Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

The Michael Bay Theory of Health Care Reform

Ezra Klein:

If there are no circumstances under which Congress will reform Medicare, there are no circumstances under which the federal government will not go bankrupt.

No circumstances? Has Klein never heard of taxes? Is he an extreme supply sider who thinks increasing taxes will never increase revenues? Even under grim budget scenarios in which the medical cost curve doesn't bend at all, the federal budget rises to consume about 30% of GDP in 2050. You could, in theory, increase taxes to pay for 30% of GDP (they're a little under 20% now).  You could also do something to dramatically shrink Social Security spending--the big non-medical driver of federal spending--by raising the retirement age and cutting benefits for those who don't need them (means-testing). It's hard to believe that some combination of taxes and means-tested Social Security cuts couldn't bring revenues and spending into long term balance even if generous Medicare spending goes unpared by Harry Reid's new panel of unelected experts.

Klein's exclusion of these obvious alternatives seems to be part of a new strategy to reconcile the Democrats health care plan with deficit-consciousness. The old argument--Classic Orszagism--claimed simply, if enigmatically, that the solution to the budget crisis was Obama's health care reform, because somehow only when the government insured coverage for all would it have the leverage necessary to "bend the cost curve" down. One problem with Classic Orszagism was that it scared the elderly, and near-elderly, who are hardly crazy to see the suggested restrictions on mammogram spending as the opening bid in an ongoing campaign to "scientifically" lower high-tech expenses (by playing up the "anxiety" caused by false positives, for example). Another problem is that if the government can bend the cost curve, the logical place to start is with Medicare--and, indeed, the powerful Fed-like "IMAB" board in Harry Reid's bill is mandated to cut only Medicare. But if we can cut Medicare, why not just cut Medicare--without also adding Obama's admittedly expensive subsidized coverage for the uninsured?

If all you cared about was the deficit, that would be your position: First see if we can cut Medicare, then talk about extending health care to everyone in a few years. The fierce reaction to the mammogram recommendations, though, reinforced an already amply justified skepticism of the governments ability to reduce treatments to constituents who see them as life-saving. Why do we have any expectation that the cost curve will be bent at all, ever?

Here is where Klein's new argument comes in: Curve-bending skeptics like David Broder have to be wrong because ... well, they have to be wrong. Broder's skepticism

is another way of saying that Congress can't cut health-care costs and the American government will go bankrupt. For one thing, that's not a very good reason not to at least try and avert that outcome. But if Broder's position is that we face certain fiscal collapse, then the only real question is whether we would prefer that 30 million Americans had insurance in the meantime, or went uninsured over that period.

It's Doomsday Orszagism: The government has to be able to bend the curve because the alternative, even without Obama's health care reform, is a fiscal apocalypse in which "the federal government will not be able to honor its debts." The asteroid is heading towards earth, and a mild mannered CBO wonk has his hands on the only plan for heading it off. You gotta believe!

But if there are other ways to head off bankruptcy--namely taxes and Social Security cuts--you don't gotta believe. An alternative argument for health reform would say: extending generous health coverage to all citizens is part of America's social equality. We don't deny people what they need to regain their health. We don't decide that some people are worth care and others aren't, British-style. We can pay for it--it's expensive, it certainly doesn't help the deficit picture, but it's not that expensive at the moment, maybe a hundred or two extra billion a year. It's worth raising some taxes and maybe denying the affluent government retirement checks (which is not such a necessary part of social equality). If we can do some reasonable curve-bending in the long-run to bring down the cost, even better. But we're not counting on it, since so far nobody's been able to do it.

Maybe the various versions of Orszagism--the confident invocations of curve-bending power--are the only way to sell health care this year, even though they've already (by raising the rationing issue) helped consign Obama's reform to seemingly permanent general unpopularity. Maybe it's even necesary to go further, in a Michael Bay-like direction, and claim disingenuously that Orszag's curve bending is the only way to save us all from horrific doom. BS sometimes works to pass legislation. But it's still BS. ... [Thanks to alert reader S.W. for the link to Keith Hennessy's chart] 10:29 P.M.

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Why the 6-Week Deadline for Health Care Matters

"Orszag Sees Health Law in Six Weeks" (Bloomberg): OMB Director Peter Orszag didn't really predict a health care law in six weeks--he said "The goal would be, yes, over the next six weeks or so, maybe sooner." We know all about "goals." But the 6-week frame is not an accident, because something happens in 6 weeks: elections. If Democrats lose big gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, that could produce a new wave of jitters among already skittish Congressional swing Democrats (a possibility Charles Lane pointed to months ago). That's one of the extraneous factors left out of some sophisticated positive assessments of the bill's chances. Better to get it done before the ax might fall. ... Meanwhile, Ezra Klein says we're on the 10 yard line. Sure! But we are playing 43-man Squamish. ... 1:06 A.M.

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The Grants of Others: Lynne Munson's suggested NEA apology is a whole lot better than actual National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Rocco Landesman's actual statement, which is just a tad unapologetic and defensive about the Breitbart.com conference call scoop:

a) These were organizations that depend on the NEA for grants. It's not that they were explicitly asked by NEA and other government officials to support the president's policy agenda. It's that they were asked to vaguely but passionately get with the program by people who seemed to have an uncomfortably flimsy idea of the boundaries between promoting the President's public service plans and making art and community organizing ... and supporting the president's policy agenda. Maybe it's all one big activity--the president's "very aggressive agenda" at the national level, with "service" at the local level meaning being an "agent of change" and learning to "connect with ... progressive groups" (as White House official Buffy Wicks put it on the conference call). Praxis! Cue will.i.am. ...

b) I don't read the what's said on the conference transcript as an explicit call to support Obamacare (though several grantees did just that a few days later). It's a call to support the public service initiative. But what if you are a potential NEA grant applicant and you don't believe there should be a public service initiative? Maybe, like the late Jack Kemp, you think it's a waste of talent. That particular political conviction is apparently officially inconceivable. If you share it, don't expect a fat grant anytime soon. Robert Heinlein interpreters hoping to stage a community theater production of Stranger in A Strange Land: The Musical are advised to look elsewhere.

c) It's obviously not just the fault of the one NEA official who participated in the call and has now been relieved of his assignment, but rather a problem in the culture of the incoming Obamaites--at least the incoming Obamaites who are sufficiently low-level and unwonkish to be assigned to the NEA. Maybe Landesman should order a viewing of The Lives of Others to underscore to them what (in admittedly extreme form) people who worry about politicizing funding for the arts are worried about.

d) Sure, the meeting tarnished the NEA but it also tarnished Obama's public service initiative, which now looks like it's being propped up by subtly coerced participation from government grantees, and steered into being an "agent of change" for "progressive" causes. I await the strongly-worded denunciation from prominent fellow national service supporters like Newsweek's Jon Meacham.

e) Who is this "former NEA Director of Communications" that Landesman keeps referring to? Does he have a name? Is he an un-person? Are they airbrushing him out of group photos? Is his name an unpronounceable symbol, like Prince's? Landesman has only been on the job a few days and he's sounding East German already. 

5:07 P.M.

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Ezra Klein, Unreliable Narrator!

I don't understand this Ezra Klein's explanation of the Baucus bill's "free rider" provision, which seems hideously misguided because it attempts to penalize employers who hire low income workers eligible for health insurance subsidies. Here's Klein:

The penalty itself is a bit confusing, and if anything, even worse than one might imagine: The employer will pay the lesser of A) the average subsidy in the exchange times the number of subsidized workers or B) $400 times the total number of workers. Two examples should clarify this:

Baucus Corp has 100 employees and does not offer health-care coverage. Thirty of the employees receive subsidies on the exchange. The average subsidy that year is $5,000. Baucus Corp woulds pay $400 times 100 employees, as $40,000 is less than $150,000 ($5,000 times 30 employees). Each of those low-income employees is costing Baucus Corp $1,333 more than an employee who didn't need subsidies.

Now imagine that Baucus Corp. only has five employees who need subsidies, and the average subsidy that year is $5,000. In that scenario, Baucus Corp would pay $25,000 rather than $40,000, because $25,000 is less than $40,000. Each low-income worker now costs Baucus Corp. $5,000 more than a worker who doesn't need subsidies.

The problem is the highlighted sentence: It sure looks as if Baucus Corp would pay the same $40,000 penalty if it had only 29 low income employees in its workforce instead of 30. Hiring an additional low income employee, as opposed to a more affluent employee, costs it nothing, not $1,3000.  (Indeed, the penalty on Baucus Corp. is the same- -$40,000--regardless of the number of low income employees in its work force unless that number is less than 8, at which point the number of low income employees X $5,000 would be the lower of the two penalties,)

If this reading is right, the provision, while still misguided, may be less misguided than it seems (not more, as Klein implies). For firms with a sizable proportion of low income workers, it would basically function as a straight pay or play tax that increased a fixed amount (in this example, $400) with every new employee hired, whether or not that employee had a low income that qualified him for a health subsidy. The perverse effect would be to encourage firms to either decide to hire lots of low income workers or to hire none of them, concentrating the low income workforce in a relatively few firms. That's crazy, but it's slightly less evil than discouraging hiring of low income workers across the board.

But I could have it wrong. I am getting my information from Ezra Klein! He has great sources, but he's an unreliable narrator. It must be frustrating for the sources. ...  2:46 P.M.

