Moreover, the relative hawks in the contentious five-agency rule-writing process, most notably outgoing CFTC Chair Gary Gensler, seem to have in large part prevailed on key issues in the rule's pending finalization next week:Regulators aren't expected to start strictly enforcing the Volcker rule until 2015, giving banks some breathing room. Because the rule was widely anticipated, most banks already have done away with operations focused on proprietary trading, or making bets with their own money.For example, Goldman shut down in 2010 its Principal Strategies in-house trading unit, partly as a response to the looming Volcker rule. Last month, Goldman Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd C. Blankfein outlined other steps being taken by the New York company to comply with the Volcker rule, including "winding down our hedge-fund investments."
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
About that "toothless" Dodd-Frank reform...
Dodd-Frank is widely written off as meek, weak and watered down by relentless bank lobbying. Perhaps it is in many respects. But the long-unfinalized and tortuously complex Volcker Rule, largely eliminating the banks' proprietary trading and in-house hedge and private equity funds, has already had significant effect, as the WSJ's Scott Patterson recounts:
Friday, November 29, 2013
Against gratitude
[repost]
Okay, not really. But I am personally uncomfortable with overt expressions of gratitude, and while I think this is mainly an emotional limitation on my part, there may be at least the ghost of a reasonable caveat in it.
As a teenager, I took a slightly unsavory pleasure in the science fiction of Robert Heinlein. He not only entertained but also influenced and repelled me. He once wrote (through a character) that there was something sick at the heart of German civilization, and whether that's true or not, I think that the sickness he condemned clings to him, in a kind of gleeful authoritarianism. At the same time, some fragments of his cracker barrel wisdom stayed with me. One of his quirks, voiced by various favored characters, is an aversion to gratitude. As I recall at this distance, he cast it as a power play of the weak, a form of toadying, or guilt masquerading as love. I think he's wrong to reduce gratitude to those impulses, though gratitude is certainly alloyed with them. In a similar vein, though, he ridiculed worship, asking why an omniscient, omnibenevolent God would require the saccharine praise of human beings. That was the question that really stuck with me. It gets at the heart of gratitude, since worship is mainly an expression of gratitude to God.
Such gratitude is -- should be -- a spontaneous expression of love. That's how those who voice it understand it. But why does it express itself in "saccharine" praise? In a Thanksgiving post, Andrew Sullivan's Dish suggested an answer:
Okay, not really. But I am personally uncomfortable with overt expressions of gratitude, and while I think this is mainly an emotional limitation on my part, there may be at least the ghost of a reasonable caveat in it.
As a teenager, I took a slightly unsavory pleasure in the science fiction of Robert Heinlein. He not only entertained but also influenced and repelled me. He once wrote (through a character) that there was something sick at the heart of German civilization, and whether that's true or not, I think that the sickness he condemned clings to him, in a kind of gleeful authoritarianism. At the same time, some fragments of his cracker barrel wisdom stayed with me. One of his quirks, voiced by various favored characters, is an aversion to gratitude. As I recall at this distance, he cast it as a power play of the weak, a form of toadying, or guilt masquerading as love. I think he's wrong to reduce gratitude to those impulses, though gratitude is certainly alloyed with them. In a similar vein, though, he ridiculed worship, asking why an omniscient, omnibenevolent God would require the saccharine praise of human beings. That was the question that really stuck with me. It gets at the heart of gratitude, since worship is mainly an expression of gratitude to God.
Such gratitude is -- should be -- a spontaneous expression of love. That's how those who voice it understand it. But why does it express itself in "saccharine" praise? In a Thanksgiving post, Andrew Sullivan's Dish suggested an answer:
A caveat for Ezra Klein
[updated, with a rather large caveat to the caveat...]
..who has a cogent set of questions about how well HealthCare.gov will be working as of Dec. 1 and going forward. On one key question I think there's a moderating factor:
Most people subject to policy cancellations in the individual market are probably not eligible for subsidies, since they've already found insurance affordable. That means they don't really need HealthCare.gov. They can easily get complete information about their options on ValuePenguin and then sign up directly with an insurer. [UPDATE: I'm afraid my premise here is severely compromised; William Ocasio reminds me that a recent Families USA study found that 71% of those currently in the individual market are below 400% of the Federal Poverty Level, and thus potentially eligible for subsidies. In practice, though, many people above about 270% FPL are not subsidy-eligible -- you only get a subsidy if the full cost of the benchmark silver plan exeeds a benchmark percentage of your income, and plan prices vary pretty widely from market to market. Still, probably more than half of those subject to cancellation are in fact eligible for at least some subsidy.]
Those who have received policy cancellations and are eligible for subsidies will need to get a subsidy application processed by hook or crook (that is, by online, phone or print application to the federal government) by Jan. 1. If they can't, I would imagine that some kind of retroactive subsidy payment will have to be worked out, after a lot of angst. For what it's worth, the subsidy-eligible probably won't be subject to rate shock, unless they're at the very top end of the scale, where the subsidy can shrink to near nothing.
Related:
Bypassing HealthCare.gov, cont.
Who needs HealthCare.gov?
..who has a cogent set of questions about how well HealthCare.gov will be working as of Dec. 1 and going forward. On one key question I think there's a moderating factor:
9. Where the Dec.1 deadline really matters is for people who've already had their plans canceled and who need to be able to sign up for a new one in time for it to start on Jan. 1. If the Web site isn't working smoothly for these people in the next week or so it'll be an utter disaster when 2014 comes and many of these people find themselves uninsured and some get sick.
Those who have received policy cancellations and are eligible for subsidies will need to get a subsidy application processed by hook or crook (that is, by online, phone or print application to the federal government) by Jan. 1. If they can't, I would imagine that some kind of retroactive subsidy payment will have to be worked out, after a lot of angst. For what it's worth, the subsidy-eligible probably won't be subject to rate shock, unless they're at the very top end of the scale, where the subsidy can shrink to near nothing.
Related:
Bypassing HealthCare.gov, cont.
Who needs HealthCare.gov?
Thursday, November 28, 2013
"People analytics" should lead to better pay in all jobs
Anyone who reads Don Peck's deep dive into new advances in "the algorithmic assessment of workers' potential might be in varying degrees excited and disturbed by new means of predicting, assessing and improving performance. My chief reaction went in a different direction. The tests potentially highlight the huge performance differential in any type of work -- and hence, the value of good performance:
Teri Morse, the vice president for recruiting at Xerox Services, oversees hiring for the company’s 150 U.S. call and customer-care centers, which employ about 45,000 workers. When I spoke with her in July, she told me that as recently as 2010, Xerox had filled these positions through interviews and a few basic assessments conducted in the office—a typing test, for instance. Hiring managers would typically look for work experience in a similar role, but otherwise would just use their best judgment in evaluating candidates. In 2010, however, Xerox switched to an online evaluation that incorporates personality testing, cognitive-skill assessment,
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Just what is the United States retreating from?
I have a problem with the way Mark Landler frames recent Obama administration diplomatic activity -- the scheduling of a Syrian peace conference as well as the interim agreeement with Iran:
To call these initiatives "a broader scaling-back of the use of American muscle" seems to me a distortion of historical US foreign policy norms. Regarding Iran: when has the U.S. ever imposed military muscle to halt another country's (professedly peaceful) nuclear program? It is only the bluster of the neocons -- the crew who blundered into Baghdad -- and of a Congress always eager to show fealty to Netanyahu that makes a preemptive strike at Iran seem like a kind of default response to that country's nuclear program.At one level, the flurry of diplomatic activity reflects the definitive end of the post-Sept. 11 world, dominated by two major wars and a battle against Islamic terrorism that drew the United States into Afghanistan and still keeps its Predator drones flying over Pakistan and Yemen.But it also reflects a broader scaling-back of the use of American muscle, not least in the Middle East, as well as a willingness to deal with foreign governments as they are rather than to push for new leaders that better embody American values. “Regime change,” in Iran or even Syria, is out; cutting deals with former adversaries is in.
Monday, November 25, 2013
Bypassing HealthCare.gov, cont
In prior posts, most recently here, I have explored the possibility that shoppers for health insurance on the ACA exchanges might bypass the still-balky HealthCare.gov with the help of information-only comparison sites ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa. Customers ineligible for a federal subsidy can already easily get all the information they need on these sites and then enroll directly with an insurer. For those whose incomes entitle them to subsidies, however, the subsidy application has been the roadblock, as it must be submitted directly to the federal government, either through HealthCare.gov or via phone or print application.
That may be about to change. Kaiser Health News' Julie Appleby reports, "Insurers and the Obama administration are testing fixes to healthcare.gov designed to allow insurers and web-based brokers to directly enroll consumers who qualify for subsidies under the health law." It appears, though that the fixes require insurers themselves to route the customer's application through HealthCare.gov -- that is, in the 36 states that have forced the federal government to run their exchanges. Direct insurer processing of the subsidy application is still only an ask:
That may be about to change. Kaiser Health News' Julie Appleby reports, "Insurers and the Obama administration are testing fixes to healthcare.gov designed to allow insurers and web-based brokers to directly enroll consumers who qualify for subsidies under the health law." It appears, though that the fixes require insurers themselves to route the customer's application through HealthCare.gov -- that is, in the 36 states that have forced the federal government to run their exchanges. Direct insurer processing of the subsidy application is still only an ask:
Sunday, November 24, 2013
C.S. Lewis: Joymongerer, democrat by default, less repressive than many of his critics, amateur philosopher
In honor of the 50th anniversary of C.S. Lewis' death on November 22, anappreciation that I agree with in toto:
I think Lewis was so compelling because, first, he was incomparable at evoking "joy" as he defined it. Whatever idea and yearning for "heaven" I ever had came from Narnia. Second, I think he had an intuitive -- not theoretical -- grasp of psychology -- he was one of those people who reads his own mind so well, he knows a good deal about how all human minds (and wills and emotions) work.The bickering of the children in The Magician's Nephew, Eustace's redemption in Dawn Treader, the seeds of human hatred elucidated by Screwtape -- and above all, the parental love turned to jealous gall in Till We Have Faces -- his greatest imaginative leap and rendition of the romance of the soul --have a kind of easy, intimate verity that give his spiritual dramas life.
At the same time, when it came to doctrine and apologetics, I think he was an unwitting sophist -- an honest sophist, if that makes any sense, because he fooled himself first...
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Red states' ACA exchanges: lab or slab?
Austin Frakt has launched a multi-post-and-tweet campaign arguing that the Affordable Care Act is an essentially conservative chassis amenable to conservative reform, and that conservative healthcare wonks should be aiming to mend it, not end it. (Subtext: they'd be doing just that if they were not playing for Team GOP.)
The penultimate post in the series dangles conservative wonk-bait via a list of potential reforms in ascending order of disruptiveness to the current ACA structure, e.g., paring back essential benefits and allowing more catastrophic plans on the exchanges (not so disruptive) and creating high risk pools or universal zero- or low-premium catastrophic insurance (very disruptive). But how to move GOP lawmakers and their think tank supporters off their "repeal and replace" schtick and onto a "revise and reform" track?
Frakt's most recent post suggests an answer by misdirection:
In short, O'Barkis is willing. Too bad Republican governors and legislatures are more interested in sabotage than in genuine conservative policy innovation. If and when, however, they're stuck with the corpse of a state exchange (or one on life support), and the ACA is still the law of the land, Republican governors may cook up some fetching Frankenstein monsters of their own.
