Month: October 2013

QOTD: Libertarian activist Preston Bates

by David Atkins

Mike Spies has profile of John Ramsay, the 23-year-old libertarian who inherited millions and has devoted millions to successful libertarian challenges in Republican primaries. His friend and fellow activist Preston Bates had this to say:

“I’m born owning myself,” he says. “And I think other people are born self-sovereign.” He pauses for a second, and then adds, “I’m not sure I believe in luck either. I hear the probability part of what you’re saying. Yeah, what was the difference between me being born Preston Bates or me being born this indigent, poor child? I don’t know if it was luck or if it was probability.”

Besides, he finishes: “What is a poor person in Baltimore like relative to a person in Pyongyang? At least the poor person in Baltimore is in the richest country in the history of the earth.”

I think it’s a great idea that this guy who happened to inherit millions from his bank-owner father and his friends can spend unlimited amounts of money in elections, don’t you? I can already smell the freedom.

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And yet, perhaps we are wising up? Even just a little?

by digby

We are a barbaric, backwards people in so many ways. But maybe we’re starting to evolve:

American support for the death penalty is at the lowest level recorded in more than 40 years, according to a new Gallup poll released Tuesday.

Sixty percent of Americans support the death penalty for convicted murderers, compared to 57 percent who supported it in 1972. Support in the survey peaked in 1994, when 80 percent of Americans supported the death penalty.

Eighty-one percent of Republicans and 47 percent of Democrats currently favor the death penalty. Support for the death penalty has declined among Democrats the most in the last 25 years, according to Gallup.

One of the more macabre stories I’ve read this Halloween week was about the fact that the states are running out of the lethal injection drugs used to execute people and can’t get any more.

I’d say that’s a sign that maybe we should just stop executing people.

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Civility


by digby

Coburn gets a little bit sloppy:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) office responded on Tuesday to Sen. Tom Coburn’s (R-OK) comment on Monday in which he called Reid an “absolute a–hole.”

“Nothing says ‘comity’ like childish playground name-calling, especially from a senator who has not sponsored a single piece of successful bipartisan legislation during his entire Senate career,” Reid’s spokesman Adam Jentleson told the Hill.

Coburn continued to bash Reid on Tuesday morning, according to the Hill.

“I think he’s done more damage to the Senate than any majority leader,” Coburn said.

But he’s such a nice bipartisan, Christian politician.

Let’s just hope Obama’s favorite Republican doesn’t decide to do an end-run and start talking to the White House on the budget. Reid is the one who’s holding the line on cutting “entitlements” right now.

Some of us saw this coming …

by digby

This segment from Chris Hayes’ show last night about the “sticker shock” and cancellations of health policies under Obamacare is quite instructive. I think it pretty much spells out the problem — and the problem with how the supporters are dealing with it.

I tried to warn people:

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Obamacare implementation: it’s all about how people are supposed to perceive it

by digby

There is a lot of chatter about how people are supposed to react to the new health care exchanges. Hostile pundits seem to think that everyone’s going to scream bloody murder at the potential rate increases while supporters of the plan think people who have to pay more will be fine with it because they are getting more for their money.

Hostile analysts like Avik Roy put it this way, writing about the new analysis of the Health Care exchanges that came out of California this week, showing that rates will go up, but not as much as experts had expected:

One of the most serious flaws with Obamacare is that its blizzard of regulations and mandates drives up the cost of insurance for people who buy it on their own.

Ezra, who I’m calling a supporter for these purposes, responds:

Some people will find the new rules make insurance more expensive. That’s in part because their health insurance was made cheap by turning away sick people. The new rules also won’t allow for as much discrimination based on age or gender. The flip side of that, of course, is that many will suddenly find their health insurance is much cheaper, or they will find that, for the first time, they’re not turned away when they try to buy health insurance.

That’s why the law is expected to insure almost 25 million people in the first decade: It makes health insurance affordable and accessible to millions who couldn’t get it before. To judge it from a baseline that leaves them out — a baseline that asks only what the wealthy and healthy will pay and ignores the benefits to the poor, the sick, the old, and women — well, that is a bit shocking.

According to the hostile analyst, Obamacare will hike rates because of added regulations and mandates. According to the supporter, Obamacare will hike rates because it makes the system more fair and offers better coverage. It’s simply different interpretations of the same thing — you’ll notice that both agree that rates will be hiked. And both agree that it will be because the policies offered will be better due to the requirements of Obamacare and the elimination of pre-existing conditions — also known as regulations.  (They also agree elsewhere that some of these rate hikes will be mitigated by the fact that poorer people will have subsidies that will help them.)

