Month: July 2009

The Blue Dog Lament

by dday

As you may know by now, 40 members of the Blue Dog Caucus sent out a letter vowing to withhold their support for health care reform without what they call “significant changes.” What’s interesting about the letter is how insignificant the changes actually are. Among other things, they want:

• a deficit-neutral policy, which is what every single proposal for this bill has included;
• aggressive solutions to bending the cost curve, which also is a goal of pretty much everyone;
• protecting small businesses, which every iteration of the plan has, including the employer mandate proposals that exempt certain small businesses and make them eligible for purchasing health care through the insurance exchange;
• rural health equity, a pretty small point;
• a public option that doesn’t use Medicare bargaining rates, which isn’t different from what, for example, Chuck Schumer has called for, although I find that to be a toothless public option, which I’ll explain later;
• time to read the bill, which I support;
• bipartisanship, which is the most ridiculous of these demands, but which actually does exist in the bill on the Senate side, where dozens of Republican amendments have been included in the HELP Committee markup.

So what’s the problem here? Well, dig a bit deeper and you’ll see. In short, the Blue Dogs want to reform the health care system without implementing things that would reform the health care system. They want to bend the cost curve and find savings from within the current system, yet they also want “rural health equity,” which actually means spending more on rural health. That would INCREASE costs. Similarly, a separate letter signed by many Blue Dogs ask Henry Waxman to cancel plans to reinstate price controls on prescription drugs to help seniors. The entire point of Waxman’s proposal is to plow savings from the current exorbitant prices paid to drug-makers back into the system. And finally, there’s the matter of the public option. Here’s the language in the letter:

We also wish to reiterate our support for the recommendations previously made by our coalition regarding how to appropriately structure a public option. In order to establish a level playing field, providers must be fairly reimbursed at negotiated rates and their participation must be voluntary. A “Medicare-like” public option would negatively impact hospitals, doctors and patients. Medicare reimbursement is on the average 20 to 30 percent lower than private plans and this inequity is even greater in some parts of the country. Using Medicare’s below-market rates would seriously weaken the financial stability of our local hospitals and doctors.

So, they don’t want a public option using Medicare reimbursement rates because they’re 20-30% lower than private plans. Which means they want to spend 20-30% MORE on provider rates, while… controlling costs, somehow. The entire point of a public option would be to lower overall costs to individuals and government; a plan on a “level playing field” is just another non-profit with little leverage to change the overall dynamic. The Blue Dogs are just being incoherent.

You don’t save money by magic. You save money by spending less money. You can do that by just letting a large and growing number of people go without adequate health care. Or else you can do that by spending less money on overpayments, inefficient processes, and unnecessary treatments. But you can’t do that without taking a bite out of someone’s bottom line. The Blue Dogs seem to be looking for a free lunch, or else just grasping at straws for reasons to object to the bill.

I think it’s the latter. Like with the effort in 1993, the Blue Dogs are inventing reasons to resist a health care overhaul. It’s obvious from the contradictions in their argument.

But lurking behind all of these complaints, according to several sources I consulted Thursday evening, is a general wariness of taking a political plunge on health care. Like their counterparts in the Senate, House members don’t like taking hard votes. Raising taxes, cutting spending, anything that takes money ouf of people’s pockets–these are not things they want to do, even in the service of a greater, more popular cause.

And now they’re getting nervous. They’re seeing the president’s popularity dipping, however incrementally. They’re watching the Senate chase its tail over the same controversies. And having just taken what were–for many of them–similarly tough votes on an energy bill, they’re not exactly thrilled about “walking the plank” again.

Never mind the literally clueless arguments from conservatives, or the complete hash from contrarians over health care – in the end, Democrats hold the fate of this bill in their hands. And lots of them don’t want to face up to the fact that their concerns about costs are solved in this case by MORE progressive reforms, not less. It hurts their wittle feelings. And maybe they’ll just use their go-to lament about bipartisanship, when the minority on this issue exists to prevent anything from being signed into law.

Fortunately, some Blue Dogs have spoken out on this issue in an intellectually coherent way. But unless more of them come around, this is how an overhaul will either be whittled down to nothing or just plain die – because so-called fiscal conservatives want to stick their fingers in their ears rather than face up to the facts.

