Month: September 2009

Like some exhausted volcano, the GOP is spewing the usual steam on appeasement of Russia. Personally, absent communism and global aspirations, I see no reason why Putin's Russia should be an enemy of the US. In any dealing with Iran, Russia will be critical. And European policy was not what this move was really about, was it? Here's Gates:

To say that the Obama administration was scrapping missile defense, Mr. Gates said, is “misrepresenting the reality of what we are doing.” He added that the new configuration “provides a better missile defense capability” than the one he had recommended to Mr. Bush.

Administration officials said the Bush missile defense architecture was better designed to counter potential long-range missiles by Iran, but recent tests and intelligence have indicated that Tehran is moving more rapidly toward developing short- and medium-range missiles. Mr. Obama’s advisers said their reconfigured system would be more aimed at that threat by stationing interceptor missiles closer to Iran.

So Obama and Gates are actually increasing the US's missile defense of Israel from Iran. Why does no neocon see that? Or is their determination to destroy this presidency prior to their actual concern for Irael's security?

Tomasky counts the ways. It is, of course, possible to be both stupid and partially right. Which is a pretty good description of his presidency in retrospect.

Limbaugh will enjoy the scorn. But he’s a disgusting opportunist and racist. And his acceptability – indeed total dominance – on the right is one reason decent people will steer clear of the GOP for the foreseeable future. There is no nuance or doubt here. This is a man who wants a race war. Until the GOP throws him out, they deserve oblivion. He’s a racist through and through, and if no one on the right stands up to this, they are complicit:

As I said earlier this morning, I suspect that one reason non-racist non-nutty folks are still not sold entirely on healthcare reform is that the fiscal reassurances along with the new benefits don't really add up convincingly. Telling people they will have to give up nothing and that almost all the money can be found from savings is not gonna work with people who rightly view government claims of no-pain-all-gain action wth a raised eyebrow. That's why the Baucus bill is not as DOA as some might think. Here's a reader whom Obama ought to take seriously:

I think your argument with Megan McArdle over Medicare Part D misses the point. I always vote third party (Libertarian), as I did in 2008. But this is the first time I was rooting for the Democrat (although 2004 was close). I didn't expect Obama to be the messiah, I didn't expect hope and change, I didn't even expect to like his policies. But I allowed myself to hope that we would get an honest, responsible politician this time. We didn't. We soooo didn't.

Obama can pass all the big government programs he wants and I won't agree with him. But if he just had the balls to say, "Hey guys, this'll make your lives better but it'll cost a little so, unfortunately, you'll have to pay up," I'd respect the guy, generally support him, and hell I might even vote for him next time around. But that ain't what he's doing. He's the same irresponsible mess, with (hopefully) a tad less incompetence. His predecessor ran up the credit card. If Obama was the man I thought he was, he'd sacrifice and make us all pay it back. Instead he just wants to continue the spree. It disgusts me, he has destroyed any last hope I actually had that a responsible man can gain power in this country.

This is premature, I think. And Obama has a chance to win this guy back. That's where he should now focus his attention: on how healthcare reform can lower the deficit. And now he has the CBO to back him up.

“We’re beating the cat, and when you say, ‘Why are you beating the cat?’ you say, ‘It’s a cat-tiger strategy.’ But you’re beating the cat because you don’t know what to do about the tiger,” – Rory Stewart on the Obama administration's attempt to control Pakistan by occupying Afghanistan.

I'm amazed this must-read Leonhardt column hasn't gotten more traction. Its thesis is so counter-intuitive it's maybe hard to absorb. Is this recession actually giving average workers a bigger pay-boost than at any time since the Clinton boom? David:

Between the collapse of Lehman Brothers last September and this June, the average weekly pay of rank-and-file workers (who make up 80 percent of the work force) remained stuck at about $612. Hourly pay rose a bit, but the increase was canceled out by a shrinking workweek. Since June — with the economy apparently starting to grow again, as Ben Bernanke noted on Tuesday — the workweek has grown and hourly pay growth has accelerated. Last month, average weekly pay rose to $618…

The added wrinkle in this recession is that inflation has dropped below zero, thanks largely to a sharp fall in energy prices. In most recessions, inflation remains positive — indeed, higher than wage growth, which means that inflation-adjusted pay declines. In this recession, average prices have fallen 2 percent over the past year, while weekly pay has either been flat or risen 1 percent, depending on which data you believe.

So inflation-adjusted pay is up 2 to 3 percent. Amazingly enough, that’s almost as big as the peak increases during the late 1990s boom.

What are the political repercussions of a downturn that is brutal to those who lose their work but lucrative for the big majority who keep theirs'? Discuss.

Fox’s local news anchor gets frisky (NSFW after the jump):

Yesterday, Ezra noted the truly surprising data in the Baucus bill – data that could prove critical to passage:

According to the CBO, the provisions of the bill that cost money — the Medicaid expansion, the subsidies and so forth — will grow by 7 percent annually over the second decade. But the tax on high-cost insurance plans, which doesn't raise all that much money in the first 10 years, would grow by 15 percent a year. The savings in Medicare and Medicaid would grow by 10 percent to 15 percent. In other words, if you're worried about the deficit, you should vote for, rather than against, health-care reform, as health-care reform actually improves the deficit.

Now I'm not an expert on subsidies, but if this bill will provide enough support to enable the working poor to get reliable health insurance, then this fiscal outlook strikes me as a game-changer.

The major resistance to healthcare reform at this point is, understandably, fiscal. If healthcare reform actually lowers the deficit over the long run according to the CBO, then resistance on that score should crumble. That's why this bill may have more legs than it first appeared. It will appeal to fiscal worry-warts like yours truly. It will be manna for Independents. And if the GOP opposes a bill that both removes some of the current injustices and reduces the long-term deficit, then the joke in the end is on them.

I might add I think this agonizing process has been helpful in the long run.

Most of us who are not Ezra Klein are not versed up to the gills in healthcare terminology and policy wonkery. The debate back and forth has been clarifying to me in a very complicated area which once bored me to death but has become increasingly interesting the more I've learned about it. Allowing the Congress to present different options, from several committees, letting the debate unfold as it has, allowing legitimate fears to be expressed (along with nutty Palin-style lies), bobbing and weaving between parties and senators … this is the system working. The system in America is not supposed to create massive sudden change. Maybe if the TARP and bank bailouts had been subject to this kind of to and fro, more errors would have been avoided.

To those who say the president has been too passive, may I suggest making that judgment once this process ends? I find Obama's style to be more constitutionally appropriate than the president-as-decider model. I think that beneath the tea-party loopiness, we've made strides toward grappling with one of the biggest and most complex policy challenges there is. Even the tea-parties serve a purpose: they channel unease with the vast changes we have absorbed in the last year, and vents it. A democracy that cannot vent is less stable in the long run.

And there's scope for more manuevring. Why not add Wyden's more competition-friendly ideas into the final bill, as he suggests in the NYT this morning? Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it seems to me that the Baucus plan may be fiscally solid but doesn't do enough to enable patient and consumer power to bring down costs. Is Wyden's proposal a helpful fix? Or a step too far at this point?

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty.)