Month: February 2010

Jobs are PAMtastic

What a surprise:

The Senate easily passed a $15 billion jobs bill on Wednesday morning amid hope that the measure could provide a blueprint for other items on President Obama’s agenda.

The measure passed 70 to 28, with 13 Republicans joining 57 Democrats in support of the package. One Democrat, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, voted against it.

Stunning that so many in the GOP who so very recently were so opposed to this bill that they wouldn’t even let it come to a vote changed their minds on it. Thank Christ Scott Brown so bravely crossed the lines and let this bill come to an up or down vote such that these teeming hordes of Republican Senators, who so very recently were mortally opposed to it even being considered, could rethink their positions on jobs-creation. A victory for independent thinking!

Or: how the GOP sticks a fig leaf onto its blanket opposition to any votes on any matter, large or small, by letting Brown appear to break ranks, knowing that serially shit-canning jobs bills is tantamount to political suicide.

We report, you decide.

[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Isaac Asimov

Memo to Code Brown 2: Judgement Day

Scott Brown, local imbecile, said through a spokesman yesterday that:

If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare. Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected.

The problem is that using reconciliation is neither “the nuclear option” (that’d be this, a technique both invented and brandished by one Grand Old Party) nor is the use of said reconciliation in any way unprecedented, either in terms of budgetary measures (precisely the reason the damned thing was created in the first place) or healthcare reforms (which often are entirely or nearly entirely budgetary issues). NPR provides us with a partial listing of the many uses of reconciliation in recent years:

  1. 1982 — TEFRA: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act first opened Medicare to HMOs

  2. 1986 — COBRA: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act allowed people who were laid off to keep their health coverage, and stopped hospitals from dumping ER patients unable to pay for their care

  3. 1987 — OBRA ‘87: Added nursing home protection rules to Medicare and Medicaid, created no-fault vaccine injury compensation program

  4. 1989 — OBRA ’89: Overhauled doctor payment system for Medicare, created new federal agency on research and quality of care

  5. 1990 — OBRA ’90: Added cancer screenings to Medicare, required providers to notify patients about advance directives and living wills, expanded Medicaid to all kids living below poverty level, required drug companies to provide discounts to Medicaid

  6. 1993 — OBRA ’93: created federal vaccine funding for all children

  7. 1996 — Welfare Reform: Separated Medicaid from welfare

  8. 1997 — BBA: The Balanced Budget Act created the state-federal childrens’ health program called CHIP

  9. 2005 — DRA: The Deficit Reduction Act reduced Medicaid spending, allowed parents of disabled children to buy into Medicaid

Conveniently left off that list are several that are specifically damaging to the GOP’s case for grievance here. Like both of the Bush tax cuts. Reconciliation. Additional oil drilling courtesy of W. Reconciliation. Medicare Part D (aka W Bush’s unfunded cost explosion). Reconciliation. Various W trade authorities. Reconciliation. And, of course, there’s this hypocrisy that’s never mentioned by the MSM:

the very senators who speak reverentially of the filibuster now, voted for reconciliation then. Judd Gregg, in fact, voted for reconciliation every time it was used in the Bush era.

Memo to Code Brown

Hey, what do you know, the stimulus worked, added jobs, and increased real, inflation adjusted GDP relative to the GOP approach: don’t do anything (aka: go die in the streets):

CBO estimates that in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2009, ARRA added between 1.0 million and 2.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States, and it increased the number of full-time-equivalent (FTE) jobs by between 1.4 million and 3.0 million. Increases in FTE jobs include shifts from part-time to full-time work or overtime and are thus generally larger than increases in the number of employed workers. CBO also estimates that real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.5 percent to 3.5 percent higher in the fourth quarter than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA.

Grey Medal

NPR nails it:

The basic problem with NBC’s coverage is that they haven’t improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it’s always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as “USA-Plus” (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly), and two events – hockey and curling – are shown as complete events, but they’re shoved off to cable.

Yep. They grew addicted to doing it this way when the Olympics were held on the other side of the world…all the events are happening at crazy hours relative to US television schedule so the delay-and-repackage thing feels less blatantly false…and but so why bother to change anything when the games are inconveniently held right in our neighborhood?

