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Health Care Failure: Obama's Top Ten Goals Will Not Be Met (7/30/09), Politex
Obama's health care plan will fail because he is not saying at town meetings what it needs to succeed:
1. Without a public insurance option future costs, obfuscated by non-competitive private insurance companies, will not be kept down. Underfunded and non-networked, co-ops will not solve the problem.
2. Without mandated employer insurance many Americans will be left adrift to fend for themselves in a sea of red tape created by their employers to avoid payouts.
3. Up to 67% of the cost of the plan will be put on the backs of our medicare-protected elderly citizens, and our highest wage earners will not be surtaxed. The health care industry lobbyists and their paid helpers in Congress have voiced that all funding for the healt care plan should come from the money that is presently being used for health care. That's like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
As he takes his case to the people at forums and town hall meetings and in interviews and press conferences, Obama is silent on these three points. His other goals, according to his aides, while admerable, are not enough to make a plan that works, even if they're not being watered down or eliminated by health care industry lobbyists and their paid helpers in Congress:
4. No discrimination for preexisting conditions: Insurance companies will be prohibited from refusing you coverage because of your medical history.
5. No exorbitant out-of-pocket expenses, deductibles or co-pays: Insurance companies will have to abide by yearly caps on how much they can charge for out-of-pocket expenses.
6. No cost-sharing for preventive care: Insurance companies must fully cover, without charge, regular checkups and tests that help you prevent illness, such as mammograms or eye and foot exams for diabetics.
7. No dropping of coverage for seriously ill: Insurance companies will be prohibited from dropping or watering down insurance coverage for those who become seriously ill.
8. No annual or lifetime caps on coverage: Insurance companies will be prevented from placing annual or lifetime caps on the coverage you receive.
9. Extended coverage for young adults: Children would continue to be eligible for family coverage through the age of 26.
10. Guaranteed insurance renewal: Insurance companies will be required to renew any policy as long as the policyholder pays their premium in full. Insurance companies won't be allowed to refuse renewal because someone became sick
Senate Health Care Plan: "Tyranny of the Tiny White States" (7/29/09), various
The "Gang of Six" that put this plan together consists of industry darling Max Baucus and "Olympia Snowe, Mike Enzi, Chuck Grassley, Jeff Bingaman and Kent Conrad. In a Senate of 60 Democrats and 40 Republicans, the health care reform bill is being written by three centrist Democrats, one centrist Republican, and two conservative Republicans. And until last week, Orrin Hatch was in the room, too. --Ezra Klein
"In the Senate...vast power is being wielded by people who, in a democratic system of government, would have almost no power. We’re talking, after all, about Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, Susan Collins of Maine, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Chuck Grassley of Iowa. Collectively those six states contain about 2.74 percent of the population, less than New Jersey, or about one fifth the population of California. The six largest states, by contrast, contain about 40 percent of Americans. --Max Yglesias
The states represented by the 6 senators (Iowa, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and Wyoming) have a total of 13 representatives so the committee consists of half of the senators from states with 13 representatives and corresponds to 6.5 representatives, that is, less than 1.5 percent of the house and roughly 1.5 percent of the population. --Nathan Newman
It turns out that a majority of the gang of six — Senators Baucus, Snowe, Conrad, and Grassley — hail from states with extraordinarily concentrated health insurance markets. As Catherine Arnst of Businessweek reports, “such market concent ration has become a potent argument for supporters of a public insurer,” which would especially benefit consumers in those states. So guess what the Gang of Six has immediately taken off the table in reform talks? [Guess why.] ... They’ve also dismissed an “income surtax on high earners” — because, hey, once you’ve already voted to give away $250 billion to the very wealthy in estate tax cuts, how could you possibly ask mere millionaires to chip in for health care? --Frank Pasqule
Update: Congress Tears Obama Health Care Plan to Shreds (7/28/09), Politex
House Speaker Pelosi: "We need to see the direction that the Senate is going,” she said, “so that we can do as much work in advance of September, so that when we come back, when we go to conference, we’re a good way down the road.” NYT
Senate Bill: Being formed by the Senate Finance Committee under the direction of Max Bachus, who has been given millions by the health care industry. The rest of the committee consists of three Republicans and two Democrats, Kent Conrad, called "out in right field" by Krugman, and Jeff Bingaman, a Centrist.
