Month: November 2009

QOTD

by digby

Kevin Drum:

I remain pessimistic on the ability of Congress to rein in the financial community in any serious way. They just don’t have the power.

At least in anything other than a purely theoretical sense.

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Projection Project

by digby

Rush shared his philosophy of life with his listeners today in words that were simple and true:

If you live in the universe of lies, the last thing that you are governed by is the truth. The last thing you are governed by is reality. The only thing that matters to you is the advancement of your political agenda. And you tell yourself in the universe of lies that your agenda is so important the world will not survive without it and therefore you can lie, cheat, steal, destroy whoever you have to to get your agenda done because your opponents are evil, and in fighting evil, anything goes. There are no rules when you’re in a fight with the devil.

He pretended that this was a description of liberalism, but that’s silly of course. His conviction and passion on the subject shine through with every word. He sounds exactly like the true believer he is.

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Which Public Option?

by digby

Here’s an interesting analysis of where the public stands on the public option per the recent Quinnipiac poll from November 9-16. John Sides looked drilled down into the data to see how people felt about the various permutations that are being floated by the Senate:

The graph shows that supporters of the public option are relatively evenly divided between supporting a pure public option and supporting a public option with either a trigger or opt-out provision. Opponents of the public option are evenly divided about the opt-out, but tend to oppose the trigger.

Thus, about one-third of the sample supports the “pure” public option. A slightly smaller group, roughly 30%, supports a “qualified” public option that features either an opt-out provision or a trigger. About 20% of the public oppose the option, but would support it with an opt-out provision. Thirteen percent oppose it but would support it with a trigger. Finally, there is a “diehard” group of public option opponents, who are about 20-25% of the population.

There is grist for both supporters and opponents of the public option in these findings. Supporters could take heart that about 75-80% of the sample supports some sort of public option — at least given how these various proposals are described by Quinnipiac. Opponents could take heart that only about a third of respondents supports the pure public option.

It’s almost impossible to see why the Senate wouldn’t want to at least pass the public option with the opt-out with those numbers. Maybe they truly are afraid of teabag hysteria, but it seems way overblown to me. The 25% of hard core public option haters are hard core health reform haters. it’s pointless to worry about them.

Of course, these results probably don’t reflect the views of insurance company CEOs which is a far more important constituency than mere voters. If you weigh the numbers the way the Four Corporatists of the Apocalypse do, it’s 95% against any kind of public option.

Sides notes that the hypothetical “median voter” and the hypothetical “median Senator” both support the public option. It seems worth noting in that case, that not one Republican Senator can be described as “median.” I think that says something don’t you?

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Usury For Dummies

by digby

Frontline tonight should be good:

As credit card companies face rising public anger, new regulation from Washington and a potential perfect storm of economic bad news, FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman examines the future of the massive consumer loan industry and its impact on a fragile national economy. In a joint project with The New York Times, Bergman and the Times talk to industry insiders, lobbyists, politicians and consumer advocates as they square off over new regulation and the possible creation of a consumer finance protection agency. How are the credit, debit and pre-paid card industries repositioning themselves to maintain high profits under the new rules? The stakes couldn’t be higher as many fear the consumer loan industry could be at the center of the next crisis.

I continue to believe this is a huge problem and a huge opportunity for Democrats to place themselves as the voice of populist reform. While the teabaggers screech hysterically about FEMA Camps and “hundred year plans,” the progressives could actually be doing something tangible and important for actual humans.

“I think this new Pew report says it all.” –Lowell Bergman, correspondent for the FRONTLINE/New York Times joint report The Card Game, airing November 24th.

One hundred percent of credit cards offered online by the leading bank card issuers continue to include practices that will be outlawed once legislation passed in May takes effect next year, according to a new report by the Pew Health Group’s Safe Credit Cards Project. The report also found that advertised credit card interest rates rose an average of 20 percent in the first two quarters of 2009, even as banks’ cost of lending declined. With the Federal Reserve currently developing rules to ensure penalty charges are “reasonable and proportional” as required under the Credit CARD Act, the report also includes policy recommendations for regulators.

Key findings of the report show that:

— 99.7 percent of bank cards allowed issuers to increase interest rates on outstanding balances — a jump from 93 percent in December;

— 95 percent of bank cards permitted issuers to apply payments in a way the Federal Reserve found likely to cause substantial financial injury to consumers; and

— 90 percent of bank cards had penalty rate hikes with the vast majority imposed by “hair triggers” of one or two late payments in a year

It’s a scandal that people are talking about everywhere but on television and in the papers.

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Truth And Consequences

by digby

This must-read report in the New England Journal Of Medicine lays out the facts about the cost to society in lost lives, productivity and money for failing to assure that everyone is covered by health insurance. And the costs of treating them late in preventable emergency situations is far, far higher than it would otherwise be. This should be obvious, but it’s not.

The conservatives frame this problem in contradictory terms, arguing both that people ARE covered and that it will cost us too much to cover them. They further insist that people shouldn’t be allowed to free ride on the system, that there should be no mandate to buy insurance and that any government administered health system is an infringement of their freedom. But these various ideas are just a smokescreen.

It’s quite obvious that what they truly believe is that people who don’t have insurance should not be allowed to get health care and that if they get sick they should be allowed to die unless they can find some charity or raise the money. There’s no other way to reconcile their beliefs.

If conservatives believe this, they should say so instead of framing the issues in terms of whether or not we’re going to “young and dynamic” vs “middle aged and secure” as David Brooks deceptively does in his column this morning. If you think that people who don’t have health insurance (or the means to pay cash) should be barred from getting medical treatment, then you should be willing to make that argument up front. I would guess that there are more than few people in this country who believe just that. People who have insurance.

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Abort, abort

by digby

Uh Oh. They’re on to our cunning plan.

Damn. How long will it take to activate our next sleeper?

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Effective Subversion

by digby

James Fallows at the Atlantic wrote a series on the president’s trip to Asia that is well worth reading, especially if you would like a little more insight than “OMG! He Bowed, he Bowed!”

I don’t know if the following is correct, but I’d really like to believe it is:

Here is how it looked to a foreigner who has just written me — a person who has lived in China for two decades, still does business there, and speaks Mandarin:

“I’ve been monitoring the China internet in the wake of the town hall and, based on my observations of these things over the years I’m very much leaning toward the White House insider’s view — that the reach was vast and deep, in the many millions or tens of millions, though not necessarily entirely positive. But the comment from President Obama that I think will have the most impact inside the firewall was not the one about US principles that you quoted in your followups. It was this one:

‘Now, I should tell you, I should be honest, as President of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time. I think people naturally are — when they’re in positions of power sometimes thinks, oh, how could that person say that about me, or that’s irresponsible, or — but the truth is that because in the United States information is free, and I have a lot of critics in the United States who can say all kinds of things about me, I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear. It forces me to examine what I’m doing on a day-to-day basis to see, am I really doing the very best that I could be doing for the people of the United States.’

Wow! As a resident of China for two decades and a Mandarin-speaking China-watcher for three decades, I can say without any doubt that those words will resonate far more deeply — and potentially more “subversively” or “destabilizingly” — than any overt thumb-in-the-eye hectoring that any foreigner or foreign leader might muster, in public or private. Those words are ***precisely*** the kind that Zhongnanhai [Chinese term equivalent to “the Kremlin”] fears the most, and rightly so.”

It’s very hard to know what to make of trips like this, but if Obama could make that point in a way that resonates then good for him.

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Job One

by digby

John Maynard Keynes can stop rolling over in his grave for a couple of minutes:

On a conference call today with economists who blog and folks who blog on the economy, Speaker Pelosi sought to bridge the gap between progressive proponents of public investment to create jobs, and right-leaning Democrats touting austerity for immediate deficit reduction, by saying: “We will never have deficit reduction without job creation.”

The Speaker statement is grounded on the notion that without a growing economy that creates jobs and expands the nation’s tax base, the deficit cannot be tamed over the long-term.

Yes indeed.

Now if someone could take the time to explain that deficits aren’t causing unemployment and recession, that would be very helpful. Unfortunately, the owners of America have spent a lot of money persuading people that their problems are all caused by government spending and taxing rich people and in order to get the economy moving again the government needs to pull in its belt and cut taxes. It’s going to take a lot to deprogram them.

Update: More on the conference call.

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Hire The Hitman

by digby

Evidently Michael Steele has been miffed that he didn’t get enough credit for the GOPs sweeping takeover of American politics in the November elections (well, except for the congressional seats which all went to Democrats)so he forced out the RNC spokesman for some reason. But the spokesman has been replaced by a heavyweight:

The Republican National Committee has hired Alex Castellanos, a long-time political strategist and GOP consultant, as an adviser.

Castellanos has been described (according to his National Media biography) as the “father of the attack ad.” He’s best known for a racially-charged ad he made in 1990 for racist former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.). The ad, called “Hands,” featured a pair of white hands crumbling a job-rejection while the narrator said, “You needed that job. You were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority, because of a racial quota. Is that really fair?” More recently, Castellanos has taken the lead in crafting an anti-health care reform message for congressional Republicans.

But that doesn’t really do him justice. He’s had so more “successes.” I’m sure you’ll recall this one:

During the heated 2000 U.S. presidential campaign season, Castellanos produced an ad for the Republican National Committee attempting to discredit the prescription drug plan policy offered by U.S. Democratic Party presidential nominee and then-Vice President Al Gore.[4] Alongside images of Gore, the ad showed the word “RATS” for a split second, before the complete word “bureaucrats” appeared on-screen.

And after he became a talking head, he showed his inherent class and dignity with this:

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin noted on the May 20 edition of CNN’s The Situation Room that “[t]here was a column in The New York Times not too long ago where it talked about some of the humor in the campaign, and the punch line was a line that was — that Hillary Clinton was a ‘white bitch.’ ” Moments later … CNN political contributor Alex Castellanos interrupted, asserting, “And some women, by the way, are named that and it’s accurate

He’s the right guy to advise the new GOP on message. He is in perfect sync with the reactionary, bigoted, macho neanderthals that make up the rump Republicans. Excellent choice.

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Wow

by digby

hoookay.

Neiwert has more.