The penultimate post in the series dangles conservative wonk-bait via a list of potential reforms in ascending order of disruptiveness to the current ACA structure, e.g., paring back essential benefits and allowing more catastrophic plans on the exchanges (not so disruptive) and creating high risk pools or universal zero- or low-premium catastrophic insurance (very disruptive). But how to move GOP lawmakers and their think tank supporters off their "repeal and replace" schtick and onto a "revise and reform" track?
Frakt's most recent post suggests an answer by misdirection:
My conclusion is that the ACA is far more amenable to more conservative reforms than to more liberal ones. Of course, this could change. A public option could be added, for example. But, having had that political fight recently, I doubt it will. The most likely pathway leftward (in the sense of toward single payer) would be if the ACA failed in a sense that could be interpreted as market failure.If some state exchanges fail, and Republicans do not at that time control presidency, Senate and House, then what? Looking back at GOP state governments' refusal to run their own ACA exchanges, Jonathan Bernstein offers a might-have-been that's also, it seems to me, a may-be-yet:
In fact, I do expect the ACA to fail in some states, but not in the ones that are most likely to adopt a state-level single payer program. Exchanges may fail where support for and enrollment into them is discouraged by political leaders and other institutions. Ironically, this is more likely to happen in states whose leaders are more ideologically supportive of market-based approaches.
Imagine if, right now, there were only a handful of states in the federal exchange, and some of the more aggressive and innovative conservative governors were running their own exchanges...suppose that several Republican governors had pushed for a deal in which they would implement Obamacare, including setting up exchanges in their states, if and only if they were given waivers and allowed to try some conservative policy ideas. The pressure would have been intense on the administration to allow at least some of them. After all, the administration never wanted to build all those different state exchanges in the first place. And certainly the president didn’t want obstruction verging on sabotage from Republicans across the board, as is de rigueur now. In order to get some Republican buy-in, there’s a very good chance Obama would have been extremely willing to cut deals, even if liberals would have been appalled at the results for the affected states.Recall also that back in 2011 Obama supported legislation that would have moved the starting line for state waivers enabling alternative means of reaching near-universal coverage from 2017 to 2014 -- and further, that the administration has proven receptive to rather radical, privatized variations of the Medicaid expansion.
In short, O'Barkis is willing. Too bad Republican governors and legislatures are more interested in sabotage than in genuine conservative policy innovation. If and when, however, they're stuck with the corpse of a state exchange (or one on life support), and the ACA is still the law of the land, Republican governors may cook up some fetching Frankenstein monsters of their own.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Who needs HealthCare.gov?
[updated and corrected 11/22, per notes at bottom]
HealthCare.gov may be obsolete before it's fixed.
Purely informational comparison shop sites ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa provide all the information that's supposed to be available on HealthCare.gov: price quotes incorporating the user's location, income, age and family composition for all insurers available to that user on the exchange. ValuePenguin provides plan details. (Shopping without a login or completed application is also possible on HealthCare.gov, but there are limitations and inaccuracies.*)
The missing link has been the subsidy application. That has had to be done through HealthCare.gov, or through phone or print applications, both of which can be started by calling the number posted on HealthCare.gov. That application is the black box from which it's unclear how soon a completed application will emerge. As I've noted before, some insurers at least will take an application for a specific plan from a user who's started a subsidy application with the government, but that's a two-track and perhaps unsettling process
Now, though, the government is poised to let the insurers -- and online brokers, which also enable some comparison shopping -- take the subsidy application, according to HuffPost's Jeffrey Young:
The brokers could be a useful intermediary for some. eHealth offers comparison shopping, with plan details for each posted choice, though in many locations it's far from covering all options on the exchanges. Within its own universe, however, eHealth will make your subsidy estimate, give you price quotes incorporating that estimate, hold information for any plan you select and notify you when enrollment is available on eHealth -- that is, when the site can initiate the subsidy application. A user should check their choices against ValuePenguin or HealthSherpa, however (I have found ValuePenguin's price quotes to be more accurate than HealthSherpa's in New Jersey).
If you want to eliminate the middleman, once the government allows third parties to process the subsidy application, you can use a non-transactional comparison site like ValuePenguin and then apply directly through the insurer offering the plan you choose. Many (I suspect most) insurers on the exchanges provide plan summaries online and enable online applications.
Once the government does outsource the subsidy application process, who needs HealthCare.gov? Its front end, that is. All that really matters is the back end: whether an application can be processed accurately in reasonable time. That of course is the rub, and allowing third parties to initiate subsidy applications won't make the technological challenge* go away. But perhaps the insurers and brokers will be able to expedite the process on behalf of their prospective customers -- and enable a smooth shopping process. If insurers and brokers can take the complete application, all the government needs to do on the front end is refer users to functioning online brokers and the informational sites.
At present, those who are not eligible for subsidies can easily make an informed choice from among policies available on the exchanges and complete the transaction through the insurer or an online broker.
One caveat: "informed" choice is a relative term. Online (and print brochure) plan summaries are not insurance contracts, which are complex, though less prone to booby-trapping than before ACA coverage rules took effect. If I were buying on the exchanges (as I might, next year), I might still seek the advice of a real live human broker to scope out how the co-pays, deductibles etc. might play out.
* You can comparison shop on HealthCare.gov without filling out an application. But subsidy information won't be incorporated in the price quote (they refer you to the Kaiser calculator for that). And the price quotes I got for my wife and I in New Jersey did not take our age into account and so were way off.
** Not to mention the yet-unbuilt systems to process subsidy payments to insurers.
Update, 11/21: just recalled that eHealth has been somewhat notorious for poor customer service: it gets two out of five stars on epinions.com, and Rick Ungar spotlighted some customer horror stories when Avik Roy used the site to spotlight rate shock. Among the complaints: signing up at one price, getting enrolled at another. That should not be possible under the ACA. But the experiences do highlight possible pitfalls to using a middleman. Of course HealthCare.gov and the state websites should function at the least, in William Ocasio's phrasing, as "public options to private marketplaces." The point here is that complete effective workarounds while HealthCare.gov is still balky may soon be imminent, and that private online gateways may remain an important part of the landscape.
Update 2, 11/22: An earlier version of this post assumed that one could effectively ACA shop on eHealth. Prompted by the Anon comment below, I further tested eHealth and found that in many locations it does not include most of the plans available on the exchanges. I have amended the post accordingly. For the record, here is the original lead paragraph:
HealthCare.gov may be obsolete before it's fixed.
Purely informational comparison shop sites ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa provide all the information that's supposed to be available on HealthCare.gov: price quotes incorporating the user's location, income, age and family composition for all insurers available to that user on the exchange. ValuePenguin provides plan details. (Shopping without a login or completed application is also possible on HealthCare.gov, but there are limitations and inaccuracies.*)
The missing link has been the subsidy application. That has had to be done through HealthCare.gov, or through phone or print applications, both of which can be started by calling the number posted on HealthCare.gov. That application is the black box from which it's unclear how soon a completed application will emerge. As I've noted before, some insurers at least will take an application for a specific plan from a user who's started a subsidy application with the government, but that's a two-track and perhaps unsettling process
Now, though, the government is poised to let the insurers -- and online brokers, which also enable some comparison shopping -- take the subsidy application, according to HuffPost's Jeffrey Young:
Now these insurance issuers and brokers are about to get what they want. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is close to providing insurers with the technological capability to also take subsidy applications, as well as sell plans to customers, spokeswoman Julie Bataille said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. ..[Update: fixes currently being tested have the insurers route their customers' subsidy applications through healthcare.gov. It remains unlikely that insurers will gain direct access to the federal data hub that enables subsidy determinations.]
Online brokers eHealth, Go Health and about 30 others also will soon have this capability, Bataille said. "We believe that they are on track to begin their transactions as soon as possible. This is something that, obviously, they will make determinations about individually as they see how their system is interacting with ours, and they make their own assessments about the fixes necessary for them to begin their work."
The brokers could be a useful intermediary for some. eHealth offers comparison shopping, with plan details for each posted choice, though in many locations it's far from covering all options on the exchanges. Within its own universe, however, eHealth will make your subsidy estimate, give you price quotes incorporating that estimate, hold information for any plan you select and notify you when enrollment is available on eHealth -- that is, when the site can initiate the subsidy application. A user should check their choices against ValuePenguin or HealthSherpa, however (I have found ValuePenguin's price quotes to be more accurate than HealthSherpa's in New Jersey).
If you want to eliminate the middleman, once the government allows third parties to process the subsidy application, you can use a non-transactional comparison site like ValuePenguin and then apply directly through the insurer offering the plan you choose. Many (I suspect most) insurers on the exchanges provide plan summaries online and enable online applications.
Once the government does outsource the subsidy application process, who needs HealthCare.gov? Its front end, that is. All that really matters is the back end: whether an application can be processed accurately in reasonable time. That of course is the rub, and allowing third parties to initiate subsidy applications won't make the technological challenge* go away. But perhaps the insurers and brokers will be able to expedite the process on behalf of their prospective customers -- and enable a smooth shopping process. If insurers and brokers can take the complete application, all the government needs to do on the front end is refer users to functioning online brokers and the informational sites.
At present, those who are not eligible for subsidies can easily make an informed choice from among policies available on the exchanges and complete the transaction through the insurer or an online broker.
One caveat: "informed" choice is a relative term. Online (and print brochure) plan summaries are not insurance contracts, which are complex, though less prone to booby-trapping than before ACA coverage rules took effect. If I were buying on the exchanges (as I might, next year), I might still seek the advice of a real live human broker to scope out how the co-pays, deductibles etc. might play out.
* You can comparison shop on HealthCare.gov without filling out an application. But subsidy information won't be incorporated in the price quote (they refer you to the Kaiser calculator for that). And the price quotes I got for my wife and I in New Jersey did not take our age into account and so were way off.
** Not to mention the yet-unbuilt systems to process subsidy payments to insurers.
Update, 11/21: just recalled that eHealth has been somewhat notorious for poor customer service: it gets two out of five stars on epinions.com, and Rick Ungar spotlighted some customer horror stories when Avik Roy used the site to spotlight rate shock. Among the complaints: signing up at one price, getting enrolled at another. That should not be possible under the ACA. But the experiences do highlight possible pitfalls to using a middleman. Of course HealthCare.gov and the state websites should function at the least, in William Ocasio's phrasing, as "public options to private marketplaces." The point here is that complete effective workarounds while HealthCare.gov is still balky may soon be imminent, and that private online gateways may remain an important part of the landscape.
Update 2, 11/22: An earlier version of this post assumed that one could effectively ACA shop on eHealth. Prompted by the Anon comment below, I further tested eHealth and found that in many locations it does not include most of the plans available on the exchanges. I have amended the post accordingly. For the record, here is the original lead paragraph:
Online health insurance brokers like eHealth and purely informational comparison shop sites ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa provide all the information that's supposed to be available on HealthCare.gov: price quotes incorporating the user's location, income, age and family composition for all insurers available to that user on the exchange. eHealth and ValuePenguin provide plan details. eHealth will make your subsidy estimate, give you price quotes incorporating that estimate, and, for now, hold the the plans you select in a kind of provisional shopping cart. [Update: management/healthcare scholar William Ocasio of Northwestern tweets that eHealth omits some insurers. So results should be checked against ValuePenguin or other brokers.]
