Barney’s Birthday March 31, 2010March 17, 2017 THE SHORT FORM Today is Barney’s birthday. I can’t tell you how old, but divisible by 5 and 10 and I’m almost certain he’s older than I am – and I’m old. It would be terrific if you wanted to chip in with a gift. Not only will it make him smile (and how often do you see THAT?) . . . it will help him get the truth out (see “the long form,” that follows). THE LONG FORM I’ve stood in awe of Barney Frank since he was a resident tutor, debating my fellow undergraduates at lunch and dinner (did anyone get up for breakfast?) with a wit and energy that left these one-time valedictorians helpless with laughter and hewn by logic. All of us knew he loved politics, and knew equally well he could never be IN politics – though he’d be perfect for the cigar-filled back room – because he was not, shall we say, politically coiffed (“Neatness Isn’t Everything,” read an early campaign poster). And there was the matter of his mouth, a [bleep]ing [bleep]storm of profanity. And there was the other thing, which would not have occurred to anyone else but eventually dawned on me. His eyes were going the same place mine were. That Barney is now, on this big birthday, widely acknowledged to be one of the most formidable orators in Congress, a pivotal figure in shaping the nation’s financial future, and a steely-tough public advocate on the issue we both once kept so deeply secret, makes me burst with pride at knowing him. (Charles will tell you I burst too easily – “don’t gush,” he has been known to say – but here it is justified.) I marvel at Barney’s brilliance and courage . . . whether it be when he comes right back at Dick Armey for “mispronouncing” his last name (the former Majority Leader, you may recall, pronounced it “fag”) or when he and his partner Jim walk with dignity through a crowd of health care opponents loudly mispronouncing it the same way. So in any circumstance, I’d want to send Barney a birthday gift. But as it happens, this year he actually needs one. A few days ago, I got the letter that follows. If you’re on his list, you probably got it, too. I’d urge you to share it with YOUR list, and invite them, too, to chip something in to show support for his decades of leadership and public service, and to help him keep fighting for the principles many of us share. Here’s the link . . . www.actblue.com/page/Barney. And here’s the letter . . . Dear [Friend], Surprise! I am asking you for money. But there is a little variety in this request, which is almost certainly one of a series you have gotten from me over a number of years. I have usually written to acknowledge that I was not in dire need of campaign contributions, but I did note that I needed some funding. This letter is different. I do not think I am going to be defeated. But I have been the target of a concerted smear campaign aimed at tying me down so I am less able to do the work necessary to pass legislation to prevent another financial crisis and to protect our economy. The Washington Post called the bill we passed in December “the most sweeping overhaul of the nation’s financial regulatory system since the Great Depression.” I was pleased that Paul Krugman wrote that it made needed changes to our financial system and that it was an appropriate response to the crisis. Here is an example of why I need your support. In November, John Fund, a member of the extremely conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, about me in a speech. He announced that I was sponsoring legislation to allow every breathing adult in the United States to vote whether or not they met a whole range of eligibility standards, including whether or not they were in the country legally. This, Fund said, was part of a broader scheme by liberals to win elections fraudulently. His statement was not a misquote; it was not taken out of context; it was not a misreading of a more complicated piece of legislation – it was a lie with no factual basis whatsoever. The fact that this claim was completely fictitious did not prevent it from being echoed by Mr. Fund’s fellow right-wingers – Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, the Reverend Moon’s Washington Times, and many right-wing blogs. I learned of this when I had some constituents angrily ask me why I was supporting this. I said I not only was not a sponsor of such legislation, I had never heard of such a bill. When my staff investigated further, they found no evidence of such a bill in either the House or Senate. I exposed this example of the right-wing propaganda machine in a speech on the floor of the House on February 3rd, 2010, both to defend myself, but also to call attention to this right-wing pattern of introducing a lie and then repeating it in various media outlets. This is of course not the only complete inaccuracy about me that is being propagated. I find myself given extraordinary powers that I did not know I had to influence Newt Gingrich and Tom Delay, since part of the right-wing effort to derail financial reform is that the crisis was not caused by financial irresponsibility and a lack of regulation, but rather by a liberal plot to push more and more low-income people into loans they could not afford. Apparently, we accomplished this in various legislative ways from 1995 to 2006 during which the Republicans of course were in total control of the House. The fact that in 2007, when I first became Chairman, we quickly passed a tough bill regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (as noted by Bush Treasury Secretary Paulson in his book) makes no difference to the right-wing machine. This barrage of inaccuracy obviously has had an effect in my own district as well as elsewhere. Unfortunately, refuting multiple and repeated lies takes money. That said, I have greater need for help this year than I have had in some time. So I write you today unlike in my previous letters asking that you contribute as much as you can. I promise that I will use the money not simply to refute the torrent of misinformation aimed at me, but also to expose this pattern of right-wing propaganda which has, unfortunately, been met with too little fight back from its victims. The right-wing has, I was told in 2008, decided to make an example of me because of their unhappiness with my advocacy on a range of issues. I willingly accept that challenge, for it is one of the most important battles of this decade. But it will take money for me to do it effectively and so I ask for your help. Signed/BARNEY FRANK DCTH DCTH closed at $8.42 yesterday, up from $5.37 (or $4.61) when first mentioned a couple of months ago. My advice: don’t sell.
