Letters from a brass watch man

So I just got the trick that the Republicans pulled tonight - why they had two speeches. Bachmann's the fall guy. She goes up there, with her charts and her eyes not quite focused on the screen, and makes Paul Ryan look like the moderate. Even though he's the guy talking about cutting Social Security.

What makes me feel worse about the whole thing is the knowledge that a whole bunch of people out there are eating up Bachmann's crap with a spoon.

I need to drink more.

'The birther "debate" doesn't exist. There is no debate. You don't call what happens when a bunch of people decide to willfully ignore every scrap of evidence thrown their way - like, say, the high-res scans of the birth certificate posted three years ago - a debate. You call that a mockery. Or political theater. Possibly vaudeville. But not a debate.'

December 10, 2010

Dear Mr. President:

Fair warning: this is a letter of support, yet it carries with it a burden, as so many things do these days. It will take me exactly two paragraphs to get to my point.

I have been raised to believe that there are two different kinds of anger. One is hot anger – the quick, impulsive kind of rage, the easy cousin to fear and panic. There’s a lot of that going around these days.

Then there’s cold anger. Cold anger is controlled, contained, augmented with the rational mind. It is patient and it is careful. Above all else, it is completely focused on a conscious goal. The difference between hot and cold anger is like that between a flashlight and a laser beam.

I mention this by way of saying that I don’t believe that you are weak. Never have. Not even for a second. And it seems to me that you are surrounded by those who confuse kindness, civility and responsibility for weakness, both in Washington and in the world stage. The Republicans, some of the Democrats; the Chinese, the North Koreans, Glenn Beck. The list goes on.

At some point over the next two years, I would appreciate it if you could instruct them all in just how wrong they all are. If possible. I think it might do us some good as a culture.

Thank you for your time, sir.

Sincerely,
Jon Stout
Avon Lake, OH

Sat down last night to try and actually figure out this whole Obamacare thing - which I'll admit I didn't do as great a job keeping track of back when it happened earlier this year - and why the conservatives are so upset about it. A few hours later, my head hurts, but I think I have a better idea of what's going on. Here's what I've learned:

Things I now know about "Obamacare":

1) There is no "government takeover of health care"

They just love throwing around that term, don't they? But see the FactCheck.org article here. The real issue is federal regulation of health care, which the Republicans seem generally opposed to. I don't know if it's principle (though I'd hope that's the case) or if they're just shilling for the insurance companies, who under the new laws have to provide more services in their health care plans, like coverage for pre-existing conditions. But the government isn't running health care. All of the insurance companies are still privately run. It's just putting new requirements on the table - which, yeah, are probably going to be a real pain for said insurance companies, but if there were going to be real problems making ends meet, they don't seem to have (openly) said anything about it while the bill was under discussion.

For more about the usual Republican antipathy towards regulation, whether responsible or not, see point #5 on interstate competition.

2) The plan could raise or lower the deficit

One of the things that really sucks about this whole debate is that so much of it seems to depend on predicting the future -- and we all know how amazing human beings are at that. According to projections by the Congressional Budget Office, the bill should lower the public debt by $143 billion by 2020, and by $1.2 trillion by 2030. The thing is, said projection assumes Congress follows through on the plan laid out by the bill - i.e. doesn't squelch on raising taxes when the bill says it should and (apparently?) provides discretionary funding of certain programs at key moments.

Anyway, when all's said and done, I gather that there's a lot left up to chance - no telling if the national health promotion strategy will work or make any sort of difference, for instance, or if the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation will be able to find better ways of making those programs work. And it looks like there's some financial trickery and slight-of-hand involved in the CBO's projections -- I found this op-ed in the New York Times by McCain's former economic adviser, claiming the plan would actually be in the red by $562 billion. While I haven't been able to find a rebuttal to his arguments from the other side of the aisle yet, he does seem to be being deliberately pessimistic when it comes to the plan (as one might expect given his affiliation). He also ties in Social Security and Medicare into the problem in his projections, which one might assume the administration is treating as a separate (if related) problem, if only for sanity's sake.

