Nostalgia and Politics

E.D. Kain takes a look at Paul Krugman's and his own politics, and how each's nostalgia shapes his views:

At some point you become your own special interest group. You suddenly see the public library as a symbol of everything that has been lost or that you imagine has been lost. You want to retake or protect what is valuable to you, and what you believe is valuable to others. The key question that needs to be asked is this: do these things you value inhibit the freedoms of others? Is your nostalgia inadvertently causing someone harm?
Krugman’s vision of the 1950’s really is a vision of an insulated world, locked precariously in amber. Can it ever really come back? Did it rely too much on the plight of the disadvantaged – women, minorities, post-war Europe? I cannot help but think that the 1950’s never really happened. That my childhood in 1980’s Montana never really happened.
So maybe we should look forward toward a new vision of the good life. If we do, in some ways it will require us to look back at freedoms lost, and that will require some level of nostalgia. But it will also require us to recall that coercion and oppression exist on many levels, that the state is often just the arm of our culture, enforcing whatever freedom-quashing cultural trend exists at the moment – whether that is a long history of women as second-class-citizens or the relatively new (and far more benign) tendency to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.
Krugman talks about an era when kids were free to go out and play in the streets all day, unsupervised and pretty much safe. I’m not thirty yet and I remember that freedom myself.

I think it is interesting that most (white) Americans, including myself, seem to idealize the '50's, and look upon the time as a time to get back to. I think that tends to hold across Republicans and Democrats.  And yet, when it comes to civil and women's rights, Democrats tend to, rightly, look askance at the decade.  Meanwhile, actual Republican policies are more tied to the 1920's or 1890's, as opposed to the 1950's.  Very few people recognize that the U.S. wouldn't have reached such an economically dominant position without the destruction of World War II unleashed on the U.S.S.R., western Europe, Great Britain and Japan.  That position can never be reattained.  The nostalgia is extremely powerful, but misleading.  We now need to determine what sort of a state we want to live in, and how we can afford that.  None of that is fun, but all of that is necessary.

A great episode of 60 Minutes

Last night the show featured Robert Gates talking about the Defense Department, Afghanistan's former Chief of Intelligence making the case that Pakistan is hostile to U.S. interests (although I think he is really saying they are even more hostile to Afghanistan's interest) and it highlighted the crazy "Soveriegn Citizen" movement of crazy rightwing potential terrorists.  Here's the Robert Gates video, watch it and compare and contrast him with Donald Rumsfeld.  Bringing in Robert Gates to relace Rumsfeld was George W. Bush's greatest singular decision of his presidency, followed by listening to Condeleeza Rice instead of Cheney in his second term:

What Happened to Sarah Palin?

Joshua Green goes back to Sarah Palin's fight against the oil companies in Alaska, and asks what might have been:

Let’s stop here and go back for a moment to the convention speech—the alchemic moment of excitement and fantasy when Sarah Palin became the star of national politics. Listening to it today, you can practically hear her shift registers, the state figure morphing into a national one, the old Palin becoming the new. She touches on the pipeline, the corruption, how she broke the oil companies’ “monopoly on power” and ended a “culture of self-dealing.” But all of that is overshadowed by the full-throated assault on Barack Obama, rooted in deep cultural resentment, that became the campaign’s ethos and remains Palin’s identity. What resonate are her charges that Obama wanted to “forfeit” the war in Iraq and that he condescended to “working people” with talk of “how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns.”
That didn’t carry her to Washington, but it did reshape the contours of American politics. Today, there aren’t many Republicans of the type Palin was in Alaska; but nearly every Republican seeking the White House strives to evoke the more grievance-driven themes of her convention speech. Regardless of whether she runs too, her influence will be more broadly and deeply felt than anyone else’s. But it’s hard to believe that her party, or her country, or even Palin herself, is better off for that.
What if history had written a different ending? What if she had tried to do for the nation what she did for Alaska? The possibility is tantalizing and not hard to imagine. The week after the Republican convention, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the whole economy suddenly seemed poised to go down with it. Palin might have been the torchbearer of reform, a role that would have come naturally. Everything about her—the aggressiveness, the gift for articulating resentments, her record and even her old allies in Alaska—would once more have been channeled against a foe worth pursuing. Palin, not Obama, might ultimately have come to represent “Change We Can Believe In.” What had he done that could possibly compare with how she had faced down special interests in Alaska?

