A Man Hears What He Wants to Hear

David Roberts does an admirable job of discussing how the whole "Climategate" mess was handled in the media.

"It's a numbingly familiar pattern in media coverage. The conservative movement that's been attacking climate science for 20 years has a storied history of demonstrable fabrications, distortions, personal attacks, and nothingburger faux-scandals -- not only on climate science, but going back to asbestos, ozone, leaded gasoline, tobacco, you name it. They don't follow the rigorous standards of professional science; they follow no intellectual or ethical standards whatsoever. Yet no matter how long their record of viciousness and farce, every time the skeptic blogosphere coughs up a new "ZOMG!" it's as though we start from zero again, like no one has a memory longer than five minutes.

"Here's the basic question: At this point, given their respective accomplishments and standards, wouldn't it make sense to give scientists the strong benefit of the doubt when they are attacked by ideologues with a history of dishonesty and error? Shouldn't the threshold for what counts as a "scandal" have been nudged a bit higher?"

Gov't Spending Equals American Jobs, pt. 2

A blogger at Moody's Analytics notes that if Congressional Republicans get the cuts they want, out economy will suffer a grevious hit. Their proposal, he writes, "would reduce 2011 real GDP growth by 0.5% and 2012 growth by 0.2 percentage points This would mean some 400,000 fewer jobs created by the end of 2011 and 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of 2012."

Talking Points Memo also notes that an ABC News report last week predicted that the Republican approach would cut economic growth by 2 percent of GDP--an even more dire analysis than Moody's.

I keep hearing from my conservative friends that if we raise taxes, it will hurt job creation. But that's really a hypothetical. Job creation is driven by many things, and maybe taxes play a role, but demand, business climate, workforce conditions, all of those play a role as well. Cutting government spending will destroy jobs that families are depending on Right Now. Real jobs, not possible jobs. With cutting government spending, you are certain to do one of several things: cancel someone's health insurance, reduce someone's services, cut someone's job. These are not good outcomes.

Government Spending Equals American Jobs

The ongoing protests in Madison have me thinking about what government spends money on. And in many cases, it's employing people like teachers, policemen, firemen, social workers, etc.

So what happens when we cut government spending?

The math isn't difficult.

More people on unemployment (and more government spending). Fewer taxes collected. Less money going into the retail sector. Purchasing decisions (new house, new car, new teeth) delayed or canceled.

That's good for our economy how?

I understand the argument that government is spending too much, and I'm sure there are cases where it's true. But too often this argument is framed this way: "We have to cut government spending so we can create jobs!" But that's not what happens at all. You may be saving the taxpayer some dollars. But what you're also doing is cutting jobs, and there's no reason whatsoever to think that the private sector will pick up the slack.

Right now many states are facing big deficits. A good number of these states, like Wisconsin, have Republican governors. So raising taxes is out. Cutting spending is in. And that means job losses, less revenue, and so on. It does not sound like a formula for economic recovery to me.

What If…?

I’d like to conduct a mental exercise. Let’s pretend the United States had a democratically-elected president back in 2000.

If that had happened, I think today’s headlines would not just be about Egypt and Libya and Bahrain. I think today, or maybe tomorrow or next week, we would be hearing about the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, as Iraq joins the irresistible lurch toward democracy in the Middle East.

Those who sought to justify the war in Iraq trotted out one reason after another. The terrorists who attacked us on 9/11 didn’t come from Iraq, so we heard about weapons of mass destruction. The weapons of mass destruction turned out not to exist, so we heard about democracy and the need to rid the world of this evil dictator.

But as it turns out, time might have done the trick, much more neatly and legitimately. It doesn’t take much imagination to think about a unified Iraq, whose citizens suddenly find themselves with fewer reasons to fight, now that they have worked together to rid themselves of a tyrant.

And think what could have been saved. Thousands of American lives. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives—to say nothing of the refugee problem that afflicts Iraq's neighbors. Trillions of dollars that we still haven’t figured out a way to replace. The reputation of this country as a champion of democracy.

