Yearly Archives: 2014

“Echo Chambers” – An Alternative To The BBC Feature

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Last November, the BBC website created the “Echo Chambers” feature, and assigned one of their experienced editors and journalists, Anthony Zurcher to curate it. The mission statement as he originally stated it is this:

Welcome to Echo Chambers, a new blog about opinion and commentary in the United States and around the world.

The purpose of this blog is to discover and present quality opinion journalism wherever it may be – to find value amid the noise. We’ll unearth interesting material and underreported views from the BBC, on the world’s newspaper opinion pages, and in think tank reports, magazines, blog posts and scholarly journals. The venue isn’t important; the content is.

A condensed version of this is permanently in the upper right corner of the Echo Chambers page.

Unscrambling the noise of the global debate, from social media to scholarly journals, Kansas City to Kathmandu.

As has been pointed out many times, I’m not a professional journalist and so cannot understand the arcane arts, but to me, this means that the blog is meant to make some sense of the chatter on both sides of an issue. After all, we’ve been told countless times by journalists and defenders of the indefensible that this blog is just a Right-wing echo chamber, and we often complain that the BBC functions as a Left-wing echo chamber. We all know the drill about Fox News or the Guardian, each often described as an echo chamber for their own side of the political spectrum, and intellectually lazy people who want to stifle debate simply dismiss any point made or evidence offered from either as invalid, simply due to the source, relieving the accuser of the need to address the actual point itself. Media in both the US and UK have become highly politicized, from local newspapers and obscure blogs all the way up to national papers and network and cable news. There’s far more opinion-mongering going on everywhere these days than actual objective newsgathering and reporting. In fact, even the top outlets like the Washington Post and the BBC are moving more and more towards opinion journalism.

One would think it’s a good idea to try and sort through the noise and attempt to distill it down to some semblance of reality, to point out merits or flaws in arguments coming from each side of an issue. The question for the BBC’s Echo Chambers feature, then, is does it meet its remit?

Zurcher’s opening mission statement was that he intends to “find value amid the noise”, and the permanent mission statement is to “unscramble the noise”. In practice, it seems that, with the exception of a weekly list of links about various topics, the installments are  mostly an exercise in Left-wing editorializing. Much of the time, Zurcher is basically presenting stuff from the mainstream Left-wing echo chamber as value in reaction to an issue which seemed to be momentarily gaining traction from the Right. His choices of who writes quality opinion is revealing. One has to give him credit for being one of the more industrious BBC journalists. He sure cranks out a lot of these in a short space of time. A list of links to my analyses of several of his pieces can be found in the comments section of this post about it by Daniel Pycock. Personally, I’m sick to death of opinion journalism, and I think it’s done far more damage to public discourse than help crystalize any ideas. But again, I’m not a professional journalist, so not qualified to judge the priest caste.

With this in mind, I’m going to try a little experiment. For the next five Echo Chambers installments (not including the next simple list of links), rather than do my usual long-winded parsing and complaining, I’m going to attempt an alternative version of what I think it says on the tin. That is to say, I’ll try to actually present a few opinion pieces on whatever topic catches Zurcher’s fancy. I won’t read his piece, just check the title and the opening lines to see what the issue is. I’ll even use his title. Then I’ll curate my own collection of “value”, adding my own brief (I promise) comments so the reader gets the idea of what I think is going on. Each one will include a link to the BBC Echo Chambers piece, and everyone can view them side-by-side and judge for themselves not so much if I’m doing a great job, but whether or not Zurcher is really doing his properly, and just how much of a Left-wing echo chamber he lives in. I may or may not link to the same things he does. Without reading it in advance, I’ll have no idea. If I do, it’s purely coincidental. This whole thing is nothing more than opinion journalism on that level anyway, and anyone who has read two or three of these things will know in which bubble Zurcher lives.

So, below is my first installment. Four more will follow as and when.