I am violating my original rule of not mentioning Sarah Palin unless she announces a run for President, which I made on my first day of blogging.  I think she may have come up in an aside on a post or two, but I generally haven't followed her soap opera.  I think this article is definitely worth reading, as it presents an interesting portrayal of Alaska, the oil industry and Sarah Palin's amazing, really, accomplishment in taking on her own party and  Big Oil.  I think it is interesting when mentioning the convention speech that he also doesn't mention the mantra of that convention, "Drill, Baby, Drill."  Somehow, the ultimate slogan of obsequiousness to Big Oil became the rallying cry most often voiced by the one opponent of the industry in Alaska that beat them.  Unfortunately, the former governor's personal flaws and biases combined with her competitive nature to undermine all that she actually did accomplish.  I think Joshua Green's article title is correct, "The Tragedy of Sarah Palin."  The whole thing is worth reading.

Being Catholic and Republican

Daniel Larison looks at Rick Santorum and analyzes the intersection of religious and partisan beliefs:

At the Republican presidential debate on Thursday Rick Santorum was asked about Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’s suggestion that there be a social truce. Santorum answered, “Anybody that would suggest we call a truce on moral issues doesn’t understand what America is all about.”
That is wrong. In fact, it’s the precise opposite of what America is about. ~Jennifer Rubin

They’re both wrong in different ways. America is not “about” anything in the way that these two mean it. America isn’t a creedal or proposition nation, and it isn’t an idea or an ideological project. Genuine constitutional conservatism is worthwhile, and it involves more than Berkowitz’s warmed-over fusionism, but it isn’t reducible to individual liberty or limited government, and one cannot claim that America is “about” either of these things. Despite their wishes to the contrary, Christian and especially Catholic conservatives cannot correctly attach moral or religious significance to the founding principles of a Whiggish republic.
What I will say in Santorum’s defense is that he has made this mistake because he considers moral issues, especially those that concern the protection of life and family stability, to be vitally important to a healthy and flourishing culture. At times, Santorum seems to want to argue that eternal verities and pre-political loyalties should take priority in how we organize our society and our polity, and he is probably one of the few Republicans to have held federal office recently to understand that obligations to a community and the common good are not the same as accepting the encroachment of the state. Then he often veers off on some strange militaristic tangent or, as he did the other night, endorses the use of torture on detainees, because he has already made the earlier mistake of attaching too much significance to the nation-state. That in turn leads him to support measures that directly contradict the moral principles that he normally defends. Santorum’s views are the unfortunate mish-mash that results from combining Catholic social teaching with Americanism and militarism, as the latter two tend to overshadow anything interesting that Santorum might have to say from his understanding of the former.

There are a lot of significant points which can be made about this subject.  Daniel pursues how pro-life voters became enmeshed in a bargain with the international interventionalist in support of wars which run counter to their moral values, and how the culture war is a way for the war hawks to co-opt the social conservatives to their war views. 

I think it is interesting to look at how Democratic and Republican Catholics cater their views about which social teachings by the Church are important to follow based on their party's interests.  Democratic Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage,labor unions, the legality of abortion and welfare programs, while being opposed to the death penalty and the war in Iraq.  Republican Catholics often want bans on gay marriage and abortion, destruction of unions, an end to welfare programs and support both the death penalty and the war in Iraq.  It seems like political platforms trump Church teaching nearly every time.  Not exactly a good trend for the stability of the Catholic Church in America.  I would guess that is a contributing factor to making "Former Catholic" the second largest "religious group" in the United States.

Update:  I neglected to mention torture.  Santorum explicitly supported the use of torture on detainees during last week's debate.  Daniel mentioned it, and I hate to leave it off the list of positions against Catholic teaching which Republicans have embraced.

The Tea Party and Liberals Each Misrepresent the Founding Fathers

William Hogeland looks at the economic roots of the American Revolution and how various factions have appropriated what they want to support their causes, even if it is incorrect (h/t Yves Smith):

