The Dish

Arlington, Virginia, 11.06 am

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

Patrick says:

Even though delinking [insurance] coverage and employment would be offset by higher wages, there would be a lag between ending employer benefits and wage increases. And Americans do not typically understand the that benefits come out of wages. The public would react like a massive financial burden had been created regardless of reality.

The obvious move then is to mandate full disclosure of employer paid benefits. Declare that paystubs and W-2's must provide the full detail of the costs of all benefits, the amount paid by the employer and the amount paid by employee. The totals are added to the wage totals to reflect total compensation. After the population has digested that information, then we can move forward to transitioning health care expenses away from the employers. Something so simple as telling the truth can solve many problems.

Another reader points out the problems with ending employer health care in the current economic environment:

My current employer, like many corporations, isn't having a record year for revenue or earnings and our executive management is under a lot of pressure from Wall Street to get our numbers up. If the health care market shifted to where they could drop all insurance for employees, I guarantee we'd see at best a small fraction of those expenses added to our paychecks and the bulk of it would go towards improving the company's bottom line, not my personal income. While this might be a boon for a lot of struggling companies, I see no way in which it wouldn't shaft the vast majority of current workers whose health care is employer-provided.

He continues:

Yes, there would be increased pressure over the long term to reduce both cost and cost growth, but the initial disruption would be huge. I've yet to see any economist deal with this issue in a rigorous fashion, and too many of the pundits commenting on the correlation seem to make the incorrect assumption that *every* dollar currently being spent by employers on health insurance would be converted to wages.

by Andrew Sprung

Continuing with the fictional flashbacks: Gail Collins' lament (if Gail Collins can ever be said to lament) over Senatorial privilege triggered a couple. Collins:

He is being treated like a visiting superpower. When the prime minister of India came to the United States, he got that one crasher-wracked party and an hour of face time with Barack Obama. Ben Nelson has met Obama at least three times in the last nine days. The president, he said serenely, “made a strong case for passing health care reform, but it remains to be seen if it was compelling."

Good work making your case, most powerful person on the planet. But we will see if it meets the standards of Senator Ben Nelson.

Back up seventeen centuries. Here's the newly empurpled emperor Julian, taking his first imperial bath, attended by his best friend and his uncle (from Gore Vidal's Julian*): 

I submerged for a moment, eyes tight shut, soaking my head. When I came to the surface, Oribasius was sitting on the bench beside my uncle.

    "That is no way to approach the sacred presence." And I splashed Oribasius very satisfactorily. He laughed. My uncle Julian laughed, too, for I had soaked him as well. Then I was alarmed. In just this way are monsters born. First, the tyrant plays harmless games: splashes senators in the bath, serves wooded food to dinner guests, plays practical jokes; and no matter what he says and does, everyone laughs and flatters him, finds witty his most inane remarks. Then the small jokes begin to pall. One day he finds it amusing to rape another man's wife, as the husband watches, or the husband as the wife looks on, or to torture them both, or to kill them. When the killing begins, the emperor is no longer a man but a beast, and we have had too many beasts already on the throne of the world. Vehemently I apologized for splashing my uncle. I even apologized for splashing Oribasius, though he is like my own brother. Neither guessed the significance of this guilty outburst.

Next up: a virtuous queen of C.S. Lewis' imagining (from Till We Have Faces), confronted by the freshly widowed wife of the counselor she always secretly loved. The wife, after a moment of intimacy in which the two women recognize that they loved the same man, accuses the queen of sucking all her servants dry, being "gorged with other men's lives, women too." The queen reacts:

"It's enough," I cried. The air in her room was shot with crimson. It came horribly in my mind that if I ordered her to torture and death no one could save her. Arnom would murmur. Ilerdia would turn rebel. But she'd be twisting (cockchafer-like) on a sharp stake before anyone could help her

How many Democrats would cede to Obama (or perhaps the Lyndon Johnson of sudden nostalgia) the power to impale Joe Lieberman just now?

