Post what you want, when you want it. It’s anarchy!
- I liked this post by John Corvino at the Indie Gay Forum, categorizing the “that’s not the definition of marriage” argument against equal marriage rights into four categories.
- Howard Stern on Gabourey Sidibe: hard facts
- Ron Unz at The American Conservative (obviously a liberal hippie think tank) debunks claims of “an illegal alien crime wave.”
- Crack cocaine sentencing disparity will soon be “One-Fifth As Racist As It Used To Be“
- Nathan Newman argues that progressives actually got some significant policy wins in Obama’s first year.
- Cell phones, Facebook, and the war on loneliness
- Democrats Who Oppose Student Loan Reform Love Banks More Than They Care About Students
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Alas, there’s going to be an outage for a few hours on Sunday while the server undergoes updates.
I love the bank thing. We need to subsidize these banks, because we need a healthy, profitable banking sector! Hmm, all these bailouts are expensive…we need to save some money…hey, let’s nationalize one of the banking sector’s most profitable lines of business!
Seems like we could have skipped a step, ya know?
So, Robert, are you saying that we should subsidize the banks forever, even though they now seem to be stable? That’s certainly how most elected Republicans (and, alas, many elected Democrats) feel.
Your comment implies you have no idea of the difference between a bail-out with a limited time frame, versus a ongoing giveaway to the banks regardless of what shape they’re in and with no end-date in mind. Also, liberals have been calling to stop this particular bank givaway for many years, long before the most recent bank crisis.
Frankly, it’s silly to call it “privatizing” when we’re talking about a business that already is based around government subsidies. It’s not like the banks are asking to be let alone so that they can run their own business without government interference.
Nor would it be illegal for the private sector to offer student loans, if this passes. If they can offer competitive rates without subsidies from taxpayers, then great. If they can’t offer competitive rates, then that just shows that the free market isn’t capable of filling the need for affordable student loans as well as the Federal government.
No, I’m not saying subsidize the banks forever. I’m saying it’s stupid to tax us hugely in order to bail the banks out, and then turn around and make it harder for the banks to exist. If you were going to screw them on student loans, then why bother keeping them alive in the first place? Is it suddenly NOT important to have a profitable, healthy banking sector?
So are you saying that it’s impossible to have a profitable, healthy banking sector without a hugely subsidized student loan program? Because otherwise your comment is senseless.
No, it’s not impossible. Saying that my comment only makes sense if it’s IMPOSSIBLE is absurd.
A guy falls down in the street, having a heart attack. You use your portable defibrillator to save the guy.
The next day, you start beating the hell out of him in the street every time you see him.
Someone comments “it makes no sense for you to save the guy’s life one day and then start beating him up the next.” Does this comment make sense only if it is IMPOSSIBLE for him to survive your beatings? If you just beat him within an inch of his life, but don’t quiiiite push him into another heart attack, is your bizarre behavior somehow logical?
The other illogical thing is that there are some Democratic congresspeople who oppose the student loan bill – not a whole lot of them, but a few. So they’re hurting health care’s chances for what seems like a pretty small political return; not that many people are worked up about student lending.
It makes me wonder if they aren’t thinking “this sucker is going down” and have decided to attach whatever other things the base would like to see but that don’t seem likely to pass on their own, so that they can at least get a clean sweep on those issues. (“We tried…but the Republicans are bad!”)
I’m envisioning a big starburst on a box saying “80% Racism Free!”
My girlfriend patiently explains that Katheryn Bigelow accomplished something herself.
My girlfriend doesn’t want relationship advice from Jerry Seinfeld.
Supposedly I write for that blog too, I just, er, haven’t lately
Banking failures and bailouts and the collapse of the commerical real estate market is quite likely going to have a direct effect on the upcoming election to see who wins the (essentially open) Illinois Senate seat that had previously been occupied by President Obama. It’s a bit ironic that it will probably favor the Republican candidate.