Yet despite constant appeals to founding values by politicians and pundits across the political spectrum, a perennial American eagerness to avoid framing our founding period in economic terms can make it strangely difficult to keep those all-important 18th-century finance issues in historical focus. The Tea Party movement, for example, has laid its claim on the founding period, and to a great extent that claim is indeed an economic and financial one. Casting the modern welfare state as a form of tyranny, in large part because of what they see as its excessive taxation, Tea Partiers invoke the famous American resistance to Parliament’s efforts to raise a revenue in the colonies without the consent traditionally given by representation. Seeing founding-generation American patriots as unified against British taxation (and frequently misrepresenting the politics even of the elites they invoke), the Tea Party defines its own anti-government, anti-tax values as essential to American identity.
The Tea Party thus edits out an alternative view of government that prevailed among the ordinary 18th-century Americans who were all-important to achieving independence. Those Americans opposed elites epitomized by the Boston merchant class, which the Tea Party, perhaps appropriately enough, so strongly identifies with. The internal struggle for American equality was as important to the founding as the high-Whig resistance to England, but the Tea Party can’t deal with the populist leaders and militia rank-and-file who wrote the socially radical 1776 Pennsylvania Constitution, or the Shaysites of Massachusetts who marched on the state armory, or the so-called whiskey rebels who inspired federal occupation of western Pennsylvania. American Revolutionary patriots all, those democratic-finance leaders had ideas about government’s role in ensuring economic equality that prefigured programs of the 19th-century Populists and the 20th-century New Dealers, the very programs the Tea Party wants to dismantle. Tea Party history therefore has to expunge the welfare state’s roots in America’s founding.
Liberals, too, can have a problem with the economic conflicts of the founding period. Alexander Hamilton’s national finance program, which Madison and Jefferson opposed with such intensity, was economically regressive. Under the influence of the founding financier Robert Morris, Hamilton made a stunningly successful effort to yoke American wealth to great national projects by beating down the popular-finance movement and promoting the interest (in both senses!) of the high-finance elites. Yet when some of today’s liberals look to Madison for support in critiquing Hamiltonian finance, they come up empty. Madison’s attacks on central banking represented anything but an argument for democracy and economic equality.

There is a lot more interesting stuff there, especially when it comes to the New Dealers claiming Jefferson's heritage in their reforms.  I've been struck by the irony of Republicans claiming the mantle of Lincoln, the savior of the Union, emancipator of slaves and supporter of federal grants for the transcontinental railroad and the Land Grant Universities, even though the party is now a states rights party, anti-civil rights, opposed to federal involvement in the economy, and with it base located in the former Confederacy.  Likewise, the Democrats claim Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson, even though each would be anathema in today's Democratic Party. 

My favorite more recent example of a party claiming history it now has no business claiming is when Republicans claim that they are the party of civil rights, because liberal Northern (especially Northeastern) Republicans (find me a liberal Republican today) joined with LBJ to pass the Civil Rights Act over the opposition of segregationist Southern Democrats.  I've actually heard Rush Limbaugh make that claim.  He neglects to mention that most of those Southern Democrats became Republicans when Barry Goldwater ran in 1964 on throwing out the Civil Rights Act, and the national Republican party froze out the liberals in the Northeast, who became Democrats.  That is an amazing example of appropriating history which doesn't match reality.

Taxes in the U.S.

Matthew Yglesias includes the following chart in his post about whether the U.S. can preserve Medicare as currently constituted:

One thing to note is that each of those other countries has some sort National Health System which covers more people than our government does.  Once you figure in the privately funded portion of our health care system, which could truly be looked at as a privately administered tax which is paid to health insurance companies, doctors, hospitals and malpractice insurance providers, we would probably move up on the list a decent amount.  Also, imagine how low our taxes could be if we didn't carry the burden of defending all these other developed world countries who spend very little on defense.

More on the Endgame

John Mauldin, over at the Big Picture:

Let me jump out on a real limb. I was having dinner last Monday with Christian Menegatti, the #2 economist at friend Nouriel Roubini’s economic analysis shop. We were comparing notes (imagine that), and he said their opinion is that the US has until 2015 before the bond market really calls the deficit hand. Knowing that Nouriel is seen as the ultimate bear, it makes me nervous to put out my own even more bearish analysis.
I think the crucial point will be reached in late 2013. If the bond market sees a serious move to control the deficit, I think they let us “skate.” Then we Muddle Through. But if not, I think we begin to see some real push-back on rates then.
Why so early? Because bond investors are going to be watching the slow-motion train wreck that is happening in Europe and especially Japan. It is one thing for Greece to default (which they will in one form or another, with lots of rumors flying this morning), yet another for Japan to do so. Japan is big and makes a difference. Japan could start to go as early as the middle of 2013. As I have said, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Whenever this happens, 2013 or a year or so later, it is going to spook the bond market. The normal indulgence that a superpower and reserve-currency country would be accorded will become much more strained. It will seemingly happen overnight. Think Lehman Brothers on steroids.
I think the chances we will deal with this potential crisis are about 75%. Not doing so is such a horrific outcome that I think politicians will do the right thing. See, I am an optimist. (What was it Winston Churchill said? “You can always depend on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”)

