Let's Keep Defining It Down

You want a great example of everything that's been wrong with the Democratic party since the third-way Democrats took over in the early 1990s? Take a good look at former Clintonite and current a-hole Matt Miller's piece from the WaPo. Matt takes on us crazy liberals who believe that without a government option, health care reform ain't worth spit. Actually, like all good centrist Dems, he ignores actual arguments from the left in favor of shooting down the charactures of arguments from the left.

Matt comes out swing and labeling. First, "the left" is "dangerous" because we are opposed to the wonders of "the biggest progressive achievement in half a century," which says a lot more about the last half century than it does about the dangerous left.

In the next paragraph the dangerous left becomes "Democrats" and/or "liberals" who have mindlessly been led astray by unnamed leaders who say that without a public option, health care "reform" is a waste of time.

Matt takes on the liberal, Democrat, dangerous left leaders. Apparently, we believe without a Medicare-style public option, there will be no way to cover everyone. Matt trumps us with the Netherlands and Switzerland. They have universal coverage and private insurance. Their health system is better and cheaper. Boom, dangerous leftists destroyed by real-world facts.

What Matt fails to mention, of course, is that while the Swiss have private insurance, they don't allow for-profit insurers to participate in the basic plan. This seems like an important distinction, as getting rid of for-profit insurance would certainly lower costs in the US and is not an idea that anybody is proposing right now. Other than that, yes the Swiss example is spot on.

Oh and, while were here, maybe Matt can throw out an insane right-wing talking point.

In fact, as these two countries show, it is possible to cover everyone without a “big government takeover.”

Matt continues by reminding us that the public option is not the most important thing. The most important thing is providing all Americans "access" to group health coverage outside of the employment context. Matt sees this happen through the wonders of the regional co-ops.

The central progressive breakthrough in any reform should be to make it possible for every American to access group health coverage outside the employment setting — access that does not currently exist but which the proposed insurance exchanges would enable. What’s critical, therefore, is the structure of these exchanges and the rules about who would be eligible to use them.

That's right. Matt has managed to define the essential need of health care reform from universal coverage with effective, quality health care to access to something. And the real danger, as it always is to a Clintonite is that if we don't get about compromising with the Republicans over the crumb they might allow us, well they might just take it away.

Matt then spends a few paragraphs attacking the one thing that nobody is proposing, but would actually solve a lot of problems - single-payer. Can you guess why single-payer would be bad? Did you guess that the crushing hand of government bureaucracy would stifle innovation? You guessed right!

On the eve of beneficial innovations in drug therapies, devices and cost-­effective ways to deliver better care, it is ill-advised to make the government’s hand too rigid.

Oh glory day we are on the eve of! Oh happy future! When? How? Unanswered, but assured.

Liberals should make peace with the notion that a regulated market of competing private health plans can be the vehicle for getting everyone covered. Yes, it means that unlike some other advanced countries, we’ll have billions of “health” dollars siphoned off by middlemen and marketers.

But if liberals think of it as a jobs program, they’ll learn to love it. If everyone’s covered and insurer “cherry-­picking” is dead, health insurance will come to look more like a regulated utility.

A regulated market "can" be a vehicle for accomplishing the half-assed goal of getting everyone "covered," sure. Let's not for a moment stop to consider what kind of coverage for how much and who benefits. Those issues pale in comparison to the larger goal of making sure everyone has "access" to "coverage." And even if the whole thing turns out just like a non-governmental Enron-type utility, so much the better. I will rest easy knowing that there are lots of middle men employed in the business of denying the claims of poor people, because, in the end, it's all about jobs, jobs, jobs, n'est pas?

Der

Headline in Emerald today:
SPORTS FANS LINKED TO SEXISM

Red Guard, Indeed

I'm pretty sure than no anti-war protest since 1991 drew front page coverage in the Register Guard. I remember attending a large rally (my only one because I hate hippies and the hippies run the rallies in Eugene) that drew what I considered 1000 people or so to the Courthouse. The mayor spoke, DeFazio spoke, we were forced to sing "Give Peace a Chance" and were treated to 5+ minutes of a drum circle (I don't know how long it went, five minutes is all I can give a drum circle). I believe this drew City/Region coverage and I was pissed the crowd was estimated at 500.

Yesterday's tea parties were treated to front page coverage, extending to the inside, and a separate article on the inside about the national tea parties. From reading the R-G, I might be lead to believe that the average fine citizen of Springfield just happened to wake up that morning and - gosh darn it - express some frustration about what Obama is doing to this country.

Now, because we are pinko, leftist, commie-types, we'll remember that at least once 1 million people demonstrated in NYC against the war. I believe this rally got a mention in the "Across the Nation" blurb section of the R-G. Apparently Fox News' weeks-long campaign to get people out, resulting in tens of thousands across the nations, is worthy of an good-size story.

/standard rant about the so-called liberal media

Daily Emerald on Strike

Those that know me well, know that I am usually the first person to mock these kinds of things. (It has to do with my fear of standing out in public, so I make fun of others who do it. It's really what makes me so lovable). But I am actually thinking the kids at the Emerald on are on the right track here.

