Yesterday I caught up on replies to comments, and returning visits. I also visited almost every blog in our blogroll. Today I will not do as well. I finally got the last of the records I need so I’ll be doing my income taxes today. :-( Pray for me.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:02. To do it, Click Here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Think Progress: “I like what we have in Massachusetts, despite some flaws,” Romney said. “But what I see in Obamacare is a very different piece of legislation — and one that followed a very different track. In our case, our bill was carried out in a bipartisan basis.”
What a lame excuse. What made the MA bill bipartisan is that he, the Republican governor, supported what the Democratic state legislature passed. What makes federal HCR, which is almost identical, not bipartisan is the complete lack of the GOP cooperation Romney himself provided in MA.
From Daily Kos: When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.
Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist. […]
Mr. Grimes, who receives Social Security, has filled the back seat of his Mercury Grand Marquis with the literature of the movement, including Glenn Beck’s “Arguing With Idiots” and Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law,” which denounces public benefits as “false philanthropy.”
Well, that certainly shows that hypocrisy is alive and well in the Realm of Teabuggery.
Alan Greenspan has his eyes on the Social Security benefits for which you have paid all your lives.
Like every other major institution in the public and private sectors, Social Security has taken a few licks from the current recession. But the problems are simply not very serious — the entitlement program’s trust fund currently stands at a massive $2.5 trillion — that’s trillion with a "t." If the federal government makes absolutely no changes to Social Security whatsoever, the program is currently projected to remain fiscally fit through 2037. The effects of the recession are included in that projection — prior to the financial crash of 2008, Social Security was projected to remain solvent through 2041.
But pesky facts like that are not the focus of the story from Times reporter Mary Williams Walsh, who instead highlights a fundamentally meaningless statistic to needlessly frighten her readers:
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016.
That threshold would indeed be important — if Social Security weren’t sitting on an additional $2.5 trillion. Walsh dismisses the trust fund — putting the term in scare quotes and calling it a mere "accounting device." And, in fact, the trust fund is an accounting device — just like bank reserves and dozens of other financial metrics used in the business world. What that accounting device shows is that Social Security is fundamentally stable from a fiscal standpoint, to the tune of $2.5 trillion. There’s nothing fishy about it.
If that $2.5 trillion ever runs out — which it won’t, because Social Security’s revenues will increase in a few years as the economy recovers — policymakers would still actually have plenty of options available for boosting the program. But according to former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, there’s only one truly viable course of action — draconian benefit cuts for seniors. Here’s the Maestro, from Walsh’s article:
When the level of the trust fund gets to zero, you have to cut benefits . . . . Because of the size of the contraction in economic activity, unless we get an immediate and sharp recovery, the revenues of the trust fund will be tracking lower for a number of years.
Greenspan, lest anyone forget, is one of the people most responsible for moving Social Security’s solvency projections from 2041 to 2037. Our current recession was caused by rampant financial excesses that Greenspan actively refused to regulate and a housing bubble that he explicitly refused to act on. To the extent that today’s government finances are constrained, the two major culprits can both be laid at Greenspan’s feet — the bank bailouts that were deployed to clean up his mess, and the lost tax revenues from job losses and plunging home values.
So it should come as no surprise that Greenspan is simply wrong about even the hypothetical need for benefit cuts. If — under a wild, unthinkable set of economic circumstances — Social Security did one day find itself in a fiscal hole, the government could always simply increase Social Security taxes or tap revenues from other government programs. In fact, when Greenspan himself was part of a commission to fix Social Security in the early 1980s, that commission did not cut benefits — it raised taxes. Policymakers would not need to cut benefits — Greenspan simply prefers that they do, because he doesn’t like the idea that the government should be providing safety nets for the elderly.
That’s a perspective shared by Wall Street billionaires like Peter Peterson, who has pledged a massive fortune to spreading the message: Save the bankers and brokers first — everyone else, including seniors, is expendable… [emphasis added]
Social security benefits have been a GOP target for years. Every penny spent reimbursing seniors is a penny that can’t spend on a millionaire. But any solvency problems Social Security may have can be corrected with one simple fix. Remove the salary cap. The current rate and cap structure is a social security tax of 6.20% (matched by employer) of income up to $106,800. The bankster with a $20 million bonus pays the exact same dollar amount as someone making $106,800.