Free Vacuum Cleaners And Dumpster Diving March 30, 2010March 17, 2017 Atul Gawande has the lead piece in the April 5th New Yorker, recounting the difficult birth of Medicare 45 years ago (among other things, it required hospitals to integrate!) and putting the new health care bill into perspective: . . . Recently, clinicians at Children’s Hospital Boston adopted a more systematic approach for managing inner-city children who suffer severe asthma attacks, by introducing a bundle of preventive measures. Insurance would cover just one: prescribing an inhaler. The hospital agreed to pay for the rest, which included nurses who would visit parents after discharge and make sure that they had their child’s medicine, knew how to administer it, and had a follow-up appointment with a pediatrician; home inspections for mold and pests; and vacuum cleaners for families without one (which is cheaper than medication). After a year, the hospital readmission rate for these patients dropped by more than 80 percent, and costs plunged. But an empty hospital bed is a revenue loss, and asthma is Children’s Hospital’s leading source of admissions. Under the current system, this sensible program could threaten to bankrupt it. So far, neither the government nor the insurance companies have figured out a solution. The most interesting, under-discussed, and potentially revolutionary aspect of the [new] law is that it doesn’t pretend to have the answers. Instead, through a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, it offers to free communities and local health systems from existing payment rules, and let them experiment with ways to deliver better care at lower costs. . . . ☞ The link to the full essay may not work for you if you don’t subscribe to the New Yorker. (You don’t subscribe to the New Yorker? What’s wrong with you?) But it builds on Dr. Gawande’s earlier brilliant piece, excerpted here, that recounted the enormous productivity gains realized in U.S. agricultural a century ago as a result of a government-sponsored scheme similar in some respects to this new health care approach. It may be hard to convey all this in a sound bite. But passage of the health care bill is going to lead to more efficient, quality health care – a very big deal. DUMPSTER DIVING IS ILLEGAL But you can’t watch this without wondering whether there shouldn’t be some way to get a lot of this bounty directly to food banks. AND SPEAKING OF GARBAGE DUMPS Scott Koppa: “Re: your recent link to the “Great Pacific Waste Patch” . . . a similar one was recently identified in the Atlantic. But on the bright side, a Canadian high-school student was able to isolate bacteria that metabolize plastic (he isolated them from a garbage dump…very bright boy). Now if we can just find a way to make that an economically viable proposition.”
