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Everything You Need To Know About The Health Care Debate... In One Post!

Health Care Summit

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Republicans Respond to the Health Care Summitt

Following up on this weekend's post, it looks like the Republicans have formally responded to Obama's call for a televised health care summit. Ezra Klein breaks out their key questions to the President:

1) "Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over?"

2) "Does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation?"

3) "If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand?"

4) "Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills?"

5) "Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion?"

6) "The President has also mentioned his commitment to have 'experts' participate in health care discussions....Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs?"

7) "Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?"

8) "Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, [be televised]?"

Here's Ezra's advice to the administration:

I think the administration should release a counter-proposal. They will agree to literally every one of the GOP's demands -- including the ones that don't make any sense -- in return for one, simple promise: The final legislation is guaranteed an up-or-down vote in the House and the Senate. No filibusters. No delays. No procedural tricks. If the GOP wants a clean process, I bet a deal can be struck here.

Steve Benen has something similar in mind:

Tell you what, GOP. You take the filibuster off the table as a "show of good faith" and I'm sure Democrats would be willing to take reconciliation off the table as a "show of good faith." What do you say?

If the Obama Administration doesn't counter with this, I'm gonna be pretty disappointed. Because the Republicans most definitely have set themselves up here.

"I'm not going to walk away on any challenge"

"The easiest thing to do right now would be to just say, 'Oh, this is too hard. You know, let's just regroup and, you know, lick our wounds, try to hang on,'" the president told the party officials and activists. "We've had a long and difficult debate on health care, and there are some, maybe even the majority in this town, who say perhaps it's time to walk away.

"But here's the thing, Democrats -- if we walk away, we know what will happen. We know that premiums and out-of-pocket expenses will skyrocket this decade and the decade after that and a decade after that just as they did in the past decade. More small businesses will be priced out of coverage. More big businesses will be unable to compete internationally. More workers will take home less pay and fewer raises. We know that millions more Americans will lose their coverage. We know that our deficits will inexorably continue to grow -- because health care costs are the single biggest driver.

"So just in case there's any confusion out there, let me be clear: I am not going to walk away from health insurance reform. I'm not going to walk away from the American people. I'm not going to walk away on this challenge.

"I'm not going to walk away on any challenge. We're moving forward. We are moving forward. Sometimes, we may be moving forward against the prevailing winds. Sometimes it may be against a blizzard! But we're going to live up to our responsibility to lead."

Much more here from Tom Schaller. I'll post the full video when I find it. In the meantime, here's the transcript.

Also, Too, More Like This Please!

TPMDC:

Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) "roadmap" budget plan -- which calls for balancing the budget in 50 years by privatizing Social Security and Medicare -- could become an excellent political tool for the Democrats, says former Clinton adviser Paul Begala.

Begala, in an interview today with TPM, said Democrats should force the GOP to bring their ideas into the public eye.

"Why don't we put Mr. Ryan's budget up to a vote?" he said. "Make them vote on it."

Democrats, he argued, should stop calling Republicans the "party of no."

"They have ideas, and lots of them. And their ideas ruin the country," Begala said.

What the Democrats have to do, he said, is make the 2010 elections a choice between Democratic and Republican ideas, instead of a referendum on just the Dems. (A point Chuck Todd made earlier this week.) The way to do it, he said, is to highlight those GOP ideas.

Begala said the White House has already begun to do this, with both President Obama and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag mentioning Ryan's budget.

And Congressional Dems have seized on the opportunity to call out the provisions that would privatize Social Security. Reps. Chris Larson and Linda Sanchez have introduced a resolution opposing such privatization, which would force Republican lawmakers to vote on the idea.

And this!

On Republicans and Budget Deficits

Why on earth would this surprise anyone?

A new Rasmussen poll supplies a very interesting data point in the ongoing debate about the budget deficit: As it turns out, Republican voters would prefer having a deficit if it meant they can get more tax cuts, instead of raising taxes in order to balance the budget.

The national poll of likely voters asked: "Would you rather see a balanced budget with higher taxes or a budget deficit with tax cuts?" A 41% plurality would rather have budget deficit with tax cuts, with 36% calling for higher taxes and a balanced budget. The internals of the poll show Republicans favoring deficits and tax cuts.

"The partisan differences on the questions are notable," says the pollster's analysis. "While 50% of Republicans would rather see a budget deficit with tax cuts, a plurality (46%) of Democrats favor the opposite approach - a balanced budget with higher taxes. Voters not affiliated with either party are evenly divided on the question."

A separate question asked: "Is it possible to balance the federal budget without raising taxes?" Here the answer was Yes 37%, with a No plurality of 42% saying that it is not possible to balance the budget without raising taxes. In the internals, 47% of Republicans think it's possible to balance the budget without raising taxes, to 53% of Democrats who do not think so.

Another Rasmussen number finds that only a very small minority knew the correct answer to this one: "Is the following statement true or false? Most federal spending is spent on only three programs--Social Security, Medicare and national defense." The correct answer is "True," but only 35% answered that way, with a 44% plurality saying false.

"These figures highlight a massive failure of leadership from both Republicans and Democrats among the nation's political elite," Scott Rasmussen wrote in the analysis. "Given the amount of political chatter about the budget in recent years, it is almost beyond comprehension that neither party has seen fit to highlight the basics so that the American people can make reasoned choices on the fundamental issues before them."

Were people not paying attention from 2000 to 2008? Hello? Is this thing even on?

Obama Speaks!

Obama speaks! And the blogosphere wrings its hands.

I don't get it. What's wrong with this?

Mr. Obama said he would first work with Congress to enact a jobs package that would encourage new hiring, which he said was “the thing that is most urgent right now, in the minds of Americans all across the country.” But he also said that he would take the time to refute false statements and misunderstandings about the health care legislation and to hear alternate ideas from Republicans.

After “several weeks” of work, he said, he would be prepared to live with whatever decision is made by Congress, but he also warned that voters, too, would be watching and would decide at the polls in November whether lawmakers had made the right choice.

Mr. Obama still did not chart a specific legislative strategy for moving a bill through Congress...

At the fund-raiser for the Democratic National Committee later on Thursday, however, Mr. Obama said that once Congressional Democrats had worked out their differences and settled on a final bill, he would push for a vibrant, public debate over the health care legislation. He said he planned “to call on our Republican friends to present their ideas.”

“What I’d like to do is have a meeting whereby I am sitting with the Republicans, sitting with the Democrats, sitting with health care experts and let’s just go through these bills,” Mr. Obama said. “Their ideas, our ideas. Let’s walk through them in a methodical way, so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense. And then I think that we have got to move forward on a vote. We have got to move forward on a vote.”

Mr. Obama said that Americans were apprehensive about the health care legislation because there was too much misinformation that he would now work to clear up.

“They are certain that they would have to go onto a government plan, which isn’t true,” the president said. “But that’s still a perception a lot of people have. They are still pretty sure that they would have to give up their doctor. They are still pretty sure that if they are happy with their health care plan, that it’s bad for them. They are still positive that this is going to add to the deficit. So there is a lot of information out there that people understandably are concerned about.”

He continued, “That’s why I think it’s very important for us to have a methodical, open process over the next several weeks, and then let’s go ahead and make a decision. And it may be that if Congress decides, if Congress decides we’re not going to do it, even after all the facts are laid out, all the options are clear, then the American people can make a judgment as to whether this Congress has done the right thing for them or not. And that’s how democracy works, and there will be elections coming up and they will be able to make a determination and register their concerns one way or another during election time.”

At one point, as the president insisted that he would continue to fight for the health care bill, the crowd chanted, “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!”

One of the most under-appreciated aspects of the Obama's approach to the presidency is his desire to see congress reemerge as a co-equal branch of government. For people who want action! this can be extremely frustrating, particularly when at most moments it seems Congress isn't up to the task. But let's be real about this, people. It is the Congress, and not the President, that is supposed to be the most powerful brach under our constitution. And although this all may be very frustrating to watch, there's nothing about modern American politics that suggests to me that our presidents have been too weak.

We desperately need Congress to reassert itself in our political system. We desperately need more, not fewer, checks on the executive branch. But I promise you, people, if we get what we need we'll end up with a system that is far more noisy, rude, chaotic, and messy than what we currently have now.

Democracy isn't supposed to be pretty. Its not supposed to be neat. Or tidy. Or fun to watch. It is supposed to require work. And effort. And near constant input from the people. But its been so long since we've lived with anything even remotely approaching a pre-eminent congress that literally no one alive remembers what it might look like.

I hope Obama continues to force Congress to lead. I don't want a president - even one I support! - to be able to dictate to Congress. And I hope Congress continues to get its act together. That's right, I said "continues." Because where you see chaos I see baby steps, and where you see the end I see the beginning. But its a long damn walk from there to there. That change you believed in? It won't come overnight. You're gonna have to keep working, keep fighting. You're gonna have to get back out there this Fall. And then again in 2012. And again in 2014. We're a long, long way down an awful hole, one that took decades to dig, and it'll take at least as long to climb out as it did to empty out.

So call me crazy, but I think this is precisely the right approach to take with the Congress. You wanna hammer Obama on something? Hammer him on his pledge to engage Republicans directly. Hammer him on his pledge to hold a public debate. Hammer him on his promise to "refute false statements and misunderstandings." Make him do it on a daily basis. He's your president. Make him work. Because that's how our system of self-government is supposed to work.

UPDATE: Worth noting - Jon Chait understands the short-term politics of this. The public debate proposal is a "heads we win, tails the GOP loses" proposal. Jon Cohn gets it too. So maybe I should take back. Nice to know I'm in good company here!

Not Demoralized

I'm an Obama supporter (obviously), and this doesn't even remotely demoralize me. Precisely the opposite, in fact.

Great Quotes

I was hoping to write a fairly significant response to the State of the Union (SOTU), but I'm down in DC for my grandmother's funeral, and won't likely get the time for a few days. But there are loads of good things being said today, and I've got a ton of posts saved up from the past week or so for comment. And since I've got a few hours and need to distract myself, let's do some quotes.

First, a post from Political Scientist John Sides on the role of "independents" in our political system. Know this. Understand this. And repeat it constantly whenever you are discussing politics with your friends:

I want to yell.

INDEPENDENTS ARE NOT A “VAST MIDDLE GROUND.”

INDEPENDENTS DO NOT COMPRISE MORE THAN “A THIRD OF AMERICANS.”

How many DAMN TIMES must this be said before this MOST BASIC OF FINDINGS — first explicated at length almost 20 YEARS AGO! — sinks into the heads of pundits.

I will keep linking to this post as long as it takes. To repeat: true, honest-to-God independents are about 10% of the American population. Declining support for Obama among independents accounts for less than a fifth of Obama’s overall decline in support.

OK, now some SOTU reactions:

CBS News:

83 percent said they approved of the proposals the President made. Just 17 percent disapproved

CNN:

48 percent of speech watchers had a very positive reaction, with three in 10 saying they had a somewhat positive response and 21 percent with a negative response.

Mark Blumenthal on a Democracy Corps dial test:

The shifts there are very extraordinary. On the issue of whether he puts Wall Street ahead of the middle class, it was a 50 point shift on people saying that [doesn't describe him] well. There was a 40-point shift...on fighting special interests. On banking reform, on support, it was a 38 point shift in favor of that. And that's clearly, far and away the place where he showed the greatest strength and clarity.

Andrew Samwick:

I give President Obama high praise for the parts of his speech this evening where he chastised his own party in the Congress for its ineffectiveness and for telling the Senate Republicans that if they are going to insist on supermajorities to get any policy passed, then they are going to have to share in the responsibility for governing. Good for him. Nobody's perfect, but I cannot help but think that the conduct of the Congress in recent years, and the Senate in particular, would be enough to make a Founding Father vomit.

Kevin Drum:

Obama was dead serious most of the time, but he also seemed loose and engaging, at times even sparring good-naturedly with the Republican side of the aisle. My guess is that this is a combination that works pretty well. At the very least, he didn't seem freighted down with the burdens of office, and that's an accomplishment all on its own given the events of the past couple of weeks.

James Fallows:

One moment when I couldn't believe what I was seeing: the Roberts-led stare whatsis? Supreme Court sitting directly in front of the President and being equally-directly dressed down by him, while the politicians right next to them in the chamber leapt up and cheered. Don't recall any moment quite like that before.

Steve Benen:

Given the public's palpable frustrations and the struggles the nation endured in 2009, there was a sense that the president would have to be vaguely apologetic during the address. He'd have to explain himself, acknowledge mistakes, and lay a new course for the year ahead. The pundits' use of words like "reboot" and "scaled back" were ubiquitous going into the speech.

The president, though, decided not to follow the conventional script. When he was supposed to be meek, he showed confidence. When expected to be contrite, Obama seemed proud. When Republicans sought deference, the president responded with strength. Indeed, while the GOP believes electoral winds are at their backs, Obama didn't mind teasing, confronting, challenging, and even mocking them in a good-natured way.

The fear that the president might shrink from the moment was backwards -- Obama stepped up and seemed larger than ever.

Matt Yglesias:

Obama seized the mantle of responsibility, pragmatism, and seriousness while challenging the GOP to show some good faith and willingness to be a constructive partner in government. But what he’s never been able to do is to generate the kind of specific, concrete political pressure on incumbent Republican senators that inspires them to vote “yes” on his bills or confirm his nominees.

