Join me. I've been boycotting the Post since 1973.
I grew up reading the Post every day. These days, if I come across it while visiting my sister's house, maybe I read the funnies.
Is this a tacit call for a bloody revolution?
2:Not Ezra's fault, but he might have been hired as a replacement.
Klein is more centrist, wonkish, and circumspect than Froomkin;less adversarial and wiser in his connections and networking; a little more flattering to power-brokers (interviews with Max Baucus etc).
Less critical of Obama.
Maybe they'll hire Ben Domenech back.
6: He might already be writing for them. Under a variety of bylines.
I'm gobsmacked by this decision.
I used to think that DeLong's prophecies of doom for the WaPo were over the top (because, whatever its faults, the WaPo continues to employee several individuals whom I know to be first-rate journalists), but I'm slowly coming around to his point of view. Whether it survives as a business enterprise is another question (if there if room in the marketplace for daily print newspaper anywhere, Washington is likely one of those places), but it might well be doomed as a journalistic enterprise.
tristero on the Froomkin firing.
Some nuanced irresponsible speculation from me:
"other than WH pressure, which seems unlikely" ...t
Well, it can be about access to 2nd and 3rd rank administration officials. Froomkin could say he doesn't need it, but that in itself would be so in opposition to Village practice as to be suspicious and incomprehensible.
Ezra Klein has been very very good, and has earned his position. Compare his work on Hardball to MY's appearances on television. EK is just a good fit.
There is also a matter of blamibg Congress for failures rather than Obama, and where that can't be done, simply be quiet. I would like to think this strategy of deflecting the heat from Obama was aimed at 2010. but as far as I can Obama and the Democratic Party is not trying to elect more progressives, but is perfectly satisfied with more Blue Dogs.
The Health Care coming out of the Senate is a horrowshow. Really really bad Worse than nothing.
bob, only people in Massachusetts are allowed to say "worse than nothing". We have to do something or else we'll just continue down our current disastrous path.
5 trillion to the insurance companies (mandates) while increasing costs to the middleclass will just bubbleup finance and guarantee another economic crash. I think another bubble is part of, if not the main, purpose.
Cuts in Medicare/Medicaid, just assuming new efficiencies, will reduce coverage.
I think what we will end up with is increased coverage for those who use it least, 20-40 somethings between jobs etc. Obama's base will be pleased.
Just graft for finance.
Actually, I'm in utter political despair right now. Health reform looks like an utter disaster, and I'm seeing and anticipating an awful lot of failure on an awful lot of other fronts. I've been trying to repeat to myself the mantra - Obama knows what he's doing - but decreasingly certain that it's true, that it matters, and that I want him to achieve what he wants to.
Most of my disgust, of course, is directed at the Senate. I can't believe how destructive an institution it has become. Oh, and the people of Maine disgust me. Collins or Snowe I could accept, but both? Fucking worthless cowards (the Sens, not Mainers).
12: Yeah. So far, we've gotten "articulate" and not much else.
Most of my disgust, of course, is directed at the Senate.
I just sent a letter to Kay Hagan expressing that if she continued to oppose a public insurance option (NC Blue Corss Blue Shield is enormously powerful here), I would feel it necessary to support a primary challenge next time she was up. I doubt I amount to anything more than a speck of dust compared to the NCBCBS lobbying juggernaut, but I don't know what else to do, really.
And yeah, burning the Senate to the ground would be the most valuable political reform we could possibly enact.
Does anyone have an informed perspective (yeah, I know, wrong comments section) on the chances that the Dems will re-insert the public option in conference committee? I suppose a lot depends on who the conferees from the Senate would be (get well soon, Teddy!). In any event, I believe that the pro-reform side is very confident of having 51 votes to approve a conference report. The GOP repeatedly ratfucked the Dems in conference committee 2002-2006 and accomplished some serious mischief via this route.
15: I think that's my vain hope. Does anyone know what Teddy's able to do from home?
15:Absolutely gonna try to reinsert in conference.
Then we will see who is more stubborn and who fights harder. There are I think a few dozen House Democrats who say they wont vote for a bill without a public option.
It's a little early, but I think it will move quickly. A couple months.
Ezra Klein & Firedoglake are the blogs I'm watching on this. And who they link to. And OpenLeft, who are doing some organizing.
Hamsher & crew are getting really good.
I really wish that people would stop trying to cut the deficit and follow pay-go rules. Why can't we just treat health care expansion as part of the stimulus? We'll get to cost containment later.
"follow" s probably be "following."