It seems that the Democratic candidate, one Alexi Giannoulias, has part ownership in a bank called Broadway Bank with the rest of his family. The bank put way too much of it’s portfolio in commerical real estate loans and it’s about to fail. Alexi will collect millions in tax refunds if that happens because you get to count losses in one year against profits in previous years for tax purposes. His bank made millions in loans to people who have been found to have committed criminal acts, some of whom had records at the time the loans were made. In fact, this very morning one of them was arrested at the U.S. – Canadian border trying to get out of the country on his Greek passport after having cut about $1.5 million in bad checks and wire transfers from Broadway Bank to save his restaurant business.
It’s too soon to tell if Alexi had approved any of these loans during the time he was chief loan officer of the bank, or how involved he was with this. He says he’s going to donate the $120,000 he got in campaign contributions from the gentleman referred to above to charity.
This should be interesting. Is Alexi complicit in criminal acts? Was he just incompetent? Or was he not involved at all? Too soon to tell. But you have to figure this isn’t going to help. Most electoral pundits would have had this seat safely in Democratic hands a month ago, but right now Rasmussen has it dead even. Of course, it’s a long way to November and this could all blow over. Or … not. And this guy was the State Treasurer! It’s worth noting that the person who held the seat before Barack Obama was Peter Fitzgerald – a Republican, and was the guy who put in the U.S. Attorneys in Illinois that are currently throwing scores of politicians into jail. The current Republican candidate, Mark Kirk, is by no means a far-right candidate and so far there is no hint of scandal concerning him. There might be a change here that was unlooked for a while back.
Well, considering that TAC has consistently opposed war since it was established in 2002, I’m sure there are some neocons who would actually argue that it is a liberal hippie think tank. For most conservatives, the war is the only issue that matters. That’s why in 2006 they loved Joe Lieberman and during the last election cycle they were calling Ron Paul a terrorist lover.
I just wanted to pop by and say thanks so much for the link love, it is much appreciated.
I’m sorry I haven’t been doing much link love lately; my cartooning has really been taking a lot of time lately, and I no longer have much blogging time. But thanks for posting so many things I want to link to!
Hm. A thought. The Obama Administration and Speaker Pelosi say “Pass the Senate health care bill and we’ll put together another bill to fix it.” And we’re supposed to trust them? Fine. Write the “fix” bill. Get it passed by the Senate. Then submit it to the House and get them to pass it (it can be worded to be dependent on the Senate health care bill being passed). Then pass the Senate health care bill. Because otherwise we have to trust the players involved – and I don’t, and neither do a lot of other people.
With regards to Howard Stern’s comments; I watched the Oscars, which is not typical of me. I have to confess that I had a very similar thought to this woman’s future in show business (minus the rather vulgar way that Stern expressed it). How many other women (or men, for that matter) of her size have you ever seen in a movie? A few, sure. But the roles are limited and from what I’ve seen generally confined to comedies where the character’s size makes them the object of various running jokes. I confess I’m not a big movie goer and from conversations on here I suspect that most of you see a lot more movies than I do, so I’d be interested in your comments.
Robert, you wrote ” Is it suddenly NOT important to have a profitable, healthy banking sector?”
That comment only makes sense if you think that there’s a contradiction between reforming student loans, and having a profitable, healthy bank sector.
I see no evidence any such contradiction exists; I am not aware of any independent economists who have predicted catastrophic effects on the banking industry due to student loan reform. (The student loan companies themselves haven’t been claiming that this would sink the health of the banking industry; they have predicted that they’d have to lay people off, and even that claim is in doubt.)
If the banks need a bailout to avoid sinking the entire economy — and it’s doesn’t appear that they do, this year — then we should bail them out (with harsh conditions). But the way to do that is with a straightforward bail-out, not a perpetual gift to them from taxpayers through student loans.
It’s a nearly painless way to repeal a $67 billion dollar annual gift to the banks, and use that money to help more Americans afford college. It’s damned good policy, even if the political return isn’t large.
As far as I know, they have no choice but to bundle all business to be voted on through reconciliation together. Reconciliation is always done via a single omnibus bill per budget year; I don’t think the rules allow the Democrats to submit two separate reconciliation bills, one for Health Care and one for Student Loan Reform.
(I might be mistaken about this — Senate rules are pretty opaque, to say the least — but that’s my understanding.)
