Spray painted in red:
— Menu effects and health reform.
— I’m a Tim Geithner apologist, but of the two Finance Ministers who I’ve ever met, the Netherlands’ Wouter Bos is probably closer to my political views; here’s wishing him well in retirement.
— Meanwhile, PvdA is surging in the polls.
— In praise of Caspar Weinberger.
— High school cancels prom to avoid lesbian date.
Fujiya & Miyagi, “Ankle Injuries”.
This week, Christian religious leaders have been criticizing Fox News host Glenn Beck for his controversial remarks that churches that promote social and economic justice are somehow dangerous. “If you have a priest that is pushing social justice, go find another parish,” said Beck. Progressive Christian group Sojourners has even launched a campaign calling on Christians to speak out against Beck.
A story posted on CNN today has a photo of a United Church of Christ congregation in Wantagh, NY that took its message right to the community:
Today, ThinkProgress spoke with Wantagh Memorial Congregational Church Pastor Ronald Garner, who explained that he put the sign up yesterday when he decided that he had to do something more public than just e-mailing Beck:
GARNER: Wantagh Memorial Congregational Church is a very progressive church. We’re open and affirming in our denomination, which means we accept into the full life of our church gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. We are a peace church, and so I just felt that it was a sign that should be in front of our building to say that Mr. Beck’s comments about the social justice being a perversion of the gospel was a total distortion of anybody that’s even given a cursory reading to the words of Jesus. [...]
I feel it was an unwarranted attack on Christians, and I felt like something needed to be said.
The pastor said that a priest in the area who liked the sign originally submitted it to CNN. He added that so far, he has received only positive responses to the church’s message.
Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)
To break the impasse, Democrats have been going back and forth on whether or not to include SAFRA in the same reconciliation package that they plan to use to make fixes to the Senate health care reform bill. Early yesterday, it seemed like such a step was not in the stars, but today, it’s looking more likely that SAFRA will indeed be included in the health care fix.
Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) has apparently had his concerns assuaged, while both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA) said that including SAFRA is a go. “This is critical to passing this in the caucus,” said Miller. “People have made it very clear they want to take this home.”
There are plenty of good reasons for putting SAFRA in the reconciliation bill. For starters, only one reconciliation bill can be passed per year, so leaving SAFRA out means exposing it to an almost inevitable filibuster later or waiting until next year’s budget resolution to include it again. Second, as Politico pointed out, the savings in SAFRA help the overall package meet reconciliation requirements:
The Senate parliamentarian notified Democratic leaders that, in order to meet the reconciliation requirements, both the Senate health and finance committees would need to produce $1 billion in deficit savings each over the next 10 years, Conrad said. With health care alone, the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would not be able to show the items within its jurisdiction save at least $1 billion. By inserting the education package, the committee would satisfy the reconciliation instructions, Conrad said.
With student debt at a record high of $23,200 per student, and the nation facing budget deficits for the next decade, it’s inexcusable to continue the current student loan system, which is nothing more than corporate welfare. The federal government gives billions every year to private companies to originate loans and then guarantees loan repayment up to 97 percent, even though the government can originate loans more efficiently and for less money. For every $100 lent by the banks, the cost to the government is about $13.81 in subsidies and defaults. The same amount lent directly by the government costs $3.85.
The lenders and their supporters in Congress argue that SAFRA constitutes an unprecedented “Washington takeover” of student lending and that the reform will kill jobs in the lending industry. As I pointed out over at AOL News today, both of these claims are bunk. The present system simply lets lenders pocket tax dollars while adding no value to the loan process.
Last night’s Community recap. I do love that show, but I think it does a pretty uniformly awful job with guest stars. Both Katharine McPhee and Jack Black were really disappointing one-offs.
Marc Ambinder signals that it’s time for the David Petraeus for President speculation to start up again. I continue to view this whole idea as slightly ridiculous, but I’d really sort of like to see the guy run for the GOP nomination. Presumably we’d see Mitt Romney slamming him as soft on terrorism and Petraeus would be slamming Romney for supporting Obama-style socialism on health care. It’d be kind of awesome.
At any rate, just thinking about it is a reminder that one reason these high-level military officers seem like appealing candidates is precisely because they get to be famous media celebrities without engaging in that sort of annoying political cut-and-thrust. But recall that as soon as Wesley Clark became a candidate, he started looking a lot more politician-y than he had before. It would be the same with anyone. Americans have a very low opinion of politics and politicians and people who act like politicians, but in practice the political system requires politicians to act like that. So anyone outside the arena looks appealing until he steps into the arena.
I’ve been arguing that the GOP’s health care proposals would shift the risk and the cost of insurance from the employer and the government to the individual. It’s what Jacob Hacker calls The Great Risk Shift. By relying on high deductible plans in the individual health insurance market and health savings accounts, Republicans are dismantling the kinds of pooling mechanisms that spread risks “across rich, and poor, healthy and sick, able-bodied and disabled, young and old” and shifting more of the economic costs and risks of insurance onto a single individual. That’s the essence of consumer-driven medicine.
Skyrocketing health care costs are already forcing employers to switch into plans with higher deductibles and co-payments and a new survey of employers finds that without significant reform, Americans will move faster towards the conservative health care utopia. A growing number of employers are predicting that unsustainable health care spending will force them to “charge more to cover spouses, tighten eligibility standards for their health plans and dispense financial rewards or penalties based on the results of certain lab tests“:
Meanwhile, employees at many companies can expect significantly higher premiums, deductibles and co-payments…the new survey is a reminder that even people who are satisfied with their insurance plans cannot count on a continuation of the status quo. With or without reform, coverage at big corporations is likely to become less affordable, and it could become more restrictive. [...]
In addition, employers are increasingly moving toward high-deductible plans, which carry lower premiums while leaving workers responsible for higher out-of-pocket expenses. Next year, 12 percent of employers plan to offer only high-deductible coverage, the survey found.
Conservatives have pushed back against health care reform by arguing that most Americans like the insurance they have. And indeed, reform advocates have had a difficult time engaging the insured majority — who feel insulated from the insurance problems of others. But many Americans in employer based coverage are already experiencing the kind of shifts the survey describes and I suspect if reform doesn’t pass this time around, those poll numbers will begin to shift. Nobody actually wants to use the Republican prescription. Especially when they get sick.
The Texas Board of Education has been meeting this week to revise its social studies curriculum. During the past three days, “the board’s far-right faction wielded their power to shape lessons on the civil rights movement, the U.S. free enterprise system and hundreds of other topics”:
– To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”
– The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”
– The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”
– The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”
As the nation’s second-largest textbook market, Texas has enormous leverage over publishers, who often “craft their standard textbooks based on the specs of the biggest buyers.” Indeed, as The Washington Monthly has reported, “when it comes to textbooks, what happens in Texas rarely stays in Texas.”
Following repeated failed attempts to add figures in Hispanic history to the textbooks, one board member, Mary Helen Berlanga, stormed “out of the meeting late Thursday night, saying, ‘They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.’”
Ryan Avent builds on Henry Farrell’s analysis of the Greece bailout situation:
This is how tighter European integration is likely to happen then. Having tied their fates together, European countries can no longer pretend to be indifferent to the success or failure of other euro zone members. Germany is learning now what that means—that it is economically unacceptable to allow troubled member states to fail on their own, and politically and economically unacceptable to kick them out. And so the options are to be drawn reluctantly and repeatedly into bail-outs or to attempt to act pre-emptively to prevent crisis conditions from emerging—which, of course, means a move toward common European fiscal policy, including regular transfers between states as takes place in America.
My Europhile colleague Max Bergmann and I were talking earlier this week about how critics of Europe’s monetary union ought to consider the possibility that the architects of the Euro actually understood what their critics among economists were saying perfectly well. After all, monetary union is now driving closer political integration precisely because of the problematic nature of the monetary union. This may or may not have been an advisable course of action, but I don’t think it was undertaken for narrow economic reasons and so it can’t be properly evaluated through a narrow economic lense. The European integration project is an elite-driven political agenda, and it appears to be benefitting from the recession even though the depth of the economic problems on the continent are in part a consequence of the project itself. It’s a pretty neat trick.
Via Laura Rozen, Israel’s Yediot Ahronoth reported yesterday that Vice President Biden had some very strong words for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu behind closed doors:
People who heard what Biden said were stunned. “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden castigated his interlocutors. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”
The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.
