Month: January 2011

Don’t Worry, We’ll Die Early

by digby

For those who continue to believe that people are unexpectedly living longer than the creators of social security ever imagined or that there will never be enough workers to support all those hundred and twenty year old retirees this article explains why raising the retirement age is actually an important benefit cut for working people.

But this is something I hadn’t considered.

In the next 25 years, the number of Americans living with diabetes will nearly double, increasing from 23.7 million in 2009 to 44.1 million in 2034. [And that’s assuming that obesity rates stay the same, instead of continuing to increase, for those 25 years.)

What does this dire prediction have to do with Social Security? Well, much of the concern about the long-term viability of the Social Security program has been built on the claim that the life expectancy of American workers is rising.

That concern has been debunked quite thoroughly in a number of places. but here’s another reason why it’s a “straw man” in the argument.

In an analysis of the Framingham Heart Study, diabetic men and women age 50 and older died on average 7.5 and 8.2 years earlier, respectively, than those who did not have diabetes.

If the incidence of diabetes is increasing at such a rapid rate, surely that will have an effect on the average lifespan of people who collect Social Security benefits. According to the Center for Disease Control, “Almost 25 percent of the population 60 years and older had diabetes in 2007.”

So relax everyone. The wingnuts are making sure that there will be no education and leadership on these preventive health issues — just look at how they react to Michelle Obama growing a garden. And if they have their way, the entire medical system will collapse. So a huge number of us will die much earlier than we need to. Problem solved. Huzzah!

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“Philanthrocapitalism” and the Lucky Duckies

by digby

If you read nothing else today, be sure to read Cynthia Freeland’s piece in the Atlantic about the new super-rich. She discusses what may be the most important aspect of the plutonomy — the fact that it’s unmoored from national allegiance. This is an important insight and gets to what I think is really the big transformation of our time: the unraveling of the nation state. You see it in these international institutions like the IMF and in huge multi-national corporations, of course. But I hadn’t realized until I read this just how much the super-rich had adopted a transnational identity.

I’m not entirely sure that it’s a bad thing in the long run — there’s nothing that says the nation state is the only possible human organizing principle. It’s actually fairly new in historical terms. Something different could feasibly end up being better. But at the moment the only people who are currently benefiting from this new arrangement are the very wealthy and powerful. And there is a very good chance that this will not go well for regular folks in the long run either.

In the meantime, here’s what we are dealing with:

If you are looking for the date when America’s plutocracy had its coming-out party, you could do worse than choose June 21, 2007. On that day, the private-equity behemoth Blackstone priced the largest initial public offering in the United States since 2002, raising $4 billion and creating a publicly held company worth $31 billion at the time. Stephen Schwarzman, one of the firm’s two co-founders, came away with a personal stake worth almost $8 billion, along with $677 million in cash; the other, Peter Peterson, cashed a check for $1.88 billion and retired. In the sort of coincidence that delights historians, conspiracy theorists, and book publishers, June 21 also happened to be the day Peterson threw a party—at Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, of course—to launch The Manny, the debut novel of his daughter, Holly, who lightly satirizes the lives and loves of financiers and their wives on the Upper East Side. The best seller fits neatly into the genre of modern “mommy lit”—USA Today advised readers to take it to the beach—but the author told me that she was inspired to write it in part by her belief that “people have no clue about how much money there is in this town.” Holly Peterson and I spoke several times about how the super-affluence of recent years has changed the meaning of wealth. “There’s so much money on the Upper East Side right now,” she said. “If you look at the original movie Wall Street, it was a phenomenon where there were men in their 30s and 40s making $2 and $3 million a year, and that was disgusting. But then you had the Internet age, and then globalization, and you had people in their 30s, through hedge funds and Goldman Sachs partner jobs, who were making $20, $30, $40 million a year. And there were a lot of them doing it. I think people making $5 million to $10 million definitely don’t think they are making enough money.” As an example, she described a conversation with a couple at a Manhattan dinner party: “They started saying, ‘If you’re going to buy all this stuff, life starts getting really expensive. If you’re going to do the NetJet thing’”—this is a service offering “fractional aircraft ownership” for those who do not wish to buy outright—“‘and if you’re going to have four houses, and you’re going to run the four houses, it’s like you start spending some money.’” The clincher, Peterson says, came from the wife: “She turns to me and she goes, ‘You know, the thing about 20’”—by this, she meant $20 million a year—“‘is 20 is only 10 after taxes.’ And everyone at the table is nodding.”

