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Republicans demand mercy

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

You truly couldn’t make this sort of thing up:

House Republican freshmen admit that their so-called “MediScare” attacks on Democrats helped them win a big majority in 2010. Democrats had voted for the health care law, which included $500 billion in “cuts” to Medicare — primarily slashing overpayments to private insurers — and Republican challengers never let them forget it.

Now, they say, it’s time to let bygones be bygones.

Nearly a dozen House Republican freshmen held a press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday morning to “wipe the slate clean,” and “hit the reset button.”

“Yeah, I mean there’s been — again, this is a both-sides issue,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) when asked if GOP candidates and the NRCC had engaged in ‘MediScare’ tactics last year. “To say that one side is blameless in trying to use issues to win votes is just dishonest.”

On Tuesday, Kinzinger and 41 of his colleagues sent a letter to President Obama, asking him to rein in Democratic attacks on GOP members who voted for the House budget, which includes a plan to privatize Medicare and cap spending on the program.

“We ask that you stand above partisanship, condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform spending on entitlement programs,” the letter reads.

Translation: Sure we lied about you in 2010, but it’s terribly unfair for you to even consider telling the truth about us in 2012.

I think this is one time when even Obama will resist the call for bipartisanship.

Times sure do change. Only a few short weeks ago the Republicans were telling themselves that the vote to abolish Medicare was going to reap big political dividends for them.


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This guy makes Paul Ryan look smart

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

This is truly incredible, and yet totally unsurprising. The very serious folks have been telling us that we must take the advice of the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission and solve the (nonexistent) social security problem. They pretty much consistently ignore the fact that the Commission never issued an official report, and that the only recommendations were those made by the chairmen, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles. The latter is a self interested banker, while the former is, as it turns out, colossally stupid, uninformed and/or disingenuous.

It doesn’t take a lot of brains to understand the concept of life expectancy. Simpson has been going around saying that no one collected social security back in 1940 because life expectancy was only 65, so no one lived to collect benefits. Even putting aside the fact that life expectancy is a norm, anyone with half a brain can see that it is not life expectancy at birth that matters; it’s life expectancy at retirement. But Simpson can’t see that, and when it’s explained to him, he still can’t understand it, or pretends not to:

HuffPost suggested to Simpson during a telephone interview that his claim about life expectancy was misleading because his data include people who died in childhood of diseases that are now largely preventable. Incorporating such early deaths skews the average life expectancy number downward, making it appear as if people live dramatically longer today than they did half a century ago. According to the Social Security Administration’s actuaries, women who lived to 65 in 1940 had a life expectancy of 79.7 years and men were expected to live 77.7 years.

“If that is the case — and I don’t think it is — then that means they put in peanuts,” said Simpson.

Simpson speculated that the data presented to him by HuffPost had been furnished by “the Catfood Commission people” — a reference to progressive critics of the deficit commission who gave the president’s panel that label.

Told that the data came directly from the Social Security Administration, Simpson continued to insist it was inaccurate, while misstating the nature of a statistical average: “If you’re telling me that a guy who got to be 65 in 1940 — that all of them lived to be 77 — that is just not correct. Just because a guy gets to be 65, he’s gonna live to be 77? Hell, that’s my genre. That’s not true,” said Simpson, who will turn 80 in September.

Truly mind boggling. If Simpson’s characterization of life expectancy were accurate, then his statement that life expectancy in 1940 was 65 would imply that everyone born in 1940 lived to be 65, no greater and no less.

This is the guy to whom we are supposed to defer on Social Security, someone who couldn’t, by the looks of it, pass 6th grade math.


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Fraud-part of the business plan

Monday, May 9, 2011

This morning’s Times informs us that various states are now letting corporations and insurance companies create “captive insurance companies” within their borders. These companies serve as devices through which corporations and insurance companies can evade regulatory requirements. In the case of the insurance companies, they can evade requirements that they meet certain reserve thresholds, meaning that they can avoid the obligation to actually have the money to pay claims if a lot of bad things happen at once. In essence, these companies are openly engaging in a fraud on the public. Instead of disclosing actual reserves, they disclose the fact that their obligations to their policyholders are insured by captive company X. Captive company X, having been set up in State Y, has no legal obligation to disclose its financial condition, yet the insurance company is allowed to use the assurance that company X will come through as proof that it is retaining sufficient reserves, even though everyone knows that in a crunch, there will be no money there. The actual money that would otherwise have been held in reserve is now free to be paid out in dividends, or more likely, drained into the pockets of the insurance company executives. This is proven by the massive amounts of money the insurance companies claim to “save” by buying insurance from themselves.

If you or I pulled off such an openly fraudulent transaction, we’d be put in jail, but if a corporation does it everyone pretends not to notice. There is, after all, no legitimate reason to form these companies. In the case of the insurance companies, the scam is made easier by the fact that, for a reason that does not exist, insurance companies are not subject to federal regulation. The states can therefore engage in a race to the bottom, which they are now doing with gusto, enabling these fraudsters so they can get a few crumbs off the table. Already, according to the Times, the crumbs are getting tinier, as the insurance giants play one state off against another to the point where some of them are allowing this criminal activity for practically no charge. In this the states are behaving like typical corrupt politicians, who are so often bought off for so little, considering the benefits obtained by those who buy them off.