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Senator Ted Cruz, still Canadian

One of the most prominent politicians on the Right these days is Ted Cruz, the Republican junior Senator from Texas. He was elected on the strength of Tea Party backing, and in these days of desperation for a fresh face is already being touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2016. Many on the Left see him as a possible threat because he is Hispanic, and identity politics is a very important tool for them. So he’ll most likely get more attention early on than a junior Senator with no experience would otherwise. Sounds familiar, somehow. Cruz is also hated on the Left because of his support for last year’s government shutdown. In other words, there’s a big target on his back.

So it was inevitable that people would start looking for something on Cruz. As it happens, he was born in Canada. His mother was a US citizen at the time of birth, so US law says he’s a citizen at birth, regardless of where he was born, even though his Cuban father was not. Cruz claims he didn’t know because he was told in his youth that he had to make some official affirmation to finalize his Canadian citizenship, and since he never bothered, he forgot all about it. It’s actually automatic, no need for him to do anything. Of course, it’s impossible to prove he’s lying.

The noise first started, really, back in March 2013, after he introduced Sarah Palin as keynote speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). One of her main topics was gun control and the Obama* Administration’s press for more and stricter background checks in the aftermath of the mass murder of children at a school in Newtown, CT. At one point, she made quip about maybe we should have started checking his background first.

You can guess what happened next. Rick Ungar in Forbes saw support for Cruz as “Birther Hypocrisy”.

While Palin’s return to birtherism accomplished the intended laugh from the appreciative crowd, there was someone in the room who was likely not laughing.

That would be Senator Ted Cruz—the man who so glowingly introduced Ms. Palin and a man who clearly views himself as being on a populist track to the White House. He’s not alone in that regard as four percent of the votes registered in the CPAC straw poll were cast in support of Mr. Cruz, the man often referred to as the Republican Barack Obama.

Ironically, there can be little doubt that among those who expressed their support for a Cruz presidency at CPAC were attendees who continue to question the current president’s constitutional right to hold the office.

While there is no legal question about Cruz’s eligibility, it was quickly revealed that he was also a Canadian citizen, which is what happens when one is born there. So there was a call for him to renounce his Canadian citizenship, partially to make a point, and partially because many would consider it a little odd for a President to be a citizen of another country. As Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News explained in August:

What’s a birther to do? After years of haranguing Barack Obama as a non-citizen, what about Ted Cruz, who acknowledges he was born in Canada? He isn’t just a U.S. citizen. He has dual citizenship as both an American and a Canadian. Cruz says he’ll renounce his Canadian citizenship, but it’s not clear whether that’s enough to satisfy the birthers in his party who have long claimed at President Obama was born in Africa and therefore ineligible to be president. Obama was born in Hawaii. But most constitutional scholars agree that even if he had been born in a foreign country, he’s still a natural-born citizen under the terms of the Constitution because he is the child of an American parent.

Slater goes on to say that true Birthers claim – erroneously, of course – that nobody even born in a foreign country can be President. Cruz quickly promised to renounce his Canadian citizenship by the end of the year.

Steven Lubet in the Left-leaning Salon snarkily pointed out that there might be some complications in the process:

Only one of Ted’s parents was a citizen when he was born (his father is a Cuban émigré who did not take U.S. citizenship until 2005), and he therefore falls under a special section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that applies to “Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent.” Under that provision, Cruz only qualifies for American citizenship if his mother was “physically present” in the United States for 10 years prior to his birth, five of which had to be after she reached the age of 14. The only definitive way to prove Eleanor Cruz’s 10 years of physical presence would be with documents such as leases, school registration, utility bills or tax records.

Of course, we don’t know how rigorous the Canadians are about evidence of citizenship, but we do know that they will not be willing simply to take Ted’s word for it. Their form is very specific about requiring documentary proof, and that might be hard for Ted to come by. Could that be the reason for Cruz’s delayed renunciation? It would be pretty embarrassing to have his Application to Renounce Canadian Citizenship denied on a technicality.

In other words, in order to renounce Canadian citizenship, Cruz first has to go through a laborious record-collecting  process to prove his US citizenship. This was picked up in the Left-wing blogosphere and other outlets, and the Left thought they smelled ironic birther blood.  It’s now the new year, so naturally those who seek to undermine him are going to check up on it. It turns out he hasn’t officially done it yet, hence the noise this week. Why hasn’t he followed up on his promise? It should be a straightforward process. So are the Left-wing birthers on to something? Kelly McPartland from Canada’s National Post seems to think so.

