Keep Trying Paul - Someone Will Listen, Eventually

Paul Krugman talks about how people - this time Glenn Hubbard - keep mischaracterizing the nature of the economic crisis we are facing:

Right at the beginning of the crisis, long before the people now advising Romney were even willing to admit that there was a problem, there was a debate between two ideas: that deep recessions were always followed by fast, V-shaped recoveries, and that financial-crisis recessions — which pushed monetary policy up against the zero lower bound — were followed by slow, “jobless” recoveries. Here’s my entry, from January 2008.

This wasn’t just a political question: private-sector forecasters were divided, too. There were a number of people predicting the V. But they were wrong, and ended up either admitting that they were wrong or went silent.

The Reinhart-Rogoff data on aftermath of crises actually came well into this debate, but added to the conclusion that the recovery from 2008-2009 was likely to be nothing like the recovery from 81-82 or 74-75. And this was a view validated by theory, history, and, it turns out, by successful prediction in the current crisis.

Krugman is right of course - there were a lot of people saying "this time is different," that this was much more like the crisis of 1929 than it was like 1974 or 1982.  They were jumping up and down screaming that the government had to step up and do more to re-ignite the economy.  Their voices were drowned out, in my view by those who had vested interests in pretending this was just a normal economic downturn.  Sometimes those interests were reputational.  More often they were much more a matter of power and greed.

My feeling is that the recession or 2001 was a precursor to what happened later.  Sparked by a different kind of bubble, people seem to forget that in the aftermath of that recession job growth was slow and we never really grew at a fast past during the 2000s - certainly not like we had in the 1990s after the 1991-92 recession.  And overall, economic growth has been steadily declining decade to decade since the 1960s.  I'm not going to speculate as to why (I have my own thoughts on this, but I'm not an economist) - hopefully I will find some helpful analyses that I can pass along.  

No, this time is different.  And it's a shame that our elite policymakers and journalists have spectacularly failed to point this out, a failure which has led our government to adopt inadequate policies, and our people to be left in the dark as to the real nature of the crisis.  

Look, I know that economics is a complicated topic.  I know that most people don't grasp the concept that there is a difference between how you run the government and how you run the economy.  It is essential for our elite leaders and especially the mass media to inform people of these differences.

Right now that hasn't been done - even by the Obama campaign. 

The American people are not stupid.  But they are not being told an accurate story.  If you ask me, this election wouldn't nearly be so close if they were....  

Salmon on CEOs and the Deficit

Felix Salmon lays into the CEOs and their "Deficit Manifesto":

This is ridiculous. There are lots of serious threats out there to the economic well-being and security of the United States, and the national debt is simply not one of them. Nor is it growing. The chart on the right [below], from Rex Nutting, shows what’s actually going on: total US debt to GDP was rising alarmingly until the crisis, but it has been falling impressively since then. In fact, this is the first time in over half a century that US debt to GDP has been going down rather than up.



So when the CEOs talk about “our growing debt”, what they mean is just the debt owed by the Federal government. And when the Federal government borrows money, that doesn’t even come close to making up for the fact that the CEOs themselves are not borrowing money.

Money is cheaper now than it has been in living memory: the markets are telling corporate America that they are more than willing to fund investments at unbelievably low rates. And yet the CEOs are saying no. That’s a serious threat to the economic well-being of the United States: it’s companies are refusing to invest for the future, even when the markets are begging them to.

Instead, the CEOs come out and start criticizing the Federal government for stepping in and filling the gap. If it wasn’t for the Federal deficit, the debt-to-GDP chart would be declining even more precipitously, and the economy would be a disaster. Deleveraging is a painful process, and the Federal government is — rightly — easing that pain right now. And this is the gratitude it gets in return!

I'm the one who emphasized the sentence in the last paragraph above.  Everything economics tells us is that this sentence is absolutely right.  The Fed is practically screaming for the federal government to do more to get the economy moving, and to keep the de-leveraging from happening at an even faster pace.  So is the IMF.  I'm mad as hell at Obama because he doesn't seem to want to push this as strongly as I think it needs to be pushed.

Atrios has been saying it over and over again:  The people that rule us are trying to destroy the world. 

Prosecuting Scientists

The New York Times had an article yesterday about a criminal trial in Italy.  In it, 7 scientists who worked on a commission for the Italian government were convicted of failing to adequately warn the public in advance of a major earthquake that decimated the city of L'Aquila, killing over 300 people and leaving thousands homeless.

The scientific community, understandably, is up in arms.  And honestly I can't blame them.

As much as we have advanced scientifically, there are still many, many things we do not know, and many, many things we cannot predict.  Earthquakes are one of them.  Perhaps we can say we know that certain places are susceptible to earthquakes, and we may even be able to say that the odds are such and such a percent that a major quake will occur in a particular area over the next howeversomany years.  But to be able to predict with accuracy that a particular place will be hit by an earthquake within a matter of weeks or even months is really beyond modern science.

There are several points raised by this that I would like to comment on.

First, the prosecutor cited a court ruling in the US where homeowners in New Orleans sued the Army Corps of Engineers for failures to prevent the flooding that occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.  But that was a civil case - not a criminal one.  No one went to jail for those failures.  And in fact, the failures were of the government as a whole, particularly to failing to react to reports that the infrastructure in place was inadequate should a large hurricane hit the city.  And those failures existed for years, under circumstances where it was pretty clear that at some time, some day, a hurricane that large would hit.  This is completely different from a failure to predict an earthquake would hit within a matter of days or weeks.

Second, the idea that science - and scientists - are the answers to our problems - or even worse, that the failure to provide those answers is somehow a punishable offense, is kind of scary to me.  I can understand why people like doctors want tort reform when I see something like this.  There are unreasonable expectations on the part of a lot of people regarding what science can do.  And in many cases, when people suffer terribly, judges and especially juries want to do something to help those in need, to the point of making others pay when we they really aren't at fault.

This is one of the reasons why I support universal health care and a strong program of income maintenance.  The primary reason people seek compensation through litigation when something bad happens to them is that the costs of care are too high, and the loss of income when one is injured can quickly pauperize someone who suffers a serious injury.  If, when someone was injured, we had a health care system in place that took care of them without them to pay for it, and if we had a system where people did not see their incomes disappear when they became disabled, whether permanently or temporarily, then there would be no need for them to resort to the courts to get the money they need to pay for these things.  They wouldn't have damages that would need to be recovered through litigation.

And honestly, I am not sanguine on the concept of providing money damages for pain and suffering.  I'm not saying pain and suffering is not real, but how does getting additional money compensate for that?  Again, if we had a health care system that provided mental health services to people who experience pain and suffering, and a system of income maintenance that kept them whole while recovering, there would be no need for this form of damages.

And don't even get me started on punitive damages.  Sure, I can understand penalizing someone like McDonalds for selling coffee that's so hot that people are seriously burned by it, especially if it happens dozens of times and they know it's an issue.  But why should one or two lucky litigants get a windfall?  There are other ways of getting corporations to act responsibly...

The legal system is an incredibly complex, expensive and time consuming way of obtaining compensation, so much so that many people who suffer injuries, particularly those that don't impose tremendous costs but only substantial ones, simply can't access it.  If a person suffers an injury that costs him or her a month's pay and $20,000 in medical bills not covered by insurance, that's a huge financial hit for most people, but still not large enough to justify going through the time and expense of seeking legal redress through the courts.  People in this situation are just stuck.  People with more serious injuries are in even worse shape.  

So you have a legal system that is not particularly good a reaching good outcomes when an injury occurs, particularly when the injury is "caused" by the failure of scientists to be omniscient.  

Finally, and I hate to say this because it sounds callous, but there are some places where people really just shouldn't live.  New Orleans is one of them.  When you build a city in the middle of a river delta - particularly a river like the Mississippi, you are almost inviting disaster.  There are some places where the odds of something bad happening are so great, and the losses from those disasters are so high, that it just doesn't make sense to live there.  We've seen this issue elsewhere along the river....so-called "100 year floods" that are so big that they overflow the levees we've spent millions to build in a fruitless effort to hold the river back.  And even when we rebuild the levees and make them even bigger, we know that at some point in the future floods will occur that will overflow them again.  The costs are tremendous, and I really wonder whether it is fair for the rest of us to bear them.  At the very least, there should be a sense of "caveat emptor" for those who decide to live there.  

Ok, I'm done with my rant.  And I hope that the convictions in Italy are overturned on appeal.

Echidne on Mourdock - UPDATED

Via Atrios, Echidne responds to Mourdock as only she can:

This is not about gods at all.  This is about who has the right to decide when a woman is to give birth.  That "who" are people who look astonishingly like Richard Mourdock.  It is those people who have decided that the penis of a rapist is God's golden pen, writing life, beautifully.  

As they say in blogland, read the whole thing.

Adding:  I just don't understand how these guys can't see what assholes they are....
UPDATE:  More from Hecate - also via Atrios....

Sorry for the silence

Had a deadline for a big project today.  It's finally done!  The next few weeks should be fairly calm, so hopefully more blogging....

Ryan and "It's been done before"

Now remember what Romney and Ryan are proposing.  The top marginal tax rate is now 35%, and they are proposing cutting that rate to 28%.  The top tax rate on capital gains and dividends is now 15%.  The propose to keep that at 15% for those making more than $200,000, and reduce it to zero for those making less than $200,000.  They also propose to treat interest income the same way as capital gains and dividends.

Ryan said it's been done before - cut taxes rates and close loopholes.  Has it?  Well, yes and no.  Interest has never been treated the same as capital gains.  In fact, treating dividends the same as capital gains is something that was introduced by the Bush II administration.  What little evidence there is that these policies are helpful to the economy is, shall we say, quite limited.

But yes, we have in the past cut taxes and tried to make it up by cutting loopholes.  So what happened?

Tax rates were cut during the Kennedy Administration.  The top marginal tax rate was cut from 91% to 70%.  No changes were made to the capital gains tax rates - the maximum rate on capital gains was 25% from 1942 until Reagan took office in 1981.  And yes, The economy also chugged along quite nicely during the sixties.  The deficit also grew substantially during the 1960s and 1970s, although whether the primary reason for that was expansion of the social safety net and the Vietnam War or the tax cuts is hard to decipher - probably some combination of the three.  

But a rate cut from 91% to 70% is hardly comparable to a rate cut from 35% to 28%.

Rates stayed the same until 1981, when the Reagan tax cuts were enacted.  Those cuts were more than just to rates.  First, the maximum rate on regular income was cut to 50%, and the maximum rate on capital gains was cut to 20%.  Both of these rate changes were phased in over three years, so that the 50% rate kicked in in 1984.  There were also hugely beneficial changes to the way we tax business income, primarily the rules dealing with depreciation on business assets.  This was greatly accelerated compared to prior law, which meant that they were able to be written off much more quickly.  By this I mean that the deductions for investing in buildings, equipment, automobiles and other machinery were much larger than they were under prior law, giving larger tax benefits to making these kinds of investments.

What happened?  Well, the deficit ballooned, that's what happened.  Also, tax shelter activity also ballooned, because at that time most tax shelters involved investments in business property that generated writeoffs for investors.  Tax bills were passed in 1982 and 1984 that closed some loopholes, but they didn't do nearly enough to reduce the deficits created by the tax rate cuts.

Not content with this result, further reform was enacted in 1986.  In that year, the maximum tax rate was reduced to 28%, phased in over two years (taking effect in 1988).  Interestingly enough, the 1986 act eliminated the difference in tax rates between ordinary income and capital gains - capital gains were tax at 28% as well.  In order to make up for the lost revenue, a major reform was passed that eliminated the ability of individual investors to get tax write-offs from investments in business property.

What happened?  Well, the deficit ballooned even further.  And let's not even talk about the real estate bubble that grew at the end of the 1980s, resulting in hundreds of savings banks going but at the end of the decade leading to the government swallowing hundreds of billions of losses to the government because of deposit insurance liabilities.

And lest anyone think that the rate cuts resulted in a magical bursting of economic activity, the facts are otherwise.  GDP grew much faster during the 60s and 70s than during the 80s.

Oh, and let's not forget something else that happened during the Reagan years - Social Security and Medicare tax rates were increased substantially - from 12.3% to 15.3% - an increase of over 24%.  The ballooning deficits occurred despite the fact that payroll taxes were drastically increased.

So what was the result of the Reagan tax cuts?  A ballooning deficit, a shift in the tax burden from to middle class workers, and a bubble economy that burst causing a recession at the end of the decade

With the deficit growing ever larger, Bush I finally relented and agreed to increase the top marginal rate to 33%, violating his "read my lips: no new taxes" pledge.  This was increased to 39.6% in 1993, the first year of the Clinton Administration.  Finally, the deficit began to come under control.  Interestingly enough, the economy grew by leaps and bounds as well.

Then we all know what happened under Bush II.

So has it been done before?  Not in the way Romney and Ryan propose it.  Reagan agreed to cut rates to 28% in exchange for increasing rates on capital gains.   Romney and Ryan don't propose that trade-off - in fact they propose to expand the beneficial treatment of investment income by extending it to interest as well.

But experience does show that reducing rates like they propose does result in a much bigger deficit.  In the past, rates had to be increased soon after the low rates were enacted to keep the deficit from ballooning ever further.  And higher payroll taxes - taxes on wages earned by the middle class (remember social security taxes are still capped - only earnings up to $110,000 are subject to the tax) were also necessary to keep the deficit from ballooning even further.

Of course, I'm a firm believer that all the extra cash in the hands of the investor class is the primary driver of the bubbles that we have experienced over the last 30 years - at the end of the 80's, at the end of the 90s and at the end of the 00s, bubbles bursting cause significant economic harm, mostly to the middle class.

No, we have not tried what Romney and Ryan are proposing.  The last time we came close - under Reagan, the cut in rates was accompanied by the equalization of capital gains rates and a large increase in payroll taxes on the middle class.  And yet still the deficit ballooned, and the economy tanked.

Why anyone would want to repeat this fiasco is beyond me....

Pauperization

This is a really distressing piece on how companies are adjusting their marketing strategies to take into account the increasing lack of resources of their customers.  The focus of the piece is Europe, but it is happening here as well.

One of the things that always astonishes me is how our political battles are so divorced from the reality of our times.  The Republicans deny global warming exists, while all the major multinational corporations - as well as the US Military - are developing long term strategies to deal with the fallout, indicating they know damn well it exists.  Politicians decry "class warfare," while the economic powers that be increasingly plan for the future knowing that economic stratification is increasing.

And our elites are fighting over how much more to lower taxes for rich people, while our masses are fighting over giving rights to the gays and whether or not they will be able to own 10 guns instead of 2.

The disconnect is astonishing....

The Perils of Democracy

Chavez wins in Venezuela, and this is the headline:

"Chavez Win Spurs Exodux as Venezuelans Foresee Economic Woes"

Read the article.  Amazing how the elites exhibit such patriotism and love of democratic values, isn't it?

Astronomy Pic ofthe Day

NGC 6946 - The Fireworks Galaxy:

From NASA:

From our vantage point in the Milky Way Galaxy, we see NGC 6946 face-on. The big, beautiful spiral galaxy is located just 10 million light-years away, behind a veil of foreground dust and stars in the high and far-off constellation of Cepheus. From the core outward, the galaxy's colors change from the yellowish light of old stars in the center to young blue star clusters and reddish star forming regions along the loose, fragmented spiral arms. NGC 6946 is also bright in infrared light and rich in gas and dust, exhibiting a high star birth and death rate. In fact, since the early 20th century at least nine supernovae, the death explosions of massive stars, were discovered in NGC 6946. Nearly 40,000 light-years across, NGC 6946 is also known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This remarkable portrait of NGC 6946 is a composite that includes image data from the 8.2 meter Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea.

Quote of the Day

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

                                    - Bertrand Russell

Obama and the Debate: This is Scary.....

Obama 'believed he had BEATEN Romney' in Denver debate....

How could he be so out of touch?  There are times when I really wonder about this guy....

On the other hand, I have heard that when he watched the replay of the debate he was really pissed at himself.  Let's hope so....

Shocker!

Headline today: 

Supreme Court won't review telecom immunity for surveillance

Actually, in my view the ACLU didn't have a leg to stand on.  If Congress grants immunity, that's really the end of the question.

But even if they did, I'd have been shocked if this Supreme Court would have taken the case anyway.

Just another example of "with liberty and justice for some."

Tintin Translates Brooks

The "shorter" series of Sadly No! summarizes the columns of our best wanking columnists so you don't have to read them.  Today he summarizes David Brooks' column in today's New York Times:

Because seniors draw out more money from Medicare than they paid into it, it is better that they just get it over with and die rather than wreck the federal budget for their grandchildren.

He continues:

For anyone who might for a moment think that this shorter is an exaggeration, I need only quote this from Bobo’s wet slobbering deep tongue kiss of the Romney-Ryan voucher plan for Medicare

Voucher plans may save money, but perhaps by shedding the sickest customers.

Ya think? Ya fucking think?? In 1964 we passed Medicare because only 50 percent of the elderly even had insurance and of those that did only fifty percent of those policies would cover hospitalization. That’s the free market for you. Old people get sick and need expensive care. They aren’t interesting to private insurers even if they have more money than Ann Romney’s dancing horses’ Cayman Islands trust funds. Why on earth people think that the free market system has gotten kinder and gentler since 1963 and why they think that a voucher system isn’t the moral equivalent of marching grandma onto an ice floe and pushing her out into a frigid ocean is beyond me.

Priceless.

How the Press Sucks, Part 2

Dean Baker:

One of the reasons that the United States and much of the rest of world remains mired in near-recession conditions is that many involved in the policy debate are completely confused on even the most basic facts of the downturn. The Washington Post exemplified this sort of confusion in a front-page article last week that labored over the problem of savings being so high. The article offered a variety of explanations and talked to several exports about the problem of "households … squirreling away cash".

The problem with the article is that people actually are not saving excessively. In fact, contrary to the premise of the article, the saving rate remains unusually low, not high. The saving rate in the second quarter of 2012 was 4.0%. By comparison, it averaged 8.3% in the 1960s, 9.6% in the 70s, 8.6% in the 80s. Even with the stock market-driven consumption boom of the late 90s, the saving rate averaged 5.5% for the decade as a whole.

....

This is also not a trivial issue. Consumption is roughly 70% of GDP in the United States. Whether or not savings are above normal, and therefore consumption is below normal, is central to our understanding of the economy. In fact, it might well be the single most important piece of information about the economy today. Yet, the reporters and editors of one of the country's most influential newspapers are 180 degrees wrong on the topic.

Not just "one of the country's most influential newspapers." The Post is THE paper of record in our nations capital. If they can't get things right, we're doomed...

How the Press Sucks

Paul Krugman:

Hmm. A late thought about the discussion on This Week. I suggested that it was the job of the news media to check on and report falsehoods from politicians. The response of the other panelists was that the media can’t do that if the opposing candidates didn’t make an issue of it — which as far as I can tell makes no sense at all.

But even granted that, the fact is that the Obama campaign is making an issue of Romney’s falsehoods, or at least trying to. Yet this is apparently considered unworthy of attention, because Obama didn’t make a forceful attack right there on the spot.

So let’s see if I have this straight: it’s not the job of the press to take on political falsehoods unless the other side makes a forceful case in 30 seconds or less. Glad to see that this has been clarified.

More on Schneiderman

Eric has been perhaps my biggest disappointment politically over the last couple of years.  I really thought he had the potential to be a Spitzer-like force in going after Wall Street corruption.  Now he's just a sad shadow of what could have been

The latest from Yves Smith, about how his staff has been abandoning him, shows just how far he has fallen:

The real tell is in a tidbit Matt Stoller unearthed today, that Schneiderman is losing staff. From the Daily News:

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has seen a mass exodus from his office in recent months, particularly in his communications shop.

The latest set to leave is press officer Michelle Duffy, who is going to work for Cuomo. She follows press shop alumni Danny Kanner and Dani Lever, who both left to join the Obama campaign, Jennifer Givner, who went to work for the Cuomo administration, and Lauren Passalacqua, who joined lame-duck Mayor Bloomberg’s press shop.

In addition, Blake Zeff, a former Hillary Clinton aide, quietly left recently to write about the presidential race, and several lawyers have also departed or are in the process of doing so, insiders said.

Several sources cited low morale in the office stemming from Schneiderman’s hard-charging chief of staff Neal Kwatra as at least a factor in some departures. But others said most who left went on to better or higher-paying jobs.

If Schneiderman were kicking ass and taking names, he wouldn’t be losing attorneys. The New York County DA’s office under Robert Morgenthau for over 30 years attracted top people on meager pay. The other jobs are “better” because Schneiderman is doing squat.

Interesting that that's how Eric got his start - first in private practice under Mike Armstrong, then working under Morganthau.  

Maybe it's just a sign of the times.  I can't name a single prosecutor in the country who has the reputation these guys had.

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Trifid Nebula:

From NASA:

Unspeakable beauty and unimaginable bedlam can be found together in the Trifid Nebula. Also known as M20, this photogenic nebula is visible with good binoculars towards the constellation of Sagittarius. The energetic processes of star formation create not only the colors but the chaos. The red-glowing gas results from high-energy starlight striking interstellar hydrogen gas. The dark dust filaments that lace M20 were created in the atmospheres of cool giant stars and in the debris from supernovae explosions. Which bright young stars light up the blue reflection nebula is still being investigated. The light from M20 we see today left perhaps 3,000 years ago, although the exact distance remains unknown. Light takes about 50 years to cross M20.

Quote of the Day

In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

                                      - Bertrand Russell

I guess its Bertrand Russell quotation week.  I saw a quotation from him several days ago that I wanted to put here, and while I haven't been able to find it since I keep coming up with other good ones....

I'm back...

Been offline for a couple of days.  Did I miss anything important?

Astronomy Pic of the Day

The Sombrero Galaxy:

From NASA:

What's going on in the center of this spiral galaxy? Named the Sombrero Galaxy for its hat-like resemblance, M104 features a prominent dust lane and a bright halo of stars and globular clusters. Reasons for the Sombrero's hat-like appearance include an unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge. Close inspection of the bulge in the above photograph shows many points of light that are actually globular clusters. M104's spectacular dust rings harbor many younger and brighter stars, and show intricate details astronomers don't yet fully understand. The very center of the Sombrero glows across the electromagnetic spectrum, and is thought to house a large black hole. Fifty million-year-old light from the Sombrero Galaxy can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of Virgo.

Quote of the Day

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

                                      - Bertrand Russell

Columbus Day

Just another occasion where those lazy teachers get to take the day off while us schmucks have to work, right?

A Spot-On Comment

A commenter on TPM:

I’ve been an avid Obama supporter, voted for him in 2008 and will be voting for him again, but Obama’s performance last night highlights the very real, absolute worst thing about him as a president and leader:

He can’t handle confrontation. He wilted at Romney’s aggressive approach. It totally threw him off his game and he never rebounded in any effective way.

And, it’s highly representative of a wider problem.

To his credit as a human being, Obama’s wired to irrepressibly seek compromise, to hold out the possibility of unifying the most polarized and entrenched forces, because he wants everyone to just get along. How many times have we heard him say, “I will listen to and consider any good ideas, whether they’re from Democrats or Republicans.”?

Unfortunately, this clearly gives the unintended impression that he’s out of ideas, or that he doesn’t stand strongly by his own ideas. It’s a weak thing to say and do and this country needs, moreover this country LOVES, a supremely confident, aggressive leader. It’s the American zeitgeist!

Obama has needed to be fiercely aggressive in promoting the notion that his ideas are what will work for the country, that a majority of Americans voted for him because they liked his ideas and believed that his ideas would bring badly-needed change. He has to do everything in his power to push his ideas through the system and to get them enacted.

One of the reasons why the GOP’s unprecedented obstructionism has not been thoroughly exposed for the destructive, politically selfish, unpatriotic movement that it’s been is because Obama doesn’t face it head on. It’s physics. Every action has an opposite and equal reaction. He HAS to take the opposing action, but he doesn’t attack the obstructionism relentlessly, doesn’t point it out in every single public statement he makes, because he’s more afraid of seeming partisan than he is confident enough in his own platform to stand by it and assert it with every fiber of his being.

That’s what it takes. That’s real leadership. He’s failed.

I must say that I agree with this take whole-heartedly.  In 2008 Obama ran on the idea that he can transcend partisan politics, and as a result came in ready to compromise on every single initiative on the assumption that this is what the American people wanted.  To him, the means are much more important than the ends.  And it absolutely showed last night.

He must stop trying to show that he's a nice guy who cares and has good ideas, and has to start being a fighter....

My General Take on the Debate

Obama failed to attack when he could have.

He failed to say the the healthcare system he proposes is the same one we had for decades, which is twice as expensive as any other in the world.  We had the supposedly competitive system Romney is proposing, and costs exploded!

He failed to say that we have been cutting taxes for the last thirty years, and growth has increasingly slowed over that period, not accelerated, and that income inequality has gotten much, much worse, not better.  In fact, I didn't hear the phrase "income inequality" raised once.

He failed to say Massachusetts had the best schools in the country before Romney got there, and he "succeeded" in not making them worse.

He failed to cite the Mitch McConnell quote about the Republicans doing everything they could to make sure he failed.

I don't know how he could have failed to mention even one of these points.

Very disappointing....

Interesting Tax Case

Just received a blurb on my computer that Google lost a round in a tax case in France.  Apparently, the French tax authorities raided Google's offices in France and, while there, obtained access to Google's internal network and thereby got hold of financial information contained on servers in Ireland.  Google argued this was an illegal search - because Ireland it outside the jurisdiction of French authorities - so that the records can't be used against them.  They lost.

If you ask me this is the right result.  The key question isn't where the servers are.  If the information is readily available to Google employees in France, then it should be deemed located in France. 

Right now this case doesn't seem to have hit any of the newswires yet.  I will update this post when I find out more.

Physicians and the ACA

Via Huffpost, I came across this survey regarding how physicians intend to vote this November.   And the biggest reason cited is the Affordable Care Act. 

I am still not sure I understand why physicians dislike the ACA.  The Huffpost article states that the biggest problem they have with the ACA is that it didn't include tort reform.  I certainly understand the tort reform issue for doctors. What I don't understand is why the failure to change it - when it has been an issue for so long and there have been so many prior efforts to change it that failed - is considered to be an issue with this particular Act. 

In other words, what is it about the ACA that doctors view as impinging on their interests?  What changes wrought by the act are going to make things worse for them?  Would those changes have been more tolerable if tort reform was included?  Is your tort exposure greater after the act than it was before it?

I know there are doctors that peruse this site from time to time.  This is a plea:  help me understand, in real and practical terms not just political hyperbole - what is it about the ACA that is going to harm your practices?

This inquiring mind wants to know....

Astronomy Pic of the Day

Colliding Galaxies:

From NASA:

Galaxies don't normally look like this. NGC 6745 actually shows the results of two galaxies that have been colliding for only hundreds of millions of years. Just off the above digitally sharpened photograph to the lower right is the smaller galaxy, moving away. The larger galaxy, pictured above, used to be a spiral galaxy but now is damaged and appears peculiar. Gravity has distorted the shapes of the galaxies. Although it is likely that no stars in the two galaxies directly collided, the gas, dust, and ambient magnetic fields do interact directly. In fact, a knot of gas pulled off the larger galaxy on the lower right has now begun to form stars. NGC 6745 spans about 80 thousand light-years across and is located about 200 million light-years away.

Quote of the Day

We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world; and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men every day who don't know anything and can't read.

                                 -  Mark Twain

Interesting Links....

Sorry this has been a very busy week for me.  Been reading a bit but really haven't had a chance to comment on what I've read.  But I thought I'd share the items I thought most interesting.

Here's an interesting report from Kaiser on the growing prevalence of drug companies giving discount coupons for brand name drugs.  via Kevin Drum

Spencer Ackerman on the Army's manual for identifying people exhibiting signs of radical extremism.  Hint: participation in social networking is an indication of radicalization.  I wonder if I'm on somebody's watch list....   via Digby

Thomas Nephew on the parallels between Obama and Booker T. Washington.   Fascinating... via Avedon

There's been a lot of discussion of taxes lately which I hope to comment on soon.  And I have some thoughts on the reaction to this post by Conor Friedersdorf, including this thoughtful post by  Henry Farrell.

Just a Question

When people with money pool their resources and hire a representative to invest their money to make make a profit, it's called a called a corporation.  The ultimate form of collectivism, the corporation holds a privileged place in our society, with rights even greater than those of people. 

When workers pool their resources and hire a representative to negotiate the terms on which they offer their services, its called a union.  Also a form of collectivism, it is vilified in our media and it is fast fading from the public landscape.

Why is that?