Chick Fil-A and Free Speech

The Chick-Fil-A thing is a strange controversy for me; the narrative is that the mayors of Boston and Chicago are falling into liberal overreach, trampling the free speech of others in the name of "tolerance".

This is an easy one for liberals, though- we should boycott, picket, and write letters, but we shouldn't be using the power of the state to stop a private company from locating franchises due to the political proclivities of their owners.  So I've been looking for lefty bloggers to try to find the actual argument in favor of the mayors' policies.

And I can't find anyone supporting them.  Here's Dave Weigel.  Here's Glenn Greenwald, as leftist as they come. Here's Adam Serwer. Here's Kevin Drum. Here's Digby.  Matt Yglesias and Jon Chait haven't written about it, as far as I can tell in my searches.

Hurray for liberals and consistency, at least in the blogosphere.  Quite a contrast to the righr wing echo chamber, which immediately starts spouting lawmakers' talking points as soon as they say something controversial.

And my favorite comment was one from Greenwald on Twitter:

Glenn Greenwald‏@ggreenwald

To all my right-wing-friends-for-a-day over Rahm: I'll be looking for you next time a GOP pol tries to punish speech of liberals or Muslims

AIPAC and the NRA Have the Same Problem

As Mitt Romney heads for Israel and Republicans continue their push to convince Jews to vote for them because of Obama's insufficient support for Israel, I'm reminded again about the odd contours of the discussion around Israel that's going on now, and how that issue compares with gun control in light of the Colorado movie theater massacre this week.

The problem for both AIPAC and the NRA is the same: they've won the debate (I recognize that AIPAC is an inexact use of the term- I'm really talking about the pro-Israel Jewish community in America writ large, of which AIPAC is only a part).  What do I mean?

With respect to Israel, both major parties are strong Israel supporters in terms of policy.  Both say that they want to make peace, and take different approaches, but there's no opposition to continuing the very high levels of financial aid and continuing the very tight military and intelligence cooperation that has been a hallmark of US-Israel relations for decades.  But where does that leave a group like AIPAC, which is dedicated to keeping this relationship strong through lobbying congressmen.  Almost nobody has a "bad score" in Congress on Israel.  I think it's pretty tough to gin up hysteria among donor groups regarding American support for Israel, when it's just not in peril.

On gun control, the Democrats have completely given up attempting to push any gun control legislation at the national level.  A calculation has been made that the love of guns in the west and in rural appalachia is so strong that no legislation can pass and Democrats will lose if they do anything about this.  So the NRA has taken to putting out dire warnings that President Obama has a secret plan to take your guns, because they can't find any evidence that there's an actual plan.  The latest thing I just heard is the theory is that Fast and Furious project is really a secret plan to build justification for gun control through the back door.  Crazy stuff.

But the NRA has to justify its existence- they don't want to pack up, declare victory, and leave Washington; so they have to find some reason to keep pushing.

I don't think AIPAC has taken to the kind of tin-foil hat conspiracy craziness that the NRA has turned to, to their credit.  But Jewish Republicans, still frustrated that Jews generally vote liberal, are trying to discredit the Democrats by exaggerating slights by Obama toward Israel.  If they say make enough accusations to the right people, they'll win some of them over I guess.  It reminds me of this joke Chris Matthews repeated on TV yesterday:

A reporter interviewed a woman who said she would not vote for Barry Goldwater.  The reporter asked why, and she said "because he wants to outlaw TV!  I can't allow that!"
"No", said the reporter, "he said he wants to eliminate the TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority.  That has nothing to do with television".
The woman replied "Well, I'm not taking any chances".

President Obama and the Democrats are not coming for your guns, though this Liberal would love it if they did.  And President Obama is not going to stop supporting Israel (which I'm pretty happy about).  Talk to the contrary is just opportunism.

The Biggest Driver of Health Care Costs that We Don't Talk About

Interesting to see this in the Weekly Standard:

In discussions of America’s high health care costs, surprisingly little attention is paid to salaries and wages. Yet the fact that medical jobs simply pay more than those in other sectors is beyond dispute. A physician practicing in a primary care setting, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, earned an average of just over $200,000 in 2010, while specialists averaged over $355,000 (the highest of any professional category tracked). By comparison, lawyers average just over $110,000, airline pilots about $92,000, and chartered actuaries (who calculate risk for insurance companies and must pass complex exams longer and arguably more difficult than the medical boards) about $150,000.