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54-46 Was My Number, But It's Not Dick Morris': I was thinking that even a smallish majority opposed to health care might be sufficient to bog it down in Congress, as skittish legislative swing votes worry about their own reelections. But health care reform foe Dick Morris seems to believe the numbers aren't quite bad enough (yet) to have that effect.

But, certainly, when opposition to the president's program grows from the current 42-55 disapproval into the 35-65 range, Congress must balk rather than march over the cliff.

It's not clear we'll ever get into the 35-65 range, unless Obama appoints Kanye West as his new spokesman. If that's what it will take for a reform to not pass, then a reform will probably pass. Hope!  3:21 P.M.

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Ezra Klein's Most Cracked Spin Yet?

Delusion Watch: Ezra Klein thinks the good news is that Obama "hasn't given a speech on health-care reform ..."  You could have fooled me. The problem, Klein reports, is that 

the media reported on his news conferences and town hall meetings as if they were the White House's failed attempts to set the agenda.

You mean they weren't attempts to set the agenda? That explains it!  ...  [via Faughnan| ... P.S.: Klein's post does raise a disturbing possibility: Maybe the White House is proceeding ploddingly according to a plan laid out months ago, in which Obama's formal address to Congress was going to be a dramatic, fresh, deal-clinching intervention as opposed to three more cubic yards of the same ineffective rhetoric the public is already sick of. . . .They haven't adjusted at all in the WH, according to this theory. We're still on Plan A. ...

P.S.: "Our CBS News tally shows that Mr. Obama has given 27 speeches specifically on his health care objectives. Add in other remarks, events and statements in which he mentioned health care and the number soars to 119." [link and emphasis added] ...  8:30  P.M.

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Suppose Obama's 'inside' deal-cutting strategy works, and a health care reform along current lines passes. Would anything then actually happen that would come back and bite the Democrats before the next couple of elections? If so, what? Bob Wright asked this question on bloggingheads yesterday. His answer: The individual mandate could be to health care what the 55 m.p.h. speed limit was to Jimmy Carter's energy policy. I had a different answer, perhaps prompted by my recent, not uncommon, experience with rising credit card rates. ... A mandate will only impinge on those who don't have insurance already. A rise in insurance premiums will impact nearly everyone, no? .... 8:31 P.M.

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That 'Loving Thing' You Do: Alec MacGillis on the La Crosse, Wisconsin hospitals that push end-of-life directives:

"The [directive] itself doesn't really matter very much -- it's the clearly expressed belief and shared understanding that it represents," Hammes said. "The family members have to believe that what they do is not only legally right, but personally right. If Mom said, 'Don't do this or do do this,' it's much easier for them to say, 'I'm doing a loving thing,' and it's a decision you can live with."  

The obvious question MacGillis ducks: What if you write a directive that says you want aggressive and expensive death-delaying measures to be taken? "I'd like to die hooked up to machines." Do the hospitals of LaCrosse just automatically follow your wishes and spend $100,000 in your final weeks, telling themselves that it's a "shared understanding" and "a loving thing." Or is ... subtle pressure exerted to have a further "conversation"? ... 9:02 P.M.

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David Brooks and The New Anti-Anti-Orszagism. It's Wrong!

Politico conveys the latest White House staff boasts about health care strategy:

Top officials privately concede the past six weeks have taken their toll on Obama's popularity. But the officials also see the new diminished expectations as an opportunity to prove their critics wrong ...

Dickerson: Who knew it was all a brilliant plot to lower expectations? ... 9:45 P.M.

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Anti-anti-anti-Orszagism: David Brooks mounts the conventional defense against anti-Orszagism:

The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn’t worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.

But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.

Brooks is being disingenous, I think. The complaint against Orszag isn't that he's worried about the deficit. You could easily have a substantial health reform effort that was deficit-neutral--that didn't add to the $9 trillion, which is the estimated deficit for 10 years.  Where Obama and Orszag went wrong was in ostentatiously blabbering about long-term health cost "game changers" beyond that 10 year period, involving a "very difficult democratic conversation" on whether to put limits on treatments toward the end of life. It's the "game changers" that rightly scare people who worry about moving toward Brit-style rationing or other sorts of restrictions..

This discussion of long-term "game changers" was almost entirely gratuitous, policy-wise. 1) They're unproven. Maybe they'll work--i.e. cut costs without affecting care. Maybe they won't. It's irresponsible to make speculative efforts to control long term health costs, something that hasn't been done in this country, the centerpiece of an attempt to extend care; 2) They're long term! There's plenty of time to institute whatever curve-bending changes in medical practice between now and 2019, as eminently respectable policy person Uwe Reinhardt notes; 3) Cutting health care costs isn't the only responsible way to control the deficit. You could also cut other costs (e.g., Social Security) or raise taxes; 4) It was intellectually misleading to argue that spending a trillion dollars to extend health care coverage (and add demand to the system) was somehow the way to control long term costs, which was the essence of Obama's appeal in his address to Congress. Maybe expanded coverage would give the government more monopsony leverage--a not-unscary prospect in iitself, especially if you are "suspicious of centralized government," as Brooks says we Americans are--but basically the two issues seem separable. If you want to control long term costs and shift to a different treatment model you could start doing that independent of efforts to broaden coverage (which, indeed,  Orszag proposes doing). There's no clear policy reason--certainly no reason we've been given--that the two have to be linked. 

Brooks has it backwards, then, when he suggests Orszag's critics are saying Obama should have put good policy common sense aside for cheap political reasons. The policy groundwork for insisting on legislating "game-changers" now is weak. The only reason to include them was political--the calculation that even a speculative, possibly Potemkin-like effort to address long term costs would appeal to Blue Dog legislators and independent voters.  It's this political calculation that appears to have been the big mistake--the curve-bending, treatment-denying talk has scared seniors so much that popular support for the whole package (including among independents) has sunk to dangerous and possibly fatal levels.

P.S.: I've learned the hard way not to question the judgment of John Harwood, but his Obama's-in-good-shape analysis seems a little ... well ... Ambinderish. ... Same goes for Norman Ornstein, who focuses on the inside game (for Senate votes) and ignores the outside game (for public opinion). Is he ...rearranging reconciliation votes on the Titanic! ... And didn't Ezra Klein tell us a couple of weeks ago that the inside game had failed, and now Obama was going to move the argument "to the country" where he'd "marshal public support"? What happened with that? ...

P.P.S: According to Atlantic, Obama is going to seize on his moment of seeming weakness to ... draw lines in the sand! Auspiciously, none of the lines (as reported by Ambinder) is an insistence on Orszag's long-term rule benders. But the night is young. ... 2:46 P.M.

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The New Republic explores new revenue models, Atlantic -style. ... And they're going to viciously attack Christina Romer after she's helped them charge $250 a seat? ... 2:45 P.M.

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"Hot Blue on Blue Action": Joe Klein vs. Glenn Greenwald: Tom Maguire buries his real lede--Is it possible that Glenn Greenwald is not a member of the secretive Journolist? ... P.S.: On the question of whether "Klein pretends to position himself as an observer rather than a rooter at TIME," I would say the answer is no.. It would be futile to do otherwise at this point, anyway--as Maguire notes. ..."Rooter" is too passive, though. More like "player." ... You got a problem with that? ... 2:44 P.M..

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This is Plan B?

Everything's Under Control! I missed Ezra Klein's latest optimistic spin last week on the health care debate. Klein notes that Obama isn't talking about "bending the cost curve" on the stump, and that Republicans have gained traction, not with arguments about cost and the long-term deficit, but with fears of cost-cutting and rationing. So far, so good. 

But Klein says the administration always intended its "curve bending" arguments as a means of building "Washington support" and passing a bill by August ("the plan was to keep this in Washington"). Now that this effort has failed,** "the argument moves to the country" where the administration's pitch will be different, focusing on stories of insurance injustices.  "You don't win appealing to the wallet, you win by grabbing the gut."

This reeks of making-the-best-of-a-bad-situationism:

1) Did the administration really think it was going to pass a bill reforming the entire health care system without winning the "outside" battle for public support? If so, someone drew the wrong lesson from the "stimulus" bill. (The stimulus bill was intended to address an acute crisis.)

2) Did the administration think that Obama could run around talking obsessively about his plans to "bend the curve" of health costs (including in a nationally televised press conference), giving interviews to the New York Times about the need for a "very difficult democratic conversation" on restricting end-of-life care and the news would stay in Washington? Note: They've invented the telegraph!

3) Most important, does the adminsitration think it has plenty of time now to move on to win the argument in "the country"--as if this were a stately, well-ordered two-stage fight, a formal legal appeal to a higher court of public opnion? Does anyone really believe this? I doubt even Ezra Klein believes it--though I guess every great spinner believes his own spin. (And Klein, unlike Ambinder, seems like a spinner rather than a spinnee.)

What he breezily glosses over is the possibility--increasingly, the actuality--that they've already lost the public opinion battle for the near future. If they now need public opinion to pass the bill in the fall, they aren't going to pass a bill. It turns out you may only get one chance to roll out a giant legislative initiative. You can't roll it out with a cost-cutting rationale and then switch cunningly and seamlessly to a security-providing rationale without addressing the fears raised by the first set of arguments. 

