More Dem infighting

The Hill:

A House fight among Democrats on overhauling the nation’s healthcare system has spread to the Senate, where centrists and liberals are clashing over the direction the legislation should take.

Trouble is brewing now that a bipartisan group of senators — led by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — has signaled it will exclude a government-run insurance option from the committee’s draft legislation that could be marked up next week.

Leaving it out would be a major step toward attracting Republican support for President Barack Obama’s signature issue. But it also would alienate liberals, who say the effort is wasted without it and are preparing a barrage of amendments for the Finance markup.

The House legislation has divided Democrats in that chamber along similar lines and is built around a public option to be paid for by raising taxes on the wealthy, an idea that has almost no chance of winning GOP votes. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee this month voted along partisan lines to approve legislation with a public option at its core.

Infighting among House Democrats has led to an impasse at the Energy and Commerce Committee that is expected to prevent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from meeting her deadline of completing work before the August recess.

And on Tuesday it prompted Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) to hint that more liberal members of the party should consider challenging centrist Blue Dogs in next year’s primaries.

Back when Arlen Specter switched parties, Sen. DeMint (R-SC) said:

I would rather have 30 Republicans in the Senate who really believe in principles of limited government, free markets, free people, than to have 60 that don’t have a set of belief.

So here's a straighter Maxine Waters (though she's probably thinking more of the House):

I would rather have 40 Democrats in the Senate who really believe in government-run health insurance, than to have 60 that don't have that beliefs.

That's what would happen over time if you somehow primaried freshmen and sophomore Dems in more conservative districts with True Progressives. Republicans would pick them off in the general. There's nothing they would like more than to run against left-liberals in districts that are not left-liberal (much like Palin turned out to be a very desirable opponent for Dems). Even if the more liberal Dem doesn't win a primary, the incumbent Blue Dog or business-friendly New Dem has to waste time and funds fending off the challenge. And he has to run more to his left for the primary, which leads to some incoherent whiplash as he then runs back to toward the right in seeking to win the general.

Maxine Waters (D) and Jim DeMint (R) are blind partisans. All principle, no pragmatism. It's nice when people have principles, but you can't run a country on ideological rigidity. You have to find ways to further your goals through compromise.

There are plenty of helpful reforms we could enact, which I've discussed previously (like in the post below). And I think insisting on public health insurance is a really dumb hill to die on. But you'd expect me to say that, since I'm opposed to it on principle*. So listen to Ezra, who isn't.

*of course, I've tried to back it up with arguments about price controls and growth.

OMB vs. CBO

Wheels within wheels. Ezra quotes this from the Orzag-CBO wonkdown:

As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. For example, and without specifying precisely how the various modifications would work, CBO somehow concluded that the council could "eventually achieve annual savings equal to several percent of Medicare spending...[which] would amount to tens of billions of dollars per year after 2019." Such savings are welcome (and rare!), but it is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals. In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.

Then adds: "That paragraph reads a bit like a very angry Data trying to hurt Spock's feelings."

Health-care reform I can believe in

Ezra Klein looks at Wyden's Free Choice Act.

The key is allowing employees choice in private plans, so they can choose the level of care they're willing to pay for and not have it be tied to a particular employer.

Thus real market competition would ensue, as people could learn which insurers/HMOs/PPOs are the most trustworthy and switch to the plan that best covers care at the price point they want. Should there be a company that egregiously denies claims, they'd get a bad rap by word of mouth and from "Consumer Reports"-type circles, thus losing customers.

Right-wing Christianity today

LGF has an extensive roundup of commenters reacting to the Tillman murder at hotbeds of right-wing kookery like Free Republic and Fox News.

Given such reactions, I can't believe it when QandO writes:

Someone went unhinged and shot an abortionist. So what? I mean, it’s a terrible tragedy, but what does it tell us about…well…anything? What conclusions are we supposed to draw? It’s not like abortionists are getting bumped off on a regular basis. The last one of these that occured was 11 years ago, back in 1998. What lessons am I supposed to draw from the fact that some lunatic thinks God told him to kill an abortionist that are in any way substantively different than those I would derive when a crackpot kills his pharmacist because the Venusians sent him a command to do so via the transmitter secreted in his skull?