Jeb Bush and Ben Stein When They're Right, They're Right March 29, 2010March 17, 2017 THE ZEN OF COOKING LIKE A GUY™ You never have to clean a banana. Think about it. BRCI Fred C.: “Is anything going on with BRCI? You suggested it at 2 cents and it’s since gone to 4 cents. Seems to be a pretty big jump for a penny stock.” ☞ Nah. The trading is very thin. The jumping up and down simply depends on whether someone wanted to buy (in which case he likely paid the dealer 4 cents) or sell (in which case the dealer likely paid him only 2 cents). You just need to wait a year or two to see whether this company gets some traction (in which case our shares would likely be worth a good deal more); or goes the way of most start-ups (in which case it will just fade away). What I can tell you is that it is a serious effort by serious people to fill a serious need. EDUCATION Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on “Morning Joe” last Thursday: “I think Secretary Duncan and President Obama deserve credit for (a) challenging a really core constituency in their own party, but (b) putting students first rather than the adults in the system. . . . New York City is an awesome example . . . very exciting.” Two minutes worth watching? GOVERNMENT Mike Hanlon sends us this Chicago Tribune op-ed that makes the case for government. In part: . . . Let me advance a suggestion that some people will find reprehensible, socialist, liberal, whatever. In the United States, the government is not your enemy. Not local, not county, not state, not federal. It’s time to find a way to pour cold water on that thought before it fuels any more violence or unleashes any more nut cases. Where the idea came from that you could have a society without services and taxes to pay for them confounds me. I love my sanitary waste system. I love my garbage collection. I love the fact that a cop will come if something goes wrong. Taxes do indeed suck, but it’s not like we don’t get anything in return. The reputation of government has already been damaged deeply by a couple of decades of “government is the problem” thought. It worked as a campaign stunt for that hero of the far right, Ronald Reagan, but look at what it unleashed. We are now so bound up that we can’t move legislation through the U.S. Senate. That is a clear consequence of many years of demonizing what the government does. That people push this agenda when sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, are in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan is unconscionable. That critics push this agenda when the ranks of government are full of people who believe in what they are doing — exhausting themselves in some cases just to help people who are forgotten, abandoned, ignored — is despicable. Hang out with some street-level workers for the Veterans Affairs and then come and argue that their work isn’t crucial, valuable, fully human and admirable. You would be wrong about that. . . . GOVERNMENT – II Ben Stein – the conservative – made the same point in two minutes on CBS Sunday Morning a couple of days ago, complete with pictures. (“There is a basic assumption among many of us conservatives that bothers me. Basically, the assumption is that if a person is a government employee, then he or she is lazy and shiftless, a parasite just eating up tax dollars without doing anything. ‘Bureaucrats’ is what the sneering expression usually is. To put it mildly, this is unfair and not even in the ballpark of what’s true.”)
How To Fix Wall Street March 26, 2010March 17, 2017 But first . . . ARMAGEDDON Warren Kaplan: “Republican leader John Boehner has declared that the passage of the health care reform law will lead to Armageddon. Although I have never found myself in agreement with Boehner in the past, I now find myself in total agreement. Notwithstanding the president’s many arguments to the contrary, we are now clearly at the point of Armageddon, as in Ah’m a geddin’ sick and tired of all the Republican hypocrisy, fear-mongering and scare tactics, and I hope we can soon move on to addressing all the other serious challenges that face our country.” REPEAL AND REPLACE? From Bill Press’s latest column, this reminder: “In 1936, one year after Franklin Roosevelt made Social Security the law of the land, Republican Alf Landon ran against him on the slogan: ‘Repeal Social Security.’ He carried two states.” OUR EVOLVING BASKET Last October 29: A basket of mini-drug-stock speculations that might double a year or two from now – to be bought only with money you can truly afford to lose – is INCY (suggested June 11 at $3.40 or so, $5.62 last night) and DEPO (down to $3.02 from $4.50 or so when suggested here the first of this month, so I’ve bought more) and DYAX, yours yesterday for $3.17. In January, we sold INCY at $10.81 – so that one had pretty much doubled – and replaced it with DCTH at $5.37 (or $4.61) and in February added NBIX at $2.60 – as always, only with money you can truly afford to lose. Last night, DCTH was $6.77, but my guru expects an upcoming F.D.A. ruling to send it higher and thinks it could top $30 in three or four years. Which is a fate-tempting* way to say: “don’t rush to sell this one.” DEPO, DYAX, NBIX are up only marginally. Guru advises “hold on.” And – while we’re at it – guru suggests you hang on to your DNDN puts. They will go to zero and you will lose everything if the F.D.A. gives the company the upcoming ruling that the market expects, or – more likely, in his view – zoom if it does not. *Famous last words? “Don’t worry…it’s not loaded.” – Terry Kath, rock musician as he put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger. (And I like this one, even though it makes a different point: “Now, now, my good man, this is no time for making enemies.” – an expiring Voltaire, allegedly, when asked by a priest to renounce Satan.) And now . . . HOW TO FIX WALL STREET – I As usual, per this from the Miami Herald (thanks, Paul!), Warren Buffett has it right: . . . Despite the recent legislation proposed by Sen. Christopher Dodd, Buffett believes too-big-to-fail will never go away. Given that, he says, “If an institution had to go to society and say ‘save me because if you don’t save me, I’m going to topple society,’ I would have it so that that person, the CEO and his spouse at least come away broke.” In other words, if the bank needs a bailout, the CEO and his top aides should go bankrupt. Never mind bonuses. Buffett sees the risk of personal financial ruin as the penalty that will keep bankers from gambling with our futures. And he says the risk should not be covered by insurance or by the corporation. . . . ☞ If you have a chance to read the full piece, you will also learn about the volcano erupting in Iceland – and I don’t mean this one. HOW TO FIX WALL STREET – II Someone sent me a copy of Jim Stone’s March 19 Boston Globe op-ed, from which a snippet follows. But can I just say first – in the spirit of, “we have hot water!” – that to find the link to the op-ed (which had not been included with the copy I was went), I entered nothing more than BOSTON GLOBE ADMIXTURE (figuring that Stone was one of relatively few to use that word recently, albeit buried near the end of the piece) and somehow – in ways I will never understand – one second later, there it was. What a time to be alive! Snippet: . . . Leading Wall Street firms no longer think of themselves primarily as investment banks and commercial lenders, channeling money to growing companies and spurring free enterprise. Their big profits now come from trading, defined broadly to include the securitization of debt and simultaneous repurchasing of similar debt securitized by others. Washington has been slow to consider whether the furious level of trading activity, in addition to exacerbating America’s corrosive income disparities, is a result of ill-conceived policies. The public may see the realities more clearly than the policymakers, too many of whom are mired in the fallacy that boosting Wall Street profitability to its prior levels is both necessary and sufficient to bring the rest of the economy back to prosperity. It is neither necessary nor sufficient, and it is fair to inquire whether such a course may even be counterproductive. . . . ☞ Have a great weekend.
Magic! March 25, 2010March 17, 2017 EAU SURE Mark Willcox: “And when you are up a creek, maybe with a paddle but without a canoe, it’s eau contraire. (On another note, if you are without a paddle, isn’t it better to be up the creek than down the creek? I mean, you can drift!)” ☞ An exceptionally good point. WHAT’S WEALTHY Ken Doran: “Yesterday, you quoted someone saying ‘[M]any people making $250K are not wealthy’ and let it stand without comment, as if it were a plausible position! My research library (Wikipedia) tells me that a household with that income is top 2% or so of the U.S., easily top few tenths of a percent worldwide. If that doesn’t count as wealthy, let’s retire the word as meaningless.” ☞ Well, I think the distinction here may be between income and assets. A family earning $250,000 a year is certainly fortunate and affluent – and all but obscenely so by Third World standards, if only barely so if trying to raise three kids in New York or San Francisco. But affluence (at least as I think of it) is about disposable income. Wealth is about assets. If that $250,000 a year comes from dividends on a $10 million portfolio, they are wealthy. If it comes from both spouses working to pay the mortgage, the nanny, the tuitions, and everything else, their net worth could be close to zero. ACORN Well, the forces of the wealthy (and I do mean wealthy) crushed this advocate for the poor. Basically, ACORN was Swiftboated. If you missed that column, and bought the Swiftboat line, I’d consider it a personal favor if you went back and took a look. MAGIC FORMULA INVESTING I was encouraged by this affirmation of my friend Joel Greenblatt’s approach, that I have plugged here (and in my introduction to his book) from time to time.
