Month: December 2012

Your little known factoid of the day

by digby

Health care reform will extend health insurance to 14 million more people in 2014 and as many as 30 million people by 2022, according to the report. The report predicts 30 million people will remain uninsured in 2022, which is three million more than analysts projected before the Supreme Court ruling. By 2022, Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program will have 11 million more enrollees and 25 million people will have coverage through the exchanges, the budget office says.

That will certainly be an improvement over the 50 million uninsured today, but I guess I’m a little bit stunned that these numbers will be so high even ten years from now. And I’m even more surprised that this is considered such a great success that people are already proposing to start dismantling Medicare because of it.

Apropos of nothing, a commenter on another blog (sorry, can’t remember which) mentioned this and I thought it was telling:

Ailing Lindsay Is Given Posts To Get City Health Insurance
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: May 03, 1996

Former Mayor John V. Lindsay, in declining health, has been appointed by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to two city posts to make him eligible for municipal health insurance coverage and eventually, perhaps, to qualify him for a pension.

In recent years, strokes and Parkinson’s disease have been described as eroding Mr. Lindsay’s once-athletic physique and taking a severe toll on his finances.

Mr. Lindsay, now 74, was Mayor from 1966 to 1973, an eight-year span that left him seven years short of qualifying for a city pension under the rules then in effect, former Mayor Edward I. Koch said.

Yes, illness takes a severe toll on your finances. After all, you can’t work.

.

“Tell me again how that person won’t miss her Medicare”

by digby

This piece by Aaron Carroll explains in full detail why raising the Medicare age is daft (and cruel):

What you’re seeing is life expectancy at age 65 broken out in to the top half of earners and the bottom half of earners, from 1977 to 2007. I got these data from a study that appeared in Social Security Bulletin in 2007. The paper was entitled, “Trends in Mortality Differentials and Life Expectancy for Male Social Security-Covered Workers, by Socioeconomic Status.” We know that average life expectancy went up less than 5 years overall in this period. But what’s somewhat stunning is how much of a disparity there is in these gains. The top half of earners gained more than 5 years of life at age 65. The bottom half of earners, though, gained less than a year.

If you raise the age of eligibility by two years, then you are taking away more years of Medicare than half the country gained in longer life. Moreover, we’ve already taken away these people’s Social Security. The Greenspan Commission in the early 1980s made it so that the retirement age is already 66. It’s scheduled to rise to 67. So those at the bottom half of the socioeconomic ladder have already lost more years of Social Security than they’ve gained in years of life life expectancy at 65.

Sure, in a perfect world poor young seniors could get Medicaid if we take away their Medicare. That is, of course, if their state accepts the Medicaid expansion. Many haven’t. Less poor young seniors can go to the exchanges, I suppose. But if you’re a 65 year old widow and you make $46,100 a year in a high cost area, then your premium will be over $12,000 for your insurance. And you could owe another $6250 in out-of-pocket costs if you get sick. Tell me again how that person won’t miss her Medicare.

(He also explains is simple language why this whole ” raised life expectancy” trope is nonsense to begin with. It pertains to life expectancy at birth not at the age of retirement. The designers of social security and medicare understood this even if nobody else seems to.)

So, we know that raising the Medicare age is a bad idea. How about the other very “clever” idea floating around these discussions: changing the accounting formula to cut benefits across all federal programs?

Here’s the answer from Social Security Works:

Some politicians in Washington are preparing to cut your Social Security COLA for good–even after two years without getting a COLA. This COLA cut has an obscure name: chained-CPI. But it would do real damage by changing the formula used to calculate the COLA. Here’s what you need to know about it:

It’s a benefit cut. It’s not some minor technical change to the COLA. It’s a real cut to the benefits you have earned every year into the future.

It cuts benefits more with every passing year. After 10 years, your benefits would be cut by about $500 a year for the average retiree. After 20 years, your benefits would be cut by about $1,000 a year.

It hits today’s Social Security beneficiaries. Politicians like to say that their cuts to Social Security will not affect those getting benefits today. Wrong! Switching to the chained-CPI would hit all current beneficiaries.