If a crackpot kills his pharmacist, do you suppose there would be thousands of approving comments from right-wingers?

Obviously there's something different going on here. A sizable number of Christian fanatics actually approve of the murder of a physician in his church.

Klein and Kattenburg see this for what it is: political terrorism intended to reduce access to abortion.

Facts of the day II

Ezra Klein at his new perch:

A small milkshake at McDonald's has more calories than a Big Mac. And tuna salad sandwiches? Way worse than roast beef.

Link blag

Will Wilkinson: Libertarian Ideal Theory as Silent Complicity...

Few say, “There should be no regulation, and so I, as a libertarian, have no opinion about how it should be carried out.” Yet I hear again and again that, since the state should not be in the business of marriage, one should not, as a libertarian, have an opinion about how this business is to be carried out. Increasingly, I find this an obnoxious and shameful form of moral recusal. One cannot use an ideological image of perfect justice to excuse or ignore an obvious injustice within the actual imperfect system. That these injustices could not arise within one’s vision of the best society does not mean that they have not in fact arisen. That a debate would not occur in an ideal world does not mean that it is not occuring or that nothing morally hangs on its conclusion. To decide to sit out the debate, with an eye on utopia, is not a way to keep one’s hands clean.

Christopher Buckley: Showdown at Notre Dame...

The most prominent Catholic politicians are: Vice President Joe Biden; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi; Sen. John Kerry; Gov. Bill Richardson; former mayor Rudy Giuliani; and fresh-from-the baptismal font Newt Gingrich.

What do they all—with the exception of the dripping-wet Newt—have in common: they’re all pro-abortion. Sorry, I meant “pro-choice.” For this, some bishops, who were rather silent whilst their priests were fondling the altar boys, have said they would refuse them the sacrament of communion. In a public debate, the Bishop of Rhode Island actually likened Giuliani to Pontius Pilate.

While researching this posting, I found myself wondering if the thrice-married Newt had weighed in on the controversy. Sure enough: “It is sad,” he said, “to see Notre Dame invite president Obama to give the commencement speech since his policies are so anti-Catholic.” Well, that didn’t take long.

What all this Sturm und Drang has guaranteed, is that this will be one heckuva commencement speech to watch. What do you want to bet that all three networks dispatch their anchors to South Bend on May 17, making it a four-ring circus.

Ezra Klein responds to Ponnuru's op-ed on the misguided case for universal coverage.

Bush advisor and economist Keith Hennessey examines how many people should get taxpayer assistance with their health insurance.

Washington Post: A 'Public' Fix for Health Care Need Not Abandon the Market

Philadelphia Inquirer: A terrible week for Republicans

Brothels in Nevada: please please tax us

Reason: The War on Pies

Tax records reveal Sasha made $136 in allowance money.

Link blag

Carlos Miller:

In what should send a frightening chill down the spine of every blogger, writer, journalist and First Amendment advocate in the United States, Phoenix police raided the home of a blogger who has been highly critical of the department.

Jeff Pataky, who runs Bad Phoenix Cops, said the officers confiscated three computers, routers, modems, hard drives, memory cards and everything necessary to continue blogging.

The 41-year-old software engineer said they also confiscated numerous personal files and documents relating to a pending lawsuit he has against the department alleging harassment - which he says makes it obvious the raid was an act of retaliation.

Cato: School Strips Student Of Clothes, Rights...

School officials searched Savana’s backpack, finding no evidence of drug use, drug possession, or any other illegal or improper conduct. They then took the girl to the nurse’s office and ordered her to undress. Not finding any pills in Savana’s pants or shirt, the officials ordered the girl to pull out her bra and panties and move them to the side. The observation of Savana’s genital area and breasts also failed to reveal any contraband. [...] The Supreme Court granted the school district’s petition for review.