So the argument appears to be around how people are supposed tointerpret these changes, not what’s actually happening. And it’s concentrated around those people who are in the private insurance market already, many of whom will not qualify for subsidies but will see their premiums go up.

I will use myself as an example of how this plays out. I’m an older Californian, a decade away from medicare. A person my age needs health insurance but it tends to be quite expensive on the private market. My husband and I are lucky to be very healthy and had no pre-existing conditions. Nonetheless, we had to go without insurance for a time and when we became financially healthy enough to afford to buy it we went to an online “exchange” called eInsurance to compare rates. (This functions in similar fashion to the exchange the government is setting up, subject to Obamacare’s new rules and regulations.)

The thought process was this, and it wasn’t complicated: how much insurance can I afford? In a perfect world, we would have bought the insurance with the low deductibles, co-pays and out of pocket maximums. We knew that the odds of one of us getting very ill over the next few years is higher than before and that it was likely to be extremely expensive. We weren’t living in denial. So, it’s not that we didn’t want the higher priced, full-service plan. We simply couldn’t afford it. I am going to guess that’s true for many people, certainly those who are older, middle class people like us.

At this point, I’m not even sure if the subsidies are tied to gross income or adjusted gross income so I’m not going to guess how it will work out for us. Maybe we’ll qualify for subsidies, in which case, huzzah. And I’d be thrilled if our coverage is better and our out-of-pocket maximums are lower. Right now, the deductible is so high that it doesn’t pay for us to use our insurance a good part of the time so we get some routine tests done through health fairs and the like because it’s cheaper. It would be nice to have that whole thing streamlined.

If it turns out that we have to pay more (and yes, get better coverage) I’m going to be able to tell myself that it’s for the greater good, that poorer people are now going to have health coverage, that those with pre-existing conditions are now getting the care they need. And for me, the bleeding heart liberal, that’s something I am willing to accept. Indeed, during the health care debate I signed on to this knowing that was likely to happen.

But somehow, I don’t think that argument is going to work on everyone. Appealing to the better angels in people who are going to find their rates have gone up and then pointing out that they’re getting more for their money is actually fairly insulting. People who buy their own insurance know exactly what they’re getting for their money — most of them invested hours and hours learning all about that when they bought it. We’re the most educated people in the country about the private insurance market. I just don’t think it’s reasonable to expect that all of those who are going to be paying more will be happy about it and lecturing them about how other people are now going to be covered is likely to make a good number of them very angry since that’s exactly what they hate about all government programs.

I can guarantee you that the Avik Roy explanation that their rates have gone up because of “mandates” and “regulations” is going to sound very convincing to an awful lot of people. And they’ll hate the fact that poor people are getting subsidies and not them. I don’t know how many of them are out there — the private insurance market is fairly small, after all. It’s possible that a few naysayers will be so drowned out by the millions of low-income people with subsidies and the beneficiaries of the medicaid expansion that nobody will hear them.

But I really don’t think that those who are trying to explain the virtues of Obamacare should count on that. If this is a debate that goes beyond one’s personal needs and extends into citizenship, egalitarian principles, universality and the common good, it would have been smart to have made it about that from the beginning rather than obsessing about “bending the cost curve” and otherwise implying that people would be paying less. I never thought advocates were very honest about that and it’s going to be a shock to some of those who will pay the price.

As I said, I’ll have to find a way to pay the higher price if that’s what happens. But I made my choices before knowing exactly what the trade-offs were and I don’t need to be told that my “better coverage” under Obamacare will be worth it. I always knew better coverage was a good thing. I just didn’t have the money. California is an expensive place to live. And I’m personally happy that we will all be pitching in to make it possible for the poorest and sickest among us to have health care. I don’t need convincing on that — I’ll do my part without complaint.

But I’m going to guess that only the 20% of people in this country who identify as liberal like me will automatically accept that explanation as reasonable. It’s going to take a more compelling argument from personal interest to convince the other 80% that the middle class paying higher rates was what Obamacare was all about. Luckily most people are covered by the government or their employers so this won’t affect them. But the enemies of Obamacare are sure to exploit anyone who makes a fuss. I wouldn’t be sure that these arguments I’m hearing from supporters will carry the day.

