The Political Doctor

Let Newt be Newt

2012-01-25T21:50:00.003-05:00

Just thought y'all should know that Newt Gingrich says we'd have a permanent base on the moon by the end of a second Gingrich term.

This is a clear example of why a Newt Gingrich nomination doesn't scare me in the least. It's a long way to November, and Newt is utterly incapable of not saying a bunch of stupid shit between now and then.

Romney's big fumble

2012-01-19T22:03:00.002-05:00

It's stunning how bad this answer is for Romney. He says, directly:

“I’m not suggesting these people are doing that but I know that Democrats will go after me on that basis and that’s why I want to release these things all at the same time."

Well, that's nice. Your tax return is:
1. Something Democrats will attack you on; and,
2. Something which, due to the damage it may cause you, something which must be handled in a certain way; and
3. Something you won't tell us what is until April, when the nomination will be wrapped up.

Huh, that's interesting. I think I'd have to insist, were I a Republican voter, that you go ahead and tell me right fucking now. It's not like you don't have the records already. It's just a matter of getting them out of a file and slapping them on the desk of an AP reporter or whatever.

Catastrophically bad day for Romney today.

Just throwin' this out there

2012-01-19T21:37:00.003-05:00

If:
1. Republican voters have proven in recent years that they'll vote for the person who feeds them the most red meat; and,
2. Newt Gingrich is clearly, as evidenced tonight in tremendous fashion, and generally throughout the campaign, the best in the field at feeding the base red meat,

then:
I'm not so sure Romney will be the nominee.

At the very least, it won't be over before Super Tuesday in March.

Newt's response will win South Carolina, prolong Romney's agony

2012-01-19T20:14:00.003-05:00

Newt just got another standing ovation during a debate in the first answer tonight, on a question about the allegation by his 2nd wife that he asked her for an "open marriage". He responded by strongly denying the allegation, offering several personal friends who refute the story, and calling the media "despicable" for pushing the story all day today. It turns the story into a win for him, as he has now positioned himself as a victim of the "mainstream media". What are the real proven facts in this story? That Newt cheats on his wives? We knew that. Now he can play the victim card and urge Tea Partiers to vote for him as a slap to the mainstream media.

Brilliant

Perry out, endorses Newt

2012-01-19T11:18:00.003-05:00

slow day at work, where the network blocks blog sites, so i'm typing this on my phone, which doesn't seem to get along with the site, so sorry... anyway, rick perry right this minute is dropping out of the race and endorsing newt. although perry has only been polling in the low single digits, the announcement will help newt in his fight against santorum to be the alternative to romney. were newt to come from behind in south carolina (where a new insider advantage poll, the most recent in the state, shows newt with a three point advantage after being down double digits just a few days ago), it's a wide open race. i still think romney would ultimately win, particularly if he won in the next primary in florida, but he would likely be damaged in such a fight, both by attacks from newt as well as having to take ridiculous right wing stances like cutting all funding to pbs, like he did before. huge night tonight, with another south carolina debate as well as the abc interview with newt's ex, where she will reportedly reveal that newt asked her for an open marriage so he could keep fucking his then mistress/now third wife. needless to say, it is a good day for obama

Santorum wins Iowa

2012-01-19T07:36:00.003-05:00

Despite initial results showing an 8-vote win for Mitt Romney in Iowa, the official results, which were certified this morning after a careful examination of results from the precincts, shows in fact that Rick Santorum won by 34 votes. So Mitt Romney goes from an unprecedented sweep of Iowa and New Hampshire to a loss to a homophobe and a win in his own backyard.

That being said, he can still just about put the primary to bed by putting up a clear win in South Carolina on Saturday. What will be fascinating to watch over the next 2+ days is how the Iowa result is portrayed in the media and how it affects the results in South Carolina. On the one hand, Romney might get some negative press about the loss and see his numbers take a hit. On the other hand, much of Newt Gingrich's improvements in the polls in the past few days has been the result of conservatives coalescing behind him as the only "non-Romney" with a chance to stop the freight train, but now Santorum can point to an Iowa win as evidence that he too can be the standard bearer.

Once again, it'll be an interesting few days leading up to the voting.

Hoping for a Ron Paul win in Iowa

2011-12-28T08:56:00.003-05:00

The latest polling in Iowa suggests that Ron Paul is well-positioned to make some noise in the caucuses that are occurring next week. More importantly, the peculiarities of the process in Iowa, it seems likely that Paul will even outperform his improving poll numbers.

In Iowa, voters meet in 1,784 different locations across the state. They actually debate, in these small groups, why those in attendance should vote for their guy. The main advantage that Ron Paul possesses is a devoted following of Atlas Shrugged-wielding libertarians, as demonstrated by his frequently-successful "moneybomb" fundraisers and his legion of supporters on social media sites like Reddit. The ferocity of his support is extremely useful in any contest that is usually low-turnout, such as the caucuses in Iowa. More importantly, many Paul supporters have lived and breathed his ideas and philosophies since his 2008 campaign and are able to . In a setting where debate is allowed immediately prior to caucus-goers casting their votes, Paul-ites will disproportionately swing undecided and weakly-affiliated voters to their guy.

So I'm predicting a Ron Paul victory in Iowa. It will throw the Republican race WIDE open.

Looking at the primary calendar, a Ron Paul win in Iowa would be followed by New Hampshire, where a Mitt Romney victory is almost guaranteed. Next up are primaries in the South, in South Carolina and Florida, where Newt, from neighboring Georgia, has big leads. Then they move out west to Nevada, where Romney will likely win. After that comes Colorado and Arizona, where Newt's polled well. Then a likely Romney win in Michigan, where his father was a popular governor, takes us to Super Tuesday, where anything can happen as 11 states vote.

The only way the Republican race ends quickly is if Mitt Romney runs the table. Based on how the map looks now, it is unlikely that he will do so, ruining his inevitability/electability argument, which is his strongest pull with Republican voters. A Ron Paul win, coupled with early Gingrich wins in states he holds advantages, ensures a long contest.

Which would be great for the President. The longer the primaries go, the longer Obama's eventual opponent will have to cater to the Republican Party base. Unlike the 2008 Democratic contest, where Obama and Hillary Clinton got loads of free press taking not-over-the-top-liberal positions, the Republicans will be forced to take hard-right positions for months. Obama will have millions upon millions of dollars to run a general campaign from the beginning, claiming the center while Republicans fight with each other for the base.

Iowa up for grabs

2011-12-22T07:40:00.002-05:00

(note: apologies for not posting for 2 weeks. Started my new job w/ Akron Children's)

We're now 12 days away from the Iowa caucuses. Here's a summary of all the polling in the state since April. The lead has gone from Romney, to Bachmann, to Perry, back to Romney for a couple days, then to Cain, then Gingrich, now Ron Paul.

The prospect of a Paul win has been scaring the hell out of the Republican establishment, with the Iowa governor advising voters in other states to ignore the result if Paul wins. And he very well might pull it off, given his current lead in the polls and the strength and dedication of his organization. A major factor that's been holding back his campaign is a lack of media coverage. A win in Iowa would change that.

But a win is far from a certainty. As we saw after Newt Gingrich's rise, the knives will come out against whoever the frontrunner is. And, at least among the Republican electorate, Paul is extremely vulnerable to attacks. While voters would respect his economic views, his non-interventionist foreign policy is diametrically opposed to the traditional Republican approach. The other candidates' campaigns, and their super-PAC, will likely spend much of the next 12 days exploiting this vulnerability.

So I don't have a fucking clue who's going to finish anywhere from 1st-6th; pretty sure Huntsman will be 7th, but that's it. I think it's unlikely that Bachmann, Perry or Santorum would win it all, but any of them could finish a strong 2nd. With Romney's big New Hampshire lead, the result there almost certainly won't be "news", so the Iowa winner will likely get an even bigger boost than normal.

While I still think Romney wins the nomination, the shape the race will take is very much up in the air.

"Freezing government spending" not an easy fix

2011-12-06T18:35:00.002-05:00

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is on CNN right now. He advocated a budget plan which would not touch Social Security or Medicare and would not raise taxes. It would accomplish this by freezing federal spending at its current level for 10 years. A similar plan, called the Penny Plan, which would actually reduce spending by 1% each year for the next six, has been proposed by Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) and supported by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY).

Sounds easy, right? Just keep things where they are (or cut a penny), and presto, it's all fixed! No sweat.

This might indeed be a relatively easy, were the United States demographically-stable. Unfortunately, ours is an aging population. In the midst of either DeMint's or Mack's plan, millions of Baby Boomers will retire, further swelling the Medicare and Social Security rolls and of course leading to a huge increase in government spending. Were one of these "freeze" plans in place, there would have to be dramatic cuts in discretionary spending to stay under the caps these Republicans would impose.

Rep. Mack and Sen. DeMint are of course well within their rights to present these cuts. But it is dishonest to present these cuts as easy and painless.

As discussed in my very first post of this cycle, most voters are woefully ignorant about the federal budget. When people don't know anything, it's easy to say "let's just freeze spending" and have voters think "Yeah! The government spends too much already! It would be easy to just not grow for a few years". With our clueless electorate, it just might work.

Cain out; good news for Newt

2011-12-03T14:39:00.003-05:00

Herman Cain suspended his campaign today. He said "suspended" so he can continue to raise money, but he's done. He says he will endorse a candidate "in the near future". Based on his recent appearance with Newt Gingrich at a "debate", as well as Newt's current status as frontrunner, makes Newt most likely to pick up a few more percentage points as a result of today's announcement.

He'll also become more likely to beat Romney. Cain being out of the running means the "anti-Romney" vote is split one fewer way, meaning Romney's amazingly-stable 20-25% in the polls less likely to hold up.

Bachmann finished?

2011-11-30T18:42:00.003-05:00

Please for the love of God tell me that Michele Bachmann's support in the polls will vanish after today. She said that, in response to the British embassy in Iran being raided by "students" a few days ago, she would close our embassy in Iran. The only problem is that we haven't had an embassy in Iran since before I was born.

So seriously, fuck Michele Bachmann. This episode clearly demonstrates that she is willing to completely talk out of her ass on important matters. This wasn't a gaffe or a blunder. It was taking a policy position without having the slightest clue about the facts of the policy. It is indefensible, and it shows she has no place in public discourse.

Newt's K-Street history

2011-11-29T09:45:00.002-05:00

While the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements disagree on many things, they both (early on, at least, in the case of the Tea Party) decried the rise of "crony capitalism". They recognized that the huge lobbying checks written to those in power cause huge, unfair distortions in the market, disproportionately helping the donors at the expense of the rest of us. The Tea Party in particular has been rabidly "anti-Washington". One would think that lobbyists and Washington insiders would be immensely unpopular with both crowds. The Tea Party's recent embrace of one Newton Leroy Gingrich demonstrates that this formerly-key principle of the movement has been abandoned, as Gingrich is entirely a creature of K Street, lobbying capital of the universe.

After Gingrich's resignation as Speaker, he spent the next decade making money off of his name and his connections in Washington. He set up numerous for-profit organizations to this end. These organizations are all located on K Street (as Rachel Maddow discussed yesterday; jump to 5:30 for the relevant section). He received at least $37 million just from health care organizations. While he never officially registered as a lobbyist, it's safe to assume that they weren't just paying him tens of millions for his perspective as a historian.

The Tea Party would lose all of its credibility if Newt, a literal creature of K Street, were to become the nominee. It would mark the completion of the Republican establishment's mission to subsume the Tea Party movement.

Romney will be the nominee

2011-11-10T00:08:00.004-05:00

At tonight's CNBC debate, Rick Perry likely torpedoed both his own campaign and Herman Cain's. As a result, I will predict that by December 1 Newt Gingrich will be at least 2nd in the polls, if not 1st. More importantly, I would now project Mitt Romney to be the near-certain nominee.

Perry committed a huge blunder in the debate. He was attempting to discuss his plans to eliminate three cabinet departments, then couldn't name which three. He got Commerce and Education, but forgot the Energy Department.

If Romney, Gingrich, Huntsman, Santorum or Paul would have committed this mistake, it might not have been so bad for their chances. For Perry, however, the gaffe played into an already-established narrative that he's, to be blunt, too dumb to be President. This reinforcing nature of the gaffe is what makes it so fatal, just like Howard Dean's "I have a scream" moment killed him because it reinforced that he was unstable/angry or why Dan Quayle's "potatoe" gaffe defined his legacy.

It is, frankly, unacceptable for a Presidential candidate to not be able to rattle off every cabinet department, or at least the ones he plans to eliminate. Perry should have been able to catch himself, start a list of each department and arrive at the right one.

This gaffe will undoubtedly be run again and again on the news, and I think we can all predict with a fair degree of certainty what Saturday Night Live will open with this week. I predict that this will lead to a discussion of the intellectual requirements to be President, and that this (along with the sexual harassment stuff) will end Cain's reign at/near the top.

So why Gingrich? Truly, it's largely a process of elimination. Perry, Cain and Bachmann have already had their shot (and fail the intelligence test), Paul's too out there, Santorum and Huntsman too unknown, and Romney's Romney, so it's Gingrich's turn. He certainly meets the intelligence requirement. He's a true conservative, with 1994 Contract with America credentials. Perry and Cain are going down, and voters won't settle on Romney yet, so it's Newt's turn.

Does Newt have a chance of being the nominee? I truly doubt it. With the intensified attention that will come with improving in the polls, people will remember about his "right-wing social engineering" remark, his serial affairs, his ethics issues that led to reprimand by the House, etc. But for now, when poll respondents only remember the 1994 revolution and his recent debate performances, he'll have a rise.

But after his inevitable fall, we'll be left with Romney. I think Santorum's social stances are too extreme even for the modern Republican Party, and he's just not that likeable. Huntsman is too moderate/reasonable. So they're left with Romney. As previously discussed, I'm OK with that.

Perry's tax plan more viable than 9-9-9

2011-11-09T18:11:00.002-05:00

The biggest non-sex-related* development in the Republican race in the last two debate-free weeks was Rick Perry's unveiling of his flat tax plan (.pdf). The main takeaway is that, like Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, it hugely decreases taxes on the wealthy. More importantly, in terms of politics, it represents a much more politically-feasible route to such giveaways than the Cain plan.

First, the numbers. Perry proposes to offer every taxpayer a choice between the current system and a flat tax of 20%. It also eliminates taxes on capital gains, the estate tax, increases personal exemptions to $12,500 per person in the household, and greatly reduces corporate taxes on profits earned overseas. It does not change the payroll tax.

Now, the math. So far as I can tell, the plan eliminates the Earned Income Tax Credit, which as previously discussed would be a disaster for the working poor. In a sane world, proposing to end an effective tool to help the poor which was instituted by Ronald Reagan would carry a political cost. In today's Republican Party, however, the problem is apparently the 47% of Americans who only pay sales, payroll, state/local and property taxes but don't pay federal income taxes, so screwing the poor is accepted party doctrine.

Where Perry's plan is politically superior to Cain's is its effects on the middle class. As previously discussed, Cain's plan would raise taxes on the average family of 4 by about $3,000 a year. For the vast majority (84%) of taxpayers, they could do the math and find that they would pay more under 9-9-9. Regardless of the arguments one might make for a tax proposal, if a vast majority of voters find it hurts them, it's probably not going to do very well at the end of the day.

Under Perry's plan, our family of 4 making $50,000 sees its federal income tax burden fall to $0, thanks to the increased personal exemption: $50,000 - 4 x $12,500 = 0 taxable income. Families making more than $50,000, their tax bill goes down under Perry's plan, except for a narrow band of people whose income is right around where the current income tax rate goes from 15% to 25%, which is $69,000 after deductions/exemptions. These people wouldn't actually see their taxes go up either, as they're allowed to choose to remain with the current plan.

For the rich, whose current income tax rate is 35%, 20% is a pretty great deal, particularly when they get to keep the mortgage interest deduction. The deduction actually phases out for incomes over $500,000, but the income tax rate savings more than make up for the phase-out. The wealthy also make a much larger percentage of their income from capital gains, the taxes on which drop from 15% to 0% under Perry's plan. They also no longer have to pay estate taxes, which only applies to estates of $5 million or more and currently tops out at 35%.

Cain's 9-9-9 plan at least attempts to be revenue-neutral (i.e., bring in as much money as the current code). Perry's plan would bring in much less revenue, exploding the deficit. Mainstream Republicans are under the impression that tax cuts for the rich are inherently revenue-neutral. They base this on the Laffer Curve, which states that there exists a level of taxation above which tax revenue will actually go down. While such a level exists, it's above the level of taxation where we currently are, so lowering tax rates will lower revenue, despite what Perry and others would have us believe.

Perry's plan would be terrible for the country, as the deficit would grow even more and force huge cuts in government programs. But, because taxes will go down on the middle class and way, way down for the rich, it is more politically palatable to voters, particularly those who put us at the wrong point on the Laffer Curve. By introducing the plan, Perry has positioned himself to potentially capitalize on an eventual Cain demise.

(*: I don't really care to comment on the particulars of the allegations against Cain. If you're interested in the story, www.politico.com has been the best source)

Maybe Herman Cain's just clueless

2011-10-26T06:18:00.004-04:00

Herman Cain's been getting a lot of shit from me recently. I think it's mostly justified, as his policies would be terrible for the nation. But it's becoming increasingly clear the more I hear him in interviews and debates that the man just has no idea what he's talking about. A sampling;

-His previously-discussed ignorance of the Palestinian Right of Return, a fairly major element in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
-His ignorance of neoconservatism, the dominant foreign policy idea in the Republican Party in the past 15 years.
-His proud ignorance of details of foreign countries and foreign leaders; "Uzbeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan".
-Most damning are his fumbles of questions on abortion, a topic he should be strong on given the prominent role it played in his 2004 run for Senate. In an interview with John Stossel about 3 months ago, Cain gives completely contradictory answers in back to back sentences. The clip really is worth watching; it's just over a minute, and the other guest's response to Cain's literally-jaw-dropping answer is worth the price of admission.
-On Meet the Press, he said he did not support abortion under any circumstances but then said abortion in the case of a threat to the life of the mother would have to be made by the family. Not as self-contradictory as the Stossel interview, but not crystal clear either.
-He further muddied the waters on his abortion stance in an interview with Piers Morgan, where he again seemed to indicate it wasn't the government's role to make the choice on abortion.

