Year: 2010

FLOR DOTS

Click here to design your own floor. It’s fun. You can get samples before you commit. And when the tiles do arrive, laying them down is so easy that even I succeeded at doing it. Charles was amazed.

GETTING BY ON $1 MILLION A YEAR

‘Trust me,’ RNC Chair Michael Steele says. ‘After taxes, a million dollars is not a lot of money.’

☞ This from a party whose most recent presidential candidate couldn’t remember how many houses he owned.

Listen: I’m all for wealth and the wealthy. ‘More power to them,’ as the saying goes. Just not more political power.

CHINA – EVEN MORE THAN WE THINK

In 30 years, according to Robert Fogel in Foreign Policy, China will represent 40% of world GDP (to our 14%).

To the extent his assessment holds (‘How did this guy get a Nobel prize?’ reads one of the many skeptical comments you’ll find appended) – and to the extent the Chinese can achieve this growth in an environmentally benign way (a huge challenge) – it’s all good. The more prosperous the Chinese, the more they’ll be able to purchase our stuff. Wheat, DVDs, jumbo jets . . . and the shares of stock in our 401k’s we’ll be selling to finance our retirements.

Even assuming that his $123 trillion China 2040 GDP estimate is way off, his argument is interesting. In part:

What, precisely, does China have going so right for it?

The first essential factor that is often overlooked: the enormous investment China is making in education. More educated workers are much more productive workers. (As I have reported elsewhere, U.S. data indicate that college-educated workers are three times as productive, and a high school graduate is 1.8 times as productive, as a worker with less than a ninth-grade education.) . . . In 1998 . . . just 3.4 million students were enrolled in China’s colleges and universities. . . . Over the next four years, enrollment in higher education increased 165%, and the number of Chinese studying abroad rose 152%. . . . I forecast that China will be able to increase its high school enrollment rate to the neighborhood of 100 percent and the college rate to about 50 percent over the next generation, which would by itself add more than 6 percentage points to the country’s annual economic growth rate. These targets for higher education are not out of reach. It should be remembered that several Western European countries saw college enrollment rates climb from about 25 to 50 percent in just the last two decades of the 20th century.

The second thing many underestimate when making projections for China’s economy is the continued role of the rural sector. . . .

Third, though it’s a common refrain that Chinese data are flawed or deliberately inflated in key ways, Chinese statisticians may well be underestimating economic progress. . . .

Fourth, and most surprising to some, the Chinese political system is likely not what you think. Although outside observers often assume that Beijing is always at the helm, most economic reforms, including the most successful ones, have been locally driven and overseen. And though China most certainly is not an open democracy, there’s more criticism and debate in upper echelons of policymaking than many realize. . . .

For instance, there is an annual meeting of Chinese economists called the Chinese Economists Society. I have participated in many of them. There are people in attendance who are very critical of the Chinese government — and very openly so. Of course, they are not going to say “down with Hu Jintao,” but they may point out that the latest decision by the finance ministry is flawed or raise concerns about a proposed adjustment to the prices of electricity and coal, or call attention to issues of equity. They might even publish a critical letter in a Beijing newspaper. Then the Chinese finance minister might actually call them up and say: “Will you get some of your people together? We would like to have some of our people meet with you and find out more about what you are thinking.” Many people don’t realize such back-and-forth occurs in Beijing. In this sense, Chinese economic planning has become much more responsive and open to new ideas than it was in the past.

Finally, people don’t give enough credit to China’s long-repressed consumerist tendencies. In many ways, China is the most capitalist country in the world right now. In the big Chinese cities, living standards and per capita income are at the level of countries the World Bank would deem “high middle income,” already higher, for example, than that of the Czech Republic. In those cities there is already a high standard of living, and even alongside the vaunted Chinese propensity for saving, a clear and growing affinity for acquiring clothes, electronics, fast food, automobiles — all a glimpse into China’s future. Indeed, the government has made the judgment that increasing domestic consumption will be critical to China’s economy, and a host of domestic policies now aim to increase Chinese consumers’ appetite for acquisitions. . . .

☞ Stay in school, kids.

FUSION

You think your microwave is impressive? Baked potatoes in 7 minutes? Imagine being able to bring 50 Olympic swimming pools to a boil in one second. That’s the kind of ooomph it takes to ignite nuclear fusion (so stand back and wear sunglasses), which is quite evidently something I don’t understand. But (thanks, James Musters) . . . Laser Fusion Test Results Raise Energy Hopes.

NESPRESSPO

Andrew Long: “My wife gave me a Nespresso machine for Christmas and I love it. Even if the quality of the coffee made by the jury-rigged capsules is equal. (I don’t know if it is or isn’t.) Even if the jury-rigged capsules do not materially reduce the useful life of the machine. (I don’t know if they do or don’t.) According to the video’s timer, it takes 1:16 to refill the capsule – let’s call it a minute. That means you have to spend an extra minute to save $0.40 or $24/hour. What’s your time worth?”

☞ The same $2.15 an hour it was when I got my first job collating and stapling the pages of the student calendar. No matter what I do, it always seems to work out to $2.15 an hour.

THE PRESIDENT LAST EVENING

If you can’t remember what the Administration got done last year, listen as the President thanked donors last night at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

(The principal thing those donors had come together to help fund was the DNC’s central project, Organizing for America. Here’s a four-minute clip explaining what that is.)

EARLIER IN THE DAY . . .

. . . he addressed the National Prayer Breakfast. His theme, once he got into the thick of it, was civility:

. . . We haven’t seen any canings on the floor of the Senate any time recently. (Laughter.) So we shouldn’t over-romanticize the past. But there is a sense that something is different now; that something is broken; that those of us in Washington are not serving the people as well as we should. At times, it seems like we’re unable to listen to one another; to have at once a serious and civil debate. And this erosion of civility in the public square sows division and distrust among our citizens. It poisons the well of public opinion. It leaves each side little room to negotiate with the other. It makes politics an all-or-nothing sport, where one side is either always right or always wrong when, in reality, neither side has a monopoly on truth. And then we lose sight of the children without food and the men without shelter and the families without health care.