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Depressions And Quants

by digby

Chris Hayes has written an excellent, accessible overview of the two main economic arguments at play at the moment between those who believe that depressions are a kind of necessary economic tough love and those who believe that they are the outgrowth of human error or greed which can and should be prevented.

Of the first, he writes:

Famed economist Joseph Schumpeter said that “a depression is for capitalism like a good, cold douche,” one that rinses off accumulated dysfunction. Robber baron Andrew Mellon (who served as Herbert Hoover’s treasury secretary) welcomed the Great Depression with these infamous words: “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people”

It’s not hard to find this same view among bankers, financiers and sundry Wall Streeters today. Recently a bond trader told me he hoped that the Fed would raise interest rates and plunge economy into a truly deep, painful (but he hoped, quick) depression. “I don’t think that would be good for you,” I said. “Oh, I’d be fine,” he responded. ( I meant politically: as in, there’ll be people with pitchforks at
your door. We were talking past each other I suppose.)

There’s no question that economic contraction feels quite different to a bond trader and an unskilled worker. A spike in unemployment hits those on the margins of the labor market the hardest, while contractions also usher in deflation, which has a strong tendency to make the rich richer. But the faith in the salutary effects of
economic misery also derives from a puritanical view of the economy, one that can manifest itself on both the left and right. Under this view contractions are collective punishment for our trespasses; we are sinners in the invisible hands of an angry God.

Of the second:

Paul Krugman, to put it mildly, disagrees. In 1999 he published a book
with the prescient title the The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008. While folks like Samuelson and Robert Lucas were celebrating the fruits of neoliberalism, a strange thing was happening: Financial crises of larger and larger scale and scope were wreaking havoc on the global financial system. Mostly, as Krugman notes, we ignored the tremors.

[…]

These crises tended to have a few things in common, but at the heart of many were central banks, governments and international lending institutions that had learned the lessons glossed in Samuelson too well. Low inflation became a central obsession of the so called “Washington Consensus,” the term given for the uniform prescription of stiff free-market medicine — balanced budgets, privatization of government services, and tight monetary policy — that dominated global economic policy in the 1980s and 1990s.

What animated much of this advice was not just a rigid and dogmatic economic consensus, but also the puritanical normative assessment that a wicked economy must now pay its penance. (Of course said penance was never paid by those who caused the crisis: It was paid out of the pockets of the starving, the poor and working class.)

Read the whole thing. It’s very clarifying.

Hayes’ trader acquaintance assured him that he would be fine and I’m sure that’s exactly what he meant. The financial elites are never held responsible for their mismanagement. It’s Blacks who bought house they couldn’t afford and day traders who shouldn’t have been dabbling in things they don’t understand and social climbers who fail to know their place who cause all the problems. Economic puritanism requires punishment, but it is more of a symbolic ritual to prove somebody will pay for failure — just not those who perpetuated it.

In a slightly similar vein, I would recommend this article in Vanity Fair about “The Man Who Crashed The World” Joseph Cassano, of AIGFP. The author, Michael Lewis, describes his conversations with our old pal Jake DeSantis the millionaire WATB who snivelled to the NY Times that he and others at AIGFP were being unfairly blamed for the collapse of the financial system and that denying them their bonuses was, like, totally bogus because they’d worked 14 hours a day! Lewis seems to think that DeSantis was something of a hero because he single handedly turned the argument away from the bonuses because when they read his letter, people realized that these guys were just hardworking sods being unfairly demonized. I don’t know what he’s been smoking, but he’s delusional if he thinks that NY Times op-ed, rather than severe pressure from America’s owners, was what forced the political class to back off. Please.

The upshot of the article is that Joe Cassano was a bullying moron who intimidated all the poor little DeSantis’ into following his orders in spite of the fact that they made no sense. And he apparently intimidated them into stuffing their pockets with tens of millions of dollars while he was at it.

I’m not buying it. I have no doubt that there were rash, aggressive jackasses like Cassano in varying levels of power throughout the financial industry during the period, but it’s simply not credible that all the good, smart “quants” who worked for them were forced to participate against their will.