What concerns me most about the repeated poor responses on abortion is that neither the candidate nor his team thought to tighten up the answers. After the Stossel interview months ago, an intelligent/savvy politician would have spent some time to figure out a way to clearly convey his stance on this issue, which is a particularly important one in Iowa and throughout a Republican primary.

Republican voters should be hopeful that Cain's campaign mirrors that of Ross Perot. By making tax reform a central issue in his campaign, he is influencing the debate, just like Perot did in '92 on deficit and spending issues. But should Cain's lead in the polls carry him to the nomination, I'm supremely confident of four more years for Obama, and likely big gains in Congress as well.

Herman Cain thinks he's helping poor people

2011-10-21T23:25:00.009-04:00

Today's Herman Cain news is that he says "if you are at or below the poverty level, your plan isn't 9-9-9. It's 9-0-9." Then, being the fucking asshole that he is, he follows that up with "Say Amen, y'all", as if to put an exclamation point on the tremendous gift he's given the poor among us. The middle number is the income tax, so people in poverty are excused from that portion.

So, let's fire up the arithmetic machine and see what effect 9-9-9 would have on the average family of 4 living at the poverty line. For a family of four, the poverty line is at $22,050, so let's look at a family making $22,000 a year. Sneak preview, they will be $6,878* worse off should 9-9-9 (which is 9-0-9 for them) come to pass:

-McDonald's has to pay 7.65% in payroll taxes, so they have to spend $23,683 to hire a worker with a $22,000 salary, with the extra $1,683 going to Uncle Sam
-The family also must pay 7.65% in payroll taxes, so there goes another $1,683
-The standard deduction for a married couple is $11,400, dropping their taxable income to $10,600
-The personal exemption ($3,650 per family member) drops their taxable income to $0
-As you might expect, this drops their owed income tax to $0
-Not only do they not owe any income taxes, they get additional, refundable credits, including:

-Earned Income Tax Credit (.pdf, Page 46): For a family of 4 making $22,000, they would get a tax credit of $4,917. This credit is refundable (i.e., they get a check from the government for $4,917 every year
-Child Tax Credit: Under current law, after the stimulus peters out, our family would get a $1,417 refundable tax credit (it'd be $2,000 today)

So the family's total tax bill would be $1,683 in payroll taxes, plus $1,683 that their employer pays. They get a credit of $6,334. So their personal tax bill is currently a net credit of $4,651, or $2,968 when you include the employer's portion, which you should.

Now President Cain institutes 9-9-9 (or 9-0-9 for the poor). In the process, he completely eliminates the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. Here's the math:

-McDonald's is still willing to spend $23,683 to employ the family's breadwinner ($22,000 + employer's contribution toward Social Security and Medicare)
-Under Cain's plan, McDonald's has to pay a 9% tax on that money, reducing the gross pay of the family to $21,551, since 9% is more than 7.65%, with the other $2,132 going to Uncle Sam.
-The family will, according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, be expected to spend even more than their income (i.e., go into debt) every year. Let's assume they just spend their income.
-If you were to spend $21,551 including a 9% sales tax, you'd spend $19,772 on stuff and $1,779 in taxes.

So our family pays $1,779 in direct taxes, or $3,910 if you include the employer's portion, which you should.

Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, even with the 9-0-9 change, changes the tax bill for a family in povery from a $2,968 credit to a $3,910 liability. This is $6,878 less that a family already IN POVERTY would have every year if Cain's plan becomes the law of the land.

Say Amen to that, you fucking asshole

(*an earlier version of these calculations used a wrong poverty threshold, which was taken from Herman Cain's website (.pdf, table 6). Serves me right for taking numbers from a source I spend the entire post attempting to rip to shreds.)

Fun with Math, or, Herman Cain is a Fucking Asshole, Part 2

2011-10-21T13:36:00.005-04:00

In Part 1, I showed my work behind my assertion that Herman Cain's plan would be terrible for the average American family. While I have endeavored to do the same for a family making $1,000,000/year, the accounting is frankly beyond my meager abilities. So here's a graph from The Washington Post that quite succinctly sums up the relative effects of Cain's plan on the Rich and everyone else. It's worth the click, I promise...

note: the difference between the effect on the middle 20% and my calculation Part 1 relates to my effort to include the poverty exemption that Cain's website mentions.

So how on Earth could Cain ever expect to get elected and get this thing passed? The answer appears to be through flat-out lying to voters. In this interview with MSNBC last week, at the 2:00 mark, Cain discussed the tax situation of a family of four making $50,000/year. He states:

Cain: Today, under the current system, they will pay over $10,000 in taxes,
assuming standard deductions and standard exemptions. I've gone through the math. $10,000

In Part 1, I showed that their tax bill, including the employer's Social Security/Medicare contributions, would be $8,416. So, how does he arrive at "over $10,000"? By leaving out the child tax credit, which is $1,000 per kid, or, for a family of four, $2,000 for two kids. This credit, which goes away under 9-9-9, accounts for much of the hit that middle-class families will take if Cain's plan is ever instituted. But, since he's a fucking asshole who is apparently comfortable with lying to people to make the current system look worse and by extension make his own plan look better, he overinflates the family's current tax bill. The interview continues...

Cain: Now, with 9-9-9, they're going to pay that 9% personal, that
9% tax on income, so that's only $4,500. You still have $5,500 left
over to apply to the sales tax piece.

Bullshit! Bull. Shit.

In order to get to $10,000 under the current system, you have to, in addition to ignoring the child tax credit, include the employer's Social Security/Medicare contribution, which is almost $4,000/year in addition to the $50,000 salary. 9-9-9, while it eliminates these contributions, also no longer allows businesses to deduct wages/salaries from their taxable income. So companies will have to pay a 9% tax on the money they want to pay their employees. Essentially, 9-9-9 replaces the current 7.65% employer payroll tax with a 9% employer payroll tax.

So, since we've established in the $10,000 number that we're gonna count employer contributions, and we don't want to compare apples and oranges, you have to include ~$4,900 in payroll taxes, in addition to the $4,500 in income taxes that Cain mentions. So you only have $600 to apply to the sales tax piece, not $5,500 as the fucking asshole claims. And that assumes you buy the $10,000 number, which itself is bullshit. Paying $600 in sales taxes assumes less than $7,000 in spending annually. That's less than what a household with that income would pay just for transportation, according to the Consumer Expenditure Survey.

Extra taxes for working families while The Rich get a tax cut that's literally off the chart. Several screens worth of off the chart. What an asshole...

Fun with Math, or Herman Cain is a Fucking Asshole, Part 1

2011-10-20T02:08:00.001-04:00

While there have been a number of analyses of the tax implications of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 Plan, I haven't seen one that breaks things down enough for the layperson to understand exactly what the implications will be for an average American family. So here's my humble attempt to fill that gap; it's long but I think it's pretty easy to follow. If you don't feel like working through it, a typical family of four would pay just under $3,000 more in taxes under Cain's plan, while the rich would pay lower rates on income and zero taxes on capital gains and inheritances. Cain covers this up by flat-out lying about how much an average family pays in taxes. We'll address the lying and the effects on the rich in part 2.

-Let's consider a family of four making $50,000 a year, which is pretty close to the median household income.
-Their employer must pay 6.2% of that amount in Social Security taxes and 1.45% in Medicare taxes (source), meaning that their employer really spends $53,825 to employ that person.
-Of that $50,000, the family must also pay 6.2% toward Social Security and 1.45% toward Medicare, dropping their total to $46,175.
-They must also pay income taxes. This first involves figuring out their taxable income, which depends on several factors:
Total Gross Income: $50,000
Standard Deduction in 2010 for a married couple is $11,400
So their taxable income is now $38,600
They also can claim a Personal Exemption of $3,650 per family member. $3,650 x 4 = $14,600
This drops their taxable income to $24,000
For couples filing jointly, the tax tables (massive .pdf, relevant bit on page 77) work out to a total liability of $2,766
But the family of four would get two $1,000 child credits, dropping their bill to $766
-So their take-home after payroll taxes, $46,175, minus $766 in income taxes, makes their total post-tax income $45,409.
-Their total tax bill is $4,591
-If you want to count the employer's portion of payroll taxes, which I think is totally legitimate and indeed preferred, as if there were no taxes the employer would be happy to give that cash to the family, their bill is $8,416

As shown in Table 10c of this pdf, the actual tax rate under the 9-9-9 plan would actually be 9.1%. 9's more catchy, but we'll do the calculations with the actual number of 9.1%.

Now, under Cain's plan, let's assume that same employer still wants to spend a total $53,825 to employ the employee. What will be the family's total after-tax income under Cain's plan?

-Payroll taxes go away under 9-9-9. But, employee wages/salaries, which are currently tax-deductible, are no longer so under Cain's plan. This means that the employer has to pay taxes equal to 9% of your wages before they can give the rest to you. So 0.091 x $53,825 = $4,898 is how much they pay in taxes before they give you your salary.
-The family's gross pay is thus $53,825-$4,898 = $48,927
-While Cain hasn't discussed it on the campaign trail, his calculations (.pdf, Table 6) allow for a deduction equal to the poverty rate. For our family of 4, this means they can claim a deduction of $15,006
-Their total taxable income is therefore $48,927 - $15,006 = $33,921
-Paying 9.1% of that in income taxes takes out $3,087
-Their total take-home, after corporate and income taxes but before sales taxes, is $48,927-$3087 = $45,840
-Based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditures Survey, a household with that after-tax income would be expected to spend about $41,000 each year.
-With the proposed sales tax, our family would have to pay a 9.1% sales tax on purchases. This would mean an additional $3,420 in taxes ($37,580 in spending plus 9.1% of that amount equals $41,000)

Got all that? Great, we're almost to the end!

Total tax bill under 9-9-9 = $3,087 (income tax) + $3,420 (sales tax) = $6,507
Including the employer's portion = $6,507 + $4,898 = $11,405

Currently, the family would pay $4,591 in federal taxes. Under 9-9-9, it goes up to $6,507, for an increase of $1,916. Counting the employer's contribution, which I think is really the more valid comparison, the family's tax bill increases from $8,416 to $11,405, an increase of $2,989.

For families who currently make less than $50,000, the change is proportionally worse, as they pay an even lower rate under current law, thanks to other deductions and credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit, all of which go away under 9-9-9.

As Cain points out, the plan is intended to be revenue-neutral (i.e., raises the same amount of taxes in total as the current system). So, if the average family and poorer families are paying more, that means the rich will pay less. A lot less. We'll look at just how much less in Part 2.

See what I mean about Cain being a fucking asshole?

Tips for the 99%

2011-10-17T21:21:00.004-04:00

As previously discussed, I support the Occupy Wall Street movement. But as much as we need changes to the political system, there are many things we can do to help bring about the goals of the 99% that don't require a corporately-supported politician to do anything. Here are some suggestions:

-Boycott the bad guys.

-Buy local and buy small. Mom and Pop's shop doesn't put them in the 1%. If you don't want CEOs to make 500 times what their employees make, don't buy from big companies. If a privately-owned company, such as Koch Industries, won't tell you what their executives/owners make, don't buy from them. Same thing for environmental protections, providing health insurance to their employees, or whatever else is important to you.

-Ignore political ads. The only reason political donations matter is that people allow biased (i.e., sponsored) media to influence their vote. If the 99% ignored ads, Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers could spend all the money they wanted and it wouldn't make much difference in the outcome of elections, so then politicians wouldn't feel like they owed their rich sponsors anything. Other forms of electioneering (voter canvassing, mailers, etc.) would still have a role, but these aren't nearly as effective or expensive as TV ads.

-Ignore ads in general. While you're at it, ignore all ads. If a company's big enough to buy an ad on a national network, it's probably big enough to hideously overpay its management.

We have more money than them. We have more votes than them. They can only maintain the current system by keeping us from using our power. Political protest is one way to fight back, but it's not the most direct or the most effective.

Stunning poll numbers for Cain, Romney

2011-10-12T19:00:00.002-04:00

Two new national polls released today. Both show Herman Cain in the lead over Mitt Romney, Cain taking the lead is interesting enough in itself, though his weaknesses as a candidate make me confident that he won't be the nominee. Of course, with the current state of the Republican Party, one can never be too sure.

The truly fascinating and important result come from comparing the new NBC poll with the previous one, conducted at the end of August. At that point, Rick Perry was in the lead with 38%, followed by Romney with 23%. Cain was tied for 5th at 5%. In the new poll, Perry's support has fallen to 16%, Romney is stuck at 23%, and Cain surged to 27%. His 22% rise perfectly mirrors Perry's 22% fall. Essentially, a fifth of the electorate decided to switch horses, and, statistically speaking, none of them decided to switch to Romney!

This is yet more support for the idea that most Republican voters just don't want to vote for the most electable (i.e., least conservative) of the major candidates. Romney's path to the nomination is to keep as many conservative candidates in the race to split the anti-Romney vote, allowing his 20-some percent to carry the day. Once he racks up wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, he'll ride the inevitability/electability wave to the nomination. If 2 or 3 out of Perry/Cain/Bachmann/Gingrich drop out of the race before Iowa, one of the survivors might be strong enough to overcome Romney. But if everyone stays in and stays relatively even, Romney will cruise to the nomination.

This dynamic helps explain Romney's approach in last night's debate to Michele Bachmann. A feature of the debate was that each candidate was allowed to ask one question to another candidate. Most used this as an opportunity to try to nail Romney. When it was Romney's turn, he chose to lob a softball to Bachmann, who launched into an excerpt from her standard stump speech. Romney needs Bachmann, the weakest of the 2nd tier candidates, to stay competitive to draw support from other conservatives, so he used his question to help her out.

It will be very interesting in the weeks before Iowa (less than 3 months away) to see if there's pressure on conservative candidates to get out of the race. We know Ron Paul's in it til the convention, but will any of the others bow out to keep the more-moderate Romney from being the nominee?

Quick reactions to GOP debate

2011-10-11T22:17:00.000-04:00

-Herman Cain said in response to the very first question that he would, in his first year as President, pass a balanced budget. Given that military+medicare/medicaid+Social Security+interest on the debt = total tax receipts, I would be very interested how Cain would go about achieving a balanced budget so soon. Republicans always preface their plans to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security by saying current beneficiaries would not be affected. It's impossible to get a balanced budget next year without making cuts to these programs next year.

-Rep. Bachmann repeated the standard Republican claim that the federal government is responsible for all those bad loans. Banks were forced, so the line goes, by the government to give $500,000 loans to janitors. This is, of course, pure bullshit. Looking at how hard it was to pass Dodd-Frank, which is a very weak regulatory structure for banks, it is ridiculous to claim that the poor, oppressed banks were forced to give all those subprime loans.

-Bachmann also repeated the bullshit that increasing the debt limit gave Obama a "blank check". The President can't spend a nickel without Congress's specific say-so. It's not a blank check for Obama; it's a check that Congress had already written and signed.

-Much of the debate centered around Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan. Bachmann chose the line of attack that, by adding a whole new kind of federal tax (a 9% sales tax), Cain would open the door to the sales tax being increased in the future. Cain is prevented from using the best defense to this claim, which is that neither Democrats nor Republicans would ever increase a sales tax. Republicans wouldn't raise a tax, period, and Democrats would never raise a strongly regressive tax. Using this line of defense would highlight the regressive nature of sales taxes, so Cain can't use it.

-Cain continues to demonstrate a lack of understanding about how laws work, as previously discussed here. He wants to include in his 9-9-9 bill a requirement for a 2/3 vote by the Senate to raise taxes. Because one act of Congress cannot bind another, a future Congress could just come along and say "Fuck that 2/3 thing", and vote a tax increase with a simple majority.

-Cain continued the tactic of portraying the participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement as being distinct from "real Americans". He claimed his recent remarks that those who aren't rich only have themselves to blame were only directed at OWS, not at the 14 million who are unemployed through no fault of their own. It is a false distinction aimed at marginalizing the OWS protesters.

-Rep. Paul rightly laid the smackdown on Cain after Cain claimed Alan Greenspan was the best Fed chair of the past 40 years. Greenspan's Fed bear much of the blame for inflating the housing bubble.

-Gov. Perry ignored a question about why the income gap is growing so much, choosing instead to launch a non-specific attack on Obama. It's not surprising that he avoided the question, as there is no answer a supply-sider can give to the question. Ron Paul could have pointed to crony capitalism as a cause, but none of the other candidates has an answer.

-Perry needed to land some punches on Romney to revive his campaign, and he wasn't able to do it. But he also didn't "throw up on himself" as he did in the previous debate.

-Romney had a good night. The format of sitting around a table together made for a more cordial, less-attacking debate, which benefits the guy with the biggest target on his back. I think Romney would be fine with everyone spooning throughout the next debate.