In the end, your guess is as good as mine whether or not the bill will work or not. Having some kind of national consensus on it would be nice - and would be a lot easier to reach, if some people would just stop screaming.

3) The Republicans did have some ideas

So one thing that I'll admit I was wrong about - I didn't think the Republicans brought any new ideas at all to the table back during the health care debate. They did, so I should apologize for that. Turns out the Republicans floated a couple of different alternative plans during the health care debate. So mea culpa on that one - if I heard that back when this was going on, I forgot about it.

4) ... but they kind of sucked.

Here's the full analysis from FactCheck.org. Here's a fun fact for you - the Ryan/Cobern plan, sponsored by two Republicans? Would have raised taxes. Or more accurately, would have taxed for the first time employees' health care benefits, which are normally counted as income tax deductions the way business expenses are. Ah, good clean hypocritical fun.

Turns out Boehner - the Republican with the tan in the House of Representatives? - had a plan that was floating around, too. Thing is, it really wouldn't have done very much for the uninsured. Might've reduced benefits and premiums, but the CBO seemed pretty hesitant when it came to projecting that one out. Wouldn't have done very much for the uninsured, and the CBO suggested it might have actually *raised* premiums for non-healthy employees - you know, the people who actually need to use their coverage. So the bill mainly strikes me as window dressing on the problem; doesn't spend much, but doesn't do much either.

5) Interstate competition

So one idea that came across strongly in the Boehner bill (actually, seemed to comprise most of its content) is the idea of interstate competition between insurance plans. Right now, health insurance companies have to sell insurance on a state-by-state basis, where the content of the plans and what they provide is covered and regulated by state law. Interstate competition would allow people to buy their insurance plans in other states other than the one they reside in. Now, Republicans say that this would create competition between different plans and thus improve rates and quality - but really, it's just a creative way of allowing people to dodge state regulations. In fact, I could easily see such a law making individual state regulations more or less irrelevant without the need for a constitutional amendment.

The thing is, President Obama actually liked this idea. And let's face it, the idea makes sense; from what I understand, life for businesses in general would probably be a lot easier if they didn't have to deal with the various mismashes of state laws and regulations in every state. Thing is, he just wanted federal regulations in place of the state-provided ones to ensure the insurance companies had to provide a certain bare minimum of coverage.

Here's a bit from the transcript of the Bipartisan Health Care Summit from this last February (remember that?):

PRESIDENT [OBAMA]: This, by the way, goes to the other difference that we have when it comes to interstate purchase of insurance. Actually, this is a Republican idea, been championed by the Republicans. We actually agree with the idea that maybe if you get more regional markets and national markets, as opposed to just state-by-state markets, you might get more choice and competition... But again, the one difference, as I understand it, and the reason you're not supporting the approach that we take, is what we say is there should be sort of a minimum baseline benefit.

Which would be provided by federal regulations. Not only would this make sense, it also jives with the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

Thing is, the Republicans seem to reject any attempt at federal regulation of health care coverage. Even if it makes sense, and even if merely allowing companies to bypass state regulations could have a massive potential for abuse. Another bit from the same transcript:

SENATOR KYL [Republican and Senate Minority Whip from Arizona]: So with all due respect, I disagree. And it's just a fundamental disagreement between us. Does Washington know best about the coverage people should have or should people have that choice themselves? Pay a little less, get a little less coverage, or pay a little more and get more coverage.

Which is a pleasant way of dressing up the real implications here: that unregulated insurance companies would be allowed to offer whatever services they like, at whatever price they like, in whatever state they happened to have bought off that year. The whole setup practically screams "loophole in the making" without some form of federal oversight.

Instead, the Republicans refused to discuss federal regulations as a matter of principle, and the idea wasn't included in the final health care bill - probably because Obama and the Democrats thought it best not to open up that particular can of worms, on top of everything else. (What's to bet that if they'd tried, the Republicans would have started screaming about states' rights?)

