Yes, RedStateVT, Obamacare is working

In response to your comment on my last blog, it is interesting that in your allegations you focus on the supposed millions of people who lost their health insurance.  But if that were truly the case, the % of people that the Gallup poll found to be without health insurance, should have gone up.  Instead, the rate of the uninsured was 18% sometime in September or October 2013.  Now, in April 2014, it was 13.4%.  How is Obamacare not a success if the rate of the uninsured is coming down?  And that is with 24 states, some of which have the highest rates of uninsured, refusing to expand Medicaid.  Imagine how much the decline in uninsured would be if all 50 states had expanded Medicaid.

Since roughly, 5.45 mm people, who signed up on the heath insurance exchange, did not have health insurance, and 8 mm people signed up on the exchange, this means that the exchanges alone are responsible for only 1.6% of the 4.6% decline in the uninsured.  You allege that 80% of the newly insured are getting a subsidy when only 35% of the decline in uninsured came through the exchanges where you get a subsidy.  Your math does not work.  Also, the health insurance industry said over 80% of the newly insured were paying premiums.  (I frankly would think that is higher, but what do I know).

Clearly, those who lost their old health insurance plan found a new health insurance plan.  Yes, they may have had to switch Dr's, but you know what, that happened to me 20 years ago when I changed companies.  My 1st Dr wasn't part of the health insurance plan provided by my 2nd employer, so I changed Dr's.  The way health insurance companies and employers have been working to control health care costs, people were already losing access to Dr's, specific drug formulations before Obamacare ever became effective.  HMO's have been limiting access to specialists for 20 years.  So there is nothing in ObamaCare that changes that trend.  In fact, that was the entire point of the Heritage Foundation/Romneycare design?  Make people realize that there is a cost to consuming healthcare and make rational judgments about what they consume.  This is the key to controlling costs and the key argument refuting a single payer plan from the conservative side.

In fact, Obamacare is being successful at bending the cost curve downward.  So successful, that when the 1st quarter GDP report came out in detail last week, analysts cited the  0.2% decline (previously it was +1.0%) in healthcare spending as a big part of the surprise negative revision.  Isn't health care spending out of control when it is 16.7% of the economy?  I know I don't want it to be 16.7% of my budget.  It is already 12.1% including Dental and that is quite enough.  If I didn't have a full cost  Obamacare premium (in other words, I was still in the old individual market), as a nonworking person too young for Medicare, it would be more then 18% of my budget and reducing my wine purchases severely.

As for your other complaints, the website was fixed and the non-functioning Oregon website is now sign up for the Federal one.  Delaying implementation, as bugs are figured out, is a tried and true part of the private sector's method for maintaining customer service during rollouts.  Why should the government not use it?

So, the rate of uninsured is coming down (and would come down even more if all 50 states expanded Medicaid), the aggregate cost curve is bending, and the private sector health insurance companies are working with all the points of delivery to retail to find new ways to make the system more efficient (and it definitely was not efficient before).  What is there not love for a Republican in that? If I were the Heritage Foundation I would be pumping out the press releases illustrating how successful their design is at allowing the private sector to operate to be more efficient.

I frankly, don't understand how the GOP got on the wrong side of this after Romenycare was the 1st successful implementation of this and it was negotiation with the moderate GOP Senators that led to Obamacare being a copy of Romneycare.  Most Democrats, including myself, would have preferred a single payer plan called Universal Medicare.

Instead of touting accusations, you should be celebrating the success of a conservative policy design, even if President Obama's name is on it.  But then, it could also be called the ACA, so you wouldn't have to say the word Obama in a positive sentence.

And if you haven't read enough about how Obamacare is working, you can read this Forbes column by John Mauldin.

The New Normal of Heath Care Spending

Quickly, this a.m.

I am off to Vermont for a wedding.

Paul Krugman nails how wrong the GOP is on the failure of ObamaCare and what they are trying to accomplish.

"What was especially odd about the incessant predictions of health-reform disaster was that we already knew, or should have known, that a program along the lines of the Affordable Care Act was likely to work. Obamacare was closely modeled on Romneycare, which has been working in Massachusetts since 2006, and it bears a strong family resemblance to successful systems abroad, for example in Switzerland. Why should the system have been unworkable for America?"

Link to Krugman Column

And David Brooks nails the result of what 8 years of Bush II leading the country, followed by the rancor of the subsequent 6 years of Obama's terms, has done to the national spirit.  My friend RedStateVT will no doubt object to my failure to get over my disgust with George W. Bush, but one must remember he squandered the balanced budget that fiscal conservatives like myself value so highly.  He had to fight the War on Terror, but misled us about Iraq, and failed to raise the revenues to pay for either War.  He expanded Medicare Part D without paying for it.  His antipathy toward Regulation lead to a casino mentality toward housing that, in retrospect, I don't know how I managed to misjudge the potential for this to ruin the economy for so many people.

So fiscal conservatives were angry, anti-war people were angry, and then President Obama comes in and creates the ACA, which anyone (particularly GOP supporters) with secure health insurance distrusts because it creates uncertainty for them and people go out of there way to avoid uncertainty with their health insurance.  But there was a national disgrace in that once you were out of the world employer provided health insurance, you had health insurance uncertainty (unless you live in VT, MA or NY, and then the only issue was cost).  Of course, cost is the ultimate uncertainty if you don't have a lot of money.  And almost everyone eventually lands outside of the world of employer provided health insurance.

Then, the Sunni/Shia thing erupts, the Taliban are still in their Pakistan base and we don't have a clear victory from the War on Terror or the War in Iraq.  So now the military supporters have questions about our national will.  As do fiscal conservatives, as do people concerned about global warming, as do people concerned about getting a job, as do people concerned about maintaining health insurance, as do people concerned about running out of savings now that they are retired.  Retirees hate the fact that risk free savings earn them nothing.  The only winners out there are people with jobs who could refinance their mortgage at 3.5%.

Anyway, David Brooks describes the decline in U.S. support for Democracy Building.