Specifically, a few "gut"-grabbing insurance horror stories aren't going to calm the "rationing" fears of those now covered by Medicare (who don't worry about their insurance, or didn't until Obama came along). The best defense is not always a good offense (cf. Dunkirk). In this case, what's required would seem to be more a dramatic repudiation of the administration's own cost-bending, treatment-discouraging rhetoric.

Obama can't fire himself, but he can fire the curve-bending wonks who convinced him that talking about end-of-life issues was a good way to sell universal care. He can find himself a health-care Petraeus. And he can ditch the closest thing to a "death panel" in the legislation--the IMAC board. The more traumatic and high-profile the intra-administration upheaval, the more space Obama buys to relaunch his plan as a rationing-free coverage extension.

That would be a Plan B. ...

P.S.: Maguire mocks the NYT's effort to bury, under a layer of anti-yahoo sneering, the evidence in its own pages of Obama talking about restricting end-of-life treatments to save money. ...

**--See Lori Montgomery's wildly unconvincing argument that health care reform has to drive down the long-term cost curve (not just be "paid for") in order to pass. Maybe if the vote was taken by the respectable, responsible newspaper editors who order up hothouse pieces like Montgomery's. As Klein notes, the "curve-bending" argument didn't even carry the day inside the Beltway, while provoking active hostility outside. ... 3:49 P.M.

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Prediction! kf Throws Caution to the Winds

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Here's a safe political prediction: Despite all the innovative e-mobilization and ad campaigns and town halls and community organizing, the August recess will not produce any effective groundswell of popular support for Obama's health care reform. Why? The "security" message--which might appeal to the vast middle--is not getting through. On Pollster.com, Mark Blumenthal discusses the polling that backs this up. ... Reform advocates have now belatedly realized what the Orszag emphasis on cost-reduction has lost them politically, and have started talking about the "moral dimension" of reform. But even that makes it sound too guilt-trippy and altruistic--'do the right thing, even if it costs you.' The point is that everyone wants health care security. I do. You do. It's not a "moral" fight like the civil rights struggle. Transcendence of self-interest should not be required. Suggesting otherwise probably loses more support than it gains.  ... P.S.: Have Democrats forgotten how to talk about the welfare state? It seemed to me even Walter Mondale** talked about medical security effectively, back when Charles Krauthammer was writing speeches for him. (Mondale had a proven staple anecdote about what it meant to his mother to get her Medicare card). ... Bring back Mondale! There's another thing I thought I'd never say. ...  Update: More on the Gallup numbers that show voters think health care reform is against their own self-interest (in terms of cost and quality of care and access to care). ...

** DeLong: Explain to the juiceboxers who this person was. Thanks! ... 2:41 P.M.

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FYI: MKH PWNS AS FTW! ... FSTFITB!** ..

 ** First Shoot the Fish In the Barrel ... 3.51 P.M.

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Klein vs. Yglesias--Who Wins the Blog-Off?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Not All Juiceboxers Are Alike: A secret conversation on "JournoList" apparently produces eerily similar arguments against the filibuster from Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias. Except Yglesias goes on to make some quirky and sophisticated points about the effects of filibusterless democracy on campaigning and on the welfare state, while Klein's reads like a prize-winning high school essay. (Also, Klein hides the JournoList connection, while Yglesias is transparent about it.) I predict this scientific experiment will be replicated in the future. ...  4:10 A.M.

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From AP yesterday:  

"We have to do what businesses and families do. We've got to cut out the things we don't need to pay for the things we do," Obama said at a town-hall style meeting Thursday in Shaker Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The meeting followed a prime-time news conference the night before in which Obama sought to rally public support for his health plan. [E.A.]

WASHINGTON - Sweeping healthcare legislation working its way through Congress is more than an effort to provide insurance to millions of Americans without coverage. Tucked within is a provision that could provide billions of dollars for walking paths, streetlights, jungle gyms, and even farmers' markets. ... "These are not public works grants; they are community transformation grants,'' said Anthony Coley, a spokesman for Kennedy, chairman of the Senate health committee whose healthcare bill includes the projects.

4:06 A.M.

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Peggy Noonan is on to something potentially big--the possible alliance between Christian pro-life forces and liberal universal health insurance advocates in favor of broadly available life-saving care ... and the potential fight between that alliance and the cost-saving Orszag end-of-life-rationalizing would-you-please-die-now crowd. ... Prediction: The sneering Dem majority position in the Schiavo case will get a second, skeptical look from at least some liberals. .... 4:04 A.M.

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Always trust content from kausfiles .. even when it's on Twitter.  4:02 A.M.

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Wonks Will Kill Health Care Yet

WaPo's Ezra Klein decrees "rules" for those who would use the CBO's damning analysis "against the existing health-care reform proposals"--they "must," he says, endorse some combination of cost-cutting proposals from a list he provides. Huh? Even as mock hubris (and it's hard to tell) this makes no sense. Who said opponents have to be for more cost-cutting? Why can't Republicans say to Dems a) You said your plans would bend the cost curve down. Instead they increase costs. The status quo would be better than your plans. Vote no. b) You said your plans would bend the cost curve down. Instead they increase costs. Why should we believe anything else you say? ... That isn't what I would say, but it's not an illogical or inappropriate response. ... 

P.S.: Klein goes on, of course, to re-endorse the very treatment-restricting form of cost-cutting that is scaring people away from the Dem plans, specifically 

comparative effectiveness review that can judge not only the effectiveness but also the cost-effectiveness of various treatments, and give the federal government authority to use that data when deciding reimbursement rates.

In other words, a medical treatment can be more effective than the alternative but the government will still try to prevent you from getting it if it's expensive. Yikes. Smug self-styled wonks will kill health care yet. ... [What would you do?--ed Guarantee health care security to all citizens--a public plan being one way to do it. People can switch jobs and lose jobs and be poor and near-poor and move and get ill without worrying about being covered. Assume this will raise costs. Assume the cost curve of medical costs will be hard to bend in any case, if that can be done at all.  Figure out how to pay those costs--through taxes, if necessary. Take reasonable cost-controlling measures, if desired, once everyone has health care security--but don't expect too much. Stop acting as if cost-cutting and treatment-denying is the point of health care reform.] ... 2:28 A.M.

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Ezra Klein, Concern Troll

Ezra Klein is concerned--or rather, he's "gripped" by an "unsettling thought":

[H]ealth-care reform isn't simply suffering because the public is overly opposed to some of its revenue raisers. It's suffering because the public is insufficiently supportive of its core. ... [snip]

[I]t's not obvious what health-care reform will do for the average American. I could give you a long answer about delivery system reforms and so forth because it's my job to know these things. But it would have to be a long answer .... [snip]

Higher taxes aren't buying them obvious benefits. Instead, they seem to be paying the health-care bills of poorer Americans. ... [snip]

If support for the overall effort were more robust, the polling on the tax exclusion would matter less. People are willing to pay for things they want to buy. But though they might abstractly favor health-care reform, it doesn't seem directly related to their lives. [E.A.]

I agree with my distinguished colleague (and welcome him to the concern troll community). He's woken to the realization that Obama is running into political difficulty because he's selling the middle class a pain sandwich--more taxes in exchange for more health care cuts. It would have been smarter to sell universal health care as offering, at a time when nearly everyone's job looks shaky, Medicare-like security for all. (It's not too late! And it fits on a bumper sticker.) ...

Whom should Klein blame for this tragic initial misstep? Among others, he should blame Ezra Klein, whose "long answer" explaining health care reform's benefits seemingly bought into the entire Orszag party line (health care reform is the way to lower costs and cut the budget deficit!)--even amplifying it by arguing that a more "rational" health care system would decide whether "a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure." If only Klein and other influential Obamapparatchiks had been more critical and Kinsleyesque. ....

P.S.: A day after his concerned post, Klein writes:

People don't like to cut costs in the health-care system. It's painful. Politicians do not voluntarily do painful things. But a lot of people want to achieve universal health care. And they're willing to make a lot of concessions to do so. The coverage expansion, in other words, can serve as leverage for the cost controls. [E.A.]

Huh?  July 10 Ezra Klein should read July 9 Ezra Klein. If universal coverage in itself doesn't do much that's obvious "for the average American"--but rather seems to mainly involve "paying the health care bills of poorer Americans," why would average Americans be willing to "make a lot of concessions" in the form of  painful cost cuts to achieve that goal--any more than they will be willing to endure painful tax increases?

Bonus question: Why would Klein abandon the sound contrarian insight he'd had a day earlier? Collective criticism on JournoList? ...

Update: "Pelosi, House Leaders to Hold Press Conference Today to Highlight Benefits of Health Care Reform for Middle Class"--Politico's Mike Allen. A Pelosi press conference! That'll do it. ... 12:04 A.M.

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Gran Salida, Win/Win? WaPo profiles one of the "thousands of Latino immigrants forced back across the border in recent months by the sinking economy ..." Thousands? Is this the Gran Salida that the New York Times assured us wasn't happening? ...

P.S.:  The subject of the profile, a resourceful and industrious Guatemalan illegal immigrant named Carlos Sanchez, seems to be at least as valuable an addition to Guatemalan society as he was to Washington, D.C.'s. [non-ironic]. After what appears to be non-traumatic adjustment period  

Sanchez teaches typing at his house each Saturday on 27 manual typewriters his sister stockpiled for him over the years. And he landed a day job teaching English in a local high school.  

