The Commentariat -- Dec. 1, 2013
The first Obama administration was focused too much on saving the banks and Wall Street. There's going to be a big populist push on whoever's running for office to espouse these kinds of progressive policies. -- Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa)
The Washington Post discovers Elizabeth Warren. AND Bernie Sanders says he'll run for president if no other progressives do. ...
... Steve Coll of the New Yorker: "The grassroots left, which seemed scattered and demoralized after the Occupy movement fizzled, has revived itself this year -- with help from union money and professional canvassers -- by rallying voters around the argument that anyone who works full time ought not to be at risk of poverty.... The movement has momentum because most Americans believe that the federal minimum wage -- seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour, the same as it was in 2009 -- is too low. A family of four dependent on a single earner at that level -- making fifteen thousand dollars a year -- is living far below the federal poverty line."
Lena Sun of the Washington Post: "Administration officials announced Sunday that they had met their Saturday deadline for improving HealthCare.gov after completing a series of hardware upgrades and software fixes to the troubled Web site. A progress report released Sunday morning by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said: 'While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.'" ...
... Sheryl Gay Stolberg & Michael Shear of the New York Times: "The story of how the administration confronted one of the most perilous moments in Mr. Obama's presidency -- drawn from documents and from interviews with dozens of administration officials, lawmakers, insurance executives and tech experts working inside the HealthCare.gov 'war room' -- reveals an insular White House that did not initially appreciate the magnitude of its self-inflicted wounds, and sought help from trusted insiders as it scrambled to protect Mr. Obama's image." ...
... Kathleen Sebelius, in a Huffington Post column, shares "some consumer friendly tips for individuals looking for quality affordable health insurance." ...
... Tim Egan: "The Republican Party started a failure campaign earlier this year.... With the disastrous rollout of the federal exchange, Republicans now smell blood. A recent memo outlined a far-reaching, multilevel assault on the Affordable Care Act. Horror stories -- people losing their lousy health insurance -- will be highlighted, and computer snafus celebrated.... It's hard to remember a time when a major political party and its media arm were so actively rooting for fellow Americans to lose."
Anthony Faiola of the Washington Post: "... the Guardian is being called to account by British authorities for jeopardizing national security [by publishing classified documents which Edward Snowden leaked to the paper]. The Guardian's top editor, Alan Rusbridger, is being forced to appear before a parliamentary committee on Tuesday to explain the news outlet's actions. The move comes after British officials ordered the destruction of hard drives at the paper's London headquarters, even as top ministers have taken to the airwaves to denounce the outlet. Scotland Yard has also suggested it may be investigating the paper for possible breaches of British law."
Henry Blodget, in Slate: No, rich people don't create jobs. Consumers with money to spend create jobs.
CW: This weekend, the Washington Post ran a column by Dana Milbank in which Milbank argues that restoring the draft & forcing all Americans to serve would make for better government because, um, ex-soldiers make better lawmakers. I didn't link the column because I thought it was stupid. Milbank notes that we currently have the lowest percentage of veterans in Congress since World War II & we haven't had a war vet president since Pappy Bush. Steve M. of NMMNB notes a little flaw in Milbank's theory: "Was Milbank nodding off in Philosophy 101 when his professor explained what a post hoc fallacy is? The number of people using rotary telephones is also at the lowest point in living memory -- and the condition of Congress is about as likely to be influenced by that societal change as it is to be influenced by the decline in military service among members of Congress.... What I think is the real reason we have a terrible government: the fact that heartland whites from outer-ring suburbia and exurbia have been encouraged for decades not to believe that other Americans are really their fellow citizens."
Frank Norris of the New York Times: "... the banking industry, which seems to have no desire to stand behind its loans, as well as consumer advocates and the housing industry" are all lobbying to gut the provisions of Dodd-Frank that force mortgage lenders to have "skin in the game"; i.e., to shoulder some of the risk for loans. One of the major causes of the financial meltdown of 2008 was, after all, the fact that mortgage lenders didn't seem to care if the mortgages they sold were ever paid off.
Jack Healy of the New York Times: "Crime has soared [in Montana & North Dakota oil country] as thousands of workers and rivers of cash have flowed into towns, straining police departments and shattering residents' sense of safety.... Amid all of that new money, reports of assault and theft have doubled or even tripled, and the police say they are rushing from call to call, grappling with everything from bar brawls and shoplifting to kidnappings and attempted murders. Traffic stops for drunken or reckless driving have skyrocketed; local jails are spilling over with drug suspects."