Jonathan Chait:

I haven't seen a convincing explanation as to why it's so awful for Republicans to disagree with a presidential speech. The answer is "decorum," but to me, decorum suggests giving latitude to the opposition. The State of the Union, remember, was originally delivered elsewhere in order to avoid the appearance of a president dictating to Congress. Forcing Congress and the Supreme Court to defer to the president as a ceremonial head of state, rather than the head of a co-equal branch of government, runs counter to the deepest spirit of our form of government.

Moreover, it represents the Washington establishment's prudish aversion to debate. I can see why a loud outburst might be objectionable -- though I'd prefer a feisty back-and-forth, like in Great Britain -- but to scold Alito merely for moving his lips in such a way as to show disapproval seems to be taking the prudishness to a new extreme. Yes, he's a Supreme Court Justice and we're supposed to believe he has no political beliefs or agenda, but in the post Bush v. Gore world it's a little late for that.

Andrew Sullivan responds to Clive Crook, who asks "What does it matter who caused the problem?":

Let me try to explain: it matters who caused the problem and why because if we do not understand the causes we cannot fix the problem and it matters because any adult judgment of a politician's first year that does not take into account the inheritance he was bequeathed is impossible.

It matters because the most important fact in American politics is the worst presidency in modern times that preceded Obama.

Two failed, unwinnable wars that continue to destroy lives and cripple our finances, a massive splurge in entitlement and discretionary spending, a huge increase in defense spending and massive tax cuts: this we now have to forget? This context should be removed from the picture?

It matters too because the very people who gave us this mess are now adamantly refusing to do anything to get us out of it, and pledge to return to exactly the same policies that got us there in the first place: more tax cuts, more war, more entitlement spending, more debt, no health insurance reform, no action on climate change. Clive acts as if there were some viable alternative out there. There isn't.

I'm not saying that Obama should not be held responsible for actions he has taken; I am saying he should not be held responsible for actions he did not take and an appalling inheritance he was forced to grapple with. Removing that context, as the GOP has largely done, and Crook now endorses, is to rig the entire debate so that Obama cannot win. It is a function of the kind of punditry that is, in fact, far more of a problem for the country than anything Obama has done - because it bases political judgment on unreality, and distorts the body politic's capacity for reasoned argument. It treats all of this as a game.

And some non-SOTU related thoughts:

Matt Yglesias on taxes:

As long-time readers know, I’m a big believer in taxes. The American people are big believers in government services, but they like them to be paid for by magic. The political system thus often winds up directing policy in a weird direction—doing policy through tax subsidies and “credits” and regulatory mandates rather than simply taxing and spending. This is bad, in my view, but the people don’t seem to agree.

There are, however, two recent little glimmers of hope. One is that in Oregon a ballot measure to enact sharply progressive increases in income taxes on high earners passed. The other is that in last night’s State of the Union address the idea of a new tax on large banks was a big applause line. The President put it front and center, and many members of congress stood and cheered for it. Neither of those things fundamentally gets us to where I want us to be, but they’re both steps in the right direction.

Steve Benen on the role of Republicans in the vote against the budget commission they proposed:

Six GOP senators co-sponsored the legislation to create the commission, and then voted against their own idea. Asked for an explanation, the Republicans said the commission -- which was intended to push policymakers to make uncomfortable decisions -- might have told them what they didn't want to hear, and should therefore not exist...

These six Republican senators said they'd welcome a commission -- it was, after all, their idea to co-sponsor the bill -- just so long as the GOP isn't asked to make concessions or compromises at all.

We've heard plenty of rhetoric of late about how President Obama just needs to reach out more to Republicans to strike bipartisan compromises. But how can anyone take such an approach seriously when leading GOP lawmakers oppose their own ideas because they may be asked to accept bipartisan concessions?

Neoconservative godfather Irving Kristol, on his son Bill Kristol:

My poor son has got it wrong again

Kate Sheppard reports on Frank Luntz recent findings on the need to reframe the climate change conversation:

Luntz suggests less talk of dying polar bears and more emphasis on how legislation will create jobs, make the planet healthier and decrease US dependence on foreign oil. Advocates should emphasize words like "cleaner," "healthier," and "safer"; scrap "green jobs" in favor of "American jobs," and ditch terms like "sustainability" and "carbon neutral" altogether. "It doesn't matter if there is or isn't climate change," he said. "It's still in America's best interest to develop new sources of energy that are clean, reliable, efficient and safe."

Ron Brownstein on our dysfunctional political system:

We are operating in what amounts to a parliamentary system without majority rule, a formula for futility.

Lanny Davis (I cannot believe I'm quoting him on this, but he's right, so...) on the need to refram the health care debate:

The Democrats have a simple message on health care that has still not really gotten through: If our bill passes, you never have to worry about getting, or losing, health insurance for the rest of your life. How is it that so few people have heard that message?

Matt Yglesias on voting in the United States:

Consider, for example, America’s staggering quantity of elected officials. If you live in Toronto, you vote for a member of the Toronto City Council, you vote for a member of the Ontario Parliament, and you vote for a member of the Canadian Parliament. That’s one large Anglophone city in North America.

What happens in New York City? Well, you’ve got a city council member, a borough president, a mayor, a public advocate, a comptroller, and a district attorney. You’ve also got a state assembly member, a state senator, an attorney-general, a state comptroller, and a governor. Then at the federal level, there’s a member of congress, two senators, and the president. That’s sixteen legislative and elected officials rather than Toronto’s three. New Yorkers don’t have three times as much time in their day to monitor the performance of elected officials. Instead, New Yorker elected officials simply aren’t monitored as closely. That creates more scope for corruption. What’s more since campaign money has diminishing marginal returns, the proliferation of elected makes money matter more than it otherwise would.

A big country like the United States is never going to have public officials who are as well-monitored as the ones in a place like Denmark. But we make the situation much, much worse by proliferating the quantity of elected officials to the point where most people have no idea what’s happening. How many people can name their state senator? How many people know what things their school board has authority over and what things their mayor decides? And this is all without considering the absolutely insane practice of electing judges.

And last but not least, a few must-reads that are quite difficult to quote:

Matt Yglesias on the Marginal Cost Pricing For Mass Transit

NPR on the role of the bail bond industry in our messed up criminal justice system.

Imagine if the United States redrew its political borders by population size. James Fallows explains.

Pelosi On Health Care

Don't think Presidential rhetoric matters? Here's Pelosi today on health care:

“You go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, you go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll poll vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in. But we’re going to get health care reform passed for the American people.”

Great Quotes

Some quotes collected over the past few days around the blogosphere that deserve your attention:

Pres. Obama on the fight in 2010 and 2012:

So, I know everybody in the media is all in a tizzy -- "Oh, what's this going to mean politically?" Well, let me tell you something. If Republicans want to campaign against what we've done by standing up for the status quo and for insurance companies over American families and businesses, that is a fight I want to have. (Applause.) If their best idea is to return to the bad policies and the bad ideas of yesterday, they are going to lose that argument. What are they going to say? "Well, you know, the old system really worked well; let's go back to the way it was"? That's not going to appeal to seniors who are now seeing the possibility of that doughnut hole finally closing and so they can finally get discounts on their prescriptions. (Applause.) That's not going to appeal to the small businesses who find out all the tax credits that they're going to get for doing right by their employees -- something that they have been wanting to do, but may not have been able to afford. It's not going to be very appealing to Americans who for the first time are going to find out that they can provide coverage to their children, their dependents, all the way up to the age of 26 or 27.

And that's why I'll be out there waging a great campaign from one end of the country to the other, telling Americans with insurance or without what they stand to gain -- (applause); about the arsenal of consumer protections; about the long-awaited stability that they're going to begin to experience. And I'm going to tell them that I am proud we are putting the future of America before the politics of the moment -- the next generation before the next election. And that, after all, is what we were sent up here to do: standing up for the American people against the special interests; solve problems that we've been talking about for decades; make their lives a little bit better; make tough choices sometimes when they're unpopular. And that's something that every one of you who support this bill can be proud to campaign on in November.

Now, I know that some of the fights we've been going through have been tough. I know that some of you have gotten beaten up at home. Some of the fights that we're going to go through this year are going to be tough as well. But just remember why each of us got into public service in the first place -- we found something that was worth fighting for. There was something we thought was important enough that we were willing to stand up in the public square, risk loss, risk embarrassment, because we knew in our hearts that something wasn't right, that we weren't in some measure living up to the American ideal, and that we thought that if we got involved and engaged in the democratic process, somehow we could make it a little bit better.

Jon Chait on the history of banking regulation in America:

Daniel Gross recently wrote an excellent piece for Slate about why we should ignore the banking industry's warnings about the bank tax. Basically, Gross argues that they are probably wrong now because they've always been wrong (at least about the dangers of regulation):

This rule dates almost to the beginning of American history. Many commercial banks in the United States opposed the creation of the first and second national banks of the United States in the late 18th and early 19th century. They saw the proto-central bank as competition, since it was essentially a congressionally chartered private bank that would compete with them. As a result, the United States, in contrast to economic rivals England and France, lacked a central bank in the 19th century—despite periodic banking panics and failures, the severity of which could have been mitigated by a central bank. It was only after the Panic of 1907 that forces were set into motion for the creation of a central bank. Would it surprise you to learn that many bankers and their political allies opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve? Didn't think so.

So to what can we attribute their cluelessness?

The simple explanation is that these guys don't know the first thing about their business, regulation, or history. Then again, maybe there are important factors of organizational psychology at work here. Industries, as a rule, don't like regulations that they didn't come up with on their own. They like to control their own environment. (You can praise the deliciousness of steak until you're blue in the face, and your 6-year-old will pronounce it "blech." Then one day, on his own, he decides to eat it and pronounces it "yummy.")

Matt Yglesias on why there's nothing new about neo-conservatism:

Robert Farley’s account of how national security hawks around the world re-enforce each other’s position, with each country’s version of Charles Krauthammer insisting that one more demonstration of implacable will can scare the other guys off, is a must-read. It’s also a reminder that there’s really nothing that’s “neo” about neoconservative foreign policy thinking.

Obviously, as a matter of historical fact it’s the case that a certain number of former liberals reacted to the dovish turn of the post-Vietnam Democratic Party by adopting more conservative ideas. But there’s nothing actually new in “neoconservative” thought. Their take on China, or their take on Iran, or their take on the Soviet Union, or their take on Saddam Hussein, is all the same and the same as the general take that the nationalistic right has in all countries—the enemy du jour is uniquely awful and compelled toward irrational and aggressive behavior, therefore we ourselves must behave in an irrational and aggressive manner lest we be overrun

Generals Krulak and Hoar on detention interrogation (via Attackerman):

A lone Nigerian caught with a bomb in his underwear is no match for FBI interrogators and skilled federal prosecutors – without resorting to torture, which violates our laws and subverts our values. Some assert that once suspects like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab get “lawyered up,” it will be impossible to get information from them about plots in progress. But FBI interrogators routinely crack tough suspects, even those with high-priced lawyers.

The assertion that suspects with lawyers never talk is simply wrong. Lawyers routinely encourage their clients to cooperate, especially in cases where suspects have been caught red-handed. And terrorists have proven eager to brag about their grand plans and al-Qaeda connections. Questioning in such cases has led to vital intelligence in the past – about sleeper cells in the United States, training camps in Afghanistan, and high-level terrorism suspects such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Kevin Drum on the health care excise tax compromise:

Our story so far: one of the funding mechanisms for healthcare reform is an excise tax on expensive health plans, popularly known as the "Cadillac tax." As policy, it's a good idea: by taxing expensive plans, you provide an incentive to keep their costs down. As politics, though, it sucks: union health plans, which are often pretty rich, would get hit by the tax. And Democrats like unions.

So yesterday everyone compromised. The excise tax is still in the bill, but the cutoff for the tax was raised from $23,000 to $24,000, dental and vision were excluded, and implementation was delayed a couple of years to give unions more time to renegotiate their contracts. In other words, a policy beloved mostly by wonks and deficit hawks stayed largely intact and unions got only a few crumbs. Nonetheless, John Boehner (R–Ohio) thundered that it was the "latest in a long line of backroom payoffs and sweetheart deals." Sarah Palin tweeted that workers "should oppose their UnionBOSSES backroom deal." Even some liberals bought the framing: "I'm not about to pretend that the union deal was anything but interest group politics," said Ezra Klein.

But except for the sense in which everything in a democracy is interest group politics in one way or another, I don't buy it. This compromise doesn't give unions anything. All it does is slightly moderate a basically anti-union tax. If Democrats were really cutting backroom deals with union bosses, they never would have proposed the excise tax in the first place. Or they would have exempted union contracts completely. There are plenty of other ways to fund healthcare reform, after all. But we've gotten to a point in the United States where anti-union sentiment is so widespread that (a) proposing a tax that falls largely on unions, and then (b) reducing it a bit, is considered a grubby giveaway even by some lefties. Yeesh.

Last but not least, this:

Great Quotes

I'm going to try and do posts like this once every few days. I wish I had time to respond to all of these. I don't but I don't want you to miss them. So...

Matt Yglesias:

It’s the miracle of capitalism!

Two guys are in the woods and they spot a vicious bear. One starts tying his sneakers. The other says “you’re never going to outrun that bear.” The first says, “I only need to outrun you.” And yet our society is so determined to worship money and success that this idea has developed that guys like Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein who managed to outrun the other guy actually outran the bear.

