Intersection on 15th Street

The current debate has an ideological incoherence on both sides. Republicans endorse a premium support model for Medicare even as they work to undo the new insurance exchanges in the health-care law. Democrats distrust premium support when it comes to Medicare but support the exchanges, with sliding scale subsidies that amount to premium support, in the health-care plan. The problem of getting health-care costs under control is complicated enough without knee-jerk opposition being the default reaction to any proposal from the other side.

"The current debate has an ideological incoherence on both sides" errs by defect. Actually, the seventeen principal sides exhibit an average of 4.509 ideomuddles apiece.

On a broader front of the _Klassenkampf_, this neobrainwave from the High Command at Fox-on-Fifteenth-Street ought to allow the F-15 Squadron to draw up a joint platform with the _Wall Street Jingo_, where there is no really deep affection for "moral hazard" -- or aversion to "death panels" -- to overcume, as long as this gruesome twosome afflict other folks exclusively, preferably the Bad Poor. Plainly there is no reason in principle why we slackers should not FIRST pay higher premiums, with hearty strengthenin’ effect upon our moral fibre, obviously in need of re-ruggediziation, and THEN get a little death-panel therapy from the premium-collection agency, that plan being the surest way to cure our Uncle Sam's insolvency, if not, perhaps, in all cases the complaints of Big Sam's idiot nephews and nieces.

Though they do not emphasize it, _et pour cause_, the F-15 Squadron must have noticed that gapin’ hole in the Thirty Year Plan recently issued by the Smirk of Janesville [ http://j.mp/g1WlyX ], the vast gap that for a while I thought I alone had detected. A few neocomrades have complained out loud that the Smirk proposed nothing significant in the direction of terminatin’ the Ponzi Security Administration, but nobooby at all pointed out that if profligate Medicare is not so much as begin to be superseded by frugal an’ inspirational SmirkCare™ until a decade after it is enacted, ¿how on G*re’s green earth will The Superclass get richer, as they naturally deserve to, by prudent specuvestments in the medical sector durin’ the interim?

My first thought was that the Scrooges an’ Warbucks an’ Goulds an’ Rockefellers of our own day have degenerated intellectually from the level of their sires an’ grandsires an’ greatgrands. I still think so, but now think I overestimated the extent of this sad tendency. Mostly, I have come to think, they are distracted from the long-term implications of the Smirk Program by their fixation on gettin’ the "Bush tax cuts" locked in forever. Until that happens, their freelordships will be in no fit condition to look as far ahead as the end of next week.

Considered in isolation, this bad attitude is no worse than usual, par for the course at the Unionbasher League Club. The daddies (&c.) of the Jingos seem to have whined about "restoring business confidence" in the 1930's in a fashion almost indistinguishable from what the Great Selfservative Noise Machine cranks out at present.

Bein’ belated perverts to the banners of The Superclass, the F-15 Squadron can still see the correlation of farces more clearly. In time, they will no doubt get freeedumbed-down to the average level of their new ideobudddies, but for one brief shinin’ neomoment they have (I think) perceived what Big Management will be feelin’ unconfident about next. ¡An’ perceived it before the biggies have started to feel it themselves!

This feat was beyond the skills of Party Neocomrade P. D. Ryan, Jr., who accordin'ly deserves to get badmouthed a little. The exact form of the mild reprimand from Fox-on-15th to the Smirk of Janesville is rather clever: " [T]he premium supports would not grow fast enough; seniors would have to shoulder an increasingly unsustainable share of their medical costs" *sounds* like the sameoldestst of lieberal and demoncratic same-olds.

That tired whimperin’ on behalf of sickos an’ poor geezers is not what the F-15 Squadron chiefly mean, but it is very convenient for them that it should sound like that. The longer the neofoxies can pretend to a continuity with the former _Washington Post_, pretend, that is, to be a "lieberal lame-stream" medium, the better they can serve The Superclass.

The real message is slightly encrypted, winkwinked an’ nodnodded at rather than boldly declared. But as I said, I think, upon reconsideration, that our now G.O.P. Geniuses are probably bestembright enough to work it out. From "[P]remium supports would not grow fast enough" ’tis no great distance, surely, to "Insurance corporation revenues would not grow fast enough."

Of course if the neofoxies actually said that in so many words, their cover would be blown once and for all. ’Tis scarcely as if Potomac River City needs two separate daily versions of America's Moonpaper. Or three, rather: one must not forget the freebie [ http://washingtonexaminer.com ], after all.

Unlike the Smirk of Janesville, then, the neofoxies on 15th are properly worried about their paymasters’ *true* best interests, wherein they completely coincide with the Wall Street Jingoes. Neocomrade Ryan is, as I conjecture, makin’ a mistake quite common amongst ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’, the mistake of supposin’ that those for whom they scab really need an’ appreciate buttressin’ up on the AEIdeological side -- as if his Uncle Scrooge or his Tio Ruperto would ever so much as cross the street to advance Freedumb of Enterprise™ considered in the abstract an’ apart from ¿what-is-in-it-for-ME? Neocommissar Smirk's Thirty Year Plan must gladden the hearts of Heritagitarians an’ Palo Alto Hoovervillains an' Catoholics, but I betcha those who actually engage directly in payroll-meetin’ an’ railroad-runnin’ will discover (as the neofoxies sagely anticipate) that SMIRKISM IS NOT ENOUGH.