We need a higher COLA, not a lower one. The current COLA is not large enough–it does not adequately account for large health care cost increases faced by seniors and people with disabilities.

And it’s not just social security. It’s veterans and military retiree benefits, disability payments, federal worker pensions, anything the federal government funds.

Here’s the thing, once again: all of this is unnecessary. The deficit caused by Bush’s tax cuts, wars and recession will be largely mitigated by reinstatement of the upper income taxes, drawdown of the wars, growth(duh!) and, most importantly, controlling health care costs, the best method for which would have been expanding Medicare to cover everyone. We don’t need to make this “clever” accounting change that will result in elderly and disabled people suffering. We can get serious about a rational national security policy, controlling health care costs, and espurring conomic growth and stop listening to the disaster capitalists who are intent upon using this window of opportunity to cut the programs they hate, whether the economy is good or bad. (Hell, we could even raise the top income tax rate above the Clinton levels, at least for those making a million dollars a year. These people have been making out like bandits and surely won’t miss the money.)

If you know any veterans or military retirees, you might want to pass this fact sheet along to them. They tend to get testy when their promised benefits are threatened. They are a constituency worth organizing against this.

.

Egyptian conservatives using gay marriage against democratic protesters

by David Atkins

The tactics of the religious right are the same everywhere, including in Egypt. Mohamed El Dahshan reports:

The intractability of the problem in Egypt is caused by the presence of three, not two, parties to the current dispute.

The first of these parties is the protesters: those demanding a civil state and a proper constitution guaranteeing human rights for all, which the current draft does not. They are women and men, old and young, Christian and Muslim, poor and rich.

The second is the state, represented by the three-headed hydra of Morsi, Badie, and Shater. President Mohammed Morsi is the public face of the beast. Mohammed Badie is the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, whose words address the members of the Brotherhood. Kairat al-Shater is the organization’s most powerful man and its most prominent strategist. The panic of these three men introduced the third party into the current dispute.

This third party is the hordes of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. They are columns of men — almost always men — who are bussed into Cairo from outlying neighborhoods and cities for use as the Brotherhood’s foot soldiers. They serve as protesters at one moment, as hired guns at another. The reasons they so obediently follow orders is twofold: First, the Muslim Brotherhood indoctrination method requires absolute faith in the group’s hierarchical leadership. Second, those in charge are force-feeding them with hatred of the protesters, and they are correspondingly convinced that those who oppose Morsi’s decisions are in fact godless heathens who are also paid foreign agents who want to ruin Egypt and allow men to marry men. (There’s a very strange fixation on the matter of gay matrimony within Muslim Brotherhood propaganda I find very puzzling.)

Sounds pretty much like religious conservatives using the issue of marriage equality and similar garbage to “other” the Occupy protesters.

The same fights occur everywhere across the globe bearing the same contours. National boundaries and religious and cultural differences are mere window dressing.

.

What’s happening in Michigan?

by digby

The term “right to work” is one of the more clever conservative phrases —and you have to give them credit, they have come up with many clever phrases. But then they have to in order to hide the fact that their favored policies are unpopular.

Anyway, Rich Yeselsen has written a fascinating piece about what’s happening in Michigan called This is not Wisconsin. It’s worse., which includes a great discussion of the libertarian myopia surrounding this nonsense, the “states’ rights” implementation of it since Taft-Hartley and the history of the UAW. (All in one essay!) But it also provides a very useful primer on what exactly has happened in Michigan  that brought about the bizarre possibility of the home of the UAW becoming a right to work state:

Michigan’s labor movement looked at the aggressive moves over the past two years by Republicans throughout the Midwest—Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana—to roll back union rights. This past year, calculating that they were diminished, but not too diminished, the remnants of the UAW and the rest of the state’s labor movement took a chance. Via a referendum question, Proposal 2, it tried to permanently inscribe the right to collectively bargain into the state constitution in order to forestall a right-to-work move in the very birthplace of the once great UAW.

The unions went all in, with a comprehensive, expensive campaign. They had several advantages that their peers in Wisconsin did not have when unions there attempted to recall Governor Scott Walker. The referendum was easy to understand, up or down on the constitutional right to collective bargaining. The referendum ran during a hard-fought presidential campaign, with Michigan, as always, a key state. Democratic turnout, and, thus, presumably, support for the union position would be high.