Mightn't it help developing countries like Guatemala if their most enterprising citizens return home, or stay home in the first place? ... 12:02  A.M.

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"Fighting Sotomayor, Republicans Falsely Advance Fire Fighter Ricci As the White Man's Rosa Parks": I remind my brother Steve that not even the sainted Rosa Parks was quite what she seemed. ... P.S.: I've never understood quite why the Ricci case was considered to have "bad" facts by defenders of Title VII's "disparate impact" standard for judging employment tests. Ricci involved a new test, designed by consultants. The worst case, for the defenders, would be if New Haven had thrown out a traditional test that had been accepted for years as job related, no? ... P.P.S.: Would this freshly concocted multiple choice exam have met the less stringent Rosenberg Standard (a "reasonable relationship to the organization's activities")? I assume yes. But would it have been crazy for the New Haven authorities to decide "no"? ... 1:40  A.M.

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Health Care: A Grander Bargain?

The Grander Bargain: Hmmm. The SEIU, a major proponent of "card check" labor law revision, has also been attacking moderate Dems on health care:    

In recent weeks, liberal bloggers and grass-roots groups such as MoveOn.org, Democracy for America, Service Employees International Union and Progressive Change Campaign Committee have targeted Democratic  Sens. Ben Nelson (Neb.),  Mary Landrieu (La.),  Arlen Specter (Pa.),  Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.).  [E.A.]

Does this hurt the SEIU's "card check" push by annoying the very moderate Dem Senators they must convince in order to get a pro-labor compromise passed? Or does it help the union, which can now say "Sen. Landrieu--if you vote for card check we'll give you a pass on health care and stop attacking you"? It's a form of leverage, after all. And it's leverage that's unavailable to the SEIU on the "card check" issue itself: It's not as if the union could run an ad attacking moderate Dems for failing to embrace "card check," which is hard to defend in public. ....

Bonus question: Does the possibility of trading some health care provisions for card check in some sort of gruesome grand bargain help or hurt Obama, assuming he cares a lot more about health care than card check? ... I guess if you think left-wing pressure for a public plan is hurting his health care effort, then it arguably helps--the unions and "progressive" Senators can be bought off with card check, freeing up moderate senators to vote for, say, a health bill with a weak public option without fear of provoking serious (non-Kabuki) opposition. ....If you think the left wing union and grass roots pressure is helping Obama, because he really wants to push the "moderates" into a plan they might not otherwise like, then arguably it will hurt him, because if the SEIU gets mollified on card check the pressure on health care will let up. ... Of course there may be other, more important factors at work, like the extent to which unions are enabled to organize in the new, more heavily regulated health care sector.  ... [Thanks to reader J.] 5:48 P.M.

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Whippersnappers Over the Hill: A new publication promises to be like "The Awl with a younger focus." Ha. Choire Sicha is already past it. ... Next, Ezra Klein takes WaPo early retirement. ... Update: Sicha emails: "Dude, I am 37! I am TOTALLY OLD." Who knew? Keep rockin' ... 5:46 P.M.

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Let the Boomers Die, II

When I worked in the healthcare industry several years ago there was a study that found a large percentage of Medicare costs were incurred in the last six months of life.  This is not about whether you get your hip replaced or your cataracts removed.  It is more about heroic efforts to keep you alive.  I'm a baby boomer also.  So I want the healthcare available but I don't want to languish in an ICU on a ventilator with IV drips with no hope!  

My answer:  Fair enough. But I want to make the decision to cut off treatment, not have it made by a cost-watching health board. Choice! The resonance with the abortion debate seems obvious. ... Both are life/death decisions. Are they both best handled by individuals and their families in consultation with their doctors? You'd think the case for "choice" at the end of life might be stronger, since the life at stake is likely to be able to participate in making that choice. ... 

Update: Prof. Althouse distinguishes this kind of choice from "right to die" cases. "It's one thing to deny the choice to die, quite another to deny the choice to live." Lively comments ensue, some of them quite moving. This isn't an issue people haven't thought about. ... 11:19 P.M.

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CNN's coverage of the chaos immediately following the Iranian vote--or lack of coverage--is now a big story. Luckily, the Washington Post can put its crack media critic on it. You know, the one who works for CNN! ... He's already defending the network on Twitter. ... [via Andrew Sullivan] 10:55 P.M.

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Let the Boomers Die!

Reader E notes a generational aspect to the enthusiasm of whippersnappers like Ezra Klein for lowering government medical costs by making "rational" health care decisions not to pay for treatments when "a person's life, or health, is not worth the price":

The Medicare savings are an outcomes-based review. When you're talking about Medicare, it means reviewing what procedures have a lower chance of success at the end of life, and then denying payment for them. The Rs will call this euthanasia of the baby boom, maybe there is another name for it though. ...

With Friends Like Ezra Klein ...

The cost reforms, by contrast, are being done cautiously, cooperatively, and with a focus on Medicare. ....

Which is why it's a bit bizarre to read Postrel writing that "if more-efficient government management can slash health-care costs by addressing all these problems, why not start with Medicare?" When it comes to cost, they actually are starting with Medicare. They hope that the efficiencies work and are voluntarily adopted by private insurance. But there's no actual mechanism to make that happen.

My impression (which could be wrong!) is that there are two sorts of cost savings Orszag has in mind. 1) A bunch of "scoreable" Medicare and Medicaid cuts** that will save $5-600 billion over 10 years and (along with some revenue increases) pay for expanding health coverage over that period; and 2) A collection of more ambitious "game changer" reforms*** that aren't part of that next-10-year calculation but will "lower the rate of health care cost growth" in the long run. These game changer reforms are not limited to Medicare and Medicaid, as I understand it--indeed, I think it is Orszag's position that you can't do them if you limit them to Medicare and Medicaid.

This latter assertion appears to be a central pillar of "Orszagism," which is defined the claim that (as Ryan Lizza puts it) "health-care reform is deficit reduction,"-- that without Obama's sweeping health care reforms we just can't "bend the cost curve" down enough in the long run. If the "game changers" could simply be limited to Medicare and Medicaid, you could simply implement them without reforming the rest of the health care system--Postrel's point--thereby more or less totally undermining Orszagism. Expanding health care coverage and cutting long-term federal health-related budget costs would be two distinct, separable policy initiatives (one reliably expensive, one seemingly speculative).

The assertion--that you can't just do the cuts in Medicare--isn't really defended in Orszag's recent posts, though he promises more dialogue in the future. Orszag also has to convince people that a) his "game changers" actually will cut costs--in Medicare, or anywhere b) without compromising health or medical progress and c) without engaging in the nasty treatment-denying behavior HMO's got in trouble for a decade or so ago. ... Update: I forgot d)--and they'll cut costs so much that they'll more than compensate for the obvious ways universal health insurance will increase long-term health costs (i.e., by increasing the number of consumers demanding medical services and enabling them to exert political pressure, not necessarily illegitimate, to pay for particular expensive treatments, including treatments Orszag's various cost-conscious reforms might deny). ... Best of luck to him.

_______       

** As described in a recent presidential letter, these "scoreable" shorter-term cuts include

reducing overpayments to Medicare Advantage private insurers; strengthening Medicare and Medicaid payment accuracy by cutting waste, fraud and abuse; improving care for Medicare patients after hospitalizations; and encouraging physicians to form "accountable care organizations" to improve the quality of care for Medicare patients ....

Plus "another $200 to $300 billion" in Medicare and Medicaid savings to be announced soon. ...

***--The "game changers," as described by Orszag, include

steps such as health IT, research into what works and what doesn’t, prevention and wellness, and changes in incentives so that Americans get the best care not just more care. 

2:42 A.M.

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It's Pedal to the Metal for the New Chrysler! Obama spokesperson: "We are delighted that the Chrysler-Fiat alliance can now go forward, allowing Chrysler to re-emerge as a competitive and viable automaker." [E..A.]  Viable? Competitive? Hello? We are writing this down. Words like that will be remembered in two years, if Chrysler even makes it that far. ...    2:41 A.M.

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Arianna vs. the Anti-Objectification Cheesecake Police: All the best fights are intra-left these days. ... P.S.: kf last month, City Paper this month. ...   2:27 A.M.

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John Dickerson: "Did Google do it for Deeds?" No. ... 2:18 A.M.

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GM Design Chief Ed Welburn did not not not accuse a HuffPo blogger of racism (sorry TTAC). ... But he did cite his grotesquely cheesy, cartoonish new Camaro as an example of what can be created in GM's "cutting edge 21st century environment." ... Welburn seems like a nice guy. But I would say the Camaro is a firing offense (though,, if he's a UAW member, it will take 6 unexcused Camaros). ... 2:16 A.M.

