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Ezra Klein is concerned--or rather, he's "gripped" by an "unsettling thought":
[H]ealth-care reform isn't simply suffering because the public is overly opposed to some of its revenue raisers. It's suffering because the public is insufficiently supportive of its core. ... [snip]
[I]t's not obvious what health-care reform will do for the average American. I could give you a long answer about delivery system reforms and so forth because it's my job to know these things. But it would have to be a long answer .... [snip]
Higher taxes aren't buying them obvious benefits. Instead, they seem to be paying the health-care bills of poorer Americans. ... [snip]
If support for the overall effort were more robust, the polling on the tax exclusion would matter less. People are willing to pay for things they want to buy. But though they might abstractly favor health-care reform, it doesn't seem directly related to their lives. [E.A.]
I agree with my distinguished colleague (and welcome him to the concern troll community). He's woken to the realization that Obama is running into political difficulty because he's selling the middle class a pain sandwich--more taxes in exchange for more health care cuts. It would have been smarter to sell universal health care as offering, at a time when nearly everyone's job looks shaky, Medicare-like security for all. (It's not too late! And it fits on a bumper sticker.) ...
Whom should Klein blame for this tragic initial misstep? Among others, he should blame Ezra Klein, whose "long answer" explaining health care reform's benefits seemingly bought into the entire Orszag party line (health care reform is the way to lower costs and cut the budget deficit!)--even amplifying it by arguing that a more "rational" health care system would decide whether "a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure." If only Klein and other influential Obamapparatchiks had been more critical and Kinsleyesque. ....
P.S.: A day after his concerned post, Klein writes:
People don't like to cut costs in the health-care system. It's painful. Politicians do not voluntarily do painful things. But a lot of people want to achieve universal health care. And they're willing to make a lot of concessions to do so. The coverage expansion, in other words, can serve as leverage for the cost controls. [E.A.]
Huh? July 10 Ezra Klein should read July 9 Ezra Klein. If universal coverage in itself doesn't do much that's obvious "for the average American"--but rather seems to mainly involve "paying the health care bills of poorer Americans," why would average Americans be willing to "make a lot of concessions" in the form of painful cost cuts to achieve that goal--any more than they will be willing to endure painful tax increases?
Bonus question: Why would Klein abandon the sound contrarian insight he'd had a day earlier? Collective criticism on JournoList? ...
Update: "Pelosi, House Leaders to Hold Press Conference Today to Highlight Benefits of Health Care Reform for Middle Class"--Politico's Mike Allen. A Pelosi press conference! That'll do it. ... 12:04 A.M.
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Gran Salida, Win/Win? WaPo profiles one of the "thousands of Latino immigrants forced back across the border in recent months by the sinking economy ..." Thousands? Is this the Gran Salida that the New York Times assured us wasn't happening? ...
P.S.: The subject of the profile, a resourceful and industrious Guatemalan illegal immigrant named Carlos Sanchez, seems to be at least as valuable an addition to Guatemalan society as he was to Washington, D.C.'s. [non-ironic]. After what appears to be non-traumatic adjustment period
Sanchez teaches typing at his house each Saturday on 27 manual typewriters his sister stockpiled for him over the years. And he landed a day job teaching English in a local high school.
Mightn't it help developing countries like Guatemala if their most enterprising citizens return home, or stay home in the first place? ... 12:02 A.M.
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"Fighting Sotomayor, Republicans Falsely Advance Fire Fighter Ricci As the White Man's Rosa Parks": I remind my brother Steve that not even the sainted Rosa Parks was quite what she seemed. ... P.S.: I've never understood quite why the Ricci case was considered to have "bad" facts by defenders of Title VII's "disparate impact" standard for judging employment tests. Ricci involved a new test, designed by consultants. The worst case, for the defenders, would be if New Haven had thrown out a traditional test that had been accepted for years as job related, no? ... P.P.S.: Would this freshly concocted multiple choice exam have met the less stringent Rosenberg Standard (a "reasonable relationship to the organization's activities")? I assume yes. But would it have been crazy for the New Haven authorities to decide "no"? ... 1:40 A.M.
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If you unimmerse yourself in the Ricci commentary, including Richard Thompson Ford's smug, reified** apocalypticism, and just look at John Rosenberg's solution for the vise-like conflict between preventing reverse discrimination and stopping non-reverse discrimination in cases of "disparate" racial impact ... well, what's wrong with it?
