Scott: I can’t respond to your comments on the site because I no longer have access to the League from work. But if it would be of interest to you, I’d be happy to have a bit of an email exchange to explore things further. I’ve got some work to which I need to attend this morning, but I’d be happy to fire back an initial response to you comment a little later. Let me know if that is of interest.

Mike: Sure Scott – fire away.

Scott: This is less in depth than I had hoped for, but the long and the short of my post can be summed up as follows:

• I’m not condemning Israel, I identified that I was not prepared to forgo the conclusion that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh deserved to die and that the Mossad were the right folks to do it,
• I worry that using tactics like assassination leave us feeling less morally culpable,
• I feel like we ought to be wracked with every bit as much doubt, uncertainty, and moral consternation over the decision to assassinate someone as we are when deciding whether or not to engage in conventional warfare, granted over different dynamics,
• And that a belief that it does as a tactic does leave us less morally culpable in terms of state sanctioned violence can and in this case seems to have lead to an attitude that is counter-rpoductive to actually ending the conflict in question.

In terms of your Hitler example, believing that Hitler should have been assassinated does not absolve us from a critical analysis of the use of assassination as an acceptable tactic in all future instances, which is, really, all I’m calling for.

Mike: I’m more inclined to say that it makes us more morally culpable. When we’re talking about general war quite often the higher-ups are insulated from the decision making. How often does the President or the Sec. of Defense get a call asking permission to fire a rocket at a Taliban position or lob a grenade into a cave where bad guys are hiding? On the flip side, when you arrange for an assassination somebody pretty high up the food chain has to say, “Yes, I want you to kill this man”. To me that’s what makes it real for them.

I also think, as many commenters pointed out, that assassination is actually better because there’s no collateral damage. One target, one dead. If you’re going to wage war, they should all be fought that way.

[Read more →]

In 2007, the New York Giants had a decent regular season, but not a particularly good one. At 10-6, they barely finished in the top quartile of teams and failed to even achieve a winning record within their four-team division. But this was not a mediocre team. After all, they have the Super Bowl rings to prove it. But one would be hard pressed to say they were the best team in the league that year. Or even the second best. Instead, they were just the team that happened to slide into the playoffs and won the last four games of the season (three of which by less than a touchdown). The next year, the Arizona Cardinals came within a touchdown of being the champs despite a 9-7 regular season. If you ask me, that is no way to select a champion.

We’ve been conditioned to believe that post-season tournaments are the only way to crown a champion. Granted, when you have a bunch of teams that can’t play one another, it makes a certain amount of sense. How else are you going to sort it out? But we’ve become so attached to the notion of post-season tournaments that we are increasingly willing to relegate the regular season to near-scrimmages and “playoff tryouts.” Didn’t have a spectacular record? No problem! Didn’t win your division? Don’t worry about it! Barely ended up with a record above .500? Take a shot at the national title!

There is, of course, one major exception to this rule. Rather than being celebrated, however, the exceptionalism of college football drives people bonkers.

I’m not going to argue that the current BCS system is perfect. It’s frustrating that a good portion of the teams that play in the league have little chance to win a national championship even if they go undefeated. And who hasn’t endured at least one season where a favorite team had a record just as good as the team that made the national championship? I know I have.

The former complaint resonates with me. That a 12-0 Utah Utes team or Boise State team has no chance at a national title no matter how well they play strikes me as wrong. The fact that in any given year, a 1-loss USC, Texas, or SEC team would go to a national championship game before an undefeated Big East or ACC champion indicates that the situation is getting worse.

My first counterargument is that a 1 or 2-loss SEC team is usually going to be better than a Big East or Mountain West champion. The current system also allows Boise State’s awesome victory over Oklahoma to stand on its own terms rather than as a prelude to the inevitable loss in the next round of a playoff.

Unfortunately, neither of these arguments are incredibly convincing. Utah (an undefeated MWC team) beat Alabama (a 1-loss SEC team) just last season and the more often teams from non-BCS conferences win these games (non-BCS teams are 3-1 in BCS bowls), the more they are going to want the opportunity for something more.

