Month: July 2009

It’s Good To Be The King

by dday

The loss of 467,000 jobs last month and the loss of practically every single job created this decade aside, at least some employees are back in business.

Business is back on Wall Street. If the good times continue to roll, lofty pay packages may be set for a comeback as well.

Based on analysts’ earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is on track to pay out as much as $20 billion this year, or about $700,000 per employee. That would be nearly double the firm’s $363,000 average last year, and slightly higher than the $661,000 for the average Goldman employee in fiscal 2007, according to analyst estimates reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Well, that was a close one! For a second I thought the banksters would have to SUFFER for the damage they caused blowing a hole in the global economy. Thankfully, that task will fall only to the rest of the population.

By the way, you really shouldn’t miss Matt Taibbi’s epic takedown of Goldman Sachs, arguably the most devious actor in this whole mess, in the latest issue of Rolling Stone. They haven’t put it on their website yet, but Zero Hedge has a very hard-to-read copy. It’s a comprehensive look at Goldman’s increasing ubiquity throughout practically all of modern life, and their role in manipulating Wall Street and K Street to get favorable outcomes. Goldman is like the Borg, and the ruling class has been assimilated. Needless to say, Goldman’s none too happy about having their agenda exposed. Taibbi responds here. He’s one of the only journalists who would dare to write this story, and he should be credited for that.

…Taibbi’s article is on the Rolling Stone site. But I agree with those in comments, anything that can be done to support Taibbi’s work in this matter ought to be encouraged. Also, he appears to have stumbled upon a very serious issue about Goldman Sachs front-running its clients, which is basically buying a stock before executing a large trade for its clients and taking the profit.

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Ugh

by digby

That lower one was in 1948-50. If we keep going down at the rate we have been, we’ll surpass that in the next two months.

It’s bad:

The American economy lost 467,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate edged up to 9.5 percent in a sobering indication that the most painful downturn since the Great Depression has yet to release its hold.

“The numbers are indicative of a continued, very severe recession,” said Stuart G. Hoffman, chief economist at PNC Financial Services Group in Pittsburgh. “There’s nothing in here to show that the economy and the market are pulling out of the grip of recession.”

The latest monthly snapshot of the nation’s job situation, released on Thursday by the Labor Department, reinforced a consensus that high levels of unemployment were likely to remain for many months and perhaps years. That will almost surely increase the difficulties of finding work for millions of jobless people while limiting wages and working hours for those employed.

After a May report that showed the pace of deterioration was moderating — with a revised figure of 322,000 net jobs lost for the month — some economists expressed hopes that an economic recovery might finally be emerging. But the June report tempered such visions with the monotony of continued decline.

For another month, manufacturing jobs disappeared, dipping by 136,000, while construction jobs shrank by 79,000 and retail by 21,000. Health care remained a rare bright spot, adding 21,000 jobs.

The losses for June brought the tally of jobs shed since the beginning of the recession to 6.5 million — a figure equivalent to the net job gains over the previous nine years.

“This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all jobs growth from the previous business cycle,” Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington, said in a research note. She called this fact “a devastating benchmark for the workers of this country and a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis and to the extreme weakness of jobs growth from 2000 to 2007.”

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An Answer For Doug MacKinnon

by tristero

Douglas MacKinnon, former press hack for Bob Dole, asks:

Why do so many on the left have such an unhinged hatred of [Sarah Palin]?

Well, Doug, I just want you to know, that, personally, I don’t have an unhinged hatred of Sarah Palin. Repeat: I do NOT have an unhinged hatred of Sarah Palin. Not in the slightest.

My hatred hinges quite sensibly on her advocacy of a psychotic extreme rightwing ideology, her radical christianism, her courting of organizations that ooze contempt for American democracy, her propensity to lie the way normal people breathe, her enormous pride in her blithering ignorance, her sheer incompetence, and her mind-boggling megalomania.

And truly, Mr. MacKinnon, the Vanity Fair article you object to are the least of the reasons to hate Sarah Palin, even if they make the rightwing love affair with such a repellent personality seem rather…unhinged, if you know what I mean.

Updated with a link to a Neiwert post.

What Works

by digby

For those who are worried about the health care reform that’s being hashed out in congress right now because you believe that single payer is the only answer, I would just ask if you think that France, Holland and Germany should change their systems? They all offer universal coverage, their statistics are far superior to ours and their people would probably kill you before they’d let you change them. And none of them have what we think of as strict “single payer” plans.