ThinkProgress:

Temperatures in “most places” are actually “above average for this time of year.” Record high and low temperatures are set every year, but there have been consistently more highs than lows in recent decades, as the National Center for Atmospheric Research demonstrates:

Ezra Klein:

According to Congressional Quarterly, President Obama "did better even than legendary arm-twister Lyndon Johnson in winning congressional votes on issues where he took a position." That is to say, if Obama told Congress he wanted X, Congress was more likely to give him X than any president in the past 60 years.

On the one hand, you could take this as evidence that Obama is an awesome president. But I'd say it's a bit more complex than that.

You're seeing the triumph of three things here. First, an uncommonly large Democratic majority. Second, a long-standing historical trend toward party discipline. And third, the White House's relentless strategy of focusing on what it can pass rather than what it thinks is needed.

The American people, via CNN:

Please tell me whether you agree or disagree that Barack Obama has the personality and leadership qualities a President should have.

Agree 64%
Disagree 35%

David Axelrod, via the National Journal and Steve Benen:

"It's almost impossible to win a referendum on yourself," Axelrod insisted. "And the Republicans would like this to be a referendum. It's not going to be a referendum."

Asked what has to happen in the next 10 months to produce the best possible result for Democrats in November, Axelrod didn't hesitate in identifying his top priority: an economy that is adding, rather than losing, jobs each month. "I think job growth is certainly number one," he said. "I think that's how most people measure a recovering economy."

To nudge that process along, he says, he expects Congress to quickly conclude legislation to promote job growth: "We have to take that up right away," he said....

"They want to stand with the insurance industry on health care and protect the status quo, then let them defend that in an election," Axelrod said. "If they want to stand with the banks and the financial industries, and protect the status quo, then let them explain that in an election. If the party that over eight years turned a... surplus into the most significant growth in national debt by far in the history of the country and left this president with a $1.3 trillion deficit when he walked in the door and an economic crisis, let them campaign on fiscal integrity. You know... we're certainly willing to have that discussion. The difference is that we'll have that discussion in the context of a campaign, and we haven't, in the midst of a crisis, tried to campaign every day in the halls of Congress."

Paul Campos:

The world's greatest nation seems bent on subjecting itself to a similarly humiliating defeat, by playing a game that could be called Terrorball. The first two rules of Terrorball are:

(1) The game lasts as long as there are terrorists who want to harm Americans; and

(2) If terrorists should manage to kill or injure or seriously frighten any of us, they win.

These rules help explain the otherwise inexplicable wave of hysteria that has swept over our government in the wake of the failed attempt by a rather pathetic aspiring terrorist to blow up a plane on Christmas Day. For two weeks now, this mildly troubling but essentially minor incident has dominated headlines and airwaves, and sent politicians from the president on down scurrying to outdo each other with statements that such incidents are "unacceptable," and that all sorts of new and better procedures will be implemented to make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

Conservative think tank AEI:

The real economy also responded to the massive stimulus but remained heavily dependent on it. In the United States, growth during the second half of 2009 probably averaged about 3 percent. Absent temporary fiscal stimulus and inventory rebuilding, which taken together added about 4 percentage points to U.S. growth, the economy would have contracted at about a 1 percent annual rate during the second half of 2009.

Steve Brill:

“Over the last 50 years, the ratio of top pay to average pay at public companies has multiplied roughly 11 times (24:1 to 275:1). That’s more pay in one workday for the chief executive than his average employee makes in a year.”

America Has The Best Health Care System In The World!

But only if you judge it by who spends the most, and not by who lives the longest.

NatGeo:

The left side of the graph shows how much is spent per person on health care per year. The right side - and other end of the line - shows average life expectancy at birth.

Amazing how people live longer and spend less in social democracies, isn't it?

C'mon people! Cheer louder! U! S! A! U! S! A! We're Number One! We're Number One!

That's better... I can feel my life expectancy improving already....

Happy Health Care Day!

It's been nearly a month since I've posted an update here - blame my dissertation! blame Twitter! blame the slow pace of progress in the Senate! - so long that I've now got 100's of items saved in my Feed Reader for future comment. At this point, there's obviously no way I can get to all of them, but given that the end of the decade is fast approaching... and given the historic nature of today's vote in the Senate... I feel like I have no choice today but to try. So let's get to it!

On Health Insurance Reform:

We're nearly there people! The bill's not perfect, but no bill ever is. Social Security was far from perfect when it first passed. Medicare and Medicaid were far more modest than they are today. Civil Rights legislation was nowhere near perfect when it was first adopted. It took decades of fighting to create robust protections for our nation's parks and forests. Why? Because this is how democracy works. It is a method and a process, not an outcome. We fight. We argue. We talk. We convince. We stand up. We act. And then we do it all over again, each and every day, until it is time for the next generation to take the lead in the fight.

Is it messy? Yes. Is it contentious? Yes. Because it is supposed to be. Because it needs to be. If the fight was easy, it wouldn't be a fight. The status quo, no matter how wretched, never easily gives way. Creating change requires more energy than defending stasis. Know this. Understand it. Accept it. And never, ever let it prevent you from doing what needs to be done.

I understand why some people on the left are unhappy with this bill. But I cannot for the life of me figure out why they think its smart politics or policy to oppose it, or worse, to join with the most hideous elements on the right in an effort to see it killed. On that count, I'm with Nate: "Progressives Are Batshit Crazy To Oppose The Senate Bill." And with Josh: "In real politics, there are no opt-outs, only cop-outs." And with Max, with a nod to Matt, who wrote:

Politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards. It takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience confirms the truth--that man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today. Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he shall not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or too base for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say 'In spite of all!' has the calling for politics.

To repeat myself, this bill isn't perfect. But it is, as John Chait wrote today, "the most significant American legislative triumph in at least four decades." And, as KDrum wrote, "the biggest progressive advance in my adult life." And, as John Cohn wrote, "the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation in a generation." And, as Ezra wrote, "arguably the most important piece of legislation the body has passed since 1963." This is an enormous achievement. Do not let your quest for your idea of the perfect blind you to the immense good that is happening right in front of your face. We're winning one of the most important political fights in more than a generation.

And while we're on the subject of Ezra, Jon, John, Kevin, Nate, and the rest of the wonky progressive bloggers around the 'sphere, let's be sure to also acknowledge just how much these guys have done to enlighten our nation's political debate. A decade ago, citizens who wanted to follow the ins and outs of our nation's policy debates quite literally had nowhere to turn. TV and print media covered the people and the politics, but they never - and here I am using that word quite deliberately - dug into the details of policy in anything even remotely approaching the level of detail that these bloggers have. Once, maybe twice during a debate you'd get a giant, multi-thousand word piece that attempted to cover the subject, but that's about it. And god help you if you happened to miss that day's edition, because there were no archives for you to return to.Today? Today you can read thousands of words a day, all part of an ongoing conversation that this nation's citizens are having with themselves. Ezra and Jon and Nate and others are leading a national clinic, and in so doing, are helping to re-democratize our nation's public sphere.

Nothing like this has ever existed before. What we are doing, what we are creating together, is something entirely new. The consequences for our system of government are immense, even if they aren't yet clear. Don't believe me?

But back to health care before moving on.... Do not underestimate what an historic achievement this will be. Ignore the cable teevee pundits. This issue represents a HUGE win for the left and for the Democratic Party. Some parts of the party are unhappy right now, but this will pass. Remember how divided we supposedly were during the primary? Remember how everyone said the wounds would not heal in time for the fall campaign? Remember how wrong all of those people were?

I know its fashionable to claim that Democrats don't know what they are doing. Ignore this too. With the help of the people - both activists and average citizens alike - the party is finding its soul and its spine again. Its leadership is rising to the occasion. Health care reform will be a huge issue next fall, and again in 2012. And I promise you, it will be an issue we will win on, both because we have the people on our side and because our opponents are so far beyond lost I don't have the words to describe them....

On the Continuing Collapse of the GOP:

State Attorneys General from several Southern states are planning to mount legal challenges to the law - never mind that the clause of the constitution they are citing makes explicit reference to ports

Congressional Republicans plan on making their opposition to health care the centerpiece of the upcoming campaign - never mind that their opposition comes without any positive proposals of their own.

Republican pundits, the people opinion polls consistently ID as the real leaders of the Republican Party, continue to hyperventilate about how this bill will end civilization as we know it - never mind that this tactic utterly failed them in the fall of 2008.

And its newest leading light, a morning zoo DJ turned political movement leader, is set on leading the effort to remove all the "Marxist code words" from the Bible. Because God knows his Son wasn't in favor of helping the poor. Or the sick. Or the downtrodden. Or the outcast. Or the weak. Or minorities. Or anyone other than himself, right?

Mark my words: The Republican Party is collapsing. If it does not pull itself out of this tailspin soon, it may soon cease to exist as a truly national political power. No political party is forever. The Federalist Party collapsed in the early 1800s under the weight of its own contradictions. The Whigs followed suit in the decade before the Civil War. The Populists misjudged their era and disappeared at the turn of the 20th century.

And then... something changed, and the two "major" parties reached a form of stasis. What was that change? In large part, I believe it was the rise of top down, national broadcast networks, a new system of political communication that privileged those in power over those now forced to watch from the outside. And that system of communication is dying. As a vertical system of one-to-many communication gives way to a horizontal system that interconnects the many unto itself, the elites are losing control. The information infrastructure atop which the last great party system was built is disappearing. And as it goes, it is entirely conceivable that it will take one of our nation's parties with it. It has happened before. It will happen again. And yes, that's precisely what my dissertation seeks to show.

Like the Federalists before it, the modern Republican Party is on the wrong wide of every major issue facing this country. It is opposed to universal health care. It is opposed to climate change legislation, even if it helps create jobs. It is opposed to any and all forms of non-punitive Immigration reform. It is opposed to the use of science in the creation of public policy. But its for tax cuts! And wars! And white people! It stands, in short, for the past, no matter how obviously disastrous that past is.

Political parties do not live forever. Like all living things, they must evolve or they must die. Denying the power of evolution does not make it go away.

On Realignments:

Republicans are becoming Democrats, and Democrats are becoming Republicans. Will this help the GOP find its way? I doubt it. But only time, of course, will tell.

Meanwhile, OFA, the organization that we built for the Obama campaign, is still out there, alive and well. We made 1 million calls to Congress over the past few months. We held more than 25,000 events in congressional districts. And now, our opponents are beginning to copy us. The future? Why, I think its already here.

On Obama:

Not surprisingly, I cannot say it better than this: Meep Meep, mutha fucka....

On the Filibuster:

Its nice to see people across the political world finally turning their attention to just how absurd and undemocratic this rule really is. James Fallows, Matt Yglesias, Mark Schmitt, and eventually even Pres. Obama himself have commented at length recently.

For me, its simple. The Senate is already ridiculously undemocratic. Despite the fact that California's two senators represent more than 12% of the US population, their votes count for only 2% of the US Senate. Meanwhile, despite the fact that the smallest 20 states have a population roughly equal to that of California, they hold 40 of the chamber's votes. Add Connecticut, and you've got enough under current Senate rules and practices to block any and all legislation.

Let me repeat myself: The smallest 20 states + Connecticut = a filibuster.

I think I'll leave it there for now.

On Climate Change:

Im running out of time for this update, so let's go to the links:

Uncertain about uncertainty? Read this.

What the hacked ClimateGate emails do - and do not - show.

Scientific American offers Seven Answers To Climate Contrarian Nonsense

How Science is supposed to work.

A climate skeptic's conversion.

Bits and Bobs:

Zen and the Art of Politics

A solution to the black carbon problem?

The Bright Side Of $26 Drone Hacks? Makes me wonder if it wasn't intentional.

Michelle Bachmann is a welfare queen!

Teddy Roosevelt is still a badass.

RedState's Erick Erickson is still a moron.

Donald Duck loves taxes.

Even in Obama's socialist utopia, taxes are still at historic lows.

And Obama, no matter what pundits might say, is still, in the one way that matters most, like Reagan. Believe it.

I'm out. Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. Peace....

On Lieberman

Has anyone out there in pundit land considered the very real possibility that CT Senator Lieberman might be deliberately undermining Democrats before switching parties in advance of his 2012 re-election effort?

Also, why aren't Dems rolling out the Republican "nuclear option" playbook from 2005? I'm not suggesting they should use it, necessarily. But as a trial balloon, it might help clarify things for the ridiculously named "moderates" in the Senate.

UPDATE: Jon Chait offers another hypothesis: Lieberman isn't devious; he's just dumb.

UPDATE II: Ezra Klein looks to have gotten into a tangle with one of his colleagues at the Post. After detailing how their only disagreement appears to be around the fact that Ezra followed the facts they agree on to their logical conclusion, he writes something that everyone must read:

We have a very sterile policy debate in this country. We talk about things in terms of costs, not lives. It's the equivalent of conducting wars from the air: You hide the damage. That might be helpful, in some cases. Too much passion can impede clear thinking. But we run the danger of forgetting the implications of our actions. It's fine to speak in terms of costs so long as we do not forget to think in terms of lives. 

Joe Lieberman is insured. Chuck Lane is insured. I am insured. If we get sick, we can go to the doctor. Studies show that our risk of death is substantially lower than those who are uninsured, as is our risk of medical bankruptcy, and chronic pain or impairment. Health-care reform, with or without the public option and the Medicare buy-in, will extend coverage to more than 30 million people. It will improve the coverage of tens of millions more. 