Predicted Result: "If the three Democrats and three Republicans can pull off a grand bargain, it will have to be more conservative than the measures proposed by the House or the left-leaning Senate health committee. And that could force Mr. Obama to choose between backing the bipartisan deal or rank-and-file Democrats who want a bill that more closely reflects their liberal ideals [and, according to polls, the wishes of most Americans.]" NYT
Obama's Defeat: Baucus claims that what will come out of his committee, will represent Obama's goals,covering the uninsured and slowing down health care expense. Thus far, his committee's solutions place a band-aid on a severed arm. Here are the Obama goals that the committee has eliminated to date:
1. No government-run insurance plan.
2. No coverage by employeers.
3. No surtax on the wealthy.
What the committee has not eliminated isaccounting for 67% of the cost of the health care plan by paying doctors and hospitals less for those patients covered by medicare or medicaid. To make up their loses, doctors and hospitals will most likely pass these added costs on to those patients.
Health Care Winners and Losers (7/27/09), Editorial
Update: Baucus' Senate Finance Committee to Drop Gvt. Insurance, Employer Coverage, Wealthy Surtax
It's been our experience that by the time one waits for House and Senate versions of a bill to be passed and sent to joint committee, it's too late to do much to change the result, unless the President decides to veto it and start all over again. This will not be the case with the Obama health bill, which has yet to pass in either branch of Congress. We call this the "Obama" health bill, because he's willing to accept whatever's presently being discussed in Congress and call it a "victory," no matter how far it is from his supposed original intentions.
We supported Hillary during the Dem presidential campaign because she wasn't much different than Obama on most of the issues, but her position on health care was more progressive than Obama's. Other than that, Obama was more personally attractive as a candidate than Hillary, and he sold himself as representing "change" and "hope," powerful, vague generalities that typical politicians use to get elected. Just ask Hillary's husband. As for McPalin, they were just more Bush, and the majority of the voters didn't want that. Bush's idea of health care was to send those who couldn't afford insurance to emergency rooms in hospitals.
Meanwhile, since the primaries, the health care industry--the American Medical Association, hospital groups and the insurance lobby--, seeing the writing on the wall, have been pouring billions into the coffers of the politicians in control of the final bill, from Obama on down. The Washington Post reports, "Obama "received more than $2 million from the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors during his record-breaking presidential campaign....The health-care sector has long ranked with financial services and energy interests as one of the most powerful political forces in Washington, and it spent nearly $1 billion on lobbying in the past two years alone." Obama's largest total campaign contributions came from the financial services industry.
"Overall, health care interests invested $126.8 million in lobbying over the first three months of this year....Spending has spiked since the beginning of last year, particularly among deep-pocketed organizations with a major stake in the health care debate....Health care lobby groups have been generous with their campaign contributions, too, particularly to Democrats....Democrats also enjoy close ties with influential players in the health care lobbying world, particularly those lawmakers sitting on committees with a key role in the legislation [like Dem Max Baucus, who is in charge of health care reform in the Senate and has been given over $3 million between 2003 and 2008]....The parade of health care lobbyists visiting the White House also moved into the spotlight last week...." (See specifics at Health Care Industry Unleashing Big Money.
As a consequence of the symbiotic relationship between politicians and the health care industry, it's now looking unlikely that the final health care bill that Obama signs will contain a federal health insurance plan, additional taxes on those earning $250,000 plus per year, and workable methods of preventing health care costs from rising. Instead, as Obama has made clear at his press conference last week, up to 67% of the cost of the plan will come from paying doctors and hospitals less for medicade and medicare patiets: "The biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid....We've estimated that two-thirds of the cost of reform can be paid for by reallocating money that is simply being wasted in federal health care programs....We...want to create an independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Medicare on an annual basis." [MedPac is already in place, but it has no power.] Right now, due to present fees, many doctors don't accept medicare patients, and some clinics limit the number of medicare patients they will treat. There's nothing in the 4 plans in Congress that specifically addresses this obvious problem, and things will ge worse as the cost of Obama's health care plan will be placed on the backs of our seniors.