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The Best of Journolistism

Monday, March 30, 2009

Jon Chait is surely correct that if Obamas presidency fails it's the Congressional Democrats who'll be responsible. ... But a) Chait writes as if the only Democrats who might put parochial interests over national and party interests are Kent Conrad-style Senate moderates-- as opposed to, say, hard-core Dems who'll prevent Obama from killing ineffective liberal programs (and from being able to afford effective ones, because they insist on paying top-dollar "Davis-Bacon" wages). There are hacks on the left and right as well as in the center. ... b) Chait declares that Dems who want to "rein in deficits" are not necessarily pursuing "the national interest." In the long run? Really? ... c) He says Obama's budget "represents a once-in-a-generation chance for the Democratic Party to reshape the priorities of the federal government." So if Obama doesn't get his health care reserve fund passed this year, we have to give up on health care for a generation? Hype, I say. ... d) Chastising Dem dissenters, Chait claims "Republicans did not denounce Bush for squandering a budget surplus to benefit the rich." John McCain might be surprised to hear that. ... e) Chait says Bill Clinton "saw the core of his domestic agenda come to ruin," adding

The one factor within the Democrats' control is whether their constituents see Obama as a strong leader taking action, like Roosevelt or Kennedy, or a floundering weakling, like Carter or first-term Clinton.

I remember Clinton's first term as being rather effective--he passed welfare reform, NAFTA, and put the budget on a path to balance. Second term? Well, there was the "race initiative"! And he managed to preserve the surplus. Chait only says Clinton failed to pass "the core of his domestic agenda" because he doesn't like the idea that ending "welfare as we know it" was at the core of Clinton's domestic agenda. But Clinton campaigned on it at least as much as on health care. Marty Peretz could fill Chait in. ... 10:11 P.M.

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Left Dem Robert Borosage wrote about labor's "card check" bill earlier this month:

[The bill] will be introduced into the House in the next couple weeks, where passage is guaranteed. The real donnybrook will be in the Senate where it has strong majority support but must overcome efforts by a conservative minority to block the vote with a filibuster. [E.A.]

"Conservative minority." Hmmm. Not so sure about that. Does "card check" as written even have a simple majority in the Senate anymore? Opponents seem to have 41 solid votes, and some 17 Democrats are apparently wavering. All it would take would be 10 of them to make those pushing the bill a "liberal minority." It reminds me of the dynamic surrounding "comprehensive immigration reform"--where we were also told that a conservative minority was blocking the bill, but where, on the crucial cloture vote, that "minority" turned out to have 53 votes (versus 46 for proponents).

There's only one way to find out for sure, of course. I'm not that curious. ...  9:49 P.M.

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Anatomy of a succesful blog post: Matthew Yglesias finds a tiny, tiny little point to make ("[a]lmost nobody" watches daytime cable news, but "people who work professionally in the political arena" do) that lets him plug a banal quote from his boss, John Podesta. ... 9:23 P.M.

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Twitter Beats Big Labor? Did a loose coalition of low-budget social networkers and tweeters defeat Measure B--a plan by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and the mighty International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (which seems to be running the city's Department of Water and Power) to create union jobs putting up solar panels all over the city? That's what L.A. Weekly's Daniel Heimpel claims. ... I can see some holes in his argument--Measure B was also opposed by the L.A. Times and by at least one prominent pol (Controller Laura Chick). And ballot measures usually have a tough road. Still! If it didn't happen this election, it will happen soon enough. ... 9:10 P.M

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JournoList Revealed! Inside the Secret Liberal Media Email Cabal

Thursday, March 26, 2009  

Michael Calderone's article on the large, secretive liberal media email group JournoList sparked a lot of debate--some of it in this space--on whether this group is a healthy development for coverage of politics. The debate was necessarily speculative because actual JournoList discussions remained secret. But with more than 300 members of this club, virtually all of them with easy access to the media, did you really think a JournoList thread wouldn't leak? People are rightly interested in learning what goes on behind the scenes at powerful institutions--or wannabe powerful institutions--whose power derives precisely from their decision to exclude the public.
 
Kausfiles has obtained a copy of one JournoList discussion, focusing on New Republic editor-in-chief Martin Peretz (for whom I once worked.) This is not a parody! It's the real thing. I don't know whether or not it is representative. I've edited it only to remove potentially defamatory passages--those cuts are marked--and left out various boilerplate links and commands embedded in the thread, such as "Print" and "Report this message." ... I won't add my own commentary, at least for now. Find your own lede! ... Reminder to JournoList organizer E. Klein, who likes to take it private: All communications are on the record. ...
 
*************************************
 
From: Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:43:51 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 1:43 pm Subject: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Yglesias points out on his Twitter feed that Peretz "has ethnic
dislikes beyond arabs"
I know this is a tiresome, but this kind of explicit racism is really,
really, really fucked. And it's useful to keep pointing that out
money quote:

"Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations,
not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our
southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has
as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic
deficiencies:  congenital corruption, authoritarian government,
anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores,
Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic
counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict.  Then,
there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic
but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can
talk with candor."

'http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_spine/archive/2009/03/23/no-
special-envoy-no-crisis.aspx
 
From: Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:00:31 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:00 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  I also read on TNR.com today that Jonah Goldberg, who believes that everyone
on this list is a fascist, is "good-humored," while Keith Olbermann's work
is best analogized to Glenn Beck or Michael Savage.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 1:43 PM, Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com>wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -  

From: Matt Duss <mattd...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:13:54 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:13 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist I anxiously await the explanation of how Peretz's obvious racism is
really just an argument about "culture."
On Mar 24, 2:00 pm, Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: Clay <ris...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:14:57 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:14 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Funny -- under Peter B. (no idea whether this extends to Frank, though
I imagine so) using the term "illegals" was verboten, for obvious
reasons. I guess Marty didn't get the memo. Or, well, you know.
Also, and this is slightly orthogonal to the topic, but Marty's post
demonstrates the accidental danger in praising Latin American
immigrants as driven and hard-working. Logically it makes sense, but
it's also easy for people to draw the false conclusion that anyone who
doesn't immigrate is therefore lazy and stupid.
On Mar 24, 2:00 pm, Matthew Yglesias <mygles...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: "newdon...@gmail.com" <newdon...@gmail.com>

From: Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:41:15 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:41 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Everyone I know who likes Olbermann also acknowledge that he is egomaniacal
and has a penchant for hysterical drama. The main difference, which is
glaringly left out by anyone who conflates him with the Savages and
O'Reillys of the world, is that Olbermann doesn't tend to, you know, lie
about stuff regularly.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:18 PM, newdon...@gmail.com <newdon...@gmail.com>wrote:
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -
 
From: Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:51:25 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:51 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Personally, I find Olbermann insufferable, but I'm not sure I buy the comparison. Michael Savage is a complete nut job and if he wasn't on radio he would probably be standing on a street corner with a bullhorn bitching about socialism.
--- On Tue, 3/24/09, Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: Isaac Chotiner <ichoti...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:55:59 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:55 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  A friend of mine who works for Pelosi and has been active in California
politics for a long time claims that Savage's bizarre, racist, homophobic
schtick is a complete act. He knows Savage a bit--or at least did when
Savage started his show. This obviously does not excuse it in any way, but
for Savage listeners it is interesting to think about.
On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com>wrote:
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From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:56:38 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:56 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Quit lying about my record, Jonathan Chait.
Or at least check the archives before descinding into Kirchickism.
What I posted about Eve was an article I PUBLISHED. It could hardly
have been going behind her back to PUBLISH an article, could it? What
I explained when you last leveled this false accusation ... [SNIP] ...  was the fact that had I known Eve was on the list, I
would not have posted it here, even though it was relevant to the
discussion at hand, because a) I had no wish to hurt the feelings of
someone I had never met, and b) this is no less important, I respect
the value of civility on this list. As you well know, there are plenty
of attacks going on between yourself, Matt, Ezra, Spencer, and myself
that do not make it onto this list because we respect the importance
of civility here. Or at least we did....
I expect Ezra will want to intervene here, but please do feel free to
forward our exchange to Marty. I can only imagine how proud he'd
be....
n Mar 24, 2:51 pm, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
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From: Chris Hayes <christopherlha...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:57:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  There's a lot of people on this list routinely criticized who are not
on it, Jon. That said, I'm more than happy to call Marty Peretz a
racist to his (electronic) face.
-c
On Mar 24, 6:51 pm, Michael Cohen <speechbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:  

From: Katha Pollitt <katha.poll...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:56:57 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 2:56 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Michael Savage told a gay caller he should get AIDS and die. He is a  
bigoted crazy person. (or is it all an act?)  Olbermann is funny  
sometimes but insufferable. He was really unfair during the primaries  
-- like calling Katie Couric the worst person in the world when she  
made some quite mild remark I think about sexism in the media (?).
On Mar 24, 2009, at 2:51 PM, Michael Cohen wrote:
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From: Alyssa Rosenberg <alyssa.rosenb...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:06:27 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:06 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist I'm not about to speak to the question of who should or shouldn't be on this
list.  But I agree with Jon that the tendency to lapse into name-calling, or
making broad assumptions about people who aren't on this list, seems at
minimum like it's not the best use of our time, and at worst, unworthy of
this very smart, very funny community.  It bothered me when folks where
making totally unsubstantiated comments about [REDACTED!--mk]'s sex life, and
it bothers me when folks make [REDACTED] jokes.  To be clear, I'm
totally open to legitimate commentary on the substance of anyone's argument,
and people should get smacked down if they lie, if they get things wrong,
etc.  I think analyzing Peretz's writing about Mexicans, or Palestinians, or
whoever, is totally fair game.  But saying that [REDACTED] clearly must not have a
girlfriend, or speculating about who [REDACTED] gets turned down by sexually are
not arguments.  We wouldn't take similar statements remotely seriously if
they were made by conservatives about anyone on this list.
- Hide quoted text - - Show quoted text -


From: Clay <ris...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:10:49 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:10 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Heh. That reminds me of a very similar meme going around in the
mid-1990s about Rush Limbaugh, that he was actually a pretty liberal
guy who had created this bloviating ass to make conservatives look
bad. The general conclusion was that, a) what does it matter, since he
never reveals himself, and b) he's clearly got an audience, and so
he's doing a lot of bad even if he is really, deep down, a "good" guy.
The same would apply to Savage, methinks. If it's an act, I'd say that
makes him all the worse of a human being.
On Mar 24, 2:56 pm, Katha Pollitt <katha.poll...@gmail.com> wrote:
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From: Rick Perlstein <Perlst...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:18:09 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:18 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  My judgment would be that, by the evidence on the record, Michael
Savage is far too deranged and possesses far too little self-control
to do anything as an "act."

