May 1, 2008 6:13

Sidney, Sidney, Oh Sidney

This piece is all the rage in the mainstream and liberal journo worlds this afternoon. It certainly give an, ummm, interesting perspective on the Clinton oppo operation.

May 1, 2008 4:41

The D.C. Madam

The story of her apparent* suicide is dominating the cable channels -- predictably, given the salaciousness of the entire saga. But our colleague Adam Zagorin, in his sad story on TIME.com that reveals she had talked of ending her life, also raises an important question that the feds have never answered adequately: Why were they prosecuting her in the first place? As Adam notes:

Palfrey's trial, which concluded in mid-April with a conviction, is one of very few such cases prosecuted in the federal courts. Most prostitution violations are dealt with at the state or municipal level, and attract little publicity. In the Palfrey case, prosecutors obliged a string of obviously embarrassed clients and employees of the escort service to appear on the witness stand and testify under oath.

*Thanks, Jayack, for reminding me that a qualifier is needed. Were you a city editor in some earlier life?

May 1, 2008 4:20

Pelosi: No Gas Tax Holiday

Hurray for Nancy Pelosi! She opposes the summer gas tax holiday, which means it probably won't happen. (At least, I hope she has the votes to stop it.) The tax holiday is the worst sort of empty political posturing for these reasons:

1. Gasoline prices probably won't fall. It's doubtful that the oil companies will pass along the savings--it certainly will be difficult to tell, since gas prices usually rise this time of year anyway, on summer demand.

2. The gas tax stokes the highway trust fund, which is spent on job-rich infrastructure renewal projects. Cutting the trust fund could well cost jobs in an extremely iffy economy. (or raise the deficit, if the government decides to go ahead with the highway projects anyway.)

3. It sends the wrong signal. It encourages something we don't want to see: greater oil consumption--and continuing dependence on foreign oil. The public has to start getting used to the fact that high oil prices probably aren't coming down--the Chinese and Indians are guzzling, and supplies will soon dwindle, if they haven't already. People should be driving less, using mass transit or more fuel-efficient vehicles.

At his town meeting in Winston-Salem the other day, Barack Obama fielded a comment from a woman who said that after the meeting she was going across town to give $20 for fuel costs to a woman who has to drive some distance every day to work a minimum wage job--there is apparently a community-wide project to help such people...and if there is any argument at all for gasoline tax relief, it would be to help the working poor. But Obama had a thoughtful answer to this problem: he said that he was proposing payroll tax relief for families with incomes under $75,000 (if you must give tax breaks, this is the best way to do it) to ease that burden, but that the long-term answer had to be an Apollo project to produce less-expensive alternative fuels and more fuel-efficient cars in the next decade. That seems to me the only answer. It is more than a little disappointing that Hillary Clinton, who has an excellent energy plan--and John McCain, a rare Republican who acknowledges the global warming crisis--have succumbed to the gas tax holiday pander. Obama gets props for standing firm.

May 1, 2008 4:02

Superpowers

• "A community...that is populated by individuals who, because they spend so much time hunched over a computer taking politics personally and living intensely inside their heads, are on constant hyper-aware alert—sensitive to slights, prone to excitations, and susceptible to a hair-trigger impulse to dramatize their thoughts and feelings with words loaded into a rocket launcher." [VF]

• "Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so." [TP] (Sorry I'm late on this.)

• "So Tony Stark's body becomes a metaphor for American power, and the question of whether you can fix the abuses of power by exerting even more power." [io9]

• "THE OBAMA UNIVERSE is governed by the reality that every night, when the Clinton campaign turns out the lights in Arlington, Clinton is not really any close to winning the nomination that when the first intern trudged in at the crack of dawn....IN THE CLINTON UNIVERSE, Clinton has all the green cards... Finally, she's an underdog, and Democrats root for the underdog. This long race is helping the party; Democrats are excited; Superdelegates perceive this, and the tipping point is coming soon." [Ambinder]

• "Question 21, which Gates called 'infamous,' asks applicants whether they have consulted a mental health professional in the past seven years. If the answer is 'Yes, they must list details. Now, troops can answer 'No' if the mental health care is related to post-combat stress or care sought for difficulty adjusting after deployment to war zones." [Reuters]

May 1, 2008 3:02

Update4: The Great Health Care Debate

McCain policy guru Holtz-Eakin does not dispute James Kvall's math, but says that projecting that health care spending will continue to grow as fast as it has in recent years fails to take into account the measures that McCain proposes to rein in medical costs:

If the question is whether the tax credit is indexed to regular inflation, it is. And historically, medical spending has grown faster than inflation. But it is important to emphasize that the tax credit is not the entire reform; McCain has other proposals in insurance market reforms, payment reforms in Medicare, and preventive efforts all of which are designed to slow cost growth or even reduce it where possible.

You can see more specifics of how McCain plans to deal with health care costs here.

Also, if you missed it, that earlier post also now includes the latest reaction to the GHCD from Justin Fox.