Crippled At Treasury March 24, 2010March 17, 2017 EAU! Irwin Gerstein: “You mentioned tap water Friday. It isn’t tap water. It’s eau de faucet (foh-SAY).” YES! Bob Ceremsak: “Something I just received: Be the kind of man that when your feet hit the floor each morning the devil says, ‘Oh Crap, he’s up!’ ” TAX NOTE Dan Stone: “Re yesterday’s column, I think the fact that these tax increases are marginal gets lost on much of the public. I listened to right wing radio host Dennis Prager and his audience discuss this issue recently. They were commenting that many people making $250K are not wealthy. No one bothered to mention that as the tax is marginal, it minimally effects all but the truly wealthy, as you suggest. I think the more important example is the couple that makes $260K. They pay an additional $90. [Or $380 if it’s investment income.] But their fear of being over the $250K limit pushes them to do the heavy lifting for those making millions. The Republican party will always defend the very wealthy by misidentifying their interests with those that are prosperous/upper middle class but not truly wealthy.” OBSTRUCTING TREASURY This is truly nuts. We are crippled at Treasury because one Republican Senator is trying to help tobacco farmers addict more Canadian children? Or because another Republican Senator wants the federal government to prohibit U.S. citizens from gambling on-line? (I agree with him that gambling is a bad idea; but so is adultery. Should the federal government get involved? And even if it should, is gumming up the works at Treasury the right way to do it?) Read it at the Washington Post. HOW THE HEALTH CARE THING PLAYS FOR REPUBLICANS The New York Times quotes conservative David Frum: “The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative, and the Republicans have now lost both. . . . Politically, I get the ‘let’s trip up the other side, make them fail’ strategy. But what’s more important, to win extra seats or to shape the most important piece of social legislation since the 1960s? It was a go-for-all-the-marbles approach. Unless they produced an absolute failure for Mr. Obama, there wasn’t going to be any political benefit.” ☞ I’m not looking for a Republican Waterloo. I’m looking for a Republican return to the party of Eisenhower and (when he was not giving in to his demons) Nixon and Ford and trust-busting Teddy Roosevelt and minority-rights-espousing Abe Lincoln . . . moderate Republicans comfortable separating church and state, uncomfortable with Swiftboating, and willing to engage in thoughtful dialog on how best to meet our challenges. I’d still vote Democrat most of the time, but I wouldn’t be nearly so fearful for our future. Tomorrow: Magic Formula Investing
Health, Taxes, and Dignity Or Lack Thereof March 23, 2010March 17, 2017 HEALTH Pete: ‘Congrats on finally passing health care reform. I hope that Democrats are rewarded for not only passing this, but also for allowing the opposition plenty of time to contribute or provide an alternative. In the end, Republicans offered nothing more than they did a year ago – and nothing at all when they controlled Congress and the White House. I was a registered Republican and am now unaffiliated. You’ll probably never draw me into your party, but I don’t think you really need me. Just keep doing good work, and you’ll get my vote.’ TAXES I don’t like ’em. And if we hadn’t racked up $10 trillion in debt under Reagan, Bush, Clinton*, and Bush, we might not have to raise them now. *With Clinton being the one who actually tamed the deficit and turned it into ‘surpluses as far as they eye could see’ before Bush sent it back out of control. But decades of deficits have consequences. (Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled triple-A paper, and all that.) Even so, put the anticipated health care tax hikes into perspective: In the first place, if your income is below $200,000 (or $250,000 filing jointly) you can stop reading: the tax hikes don’t apply to you. I know you have sympathy for the poor blokes who do take in more than $200,000 a year – so do I, and I commend you for wishing us well. Truly! It’s a great American trait to applaud rather than resent good fortune. But I expect you have some sympathy also for those at the bottom. Compassion is a great American trait, too. So having said that, what’s the damage? We will be adding nine-tenths of one percent to the wages of folks now in the 35% top Federal tax bracket, thus lofting them into the 35.9% bracket. (Under Clinton/Gore – not a time of terrible hardship for America’s affluent – the top bracket was 39.6%.) And by adding 3.8% to the tax rates on their dividends and capital gains, we’ll be lofting them from 15% to 18.8% (they were 39.6% and 20%, respectively, under Clinton/Gore). And the further damage? The President also proposes to raise taxes separate from these health-care-related