Maybe, right? Maybe it would’ve worked out that way. All we know now, as we stand on the sidelines, is that our slipshod, democracy-at-the-barrel-of-gun solution in Iraq now looks shaky, out-of-touch, and overly expensive. Maybe it will work out. Maybe.

Compare and Contrast

Two neighboring states have elected starkly different governors with starkly different ideas of how to solve their financial crises.

In Wisconsin, Scott Walker is charging ahead with tax cuts, evisceration of public unions, and a government-is-the-problem vision that is as pure, and as radical, as any state executive has articulated in modern times.

Facing a deficit twice as large, Minnesota governor Mark Dayton is similarly taking a blowtorch to government spending, but he is almost unique among governors in asking that the rich also pay a hefty price tag to address financial problems that have been ignored for too long.

Walker’s agenda will almost certainly pass in some form. It’s hard to see how Dayton’s tax increases will get by the new Republican majorities in the Minnesota Legislature.

It’s too bad. We might’ve had a chance to see how two opposite approaches would play out. Would wealthy business owners have stampeded out of Minnesota for the greener pastures of Wisconsin, taking their jobs with them? Would Walker’s gutting of schools and presumably health care programs (if you want to address spending you gotta go there eventually) have made Wisconsin an undesirable destination for employers?

It’s too early to tell how it will all play out. But the two men could hardly be further apart in their ideas about what their states should look like.

A random thought

(That I’ve shared elsewhere…)

As a parent, there is one thing I’m quite sure of.

Public school teachers deserve more compensation, not less.

Meet the New Congress

Heard a really remarkable interview on MPR today. It was with a Congressman from Florida who chairs a transportation committee, John Mica. In the short interview, Mica, who came across as a reasonable and likable guy, really did a remarkable job of downplaying the entire tea party movement.

First, he backpedaled on earmarks, saying that earmarks were necessary to keep the President from just doing whatever he wanted. Fair enough, but pretty different from what the R's were saying the last couple of months.

Then he said about the health care reform repeal, and I'm trying to not paraphrase too much: A) I'm going to vote for it, B) it's not going to pass (presumably he meant it would fail in the Senate,) and C) I don't really want to repeal health care reform anyhow.

He then went on to throw up a smokescreen of false and misleading points about the new health care law, for instance saying that it's wrong to mandate health insurance coverage when people can't afford it (the reform law specifically addresses that issue to make it affordable through subsidies), and saying it's too expensive (when in fact repealing the health care reform law will add $100 billion to the deficit).

By this point, I've come to expect R's to peddle in misinformation, tho it was disappointing to hear it from a guy who seemed reasonable otherwise. But it was really incredible to hear the mental gymnastics required to say, "I'm going to vote for something I don't agree with because I know it will eventually fail."

I may disagree with him on the larger points, but on this, I hope he's not wrong.

AaaaOOOOOOOOGA! The horn blows for Childress.

It’s been easy to place blame on Brad Childress for the astonishing collapse of the Minnesota Vikings this season. Blame could also be shared by Brett Favre, an inconsistent-at best receiving corpse (hey, let’s just leave that typo in there, it fits), rapidly aging lines on both sides of the ball, and a secondary that has some very questionable pieces.

But the real culprit for the Vikings mess is owner Zygi Wilf. And he’d better figure out quickly that he needs to change the basic organizational structure of the team, or it’s likely to be in exactly the same place in a year or two. Or sooner.

Wilf did not have a lot of football know-how when he bought the team. And it has showed. With no strong general manager, Wilf pushed most of the power and decision-making to the head coach, and that has been a disaster.

Childress may actually be a pretty good coach on some levels. After all, he had two pretty good seasons with the Vikings and was one-increadibly-boneheaded-I-can’t-believe-Favre-did-that-again-does-he-have-a-death-wish interception away from taking them to the Superbowl.

But then the wheels came off this season. And why? One word: personnel. Childress went for the short-term glory of bringing in big stars like Allen, Favre, and infamously, Moss, rather than cultivating a deep bench of players who could step in if the starters faltered. And falter they have. This team peaked big time last year and clearly Childress had nowhere to go when players like Williams and Rice either got hurt or lost a step.