While Obama, under pressure from Repubs, Dems, and the health care undustry, insists that most of the money from his plan is in available federal funds, Paul Krugman warns, "We really, really don’t want to get into a position a few years from now where premiums are rising rapidly, many Americans are priced out of the insurance market despite government subsidies, and the cost of health care subsidies is a growing strain on the budget.
"And that’s why the public plan is an important part of reform: it would help keep costs down through a combination of low overhead and bargaining power. That’s not an abstract hypothesis, it’s a conclusion based on solid experience. Currently, Medicare has much lower administrative costs than private insurance companies, while federal health care programs other than Medicare (which isn’t allowed to bargain over drug prices) pay much less for prescription drugs than non-federal buyers. There’s every reason to believe that a public option could achieve similar savings."
But writing in THE NATION, John Nichols, says a federal health care option is not going to happen:
"A robust public plan, with the quality and flexibility that is required to make it appealing to all Americans, would wipe out its insurance-industry competitors in short order. Why would anyone opt for more of the profiteering, restrictions and actual denials of needed treatment -- especially for people with pre-existing conditions -- that the insurance industry uses to make money rather than provide Americans with the medical care they require? And why would any employer choose to subsidize the stock value of health-care conglomerates when it is possible to opt for the better care and controlled costs of a public plan?
"The powerful insurance and private health-care lobbies, which fear honest competition as the vampire does the stake, are going to do everything in their power to accomplish three things:
1. Scare Americans with hypocritical talk about the hefty price-tag for getting a robust public plan off the ground.
2. Undermine the structural supports for a public plan so that it cannot compete -- effectively turning it into a sub-standard "alternative" that will appeal only to those who have no other options.
3. Fiddle with the overall "reform" so that most of the taxpayer money that is expended streams into the accounts of private firms.
In the state of confusion created the industry's lobbying and advertising campaigns, chances are that the scaremongers and the profiteers will come out ahead."
Which would lead, Krugman concludes, to defeat, not victory: "Reform isn’t worth having if you can only get it on terms so compromised that it’s doomed to fail. Above all, the success of reform depends on successful cost control."
And tht's why the D.C. politicians in power are having million dollar paydays, courtesy of the health care industry. --Politex
Energy R&D: Obama Keeps Breaking Promises (7/22/09), CD
"During the campaign, he drew attacks from Hillary Clinton and John McCain for being all rhetoric and no action....President Obama has repeatedly pledged $150 billion to clean energy research and development, but with just $1 billion per year in R&D funding, the Waxman-Markey bill falls far short. Will Obama listen to 34 Nobel laureates urging him to keep his promise?"
Bush, Paulson, and Greenspan, The Three Stooges Of The Economic Meltdown (7/21/09), Michiko Kakutani, book reviewer
Obama's a Wuss (7/21/09), Politex, Brooks
Most everyone likes Obama. I know I do. Personally. But when it comes to politics, he's a wuss. We knew this for years, and we've written about it. He's presently being eaten alive by the D.C. politicians on both sides of the aisle. He's unwilling to get tough enough to do the heavy lifting. He now knows that his dream of bipartisanship doesn't move Republicans one iota, and he allows the Republicrats in his own party to do business as usual. His pretty words to the contrary are hot air. He's weak and ineffectual.
By giving too much power to a Republicrat-controlled Congress, he is willing to sacrifice the needs of the people for hollow "victories." That's why his poll numbers are going down. He asks, "Can't we all just get along?" and the Republicans and Republicrats just keep beating on him. He's a wuss. --Politex, JoeBama Watch
Here's David Brooks' take:
"Months ago, it seemed as if Obama would lead a center-left coalition. Instead, he has deferred to the Old Bulls on Capitol Hill on issue after issue.
