Polarization

This summer we saw a spectacle of ill informed, emotional and uncompromising people take over town halls, talk shows, and all matters of opinion over substance. For a progressive, still basking in the afterglow of an historic victory, it was easy to stand back and be puzzled, smugly secure in the belief that they were now the ones in charge, and all the noise on the other side was of no consequence. The right wing seemed imminently frozen in a set of apocalyptic beliefs about the role of government, and the current administration. For some Americans, health care reform represented the difference between freedom and tyranny.

I was under the impression that any health care victory would ultimately be well-received by anyone identifying as left-of-center. Seeing the reaction to the demise of the public option, I have been struck by just how ill informed, emotional and uncompromising this group has become as well. Like their counterparts on the right, they have convinced themselves that once they got their man in charge, the public would see things their way, and their agenda would pass, one item after another.

There is something in play in today's American politics that threatens our ability to get anything done, left, right or center. On all sides of debate, a growing cadre of people believe that their point of view should be what governs the country-- that compromise is apostasy, and dissent is treachery. Individualism has taken over politics, moving far beyond the binary partisan labels of the past, people settling only for 'designer' candidates for office. This is an exercise in self-indulgence, pure and simple.

I thought somehow that the left was better than all that, but I was wrong. Look at health care: a public option was a plan that promised to offer little, and only to a select sliver of the public who were actually eligible to sign up. It wasn't going to save much money. It wasn't going to make premiums that much cheaper. It wasn't even necessary in the more competitive marketplaces for health insurance. But it became a rallying cry for extremists of all stripes. It was the beginning of the end for some and the end of the beginning for others. Sweating these details makes people angry, neurotic, and self-defeating. It's what losers do. Enough already.

In negotiations, where a win-win is possible for all parties, rule one is to never act desperate, to always at least appear willing to walk away. Another way to say it is that beggars can't be choosers. In the health care debate, this rule was already abrogated by bad faith on behalf of the opposition, and the all-or-nothing dynamic that has taken over the discussion on all sides.

The fact is that liberals are not willing to walk away, and everyone knows it. We shouldn't walk away. We should take the deal. But we should take it with the understanding that it is our side that is desperate to win. The other side can never suffer as great a defeat as we can by taking on this issue. There will be no in-your-face moment, no champagne popping. There will be a vote and a law. We can't pretend that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, or Barack Obama have sway over those who stand little to gain from their constituents by passing this bill. We should admit that there is a limit to our power, and accept that those limits work for us sometimes, and for the opposition at other times.

The public option is not a big deal. Medicare buy-in for the 55-65 set is not a big deal. Extending coverage to 30 million more people, making it cheaper, and more secure for everyone is a big deal. It's the basis for something that can and will grow as time goes on. It's the fulfillment of one of the central progressive policy goals of the past 100 years. We're closer than ever, and we're desperate to finish this thing, all of us. Let's pass it, sell it to the public as a major victory, and move on.

This is politics, not pizza delivery. No one gets exactly what they want delivered to their door.

Pyrric Victory?

And so it is told. We may be on the cusp of history. The Holy Grail of American liberals may at last be in their grasp. Sir Harry Reid has bravely fought off the infidels and savages, battling ever closer to the siege walls of a new Jerusalem. The winter nights grow long, and the days are short and without comfort. But Sir Harry and his majority are nearly there at long last.

Sir Harry paced back and forth along the line of his counts and dukes who stand in stoic circumspection, their hosts of legislative aides scurrying to claim credit for details and strategic press leaks.

"Now is not the time and turn west to the far hearths of our homes. But the time will soon arrive, brothers. We will know our glory. We will know the veneration of our constituents. We will not snatch defeat from the jaws of victory."

Not exactly.

When written about the present, narratives like the one above are most often meant as sarcastic shots at the day's egoists, opportunists, and petty quibblers. When written a hundred years from now, the same narrative can seem bereft of all irony, pointing to some bygone age when men were men and real laws got passed.

Once those men are dead, their eulogies uttered and transcribed, their gravestones cast with a pall of wear, things always look better than they were. Wars were noble. Leaders were virtuous. Everyday people lived simple, righteous lives. We all know better, but the illusion pervades.

We will pass health care reform and it won't be enough. Leaders will make craven and self-serving decisions. With or without the public option or medicare buy-in, health care will still be expensive, and some people won't be able to afford it. There won't be enough doctors in rural areas, and rates of diabetes and obesity will continue to mushroom. People will die preventable deaths.

Even a perfect bill would not come close to fixing the root causes of poverty and ill health. But progress will be made. Insurance companies will have to rate us on where we live, instead of how sick we are. They won't be able to cap our benefits. They'll have to offer a decent set of care options for people. There will be a national insurance exchange that gets companies competing for our business, harnessing the market to do some good in health care for a change. Life will be marginally better, and we will continue to improve on it as time moves on, unintended consequences crop up, and new problems arise.

Living in any bygone epic was never so good, as the wise among the elderly will attest.

Eddie Vedder sung "The kids of today must defend themselves from the seventies... it's not reality. Just someone else's sentimentality..." I wasn't there in any meaningful way. Does anyone who mothballed their Spirit of '76 varsity jacket think differently than Eddie about that decade? Oil crises? Iran? Nixon? Disco?!

Thomas Hobbes famously described life in the distant past in no uncertain terms: nasty, brutish and short. And right he was. Look only at life spans and the causes of their brevity even 50 years ago (short). Look at the proportions of people who died in war as recently as 75 years ago (brutish). Look at the conditions of daily life 100 years ago (nasty). Be thankful for all the hard work that went into what we have today. Be ready for a struggle with the creation of tomorrow.

We are all victims of the dread beast Nostalgia. The monster's quarry is our realistic appraisal of both past and present. Its lasting wounds fester the promise of our future, that which isn't written. Nostalgia is the covert assassin of optimism.

True optimism allows us to fight for a world in which our descendants live longer, more peaceful and comfortable lives than our own. There is no new Jerusalem, only plodding progress towards somewhere unknown and maybe better than today. Progress is what we're fighting for. And this is what it looks like. This is how it's always looked when people fought to make the world better.

On the debt: Put up or shut up

Post #100! Yay!

Our mounting national debt is more of a practical consideration than some argument on what the government should and shouldn't do.

If people on the right don't like spending on one thing or another, then they should get specific. That's what people who want to be in charge have to do. Do you cut welfare? Defense? Roads and bridges? If they want lower taxes, they should have to explain why this is better for America.

Most economists (even the Reagan guys) believe that the experiment of lowering taxes didn't do much in the way of increasing the state's revenue. I believe it was never the point-- it was (and is) a cynical backdoor way of achieving that vision of a smaller state.

Instead of facing the political realities of saying "let's cut this program," the GOP's made it into doing you a favor by lowering taxes on the hopes that one day we'll be so far in debt that the government will have to shrink to their liking.

There are spending priorities that this country needs to consider if it wants to stay in charge. It might mean making some big public investments. There are cuts that have to happen. There is revenue that has to come from somewhere other than China.

That's being practical first, ideological second. As self-described "fiscal hawks", the GOP might actually do some good for America if they got that straight.

Right now they seem to believe that anyone who doesn't want to cut everything is the enemy in some ideological holy war. That's a dangerous way to run a country.

We can afford rolling back tax rates to the Clinton era, when we ran a surplus. We can even afford a VAT. We can't afford $14T in debt. Let's put everything on the table and solve the problem.

I don't want to wait for the IMF to come in and peg an inflating, worthless Dollar to the Euro.

Democratic messaging... huh?

I've been following a number of political blogs since about mid-summer, when the rhetoric around health care (and now everything) started getting to its current level of unhinged nuttiness.

What I don't get is how, after 4-5 months, I keep seeing the same level of credulity at how these guys could make this or that outrageous claim, or level such and such an insult with a straight face.

Can't the reaction to this crap evolve a little? Just a bit? How about a little coverage of our side? What's our emotional message? Who cares about what we have to say?

Following leftish bloggers is like watching a posse of Vulcans at a Klingon convention. Sure, you're right, but you'll get your ass kicked anyway, and nobody will care.

It was true in 2nd grade, and it's true today.

The right wing messaging machine sucks the oxygen out of any policy debate just by saying something crazy... a perverse form of 'framing the argument.'

Do our nation a favor, smartypants bloggers. Try not to debate back, and certainly not on their terms. Doing that only makes crazy positions look like reasonable alternatives.