That’s nice. One wonders whether Holly will be “satirizing” the lives of the millions of elderly Americans her father seeks to impoverish with his crusade to destroy social security. A crusade which Freeland inexplicably seems to think is a form of “philanthropy”!

Inspired and advised by the liberal Soros, Peter Peterson—himself a Republican and former member of Nixon’s Cabinet—has spent $1 billion of his Blackstone windfall on a foundation dedicated to bringing down America’s deficit and entitlement spending. Bill Gates, likewise, devotes most of his energy and intellect today to his foundation’s work on causes ranging from supporting charter schools to combating disease in Africa. ..

Just … wow. Comparing what peterson is doing to what Soros and Gates are doing is just absurd.

That is a small mistake in a piece that’s worth reading for the rich (no pun intended) details about this emerging plutocracy and their disdain for the parasites. She gives these people far more credit than they deserve — after all, they may have helped build the modern economy, but they were so reckless they nearly destroyed it as well, so much so that the parasites had to step in and bail them out. But she knows them well and gives us a fascinating portrait of the new western aristocracy.

An aristocracy that’s producing the same thing they always produce:

Peter Cary “PC” Peterson, 18 years old and a senior at Dwight, is sitting at Philippe on the Upper East Side, talking about the way the world works, based on his extensive experience. “Everything in New York City is about connections,” he explains, his eyes glinting and head lolling back. “It’s who you know and how much money you have. It’s really sad. And I am not saying I’m like that. But that’s what New York is: money and power.”

That’s Pete Peterson’s grandson PC — Holly Peterson’s nephew — the one for whom old Pete the “philanthrocapitalist” is trying to save the country by destroying the safety net.

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Your New Speaker

by digby

“The people voted to end business as usual.” John Boehner January 5, 2011

I’m sure he’s changed completely.

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All Hail The Republican Overlords

by digby

Amato’s got a nice post up about Republican coronation day. I remember they had extensive coverage of Pelosi’s election, but I’m fairly sure it was because it was an historic milestone, not because it meant that the entire world had shifted on its axis.

As I’ve been watching cable TV during the holidays and now into the first week of January, I learned something that I kind of missed this past November. It appears that the Republicans have taken over the White House and the Senate along with the House. Did you know that? The media, at least, are trumpeting January 5th as being just as big as Obama’s Inauguration day because that’s the day Republicans will be sworn in to take control of the House.

Meanwhile, we all knew that Michelle Bachman had conservative Supreme Court justice Scalia booked to give lessons on the constitution to incoming teabaggers, but this really strikes me as going too far:

ABC’s Ariane de Vogue reports: Behind closed doors Chief Justice John Roberts swore in members of speaker designate John A. Boehner’s staff this morning during a private ceremony. The Constitution requires all federal employees to take an oath to support the Constitution, but it’s not every day the oath is administered by the Chief Justice of the United States. Boehner invited Roberts to appear, and the speaker designee’s spokesman believes it could be the first time staff was sworn in by a Chief Justice.

I thought Amato wsa being hyperbolic when he compared this to the president’s inauguration. Apparently not.

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Hissy Victory

by digby

This is just sad. And a precursor of what’s to come:

The Obama administration, reversing course, will revise a Medicare regulation to delete references to end-of-life planning as part of the annual physical examinations covered under the new health care law, administration officials said Tuesday.

The move is an abrupt shift, coming just days after the new policy took effect on Jan. 1.

Many doctors and providers of hospice care had praised the regulation, which listed “advance care planning” as one of the services that could be offered in the “annual wellness visit” for Medicare beneficiaries.

While administration officials cited procedural reasons for changing the rule, it was clear that political concerns were also a factor. The renewed debate over advance care planning threatened to become a distraction to administration officials who were gearing up to defend the health law against attack by the new Republican majority in the House.

Although the health care bill signed into law in March did not mention end-of-life planning, the topic was included in a huge Medicare regulation setting payment rates for thousands of physician services. The final regulation was published in the Federal Register in late November. The proposed rule, published for public comment in July, did not include advance care planning.

An administration official, authorized by the White House to explain the mix-up, said Tuesday, “We realize that this should have been included in the proposed rule, so more people could have commented on it specifically.”

“We will amend the regulation to take out voluntary advance care planning,” the official said. “This should not affect beneficiaries’ ability to have these voluntary conversations with their doctors.

The Republicans have already stated that they are going to try to derail the implementation, which is smart from their perspective. The longer it takes and the more complicated it is, the more they can erode public support. It will be interesting to see how well this Rube Goldberg plan holds together when pieces of it are whittled away.