Some immigration experts are wondering why it’s taken Mr. Cruz so long to complete the paperwork for his renunciation. “It’s not complicated at all,” said Stephen Green, an immigration lawyer in Toronto, according to the Associated Press.

Richard Kurland, a Vancouver-based immigration attorney, agreed: “Unless there’s a security issue that hasn’t been disclosed, unless there’s a mental health issue that hasn’t been disclosed, there’s no reason for anything other than a lickety-split process to occur.”

Hmmm. Well, something must be holding up the works, which is why Mr. Alexander should seize this opportunity to get involved. Ted Cruz is an American caught in the talons of Canadian citizenship. We need to set him free.

Yes, the Left-wing echo chambers like the Daily Kos are getting excited over this, but I’m having a hard time finding actual opinion pieces on it. Rather than seeing a lot of noise in the echo chambers which must be unscrambled, I’m seeing that almost everyone is pretty much reprinting the same Canadian Press/AP piece over and over, or quoting the relevant bits like McPartland has done. Wayne Slater in the Dallas Morning News is doing the same thing in his opinion piece. Is there anything in the Right-wing echo chamber about this? Not that I can find. I haven’t spent hours searching, and at this point it’s pretty clear that anything will be more speculation or a simple dismissal, repeating what’s already been said.

I suppose one way to look at this is that if the Right is silent, that means they’re afraid of the truth. Alternatively, they could simply feel that it’s already been proven that Cruz meets the definition of a natural born US citizen, especially since nobody is doubting that his mother didn’t live in the US for ten years before he was born, and don’t care about this. In other words, it’s exciting for the Left, who have only speculation to go on, and that’s about it. There’s nothing edifying either way other than the one supposition quoted by the AP. We’ll have to wait and see.

* I’m refraining from my usual formulation of “The Obamessiah” and the quasi-religious capital H in “Him”, etc., because I do that to make fun of the BBC’s reflexive worship and near religious devotion, and it’s not appropriate for what I’m trying to do here.

SHUTTING THE GATE…

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Aw, bless ’em. The BBC must have been so upset by the revelations from former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates indicating that Obama did not have faith in the merit of the administration’s strategy, despite his decision to order a “surge” in troops to the region, that it is buried in the main news portal today! See if you can find it; Hint, it’s below a Schumacher story….

Comedians will always have the last laugh, Mr Gove

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Joan Bakewell tells us politicians won’t win against the comics….

Something the BBC knows and employs to great effect on its comedy programmes:

It is an unwise man who picks a quarrel with comics. They may not be right; indeed, you may be. But they have the jokes. And that means laughter and the warm regard of the public.

 

However…

Perhaps politics is now seen by the public as so discredited that it’s time to bring on the clowns. In which case, more than a few will be in for a shock. Running the country is no laughing matter.

 

 

‘Public Opinon Is Very Incendiary On This’…..Immigration

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The census clearly shows that the decade preceding 2011 saw the greatest rise in the population in England and Wales in any 10-year period since census taking began growing by 3.7 million or 7.1 per cent. Some 55 per cent of this growth is due to immigration, immigration that primarily occurred under New Labour’s watch.

 

Interesting that the BBC has filled the airwaves all day with talk of immigration….based on Nick Robinson’s programme ‘The Truth about immigration’. and filled the right wing newspapers with his interviews…..shouldn’t all these debates be after the programme has aired….or is it all just the usual BBC trick of having a ‘news’ item which is actually no more than an extended advert for a TV programme?

Curiously, despite Nicky Campbell admitting this morning that ‘Immigration is of massive consequence to people’...and that nearly 80% of people want it reduced,  the programme is not (yet) on the ‘Featured’ section of the iPlayer, nor is it in the ‘Most Popular’, in fact I had to use the search facility to bring the programme up at all.

 

Campbell’s ‘Your Call’ this morning was based upon Robinson’s programme….and wanted your views and experiences of immigration.