The piece goes on to point out that in fact all salaries in health care are higher than they are for equivalent positions in other fields, right down to the janitors in hospitals.  And comparisons with the rest of the world reveal that US doctors make much more than their counterparts in other countries.  In spite of this, health outcomes are no better than they are elsewhere.

I'm a beneficiary of this- I work in a psychiatric hospital as a social work administrator.  I used to work in a private non profit agency, but I make more money in the medical side of the field.

The bald reality is that one person's "waste" is what I call "salary", and I don't want mine cut.  But the fact is that if we're serious about cutting health care costs, whether our solutions are from right or left, we're going to have to accept lower pay or fewer jobs in health care. 

I'm not happy about it personally, but it's still reality.

Bain Attacks aren't Really Relevant, but at Least They're Not Lies

I'm tiring a bit of all the breathless reporting about Mitt Romney's career at Bain, especially the latest kerfuffle about whether he left the company in 1999 (when he says he left) or 2002 (when Bain's legal filings say he did).  I guess this matters because Romney had earlier deflected criticism about Bain's investment in companies that specialized in outsourcing by saying that it happened after he left, when he was actually still technically there.  So now: he's a liar!!

Well, I'm perfectly willing to believe that Romney took a leave from day to day operations while he was running the Olympics, and that he was just a figurehead during that time with no significant hand in the business.

I'm also very sympathetic to the point that there's nothing wrong with outsourcing- the job of a business is to make money, and outsourcing increases profits so of course Bain was doing it.  Bain committed no sin.  Mitt Romney's real sin was his original defense of outsourcing, in which he fails to defend it on its merits and instead tries to deflect it by saying he wasn't responsible.

Of course we know why Romney defended himself that way: your average Joe Sixpack doesn't really agree that big businesses should be outsourcing American jobs and laying off workers.  The fact is that Bain did stuff like that, and lots of other stuff that was very bad for the workers in their companies.  Again, it was all legal and most of it was ethical too, at least in terms of the way the business world sees ethics these days.  But if people pay attention, it won't be very popular, and it points out the fact that Mitt Romney's experience in business didn't really give him experience in how to create jobs.  The Bain experience is best (for Romney) understood from 30,000 feet rather than in its particulars.

So now the Romney campaign has stumbled into a little mess.  To me, the whole thing also points out again how corporate executives are so different from the rest of us: Mitt could just take a leave of absence, keep getting paid, and then "retire retroactively" from his job.  It seems like the CEO class never has to take much of a chance- they always have a safety net.

Anyway, Mitt Romney's "lie" is unimportant, and doesn't tell us anything about how he'd be as president.  But these sorts of mini-scandals are what dominate campaigns these days since reporters can't be bothered to talk about real issues, so Democrats have to take advantage.

And in contrast to the mini-scandals that Republicans keep initiating, this one has the nice little bonus of being true in its particulars.  Irrelevant, but at least true.

Latest Outrage- Voting Rights Assaults

So now in the news we have various states with Republican leadership instituting strict voter registration laws.  In Florida they have developed lists of people suspected of being ineligible to vote, and the governor insists on following through even though the lists have been shown to have many mistakes.  In Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers are bragging about how the new voter ID law will help Mitt Romney get elected.  And this story from the Florida article is a great illustration:

But if you want a new law that the government is seriously ill-equipped to enforce, look to Mississippi. In order to get a free voter ID card there, you need to supply a birth certificate. Some women, with new married names, are unable to use birth certificates to prove their identity. If they lack copies of their birth certificates, they need to apply for them with—of course—some kind of ID card.

 Now governments are big bureaucracies, and they're trying to serve millions of people, so there are going to be mistakes.  Injustice happens, and sometimes can't be avoided.  But if you're going to put in a system that will result in false positives for illegals and disenfranchise legitimate voters, there needs to be a good reason.  And in the case of Voter ID laws, there just isn't a good reason.  Nobody is organizing campaigns to get illegal immigrants and felons to vote.  Voter fraud is practically nonexistent in the US.