Empowered by faith, consistently, prayerfully, we need to find our way back to civility. That begins with stepping out of our comfort zones in an effort to bridge divisions. We see that in many conservative pastors who are helping lead the way to fix our broken immigration system. It’s not what would be expected from them, and yet they recognize, in those immigrant families, the face of God. We see that in the evangelical leaders who are rallying their congregations to protect our planet. We see it in the increasing recognition among progressives that government can’t solve all of our problems, and that talking about values like responsible fatherhood and healthy marriage are integral to any anti-poverty agenda. Stretching out of our dogmas, our prescribed roles along the political spectrum, that can help us regain a sense of civility.

Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable; understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, that “civility is not a sign of weakness.” Now, I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. (Laughter.) But surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith, or, for that matter, my citizenship. (Laughter and applause.)

Challenging each other’s ideas can renew our democracy. But when we challenge each other’s motives, it becomes harder to see what we hold in common. We forget that we share at some deep level the same dreams — even when we don’t share the same plans on how to fulfill them.

We may disagree about the best way to reform our health care system, but surely we can agree that no one ought to go broke when they get sick in the richest nation on Earth. We can take different approaches to ending inequality, but surely we can agree on the need to lift our children out of ignorance; to lift our neighbors from poverty. We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are — whether it’s here in the United States or, as Hillary mentioned, more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda.

Surely we can agree to find common ground when possible, parting ways when necessary. But in doing so, let us be guided by our faith, and by prayer. For while prayer can buck us up when we are down, keep us calm in a storm; while prayer can stiffen our spines to surmount an obstacle — and I assure you I’m praying a lot these days — (laughter) — prayer can also do something else. It can touch our hearts with humility. It can fill us with a spirit of brotherhood. It can remind us that each of us are children of an awesome and loving God.

Through faith, but not through faith alone, we can unite people to serve the common good. And that’s why my Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships has been working so hard since I announced it here last year. We’ve slashed red tape and built effective partnerships on a range of uses, from promoting fatherhood here at home to spearheading interfaith cooperation abroad. And through that office we’ve turned the faith-based initiative around to find common ground among people of all beliefs, allowing them to make an impact in a way that’s civil and respectful of difference and focused on what matters most.

It is this spirit of civility that we are called to take up when we leave here today. That’s what I’m praying for. I know in difficult times like these — when people are frustrated, when pundits start shouting and politicians start calling each other names — it can seem like a return to civility is not possible, like the very idea is a relic of some bygone era. The word itself seems quaint — civility.

But let us remember those who came before; those who believed in the brotherhood of man even when such a faith was tested. Remember Dr. Martin Luther King. Not long after an explosion ripped through his front porch, his wife and infant daughter inside, he rose to that pulpit in Montgomery and said, “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”

In the eyes of those who denied his humanity, he saw the face of God.

Remember Abraham Lincoln. On the eve of the Civil War, with states seceding and forces gathering, with a nation divided half slave and half free, he rose to deliver his first Inaugural and said, “We are not enemies, but friends… Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

Even in the eyes of confederate soldiers, he saw the face of God.

Remember William Wilberforce, whose Christian faith led him to seek slavery’s abolition in Britain; he was vilified, derided, attacked; but he called for “lessening prejudices [and] conciliating good-will, and thereby making way for the less obstructed progress of truth.”

In the eyes of those who sought to silence a nation’s conscience, he saw the face of God.

Yes, there are crimes of conscience that call us to action. Yes, there are causes that move our hearts and offenses that stir our souls. But progress doesn’t come when we demonize opponents. It’s not born in righteous spite. Progress comes when we open our hearts, when we extend our hands, when we recognize our common humanity. Progress comes when we look into the eyes of another and see the face of God. That we might do so — that we will do so all the time, not just some of the time — is my fervent prayer for our nation and the world.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.

ONCE THE PRESIDENT ADOPTS THEIR IDEAS, REPUBLICANS OPPOSE THEM

“This President is not just supporting Republican-friendly policies,” says Rachel Maddow, “he’s supporting actual Republicans’ actual policies. And the Republicans are voting no, against their own ideas.” The first five minutes show and tell the story.

Our government is broken when one party will not accept anything – even its own ideas – that the President proposes.

A powerful five minutes.

JOHN McCAIN IS A DISAPPOINTMENT

Leaving aside all we learn about him in Game Change, how about the Senator’s flip this week on repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell? In 2006, he said he’d defer to the military brass; if they ever came to him and said it should be repealed, well, at that point he’d seriously consider it. But when this week the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified before him that it was time to allow gays and lesbians to serve openly – an opinion buttressed the next day by former Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell – McCain decided that they should defer to his judgment instead.

SEMI-TASSE

Stephanie Hill: “Greek vs. Latin. ‘Hemi’ (in which the ‘e’ is pronounced like a long ‘a’) is a shortened version of the Greek word for half. Semi is Latin. Sphere is Latin taken from Greek. (What about ‘demisphere?’)

Daniel: “Semi – half, from Latin . . . hemi – half, from Greek . . . demi – divided in half, from Latin. Thus, demitasse – a half cup of coffee . . . semiquaver – an 1/8th note in music . . . demisemiquaver – a 16th note. Okay, I didn’t really know this answer but Google is all knowing.”

Richard Theriault: “Semi is Latin, hemi is Greek – just like homo and iso, both meaning “same.” Though there we seem to distinguish between homo as same KIND and iso as same SIZE. Most geometric names are Greek roots, as in dodecahedron, a 12-faced solid (as opposed to dodecagon, a 12-sided plane figure). Just a convention of language, in that prefixes for multiples and fractions have Greek roots. Mostly. Kilo/milli; mega/micro; tera/nano, etc. But it falls apart at lower values. We seem to stick to Latin for up to 100 and then shift to Greek. Hey, it’s English. Nobody said it has to make sense!”