It seems to me that the Democrats would be much better off splitting HCR and SLR into separate reconciliation bills, if they could; since the holdouts on HCR and the holdouts on SLR aren’t always the same Senators, it would be easier to pass them separately than together.
As far as “this sucker is going down” — obviously, the Democrats are going to lose some seats, and they’d be foolish to not pass some legislation now. (Nor is there anything unethical about passing legislation while you have a strong elected majority.) But my expectation is that the Democrats will retain a majority — but a smaller one — after November.
Too many Americans go to college now, so I doubt that it’s good policy.
You’re right about the reconciliation, they can only do one reconciliation bill before they have to do a new budget resolution. (I think that’s the right sequence. They can only do one, that part I’m sure of.)
If the bill goes down, the Dems will lose seats in a typical midcycle shift. If the bill passes, the Dems will lose their majority in a one-off tidal wave.
I’m a little ahead of the curve on this, but Democratic pollsters agree with me: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/11/AR2010031102904.html
You might also check out http://realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2010/house/2010_elections_house_map.html
Right now polling shows the Republicans picking up a net 16 seats in the House, with 30 more seats being tossups. In the Senate, they’re showing the Republicans picking up 4, with another 4 being tossups. That’s pre-health care. If they don’t pass it, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the numbers come out about like the early polling shows. Pass it, and you can write off every one of those tossup seats.
When Barbara Boxer’s seat isn’t considered a safe Democratic win, Democrats had better be careful about what unpopular legislation they pass on party-line votes.
Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell are “Democratic pollsters” in the same way that Zell Miller is a Democrat — they find the label useful for making Republican talking points, but they don’t actually agree with Democrats on substantive policy issues.
The polls on Health Care Reform show that approval is growing. It’s not a wonderful issue for Democrats, but neither is it the ARMAGEDDON! issue you imagine it to be. My guess is that Democrats will do slightly better having passed health care reform (thus having won an accomplishment, and provided their base with a reason to come out) than having failed to do so.
Of course, there’s no way to test that, alas.
I really find this sort of horse-race discussion boring, to tell you the truth. What’s important about HCR is that, compared to the status quo, it’s good policy. Even if you’re right — and you haven’t been very accurate with your past election predictions, since as you may have noticed McCain is not the President — it doesn’t convince me that Democrats are wrong to pass HCR.
If the price of getting health insurance for millions of currently uninsured Americans, saving tens of thousands of lives, reducing the deficit, and beginning to set up systems to reduce the growth of medical spending — not to mention closing the donut hole and getting rid of the “pre-existing conditions means uninsurable” problem — is a catastrophic loss for the Democrats in 2010, then I’ll consider it worth it.
The point of getting elected isn’t to win re-election. It’s to pass policy that helps people.
It’s interesting that you and Rob are so eager to discuss polls and process, rather than the actual effects of passing this bill versus retaining the status quo.
I don’t think anyone will really care, in two months’ time, whether the bill was passed sidecar-first or sidecar-second (a choice that will be made, to a large extent, based on what seems most likely to be deemed acceptable according to the rules of the Senate as interpreted by the Senate parliamentarian). I think people will care about if the bill passed or failed, and they’ll care about if they think the bill does good things or bad things.
There is an interview series of professional women in online journalism that should not be missed.
http://www.ourblook.com/Table/Gender-and-Mass-Media/
It was conducted by the University of Iowa Gender and Mass Media class this past fall. The women who were interviewed offer a great deal of unique perspectives and insights to the future of online journalism. Especially pertaining to the ever changing world we live in and both the affects an effects of journalims.
A city police officer filed a lawsuit alleging the acting chief covered up the accident and traffic stop of the former police chief. I spoke with him several weeks ago in passing and he mentioned it. Blogging’s not been boring as I’ve got tons of things to look into further and write about in relation to this ongoing situation and others.
Also, the blog was named one of the “movers and shakers” (and I guess I’ll find out what that means when the issue’s released) of the Inland Empire by Inland Empire Weekly, an alternative newspaper. That was an interesting surprise.
