E.Z. Million, Norman's Most Interesting (-ly Named) Politician, Dies

Oh, E.Z. Million, never could you manage to proclaim
An electoral victory due to a football game.
A single issue politician rarely gets to claim
A democratic victory to carry him to fame.
We'll all fondly remember every Fall when you'd exclaim
That it was so unfair to go to Texas for this game.
And when we'd read your interviews, our thoughts were all the same:
"But seriously, sir, is that your honest Christian name?"

Health Care Reform - It's Gonna Suck

…Health care has been moving target for republicans …. the Democrats will shift, thinking they have something that the Republicans will go for, and then the Republicans will shift further. And [the Republicans] make a big deal about something that distracts and frightens the voters like those so-called death panels, then the Democrats drop that and Republicans find something else to object to.

Cokie Roberts, NPR’s Morning Edition, August 17, 2009.

Health care reform, as I want it (legitimate socialized medicine, with doctors employed by the government) has always been doomed. Health care reform, as I would accept it (mandatory single-payer government baseline insurance with plenty of room for supplemental insurance policies) has also been doomed for a long time. But it's looking more and more like health care reform, as the President originally wanted it (public "option" insurance) will also be doomed. If a final bill makes it all the way through both chambers of Congress this year, that bill would be generously described as "watered-down" and more accurately described as "gutted". Both Democrats and Republicans will claim victory, both for the actual passage of the bill and for the holes shot into it. Bipartisanship in action.

But even I can't dismiss all of the points that have been made by conservative analysts in the media over the last month. One in particular that I've heard only a couple of times is this: you can't expect to have a government option on health care, or provide semi-universal coverage, without raising taxes. This is true. For any meaningful reform to take place, it's going to take a lot more efficiencies than just computerizing medical records. A lot of inefficiency comes from the complicated method of filing and paying insurance claims, and fighting with insurance adjusters for money, which is mostly done by people in the doctor's office. Like any other marketplace, health care works more efficiently when there isn't market friction caused by complicated rules, policies, procedures, and differences in plans; and substantial savings could be derived by simplifying the terms of all insurance plans, or of course by having a baseline plan for which the rules about what is covered and what isn't are widely known and accepted (socializing medicine, for instance). But the inefficiency involved is paid for by the private marketplace; no public savings could be achieved by such a reform. It would benefit society as a whole, but at an expense to government (and therefore to taxpayers). And yet no Democrat wants to admit this.

Another Republican-derived point is that it would be unfair to the upper 5% of income earners to be taxed to pay for a service that gets used entirely by the lower 95% of income earners. I sort of agree with this. I understand progressive taxation, but on a government program as expensive as a proposed Medicare-for-all, I would want it to be paid for like Social Security is now (or for that matter, like Medicare is now); that is, as a social contract with everybody so that everybody pays a little bit and everybody gets to use the service. I'm saying I'd be in favor of tax increases on everyone if I got to have a medical insurance program that everyone got to use. Mr. Obama, please raise my taxes.

As usual, the problem with having politicians in charge of social programs is that politicians play politics all the time, and only consider the good of society if the good of society is popular at the moment. What's popular at the moment is views from "Main Street, America" of people angry about the government paying for things they can't afford, and are feeling like outsiders, which pays dividends for the Republican congressmen who believe they too are outsiders. The lock-step-feel of Congressional Republicans is back now that they've been put back into their comfortable roles as outsiders from beyond the Beltway. And as the Obama administration wastes more and more time trying to get a weak health care bill passed, the Republicans may use the time to get another Newt Gingrich-like movement going.

East Versus West: the Media Wars

"No one has the right to insult the president, and they did it. And this is a crime. The person who insulted the president should be punished, and the punishment is jail. ... Such insults and accusations against the government are a return to Hitler's methods, to repeat lies and accusations ... until everyone believes those lies."

Reuters quotes Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking to supporters outside Tehran's Sharif University.

I think this is interesting, and not just because the Holocaust-denier Ahmadinejad is using Hitler as an example of wrong. I think it's interesting because Ahmadinejad makes certain inescapable points about the Western media's coverage of the riots in Iran. And that is, they are biased. They are biased towards our Western ideals of basic universal human rights such as the freedom of expression.