He is endorsing $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases.  I would think more along the lines of drastically overhauling the heath care sector with single payer, slashing defense spending and wrapping up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (and Libya), then $2 in tax increases/tax reform for every $1 of spending decreases.  I think he is right that the deficit and debt are huge issues, but I think he is slanted too much in an anti-government direction.  Likewise, he is much more optimistic about Republican politicians being able to fix this mess.  So far, I have yet to see a decent likely candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012.  I sure don't want any of the guys who participated in the debate last week running the country.  He also doesn't mention issues we may face with resource scarcity or climate change.  We face a lot of hurdles in the near future, and we're going to have to put aside much of our enmtiy with our political opponents and make true shared sacrifice.  So far, I don't see much of that from Republicans.  I don't even see them acknowledging what I think are pretty obvious facts.  This is going to be a tough process.

How To Cut Defense Spending

All Things Considered interviewed Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor:

This year the U.S. is expected to spend $700 billion on defense. That's twice what was spent in 2001, and as much as is spent on the rest of the world's militaries combined.
Defense is the U.S. government's biggest discretionary expenditure, but given the level of the national debt — and the drive to reduce government spending — calls are louder than ever to find cost savings.
Ret. Army Col. Douglas Macgregor says there are ways to reap major savings when it comes to defense. He recently wrote about the subject in an article titled "Lean, Mean Fighting Machine" for Foreign Policy magazine. He tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that the U.S. simply cannot afford "wars of choice."
"Emphasis on choice," Macgregor says. "If you look at all of the interventions that we have launched since 1945 — beginning with Vietnam in 1965 and moving forward — none of them have changed the international system at all, and none of them have directly benefited us strategically."
World War II was the last military event that really had a strategic global impact, he says. "Americans need to understand that these wars of choice, these interventions of choice, have been both unnecessary, counterproductive, strategically self-defeating and infinitely too expensive for what we can actually afford."

Unfortunately, with one of our political parties being afraid of being called pussies by the idiots and fools in the other party, who only want to spend more on defense, I don't think this will go very far.  Plus, the cuts in defense would increase unemployment immensely.  I'm pretty sure we won't address this issue until it is too late.  In other words, I don't figure on selling my defense stocks yet.

New Democrats Make a Move Up North

From ThreeHundredEight.com, the latest polls show the New Democrats making significant gains in Monday's election:

I think multiple parties in the U.S. could make things more interesting, and maybe tamp down the influence of the crazy Republican base.  We might end up with a strong Southern secessionist party, much like the Bloc Quebecois.  I would guess that the current Democratic party would split into more of a Labor and New Democratic makeup like up north. The question would be whether many moderate Republicans would go to the centrists and away from the nutty right.  It is at least an interesting thought-exercise.

How Socialized Medicine Works in Canada (Maybe)

James Fallows highlights a reader's email:

First, a primer from a reader in Montreal (I think - or someplace up there):

>>Here is how health care is financed in Canada.

1- The state determines how much money is available for heath care from the budget of the year. Say $1.00 [billion] etc

2- The state then asks the various medical professionals for a price for say 50,000 broken legs to be repaired, 20,000 births, you name it. The statistics of the needs of the country are known from previous experience.

3- The medical professionals discuss between themselves how to divide the available money for the various procedures. They know that it takes 10 minutes to do this and two hours to do that.

4- They return to the state with a price list for each procedure.

5- The state then guarantees that every medical act will be paid according to the price list.

6- The medical professionals know that they will get paid immediately upon completion of services. The only paper to fill is a credit card slip of paper containing the identification number of the physician and the procedure with the agreed price.

7- That is it. No collection agency, no discussion with an insurance about the need to do an MRI etc.. Whatever is ordered by the doctor is executed. If a question arises, then it is the medical association that looks into the matter and decides. The association has the power to remove the license of the offending doctor.

<<In a follow up note, the same reader adds:

>>There is a social impact as well.   Since health care is free, when a doctor screw things up (yes it happens in Canada) fixing the problem is also free. Hence the patient does not develop the anger of paying his bills and losing his home for the mistake of somebody else.