The debate over this policy is whether it cuts the deficit, but the point of this policy is that it saves lives. Making that clear using numbers derived from the best empirical evidence we've had is not venomous. It's responsible. Threatening to sink the effort because you don't like a small corner of it is morally irresponsible. And we columnists should not grow so accustomed to the forced courtesies of Washington that we forget how to say so. 

Not too long ago, Lieberman agreed that these lives were far too important to be sacrificed due to political pique. “Every campaign, as President Clinton reminded us, is about the future," Lieberman said in a 2006 debate against Ned Lamont. "And what I'm saying to the people of Connecticut, I can do more for you and your families to get something done to make health care affordable, to get universal health insurance." 

If this is doing more, I'd hate to see doing less.

I've come to believe that this tendency to view everything from an antiseptic 30,000 ft view-from-nowhere has, more than anything else, destroyed the trust Americans once had in the news media. And by extension, the trust they once had in their political system. If every policy story is presented in cold, impersonal terms, over time it is only natural for people to conclude the details of policy simply do not matter. It's all presented as if its a big interpersonal drama, with the only effects felt by elite political actors who aren't actually affected by the issues they are debating. 

But that's just not how things actually work. This government is our government. It is no more and no less than what we make it, together, each and every day. And this policy debate is a perfect example of that. This isn't about the Senate. It isn't about the President. It is about us. And although it might not be convenient for either our political or media elites, in our 21st century America, some of our fellow Americans die each and every day because they do not have health insurance. Saying that might make people uncomfortable. But so what? It should. 

Why does one of the writers at the Washington Post think it is a "venomous smear" to point out that Joe Lieberman's personal grudge will in point of fact cause some people to needlessly die. He doesn't disagree with Ezra on the facts. In fact, he accepts that studies show that "the lack of health insurance contributed to the deaths of 137,000 people between 2000 and 2006." Each and every day, more than 50 Americans die, Lane admits, because they were unable to get the care they needed. But connect that to Lieberman's endless need to delay things, and oh my! Ezra has just gone much too far. But why? What is journalism for if not speaking truth?

It might be uncomfortable for everyone to think about public policy is like this, but to repeat myself: so what? If it makes you uncomfortable to deal with the world as it is, don't become a journalist. Or a politician. Go do something else that better suits your fragile nature. 

UPDATE III: Via Ezra, a video from just 3 months ago of Lieberman strongly endorsing the Medicare buy-in that his principles demand he reject today: Ezra adds:

I'm still awaiting an explanation of how it's principled for Lieberman to threaten to derail a bill that will save more than a hundred thousand lives because it includes a policy he supported as recently as three months ago.

And then this, via Twitter:

If all these insured people think health care insurance doesn't reduce mortality, why do they buy so much of it?

I can't wait to hear the answers to that last one! UPDATE IV: At this point, this really is just a long "go read Ezra" post. But in the interest of covering the entire debate today... another must read from Ezra. FINAL UPDATE: None of this should be read as a suggestion that Dems bail on the reform project. As I've said on numerous occasions: public option, no public option; Medicare expansion, no Medicare expansion, it doesn't matter. Passing this bill is the beginning, not the end. If you don't think it goes far enough, that's great! Go out and fight for it, both before and after passage. But to suggest that the whole thing should be scrapped so that we can start over? That's as ridiculous as what Lieberman is doing. You go to reform with the political system you have, not the one you wish you had. The world isn't perfect. Welcome to adulthood.

On Health Care

I don't care what it takes to get the deal done. Make the compromises, and then get the deal done. We can always improve it later. A start, any start, is better than nothing. Do the best you can, then keep fighting until you get what you want. That's the essence of politics in our democratic republic. Never, ever forget that.

Mid-Week Bits + Bobs

Lots of interesting things going on out there that are too long for a Twitter post and too short for their own blog post. And no, I don't need no damn micro-blog either. Something like this works just fine:

+ Let's put this right up top. John Farmer, senior counsel to the 9/11 Commission, has just written a book that provides evidence that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Dick Cheney provided false testimony to the 9/11 Commission. Even worse, he uses FAA and NORAD records to show that the Bush Administration sought to alter official government records to make their performance on 9/11 look much, much better than it actually was.

Wondering why you haven't heard about this yet? The NYT buried the story in its Sunday Book Review. Isn't it crazy how liberal that newspaper is? And how biased against conservatives?

+ Via Ezra Klein, a great quote from Rahm Emanuel on the pragmatic politics behind health reform:

“Let’s be honest. The goal isn’t to see whether I can pass this through the executive board of the Brookings Institution. I’m passing it through the United States Congress with people who represent constituents... I’m sure there are a lot of people sitting in the shade at the Aspen Institute — my brother being one of them — who will tell you what the ideal plan is. Great, fascinating. You have the art of the possible measured against the ideal.”

+ Meanwhile, Republicans continue to drive themselves off an ideological cliff. Political Wire / CNN / Ezra:

The poll indicates that a slight majority, 51%, of Republicans would prefer to see the GOP in their area nominate candidates who agree with them on all the major the issues even if they have a poor chance of beating the Democratic candidate. Forty-three percent of Republicans say they would rather have candidates with whom they don't agree on all the important issues but who can beat the Democrats."

In constrast, Democrats polled "seemed to place a slightly higher priority on electoral victory: 58% say that they would like their party to nominate candidates who can beat Republicans, even if they don't agree with those candidates on all the issues."

A party ceases to be a national political party when its members care more about ideology than about winning elections. Why? Because the only purpose a political party has is to win elections. It serves no other purpose.

+ Via Kevin Drum, a great example of SoCal conservative thinking:

It's like living in a Third World country not to have sewers. But nobody wants to pay that sort of exorbitant fee. If we need a sewer system, you expect government to provide that service.

Those fees the gentleman is complaining about? They are otherwise known as taxes. This approach is very typical of conservatives, particularly in California. Government ought to provide the services middle class people need to live a middle class lifestyle, but it must never ever collect money from middle class people to do so. Nor from small business. Nor from big business. And that, in a nutshell, is why the budgets of both CA and the USA are such a disastrous mess.

This really is quite simple: Taxes pay for the things that the people ask their government to do on their behalf. Without taxes, no services. No police. No fire fighters. No military. No 911. No public hospitals. No courts. No jails. No prisons. No roads. No public parks. No sewer systems. No food safety. No public transportation. No street lights. No national forests. No air traffic control. No airport security. No public universities. No public schools. No NIH. No bank deposit insurance. No... are you getting my point here?
Here's the less ranty version from CBO director Doug Elmendorf

The country faces a fundamental disconnect between the services the people expect the government to provide, particularly in the form of benefits for older Americans, and the tax revenues that people are willing to send to the government to finance those services.

Without taxes, there is no government. Period. Full stop. The end. No government whatsoever, including all of the things that we take for granted, and that in the words of this jackass, separate us from the "Third World."

+ Not to turn this into all taxes, all the time, but this from a recent Attackerman guest blogger is just too good to pass up:

A key part of living in a democratic society is accepting the fact that a majority of your fellow-citizens might favor a policy that you’re opposed to, morally or otherwise. Hell, a key part of living in a democratic society is accepting the fact that the government will grant certain rights – like reproductive freedom inclusive of abortion – that you find deeply immoral. Now, as a full person within said society, you can work and lobby to restrict the extent to which that right can be exercised. But what you can’t do is force the government to abandon rights or responsibilities that you find distasteful. For instance, I’m not a huge fan of bloated defense budgets or open-ended imperial adventures, and ideally, I would not want my tax dollars to support said projects. As a society however, we’ve agreed that I am not allowed to not pay taxes because I don’t like a particular action. Instead, I have to convince my fellow citizens that my stance is the correct one, and watch it go from there.

That's just one of two ways that the recent debate over insurance coverage for abortions highlights some very basic misperceptions people have about how money works in both our economic and political systems. Here's another, this time from Steve Benen:

As we talked about this morning, all the RNC has done here is opt out of abortion coverage for RNC employees. RedState wants an explanation of how this went unnoticed for 18 years.

But more important is the underlying logic. The new-and-improved RNC policy will insure its employees through Cigna, and Cigna will still pay for abortions, just not for RNC employees. In other words, RNC premiums will go to the company, and the company will then use its pool of money to pay for abortions. That's the "fix" RNC Chairman Michael Steele scrambled to make.

RedState and the Republican National Committee support the Stupak amendment, and according to its reasoning, the RNC will still be indirectly subsidizing abortions with its premiums. Leon H. Wolf wants an explanation for the previous mistake, without realizing that very little has actually changed here.

One of the most very basic qualities of money is its fungibility. Since all dollars are equal, any dollar collected by a single organization is the same as any other. Once its been collected, it can't be separated out. Any one dollar is interchangeable with any other.

For hard core pro-lifers, this should present a very serious problem. If abortion is so evil that it cannot be supported, then pro-lifers cannot buy insurance policies from companies that provide abortion coverage to anyone. Their individual policy is irrelevant. When their insurance company collects premiums, it puts all of the money into one giant pool. That's true with all financial transactions in general, but its specifically true with insurance, which is built entirely around the idea of pooling risks and costs across a giant group of people.Thus, if you are pro-life and you purchase insurance from a company that provides even one person with coverage for abortion, you have supported something you find morally abhorrent. If you really are as serious about this as you say, you will cancel your insurance right away. Right?

+ Here's a second great example of the bizarre contradictions in what passes for modern conservative thought. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) recently suggested that Carrie Prejean, the beauty queen turned anti-gay marriage activist turned conservative hero turned sex tape star, might make a good candidate for office. His reasoning:

[Carrie] has the ability to draw crowds and if she has a strong message to go with that, who knows what she can do? She has star power which can open doors.

We’ve all made mistakes when we were 17. [The sex tape] is going to be an impediment, but people are excited about her convictions and her beliefs.

Sure thing, she's done something that conservatives abhor. And that might be a problem. Except she says all the right things! And people like her! So no matter. After all, morals are about what you say, not what you do, right? Its words that matter, not deeds. Just like Jesus wanted. Wait. Hang on...

+ Andrew Sullivan writes about the real lessons of both 9/11 and Ft. Hood:

The awful truth is: what 9/11 revealed, and what it was designed to reveal, is that there is nothing we can really do definitively to stop another one. They had no weapons but our own technology. The training they had was not that sophisticated and the costs of the operation were relatively tiny. There were 19 of them. None of the key perpetrators has been brought to justice. Bin Laden remains at large. If you calculate the costs of that evil attack against the financial, moral and human costs of the fight back, 9/11 was a fantastic demonstration of the power of asymmetry to destroy the West.

Everything that has subsequently transpired has merely deepened that lesson. The US is now bankrupt, trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of our lives, unable even to prevent the two most potentially dangerous Islamist states, Pakistan and Iran, from getting nukes, morally compromised and hanging on to global support only because of a new president who is even now being assaulted viciously at home for such grievous crimes as trying to get more people access to health insurance.

Yes, security is much better. Yes, it's amazing that more attacks have not taken place. Yes, Muslim-Americans have not joined Jihad the way many Europeans have. Yes, we have gained some small benefits from ousting the Taliban, and Saddam ... although at terrible costs. But we have done nothing to show that we can really win this war by the methods we have used so far. The biggest blow to al Qaeda as a global brand has not been what we have done to them, but what they have done to themselves, by their flagrant violence against fellow Muslims, their nihilism, and their barbaric brutality.

And now, in the wake of Fort Hood, we face the possibility of radicalizing Muslims in America and polarizing more Americans against them. This does not help.

+ Marc Lynch follows on:

The grand strategy of al-Qaeda and its affiliated ideologues is, and has always been, to generate a clash of civilizations between Islam and the West which does not currently exist. Their great challenge is that the vast majority of Muslims reject their theology, ideology, strategy and tactics. That's especially true of American Muslims. They therefore feel the need to change the environment in which Muslims live in order to change their calculations about the appropriateness of extremist identities and ideologies and actions.

Terrorism is a means towards that end. The object is to create a violent, polarized environment in which Muslims are forced to embrace a narrow, extreme version of Muslim identity. They want Muslims to accept a master narrative in which the Islamic umma is existentially threatened by Western aggression, and the only theologically and strategically appropriate individual response is to join the jihad in the path of god (as they have defined it).

+ Meanwhile, Bruce Schneier (via Kevin Drum) takes on our nonsensical approach to preventing terrorism:

Security theater refers to security measures that make people feel more secure without doing anything to actually improve their security. An example: the photo ID checks that have sprung up in office buildings. No-one has ever explained why verifying that someone has a photo ID provides any actual security, but it looks like security to have a uniformed guard-for-hire looking at ID cards.

....Security is both a feeling and a reality. The propensity for security theater comes from the interplay between the public and its leaders. When people are scared, they need something done that will make them feel safe, even if it doesn't truly make them safer. Politicians naturally want to do something in response to crisis, even if that something doesn't make any sense.

