Month: August 2009

Jonathan Martin writes:

Mike Allen had a brief phone conversation with Sarah Palin last night. In doing so, Palin knocked down divorce rumors — something her spokeswoman had already done over the weekend. So why reiterate it again? Who knows, but here is one guess: She and her advisers may have actually just wanted to put out that she was in New York City for book meetings and was there with husband Todd and the family. In other words, a preemptive move before one of the NYC tabs or a blog up there saw her and ran an item.

A reader writes:

Here is the Cash for Clunkers program that was in place during the Bush Administration. The bonus depreciation provisions put in place after 9/11 provided a 50% immediate tax deduction for the purchase of Large SUV’s. So when my boss purchased a $100,000 Range Rover he wrote off $50,000 on his taxes. Assuming a 35% federal tax bracket – this resulted in an immediate tax refund of $17,500 on the purchase of the Range Rover (even though the down payment may have been $10,000). $17,500 cash for the purchase of a 12 mpg Range Rover.

Now that’s “Cash for Clunkers” we can believe in.

Everything Is Terrible introduces the internet to Yogi Ogi Dogi and his yoga farm.

The Onion offers the next best option:

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

For a few months, I worked at an electronic medical billing company. I was astounded at how complicated and convoluted medical billing is, and this is ultimately why we need to have significant health insurance reform. What happens is a doctor's office will decide on a price for a procedure – for instance, a checkup typically costs around $180. Say I have Tufts. They might pay out $100 for a checkup – the rest the doctor writes off. Why not just charge $100 and not have to write off $80? Well, that's because other insurance companies – say Blue Cross and AETNA – might pay $120 and $150 respectively. So it make sense for doctors to charge significantly more than they would expect from most insurance companies. However, if somebody doesn't have good insurance or has no insurance, they are billed for the full amount -$180, even though the doctors office might expect to write off up to $80 dollars of that charge from somebody with good insurance. Given that the majority of the people without health insurance are lower income, this can cause crippling financial problems, or result in a denial of service. And why? Is someone with insurance "better" than somebody without? Are they more deserving of good health because they happened to not get laid off during a particular bad recession?

The problem with predicting medical expenses is that, even though you can find the codes (they're called CPT codes and you can find them here) you would have to get the price from the doctors' billing coders, which they would probably be loathe to give out- how can we expect the market to work when the consumers don't get to know the price BEFORE consuming? And the reader didn't include that if you get an ultrasound, you're billed for the ultrasound and the use of the ultrasound machine. If you have the time to sit down and do the research, it would be nearly impossible for the average person to make an accurate decision about the most cost effective doctor to have. Imagine trying to make that decision in a panic.

Buzzfeed writes:

Before his untimely death, Heath Ledger began directing a video for Modest Mouse's “King Rat”. Unfortunately he died before the video was completed, and it has been languishing in limbo until now. Watch Ledger's music video, completed by his associates at the Masses, a violently unabashed commentary on illegal whale hunting.

Update: According to YouTube, "This video contains an audio track that has not been authorized by Sony Music Entertainment. The audio has been disabled." Full version here.

The Advocate turns up the heat on Obama:

After eight years of George W. Bush, we were sick of being excluded, sick of being hated. […] [Obama] talked to us — and about us — more, and more explicitly, than any nominee before him. And not just when he had to. Not just at Human Rights Campaign dinners. At black churches, in his stump speech, on the night he was elected: He said the word that every major candidate before him had found every excuse not to say. He named us. He said gay. […] And during his first months in office, while he worked with Congress on the economic stimulus package and the wars, and laid groundwork for legislation to protect the environment and reform health care, we were on our best behavior, waiting for him to reveal his plans to keep his promises to us.

Momentum for gay equality kept building — in the courts, in legislatures, and in culture. Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine legalized gay marriage — which was, significantly, also endorsed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Dick Cheney too announced his support for marriage equality, as did top Republican strategist Steve Schmidt, who managed John McCain’s presidential campaign. Polls showed clear majorities supporting repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” even among conservatives and churchgoers — constituencies that had long been in favor of the antigay military policy. Still, through all of this, one word was conspicuously absent from the president’s vocabulary.

The hero was a player after all.

I understand the sentiment, but I also think it’s premature. We are absolutely right to be angry at the contempt shown our cause by some in the political department of the White House. More than most of us believed, they have brought with them the Clintonian smell of fear into the White House. They seem terrified of an increasingly marginalized and extreme right, rather than energized by the groundswell of support for real change that occurred in the last election.

But it’s been six months, guys.

He inherited the worst depression in modern times and trillions in credit-card spending by the fiscally insane Republicans. He inherited two failed and failing wars, a climate crisis almost too late to tackle, a healthcare system bankrupting private business and the public finances, and a Middle East on the brink of triggering a third world war (if Israel attacks Iran).

I’m no sap, but be fair. Keep up the pressure – like HRC’s superb tour of fired servicemembers and their effort to bring ordinary Americans into local congressional offices around the country. (Yes, I can praise them when they are doing good work). Keep making the arguments. And focus on the Congress as much as Obama. Much of what we want can only be achieved in the Congress and the states. Obama does not have a magic wand. It’s Pelosi and Reid who should be the brunt of the criticism.

With health-care legislation looming, Posner worries about the debt:

At first it was argued that health-care reform would more than pay for itself by the savings in health-care costs that it would generate. No one argues that any more. Now the argument is that at least the savings will pay for the cost of the program–and fewer people are arguing that with a straight face. If the health-care plan is enacted, the government's fiscal dilemma will probably be even graver than it is now. The need for a general tax increase will be all the more urgent–and it has just been taken off the table.

Or has it?

The President is a lawyer. Lawyers are masters of equivocation. Perhaps what has been taken off the table is just increases in income tax rates until the economy recovers from the current depression. Perhaps the door has been left ajar for other forms of tax increase, such as a federal value-added tax; cutting deductions (which do not affect the nominal tax rate); and increasing federal income tax rates in a year or two, when (one hopes) the Gross Domestic Product will have returned to its trend line.

I hope there is this running room; the alternatives seem either less feasible politically (such as cutting spending) or more harmful to the nation–as Summers and Geithner must know.

Daniel Indiviglio shares his concerns but downplays any fear of US insolvency by pointing to this new credit-rating report. I can certainly see the need for VAT down the line. And sooner rather than later, if expanding healthcare insurance works.

"As the President, I swear to Almighty God before the Holy Quran and the Iranian nation that I will protect the official religion and the Islamic Republic regime and the country’s constitution, and use all my talents and qualifications towards responsibilities I have undertaken, and dedicate myself to serving the people and promoting the country, promoting religion and morality, supporting truth and spreading justice, and will avoid any kind of obstinacy and defend the freedom and dignity of individuals and rights of the nation that the Constitution has recognized.  I will refrain from any action to safeguard the borders and political, economic and cultural independence of the country, and with the help of God and by following the Islamic Prophet and the Imams like a devout and self-sacrificing trustee will protect the power that has been given to me by the nation as a sacred trust placed in me and pass it to the nation’s elected [leader] after me," – "President" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad giving the oath of office today. Video here.