This scam, I believe, could be easily stopped. Given the current group of Bozos running the House, it’s unlikely that the federal government would step in, even if it could do so. The states, however, retain the right to regulate insurance companies, and it would be easy enough for insurance regulators in the bigger states, say California, New York and Illinois, to forbid any insurance company using captive companies from underwriting insurance within its borders. Don’t look for Connecticut to take action. The article points put that Connecticut has just passed a law enabling captives, so we’ll be getting crumbs too, until the time comes for the inevitable bailout.

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Now we know

Sunday, May 8, 2011

I’ve become a big Doctor Who fan, and as soon as Season 7 started, I subscribed on ITunes. Who would have thought that by doing so I would learn the answer to a true historical mystery.

My younger readers may be surprised to learn that there was a time when those of us on the left were quite convinced that no president could be worse, or more evil, than Richard Nixon. Those were innocent days, as we’ve since learned that, paranoid as he was, Nixon just can’t measure up to two of his Republican successors, not to mention whatever Republican we happen to get next. These days he looks like a moderate-certainly not bat shit crazy enough to be even considered for a place on the Republican’s national ticket. Still, at the time we felt that the world had been freed from true evil when he was brought down by the tape recordings he himself had made.

But, back to the Doctor. Turns out that the Doctor is the reason Nixon installed those tape recorders in the Oval Office, something that was previously a mystery. You’ll just have to watch to find out why. There’s no way I could explain it, except to say that it’s nice to know that the Doctor rid the Earth of an entire race of evil aliens and Richard Nixon all in one fell swoop.

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It’s been nice

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Just my luck. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, my new Ipad finally arrived after a several week wait. Today I find out that I won’t be enjoying it for long, because the whole world is going to end on May 21st.

[Harold] Camping, an engineer by training, says he came up with the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers. It involves, among other things, the dates of floods, the signals of numbers in the Bible, multiplication, addition and subtraction thereof. Camping describes his equations with absolute conviction.

“He seems to be the only one who understands the equation,” said Paul Boyer, a University of Wisconsin historian who studies apocalyptic beliefs.

Camping is an engineer by training, but his day job is as a fundamentalist radio preacher. Apparently he’s been through this before, having just missed on his previous prediction that the world was going to end in 1994. This time, of course, he must be right, because his calculations have yielded not just the precise year, but the precise date and time:

The end will come sometime around 6 p.m. on May 21 — not 6 p.m. California time or New York time or Hong Kong time. The world will end at 6 p.m. only when it is 6 p.m. locally, Camping said, citing his calculations. “People will see this coming to them from around the world,” he said. “It will follow the sun around.”

Okay, so my new Ipad may come in handy after all. I think I’m right in thinking that the world will end at the international dateline first, and then the end will make its way west, around the world until it gets here. That’s seventeen hours, more or less. That means I can use my Ipad to follow the end on twitter, or to get live team coverage from Fox.

Now, if you think Camping and his followers are slightly crazy, rest assured they are not, at least if you consider insanity as a deviance from the norm. Here in America, according to the article, fully 41% of the people believe the world will end before 2050. Camping and his flock are merely pegging the date slightly earlier.


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Here they go again

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Republican Christopher Coutu, who somehow managed to get himself elected as a state representative from Norwich, is your typical right wing legislator, more interested in spouting inane talking points than responsible governance. He is also planning to run against Joe Courtney in 2012 (when he will get his ass handed to him, but that’s not what this piece is about).

The New London Day has already commenced its campaign on his behalf, giving outsize prominence to a gimmicky lawsuit filed against Malloy’s budget by some Republican legislators and a right wing legal group. The paper gave it front page coverage, with Coutu’s name featured in the headline.

I’m not saying that this waste of judicial time doesn’t deserve coverage. It just doesn’t belong on the front page as the headline story, nor does Coutu’s name need to be prominently displayed in that place. This comes a mere day after the Day printed a Coutu press release in the guise of a news article.

This is the same as it ever was. The allegedly liberal Day can be relied on to lavish attention on Republican candidates for the Second Congressional seat.

UPDATE: The drumbeat continues, with the normally sensible David Collins lavishing praise on Coutu in a column this (Sunday) morning. (This post was originally put up on Saturday). That makes it three days in a row. Collins transcribes the usual conservative tripe that Coutu and people like him dish out (we must screw the middle class while aiding the rich is what it always amounts to) and, of course, neither challenges Coutu nor informs his readers regarding the facts about Social Security, about which Coutu engages in the usual Republican lies. Likely, like so many members of the press, Collins has not bothered to inform himself on these topics, preferring to confine himself to the he-said, she said style of political reporting. After all, who ever said it was the role of the press to sort out the facts for its readers, rather than leaving it to them to do the heavy lifting.


