zipittsunami

Bill Clinton is a baller

2009-08-04T15:22:00.003-04:00

U.S. journalists imprisoned in North Korea pardoned by Kim Jong Il

Testing photos

2009-07-30T23:14:00.003-04:00

Best thing to come out of the 2008 election.

"Unique American solution"

2009-07-30T15:33:00.006-04:00

It seems that the American way of doing things can be completely nonsensical. WHY are we not on the metric system? Every other country in the world uses it because it makes so much more sense. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 1760 yards in a mile, etc. Wouldn't kids be able to learn the concept of distances better if all units went up in easy-to-understand powers of 10?

WHY can we vote at 18 and not drink until we're 21? Why does the driving age vary so much by state (from 15 to 15.5 to 16 to 16.5 to 17)? Europeans use 18 as the standard age to do all of those things.

Sometimes, the "American way" is just stupid...and that's not even mentioning our for-profit, market-driven, outrageously expensive, BROKEN mess of a health care system.

I don't know why I only like reading news articles at work...

2009-07-28T16:09:00.003-04:00

The New Yorker had a great article on America's health care exceptionalism. In theory, I think it's great that our government has so many checks and balances. But, the consequences are that any major legislation takes years (maybe even decades) to pass. Didn't Harry Truman talk about the need for "health care for all"? The fact is that a hefty majority elected Obama president (hopefully) knowing full well what his ideas on health care were. And now, that majority of citizens will be undermined by the likes of Chuck Grassley (R-KY) and Max Baucus (D-MO) who represent a small minority of Americans (but yet a huge portion of the health insurance lobby).

By the way, this piece by Martin Feldstein in the Washington Post today is so intellectually dishonest that I have no idea how he has the gall to call himself an economist. It's infuriating to read.

Conspiracy theories...

2009-07-27T15:49:00.002-04:00

Did the Obama administration specifically design the stimulus package to not kick until 2010 right before the midterm elections? Anything's possible, I guess.

Here's your daily Robert Gibbs, addressing the the "birther" nutsos.

Why are pundits STILL talking about the Gates arrest?

So cute...

2009-07-24T18:11:00.000-04:00

Here.

Health Reform Gets Messy

2009-07-24T11:41:00.003-04:00

Reading the Wall Street Journal comments section just depresses me. There's so much virulent hatred out there for Obama. Even among liberals, people are extremely upset that the President didn't push for a single-payer option.

I'm trying to understand what's happening now. So, the administration had a list of policies it wanted to see in the health care bill. They probably didn't expect to get everything they wanted, but as long as Congress included enough of what the President had, Obama would be satisfied. The problem is that it's really hard to push for health reform when there isn't a specific bill yet. Yeah, there are a lot of suggestions out there. But, Obama has to wait for the House and Senate committees to structure everything. Nothing has been finalized yet. So, in that sense, maybe the press conference on Wednesday was a bit premature. Politico has a really good analysis of the situation here.

It's scary how much power Max Baucus has. Like Gail Collins said the other day, he represents three-tenths of 1 percent of the population. And apparently, he gets millions in donations from insurance lobbyists. That's even more frightening. It's looking like Senate Finance won't include a public option in their version. Margaret Carlson has a scary prediction for what will happen in that case. Millions more are covered, sure, but there's no pressure on insurance companies to keep premiums low.

I'd like to think that the Blue Dogs are truly worried about cost, but my suspicion is that they're probably just spineless. Too worried about reelection. The complaint over the payment discrepancy between rural and urban doctors seems more about pleasing constituents than anything else. No wonder the stimulus got so messy. Congress can't be trusted with anything.

Rachel Maddow is awesome

2009-07-23T23:07:00.000-04:00

"We begin tonight with the president pushing back on what has long been feared as the toughest, most intransigent issue that there is in American domestic politics, the budget-eating, business-busting, high cost, bad outcome, paperwork blizzard-producing, inefficient, insufficient, heretofore unreformable mess America calls a health care system."

Video

Obama Town Hall

2009-07-23T15:22:00.001-04:00

Pretty useless. Not one person asked him a serious question about cost. The best question came from a 14-year-old.

A little bit of honesty

2009-07-23T14:17:00.004-04:00

I guess it should come as no surprise that the biggest news from last night's press conference was Obama defending his black Harvard professor friend and calling out the Cambridge cops. The White House even had to "qualify" his statement from last night. This is just stupid. The police officer DID act stupidly. The guy was in his own home and was reasonably pissed at having to defend himself. There's NO way he would have been arrested IN HIS OWN HOME if he had been a white Harvard professor. Props to Obama for telling it like it is...before he has to qualify & retract & undermine his message to the press.