[T]he solution to this dilemma is conceptually (if not politically) easy: demote disparate impact to its proper role, which is suggestive evidence of the possibility of disparate treatment, a possibility that can be successfully refuted by an employer's production of credible evidence that the challenged test, policy, or procedure bears a reasonable relationship to the organization's activities. (Of course, credible evidence that an employer adopted even such a reasonable test for a discriminatory purpose would also be barred as disparate treatment.) [E.A]
Would that be so terrible? We couldn't live with that? We'd be racist if we did? Note that there would still be race discrimination suits, presumably plenty of them. They would just be easier to defend against. ... P.S.: Ford worries about an explosion "disparate impact" of lawsuits from disgruntled whites--but this rule would make those suits less easy to win too, along with suits by disgruntled blacks (and other minorities). Everyone would have to calm down! ... P.P.S.: Rosenberg notes that his solution is similar to one adopted by the EEOC in 1989, but then overruled by Congress (and the first President Bush). ...
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**--Why "reified"? Because it falsely treats the circumstances that gave rise to "disparate impact" law as more or less permanent. In reality, the arc in which race preferences are initially regarded as a necessary remedy and then gradually regarded as toxic and stigmatizing and finally as unconstitutional seems like a natural one. ... Reification #2: In predicting a hellacious gridlock of discrimination litigation from whites and blacks, Ford also seems to assume that Congress can't or won't relax the "disparate impact" test along the lines suggested by Rosenberg and the 1989 EEOC case. ... 5:38 P.M.
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Grats to kf role model Walter Olson, who started his Overlawyered blog 10 years ago. The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers--for obvious reasons--habitually leave out of their let's-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in. ... P.S.: Here's a pithy Olson graf on the litigation vise facing businesses, one aspect of which the Supreme Court addressed in the Ricci case:
How are employers supposed to behave when they face a possible discrimination lawsuit no matter which way they turn?
It's a question HR managers and company lawyers are used to facing every day. Would you rather field the legal claims that result from targeted layoffs, or the ones that result from sacking people regardless of performance? Would you rather face a defamation lawsuit for mentioning the reasons for a problem employee's departure, or a failure-to-warn lawsuit for not mentioning them? Will your policy on religious proselytizing in the workplace get you sued by the believers, or by the atheists?
But Justice Anthony Kennedy's solution to this problem in the Ricci case--that a city can't throw out a job test that winds up promoting whites and no blacks unless there is a "strong basis in evidence" that it would lose a subsequent discrimination lawsuit--seems an unsatisfying solution to the litigation vise.
What if a city, after reading the Ricci decision, decides there's just a wee a bit less than a "strong" basis for thinking it will lose a discrimination case, and doesn't throw out the test (lest SCOTUS smack it down)--and then loses the discrimination case anyway? That it was scared to throw out the test doesn't necessarily mean the test didn't have an unjustified "disparate impact" (The evidence might not have been overwhelmingly apparent at the time, for the city could have guessed wrong.) Justice Kennedy seems to have carved out, not a safe haven but an area of uncertainty where the outcome could typically be "lose lose." ...
But, again, maybe I'm confused or missing something. ...
P.S.: I took this item down briefly when I thought for a moment it was wrong. Now I think it is not wrong. ... 7:05 P.M.
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They're having a terrific time at the Aspen Ideas Festival! Ferguson vs. Fallows was *great,* for example. Too bad you're not invited and you're missing it! ... But you can watch some short video highlights of a few speakers here. ... P.S.: Classic Atlantic operation. Not having a fabulous exclusive party--"inspired thinking in an idyllic setting"--but expecting readers to enjoy being third-class voyeurs at your fabulous exclusive party while the invited Atlantic people tell you (now via Twitter) what a good time they're having. ... 11:05 P.M.
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Atlantic's Matthew Cooper may think that "affirmative action in its myriad forms is here to stay," but Ward Connerly and the Arizona legislature seem to have other ideas. The legislature has put an anti-preference initiative on next year's ballot. ... 4:06 P.M.