Link to Brooks Column

The Wall Street Journal Should Know Better

I wouldn't know what the WSJ is saying on their editorial page if my wife didn't love the new stuff they added:  a NYC section and a Personal Journal with a different focus every day of the week.  I still may try to get her to allow me to stop subscribing as I hate helping fund Rupert Murdoch's empire.

But today they angered me to new heights.  Along with the actions of the GOP Congress, which I will note has an approval rating of 7%.  It is no wonder that President Obama's approval rating is falling.  The GOP Congress refuses to govern and at some point the people hold everybody in Washington responsible for this failure to manage the country.  The GOP is succeeding in creating a failed Presidency, except for one very important item:  ObamaCare.

No matter what happens in November, President Obama will still be President.  And there will be a sufficient number of Democratic votes in the Senate to prevent a 2/3's override of any vetoes.  So the country may not move forward, but the GOP lack of respect for the President and their lack of respect for the people of the United States of America will become readily apparent to all and I hope ruin their chances for regaining the White House in 2016.

So what did the Wall Street Journal say that angered me so much this morning?  They wrote an editorial on how ObamaCare was responsible for a decline in health care spending in the 1Q of 2014 and therefore, ObamaCare was responsible for the slow growth in the American economy and the fate of the long term unemployed.

This view is so screwed up that there is no logical single place to start to dissect it and show it to be wrong.  But here I go.

1st, Health Care spending is one sixth of the economy.  That is unsustainable, but faces pressure to increase as the Baby Boomers age.  It has to be contained because there is enormous waste in the system. ObamaCare tries to begin to control that and it is in the national interest to do so.  If the WSJ were not so putridly anti-Obama (and any other Democrat), they would acknowledge that.  After all, ObamaCare was designed by the right wing Heritage Foundation as an private sector insurance alternative to a single payer plan.  I am sure somewhere in the archives, theWSJ supported this design.

2nd, the biggest problem in U.S. labor global competitiveness is the fact that our employers must offer health insurance to their workers where other countries have a national single payer plan payed for through taxes and worker payments.  One reason these other countries can afford this is they do not spend 4% of GDP on their military.  But you will only see the WSJ seeking more spending on the military because that will raise GDP growth.  Why doesn't the WSJ support spending on infrastructure to raise GDP?  Do they think crumbling roads and bridges and underground pipes are going to last forever?

3rd. they are observers of the Global Economy and have been for decades.  They well know (but refuse to admit it) that when a country suffers a Real Estate Bubble Burst, it takes 7 to 10 years to recover from that and the U.S. is actually doing much better than that norm.  In addition, we have a demographic reality to deal with which is the retirement of the baby boomers, many of them early as a result of the Real Estate Bubble Burst, and the widespread business practice of age discrimination.  When you retire, you consume less:  Less House, less travel, less spending on clothes, appliances, home improvements, less eating out.  And the young people coming into the job market have student loans to pay off, so they are not replacing the retiring baby boomer spending in the aggregate.  So for the WSJ to say the Obama Presidency social and political priorities have generated slow growth is a joke.  The President would have spent more on infrastructure if the Congress would have passed the authorizations and GDP growth would be higher if that had happened.

4th, they acknowledge that income inequality has grown but they refuse to acknowledge that globalization has defeated the benefits of supply side economics and they refuse to acknowledge that government spending has been pretty much cut to the bone in some areas of discretionary spending, but there is a refusal on the part of both parties to cut the tax subsidies that flow to business and the WSJ is silent about that.  You cannot cut taxes to raise prosperity at this point.

I know that basically the WSJ editorial board is insular and crazy.  Their view of the world is lock step in line with the Koch Brothers and always has been even under the former WSJ ownership.

And that is ultimately what makes me so angry.  Lying!!  The GOP/WSJ promulgate lies after lies after lies.  As a manager, if one of my staff lied to me, I fired them as soon as I uncovered the lie.  Hell hath no fury, as this writer being lied to.  I detest lies with a passion that has no boundaries.

I accept differences of opinion, but I cannot tolerate lies.  And that is what the conservative movement has become today.  They are trying to Swift Boat America and believe if you put forth lie after lie after lie eventually you convince a sufficient number of people that lie is the truth.  But eventually, reality about the truth will have to occur, and I hope the American people are as angry about lying as I am.

And this is how F***** Up the U.S. will be if the GOP wins the Senate

This is a copy and paste of Simon Maloy's writing in Salon, with a link to the original article at the bottom.

"Politics, as a rule, is terrible. It attracts terrible people and rewards their worst behaviors. It works at cross purposes, appealing to a person’s sense of idealism and then expecting them to corrupt it in order to achieve anything of substance. It’s a punishing slog that requires overcoming absurd and unnecessary obstacles to accomplish even the most basic of functions. And it’s only going to get worse.

Brian Beutler writes at the New Republic that the political climate as it exists today isabout as good as it’s going to get for some time to come. Sure, we’re not actually getting anything done, save for the occasional executive order from President Obama, but we’re also not careening toward default and/or shutdown (though that could change before long). In the context of the dysfunction of last few years, this can’t be viewed as anything but a positive development.

That’s how low we’ve sunk: “not actively trying to sabotage ourselves” is counted as progress.

But get ready to sink lower. Let’s assume that the Republicans take control of the Senate in November, an outcome that is not inevitable, but certainly likely. The status quo will obviously be altered. Beutler lays out the options:

Republicans will either yield to 2011-style impulses again, and provoke a series of dangerous confrontations, or they’ll content themselves with running the Democrats’ current play, in reverse. Passing what legislation they can, expecting a veto. Letting Senate Democrats filibuster farther-fetched priorities. Continuing to propound various scandals and conspiracy theories.

Were I a betting man, I’d go with the regression to 2011-style crisis governance as the likelier of the two outcomes. We may be in a lull now, but that’s the direction an increasingly anti-government Republican Party is headed, and crisis governance is the only way to keep the Tea Party happy.

