July 2009 – Page 58

Daily Chart: The Brighter Side of the Budget Fiasco

By Conor Clarke

There's really no getting around the fact that the country's long-term budget outlook is Non entitlement spending in the long run

This is past and projected government spending as a percentage of GDP on things besides Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and interest. And look, it's not so bad! And sure, maybe that is like saying, "when you consider the ocean without all that water, things don't look so wet." Nonetheless, my sense is that when people worry about the future of big government, they worry about things above and beyond an older population that gets increasingly grabby with the increasingly expensive entitlements. But that's really all we have to worry about.

Friday Links

by Conor Friedersdorf

— This is one of the more delightful examples of public art that I've seen.

— Mental Floss looks at eight very hairy people.

— What do blood diamonds have to do with Goldman Sachs?

— "Catholicism's mysterious appeal to intellectual converts."

— If you've ever been involved in the making of a corporate Power Point presentation, this story is for you

Better Ways to Pay For Health Care: Taxing Health Benefits, Ctd

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

One minor nit-pick. It is very common for people to discuss how no-one pays taxes for their employer provided health care benefits. This is flat out untrue. I pay taxes on the majority of my health care benefits from my provider: those that cover my partner. Because of DOMA, my partner's benefit costs (which are higher than the employee rate) are fully taxable while my co-workers do not have to pay taxes for their spouses' health care benefits. It is very frustrating to hear people who espouse "no special laws!" when opposing gay rights who then go on to complain at the merest possibility that they might have to pay taxes on this portion of their compensation from their employer. I support the tax on health care benefits for the reasons Conor Clarke listed, but I add a fifth: fairness.

What the Media Needs…

by Conor Friedersdorf

… is more content like the stuff produced by This American Life.

Though I am a partisan of long form storytelling, here I am lauding another aspect of that great radio program: its ability to consistently broadcast voices that sound different from what we normally hear when we get the news. If your news diet is mainly newspapers, you get quotes so short that they're mostly stripped of any personality. Television news gives the misleading impression that everyone in America speaks in the accent-less manner of the typical anchor.

But if you listen for very long to This American Life, you're reminded how big a country America is, all the regional accents it encompasses, and its delightful regional expressions — and by extension, you gain perspective about the size and diversity of our polity. For me, this underscores the wisdom of deciding many issues at the local level. I am sure others draw different lessons, perhaps as worthwhile. The point is that America is a much bigger, broader place than is generally portrayed in mass media, and we'd all understand the country a bit better if more media outlets did as good a job of rendering that as Ira Glass and team.

Sonia Sotomayor and Affirmative Action

By Conor Clarke

When I see a walking, talking anachronism like Pat Buchanan say on MSNBC that Sonia Sotomayor isn't qualified for the Supreme Court because she's an affirmative action baby (via Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ezra Klein), I think back to one of the favorite conservative criticisms of race-based affirmative action: It will forever tar the accomplishments of its beneficiaries. In a way, the fact that Buchanan's worry is so widely shared is obvious proof that this criticism is true. And, in a way, it just proves that the criticism is self-fulfilling. If the same people who doubt the efficacy of affirmative action also doubt its beneficiaries, there's nothing terribly interesting about the latter critique.

Mostly, however, I think it underlines the importance of thinking and talking about affirmative action as a program designed to alleviate a lack of opportunity (e.g., systematic racism, poverty) rather than accomplish some secondary goal (like better classroom discussions).

I made one version of this argument a couple of days ago — and expanded it here here and here — but I want to add a few more points. At the heart of Buchanan's critique is a sense that anyone who was a benficiary of affirmative action in the past cannot be well-qualified today. I don't think this argument can stand scrutiny.

That's because one's qualifications in the present are a function of one's opportunities in the past. There are very talented white children born in the lap of luxury on the upper west side of Manhattan, and there are equally talented Hispanic children born in poverty in the south Bronx. It should surprise exactly no one, except possibly Pat Buchanan and Michael Goldfarb, to learn that they will not get the same SAT scores. An affirmative action system that corrects for this lack of balance is not taking a "less qualified" person and putting her above a "more qualified" person. It is giving equally qualified people the same opportunities. This is liberalism 101, not rocket science.

A Woman Injured

by Chris Bodenner

One of the more dramatic clips from today:

Two Can Play This Blame Game

by Chris Bodenner

Nico makes one of the sharpest points I've seen of today's protests:

The chants against Russia and China — whose governments have both recognized Ahmadinejad's election victory — were widely used today. As noted below by a reader, the strategic benefit here seems to be associating the Iran's government with a foreign power, just as the government is trying to do to tar the reformists.

A Sea Of People, Ctd

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

That post is of a video from protests weeks ago; I specifically remember the video, including location (narrow street, many people), the bridge, and the running-up-the-stairs-while-pointing-the-camera-low. I believe the video was actually posted on the Daily Dish too.

I had had a vague feeling that was the case as well. But Raye Man Kojast? is usually a reliable source, and in the immediacy of the moment I leaned towards posting. I just got done scanning several weeks of the Dish and couldn't spot the same video. If anyone happens to know where that same footage is posted on the Dish or elsewhere, I'd be grateful to correct the record.

Update: Regardless of that particular video's veracity, this point remains:

Hundreds of thousands of green-clad protesters (at least two eye-witnesses told me that it may have been closer to one million) flooded the streets after Rafsanjani’s speech.

The Limits Of The Anti-Tax Mantra

by Patrick Appel

Bruce Bartlett has column a few days ago whacking Republicans for opposing any and all taxes. Money quote:

[It] would be better to pay for health reform some other way. But if Republicans refuse to propose any alternative, insisting instead that taxes should never be raised for any reason, they pretty much guarantee that Democrats will raise the top rate. If that happens, Republicans will bear some responsibility as well.

Drum seconds him. Ezra Klein follows up with an interview today.

The Key Points

by Patrick Appel

From Muhammad Sahimi's analysis of Rafsanjani's speech:

Rafsanjani’s sermons demonstrated the glaring fissures in the leadership of the Islamic Republic. The fact that, (a) he called the present conditions a crisis; (b) acknowledged that many clerics and ayatollahs are unhappy with what has happened, contrary to the claims by the hard-liners that the clergy are unified behind them; (c) stated that whatever he speaks of are the results of his consultations with two powerful organ of the Islamic Republic, namely, the Expediency Council and the Assembly of Experts; (d) he did not mention even once the Supreme Leader; (e) he acknowledged that people doubt the election, that people’s trust in the system had been destroyed, and he blamed the Voice and Visage of the Islamic Republic and the Guardian Council for it, and (f) always contrasted what the hard-liners do with what the Prophet and Imam Ali did, in order to demonstrate the falsehood of their claims that they are the true followers of the two revered Islamic figures, demonstrated that he has sided with the people in the crisis. That is bound to reinvigorate the democratic movement.