The Buddy System

Jul212009
by publius

by publius

I just heard Chuck Todd say something rather remarkable on Hardball:

This surcharge tax idea coming out of the House, Grassley himself said
it's dead, and if Grassley says it's dead, Baucus usually goes along. I
mean, the two of them are like blood brothers in this on the way they
run the Finance Committee. They both sort of take the long view because
as one of them's the ranking member now, the other one's the chairman.
They know those roles can get reversed quickly, so they very much
listen to each other on that. So that millionaire surtax or whatever
you want to call it at this point is probably dead.

First, it's entirely possible Todd is wrong.  Maybe Baucus doesn't actually march to Grassley's drum.  Maybe Baucus hates the surtax and wants to use Grassley as cover.  I'm not sure. 

But if Todd is correct, then it's the craziest thing I've ever heard — for various reasons.  First, Chuck Grassley shouldn't be dictating health care policy in a 60-40 Senate.  Period.  Full stop.

Second, one would hope that policy for 300 million people outranks "buddyness" in the United States Senate.  Granted, you could maybe justify Baucus's actions under some sort of game theory "long view."  The idea would be that cooperation ultimately helps the Dems because it gives Baucus some leverage when he's in the minority.  The thing is, though, I don't really remember Baucus fighting for much of anything in the minority.  I do, however, remember his brave support of Bush's tax cuts.

Third, Grassley's home state of Iowa went for Obama by nine points.  If anything, Baucus and pals should be leveraging Iowa politics to pressure Grassley.  I suppose such things would make lunch at the cafeteria a bit awkward.  But seasoned politicians understand that this is all part of the game… yo.

Now again, maybe Todd is just getting played here in some sort of elaborate Kabuki.  I certainly hope so.

Posted at 12:29 am in Weblogs | – Comments (1)

Quotes of the Day: Sotomayor Edition

Jul202009
by Eric Martin

by Eric Martin

It was odd to see the way the GOP turned the Sotomayor confirmation hearings into the "wise Latina" show – opting to focus, monomaniacally, on a few words from a speech delivered over 7 years ago, while virtually ignoring the output of one of the longest judicial careers of any recent Supreme Court nominee.  Jim Henley summed it up succinctly:

If Sonia Sotomayor is so great, how come she only ever said one thing in her whole life?

But aside from how strange it was to see politicians questioning a potential Supreme Court justice - incessantly and repetitively - about one passage in a speech, and not her jurisprudential outlook/body of work (which belies the accusation of bias as supposedly evidenced by that excerpt), the essence of Sotomayor's supposedly controversial commentary shouldn't really be all that controversial. 

Judges whose life experiences differ from the white male norm that has dominated the Supreme Court since its inception, would, I "hope," be able to make better informed decisions on cases for which being white and male may increase the likelihood of certain blindspots, and being a member of a minority group might provide certain insights. 

Further, while a minority will likely be well-versed in the dominant culture of a given society (by virtue of it being dominant and all), a member of the majority group is less likely to be familiar with the culture of that minority group.  Due to this myopia, sometimes the dominant group just doesn't get it – or at least, has a harder time of it.  Much of the rest of the GOP's performance during these hearings (and in previous weeks) provided ample evidence for that proposition. 

Stephen Colbert, once again, nails it (via):

For instance, take the Dred Scott case. Those justice's life experience, being white men in pre-civil war America some of whom owned slaves, in no way influenced their decision that black people were property. And, their personal backgrounds had nothing to do with the all-neutral court decision that it was legal to send Japanese Americans to internment camps in 1942. Imagine how the life experience of an Asian judge would have sullied that neutrality.

Now, in a perfect world, judges would be colorblind and infinitely empathetic such that absolute neutrality, and the total usurpation of personal bias and the influence of life experiences, was not only an attainable framework for judging, but a commonplace one.  But since we live in this world instead, diversity provides a helpful check on the inevitable effects of judges' personal contexts and histories - especially when those personal histories have tended to be relatively uniform, thus increasing the risks of certain lapses.

