Paul Ryan brings back 'death panels'

Paul Ryan, putting the profit incentive back in death panels.Paul Ryan hasn't actually uttered the words "death panel," probably because he doesn't want to sound like 2008's Republican vice presidential candidate, but he's fearmongering on death panels, just the same.

Ryan?s attacks on the health law?s Independent Payment Advisory Board ? a centerpiece of his campaign event with Mitt Romney in Manchester, N. H., Monday ? are ripped from the pages of the playbook Republicans used during the health reform debate. Sarah Palin stirred up the opposition by warning of ?death panels,? and other Republicans charged that the entire law would put government bureaucrats between patients and their doctors.

Now, Ryan is bringing that rhetoric back by warning voters of the dangers of the ?rationing board.? [...]

Obama ?puts this new board of 15 unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats that he?s about to appoint, who are required to cut Medicare every year in ways that will clearly lead to denied care for current seniors,? Ryan said at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire on Monday.

Clearly, Paul Ryan believes insurance companies should be in charge of rationing care to seniors, not a board that is prohibited by law from denying or rationing health care. The IPAB's job is to determine procedures and treatments that are both health effective and cost effective. The board, by the way, hasn't even been convened yet, nor has President Obama nominated anyone. Since the board members have to be approved by the senate, that's not going to happen anytime soon.

But what Ryan and Romney want to do, of course, is privatize Medicare. They want insurance company bureaucrats to be in charge of making the decisions about what treatment seniors do or do not get, and how much they have to pay for it. Their vouchers aren't going to stretch very far in a health insurance system that won't have any limits on it. After all, if a Romney/Ryan team repeals the Affordable Care Act, health insurers will be free to charge as much as they want and to deny coverage to anyone they don't want.

There's your death panel.

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Still no reason for Akin to drop out of the race

Todd Akin (R-Dumbfuckistan)I wrote yesterday that it would be perfectly rational for Todd Akin to stay in the Missouri Senate race. Unlike crazy unelectable Republican Senate nominees like Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O'Donnell in Delaware, and Ken Buck in Colorado, Akin has the benefit of running in Missouri?a red state that is getting redder, with one of the largest concentrations of white evangelicals in the country. I also guessed that Akin remained the frontrunner given his state's demographics.

Yesterday's snap poll from PPP confirmed those guesses?Akin retains a one-point lead over deeply unpopular incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, not much different than the state of the race in late May. The numbers certainly show a massive erosion in McCaskill's deficit, no doubt. But fact is, Akin still leads (however marginally) after suffering the wrath of the entire political and media establishment.  

If polling showed him down 10-15 points, there would be no electoral rationale for him to continue his race. But he can win this. Why else would he give it up after a year of hard campaigning? Not when he's this close to the goal.

Let's put it this way: If he drops out, he has zero chance of becoming a U.S. senator. If he stays in, he has a good chance.

So what's left, the money? The NRSC and Karl Rove's Crossroads have promised to quit the state of Akin stays in. But the GOP's hopes for a majority run through Missouri. There's not much of a path without knocking off McCaskill.

In other words, the money will be there. As much outrage and disgust as they're dishing at the moment, they'll quietly open up the checkbook so long as the race remains deadlocked, and Akin promises them one seat closer to the majority.

If I'm Akin, I call their bluff and stay in. It's the rational thing to do.

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Miniter's Bin Laden "Bombshell" Is Inaccurate By
A Full Year

The "blockbuster" allegation from Richard Miniter's new book, Leading From Behind, is that President Obama dithered and vacillated when it came to authorizing the mission that led to the May 2011 death of Osama bin Laden. As Miniter puts it on page 117, rather than acting decisively "it took the president almost two years to make a decision to act" after intelligence agencies identified "bin Laden's hideout in the first few months of the Obama administration." There is, however, a fatal flaw in Miniter's allegation: he's off by a full year. To characterize Obama as having delayed action, Miniter describes intelligence activities that happened in 2010 as having occurred in 2009, leading him to repeatedly contradict his own timeline of events.

Media Matters previously pointed out the significant problems with Miniter's charge that Obama canceled three times the operation to kill Bin Laden -- specifically that on the dates Obama was alleged to have canceled the "mission," there wasn't yet a "mission" to cancel. Miniter's allegations are being treated credulously by conservative media outlets: Miniter appeared on Fox & Friends this morning to promote the book, and his claims about the Bin Laden raid received a New York Post write-up.

According to reported accounts of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, in 2009 and 2010 the intelligence community ramped up its efforts to track down the terrorist leader, leading to a key moment in August 2010 when intelligence officers tracked Bin Laden's courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, entering Bin Laden's walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. As the New Yorker's deeply reported blow-by-blow of the hunt put it:

In August, 2010, Panetta returned to the White House with better news. C.I.A. analysts believed that they had pinpointed bin Laden's courier, a man in his early thirties named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Kuwaiti drove a white S.U.V. whose spare-tire cover was emblazoned with an image of a white rhino. The C.I.A. began tracking the vehicle. One day, a satellite captured images of the S.U.V. pulling into a large concrete compound in Abbottabad.