A few weeks ago, I tried to figure out if this dilemma could be resolved without a comprehensive, 16-team playoff that would allow a team that got third place in its division a chance at the national title (as happened with the Richmond Spiders in I-AA football last year). Surprisingly enough, I actually came up with one.* The qualification rules were strict enough that either 8 or fewer teams would be allowed in each year (dating back to 2005). It gave every team, regardless of conference, a chance at winning the title. The regular season would be slightly devalued, but nothing I couldn’t live with.

Just as with many similar proposals, the general response would undoubtedly be “It’s not enough.” Half of the playoff proponents would say “If it doesn’t let a 13-0 MAC team in, there’s no point in having a playoff” while the other half would say “If it doesn’t let this 10-2 SEC team in – which happens to be better than that undefeated MAC team – it’s not a real playoff” or “The only reason to have a playoff is to have the best teams plays, even if some conferences get left out.” My plan satisfies the first group but not the second. Unfortunately, plenty of people simply aren’t interested in everyone having a shot at the title, which is really the only reason I’d care to see a playoff.

To satisfy both camps, you need a 16-team tournament. A lot of playoff proponents swear that we won’t revisit the same arguments for team 15 vs 16 vs 17, but I find that unlikely so long as there is any room for debate. Of course, just as we now argue over who gets to play in a BCS Bowl, we’d always argue over playoff qualifications. Last year, teams ranked 13-19 (except #17, a 10-2 BYU) had 9-3 records going into the bowl season. A hypothetical playoff could use BCS calculations or rankings to determine eligibility, but those are the very things that people object to now. With playoff eligibility at stake, the debate will only become more intense. Eventually we may see a 32-team playoff.

But even if we stick to 16 teams, once you’re letting 9-3 teams in, you’re excusing three losses. Right now, no losses are excused. With a playoff system, almost everything teams fight for now (National Championship Game, conference championship, BCS Bowl, any old bowl) becomes a sideshow. Nobody cares who wins the NFL’s NFC East Division because it doesn’t really matter when it comes to brass ring. The entire season revolves around making the playoffs (and to a much lesser extent, determining playoff seeding). And making the playoffs allows teams to lose games in ways that they cannot afford to now. Under the current system, however, games outside your favorite conference take on greater importance because they have a huge impact on your team’s championship hopes.

A prime example of this is USC’s 2009 season. USC’s first loss was devastating for its fans because it meant the Trojans were unlikely to get a shot at the national championship. Meanwhile, Washington’s victory was celebrated in Texas, Alabama, and Florida because it enhanced their national championship hopes. USC’s second loss was equally devastating because it eliminated what was left of USC’s national championship aspirations. USC’s third loss was perhaps less devastating, but it was still significant because it meant that they would not win the conference title or play in a BCS bowl for the first time in seven years.

Add a playoff system and only the third loss really matters and it still isn’t a season-ender because it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that USC would retain a shot at the national title. And only the third loss would really matter outside of the West Coast.

A smaller playoff system mitigates this somewhat, but leagues don’t generally limit playoff participation. Instead, professional sports have drifted towards increasing the number of divisions and wild card slots to let in as many teams as possible. In other words, I can’t even support my own limited playoff system because I have absolutely no reason to believe that it would stop there, particularly because people will always argue that a team left out deserves a shot to have things settled “on the field.”

Alas, 70% of the country rejects my profound wisdom. The good news, though, is that public opinion doesn’t matter. The only way a playoff system will be instituted is if fans start boycotting. But college football has never been more popular despite its chaotic champion-crowning methodology — or perhaps because of it.

–

* My hypothetical playoff system basically lets in any conference champion (or independent) that won 10 or more games against FBS opponents. The playoff consists of eight teams, but there is an “elimination week” that narrows the field to four contenders. In the event that fewer than 8 teams are eligible, the teams with the best strength-of-schedule (SOS) do not have to participate in elimination week. In the event that there are more than eight eligible teams, priority is given to undefeated teams, but after that participation is determined purely by SOS, regardless of record.

