The Pacific Crest Trail September 6, 2013September 3, 2013 This column speaks to our insane failure to maintain national infrastructure. Better to keep people unemployed, apparently, than raise the needed tax revenue as we always used to until Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush made lowering taxes for the wealthy our top national priority. Afraid of bears, I hand the microphone to the estimable Nick Kristof. Beauty and the Beasts By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF August 31, 2013 DURING an August vacation with my family, I enjoyed lodgings so spectacular that not even Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could ever buy or rent them. The scenery was some of America’s finest: snowcapped mountains, alpine lakes, babbling brooks. The cost? It was free. We were enjoying some of America’s public lands, backpacking through our national patrimony. No billionaire can acquire these lands because they remain — even in a nation where economic disparities have soared — a rare democratic space. The only one who could pull rank on you at a camping spot is a grizzly bear. “This is the most beautiful place in the world,” my 15-year-old daughter mused beside a turquoise lake framed by towering fir trees. She and I were hiking 200-plus miles on the Pacific Crest Trail, joined for shorter bits by my wife and sons. We imbibed from glacier-fed creeks, startled elk, and dallied beside alpine meadows so dazzling that they constitute an argument for the existence of God. At night, if rain didn’t threaten, we spread our sleeping bags under the open sky — miles from any other human — and fell asleep counting shooting stars. You want to understand the concept of a “public good”? It’s exemplified by our nation’s wilderness trails. In some ways, this wilderness is thriving. Cheryl Strayed’s best-selling book “Wild,” about her long backpack on the Pacific Crest Trail, has inspired hordes of young women to try the trails. Reese Witherspoon is starring in a movie of “Wild,” made by her production company, and that will undoubtedly send even more out to feed the mosquitoes. The talk of the trail this year was of a woman named Heather Anderson who shattered a record by backpacking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, without support, in 61 days. That’s nearly 44 miles a day over tough terrain. She says she graduated from high school at 200 pounds and found purpose — and lost 70 pounds — on the trails. On this trek, she had encounters with five rattlesnakes, eight bears and four mountain lions. (For more on Heather Anderson’s extraordinary journey, visit my blog at kristof.blogs.nytimes.com.) Yet America’s public goods, from our parks to “Sesame Street,” are besieged today by budget-cutters, and it’s painful to hike some trails now. You see lovingly constructed old bridges that have collapsed. Trails disturbed by avalanches have not been rebuilt, and signs are missing. “Infrastructure is really crumbling,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, herself a backpacker, told me. She notes that foreign tourists come to visit America’s “crown jewels” like Yosemite and are staggered by the beauty — and flummoxed by the broken toilets. It’s even worse at the Forest Service, which is starved of funds partly because firefighting is eating up its budgets. The Forest Service has estimated that only one-quarter of its 158,000 miles of trails meet its own standards. About once a year, my family hikes the spectacular Timberline Trail, constructed in the Great Depression around Mount Hood in Oregon as a public works project. But one section washed out in 2006, and it still hasn’t officially reopened. What our ancestors were able to create when we were a poor country, we are unable to sustain even now that we are rich. That’s not because of resources. It’s because they were visionaries, and we are blind. Wallace Stegner called our national parks America’s “best idea.” The sequester, which I would call “America’s worst idea,” was supposed to save money, but when sloping trails aren’t maintained every year or two, they erode and require major repairs that cost even more. Republicans praise the idea of citizen volunteers and public-private partnerships. But our agencies are so impoverished that they can’t take full advantage of charity. Mike Dawson of the Pacific Crest Trail Association says that volunteers could provide about 250,000 hours repairing the trail each year. But the Forest Service doesn’t have the resources to organize and equip all the volunteers available, so it will be able to use only one-third of that free labor this year, he says. That’s crazy. All this is symptomatic of a deeper disdain in some circles for the very idea of a public good: Who needs a national forest? Just buy your own Wyoming ranch! This fall will probably see a no-holds-barred battle in Washington over fiscal issues, and especially the debt limit. But, in a larger sense, it’s a dispute over public goods. So, considering how ineffective Congress is, perhaps we should encourage all 535 members to take a sabbatical and backpack the Pacific Crest Trail. I’m not sure we’d miss them for five months. And what an entertaining reality show that would make! It would also have a serious side. Maybe when dwarfed by giant redwoods, recalcitrant politicians would absorb a lesson of nature: We are all part of something larger than ourselves. Perhaps they would gain perspective and appreciate the grandeur of our public lands of which they are such wretched stewards.