Obama's Health Care Sales Pitch

2009-07-23T10:55:00.005-04:00

Based solely on reading comments on RealClearPolitics and The New York Times, I find the reaction to the President's news conference last night worrisome. Was I watching something else? I didn't find it boring. He didn't look tired to me. He didn't deflect questions. Rather, I thought he explained things in almost excruciating detail. Yes, it was political. He called out Republicans repeatedly for delaying. Yes, he might have exaggerated potential cost savings. But reforming health care has been delayed and delayed for years, so OF COURSE it will be hard. I doubt that people actually expected to have the bill completed and voted on by the August recess, but I'm seriously concerned about Congress's ability to step it up.

Obama won the election by a ~54% majority, so I'm not sure why people are freaking out about his policies now. I don't think he has reneged on anything he promised. The possible exception I see is taxing employer-based benefits (which was in McCain's plan and was frequently criticized by Obama), which he has reluctantly said he'd be open to but opposes on principle. Well, I guess that's a big exception.

I'm just surprised that people genuinely believe that Obama wants to make us socialist, to spend us into bankruptcy, and for the government to invade everyone's lives. I don't see how so many Americans buy into that rhetoric so easily.

UPDATE: No health care vote before August recess. Not a huge surprise, but I have mixed feelings about whether it's a good thing. More to time to hash it out so it's a solid bill, but will it lose momentum?

Metals in Mobile Phones Fuel African World War

2009-07-22T14:32:00.005-04:00

So I'm now working on a project that's trying to get cell phones to people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. DRC, as a country, is rich in natural resources, particularly minerals such as tantalum and coltan. In fact, Africa provides 80% of the world's coltan reserves. Coltan, which is short for columbite-tantalite, is one of the main components used in mobile phones and computer chips. With the ever-increasing demand for communication technologies, the price of coltan has skyrocketed over the last few years. So, coltan exports have generated substantial revenue for African governments. As a result, militant groups like the Rwandan army have more money to purchase arms, exploit resources, and generally terrorize local communities. Over 3 million people have been killed in the region.

Obviously, the demand for mobile phones is not going down anytime soon. But, I guess it's weird that we're promoting cell phones in a region where they're at the root of the problem. I'm not clear on how any mobile operator in the region can ensure that their products will go to the poor people and not directly to the militant groups with all the money.

More info here.

More ObamaCare

2009-07-22T10:37:00.010-04:00

So today, I was reading this transcript of Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace interviewing Budget Chief Peter Orszag and Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH).

I just don't think Orszag was making a convincing case for health reform. He didn't have a good argument against the CBO director's claim that the plan will raise the cost curve and hurt the economy. He didn't have a good conceptual reason why it's okay to tax only rich people at <60%. And, he didn't have a good defense for what the plan might do to small businesses. He did, however, have a clear and cogent explanation for why the Republican fearmongering charges that bureaucrats will "stand between you and your doctor" and "ration your care" are totally bogus. Right now, insurance companies (and Congress, to some extent) determine what patients can get treated for. Health care is already rationed! Only by income for those who can't afford treatment or for the sick who are denied coverage by their insurers. I don't see why anyone has a problem with comparative effectiveness research and using an independent commission of DOCTORS to determine what would be the best form of care. Drugmakers and insurance providers do this already, and shouldn't we expect doctors to make better decisions? The drug and insurance lobbies are ridiculously powerful, though, so of course we shouldn't expect congresssmen to make rational decisions based on evidence.

Back to Orszag: I'm not sure why the administration can't just say flat-out that they won't allow taxpayer money to pay for abortions. I'm pro-choice, of course, but I don't think it's fair for public money to go towards a procedure that half the country thinks is murder. (Although: I see the counterargument that state money pays A LOT to execute inmates, which IS actually murder.) But, I will admit that I have no idea how people pay for abortions now or even how much they cost.

As for raising taxes: maybe it's just my love for Atlas Shrugged talking, but there is something fundamentally un-American about taxing the top 1-2% to subsidize health care for the uninsured. That's in theory, of course. Timothy Noah pointed out that the revenue generated by the surtax (some $544b) is a lot less than what that same group got in tax cuts from the Bush Administration. And from what I understand, the majority of the uninsured is made up of young, healthy people and not poor people or illegal immigrants.

My theory about Orszag is that he doesn't really have any good arguments against taxing health care benefits because the administration doesn't want to be on record for supporting it because Obama promised that no one who liked their current plan would lose it. This is all despite the fact that most economists and policy wonks think it's the best way to cut costs and limit overutilization of health services. This is also where Sen. Gregg actually made a lot of sense. He supported taxing health benefits and changing the way doctors are reimbursed (by quality and outcomes rather than number of procedures). The current House and Senate bills don't seem to really address the reimbursement issue.

I'm really tired of hearing Republicans say that the power of health care should be put back in the hands of consumers so they can purchase the best plans on their own from the private market. I don't think health care functions as a free market system. The incentives for doctors and insurance companies are all at a whack, and consumers are not rational thinkers.

Well done, Senate.

2009-07-21T16:34:00.002-04:00

Senate rejects $1.75B for F-22 fighter jets

On an unrelated note, some wealthy guy is actually paying for a billboard campaign ("Recession 101") to inspire Americans to think optimistically and become less depressed about the economy.

My favorite: Stop obsessing about the economy; you're scaring the children.

Whaaat?

2009-07-21T10:01:00.002-04:00

Of all people, the AMA endorsed the House's health reform bill.

There's an interesting article in Slate today by Timothy Noah that goes over potential tax code changes that would generate revenue to pay for health care.

I'm going to be really sad when NYT starts charging for online subscription...

2009-07-21T09:26:00.000-04:00

Here's Roger Cohen's article on Iran.

That country is just a mess. I don't understand how Iran's population can be so young and educated and yet have a government that's so blatantly corrupt. The street demonstrations served as a major denunciation of the government and the Supreme Council, but they didn't lead to any structural change. So I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens there.

Oh, David Brooks

2009-07-21T08:58:00.000-04:00

I usually agree with his thoughtful analyses, but I was disappointed by his article today. The health reform bill is nowhere close to being complete, so I think it's a bit premature to criticize its failings. There are huge hurdles to passing health reform, in the form of powerful lobbies (and Congressional donors) and a do-nothing opposition party. It's too politically inconvenient to include cost control measures (payment reform, taxing employer-based health care, tort reform, etc.), so it remains to be seen how we're expected to pay for this.

Secy. Clinton

2009-07-20T11:23:00.000-04:00

So there's been a lot of buzz about Tina Brown's claim that Hillary Clinton is getting marginalized by Obama on foreign policy. It's an interesting theory. I don't know how incapacitated her injury actually made her (she did "shatter" her arm, supposedly), so that may be a legitimate reason why she's been conspicuously absent on some issues (ex. Iran's election). In an interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz, Clinton called the report "ridiculous".

Hmmm...if it's gathering enough storm to warrant a denial, something must be up.

Because sometimes I just like to think my thoughts...

2009-07-17T20:37:00.000-04:00

I realize Arrested Development was canceled three years ago, but a quotable show lasts forever...

Health reform is obviously a HUGE issue this summer. But the legislation and possible amendments to the proposed bills are so complicated that I find myself so conflicted and frequently changing my mind. I'm not at all swayed by the moral argument that a nation has an obligation to provide health coverage to all its citizens. The theory that universal coverage would (hopefully) be economically efficient and save hospitals having to treat ER patients for primary care is, to me, a much more compelling reason. It's also ridiculous that we spend 16% of our GDP on health care and that we're the only rich nation that doesn't actually provide it.

Capping malpractice claims makes sense too, but I think studying the states that have tried those restrictions should happen first. I also think that removing the tax exclusion for employer-based coverage needs to happen both because it would be a great revenue source and because it's essentially a regressive tax.

Max Baucus (D-MT) called out Obama for saying that removing the tax exclusion is off the table. It's tough to sell politically, since it may result in employers cutting health coverage for its workers. And since Obama has repeatedly promised that no one will be forced off of plans they like, the administration doesn't want to be on record supporting the tax exclusion removal. So interestingly, according to White House staffers, Baucus calling him may actually be good for Obama. If the tax on employer-based coverage ends up in the final bill, he can say that his hands were tied ("don't want the good to be the enemy of the perfect" or something like that...). Thus, the economically good but politically bad option passes. Pretty savvy political move. I don't want us to be bankrupt in ten years, though, so the CBO Chief's warning disturbs me.

It makes me furious that we let Bush burn through trillions of dollars on nothing that actually benefited American society (tax cuts for the top 1%, Iraq, etc.), and now we're in too crappy a fiscal position to actually do things that will be help us in the long-term (health reform, cap-and-trade, public education, etc.). I also hate that people don't realize how much waste occurs in defense spending. Robert Gates seems to be an extremely pragmatic and no-nonsense leader, so I was intrigued by his push to halt production of F-22 fighter jets. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry have absolutely no concrete reason for supporting the production of these expensive jets, so they should just shut up and back off. Gates is, after all, a stated Republican and a self-described hawk and the Sec. of Defense, so I think he has much more credibility.

Being in Washington D.C. has given me so little faith in our elected leaders and legislative process. It is, by design, so slow-moving with zero sense of accountability and no real way to measure results. There are so many passionate and intelligent people here, but it takes years for anything to happen because it's in most people's best interest to stick to the status quo. Politicians are just so short-sighted and are really only ultimately interested in getting reelected.

So much to change, and so few mechanisms to make it happen. Sorry Obama, I'm losing hope.

Finally got a blog!

2009-07-17T20:17:00.001-04:00

yay day 1