May 1, 2008 2:58

Experts? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Experts!

On the Clinton press conference call this morning, comm director Howard Wolfson was asked to defend Clinton's roundly-criticized/derided/debunked "gas tax holiday" proposal. I haven't gotten the recording yet, so I'll be back with the exact quote later, but his answer was along these lines: "Presidents sometimes do what experts say and sometimes they don't," and sometimes the right thing to do isn't what the experts say.

We've heard this kind of logic applied to poll numbers, and as an argument against merely going with the will of the crowd, it makes sense. Sometimes the right thing to do isn't the popular thing to do -- either because we don't have consensus as a country, or, you know, because the government is actively lying to us to make the wrong thing to do more attractive.

But in this case, HRC's people seem to be arguing that she's committed to doing something stupid just because it's popular. Which is a lot like her vote on the war, except when it turns out disastrously, she can't claim to have been lied to.

Of course, if this policy turns out disastrously, McCain -- also a tax holiday supporter -- will just insist on giving out the gas for free. Perhaps even pouring it on a fire.

UPDATE: Exact statement from the call, per NPR:

"We believe that the presidency requires leadership. There are times when a president will take a position that a broad consensus of quote unquote experts will agree with, and there are times when a president will do something that, the group of experts quote unquote does not agree with.

"And you know, this is something that Senator Clinton believes is the right policy...she believes it's the right policy in the short term to help consumers who are struggling, and she has, as I said, a very comprehensive plan to deal with this in the long term as well. And she's going to continue to talk about this and continue to push for it. And I understand that there may be some people who disagree with it and of course they're entitled to disagree with it. You know, this is something that Senator Clinton believes is important. And presidents listen to advice, get advice, and then, and then act. And that is what Senator Clinton is doing."

May 1, 2008 12:28

Robo-Cop

The blog Facing South has been following the controversy surrounding robo-calls made in North Carolina by the group "Women's Voice, Women Vote." You can listen to the call here. Again, the Clinton conspiracists have plenty of grist for their respective mills: The calls instructed listeners to wait for a "voter registration packet" and to sign it and send it in "THEN" they could vote. The problem? Facing South explains:

The call is deceptive because the deadline has already passed for mail-in registrations for North Carolina's May 6 primary. Also, many who have received the calls -- like Kevin Farmer in Durham, who made a tape of the call that is available here -- are already registered. The call's suggestion that they're not registered has caused widespread confusion and drawn hundreds of complaints, including many from African-American voters who received the calls.

The last bit is key, obviously, for those that think the calls were intended to suppress the black (and likely Obama) vote. What's more, the group has documented ties to the Clinton campaign -- including a shared "voter outreach" firm, as well as overlap in their leadership: Maggie Williams (HRC campaign manager) was on WVWV's executive committee, and FoB John Podesta is on the board of directors.

This all could be a coincidence. The world of progressive politics is not that large, and WVWV insists that there was simply "confusion" about when and where the calls were to be placed. Thing is, they've apparently been confused a lot: Facing South found WVWV doing some kind hinky election mailing or call in ten other states, including a similar case investigated by the state police in Virginia.

Even if the Clinton campaign is not directly involved, the group's activities have certainly warranted the scrutiny of the blogosphere -- and beyond. As well as, you know, the police.

UPDATE: Thanks for the Open Left link. I admit that Becky Bond's defense/explanation makes more sense than the one in WVWV statement: She points out that the board has two Obama supporters on it, and says the calls are supposed to be a general election strategy, not a primary one -- and that the reason the calls go out after the primary registration deadline is because "around primaries people are reminded that they need to register in time for the general." She also says WVWV has research to support all the slightly suspicious aspects of their tactics, apparently including the use of a fake name to identify the robo-caller, saying that calls "from an individual with a name and way of speaking that is similar to the target demographic" are more effective than a "generic" caller.

I think, then, that the Clinton connection sounds like just a small-world thing -- but as for the actions themselves, it is striking that these apparently innocent tactics have still been called illegal and been the subject numerous complaints. But, again, it could be coincidence. And political consultants can be as inept as anyone. Perhaps more so. If the options are: well-designed voter suppression campaign versus badly-designed GOTV campaign, the history of the modern Democratic party suggests the latter. (Now, if it were the Rs....)

UPDATE 2: Yep, they're just idiots. TPM has a statement from Podesta:

With respect to the calls and mailings made in North Carolina, I understand that remedial action is being undertaken. I agree with fellow board member William McNary that the North Carolina state calling program was a mistake of judgment and execution.

May 1, 2008 11:50

Update3: The Great Health Care Debate

More math from my email inbox. (Commenter Jay Ackroyd loves this stuff.) This installment comes from James Kvall, of the Center for American Progress:

Holtz-Eakin's basic math is correct but it begs a basic question: if a typical worker gets an $800 tax cut, how can the whole policy be revenue-neutral?