Syria – II September 5, 2013September 4, 2013 Many thoughtful responses to yesterday’s post, for which I am grateful and which I have condensed here. My “answer” to most of them is largely to say, well, when I listen to the Kerry and Obama clips linked to yesterday, I come to a different conclusion . . . though, as a result of your input, with more qualms than before. (Anyone without qualms in this situation sees the world too simply. Here are columnist Matt Miller’s six qualms that leave him unsure which way to go. Well worth the quick read.) But in addition to referring you back to the case made by the Administration, I’ve interjected a few thoughts of my own: Paul F. deLespinasse: “What good would it do us, or the people of Syria, if the U.S. engages in a ‘limited’ strike by cruise missiles? [THE WORLD, OF WHICH WE AND THE SYRIANS ARE A PART, WOULD BE BETTER OFF IF THE INTERNATIONAL BAN ON THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS WERE ENFORCED, DISCOURAGING THEIR FUTURE USE.] . . . If Congress understands America’s true interests, it will not support President Obama’s desire to bomb Syria. But in any event, Obama—for whom I do not regret voting even though he has made mistakes—should be commended for recognizing his constitutional duty to get Congressional authorization before engaging in acts of war where no emergency requires immediate action.” Lee Salomon: “Is the President simply proposing punishment for unacceptable behavior [YES, I THINK HE HAS MADE THAT CLEAR], or are we throwing our weight on to one side? Sen. McCain suggests his support for the President’s proposals only if they serve to tip the balance to the other side. But, what will be the result? Can the “opposition” actually form a functioning alternative government? There is no organized ‘other side’. Will Syria become Somalia? These are uncomfortable questions which the Administration is not addressing. It is avoiding these questions by suggesting that they don’t require answers since we aren’t going to be in Syria with ‘feet on the ground’, nor will we be there very long. Can anyone with the slightest knowledge of our military history believe this? I think, Andrew, that your Democratic Party loyalties have gotten the best of your caution. Or, to put it another way, if this enterprise were a business, would you buy its stock? [IT’S MOOT, BECAUSE ALL MY CASH IS IN BOREALIS. BUT JOHN BOEHNER — NO DEMOCRAT — HAS.]” Russell Turpin: “Why not strike Syria? Because the argument ‘to punish Assad’ is inadequate. Showing that Assad has used chemical weapons begins the case for military action, but doesn’t finish it. What practical purpose will the military action accomplish? Regime change? No, that’s not suggested. Swaying the course of the civil war? No, it’s not even clear that’s wanted. Then, what? Is it simply a slap on Assad’s wrist? That’s not worth the lives of the people who will die. Just as dead as those who were killed in that chemical attack. But this time, by our hands. [BUT WHAT IF THE GOAL IS TO LET THE ENTIRE WORLD — NOT JUST ASSAD — KNOW THAT CHEMICAL WARFARE, HAVING BEEN PROSCRIBED BY LONGSTANDING INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT, WILL NOT BE TOLERATED?]” Doug Mohn: “I’m still listening and am undecided. I believed Colin Powell last time and am not so trusting this time. [BUT WE KNOW BUSH WAS LOOKING FOR AN EXCUSE TO INVADE OIL-RICH IRAQ LONG BEFORE 9/11 AND THAT TREMENDOUS PRESSURE WAS PUT ON THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY TO COME UP WITH A RATIONALE. THAT SEEMS VERY DIFFERENT FROM THE CURRENT SITUATION, NOT LEAST BECAUSE AN INVASION IS CATEGORICALLY RUED OUT.] Here is a point-by-point rebuttal of the case for military action. [THE FIRST “POINT” IS THAT IT MAY HAVE BEEN AS FEW AS 100 CHILDREN HIDEOUSLY GASSED TO DEATH, NOT 426. SO . . . WHAT? EVEN IF TRUE, HOW DOES THAT CHANGE THINGS? I DID NOT FIND THE POINTS IN THIS LINK SUFFICIENTLY PERSUASIVE.]” Michael M: “I didn’t watch the speeches. Yes, chemical weapons are terrible, but it’s not our fight. [WATCH THE SPEECHES. KERRY AND OBAMA ARE NOT UNTHOUGHTFUL, UNINTELLIGENT MEN. THEY HAVE LISTENED HARD TO EVERY POINT OF VIEW; PERHAPS YOU SHOULD TAKE THE TIME TO CONSIDER THEIR CONCLUISION BEFORE REACHING YOUR OWN.]” David: “You say: ‘I can’t see how anyone could listen to both John Kerry’s presentation and then the President’s and fail to agree with his decision to impose consequences on Syria.’ Noam Chomsky disagrees because the US is obligated by international agreements to get the agreement of the UN, which it has not done. [THIS ONE DOES GIVE ME PAUSE; BUT IT WOULD MEAN THAT ANY ONE MEMBER OF THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL COULD IN EFFECT NULLIFY A NEARLY CENTURY-OLD GLOBAL TREATY. I THINK IT’S REASONABLE TO GIVE THAT TREATY MORE WEIGHT THAN WE GIVE THE WILL OF VLADIMIR PUTIN.]” Richard: “Why is it worse to kill people with gas than with bombs or guns? Why is it ok to kill children with drones while aiming at suspected terrorists? How about landmines – the US refuses to sign on to a ban? Genocide in Rwanda? Any number of other mass causes of death that have done and are doing much more harm? It’s quite possible the increases in refuges from fear of US bombings will result in more harm than are alleged by chemical weapons. The moral compass is a bit too selective for my taste. [WE HAVE NOT ALWAYS MADE THE RIGHT CALLS — PRESIDENT CLINTON COUNTS OUR INACTION IN RWANDA AS ONE OF THE KEY SHORT-COMINGS OF HIS ADMINISTRATION. AND I DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT THE LAND MINE TREATY, BUT NOTE THAT CHINA, RUSSIA, INDIA AND PAKISTAN ARE AMONG THE COUNTRIES THAT ALSO HAVE NOT SIGNED ON. MAYBE WE SHOULD SIGN ON ANYWAY — IT IS FOR SURE WORTH PERIODIC REVIEW. BUT IN THE CASE OF THE CHEMICAL WEAPONS TREATY — WHAT WE’RE ADDRESSING HERE — VERY FEW NATIONS HAVE FAILED TO SIGN.” Matt Wilbert: “I’m afraid I am one of the people who does not agree with you, the Secretary of State, or the President on this issue. I support the Administration on most issues, and the GOP on basically none, but the case for striking Syria is so remarkably weak that it is surprising to me that the President even proposed it. Here are a few objections. 1) The logic is bad. Yes, we all agree that countries shouldn’t gas their own people (or anyone else for that matter.) But just because something is widely considered reprehensible doesn’t mean the answer is military force. But the argument seems to be that if we don’t attack Syria, we are letting their actions go unpunished. Are there no sanctions against Syria? Is Syria not a pariah among nations? There are punishments other than modest cruise missile attacks. 2) The justification is insufficient. International law doesn’t permit countries to launch attacks against a country to enforce the protocols against the use of chemical weapons, if those conventions even apply to domestic use. The Security Council could authorize some kind of action, but it won’t. That could be written off as Russia protecting an ally, but there is little international support for this kind of action even within western democracies. I can understand when people think that a particular situation trumps normal legalities, but in this case the US is trying to reinforce international “norms” by violating international law. That seems self-defeating. 3) The proposed measures are inadequate. Yes, we could undoubtedly cause lots of damage to things in Syria if we wanted, but no one has explained how military action with no actual ground presence could possibly protect civilians from chemical weapons. No doubt we could protect them by invading the country and removing the current government, but no one wants to do that for obvious reasons. In fact, most people, including the Administration, are at pains to explain how limited the strikes will be, and how little danger they will pose to any American. Unfortunately, this means they will also pose remarkably little danger to the Syrian government. 4) It isn’t in the US national interest. It simply doesn’t matter to the US what happens in Syria. That doesn’t mean we don’t have a humanitarian interest, nor that we shouldn’t try to bring an end to the conflict, nor help the refugees or the countries hosting them, but the US doesn’t have a vital interest in the outcome of the conflict and the argument that we have a vital interest in maintaining a prohibition against the use of chemical weapons simply isn’t credible. We have not responded to chemical weapons use at various times in the past, nor even to arguably more important norms like the prohibition of genocide. 5) Bombing is always a questionable approach to helping the people of a country. First, it tends to kill a lot of those people. Second, it probably won’t succeed in replacing the government. Third, if it does manage to cause or support of change of government, very often the new government isn’t much of an improvement. Anyway — and in sum — I think this is one time when the President has made a significant error in judgment, and I am hoping that Congress, either through wisdom or dysfunction, rejects his request for support of this folly. [THIS IS AN AWFULLY THOUGHTFUL EXPOSITION. ONE PIECE IT DOES NOT ADDRESS, HOWEVER, IS WHETHER — HAVING TRIED TO DISCOURAGE THE USE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS (SURELY A WORTHY GOAL!) BY DRAWING A ‘RED LINE” (EVEN IF YOU ARGUE THAT IT WAS AN INADVISABLE MEANS OF REACHING THAT GOAL) — WE NOW JUST SAY OUR RED LINES ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY. DOES THAT ALONE HAVE POTENTIAL COSTS? MIGHT THEY OUTWEIGH THE POTENTIAL COSTS OF THE LIMITED CRUISE MISSILE STRIKE?]” Sue Hoell: “Really? You really want me to share my thoughts? (1) President Obama has been talking about taking out Assad for the past two years. It seems like the sarin gas accusation is a flimsy excuse to do what he has been clamoring to do for two years. (2) Why has Obama been so eager to take out Assad? Because Assad and Iran are allies and Western petroleum companies are chomping at the bit to take control of Iranian oil and adjacent shipping lanes? (3) There is