Why Obama Failed To Create A Single-Payer and Universal Medicare-For-All Program In The United States

“Jeffrey B. Kindler, who retired as Pfizer's chairman and chief executive at the end of 2011, has joined Lux Capital as a venture partner...The hiring marks Mr. Kindler's most prominent business appointment since his contentious departure from Pfizer. He became the pharmaceutical giant's chief in 2006...His signature achievement was orchestrating the $68 billion takeover of Wyeth in 2009, kicking off a huge wave of health care mergers by drug maker...At Lux, Mr. Kindler will again be called upon for his deal-making skills, helping to find new health care investments and working with existing portfolio companies. The firm has already invested in the likes of Cerulean Pharma and Kala Pharmaceuticals….Besides his new post at Lux, Mr. Kindler works as a senior adviser to Paragon Pharmaceuticals and as a director at Starboard Capital Partners, a private equity firm.”

--from the August 8, 2012 issue of the New York Times

Why Obama Failed To Create A Single-Payer and Universal Medicare-For-All Program In The United States

In his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter indicated why a Single-Payer and Universal Medicare-For-All Program, similar to the Canadian health care system, was not established in the United States by the Democratic Obama administration between 2009 and 2012:

“…The [Obama health care reform] plan called for…winning support—or at least neutrality—from the insurance and drug industries (compensated by the arrival of 30 million new customers)…Obama…said the goal was `comprehensive health care reform by the end of the year.’…He warned `liberal bleeding hearts’ not to get…ambitious about universal coverage…Everything…([except] a single-payer plan, which he had ruled out in 2008…) was on the table…Jeffrey Kindler, the CEO of Pfizer, the drug giant, happens to be a Democrat…The industry would pay for the media to build public support for the plan…On May 11 [2009]…Obama met in the Roosevelt Room with industry…representatives…

“…The White House began cutting its own deals…Obama agreed to speak to the AMA convention—the first president to do so in a quarter century—and open the door to malpractice reform…in exchange for doctors’ not actively opposing him…All the claims of no quid pro quo couldn’t obscure the major deal cut in the Roosevelt Room in July [2009] between Rahm Emanuel and Billy Tauzin…representing the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, better known as PhRMA…The Drug industry…stood to gain billions from the legislation…

“On one level the loud public option debate was good for the overall prospects of the bill because it distracted media attention from…the mandates forcing individuals to buy insurance…Rahm…told anyone who would listen that a public option wasn’t necessary…Rahm…thought he could satisfy the base by having Obama lash out rhetorically at insurance companies, but it wasn’t enough. Liberals wanted to see the president fighting for them…”

New Orleans and New York City: `Destroyed By A Rising Flood'?

How Obama and National Security-Deloitte LLP Advisor Jim Jones Worked For `Change' In 2009

“General James Jones, USMC (Ret), former National Security Advisor... has joined Deloitte LLP as Senior Advisor. In his new role, General Jones will work in an advisory capacity with Deloitte’s federal and commercial clients and Department of Defense practice.
“Appointed National Security Advisor to President Barack Obama on January 20, 2009, General Jones also served as president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber Institute for 21st Century Energy.

“`General James Jones is a game-changing hire who will provide valuable and unique insights for our Federal Practice,” said Robin Lineberger, CEO, Federal Government Services, Deloitte LLP. `…He...will have a particular focus on Deloitte’s Department of Defense practice.’…

“Led by General Charles F. Wald (USAF, Retired), Deloitte’s Department of Defense (DoD) practice works with DoD clients… Deloitte has been working with the DoD since 1912, and today approximately 1,400 Deloitte practitioners work with all branches of the Department of Defense in Greater Washington and beyond. Serving more than 80 percent of the world’s largest companies across 20 industry sectors, Deloitte has reach back to leading practices of the private sector… “

--from a January 17, 2012 Deloitte LLP press release

How Obama and National Security-Deloitte LLP Advisor Jim Jones Worked For “Change” In 2009

One reason the Democratic Obama administration--whose White House National Security Advisor Jim Jones was hired to advise the clients of Deloitte LLP’s Pentagon practice in 2012-- failed to produce much radical democratic change in the United States between 2009 and 2012 might be because President Obama’s typical workday at the White House in 2009 apparently didn’t include much day-to-day contact with many U.S. grassroots anti-war, anti-racist or anti-corporate political activists, although “Obama…was on TV more than any of his predecessors,” according to Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter’s 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One. As the same book also observed:

