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Grassley tells constituent: If you want good health insurance, ‘go work for the government.’

By Faiz Shakir on Jul 3, 2009 at 9:40 pm

During a townhall in Waukon, IA Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) was asked by a constituent of his: “Why is your insurance so much cheaper than my insurance and so better than my insurance?” When Grassley struggled to explain the details of his own health care plan, the elderly man followed up, “Okay, so how come I can’t have the same thing you have?” Grassley said, “You can. Just go work for the federal government.” Watch it:

Grassley has been at the forefront of railing against Obama’s health care plan, declaring, “We need to make sure that there’s no public option.” As Igor Volsky notes, there is an irony in government workers like Grassley complaining about “government-sponsored health care.” If Grassley wants to stand on principle, he could abandon his government-sponsored insurance and try his luck in the individual health insurance market.

Politics

Did an embezzlement scandal force Sarah Palin to resign?

By Faiz Shakir on Jul 3, 2009 at 8:47 pm

palinMax Blumental reports on The Daily Beast that Sarah Palin may have quit her job today because she was trying to avert a major, yet-to-be-disclosed corruption scandal. The gist of the rumor is that an Alaska building company called Spenard Building Supplies (SBS) was awarded a contract by Palin to build a hockey arena in Wasilla, AK, and in return, SBS helped construct Palin’s home:

Many political observers in Alaska are fixated on rumors that federal investigators have been seizing paperwork from SBS in recent months, searching for evidence that Palin and her husband Todd steered lucrative contracts to the well-connected company in exchange for gifts like the construction of their home on pristine Lake Lucille in 2002. The home was built just two months before Palin began campaigning for governor, a job which would have provided her enhanced power to grant building contracts in the wide open state.

SBS has close ties to the Palins. The company has not only sponsored Todd Palin’s snowmobile team, according to the Village Voice’s Wayne Barrett, it hired Sarah Palin to do a statewide television commercial in 2004.

Though Todd Palin told Fox News he built his Lake Lucille home with the help of a few “buddies,” according to Barrett’s report, public records revealed that SBS supplied the materials for the house. While serving as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin blocked an initiative that would have required the public filing of building permits—thus momentarily preventing the revelation of such suspicious information.

Just months before Palin left city hall to campaign for governor, she awarded a contract to SBS to help build the $13 million Wasilla Sports Complex. The most expensive building project in Wasilla history, the complex cost the city an addition $1.3 million in legal fees and threw it into severe long-term debt. For SBS, however, the bloated and bungled project was a cash cow.

Alaska bloggers have reported in recent weeks that “a long simmering embezzelment/IRS scandal is still being looked at by the feds.” In her press conference today, Palin asked the public to “trust me with this decision and know that it is no more politics as usual.” But she also bemoaned “political operatives” who have “descended on Alaska” to investigate “all sorts of frivolous ethics violations.” Palin said this “politics of personal destruction” was one of the key motivating factors behind her decision today.

Update

Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore writes, “For weeks the rumors of a criminal investigation against the governor have been brewing. They are rumors, but are swirling fresh again with Palin’s resignation. I’m holding my breath for the other ‘Naughty Monkey’ to drop.”

Climate Progress

Palin for Prez? Alaska gov to step down, cash in, and misinform public on energy and climate

By Joe Romm on Jul 3, 2009 at 7:18 pm

Who do you think will be the GOP’s presidential nominee in 2012?

“If I had to guess, we just saw the opening statement of the 2012 campaign.”

That’s conservative pundit Bill Kristol, calling into Fox News after the only governor who can see Russia when she stands on a really, really tall building announced she is quitting her job in a few weeks.

polar-bear-tongue.jpegAnd why not?  Top GOP contenders for 2012 are dropping like adulterous, love-sick flies — and let’s not forget “Eruptions of know-nothingism from conservative savior Bobby Jindal.”

And let’s certainly not forget this post-election Rassmussen poll about the woman who wears a polar bear pin even though she is working overtime to wipe the species out:  “64% of GOP voters say Palin is their top choice for 2012, 69% say Palin helped McCain.”

So here’s a little Palin primer on energy and climate:

Read more

Yglesias

More Stimulus

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 3, 2009 at 5:22 pm

Paul Krugman sounds the alarms about the need for additional stimulus, though he recognizes the political obstacles:

So getting another round of stimulus will be difficult. But it’s essential. [...] So here’s my message to the president: You need to get both your economic team and your political people working on additional stimulus, now. Because if you don’t, you’ll soon be facing your own personal 1937.

Given the political obstacles, I worry about the wisdom of framing it this way. The funds appropriated in ARRA are only now beginning to flow, and the pace will increase over the next few months. A new political campaign for new stimulus couldn’t possibly produce new legislation—much less new actual expenditures—for quite a long time now. So while I’m not 100 percent up to speed on the mechanics of this, it seems to me that the best thing to do is probably to try to achieve additional stimulus through the regular congressional appropriations process that’s going to need to move forward over the next several months one way or the other. Just have congress take some useful programs that are appropriated at less than their authorized level, and jack up the appropriations.