no proof that it was Assad who used the sarin gas rather than the US-armed and trained mercenaries, Israel, Saudi or Qatar agents. (4) Assad has no reason to gas his own people. He has plenty of reason to gas mercenaries armed by the West to overthrow his government and kill Syrians. Why shouldn’t he use all weapons he has at his disposal to stop the mercenaries from continuing to create havoc? (5) Why is it so unthinkable for sarin gas to be used in Syria, when it was OK for the US to drop Napalm and White Phosphorus on people in Viet Nam and to overlook Saddam gassing Iranians and Kurds during the Iran-Iraq war? (6) Why is it OK for the US to police the rest of the world but decline to provide needed infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, food, housing, to the rest of the world? Because killing people is easy. Caring for people is much more challenging.” Vote Vets‘ Jon Stolz (writing to his list): “After careful consideration and an overwhelming response from tens of thousands of veterans, military family members and supporters, we have come to the difficult conclusion that VoteVets cannot support military intervention in Syria. There is no doubt that the use of chemical weapons in Syria is a horrific tragedy, and very likely a war crime. But if our goal is to eliminate Assad’s chemical weapons cache, then missile strikes, alone, won’t achieve that goal. And If the goal is to give Assad a deterrent against using them again, missile strikes don’t achieve that, either. . . . Above all else, we must not ignore the warning of our senior military leaders, like we did in the lead up to the Iraq War. In a letter to Congress several weeks ago Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey’s words speak for themselves. ‘We can destroy the Syrian air force,’ he said. ‘The loss of Assad’s air force would negate his ability to attack opposition forces from the air, but it would also escalate and potentially further commit the United States to the conflict. Stated another way, it would not be militarily decisive, but it would commit us decisively to the conflict…'” # The world is a desperately challenging place. The fact that we have made terrible errors in judgment in the past (among them, I would argue Vietnam and Iraq) does not mean we should fail to face each new decision — even the really difficult ones — on its own merits. Or that we should withdraw from the world. John McCain would have had us take far more action (did you see Rachel Maddow’s map last night showing all the places he’s advocated military engagement?); some argue we should be taking none. In so many of these things, given the evil and chaos and self-interest in the world, there is no good choice, only the least bad choice. (Noah Stern passed on to me Matthew Yglesias’s excellent “The Case for Doing Nothing” in Slate calling out this notion. ” … we can brush [our concerns] under the table with the thought that there are no good options, which makes it OK to endorse some shoddy ones. Except, in this case, it’s total nonsense. Obama has an excellent option. It’s called ‘don’t bomb Syria.'” But even if you come out where he does, I think it’s fair to criticize his argument for giving insufficient weight to the downside of doing nothing. And to this question of whether we must all agree that one man — Putin, in this case — has the moral authority to override enforcement of a long-established global treaty.) Having thought some more about this, thanks to the responses above and others that were similar, I’m still with the President and Secretary of State (and Boehner and Pelosi and France). But so long as anyone chiming in has taken the time to hear out the Secretary of State and then the President, I totally respect their coming to a different conclusion. Meanwhile, if the President, hearing all this debate (as it will be expressed in Congress), encounters new facts or arguments that change his mind, that’s fine with me, too — though I’m certain he and his team have already thought very long and hard about the least bad course to take.
Syria September 4, 2013September 3, 2013 I can’t see how anyone could listen to both John Kerry’s presentation and then the President’s and fail to agree with his decision to impose consequences on Syria. The President asks, “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of children to death in plain sight and pay no price? What’s the purpose of the international system that we’ve built if a prohibition on the use of chemical weapons that has been agreed to by the governments of 98 percent of the world’s people and approved overwhelmingly by the Congress of the United States is not enforced?” Yes, we have a lot to worry about if we go ahead with this. But how can we not? My guess is that at least some of those who oppose this action have not taken the time to listen to the case as they laid it out. Then again, I’m old enough — and just barely wise enough — to know that some of you, having listened carefully, likely will somehow reach a different conclusion. I hope you will share your thoughts.
