Tag: Politics

Roberts Prevents Single Payer

Matt Yglesias makes a strong case re: the likely philosophical underpinnings of Roberts’ joining the more liberal members of the court to uphold the mandate. Namely that, in the absence of mandate, the Democrats would begin campaigning for Medicare for All. And they’d get it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but almost certainly within a millennium or two, and then for a long time.

But! I don’t think nearly that long of a game is needed, though. Presuming Roberts was never going to gut the whole bill, knocking out just the mandate within the political system as currently figured does nothing so well as guarantee the end of the private insurance system we all know and love within 5 or 10 years. This is because, without a mandate, healthy individuals would have powerful incentive not to buy insurance until they are sick. Since the ACA already prevents insurers from refusing coverage for any reason, you’d simply buy insurance on the day you started needing it. That is, to say the least, an unsustainable business model. Some even called for a “poison pill” in the original law designed to create this situation such that even a GOP government would be forced into extending Medicare to all the moment even their constituents could no longer afford insurance premiums.

Roberts knew all of this. He knew he likely couldn’t simply gut the law without adversely affecting the public’s opinion of the Supreme Court in general and the Roberts court in particular, knew he furthermore couldn’t simply kill the mandate without also killing private insurance (gridlock essentially ensured this outcome), and decided the least of these was simply keeping the mandate and letting Congress sort it out. Which, as it happens, was exactly the right decision by any reading of the Constitution and precedent that my not-a-lawyer eyes can detect. Huzzah for democracy.

Roberts Prevents Single Payer

in the 1960s, [there was certainty] that Americans would never consent to give up their big-government perks. And yet, somehow, alongside the ordinary tacking of American political preference between Democrats and Republicans, conservatism continues to thrive. That’s because power begets power: Democrats can be counted on to compromise with conservative nuttiness, and the media can be counted on to normalize it. And it’s because there will always be millions of Americans who are terrified of social progress and of dispossession from whatever slight purchase on psychological security they’ve been able to maintain in a frightening world. And because there will always be powerful economic actors for whom exploiting such fear, uncertainty and doubt pays (and pays, and pays).

Conservatism is not getting crazier, and it’s not going away, either. It’s just getting more powerful. That’s a fact that a reality-based liberal just has to accept – and, from it, draw strength for the fight.

Rick Perlstein, bringing the old optimism, and but also exactly right.

A Lot of Young People Here Today

Ron Paul shows up to local diner, hoping to find regular ‘Mericans who, we are informed, actually eat in such places; he is instead greeted by ~97 high school students. From Massachusetts. Whose teacher had reserved the entire restaurant. Circus ensues. Vermin Supreme was even in the parking lot, which was also the location of the (apparently) sole New Hampshire voter:

Karen Heller had come to “fall in love with Ron Paul.” Heller remains undecided. “I really love Jon Huntsman,” she said, “but every year I feel like I’m throwing my vote away.”

Gods help me, some days I love politics. Which we all know ain’t the beanbag.

A Lot of Young People Here Today

I’ve talked to enough members over the last 24 hours who believe that, ‘Hey, we don’t like this two month extension [but] if you can get this fixed, why not do the right thing for the American people, even though it’s not exactly what we want.

John Boehner, completely misunderstanding the position of his caucus. Either it’s exactly what we want or we blow up the country. Right, John? Right?

A Vision of America

Matt Yglesias:

Loser liberalism, by implying that all fortunes are created equal, alternately goes too easy on scoundrels and comes down too hard on people who are merely prosperous. [Even “low” paid] folks working on Wall Street are making a living in an industry that’s systematically dependent on implicit and explicit government guarantees. Making a living as a patent troll is totally different from making a living as a genuine innovator. Dentists enriching themselves by blocking competition from independent dental hygenists and tooth whiteners aren’t the richest people around, but their income represents a healthy share of ill-gotten gains. A viable egalitarian politics needs to find a way to distinguish between “malefactors of great wealth” whose revenue streams need to be systematically reappropriated, and people who are just paying higher tax rates because of the declining marginal utility of income.

