It’s Nice to Know That David Simon Sees the World (At Least Partially) The Same Way I Do

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 25, 2010 at 4:37 pm

At least, about the importance of popular culture, and its significance in his new show, Treme:

This is a story about culture and how American urban culture defines how we live. New Orleans is an extraordinary and unusual culture, but it comes from the same primal forces in American society of immigration and assimilation and non-assimilation and racism and post-racialism that really are the defining characteristics of this melting pot society. What is it about Americans that makes us Americans? The one thing we have unarguably given the world is African-American music. If you walk into a shebeen in South Africa, or whatever version of a bar they have in Kathmandu, if they have a jukebox, you’re going to find some Michael Jackson, some Otis Redding, some John Coltrane. It has gone around the world. That is the essential American contribution to worldwide culture. The combination of African rhythms and the pentatonic scale and European instrumentation and arrangement. That collision of the two happened in a 12-square block area of a city called New Orleans that had a near-death experience in 2005.

I’m still not sure how I think Simon is going to do with Treme, though of course I’m reserving judgment until I get I get a chance to watch the pilot a couple of times. I’m just not sure how you replicate the knowledge of Baltimore that reporting gave Simon; reporting is part of what made Almost Famous great, too, when you think about it, Cameron Crowe knew his stuff. But I’m feeling a bit warmer and fuzzier towards the show knowing that despite his bitterness about journalism, which I’m not sure I always think is accurate or helpful, Simon and I see the power and diffusion of pop culture as important in some of the same ways.

Also, the news that Dominic West’ll probably get a role if there’s a second season is enough to make me commit to the first. What can I say? I’m weak.

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Politics

Rockefeller: ‘The health insurance industry is the shark that sits right below the water.’

By Zaid Jilani on Feb 25, 2010 at 4:23 pm

Today, the White House has been hosting the Bipartisan Health Care Summit, where “the one topic that Democrats keep hammering on over and over is the problem of insurance companies refusing to cover people with preexisting conditions.” For example, during the summit today, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) ripped into the abusive behavior of insurance corporations, saying that the industry “is the shark that sits right below the water”:

ROCKEFELLER: The health insurance industry is the shark that swims just below the water and you don’t see that shark until you feel the teeth of that shark. … This is the way they operate. Nobody has any oversight over them. They’re not under any anti-trust rules. They can do what they want. … This is a rapacious industry that does what it wants.

Watch it:

The “rapacious” behavior that Rockefeller condemns includes raising premiums to increase their profits, denying coverage to women who have had Caesarean section pregnancies, and rescinding coverage of customers for frivolous reasons. Kevin Drum notes that Republican “have been relentlessly trying to talk about everything but this. They’ve barely acknowledged the preexisting conditions problem at all.”

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Yglesias

What It’s All About

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 25, 2010 at 4:01 pm

MSNBC switched away from the health care summit to show a Sweden-Finland hockey match. It was a reminder of what a narrow band of ideas we discuss in the United States. I’ve discussed Swedish health care before, and in Finland they have crazy beliefs like “one of the duties of the public sector is to take care of the health and wellbeing of the population” and therefore “social and health care in Finland is funded primarily by taxation.”

Looking at the slides from the OECD’s health at a glance PowerPoint presentation offers an excellent reminder of what the quest for universal coverage is all about:

This is unmet care defined as “Did not get medical care, missed medical test, treatment or follow-up, did not fill prescription or missed doses.” It’s striking that not only does the US do much worse with regard to poor people, we do much worse than many countries with regard to richer than average people.

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Security

McCain Campaign Calls on Hayworth To Disavow Anti-Immigration Group’s Endorsement

By Andrea Nill Sanchez on Feb 25, 2010 at 4:00 pm

mccain_seat_1006 Earlier this week, the anti-immigrant group, Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), endorsed senatorial candidate and former U.S. representative, J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ). While Hayworth proudly touts ALIPAC’s endorsement on his website, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign claims that it’s nothing to be proud of. James King of the Phoenix News Times reports:

“J.D. Hayworth’s lavish praise for the social theories of noted anti-Semite and xenophobe Henry Ford sparked a major controversy during his losing 2006 campaign, causing many Arizonans to question Mr. Hayworth’s judgment. It is astounding that Mr. Hayworth would today accept the endorsement of a group that the Anti-Defamation League reports is backed by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and anti-Semites. Mr. Hayworth should immediately disavow this group’s support,” says Brian Rogers, the McCain campaign’s Communications Director…

Rogers claims some of the country’s most notorious hate-mongers support the group, including members of the National Socialist Movement and David Duke, a former “Grand Wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan and one-time presidential candidate from Louisiana.