The accepted orthodoxy of the programme was that immigration was good….we were constantly told that ‘studies show that immigrants have a beneficial effect upon the economy’….there was no examination of this, it was just taken as fact.

‘As a fact economists tell us that overall immigration makes us richer.’

And yet that just isn’t true…..

Limit immigration, warns House of Lords

The number of immigrants entering Britain should be capped, an influential House of Lords committee has warned.

Its analysis concludes that record levels of immigration are bringing no economic benefit to the country.

The overall conclusion from existing evidence is that immigration has very small impacts on GDP per capita, whether these impacts are positive or negative. This conclusion is in line with findings of studies of the economic impacts of immigration in other countries including the US.”

 

Even those studies that do show a benefit admit that the ‘impact is small…..positive, albeit small’

So no, not ‘all studies show immigration is economically beneficial’

 

The BBC gives the impression by not balancing any such benefit against the downsides, that the benefits are large scale.

Campbell brought on an academic whom Campbell assured us was strictly neutral and unaligned…well, no…he had a very definite bias…pro immigration.

He told us that immigration benefits us by £45 billion per annum….but oddly didn’t mention any costs….so the figure of £45 billion is just pure propaganda.

When a caller suggested that immigrants undercut wages and cost jobs his response was….‘of course it’s difficult but we live in a global economy’.

 

There is a stark contrast between what the academics and the likes of Campbell tell us and what the ‘man on the street’ who has to live day to day with the effects of mass immigration is saying.

Again and again callers told us that they’d lost out, either with very much lower wages or no jobs at all…never mind housing and access to schools and the NHS and the myriad of other problems immigrants bring but which are ignored by the BBC and Co.

The BBC’s line has been a constant mantra on all its programmes and news bulletins today that immigration is economically beneficial and that to limit immigration will therefore damage the ‘already fragile economy’ as Sheila Fogarty claimed…but the flip side, the negative effects of immigration just aren’t mentioned….or indeed whether those ‘benefits’ actually exist.

 

The very minimal, if any, benefits of immigration, are being hyped by the BBC whilst completely ignoring the social impacts and the damage to quality of life….which is in contrast to the BBC’s normal stance in which it denounces capitalism, money making, materialism and consumption and promotes as the better alternative, quality of life and the environment…hug a hoodie and a polar bear.

Campbell’s tone when talking to the different callers was markedly different….the pro-immigration callers had a much warmer reception… Campbell telling one he looked forward to hearing from him again.

 

Campbell had some interesting comments of his own to make which might inform us of his own leanings.

When a caller spoke of the ‘indigenous population’ Campbell asked:

‘What do you mean by indigenous population, we’ve had waves of immigration for years and years now?’

In other words…Campbell thinks there is no such thing as an ‘indigenous population’.

At odds to that po-immigration campaigners always tell us that the ‘indigenous population’ has nothing to worry about….there is no mass immigration…numbers have been exaggerated…it’s only say 13% of the population who are immigrants.

So…that would mean 87% are ‘indigenous’ based on that figure.

 

He went on to say ‘Public opinion is very incendiary on this,’

So the near 80% of people who want immigration controlled and brought down have an ‘incendiary’ view in Campbell’s opinion?

 

 

Sheila Fogarty also based her programme on immigration.

Here once again the BBC repeated the mantra…‘all studies show immigration is economically beneficial’…without quantifying exactly how much…or indeed questioning that at all.

However the two ‘expert’ speakers who were brought on both stated that the economic benefits were ‘small’….but such qualifications never made it to the news bulletins.

Here is the blurb from the programme which gives us a insight into the BC’s own view…which you can always judge by what it highlights:

A BBC survey suggests fewer people than ever think immigration damages the economy.

 

Depends of course who you ask…..ask someone who has a cheap plumber or nanny and they might think it’s great, ask someone with no job or a job on wages forced ever lower by cheap imported labour and the answer may well be different…but again that all ignores the social impact and the quality of life issues.

Fogarty had on Jenny Phillimore, Professor of Migration and Superdiversity from the University of Birmingham, Institute for Research into Superdiversity…supposedly another of these ‘neutral’ academics…but she was far from that…more like a campaigner than a impartial observer.