And just as a side note: what message does it send to the rest of your team when you go for a star player and tacitly tell the world he doesn’t have to play by the same rules as everyone else? Doesn’t have to come to training camp? Gets special treatment. Yeah, Farve’s a legend. But the psychology of this team was dysfunctional from the day Childress played chauffeur to Favre at the beginning of last season. It was festering all along, and the dam burst this year with Moss.

A strong general manager who could avoid the impulsive, go-for-broke decision-making that doomed Childress’ tenure is needed badly by the Vikings. I don’t know if Wilf will be able to figure out how to right this ship. But firing Childress is just the first, and easiest, step.

Waiting for the Great Leap Backwards

In thinking about tomorrow’s election, I was reminded of something someone said after George Bush’s popularity began to plummet early in his second term. “No matter who’s elected, they’re going to have such a mess to clean up they may not want the job,” the statement went.

That seems especially appropriate now. We had two elections that brought Dems to power, and people expected improvements, but the problems that had been building up over eight years—or longer—have turned out to be very tough to fix.

So here we are, poised to punish the Democrats for not fixing the mess Republicans made quickly enough, and putting Republicans back in power to mess things up a little more—or, more likely, to ensure more gridlock on the really tough problems.

Good job, American Democracy.

Hey, it’s not the end of the world. We’ve survived worse than handing power to a bunch of crazy tea-partiers who don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

I think.

Minnesota, the nice tea party state

I was talking to Al Franken the other day—OK, it was a few months ago and it was the one and only time I have spoken to the man—and he said something like, “you know, we have tea party types here, but they’re nice tea party types.”

And it does seem that the extremes of tea partiers are a little less extreme here. I mean, we do have the tea party queen in Michele Bachmann, but other than her the crazy gets dialed down quite a bit in Minnesota.

Bachmann is cruising against Taryl Clark in the 6^th district. Clark may make the race a bit tighter than former opponents, but I agree with those who say that in the year of the Republican Wave, Bachmann is not going down. Bad timing for Clark.

Tim Walz seems pretty secure down in the 1^st district, probably because he’s so likable and down to earth that the R’s can’t make much traction in arguing he’s part of the problem. The problem is supposed to be out-of-touch Washington insiders who don’t listen to their constituents, and Walz just doesn’t allow himself to get tagged with that. He is dogged in his attempts to stay tuned in with his voters, even if he doesn’t always take the most popular stance.

It is a sign of the times that even Jim Oberstar up in the 8^th district is seeing a challenge, but that seems to be the case with his race against Chip Cravaack. Some internal polls released by the Cravaack camp suggest he was within a point or two of Oberstar. But like Derek Wallbank, I really doubt the underdog can pull this off. I was just up on the North Shore and there can be no doubt that Oberstar brings home the bacon to his district. I have never seen nicer roads than the county highways north of Duluth. I mean, they were amazing. I felt like I was in a car commercial. Of course, some might say that proves that Oberstar is a pork-addled Washington insider, but somehow I doubt he’s going to lose tomorrow. If I’m wrong, it is REALLY going to be a long night for Dems.

Those are the closest congressional races. And except maybe for Walz, I would expect that they end up not being that close.

The governor’s race looks like it will be tight to the end. I have to give credit to Mark Dayton. Despite being far from the smoothest public speaker, despite his rather risky stance on raising taxes on high earners, despite his less-than-stellar track record in office, he has managed to run an efficient and effective campaign. He hasn’t made a major mistake, as Hatch did four years ago.

Tom Emmer also deserves credit. Early in the race, it looked like he would implode and lose his support to the more moderate Independence Party candidate, Tom Horner. But Emmer shored up his base, stopped shooting himself in the foot, and turned on his considerable charm and enthusiasm to make a close race of it. As others have pointed out, when it comes to Minnesota, if the R’s and D’s both turn out the base, the D’s just have the numbers, so they win. That will probably happen tomorrow.