In response, Abe Foxman deployed one of the most serious weapons in the Israel-debate-policeman’s arsenal:
While much of this is understandable, there needs to be some stepping back so that there are no long-term deleterious results from this contretemps. The vice president’s comments in his Tel Aviv University address softening the U.S. response was helpful. Less helpful were his comments that Israel’s announcement on building in East Jerusalem was endangering American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the kind of rhetoric that does exactly what Mr. Biden has studiously avoided doing, linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America’s larger Middle East challenges, and it unnecessarily calls into question Israel’s role as an ally and the impact on American interests. The Mearsheimer and Walts of this world will delight in this kind of criticism of Israel.
You’ll notice that Foxman doesn’t offer an actual counter-argument here, he just criticizes Biden’s “rhetoric” by name-checking the dreaded professors Walt and Mearsheimer, which is the equivalent of sticking his fingers in his ears and shouting “LA LA LA LA!”
Foxman is quite incorrect that Biden has “studiously avoided” linking the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to America’s larger Middle East challenges. Here’s what Biden said his speech at the 2009 American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference:
The continuation of Israeli-Palestinian and Arab-Israeli conflicts strengthen Iran’s strategic position. They give Iran a playing field upon which to extend its influence, sponsor extremist elements, inflame public opinion…
There are many reasons to pursue an end to these conflicts. It gives Israelis peace and security they deserve; to help the Palestinians fulfill their aspirations of an independent and better life; to ease tension in the regions — in this region.
The Iraq Study Group came to a similar conclusion, stating in its 2006 report (pdf) that “The United States cannot achieve its goals in the Middle East unless it deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional instability.”
This is, or should be, unremarkable. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a driver (not the only, but one) of extremism and violence in the region, and thus it’s in the U.S. interest to resolve it. As Israel’s key patron and security guarantor, it also stands to reason that bad behavior by Israel reflects poorly on the U.S., and negatively impacts our ability to achieve our goals.
What is remarkable, though, is how unacceptable this is to Foxman, and how nervous he seems to get over the U.S.-Israel relationship being discussed in such terms. Frankly, I think Foxman should show a bit more confidence in the strength of the U.S.-Israel bond. It can withstand this sort of scrutiny. But there’s no U.S. alliance or relationship — no matter how “special” — that should be above criticism or exempt from rigorous strategic analysis.
Included in both the House and Senate health care reform bills each chamber passed last year is a mandate for individuals to buy health insurance. Offering support for the measure, President Obama has compared the idea to states’ requirements that those who drive cars must purchase auto insurance. “Under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance,” Obama has said.
However, Republicans are strongly opposed to this provision, with many even claiming (wrongly) that the mandate is unconstitutional. Mike Huckabee picked up on this point last night on Fox News. “People don’t want [it],” Huckabee complained. “And 34 different attorney generals across America are prepared to file a lawsuit against the federal government on the constitutional grounds that you cannot require a citizen to purchase something in order to be a citizen.” But then, Huckabee inadvertently made the case for the mandate:
HUCKABEE: No one is required to own or drive a car. A lot of people in New York City where I am right now, they live their whole lives and never own an automobile. So they don’t have to have a car therefore they don’t have to have insurance. You can’t live and breathe without some form of health. If the requirement is that you have to have health insurance, it’s not just you have to have it if you plan to be healthy or you have it if you plan to breathe and inhale and exhale. That’s the difference here.
So yes, driving is a privilege. Not everybody has to drive, but everybody has to live.
Watch it:
What Huckabee so eloquently stated is precisely the point. Those who choose to drive must buy insurance. But we don’t necessarily choose to live. As Huckabee noted, “everybody has to live.” And he’s right, the “difference” is, no one is forcing anyone to drive, but staying alive is an absolute necessity. Therefore, having health insurance is a more cost effective way to satisfy that goal.
The President is a convert to the insurance mandate provision, having opposed it during his run for the presidency in 2008. However, most Republicans are converts to opposing it. For example, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a key player in the Senate’s health care negotiations, once supported the mandate, has cited the very same auto insurance analogy Obama used. But now, due the the GOP’s obstruct-at-all-costs tactics, the Iowa senator is “very reluctant to go along with an individual mandate.”
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