Consider the current distribution of wealth in the US. The richest 20% have most of the pie. The bottom 40% have that tiny sliver, only 0.2% od the total wealth. The Social Security tax structure is regressive, because it disproportionately protects the income of the rich at the expense of the poor and middle classes. That is the sole cause of the problem. No other fix is acceptable.
Considering GOP claims that Obama is ineffectual in the foreign policy realm, his success exposes their lies.
After nearly a year of very difficult negotiations, the White House and the Kremlin have announced a new strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty, also known as New START, which they will sign in Prague on April 8, 2010. The first START treaty was signed by Presidents George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991; the history since then has been rocky and complex, but at least we’ve made some progress.
Here are the key details of New START, via a White House press release:
Treaty Structure: The New START Treaty is organized in three tiers of increasing level of detail.The first tier is the Treaty text itself.The second tier consists of a Protocol to the Treaty, which contains additional rights and obligations associated with Treaty provisions.The basic rights and obligations are contained in these two documents.The third tier consists of Technical Annexes to the Protocol.All three tiers will be legally binding.The Protocol and Annexes will be integral parts of the Treaty and thus submitted to the U.S. Senate for its advice and consent to ratification.
Strategic Offensive Reductions:Under the Treaty, the U.S. and Russia will be limited to significantly fewer strategic arms within seven years from the date the Treaty enters into force.Each Party has the flexibility to determine for itself the structure of its strategic forces within the aggregate limits of the Treaty.These limits are based on a rigorous analysis conducted by Department of Defense planners in support of the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review.
Aggregate limits:
1,550 warheads.Warheads on deployed ICBMs and deployed SLBMs count toward this limit and each deployed heavy bomber equipped for nuclear armaments counts as one warhead toward this limit.
This limit is 74% lower than the limit of the 1991 START Treaty and 30% lower than the deployed strategic warhead limit of the 2002 Moscow Treaty.
A combined limit of 800 deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers, and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.
A separate limit of 700 deployed ICBMs, deployed SLBMs, and deployed heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.
This limit is less than half the corresponding strategic nuclear delivery vehicle limit of the START Treaty.
Verification and Transparency:The Treaty has a verification regime that combines the appropriate elements of the 1991 START Treaty with new elements tailored to the limitations of the Treaty.Measures under the Treaty include on-site inspections and exhibitions, data exchanges and notifications related to strategic offensive arms and facilities covered by the Treaty, and provisions to facilitate the use of national technical means for treaty monitoring.To increase confidence and transparency, the Treaty also provides for the exchange of telemetry.
Treaty Terms: The Treaty’s duration will be ten years, unless superseded by a subsequent agreement.The Parties may agree to extend the Treaty for a period of no more than five years.The Treaty includes a withdrawal clause that is standard in arms control agreements.The 2002 Moscow Treaty terminates upon entry into force of the New START Treaty.The U.S. Senate and the Russian legislature must approve the Treaty before it can enter into force.
No Constraints on Missile Defense and Conventional Strike:The Treaty does not contain any constraints on testing, development or deployment of current or planned U.S. missile defense programs or current or planned United States long-range conventional strike capabilities.
Although the treaty is routine — kind of like a required maintenance agreement — its significance cannot be overstated. It sets an example for the rest of the world; it proves that we are, indeed, dedicated to arms control, and could very well have a ripple effect in terms of future nuclear arms control talks, e.g. discussions about tactical nuclear weapons in Europe…
Some time ago, Obama ordered an upgrade of the US nuclear arsenal, prompting considerable progressive outrage. After researching the issue, I explained that there were two factors involved in that decision. First, our nuclear arsenal had fallen into disrepair during the Bush regime, along with everything else, except millionaires’ wallets. Second, without a nuclear upgrade, the GOP refused to back the treaty. In retrospect, the achievement of a 30% reduction in nuclear demonstrates clearly that Obama’s upgrade of the arsenal was not a bellicose policy.
What remains to be seen is whether or not the GOP, the party of no integrity, will keep their word and agree to ratification.
Yesterday I did pretty well, considering the time I spent asleep, because I caught up with both replying to comments and returning visits. Today, I should stay up to date.
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:07. To do it, click here. How did you do?
A strong showing by Iraq’s Sunni Muslim minority gave secular Shiite politician Ayad Allawi the narrow lead that he needed to win a landmark parliamentary election over incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, according to results released Friday by the Iraqi election commission.