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word – Neutral Man's Burden
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Jeff Goldblum
Posted at 2:55 pm in Uncategorized | – Comments (21)

Maybe Scratch the Town Halls, Mike

Jul202009
by publius

by publius

Poor Mike Castle (R-DE).  He was trying to have a town hall meeting, like any good Representative.  But then he lost control to a woman demanding (to loud applause) that he pay more attention to Obama's birth certificate.  The funniest part, though, comes at about 1:45, where she convinces the crowd (and Castle) to do a spontaneous Pledge of Allegiance.  (Via Gateway Pundit)

Posted at 2:55 pm in Current Affairs | – Comments (15)

Democrats Drop Card Check from Union Bill

Jul202009
by Sebastian

-by Sebastian

Democrats have dropped card check from the pending changes to union organization laws.

This allows the bill to focus on much less controversial methods of addressing union concerns about unfairness in union organization drives: including shorter election times, much stricter punishments for violating the law regarding organization, and faster arbitration.

Given any reasonable interpretation of these ideas (I'd support election times in a week or so though not just one or two days, I'd support harsher punishments but not the death penalty for frustrating union drives, and fair arbitration is fine–though I'm reluctant to pull the possiblity of appeal to actual courts) I'm all for it. 

This also may be a good illustration of how mainstream Democrats can usefully use the tactics that publius described here.  They can leverage general Republican obstructionism against a bill until they get the bad parts removed.  Then they can switch over and support it.  It also provides a good reality check:  those who claimed to be opposing it on the basis of card check are now in a much harder position if they want to continue opposing the bill. 

Posted at 1:20 pm in Current Affairs | – Comments (17)

Retro Bill

Jul202009
by publius

by publius

Retro Bill Kristol got out his flannel shirt and Pearl Jam albums today and decided to go all 1994 on us:

With Obamacare on the ropes, there will be a temptation for
opponents to let up on their criticism, and to try to appear
constructive, or at least responsible. … My advice, for what it's worth: Resist the temptation. This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill.

And you know, that's fine.  Kristol doesn't believe in health care — he thinks it will hurt Republicans politically.  So he wants to kill it.  I disagree, but that's how things work.  That's part of the game, yo. 

But here's where he drifts into blatant deception:

So the constructive part of the message would be: Start Over. We're not
giving up on health reform. Far from it. But the only way to pass
health reform is first to get rid of the misbegotten efforts now before
Congress.

That part is, of course, not true.  The institutional GOP — of which Kristol is a part — has never made any real effort to pass national health care reform.  Delay is simply a plan to kill reform.  The Gang should take note.

Posted at 11:07 am in Weblogs | – Comments (19)

The Anti-Tax Ideology

Jul202009
by publius

by publius

I’ve made a lot of snarky references lately about how various Republican policies are really about helping rich people. As I plan to continue this line of snark, I should probably back it up with some substance. And the surtax debate gives me a good opportunity to do that.

Before I do, I should tell you about the ridiculously awesome iTunes U section, which I've recently "discovered."  For those unfamiliar, this service allows you to essentially audit various college classes by downloading the lectures (MIT/Berkeley/Stanford have good collections). And it’s free! I’ve been listening to Professor Charles Anderson’s political philosophy class (which is very good thus far, though I’ve only listened to Hegel and Marx – Karl, not Richard).

Listening to the Marx lectures reaffirmed my take on him. Basically, I find his descriptive critiques of capitalism and ideology very persuasive. And I find his normative recommendations to be loopy and dangerous.

His ideology critique, though, is especially interesting. Marx didn’t necessarily say that ideology was a conscious strategy to deceive. As Anderson explained, Marx saw it in more Darwinian terms – a given ideology was adopted because it was useful to the people currently in power. It is “selected” for its usefulness, like any other biological trait. Thus, the ideology of “divine rights of kings” was useful to justify power relations in feudal society.