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The Mandate

by digby

FYI:

Why do I get the sick feeling that this will be portrayed as 80% of Americans across all income agree that defense spending should not be cut?

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Losing Well

by digby

Mike Konczal at Rortybomb makes an excellent observation in his post responding to Jonathan Bernsteins’ query to liberals about what disappointed/surprised them the most about the Obama administration (which I answered here.)

Konczal writes:

I expected Obama to be a better loser, specifically to be better at losing. There were a lot of items on the table, a lot of them weren’t going to happen, but it was important for the new future of liberalism that the Obama team lost them well. And that hasn’t happened. By losing well, I mean losing in a way that builds a coalition, demonstrates to your allies that you are serious, takes a pound of flesh from your opponents and leaves them with the blame, and convinces those on the fence that it is an important issue for which you have the answers. Lose for the long run; lose in a way that leaves liberal institutions and infrastructure stronger, able to be deployed again at a later date. Let’s take an example of a lose: immigration. The assimilation of Hispanics into a central part of the United States is a long-term project, one that will go on beyond this Congress and any bill it may have passed. Securing Hispanic votes is central to any theory of an emerging Democratic majority. And it was going to be possible that any bill wouldn’t pass, given how difficult immigration bills were to move in the Bush years.

He goes on to demonstrate just how badly the administration fumbled their loss on immigration.

This cannot be emphasized too much. Just as wins must be political as well as policy successes in order to lay the groundwork for the next step losses should be in service of emphasizing values and clearly laying blame for the loss so the party can regroup.(I wrote a lot about this in other contexts as well.)

You can’t win them all, but you can make damned sure that when you lose your principles are out front and everybody knows where you stand. That is very helpful down the road when you try to make a case for your policies. Trying to “make the best of it” or paper over the differences or (worst of all) adopting the other side’s position as your own and saying the policy is actually a good one, will come back to bite you hard.

The Republicans are very good at this whether they are in a minority or a majority and it serves them especially well when they are regrouping after a loss. They always, always lose in a way that sets them up for a win down the road. In this way they are much more sophisticated about politics than the Democrats are and it’s one way their movement seems to be able to constantly evolve and even reinvent itself.

None of this is Obama’s strong suit. He’s a conciliator and a mediator, not a partisan leader. And I suppose in the aftermath of the big win in 2008 it was not unreasonable to think that those were valuable skills going forward. But the GOP was not the spent force people thought they were and they managed a big comeback on the heels of their loss. The Dems could stand to learn a thing or two from them.

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They Got Tweety

by digby

On Hardball this afternoon Matthews was talking about “cut-go” with Todd Harris and Steve McMahon, the Tweedledum and Tweedledummer of the Village and he ranted and raved about how both parties promise spending cuts to bring down the deficit but refuse to give any big specific items that would really make a difference. The Republican Harris went on about how “it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be painful and like I said, I hope entitlements are on the table.” (Now keep in mind, they were talking about “cut-go” in the context of raising the debt ceiling, which means Harris is advocating for immediate cuts to “entitlements”.)

After Harris babbled for a while about “entitlements” destroying the country, Matthews again said how frustrated he was that Republicans always refuse to say what they will cut — “give me a couple hundred billion at least, give me somethin’ big, they give me nothing. Democrats too, by the way.”

McMahon piped up at that and said:

I’ll give it to you right now. Democrats are going to come with a bill to take away the tax cuts for people making 250 thousand dollars a year. That’s 700 billion dollars that we borrowed …

Matthews: I hate to break it to you, but that’s not a spending cut it’s a tax increase.

McMahon: no it’s not a spending cut, but it results in revenue that will…

Harris: It’s a tax increase!

Matthews: Just remember the difference, it’s a tax increase. You ask Americans whether they want that tax increase and a majority will tell you they don’t want that tax increase.

The debate has officially shifted from “deficit reduction” to “cutting spending to reduce the deficit.” This has to be one of the fastest internalization of GOP propaganda in history and that’s saying something. Matthews may be an outlier, but from what I saw today among the gasbags, they are all coming on board very quickly. If I had to guess, it was the lame duck deal that finally took taxes off the table for the Villagers. It’s dead as far as they are concerned, so “cut-go” is the only way to reduce the deficit.

Naturally, they all agree that pain and sacrifice are necessary. They will not personally feel it,of course, but they will feel a slight bit of guilt and shame when they have to step over sick people and little children in the gutter, so it will be almost as bad.

I shouldn’t be flippant about this. We are seeing a full embrace of “austerity” by the ruling elite happen before our eyes. It’s not necessarily inevitable that these things will pass — gridlock is probably our best case scenario at this point — but something significant has shifted.