Conclusion

So to wrap it all up - it seems to me that any kind of plan for the future involves a certain amount of optimism and wishful thinking. In the Obamacare plan, it's the assumption that the federal government and Congress will act responsibly in the future to continue the plan laid out by the bill. In the case of the Republicans, it's their endless faith in the free market to right all wrongs - even if any business is practically obliged to find whatever loopholes or abuses they can get away with in the endless pursuit of the almighty Bottom Line.

I can't really trust a company to be kind. And yeah, trusting Congress to be competent? Not a whole lot of hope on that one. But the health care bill still strikes me as the best shot we've got at the moment.

God help us all.

A letter to the editors of the Wall Street Journal, just sent today. Doubt it'll get in - like their brother company, Fox News, they tend not to allow anything that questions the Big Narrative into the paper - but nonetheless fun to write anyway.

In response to “What the Tea Partiers Want” (Review section, Saturday, October 16, 2010): I admire and wish to encourage Professor Haidt’s more self-reflective approach to the Tea Party. However, as a professor of psychology, Mr. Haidt is no doubt familiar with the “just world” fallacy, whereby an observer seeing an individual suffering will rationalize not helping by presuming the sufferer did something to deserve their fate. Like others operating under this notion, Professor Haidt underestimates the role that pure, blind chance plays in all of our lives.

Let me just reiterate the facts of this world: it is entirely possible for an employee to work hard and loyally for a company all of his or her life, but still be laid off by management if the company’s bottom line happens to require it. Cancer is the result of the wrong particle hitting the wrong DNA at the wrong time, not a moral judgment, and can and does happen to anyone. A person can work two or three jobs all of his or her life and never make as much money as Paris Hilton spends on clothes in a single year. Bad things happen to good people all of the time, and there is no sense that we can perceive behind it.

To Professor Haidt and those who think like him, I would ask: what exactly is so wrong with wanting to make life in this world – or at least in America – suck less?

So you know how it is... You get busy, you let the blog go for a while -- make that a long while. You promise yourself that you'll post something as soon as you've got something *really* good, something worth writing about... But not right then, so it languishes for a few more months while you try and think of something appropriately dramatic.

And then you see a movie, and you want somewhere to write about it.

Hi, everyone. It's been a while. Just saw "Scott pilgrim versus the world" last night.

In general, thought it rocked. I've become a fan of the comics in recent months, so I knew the source material going into it. Honestly, I really thought they did a fantastic job in the adaptation. With any adaptation at all, in my opinion, the point isn't to provide an exact one-to-one translation to the screen - that's usually not possible. Instead, the object is to try and get at the substance of the source in as much as possible while working the material in such a way that works for the screen and for the actors.

Random thoughts as they come to me:

• Michael cera was surprisingly effective as the title character. When I first saw the trailer, I thought he was completely wrong for the part. Instead, he found a way to make it work -- primarily, I guess, by realizing the character's nature as the ultimate Idiot Hero. Cera just plays him as the idiot who thinks too much as opposed to too little, which complements his kind of nerdy cerebralness. Also - surprisingly convincing in the fight scenes, I thought. (or maybe he just had a really good stunt double?)
• Actually, the only character I was kind of dissapointed with was Ramona. I don't think they did a good enough job of really relaying why Scott falls for her. In the comics, what really sold the connection between the two of them to me was how chill and laid-back she was as a girlfriend, and how she was, in her own way, just as big a dork as Scott. The actress - forgive me, can't remember her name right now - was just a little too chilly and distant. Maybe that was just inevitable given the medium, but I wish they'd gone more into that.
  Physically perfect for the part, though. Man, she was cute.
• Wallace was perfect. That is all.
• liked the ending. A bit too pat, maybe, but close enough. The reset was brilliant.
• in general, the production was perfect. The universal logo in the beginning? The music cues from Zelda? A reference to freaking *ducktales*? yeah, I'm sold.

Okay, lunch hour is up. Deadlines to face back at work. Fun, fun, fun...

At work without anything to really do. Would head out early except for the fact that I put down for eight hours today, which I figure buys my employer that much desk time, productive or no. So have some pictures of our cubical decorations:






(it's probably a bad thing when a joke requires a footnote...)


(this being a still from the official Team Sparta Christmas e-card)