A pretty good George Will column on the constitutionality of a health insurance mandate. I’m waiting on our resident legal expert to weigh in with a more informed opinion.

Jane Hamsher has been taking a lot of flak in recent days for coming out against the Senate health care reform bill as well as for suggesting that “both the [progressive opponents] and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill” and that the ”painfully obvious left/right transpartisan consensus that is coalescing against DC insiders of both parties appears to be taking everyone by surprise.”  Although not actively opposing the final Senate bill, Glenn Greenwald offered similar sentiments about the common ground between the Tea Partiers and the far left, noting:

Whether you call it “a government takeover of the private sector” or a “private sector takeover of government,” it’s the same thing:  a merger of government power and corporate interests which benefits both of the merged entities (the party in power and the corporations) at everyone else’s expense.  Growing anger over that is rooted far more in an insider/outsider dichotomy over who controls Washington than it is in the standard conservative/liberal ideological splits from the 1990s.  It’s true that the people who are angry enough to attend tea parties are being exploited and misled by GOP operatives and right-wing polemicists, but many of their grievances about how Washington is ignoring their interests are valid, and the Democratic Party has no answers for them because it’s dependent upon and supportive of that corporatist model.  That’s why they turn to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh; what could a Democratic Party dependent upon corporate funding and subservient to its interests possibly have to say to populist anger?

Hamsher then followed through on her assertions by agreeing to take her case to Fox News, for which she was criticized as being “naive.” Finally, today we learn that she has teamed up with none other than Grover Norquist to call for Rahm Emanuel’s resignation due to his actions with respect to Fannie and Freddie.  The criticisms of Hamsher and to a lesser extent Greenwald, have been echoed by several of my fellow Gents here at the League. 

Underlying these criticisms of Hamsher seems to be an assumption that: 1. From a liberal perspective, it is inarguable that the Senate bill at least makes things better; 2.  Hamsher is insane for finding common ground with Tea Partiers in opposition to bailouts that were sold as necessary to prevent a Great Depression; and 3. Hamsher is insane for thinking the Tea Partiers have any actual common ground with her, and that they may actually have similar values to her. 

The first two of these criticisms, however, demonstrate precisely why Hamsher and Greenwald are ultimately correct about the common ground with the Tea Partiers.  Specifically, these criticisms assume that “the experts” are always right, and that the average voter is unqualified to assess the normative merits of a particular government action.  So, the message is sent that progressives like Hamsher should STFU since Paul Krugman thinks that the bill, while imperfect, is at least an improvement from the status quo.  Similarly, on the bailouts, Hamsher (as well as, I assume, all the Dem legislators that voted against them last year) should STFU and support them because the experts say things would have been really, really bad without them [NOTE: I am not offering an opinion here as to my thoughts on TARP].  In each case, Hamsher is expected to weigh the acknowledged normative costs less than the claimed normative costs because, well, she’s neither an expert nor an insider; she’s dismissed as being unrealistic and unserious merely for assigning different moral weight to the acknowledged normative costs from the experts.  Unfortunately, last I checked, being an expert economist or scientist doesn’t give one authority to tell people how to make moral calculations. 

[Read more →]

Running through the process that has brought us to the precipice of passing the Senate health care reform bill, as well as the rhetorically violent reaction of some extremely disappointed progressives like Howard Dean and Jane Hamsher, has resulted in this scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (the movie, I don’t honestly remember whether it is in the book or not) playing over and over in my head,

What was I doing out here ? What was the meaning of this trip ? Was I just roaming around in a drug frenzy of some kind… or had I really come out here to Las Vegas to work on a story ?

Who are these people, these faces ? Where do they come from ? They look like caricatures of used car dealers from Dallas… and, sweet Jesus, there are a hell of a lot of them at 4:30 on a Sunday morning… still humping the American Dream — that vision of the big winner… somehow emerging from the last-minute, pre-dawn chaos of a stale Vegas casino.