Who are the members of the conference committee and, for future reference, what's the easiest way to go about finding out that information?
Who are the members of the conference committee and, for future reference, what's the easiest way to go about finding out that information?
They will be appointed by the leadership of the respective houses, once competing versions of the legislation have been passed in both houses. So it's going to come down to Harry Reid, which doesn't exactly fill me with optimism.
Why can't we just treat health care expansion as part of the stimulus? We'll get to cost containment later.
As much as I'd like to see that, the stimulus has been pretty tightly defined as temporary spending, and health care wouldn't fit into that definition.
it's going to come down to Harry Reid
Head. Desk. Bangbangbangbangbang.
22: Sure, we'll temporarily increase it massively without new taxes, then we'll raise taxes somewhat and we'll also bring spending under control.
21: Once they're appointed, where is the information found?
23: So true, Apo, so true.
Who do you all think would be a better majority leader?
Sanders would be dreamy, but I'm doubtful of his ability to effectively twist arms.
27: Stanley, Sanders is not a Democrat. Furthermore, I was thinking about people who are realistic candidates.
Head. Desk. Bangbangbangbangbang.
This is going to be standard treatment for a lot of conditions under the reformed healthcare system. Cheap, simple to administer, occasionally effective. Who could possibly ask for anything more?
Who do you all think would be a better majority leader?
Durbin
In ten years, Sheldon Whitehouse (from RI).
27: Stanley, Sanders is not a Democrat.
I bet he'd become a Dem if they let him be leader, but apo's right: he'd probably get rolled way too easily. And, more to your point, I wasn't being serious, BG, even if I agree with Sanders on a ton of issues.
Ezra Klein riffs off the Finance Committee's outline. As he says, there is a way to go.
Included are the comments, where the numbers are crunched and the implications followed. This is complicated stuff.
The comments are important. Ezra says Hey, 65% coverage when you don't have any is terrific" No, see the mandate has reduced my income, and 35% of quarter million dollar operations leaves me as bankrupt as 100%.
if you make $31500 you wil get no subsidies and be forced to buy coverage. Your premiums alone run about 6000 (19% income), Add in co-pays, deductables, and an unfortunate out of network emergency room visit you could easily be spending over 25% of your income on health care....jonwa
I don't know if jonwa's numbers are right, or what the final bill will look like. I don't have one source to recommend, I don't trust anybody, but read everybody. People like EK & MY have reasons to accept what Obama signs. A loss will be politically horrible. Being on the wrong side could wreck a career.
I tend to trust more those to the left of Obama who criticize the plans. There are a few who might just want to hurt Obama, but most of us just want a good plan.
33 cont
I don't know if the 31k is before or after taxes. Presume after.
8000 a year out of pocket. A bad operation, my 35% costs me a 100k. Interest & a little principal means 10k a year + 8k premium = 18k a year from 31.
Who are we kidding?
And qui bono? Finance.
My biggest concern about Obama, especially once it came down to him versus Clinton, was that he would get rolled by Congress. For chrissake, dude, you have a motherfucking mandate.
The R's of course have a great soundbite line on the public option: "they want to insert a bureaucrat between you and your doctor." How about "we'll give you an option to get rid of the rapacious private insurance company between you and your doctor"? Probably not.
Robert Reich had a great commentary on the public option on NPR on (I think) Wednesday. I'd find the link, but I need to get my ass back to work.
Actually, I'm in utter political despair right now.
I feel this way, too, and I just chalked it up to the cabin fever of maternity leave, but now I wonder if it's really just the patheticness of the news out there that I'm responding to.
36:Robert Reich is a good guy, and helps me define what "good guy" means.
What's particularly galling to me is this notion that a "bipartisan" plan is important. Hey America, one party (well, one and a half, really) has spent the past few decades determinedly blocking anything that might look like a reasonable health care system. Any compromising with them only gets you a shittier system. Gahhh.
Brad DeLong, who might know, in a longer, tangential to topic piece on Christy Romer and Deficit Reduction comes up with this:
The Obama administration wants, as OMB Director Peter Orszag explains every hour on the hour, to balance America's long-run budget by reducing the extraordinary economic inefficiency of the American health-care system via health care reform.
BdL's commenters, some names I respect, scream. Example:Paul Lukasiak
Bottom line here is that absent fundamental change in the health care delivery system (i.e. 'single payer') there will be no significant savings in health care. And not only is Obama opposed to single payer, he doesn't even support the kind of "public option" that would lead to a single payer system if properly administered. Hence, Orzag's 'deficit reduction' strategy is just not credible.