hikes. That part has not yet been addressed by Congress, but if passed as proposed would raise rates further still. The capital gains tax for $200,000+ earners would go back to Clinton’s 20% plus this new 3.8% – so 23.8%. I’m not thrilled with that (though it beats the 28% rate in Reagan’s last years and all four George H. W. Bush years). But, then again, I’m not thrilled that we spent a couple of trillion dollars on Iraq. But we did, and whether it was a good idea or not, the costs and debts are undeniable – and ours. So perspective is needed. A responsible, successful modern society needs things like roads and schools and infrastructure – and taxes. It needs to pay interest on its debt – and that, too, takes taxes. According to this, ‘The combination of the new Medicare taxes and Obama’s budget proposals, if they were in place this year, would cost a married couple with a household income of $5 million an extra $287,100 in taxes.’ When I see the enormity of our challenges, I, for one, can live with imposing that added burden on the $5 million family. Which leads me to . . . DIGNITY Imagine two societies: one where those unable to earn an adequate wage survive by begging; the other where they keep alive by redistribution mechanisms like the earned-income tax credit and Social Security. I prefer the second. Not to say there isn’t an honored role for philanthropy and private charity – there absolutely is. And certainly not to say that most Republicans are mean or selfish and most Democrats, saintly – absolutely not! Still, the Republican approach – . . . whether opposing Social Security, when it was founded, or Medicare, that Ronald Reagan so famously opposed . . . or opposing the minimum wage, or inflation adjustments to the minimum wage (even as CEO pay zoomed and billionaire tax rates were slashed) . . . or opposing health care coverage for children . . . – leans toward the private model. To wit: People may be bankrupted by illness and reduced to poverty, but the American heart is large and we will fill their cups with coins. And in any event, it’s their problem. America’s greatness and genius lie in self-reliance and individual liberty and – well, I am watching Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin on the floor of the House make a stirring speech on this theme even as I type these words. The Democratic approach . . . when fighting for Social Security and the rest of the safety net . . . institutionalizes our generosity and honors our ‘social compact,’ so that relatively few are reduced to the indignity of begging and as few as possible need live in fear of ruin over an illness or an economic downturn. As with so much else, it’s a question of balance. The last thing Republicans want is to get the balance so wrong that mass suffering and starvation result (or 45,000 deaths annually from lack of health coverage). And the last thing Democrats want is to get the balance so wrong that people are sapped of incentive or personal responsibility. (Almost all agree that ‘the war on poverty,’ while well-intended, went badly awry in some respects.) Few Democrats favor the 90% top federal tax rate Kennedy inherited from Eisenhower or the 70% top rates that prevailed through Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter – or even the 50% top federal bracket of Reagan’s first term. Democrats, indeed, are all about ‘opportunity’ – student loans and small business loans and much else that causes the economy and the stock market consistently to do better under Democratic Administrations than Republican. Moderate Republicans used to support much of the safety net. Indeed, the health care plan now heading toward the President’s desk is very much like the health care plan then-Governor Romney crafted for Massachusetts (and for which Scott Brown voted as a Massachusetts legislator before winning Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat). But there are relatively few moderate Republicans left (gerrymandering Congressional districts is one cause). And where there are, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, et al, make them cower. In sum: Where do we want to fall on the continuum from no safety net and beggars everywhere, at one extreme (no one wants that), to – at the other extreme – cradle-to-grave coddling and paternalism that remove any incentive to excel or even to work (no one wants that, either)? Were we at the right balance before passing this health reform package? Or are Democrats (and Republicans from Teddy Roosevelt to Mitt Romney, along with every other wealthy nation in the world) right in thinking we had it wrong? And, by the way, are the Democrats right that we should launch an armada of pilot programs, and as much competition as we can, to make health care delivery more efficient in the decades to come? That’s part of what just passed Sunday night, too. Tomorrow: Eau! Yes!
A Great Day for America March 22, 2010March 17, 2017 Minority Leader John Boehner talks of ‘Armageddon’ if health care reform is signed into law. Even though the legislation is scored not just as ‘revenue neutral’ but as actually reducing the deficit. (Contrast that with the trillions in war spending and tax-cuts-for-the-rich that Republicans enacted without any effort to pay for either one, and the gigantic deficits that resulted.) Will it be Armageddon if the 45,000 people now estimated to die each year for lack of coverage don’t die? Armageddon because we’ll be inching toward the kinds of coverage they have in all the other wealthy nations of the world? Armageddon because we’ll be stressing preventive care? Or because we’ll be launching a slew of pilot programs – including pilot programs for tort reform – that start the process of building a more efficient health care system? Armageddon because illness-caused bankruptcies will plummet? Armageddon that insurers will have to pay out 80% to 85% of their premiums (depending on the number of insureds covered) in health care reimbursements? Armageddon because people will no longer have to worry about losing coverage if they switch jobs? Armageddon that, as Republicans suggested we should, we’ll now be sending investigators posing as patients to help root out fraud? Armageddon that consumers will have more carriers competing for their business? I can totally see how thoughtful people would have written this legislation differently. There is endless legitimate discussion to be had over the best approaches, constrained though those approaches must be by political reality. But Armageddon? To my mind (let alone truly world-class minds like Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s), the bill that passed last night is a vast improvement over the status quo. A government take-over? (As in, Keep the government’s hands off Medicare!) Death panels? Armageddon? It is really scary to see the crowd incited this way.* It does not lead to good policy, good health, or good will. The truth is, yesterday was a wonderful day for America. This enormous freight train, frozen in its tracks for so long, has begun to roll. Now, with enlightened regulation and further legislation to spur competition and innovation, we may actually get somewhere. *When I see angry demonstrators (or even just angry Republican Congresspersons) desperate to ‘stop the bill,’ I remember their equal urgency to ‘stop the count’ of Florida ballots. Yet, would it really have been so terrible for America if we had had Gore instead of Bush? Really?
A Sea of Plastic Not Credit Cards -- The Other Kind March 19, 2010March 17, 2017 MUSTARD I ate some “sell by February 28, 2007” generic Publix honey mustard yesterday and it was fine. Just sayin’. FLUSTERED Later, I had dinner with three college seniors – a microbiologist, an avian ecologist, and a history major – none of whom knew what a filibuster was. Which meant they don’t follow the news. How do we fix this? (I thought Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert were our answer to that, but apparently not enough.) PLASTICS It seemed like a good idea in “The Graduate” – “Mr. McGuire: I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Benjamin: Yes, sir. Mr. McGuire: Are you listening? Benjamin: Yes, I am. Mr. McGuire: Plastics. Benjamin: Just how do you mean that, sir?” – but wait til you read about the Great Pacific Waste Patch. And, no, cleaning up the oceans probably isn’t environmentally viable, as you’ll read. The good news: San Francisco has made the kind of progress every city should and can. I’m going to try even harder to remember to bring our recyclable bag to the supermarket . . . I no longer put apples inside plastic bags: they can sit loose on the scale just fine . . . and have I mentioned tap water? TORTURE – ONE LAST TIME Mark Budwig: Regarding what Mike Martin says of the Viet Cong, one might consider also the Japanese soldiers in hopeless island positions in the last days of WWII in the Pacific. Their officers sought to induce them to fight to the death rather than surrender by portraying Americans as monsters who tortured and killed prisoners. Our enemies now needn’t bother themselves with such anti-American propaganda; stupid American ‘patriots’ do it for them. Indeed, it’s astonishing to think how well Japanese prisoners were treated considering the ferocious anti-Japanese sentiment of the time, certainly equaling or exceeding the anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment of today, bad as it is. And the country then was fighting against a truly existential threat. Even so, people were less concerned with safety and more with values – ‘with liberty and justice for all’ – they were fighting for.” ☞ Even at our worst, I don’t think most people saw us as monsters; and by now I think most realize we have largely rejected Abu Ghraib and the rest. But Mark has a point. VIRGINIA, ONE LAST TIME Rachel Maddow’s take on the new Governor and Attorney General. Coming: Offshore Windmills! (And a Health Care Bill?)
Much A-Deem About Nothing March 18, 2010March 17, 2017 HEALTH CARE The House is going to have a historic vote on health care. Every member will be recorded, by name, on whether to pass health care reform or scuttle it. If a majority in the House vote to pass it, it passes. And this is tricky, or dead-of-night, or undemocratic why? (Apparently, the Republicans have used “deem and pass” 200 times in the last 15 years, so it’s not a completely novel approach.) With any luck, legislation will be signed into law before Easter and the health care reform behemoth will finally start to move. It is much easier to steer something – and build momentum – once it’s moving. Additional legislation will undoubtedly follow. (Sooner or later, there should be a public option. And authority to negotiate drug prices. And wouldn’t it be nice if the capacity of V.A. hospitals were steadily expanded? Perhaps with a lottery allowing a certain number of veterans’ spouses and offspring to buy in each year? The V.A. offers cost-effective government health care that people seem to think works quite well.) But in the meantime, consider the efforts we may see coming from bright Health & Human Services regulators committed to progress – from cracking down on fraud (who among us would not like to see that?) to rolling out pilot programs that prove themselves. The bill is chock full of promising pilot programs for more efficient care. Once the bill does pass, many Americans are going to start seeing things they like, even before pilot programs have time to prove themselves and roll out. Rachel Maddow provides the expected timetable: For example, shortly after passage it will become illegal to deny kids coverage for pre-existing conditions. Adults will have to wait until 2014 for that protection, but will at least get access to new high-risk insurance pools. Kids will be able to stay on their parents’ plans through age 26. Lifetime limits will disappear; likewise, insurers’ ability to cancel your policy when you get sick. Starting January 1, Medicare patients will qualify for free annual wellness visits. And insurers will be required to pay out at least 80% or 85% of premiums (depending on the number of people covered by the plan) in actual health care reimbursements. Customers of insurers who pay out less will get rebates. TORTURE That Employee of the Church of Christ: “If you really believe Al Qaeda is evil incarnate, why do you talk and act and vote as if Cheney et al are evil incarnate? You focus all your efforts on vilifying those who you believe may have crossed the line dealing with the perpetrators, while you spend no effort on those that you declare to be ‘evil incarnate.’ That is at least way off base, if not evil as well. The true evil (as opposed to partisan enthusiasm) in all this is that I followed your advice on FMD but not on GLDD. Sigh.” ☞ Sigh, indeed. There’s something we agree on. Sorry about that. As to the rest . . . C’mon, have you been out with signs vilifying Al-Qaeda? What would be the point? Who needs persuading of this? You’re not soft on Al-Qaeda, you just know we already all agree. Same with me. If I thought I had even a single reader who needed persuading that Al-Qaeda is the enemy, I would rail against Al-Qaeda daily. My thrust has simply been that Cheney is wrong (I don’t think I’ve ever called him evil) . . . that the way to defeat terrorism is not to play into Al-Qaeda’s hands by invading Iraq or by humiliating prisoners in Abu Ghraib or by torturing them when many experts think traditional interrogation methods are more effective. (Question: in your view, was the waterboarding we were doing torture?) Mike Martin: “I had to point out one little omission in your torture story. The biggest reason we should not torture is that when enemy soldiers or terrorists are cornered, you can forget about capturing them if they know they are going to be tortured. They are likely to either fight to the finish or do some suicidal response. I have an acquaintance who was in psyops in Vietnam. It was his job to talk Viet Cong into surrendering, often from tunnels and caves where it was very dangerous to try and get to them. Because we had a reputation for treating prisoners well, they were more inclined to surrender. We were able to interrogate those who did give up and retrieve valuable information. As a former Marine, I don’t want to go into battles when I can get the enemy to give up. The people who believe in torture have no conception of military reality. Torture results in Americans dying. There is no other way to put it.” Matt Ball: “In WW II, the Japanese homeland was under attack. Thousands were being killed every day. Yet the US determined that Japanese waterboarding was torture and executed those who did the torture. Meanwhile, this is worth a link, for those who assume anyone we abuse had it coming.”