Horner has to be disappointed that he didn’t make more headway with voters. I think a lot of political observers thought that policy-wise, he was the most articulate and made the most sense. You could say he “won” a lot of the 472 debates (a mild exaggeration of the numbers there)

From my viewpoint as someone observing the health care industry, it surprised me that Horner pulled in the endorsement of both the Minnesota Medical Association (MMA) and the Minnesota Hospital Association. When that happened, I thought he might actually have a chance to pull in a lot of more moderate voters. But he’s never come close to cracking 20 percent and making this a real 3-way race.

What that tells us, I think, is that even in Minnesota, where Jesse Ventura once shocked the world, people are comfortable with our two-party system. For all the talk about tea parties and independent voters, we’re still a red and blue electorate.

Wisconsin Swings Back

A state that had been trending blue is going to reverse itself tomorrow, if the polls are correct. Russ Feingold, a great independent/progressive voice and one of the most principled people in the Senate, will lose to ultra-pro-business newcomer Ron Johnson. Anti-government crusader Scott Walker will trounce Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett.

Progressives will mourn the loss of Feingold, but Scott Walker’s win is a real nightmare for the people of Wisconsin. He is a true believer in downsizing government to the point where it basically ceases to function, as he has proven in his role as county executive for Milwaukee County. Expect Wisconsin’s next governor to be extremely partisan in fighting against health care reform, nixing mass transit projects, slashing education, etc. As George Bush so ably did, Walker believes government can do no good and is dead set on proving it.

Johnson on the other hand will have little power and less know-how, at least to start. He won’t help with much but other than being an R vote, probably can’t do too much harm.

*cough* dusty in here... somebody open a window...

So yeah, I'm firing up the blog now that we're a month away from another big election.

Hopefully it will cut down on me posting an annoying amount of political stuff on FB. I hope so anyhow. If I could keep it to posting, say, 3 or 4 things a day there, that would be good...

My first shockingly radical political thought has to do with health care reform, of course. I'm on this mailing list of a bunch of cranky doctors, most of whom are strongly opposed to the health care reform law. Oh, there are a few hippies who think it's a good thing to address the issue of millions of uninsured, but many of these docs are just aghast that the government is going to take some steps that might affect their income--ooops, sorry, interfere with the doctor/patient relationship.

What really strikes me is not that a bunch of older physicians who are set in their ways and are quite comfortable with the system as it is are opposing change. What strikes me is that after spending 30-plus years complaining about health insurers and how they are the source of all evil in the world, many of these docs now have turned around and are defending health insurance companies against the ravages of government-controlled health reforms. It really is a head-spinning turn of events.

Mothballs

Yeah, it's become pretty obvious that I can't keep up with the ole' blog. My last post was in March??? Ouch.

Facebook is just a much more immediate and inclusive medium. Even though in theory anyone in the whole wide web can come here to ML, that's not the way it works out. With FB, you know you've got an audience, though you give up some things, such as privacy to some extent.

On the other hand, lots of folks are not interested in political debate on FB, and I probably am quite annoying to them. But some are. It's just not practical to try to drag them to this blog and expect them to make it a destination, especially when I can't even do that myself on a regular basis.

And the truth is, Ezra Klein and Josh Marshall say everything I would say, and more, much better than I could say it. So linking to them is simply more efficient.

I'm not closing the account. There's an election this fall (and unless Obama triggers the Rapture, more to come) and it will probably make sense to fire this site up then, when I have more to write about.

Until then, see you on FB!

PS: I'm also still blogging on MySpace, but that's pretty much just about music stuff.

Good night, everybody, everywhere. Goodnight...

“This is what change looks like”

A few months into the Obama presidency, a liberal friend tried to pin me down on my position on health care reform. Now, I’m not really hard to pin down—I support reform. I’ve been a pretty loud advocate for it. But he wanted to know my opinion on the public option, a measure he saw as essential. I was reluctant to take a militant position on the public option, not because I didn’t see it as a good idea (I do) but because I didn’t see it as the silver bullet of health care reform.

About the same time, I was arguing with conservative friend who thought that the Democrats were just trying to create a huge entitlement program for all the unemployed people, in effect (he argued) “buying” their vote with the currency of health care. I replied that health care reform isn’t about free goodies: it’s about making all of us more economically secure, regardless of whether we’re employed or not.

With such a contentious, divisive issue, I found myself again and again drawing on my experience with people who are actually in the health care industry. I’ve been watching and listening for more than ten years as industry people talked about reform. What I hear over and over again is that our health care system is broken, unsustainable, heading for disaster. I hear words like “catastrophe” and “crisis.”

Year after year, I’ve heard people talk about the failures of our system. And it was more than talk. The doctors and health system people—as well as many the insurance side, knew all too well how real lives were being damaged by the lack of access to health care. They saw the price people paid for being uninsured. We heard those stories over and over again. But when the speech or the conference was over, everyone would go their way, until the next conference or speech.

There just wasn’t enough consensus on how to fix the problem. And I frankly questioned how we ever would find consensus, given the entrenched positions of people, not only politicially, but from their different places as stakeholders in the industry.

One of the really remarkable things about this health reform campaign of the last year was how Obama was able to get industry players on board. The American Medical Association. The drug companies. AARP (representing the Medicare constituency). Even the health plans, though generally opposed, were muted in their criticism because they simply could not make the argument change was not needed.

You can certainly turn that around and say that Obama has sold out to the special interests. But the bottom line is that it would be impossible to bring about reform without the industry being part of the pro-reform team. Unless, of course, it was done with as a kind of top-heavy, big government takeover of health care—outlawing private insurance and replacing it with a government system, for example. In this political climate, who thinks that would have worked?

There were many times during this process I thought health care reform was dead. But time proved me wrong. Just as it has proven Obama right. This is what change looks like. It’s a long, hard, contentious process, and even when you get to the “end” there’s much more to do.

People voted for change in 2008. They voted for health care reform—it was a major campaign issue. They voted for a new approach to our economy and our politics. It’s been a long, hard, contentious battle for those things so far. But we have a president who is delivering on his promises.

And we have passed health care reform in the United States.

“Help Me, ObiWan-AG, You’re My Only Hope”

I’d say the chances of a court challenge overturning health care reform is just slightly less likely than Leia and friends blowing up the Death Star. And remember, folks, that was Hollywood.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the individual mandate (originally a Republican idea) is unconstitutional. Blah blah, Commerce Clause, 10th Amendment, woof woof. If people don’t choose to buy insurance, they’re not part of commerce, therefore, they can’t be forced to be part of the system. This ignores the fact that a) everybody gets sick sometime and 2) they will then access the system, which has real costs, presto, commerce!

This Pioneer Press article is one of many to throw cold water on that idea. Sure, the Supreme Court has been very activist lately, often throwing out decades of precedent to pursue their conservative vision of America, but it seems unlikely they would legislate this openly from the bench. And if they did find the individual mandate unconstitutional, there’s a quick fix: change it so it’s not a mandate—
just make it really hard to refuse.

Here’s part of the PriPress article:

“[The Supreme Court ruled] that staying out of the marijuana market rather than participating in it does affect commerce (even if the market is illegal). Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist sided with Raich, but the court's liberal wing prevailed, even winning over conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

‘Raich seemed to stem the Rehnquist court's rollback of Congress' Commerce Clause power. And Justice Scalia went along with that, using reasoning that arguably expands Congress' reach,’ said Mehmet Konar-Steenberg, an associate professor at William Mitchell College of the Law. ‘So I don't know how much stomach there is at the Supreme Court right now to try to revive this line of cases.’

Furthermore, the links between health care and commerce are clearer, Konar-Steenberg said, pointing out — as others have — that many already purchase insurance and that those who don't have their emergency room bills picked up by everyone else. ‘These don't strike me as attenuated links to interstate commerce,’ Konar-Steenberg said.”

Yes, politicians, have been known to make deals before. You didn’t know that? Really?

I recently heard from a friend who was shocked, shocked to find that Democrats were making deals and twisting arms to pass health care reform. She insisted that this was far worse than anything that had ever gone on before. Well, I don’t know, but I suspect it wasn’t worse than this:

“A 15-minute vote was scheduled, and at the end of 15 minutes, the Democrats had won. The Republican leadership froze the clock for three hours while they desperately whipped defectors. This had never been done before. The closest was a 15-minute extension in 1987 that then-congressman Dick Cheney called “the most arrogant, heavy-handed abuse of power I’ve ever seen in the 10 years that I’ve been here.”