If the Republicans do win the Senate, it will be because conservative voters came out to support people like North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Arkansas’ Tom Cotton. When the new Congress is sworn in next February, conservatives are going to want their agenda implemented – Obamacare repealed, debt limit frozen in place. With Obama in the White House, they’re not going to be able to realize that agenda through the normal legislative process.

Republicans managed to occupy themselves by passing endless Affordable Care Act repeal votes in the House, but even they’re weary of that gimmick and I suspect that seeing repeal after repeal fall victim to Democratic filibusters or Obama’s veto pen will not to do the trick for people like Ted Cruz. Cruz has already demonstrated that he’s not willing to accept half measures when it comes to repealing Obamacare, and reform bills that merely undermine the law would seem to fall in that category. Lately he’s beentalking up the government shutdown he precipitated as a political victory for the Republicans.

He’ll also have new allies who are attuned to the Tea Party ethos and will not necessarily fall in with what the establishment wants. “To backers of the Tea Party hopefuls, it is the willingness of their candidates to break with the establishment that makes them so attractive,” Carl Hulse wrote in the New York Times. “Conservative activists view many in the Republican hierarchy as timid, insufficiently conservative and complicit with Democrats and Washington lobbying interests. They yearn to shake the power structure and believe the party could benefit.”

The question ultimately comes down to whether the Senate Republican leadership would risk open rebellion within the caucus in order to pursue a less destructively incompetent form of governance. Mitch McConnell was opposed to Cruz’s shutdown scheme, but not to the idea of taking hostages in order to extract policy concessions. Assuming he survives against Allison Lundergan Grimes and is elected majority leader, he could very well revive the tactic, particularly if the Senate and House can put up a unified front against Obama.

The Republicans will also be keenly aware of the ticking clock. Control of the Senate could very likely be a short-lived situation as the 2016 map will be as bad (or worse) for Republicans as it is for Democrats this cycle. The pressure to implement conservative agenda items before Democrats have a chance to take back control will be enormous.

Republicans were already frustrated when the leadership abandoned the crisis governance tactic earlier this year. And I doubt that conservatives, after seizing full control of the legislature for the first time in eight years, will be content to use the legislative process to rack up political victories. They’ll want results and they’ll want them quickly. Add all those things together and you can start to see how Republicans will be tempted to resume their strategy of creating and exploiting government dysfunction, and how our already terrible politics will only get worse."

Link to original article

This is How F***** Up the Middle East Is

I may not have this exactly correct, but I think I am close and this why the Neo-Con belief that we need to keep the U.S. Military in harms way is simply wrong.  It also shows why we have to pay intense attention to the situation in order to protect ourselves.

The U.S. and the tyrannical Sunni Gulf States (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Abu Dhabi) are allies.  So it kind of makes sense that Shiite Iran and we would have difficulties, since the Sunni and Shia have difficulties.

But the Qatar's, which host a U.S. military base, provide (or at the very least allow) financial support to extremist Jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS, the former of which the U.S. is formally at war with.

The U.S. invaded Iraq to depose the tyrannical Sunni Saddam Hussein and allow the Shiite majority to elect so we ostensibly support democratization as a a U.S. Goal in the Middle East despite being an ally of all these tyrannically run states.  Saddam did violate the rules when he invaded Kuwait.

So, the U.S. invasion of Iraq allowed the formation of a Shia State that aligned itself with Iran, our ostensible enemy (neoconservative view who designed the invasion of Iraq).

The U.S. then cheers on the Arab Spring as creating democracy in tyrannical states and getting rid of our enemies like Gaddafi.  But then, we end up with the Muslim Brotherhood who are Sufi's and can support either Shia or Sunni conservatives and definitely do not believe in liberal democracy.  But what happens, the people rebel, and the tyrannical Army takes over again.  Democracy snuffed out.

Meanwhile, Syria erupts into a Civil War, the neoconservatives argue for air cover and arms support for the rebels, but it is not clear what kind of command and security support the rebels have and sophisticated arms could well find their way the hands of enemies of Israel, our only true ally in the region (albeit one who could make life easier for us by developing a 2 State solution to their own major problem).

So in Syria, we support the rebels who are Sunni against the Shiite Assad regime who is supported by Iran and Iraq (our ally and our enemy).  The Sunni rebels include ISIS, which is now trying to overthrow the Shia Iraqi government using the funding from Qatar.

The Assad regime is now attacking ISIS in Iraq believing they have over reached while the U.S. has military observers in Iraq trying to figure out if U.S. military action can be effective fighting ISIS.  This would make us allies of Iran and the Assad regime, both of whom we would like to overthrow.  But we have to do this because Al Qaeda and ISIS are enemies of the U.S., but allies of the Gulf States, who are our allies.

So our allies have allies who are our enemies.  We are helping our allies who are allies of our enemies fight our enemies who are allies of our allies.  And our enemies are fighting our enemies who are allies of our allies.

So who are our allies and enemies?  The Gulf States which support Al Qaeda and ISIS or Iran and Iraq which oppose Al Qaeda and ISIS.  But Iran is our original enemy in all this because we supported the Shah and he suppressed the Mullahs who eventually took over and hate the U.S. and Israel.  And Al Qaeda and ISIS are our newest enemies.

So we have both Shia and Sunni and Sufi who hate us for interfering in their countries and we have Shia, Sunni and Sufi allies who want our military support when it suits them, but then it usually upsets someone else in the region.

Remember, the original reason Al Qaeda was formed by Osama bin Laden was to oppose the U.S. military being in Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War to free Kuwait from Saddam Hussein.

For every action there is a reaction when it comes to the Middle East.

It seems to me the best solution for the U.S. is to let the Sunni and Shia fight it out amongst themselves.  The fewer of them there are, the better.  Israel needs to develop a secure 2 State Solution so the Palestinians cannot be an excuse for all sorts of activity, and Israel can hold another government responsible for security issues in the West Bank as they do Gaza.

Those poor 3 kidnapped teenagers were taken in an Israeli security zone of the West Bank and they would not have been there if the West Bank was Palestine.  As the Arab population of Israel and the West Bank grows and becomes radical because they have no sovereign state, these type of security issues will just become more widespread because of the relative population.