At the end of this article I couldn’t help but wonder if the fact that Cassano was a working class striver among the elite Ivy boys doesn’t merely explain his own motivation for taking obscene risks, but also the motivation of all these little birdies who whispered in Lewis’ ears about how stupid and boorish he was. “Some people” just have no business being among their betters. And once you let them in, they trash the place.

My feeling is if the quants knew this guy was a moron who was going to crash the world financial system and they did nothing about it, they are more responsible than he was. After all, they’re allegedly the smart guys. Instead, they took the money and then whine like little babies when they got blamed. Sorry, I have more respect for Cassanno at this point than them. At least he’s not pretending to be a victim.

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The Creeping National Security State

by dday

This makes no sense:

The federal government’s most secure prison has determined that two books written by President Barack Obama contain material “potentially detrimental to national security” and rejected an inmate’s request to read them.

Ahmed Omar Abu Ali is serving a 30-year sentence at the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colo., for joining al-Qaida and plotting to assassinate then-President George W. Bush. Last year, Abu Ali requested two books written by Obama: “Dreams from My Father” and “The Audacity of Hope.”

But prison officials, citing guidance from the FBI, determined that passages in both books contain information that could damage national security.

Then I guess we’ll have to track down all of the couple million copies sold worldwide and redact them, not to mention garbling the Grammy-winning books on tape.

Couple things here. First, somebody tell Republicans and skittish Democrats that there’s an Al Qaeda member in a federal prison on US soil! Let the pants-piddling begin!

Second, this has basically become shorthand for any violations of civil liberties, or as we see here, basically anything, in the modern age. Just cite national security to give your actions the patina of importance. There’s no justification for the theory that someone confined to a solitary cell 23 hours a day can gain valuable insight to carry out attacks on the nation from a memoir written in 1996 and a campaign-era collection of policy papers. Seduced by secrecy, government officials use the threat of national security to convince themselves of any behavior under the sun. Shielding a book from a prisoner pales in comparison to torture or warrantless spying or whatever it is the CIA held from Congress all those years. But they have the same rationale, which is often uncritically accepted by political leadership and the media establishment. And everyone walks around in this daze, without challenging this constant invocation of national security for increasingly ridiculous actions.

As long as nobody rises to stop it, the ruling class can expand the national security state block by block until we live as we do today, in a fundamentally different country.

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Un-Signing The Signing Statements

by dday

Good:

The House rebuked President Obama for trying to ignore restrictions to international aid payments, voting overwhelmingly for an amendment forcing the administration to abide by its constraints.

House members approved an amendment by a 429-2 vote to have the Obama administration pressure the World Bank to strengthen labor and environmental standards and require a Treasury Department report on World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) activities. The amendment to a 2010 funding bill for the State Department and foreign operations was proposed by Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), but it received broad bipartisan support.

The conditions on World Bank and IMF funding were part of the $106 billion war supplemental bill that was passed last month. Obama, in a statement made as he signed the bill, said that he would ignore the conditions.

They would “interfere with my constitutional authority to conduct foreign relations by directing the Executive to take certain positions in negotiations or discussions with international organizations and foreign governments, or by requiring consultation with the Congress prior to such negotiations or discussions,” Obama said in the signing statement […]

President George W. Bush had used signing statements to ignore a number of provisions in bills that he signed into law, frustrating Democrats in Congress. One Bush signing statement allowed the administration to ignore a provision banning the torture of terror detainees in situations threatening the nation’s security.

Frank and Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Texas) said that one way they could get presidents to stop issuing signing statements casting aside laws would be to refuse to fund their priorities. The amendment passed Thursday seeks to nullify Obama’s signing statement by withholding funds from any agreement involving the Treasury Department that doesn’t follow the conditions set out in the supplemental bill.

“The signal we send to the Treasury is very clear: Ignore statute at your peril,” Kirk said.

As long as the executive is given a power, he or she will probably keep using it. It’s up to the legislative branch to assert their authority. Of course this never happened with a Republican in the White House, as the GOP sees their role in those situations as human shields. But I really don’t care about partisanship when it comes to reining in the runaway executive and restoring balance to the branches of government. Congress has a lot more power than they’ve been using over the years, and while this is a small point, I’m happy if it leads to signing statements going the way of the dodo bird.

…I was hinting at this, but David Waldman fleshes it out:

Pretty much as predicted, Congressional Democrats find their spine in standing up to expansive executive power as soon as there’s a Democrat in the White House. Actually confronting a Republican president about it was apparently too politically difficult for them to contemplate. Why? Because Republicans would have voted against it, meaning that standing up for institutional prerogatives and the separation of powers is a politicized issue. It’s “partisan bickering” when Democrats say this about Republican presidents, but “bipartisan agreement” when they say it about Democrats, because it’s only when it’s said about Democrats that Republicans agree that there ought to be a separation of powers.

Which of course means that such a separation only has a hope of existing as the founders intended when there’s a Democrat in the White House. Which hasn’t been all that often since the advent of the Nixonian “Imperial Presidency,” mind you.

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Missing The Point?

by tristero

I think the great Joe Conason misses a crucial point about Sarah Palin. He writes:

Palin, a manifestly unqualified and incompetent politician unable to string together a series of coherent sentences…

…cursory background investigation that revealed almost nothing about her lack of knowledge, bizarre official conduct, and narcissistic temperament.

Well, yes. All true. But what’s missing from this list are Palin’s ties to radical extremists, fanatical christianists, and even secessionists. Had Palin been experienced, articulate, knowledgeable, reliable, and a paragon of empathy, nevertheless, her delusional, far-right political views should have immediately disqualified her from serious consideration as a national candidate.

We should never forget: For eight long years, genuinely extreme ideologues, who boasted of the fact they were not members of the “reality-based community,” ran this country. Even now, when the executive branch is in the hands of a sane person (whatever his faults). this country’s media provides rightwing extremism a place in the national discourse it simply doesn’t merit.

Palin is, first and foremost, a political nutjob. That is the most important thing to understand about her from the perspective of a voter. That a major political party would choose someone with such crazy ideas, and that a reporter as intelligent as Conason would fail to note this even in passing or as further evidence of her incompetence for public office, speaks volumes about how far Americans still treat truly bizarre political philosophies as acceptable.

No Pool For You

by digby

I assume that most of you have heard by now about the bigots at the Philadelphia swim club who wouldn’t allow the white kids to swim with the African American kids. It takes me back to my childhood wonder years in 1960s Mississippi. Good times.

Sixty-five campers, kindergartners through seventh graders who are African American and Hispanic, arrived at the private swim club around 3:30 p.m. on June 29. It was their first visit to the club, but the camp had made arrangements for weekly trips on Mondays through Aug. 10.

While the campers were swimming, Wright said, three of them came up to her and said they had heard club members asking what African Americans were doing at the club.

Although the children were upset, Wright said, they stayed at the pool for an hour more to complete their session. She said that she approached club president John Duesler while events unfolded that day and that he seemed apologetic.

On July 3, Wright said, the camp’s $1,950 check in membership fees to the swim club was refunded, meaning the children no longer had access to the pool. She said Duesler gave no reason for the refund except that the membership no longer wanted the children at the pool.

Repeated attempts to reach Duesler, other club officers, and the club’s management yesterday were unsuccessful. NBC10, which first reported the story, said yesterday that Duesler had given the station the following statement: “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion . . . and the atmosphere of the club.”

The club is not affiliated with the Huntington Valley Country Club, which today inadvertantly found itself a target of public rage.

“We’ve been getting a lot of nasty calls,” country club receptionist Karen Ojeda said.

Wright said she heard no racially charged comments when the campers were at the club but did hear a club member express displeasure that the children were at the pool. She said many parents made their children leave the pool after the campers arrived.

But here’s something that is rarely focused on in all the stories about the appalling behavior of these awful people:

The camp first contacted the club about membership after the New Frankford Community Y in the Frankford section of the city – where the children used to swim – closed last month because of lack of money. The club is about a 20-minute drive from the camp’s location at Devereaux and Summerdale Avenues in Northeast Philadelphia.

