;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 2, 2013
Paul Krugman: "Despite the lingering effects of the financial crisis, America is a much richer country than it was 40 years ago. But the inflation-adjusted wages of nonsupervisory workers in retail trade -- who weren't particularly well paid to begin with — have fallen almost 30 percent since 1973.... We can preserve and expand food stamps, not slash the program the way Republicans want. We can make health reform work, despite right-wing efforts to undermine the program. And we can raise the minimum wage." ...
... Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Seeking to increase pressure on McDonald's, Wendy's and other fast-food restaurants, organizers of a movement demanding a $15-an-hour wage for fast-food workers say they will sponsor one-day strikes in 100 cities on Thursday and protest activities in 100 additional cities." CW: Wendy's is the only major fast-food chain that refuses to sign onto a program that ensures it purchases tomatoes only from ethical suppliers & that pays farm workers an extra penny a pound.
Joseph Tanfani of the Los Angeles Times: "... technology failures have become the rule in the federal government, not the exception. Websites crash, attempts to modernize systems founder and military systems costing hundreds of millions are abandoned before ever being used. The Obama administration has tried to confront the problem, appointing top technology officers who scrapped and consolidated some flagging projects and pushed for more agile procedures. But the reforms have been modest.... The government's problems, involving taxpayer money, are pervasive and add up to billions in waste. Washington will spend more than $76 billion this year on information technology. A federal report in January found that 700 projects, accounting for $12.5 billion, were in trouble." ...
... Robert Pear & Reed Abelson of the New York Times: "Weeks of frantic technical work appear to have made the government's health care website easier for consumers to use. But that does not mean everyone who signs up for insurance can enroll in a health plan. The problem is that so-called back end systems, which are supposed to deliver consumer information to insurers, still have not been fixed. And with coverage for many people scheduled to begin in just 30 days, insurers are worried the repairs may not be completed in time." ...
... Washington Post reporters Sandhya Somashekhar & Lena Sun have expanded on the report by Sun I linked yesterday. ...
... USA Today Editors counter: " for all the apparent good news, Obama and his signature effort are nowhere near out of the woods." ...
... In a USA Today op-ed, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius writes, "... today's user experience on HealthCare.gov is a dramatic improvement over where it was on Oct. 1. The site is running faster, it's responding quicker and it can handle larger amounts of traffic."
... Garance Franke-Ruta of the Atlantic: "... the Department of Health and Human Services released a report that detailed just how badly the [Healthcare.gov] site was functioning in October and early November. According to the Healthcare.gov Progress and Performance Report, the site was offline more than it was online in at the start of November." ...
... The HHS report on Healthcare.gov is here. ...
... James Surowiecki of the New Yorker looks at how the ACA began lowering healthcare costs -- even before it was enacted -- & is likely to continue to do so. He cites studies that illuminate reasons for cost reductions. ...
... Amie Parnes & Justin Sink of the Hill: "Former administration officials and Democratic operatives say President Obama is ill-served by his current White House staff and must reboot his second term team following the disastrous ObamaCare rollout. First-term insiders argue the White House's weakness was defined by a lack of preparedness, messaging blunders and failure to keep the president informed." Includes quotes from former staffers wearing masks while skewering current officials with long knives. CW: I understand the occasional necessity for anonymity, but this was not one of those occasions. If you're going to diss a public figure by name, have the guts to reveal your own name. I would not have published the anonymous digs.
Joan Walsh of Salon: "... despite the RNC autopsy that kicked off 2013, looking at ways to make sure it wasn't merely the party of 'stuffy old men,' the GOP apparently learned nothing from its 2012 drubbing.... It may turn out that the ACA troubles were a brilliant Democratic plot to distract Republicans from their demographic terminal illness, and convince them that the Kill Obamacare playbook is all they need for 2014. Republicans have made absolutely zero progress in reaching out to any of the demographic groups -- women, young people or Latinos...."
Michael Lind of Salon: The right is united behind a single economic vision based on libertarianism. The left adheres to three distinct economic philosophies. "Universal policies for all Americans as a matter of right should be the progressive agenda of our time. The sooner the center-left abandons well-intentioned but anachronistic strategies and rallies behind contemporary economic-rights progressivism, the sooner the battle for the future of America can be taken successfully to the libertarian right."