OF INTEREST TO NESPRESSO USERS ONLY

Oh, my. Need I say more? (Okay, I’ll say a little more. If a pound of premium coffee costs $8 and you get 50 small roll-your-own Nespresso cups from it, then that’s 16 cents each versus 55 cents for the Nespresso pods. Three cups a day – decaf! demitasse! – and you save $400 a year. Not nothing. Although obviously, if money mattered to you, you wouldn’t have bought this expensive coffee maker in the first place.)

LAW & MORE ORDER

Alvin Bluthman: “I don’t see the negatives that Stephen G. sees in the ‘Law & Order’ TV shows. To me, they present dedicated police officers and career prosecutors at their work. Certainly these shows are ‘procedurals’ (compare with ‘cop fantasy’ shows like ‘Columbo’ and ‘Monk’), but there is really nothing like the ‘powerful and corrupt defense lawyers’ he references – though the defense lawyers, like the prosecutors, are obviously skilled and know how to use the legal system on behalf of their respective sides – that is the essence of good lawyering. But ‘corrupt’? How? Suborning perjury? Bribing judges or witnesses? (Though there have been stories of this nature, they are rare.) . . . To me, if there is any real fault with these shows, it is the sheer number of major crimes depicted. On one episode, Briscoe (remember Jerry Orbach?) and his partner had to work five separate murders by the end of the hour. Such a workload is incredible – just unbelievable, and simply unrealistic. ‘In New York City’s War on Crime’ (as they say), there were fewer than 500 homicides last year (of all stripes, not only murder, but manslaughter, as well as justifiable homicide – self-defense or the defense of others, and not a crime at all). With 73 police precincts, and multiple pairs of detectives in each one sufficiently experienced and trained, and so, assignable to homicides, each precinct should get ONE homicide every seven weeks or so, and one pair of homicide-assignable detectives might get one or two a year. The result is that these shows greatly overstate the crime rate in New York, which is, after all, by far, the safest large city in the country.”

SCANSNAP

Kathi D.: “Thank you for alerting me to the existence of the Fujitsu ScanSnap! I bought one and soon wondered why I didn’t already know about this thing. It’s fantastic! I’m tearing up magazines and scanning the parts I want, allowing me to dump a whole lot of clutter – in addition, of course, to the miscellaneous paperwork that I may or may not need, but was holding onto ‘just in case.’ By the way, I bought the ScanSnap S300, teeny-tiny and only $250 from amazon.com. My husband first gave me the withering look that says, ‘Not another gadget,’ but soon was scanning everything in sight for himself.”

☞ If you spring for this – or the heftier S1500 model I bought – be sure to get the correct version: PC or Mac.

THE LONG ROAD BACK TOWARD FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY

Every journey begins with a single step, and ours began this week. Officially titled General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 Revenue Proposals, behold: the 153-page Greenbook. Or just settle for the President’s overview Monday:

REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
ON THE BUDGET
Grand Foyer
February 1, 2010
10:40 A.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning, everybody. This morning, I sent a budget to Congress for the coming year. It’s a budget that reflects the serious challenges facing the country. We’re at war. Our economy has lost 7 million jobs over the last two years. And our government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy.

The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching out toward the horizon.

Yet over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy, and funded two wars without paying for any of it — all of which was compounded by recession and by rising health care costs. As a result, when I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion, with projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade.

If we had taken office during ordinary times, we would have started bringing down these deficits immediately. But one year ago, our country was in crisis: We were losing nearly 700,000 jobs each month, the economy was in a free fall, and the financial system was near collapse.

Many feared another Great Depression. So we initiated a rescue, and that rescue was not without significant cost; it added to the deficit as well.

One year later, because of the steps we’ve taken, we’re in a very different place. But we can’t simply move beyond this crisis; we have to address the irresponsibility that led to it. And that includes the failure to rein in spending, as well a reliance on borrowing — from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street — to fuel our growth. That’s what we have to change. We have to do what families across America are doing: Save where we can so that we can afford what we need.

Now, I think it’s very important to understand: We won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight, given that the recovery is still taking hold and families across the country still need help. We will continue, for example, to do what it takes to create jobs. That’s reflected in my budget; it’s essential. The budget includes new tax cuts for people who invest in small businesses, tax credits for small businesses that hire new workers, investments that will create jobs repairing roads and bridges, and tax breaks for retrofitting homes to save energy.

We also continue to lay a new foundation for lasting growth, which is essential as well. Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children’s future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century.

That’s why we build on the largest investment in clean energy in history, as well as increase investment in scientific research, so that we are fostering the industries and jobs of the future right here in America.

That’s why I’ve proposed a more than 6 percent increase in funding for the Education Department. And this funding is tied to reforms that raise student achievement, inspire students to excel in math and science, and turn around failing schools which consign too many young people to a lesser future — because in the 21st century there is no better anti-poverty program than a world-class education.

And that’s why we eliminate a wasteful subsidy to banks that lend to college students, and use that money to revitalize community colleges and make college more affordable. This will help us reach the goal I’ve set for America: By 2020 we will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

These are the investments we must make to create jobs and opportunity now and in the future. And in a departure from the way business had been done in Washington, we actually show how we pay for these investments while putting our country on a more fiscally sustainable path.

I’ve proposed a freeze in government spending for three years. This won’t apply to the benefits folks get through Social Security, Medicaid, or Medicare. And it won’t apply to our national security — including benefits for veterans. But it will apply to all other discretionary government programs. And we’re not simply photocopying last year’s budget; freezing spending does not mean we won’t cut what doesn’t work to pay for what does.

We have gone through every department’s spending line by line, item by item, looking for inefficiency, duplication, and programs that have outlived their usefulness. That’s how we freeze discretionary spending. Last year, we found $17 billion in cuts. This year, we’ve already found $20 billion.

Now, some of these cuts are just common sense. For example, we cut $115 million from a program that pays states to clean up mines that have already been cleaned up. We’re also cutting a Forest Service economic development program that strayed so far from any mission that it funded a music festival. And we’re saving $20 million by stopping the refurbishment of a Department of Energy science center that the Department of Energy does not want to refurbish.

Other cuts, though, are more painful, because the goals of the underlying programs are worthy. We eliminate one program that provides grants to do environmental cleanup of abandoned buildings. That’s a mission I support, but there are other sources of private and public funds to achieve it. We also eliminated a $120 million program that allows folks to get their Earned Income Tax Credit in advance. I am a big supporter of the Earned Income Tax Credit. The problem is 80 percent of people who got this advance didn’t comply with one or more of the program’s requirements.

So I’m willing to reduce waste in programs I care about, and I’m asking members of Congress to do the same. I’m asking Republicans and Democrats alike to take a fresh look at programs they’ve supported in the past to see what’s working and what’s not, and trim back accordingly.

Like any business, we’re also looking for ways to get more bang for our buck, by promoting innovation and cutting red tape. For example, we consolidate 38 separate education programs into 11. And last fall, we launched the “SAVE Awards” to solicit ideas from federal employees about how make government more efficient and more effective. I’m proud to say that a number of these ideas — like allowing Social Security appointments to be made online — made it into our budget.

I also want to note even though the Department of Defense is exempt from the budget freeze, it’s not exempt from budget common sense. It’s not exempt from looking for savings. We save money by eliminating unnecessary defense programs that do nothing to keep us safe. One example is the $2.5 billion that we’re spending to build C-17 transport aircraft. Four years ago, the Defense Department decided to cease production because it had acquired the number requested — 180. Yet every year since, Congress had provided unrequested money for more C-17s that the Pentagon doesn’t want or need. It’s waste, pure and simple.

And there are other steps we’re taking to rein in deficits. I’ve proposed a fee on big banks to pay back taxpayers for the bailout. We’re reforming the way contracts are awarded, to save taxpayers billions of dollars. And while we extend middle-class tax cuts in this budget, we will not continue costly tax cuts for oil companies, investment fund managers, and those making over $250,000 a year. We just can’t afford it.

Finally, changing spending-as-usual depends on changing politics-as-usual. And that’s why I’ve proposed a bipartisan fiscal commission: a panel of Democrats and Republicans who would hammer out concrete deficit reduction proposals over the medium and long term, but would come up with those answers by a certain deadline. I should point out, by the way, that is an idea that had strong bipartisan support, was originally introduced by Senators Gregg on the Republican side and Conrad on the Democratic side; had a lot of Republican cosponsors to the idea. I hope that, despite the fact that it got voted down in the Senate, that both the Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican Leader in the House John Boehner go ahead and fully embrace what has been a bipartisan idea to get our arms around this budget.

That’s also why we’re restoring pay-as-you-go: a simple rule that says Congress can’t spend a dime without cutting a dime elsewhere. This rule helped lead to the budget surpluses of the 1990s, and it’s one of the most important steps we can take to restore fiscal discipline in Washington.

You can read more about the budget at budget.gov — very easy to remember — budget.gov. But the bottom line is this: We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation. We can’t.

In order to meet this challenge, I welcome any idea, from Democrats and Republicans. What I will not welcome — what I reject — is the same old grandstanding when the cameras are on, and the same irresponsible budget policies when the cameras are off. It’s time to hold Washington to the same standards families and businesses hold themselves. It’s time to save what we can, spend what we must, and live within our means once again.

Thanks very much.

Tomorrow or Soon: Semi, Hemi, Demi and Other Loose Ends

LAW & ORDER

Stephen G.: “You cite ‘Law and Order’ as an example of good TV? As an actual lawyer, who’s been in courtrooms, and dealt with police and DAs, I have to say that L&A is an insidious, evil, representation of our ‘criminal justice’ system. It portrays a system where evil, brilliant criminals and their powerful and corrupt defense lawyers make it almost impossible to obtain a conviction, and that only the dedication and courage of the overmatched prosecutors and cops saves the day. I hate to resort to arcane legalisms, but THIS IS CRAP, and almost exactly opposite reality. /SIGNED ‘A lawyer in California, home of the life sentence for shoplifting.’”

BOREALIS

Ah, Borealis.

One of the stumbling blocks to my plutocratude has been Boeing’s skepticism that the APU on its airplanes – the “auxiliary power unit” that powers the lights and air conditioning when the aircraft is on the ground – would have enough juice left over to power the WheelTug™ motors we hope to imbed in their nose wheels.

(WheelTug is a subsidiary of Chorus Motors which is a subsidiary of Borealis which I told you, in 1999, was “a stock that’s surely going to zero” even though I had – unable to control my demons – bought a ridiculous lot of shares in it.)

And you would think Boeing would know a little something about this.

But it now turns out there is plenty of power after all. A couple of weeks ago, Delta made available a jet for testing to see just how much juice the APU does have to spare.

The press release begins:

WHEELTUG ANNOUNCES SUCCESSFUL ELECTRIC LOAD TEST ON BOEING B737NG

February 1, 2010 – WheelTug Limited with partner Co-Operative Industries, reported today the successful completion of an Electrical Load Measurement (ELM) development test on a Boeing B737NG. The tests confirm sufficient power is available to operate a WheelTug®.

The tests were conducted in January at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, GA in the presence of independent observers.

☞ The full release will likely leave you with a lot of obvious questions.

The answers are (in order): “Good question.” “Who knows?” “Wouldn’t you think?” “It’s a mystery!” “I know! I keep asking that myself!” and “Well, it took winglets a ridiculous number of years to be accepted, too, yet now they’re in wide use.”

The stock, symbol BOREF, trades just a few hundred shares on a typical day. Under no circumstances should you enter a “market” order to buy or sell it. You need to enter a “limit” on the price you are willing to pay or accept.