In particular, it will not restore "business confidence" if SmirkCare™ does no more than keep their freelordships’ taxes down to current levels rather than steal ever more an’ more bucks from the Alone Producin’ Class only to keep throwin’ ’em into the bottomless pit of medicine for the Bad Poor. Though necessary, avoidin’ that will be far from sufficient.

A pious abhorrence of Moral Hazard -- naturally, only for those with annual salaries in fewer than six or seven digits, lesser breeds without the pale of The Superclass -- can do no harm, an’ maybe it will even do some small fiscal good as well as a whole lot of neoëthical ditto, yet, even between them, Taxation Restraint and Moral Hazard Limitation cannot do the trick. As the labels I choose give away, these are purely negative measures. What Scrooge an’ Warbucks an’ Murdoch an’ ... and Freedumb and Justice (and Fox-on-15th) demand -- or damwell oughta demand -- on the healthcare front of the Class War is POSITIVE steps that commence IMMEDIATELY to put money in the pockets of Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) so that it can then trickle downwards to bless us, every one.

Given That Man in the White House an’ the fiends in control of the Senate, ‘immediately’ will probably have to go by the board, but there can be no excuse for abandonin’ ‘positive’ the way the Smirk of Janesville has abandoned it. Probably that little laddie’s pipemasters did not make perfectly clear exactly what tune they wanted, but this is no excuse at all. I mean, ¿What is the ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ good for, if she cannot *anticipate* her Masters’ just an’ reasonable requirements? ¿If the F-15 Squadron can do that in D.C., why cannot The Smirk do it in the First of Wisconsin? ¡One would hate to have to think that there really is something intrinsically decerebrating in the air and water of Flyover Country!

Of course an unsigned foxitorial is not the place to present a proposed improvement over SmirkCare™, or any other morsel of policy-wonk fodder, in eye-glazin’ detail. It sounds, however, as if Party Neocomrade F. X. Hiatt an’ his freelordship’s like-neominded merrypersons think they could do it. They lay it down expressly that the holy Homeland™ needs BOTH the Smirkites’ "premium support model" AND the reactionary lieberals’ "new insurance exchanges in the health-care law." That sounds as if we are in fact most of the way to Beulah Land already: the pipe (insurance exchanges) has already been forged. It has even been connected to the trough (Secretary Geithner's Department). Now, if only somebooby would please find the spigot an’ turn it, the flood of Fedguv swill would fruitfully shower down upon the parched wastelands where Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) languish so sadly [ http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/14health.html ] at the moment.

Which reminds me just a little of the neocomrade foxitorialists’ "ideological incoherence." One will not find the Freelord of Hiatt an’ minions pointin’ out that it is, after all, in large part "Fedguv swill" of which we sing. Greedy selfcentered geezers amongst the Bad Poor certainly deserve to pay much more for their medicine than they have been paying, but that is a great *moral* neotruth primarily. Ætna an’ CIGNA (&c. &c.) are already charging about as much as that sort of traffic can bear. They always have an’ they always will, for such is the teachin’ of Chicagonomics for Dummies. Really significant revenue enhancement therefore requires gettin’ at Big Sam.

That is where ‘incoherence’ comes into sight, given that the neofoxies are passionate groupies to Peter Peterson, the Freelord of Concord. Addicted to "fiscal responsibility" are they. Comin’ from Freddy Hiatt's crew, that soundbark probably means what it sounds like, what his freelordship of Concord presumably means when he barks it. On Fifteenth Street in Beltway City, F. R. is not simply Tax Limitation for oneself personally masqueradin' as policy prescription, though of course it *is* that among other things.

’Tis no accident, therefore, that one finds no explicit rehearsal of the "¡Down with fiscal irresponsibility!" soundbark here. Every penny the neofoxies would rechannel from China to Bernanke von Ludendorff to Geithner von Hindenburg to CIGNA to trickeledown is red ink from the accountant’s-eye or Concord Coalition view. Today's foxitorial is not on that account automatically to be deemed an "ideological incoherence," however. Any appearance thereof results from the fact that Hiatt©@®€ (Pat. Pend.) just happens to be one of the dispensations of Fedguv swill that the neofoxies thoroughly approve of. It thus resembles lighthouse maintenance (I assume) an’ Native Management (for sure). Freelord Freddy an’ the F-15 neoguys are not doctrinaire dilbertarians who refuse to admit that the Wicked State may be allowed to do anything at all. They just wanna pick an’ choose a little.

Unfortunately, that is another thing they would be unwise to say out loud. Naturally they cannot reconcile lemme-pick-an’-choose [*] with Financial Responsibility without any mention of the former, so there is much to be said for their decision to mention neither.



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[*] Pronounced, I believe, "Lem-ME pick an’ choose," with heavy stress on the second syllable and the First Person.

Defection to Foxcuckooland has not made the former Posties any less _élitistes_ then they have been all along. To be sure, up to a point they really *are* more bestembright than others, havin’, for example, managed to come up with sounder policy for The Smirk of Janesville’s paymasters than it could.