Result: A Montreal friend orthopedic surgeon specializing in spine surgery told me that he pays $5,000 per year for malpractice insurance per year.

Compare that with the $250,000 for insurance of the average surgeon in Dallas, TX. The doctor must recover the insurance fee by charging more, and you end up in a vicious loop.

Fairness and justice makes life easier for everyone.<<

I tihnk that would reasonably apply my concept of cooperation between government and medical providers to handle medical delivery and control costs.  I would like to see doctors, hospitals, insurance companies along with the administrators of Medicare and Medicaid work out a plan to deliver better than current U.S. health care (which is on average less effective than France) at a cost within 5% of France's health care cost.  My guess is that we would discover that doctors, hospitals and insurance companies end up with most of the excess spending the U.S. has in relation to France, while patients do not benefit.  Our "market" system does medicine so inefficiently.

The Current Spending Debate

Yglesias:

I think the right way to think about the current debate is this. We have a fairly settled view in the United States that one important function of the government is taking care of elderly people. We also have a fairly settled view in the United States that one important function of the government is ensuring that people have health insurance. We also have a fairly settled view in the United States that we like being an unusually low tax country. We also also have a fairly settled view in the United States that we want to maintain a uniquely expensive posture of global military hegemony. These are straightforwardly incompatible goals. Large, regionally significant states such as China, India, Brazil, and Nigeria are growing faster than we are putting pressure on military hegemonism. The share of the population composed of elderly people is rising. And the productivity of the health care sector is increasing more slowly than the productivity of the economy as a whole. This leaves us with a lot of adjusting to do.
The essence of the problem is that what people want is the status quo, but the status quo is untenable. In a healthy political system featuring bipartisanship by alternation, both parties would put forward visions of fairly small deviations from the status quo and they would take turns implementing those deviations. The net impact over the course of the years would be quite large, and the weighting of the changes would depend on what proves workable, what proves popular, and the vicissitudes of electoral politics. Instead, we have a political system that counts on this problem being solved via some form of “grand bargain.” That turns various proposals into game theoretical exercises and creates a strange bargaining dynamic that empowers extreme voices.

My plans, let the Bush Tax Cuts expire, add a couple of very high income tax rates in the 45 to 50% range, cut back military spending, end the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan  and Libya, bring pressure to bear on the medical delivery system (doctors, hospitals and insurance companies) to rein in costs, maybe create a national public option health care plan, and wrest control of state governments from loony Republicans.  Then we could fix some of the other issues, like banning the Designated Hitter and going back to exclusive use of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch.

Greenspan Calls for Ending Bush Tax Cuts

Wow, didn't think that I'd find myself agreeing with Greenspan:

 Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Sunday stepped up his call for Congress to let the Bush-era tax cuts lapse. In an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Greenspan used his strongest words yet to urge lawmakers to let the tax cuts expire. The risk of a US debt crisis, he said, is just too big.
Greenspan, who retired from the Federal Reserve in 2006, had endorsed the cuts back in 2001 championed by then-President George W. Bush.
"This crisis is so imminent and so difficult that I think we have to allow the so-called Bush tax cuts all to expire. That is a very big number," he said, referring to how much the US government could save from letting income taxes go back up to levels last seen under former President Bill Clinton.
Greenspan was talking about re-imposing the taxes for all Americans. The Treasury has estimated that a permanent extension of all the Bush tax cuts would cost $3.6 trillion over the next decade. Allowing taxes to increase on those in the top income brackets would take the cost to the government down to $2.9 trillion, according to White House estimates.

Well, there's a first time for everything.

A Chart to Ponder

Nancy Folbre brings up raising the top marginal rate:

Consider, for instance, the Fairness in Taxation Act introduced by Representative Jan Schakowsky, Democrat of Illinois, which would increase the top federal marginal income tax rate to 45 percent for married couples earning more than one million dollars a year and to 49 percent for billionaires, from the current rate of 35 percent.
Historically unprecedented? Hardly. The top marginal tax rate was 50 percent in the mid-1980s and even higher in the 1950s (as the chart shows).
Such a boost could raise an estimated $78 billion, more than the cuts that House Republicans were seeking in last week’s budget talks.
Even if it fell far short it would avert proposed cuts for many valuable programs, including Head Start, which provides early childhood education, and Pell Grants, which help low-income families send their children to college.

Hopefully this is among the ideas in Obama's proposed budget fix.