But Proposal 2 ran 12 points behind Barack Obama and lost 58-42. The decline that compelled the unions to lock in their rights paradoxically guaranteed they would lose. During the heyday of Cadillac Square, the right to collectively bargain was a potent fact on the ground. A constitutional imprimatur was beside the point.

The headcount said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters. The unions could, and are, making some noise, but they wouldn’t create sufficient civil strife to defeat a right-to-work flip.
The loss provided what is called in an organizing drive a convenient “headcount” for corporations and their conservative Republican allies. The headcount said simply that the UAW and allied unions did not have the unqualified support of most Michigan voters. The unions could, and are, making some noise, but they wouldn’t create sufficient civil strife to defeat a right-to-work flip. The unions could be rolled, the more quickly the better, even during a lame-duck session. The savvy president of the UAW, Bob King, one of the most progressive union leaders in the country, promises not to give up and threatens recall elections. But state right-to-work laws have only been repealed once, in Indiana in 1965. Indiana reinstated right-to-work laws earlier this year.

And here I thought the conservatives had been vanquished for all time.

As they say, read the whole thing. It’s a helluva story and will provide some much needed context for the uproar. Yikes.

.

Can drones make mistakes

by digby

Here’s a good question for you:

If Our Drones Are So Accurate, Why Do Their Missiles Keep Hitting Children?

Now, one might glibly respond, as former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs did, that they should have had more responsible parents, but I doubt there are very many people who think that makes much sense.

But setting aside the ethical bankruptcy of certain people for the moment, what to make of the claim that drones are exceptionally good weapons because of their accuracy in light of the fact that civilians are commonly being killed? I have to say that I think this might be the thing that causes the most problem for the US in the long run. If people believe they are as accurate as advertised and they are killing civilians, including at least 178 children, then the only thing that the people on the other end of the bombings (and their friends and relatives) can conclude is that we are targeting these civilians and children. You can’t have it both ways.

On the other hand, I’m given to understand that the government believes they are on the verge of killing all the Al Qaeda terrorists once and for all so it’s nothing to worry our pretty little heads about.

There is still danger and there is still much to do. Al Qaeda’s core has been degraded, leaving al Qaeda more decentralized, and most terrorist activity now conducted by local franchises…

So, therefore, in places like Yemen, and in partnership with that government, we are taking the fight directly to [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], and continually disrupting its plans to conduct terrorist attacks against U.S. and Yemeni interests.

We have made clear that we are not at war with an idea, a religion, or a tactic. We are at war with an organized, armed group — a group determined to kill innocent civilians…

Al Qaeda’s radical and absurd goals have included global domination through a violent Islamic caliphate, terrorizing the United States and other western nations from retreating from the world stage, and the destruction of Israel. There is no compromise or political bargain that can be struck with those who pursue such aims.

In the current conflict with al Qaeda, I can offer no prediction about when this conflict will end.

I’m going to guess that some people out there figure we’d better make sure we get every last four year old because they’re going to grow up someday. Oh right, we’ve already heard from one.

.

Conservatism in Afghanistan

by David Atkins

Conservatism. It’s the same the world over:

A senior advocate for women in Afghanistan was shot dead by unknown gunmen Monday, officials said, the latest assassination of a women’s rights activist in the country.

Two assailants riding a motorbike gunned down Najia Seddiqi as she was heading to her office in eastern Laghman province, said Helai Nekzad, the chief of information at the Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Kabul.

Seddiqi was the head of women’s affairs for Laghman province. Her predecessor in that post was killed five months ago when explosives hidden in her car were detonated.

“We have launched an investigation to find out whether Najia Seddiqi’s killing was politically motivated,” Nekzad said.

President Hamid Karzai described the assassination as “terroristic,” a term he often uses to describe attacks by Taliban-led insurgents or al-Qaeda militants. No group or individual has made any claim of responsibility.