Allawi’s mixed-sect Iraqiya coalition won 91 of the next parliament’s 325 seats, compared with 89 for Maliki’s State of Law bloc, the core of which is his Shiite conservative Dawa Party.
As Allawi supporters danced and unleashed celebratory gunfire in Baghdad and western Sunni-majority cities, a stone-faced Maliki appeared on live television to repeat his demand for a recount and assert that the tally released Friday "is not final."
"We do not accept these results," Maliki said, flanked by members of his coalition.
I sincerely hope that this does not turn into a new civil war there.
From Red State Update: The boys take on the aftermath of HCR passage.
The battle for health care reform is over, for now. When the Senate voted on the Reconciliation Act, three cowardly DINOs voted with the Republicans.
Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor
They should lose their funding from the Democratic Party. They should be challenged by progressives in their next primaries. They should be stripped of plum committee assignments. They should be retired.
Yesterday, the House passed the amended version of the Reconciliation Act.
Congress on Thursday gave final approval to a package of changes to the Democrats’ sweeping health care overhaul, capping a bitter partisan battle over the most far-reaching social legislation in nearly half a century. The bill, which Democratic leaders hailed as a landmark achievement, now goes to President Obama for his signature.
“The American people have waited for this moment for a century,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said at a news conference. “This, of course, was a health bill. But it is also a jobs bill, an economic recovery bill, was a deficit-reduction bill, was an antidiscrimination bill. It was truly a bill of rights. And now it is the law of the land.”
In a fitting finale to the yearlong health care saga, the budget reconciliation measure that included the final changes was approved first by the Senate and then by the House on a tumultuous day at the Capitol, as lawmakers raced to complete their work ahead of a two-week recess.
The final House vote was 220 to 207, and the Senate vote was 56 to 43, with the Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers.
The reconciliation bill makes numerous revisions to many of the central provisions in the measure adopted by the Senate on Dec. 24, including changes in the levels of subsidies that will help moderate-income Americans afford private insurance, as well as changes to the increase [for those earning over $250,000] in the Medicare payroll tax that will take effect in 2013 and help pay for the legislation.
The bill also delays the start of a new tax on high-cost employer-sponsored insurance policies to 2018 and raises the thresholds at which policies are hit by the tax, reflecting a deal struck by the White House and organized labor leaders. It also includes changes to close the gap in Medicare prescription drug coverage known as the doughnut hole, and to clarify a provision requiring insurers to allow adult children to remain on their parents’ insurance policies until their 26th birthday.
Many of the changes were intended to address the concerns of House Democrats, as well as to bridge differences between the original House and Senate bills and to incorporate additional provisions sought by Mr. Obama.
The bill also included a broad restructuring of federal student loan programs, a centerpiece of Mr. Obama’s education agenda.
As the Senate voted, Mr. Obama was in Iowa City where he opened an aggressive public relations blitz to sell the health care overhaul with a campaign-style rally at the University of Iowa Field House.
Speaking to a crowd of about 3,000 Mr. Obama dared Republicans to follow through on their efforts to repeal the legislation, which would require them to win back big enough majorities in Congress to override his veto… [emphasis added]
GOP appeals are gushing to their brainwashed base, begging for contributions to help them repeal health care reform. That is nothing but a cheap trick, trying to extract money from their Faux Noise sheep with a completely empty promise. Even the GOP leadership is starting to admit it.
Throughout the week, many Republicans have said that repealing the Affordable Care Act should be part of the Party’s campaign platform for this year’s midterm elections. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said “repeal and replace will be the slogan for the fall.” Congressional Republicans such as Reps. Pete Hoekstra (MI), Michele Bachmann (R-MN), Zach Wamp (TN) and Sens. John McCain (AZ) and Jim DeMint (SC) have signed on to the cause as well.
But other Republicans are candidly acknowledging that the GOP’s new big agenda is mere political gamesmanship:
– Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ): “Our view is that we should repeal and replace the bill with the solutions that we think actually work. Obviously, the president will not sign a repeal bill that the Congress passes, so that’s more of a symbol. … Barack Obama is president. He would never sign a repeal law. We don’t have the votes to get it passed right now. We’re not going to waste our time on that.”