Speaking of Johnson, he was definitely the splash-from-the-bath type. According to Robert Caro, he would force people to consult with him while he was on the toilet.

Take a step back: it's remarkable, the constraints democracy has placed around power over the slow march of centuries.

——

*Andrew has excoriated Vidal's verbal flame-throwing in public affairs – with some justice. But the man is a master story-teller.

by Chris Bodenner

Lyrics to Nina Simone's "Little Girl Blue" after the jump:

Sit there and count your fingers
What can you do
Old girl you're through
Just sit there and count your little fingers
Unlucky little girl blue.

Just sit there and count the raindrops
Falling on you
It's time you knew
All you can count on
Are the raindrops
That fall on little girl blue

No use old girl
You may as well surrender
Your hopes are getting slender
Why won't somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue

No use old girl
You may as well surrender
Your hopes are getting slender
Why won't somebody send a tender blue boy
To cheer up little girl blue

by Patrick Appel

Jonathan Cohn:

News that the Senate Democrats were going to allow insurers impose annual or lifetime limits on policy caused quite a stir a few weeks ago. And rightly so. Very few people will ever incur medical bills in the hundreds of thousands or higher. But those that do will be the ones with the worst medical problems–the ones, in other words, who need protection the most.

The White House promised to seek changes, as did liberals on Capitol Hill. It looks like they succeeded.

Reihan Salam:

The Kaiser Family Foundation, a wonderful source for news and information on health coverage in the United States, has a useful chart on poverty rates in the states as of 2008. Nebraska is a relatively low-poverty state, with a poverty rate of 10.6 percent of households. Fifteen other states have lower poverty rates while thirty-five have higher poverty rates. Yet it seems that Nebraska, by virtue of its impressively stubborn Democratic senator, will receive unusually generous treatment.

Ezra Klein:

A smart observer told me that the bill would come down to whether Ben Nelson, in his heart of hearts, wanted to vote for it or wanted to use his demands to kill it. It looks like he wanted to vote for it. Nelson's compromises were achievable. Abortion language stronger than what the legislation had but considerably weaker than what Bart Stupak preferred. An extra year of federal funding for the Medicaid expansion, which is probably a good thing one way or the other.

Nate Silver:

The CBO score is out. It appears that the bill will be marginally more expensive than the previous version, but will also raise marginally more revenues, so the net effect on deficits (vis-à-vis the original version) is basically zero. Also, the CBO has stated that the changes introduced by Reid's Managers Amendment are unlikely to significantly alter the premiums that taxpayers are expected to pay under the bill; the public option would have saved the government some money by reducing the amount of subsidies, but would not have had a significant effect on the premiums that individuals pay.

Suderman:

This doesn't mean that there are no potential hurdles left: Democrats still have to reconcile the House and Senate versions, which may prove complicated. The House bill is financed in large part by a millionaire's tax on high earners, and the Senate bill is financed by an excise tax on gold-plated health care plans — a tax that's opposed by unions, which have far more influence in the House. And Nelson has explicitly reserved the right to vote against final passage of the reconciled bill should any significant changes occur. In other words, it ain't over 'till it's over.

That said, Democrats are now substantially closer to wrapping up this process than they were even a day ago. If I had to guess, I'd say that, with Nelson on board, it's all but a done deal.

Yglesias:

I don’t want to endlessly rehash the intramural argument about whether this bill is worth passing or not, since at the end of the day I’m looking forward to working with all the netroots activists of the world on more and better legislation in the future. But to repeat—despite flaws, I think this is an excellent piece of legislation. Among other things, it represents a return, after fifteen years, of the idea that congress should be trying to pass major legislation that tackles major national problems. 

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

After

Then, I started thinking about how you all can take this project a bit further.  Perhaps you’ve already thought about it too, but I would love to see follow up publications.  Something like “View from Your Window – January” with a collection of photos from different places taken during  each month of the year.  A whole 12 book set!  Or if that’s too much, maybe just based on the seasons so that you have a 4 book set.