Boycott the Bad Guys

2011-10-11T19:09:00.001-04:00

I sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street movement. The fabulous growth in income over the past 30 years of the top 1% of earners while millions of Americans are without health insurance is a sign of a dysfunctional system. It's unfortunate that the actions of OWS participants seem focused on asking the government to intervene on their behalf, rather than doing what they can as private individuals to bring about change. One action that the 99% could undertake, without requiring any help from the government, is to boycott those products/companies owned by the worst actors of the 1%. I'd humbly suggest that we start with Brawny paper towels, owned by the Koch brothers (massive funders of right-wing causes, main force behind the efforts in several states to strip union rights from teachers and cops, tied for 4th-richest Americans. Read Bloomberg's article on their non-political corporate misbehavior).

Even with all the gains made by the 1% in the past 30 years, they only make about 20% of the total reported income. Unless you're Rolls Royce, your company depends on customers from the 99%. A customer base making purchasing decisions based on corporate behavior is a much bigger threat to the 1% than marching in the street begging politicians to help you.

With their power to obliterate brands and companies, motivated consumers can force changes in how the 1% treats the 99%. Koch Industries paid $21 billion a few years back for Georgia-Pacific, the company that makes Brawny paper towels, along with Dixie cups, Quilted Northern toilet paper, and many other products. The threat of zeroing out that investment would go a long way toward stopping the Kochs' campaign to blame all the ills of society on teachers making fifty grand a year.

Libertarians/conservatives argue against government regulations by advocating for the free market. This approach depends on informed consumers making rational decisions based on their personal values. We can depend on government to fulfill this role for us, but in the post-Citizens United world of one dollar/one vote, it's unwise to count on politicains to do this for us. Fortunately, we don't need them. We're powerful enough to do it ourselves. We are the 99%.

27,000+ Americans wrong on forgiving student loan debt

2011-10-05T13:02:00.004-04:00

The Obama White House recently introduced a petition feature on its website, where Americans can digitally sign on to various policy proposals or questions. If a certain threshold is reached, the White House promises to give an official response to the petitioners. Depending on how seriously the White House takes these petitions, it could be a great way for voters to voice their concerns to the government.

As you might expect, the clear champion amongst the petitions in terms of number of signers concerns the end of marijuana prohibition. The second-most popular petition advocates the forgiveness of all student loan debt in order to put money in people's pockets and stimulate the economy. As a holder of significant loan debt, I would greatly benefit personally were this to be done. However, it is terrible fiscal/economic policy.

While most college graduates have taken a hit in the past few years, they are still doing better than non-grads. Most immediately, that should disqualify them from being a preferred group to receive government benefits, as there are people (some of whom are themselves college graduates, to be fair) who are struggling for the essentials of living. In terms of stimulus, forgiving student loan debt is an inefficient use of government resources because college grads are less likely than their poorer counterparts to spend any money they have and stimulate the economy. People who already can afford the essentials might save some of the windfall from the government, but those in poverty will spend it.

Student loan forgiveness is a waste of government resources, giving benefits to people who are less likely to need them and less likely to use them to stimulate the economy. It's better to give money to the janitor than the secretary. Of course, either is better than giving money to the boss, which is the Republicans' plan.

The GOP candidates, Part 6: Herman Cain

2011-10-04T11:40:00.003-04:00

First, some news: looks like Chris Christie is going to stay out; he's holding a press conference at 1pm today, if the rumors are to be believed. Mitt Romney's a very happy man.

The other big news this morning is an ABC/Washington Post national Republican poll which confirms the findings of the previous poll, by Fox. The relevant bits are:

-Rick Perry's taken a big hit, losing over a third of his support, dropping from 28% to 17-19%.
-Despite the wide fluctiations in the support of Perry and others, Romney continues to chug along in the low to mid twenties, lending further support to our recent discussion of his position. He has now passed Perry in the polls, according to the rolling average of polls compiled by realclearpolitics.com
-Herman Cain is the new flavor of the month, picking up just about all the voters Perry lost. He is tied with Perry in 2nd place in hte new poll.

Cain's strength means it's time to revisit his candidacy. His shortcomings in foreign policy were discussed previously. As a successful businessman and former chairman of the board of directors of the Kansas City Fed, he has significant and politically-attractive economics/business experience. He also has mastered stating his positions with an upbeat tone that stands out at debates.

His main policy proposal is his 9-9-9 plan, which would scrap all federal taxes and replace them with a 9% flat corporate tax, a 9% flat income tax, and a 9% national sales tax. Cain has not released, so far as I'm aware, a detailed analysis of his plan. Here's an analysis that shows, as one might expect with a flat tax structure, that the taxes for the poor would go way up and the taxes for the rich would go way down. By eliminating capital gains taxes, an estimated 23,000 millionaires would pay no taxes on their income at all. In total, the plan would bring in roughly $300 billion less than the current plan, which would require more debt.

But, Herman Cain is not, at least at this point, a serious or viable candidate for President. On a superficial level, he appears to be more interested in building his name and selling books than winning the nomination. His list of upcoming events includes nothing in Iowa and New Hampshire, instead holding events in later-voting states like Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Arizona. He's taking 2 weeks away from campaigning to sell his book. He also has very little campaign infrastructure in place (pollsters, Iowa caucus captains, etc.), though with the increased attention/donations, he might be able to build a real campaign.

More generally, his complete lack of experience in government will be a damning liability. This past weekend, he appeared on Fox News Sunday. He was asked whether, by adding a new kind of tax (federal sales tax), would he make it easier for the government to tax more. He said "In the legislation that I am going to ask Congress to send me, I want a two-thirds vote required by the Senate in order for them to change it. That will impede cavalierly raising it." The problem is that the legislation would be clearly unconstitutional. One piece of legislation cannot bind another. Cain and his advisors appear to be unaware of this fact.

Cain also has practiced the Republican pastime of lying about health care reform. In a recent debate, he claimed that he would not have survived cancer a few years back had Obamacare been in place. He stated that his care would have required a federal bureaucrat's approval. This claim was determined by Politifact to be "False".

Herman Cain, while not a serious candidate, is attracting significant conservative anti-Romney support. He will have to decide whether he wants to profit from this support by selling books (the Huckabee route) or actually try to be elected President. Given his significant weaknesses as a candidate and complete lack of government experience, he might be better off to try the former.

Ronald Reagan supports Obama's Buffett Rule

2011-10-03T15:19:00.003-04:00

Even St. Ronald the First supports the Buffett Rule. Here's the video. It's only a minute long and very much worth viewing for Democrats and Republicans alike.

So now we have a "radical socialist anti-colonial" who as President has:

-advocated changes to the tax code that Reagan also proposed,
-passed a similar health plan to ones supported by Mitt Romney, mid-90's Senate Republicans, and leaders at the conservative Heritage Foundation, while refusing to fight for a public option or single payer,
-passed a stimulus bill that was too small and largely constituted of tax cuts,
-expanded gun rights, earning an F from the anti-gun Brady Campaign,
-extended the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy,
-kept Gitmo open, continued drone attacks and generally continued Bush's foreign policy.

You can agree or disagree with Obama's policies, but to call his Presidency anything other than centrist, or even conservative, is so laughable I couldn't take seriously anyone who would make the claim.

Mitt's "anti-Romney" problem

2011-10-03T11:01:00.004-04:00

One of the main narratives assigned to the Republican primary season is the quest to be the "anti-Romney", the candidate who gains the most support among conservatives who think Romney is too moderate (and/or too Mormon, depending on your view of the Christian Right). With Romney running for the Republican nomination non-stop for the past 5 years, voters have already made their minds up on him, and his overall support is unlikely to change much, at least until actual primary and caucus results start shaking up the race.

The polling data pretty much supports this view. Despite big shake-ups to the race (Huckabee dropping out, the rise and fall of Trump and Bachmann (and Perry?), the rise of Herman Cain), Romney's support in polls has been pretty steady in the high-teens to mid-twenties.

His support is high enough to dominate a field of candidates who split the conservative votes among themselves. The goal of all the other candidates is to consolidate the anti-Romney vote behind him-/herself, climbing above Romney's steady but beatable support. Romney wins by keeping the field closely competitive with each other, allowing his more moderate voter base to carry him to victory. He is greatly helped by additional conservatives in the race; Sarah Palin entering the race would probably deliver Romney the nomination. She would pull enough conservatives from Bachmann and Perry in Iowa that Romney would likely win there. Following that up with a win in New Hampshire, where he absolutely dominates the polls, would pretty much end the race. In the past 9 election cycles, which more or less define the modern primary era, no Republican has won the nomination without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire, and wins there would coalesce support behind him as the most electable candidate. There would be immense pressure from anti-Romney conservatives on weaker conservative candidates to get out of the race before Iowa to keep that from happening.

However, the emergence of another moderate candidate, such as NJ Gov. Chris Christie, or the ascension to viability of former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, would likely devastate Romney's campaign. If either is able to peel 5-10% from Romney's total, he sinks from frontrunner to also-ran.

Christie will reportedly announce his decision in the next few days. We'll know a lot more about the shape of the Republican race, and Mitt Romney's chances, when he does.

Obama's tax proposal not "playing to base"

2011-09-26T21:38:00.003-04:00

In the last couple weeks, President Obama has advocated plans to pay for his jobs bill and to pay down the deficit by raising taxes on the rich. Many in the media have interpreted this to be Obama "playing to his base". The New York Times' David Brooks laments that Obama's proposal will "fire up liberals but are designed to enrage moderates and conservatives." The theory goes that Progressives are upset over not getting as much as they wanted during Obama's administration, and he's trying to make them happy by waging class warfare, moderates be damned.

It would seem that raising taxes on the wealthy is the sort of thing that would only appeal to pinko-liberal commies like me, and that by advocating tax increases for the rich, Obama is abandoning his long record of compromise and seeking the center (working with Republicans to cut spending, pushing for "grand bargain" with Boehner, not advocating a public option, agreeing to extend Bush's tax cuts, etc).

However, this is clearly not the case, based on recent polling (New York Times (.pdf), Washington Post, NBC/Wall Street Journal (.pdf), Gallup). Depending on how the question is asked, between 54% and 80% of moderates and independents favor these tax increases.

Obama's electoral strategy, as previously discussed, will likely depend on portraying himself as the "adult in the room" trying to govern the nation while Republicans refuse to compromise. Republicans would be helped by stories of Obama playing to his base. But the numbers show that's not what he's doing.

The GOP candidates, Part 5: Mitt Romney

2011-09-26T15:04:00.002-04:00

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is most likely to be the nominee. The main reason is that Republican voters hate Barack Obama so much that at the end of the day they'll hold their noses and vote for the candidate they perceive to be best positioned to beat him. Especially given Perry's debate performances and his position in head-to-head polls recently, Romney's apparently the most likely winner in the general election, so they'll give him the nomination.

I think a Romney nomination would be a gift to Obama's re-election bid, as Romney fits right into Obama's previously-discussed strategy of showing the Republicans will attack the things they used to support, leaving the government gridlocked and incapable of doing anything. On issue after issue, Mitt Romney has lurched significantly to the right, as has the rest of his party.

Health Care
In 1994, when he ran for Senate against Ted Kennedy, Romney said he would support Sen. John Chafee's (R-RI) health care bill, which included a federal mandate to buy health insurance. He later, as Governor, put in place "RomneyCare", which includes a mandate to provide insurance.

This election, he attacks health care reform as strongly as any of his Republican colleagues. With Republican voters whipped into a frenzy over ObamaCare, to do anything else would end his chances of nomination.

Cap-and-Trade
In 2005, Romney was strongly involved with negotiations to set up the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade system among New England states. Initially, he supported the measure, saying "I think it is good business" and "we can effectively create incentives to help stimulate a sector of the economy and at the same time not kill jobs."

This time around, he says "Cap and trade effectively constitutes an enormous, hidden tax on the American people and American businesses. It will lead to higher joblessness and make a bad economic situation even worse."

Abortion
When running for the Senate in 1994, Romney stated "I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country." When running for Governor in 2002, he said "I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard."

In 2008 and 2012, he has repeatedly said he is pro-life and would support overturning Roe v Wade.

Campaign Finance
In 1994, Romney advocated strict campaign spending limits and the abolition of PACs. In 2002, he suggested public financing of campaigns through a 10% tax on private contributions to privately-funded candidates.

In 2008, he said "Do we really want government telling us when we can engage in political speech, and what form it can take". He has since been strongly opposed to McCain-Feingold and other efforts to limit campaign contributions and spending. Recently, he has received rather shady large contributions from corporations which form, give him a check for lots of money, then close.

Gay Rights
In 1994, Romney wrote a letter (.pdf) to Log Cabin Republicans saying he supported gay and lesbian soldiers being allowed serve openly.

He recently said "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" should have been kept in place.

In the interest of brevity, I'll stop there, but he has a similar record of strong right-ward turns on issues such as gun control, immigration policy/amnesty, capital gains taxes and others.

Vast majorities of voters agree that Washington is broken. Parties that used to be able to compromise with each other are now unable to do so. A Mitt Romney nomination would be great news for Obama and Democrats because he personifies the truth that the separation between the parties is the result of the Republican Party tilting heavily to the right.

Next up, we'll get back to discussing why Obama's recent strategy of pushing for tax increases on the rich is not "playing to his base", as his critics claim.

The GOP Candidates, Part 4: Rick Perry

2011-09-26T10:20:00.002-04:00

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has taken Michele Bachmann's position as the "anti-Romney". He was billed, prior to entering the race last month, as a conservative's conservative, the longest-serving governor in a state that had added 1/3 of all the jobs added nationwide since the recession. He is not shy about showing his Christian faith, holding a high-profile stadium prayer rally just before entering the race. He brags of carrying a laser-sighted pistol with him while he walks his dog, using it to shoot a coyote. He was, in short, a Tea Party wet dream.

Upon entering the race, he shot to the top of the polls. Unfortunately for him, his position invited lots of scrutiny and attacks, and multiple cracks have shown. His main strength, his jobs record, has been shown to be largely a mirage, with a study showing that 81% of the jobs created in Texas going to immigrants, which doesn't play well with Republican voters. Many of the jobs created were also government jobs. Others were poachedfrom other states, making his model difficiult to apply nationwide.

More generally, he's shown himself to be, well, kind of dumb. His debate performance have hurt his campaign rather significantly, particularly his debacle in last Thursday's debate. A video of an answer about abstinence-only education emerged that showed his complete inability to articulate a position or use facts to support his argument. He defended his policy of giving in-state tuition rates to children of illegal immigrants by saying those who don't support it "don't have a heart." Not exactly a good way to get votes in a GOP primary.

It's particularly unfortunate for him that he doesn't have great rhetorical skills, with the number of questionable positions he has to defend. In his book "Fed Up", he called Social Security unconstitutional and ""a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal." He now says he wants to reform the program but hasn't really addressed the "unconstitutional" attack. Given how popular it is, particularly with older people (who tend to vote more), he needs to come up with a better answer.

He has also taken a lot of heat for issuing an executive order requiring girls to get the HPV vaccine, making Texas the first state to require it. While the HPV vaccine is a great thing that I personally think each and every girl should get, there was some appearence of "crony capitalism" in how the order came about. Perry's former chief of staff was a lobbying for the vaccine's maker, Merck. Perry also received about $29,500 from Merck since 2000. Merck has also donated $352,500 to the Republican Governors Association since Perry became active in that organization in 2006.

And he let his state murder a guy and has since been covering it up.

In sum, Perry is Bush circa 2000 but with a worse record as governor and more controversial positions to have to defend. Bush wasn't a great orator, but he didn't really have all that much as governor to answer for. Unless Perry starts showing more skill on the campaign trail, Romney's looking pretty good for the nomination. More on him next post.

GOP's different rules for The Rich and teachers

2011-09-21T21:48:00.000-04:00

President Obama unveiled his deficit reduction plan this week, which includes about $1.5 trillion in new taxes on the rich. Predictably, Republicans decried the effect that the proposal would have on "job creators". They say that, by raising taxes and decreasing the wealthy person's take-home pay, they will dis-incentivize those efforts and investments of the person. They are absolutely correct in their analysis, which is based on simple supply-and-demand. If you decrease the "price" (take-home income), you get less quantity of the "good" (investing decisions, running companies, etc.) supplied.

Unfortunately, they seem to be unable to apply the same logic to teachers, firemen and police officers. By stripping union rights from these groups, and generally opposing efforts by the Obama Administration to use federal funds to keep them from being fired, Republicans are dis-incentivizing workers who provide these vital services. Just as the economy would be damaged by having fewer "job creators", it will also be weakened by having fewer good teachers.

In determining how to close the deficit, we must, through our democracy, decide how much each of us will contribute in addition to what we already do. Republicans want to exempt a segment of society from contributing, despite their being the segment most able to afford it.

In my next post, we'll discuss the ridiculousness of calling Obama's tax policy "playing to his base" and "giving up on compromise".

The GOP candidates, Part 3: Michele Bachmann

2011-09-20T15:51:00.003-04:00

Rep. Michele Bachmann is the leader of the Tea Party Caucus. She thinks that climate change is voodoo nonsense, hokum, AND a hoax. She said in 2008 that she was "very concerned that he [Obama] may have anti-American views." She wants to "wean everybody off" Social Security and Medicare. She has said terrible things in reference to homosexuality and same-sex marriage. But my main issue with her is that she's clearly just not that bright.

She apparently thinks HPV vaccines cause mental retardation, on the basis of one anectdotal report from the campaign trail. That she could be so easily convinced shows her lack of scientific insight and knowledge. That she would pass along the claim in a national interview shows her lack of political instincts. This episode, along with a long history of misstatements and/or fabrications, as well as having never in her 4+ years in Congress written a single bill that has become law, shows that she just doesn't have the intelligence or ability to be President.

But there is a path for her to win her party's nomination, which in this economic and political environment, gives her a path to the White House. Her campaign was doing very well, including a win in the Iowa Straw Poll, until Gov. Rick Perry entered the race. He has taken over much of her support as the Tea Party "anti-Romney". It is unlikely that Bachmann will win the nomination unless Perry is knocked out of the race.