Israel needs a 2 State Solution and until the U.S. can figure out who is truly an ally in the Middle East, the fewer people we have in harms way, the better.  But we do have to pay attention.

I was thinking about this article this morning and then I saw Thomas Friedman's column this morning.  His key quote is;  "We tend to make every story about us.  But this is not all about us.  To be sure, we've done plenty of ignorant things in Iraq and Egypt.  But we've also helped open their doors to a different future...which are slammed shut for now......Where we see islands of decency threatened, we should help protect them.  But this is primarily about them, about their need to learn to live together, without an iron fist from the top, and it will happen only when and if they want it to happen."

Link to Fiedman column on ISIS and Sisi


And this is why Putin should think twice about radicalizing the eastern end of the Ukraine.  Russia has enough problems with its Muslims.  It should not be creating another zone of instability in a region not all that far from Chechnya.

These are a sample of Tea Party Priorities

Based upon the voting record of Steve Scalise, a GOP candidate to become Majority Whip in the House of Representatives.

1.  Repeal Obamacare and deny health insurance to lower middle income America and people with pre-existing conditions.

2.  Deny Climate Change is Occurring.

3.  Defund the government so you can cut taxes further after ending crucial services.

4.  Maintain government subsidies for Flood Insurance so that people living in coastal flood zones don't see their insurance costs sky rocket.



In other words, it's OK for my constituents with boatloads of money to give me campaign contribution to get government handouts, but it's not OK for lower middle class constituents to get the government policies that will help them

Why Do GOP Senators Not Respect the Constitutional Process?

I don't understand why the GOP Neo-Con Senators continue to want to send Islamic criminals to Guantanamo Bay.  If they are in U.S.A. jails they will be subject to the ultimate criminal justice system in the world, U.S. criminal gangs who don't respect people who do harm to their turf, which is what the 9/11 attacks were.  But on a more serious note, what makes us a great nation is our belief that our justice system transcends politics and the military (which is suspect to outsiders in foreign countries) and in the ultimate guilt by evidence and conviction by a jury of ordinary people.

I don't understand why these Senators refuse to trust the system and advocate torture as a form of retribution which is what Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio did yesterday.

But the Middle East is a rats nest and I appreciate Thomas Friedman's expansion of my post from last week.  I know he didn't read it, but it is nice to see we agree.

Link to Thomas Friedman today

And we would be remiss if we did not call out Doc Hastings, the GOP House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman.  He denounced President Obama's expansion of the George Bush II's Pacific Ocean National Monument, which has the goal of providing a safe haven for fish to live and reproduce preventing the extinction of the species.  Congressman's Hasting's ostensible reason is it will give U.S. Tuna fisherman a smaller slice of the ocean to fish in and make it harder for them to make a living.

But if the fish don't have a safe place from the navy of fishing boats that is out there looking to hook them in order to feed 7 billion people, there won't be any fish for the 7 billion people.  How many tuna do you need to even provide sushi for 200 million sushi eaters?  The world needs more safe places for the fish than even the U.S. can provide in this one national monument.  How many fish species are struggling to avoid extinction?  Too many!

This is just another illustration of how the GOP supports business that has absolutely no ability to control its need for short term cash flow at the expense of a healthy environment that is sustainable in all its diversity.  I think the GOP wants the world to live off of land based animal protein that is fueled by water that is unsafe for humans to drink (my dog shows me that animals have a greater tolerance for unsafe water) and animals don't live long enough to suffer from air pollution and the issues of global warming.

I am an individual of business training and I want business to be profitable and sustain prosperity.  But I learned studying economics and in business school that when a company must spend money to prevent harm to a freely available part of nature they will not spend that money unless government regulation insures that all the competitors will face the same burden.  If only one company takes advantage of avoiding the cost, they will scoop up more market share and put the "good" companies out of that business and the same pollution will still be there in the end.  Only government regulation can prevent the short sighted nature of capitalist enterprise when it comes to natural resources.

The GOP of the 1960's and 1970's understood that.  Today's GOP does not.

Musings About Words from Conservatives

1st, I am glad John McCain is not President.  His criticism, that even a discussion with the Iranians about the situation with the Sunni Jihadist's in Iraq that we and they oppose, is a bad idea shows how divorced from reality his brain is.  Iran and Turkey are the biggest baddest military in the region and both border Iraq.  Not talking with Iran and Turkey about the situation there would be the equivalent of not speaking with U.S. about a conflict in Mexico or Canada.

2nd, I think the Supreme Court should force the challenge to the Ohio "lying" law to be heard in the court system.  It will be interesting to see if the Supreme Court Justices sanction lying as legally protected language as they have by allowing corporations to be treated as individual citizens.  Being damaged by lying is generally cause for winning civil slander suits.  So you would think a law making lying illegal in election campaigning would be a slam dunk on being constitutional.  Now there is a gray line between interpretation and blatant lying but that would be fact specific and for the justice system to figure out in each specific case.  But it certainly seems reasonable that blatant lying should be discouraged by the legal system and such discouragement within the boundaries of what is constitutional.  If the Robert's Supreme Court upheld lying as constitutional, they would cement themselves as activist judges and really quite radical and subverting.  Something a Supreme Court should not be:  radical and subverting.

3rd, Bret Stephens in the WSJ today comprehensively listed conservative complaints about Obama Administration actions without ever addressing the reality that the military cannot solve civil wars, cannot successfully build a nation where there is ethnic religious diversity that each side will not respect, and is burned out by trying to do just that for 13 years in two countries.  Not to mention that the Republicans have yet to sanction raising revenues to pay for the Borrowed War on Terror.  Hypocrit's!  Cut taxes and raises expenses by starting military action.  That's a fine way to balance the budget.  I am not sure Conservatives deserve that label any more. It is not conservative to sanction lying, it is not conservative to be imprudent about budgets.  I don't know what label would describe them, but conservative is not accurate.