To wit-- ...[REDACTED]
 
From: Jesse Singal <jesse.sin...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:23:59 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:23 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Then there's Savage's work as a fiction writer, mentioned in this great *
Salon*<http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2003/03/05/savage/print.html>piece
that runs down his strange biography:
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> This maniacal tendency, and the roiling emotions that fueled it, were laid
> bare in "Vital Signs," Michael Weiner's first and only book of fiction,
> published in 1983. A collection of confessional, stream-of-consciousness
> stories, it follows the exploits of Samuel Trueblood, who just happens to be
> a 40-ish New York Jew, an herbalist and writer with a tumultuous personal
> life, a substantial assortment of inner demons and a bit of a Napoleon
> complex. "I am physically not tall, but my eyes burn with fire," he states.
> "Two black fires of Hell." Trueblood narrates a series of misadventures,
> from procuring an illegal backroom abortion for his fianc?e to beating the
> stuffing out of an abusive cop.
> Trueblood describes his life as one long search for inner peace. He blames
> much of his discontent on his "childhood beneath tyranny," during which he
> was cowed by his bullying father. Trueblood describes how his father mocked
> him with "brutal jokes and chides, 'gentle' kidding: 'You're not a fag, are
> you Sam?' the little man would say each time the boy dared wear a colorful
> shirt or flashy trousers." Unable to shake his dead father's disapproving
> influence, the adult Samuel is tortured by feelings of weakness and
> inadequacy. "I am filled with fears," he admits, "nearly all the time
> feeling I am about to become totally insane."
> Even after moving to mellow Marin County, becoming a successful herbalist
> and starting a family, Trueblood remains plagued by his "underlying
> sadness." Not even trusty passionfruit tea can bring him off this bummer. In
> one passage, he almost loses it in front of his wife and two young children:
> "Inner voice screaming at me for years, first rational, then crazy, telling
> me to do mad things. Every form of relief tried, painting, psychotherapy,
> running, diet, vitamins, etc., etc. Almost uncontrollable now. Impulses to
> stab children, strangers, wife, self with scissors."

> Eventually, Trueblood seeks solace in chasing skirts. (Though he admits to
> being drawn to "masculine beauty," he confides that "I choose to override my
> desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a
> storm, below decks.") While his wife stays home with the kids, he beds a
> young "cockswell" with a "dykish haircut" and skin "[s]ofter than that
> Northern Indian prostitute in Fiji whose covering was as soft as that of my
> own penis." And so it goes for another 50 pages.

When it comes to someone has insanely homophobic as Savage, I have no
problem saying that the dude's [REDACTED], and that this may explain some
of his more execrable paroxysms about homosexuality.

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From: Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:25:29 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:25 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  I have no idea how to retrieve the echange in question, but if
somebody knows how, please do.
I'll concede the point that you published the critique of Eve on your
blog. However, trying not to be catty here, not everybody here may
read your blog on a daily basis. The exchange was about your decision
to repost the critique of Eve here on the list. You did it, she
replied, and then you said you wouldn't have done it if you had known
she was on the list. You viewed this as etiquette, I viewed it as
something different.
 
... [SNIP] ...

From: Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:35:09 -0700 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:35 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> wrote:
> There seems to be a junior
> high quality to this list with regard to TNR, where if you're not on
> it you get sniped at constantly, but if you are on it you're mostly
> safe.

I can fix that!!  

From: Jonathan Chait <jch...@tnr.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:39:45 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:39 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Yes, your posts have more of a prison quality to them. I find it
preferable, though still well short of ideal.
On Mar 24, 3:35 pm, Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> wrote: 

From: Alex Rossmiller <alexrossmil...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 15:41:40 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:41 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist *sigh*
As the resident archive-checker, I link this only in the interest of
stopping the speculative element of the debate -- you should be able to see
the original thread
here<http://groups.google.com/group/journolist/browse_thread/thread/d9acdf0bacb38037/fed32501975cf602?lnk=gst&q=alterman+eve#fed32501975cf602>
.
But really, the most notable quote from that conversation was from Rich
Byrne: "Do we need a separate TNR-list? Just asking."  (Though second is
probably this, from Spencer: "Jon Chait is to TNR as Ari Fleischer is to
George Bush.")
Civility in action!
 
From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:42:56 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:42 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist  Wrong again, Mr. Chait, on both points:
I did not publish on my blog but on the front page of the Center for
American Progress website where I write a weekly column. Not everybody
reads that either, but then again but more people read it than read
The New Republic, if I am not mistaken.  (See  "The State of the News
Media: Magazines: Opinion Titles.")
Second,  ... [SNIP] ....
 
From: Jeet <jeeth...@yahoo.ca> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:46:48 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 3:46 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Is there a tendency on this list to lash out against TNR too much?
Maybe.
But the core of the matter is: TNR is a really first rate liberal
magazine, especially in the last decade or so, so it's disappointing
that also have to run crude ethnocentric articles by Peretz.
When The American Spectator or National Review run frothing-at-the-
mouth xenophobic articles, no one here notices because we don't expect
any better from them. But TNR is one of the two or three most
important liberal magazines in American history, so it matters what
they publish.
On Mar 24, 1:41 pm, Alex Rossmiller <alexrossmil...@gmail.com> wrote: 
 

From: Ezra Klein <ezra.kl...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 16:08:11 -0400 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:08 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist Jon -- you and Eric should take this off-list.

I'd love to have Michelle Cottle on the list. My worry with Marty is that he
wouldn't respect the off-the-record nature of the discourse when it ceased
to suit him.

From: Brad DeLong <brad.del...@gmail.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:08:40 -0700 Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:08 pm Subject: Re: [JournoList] Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist 

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 12:46 PM, Jeet <jeeth...@yahoo.ca> wrote:

> Is there a tendency on this list to lash out against TNR too much?
> Maybe.

As someone who was working hard for the Clinton Administration to improve
American health care when Betsy McCaughey came over the transome from a
magazine whose editor "knew its flaws" but wanted to "provoke," I have an
answer to Jeet's question.
My answer is: "No."
Now if there were a rotating New Republic staffer outside on the street 24/7
saying: "Woe to an iniquitous generation. We published Betsy McCaughey! For
our sins the One Who Is has turned Her face from us forever!!" I might think
that they had learned their lesson.
Or if Chait and all other TNR staffers were to adopt that as their .sig
file...
But in this fallen world? In which... ahem... Marc Ambinder holds up Andrew
Sullivan as a sterling example of intellectual integrity?

Nope.

Brad DeLong


From: Eric Alterman <era00...@aol.com> Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 13:13:39 -0700 (PDT) Local: Tues, Mar 24 2009 4:13 pm Subject: Re: BREAKING: Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist For the record boss man, I'm done. I merely responded to a series of
false accusations made about me by Mr. Chait. You'll note that I
manfully (and womanfully) resisted the urge to join in the Marty
bashing until lied about above...

*************************************

[And so it ends. ... Or does it? ... Stay tuned!--mk] 3:21 P.M.

___________________________

Whippersnappers Go On Offense!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009  

[Updated] Spencer Ackerman, who seems to be a member of the distinguished JournoList group, responds to my item of yesterday:

If Mickey Kaus actually believes what he writes here, he'll publish every journalism-related email, letter, fax or notebook scribble he's ever shared with another reporter to trade ideas. If he doesn't do that, this pathetic has-been should shut the fuck up and find a way to get over his unbecoming obsession with Ezra Klein. [E.A.]

I'm beginning to worry that they're really not going to invite me. ... P.S.: C.A.P.'s Matthew Yglesias agrees with Ackerman. It seems like a silly argument. Aren't there lots of activities that are highly desirable when practiced by individuals on a small or dispersed, uncoordinated basis, but become problematic when practiced on a large scale by competing groups? It's nice to eat dinner with a friend at Princeton. But when large, exclusive eating clubs form and come to provide the "only decent, attractive, and convivial accomodations available to a Princeton undergraduate," there's a problem. Similarly, private backyards are a good thing. But if the private backyards and common areas of rich people in gated communities come to use up the bulk of attractive potentially public parkland, there's a legitimate social issue.

Everybody has private notes, sources, or conversations. That doesn't mean a secret conversation among "hundreds" of influential Democratic writers doesn't potentially create problems. Groupthink might be one of them. ... Hey, and another might be the fostering of an us-vs-them mentality!  Maybe even a weakness for smug rationalization. ...  Another might be that writers on JournoList begin to devote their energies more inward--toward convincing or impressing or at least not angering their fellow club members--than outward, toward convincing their fellow citizens. ... Or if it simply becomes true that all the best arguments are made on private list-servs. Yglesias and Ackerman certainly aren't making them in public. 

