Month: September 2009

Hokum gets a public option

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By Lindsay Beyerstein Yesterday the Senate Finance Committee voted down two amendments that would have added a public option to its health reform bill. The committee also tacked on millions for discredited abstinence-only-until-opposite-marriage teaching. On the bright side, maybe kids will start ditching church now that they get their religious hokum free from the government, … Read more

ACORN Is Important After All

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by publius In 2005, Peter Daou wrote a seminal essay called "The Triangle," which (among other things) examined the relationship between blogs and the "mainstream" media (MSM).  Daou's framework provides the best context for understanding the wingers' recent victory lap on ACORN.  As it turns out, the celebration has very little to do with ACORN … Read more

The Meddlesome Nelson

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by publius Brian Beutler has the latest unhelpful comment from Ben Nelson on health coverage reform.  And while it's really annoying to hear, I'm not sure it's that big of a deal. Nebraska, remember, is a very Republican state.  Bush beat Kerry by over 30 points.  Obama did much better, but still lost the state … Read more

Afghanistan’s Fork In The Road

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by publius It's easy to understand why Obama is delaying a final decision on Afghanistan strategy.  He's come to a major fork in the road — and each potential choice calls for radically different actions that can't be easily reversed. Eric Martin can correct me if I'm wrong, but Obama seems to be faced with … Read more

The GOP’s Medicare Hypocrisy

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by publius Today's Post has a decent overview of Republicans' about-face on Medicare spending.  Demagoguing Medicare cuts is quickly becoming the GOP's go-to argument.  And it's hard to recall a more brazen and cynical act of hypocrisy.  It's an argument premised entirely on the assumption that the public — and seniors in particular — will … Read more

What Merkel Means

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by publius I've already noticed some cheering in conservative quarters about the sweeping victory of Merkel's center-right coalition.  To the extent we're viewing the German election through domestic political lenses (and, as Americans, that's our God-given right), it's worth keeping relative baselines in perspective.  As Yglesias notes, much of Merkel's coalition would be considered fairly … Read more

The Benefits of McDonnell’s Thesis

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by publius I haven't followed the Virginia governor's campaign as closely as I'd like.  But it seems clear that McDonnell was pretty much running away with it before his thesis emerged.  The views in his thesis have really wounded him — and rightly so.  It's not exactly a college-era exploration.  He wrote it at 34, … Read more

My Wandering Days Are Over…

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by Eric Martin Today, I got married to the most beautiful woman in the world.  Both beautiful because she is on the outside, and also because she puts up with me.  It ain’t easy.  She’s special.  I’m just a louse.  

Mothers For Kyl

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by publius I'm not entirely sure why including maternity care in health insurance benefits is a hill that Jon Kyl wanted to fight on.  But he did: I don't need maternity care and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that I don't need and will make the insurance more expensive. … Read more

Howard Dean Talks Budget Reconciliation (Video Exclusive)

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By Lindsay Beyerstein Last night, I quite unexpectedly scored an exclusive video interview with Howard Dean at the 92nd St YMCA where he was promoting his new book on health reform. I asked him about the chances that Democrats will try to use budget reconciliation to pass a health care bill and thwart a filibuster. … Read more

Did Palin Make Posner A Keynesian?

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by publius Regardless of what you think of Posner, you have to respect his willingness to write an essay like that.  It's no easy thing, after decades of being on a different "team," to be that intellectually open to re-examining your basic foundations and assumptions.  It's an admirable trait — and I hope I would … Read more

There Is Still Good In Him. I’ve Felt It.

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by publius Richard Posner just wrote one of those "read the whole thing" essays in TNR.  And it's the clearest and most persuasive theoretical grounding of recent Democratic economic policies that I've seen. It's dense in a few places, but he generally lays out pretty clearly the logic of things like the fiscal stimulus, policies … Read more

The Sound and the Fury

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by von In light of the increasingly frenetic calls to reject Gen. McChrystal's report and to bring the troops back home from Afghanistan, it's worth looking at what Gen. McChrystal actually said.  The unclassified version of McChrystal's report is here.  The striking part of McChrystal's report is how different the report is from its caricature in the press.  George Packer is … Read more

Suderman’s Misguided Attacks On The FCC

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by publius I apologize for being a broken record this week, but this week's FCC decision is an incredibly important one.  And it's important to stand up for it now, in the immediate aftermath, while opinions are being formed.  So that said, there is a great deal wrong with this Peter Suderman critique of the … Read more

Scenes from the UN General Assembly

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By Lindsay Beyerstein A mysterious pro-Qadhafi group outside the United Nations in Manhattan. Col. Qadhafi delivered a bizarre 90-minute address to the General Assembly today. He touched on various themes including a protracted prison rape analogy, a theory about the next big thing in man-made influenza ("fish flu," you heard it here first), and a … Read more