For reasons that aren't clear, Miniter describes this moment as happening in 2009:

A single phone call gave al-Kuwaiti away in August 2009.¹⁴ It lasted less than a minute, but the spy satellites parked over Pakistan intercepted and recorded the call. It was logged into the National Security Agency's enormous databases. A keyword search alerted intelligence analysts. Soon America's electronic sleuths were tracking al-Kuwaiti through his mobile phone. A technical team mapped the locations of every phone al-Kuwaiti made a call to or received a call from. It showed red dots all over Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A covert ground team eventually spotted al-Kuwaiti himself in the Bilal Town section of Abbottabad, a prosperous enclave north of Pakistan's capital city of Islamabad. He liked to roam the busy streets of Abbottabad in a white sport-utility vehicle, with a distinctive red rhino emblazoned on its spare tire cover. It made him easy to follow.

Within weeks al-Kuwaiti was tracked repeatedly entering and exiting a mysterious walled compound. [Leading from Behind, pp 131-132]

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"You Didn't Build That": How Fox News Crafted The
GOP's Convention Theme

After weeks of Fox News pushing the dishonest "you didn't build that" attack on President Obama, the Republican National Convention will reportedly adopt the Fox News lie by adopting "We Built This" as a convention theme. Independent fact checkers have said this line of attack is dishonest.

President Obama: Public Infrastructure Contributes To Business Success

Obama: Individual Drive, Infrastructure, Teachers Contribute To Small Business Success.  During a July 13 speech in Roanoke, VA, Obama touted the role infrastructure and education, in addition to individual drive, plays in the success of business owners:

OBAMA: [L]ook, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.  You didn't get there on your own.  I'm always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there.  It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.  Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. 

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.  There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.  Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.  Somebody invested in roads and bridges.  If you've got a business -- you didn't build that.  Somebody else made that happen.  The Internet didn't get invented on its own.  Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. 

The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.  There are some things, just like fighting fires, we don't do on our own.  I mean, imagine if everybody had their own fire service.  That would be a hard way to organize fighting fires.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together.  That's how we funded the GI Bill.  That's how we created the middle class.  That's how we built the Golden Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam.  That's how we invented the Internet.  That's how we sent a man to the moon.  We rise or fall together as one nation and as one people, and that's the reason I'm running for President -- because I still believe in that idea.  You're not on your own, we're in this together. [WhiteHouse.gov, 7/13/12]

Fox Distorted Obama's Comments To Manufacture Outrage Over "You Didn't Build That"

Fox & Friends Deceptively Edited Obama's Comments On Small Business. Fox News deceptively edited Obama's remarks to make it seem as though he was claiming that small business owners do not deserve any credit for their own success. Obama's actual remarks made clear that he attributed the success of businesses to both the individual drive of business owners and to the benefits provided by influences such as great teachers, and government-created infrastructure. [Media Matters, 7/16/12]

Within Two Days, Fox Spent More Than Two Hours Of Airtime On "You Didn't Build That" Lie. In the two days that followed Fox's initial misrepresentation of Obama's remarks, the network devoted 42 segments and more than two hours of airtime to misrepresenting Obama's "you didn't build that" remarks.  [Media Matters, 7/18/12]

Rupert Murdoch Endorsed The Falsehood On Twitter. In a post to his Twitter account, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch wrote: "Yesterday Obama went off script, showed real self ie government omnipotent, individuals secondary. Must be big damage." [Media Matters, 7/19/12]

Fox Attacked Nonpartisan Journalists For Ignoring The Made-Up Story. Fox blasted mainstream media outlets for not covering Obama's remarks for four days, despite the fact that the remarks were ripped out of context. [Media Matters, 7/19/12]

Fox & Friends Tried To Rebut Charge That Video Was Deceptively Edited With New Deceptively Edited Video. Fox & Friends subsequently offered to rebut assertions that they had misrepresented Obama by showing the context of Obama's remarks. But the new clip that Fox & Friends played still omitted the relevant context. [Media Matters, 7/26/12]          

Fox Hosted Karl Rove And His New Anti-Obama Attack Ad Repeating "Didn't Build That" Falsehood. Karl Rove produced an ad based on the misrepresentation of Obama's remarks and then touted that ad on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor. [Media Matters, 7/25/12]

Romney Repeated The Fox Narrative

Mitt Romney Repeated Fox's "You Didn't Build That" Distortion. The day after Fox deceptively edited Obama's remarks, Romney repeated the distortion and characterized it as "insulting to every entrepreneur, every innovator in America, and it's wrong."  [Media Matters, 7/17/12]

