Breaking Down: healthcare and other cultural artifacts

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Above: "Man Robs Bank for $1 To Get Health Care in Jail/"


Liz Goodwin, Yahoo: Suspected domestic abusers go free as Topeka city, county officials bicker over funds

A bitter argument over money in Topeka, Kan., means that city and county authorities have neglected to prosecute or charge people suspected of domestic battery since Sept. 8.
In other words, the local justice system has spent a month effectively sending the message that misdemeanor domestic assault will go unpunished--at least for now. The dispute started last month, when Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor announced that a 10 percent budget cut to his office in 2012 meant he would no longer be prosecuting any of the city's misdemeanors, effective immediately.

The Chronicle for Higher Education,August 11, 2010 "Salary for Interim Commissioner Raises Eyebrows in Louisiana":

Should Louisiana’s interim higher-education commissioner be making $25,000 a month—plus $1,500 a month for housing and $600 for a car?


Balloon-Juice, "This class war thing is more complicated than you'd think":

Archer, 52, abruptly quit her job on Aug. 19 as the No. 2 official at the powerful Department of Administration. She made $124,000 in that position. She was to start the following Monday as legislative liaison at the Department of Children and Families, but began taking paid medical leave that day.

She is making $99,449 in that job – $39,129 more than her predecessor. That 65% pay hike was possible because Walker’s fellow Republicans turned 39 civil service jobs into political positions earlier this year.

Daniel Politi, Slate, Sep. 15, 2011
Postal Service Could Get Slower:Plan calls for shutting down more than 250 mail processing facilities and eliminate 35,000 jobs.

CNN, "Financially-strapped cities cut jobs, services"

Christian Science Monitor, "A long, steep drop for Americans' standard of living"


New York Times, "Use of Private Contractors Don’t Save Government Money, Study Finds"

The government paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost federal employees to perform comparable services, according to the study.

via Gary Farber who writes, "The study found that in 33 of 35 occupations, the government actually paid billions of dollars more to hire contractors than it would have cost government employees to perform comparable services. On average, the study found that contractors charged the federal government more than twice the amount it pays federal workers. Remember: government is inefficient, and privatization is wonderful!"


Louisville, Courier-Journal, September 9, 2011: "Sherman Minton Bridge closed indefinitely due to structural cracks"
via Thom Hartmann,"America’s infrastructure now ranks 16th in the world"

The Sherman Minton Bridge is just one of several bridges in danger of collapsing –- As the American Society of Civil Engineers points out, 34% of all the bridges in Kentucky are considered “structurally deficient.” Of course – Kentucky is the home state of Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell – who opposed increased infrastructure spending in the 2009 stimulus bill – opposed it again when Republicans blocked a jobs bill in 2010 – and threw cold water last week on President Obama’s “American Jobs Act” that includes billions in transportation infrastructure products. According to a study by the Urban Land Institute – our nation’s infrastructure needs $2 trillion worth of repairs.

CNN, September 13, 2011: In one year, 2.6 million more poor

Amy Bingham, ABC News, September 13, 2011: "Tea Party Debate Audience Cheered Idea of Letting Uninsured Patients Die"

Carrie Gann, ABC News, Sept. 2, 2011:
Man Dies From Toothache, Couldn't Afford Meds

A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn't afford his medication...According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis' wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.

I'm tempted to leave it there and let the reader make her own conclusions. But in 2014 when the so-called Affordable Healthcare Act fully kicks in, people like Kyle Willis and dollar bank robber James Varone still won't have universal healthcare, they'll have a universal obligation to purchase insurance, which isn't exactly the same thing. And if they don't they'll be fined. The plan, of course, is designed to be fully implemented after the 2012 election, and to include subsidies for poor folks.