Karen DeYoung & Joby Warrick of the Washington Post: "A bipartisan juggernaut of senior senators is spending the remaining week of the Thanksgiving recess forging agreement on a new sanctions bill [against Iran] that the senators hope to pass before breaking again for Christmas. The administration believes the legislation could scuttle the interim nuclear agreement reached with Iran on Nov. 23 and derail upcoming negotiations on a permanent deal -- scheduled for completion in six months -- to ensure that Iran will never be able to build a nuclear weapon."
Manu Raju & Burgess Everett of Politico: Newly-installed Sen. Cory Booker is eschewing his well-known self-promoting lifestyle to fit into his role as the Junior Senator from New Jersey (D).
Kathleen Geier of the Washington Monthly has a superb takedown of Ross Douthat's effort (linked here yesterday) to bring Pope Francis's critique of capitalism into the conservative fold. Clearly, Douthat has learned from David Brooks how to make unsupported claims by linking to bull in hopes the busy reader will think "link = proof". Geier goes to the linked "proofs." ...
... Kieran Healy of Crooked Timber: "... here is a quiz to see whether you can distinguish statements by Pope Francis from statements by Karl Marx.... I sort of hope it will be picked up, stripped of this introductory paragraph, and circulated as evidence that the Pope and Marx agree on pretty much everything."
Senatorial Races
James Hohmann of Politico: The GOP is targeting blue & purple states in hopes of taking over the Senate.
James Pindell of WMUR Manchester: "Former New Hampshire Republican senator Bob Smith said he has changed his mind and will try to defeat Democratic incumbent Jeanne Shaheen for his old seat next year.... Smith is the third Republican to announce a bid to run against Shaheen. Former state Sen. Jim Rubens, R-Hanover, and conservative activist Karen Testerman, R-Franklin, are already in the race, but Republicans fear they might be weak challengers and have been looking for someone else. For the past month that 'someone else' had been former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who appeared to be making moves to enter the race. He is selling his Bar State home to live in New Hampshire full time. In a smaller move, he even changed his Twitter handle to no longer have 'MA' in it." CW: I think that's "Bay State," not "Bar State." According to this site, North Dakota is the "Bar State," with more bars per capita than any other U.S. state, with Montana a close second. ...
... Uh-oh. Sen. McDreamy is about to make a comeback. Do you know which of these people is Martha Coakley & which is Jeanne Shaheen? Yeah, the people of New Hampshire probably don't know either. But I'll bet they recognize Sen. McDreamy:
News Ledes
New York Times: "The Metro-North Railroad train that derailed on Sunday, killing four people and injuring dozens more,
New York Times: "Even as thousands of protesters occupied Independence Square, blockaded the Cabinet Ministry and continued to demand his resignation, President Viktor F. Yanukovich of Ukraine on Monday defended his refusal to sign accords with the European Union, said he was on the verge of securing lower gas prices from Russia, and urged opposition politicians to wait for presidential elections in 2015 to challenge him."
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A Note from a Fan of the Late Ginger Rogers:
Lately I have been receiving a great deal of personal mail asking my opinion about long and/or complicated tracts the writers have read somewhere along the way. Occasionally I answer some of this mail, but usually I don't have time. I work on Reality Chex about 8 hours a day on a normal day, more during election season or in other special circumstances.
Conversely, some writers send me their opinions on topics that are Reality Chex-appropriate. Share those opinions here, please.
If you have something you want to share with me personally, keep it short, please. And don't expect detailed answers.
I'm dancing as fast as I can. Backwards. In high heels.
Marie
Humor Break:
The GOP declares on Twitter that the War on Racism is a 'Mission Accomplished' and social media deploys its troops.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jacobfischler/republican-party-tweet-about-rosa-parks-goes-horribly-wrong
I propose: #RacismEndedWhen Aqua Buddha Boy legalized it and the Supremes passed the papers.
@safari, et al. I find the left's phony outrage over this single tweet equal to or beyond standard-issue right-wing bullshit. What's more, this nonstory is being promoted by people who actually should understand the imprecision of the English language, not by the mouthbreathers on the right.