Update: Reihan Salam says don't worry about JournoList enforcing "message discipline":

After talking to a number of friends, and after observing its workings from a distance, I've concluded that the JList has virtually no disciplining functon. It is a forum for robust debate, not a tool for forming a tightly-knit Leninist cadre.

He's probably mostly right, but remember: 1) It's the robustness of what comes out of JournoList we're talking about, not what goes on inside. 2) There sure was a whole lot of discipline on the left in the Edwards adultery scandal, at least until Lee Stranahan came along (and he was then banned from Daily Kos). I doubt you needed JournoList to get left activists defensive about Elizabeth Edwards, or to get Daily Kos to be thuggish, but it may have helped. The only way to know is to know what went on inside. 3) Reader A.A. adds an excellent point:

I thought that one of the netroots' complaints against the old MSM was rightly that elitist journalists in DC tended to self-police their content because they did not want to breach taboos within their social networks; this previous system, the argument goes, favored the status quo and turned a lot of national-level journalism into the recitation of talking points. One of the great things about the internet in this context was that it allowed for a wider spectrum of opinion to be discussed -- a change that helped to make it possible for national politics to shift to the left.

Wasn't it a few years ago that many of these left blogosphere types were ridiculing the Beltway Kool Kids who did things like criticize unions and defend Clintonism? I think it was!  Now they've created their own Kool Kids club....  Is Ezra Klein the new William F. Buckley or the new Tim Russert, helping establish the boundaries of what's respectably thinkable? 4) Regarding that last link, my comrade Glenn Greenwald thinks he's already spotted some backscratching that's been hidden from view:

Touching: on Journalist, Ezra attacked critics of Douthat. Now Ross says Ezra is the William Buckley of our era: http://tinyurl.com/d62o2b 

Hasn't Greenwald broken the seal of omerta? If he's in the JList club, doesn't he now get cast out into the darkness? Is there a ceremony? Win-win! ...

More: Salam, on his way to exculpating the JList, makes the following mousetrappish point, which might cause trouble for some in the dwindling minority of "objective" non-opinion journalists:

As a minor-league policy wonk, I find the idea of taking part in off-the-record conversations with eminent historians, economists, and reporters very attractive -- yet I was told early on that I wasn't eligible, for the excellent and obvious reason that my sympathies aren't generally on the left. Though I could agree to the off-the-recordness of the JList, I'd inevitably discuss its contents with conservative friends and collaborators, like The Atlantic's own Ross Douthat.

This raises the question -- why is it that a number of journalists at so-called "mainstream" outlets, like Time, do pass muster.

And: Joel Achenbach doesn't think the Web needs more ideas hashed out in public:

Blogworld doesn't need more raw copy, more e-mails masquerading as opinion columns. Blogworld is crammed to the rafters with blather. Secretly -- don't tell anyone -- I read a lot of blogs at work, and in general wish they were better, more thoughtful, with less of the "No, YOU'RE the giant arsehole" stuff.

But if there's blather on the web, maybe that's because all the best discussions are taking place in secret on JournoList!  No, I don't think so either. 1:49 A.M.

___________________________

The Uninvited

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Brad DeLong objects to the hed--"Inside the echo chamber"--on Michael Calderone's piece discussing the underknown leftish email cabal organized by Ezra Klein:

It's not an echo chamber. I have never seen a less echo chamber-like space in my life. The headline is simply wrong.

Fair enough. But I think the headline-writers' worry was that an "echo chamber" is what the outside world tends to get from members of JournoList once they've vigorously hashed out their disagreements in secret. "Inside the Echo Factory" would be a headline more accurately reflecting that concern. It's noisy in a factory but the product is often standardized.

Is the fear of groupthink justified? I can think of one example that could be checked out (though it's hard to do that without knowing who is in the secretive group and who isn't) -- namely, the the treatment of the New Republic's "Baghdad Diarist" controversy. I'm told that at least one TNR editor defended the magazine to others on the list--'don't worry, it will turn out OK, only a couple of mistakes,' etc.  Did this have the effect of preventing some members of the list from criticizing the magazine until much later--whenTNR editors themselves finally gave up and cut the "Diarist" loose? I wouldn't be surprised if it did. The same might well go for John Edwards and his cheating scandal. A back-channel, under-radar group--especially one in which you can argue off the record--is good for keeping troops in line.

There's a second, less uncertain, concern (aside from my primary beef, which is that they didn't invite me). Blogger Doxophilic writes:

You are supposed to brainstorm, deliberate, revise and improve. This goes for anyone who writes with the purpose of persuasion or education, including journalists.

That's true. But I always thought one of the big ideas of the Web was that, to the maximum extent possible, these deliberations and revisions and improvements could now take place in public, where everyone could follow along and maybe contribute. Doxophiliac argues that people should be able to "backtrack if someone makes a good argument in response"--but you can "backtrack" in public too. It's been done. Even by Joe Klein! 

We non-elite writers learn something just from watching the sausage get made.  One thing we learn is it's just sausage. Ezra Klein has taken a lot of what could be highly informative back and forth on the World Wide Web and privatized it, much as rich people in gated communities reclaim green space from the public sphere and wall it off behind guards and fences. It's not an egalitarian or democratic impulse.

P.S.: Here's DeLong's preferred description of JournoList:

[I]t is the people whom Ezra thinks are smart enough, committed enough to discussion and learning and education, and good-hearted enough to be worth emailing regularly--and the rest of us free-ride on the virtual space that is Ezra's network. [E.A.]

False modesty? Check. Suck up to the organizer? Check. Underlying, self-satisfied exclusionary impulse? Check. ... 6:39 P.M.

___________________________

Arise, Non-VIPs! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Wristbands.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Any club that won't have me... : I was surprised to learn that there were special VIP areas at several otherwise extremely enjoyable pre-inaugural parties. Talk about a violation of social equality: how can a party claim to want all Americans treated equally if, you know, the party doesn't treat them equally? Why aren't these things stigmatized like skyboxes at ballparks? These events weren't even fundraisers, for the most part--it wasn't as if the VIPs had paid extra for exclusive first class seats. It was pure status rank--i.e., social inequality.

I see three possible policy initiatives that might restore American values to debauched celebrations:

1. Heap opprobrium on those who go to VIP areas in otherwise perfectly good parties. (It would be unfair to single anyone out. Like Jon Alter!) This might involve turning status striving on itself by suggesting VIP sections are where the losers go. Girls won't make passes at men who have passes, etc.

2. Create a second, tiny glass-walled V-VIP area within the regular VIP area--reserved for special VIPs who are above mingling with mere Alter-level VIPs. This would be a bit of performance art designed to emphasis the self-defeating, infinite-regress quality of mindless status differentiation.

3. Give an award--a sort of Social Egalitarian Oscar**--to celebrities who go to events but don't go to the designated "VIP" areas. ...

Pursuing option 3, kf honors ... Forest Whitaker and Natalie Portman!*** Also Jerry Yang, if he counts. ... I'm sure there are others. ... P.S.: I don't blame the organizers of these events. I assume it's some of the celebrities themselves who demand protection from annoyingly non-famous invitees. The system is to blame, I tell you. ... [If they'd let you in, would you have written this?--ed What makes you think they didn't let me in? You really think they didn't let me in?] .... 

**--Suggestions for names gratefully accepted. The Velvet Scissor? ...

***-- These distinguished celebs were spotted mingling harmlessly with mere attendees. Of course, it's always possible they snuck off to the VIP areas to talk to Alter when I wasn't looking! ...

Update: There apparently actually was a glass-walled V-VIP area for J.Lo. and Marc Anthony at ... Cafe Milano. It kept them from Jake Tapper. ... 5:34 P.M.

___________________________

Whippersnappers "Juicebox Mafia": Good label! May it outlast the Israel-Hamas confilct. ... P.S.: For its use in context, see this fabulously pissy Marty Peretz post. ... 5:17 P.M.

___________________________

What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Enjoy your daily print newspaper. It's later than you think. ... 1:02 A.M.

___________________________

Magical Moment: One seemingly sure sign Obama is actually, really not going left, at least on economic policy: Robert Kuttner isn't sucking up!** Instead he's frankly anguished about the incoming economic team. ... P.S.: OK, there's a small, vestigial suck-up at the end. ...

**--For Kuttner's 1992 flattery of president-elect Clinton, click here, search for "epic." ...12:47 A.M.

___________________________

Monday, December 29, 2008

Fire Fire Mickey Kaus. They're falling down on the job. ... No wonder I still have this gig.

Update: They've been spurred into action, arguing

It's true that unions are poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth. They have also failed to cure cancer, and they haven't done anything to stop Russian aggression in post-communist Europe.

Now it's obvious unions are "poor vehicles for equitable distribution of wealth." Please tell it to Kevin Drum (and Paul Krugman). ... 7:26 P.M.

___________________________

Life in the Left Cocoon:  Promoting the Southern, corporate, anti-UAW agenda, Kevin Drum says he's "open" to "good-faith efforts to address reform" of "mushrooming work rules." But he's still for greater unionization:

Conservatives flatly oppose anything that gives labor any additional bargaining power, full stop, and that doesn't leave much room for compromise. So unions it is. Especially in the service sector, they're pretty much the only idea on the table for seriously addressing low-end wage growth, and that means I'm for 'em. [E.A.]