Pools are closing all over the place for lack of funds. And if anyone’s thinking help is on the way, think again:

Looking to strike fear and compliance in the hearts of local officials, Vice President Joe Biden warns that if they use money from the economic stimulus fund to build what he regards as the wrong kind of projects, “I’ll show up in your city and say this was a stupid idea.”

“No swimming pools!” he implored. “No tennis courts!” he begged. “No golf courses!” he pleaded. “No Frisbee parks!” he exhorted.

Little kids in urban centers being able to swim outdoors in pools close to their homes is a waste of taxpayers money you see.

h/t to rp

Silbido Del Perro

by digby

A certain kind of thinking knows no borders:

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, issued a press release to announce that she will be meeting with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency to talk about drug trafficking in Honduras.

“Obtaining an assessment from DEA about the situation on the ground is of increasing importance in light of recent developments in Honduras and reports of possible Zelaya drug ties. “The drug network is like a spider web extending into arms trafficking and used to finance such extremist groups as the FARC. It undermines our regional security and stability. It is critical that we understand the full scope of the problem and the players involved in order to combat it effectively.” [Emphasis mine]

These “reports of possible Zelaya drug ties” have come from none other than the newly-minted Honduran “Foreign Minister” Enrique Ortez. He claimed in an interview that “Every night, three or four Venezuelan-registered planes land without the permission of appropriate authorities and bring thousands of pounds … and packages of money that are the fruit of drug trafficking.” Ortez, as those who have been following this situation are well aware, was dressed down by the United States Ambassador to Honduras for frequently invoking the racially charged pejorative “negrito” to refer to President Obama. At one point, Ortez described the president of the United States as “this little black man (negrito) who has no idea where Tegucigalpa is.”

But it gets worse:

A third quote by Ortez Colindres surfaced yesterday, made during an interview with a Honduran television station and cited in El Tiempo newspaper:

“He negociado con maricones, prostitutas, con ñángaras (izquierdistas), negros, blancos. Ese es mi trabajo, yo estudié eso. No tengo prejuicios raciales, me gusta el negrito del batey que está presidiendo los Estados Unidos.” ——– “I have negotiated with queers, prostitutes, leftists, blacks, whites. This is my job, I studied for it. I am not racially prejudiced. I like the little black sugar plantation worker who is president of the United States.”

I think I finally understand why so many Republicans are backing the coup.

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Cue My Eyes Rolling Into The Back Of My Head

by dday

The Republicans will trot out Frank Ricci, the firefighter from New Haven, to testify against Sonia Sotomayor at hearings next week. And then we’ll all get to hear once again about the poor guy who studied hard – hard! – to pass that promotions test, and then the MAN, in this case represented by a Latina following the established laws on the books which the Supreme Court had to change, knocked him down and took everything he had. He needed that promotion, see, and he was the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority throw out the test because they could have been sued until the Supreme Court changed the law to essentially indemnify them.

The reality of the case doesn’t matter, so this will just be a launching pad for a series of “white man’s burden” colloquys among Villagers.

Man, the blowhards are going to make me sick next week. Pat Buchanan is probably testing out new slurs as we speak. “Does Sombrero Lady sound pejorative enough? How about Phi Beta Hubcappa?”

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Bipartisan-Curious

by digby

It’s Groundhog Day:

One of the key Democratic senators whose vote remains up for grabs when it comes to health care reform urged his colleagues to continue to push for a bipartisan bill, even as party leadership said it was time to give up on recuriting GOP support. In an interview this week with the Huffington Post, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) maintained that there was still “great interest in the Finance Committee for a bipartisan bill on both sides of the aisle” and he urged lawmakers to continue to pursue a collaborative path.

He would not comment directly on news that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had urged the Committee’s Chairman, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop efforts to attract Republican support. But he also didn’t hide his own preferences. “I’m committed to the priority that the president laid out,” said Wyden. “I think the president got it right. He said ‘I want to get it done this year’ and he also indicated that his first choice is to have a bipartisan bill because he recognizes that a bipartisan bill allows the country to come together.”

The country is already together in a thoroughly bipartisan way on this issue. It’s corporate whores in Washington who are at odds with the people.