That’s basically how I see modern anti-tax ideology. It’s not so much that I think people are lying, or are making conscious efforts to deceive. Instead, I think people aren’t seeing the extent to which anti-tax narratives are useful in defending extreme concentrations of wealth and income.

Think about the reality of the surtax debate. Think about what’s really at stake. The actual policy debate is whether to increase tax rates on the top 1.2% of households by a few percentage points. There’s not much there there.

And that’s true of the larger tax debate. Although we need more tax revenues, it’s not like we’d be ushering in a socialist society even if, say, Crazy Communist Publius Hilzoy got to decide the appropriate tax rates (I’ll taunt her until she’s forced to return).

If progressives had their way, tax rates on the very rich would go up by maybe 10 or 15 percentage points. The “merely rich’s” rates would go up somewhat less, and most people’s rates would be essentially unchanged or up just a bit (in exchange for offsetting benefits like health care coverage). Them’s the stakes of our tax debate. It’s not exactly Russia 1917.

The anti-tax ideology, however, obscures the reality of this debate. To listen to Chris Wallace today interviewing Orszag, you would think that a massive redistribution is at issue. But it’s not – the tax debate in our country is about whether to shift the marginal rates on the fairly well-to-do by a few points.

In this respect, the anti-tax ideology – essentially everything you hear about “raising taxes” or “hurting small businesses with taxes”, etc. – is obscuring reality. It's not that I think people are consciously lying. They’re just not seeing how this ideology is really only useful to protect massive concentrations of income.

That’s what burns me about Ben Nelson and Susan Collins and Evan Bayh. They act like they’re populist crusaders defending yeoman farmers from socialism or something. What they’re really doing is preventing those people from getting valuable services by treating tax hikes on the wealthy as something other than what they really are.

To sum up, there’s a debate about how to fund things in this country. The anti-tax ideology expressed so loudly in conservative and “centrist” circles doesn’t really protect the middle class from significant tax increases – that’s not really on the table anyway. What is on the table is redistributing money from those most able to bear it – ones who most benefit from "bailouts" – to ensure that no American will ever again toss and turn at night worrying about pre-existing conditions. It’s not all that much to ask.

All that said, maybe you think concentrating wealth is the best way to go about spreading welfare, etc. That’s fine – but let’s at least be up front about it. Let’s not pretend that taxes on the very very rich are somehow the same as taxes on middle America.

Posted at 2:10 am in Current Affairs | – Comments (119)

Big Financial Development

Jul192009
by publius

by publius

Andy Borowitz: Goldman Sachs in Talks to Acquire Treasury Department

In what some on Wall Street are calling the biggest blockbuster deal in the history of the financial sector, Goldman Sachs confirmed today that it was in talks to acquire the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

. . .

"The Goldman spokesman said that the merger would create efficiencies for both entities: "We already have so many employees and so much money flowing back and forth, this would just streamline things."

Mr. Hestron said the only challenge facing Goldman in completing the merger "is trying to figure out which parts of the Treasury Dept. we don't already own."

Goldman recently celebrated record earnings by roasting a suckling pig over a bonfire of hundred-dollar bills.

Posted at 11:12 am in Uncategorized | – Comments (11)

Waiting for Nothing

Jul182009
by publius

by publius

Many things annoy me about the calls to “slow down” on health care coverage.  But what most annoys me is the idea that we should wait for a “bipartisan” result, as the latest letter from the “Gang of Moderates Protecting Really Rich People” suggests.

In the abstract, these requests sound reasonable.  But these requests assume that Republicans are interested in passing real reform — which they’re not.  They’ve never made any serious efforts — institutionally speaking — to enact reform, and there’s exactly zero reason to think that they will.  They’re slowing things down to kill reform — and the Gang is facilitating them.

My hope is that this reality will eventually color the coverage of the Gang, who are often portrayed as Platonic statesmen, high above the fray of nasty partisanship.   More broadly, I wish the reality would sink in that Republicans (again, institutionally) aren’t interested in passing meaningful policy reform on either of the two most pressing issues of the day — health care and energy.