Romney Campaign Adopted The "You Didn't Build That" Distortion As A Major Part Of Its Campaign. The Romney campaign has put out press releases and television ads touting small business owners telling Obama that they did build their businesses. [MittRomney.com, 7/30/12; Breitbart.com, 7/30/12]

Independent Fact-Checkers Have Debunked The "You Didn't Build That" Narrative

Wash. Post's Kessler: "Focusing On One Ill-Phrased Sentence" Amounts To "Pretend[ing] That Obama Is Talking About Something Different."  The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler criticized the Romney campaign for distorting Obama's comments in an attack ad:

Obama certainly could take from lessons from [Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth] Warren or [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt on how to frame this argument in a way that is less susceptible for quote-snipping. And Romney certainly could answer Obama's argument by engaging in a serious discussion about whether the wealthy should pay much more in taxes as a matter of social good and equity. That would be grounds for an elevated, interesting and important debate.

But instead, by focusing on one ill-phrased sentence, Romney and his campaign have decided to pretend that Obama is talking about something different -- and then further extrapolated it so that it becomes ridiculous. That's not very original at all. [The Washington Post, 7/23/12]

FactCheck.org: "Taking Snippets Of" Obama's Speech "Ignores The Larger Context Of The President's Meaning." A FactCheck.org analysis criticized efforts to take Obama's comments out of context to distort the meaning:

There's no question Obama inartfully phrased those two sentences, but it's clear from the context what the president was talking about. He spoke of government -- including government-funded education, infrastructure and research -- assisting businesses to make what he called "this unbelievable American system that we have."

In summary, he said: "The point is ... that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

[...]

We don't know what the president had in mind when he uttered those words, and his intent is not clear. Regardless, our conclusion is the same: Taking snippets of his speech ignores the larger context of the president's meaning that a business owner does not become successful "on your own." [FactCheck.org, 7/23/12]

PolitiFact.com: "When You Read The Full Text Of [Obama's] Remarks, That Quote Distorts The Meaning Of Obama's Claim." A July 25 post to the Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact.com determined that it was false to use a portion of Obama's comments to accuse him of denigrating business owners:

In this item, we'll rate the claim that Obama was saying success "is the result of government," not "hard-working people," when he said, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen."

In case you didn't catch it the first 5,000 times the snippet ran on cable, yes, those words were uttered by Obama.

But as you can see when you read the full text of his remarks, that quote distorts the meaning of Obama's claim.

[...]

We believe, as do our friends at FactCheck.org and the Washington Post Fact Checker, that Romney has seriously distorted Obama's comments.

Romney cherry-picked a quote that made it sound like Obama was dismissive of businesses when in fact he was making a point that success comes from the combination of "individual initiative" and the fact that "we do things together." [PolitiFact.com, 7/25/12]

AP Fact Check: Republicans Have Taken Obama "Out Of Context." An August 12 AP Fact Check article noted that the "you didn't build that" attacks took Obama "out of context":

RYAN: "I'm proud to stand with a man who understands what it takes to foster job creation in our economy, someone who knows from experience, that if you have a small business -- you did build that."

THE FACTS: Ryan, like Romney and scores of Republicans in recent weeks, has used comments Obama made at July 13 campaign appearance in Virginia against him. But the rhetorical jab takes Obama out of context. Republicans have seized on only part of Obama's quote -- "If you've got a business, you didn't build that" -- but the full quote makes clear Obama is talking about the conditions that help businesses and individuals succeed, such as teachers and infrastructure.

The more complete quote from Obama: "If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business -- you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." [AP, 8/12/12, via CBS News] 

And Now Fox Is Reporting That The GOP Convention Has Adopted The Narrative As One Of Its Themes

FoxNews.com: "GOP Convention Session To Be Themed 'We Built This!' " A FoxNews.com article reported: "The GOP is turning what some see as a presidential slight aimed at business owners and entrepreneurs into a theme for a night of the Republican National Convention next week, titling Tuesday night's session 'We Built This!' " [FoxNews.com, 8/21/12]

Fox's Carlson: GOP Convention Theme Is Based On "Obama's Infamous Line." On the August 21 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that the Republican convention theme was based on "Obama's infamous line a couple of weeks ago":

CARLSON: Maybe I shouldn't say what the theme of the convention is. Can we say what the theme of the convention is?

STEVE DOOCY (co-host): Winning.

CARLSON: No. I think it was something about building it based off of we built this based off of President Obama's infamous line a couple of weeks ago. And now the Republicans are going to capitalize on that and make that the theme of the Republican National Convention. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/21/12]

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Despite Legitimate Rape Comment, Todd Akin Still
Leads by a Point

There is probably one main reasons why Rep. Todd Akin is still refusing to bow to the collective pressure of the Republican party to drop out of the Missouri Senate race: he thinks he can still win. New polling by PPP shows that is not a completely[...]