Creating a Monster

My first college political science class was taught by a one of those iconoclasts who are absolutely mesmerizing to a room full of 19 year-olds. At the time it was like watching pure truth every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 9 am. Looking back, I suspect that if I sat in on a lecture of his now, he might come across as a bullying demagogue, but I have to admit that this professor has had a lasting impact on my thinking.

Among many things he said that jolted my thinking was a proclamation that, despite being a good progressive, he was an unapologetic elitist. "Of course I'm an elitist," he said. "I'm a college professor, and besides, have you looked at who we're trying to govern? Do you really want Bubba in charge of our schools? Our roads and bridges? Our armies?!"

It seemed so wrong to say something like that, but so irrefutably true. Having had what amounts to an elite education, I'd was always told I could be anything I wanted to be, and people really meant it. But the one thing I could never allow myself was to think I was better than anyone else. This is mostly a good value, and it's mostly right in practice. But not always. Sometimes being more educated or qualified means that it's your duty to take on leadership roles. There's no need to be polite about it. We need talent in charge, not Bubba.

Too often, people who are gifted by accident of birth as rich, intelligent, or an heir to power would rather come off as just like everyone else, and everyone else expects them to do just that. It's considered a condescending courtesy or a necessary formality to indulge every bad idea for the sake of equity, while quietly assuming your position is unequivocally rational and just. But false humility is an uglier thing than owning one's talents, and certainty of one's own virtue is one of the most smug, repugnant characteristics a person can possess.

So what about elitism? Back to the poli-sci lecture. During the late renaissance, when democracies were first coming online, most of the argument was over how much power to give the common man. After all, most people were illiterate, and had spent most of their energy trying to feed their families and keep a thatched roof over their heads. The vote was restricted to white, male landowners-- people who it was believed had an interest in the common good, beyond themselves or their own families. It was noblesse oblige to do the right thing. With industrialization, public education, and a hundredfold increase in living standards, the right to vote has expanded to anyone who is both an adult and a citizen. And it was the right thing to do.

We no longer restrict who can vote, and we shouldn't. Maybe we never should have restricted it, but those were the judgment calls of generations before us; they were already making bold moves when considering how things worked before them.

It would do us some good to recognize the thinking behind how our system of government was established. It's supposed to be simultaneously responsive to citizen's needs and desires, while isolating and empowering elected decisionmakers to make hard decisions in the public interest. If we gave people what they wanted every time, we'd be no better off than the Romans under Caesar, placated by gladiators killing one another in the coliseum, and scraps of bread tossed from the back of a wagon. When people are told to expect everything they want, they are much more likely to act in their own self interest. There can be no society when leaders indulge our most atavistic instincts.

There is a disturbing trend in today's political discourse. America's right has had some successes in appealing to the basest instincts of certain people. The Republican party enjoyed considerable success by giving the people what they want. Tax cuts, guns, freedom without responsibility. It's one thing to be conservative, and to believe in limited government and incremental progress. It's quite another to call for the destruction of a system that has served us reasonably well, or to call for a theocratic approach to lawmaking that conforms to the beliefs of one segment of the demographic. That's not conservative.

I really hope that conservatives can attract a cadre of rational, competent leaders, instead of those who choose to arouse our leanings towards hatred and idolatry. More generally, I wish that people would look for qualified leaders who talk sober sense instead of populist yes men.

In the end, I place a lot of the blame on the profit motive in journalism. Media outlets are rewarded for covering trainwrecks, not floor debates. Trainwrecks please the base, and this system of reward has gone on to reward the trainwrecks in public office, to embolden those who would be seduced by them. This is a self-fulfilling phenomenon-- the more coverage, the more reward.

The more reward, the more coverage. I don't think there's any policy that could change this and I reject any censorship or regulation of the media as both unwise and unamerican. I have to believe that most people will reject the "trainwreck effect" on their own. Left or right, we need an elite in charge. A little nobility ennobles all of us.

The Public Option, Revisited

I think too much has been made of the public option on both sides of the debate. It might be a good idea or not, government might be able to do some things right or not. Everything that could be said about that has been, from Roosevelt to Reagan. It's tired.

To be sure, according to the CBO, a public option would be better for the deficit than otherwise. It would be funded by premiums and subsidies, just like the private plans. The idea is that it would reduce costs through negotiated rates and market clout.

The problem with the legislation now under consideration is that the rates aren't all that negotiated, and the clout just isn't there.

Even if the "robust" version of the public option had made it in, at 5% over Medicare rates, how much of an impact would that have on health care costs if 90% of everyone aren't even eligible for it? How would it have any impact if it's mandated to just "negotiate" without having any leverage, marketshare, or regulatory largess?

Maybe a government program could outcompete the private sector. Even without the 5% over Medicare rates, a public plan might have lower overhead, and it certainly wouldn't have profits or shareholders to please, but private insurers would surely adapt over the longer run. All of that would lower costs, even premiums, but by how much? A public plan might help the process along with a bit of competitive pressure, but that's all.

In my thinking, the real action is with the "exchanges." If everyone could buy plans, public or private, on a regulated market that's open to all, we might see insurance companies having some stake in lowering costs so they could pass it on in lower premiums. Right now, I get a once-a-year window to choose from two or three plans, likely from the same company. That's about the same level of timing and choice I'd have if I were shopping for cars in East Germany, circa 1982. Imagine an open market with 20 plans. A public plan would only add to that sort of arrangement.

Myself, I like the idea of a public plan giving the boys in Hartford a run for their money. I'd certainly buy into a public plan if it were cheaper and without significant caveats, disclaimers, clauses and exemptions beyond the standard hassle of private coverage. But working for a business with more than 50 employees, I can't.

The debate over the public option has served the underhanded political purpose of keeping the real cost-reducing measures in the shadows, where they could be bound and gagged according to the wishes of everyone who makes a dime in health care. The American public has had an academic debate about the role of the state in the public welfare, while the backroom deals were signed and delivered long ago.

My prediction is that they'll pass a bill, and within 5 years of its going into effect, people will demand to be allowed into the exchanges, where the rates are lower and the service is better, public or private.

I say good.

The Humor Gap

I have a vivid memory of being a kid, and going into a surplus store with my dad to get something cool, like Vietnam-era BDUs, or an Israeli gas mask, or a grenade that's been hollowed out.

On the wall behind the register, behind the pepper spray and bumper stickers there was a t-shirt pinned up with thumb tacks. The shirt had a picture of a skull half-buried in the sand wearing a pair of RayBan aviators and a burnoose. The caption underneath said, "NUKE THEIR ASS AND TAKE THE GAS!"

Even as a third-grade boy who was into squashing bugs and GI JOE, I looked at that shirt with a measure of fear and disgust. It was deeply unsettling to think of people who believed the shirt's message enough to buy it and wear it around town. Sure, I liked dummy grenades and camouflage, but nuclear holocaust for oil just seemed a step too far.

That image came back to me today as I trawled the internet looking at borderline acts of sedition, vague threats of assassination, and slogans on signboards that say things like, "we came unarmed, this time." I read a blog entry of someone who worked at a call center and spoke to someone who said they "hang liberals," and went on to conduct the call's business as if it were lighthearted conversation. Most of the responses were incredulous gasps of horror and disbelief-- things like, "I assume he means 'hanging in effigy'..." or "I voted 'report him' on the off chance he wasn't kidding..." But will that guy do anything? Can that guy really do anything? No. And treating it as if he could only gives him (and others) ideas.

Humor often takes the form of something you wish was true, or know not to be true, that is said anyway. This kind of stuff passes for humor among belligerent paranoids.

Most liberals don't find threats on theirs' or their leaders' lives to be very funny. They don't even find threats on their enemies to be funny. I share that aesthetic, but I question the reaction. Too often the reaction of liberals to a politically incorrect statement that, say, denigrates women, is something like, "I'm very offended by that..." or something sober but vaguely witty like, "What he said is an offense to 51% of the world."

Of course there's the issue of proportionality. Were the vision to become true-- as humor suggests it might or should-- 'middle eastern nuclear warfare' is several orders of magnitude more dire than 'barefoot and pregnant.' But do either idea, when touted by idiots, deserve to be taken seriously?