Bachmann seems to recognize this, given the vigor with which she attacked him at the last debate. Her attacks regarding Perry's decision to mandate the HPV vaccine in Texas, along with pointing out possible corruption on Perry's part (more on that in my post about him) have managed to hurt Perry somewhat, particularly in the head-to-head with Obama.

Hopefully, even if Bachmann were nominated, the months of scrutiny of her record and her abilities would prevent her from being elected. But one can never be too sure.

Rick Perry's Texas executed/murdered a (likely) innocent man

2011-09-19T21:52:00.004-04:00

I have done a fair amount of reading about the case of Cameron Todd Willingham. He was a man who was executed in Texas for, according to Texas, killing his three daughters. It appears rather clear that, at the very least, there was reasonable doubt that Willingham was innocent. But Gov. Rick Perry, and the execution system he oversees, executed him anyway, apparently not even bothering to read the strong critique of the evidence against him.

The case is best summarized in this New Yorker article. Being a New Yorker article, it's fairly lengthy, but I think it's worth it, particularly with Perry being the GOP frontrunner.

If not, the basic summary is that he was convicted of setting a fire in 1991 which killed his 1 year old twins and 2 year old daughter. The main evidence against him were patterns in the burned house which suggested "puddles" of accelerant (e.g., lighter fluid), as well as marks that indicated more than one source point for the fire. These analyses of the burn patterns is not based on any science, and instead were based on practices handed down from generation to generation of fire investigators. A psychiatri st who pretty much made his living "diagnosing" murder suspects as sociopaths, and who has since been expelled from the American Psychiatric Association, labelled Willingham as such based on an Iron Maiden poster in his house. He was convicted and sentenced to death, despite there being no motive given besides his supposed mental illness, and no evidence besides the non-scientific analysis of the burn patterns.

Just before Willingham was executed, his case was reviewed by Dr. Gerald Hurst, a fire investigator who actually (gasp!) uses scientific methods. He reported on the advances in fire investigation since the 1991 fire. It had since been discovered that accidental fires can form the same patterns (puddles, apparent multiple starting points) as those found in the Willingham house. He gave his report to Perry's office and the clemency board. Internal e-mails show no evidence that anyone in the Governor's office or on the board even read Hurst's report. He was executed (or, if you prefer, murdered) by Texas on February 17, 2004.

Since his death, there was a state panel set up to investigate the use of forensic investigation in Texas. The panel hired another fire investigator to look at how arson cases were investigated in Texas, and he came to similar conclusions as Hurst. Just days before the panel was set to publish its conclusions, Perry removed several of its members and appointed an ally to run the panel. Since then, the panel has assigned the Willingham case to a sub-committee, which allows its hearings to be closed to the public. They have also moved their full meetings to obscure, hard-to-reach areas of the state to discourage reporters from attending.

Rick Perry is the frontrunner in his party's race for the White House. His record, policies and personality have been the focus of the last couple Republican debates. He talks proudly on the campaign trail of the use of executions in his state; he has presided over 235 executions, including Willingham's, in his time in office. If it is true that his state executed an innocent man on his watch, that should disqualify him in the eyes of voters. Hopefully the moderator at an upcoming debate, or anywhere else during the campaign, will have the guts to ask him about it.

Republicans blame uncertainty, plan to create more

2011-09-16T21:57:00.006-04:00

Speaker John Boehner gave a speech this week where he laid out the Republican "plan" for jobs. In addition to fairly vague criticism of "excessive regulation", he discussed their plans on the fiscal side of things. Their entire fiscal plan is, you guessed it, to "simplify the tax code" by lowering rates and eliminating loopholes. They bash Obama's measures to cut payroll taxes and offer tax credits as "gimmicks", despite having supported similar measures in the past.

They talk about completely overhauling the tax while claiming, as Boehner did in his speech, that the big reason employers aren't hiring is "uncertainty" about their future taxes. So their plan to turn around the economy is to put every single line of the tax code on the table, endangering every subsidy, loophole and incentive that every business in America depends on to keep their doors open. Sounds like their plan would cause a lot more uncertainty for job creators.

It would be one thing if they thought they'd be able to do this quickly. But, given the current environment, heading into an election year, there's no chance it would be a fast process. And every lobbyist in town would prepare to fight tooth-and-nail against any elimination of their specific loophole.

Meanwhile, nothing would be done to help the economy in the short term. So we'll still be stuck with high unemployment even longer, with the Republicans not only standing in the way, but actually making things worse, according to their own rhetoric.

The GOP candidates, Part 2: Ron Paul

2011-09-13T10:33:00.003-04:00

In last night's CNN/Tea Party Republican debate, there was a moment which was a perfect microcosm of the Ron Paul experience. The moderator, Wolf Blitzer, asked 7 of the 8 candidates about their thoughts on the Federal Reserve. The one candidate they didn't ask was Ron Paul, which is very peculiar when you consider that Paul wrote a book about the Fed. While I disagree with just about everything Ron Paul supports, his ideas are different from his competitors, and by marginalizing his candidacy, the media are depriving Americans of an opportunity to think and learn about economics and the role of government.

It is utterly indefensible of Blitzer to not include Paul in the Fed discussion. Mitt Romney had even set up Paul's response by saying "We need to have a Fed... because if we don't have a Fed, who's gonna run the currency? Congress?! I'm not in favor of that." Had Blitzer then gone to Paul, I'm sure that he would have quoted Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, which says that Congress has the power "To coin Money, [and] regulate the Value thereof".

This is just one more example of the media's anti-Paul bias, which I think is due to his being the most anti-corporate candidate in the race. Despite having solid backing among Republican primary voters and his close second-place finish at the Iowa straw poll, he is marginalized as a non-contender. Doing so elevates the ideas and policies of dunces like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann to the center of these debates, instead of the more interesting (but ultimately wrong) ideas of Paul.

He favors a gold standard, which would fix the value of the dollar to the value of gold. The US was on the gold standard until 1971, when it was ended by Richard Nixon. Returning to the gold standard today, as well as going to a full-reserve banking system that Paul and other Austrians support, would cause massive deflation. By limiting the supply of dollars and requiring banks to hold more of them in reserve, the value of the dollar will increase significantly. For people (like me) with student loans, or a 30 year mortgage, or any other debt, which becomes harder to pay back when each dollar is more valuable, a Ron Paul presidency would be a disaster.

It wouldn't only be a disaster for debtors. As discussed in a previous post, much of the reason for the current poor state of the economy is due to less consumer spending, as people are saving more to make up for the lost value of their homes. Deflation, by making people's mortgages and other debts larger in real terms, would have a similar effect, further driving down consumer spending and worsening the economy.

I've previously discussed the refusal of some to accept that there are some spheres, such as limiting health care costs, where government programs might be better than the private market. Paul has never met a government program he wouldn't cut/eliminate. He has such a limited view of federal power that he opposes mandates in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that desegregated restaurants/hotels/etc.

While Ron Paul's ideas are frequently wrong and/or harmful, he has enough support that his ideas deserve more attention than they're getting. Hopefully in future debates and media coverage, he'll have more of a chance to share his ideas, rather than the media deciding which ideas merit consideration.

The GOP candidates, Part 1: The Field

2011-09-12T12:32:00.003-04:00

Over the next few days, I'll try to as briefly as possible summarize my thoughts on the Republican Presidential candidates. I think there are four candidates with a realistic path to the nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and to a lesser degree, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and Texas Rep. Ron Paul. Each of them will get their own post later on. In tonight's Republican debate, there will be four other candidates, who I'll discuss here.

Also, apologies to Fred Karger (gay rights activist), Buddy Roemer (former Louisiana Gov. and Congressman who lost to former KKK leader David Duke in 1991 before disappearing for over a decade), and Gary Johnson (libertarian former New Mexico governor), who are so far behind that they can't get into the debates.

Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather's Pizza
Herman Cain is running the campaign Donald Trump wishes he could have run. Cain has never been elected to anything, but he's had a good run in this field, with his support reaching double digits after a well-received debate performance in South Carolina back in May. He has since faded, but still maintains enough support to stay in the debates.

My impression from watching him in debates is that he excels at telling Republican voters what they want to hear, even if he doesn't have much of an idea what it means. After making several statements about the Israel-Palestine conflict a few months back, it became clear that he had no idea what the Palestinian "Right of Return" is. Being a rather important issue in the conflict, that was the moment that I wrote off his chances of being a serious contender.

Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House
Despite leading the Republican war against the Clintons in the 90's, Gingrich also demonstrated an ability to work with President Clinton on big initiatives such as welfare reform. In 2005, he had high-profile discussions with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton about health care reform. It is this willingness to work with Democrats that made Newt my preferred candidate (though in this field, that's not saying much).

Unfortunately for Newt, his campaign had one of the worst rollouts in recent history. He appeared on Meet the Press and denounced the Republican/Paul Ryan budget as "right-wing social engineering". He picked a bad year to fight the new Republican/Tea Party orthodoxy. He was forced to quickly walk back his statement, and his candidacy has never recovered.

Jon Huntsman, former Utah Governor
I am flabbergasted that Jon Huntsman is doing so much worse than Mitt Romney. Both are handsome, Mormon, rich, moderate former governors. Huntsman has a better record creating jobs in his state than Romney did in his, as Huntsman and Perry pointed out in last week's debate. Most importantly, Huntsman does not have the "RomneyCare" baggage that should be poisoning Romney's chances among Republican primary voters.

In the recent debate, he denounced those of his competitors (read, Perry and Bachmann) who have led to his Party being viewed as "anti-science". While accepting the role science should play in a modern society might help him in a general election, it will make it very difficult to emerge from a Republican primary.

Rick Santorum, former Pennsylvania Senator
Santorum's appeal is pretty much limited to social conservatives who don't like the Tea Party, or at least those who don't like Bachmann and Perry. He's militantly anti-gay and anti-abortion. He was also defeated, as an incumbent, by 19% in his re-election bid in 2006.

Why Obama's jobs bill makes sense

2011-09-11T22:55:00.010-04:00

This recession and recovery has been terrible. More jobs were lost, and they're taking longer to come back. Why is that, and what can government do to help?

The recession was caused by the breaking of the housing bubble. Housing prices dropped by about a third. This had a particularly strong effect on consumers because many of them had a large percentage of their net worth tied up in their homes. As a result, the average Americans' net worth fell by almost 25% during the recession. To make up for this shock, and given the uncertainty in the labor market, many Americans have started saving instead of spending. Given that consumer spending makes up about 70% of the economy, that's a recipe for a recession and a slow recovery.

It's also a recipe for making Republicans' plans for across-the-board tax cuts ineffective. Untargeted tax cuts are likely to be saved, particularly those tax cuts given to top earners, adding to the piles of cash banks are already sitting on. Money saved is not as stimulative as money spent, as we need people buying things to mkae up for the drop in consumer spending. Untargeted tax cuts might also be used to buy things from overseas.

Republicans are also pushing for corporate tax cuts. Corporate income taxes in America already add up to a smaller total, as a percentage of GDP, than corporate income taxes in any other OECD country. Corporations are sitting on a record amount of cash. Corporate profits are at an all-time high. I have yet to see any convincing evidence that jobs will come if we just give corporations just a little bit more, but that's what Republican candidates are proposing.

Obama's preference in the American Jobs Act for targeted tax cuts, including payroll tax cuts and tax credits for hiring veterans and long-term unemployed, ensures that any lost government revenue is spent specifically on the best solution, American jobs. Instead of giving tax cuts to people who may or may not use it to add jobs, Obama's plans will only give tax cuts to job creators. And instead of labelling every rich guy and job-cutting corporation a "job creator" as the Republicans do, the only way to get tax benefits is to actually create jobs.

Why are Republicans acting this way?

2011-09-10T16:50:00.002-04:00

First, some background:

-Prior to the recent debt ceiling fight, the debt ceiling had been raised 74 times since 1962 without controversy and without conditions. The vast majority of current Republican who were in Congress during the Bush administration voted for increases each of the 7 times it was increased. These Republicans now decided that trillions in cuts must be attached to the recent increase.

-7 Republican Senators (Robert Bennett of Utah, Sam Brownback of Kansas, Mike Crapo of Idaho, John Ensign of Nevada, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, James Inhofe of Oklahoma, and John McCain of Arizona) co-sponsored a bill to set up a deficit commission which Congress would be forced to vote on. After Obama came out in support of the bill, all 7 removed their names from the bill and voted against it. As a result, we got a weaker commission without a binding requirement for a vote.

-During the health care reform debate, Republicans stated they wanted 4 things in the bill:
1. Allow people to buy insurance across state lines. This is in Obama's law.
2. Allow individuals and small businesses to pool together to buy insurance. This is what the health insurance exchanges established by Obama's law are.
3. Allow states flexibility to experiment with different approaches. This is in Obama's law, which allows states to opt out if they have a better proposal.
4. Tort reform. No particularly strong elements of this in the bill, though it hasn't particularly been shown to work when it comes to limiting health care costs.

Despite including these elements in the law, as well as support from such noted Socialists as Bob Dole and Obama's refusal to push for a public (government-run) option, Republicans uniformly voted against it and decry reform as an affront to all that is right and American.

Why are Republicans acting this way? Why do they demonize proposals which they used to support, just because Obama supports them? Why do they refuse to compromise with him, rejecting deals like Obama's "Grand Bargain" which included between $3 and $5 in spending cuts for every dollar of tax increases?

Republican Senate Minority Leader summarized the Republicans' position very succinctly when he said "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term President." He didn't say their number one goal is to put Americans back to work, or let them keep more money in their pockets, or anything else not hyper-partisan. Their goal is to make Obama fail, and simple game theory demonstrates that this can't happen by giving him anything he wants.

There are two possible scenarios come Election time; either the economy improves, or it doesn't. If it improves, history tells us that Obama would be more likely (though not a lock) to be re-elected, whether he had some Republican support or not. If it doesn't improve and Republicans had supported some of Obama's initiatives, Obama would be able to share the blame with them, much as Bush stuck John Kerry and the Democrats with some blame for Iraq during the '04 election. If it doesn't improve and Republicans voted against him all the way, he gets all the blame and is an easy target come 2012.

So, given that their stated #1 goal is to make him a one term President, it makes sense that they would deny everything to Obama. There is even motivation for them to actively prevent the economy from improving. Given their refusal to support previously non-controversial things like raising the debt ceiling and infrastructure spending, there's reason to think that's what they're doing.

Medicare and Republican Dogma

2011-09-08T22:55:00.002-04:00

When defending his plan to replace Medicare with vouchers, Rep. Paul Ryan often points to Medicare Part D, the prescription drug component of Medicare, which relies heavily on private prescription coverage. Ryan points to the government's costs for Part D being about 40% under the projections made when the bill was passed in 2003. He claims that this proves that competition and private markets are more efficient than public programs. Unfortunately for him, the facts of Medicare Part D, as well as a comparison of Medicare vs. private health insurance, demonstrates that this is just not the case. The failure of Republicans to recognize these facts is another example of the zealous misplaced faith in free markets as a solution for every problem every time.

In 2003, when Medicare Part D was passed, it was projected that 93% of eligible seniors would sign up for the program. In fact, only 77% of those eligible enrolled. Additionally, overall drug spending, not just spending within Part D, came in 35% below the projections made in 2003. This is due to several drugs becoming available generically, fewer new expensive drugs, and the rise in the number of prescriptions per senior not rising as quickly as projected. Most if not all of the "savings" Ryan points to come from factors which have nothing to do with the private nature of the plans.

Looking at Medicare since implemented, it has consistently shown a superior ability to control costs than private health insurance plans. As shown in the National Health Expenditures Data (.pdf, page 17, Table 14), between 1970 and 2009, the per-enrolee expenditures for Medicare have increased at an annual rate of 8.3%, compared to 9.3% for private health insurers. Since 1999, the annual advantage for medicare has been larger, between 2 and 2.5% per year. Thanks to the miracle of compound interest, it works out to private costs increasing over 60% faster than Medicare over the past decade (my calculation based on the percentages in the .pdf above).

Per the CBO, a Medicare plan for a senior is 11% cheaper today than providing the same benefits would cost if purchased from a private insurer. This is largely due to the massive bargaining power that Medicare has, given the huge number of people it covers. The CBO projects, based on the different rates of growth like I discussed in the previous paragraph, that by 2030, a Medicare plan would cost 30-40% less than a private plan.

Rep. Ryan's plan proposes a subsidy for private insurance that, in 2030, would be worth about 32% of the cost of a private plan, per the CBO. Given that a Medicare plan would be cheaper by just about that same amount, seniors would be better off if the government kept Medicare going but completely eliminated the subsidies than they would be with being forced into a subsidized private plan.

Ryan and other Republicans are incapable of recognizing the errors in their approach to Medicare because it is antithetical to their free-market dogma to think that a government program could be more efficient than a privatized system. We have 40 years of Medicare history that clearly demonstrates that they are wrong.

Preview of Obama's Speech Tonight

2011-09-08T08:46:00.002-04:00

With the President giving a speech before a joint session of Congress tonight, I'm going to push back the conclusion my analysis of the Republican plan to eliminate (or save, if you prefer) Medicare. I'll also be discussing last night's Republican debate, and more generally my opinions on the Republican field, in the near-future.

The President's speech tonight, along with yesterday's debate, which was the first to include front-runner Texas Gov. Rick Perry, marks the true beginning of the 2012 election. President Obama will be laying out proposals to increase jobs. If the "leaks" are to be believed, he will be proposing somewhere between $300 billion and $500 billion in new spending and tax cuts for things like an extension of unemployment benefits, a payroll tax cut extension, job training, school construction, and infrastructure spending. I haven't seen any specifics on how he will propose to pay for this spending, but it is likely it will include closing some tax loopholes as he advocated during the debt ceiling fiasco.