Living an Objectivist Life

Alyssa Bereznak describes life with her Ayn Rand-obsessed father (h/t the Dish):

What is objectivism? If you'd asked me that question as a child, I could have trotted to the foyer of my father's home and referenced a framed quote by Rand that hung there like a cross. It read: "My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute." As a little kid I interpreted this to mean: Love yourself. Nowadays, Rand's bit is best summed up by the rapper Drake, who sang: "Imma do me."

Dad wasn't always a Rand zealot. He was raised in a Catholic family and went to church every week. After he and my mother got married in 1982, they shopped around for a church. He was looking for something to live by, but he couldn't find it in traditional organized religion.
Then he discovered objectivism. I don't know exactly why he sparked to Rand. He claimed the philosophy appealed to him because it's based solely on logic. It also conveniently quenched his lawyer's thirst to always be right. It's not uncommon for people to seek out belief systems, whether political or spiritual, that make them feel good about how they already live their lives. Ultimately, I suspect Dad was drawn to objectivism because, unlike so many altruistic faiths, it made him feel good about being selfish.

I think this hits the nail on the head.  Overall, the philosophy is a justification for being selfish.  Rand doesn't just say that you have to look out for yourself first, she makes it a moral failing to be altruistic.  I have a hard time understanding how so many people who claim to be Christian can also claim to enjoy Rand's books.  She wages jihad against all organized religion to undermine altruism and solidify her own philosophy of the goodness of selfishness.  Maybe I've been brain washed by organized religion, but self-sacrifice for the benefit of others does strike me as virtuous.  The concept that so many self-described Christians can wrap the ideas of their church and the ideas of Rand together seems like serious mental gymnastics.  I think in the end they tie together their disdain for government, their faith in God and their belief in their own personal goodness.  This causes them to believe that if they didn't have to pay taxes, they would help out the less-fortunate through their church and cut out some government waste too.  I call shenanigans.

Obama vs. Ryan

Andrew Sullivan quotes from the news that Obama will be releasing his own budget plan soon, focusing on raising taxes on the rich and making smaller changes to Medicare and education programs, and follows with this analysis:

And so Obama starts off this critical part of his first term by appearing to be above the fray and yet committed to compromise. Via Biden, he calls the GOP's bluff, draws a line in spending cuts for 2011, and exposes the draconian spending reductions that the GOP's no tax increase pledge requires. He comes back with a bid to tax millionaires, offers spending cuts that would be far more sophisticated and targeted away from investment than the GOP, and pledges to put his own proposals forward as early as this week.
Of course, for a blogger like me, you face a choice. Simply trust the guy and spin for him, or voice skepticism, outrage and disappointment and get played along with the GOP. But, of course, I don't mind getting played. Because I want this president to succeed - and such success requires root-and-branch spending and tax reform.
He seems to be getting there - in that highly unsatisfying but politically shrewd way of his. So now we will have the Ryan plan and the Obama plan. Guess which one independent voters will like more?

Even though I didn't share Sullivan's admiration for the "courage" of Paul Ryan's budget plan, I do agree with him here.  Obama appears to have gotten rolled on every issue since the November elections, giving in to the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts, on payroll tax cuts and on the recent 2011 budget negotiations/hostage crisis.  But he let Paul Ryan roll out his absolutely awful, Bizarro World Robin Hood (screw the poor and give to the rich) 2012 budget last week, sat back while all the sociopaths in D.C. talked about how bold it was, let the analysts dig into the numbers and find out it doesn't add up, then he'll roll out his own plan with valid numbers and a return to Clinton-era tax rates.  This will once again show the President as much more reasonable than the Republicans, even though most of the people in Western Ohio will believe it shows how ignorant he is.  You'll get that.  It will help the president with more reasonable people in the more-populated areas, which is where it counts.

Yet I have my reservations about the future.

A lot of people will point to the late 90's and say that the we'll return to some golden economic era.  I disagree.  I think the 90's, like all "prosperity" we've seen since the end of the Carter presidency, was fueled by borrowed money and productivity gains from the integration of technology, along with lower oil prices after the end of the embargo.  Since the tech bubble burst and China roared back from the 1998 Asian crisis, we have seen the limitations of our ability to sustain economic growth, especially with the addition of the "War on Terror" and actual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a partial war now in Libya.  We've positioned ourselves into a spot where we will face a real decrease in standard of living, barring a technological miracle.  Yet, we still can't prepare ourselves for actual sacrifice.  Obama will most likely take a step in the right direction, but it still won't be large enough.  The nice thing is that it actually is in the right direction.  Republicans, meanwhile, always direct us the wrong way.

We as a people face some stark choices.  We can start making some real sacrifices, or we can slowly (or much faster if we choose to follow the Republicans) march closer and closer to the precipice.  At this point in our public conscience, Jimmy Carter is looked on as a failure as President.  But as we face the challenges ahead of us, we will need to follow many of his recommendations from his "Malaise Speech," becoming more energy-efficient, more humble, and making some real sacrifices.  If these efforts were made when he recommended them, we would be a lot better off now. 

Instead, we avoided facing a more sustainable energy future, and made grave choices which will make things even more difficult.  The vast number of buildings constructed since 1980 have produced unprecedented sprawl, much greater dependence on automobile travel, much larger homes which we heat and cool, vast amounts of debt, and tremendous poverty and crime which we abandoned in our inner cities.

Now we face energy and climate challenges, enormous debt problems, a struggling economy, and have no real way to easily go forward to address them.  Along with that, we've fostered and developed an every man for himself attitude which will make addressing these problems even tougher.  The policy choices made since 1980 have weakened and indebted the middle class, built up resentments amongst the lower 80% of the income distribution, and enriched and strengthened those at the top. 

The size of the challenges we face will require that all people make some sacrifices, but those who have the most will have to give the most.  Unfortunately, they don't see it that way, and they have spent the last 30 years strengthening themselves at the expense of everyone else.  To peacefully convince them to participate in the sacrifice will take unity among everyone else, yet in the last 30 years, the people in charge have sown tremendous dissension and disunity amongst the lower and middle classes.  It is time to unite, face our real challenges and move forward.  It will be painful, but it will lead to real rewards.  Look in the mirror, ask yourself what you can do, and get involved.  It is not too late, but it is close.

WWHCD?

According to the LA Times, that is the question in Congress right now:

Forget funding the government or sorting out conservative social policies. In some quarters, the question of the day in Congress was, "What would Henry Clay do?"

Revered as the nation's "Great Compromiser," Clay has made an extraordinary number of cameos in the current budget drama — a saga filled with people who claim to be aspiring to, but moving slowly toward, compromise, great or not.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Thursday declared that Clay — a former House speaker best known for the slavery compromises that delayed the Civil War — was "one of the greatest speakers of all time."

"All legislation is based on mutual consent," Reid said, as he declared that Democrats would go no further to appease Republicans while on the edge of the first government shutdown in 15 years. "Isn't this the time to do just that? Remember the word that is so important in what Henry Clay said is 'mutual concession.' "

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentuckian, like Clay, had another interpretation.

"He would have approved very much of that bill that the House will be sending over later today," said McConnell, a Republican.

There is a little more history thrown into the story after that.

Will Competition fix Medicare?

Kash Mansori at the Street Light doesn't think so:

The notion that Medicare costs have been rising because it is a government-run health insurance program, or because it is not a "competitive" health insurance program, is odd. Theoretically, economists can list a number of very specific ways in which the markets for health care and health insurance are characterized by market failures. And for those of you who have forgotten your Econ 101 lessons, please recall that economic theory clearly predicts that when there are market failures there is no reason to necessarily expect that competition (i.e. the free market solution) will provide a good outcome.

Providing yet another example when economic theory actually matches what we see in the real world quite well, we find that there is absolutely no evidence that competition among private health insurance companies leads to lower costs. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducts a survey of employer-sponsored health insurance programs every year to estimate private health insurance premiums. Health insurance premiums for workers in large companies -- those employing 200 people or more, which encompasses about 65% of all workers covered by private, competitive, employer-sponsored health insurance plans -- rose by 135% over the ten year period 1999 to 2009.

Meanwhile, Medicare spending per person rose by about 103% over the same period. (Note that to get this figure I simply divided total Medicare costs from the CBO (pdf) by the number of Medicare enrollees as provided by Census (pdf).)

Pawlenty's Fiscal Stewardship

From the LA Times:

"Tim Pawlenty's philosophy of fiscal management can be summarized as 'kick the can down the road,'" said former Minnesota Gov. Arne Carlson, a Republican, referring to what he calls Pawlenty's pattern of "engaging in heavy borrowings and shifting costs to local governments, including school districts, while not confronting the state's serious challenges."

