James A. McClure

Okay, the Supreme Court upheld ObamaCare, sort of, and health care reform is back on the political front burner. That’s a good thing. The first attempt at fixing the health care system was bound to turn out like the first pancake. Now it’s time to discard the imperfect result, turn down the heat and try again.

When Congress initially began working on this issue I was delighted. For many years I was a poster child for health insurance reform: self-employed with an unhealthy wife and monthly insurance premiums the size of a mortgage payment. We changed insurance carriers every year or two when the insurance company either went broke or dropped whatever group we were in. Over the years I joined two unions and a fishing club to get group coverage.

I studied the health insurance issue when I worked with a state hospital association a few years ago, and learned about the potential for reform and the wide range of possible solutions. As I watched the sausage-making in Congress, however, I was appalled at the outcome.

The good news is that the law will change because it’s unsustainable in its present form. This will happen sooner if Republicans win in November, or later (and more painfully) as unintended consequences and soaring costs drag down what’s left of the economy.

Gov. Romney can’t repeal Obamacare if he’s elected president (and I wish he’d stop promising to do so). But since the law gives the administration sweeping authority to write the rules, the next president can make significant changes – such as granting waivers to states and Catholic hospitals rather than unions.

If we are lucky, a balanced Congress and moderate president can give the Unaffordable Care Act some needed body-and-fender work while keeping special interests in check. Perhaps they will have the freedom to consider options that were off the table in 2009 such as:

• Limitations on medical malpractice lawsuits;
• Allowing health insurance companies to compete across state lines;
• Expanding health savings accounts and competitive Medicare Advantage plans;
• Allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices;
• Making it easier for small businesses to join together in group plans;
• Low-cost catastrophic insurance for healthy young people; and
• Allowing uninsured people to “buy in” to the group plans government employees have.

Fortunately, my personal stake in health insurance reform is less than it used to be because I am now covered by Medicare, Tricare for military retirees and the Veterans Administration. (That’s three kinds of socialized medicine, which makes me feel conflicted when I watch Fox News.)

Still, I will rest easier if Congress gives back the $500 billion it took out of Medicare to pay for Obamacare.

Why do the politicians who oppose government regulation of business want the government to regulate marriage and pregnancy?

I never thought much of President George W. Bush. Didn’t vote for him. Now I’m starting to like the guy. I guess President Obama really has transformed the political landscape.

If we re-elect President Obama, will he continue to complain about the mess he inherited from President Bush? Or, if we elect Gov. Romney, will he complain about the mess he inherits from President Obama? Can we get both candidates to make a no-whining campaign pledge?

My brother had a great idea a few years ago: require elected officials to wear the logos of their contributors the way NASCAR drivers do. That would sure liven up the Senate.

No politicians are pandering to me and I resent that. President Obama is pandering to Hispanics, women, gays and college students. Gov. Romney is pandering to the Tea Party and the evangelicals. Being pandered to is becoming a civil right and I feel discriminated against. My vote has to be worth something.

Now that Joe Biden has redefined the role of the Vice President as the crazy uncle of the administration, Newt Gingrich could make a great running mate for Gov. Romney. I’d buy a ticket to that debate.

Should there be a statute of limitations on calling existing tax rates a tax cut? I guess ending a tax cut, even after 12 years, sounds more palatable than raising taxes.

If we’re serious about separation of church and state, why do we allow the government to perform marriages? The only thing the state needs to care about is a contract between two people. Calling that contract a marriage – instead of, say, a spousal agreement – means that people get the state mixed up with their churches and seek to impose their religious beliefs on the rest of the population.

When politicians complain about special interests, why are they talking mostly about big corporations and not about unions, trial lawyers, farmers, realtors and environmental groups?

It’s surprising to hear that President Obama’s reelection campaign is operating at a deficit, spending more than it’s taking in. (Okay, maybe that’s not surprising after all.) The obvious solution is to get the rich to pay their fair share. Warren Buffett and George Clooney need to come up with bigger campaign contributions to spare the Prez the embarrassment of asking the Chinese for a loan.

Reaction to the recall election in Wisconsin will be reverberating for a while.

For the record, my roots are on both sides of the controversy. My father was a union organizer in the 1930s. I worked in corporate public relations on the management side of a half-dozen strikes.

Unions can check stupid managers and keep people like office-building janitors from being exploited. Unions win more than half of certification elections and companies whose employees vote for a union – in a fair, secret-ballot election — usually deserve what they get.