How GOP Opposition to Everything Obama is a Victory for Liberals & Big Business

Republican refusal to cooperate with the Democrats has prevented progress on the Grand Bargain budget deal, otherwise known as Simpson-Bowles.  A sensible plan to use some modest revenue increases combined with some sensible cuts in expenditures to provide the backdrop for some changes in social security and medicare that would put both entitlement programs closer to a path of long term stability; which they are not on now.

Addressing entitlements now is a lower cost solution than doing it some unknown time in the future.

How is this creating a victory for Liberals?  As Paul Krugman stated today, he thinks Simpson-Bowles is a bad deal and unnecessary.  He believes economic growth will fix entitlements and only sees the hurt fixes today will cause lower income retirees:  AARP's position as well.  Obama supports Simpson-Bowles but the Grover Norquist/Koch Brothers/Tea Party GOP cannot support a compromise to pass Simpson-Bowles.  So this inaction is a victory for liberals.

Link to Krugman column

David Camp (retiring GOP Congressman from Michigan) and President Obama both like the idea of comprehensive tax reform which would address the numerous tax loopholes that allow Big Business and Private Equity/Hedge Fund managers to avoid paying a fair % of income in taxes.  The revenue from closing these loopholes would allow the U.S. to reduce the corporate tax rate to a global level and reduce some personal income tax rates.  The net effect would be to encourage global companies to locate more operations in the U.S. increasing job creation domestically.  But the Grover Norquist/Koch Brothers/Tea Party oppose this too, probably because the 1st two are creatures of Big Business and they provide the $ that the Tea Party uses to run campaigns.

This is not a victory for liberals, but it also doesn't seem like a victory what I think the Tea Party stands for; which is anti Big Banks & other Big Businesses.  It also prevents any rational debate over the future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which is a victory for their supporters; another anathema for conservatives.

So basically, other than the benefits for Big Business, all this GOP opposition to everything Obama is a victory for liberals and supports of the GSE's.

I guess the inability to see consequences of their actions is more widespread within the GOP than just the Neo-Con military wing.

Reducing the Price of Oil is the Only Sure Way to Advance U.S. Interests

Today's news in one form or another revolves around the spread in conflict throughout the regions that constitute the Edge of Chaos, a book I read 10 or 20 years ago.  From the southern border between the Sahara and Sub-Saharan Africa through the Middle East into the Southern Caucasus Mountains and on to the 'Stans, these regions all represent a possible home for Terrorists and attack on the U.S.

We cannot afford (thanks to the borrowed War On Terror) to put troops in all these places nor can our burned out military psychologically deal with being on the ground in all these places 100% of the time.

Where did these terrorists come from?  Well many of them arose out of grievances against domestic governments that were/are corrupt and ineffective or dictatorial.  But what all of them have in common is a need for money.  Iran is only negotiating (albeit at a snails pace) over its nuclear ambitions because the sanctions have harmed their access to money that they need.

What is the number 1 source of revenue to finance these activities?  Oil revenue from rich Arabs in the Gulf States and Sudan and Oil revenue to Russia.

That is why I now believe it is imperative for the United States to reduce its imports of oil in a prudent way.  A two fold effort aimed at increasing North American production while reducing consumption would provide both a demand and supply shock to reduce the global price of oil and reduce the revenues going to these terrorist organizations.

A sharp word with the Saudi's, the Kuwaiti's, the Qatarese, and Abu Dahbians about their need to curtail the flow of funds from their citizens to terrorist organizations would also be in order, but I would not hold my breadth thinking they will do anything.  Their interest is in keeping the price of oil  high and terrorism accomplishes that.

We might have a discussion with the Chinese and EU about this as well.

The supply shock is further development of fracking (done in an environmentally safe way and it can be done in such a manner) and building the Keystone pipeline.  The Demand shock has to be a higher gas tax with revenues funneled into Tax Reform that reduces tax rates without increasing the budget deficit.  Then people, while they will have money to pay the higher price on gasoline, would also have a motivate to drive more fuel efficient cars and drive less.  A Cap & Trade program in tandem would also help green house gases to offset the increase from the Canadian Tar Sands.

Energy, Economic Growth and National Security are completely interlinked.  We need to consume less energy to reduce the flow of funds to terrorism and we need a strong economy to provide revenues to pay for both a safety net and a military capacity.  Raising the minimum wage and bringing undocumented immigrants into the formal economy would provide a boost in both revenue and tax paid by low wage workers that would help increase demand in the U.S. and boost revenues to further balance the budget.  While we are at it, perhaps we could even put in few fixes to stabilize entitlement financing over the next 40 years.

The Democrats have to be this bold in explaining how their policies need some GOP policies if the country is to move forward in a stable manner.

Do Neo-Con's Ever Think Reflectively?

I will be the 1st to admit that I didn't think overt negative thoughts about President Bush II's desire to invade Iraq because I thought President Bush I should have finished the job in The Gulf War by sending the Army onto Baghdad and removing Sadam Hussein from power.

But let us recall why President Bush I held the military back and limited the victory to restoring Kuwait to what it was previously.

You invade a country, you have an obligation to fix it.  If you don't fix it, you end up with a Hitler.

Iraq was not a well thought through colonial creation by the Ottoman's and the British.  As in Syria, the colonial powers created a country that combined tribes without creating a democracy where the tribes respected each other.  Instead, you had Kings and dictators that squashed the tribal influences or bought them off with oil revenues and let them operate in their immediate territory.

But simmering underneath were tribal aspirations which have now become fed by regional power brokers who certainly don't care about the consequences of their actions.

So you have the Saudi dictatorship funneling money to the jihadist Sunni extremists that want to overthrow Shiite dictatorships.  You have the Iranian dictatorship funneling money to Shiite dictatorships that are fighting to maintain power against the Sunni extremists.  The jihadist Sunni extremists want to overthrow the Sunni dictatorships that are friendly to the U.S. once they overthrow the Shiite dictatorships.

So when John McCain says we should have left troops in Iraq that President Maliki didn't want, he obviously is not being reflective of the primary lesson of the Vietnam War:  No outside military can control a country when the outside military can't defeat the domestic military force that keeps replacing itself and can maintain the fight indefinitely because it is their country.

