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Things look up in Kentucky

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Seems Mitch McConnell has a little problem; one many of us have seen coming for some time. The Kentucky version of Obamacare has been a huge and popular success there, so Mitch has to pass through the eye of a needle so small it would daunt the tiniest camel. He has chosen to do so by lying:

McConnell has recently begun arguing that while Obamacare should be repealed, the state of Kentucky should be able to keep the Kynect system as it is, even if the federal law the system is based on were to be uprooted completely.

“If Obamacare is repealed, Kentucky should decide for itself whether to keep Kynect or set up a different marketplace,” McConnell campaign spokeswoman Allison Moore told TPM on Tuesday.

That doesn't quite add up to the editorial board of the Lexington Herald-Leader.

“Repeal the federal law, which McConnell calls 'Obamacare,' and the state exchange would collapse,” the editorial said on Wednesday. “Kynect could not survive without the ACA's insurance reforms, including no longer allowing insurance companies to cancel policies when people get sick or deny them coverage because of pre-existing conditions, as well as the provision ending lifetime limits on benefit payments. (Kentucky tried to enact such reforms in the 1990s and found out we were too small a market to do it alone.)”

The editorial goes on to say that Kynect wouldn't be able to survive without the federal funding from Obamacare.

“Kynect is the Affordable Care Act is Obamacare — even if Kentuckians are confused about which is which,” the editorial continued.

via TPM

At Kos, they've urged McConnell's opponent, Allison Grimes (donate today) to aggressively call McConnell out. McConnell is counting on confusing voters; many oppose Obamacare and love Kynect. Propaganda does stuff like that. I've been saying (not on this blog, but to my long suffering spouse) ever since McConnell's initial blunder that the best person to make the argument against McConnell would be Kentucky's popular Democratic governor, Steve Beshear. Kynect is one of his greatest achievements. He would have instant credibility if he explained to the people of Kentucky that the program they love is the same program they've been taught to hate and that Mitch McConnell has sworn to destroy. Well, much to my disappointment (for purposes of this post), I discovered while writing it that Beshear is doing exactly what he should be doing. This is what comes of having a day job; I think of something in the morning, and by the time I get a chance to write about it, events have overtaken it.

But, I'll make a silk purse out of this sow's ear. This is my good news post for the week. The Democrats, at least in Kentucky, are learning how to fight. Personally, I think McConnell is toast, so long as the Democrats continue to milk this issue correctly.

Filed in Democrats, Health Care, Politics | | Comments (0)

Yet another false equivalency

Wednesday, May 28, 2014

In wandering around the internet today I came upon an article that directed me to this quite able takedown, by David Shorr of TPM, of yet another pundit who blames our current political dysfunction on both parties equally. I couldn't resist some low hanging fruit left un-plucked by Shorr. He quotes John Schindler, the plague on both your houses pundit, as follows:

[T]he Left pretends that [the ACA] is a radical step forward to justice, when actually it is a very modest reform of the existing – exceedingly, unsustainably expensive – system, based largely on onetime GOP proposals, while the Right is in high dudgeon mode over this allegedly vast expansion of state power, when really it’s a huge gift to the insurance industry (a Republican stalwart). Moreover, the ACA manages to do the nearly impossible, namely increasing access to healthcare only very modestly, at considerable taxpayer expense, while doing essentially nothing about controlling spiraling costs, not least because that would upset trial lawyers (a Democratic constituency).

Now, mind you, this is in an article about the inability of both sides to retreat from their absolutist positions. I won't argue with his characterizations of the ACA (except the part about the “Left” believing it's a radical, rather than a tentative step toward justice), but his description of the ACA proves beyond doubt the absolute eagerness of the Democrats (Obama first among equals on this score) to retreat from orthodox left/liberal/even moderate positions on Health Care Reform in the first place. What part of “based largely on GOP proposals” proves the Democrats are intransigent partisans? Was Schindler living elsewhere when Obama spent months vainly seeking the vote of even one Republican by offering compromise after compromise? Does he not recall how much the original House bill (which contained a public option) was eviscerated in the hope of attracting Republican support? We can argue about whether the Democrats should have ceaselessly sought compromise, but no one can honestly argue that they didn't. Can Shindler think of an example of the Republicans bending so much on any subject? We won't even stipulate that it has to be as politically significant as Health Care.

The fact that this meme will not die bodes ill for what's left of our Republic. One can't cure a disease unless one diagnoses it correctly. The doctors into whose hands we have largely given the task of diagnosing our ills, like Schindler, engage in serial malpractice of just this type.

Filed in Dysfunction, Pompous Pundits | | Comments (0)

Hey Joe, your 15 minutes are up!

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Isn't it about time that the media let Sam Wurzelbacher slip back into the obscurity from which he came? Who cares what he thinks, and I use the word “thinks” advisedly.

Filed in Crazies | | Comments (0)

Demagogues hard at work in Europe

Friday, May 23, 2014

This morning Paul Krugman warns once again about the rising of the right in Europe, the result of, ironically enough, conservative to right wing (in normal times) economic nostrums.

It’s hard to imagine war in today’s Europe, which has coalesced around democratic values and even taken its first steps toward political union. Indeed, as I write this, elections are being held all across Europe, not to choose national governments, but to select members of the European Parliament. To be sure, the Parliament has very limited powers, but its mere existence is a triumph for the European idea.

But here’s the thing: An alarmingly high fraction of the vote is expected to go to right-wing extremists hostile to the very values that made the election possible. Put it this way: Some of the biggest winners in Europe’s election will probably be people taking Vladimir Putin’s side in the Ukraine crisis.

via The New York Times

It's not the first time Krugman has written to this effect, though you may have read similar warnings here first.

I suppose it's a measure of how topsy turvy the world has become that we have now reached a point where the European far right is supporting Russia, but a larger point might be that the terms “right” and “left” are losing their meanings, or perhaps, more accurately, are being transmogrified beyond recognition. After all, if rightists in Europe are taking sides with Putin, they are by extension siding against the Ukrainian government, which is dominated by the right itself. These political movements are the European equivalent of the Tea Party, with no coherent ideology except opposition to whatever the democratically elected present governments may want. If France is against Putin, then the Far Right is for him. They are the very model of the modern reactionary. As Krugman points out, and as I said in my own post several years ago, since the established parties have closed ranks around an orthodoxy that grinds the mass of people into the ground, they have created a political vacuum custom made for the extremists. They can actually promise an economic program that might very well be superior to that provided by the establishment, at the low low cost of human rights, tolerance and democracy. It's a price many a frustrated voter will be willing to pay.

It doesn't help that both our politicians and our press appear to want to ignore these warning signs. It's good versus evil, with Putin as the monster. He may in fact be one, but that doesn't change the fact that the Ukrainian government, which took office after overthrowing a corrupt, but democratically elected government, is riddled with Nazis.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism, Foreign Affairs | | Comments (0)

It’s graduation time, and the pundits are whining

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

It's graduation time, which means graduation speakers, which means controversy about graduation speakers, which means inevitable claims that protest against graduation speakers somehow implicates the right of free speech. The example that provoked this post is here (Open Season on Free Speech), but its brothers and sisters are legion.

The fact is that despite the yearly infliction of such lamentations, there is no free speech issue here, either legally or philosophically. As a legal matter we are protected from government infringement of our right to speak. In some cases, as a matter of public policy, we have protected otherwise defenseless people from being punished for the content of their speech. Connecticut, for instance, has a statute that provides protection to an employee from employer retribution for things the employee has said or written.

While the government may not control the content of my speech, neither it nor any private entity has any obligation to provide me a forum, podium or newspaper column from which to propagate my views. That's why I pay money to a web hosting service for the privilege of propagating said views. I also have no right to an audience, so if no one reads this blog, that is my tough luck (or maybe good luck, depending on your point of view). That's also why the New London Day can refuse to print my letters while printing every bit of right wing nonsense it receives.

But I wander. Let's focus on the graduation issue. What's going on here?

A small group of people makes the initial choice of speakers. Particularly in this age when university administrators are becoming ever more like CEOs, the decision quite often does not even involve meaningful input from the students, alumni and parents who will be the captive audience of the chosen speaker. Once the speaker is chosen, by the logic of those who make the “free speech” claim, the free speech rights of countless potential speakers have been violated by the selection committee, for they have been blocked from speaking every bit as surely as a potential speaker who is later blocked by an outraged student community. Yet, no one seems to feel any sympathy for Richard Dawkins, who year after year has been denied his right to speak to the graduates of Liberty University.