Forget conference committees, any observer of health care reform needs to add the term “ping-pong” to their legislative vocabulary.

Ping-pong is a little known but increasingly used procedural device to pass legislation. A 2008 report by Walter Oleszek for the Congressional Research Service describes ping-pong as “the exchange of amendments between the houses”

It works like this:

PING: House passes a bill and sends to the Senate.
PONG: Senate amends the bill and sends it back to the House.
PING: House accepts the Senate amendment and sends bill to the President.

Sometimes the ping-pong match goes on for multiple rounds, as the House and Senate exchange amendments back and forth until either one chamber caves or compromise language is reached.

Walter Oleszek’s CRS report noted that pingpongs outnumbered conference committees by a 2-1 ratio in 1994, but went up to a 4-1 ratio by 2008.

Earlier this year, SCHIP legislation signed into law by President Obama (H.R. 2) was handled via the ping-pong method. The House passed a bill, the Senate amended it, the House concurred in the Senate amendment and the bill went to the President. Click here for the legislative play-by-play of the SCHIP ping-pong.

There are 2 procedural advantages of the ping-pong method:

1. No conference committee. Ping pong is a take it or leave it proposition. There is no conference committee, so there is no opportunity for compromises to be struck (or nettlesome provisions removed) by a handful of conferees picked by the leadership.

2. No motion to recommit. Bills can be sent back to the committee of juridiction from whence they came. These bills are recommitted with instructions to make certain substantive changes in the bill. Usually, motions to recommit are efforts by the minority party to attach controversial provisions to a bill, forcing the majority to either kill the bill or force vulnerable lawmakers into taking a difficult vote. Since an amendment does not originate in committee, it cannot be re-committed.

Ping-pong often plays a role in controversial legislation. During the 110th Congress, energy legislation was under consideration that would tax windfall profits on oil companies and use the proceeds to develop renewable energy. Republicans wanted to offer a motion to recommit on the bill to allow offshore oil drilling. Democrats wanted to avoid taking a vote on the issue. So the Senate amended House legislation and sent it back to the lower chamber. After a couple of rounds of ping pong, the House adopted the Senate amendment and the bill was signed into law.

What does this mean for health care?

The two touchiest items in the health care debate are now the public option and the Stupak Amendment. The House bill contains both. It is highly likely that the Senate will take up the House bill (H.R. 3962) and gut it from top to bottom, replacing the entire bill with a massive Baucus amendment containing whatever Senate compromise gets hammered out behind closed doors.

On the Senate floor, there will be amendments to the Baucus amendment – amendments for a robust public option, amendments to add the Stupak language, etc. These amendments will likely be subject to a 60 vote threshold, meaning that they will fail. So the Baucus amendment will remain largely intact when it goes back to the House for an up or down vote. Then it will go to the president.

by Kyle Mathews

If there’s one thing that most political commentators and Americans can agree upon, it’s that Congress is bad at its job. Presidential approval ratings go up and down, Congressional approval ratings pretty much stay down. These days, it’s become de rigueur to point to hyper-partisanship, legislative relics who’ve all but become permanent fixtures in both houses, the pervasive and harmful influence of special interests in the legislative and electoral process, and the regularity of ethical lapses and scandals.

The prevailing sentiment of the day seems to be “Congress is good, but the people in it are terrible,” and many of our attempts to address Congressional shortcomings stem from that mindset. Recent examples include campaign finance reform, lobbying disclosure requirements, hiring bans, transparency initiatives, and “the most ethical Congress in history.” These reforms aimed to keep bad people out of politics so good people could do good work.

This focus on bad actors; however, ignores the ways in which the system itself incentivizes bad actors. To run for Congress, stay in Congress, and pass legislation requires money, votes, influence, popularity, allies, and expert knowledge. Those requirements increase the value and leverage of organizations or individuals that can provide one or more of those to a significant degree, making those groups something of a super-constituent. These include donors, interest groups like the NRA or SEIU, think tanks like Brookings or Cato, fellow politicians, and the parties themselves.