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Friday Night Music

Friday, May 6, 2011

So, last Saturday we went to Northampton. Periodically we meet friends up there and use a concert as an excuse to get together. Last time around it was the one and only, the great Randy Newman. This time is was John Prine. I confess that though I’ve heard of him, I couldn’t have named a single one of his hits, if he had any, but, as I say, the concert is just an excuse for the get together.

Well, who knew there were a sufficient number of John Prine fans in the Northampton area to not only fill the theater, but who were mostly so knowledgeable about his body of work that they recognized each song at the opening chord. I have no idea which of his songs might be considered his trademark, but I liked this little ditty, sung here when he was quite a bit younger.

Though I love music, I don’t go to concerts very often. At the Prine concert, we enjoyed an opening act, and then waited over half an hour for Prine to come on stage. My wife and I, neophytes that we are, had about concluded that the now aging semi-star had suffered a heart attack or some other debilitating event. I turned to one of our friends (a dyed in the wool Prine fan) and said that while I might be willing to wait for half an hour for the likes of Paul McCartney, it seemed a tad long for just John Prine. To which remark she took much offense, but I stand by it, including the italics.

I have since learned that this is standard operating procedure, and that, even after paying $45.00 per ticket, one must expect to wait an ungodly amount of time before the rock and roll gods, demi-gods, or in this case demi-demi-demi-gods take the stage. I don’t have sufficient experience to say, but I wonder if the wait time is inversely proportional to the number of demis the performer in question warrants, in which case one would presumably have to bring a sleeping bag if one were actually affluent enough to afford a ticket to see a McCartney or the Stones.

I should add that once Prine started he put on a great show.


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This blog now Ipad friendly

Friday, May 6, 2011

To coincide with the arrival of my new Ipad 2, I have added a plug-in to my WordPress blog. If you access the blog on an Ipad, it will look just like an Ipad app. Very cool.

Unfortunately, the actual content is of the same low quality, but the experience is so much more satisfying.

By the way, now that I have the Ipad 2 I can’t believe that I could stand living without one, especially since I also bought one of those overpriced Apple cases. My whole life has changed now that I can look at my own face close up and personal on the front facing camera. Now I know what my wife and co-workers experience every day, and I truly grieve for them.


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Pundits assessed

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Here’s some fun reading. An allegedly scientific, or at least quasi-scientific study of the predictions of pundits and others in the national eye. According to the study, liberals are far more likely to be accurate prognosticators than their conservative brethren, and lawyers are less likely than others to get it right.

Paul Krugman comes out way on top, and deservedly so. Not only is he almost always right, but his predictions are often made months in advance, so it’s not like he is predicting the obvious.

The study, on the whole, I fear, must be taken with a massive grain of salt. While the discussions of individual pundits point out that some predictions are slam dunks, the study itself, so far as I can see, does not factor in the obviousness of any particular prediction. If a pundit predicts that the sun will rise tomorrow, and it does, it appears that pundit gets a point. As to the lawyer factor, in which I have an obvious personal interest…well, there are lawyers and there are lawyers. The subset of pundits being examined does not necessarily include the most astute among us, so while it may be true that lawyer pundits who make it to Fox are not good at making predictions, it does not follow that one can say the same about lawyers as a class.

Still, fun reading, and one really can’t argue with the other finding-that liberals are right more often than conservatives. Conservatives live in a fact free present, so it’s not surprising that their futures are also fact free. It’s also the case that we need more of this. Every pundit on television should be given a report card now and then, and perhaps their grades should be disclosed each time they get to open their mouth on the television.


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Obama gets Osama, but will he get the credit?

Monday, May 2, 2011

From what I’ve read, it looks like Obama deserves a lot of credit for taking out Osama. Personally, I wish they could have taken him alive, but I know that’s probably asking too much.

Will Obama get the credit he deserves, for what was apparently a long term effort that he pushed hard on? My guess is that he won’t, since the Republicans ultimately control the narrative, Democrats being unwilling to push back on anything. The Republicans are a little off balance right now, but they’ll recover quickly. There will be two arguments.

First, the “serious” argument. The proponents will argue that this was all George Bush’s doing, history to the contrary notwithstanding. (And see also John McCain’s point blank statement that he would never do what Obama did) This has already started.

Second, the argument the birthers are likely to adopt: That Osama was not killed and this is all an elaborate hoax. After all, there’s no corpse, is there? All of those pictures and DNA tests are easily faked, just like birth certificates, etc. Look for folks like Limbaugh to whip it up.

The media will give credence to the “serious” argument while being pushed in that direction by the crazies. The Democrats will consider both claims so absurd that they deserve no response, just like John Kerry did with the swift boaters. And we all know how that turned out.

I hope I’m wrong about this. We’ll see.

Meanwhile, here’s a nifty little picture purloined fromJuan Cole’s site.



UPDATE: That didn’t take long. The conspiracy theories are already circulating

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