ALIPAC was quick to jump on Rogers and dismiss his comments as “offensive false information.” However, Rogers was simply citing public facts. The Center for New Community has extensively documented ALIPAC’s nativist ties, describing the group as being “characterized by hysterical fear-mongering and xenophobic, anti-Latino conspiracy theories.” The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that ALIPAC “is supported by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, recently designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, and allied with various Minuteman factions.” ADL accuses ALIPAC of promoting “virulent anti- Hispanic and anti-immigrant rhetoric” and “adopting the tactics and rhetoric of racist groups and moving it into the mainstream.” Members of Hayworth’s own Party have pointed out that his anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy platform cost him his House seat in 2006.

While the McCain campaign is wise to highlight Hayworth’s nativist ties, McCain has allowed himself to be intimidated by Hayworth’s hard line immigration views and has moved his own platform further to the right.

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Politics

Companies infused eight lobbyists for every federal lawmaker into the health care debate.

By Amanda Terkel on Feb 25, 2010 at 3:30 pm

A new analysis by the Center for Public Integrity shows that corporate interests attempted to exert an unprecedented amount of influence in the health care debate over the past year. More than “1,750 companies and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists — eight for each member of Congress — to influence health reform bills in 2009.” These groups included 207 hospitals, 105 insurance companies, 85 manufacturing companies, and 745 trade, advocacy, and professional organizations. Overall, “[b]usinesses and organizations that lobbied on health reform spent more than $1.2 billion on their overall lobby efforts.”

In June, Senate Republicans met with health care lobbyists in order to “recruit stakeholders to oppose options such as a government-funded insurance plan and a mandate requiring employers to help pay for heath insurance.” Republicans also requested that health care lobbyists be given at least 72 hours to review any legislative language in the Senate Finance Committee. A recent Center for Responsive Politics analysis found that “federal lobbying soared to record levels last year,” with “about $1.3 million spent on lobbying for every hour that Congress was in session in 2009.”

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Health

Does Obama’s Health Care Plan Really Lower Premiums?

By Igor Volsky on Feb 25, 2010 at 3:15 pm

President Obama and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) got into a bit of a spat about whether or not the Senate health care bill actually reduces health care premiums. Obama conceded that Americans who purchase coverage in the individual market would see a 10-13% premium increase, but explained that they would be paying more for better coverage.

“What the Congressional Budget Office is saying is that if I now have an opportunity to actually buy a decent package inside the exchange that cost me about 10-13 percent more but is actually real insurance, then there are going to be a bunch of people who take advantage of that. So yes, I’m paying 10 to 13% more because instead of buying an apple, I’m getting an orange.” “They’re two different things,” he said.

Watch a compilation:

To be clear, Americans who qualify for subsidies would see very large cost savings. The CBO concluded that premiums will be “56 percent to 59 percent lower, on average than the nongroup premiums charged under current law.” Families will save $100-200 annually. Families purchasing coverage in the small business market could save up to $100 annually and those who seek insurance in the large-group market could save up to $200 annually, the CBO report found. Significantly, the premiums in these new insurance plans would cover a higher percentage of health care expenses (and provide more comprehensive coverage) than what’s currently available in the individual market. As Ezra Klein put it, “[t]he fact that I could buy a nicer car after getting a better job suggests that cars are becoming pricier. The bottom line is that if you’re comparing two plans that are exactly the same, costs go down after reform.”

Under the Senate bill, Americans can also purchase cheaper ‘Bronze-level’ insurance. In fact, another CBO report found that Americans who want to purchase a policy with a higher deductible would pay, on average, approximately $1,000 less that under current law:

Price Of Insurance In Individual Market WITHOUT Reform (2016)	Price of Bronze Plan (2016)	Effect On Premiums
$5,500 Individuals, $13,100 Families	$4,500 – $5,000 Individuals, $12,000 – $12,500 Families	Individuals and families could save up to $1,000 on average.