What John McCain wants is the U.S. to use the U.S. military to support a Shiite regime in Iraq that is controlled by Iran, against whom he wants to send the military to end their nuclear program.  And then he wants the U.S. military to support the Sunni  uprising that includes the Sunni extremists and end the Shiite Assad regime in Syria.  So John McCain wants the U.S. military to be active in Iran, Iraq and Syria; countries where substantial numbers of residents want nothing more than for the U.S. to stay away and will fight us if our troops are there.  This is a rats nest where we need to make sure Al Qaeda doesn't resurface and form training camps for exported terrorism, but boots on the ground and pilots putting their life at risk if they are shot down just doesn't make sense to me.  Keep our military out of harms way.  These are domestic political situations that outsiders cannot control.

This domestic vs outside control is what scares the Chinese so much.  Now that the USSR has broken up and Russia can no longer control the countries that had a self identity before 1918, China is the only country controlling places where such self identity exists without political process to relieve stress.  However, I will note that China has populated Tibet and Urugi (or whatever the NW of China is called) with lots of Han people so a breakaway is not likely to happen.

Russia on the other hand, also cannot seem to lose that mentality of desire to control places, where the residents want to govern themselves.  I sort of get why Russia decided they needed Crimea (naval base and lots of Russia identifying people), but Russia did agree to the Ukrainian Borders in a treaty.  You negotiate changes to treaties in a civil society, so Russia, under Putin, is most definitely operating in the area of an uncivil society.  And you would think that Russia, which has enough trouble of its own with Muslim regions within its borders, would not want to ferment anarchy in another part of its immediate universe.  But that is what they are doing in the Ukraine.  Do they want a civil war in the Ukraine? Where the gas pipelines that support the E.U. and Gazprom's/Lukoil's/Rosneft's and Russia's finances might get blown up and destroy a 1/3 of the global economy, which would harm the other 2/3's of the global economy, which would harm the Russian economy.

So my only conclusion is that the neo-cons in the U.S. and Russia need to reflect upon all this.  I hope they see that politics is all local.  Only the locals can work out their differences and find a way to live with each other.  Otherwise, you just let them slaughter each other because outsiders cannot fix it.

Something for Every Serious Thinker About Education to Think About

I don't really include myself in this category because I don't know enough to be a serious thinker about education despite being highly educated and caring about education.  Of course, that would put me in the same camp as most other school budget voters and people who hold strong opinions on education.

I quote a better writer (a Jesse Rothstein) than myself who highlights an economic reality when it comes to contemplating the quality of teaching in this country.  He is making the case for job security through tenure as a positive.  I don't agree with that nor do I think tenure is necessary to insure job security.  After all, no one in any other profession has job security and that is the only alternative available to these prospective teachers.  Of course, that means teacher salaries and other work rules have to be competitive.  I for one, having been a little league coach and dealing with strongly held parental opinions, cannot imagine myself being a teacher dealing with parental opinions month after month month, year after year after year.

"The reason has to do with the many ways that the role of teachers in the labor market has changed in recent decades. When few professions were open to highly skilled women, schools could hire them for low salaries. Now, teaching must compete with other professions. That has made it hard to recruit the best candidates. One study found that the share of the highest-achieving women who were teachers fell by half between 1964 and 2000; another found an 80 percent drop."

"Thomas J. Kane, a professor of education at Harvard and an expert witness for the Vergara plaintiffs, co-wrote a paper in 2006 on the “coming teacher shortage” and a looming need to “dig further down in the pool of those willing to consider” teaching. Significant layoffs during the last recession, which refilled the pool of job seekers, temporarily alleviated the problem. But those will be absorbed quickly as education budgets recover."

Link to whole column. It is balanced and worth reading.


Link to a similar column. It is complicated with no easy solution.

Will moderate Republicans be forced into independent status and caucusing with the Democrats?

It might be a bit far fetched to think this as Tea Party politics are just as strong in the rural Northeast as they are in the rest of the country.  I mean look at Wisconsin.

But it could happen if the Tea Party insists on no compromises that shut down the government and lead to a lot of disgruntled voters in the middle who determine a lot of elections.

I have completely screwed over my CFP studies today reading about the aftermath of Eric Cantor's losing to an Economist who doesn't have an opinion on the minimum wage.

Link to Pew Research showing GOP voters like rigid politicians

Can a court really eliminate tenure?

I am deeply indebted to my teachers at every level of my education.  But I do know that tenure protects teachers from being fired for incompetence and there is no where in our society where an organization should not have the right to fire people for incompetence.

And teachers have to realize that they must be held up to performance standards.  And they must realize that as human beings, they will all age differently.  A certain percentage will be able to be competent teachers until retirement.  But a certain percentage will lose their drive, burnout or lose mental capacities and those people should not be in a classroom.  A mind is a terrible thing to waste and that is what incompetent teachers are doing.

Tenure accomplishes two things.  It protects teachers from tyrannical principals and it protects incompetent teachers from being fired.  A union process can accomplish the former while providing protections so that there is due process in the process of determining competency.

But I believe tenure is a contractual issue between school boards and teacher unions, so I am not sure how a court is going to find tenure illegal or unconstitutional.

But that is what a court in California is going to try and determine.

Why the Tea Party and I are Not in Agreement!!!

Yesterday, reporters went searching for voters who had voted for David Brat.  What they found were people who are angry with Eric Cantor for voting on compromises.

Regular readers know that I believe democracy is founded on compromise because no one is correct about anything 100% of the time and no where is that more true than when it comes to government.  That is why the founding fathers, so revered by the Tea Partiers, set up a government that has checks and balances, including a legislature where people of different views get together and talk to each other.  Then they look for legislative language that satisfies a majority of the legislators and the President.  That is our system.

Now Eric Cantor was a hardly a compromiser of the sort that I would vote for.  He said no to any number of things I think the government should be doing.  So what did the voters find objectionable?
Apparently, it was a slight musing that some compromise on immigration might be something he could support.  Apparently, it was voting to keep the government running and it was a picture taken of him meeting the President to have a discussion on something.