Update:  If I were the one making the wonkish argument for Obamacare, I think I’d emphasize the fact that while premiums may go up in the private market initially, the plan will eventually do something about this, which will likely lower costs all around eventually. A few of the more open-minded types who are usually hostile to government regulation might find it convincing.  Might.

I appreciate what the people in that Chris Hayes segment are saying. But I’m also hearing from middle class friends who live in LA and San Francisco, where their housing and transportation costs are very high, that they are being hit with huge sticker shock and don’t qualify for subsidies. They are freaking out because they just can’t afford to pay so much more even for the new bronze plan with high deductibles. I guess they can move, but this is where their lives are.

By the way, I tried to warn them too. But they are all big Democrats and wouldn’t hear any criticism of President Obama so I gave up.

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A program run amok

by digby

There are lots of people wondering just what got into Dianne Feinstein that has her suddenly all hot and bothered over the NSA revelations (which, up until now, she’s defended to the hilt.)

One of the National Security Agency’s biggest defenders in Congress is suddenly at odds with the agency and calling for a top-to-bottom review of U.S. spy programs. And her long-time friends and allies are completely mystified by the switch.

“We’re really screwed now,” one NSA official told The Cable. “You know things are bad when the few friends you’ve got disappear without a trace in the dead of night and leave no forwarding address.”

In a pointed statement issued today, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein said she was “totally opposed” to gathering intelligence on foreign leaders and said it was “a big problem” if President Obama didn’t know the NSA was monitoring the phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the United States should only be spying on foreign leaders with hostile countries, or in an emergency, and even then the president should personally approve the surveillance.

It’s interesting she’s putting it in those terms when just about everyone else is rolling their eyes at the idea the US is any different than all the other countries who spy on their allies. (Well, no different except the trillion dollar surveillance program that dwarfs anything anyone in the rest of the world could possibly have.)

I think the problem here is that the political defenders, perhaps including the president as well, are finally recognizing that they are dealing with a rogue agency. A rogue agency that is spying on heads of state apparently without permission. Which means it might be spying on anybody without permission. Like Senators maybe. Or Presidents.

I always thought it odd that the first statement the president made after the initial Snowden leaks were made public included this odd little aside:

But my observation is, is that the people who are involved in America’s national security, they take this work very seriously. They cherish our Constitution. The last thing they’d be doing is taking programs like this to listen to somebody’s phone calls.

And by the way, with respect to my concerns about privacy issues, I will leave this office at some point, sometime in the last — next 3 1/2 years, and after that, I will be a private citizen. And I suspect that, you know, on — on a list of people who might be targeted, you know, so that somebody could read their emails or — or listen to their phone calls, I’d probably be pretty high on that list. So it’s not as if I don’t have a personal interest in making sure my privacy is protected.

But I know that the people who are involved in these programs — they operate like professionals. And these things are very narrowly circumscribed. They’re very focused. And in the abstract, you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential, you know — you know, program run amok. But when you actually look at the details, then I think we’ve struck the right balance.

I had guessed he was talking about that story that an NSA operative have read Bill Clinton’s emails and he felt that issue had been properly dealt with. But it was still a little bit bizarre that he’d use the word “targeted” or even bring it up at all.

Now, you have to wonder — if he really didn’t know about Merkel, what else doesn’t he know about?

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A good idea

by digby

Many of the Republicans in this coalition would undoubtedly not join if there were a Republican in office and I’d imagine there would be a few more Democrats if George W. Bush was president. But it’s also true that civil liberties always makes for strange bedfellows and in this case it’s exceedingly important that it does. This is important.

From the ACLU:

A bipartisan reform bill to rein in the National Security Agency’s bulk collection, analysis, and storage of Americans’ electronic communications was introduced in both the Senate and the House of Representatives today. The American Civil Liberties Union strongly supports the bill, which is sponsored by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), one of the original authors of the Patriot Act.

“The last five months have proven that the NSA cannot be trusted with the surveillance authorities they have been given by a secret court without the knowledge or approval of the American people,” said Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “The only way to stop the NSA’s collect-it-all mentality is for Congress to pass legislation that prohibits the intelligence community from engaging in the dragnet surveillance of Americans’ communications. The legislation introduced today by Sen. Leahy and Rep. Sensenbrenner is a true reform bill that rejects the false and dangerous notion that privacy and our fundamental freedoms are incompatible with security.”