I encourage you to read what they have written.

This feels right. They lay out a persuasive case. There is nothing (pardon) hysterical about what they write. Nothing that seems like a bunch of whiny kids making crazy demands. They haven't barricaded a cafeteria. They are not demanding anything over the top or tangential (at best) to their cause. Hopefully, their protest will not end up a predictably miserable failure.

So until I know otherwise, go Daily Emerald staff! I hope I don't see a paper in the box tomorrow.

Triple Plays All Over the Place

As County Fair points out, there is almost no imaginable reason Hugh Hewitt should be included in as any kind of "expert" in a discussion of Bush's legacy, a fact which Hewitt quickly confirms when Politico inexplicably does just that.

Hewitt's first sentence contains three errors.

George W. Bush, like Harry Truman, was president when an unexpected attack inflicted a terrible defeat on the United States. Unlike the far-away launch of the Korean War, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, savaged the heart of Manhattan and came close to crippling the national government in Washington.

I'm not an expert in the history of the Korean War, but if memory serves, the Korean War came after months of hostilities, a disputed election, and the unification of Korea was the stated aim of the both the North and South Koreans. In other words, the invasion of the South by the North was widely expected. (Wikipedia confirms!)

I also seem to remember that the Korean War was deemed a "tie," in that it was the stated ambition of both sides that the country be unified, but the war resulted in a on-going stalemate, with the country divided along the 38th parallel, much the same as it was before the war. Unless Hewitt is somehow saying that the initial attack by North Korea against South Korea was a terrible defeat for the United States. Either way.

I'm not sure how close the attacks on 9-11 came to "crippling the national government in Washington." I remember that a certain President spent an awful long time flying around in his plane while assuring the nation that Dick Cheney was in control of everything. I remember hearing an anecdote about one GOP staffer getting in his car and not stopping until he reached Harrisburg, PA. I know there was a tremendous amount of fear that day, but I don't recall the crippling of the government or anything like it. Maybe Hewitt is referring to everyone losing their heads and hastily voting to launch an unnecessary war in Iraq, but I doubt it.

And that's just the first sentence. The rest of the article is hackity-hackity. I did like this, though:

Bush’s grand achievement on the domestic side was the most recent turn of a triple play of tax cuts — John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s and his own — all of which prove the incredible economic wisdom of allowing people to keep more of the money they make. It is unfortunately a lesson that is as quickly unlearned as it is productive when relearned. We are watching its unlearning now. Someone down the road will make it four for four.

The long run of economic growth that ended with the subprime crisis was the product of low marginal tax rates. The bubbles that burst did not destroy that truth any more than their explosions undermined the wisdom of free trade, for which Bush was a tireless campaigner.

If the economy is Bush's greatest domestic...Jesus, how do you finish that sentence?

The Mysterious Case of the Attributed Article

I was going to write a post about how the BBC is reporting that the guy who threw his shoes at Bush as been beaten while in custody, but that the AP article just says he is going to be tried and could get two years or be let free. Digging up the article on the internet, though, I see that the AP article does mention this allegations, but the Register Guard just cut off that portion of the article.

In my investigationings, I discovered something even more interesting (ha, ha). This article on Yahoo is attributed to Qassim Abdul-Zahra of the AP. It starts out:

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi journalist who hurled his shoes at President George W. Bush was expected to appear before a judge Wednesday in a first step of a complex legal process that could end in a criminal trial, a government official and the reporter's brother said.

Muntadhar al-Zeidi has been in custody since Sunday, when he gained folk hero status across the Arab world by throwing both shoes at Bush during a news conference. Bush ducked twice during the bizarre assault and was not injured.

Despite widespread sympathy for his act across the region, Iraqi authorities sent the case to the Central Criminal Court of Iraq, which handles security and terrorism cases.

The Register Guard, however, attributes this story to a Robert Reid of the AP. As do other news outlets.

For some reason I doubt that the YahooNews! is taking an article written by a guy with an (forgive me) "American" name and slapping a Muslim-sounding name on it, but for some other reason I can see just the opposite happening. Am I missing something? Alternative explanations?

Oh Well, We've All Got A Job To Do

Shorter Ruben Navarette:

It turns out that all those columns I wrote calling Obama a panderer and a phony were wrong, which I might have known had I done the most basic research on him before I wrote them.

I Read the News Today

On a day when the Register Guard front page informs me that 25 workers at Emerald Valley Kitchen, including my sister who is raising three kids, are about to lose their jobs, and another Springfield plant is set to close with the loss of 100 jobs, and the interior pages tell me that local RV makers Monaco Coach and Country Coach are cutting back pay, and the UO's economic index is down 10% from it's baseline in 1997, it was quite a relief to turn to the editorial pages to find George Will assuring me that the economy was humming along just fine.

Apparently, sales on "Black Friday" were up more than three percent over last year! And Americans spent seven percent more than they did last year on that fateful day! On a one day snapshot, spending is up! up! up! Will warns us against reading too much into it, then proceeds to read too much into it (but with question marks for plausible deniability).

