Friday, April 24, 2015

The political fight is on a personal level


On November 18, 2013 President Obama[1] was disappointed about the non-election of three nominations to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeal, obviously the second highest Court in the Country. Even the favorable voices of Chief Justice John Roberts and the Judicial Conference of the United States, who are convinced to fill these vacancies, the elections have been blocked by Senate Republicans.

President Obama comments additionally that four of his five nominations have been obstructed while six nominations of his predecessor have been confirmed. It be his constitutional duty to nominate qualified personalities to a fully-functioning judiciary, he wrote.

What is the statement of Norm Ornstein from the American Enterprise Institute? „If Obama is for it, we’re against it even it’s good for the country.”[2] That is the reason of the actual gridlock the political battle has been transformed to a personal matter. Political arguments do not convince anymore, everything is personal and used on a personal level.

Yesterday Loretta Lynch has been confirmed as Attorney General of the U.S. – after a long period of ... in the U.S. Senate.



[1] The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, November 18, 2013
[2] Tamara Lytle, “What’s Wrong with Washington,” AARP Bulletin, December 2011, 16-18.

Monday, April 13, 2015

The United States - A Socialist Country?

Introducing “Obamacare”, the mandatory health care insurance in the U.S., is often mentioned by the issue if that means that a socialized medical care is invented. About this point there are large uncertainties.

“Obamacare” respects the liberal principle that the Government is setting the framework and is defining minimal standards. “Obamacare” requires that everyone has to have a healthcare insurance. And the insurance contracts have to fulfill minimal levels of services. The performers are private organizations and participants. The Health Insurance Companies are offering their services and work with their participants like hospitals, medical doctors, medical laboratories and pharmacies. They settle up the services done by private authorities. Health Insurance Companies, hospitals, medical doctors, medical laboratories and pharmacies are active as private businesses. 

In a system of socialized medicine all medical services would be processed by government related companies and authorities like in Canada, Great Britain and Norway. In these cases every activity is done by the government, beginning with the insurance, all medical services, stay in hospitals and purchasing of medicine.


With “Obamacare” in the U.S. the benefits of a health insurance contract is stipulated. All other market participants like medical doctors or private companies (insurer, hospitals, pharmacies) are private businesses. 

Thursday, April 9, 2015

Health Care System

The introduction of the new health care policies should have offered the targeted people choices by means of computer-aided market platforms. The federal government’s programming of these market platforms was disastrous. Valuable time for new applications was taken up with corrections and patchwork repairs presumably strengthening the predominant rejection of mandatory health care throughout the country. Federal government regulations are met with suspicion and treated with utmost skepticism. The introduction of Obamacare is no exception.

It is interesting that the new mandatory insurance is aimed at about 15% of the population, i.e., more than 80% of residents have health care and know about its benefits. Yet, a majority rejects Obamacare.

Whoever is covered by a health care plan pays a predetermined price for visits to the doctor or hospital negotiated with the insurance company. A special report by Steven Brill shows that especially middle class patients without insurance coverage pay for the horrendous cost of their treatment, thereby depleting their savings often earmarked for retirement.[1] As all residents must have health care insurance by 2014, negotiated prices will have to be paid in full or partially by the health insurers. 


[1] Steven Brill, Bitter Pill, Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, Special Report in Time Magazine, March 4, 2013

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Budget Problem

Why are America’s budget problems out of control?

The American Congress has re-elections every two years and thus its composition changes every two years. A new Congress is eager to approve new laws which are fueled by the 12'000 active lobbyist in Washington, DC, working towards their own goals and their own interests. Once a law is passed offering benefits or tax credits for a certain cause or product e.g. subsidizing cotton or energy; that federal expenditure remains in force moving forward until Congress cancels the law. Unfortunately, such cancellations of subsidies do not happen but more are added every year. Expenses go up every year almost unnoticed.

Income is reduced because of the constant effort to lower taxes. Profits from large companies enlarged from loopholes and exceptions created in their favor through lobbying. Small and medium size companies bear the burden.  Did you know that between 2008 and 2010, up to 30 large corporations spent more money on Lobbying in Washington than they paid in income taxes?[1]

An increase in subsidies and a decrease in tax income create a gap and build a structural deficit. Cyclical changes influence the deficit like heavy waves however they do not solve the problem to reduce the deficit.