The bill, The USA FREEDOM Act, would enact the following core reforms to NSA surveillance authorities:

It would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records shared with third parties and put reasonable limits on Patriot Act powers targeted at people in the U.S. The new restrictions would apply not only to phone records collected under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, but national security letters and pen registers that have also been abused.
It would amend the 2008 FISA Amendments Act to require court orders before the government could use American information collected during foreign intelligence operations.
It would increase transparency by allowing communications providers to disclose the number of surveillance orders they receive, mandate the government publish how many people are subject to surveillance orders, and make public significant FISA Court opinions since July 2003.
It would create a public advocate that could advise the secret surveillance court in certain cases.
The bill pulls language together from the many House and Senate bills introduced over the last several months by members of both parties.

“The bulk collection of Americans’ phone records is an extraordinary and intrusive power government should not have,” said Richardson. “This legislation rightly shuts the program down and provides additional protections to ensure the government doesn’t engage in the bulk collection of any other records. Proposals described by the Intelligence Committees would only make the current situation worse by entrenching privacy-busting practices. Congress should focus on reforms like Sensenbrenner-Leahy.”

The bicameral legislation has attracted prominent, bipartisan support.

In the Senate, 16 bipartisan cosponsors include Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Dean Heller (R-Nev.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

In the House, more than 70 bipartisan cosponsors include Reps. John Conyers (D-Mich.), Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), Ami Bera (D-Calif.), Mike Quigley (D-Ill.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), John Mica (R-Fla.), Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.)

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O’Reilly asks Cheney the perennial question

by digby

From Think Progress I find that Dick Cheney is thinks people are a lot dumber than they are. He was on O’Reilly last night who asked him about Iraq.

O’Reilly said, “they finger pointed you and Bush and I don’t want to do that,” O’Reilly said, “But we spent a $1 trillion on this with a lot of pain and suffering on the American military. What did we get out of it? Beside Saddam being out of there?”

While Cheney meandered for a few minutes, he finally settled on the main prize: an Iraq without weapons of mass destruction:

O’REiLLY: But what — right now, what do we — what do we get of Iraq for all of that blood and treasure? What do we get out of it?

CHENEY: What we gain and my concern was then and it remains today is that the biggest threat we face is the possibility of terrorist groups like al Qaeda equipped with weapons of mass destruction, with nukes, bugs or gas. That was the threat after 9/11 and when we took down Saddam Hussein we eliminated Iraq as a potential source of that.

Since Iraq didn’t have any weapons of mass destruction maybe we could have saved ourselves some money and eliminated a cheaper “potential source of WMD” that didn’t have any. Like “invading” Trinidad or something.

I’m frankly shocked that Cheney hasn’t been able to develop a better line about this by now. But then, really, what can he say? There is no good reason. We went crazy. And everyone knows it.

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There is no “center” left in America

by David Atkins

An ABC News poll confirms what most of us outside the beltway cocktail circuit already knew: America is a deeply divided country with differences that go beyond mere team spirit partisanship:

While these issues divide a variety of Americans, this poll, produced for ABC and Fusion by Langer Research Associates, finds that the gaps in nearly all cases are largest among partisan and ideological groups – so enormous and so fundamental that they seem to constitute visions of two distinctly different Americas.

Consider:

• Among all adults, 53 percent think women have fewer opportunities than men in the workplace. But that ranges from 68 percent of Democrats to 38 percent of Republicans, a difference of 30 percentage points. Comparing the most unlike groups, liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, it’s 76 vs. 35 percent.

• Forty-one percent overall think nonwhites have fewer opportunities than whites in society. Fifty-six percent of Democrats say so, as do 62 percent of liberal Democrats (more than the number of nonwhites themselves who say so, 51 percent). Among Republicans that dives to 25 percent.

• Forty-three percent of Americans say it would be a good thing if more women were elected to Congress – but the range here is from six in 10 Democrats and liberals alike to just 26 percent of conservatives and 23 percent of Republicans. Instead two-thirds or more in these latter two groups say it makes no difference to them.

• Just 23 percent overall say it would be a good thing if more nonwhites were elected to Congress; 73 percent instead say it makes no difference to them. Seeing this as a good thing peaks at 50 percent among liberal Democrats (far more, in this case, than the number of nonwhites themselves who say so, 29 percent). Among conservative Republicans, it’s 5 percent.