– Newt Gingrich: [Faux Noise Delinked] “What you have to do is be politically honest. If the Republicans win a majority in the House and Senate next year, they will not be able to repeal the bill. The president would veto it.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) proclaimed yesterday that the GOP should “repeal this bill,” yet seconds later, even he acknowledged that with Obama as President, “it’s going to be very difficult to repeal this bill outright.” Watch the compilation:
Republicans whined about repealing the bill before it passed but even then, National Republican Senatorial Committee head Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) noted that the repeal effort would likely go nowhere “because obviously we don’t have the White House, we don’t have 60 votes in the Senate.”… [emphasis original]
One of the biggest complaints I have heard is the time it will take to implement some of the benefits the bill contains. An excellent editorial by Jonathan Kohn explains the delays.
HEALTH care reform, the most ambitious domestic policy initiative of our time, is now law. And already there is talk of how to make it even better. Some want to improve the subsidies and financial protections, so that people aren’t as exposed to high medical bills. Others would like to add some sort of public option, whether it’s a new stand-alone government-run plan or expanded access to Medicare.
Those are good ideas. But making the most out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will also depend on something a little less exciting: putting the existing plan into action. The challenges ahead fall into four categories.
DELIVERING THE DELIVERABLES President Obama promised that some of the benefits of reform would appear in the first year. For starters, within 90 days the Department of Health and Human Services must set up a high-risk pool as a temporary source of insurance for people who have pre-existing conditions.
Some of the new consumer protections will take effect within six months; first, though, federal officials have to translate that law into regulation. The government is also supposed to provide a new, easy way for consumers to compare benefits from insurer to insurer.
EDUCATING THE PUBLIC It’s one thing to create a health insurance program and quite another to get people to sign up for it. Today, many more people are eligible for Medicaid than actually enroll, in no small part because some states — wary of adding too many people to the rolls — make it hard to apply for and stay in the program.
That said, more than 97 percent of people in Massachusetts now have insurance, thanks in part to an aggressive public relations campaign that enlisted the Red Sox to raise awareness about the state’s own health care overhaul. A similar effort to increase public knowledge and to undertake direct outreach to individuals will be necessary. While states and nonprofit organizations will play vital roles, the federal government should probably take the lead.
HANDLING THE INSURERS Speaking of Massachusetts, that’s the one state with a fully working model of an insurance exchange: a place where individuals and small businesses can buy relatively affordable coverage, with clearly defined benefits and no exclusions or mark-ups based on the health of the people applying. And the model seems to work overall. But replicating that in 49 other states won’t be easy.
It requires appointing people to run the exchanges and figuring out how Americans will use them, but it also means preparing to regulate insurers more closely than anybody regulates them now. The law creates minimum standards for what insurance covers and requires insurers to spend most of their money on actual patient care, to name only two obvious changes. The states will have primary responsibility for enforcing these standards, but first the federal government will have to write them.
BENDING THE CURVE Dozens of new initiatives are intended to control, or at least reduce, the cost of medical care. But most of them require work to get up and running.
Everyone hopes that wider use of electronic medical records can improve quality while reducing expensive duplication. Again, somebody first has to set up a standard for the records. Studies show we’d save money if we stopped paying for so many treatments that don’t work (or don’t work better than the alternatives). But we can’t start paying for treatments more intelligently without better information about what drugs and procedures do work, not to mention which ones doctors and hospitals already use.
Progress on many of these goals is already under way. (Development of electronic records, for instance, began with the stimulus.) But there are obstacles ahead: some states are eager to do their part; others are busy suing the federal government because they don’t like the law. The Obama administration also needs to find the right people to manage these programs.
Getting reform right may ultimately require making sure one official is responsible for coordinating activity among the different agencies and levels of government. It should probably be someone who reports to the White House but is also accountable to Congress; someone with a head not just for politics but also for the world of insurance, regulation and medicine; someone who can push the many groups and institutions that will need pushing, while also listening to people’s concerns…
Considering what is involved in setting up the mechanisms to implement the most ambitious legislation in many of our lifetimes, the delays seem reasonable. After all, to quote a famous politician, it’s a big f*ck*ng deal! 😈
So it’s over. I have never witnessed such a contentious floor fight, but I remember I made a promise, and now is the time to keep it.
One positive aspect of the delays is that the mandate, in the absence of a strong public option does not take effect until 2014. That gives us time to get it changed.
