August 2009
91 posts
if you were up in the mountains all weekend and...
September is around the corner—like less than 24hrs—so things are likely to heat up on the health care front. Two of the gang of six have started publicly talking about the death panels so any health care reform activists who think the finance committee is going to make a deal on this issue needs to get back into the real world. Using reconciliation might have some interesting...
The trucks won't load themselves: Headed to the...
We’re headed up to the mountains for the weekend. A cabin up near Hiawassee. So no posting for a bit. I’m just going to do one quote this morning… ”He [Philippines leader] must be in three places at the same time: In front of the people, so he can guide them and lead them onward to a greater destiny. Beside the people, so he can feel what they feel, suffer what they...
Are you spiritual?
Epiphenom: So the reality is that many atheists are spiritual, at least as defined by these scales. Many aspects of spirituality don’t require you to believe in magical forcesSo, be aware of just how fuzzy is the psychological concept of ‘spirituality’. Even if you are an atheist, when researchers are talking about the effects of spirituality, they may well be talking about you! ...
People ask me why i'm a Democrat...
People ask me why i’m a Democrat… Short and sweet—-Its generational… I came of age politically speaking during the Bush years when Bush Republicans got us into a war that undermined our national security and passed tax cuts that weren’t paid for… bringing back deficits after Clinton had brought us surplus (after the Reagan/Bush deficits). I came of age...
We need a 2nd stimulus (that is not politically...
The folks who said the first package should have been a lot bigger (I won’t name names, but… ah hemm….) Obama’s “political smarts” is coming back to haunt us all—-for an I told you so… Financial Times: Mounting concern over the economic – and even national security – implications of exploding US national debt is also likely to complicate any...
Report cites Honduras abuses
Financial Times: An alarming pattern of widespread abuses and restrictions of civil liberties has emerged in Honduras since the June 28 coup, a leading human rights organisation reported on the weekend. Preliminary findings by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) following a five-day visit last week uncovered “disproportionate use of public force, arbitrary detentions, and the...
Panic of 1857
Panic On this day in 1857, the New York Branch of the Ohio Life Insurance and Trust Company (OLITC) failed, an event often (dis)credited with starting the Panic of 1857. But of course the Panic didn’t really begin there; as with all major financial catastrophes the story is more complicated than it initially appears. For the origins of the 1857 meltdown, one might look abroad, to the Crimean...
When choosing a pet, do you prefer unicorns or...
The Debilitating Myth of the ‘Free Market’ Alternative This is something like what the healthcare debate is about. It’s not about real alternatives. Rather, it’s about the choice between a realistic alternative that can actually extend coverage while lowering costs — the public option — and a fantasy: the “free market” option. And health care is only the most readily available of...
And now we have death books?
Fox News, NRO, Limbaugh run with “death book” smears Following false accusations that Democrats’ health care reform legislation would institute “death panels” for the elderly, H. James Towey claimed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the Obama administration revived a Veterans Health Administration (VHA) booklet on advanced planning directives that would...
reconcile... with the past...
Schieffer allows Grassley to criticize reconciliation without noting his past support of process CBS Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer allowed Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) to criticize Democrats for reportedly considering using the budget reconciliation process to pass health-care reform with a simple majority of 51 votes in the Senate by claiming that “reconciliation was put in place to...
DFA on the move... 5 to go...
From the Inbox:Last week was incredible, but we’re not done. We’ve proved that a bill without a public option can’t pass the House of Representatives, but we are five commitments short of proving that a bill with a public option can pass the Senate. Once we have 50 Senators who clearly state they will vote for a public option, then we have the votes to win and Congress will see...
@JimN2010
Only you can end broken government… links for the day… Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
"There is probably no better way to rebuild...
Inflation, Warren Buffet, and You Warren Buffet is a very shrew investor. His oped in the New York Times today warning of the evils of inflation was likely one of his best. Mr. Buffet tells readers that we must quickly get the budget deficit down or risk becoming a “banana-republic economy.” To help make his case on inflation, Buffet quotes Keynes, the great guru of all depression...
Mad High Tax Rates
So lets go to a Foundry Post: Mad High Tax Rates On this week’s season premiere of the popular AMC show “Mad Men” viewers were reminded about the punitive high tax rates in the 1960s: Click here to view the embedded video. This episode of Mad Men takes place in 1963, when the top income tax rate was 91 percent on incomes over $200,000 ($400,000 for married couples). That translates to about...
Health Care and the power industry...
Mark Thoma sends us over to Jack Roberts who is looking back to the public/private power debate of the 30’s Public option shouldn’t be deal breaker for reform Public option shouldn’t be deal breaker for reform Recent reports that the Obama administration may (or may not) be backing away from a public option for health care reform are likely to raise the decibel level of the debate even...
befogged by bewilderment and fear
Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
The trucks won't load themselves....
I’m headed to work, here are your morning quotes… [S]he refused to be bored chiefly because she wasn’t boring. —Zelda Fitzgerald, 1922 The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it. —George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950) Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
health reform reality check...