Here's what the brouhaha is all about: The RNC sent out a tweet which read, "Today we remember Rosa Parks’ bold stand and her role in ending racism."
Later, after left-wingers began frothing at the mouth, the RNC sent out a correction: "Previous tweet should have read 'Today we remember Rosa Parks' bold stand and her role in fighting to end racism.'"
You know, I got it the first time. The construction was a bit clumsy but entirely understandable. That is, I might thank you for your role in ending stupidity after you wrote one of your usually-sensible, insightful comments. But neither of us would think that was the end of stupid forevah. It was, rather, a step in the right direction.
So yesterday will be remembered not just for the anniversary of Rosa Parks' brave sit-in, but for the day the left got a little more like the right; that is, stupid.
Marie
I have what I think is a better idea than raising the minimum wage.
Simply guarantee anyone who wants one a public works job at a living wage, say $15 per hour. No need for a minimum wage law any longer.
How fast do you think WalMart would raise their wages once their employees started flocking to the new jobs helping to rehabilitate the national infrastructure?
@Noodge: Sounds good in theory but I see some problems. First, of course, it would never pass Congress. Ever. Second, what do you do with slackers?: "Oh, I'm working, boss, to the best of my ability, but this hangnail is slowing me down." What do you do with people who don't have the capacity to work on jobs improving the infrastructure? What do you do with people who have the capacity but don't have transportation to get to the infrastructure projects? (Yeah, initiate a better transportation system, that's the idea.) What do you do about undocumented workers?
I think what you're leading up to is a guaranteed minimum income, & I'm not sure that's a good idea. It might work in Switzerland, where it's been proposed & where there is generally a rigid work ethic coupled with exclusionary immigration laws. But here? I dunno.
The problems aren't insurmountable, but no program could cover every theoretically-willing worker. I think at least 10 percent to perhaps as many as 25 percent would prove to be unsuitable for some reason or other. And there absolutely has to be incentive to work & a disincentive to lollygag -- that's the only advantage capitalism has over socialism, as far as I can tell.
Marie
@ CW: What I'm trying to do is avoid a guaranteed income and what Franklin Roosevelt called the poverty of the dole. A guaranteed job is something quite different from a guaranteed check.
I'll try and answer your questions in order. We do the same thing with slackers that we do in any other job: We send them home. A guarantee of a job doesn't mean you can't get fired from the one you have now. And in any event, getting some work from people is better than simply giving them money for doing nothing.
Not all public works jobs need be infrastructure-related. We could open day care centers, senior centers, etc. Undocumented workers would not have any right to a job (of course we can certainly do more to get them documented).
Certainly there are people who for one reason or another are unable to work, and it would be every bit as much our duty then to see that they have what they need as it is now.
Try as I might, I can't really think of a better way to deal with the unemployment/poverty problems we face now. As it stands we subsidize the low wages WalMart and McDonald's pay by providing their employees with food stamps and Medicaid. If we started guaranteeing everyone a job at a living wage McDonald's and WalMart would have to start paying their employees enough so that the taxpayers would no longer have to subsidize their food purchases.
Today WalMart escapes having to pay those subsidies by not paying taxes. But if they were forced to start paying employees $15 per hour we wouldn't have to worry quite so much about whether they pay their fair share of taxes, as the money we would have taken from them to cover their employees' food stamps and Medicaid would, instead, go straight to the employees, which is where it belongs.
It's not perfect; no system is. But it's a darned sight better than what we're doing now. And yes, I understand that it has no chance of passing Congress, especially the way Congress is configured today. But I can dream, can't I?
@CW: That's the reason I seldom pay attention to tweets. Writing a clear sentence in 140 characters is really difficult. Like the correspondent who apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short one.
Driftglass has more on long sentences.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/11/excuse-me-while-i-whip-this-out.html
@Noodge: Thanks for clarifying. The point you raise about subsidizing WalMart, McDonald's etc., is excellent.
Here's what should go into the farm bill that's stalled in Congress, largely because Republicans want to further cut food stamps (the Democrats have already agreed to a massive cut): make corporations pay for food stamps for their employees. It makes perfect sense to me. Right now I am paying taxes to "assist" the family who owns as much wealth as 40 percent of the rest of us. Why not let the Waltons assist me?