Exhibit A for this argument is the good Senator from Arizona, John McCain.  One frustrating aspect of McCain’s campaign coverage was that it often treated him as a strong environmentalist.  Several editorials said something to the effect of “We’re so lucky to get to choose between two candidates who embrace cap-and-trade.”  Here’s the LA Times:

Regardless of who wins the November election, our next
president will back a cap-and-trade program, eliminating the worry that good
legislation in this area will die by veto. Democrat Barack Obama would impose
tougher restrictions than Republican John McCain, but the latter is still a
national leader on the issue.

And the Post:

[C]limate change will get the aggressive attention it
deserves from the White House, no matter which party wins in November.  The centerpiece of Mr. McCain’s plan is
a reduction in carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system[.]

And David Simon’s favorite paper:

Fortunately, whichever candidate is elected . . . [b]oth the Republican and
Democratic nominees have at least recognized the threat and have pledged to
take significant action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in this country and
around the world.

John McCain was good at saying enough to get Sunday morning talk show praise.  But when the real effort was needed, “national leader” McCain has been almost uniformly critical.  He’s referred to the plan as “cap and tax,” and has provided no muscle whatsoever in building political support for this effort.  And remember — he’s supposedly the best one.

And that’s the larger problem.  Republicans aren’t serious about doing anything on either front.  A McCain administration wouldn’t have pushed for a real cap and trade; neither would it have pushed for real health care reform beyond nibbling at the edges of the status quo.  The GOP just isn’t interested — and all the debates about “costs” shouldn’t obscure this fundamental reality.

The Dems should hold together on the procedural votes, and then oppose the ultimate bill if they want.  But there’s no reason to bend over backwards to appease the GOP.  Let Olympia Snowe and Chuck Grassley and Richard Burr take their chances on voting no.

This opportunity is likely fleeting — and so the Dems shouldn’t hold up the process under the pretense that Republicans are going to shift on anything.  When they do, I’m all for bipartisan compromise.  But given the lack of real effort, for decades really, the strong presumption should that they will not.

Posted at 3:56 pm in Weblogs | – Comments (24)

Last Post

Jul182009
by hilzoy

by hilzoy

I had all kinds of ideas for things I wanted to write before I left, but between last-minute packing and phone calls from friends and family, it didn't happen. So I'll just say a few things quickly.

As I said before, one of the things that led me to start blogging in the first place was the fact that I thought the country had gone crazy, and one of the things that particularly bothered me was the sheer level of invective and hatred that people seemed to feel comfortable directing at one another. I hated this, not just in itself, but because I thought: this harms us all. 

A democracy is essentially about determining the course of our nation together. To do that, it helps a lot to have a good citizenry. A good citizenry is informed, serious about things that are worth taking seriously, and not liable to be led off course by demagogues. (Everyone doesn't have to be like this, but you need a critical mass of people who are.) But I've always thought that a good citizenry is also composed of people who assume, until proven wrong, that many of the people who disagree with them are acting in good faith. 

This matters for policy: you're unlikely to choose sound policies if you assume that anyone who disagrees with you is a depraved, corrupt imbecile. It's hard to learn anything from people you have completely written off. But it's also corrosive to any kind of community or dialogue to assume the worst about large numbers of people you've never met. It makes you less willing to try to take their problems seriously, and to try to figure out how they might be solved, or to try to understand what's driving them. 

I hate it when people do this to me. I never wanted to do it to them.

The thing is, it's hard to see how to try to help create a better citizenry. It's not something that can be accomplished by enacting a policy, the way covering the uninsured is. It's a matter of individual moral choices, and as far as I can see, the only way in which we can have a better citizenry is to make the best choices we can, and to try to help other people when it's in our power to do so. I once had a friend who decided that she would research all the down-ticket offices, candidates for judgeships, etc. — the races we all vote on without having a clue who we're voting for — and distribute the information she found to anyone who wanted it. She was helping out in the way I have in mind.