He will essentially be daring the Republicans to vote his proposals down. Republicans have spent the last 3 years villifying Obama and his policies, so it seems fairly likely that they'll oblige him in this dare. Given that Republicans have been attacking policies they used to support (which we'll be discussing more in depth in future posts), it will be politically untenable for them among their own base to vote for hundreds of billions in new spending.

Once they are on the record as voting down a jobs bill, Obama will be able to go to voters and make a surprisingly good case that he's done all he can on jobs and the economy, given the relative lack of power he has on economic matters vis-a-vis Congress.

-The recent downturn in job creation corresponds fairly closely to the draw-down of the original stimulus spending.

-The CBO estimates the stimulus bill meant there are now 1.3 million to 3.3 million more jobs than there otherwise would have been.

-Some liberal economists, such as the New York Times' Paul Krugman, argue that the stimulus should have been bigger, but since the vote in the Senate barely beat a Republican filibuster, it is unlikely that he could have gotten a bigger package passed.

-Depending on the analysis, the spending cuts forced through by Republicans during the deficit debate, along with failing to extend payroll tax cuts and unemployment insurance, will cost as many as 1.8 million jobs in 2012.

-The things he is reportedly proposing tonight would have been fairly non-controversial just a few years ago. Refusing to go along with things like infrastructure spending, job training and tax cuts for workers will make it much easier for Obama to lay the blame for the economy at the feet of Republicans in Congress.

Hiding the costs of cutting

2011-09-07T14:13:00.004-04:00

(Very long post. The take home point is that the Republican plan to modify/replace Medicare will result in massive increases in out-of-pocket expenses for beneficiaries, because private insurance is just straight-up indisputably more expensive than Medicare. In order to be able to cover these increased costs, each of us would have to start saving thousands of dollars a year starting today to make up the difference. So why not just pay more in Medicare taxes, the increase of which would be less than the amount we would have to set aside should Republicans get their way?)

In my previous post, I discussed that, since most voters don't know how the federal government spends money, Tea Partiers were able to get into office on a vague pledge to "cut spending", without ever being specific about what spending would be cut. After they got into office, besides some invectives hurled at budgetarily-trivial organizations like Planned Parenthood and NPR, their main budgetary proposal was Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan's "Path to Prosperity". Its main cost savings come from changing traditional Medicare into a system oddly enough quite similar to Obamacare. Instead of being a government-run, subsidized health insurer, Medicare would give seniors vouchers with which they could purchase private insurance on government-run exchanges, just like Obamacare. While it would decrease government expenditures on health care, it would increase health care expenditures overall and vastly increase costs for seniors. That means that current workers, who of course are tomorrow's seniors, would have to immediately start paying thousands of dollars a year in a hidden "tax" to make up for the supposed "savings" Republicans want to impose.

As currently constituted, Medicare offers subsidized insurance. The total cost of insurance is made up of both government subsidies and seniors' out-of-pocket expenses. The Republican plan, which all but 4 Congressional Republicans voted for, would not change anything for anyone already on Medicare or anyone 55 or above. That is, if you're 65 years old and get into Medicare before 2022, it doesn't change anything. According to the Congressional Budget Office (.pdf) and the Kaiser Family Foundation (.pdf), the average Medicare beneficiary, under current law, would get about $8,000 in subsidies in 2022 and have to pay about $6,200 out-of-pocket every year, for a total cost of about $14,000 a year.

Under the Republican plan, seniors would instead get a voucher for $8,000, the same as the government's cost in 2022 under current law, and purchase private insurance via a government-run exchange. The CBO estimates that a plan providing similar benefits to Medicare via a private insurer would cost a bit over $20,000 a year, or over $6,000 more than a traditional Medicare plan. This is because, with Medicare's bargaining power, they are able to pay lower reimbursement rates to doctors and hospitals. Because the federal government's contribution stays at $8,000, the out-of-pocket cost for a senior in 2022 would be over $6,000 higher than they would pay out-of-pocket with traditional Medicare.

The savings for the government come via limiting the rate at which the voucher's value increases over time, as well as by pushing back the age at which citizens qualify for the voucher (going from 65 in 2022 to 67 in 2033). Instead of the current system, where the government's cost increases in step with the rise of health care costs, the Republican plan would index increases in the govenment's cost to overall inflation, which historically is well below inflation in health care costs. This means that the percentage of seniors' health care costs which are paid by the government will decrease over time, as the voucher increases in value more slowly than health care costs go up. The CBO also projects that the difference in price between a traditional Medicare plan and a similar private plan will continue to increase over time. So people younger than 55 would get an even worse deal than today's 55 year olds.

So let's look at how much a 55 year old today would have to save in order to cover the increased costs in their retirement. All the calculations are my own, and I'd be happy to share more details if anyone cares:

-The Social Security Administration projects that a person who turns 65 in 2022 can expect to live 19 years.

-In order to pay $6,240 more out-of-pocket, per the Kaiser projection, for each of those 19 years (which is a very kind assumption, as the actual out-of-pocket cost will increase faster than inflation), assuming a 5% return on investment, would require a nest egg of $77,764 at age 65, which would be spent down to $0 over the next 19 years

-In order to have a nest egg of $77,764 by age 65, again assuming a 5% return on investment (which is also very kind and very close to the average 5.3% rate of increase of the Dow over the 20th century, given the current return on a 10 year government bond of about 2%), a current 55 year old would have to save just over $5,200 a year, or $100 a week, starting today to not lose ground.

-If you drop the expected rate of return on investment to 3%, which again relative to the 10 year T-bill is kind, a current 55 year old would have to save just over $7,000 a year, starting today, to not lose ground.

-When you consider that health care costs have increased by 4.9% in real terms over the past 4 decades, which means that health costs have gone up faster than the Dow increased in the 20th century (4.9% real is actually more than 5.3% nominal, which doesn't include inflation), it is likely that younger workers will get an even worse deal than current 55 year olds. They'll have more time to save up their nest egg, but in real terms they will have to save/deposit even more to make up the difference.

All of this boils down to the fact that Medicare, due to its massive, bordering-on-monopsony power to control reimbursement rates, is more effective at limiting costs than private insurance. If your goal is to limit health care costs for the government, the Republican plan is one way to go. But if your goal is to limit overall costs, which at the end of the day is what matters, then it's a big step in the wrong direction. Instead of paying thousands more a year into individual accounts to pay increased out-of-pocket costs in our retirement, we would be better off to pay more than we currently do into the Medicare system.

In the next post, we'll discuss why Republicans' claims that privatization will actually decrease costs, which seem to be largely based on their misinterpretation of the effects of Medicare Part D (Medicare prescription coverage), are flawed.

The long-awaited return of The Political Doctor!

2011-09-07T08:39:00.002-04:00

Hello again, friends! After a long layoff during which I completed my Pediatrics residency and getting a job back home in Akron, it's time once again to fire up the computing machine and share my political thoughts with the world! Aren't you lucky?!

Let's begin again by returning to my "What is everyone so angry about" series. In Part 1 and Part 2, we discussed the distortions and outright lies that Republicans were using to demonize the President as an un-American Marxist in order to provide cover for refusing to negotiate with him. Now we will discuss why voters are so vulnerable to these tactics.

The average voter is woefully misinformed and/or ignorant about the federal budget.

Some facts before we begin. Here's a rundown of where the money actually goes. Highlights include 67% of spending going to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid/CHIP, defense spending, and interest on the debt. Another 14% goes to safety net programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps, low-income housing assistance, school lunches, and such.

In a poll in November 2010, when the Tea Party made their historic gains in Congress and state legislatures, Americans were asked what percentage of the federal budget they thought went to foreign aid, and then what percentage they think should be spent. The median responses were that 25% of the budget (which would work out to about $900 billion/year) was sent to other countries, and that an ideal amount of aid would be 10%.

The actual percentage of the federal budget for foreign aid is less than 1%.

When it comes to military spending, most voters vastly underestimate how much we spend. The defense budget for 2011 is about $719 billion(.pdf). This represents about a fifth of the total federal budget and is about 7 times the amount spent by any other country. A Rasmussen Reports survey from earlier this year finds that only 25% of voters think that we should spend even 3 times as much any other country and 40% think we should spend less than that. Reducing our military spending to only 3 times the next closes country would save us $400 billion a year and would result in 10-year savings of around double the savings agreed to in the budget battle last month.

Since my last post, I called into a nationally-syndicated right-wing radio show, The War Room, to correct the host on the amount of spending on earmarks. He said several times during a rant that there are "hundreds of billions wasted on earmarks", when in fact the actual number is about $16 billion a year.

A poll(.pdf) from March 2011 shows that voters believe, on average, that 42 cents of every federal dollar are wasted. Wasted!!! A stunning 60% of voters think that our deficit problems can be eliminated by simply eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse". As mentioned above, the vast majority of government spending is in popular programs like Medicare, Social Security and defense, which voters consistently say they don't want to be cut (.pdf).

To the average voter who belives these falsities, it would be pretty easy to become frustrated and angry with President Obama for not doing more to cut the "waste, fraud and abuse", which of course no one would miss. Republicans capitalized on this anger by running a vague campaign in favor of "spending cuts". Voters, the media and their Democratic opponents never provoked Republicans to get specific about where they would cut, so they were able to skate into office without taking politically-bold stands about which popular programs (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) they would cut.

In my next post (which won't be 17 months from now, I promise!), we'll discuss the Paul Ryan budget (.pdf), which would replace the current Medicare program with vouchers, or, if you prefer, premium supports. Sneak preview: it would result in a huge cost increase for future seniors who, as current non-senior workers, would essentially have to pay a new tax today to save for their increased future costs.

What is everyone so angry about? Part 2

2010-05-06T10:38:00.006-04:00

As discussed in part 1, conservative media repeatedly portray Obama as a socialist in order to provide cover for not negotiating/compromising with him. In addition to portraying deficits and spending as out of line with historical norms (despite being in line with Bush's last months and CBO projections at the start of his Presidency), they frequently cite the federal government taking a partial ownership in banks and car companies as a condition for saving those companies from extinction with billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars. What Hannity & Co. miss, with these claims, is that it was noted Socialist George W. Bush who required banks give stock to the government in exchange for a bailout, and that doing anything else would have required either a second Great Depression or a massive giveaway to Wall Street.

There was a legitimate debate around the time of TARP (the bank bailout bill) about whether or not taking an ownership stake in companies was a good idea. Just about everyone agreed that letting the banks go out of business would destroy the economy. It was also widely agreed that government cash was the only way that these companies would be kept from closing their doors. Numerous prominent Republicans supported taking ownership in bailed-out banks, including the Bush White House, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, House GOP Leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor, along with 89 other House Republicans and 32 other GOP Senators. You can't call Obama a socialist for taking over banks without putting the same label on the GOP. Theirs was not the socialistic goal of achieving government ownership of production; it was to save our (mostly-) capitalist economy.

This claim that Obama took over banks also rings somewhat hollow as he, ya know, wasn't President then.

When Obama actually was President, he applied the same logic that Bush and the GOP leadership (and then-Sen. Obama) did with TARP in bailing out GM and Chrysler. Bush had already allocated billions of dollars to save the two. Obama followed Bush's deal with the banks that, if the federal government was going to share in the risk of loss of billions of dollars, that they should get a share of the potential profits as well.

Another problem with the "Obama-as-Socialist" meme is that he's so bad at it, were that his actual goal. Under Obama's administration, the government has sold back most of the stakes it took in banks, and GM has repaid billions of its debt. His supposed socialist takeover of our health care system expands private insurance much more than it expands government-run plans. In one breath, they criticize Obama as a Socialist who is out to lead a government takeover of the banks, and in the next breath, they say he is in bed with them. They'll twist reality in any way necessary to attack Obama and de-legitimize his policies.

One of my biggest beefs with the Tea Party and the conservative media is that they overemphasize critiques of Obama policies without properly acknowledging the alternatives to those policies. The only alternatives to Obama's action regarding partial ownership of GM and Chrysler were either letting the companies fail by refusing to help them, which would have destroyed millions of jobs, or to give the corporations something for nothing, giving them billions without asking for anything in return. Those alternatives, of course, don't look as good on a sign at a rally as a picture of Obama with a Hitler mustache.

I hold out hope that as November approaches, conservatives will be forced to say what they will do if returned to power, instead of just what they oppose. Opposing Obama's deficits and spending is all well and good in the abstract, but you can't slash the deficit or lower taxes without specific ideas about what spending to cut. As we'll discuss in Part 3, Tea Partiers, and Americans in general, are susceptible to such vague rhetoric because they have no idea what the government actually spends taxpayers' money on. As Americans become more interested and educated during the upcoming campaign, they will more carefully consider alternatives to Obama's policies, and those policies might not look so un-American anymore.

What is everyone so angry about? Part 1

2010-04-28T23:15:00.004-04:00

Anyone who listens to 2+ hours of conservative talk radio a day like I do can tell you that the Republican Party is defined above all by anger. What's frustrating being a liberal listening to these shows is that the vast majority of that anger is based on claims which are demonstrably false. Over the course of the next several posts, I'll show that Conservative claims that Obama exploded the deficit, that he "shoved ObamaCare down our throats", that we are overtaxed, that Obama is a socialist gobbling up banks and car companies, and that the solution to the deficit is spending cuts are all based on clearly incorrect ideas.

We'll start with Sean Hannity's daily claim that "Obama quadrupled the deficit!" Whenever Hannity is challenged on his frequent claims that Obama is a radical socialist, Hannity trots out this deficit lie as seeming proof of Obama being something peculiar and unprecedented in history. Other presidents have raised or lowered the deficit, the argument goes, but Obama QUADRUPLED it.

Portraying Obama's policies as out of line with any other administration in history is necessary for the conservatives' strategy of resisting absolutely everything the Democrats try to do. You can't refuse to compromise with your opponent unless they are seen as so extreme that even meeting them half-way would be a radical change. Convincing people that Obama quadrupled the debt goes a long way to making him too extreme to be bargained with.

Here's the calculation one has to do to arrive at "quadrupling". In February 2008, Bush's White House projected a deficit for the 12 months from October 2008 through September 2009 to be $407 billion. This number didn't include any of the $150 billion being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan that year, which as part of accounting tricks used to keep the headline deficit number artificially low, were funded via supplemental bills. $407 billion's a dishonest start, but at least it's a start.

In February 2010, Obama projected total debt for Fiscal Year 2010 of $1.6 trillion. As you might be aware, $1.6 trillion divided by $400 billion is 4. A talking point is born.

Of course, kind of a lot happened in the two years between the two budget projections (i.e., guesses about future deficits). Massive unemployment, which led to both a decrease in tax revenue and an increase in demand for government services, along with lost wealth exploded the deficit in the last months of Bush's presidency. In January 2009, before Obama took office, the Congressional Budget Office was projecting a deficit of between $1.2 and $1.3 trillion.

By the time Obama took office, we were losing ~800,000 jobs per month. Obama and the Democrats chose to follow good ol' Econ 101 Keynsian policies, by increasing deficit spending to spur growth in the economy. And so, the projected deficit bumped up by about $400 billion. Which is a lot. I'm not trying to convince you that Obama has been a deficit hawk. But it's only half the increase in the budget deficit that occurred under Bush.

It's much easier to refuse to negotiate with a Marxist than a Keynsian. To try to portray him as the former, Hannity and other conservatives cherry-pick numbers to arrive at claims that are removed from reality. They try to do this in order to further stoke the anger among the Tea Party. As we'll continue to discuss throughout this series, this anger is based on ignorance and misinformation, and is certainly not an appropriate basis for a political party.

Oklahoma mandates rape before abortion

2010-04-27T20:45:00.004-04:00

Today, Oklahoma's legislature passed a law which forces a woman to have a vaginal ultrasound showing her fetus before she is allowed to have an abortion. If you've never had the pleasure of having or at least watching a vaginal ultrasound, let me describe for you the ultrasound probe.

See, you can get a better picture of the fetus if you put an ultrasound emitter into the vagina, where it's closer to the uterus. Some engineer somewhere many years ago had to figure out the best shape to use to enter a vagina. Nature had the same problem and created an erect penis, and our engineer wound up inventing a similarly-shaped device. Having a vaginal ultrasound means getting this penis-shaped probed placed in your vagina. It's fairly unpleasant in a medical setting, as you might imagine. But it gives you a better picture than a traditional ultrasound which places the probe on the woman's abdomen, and sometimes it's medically necessary to get a REALLY good look at a fetus (or gynelogical cancer, or anything else you'd want a good look at).

At the hospitals where I've trained, like hospitals everywhere, they're concerned about passing infections from patient to patient. When it comes to vaginal ultrasound probes, they had to find something to cover the probes as they're being used. At my hospitals, they use condoms. Regular ol' off-the-shelf Trojan condoms.

So Oklahoma just mandated by law that a medical professional put a condom over a penis-shaped object and insert it in a woman's vagina, whether she likes it or not, before that woman can have an abortion.

Government-sanctioned rape; it's not just for war-torn African countries anymore!

As a medical doctor, it strikes me as quite unethical for gynecologists and ultrasound technicians to participate in this. Hopefully the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) will provide support to its members who don't want to go along with mandated rape.

"State of the Union" Live-Blog

2009-02-24T20:57:00.045-05:00

Welcome back to the Doctor's Office in scenic Pittsburgh, PA. I've been meaning to getting back to the blog, and the President's pseudo-State of the Union speech seems as good an entry point as any, so here goes. As usual, I'm watching on MSNBC:

8:58 - Unprofessional move by Chris Matthews, taking a huge whack at Bobby Jindal, the Louisiana Governor, who is giving the GOP response to the President's speech. Says he's "not at all impressed with Jindal". Way to make MSNBC look ridiculous!