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Stimulus Bill Race Quotas? Did you know** that CalTrans, the huge state agency that spends billions in federal highway construction funds, "sets a quota of having 6.75 percent of contracts go to women or members of [a] targeted group--African American, Asian-Pacific American, and Native America, but not Latinos or other groups." Not a "goal"--a quota. They are being sued. But why is a lawsuit even required? Stimulus money appears to be involved. And aren't "quotas" are what every poll-tested politician says he or she is against? Don't you think if the GOPs (or anyone) made a big stink about the stimulus bill's race quotas, Obama would back off? ... Plus it's another bone he could toss to Latinos! ... P.S.: If "quotas" have always tested badly in polls, the words "affirmative action" has often tested much better. But not in the recent Quinnipiac poll, which found that
American voters say 55 - 36 percent that affirmative action should be abolished
Backfill: Jennifer Rubin explains how explicit race quotas in contracting survived the Supreme Court's 1995 Adarand decision, which many people (me too) thought had killed the practice. "Strict scrutiny" isn't what it used to be. ... No doubt Justice Sotomayor will clean up this mess.
**--You wouldn't know if you relied on the L.A. Times, which apparently hasn't covered the CalTrans quota controversy (though its competitors have). ... 1:40 A.M.
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Why was Pennsylvania relatively unscathed by foreclosures in 2008 while neighboring Ohio was hammered? A friend at a conference I recently attended pointed out the contrast. I don't know the answer, but it might be instructive. ... Update: Thanks to Tom Maguire, who forwards a newspaper article and a summary of three Fed studies on the topic. Regulatory differences are suspected. ... 1:54 A.M.
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Los Angeles Democrats have succeeded in using the state's fiscal crisis to recreate welfare, some thirteen years after the hated federal AFDC entitlement was abolished. The local Dem-controlled Board of Supervisors is proposing to pay mothers for "caring for their own children"--which was the original idea of the welfare program when it was inserted into the New Deal's cash-granting structure in 1935. It seemed to make sense--caring for children is a type of work, after all. Except that subsidizing non-working parenthood--especially single motherhood--turned out to be a recipe for epic social disaster (something that was predicted by not a few dissenting antipoverty activists back in FDR's day). In 1996, Congress finally decided the better policy was to require mothers receiving welfare to work, outside the home, even if that was more expensive than just mailing them checks. At the time, the favored liberal Democratic battle cry was a demand for more day care. But now the Dem Board of Supervisors' proposes to cut the day care and just mail out the checks again, at least to all mothers with two children under age 6. (Message: Have a second kid and you don't have to go to work!).
Doesn't Obama's HHS Department have some say in this? Does he really want to resume subsidizing the culture of dependent single motherhood? ... P.S.: If he plays his cards right he could come out for both welfare and quotas in the same week, and give the GOPs a fair shot. ... [via Drudge] 2:07 A.M.
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WaPo media critic Howard "I'm A Star--The Rules Don't Apply to Me" Kurtz, who failed to disclose that he is paid by CNN when he defended CNN in an online chat this week, promises to disclose in the future:
"That was an oversight and won’t be repeated."
We've heard that tune before! ... P.S.: My beef with Kurtz isn't so much that he has a giant crippling conflict of interest (one that would never be tolerated for a Post reporter writing about, say, GM). It's that he has a giant crippling conflict of interest while he runs around chastising other journalists for minor conflicts of interest. Franklin Foer called him an "East German figure skating judge." He once tried to zing me for an Amazon Associates payment of $1.92 (which I'd overzealously disclosed). ... P.P.S.: The Post's Omblogger Andy Alexander produces a laboriously crafted corporate PR-style paragraph defending his employer--
An archival examination of his writings for The Post shows that when CNN has received a significant mention in his columns or stories, they typically end with this disclosure: "Howard Kurtz hosts's CNN's weekly media program, ‘Reliable Sources.'" [Weasel-word emphasis added.]
a) BS; b) What about stories trashing CNN's competitors (without 'significantly' mentioning CNN)? c) This isn't the sort of conflict--getting a paycheck from one of the companies you are covering--that disclosure is held to cure, according to the normal rules of journalism. ...
Update: Bill Wyman argues--and he has a good example--that what Kurtz doesn't write about matters just as much. ... 2:36 A.M.
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Imagine how cool President McCain would be in the Iran crisis. ... Would he go on TV to declare "we are all Moussavists now," or suspend all government activities while he parachuted into Tehran? ... 3:08 A.M.
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