The real migration scandal in the UK are the people forced to live without any recourse to public funds. Migrant women who leave violent husbands, and women who have been trafficked into the UK to work in the sex industry, face the additional trauma of destitution, says Jenny Phillimore

 

Should an academic also be a campaigner? Can you then trust their research?

There are plenty of social scientists, says Alan Wolfe, director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, who never produce research results at odds with their own worldview.

“You’re just supposed to tell your peers what you found,” says John Leo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “I don’t expect academics to fret about these matters.”

 

Phillimore though does ‘fret‘ about her findings…and works to provide a solution to the problems as she perceives them to be.

She is fairly arrogant and patronising.

Phillimore thinks the problem is not the immigrants, diversity is just something you need to get used to.

The problem is people in areas which haven’t experienced mass immigration before and where there isn’t much diversity now

They are clearly stuck in their ways with their old prejudices…they are far too used to a stable society….unlike those say in Brimingham where they all happily mix together and happily welcome new immigrants because they are such a diverse society already….allegedly…funny how it is always the inner cities that ‘burn’ when racial tensions kick off.

 

Even Phillimore admits herself that previous immigrant populations don’t like immigration:

 

In other words her claim that societies with lots of immigrants are more welcoming to yet more immigration is false…a lie in fact.

 

And what of a ‘stable society‘?…isn’t that a telling remark?…immigration brings instability then…the ‘superdiversity’ means no one has any identity, no one trusts anyone, no one knows anybody…and society breaks up…as studies show.

 

The downside of diversity

A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?

The greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.

 

 

Phillimore goes on…the main problem is the ongoing negative rhetoric about immigration…..there are not anywhere near as many immigrants in this country as people think she claims.

In other words…shut up..you’re not allowed to talk about immigration.

 

Who then pops up on Fogarty’s show but one ‘Phil Mackie’ (around 13:10)…the BBC’s very pro-immigration journo…yes, another one to add to the long list.

Curiously his analysis was exactly the same as Jenny Phillimore’s…curious indeed…yes, it’s those ignorant rural hillbillies who are the racists….what they need is a few more black faces around to make them realise that they have nothing to fear and that a massive wave of immigrants is just the thing to improve their lives.

 

Here Phillimore admits there are problems…just that the solution is not to limit immigration but to ‘deal with it’…..keep the borders open but build more houses, schools hospitals, prisons, cough up more welfare payments, build more roads, concrete over the green and pleasant land….it’s not the number of immigrants that is the problem it’s the lack of help they receive from government and the attitudes of the ‘indigenous population’…should such a thing exist….

Time for change

In this era of superdiversity in the UK it is time for a housing and migration change of plan, says Jenny Phillimore

The census clearly shows that the decade preceding 2011 saw the greatest rise in the population in England and Wales in any 10-year period since census taking began growing by 3.7 million or 7.1 per cent. Some 55 per cent of this growth is due to immigration, immigration that primarily occurred under New Labour’s watch.

There is evidence that in some areas heavy concentrations of new migrants have restricted the availability of entry level housing, led to the development of unregulated HMOs, and pushed rents and house prices up. It is also clear that some landlords have been quick to cash-in on migrant housing demand by inflating rents, overcrowding properties, and neglecting fire safety and routine maintenance.

Some rural areas have also seen extensive changes. Rural Lincolnshire has seen some of the largest rises in the numbers of migrants of all of the UK with increases outstripping those in London and other cities. Again these increases do impact on house prices while lack of housing availability contributes to an explosion in the use of non-standard accommodation with migrants sometimes living and working in sheds and greenhouses or crammed into caravans and mobile homes. Migrants are often the victims of these problems rather than the cause but the net result is increased population density and a deteriorating environment and housing stock.

Much of the emphasis [from politicians] is upon greater controls and limits, strong action against ‘illegal’ migration and short and long-term action on intra-EU migration – the latter a clear attempt to pander to UKIP voters.Cooper fails to acknowledge that not only has the UK already become a country of immigration but, like the rest of the EU, we have entered an era of superdiversity where we have already witnessed unprecedented global movement and increase in diversity.