TIME: The G-20's Hidden Issue: A Global Trade Imbalance...

world leaders have been blaming the crisis on the immediate villains: banks, investors and derivatives traders who took on more risk than they could handle. A regulatory structure that failed to notice the problems. A global consumer delusion that the bubble could expand forever.

Largely left out, however, is the vital role that trade balances played in igniting the crisis in the first place. Since the late 1990s, the U.S. has been spending far more than it has earned, sending huge sums of capital overseas, a dynamic measured as the current account deficit.

Ezra Klein: AMATEUR HOUR FOR THE HOUSE GOP...

this budget demonstrates the difficulty of building a minority platform. Serious players who might introduce moderating pressures are not, after all, interested in expending resources to better a piece of off-year messaging. AARP would probably have a lot to say to John Boehner if he proposed voucherizing Medicare from the majority but will probably ignore the fact that it was in Paul Ryan's fake budget. The Chamber of Commerce would have a few concerns about the repeal of the stimulus package if they thought it might happen. But with all those groups ignoring it, the GOP's budget was influenced mainly by the party faithful even as it was delivered straight to the media.

Which gets to the real import of the budget: Something has really gone awry in the House GOP's political operation. They should not have released this document. They certainly shouldn't have released its inane predecessor. And they certainly shouldn't have scheduled their press conference for April Fool's Day.

More Ezra Klein: CAN WE LIMIT THE THREAT FROM BIG BANKS RATHER THAN THEIR SIZE?...

Kevin Drum, who's been skeptical about reforms to limit bank size, is intrigued by William Buiter's proposal to accomplish much the same thing by enacting regulations that increase capital requirements as banks grow in size. "This accomplishes two things," says Kevin. "(1) it puts natural downward pressure on bank size since higher capital requirements reduce leverage and profitability, and (2) if a bank gets big anyway, the higher capital ratio makes it less likely to fail and cause systemic problems."

Will Wilkinson smokes pot, and he likes it.

ThinkProgress: Ann Coulter April Fools

Our future robot overlords are already conducting scientific research on their own.

Customers who buy condoms also buy...

The gatekeeper

I found the New Yorker's profile of Rahmbo to be quite interesting, especially compared with the many takes I rounded up just days after the election.

Andrew summarized a summary:

Klein calls this the key quote:

[Emanuel's] task has been made no easier by Obama’s desire for bipartisanship, which Emanuel argues the press has misunderstood. “The public wants bipartisanship,” he said. “We just have to try. We don’t have to succeed.”

Rahm also thinks Krugman doesn't understand politicking:

...my view is that Krugman as an economist is not wrong. But in the art of the possible, of the deal, he is wrong. He couldn’t get his legislation.”

The turbaconducken

That's right: a chicken, inside a duck, inside a turkey, wrapped in bacon...

Best taco ever

(via Klein)

Na na na na -- na na na na -- hey hey-ey, goodbye.

Ezra Klein sums up many of our thoughts:

Two things happened yesterday, and they were not, for the future of the country, of equal importance. First, George W. Bush stopped being president. And second, Barack Obama became president. In the arc of the moral universe, in the grand sweep of American history, Obama's inauguration might have been of more consequence. But in the short-term condition of the country, George Bush's exit was far more significant. Close your eyes and it would not necessarily be the case that a President Clinton would prove dramatically different than a President Obama. A President Bush would.

Which is why it's hard to abide the commentary suggesting that celebrants were wrong to cheer Bush's departure. That was part of the day. Arguably, it was, if anything, underplayed. K-Lo writes that "my inaugural good feelings were definitely spoiled a bit by the “Na Na Hey Hey … Goodbye” outburst on the Mall just now. How shamefully disrespectful. Keith Olbermann even thought so!" (Man Keith, you used to be cool.) David Remnick calls the moment a "sour note." I'm with the mob. Bush was a shameful president. His actions led to deaths of hundreds of thousands, the displacement of millions, and the impoverishment of more than we're likely to know. He will never go to jail. He will never be tried in Court. He will never be poor or hungry or homeless or drafted. And this country, sadly, has done away with the stocks. But he can be shamed.