It is a fact that journalists from the West, including CNN and all the cable news media, have made it a habit now to broadcast unconfirmed rumors and opinions from blogs that may or may not be located in Tehran. I mean, you can't trust Twitter users at all, and yet the media (having no other choice than to report from their outposts in foreign countries) has reported unconfirmed reports straight off the internet as fact, simply because they fit in with our Western perception of Iran. The Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad always make this diatribe about the biased coverage of the Western media, but they're completely right. I mean, the western media is going to sniff out anything that seems revolutionary. They interview so-called experts who talk about the people's desire for reform of the system even though these experts often are Iranian ex-pats teaching at American Universities, which is a demographic that obviously favors reform. The media always emphasizes the oppressed over the oppressors in Iran, especially women, but of course we base our definition of oppression as curtailing freedom of expression (speech, dress), which is an individual freedom that we in the West recognize instantly when it is taken away by the government.

Okay, having said that, of course no nation in the West is going to kick out all foreign journalists, imprison peaceable dissidents, and use the chant "DEATH TO IRAN" as an official state policy. Iran is run by oppressors who mask their tyranny of human rights behind a shroud of oppressive religious dogma. But you know, for having two weeks of riots in a country whose leaders are reportedly without scrupules, there have been shockingly few deaths, as in, maybe only in the dozens. A couple of orders of magnitude less than the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989. So far.

You Can Tell People Hate Democrats Because More Senators Are Becoming Democrats

From Oklahoma's senior Senator Jim Inhofe:

There is no evidence more visible that the American people are already rebelling against the far-left agenda than Senator Arlen Specter switching parties to become a Democrat. He did this for one reason, and that is his advisers told him he couldn’t retain his Senate seat as a Republican. In other words, the same people who supported Senator Specter six years ago have soundly rejected him today.

What? A moderate Republican shifts leftward and this is an indication that his constituency has shifted rightward? Arlen Specter switched parties because the formerly conservative moderates are now voting Democrats into office, leaving behind a Republican party out of touch with Pennsylvania values.

Speaking of values, this quote was found in a NY Times opinion-almalgamator on the subject of gays serving openly in the military. Inhofe is one of several contributors to confuse being openly gay with having sex in front of everyone non-stop.

The Oklahoma State Legislature is Filled with Morons! Aargh!

The Republican-dominated Oklahoma state legislature has accomplished the following tasks this legislative session:

Hating on the Flaming Lips: the innocuous resolution declaring the Flaming Lips' song "Do You Realize??" as the official state song (based on an online poll) was not passed by the state house of representatives because some conservatives didn't like the fact that one of the band members wore a red t-shirt with a hammer and sickle symbol to the state senate chambers for the ceremonial passage of the bill there (04/23/2009)

Wasting time trying to deny access to the courts: Governor Brad Henry had to veto a bill that would require plaintiffs to get a certificate of merit from a "qualified expert". This would hinder legitimate lawsuits, could cost up to $12,000 by some estimates, and was determined to be unconstitutional by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in 2006. The same bill (with the same exact wording) was vetoed by Brad Henry last year too, for the same reasons. (04/24/2009)

Declaring sovereignty for Oklahoma while accusing U.S. leaders of violating the U.S. Constitution: Governor Brad Henry had to veto this one too. The measure, which passed by a huge margin in the House, also would have required Oklahoma to refuse and return its stimulus money. (04/24/2009)

Denying insurance coverage to autistic kids ... twice: Well, making huge profits is more important than providing the service for which people pay insurance companies money. (02/03/2009 & 04/28/2009)

Voted to erect a 10-Commandments monument on the grounds of the State Capitol: Overwhelmingly passed, I might add.

Placed restrictions on voting in elections: Bad Brad vetoed a voter-ID bill. Immediately afterwards, before the ink dried from the governor's veto stamp, election fraud became rampant. I myself voted in some school board elections outside of my district, just for yucks. I make sure to carry a lot of fake moustaches and beards with me too, just so I can revisit the same precinct over and over again. "Sure, my name is Rita Sanchez! Prove I'm not!"