Movement and change are the new norms.  While we might want to slow these movements down by strengthening our borders we cannot turn back the clock.

 

TALIBAN MORE SINNED AGAINST THAN SINNING…

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The BBC have covered the story of the little Afghan girl who was detained wearing a suicide vest in southern Afghanistan, I happened to catch BBC Today early this morning, before 7am. John Humphrys introduced the item by asking the BBC correspondent IF this story could really be true. It’s as if he couldn’t believe how wicked these dark age savages really are and preferred to imply this was black propaganda deployed by the Afghan Government.

BBC: Laughable Bias Against George Osborne’s Proposed Cuts…

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Biased BBC contributor Daniel Pycock writes

“If you thought the BBC were pushing the “too far, too fast” line last time, just wait for more of their output regarding George Osborne’s planned cuts between 2014-16. Take a look at this most recent article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25617844

I count thirty four sentences in total, of which seven contain what Osborne actually said. There are another seven ‘neutral’ sentences dedicated to paraphrasing the government’s position. This means that there are another twenty sentences with which to flood the article with criticisms from: Trade Unions (loony left), the Labour Party (left), the Liberal Democrats (left) and the BBC’s own Nick Robinson (nominally a wet conservative).

Ed Balls got four sentence-paragraphs of criticism in there – more than I can remember any Shadow Conservative Chancellor getting (especially with comparable poll ratings). Nick Robinson basically rebuts everything that Osborne suggests, and only Robert Peston (in a side-box) provides some sort of supportive comment.

Now, I’m no massive fan of George Osborne (I do not support ring-fencing DfID, Health, or among other things, the perpetuation of our pensions ponzi-scheme); but I think that, given the alternatives offered, he is at least advancing a semi-respectable position regarding the national finances. See if you get that impression or not from the BBC…”

Mark Mardell Lies About Health Care

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Mark Mardell, the BBC’s US President editor, has published his first post of the new year, and it’s as awful as we’ve come to expect. Doesn’t anyone read this stuff for him before he published it? (H/T George R in the open thread)

A big year for Obama and the Democrats

First he says that making everyone purchase health insurance is the President’s greatest achievement.

The plan to make all Americans take out health insurance is Mr Obama’s main achievement in office, and it is the biggest change he has made to American society.

Actually, the President’s main achievement has been to divide the country and fan the flames of political and ideological hatred. But Mardell and the BBC have always blamed the Tea Party movement and anyone he can think of on the Right for that, so never mind.

He sets up his explanation with this bit of ideological and class war talking points:

At the end of last year I saw the Obamacare sign-up in action in two very different states, Mississippi and Kentucky.

They are both in the South and both of a conservative disposition. But in Mississippi the Republican governor will have nothing to do with the plan, whereas the Democratic governor in Kentucky has embraced its possibilities.

I hope I will get the chance this year to look at other examples but these trips have left me with the strong feeling the healthcare changes will play very differently in different states – and within social classes.

He went to Mississippi, of course, to hoe his usual race row. Helping poor black people is the legacy of ObamaCare, and anyone who objects to the plan is racist. He doesn’t say it out loud, but that’s been his theme since 2009: those who object to ObamaCare as wealth redistribution are really objecting to redistributing wealth to people not like them. He’s said that over and over again.

Then Mardell explains how ObamaCare is playing out in different States. The Democrats, he says, believe all will be mostly well once the website is fixed.

That may well be true in some places – those states which have chosen to embrace expanding Medicaid, a US healthcare programme for the poor, and run their own exchange websites.

Er, if the State is running its own exchange website, that has nothing to do with the ObamaCare national website being fixed. Hello? Ideology has clearly muddled his thinking here.

Note to Mardell and the BBC: Going on Medicaid IS NOT purchasing health insurance.

Like all intellectually honest people have been saying from the very beginning, the goal of ObamaCare is to pave the way towards Socialist, government-provided health care for all. I’ve only been saying it for more than three years. If a political junkie like Mardell can’t tell the difference between buying health insurance and being a ward of the State, he has no business being a journalist.