Super-constituents distort representative government by creating incentives to value the priorities and contributions of a select few over those of a legislator’s constituents. Super-constituents also retain the power to punish elected officials more easily and more severely than regular constituents, by endorsing competitors, stripping legislators of seniority or committee membership, and cutting off access, particularly to donors. With this in mind, more significant reforms modifying the structure of the United States Congress or rather how it does business, not just who shows up to do it, need to be considered.

Broadly, we need reforms to accomplish more legislative/legislator independence, a better representation of people and collective interests, and a greater emphasis on work rather than optics and political gamesmanship.

More specifically, we would benefit from:

· More accurate representation of constituencies;
· Less partisanship;
· Incentives for legislative leadership;
· Breaking up entrenched power;
· Addressing the disproportionate influence of extra-legislative entrenched interests;

To accomplish some of those goals, or at least put us on the road to a less dysfunctional legislature, consider this slate of 8 reforms. [Read more →]

In the grand discussion of where should Conservative leaders lead and where do they go, it’s important to get a good lay of the land, a solid bearing of where Republicans and Conservatives are, and an accurate reading of where the competition is. Building off of Mark’s exploration of the relationship between the base and wonks and E.D. taking that ball and running with it, I hope to add another piece to the puzzle.

In talks about conservative dissidents, conservative wonks, what we really need to talk about are conservative elites, of which some of the former are included. Elites are, leaders, columnists, idea-mongers, and purveyors of vision.

In that sense, Rush Limbaugh, reviled though he may be, is certainly an elite but not a dissident nor wonk. What he does do, is project an image of what conservatism is and just as importantly what is not. Some elites are dissidents, quite a few are wonks but they are – for better and for worse- leaders of conservatism.

The conservative base and its elite leaders are fractured unlike their competition, Democrats, progressives, and/aka liberals. The very strong alignment between the liberal base and liberal elites forms an iron binary, a group whose fundamental agreement on issues joins them inviolably. Their broad agreement on social and economic issues allows them to work – more or less – in harmony. By contrast, the right has a fairly sizeable disconnect between both. For example with the bank bailout and gay marriage there are sizeable chunks of the conservative elite who either support them or simply don’t care at the same time that the huge chunks of the base have been positively apoplectic over them. There’s a reason you see one of the most prominent conservative lawyers in America working for marriage equality but zero liberal lawyers seeking to overturn Roe.

Another contrast between the two, effective signaling between elites and the base allows liberal elites to organize for health care and channel the energy of a strong base into focused issues of consensus whereas tea parties and town halls reflected a base only enough organized enough to be a disorganized mess.

We saw this contrast as early the 2008 presidential primary. The Democratic candidates came in all regions, genders, and colors but basically agreed on 90%-95% on their policy. The Democratic contest was a contest of packaging not direction or political identity.

The Republicans were the exact opposite. They were all wealthy, white, men but their ideas couldn’t have been more heterodox. Giuliani, Thompson, Huckabee, Romney all presented very different visions of the future of the Republican Party and consequently conservatism’s role within the party. The only candidate whose selection and platform amounted to tinkering around the edges rather than changing directions was also the one least offensive to the most number of people, John McCain. This is also why he suffered from an enthusiasm gap until he picked Palin.

[Read more →]

by Jaybird

There is a scene in C.S. Lewis’s _The Great Divorce that has been sticking in my craw in the last month or so. It’s the scene where they talk about Napoleon. If you haven’t read it (you should, it’s good) it’s a discussion of Hell. Hell, Lewis explains, is a place where one’s wishes are immediately granted. The problem is that people wish for things that make them feel better without actually helping them. The narrator talks to a couple of folks who say they looked up Napoleon. They spent a year spying on him and they said that all he did was pace back and forth saying “It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault.” That’s all he did. For an eternity.