When people take brain-dead ideas, demagoguery, or jokes that are in bad taste seriously, the only thing that happens is that a legitimate position in an argument is created. You're setting up the argument that reads something like:

While on one hand, nuclear anihilation would solve our dire energy problems, on the other it's morally abhorrent and dangerous.

But this is not the LSATs, people.

The real choice isn't whether or not to be offended by tasteless humor. It's whether you're laughing with the offending person or at them. Statements like 'I hang liberals,' or 'NUKE THEIR ASS AND TAKE THE GAS!" should not be given the solemn respect of true offense, nor should they even be allowed near the scales of merit.

I say laugh them out of the room. Call them a bunch of retarded neanderthals. And then (if you still need to) say why, but not before they are thoroughly ridiculed. Not only will you come off as a confident authority on whatever subject is in question, you'll also begin to shape reality according to your beliefs.

Mortal threats on people are not funny, but when the average guy takes them seriously, it makes them a serious viewpoint. Shame and embarassment work. Laugh them off in public and create a more just reality.

And don't worry. The FBI is trawling the internet too, and they take it seriously enough for all of us. I hope.

In Defence of Fahrenheit

... because someone needs to do it.

Beginning in elementary school science class, most kids have heard that the use of the Fahrenheit temperature scale is barbaric, antiquated, impractical, and downright antisocial to the rest of the world. And yet our daily exposure to Celsius is for the most part limited to alternating time and temperature readings found on bank clocks on the side of the road. Why?

Go anywhere else in the world, and people will tell you that a 60 degree day can only happen in the Sahara. Even in Canada, so similar to us, a basic use of everyday language is mostly unintelligible. Talk to non-Americans and they are baffled at our continued use of a system where 32 means freezing and 212 means boiling.

32? 212? Who could remember that? Beyond centreing on the properties of water at sea level, there's nothing particularly rational about Celsius. In many ways, it's equal to Fahrenheit, though perhaps less elegant. Consider the following:

1. In scientific applications like thermodynamics, numbers must be expressed in absolutes. Even Celsius must be converted to Kelvins, whereby 0 is absolute zero, freezing is 273.15, and boiling is 373.15. There's nothing scientific or convenient about that. You could do the same thing with a Fahrenheit scale, or you could start over entirely.

2. In everyday usage, Fahrenheit allows the user to be far more precise about the temperature using whole numbers. The equivalent difference between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit is expressed as 21 to 26 degrees Celsius; a roughly 2 to 1 ratio of discrete measurement points in favour of Fahrenheit.

3. For body temperature, right when you want precision, you don't get it. 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 37 degrees Celsius is normal. No argument there. But when 100 degrees Fahrenheit indicates that something is wrong, the equivalent in Celsius is 37.8. Which is more convincing? What about the difference between a 100 and 105 Fahrenheit fever? 37.8 to 40.6 is the difference between life and death in the rest of the world?

4. Unlike the metric system, with its clear advantages over Imperial measures in both precision and ease of use, Celsius is not a base-10 system, nor does it grant its user any real advantage in expressing the subjective feelings brought on by the weather. Even if 20 Celsius is roughly room temperature, and 30 is roughly beach weather, 70 Fahrenheit is roughly room temperature, and 80 gets you in a pair of shorts. 90 Fahrenheit is a warm summer day, while 40 Celsius is blistering.

I accept that Fahrenheit is one of the most annoying examples of American exceptionalism. I certainly betray some embarrassment when I hear of Americans in other countries who can't understand the temperature. It's like not being able to read the time. We can and should do better. If people everywhere can learn 4, 5 or 6 languages, surely there is a place for both systems of temperature measurement here in monoglot America. We could handle a weather forecast that says that a high of 86 is also a high of 30.

But why America in particular? I don't know for sure, but there is a certain style and pragmatism in the everyday use of Fahrenheit that suits the American temperament like none other. We don't need 0 to mean freezing or 100 to mean boiling. We already know what they are as sure as the day is long.

We have an understanding of what a 90 degree day means that provides a silent national cohesion, a reminder that somehow, America is different.

Don't Freak Out Anyway

I was wrong about the Obama administration being eggheaded Jedis of the nth degree. They placed too much faith in the Grassley-Baucus negotiations, and too little faith in their own base, and that's where they got in trouble. I placed too much faith in them. They weren't that smart or that wise, but this time it worked out for them.

What were they smoking!?

Wrong as I was, the improved prognosis for reform is unchanged. Stirring up the Left netroots and getting GOP leadership to admit that there's no deal changes the entire dynamic. The GOP's PR offensive was at its shrillest when no one was looking and no one was cutting any real deals in Congress. That kind of wave is high amplitude, but low frequency. They put all their energies towards sinking the effort in August, and now they will struggle to keep up that level of panic. Now only 21 percent of the public has any trust in them as health reformers, and many see them as liars and fearmongers. They have said themselves that this is about politics, not compromise.

After so much rancor on all sides, the public is now watching this debate with a level of critical thinking and intensity I've never seen.

This is far from over, but we're closer than ever to a decent set of reforms that put the country in the right direction. Let's hope they play a smart game in the weeks and months between now and a bill on the President's desk.

Health Reformers: Don't Freak Out!

... don't do it!

Everywhere I turn on the left side of the blogosphere I hear cries of betrayal, disillusionment, anger and frustration with the health reform process. Everywhere on the right I hear triumphalism, and a cloying sense that defeating this initiative is both possible, and the key to their rightful, unapologetic return next year.

We know that both sides hold few traits in common. One thing I think they share is the reading of statements and the events that surround them at face value, and on an ever-shortening time horizon.

But take a step back and ask yourself:

• Does it really make sense for the president to just plain give up on central elements of policy because of bad vibes coming from congressional districts? Without any indication of a good faith effort from the other side?
  
• Did it really make sense for the Senate Finance committee to take end-of-life language out of their bill because of some irrational agitation?
• Are these guys really so cravenly stupid as to be so subject to shifts in media coverage and public opinion?

I'd bet my IRA that the answer's no to all three. The name of the game is surviving an August recess where all the cards are stacked against them. Reformers, take heart of the facts on your side, and don't snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when you don't have to.

Consider these truths:

• The 'public option' is alive and well in three House committees, and one Senate committee. All the capitulation is contained in one fifth of the legislative effort. You're still batting .800
• The end-of-life language was taken out of the Senate Finance bill... that's it. Once the whole matter cools down, I can guarantee that it'll end up in the bill that comes out of conference committee.
• The House and Senate are dominated by Democrats, and the leadership in both chambers is on board with the left-leaning approaches. They get to decide who goes to committee to negotiate a final bill, and they place the pressure on members to hold the party line.

Consider this possibility:

Why in hell would the president and the senate give up the farm when they're not even in session, and knowing that they'd never get anything out of the deal? My view is that they've calculated a decent win-win proposition.

The best-case scenario is that the opposition overplays their hand, showing that there is not deal on Earth or in Heaven that would satisfy them, despite widespread public demand for one. The liberal base is enraged by all of this, and puts immense pressure on the handful of senators holding this thing up. When the legislation goes to conference committee, and the GOP has nothing, they'll be left with an unpopular opposing view and nothing else.

The worst-case scenario is that the opposition galvanizes around defeat, and liberal activists cower in submission, or make non-negotiable claims, all the while knowing that their entire political ascendancy depends on passing something, anything, so long as it works. For that, they certainly have the votes, and a chance to fight another day. The softer message works to lower expectations for activists and the public-- a tactic that the Bush administration was masterful at pulling off.

In a monologue, Jon Stewart asked whether the Obama administration was staffed by a bunch of Jedis who were ten steps ahead of everyone else. I have to assume this is true because the alternative seems so implausible. On all sides, a game is being played by a competent, savvy and tough set of players. Expect a little subterfuge from them. They're politicians.

The Executive and Legislative leadership is not as weak or as stupid as the conventional wisdom on both sides seems so ready to believe. They just see no point in fighting when there is nothing to win right now. The real wins and losses happen when people come back from vacation, not now.

Have a little faith in September, and show your support today!

James's Carville's Ten Rules For Progressives to Live By

Pass it on!

1. Stop Apologizing for Everything. You are a member of the party that beat the Depression, won two world wars, cut elderly poverty by two-thirds, and is responsible for the greatest period of economic growth since World War II. Democrats wake up and start looking for someone to apologize to. Stop It. You've got nothing to apologize for.