[1] Zaid Jilani, “Between 2008 And 2010, 30 Big Corporations Spent More Lobbying Washington Than They Paid In Income Taxes,” Think Progress Economy, December 7, 2011

Sunday, December 21, 2014

The Transformation (2)

The text I published last week was revealing and surprising to me. Here is another quotation about how Americans do and love politics:

"So, the new NBC poll, the new NBC/"Wall Street Journal" poll that came out. If this poll were a medical test, the resulting diagnosis would be schizophrenia. I mean, no offense to schizophrenia. Look at this. Do you favor the basic idea of reforming he immigration system? Do you favor a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants? The answer, yes, 57 percent of the country favors that. OK. How about if we achieve that goal the way President Obama says he wants to? Do you favor a pathway for undocumented immigrants that also requires them to pay a fine and any back taxes and to pass a background check, like the president want? Do you want that? The answer: yes, with an exclamation point -- 74 percent yes. We love that idea. As a nation, we love what the president wants to do to reform immigration policy. Great. That seems very simple. Now that the president is going to act on immigration policy, let`s ask about that. Do you favor what the president is about to do? No. No. We love this policy. We hate this policy. How dare this president does what we want? Here`s my other favorite. They asked people what the newly elected Congress should do in Washington. What do you want them to do? And this is the list of ranked policies -- policies ranked in terms of what people want the new Congress to do. Look at the top five. 

The top  five most popular policies the American people want this Congress to pursue are: 

  • number one, lowering the cost of student loans, also 
  • increase spending on infrastructure, 
  • raising the federal minimum wage, 
  • approving more money to fight Ebola, and 
  • limiting carbon emissions to fight climate change. 

Those are the five most popular policies on the whole list of things that Congress should do. The top five are all things that the Republicans who were just elected to lead the Congress are adamantly opposed to. So, as a nation, we just elected a Congress that has pledged to fight tooth and nail against the policies that we most want to see enacted. And here`s the best part. When asked are you happy with what you just did, are you happy with electing this new majority that`s pledging to stand against everything you want, does that seem like a good thing? The answer is yes. Yes, very happy with the result of the election. So, Americans want very specific things for the country. And we`re also delighted to elect the people who will stop the country from getting those things. It`s almost like people don`t really know what`s going on in politics. Or they don`t really know what decisions are being made and by whom in Washington. It`s almost like the public isn`t that well-informed about who wants what, what`s going on with policy and politics that even on issues that they say they care about. It`s almost like we don`t know."

