Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

We're All Excitable Now!

Reservoir Moose: Tarantino has never achieved a scene this saturated with the tense rising threat of imminent violence ... 7:44 P.M.

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Blame Orszag First! Let's Go to the Numbers: Isn't Question 32 in the NBC/WSJ poll pretty close to a verdict on the success or failure of Orszagism as a means of selling health care reform? The verdict would be failure:

32: Thinking about efforts to reform the health care system, which would concern you more?

Not doing enough to make the health care system better than it is now by lowering costs and covering the uninsured.

OR

Going too far and make the health care system worse than it is now in terms of quality of care and choice.

The second option wins, 53-40. Doesn't this at least suggest that all the talk about "game changers" and curve-benders, about how "we're going to have to change how doctors think about health care and how patients think about health care" and the need for a "very difficult, democratic conversation" about costly end of life care (requiring "guidance" from an "independent group" outside of "normal political channels") has spooked people, in a way that just saying "we're setting up these health care exchanges and here's how we pay for them," or "we're going to let anyone over 50 buy into Medicare" wouldn't have spooked them? ...

P.S.--Ask Not for Whom the Chooch Tolls: The GM bailout (Question 28) is shockingly unpopular:--65 vs 30. ...

P.P.S.--"I was upset": Barney Frank had more in common with Andrew Sullivan than I realized. He's calmed down now. ... 4:47 P.M.

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Keeping Up With the Whippersnappers: It's a Mini-festival of bitter excuses over at Ezra Klein's Twitter feed: 

So refusing to shake voters hands turns out to be a bad campaign strategy? Same with insulting the beloved local sports franchise? Huh. about 3 hours ago from web
 
If Brown wins, Democrats go from the largest majority since the 70s to the second-largest majority since the 70s. about 14 hours ago from web
 
Daily Show: "Coakley believes Larry Bird is a Sesame Street character. She went into the bar in Cheers and didn't know anybody's name." about 14 hours ago from web

Meanwhile, travel back in time with us to ... five days ago, when authoritative juiceboxer Matt Yglesias chastised Scott Brown for having managed  "to squander a very favorable electoral landscape." According to Yglesias, Brown "finds himself running in a winnable race, and yet he’s overwhelmingly likely to lose." .... 10:37 P.M.

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Missing in Massachusetts: A good day to remember the late Dean Barnett. ... [via MKH]  P.S.: This past year I would gladly have traded the entire national staffs of the New York Times, Washington Post and all four TV networks for any two of Barnett, Deborah Orin, Marjorie Williams and Cathy Seipp. They were all immune to Democratic BS. ... 10:31 P.M.

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I still haven't heard a convincing argument against the Sudden Victory strategy (in which the House passes the Senate health care bill, fixes it later). Sure, attention-hounds like Anthony Weiner (who's done quite enough to damage the cause of health care reform, thank you) will denounce it today.** Give them a couple of weeks for the Kabuki makeup to wear off. (Or a couple of months--alert reader S.S. wonders if there is is there a time limit on how long the House can let the Senate bill sit there before they take it up?) . ... P.S.: On Hardball just now, Lawrence O'Donnell said he's never seen a case of 'pass it now, we'll enact a fix later' work. But President Clinton endorsed (and signed) the 1996 welfare reform while pledging to correct its excesses (notably its harsh treatment of legal immigrants). There were rumors of a memorably cynical left-wing bumper sticker along the lines of "Only Clinton Can Undo What He Has Done." But in fact Clinton was largely successful in going back and fixing the problems he identified, if I remember. ...

**--Don't we have to add Anthony Weiner's name to the list of those awaiting Ezra Klein's denunciation for being "willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people"? 10:25 P.M.

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MSM Comes Through for Obama on Health Care Premiums

[Corrected 12/2--The CBO report isn't as grim as my emailer, or I, originally thought. The changes below reflect this. ] An alert reader (who is involved in the health care debate and, like me, favors Obama's reform) emails:

Most of the coverage I’m seeing today of the new CBO report on health reform’s effects on premiums is .totally in the tank for the Obama administration. CBO’s report argues (contrary to a recent paper by Jonathan Gruber, the Obama administration’s favorite health economist) that health reform will INCREASE the cost of private health premiums. There’s no other way to read the thing. Yet the NYT ["No Big Cost Rise in U.S. Premiums Is Seen in Study"] and Wash Post ["Senate health bill gets a boost"] and especially Ezra Klein ["Congressional Budget Office: Reform Will Bring Down the Cost of Health Insurance"] are all saying the report vindicates the Democrats on cost. That’s insane. (The WSJ’s ["Some Health Premiums to Rise"] is the only news account I’ve seen that reports it straight.).

How are reporters distorting this? Mainly in two ways.

1)  They’re emphasizing that health reform will leave employer-based premiums largely unaffected. This is supposed to be a huge accomplishment. But health reform does virtually nothing to alter employer-based health care—it’s focused on the individual “nongroup” market—so to say it will have virtually no impact on employer-based premiums is like saying it will have virtually no effect on global warming.

[2) They’re] emphasizing that health reform will lower premiums for the majority of participants in the nongroup market by up to 60 percent. It will do nothing of the sort. It will INCREASE premiums in this market by 10 to 13 percent. That it will do so for good reasons (regulatory changes will require insurers to provide more actual insurance to customers) may justify the increase, but it doesn’t contradict it. Premiums will be higher because of health reform. The bill alleviates this for more than half of all participants in the new exchanges by extending income-based subsidies that will reduce the out-of-pocket cost of premiums by up to 60 percent as compared to what purchasers would pay without health reform.  But that shouldn’t be mistaken for lowering the actual cost, which will still be borne by the nearly half of all purchasers who don’t receive subsidies. [E.A.]

When Ivy League universities raise tuition but pledge increased subsidies (i.e. financial aid) the headline usually reads something like "Yale Raises Tuition." ...

P.S.: [Corrections below] Klein seems particularly disingenuous, discussing the report as if premiums would rise only because newly empowered individuals would choose to buy better policies:

Premiums for the same policy in the individual market fall by 14 to 20 percent. But people in the individual market, who are largely low-income, will now have the opportunity to purchase better policies that cover more expenses and provide more security. That's a good thing. It's one of the reasons for health-care reform, in fact. And it is not analogous to health-care insurance becoming more expensive, any more than the fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming more expensive. [E.A.]

But individuals--at least those buying new policies--won't be able to buy "the same policy" that they can now, as I understand it. The policies they buy on the new exchanges will have to include some state-mandated benefits ("mental health and substance abuse treatment") and they could not exclude preexisting conditions. Both changes make policies better, but also more expensive. If you are an individual without a preexisting condition who doesn't want to buy mental health or drug abuse insurance--sorry! Your premiums are going up anyway--and by more than the CBO's average 10 -13%, presumably, because that figure averages in all the people who now pay more because of their preexisting conditions. You'll have to pay for them anyway. Will that increase outweigh the premium-reducing effect of a) the efficiencies introduced by the bill's "exchanges," and b) the broader insurance pool created because young, healthy people are now required to sign up? It's not clear to me.  It looks as if CBO estimates the cost increases due to mandated benefits as at least 9%, probably a bit more,** while the cost-reducing factors are 14-20%.But for an individual without a preexisting condition the cost increase would presumably be higher than 9%, since that averages in all the people who now pay more because of their preexisting conditions.

Plus, according to CBO, that apparently doesn't account for another factor that could push up prices--more people using more services because they'd have policies that require less cost-sharing.expanded insurance driving up health care spending overall, and encouraging the "accelerated dissemination of new medical procedures" (as happened when Medicare started, apparently).

These would be relatively small prices worth paying for the security of knowing that you can always get reasonably priced insurance. But it's silly to pretend that either premiums in the key individual market will never go up a bit (before being subsidized back down for some) or that if they do go up it will just be because people voluntarily buy the equivalent of "a nicer car." 

The fear, of course, is that if the first thing already-insured, healthy individual voters see as a result of health care reform is a non-trivial hike in their premiums, they might not be very happy about the Democrats' achievement. Their unhappiness will be all the greater if they've been promised a premium cut, or if any increase is glibly dismissed as simply paying for benefits that they've now had the "opportunity" to purchase. ... The fate of the 1988 catastrophic health care insurance bill--passed, then repealed--offers a relevant, cautionary example, no? ... 

Update: Clive Crook defends the MSM. He also addresses the "more important" question of whether the CBO report is right, worrying that premiums will rise due to a factor CBO pooh-poohs--adverse selection. ...