In addition, even as I type these words, there is a legion of insurance company lawyers dissecting every phrase, looking for loopholes they can use to deny coverage to those with preexisting conditions, to dump sick patients, to deny covered procedures dying patients desperately need to save their lives, and to evade the requirement that they spend 85% of what they take in on direct benefits payments. If you think they won’t find such loopholes, email me. I want to talk to you about a bridge I just happen to have for sale.
While I do support a strong public option, that is a fallback position. What this country really needs is universal, single-payer health care: Medicare for all. I can almost hear GOP screams of “socialized medicine”. What’s wrong with that? We have socialized police protection. Why? Protecting our lives and property is far too important to leave it to greedy corporations, who would consider profit more important than our lives and property. We have socialized firefighters. Why? Protecting us from fire is far too important to leave it to greedy corporations, who would consider profit more important than fighting fires. With this in mind, health care is far too important to leave it to greedy corporations, who have proven over and over again, that they consider profit more important than our lives and health. Furthermore, every penny that goes to insurance company profits is a penny that doesn’t get spent on health care.
Yesterday, we began hearing reports the prominent GOP leaders were acknowledging that the flood of violence, hate and intimidation, inspired and egged on by the GOP, is inappropriate. Each acknowledgement has bee followed by a ‘but’. …but the Democrats are forcing a government takeover of healthcare. …but they’re afraid of Democrat socialism. …but the Unibomber was left wing. No excuse is too absurd, as they try to evade accountability for their behavior. Here’s the topper:
Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, claimed earlier today that his office had been the target of a politically motivated shooting.
If you thought Cantor’s claim seemed reminiscent of the the bogus "an Obama supporter carved a backwards ‘B’ into my face" story from the 2008 campaign, you were right.
According to AP, the Richmond Police Department now says the bullet that hit an office in the building where he has a campaign office was fired randomly.
Bullet that hit Va. congressman’s office random
RICHMOND, Va. — Richmond police say the bullet that hit a window of Republican Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor’s office had been randomly fired skyward.
Given the facts of the matter — that the bullet was fired randomly in the air, and hit a window in the building in which Cantor has an office (the bullet didn’t hit his office) — it is clear that Cantor willfully misled the media this morning. Cantor and his office knew that they were not targets of the shooting, but they claimed otherwise to score political points.
This is a big deal. Cantor is the number two Republican. He speaks for the party. And he brazenly dissembled to the national press corps on an issue of life or death. It might not be fair or balanced, but he should be held to a different standard: truth and accuracy.
Postscript: In related news, officials have determined that the gas line leading to the home of the brother of Congressman Tom Periello was severed intentionally. Tea partiers had urged members to "drop by" Periello’s brother’s home thinking it was the Congressman’s. [emphasis original]
They have no excuse. Because the GOP is unwilling to conform to the basic premise that, in this country, we settle our differences with ballots, not bullets, every Republican in office is one Republican too many.
David Frum and I rarely agree on anything, but when I told the truth, the unforgivable sin in GOP circles these days, he was right. It cost him his job.
David Frum, the conservative pundit and former Bush White House speechwriter, has left his perch at the American Enterprise Institute — and some observers wondering whether the move was triggered by his recent criticism of the GOP.
Today, Frum posted on his blog a note he had sent to AEI President Arthur Brooks:
Dear Arthur,
This will memorialize our conversation at lunch today. Effective immediately, my position as a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute is terminated. I appreciate the consideration that delays my emptying of my office until after my return from travel next week. Premises will be vacated no later than April 9.
I have had many fruitful years at the American Enterprise Institute, and I do regret this abrupt and unexpected conclusion of our relationship.
Very truly yours,
David Frum
Frum has lately emerged as perhaps the most prominent internal critic of the modern conservative movement. On Sunday, in a blog post that received widespread attention, he lambasted the Republicans no-compromise strategy on health-care reform, writing "[t]his time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none."…
Frum is a prominent neocon, and he is certainly no defector to the left. He is an enemy of all who hold progressive values. He is an extreme hawk, a proponent preemptive military attacks, and an authentic GOP torture monger. But not even one such as he is safe from the current GOP extremism. He forgot, just for a moment, to goose step. He is now under the bus. This further illustrates why every Republican in office is one Republican too ,many.