"Machiavelli said a leader should be feared as well as loved. Obama is loved by the Democratic chairmen, but he is not feared. On health care, Obama has emphasized cost control. The chairmen flouted his priorities because they don’t fear him. On cap and trade, Obama campaigned against giving away pollution offsets. The chairmen wrote their bill to do precisely that because they don’t fear him. On taxes, Obama promised that top tax rates would not go above Clinton-era levels. The chairmen flouted that promise because they don’t fear him.
"Last week, the administration announced a proposal to take Medicare spending decisions away from Congress and lodge the power with technocrats in the executive branch. It’s a good idea, and it might lead to real cost savings. But there’s no reason to think that it will be incorporated into the final law. The chairmen will never surrender power to an administration they can override."
Obama Breaks Yet Another Campaign Promise, Allows Logging In Rain Forest (7/16/09), HuffPost
This week, the Obama administration approved the sale of timber in a roadless national forest in Alaska. The Tongass National Forest is a 17 million acre temperate rain forest in southeast Alaska, which is home to both endangered species and native Alaskan tribes. It is the largest temperate rain forest in the United States....
"Tongass environmental activists had been hoping [Obama's Sec. of Ag. would provide] a temporary moratorium on timber road-building in roadless areas, including Orion North and three other timber sales on the Tongass. President Obama supported the roadless rule in his campaign." [Juneau Empire]
Environmentalists have long criticized allowing logging in national forests as not only destructive, but a waste of taxpayer money. According to The Wilderness Society: "American taxpayers have not only watched as the Tongass has been picked apart by road building and logging, they've paid for the privilege. The tab extends beyond $750 million over 20 years. In a single year alone, the Forest Service spent $36 million on the Tongass timber program and got back in revenues only $1 million. Subsidies for logging roads account for nearly half of timber program costs annually."
Bush Supremes' Selection And His Gut Decisions Show GOP Irrationality (7/15/09), Dowd
"Freedom": Bailed Out Banks Are Back to Screwing Us (7/14/09), Herbert
The very fact that the nation's financial institutions are presently doing again what they did to create the fiancial crisis that has led to depression conditions for millions of the newly unemployed and more wealth for the financiers left standing, indicates that Obama and Congress have failed in their task to prevent such a crisis from happening again. Given Obama's willingness to settle for watered-down programs led by folks whose ethics are questioned and calling the resuslt a "victory," I don't hold out much hope for a strong consumer protection plan, discussed by Herbert below. As we've learned from the Bush years, if a bill is ever passed with teeth in it, ineffectual leadership, lack of funding, or outright corruption too often kills its effect, unless it directly benefits the wealthiest Americans. --Politex
What is up with the banks and the rest of the financial industry? The people running this system remind me of gangsters who manage to walk out of the courthouse with a suspended sentence and can’t wait to get back to their nefarious activities.
These malefactors of great wealth...developed hideously destructive credit policies and took insane risks that hurt millions of American families and nearly wrecked the economy. Then they were bailed out with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars, money that came from the very people victimized by the industry’s outlandish practices.
Now the industry is fighting against creation of an agency that would protect taxpayers and ordinary consumers from a similarly devastating onslaught in the future. And at the same time they are scrambling to raise credit card interest rates and all manner of exploitive fees to build a brand new superstructure of questionable profits on the backs of the taxpayers who came to their rescue....
Protecting the consumer is, of course, anathema to the industry.... Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard Law School professor who currently chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel, which has been monitoring the financial industry bailouts, told a Congressional committee last month about the stark difference between the warm and fuzzy advertising approach used by lenders competing for consumer dollars and the treachery that is so often hidden in the fine print. “Giant lenders compete for business by talking about nominal interest rates, free gifts and warm feelings,” she said, “but the fine print hides the things that really rake in the cash. Today’s business model is about making money through tricks and traps.”
It should be clear by now that it is often the goal of financial institutions to see that the consumer is not well informed. “In the early-1980s,” said Professor Warren, the average credit card contract was about a page long. “Today, it is more than 30 pages. ... I am a contract law professor, and I cannot make out some of the fine print.” She added, “Study after study shows that credit products are designed in ways that obscure the meaning and trick customers.” There is nothing free or fair about a market in which one side uses double talk and mumbo jumbo to obscure important information and deliberately dupe the other side into making decisions against its own interests....