Why was it designed this way? Was it a good-cop,bad-cop routine played out(and still playing out), not in an interrogation room on a television show, but on television screens nonetheless, before millions? Was it because the republicans are supposed to sweep in and gut funding for the Kyle Willises who need subsidies, so the democrats can't be blamed, and the GOP can tell their supporters they tried their damnedest to get rid of Obamacare altogether, but all they could do was defund it, because the courts wouldn't "let" them get rid of the individual mandate? And so the democrats who voted for the mandates could say, "let us back in power, see what happens when we're not there to protect you?"

What do you think?

31 August 2011

Cenk Uygur,th' Young Turks: Banks Got Free Money From Fed

Uygur's argument about bonuses is a bit silly, although by now it's conventional wisdom for many. The federal government should not have forbade big bonuses for CEOS but rather substantially increased the taxes on such payouts, including a hike ( say, to 45% or higher) in the tax on incomes over 5 million for those CEOs, and all other incomes in that region, bankers and others. Also, they could have taken over some real estate holdings from the banks in exchange for the bailout dollars, and sold them to sounder, smaller banks. Wealthy Americans are undertaxed in general, not just bankers, and Obama (and the 2009-2010 democrats in general) decided to be part of that ongoing problem, at precisely the time when they had the most favorable conditions to overhaul the tax code and make it more progressive.



Rakesh Raman, Why You Must Not Compare Anna Hazare with Gandhi

I don't know if Raman is right in asserting that Gandhi was unconditionally against violence, as opposed to preferring nonviolence when it was possible, but recognizing that there might be circumstances where it was not.


BDR pondered who the dems would run in 2016 if Obama loses. I commented:

I say Russ Feingold '16, if he's willing to hug enough bankers. Feingold would be valuable as a measure of co-opting optics. Just like converting Kucinich's 'no' vote on the Healthcare Reform Will Get You Act of 2010 was valuable, lest some normals furrow their brows and try to figure out why a lefty would oppose it. They needed Dennis K's vote, if not mathematically, then thematically.

Additional thoughts: I wrote that because I couldn't help but note that if anybody could have usefully challenged Obama from the left in the primaries it was Feingold. At this point Kucinich is probably regarded as too old, and as a two-time loser.

Ted Kennedy challenged Carter in 1980 and actually made it a race for a while, but today as our politics become increasingly tribal something like that seems impossible. Whatever you think of Kennedy, if anybody tells you that he cost Carter re-election, recall what happened to a certain military operation in the Iranian desert on April 24th, 1980.

Duncan Mitchel, "The Trouble With Privilege Is That Everybody Doesn't Have It"


2 pajama-clad girls take stolen goat for walk
"Everything went according to plan for two pajama-clad stepsisters who took a goat they'd freed from a Minnesota zoo for a late-night walk..."

I may have linked to a different site discussing this same study before:

Upper-class people less empathetic than lower-class people: study | The Raw Story

People from different economic classes have fundamentally different ways of thinking about the world, according to research recently published in Current Directions in Psychological Science. [...] “One clear policy implication is, the idea of nobless oblige or trickle-down economics, certain versions of it, is bull," Keltner added.

Slate, "People Always Say You Should Invest Like Warren Buffett. Here's Why You Can't"

Adam Kessler | Cognitive dissonance, the Global Financial Crisis and the discipline of economics [note: pdf link]

I consider the social-psychological concept cognitive dissonance as the best explanatory framework for understanding this response. Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that when real-world events “disconfirm” deeply-held beliefs this creates psychological discomfort in persons...

Or, denial is a river, with flowcharts n' copious statistics.

What Caused the Financial Crisis? Don’t Ask an Economist


Business Insider, "Here's The Bomb That Might Blow A Hole In Bank Of America"

CNN: "U.S. ranks low for newborn survival"

The GOP War on Voting | Rolling Stone Politics

Norway killer tied to drugs, the Tea Party and the libertarian conspiracy:

Peter Dale Scott -- poet, U.C. Berkeley professor and former Canadian diplomat -- has written a fascinating analysis of the mass killings committed by Anders Breivik, which he views as a "deep" event. "Deep" is Scott-speak for "conspiratorial," although he operates on a wavelength very different from that of the conspira-cranks who gravitate toward Alex Jones.

Boingboing.net: "Ayn Rand took government assistance while decrying others who did the same"

Sibel Edmonds, "Politicians aren’t as Incompetent as They Seem"

Buy Suze Orman books or else

August 17, 2011
Personal finance expert Suze Orman tells CNN's John King how consumers can cope with Wall Street's wild swings.



Added On August 17, 2011
CNN's John King and Jessica Yellin talk about the president's new proposal geared toward creating jobs


Mother Jones,The Next Debtpocalypse: Fiscal Meltdowns in the States:Inside the plan to gut state budgets and keep corporate America happy.

the Huffy Post, "Obama For America's New Mexico Director Sends Out Email Bashing 'Firebagger Lefty Blogosphere'"




Star Tribune/AP, Report: Justice Department investigating Standard and Poor's mortgage securities ratings.
Updated: August 17, 2011 - 10:43 PM

Annie Lowrey, Deliverance:The U.S. Postal Service must make massive changes if it is going to survive

I generally like Annie Lowrey's reporting, but this was really disappointing, just the usual boilerplate about a government agency needing to become lean and mean and innovative, blah blah blah, at the expense of its workforce. Presumably Lowrey and her peers have to periodically remind you that they work for the Washington Post and mustn't rock the austerity boat. People worry about jobs, and the further deterioration of the economy. OK, how about not laying off 120,000 more postal workers and not getting apoplectic about how the USPS needs to break even? (Does the post Osama Afghanistan war have to break even? How about the not-war that we're not-waging on Libya? Couldn't we use cheaper missiles or fewer sorties and still achieve a protracted stalemate?)

Lowrey does mention "innovating" by allowing the Post Office to set its own postage rates (You know, like their private sector competitors already do), as opposed to waiting for the congress to vote on any rate changes. Of course they could have done this years ago if the Democrats and Republicans weren't intent on starving the beast. As one commenter observed, the problem is the Post Office is underfunded.

CNN: Bachmann: I'll bring back $2 gas How can you not vote for her?


Alternet, 6 So-CalledSo-Called "Job Creators" Who Won't Hire The Unemployed
Allstate Insurance, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and the University of Arizona are just a few of the companies advertising that they will only hire people who already have jobs.

TV reporter:"The Down House owner Chris Cusack said the customer called the bartender a "twerp" on Twitter, and the manager showed her the door."
Tweet Gets Houston Customer Kicked Out - www.ksat.com HOUSTON

-- A Houston diner is kicked out of a restaurant not for something she did, but apparently for something she said on Twitter. Wednesday, August 17, 2011.



Unintentional humor is often the funniest.(Mediamatters.org watches Fox News so you don't have to...)
Fox's Eric Bolling Asks If Warren Buffett Is "Completely A Socialist"



www.businessinsider.com: This Is For Everyone Who Thinks The US Can't Fund Its Own Debt
This idea that we need to borrow from China is dangerous nonsense.

Is the SEC Covering Up Wall Street Crimes? | Rolling Stone Politics
Imagine a world in which a man who is repeatedly investigated for a string of serious crimes, but never prosecuted, has his slate wiped clean every time...

(OK, so she doesn't say buy my books or else.)

The 4th way, or possibly the 5th way. Sorry, I've lost track

The best way, possibly, to fix the deal is to primary you-know-who, and the rest of his minions. Mockery of the tea party and the falseness of their grass-roots origins notwithstanding, that's what they did.

Does the democratic party deserve saving? This is a silly question; what does "deserve" have to do with anything? It's like saying this cardboard box has been in my family for years, and it used to contain some really swell stuff. I can't throw it away.

It needs to be retooled to serve people's needs if this is possible, or discarded if it isn't, with no sentimentality. It's had a good run, or a bad run, or a mostly bad run with some bright moments, or whatever.

It may of course be too late, as a key provision of the poison pill is scheduled to take place in late 2012, just after the election.


Oh by the way, welcome back.