Yes, it is credible Paul. Reduce Medicare/Medicaid and "reform" expenditures without the gains in efficiency. Result:lower deficits and dead people. Precedent:Welfare Reform. I wonder how those people are doing now.
I just read the Frances Perkins biography, and it made me think that Obama is trying to emulate FDR with all this bipartisan business.
I thought that the book was okay until the end of it when I realized that Downey was a member of the Village. Liberals didn't appreciate Perkins' efforts to clean house by ridding the governments of Commies in the post-war period in a moderate fashion.
The most irritating part was the line where she wrote, "in July 1945 the British people showed its traditional ingratitude toward its great men and refused to reelect Prime Minister Churchill."
And qui bono? Finance.
cui bono. "To whose good".
There is a lot of momentum in the Senate behind Conrad's proposal to replace the public option with non-profit cooperatives, along the lines of the rural electric cooperatives. That is what the Finance Committee is looking at.
39: I will always love Robert Reich because in his memoir of working in the Clinton administration he has a fantasized conversation with Alan Greenspan in which they set forth their policy differences, and Greenspan closes by snapping "Go suck on a pickle, you Bolshevik dwarf." Anyone who daydreams about Greenspan calling him a Bolshevik is okay in my book.
Regarding health care: Beaudrot counsels against panic.
46: The final bill will be something in between; my guess, it will be the Senate bill plussed up a tiny bit, perhaps with a somewhat hobbled public plan, or one limited to individuals under a certain income threshold.
This isn't cause for panic?
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana plans to take a break from the grind of crafting a health care overhaul to serve as a Democratic rainmaker with a few of his friends along the Madison, Gallatin, and Yellowstone rivers in the Treasure State this weekend.Lobbyists and political supporters will get their chance to cast fishing lines and drive golf balls with the Senate's top tax writer at his Fly-Fishing & Golfing in the Big Sky event. The cost is $2,500 per person, $5,000 for a political action committee. And for the same price, more fun lies ahead at Camp Baucus, the summer camp he holds for supporters and their families in his home state between July 31 and August 2nd.
From CQ today. Hopefully Charlie Carp can go along to "Camp Baucus". Or we could take up a collection to send Emerson and McManus.
Or we could take up a collection to send Emerson and McManus.
Just one or the other. If we send them both they'll probably wind up arguing with each other the whole time.
If we send them both they'll probably wind up arguing with each other the whole time.
Nah, it'll be like a buddy movie. Sure they'll argue when the kayak overturns in the white water rapids, but when the big action scene comes they'll be shoulder-to-shoulder.
45 is excellent. I'll have to read his memoir.
52 - I'm thinking I want the audiobook, just so I can hear that line in Reich's voice. He does have a nice voice. For a Bolshevik dwarf.
BLOG CABIN
Scene 17
Int. night, a luxurious log cabin at Camp Baucus. EMERSON and MCMANUS frantically pile furniture against a door with a large hole in it. A GRIZZLY BEAR snout and paw alternately poke through the door.
EMERSON: Dammit Bob! I told you we shouldn't have tracked all that honey in here after we upset the bee hive on Nancy Pelosi!
MCMANUS: And I told YOU we should have brought my dogs along!
EMERSON: We wouldn't even be in this mess if you hadn't insisted on moving out of the main lodge.
MCMANUS: Listen, you're the one who wouldn't take the complimentary .30-06 that came with the gift bag from the NRA seminar.
EMERSON: Not that again! You're as bad as those economists who hassled us down by the pool yesterday.
MCMANUS: Ha! Maybe if you hadn't spent so much time yelling at Harry Reid about analytical philosophy we could have gotten our margaritas and been gone before they even showed up.
EMERSON: Look, what does that even have to do with the fact that there's a grizzly bear about to break down this door?
BOTH: RUN!!!
Exeunt, pursued by a bear
they'll probably wind up arguing with each other the whole time
No, Emerson will yell towards as many lakes/holes as he can that their fundamental assumptions about fish and balls are wrong and that the Populist party in 1878 had a surprisingly efficient method, superior to those of his audience, of whacking balls or capturing fish. Bob will then make a public offer to, for a bucket of bait, garrote Emerson. This offer will be accepted and completed, but bob will be screwed out of his bait. This will cause him to become bitter.
Have you all heard of this guy Hal Luft? He just wrote a book called The Total Cure which looks interesting to me. (God, I sound like a spam bot.)
Cool podcast with him on The Health Care Blog.
Pain Perdu, I'd be very interested to know what you think of it.