The malefactors of great wealth view an informed consumer as Public Enemy No. 1. The last thing in the world that they want is a fair marketplace, which is why the Consumer Financial Protection Agency can’t come fast enough.
Biden Lies, Says Krugman, Stiglitz Who? (7/6/09), HuffPost
During his interview with ABC's This Week on Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden made what will be a much-discussed admission in the week ahead. The Obama administration, he said, had "misread" the extent of the economic catastrophe it inherited.
"The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy," declared Biden. "The figures we worked off of in January were the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there."
"We misread how bad the economy was, but we are now only about 120 days into the recovery package," the vice president said later in the interview. "The truth of the matter was, no one anticipated, no one expected that that recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of money."
Certainly, the Obama administration's acknowledgment that it misjudged the crisis it inherited is rife with possibilities for its [critics]....For an Obama White House that, two weeks ago, told the public to measure the success of its policies based on jobs they created, it is difficult to decry these critiques as inherently unfair, regardless of what troubles were passed on from the Bush administration.
But equally problematic is Biden's assertion that "everyone" - not just the White House - was off in their prognostications. This is simply untrue.
Host George Stephanopoulos pointed out that "a lot of people were saying that you needed to do something bigger and bolder" when it came to the stimulus package. He named New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as one example. There are many others.
The prize-winning Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz not only warned that the stimulus was too small during its construction, the day after Obama signed it into law he predicted how its shortcomings would make themselves apparent.
"I think there is a broad consensus but not universal among economists that the stimulus package that was passed was badly designed and not enough. I know it is not universal but let me try to explain. First of all that it was not enough should be pretty apparent from what I just said: It is trying to offset the deficiency in aggregate demand and it is just too small," Stiglitz said.
"The shortfall in state revenue [is] probably in the order of 150 to 200 billion dollars a year. And the states have balanced budget frameworks so if you follow the newspaper you know the drastic problems that California and New York are in, these are really serious problems and because of their balanced budget frameworks they have to reduce their spending... if their income comes down. So that would be a negative stimulus of 150 to 200 billion unless there is federal aid.
"And the stimulus package there was a little of federal aid but just not enough. So what we will be doing is we will be laying off teachers and laying off people in the health care sector while we are hiring construction workers. It is a little strange for a design of a stimulus package. You ask, why do you want to hire construction workers and fire teachers. I don't know what is the rationale behind that."
Politex: At the time Obama's stimulus package was passed by Congress, critics warned that he would have to come back to Congress and ask for more stimulus money at a later date, so he was made aware of he size of the package with respect to the seriousness of our economic failure. Critics warned that he would have a harder time getting a second stimulus package through Congress, so he should have asked for more to begin with. Given the behavior of the Repubs since Obama has been in office, it's not difficult to believe that they wanted the stimulus package to fail, and held the line on stimulus spending, with the help of centrist Dems. Add to this Obama's well-known willingness to settle for half-way measures, which takes the pressure off the Repubs, who want to give him nothing.
Meanwhile, in spite of Biden's admission that the Obama administration is now aware of the greater severity of the economic crisis and that the funding is failing, senior adviser David Axelrod said yesterdy on Meet the Press that any discussion of a possible second stimulus package would wait until the fall. Given Biden's remarks, this implies that, at present, a stimulus package crafted for a serious economic crisis might work equally well for an even more serious economic crisis.
To Wacked Out Palin, Blatant Contradictions Prove Her Sincerity (7/5/09), Dowd
Palin’s speech is classic casuistry.
After girlish burbling about how “progressing our state” and serving Alaska “is the greatest honor that I could imagine,” and raving about how much she loves her job, she abruptly announced that she was making the ultimate sacrifice: dumping the state on her lieutenant.
Why “milk it,” as she put it, when you can quit it? “Only dead fish go with the flow,” she said, while cold fish can blow out of town. Leaving Alaska in the lurch is best for Alaska. She can better “effect change” in government from outside government. She can fulfill her promise of “efficiencies and effectiveness” by deserting Juneau midway through her term — and taking her tanning bed with her.