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Walking the planks with the GOP

GOP's abortion plank passes easily w/out big changes: McDonnell thanks committee for "affirming our respect for human life" ... "well done"
? @PeterHambyCNN via webRT @PostRoz: GOP platform will include language opposing legislation banning high-capacity ammo magazines, per committee vote.
? @ZekeJMiller via TweetDeckWhy not save time and space and just merge these two planks? Cuz nothing says respect for human life better than guaranteeing that everybody with five synapses to rub together has access to 100-round magazines.

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Five Things Government Does Better Than You Do

When Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and other hard-line conservatives talk about cutting the government?s budget, their primary rationale is that individuals can make better decisions with their own money than the government can. As Ryan himself said to an audience at Georgetown University, ?We put our trust in people, not in government. Our budget incorporates subsidiarity by returning power to individuals, to families and to communities.? It sounds reasonable?of course we want individuals to have power, and of course we want communities to take care of their neediest members. And since conservatives have done a fine job of portraying the government as full of heartless, inept bureaucrats, allowing people to make their own decisions sounds better than the alternative.

The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of well-being for society as a whole. But this isn?t always true. One of the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts have consequences for how we should think about government in certain instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs. Here are five.

 

Retirement Insurance

Since the 1930s, Social Security has protected Americans by providing a cushion against poverty in old age. It taxes workers and employers for every dollar earned and uses that money to pay retired workers based on how much they?ve earned throughout their lives, adjusted for inflation. Ryan?s budget would significantly change Social Security by turning it into private accounts for each American worker, making it operate roughly like a 401(k) retirement plan you?re automatically enrolled in. People would choose how to invest in the private market for their own retirements.

The problem is that, as study after study has shown, people are pretty bad at managing their own retirement savings. Employees routinely invest less in 401(k) accounts than they mean to because, in general, people value money more in the present than they do in the distant future. Even if participation is mandatory, there?s no guarantee that people will invest enough, or choose the right amount of risk. There?s also no way to plan for an economic disaster like the one that hit in 2008, when many private pension plans and 401(k)s lost disastrous amounts of money, and when many suddenly unemployed workers withdrew money from their plans early. Individuals can?t predict what?s going to happen to them in the future, or how accurately how long they?re going to live after retirement. But we are pretty good at planning for what will happen to the population as a whole, which is why a system like Social Security, which pools money collected from everyone and plans for population-level changes, is safer.

 

Health Care

The same principle that makes Social Security work better than individual retirement accounts?that we don?t know what?s going to happen to us but can reasonably predict outcomes for an entire population?also applies to health care. Not only would a Romney-Ryan administration work to undo the Affordable Care Act; Ryan would turn the perennially popular Medicare system, the government-run health insurance program for the elderly, into a system in which seniors would get vouchers to buy insurance on the private market. Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the poor, would be turned into a state-run system for which the federal government would provide a fixed amount of money.

There are a number of reasons the private market doesn?t work well for health insurance, and they?ve been enumerated many times before. But here?s the heart of it: Even if you buy the idea that people always act rationally, free markets only work efficiently if consumers have the necessary information to make the best choices. But patients know less than doctors; doctors don?t know everything about their patients; and none of us know what accidents might befall us.

In fact, that?s how modern health-insurance programs started. In the 1920s, doctors at Baylor University hospital in Texas found that, without noticing it, people spent more money on cosmetics during the year than they did on medical care?they didn?t squirrel away a few bucks a day in case an unpredictable medical illness befell them, precisely because those things are unpredictable. It worked better for both hospitals and patients if there were systems through which people could pay a little each month to guard against future costs. The plan worked so well that states began copying it in the 1930s, giving birth to the Blue Cross system of nonprofit insurance plans.

But those small plans started to create problems right away. At first, health-care plans were only marketed to people with jobs who seemed likely to stay healthy?this meant that insurance plans could collect reasonable premiums without having to worry about too many big payouts. The problem, of course, is that it leaves the sickest, poorest people without care. In addition, as America became richer during the last half of the last century, many insurance companies shifted to the for-profit model.

Other problems arise in private markets, and they have to do with both rational and irrational behavior on the part of consumers. Private insurance works only if there are some people paying premiums who get lucky and don?t spend as much on health care as they pay so that there?s enough money to cover those unlucky folks who fall off a ladder or wind up with a heart condition. But if you let consumers make their own bets, many will bet that they?ll be one of the lucky people and decide that they don?t want to contribute to a health-insurance plan. This leaves the insurance companies with a pool made up of a larger percentage of sick or risky individuals than they planned for, which will require them to raise their premium rates.