Is this evidence that the recent deleveraging of indebted households has breathed fresh life into personal consumption, which normally is 70 percent of economic activity? Is it evidence of underestimated strength in the economy in which more than 93 percent of those who want to work are employed(!), and more than 93 percent of mortgages are being paid on time? Is it evidence that Washington's jaw-dropping interventions with hundreds of billions of dollars are having their intended psychotherapeutic effects?

I would speculate that the slight increase in day-after-Thanksgiving sales is evidence of none of things. Off the top of my head, I would offer that increased sales might be due to 1. the shortened holiday calendar this year; 2. the need for people to take advantage of sales in a depressed economy; 3. the willingness of retailers to report higher than actual sales in a vain hope of spurring an temporary economic "recovery."

The point of Will's column, however, is not to argue that the economy is doing well, but to warn against interfering with the market forces that have delivered an economy with its low levels of unemployment and foreclosure. I mean if nothing is really wrong, there's no need to go fixing anything, right? Right? Black Friday sales?

It seems that Obama is promising job creation or, if all else fails, to stem the tide of job loss. This is all balderdash to Will. As Will demonstrates, absolutely without reference to population growth, there has been an average increase of 1.5 million new jobs in the US each year since the Eisenhower administration. Now, this statistic combined with the fact that the newly-elected President is talking merely about stemming job loss might be cause for concern. I mean, it seems like a lack of job growth when it is almost a given portends a gloomy economic forecast. Depressing really. Not to George "Sunshine When It's Raining" Will!

In recent years, in normal conditions, the economy has "lost" tens of millions of jobs through capitalism's "creative destruction" (Joseph Schumpeter's phrase). It also has created a few million more than that, which is why the destruction is creative.

I am sure George will (ha!) appreciate it if we skip right past that "in normal conditions," so we will. Ah,! "creative destruction" is there nothing you can't do? Each time an American loses a middle-class income paying job, an angel gets its wings two more jobs are created unloading goods at the local Wal-Mart. Progress! And this is really the heart of Will's column, the argument that free trade, despite all (no all!) indications to the contrary, has been a success for the American economy. Heaven forbid, we mess with free trade,

Should jobs "saved" by, say, protectionist policies that interfere with free trade be balanced against jobs lost when export markets are lost to retaliatory protectionism?

Will asks, rhetorically. Of course we should do nothing to damage our booming export sector. Why, if you combine American know-how with our inherent grit and determination, no one can out-manufacture the good ol' U.S. of A.! I mean, if we could open up that damn China market, why we could sell a billion toasters over night! Or cars! Think about a billion Indians all driving Hummers! Let's pray to Jeebus that nothing interferes with that plan. (Certainly not anything as short-sighted as bailing out the automakers long enough to enable them to retool their cars so that they might produce one an Indian would want to buy. That would be communism of the worst sort!) So we may lose millions upon millions of "jobs," but through the miracle of creative destruction, we'll also gain millions and millions of "jobs." Following Will's lead we will not even begin to wonder if "jobs" always equals "jobs."

You see, global free trade is all just a system of trade-offs, you lose your job making tasty organic salsa for $15 an hour with benefits, but you gain a job at Sam's Club selling salsa made in Asia! If no one can afford to buy RVs, that's okay!, you can get a job...well...um...there's always job training at the local community college! (And, by the way, look at all them trees out there just going to waste. I bet someone could make a pretty penny chopping all them trees down, then someone, somewhere could make them into a cheap table that you may be able to afford to buy one day.)

Of course, Will doesn't care about the loss of good jobs. Whereas our labor has a practical range of about 30 miles, his capital can be invested anywhere. When our jobs go to Mexico, India, or China, so does Will's money. (Thank God we have the US military to make sure that he'll get it back!) Plus, his job isn't going anywhere. You can't outsource this top-notch level of obfuscation, it takes decades of blindly spewing right-wing free market talking points to be this oblivious to what is happening all around you.

I Choose Both!

Which is more ridiculous? This headline from the Register Guard:
Despite Obama, racial disparities persist

or this opening paragraph from Jonah Goldberg:

In an attempt to dial down expectations for his administration, President-elect Barack Obama's supporters have dropped much of the "messiah" talk.

You decide!

Common Knowledge

In a must-read about the Big 3 bailout, Jonathan Cohn debunks the $70 an hour myth. I found this passage enlightening, but depressing:

The number only gets to $70 an hour if you include the cost of benefits for retirees--in other words, the cost of benefits for other people. One of the few people to grasp this was Portfolio.com's Felix Salmon. As he noted yesterday, the claim that workers are getting $70 an hour in compensation is just "not true."

Depressing because this fact should be basic knowledge, but, as he notes, it appears that it is not. If we can have a week-long conversation about the Big 3 and their problems without everyone knowing that the high labor costs are legacy costs, then...well...jeebus.

btw, check out that first comment. Yes, unions will just have "give up keeping all those retirees happy." No sense in not destroying tens of thousands of lives while we're at it.

h/t: Bellman