In many cases there is a philosophical and cultural disconnect between the student community (including the parents who have shelled out mega thousands in order to reach graduation day) and the administrators who make the initial decision on who will speak, and therefore the content of the speech to which the audience will be subjected.

To repeat: the speaker has no right to speak, the audience has little choice but to listen. In reality, the protests that often ensue are not about the expected content of the speech, but to the speaker him or herself. For instance, some people don't like it when one of the most important days of their life is spoiled because their corporate school administrators see fit to honor a war criminal as part of the graduation process. Remember that these people are not just giving speeches, they are being awarded honorary degrees, implying a seal of approval from the school, and by extension, the larger school community. So in reality, the protest is usually over the honor being extended, not the anticipated content of the speech, but even if that were the case, there would be no “free speech” issue here. Somewhat like Bartleby, the protestors are simply saying that they “do not choose” to listen.

Now, lets be clear. There are good reasons and bad reasons to oppose a proposed speaker. Just as the choice of a war criminal tells a lot about the initial selection committee, so the reasons protestors give for opposing a given speaker tells a lot about them. It's not just students of course, as the Globe columnist to whom I've linked above notes, there are often outsiders who oppose graduation speakers. As he points out, we learned a lot (mostly bad) about the Bishop of Boston who opposed Boston College's choice of the President of Ireland because Boston College had the “audacity to invite someone who chose to obey his nation’s Supreme Court and create an exception to Ireland’s prohibition against abortion when a woman’s life is endangered.”

The Bishop is a reprehensible toad, we can all grant that. But his opposition to the Irish Prime Minister did not threaten anyone's free speech rights. The Prime Minister was free to say whatever he liked, with no interference from the US government, unless BC chose to exercise its own right to withdraw its invitation. We can probably all agree that BC did itself proud by standing firm. We learned something about the Bishop and something about BC from that incident, but it tells us nothing about free speech.

So, it's not open season on free speech. In some cases, such as that of a certain former Secretary of State, it is righteous anger on the part of students at being forced to choose between attending their own graduation or being complicit in honoring a war criminal. Other proposed honorees have been opposed for less legitimate reasons, but rest assured that Jamie Madison rests easy in his grave, or, I should say, if his sleep is disturbed it is disturbed by the prospect of a nation he helped found being destroyed by a Supreme Court that equates money with speech.

Filed in Lawyer stuff | | Comments (0)

Well, that’s all right then

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

These people make Walmart look good.

Yesterday the New York Times revealed that the people building NYU's campus in Abu Dhabi were systematically abusing the foreign workers doing the actual work:

Facing criticism for venturing into a country where dissent is not tolerated and labor can resemble indentured servitude, N.Y.U. in 2009 issued a “statement of labor values” that it said would guarantee fair treatment of workers. But interviews by The New York Times with dozens of workers who built N.Y.U.’s recently completed campus found that conditions on the project were often starkly different from the ideal.

Virtually every one said he had to pay recruitment fees of up to a year’s wages to get his job and had never been reimbursed. N.Y.U.’s list of labor values said that contractors are supposed to pay back all such fees. Most of the men described having to work 11 or 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, just to earn close to what they had originally been promised, despite a provision in the labor statement that overtime should be voluntary.

The men said they were not allowed to hold onto their passports, in spite of promises to the contrary. And the experiences of the BK Gulf strikers, a half dozen of whom were reached by The Times in their home countries, stand in contrast to the standard that all workers should have the right to redress labor disputes without “harassment, intimidation, or retaliation.”

The article goes on to detail that the workers were systematically deprived of their rights, not to mention their pay.

But NYU has made it all okay:

New York University issued an apology on Monday to any workers on its newly completed Abu Dhabi campus who were “not treated in line with the standards we set,” after The New York Times reported widespread abuses among a labor force that numbered about 6,000 at its peak.

The article described workers being arrested, beaten and deported to their home countries after striking over pay. Recruitment fees, of approximately a year’s wages, were all but required, and laborers had to work overtime, sometimes seven days a week, to earn the base pay they were promised. Not one of the dozens of workers interviewed had his own passport. Some were living in filthy, crowded apartments.

…

In 2009, after announcing the project, N.Y.U. had issued a “statement of labor values” saying those building N.Y.U. Abu Dhabi would be treated better.