Because insurance companies need to make a profit, they?ll try to keep sick people or people who are likely to get sick, like smokers, out. Doing that kind of screening creates higher administrative costs. Estimates on how big a percentage administrative costs are for total health care spending vary, but the average in our employer-based insurance system is about 12 percent, and in the private market?those poor saps who have to try to buy insurance on their own?it?s as high as 30 percent. This is one of the big reasons that the costs of the government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are rising more slowly than those in the private market?government doesn?t have to worry about maintaining profits, so its overhead is much lower. The figure often side for Medicare?s overhead is 2 percent, but Ezra Klein argues that its probably more fair to say it?s 5 to 6 percent, to count for the tax-collection and other costs incurred outside the Department of Health. This is also why health care costs in the United States have risen so much faster than they have in the rest of the developed world, where universal plans that cover every citizen. It?s also why a system like Ryan?s, where seniors would get money to buy plans in a private market without reform, won?t do anything to slow the rise in health-care costs and ultimately leave many seniors paying for their own care.

All of these problems in health-insurance markets boil down to one thing: information problems. For markets to work well, consumers and sellers need to be able to have all the relevant information readily available to them, and because our health, especially our future health, is such a different good than, say, a croissant, the private market just won?t work as smoothly and efficiently as we would want it to work. Health insurance works best, and is cheapest, when we spread risk out over as many people as possible, which is why every wealthy country but ours has decided to spread risk out over its entire populace. The Affordable Care Act works to get closer to a universal system by requiring companies to offer insurance plans to everyone, setting ground rules for how insurance companies cover medical problems and by requiring every person in America to pay premiums, either with help from the government or on their own.

 

Addressing Poverty

The conservative argument against government spending on the poor through programs like welfare and food stamps is that it de-incentivizes working, and that help for those who can?t work is best left up to communities and charity. While its important that communities take care of their members, and local resources are important to rely on, there are arguments against relying on charity as a basic social safety net.

People don?t give enough. Americans spent about 1.9 percent of their disposal income on charity in 2011. That was up from the year before but generally down from its high in 2005, when Americans gave 2.4 percent of their disposal income to charity. Charitable giving falls in times of economic hardship, which is also when need rises.

 

Disaster Relief

Conservative arguments against funding FEMA hold that local communities are better at cleaning up after widespread destruction than the government. After tornadoes tore through southeastern Missouri last May, FEMA was facing a funding shortfall and deficit-obsessed House Republicans, led by Ryan?s physical and ideological twin Eric Cantor, argued that lawmakers would have to cut money elsewhere before raising FEMA?s budget. Russ Carnahan, a Democratic representative from Missouri, responded in a way that nicely summed up the sentiment after Cantor?s comments when he said, ?[T]o have that debate in the face of the suffering we?ve seen in Joplin is just plain wrong.?

The problems with disaster insurance is similar to the problems with health insurance: Only people who think their house might be flooded bother to buy flood insurance, so the insurance companies risk going broke paying out all of their customers every time it floods. In general, the federal government has many more resources at its disposal than states and communities do. Damage from catastrophic events runs in the billions of dollars and devastates local economies, so states not only have to step up their spending to help hurting communities, but take a hit in tax revenues as well. Keeping the federal government in charge of disaster relief spreads risk out over the entire country, and ensures that victims in poor states?basically every state in Tornado Alley?get as much help as residents of wealthier states would.

 

All the Little Things

While I?ve been focused so far on specific things that the federal government can do better than individuals or the private market, there are a number of tiny things that local governments do to create the world in which you live?building roads, taking out the trash, keeping traffic flowing, and turning street lights on at night. Basically, we can call this ?running your community.? Where would your nice duplex be if there was no way to get to it, and your yard was full of trash? Yet the sentiment behind plans like Ryan?s to gut government extends to state and local levels. The biggest experiment in gutting local government came from Colorado Springs in 2010. The previous fall, voters had rejected a plan to raise their own taxes to cover a shortfall in revenues. Local officials then warned that they?d have to end certain services, like neighborhood community centers, park maintenance, and streetlights.

Undeterred, local residents decided to chip in to clean up in local parks, and, ultimately, the city decided to privatize some services. The city started an ?adopt a streetlight? program after residents were upset about dangerous, darkened streets. This American Life documented life in the town in the year after the city government drastically cut its services, and shared this story from the local mayor, Jan Martin:

[A] gentleman came up to me and actually thanked me for the adopt a street light program. He had just written a check to the city for $300 to turn all the street lights back on in his neighborhood. And I did remind him that for $200 if he had supported the tax initiative, we could have had not only streetlights, but parks and firemen and swimming pools and community centers. That by combining our resources, we as a community can actually accomplish more than we as individuals.

Robert Smith: And he said?