This Bronze-level policy is rather skimpy. As the budget office explains, the “lower actuarial value would reduce premiums for Bronze plans directly, because the policy would pay for a smaller share of enrollees’ costs for covered services, and indirectly, because enrollees would use slightly fewer or less-expensive services when faced with the higher cost-sharing requirements included in Bronze plans.” Individuals would also face much higher deductibles and co payments. Still, the reformed Bronze policy would have to cover the “essential benefits” specified in the legislation and would likely be more comprehensive than policies available in the existing nongroup marketplace. The affordability credits and out-of-pocket spending caps included in the final reform legislation would also lower costs for Americans between 133%-400% of the federal poverty line.

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Yglesias

Bipartisanship By Alternation

By Matthew Yglesias on Feb 25, 2010 at 3:14 pm

capitol1 1

One odd fixture of an awful lot of the policy debate is that the way you get a policy framework that incorporates ideas from both the right and the left of the political spectrum exclusively through “bipartisan compromise.” Realistically, in both the United States and in other countries, the policy status quo tends to reflect input from both parties because the parties alternate in power. The welfare reform initiative signed by Bill Clinton in 1996, for example, largely reflected the conservative vision. But the Democratic Party performed better in elections in subsequent elections and got a larger share of political power. Consequently, the policy status quo started to evolve in a more left-wing direction. They didn’t undue the core changes made in the original welfare reform, but they did make TANF more generous to legal immigrants and over time have enacted some substantial increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

In perhaps a similar way, the conservative idea of replacing Medicare with a voucher program would be a lot easier to do if liberals first succeeded in creating a workable, well-regulated and subsidized individual insurance market that covers everyone. Conversely, the progressive idea of universal health insurance coverage would be easier to achieve if conservatives first succeeded in their idea of redefining “health insurance” to mean something much less generous.

And if you look at countries with fewer legislative veto points—Canada, Sweden, the UK, whatever—this is what you see. It’s not that one party wins in a götterdamerung-esque showdown and rules the roost forever. Nor is it that programs are created, then repealed, then re-created, then re-repealed over and over again. Instead, the see-saw of political power creates an evolving status quo that incorporates ideas from both the left and right perspectives.

The United States has traditionally had both many veto points and also incredibly lax party discipline. During the historically unusual mid-20th century decline in congressional polarization this created a situation in which we were used to legislation-by-compromise, and control of the congress rarely flipped. Today, thanks to the end of the Solid South, parties are much more polarized and party control of congress is much more competitive. Under the circumstances, it would make much more sense to reduce veto points and pursue a policy dialogue based on alternation of governing agendas rather than the mirage of bipartisanship. After all, why shouldn’t the parties organize themselves into relatively uncompromising vehicles of ideological visions?

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Climate Progress

Boykoff on “Exaggerating Denialism: Media Representations of Outlier Views on Climate Change”

By Joe Romm on Feb 25, 2010 at 3:00 pm

Freudenburg: “Reporters need to learn that, if they wish to discuss ‘both sides’ of the climate issue, the scientifically legitimate “other side” is that, if anything, global climate disruption is likely to be significantly worse than has been suggested in scientific consensus estimates to date.”

Mass media have been a key vehicle by which climate change contrarianism has traveled, according to Maxwell Boykoff, a University of Colorado at Boulder professor and fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, or CIRES.

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Alyssa

I Want a Doctor To Take a Picture So I Can Look At You From Inside As Well

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Feb 25, 2010 at 2:47 pm

Wow, is there a lot to parse in this video of Kirsten Dunst playing “Akihabara Majokko Princess,” directed by McG, and produced Takashi Murakami (warning, some of the anime images are NSFW) for a Tate Modern exhibition last year. Among the questions it raised for me: 1) Huh, is this really what Kirsten Dunst’s career has come to? 2) What should I make of the continuing appropriation of Harajuku culture by American women, white and black alike? 3) Would this have been better if it was the Liz Phair cover, with its fabulous implications for sexuality?