I think the answer is that the proposal is a big tax cut in its first year, but it morphs into a tax increase over time -- so it's really revenue neutral over 10 years and a tax increase beyond that. This would work by holding down the growth in the credit to the inflation rate (about 2% a year), unlike the current benefit which rises with health care premiums (about 6%). Surprisingly quickly, the tax cut turns into a tax increase, even for typical workers with ordinary health care plans.

The key question is how the tax credit grows over time -- with inflation, with health care premiums, or some other way. As the NY Times said this morning, it remains unanswered by the McCain campaign.

You can read more from Kvall here. And then there's this from the New York Times.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:

Our blogging cousin Justin Fox has been following the traffic here in the Swamp, and has come to this conclusion:

I don't think this McCain plan is some kind of scam. It just shows clear signs of having been designed by free-market-oriented economists who don't know all that much about the health-care system. As a mostly free-market-oriented non-economist who doesn't know all that much about the health-care system, I'm naturally sympathetic to it. But I'm also extremely dubious of how well it would work in practice.

May 1, 2008 11:42

Not Much Money Where Your Mouth Is

Mark "The Minimalist" Bittman has a lovely, straightforward (if opinionated) approach to food, so I suppose it makes sense that he'd a have similar approach to the politics of food. With the chattering class -- and the Washington Post -- focused on how expensive food is getting, he has a bracing blog post up today reminding readers that, in the U.S., we still stuff ourselves pretty cheaply. And why is that? He summarizes a recent Pew report:

The reasons I do get are these: There are the “efficiencies” of industrialized production, not only of animals but of crops: the length of time it takes to bring a chicken to market has been cut just about in half since the end of World War II, and the yields of some crops have more than doubled per acre. These so-called efficiencies include monoculture, extensive use of fertilizer and factory farming — the whole package.

A second and related factor is the hundred-year-long experiment with spending down just about every available natural resource we’ve inherited from thousands of generations of our ancestors: oil, of course, but other mineral resources, land, water, oceanic resources and air as well. (We could list the relatively good weather our farmland receives, and wonder whether we’ve squandered that too.)

Something to think about on the way to Whole Foods.

(Bittman's "Bitten" blog -- fun to say -- is, generally, really good; check out his entries about a recent trip to Italy for nice color and excellent recipes. I'm thinking of making the carbonara for lunch...)

May 1, 2008 11:01

100 Years

The McCain campaign has gone rabid-vehement over what they consider distortions of their candidate's desire to remain in Iraq for 100 years. Once again, let's make the distinction: McCain hasn't said he's in favor of a 100 year war...just a 100 year occupation, which he posits, ridiculously, could be as peaceful as the U.S. military presence in Korea or Germany. Moira Whelan has laid out the details of the controversy very clearly here.

My view is that this is a completely legitimate issue: McCain wants to use Iraq as a long-term U.S. military platform in the region. Both Obama and Clinton think that's foolish--a U.S. military presence in Iraq would be a constant irritant--and so do I. My guess is the American people will agree with the Democrats on this one, which is, obviously, why the McCain campaign is trying to deligitimize it.

May 1, 2008 9:35

Latest Column

...and the end of the Wright controversy, I hope.

May 1, 2008 7:36

Buh-bye, Lurita

What took so long?

May 1, 2008 6:51

Update2: The Great Health Care Debate

With as much as we have been discussing health care policy here lately, I'm thinking we should re-name this blog "Bedside Manner." But here's a point that McCain senior policy adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin, in an e-mail to me, suggests we need to underscore:

Just wanted to make sure that you understood that there is nothing in McCain’s plan that forces an individual to give up their employer-sponsored insurance. In particular:

Nothing changes for the employer. All compensation (wages, health, life, disability, etc.) was deductible from business taxation before; it would remain so after. Accordingly, since employers offer an array of wages/benefits to attract the workforce they need to compete, nothing will change on that front — including the use of health insurance as a recruiting/retention tool.

For the typical ESI recipient -- $12,000 policy — nothing changes. The tax liability on the policy ($12,000 x .35) when insurance is taxed as compensation is $4,200; this will be immediately offset by the credit of $5,000. In short, if they want to stay with the current plan, it just means a lot of computer entries on the pay stub. No change and if they are happy they stay with what they have.

Understood. There is nothing in the plan that forces employers to drop their coverage, and in industries where there are union contracts, or where companies are in heavy competition for the best workers, a good health plan is likely to remain part of the compensation mix. But at a time when many employers are already scaling back, raising the cost of and even dropping health coverage for their workers,* many experts say that the kind of system envisioned under the McCain plan would encourage even more employers to get rid of health coverage.

Which, by the way, is not necessarily a bad thing. The current system of getting your health insurance as a fringe benefit from your employer does not make a lot of sense economically, and is one of the things that has given rise to the many problems--especially rising costs--in the health care system today. The real question is whether what would replace it is better or worse than what we have now. And that is what this long-overdue debate should be all about.

* Could we see a show of hands out there from those of you who are feeling it? Mine would go up, if I weren't typing.