Jan Martin: He said he would never support a tax increase.

Robert Smith: So for him it wasn't the money. He was willing to pay more to turn on the street lights than to pay for all city services.

Jan Martin: That's right. And it's because of a total lack in trust of local government to spend those services, which was part of [local businessman?s] Steve Bartolin's letter. That prevailing sense that government won't take care of our money, that brings somebody to the conclusion that, I'll take care of mine. You go figure out how to take care of yours, because we don't trust government to do it for us.

That?s why Ryan?s budget shows him to be an ideologue. A smart, tough-minded, politically-brave representative would be more willing to preserve the programs that the government actually does run better than individuals could. An ideologue feeds into the conservative-led narrative that?s been prevalent for the past 30 years ?that government is never to be trusted. 

Healthcare reform in the United StatesHealthGovernmentHealth insuranceInsuranceMedicareMedicaidUnited States National Health Care ActFederal Emergency Management AgencyHealth insurance in the United StatesHealth care reform in the United StatesSocial IssuesLabor

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Five Things Government Does Better Than You

When Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan and other hard-line conservatives talk about cutting the government?s budget, their primary rationale is that individuals can make better decisions with their own money than the government can. As Ryan himself said to an audience at Georgetown University, ?We put our trust in people, not in government. Our budget incorporates subsidiarity by returning power to individuals, to families and to communities.? It sounds reasonable?of course we want individuals to have power, and of course we want communities to take care of their neediest members. And since conservatives have done a fine job of portraying the government as full of heartless, inept bureaucrats, allowing people to make their own decisions sounds better than the alternative.

The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of well-being for society as a whole. But this isn?t always true. One of the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts have consequences for how we should think about government in certain instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs. Here are five.

 

Retirement Insurance

Since the 1930s, Social Security has protected Americans by providing a cushion against poverty in old age. It taxes workers and employers for every dollar earned and uses that money to pay retired workers based on how much they?ve earned throughout their lives, adjusted for inflation. Ryan?s budget would significantly change Social Security by turning it into private accounts for each American worker, making it operate roughly like a 401(k) retirement plan you?re automatically enrolled in. People would choose how to invest in the private market for their own retirements.

The problem is that, as study after study has shown, people are pretty bad at managing their own retirement savings. Employees routinely invest less in 401(k) accounts than they mean to because, in general, people value money more in the present than they do in the distant future. Even if participation is mandatory, there?s no guarantee that people will invest enough, or choose the right amount of risk. There?s also no way to plan for an economic disaster like the one that hit in 2008, when many private pension plans and 401(k)s lost disastrous amounts of money, and when many suddenly unemployed workers withdrew money from their plans early. Individuals can?t predict what?s going to happen to them in the future, or how accurately how long they?re going to live after retirement. But we are pretty good at planning for what will happen to the population as a whole, which is why a system like Social Security, which pools money collected from everyone and plans for population-level changes, is safer.

 

Health Care

The same principle that makes Social Security work better than individual retirement accounts?that we don?t know what?s going to happen to us but can reasonably predict outcomes for an entire population?also applies to health care. Not only would a Romney-Ryan administration work to undo the Affordable Care Act; Ryan would turn the perennially popular Medicare system, the government-run health insurance program for the elderly, into a system in which seniors would get vouchers to buy insurance on the private market. Medicaid, the health-insurance program for the poor, would be turned into a state-run system for which the federal government would provide a fixed amount of money.

There are a number of reasons the private market doesn?t work well for health insurance, and they?ve been enumerated many times before. But here?s the heart of it: Even if you buy the idea that people always act rationally, free markets only work efficiently if consumers have the necessary information to make the best choices. But patients know less than doctors; doctors don?t know everything about their patients; and none of us know what accidents might befall us.

In fact, that?s how modern health-insurance programs started. In the 1920s, doctors at Baylor University hospital in Texas found that, without noticing it, people spent more money on cosmetics during the year than they did on medical care?they didn?t squirrel away a few bucks a day in case an unpredictable medical illness befell them, precisely because those things are unpredictable. It worked better for both hospitals and patients if there were systems through which people could pay a little each month to guard against future costs. The plan worked so well that states began copying it in the 1930s, giving birth to the Blue Cross system of nonprofit insurance plans.

But those small plans started to create problems right away. At first, health-care plans were only marketed to people with jobs who seemed likely to stay healthy?this meant that insurance plans could collect reasonable premiums without having to worry about too many big payouts. The problem, of course, is that it leaves the sickest, poorest people without care. In addition, as America became richer during the last half of the last century, many insurance companies shifted to the for-profit model.