La Chute

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by von Since my flight got canceled this morning, I suppose that I have time to risk some questions to Publius' post:  "Afghanistan as Therapy".  Publius writes: [O]n the domestic front, the stimulus saved a lot of jobs — and helped stop the bleeding.  But the opposition was fueled by an ideological aversion to government.  … Read more

Afghanistan As Therapy

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by publius One unfortunate aspect of today's political conservative movement is that much of it is defined entirely by opposition — and contempt — for liberals.  That's the ideological glue that holds many otherwise inconsistent policies and coalitions together. Another dynamic is simply that frustrations with the Bush administration led to massive amounts of cognitive … Read more

The Rule of Law in Action

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The main reason why you want to have clear election laws before you come to a crisis is because at the time of crisis it is almost impossible for us to avoid looking at whether or not the law will help or hurt our preferred candidate. If you are permitted to change the law midstream, … Read more

Risky Business

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by publius Julian Sanchez wrote a thoughtful critique of the FCC's decision yesterday.  There's a lot there, but his main theme is simply that we should be skeptical of adopting rules like these because of the potential unknown consequences (on investment, network construction, etc.).  A few thoughts… First, it's a small point, but I don't … Read more

Rick Perlstein on ACORN

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by publius Following up on Eric's post, I just read this very insightful Q & A with Rick Perlstein (author of Nixonland, Before the Storm) on ACORN.  It's about the best analysis I've seen.  The upshot, according to Perlstein, is that ACORN is a largely manufactured crisis.  A few employees at an extremely marginal organization … Read more

Yeah, About that ACORN Law

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by Eric Martin To follow up on the discussion about the ACORN hoopla that sprung up in the comments to one of Lindsay's recent posts, what we know is that some ACORN employees were caught on video engaging in unethical and, possibly in some instances, illegal behavior.  What we also know is that some ACORN employees … Read more

Live from the UN Summit on Climate Change

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By Lindsay Beyerstein I'm posting from the UN Summit on Climate Change at UN HQ in New York. I'm wearing one of those special plastic translation earpieces. World leaders are here to talk face-to-face before the big climate negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December. President Obama is scheduled to address this morning's opening … Read more

Et Tu, NPR?

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by publius I'm pretty sure I have never — before today — yelled at NPR's Robert Siegel in my car.  But his intro to the segment on the FCC ruling left me no choice (audio): The Internet has gone largely unregulated since it came into being more than 30 years ago[.]  But today the Chairman … Read more

Kudos to the FCC

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by publius I've only scanned the speech, but on first glance, it looks pretty solid.  It hits the right notes on the value of open networks — it expands substantive protections.  It's good.  Also, one particularly nice and unexpected touch — very Obama/Genachowski-ish — is that the FCC launched a new website today called openinternet.gov.  … Read more

An FCC Win — Probably

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by publius In further evidence that elections matter, the FCC is taking an aggressive step tomorrow toward protecting open networks (a more accurate term than "net neutrality").  The WSJ reported on Saturday: The U.S. government plans to propose broad new rules Monday that would force Internet providers to treat all Web traffic equally[.] The FCC … Read more

Regulating Wall Street

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by publius I won't pretend to claim expertise in the debate about whether the feds should regulate bankers' compensation.  But the devil, it seems, is in the details.  I could easily imagine rules that are excessive intrusions — but I could just as easily imagine acceptable ones too. Regardless, though, the underlying theory of imposing … Read more

The Stakes, Cont’d

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by publius Sorry for non-posting (almost finished with outside project), but I thought this Post article was worth noting.  In addition to domestic violence, insurers have adopted a few other noteworthy pre-existing conditions: Health insurers have issued guidelines saying they could deny coverage to people suffering from such conditions as acne, hemorrhoids and bunions. One … Read more

Interests, We All Got ‘Em

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by Eric Martin This is so strange.  It’s almost as if Pakistan puts Pakistan’s interests ahead of ours.  Don’t they know who we are? Despite growing U.S. military losses in Afghanistan, Pakistan still refuses to target the extremist groups on its soil that are the biggest threat to the American-led mission there, the U.S. ambassador … Read more

Unleash Senator Wyden

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by von Senator Wyden (D-Ore.) has a health care bill.  As I've written in the past, it's a pretty damn good bill.   I'm not alone in liking it:  lots of other folks on the left and right do as well.  Moreover, unlike all the other major health care bills out there, Wyden's bill is genuinely bipartisan:  it … Read more

Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad

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by Eric Martin At long last, the Obama administration has provided a draft of its objectives  with respect to the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan, as well as a series of metrics for gauging the success in terms of meeting those aims.  Unfortunately, the enunciated objectives are themselves typical of the muddled and contradictory goals, tactics and … Read more

Baucus’s Exchanges are . . . Good!

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by publius Ezra Klein notes a very, very promising aspect of Baucus's bill: The House bill, for instance, specifically allows businesses with only 20 or fewer people to join. Baucus goes quite a bit further. He begins by mandating that businesses with up to 50 employees be allowed to buy into the exchanges. If states … Read more