Ah, Capitalism. Ross Douthat figures out how to integrate Pope Francis's exhortation into his own conservative framework. CW: Douthat's effort necessarily includes aspects that stretch logic to the breaking point, but Francis does manage to snap Douthat out of any Ayn-Randian fantasies. It will be fun/infuriating to watch Paul Ryan integrate Francis's exhortation into the Ryan Plan for the Poor.
Fresco in the catacomb of Priscilla in Rome. Reuters photo.Philip Pullella of Reuters: "Proponents of a female priesthood say frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla prove there were women priests in early Christianity. The Vatican says such assertions are sensationalist 'fairy tales'. The catacombs, on Rome's Via Salaria, have been fully reopened after a five-year project that included laser technology to clean some of the ancient frescoes and a new museum to house restored marble fragments of sarcophagi." ...
... More News about Ladies & the Spirit of Christmas. Karen Araisa of NBC Philiadelphia: "One woman apparently used a stun gun on another after an all-out brawl inside of the Franklin Mills Mall in Northeast Philadelphia." With video of these lovely ladies duking it out.
News Ledes
Karzai Still Crazy. Reuters: "Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused his U.S. ally on Sunday of withholding military supplies to press him to sign a bilateral security deal that will shape the U.S. military presence after most foreign troops leave in 2014."
Los Angeles Times: "In hopes of ensuring that the next man on the moon is Chinese, Beijing launched a rocket carrying a buggy-like vehicle that is expected to roam and explore the moon's surface for three months."
New York Times: "More than 100,000 people took to the streets of Kiev on Sunday, and thousands more rallied in other cities across Ukraine, to demand the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich, the largest outpouring of fury so far over his refusal to sign far-reaching political and trade accords with the European Union."
New York Times: "At least four people were killed after a Metro-North Railroad train derailed Sunday morning in the Bronx along the Hudson River, officials said. A total of 67 people were injured -- 11 critically...."
Share Article
Reader Comments (15)
In the age of megadata collection and massage, no finding is too trivial to report:
“Purchases made from Apple devices accounted for 18.1 percent of total online sales, against 3.5 percent for Android devices.”
http://news.yahoo.com/online-sales-soar-black-friday-two-day-shopping-224512001.html
Oops. Dropped a not.
Re; Who says it's all bad to bring a knife to a gun fight?
" And a dispute over a parking spot outside a Virginia Wal-Mart led to one man pulling out a handgun. He was then stabbed in the arm."
The Spirit of Christmas is so not about consumerism that the violence in the malls is proof positive our souls are goin' to hell on a Santa driven sleigh ride.
Re: yesterday's Black Friday madness. @episcopalcafe retweeted this from Torey Lightcap (@fathertorey):
"I was super sour about Black Friday. @JimNaught turned me around on it, though. At what other point can working families afford this stuff?"
I never understood why people would stand in line in the wee hours to fight their way to a big screen TV. Of course, if I wanted a big screen TV, I'd just go buy it when I wanted it, on sale or not. I have that luxury; most people don't. Maybe Black Friday chaos is just another symptom of our growing income inequality. Maybe I won't be so quick to judge those in line any more.
Speaking of having everyone serve in the military like Milbank suggests: Don't most states and cities offer a points bonus on police job applications benefitting former members of the military over and above regular people? Policing is not a simple binary world like the military's good guys and bad guys. Military people are first and foremost trained to kill people. The US military does not have helping young children or the elderly cross the street as its first priority last I checked.
Lastly, why have we allowed the term "public service" be usurped by gun-toting people trained in violence forever sucking at the trough of the public payroll while listening to subsidized Limbaugh on Armed Forces Radio? We have allowed all that because these people are COMFORTABLE with violence and threatening violence against alternative points of view.
Just finished reading the Stolberg/Shear article on the implementations of the on-line ACA exchanges. Complicated doesn't begin to describe the problems that occurred or should I make that present tense. The thing that struck me though is the way the article presented insurance companies in quite a positive light–––did I read that wrong? Atena comes off as a comforting mother with big breasts ready to nurse all those in need of care and succor. As much as I'd like to believe these companies are willing to stretch their monetary legs a bit, their reputation doesn't stand up to the smell test.