“A normal day in the [Obama] White House began around 7:30 a.m., when a dozen senior staff gathered in Rahm Emanuel’s office…At 8:45 Rahm would usually hold a legislative strategy meeting…Obama began his day by joining Michelle [Obama] in the fitness room, where she often got going before 6 a.m…The president read…the Wall Street Journal and USA Today over breakfast…He walked downstairs to the Oval Office around 9:15, sometimes later…He and Rahm would go over a quick-to-do list…

“At about 9:30 Obama received the Presidential Daily Briefing on national security (led by NSC advisor Jim Jones or his deputy, Tom Donilon). Later the name was changed to the National Security Session to reflect that the thirty-to-forty-minute briefing had been broadened…At around 10:30 came the Economics Daily Briefing, led by Larry Summers…

“…The president didn’t like sitting at his desk all day…The Obama workday was brisk, with an occasional brief break for some…sports talk or a careful toss with one of the footballs or basketballs that came around Reggie Love’s desk…Obama liked to hear some of the milder staff gossip…The afternoon was usually devoted to more meetings and four or five telephone calls, often with foreign leaders, capped by a casual review of the day’s events with a few senior staff. He went upstairs for dinner…around 6 p.m., frequently followed by a drop-by at an evening reception…By 8 p.m. it was usually time to go back to his study in the residence…

“…This was a man who in 1993 retreated to Indonesia for a few weeks shortly after getting married to labor on his first book…Obama…had repeatedly expressed his objection to `relitigating’ the Vietnam War and the 1960s…He infuriated some liberals by saying in a May [2009] speech at the National Archives that he didn’t want long investigations of Bush and Cheney that would `relitigate the last 8 years’…Obama responded by traveling far more widely in his first year than had any previous president. In 2009 he made 10 foreign trips to 21 foreign nations (4 of them twice)…Obama…immersed himself in the details of…counterterrorism…

“Bob Gates…was almost certainly the most influential member of the Cabinet…His pedigree as a Republican and former CIA director gave Obama political cover…From the start Obama was inclined to back Gates against liberal critics. When photographs surfaced documenting the torture of detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq, the White House…at first declined to block their publication. But…Obama…reversed his position…”

 

Obama's Steven Rattner-Quadrangle-GM-Auto Industry Bailout Connection

“Starting in the transition [after the November 2008 election], Obama’s point man on autos was Steven Rattner, a founder of the private investment firm Quadrangle…The widely circulated idea that Obama gave the unions a special break was wrong. As [UAW President] Ron Gettlefinger contemplated a deal that would provide…for the closure of 17 plants, massive new layoffs, wage freezes, cuts in retirement, vacation, and health care benefits, and a promise not to strike for 6 years, he walked the streets of Washington for 2 hours…
“On June 1 [2009] Obama made his…announcement…The U.S. government would pump another $30 billion into GM…buying its ownership stake to roughly 60 percent…In July [2009]…Rattner returned to New York under a cloud. The investment business he founded was being investigated for its role in a pension fund scandal…”
--from The Promise: President Obama, Year One book by Jonathan Alter in 2010

“Steven L. Rattner…led the Obama administration’s efforts to restructure the auto industry….He became embroiled in a kickback scandal involving New York State’s pension fund….A former financial reporter for The New York Times who is currently a contributing opinion writer for The Times, Mr. Rattner entered investment banking in the 1980s. He became a deal maker in the media and communications sectors for the likes of Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Lazard. In 2000, he co-founded the Quadrangle Group, a media-focused private equity firm. In January 2008, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chose the firm to manage the investments of his multibillion-dollar fortune….In November 2010, Mr. Rattner agreed to pay $6.2 million in repayments and penalties to settle a suit brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission...The next month, Mr. Rattner agreed to pay $10 million to settle two lawsuits brought by…New York’s attorney general. The suits charged that Quadrangle paid kickbacks to win lucrative contracts managing assets of the pension fund.