“We need those who will respect our Constitution,” said Palin, who swore on the Bible to uphold the Constitution. She said she can’t fulfill that silly old oath of office in the usual way because she’s not “wired to operate under the same old politics as usual.”
Naturally, she dragged the troops in, saying that her trip to see wounded soldiers overseas “fortified” her decision to give up because “they don’t give up.”
She refuses to succumb to the “politics of personal destruction.” It’s no fun unless she’s the one aiming those poison darts, as she did when she accused Barack Obama of associating “with terrorists who targeted their own country.”
Sometimes, she explained, if you’re the star, you have to “call an audible and pass the ball” and leave at halftime, “so the team can win” somehow without you.
The maverick must run free when greener pastures beckon. The musher must jump out of the dogsled when warmer climes call. As Palin’s spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, says, “The world is literally her oyster.”
But just remember, beloved Alaska, it’s all about you.
Palin's Independence Day (7/4/09), Politex
In a perfect embodiment of the present confusion of the Republican Party, Sara Palin has decided to step down as Governor of Alaska because, in her words:
1. She's quitting because continuing as governor would be "the quitter's way."
2. She's interrupting her term in office beause she wants her replacement to "continue without interruption."
3. She doesn't want to be a typical last-term governor and "hit the road" on junkets as she hits the road on "campaign... junkets."
Here is why she's quitting:
1. The longer she stays in office, barraged by both Alaskan parties, the longer her inane character, administrative foibles, and present lack of accomplishment will be on display.
2. She needs to return to the lower US with time on her hands because that's where the money and audience is if she expects to run a presidential primary campaign.
3. Failing that, she needs to solidify her right wing audience so she can get a job on Fox.
Like McCain who rolled the dice and made her a falling star, Palin's rolled the dice on Independence Day weekend, symbolic to her followers, much to the chagrin of rational folks and the delight of the press. (more by Gail Collins)
Republicans, Dem Senators Driving Half-Way Obama Into Depression
While His Foreclosure Reduction and Bank Lending Plans Fail (7/3/09),
Politex, Kristoff, Krugman
If the uncooperative, do-nothing Republicans were in control and their Dem opposition were acting like Repubs, they would be calling the Dems "unAmerican." And now that the Repubs are using congressional filibusters on a daily basis, why aren't the Dems, unlike the Repubs under Bush, getting press coverage by warning us that filibusters could bring down our nation of laws, and democracy itself. In fact, why aren't the Dems using scare tactics to warn the nation about the grave harm that Republicans are doing. While the Repubs played the scare card on a daily basis under Bush, Obama and the Dems would rather appeal to us rationally. Given the track record of the American electorate, this may prove to be a mistake.
According to Nicholar Kristoff, "Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes and enemies with clubs, but we aren’t well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought." Kristoff provides two examples from today's politics, the unwillingness of both Dems and Repubs to put Guantanamo prisoners in prisons on the mainland, and Congress's unwillingness to pass a stong climate controll bill. While we're over-alert for Guantanamo prisoners, climate changes "sneak in under the brain’s radar....In short, we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age. We’re less adept with 21st-century challenges....This short-circuitry in our brains explains many of our policy priorities. We Americans spend nearly $700 billion a year on the military and less than $3 billion on the F.D.A., even though food-poisoning kills more Americans than foreign armies and terrorists."
This is the thinking that is presently leading us into a depression, as Krugman points out in today's op-ed piece. With the unemployment rate ready to reach 10% and states running out of money, "We have the Obama stimulus plan, which aims to create 3 ½ million jobs by late next year. That’s much better than nothing, but it’s not remotely enough. And there doesn’t seem to be much else going on. All of this is depressingly familiar to anyone who has studied economic policy in the 1930s. Once again a Democratic president has pushed through job-creation policies that will mitigate the slump but aren’t aggressive enough to produce a full recovery. Once again much of the stimulus at the federal level is being undone by budget retrenchment at the state and local level.