....Unfortunately for politicians, the security measures that work are largely invisible. Such measures include enhancing the intelligence-gathering abilities of the secret services, hiring cultural experts and Arabic translators, building bridges with Islamic communities both nationally and internationally, funding police capabilities — both investigative arms to prevent terrorist attacks, and emergency communications systems for after attacks occur — and arresting terrorist plotters without media fanfare. They do not include expansive new police or spying laws. Our police don't need any new laws to deal with terrorism; rather, they need apolitical funding. These security measures don't make good television, and they don't help, come re-election time. But they work, addressing the reality of security instead of the feeling.

The arrest of the "liquid bombers" in London is an example: they were caught through old-fashioned intelligence and police work. Their choice of target (airplanes) and tactic (liquid explosives) didn't matter; they would have been arrested regardless.

+ TNC nails why Dragon Age: Origins is one of the best games of its generation. And yes, I've already completed one play though. As a Dalish 'you can take our lives, but you will never take our freedom!' Elf, thank you very much.

The Art of the Possible

Via Steve Benen, here's something from Paul Begala written last August that should be kept in mind as the debate over the Stupak Amendment unfolds over the next few weeks:

No self-respecting liberal today would support Franklin Roosevelt's original Social Security Act. It excluded agricultural workers -- a huge part of the economy in 1935, and one in which Latinos have traditionally worked. It excluded domestic workers, which included countless African Americans and immigrants. It did not cover the self-employed, or state and local government employees, or railroad employees, or federal employees or employees of nonprofits. It didn't even cover the clergy. FDR's Social Security Act did not have benefits for dependents or survivors. It did not have a cost-of-living increase. If you became disabled and couldn't work, you got nothing from Social Security.

If that version of Social Security were introduced today, progressives like me would call it cramped, parsimonious, mean-spirited and even racist. Perhaps it was all those things. But it was also a start. And for 74 years we have built on that start. We added more people to the winner's circle: farmworkers and domestic workers and government workers. We extended benefits to the children of working men and women who died. We granted benefits to the disabled. We mandated annual cost-of-living adjustments. And today Social Security is the bedrock of our progressive vision of the common good.

Politics is the art of the possible, not the perfect. I understand this specific issue is a very, very big deal to some people. But big enough to sink a once in a generation chance at meaningful heath care reform?

As with all legislation, these reforms can always be altered and improved later on, particularly because the major provisions don't take effect for as many as 3 or 4 years. If it cannot be corrected now, it can always be corrected later. But if this bill fails to pass, we lose everything in it. There is no a la carte option here.

Lieberman is willing to let the whole thing die because of the public option, exhibiting a level of self-interested short-sightedness that drives his opponents on the left nuts. But now, some of his fiercest critics want to draw a similar line over abortion funding. And so I have to ask: would the women that so many are fighting to defend be better off with a reformed system that doesn't provide insurance coverage for abortions, or with no reform at all? Because if this fight is pushed too far, those will be the choices.

I'm not saying that this isn't a fight worth having. If you believe it is, then fight! But as you do, keep the biggest possible picture in mind.

UPDATE: If you are going to fight, this line of attack from Markos (via Twitter) is a great one to take:

@markos: The thing the Stupak amendment is that I thought Republicans didn't want government between a doctor and patient.

[Updated to correct an absurd number of typos. Never blog before coffee!]

More Like This, Please!

Great Quotes From Posts I Missed

Some great quotes from some posts I collected over the past few weeks....

Nate Silver on polling data:

It is hard to weed out response bias -- people who are more interested in politics are more likely, maybe much more likely, to take a political survey. Although weighting for demographics can remove some of this response bias, it probably cannot remove all of it, or it may do so in weird ways that tend to cause the polling results to be less reliable. This is one reason why polls on policy issues tend to be less consistent with one another than polls on elections.

Matt Yglesias on political participation:

It’s probably worth emphasizing that a lot of the things that bien pensant types deplore—like this past summer of crazy rallies and political polarization more generally—are inextricably tied up with things that bien pensant types claim to want, namely an increased level of civic engagement. The politics of the late-19th century was incredibly vicious, polarized, and un-edifying. It was also an era of high turnout and booming newspapers.

Andrew Sullivan on the power of the idea of America:

America is exceptional not because it banished evil, not because Americans are somehow more moral than anyone else, not because its founding somehow changed human nature—but because it recognized the indelibility of human nature and our permanent capacity for evil. It set up a rule of law to guard against such evil. It pitted branches of government against each other and enshrined a free press so that evil could be flushed out and countered even when perpetrated by good men. The belief that when America tortures, the act is somehow not torture, or that when Americans torture, they are somehow immune from its moral and spiritual cancer, is not an American belief. It is as great a distortion of American exceptionalism as jihadism is of Islam. To believe that because the American government is better than Saddam and the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Americans are somehow immune to the same temptations of power that all flesh is heir to, is itself a deep and dangerous temptation. The power to torture is a case in point. Because torture can coerce truth, break a human being’s dignity, treat him as an expendable means rather than as a fragile end, it has a terrible power to corrupt. Torture is the ultimate expression of the absolute power of one individual over another; it destroys the souls of those who torture just as surely as it eviscerates the dignity of those who are its victims. And because torture is so awful, it also often requires a defensive embrace of it, a pride in it, an exaggeration of its successes.

Ezra Klein on the Senate:

Senators know each other. They're friendly with each other. They trust each other. So when Chuck Grassley told Max Baucus he wanted to work with him, Baucus trusted that Grassley would, and could, do so. After all, this was Chuck we were talking about! They're friends! When that eventually failed, a lot of excuses got made. Obama didn't give them enough time. The politics changed. Liberals just wouldn't compromise. But the fundamental reality was that senators act like individuals, but on big issues, they tend to vote like automatons. They never think they'll do that in advance, and they always come up with rationalizations for why they did it in that specific case. But that's what happens.

I'm convinced that we'd all be better off if legislators just assumed that everyone would vote with their party, and anyone who was willing to exchange a firm promise of support for a discrete set of changes could then come forward to make that deal. It would be sacrificing an important ideal, but the model would better fit the reality. And we'd waste a lot less time.

Matt Drudge on the announcement that the United States will not host the summer olympics:

Bad day for USA. Good day for GOP?

Eric Martin on Afghanistan:

The narrative of US forces as peace-bringers, and defenders of the virtuous, is an archetypal story, a common form of wartime propaganda prevalent amongst warring populations intent on buttressing their efforts with some moral undergirding (also, often detached from reality - see, ie, US armed support for the "good guys" in Central and South America, Southeast Asia and elsewhere). It's a good war, after all, and we are the good guys, defending the foreign born good guys, in pursuit of a common humanitarian good. While there are elements of truth to this characterization, the story begins to break down upon closer scrutiny - as touched on above. In truth, we fight wars to further our interests. Sometimes those align with local groups. If so, we champion their cause - often regardless of how "good" or "bad" that group is.

Not only is it the case that the continuation of our mission involves both intentionally and unintentionally killing thousands of actual Afghan people (that we are ostensibly there to protect), so too are the factions that we are championing far from the virtuous liberal-minded freedom fighters that the good guys vs. bad guys narrative demands.

A trial attorney (and Andrew Sullivan reader) on torture:

The interrogator told al-Rabiah:

“There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

Court Memorandum and Order, p. 41 (emphasis mine).

This was an agent of the United States saying this.

This was not a statement pulled from the transcripts of the Nuremburg trials, nor archival evidence taken from reports smuggled out of one of Stalin’s gulags. This was a statement made by an agent of this government less than 7 years ago to a detainee. The enormity of that is nearly incomprehensible.

But even worse – far worse – is the fact that the government would nevertheless still seek to convict based on the resulting confession.

To those of us who read that passage and who vowed and make it our vocation to serve and protect the Constitution of the United States, that fact is a gut-punch. For me and my colleagues, it literally took our breath away. It makes one wonder how far down into the abyss we have allowed ourselves to drop. And whether there is the political will to find our way out.

Wired's Chris Anderson on Terminator and the Singularity:

it stopped me in my tracks for a few minutes as I reflected on how amoral invention is. Technology wants to be invented and we are almost powerless to stop it. We are hard-wired to create the future, be it good or bad. Invention is its own master.

Last but certainly not least, this may be the coolest physics lesson ever:

And this is absolutely the most amazing prediction in the history of predictions:

They Ask, I Answer

Kevin Drum, channeling Jon Stewart, asks:

Why are Democrats so lame? ...They have a huge majority in the Senate, the public is strongly in favor of a public option, and yet....for some reason they can't round up the votes to pass it. Hell, they can't even round up a normal majority to pass it out of the Finance Committee, let alone a supermajority to overcome an eventual filibuster.

This one is simple. In the House, a strong public option has already passed. The House is the branch of our bicameral legislature designed to directly represent the people. In the Senate, it faces an uphill battle. Given that the Senate was designed to represent the states, and not the people, and as such is not even remotely representative of the will of the people, this makes perfect sense.

It isn't the Democrats that are the problem here. It is the constitution. Make the Senate more representative, or better yet get rid of it entirely, and you wouldn't face this problem.

History Doesn't Hurt My Brain

Stories like the one The Daily Show told last night are exactly, precisely why I love teaching politics:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Where the Riled Things Are
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Over the course of the 20th century, our government did a series of things that transformed our society for the better. Having come to accept those transformations as nothing more than "the way things are," we as a society came to take them for granted, eventually forgetting the role that government played in creating them in the first place. 

A vast majority of the American Southwest was a desert before the Bureaus of Land Management and Reclamation transformed it into one of the most prosperous and fertile regions in the world. But once the transformation was complete, the role of government was almost totally forgotten or ignored. Within a decade or two, that same region gave rise to modern anti-government conservatism, eventually leading to the piece Stewart highlights above. Sean Hannity has no idea what he's talking about. The farmers in that region don't understand their own history. And a teacher's job is never done.

Weekend Update

I don't expect to have any time to blog this weekend, and since its been awhile.... some thoughts:

+ Video of the Week: In case you haven't already seen it:

Josh Marshall responds:

With Sen. Kyl pointing out that men have no interest in having insurance cover child birth, no doubt women will note that they have little interest in covering prostate and testicular cancer. And surely men will get back into the act and want to get out of under the cost of covering breast cancer, which very few men get. Indeed, you can see how everyone should probably insist on special customized insurance policies which cover the ailments they plan on getting and avoid paying for the ones they don't. As long as everyone plans well and makes good predictions everyone should be able to save a lot of money.

+ The Paranoid Style: Hendrik Hertzberg is dead on in his description of the GOP as a party led not by politicians but by talk radio personalities. But the rest of this post? Nonsense. Anyone who thought that Obama wouldn't face this kind of backlash has forgotten the 2008 campaign. And the idea that "lunatic paranoia" has always been confined to the fringe is equally ridiculous. It only appeared to be on the fringe because that was where our top-down, elite driven media placed it. But it was always at the heart of the Southern Strategy, and the Southern Strategy is at the heart of Republican success for more than three decades. So much so, in fact, that the South is all they've got left.

But Hertzberg's conclusion is dead on:

The boorish South Carolina Republican who shouted “You lie!” at the President after he said, truthfully, that reform “would not apply to those who are here illegally” did the public weal a favor by underlining bipartisanship’s futility. A bill that reflects a necessary compromise among Democrats is bound to be stronger than one that reflects an unnecessary compromise between Democrats and Republicans. And that’s no lie.

What I don't understand is why people don't see that this was always understood by Obama's team as one of the possible outcomes of bipartisan outreach. Calling your opponents obstructionist is nothing more than name-calling if you don't first give them a chance to obstruct!

And - shocking! - although this seems to be something that neither our talking heads nor most of our elite bloggers understand, the American people get it. Greg Sargent reports on the results of a new CBS/NYT poll:

The poll finds that an overwhelming majority of 64% think Republicans are opposing Obama’s health care plans mostly for political reasons. But it also finds that an equally large number, 65%, say Democrats shouldn’t pass a bill without Republicans — even if they think it’s right for the country — and should instead compromise to win over some GOPers.

This shows, I think, that Democrats have convinced the public that the GOP wants Obama and Dems to fail at all costs. But they’ve failed to make the case to the public that GOP obstructionism may leave them no choice but to go it alone in order to realize reform.

Senator Chuck Schumer has been privately telling Dem colleagues that much more needs to be done to lay the political groundwork for doing health care alone through the “reconciliation” process, should it come to that. The numbers above suggest he’s right.

Greg frames that as a problem, but I don't see why. The Democrats have won the argument on its merits. They've also convinced the public that the Republicans aren't serious partners in reform. Now, and only now, can they move on to the final stage of convincing citizens that the GOP has left them no choice but to go it alone.

We're almost there, people. Almost there.... Oh, and for the record: I was right about what all the teabagging would do for public opinion. Oh ye of little faith....

+ Speaking of Talk Radio: Ezra Klein:

“In the course of a few years," writes Michael Gerson, "a fringe party was able to define a national community by scapegoating internal enemies; elevate a single, messianic leader; and keep the public docile with hatred while the state committed unprecedented crimes. The adaptive use of new technology was central to this achievement."

That party? The Nazis. That technology? Talk radio. But Gerson's subject is not talk radio or the Nazis, but the vast expanses of the Internet. "User-driven content on the Internet often consists of bullying, conspiracy theories and racial prejudice," writes Gerson, which is interesting, as I thought it consisted of porn and teenagers holding party cups. "The absolute freedom of the medium paradoxically encourages authoritarian impulses to intimidate and silence others," he continues. "The least responsible contributors see their darkest tendencies legitimated and reinforced, while serious voices are driven away by the general ugliness."

That doesn't describe the Internet I know (unless, for some reason, you don't think Autotune the News is a serious voice), but the Internet is big, and Gerson might visit parts I miss. "The exploitation of technology by hatred will never be eliminated," he concludes. "But hatred must be confined to the fringes of our culture -- as the hatred of other times should have been."

What's striking is that this doesn't really describe the Internet. Hateful voices remain on the fringe. And they stay on the fringe. The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe. Controlling a Web site or a blogspot domain is not like controlling a radio station or a television network.

Gerson's examples, in fact, come from comment threads, which virtually disproves his thesis. But there is a major medium where the hateful voices sit firmly in control of the content, and it's the same medium that begins Gerson's remarks: talk radio. And, to a lesser extent, cable news. That's where society's most hateful conspiracy theories sit and fester, where its most explosive lies are recounted and amplified, where its least responsible elites have control of the means of production. I don't worry about jewhater429, the 97th entrant in a comment thread. I worry about Beck and Limbaugh and Savage.

Look, this is really simple: Authoritarian political systems need hierarchical, top down systems of media to propagate their ideologies. Bottom up, decentralized networks are a direct threat to everything they stand for. You cannot build a system of absolute control atop something that is fundamentally uncontrollable.

Was the Nazi system built atop talk radio? Absolutely. Because talk radio is both hierarchical and centralized. It doesn't actually allow citizens to communicate with one another, or with their leaders. It, like TV, only makes it appear to others as if there is a conversation going on. And that appearance is part of what makes their system so seductive. It convinces you that you and your hatred are part of a vast, previously silent majority. But its a trick. An illusion. Nothing more than a funhouse mirror reflecting back a single image as if it were from a million unique sources.

"The beauty of the Internet is that it's pretty much all fringe." Think on that. Deeply. If you want to understand how the world has changed, you must understand this. Stop thinking of the world in 20th century mass broadcast terms. The center of the media universe is gone, and it is not coming back. In its place we now have a million centers. Like the ever expanding universe, no matter where you stand you are at the center, looking out on an infinite horizon that is moving away from you at the speed of light.

Gerson doesn't get it. Limbaugh doesn't get it. Beck doesn't get it. The empire they have built is an illusion. They scream into the void. Sometimes the void screams back. But in the end, all they are doing is screaming at themselves. Our national conversation? The real one that's happening between average citizens day in and day out? It is moving further and further away from them. Here's why:

+ It's About TIme: I'm really late getting to this one, but TNC had the best of all possible responses to the "Limbaugh blames high school bullies on Obama" ridiculousness:

For black people, the clear benefit of Obama is that he is quietly exposing an ancient hatred that has simmered in this country for decades. Rightly or wrongly, a lot of us grew tired of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, mostly because they presented easy foils for Limbaugh-land. Moreover, again rightly or wrongly, they were used to define all of us.

It's intensely grating to live say, in Atlanta, and have some dude in Harlem crowned as your unelected leader. It's even more grating if said dude's agenda seems, in large measure, come down to standing in front of cameras and tweaking his opponents. It's no mistake that O'Reilly and Sharpton would break bread together at Sylvia's--they feed each other.

But Barack Obama, bourgeois in every way that bourgeois is right and just, will not dance.He tells kids to study--and they seethe. He accepts an apology for an immature act of rudeness--and they go hysterical. He takes his wife out for a date--and their veins bulge. His humanity, his ordinary blackness, is killing them. Dig the audio of his response to Kanye West--the way he says, "He's a jackass." He sounds like one of my brothers. And that's the point, because that's what he is. Barack Obama refuses to be their nigger. And it's driving them crazy.

It's about time.

If everything is now the fringe, then there are no longer shadows in which demagogues can hide. Once upon a time they could mask their hatred by wearing a mask whenever they spoke to the wider world, only revealing their true natures when appearing before "friendly" audiences. But you cannot control who hears and sees you anymore. There still may be many publics, but the lines separating them are now so porous as to be virtually nonexistent.

TNC is right. None of this is new. What's changed is that it is all now being exposed. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it isn't the decentralized nature of our newly reborn public sphere. But if not this, what? What else explains this change if not our new grassroots system of communication?

+ The Coalition Cracks: The birthers and turning on one another. The talk radio hosts are turning on one another. This is what happens as a multi-decade coalition collapses into itself. And yes, as TNC just said, it is intensely gratifying to watch. Stay focused on the very long view and you'll see what I mean.

+ Making the Trains Run On Time: Speaking of the birthers, Glen Beck called them and their fellow travellers to DC a few weeks back, and a whole bunch of them came. Not a million. Not even close. But still... When they got back home, guess what? They complained that Metro - you know, the DC area's "public option" for ground transportation - wasn't properly prepared for their arrival. Because nothing says "die hard anti-tax conservative" like demanding low cost, high quality public transportation in the congressionally controlled District of "taxation without representation" Columbia. Morons.

+ Just Say No To PROPAGANDA: My "favorite" lowlight from last week's Texas Board of Ed meetings on rewriting the US history curriculum.

Propaganda is a "negative" so we shouldn't use the word, she says. She even cites our nation's experience under President Wilson as the reason for her plea. Ummm... OK. For the record:

Pres. Wilson hired George Creel to head the United States Committee on Public Information during World War I. Here is how Creel defined his mission:

Not propaganda as the Germans defined it, but propaganda in the true sense of the word, meaning the "propagation of faith."

But since that word is too "negative" (you know, like on the SAT's!), students in Texas won't be allowed to hear it. Brilliant.

+ Somewhere Mr. Jefferson Is Smiling: If I had to describe my religious beliefs by fitting them into a single tradition, I'd almost certainly say I am a deist. I would have thought I was largely alone in this. But wow... as many as 1 in 5 of my students would be right there with me.

You want to know what the Founders really thought about God? Start here. If you understand what you find there - and much more importantly, what you do not find - you'll be a long way towards understanding the faith of our fathers.

+ Tipping Points: There are 9 climate change tipping points. All of them appear to be irreversible. For those who want to go deep into the weeds, Science has an in-depth set of articles on CO2 sequestration. Sadly, you either need a subscription or access to a university library. Here's the conclusion for those who cannot click thru:

On the 10-year time scale, it is not technology, but legal permission, business development, and public opinion that will determine whether CCS experiments and demonstration plants are built sufficiently rapidly for CCS to be deployed in 2020. On the 20-year time scale, these initial demonstrations must enable a new CCS industry to be born. Low-cost reliable capture at clusters of CCS power plants must emerge, and national pipe networks must be developed, delivering to aquifer storage capacity that must have been validated. CCS also needs to be built and operated in developing economies with high national but low per capita emissions. If CCS is difficult to afford now in Western economies, then it is even more so in India and China. Additional payments for CCS demonstrations will accelerate the above-mentioned actions.

Simply pricing carbon in a market is not enough to encourage CCS or to enforce decarbonization. During peak demand, venting of CO2 will be commercially beneficial. If the price of carbon is set very high to avoid such effects, that taxes the whole economy, not just dirty electricity. Additional policy levers will be needed to enforce CCS operation. Lessons from previous clean-up technologies applied to power plants—such as SOx and NOx removal from flue gases—show that voluntary codes do not work, but clearly signed and enforced rule changes do.

New power plants can now be built "capture ready," to be converted when CCS is established. This is the death-or-glory test of governments, as there is industry pressure to build new coal and gas plants now, increasing CO2 emissions, and perhaps convert to CCS later. Substantial difficulties can be anticipated in government-enforced plant-by-plant conversion. Another regulatory route is the introduction of emissions performance standards, expressed as amount of CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity produced. These standards are conceptually simple and directly address the issue. Care will be needed to avoid unintentionally incentivizing gas-fuelled plants, which are not fitted with CCS but lock-in CO2 emissions. A permitted emission amount decreases through time, enforcing innovation. A key difficulty is that firm rules and dates cannot be applied to technologies that do not yet exist.

Coal and gas combustion can become more sustainable. To change black fuel into green energy, the acceleration and scale-up of CCS is required, from tens of power plants within 5 years, to hundreds of large plants by 2025, and then to thousands of small power plants by 2035. This progression can defer climate change problems and buy time. To do this, bold policies of clear vision to include CCS emissions reductions must be explicit. CCS may be the single most effective and direct climate action available. It is not yet too late, but good words need to be matched by hard actions and good money; the present level of committed funds is too low and needs a 4- to 10-fold increase in order for this climate mitigation to be successful.

+ Julian Sanchez gets positively medieval on FireDogLake and other lefty blogs cheering on the DEms get tough approach to DOJ hearings:

So it looks as though Al Franken reading the Fourth Amendment to DOJ’s David Kris has blown up on lefty and/or privacy-friendly blogs. Look, I appreciate the sentiment, I really do.  I want to see Senators reciting the Fourth Amendment to representatives of the executive branch every time there’s a hearing.  I want them to tattoo it on their legislative aides’ foreheads and have it played as a background soundtrack in Dirksen like subliminal Brave New World programming. But for the serious? David Fucking Kris does not need to be schooled on the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirements by Stuart Smalley.  I spent Thursday afternoon reading the chapter David Kris wrote on how the Fourth Amendment’s particularity requirement applies to FISA taps in his ginormous reference book on national security surveillance.  If  the name doesn’t ring a bell, Kris is the stone cold killer who put a bullet in the head of the legal sophistry invoked to justify Bush’s warrantless wiretap program without breaking a sweat. Alternatively, you may recall him as the guy responsible for exposing the bogus claim that investigators needed broad new powers in order to be able to eavesdrop on wholly foreign conversations. Or the guy who torpedoed the dishonest technological argument for expanding FISA wireline intercept powers.

His job is now to defend the renewal of roving wiretap authority in foreign intel investigations. But you know what? There should be roving wiretap authority in foreign intel investigations. No sane person says there shouldn’t.  No, really. Call the ACLU or CDT and ask. The surveillance hawks want the debate to be “should this power exist or not?” because—since it should—that means they win. The real question is whether there should be clearer limits on roving applications to ensure that if a warrant gets to “rove” across communications “facilities” (e.g. disposable cell phone numbers) you at least have to specify an individual target precisely and follow robust, enforceable minimization procedures to guarantee you’re only picking up your target’s communications. When I hear Kris saying we shouldn’t implement that reform, I’ll shed a single sad-clown tear for the smart man we’ve lost to the Sarlacc Pit of government work. What I’m actually hearing so far are offers to work with Congress to fix the insane legislation that—who now?—oh yes, Congress passed when a different bunch were running DOJ.

Memo to Democratic legislators: The people there now are relative friendlies.  They’re extending olive branches, which you should probably stop setting on fire. You’re just giving Bushie dead-enders an excuse to paint this as “civil liberties hippies vs. the Brave Americans Fighting Terror.” I watched John Conyers spend a good chunk of Tuesday’s hearing on the House side being a condescending dick to Todd Hinnen, one of the fiercest critics of Bush-era detention and interrogation policies. This just leaves smarmtastic bottom-feeders like Jim Sensenbrenner and Jeff Sessions to cast themselves as solicitous Grima Wormtongues by contrast. It makes for an awesome YouTube clip on Firedoglake, right up until the part where you fucking lose.

Let’s write a new script.  I call it “Civil libertarians and sober intel people trying to craft good policy together, thereby depriving psychotic executive branch maximalists of the cover they need for their fearmongering.”  Not, admittedly, a particularly pithy title.  It’ll never be a Regnery bestseller.  But we’re talking C-SPAN here; work with me people.

+ The Future Is Crowdsourced: People are often skeptical when I tell them that crowdsourcing is the future of commerce. Not e-commerce. Commerce. But check it out: CBS Radio agrees with me. They're getting set to launch a Last.FM powered radio station. No DJs. Just the wisdom of the crowd. If that doesn't kill off satellite radio, nothing will.

Weekend Bits + Bobs

Some things that I didn't get around to commenting on this week....

+ Ron Brownstein parses the Census data on life during the Bush years:

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet.

So for what should be the last time: trickle down economics is a pathetic excuse for a joke of an economic philosophy.

+ O'Reilly and Beck are clueless. We all know that, right? Doesn't matter. Watching them stumble their way into unintentional idiocy is still fun. Go check Attackerman and see what I mean. Brilliant.

+ Andrew Sullivan on the Tea Bag Brigades:

Here's a test: when you see as many posters lambasting Bush and Cheney and the GOP for getting us into this crisis in the first place, I will take these people seriously as genuine small government non-partisan conservatives and independents. In so far as they can pressure the Congress and president into taking the debt seriously in the future, good for them. In so far as they are proposing no practical solutions, and echo truly disturbing hatred of a president barely eight months in office, facing huge crises on all fronts, they are doing their own cause far more harm than good.

Steve Benen piles on:

As for what the overwhelmingly-white crowd had to say, I still think these protests could benefit from some focus. We learned today that right-wing activists don't like government spending (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers spent freely), don't like the size of government (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers increased the size of government), don't like deficits and debt (except when Bush and Republican lawmakers added trillions to the nation's tab), and don't like czars (except when Bush used dozens of them to implement his agenda).

They don't like health-care reform, though it's not clear why. They don't like gun control, though it's not clear why they think anyone's coming for their firearms. They also don't like taxes, immigration, abortion, Muslims, the U.N., and the idea of "socialism," though their understanding of the word is tenuous at best.

In other words, the point of today's rally was to let the country know there are a lot of right-wing activists with right-wing beliefs. We knew that before today, but I guess they wanted to remind us.

This is precisely why its been many decades since protests from the left were taken seriously. So yes, although it is a problem that the Washington Post considers these loons worthy of front page treatment, but over time that will fade. With all of this Nazi nonsense, they are delegitimizing themselves. As always, stay focused on the long view.

+ I wonder if the results of this study don't help to explain a good bit of the economic narcissism of the Baby Boom years:

[I]ndividuals growing up during recessions tend to believe that success in life depends more on luck than on effort, support more government redistribution, but are less confident in public institutions.

Boomers came of age during one of the greatest (both in terms of size and length - economic booms in all of human history. The post WWII boom was a direct result of government policy - think the Marshall Plan, the GI Bill, and even to some extent the policy of containment - but the Boomers, unlike their parents, never really understood that. To them, government wasn't what had created the boom; it was what had caused its end. Thus, the solution was to get government out of the business of regulation. And the result? Go back and reread that Brownstein piece.

I mean, even uber-conservative economist Friedrich Hayek understood things more clearly than the Boomer conservatives he supposedly inspired.

"Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist the individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance - where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks - the case for the state's helping to organize a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong... Wherever communal action can mitigate disasters against which the individual can neither attempt to guard himself nor make the provision for the consequences, such communal action should undoubtedly be taken," - Friedrich Hayek, The Road To Serfdom (Chapter 9).

+ Here's another take on the Obama as Community Organizer theme:

President Obama started his career as a community organizer. Which means he is used to (and most excellently skilled at) running an organization by “working for consensus”, a set of skills quite different from the ones needed for running the more usual top-down business/military/GOP organizations. In an authoritarian organization, for better or worse, at the end of the day what the Big Kahuna says goes is what goes. Even if he’s the best, most open-minded Big Kahuna in the universe, heading up a team of uniquely gifted & prickly talents – he can ask for input, he can get input he hasn’t asked for, but when hammer meets nail it’s the Big Kahuna’s hammer that gets to choose the nail. And the other members of the team are always aware of this reality; barring things get so bad that grenades get rolled into the colonel’s tent, no private in the army forgets for long that the colonel is the one setting the agenda.

In a consensus-driven organization, on the other hand, everybody must have a chance to give an opinion… even when their opinion is stupid, crazy, laughable, and wrong. Being a successful community organizer means knowing that the local Mr. Tinfoil or Ms. Crystal-Bunny will show up at every godsdamned meeting and waste everybody else’s time ranting about black helicopters or the necessity for regular high colonics. A large part of the job of being a successful community organizer is ensuring that the resident nutball gets a respectful hearing without being permitted to permanently derail the meeting. Because, sad as it may seem, the rest of us skittish flaky primates want to know (even when we don’t articulate it) that “our guy” will take our ideas seriously, even when we’re not sure our ideas are worth taking seriously. When Obama stands up before Congress and explains that his health care reform proposals will involve neither death panels or government-paid abortions (unfortunately, IMO), he is reassuring the 80% of his audience who have no strong feelings about either topic that he will, at another time, be open to their opinions, however formless and/or gormless. This is important, even when it means that the meetings keep running into overtime and that us sane people have to listen to an awful lot of extremely random crap.

After eight years of the Cheney Regency’s “My way or the Gitmo highway” authoritarianism, anything less forceful than sloganeering and explicit threats seems like pretty weak sauce to those of us who’ve been paying attention. The question, of course, is whether President Obama’s target audience—the vast quivering voting-eligible majority that isn’t ideologically wed to either Invisible-Hand-of-the-Marketplace-Uber-Alles or Medicare-for-All-Americans-Immediately —considers his speech, and his administration’s work over the next few weeks and months, as sensible compromise or timid obfuscation. Perhaps we’d get better proposals and a more useful final bill if President Obama would channel his Inner Authoritarian a little more, but his gift for seeking consensus seems to be why Obama is President and certain other people are not. Maybe all the histronics are simply a necessary part of the process of committing democracy.

+ Yet more proof that Cheney's rules were a danger to national security. This one comes from our staunchest ally, the Brits.

+ Tom Schaller details the political history of South Carolina:

I, for one, am not much surprised that such bleating-heart conservatism came from South Carolina. I mean, c'mon: This is a state that, more than any other, has been resisting progress for the Union--and the Union itself--since, well, before there even was a United States.

This is a state whose slaveowners pressured Thomas Jefferson to remove condemnations of slavery from the Declaration of Independence. This is a state where loyalists rallied by the British as part of their "Southern Strategy"--the Brits' term, not mine--recaptured South Carolina from the patriots in 1780 as part of a plan to flip SC and Georgia and roll northward from there to smother the very revolution that birthers and tea partiers and Glenn Beck sychophants point to today as inspiration. This is the state that gave us senator and Vice President John C. Calhoun, who advocated state “nullification” of federal powers. This is also the state which became the first to secede from the Union to start the Confederacy—and even threatened to secede from the Confederacy when the other southern states refused to join its calls to re-open the slave trade. This is also the state that boasts of Congressman Preston Brooks, who in 1856 bloodied abolitionist senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane. (Top that, Rep. Wilson!)

All ancient history, you say? Not so fast.

Well into the 20th century, this was the state where black citizens observed the Fourth of July mostly alone. Why? Because--get this--the vast majority of whites preferred instead to celebrate Confederate Memorial Day, May 10, a practice that continued into the early 50s, which means there are some very senior South Carolina citizens who skipped a few Fourths back in their early years. (Why isn't Sean Hannity asking them to brandish their flag pins?) In 1920, this was the state whose legislature rejected the women’s suffrage amendment, only ratifying it for symbolic purposes a half century later, in 1969. In 1948, this was the state where the legislature declared President Harry Truman’s new civil rights commission “un-American,” and that offered segregationist favorite son Strom Thurmond as the so-called Dixiecrat party's presidential nominee. And it was this state's Clarendon County, not Topeka, that was the original case that later became--and only after political intervention by Gov. James Byrnes to replace SC with KS--the landmark Brown v. Board of Education ruling. Is anyone surprised that this was the state that brought the first court challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act?

Joe Wilson's outburst? Puh-lease. Merely a peep, folks. Merely a peep.

+ And then there's this - Michael Steele as the Humpty milk monitor:

+ Finally, I'm at a loss for words on this one. And no, it isn't meant as a joke.

This Week's Must Read

Ezra Klein on "Profit And The Insurance Industry."

He's right in his conclusion: many, many people on the left are fighting the wrong fight.

What TNC Said

TNC on Obama's use of the phrase "reasonable Republicans":

Interesting video from GMA. Obama, again, maintains that there are conservatives who he can work with, and who he hopes to work this. I think when you've got Obama shouting out Chuck Grassley and then Grassley turning around and running against health care reform, that sort of sentiment drives liberals crazy. I think Obama should have taken, and should take, the hysteria a lot more seriously. Stupid is seductive--and it kills.

That said, I think the "reasonable Republicans" line is a smart one--as long as legislation gets done. If you do get bipartisan support, great. If not, when time comes to run again, you get to cite all the times you tried, and decry your opponents obstructionism.

I've said this numerous times since the election, and I'l say it again here: You cannot demonstrate that your opponents are negotiating in bad faith unless you first try seriously negotiate with them.

The odd thing thing, for me at least, is that people on the left seem to get this when it comes to international relations. It is the left, for example, that insists we must negotiate with Iran. Why? Because it just might work, and we certainly won't know unless we try. And if it doesn't? In that case, they argue, we'll be much more likely to rally the world behind us to do whatever it is that we decide must be done.

Substitute "Republicans" for Iran "the American people" for "the world" and you'll see what I'm getting at here.

Democracy is supposed to be noisy. Its supposed to require hard work. Problems and questions become political precisely because they are contentious. Arguments can only be won by having them. You think you know the answer? Great! Come back to me when you've convinced your friends and neighbors and I'll congratulate you. Until then, I'm just going to keep nagging you to get to work....

UPDATE: As if on cue... Greg Sargent reports:

Top White House adviser Linda Douglass told a closed-door meeting of House Dem press secretaries yesterday that a key aspect of Obama’s speech will be to frame the current moment as offering a stark choice between true reform and the status quo, a person in the room recounts.

That’s perhaps not terribly surprising, but it’s interesting for a couple reasons. First, that framing left some in the room thinking the speech may help lay the groundwork for Dems to go it alone on health care if necessary, the person present says. If Obama can persuade Americans that Republicans, or reform foes in general, endorse doing nothing, it will make it easier for Dems to say they had no choice but to proceed alone.

Second, it suggests Obama may return to a refrain that served him so well during the campaign — change versus more of the same — only this time, the implicit target may be current Congressional Republicans.

That last bit should make clear why this is all so predictable. It worked for the man during the election. Why wouldn't he follow the same playbook here.

Step One: Let people have their say.
Step Two: Let people wear themselves out.
Step Three: Identify allies and adversaries.
Step Four: Define consensus
Step Five: Success!

By my read, we're not at step four, and should hit step five well before Thanksgiving.

Weekend Update

Last weekend's video project got me way behind on blogging. Here are some things I missed that still deserve attention:

+ Henry Farrell, who should get it, doesn't:

The real worry for the Netroots is that Obama is undermining their particular blend of online politics. He has taken the parts of Netroots politics that he likes (online organizing and fundraising), while dumping the parts that he doesn't (a strongly confrontational politics and emphasis on bottom-up decision making). There isn't much room for the Netroots and vigorous online partisanship in Obama's plans for the future of the Democratic Party...While the Netroots have had genuine impact, the president they helped to elect has no use for their style of politics, even as he steals some of their tricks.

At a recent blogger conference call (can't find a link, sorry!) Obama encouraged Netroots bloggers to go out and put pressure on him. Farrell's description would suggest that this action should be seen as Obama "dumping" the Netroots, but I don't see that at all. I see that as Obama recognizing that an independent ally can be far more powerful than a dependent one, and that given the decentralized nature of the movement and the medium, it wouldn't be possible to co-opt it anyway. Go read Al Giordano on this. And when you're done, read him again. And then think on this:

The importance of the Netroots and the blogosphere is not its ability to influence the media, nor is it its ability to force politicians to do any particular thing. Its about citizens reengaging directly with one another. The story isn't vertical; it's horizontal. And its not an ending, but a beginning.

Over the course of the 20th century, the growing dominance of mass media broadcasting networks turned politics into a spectator sport. Why, for example, did the Supreme Court hold in Buckley v. Valeo that money equals speech? Because in a society where the most influential and important forms of political speech take place on scarce, for profit broadcast networks, you cannot speak if you cannot pay. In that world, speaking and spending are essentially indistinguishable. Mass broadcasting networks turned everything they touched into a commodity, even politics.

But the Internet so drastically reduces the cost of speech that this cost is rapidly moving in most circumstances towards zero. And that's blowing that old system apart. We aren't there yet. But 10 or 20 years from now? I can only barely begin to imagine how different things will be. Thankfully, only one part of one chapter of my dissertation will be that forward looking, so I don't have to imagine too hard...

+ This may be the single best thing I've ever read about Obama's style of leadership. Via Kevin Drum, who found this in a comment at James Joyner's site:

“He operates like a community organizer: let people have their say, let them wear themselves out, then step in and define the consensus.”

This week's address before Congress will be the test of that final step. No one has ever tried this form of presidential leadership. I believe it will work. Obama believes it will work. But we don't yet know. One thing is clear, however. Given that it is premised on letting everyone exhaust themselves while having there say, we should see all the noise of the past few weeks as part of this new process. As TJ would have said, let us first hear all sides of the debate, and then let us decide how to proceed. We must understand both the truths and the falsehoods we face if we are to proceed honestly and intelligently.

I realize that a tremendous amount of print and teevee time has been spent on the nuttiness of the past few weeks, but in the end I see no reason for all the pesimissim. Transforming our health care system is going to be hard. Really hard. It's not going to happen in a single fight, nor in a single bill. So what if it takes a "trigger" to get a public option? The thing wasn't going to kick in for a few years anyway, so what difference does that make? Because if the reformers are right and the private sector is totally incapable of reforming itself, then the targets won't be hit and the public option will kick in. Only at that point, instead of a political fight, it will be based on a data-driven analysis. And this is bad how precisely?

Moreover, the noise and debate of this past month have accomplished something incredibly important. The fringe - the birthers, deathers, tenthers, etc - is now no longer in the shadows. Throughout most of our history, the paranoid style of American politics has always been with us. In the past, however, it usually lived in the shadows. The Birchers, as just one example, were too "weird" and "fringe" for Cronkite and his friends to cover, so they were ignored. But ignoring them didn't make them go away, did it? They were still there, only most of their citizens knew nothing about them. And how are you supposed to combat that sort of ignorance if you don't even know it exists?

Or take the militia movements of the 1990s. They were ignored, until one of their members blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City. Wouldn't it have been better for them to have gotten some attention before that?

At this point the fringe is very obviously the fringe, and so long as they don't actually take up arms against their fellow countrymen and women, their rantings don't really amount to much. It's crazy, but no crazier than what went on for most of the 19th century (thus the importance of the aside in the last sentence).