• Thirty-nine percent of adults say they trust the government in Washington to do what’s right; six in 10 don’t. Apparently reflecting views of the Obama administration, trust peaks at 62 percent of Democrats, as many liberals and 69 percent of liberal Democrats. Just a quarter of Republicans and conservatives, and 18 percent of conservative Republicans, feel the same.

• Support for legal status for undocumented immigrants, 51 percent overall, ranges from 77 percent among liberal Democrats to 32 percent among conservative Republicans. Views on this issue also show sharp differences among other groups – for example, nonwhites vs. whites, 70 vs. 43 percent; and adults younger than 40 vs. their elders, 61 vs. 47 percent.

• Fewer than half of all adults, 45 percent, say political leaders should rely somewhat or a great deal on their religious beliefs when making policy decisions. But again the range is wide: Six in 10 conservatives, as many Republicans and 65 percent of conservative Republicans hold this view. That falls sharply to 39 percent of Democrats and independents alike, four in 10 moderates and 32 percent of liberals.

Partisan and ideological differences of 20, 30, 40 and even 50 points raise challenging questions of how political accommodation can occur in this country – a consideration that may gain urgency in the aftermath of the 16-day partial government shutdown prompted by a political dispute over the new federal health care law. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll this week, 75 percent of liberal Democrats supported that law; 76 percent of conservative Republicans opposed it.

One of these two sides is going to win, and one of them is going to lose. As it happens, it’s a pretty good bet that it won’t be the conservative side as the electorate becomes browner and more Millennial:

RACE AND PARTISANSHIP – There are racial and ethnic differences in many of the attitudes measured in this survey, partly reflecting partisan predispositions. In ABC News/Washington Post poll data, 24 percent of whites call themselves Democrats and 30 percent are Republicans, while among nonwhites the gap is far wider – 43 percent identify themselves as Democrats, vs. just 10 percent as Republicans.

Including people who describe themselves as independents but say they lean toward one of the two parties, the gap widens even further. Among whites, 42 percent are Democrats or lean that way; 48 percent are Republicans or Republican leaners. That compares to a 70-21 percent leaned Democrat vs. leaned Republican division among nonwhites.

Nonwhites, separately, are 11 points more apt than whites to describe themselves as liberals.

MILLENNIALS – Millennials, another group on which Fusion will focus coverage, customarily are described as Americans born from 1982 to 2004; for adults, that’s age 18 to 31. They’re not much different from other age groups on most of the attitudes measured in this survey, with two exceptions. As noted, along with under-40s more broadly, they’re more apt to favor legal status for undocumented immigrants. And they’re 12 points less apt than their elders to say politicians should base policy positions on their religious beliefs, a result that fits with customarily lower levels of religiosity among young adults.

There’s another difference among millennials vs. older adults, reflecting another longstanding attribute of young Americans: Their comparative lack of engagement in politics. Among adults age 18 to 31, just 54 percent report that they’re registered to vote. That soars to 87 percent among those 32 and older. Indeed it increases steadily with age, peaking at 94 percent of seniors.

The sooner Democrats embrace progressive values and engage younger citizens and communities of color, the sooner we can settle this argument once and for all. It won’t mean the end of the Republican Party–things will always balance themselves in a two-party system–but it will mean a major political realignment assuming there is no major crisis or coup in the intervening time.

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Huckleberry has a hissy

by digby

Joan McCarter has the whole story, but this quote is just precious:

GRAHAM: So I am calling for a joint select committee. […] And where are the survivors? 14 months later, Steve, the survivors, the people who survived the attack in Benghazi, have not been made available to the U.S. congress for oversight purposes. I’m going to block every appointment in the United States Senate until the survivors are being made available to the Congress. I’m tired of hearing from people on TV and reading about stuff in books.

At this point poor Huck is careening back and forth between being the reasonable adult in the room and sounding like the veriest Tea Partier. I don’t think he knows which end is up.

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How very medieval of you

by digby

We’re sorry Daddy:

British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Monday his government was likely to act to stop newspapers publishing what he called damaging leaks from former U.S. intelligence operative Edward Snowden unless they began to behave more responsibly.

“If they (newspapers) don’t demonstrate some social responsibility it will be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act,” Cameron told parliament, saying Britain’s Guardian newspaper had “gone on” to print damaging material after initially agreeing to destroy other sensitive data.

Now you know why the American revolutionaries decided to break off with England and why the writers of the US Constitution felt the need to explicitly guarantee freedom of speech and freedom of the press: because there is always some power mad prick like David Cameron deciding what the people are allowed to know.

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