The Taliban has yet to comment on the shooting, which comes a week after a teenage girl, volunteering in an anti-polio drive, was fatally shot northeast of Kabul. Officials have said that they do not think the girl’s death was politically motivated.

These big, tough men are really afraid of empowered women, aren’t they? It’s the same conservative impulse worldwide.

.

Whatever you do, don’t think of England

by digby

Well hell, this news out of the UK doesn’t sound very good at all:

Vince Cable, business secretary, has admitted there is “clearly a risk” of the UK entering a triple-dip recession and facing a Japanese-style lost decade of stagnant economic growth.

In an interview with the Observer newspaper, Mr Cable – who is one of the most senior Liberal Democrats in government – was asked whether a triple-dip in the economy was possible. “I always try not to get drawn into forecasting arguments but there clearly is a risk,” he said. “The most likely outcome is that we continue bumping along the bottom”, reflecting the Office of Budget Responsibility’s forecasts.

These comments come after chancellor George Osborne downgraded UK growth prospects in his Autumn Statement, and grim manufacturing figures released at the end of the week stoked fears of further economic contraction.
[…]
Michael Saunders, UK economist at Citibank, said : “Early data suggest the UK is heading for a ‘treble dip’, with GDP shrinking again in the fourth quarter of 2012. We expect the economy will continue to underperform the OBR’s forecasts in 2013-14, leading to further sizeable revenue shortfalls and deficit overshoots.”

Saunders said government debt as a share of national output was likely to hit 100% over the coming years as budget deficits piled up in response to weak growth. “We have argued for a while that the UK will lose its AAA rating in the next two to three years and it now seems likely that this will happen in the next 12-18 months, reflecting the higher path for the debt/GDP ratio plus rising uncertainty over how and whether the government will achieve the savings needed to stabilise and reverse the debt trajectory.”

A leading thinktank, the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, said growth had slowed sharply since the 1% growth in the third quarter of 2012 that marked the end of the nine-month double dip recession. It estimated growth of 0.1% in the three months to November and said the economy would not be strong enough in 2013 to reduce unemployment.

Why you’d almost think that their vaunted austerity plan wasn’t a very good idea.

Meanwhile, back in the states:

The prospect of cutting Medicare benefits in a “fiscal cliff” deal has prompted an outcry from concerned liberals. But whether or not legislators actually end up raising the Medicare age or paring back Social Security payments, domestic benefits and services—ranging from veterans’ health care and low-income housing to Head Start programs—are going to get squeezed over the next 10 years.

Last year’s debt-ceiling agreement included $1.5 trillion in cuts to discretionary programs through 10-year spending caps that are already in effect. According to a new analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the domestic programs subject to the spending caps will face a $615 billion shortfall if they keep their benefits and services at 2012 levels. If such, they’ll be forced to scale back unless Congress decides otherwise—and right now, the Republicans want even less money spent on these domestic programs, not more.

So, you know, it’s just a terrific idea to be talking about even more spending cuts. Because, what could go wrong?

.

Incremental Privatization

by digby

Joan Walsh has written a comprehensive post about the proposal (by some people) to hike the Medicare eligibility age that’s worth reading in its entirety. But her conclusion is particularly important:

We just had an election in which the president promised to protect Medicare, and never once publicly supported raising the eligibility age to 67, while Romney’s advisors said his plan included hiking the age (Romney himself avoided details about any of his plans.) Post-election polls find that two thirds of voters oppose increasing the Medicare eligibility age. Should this deal become reality, it would reinforce the cynicism Americans harbor about government – and about Democrats. Deservedly.

The truth is, Obama should be pushing to lower the Medicare eligibility age, to let those 55 and over opt to buy into the program with their own money. The premiums paid by a younger, healthier cohort would help stabilize the program, while the benefits of getting that population insured earlier would keep costs down later. That’ll never happen, you say? Well, we can make sure it’ll never happen if progressives never ask for it.

Honestly, the only real reason to throw seniors into the Obamacare pool is to put more people at the mercy of private insurance, and weaken both the economic and political basis for Medicare… Actually, it’s where the GOP thinks “entitlement reform” should go — into the private sector, with mutual funds handling Social Security, and private insurance taking back the Medicare population. If this is what Obama is trying to do, then he’s ignoring the vote he just received and betraying the social movements that got us the rights we have today.