- Twenty.
- We change a twenty.

- Thank you.

- Here we go.
- Okay.

- Spinning the wheel, spinning the wheel, spinning the wheel. Make me rich. Make me very rich!

- Eee-yo !

- That’s ten.
- Oh, you bastard !

- Shit. [ Sighs ]
- Sorry.

No, no. Calm down. Learn to enjoy losing.

Dean, Hamsher, Greenwald, and an assortment of other progressives who have been keenly outspoken about the shortcomings of the Senate reform bill have come under no small amount of fire (albeit relatively friendly fire) from a number of their fellow progressives who see the bill in a “something is better than nothing” frame. As Ed Kilgore astutely notes at The New Republic, the divide here is more than just a matter of sour grapes and constitutes a real and pressing gap in the analysis and vision of the American left — a divide with which that motley coalition will have to deal  at a point rapidly achieving a status of sooner rather than later.

So while I would likely fall into line with Erik’s ultimate sentiment of supporting the reform (after everything that has happened, to turn around seems unwise), a part of my heart and thoughts follow along the outraged lines of dissatisfied progressives. [Read more →]

I’ve been out of pocket from the political realm for a week and a half, but President Obama’s claim that a health insurance mandate is not a tax strikes me as marginally good politics and absolutely terrible lawyering.  I think Jason Kuznicki (also here) and by extension Will, are absolutely, 100% correct that an individual mandate is necessarily characterized as a tax, and a regressive one at that.  But that’s not the interesting thing to me here. 

Accepting for the moment that it is only debatable – rather than certain - whether an individual mandate is a tax, Obama’s attempts to characterize the mandate as something else are hardly a make-or-break argument for passage of health care reform.  Health care reform is not going to pass or fail to pass because people think the mandate should be characterized as a “tax” or merely as an attempt to get the uninsured to “take responsibility to get health insurance.”  The people affected, whether you characterize it as a tax or as something else, are going to be the same people; the people worried about being affected are going to be the same people; the costs that the mandate will impose on them will be the same.  People for the most part get this.  Sure, it may be mildly politically embarassing for Obama to sign a tax increase on a subset of the American middle class in contradiction of his campaign pledge, but if the resulting bill is as good as Obama wants voters to think, it’s tough to see him paying much of a price at the polls for it. 

But by claiming that the mandate is not a tax, Obama undermines the single strongest argument that the mandate is constitutional.  [Read more →]

Much like Alex Massie, I’ve largely given up on trying to understand the health care reform acrobatics of US politics and policy, not in the least because there is plenty going on in my own country that deserves attention and scrutiny. But this whole Joe Lieberman calling the shots all by his bad self is just beyond mind boggling to me. I mean that one person could wind up wielding so much power on something as huge and important as health care reform seems not only an irresponsible state of affairs, but also, frankly, more than a touch undemocratic and brings me back to the issue of representation in American politics and the two-party system.

In my original post talking about the potential benefits of introducing a National Tea Party into the political arena (and my hopes around what might wind up being a tectonic fracturing of the two bloated parties into more sincere and grounded constituencies), I talked a lot about the impacts such a movement might have on discourse. I remain at least somewhat convinced that a more closely parsed system of party representation would do a lot of good for American political discourse, both in terms of grounding the different factions in a space of not needing to rail against the more/less moderate factions of their teams, as well as providing for a more full-throated representation of different and, frankly, important (thought perhaps not equal) perspectives. That said, I think there is also a realpolitik component as to why there ought to be support for discursive break up, the various logistical challenges besetting such a proposal notwithstanding, that speaks directly to the Lieberman toll booth through which Democrats have just had to pass. [Read more →]

To steal from and reformat Katrina vanden Heuvel on November 20’s On Point Week in the News segment: if there were as much passionate and vehement debate within mainstream political discourse on decisions to go to war as there has been on health care reform, something would have gone terribly right with our politics and the world would be a very different place. Discuss…

Rep. Virginia Foxx thinks that the health care bill is “worse than terrorism“: [Read more →]

I don’t really have anything insightful to add to Hendrik Hertzberg’s most recent post, but this is certainly worth repeating: [Read more →]

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that 15.8 percent of Americans lived in poverty last year, using an alternative method to analyze their numbers provided by the National Academy of Sciences.  This is significantly higher than the 13.2 percent official poverty rate the agency released last month. Since a great deal of the estimated cost of health care reform relies on the old data, what do these numbers have to say about the final cost of the bill?