Here’s a brief overview of what these three countries have:

Holland

Health care in the Netherlands is financed by a dual system. Long-term treatments, especially those which involve (semi-)permanent hospitalization, and also disability costs such as wheelchairs, are covered by a a state-run mandatory insurance. This is laid down in the Algemene Wet Bijzondere Ziektekosten (AWBZ, see article in the Dutch Wikipedia), “general law on exceptional healthcare costs” which first came into effect in 1968.

For all regular (short-term) medical treatment, there is a system of obligatory health insurance, with private health insurance companies. These insurance companies are obliged to provide a package with a defined set of insured treatments [1].

This system came into effect in January 2006. For those who would otherwise have insufficient income, an extra government allowance is paid to make sure everyone can pay for their health care insurance. People are free to purchase additional packages from the insurance companies to cover additional treatments such as dental procedures and physiotherapy. These additional packages are optional.

A key feature of the Dutch system is that premiums are set at a flat rate for all purchasers regardless of health status or age. Risk variances between funds due to the different risks presented by individual policy holders are compensated through risk equalization and a common risk pool which makes it more attractive for insurers to attract risky clients. Funding for all short term health care is 50% from employers, and 45 percent from the insured person and 5% by the government. Children until age 18 are covered for free. Those on low incomes receive compensation to help them pay their insurance. Premiums paid by the insured are about 100 € per month with variation of about 5% between the various competing insurers.

Prior to 2006 (and since 1941) there were two separate systems of (short-term) health insurance: public and private. The public insurance system was executed by non-profit “health funds”, and financed by premiums taken directly out of the wages (together with income taxes). Everyone earning less than a certain threshold income could make use of the public insurance system. However, anyone with income over that threshold was obliged to have private insurance instead.[2].

Germany

Germany has a universal multi-payer system with two main types of health insurance. Germans are offered three mandatory health benefits, which are co-financed by employer and employee: health insurance, accident insurance, and long-term care insurance.

Accident insurance (Unfallversicherung) is covered by the employer and basically covers all risks for commuting to work and at the workplace.

Long term care (Pflegeversicherung) is covered half and half by employer and employee and covers cases in which a person is not able to manage his or her daily routine (provision of food, cleaning of apartment, personal hygiene, etc.). It is about 2% of a yearly salaried income or pension, with employers matching the contribution of the employee.

There are two separate systems of health insurance: public health insurance (Gesetzliche Krankenversicherung) and private insurance (Private Krankenversicherung). Both systems struggle with the increasing cost of medical treatment and the changing demography. About 87.5% of the persons with health insurance are members of the public system, while 12.5% are covered by private insurance (as of 2006).

France

The entire population must pay compulsory health insurance. The insurers are non-profit independent agencies not linked to the State. A premium is deducted from all employees’ pay automatically. An employee pays 0.75% of salary to this insurance, and the employer pays an amount to the value of 12.8% of the employee’s salary. Those earning less than 6,600 euros per year do not make health insurance payments.

To allow full reimbursement of health costs, many employees also pay a voluntary premium (up to 2.5% of salary) to a mutual insurer. In the 1960s, 30% of the population paid for supplementary health insurance. This rose to 50% in the 1970s. By 2000, 85% of the population were paying privately for additional insurance coverage.[5]

In addition to payroll contributions, a general social contribution (or social security tax) of 7.5% (known as the Contribution Sociale Generalisée or CSG) is levied on employment and investment income. Most goes to health insurance.[5]

After paying the doctor’s or dentist’s fee, a proportion is claimed back. This is around 75 to 80%, but can be as much as 85%. Under recent rules (the coordinated consultation procedure [in French: parcours de soins coordonné]) General practitioners (“médecin généraliste” or “docteur”) are more expected to act as “gate keepers” who refer patients to a specialist or a hospital.[5] The incentive is financial in that expenses are reimbursed at lower rates for patients who go direct to a specialist (except for dentists, gynecologists and psychiatrists).

As costs are borne by the patient and then reclaimed, patients have freedom of choice where to receive care.[5] Around 65% of hospital beds in France are provided by public hospitals, around 15% by private non-profit organizations, and 20% by for-profit companies.[5]

England and Canada have more straightforwardly government sponsored “single payer” systems.

All of these systems have their good points and their bad points. But every last one of them is better than what we have in the United States right now in one important respect: universal coverage. They all guarantee that everyone has access to affordable insurance and have created systems to make that happen, which are dependent upon the government to regulate and administer. All of them have changed over time and continue to evolve today. Many of them are facing the same financial pressures we are, but still to a lesser degree. (Aging populations, expensive treatments etc…) The satisfaction rate is much, much higher among citizens of those countries than here. I’ve been sick in those European countries and believe me navigating their systems was a breeze compared to what I’ve experienced in the health care maze here. I would take any of them over what we have now.

So, while I am a proponent of single payer, (which I am defining as medicare for all, even though that too is a private, public partnership) I recognize that there are other ways to get to affordable, universal health care and I’m willing to see what the congress comes up with before I decide to bail on the whole thing.

I don’t know if the plan the congress and administration produces will be any good, but I do know that the concept of having a public plan operating alongside private insurance with mandates, employer contributions and public subsidies did not come out of thin air. Various forms of that kind of system are in place elsewhere and they can work. It remains to be seen if they can pull it off but I see no reason to be reflexively hostile to it at this stage of the game.

I do agree that single payer should have been the leftward position going into this, because it would have given us much more room to maneuver. But then, we all should have backed Dennis Kucinich in the presidential race because he’s the only one who ran with single payer in his platform. That ship sailed two years ago as far as legislative strategy is concerned — and actually probably 60 years ago when Harry Truman lost the first health care battle. I haven’t exactly seen liberals organizing around single payer all these years so we could be prepared for this moment so I’m disinclined to blame the politicians alone for that.

There’s nothing wrong with advocating for the system you want and I’m not saying people shouldn’t do that. I’m not the issue czar telling people what the proper progressive position on things has to be. I’m only pointing out that it is possible to have huge improvement in our system, including universal health care, through other means than single payer (however you define it.) While we debated “socialized medicine” for 60 years, the Europeans have done a lot of experimenting and have figured out various ways to get this done. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Update: Corrente asks a very smart question about the proposed HELP plan and whether or not it will preclude a state or region enacting its own single payer plan. The groups who are whipping the congress on specifics of the public plan should read this. It’s a good idea and will tell us a little bit about the legislative intent here.

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Milbank Would Write About This, But He’s Busy Scheduling A Listening Session With The NRA

by dday

I don’t care about any of this, Nico Pitney is still such a dick:

For $25,000 to $250,000, The Washington Post has offered lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to “those powerful few”: Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and — at first — even the paper’s own reporters and editors.

The astonishing offer was detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he felt it was a conflict for the paper to charge for access to, as the flier says, its “health care reporting and editorial staff.”

With the newsroom in an uproar after POLITICO reported the solicitation, Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said in a staffwide e-mail that the newsroom would not participate in the first of the planned events — a dinner scheduled July 21 at the home of Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Katharine Weymouth.

The offer — which essentially turns a news organization into a facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters — was a new sign of the lengths to which news organizations will go to find revenue at a time when most newspapers are struggling for survival.

For all the stories about blogger ethics, I don’t have access to anyone at the highest levels of government that I can sell to corporate lobbyists.

These “salons” have already been cancelled, and look what the Publisher says was the real problem:

“Absolutely, I’m disappointed,” Weymouth, the chief executive of Washington Post Media, said in an interview. “This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren’t vetted. They didn’t represent at all what we were attempting to do. We’re not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom.”

Translation: “And I would have got away with it, too, if it weren’t for you meddling kids.”

Well, I’m glad that whole mess is over. Now the Post can go back to being influenced by lobbyists and setting conventional wisdom in Washington without all that dirty money changing hands.

Update: from digby — just curious about one other little matter: who in the allegedly anti-lobbyist White House agreed to this? And did whoever it was think it might be important to include some non-industry representatives, who can’t afford to pay 25k to eat some stale canapes with wealthy villagers at this intellectual salon where all the “people who will get it done” were gathering? But then perhaps that would be inappropriate. After all, if you have the media, the titans of industry and the White House all under one roof it would be unseemly to allow any dirty hippies in the door. They could light up a fattie right there in the drawing room and start singing “I want to fuck you like an animal” to Ceci Connolly.

And anyway, they are clearly irrelevant to the process. As are the citizens.

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Laying Back With A Stogie

by digby

Reader JW brought this story about California’s woes from last week-end’s NY Times Magazine to my attention. I think it says it all:

“Our wallet is empty,” Schwarzenegger said in a speech a few days before my visit. “Our bank is closed. Our credit is dried up.” He called for cuts that would, among other things, eliminate health insurance for close to a million poor kids, stop welfare checks for more than half a million families and close 80 percent of the state’s parks. Then he pivoted into empathy mode. “I see the faces behind those dollars,” Schwarzenegger said. “I see the children whose teachers will be laid off. I see the Alzheimer’s patients losing some of their in-home support services.” As I waited for Schwarzenegger in the lobby of the governor’s office, I studied the official portraits of former governors, including those of Ronald Reagan, Earl Warren and Jerry Brown (boldly colored and cartoonish and considered so bizarre at the time it was painted that the Legislature initially refused to hang it). Suddenly I heard Schwarzenegger’s unmistakable voice booming joyously as he led an entourage from his office.“We are going to da beh, we are going to da beh,” Schwarzenegger kept saying.

Schwarzenegger and I then repaired to a tent that he had put up in a courtyard next to his office, which allows him to smoke cigars legally at work (no smoking is allowed inside the Capitol). The tent is about 15 square feet, carpeted with artificial turf and outfitted with stylish furniture, an iPod, a video-conferencing terminal, trays of almonds, a chess table, a refrigerator and a large photo of the governor. Schwarzenegger reclined deeply in his chair, lighted an eight-inch cigar and declared himself “perfectly fine,” despite the fiscal debacle and personal heartsickness all around him. “Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight,” he said. “I’m going to lay back with a stogie.

Maybe Arnold and Maria could invite all of those elderly Alzheimer’s patients who have lost their home health aides to come over and share his jacuzzi and his optimism. Maybe they can feel “perfectly fine” too.

JW points out that the article is a typical snotty hit piece on the California fruits and nuts, but that it does state one particularly egregious false equivalence:

Complicating matters further, the major parties in California are both effectively controlled by their most partisan elements, a bypro duct of gerrymandered voting districts that force lawmakers to appeal to their ideological bases. After many earlier failed efforts, a ballot initiative championed by Schwarzenegger finally passed last year that will redraw the districts. But that won’t take effect until after the 2010 census, so for now the two parties are largely controlled by what Bruce Cain at Berkeley calls “the Taliban.” The result? Gridlock in Sacramento, a standoff between the parties of “no more taxes” (Republicans) and “no more cuts” (Democrats).

There is no doubt that Democrats are dysfunctional. But they are not equivalent to the California Republicans who are completely insane. The “cuts” which don’t intrude on Arnold’s beautiful mind when he’s in the jacuzzi puffing on his Cuban, are going to affect real humans in ways that are devastating. Refusing to raise taxes on millionaires because they might get mad and move their companies to Samoa is not even in the same category.

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Novel Romance

by digby

You learn something new every day. According to certain theologians, evangelical teaching says that love isn’t a feeling:

The Christian counselors Sanford sought out while trying to decide whether to stay with his wife or jump on a plane to South America advised him what else love is and isn’t. “Their point is that love is not a feeling,” Sanford told The Associated Press in a tearful two-day confessional. “It’s a choice. It’s an action.” That sentiment might seem cold to many Americans, but it is perfectly consistent with the born-again, evangelical Christian world that Sanford inhabits, says sociologist John Bartowski. “What evangelicals are doing is sort of carving out a subcultural view of love which is not so highly romanticized as we see in movies, that is at odds with the dominant view of love,” says Bartowski, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and author of the book, “Remaking the Godly Marriage: Gender Negotiation in Evangelical Families.” That world view, he says, “divorces” love from emotion, because “feelings are fleeting and not to be trusted.” “Love is something that is cultivated in the trenches of living a day-to-day relationship,” says Bartowski. “That is not a Hallmark moment.”

I guess the only euphoria allowed is the ecstasy you feel for Jesus.

Not that I feel sorry for Mark Sanford. He’s clearly in the throes of a whopper of a mid-life crisis and it’s very difficult to watch someone you know go through one, much less on the national stage. But I do think I can understand how someone like him gets to this point. Repression will do that to you.

I have no idea what’s gone on in that marriage and even if I did, I’m sure I couldn’t fully understand it. Human relationships are always mysterious to some degree, even to the people involved in them. But some marriages aren’t worth saving and from a distance this one sure looks like one of them to me. And it looks as though Sanford is doing everything his rebellious, guilt ridden subconscious is telling him to do to make it impossible to repair. After reading that article ( which I’m sure is simplistic and theologically shallow and yadda, yadda,yadda) I have to say that a little part of me would be gratified if Sanford ends up leaving the whole thing behind and becomes a bartender in Belize or something.

The pleasure nazis are always telling people that nothing but religion and war are allowed to make you feel good. And I just don’t think that human beings are wired to love Jesus and get off on violence alone. I know if it were me, something very fundamental inside me would strike out against all these people telling me that the idea of love and emotional fulfillment in marriage is irrelevant.

The funny thing is that I suppose my position puts me sort of in league with Ross Douthat, the Conservative Catholic Boy Wonder of the NY Times who was just the other day extolling the virtues of the grand passion. But he was saying, naturally, that it’s liberal elites who are a bunch of dried up prigs who have no notion of romance and conservative Real Americans who know how to feel. And perhaps that’s right if what you define as great romance is an 8 1/2 year ilicit affair for which you feel so much giddy excitement and guilt that you end up staging a highly public crash and burn and then submitting yourself to the flaggelation of your tribe. That’s not romance in my book, that’s gothic soap opera. But I guess if you’re Mark Sanford, you take what you can get.

On the other hand, any man over 40 who publicly says stuff like this probably doesn’t deserve any sympathy, because of the turgid dialog alone:

“A whole lot more than a simple affair,” he said. “It’s a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”

That makes my teeth hurt.

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Blanche!

by digby

As you all know, Blue America has been collecting money to run some ads in Arkansas to ask Blanche Lincoln to support a Public Plan. We shot three spots but couldn’t decide which one to go with, so we’ve decided to ask you to make the decision for us, by coughing up yet another buck or two for the ad of your choice.

All you have to do is go to the Act Blue Campaign For Health Care Choice Page and follow the instructions.

Here are the ads:

#1 “I Thought We Had Insurance”

#2 “Bonuses”

#3 “Bailout”

Vote here! Vote often!

John Amato has a thorough post about the campaign and the contest, here.

Previous posts about the campaign:

Campaign For Health Care Choice
Monopoly Money
A Votre Sante
Private Dancers
Code Blue
Learn, Damn You, Learn!
Washington To Constituents:STFU

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On Palin

by digby

I haven’t the time right now to weigh in in detail on the Todd Purdham article about Sarah Palin in Vanity Fair, although it is a fascinating, if frustrating, piece. But I will say that I think Ed Kilgore gets to the real question that wasn’t asked and he answers it correctly:

Purdham never gets around to examining in any detail why the Conservative Base loves her so. That’s a strange omission, particularly since the whole piece begins with Palin’s speech earlier this year at an Indiana Right-to-Life event–significantly, her first public appearance outside Alaska in 2009.

In all the hype and buzz about Palin when she first joined the ticket, and all the silly talk about her potential appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters, the ecstatic reaction to her choice on the Cultural Right didn’t get much attention. She wasn’t an “unknown” or a “fresh face” to those folks. They knew her not only as a truly hard-line anti-abortionist, but as a politician who had uniquely “walked the walk” by carrying a pregnancy to term despite knowing the child would have a severe disability. And all the personality traits she later exhibited–the folksiness, the abrasive partisanship, the hostility towards the “media” and “elites,” the resentment of the establishment Republicans who tried to “manage” her, and the constant complaints of persecution–almost perfectly embodied the world-view, and the hopes and fears, of the grassroots Cultural Right. (This was particularly and understandably true of women, who have always played an outsized role in grassroots conservative activism.) Sarah Palin was the projection of these activists onto the national political scene, and exhibited the defiant pride and ill-disguised vulnerability that they would have felt in the same place.

This base of support for Palin–maybe not that large, but very passionate, and very powerful in places like the Iowa Republican Caucuses–isn’t going to abandon her just because the Serious People in the GOP laugh her off in favor of blow-dried flip-flopping pols like Mitt Romney or blandly “electable” figures like Tim Pawlenty. To her supporters, mockery is like nectar. And that’s why Sarah Palin isn’t going to go away as a national political figure unless it is by her own choice, or that of the people of her own state.

She’s got that Nixon Orthogonian thing going on. And it’s more potent than ever in this environment of epic elite failure. I wouldn’t assume that she, of all the Republican freakshow, won’t be the one who survives. It’s highly unlikely that she can transcend that passionate base and actually become president, thank goodness, but she could certainly be the one the party chooses. She is one of them through and through.

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