Marie
It took me quite awhile to get past the awful roll out of the ACA and the copious shouting in its wake. Recently I begin to think about the tech failures in a larger context. It was a dungball that landed with a messy splat at Obama's door and you would hope that's the last place there would be such a ginormous dungball. But...I began to think about the experiences I have had recently with 2 big magic-in-the-ether giants, Sprint and Comcast. No need to bore anyone with details. However, what I figured out is the marketing for the capabilities of these products is light years ahead of the actual capacity.
I am convinced there are a very small number of people who have successfully transferred the picture in their heads of running like the wind with the tech bulls to actually running with those bulls. Jeebus, I really want to run with the tech bulls too and I've been seduced - more than once, into believing I am indeed a tech wiz. Mostly, I can't even find the f-in bulls. Where are those f-in bulls, you promised me the bulls? At first, I thought I was too old, too dumb and too slow to run with the bulls, but then I paid attention. I'm not. The bulls aren't grown and in several instances they haven't been born yet.
I'm not sure that the capacity exists to successfully put the huge and complicated ACA online. Not sure which was a worse scenario, the immediate failure or a preemptive acknowledgement that the roll out wasn't going to be the 8th technological wonder of the world. But anyway, that's my bull story.
@Diane: Good points. You have to wonder if anybody ever asked the whiz kids, "So what's feasible?" That assumes, of course, there were some whiz kids to ask.
You didn't want to detail your problems with the ingenious IT systems devised by the monarchs of capitalism, so
I'll share a small one which I'm sure everybody can top. After my husband died I had to get a new Lowe's card in my name. That went fine. Then I wanted to pay my bills online, just as I had with the old card. But I couldn't because -- the Lowe's system doesn't allow for two different accounts, even when one has been cancelled, to use the same e-mail address. Lowe's is a big company. Obviously people cancel their cards & get news ones every day for a myriad of reasons. Lowe's acknowledged their User ID system was problematic in this regard. But, gosh darn, they hadn't fixed it & weren't gonna.
Marie
From today's NYTimes: "Speed Is Called Possible Cause of Deadly Train Crash in Bronx."
And as they say about driving a car (also saw an obit about the recent and disturbingly apt demise of a "Fast and Furious" star), speed can surely kill.
Worse maybe, speed also obliterates sense. Haven't forgotten Marie taking me to task for skimming a Milbank offering a few weeks back and getting it flat wrong. And then there was the student I'll also never forget, who years ago reported on a novel he'd read using the, was it the then-popular Evelyn Wood's?, speed reading technique he thought he'd mastered and summarized a story line that never was.
Now there's the ACA about which disappointment continues to rage. Of course, for some the rage is a political end in itself, but the spark that sets it off is the urge most feel to be instantly gratified. When we turn the key or push the button we want the engine to start. Now. We would have it no other way because we're in a hurry; we have to get to our job, school, the mall; we don't have time to waste on problems. And we certainly don't have time to think about them in any detail.
That's why we seldom think about how our news is filtered and how that filter affects our judgements. It's too much trouble. As Diane and Marie point out, the ACA website problems are hardly unique. And as others have said, it is often private, for-profit contractors or businesses that have created the mess government gets blamed for. But to many who think fast, that is poorly or not at all, (after all, who has the time to do it right?) government automatically assumes the role of the lazy, non-productive, parasitical 47%, the handy goat we like to tie up in the town square and whip bloody. It feels so good.
That way it's not our fault, attention is diverted from the very real shortcomings of capitalism, and the profiteers retain their free hand to wreak havoc in the land of freedom, just the way they like it.
Speed thinking, reading and writing, rushing to judgement are other ways speed kills. Yes, that speed thing can be all-around deadly, but I'm guessing that will not be the next Times header. We'll hurry on to something else.
Making the best of what you have to give=living while you can (wisely).
Doing it with others to the shared benefit of all=pooling resources (in all their variety, which comes in handy when you least expect it).
Growing and prospering through the benefits of pooling=community.
Looking to the wealth of a community, in a self-serving manner=greed and avarice.