Other problems arise in private markets, and they have to do with both rational and irrational behavior on the part of consumers. Private insurance works only if there are some people paying premiums who get lucky and don?t spend as much on health care as they pay so that there?s enough money to cover those unlucky folks who fall off a ladder or wind up with a heart condition. But if you let consumers make their own bets, many will bet that they?ll be one of the lucky people and decide that they don?t want to contribute to a health-insurance plan. This leaves the insurance companies with a pool made up of a larger percentage of sick or risky individuals than they planned for, which will require them to raise their premium rates.

Because insurance companies need to make a profit, they?ll try to keep sick people or people who are likely to get sick, like smokers, out. Doing that kind of screening creates higher administrative costs. Estimates on how big a percentage administrative costs are for total health care spending vary, but the average in our employer-based insurance system is about 12 percent, and in the private market?those poor saps who have to try to buy insurance on their own?it?s as high as 30 percent. This is one of the big reasons that the costs of the government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are rising more slowly than those in the private market?government doesn?t have to worry about maintaining profits, so its overhead is much lower. The figure often side for Medicare?s overhead is 2 percent, but Ezra Klein argues that its probably more fair to say it?s 5 to 6 percent, to count for the tax-collection and other costs incurred outside the Department of Health. This is also why health care costs in the United States have risen so much faster than they have in the rest of the developed world, where universal plans that cover every citizen. It?s also why a system like Ryan?s, where seniors would get money to buy plans in a private market without reform, won?t do anything to slow the rise in health-care costs and ultimately leave many seniors paying for their own care.

All of these problems in health-insurance markets boil down to one thing: information problems. For markets to work well, consumers and sellers need to be able to have all the relevant information readily available to them, and because our health, especially our future health, is such a different good than, say, a croissant, the private market just won?t work as smoothly and efficiently as we would want it to work. Health insurance works best, and is cheapest, when we spread risk out over as many people as possible, which is why every wealthy country but ours has decided to spread risk out over its entire populace. The Affordable Care Act works to get closer to a universal system by requiring companies to offer insurance plans to everyone, setting ground rules for how insurance companies cover medical problems and by requiring every person in America to pay premiums, either with help from the government or on their own.

 

Addressing Poverty

The conservative argument against government spending on the poor through programs like welfare and food stamps is that it de-incentivizes working, and that help for those who can?t work is best left up to communities and charity. While its important that communities take care of their members, and local resources are important to rely on, there are arguments against relying on charity as a basic social safety net.

People don?t give enough. Americans spent about 1.9 percent of their disposal income on charity in 2011. That was up from the year before but generally down from its high in 2005, when Americans gave 2.4 percent of their disposal income to charity. Charitable giving falls in times of economic hardship, which is also when need rises.

 

Disaster Relief

Conservative arguments against funding FEMA hold that local communities are better at cleaning up after widespread destruction than the government. After tornadoes tore through southeastern Missouri last May, FEMA was facing a funding shortfall and deficit-obsessed House Republicans, led by Ryan?s physical and ideological twin Eric Cantor, argued that lawmakers would have to cut money elsewhere before raising FEMA?s budget. Russ Carnahan, a Democratic representative from Missouri, responded in a way that nicely summed up the sentiment after Cantor?s comments when he said, ?[T]o have that debate in the face of the suffering we?ve seen in Joplin is just plain wrong.?

The problems with disaster insurance is similar to the problems with health insurance: Only people who think their house might be flooded bother to buy flood insurance, so the insurance companies risk going broke paying out all of their customers every time it floods. In general, the federal government has many more resources at its disposal than states and communities do. Damage from catastrophic events runs in the billions of dollars and devastates local economies, so states not only have to step up their spending to help hurting communities, but take a hit in tax revenues as well. Keeping the federal government in charge of disaster relief spreads risk out over the entire country, and ensures that victims in poor states?basically every state in Tornado Alley?get as much help as residents of wealthier states would.

 

All the Little Things

While I?ve been focused so far on specific things that the federal government can do better than individuals or the private market, there are a number of tiny things that local governments do to create the world in which you live?building roads, taking out the trash, keeping traffic flowing, and turning street lights on at night. Basically, we can call this ?running your community.? Where would your nice duplex be if there was no way to get to it, and your yard was full of trash? Yet the sentiment behind plans like Ryan?s to gut government extends to state and local levels. The biggest experiment in gutting local government came from Colorado Springs in 2010. The previous fall, voters had rejected a plan to raise their own taxes to cover a shortfall in revenues. Local officials then warned that they?d have to end certain services, like neighborhood community centers, park maintenance, and streetlights.

Undeterred, local residents decided to chip in to clean up in local parks, and, ultimately, the city decided to privatize some services. The city started an ?adopt a streetlight? program after residents were upset about dangerous, darkened streets. This American Life documented life in the town in the year after the city government drastically cut its services, and shared this story from the local mayor, Jan Martin:

[A] gentleman came up to me and actually thanked me for the adopt a street light program. He had just written a check to the city for $300 to turn all the street lights back on in his neighborhood. And I did remind him that for $200 if he had supported the tax initiative, we could have had not only streetlights, but parks and firemen and swimming pools and community centers. That by combining our resources, we as a community can actually accomplish more than we as individuals.

Robert Smith: And he said?

Jan Martin: He said he would never support a tax increase.

Robert Smith: So for him it wasn't the money. He was willing to pay more to turn on the street lights than to pay for all city services.

Jan Martin: That's right. And it's because of a total lack in trust of local government to spend those services, which was part of [local businessman?s] Steve Bartolin's letter. That prevailing sense that government won't take care of our money, that brings somebody to the conclusion that, I'll take care of mine. You go figure out how to take care of yours, because we don't trust government to do it for us.

That?s why Ryan?s budget shows him to be an ideologue. A smart, tough-minded, politically-brave representative would be more willing to preserve the programs that the government actually does run better than individuals could. An ideologue feeds into the conservative-led narrative that?s been prevalent for the past 30 years ?that government is never to be trusted. 

Healthcare reform in the United StatesHealth insuranceInsuranceMedicareMedicaidUnited States National Health Care ActFederal Emergency Management AgencyHealth insurance in the United StatesHealth care reform in the United StatesSocial IssuesLabor

Read The Full Article:
http://prospect.org/article/five-things-government-does-better-you

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CNN's Loesch Does Not Want Akin To Appear On CNN
After "Legitimate Rape" Comments

CNN contributor Dana Loesch had a meltdown on Twitter after learning that Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) was scheduled to be a guest on CNN to discuss the controversy surrounding his claim that it is "really rare" for victims of "legitimate rape" to become pregnant from the assault, despite this being one of the top news stories of the day.

CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight had announced that Monday's program would be hosting Akin -- "the biggest name of the day" and "the man everyone is talking about" -- following the Missouri Senate candidate's inflammatory comments. Upon hearing that news, Loesch took to Twitter to criticize Rep. Akin's decision to appear on her own network:

Despite Loesch's complaint at the possibility that Akin might appear on CNN, he also appeared on Mike Huckabee's and Sean Hannity's radio programs.

Apparently, Loesch thinks it's out of bounds for a Senate candidate and incumbent congressman to appear on a news network to discuss one of the major political news stories of the day. Loesch has been working to dismiss the ostracized congressman's outrageous comments in order to try and save face for Missouri Republicans. 

By the way, Akin ended up being a no-show on Piers Morgan Tonight.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/O2Ph3PRn6aM/189462

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President Obama: 'Rape is Rape'

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After all the gnashing of teeth and pearl-clutching last week by Chuck Todd and other White House reporters, President Obama joined today's press briefing to answer a couple of questions about Todd Akin's remarks yesterday.

He was asked whether he thought Rep. Akin's views represented the views of the Republican party in general. Here is his response:

Let me first of all say the views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape. The idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we're talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and certainly doesn't make sense to me.

So what I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians -- a majority of whom are men -- making health care decisions on behalf of women.

And though these particular comments have led Governor Romney and other Republicans to distance themselves, I think the underlying notion that we should be making decisions on behalf of women for their health care decisions or qualifying forcible rape versus non-forcible rape...I think those are broader issues and I think that's a significant difference in approach between me and the other party.

But I don't think that they would agree with the Senator from Missouri in terms of his statement, which was way out there.

I might have a bone to pick with that last statement, since Paul Ryan and all the Republicans now backing away from Akin teamed up with him to redefine rape.

Also, if you don't read this entire piece over at The Nation by Ilyse Hogue tiny spiders will bite you. Not really, but it's the smartest analysis I've read yet.

While the political dynamics around these two issues are different, there are striking similarities in the right-wing strategy of capitalizing on extreme statements to shift the spectrum of what?s possible. And the wary will take heed: in the span of four short years, we went from having two presidential candidates who openly advocated action to stop climate change to having no GOP candidates in 2012 who could or would affirm its existence and a Democratic president who seems to wish the issue would magically disappear. The consequences of inaction are already being felt.

The same process is underway to undermine women?s voices in our own destiny. Mitt Romney has already flip-flopped from a pro-choice Senate candidate and a governor who promised to be ?a good voice? among Republicans on reproductive health to his new incarnation as Paul Ryan?s running mate and an anti-choice leader. While Ryan allows lesser candidates like Akin to carry the water on extreme views held by the right-wing patriarchy, his equally radical views become mainstreamed as his anti-woman credentials are embraced by the party leadership. If we don?t stop laughing and start drawing hard lines around scientific reality, how many Akin?s will it take before we see a President Romney ordering rape victims thrown into the water to see if they float?

Read and heed.

Read The Full Article:
http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/president-obama-rape-rape

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