"So have we failed to learn from history, and are we, therefore, doomed to repeat it? Not necessarily — but it’s up to the president and his economic team to ensure that things are different this time. President Obama and his officials need to ramp up their efforts, starting with a plan to make the stimulus bigger. Just to be clear, I’m well aware of how difficult it will be to get such a plan enacted. There won’t be any cooperation from Republican leaders, who have settled on a strategy of total opposition, unconstrained by facts or logic....It’s also not clear whether the administration will get much help from Senate “centrists,” who partially eviscerated the original stimulus plan by demanding cuts in aid to state and local governments — aid that, as we’re now seeing, was desperately needed.
"And as an economist, I’d add that many members of my profession are playing a distinctly unhelpful role. It has been a rude shock to see so many economists with good reputations recycling old fallacies — like the claim that any rise in government spending automatically displaces an equal amount of private spending, even when there is mass unemployment — and lending their names to grossly exaggerated claims about the evils of short-run budget deficits. (Right now the risks associated with additional debt are much less than the risks associated with failing to give the economy adequate support.) Also, as in the 1930s, the opponents of action are peddling scare stories about inflation even as deflation looms.
"Obama administration economists understand the stakes. Indeed, just a few weeks ago, Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisers, published an article on the “lessons of 1937” — the year that F.D.R. gave in to the deficit and inflation hawks, with disastrous consequences both for the economy and for his political agenda. What I don’t know is whether the administration has faced up to the inadequacy of what it has done so far....Getting another round of stimulus will be difficult. But it’s essential."
Stimulus, Environment, Health: Why Obama Ends Up With Weak, Half-Way Results (7/1/09), Brooks
BushBama Attacks Human Rights, Civil Liberties, Rule of Law (6/23/09), Herbert
Bush "Violation" Killing America's Lakes, Rivers Upheld By His Supreme Ct. (6/23/09), NYT
Republican Senators And Dems Like Nelson and Conrad Make Citizens Sick (6/22/09), Politex, Krugman
Obama's First Choice For Health Sec. Urges Him To Drop Fed. Public Health Care Plan.
Disappointing Daschle Is Now A Well-Paid Health Corporation Shill (6/19/09), Huffington
Obama To Daschle: Don't Worry, Tom, I Have Your Back (6/19/09), Huffington
Obama Has Decided To Save Fat, Corrupt Bankers. Period. (6/19/09), Huffington
Obama's Newly-Announced Economic Plan Rearranges Deck Chairs On the Titanic (6/18/09), Nocera
We'll Second That! Quotes of the Day (6/17/09), ed by Politex
Since Key Members Of Congress Have Holdings In/Ties To The Industry,
Can We Expect Meaningful Health Care Reform?, WP
Almost 30 key lawmakers helping draft landmark health-care legislation have financial holdings in the industry, totaling nearly $11 million worth of personal investments in a sector that could be dramatically reshaped by this summer's debate.
Obama Fuels Opponents' Argument Against Interracial Marriages, Politex, etc. (6, 16, '09)
Hooverville: Charismatic, Intelligent Obama Is Just A Failing Suit, Harpers (6, 14, '09)
For The Bottom 30% Of The Nation, We're In a Depression, Barbara Ehrenreich (6, 14, '09)
Abortion Doctor's Murder Sparks Waves Of Calm, Rational Discussion, Onion (6, 12, '09)
Homeland Security Warning Re Anti-Abortion, Anti-Jewish Terrorist Killings By
Right-Wing Extremists Attacked As Anti-Republican By GOP, Huffpost (6, 10, '09)
Jawboning For Obama: We're Not In This Together, Politex (June 9, 2009)
Tone Deaf Obama Gives Religious Anti-Abortion Activist Senior Public Policy Post
in Dept. of Health and Human Services On the Heels of the Murder of Law-Abiding
Abortionist, As Satomayor Remains Silent on Pro-Choice, Raw Story (June 6, 2009)
Bush, Obama, Senate Defeat Constitution In Wiretapping Case (June 4, 2009)
Supporting Hillary: Obama's Concerted Efforts To Halt Israeli Settlements;
Satellite Photos Indicate Israelis Lied To Bush (June 3, 2009)
The Payoff Plan: Obama and His Very Wealthy Car Czar Steal Pensions
From Workers, Give the Money to Banks , Greg Palast (June 2, 2009)
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