Myths and falsehoods about health care reform Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Social Mobility
Understanding Society: We often think of the United States as a place with a lot of social mobility. What exactly does this mean? And is it true? Ironically, the answer appears to be a fairly decisive “no.” In fact, here’s a graph from a 2005 New York Times series on income mobility that shows that the United States ranks second to last among Great Britain, US, France,...
Jon Stewart on Barney Frank's town hall..
Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
links to read... while I go eat dinner
Replay of 1930? Jobless Claims data Initial Jobless Claims totaled 576k, 26k more than expected and up 15k from the prior week which was revised up by 3k. This brings the 4 week average up to 570k from 566k. Continuing Claims were 26k more than estimated and up 2k from last week. The insured unemployment rate was 4.7%, unchanged with the prior week. Those filing for Emergency Unemployment...
How do we know the recession is over?
Signs of Recovery A number of economists have started proclaiming that the recession is over, or at least that a recovery is just around the corner. Others disagree. Robert Hall, the chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, reportedly indicated recently that the group is still waiting for “activity to surpass its previous peak.” What are the...
Brad Delong on Think Tanks
Washington Thinktanks in the Twenty-First Century: A Modest Proposal Think-Tank Effectiveness: Dean Baker of CEPR Says: “Ahem!” Which makes me think about a great panel on Bloggers and Think Tanks I went to at Netroots… Which inspired me to make my interview (in the loudest room I could find) with Dean Baker into a podcast. I’m finally going to try that podcast...
What you won't hear from "Free Market"[sic]...
Dean Baker (again): We pay $250 billion a year for drugs that would sell in a free market for about $25 billion a year because the government gives drug companies patent monopolies. Patent monopolies are also the reason that expensive diagnostic tests are expensive. In addition, our doctors get paid about twice as much as doctors in West Europe and Canada, even though most of the rest of us get...
FACT CHECK health care reform
Health overhaul myths taking root: The judgment is harsh in a new poll that finds Americans worried about the government taking over health insurance, cutting off treatment to the elderly and giving coverage to illegal immigrants. Harsh, but not based on facts. President Barack Obama’s lack of a detailed plan for overhauling health care is letting critics fill in the blanks in the...
Debate Over Public Option: Post Excludes Freedom...
Dean Baker: That would be the people who hate the idea that the government will use the power of the state to force people to buy insurance from Aetna, United Health, or some either company run by a golden diaper CEO. If there are mandates without a public option, then this is exactly what would happen. Many freedom loving people find this idea quite offensive which is one reason why many...
Dean Baker on Bernanke
Bernanke: He Didn’t Just Miss the Housing Bubble First, he misled Congress last fall to help gain quick approval of the TARP. He told Congress that the commercial paper market was shutting down, so that non-financial corporations could not raise the money needed to pay their bills and meet their payrolls. In fact, the Fed had the ability to prevent a shutdown of the commercial paper market...
Democratic leadership is joining the real...
New Rx for Health Plan: Split Bill The White House and Senate Democratic leaders, seeing little chance of bipartisan support for their health-care overhaul, are considering a strategy shift that would break the legislation into two parts and pass the most expensive provisions solely with Democratic votes. The idea is the latest effort by Democrats to escape the morass caused by delays in...
Americans Hate Everyone, Believe Everything
Ezra Klein: Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal/NBC poll (pdf) is disappointing stuff. It’s not so much that the American people have turned against Obama’s health-care reform effort as they’ve turned against the legislative process in general. The graph at the right tells the story well: Americans disapprove of the job Obama is doing on health care. But they hate the job...
Poll: Nearly Half Of Americans Believe “Death...
Greg Sargent Nearly half the country believes that the health care proposal would empower the government to withhold medical care for the elderly. As Steve Benen notes, this “points to a political discourse that’s badly broken.” Indeed, another finding amplifies this point. Many have argued that those believing the “death panel” fantasy are a small minority that gets its info from Fox. But this...
China moves to curb health costs
Financial Times: China has moved to control healthcare costs for its citizens from Beijing, setting plans to purchase and distribute hundreds of essential medicines that are now mostly sold at huge mark-up prices through hospital pharmacies. The measures are part of an Rmb850bn ($124bn, €88bn, £75bn) overhaul of the country’s ailing health system, aimed at securing basic medical services for...
White House hopeful on health reform
Financial Times: The White House on Wednesday sought to quell suggestions it was preparing to pull the plug on further negotiations with Republicans over healthcare reform even though most are bitterly opposed to any Democratic-inspired change. Senior administration officials pointed to the continuing bipartisan talks in the Senate led by Max Baucus, the Democratic chairman of the finance...
Developed markets feel China impact
Financial Times: When the US sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold – or so the old saying goes. But in recent days it has been the sickly Chinese stock market that has been blamed for infecting markets in other parts of the world. Take Wednesday – the Shanghai Composite index fell 4.3 per cent. Other Asian markets dropped sharply and bourses in Europe initially followed suit before...