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**-- The 9% doesn't include involuntary increases when individuals who have policies that cover less than 60% of their projected costs are forced to buy policies that cover that statutory amount. Apparently there aren't many such people, but there are some. ...  4:17 P.M.

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Ezra Klein, Unreliable Narrator!

I don't understand this Ezra Klein's explanation of the Baucus bill's "free rider" provision, which seems hideously misguided because it attempts to penalize employers who hire low income workers eligible for health insurance subsidies. Here's Klein:

The penalty itself is a bit confusing, and if anything, even worse than one might imagine: The employer will pay the lesser of A) the average subsidy in the exchange times the number of subsidized workers or B) $400 times the total number of workers. Two examples should clarify this:

Baucus Corp has 100 employees and does not offer health-care coverage. Thirty of the employees receive subsidies on the exchange. The average subsidy that year is $5,000. Baucus Corp woulds pay $400 times 100 employees, as $40,000 is less than $150,000 ($5,000 times 30 employees). Each of those low-income employees is costing Baucus Corp $1,333 more than an employee who didn't need subsidies.

Now imagine that Baucus Corp. only has five employees who need subsidies, and the average subsidy that year is $5,000. In that scenario, Baucus Corp would pay $25,000 rather than $40,000, because $25,000 is less than $40,000. Each low-income worker now costs Baucus Corp. $5,000 more than a worker who doesn't need subsidies.

The problem is the highlighted sentence: It sure looks as if Baucus Corp would pay the same $40,000 penalty if it had only 29 low income employees in its workforce instead of 30. Hiring an additional low income employee, as opposed to a more affluent employee, costs it nothing, not $1,3000.  (Indeed, the penalty on Baucus Corp. is the same- -$40,000--regardless of the number of low income employees in its work force unless that number is less than 8, at which point the number of low income employees X $5,000 would be the lower of the two penalties,)

If this reading is right, the provision, while still misguided, may be less misguided than it seems (not more, as Klein implies). For firms with a sizable proportion of low income workers, it would basically function as a straight pay or play tax that increased a fixed amount (in this example, $400) with every new employee hired, whether or not that employee had a low income that qualified him for a health subsidy. The perverse effect would be to encourage firms to either decide to hire lots of low income workers or to hire none of them, concentrating the low income workforce in a relatively few firms. That's crazy, but it's slightly less evil than discouraging hiring of low income workers across the board.

But I could have it wrong. I am getting my information from Ezra Klein! He has great sources, but he's an unreliable narrator. It must be frustrating for the sources. ...  2:46 P.M.

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54-46 Was My Number, But It's Not Dick Morris': I was thinking that even a smallish majority opposed to health care might be sufficient to bog it down in Congress, as skittish legislative swing votes worry about their own reelections. But health care reform foe Dick Morris seems to believe the numbers aren't quite bad enough (yet) to have that effect.

But, certainly, when opposition to the president's program grows from the current 42-55 disapproval into the 35-65 range, Congress must balk rather than march over the cliff.

It's not clear we'll ever get into the 35-65 range, unless Obama appoints Kanye West as his new spokesman. If that's what it will take for a reform to not pass, then a reform will probably pass. Hope!  3:21 P.M.

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Ezra Klein's Most Cracked Spin Yet?

Delusion Watch: Ezra Klein thinks the good news is that Obama "hasn't given a speech on health-care reform ..."  You could have fooled me. The problem, Klein reports, is that 

the media reported on his news conferences and town hall meetings as if they were the White House's failed attempts to set the agenda.

You mean they weren't attempts to set the agenda? That explains it!  ...  [via Faughnan| ... P.S.: Klein's post does raise a disturbing possibility: Maybe the White House is proceeding ploddingly according to a plan laid out months ago, in which Obama's formal address to Congress was going to be a dramatic, fresh, deal-clinching intervention as opposed to three more cubic yards of the same ineffective rhetoric the public is already sick of. . . .They haven't adjusted at all in the WH, according to this theory. We're still on Plan A. ...

P.S.: "Our CBS News tally shows that Mr. Obama has given 27 speeches specifically on his health care objectives. Add in other remarks, events and statements in which he mentioned health care and the number soars to 119." [link and emphasis added] ...  8:30  P.M.

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Suppose Obama's 'inside' deal-cutting strategy works, and a health care reform along current lines passes. Would anything then actually happen that would come back and bite the Democrats before the next couple of elections? If so, what? Bob Wright asked this question on bloggingheads yesterday. His answer: The individual mandate could be to health care what the 55 m.p.h. speed limit was to Jimmy Carter's energy policy. I had a different answer, perhaps prompted by my recent, not uncommon, experience with rising credit card rates. ... A mandate will only impinge on those who don't have insurance already. A rise in insurance premiums will impact nearly everyone, no? .... 8:31 P.M.

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That 'Loving Thing' You Do: Alec MacGillis on the La Crosse, Wisconsin hospitals that push end-of-life directives:

"The [directive] itself doesn't really matter very much -- it's the clearly expressed belief and shared understanding that it represents," Hammes said. "The family members have to believe that what they do is not only legally right, but personally right. If Mom said, 'Don't do this or do do this,' it's much easier for them to say, 'I'm doing a loving thing,' and it's a decision you can live with."  

The obvious question MacGillis ducks: What if you write a directive that says you want aggressive and expensive death-delaying measures to be taken? "I'd like to die hooked up to machines." Do the hospitals of LaCrosse just automatically follow your wishes and spend $100,000 in your final weeks, telling themselves that it's a "shared understanding" and "a loving thing." Or is ... subtle pressure exerted to have a further "conversation"? ... 9:02 P.M.

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David Brooks and The New Anti-Anti-Orszagism. It's Wrong!

Politico conveys the latest White House staff boasts about health care strategy:

Top officials privately concede the past six weeks have taken their toll on Obama's popularity. But the officials also see the new diminished expectations as an opportunity to prove their critics wrong ...

Dickerson: Who knew it was all a brilliant plot to lower expectations? ... 9:45 P.M.

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Anti-anti-anti-Orszagism: David Brooks mounts the conventional defense against anti-Orszagism:

The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn’t worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.

But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.

Brooks is being disingenous, I think. The complaint against Orszag isn't that he's worried about the deficit. You could easily have a substantial health reform effort that was deficit-neutral--that didn't add to the $9 trillion, which is the estimated deficit for 10 years.  Where Obama and Orszag went wrong was in ostentatiously blabbering about long-term health cost "game changers" beyond that 10 year period, involving a "very difficult democratic conversation" on whether to put limits on treatments toward the end of life. It's the "game changers" that rightly scare people who worry about moving toward Brit-style rationing or other sorts of restrictions..

This discussion of long-term "game changers" was almost entirely gratuitous, policy-wise. 1) They're unproven. Maybe they'll work--i.e. cut costs without affecting care. Maybe they won't. It's irresponsible to make speculative efforts to control long term health costs, something that hasn't been done in this country, the centerpiece of an attempt to extend care; 2) They're long term! There's plenty of time to institute whatever curve-bending changes in medical practice between now and 2019, as eminently respectable policy person Uwe Reinhardt notes; 3) Cutting health care costs isn't the only responsible way to control the deficit. You could also cut other costs (e.g., Social Security) or raise taxes; 4) It was intellectually misleading to argue that spending a trillion dollars to extend health care coverage (and add demand to the system) was somehow the way to control long term costs, which was the essence of Obama's appeal in his address to Congress. Maybe expanded coverage would give the government more monopsony leverage--a not-unscary prospect in iitself, especially if you are "suspicious of centralized government," as Brooks says we Americans are--but basically the two issues seem separable. If you want to control long term costs and shift to a different treatment model you could start doing that independent of efforts to broaden coverage (which, indeed,  Orszag proposes doing). There's no clear policy reason--certainly no reason we've been given--that the two have to be linked. 

Brooks has it backwards, then, when he suggests Orszag's critics are saying Obama should have put good policy common sense aside for cheap political reasons. The policy groundwork for insisting on legislating "game-changers" now is weak. The only reason to include them was political--the calculation that even a speculative, possibly Potemkin-like effort to address long term costs would appeal to Blue Dog legislators and independent voters.  It's this political calculation that appears to have been the big mistake--the curve-bending, treatment-denying talk has scared seniors so much that popular support for the whole package (including among independents) has sunk to dangerous and possibly fatal levels.

P.S.: I've learned the hard way not to question the judgment of John Harwood, but his Obama's-in-good-shape analysis seems a little ... well ... Ambinderish. ... Same goes for Norman Ornstein, who focuses on the inside game (for Senate votes) and ignores the outside game (for public opinion). Is he ...rearranging reconciliation votes on the Titanic! ... And didn't Ezra Klein tell us a couple of weeks ago that the inside game had failed, and now Obama was going to move the argument "to the country" where he'd "marshal public support"? What happened with that? ...

P.P.S: According to Atlantic, Obama is going to seize on his moment of seeming weakness to ... draw lines in the sand! Auspiciously, none of the lines (as reported by Ambinder) is an insistence on Orszag's long-term rule benders. But the night is young. ... 2:46 P.M.

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The New Republic explores new revenue models, Atlantic -style. ... And they're going to viciously attack Christina Romer after she's helped them charge $250 a seat? ... 2:45 P.M.

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"Hot Blue on Blue Action": Joe Klein vs. Glenn Greenwald: Tom Maguire buries his real lede--Is it possible that Glenn Greenwald is not a member of the secretive Journolist? ... P.S.: On the question of whether "Klein pretends to position himself as an observer rather than a rooter at TIME," I would say the answer is no.. It would be futile to do otherwise at this point, anyway--as Maguire notes. ..."Rooter" is too passive, though. More like "player." ... You got a problem with that? ... 2:44 P.M..

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This is Plan B?

Everything's Under Control! I missed Ezra Klein's latest optimistic spin last week on the health care debate. Klein notes that Obama isn't talking about "bending the cost curve" on the stump, and that Republicans have gained traction, not with arguments about cost and the long-term deficit, but with fears of cost-cutting and rationing. So far, so good. 

But Klein says the administration always intended its "curve bending" arguments as a means of building "Washington support" and passing a bill by August ("the plan was to keep this in Washington"). Now that this effort has failed,** "the argument moves to the country" where the administration's pitch will be different, focusing on stories of insurance injustices.  "You don't win appealing to the wallet, you win by grabbing the gut."

This reeks of making-the-best-of-a-bad-situationism:

1) Did the administration really think it was going to pass a bill reforming the entire health care system without winning the "outside" battle for public support? If so, someone drew the wrong lesson from the "stimulus" bill. (The stimulus bill was intended to address an acute crisis.)

2) Did the administration think that Obama could run around talking obsessively about his plans to "bend the curve" of health costs (including in a nationally televised press conference), giving interviews to the New York Times about the need for a "very difficult democratic conversation" on restricting end-of-life care and the news would stay in Washington? Note: They've invented the telegraph!

3) Most important, does the adminsitration think it has plenty of time now to move on to win the argument in "the country"--as if this were a stately, well-ordered two-stage fight, a formal legal appeal to a higher court of public opnion? Does anyone really believe this? I doubt even Ezra Klein believes it--though I guess every great spinner believes his own spin. (And Klein, unlike Ambinder, seems like a spinner rather than a spinnee.)

What he breezily glosses over is the possibility--increasingly, the actuality--that they've already lost the public opinion battle for the near future. If they now need public opinion to pass the bill in the fall, they aren't going to pass a bill. It turns out you may only get one chance to roll out a giant legislative initiative. You can't roll it out with a cost-cutting rationale and then switch cunningly and seamlessly to a security-providing rationale without addressing the fears raised by the first set of arguments. 

Specifically, a few "gut"-grabbing insurance horror stories aren't going to calm the "rationing" fears of those now covered by Medicare (who don't worry about their insurance, or didn't until Obama came along). The best defense is not always a good offense (cf. Dunkirk). In this case, what's required would seem to be more a dramatic repudiation of the administration's own cost-bending, treatment-discouraging rhetoric.

Obama can't fire himself, but he can fire the curve-bending wonks who convinced him that talking about end-of-life issues was a good way to sell universal care. He can find himself a health-care Petraeus. And he can ditch the closest thing to a "death panel" in the legislation--the IMAC board. The more traumatic and high-profile the intra-administration upheaval, the more space Obama buys to relaunch his plan as a rationing-free coverage extension.

That would be a Plan B. ...

P.S.: Maguire mocks the NYT's effort to bury, under a layer of anti-yahoo sneering, the evidence in its own pages of Obama talking about restricting end-of-life treatments to save money. ...

**--See Lori Montgomery's wildly unconvincing argument that health care reform has to drive down the long-term cost curve (not just be "paid for") in order to pass. Maybe if the vote was taken by the respectable, responsible newspaper editors who order up hothouse pieces like Montgomery's. As Klein notes, the "curve-bending" argument didn't even carry the day inside the Beltway, while provoking active hostility outside. ... 3:49 P.M.

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Prediction! kf Throws Caution to the Winds

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Here's a safe political prediction: Despite all the innovative e-mobilization and ad campaigns and town halls and community organizing, the August recess will not produce any effective groundswell of popular support for Obama's health care reform. Why? The "security" message--which might appeal to the vast middle--is not getting through. On Pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal discusses the polling that backs this up. ... Reform advocates have now belatedly realized what the Orszag emphasis on cost-reduction has lost them politically, and have started talking about the "moral dimension" of reform. But even that makes it sound too guilt-trippy and altruistic--'do the right thing, even if it costs you.' The point is that everyone wants health care security. I do. You do. It's not a "moral" fight like the civil rights struggle. Transcendence of self-interest should not be required. Suggesting otherwise probably loses more support than it gains.  ... P.S.: Have Democrats forgotten how to talk about the welfare state? It seemed to me even Walter Mondale** talked about medical security effectively, back when Charles Krauthammer was writing speeches for him. (Mondale had a proven staple anecdote about what it meant to his mother to get her Medicare card). ... Bring back Mondale! There's another thing I thought I'd never say. ...  Update: More on the Gallup numbers that show voters think health care reform is against their own self-interest (in terms of cost and quality of care and access to care). ...

** DeLong: Explain to the juiceboxers who this person was. Thanks! ... 2:41 P.M.

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FYI: MKH PWNS AS FTW! ... FSTFITB!** ..

 ** First Shoot the Fish In the Barrel ... 3.51 P.M.

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Klein vs. Yglesias--Who Wins the Blog-Off?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Not All Juiceboxers Are Alike: A secret conversation on "JournoList" apparently produces eerily similar arguments against the filibuster from Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias. Except Yglesias goes on to make some quirky and sophisticated points about the effects of filibusterless democracy on campaigning and on the welfare state, while Klein's reads like a prize-winning high school essay. (Also, Klein hides the JournoList connection, while Yglesias is transparent about it.) I predict this scientific experiment will be replicated in the future. ...  4:10 A.M.

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From AP yesterday:  

"We have to do what businesses and families do. We've got to cut out the things we don't need to pay for the things we do," Obama said at a town-hall style meeting Thursday in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The meeting followed a prime-time news conference the night before in which Obama sought to rally public support for his health plan. [E.A.]

WASHINGTON - Sweeping healthcare legislation working its way through Congress is more than an effort to provide insurance to millions of Americans without coverage. Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers' markets. ... "These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,'' said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.

4:06 A.M.

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Peggy Noonan is on to something potentially big--the possible alliance between Christian pro-life forces and liberal universal health insurance advocates in favor of broadly available life-saving care ... and the potential fight between that alliance and the cost-saving Orszag end-of-life-rationalizing would-you-please-die-now crowd. ... Prediction: The sneering Dem majority position in the Schiavo case will get a second, skeptical look from at least some liberals. .... 4:04 A.M.

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Always trust content from kausfiles .. even when it's on Twitter.  4:02 A.M.

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Wonks Will Kill Health Care Yet

WaPo's Ezra Klein decrees "rules" for those who would use the CBO's damning analysis "against the existing health-care reform proposals"--they "must," he says, endorse some combination of cost-cutting proposals from a list he provides. Huh? Even as mock hubris (and it's hard to tell) this makes no sense. Who said opponents have to be for more cost-cutting? Why can't Republicans say to Dems a) You said your plans would bend the cost curve down. Instead they increase costs. The status quo would be better than your plans. Vote no. b) You said your plans would bend the cost curve down. Instead they increase costs. Why should we believe anything else you say? ... That isn't what I would say, but it's not an illogical or inappropriate response. ... 

P.S.: Klein goes on, of course, to re-endorse the very treatment-restricting form of cost-cutting that is scaring people away from the Dem plans, specifically 

comparative effectiveness review that can judge not only the effectiveness but also the cost-effectiveness of various treatments, and give the federal government authority to use that data when deciding reimbursement rates.

In other words, a medical treatment can be more effective than the alternative but the government will still try to prevent you from getting it if it's expensive. Yikes. Smug self-styled wonks will kill health care yet. ... [What would you do?--ed Guarantee health care security to all citizens--a public plan being one way to do it. People can switch jobs and lose jobs and be poor and near-poor and move and get ill without worrying about being covered. Assume this will raise costs. Assume the cost curve of medical costs will be hard to bend in any case, if that can be done at all.  Figure out how to pay those costs--through taxes, if necessary. Take reasonable cost-controlling measures, if desired, once everyone has health care security--but don't expect too much. Stop acting as if cost-cutting and treatment-denying is the point of health care reform.] ... 2:28 A.M.

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Ezra Klein, Concern Troll

Ezra Klein is concerned--or rather, he's "gripped" by an "unsettling thought":

[H]ealth-care reform isn't simply suffering because the public is overly opposed to some of its revenue raisers. It's suffering because the public is insufficiently supportive of its core. ... [snip]

[I]t's not obvious what health-care reform will do for the average American. I could give you a long answer about delivery system reforms and so forth because it's my job to know these things. But it would have to be a long answer .... [snip]

Higher taxes aren't buying them obvious benefits. Instead, they seem to be paying the health-care bills of poorer Americans. ... [snip]

If support for the overall effort were more robust, the polling on the tax exclusion would matter less. People are willing to pay for things they want to buy. But though they might abstractly favor health-care reform, it doesn't seem directly related to their lives. [E.A.]

I agree with my distinguished colleague (and welcome him to the concern troll community). He's woken to the realization that Obama is running into political difficulty because he's selling the middle class a pain sandwich--more taxes in exchange for more health care cuts. It would have been smarter to sell universal health care as offering, at a time when nearly everyone's job looks shaky, Medicare-like security for all. (It's not too late! And it fits on a bumper sticker.) ...

Whom should Klein blame for this tragic initial misstep? Among others, he should blame Ezra Klein, whose "long answer" explaining health care reform's benefits seemingly bought into the entire Orszag party line (health care reform is the way to lower costs and cut the budget deficit!)--even amplifying it by arguing that a more "rational" health care system would decide whether "a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure." If only Klein and other influential Obamapparatchiks had been more critical and Kinsleyesque. ....

P.S.: A day after his concerned post, Klein writes:

People don't like to cut costs in the health-care system. It's painful. Politicians do not voluntarily do painful things. But a lot of people want to achieve universal health care. And they're willing to make a lot of concessions to do so. The coverage expansion, in other words, can serve as leverage for the cost controls. [E.A.]

Huh?  July 10 Ezra Klein should read July 9 Ezra Klein. If universal coverage in itself doesn't do much that's obvious "for the average American"--but rather seems to mainly involve "paying the health care bills of poorer Americans," why would average Americans be willing to "make a lot of concessions" in the form of  painful cost cuts to achieve that goal--any more than they will be willing to endure painful tax increases?

Bonus question: Why would Klein abandon the sound contrarian insight he'd had a day earlier? Collective criticism on JournoList? ...

Update: "Pelosi, House Leaders to Hold Press Conference Today to Highlight Benefits of Health Care Reform for Middle Class"--Politico's Mike Allen. A Pelosi press conference! That'll do it. ... 12:04 A.M.

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Gran Salida, Win/Win? WaPo profiles one of the "thousands of Latino immigrants forced back across the border in recent months by the sinking economy ..." Thousands? Is this the Gran Salida that the New York Times assured us wasn't happening? ...

P.S.:  The subject of the profile, a resourceful and industrious Guatemalan illegal immigrant named Carlos Sanchez, seems to be at least as valuable an addition to Guatemalan society as he was to Washington, D.C.'s. [non-ironic]. After what appears to be non-traumatic adjustment period  

Sanchez teaches typing at his house each Saturday on 27 manual typewriters his sister stockpiled for him over the years. And he landed a day job teaching English in a local high school.  

Mightn't it help developing countries like Guatemala if their most enterprising citizens return home, or stay home in the first place? ... 12:02  A.M.

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"Fighting Sotomayor, Republicans Falsely Advance Fire Fighter Ricci As the White Man's Rosa Parks": I remind my brother Steve that not even the sainted Rosa Parks was quite what she seemed. ... P.S.: I've never understood quite why the Ricci case was considered to have "bad" facts by defenders of Title VII's "disparate impact" standard for judging employment tests. Ricci involved a new test, designed by consultants. The worst case, for the defenders, would be if New Haven had thrown out a traditional test that had been accepted for years as job related, no? ... P.P.S.: Would this freshly concocted multiple choice exam have met the less stringent Rosenberg Standard (a "reasonable relationship to the organization's activities")? I assume yes. But would it have been crazy for the New Haven authorities to decide "no"? ... 1:40  A.M.

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Let the Boomers Die!

Reader E notes a generational aspect to the enthusiasm of whippersnappers like Ezra Klein for lowering government medical costs by making "rational" health care decisions not to pay for treatments when "a person's life, or health, is not worth the price":

The Medicare savings are an outcomes-based review. When you're talking about Medicare, it means reviewing what procedures have a lower chance of success at the end of life, and then denying payment for them. The Rs will call this euthanasia of the baby boom, maybe there is another name for it though. ...

kausfiles Plays ... and Pays!

Unfortunately, our belief in the importance of equal opportunity and nondiscrimination is too often forgotten when it comes to the debate over whether and how to police the market for home mortgages. In poor and working-class communities across the nation, predatory mortgage lending has become a new scourge. Predatory lending is the practice of imposing inflated interest rates, fees, charges, and other onerous terms on home mortgage loans--not because the imperatives of the market require them, but because the lender has found a way to get away with them. These loans (which are often sold as refinance or home improvement mechanisms) are foisted on borrowers who have no realistic ability to repay them and who face the loss of their hard-won home equity when the all-but-inevitable default and foreclosure occurs. ...[snip]  

In these circumstances, government must step in to curb predatory lending and encourage the flow of fairly priced capital to sectors where it is needed and will be well-used. Filling a gap left by federal inaction, state enforcement efforts in this arena have centered on identifying the valid economic criteria considered in mortgage underwriting and compelling lenders to focus on those factors--not on preconceptions, prejudices, or predatory instincts--in determining how to price home mortgage loans. The point is not to protect people from their own bad decisions or, conversely, to guarantee that mortgages be granted to specific persons or groups on specific terms--that would violate the principle of market freedom. The point is to support equal opportunity and to ensure that borrowers are charged rates and fees based upon their status and qualifications as economic actors in the mortgage market, not upon their diminished access or market savvy or their race.

"We need President Obama and his auto task force to stand up for the interest of workers and retirees in these restructuring negotiations," according to the message, posted on uaw.org. [link added]  

___________________________

"I have no way to substantiate any of this ... I have no evidence of it."

But Castaneda challenged his critics to "offer a better explanation." ... How about that Raul was, in the manner of strongmen everywhwere, simply removing two popular officials who might pose a threat to his power? ... 7:03 P.M.

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New Dem Health Care Pitch: "We'll Deny Treatment!"

Friday, April 17, 2009 

Democratic blogger Ezra Klein appears to be positioning Dem health care reforms as a way to cut costs, on the grounds that a reformed system will be able to make "hard choices" and "rational" coverage decisions, by which Klein seems to mean "not providing" treatments that are unproven or too expensive--when "a person's life, or health, is not worth the price." Matthew Yglesias' recent post seems to be saying the same thing, though clarity isn't its strong suit. (He must have left it on Journolist.)  

Isn't it an epic mistake to try to sell Democratic health care reform on this basis? Possible sales pitch: "Our plan will deny you unnecessary treatments!" Or maybe just "Republicans say 'yes.' Democrats say 'no'!" Is that really why the middle class will sign on to a revolutionary multi-trillion dollar shift in spending--so the government can decide their life or health "is not worth the price"?  I mean, how could it lose?

The "rational," cost-cutting, "hard-choices" pitch isn't just awful marketing--I don't even think it's accurate. Put it this way: I'm for universal health care in large part precisely because I think the government will be less tough-minded and cost-conscious when it comes to the inevitable rationing of care than for-profit insurance companies will be. Take Arnold Kling's example of a young patient with cancer, where "the best hope is a treatment that costs $100,000 and offers a chance of success of 1 in 200." No "rational bureaucracy" would spend $20 million to save a life, Kling argues. I doubt any private insurance company is going to write a policy that spends $20 million to save a life.  But I think the government--faced with demands from patient groups and disease lobbies and treatment providers and Oprah and run, ultimately, by politicians as terrified of being held responsible for denying treatment as they are quick to pander to the public's sentimental bias toward life--is less likely to be "rational" than the private sector.

That is to say, the government's more likely to pay for the treatment (assuming a doctor recommends it). So it's government for me.  

Now, I understand that President Obama has chosen to sell his health care plan in the current budget as a way to control costs. How else to even colorably bill it as a policy response to the immediate economic crisis?  That it won't control costs seemed, initially, to be merely disingenuous--and what's a little deception if that's what it takes to get a good universal health care law passed? But on second thought, Obama's strategy isn't just disingenuous. In the not-so-long run it's ineffective, a political loser.  

Didn't universal health coverage gain traction during the anti-HMO era, when voters began to see private-sector cost-cutting bureaucrats override the decisions of doctors to provide drugs and treatments to their patients? The evil HMOs tried to kick new mothers out of the hospital after a day! Politicians responded with laws mandating treatment, with a "patients' bill of rights," etc. But now, through a heroic, concerted effort at self-congratulatory Obamaist groupthink, the Dems are about to cast the government in the cost-cutting, treatment denying role and put themselves on the side of the heartless bureaucratic bean counters.  

More broadly, haven't liberals historically prospered when they promised and delivered more for the average American (more Social Security, health security, prosperity, clean air) in exchange for increased spending? Why not try the same with health care? Give pandering a chance. ... 2:49 A.M.

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'This Time It Was Supposed to Be Different'

Thursday, April 2, 2009 

Alert emailer J. makes a basic point about JournoList much more clearly than I did: 

 I also have a vague dislike for the practice you describe.   But my problem is that I also have a vague feeling that I can identify what about it really gets you down even though I don't think you have said this yourself ... [snip] ... Here goes:        

1.  A problem with the MSM is that they are innately compromised by being large organizations.  A stock character in literature is the newspaper reporter who can't print all that he knows because the publisher owes things to advertisers, it's bad politics, there's a risk of vehement complaints from the public, etc.  Moreover, we have all met reporters who fascinated us by saying things like, "Here's how it really is . . . ," and if you ask why they don't say that in print, they give a lot of answers that are not satisfying.  Now the excuse for this always was that a successful newspaper or radio or TV network of necessity had to be a large organization, simply to get heard.  A guy with a mimeograph machine in his bedroom can't do that, (except that I. F. Stone did it).  This led to a widespread feeling that what a consumer of news got was a sort of second-order reality, the filtered and compromised version.  The better the news organization, one hoped, the less the filtering or compromise, but there was no way to eliminate it. This was evil but a necessary evil.

 2.  That led to the feeling, too, that there was a first order of reality, which was what the reporters said among themselves.  But only the informed elite had access to that.        

3.  Where this is going is obvious.  With the Internet, we have thought, it is possible to get an audience without the gargantuan investment in printing presses, broadcast licenses or equipment, or the need to hire a large reporting staff so you can cover the broad range of topics necessary to sell a news product, attract advertisers, and so on.  You just need a computer and time.  This means no compromises in what is said, no filtering into a second order of reality, and direct address to the readership: exactly what you, the blogger, think is what I, the reader, get.  This is not to say you have all the advantages of a newspaper, because you don't.  But you can address the public without having the newspaper's disadvantages.         

4.  Against this background, JournoList is a very disappointing and sort of unsettling development.  Just the existence of the list and the fact that broadscale discussions go on inside it suggests that these liberal voices are deliberately and unnecessarily recreating one of the chief disadvantages of the MSM.  The suggestion that they have things to discuss privately about what they are doing (I assume they are using the list to discuss "journalism", not which movies to see, books to read, or recipes to cook), re-creates the idea that that, rather than what their consumers see, is the first order of reality. This seems to break one of the promises of, or hopes for, the Internet.  It also suggests that these journalists rather liked the cage that their MSM ilk used to be in, because these present day guys are recreating that for themselves.  That's a very disappointing discovery also because it diminishes them as people.         

5.  Robert Wright was correct to say that this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, but the response to that is that this time it was supposed to be different -- and that, indeed, Bloggingheads is supposed to be as close as you can get to being admitted into Frankfurter's[**] living room . ...  There is also nothing whatever wrong with meeting in secret in some instances -- it is highly unlikely that we would have a Constitution resembling the masterwork we have if the boys had had to meet in public, and there are plenty of other examples.  But because the whole point of journalism is to inform people, the suggestion that its substance ought to be dealt with in sessions that exclude those to be informed is by its nature troubling. 

**--I had compared JournoList to the young Felix Frankfurter's "House of Truth"--a good career move for Frankfurter.

Last word on JList? Chris Lehmann ... 12:40 A.M.

___________________________.

The Best of Journolistism

Monday, March 30, 2009

Jon Chait is surely correct that if Obamas presidency fails it's the Congressional Democrats who'll be responsible. ... But a) Chait writes as if the only Democrats who might put parochial interests over national and party interests are Kent Conrad-style Senate moderates-- as opposed to, say, hard-core Dems who'll prevent Obama from killing ineffective liberal programs (and from being able to afford effective ones, because they insist on paying top-dollar "Davis-Bacon" wages). There are hacks on the left and right as well as in the center. ... b) Chait declares that Dems who want to "rein in deficits" are not necessarily pursuing "the national interest." In the long run? Really? ... c) He says Obama's budget "represents a once-in-a-generation chance for the Democratic Party to reshape the priorities of the federal government." So if Obama doesn't get his health care reserve fund passed this year, we have to give up on health care for a generation? Hype, I say. ... d) Chastising Dem dissenters, Chait claims "Republicans did not denounce Bush for squandering a budget surplus to benefit the rich." John McCain might be surprised to hear that. ... e) Chait says Bill Clinton "saw the core of his domestic agenda come to ruin," adding

The one factor within the Democrats' control is whether their constituents see Obama as a strong leader taking action, like Roosevelt or Kennedy, or a floundering weakling, like Carter or first-term Clinton.

I remember Clinton's first term as being rather effective--he passed welfare reform, NAFTA, and put the budget on a path to balance. Second term? Well, there was the "race initiative"! And he managed to preserve the surplus. Chait only says Clinton failed to pass "the core of his domestic agenda" because he doesn't like the idea that ending "welfare as we know it" was at the core of Clinton's domestic agenda. But Clinton campaigned on it at least as much as on health care. Marty Peretz could fill Chait in. ... 10:11 P.M.

___________________________

Left Dem Robert Borosage wrote about labor's "card check" bill earlier this month:

[The bill] will be introduced into the House in the next couple weeks, where passage is guaranteed. The real donnybrook will be in the Senate where it has strong majority support but must overcome efforts by a conservative minority to block the vote with a filibuster. [E.A.]

"Conservative minority." Hmmm. Not so sure about that. Does "card check" as written even have a simple majority in the Senate anymore? Opponents seem to have 41 solid votes, and some 17 Democrats are apparently wavering. All it would take would be 10 of them to make those pushing the bill a "liberal minority." It reminds me of the dynamic surrounding "comprehensive immigration reform"--where we were also told that a conservative minority was blocking the bill, but where, on the crucial cloture vote, that "minority" turned out to have 53 votes (versus 46 for proponents).

There's only one way to find out for sure, of course. I'm not that curious. ...  9:49 P.M.

___________________________

Anatomy of a succesful blog post: Matthew Yglesias finds a tiny, tiny little point to make ("[a]lmost nobody" watches daytime cable news, but "people who work professionally in the political arena" do) that lets him plug a banal quote from his boss, John Podesta. ... 9:23 P.M.

___________________________

Twitter Beats Big Labor? Did a loose coalition of low-budget social networkers and tweeters defeat Measure B--a plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the mighty International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (which seems to be running the city's Department of Water and Power) to create union jobs putting up solar panels all over the city? That's what L.A. Weekly's Daniel Heimpel claims. ... I can see some holes in his argument--Measure B was also opposed by the L.A. Times and by at least one prominent pol (Controller Laura Chick). And ballot measures usually have a tough road. Still! If it didn't happen this election, it will happen soon enough. ... 9:10 P.M

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JournoList Revealed! Inside the Secret Liberal Media Email Cabal

Thursday, March 26, 2009  

Michael Calderone's article on the large, secretive liberal media email group JournoList sparked a lot of debate--some of it in this space--on whether this group is a healthy development for coverage of politics. The debate was necessarily speculative because actual JournoList discussions remained secret. But with more than 300 members of this club, virtually all of them with easy access to the media, did you really think a JournoList thread wouldn't leak? People are rightly interested in learning what goes on behind the scenes at powerful institutions--or wannabe powerful institutions--whose power derives precisely from their decision to exclude the public.
 
Kausfiles has obtained a copy of one JournoList discussion, focusing on New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (for whom I once worked.) This is not a parody! It's the real thing. I don't know whether or not it is representative. I've edited it only to remove potentially defamatory passages--those cuts are marked--and left out various boilerplate links and commands embedded in the thread, such as "Print" and "Report this message." ... I won't add my own commentary, at least for now. Find your own lede! ... Reminder to JournoList organizer E. Klein, who likes to take it private: All communications are on the record. ...
 
*************************************
 
From: Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:43:51 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 1:43 pm Subject: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Yglesias points out on his Twitter feed that Peretz "has ethnic
dislikes beyond arabs"
I know this is a tiresome, but this kind of explicit racism is really,
really, really fucked. And it's useful to keep pointing that out
money quote:

"Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations,
not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our
southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has
as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic
deficiencies:  congenital corruption, authoritarian government,
anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores,
Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic
counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict.  Then,
there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic
but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can
talk with candor."

'http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/03/23/no-
special-envoy-no-crisis.aspx
 
From: Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:00:31 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:00 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  I also read on TNR.com today that Jonah Goldberg, who believes that everyone
on this list is a fascist, is "good-humored," while Keith Olbermann's work
is best analogized to Glenn Beck or Michael Savage.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com>wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -  

From: Matt Duss <mattd...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:13:54 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:13 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist I anxiously await the explanation of how Peretz's obvious racism is
really just an argument about "culture."
On Mar 24, 2:00 pm, Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -

From: Clay <ris...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:14:57 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:14 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Funny -- under Peter B. (no idea whether this extends to Frank, though
I imagine so) using the term "illegals" was verboten, for obvious
reasons. I guess Marty didn't get the memo. Or, well, you know.
Also, and this is slightly orthogonal to the topic, but Marty's post
demonstrates the accidental danger in praising Latin American
immigrants as driven and hard-working. Logically it makes sense, but
it's also easy for people to draw the false conclusion that anyone who
doesn't immigrate is therefore lazy and stupid.
On Mar 24, 2:00 pm, Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: "newdon...@gmail.com" <newdon...@gmail.com>

From: Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:41:15 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:41 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Everyone I know who likes Olbermann also acknowledge that he is egomaniacal
and has a penchant for hysterical drama. The main difference, which is
glaringly left out by anyone who conflates him with the Savages and
O'Reillys of the world, is that Olbermann doesn't tend to, you know, lie
about stuff regularly.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:18 PM, newdon...@gmail.com <newdon...@gmail.com>wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -
 
From: Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:51:25 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:51 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Personally, I find Olbermann insufferable, but I'm not sure I buy the comparison. Michael Savage is a complete nut job and if he wasn't on radio he would probably be standing on a street corner with a bullhorn bitching about socialism.
--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -

From: Isaac Chotiner <ichoti...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:55:59 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:55 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  A friend of mine who works for Pelosi and has been active in California
politics for a long time claims that Savage's bizarre, racist, homophobic
schtick is a complete act. He knows Savage a bit--or at least did when
Savage started his show. This obviously does not excuse it in any way, but
for Savage listeners it is interesting to think about.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com>wrote:
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From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:56:38 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:56 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Quit lying about my record, Jonathan Chait.
Or at least check the archives before descinding into Kirchickism.
What I posted about Eve was an article I PUBLISHED. It could hardly
have been going behind her back to PUBLISH an article, could it? What
I explained when you last leveled this false accusation ... [SNIP] ...  was the fact that had I known Eve was on the list, I
would not have posted it here, even though it was relevant to the
discussion at hand, because a) I had no wish to hurt the feelings of
someone I had never met, and b) this is no less important, I respect
the value of civility on this list. As you well know, there are plenty
of attacks going on between yourself, Matt, Ezra, Spencer, and myself
that do not make it onto this list because we respect the importance
of civility here. Or at least we did....
I expect Ezra will want to intervene here, but please do feel free to
forward our exchange to Marty. I can only imagine how proud he'd
be....
n Mar 24, 2:51 pm, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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From: Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:57:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  There's a lot of people on this list routinely criticized who are not
on it, Jon. That said, I'm more than happy to call Marty Peretz a
racist to his (electronic) face.
-c
On Mar 24, 6:51 pm, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:  

From: Katha Pollitt <katha.poll...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:56:57 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:56 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Michael Savage told a gay caller he should get AIDS and die. He is a  
bigoted crazy person. (or is it all an act?)  Olbermann is funny  
sometimes but insufferable. He was really unfair during the primaries  
-- like calling Katie Couric the worst person in the world when she  
made some quite mild remark I think about sexism in the media (?).
On Mar 24, 2009, at 2:51 PM, Michael Cohen wrote:
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From: Alyssa Rosenberg <alyssa.rosenb...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:06:27 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:06 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist I'm not about to speak to the question of who should or shouldn't be on this
list.  But I agree with Jon that the tendency to lapse into name-calling, or
making broad assumptions about people who aren't on this list, seems at
minimum like it's not the best use of our time, and at worst, unworthy of
this very smart, very funny community.  It bothered me when folks where
making totally unsubstantiated comments about [REDACTED!--mk]'s sex life, and
it bothers me when folks make [REDACTED] jokes.  To be clear, I'm
totally open to legitimate commentary on the substance of anyone's argument,
and people should get smacked down if they lie, if they get things wrong,
etc.  I think analyzing Peretz's writing about Mexicans, or Palestinians, or
whoever, is totally fair game.  But saying that [REDACTED] clearly must not have a
girlfriend, or speculating about who [REDACTED] gets turned down by sexually are
not arguments.  We wouldn't take similar statements remotely seriously if
they were made by conservatives about anyone on this list.
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -


From: Clay <ris...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:10:49 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:10 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Heh. That reminds me of a very similar meme going around in the
mid-1990s about Rush Limbaugh, that he was actually a pretty liberal
guy who had created this bloviating ass to make conservatives look
bad. The general conclusion was that, a) what does it matter, since he
never reveals himself, and b) he's clearly got an audience, and so
he's doing a lot of bad even if he is really, deep down, a "good" guy.
The same would apply to Savage, methinks. If it's an act, I'd say that
makes him all the worse of a human being.
On Mar 24, 2:56 pm, Katha Pollitt <katha.poll...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: Rick Perlstein <Perlst...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:18:09 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:18 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  My judgment would be that, by the evidence on the record, Michael
Savage is far too deranged and possesses far too little self-control
to do anything as an "act."

To wit-- ...[REDACTED]
 
From: Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:23:59 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:23 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Then there's Savage's work as a fiction writer, mentioned in this great *
Salon*<http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/05/savage/print.html>piece
that runs down his strange biography:
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> This maniacal tendency, and the roiling emotions that fueled it, were laid
> bare in "Vital Signs," Michael Weiner's first and only book of fiction,
> published in 1983. A collection of confessional, stream-of-consciousness
> stories, it follows the exploits of Samuel Trueblood, who just happens to be
> a 40-ish New York Jew, an herbalist and writer with a tumultuous personal
> life, a substantial assortment of inner demons and a bit of a Napoleon
> complex. "I am physically not tall, but my eyes burn with fire," he states.
> "Two black fires of Hell." Trueblood narrates a series of misadventures,
> from procuring an illegal backroom abortion for his fianc?e to beating the
> stuffing out of an abusive cop.
> Trueblood describes his life as one long search for inner peace. He blames
> much of his discontent on his "childhood beneath tyranny," during which he
> was cowed by his bullying father. Trueblood describes how his father mocked
> him with "brutal jokes and chides, 'gentle' kidding: 'You're not a fag, are
> you Sam?' the little man would say each time the boy dared wear a colorful
> shirt or flashy trousers." Unable to shake his dead father's disapproving
> influence, the adult Samuel is tortured by feelings of weakness and
> inadequacy. "I am filled with fears," he admits, "nearly all the time
> feeling I am about to become totally insane."
> Even after moving to mellow Marin County, becoming a successful herbalist
> and starting a family, Trueblood remains plagued by his "underlying
> sadness." Not even trusty passionfruit tea can bring him off this bummer. In
> one passage, he almost loses it in front of his wife and two young children:
> "Inner voice screaming at me for years, first rational, then crazy, telling
> me to do mad things. Every form of relief tried, painting, psychotherapy,
> running, diet, vitamins, etc., etc. Almost uncontrollable now. Impulses to
> stab children, strangers, wife, self with scissors."

> Eventually, Trueblood seeks solace in chasing skirts. (Though he admits to
> being drawn to "masculine beauty," he confides that "I choose to override my
> desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a
> storm, below decks.") While his wife stays home with the kids, he beds a
> young "cockswell" with a "dykish haircut" and skin "[s]ofter than that
> Northern Indian prostitute in Fiji whose covering was as soft as that of my
> own penis." And so it goes for another 50 pages.

When it comes to someone has insanely homophobic as Savage, I have no
problem saying that the dude's [REDACTED], and that this may explain some
of his more execrable paroxysms about homosexuality.

- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -  

From: Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:25:29 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:25 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  I have no idea how to retrieve the echange in question, but if
somebody knows how, please do.
I'll concede the point that you published the critique of Eve on your
blog. However, trying not to be catty here, not everybody here may
read your blog on a daily basis. The exchange was about your decision
to repost the critique of Eve here on the list. You did it, she
replied, and then you said you wouldn't have done it if you had known
she was on the list. You viewed this as etiquette, I viewed it as
something different.
 
... [SNIP] ...

From: Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:35:09 -0700 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:35 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> wrote:
> There seems to be a junior
> high quality to this list with regard to TNR, where if you're not on
> it you get sniped at constantly, but if you are on it you're mostly
> safe.

I can fix that!!  

From: Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:39:45 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:39 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Yes, your posts have more of a prison quality to them. I find it
preferable, though still well short of ideal.
On Mar 24, 3:35 pm, Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> wrote: 

From: Alex Rossmiller <alexrossmil...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:41:40 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:41 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist *sigh*
As the resident archive-checker, I link this only in the interest of
stopping the speculative element of the debate -- you should be able to see
the original thread
here<http://groups.google.com/group/journolist/browse_thread/thread/d9acdf0bacb38037/fed32501975cf602?lnk=gst&q=alterman+eve#fed32501975cf602>
.
But really, the most notable quote from that conversation was from Rich
Byrne: "Do we need a separate TNR-list? Just asking."  (Though second is
probably this, from Spencer: "Jon Chait is to TNR as Ari Fleischer is to
George Bush.")
Civility in action!
 
From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:42:56 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:42 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Wrong again, Mr. Chait, on both points:
I did not publish on my blog but on the front page of the Center for
American Progress website where I write a weekly column. Not everybody
reads that either, but then again but more people read it than read
The New Republic, if I am not mistaken.  (See  "The State of the News
Media: Magazines: Opinion Titles.")
Second,  ... [SNIP] ....
 
From: Jeet <jeeth...@yahoo.ca> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:46:48 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:46 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Is there a tendency on this list to lash out against TNR too much?
Maybe.
But the core of the matter is: TNR is a really first rate liberal
magazine, especially in the last decade or so, so it's disappointing
that also have to run crude ethnocentric articles by Peretz.
When The American Spectator or National Review run frothing-at-the-
mouth xenophobic articles, no one here notices because we don't expect
any better from them. But TNR is one of the two or three most
important liberal magazines in American history, so it matters what
they publish.
On Mar 24, 1:41 pm, Alex Rossmiller <alexrossmil...@gmail.com> wrote: 
 

From: Ezra Klein <ezra.kl...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:08:11 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:08 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Jon -- you and Eric should take this off-list.

I'd love to have Michelle Cottle on the list. My worry with Marty is that he
wouldn't respect the off-the-record nature of the discourse when it ceased
to suit him.

From: Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:08:40 -0700 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:08 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist 

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jeet <jeeth...@yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Is there a tendency on this list to lash out against TNR too much?
> Maybe.

As someone who was working hard for the Clinton Administration to improve
American health care when Betsy McCaughey came over the transome from a
magazine whose editor "knew its flaws" but wanted to "provoke," I have an
answer to Jeet's question.
My answer is: "No."
Now if there were a rotating New Republic staffer outside on the street 24/7
saying: "Woe to an iniquitous generation. We published Betsy McCaughey! For
our sins the One Who Is has turned Her face from us forever!!" I might think
that they had learned their lesson.
Or if Chait and all other TNR staffers were to adopt that as their .sig
file...
But in this fallen world? In which... ahem... Marc Ambinder holds up Andrew
Sullivan as a sterling example of intellectual integrity?

Nope.

Brad DeLong


From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:13:39 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:13 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist For the record boss man, I'm done. I merely responded to a series of
false accusations made about me by Mr. Chait. You'll note that I
manfully (and womanfully) resisted the urge to join in the Marty
bashing until lied about above...

*************************************

[And so it ends. ... Or does it? ... Stay tuned!--mk] 3:21 P.M.

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Whippersnappers Go On Offense!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009  

[Updated] Spencer Ackerman, who seems to be a member of the distinguished JournoList group, responds to my item of yesterday:

If Mickey Kaus actually believes what he writes here, he'll publish every journalism-related email, letter, fax or notebook scribble he's ever shared with another reporter to trade ideas. If he doesn't do that, this pathetic has-been should shut the fuck up and find a way to get over his unbecoming obsession with Ezra Klein. [E.A.]

I'm beginning to worry that they're really not going to invite me. ... P.S.: C.A.P.'s Matthew Yglesias agrees with Ackerman. It seems like a silly argument. Aren't there lots of activities that are highly desirable when practiced by individuals on a small or dispersed, uncoordinated basis, but become problematic when practiced on a large scale by competing groups? It's nice to eat dinner with a friend at Princeton. But when large, exclusive eating clubs form and come to provide the "only decent, attractive, and convivial accomodations available to a Princeton undergraduate," there's a problem. Similarly, private backyards are a good thing. But if the private backyards and common areas of rich people in gated communities come to use up the bulk of attractive potentially public parkland, there's a legitimate social issue.

Everybody has private notes, sources, or conversations. That doesn't mean a secret conversation among "hundreds" of influential Democratic writers doesn't potentially create problems. Groupthink might be one of them. ... Hey, and another might be the fostering of an us-vs-them mentality!  Maybe even a weakness for smug rationalization. ...  Another might be that writers on JournoList begin to devote their energies more inward--toward convincing or impressing or at least not angering their fellow club members--than outward, toward convincing their fellow citizens. ... Or if it simply becomes true that all the best arguments are made on private list-servs. Yglesias and Ackerman certainly aren't making them in public. 

Update: Reihan Salam says don't worry about JournoList enforcing "message discipline":

After talking to a number of friends, and after observing its workings from a distance, I've concluded that the JList has virtually no disciplining functon. It is a forum for robust debate, not a tool for forming a tightly-knit Leninist cadre.

He's probably mostly right, but remember: 1) It's the robustness of what comes out of JournoList we're talking about, not what goes on inside. 2) There sure was a whole lot of discipline on the left in the Edwards adultery scandal, at least until Lee Stranahan came along (and he was then banned from Daily Kos). I doubt you needed JournoList to get left activists defensive about Elizabeth Edwards, or to get Daily Kos to be thuggish, but it may have helped. The only way to know is to know what went on inside. 3) Reader A.A. adds an excellent point:

I thought that one of the netroots' complaints against the old MSM was rightly that elitist journalists in DC tended to self-police their content because they did not want to breach taboos within their social networks; this previous system, the argument goes, favored the status quo and turned a lot of national-level journalism into the recitation of talking points. One of the great things about the internet in this context was that it allowed for a wider spectrum of opinion to be discussed -- a change that helped to make it possible for national politics to shift to the left.

Wasn't it a few years ago that many of these left blogosphere types were ridiculing the Beltway Kool Kids who did things like criticize unions and defend Clintonism? I think it was!  Now they've created their own Kool Kids club....  Is Ezra Klein the new William F. Buckley or the new Tim Russert, helping establish the boundaries of what's respectably thinkable? 4) Regarding that last link, my comrade Glenn Greenwald thinks he's already spotted some backscratching that's been hidden from view:

Touching: on Journalist, Ezra attacked critics of Douthat. Now Ross says Ezra is the William Buckley of our era: http://tinyurl.com/d62o2b 

Hasn't Greenwald broken the seal of omerta? If he's in the JList club, doesn't he now get cast out into the darkness? Is there a ceremony? Win-win! ...

More: Salam, on his way to exculpating the JList, makes the following mousetrappish point, which might cause trouble for some in the dwindling minority of "objective" non-opinion journalists:

As a minor-league policy wonk, I find the idea of taking part in off-the-record conversations with eminent historians, economists, and reporters very attractive -- yet I was told early on that I wasn't eligible, for the excellent and obvious reason that my sympathies aren't generally on the left. Though I could agree to the off-the-recordness of the JList, I'd inevitably discuss its contents with conservative friends and collaborators, like The Atlantic's own Ross Douthat.

This raises the question -- why is it that a number of journalists at so-called "mainstream" outlets, like Time, do pass muster.

And: Joel Achenbach doesn't think the Web needs more ideas hashed out in public:

Blogworld doesn't need more raw copy, more e-mails masquerading as opinion columns. Blogworld is crammed to the rafters with blather. Secretly -- don't tell anyone -- I read a lot of blogs at work, and in general wish they were better, more thoughtful, with less of the "No, YOU'RE the giant arsehole" stuff.

But if there's blather on the web, maybe that's because all the best discussions are taking place in secret on JournoList!  No, I don't think so either. 1:49 A.M.

___________________________

The Uninvited

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Brad DeLong objects to the hed--"Inside the echo chamber"--on Michael Calderone's piece discussing the underknown leftish email cabal organized by Ezra Klein:

It's not an echo chamber. I have never seen a less echo chamber-like space in my life. The headline is simply wrong.

Fair enough. But I think the headline-writers' worry was that an "echo chamber" is what the outside world tends to get from members of JournoList once they've vigorously hashed out their disagreements in secret. "Inside the Echo Factory" would be a headline more accurately reflecting that concern. It's noisy in a factory but the product is often standardized.

Is the fear of groupthink justified? I can think of one example that could be checked out (though it's hard to do that without knowing who is in the secretive group and who isn't) -- namely, the the treatment of the New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" controversy. I'm told that at least one TNR editor defended the magazine to others on the list--'don't worry, it will turn out OK, only a couple of mistakes,' etc.  Did this have the effect of preventing some members of the list from criticizing the magazine until much later--whenTNR editors themselves finally gave up and cut the "Diarist" loose? I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The same might well go for John Edwards and his cheating scandal. A back-channel, under-radar group--especially one in which you can argue off the record--is good for keeping troops in line.

There's a second, less uncertain, concern (aside from my primary beef, which is that they didn't invite me). Blogger Doxophilic writes:

You are supposed to brainstorm, deliberate, revise and improve. This goes for anyone who writes with the purpose of persuasion or education, including journalists.

That's true. But I always thought one of the big ideas of the Web was that, to the maximum extent possible, these deliberations and revisions and improvements could now take place in public, where everyone could follow along and maybe contribute. Doxophiliac argues that people should be able to "backtrack if someone makes a good argument in response"--but you can "backtrack" in public too. It's been done. Even by Joe Klein! 

We non-elite writers learn something just from watching the sausage get made.  One thing we learn is it's just sausage. Ezra Klein has taken a lot of what could be highly informative back and forth on the World Wide Web and privatized it, much as rich people in gated communities reclaim green space from the public sphere and wall it off behind guards and fences. It's not an egalitarian or democratic impulse.

P.S.: Here's DeLong's preferred description of JournoList:

[I]t is the people whom Ezra thinks are smart enough, committed enough to discussion and learning and education, and good-hearted enough to be worth emailing regularly--and the rest of us free-ride on the virtual space that is Ezra's network. [E.A.]

False modesty? Check. Suck up to the organizer? Check. Underlying, self-satisfied exclusionary impulse? Check. ... 6:39 P.M.

___________________________

Who moved my juicebox?

Friday, March 13, 2009 

Pssst, C.A.P.! Your star blogger, Matt Yglesias, is giving his best stuff to Twitter! Maybe it's just a way to avoid the Palmieri police ... P.S.: It's still not as good as Ezra Klein's best stuff. ... 6:34 P.M.

___________________________

Single-issue labor: The AFL-CIO attempts to make Senator Specter an offer he can't refuse: Vote for "card check" and we will support you in 2010. Is this a sign of desperation? Not necessarily--what could a future Democratic senator from PA give labor that would be more important than "card check"? ... But what about all those other GOP senators labor was supposedly lining up? ... P.S.: Kos suggests this makes it much more likely that Specter will switch parties and run as a Democrat (in the process giving Dems their 60 vote Senate majority). Doesn't a Liebermanesque run as an independent seem more in keeping with Specter's self-image? ...7:32 P.M.

___________________________

Does free trader Jagdish Bhagwati really think increased unionization will solve the problem of "stagnation of workers' wages," or does he just like the way the "union decline" explanation takes the heat off the competing explanation that would blame free trade? It's hard to read his recent TNR piece without tending toward the latter conclusion. ...

P.S.: It's entirely possible, of course, that wage stagnation would take place even without trade--thanks to "domestic" factors Bhagwati cites (like  "labor-saving technical changes" that reduce the market for unskilled work)--without the decline of unions being a major cause. And Bhagwati doesn't say it is a major cause, only that Andy Stern, the SEIU, and "many labor economists" think it is. .. Note also that Bhagwati, like so many "card check" defenders, doesn't actually approve of  the "card check" part of the card check bill:

And it is, indeed,hard to defend the denial of an automatic secret ballot.

Does Bhagwati, as an ardent market-oriented free trader, find it easier to defend the mandatory government arbitration provisions of the "card check bill? If not, what's left? ... [via Yglesias]

P.P.S.: And if Lawrence Summers' tepid and abstract remarks on unions at the Brookings Institution this week were, as Sam Stein claims, "stronger than anything that has come from the White House since [the card check bill] was introduced," that's mainly a reflection of how watery the White House's support has been, something Stein (unlike Marc Ambinder) recognizes. ... Summers doesn't so much as mention fostering greater unionization in the text of his speech--not even in the parts about ensuring that growth is widely shared. He answers a press question on the subject by endorsing "some adjustment in an environment that has proven so problematic for labor union organizing." But he doesn't endorse the specific "adjustment" in the card check bill, and indeed warns that "we need to be mindful as we redress a pendulum that has swung of the risks of swinging pendulums too far." ... 2:39 A.M.

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Arise, Non-VIPs! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Wristbands.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Any club that won't have me... : I was surprised to learn that there were special VIP areas at several otherwise extremely enjoyable pre-inaugural parties. Talk about a violation of social equality: how can a party claim to want all Americans treated equally if, you know, the party doesn't treat them equally? Why aren't these things stigmatized like skyboxes at ballparks? These events weren't even fundraisers, for the most part--it wasn't as if the VIPs had paid extra for exclusive first class seats. It was pure status rank--i.e., social inequality.

I see three possible policy initiatives that might restore American values to debauched celebrations:

1. Heap opprobrium on those who go to VIP areas in otherwise perfectly good parties. (It would be unfair to single anyone out. Like Jon Alter!) This might involve turning status striving on itself by suggesting VIP sections are where the losers go. Girls won't make passes at men who have passes, etc.

2. Create a second, tiny glass-walled V-VIP area within the regular VIP area--reserved for special VIPs who are above mingling with mere Alter-level VIPs. This would be a bit of performance art designed to emphasis the self-defeating, infinite-regress quality of mindless status differentiation.

3. Give an award--a sort of Social Egalitarian Oscar**--to celebrities who go to events but don't go to the designated "VIP" areas. ...

Pursuing option 3, kf honors ... Forest Whitaker and Natalie Portman!*** Also Jerry Yang, if he counts. ... I'm sure there are others. ... P.S.: I don't blame the organizers of these events. I assume it's some of the celebrities themselves who demand protection from annoyingly non-famous invitees. The system is to blame, I tell you. ... [If they'd let you in, would you have written this?--ed What makes you think they didn't let me in? You really think they didn't let me in?] .... 

**--Suggestions for names gratefully accepted. The Velvet Scissor? ...

***-- These distinguished celebs were spotted mingling harmlessly with mere attendees. Of course, it's always possible they snuck off to the VIP areas to talk to Alter when I wasn't looking! ...

Update: There apparently actually was a glass-walled V-VIP area for J.Lo. and Marc Anthony at ... Cafe Milano. It kept them from Jake Tapper. ... 5:34 P.M.

___________________________

Whippersnappers "Juicebox Mafia": Good label! May it outlast the Israel-Hamas confilct. ... P.S.: For its use in context, see this fabulously pissy Marty Peretz post. ... 5:17 P.M.

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