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Low-tech glitches on HealthCare.gov
I get that fixing HealthCare.gov dysfunction is a massively complex tech project. But there are informational flaws on the site -- sins of omission and commission -- that would be easy to fix. I've encountered two.
For the first, call me stupid. There's a hole either in my tech savvy or my reading about ACA implementation -- or both. But stupidity is rarely rare, and the designers of heatlhcare.gov should have anticipated my need for one really basic piece of information.
From October 1 to November 15, I tried to create a login at healthcare.gov at least 40 times. For perhaps too long, I assumed that my failure was just the core failure of the site. Gradually, recently, it dawned that whatever the site's functional failures, most people by now could at least log in -- and were encountering further glitches when they tried to complete applications (see comments on this HHS posting). So I went on live chat and quickly learned the cause of failure: if you've blocked access to pop-ups, you have to turn off the pop-up blocker. I did so, and lo, my login is created.
For the first, call me stupid. There's a hole either in my tech savvy or my reading about ACA implementation -- or both. But stupidity is rarely rare, and the designers of heatlhcare.gov should have anticipated my need for one really basic piece of information.
From October 1 to November 15, I tried to create a login at healthcare.gov at least 40 times. For perhaps too long, I assumed that my failure was just the core failure of the site. Gradually, recently, it dawned that whatever the site's functional failures, most people by now could at least log in -- and were encountering further glitches when they tried to complete applications (see comments on this HHS posting). So I went on live chat and quickly learned the cause of failure: if you've blocked access to pop-ups, you have to turn off the pop-up blocker. I did so, and lo, my login is created.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
Status quo Sunday at the New York Times
I had the oddest sense of deja vu while reading Ross Douthat's column about the Affordable Care Act today immediately after reading Tom Friedman's column about Israel.
Both were sleight-of-hand defenses of a status quo: an Israel continuously extended on theft of land and a welfare state in statsis that Douthat would not have adapt to mitigate new problems of wealth distribution and risk transfer.
Friedman's column is a mealy-mouthed plug for a book by Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, which may well be better than Friedman's characterization. It begins with an even-handedness trope: a plea to view "the real Israel, not the fantasy, do-no-wrong Israel peddled by its most besotted supporters or the do-no-right colonial monster portrayed by its most savage critics." Fair enough. But the column sanitizes the colonial reality, flashing briefly on a bloodless freeze-frame of expelled refugees in 1948 rather than engaging with the continuing and accelerating gobbling of the West Bank. It then devolves into que sera piety: Palestinians should suck it up and get on with their lives. And by the way, the failure of two-state negotiations is all their fault:
Both were sleight-of-hand defenses of a status quo: an Israel continuously extended on theft of land and a welfare state in statsis that Douthat would not have adapt to mitigate new problems of wealth distribution and risk transfer.
Friedman's column is a mealy-mouthed plug for a book by Haaretz columnist Ari Shavit, which may well be better than Friedman's characterization. It begins with an even-handedness trope: a plea to view "the real Israel, not the fantasy, do-no-wrong Israel peddled by its most besotted supporters or the do-no-right colonial monster portrayed by its most savage critics." Fair enough. But the column sanitizes the colonial reality, flashing briefly on a bloodless freeze-frame of expelled refugees in 1948 rather than engaging with the continuing and accelerating gobbling of the West Bank. It then devolves into que sera piety: Palestinians should suck it up and get on with their lives. And by the way, the failure of two-state negotiations is all their fault:
Saturday, November 16, 2013
"Urged on by Netanyahu..."
During the Cold War, in the course of pursuing perhaps the most successful long-term foreign policy strategy in human history -- containment of the Soviet Union -- the United States did a lot of stupid, cruel, counterproductive things -- overthrow elected governments, prop up corrupt autocrats, support quasi-fascist insurgencies. It did all of them, though, in the perceived national interest, however short-sighted or ruthless the calculus of the decision-makers -- even when, in the case of Nixon, that perceived national interest was avowedly a matter of national prestige.
Imposing new sanctions on Iran now would be in a different category of foreign policy malfeasance. The Times editorial board's wording casually captures what's cockeyed:
Imposing new sanctions on Iran now would be in a different category of foreign policy malfeasance. The Times editorial board's wording casually captures what's cockeyed:
A rare opportunity for a diplomatic resolution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program is at risk because many lawmakers, urged on by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, are insisting that Congress impose tougher economic sanctions, perhaps next week as an amendment to the defense bill.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Working around healthcare.gov: summary
To distill the takeaway from my last two posts (1, 2): anyone with computer access seeking to buy insurance on the ACA exchanges can easily get all the information they need to select a plan while bypassing healthcare.gov by visiting window-shopping sites ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa, as well as the individual insurers' sites once one has honed in on a single plan or a handful of top contenders.
Both sites prompt you for your location (zip code or state/county), the number and ages of people in your household, and your household income, and then give you specific quotes for all the exchange plans in your area. These quotes incorporate your subsidy if you qualify for one. ValuePenguin provides plan details, and HealthSherpa provides contact information for each plan, including the identifying name of the plan in question. I appear to have gotten inaccurate price information in one location (Essex County, NJ) from HealthSherpa, but not from ValuePenguin, and the two provide identical price info at other locations I tested. The information on the two aggregator sites can in any case easily by checked against the insurers' own sites. The big insurers, if not all exchange participants, also offer subsidy calculators on their websites.
The catch is that as of now, the actual subsidy application has to be processed by the federal government, and the application process through the healthcare.gov website has proved broken for many if not most users (I have not been able to establish a login myself). You can, however, apply over the phone by calling the number listed at healthcare.gov and providing information orally, or you can ask the phone rep for a print application, which they'll mail. I reached a live person quickly, and he was ready to take a subsidy application from me, or so he said. Once you have an application case number, which can be sent by email if you apply over the phone, an insurer will let you apply for a specific plan, but you cannot seal the deal until the subsidy application comes through.
The great unknown, I believe, is whether the federal government can process a phone or print application in reasonable time. If so, the process need not be particularly onerous even if you cannot apply through the healthcare.gov site.
P.S. Healthcare.gov should be able to perform the ValuePenguin/HealthSherpa function even if you can't log in. It does not provide age-specific price information, however -- at least, it hasn't in my three attempts. And it sends you to the Kaiser Family Foundation for a subsidy calculator. The Kaiser calculator is a great tool, and has been around for a while, but it doesn't provide plan-specific information.
Both sites prompt you for your location (zip code or state/county), the number and ages of people in your household, and your household income, and then give you specific quotes for all the exchange plans in your area. These quotes incorporate your subsidy if you qualify for one. ValuePenguin provides plan details, and HealthSherpa provides contact information for each plan, including the identifying name of the plan in question. I appear to have gotten inaccurate price information in one location (Essex County, NJ) from HealthSherpa, but not from ValuePenguin, and the two provide identical price info at other locations I tested. The information on the two aggregator sites can in any case easily by checked against the insurers' own sites. The big insurers, if not all exchange participants, also offer subsidy calculators on their websites.
The catch is that as of now, the actual subsidy application has to be processed by the federal government, and the application process through the healthcare.gov website has proved broken for many if not most users (I have not been able to establish a login myself). You can, however, apply over the phone by calling the number listed at healthcare.gov and providing information orally, or you can ask the phone rep for a print application, which they'll mail. I reached a live person quickly, and he was ready to take a subsidy application from me, or so he said. Once you have an application case number, which can be sent by email if you apply over the phone, an insurer will let you apply for a specific plan, but you cannot seal the deal until the subsidy application comes through.
The great unknown, I believe, is whether the federal government can process a phone or print application in reasonable time. If so, the process need not be particularly onerous even if you cannot apply through the healthcare.gov site.
P.S. Healthcare.gov should be able to perform the ValuePenguin/HealthSherpa function even if you can't log in. It does not provide age-specific price information, however -- at least, it hasn't in my three attempts. And it sends you to the Kaiser Family Foundation for a subsidy calculator. The Kaiser calculator is a great tool, and has been around for a while, but it doesn't provide plan-specific information.
Monday, November 11, 2013
Working around HealthCare.gov, cont.
[updated]
On Nov. 10 I spotlighted two public service websites, ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa, that appear to offer workarounds to the dysfunctional healthcare.gov for people hoping to buy health insurance on the ACA exchanges.
Both sites take your location (zip code or state/county), the number and ages of people in your household, and household income, and give you specific quotes for all the exchange plans in your area. ValuePenguin links to plan details, and HealthSherpa provides contact information.
To what extent do these tools provide a workaround the broken Healthcare.gov website? They provide all the information needed to make an informed choice, at least when checked against the insurers' sites. One still has to go through the federal government to apply for a subsidy, but that can be done by phone or snail mail. The main question, for those eligible for subsidies, is how long the subsidy determination will take.
A shopper who is not eligible for subsidies can buy a plan directly from the insurer of her choice, with all the information that should have been available on healthcare.gov easily obtained elsewhere. Below the jump, my experience initiating the shopping process. I presented myself on the phone as someone planning to apply for a subsidy.
On Nov. 10 I spotlighted two public service websites, ValuePenguin and HealthSherpa, that appear to offer workarounds to the dysfunctional healthcare.gov for people hoping to buy health insurance on the ACA exchanges.
Both sites take your location (zip code or state/county), the number and ages of people in your household, and household income, and give you specific quotes for all the exchange plans in your area. ValuePenguin links to plan details, and HealthSherpa provides contact information.
To what extent do these tools provide a workaround the broken Healthcare.gov website? They provide all the information needed to make an informed choice, at least when checked against the insurers' sites. One still has to go through the federal government to apply for a subsidy, but that can be done by phone or snail mail. The main question, for those eligible for subsidies, is how long the subsidy determination will take.
A shopper who is not eligible for subsidies can buy a plan directly from the insurer of her choice, with all the information that should have been available on healthcare.gov easily obtained elsewhere. Below the jump, my experience initiating the shopping process. I presented myself on the phone as someone planning to apply for a subsidy.
Sunday, November 10, 2013
A private-market patch for the ACA?
About ten years ago, I used LendingTree.com to refinance my house. On the website, I punched in various vital statistics -- perhaps more than I'd be comfortable submitting today -- and, as advertised, received four bids from mortgagers. Each sent offer details, I believe all by email. Parsing the offers -- points, fees, etc. -- took some time, as with any comparison shopping for a financial product. The small bank I went with gave me some heartburn by not approving the loan within the rate lock period, but they did extend that period, and I did get the loan at the advertised rate, within the estimated costs. It wasn't as easy as buying a camera on Amazon, but it was within reasonable expectation.
About seven years ago, I helped my older son, then 23, buy health insurance on New Jersey's bare-bones individual market exchange. There were basically three choices. AmeriHealth looked best, and they sent us a plan summary -- I think three options at different price points. We settled on not-terrible coverage -- at least, not terrible on paper, to my reasonably informed eye -- for about $180 a month.
Months ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation put up a provisional ACA cost calculator: punch in the number of people in your household, their ages, family income, and zip code, and get an estimate of the price of a silver or bronze plan, with and without the subsidy you qualify for, if any. It does not provide information for specific plans,however.