Could the industrial-era, mass broadcast media do a better job? Absolutely. Are they making the problem worse than it might otherwise be? In one sense, yes. But in another, no. Only by brining the darkness into the light can it be defeated.

Matt Yglesias gets us part of the way there with this:

I guess one thing I would say to this is that the change in the media is part of a much broader shift in American society. Technological and economic change has just made authority weaker and tended to fragment perspectives. If you think of, for example, popular music things like MTV and Top 40 radio stations don’t have the level of cultural power that they once did. It’s extremely easy for people to bury themselves in a subculture of their liking and not worry too much about the mainstream. Or maybe you ignore the dross that is prime time television programming and rely on cable channels and Netflix instead. Walter Cronkite broadcast at a time when when big cultural players could really run things in a way they can’t these days. That shift has had a lot of consequences, some good and some bad.

This argument is fine so far as it goes, but from my perspective it doesn't go nearly far enough. The mass broadcast era of which MTV, Top 40, and Cronkite were a part is only one era of American politics. Before that, we lived in a super-fragmented, hyper-partisan world. Before the telegraph, every community was a niche community. That's the story of most of human history, in fact. Teevee is an aberration in the normal patterns of human communication, not a baseline against which all things must be measured.

So how did people figure out what was and was not truth in the world before it was handed down from on high via the talking heads on the teevee? The truth, the only truth, is that they had to work for it. To learn. To seek. To strive. To question. In the end, that's all there is.

I mean, c'mon people.... Yglesias is right: even books aren't fact checked. It was all a myth, this whole "truth can be delivered to us as a pre-packaged commodity" thing. It was never real. Look past the myth to the historical record and you'll see that. Give me another 12-16 months, and I'll hand you a book that will present that argument to you. After that, it's on you. As it always has been.

+ Which brings me to this from Ezra:

...before the media reported the facts, they hyped the lies. There are a lot of things the average American doesn't know about. Before Sarah Palin talked about death panels, for instance, no one knew about Sen. Johnny Isakson's quiet crusade to persuade Medicare beneficiaries to adopt living wills. It did not lead every newscast and it was not reported in every paper. This despite the fact that Isakson (R-Ga.), unlike Palin, has a vote on health-care reform.

It is true that Palin's statements eventually got fact-checked. The New York Times, in particular, spoke clearly and forcefully, albeit well after the controversy had begun dominating the coverage. But the world is full of lies. There aren't enough reporters on the planet to fact-check them all. That's okay, as most lies aren't reported. Stories about the Obamas heading to Martha's Vineyard do not have to contend with stories about a crank who thinks they're really heading to a secret rejuvenation chamber in the Himalayas.

Long before the media ever fact-checks a debate, they construct it. Piece by piece, bit by bit. There is not, however, a whole lot of substantive news on any given day, even as health-care reform remains the central issue before Congress. So they cover the controversy. They cover the lies and the untruths and the angry ads. Sometimes they fact-check these documents and sometimes they don't, but it probably doesn't much matter in the long run: For the past few weeks, the casual consumer of news has heard about death panels and illegal immigrants and skyrocketing deficits and violent town halls. They may not believe all those things. But they assume they're part of the national conversation for a reason, and, quite naturally, they recoil from the center of it.

Media organizations must publish new content if they are to attract an audience. The easiest way to do this is to cover world events as if they are some sort of endless stream of consciousness. And now, this! And then this! And over there, that! And this too! And wait, what about this? [See E.J. Dionne for more on this phenomenon.]

But there is a way around this, should news organizations make that their goal. Rather assume that readers are following every jot and tittle of a story, they could instead recognize that most people only have a very vague sense of the details of the background of each story. Rather than shun recaps as redundant, they could instead embed them deeply into each and every story on a subject. In a world of print scarcity, that was impossible. Now, its not. News stories no longer need to be self-contained units. On the web there is no scarcity. It costs you nothing to embed links to background your news organization produces (and hopefully continually updates!) for any given story.

So far as I know, no one - not even the blogosphere! - is doing this right now. And I cannot for the life of me understand why. Aren't there any public interest groups or foundations that want to do something like this? And if not, why not?

If only I had more time... And money...

In the meantime, this from Ezra (via TNC) isn't quite right:

This is the market getting more efficient. This is the market learning how to deliver more of what people want (Sarah Palin) and less of what they don't want (the difficulties of adjusting Medicare payment rates). If policy stories begin swamping servers, people will hire more policy reporters. But there's not much evidence of that happening. That's not to say there's no room for substantive policy coverage. But the more eyeballs matter, the less substantive coverage there'll be, and I don't think it'll be the fault of reporters. A lot of the policy coverage that happens right now exists not because the audience wants it, but because the media decides they need it. As the market becomes competitive, that type of reportorial paternalism will become less and less viable.

But this assumes that people's preferences for news are created independent of the media environment in which they live. And that's just not true. In the 19th century world of partisan presses, people participated in politics first, read about it in the papers second, and then returned to participate with whatever new information they had just acquitted third. In the 20th century world of industrial strength mass broadcasting, people watched politics first, and, well... often there was no second. In that environment, is it any wonder that people showed preferences for news stories that treated politics as if it was a spectator sport. After all, for most people it was!

But now we're moving into a new world, one where parallel horizontal communications networks will dominate human communication patterns. We're moving back, I believe, to a system where people participate first and watch second. It will take years, perhaps even decades, before we see all the ramifications of this, if for no other reason than that the older generations will have to die off. (Yes, death is inevitable, and it does produce change).

But the early signs of a very profound change are already around us. I mean, c'mon... when was the last time this country spent the better part of a month talking about town hall meetings. Think on that. Don't let the ancient novelty of that pass you buy.

While you are doing that, some other random bits and bobs....

+ Van Jones. My opinion? As a political issue, it doesn't matter. Glenn Beck dug up some silly dirt on the guy, and he resigned. So what? Inside the Village its a big story. But to the 300+ million Americans who don't live in DC its totally irrelevant. Both because his position wasn't all that important, and because they don't have the first clue who Jones is. It's a sideshow. Just like Glenn Beck.

This is a sideshow. Don't be distracted. Fight back, but on the terrain most favorable to you. Van Jones isn't the point. The public option isn't the point. What's at stake here is far bigger than either of them. Stay focused on what matters. And always remember, this is a campaign, not a single battle. We won't win every one. The fight wouldn't be worth fighting if it were that easy.

+ And this stupid "children must not be forced to listen to speeches by the President" nonsense. Yes, its dumb. Yes, its hypocritical. But let's be honest: its also totally predictable. When conservatives impose their ideology on schools (evolution is from teh devil!) they believe they are speaking the truth, so it isn't from their point of view indoctrination. When they claim you must support the president in everything he does, they mean the presidents they consider legitimate. They weren't making universal arguments. Everything about their claims is situational and relativistic. It always has been.

Recognize that. Admit it. And then call bullshit. On your blog. Via Twitter. In newspapers. And on the radio. We all have soapboxes. Use them. Truth isn't handed down from on high. It must be fought for. If not you, who?

Don't worry about calling the liars liars. Just focus on how their words are lies. Tell a better, more truthful story and you will win. Change the metaphor, change the world.

+ There's a poll showing George Allen could make a comeback in VA? Don't believe the hype. What it actually shows is that people have forgotten what it was that Allen actually did. A campaign would remind them of that.

+ Pres. Bush picked the guy who wrote Dow 36,000 to be the founding executive director of his new think tank? This cannot possibly be true, can it? God really does have one hell of a sense of humor....

+ You know all that nonsense about how torture "saved live" and "made us safe." Here's an interesting twist on that: Despite extensive torture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave us nothing on al Qaeda's leadership. Nothing. I wonder what would have happened had we interrogated him with the techniques that we know actually work?

+ If you didn't read Ta-Nehisi Coates's masterful series recounting his first trip to the Civil War battlefields of the South, you really need to correct that. Parts one, two, three, and four.

Why Newspapers Are Dying

WaPo Ombudsman Andrew Alexander looks at his paper's health care coverage and comes away seriously unimpressed:

The Post publishes health-care reform stories almost every day as it tracks the twists and turns of the epic debate. So it's surprising to hear from so many readers who ask: Why hasn't The Post explained what this is all about?

"Your paper's coverage continues in the 'horse race' mode," complained Bill Byrd of Falls Church. "Who's up, who's down . . . political spin, personal political attacks.

"How I would love to read more actual journalism on this issue," he e-mailed.

Make no mistake, The Post has produced some stellar health-care coverage. It's exposed heavy industry campaign contributions to key members of Congress who are drafting legislation. It's revealed those with personal investments in corporations that could be affected by the health-care laws they write. And it's burrowed into thorny questions about who should be authorized to deny patient requests for expensive but non-critical medical care.

However, readers say that too many other stories have been about process or politics. That's coverage The Post must own, of course. Washington is filled with policy wonks and decision-makers.

But readers seem to be saying: What about the rest of us? Over the past month, dozens have called or e-mailed to urge more explanatory journalism.

Many have said that Post stories routinely assume a foundation of knowledge that they simply don't have. Some said that they don't understand basic terms like "public option" or "single payer." They want primers, not prognostications. And they're craving stories on what it means for ordinary folks and their families.

In my examination of roughly 80 A-section stories on health-care reform since July 1, all but about a dozen focused on political maneuvering or protests. The Pew Foundation's Project for Excellence in Journalism had a similar finding. Its recent month-long review of Post front pages found 72 percent of health-care stories were about politics, process or protests.

"The politics has been covered, but all of this is flying totally over the heads of people," said Trudy Lieberman, a contributing editor to Columbia Journalism Review, who has been tracking coverage by The Post and other news organizations. "They have not known from Day One what this was about."

It's not for lack of interest. About 45 percent of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press recently said they have been following the health-care story more closely than any other.

But nearly half of those surveyed this month in a nationwide poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation said they are "confused" about reform plans.

I've titled this post "Why Newspapers Are Dying" in response to the paragraph that I've put in bold. Readers - you know, the people who pay for the paper, either in their subscriptions or in the advertisers they attract? - want information about policy. But because the Post also feels it "must" serve a tiny audience of policymakers and wonks, and because it believes it "must own" coverage about them, it covers almost nothing but the horse race aspect of things.

But why "must" the Post "own" this coverage? Alexander doesn't say. Most likely he assumes the answer is obvious. The problem is that I have absolutely no clue what the answer is..

What would happen if the Post abandoned the coverage of the game in favor of stories that educated readers about the issues? There's no shortage of other news outlets providing similar coverage: CQ, The Hill, Politico, etc. If the Post didn't provide that information, it wouldn't disappear. Nor, for that matter, would the audience it attracts. Does Alexander really think that policymakers would stop reading the Post, the only legitimate daily in DC, if it primarily offered substantive coverage of the issues?

Finally, to admit the Post "must own" this type of coverage is to admit upfront that the Post must allow political actors to set the newspaper's agenda. If they do it, it must be covered. If they say it, it must be reported. "The Post is here," Alexander is essentially saying, "to act as stenographer for government officials and political actors."

Alexander admits that readers want substance, but in response offers that his paper has no choice but to do what it is doing. It must, in essence, ignore the needs of the audience it supposedly serves in favor of the people it covers.

You want to know why the Post is dying? That's why.

On Polling Data

Remember how a few days back I warned you to ignore any and all polling data on public policy? This is a perfect example of why. Nate Silver explains::

A new survey by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates for the AARP reveals widespread uncertainty about the nature of the "public option" -- a government-run health insurance policy that would be offered along with private policies in the newly-created health insurance exchanges. Just 37 percent of the poll's respondents correctly identified the public option from a list of three choices provided to them

The other 63%? They either thought that the plan was to create a British-styled NHS (i.e. socialism!), create a network of co-ops, or they had no idea. And that last group was a full 23% of the people surveyed.

Think that's bad? Nate explains why you aren't thinking hard enough:

This should serve as something of a reality check for people on both sides of the public option debate. If the respondents had simply chosen randomly among the three options provide to them, 33 percent would have selected the correct definition for the public option. Instead, only 37 percent did (although 23 percent did not bother to guess). This is mostly a debate being had among policy elites and the relatively small fraction of the public that is highly knowledgeable and engaged about health care reform; for most others, the details are lost on them.

This is also why relatively small changes in wording can trigger dramatic shifts in support for the public option, which has been as high as 83 percent in some polls and as low as 35 percent in others depending on who is doing the polling and how they're asking the questions. You don't see those sorts of discrepancies when polling about, say, gay marriage or the death penalty, where the options are a little bit more self-evident.

And the worst part? This is an Internet poll, which means these people actively self-selected into the sample.

Repeat after me: Polling data on public policy options is useless. It must be ignored.

I'll leave you to ponder why this means we're exceedingly lucky that we live in a republic, and not a democracy.

His Greatest Political Failure

At this point in the news cycle, there's not much I can add about Kennedy that hasn't already been written. So rather than offer yet another take on this great man's life, I'll simply say this:

Kennedy considers his greatest political failure to have been not making a deal with Nixon in the early 1970s on national health care. What Nixon proposed wasn't perfect, but in retrospect, the decision to hold out for something closer to the liberal idea of perfect meant that this nation went more than a generation without any reform at all. A desire for perfection, he came to see, should never be allowed to become the enemy of the good. Take the best deal you can get, and then work like hell to make it better every day of the rest of your life. That's how change happens in this country. As you remember the man, keep that lesson in mind.