I regret just getting two copies, because there are so many people for whom this would make a wonderful gift.

We also received a suggestion about doing versions from individual cities. Another reader writes:

I just received my copy of "the View From My Window" and lo and behold, there's one of my pictures in it! I am filled with disproportionate delight and glee! When my picture made it onto the site I had a similar experience; I felt like dancing with excitement and pride.

Why is this? I ask myself. Why such a large response? All I can come up with by way of self reflective explanation is that being published on the site, and then being published in the book underlines some small sense of ownership I feel in the Daily Dish. So often Andrew's (and helpers') writings parallel things I have been thinking or feeling, or help me gently cross-section and unfold long held ideas and ideals. Reading the Daily Dish, I never feel talked down to or pressured to hold any particular philosophy, political or religious. In other words, I am free to listen and learn, agree or disagree, as though I am in conversation with friends.

So, thank you. Thank you for your hard work each day, for the intelligence and passion in the writings. Thank you for showing me each day a view from someone else's life. And thank you for the honor of including a view from my window in this lovely book.

Details on how to get the book here.

by Conor Friedersdorf

In the last couple days, Julian Sanchez and I wrote posts arguing that a vocal group on the right are engaging in what Mr. Sanchez terms "the politics of ressentiment." Its a term I am still mulling over, and perhaps there are some differences in what we're saying, but on this we agree: these folks say their behavior is grounded in conservatism, but "the farce currently performing under that marquee is an inferiority complex in political philosophy drag."

It is noteworthy that both of us used the words "inferiority complex" in our posts — that is to say, our argument isn't that these people are in fact inferior. Indeed, explicit in our posts is the assumption that their "complex" is irrational. "Mark Levin, a man intelligent enough that he needn't have an inferiority complex," I wrote, "for some reason adopts the rhetorical style of the classic insecure bully — juvenile name calling, constant self-aggrandizement, vituperative outbursts." Nor would I ever question the intelligence of Laura Ingraham, who knows better than to mock the use of Dijon mustard, or Rush Limbaugh, an obviously intelligent man whose cultural affects — fancy cars, pricey restaurants, expensive cigars, sprawling mansion on the coast — hardly permit my opponents to argue that I jam motivated by contempt for the stereotypical lifestyle of regular non-elite Americans.

So it's interesting that, as if to prove our point about inferiority complexes, the folks who objected to our post responded as though we asserted the inferiority of these conservatives and their audiences, rather than merely laying out the particular way their politics are wrongheaded.

This confused post by Mike Farmer, who tellingly but absurdly assumes that Julian Sanchez is a "moderate" and that Rod Dreher disdains social conservatives, contains this excerpt:

Social conservatives are a dying breed, so why the sudden hand-wringing over this irrelevant and dwindling political faction? Perhaps it's the new polls showing the popularity of the Tea Party over Republicans or Democrats, and the Tea Party is not even a political party. This has to be disturbing to people who view the Tea Party as southern, conservatives hicks. The moderates are dying of embarrassment. They don't want to be associated with this movement so they are pulling out every cliche and stereotype they can dust off and use as a weapon.

Now, the angle is that the Tea Party crowd in envious of the moderates' superior intellect and have to make monsters out of these intellectual giants in order to muster to courage to even approach this superior class of people. The hicks in the TP movement are insecure and frightened by ideas they don't understand, so they hold on to their simplistic culture and religious ideas, clinging to their guns and religion.

Who said anything about moderates being a "superior class of people," or "intellectual giants"? Who called anyone a hick, or even invoked stereotypes that amount to the same thing? Who called the culture of the conservative base "simplistic" or denigrated their religion? All these supposed insults are conjured out of thin air.

It isn't surprising that a writer as clever as Robert Stacy McCain didn't make the same mistake as obviously, but he made it nonetheless:

Shorter Sanchez: "Hey, let's change the subject and talk about what a bunch of yahoos those Republicans are!"

Of course, Mr. Sanchez's post didn't assert that Republicans are yahoos, it argued that they're mistaken in obsessing over the possibility that somewhere, someone at Harvard is calling them a yahoo. These are very different things.

Mr. McCain goes on:

Notice that it is Mr. McCain here who not only asserts that Sarah Palin is provincial, but assumes the qualities she possess — the ones Mr. Sanchez is supposed to despise — are shared by "us." Mr. McCain lives near Washington DC. Occasionally you'll find him attending the same social gatherings as Mr. Sanchez. Even if we grant that it is understandable for him to assume that Mr. Sanchez dislikes Sarah Palin's uncommon Alaskan subculture of moose hunting and oil exploration, what on earth would possess him to imagine that Mr. Sanchez sees the conservative base, and even Mr. McCain himself, as part of that same "class" subculture? In fact, any coherent "us" here cannot refer to class or provincialism, it can only refer to styles of politics, a perfectly unobjectionable attribute to criticize.

Also noteworthy is a man who complains about treating political disagreement as a form of neurosis, yet himself writes about "Palin Derangement Syndrome," and has on many occasions psychoanalyzed what motivates Ross Douthat to write. I am not interested in dinging him for inconsistency so much as making this observation: when a writer forcefully expresses disagreement with Sarah Palin or Robert Stacy McCain, it is cast as a result of their elitism and disdain for regular Americans — evidence that they feel contempt for political opponents who they regard as stupid — but if you actually survey the Internet, you'll see that it is far more frequent to see so-called moderates like Mr. Douthat, Rod Dreher, David Frum, David Brooks, Kathleen Parker and others attacked due to what is called their elitist class, or having their cultural attributes mocked, or having their intelligence questioned.

Anyone still unconvinced by the "politics of ressentiment" thesis can find numerous examples beyond those already offered — there are a few in this piece, where I demonstrate the harm this tendency does to young professionals on the right, and speaking of Big Hollywood, here is an excerpt sent by a Dish reader from a post prompted by the fact that Sesame Street made fun of Fox News:

We're the cool kids now. We no longer "NEED" their approval.

Guess what?

You never did.

by Patrick Appel

David Kurtz on the monetary angle (Wonk Room has more):

For my money, increased federal Medicaid subsidies for a particular state ranks pretty low along the spectrum of pork barrel politics. Is it good policy to single out one state for special treatment? Probably not. Does it amount to the sort of sleazy special interest politics that awards fat federal contracts to major campaign contributors? Hardly. For those who would equate the two, what planet do you live on?

Cohn points to commentary on the abortion compromise:

The Hill's Jeffrey Young and Wonk Room's Igor Volsky have more details on the final compromise with Nelson and other features in the manager's amendment. The gist of the abortion amendment is that it'd give states the right to prohibit coverage of abortion within their own insurance exchanges, which is what the Stupak amendment in the House bill would do nationally. Also of note: Ron Wyden did a get a scaled-down version of his Free Choice amendment. 

by Chris Bodenner

Sebastian at Obsidian Wings shares a poignant story about a guy he played World of Warcraft with:

Last month a little before Thanksgiving, I heard while we were playing that he was coughing rather loudly.  I jokingly said he should consider taking up smoking if he was going to cough so much, and he admitted that he had pneumonia.  He was on antibiotics for it and the doctors said it was a fairly bad case, though not awful.  After the raid was over I wished him well and told him "no more coughing" in my best big brother voice.  I logged in the next day and his friend from college told me that he had died, presumably of a pneumonia related pulmonary embolism.  At first I thought that the friend was playing a joke in very poor taste.  Then, what an obnoxious irony to have my last words to him be "stop coughing".  He never listened to me before.

So after an initial shock, I then found myself crying over a person I had never met.  I didn't even know what he looked like until I saw his obituary!

Ta-Nehisi offers his own thoughts and anecdotes from his online social world.