In a statement to the N.Y.U. community, its president, John Sexton, called the workers’ treatment, “if true as reported, troubling and unacceptable.”

“They are out of line with the labor standards,” he continued, “we deliberately set for those constructing the ‘turnkey’ campus being built for us on Saadiyat Island and inconsistent with what we understood to be happening on the ground for those workers.”

In a separate statement, to the website NYU Local, a spokesman, John Beckman, wrote “To any worker who was not treated in line with the standards we set and whose circumstances went undetected and unremedied, we offer our apologies.”

So, that's alright then. I'm sure the workers are gratified. They won't be getting their money or their rights back, but they do have an apology. After all, who could have predicted that such things could happen in a country like Abu Dhabi? Other than, umm…, just about everyone.

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)

A typical case of American blind justice

Monday, May 19, 2014

Every once in a while you see a story like this and you wonder. I'd like to think it couldn't happen here, but this took place in Washington State, not Alabama:

At the very end of last year, Shaun Goodman left a bar in Olympia, Washington in his Ferrari and led police on a high speed chase that approached 100 mph at times before crashing into two cars, jumping the curb and eventually careening into the side of a house. An unsuspecting passenger who had accepted a ride from Goodman was forced to leap from the moving car as it slowed down approaching an intersection.

Police arrested Goodman, whose blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit in Washington. He pleaded guilty to felony charges of eluding a police officer and driving under the influence, his seventh DUI conviction. And last week, Judge James Dixon handed down his sentence: no jail time and one year in a work release program.

Members of the community are crying foul, and argue that criminals who have money play by a different set of rules than others who commit similar crimes, drawing comparisons to several other recent cases of wealthy defendants getting off with minimal punishment. On Friday, protesters gathered in front of the Thurston County courthouse to demand answers.

“The judge has said at some point that he’s an important businessman in the community, and it wouldn’t be fair for him (and) his employees would suffer if he went to real jail,” said Sam Miller in an interview with local station KOMO News. “And my question is, what about the people that might suffer if he kills somebody?”

via Think Progress

The article reminds us of a couple of other recent cases, including the kid who got away with murder based on a plea of affluenza:

Last year, a teenager who killed four people and injured two others by driving drunk in Texas avoided jail after the lawyer hired by his wealthy parents claimed their son suffered from “affluenza,” an infliction suffered by the extremely wealthy that prevents them from accepting any responsibility for their own actions. And in March, an heir to chemical magnate Irénée du Pont who raped his own three-year-old daughter accepted a plea bargain that reduced his charges to fourth-degree rape and received probation, avoiding a mandatory jail sentence of 10 years. In her decision, the judge in that case explained that the defendant “will not fare well” in jail.

I can understands the judge's reasons for not sending the rapist to jail. If he wasn't going to fare well there, then what would be the point? Any number of my homeless disability clients have ended up in jail for the crime (usually) of being mentally ill, but it's all been for the best, for to a man, if asked, they will tell you how well they fared there. That's why so many poor people are clamoring to get into our penal institutions. And as to affluenza, someone ought to tell Paul Ryan about it, because apparently poor people never catch it, meaning they are all perfectly capable of accepting responsibility for their own actions, which seems to run against the grain of what Paul has been saying in other contexts. Affluenza must be highly contagious among the unfortunate .01% however, since the government has apparently concluded that all the bankers and hedge fund managers have it.

Filed in American Life, Equal Justice | | Comments (1)

Piketty

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Blogging has been slow here, as I've been occupied making my way through Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century, attending conventions (still not finished with those), and watching episodes of Doc Martin on Netflix.

I finished Capital today. (*Doc Martin* will take a little longer) It's an easier read than one might think. No real math is required; the formula to which he constantly returns amounts to this: capital, especially the capital owned by the rich, “earns” returns greater than the rate at which the economy grows, ineluctably leading to greater inequality since this implies a transfer of wealth from bottom to top, with inherited wealth predominating. We will soon be ruled by a class of people such as the Kochs, born (if I might steal and elaborate on a great line) sliding into home thinking they hit a homer.