Now, it seems, there's a private-market, state-specific improvement, with pricing for actual plans and contact info for the insurers offering them:
About seven years ago, I helped my older son, then 23, buy health insurance on New Jersey's bare-bones individual market exchange. There were basically three choices. AmeriHealth looked best, and they sent us a plan summary -- I think three options at different price points. We settled on not-terrible coverage -- at least, not terrible on paper, to my reasonably informed eye -- for about $180 a month.
Months ago, the Kaiser Family Foundation put up a provisional ACA cost calculator: punch in the number of people in your household, their ages, family income, and zip code, and get an estimate of the price of a silver or bronze plan, with and without the subsidy you qualify for, if any. It does not provide information for specific plans,however.
Now, it seems, there's a private-market, state-specific improvement, with pricing for actual plans and contact info for the insurers offering them:
WOW: This is a great, quick way to shop for your ACA health insurance. http://t.co/6oHFUhNNtRI gave this a whirl, putting in my zip code, ages for my wife and me, and various income estimates. It works. There are no plan details (other than plan type -- HMO or EPO or POS), and I haven't called the insurers whose plans are quoted [update - see next post], but I would assume that they will send plan details if asked. [Update: per below, another site, ValuePenguin, appears to give more accurate price quotes, at least in New Jersey -- as well as plan details. Most insurers' websites do, too.]
— LOLGOP (@LOLGOP) November 10, 2013
Friday, November 08, 2013
The ACA as a framework for (further) conservative healthcare reform
Austin Frakt does AEI's James Capretta the honor of seriously considering* elements of Capretta's attempt (with Douglas Holtz-Eakin) to fill in the long-empty "replace" blank in Republicans' purported "repeal and replace" program for the Affordable Care Act. After spotlighting various lacunae as well as potentially workable elements in Capretta's "decentralized, market-diven alternative to the PPACA," Frakt comes to a core point, implicitly questioning whether conservative healthcare wonks are acting in good faith:
6...Democrats are well aware of the limitations and problems with the Affordable Care Act. Some are so troubling that the administration is considering some interesting proposals that would require Congress to act. Point being, there is leverage for some negotiation on some aspects of the law. And, crucially, some of the things Capretta has proposed fit within the structure of the ACA, such as allowing Medicaid enrollees to buy exchange plans (see Arkansas), capping the employer-sponsored insurance tax subsidy (see the Cadillac tax), or making exchange plans more catastrophic. But that brings me to …
Thursday, November 07, 2013
More than just a website: state efforts to make the ACA work (and the lack thereof)
We've all read by now that the ACA websites in states that are running their own exchanges (14, plus D.C.) are working much better than the federal site. What most of us may not have fully recognized -- though it's no doubt obvious to health and insurance professionals and people who have run social service programs -- is that establishing, running and marketing a functioning insurance marketplace requires a wholehearted commitment from state government.
Enticing insurers, policing insurers, and, above all, educating and wooing the uininsured public require expertise, commitment, money and accountability. Putting the program across in mostly low-income and low-information populations is a lot like delivering chronic care to those in need: it requires a lot of patient, informed, sensitive one-on-one contact.
Kentucky and California are two states that are going all out to make the Affordable Care Act a success. The Huffington Post's Jason Cherkis recently did some great reporting in Kentucky, where Governor Steve Besheare, a Democrat,
Enticing insurers, policing insurers, and, above all, educating and wooing the uininsured public require expertise, commitment, money and accountability. Putting the program across in mostly low-income and low-information populations is a lot like delivering chronic care to those in need: it requires a lot of patient, informed, sensitive one-on-one contact.
Kentucky and California are two states that are going all out to make the Affordable Care Act a success. The Huffington Post's Jason Cherkis recently did some great reporting in Kentucky, where Governor Steve Besheare, a Democrat,
is using all the powers of his administration to sell Obamacare, marshaling millions of dollars for branding and market research, heartwarming television spots and eye-catching bus ads. A hired army of true believers have held meetings across the state, spreading the word and rebutting misconceptions.
Monday, November 04, 2013
Joy eludes the Archbishop (Lewisian joy, that is)
Rowan Williams, a former Archbishop of Canterbury who's written a book about C.S. Lewis, seems, on the basis of this interview, to appreciate CSL for what I regard as the right reasons: his understanding of human frailty based on personal humility, his capacious and sympathetic grasp of literature, and, above all, his imaginative evocation of spiritual desire and experience. I was pleasantly surprised, too (probably shouldn't have been; I'm not up on current theological currents) that he pretty much dismisses Lewis's agitprop-thin "rational" arguments for Christianity's literal truth.
All that said, Williams seems to misunderstand the keystone of Lewis's imaginative theology, the experience Lewis called "joy." Williams conflates that joy with more prosaic spiritual phenomena -- the psychomachia of everyday life -- that Lewis also evokes.
Here's Williams' take on Lewisian joy:
All that said, Williams seems to misunderstand the keystone of Lewis's imaginative theology, the experience Lewis called "joy." Williams conflates that joy with more prosaic spiritual phenomena -- the psychomachia of everyday life -- that Lewis also evokes.
Here's Williams' take on Lewisian joy:
Sunday, November 03, 2013
Subtext to the WaPo healthcare.gov disaster narrative: Sabotage works
The Washington Post's tick-tock by Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin on the decisions leading to the dysfunctional launch of healthcare.gov is cast in a familiar genre: an anatomy of politicized administrative incompetence. And the piece does capture some likely bad decisions.
But the narrative documents a more basic fact, not hidden but acknowledged only secondarily: sabotage works. More specifically: in a two-party system, if one party gives itself over with fanatic single-mindedness to sabotaging the enactment of a major reform, it will succeed in some degree.
But the narrative documents a more basic fact, not hidden but acknowledged only secondarily: sabotage works. More specifically: in a two-party system, if one party gives itself over with fanatic single-mindedness to sabotaging the enactment of a major reform, it will succeed in some degree.
Thursday, October 31, 2013
No, 93 million Americans will not lose their health plans under Obamacare
Avik Roy is within his conservative pundit rights in spotlighting the grievances of the estimated 3 percent of the population who may be subject to higher health insurance premiums when the ACA takes full effect in 2014 than they currently pay for plans in the existing individual market. He descends into partisan hackery, however, in suggesting that tens of millions more will "lose" their coverage as employers' "grandfathered" plans fall by the wayside, as they are bound to do -- and that therefore, "93 million Americans will be unable to keep their health plans under Obamacare."
Roy purports to find a nuclear bomb in interim final regulations for group health plans issued in the Federal Register in 2010:
Roy purports to find a nuclear bomb in interim final regulations for group health plans issued in the Federal Register in 2010:
Contrary to the reporting of NBC, the administration’s commentary in the Federal Register did not only refer to the individual market, but also the market for employer-sponsored health insurance.
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Will red states stonewalling the ACA pay for self-inflicted punishment?
The long-term effects of the Affordable Care Act that everyone should ardently wish for are 1) access for all Americans to affordable, adequate health insurance and 2) reduced or reversed health care inflation.
Republican governors and/or state legislatures determined to sabotage the law are causing needless suffering, by denying millions the access to Medicaid the law was designed to provide, and by refusing to run the private insurance marketplaces, forcing the federal government to operate them in 34 states, with so-far disastrous results. State-level stonewalling goes beyond refusal to build a website: it also means abjuring the responsibility both to entice insurers into the exchanges and to impose discipline on those that participate, via state adaptation of the federal coverage guidelines, and by working to prevent adverse selection in the exchanges through state regulation of the individual market outside them.
No real good can come of deliberate misgovernance. But its consequences may trigger self-correction over time. States that try to make the law work may emerge as better places to live than states that don't -- offering Medicaid to the lowest-income adults, and a competitive, well-regulated and subsidized market to those with modest incomes. That creates a range of economic freedoms -- to leave a full-time job to start a business or go to school, to go from full- to part-time to do either, or undertake the kind of de facto apprenticeships that a career change often requires, or care for a sick parent.
On the most basic level, Donald Taylor points out that the states refusing Medicaid expansion are effecting a wealth transfer to states that embrace it:
Republican governors and/or state legislatures determined to sabotage the law are causing needless suffering, by denying millions the access to Medicaid the law was designed to provide, and by refusing to run the private insurance marketplaces, forcing the federal government to operate them in 34 states, with so-far disastrous results. State-level stonewalling goes beyond refusal to build a website: it also means abjuring the responsibility both to entice insurers into the exchanges and to impose discipline on those that participate, via state adaptation of the federal coverage guidelines, and by working to prevent adverse selection in the exchanges through state regulation of the individual market outside them.
No real good can come of deliberate misgovernance. But its consequences may trigger self-correction over time. States that try to make the law work may emerge as better places to live than states that don't -- offering Medicaid to the lowest-income adults, and a competitive, well-regulated and subsidized market to those with modest incomes. That creates a range of economic freedoms -- to leave a full-time job to start a business or go to school, to go from full- to part-time to do either, or undertake the kind of de facto apprenticeships that a career change often requires, or care for a sick parent.
On the most basic level, Donald Taylor points out that the states refusing Medicaid expansion are effecting a wealth transfer to states that embrace it:
Sunday, October 27, 2013
"What if Obamacare works?" -- What Ross Douthat leaves out
Ross Douthat "fairly fairly" describes the differences between the cheapest health insurance plans available on the ACA exchanges and the cheapest plans currently available on the individual market, most of which will be phased out because they don't comply with ACA minimum coverage requirements. But he leaves some important facts out.
Douthat acknowledges that the ACA's premium subsidies will offset the price increase for many who buy on the exchanges, and he fairly if too briefly presents the limitations of a cheap plan currently available on the individual market ("a $5,000 deductible, an annual out-of-pocket limit of $12,500, and all kinds of copays and coverage restrictions"). He then frames the ACA's political prospects like this:
It's Douthat's presentation of the likely long-term consequences of a successful ACA rollout that tilts our view of past and future playing fields:
Douthat acknowledges that the ACA's premium subsidies will offset the price increase for many who buy on the exchanges, and he fairly if too briefly presents the limitations of a cheap plan currently available on the individual market ("a $5,000 deductible, an annual out-of-pocket limit of $12,500, and all kinds of copays and coverage restrictions"). He then frames the ACA's political prospects like this:
True, perhaps -- though the politics will also be defined by the reactions of those eligible for the subsidies, and those shut out of the current market by preexisting conditions or age (the ACA limits age-related price differentials to 3-to-1; currently they're as high as 6-to-1), or, to a lesser extent, by those newly eligible for Medicaid (who are less likely to be politically vocal and perhaps less likely to recognize that their new benefits are a product of the ACA).With some grandfathered exceptions, Obamacare makes those kinds of plans illegal. The out-of-pocket limit for individuals is capped at $6,500 a year, preventive services are fully covered, and various “essential benefits” as well.If we ever get beyond the follies of HealthCare.gov, the politics of the rollout will probably be defined by how (and how vocally) middle-class Americans just above the subsidy threshold react to this “pay more, get more, subsidize other people” deal.
It's Douthat's presentation of the likely long-term consequences of a successful ACA rollout that tilts our view of past and future playing fields:
Friday, October 25, 2013
A companion list to The Atlantic's "50 Greatest Inventions"
The Atlantic has a panel-generated list of the 50 greatest inventions since the wheel, which is entertaining, and an accompanying James Fallows meditation on what the exercise can teach us about innovation's impact, value and future prospects, which is humane, urbane and deeply informed, as you'd expect from Fallows.
Fallows also provides a "taxonomy" of the 50 chosen items. I had read the listicle first, and when I came to the lead-in to the taxonomy, it immediately made me sense a category missing from the list:
I shouldn't say that what I want to add was "missing" -- arguably it didn't belong. Let's call mine a companion list. But it occurred to me a while back that the U.S. Constitution was a kind of enabling technology of the modern world, and that makes me want to think more about what you might call social technologies, from those traceable to the dawn of recorded history to the present (excluding an earlier strata including language, worship and prayer, marriage and tribal organization). Here's a first pass at a list of key "inventions" of this kind. It's neither chronological nor ranked in order of "importance," but rather loosely grouped according to type: legal, political, economic, pedagogical.
Fallows also provides a "taxonomy" of the 50 chosen items. I had read the listicle first, and when I came to the lead-in to the taxonomy, it immediately made me sense a category missing from the list:
One of our panelists, Leslie Berlin, a historian of business at Stanford, organized her nominations not as an overall list but grouped into functional categories. From our panelists’ nominations, a similar but slightly broader set of categories emerges. Here is my adaptation of Berlin’s useful scheme.Fallows' categories are as follows: innovations that 1) expand the human intellect; 2) are integral to the infrastructure of the modern world; 3) enabled the industrial revolution; 4) extend life; 5) allow real-time communication out of voice range; 6) enhance transportation; 7) enable organizational breakthroughs (clocks, calendars, alphabetization); and 7) facilitate killing.
I shouldn't say that what I want to add was "missing" -- arguably it didn't belong. Let's call mine a companion list. But it occurred to me a while back that the U.S. Constitution was a kind of enabling technology of the modern world, and that makes me want to think more about what you might call social technologies, from those traceable to the dawn of recorded history to the present (excluding an earlier strata including language, worship and prayer, marriage and tribal organization). Here's a first pass at a list of key "inventions" of this kind. It's neither chronological nor ranked in order of "importance," but rather loosely grouped according to type: legal, political, economic, pedagogical.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
John G. Taft's evasive honesty
What a peculiar exercise in moral exhortation. John G. Taft rather bravely excoriates the recklessness and cruelty of the current Cruzified GOP in the name of the party's grand old traditions of responsible governance and fiscal probity-- presumably embodied in "Five generations of Tafts [who] have served our nation as unwaveringly stalwart Republicans." And yet he does so by invoking the party's -- and his family's -- past shame: its collusion with Joe McCarthy's communist witch hunt. Taft manages to be refreshingly honest and subtly evasive all at once.
Taft levels his attack against Ted Cruz & co. in the name of his grandfather:
Taft levels his attack against Ted Cruz & co. in the name of his grandfather:
"The adults in the room" -- except with respect to one little issue that is the focus of Taft's historical analogy:As I write, a photograph of my grandfather, Senator Robert Alphonso Taft, looks across at me from the wall of my office. He led the Republican Party in the United States Senate in the 1940s and early 1950s, ran for the Republican nomination for president three times and was known as “Mr. Republican.” If he were alive today, I can assure you he wouldn’t even recognize the modern Republican Party, which has repeatedly brought the United States of America to the edge of a fiscal cliff — seemingly with every intention of pushing us off the edge.
Throughout my family’s more than 170-year legacy of public service, Republicans have represented the voice of fiscal conservatism. Republicans have been the adults in the room. Yet somehow the current generation of party activists has managed to do what no previous Republicans have been able to do — position the Democratic Party as the agents of fiscal responsibility.
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
The Obamaquester according to Harry
Harry Reid's view of the sequester -- and how we got saddled with it -- has been seeping into the national political narrative in recent weeks. Notwithstanding his alleged renewed bonds and recent successful teamwork with Obama, his view is not a pretty picture for the president.
In Twitter exchanges with Greg Sargent and others -- I think Jonathan Bernstein and Brian Beutler -- I have sought a convincing account and analysis and possibly justification of the Obama administration's thinking at the fiscal cliff -- why Biden, with Obama's backing, cut in on Reid's negotiations with McConnell and settled for half a revenue loaf and only a short-term sequester postponement. I haven't found one. And today's somewhat triumphal narrative by Sam Stein and Ryan Grim of the Democrats' short-term shutdown victory -- a purported tale of renewed harmony and mutual trust -- also provides the opposite of what I've sought: Reid's indictment of Obama's fiscal cliff conduct.
In Twitter exchanges with Greg Sargent and others -- I think Jonathan Bernstein and Brian Beutler -- I have sought a convincing account and analysis and possibly justification of the Obama administration's thinking at the fiscal cliff -- why Biden, with Obama's backing, cut in on Reid's negotiations with McConnell and settled for half a revenue loaf and only a short-term sequester postponement. I haven't found one. And today's somewhat triumphal narrative by Sam Stein and Ryan Grim of the Democrats' short-term shutdown victory -- a purported tale of renewed harmony and mutual trust -- also provides the opposite of what I've sought: Reid's indictment of Obama's fiscal cliff conduct.
He complained that Vice President Joe Biden had undercut fiscal cliff negotiations at the end of 2012, when Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was offered a more generous deal on tax revenue and sequester spending than Reid felt he could have crafted.
It didn't escape his notice, Reid said, that the deal Biden made conveniently postponed the budget cuts two months, or just long enough to allow the Inauguration and the State of the Union address to pass without the sequester's shadow. Senate Democrats had been pushing for a two-year delay and had been prepared to settle for just one.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Okay, so our problem is GOP extremism -- but what's driving that?
Jonathan Bernstein advances a kind of Bad Man theory of contemporary American politics -- the bad man being Newt Gingrich, the GOP's Faust. The problem with U.S. politics, he argues, isn't structural, and it's not political polarization per se:
No, the problem is the Republican Party, which has developed a weird and dysfunctional set of incentives along with the legacy of a handful of role models they would be better off without. There’s the race to be the True Conservative, which requires staking out ever-more-crazy positions in order to differentiate from RINOs and squishes – and the reaction by mainstream conservatives who are terrified at losing their conservative credentials and therefore cling as close as possible to the nuttiest radicals out there. There’s the lucrative conservative marketplace, which thrives on incivility and conflict – that’s one set of perverse incentives – and which also thrives when Democrats are in office, which is another set of perverse incentives. There’s the conservative closed information feedback loop, with Republican Party actors and politicians failing to see the U.S. that the rest of the nation sees.
Sunday, October 20, 2013
We're still in the sequester's grip
George Packer zooms out from the latest fiscal skirmish to assess the state of budgetary warfare in the Obama era:
President Obama and the Democrats in Congress appear strong for refusing to give in to blackmail.
But in a larger sense the Republicans are winning, and have been for the past three years, if not the past thirty. They’re just too blinkered by fantasies of total victory to see it. The shutdown caused havoc for federal workers and the citizens they serve across the country. Parks and museums closed, new cancer patients were locked out of clinical trials, loans to small businesses and rural areas froze, time ran down on implementation of the Dodd-Frank financial-regulation law, trade talks had to be postponed. All this chaos only brings the government into greater disrepute, and, as Jenny Brown’s colleagues dig their way out of the backlog, they’ll be fielding calls from many more enraged taxpayers. It would be naïve to think that intransigent Republicans don’t regard these consequences of their actions with indifference, if not outright pleasure. Ever since Ronald Reagan, in his first inaugural, pronounced government to be the problem, elected Republicans have been doing everything possible to make it true.
Saturday, October 19, 2013
Forever young in the New World
I can't remember what triggered it, but at dinner tonight I pulled out a copy of Death Comes for the Archbishop and read to my wife one of my favorite passages in American literature. It gives me a craving for something of which I've had intimation but never fully experienced -- except in reading this:
All his relatives at home, and his friends in New Mexico, had expected that the old Archbishop would spend his closing years in France, probably in Clermont, where he could occupy a chair in his old college. That seemed the natural thing to do, and he had given it grave consideration. He had half expected to make some such arrangement the last time he was in Auvergne, just before his retirement from his duties as Archbishop. But in the Old World he found himself homesick for the New. It was a feeling he could not explain; a feeling that old age did not weigh so heavily upon a man in New Mexico as in the Puy-de-Dôme.
He loved the towering peaks of his native mountains, the comeliness of the villages, the cleanness of the country-side, the beautiful lines and cloisters of his own college. Clermont was beautiful,-- but he found himself sad there; his heart lay like a stone in his breast. There was too much past, perhaps. . . . When the summer wind stirred the lilacs in the old gardens and shook down the blooms of the horse-chestnuts, he sometimes closed his eyes and thought of the high song the wind was singing in the straight, striped pine trees up in the Navajo forests.
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Twas the Night Before Shutdown (complete)
Twas the night before shutdown: the House changed its rules
To hold us all hostage to vain spiteful fools.
Poison pills had been stuffed in the CR with care
To deprive shiftless "others" of Obamacare.
A Senate CR, disinfected and clean,
Was blocked from a vote by the rightwing machine.
And Boehner with his baritone, and Cruz with his glower,
Took to podiums to prove gu'mmint could not sink lower.
So workers were furloughed and services shuttered.
The president was grounded, th'economy sputtered...
And all of a sudden the government mattered!
And Cruz and his crew with their own spite were spattered.
To hold us all hostage to vain spiteful fools.
Poison pills had been stuffed in the CR with care
To deprive shiftless "others" of Obamacare.
A Senate CR, disinfected and clean,
Was blocked from a vote by the rightwing machine.
And Boehner with his baritone, and Cruz with his glower,
Took to podiums to prove gu'mmint could not sink lower.
So workers were furloughed and services shuttered.
The president was grounded, th'economy sputtered...
And all of a sudden the government mattered!
And Cruz and his crew with their own spite were spattered.
Twas the night be shutdown...Twas the night before default, cont.
The exciting conclusion...full epic after the jump.
The leadership, stunned, called the vote off and soon
The air fizzled out of the Tea Party balloon.
The Senate bill, simplified, once more was tendered,
As Boehner, Paul, Cruz in swift sequence surrendered.
"We just didn't win. But we fought the good fight."
Quite so -- if "good" equals "pumped full of spite."
Thus did the caucus put on a brave face,
Raised one more chorus of Ah-mazing Grace,
Checked on their vitals and took a deep breath,
Prepped to defend the sequester to death,
Chanted their catechisms, glowing with pride --
Beguiled, reviled and self-Cruzified.
The leadership, stunned, called the vote off and soon
The air fizzled out of the Tea Party balloon.
The Senate bill, simplified, once more was tendered,
As Boehner, Paul, Cruz in swift sequence surrendered.
"We just didn't win. But we fought the good fight."
Quite so -- if "good" equals "pumped full of spite."
Thus did the caucus put on a brave face,
Raised one more chorus of Ah-mazing Grace,
Checked on their vitals and took a deep breath,
Prepped to defend the sequester to death,
Chanted their catechisms, glowing with pride --
Beguiled, reviled and self-Cruzified.
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Twas the Night Before Shutdown...Twas the Night Before Default
The epic continues...
Then Collins cooked up something Murray could swallow,
Five queens signed on, and the old bulls clicked "follow":
Senate-House conference on terms uncoercive,
Tweaks to Obamacare none too subversive,
Debt ceiling bump-up and short CR, clean,
Sequester not locked in for 2014.
Markets exhaled and the indexes soared,
Till Boehner rolled one more grenade of discord:
"Don't touch that hostage! A price must be paid --
Even if only by us and our aides...
National default is a bridge none too far
To uphold our values -- whatever they are."
Thus Boehner spooled his caucus one last yard of rope
To twine round their necks, as the nation's last hope.
Lo, Heritage Action gave one mighty yank,
The diehards jumped ship, and the House CR sank.
To be continued (if the world does...)
Twas the Night Before Shutdown, Canto I
UPDATE: Here's the whole thing
Then Collins cooked up something Murray could swallow,
Five queens signed on, and the old bulls clicked "follow":
Senate-House conference on terms uncoercive,
Tweaks to Obamacare none too subversive,
Debt ceiling bump-up and short CR, clean,
Sequester not locked in for 2014.
Markets exhaled and the indexes soared,
Till Boehner rolled one more grenade of discord:
"Don't touch that hostage! A price must be paid --
Even if only by us and our aides...
National default is a bridge none too far
To uphold our values -- whatever they are."
Thus Boehner spooled his caucus one last yard of rope
To twine round their necks, as the nation's last hope.
Lo, Heritage Action gave one mighty yank,
The diehards jumped ship, and the House CR sank.
To be continued (if the world does...)
Twas the Night Before Shutdown, Canto I
UPDATE: Here's the whole thing
Monday, October 14, 2013
Twas the Night Before Shutdown
Yesterday, Kurt Eichenwald tweeted:
Twas the night before shutdown: the House changed its rules
To hold us all hostage to vain spiteful fools.
Poison pills had been stuffed in the CR with care
To deprive shiftless "others" of Obamacare.
A Senate CR, disinfected and clean,
Was now blocked from a vote by the rightwing machine.
And Boehner with his baritone, and Cruz with his glower,
Took to podiums to prove gu'mmint could not sink lower.
Night before shutdown, House changed its rules so that ONLY GOP leadership could bring budget to floor. But it's the "Obama shutdown." Sigh. [Details here] .The language sounded familiar, and seemed to gallop of its own accord as below -- with an assist from Matt Glassman as noted (MG):
Twas the night before shutdown: the House changed its rules
To hold us all hostage to vain spiteful fools.
Poison pills had been stuffed in the CR with care
To deprive shiftless "others" of Obamacare.
A Senate CR, disinfected and clean,
Was now blocked from a vote by the rightwing machine.
And Boehner with his baritone, and Cruz with his glower,
Took to podiums to prove gu'mmint could not sink lower.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
What McConnell could cook up with Reid
Well, the rumors are flying thick and fast this Sunday, and this post probably won't be worth the pixels it's printed on. But based on Mitch McConnell's past dealmaking history, his acknowledged relative lack of leverage this time, and the drop-dead taboos against raising spending levels or taxes that a primary challenge imposes on him, I can't resist a bit of speculation as to what he may be cooking up with Reid (Dick Durbin called the talks between them a "breakthrough" today, though Reid himself has sounded far less sanguine).
Recall that the Budget Control Act negotiated by McConnell in the last days of July 2011 created a mechanism whereby the executive branch could raise the debt ceiling and Congress could register a vote of disapproval -- or override the hike with a two-thirds majority in both houses. That deal was end-stopped by the amount required to raise the debt ceiling high enough to get past the 2012 election; it ran out in March of this year.
Recall too that progressive éminence grise Norm Ornstein has floated an acceptable exception to the Dems' current no-concessions-for-debt-limit-hike stance: trade a single concession to end debt ceiling terrorism forever:
Recall that the Budget Control Act negotiated by McConnell in the last days of July 2011 created a mechanism whereby the executive branch could raise the debt ceiling and Congress could register a vote of disapproval -- or override the hike with a two-thirds majority in both houses. That deal was end-stopped by the amount required to raise the debt ceiling high enough to get past the 2012 election; it ran out in March of this year.
Recall too that progressive éminence grise Norm Ornstein has floated an acceptable exception to the Dems' current no-concessions-for-debt-limit-hike stance: trade a single concession to end debt ceiling terrorism forever:
Friday, October 11, 2013
The party that loses by winning
On July 4, 2011, when the Republicans were in the process of nailing Obama to the debt ceiling, David Brooks wrote:
They did "win," though, by forcing Obama to swallow, under threat of national default, the Budget Control Act, which purported to match every dollar of debt ceiling increase with a dollar of deficit reduction, with no concession on the Republicans' part that any of that reduction would come through tax increases. Nor has it, now that Republicans have learned to love the sequester, or professed to. The BCA imposed over $900+ billion in cuts to discretionary spending over ten years, and then another $1.2 trillion through sequestration if a Congressional supercommittee could not agree on a plan to replace that second tranche with a deficit reduction package of equal value. Since Republicans would not agree to any sequester replacement including new revenue, it is still with us, and the DBA's deficit reduction mix remains (approximately, counting interest savings), spending cuts $2.5 trillion, revenue 0.
If the Republican Party were a normal party, it would take advantage of this amazing moment. It is being offered the deal of the century: trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for a few hundred billion dollars of revenue increases.With about $4 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years the agreed target, Obama was ready to settle for just $800 billion in new revenue, a roughly 4-to-1 ratio of spending cuts to revenue . But the GOP passed up Brooks' 'deal of the century.' A four-fifths win for the no-new-taxes-ever crowd wasn't good enough for them.
They did "win," though, by forcing Obama to swallow, under threat of national default, the Budget Control Act, which purported to match every dollar of debt ceiling increase with a dollar of deficit reduction, with no concession on the Republicans' part that any of that reduction would come through tax increases. Nor has it, now that Republicans have learned to love the sequester, or professed to. The BCA imposed over $900+ billion in cuts to discretionary spending over ten years, and then another $1.2 trillion through sequestration if a Congressional supercommittee could not agree on a plan to replace that second tranche with a deficit reduction package of equal value. Since Republicans would not agree to any sequester replacement including new revenue, it is still with us, and the DBA's deficit reduction mix remains (approximately, counting interest savings), spending cuts $2.5 trillion, revenue 0.
Wednesday, October 09, 2013
Reading Oryx and Crake in the time of debt ceiling brinksmanship
I'm not quite sure when my long-held optimism about the human race took shape, but my read of history for some time has been that human life is steadily improving, that our progress, notwithstanding major setbacks, has been moral as well as material, and that we are adaptive enough to continue to increase wealth, freedom and peace. There's always been the caveat that global warming or some as-yet-unimagined disaster could undo all -- or that we would bioengineer or own evolution or replacement. But I've felt reasonably confident that the progress of the last few hundred years -- long lives, better health, less subjection to violence, more scope for more people to exercise their faculties -- would continue.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake trilogy, which I've read in the last couple of weeks, has dinged this optimism. It's a double dystopia, with two narrative presents: an anarchic world of balkanized corporate dominance and environmental degradation prior to the near-extinction of humanity by an engineered superbug, and a remnant community's life in the ruins - and interaction with a community of genetically engineered human mutants designed to be more pacific-- after the "waterless flood."
Tuesday, October 08, 2013
Maybe it doesn't matter, but...
I wish Obama would clarify, when laying out his current position on budget negotiations (as in today's press conference), that 1) he and Democrats in Congress have already agreed to the funding levels stipulated in the House GOP's bill funding the government for the next two months, and 2) what he's willing to negotiate is a bill funding the government on new terms for the rest of FY 2014 and the years beyond. In statements like this...
At the beginning of this year Speaker Boehner said, what we want is regular order and a serious budget process. So the Senate should pass a bill and the House should pass a bill, and then a committee comes together and they hash out their differences and they send the bill to the president. Well, that's exactly what Democrats did....it remains unclear what Democrats agreed to (Republican spending levels in a 6-10 week continuing resolution), what they've balked at (a litany and sequence of demands extraneous to that short-term funding), and what Obama is willing to negotiate if/when the threats of government shutdown and debt default are removed (funding for the remaining 9-10 months of FY 2014 and a long-term replacement of the sequester with a mix of more targeted spending cuts, including to entitlements, and revenue-yielding reductions in tax loopholes).
Except somewhere along the way, House Republicans decided they wouldn't appoint people to the committee to try to negotiate, and 19 times they've rejected that. So even after all that, the Democrats in the Senate still passed a budget that effectively reflects Republican priorities at Republican budget levels just to keep the government open, and the House Republicans couldn't do that either.
Saturday, October 05, 2013
General Giap and the GOP
Responding to Republican calls for a broad fiscal "dialogue" under the double threat of government shutdown and looming debt ceiling, the Times editorial board reacts with commendable incredulity -- but salts in, I think, a misconception (my emphasis):
This is a moment for immediate action to reopen government’s doors, not the beginning of a conversation that Republicans spurned when they lacked the leverage of a shutdown. They have refused to negotiate over the Senate’s budget, they have refused to negotiate over the president’s budget, and they have refused to negotiate to make the health law more efficient, insisting only on its demise.
The shutdown does not increase Republican leverage -- it erodes it. Grover Norquist understands this:
Thursday, October 03, 2013
The Civil War, a distant mirror for Obama
Here's Obama speaking to* John Harwood of CNBC yesterday about what's at stake in the looming debt ceiling battle:
That is, debt ceiling terrorism must be tamed so that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from...this country. It does now exist to some varying extents in other parts of the earth as well as (or better than) here, so let's alter Lincoln's formula accordingly.
A couple of days ago, I noted that Obama was channeling Lincoln a bit while categorizing his political opponents' values:
The fight that we're having right now is not about the healthcare law, it's not about a particular budget— what it has to do with is do we continue with that process where we have elections, the majorities are determined, there's some protections for minorities in the system, but ultimately, you know, we are able to strike compromises and then move forward. And if we can't do that— this country's too diverse, it's too big— you know, what you'll end up seeing is more and more the polarization that you talked about, that's not healthy for our politics.
That is, debt ceiling terrorism must be tamed so that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from...this country. It does now exist to some varying extents in other parts of the earth as well as (or better than) here, so let's alter Lincoln's formula accordingly.
A couple of days ago, I noted that Obama was channeling Lincoln a bit while categorizing his political opponents' values:
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
Do tell, NYT, of Israel's place at the US policymaking table
The New York Times editorial board does not like Benjamin Netanyahu, and hopes for success in the United States' upcoming round of negotiations with Iran. Yet they go rather easy on Netanyahu in response to his UN speech yesterday urging the U.S. and allies to regard Iran's seemingly conciliatory new president, Hassan Rouhani, as a wolf in sheep's clothing.
The Times editorialists note that the Iranians "were not happy that Mr. Obama, meeting Mr. Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, took a harsher tone toward Iran than he did when he spoke by phone with Mr. Rouhani last week" -- but imply that Iran ought to be able to understand such posturing. The language in which they explain the political dynamic at work in both countries is revealing in what it assumes about U.S. politics:
The Times editorialists note that the Iranians "were not happy that Mr. Obama, meeting Mr. Netanyahu at the White House on Monday, took a harsher tone toward Iran than he did when he spoke by phone with Mr. Rouhani last week" -- but imply that Iran ought to be able to understand such posturing. The language in which they explain the political dynamic at work in both countries is revealing in what it assumes about U.S. politics:
Apocalypse now?
Robert Costa, perhaps the best-sourced reporter on Republican thinking, indicates that warnings in the wake of the 2011 debt ceiling deal that Obama had enabled debt ceiling terrorism for the foreseeable future were true:
Most of the conference is well aware of the consequences of default. In fact, over the past few years, the House GOP leadership has actually hosted private meetings for members about what default means and why it shouldn't happen. But, at the same time, Republicans are very eager to get some kind of 2011-esque concession from the White House and Senate Democrats on the budget, when they were able to pass legislation that led to sequestration. Of course, the political climate then was different, due to the GOP having recently won the House, but the GOP is hoping for a similar outcome this time, and you have leaders like Paul Ryan publicly talking about a larger agreement being possible. I'm still skeptical though, since most Republicans are unwilling, at all, to bend on taxes, and Democrats aren't exactly scrambling to cut a big deal with Boehner, who they think is in a weakened position.Costa suggests that the current standoff over a short-term continuing resolution is likely to bleed into debt ceiling negotiations -- which Obama has stated categorically and repeatedly that he won't engage in. He also seems to think that Democrats are likely to waver in their resolve to negotiate neither the CR -- for which there's already agreement (on GOP terms) as to spending levels -- nor the debt ceiling. Here's Obama yesterday on the latter:
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Does a clean CR mean a clean shot at Republicans?
I have been gnashing my teeth at Democrats' preemptive surrender on the spending levels in the ten-week continuing resolution passed by the House, which establishes the sequester as a spending baseline. Why not amend the CR to reflect the spending levels in the House budget, I thought, as well as stripping out the defunding of Obamacare, and then negotiate over spending? That would leave Republicans an out: they could claim the victory they've already won (on spending).
Maybe I was wrong. Conceding the House spending levels puts the spotlight squarely on Republicans' extraneous demands. And oh did Obama shine that spotlight today. He's fought two skillful election campaigns against Republicans, but I don't think he's ever so squarely accused them of moral bankruptcy as this:
Maybe I was wrong. Conceding the House spending levels puts the spotlight squarely on Republicans' extraneous demands. And oh did Obama shine that spotlight today. He's fought two skillful election campaigns against Republicans, but I don't think he's ever so squarely accused them of moral bankruptcy as this:
Sunday, September 29, 2013
The GOP is drunk on the proven power of extortion
I am looking past the pending government shutdown to the looming debt ceiling standoff -- the point in late October when Republicans can, worst case, cause a global economic cataclysm, or, second worst, hamper U.S. economic growth for decades to come.
As Republicans keep cramming more fantastic demands into their debt ceiling ransom note, Obama is saying now what he should have said the first time they made fantastic demands ($2.5 trillion in spending cuts over ten years with no tax increases) a condition of raising the debt ceiling in spring/summer 2011. On Friday, he said:
As Republicans keep cramming more fantastic demands into their debt ceiling ransom note, Obama is saying now what he should have said the first time they made fantastic demands ($2.5 trillion in spending cuts over ten years with no tax increases) a condition of raising the debt ceiling in spring/summer 2011. On Friday, he said:
I will not negotiate over Congress’s responsibility to pay the bills that have already been racked up. Voting for the Treasury to pay America’s bills is not a concession to me. That’s not doing me a favor. That’s simply carrying out the solemn responsibilities that come with holding office up there. I don’t know how I can be more clear about this. Nobody gets to threaten the full faith and credit of the United States just to extract political concessions. No one gets to hurt our economy and millions of innocent people just because there are a couple of laws that you do not like.The continuation, though, rather airbrushed Obama's own history on this question:
Thursday, September 26, 2013
In which Lavrov disavows the language of the Security Council resolution his country just agreed to
The U.N. Security Council has agreed on a resolution compelling Syria to give up its chemical weapons for destruction.
The headline is that there is no preauthorization for the use of force if Syria violates the agreement, e.g., by not allowing access to its weapons, or by moving them, or, of course, by using them. But that is no surprise. The reported language with respect to enforcement is in line with that in the Framework Agreement the U.S. and Russia struck on September 14. In fact it is less equivocal than the Framework. The draft resolution
The headline is that there is no preauthorization for the use of force if Syria violates the agreement, e.g., by not allowing access to its weapons, or by moving them, or, of course, by using them. But that is no surprise. The reported language with respect to enforcement is in line with that in the Framework Agreement the U.S. and Russia struck on September 14. In fact it is less equivocal than the Framework. The draft resolution
Decides, in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic, to impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.Cf. the Framework Agreement:
Wired for War
It is doubtless hard for most Americans, and for most people who have not had extended experience of war, to fathom the experience, values, motives and emotions of a lethal and brutally effective military leader like Qassem Suleimani, head of Iran's Quds Force, profiled in this week's New Yorker by Dexter Filkins. The Quds force spearheads Iran's overseas military adventures, and Suleimani helped build up Hezbollah, choreographed and equipped Shiite militias' killings of Americans in Iraq, probably helped orchestrate Hezbollah's terrorist bombings of Jews in Argentina, and is directing Iran's military intervention on behalf of Assad in Syria. He cut his teeth in eight years of brutal combat in the Iran-Iraq war.
Filkins cites Ryan Crocker asserting that Suleimani is not motivated primarily by religion: "Religion doesn’t drive him. Nationalism drives him, and the love of the fight.” But Suleimani has a certain mysticism of his own. "When I see the children of the martyrs, I want to smell that scent, and I lose myself," he recently said in an interview in Iran. Stranger yet is his response to eight years of World War I-like horror in the Iran-Iraq war:
Filkins cites Ryan Crocker asserting that Suleimani is not motivated primarily by religion: "Religion doesn’t drive him. Nationalism drives him, and the love of the fight.” But Suleimani has a certain mysticism of his own. "When I see the children of the martyrs, I want to smell that scent, and I lose myself," he recently said in an interview in Iran. Stranger yet is his response to eight years of World War I-like horror in the Iran-Iraq war:
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Okay, now he can't move them
Assad, that is. His chemical weapons. Because he's signed the Chemical Weapons Convention and declared them. In the LA Times, Shashank Bengali reports:
Syrian President Bashar Assad has disclosed the locations of dozens of poison gas production and storage sites to international inspectors, according to Western officials.The OPCW administers the Chemical Weapons Convention. The Convention stipulates (Article IV, paragraph 4) that once such a declaration is made,
Officials familiar with Assad's disclosure — the first step in complying with an ambitious U.S.-Russian plan to seize and remove or destroy his arsenal of chemical weapons by mid-2014 — described it Tuesday as "a serious document" that comprises scores of pages and is surprisingly thorough.'
Information in the closely guarded document roughly tracks with U.S. intelligence estimates that Syria has about 45 sites used to produce or store illicit blister agents or neurotoxins...Syria submitted the declaration over the weekend to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the implementation and compliance arm of the Chemical Weapons Convention.
Monday, September 23, 2013
On rate shock in Georgia
I have questioned (here and here and, to a lesser extent, here) whether Wall Street Journal coverage of the Affordable Care Act has a negative bias. I don't want to overstate the case, as the Journal's health care reporters are well informed and thorough. Perhaps the bias is mine. But today, in an article about how the experiences of potential beneficiaries of the ACA are likely to vary state by state, reporter Louise Radnofsky, sharing a byline with Amy Schatz, again made me bristle a bit, here:
Thursday, September 19, 2013
Democrats won't cave on Obamacare -- but on everything else...?
I am getting weary of progressives' reflexive head-shaking over Republican "craziness" and mainstream reporters' warnings that the GOP may commit electoral suicide by ceding policy to their most extreme members.
Perhaps they will. A party does not have a single will. There are doubtless Tea Party diehards that would shut down the government, push the nation into default, and never vote for any funding bill that includes the discretionary funding for Obamacare.
But they will not ultimately dictate the party's actions. What I strongly suspect will happen is that the Senate GOP will run down the clock, filibustering the so-called "clean" continuing resolution (with the Obamacare defund stripped out) until the last minute, then win a series of concessions making the horrendous House spending provisions worse -- shifting more funding under overall sequester caps from domestic to defense -- in exchange for allowing a vote [correction 9/24: Democrats need only a simple majority to amend the unchanged House CR -- thus, it's unlikely to get worse. But current reporting is confident that Senate Democrats will not amend the CR's spending provisions.] Then Senate Democrats will pat themselves on the back for "standing firm" against defunding Obamacare -- while locking in the sequester as a new funding baseline and shielding defense spending from much of its bite. Comforting reports that Red State Senate Democrats won't vote to defund Obamacare serve only to convince me that they'll give away everything else in the store.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Flip the script, Mr. President
Denouncing the latest Republican round of budget negotiation-by-hostage-taking, Obama said this to the Business Roundtable today:
Since 2011, the extremist wing of the Republican party has consistently set the terms of our budget battles. That's because the the GOP House, enabled by the Hastert Rule and the extremists' ability to dictate to leadership, has wielded an effective veto over any prospective budget compromise. As funding and debt deadlines loom they loudly proclaim their intention to exercise that veto, even at risk of national catastrophe, and no one doubts their willingness.
But the President also has a veto. It's time -- past time -- for him to prepare the ground on which he might use it to shape the terms of negotiation.
just flip the script for a second and imagine a situation in which a Democratic Speaker said to a Republican President, I’m not going to increase the debt ceiling unless you increase corporate taxes by 20 percent. And if you don't do it, we’ll default on the debt and cause a worldwide financial crisis. Even though that Democratic Speaker didn't have the votes to force through that particular piece of legislation, they would simply say, we will blow the whole thing up unless you do what I want. That can't be a recipe for government.I think it's time that Obama did flip the script. Not in this round, and not by holding the debt ceiling hostage. But by using the leverage his office does afford him.
Since 2011, the extremist wing of the Republican party has consistently set the terms of our budget battles. That's because the the GOP House, enabled by the Hastert Rule and the extremists' ability to dictate to leadership, has wielded an effective veto over any prospective budget compromise. As funding and debt deadlines loom they loudly proclaim their intention to exercise that veto, even at risk of national catastrophe, and no one doubts their willingness.
But the President also has a veto. It's time -- past time -- for him to prepare the ground on which he might use it to shape the terms of negotiation.
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
J Street can reason. The Anti-Defamation League merely emotes
Whatever the merits of Ian Lustick's argument in last Sunday's Times that the two-state solution for Israel and Palestine is all but dead and that it's time to start imagining long-term alternatives, letters in response from two Zionist organizations, the Anti-Defamation League and J Street, form an instructive contrast. The letter from the ADL's Kenneth Jacobson is an emotional diatribe. The justice and need for a Jewish state is assumed rather than demonstrated. Lustick has violated a taboo merely by raising the prospect of a single state in which Jews are neither a majority nor a ruling class:
Monday, September 16, 2013
But Greg Sargent, "handling and manipulation of process and theatrics" matter
Greg Sargent has quite rightly called out a bevy of reporters who have slammed Obama for the process by which he arrived at his Syria policy (and other policies) "without taking a stand on the substance of the policy debates underlying them. It's true that criticizing presidential process can be a dodge, shielding the writer from grappling with the policy merits of, say, a missile strike on Syria. But Sargent overstates the case, I think, by suggesting that process can be cleanly separated from policy. Holding up Dylan Byers as Exhibit A, Sargent criticizes a
genre of criticism of Obama..largely focused on the President’s handling and manipulation of process and theatrics, and the consequences that allegedly has had for the president and the country. Into this category fall the arguments, mentioned by Byers above, that Obama’s changes of course during the Syria crisis have been “confusing and contradictory,” that this has made him “appear weak on the international stage,” and that he has failed to muscle a progressive agenda through Congress.
Saturday, September 14, 2013
So, Congress, how 'bout that AUMF?
Remember the alternative AUMF proposed by Senators Manchin and Heitkampf?
What the agreement (already famously) does not do is effectively pre-authorize military action in the event that Syria violates the agreement. Whether this kind of agreement could be so structured, I don't know, but the Russians have made it clear that they will block any future call for a Security Council resolution authorizing force.
The Manchin-Heitkamp resolution* calls for two primary things. First, it gives the administration 45 days to secure from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a commitment to join those nations who have signed and agreed to the Chemical Weapons Convention. If Assad fails to comply, then the Senate gives full authorization to the president to use whatever means possible to respond to the regime's apparent August 21 use of chemical weapons.So now, thanks to the U.S.-Russian agreement on a Framework for the Elimination of Syrian Chemical Weapons, Assad has already acceded to the Chemical Weapons Convention. And he will be required to provide an inventory of Syria's CW arsenal within seven days of ratification by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons of a draft decision to be provided by the U.S. and Russia "within a few days." Once that inventory is provided, the Chemical Weapons Convention forbids moving any weapons, "except to a chemical weapons destruction facility" (Article IV, paragraph 4). Inspections are to begin in November, and the framework, as the FT puts it, "is structured around a series of deadlines which will allow the world to judge whether it is being adhered to or not." The framework also stipulates enforcement under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, which authorizes the Security Council to use both non-military and military means.
What the agreement (already famously) does not do is effectively pre-authorize military action in the event that Syria violates the agreement. Whether this kind of agreement could be so structured, I don't know, but the Russians have made it clear that they will block any future call for a Security Council resolution authorizing force.
Friday, September 13, 2013
America's "inward turn" is moderate and proportionate
It's hard to deny, as Roger Cohen charges, that Obama and his surrogates have whipsawed the world with mixed signals in the wake of the Syrian government's chemical weapons attack on August 21. But Cohen overstates the case and its consequences when claiming that Obama's "dithering"
So U.S. "isolationism" is "growing." But growing from what? The Times/CBS pollsters have been asking the first question since September 2002, when the Bush administration was selling its prospective war in Iraq and was pretty fresh off an apparent quick victory in Afghanistan. You could say that the U.S. was at the peak of post-9/11 triumphalism. At that point, 45% said that the U.S. should "take the leading role," while 49% said it should not. A drop from 45% to 34% is significant, no doubt. But it strikes me as quite moderate in light of the decade of disastrous war that followed.
marked a moment when America signaled an inward turn that leaves the world anchorless.The Times/CBS poll result cited raised my eyebrows too. Specifically, 62% said that the U.S. should not "take the leading role among all other countries in the world in trying to solves international conflicts," while just 34% said that the U.S. should do so. Perhaps even more striking, when asked, "should the United States try to change a dictatorship to a democracy where it can, OR should the United States stay out of other countries' affairs?" 15% said "try to change," while 72% said "stay out."
The president has reflected the mood in America. Almost two-thirds of people surveyed think the United States should not take a leading role in trying to solve foreign conflicts, according to a recent New York Times/CBS news poll. Principle backed by credible force made the United States the anchor of global security since 1945 and set hundreds of millions of people free. Obama has deferred to a growing isolationism. His wavering has looked like acquiescence to a global power shift.
So U.S. "isolationism" is "growing." But growing from what? The Times/CBS pollsters have been asking the first question since September 2002, when the Bush administration was selling its prospective war in Iraq and was pretty fresh off an apparent quick victory in Afghanistan. You could say that the U.S. was at the peak of post-9/11 triumphalism. At that point, 45% said that the U.S. should "take the leading role," while 49% said it should not. A drop from 45% to 34% is significant, no doubt. But it strikes me as quite moderate in light of the decade of disastrous war that followed.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Beyond disputin', an element of truth
The author of the words below might ask Americans, as the malign plutocrat banker Potter asked George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life after sketching out his life and prospects, "Do I paint too grim a picture? Or do I exaggerate?"
Again, below, does Putin paint too grim a picture?
That's Vladimir Putin in the New York Times. Yes, he does paint too grim a picture, and exaggerate. The Libya intervention was authorized by the Security Council, e.g., by Russia under Medvedev And Obama's proposed strike on Syria has little in common with Bush's invasion of Iraq. But the broad question -- have American military interventions post-9/11 done more good than harm? --is hard to answer in the affirmative.It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes.
Again, below, does Putin paint too grim a picture?
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Why did Putin do it?
Like almost anyone watching, I would be delighted if a U.S. strike against Syria could be averted by an agreement to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control.
At the same time: A world in which Vladimir Putin defuses a crisis by proposing and following through on an executable plan to reduce violence is not the world I thought we live in. I can't help but at least half-expect yesterday's hope to go up in a puff of smoke, perhaps as Assad simply denies that his regime has any chemical weapons (Syrian buy-in thus far has been voiced by foreign minister Walid al-Moualem). Yet events are rushing forward. France has proposed a Security Council resolution calling on Syria to empower the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to destroy its chemical weapons and require Syria to join the OPCW, the implementing authority for the Chemical Weapons Convention. It's hard to see Russia blocking some kind of Security Council resolution to execute its proposal, if not France's current draft per se, and China too has indicated support. So even if action to secure Syrian CW does not materialize quickly, the Russian proposal seems to be on course at least to break the Security Council logjam and hence defuse the impetus for near-unilateral U.S. action.
Why did Putin do it? The authorization for military action against Syria that the administration has sought seemed headed for near-certain defeat. Almost two thirds of Americans are opposed to a strike. Regarding international conflict, Americans don't want the country to lead, whether from in front or behind. According to the latest New York Times/CBS poll, released today, 62 percent say the U.S. should not take the lead among all other countries in the world in trying to resolve international conflicts, and 61 percent oppose air strikes against Syria. Those numbers are trending the wrong way for the administration. So why would Putin move to avert a military strike that pretty clearly was not going to happen, at least not until further atrocities hit the headlines? Four possibilities come to mind:
At the same time: A world in which Vladimir Putin defuses a crisis by proposing and following through on an executable plan to reduce violence is not the world I thought we live in. I can't help but at least half-expect yesterday's hope to go up in a puff of smoke, perhaps as Assad simply denies that his regime has any chemical weapons (Syrian buy-in thus far has been voiced by foreign minister Walid al-Moualem). Yet events are rushing forward. France has proposed a Security Council resolution calling on Syria to empower the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to destroy its chemical weapons and require Syria to join the OPCW, the implementing authority for the Chemical Weapons Convention. It's hard to see Russia blocking some kind of Security Council resolution to execute its proposal, if not France's current draft per se, and China too has indicated support. So even if action to secure Syrian CW does not materialize quickly, the Russian proposal seems to be on course at least to break the Security Council logjam and hence defuse the impetus for near-unilateral U.S. action.
Why did Putin do it? The authorization for military action against Syria that the administration has sought seemed headed for near-certain defeat. Almost two thirds of Americans are opposed to a strike. Regarding international conflict, Americans don't want the country to lead, whether from in front or behind. According to the latest New York Times/CBS poll, released today, 62 percent say the U.S. should not take the lead among all other countries in the world in trying to resolve international conflicts, and 61 percent oppose air strikes against Syria. Those numbers are trending the wrong way for the administration. So why would Putin move to avert a military strike that pretty clearly was not going to happen, at least not until further atrocities hit the headlines? Four possibilities come to mind:
Thursday, September 05, 2013
Syrian site-setting in the Senate
Just what -- or who -- are the likely targets of a strike in Syria? This exchange in the Senate Foreign Services Committee hearing transcript made me pick my head up:
SEN. DURBIN: General Dempsey, we saw these photographs earlier -- these heartbreaking photographs. Page three of The Washington Post this morning, an ad by a group supporting the president's effort has a photograph that's riveted in my mind, as a father and grandfather, of the children on the floor in shrouds, victims of this chemical agent gas attack.
What the administration is asking us for is military authority to launch additional attacks. What have you been charged with in terms of the issue of collateral damage from those attacks as it would affect innocent people and civilians in the nation of Syria?
Wednesday, September 04, 2013
Does Obama really need to choose whether he's a liberal or realist in Syria?
Dan Dresner thinks so. In his view, a leak to the effect that Obama does not want the contemplated punitive strike to topple the Assad regime (in keeping with his slow-walked support of "moderate" rebel groups) clashes with intimations that Obama aims ultimately to push Assad out, as well as with his stated desire to uphold the international norm against chemical weapons. Dresner's conclusion:
There are a lot of areas of foreign policy where different paradigms can offer the same policy recommendation, and there are a lot of foreign policy issue areas where presidents can just claim "pragmatism" and not worry about which international relations theory is guiding their actions. I'm increasingly of the view, however, that Syria is one of those areas where Obama is gonna actually have to make a decision about what matters more -- his realist desire to not get too deeply involved, or his liberal desire to punish the violation of a norm. If he doesn't decide, if he tries to half-ass his way through this muddle, I fear he'll arrive at a policy that would actually be worse than either a straightforward realist or a straight liberal approach.Busy work day ahead, so I will keep this short and maybe flesh out later, but I see a balancing act rather than a contradiction.
Tuesday, September 03, 2013
Did Nancy Pelosi (and Kerry) read Max Fisher?
Kind of looks like it:
Compare Fisher:
[UPDATE: guess that's the party line: Kerry echoed it in his testimony this afternoon:Ms. Pelosi said..that she was hopeful the American people “will be persuaded of” military action.“President Obama did not write the red line,” she said. “History wrote the red line decades ago.”
Now, some have tried to suggest that the debate we're having today is about President Obama's red line. I could not more forcefully state that is just plain and simply wrong. This debate is about the world's red line. It's about humanity's red line. And it's a red line that anyone with a conscience ought to draw. ][9/5: Obama said the same in Sweden.]
Compare Fisher:
The U.S. decision to move toward possible strikes appears, rightly or wrongly, wisely or unwisely, to be all about reinforcing international norms. It’s not about us; it’s not about “because Obama said so.” It’s about “because international norms say so.”
Monday, September 02, 2013
Worth reading on Syria
As a Labor Day labor, I thought it might be useful to share some of the strongest analyses I've read about Syria, some of which are at odds with each other. The choices below address three interrelated questions: what should any U.S. response to the Assad regime's chemical weapons attack seek to achieve? How, if at all, does U.S. (and Obama's) "credibility" factor into the equation? And how, if at all, should we engage with adversaries other than Syria with a stake in the conflict?
1. How narrow a mission?
The Washington Post's Max Fisher argues that the "red line" is not about Obama, it's about a hundred year-old international norm. A strike narrowly focused on upholding the international taboo against chemical weapons use makes sense:
1. How narrow a mission?
The Washington Post's Max Fisher argues that the "red line" is not about Obama, it's about a hundred year-old international norm. A strike narrowly focused on upholding the international taboo against chemical weapons use makes sense:
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