Google’s ChromeCast September 3, 2013September 3, 2013 WORDS WITH FRIENDS – REVELATION Words With friends and Foosball are the only two things I’m really good at. With Foosball, it’s because I have an enormous home court advantage. Charles got it for me as a surprise and, not knowing anything about Foosball himself, he set it up backwards. The players are all bolted to their rods facing the wrong way. And I didn’t notice at first because it had been decades since I’d played, so over the weeks that followed — this was maybe 7 years ago — I just learned to play backwards. What’s more, the playing field slopes in interesting ways that are second nature to me now but a bafflement to strangers. This summer, I am undefeated. Last summer, I actually beat a former Seattle Seahawk. Football and Foosball are no closer chickens and chickpeas, but it still feels good. With WWF, it’s that I’m good at strategy. And that I play so much, I’ve learned a lot of ridiculous but allowable “words” no one ever uses. And yet there’s this guy I’ve just recently started playing — a smart guy, but c’mon — who, it pains me to say it, usually wins. (Seriously: it pains me to say it.) Indeed, I am way too competitive and self-aggrandizing to have said it, except for what comes next: the revelation. In the midst of a game where he had just made MISTIER for the second time, using all seven letters again, we had occasion to speak on the phone about a business matter. “NODI?” I began, where someone else might have said “Hello” (but he had placed MISTIER perpendicular to NOD, so one of the I’s in MISTIER turned NOD into NODI, which is how he found a place for it). “I don’t know what it means either,” he acknowledged. (My guess: a plural of nodes, like those worrisome nodi on his neck. But I’m past looking these things up. I do know what a RYA is, but who cares? Where does that get me? It’s only use is in Words With Friends.) “Well, listen,” I said. “Before we talk business I have to ask: do you use one of those anagram programs?” I.e., do you cheat? At which point, in an earlier age and a slightly different setting (and before telephones were invented), he would have squinted at me hard, spat out his chaw . . . and the whole bar would have suddenly quieted and grown tense as each of our right hands tightened under the table around the handle of our guns. But in this case he just laughed, took it as a compliment, and said no, “just that thing that tells you how good your word is.” Long pause at my end. Eyes squinting. “What thing.” “You know, the thing with the little Plus sign at the edge of the word that you click and it tells you how good the word you’re about to play is compared to the best you could do.” “What?” “Don’t you have it, too?” “You mean that annoying thing Zynga keeps trying to sell me to get some revenue from the game?” (Which as a Zynga shareholder myself* I hope loads of people buy, but I would never buy because, well, I wasn’t even sure what it was, but I certainly didn’t think it was fair to use some kind of computer aid.) “Oh — I thought everybody used it,” he said, explaining that, because it was part of the game (if you bought it), it was, well, just part of the game. Aha! Now I had an excuse (or at least a rationalization) for my dismal record against him. I felt much better. The Word-O-Meter, as it turns out, gives you no direct help, but it does tell you how close to the best possible score the word you’re planning to use comes. So instead of playing MISTER for 26 points, you might stop, when it tells you that’s a pathetic showing, and spend more time trying to figure out what much better option there might be. Oh! MISTIER!!! And now I have given Zynga its 99 cents (or whatever) and have begun texting my various WWF partners to tell them about my discovery and to ask whether they use the Word-O-Meter, too. “If you sue it, I will. Otherwise, let’s not.” Already, I’ve found another one of my regular opponents who, it turns out, has been using this all along. I had no idea! Anyway, let Alec Baldwin know, if he doesn’t already, and anyone else for whom Words With Friends is an enormous time-waster. *Long story; I’m not recommending YOU buy it. CHROMECAST I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I bought two of them and they’re supposed to arrive tomorrow. Basically, they throw videos from your computer or smart phone up onto your giant TV screen. I think. Here’s one glowing review. And here’s a little more measured review from my pal Don: “Google’s ChromeCast will truly change things once everyone gets on board, but for now you are not missing much. The easiest streaming is from Netflix: on your iPhone just press an icon on the cover art in the Netflix app, and the movie comes up on the TV. Beautiful picture, no pauses or lags, works just like a DVD. Well… almost. With a DVD you can pause at a particular point to scrutinize something in the background, and then forward a few frames. A wi-fi control lag makes pausing at an exact spot with ChromeCast like an arcade game. But the biggest downside I found is that Netflix streaming has nothing I want to watch, no matter what device one uses. Of the 75 of so DVDs in my rental queue, none is available for streaming. There is nothing new, sort of new, or even old that appeals to me. I tried Indiana Jones, Goonies, Risky Business, and dozens of other old movies. Nothing. I think the selection of TV shows may be better … but you won’t find the Sopranos. I was surprised to find I could not even stream PBS shows. You are supposed to be able to stream to TV anything you can play on the Chrome Browser, but I have had limited success with that. (There is a good App called CanIStreamIt at iTunes that shows you what is available on a dozen sites. I hope that app will add a ChromeCast streaming icon to its menu — that would be a huge plus.) “Oh, and the interface is clunky. I always wanted to control TV with my iPhone — it seemed like a natural thing to do. It ain’t. The reality is if you are gaming or surfing, you have to leave that app to go back to the Netflix app to pause or rewind. Google or someone needs to come out with a small wifi remote as an alternative / supplement to iPhone control. Ultimately the future will be TVs and DVRs with built-in circuits to respond to multiple command sources: bluetooth, wifi, and ir. If only Steve Jobs had lived to revolutionize TV! “ChromeCast is definitely a work in progress and at a price ($35) that should sweep away the competition. Availability of films and entertainment will eventually catch up.”