@P.D.Pepe: It is true that the reporters don't say anything negative about Aetna, but they really don't put anyone in a negative light. They report mistakes -- like Valerie Jarrett's tweet -- & trace the general course of what looks to me like gross & negligent mismanagement, but they don't really finger any individuals or companies. I thought the report was pretty balanced; I was left with the impression that everybody fucked up, that there was fingerpointing, but that the reporters let the participants do the fingerpointing; they stayed out of it.
Marie
@Marie: Yes, you're right. It wasn't an opinion piece but straight reportage on the subject. As I was reading the article I couldn't help thinking that not too long ago computers were in their infancy, the internet a strange new beast to embrace and tame and wham! We now want a program that services millions of people in a health care system that has never been tried before and they/we expected it to run smoothly. Great expectations thwarted by, as you pointed out, practically everybody that was involved. Humble pie has been eaten by all.
@PD: "Humble pie has been eaten by all." Hmmm....wish that was all of it. Thinking about how the Republicants--with who knows how much success--are saying Obama's rollout of ACA is more disastrous for the country than Bush/Cheney's lying us into Iraq and Bush's fucked up handling of Hurricane Katrina. Do all the "stupids" buy this? Certainly those who watch Fox News and listen to Rush buy it. How many more only the 2014 elections will tell.
Our wonderful senator, Jeff Merkley, is embattled in Oregon. He is being blamed for "Obamacare" by many, and has a serious challenger for next year. Hard to believe with all his good work, but he felt he had even to join the other Dems in voting with the Republicants to allow people to keep their (inferior) insurance policies.
I have just about decided that our national IQ is waaay under 100. Few voters of average intelligence. Even less with the slightest ability to think critically. Sad for where this country is going--or not going. I am sure all, or most, of you realize that Bernie Sanders would be "bushwhacked" if he ran for the Presidential nomination in 2016. Elizabeth Warren too. Sad.
Re: serving in the military. Since I served for 22 years in a branch whose mission WAS to "close with and destroy the enemy"--the US Army infantry, I believe I can offer some perspective. First, not everyone in the miitary has a job calling for destroying the enemy. Commenter Patrick's job was to save lives (dustoff pilot).imf
That said, it's true that the military's ultimate purpose is to defend the http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/opinion/homage-to-the-idols-of-idleness.html?pagewanted=2&hp&rref=opinion/internationalUnited States by any means necessary. However, you shouldn't assume that the military is a monolith. Far from it. It's made up of all kinds of people.
As far as everyone serving in the military goes-- bad idea. However, that doesn't mean that everyone shouldn't serve in some capacity: Americorps, Peace Corps, etc. Such a system kind of smacks of fascism, though.
George Washington was right. Standing armies cause trouble. KIf one has it, why not use it?
If not Kif!
How that link got in there is a mystery. An interesting read, though.
Marie, you were right not to link Milbank's article, which was not just stupid but lazy. He owed the paper some ink, took two facts (lowest vet presence in congress, dysfunctional legislature), chose correlation instead of causal analysis, and came up with a BS solution (universal service). I suspect he wrote it a few weeks ago and stored it for when he owed a piece while on vacation. Good planning, crappy work.
If universal service was something like the New Deal CCC, in which the unemployed or newly graduated HSers could get work experience and help improve the infrastructure, that would be great.
But if he's recommending some go into compulsory military service because it "builds character" or a sense of national togetherness, sorry, that is crap. If you don't want to wear the uniform the government should not make you do so. We've been through that experiment a few times, the empirical results are clear.
We don't need more nationalism. We need better-educated citizens with better access to good journalists doing a better job. With luck, Milbank may already have written that column and stored it for Christmas or New Year's weekend.
Just read a comment at WaPo that said Obamacare would be popular with blacks because it lowered their premiums but raised "our" to pay for it. He--I assume it was a he--didn't say if "our" included Latinos and Asians, but I suspect not. What a great fucking country we've become! Makes me proud just to think about it.
Journalists may like to present as rock stars to an uncritical audience, so the conspicuous absence of editors needs to come into the light as well. The citizen commenters are liable to take over the ship of the Fourth Estate, and rightly so, because the officers' corp, the designated "betters," may have lost their string or even gone awol.
A devoted editor has, as their first tool, the ability to extract the diamond from the rough and help it shine. To wit, a small example from the contributions of the commentariat. With full respect and appreciation, I offer a small shift in a fine post:
"We need better-educated citizens with better access to good journalists doing a better job."
A slight reduction reveals yet another key phrase:
We need citizens with access to a better job.