Fox News: Defenders of Right Wing Extremism

Apparently conservatives are steaming mad at Janet Napolitano. The Homeland Security Secretary has not withdrawn the report on rightwing extremism released April 9th, nor did she disagree with its findings. The part of the report that most angers Fox News and talk radio personalities is the following footnote:

Returning veterans possess combat skills and experience that are attractive to rightwing extremists. DHS/I&A is concerned that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to boost their violent capabilities.

Fox News has sounded the horns of umbrage based primarily on this statement, and they have encouraged conservatives to talk it up like it accuses all veterans of terrorism. Republican senators and representatives around the country have issued many statements chastising Napolitano and the DHS for a failure to apologize and withdraw the report. And on the heels of a successful series of tax day tea party rallies (even though, as Paul Krugman notes, they did start unconventionally from the top down, their attendance by throngs of people makes them a success), Fox News has learned that it can bolster its role as red America's megaphone, a role that necessarily takes it even farther away from the realm of objective journalism.

But there are several layers of obvious hypocrisy on this issue. First of all, at no point does the DHS report state that veterans should be or will be monitored like terrorism cells. Many conservative talking heads are insinuating that this is a likely possibility in order to drive the perception that the Obama administration is anti-soldier. This is a complete lie, and it is vile to continue misleading people in this way. Secondly, it's hard to argue that the findings of the entire DHS report are not valid. The report cites evidence that veterans have been recruited in the past to rightwing extremist groups. Much of the report notes the similarity of our current economic and political climate to the last time rightwing extremism was on the rise, which was in the early 1990s. It would be foolish to ignore rightwing extremism's affinity for veterans, just as it would be foolish to ignore Al-Shabaab's affinity for Somali-American men from Minnesota.

Thirdly, the report was not written by or even commissioned by Janet Napolitano or the Obama administration. The Bush administration got the ball rolling on the report, and like so many economic summaries or CIA summaries, this Homeland Security summary took time to develop. Conservatives are suggesting that the Obama administration only started this report as a kind of grudge against conservatives and the military, when in fact the Obama administration didn't even commission it.

Fourthly, it wasn't even the only report to be developed and released by DHS. There is a similar report that looks at the threats from leftwing extremism, which is mostly concerned with cyber-terrorism and protesters of the type found at economic summits. Conservatives rarely mention this report, which claims that leftwing extremists may "encourage recruitment of individuals with sophisticated cyber skills into their trusted circles." I don't see code monkeys (or even Iphone owners)erupting en masse with umbrage at the Department of Homeland Security.

Expect to see more mischaracterizations of minor reports in the coming years as Fox News and others start to regain their swagger by relearning how to manipulate large groups of people who don't know any better.

The Most Profitable Banking Practice

While reading Eliot Spitzer's continuing effort to excoriate Goldman Sachs over their involvement in the AIG bailout, I came across a sentence that precisely sums up my feelings towards these bailouts that started with Henry Paulson and George W. Bush and is continuing with Tim Geithner and Barack Obama.

What continues to be fundamentally disappointing is that the "too big to fail" institutions continue to absorb enormous sums of taxpayer support without either demonstrating the genuine need for such support or altering their behavior after receiving it.

As I say every time I post something about this subject, I can't stand bailouts. But I understand the desire by the federal government to save the economy because it saves peoples jobs and keeps smaller businesses from being turned into debris from any potential financial supernova caused by the explosion of a big bank. This continues to be the rationale given for saving big corporate institutions that claim to be doing poorly.

But even after trillions now in federal help to giant private industries, credit is still tight, and unemployment continues to grow. Why have their business practices not changed? Because they don't have to. The bailout money has been one no-strings-attached handout after another, because our government still trusts the experience and decision-making ability of existing CEO's to deliver the most efficient outcome. But it's not in the interest of the powerful executive to create a better economy for everyone; it's only in his interest to make money for his company. And about the most efficient way to generate skrill is not to spur innovation or streamline production but rather to stick your hand out in Washington D.C. and beg. Goldman Sachs just made $10 billion in just one day, October 3, 2008, when the Troubled Asset Relief Program was signed into law. The only work put into that was done by whoever was in charge of financial reporting. Screw investment banking. The real money's in bailouts.

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A note on honest math: http://xkcd.com/558/