The ParallAXE

From now on

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:57:29 -0400

go to http://comechucka.tumblr.com/, and to http://scoop44.com/

as I’ll no longer be blogging here—

GHC

"Now, a little over five months after Bush left office, Barack Obama’s presidency is shaping up..."

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:42:21 -0400

“

Now, a little over five months after Bush left office, Barack Obama’s presidency is shaping up to be in large part about coming to terms with the Bush era, and fixing all the things that were broken. In most cases, Obama is approaching this task enthusiastically – although in some cases, he is doing so only under great pressure, and in a few cases, not at all . I think part of Obama’s abiding popularity with the public stems from what a contrast he is from his predecessor — and in particular his willingness to take on problems. But he certainly has a lot of balls in the air at one time. And I predict that his growing penchant for secrecy – especially but not only when it comes to the Bush legacy of torture and lawbreaking – will end up serving him poorly, unless he renounces it soon.

Obama is nowhere in Bush’s league when it comes to issues of credibility, but his every action nevertheless needs to be carefully scrutinized by the media, and he must be held accountable. We should be holding him to the highest standards – and there are plenty of places where we should be pushing back. Just for starters, there are a lot of hugely important but unanswered questions about his Afghanistan policy, his financial rescue plans, and his turnaround on transparency.

”

- Froomkin on Obama in his last column. Let’s hope he keeps getting to watch the White House with the same incisiveness that he has for the last five years. Because it will be a sad day when I rely on the Politico to get my substantive DC news.

Is Health Care Reform Worth $1.6 Trillion?

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:26:18 -0400

Is Health Care Reform Worth $1.6 Trillion?:

boomshockalocka:

A price tag of $1.6 trillion seems immense if one contemplates the figure in the abstract. It is, however, only about 4 percent of the total cumulative health spending of $40 trillion, the amount government actuaries now project for the decade from 2010 to 2020. That is also less than the 6 to 7 percent that total national health spending has increased each year in the past decade.

E.J. Dionne on the politics of the Supreme Court

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 11:28:13 -0400

E.J. Dionne on the politics of the Supreme Court

How Franken and Coleman each wait for the ruling

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:59:00 -0400

Most days, Norm Coleman reports to work as an adviser to the Republican Jewish Coalition. He also attends meetings, makes speeches, stays in touch with former Senate colleagues, squeezes in a little fishing up at his lake cabin. And he waits.

Most days, Al Franken dives into briefing books and tries to get up to speed on everything from the biggest issues of the day to the most arcane of Senate rules. He gets more time to cook with his family, hang out with friends, indulge in his passion for reading. But mostly, he, too, waits.

Of course this gives us some insight on how each man thinks the ruling will come out. But I wonder if we can extrapolate our inference from these actions to judge if Coleman will appeal or not. I mean, would Norm really be going up to Backus to fish if he was expecting to appeal to the Supreme Court, knowing that the state ruling should come any day?

Obama's sound messaging on healthcare reform

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:59:00 -0400

President Obama and ABC’s Jake Tapper had a good back-and-forth at today’s Rose Garden presser. Tapper asked a tough question and the president gave a sound answer. I guess I was caught by it because right now I’m reading Eric Alterman’s Sound and Fury, a book which will make you desperate about the state of American journalism (if you already weren’t). So this is nice to see.

via Jonathan Cohn at TNR:

I thought the most interesting exchange came after ABC’s Jake Tapper asked a question about Obama’s pledge that nobody would have to give up their health insurance if reform passed. As Tapper explained,

if the government is offering a cheaper health care plan, then lots of employers will want to have their employees covered by that cheaper plan, which will not have to be for-profit, unlike private plans, and may, possibly, benefit from some government subsidies, who knows. And then their employees would be signed up for this public plan, which would violate what you’re promising the American people, that they will not have to change health care plans if they like the plan they have.

Tapper’s question was more narrow than it had to be. The real issue here isn’t simply about a public plan. If private plans made available through the insurance exchange are more financially attractive than the plans employers offer on their own, then you could have the same problem—people fleeing employer-sponsored covearge to opt for these new plans. And it’s always possible that if enough people leave an employer’s plan, that employer will stop offering it.

The issue is very much on the minds of Capitol HIll reformers. And while there are various ways to mitigate this problem—some better than others—over the long run it’s quite possible there’d be some, gradual migration from current employer plans over to plans offered through the exchange. (Again, that’s true whether or not there’s a public option in the exchange.)

But Obama gave what I considered the proper response, at least on substantive grounds: First, that nobody should have to give up their doctors and hospitals, which is what people care about most; second, that some people are going to lose current coverage because that’s how the system works now. Premiums are constantly going up, employers are constantly switching plans. The key is whether government makes that problem worse, either by hastening the shift or dumping people into inferior plans.

…there going to be employers right now, assuming we don’t do anything—let’s say that we take the advice of some folks who are out there and say, “Oh, this is not the time to do health care. We can’t afford it. It’s too complicated. Let’s take our time,” et cetera.

So let’s assume that nothing happened. I can guarantee you that there’s the possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they’re not going to end up having the same health care they have. Because what’s going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions. We’ve got to raise premiums on our employees. In some cases, we can’t provide health insurance at all.

And so there are going to be a whole set of changes out there. That’s exactly why health reform is so important.

For my own yeoman part, I think the president frames the issue in exactly the right way with this kind of answer. For one, he gets nearly all healthcare policyholders on board by raising the specter of costs rising to prohibitive levels. And then he nudges them down his path in arguing that because things are going to change so radically anyway, we might as well reform things to make that change a good one. Putting Americans and Congress in a mindset that change is inevitable not only will bolster the 72 percent majority that already favor healthcare reform, it takes away from the table those fringers who want to stall any attempt at reform. I’d score this one for the president.

House Republicans and President Ahmadinejad: both victims of Obama’s soft hardball

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:37:42 -0400

House Republicans and President Ahmadinejad: both victims of Obama’s soft hardball:

A crosspost from the What Is Change? blog at Scoop44

The Left's Laffer Curve? - The Plank

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 10:54:45 -0400

The Left's Laffer Curve? - The Plank :

Jonathan Chait thoroughly dismantles a healthcare reform-Laffer curve comparison made by Megan McArdle

The stimulus's bittersweet gift to public transit

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 01:07:00 -0400

The stimulus's bittersweet gift to public transit:

via ProPublica:

Federal stimulus funds have swooped in to prevent service cuts to healthcare and education, but no such remediation has been granted to public transit. Transit systems nationwide are getting billions for new buses and trains. According to the language of the stimulus bill, however, the money can’t be spent to run them — to pay for operating costs like wages and fuel. Although national mass-transit ridership is at a 50-year high, a recent survey by the American Public Transportation Association found that 90 percent of transit agencies have cut service or raised fares.

(via boomshockalocka) This cannot be shared with too many...

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 23:41:57 -0400

(via boomshockalocka)

This cannot be shared with too many people. When half of Republicans want a public option, it’s high time for reform.

Monica Crowley, you sure are one very evil goblin!

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 01:22:00 -0400

[From whence the title came]

Are they still called crocodile tears when they’re covering up for something else? Monica Crowley goes after President Obama for not intervening in Iran, and when the rest of the McLaughlin Group laughs at her, knowing that she can hardly cover up her desire for the United States to go to war with them, pseudo-righteously invokes the plight of the Iranian people in defense. This from the woman who has spent entire columns disparaging the moral worth of their religion.

Co-opting a movement to form your own agenda is common in domestic and sometimes international politics. But couldn’t Crowley give it a break? If she stepped back for a moment and truly examined the neoconservative position—which is covertly and opportunistically co-opting the revolutionary message to force war with their country—she’d be ashamed of herself. At least I’d hope she’d be.

Also: Sullivan via Brzezinski on neocon blabbery

DC summer reading list

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:08:00 -0400

Like this

Soon enough your blogger will be en route to our nation’s capital, where he will join the ranks of the loathsome Hill intern. To help him experience that which this great city offers, he’s looking for some District/political-type books to read, to help give him context and also to refresh his mindgears in between his academic summer reading list.

Here’s a few I’m looking to start with. Tweet your suggestions—novels, biographies, ethnographies, poetry, essays, anything—to @graisonhc or email them to graison@uchicago.edu.

Sound and Fury, by Eric Alterman

Dog Days, by Ana Marie Cox

Supreme Courtship, by Christopher Buckley

Renegade, by Richard Wolffe

Education reform: should America specialize earlier?

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:08:00 -0400

John McWhorter waxes reformist on the future of American education:

I see nothing disturbing in an alternate universe where most students of what we now think of as freshman age are, instead, out in the world learning to ply their trade—in an office, workshop, or conservatory. Instead, most of them spend six years after tenth grade gamely tolerating several dozen courses, most with only the vaguest relationship to the jobs they will seek—or who they will be as people. Is this really the way we would do things if we were building from the ground up? […] Think of the money that would be freed up for education at younger ages, which almost all seem to agree we need to provide more of.

McWhorter has a point. We already know that each dollar spent on early childhood education pays back ten. I’m guessing that forcing Jane College to take Intro to Chem so she can get a business degree (which she’s pursuing only because she knows that BA/BS looks better on a resume than a tech school degree) has not done the same. So, from an efficiency standpoint, it’s hard to argue against the need for such reform.

That said, I can’t help but think of how different my own education would have been under such a system. I would never have been a literature major if I hadn’t had the time to develop an interest in the humanities in the latter two years of high school and my first year of college. Today that interest shapes much of my thinking and my aspirations. What if I wouldn’t have had the time to develop that passion?

My qualm: our education system already has enough trouble teaching critical thinking skills and instilling a passion to learn in its students. Would forcing students to choose a career path at sixteen help fix that?

Proponents of such radical reform have to mount a huge burden of proof to answer that. Which is good. Because the consequences of this policy reach far beyond the economic. More important things are stake.

"I continue to be a little bit astonished by how little attention the political establishment is..."

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:47:00 -0400

“I continue to be a little bit astonished by how little attention the political establishment is giving to the implications of the routinization of a 60-vote supermajority requirement for all Senate business. This is a very new “tradition” in American governance, it goes against everyone’s common understanding of how democratic procedures are supposed to work, and there’s very little reason to believe that the results will be beneficial in the long run. The fact that the Democrats currently hold 58-59 Senate seats is, I think, to some extent clouding people’s thinking about this. It’s quite rare for either party to have a majority that large. And the implication of the currently evolving norm is that a new president with a 54 or 55 copartisans in the Senate could find himself completely unable to confirm vast numbers of subcabinet nominees, rendering the country essentially ungovernable.”

- Yglesias on Ambinder on the disturbing trend of holding up presidential nominees to force the ruling party to waste legislative energy.

Snapshot!

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:08:57 -0400

You’ve probably already come across the figures, but in case not, First Read has the latest of public opinion on the politics of healthcare reform:

Almost three-quarters (73%) of Americans trust doctors to make the right decisions regarding reform. The Obama administration seems to understand this, given the president’s outreach to the American Medical Association. A majority — 58% — trust Obama to make those decisions.

But Congress seems to have its work cut out for it, especially the GOP. More Americans trust pharmaceutical (40%) and insurance (35%) companies to reform the health-care system than congressional Republicans (34%).

Congressional Democrats get somewhat better numbers (42%), but certainly nothing to brag about.

The inspiration and guiding principles of The ParallAXE, embodied

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:32:15 -0400