I do actually want to dive into those first two questions for a minute, because as weird as this video and its racial and sexual implications are (as is the fact that McG is collaborating with Murakami, unless his work with Marc Jacobs was just the start of his efforts to go as lowbrow commercial as possible, or something), I think it actually illustrates some of Dunst’s strengths. She’s a good, limber, physical actress, and she’s often at her best, I think, when she’s being a little goofy. It’s one of the reasons the first Bring It On movie worked so well: Dunst totally sold her main-character cheerleader, she looked comfortable and genuinely happy dancing around, as she does here. She was good in the also-underrated Wimbledon, where she played a tennis champ, because she was running, or playing, or hooking up with a guy she had chemistry with for a lot of the movie. I think this is a really winning quality. In a time when a lot of Hollywood actresses seem really alienated in their bodies, actresses who embrace their physicality are a rarity. They carry themselves differently on screen. Living the credo that “there is nothing in your body that lies” is hard for women everywhere, but I imagine it’s doubly or triply difficult in Hollywood.

I actually thought Dunst was miscast in the Spider-Man movies for precisely this reason. Mary Jane is such an inert role, she’s always getting saved. I hate to be contemptuous of that, but I just don’t find it very interesting. I think a lot of folks agree that the upsidedown smooch in the first movie is the defining romantic moment in it (okay, maybe the “I’ve always been standing in your doorway” scene too), and I think it works precisely because it’s one of Dunst’s most physical moments in the movies. She is the sexual aggressor, rolling down his mask in a clear parallel to fully undressing a lover. It’s great. But she hasn’t had that kind of opportunity in the other movies, or in her other movie roles, in what seems like a long time. I’d really love Dunst to find her way back into some good roles.

And I’m glad Murakami gave her the opportunity, I guess. I do find the appropriation of Harajuku culture here in the U.S. fascinating. There are a range of these appropriations, of course. Gwen Stefani’s Love. Angel. Music. Baby., and her decision to tour with Harajuku Girls re-named for each element in the album’s title certainly kicked off the trend. Nicki Minaj, among other identities, brands herself as a Harajuku Barbie, a totally fascinating mashup. I think part of what gets me here is the combination of the song and the imagery. Dunst may be dressing up Harajuku-style, but that doesn’t mean she’s actually turning Japanese, much less having a meaningful engagement with Japanese culture. I understand that there’s value in teaching folks about subcultures, and that individual members of subcultures have the right to work where and how they want. But there’s a fine line between engagement with a culture and use of it. I’m not sure where the line falls here. It seems like it’s worth looking out for, though.

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Security

Lieberman Claims That Settlements Are Not A Major ‘Obstacle To An Israeli-Palestinian Peace’

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Feb 25, 2010 at 2:35 pm

Lieberman5 Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is one of Congress’ biggest Israel hawks, opposing “any attempt to pressure Israel” and worrying that President Obama doesn’t have “the right stuff to bomb Iran.” But in a recent interview with the Jewish Ledger, Lieberman offered a harmful understanding about the situation in the Middle East, rejecting the fact that the expansion of Israeli settlements is impairing the peace process:

Q: There’s been a great deal of pressure on Israel to stop building in the “settlements.” Some in the Administration and in Congress believe it is a major impediment to peace. Do you agree?

A: No, I really don’t think that the “community building,” as it is now called, is the obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Respectfully, I think the President made a mistake when, earlier in the year, as an attempt to try to engage the Arab world, he specifically called on Israel to freeze the settlements, because that had not been a specific request of the Palestinians themselves, and it led others in the Middle East to think that they could continue to pressure us. … We can’t – and in my opinion, we shouldn’t – push both peoples to do something that they don’t want to do.

The Israeli government may call it “community building,” but the U.S. government and the international community refer to it as “settlement expansion.” Settlements are one of the chief Palestinian grievances, so regardless of how Lieberman feels about them, claiming that settlements are not a major “obstacle” to peace is naive or willfully ignorant. By opposing a settlement freeze, Lieberman is disagreeing not only with Obama, but with every U.S. administration since Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967.

The settlements stoke extremism and violence on both sides of the conflict, making reconciliation more difficult. As the Wonk Room’s Matt Duss notes, “by entrenching Israel within the Palestinian territories, the settlements also make a two-state solution — which both Presidents Bush and Obama have recognized as a central U.S. national security interest — far more difficult to achieve.”

Under the 2003 road map, Israel is obligated to freeze settlements, including “natural growth.” After resisting calls from the Obama administration to honor its commitments, the Israeli government announced a partial freeze late last year. But thanks to plenty of loopholes in the pronouncement, 10,000 new homes could be built this year.

By whitewashing the settlement issue, Lieberman — like Sarah Palin — endangers the Middle East peace process by attempting to push U.S. foreign policy in the wrong direction.

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