Football = Socialism August 30, 2013August 29, 2013 WESLEY CLARK ON WHY WE INVADED IRAQ This is not new, but remains jaw-dropping. Two minutes. Watch. BILL MAHER ON WHY THE NFL IS SOCIALIST Not new, either, but you don’t want to miss it. A must-send to your Republican uncle. A READER ON THE YOUNG SUBSIDIZING THE OLD Rasley: “You asked, ‘Should Corporate America Force The Young To Subsidize The Old?’ Yes, and you forgot to mention that before there were Social Security and Medicare, who paid for the health and support of the elderly? Their younger relatives. My grandparents by the time they were 40 were supporting his mother, her mother, and an elderly man who was a distant cousin– and my mother remembered that they were all living in her parents’ 1200-square-foot home. My mother shared a room with her own grandmother for most of her childhood. Somehow I doubt that these days young people want to be responsible for the upkeep of elderly relatives. It’s really much cheaper to pay FICA and Medicare taxes. Young people today have grown up never knowing life without Medicare and Social Security. We might need to explain to them that if old people have no income, they move in.” # Have a glorious weekend. And here’s to those who do the hardest work and often get paid the least. And to the REAL job creators. And, for that matter, to a $15 minimum wage (later discussed here).
Fifty Years Later August 29, 2013August 28, 2013 What a day yesterday was. If you missed any of it, click here.
And In Case We DO Live Forever . . . August 28, 2013August 27, 2013 Bill Gates says mortality is “just a software problem,” Ray Kurzweil says average longevity will soon be increasing by more than a year per year, and you read here yesterday about the entrepreneur who plans to download our minds into cyborgs by 2045. Having now had a little more time to think about it, I’d like to expand on yesterday’s advice. (Yesterday’s advice: “Invest for the long-term.”) I would add: (1) floss (2) moisturize (3) avoid buying stock in companies that write annuities But the main thing? The main thing is this: It really, really matters that we, as a species, get things right — or as close to right as possible — these pivotal next few decades. And since world leadership still resides significantly with America, it really matters which vision gains ground here in 2014 and 2016 – the vision that (for example) nixes investment in infrastructure and picks a climate change denier to chair the House subcommittee on climate change . . . that fights to keep wages low for those at the bottom and taxes low for those at the top . . . or the vision that stresses investment in a sustainable, equitable future. What a shame it would be, on the cusp of astounding possibility, to screw it up. Already, I have — in my shirt pocket — a symphony orchestra, an alarm clock, a flash light, a camera, a phone, today’s newspapers, virtually all the books and music ever written, and a team of researchers to find me, more or less instantly, whatever I need and guide me, turn by turn, whether by foot car or public transport, to whatever destination I seek. In my shirt pocket! Imagine what the next few decades could bring. Ceding more control to the current Republican Party, in my view, would not bode well for any of the things most of us care about. Which is why I am obsessed with turnout in 2014, when Nate Silver thinks Democrats may lose the Senate . . . but when, in fact, if Democrats register and turn folks out to the polls, we not only hold the Senate, we take back the House, win governorships and flip state legislative chambers our way. It’s really “just” a matter of doing it. Consider: > The potential for gains is enormous. Voter turnout in 2008 and 2012 was 62% and 60%. In 2010, not quite 42%. We won’t get a Presidential-level turnout in a mid-term election . . . but could we improve from 42% to, say, 45%? Or 47% or 49%? Everything would be different if we could – and we can. Especially among the groups that Republicans are working so hard to disenfranchise. Those efforts get people so mad they could actually backfire again as they did in 2012. There are more than enough House seats in play for us to confound the conventional wisdom and regain control of Congress. > Independents, who broke heavily for the Republicans in 2010, now lean heavily our way. > Obamacare, which we’ve done such a bad job selling, will by then have begun to sell itself. Where it hurt us in 2010, it may actually help us in 2014, as people gain advantages that they won’t want to see taken away. So here’s the thing: Most of the money that goes to politics gets saved up until next fall, then plowed into a sea of TV advertising. It’s necessary; but it doesn’t persuade a lot of Republicans to vote for Democrats or inspire a lot of Democrats to register or vote. If anything, all that advertising, much of it negative, turns people off. The sweet spot – the leverage – is in the neighbor-to-neighbor ground game that gets people who already lean Democratic to vote. Once at the polls, they vote not for just for one candidate whose ads they may have seen, but, typically, for all the Democratic candidates. In 2014, the technology and infrastructure that underlie this ground game are the responsibility of the DNC. If Democrats want to win – and when I see how much progress the Republicans have blocked us from making, I desperately do want to win – then we have to fund this technology and infrastructure. Click here. Not least because laying the groundwork to win in 2014 also improves our chances for 2016. (For starters: Voters we register in 2014 remain registered for 2016.) But laying that groundwork is like planting seed corn. It needs to be sowed well in advance of the harvest. Like . . . now. The two parties have never been more polarized . . . or Congress more paralyzed . . . and if 2014 and 2016 don’t turn out right, we could regret it for the rest of our lives. Which could be very, very long. So click. I’ll see it right away to say thanks.
Living Forever August 27, 2013August 26, 2013 Not everyone wants to. I do. This 32-year-old Russian aims to make it possible. Have a nice day. And just in case it works out: invest for the long-term.
Should Corporate America Force The Young To Subsidize The Old? August 26, 2013August 25, 2013 Today I hand the microphone to my friend Matt Miller, who shared his opinion in the Washington Post. As people increasingly come to appreciate Obamacare — and as it’s phased in, they will — here’s one more “talking point” to help them counteract the criticism: The GOP’s Obamacare youth hoax By Matt Miller It’s rare for a political party to trumpet a position that unintentionally reveals its myopia, incoherence and expediency. Yet such is the trifecta with the Republican campaign to call attention to Obamacare’s young “victims.”Republicans are obsessed with the supposed injustice being done to some healthy young people who will effectively subsidize their sicker elders when Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect. The crusaders are nothing if not convinced of the righteousness of their cause. “The whole scheme is enlisting young adults to overpay, so other people can have subsidies,” Dean Clancy, a vice president at FreedomWorks, told my Post colleague Sarah Kliff. “That unfairness reminded us of the military draft.”Conservatives are therefore urging young Americans to resist. “I’m burning my Obamacare draft card,” runs one theatrical riff from a group called Young Americans for Liberty, “because I’m too busy paying student loans to pay for somebody else’s health insurance.” Republican policy advisors have urged the party to make such child abuse a big part of their anti-Obamacare message. Sounds like a sexy argument, except for one thing. Republicans seem to have forgotten where most people aged 19 to 34 get health coverage: from their employer. And at virtually every company, young people pay the same premiums as employees who are much older than they are and who get more expensively sick than they do. In other words, the evil cross-subsidy Obamacare’s foes are storming the barricades to roll back already exists, at vastly larger scale, in corporate America. These youngsters are already in chains! They’ve been put there by the private sector! And, inexplicably, young employees have entered this servitude of their own volition. (To extend the GOP’s draft analogy, it turns out there’s a voluntary army of health care masochists from sea to shining sea.) How could injustice on this scale escape the GOP’s searing moral scrutiny? After all, the president is only hoping thatabout 2.7 million young people will purchase coverage in the new exchanges. But 20 million Americans between the ages of 19 and 34 get coverage from their employer right now, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation. If you’re keeping score, that makes employer-based health care’s cross-subsidy about eight times more evil than Obamacare’s. How does it work? Compare a typical, strapping young employee of 28 to her broken- down 58-year-old colleague. These two employees have very different annual health expenses. Yet under the nefarious plot known as “group health insurance,” they basically pay the same premiums. It turns out every big company in America is essentially a socialized health care republic, in which the young subsidize the old, and the healthy subsidize the sick — all of whom pay the same premiums for the same plans. Similar dynamics explain why, in the federal health-care plan, spry 42-year-olds like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz subsidize 79-year-old geezers like Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch. Maybe that’s why Cruz always seems so angry. Of course, most people in civilized nations know and accept that this is how insurance works. But Republicans nowadays aren’t like most people in civilized nations. They think Obamacare is a form of injustice akin to slavery. Which makes employer-provided health care slavery on steroids. Where’s the outrage? If conservatives were consistent and principled, they would devote far more time and effort to liberating 20 million young Americans from the socialism baked into employer-based insurance and look past the Obamacare exchanges as a puny sideshow. But, alas, conservatives