And he should be. Forever. The self-delusion of his administration is startling. Last week, Chris Beam crashed the celebratory barbecue of the outgoing Bushies. It was hugs and kisses and high-fives all around. It was like watching Lehman's executives reminisce about the good times. Josh Bolten took the stage and emotionally toasted his colleagues. "If ever there was a group to leave government with their heads held high, this is it," he said. Yech. They can tell each other what they want. But they should have to hear from the country they harmed. Bush's awful, unpleasant, disrespectful post-presidency should serve as a warning to executives who would follow his path. Shaming him is not just appropriate. It's important.

Aye. And it's worth emphasizing that this is not about sour bitterness or shallow partisanship. It's about righteous outrage, relief, and accountability.

Oh, and renewal:

Partisan media

Yglesias, 29 September:

I wonder how an Obama White House will deal with MSNBC’s flirtations with establishing itself as the progressive-friendly cable network. An incumbent administration has a lot of ability to reward particular reporters, hosts, and networks with access, scoops, and choice interviews. In principles, a White House inclined to think and act strategically about the media could do a lot to push MSNBC to transform in that direction while simultaneously bolstering the news credibility of Maddow and Keith Olbermann.

Yglesias, 11 October:

One issue I’m interested in that I think hasn’t been aired yet is whether or not a new Obama administration will try to use the considerable leverage at its disposal to enhance the credibility and standing of some of the new more progressive media — with Maddow’s show certainly being a big part of that. People forget, but Fox News had quasi-pariah status at the beginning, but conservative politicians really insisted on getting it taken seriously and the Bush administration, when it came into office, did a lot to further entrench that.

Ezra Klein recently:

... the important thing Obama could do for the "liberal" media is not have dinner with them. That's good for egos but meaningless for influence. It is, however, well within Obama's power to increase the influence of progressive outlets. Covering the presidency is the central concern of political reportage. And an outlet's ability to cover the presidency can be affected by the favor of the President. If The American Prospectand TPM Cafe and Huffington Post and others of our ilk were given the occasional interview with Obama, and fed useful scoops, that would rapidly increase our readership, our importance in the broader media ecosystem, and the likelihood that members of our outlets would go on to hold key positions in more mainstream institutions. To give just one example, if was understood that Mark Schmitt had more contacts with the Obama crew than Howard Fineman, the Sunday shows would be more likely to turn to Schmitt for analysis. In the long-run, that would be good for both Obama and for progressivism. And he wouldn't even have to waste time watching me chew my dinner.

Ross Douthat today:

Now obviously if I worked for The American Prospect or HuffPo I'd be thinking exactly along these lines: It would be absurd for a ideologically-motivated publication to turn down a shot at political influence to preserve its sense of purity. (And I'm all for Mark Schmitt on Meet the Press - or better, as a permanent replacement for David Gergen.) But it's still worth noting that this is roughly how the Bush Administration treated the conservative media - rolling out scoops to partisan outlets, wooing right-wing media types with Presidential face-time, bypassing mainstream outlets in favor of talk radio and Fox News, and so forth. And in the long run, it was good for neither the Bushies nor for conservatism.

Gah. He's damn right it would be counterproductive, for both the left and the earnestness of our politics. Eight years of FOX exclusives was enough. No thanks.

And I doubt it would jive with Obama's pledge to be "the President of all Americans".

Study: Virginity pledges ineffective, correlate with unprotected sex

(meme)

Teenagers who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not promise abstinence and are significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do, according to a study released today.