Carlson, who endorsed Pawlenty when he first ran for governor in 2002 and backed Barack Obama for president in 2008, represents an older and now much-maligned brand of moderate Republicanism once dominant in Minnesota. He and like-minded critics take issue not only with Pawlenty's abilities as an economic steward, but also with the core of his governing philosophy: that his approach of limiting taxes and spending would stimulate economic growth.

Even some of the ascendant conservative Republicans — those who worked closely with Pawlenty and share his philosophy — offer criticism or muted praise. They are frustrated with Pawlenty for different reasons, citing his support for the tax increase on cigarettes.

"'Health impact fee' was a euphemism. It was a tax," said Jason Lewis, a conservative Minneapolis-based talk radio host, who says he has a "love/hate" relationship with the former governor. He lauded Pawlenty's political skills but lamented what he said were moderate positions Pawlenty had taken through the years.

This is the heart of the dilemma we now face.  Republicans refuse to raise any taxes, even though taxes have been frequently cut at the federal and state levels for almost 30 years, while Democrats decry all spending cuts.  There has to be a middle ground.  The Bush Tax Cuts should not have been extended completely for the next two years, and should all go away in 2012.  The federal government is going to have to work with doctors, hospitals and other interested parties to rein in health care costs.  Instead, we have Republicans proposing dramatic cuts to all spending while recommending that there be no tax increases, and sometimes proposing even more ridiculous tax cuts, while Democrats can only find budget cuts in the bloated Defense Department.  This insanity will not end well.

Republicans' Newly Found Deficit Religion

Bruce Bartlett calls the GOP out:

The truth is that Republicans don’t care anything about the deficit. They made that abundantly clear when they controlled Congress during the dismal George W. Bush years. What all of the current budget discussion is about is defunding programs that benefit Democratic constituencies and if possible destroying institutions, such as labor unions, that historically support the Democratic Party. In other words, it’s all about political power; any concern for the deficit is purely for show, window dressing to disguise the true Republican agenda.

 

A few days ago, an unnamed senior House Republican aide let the cat out of the bag, telling reporter Brian Beutler, “This debate has always been about discretionary spending – not autopilot ‘mandatory’ spending or tax hikes.” In short, it has nothing whatsoever to do with reducing the deficit.

 

Just to remind people, we had budget surpluses not too long ago. Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress bequeathed a surplus of 2.4 percent of GDP to the Republicans. They promptly dissipated it with tax cuts that reduced revenues by about 2 percentage points of GDP, increased domestic discretionary spending by about 0.5 percent of GDP, and defense spending by about one percent of GDP.

 

As noted earlier, Republicans made the problem with entitlement programs worse by adding a new unfunded benefit to Medicare just to buy the votes of seniors in 2004. They also repeatedly postponed cuts in Medicare physician payments that they themselves had enacted during the Clinton administration. While Republicans are not responsible for all of the increase in mandatory spending in the 2000s, they are guilty today of insincerity on the budget when they focus exclusively on domestic discretionary spending while exempting defense and entitlements from cuts.

Bartlett got kicked out of the conservative establishment, and has found his voice to tell people that the Republicans are full of shit, too bad conservative voters won't listen to him.

Employer-Provided Healthcare as Social Insurance

Uwe Reinhardt takes on Ron Johnson's op-ed about Obamacare:

Third, the contributions employees make directly toward the premium for health insurance (through explicit deduction from their paychecks), plus their indirect contribution through reductions in take-home pay, are effectively community rated. This means healthier employees are forced to subsidize through their premiums the health care of sicker employees by effectively paying the same premiums.
Consider two workers performing the same work in a company, one healthy and the other chronically sick. They will make the same direct contribution to the identical insurance policy and receive the same take-home pay.
In other words, the idea that raised so many hackles last year — that younger, healthier Americans should, through community-rated health-insurance premiums, subsidize sicker Americans — has long been accepted by the bulk of Americans at their place of work.
In this sense, then, private employment-based group insurance qualifies for the label of “social insurance,” even though it is privately sponsored. It is, of course, not socialized medicine, but neither are the Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare programs, government-sponsored social insurance programs that procure health care from the private sector.

He also discusses the tax subsidy for employer-provided health insurance.  It is very well written, and he takes the time to compliment Ron Johnson.  What bothers me about Mr. Johnson is his attitude that he earned everything he got, and his hostility toward the government which undoubtedly assisted him along the way.