From The Belmont Club, The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes.
Robert Reich has been widely quoted in the news and blogs lately, citing a 2007 speech he delivered at UC Berkeley in which he is supposed to have said of health care reform that:
- Younger people should pay more
- Healthier people should pay more
- Older people should just die- they’re “too expensive”
- There should be “less innovation” in medical technology
- You should not expect to live longer than your parents.
That is largely going to be interpreted as the “hidden truth” that the MSM doesn’t want you to know and to a certain extent it is, but not in the way the casual reader may understand it. Robert Reich was once my teacher and I knew there had to be more to it than that, and so I went to the source: …
RTWT You’ll need to to appreciate the following.
The post suggests that what Reich was saying was “telling the truth is electoral suicide.” I think this is demonstrably naive. The idea that telling the truth is electorally irrelevant seems a lot closer to reality.
Put it this way, Barack Obama told us the truth over and over again and it was much clearer and starker than a thousand page cap-and-tax bill; “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.” Other truths he told us: “The Supreme Court, tragically, never spoke on redistribution.” or, “Judge me by the people who surround me.” or, “What I really favor is a single-payer health care system.”
Even now, when he says, “If you want to keep your health care plan, you can,” it’s true. The unspoken implication that makes that so is, “It’s just that it will bankrupt you or your employer.”
On the evidence, I’m afraid politicians telling the truth actually doesn’t matter much. Most American voters don’t listen.