But really we all know what's going on.  The Republican party is trying to disenfranchise people who are more likely to vote Democratic.  Of course, most of us have valid state IDs, but who doesn't have them?  Poor people.  Whose birth certificates may not match their current name?  Married women. Who is more likely to mistakenly end up on a list of undocumented immigrants?  Latino immigrants.

This goes past dirty tricks and gets to something much more serious- it's a bald subversion of Democracy, on the level of the old Southern "poll tax" and the original "grandfather clause", first used in the old South to make sure that the grandchildren of slaves could not vote.  This stuff is the whole reason that the Voting Rights Act was passed in the first place.  I know I'm getting hyperbolic here, but this is really serious!  It's stealing elections!  Eric Holder and the Obama administration has to fight this tooth and nail, with every tool they have.

A Quarter Million Dollars per Year = Rich

Driving me crazy on Morning Joe again today, as host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough keeps talking about how the cutoff of $250,000 for defining high income people whose taxes should go up is too low.  "What about the small businessman making just $270,000 a year, struggling to make a payroll?" etc.

My wife accused me of talking to someone- I was just talking back to the TV.  Here's why:

• First of all, we're talking about marginal tax rates.  That means that everyone gets taxed the same on that first $250K.  So the small businessman making $270K is only taxed at the higher rate on the last $20,000 of income.  It's not a huge tax increase on people at the lower part of the high income spectrum.
• As cohost Mika Brzezinski pointed out, "how have those lower tax rates on so-called job creators worked out over the past 10 years?"  The answer, of course, is that they haven't worked out at all, and there's no evidence at all that raising rates on this group will hurt investment at all.
• It seems like a great life being a political pundit on TV.  My guess is that everyone around that table makes at least $250,000 a year.  That's great for them, and I don't begrudge them their money, but I think it does make their view of money a bit skewed.  At $250K an earner is in the top 3% of Americans.  Even in New York City, the median household income is $55,000, so if you're making $250 you're making more than four times the median household income.  I know everyone in American wants to see themselves as hardscrabble middle class, but at that income level you're rich.  No matter where you live.
• I'm not even sniffing at $250,000 in income per year, and my life is pretty damn comfortable.  I go on vacations out of state, I send my kids to overnight camp, I go out to dinner whenever I want, etc.  You just can't tell me $250 isn't a lot of money to earn in a year.

UPDATE: Here's Matt Yglesias making the point specifically in New York City.

GOP Governors Rejecting ObamaCare

This stuff has lots of liberals fuming.  It describes how many southern states are planning to refuse to do the expansion of Medicaid that ObamaCare tried to require but which the Supreme Court said the feds couldn't legally coerce.  The Republican governors can therefore legally refuse to implement increased Medicaid coverage, though they're kind of crazy to do so because the law calls for 100% of the cost to be footed by the feds for now, decreasing to 90% later.

For me, my passive-aggressive side comes out here: I say let 'em do it!  Why fight on this?  I'm happy to have the federal government fund more health care in my blue state and save money from the morons in Texas who seem just fine with the highest percentage of uninsured people in the country. We can spend the federal money on something else, maybe even tax cuts. 

What would be really nice would be if voters in Texas and elsewhere vote the morons out and usher in a new era of sanity in the South.  I'm not optimistic about that, but at least I don't have to keep sending my tax dollars there.

The Supremes and ObamaCare

I wrote this last week, but see that I didn't hit the "publish" button- sorry for the delay, fans!

Big news today of course is that the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act on a 5-4 vote.  This is certainly good news for liberals like me, but it's only one battle in a war that won't end until the law is fully implemented and Americans grow to love it like we love Medicare... or until Republicans manage to repeal it.