When I started blogging, I thought: with all the craziness and vitriol that's flying around, it's worth at least trying to do something like that. I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to be informed, by covering stories that weren't being covered, and by always linking to my primary sources, so that only one of us had to spend time figuring out how to find some bill or GAO report, for instance; and to fact-check claims that struck me as dubious, and that were being accepted.

But I also wanted to try, if at all possible, to treat people, and most especially my political opponents, with respect, except where respect had been clearly forfeited. (Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, I'm thinking of you.) Because, as I said, I think it's just corrosive to democracy if people are not willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to one another. Besides, it's uncharitable and wrong, and besides that, perhaps some people would survive in a world in which no one was ever more generous to them than they deserve, but I am quite sure that I would not.

That was one of the things I wanted to try to do. I wasn't particularly confident that I'd succeed at all, but I thought: the least I can do is try. It might be a complete failure. It might be that the idea of me trying to do this is just laughable, and that if I had the self-awareness God gave an oyster, I'd be rolling on the floor laughing. Still, I thought, if it doesn't work, the fault will probably be mine, and I'll learn something. (One thing about blogging: you have to be willing to regard criticism as a learning experience, because your shortcomings, including the ones you don't know about and will be mortified to discover, are always in plain view.)

I think that democracy, like any kind of community, takes effort. It needs to be maintained. People need to work at it. And the last five years have made me realize, yet again, that even when things seem really bad, they are not hopeless. There is always something you can do. Even when you're not expecting it, you'll get an email from Moe Lane asking: would you like to join our blog?

All you can do is try. And as my grandmother used to say to us: it is not worthy of humanity to give up.

***

I also want to thank everyone who commented on the various goodbye threads at ObWi, the Monthly, and elsewhere, my wonderful co-bloggers, and all the people who have commented over the years. It means more to me than I can tell you. But I've always felt that I got much more than I gave from the communities at both blogs, and I'm more grateful than I can say. 

Thank you.
Posted at 1:44 am in Uncategorized | – Comments (94)

Sunshine

Jul172009
by hilzoy

by hilzoy

Here's an interesting catch by Merrill Goozner:

"The House bill would create an internet accessible database that includes all health-related payments to physicians by corporations including gifts, food, or entertainment; travel or trips; honoraria; research funding or grants; education or conference funding; consulting fees; ownership or investment interests; and royalties or license fees. If I'm reading the bill correctly, it says anything over $5 must be reported. (From pg. 635 of the bill.)"

I believe the relevant section of the bill is 1451, and it does seem to say that. This is really good news. There is a lot of money sloshing around in health care. There are advisory boards, speakers' bureaus, conferences conveniently held in beach resorts, educational (and "educational") events, dinners courtesy of drug companies, gifts, etc., etc., etc. And that's not counting things like industry-sponsored research.

A lot of this is just marketing, sometimes disguised and sometimes not. Making it public would have two very good effects. First, and most obviously, it would allow people to discover any conflicts of interest that their doctors might have. Second, it might shame people. If you're an "opinion leader", or in some other way a good catch for a company, it's possible to get very considerable amounts of money from these sorts of things. If it came out that some doctors were getting, say, hundreds of thousands of dollars, not for doing research but for various marketing-esque activities, I suspect that those doctors might become less greedy. 

And that would be a good thing. Most people don't think that they would allow their judgment to be corrupted by something like a fancy dinner with a flattering sales rep, or even an all-expenses paid trip to an industry-sponsored conference at Waikiki. But there's a fair amount of research that shows that accepting a gift from someone does affect your judgment, whether you're aware of it or not. (Why else would pharmaceutical companies give all these gifts?) 

Making these gifts public is an excellent thing. Good for the House committees for writing it into their bill.
Posted at 7:28 pm in Foreign Affairs | – Comments (11)