It remains highly speculative; at under $3, it’s about a dollar cheaper than it was in 1999; I still own a ridiculous lot of shares.

THE PRESIDENT AND THE REPUBLICANS

Again I link to Friday’s give-and-take. If you are a history buff or care to take the measure of the man you elected (or voted against) . . . if you are engrossed in the Grand Puzzle . . . how the game of governance can be won for the American people and how we can navigate our way back to prosperity and a modicum of common purpose . . . well, then, you shouldn’t miss this. As one of my friends put it, “The President spent an hour taking questions from House Republicans at their annual retreat. The level of skill, intelligence, expertise and political sophistication he demonstrated throughout was incredible.”

Tomorrow: The Long Road Back to Fiscal Responsibility

THE PRESIDENT AND THE REPUBLICANS

I’ll link to Friday’s give-and-take – in case you missed it – again tomorrow. As one of my friends put it, “The level of skill, intelligence, expertise and political sophistication the President demonstrated throughout was incredible.”

Today, though . . .

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH DEMOCRATS

Here’s a pretty plausible explanation of mistakes we Democrats make in communicating our message. We use numbers and logic; they use stories. We’re generally right; they’re generally effective. (“Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense – but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.”)

I BLAME MYSELF

If I weren’t always so far behind*, I would have read Atul Gawande’s piece in the December 14 New Yorker the first week in December, and I would have linked you to it and you would have linked all your friends, and, along the way someone would have persuaded Martha Coakley to campaign (and told her who Curt Schilling is, though it obviously couldn’t have been me, having just learned myself … though I did once meet Bobby Orr, which I know is different, but not that much different), and we would have “passed health care” before the State of the Union.

*For that, I blame Mad Man and Modern Family and The Office and 30 Rock and 24 and – well, I don’t blame Rachel Maddow or Jon Stewart or Steven Colbert or 60 Minutes, because, zooming past the commercials with Tivo, there is no better use of time – you know the kind of shows I mean. Dexter, Desperate Housewives, Law and Order, CBS Sunday Morning. It is a golden age.

So it’s on me, but now it’s on you to read the piece yourself.

Gawande, by the way, is the same guy who did the pieces previously linked to on hospital checklists (using them makes a dramatic difference in the quality of care) and, later, on McAllen Texas versus El Paso (the demographics are similar, yet health care costs in McAllen are much higher because most McAllen docs view their calling as a business).

His overall point is that the myriad pilot programs in the health care bill are just what the doctor ordered – and can lead to the same kind of dramatic improvements in U.S. health care as they did, a century ago, in U.S. agriculture.

See what you think (and subscribe to the New Yorker!) . . .

Testing, Testing
The health-care bill has no master plan for curbing costs. Is that a bad thing?
by Atul Gawande

December 14, 2009

Cost is the spectre haunting health reform. For many decades, the great flaw in the American health-care system was its unconscionable gaps in coverage. Those gaps have widened to become graves—resulting in an estimated forty-five thousand premature deaths each year—and have forced more than a million people into bankruptcy. The emerging health-reform package has a master plan for this problem. By establishing insurance exchanges, mandates, and tax credits, it would guarantee that at least ninety-four per cent of Americans had decent medical coverage. This is historic, and it is necessary. But the legislation has no master plan for dealing with the problem of soaring medical costs. And this is a source of deep unease.

Health-care costs are strangling our country. Medical care now absorbs eighteen per cent of every dollar we earn. Between 1999 and 2009, the average annual premium for employer-sponsored family insurance coverage rose from $5,800 to $13,400, and the average cost per Medicare beneficiary went from $5,500 to $11,900. The costs of our dysfunctional health-care system have already helped sink our auto industry, are draining state and federal coffers, and could ultimately imperil our ability to sustain universal coverage.

What have we gained by paying more than twice as much for medical care as we did a decade ago? The health-care sector certainly employs more people and more machines than it did. But there have been no great strides in service. In Western Europe, most primary-care practices now use electronic health records and offer after-hours care; in the United States, most don’t. Improvement in demonstrated medical outcomes has been modest in most fields. The reason the system is a money drain is not that it’s so successful but that it’s fragmented, disorganized, and inconsistent; it’s neglectful of low-profit services like mental-health care, geriatrics, and primary care, and almost giddy in its overuse of high-cost technologies such as radiology imaging, brand-name drugs, and many elective procedures.

At the current rate of increase, the cost of family insurance will reach twenty-seven thousand dollars or more in a decade, taking more than a fifth of every dollar that people earn. Businesses will see their health-coverage expenses rise from ten per cent of total labor costs to seventeen per cent. Health-care spending will essentially devour all our future wage increases and economic growth. State budget costs for health care will more than double, and Medicare will run out of money in just eight years. The cost problem, people have come to realize, threatens not just our prosperity but our solvency.

So what does the reform package do about it? Turn to page 621 of the Senate version, the section entitled “Transforming the Health Care Delivery System,” and start reading. Does the bill end medicine’s destructive piecemeal payment system? Does it replace paying for quantity with paying for quality? Does it institute nationwide structural changes that curb costs and raise quality? It does not. Instead, what it offers is . . . pilot programs.

This has provided a soft target for critics. “Two thousand seventy-four pages and trillions of dollars later,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate Minority Leader, said recently, “this bill doesn’t even meet the basic goal that the American people had in mind and what they thought this debate was all about: to lower costs.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill makes no significant long-term cost reductions. Even Democrats have become nervous. For many, the hope of reform was to re-form the health-care system. If nothing is done, the United States is on track to spend an unimaginable ten trillion dollars more on health care in the next decade than it currently spends, hobbling government, growth, and employment. Where we crave sweeping transformation, however, all the current bill offers is those pilot programs, a battery of small-scale experiments. The strategy seems hopelessly inadequate to solve a problem of this magnitude. And yet—here’s the interesting thing—history suggests otherwise.