are not consistent and principled, save for their consistent determination to hurt the president politically. It would be better if all those smart GOP thinkers devoted their talent and energy to the question of how they would expand coverage to the 50 million uninsured — but to raise that question is to enter the policy cul de sac in all its delicious irony. Because the answer to that question is RomneyObamacare, the only sound way (as Republicans rightly taught us) that a country can move toward universal coverage using private health plans. The GOP could offer a tweaked version with slightly fewer regulations. Or structure it to offer universal catastrophic coverage to save money. But if Republicans were serious, they’d offer the same basic reform architecture. So Republicans choose not to be serious. And it shows. In the end, the GOP’s Obamacare youth hoax shows how silly a party can look when a political focus on one corner of a policy leads it to latch on to “insights” that utterly miss the big picture. It’s a reminder, if we needed another, of how close the connection can be between ideology and idiocy. A senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and the host of the new podcast “This…Is Interesting,” Miller writes a weekly column for The Post. Peruse his archive or follow him on Twitter.
It’s rare for a political party to trumpet a position that unintentionally reveals its myopia, incoherence and expediency. Yet such is the trifecta with the Republican campaign to call attention to Obamacare’s young “victims.”Republicans are obsessed with the supposed injustice being done to some healthy young people who will effectively subsidize their sicker elders when Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect.
Jobs: Teaching, Buttling, Steve August 23, 2013August 22, 2013 There are so many jobs I’d pay dearly not to have to do. Yet in many cases I am paying — indirectly, via my dinner check or hotel bill — just $7 or $8 an hour not to have to do them. (Thank you for plucking my chicken.) Should unpleasant jobs pay the most? I know . . . I know. Just a thought. TEACHING Teaching is potentially enjoyable. At the right school, with the right kids, I can certainly see doing it (so long as classes don’t start before noon — how about night school for gifted teens?). But the pay and benefits are either inadequate or overgenerous, depending (in part) on whom you’re talking with. Surely some teachers should find another line of work; but if your Republican uncle thinks that teachers on the whole have it too sweet — “three months off!” and all that — ask him to consider this graphic. BUTTLING Have you seen it? Lee Daniels’ oddly named “Lee Daniels’ The Butler“? Someone I know — certainly not me — cried through almost the whole thing. What a story! What this man has seen! What times he — and we — have lived through! (My eighth grade algebra teacher, Bob Moses, left Horace Mann School to help build the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and organize the 1964 Freedom Summer; my friend Al Lowenstein, who had been a student at Horace Mann years before Moses arrived, went down to Mississippi, too. I would never — ever — have had the courage to do anything like that. I didn’t even have the courage, a decade or so later, to use my real name on a book I wrote about being gay . . . well, it was 1973, very different times . . . and yet former congressman Lowenstein did — he blurbed the thing with his real name.*) Imagine: a black boy in the Jim Crow south, making his way up to Washington to serve white folks in a hotel bar . . . ultimately rising to serve as personal butler to presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan — and living to vote for, and meet — the forty-fourth President of the United States. I don’t want to spoil it by telling you more, or by telling you which actors play those presidents in the movie (yikes!), or by telling you how much of the story is literally true and how much merely inspired by a true story. But what a way, in two hours with some popcorn, to relive these last 80 years. And what context it adds to the current efforts, in North Carolina and elsewhere, once again to keep African Americans from voting. Go see this movie. *In Googling to refresh my Lowenstein/SNCC recollection, I found this profile from the January 8, 1968, Harvard Crimson. No relevance to The Butler, but I can’t resist the footnote. JOBS Someone I know — again, I want to stress, not me — even teared up watching the Steve Jobs movie. Now that’s just pathetic. And yet what a story his was. And — from a tech point of view, entirely divorced form the political — what amazing times we’ve lived through with that. And here’s the story! At least a good chunk of it. From a time before . . . everything. I almost didn’t see “Jobs” because the reviews have been so mixed. But count me with those who thought it was completely gripping and terrific. # Have a great weekend. See these movies. Support a higher minimum wage. Be outraged by efforts to keep people from voting. And tip your hat to Steve Jobs. What an insanely great impact he had on a billion lives.