“Quadrangle also struck a deal with…the S.E.C., paying $12 million to end its role in the case. The firm acknowledged paying more than $1 million in fees to a political consultant, Hank Morris, in exchange for his help in landing a state investment contract. Mr. Morris pleaded guilty to securities fraud…Mr. Rattner is now the chairman of Willett Advisors, a firm that was spun off…to take over the management of the fortune of Mr. Bloomberg, a longtime friend, when Mr. Rattner left the firm….In 2009….he filed federal disclosure forms that listed his net worth as between $188 million and $608 million….He…specialized in…brokering deals on behalf of companies like Viacom and Comcast...He also…he pursued leveraged buyouts of media companies like the takeovers of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and most of the American titles of Dennis Publishing, including men’s magazines like Maxim and Stuff.

“Mr. Rattner had also become influential in the Democratic Party, giving millions of dollars to candidates like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. His appointment as the White House’s car czar, in charge of its ambitious plan to reorganize General Motors and Chrysler, was in part the culmination of years of hosting fund-raisers…”

--from the New York Times website

“The government did not have to bail out the auto companies in order to keep workers employed and producing something (whether cars or something else)…. If the government wanted to keep the workers producing cars, it could buy the auto companies themselves...Maintenance of employment does not appear to have been the objective of government policy…The government has encouraged layoffs by requiring deep cuts in company costs as a condition of the bailout. The companies have sought concessions on past obligations from workers and bondholders, concessions on future wages and benefits from workers, and massive layoffs. Under GM’s government-mandated restructuring plan (after the first round of bailouts), the company promised to lay off 47,000 workers worldwide by the end of 2009….Chrysler’s plan promised to cut 35,000….The Obama administration rejected both plans as inadequate, saying that viable restructuring plans for both companies would require deeper cost cutting….

“The government could have nationalized GM or Chrysler for much less than what it handed over in bailout money….Some commentators compared the auto companies to the bankrupt railroads of the 1970s, which were nationalized (as Conrail) and later re-privatized.…From a purely economic standpoint, the government could have easily nationalized GM for much less that it gave out in bailout loans... “
--from a 2009 article in Dollars and Sense magazine

Obama’s Steven Rattner-Quadrangle-GM-Auto Industry Bailout Connection

When the Democratic Obama administration used public funds to bail-out General Motors’ management in 2009, thousands of U.S. automobile industry workers lost their jobs and some of their previously-negotiated benefits; and the average wages for post-2010 newly-hired U.S. automobile industry workers were drastically cut.

Yet if the U.S. automobile industry had just been nationalized by the Democratic Obama administration in 2009 and placed under democratic worker and community control on a non-profit basis, jobs for all UAW workers without any loss in benefits could have been saved or created by the U.S. federal government--without using billions of dollars of U.S. government to purchase stock in the still financially unprofitable, “too big to fail” General Motors transnational corporation of the GM executives and the Wall Street firms and billionaires that still control the remaining shares of GM stock.

One reason Obama failed to nationalize GM and the other financially bankrupt U.S. automobile corporations in 2009 might because he relied on a multi-millionaire Wall Street financier and major Democratic Party campaign contributor named Steven Rattner to formulate his administration’s policy on restructuring the U.S. automobile industry-- instead of just allowing UAW members and the people who lived in communities in which GM operated factories to democratically determine how firms like GM should be restructured.

And, coincidentally, besides arranging the bail-out of GM management in 2009, former Quadrangle and current Willets Advisers executive Rattner has been busy both managing the multi-billion dollar fortune of the Republican Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, and apparently involved in a Quadrangle kickback/pension fund scandal that violated both Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] regulations and New York State laws in recent years.

Obama's Illinois State Senate Career and Robert Putnam-CIA Connection

“…Obama's willingness to hear out insurers and their lobbyists is revealing given the posture he strikes today on the presidential campaign trail - that lobbyists, insurance companies, and other big-industry special interests have an outsized and polluting influence on policy-making in Washington…And yet while serving in Illinois, Obama was willing to accept campaign contributions from lobbyists. Obama's state Senate campaign committee accepted contributions from insurance companies and their lobbyists - including $1,000 from the Professional Independent Insurance Agents PAC in June 2003, and $1,000 from the Illinois Insurance PAC in December 2003 - while the Health Care Justice Act was wending its way through the Illinois General Assembly. Obama also collected money from the insurance industry and its lobbyists for his successful US Senate campaign in 2004….”