I’m enough of an optimist to say that the wilderness is not for *THAT*… but, goodness, measuring some of the responses to the election, one might think that it was. People explaining that it was the fault of the media, or the fault of insufficiently rigorous investigation into the whereabouts of Barack (HUSSEIN!!!) Obama’s mother at the moment of his birth, or even the fault of the faithless American People. It was Soult’s fault. It was Ney’s fault. It was Josephine’s fault.

To be sure, much of the complaining has taken the form of something like “if only you had been more like me, you would have succeeded. Since you were more like you, of course you failed.” While this argument feels good when you say it (go on, say it), it loses much of its oomph when one realizes that social conservatives are saying it at the same time as fiscal conservatives and yet again at the same time as defense hawks at the same time as paleocons at the same time as neocons at the same time as libertarians at the same time as Lincoln Chafee is saying it. Sure, one or two of these groups may be right (I’m pretty sure that at least one is) but the argument itself is just as likely to be the letting off of steam as it is an accurate measurement of the state of affairs.

Best to take a step back and think about what really happened and what it means. What happened in 2004? The Republicans won. Big Time. They picked up seats in their majority-controlled Senate, they picked up seats in their majority-controlled House. They re-won the White House with a majority vote and that is something that people hadn’t seen since 1988. Four years later, the Democrats have a nigh-unfillibusterable lead in the Senate. The Democrats have the House. Obama won the White House with a percentage of the electoral college so large that you have to go back to Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to see a democrat exceed it.

This is more than can be pinned on Josephine. [Read more →]

by Mike at the Big Stick

It’s an interesting time in our house these days. About 6 months ago, my wife and I decided to put our home up for sale. We then spent several months completing all those lagging projects we had never seemed to find time for. The high-trafficked areas got fresh coats of paint, the carpet got professionally cleaned, and I began an unpleasant ritual of cutting the grass twice per week so it would help our ‘curb appeal’. I also started taking daily trips down memory lane as I recalled the room where I learned to install baseboard, or the first light fixture I ever replaced, or the day I successfully installed my first faucet. I thought of the four Thanksgiving dinners we have hosted and was more than a little sad to patch over the holes in the mantel where I put the nails for our Christmas stockings every year. I began to think of our house as not just a collection of walls but as a home.

That realization may strike some readers as a bit of a no-duh moment, but it was one that had escaped me thus far. From the day we moved in 4 years ago, I had always known this would not be our permanent residence. It was what we could afford at the time. It was an upgrade from our condo and gave us much-needed space for our daughters. It was also a place where we could landscape and have a dog and I could tinker in the garage. But it was never a home because it wasn’t a place to stay…it was an investment.

Writing for Front Porch Republic, James Mathew Wilson used a Wall Street Journal article by Thomas J. Sugrue as a springboard to discuss the way Americans view home ownership, as contrasted with other countries. Wilson makes a number of good points throughout the piece and, in typical Front Porch style, offers a fair number of suggestions involving changes in our behavior patterns to create a sense of ‘place’ in where we live. [Read more →]

by Dan Summers

I watched President Obama’s speech last night with interest. As an unabashed supporter of health care reform, I was heartened by how clearly the President described the intentions of his reform package, and why the need for reform is pressing. As I mentioned in my discussion with Scott a little while ago, I think the need for insurance industry reform is particularly urgent, so I was glad to see that point hit early and hit hard. (It was also somewhat gratifying to see that doing away with such things as preexisting condition exclusions and rescission could get even Republicans on their feet.)

As a physician, I was also glad to hear that the President is willing to consider GOP proposals for malpractice reform. While the impact of malpractice costs per se on the overall cost of health care in America may be smaller than the Republicans would have us believe, the actual impact may be harder to measure. [Read more →]

~by jfxgillis

Okay. So here’s the thing about the health care industry in the USA, especially the insurance sector. It stinks. Everyone knows it. Everyone feels it. We pay more for what we get, and we get less for what we pay for, than virtually any other developed country by any systemic measure. Even people with gold-plated policies they have by virtue of highly remunerative employment know those policies are overpriced even as they benefit from them.

The old World Health Organization rankings rated us 37th in the world. Granted, there’s honest dispute about that, but still, massaging the figures in our favor doesn’t get you that far up the rankings. We still stink. And the Commonwealth Fund’s ranking of 19 developed countries puts us dead last. And I do mean dead.

I believe in USA Number One!! and all, but I could live with it if we were say, fourth or ninth, or maybe even just outside the top ten, but  being number one only in per capita health care expenditures while last in health care outcomes isn’t just atrocious. It’s irrational. It’s a mystery. The odd thing is, the resolution to the puzzle doesn’t seem to be amenable to ideological explanation. On the one hand, we spend more on taxes on provision of health care through the public sector than many of the nominally more socialist countries ahead of us on the Commonwealth Fund chart. On the other hand, our health care is more dominated by the private sector than any other country on the list. Both Left and Right can agree that there’s something weird about being last in outcomes and first in expenditures. [Read more →]

(David Lemire worked for over 30 years as an underwriter at a large, multi-state HMO.)

Now that President Obama has changed his rhetoric from reforming health “care” to reforming  health “insurance,”  you any be asking yourself what insurance reforms are needed.

If, like about 60% of Americans, you receive your health insurance as a condition of employment you are in a fortunate majority. And, in most states, if you work for a company with more than 50 employees you are not subject to preexisting condition limitations or rescission of your coverage.

Your employer probably bears some of the cost, and because of laws put in place during WW II, you do not have to pay taxes on this compensation. Yes, compensation; your employer deducts the dollars paid for your insurance as a business expense just as is done for your cash compensation. But because of the WWII legal exemption, you don’t pay taxes on what your employer pays.  And because of the employer contribution the amount deducted from your paycheck is less than the value of your insurance.

But if you are among the other 40% of Americans, you either buy your insurance in the individual market with dollars you have had to pay taxes on or you go uninsured (unless your fellow taxpayers pay your costs under Medicare or Medicaid). So, which part of health insurance needs reforming and who should pay for the “reform?”

Let’s start with the majority of Americans. And let’s assume you work for an employer large enough to “self insure” (usually 200 or more employees). This means that the employer retains the liability for your health care costs rather than buying an insurance policy. Why would an employer do this? Well, first of all, by assuming the risk, your employer avoids paying an insurance company a “risk charge.” This lowers the overall cost of the group policy.

But even more importantly, by “self insuring,” your employer, under ERISA, a federal law, is exempt from state mandated benefits. This is especially important for employers who need to have a single plan design for multiple locations in several states. Otherwise state mandates would result in different plans depending on where you live. Here’s why. In many, if not most, states, special interest groups have lobbied the legislatures to mandate that their “services” are covered in any insurance policies issued in the state. It doesn’t matter if you want the coverage, or if your employer wants to include the coverage in your policy; if it is mandated, you have to have it and that adds to cost. ERISA exemption means your insurance costs are not inflated by these special interests.

Your problem is that if you lose your job, or want to change employers, you risk losing your coverage. That’s really your “insurance” problem.

[Read more →]

By Jay Adler

A lot of sports fans sighed the usual big one recently when the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, on a technicality, upheld a lower court decision in favor of the Washington Redskins, against plaintiff’s suit to force the team to change its name. Some of the Native plaintiffs are now considering taking the case to the Supreme Court.

At just about the same time, Nazune Menka, a graduate student in environmental science participating in the Native American Political Leadership Program at George Washington University, had the opportunity, with other students in the program, to meet with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The students were given the chance to ask questions of Scalia, and Menka began a question about a significant recent decision, Carcieri v. Salazar, that had not been favorable to Native interests. Menka’s impressively sincere and ingenuous account of the meeting in Indian Country Today relates the rudeness she felt in Scalia’s cutting her off mid question and embarrassing her before the other students. “The case is a laugher,” she reports he told her.

That’s how many people feel about the team name and mascot issue too. Come on. Get real. Let’s talk about something serious.

Of much greater significance is Menka’s account of a question posed by another student. “He had earlier stated to another Indian student brave enough to stand and ask a question that the U.S. right to rule was by conquest and all Indian law was based off that.” [Read more →]