She also admits, as I do, that this may be a trial balloon floated to gauge reaction, in which case it’s important to … react. Call your congressional Rep and tweet your favorite journalists today. The political establishment needs to know what a shitstorm this will create or they’ll think it’s just a “balanced approach” that everyone will accept as the price of doing business.

Update: I should point out that a number of health care wonks operating in good faith also believe that sometime in the future Obamacare will be a comprehensive universal system. But they all assume generous subsidies and a public option for all. That’s not what the privatizers have in mind — and I’m stymied as to how that’s going to happen in this political environment. So, for me, it’s just say no for the foreseeable future.

.

Wherein Huckleberry Graham tells the president to “man up”

by digby

I guess he told him:

“In February or March you have to raise the debt ceiling. And I can tell you this, there is a hardening on the Republican side. We’re not going to raise the debt ceiling. We’re not going to let Obama borrow any more money or any American Congress borrow any more money until we fix this country from becoming Greece. And that requires significant entitlement reform to save Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy. Social Security is going bankrupt in about 20, 25 years. Medicare is going bankrupt in 15 or 20 years. […]

“Yes, we will play that game, Mr. President, because it’s not a game. The game you’re playing is small ball. You’re talking about raising rates on the top 2% that would run the government for 11 days. You just got re-elected. How about doing something big that’s not liberal? How about doing something big that really is bipartisan? Every big idea he has is a liberal idea that drowns us in debt. How about manning up here, Mr. President and use your mandate to bring this country together to stop us from becoming Greece.”

In case you were wondering, yes Graham is running for re-election and has often been considered something of a squish. So he’s going to be very, very hardcore over the next two years. Whether anyone believes it is another story. I’ve always found him to be somewhat lethal and reptilian myself, so I can only imagine how unpleasant it’s going to get, particularly since the Villagers all consider him the personification of the reasonable conservative and I see no reason to think they’ll change their minds just because he turns into a rabid partisan.

.

Day of Action

by digby

Today is a progressive “day of action” on the fiscal cliff negotiations with a bunch of organizations holding events around the country.

Here’s one from the AFL-CIO. You can click over to find the event near you:

PROTECT OUR FUTURE IN THE COMING BUDGET SHOWDOWN

After the 2012 election, Congress returns to Washington for a “lame-duck” session and faces a series of high-stakes decisions with far-reaching consequences for workers and the economy. Many of these decisions involve issues that have been at the center of this election campaign, such as tax cuts for the wealthy and benefit cuts for Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare.

Some politicians and Wall Street executives want a “grand bargain” that could cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, all to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

Working families across the country are coming together to tell their members of Congress:

– NO tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans;

– NO benefit cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.

There are others as well, which you’ve probably already received in your email box this AM. If nothing else, this is a day to call your congressional representative and tell him or her that you expect them to protect vital programs and vote against any deal that cuts them. remember, this is a manufactured “crisis” over a manufactured deficit which will be made worse by austerity not better. There is no reason we have to cut these programs — they want to cut these programs.

Here’s Scott Lemieux with a nice short comment on the state of the negotiations:

The actual deal apparently being discussed — trading terrible Medicare policy changes for less than you’d get in upper-class tax rate increases if you just did nothing — would be an incredibly bad deal that suggests that Obama hasn’t learned anything about dealing with congressional Republicans. Right, you have to give something to get something — but the expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the defense cuts in the sequester already provide plenty of leverage.

So why on earth are we talking about making a major policy concession on Medicare in exchange for unspecified concessions that Obama can probably get using the leverage derived from the sequester?

Going over the cliff is entirely in the president’s hands. He just handily won re-election and he can dictate the terms. There is no reason for any “concession”, certainly not now.

If the Republicans insist on holding the debt ceiling hostage next month, the president also has the high ground, even higher than he had in the last go around. There is certainly no reason to prematurely capitulate on that basis. Unless, of course, it isn’t a capitulation but a true meeting of the minds. That’s what we don’t know.

.