Reasonable people are going to disagree, of course, as to who exactly the malefactors are and what policy levers can and should be used against them. […] But there’s something deeply unimaginative, cramped, narrow, and – I think – fundamentally incorrect about this vision of America where everything is on the level, but people need to pay a top marginal income tax rate of 39.5% rather than 35%.

I’d say Yglesias has provided us with a rather trenchant distillation of just how warped our national political discourse has become.
Extending his example, the Republicans more or less universally call this potential 4.5% rise in top marginal rates on the richest of the rich “pure socialism,” or, at best, anti-American, anti-jobs, anti-whomever they’re talking to at that moment. That approach tends to be a conversation ender and the point at which the MSM says something along the lines of “we’ll leave it there.” And but also it’s unclear to me how you even address the broader issues in the economy that Yglesias rightly lays out without at least being able to have a semi-sane discussion about tax rates and revenues. If that 4.5% rise can be effectively dismissed using “socialism!” just how is a national candidate supposed to make the more nuanced and complex point?

I’d say it can’t be done in the current media environment. It is not possible. The slow motion implosion that is the GOP’s series of primary debates is a symptom, not a cause. The underlying rot is fundamental to the discourse itself; the growing and brazen willingness to use that rot for personal gain (e.g. by lying your ass off to score temporary political points even within your own party) is simply the work of our old friend the invisible hand. Fix the discourse and you’ll functionally eliminate the lying and its various outgrowths, such as but not limited to uniform one party partisan intransigence that the predominant national discourse inevitably blames on both political houses in Congress. A truly honest assessment could never reach such a illogical conclusion as that. Obviously one party is more to blame in any gridlock situation. Say so. You’ll put the Daily Show right out of business.

Considered relative to our long-term national health, the truly successful national candidate needs to disrupt the discourse itself. On the surface, this would seem a relatively straightforward thing for a President to do (despite the ineffective nature of Presidential speeches)…Obama did make some early feints in the direction of cutting off their air supply but ultimately (and predictably) chickened out. And, frankly, a frontal attack that simply refuses to speak to FOXnews (or similar organizations) will never work; journalists love nothing better than circling the wagons over perceived slights. You’ve got to destroy their memes by making them functionally irrelevant and you cannot do that by simply not talking to anyone but your chosen scribes.
If Obama really wants to be the modern TR, I’d say that’s where to start: with the discourse. Be smart. Explain, but not in novel form. Short, declarative sentences and concise paragraphs. Pick one thing; this cycle it’s going to be an outgrowth of what Yglesias is distilling above. Explain that. Repeatedly and in simple language. People already understand it in a deep sense, but they need you to give those feelings voice (Elizabeth Warren is proving the true power of such an approach; the application of the traditional GOP meme(s) actually increased her popularity). Explain. Say nothing else. If they want to show the President, some of this stuff will have to be included. Never leave that message behind, even for a second. Also provide it to your Congressional allies. Anyone who goes off script loses financial support, chairmanships, or whatever idiotic perks matters most to them. It’s our rotted discourse or the country. Choose one.

A mature society is one that can distinguish between 1) times when lawbreaking requires new, more robust laws, 2) when the appropriate conclusion is that there will just always be some level of crime, and 3) when the prohibition itself is incompatible with a free society.

Conor Friedersdorf, weighing in on SOPA and other draconian “law and order” approaches to the innerwebs. Which, of course, must be destroyed such that it may better serve our Galtian Overlords.
Sadly, we’re not even close to assessing the three points he lays out, because doing so would require us to throw our lot in with a bunch of pointy headed analysts and require looking into some “data” and “numbers” and making conclusions based on empirical reality. None of this is currently allowed in public discourse or decision making at any level. In fact, recourse to analysis and empiricism is frequently pointed to as a disqualification for office. And so the Republic crumbles.

I think it’s going to be Obama’s 99% versus the 1%, and Romney sort of represents the 1%.