And if anyone in their right mind actually believes that the Republican Party is going to have a “stake” in the success of health care reform because a couple of GOP stragglers are dragged across the line to vote for the Democratic plan, I’ve got some AIG CDOs to sell them. They will be trying to dismantle it for the next 60 years, just as they’ve spent the last 60 years trying to dismantle Social Security.

Wyden isn’t talking to the people, he’s talking to David Broder and the rest of the village punditocrisy and it’s insulting to the intelligence of anyone who isn’t one of them. It’s enough to set your teeth on edge to hear this crap again.

Once more with feeling:

From The Agenda:

Gore asked, what did Boren want changed in the plan in order to secure his vote?

Like a little list? Boren asked.

Yeah, Gore said.

Boren said he didn’t have little list. Raising the gas tax a nickel or cutting it a nickel or anything like that wouldn’t do it, he said. He had given his list to Moynihan like everybody else in the Finance Committee. It was over and done with, and Boren likened himself to a free agent in baseball. “I have the luxury of standing back here and looking at this,” Boren said. His test would be simple: Would it work? If not, it didn’t serve the national interest.

Gore said he was optimistic for the first time.

Boren shot back. “There’s nothing you can do for me or to me that will influence my decision on this matter.” he added. “I’m going to make it on the basis of what I think is right or wrong.”

Nobody responded for a moment. Clinton then stepped in. Why didn’t Boren think it was in the national interest? he asked.

It wasn’t bipartisan, Boren answered. To be successful in this country it had been demonstrated over and over, an effort had to be bipartisan, Clinton had even said so himself, Boren pointed out. Even most optimists, Boren said, thought they were still not even halfway there.

No Republican voted for the plan.

There you have it. That ridiculous Villager article of faith that says bipartisanship is not only important for its own sake, it’s the only thing that’s important.

Someday, in my dreams, Democrats will run as progressives in the same way that Republicans proudly ran as conservatives both when they were ascendant and holding the reins of power over the past 30 years. They won’t apologize for their ideas or pretend that the most important thing in the word is for Republicans to approve of what they are doing. They will recognize that while compromise is a necessary element of politics, progress and systemic change requires a fight which usually results in the losing side being unhappy. That day is not here yet.

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Oh Nancy

by digby

Oh my goodness

Panetta Admits CIA Misled Congress on “Significant Actions”
By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

CIA Director Leon Panetta told the House Intelligence Committee that the agency had misled and “concealed significant actions from all members of Congress” dating back to 2001 and continuing until late June, according to a letter from seven Democrats on the panel.

The letter was dated June 26, two days after Panetta appeared before a closed door session with the committee and it asked that the CIA chief “correct” his statement from May 15 that “it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.”

“Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week,” states the letter to Panetta from Anna G. Eshoo of California, Alcee L. Hastings of Florida, Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Adam Smith of Washington, Mike Thompson of California and John F. Tierney of Massachusetts.

CIA spokesman George Little said Panetta stood by his May remarks and believes Congress must be kept fully informed and Little added, “it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.”

Big of them. But you have to stop and truly appreciate the weasel words in that statement: Panetta stands by his statement — at least the part where he said he believes congress should be kept informed.

The issue is politically sensitive because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi , D-Calif., found herself at the center of a firestorm in May when she accused the CIA of misleading Congress over the use of harsh interrogation methods during the Bush administration.

Somebody owes Pelosi an apology. According to the article it won’t be Pete Hoekstra who is simply putting his fingers in his ears and singling “lalalalalala.”

But lest anyone thinks that the actual rules and processes are going to change any of this:

The Obama administration has threatened to veto the funding bill for US intelligence agencies because the House included a provision that would increase the number of members who receive briefings on highly secretive covert operations.

[…]

The same provision allows Congress, not the administration, to restrict the briefings in extraordinary circumstances.

This seemingly small change to the law is what’s provoked the veto threat. The Obama administration, like all previous administrations of the modern era, believe that the president, and only the president, has the power to determine what constitutes national security information and, even more vitally, what safeguards ought to be in place to protect the information.

Because it’s worked out so well up to now.

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