Rachel Maddow, in the Rachel Maddow Show on November 19, 2014

Friday, December 12, 2014

The Transformation

By Edwin Lyngar, published in SALON, July 16, 2014

"I was a 20-year-old college dropout with no more than $100 in the bank the day my son was born in 1994.  I’d been in the Coast Guard just over six months. Joining the service was my solution to a lot of problems, not the least of which was being married to a pregnant, 19-year-old fellow dropout.  We were poor, and my overwhelming response to poverty was a profound shame that drove me into the arms of the people least willing to help — conservatives.
Just before our first baby arrived, my wife and I walked into the social services office near the base where I was stationed in rural North Carolina. “You qualify for WIC and food stamps,” the middle-aged woman said.  I don’t know whether she disapproved of us or if all social services workers in the South oozed an understated unpleasantness.  We took the Women, Infants, Children vouchers for free peanut butter, cheese and baby formula and got into the food stamp line.
Looking around, I saw no other young servicemen.  Coming from the white working class, I’d always been taught that food stamps were for the “others” — failures, drug addicts or immigrants, maybe — not for real Americans like me.  I could not bear the stigma, so we walked out before our number was called.
Even though we didn’t take the food stamps, we lived in the warm embrace of the federal government with subsidized housing and utilities, courtesy of Uncle Sam.  Yet I blamed all of my considerable problems on the government, the only institution that was actively working to alleviate my suffering. I railed against government spending (i.e., raising my own salary).  At the same time, the earned income tax credit was the only way I could balance my budget at the end of the year.
I felt my own poverty was a moral failure.  To support my feelings of inadequacy, every move I made only pushed me deeper into poverty.  I bought a car and got screwed on the financing.  The credit I could get, I overused and was overpriced to start with.  My wife couldn’t get or keep a job, and we could not afford reliable day care in any case.  I was naive, broke and uneducated but still felt entitled to a middle-class existence.
If you had taken WIC and the EITC away from me, my son would still have eaten, but my life would have been much more miserable.  Without government help, I would have had to borrow money from my family more often.  I borrowed money from my parents less than a handful of times, but I remember every single instance with a burning shame.  To ask for money was to admit defeat, to be a de facto loser.
To make up for my own failures, I voted to give rich people tax cuts, because somewhere deep inside, I knew they were better than me.  They earned it.  My support for conservative politics was atonement for the original sin of being white trash.
In my second tour of duty, I grew in rank and my circumstances improved.  I voted for George W. Bush.  I sent his campaign money, even though I had little to spare. During the Bush v. Gore recount, I grabbed a sign and walked the streets of San Francisco to protest, carrying my toddler on my shoulders.  I got emotional, thinking of “freedom.”
Sometime after he took office, I watched Bush speak at an event.  He talked of tax cuts.  “It’s the people’s money,” he said.  By then I was making even better money, but I didn’t care about tax cuts for myself.  I was still paying little if any income tax, but I believed in “fairness.” The “death tax” (aka the estate tax) was unfair and rich people paid more taxes so they should get more of a tax break.  I ignored my own personal struggles when I made political decisions.
By the financial meltdown of 2008, I was out of the military and living in Reno, Nevada — a state hard hit by the downturn.  I voted libertarian that election year, even though the utter failure of the free market was obvious.  The financial crisis proved that rich people are no better than me, and in fact, are often inferior to average people.  They crash companies, loot pensions and destroy banks, and when they hit a snag, they scream to be rescued by government largess.  By contrast, I continued to pay my oversize mortgage for years, even as my home lost more than half its value.  I viewed my bad investment as yet another moral failure.  When it comes to voting and investing, rich people make calculated decisions, while regular people make “emotional” and “moral” ones.  Despite growing self-awareness, I pushed away reality for another election cycle.
In 2010, I couldn’t support my own Tea Party candidate for Senate because Sharron Angle was an obvious lunatic.  I instead sent money to the Rand Paul campaign.  Immediately the Tea Party-led Congress pushed drastic cuts in government spending that prolonged the economic pain.  The jobs crisis in my own city was exacerbated by the needless gutting of government employment.  The people who crashed the economy — bankers and business people — screamed about government spending and exploited Tea Party outrage to get their own taxes lowered.  Just months after the Tea Party victory, I realized my mistake, but I could only watch as the people I supported inflicted massive, unnecessary pain on the economy through government shutdowns, spending cuts and gleeful cruelty.
I finally “got it.”  In 2012, I shunned my self-destructive voting habits and supported Obama. I only wished there were a major party more liberal than the Democrats for whom I could vote.  Even as I saw the folly of my own lifelong voting record, many of my friends and family moved further into the Tea Party embrace, even as conservative policies made their lives worse.
I have a close friend on permanent disability.  He votes reliably for the most extreme conservative in every election.  Although he’s a Nevadan, he lives just across the border in California, because that progressive state provides better social safety nets for its disabled. He always votes for the person most likely to slash the program he depends ondaily for his own survival.  It’s like clinging to the end of a thin rope and voting for the rope-cutting razor party.
The people who most support the Republicans and the Tea Party carry a secret burden.  Many know that they are one medical emergency or broken down car away from ruin, and they blame the government.  They vote against their own interests, often hurting themselves in concrete ways, in a vain attempt to deal with their own, misguided shame about being poor.  They believe “freedom” is the answer, even though they live a form of wage indenture in a rigged system.
I didn’t become a liberal until I was nearly 40. By the time I came around, I was an educated professional, married to another professional.  We’re “making it,” whatever that means these days.  I gladly pay taxes now, but this attitude is also rooted in self-interest.  I have relatives who are poor, and without government services, I might have to support them.  We can all go back to living in clans, like cavemen, or we can build institutions and programs that help people who need it.  It seems like a great bargain to me.
I’m angry at my younger self, not for being poor, but for supporting politicians who would have kept me poor if they were able.  Despite my personal attempts to destroy the safety net, those benefits helped me.  I earned a bachelor’s degree for free courtesy of a federal program, and after my military service I used the GI Bill to get two graduate degrees, all while making ends meet with the earned income tax credit.  The GI Bill not only helped me, it also created much of the American middle class after World War II.  Conservatives often crow about “supporting the military,” but imagine how much better America would be if the government used just 10 percent of the military budget to pay for universal higher education, rather than saddling 20-year-olds with mortgage-like debt.
Government often fails because the moneyed interests don’t want it to succeed.  They hate government and most especially activist government (aka government that does something useful).  Their hatred for government is really disdain for Americans, except as consumers or underpaid labor.
Sadly, it took me years — decades — to see the illogic of supporting people who disdain me.  But I’m a super-slow learner.  I wish I could take the poorest, struggling conservatives and shake them.  I would scream that their circumstances or failures or joblessness are not all their fault.  They should wise up and vote themselves a break.  Rich people vote their self-interest in every single election.  Why don’t poor people?"
You can follow Edwin Lyngar on twitter @Edwin_Lyngar

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

What is your Vision for America?

This is the weighty question I posed in my book where I explore how the political map of America - my adopted homeland - differs wildly from that of my native Switzerland. I am passionate about American life and culture, and my new book examines the differences in health care, retirement plans, tax systems and international affairs between the two nations, in an effort to find common ground and sources of inspiration and improvement.

My findings reflect intense differences in values, commitments and priorities between the US and Switzerland, which impacts the people, their economies, politics and international relations profoundly. While the American people seems driven by wealth, fame and short-term success, the Swiss focus on quality, precision, independence, integrity, financial stability and the physical well-being of its countrymen. The Swiss take pride in taking care of their citizens throughout their lives by having well-oiled social systems in place. While healthcare is considered a service in Switzerland, in the United States, I believe it to be a very profitable business. I question if this is a lack of solidarity and if America is, in fact, a plutocracy.