--from a September 23, 2007 Boston Globe article

“Graduating from Swarthmore…in 1963, Robert Putnam went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford…He then went to Yale to do graduate work….Following graduation, he joined the University of Michigan faculty, becoming a full professor of political science in 1975. In 1979, Robert Putnam moved to Harvard as a professor of government and subsequently served as department chair from 1984 to 1988. In 1989, he was appointed dean of the Kennedy School of Government and Don K. Price Professor of Politics. He is now the Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University…Robert Putnam has served on a variety of bodies including the staff of the National Security Council. He…is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission…Robert Putnam is currently President of the American Political Science Association (2001 – 2002). He is an occasional consultant to the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency and The World Bank….”
--from the www.infed.com website

Obama’s Illinois State Senate Career and Robert Putnam-CIA Connection

Unlike the lobbyists of U.S. health insurance corporations and U.S. drug companies, most U.S. anti-war activists want to see a Single-Payer and Universal Medicare for All—similar to Canada’s health care system-- or a free health care system established in the United States. And most U.S. anti-war activists want to see the Central Intelligence Agency abolished.

Yet between 2009 and 2012, the Democratic Obama Administration failed to establish a Single-Payer and Universal Medicare for All—similar to Canada’s health care system--or a free health care system in the United States. Nor did the Democratic Obama Administration abolish the Central Intelligence Agency between 2009 and 2012.

One reason might be because 2012 Democratic presidential candidate Obama both accepted campaign contributions from insurance companies and their lobbyists and participated in an elite forum, the Saguaro Seminar, that was run by a Central Intelligence Agency Consultant named Robert Putnam when Obama was a member of the Illinois State Senate.

In his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter described Obama’s pre-White House career as an Illinois state senator in the following way:

“…As early as 1991, before the publication of his book, he [Obama] confided to his future brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, that he might want to run for president someday…To get elected to the Illinois State Senate in 1996 he [Obama] challenged the petitions of the incumbent, Alice Palmer, and…forced her and the other candidates off the ballot, allowing him to run unopposed. In Springfield [Illinois]…even the Republicans warmed to him over time, partly through poker and golf. His reception in Chicago’s Black community was harsher. The thrashing he received in a 2000 primary campaign against incumbent congressman Bobby Rush made him humbler.

“Only in the last 2 of his 8 years as a state senator…did he win passage of meaningful legislation…He won a reputation as a…legislation who would compromise, and compromise again…In 1997…Harvard’s Robert Putnam…invited Obama to participate in the Saguaro Seminar, an elite forum…He [Obama] bought a mansion in Chicago with the proceeds of book sales…When reporters went looking for his papers from his years in the Illinois State Senate they found that his schedules had been lost, destroyed, or…never kept in the first place…”

 

Obama's MacArthur Foundation-Sidley Austin-Commission on Presidential Debates-Minow Family Connection

“Martha Minow is Dean and Jeremiah Smith, Jr. Professor of Law at Harvard Law School,… Ms. Minow is Vice-Chair of the board of the Legal Services Corporation, a… government-sponsored organization...She previously chaired the board of directors for the Revson Foundation and served on the boards of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and the American Bar Foundation. She currently serves on the Covenant Foundation and Facing History and Ourselves….Ms. Minow is a member of the Audit Committee and the Institutional Policy Committee of the Foundation.”

--from the MacArthur Foundation website

“Sidley’s Government Strategies group works at the crossroads of law and policy, helping clients develop and implement strategies which protect and further their business interests….Sidley represents an array of clients on matters relating to public policy, including regulatory, legislative and oversight/investigations matters involving the U.S. Congress, federal agencies and other institutions that shape law and policy…. Our government strategies team works…with Sidley’s related practices to leverage the firm’s synergies and resources to further our clients’ interests in sectors ranging from the life sciences, to energy, the environment, communications, technology, financial services and international trade….Led by former U.S. Congressman Rick Boucher, with strong assistance from partner Daron Watts…our practice includes lawyers and professionals who work with key legislators and executive branch officials who have a direct influence on policies of interest to our clients. A number of our team members have held senior positions in government…For any particular client need, Sidley utilizes a…team of lawyers…that includes several of our former government officials:

“A 14 term U.S. Congressman (who served for more than 25 years on the U.S. House of Representatives Committees on Energy & Commerce and the Judiciary); a former long time Health Policy Director for a senior Senate Finance and HELP Committee member;  a former Senior Counsel to the House Financial Services Committee; the Acting General Counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS); the Acting Chief Counsel of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA);the Acting U.S. Attorney General; four Associate White House counsels; the General Counsel of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the deputy Associate Administrator for Congressional Relations of the EPA; the General Counsel of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); and the Legislative Counsel and Parliamentarian to the House Energy & Commerce Committee.