For starters, this places 7 million more Americans below the poverty line.  18.7% of these are elderly, and will receive Medicare.  The remaining 5.69 million are non elderly.  Under the Senate Finance Bill, anyone earning 133% above the poverty line or below qualifies for Medicaid.  Using the new numbers, this means that at the very least, 5.69 million more people will be eligible to receive Medicaid than Congressional Democrats and the CBO are accounting for.

The CBO estimates, “there would be roughly 14 million more enrollees in Medicaid and CHIP than is projected under current law.”  But the CBO estimate was based on the old census numbers.  If Congress adopts the new methods for rating poverty, that number will increase by at least 5.69 million people. From the report [pdf]: [Read more →]

Look, I’m all for more decentralized solutions to health care, but the government simply needs to play a role in setting the rules.  Rick Ungar provides at least one good reason why that is. [Read more →]

James Joyner points us to this bit of union badness from Mickey Kaus:

I knew they’d find a way to punish Ford: The new UAW contract with Ford apparently does not give America’s surviving non-bankrupt automaker parity with GM and Chrysler, reports Bloomberg: “The plan doesn’t include cuts to retiree benefits, such as vision coverage, that were granted to GM and Chrysler.” Rather, the pain seems even more concentrated on future hires (if there are any) than with the GM/Chrysler deals. … TTAC wonders whether the UAW had an extra incentive to resist giving concessions that might make Ford more successful now that the union owns a large chunk of its main domestic competitors. [emphases original]

Yes, now you have the UAW and the government as stakeholders in GM and Chrysler, while members of the UAW work for Ford.  This certainly seems like an awkward situation.  Writes Joyner:

It is, to say the least, problematic for a labor union to own competing firms.  But to the degree that the conflict of interest hurts Ford’s UAW employees, they could presumably divest and start a new union.

The real issue is the antecedent to this situation:  The federal government picking winners and losers between firms.  The federal taxpayer bailed out two of the Big 3 and now has powerful incentive to assure the success of those two companies at the expense of the third.  Not only is Ford much less likely to get government contracts now but they’re much more likely to come under higher regulatory scrutiny.  That they also have a more hostile union — one that no longer ultimately needs them to stay in business — is mere icing on the cake.

Picking favorites is key here.  This is what happens when the government intervenes in the markets to the advantage of specific corporations or special interests.  Unlike a stimulus check cut for every American to spend as they please, this sort of bailout rewards failing companies and punishes the one US automaker that was actually not in trouble.  Intentions aside, this seems pretty antithetical to capitalism and fairness and how we ought to be running our economy.

Now walk over to health care for a moment.  We hear a lot about insurance companies – and sure, they’ll make out pretty good under the new legislation, since it doesn’t require them to really compete any more than they do today – but what about Big Pharma?  And we know that the big unions are opposing any move to wrest health insurance from employers – even though liberals and conservatives alike think that’s the only way to really reform our muddled system.  So we can rest assured that the unions will be winners, too.   So let’s see, that’s Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Labor in the Winners Column.

Who should we put in the Losers Column?

I’m embarrassed to say that I once had a little bit of respect for Bobby Jindal.  I mean, his retrograde social views notwithstanding, he seemed to be exactly what I was looking for in a Republican: intelligent, articulate and comfortable with public policy.  Granted, I would never vote for him, but it is critically important for the country that the GOP take governing seriously, and here was a guy who – I thought – did exactly that. [Read more →]