Here's Klein:

Teenagers who pledged to avoid sex until marriage were as likely to have intercourse as other U.S. adolescents," reports a new survey. Which would be fine. I don't much care if your first sexual encounter invalidates a pledge you took in 7th grade homeroom. The problem is, "teens who took the pledge also were less likely to use birth control pills or condoms than those making no promise." As Steve Benen comments, "The difference between teens who make abstinence pledges and teens who don't isn't sexual conduct, it's that those who make the pledges engage in more dangerous sexual conduct."

Right. So the data we have says that abstinence pledges are definitely ineffective and possibly harmful. I'd treat that last as a provisional result: It's not clear that the pledge is leading to more risky sex. It could be that the folks who take the pledge have less access to birth control, or less knowledge about it, or simply love the idea of teen pregnancy. More study needed, etc. And the bottom line remains: Efforts to fund abstinence only education in place of sex education are efforts to fund an increase in teen pregnancy and STD transmission. At this point, the data is too clear, and too overwhelming, to support any other conclusion.

Comparative public opinions on healthcare

Klein:

My libertarian friends and I used to joke that it would be nice to reach the day when we could disagree again. Reading Andrew Sullivan's reply to my post on the United Kingdom's National Health Service, I think we're there.

He then showcases some data. Interesting.

PSA

What happens if you stop smoking right now?

Card check and the secret ballot

I've been idly wondering liberals were so keen on card check legislation, thinking it a little absurd that they'd want to do away with the option of secret ballots. I thought it was a sign of how badly union leaders have the Dems by the balls. (which doesn't make much sense either, but it's the best I could come up with myself)

However, as Klein explains, the secret ballot option is still there. All this does is prevent employers from requiring the costly, time-consuming procedure if not enough prospective union members wish it.

From pickin’ cotton to pickin’ presidents

Via Andrew, a very fascinating pair of maps.

Klein looks at racists turned republicans.

He collects comic books!

UK's Telegraph: The 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama.

As I looked down this list, I thought to myself: Why are we -- the World -- so obsessed with the next head of the U.S. government? It's not normal. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't recall people being nearly as excited about Clinton or either of the Bushes when they were first elected.

There are several factors, like race. That's historic. But I think the principal reason is how badly Bush Republicanism fucked up America's reputation.

Now it's not just lefty fans who are obsessed with details about the next president; it's everyone who has a brain and chooses to use it. Why? Because we've learned the hard way how disastrous it is to have ignoramus anti-intellectuals heading American government. Read Andrew on this just before the election.

On a lighter note, Klein:

BARACK OBAMA IS YOUR HOMEBOY.

Barack Obama collects comic books. Barack Obama uses a Mac. Barack Obama brushes the dirt off his shoulder. Barack Obama plays pick-up basketball. George Bush may have been the president you could have a beer with, but Obama is the president you could have a PBR with while talking about Season 2 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

The Obamas on election night

There's a big Flickr gallery with 5,000 pages going back to the start of the campaign. Here's the crew watching returns on election night:





7 year-old Sasha's expression is just adorable:







Here's one of my favs, they're watching McCain's concession speech. It must be a little unsettling listening to the crowd boo:





Above is the team that really did it. From left to right, Robert Gibbs, communications director who will become press secretary; David Plouffe, campaign manager; Barack Hussein Obama, president-elect; and David Axelrod, senior strategist who will come to Washington and be a senior advisor and "assistant to the president".

The later may not sound grand, but according to Ambinder:

Assistant to the president is a very coveted post with quasi-institutional prerogatives; assistants can (if the Obama administration chooses to continue the practice) pop in on the president whenever they want, and they're given review privileges over everything that goes out in the president's name.

Another thing to note about Axelrod is that he and Obama are both good friends with Rahmbo, and share a policy vision. Seems like it'll be a powerful trio for getting things done.

As for Plouffe's future, Klein comments:

He says he won't be working in the White House. This may or may not be related to the fact that he had a baby girl yesterday, making this a very good week for him.

Quote of the day

"A lot of shelter dogs are mutts like me." --Barack Hussein Obama

That's one for the ages.

Full presser:



Transcript at CNN.