The Commentariat -- Dec. 3, 2013

By Brian McFadden, via Daily Kos. CLICK TO SEE LARGER IMAGE.

NEW. George Packer of the New Yorker: "... while no big-box executive can risk being seen by shareholders to be openly taking the side of the lowest-paid employees, there is a hardheaded argument to be made for doing so: the company's revenues depend on higher hourly wages. While no one imagines that Republicans would allow the minimum-wage bill to pass the House of Representatives, corporate executives are paid to be ruthlessly practical. America is still waiting for the first retail C.E.O. to see what's in front of his nose."

The Drones Are Coming. And they'll deliver your package in half-an-hour. Matt Yglesias explains. ...

... OR, as Paul Waldman of the American Prospect put it, "... in a 14-minute ad for Amazon that was cleverly staged as a report on 60 Minutes ('If you can do this with all these products, what else can you do?' gushed Charlie Rose on the floor of a[n Amazon] fulfillment center. 'You guys can organize the world!'), the company revealed the future of package delivery: drones.... Rose, showing his keen journalistic skills, saw the drones and said, 'Wow.'" ...

... When science fiction edges up to reality:

... In Politico, Kevin Robillard & Alex Byers (among other reporters & pundits) point out some obstacles to Amazon's plan to bring you Toothpaste-in-a-Drone: "Washington regulators, state lawmakers and privacy activists have a warning for Jeff Bezos's army of flying robots: Not so fast." ...

... James Ball of the Guardian: "Jeff Bezos's 'plan' for drone deliveries is little more than a publicity stunt – timed for the biggest online shopping day of the year." ...

... Fox "News": "A Senate committee is planning to hold a hearing to discuss the potential impact of integrating drones into civilian life.... A spokeswoman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., confirmed to Fox News the hearing is scheduled for 2014, and said it was planned before Amazon unveiled its so-called 'Octocopters' Sunday night."

Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Monday declined to get involved in state efforts to force online retailers such as Amazon.com to collect sales tax from customers even in places where the companies do not have a physical presence. The issue -- ending what for many Americans is tax-free online shopping -- is one of the most important in modern retailing. Traditional brick-and-mortar businesses say the online retailers receive an unfair advantage by not collecting sales tax in some areas."

Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explores what the growth of Roman Catholic hospitals means to reproductive health. Kliff highlights a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of Tamesha Means, a pregnant woman who received inadequate care at a Roman Catholic hospital when she presented in painful labor at 18 weeks. "The lawsuit comes in the midst of a wave of high-profile mergers between Catholic hospitals and secular systems. The partnerships have raised questions about how care will be delivered at institutions guided by religious directives, particularly in rural areas ... where patients have little choice of where to be seen."

Reset. Justin Sink of the Hill: "President Obama will hold an event Tuesday touting the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, as the White House looks to reset public perception of the embattled healthcare law following two months of repairs to the glitchy ObamaCare website." ...

... Amy Goldstein & Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post: Healthcare.gov "errors cumulatively have affected roughly one-third of the people who have signed up for health plans since Oct. 1, according to two government and health-care industry officials. The White House disputed the figure but declined to provide its own. The mistakes include failure to notify insurers about new customers, duplicate enrollments or cancellation notices for the same person, incorrect information about family members, and mistakes involving federal subsidies." ...

... Noam Levey of the Los Angeles Times: " TheObama administration's overhauled healthcare website got off to a bumpy relaunch Monday as a rush of consumers caused an uptick in errors and forced the administration to put thousands of shoppers on the HealthCare.gov site on hold." ...

... Kate Pickert of Time: "Health-insurance-enrollment counselors in several large states said on Monday that the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov was operating reasonably well for the first time since its Oct. 1 launch, with clients able to use the site with relative ease throughout the day. Despite marked improvement in the website's consumer functions, it is unclear what back-end problems remain and if the millions of Americans expected to purchase plans through the new insurance marketplace will be able to do so in time to have coverage that begins on Jan. 1." ...

... Yves Smith, always a tough critic, makes some valid -- & dismaying -- points in her review of Stolberg-Shear New York Times story, linked here December 1, that got "inside the race to rescue a healthcare site": "... it reveals Obama to have been recklessly indifferent about the execution of what was billed as his signature policy initiative. One can only imagine how inattentive he is to other matters you'd expect him to take seriously." ...

... Dana Milbank: "... the real gauge of HealthCare.gov's improvement was Republicans' response -- or lack thereof. When the House returned from Thanksgiving recess on Monday afternoon, the GOP speakers on the floor essentially ignored the Web site, instead returning to their earlier denunciations of Obamacare overall and President Obama in general." ...

... "Benghazification Begins." Paul Krugman: "... the [Healthcare.gov] crisis is over -- for Obama and the Democrats. It's just beginning for the Republicans, who won't be able to let go of the notion that it's a criminal scandal, and that mobs with pitchforks will march on the White House if only they can find the right words. They'll try everything. They'll hold endless hearings; they'll get the usual suspects to publish many op-eds. Maybe they'll get 60 Minutes to do a report that has to be retracted." ...

Let's See if Krugman Could Be Right

... Nullification, Ctd. Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: "... a fresh wave of legal challenges to the [ACA] is playing out in courtrooms as conservative critics -- joined by their Republican allies on Capitol Hill -- make the case that Mr. Obama has overstepped his authority in applying it." ...

... Dylan Scott of TPM: "House Oversight Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent letters Wednesday to 15 insurance companies demanding copies of their correspondence with the Obama administration in an effort to determine if the administration knew in advance that people could lose access to their doctors or have their existing health insurance policies canceled under Obamacare." ...