At the start of the twentieth century, another indispensable but unmanageably costly sector was strangling the country: agriculture. In 1900, more than forty per cent of a family’s income went to paying for food. At the same time, farming was hugely labor-intensive, tying up almost half the American workforce. We were, partly as a result, still a poor nation. Only by improving the productivity of farming could we raise our standard of living and emerge as an industrial power. We had to reduce food costs, so that families could spend money on other goods, and resources could flow to other economic sectors. And we had to make farming less labor-dependent, so that more of the population could enter non-farming occupations and support economic growth and development.

America’s agricultural crisis gave rise to deep national frustration. The inefficiency of farms meant low crop yields, high prices, limited choice, and uneven quality. The agricultural system was fragmented and disorganized, and ignored evidence showing how things could be done better. Shallow plowing, no crop rotation, inadequate seedbeds, and other habits sustained by lore and tradition resulted in poor production and soil exhaustion. And lack of coordination led to local shortages of many crops and overproduction of others.

You might think that the invisible hand of market competition would have solved these problems, that the prospect of higher income from improved practices would have encouraged change. But laissez-faire had not worked. Farmers relied so much on human muscle because it was cheap and didn’t require the long-term investment that animal power and machinery did. The fact that land, too, was cheap encouraged extensive, almost careless cultivation. When the soil became exhausted, farmers simply moved; most tracts of farmland were occupied for five years or less. Those who didn’t move tended to be tenant farmers, who paid rent to their landlords in either cash or crops, which also discouraged long-term investment. And there was a deep-seated fear of risk and the uncertainties of change; many farmers dismissed new ideas as “book farming.”

Things were no better elsewhere in the world. For industrializing nations in the first half of the twentieth century, food was the fundamental problem. The desire for a once-and-for-all fix led Communist governments to take over and run vast “scientific” farms and collectives.  We know what that led to: widespread famines and tens of millions of deaths.

The United States did not seek a grand solution.  Private farms remained, along with the considerable advantages of individual initiative. Still, government was enlisted to help millions of farmers change the way they worked. The approach succeeded almost shockingly well.  The resulting abundance of goods in our grocery stores and the leaps in our standard of living became the greatest argument for America around the world.  And, as the agricultural historian Roy V. Scott recounted, four decades ago, in his remarkable study “The Reluctant Farmer,” it all started with a pilot program.

In February, 1903, Seaman Knapp arrived in the East Texas town of Terrell to talk to the local farmers.  He was what we’d today deride as a government bureaucrat . . . he worked for the United States Department of Agriculture.  Earlier in his life, he had been a farmer himself and a professor of agriculture at Iowa State College.  He had also been a pastor, a bank president, and an entrepreneur, who once brought twenty-five thousand settlers to southwest Louisiana to farm for an English company that had bought a million and a half acres of land there. Then he got a position at the U.S.D.A. as an “agricultural explorer,” travelling across Asia and collecting seeds for everything from alfalfa to persimmons, not to mention a variety of rice that proved more productive than any that we’d had. The U.S.D.A. now wanted him to get farmers to farm differently. And he had an idea . . .

☞  It’s a wonderful story, filled with hope, and worth reading to the end.

(And tort reform?  Sensibly done, with very high caps, if any, on the worst pain and suffering, I’m for it.  That will come, too, but likely not this year.  Except maybe some pilot programs.)

INFRASTRUCTURE

I never attended the opening of a highway before, and technically, this one opened Wednesday, so if there was a ceremony, I missed it. But it now takes just two and a half hours to drive from the San Jose, Costa Rica, airport all the way to Paradise Breezes.* I am watching the sun set into the Pacific as I type. The bridges are no longer scary or one-way – they are brand new. The highway has red and yellow reflectors. The free broadband at PB seems to be working fine (if you’re reading this, something must be working); and – oops, there goes the sun.

* Full disclosure: I own a piece.

JEREMY GRANTHAM: SEVEN LEAN YEARS

Well, he’s horrifyingly smart and generally right (and writes so engagingly). If you want a first-class financial overview and predictions for the years ahead, don’t miss a word.

STATE OF ThE UNION: REAGAN’S FIRST

Peter Kaczowka: “As to Obama blaming the previous administration for our woes, let’s see what REAGAN said in his first State of the Union. The speech is a study in whining and kvetching: ‘In my inaugural address last year, I warned that the “ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months.” ’ … ‘Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that is only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe. They are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, spend and spend.’ … ‘The situation at this time last year was truly ominous.’ … ‘The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us a trillion dollar debt.’ [Reagan fixed that, it was $2.6T when he left office].”

STATE OF THE UNION: OBAMA’S FIRST

Did you watch? If not, balance your laptop on the handle bars of your treadmill and click here. Everyone (I repeat) will see it through his own eyes. To mine, it was filled with grace, good will, intelligence, quiet determination, and hope for the future.

STATE OF THE UNION

Did you watch? If not, you can now. Everyone will see it through his own eyes. To mine, it was filled with grace, good will, intelligence, quiet determination, and hope for the future.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE TO FIX OUR FINANCIAL SYSTEM

One of the areas the President addressed was the need to reform our financial system. He might not agree with everything in this analysis from John Hussman, but most of it is spot on.

THE REPUBLICAN RESPONSE

“All Americans – unless they are gay – should have the opportunity to find and keep meaningful work, and the dignity that comes with it,” intoned the newly elected Governor of Virginia, offering the official Republican response. Well, okay, he did not literally add “unless they are gay,” but Republicans vote overwhelmingly against extending employment nondiscrimination laws to cover LGBT Americans, which amounts to much the same thing; and John McCain issued an immediate statement disagreeing with the President’s call for lifting the ban on our “finding and keeping meaningful work, and the dignity that comes with it,” in the military.

Speaking of which . . .

GENERAL SHALIKASHVILI

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when “don’t ask/don’t tell” was enacted, he yesterday issued this statement:

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts about the Policy Concerning Homosexuality in the Armed Forces. When I was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, my support of the current policy was based on my belief that implementing a change in the rules would have been too burdensome for our troops and commanders at the time.