Update: I understand that the Democrats are going to combat all this by accusing the Republicans of being hypocrites and playing games with … what? Oh sorry, I fell asleep before I finished typing that sentence.

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What Comes After The Symbolic Vote

by digby

The Republicans are going to put on quite a show for the TeaParty to demonstrate that they mean business in repealing “Obamacare” even though there’s no way Obama will ever sign it. In case you were wondering what Plan B is:

The stage is set for a battle early this year over funding of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul as Republicans try to make good on a campaign promise to roll back one of the administration’s main policy victories.

Republicans in the House of Representatives will likely approve scrapping healthcare reform at a vote on January 12 but a repeal will probably not succeed since Democrats continue to control the Senate and can block the move.

Even so, Republicans will yield considerable sway over the government purse strings once they take control of the House on Wednesday and will try to use that power to deny the administration’s requests on financing to implement the law.

“They are not going to get what they want on funding for healthcare. The House is not going to give it to them,” said a senior Republican Senate aide.

“All of this slows it down, by slowing it down it gives us a real opportunity, when we take over the Senate and or the White House in 2012, to take this law apart piece by piece,” the aide said.

This was anticipated. And the Democrats do have a plan to defend it.

Greg Sargent reports:

Accuse Republicans of engaging in frivolous political antics to please the base that don’t do a thing to create jobs and get the economy moving again. The question is whether Dems will couple this with an effective and proactive case for all the popular provisions in the Affordable Care Act itself. Joan McCarter urges Dems to ditch civility and bipartisanship and use procedural maneuvers to try to force actual votes on the Act’s provisions. As Eugene Robinson aptly puts it today, Dems should respond to the repeal push by saying: “Make my day.” * Dems sharpen attack on GOP over repeal? Look for Dems today to try and turn the tables on Republicans by pointing out that they are rushing through the repeal bill despite their months of attacks on Dems for allegedly rushing the original legislation. DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse emails:

Barely a week after they take the oath of office, Republicans are going to ram through a bill over the objections of millions of Americans to deny people access to affordable health care — a bill impacting one sixth of the American economy — without a hearing, a committee markup or testimony from a single witness. This from a party that complained bitterly that Democrats rushed through health care reform after a year of debate and dozens of Congressional hearings.

Somehow I don’t think Republicans will be as moved by this criticism as Dems were when Republicans accused them of “ramming through” health reform. In retrospect, you think maybe it was a mistake for Dems to slow the legislation in response to those original GOP attacks? * Relatedly, Igor Volsky tallies up the months and months of hearings and amendments Dems went through in response to GOP criticism. * Dems to GOP: Don’t you care about the deficit? Also, Dems will argue today that the repeal push proves the GOP’s lack of seriousness about the deficit. “Repealing the Affordable Care Act will explode the deficit by one trillion dollars over the next twenty years,” Woodhouse continues, adding that this “shows just how hollow their promises of fiscal discipline really are.” * How many Dems will vote for repeal? As Carrie Budoff-Brown notes, even if the GOP repeal bill is a non-starter, “Republicans could embarrass the White House if they persuade a number of Democrats to vote with them and, over the long term, plan to try to chip away at pieces of the law.”

It’s not quite as sharp one might hope but at least they’re thinking about it. I think “the Republicans want to take away your health care” (h/t to Peter Daou) would be a pithy meme, but they seem to be hooked on deficit reduction as the new Democratic mantra.

I suspect that the health care reform will be the Republicans’ most valuable hostage in the next two years. Indeed, it will be the one thing that both the administration and the Senate will fight to the death to preserve — it is Obama’s most important legacy and the Democrats spilled a lot of blood to get it through. It remains to be seen what the Republicans will extract from them in the negotiations.

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Dangerous Meme Alert

by digby

Listening to tea party congressmen on MSNBC right now defending cut-go and this keeps coming up whenever Mitchell asks why they refuse to pay for tax cuts if they are so concerned about the deficit. I discussed it before and it’s really catching on now:

“We don’t think tax cuts are something that we have to be “pay for” because it’s the people’s money to begin with, not the government’s.” Greg Walden (R) Lunatic

Who does the government belong to, I wonder? And who’s supposed to pay for it?

This is a very pernicious meme the Democrats need to refute quickly and decisively because these Republicans are squawking it in unison like a bunch of trained parrots. So far,the only reaction I’ve seen from them or the gasbags asking is slack-jawed stupefaction. I don’t think that’s sufficient.

Mitchell points out that Tea Partiers make up a third of the new House majority.

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