Month: August 2012

The Onion spotlights Republican support from seniors:

On the other side of the demographic divide, Ann Beeson notes that the young "can be enthusiastic volunteers and organizers but tepid voters":

The missing link between issue advocacy and voting struck me forcefully when I discovered that many of the young women who rallied recently at the state capitol to protest Gov. Rick Perry’s attack on Planned Parenthood hadn’t voted in the 2010 gubernatorial election. They had skipped a step in the policymaking process that might’ve kept them out of the heat – voting out a leader willing to risk women’s lives to score political points. I’ve also met plenty of bike-riding young people who are passionate about saving the environment, fanatic about composting, obsessed with their carbon footprint — but they don’t vote either.

Youth apathy could hurt Obama this election:

In 2008, Mr. Obama tapped more deeply into the universe of "unlikely voters" than almost all candidates that preceded him, garnering a significant number of votes from groups like young voters and minorities who have a low propensity to turn out. But he may not repeat that success this year. In almost every swing state that tracks voter registration by party, the share of voters who are registered as Democrats is down from four years ago.

A reader writes:

Although I agree with the sections of the post explaining why competitive bidding may not work to reduce health care costs, I think you overstepped a bit when discussing the relative efficiencies of health care systems. The study you cite uses a model that does not control for pharmaceutical expenditure per capita. The reason this is important is because the US largely foots the bill for the rest of the world's pharmaceutical R&D costs (authors even refer to another study that does).

Basically, the US healthcare system pays pharmaceutical companies a premium so they can innovate and create new treatments, while the cost-controls used by other governments allows them to receive a price that is closer to production cost but does not fuel R&D (Of relevance, the Biopharm industry is largely leaving Europe). The former is sometimes referred to as more "dynamically efficient" while the latter is more "statically efficient". Although the authors use an approach that is not "wrong", it's a little limited in that it ignores the dynamic effeciency piece. Simply, part of the reason our expenditures are relatively high is that other countries are not at the cutting edge of new medical technology (i.e. Iraq).

Full disclosure: I'm a public policy associate at a large pharma company.

That sounds right to me and I'm glad of the clarification. The basic point remains. Update from a reader:

Pharma is not leaving Europe. At least not officially. And at least not from European tax havens. Many pharma patents are "owned" by Swiss, etc subsidiaries who charge incredibly high license fees to the American manufacturing branch of multinational drug companies. This shifts profits to tax havens where they can accrue without facing US taxation. Drug companies then advocate for holidays from US corporate income tax such as that that took place in 2004/5, during which they repatriate billions in profits and simultaneously avoid US income tax and build up a ridiculous foreign-income-tax credit that can be used to reduce tax liabilities for years to come.

Go look up annual reports from Pfizer from, say, 2006, when they brought billions of profits to the US and distributed it mostly as dividends to stock holders… this generated a huge foreign-tax credit that's still being carried forward. Not a tax professional at all, but I suspect that Mitt Romney's foreign tax credits that spiked in 2005 and have continued to this day probably stem from the tax holiday. This is pretty important in this election, as Romney is proposing a similar holiday right now.

The record for the tallest building in the world currently belongs to the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, but architects in China and Saudi Arabia are hoping to top it. Nate Berg wonders if we'll ever hit a limit. He spoke to William Baker, a structural engineer who worked on the Burj Khalifa:

A building taller than a mountain seems preposterous. But according to Baker, it's entirely possible. "You could conceivably go higher than the highest mountain, as long as you kept spreading a wider and wider base," Baker says. Theoretically, then, a building could be built at least as tall as 8,849 meters, one meter taller than Mount Everest. The base of that mountain, according to these theoretical calculations, is about 4,100 square kilometers – a huge footprint for a building, even one with a hollow core. 

(Image of a 1990s-era concept for a two-and-a-half-mile supertower in Tokyo with a hollow core similar to the Eiffel Tower's.)

Benjamin Hale, a philosophy professor, contrasts two ways of thinking about fairness. Purveyors of what he calls the "veil of opulence" theory "may imagine themselves to be fantastically wealthy movie stars or extremely successful business entrepreneurs" and they "vote and set policies according to this fantasy." Instead, Hale, siding with John Rawls, holds to the "veil of ignorance" version of fairness:

If there’s one thing about fairness, it is fundamentally an impartial notion, an idea that restricts us from privileging one group over another. When asking about fairness, we cannot ask whether X policy is fair for me, or whether Y policy is fair for someone with a yacht and two vacation homes. We must ask whether Z policy is fair, full stop. What we must ask here is whether the policy could be applied to all; whether it is the sort of system with which we could live, if we were to end up in one of the many socioeconomic groupings that make up our diverse community, whether most-advantaged or least-advantaged, fortunate or unfortunate. This is why the veil of ignorance is a superior test for fairness over the veil of opulence. It tackles the universality of fairness without getting wrapped up in the particularities of personal interest. If you were to start this world anew, unaware of who you would turn out to be, what sort of die would you be willing to cast?

The Burmese government's announcement on Monday to end press censorship put China's media in a tricky spot. Lillian Lin notes that the People's Daily was "fairly evenhanded," but that the more nationalistic Global Times came down harder:

In an editorial on Tuesday, it said China should never follow Myanmar’s model…. "China has been on the track of liberalizing the press for a long time, and will go further in the future," it read. "We should proceed based on the national situation, instead of being panicked and making backwards countries like Myanmar and Vietnam our totem."

Lin says the issue received a lot of attention on China's microblog – a lot of it critical. One example:

"China has been on the track of liberalizing the press for a long time? But in the wrong direction," said one Weibo user.

(Photo: A Burmese man reads a local journal in Yangon on August 20, 2012. Burma said it had abolished media censorship on August 20 in the latest in a series of rapid democratic reforms, delighting journalists who lived for decades under the shadow of the censors' marker pen. By Soe Than Win/AFP/Getty Images)

Ed Kilgore reminds us that, even with Medicare somewhat protected under the Romney-Ryan plan, all is not peachy for seniors, especially poor ones:

More than two-thirds of America’s nursing home residents—two-thirds—are having their basic needs met by Medicaid. So with federal Medicaid funding being cut an estimated one-third over the next decade if Ryan gets his way (not cuts likely to be offset by the typically Republican leadership in the states most affected, who are already whining they can’t afford their current costs), and Romney apparently even more inclined to aggressively follow the block, cap and dump approach, it’s going to get tough fast for lower-income seniors.

Harold Pollack likewise focuses on seniors covered by both Medicaid and Medicare:

Dual-eligibles are the sickest, poorest, and most vulnerable segment of the Medicare population. Medicaid spends billions on nursing home and long-term care for the dual-eligible population. It pays for many other things, too. It helps dual-eligibles by covering Medicare Part B premiums, copayments, and deductibles that they couldn’t otherwise afford. It also covers essential services such as dental care that Medicare doesn’t cover, but that elderly and disabled people need.

Dish readers elaborated on this topic last week.

Today on the Dish, Rapegate raged on as Andrew hailed the Dem's culture war advantage, analyzed GOP polarization on Akin, and excavated the Right's long-standing rhetorical redefining of rape. Akin's lead shriveled but he still hung on, and Romney led Obama among Missouri women (but that was before Akin's remarks). Meanwhile, Andrew clarified his friendship with Niall before going another round with him and dismantling his China arguments. Andrew also called out Paul Ryan for advocating private charity but giving so little himself, explained why healthcare is not a classic market and argued for breaking up banks. He then paused to admire wide receiver Elliott Mealer's chin-padding.

Elsewhere in politics, Obama distinguished his personal faith from his job, the Ryan selection put Wisconsin back in play, and the potential veep's budget plan would have Romney paying .82% in taxes. Canny readers joined in the Ferguson-fisking, Eric Cantor dressed down GOP skinny-dippers and Nate Cohn compared 2012 and 2004. And in the ad war, Romney's campaign lied again on Obama's welfare policy.

Shauna Prewitt went to law school to protect her rape-conceived child, and while Obama focused on welfare aid at the expense of job creation, Derek Thompson highlighted the relative importance of local jobs to the economy. Surowiecki advocated talent-focused immigration reform, Chait noted the GOP extinction from popular culture, and while Marc Tracy marveled at the right's anti-Semitism trigger-happiness, Goldblog shushed about a spate of Jewish terror attacks.

In other assorted coverage, Ackerman argued for closing down the NYPD's real, live Muslim-themed The Wire, Dan Colman recalled the hellish production of Apocalypse Now, and blow jobs transmitted HIV – but at a low incidence. Jesse Bering, meanwhile, considered vagina shape, paperbacks of old cost a lot and Scott Adams outwitted a used car salesman. Meanwhile, Pussy Riot comprised grrls, a cellular menage a trois prevented heritable diseases, and readers skewered the a Pareto Principle workout post. Airbus modeled the future, readers interpreted bus clues in the VFYW contest and Alain de Botton endorsed bibliotherapy. FOTD here and VFYW here. And today in funny, while the women of Qingdao dressed for a stick-em-up, er, day at the beach, the very amazing Leslie Knope did impressions.

 - G.G.

(Photo: This picture taken on August 16 shows Chinese beachgoers wearing body suits and protective head masks, dubbed 'face-kinis' by Chinese netizens, on a crowded public beach in Qingdao. By AFP/Getty Images.)

Indigenous priests take part in a Mayan ceremony at the Kaminal Juyu archaeological site, in Guatemala City on August 21, 2012, during celebrations for the 'Oxlajuj B'aqtun' – the current Mayan cycle Baktun 13 – which will end on December 21. By Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images.

According to the AP, the NYPD's Demographic's Unit has spent more than six years "spying on Muslim neighborhoods, eavesdropping on conversations and cataloguing mosques" and has "never generated a lead or triggered a terrorism investigation." Ackerman wants to close down the unit:

Logic dictates dismantling the program. Politics dictates continuing it. There remains no organized constituency in the United States that elects and pressures politicians to dismantle the post-9/11 security apparatus. There is, instead, a potent disincentive: the politician who proposes doing so, particularly at the national level, lives in fear of being demagogued, and especially in fear of being blamed for another attack. Combine that with a rising and ugly climate of suspicion of American Muslims, and citizens of the United States get treated like enemies of the United States, with minimal hope of democratic redress.

Samuel Goldman is on the same page:

The legality of the program is in currently in litigation. But the failure to produce useful intelligence removes its practical justification. Threats of political violence may justify expansions of government powers. When the applications of those powers shows that those threats are exaggerated or non-existent, however, they should by removed or restricted. In short, I can understand why the NYPD and city officials once thought the Demographic Unit was necessary. Now the time has come to shut it down.

Previous posts on Imaginationland here and here.

Wonder why FRC is still backing him? Or that he sees no reason to quit? The answer is that his view of female reproduction is based on the work of one Dr. Jack C. Willke. Willke is not, as one might expect, some obscure quack, far, far away from the center of Republican and Christianist politics. He is, the LA Times notes, the founder and president of the International Right to Life Federation, president of the Life Issues Institute, and a former president of National Right to Life, the oldest and largest pro-life group in the country. He was president from 1980 to 1983 and then from 1984 to 1990. In 2007, Willke was described as "an important surrogate for Governor Romney's pro-life and pro-family agenda" in the words of the Romney campaign. "I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country," Romney said at the time. Willke, of course, has defended Akin forcefully since the uproar. Here he is, pioneering this wingnut version of female sexuality back in 1999:

First, let's define the term "rape." When pro-lifers speak of rape pregnancies, we should commonly use the phrase "forcible rape" or "assault rape," for that specifies what we're talking about. Rape can also be statutory. Depending upon your state law, statutory rape can be consensual, but we're not addressing that here.

Yes, you read that right: "statutory rape can be consensual". There's more:

How many forcible rapes result in a pregnancy? The numbers claimed have ranged the entire spectrum of possibilities. Some feminists have claimed as high as 5 to 10 percent, which is absurd. One problem has been the lack of available studies and accurate statistics. Often women do not admit to having been raped. On the other hand, it has been known that women, pregnant from consensual intercourse, have later claimed rape. Is it possible to know the actual facts?

My italics. Lying behind all of this is some kind of notion that women claim they have been raped to get an abortion. It's this loophole they are trying to fill. It becomes much less obviously cruel or drastic if the odds of pregnancy by rape are close to non-existent. You can see how easily it could become a Christianist talking point, picked up by someone who lives and breathes the evangelical base like Akin. But his statistical method is as surreal as his conclusion.

Willke first posits 200,000 rapes a year and then winnows that number down to rape-pregnancies of around 225 in the entire US in a year. Among the statistics he uses to prove his point are the following:

One-fourth of all women in the United States of childbearing age have been sterilized, so the remaining three-fourths come out to 10,000 (or 15,000).

Only half of assailants penetrate her body and/or deposit sperm in her vagina, so let's cut the remaining figures in half. This gives us numbers of 5,000 (or 7,500).

Fifteen percent of men are sterile, that drops that figure to 4,250 (or 6,375).

I kid you not. Here's the "science":

To get and stay pregnant a woman's body must produce a very sophisticated mix of hormones. Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain that is easily influenced by emotions. There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.

It's important to understand that this man is a central figure in the history of the religious right. What he is spouting is the orthodoxy you don't hear outside of Christianist circles – but it's there. And it's why Akin seems baffled, and why Ryan had no compunction in using Willke's specific term "forcible rape" as part of a bill he sponsored.

Partisanship should help keep the base with Romney and not go rogue with Akin. Or it might not. The first thing I thought when I heard that Romney had picked Ryan was that Romney, a man who couldn't win a majority of evangelicals in a single contested primary, had picked a Catholic as his team-mate. If they both pick a fight with a Christianist, evangelical pro-life authority like Willke, they could dig an even deeper hole.

(Photo: Chris Maddaloni/Roll Call/Getty Images)