Let me see, you are the majority leader of the House of Representatives and you have direct responsibility for a key aspect of the government and you are not supposed to either keep the government running or have any discussions with the President.  Well, how are you going to do your job?  And if you are doing your job, why should we pay you to sit in the House of Representatives?  Why don't we just disband the whole legislative process seems to be the view of the Tea Party.

I am almost speechless after taking that logic to it's conclusion, but my real thought of the day was a poll taken by the Pew Research group that found partisanship increasing on the liberal side and a shrinking (but still majority) group of people in the middle.

This is sad because I do not support 100% of liberal biases despite what RedStateVT may think.  I believe environmental change has to be done in a way that maintains economic growth.  I believe in the power of markets and I do not believe the government should be interfering with business beyond prudent regulation because markets can be excessive in ways that only self-correct by damaging innocent people.

And responsible members of the GOP should think about what a Tea Party libertarian set of policies would look like.  Isolationist would be near the top of the list.  A return to the boom bust cycle of late 1800's and early 1900's.  Greater concentration of wealth which in the same time period let to anarchists and Marxism as a response.  And legalized drugs for everyone to have access to (that could lead to some rational policies that our current War on Drugs has failed miserably at).

Fortunately, I do not believe a Tea Party candidate can win any election other than a rural one.  So let's be thankful the President has a veto power and hope this rise of the Tea Party will motivate less committed voters to come out for the elections this fall and elect a few more Democrats then it looks like will win today.

Eric Cantor and Immigration RIP

I'd like to say something poignent about Eric Cantor's loss, but he practiced reactionary politics, supported the do nothing plans of the Tea Party and I believe voted to shut down the government.  So he lost to an anti-immigration nut case who wants to be more anti-government than Eric Cantor.

And suddenly, immigration reform which was already dead, is now even deader according to various political pundits.

All we can hope for is somehow this mobilizes a strong turnout by marginal Democratic voters who usually sit out mid-term elections to turn out this November and vote for Democratic Congressional candidates.

These congressional candidates could even be Republicans who believe in a functioning democracy.

The Tea Party does not believe in a functioning democracy.  Shutting down the government, refusing to negotiate with the elected representatives of the other party and trying to ignore the views of 50% of the population across the rest of the country so it is your way or the highway is the style of autocrat's and 3rd world countries.  They may pretend to be 1776 patriots but they are really more believers in the policies of King George III.

Lt Col. Robert Bateman challenges the NRA

I quote from his blog wherever it is.


"Open Carry Texas" (which I think of as "Wimps With Mommy Issues"), conducted an open carry, en masse, at a Chipotle Restaurant — then the moms shared the word. They posted pictures of these morons carrying rifles in a family restaurant. Then they asked that the chain bar weapons on their private property. As Founder Shannon Watts put it: "The Chipotle petition received more than 10,000 signatures within just a few hours." The corporation realized where their business interests lie and that guns are wrong in their establishments across the entire nation.
...
"These women are doing what nobody else had managed to do before now. They are actually affecting change. Not through legislation, but through the free choice they have to patronize, or to NOT patronize, private companies that allow guns to be carried in their stores, restaurants, malls, and more."


"This is too much. We have Tea Party political activists shooting cops from behind, in the head, then covering their dead bodies with the Tea Party “Gadsden” flag and shouting, “The Revolution begins now!”

"No. I am coming home. I need to be there and be part of the solution. Moms Demand Action is getting some traction, but they can use the lean-in of a few U.S. Army Airborne Infantry Rangers. I am only sorry that I did not stand up to this threat to our nation before. I am sorry. I was busy."

"I have been overseas in Afghanistan and in NATO nations for half a decade while the insanity of the National Rifle Association expanded and exploded, and the NRA became, essentially, the tool of death in the United States. They made mass killings normal."

And somehow the NRA thinks we there should be more people packing guns when we already have   by one count a school shooting every other week and in 2011 11,422 people were killed by gunfire in the United States (that's 31.3 per day) and 59,208 were wounded (162 per day).  I'm not even counting the 19,392 gun fire suicides as I figure they would have found another way to eliminate themselves from this earth.

And we can't even have a rational discussion about a few things that might reduce the use of automatic weapons to kill and wound innocent people who are just going about their normal activities in a day when some usually caucasian male comes out of the wood work on a mission to take some people out while he awaits a police bullet or comes to the realization that he'd better shoot himself in case the police just wound him and he ends up in jail.

Amen

On the D.C. fight over the Bergdahl exchange, a gossip columnist in the Daily News (Linda Stasi) sums up the way most Americans feel about the state of political process in D.C.

"No matter how Bergdahl was rolling, the way the President traded him for five senior Taliban leaders has caused yet another war at home."

"And after 12 years of an illegal, undeclared war, we all have combat fatigue."

The Taliban Have to be Sent Home Under International Law

I learned this in the Economist this week.

There are two basic international rules of war under which we are holding the bad guys in Guantanamo.

The 1st is Al Qaeda guys that we hold on the basis of the War on Terror and our being attacked multiple times.  We can continue to hold them as long as Al Qaeda exists and threatens to do us harm.

The 2nd is the Taliban guys (like the guys we used in the Bergdahl prisoner exchange) that we hold on the basis of the War in Afghanistan.  Once we no longer have troops in Afghanistan, we cannot hold any prisoners of war legally (from the War in Afghanistan) and we would have to send them home or be in violation of any number of moral codes.

So when the GOP politicians pretend that we could have held these exchanged prisoners for a long time to come, they are either ignorant or deliberately ignoring the reality that these guys were going to go home sometime in the next year or two anyway.

And I maintain that all the prisoners in Guantanamo should have been prosecuted for crimes and sentenced to jail in the U.S.  Then the gang members in jail would have dispatched them to meet the heavenly virgins that are awaiting them and we would have be having to argue about what to do with the people held in Guantanamo.

Partisanship has Overwhelmed Citizenship

David Brook's column this morning shows us why Private Bergdahl had to be brought home and subsequent review of the video tape reveals that John McCain wanted this originally, but now says the price was too high.

I have never wondered why the U.S. is a country that we all believe in but I am thankful my grandparents and great great grandparents chose to leave Europe and come to the U.S.  I also recognize that immigrants striving for a better life makes this a better more dynamic country.  That is why I support a liberal immigration policy.

Until I read David's column this morning I did not think about the challenges it takes to maintain a sense of nationality in a country of 300 million people from all types of ethnicity and arrival times  here in the United States.  I do understand having lived here in NYC for 30 years that 9/11 brought NY'ers together in a way that I could not have imagined.  2 hours of tragedy eliminated a certain ethnic mistrust that had existed previously.  We were all in it together and that commonality in attitude has been maintained every since.

And I believe that whatever mishandling there has been on the part of President Obama in bringing Private Bergdahl home can be laid at rest to his trials and tribulations of having to deal with a GOP that wants nothing more than to ruin him and make his Presidency a disaster.  But as David writes, it was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, a disastrous Presidency is not good for the country.  President Bush II's presidency was a disaster for the country without the Democrats even trying to create that.

Link to David Brook's Column

The Market Cannot Solve Everything

Markets can be excessive, that is why regulation is needed.  Think banking & securities here.

Markets take advantage of freely available resources, that is why regulation is needed.  Think the environment here.

And lack of Universal Health Insurance harms the economy because workers in other countries don't require health insurance from their employer.

And it leads to other sub-optimal outcomes as this Bloomberg columnist states so well.


Link to Bloomberg column

Only in Iran & Other Tuesday Musings

The "Happy" guy is playing a concert at the Apollo theater tonight and is streaming it on the internet so his fans in Iran can watch it.  Seeing this story this morning reminded me of my disgust when I originally read about Iran prosecuting the kids who made a fun video dancing around to "Happy".  It cannot be a proud moment for a regime's legitimacy when you have to prosecute young people for having fun and being happy.

A striking pose of a mean ill spirited angry mullah comes to mind and I wonder who would want to live in a place where that is the spirit of the government.  While it is a distance from the Congressional GOP, they are certainly in the same county.

David Brooks wrote today about something I have been personally concerned about.  The ability of the internet to draw me into watching videos of things that are momentarily interesting and distracting from things that would have more meaning like reading books faster so I can read more books in a year.

David Brooks Column

Also. now that more information has come out about the circumstances of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl original disappearance, I am faced with the reality that this decision was on the edge of decision making.  I can see there was no right answer that everyone would agree with.  Do you leave an American soldier a POW because he did something stupid that resulted in unnecessary armed conflict and casualties or do you bring him home with a POW swap of some really bad people who are now getting up in age and may or may not return to the battlefield.

The Army did promote Private Bowe Bergdahl to Sgt. while he was in captivity.

The Army and Marines bring home the dead and the wounded and as a matter of policy do not want to leave a POW a POW.

The guys we sent back are bad people although they were not frontline soldiers for the most part but rather politicians who governed under the Taliban.  The Taliban is a political organization and these guys were probably some of their best managers and they probably hate the U.S. more than ever after 12 years in Guantanamo's  hot humid weather prison.

But we are leaving Afghanistan and the real enemy is the ISI of Pakistan that allows the Taliban to operate and protected Osama bin Ladan.  There would be no Taliban if Pakistan did not want them to exist.  What difference do these guys really make and if they were the price to get our POW home, so be it.

The issue of precedent is a smokescreen.  If we don't bring POW's held by the enemy home, the enemy will either simply kill them or co-opt them into their society.  They won't stop capturing POW's and removing them from the battlefield.

The GOP who are truly sorry these guys are going home and wanted to keep them locked up with the U.S. taxpayer paying for their upkeep should reflect upon the fact that if they had been brought to a U.S. court, convicted of crimes against the U.S. and humanity, sentenced under U.S. law and held in a  U.S. jail (where a CRIP would likely have sliced their throat), they would not have been available to the President and Army for a POW swap.

Anyway, I am glad this was a decision I did not have to make.

Only In India

Do the police use water cannon to disperse women protesting the preponderance of rape in India and the police unwillingness to investigate and arrest the perpetrators.

Obama's Dealing with Reality and other Sunday Musings

As usual, the paid pundits write words that I wish I could have.

Thomas Friedman on Syria.

"Yes, being in Kurdistan, it is clear that the metastasizing of the Syrian conflict has reached a stage where it is becoming a factory for thousands of jihadists from Europe, Central Asia, Russia, the Arab world and even America, who are learning, as one Syrian Kurdish leader told me, “to chop people’s heads off and then go back home.” The conflict is also, as an Iraqi Kurdish security expert added, legitimizing Al Qaeda’s shift “from the caves of Afghanistan into the mainstream of the Arab world” as defenders of Sunni Islam. These are big threats."

"But when I ask Kurds what to do, the answer I get is that arming decent Syrians, as Obama has vowed to do more of, might help bring Assad to the table, but “there is no conventional military solution” — neither Shiites nor Sunnis will decisively beat the other, remarked a former deputy prime minister of Iraq, Barham Salih. “But walking away is not possible anymore.” Syria is spinning off too much instability now."

"The only solution, they say, is for the U.S. and Russia (how likely is that!) to broker a power-sharing deal in Syria between Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran and their proxies. Repeat after me: There is no military solution to Syria — and Iran and Russia have to be part of any diplomatic one. Those are the kind of unpleasant, unromantic, totally long-shot foreign policy choices the real world throws up these days. A little humility, please."

Link to Column

Ross Douthat also had some good comments on the negative side of the internet and the impact it has on everyone, disastrously for some people.  I know Douthat would prefer to a return to society dealing with sex as it did 50 or 60 years ago, but is it really conservative to aspire to make over a society as completely as that would entail.  Societies go where consensus opinion takes them.  And if leaders want to alter that they need to change consensus opinion.

Link to Douthat column on Sex