Health Care / Politics

If you thought the right was going to back off on health care to concentrate on jobs and the economy, you aren’t paying attention.

“When Assurant Health, a Milwaukee-based health insurance company, announced this month it was laying off 130 employees in Milwaukee and Minneapolis, it blamed the health care overhaul for its struggles — and at least one prominent critic of reform quickly chimed in. “There are more and more Obamacare job-killing stories piling up like this one,” conservative columnist Michelle Malkin wrote in an item with the headline, “The White House War on Jobs.

“Remember that companies lay off workers all the time. They also hire new ones. And while too many American companies are downsizing or shuttering these days, health care is one of the few sectors that hasn’t stopped creating jobs — and isn’t likely to anytime soon, according to every forecast I know. If I wanted to cherry-pick stories for a clever-sounding column, I could just as easily talk about Dell, which is going gangbusters over the suddenly huge demand for medical information technology.”

http://www.tnr.com/blog/77317/health-policy-tip-if-malkin-angry-you-shouldnt-be

Socioculture

Stanley Fish suggests terrorists are in the eye of the beholder:

“The formula is simple and foolproof (although those who deploy it so facilely seem to think we are all fools): If the bad act is committed by a member of a group you wish to demonize, attribute it to a community or a religion and not to the individual. But if the bad act is committed by someone whose profile, interests and agendas are uncomfortably close to your own, detach the malefactor from everything that is going on or is in the air (he came from nowhere) and characterize him as a one-off, non-generalizable, sui generis phenomenon.”

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/weve-seen-this-movie-before/

Economics / Politics

Andrew Ross Sorkin chronicles typical CEOs and hedge fund managers who liked Obama for all the wrong reasons, and now work against him for all the wrong reasons.

“Just last week, Paul S. Otellini, chief executive of Intel, said at a dinner at the Aspen Forum of the Technology Policy Institute that “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”
“Mr. Otellini has overseen two big acquisitions in the last two weeks — the $7.7 billion takeover of the security software maker McAfee and the $1.4 billion deal for the wireless chip unit of Infineon Technologies. If he is true to his word, those deals will most likely lead to job cuts in the United States, not job creation.”

This is so textbook spineless it’s depressing. Wildly cash-heavy already, Intel will acquire, merge, and lay off, add the resulting boatload of cash, and then blame Obama for not jump-starting the economy. We’re back in the Reagan 80s. And, oh, by the way, Intel’s taxes are too high. NOT.

“(Daniel S. Loeb, hedge fund manager) is no longer betting that a chief executive will make his numbers; he’s betting on what legislation Congress will pass next.

“Perhaps our leaders will awaken to the fact that free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation, growth and jobs,” he continued. “Perhaps too, a cloven-hoofed, bristly haired mammal will become airborne and the rosette-like marking of a certain breed of ferocious feline will become altered. In other words, we are not holding our breath.”

Gosh, how clever and eloquent. Pigs will fly and leopards will change their spots, genius, when you bet on the CEOs who do make their numbers in this environment. Times are tough, and successful CEOs are few and far between these days, but you’ve just let all of the lame ones off the hook when you crybaby about how that mean Congress is holding them all back. CEOs with a spine think long-term stability, but your hedge fund can’t make fast money off of shorting their stocks.

“Many people see the collapse of the subprime markets, along with the failure and subsequent rescue of many banks, as failures of capitalism rather than a result of a vile stew of inept management, unaccountable boards of directors and overmatched regulators not just asleep, but comatose, at the proverbial switch,” he wrote. “It is easy to see why so many people have concluded that the entire system is rigged.”

‘Inept management and unaccountable boards’ are the result of thinking that ‘free market capitalism is the best system to allocate resources and create innovation…’ Unregulated U.S. corporations will hold themselves accountable if things go south? Brutha, please… And you don’t get to bitch about the ‘regulators asleep at the (oh, is that a proverbial reference, herr wordsmith?) switch’ when your knocking yourself out to make sure the switch is completely abandoned, or never installed in the first place. These guys are the college studs who want to bang as many co-eds as possible, and then marry a virgin. You can trust your husband, honey, just don’t bug him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/business/31sorkin.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1283266921-7AghwE4oVivHhHPI3L19dA

And a Krugman reaction:

“And you have to bear in mind that this comes after Obama has made immense efforts to placate the financial industry. There were no bank nationalizations; there were hardly any strings attached to bailouts; the financial reform bill was by no means draconian given the scale of the disaster. But Wall Street is furious that Obama might even hint that they caused the crisis — which he does, now and then, because, well, they did.”

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/the-unbearable-pettiness-of-being-rich/

Socioculture / Politics

HuffPost’s Marty Kaplan rants eloquent…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/of-course-were-depressed_b_698982.html

Socioculture / Politics

For me, Ross Douthat is slowly edging out David Brooks as the Thoughtful Conservative Worth Following in the NYT.

“In a sense, Beck’s “Restoring Honor” was like an Obama rally through the looking glass. It was a long festival of affirmation for middle-class white Christians — square, earnest, patriotic and religious. If a speaker had suddenly burst out with an Obama-esque “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” the message would have fit right in.
“But whereas Obama wouldn’t have been Obama if he weren’t running for president, Beck’s packed, three-hour jamboree was floated entirely on patriotism and piety, with no “get thee to a voting booth” message. It blessed a particular way of life without burdening that blessing with the compromises of a campaign, or the disillusioning work of governance.
“For a weekend, at least, Beck proved that he can conjure the thrill of a culture war without the costs of combat, and the solidarity of identity politics without any actual politics. If his influence outlasts the current election cycle, this will be the secret of his success.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/opinion/30douthat.html?hp

Socioculture / Politics

I don’t want to give this weekend’s Beck/Palin circus too much notice, but there’s a terrific article by John Perr on Crooks & Liars today.

“On Saturday, Glenn Beck and tens of thousands of his Tea Party faithful descended on Washington supposedly to “restore honor” to America and defend the Constitution of the United States. Or more, accurately, parts of it. After all, once they get past their enthusiasm for the Second and Tenth Amendments, the same right-wing die-hards would literally white out large swaths of America’s contract with itself. And with their pick-and-choose, cafeteria-style Constitution, these most fervent Republicans would undermine the economy, gut the social safety net, and incite racial, religious and ethnic division.

“Despite the facts that over 95% of American households received a tax cut courtesy of President Obama and the Democrats and that total federal, state and local taxation is at its lowest level since 1950, frothing at-the-mouth Tea Baggers and many rabid Republicans want to eliminate the IRS – and the income tax – altogether.”

http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/conservatives-serve-constitution-cafeteria-style

Transportation / Politics

Once or twice a year, I kvetch with pals about the sad state of Amtrak. In the rest of the world, Passenger traffic has priority over Commercial Freight trains. But since, typically, American business knows better than to trust what actually works in the rest of the world, here Freight has priority over Passenger. That’s why your train sits motionless in the middle of Nebraska for an hour at a time – they must wait for freight trains to cross first, and you being 4-1/2 hours late to Denver is your tough luck.

$1.1 billion has been set aside in the evil socialist stimulus package for nationwide rail improvements in general, and high-speed passenger trains in particular. Of course it should be more – the northeast coast corridor alone has a $10 billion maintenance backlog. But the $1.1 will make good improvements and create some jobs. Why am I not surprised that the rail corporations aren’t interested?

“The genuine article, service at up to 220 mph, is being planned in California and Florida. It already exists to a lesser degree on Amtrak Acela Express trains that get up to 150 mph on small portions of the route between Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
“Meanwhile, the Union Pacific Railroad, which owns the track between Chicago and St. Louis that is set to be the first higher-speed corridor in Illinois, officially supports the 110 mph plan because it provides millions of dollars in government subsidies to upgrade tracks, signals and other infrastructure that freight trains share with Amtrak and Metra trains.
“The rail modernization will greatly benefit the freight railroad, even though Union Pacific executives would prefer to have nothing to do with high-speed trains.
“Union Pacific agreed to allow 110 mph passenger trains on the tracks being rebuilt mostly with federal stimulus funds between Chicago and St. Louis only because it inherited the obligation when it bought the track along the Southern Pacific Railroad in 1996. An earlier Southern Pacific agreement allowing the Illinois Department of Transportation to run faster trains was part of a grandfather clause.
“If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be doing this investment (in high-speed rail),” Union Pacific Chief Executive Officer James Young told the Bloomberg news agency in July. “We need to focus on freight for our good and for the good of the country.”

http://www.chicagotribune.com/classified/automotive/commute/ct-met-getting-around-20100829,0,3620622.column

Movies

In praise of Ida Lupino:

“Her seven films as director shouldn’t be over-championed for the purposes of correction, though all contain numerous flashes of brilliance, and a couple are great. But no woman came close to being a threat on quite so many fronts (directing, acting, writing, and producing) as Lupino during her time.”

http://www.thelmagazine.com/gyrobase/ida-lupino-the-mother-of-us-all/Content?oid=1723902&storyPage=2

Economics

‘swhat I been sayin’…

“The long-run debt problem — the result of imprudent fiscal decisions before the recession, escalating health care costs and an aging population — must be addressed once the economy has recovered. But for now the priorities of fiscal policy should be jobs and investment.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/opinion/29tyson.html?_r=1

Socioculture / Politics

And in defense of the Tea Party comes ‘Americans For Prosperity’, an ostensibly ‘grassroots’ organization funded with millions of dollars by the billionaire Koch brothers. This week’s New Yorker features Jane Mayer’s brilliant analysis of who they are and what they intend.

“The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests. In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups. Indeed, the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies—from health-care reform to the economic-stimulus program—that, in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus.”

“…the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. Over the July 4th weekend, a summit called Texas Defending the American Dream took place in a chilly hotel ballroom in Austin.
“Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. “Today, the voices of average Americans are being drowned out by lobbyists and special interests,” it said. “But you can do something about it.” The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders. The White House has expressed frustration that such sponsors have largely eluded public notice. David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, said, “What they don’t say is that, in part, this is a grassroots citizens’ movement brought to you by a bunch of oil billionaires.”

“The Texas branch of Americans for Prosperity gave its Blogger of the Year Award to a young woman named Sibyl West. On June 14th, West, writing on her site, described Obama as the “cokehead in chief.” In an online thread, West speculated that the President was exhibiting symptoms of “demonic possession (aka schizophrenia, etc.).” The summit featured several paid speakers, including Janine Turner, the actress best known for her role on the television series “Northern Exposure.” She declared, “They don’t want our children to know about their rights. They don’t want our children to know about a God!”

“Even though the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently issued a report concluding that the evidence for global warming is unequivocal, more Americans are convinced than at any time since 1997 that scientists have exaggerated the seriousness of global warming. The Kochs promote this statistic on their company’s Web site but do not mention the role that their funding has played in fostering such doubt.
“In a 2002 memo, the Republican political consultant Frank Luntz wrote that so long as “voters believe there is no consensus about global warming within the scientific community” the status quo would prevail. The key for opponents of environmental reform, he said, was to question the science—a public-relations strategy that the tobacco industry used effectively for years to forestall regulation. The Kochs have funded many sources of environmental skepticism, such as the Heritage Foundation, which has argued that “scientific facts gathered in the past 10 years do not support the notion of catastrophic human-made warming.” The brothers have given money to more obscure groups, too, such as the Independent Women’s Forum, which opposes the presentation of global warming as a scientific fact in American public schools. Until 2008, the group was run by Nancy Pfotenhauer, a former lobbyist for Koch Industries. Mary Beth Jarvis, a vice-president of a Koch subsidiary, is on the group’s board.”

“(Thomas McGarity, a law professor at the University of Texas) explained the strategy: “You take corporate money and give it to a neutral-sounding think tank,” which “hires people with pedigrees and academic degrees who put out credible-seeming studies. But they all coincide perfectly with the economic interests of their funders.”

“The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.”

“The Kochs’ sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the nineteen-twenties, and since the seventies the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class. Yet the brothers’ message has evidently resonated with voters: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist.”

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer