morganBlog

Why "2,700 pages" rings hollow

2010-02-26T05:57:00.000-08:00

Anyone paying close enough attention to the health care debate has heard the Republican leadership reminding people that the health reform bill is 2,700 pages long. And Democrats have largely failed to find a counter-message that works. People are wary of ambitious undertakings that seem complicated and expensive and, most of all, that they don't understand.

But it got me wondering: just how long was the bill that enacted Medicare Part D? This is a prescription drug benefit program for seniors, much maligned by democrats as a handout to the private insurance companies that administer the benefit. The answer is that H.R. 1, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003, takes up four hundred and fifteen pages.

Read the text of that bill here.

So, it took 415 pages to create a new Medicare Part D Program. At ~2,700 pages, that would make the Senate bill about 6.5 times longer. And yet, look at what's in there:

-Expanded coverage, including 30 Million more people on health care rolls
-Eliminates discrimination based on pre-existing conditions
-Eliminates wasteful spending from Medicare
-Establishes health insurance exchanges
-Closes the Medicare "donut hole"
-Eliminates lifetime caps on coverage
-Prevents people from getting dropped when they get sick
-Requires a high proportion of your premiums to be spent on care, not profits

Let's look at it another way. Medicare part D had about 24 million participants in 2007. That means about 57,831 people per page of legislation. Now, let's assume that with a population of 300,000,000, about 275 million would be required to have insurance under the Senate bill. That means that citizens would see benefits from this legislation at a ratio of, wait for it... more than 105,000 beneficiaries per legislative page. You could say that this is just the size of the effect, that not all of these people will "benefit" from the legislation...but I don't buy that for a second. I'd say that 2,700 is pretty economical for all that the Senate bill provides.

Of course, this is a little bit of a trip down the rabbit hole, because the GOP accusations about the length of the bill have never been good faith objections. They really just fit in there with the death panels argument, which started as a Republican idea in the first place. Nonetheless, this has been a fun little exercise.

The GOP/Tea Party Catch 22?

2010-02-15T12:33:00.000-08:00

GOP Chairman Michael Steele is courting Tea Party activists and the Tea Party would take a prominent place at CPAC this week. I was mulling this over and asked myself about the implications of this. It struck me that co-opting the Tea Party might damage the GOP brand just as cooperating with the GOP will force the Tea Party to moderate.

Courting so-called values voters along side more traditional conservatives radicalized the GOP but it also moderated radical conservatives. Focus on the Family did not see its agenda immediately realized. Nor did the Club for Growth. And, it eventually drove more independent-minded voters out of the party.

Courting the Tea Party continues this pattern. The GOP needs Tea Party energy but can't give all the radicalism Tea Partiers are looking for. And the Tea Party doesn't have much of a choice but to consent to this without risking Dem wins, ala NY-23. Adopting the whole shebang Tea Party agenda, even if one were able to distill it from the anger and racism, would be Christmas come early for Democrats.

Independents won't break for rabidly conservative messages unless Democrats somehow condescend to them or stay aloof. The winning attitude is this: respect the voter. Scott Brown won precisely because he was handsome, neat, and didn't come off as a total whack job. He was unknown, got portrayed as an average joe, spoke to people's feelings and was there at the right moment in time. Many Tea Party activists operated in Massachusetts, but their radicalism and aggressive and intimidating activities gained too little attention too late to make any difference there. Their involvement didn't paint him in the slightest.

None of these factors apply in the same way for the 2010 elections. Another fall out between the hard right and the GOP establishment could mean more NY-23's. So, it seems, the GOP and the Tea Party need each other. And now we get to see if they're both ready to play at realpolitik. Can't wait to see what happens!

Precisely.

2010-02-15T10:33:00.001-08:00

On Scott Brown Book Rumors

2010-02-13T16:08:00.001-08:00

I really couldn't have put it better than my good friend Alex:

"Really? He should govern for a little while. Like, do his job."

All the things the President HAS delivered on

2010-02-12T11:46:00.001-08:00

Yo. Let's get this straight: things have been getting done. At the risk of being just another one of those link-passer-arounder bloggers (hey, if Ben Smith can do it, why shouldn't I?) here is a list of things that the Obama Administration has gotten done. I think it's pretty impressive:

* No. 6: Create an Advanced Manufacturing Fund to invest in peer-reviewed manufacturing processes
* No. 15: Create a foreclosure prevention fund for homeowners
* No. 16: Increase minority access to capital
* No. 33: Establish a credit card bill of rights
* No. 36: Expand loan programs for small businesses
* No. 40: Extend and index the 2007 Alternative Minimum Tax patch
* No. 50: Expand the Senior Corps volunteer program
* No. 58: Expand eligibility for State Children's Health Insurance Fund (SCHIP)
* No. 76: Expand funding to train primary care providers and public health practitioners
* No. 77: Increase funding to expand community based prevention programs
* No. 88: Sign the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
* No. 110: Assure that the Veterans Administration budget is prepared as 'must-pass' legislation
* No. 119: Appoint a special adviser to the president on violence against women
* No. 125: Direct military leaders to end war in Iraq
* No. 132: No permanent bases in Iraq
* No. 134: Send two additional brigades to Afghanistan
* No. 154: Strengthen and expand military exchange programs with other countries
* No. 167: Make U.S. military aid to Pakistan conditional on anti-terror efforts
* No. 174: Give a speech at a major Islamic forum in the first 100 days of his administration
* No. 182: Allocate Homeland Security funding according to risk
* No. 184: Create a real National Infrastructure Protection Plan
* No. 200: Appoint a White House Coordinator for Nuclear Security
* No. 208: Improve relations with Turkey, and its relations with Iraqi Kurds
* No. 212: Launch an international Add Value to Agriculture Initiative (AVTA)
* No. 215: Create a rapid response fund for emerging democracies
* No. 222: Grant Americans unrestricted rights to visit family and send money to Cuba
* No. 224: Restore funding for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (Byrne/JAG) program
* No. 225: Establish an Energy Partnership for the Americas
* No. 239: Release presidential records
* No. 241: Require new hires to sign a form affirming their hiring was not due to political affiliation or contributions.
* No. 247: Recruit math and science degree graduates to the teaching profession
* No. 266: Encourage water-conservation efforts in the West
* No. 269: Increase funding for national parks and forests
* No. 270: Increase funding for the Land and Water Conservation Fund
* No. 272: Encourage farmers to use more renewable energy and be more energy efficient
* No. 277: Pursue a wildfire prevention and management plan
* No. 278: Remove more brush, small trees and vegetation that fuel wildfires
* No. 284: Expand access to places to hunt and fish
* No. 290: Push for enactment of Matthew Shepard Act, which expands hate crime law to include sexual orientation and other factors
* No. 300: Reform mandatory minimum sentences
* No. 307: Create a White House Office on Urban Policy
* No. 325: Create an artist corps for schools
* No. 326: Champion the importance of arts education
* No. 327: Support increased funding for the NEA
* No. 332: Add another Space Shuttle flight
* No. 334: Use the private sector to improve spaceflight
* No. 336: Partner to enhance the potential of the International Space Station
* No. 337: Use the International Space Station for fundamental biological and physical research
* No. 338: Explore whether International Space Station can operate after 2016
* No. 342: Work toward deploying a global climate change research and monitoring system
* No. 345: Enhance earth mapping
* No. 346: Appoint an assistant to the president for science and technology policy
* No. 356: Establish special crime programs for the New Orleans area
* No. 359: Rebuild schools in New Orleans
* No. 371: Fund a major expansion of AmeriCorps
* No. 380: Bolster the military's ability to speak different languages
* No. 391: Appoint the nation's first Chief Technology Officer
* No. 394: Provide grants to early-career researchers
* No. 411: Work to overturn Ledbetter vs. Goodyear
* No. 420: Create a national declassification center
* No. 421: Appoint an American Indian policy adviser
* No. 427: Ban lobbyist gifts to executive employees
* No. 435: Create new criminal penalties for mortgage fraud
* No. 452: Weatherize 1 million homes per year
* No. 458: Invest in all types of alternative energy
* No. 459: Enact tax credit for consumers for plug-in hybrid cars
* No. 460: Ask people and businesses to conserve electricity
* No. 475: Require states to provide incentives for utilities to reduce energy consumption
* No. 480: Unprecedented expansion of funding for regional high-speed rail
* No. 483: Invest in public transportation
* No. 484: Equalize tax breaks for driving and public transit
* No. 494: Share enviromental technology with other countries
* No. 498: Provide grants to encourage energy-efficient building codes
* No. 500: Increase funding for the Environmental Protection Agency
* No. 502: Get his daughters a puppy
* No. 503: Appoint at least one Republican to the cabinet
* No. 506: Raise the small business investment expensing limit to $250,000 through the end of 2009
* No. 507: Extend unemployment insurance benefits and temporarily suspend taxes on these benefits
* No. 513: Reverse restrictions on stem cell research

Read the full post here.

One final, optimistic point in this glowing article:

It is likely the legislative schedule of 2010 will demonstrate that no president in recent history has had so many major legislative achievements, and that will be due to Obama's insisting that principled policy-making move forward, even where compromises need to be made with ideological opponents, all in the interests of progress.

Talking points for this: "pragmatic progressivism."

Why Dems May Prefer "Old Tricks" to "Change"

2010-02-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

I was just reading a HuffPost article about the president and his promises of change. Oh, you say, that one. Anyway, it was specifically about pharmaceuticals, lobbyists, Medicare etc.

And I then just smacked my hand against my forehead an said "d'oh!"

Why? (Other than that this may be an obvious point?)

If we look at Washington from a view of 30,000 feet we see a town in which both parties rely on a system of "special interests," a politics of privileged access, and the kind of who's-who-ing that most people who dislike politics cite as the precise reason for its distastefulness. It's the same "culture of corruption" message that led Dems to massive victory in 2006.

The trouble is, Democrats govern in a similar way, most prospective candidates started working toward public office by building insider networks, and the all-powerful determinant of electoral viability, namely money, is concentrated in few enough hands to make most high donor rolls look like a who's who of national politics.

In other words, the president's campaign may have set up an impossible goal for Democrats: change the way you govern, run for office, and set up potential candidates to run, all without losing any ground and maximizing your electability. Did the president pull this rug out from under his own party without knowing he was doing it? Did he do it for the general welfare, despite foresight that his party might suffer?

I ask because I am skeptical of most people's altruism, either the president's or that of the network of individuals whose livelihoods and the relevance of whose skills are predicated on DC looking largely like it did before the president arrived (as president). Real change is in few people's interests when we speak of those professionally involved in politics.

Monocle

2010-02-03T09:36:00.000-08:00

A new place to get perspective and news. Monocle is all about being informed and skirting what mainstream media are likely to report on, giving more context and insight. I love it. Check out a sample: http://monocle.com/sections/affairs/Web-Articles/The-Young-Europeans/. Unfortunately the video isn't embeddable.

The President, On Message

2010-01-24T21:41:00.000-08:00

Thank goodness the President is finally on message. His more populist tone, I am convinced, is the single best thing he could do right now to get people on board to see the Democratic agenda through.

A mix of commentators have concluded that the Massachusetts senate election was, wasn't, or was sorta kinda a referendum on Obama. But it seems to me that what's abundantly clear is that a lack of leadership from the West Wing in health care reform has left Americans with little to go on except assurances like "don't worry, we'll act in your best interest" while hearing about record deficits, record unemployment, and even more "record" spending coming through the pipeline. Inconsistent and half-baked messaging has been a huge hindrance to getting the Obama Adminstration's message through. But an even more serious problem has been that the agenda itself is still forming. As other people wiser and better connected than I have noted, the President has hesitated in stipulating key features of reform that would be deal-breakers for him.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that things would not have been so bad several fluke disasters not come to pass. Who's to say that the timing of the Senate's reform bill was to come so close to the Massachusetts special election, or that the House and Senate bills would not be able to be reconciled and therefore have their features clearly defined and publicly presented before Coakley and Brown went on the ballot. But letting the president entirely off the hook would be like arguing that the president shouldn't expect political trouble left and right, particularly with lots of fair warning over the summer as the GOP tried left and right to stop his agenda in its tracks.

Fortunately, the President's rhetoric is coming around to match political reality. This is what several "in the know" people have always said about him, that he's a pragmatic progressive. In this instance he is a laggard and has fortunately come around to seeing that getting things done is more important than professing to be transformative.

Show us results, Mr. President. Prove to people that you're listening without them without having to make you listen. Be lofty in your goals and candid when you tell us what reform means in day-to-day terms for average people.

Happy Holidays!

2009-12-12T15:01:00.000-08:00

I want to wish a happy holiday season to everyone who, well, celebrates a holiday at this time of year.

Unfortunately a recent spate of work has kept me from the blog for a while, so if you've been checking, stay tuned.

2009-11-28T17:34:00.000-08:00

The GOP could win big in 2010...maybe

2009-10-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: a version of this was posted to the Huffington Post. Please visit: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-warners/gop-to-retake-house-in-20_b_306832.html

When House whip Eric Cantor said the GOP would win a landslide in the 2010 midterm elections, I simply laughed out loud. Now, I am not a polling junkie or a professional political operative. This tells me that if reason dictates the GOP doesn't deserve that shot in 2010 it will be entirely due to playing political games of dubious merit that the GOP even stands a shot. Not that, you know, we should expect anything else given the current state of politics.

The GOP brand was recently polled quite badly. Pollster.com, run by the National Journal just posted an article showing dire straits for brand GOP:

The overall finding is simple -- the GOP's standing relative to the Democrats on both measures is worse than any opposition party in the sample. For instance, the Pew data show that the Republicans are currently viewed more negatively than any minority party in the previous four midterms in terms of both net favorables and the difference in net favorables between parties

Nevertheless, Cantor has insisted that people want to put some limits on the Obama administration's power, and on the power of Nancy Pelosi. But the main components of the Obama agenda are overwhelmingly popular. The Public Option has been overwhelmingly popular, the ban on discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions is popular, being able to take insurance with you when you change jobs is popular, etc. The only reason the bills under discussion hasn't been more robust is because of dissent within the Democratic party over their scope. Doesn't sound like the intense, scary government bogeyman with control that Cantor's trying to live-up. In fact I think the President will be able to make a more compelling case, that we had a discussion that Republicans decided largely to opt out of and a broad coalition of Democrats who spent a good amount of time haggling over even the broadest outlines of health reform. So as far as I'm concerned there isn't much if any merit to Cantor's argument.

But of course he's priming the media pump to generate the perception that his story may be plausible, which is step #1 to actually making it plausible. If nobody believes that the GOP has any fight in it for 2010, they'll put up fewer resources to finance the battles that would be necessary to beat a large number of Democrats. Indeed the GOP has a big enthusiasm problem, with a quarter-century low in the number of people self-identifying as Republicans.

So we're seeing two things. There's the current reality on the ground that the GOP is up you-know-what-creek with few prospective paddles, and the media reality where GOP leaders are trying to paint a picture of possibility for 2010.

Now, the question that follows is, To what extent to the GOP have to do anything substantive, as opposed to just changing tone and message, in order to get big gains? I think it depends.

Right now you see a lot of talk from a wide range of people concerned about the "fringe." This is for good reason. A while ago, the Department of Homeland Security warned of rising right-wing extremism. And a whole bunch of conservatives got offended. And then some crazy showed up and shot someone at the Holocaust Museum. Yeah, report vindicated. But I think the fact that the Glenn Becks and Michelle Bachmanns have generated so much noise actually presents a strong opportunity for people like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to take the spotlight by being minimally reasonable. In other words, by repudiating or at least dissociating themselves from the hardcore crazies, mere every-day crazy could be made to look normal and perfectly vote-for-able.

That of course depends on a number of factors, including the GOP leadership corralling its membership on board that particular Arc. Otherwise, the flood may not go the way Cantor says it's going to go.

Why morganBlog?

2009-09-30T23:01:00.000-07:00

On occasion I blog on the Huffington Post, but I've been feeling the need for a forum all my own to share thoughts with the world. Hence morganBlog. Everything I write for HuffPost will be linked to here, but I want to use this blog as a way to think things through, especially political issues.

Blogs are weird things. They can be forums for people to speak to the ether and thereby for self-reflection. For others blogs are sources of news that traditional outlets wouldn't report or are too slow to report. They can embrace multiple media simultaneously.

The impact of blogging on political discussion has been widely acknowledged for the way it levels the differences between the lone citizen armed with a few digital devices and a huge media empire. CNN has embraced this with its iReport concept.

But of course the shift is bigger than that. We have been freed to a large extent from the institutionalized delivery of news. We are much more literally consumers of news now. Outlets like the Huffington Post filter out stories that their constituency won't be interested in. It's not like this didn't happen before, but with an ever-wider range of sources for news we are freer than ever to ignore points of view we don't like.

Blogs have unleashed a contradictory set of forces therefore. On the one hand we're freer to consume news as we choose, and on the other, stories and perspectives we were less likely to hear before the advent of blogs has become more likely than ever, so long as we dig around the internet a little.

Making sense of the blogosphere entails, I think, participating in it actively. Not doing so means agreeing to be influenced by an online discussion between millions of participants that interfaces directly with more traditional media and their coverage, and also with politics and cultural developments. Political discourse helps construct and configure the symbols we see and attach to objects all around us. In that sense, blogs perform a political function recognized decades ago by political scientist Murray Edelman:

Politics is for most of us a passing parade of abstract symbols, yet a parade which our experience teaches us to be a benevolent or malevolent force that can be close to omnipotent.

I won't be any more philosophical than to say the interface between virtual blogosphere discussion and real-world political and cultural effects is something of a false juxtaposition. Bloggers shape our experience of political symbols and I hope to occasionally expose some cracks in their "omnipotence."

morganBlog is my experiment in engaging online content for the sake of my self, my friends and family, and for the sake of understanding and influencing in some small ways how people think about contemporary issues. It may ultimately be more of a journal of my thinking and its evolution, and a kind of sketch pad for experiments in the world of New Media, but I hope that you find it interesting, informative, and occasionally provocative. Comment, share, tweet, re-tweet, post to facebook, share on Google reader. With a little dialogue between you and me this space could evolve into something interesting.

A Health Care Town Hall in Milton, MA

2009-09-30T22:40:00.000-07:00

On 9/3 I attended a health care town hall in Milton, MA, hosted by Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D). Rather disappointingly he thought that holding a town hall also meant listening to lies about "death panels." It's one thing to accept that people are afraid of those things. But not to take the opportunity to inject some actual facts into discussions about such things struck me as irresponsible. Here are some views of the circus outside.

Reposted: Health Care Reform is the New Gay Marriage

2009-09-30T22:17:00.000-07:00

Originally featured on the Huffington Post

I'm going to go out on a limb here. The Tea Baggers are not just a whole bunch of white racists, comments by Janeane Garofalo to the contrary.

I don't at all disagree that racism is a huge factor in all the outrage. Garofalo's point, that if these people were really just concerned about spending they would have been protesting George W. Bush's tax cuts and spending, has merit. Just look at this photo over at Politico.

But I think there's a broader, existential fear here and that racism is but one element of it. There are particularly American elements of this and others related to globalization.

Americans have long had an ambivalent relationship with government, going back to 1787 or even before. We have always contested its very makeup and responsibilities. Not all the colonists wanted independence, then we had the Articles of Confederation. Our Constitution is as much the product of compromise as consensus. The Supreme Court arguably invented its capacity to exercise judicial review. The Civil War pitted South and North against each other and set a fault line that has yet to disappear. Desegregation pitted the Feds against States. The governor of Texas now openly speaks of secession. Today's battle over health care reform and "government takeover" clearly relates -- the Governor's remarks came at one of the now infamous Tea Parties.

Today, the Tea Bagger movement displays new specific fears laid over a pastiche of classic American preoccupations. The race issue in the health care reform debate is, I think, more than just a signal of the unfinished business of racial reconciliation and justice. It is more than a battle over the proper role of government. It's a signal about the broader challenge of preparing an entire country to live in a modern world that departs in significant ways from real and percieved traditions and forms of the status quo.

Our quintessential American troubles regarding race and government meet a world that now easily penetrates the comfort of our local communities. Ironically, this permitted and incited conservative Christians, in reaction to the baudy 1960s, to organize via televangelists and direct-mail campaigns in the 1970s to launch Reagan into office, followed up by the two Bushes. Barack Obama used tools that did the same thing -- using our Facebook pages, our email accounts, our Blackberries and iPhones his campaign got people together in peoples' homes all around the country, gave conference calls to supporters.

Social issues seem to have functioned in much the same way. Gay marriage and our increasingly obvious interconnectedness present threats to traditions and ways of doing things that many of us, though not all of us, think should change. Who could have predicted the existential angst of those whose world seems so threatened by people of the same sex getting married? How could we explain that without recognizing some kind of fear finding its manifestation in an appeal to tradition? In that regard, health reform is the new gay marriage.

The Tea Baggers aren't just a rowdy mob of racists. Their behavior, like that of Joe Wilson, can't simply be explained as racism, even though that's clearly a factor.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/morgan-warners/health-care-reform-is-the_b_286103.html