Yglesias

Palin Resigning

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 3, 2009 at 4:17 pm

Apparently wants explicit permission to neglect the people of Alaska in order to seek the presidency.

My friend Emily Thorson has done research indicating that the Palin pick as VP was a political disaster without precedent in the history of politics. Conventional wisdom is that VP picks don’t matter, since there’s never been evidence that they matter, but it seems that Palin did matter and in a bad way.

Update

Nope, now she’s saying she’s out of politics for good.

Yglesias

Maximizing GDP or Maximizing Employment

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 3, 2009 at 4:02 pm

Here’s a good point from Mark Thoma and Pavlina Tchernevna about fiscal stimulus. If what you want to do is increase the budget deficit by some amount to decrease unemployment, the most efficient way to do that on a dollar-per-dollar basis is to spend the funds employing the unemployed people on public projects of some kind. But though this is a highly efficient way of getting people into jobs it’s not at all the most efficient overall allocation of the money. But that in turn means that if you spend a lot of time and energy trying to design your stimulus to be efficient in the sense of getting real value for your money, that you almost certainly won’t be getting the most employment bang for your buck.

A stimulus designer, in other words, faces a choice at the margin between maximizing GDP and maximizing employment. And when constructing ARRA both congress and the administration tended to choose GDP. Over time of course GDP growth will lead to employment growth. But as we know, there are substantial lags in this process and perhaps a case to be made that it makes more sense to do things the other way ’round. Certainly one concern I have with regard to the tangible infrastructure projects that ARRA is funding is that the administration’s zeal to avoid anything that looks like “waste” is itself creating a wasteful level of delay and waste-monitoring, when it would make more sense to just plunge ahead and get projects out the door.

Politics

Gov. Sarah Palin Quits Her Job

By Ben Armbruster on Jul 3, 2009 at 4:00 pm

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) announced this morning from her home in Wasilla that she will not be seeking re-election and that she will be stepping down in a few weeks. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell will be inaugurated as Alaska’s governor on July 25. A local NBC affiliate reports that “there was no immediate word as to why she will resign, though speculation has been rampant that the former vice presidential candidate is gearing up for a run at the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.” Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox News yesterday that Palin “is not a serious candidate for the presidency.” “You cannot sustain a campaign of platitudes and clichés over a year and a half if you’re running for the presidency,” he said.

After running through her accomplishments as governor during the announcement, Palin said, “This success I am proud to take credit, for hiring the right people.” She said she decided to “veto” those “stimulus dollars” because “some of those dollars would harm Alaska and they harm America.” “So that Alaska may progress, I will not seek re-election as governor,” she said, adding, “I’ve determined it’s best to transfer the authority of governor to Lieutenant Governor Parnell.” Watch it (note the video feed cut out before Palin finished her statement):

Update

Announcing her resignation, Palin assailed “political operatives” who “descended on Alaska” after her VP nomination and added that fighting ethics violations allegations ever since “hasn’t been cheap.” She also said she is looking at “a half a million dollars in legal bills,” calling it “pretty insane.” See Palin’s full statement here.


Update

,Calling into Fox News after the announcement, Bill Kristol said, “If I had to guess, we just saw the opening statement of the 2012 campaign.”

Later writing on the Weekly Standard’s blog, Kristol digs in:

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It’s an enormous gamble – but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she’s freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues – and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she’ll take a hit for leaving the governorship early – but how much of one? She’s probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.


Update

,Palin tweets: “We’ll soon attach info on decision to not seek re-election… this is in Alaska’s best interest, my family’s happy… it is good, stay tuned”


Update

,MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports:

“Talking to people who are very close to Sarah Palin, I have been told that she has told her supporters that she is out of politics, period. She is fed up with politics. She doesn’t like her life. She feels like she has to raise her family. She’s sick of the commute from Wasilla to the capital and she really does not want to run for higher office. This is not the case where she is stepping down in order to figure the way for a presidential run. In fact, she has told some of her biggest backers in the national Republican Party that they are free to choose other candidates for 2012.”


Update

,Palin political adviser Fred Malek said that Palin isn’t ruling out a future run for office, and he expects her to help other Republicans raise money. “She’s not going to go hide in a cave,” Malek said in a telephone interview. “She’ll continue to be a major friend and force for Republican figures in this country.”


Update

,Alaska Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell responds: “It is with a heavy heart that I hear these words.”