Some thoughts:

• I saw that Anthony Kennedy, writing the dissent, would have struck down the whole law.  Wow- I haven't been able to find the reasoning he uses there, but most of what I read in the leadup to this noted that only the mandate was really in the discussion of unconstitutionality, so it could have been invalidated without taking down the whole law.  The stuff I can find, including the link above, notes that Kennedy rejects seeing the mandate as a "tax".  But why would that mean the entire law would be invalidated?  That seems odd, and frankly really activist in the extreme.
• I think John Roberts makes the right call from a conservative perspective, showing how nothing in the ACA is unprecedented.  That still doesn't mean it's a good law- government gets bigger, and conservatives don't like that, but it's just not unconstitutional.  Scalia and Thomas were expected to vote against the law, and in some ways that's not even very inconsistent of them.  We've come to learn that these two are really radical jurists, and if they had the chance to strike down Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid, I think they would do it.  That's a backhanded way of saying that their dissents are in keeping with their judicial philosophies- a good reason to keep Republicans out of the White House, as their judges will bring us back to a pre-New Deal America.  Kennedy I have a much harder time forgiving for his position, as he has a history of relative moderation and has criticized judicial activism- his dissent stinks of raw partisanship.
• Now the battle moves to the 2012 elections.  If Republicans sweep both houses of congress and the presidency, they'll certainly repeal the law.  I would certainly hope that Democrats use the filibuster in the Senate in the same way that it's been used on them the last 3 years to try to block it, but as I've said before, as soon as the Democrats use that tactic I fully expect Republicans to use the "nuclear option" and end the filibuster entirely.  That's why I want Democrats to do it themselves first, but unfortunately my side insists on bringing a knife to a gunfight.  If the Democrats hold on to anything in 2012, the law goes fully into effect before the next election and would be much harder to repeal in the future.  I guess it always seems like the next election is Extra Important, but in this case I think it really is.
• If moderate Democrats cave on the ACA at any point, I'll have to just give up.  The wimpy nature of the people who are supposed to be looking out for the little guy will just be too apparent.  You can't win if you're not willing to fight.

I thought this was awesome, from the New Republic:

A Republican state representative in Louisiana now says she was confused when she enthusiastically supported Gov. Bobby Jindal’s voucher bill to fund private schools. From the Livingston Parish News (free registration required):

"WATSON — Rep. Valarie Hodges, R-Watson, says she had no idea that Gov. Bobby Jindal’s overhaul of the state’s educational system might mean taxpayer support of Muslim schools …

'I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school,' Hodges said.

Hodges mistakenly assumed that 'religious' meant 'Christian.'

HB976, now signed into law as Act 2, proposed, among other things, a voucher program allowing state educational funds to be used to send students to schools run by religious groups …

'Unfortunately it will not be limited to the Founders’ religion,' Hodges said. 'We need to insure that it does not open the door to fund radical Islam schools. There are a thousand Muslim schools that have sprung up recently. I do not support using public funds for teaching Islam anywhere here in Louisiana.'"

I love that line about mistakenly assuming that “religious” meant “Christian.” It happens to so many people…

It's great when we see blatant bigotry completely laid bare in this way.  It would be even better if Hodges were forced to pay for it with an election loss, but unfortunately there are a lot of places in the US in which double standards relating to Christianity and Islam are completely acceptable to voters.  We have a long way to go.

It's not Complicated: Republicans Don't Want Universal Coverage

Kevin Drum points out how Mitch McConnell "tap dances" around the issue of how the Republican party would do the "replace" part of "repeal and replace" of ObamaCare.  McConnell refuses to allow himself to be pinned down to even vague outlines of what Republicans would do to fix our health care system, which everyone agreed was a problem back in 2008.

Drum finishes with:

I think it's safe to say that Republicans have exactly zero intention of replacing Obamacare with anything at all except a few miscellaneous gifts to their campaign contributors (state-level regulation for insurance companies, tort reform for the Chamber of Commerce, etc.). The 30 million uninsured will be quickly and completely forgotten, as McConnell's robotic dedication to GOP talking points showed. How about if we all stop pretending that they were ever serious about this in the first place?

...which is right.  To put it a different way: Democrats are in favor of this plan to allow universal access to health insurance and health care.  Republicans, on the other hand, are not just against this bill, they are really opposed to universal access to health care.  After all, the reforms they suggest (tort reform, increased competition, making costs more directly felt by consumers) are all decent ideas that would help the system become more efficient, but none of them would solve the barriers to universal access- insurance companies denying coverage to high-risk people, and the fact that insurance is too expensive in the individual market.