Joe McQuaid, publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, on why his publication endorsed disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich instead of Mitt Romney. I think he’s right. But let’s not have The Democrat get to messaging this way or anything.
Source: livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com

Upstairs/Downstairs

John Kyl (R, AZ), Saturday: [tax increases are] the wrong medicine for our ailing economy, […] [any possibility of a potential future increase only serves to] put a wet blanket over job creation and economic recovery.
John Kyl (R, AZ), Sunday: The payroll tax holiday has not stimulated job creation. We don’t think that is a good way to do it. [Thus we want to raise taxes on every American that currently receives a paycheck]. The best way to hurt economic growth is to impose more taxes on the people who do the hiring. As a result, the Republicans have said, ‘Don’t raise the existing tax rates on those who do the hiring.’ [That is to say, the 1%. Who aren’t, uh, actually hiring. But still. Don’t raise THEIR taxes. Raise the 99%’s taxes. Only that will get the old economy going again!]
Lemkin: Again, the MSM will see no dissonance whatsoever in these positions. Of course raising taxes on most everyone in the country to avoid a tiny tax increase on a tiny fraction of the country makes the best economic sense in an aggregate demand-based economic downturn. What other conclusion is even possible given this data? Surely both sides are at fault for low aggregate demand in the 99%; this is only fixable if both sides agree to lower taxes on the 1%. Again: what other conclusion is even possible?

The Rub

In all the rush to cast a pox on both houses, most Serious People seem to be missing the underlying point here.

The Republicans want tax rates to remain at current (i.e. Bush/Obama tax cut) levels or to be lowered. To do that without collapsing the Federal Government, they have to end Medicare. Period, the end, no other way to do it. Zero the non-military discretionary budget and you still aren’t getting particularly close. Thus, this:

…committee Republicans offered to negotiate a plan on the other two health-care entitlements–Medicare and Medicaid–based upon the reforms included in the budget the House passed earlier this year [this is what is commonly referred to as the “Ryan plan”; it ends Medicare but leaves in place a voucher system which seniors would use to try to buy coverage on the open market. Good luck with that, seniors. Anyone paying attention will recall that this is the issue Medicare was created to solve. At any rate, under Ryan’s plan everyone that fails to find coverage they can afford with regard to the differential between voucher and actual cost: go die in the streets.]

Republicans on the committee also offered to negotiate a plan based on the bipartisan “Protect Medicare Act” authored by Alice Rivlin, [which would allow seniors to] choose from a list of Medicare-guaranteed coverage options, similar to the House budget’s approach–except that Rivlin-Domenici would continue to include a traditional Medicare fee-for-service plan among the options.

So, the GOP “choices” here are: completely voucherize and functionally end Medicare under the Ryan plan, or vastly extend Medicare Advantage and get to Ryan’s plan stepwise. After all, Medicare Advantage has bee such a smashing success; it’s the plan that delivered a ~14% more costly version of Medicare, the program it sought to “revolutionize.”

Democrats, on the other hand, believe that a return to Clinton era tax rates fundamentally solves the near- to mid-term budget issues. This is widely known to be true; it is also known to be true by Republicans, who are simply using the current “crisis” (which, not coincidentally was invented by them during the run-up and denouement of the debt ceiling “crisis”) as an excuse to attempt various long-held policy goals, most notably: ending Medicare.

Long term issues in our budget do indeed exist, these can only be handled by bringing health care costs under control; Democrats wish to work towards that goal, Republicans choose to address the issue by simply ending that program entirely. This is the point at which it’s worth noting that, if we paid for medical care the per-capita rates that our next-nearest “competitor” pays, we’d be facing surpluses as far as the eye can see. Right now.
But, a massive step in that “solvency” direction would, in fact, be Medicare for all. Instead, the GOP demands Medicare for none or they blow up the country. Those are your two GOP-approved choices. They simply don’t want to talk about it in public, because eliminating Medicare is a wildly unpopular position to hold. You’d think someone in the media would mention something as explosive as this from time to time. Doesn’t ever seem to come up.

Clearly, though, both parties are equally at fault here. Truly a triumph of 21st Century Journamalism.