And then he blames evil Republicans for the reason why insurance premiums are much higher in the ObamaCare exchanges.

But in Republican states where they do neither (and so people have to rely on the glitchy federal website), it could end up being very expensive for individuals and firms, and have a very low take-up.

This is, of course, a total lie. Okay, a partial lie. Yes, expenses for the insurance companies will go up if they don’t get enough young people and middle class and wealthy people to pay into the system. That’s why some insurance companies are already preparing to line up for a bailout. Actually, a bailout was sneakily written into the damn law in the first place, and a bill has been introduced to stop it. They knew all along that this wouldn’t be sustainable, and wrote themselves some taxpayer cash handouts. Did the BBC ever tell you that?

However – and here’s where the lie comes in – the premiums are higher for people who are paying for it because the whole purpose is to get them to subsidize and cover costs of insurance companies being forced to cover everyone with pre-existing conditions who would otherwise be paying a lot more, as well as being forced to pay for birth control pills and maternity care for everyone, men included. Plus taxes are being stuck on top of it. In short, the premiums will in general be higher anyway, regardless of how many people sign up in a world where the website was launched without a hitch. In fact, premiums are already higher. Insurance companies didn’t start out with high prices and will lower them once more people sign up. They’re higher because that’s what it’s going to cost even if everybody signs up, and they will remain so. What he’s saying simply isn’t true.

Here’s a good explanation from Forbes (not Fox News, not Breitbart, not the Right-wing echo chamber), which was written 10 months before we found out that the website was screwed up. No blame on a glitchy website preventing it from working was possible. The actual premium figures still remain to be seen, but there’s no denying the underlying mess. Well, Mardell is denying it, but he’s wrong, and has to be dishonest in order to do it.

Even when people in the US are trying to defend against this charge, it’s framed as “Why the premiums are lower than expected”, which is clever way to say they’re higher but it’s not as bad as the doomsayers said. Not much of a defense. And this is from California, one of those Democrat States running its own exchange that Mardell claims would work out well. The reason the premiums aren’t as high as expected? Some of the biggest insurance companies are staying out. They know keeping costs down isn’t going to happen, and they’ll be screwed. There’s a whole other cluster@#$% waiting to happen there with limited provider networks and limited options for care, but that’s for another time. In any case, notice that even someone defending against the charge that ObamaCare is making premiums higher isn’t actually showing that they’re lower than they would have been if it didn’t happen.

The system is mathematically unsustainable, and was never intended to be otherwise. Think it’s just me? Think I’m simply echoing red meat falsehoods tossed to me by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh? Think again. Even Mardell’s fellow far-Left Progressives are admitting it.

How Obamacare Actually Paves the Way Toward Single Payer

Last week the liberal documentary-maker Michael Moore prompted indigestion across the progressive wonk community by pronouncing Obamacare “awful.” In a New York Times op-ed, he bemoaned the way the president’s law preserved the health insurance industry rather than replacing it with a Medicare-for-all style single-payer system. The good news, Moore conceded, is that the previously uninsured (and often previously uninsurable) can get finally get coverage. The bad news is that their coverage will often be lousy and pose an enormous financial burden. He ended by calling for activists to lean on state politicians in an effort to beef the law up.

********

And yet I’m still much more sympathetic to Obamacare than Moore. He thinks it’s awful. I consider it a deceptively sneaky way to get the health care system both of us really want.

Mark Mardell is a liar, for purely ideological purposes. He’s made it very clear in the past that he thinks government-provided health care is analogous to the government providing police and fire departments. At the same time he made it obvious that he sees no difference between the government requiring people to buy health insurance and requiring people to buy car insurance. His personal ideology colors his thinking and his reporting, in this case to the point of dishonesty and misleading his readers.

My opinion of ObamaCare is irrelevant here. I’m not demanding that Mardell reflect my opinion instead of the one that ObamaCare is correct. These are facts. It’s not ideology to say that going on Medicaid is not the same thing as buying insurance. It’s not ideology to point out the actual reasons why premiums are high. Mardell is not impartial: he is biased. That’s the whole point of his job as a titled BBC “editor”, and I think it’s wrong.