9:00 - That reminds me, and just skip to the next one if you don't watch MSNBC kind of a lot, but are you as annoyed as I am with that ridiculous "Hardball" commercial where Matthews says "I hate to teach politics to the experts, but it's fun." in just the jerkiest way possible?

9:04 - Whilst they're still introducing people, let me point you over to an article on fivethirtyeight.com written by a Berkeley linguistics professor about Obama's use of language as unconscious persuasion.

9:08 - Can't they cut out all the slowly introducing people while everyone just sort of mills about and shakes hands with people they've worked with in Congress for 20 years? Isn't there a huge economic crisis y'all could be working on?

9:10 - It's weird, but I still don't really think of Obama as the President. Like, my first-hundredth-of-a-second "how do you think of Barack Obama?" reaction does not include being President. He's still a candidate in my mind.

9:13 - Did Orrin Hatch just grab Obama by the back of the neck? I know he meant it as a friendly gesture, but the man is President!

9:14 - Damn, while typing I apparently missed Hillary kissing Obama (presumably on the cheek). Oh the perils of live-blogging

9:15 - The applauding continuously while the "star" thanks everyone in an attempt to quiet them is strangely "Tonight Show"-ish.

9:16 - Once again Obama steps on a line. He was supposed to wait for Speaker Pelosi to introduce him, but instead started right in on the first few words of his speech.

9:18 - Oh thank God, MSNBC has the opinion meter thingy where two on-screen lines represent how much Obama or McCain voters "like" what he is saying! Now I don't have to worry about forming my own opinion

9:19 - It is oddly hypnotic, though

9:20 - Let's see how smart McCain voters are. He's setting up to trash Bush's policies. I wonder when McCain voters realize it.

9:24 - OK, he didn't go at it nearly as hard as I thought he might. But he definitely gave a few jabs that went unnoticed

9:25 - Aw, look at Joe act all surprised and embarrassed after being complimented by the President. It's like he didn't know it was coming.

9:27 - He's trying to be more optimistic tonight than he's been previously, emphasizing not the "we're in trouble" and more on the "we won't be forever".

9:29 - So why are people worried about nationalizing banks? These banks, by all laws of capitalism, should have gone out of business. But the government stepped in and kept them afloat. So why should people get to keep their shares of a company which should have gone out of business? The only moral argument for people being rich is that the market determined their value to be that high. The market dictates that people who had millions of dollars in Citigroup, AIG etc should have lost their entire investment. So why are we worrying about wiping out the fake "value" of their investment?

9:33 - My oh my, but that opinion meter graph is distracting

9:34 - It's fun when there's a partisan issue that only the Democrats stand up and applaud for. Then you can see a stark representation of their dominant majority in Congress.

9:37 - It's so bizarre to have a President who argues for government, and not calling it the problem.

9:39 - Maybe this is a sign I watch too much sports, but Pelosi is killing Biden at starting standing ovations. Is Biden injured?

9:41 - All this bailout stuff has totally crushed my sense of the value of money in politics. When Obama mentions $15 billion a year for green energy research, my first response is "hmmpf! chump change..."

9:43 - I always thought they rehearsed when to burst into applause. Like, someone would go through the speech with the VP (and Speaker, if they're all the same party) and figure out when to stand up. Pelosi clearly has her own agenda.

9:44 - Isn't it ridiculous that whatever spellchecker this site uses still doesn't recognize "Pelosi" or "Obama"?

9:46 - Thoroughly uninspiring section on health care. I don't have anything to say about it.

9:49 - Having as your national goal reclaiming the highest percentage in the world of the population with college degrees doesn't quite have the inspirational cache of sending a man to the moon

9:51 - He's starting to overuse the "no red or blue states, on the United States"-"not a Democratic issue, not a Republican issue, but an American issue" construction.

9:53 - Oh, in case you didn't hear, the White House announced today that, instead of having all our troops out of Iraq in 16 months, as Obama aimed for during the campaign, he will now aim to have all combat troops out in 19 months. Damn

9:56 - Nice job pointing out the ridiculousness of the Bush policy to not include the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan when calculating the deficit. That's hundreds of billions of dollars a year that they just didn't include on the supposed "bottom line".

9:57 - Of course, it is not without advantage to Obama to make this change. It's rhetorically easier to double a trillion dollar deficit than triple a half a trillion dollar deficit

10:00 - How sad that I'm glad to hear the President say we don't torture and to believe him. How was that not always a given?

10:05 - Bland, "inspirational" section here. Not really much to say

10:06 - ...so let's talk some more about the audience reaction lines. McCain's voters have pretty consistently been higher than the Obama voters' line. I guess the redliners are trying to be bipartisan or something.

10:08 - In the audience, Ohio Sen. looks like he just had a stroke.

10:09 - He really is pushing hard for the stimulus and budget being mostly things he wants to do anyway (health care, green energy, etc.). Starting out his term going for a home run. OK speech without any particularly memorable moments.

10:13 - Getting ready for Jindal. I honestly don't know why the opposing party always does these. It's pretty much impossible to invent a juxtaposition that makes you look shittier than comparing yourself while standing in an empty office to the Leader of the Free World addressing a joint session of Congress.

10:15 - And Matthews comes around again to dump on Jindal before he even speaks. I really would like it if MSNBC would make at least some effort to separate their opinion people from their news people.

10:24 - Did someone just say "Oh god" under their breath as Jindal came on? Was that Keith?

10:25 - Having never heard him talk in this setting before, I can tell you that my first impression is that he's not very good at this. Neither conversational nor formal. Just kinda silly and fake.

10:29 - Neither he nor Obama have had much in terms of specifics. Such a shame

10:32 - As a doctor, I can tell you that we already have a system where decisions are NOT made by a patient and their doctor. Insurance companies have a lot of say. To state that universal care would ruin a pure patient/doctor relationship is ridiculous

10:33 - Obama voters are not feeling the obligation that McCain voters were to support the other guy. Much lower blue scores for Jindal than red scores for Obama

10:36 - Not great. Nothing memorable from either. I don't think anyone will remember tonight on either side.

Things Only Government Has Motivation to Do

2009-02-10T05:56:00.002-05:00

One of the things about free-market capitalism is that, if there's no one who has an economic incentive to do a particular thing, it's very unlikely that thing will be done. Government, by having vast sums of money (stolen at gunpoint from the people, I'll grant you) along with incentives other than profit, is uniquely situated to perform those tasks in our society which, while beneficial to society as a whole, are not economically beneficial to the performer.

An example is the FDA. Pfizer/Merck/et. al have a huge motivation to get new drugs on the market. They devote billions of dollars a year to development and marketing of new medications. There are few entities, however, who stand to profit by having new drugs not reach the market, or by ensuring that side effects are minimized. Even insurance companies will often not have an economic incentive to stop new drugs; just because a few people might die because of a new med doesn't mean that there's not money to be made by providing it to the other patients who don't have a problem with the med.

In the days before the FDA, anyone could bring any product to market. Since there was no one to oppose new products, we wound up with an era of snake oil salesmen and quack doctors. Eventually, because government had motivation to test and regulate new meds even though they would lose money doing so, we are now relatively protected from potentially harmful products.

Of course, it is imperfect protection. Due to the massive sums of money involved, along with chronic underfunding of the FDA, pharmaceutical companies are still able to ram harmful drugs through the process. Teams of lawyers, marketers, lobbyists and paid researchers line up on one side versus, usually, a single FDA scientist who is tasked with verifying thousands of pages of research on a new medication. And this single scientist is tasked with convincing FDA commissioners who know they have a lucrative drug company job waiting for them if they are perceived as being "industry-friendly" to rule against that industry. So the FDA is not without its problems, but it's better than nothing, which is what we'd get if it were left up to the market.

The economic stimulus, as discussed by President Obama last night, is another example of government stepping in when the market does not provide incentive for changes that benefit society. Because people are afraid of a continuing worsening of the economy, few are spending and investing money. Therefore, the economy continues to suffer, leading to a downward spiral of increasing fear and decreasing spending. A single, private entity isn't going to be the first to jump out to break the cycle; they'd lost all their money. In this market, if a CEO is able to keep his company afloat, he'd probably get huge bonuses, based on the bonuses Wall Street gives to people who drive their companies into the ground. So what's the motivation for this CEO to risk his company's future, even if failing to take that risk hurts the general economy?

It is up to government, therefore, to act. Only government has both the access to resources as well as the motivation to spend those resources now. Only government spending can break the cycle we're in. Giving a few hundred billion in tax cuts isn't going to do it; there's already trillions of dollars in private money that is on the sidelines in this economy, waiting for a sign to jump into the market.

One more place where government can act where no one else has an economic motive to do so is in social programs, an example of which is free condom programs. For lots of reasons (embarassment, not thinking ahead, etc.), young folk often don't use condoms. And society then has to deal with increased numbers of STDs and unintended pregnancies. Based on insurance companies' refusal to provide free condoms, it appears there is no private entity with an economic motivation to give teens free condoms. So it falls to government to do so. Let's hope voters keep giving government non-economic motivation to keep at it.

Things Only Government Can Do

2009-02-02T20:52:00.002-05:00

Driving in Morgantown ,WV (home of WVU and where I'm doing my pediatrics residency) when its snowing can be truly awful. Numerous hospital staff who have worked in Morgantown for decades swear to me that the snowplows don't even come out if school is cancelled that morning. And so, after a 70 mile commute, on a snowy day I spend at least an extra half-hour sitting in traffic on the 2 miles of fairly-major-but-not-Interstate roads between I-79 and the hospital.

Most of my readership probably remembers the widespread blackout in August 2003, where power was lost throughout the eastern United States.

In Kentucky, Americans are dying because of poor infrastructure. Carbon monoxide poisoning was to blame, killing people who were attempting to warm their homes that were left without electricity during record cold.

And then there's the 13 Americans who, like me and presumably you, take the risk to drive across a bridge every day lost their lives when the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed into the Mississippi River.

The American Society of Civil Engineers (i.e., people who are the experts when it comes to this sort of thing) give the existing infrastructure in the United States a "D" grade. They estimate that it would cost $2.2 trillion to get our roads, power lines and other infrastructure up to code.

As someone who loses hours to traffic, is more productive with electricity powering my workplace and my computer, and doesn't want to drown in my Honda, I really wish our leaders, knowing that they A) are tasked with creating jobs (and/or allowing private industry to create jobs) for millions of Americans, and B) have to maintain and improve the infrastructure that allows Americans to be productive and live modern lives, could figure out a way to get millions of Americans working on maintaining and improving infrastructure.

Is the Republican Party Doomed?

2009-01-29T19:39:00.005-05:00

Rachel Maddow was up in arms yesterday on her show about the President's stimulus bill that was passed by the House. Despite efforts by the President to include elements in the bill to appeal to Republicans (tax cuts, etc.) at the expense of more spending on infrastructure, alternative energy and unemployment benefits, not one Republican voted for the bill. Not one. Amazing...

How is it possible that every single one of the 178 Republicans held together to oppose the bill? Even with Obama's popularity, eleven Democrats went against him on this one. And yet no GOPer had the gall to oppose the mighty John Boehner. I suppose this is due to circling the wagons when under attack, along with the fact that only the Republican-est of Republican districts elected Republicans this time around.

So what can be done to fight such solidarity among the GOP in opposition to Obama's attempts at bipartisanship? What can we derive from the saga of the stimulus plan regarding Obama's plan for doing so? It would appear that, as Ms. Maddow fears, that the President screwed up. He gave the Republicans part of what they wanted and yet got not one single vote in return. I have an alternative and more hopeful interpretation.

The outcome of Congressional votes is seldom in doubt. Most times, the exact vote of every single Congressman is known beforehand. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's Chief of Staff, surely knew that, despite their concessions, they wouldn't have any GOP support. And yet the Democrats decided to include the tax cuts in the bill. This is part, I think, of a plan by the Administration to crush the Republican Party once and for all.

It's important to Obama's popularity that he be seen as a new sort of politician. He can't be seen as a blithely partisan figure. He has to make these sorts of attempts to build bipartisan consensus. He still manages to have the stimulus be seen as an entirely Democratic accomplishment, but he now has the added advantage of making the Republican Party look ridiculously obstructionist and out-of-touch, refusing to give even one vote in exchange for substantial concessions by the President.

If the economy recovers by November 2010, the Republicans are doomed. Like, Whig- and Federalist-level doomed. They're already down 77 in the House, and 18 in the Senate, with way more Republican Senate seats up for re-election in 2010 than those currently held by Democrats, meaning they are more likely than not to lose even more seats. A growing economy after an all-Democrat stimulus bill means they will lose so many more seats that they will become irrelevant.

This is nice and all...

2009-01-20T11:57:00.003-05:00

but does Aretha Franklin realize that every second of this bullshit is another second W is President?

When it comes to 7 month old Janaya...

2009-01-05T16:58:00.004-05:00

Baggage Fees and Government Cheese

2008-12-18T12:29:00.002-05:00

(Posting during another electronic medical records class. I still haven't figured out how to include links, so I'll clean these posts up later. sorry)

Earlier this year, most airlines began charging passengers $15 for their first checked bag, as well as increasing fees for subsequent bags. The reason given by the airlines when they introduced these fees was increased fuel costs at a time when oil was $147 a barrel.

At the time of this post, oil is trading at $38.97, which is down over 70% from its peak earlier this year. Jet fuel prices have fallen 60% since July. And yet, airlines are still charging the same fees that they added to "cover increased fuel prices".

Why haven't these charges been rescinded? It's because consumers have already gotten used to the idea of being charged for baggage; they aren't mad about it anymore, so airlines will keep making them pay it, even though the supposed rationale for the fee is long gone.

Similar to the inertia of baggage fees, government programs, once enacted, are very difficult to get rid of because people become accustomed to them. Social Security and Medicare were controversial programs when they were first enacted, and it wouldn't have caused a huge political upheaval if they were never passed. Now that we have these entitlements, however, there would be senior citizens rioting in the streets if the programs were seriously threatened.

This concept shows the potential for huge and long-lasting change Obama and the Democrats in the next few years. Government-subsidized health insurance is a hot issue right now, but once people have a government insurance card in their wallet, they'll be much more likely to favor the program and support candidates who will protect it.

Two Cher-related Questions

2008-12-18T12:29:00.001-05:00

Why is it that T-Pain gets credit for starting the whole "digital voice modification" thing when Cher was doing it years ago in that unbelievably irritating "Do You Believe" song?

What is this Beyonce "If I Were a Boy" song if not an attempt by Mrs. Jay-Z to add herself to the hallowed ranks of Judy Garland and Cher as favorite artists to impersonate for drag performers?

In Case You Missed It

2008-12-15T07:31:00.000-05:00

For No Reason at All

2008-12-11T06:17:00.001-05:00

Obama/Dems Need to Be More Aggressive

2008-12-11T05:37:00.003-05:00

This whole Blagojevich thing has not been handled well at all by the Obama transition team. Journalists are trying to figure out what the President-elect knew and when he knew it, which is never a good thing to have journalists asking about you. And, as discussed previously, the transition team's response has not done much to assuage concerns.

Obviously it would have been much better if, upon first hearing Blagojevich's ridiculous demands, the Obama team would have called up U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald's office, which was publicly investigating the Governor for months, to inform Fitzgerald of Blagojevich's corruption. That would have kept any of Blagojevich's stink from being passed on to the transition.

Similarly, Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress need to be more aggressive and publicly confrontational in fighting Senate Republicans over the auto bailout. Yesterday, the bailout passed the House mainly due to Democrat support. Its fate in the Senate, where 60% of Senators must support the bill (or at least support a vote on the bill), is murky, with Republicans led by Richard Selby (R-AL) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) threatening a filibuster even though the bailout is supported by the GOP White House.

I say, let 'em filibuster, and make 'em actually keep talking on the floor of the Senate; in recent years when a cloture vote fails to end debate, the Senate just moves on to something else, instead of making Senators actually filibuster, which is a shame. Such drama on the Senate floor would lay bare the clear conflicts of interest at play on this issue.

Alabama is home to three Honda and Hyundai plants, which the state attracted by giving the Japanese manufacturer's a bunch of tax breaks and subsidies. So Sens. Selby and Sessions are more than happy to abandon their apparent love for the removing government influence over the free market when it benefits their own state, but not when it helps save millions (or hundreds of thousands, depending on whose analysis you believe) of American manufacturing jobs. Republicans would also benefit from a weakened United Auto Workers, which reliably supports Democratic candidates all over the country.

By drawing attention to Republican opposition to the bailout, Democrats can either a) generate enough public support to get the bill passed, or b) clearly establish that it is Republicans who killed the bill and allowed the companies to fail. Seems like a win-win.

Oh yeah, I forgot...

2008-12-09T21:07:00.001-05:00

In the taped calls, Blagojevich says at some point, when discussing who he thought was Obama's preferred candidate to take his old Senate seat, "they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation."

Let me tell you, that's a great bit of tape for Democrats

Obama's First Potential Scandal

2008-12-09T18:00:00.001-05:00

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was arrested by the FBI this morning. According the the press release put out by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, who is the man who successfully prosecuted former Cheney Chief of Staff Scooter Libby, he was attempting to sell Obama's Senate seat, which as Illinois Gov he is solely responsible for appointing the new Senator. Let me summarize the issue as briefly as I can:

Gov. Blagojevich was being investigated by the Feds for corruption, getting campaign contributions from lots of rich folk, including our old friend Tony Rezko, in exchange for your standard slate of government contracts and other favors. As part of his investigation, Fitzgerald, who is widely thought to be the best prosecutor in the country, tapped Blagojevich's personal and office phones, as well as his office and a conference room at "Friends of Blagojevich", his political organization. The Illinois legislature passed an ethics law to make it tougher for Blagojevich to raise money, starting January 1, 2009, so time was a-wastin'.