2. Quit Conceding That The Other Side Has A Point. I taught school for a little while, and guess what? There is such a thing as a stupid question. The same goes for opinions. Not everyone has a valid point. The next time a right-wing nut tells you that the Bush plan gives the poor a lot of incentive to get rich don't say, 'Well, you've got a point." They don't have a point. What they are saying is stupid. Sometimes a mind is like a mouth; you just have to shut it.

3. Be Big: Think only of, and talk only about big things. When I advise candidates, I tell them it is okay to have an opinion on everything, it is just not okay to render said opinion on everything. I may favor a trans-gender amendment. But if I were running for president, I would not make that part of my core platform of ideas.

4. Be Positive. I grew up in the town of Carville, Louisiana-so named because my family provided the town with its most indispensable federal employee, its postmaster. When I was growing up, my daddy convinced me that I was living in the best place in the world. He always made sure I remembered that we had the best climate, the best people, the best family, the best soil, the best peaches-the best of everything. "Of any place that you could live in the world, " he'd tell me, "you're living right here in Carville, Louisiana." Man, I thought it was the garden spot of the universe. Did I know that there was a Broadway or a Michigan Avenue or a Rodeo Drive? No. And I didn't give a damn. Progressives are genetically inclined to talk about how bad things are. We'd rather be the skunk than enjoy the garden party. We need to be able to see the good-and make a case for making it better. In short, we need more of my daddy's Carville attitude in Washington and less of our liberal activist carping one.

5. Use Their Weapons Against Them Republicans love to talk about the right and wrong. They do so with an absolutely religious fevor-and that makes sense because more than a small number of them use their religion as a justification for their policies. If they're going to do that, it's fair for us to ask questions like "Is cutting funds for the schools that educate the kids of the people fighting for us in Iraq a bad, stupid right-wing policy, or is it an affront to God?" "Is rolling back clean water protections so your rich contributors can blight the environment bad policy, or is it a sin for which you can burn in hell?"

6. Attack Their Lack Of True Patriotism There are actually some people who will buy a used car from the dealer with the biggest flag. He's usually the guy with the biggest mouth, too. The same goes for politics. We shouldn't look for the biggest flag or listen to the biggest mouth-we should look for the real patriots, the ones who are willing to tell the truth and make America stronger. It is completely antithetical to the American ideal of generational promise to burden future generations with a massive amount of debt. Every American child has heard the story from his or her parents or grandparents about how they worked hard to make things better for the next generation. They struggled to be the first in their family to finish high school, so that the next generation could be the first in their family to finish college, so that the next could be the first to finish graduate school. And whether your family came here on the Mayflower in 1620 or from Manila in 2003, we all share the belief that America is not just a good place today, but is going to be a better place tomorrow. Republicans have destroyed that. Being an American, honoring the flag, is much more than some trumped-up staged landing on an aircraft carrier. Just having a lot of red, white, and blue bunting at your convention isn't patriotic. Their lack of understanding of what this country is really about demonstrates a total lack of patriotism. We need to call them on it.

7. Never Just Oppose, Always Propose. I can tell you with absolute certainty that back in 680 B.C., the first sentence for the first speech in the first campaign of the first Athenian running for City-State Council was this: This election presents a choice. Every election is a choice, and as progressives, our goal must be to ensure that the choice isn't between bad and nothing; the choice needs to be between good and bad. We progressives need to define our visions of American, not just react to the right wings vision of America. We don't like the America they want to build, we need to show Americans something better.

8. Don't Let the Little Crap Get in the Way of the Big Shit. You have to pardon my language, but I just don't know a better way of saying it. As progressives we need to do more than fight symbolic battles, we need to be driving toward a larger goal. For example, the big shit is energy independence. The little crap is drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. I once asked a friend of mine who was very active in the environmental movement, "Would you trade off a fuel standard that freed us from Middle Eastern oil for drilling in ANWAR?" He said no. To me that's an example of the little crap getting in the way of the big shit. Would you trade off late-term abortions for unversal health care? To me, the great gain of universal health care is far more importane than the largely symbolic battle over a little-used procedure. Don't get me wrong; symbolic fights are periodically worth fighting. I have nothing against them, and I'm not saying we should abandon our principles. What I'm saying is that we should be willing to make a trade-off to advance them.

9. Sometimes You've Got to Be Willing to Fight. Period. Why is it that Democrats were calling on Al Gore to concede the election when no Republicans called on George Bush to concede? Why didn't we want to fight as badly as they did? Why didn't we call on Bush to concede? Because our nature is not too be tough. If I've said it once, I've said it a million times; America will never trust a party to defend America that fails to defend itself.

10. Stop Brown-nosing the Elites I believe that in the 180 days prior to any election, candidates should be required to stay away from cocktail parties, dinner parties, or any social event that occurs in the following areas: Georgetown, Foxhall, Spring Valley, Bethesda, Old Town Alexandria, McLean, and Chevy Chase....and other bastions of stupidity inside the Washington Beltway. One of the reason Tom Delay is so successful is that he doesn't give a damn what any people in any of these neighborhoods think. Democrats tend to become completely paralyzed by it. I can't tell you the number of times in a Democratic meeting where someone says that such and such was said at so and so's dinner party, and that the deputy assistant to the associate editorial page editor at the Washington Post rolled her eyes. Everybody freaks out. For reasons not completely understandable to me, the effect is far greater on Democrats than Republicans. This is a disease we must cure ourselves of.

The most underestimated parts of American culture

If you've read this, you know that I've been following health reform pretty closely, and that I have wagered many opinions on where I think it is heading, and where it should head. Seeing as it's now the middle of August, they're not coming out with anything new in Washington. Everyone has decamped back to their districts, with news crews, bloggers and trolls patrolling the land like sharks leaving the reef for the barren ocean, floor scoping for that distant whiff of blood.

For the next several weeks, the ether we all breathe in as Americans won't be full of issues related to the merits of one health care bill over another, nor will it be about his committee versus the other guy's. It will most definitely contain little in the way of nominally nonpartisan analysts' takes on the legislation. For true policy wonks, who never wager any serious bets on actual human behavior, this August must be like spending a month floating in a sensory deprivation chamber. For wonks with political proclivities it must be hell to wonder what's really going on out there.

I don't pretend to have a more global view than the next guy, but from where I sit, I do see one thing happening. Justified or not, the guys in charge are coming off as better than everyone else. Forget about sounding like Joe Everyman. Our leaders aren't feeling most people. Democrats haven't done that with great success since Roosevelt, who was not exactly a beer drinker himself.

Looking at the liberal blogosphere, there is no end to cogent, rational arguments on why reform is necessary, and in what ways. There are thousands of sensible voices calling for order and healthy dialectical progress. They busy themselves by calling people 'stupid thugs', all while correcting the spelling and grammar mistakes on the placards held by the people beating down the doors to their 'town meetings.' They try their damndest to live in a rational world, seeking the smartest, most efficient move for our country at any given moment.

Stupid thugs or not, Teabaggers and the rest of them understand one thing that liberals never seem to get. Most people don't think rational things are necessarily good things. Most people don't like to be told what's good by an egghead know-it-all who got beat down every recess as kids. People absolutely detest being talked down to, patronized, or told what to do here. Most people are more superstitious and fearful than you might think. Most people believe in angels and devils. Most people will act on emotion and instinct long before they do the rational thing.

I read many opinions griping about the demagoguery, paranoia and general nastiness emanating out of the Right Wing. The reason why they're spouting delusional interpretations of pretty mainstream proposals, or circulating outright lies (all while winning the news cycle) is that there really isn't anything rational to discuss right now. It is easier to destroy than it is to create, and destruction is an emotional thing. There is nothing pushing back at a Right Wing that trades in the currency of emotion-- the only game in town. Congress is closed. The president is at the beach.

If health reform fans are going to get anything positive out of this month, they need to send the wonks to an all-inclusive resort with CSPAN at the bar and give the English teachers who moonlight as bloggers some 7th grade level essays to correct.

Time for getting back to your roots, lefties. Leave the details for September. Why do you believe in health reform? What do you believe in? What happened to your friend, your sister, a coworker that makes it unacceptable to do nothing about our messed up system? What are you angry about? What are you hopeful for?
Never mind the crackpot stuff they believe in. What about you? Forget about money, public options, exchanges, or anything even remotely related to congress. Don't try to justify it. It's just plain wrong for people to go without health care when they don't have to. You have just as much a right to your emotions and beliefs as Glenn Beck. The Right's been peddling visions of apocalypse. The Left needs to come back with a Garden of Eden. Those are the wages of this battle.

It's time to feel this. The details will be worked out, and they'll be more to the liking of true reformists, if there is an emotional impetus behind them. To be certain, congressmen listen to the guys that pay for their campaigns, but they listen even harder to the people that vote them in.

Thank God, Thomas Jefferson, and the rest of 'em.

May the Zeitgeist Be With You

Full attribution: That title came from a friend of mine who used to use it as his signature line in emails.

In War and Peace, one of Leo Tolstoy's central ideas is that no one person is in charge of events. His position is that that battles are won not by generals, but by the lieutenants and the troops they command. Tolstoy says this is because of communication. In Tolstoy's view, Napoleon was nowhere near as powerful as the unwieldy, unpredictable force he stood behind. In Tolstoy's time, a general could lay out a brilliant strategy, but would have very limited to make changes once the battle began; the lines stretched for miles in all directions, and the chaos of armed crowds took over.

In a very real sense, Tolstoy's principle of communication no longer applies. Generals can see not only what is occurring in the theaters of war, but they can also react to changes, take advantages of openings, and control the outcomes of events with a degree of precision unimaginable even a few decades ago. The Napoleons of today have the power that their forebears lusted after, claimed to possess, but were always missing.

I've been thinking a lot about the Zeitgeist lately. It used to be a force of nature, like the weather. Ideas would pass through the collective unconscious like so many fronts and squalls. Changes would happen gradually, over a course of days, or weeks, or with the seasons. Depending on where you lived, the climate would be different. No one had any more control over it than anyone else.

Today, the Zeitgeist, a force of human nature in itself, has been harnessed for the express purposes of those with money and influence. Media empires and political movements are build around swaying public opinion on a moment's notice. Marketing shapes and reacts people's views on what is wanted and what is needed to have a full life. Blogs react to events (and one another) in real time. Watching the Iranian protests on people's cell phones, or to reading the thousands of voices commenting on this or that development in the health care reform debate it is impossible not to marvel at the speed with which ideas travel today.

It is so easy to get swept up in the 24-hour news cycle. It is so easy to be overwhelmed by endless, purposeful messaging, control of the narrative, channeling of viewpoints. It is so easy to react to the bluster at town hall meetings, or the latest jobs report, or the newest gadget. It's so easy to lose scope in a sea of infinite typewriters manned by infinite, willful monkeys who all want your things.

So many collective matters, ranging from political debate to fashion trends have have moved from an ostensibly random drift of social phenomena that was beyond comprehension, to the art and science of influencing others, controlling the microphone, shouting louder, using just the right words to evoke an emotional response. Is it socialized medicine or universal health care? Are they terrorists or freedom fighters? Does it make you beautiful, or can you live without it? They know how to issue your marching orders as never before.

Powerful groups have a control over the Zeitgeist almost as might gods over nature. On television and online, they compete with one another for our attentions in proxy wars of necessity, hurtling storms of ideas, cold fronts and warm fronts onto the land, all to elicit the desired reaction, like a bloody argument among magicians.

We are all footsoldiers now, fighting the day's ideological battles, making today's consumer choices based on the direct influences of our generals in politics and business. Cable news, the print media, advertising, and entertainment all wrestle with one another for our attentions, representing events in ways that have a proven, focus group tested track record of influencing our behaviors, stoking our hopes and fears, changing our votes, leveraging our buying power.

In the span of one day, the narrative of an event like health care reform can move from hopelessly improbable, to a clear-cut case of success. We must all take a step back from this war of attention and ask what the true sequence of events is. We must ask who is shaping a given message, and to what end. Turn off the TV and let things happen as they will. Don't let them manipulate your fears and desires. The generals are more powerful than ever. We need to take some of that control back for ourselves. We cannot and should not go back to a state nature, where events unfold without purpose, but we must find a way of controlling our own thoughts.

The 24/7 media coverage of every human detail is a war over ratings and your bank account. It is not an ideological struggle of conservative against liberal any more than it's a real war of Coke over Pepsi. Think through the issues, make your own influence. Be informed but don't be manipulated. May the Zeitgeist Be With You.

No One Truth

So hard to write this one...

The arrest of Henry Louis Gates Jr. was followed within minutes by posturing on all sides claiming victimhood. Such claims forsake the wisdom that we all acquire through a life of living with one another, black, white or otherwise. They also betray a genuine and disturbing lack of empathy for all of our hard-fought lessons on race relations in America.

Truth on racial issues depends on what color you are, because what color you are decides what truths you see.

As a white guy growing up around a plurality of black people I took a lot of crap. Almost every time I got roughed up it was by black kids. Just about every experience I've had as a victim of crime was perpetrated by black people. I've been called white-ass______ more times than I can remember. Those are inescapable facts that, no matter my liberal post-civil rights upbringing, or my desire for things to be different, affect my judgment today.

Even if I try to turn the other cheek, dismissing these incidents as class resentment, or some kind of helpless lashing out, I'd be a fool to ignore my instincts and walk into a potentially dangerous situation on the grounds of racial equality. My instincts of preservation may offend someone who I misread. For that I apologize, with the qualification that I'm just looking out for my own interests and that it's nothing personal. In fact, it's quite the opposite of personal.

Talking to black guys, and hearing enough stories, I have no doubt in my mind that being a young black man, no matter your background, is about being treated differently at every step of your life. You walk into a drug store and the clerk follows you around. You walk down the street and someone averts their gaze and gives you wide berth. You get pulled over for nothing and get threatened (or worse) by the police who are supposed to protect you.

I can't imagine how frustrating it would be to be a law-abiding, tax-paying patriot and have these sorts of things happen to me. Even if I knew that the cops had spent their careers learning the hard truths about who commits crimes, and that their treatment towards me was nothing personal, the personal threat, not to mention the basic insult to one's pride, would override all else. After a life of unfair experiences I'd be a fool to think that this experience, this cop, is any different.

We should all admit that there's a difference between the personal racism of self-preservation, and the impersonal racism of cultural and institutional exclusion. At some point in American history there was little meaningful difference between the two, but today I think things are quite different. In the personal sense, we're all racists. There is a difference between our realities being shaped by experience, and an arbitrary and unequal legal or social structure. I wish there were two separate words to describe these phenomena. It would clear up a lot of misunderstanding.

When a white guy calls a black guy a racist for seeing things in view of their past experience, he would do well to remember all of the times he didn't give the benefit of the doubt to someone who passed them on the street. Too often, white men take their position in life for granted, assuming that it's all a matter of personal merit that explains the impersonal nature of racial disparities. Many believe that if only black people were as race-blind as they themselves pretend to be out of fear of politically-correct retribution, all of this stuff could be put to rest once and for all.

Likewise, when a black guy turns to race as an immediate explanation for an adverse event, a little understanding towards the experiences that the white person may have had could go a long way, hard as that may be in practice. Like everyone else, white people will make judgments (right or wrong) based to some extent on their experiences.

That said, I do believe that black people have the harder role. They are challenged to overcome some pretty awful past and present truths that have shaped their worldview. There is no racial hardship that the average white American guy can claim over his black counterpart. It's just plain harder to be black in America, and that will shape how you see things.

When we hear grown white men claiming to be the victims of racism at the hands of a 'Wise Latina', or indeed, the President of the United States, the level of self-absorption and outright antipathy is staggering. It's a cold, reptilian view of the world that leads to self-interested conflict, also known as the erosion of civilization.

A situation where a police officer who was following instinct and procedure arrests a 55 year-old upset professor, who was himself acting out based on a life's wisdom, will inevitably trade one man's wisdom for another's. The world is not fair to any of us. The diverse ways that it's not fair shape how we see it. Empathy for one anothers' situations must be preserved and nurtured if we are to ever see a "post-racial" America, and if we are to prevent future bloodshed and misery on account of race. We must understand where each other are coming from. We must be honest with one another about how our experiences brought us here.

The world will be better when we can admit we're different, and that those differences do in fact matter.

A professor I had back in college concluded the semester with this piece of advice: "Kids, there is more than one truth out there. Anyone who tells you differently is only speaking for themselves." Amen.

Political Advice for Democrats: Screw Compromise

Much as the health care fight has been a riveting, nail biter, edge-of-the-seat saga of intrigue, twists and turns, it's about to get a lot more interesting. Here's why:

1. It'll be interesting to see what happens to the House bill when it goes before the congressional budget office to get scored. If a bill with a strong public option can cover more people for cheaper, it's going to be hard to convince the public otherwise. If it can cover more people and effectively reduce health care costs, it'd be crazy to do anything less.

2. It'll be even more interesting to see what emerges from conference committee once Baucus and Grassley meet the likes of Waxman and Pelosi. I think the Democrats haven't begun the internal strong-arming that they'll be pulling on the centrist senators in favor of watering this thing down into meaninglessness.

And here's why they should play hardball

1. Democrats have much more political cover than they had for the stimulus vote, where they needed it to be bipartisan to do something as daring as it was. They needed Snowe, Collins and Specter to show we're all in this together. Health is different. For health, they need 50 votes and budget reconciliation. Above all, they need it to work. The public is behind them by wide margins. No one will care if it's bipartisan once it's up and running. They'll own the thing regardless, for better or worse. No matter what they do, Fox News, Talk Radio and the rest of them won't like it. They may as well retain control over the issue.

2. Health care reform will deep-six the Democratic ticket in '10 and '12 if this thing passes and doesn't work well. The compromises they have been pursuing in the Senate look like a guarantee that the new system won't work well. In effect, harmony, bipartisanship and compromise now will likely spell electoral evisceration later.

3. Imagine the disaster if they pass Baucus' bill as written and everyone over 300% poverty is forced to purchase a private insurance plan at upwards of $200/month. Sure, it's going to be under $ 1 trillion over 10 years, but the costs will be shifted down to the little guy both in terms of premiums and in doing little to mitigate the growth that drives them. Better to pay for subsidies via broad taxes and negotiate via federal clout than to mandate that people pay a big bill they can't afford. If you think tax increases are bad politics, that's a recipe for collapse.

4. Regarding the budget: Bush's tax cuts yielded negligible public benefit and cost $1.8 trillion. Medicare prescription drug coverage cost almost $1 trillion and was done through parliamentary guerilla tactics like budget reconciliation. Time for the D's to step up and own this thing and raise the revenues necessary to pay for reforms with teeth.

5. Speaking of reforms with teeth, consider the "public option" for a moment. The government will not put insurance companies out of business. It'll make them sell a few of their Gulfstreams and company villas to be sure, but these guys will figure out how to make a buck under the new rules. They will be able to offer the public attractive, affordable insurance products that rival or surpass the government's. They'll just have to take less off the top for themselves. The only places in the world where private health insurance markets don't function are where where it's illegal. A recurring controversy in Canada is over whether and how the private sector can sell benefits-- something that's nowhere near the discussion here.

And now to argue by metaphor

Like larger rules of life, health insurance companies will be forced to evolve to changing circumstance. But life flourishes wherever it's permitted, be it in mid-ocean trench heat vents or in antarctic lakes. Health insurance companies will be allowed, even encouraged under the new rules. It's just that health insurance companies have been making Garden of Eden profits for too long now. Time for insurance companies to face real competition, and become the highly adapted organisms that we all need to survive.

Health Care Reform, misunderstood

Being part of the industry, it's easy to forget that most people probably have other things to worry about aside from the details of the health reform bills before the Senate and the House. Nevertheless, I'm surprised by how misinformed people are about what's actually being proposed. I really have to wonder where people are getting their information, or if they're just making stuff up based on their own superstitions about government, the poor, and insurance. I just plain don't know where some of the stuff I hear comes from.

For example:

"I don't want Medicaid for all..." ...No one's talking about anything like Medicaid for all. The most government-heavy proposals are that a public plan be formed to compete with the private ones, mostly under the same rules for coverage and financing.

"Free health care? Like they have in Canada? Please..." ...No one's talking about anything being free, or Canadian. Government, business, and individuals will all have to pitch in to get affordable coverage to everyone. What they have in Canada is radically different from anything on the table now, and for its inconveniences and occasional horror stories, it works better than our system by almost any measure.

"I don't want some government bureaucrat telling me what I can and can't have..." ...Putting aside the notion that the same people can't wait to get on Medicare, no one's talking about the government having the right to deny your claims. If anything, the government will make insurance companies have to pay your claims and have to provide coverage regardless of any health problems you showed up with. At most, the government will underwrite research on what works and what's hokey-- something that could save us money. Under the proposed rules of the game, insurance companies, public or private will actually want to pay for what works because they'll have to cover you down the road. Right now we have some private sector bureaucrat telling us what we can and can't have, and they're doing it on the basis of what's best for their shareholders, not you.

"My health insurance is fine, why would I want to change anything?" Putting aside all moral objections here, your insurance is not fine. They can deny you coverage if you sneeze, they can deny claims as they please, and even when something is covered, they can short-change you on their rates... and it costs at least twice what people pay everywhere else in the world. Why do you pay more? Because health care providers charge more to make up for everyone else who doesn't have insurance, and because they perform all kinds of unnecessary and expensive procedures either because they're profitable, or to cover their tracks to avoid a malpractice claim-- not because it's what's best for you.

We can debate what the role of the state should be in financing and organizing health care, but rules that let them select healthy, cheap beneficiaries haven't worked so well once they get a little older and sicker. Competition can be a race to the bottom just the same as it can be a race to the top... it's a question of rules. After all, if I was in business, why would I do something that took away from my profits, like paying a claim when I didn't have to? Knowing that, and knowing that the results are mediocre, expensive coverage for some, the rules of the game need to change. Who does the changing? The government. That's what we pay them for.

Two States, Three Armies

I've stopped paying much attention when Israeli and American leaders meet to discuss real estate. That prime strip of Mediterranean coastal property is so full of historical neighborhoods and nice views, but its complex layers of ownership, with the legal validity of its various deeds and covenants, the Hatfield-McCoy culture is just plain tautological and tiresome.

I don't have a mind for following all of the implications of Hamas not recognizing, but negotiating with the Zionists, or the policy prescriptions that would come to pass under a Labor or Likud government. I don't have much patience for bronze age mentality religious fundamentalism, squabbles of one patch of dirt over another, or guys who would rather blow themselves up than speak eloquently about their plight. I'm tired of the bull-headed, though somewhat justified paranoia of the Israeli public.

There are so many intractable positions on all sides of this conflict that I cannot foresee any solution without an outside force dictating terms.

No side can afford weakness; all sides have been burned by such acts in the past. In move that is underappreciated for its cynicism, Ariel Sharon hands Gaza over to the Palestinian Authority, only to have them swept out by Hamas, followed by an endless barrage of rockets, which in turn precipitates a mass invasion of the miserable strip of land, and a probably illegal blockade of its citizens.

Ehud Barak offers terms giving Arafat 95 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza, with a land exchange for the other 5 percent. Arafat says no, after years photo ops, grins, trustbuilding and chance taking. The labor government loses credibility, Arafat gets sick and dies. Palestinians see a cold, intransigent Israel build a wall around them, hopelessness in a slab of concrete across the road. Helplessness in each of 400 checkpoints intended to provide safety to the Israeli heartland, and nothing new or different.

Ceasefires cannot be maintained on either side. Israeli settlers routinely disobey army orders, and Palestinians are too factional to all agree to play nice.

No side can confront, contain or coopt their zealots beyond a stalemate. No one group has any moral authority after so much bloodshed. There can be no honest brokering of a deal without outside assurances.

In my view, the only way there will ever be a lasting, productive peace in the region is if all sides agree to a multinational army patrolling an agreed-upon border, and providing day-to-day police in a proto-Palestine. I am convinced that the factionalization of Palestinians is far less than what can be found in Iraq or Afghanistan. Their differences are political, not tribal.

Because blood is less of a factor in Palestine than elsewhere in the mid-east, they are far more likely to one day have a centralized army, police force, and government, provided that assurances can be made for their immediate security, prosperity and sovereignty. Those assurances will not come from Israel or the United States alone. They must be multi-national, with the backing of all of Israel's neighbors (including Syria).

The Israel-Palestine conflict more closely resembles the former Yugoslav conflicts of the 90s than anything going on right now in the mid-east. Borders need to be set, and given time to harden before a real peace can happen. Those conditions have never existed in the region because of the world's insistence on dealing with Israel and Palestine on their own terms. NATO would provide a good mix of allies for both sides of the disagreement, avoiding the pro-Israel bias of the US, or the pro-Palestinian bias of the UN.

I do not understand why we think that another meeting with another prime minister, another president will make the difference. It feels more and more like a dog chasing its tail than some kind of peace process. The details of a final agreement are almost entirely settled. What's missing is security, and protection from one side's nut cases or another, with neither side having anywhere near the credibility to do so unilaterally. The world needs to step up. Israel and Palestine need ultimatums-- real help for economic development, real security, a real future, or not. This conflict is too much of a problem for everyone to allow these players to squabble forever.

Revisiting the Axis of Evil: North Korea

About a month ago a story passed through the news cycle that, like many, received fleeting attention only to be buried under events that people actually seemed to care about. A pair of Chinese trawlers approached the USNS Impeccable, where their crew stripped to their underwear and made a grab for some scientific equipment in easy reach. The Impeccable repelled the insult by aiming their firehoses at the suspect vessels. A day later, the incident escalated, with Chinese patrols shining spotlights on the USNS Victorious, and making a couple of close-in fly-bys with naval aircraft. Protests were lodged, talking heads blustered, and pretty soon, the story went away.

About two days after that story was written, I was in Alaska for work. In a public place I overheard a conversation between what looked like a father and son. The conversation went something like,

"Those Chinese bastards. Harassing our ships. Imagine the nerve."
"Yeah, who the hell do they think they are? Harassing American ships."
"If that Obama wasn't in charge we'd have sent a bunch of F-14s in and blew 'em out of the water."
"They had it coming. We should have taught 'em a lesson then and there."
"Yeah, but with these cowards calling the shots, that'll never happen."

A few days ago, with North Korea's rocket launch that sent all three stages into the Pacific, (just in time for their Supreme People's Assembly to vote unanimously in favor of Kim Jong Il's continued leadership) we started to hear the same thing from Alaska all over again. Governor Palin positioned herself as tough on The Enemy, skewering Obama for missile defense cuts in light of this grave offense.

In fairness, Alaska is one of a few strategic targets within the theoretical radius of North Korea's mediocre ballistic technology. In a strategic distant second, with about 200 million more people than Alaska, come Japan and South Korea.

This launch flew farther than a similar rocket launched in 1998, but nevertheless, crashed in the ocean without coming anywhere near to achieving orbit; something the Soviets did over 40 years before using kerosene. Are you kidding me?

In this world there are a great number of things that go bump in the night. Living in a major city, and being born and raised in Ground Zero, these thoughts weigh heavily on me. But I don't think they scare me anywhere near as much as the paranoid tree people of the north we call Alaskans.

Let's put this in perspective.

1. North Korea has absolutely nothing to gain from launching any kind of strike, nuclear or otherwise. They will lose all the rights to pity that they currently enjoy from their lukewarm relations with Russia and China. More than likely they would also cease to exist once everyone else was through with them.

2. Unlike Iran, North Korea has no strategic allies, underwrites no wars or terrorist activity against America or its allies.

3. Also unlike Iran, there is no effort at nuclear hegemony over their neighbors, Pakistan and Israel, among others.

4. Also also unlike Iran, no one in North Korea is making statements that their populace could withstand a nuclear strike while they could devistate their opponents. For North Korea, it's all lose-lose.

5. Unlike the Soviets, North Korea hasn't had a single rocket do what it should, much less are they the stewards of an expansive empire in posession of megatons-worth of highly fissile material... and even then a missile defense shield was viewed as politically destabilizing and technologically unreliable.

The response to such a state, in its cry for attention, should not be to build a complex, unproven missile defense shield so that the good citizens of Alaska can sleep better. The response is free Ambien and talk therapy along with their oil paychecks.

It's been said that 57 percent of Americans want some kind of American military response to North Korea. It is for reasons like this that our founding fathers designed indirect representation of the people's wishes. North Korea is the last place in the world that merits further military intervention right now. They need propaganda over shortwave, kimchi rations from their Southern cousins, and an eventual revolution.

Even if North Korea achieves all it aims to achieve, launching something into orbit, they are not in a position to do anything other than get people talking to them. With two exceptions in 1945, nuclear weapons have been used exclusively for their potential purpose, rather than their intended purpose. It's the thought of a mushroom cloud that matters, not the cloud itself.

It's just not conscievable that a state in their position would really consider a nuclear strike on anyone. As a general principle, Alaskans are in Alaska precisely because of a need to kill stuff, a fear of outsiders, and bizarre social skills. Great drinking buddies, awesome hunters, but terrible diplomats.

Limbaugh will be deep-6ed soon

Just a prediction I wanted to get out there before it happened. Here's how I see it:

This guy is doing a major disservice to the GOP's prospects of having any power in the near future. With so many ideological decisions in play, Limbaugh is dragging the Republican center of gravity ever further towards the right. If I were a GOP strategist I'd be calling my oppo research guys, dusting off the Nixon/J. Edgar Hoover playbook and finding every one of the guy's skeletons. I'd do anything to shut him up as long as I didn't get caught with the duct tape and cloroform. Plausible deniability all the way.

With Limbaugh's media exposure levels reaching their natural crescendo it may only be a matter of time. What goes up must go down. But with an ever-tightening grasp on power without ever seeking elected office, the guy's making conservative enemies-- even as GOP politicians grovel for not toeing his version of the party line. With Rahm Emanuel defining the Republican message on the terms of a talk radio figure, there is a long line of real deal GOP strategists who must be freaking out. These guys do not like having their message hijacked, and it's all about the message.

And Limbaugh has skeletons. Consider his clandestine trips to the Dominican Republic, with all the circumstantial evidence of a sketchy sex trade, bottles of Viagra, addictions to OxyContin, there's something there that's big enough to take the guy down. I think he guards his personal life ferociously, but someone knows something, and everyone has a price. He'll go down in a perfect storm of Hollywood rumors, teary testimony and grainy video.

I'll miss the guy. He's an important foil on the stage of American political theatre, and there is no one like him on the Left. He's consistent. His self-importance makes him a cynch to manipulate. As long as he's in the picture, the GOP will be dominated by the loony, selfish and angry messages that just don't play in these times.

Here's an early bittersweet goodbye. Soon the old bull will be led out to pasture. Mooo.

Another Tax Rant

Living in the South I hear a lot of complaining about taxes.

"If it wasn't for that damned tax coming out of my paycheck I could afford that new car."
"Why don't they just let us decide how to spend the money?"
"The government just wastes it."
"Why should I pay for somebody to be on the dole?"
"Taxes are like a thief in the night who comes and takes your flatscreen TV right out your back door."

I turn on my (unstolen) TV and watch senators bloviate about cutting taxes even as our states and federal government go into hock to Chinese loan sharks in minnow clothing.

So I get a check for $2000. What do I do? Since it's my choice how I spend it, how will it move through the economy? Let me tell you...

I'd put a thousand towards credit cards and spend the other thousand on a bigger TV, made in China. What happens to that money then?

Fifty percent of that money goes towards reducing the interest that investors receive on my debt, and of the remaining 50 percent, 9/10ths of it ends up subsidizing Asian assembly line workers and supply chain conglomerates, with the remaining 1/10th going to Best Buy.

So as a rough estimate, $100 of my tax refund goes towards Best Buy's bottom line, probably paying an hour's wage for someone once you take out overhead, profit and yes, taxes.

All of that is rational decisionmaking on an individual level, predictable and measurable with basic econometrics. The trouble is it doesn't do any good when you have to look past your own nose.

Is that $2000 going to make a difference if I'm thinking about starting a small business, or trying to meet payroll this month? What about next month? Will it be the deciding factor on if I go back to school to increase my earning potential? Is it going to fill a pothole or keep cops on the street? No, it will never do any of those things.

What if all those checks for $2000, say $300 billion's worth, went towards the public interest? Think of all the student loans that could be subsidized, mortgages underwritten, small businesses supported. Think of all the roads that could be paved, or cops keeping us safe at night.

What would guaranteed health care do for the small business owner looking for talent, or the guy with the million dollar idea who stays in his middle management position because he can't imagine hiring the people and taking out the loans he'd need to get it off the ground? Think of the jobs that spending could create. We might even be able to pay some of it back.

Here is a graph that sums up what I'm talking about:

The take-away message to me is in the "Bang for the Buck" column. That's the ratio of what you get in economic growth for every dollar spent. You might get something out of cutting taxes, but the choice is as simple as 1.06 million jobs per $100 billion in infrastructure spending or 813,000 jobs for $100 billion in tax rebates. And that doesn't take into account the dividends from attracting investors with a solid infrastructure to move their product from unfinished materials to microprocessors and tractors.

All this tells me that the tax cut argument isn't really about what's better stimulus policy. It's plain base selfishness. We know now for a fact that supply side economics doesn't work. Under the Bush administration these same guys gave $1 trillion in tax breaks to mostly upper income earners? I'm certain that prices for housing in the Hamptons tracks closely with that figure, but my $300 rebate check in 2001 went to beer. Hey, at least it was domestic.

While people complain about money taken out of their pockets, kids are growing up ignorant and sickly, our roads and rails resemble Moldova's (no offense, guys), and we have nothing to show for it.

If we're going to go into further debt, let's at least do it with a plan for creating some revenue to pay it off. Taking out a $40,000 loan for school is a wiser investment than a $40,000 loan for an Escalade. The same applies on a national scale. I've got friends who are up to their eyeballs in debt, but they're doctors and lawyers now. They'll be fine. Same goes for America.

People who are hung up on taxes should devote their energy towards making sure that the taxes we do pay are going towards worthwhile things. I don't want my money spent on the proverbial $10K hammer either. I don't want to pay for Medicaid fraud or Welfare Queens. But none of that should cost us our futures. Cutting taxes for those reasons is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Why can't we just leave taxes alone for a while and figure out how to put them to work in the best possible way?

There's a lot that market and business principles, good stewardship and fiscal prudence can offer to government spending. But the ethic at work must be to improve the system, not to destroy it. You can't be in charge of a government that you hate in principle. This past decade has been a lesson in what that does.

Taxation and Moral Hazard

The Georgia Statehouse is abuzz with legislators, constituents and special interest groups these days. It's bill writing season, and now is the time for big visions to hit the ground running.

Trouble is, there is no big vision here, only small men. Today's Atlanta Journal Constitution reports that state tax collections are off 14% for the year. That's a shortfall of $262 million compared to last January.

They're talking about shutting down rape crisis centers, ending a grant for students on full-ride state scholarships to buy their books, even a cut in public health programs that monitor and control infectious disease. Sounds to me like they're trying to recreate Bolivia right here in our backyard, but that's hardly the point.

The point is, they're also talking about doubling the homestead exemption from real estate taxes, a big general tax cut, even a provision for $7 million in tax breaks for people who get their Gulfstream jets serviced here in Georgia. According to local watchdogs (link above),

"The Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, an Atlanta-based think thank, said special tax breaks given out in the past four years will save the beneficiaries, and cost the state, $250 million this year. Meanwhile, advocates say, the Department of Human Resources budget faces cuts of almost $150 million."

The Department of Human Resources doesn't run payroll and benefits here. It's the agency in charge of health and social welfare, and they're going broke.

But that's not why I'm mad. What gets me is the Georgia delegation to the US House of Representatives begging for a federal bailout while their counterparts at the state level slash away at their own tax base to grease the palms of their golf buddies over at Gulfstream. (attention: Rep. Ron Stephens [R-Savannah])

The portion of the federal bailout that's headed to Georgia is somewhere in the neighborhood of $4 billion. Of that, about $2 billion is slated to go directly into plugging the holes in the state budget.

...And these guys are talking state tax cuts?!

Their reasoning is simple. All else being the same, any state legislator would much rather lower his constituents' tax burden. Being so brazen as to raise that tax burden can be hazardous to their careers, especially in the conservative South.

But we're not talking fiscal responsibility here, or fiscal prudence, or even fiscal conservatism. This isn't about cutting frivolous programs. It's about making ends meet and doing the best with what we have. It's about a bunch of guys acting in their own naked self interest over that of the people they are elected to serve.

This isn't "starve the beast of government" conservatism, it's taking advantage of a federal windfall for one's own narrow political interests. No one's talking about transforming government into something smaller, leaner and meaner. This kind of conservatism is all fun and no pain. State budget shortfalls will be the fed's problem soon enough.

From where I sit, state tax cuts are worse than banks paying out bonuses, or sending their executives to Vegas, or buying $35,000 toilets while they're taking federal money. The representatives in the Georgia Statehouse aren't looking out for the best interest of a bunch of shareholders. They're supposed to be looking out for all of us, and it's us who pay their salaries and fund their pet projects.

If the federal government is placing layers of caveats and stipulations on executive pay, oversight and regulation for any company that takes their bailout, they should do the same for states. State governments are going to be the biggest beneficiaries of federal money. It should have its own set of preconditions.

State governments have no business passing massive tax cuts knowing full well that Uncle Sam will come save the day. They don't print money and don't get to run deficits.

If the State of Georgia wants to be irresponsible with its budgeting it should do it on its own dime. I for one would rather live somewhere that can handle its own business.

The Public (read nuclear) Option

Today's New York Times has an article that defines exactly where the line in the sand will be in the debate over health care reform. It's not whether insurance will be mandated. It's whether the government can compete in the game.

All of the major bills floating around committee call for some kind of federal coordination of various health plans that works to lower costs, improve quality, and insure all or most American residents.

We heard a lot about "individual mandates" during the election. Hillary and Edwards were for them, Obama was against. Individual mandates means that health insurance would be compulsory for all Americans; an issue that roils many with a libertarian bent.

I'm for mandates, on the grounds that the redistributive functions of insurance don't work unless rich, healthy people subsidize poor and sick people. If it's ever going to make a difference, health insurance reform require all people to sign up for a plan. We'll have to sacrifice a bit of liberty in order for all of us to have the freedom to see the doctor. That's life in the big city.

The insurance companies are for mandates as well. They've even agreed to "community rating," where they wouldn't be allowed to exclude or overcharge an individual for their own medical status. Everyone would have the same premiums. Why? They did the math and saw that a law requiring that everyone be insured would be a goldmine-- the ultimate captive audience. Of course they're for the individual mandate. They'll even throw the lawmakers a bone and cover the sick, so long as nothing else big changes.

The real line in the sand is over whether the government can compete with its own plan. The fact is that government insurance schemes have lower overhead and massive bargaining power. The government doesn't answer to shareholders, or pay its executives 8-figure salaries. By some reckonings, private insurance spends ten times the amount on overhead than Medicare. It can cut deals with providers and suppliers that no private entity could dream of. It doesn't need to profit, just to stay within budget. In the words of the Times article,

"That is what worries insurers, employers and Republicans. "

While I can't figure out why employers are so worried about a public option, I can certainly understand the other two interest groups.

Insurance companies are interested in reform policy that is the best deal for the business they are in. That's what any business interest worth its salt would do, there's no moralizing here. The thing is, this particular business interest isn't my interest, nor is it the interest of the American public. The public option is an option. If private insurance companies can change their business practices in a way that can compete with the government, I'm all for them. If not, they can find something else to do. That's capitalism.

For all the bombast about how market-driven competition would ultimately lower health care costs, you'd think the free marketeers would be confident that their products would blow the big, bureaucratic government plan out of the water. They're scared because the public option calls the bluff of market fundamentalist-oriented health reformers, and threatens the privileged position that private insurers currently enjoy.

All businesses would rather not compete. Competition takes away profit. We have antitrust laws precisely to ensure that they have to do it because we've seen the danger of monopolies. Having a public option available to purchasers of health insurance fosters that spirit of competition. A public option is the only compromise between either a cartel of private insurance plans, or a monolithic federal plan.

Why should we be forced to pay more for insurance coverage than we have to? Is it based on some abstract principle derived from an Ayn Rand novel? Is it a full employment act for insurance executives?

Personally, I'd rather have bureaucrats design my coverage.

At least they're answerable to a congress I elect, rather than shareholders who are in it for the investment.

At least they'd be putting the quality of coverage ahead of their profitability.

At least my premiums would pay for coverage, rather than golf retreats and corporate jets.

At least they'd have an interest in keeping me healthy and out of the hospital instead of denying my claims when I'm just a little bit sick, or biding their time until I switch coverage and become someone else's problem.

...but that's my opinion, and that's my choice. If you think differently, by all means, sign up for a private plan.

If American enterprise is so dynamic, let's give them a challenge. If they lose, it's fine with me, so long as everyone's covered. The only way to ever really settle the public-private debate is to let the best insurance scheme win. That's the American way.