I came of age at a time that was in fact an aberration. The shock of the two world wars and the Depression had destroyed many large fortunes and had induced or reinforced the propensity of governments to raise both income taxes and estate taxes to confiscatory levels, where they belong. Piketty says that high levels of inequality were, before the wars, the norm, and that we have, to a certain extent, simply been returning to the norm, with the process getting a terrific shove from the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, who reduced income taxes on the rich and, perhaps even more critically, reduced estate taxes.

In essence, he proves with statistics what we all already knew: the rich get richer and the poor have babies, though, ironically, according to Piketty, the fact that they're having fewer babies actually accelerates the process of wealth transfer.

The takeaway is that we're probably doomed to a future resembling Medieval times more than the postwar period, unless there's another shock to the world economy equivalent to two world wars. My guess would be that climate change might administer such a shock, but of course there's no guarantee that the reaction would be similar to what happened during and after the wars and Depression, or whether the rich would use the shock to further entrench themselves.

Piketty proposes a global tax on capital as the solution, while admitting it is unlikely to happen. He points out that nations, just like our states and localities, engage in a race to the bottom by offering ever more generous tax breaks to corporations, making it hard for any nation to effectively tax corporations. The latest example of that, which hits close to home here in Connecticut, is Pfizer's attempt to become a corporate citizen of Britain. A global tax would address such problems, but what are the odds?

Still, he says that the U.S. is in a better position than the small countries of Europe to take some effective action, assuming it had the political will to do so. Short of the global tax on capital, he points out that 1) an increase in tax rates on top earners (endlessly advocated here) would be effective in combatting inequality ,and 2) it is feasible to impose taxes on capital based on the “location of the corresponding business activity or company”, rather than the residence of the taxpayer. This would require “automatic sharing of bank data to allow the tax authorities to assess complex ownership structures”, but once that sharing of data was put in place unilateral action could be effective, though not as effective as the global tax.

One's immediate reaction is to dismiss the chance for any such international cooperation out of hand, and it's probably true that it's not going to happen. But, let us not forget, our own government has negotiated a host of multilateral “free trade” agreements designed, consciously or not, to funnel money to the corporations. The “Trans Pacific Partnership”, being the latest, and let us be thankful, failed attempt. It is at least possible that some future President Warren could advocate for a “free information” agreement, enabling us to follow the money and tax it here, where it's reaped. Don't hold your breath, of course, but one never knows. Maybe the NSA could work on the problem. If something like that doesn't happen, prepare your kids for a life “in service” to The Lord of the Manor. (My spell checker must be religious, it just automatically capitalized “The Lord”)

Filed in Book reports | | Comments (2)

25% normal

Thursday, May 15, 2014

I’ve been busy lately, what with attending meaningless nominating conventions and such like. So, no posts of substance lately. You must, therefore content yourself with entertainment: excerpts from the Idaho Republican primary gubernatorial debates.

So, one normal guy. That’s not too bad.

Did you catch the look on the moderator’s face?

Filed in Crazies | | Comments (1)

Little Timmy speaks

Monday, May 12, 2014

Little Timmy Geithner is on a book tour, launched (at least so far as I was aware) in yesterday's New York Times Magazine puff piece by Andrew Ross Sorkin. Today I ran across this quote, which sort of follows up on Little Timmy's remark that the purpose of the homeowner relief program was to “foam the runway” for the banks. In other words, it was a sham that enabled them to stretch out the foreclosure process, allowing the banks to make their books look better, while doling out false hope to millions of ordinary people. Little Timmy uses another plane analogy for not prosecuting the banksters:

In this fascinating interview today with Susan Page at USA Today, Geithner actually uses the plane analogy, but his image of himself is something like that of Indiana Jones, hero to the rescue, defying all odds:

“It’s like you’re in the cockpit and the plane’s on fire and smoke is filling the cabin. And you’ve got a bunch of people on the plane — you’ve got some terrorists, or you’ve got some people who built the plane or didn’t design the fire system right — and people want you to come out of the cockpit and put them in handcuffs or beat them up. And it’s understandable, but you’ve got to land the plane safely if you want to protect people from the risk of catastrophe.”

via Wall Street on Parade

Now, I'm no expert in criminal law, but I imagine if that scenario were to play out in real life, those terrorists and designers would have been arrested once the plane was safely landed. I'm fairly sure that the pilot would not, as Geithner, did, hand them multi-million dollar bonuses. This is only surmise, of course, but I'm fairly sure I'm right. 

Filed in Corporate Crime | | Comments (0)