Tom DeLay bribed Rep. Nick Smith to vote for the legislation, using the political future of Smith's son for leverage. DeLay was later reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee.

The leadership told Rep. Jim DeMint that they would cut off funding for his Senate race in South Carolina if he didn't vote for the bill.

The chief actuary of Medicare, Rick Foster, had scored the legislation as costing more than $500 billion. The Bush administration suppressed his report, in a move the Government Accounting Office later judged ‘illegal.’”

(Read the whole thing, it’s pretty amazing.)

RIP Alex Chilton

On a non-political note... I named this blog Mod Lang after the Big Star song, thinking that it would be a place to talk about culture more than politics. Well, it hasn't turned out that way, but just the same, I feel I should note the passing of Alex Chilton, who along with Chris Bell founded Big Star.

I was introduced to the music of Alex Chilton and Big Star by Bob Richert, a record store owner and small-label enterpreneur in Bloomington, IN, in the spring of 1981. It was only fitting, then, that I met Alex Chilton in that same small college town a few years later.

I was in town, almost on a whim, to visit a girl. (Of course) I found out that Chilton was playing that weekend and decided to go see him. Since I had been doing some writing for a small music publication in Milwaukee, I decided to push my luck and see if I could get an interview.

Chilton said sure. A couple hours before his show, I met him in the dressing room and we talked about his career and music. I have the article, buried somewhere in my files, but I was a young an clumsy interviewer then, and I'm sure it doesn't say anything that Chilton fans haven't already heard.

He was cynical about the music business. He was proud of his recent work, which at that time consisted of minimalist solo albums (Feudalist Tarts was probably his latest or about to come out at that time.) --almost to the point of being dismissive of his Big Star work. Probably at that time he was sick of being asked about Big Star, which for all its critical acclaim, had left him nearly penniless.

For all his sour feelings for the music business, he was generous with his time and even asked if I wanted a joint. I'm not sure it helped my standing with him that I declined, but I'm sure it was a good idea I stayed clear-headed for the interview.

After the interview, Chilton played to maybe two dozen people in a no-frills club called Second Story. He played solo and included many choices that I found curious at the time, including old R and B standards and the Italian pop classic Volare (which was a staple for him for many years). Big Star songs were few and far between. But Chilton was following his muse, which he had doggedly done since leaving the Box Tops, and he clearly wasn't interested in reliving his pop-rock legacy.

At the end of the interview, I asked something along the lines of, since he was a hero to many budding songwriters, did he have any advice for them? He looked me in the eye. "Yeah, " he said. "Go to law school."

He was funny, he was cynical, he was dark, and he was light. He was, as he once wrote, "a true heart." He stayed true to his music and himself, even when that wasn't the smartest or easiest call. But he didn't let go of that vision. He held on, and so many times, his music has helped me to do the same.

Thanks for the interview, Alex. And everything.

From now on, let's say we call those "Jim DeMint boots"

Called it.

A couple of days ago, I thought of posting a Facebook status line saying, "COUNTDOWN TO SOCIALISM!!!"

Just as a snarky jab at my conservative friends who have been hyperventilating about this health care reform thing.

Then I thought, nah, let's be a little more gracious than that.

But lo and behold, someone's doing it for reals. "GOVERNMENT HEALTH CARE TAKEOVER IN: 12:23:43" reads prominent banner ads on the Washington Post website. "You Can Stop Obamacare: Act Now!" the ad continues. And "Paid for by the Republican Congressional Committee."

Keeping up the bullshit 'til the bitter end.

A brief history of health care reform in the US

Democrats: "We need health care reform. Let's do Plan A."
Republicans: "We don't like Plan A. We want Plan B."
(TEN YEAR PAUSE)
Democrats: "OK, we'll do Plan B."
Republicans: "No, we want Plan C."
(TEN YEAR PAUSE)
Democrats: "OK, Plan C, then."
Republicans: "Plan C is socialism. We want Plan D."
Democrats: "We're starting to think you're not serious about this."