[updat

Culture

Hollinger Makes the Case for Artest

By Matthew Yglesias on Jul 3, 2009 at 2:28 pm

I expressed some doubts as to whether exchanging Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest really makes the Lakers better. John Hollinger makes the case that he is:

At small forward, L.A. mostly needs a floor spacer, and as far as floor-spacing ability goes, Artest is superior to Ariza — he shot 39.9 percent on 3s last season, Ariza 31.9 percent. [...] Overall, Artest isn’t as efficient as Ariza offensively because he tends to force terrible shots, but that’s likely to be less of a problem in a system in which he’s the fourth option behind Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum. Additionally, he’s a good passer who might see his assist rate bump significantly in L.A.

Basically the conjecture here is that rather than play in LA as he played in Houston (a guy who shoots more than Ariza, but does so less efficiently), Artest will start playing like a different guy who shoots less, but takes most of his shots in the form of highly efficient three pointers. Hollinger also says that Artest’s inferiority as a rebounder will be compensated for by his superiority as an on-the-ball defender.

Neither argument strikes me as clearly wrong, but I don’t think either is clearly correct. At the end of the day, the facts that Ariza is younger and less crazy seem like controlling tie-breakers to me.

Climate Progress

How I learned to stop worrying and love the blogosphere

By Joe Romm on Jul 3, 2009 at 2:15 pm

Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The debate over Waxman-Markey reminds me of what I love most about blogging.

No, it’s not what you think, it’s not the chance to be snarky.  I don’t need the blogosphere for that.

No, what I like about the blogosphere is that it ultimately drives a precision in language and a clarity of thought because it is filled with people like The Talented Mr. Pielke, people who are too clever by half [or is that half clever?], people who are ready at a moment’s notice to spin some slightly ambiguous molehill of phrase into a mountainous assault on you, people whose primary blog, the ironically-named “Prometheus,” just died – let us pause for a moment of silence … and weekend of celebration, barbecue, and fireworks.

The problem arises for many reasons, such as malicious mischief, but here I’m going to focus on just one — the generally humorless nature of the global warming deniers and delayers.

My father, a lifelong newspaper editor known for his sense of humor, always said that no matter how blatant the humor he might use, some reader would inevitably take it literally and write him an angry letter.  I have endeavored to address that problem here with the “Humor” category — but that doesn’t work for small bits of humor in an otherwise serious post.

So for the first time ever — and I hope the last — I’m going to explain two jokes for the sake of those cheerless cheerleaders for climate chaos, and their head cheerleader [jeerleader?], The Talented Mr. Pielke (Jr).

Read more

Health

Why Comparative Effectiveness Research Will Enhance Personalized Medicine

By Guest Blogger on Jul 3, 2009 at 2:02 pm

Our guest blogger is Michael Rugnetta, a Research Assistant to Jonathan Moreno for the Progressive Bioethics Initiative.

cerpillThe roadmap for comparative effectiveness research has become much clearer and detailed these past few days with the release of two new reports. One comes from the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies and the other comes from HHS’s Federal Coordinating Committee for Comparative Effectiveness Research. The IOM released a list of 100 health topics for the Obama administration to prioritize as it spends $1.1 billion in stimulus funds dedicated to CER. More importantly, the Federal Coordinating Committee itself has stated in its report to the President and the Congress that CER should “complement the trend in medicine to develop personalized medicine,” and that it will be “an important partner in helping to bring about this new level of medical effectiveness, personalization, and innovation.” This bold vision of personalized medical innovation based on “patient-centered, pragmatic, ‘real world’ research,” clearly dwarfs the feeble criticisms of CER aired by conservatives in last week’s HELP Committee markup of the “Affordable Health Choices Act.”

While the act incorporates CER as part of its health reform agenda, there is another piece of legislation that will establish a dedicated, rigorously-organized federal Institute for CER.

Formerly known as the “Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute,” the creation of this federal body depends on the passage of the “Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Act,” (S. 1213) sponsored by Senators Baucus and Conrad. Upon a close reading of the bill, it is evident that the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute will not just be another meaningless chunk of bureaucracy as its critics claim. The Institute’s goal will not be to simply spit out generic guidelines that your doctor must follow “or else.” Rather, the Institute has been designed to ramp up medical innovation for the common good by championing a new era of personalized medicine.

Taking a close look at the bill there is plenty of language about “evaluating and comparing the clinical effectiveness, risks, and benefits” of various tests, treatments, and devices. More importantly, the bill upholds a commitment to doing the best kind of comparative effectiveness research by making it personalized and reaching out to subpopulations. The bill charges the Institute with conducting “research and evidence synthesis that considers variations in patient subpopulations.” The bill builds upon this by later explaining what “subpopulations” means specifically:

“racial and ethnic minorities, women, age, and groups of individuals with different comorbidities, genetic and molecular subtypes, or quality of life preferences.” This also means that the institute will “include members of such subpopulations as subjects in the research as feasible and appropriate.”

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