As it became clear that Obama was going to win, giving Blagojevich the opportunity to appoint his successor to the Senate. Appointing himself to the seat would benefit him, so he made clear to anyone who would listen that he was open to offers. Bribes he was asking for included:

1. Being appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services, Energy, or an ambassador
2. Getting his wife a well-paying position on a corporate board
3. A high-paying job for himself with a political committee and/or a non-profit group
4. Campaign funds

So yeah, it's illegal to ask people for that stuff in exchange for an official decision.

There are two ways this can come back to sting Obama. First off, there's Rezko's involvement. There was a real estate deal involving Rezko and the Obamas in the past that, while probably not anything that will ever be a big deal, it hurts any time "Obama" and "Rezko" are in the same news story.

The more serious issue is a discrepancy between Obama's statements on this issue and those of David Axelrod, Obama's chief campaign strategist. In an interview with the Chicago Fox affiliate a couple weeks ago, Axelrod said that Obama had "talked to the governor" about who would replace him. Today, Obama said "I had no contact with the governor or his office." If Obama indeed has spoken with Blagojevich in the past month or two, Fitzgerald would have a recording of the conversation. Let's hope Obama's telling the truth. I think he is, actually. It seems unlikely that Obama would actually personally talk to pretty much anyone directly, especially a corrupt governor. So Axelrod just meant that Obama's people talked to Blagojevich and/or his people.

During Obama's comments today about the issue, he said "I had no contact with the governor or his office and so we were not, I was not aware of what was happening." Notice that he stopped himself from saying "we were not aware", correcting to "I was not aware". So clearly his team knew what was going on, but Obama at least has plausible deniability. Depending on how close it gets to the man himself, he could be politically hurt, leaving him less able to pass his agenda. Health insurance reform and funding for green energy, infrastructure and higher education got a little less likely. We'll find out how much less.

Workers First

2008-12-08T21:12:00.003-05:00

My brother, earlier in his career, had a bad habit of working for companies that went out of business while he was still an employee. When Builder's Square went out of business years ago, Greg had built up a couple weeks of vacation time when his employer declared bankruptcy. Since workers come way down the line when it comes to selling the company's assets to pay creditors, he didn't see a penny of his earned vacation pay.

With all the business closings going on these days, hundreds of thousands of workers, like those in Illinois who are occupying their plant after their employers violated federal law by laying them off with only three days' notice, find themselves in the same situation Greg did. But these workers aren't teenagers who miss out on spending money. They include parents trying to support their families and older workers close to retirement.

How about a law that, when a company goes out of business, workers get their money first? After they've received their owed compensation, other creditors, such as banks and shareholders, can be paid. What's the problem with that?

Only the Pentagon

2008-12-08T20:47:00.002-05:00

According to the LA Times, since March the Pentagon has reworked the rules for what qualifies as a disability received in combat, which earn the soldier more benefits than a non-combat injury, to no longer include wounds received as a result of land mines or roadside IEDs. This saves the federal government millions of dollars, which they can then turn around and give to banks.

And conservatives have the unmitigated gall to say that it's un-American to tax the bank shareholders' capital gains taxes at the same rate at which they were taxed under Bill Clinton.

Every now and then, conservatives are real motherfuckers. Just utterly indefensible mommy-sodomizers.

Does Religious Tolerance Apply?

2008-12-07T22:53:00.006-05:00

So, as you might be aware, there's nothing on TV Sunday nights. The Mrs. and I are watching Joel Osteen, who is just about the douchebagiest douche that ever douched a... nevermind. But he does suck. If you've never watched or read Mr. Osteen, he's a televangelist based out of a "church" which is a converted 20,000 seat basketball arena in Houston. That's your first problem right there.

If you've never listened to a couple minutes of one of Mr. Osteen's "sermons", I'm sure there are some on YouTube. Check out any clip you like, and ask yourself "What is the message he is promoting? What is the fundamental "good" he is arguing for?" I haven't actually gone to YouTube to verify this claim, and yet I feel confident in saying that it's not going to be "love", "kindness", or "charity", or anything else I'd describe as "Christian".

Every time (totalling maybe 3 or 4 hours of material, if I had to guess) I've watched Mr. Osteen, the message he's selling, in his obvious used-car salesman way, is relieving anxiety, regaining control over your life, or achieving financial success. Worthy goals, I suppose, but not anything that anyone should be listening to and thinking it's "church".

He's so obviously preaching a message that bears no resemblence to and is in fact often directly opposed to biblical Christianity that I can't have any respect for anyone who follows him. If I ever met anyone who's a member at Lakewood Church, I would discriminate against them. If I'm staffing a practice, and I've got a choice between a nurse who graduated from University X and worked for Y years at Z Hospital, and a nurse who graduated from University X and worked for Y years at Z Hospital and is a member of Joel Osteen's flock, I'd pick the first one. Is that ok? Should I work on that?

Discuss

Obama on Meet the Press

2008-12-07T10:21:00.003-05:00

Posting while Obama's on Meet the Press with Tom Brokaw this morning; all quotes are paraphrased as best as I can remember them whilst watching live:

-Starting off with the economy. Who'da thunk?

-All Obama's talk of helping states and telling Brokaw that "Governors have projects that are shovel-ready" and just need funding gives him a tremendous amount of political capital. He's basically telling 50 state leaders "come along with me and I'll make you look good to your consituents"

-He's better than any politician of my adult life at explaining both sides of an issue, stressing both the need to help the Big Three automakers and the need for them to restructure.

-He actually seems to think that if we give Ford/GM/Chrysler billions of dollars, they won't come back for more. Maybe he is hopelessly naive.

-Just did a great job deflecting Brokaw's suggestion of a new gas tax, since gas is so "cheap" now, by pointing out the other ways people are worse off economically. Good policy, but even better politics. "I feel your pain", in quite a few more words.

-Interesting thought about the "moral hazard" problem of bailing out homeowners who took bad mortgages, thereby "punishing" responsible homeowners by making them pay their whole mortgage and pay taxes to bail out their neighbor. "If my neighbor's house is on fire, even if they were smoking in their bedroom, I want to keep the fire from spreading to my house."

-Commercial break. I don't know if you ever watch these Sunday morning shows, but there are some weird freakin' ads all the time. Companies like Boeing and Archer-Daniels-Midland, the huge agricultural business, advertise a lot, even though 99.999% of people never buy anything from these companies, those big-time corporate "decision-makers" do watch these shows, so it's worth it to advertise to that tiny but powerful faction.

-He's really talking like his presidency is going to be a complete refutation of the Reagan Revolution. Greed is not good. Help everyone to help the economy, don't just help the rich and wait for benefits to trickle-down.

-When do you suppose Obama actually offered the Secretary of State job to Hillary Clinton? In November? During the general election? My money's on toward the end of primary season.

-Nothing earth-shattering so far. But really, there never is with Obama. Part of his appeal, I suppose.

-Ostensibly talking about farmers in Afghanistan, he says that the country needs things like infrastructure improvements and increased aid from the Afghan national government. Nice, subtle effort to further bolster support of such help to the American little guy, too.

-Would have been better if he had said it at some point during the campaign without prompting from Brokaw, but Obama's answer extolling the virtues of the Presidential "bully pulpit" being used for wider purposes than just government, such as culture, parenting, art, etc.

-Obama won't say that he's quit smoking but does say that he's done a great job, "under the circumstances", to make himself healthier. Meaning every now and then, brotha needs a smoke.

-And we end with "news" about the future of Meet the Press, with David Gregory replacing Tom Brokaw. Good riddance! I've never liked Brokaw. He completely lost me when he came out with all those books about "The Greatest Generation". I mean, sure, they did a lot of great things, but his completely positive portrayal of them struck me as a blatant attempt to make money off of nostalgia. Tim Russert tried the same thing with "Big Russ and Me". So watch for the next book to offer a collective blow job to the people who gave us Nixon and Reagan, from new MtP host David Gregory!

Quick Hits

2008-12-06T21:43:00.000-05:00

Random thoughts on call:

-Why is the Democrat never the one in the lead when there's a close federal election?

-Who wants to make wagers on how soon after January 20th Supreme Court justices start to retire? I think there'll be at least 2 next year.

-I continue to be confused by the psychology of the stock market. The Labor Department announces the worst one-month loss of jobs since 1974 AND adds more lost jobs to the totals from the prior 2 month, and stockholders respond by sending the Dow up 250 points.

-Actually, I'm not confused. Traders, analysts and pretty much everyone else make money when the market goes up. So when there's good news, the market goes up cuz things are good. When there's bad news, the market goes up cuz, so the thinking goes, things are so bad now that it has to improve eventually. Amazing how people will interpret data when they have a financial interest in the outcome.

-Maybe LeBron James and the Cavs are playing a mind-game with the rest of the league. By dangling the possibility that he'll leave Cleveland and play somewhere else in 2 years, teams such as the New York Knicks have been trying to get rid of expensive players so they'll have money to hire LeBron in 2010 but making their current team worse in the process. This makes the Cavs more likely to win in the next couple seasons, as the other teams are worse.

-Is there any reason to appoint Gen. Shinseki, who's the guy who was fired after saying we'd need "several hundred thousand" troops for Iraq, your VA Secretary other than to poke Bush in the eye?

-hehheh. "Poke Bush"...

-I like Chris Matthews, but if he really runs for Specter's PA Senate seat, I'm not voting for him. Governing is way different from talking about governing.

-Remember when Bush vetoed an increase in funding for children's health insurance last year, which would have resulted in millions more children being covered, because it cost too much? The $34 billion being discussed for the Big 3 automakers could have paid for the increase for about 5 years. The $700 billion bailout could have paid for a century.

Fivethirtyeight.com, a Day Behind the Doctor!

2008-12-04T18:42:00.002-05:00

Today's 538 post:

They talk about "Swing Senators", and their first 3 are Snowe, Collins and Specter. And then they go on to mention the other senators I listed yesterday.

You read it hear first!

Obama's Ridiculously Strong Cabinet

2008-12-03T08:50:00.000-05:00

It's safe to say that Obama is pulling out all the stops when it comes to assembling his Cabinet. On Monday Obama announced his national security team, which includes, among others, Bush's Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, and John McCain's former foreign policy advisor, James Jones, as Obama's National Security Advisor. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security, and, of course, New York Sen. and former Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. He will also nominate New Mexico Gov. and former Presidential candidate Bill Richardson as Commmerce Secretary. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle will be Secretary of Health and Human Services. He recruited Rahm Emanuel, a rising Dem star in the House and who was well-known to have aspirations to be Speaker of the House, to serve as his Chief of Staff.

Choosing people from Bush's Cabinet and the McCain campaign demonstrates Obama's supreme confidence in his management abilities. He said when introducing Gates that "I will make policy" and "the buck stops with me," even though he has selected a man who very publicly disagreed with him on Iraq, the central issue which will be run by Gates' department in Obama's administration. Cabinet Secretaries, particularly those Obama has selected, are not politically powerless, and they tend to be protective of their power and influence. But Obama, choosing Gates, believes that he can keep Gates in line on this very important issue.

There are two reasons why I'm potentially thrilled about the selection of Gates, assuming Obama indeed will be able to set Pentagon policy, which I trust he will be. One is that Gates has already been running the Defense Department for years, so he figuratively (and, sadly, literally) knows where the bodies are buried. It's also fabulous that Gates, and Jones as well, will provide opposing viewpoints. One of the biggest factors that lead to the problems during the run-up to Iraq was that pretty much everyone around the President was a neocon who thought the war was a good idea. Wall Street is in such deep doggy-do because just about every financial CEO had an Ivy League MBA and thought CDO's were the bee's knees. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama will have within his own Cabinet viewpoints from men who disagree.

Having two former Democratic primary opponents in his Cabinet, as well as another as his VP, raises the risk of Secretaries looking after their own political interests before the Administration's. I don't think you'll find many people who would argue with Clinton and Richardson being the best-qualified Democrats to hold a Cabinet-level position, so there is also a significant benefit to these selections. It will be up to Obama's management skill, as well as his political muscle, to keep these two in line and put their massive qualifications to good use. Same goes for Emanuel, though it's pretty hard to score political points for yourself when you're Chief of Staff. Actually, I'm convinced Obama picked Emanuel only because in Hebrew "Rahm" and "Barack" translate to "thunder" and "lightning".

Selecting Napolitano also is not without negatives because, according to Arizona law, she will be replaced by the current Arizona Secretary of State, who is a Republican. It also robs the Democrats of a very strong chance to defeat John McCain in 2010 when he runs for another Senate term; Napolitano is the strongest Democrat in the slightly red state and the only Dem with a good chance of taking McCain's seat, so it's no coincidence that McCain spoke publicly and strongly in support of Napolitano's nomination. Just because they didn't get to 60 Senate seats this time doesn't mean they wouldn't have a chance next time around. Choosing Napolitano makes it significantly less likely. Clearly, Obama is aware of this implication of her nomination, so he must really think she's gonna be a great Homeland Security Secretary.

By assembling such a strong Cabinet, in name, stature, and diversity of opinion, Obama is raising expectations for his Administration. With such power in the Executive branch, as well as near-dominance of the Legislative, Obama is setting the table for a strong government. It'll be pretty much make-or-break time for the Democratic Party. They've got their all-star team in the Executive branch, so they have no excuses if they fail.

OK, 60's Not That Important Anyway

2008-12-03T07:50:00.001-05:00

With yesterday's Georgia runoff victory by Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss (who, to remind you, first earned his seat in 2002 by attacking the patriotism of Max Cleland, a veteran who lost both legs and an arm in Vietnam. Chambliss stayed out of Vietnam by receiving 5 student deferments and then a medical deferment for knee problems. You know, Sen. Chambliss, Max Cleland has knee problems too; his knees are still in Vietnam!), the Democrats lost the last faint glimmer of hope that they'd reach a filibuster-proof 60 Senate seats. To review, it takes 60 votes to invoke cloture and stop debate to call for a vote on a bill; without 60 votes, one Senator can talk and talk and talk, keeping a bill from being passed. So it looks like the Democrats will wind up with 58, or possibly 59, if Franken wins in Minnesota, where the recount is finishing up. Even though they'll need to find a couple GOP cloture votes, along with unanimous support from within their own party, in order to pass a bill, they have several very good GOP targets to find a few more votes.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) is up for re-election in 2010, and he's in the unenviable position of being a Republican in a state that has voted for a Democrat for President every year since 1988, including a huge 11% victory by Obama. It will be very difficult for Specter to resist a President so popular among his constituents. It also helps that Specter is about the most liberal GOP Senator.

His competition for that title include Sens Olympia Snow and Susan Collins of Maine, which went for Obama by 18%. So there's two more pickups that should be pretty easy for one bill or another.

Richard Burr (R-NC), Norm Coleman (R-MN, assuming he beats Franken), John Ensign (R-NV), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Richard Lugar (R-IN), and George Voinovich (R-OH) are all Republicans from states which made significant shifts toward the Democrats/Obama in '08. They'll no doubt be more persuadable than they might have been in the past when it comes to voting for cloture on a Democratic bill

As long as Obama remains popular and politically strong, it shouldn't be too difficult to find some Republican votes. So screw Georgia! They can keep their stupid Republican Senator,

MMMMBORED!

2008-12-03T07:50:00.000-05:00

The dark side of the rush to install electronic medical records in hospitals is that it forces hot young docs like myself to sit through hours and hours of tedious training for the new system. Today, my friends, is my first day of three of training for Merlin, Ruby Hospital's new program. We're 50 minutes in, and we're still working on things like managing tabs, dragging and dropping, and plenty of other things that are as natural as breathing to any middle- or upper-class American under the age of 40. I understand why we have to do this, as there are people in this class who are asking something like "one click or two" for everything, but it still sucks. So I'm just gonna go ahead and do some posting this morning (and tomorrow afternoon and 12/18, when I get even more training). So buckle your seatbelts! It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

Wall Street Optimistic About Obama

2008-12-01T15:48:00.000-05:00

Our old friend Rush Limbaugh, two days after the election, proclaimed that "the Obama recession is in full swing." Parroting time-honored GOP talking points, he claimed that Wall Street was reacting to Obama's plans for increased taxes on rich folks by selling their assets before the Dems had a chance to gouge them.

This past week's action on Wall Street have greatly refuted the idea that stockholders are scared of Obama. On Friday, November 21st, Obama announced that New York Fed chair Timothy Geithner would be his pick to be Treasury Secretary, which, to remind you, has become an absurdly powerful position lately. The Dow responded to Geithner's nomination, which NBC News reported at 2:59pm Friday, by skyrocketing 500 points in the hour before the stock market closed. Take a look at that last link. It's obvious that Wall Street loved Obama's choice.

But maybe this was a one-time fluke. Obama has been pressing his luck by holding daily press conferences the three days before Thanksgiving. The Dow has gone up each of those days, plus this past Friday. It should go without saying that a 5 day winning streak on the Dow, in this economy, is nothing short of remarkable. The last time the Dow Jones Industrial Average went up this much, percentage-wise, five days in a row was 75 years ago.

Screw the "one President at a time" line that Obama's been spouting. Time to take over, Barry!

UPDATE: Today, the Dow went down 680 points. Obama, instead of holding another economics press conference, decided to announce his national security team today, including Hillary as his Secretary of State (more on this later). It's official; he's not allowed to talk about anything other than the economy.

A $700 Billion Boondoggle

2008-11-12T21:52:00.002-05:00

Remember a couple months ago when the Administration, with the assistance of both presidential candidates, rammed a bill through Congress which gave the Treasury Department $7oo billion to buy "troubled assets", credit derivatives and other overly complicated bad investments.

Today, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulsen announced that he's just gonna go ahead and spend the $700 billion on other things, such as bailing out auto companies and buying shares in banks. And it did not require a new act of Congress to change where all that money (the technical term is "shitload") would be spent. How is it possible that Congress gave so much money without imposing more strict controls on how it would be spent? Is Paulsen prevented from spending a few billion on a Paulsen theme park? I'm not so sure...

Chances in Minnesota and Alaska Looking Up

2008-11-12T19:54:00.003-05:00

In the Begich (D)/Stevens (R) Alaska Senate race, they started counting absentee and questioned (Alaska's version of provisional) ballots today. This morning, Stevens led by 3,257 votes. After counting about half of the total number of uncounted ballots, his lead is down to 971. And reports are that the remaining ballots are disproportionately from pro-Begich areas.

The Franken (D)/Coleman (R) race in Minnesota is similarly closing. Right after Election Day, Franken trailed by 725. As precincts have updated/corrected their counts and started counting absentee ballots, it's down to 206. Soon they will begin visually inspecting the tens of thousands of ballots which did not register a vote for anyone in the Senate race. Due to the overlap between people likely to vote Democrat and the people likely to screw up filling out their ballot (e.g., writing X's in ovals instead of coloring them in), it's more likely than not that Franken will also emerge victorious when all the votes are counted.

So that leaves Georgia. Unfortunately, it looks like Chambliss will hold on, leaving the Senate 59-41. But, if Obama were willing to use a tiny portion of the massive amount of popularity and political capital he has at his disposal to help Martin, the Dem candidate, 60 is most definitely in reach, as long as they don't do anything stupid like boot Lieberman.

Update: Right after I posted this, I clicked over to MSNBC for Countdown. As counting has continued, Begich is now UP by three votes. Whoo!

You Can't Boot Lieberman Now

2008-11-07T16:19:00.002-05:00

Let's review the story of Joe Lieberman. He lost the 2006 Connecticut Democratic Senate primary to Ned Lamont and then beat Lamont and an irrelevant Republican in the general election while running as an independent and being supported almost entirely by Republicans despite stating publicly that he would caucus with the Democrats (i.e., vote for Harry Reid for Majority Leader). This was a very important vote, because with the Senate having 49 Dems, 49 Republicans and 2 independents (Lieberman and Vermont's Bernie Sanders, who also caucuses w/ the Dems) meant that the Dems controlled the Senate and all the committee chairs. If Lieberman had caucused with the Republicans and voted for Mitch McConnell for Majority Leader, then it would've been a 50-50 split which would have been broken by Dick Cheney.

Then, as you might be aware, despite being a pretty standard, down-the-line Democrat on all issues outside of Iraq, he decided to publicly (very publicly, it must be said) support McCain for President, going so far as to speak at the Republican convention in September. Democrats were pissed, but, because Democratic Senate leadership and committee chairmen needed Lieberman's vote in order to remain Senate leadership and committee chairmen.

Now, with the new Senate based on Election Day looking like 55 Dems, 2 Independents, 40 Republicans and 3 still undecided (though all leaning, to varying degrees, toward the Republicans), it looks unlikely that Lieberman's caucus vote will matter very much. Being the 51st vote in a 100-vote body is a much stronger position than being the 57th, so now Harry Reid is ratcheting up the pressure on Lieberman to give up his committee chairmanship; he currently leads the Homeland Security committee. The likely outcome of stripping Lieberman of his chairmanship would be that he would caucus with the Republicans, making it 56-44 (assuming Franken, Begich and Martin fail to come from behind in any of their undecided races).

There are two reasons why stripping Lieberman of his position, effectively kicking him out of the caucus, is a terrible idea. The most obvious is that it's still possible that the Democrats will reach a filibuster-proof 60 seats, if they should manage to run the table in the three undecided races. It's also possible that, with 19 Republican seats and 15 Democratic seats up for election in 2010, that the Democrats will pick up the three needed seats in that election. Booting Lieberman out would mean they'd have to win 4.

But more importantly, it is utterly ridiculous for them to boot him out now, as opposed to the day after he spoke at the Republican convention. Stripping him only after his vote is no longer necessary to keep you in power is spineless, and far from a new sort of politics that President-elect Obama campaigned on. One of the few things that would make me respect him even more than I already do would be if he were to, as a matter of principle, instruct Reid to back off of Lieberman.

Forget Everything I Said....

2008-11-05T22:27:00.003-05:00

...about Palin possibly being a good candidate one day. You have to read the summary: If you've got five minutes, watch the video on the same link.

Cameron relates how McCain aides were terrified of Palin's lack of knowledge of international, national, and even basic civic issues. Cameron reports that Palin was unfamiliar with the concept of "American exceptionalism," and that not only did she not understand that Africa was a continent rather than a single country but also that during debate prep Palin was unable to name all the nations in North America.

Palin was apparently a nightmare for her campaign staff to deal with. She refused preparation help for her interview with Katie Couric and then blamed her staff, specifically Nicole Wallace, when the interview was rightly panned as a disaster. After the Couric interview, Palin turned nasty with her staff and began to accuse them of mishandling her. Palin would view press clippings of herself in the morning and throw "tantrums" over the negative coverage. There were times when she would be so nasty and angry that her staff was reduced to tears.

Oh Lordy Do I Hate Alaska!

2008-11-05T18:32:00.004-05:00

What a joke of a state Alaska is! Let me count the ways!

1. Obviously, we have to start with Palin. Of course, in such a sparsely populated state, maybe she's the best they can do.

(addendum: I'd planned a separate post on this, but there's really nothing to say about it than just to report, from Newsweek: "The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied." This is one of those times when I have to restrain myself from calling her the C word.)

2. Earmarks. These fuckers get a check from the state government every year for THOUSANDS of dollars, and yet they get more per capita in federal earmarks (i.e., money from you and me, who don't get fucking checks from their state governments) than any other state. Assholes! They got some fuckin' nerve taking all those federal bucks.

3. And finally, they re-elected a man just convicted of SEVEN FELONIES relating to corruption to the Senate. This isn't a guy gettin' a beej from a fat chick. It's taking money from rich people, and what do you suppose they got for their money? And these fuckin' jokers are sending him back to the Senate. Unbelievable

Fuck you, Alaska! Allen (or anyone else who might encounter an Alaskan), next time you see anyone from Alaska, give 'em a figurative kick in the nuts for me!

Good Morning!

2008-11-05T04:38:00.000-05:00

I don't know what to think. It's so weird! My guy won!

Now we can look forward to 4 years of inspiring speeches and inspired leadership. Who's excited?!

Erroneous calling based on Ohio

2008-11-04T21:56:00.001-05:00

I made a mistake based on Ohio, cuz I was double-counting New York, but....

Ohio! Chug-a-lug

Fuck Fate

2008-11-04T21:55:00.002-05:00

It's time to celebrate!

Here's some pro-Obama babies!

I'm rather embarassed....

2008-11-04T21:37:00.003-05:00

I was double-counting New York. So I guess it's still not OVER.

Of course, the 200 now for Obama plus California plus Washington plus Oregon is money, with Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Florida, Indiana and North Carolina, EDIT: and Missouri as potential overkill.

To New Mexico!

2008-11-04T21:32:00.001-05:00

Chug-a-lug!

Now They're Just Being Ridiculous...

2008-11-04T21:00:00.001-05:00

MSNBC calls Texas too early too call.

Yeah, right.

Assholes

Another Thing to Consider

2008-11-04T20:59:00.002-05:00

If MSNBC (or any other network... I just happen to be watching MSNCB) calls Virginia, they probably lost 10-20% of their viewers, so I shouldn't be surprised that they're not announcing anything. This is the problem with depending on information from people with a profit motive to not give information.

MMMMBBBBBOOOOOOOOOORRRRRED

2008-11-04T20:51:00.001-05:00

Fucking call something already!

I'll be honest....

2008-11-04T20:27:00.000-05:00

Starting to get nervous about Virginia.

Virginia + Iowa (which is way Obama) is victory. Virginia closed an hour and a half ago, though. It's time for it to be called.

Obama Takes Pennsylvania!

2008-11-04T20:12:00.001-05:00

This is the first time in my adult life that my candidate has taken the state I'm living in. Whoo!

Bottoms up!

No One's Calling Anything

2008-11-04T19:52:00.001-05:00

My guess is they're having problems projecting because of the big proportion of early voters; no one's sure how much to weight those results. This sure is frustrating, though. I expected things to go faster one way or the other

Confused...

2008-11-04T19:02:00.001-05:00

No call in SC, no call in VA. I sure thought one of those two would be called by now. If McCain's doing better than expected, SC should be called. Same for Obama in VA. What's going on?!?

And We're Off!

2008-11-04T19:01:00.002-05:00

Vermont for Obama, Kentucky for McCain.

No news there, apart from we're started.

Indiana Close

2008-11-04T18:39:00.001-05:00

If Obama wins Indiana, it's over, cuz he'll certainly win Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Great News from Drudge!

2008-11-04T18:06:00.002-05:00

Headline on Drudge:

"Exit polls claim 'Obama +15' in PA... Developing..."

!!!!!!!

Drudge usually has pretty good exit poll leaks. Do I believe that this means Obama will win PA by 15? no. But will he win? I'm far more confident than ever

Sticking With My Projection

2008-11-04T17:55:00.002-05:00

I'm still going with 353 electoral votes, but if I had to take the over or the under*, I'd go with the over!

(To non-gamblers, if a casino puts the over/under at x, you could bet money on the over, meaning you think that two teams in a game are going to score more points than x, or on the under, meaning you think they're going to score less than x. So I'm saying that if I had to choose for my guess to be wrong for being too high or too low, I'd go with too low)

News from Virginia

2008-11-04T17:44:00.002-05:00

The McCain campaign sued to force Virginia to extend the deadline for military absentee ballots from today to Nov 14th. His goal, of course, is to have more military votes, which go overwhelmingly for McCain, count in this vital swing state. A federal judge did order that late ballots be kept so that a future decision might count or not count these votes.

I can't express how badly I want these votes counted, even though it hurts my guy. Anything that moves toward more people getting their votes counted is a good thing.

Oh Yeah...

2008-11-04T17:21:00.000-05:00

More damn MSNBC music. Crap...

Drinking Game Ideas?

2008-11-04T17:17:00.004-05:00

We're going with a drink whenever a swing state goes for Obama. Our list, which is pretty much the same as the undecided states in my prediction post, include:

Virginia
Indiana
Ohio
Florida
Pennsylvania
Iowa
North Carolina
Colorado
New Mexico
Nevada
Missouri

Also any state I expect McCain to win.

So say a toast and take a drink whenever one of these states is called. Why? Because I feel like less of an alcoholic if other people are doing the same thing. I'll post when MSNBC calls any of them from Obama

Not to Give Away My Plans or Anything, but...

2008-11-04T17:00:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know where wine fits into the "liquor before beer..." thing?

Election Day!

2008-11-04T16:31:00.002-05:00

We are live from The Doctor's Office in what the McCain campaign would have you believe is the swingiest of swing states, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Doctor and I just got back from knocking on doors in Pittsburgh, which along with Philadelphia and Penn State must run up enough of a lead for Obama that he can afford to lose the rest of the the state. It's s'pose to rain in Philly today, so let's hope he still gets the margins there.

By the way, you never really realize how hilly Pittsburgh is until you spend 7 hours walking around in it.

I anticipate a ton of posts tonight, so I'll do separate posts instead of one long one like for the debates. I'll try to consolidate a few thoughts into each post.

So stay tuned. Leave comments as the night goes on, if you want.

Expectation as Motivation

2008-11-03T17:05:00.003-05:00

In watching this long campaign, it is clear that one's performance is much less important than one's performance relative to expectations. Obama's victories in VA, DC, WI and others in the primaries, while huge, did not change the tone of the campaign because his big victories were expected. Hillary's HUGE victories in WV and KY were similarly meaningless. Sarah Palin "won" the debate with Biden by not crapping all over herself in a fit of panic.

If Barack Obama is going to do any of the things he's campaigned on, whether specific policy proposals or changing the tone in Washington, he will need to put up a big win. 270 is of course the magic number, but if he only wins, say, Kerry plus VA, IA, CO and NM, for a total of 286, many will interpret his victory as a squeaker, a failure of Obama to close the deal, and a reaction to all the "socialist" talk in the last weeks of the campaign. Even with 56-59 Dem Senators and a majority in the House, it will be difficult to reform health care, expand education funding, or anything else without an obvious mandate.

So this is why, despite my 100% confidence that Obama will win tomorrow, I will be out knocking on doors for Obama in Pittsburgh all day tomorrow (pushing the start of the liveblog back to 8ish). And to all my readers in Ohio, that's a vital 20 EVs. Anything with a 3 in front of it is immeasurably better than anything with a 2, and Ohio could very well be the difference. Obama wins in Ohio and Florida pushes McCain perilously close to something starting with a 1. In the perception game, that's a big deal. So get out and vote, and when you're done with that, call all your friends. Maybe knock on some doors. It's important.

Beaten to the Punch by FiveThirtyEight

2008-11-03T16:56:00.002-05:00

I had planned an hour-by-hour preview of Election Night, but Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has one up on Newsweek.com. There's no topping it, so I'll just link to it.

Fearless Predictions!

2008-11-03T13:00:00.003-05:00

Obama will win 353 electoral votes. He will win, going from states I'm most confident about to states I'm least (Things in bold are things I looked up after finishing the post; the rest was from memory, a sign that I've spent way too much time with this stuff):

All the Kerry states minus Pennsylvania (231 EVs)
Iowa (7 EVs)
New Mexico (5 EVs)
Pennsylvania (21 EVs)
Colorado (9 EVs)
Virginia (13 EVs)
Nevada (5 EVs)
Ohio (20 EVs)
Florida (27 EVs)
North Carolina (15 EVs)

It's also possible, but unlikely (from least to most unlikely), that he'll win Missouri (11), Indiana (11), Nebraska's 2nd District (1), North Dakota (3), Montana (3), Georgia (15), Arizona (10), West Virginia (5), Louisiana (9) South Dakota (3), Arkansas (6), and South Carolina (8). Which gives Obama an absolute ceiling of 438.

That leaves Alabama (9), Mississippi (6), Texas (34), Oklahoma (7), Nebraska's other votes (4), Kansas (6), Wyoming (3), Utah (5), Idaho (4), Alaska (3), Kentucky (8), and Tennessee (11) for McCain's safe states, totaling 100 EVs.

(Note: Some bolds there. In my defense, these states are perfectly safe for McCain and therefore boring.)

The Democrats will pick up 8 Senate seats, leaving them, sadly, one seat short of 60, again starting with the ones I'm most confident about:

There are 39 Democratic Senators not up for re-election; Obama will be replaced with another Democrat

All 12 incumbent Democrats will win, including Biden, who will also be replaced with another Democrat, possibly his son, Beau.

Udall in New Mexico over Pearce
Udall in Colorado over Schaffer
Warner in Virginia over Gilmore
Shaheen in New Hampshire over Sununu
Begich in Alaska over Stevens
Hagan in North Carolina over Dole
Merkley (only bold for spelling) in Oregon over Smith
Franken in Minnesota over Coleman

I feel very, VERY confident about the first six, pretty darn good about Merkley, and better than 50/50 about Franken. They also have an outside chance at beating Chambliss in Georgia, McConnell in Kentucky and Wicker in Mississippi. Any one, along with winning the 8 above that they're supposed to win, would mean 60. Depends on African-American turnout in these red states.

I haven't really read anything about governorships or House races, so look elsewhere for predictions on those races.

So tune in tomorrow and see how I did. You better believe there's going to be a live blog.

What if All This Electioneering Was Irrelevant?

2008-11-03T06:53:00.002-05:00

From Marc Ambinder:

Obama leads in 18 out of the 19 states with the largest recent declines in home
prices, whereas McCain leads in 13 out of the 14 states with the largest recent
increases in home prices.

I know, I know. Correlation does not imply causality. But that's some impressive correlation!

Does Obama Want to Bankrupt Coal?

2008-11-03T00:26:00.003-05:00

At the hospital tonight, people are freaking out about a quote from Obama that was released today:

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it
will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all
that greenhouse gas that's being emitted

West Virginia (along with, more important in electoral terms, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Montana, among others) depends on the coal industry. 40,000 jobs in the state are directly in the industry. So even at a hospital in a non-coal region of the state, people are pissed.

So I've spent most of the past 6 hours or so trying to talk NICU nurses out of burning Obama in effigy. It's important, like with many political "gaffes", to look at the complete context of the quote. It's long, so I'll just post a link.

In short, Obama is talking about charging electric companies for the damage to the environment that pollution from their plants does. A traditional coal plant that pumps tons and tons of CO2 into the air would contribute to global warming. Obama wants to use a cap and trade system, under which companies are taxed based on how polluting their plants are, to encourage cleaner techniques, such as trapping CO2 instead of emitting it. So what he meant in the bad-sounding quote was if someone wanted to build a traditional, high-polluting coal plant, they can; it's just that it would bankrupt them..."

Obama is not suggesting ending the use of coal for electricity; he's just saying that consumers and producers should pay its true cost, instead of just releasing pollution for all of us to deal with.

Brilliant State-by-State Preview

2008-11-02T10:06:00.002-05:00

Chuck Todd, NBC News Political Director, has a wonderful summary of what to watch for on Election Day. I was planning on doing something similar, but Chuck's is so good that there's no point. It's definitely worth a read.

Sarah Palin Talks With a Foreign Leader

2008-11-01T18:51:00.001-04:00

Or, ya know, not: