Later On

None of these guys will take responsibility for their decisions. Mary Bottari at PRWatch.org:

President Obama’s chief economic adviser, Larry Summers, was interviewed on PBS late last week about the state of play on financial reform. In an odd, shifty-eyed discussion, Summers admits “mistakes were made,” but none by him.

Maybe Summers felt compelled to defend himself after President Clinton recently admitted to ABC reporter Jake Tapper that he should not have listened to the advice to deregulate the derivatives market from Summers, Robert Rubin and others. Clinton admitted: "On derivatives, yeah I think they were wrong and I think I was wrong to take [their advice] because the argument on derivatives was that these things are expensive and sophisticated and only a handful of investors will buy them and they don’t need any extra protection, and any extra transparency."

Summers’ Dubious Past, and Current Bogus Argument

Between 1992 and 2001, Summers held various positions in the U.S. Treasury Department, including that of Treasury Secretary from 1999 to 2001. Along with Robert Rubin and Alan Greenspan, Summers brought about elimination of key U.S. financial regulations including the Glass-Steagall Act. He was particularly aggressive in his efforts to block regulations of derivatives, regulations that might have prevented the economic meltdown the U.S. suffered in 2008. According to economist Dean Baker, "The policies he promoted as Treasury Secretary and in his subsequent writings led to the economic disaster that we now face."

Summers was wrong in the 1990s, and he is wrong now. In his PBS interview, Summers says that capping the size of too-big-to-fail banks, as has been proposed by Senators Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Ted Kaufman (D-Delaware) is the wrong approach. Inexplicably, Summers says we should not clamp down on big banks because small banks pose hazards as well.

In a Sunday column Baker points out the absurdity of this argument, noting that too- big-to-fail-banks (TBTF) have a special status. “Creditors know that the government will bail them out if a TBTF bank gets in trouble, they will keep the money flowing regardless of how risky the activities of the bank. This is a recipe for many more bailouts,” says Baker.

Summers’ self-serving interview on PBS pushed normally sedate Nation magazine writer William Greider over the edge. In a column entitled “Professor Pants-on-Fire,” Greider characterizes the Summers’ interview as “aggressively misleading to plain deceitful.”

"Regulators didn’t have authority in a comprehensive way to monitor the derivatives market." This is a flaming lie. The principal regulatory agency — the Commodity Futures Regulatory Commission — was actually preparing to impose stricter oversight on derivatives in the late 1990s, when Larry Summers stopped it. Summers and Republican allies intervened in 2000, with legislation that castrated that agency and prohibited it from acting further. Derivatives exploded thereafter.

Stronger Reforms are Needed

By characterizing the recklessness, greed and fraud on Wall Street as “mistakes,” Summers is promoting the view that a few tweaks to the system are sufficient. Senators Brown and Kaufman are not buying it, pressing ahead in their effort to pare down the size of systemically dangerous institutions. Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Arkansas) is not buying it either, pushing for much stricter regulation of derivatives than has been proposed by the Obama administration. It was reported late on Sunday, that Lincoln’s proposal to force banks to spin off their derivatives operations will be incorporated into the sweeping regulatory legislation slated be debated in the Senate today, despite Obama administration opposition.

If true, this is a stunning development shows that momentum is building for even stronger financial reforms than has been proposed by the White House — and Larry Summers — to date.

(For more information on Summer’s role in the financial crisis, check out CMD’s Sourcewatch profile of his activities here, and sign our petition to end “too big to fail”.)

Chuck Grassley is contemptible. Once he wasn’t, but those days are long gone. Steve Benen:

During the debate over health care reform, few, if any, policymakers played as absurd a role in the reform process as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa. From advancing demonstrably ridiculous claims to forcing needless delays to brazen hypocrisy and contradictions, the Iowa Republican was an obnoxious force. Given that he was the Senate Republicans’ point-man on health care, this was a problem.

It was pretty amusing, then, to see Grassley last month start to take credit for some provisions in the Affordable Care Act. In a press release, Grassley praised some of the effects of the legislation, and credited his own work for making these benefits possible.

Igor Volsky reports today that Grassley has done it again, "highlighting how the new law would help Medicare beneficiaries in rural Iowa." This is from the conservative senator’s latest press release:

When doctors in states like Iowa are not fairly reimbursed for their services, it makes it difficult to recruit doctors and it makes it a challenge for them to keep their doors open to new Medicare patients. I worked successfully to improve Medicare payments to doctors in rural states like Iowa and, in turn, access for beneficiaries, as part of the health care reform enacted this year. I’ve previously won passage of legislation to help hospitals in rural America keep their doors open. [emphasis added]

Remember, Chuck Grassley repeatedly tried to kill the proposal, fought to prevent the Senate from debating it, fought to prevent the Senate from even voting on it, and repeatedly concluded that the law itself is unconstitutional.

But just in case any Iowans end up liking what’s in the new law, Grassley also wants folks to know some of the good stuff was his idea (even though he voted against the bill that included his ideas).

Shameless. Just shameless.

Barack Obama is much better at making promises than he is at keeping them. So, Ed Brayton asks, where is the promised transparency?

On his very first day in office, President Obama pledged the most transparent administration in history. That’s starting to look a lot like President Bush’s promise to have the most ethical administration in history. The Huffington Post reports:

One year into its promise of greater government transparency, the Obama administration is more often citing exceptions to the nation’s open records law to withhold federal records even as the number of requests for information declines, according to a review by The Associated Press of agency audits about the Freedom of Information Act.

When I first reported on the fact that FOIA denials had gone up in the first year of the Obama administration, some wondered whether that was because the number of FOIA requests had gone up. Here’s the answer:

The AP’s review of annual Freedom of Information Act reports filed by 17 major agencies found that the administration’s use of nearly every one of the law’s nine exemptions to withhold information from the public increased during fiscal year 2009, which ended last October.

The agencies cited exemptions at least 466,872 times in budget year 2009, compared with 312,683 times the previous year, the review found. Over the same period, the number of information requests declined by about 11 percent, from 493,610 requests in fiscal 2008 to 444,924 in 2009…

The administration has stalled even over records about its own efforts to be more transparent. The AP is still waiting – after nearly three months – for records it requested about the White House’s "Open Government Directive," rules it issued in December directing every agency to take immediate, specific steps to open their operations up to the public.

The White House on Tuesday described the directive as "historic," but the Office of Management and Budget still has not responded to AP’s request under the Freedom of Information Act to review internal e-mails and other documents related to that effort.

Roger Daltrey, you’re on.

Take a look.

For example:

Remember Excite? Formed in 1994 as Architext and relaunched as Excite the next year, it was meant to be the search engine to end all search engines. With funding from some of Silicon Valley’s top investors, the company went on to enjoy a highflying initial public offering after hiring a new CEO, George Bell, in 1996.

Back then, there was nothing that dot-com stock couldn’t buy, and Excite, a company worth $35 billion, went on an acquisition spree with its riches. In addition to many smaller deals, it paid $425 million for iMall and a whopping $780 million for online greeting-card company Blue Mountain Arts.

But when two young Stanford University students came knocking, looking for someone to buy their nascent search engine so they could return to their studies, Bell would have none of it. In 1999, Google (GOOG) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered Excite their business for $1 million. Bell deemed it too high, and a second offer of $750,000 was also roundly rejected.

Google is a $180 billion company today.

And Excite?

In the fall of 2000, Bell resigned as the company’s CEO. By the time the third quarter of 2001 rolled around, Excite’s stock price had fallen to $1 a share.

See the whole collection.

I’m not sure about this. I was an early reader, and thanks to an early childhood spent reading instead of looking at distant objects and playing ball and the like, had terrible myopia (around 20/900). If you kid does read, encourage outdoor active play a good part of the day. Just a thought.

Here’s an enthusiastic review of one book for teaching children to read.

The USDA, so far as the beef industry is concerned, seems to function as an enforcement arm of the major beef producers and pretty much do their bidding. You may recall when Creekstone Farms wanted to test every cow they slaughtered for mad-cow disease. Reason: Creekstone sold to the Japanese market, which pretty much demanded 100% testing. Moreover, 100% testing would add maybe a penny or two a pound to the cost of beef—easily added on to the price.

But the USDA, at the behest of the major beef producers, refused to allow Creekstone to test—even though Creekstone would pay all fees, etc. The problem: the major beef producers were terrified that 100% testing would uncover cases of mad-cow, and the beef industry wants to keep an instances unfound, for fear that people might buy less beef if they knew how much mad cow was around.

And now this, reported by Sara Breselor at Salon:

That wailing you hear in the distance is the sound of small meat processors begging the USDA for mercy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service recently proposed a set of new regulations that will require all meat processors to submit their products to a new series of tests, a procedure that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for even a modestly scaled operation, enough to cripple many small processors.

What worries fans of small farms and locally produced food is that the closing of small processors will mean the closing of small farms. Slaughter and processing is the biggest challenge for small-scale meat; they’re operations simply too costly and complex for farms to handle themselves. As it is, farmers have few options for meat processing without selling their animals to massive feedlot-meat operations, and without that piece of the puzzle, many farmers may quit. Why is the USDA considering the new testing regime? Some producers wonder if the machinations of Big Food are in play.

"The new testing would just ensure that the current processes, which are based on scientific consensus, are working," according to Dustin VandeHoer of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship. But, he adds that it’s not clear why they’re being mandated: "It doesn’t appear that it’s in response to any specific situation. They’re just kind of reinterpreting the existing rules.’" And he’s unsure that the new tests are necessary. "We haven’t had problems with food safety, especially with the smaller plants," he says. "We should never become complacent, but I think we can reach a point where [small meat processors] can still be allowed to operate and food can be safe. I don’t know that we need to be taking this path that’s going to put small plants out of business." (Repeated attempts by Salon to solicit comments from the USDA were unsuccessful.)

Greg Higgins, chef/owner of Higgins Restaurant in Portland, Ore., and a founding member of the sustainability and local-food-focused Chefs Collaborative, has darker suspicions. "What’s always in the back of my mind is the industrial food lobby," he says. He suspects that the change in the USDA regulations, and the way they will affect small meat producers, was probably "fairly well thought out by the lobbyists." The popularity of small farms, grass-fed meats, and artisan products like salumi and prosciutto is expanding rapidly, and Higgins suspects that the industrial food lobby is trying to squeeze producers out so as not to lose a share of the market."They don’t want any competition," Higgins says. "They’re very powerful and I think they would relish the opportunity to keep the market closed."

Mario Fantasma of Paradise Meats in Trimble, Mo., wants to trust the USDA. "I’m sure their intentions are good," he says, "but I don’t think that they see far enough into what it can do to small companies — and even large companies for that matter."

Higgins says that it’s unfair for small plants to suffer when health safety risks are disproportionately linked to large-scale processing. "Think about all the big health scares we’ve had," he says. "They’re all related to large-scale food production, whether it’s spinach from a massive grower in California or ground beef out of the Midwest, they’re all gigantic, they’re never these little tiny plants."

And Fantasma argues that small plants are, by necessity, already more conscious about food safety. "At small facilities, we’ve always had food safety in our top priorities. We can’t afford not to. If one of our customers came here and got sick, what do you think would happen to my business? That alone would kill us. It’s common sense that we want to do everything in our power to make sure that our product is safe."

"The thing that’s going to affect us is the cost of the testing," Fantasma says. Regulations for small plants like Fantasma’s will require 13 samples of every product to be tested before processing, and another 13 samples after processing. "When you add all those products and tests, it racks up a super amount of money," he says. "Right now we’re sitting at about $500,000 for the initial validation tests, just for the first year. We wouldn’t be able to do it. It would just really devastate our business."

Fantasma recognizes the trickle-down effect of the new regulations…

Continue reading.

Kevin Drum points out the problem with the simple solution of having the SEC pick which ratings agency gets a contract:

One of the big villains in the housing bubble was the ratings agencies. Providing ratings for complex securities is lucrative business, and in order to get it the agencies implicitly — or sometime explicitly — colluded with issuers to provide higher ratings for their securities than they deserved. The conflict of interest is obvious: having the issuer of a security pay for its rating is like having a student pay his professor for a grade.Dean Baker explains what to do:

The obvious way to fix the conflict is to take away the hiring decision from the issuer. The issuer would still pay the rating agency but a neutral party — the SEC, the stock exchange on which the company is listed, the local baseball team — would make the decision as to which agency gets hired.

I guess this is my question: if you do this, the ratings agencies no longer have any incentives to do much of anything. There are three of them, and presumably each one would get a third of the business at a price set by the SEC. So their incentive would be to hire the cheapest possible analysts and cut costs to the bone. The result would be ratings agencies even less able to cope with complex modern securities than the current ones.

This is what stonkers me about the ratings dilemma: there just doesn’t seem to be any good answer. Turning the ratings agencies into regulated utilities might be better than the current situation, but not by much. And if you’re going to do that, why bother with ratings agencies at all? Why not just have the SEC provide ratings?

I’ve read other proposed solutions too. Open up the business to more firms, for example, or pay the agencies based on the accuracy of their ratings. But the first doesn’t really get at the conflict of interest, and the second is difficult because it often takes years before you know if a rating is accurate.

I remember once someone telling me that after every financial crisis ever, the ratings agencies were always rolled out as sacrificial lambs. They had always been too optimistic, or too stupid, or too corrupt, or something. And then there’d be a hue and cry about "fixing" them, even though the real problem was that every single person on Wall Street, buyers and sellers alike, had wanted them to do exactly what they did: help inflate a bubble that made everyone truckloads of money. The hue and cry, he suggested, was more a way of deflecting blame from the real villains than it was a serious attempt to address an underlying problem.

I don’t remember who told me that, and I don’t even know for sure if it’s true. It’s stuck with me, though. I’m just not sure what the answer is here.

It might be just the ticket. Take a look.

Greenwald:

The New York Times yesterday excitedly declared that the imminent Battle of Kandahar “has become the make-or-break offensive of the eight-and-half-year [Afghanistan] war” and is “the pivotal test of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy.”  As Atrios suggests, there never is any such thing as “make-or-break” because we never leave no matter how completely our war and occupation efforts fail.  That’s what led to the countless Friedman Units of the Iraq War:  the endless proclamations that The Next Six Months will be Decisive, only to be repeated at the end of the six-month period of failure as though the prior one never happened.

Just consider what’s being said now about how the Kandahar offensive is the “make-or-break” battle of the war and the “pivotal test” for Obama’s war strategy by comparing it to what was said a mere two months ago about the now clearly failing assault on Marjah:

Times of London, February 13, 2010:

Allied troops launched a major offensive into Afghanistan’s most violent province last night, in a key part of President Obama’s push to seize control of the Taleban’s last big stronghold. . . . If it fails, many analysts believe that the war will be lost.

The Independent declared on February 9, 2010, that General McChrystal wants the Marjah offensive to “be one of the most significant in the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001″ and, of Obama’s war strategy, said that “Marjah looks like being its first major — and possibly decisive — test.”  The BBC quoted a NATO official who proclaimed that Marjah “was ‘probably the definitive operation’ of the counter-insurgency strategy” and “this operation could potentially define the tipping point, the crucial momentum aspect in the counter-insurgency.”  Time helpfully informed us that “U.S. officials believe it will mark a turning point in the war.”

Now that that “make-or-break decisive test” has failed (or, at best, has produced very muddled outcomes), did the Government and media follow through and declare the war effort broken and the strategy a failure?  No; they just pretend it never happened and declare the next, latest, glorious Battle the real “make-or-break decisive test” — until that one fails and the next one is portrayed that way, in an endless tidal wave of war propaganda intended to justify our staying for as long as we want, no matter how pointless and counter-productive it is.

* * * * *

Speaking of war propaganda, today is a very proud day for the U.S.:  the military commission ordered by Eric Holder begins for Omar Khadr, a Canadian-born, Afghanistan-residing detainee encaged at Guantanamo for seven years — since he was 15 years old — on “war crimes” and “terrorism” charges that he was involved in a firefight with American military forces who, revealingly enough, were using a former Soviet military base as their outpost.  Khadr was wounded in the battle, imprisoned at Bagram, then at Guantanamo, claims he was severely tortured into falsely confessing, and made worldwide news when a video of him weeping, begging for medical help, and crying for his mother during an interrogation was released.  Apparently, if the U.S. Army invades a foreign country, anyone who fights against that invading force — including a 15-year-old boy — is a “war criminal” and a “Terrorist,” even the Worst of The Worst, which is, of course, all that we’re currently holding at Guantanamo.  Now that’s some robust propaganda.

Chuck Norris demonstrates teh crazy. Ed Brayton:

Chuck Norris joins the crazy brigade in arguing that the Obama administration is on the verge of taking away everyone’s guns. He makes it sound exceedingly ominous:

Right now, Washington is scheming and scamming to erode then erase the Second Amendment from our Constitution. And it will accomplish it through the signing of international treaties on gun control, bypassing the normal legislative process in Congress, tightening regulations upon firearm and ammunition manufacturers, using the anti-gun financing of tycoons and ultimately confiscating all firearms under the guise of terrorism patrol and enforcement. Without public debate and cloaked in secrecy, gun control will covertly come upon us like a thief in the night. One day, we will wake up to discover that the U.S. has signed a global treaty that will prohibit any transfer of firearm ownership, force reductions in the number of firearms privately owned and eventually eradicate the planet of guns for law-abiding citizens. Of course, the criminals will still illegally have their guns. And on that day, if you do not comply with that global treaty, you will be fined and face imprisonment. This is not a fictitious story or false warning.

But if you look at the rest of the column, you’ll see that is based on nothing at all. His only "evidence" for this claim is the existence of a treaty called CIFTA — the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing and Trafficking of Firearms — that not only has Obama not done anything to promote, he intentionally tabled it and hasn’t pushed for it to get a vote in Congress.

This is Part One of three articles in which I’ll be addressing the evidence – the smoking gun, if you will – of the pressing threat to the Second Amendment and our firearm freedoms.

As Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, wrote in the American Rifleman (February 2010): "President Obama’s political mantra of ‘hope and change’ has morphed into a very real threat. Obama’s deep curtsy to international arms control has given ‘hope’ to the international gun-ban crowd that they will prevail."

But he even admits that Obama hasn’t done anything on the treaty, which he attempts to explain away:

It was also no surprise, therefore, a year ago this month when Obama personally promised Mexican President Felipe Calderon that the White House would push to ratify through the Senate the CIFTA (the Inter-American Convention Against Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms) treaty, which has sat tabled and unapproved by the U.S. Senate since 1997.

But then, as quickly as he initiated the debate, the president just as quickly ceased trying to ratify CIFTA in the U.S. Senate. Why was that? Cato Institute scholar Ted Galen Carpenter said there was a reason that the treaty was tabled a year ago by Obama. I agree. I believe that reason was Obamacare. He knew he couldn’t tackle and force through Congress two incredibly hot and volatile issues at once, at least of this caliber. But now that Obamacare is law, it’s no surprise that both CIFTA and a separate U.N. small arms treaty are experiencing a renewed life. And like Obamacare was pitched solely under "health-care reform," you can bet that a small arms weapon ban will be pitched under "a fight against global terrorism and drug wars."

Okay, now let’s take a look at the actual treaty, which — surprise, surprise — doesn’t do anything even remotely like what Norris and LaPierre claims it does. The first clue should be in the word "illicit" in the title of the treaty. The only thing the treaty does is say that the country would take legislative action against illicit manufacturing and trafficking of guns. That is, it deals with major arms traffickers who make and transport illegal weapons for use by terrorists, gangs and other unsavory groups.

Here’s the definition of what the treaty seeks to restrict:

1. "Illicit manufacturing": the manufacture or assembly of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials:

a. from components or parts illicitly trafficked; or

b. without a license from a competent governmental authority of the State Party where the manufacture or assembly takes place; or

c. without marking the firearms that require marking at the time of manufacturing.

2. "Illicit trafficking": the import, export, acquisition, sale, delivery, movement, or transfer of firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials from or across the territory of one State Party to that of another State Party, if any one of the States Parties concerned does not authorize it.

It isn’t talking about someone going to a licensed gun shop, filling out the proper paperwork, going through the background check and legally buying a gun; it’s talking about guns that are manufactured illegally in mass quantities and sold to gangs of criminals. And the treaty quite explicitly allows confiscation only for "firearms, ammunition, explosives, and other related materials that have been illicitly manufactured or trafficked."

The reality that these people actively ignore is that the right of American citizens to own guns has probably never been safer than it is at this moment. For the first time in American history, the Supreme Court in 2008 explicitly declared — quite correctly — that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own handguns. Any attempt at a wholesale ban on gun ownership would be struck down immediately by the courts, as it should be.

This is pure fear-mongering and demagoguery.

Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times:

Israel’s alarm at the deterioration in its relations with the US is palpable. In Jerusalem recently, even a liberal commentator told me: “Barack Obama is a disaster for Israel. I don’t think the general public realise just how much of a disaster he is.” Government officials are more careful – but only a bit. Danny Ayalon, the deputy Israeli foreign minister, says that it would be a “grave mistake” for America to present its own Middle East peace plan, an idea that the US president’s people are known to be considering.

Listening to all this, I could not help thinking back to the early stages of the Northern Irish peace negotiations. In part, this is because some of the same cast of characters have moved from Belfast to Jerusalem. George Mitchell, Mr Obama’s envoy to the Middle East, played a crucial role as a go-between in Ulster. Tony Blair Is also on the scene, this time installed in the American Colony hotel rather than Stormont castle.

But there is more to the parallel than familiar faces. The Israelis’ furious reaction to the pressure they are under from the Obama administration is reminiscent of the British rage early in the Northern Irish peace process, when it became clear that our American allies were intent on “talking to the terrorists” of the Irish Republican Army. But, as it turned out, the Americans were right to insist that there was a peace deal to be made with the IRA. They are right again on the Middle East peace process. There is still a deal to be had – and if Israel does not take it soon, the long-term survival of the Jewish state will be imperilled.

In their more reflective moments, some senior Israeli politicians will acknowledge that a two-state solution is as vital for Israel as it is for the Palestinians. Dividing the land is the only way of ensuring that Israel remains both Jewish and democratic. The continued occupation of the West Bank, by contrast, always carries with it the risk of another Palestinian intifada, and is the major cause of Israel’s dreadful global image. Israeli politicians worry that the “delegitimisation” of their state has spread from the Muslim world to Europe. Tzipi Livni, leader of the Israeli opposition, recently had to cancel a trip to Britain for fear that she would be arrested on war-crimes charges.

Yet for all their long-term concerns, the Israelis have failed to make vital concessions, because the status quo still feels more comfortable. Israel’s assaults on Lebanon and Gaza have, for the moment, largely stopped the threat of rocket fire into Israel. The wall the Israelis have built around the West Bank has helped to prevent suicide bombings. The economy has done well in recent years. Things look good – if you do not look too far into the future.

By contrast, calling a complete halt to illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land – as Mr Obama has demanded – entails risks and pain. There are members of the Israeli cabinet who still cling to the idea of a Greater Israel, incorporating all of the West Bank. If Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, delivered the settlement freeze the Americans want, his rightwing coalition would probably collapse. Many Israelis also worry that an eventual move to uproot at least 80,000settlers as part of a peace deal could lead to a revolt in the army – some 30 per cent of whose officers are religious conservatives, presumed to be sympathetic to the settlers. Any such military revolt, one respected commentator told me, “would be the end of the state of Israel”. Even if a Palestinian state were established on the West Bank, the Israelis worry that it might fall into the hands of Hamas, just as Gaza did; and then become the base for renewed rocket attacks on Israel that could hit Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airport.

So rather than discuss settlements, the Israelis are desperately trying to change the subject…

Continue reading.

Steve Benen:

Since its original publication three years ago, Phillip Longman’s Best Care Anywhere has become a classic among health care delivery system reformers. Nobel Laureate and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has applauded its central insight: that a universal, integrated system such as the VA is best equipped to maximize health care quality while lowering costs thanks to its long-term relationship with its patients. Ezra Klein of the Washington Post has called Best Care Anywhere, "Among the most important social policy books published in the last decade." Through word of mouth and expert endorsement, it has become one of the nation’s best-selling books on fixing the health care delivery system as well as assigned reading for students of health care policy. Now, by popular demand, Longman has produced a new, expanded second edition that relates the book’s paradoxical message to the new and urgent challenges created by passage of comprehensive health insurance reform.

The book chronicles the transformation of the VA health system from one of the worst health care providers in United States into one that outperforms nearly all others on metrics ranging from patient safety to the use of electronic medical records, adoption of evidence medicine, cost-effectiveness and patient satisfaction. Longman uses this story, along with that of his first wife’s death to breast cancer at a prestigious cancer treatment center, to draw out lessons about how much of what we think we know about the working of the health care delivery system is simply wrong.

On Thursday, the New America Foundation will host a discussion on Longman’s book at its D.C. office at 12:15 p.m. The event will be moderated by Paul Glastris, the Washington Monthly‘s editor in chief, who edited and published the original magazine cover story that became the book. Longman also wrote a follow-up piece, "Best Care Everywhere," in the October 2007 issue.

If you wish to attend in person, you can register here. If you want to watch the event online, a live webcast is available at the same link. (You need not register to watch the webcast.)

An opposing view:

From the Center for American Progress in an email, and note that Ben Nelson is up to his usual tricks—what a contemptible politician.

Senate Republicans, joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), voted yesterday to prevent a key Wall Street reform bill from reaching the floor for debate, thereby launching "a standoff that throws the sweeping legislation into a period of uncertainty." The legislation is meant to prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis by reining in the activities of the country’s largest financial institutions, bringing risky financial instruments out of the dark, and ensuring that taxpayer money is never again used to prop up a failed financial firm. The bill would authorize the creation of a $50 billion bank-financed fund to help the federal government close any large financial institution seen as threatening the stability of the system. The overhaul would also include a consumer protection agency and establish a new oversight structure for hedge funds and derivatives — the complex financial instruments that played a key role in the 2008 collapse. Yet following their pattern of obstructing any major piece of legislation since President Obama’s inauguration — and after a close-knit Wall Street lobbying campaign — Republicans blocked the measure from consideration. Obama criticized Republicans for the move, urging them to "put the interests of the country ahead of party."

Read the rest of this entry »

Amanda Terkel at ThinkProgress:

Tea Party activists go out of their way to insist that they’re not partisan, racist, or filled with hate; they’re just patriots who want to stop a “socialist” government machine from controlling their daily lives.

The new immigration law in Arizona should be ripe for the Tea Parties to take up. SB-1070 is the “broadest and strictest immigration measure in generations,” giving police unprecedented power to detain anyone they suspect of being an undocumented immigrant and making “the failure to carry immigration documents a crime.” Even traditionally far-right figures like former Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo and former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee have worried that the law might lead to racial profiling abuses by the government.

But as the Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson notes, this Tea Party support hasn’t materialized:

Activists for Latino and immigrant rights — and supporters of sane governance — held weekend rallies denouncing the new law and vowing to do everything they can to overturn it. But where was the Tea Party crowd? Isn’t the whole premise of the Tea Party movement that overreaching government poses a grave threat to individual freedom?It seems to me that a law allowing individuals to be detained and interrogated on a whim — and requiring legal residents to carry identification documents, as in a police state — would send the Tea Partyers into apoplexy. Or is there some kind of exception if the people whose freedoms are being taken away happen to have brown skin and might speak Spanish?

Not only are Tea Partiers not speaking out against SB-1070, they’re actively supporting it. The Arizona Tea Party Network called on its members to support Brewer’s big government. In fact, the sponsor of SB-1070 is state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), a Tea Party backer.

According to a new survey directed by University of Washington political scientist Christopher Parker, white Tea Partiers tend to be “predisposed to intolerance,” pointing to a possible reason the movement has been reluctant to join with immigration reform activists:

For instance, the Tea Party, the grassroots movement committed to reining in what they perceive as big government, and fiscal irresponsibility, also appear predisposed to intolerance. Approximately 45% of Whites either strongly or somewhat approve of the movement. Of those, only 35% believe Blacks to be hardworking, only 45 % believe Blacks are intelligent, and only 41% think that Blacks are trustworthy.Perceptions of Latinos aren’t much different. While 54% of White Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be hardworking, only 44% think them intelligent, and even fewer, 42% of Tea Party supporters believe Latinos to be trustworthy. When it comes to gays and lesbians, White Tea Party supporters also hold negative attitudes. Only 36% think gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt children, and just 17% are in favor of same-sex marriage.

Also, if Tea Partiers really do feel like they’ve been taxed enough already, they should support immigration reform. As Andrea Nill has reported, “In January, the Immigration Policy Center and the Center for American Progress found that legalizing undocumented immigrants through comprehensive immigration reform would generate $4.5 to $5.4 billion in additional net tax revenue within three years. The study predicted that ultimately the benefits of immigration reform would go beyond pure tax revenue and would yield at least $1.5 trillion in cumulative U.S. gross domestic product over 10 years.”

UPDATE: In an op-ed today (via Steve Benen), Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse writes that she isn’t “going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state“:

What would Arizona’s revered libertarian icon, Barry Goldwater, say about a law that requires the police to demand proof of legal residency from any person with whom they have made “any lawful contact” and about whom they have “reasonable suspicion” that “the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States?” Wasn’t the system of internal passports one of the most distasteful features of life in the Soviet Union and apartheid-era South Africa?

Since Greenland’s icecap is on land, rather than floating (as does the Arctic icepack), when Greenland ice melts, the runoff will raise sea levels. So how much ice is melting in Greenland? John Cook of Skeptical Science has the answer:

I’m talking at the University of Queensland next week so I thought I might use Skeptical Science to test-drive a new visual metaphor. Sometimes in the climate debate, we get a bit lost in the data and statistical analysis, forgetting the sheer scale of the impact we’re having on our climate. A vivid example is the amount of ice that Greenland is currently losing. When scientists talk about ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet, they refer to gigatonnes of ice. One gigatonne is one billion tonnes. To get a picture of how large this is, imagine a block of ice one kilometre high by one kilometer wide by one kilometre deep (okay, the edges are actually 1055 metres long as ice is slightly less dense than water but you get the idea). Borrowing from alien invasion movies, the scale is well illustrated by comparing a gigatonne block of ice to a famous, historical landmark like the Empire State Building:

How much ice is Greenland losing? This is monitored by satellites which have measured changes in gravity around the ice sheet over the last decade (Velicogna 2009). In 2002 to 2003, the Greenland ice sheet was losing mass at a rate of 137 gigatonnes per year.

However, the rate of ice loss has more than doubled in less than a decade. The rate of ice loss over the 2008 to 2009 period was 286 gigatonnes per year.

This is a vivid reminder that global warming isn’t a statistical abstraction cooked up in a climate lab. Greenland is just one example of the physical realities of climate change. On the other side of the planet, Antarctica is also losing ice at an accelerating rate. All over the globe, glaciers are retreating at an accelerating rate.

It’s also a reminder of the massive amount of inertia at play in our climate. It takes time for the massive Greenland ice sheet to respond to warming. But this inertia is not our friend. Now that Greenland is losing ice at an accelerating rate, it’s not like we can throw a rope around the ice sheet and hold it back. The steadily accelerating ice loss from Greenland is an ominous reminder that our actions now will have effects long into the future.

Just to be clear: this is not presented as a "proof" of global warming—we’re long past that—but as another of the consequences of global warming.

I do like Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet, and the soap made a wonderful lather with the Plisson Chinese Grey. And I stuck with the Pils razor, which I must say gives an excellent shave: close, comfortable, with no nicks or burns. I think this is becoming my favorite razor.

A splash of Blenheim Bouquet, and I’m ready for the Nordic Track.

Greg Gordon and Chris Adams for McClatchy:

Goldman Sachs reaped "billions and billions of dollars" by betting on a housing market crash in 2006 and 2007, but the secret wagers put the firm in conflict with the interests of clients who were still buying its risky mortgage securities, Senate investigators said Monday.

"The evidence shows that Goldman repeatedly put its own interests and profits ahead of the interests of its clients," Michigan Democratic Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Permanent Investigations Subcommittee, told a news briefing. "I think they’ve been misleading to the country."

The panel provided the first detailed glimpse of its findings from an 18-month investigation into the world’s most prestigious investment bank, setting the stage for a hearing Tuesday at which Goldman’s chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and six other company executives will give sworn testimony.

Blankfein, in testimony prepared for delivery Tuesday, denied that Goldman orchestrated a “massive short,” or a series of negative bets that enabled it to ring up huge profits when the housing bubble burst and sank the nation’s economy.

“And we certainly did not bet against our clients,” he said.

The newly released documents and Tuesday’s hearing will offer the public a rare look inside the trading activities in one of the nation’s storied investment banking firms.

The subcommittee and Goldman, which turned over 2 million documents to the panel in response to subpoenas in June 2009 and on March 12 of this year, have been publicly sparring since Saturday in the buildup to the hearing, releasing dueling sets of company emails.

On Monday, the subcommittee released dozens of additional excerpts from internal documents that staffers said show that Goldman mortgage traders, with the knowledge of senior company executives, sharply shifted from positive bets on the housing market to negative ones after a high-level meeting on Dec. 14, 2006. The shift followed 10 straight days of mortgage losses, Goldman has said.

In his 2007 performance review, senior Goldman trader Michael Swenson said that he knew by summer of 2006 from “market fundamentals in subprime” that the home mortgage market and related exotic securities were headed for “a very unhappy ending.” He said he directed the firm to take a big bet that the market would go down.

As another top trader, Joshua Birnbaum, wrote in his performance review: "Much of the plan began working by February as the market dropped 25 points and our very profitable year was underway."

About that same time — in February 2007 — Blankfein asked in an internal email related to mortgage securities if the firm was "doing enough right now to sell off cats and dogs in other books throughout the division."