The larger impact is that the threat of unionization gives smart businesses an incentive to treat employees well. Whether WalMart has a union is irrelevant (except to union bosses) so long as WalMart continues to give its employees a better deal than the union offers.

Collective bargaining works when there’s a balance of power and a level playing field. Workers are at a disadvantage when management holds all the cards, and they lose jobs when unions have enough power to make a business uncompetitive (as in the steel and automotive industries).

The market forces that balance labor and management in private business do not exist in the public sector. Collective bargaining for government employees is a stacked deck: Unions contribute to the politicians who negotiate their contracts and usually control both sides of the bargaining table.

State and local governments have no competition, cannot go out of business and are unwilling to take a strike. Government officials are under pressure to preserve labor peace by giving in to the unions… and besides, it’s not their money.

For many years public employees were not well paid but were guaranteed job security instead. The “right” to collective bargaining for government employees was considered redundant and did not emerge until the late 1950s. It’s worth noting that federal employees do not have the same “right” to bargain for pay and benefits. You don’t see downtrodden employees from the GSA picketing the Capitol.

Paying teachers and firefighters a little more sounded fair enough. But now government employees, on average, get higher pay and dramatically better benefits than private-sector workers. Years of exponentially unsustainable pensions and benefits have brought some states to the debt levels of Greece:  forcing them to cut public services to support lavish pensions for youthful retirees. Taxpayers were bound to push back sooner or later.

Pushing back is difficult because public employee unions are a self-perpetuating political engine. Revenue from union dues purchases political influence to create jobs and privileges for government employees, all at taxpayer expense. Government, in effect, has become its own special interest that dominates the political landscape.

It may be no accident that much of the 2009 federal stimulus went to “create and save” local and state government jobs. A percentage of the borrowed billions went for union dues and was contributed to the politicians who voted for the stimulus. Sweet! 

Ultimately, the donnybrook in Wisconsin was about regime change and not workers’ rights. The existential threat was that union membership for public employees became voluntary instead of mandatory. Dues collection dropped sharply and that hit union bosses and their pet politicians in their pocketbooks. Wonder how many public employees who chanted outside the state capitol last year have quietly stopped paying their union dues?

At the same time the people of Wisconsin were retaining their governor, two California cities overwhelmingly voted to reduce pensions for city employees because skyrocketing pension costs were forcing cuts in services.

In the weeks to come we will hear a lot about the woeful plight of government workers in Wisconsin. Taking something away from people, however privileged, is a legitimate cause for anger — especially if their leaders tell them they have a constitutional right to all those perks. There will be a lot of emotional hyperbole because picket-line theater is what unions do and they’re good at it. I found it challenging to be a management spokesman during strikes because unions have all those great songs about solidarity.

If it’s any consolation, these unfortunates will still be paid more than their private-sector counterparts. They will contribute more to their pensions but not as much as their neighbors who work for private business. Government workers will still be mostly fireproof, though some agencies may hold them accountable for performance. (Oh, the injustice!) Most important, they still have jobs because the new reforms have enabled local governments and school districts to avoid layoffs. They also may have more money in their pockets because they no longer have to pay union dues and their property taxes aren’t going up. Armageddon it’s not.

The union explanation of the Wisconsin recall is that Republican money won the election, which implies that voters had nothing to do with it. Including, I suppose, the 37% of union members who voted for Gov. Walker.

In election-night TV coverage, one of the union supporters wailed that Gov. Walker’s victory is the end of democracy. It looks to me like democracy is working just fine.

It would be tempting to mourn the passing of the golden age of journalism.

In the 1960s the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University initiated me into a quasi-priesthood of accuracy, fairness and balance. It was a reporters’ boot camp where crusty, ex-editor professors like the legendary Richard Hainey unleashed withering scorn on any unchecked fact or unattributed source. It was drummed into us that our first responsibility was to our readers and our stories were bigger than we were.

In my first job as a reporter for a community newspaper I was delighted when my stories angered people on both sides of an issue. Later, as a corporate media spokesman in Chicago, I encountered occasional bias and sloppy reporting but found the vast majority of reporters to be straight shooters. In those days we venerated Walter Cronkite and cheered the meticulous digging of Woodward and Bernstein.

The media landscape that nourished a couple of generations of great journalism has been paved over by economics and technology. Metropolitan newspapers and news magazines are withering:  Those that have survived declining advertising revenue have downsized their editorial staffs. The major television networks have lost chunks of their audience to cable TV and can no longer afford blue-ribbon news operations. And both print and broadcast media face growing competition from the Internet.

At a time when nobody can afford to hire reporters, technology has put the news cycle on steroids. Stories that went unreported until the evening newscast or morning paper now go viral on the Internet and are quickly picked up by multiple cable news outlets to fill 24 hours of airtime.

One result is the tabloidization of news. Local police stories such as missing toddlers or hostage situations are now national news because they build ratings and are cheaper to cover than the economy or the nuances of foreign relations. The media herd instinct means that a sensational but trivial story such as the Casey Anthony trial sucks the oxygen out of the news schedule for weeks at a time. For a news junkie like me, it’s a helpless feeling to get on the treadmill at the gym and realize that there will be no actual news on any of the TV news channels for at least half an hour… so it’s either the sports channel or the Home Shopping Network.

Think of the great news coverage we could have seen if the media had assigned all the reporters who covered Michael Jackson’s death to develop stories on the economy instead. But would anyone have watched it?

Another trend is the breakdown of boundaries between news, entertainment and opinion. Network news anchors are chosen for celebrity appeal rather than reporting skill, and political operatives double as news magazine columnists and television news show hosts. One result is that political coverage – fueled by today’s climate of hyper-partisanship and the celebrity appeal of President Obama – has become more overtly partisan. Wonder what my journalism professors would think of Al Sharpton hosting a TV news show one day and leading a demonstration the next?

It had never occurred to me to watch Fox News until I saw Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin on ABC News during the 2008 campaign. I’m no fan of Palin, but Gibson’s interview was a textbook display of bias: the raised eyebrow, patronizing tone and “gotcha” questions, especially compared with his fawning interview of candidate Obama. So I now channel-surf between CNN and Fox in the hope that the truth will be somewhere in the middle.

This year’s presidential campaign is a bonanza for media-watchers. Was there a connection between political-operative-turned-newscaster George Stephanopoulos’ unexpected question about birth control during a Republican debate and the Obama administration’s birth-control mandate a few weeks later? One wonders. Why does the Washington Post do a front-page story about Mitt Romney’s high-school pranks when polls show voters are most concerned about the economy? Does anyone outside network newsrooms really believe that gay marriage, free birth control and student loans are the most important issues to the electorate?

Amid all the controversy there’s not much reporting going on. National TV news programs are more likely to rely on pundit panels than reporters, and the Washington Post “expose” on Romney’s antics 50 years ago appears to be flunking the Woodward-Bernstein test.

It’s hard to tell whether this is a vast, left-wing media conspiracy, as Fox News claims, or merely a half-vast effort to boost ratings and circulation by grabbing the easy headline. Either way, it’s going to be a nasty campaign that may further tarnish the credibility of the national news media, especially if they fail to re-elect President Obama.

I don’t see partisan news media as a threat to democracy. We’ve survived worse. The fulminations of Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann and, for that matter, the SuperPAC attack ads, are tame compared to what newspapers of yore published about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

The silver lining is that the Internet has democratized newsgathering and put it into a fishbowl. Everything that happens anywhere is going to be reported on somebody’s blog, everyone with a cell phone is a photojournalist and the whole world is watching. The traditional news media no longer have a monopoly on news coverage. Anything they decline to report, or that their thin-spread news staffs miss, will inevitably pop up on the web and quickly go public. A growing number of national stories now originate in blogs and are picked up by the media.

If you’re as addicted to news and opinion as I am, today’s media scene is hog heaven. I channel-surf several news networks and read a local newspaper, a couple of news magazines, the Wall Street Journal website and selected blogs. My consumption of news and information is limited only by my desire to get a life. 

One can argue that more obvious media bias may help citizens become the thoughtful voters the framers of the Constitution had in mind. It’s easy to tell where MSNBC, Fox News, the Huffington Post and the Daily Caller are coming from, and consumers can weigh the alternative viewpoints of multiple sources. Everybody trusted Walter Cronkite a generation ago but today’s viewers are more skeptical, as evidenced by the rapid growth of cable news and the decline of the major networks. Some folks will flock to media that mirror their political views, but the diversity of media outlets means that issues will be raised and opposing viewpoints will be heard.

What has not changed is that the hardcore journalism is I learned is still alive and well in local newsrooms. Local newspapers and TV stations, even in a secondary market such as Albuquerque, are doing superb investigative reporting and earning Pulitzer prizes the old-fashioned way. Last week a local TV station followed city employees around with camera crews and sifted through records to expose illegal use of handicapped parking passes. The TV networks may be giving President Obama a pass, but the mayor had better watch out.