Wow, congrats! I think it means you’re doing good. :-)
RonF makes the analogy between banks and taxpayers and student aid reform:
I dunno about that one. How about this instead:
Of course, the best thing for us would be to get the kids out of harm’s way and ALSO get a regulatory restraining order on the bastard – I mean, the banks. But of course we don’t have the will for that.
(OK, and I know that this exhibits many WAY too many gender sterotypes)
This. (from Amp’s #16 above)
I must admit that I was pretty agnostic on this reform proposal (I want Single Payer, Dammit! F*#)@&! this insurance/hospital/pharma coercive violence), until I read a post from a doctor in a NYTimes blog that made me a convert. He quoted that Harvard study that found that 45,000 people die in this country each year due to lack of access to health care. And said that it is morally unjustifiable to let that continue. Full stop.
Yes! But not just full stop, because it’s also economically stupid. We need those people. They’re our people – we educated them, we live with them, their kids go to our kids’ schools, they contribute to making our country work, they make us great. We can’t do without them. And it’s getting worse. Tomorrow it’ll be someone you know, or someone you care about.
So, yeah, this bill stinks to the sky. But it’s better than what is.
OK, now I’m going to follow that post with an embarrassing, emotional story:
On the morning of 9/11 I was sitting in a mid-career kind of training, a long way from home with a bunch of strangers. One of the other students came in and said that someone had flown planes into the Twin Towers, and she had heard that there may be 50,000 people trapped inside the burning buildings. 50,000 people! I started crying. Everyone turned to look at me, and someone next to me said quietly “do you know someone there?” No, I didn’t, but the thought of 50,000 people dying in those buildings made me fall apart. (why is it worse than 3,000? I honestly don’t know)
I just can’t stand the idea of tens of thousands of people dying in this country each year because the hospital door is (figuratively) locked to them. It’s tragic, and it literally makes me weep.
Dry your tears, empathetic marmalade. You weep for statistical deaths, and statistical deaths of iffy validity at that.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/03/myth-diagnosis/7905/
It amuses that those who spend all the time telling us never to give up on the Vegas odds of dieting “success” are now falling over themselves too write off GS’s chance of being able to create a career in the biz they call show.
It’s just occured that she probably has a better chance at the Hollywood career- she started her diet one at the age of 6.
In fact, maybe the real ‘corruptor’ of her hopes is the memory of that investment, rather than her not owning a mirror.
(Amp’s snark edited out by Amp.)
Since you didn’t make an argument, just a link, I’ll respond with quotes but no argument of my own. :-)
Stan Dorn wrote a response to the McArdle post you linked.
J. Michael McWilliams, an assistant professor of health care policy and of medicine at Harvard Medical School, also responded to McArdle’s post:
Autin Frakt — another expert who has published on this subject in the peer reviewed literature — summed it up here:
I’d also highly recommend these two posts by Ezra Klein.
A question occurred to me recently, so I’ve written a post on my stagnant blog in order to raise the question. My real interest is in hearing responses to me noticing that the Precious DVDs at my local BlockBuster are kept behind the desk to prevent theft, a policy not used for any other title that I could see. I haven’t been able to decide what to think about this.
I didn’t know Gahan Wilson once did a Sunday comic strip.
Harvard Medical School’s press release upon the publication of “Racial, ethnic and educational differences in control of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in the United States: trends from 1999 to 2006 and effects of Medicare coverage,” by JM McWilliams, E Meara, AM Zaslavsky, JZ Ayanian JZ, Annals of Internal Medicine, April 21, 2009: 150:505-515.
That said, I’m intrigued by the arguments of the University of Chicago’s Harold Pollack, author of Making Americans Healthier: Social and economic policy as health policy (2008):
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Perhaps this helps explain some of my discomfort with the Boy Scouts.
There are some lessons best not learned from the church. This is one of them.
Thanks Amp!!
Former chief got charged with two DUI counts.
oops some links.
Former police chief charges with DUI and my response to another local blogger who thinks I’m being too critical of the city manager, who was the chief’s boss.
Alas, apparently I’m mud to him and the department’s command staff right now. The acting chief said he didn’t read the site and then the next day did a reversal and said it was all ridiculous garbage.
Oh well.
The CHP confirmed what everyone knew. Officers knew the police chief was intoxicated when they stopped him.