Later that year, Blankfein wrote that, "Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts."

Goldman has said repeatedly that it made bets against the housing market, via insurance-like contracts known as credit-default swaps, largely in its role as an intermediary for clients and did not profit massively when loan defaults soared and home prices nose-dived beginning in the summer of 2007.

Levin said that Goldman “a lot to answer for.”

He and his aides pointed to …

Continue reading.

Here’s a profile by Gabriel Sherman in New York. It begins:

On the morning of July 3, 2009, a national holiday, Sarah Palin placed a call to her communications director and told her that she wanted to hold a press conference at her Wasilla, Alaska, home. She wouldn’t disclose the topic. For Palin, the months since Election Day had been a letdown even bigger than the loss to Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Being governor was drudgery. “Her life was terrible,” one adviser says. “She was never home, her [Juneau] office was four hours from her house. You gotta drive an hour from Wasilla to Anchorage. And she was going broke.” Her sky-high approval ratings in Alaska—which had topped 80 percent before John McCain picked her—had withered to the low fifties. She faced a hostile legislature, a barrage of ethics complaints, and frothing local bloggers who reveled in her misfortune. All this for a salary of only $125,000? The worst was that she had racked up $500,000 in legal bills to fend off the trooper scandal and other investigations. She needed money and worried about it constantly. “You have to keep in mind,” Bill McAllister, her then–press secretary, told me, “she and Todd were middle class. They’re rich now, but not then.”

And, whatever one thinks of her intelligence, she was more than shrewd enough to see that there was money to be made on her newfound national profile, and she hadn’t been the one making it—this was her particular American resentment. The tabloid-media culture began cashing in on the Palin-family drama ever since her pregnant 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, and boyfriend Levi Johnston stepped on the Xcel Energy Center stage at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul. On multiple occasions, Palin complained to campaign aides about Kaylene Johnson, an Alaska journalist, who had just published a book about her. “I can’t believe that woman is making so much money off my name,” Palin said.

From the time of her infamous wardrobe selection, money had been an issue in Palin’s politics. Her relationship with the McCain campaign had been plagued by financial misunderstanding. In her book Going Rogue, she claimed that the McCain campaign had left her on the hook for her Troopergate bills. Palin was furious. “Deep down, she wanted to make money,” a McCain adviser says. “There was always financial stress. They’re not wealthy people.”

Palin knew there were ways to solve her money problems, and then some. Planning quickly got under way for a book. And just weeks after the campaign ended, reality-show producer Mark Burnett called Palin personally and pitched her on starring in her own show. Then, in May 2009, she signed a $7 million book deal with HarperCollins. Two former Palin-campaign aides—Jason Recher and Doug McMarlin—were hired to plan a book tour with all the trappings of a national political campaign. But there was a hitch: With Alaska’s strict ethics rules, Palin worried that her day job would get in the way. In March, she petitioned the Alaska attorney general’s office, which responded with a lengthy list of conditions. “There was no way she could go on a book tour while being governor” is how one member of her Alaska staff put it.

On Friday morning, July 3, Palin called her cameraman to her house in Wasilla and asked him to be on hand to record a prepared speech. Around noon, in front of a throng of national reporters, she announced that she was stepping down as governor. To many, it seemed a mysterious move, defying the logic of a potential presidential candidate, and possibly reflecting some hidden scandal—but in fact the choice may have been as easy as balancing a checkbook.

Less than a year later, Sarah Palin is …

Continue reading.

But that was a long time ago. Steve Benen:

During the debate over health care reform, few, if any, policymakers played as absurd a role in the reform process as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa. From advancing demonstrably ridiculous claims to forcing needless delays to brazen hypocrisy and contradictions, the Iowa Republican was an obnoxious force. Given that he was the Senate Republicans’ point-man on health care, this was a problem.

It was pretty amusing, then, to see Grassley last month start to take credit for some provisions in the Affordable Care Act. In a press release, Grassley praised some of the effects of the legislation, and credited his own work for making these benefits possible.

Igor Volsky reports today that Grassley has done it again, "highlighting how the new law would help Medicare beneficiaries in rural Iowa." This is from the conservative senator’s latest press release:

When doctors in states like Iowa are not fairly reimbursed for their services, it makes it difficult to recruit doctors and it makes it a challenge for them to keep their doors open to new Medicare patients. I worked successfully to improve Medicare payments to doctors in rural states like Iowa and, in turn, access for beneficiaries, as part of the health care reform enacted this year. I’ve previously won passage of legislation to help hospitals in rural America keep their doors open. [emphasis added]

Remember, Chuck Grassley repeatedly tried to kill the proposal, fought to prevent the Senate from debating it, fought to prevent the Senate from even voting on it, and repeatedly concluded that the law itself is unconstitutional.

But just in case any Iowans end up liking what’s in the new law, Grassley also wants folks to know some of the good stuff was his idea (even though he voted against the bill that included his ideas).

Shameless. Just shameless.