Month: April 2011

A reader writes, "As to why we can never become drug-free unless we become people-free, I quote from the prophet Chris Rock":

According to James Pethokoukis and Goldman Sachs, it's not really a contest. For all its flaws, the Ryan plan allegedly saves $6.9 trillion vs Obama's $4.7 trillion over roughly the same period. There's more:

The Obama Framework likely uses the same higher growth assumptions as Obama’s February budget. When CBO re-ran that budget using its own gloomier forecast, it found the Obama plan raised $1.7 trillion less than it claimed. Ryan uses the CBO numbers. So a back-of-the-envelope estimate — adjusted for similar economic assumptions — finds the Obama Framework would only save $3 trillion vs. $6.9 trillion for the Ryan Path over ten years. And nearly 2/3 of Obama’s savings comes from higher taxes (net interest).

But the Ryan plan is sinking with the public, partly because of its stupid and ideological refusal to raise any revenues by returning to Clinton-era tax rates on the successful and wealthy, or indeed raising revenues through tax reform. 

The High Definite says, "This is your dad on drugs … and rollerblades":

Ezra Klein summarizes polling on Paul Ryan's plan:

You know what’s not popular? Reforming Medicare such that beneficiaries “receive a check or voucher from the government each year for a fixed amount they can use to shop for their own private health insurance policy.” According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, 65 percent of Americans oppose the idea — about the same number who dismissed it in 1995. And if they’re told that the cost of private insurance for seniors is projected to outpace the cost of Medicare insurance for seniors — which is exactly what CBO projects – more than 80 percent of Americans oppose the plan.

So Ryan's austerity plan is deeply unpopular, and yet he cannot be politically brave for advancing it? One or the other, please.

Michael Scherer notices that Palin and Trump have had kind words for one another:

Trump was once a booster of Canadian-style health care. Palin sees such approaches as akin to death panels. Trump wants to impose a 25% tariff on China. Palin is a big free-trade booster. Trump supported the Obama bailout of the auto companies, saying he thought “the government should stand behind them 100%.” Palin has compared the government involvement in Detroit to spread-the-wealth socialism. But let’s not dwell on policy. The fact is both are tripped up by the press.

And so they are one. And that very fact is what makes each the model of the modern Republican populist.

Savannah, Georgia, 9.45 am.

Like a Monet.

Andy Greenberg ponders it:

It could be argued that the Times wanted to focus on source material that it more actively obtained and that wasn’t shared with any other publications. But neither of those factors stopped the newspaper from submitting its historic reporting on 1971’s Pentagon Papers and winning a Pulitzer for that coverage in 1972: There, too, the material came from a single, willing source–Daniel Ellsberg–and was shared with many other media outlets.

The Times may instead be hoping to avoid owing any favors to a source with which it has feuded publicly. In December, the Times’ Keller told an audience at Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab that “”I don’t regard Julian Assange as a kindred spirit,” he said. “If he’s a journalist, he’s not the kind of journalist that I am.”

The Pulitzers are less, it seems to me, a true measure of quality. What they are is what most awards are: a reflection of a professional elite's view of who is respectable and who isn't. It's about reputation, and safety, not quality and risk. That also explains the NYT's decision to publish newspeak on the subject of US-authorized and implemented torture. They were worried about their reputation and source-greasing more than the, er, truth.

But for me, the power and punch of Wikileaks was not the curated massive doc dump the NYT did. It's the constant reference to a Wikileaks nugget in countless news stories since, especially in the Arab Spring. We simply understand the world – in all its hypocrisy, double standards and ugliness – more profoundly than we did pre-Assange. And we can better assess the real world trade-offs that our political masters would prefer to understand and make in seclusion.

Last time I checked, that was called democracy. And newspapers were for it.

A reader writes:

I'm a perpetual text/tweeter in mid-conversation, and I believe it is absolutely appropriate manners. Customs change with the times and we live in 2011, a world where the line between meatworld interaction and online social networks is paper thin. This is a good thing!

How is the online life ranked below the in-person? The rudeness to me is an individual who thinks that just because I am standing next to them they may monopolize my time for hours on end. I am to be shared.

I know you're hostile towards Ray Kurtzweil's burgeoning Singularity cult, but that my behavior becomes more acceptable all the time (especially with the 35 and under crowd) indicates there's something to it. To tweet or text in the middle of social engagements is to observe the world on behalf of our social super-organism, uploading that sensory data into the shared brain. It is the very opposite of anti-social.

Another writes:

It's interesting that you're batting around the topic of compulsive use of gadgets at the expense of real-live social interactions.  I've just started reading the book "iBrain", in which the authors describe how our use of these technologies is actually re-wiring the neural circuitry of our brains, especially for people who start when they're young.  Here's a link to the Kindle version on Amazon (so you can read it while you're ignoring someone across the table at dinner ;)

I've heard this hoary biblical phrase from Obama a lot lately. I respect the moral sentiment behind it. But two points. There is a difference between choosing to be one's brother's keeper and being required to do so by the government. The one is an individual moral choice; the other is a collective mandate that binds both us and future generations to massive debt.

And the phrase is a misnomer in this particular case, especially with respect to Medicare and social security. The choice is: should the current working generation be required to be our parents' keeper in the privileged position they have long gotten used to, regardless of their private means? And to keep doing that in the full knowledge that we will have no such option in our old age?

David Frum begs the GOP to tackle the nation's economic hardships. He thinks it's the only way to destroy candidates like Trump:

The GOP establishment has successfully directed those [economically frustrated] emotions [from the GOP base] against the Obama administration. But there’s no guarantee that the emotions will remain fixed in that direction – because after all, the establishment GOP is offering little or nothing to allay the discontents producing the anger. Conservatives like liberals have suffered unemployment, the loss of savings, the decline in housing values. Conservatives like liberals find themselves suddenly poorer for reasons they do not understand. Conservatives like liberals fear and dread that Medicare and Social Security will soon be cut to rescue the country’s finances. If the GOP wants to finish Trump, GOP candidates had better learn to speak to those anxieties – to offer a remedy more effectual than the snake-oil now being peddled by Tim Pawlenty.

Amen. And repeating the failed supply-side doctrines of the 1980s does not suffice.