“Whether a client’s need requires knowledge of…telecommunications,…financial services, or trade policy—or knowledge of the individuals who will mold a particular Congressional or agency action—Sidley possesses full service capabilities to assist.”

--from the Sidley Austin Corporate Law Firm website

“Newton Norman Minow (born January 17, 1926) is an American attorney and former Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. .. He is Senior Counsel in the Chicago headquartered law firm of Sidley Austin LLP (formerly Sidley and Austin prior to a merger with Brown & Wood), a large international law firm with multiple areas of expertise, including telecommunications related law….Minow has sat on the Board of Directors at Foote, Cone & Belding Communications Inc.; Tribune Co.; Manpower, Inc.; AON Corp.; CBS, and Sara Lee Corporation. He has been Chairman of the Board at RAND Corporation. ..He is a life trustee of Northwestern University and the University of Notre Dame. He…is a vice-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates…”
--from Wikipedia website 

Obama’s MacArthur Foundation-Sidley Austin-Commission on Presidential Debates--Minow Family Connection

Most people in the United States don’t think it’s democratic for the alternative third party candidates who aren’t either Democrats or Republican presidential candidates to be excluded from the Commission on Presidential Debates’ televised presidential candidate debates in 2012.

And most people in the United States don’t think it’s ethical or democratic for the Chicago-based Sidley Austin corporate law firm to attempt to gain special consideration for its corporate clients from U.S. government regulatory agencies and Congress by apparently hiring former U.S. government officials as law firm partners to represent the special interests of Sidley Austin’s corporate clients before U.S. government agencies and Congress.

Yet the tax-exempt, multi-billion dollar MacArthur Foundation has apparently not been eager to provide much grant money to many anti-war grassroots critics of either the undemocratic way the Commission on Presidential Debates’ rigs the U.S. presidential election process or the unethical way that the Sidley Austin corporate law firm apparently hires former U.S. government officials to represent the special corporate interests of its clients before U.S. government agencies and the U.S. Congress.

One reason might be because 2012 Democratic Presidential Candidate Obama, himself, apparently used to work for the Sidley Austin corporate law firm of MacArthur Foundation board member Martha Minow's father: former FCC Chairman and Commission on Presidential Debates Vice-chairman Newton Minow.

As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter recalled in his 2010 book The Promise: President Obama, Year One:

“…One of his professors, Martha Minow, now the [Harvard] Law school dean…recommended him [Obama] for a job as a summer associate to her father, Newton Minow, a senior partner at the Chicago firm of Sidley Austin. That’s where Barack met Michelle [Robinson Obama], who was his supervisor at the firm…”

  The same book also noted that Obama’s Harvard Law School “classmate Julius Genachowski, [is] now the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission…” So it’s also not too likely that the FCC is going to criticize former FCC Chairman Minow’s Commission on Presidential Debates for violating any FCC “fairness” doctrine by excluding third party candidates like Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, for example, from its 2012 televised presidential debates on the public television airwaves.

Hawaii's `Non-Profit' Punahou School Assets Increased By $28 Million After Obama's Inauguration

In 2009 funding for the public school system in Hawaii was decreased by around $468 million. Yet between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011 the total net assets of the “non-profit” and tax-exempt elite, private prep school in Hawaii from which Democratic President Obama graduated in 1979--the Punahou School--increased from over $288 million to over $316 million, according to its Form 990 financial filing for 2011.

The Punahou School claims to be a private educational institution that is run on a “non-profit” basis. Yet between July 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, the total revenues earned by the Punahou School exceeded its total expenses by over $16 million. In addition to collecting over $73 million in tuition and fees from the parents of its preppie students, the Punahou School also collected over $9.5 million in investment income from its endowment funds’ and Ltd. Partnership stock portfolio between 2010 and 2011, as well as over $17 million from the tax-deductible contributions and gifts which it received.
And, coincidentally, the annual salaries received by officials in the “non-profit” Punahou School private prep school administration since Obama’s inauguration were significantly higher than the annual salaries received by most U.S. public school teachers between 2009 and 2012. Punahou School President James Scott was paid an annual salary of $433,00, the Punahou vice-president and treasurer was paid an annual salary of $276,00 and the principal of the Punahou School’s Academy division was paid an annual salary of $298,000 between July 2010 and June 30, 2011.