Wow go buy an entertainment weekly and you might...
CBS and Pepsi bring video ads to printed page When some readers of Entertainment Weekly open their magazines next month, they will discover characters from US television programmes speaking to them from a wafer-thin video screen built into the page. The marketing experiment – which is being conducted by CBS, the US broadcaster, and Pepsi, the soft drinks maker – recalls the fantasy newspapers of...
"Resistance Efforts," Guns and the Constitution
On the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle guy: Like William Kostric (who openly carried a handgun outside of President Obama’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire with a sign that read, “IT IS TIME TO WATER THE TREE OF LIBERTY!”) before him, “Chris” initially told the press that he was carrying these weapons to exercise his Constitutional rights, stating, “In Arizona,...
Michele Bachmann's America... Health Care Reform...
Bachmann: Health Care Reform Is Unconstitutional Speaking on Fox News last night, right-wing Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) claimed that health care reform is unconstitutional: It is not within our power as members of Congress, it’s not within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, for us to design and create a national takeover of health care. Nor is it within our ability to be...
Public Option.. a pro-competitive intervention in...
Economist Brad Delong: having a public plan would add to health insurance companies’ incentives to work harder on lowering their own costs, and increase price competition. And a public plan that wasn’t in the business of spending lots of its money figuring out how not to cover sick people would have lower administrative costs. Enough lower to make it a viable large-scale player in the...
et trois un miniverse Republican
There is a reason why there are so many independents… they’ve walked away from the Republicans who are being pushed over the cliff by this “miniverse.” It truly is harmful… as we need two strong parties debating the issues to find good policy… How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? Since Obama’s rise, the US right has been...
Republican "miniverse" part deux
Its important to go back to the Iraq War and remember that Fox News viewers got the facts wrong on that one as well. PIPA Study: “Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War” The Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) released a report entitled “Misperceptions, The Media and The Iraq War.” They examined consumption of various news media and correlated the...
Republican "Miniverse"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/32469231#32469231 Posted via web from Jim Nichols | Comment »
Our troops like their single payer system....
I just got an email from IAVA: For the past few weeks, the national debate over health care has flooded the airwaves. No matter what your political party or stance on the issue, one thing is certain. Veterans’ health care must be protected. Hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans depend on the VA for care. And we want you to know that IAVA is committed to ensuring that all...
Arguing with you ma'am is "like arguing with a...
So says Rep. Barney Frank to an opponent of health care reform: Posted via email from Jim Nichols | Comment »
The trucks won't load themselves...
I’m headed to work, here are your morning quotes… The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. —Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900), The Gay Science, section 191 Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look there. —Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121 AD -...
On the Health Care Reform Front
The progressive wing of the Democratic Party is all abuzz and busy as all get out. Organizer email lists that I’m on are shooting info on different approaches and tactics people are using to put pressure on members not supporting a public option as well as different events people are holding in their area. If you need ideas don’t hesitate to email me: Jim.Nichols@gmail.com ...
Reward Good Behavior: health care reform...
From the inbox: Over the weekend it became clear that the Obama Administration wants to drop the public option from health care reform. We saw this day coming. That’s why for two months, we’ve been working hard to get members of Congress to draw a line in the sand: no public option, no health care reform. Yesterday, they did it. This is exactly the kind of spine we need to see...
Humanitarian interventionism: case study Rwanda
Alice in Rwandaland and Through the Looking Glass If you’re going to talk about humanitarian interventionism (and with Conor as our guestblogger this week, we are), then sooner or later, you are going to come up against the Big One; the argument that the fact of the Rwandan genocide forever legitimises the general principle of a “responsibility to protect”. A version of this can be seen in...
links...
Chuck Grassley’s Dispiriting Bipartisanship First, Grassley did not speak like Lindsey Graham or Olympia Snowe. He did not come onto the program determined to present a reasonable face and comfort liberals, conservatives and independents alike. Instead, he railed against “government-run health care” and the “Pelosi health-care bill.” He talked about bureaucrats and...
government spending and the ivory tower...
Lots of “conservatives”[sic] claim to worry about government spending and waste. As an Ivory Tower ideological position I can understand it—political theory does have its place in discourse. But government isn’t the land of Utopians like Karl Marx and Ayn Rand, whose quaint little theories have nothing to do with the real world; its about coalitions and pragmatic...
Commodities recover but sentiment weak
Financial Times: Commodity prices recovered some ground on Tuesday, after the previous session’s sell-off, led by rising crude oil and base metals prices, but sentiment remained cautious. Edward Meir, of brokerage MF Global in New York, said the commodities market had been discounting a V-shaped economic recovery since March and warned that recent economic indicators had been “quite erratic”....
This just in... gravity is 9.8 m/s ^2
The other day waiting in line for the health care forum the debate between myself and about 5 people standing in line with me turned to taxes. I stated that Ronald Reagan had a higher top income tax bracket than Obama’s increase… They scoffed and said I was “nuts.” Go look it up for yourself… Yesterday I was speaking with someone who passionately thought the...