This goes to NBC’s entire approach to television of late: when in doubt, fall back on the old ways, the old models. Ride them to the bitter end and, probably, for a few years beyond the end. If an incremental change proves insufficient, retreat back to the older thing.
And this has always been their approach to the Olympics. They have three networks ostensibly available to them to broadcast the games and yet still manage to show a vanishingly small fraction of the actual sporting events. As NPR notes, complete games/events coverage is limited to some hockey and curling matches. Period. Add in more or less complete coverage of opening and closing ceremonies and you’ve got a “complete” events list that numbers four covering an event spanning two weeks. Unless, of course, you count the skating; there you get USA-first style coverage, with the Americans, the ultimate winners if they don’t happen to be ‘Merican, and one or two nobly failing foreigners to pad out the necessary space for commercials.
This is indefensible. Does the West Coast typically have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of an East Coast Superbowl? Or, even more to the point, does the West Coast have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of a Superbowl played in Los Angeles? Would that seem a reasonable approach for the TV production of that game? The Olympics are no different. Or shouldn’t be.
Last night, rather than show something, anything actually sports-related on the main prime-time broadcast, they spent an entire segment chatting with…swimmer Michael Phelps, who won’t be seeing any Olympic action for another two years. Clearly it was critical to get his thoughts in place of covering the actual games going on that day. Likewise the interminable recaps of whatever figure skating outrage is queued up for the day.

I’d wager that most people are past ready to dispense with the old model of tape delayed spoon feeding and endlessly narcissistic “Up close and personal” side stories that only serve to distract from whatever it is that’s going on in the first place. Such a broadcast could be accomplished with far fewer individuals on the payroll, and without weeks of run-up production time and the expense of same. Just place some cameras, hire some operators, and have a bit of talent stationed around to interpret where necessary. Honestly, it’s in your financial interest and that of your shareholders to run off as cheap a broadcast as you possibly can. Actually broadcasting Olympic sporting events is just how you do that.

I, for one, would pay to see it done that way.

Based not on a subjective assessment of the Tea Party’s viability or [NYT reporter David Barstow’s] opinion of its desirability but only on facts he knows about the state of politics and government since Obama’s election, is there any substantial likelihood of a tyranny replacing the American republic in the near future?

Jay Rosen
asking an excellent question about the editorial content (or lack thereof) in this piece. The ongoing and steadfast refusal to reflect objective reality, even when uncomfortable, is a major problem.

Is the world round? Opinions differ.

Pity Poor Iowa

Iowa representative Steve King thinks the terrorist attack on the IRS building in Austin was completely justifiable, perhaps even legitimate:

KING: It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back.

As with returning the colonies to Her Britannic Majesty, nothing would make me happier than exempting Iowa from compliance with the IRS and from the painful reality of receiving any of those pesky federal dollars:

Iowa taxpayers receive more federal funding per dollar of federal taxes paid compared to the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2005, Iowa citizens received approximately $1.10 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 24th nationally and represents a rise from 1995 when Iowa received $1.06 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (then ranked 26th nationally). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending they received per dollar of federal taxes paid were: Minnesota ($0.72), Wisconsin ($0.86), Illinois ($0.75), Missouri ($1.32), Nebraska ($1.10), and South Dakota ($1.53).

Seriously. Let’s get the “thumb” out of their back once and for all. I’m sure they’ll be much happier. Any other states care to apply? Maybe they’d like to watch the example of Iowa first.

Code Brown: PAM

ryking reports that:

the Teabaggers were going apeshit over Brown’s vote for the jobs bill on Twitter and I almost wet myself laughing at the vitriol. I guess these imbeciles thought he’d vote like a typical GOP automaton. News flash, imbeciles: Brown knows he won a protest vote in Massachusetts; he wants to be re-elected after he serves out the last two years of Ted Kennedy’s term so he can’t — and therefore won’t — march in goosestep, er, LOCKSTEP, with the America-hating GOP.

I wish I thought this was an accurate analysis. Unfortunately, I’d say this is an example of the GOP leadership knowing that a lockstep vote here, coming hot on the heels of the Brown mania, would be an all-too-clear and inescapable indictment of their current anti-democratic ways.
Of a piece with that, repeatedly bottling up jobs bills just isn’t going to play for any of them. Thus, Brown is given the go-ahead to vote for cloture, and a few of the moderate GOPers also scurry in to join him. The key vote, though, comes later: when the bill will pass 98-0 or some-such. The GOP Senate knows well that people don’t pay attention to anything, and certainly not the vagaries of cloture votes. No price will be paid for their delaying or otherwise weakening bills; after all, the GOPers can still just run on having voted “for” it in the end. They know that neither will their enablers in the media ever bring up the inconvenient cloture votes nor will the Democrat ever stoop to being so impolite as to mention such a thing in public.