Acting on greed, without the heart to offer fair and just compensation, or anything of equivalent value=theft.
Acting on theft, with poor impulse control, in order to become one of the rulers of Cash Mountain=gamer's ecstasy.
Making a religion of it=messing with the public mind, a.k.a. playing with fire (to the perverse delight of too many, and the pain of many more).
Who has rights to natural resources? Who has the right to take 'em anyway, in the name of what? Raw materials (and human resources) are hugely useful and wildly attractive, yet there is nothing so tempting as a ready-made fortune, which is why the tax structure (and its bitchin' indoor pool) is the prime target of privately held wealth. One, because it is huge, and two, because it has the annoying tendency to challenge, by force of law, the unfettered rights of extractors (the most ingenious of takers).
This is the "demon" progressive taxation, whereby asset-stripping is transformed into the energy of reinvestment. Into people, places, and things. Into families, education, and healthcare. Into those not able to care for themselves. F**k it, on a good day, even artists, loners, and all manner of out-groupers can get their bearings straight.
Wealth circulation or wealth constriction. In the religion of the latter, someone has to flame out early. In the world of the former, we learn to appreciate all that we have, including one another and the ground we stand on.
Common wage earners pay taxes on every dollar that passes through their hands, in or out (with coded exceptions and exemptions). But the most strident of the "wealthy" howl, I mean howl, that their money has already been taxed ONCE, so why should it be taxed, ever, ever again. Progressive taxation. It was once the fashion. I wonder if we'll hear from it again.
Good government? Now that's another nut to crack. Hmm. Public funding of elections and really, really tight "condoms" for lobbyists. Maybe.
BTW: Been said many times, still not enough: "Obama Care" (the term, and all it implies) is an unexamined obscenity, kinda like--I hesitate to say it. It is a law, the ACA. Like it or not. It will get the life we give to it, or it will succumb.
@Todd 2.0: I take your points (most of them anyway) and the ACA may be a mashup, in its imperfections a perfect example of politics apologetically defined as the art of the possible, but it is the forty or so million without health insurance that is the real obscenity that all the fuming on the Right is designed to obscure.
Re: Thanksgiving: Not all CEO's are like the Waltons: From Peter King of Sports Illustrated.
"CEO of the Week
Laura Sen, chief executive officer, BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc. Bucking the trend of monster stores opening on Thanksgiving, Sen was one of a few executives who chose to shutter her 201 stores in 15 states until Friday at 7 a.m. “Call me old-fashioned,” Sen told The Boston Globe. “But I think Thanksgiving is a lovely holiday and not the time to be shopping.” You are old-fashioned, Ms. Sen, and kudos to you for it. Family time on Thanksgiving. What a concept. Is that new?"
In most of these posts "Health Insurance" and "Health Care" are terms used interchangeably. They are not the same, and one does not necessarily get you the other.
The same can be said of Jobs and Income as Wal-Mart and Mc Donald's workers will attest.
As a wise person said in the past (can't remember who it was) Jobs??? Slaves had jobs, people need income to survive in this economy".
Walmart and McDonalds are the favorite targets of people pointing to the destruction caused by modern capitalism but I think they are really just yesterdays answer to the question of how to service the consumer. Today's answer, the internet and Amazon, is even worse. If Walmart has taken the choice cuts from the corpse of retailing then Amazon is surely boiling the bones. The most depressing article I've read in a long time is this: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/01/week-amazon-insider-feature-treatment-employees-work
@CW We're on similar wavelengths on the ridiculousness of the Twitter Wars. I wasn't trying to defend the liberal tweeters but rather just standing on the sidelines and shaking my head as the poo flies. Like any comments section, I might read the first couple comments with the best scores (that's how I found RC), but beyond 3 or 4 they devolve into intellectual retrograde.
I don't "tweet" for the same reason as others have mentioned, the seeming futility of the exercise of cramming any well-reasoned thought into 140 characters. Surely it can serve a good purpose, but in general it seems like a lot of ill-advised, ego-pumping shenanigans.
@safari: Tweeting is the mainstream of snark, which we apparently don't have enough of if you discount MoDo's biweekly blather.