... Karoli of Crooks & Liars: "In the past two weeks, [California] GOP Assembly members have sent mailings out on what appears to be the state's dime to their constituents about health insurance. Only, they don't direct those people to CoveredCA.com to sign up. Instead, they send them to their own astroturf version at the URL CoveringHealthCareCA.com. On their version, there are links to negative articles and twisted messages intended to sour people on signing up for health insurance before they ever land at the official health exchange site." CW: Click on the link. The GOP's fake site surely will fool a lot of people. It's really a horrible disservice to Californians. California's Insurance Commissioner should shut it down.

Joe McCarthy, Ted Cruz. Or vice-versa.... Sahil Kapur of TPM: The right's obsession with ObamaCare is a bizarre phenomenon that smacks of McCarthyism, but is worse in that Republicans will decimate any fellow Republicans whom they can accuse of acting in any way that does not lead to the obliteration of the ACA. ...

... Repeal, Don't Fix. Alex Roarty of the National Journal: "Democrats need to salvage what benefit they can from Obamacare. And so far, Republicans are lending them a helping hand." ...

... The Do-Nothing Congress -- It's a Strategy. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Many Republicans believe they are getting such good traction from their attacks on President Obama's stumbling health care law that they feel less compelled to produce results. Any public fight over legislative compromises could take away from the focus Republicans have kept on the health care law." Weisman ticks off some of the things Congress must do to avert various calamities, yet may let slide so as not to distract from demagoguing ObamaCare. ...

... Charles Pierce is dead-right about this: "... it would be a capital mistake to believe that, one day, just because the law is in place and is working for people, that it then would be beyond political peril. Among the people seeking to destroy it, the fact that it was working would be the most serious indictment against it. In fact, the better it works, the more pernicious it is, and the more urgent the task of its destruction becomes. The happier They are, the weaker America becomes. The healthier They are, the less free we are. Forever and ever, amen." Read the whole post ...

     ... CW: If you think Pierce is just a cockeyed pessimist, bear this in mind: Social Security has been around for three-quarters of a century, & Republicans are still trying to kill it, whether by cutting benefits, by jiggering with the cost-of-living calculation, by raising the eligibility age, by "privatizing" it or by any other means they can think of -- even tho half their base are SS beneficiaries & SS is the most popular government program in the U.S.

... FINALLY, Jon Stewart explains why government can't do anything right and the private sector is fantabulous:

Mark Landler & Martin Fackler of the New York Times: "With Japan locked in a tense standoff with China over disputed airspace, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. arrived [in Tokyo] late Monday for a weeklong visit to Asia intended to reassure a close ally and demand answers from a potential adversary."

The U.S. -- It's Not Lake Wobegon Anymore. Daniel Arkin of NBC News: "Students in the United States made scant headway on recent global achievement exams and slipped deeper in the international rankings amid fast-growing competition abroad, according to test results released Tuesday. American teens scored below the international average in math and roughly average in science and reading, compared against dozens of other countries that participated in the 2012 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which was administered last fall."

Gubernatorial Race

Gov. Scrooge Walker (RTP-Wisc.). Scott Keyes of Think Progress: "Last week, Walker's campaign sent an email encouraging supporters not to buy [Christmas] gifts for their children and to use that money instead to support his reelection effort."

Local News

Nicole Flatow of Think Progress: "... Republican lawmakers and the National Rifle Association are exploiting [the case of Marissa Alexander (see story)] to advance a Florida bill that would explicitly expand broad Stand Your Ground-like immunity to those who brandish or fire guns in self-defense. Last month, a Florida House committee overwhelming rejected a bill to repeal the state's Stand Your Ground law, and supported passage of the warning shot legislation instead. The bill has now been introduced in the Senate."

A Result of National Gun Obsession. Nicole Flatow: "A 72-year-old who suffered from Alzheimer's was shot dead after wandering onto a [Georgia] man's property early Wednesday morning, ringing the doorbell and turning the door handle. After Joe Hendrix's fiancé called 911 to report a possible intruder, Hendrix went outside to take matters into his own hands, and fired four shots at a silhouette in his yard, killing Ronald Westbrook." CW: I do not understand the workings of a mind that would shoot at a shadow who could have been, say, an elderly Alzheimer's victim, a family member, a drunken neighbor who went to the wrong house, a harmless person in distress, etc. I get being frightened by a stranger in the dark; I don't get being so scared you shoot to kill while the cops are en route.

David Edwards of the Raw Story has the most comprehensive version of the arrest of three teens in Rochester, New York, whose "crime" was waiting for a school bus.

News Ledes

New York Times: "As investigators of the fatal Metro-North Railroad train derailment said they had found no apparent problems with the train's brakes or other equipment, a union official said on Tuesday that the engineer briefly nodded off before the accident."

AP: "Entombed at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean in an upended tugboat for three days, Harrison Odjegba Okene begged God for a miracle. The Nigerian cook survived by breathing an ever-dwindling supply of oxygen in an air pocket. A video of Okene's rescue in May ... that was posted on the Internet more than six months later has gone viral this week. The other 11 seaman aboard the Jascon 4 died." The AP video is here.

KSL Salt Lake City: "Homeland Security agents in Salt Lake City helped shut down more than 700 domains that were hawking counterfeit products Monday. The domain names were part of scams to lure customers into buying counterfeit products during the holiday shopping surge."

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."

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...."