It’s basically stimulus 2.0: take all the glory of anything that works or turns out to be popular, while doing none of the actual policy work needed to bring it about. In fact, you fight all that every step of the way and use the legislative mayhem to further inculcate the sense that DC is fundamentally off the rails. Rest easy that nobody on any side of the aisle or in the media will say or do anything about it. It’s an entirely cost free position that, so far anyway, is working like a charm.

So, no. I don’t feel the need to advance our Code Brown independent vote counter past 0. That happens in the unlikely event of his taking a difficult stand, one clearly against the leadership’s wishes. When FOXnews hollers about a vote, or he’s forced to apologize for some perceived slight, or prostrate himself before Rush: then and only then the 0dometer will advance. And sorry, it’s just not going to happen.

Starve the Beast

Paul Krugman notes that the GOP has collectively been working for around three decades to bring on the catastrophic nexus, “preparing the ground” for the moment at which they can cut wildly popular programs like Medicare and Social Security in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” Unfortunately, with that day all but at hand, the GOP finds itself unwilling to pull the trigger and say these long-held beliefs publicly:

At this point, then, Republicans insist that the deficit must be eliminated, but they’re not willing either to raise taxes or to support cuts in any major government programs. And they’re not willing to participate in serious bipartisan discussions, either, because that might force them to explain their plan — and there isn’t any plan, except to regain power.

Absolutely right. And but Krugman goes on to note in today’s column that the state of the California health insurance system generally and the recent Anthem move to raise rates by ~30% specifically put to lie everything the GOP is saying about national health insurance reforms:

some claim that health costs would fall dramatically if only insurance companies were allowed to sell policies across state lines. But California is already a huge market, with much more insurance competition than in other states; unfortunately, insurers compete mainly by trying to excel in the art of denying coverage to those who need it most. And competition hasn’t averted a death spiral. So why would creating a national market make things better?

More broadly, conservatives would have you believe that health insurance suffers from too much government interference. In fact, the real point of the push to allow interstate sales is that it would set off a race to the bottom, effectively eliminating state regulation. But California’s individual insurance market is already notable for its lack of regulation, certainly as compared with states like New York — yet the market is collapsing anyway.

Finally, there have been calls for minimalist health reform that would ban discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions and stop there. It’s a popular idea, but as every health economist knows, it’s also nonsense. For a ban on medical discrimination would lead to higher premiums for the healthy, and would, therefore, cause more and bigger death spirals.

So California’s woes show that conservative prescriptions for health reform just won’t work.

To which we say: yep, even though Krugman starts with a straw-man in there. Some? How about “GOP leaders in the House and Senate say” or any other construction there? Some? That’s Bush league usage.

But, I think the synthesis of these two articles is what actually provides the way forward. We’ve said it before: Democrats can’t bring themselves to move good policy and the GOP categorically can’t resist bad policy, so combine the two. Spend a few years “preparing the ground” just as the GOP did on forcing government into the present fiscal situation in hopes of eviscerating the New Deal once and for all. Make it such that, when the inevitable happens, the end result will require the desired policy solution.
This means that you just pass into law the super-popular and death-spiral inducing community rating and tack on whatever meaningless and ineffective tort and state-lines “reform” the GOP wants to make that poison pill pass. Both sides celebrate. Then wait five years. Even conservatives agree that:

the country will face a choice: allow the numbers of uninsured to continue shooting up, or enroll more and more people directly in taxpayer-funded government insurance plans.

At the collapse of health insurance in this country, the GOP will be forced to roll out Medicare for all; after all, there will be no functional private insurance industry left to protect. Even the very rich will be priced out. Nothing gets the GOP’s attention more quickly than a situation like that.
Just think of the day that Single Payer is finally signed into law by President Palin. Likewise, the new Democratic majority will return to a Senate free from the filibuster as, everyone knows, that will be the first thing to go once the GOP is back in charge over there.

Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.

For what it’s worth, if [A. Joseph Stack] had somehow survived, he should’ve been read his Miranda rights and tried in a civilian court. He should not have been tortured. These people are small and we – and our traditions and values – are big. They lose when we remember that, and they win when we forget it. Yesterday, they lost. An act of terrorism was committed, but we were not terrorized.

Ezra Klein on the Austin IRS domestic terrorist attack. Amen, brother.