The concern among many at that time, was that letting people who were openly gay serve would lower morale, harm recruitment and undermine unit cohesion. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was seen as a useful measure that allowed time to pass while our culture continued to evolve. The question before us now is whether enough time has gone by to give this policy serious reconsideration. I believe that it has.

Recently, Army Secretary John McHugh said that “The Army has a big history of taking on similar issues [with]…predictions of doom and gloom that did not play out.” His conclusion echoes substantial scholarly and official military research which finds that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would not jeopardize readiness.

Studies have shown that three-quarters of service members say they are personally comfortable around gays and lesbians. Two-thirds say they already know or suspect gay people in their units. This raises important questions about the assertion that openly gay service would impair the military. In fact, it shows that gays and lesbians in the military have already been accepted by the average soldier.

Additionally, at least twenty-five foreign militaries now let gays serve openly, including our closest ally, Britain. Although we lead rather than follow these militaries, there is no evidence suggesting that our troops cannot effectively carry out the same policy change as those nations did.

In 2008, a bi-partisan panel of retired General and Flag officers carefully reviewed this matter for a year and concluded that repeal would not pose a risk to the military’s high standards of morale, discipline, cohesion, recruitment, or retention. Interestingly, an increasing number of active-duty officers who have reviewed “don’t ask, don’t tell” indicate that the policy, not the presence of gays, is detrimental to the armed forces’ need for skilled personnel who are able to serve without compromising their integrity and, by extension, that of the armed forces as a whole.

As a nation built on the principal of equality, we should recognize and welcome change that will build a stronger more cohesive military. It is time to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell” and allow our military leaders to create policy that holds our service members to a single standard of conduct and discipline.

☞ The gay thing was only half a minute in a 71-minute speech, which was a reasonable ratio when you consider the enormity of the other challenges we face. Do try to find time to watch the speech if you haven’t already.

ENGLISH

Shouldn’t it be the Western semisphere? The Southern semisphere? Think about it.

HEALTH CARE

Dave N.: “Nicoletta’s dilemma was heartbreaking. Almost all of us have or will have ‘preexisting conditions.’ I have had skin cancers and my wife has leaky heart valves and small foramen (causing pinched nerves). Luckily for us we have health insurance through her former employer. However, I can relate this anecdote. We were in New Zealand in 2003, I think it was, and she developed bronchitis (another of her chronic problems, she has it right now, in fact!). Not only did the clinic treat her for free, even though we were just tourists, but the medication they gave her (unavailable in the US even now) was the best she ever has had for the condition before or since. She was back on her feet in a day. We even tried to pay, but there was no mechanism for us to do so! Although I think that the current healthcare bills are deeply flawed, and the political process is even worse, I think something needs to be done. The current system is a disaster for many people, and ‘merely’ a pain and/or painful for the rest of us. You will love this quote by Bill Gates: ‘Governments will always play a huge part in solving big problems. They set public policy and are uniquely able to provide the resources to make sure solutions reach everyone who needs them. Markets don’t serve the poor in some important sectors, like health, because the poor can’t afford to pay.’”

TALL POLITICS

Craig Daniger: “I voted for Bush – twice. I know the Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. The lawyer in New Zealand has too much time on his hands. And the taller candidate theory is garbage. Roosevelt won 4 times in a wheelchair.”

☞ Well, then, that’s that. But for what it’s worth . . . Roosevelt was 6’2” and didn’t campaign in a wheel chair; and my point, in any event, was more general. I guess I should have said “the more attractive candidate” or “the more likable candidate” instead of “the taller candidate.” Still – being annoyingly argumentative – I note that the taller candidate apparently does more often win: 27 to 18. (I’ve adjusted for Gore, who won the popular vote. I’m not suggesting that Scalia, Thomas, et al, base their votes on height.)

David Morrison.: “You write: ‘I’m angry that Wyoming’s half a million residents have as many Senators as California’s 36 million – what idiot came up with that?’ It was James Madison, actually.”

☞ Our shortest president, by far.

SOTU

It’s 9pm Eastern time on all the major networks. Be there or be square.

Mike Koltak: “Propaganda works better than you think. The major reason ‘America’ and especially ‘Middle Class America’ is opposing health care (and many other issues), is that the Republicans have a better marketing department than the Democrats.”

☞ Mike is referring to last week’s Supreme Court ruling allowing corporations to, essentially, buy the House and Senate even more than they already do, and he offers this fascinating article from USA Today on how effective advertising really is.

In short part:

[P]sychologists have shown that people respond far more readily to propaganda, otherwise known as advertising, than they are willing to believe:

• Just giving medical students pens with a drug’s name on them made the students significantly more favorably disposed toward the medication than otherwise, despite their immersion in classes aimed at letting them rationally evaluate drug benefits, found a 2009 Archives of Internal Medicine report.

• Remember shaking hands with Bugs Bunny at Disneyland? Roughly a third of people presented with a fake ad depicting a visit to Disneyland that featured a handshake with Bugs later remembered or knew the meet up with the ‘wascally wabbit’ had happened to them, according to a 2001 University of Washington study. Even though Bugs is owned by Warner Brothers and verboten at a Disney facility, so it couldn’t have happened.

• In a famous 1951 experiment led by Swarthmore’s Solomon Asch, 76% of people conformed at least once to what they heard other people arguing was the correct length of a line on a scale right in front of their face, even though it was plainly wrong. The people arguing for the incorrect measurement were all plants, but overall, 33% of participants went along with the group, even though they were spouting nonsense. A follow-up study in a 1955 Journal of Abnormal Psychology report found even under anonymous conditions, about 23% of people preferred to believe what people were saying about the line rather than the evidence in front of their own eyes.

“If you are inclined to believe that people do all their thinking rationally, then you might accept that more information is better, and that eventually the good information will drive out the bad,” says journalist Shankar Vedantam, author of the just-released The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives. “Unfortunately, there is a small warehouse full of research showing it is an error to believe we live according to reason. Rather we make decisions with our unconscious.”

☞ Which brings me back to my earlier assertion, that “the taller candidate usually wins,” which some of you found offensive but was my shorthand for: the electoral decision process is not entirely rational or well informed. E.g., 70% of Bush voters – including Sarah Palin, we learn from Game Change – believed Iraq attacked us on 9/11.

THOUGHTS FROM MILAN: HEALTH CARE

Nicoletta: “I am an American who lives in Milan. I came here 10 years ago to work as an independent contractor in IT for banks. Over the last few years I have developed metastatic breast cancer and have been treated by the excellent Italian health system, rated the second best in the world. It is a big LIE what some say that the European (and Canadian) health systems are second rate. I have gone thru two surgeries (one very complex brain surgery), chemotherapy, radiation surgery, a complex set of tests every three months, all with the most up to date technology and excellent doctors. The system isn’t perfect, higher taxes (of course), and a bit more bureaucracy, but it is worth it. Never was I asked to pay a penny out of my pocket and I’ve always been made to feel that I, the patient, comes first. The system is very compassionate and humane. I’m feeling fine now and have been cancer free for an entire year. Now here’s the thing. For the last few years I have really wanted to return to my home town of Chicago, my parents are aging, I have a chronic disease and really want to be with family, and I want my son to grow up in America. But, I CANNOT GET HEALTH INSURANCE BECAUSE I HAVE A PREEXISTING CONDITION. The only way is to give up my small business and become an employee of some company, something I don’t want to do. So even though I can afford to buy my own insurance, I just remain in Italy and wait for the system to improve. I love my country and really believe that we can do better! We need universal health care! We really need to make this clear to everyone that will listen. Shout from the rooftops. We need universal health care! We need universal health care! We need universal health care!”

THOUGHTS FROM DOWN UNDER: DONE IN

Miles Jaffe, Harvard College, Yale Law School, is a retired attorney who winters with his wife in New Zealand. Lots of sheep, little to do but think. And here is what he thinks:

THE REPUBLICAN HEIST
By Miles Jaffe

I, like millions of others, watched the eight years of GWB government, appalled by its errant policies, incompetence and greed, but, I confess, I entirely misunderstood the plot. This was not the gang that couldn’t shoot straight; this was the most highly competent group of bank robbers since the Lavender Hill Mob.

They not only robbed the bank. They changed the bank so that even under new management, it would not detect future heists. Moreover, the bank would not have the ability to redesign its security, nor to undo changes that make future heists themselves a part of the bank’s business itself.

The Bush Administration succeeded beyond its wildest dreams. While leaving the opposition in control, it created “favorable” economic and political circumstances that even its most clever architect, Karl Rove, could not have intended.

I, of course, am aware of the “starve the beast” theory that holds that Republicans have run up huge deficits intentionally to make “Liberal” domestic programs “irresponsible.” This is only a tiny fraction of the scheme.

I owed this revelation to Thomas Frank and the publication of his recent book: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule. The mass firing of federal prosecutors, the placement of industry insiders in posts that regulate those industries, “the pallets of shrink-wrapped cash ‘misplaced’ in Iraq,” the outsourcing of traditional government work to private contractors and the broad practice of awarding contracts without bids, are the products not of incompetence but of deliberate, core conservative policies. This was not the “flood of mismanagement as part of a culture of corruption” as Democrats might have it, nor was it the product of a “few bad apples,” as Republicans might suggest. “This spectacular episode of misrule has coincided with both the political triumph of conservatism and the rise of the Washington area to the richest rank of American metropolises.”

The Bush Administration not only rewarded its buddies with policies favoring oil, with no-bid contracts to its friends: it created a fiscal situation that makes private outsourcing a necessity in the future. The bank is open for business and the large corporations will be first in line using their strong elbows to prevent major competition.

As almost a sidelight, Frank points to an ironic aspect of the scheme: not only have the conservatives devised ways to reward their corporate supporters. They have developed a political process in which the participants (talking heads, news outlets, lobbyists) themselves become rich. Conservatives, formerly bored by or indifferent to politics and to life in Washington, can now participate in politics as entrepreneurs! Politics has become like oil: a fecund soil for profitable businesses. (See Fox News) Thus conservatives are drawn to Washington to influence government while in and out of power, making Washington, as Frank notes, America’s richest city.

Frank concludes:

“The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job. Repairing it will require years of political action.”

Even the Iraq war has done yeoman service in keeping the bank open for future corporate plundering and government incapacity. It has increased the power and importance of the military but more importantly, right out of Orwellian fantasy, it has created conditions for the “Long War” to which Republicans are so devoted. It has established in practice the Orwellian ideal of a war that has no ending and can never be evaluated. And who benefits from an endless war? And what institution is crippled by its continuance?

Then one might talk about the closure rules in the United States Senate where we now have learned that states with 11 percent of the population can control 41 votes to prevent any significant policy change.

And perhaps the final nail, the ultimate product of the Bush Administration: The Supreme Court five member majority in last week’s ruling in Citizens United has invalidated restrictions on corporate political speech. The Chief Justice has given up all claims to taking a narrow approach to matters coming before the court. Under his leadership, the Court has stretched its reach to throw out 100 years—if not 200 years—of distinguishing between human and corporate political speech. Even Karl Rove did not dream of this, I presume.

So the conservatives have taken the money and left the bank, leaving the bank both destitute and encumbered with endless, unchangeable obligations. And upon looking back at the bank, these same conservatives are venting their feigned anger at the inability of new management to rebuild the structure, not even acknowledging their role in its incapacity. And the final irony: the other bank customers are angry at new management and apparently oblivious to the existence of a heist. Some of us might ask, with reference to Frank’s earlier book, What’s the Matter with Kansas, what’s the matter with America?