The only idea on the table? How about restoring economic growth and creating a tight labor market, giving all workers (not just the unionized) greater bargaining leverage? That's the traditional Clintonite formula, no? To that you could add border control to ensure that competition from unskilled immigrants doesn't undermine leverage among lower-wage workers..... Drum goes on the cite Ezra Klein for the proposition that:

the last great leap forward for unions was during World War II, and the last great expansion of the American middle class followed in its aftermath. In contrast, the most recent expansions -- which have largely occurred in the absence of unions -- have benefited America's rich. [E.A.]

Huh? The biggest recent expansion, during the '90s, a) benefitted Americans at all levels, but especially average workers and b) occurred largely while union power was ebbing. The Clintonite formula worked. Maybe it can't be achieved again. Maybe it's flawed because (sorry!) the rich got richer too in the Clinton years. Maybe a return to Carter-era union power will be better still! But those are arguments Dems like Drum and Klein won't even deign to make as long as they keep reassuring each other that they not only have the best ideas around but the only ideas around. ...

P.S.:  Klein also argues;

The countries with the world's highest growth rates -- the Nordic economies -- also have some of the world's highest rates of unionization. Denmark, Sweden, and Finland all approach 80 percent. 

There's an argument that in countries with 70-80-90 percent unionization, unions have to be more responsible--union leaders know that any inflationary wage increases are going to be paid for by their own members (who are essentially everyone), and they know that any declines in productivity will hurt their own members (essentially everyone). Not only do they have an incentive to be reasonable, but they have the power to keep their own membership--say, those unions that could get bigger-than-average increases by striking--in check. But we aren't going to get 80% unionization. We're going to get 20-25% or 30% unionization, with unions that are powerful enough to cut good deals for themselves (and impose resulting price increases on everyone else), but not so large that they have to take everyone's interests into account. ... (This is point made by Mancur Olson and noted by Robert M. Kaus a year before Klein was born. Yikes.) ...  4:06 P.M.

___________________________

They Said It Couldn't Be Done! How to Make Caroline Kennedy More Boring:  Caroline Kennedy's ragging of NYT reporters, for which she's now being pilloried, is of course one of her better recent moments:

NC: Could you, for the sake of storytelling, could you tell us a little bit about that moment, like, where you were, what you said to him about your decision, how that played out?

CK: Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something? (Laughter)

DH: What do you have against women’s magazines?

CK: Nothing at all, but I thought you were the crack political team here.

Kennedy's bristling at the embarrassing, sentimentalizing conventions of journalism (at Newsweek the question was always "what were you eating") and isn't afraid to invoke some undiplomatic truths (i.e. women's magazine's often run softball crap). Either she'll keep it up--in which case maybe there's something to the idea that she has the virtues of an independent outsider--or, more likely, she'll become even more safely platitudinous. ... 3:19 P.M.

___________________________.

The Aribtrariness of Wagner Act Redistribution: Richard Posner makes an essential point usually overlooked by those on the left who instinctively support unionism in the hope that it will achieve some sort of just redistribution of income:

The redistribution of wealth that they bring about is not only fragile ...[snip] ...but also capricious, as it is an accident whether conditions in a particular industry are favorable or unfavorable to unionization. [E.A.]

Or, as Robert M. Kaus put it in very small type in 1983:

The "economic power" that the Wagner Act gives unions is determined by all sorts of factors that have nothing to do with the moral basis of a union's cause. Workers who work in a single location, for example,are easier to organize than workers who are geographically dispersed, even though the latter may work in sweatshops and the former in comfortable, lighted factories. Some industries are extremely vulnerable to strikes--industries that deal in perishable goods, for example, or industries (e.g. Broadway theaters) where you can set up a picket line that will intercept a lot of customers. In other industries, advances in technology have weakened the power of strikes, as petroleum and chemical workers discovered when they walked out and found that skeleton crews of supervisors could run computer-controlled refineries for a long time. Did the chemical workers deserve to be paid less simply because their industries had become more strike-proof?

This arbitrariness is not just a trivial side effect of the collective bargaining system. A truism within the labor movement holds that "the workers who need the unions the most don't get them."  .... The answer of labor leaders to this dilemma is simple: more unions. .... But even if the law required unions in every workplace, there is no reason to think wage inequalities would shrink in any systematic fashion. Sol C. Chaikin, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, often complains about the "two-tier labor force" in the United States--but he is complaining about a disparity that exists within the ranks of organized labor. ... The Wagner Act gave Chaikin's union the power to strike. Unfortunately, fate did not give it any of the chance attributes that might enable it to use strikes to boost wages dramatically above their market levels. [E.A.]

If you organized the operators of drawbridges going into Manhattan, under the Wagner Act your union will be able to extract quite a premium by striking. If you organize fast food workers, not so much. I've never understood why leftish idealists ever bought into the idea that this is distributive justice. ... 1:12 A.M.

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

Two year-end TV roundups--by Tom Shales and by Inside Cable News. One of these guys is paid an incredible amount of money. And one of them phones in a list of usual suspects. ... P.S.: From the other one:

Unlike NBC’s very public axe wielding, CNN’s cuts came about suddenly as a bunch of on the air talent lost their jobs. Most notable loss; CNN veteran Miles O’Brien. CNN has yet to publicly account for all this talent loss, which flied in the face of the public posturing done by Jonathan Klein regarding how his network was in the money.

Jonathan Klein, dissembling? We're shocked. ... 7:00 P.M.

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Friday, December 26, 2008

Don't Blame Gettelfinger: Rand Simberg's anti-UAW-work-rule post was better than mine. He has horror stories, including his own--noting that there are too many floating around for them to be "merely anecdotal." (Another bit of confirming evidence: The union firms went broke! Non-anecdotally broke.) Simberg makes a point that's especially relevant now that the UAW is arguing that labor is only "10% of the cost of the vehicle."

And the rules don’t just affect productivity — they affect quality as well. When you can’t discipline employees for being absent without leave, when you have to bring in unfamiliar workers to fill in for them, when you’re missing half your plant during hunting season — yes, the stories about avoiding buying cars built on Monday or Friday in the fall are true — you can’t expect to put out a quality product, regardless of how well or poorly designed it is. You particularly can’t expect to do so when the union rules put all responsibility for quality and production on management, but give them no authority to manage the workers and provide the workers with no incentive to build a quality product if they lack the personal pride to do so. [E.A.]

Labor may only be 10% of the cost of the vehicle, but it's still going to be a vehicle nobody wants to buy if it's poorly made. ... Note: The UAW does make some high quality cars, especially at the NUMMI joint venture with Toyota in San Jose, where they threw out the UAW work rule book. Why couldn't GM successfully spread the NUMMI system to all its other plants? Ask the UAW. ...

P.S,: Here's a Business Week profile of the UAW president Ron Gettelfinger. Seems like a reasonable guy! But that's the point. Gettelfinger isn't the problem--I suspect, for example, that the UAW leadership knows pretty well what the problems are in its factories. The problem is the system, the American adversarial labor-management negotiating system, in which reasonable people doing what the system tells them they should do wind up producing undesirable results.  Just as negotiating over work assignments means factories adjust too slowly to generate continuous efficiency improvements (which often involve constantly changing work assignments)  negotiating ponderous 3 year contracts (in which Gettelfinger must extract every possible concession to please the members who elected him) means contracts adjust too slowly to save the companies from failure if market conditions change.  From Business Week:

[T]here is a pragmatic Ron Gettelfinger as well. Three years ago, the automakers were in trouble, and he knew that without concessions there would be no jobs for his members to report to. When Detroit came looking for givebacks, Gettelfinger ultimately agreed to a contract that set back starting factory wages 30 years: New hires will begin at $14 an hour—half the wage for veterans and a pay scale not seen since the '70s. Plus, he has watched the Big Three cut some 80,000 jobs since 2005.

That also brings up a key criticism from Detroit's executives. Gettelfinger made those key concessions starting in 2005, but not until Ford and GM were reeling toward massive losses. The union has never given enough to get the companies ahead of the curve. "It's always a day late and a dollar short," says one former GM executive. [E.A.]

See also this interview, pointing out that the $14 wage scale for new hires hasn't had an impact because nobody new is being hired by the UAW's employers, who are shrinking, not growing. The obvious alternative to cutting the pay of nonexistent future workers would be to cut the pay of existing current workers--but they are the people the system tells Gettelfinger he needs to please. ...

Fifteen years ago, at the start of the last Democratic president's administration. incoming Labor Secretary Robert Reich famously said "The jury is still out on whether the traditional union is necessary for the new workplace." Tactfully put. This fall, if not earlier, the jury came back. 5:19 P.M.

___________________________ 

What's Worse Than Camelot? Cuomolot! I should say that I'd certainly prefer Caroline Kennedy to at least one candidate for Hillary Clinton's seat. That candidate would be Andrew Cuomo. Caroline may be boring but she does not seem evil! (For some links on why I think Cuomo is a thuggish irresponsible opportunist, click here. I also had some unpleasant dealings with his self-promotion machine at HUD, when they were busy hyping and distorting some homeless statistics in order to get his name in the paper.) ... These are not the only two people in New York state, however. ... 4:30 P.M.

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