Health Care Policy Misrepresentations

I generally find the New Republic to be a bit too left-leaning, but I enjoyed this Health Care Policy discussion by Jonathan Cohn.

Here's a summary:

In order to cover his proposed 5K tax credit for health coverage, McCain would tax health benefits. Specifically, while the existing exemption for payroll taxes would stay in place, the existing exemption for income taxes would be repealed. But that would still leave 1.3 trillion dollars that McCain would need to find somewhere in the budget to make his plan revenue neutral. His chief economic adviser suggested that this would be accomplished through "savings" in Medicare. Obama pounced, by equating, against the vociferous protests from the McCain camp, "savings" with "cuts." The McCain campaign is not clear how it intends to skim 1.3 trillion from the current cost of Medicare. (Vague promises to "improve efficiency" and "eliminate fraud" don't sound promising.) Cohn says that no serious economists see the necessary "savings" as realistic. Hence, "cuts" is a borderline fair characterization.

Now, Obama's plan would leave a half a trillion dollar hole in the budget and he would also seek to improve efficiency of Medicare to address that; however, he has been consistent and specific as to how he intends to do so. "Cuts" therefore are substantially less likely.

Finally, and most importantly in my opinion, McCain boxes himself in through the holes in the budget his tax cuts will generate; hence if his "savings" don't work out he has to borrow from China. Obama is not boxed in with respect to tax policy to the same extent.

Videira fails to appear for the Hamilton Reserves against St. Mirren

Accies downed 4-1 by St. Mirren.

Michael Videira in Reserves against Celtic

Videira started, and was substituted, in a 4-2 loss to the Celtic reserves.

"The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga

The book deals with a serious subject - the plight of the poor in India - in a fast-moving, entertaining, caustic way. The book should be accessible to anyone (which I somehow suspect isn't the case with all Man Booker winners).

The criticism that the Wall Street Journal raised in today's paper is absurd. Somehow, it sees the book as critical of globalization. The book has very little to do with globalization, and if anything it is welcoming of it. It does not neglect to mention the non-stop construction, the call centers, etc. In fact, Balram (a.k.a. The White Tiger), the main character, seizes on the newly presented opportunities. Nor does it maintain, contrary to WSJ's review, that only the "rich" benefit from globalization.

The book is about poor villagers, for whom the reality is that they are predestined to die no better off than they were born, and about one man going to extreme ends to change that destiny. It's about corruption, it's about the millenia old traditions, it's about illiteracy, violence, debt, and religion, and how all these things prevent a poor villager to break out of what Balram calls the Rooster Coop.

I have no quarrel with WSJ's numbers, which indicate that there was a significant percentage increase of Indians living above the poverty line from 1981-2005 (18%). I also think that Adiga could have been more clear about who works at the call centers. (Is there a middle class? In the novel, Adiga talks about "masters" and "servants" and that 99.9 percent are servants while the remainder are masters. In this interview with the Guardian, he claims that 5% of Indians are well-off. The Independent cites him as putting the total of the underclass at 400 million.) But I think he makes it clear that there is a substantial underclass that is far from equipped (what, with debt bondage, disease, oppressive hierarchal societal structure) to benefit directly in a substantial way. The construction workers in the novel, for example, are not part of the modernity which they are building.

The one time I was traveling internationally, I was seated next to an Indian woman, who upon hearing my talk of a culture shock (on a trip to Western Europe!) suggested that for culture shocks, one should head to India. All in all, the book portrays India as a country that would be almost offensive to Western sensibilities. It does however make an eloquent case for the humanity of those for whom the very circumstances of their birth had seemed to take that humanity away. Most compellingly, it shows how a man with, at the outset, at best a mirky understanding of how the world around him works, slowly but surely figures it out, to the detriment of his masters.

FC Midtjylland - AGF Aarhus

In the battle of Danny Califf v. Jeremiah White, Califf came out the winner. Both played the entire match, but neither was particularly impressive. White had a couple of chances - a long distance shot caught easily by the keeper, and a very good chance just at the edge of the box which Jerry skied. He also made a couple of decent passes to set up his teammates. Califf's performance is harder to assess, but he completely whiffed on a tackle on Nando Rafael inside in the box, fouled the same player hard early, and faked a foul when otherwise Rafael would have been through on goal. I thought Aarhus was the victim of some other dubious officiating: most notably, when Rafael was clearly tripped up inside the box, but also when the same player was whistled for a foul after cleanly robbing the defender (he would have been in alone) and on a couple of incorrect offside calls. AGF had a bit more of the possession and a bit more the chances, but Midtjylland buried theirs.

Sven Goran Eriksson's Favorite Classical Music!

Well!

Mike Videira goes 90 in Reserves versus Falkirk

Accies lost that one 2-1, but according to the official site, had the better of the chances in the second half.

Obama in Toledo

Courtesy of the New York Times:

“We’ve lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to take out as many credit cards as possible...to borrow instead of save...Now, I know that in an age of declining wages and skyrocketing costs, for many folks this was not a choice but a necessity just to keep up, I understand that.”

“But we now know how dangerous that can be...Once we get past the present emergency, which requires immediate new investments, we have to break that cycle of debt. Our long-term future requires that we do what’s necessary to scale down our deficits, grow wages and encourage personal savings again.”

It's gut check time, America

Some (quoted rather than paraphrased) highlights from this excellent article by Fareed Zakaria:

1. Paul Volcker has long argued that the recent spate of financial innovation was nothing of the kind: it simply shuffled around existing resources while contributing few real benefits to the economy. Such activity will now be reduced significantly. Boykin Curry, managing director of Eagle Capital, says, "For 20 years, the DNA of nearly every financial institution had morphed dangerously. Each time someone at the table pressed for more leverage and more risk, the next few years proved them 'right.' These people were emboldened, they were promoted and they gained control of ever more capital. Meanwhile, anyone in power who hesitated, who argued for caution, was proved 'wrong.' The cautious types were increasingly intimidated, passed over for promotion. They lost their hold on capital. This happened every day in almost every financial institution over and over, until we ended up with a very specific kind of person running things. This year, the capital that remains is finally being reallocated to more careful, thoughtful executives and investors—the Warren Buffetts … of the world."The fear on Wall Street is that a Democratic administration would overregulate. But look at who is advising Barack Obama—Buffett, Volcker, former Treasury secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. It is more likely that what will come from their efforts will be a better-regulated financial system that, while producing less-extravagant profits, will be more stable and secure.
2. The financial industry itself is likely to shrink, and that's not a bad thing, either. It has ballooned dramatically in size. Curry points out that "30 percent of S&P 500 profits last year were earned by financial firms, and U.S. consumers were spending $800 billion more than they earned every year. As a result, most of our top math Ph.D.s were being pulled into nonproductive financial engineering instead of biotech research and fuel technology. Capital expenditures went into retail construction instead of critical infrastructure." The crisis will stop the misallocation of human and financial resources and redirect them in more-productive ways. If some of the smart people now on Wall Street end up building better models of energy usage and efficiency, that would be a net gain for the economy.
3. In the short term, all the solutions to the current crisis require that governments take on more debts and larger obligations. This is inevitable and necessary. But that doesn't mean we should, as some noted economists advocate, stimulate the economy with more tax cuts. That would be only one more way to keep the party going artificially—like asking a drunk to go to AA next year, but in the meantime to have even more whiskey. A far better stimulus would be to announce and expedite major infrastructure and energy projects, which are investments, not consumption, and therefore have a much different effect on the country's fiscal fortunes. (They are not listed separately in the federal budget, but that's just bad accounting.)
4. [I]t's a different world out there. [We are no longer assumed to know what we are doing on either the foreign policy or economic policy front, and the margin of error in these matters has shrunk dramatically.] We will have to make strategic choices. We cannot deploy missile interceptors along Russia's borders, draw Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, and still expect Russian cooperation on Iran's nuclear program. We cannot noisily denounce Chinese and Arab foreign investments in America one day and then hope that they will keep buying $4 billion worth of T-bills another day.

Palin and the Alaska Independence Party, and other McCain/Palin shadiness

Palling, and sleeping with (The York Daily Record), militant secessionists, felons, etc...(Salon)

We Americans need to ask ourselves: do we have friends, husbands, pastors, or campaign managers like this?

McCain on Energy Policy - "erratic"

This seems to suggest that he is all over the place, finally taking a stand for alternative energy in the bailout bill. Obama, on the other hand, has a consistent pro-energy independence voting record.

McCain associates with convicted felon and provocateur G. Gordon Liddy

From the Washington Post:

[I]t wouldn't be inappropriate to raise questions about McCain's association with G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted Watergate burglar whose colorful history includes telling listeners to his radio show in 1994 to shoot federal agents in the head. When McCain went on Liddy's radio show in November 2007, he told Liddy [link to the Chicago Tribune], "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family... It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

McCain hasn't been "truthful" in failing to explain this dubious relationship.

Michelle Obama's Cousin the Rabbi

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1019188.html

Haaretz is a leading Israeli publication (and a personal favorite of mine).

It is worth noting that he converted under the supervision of Orthodox and Conservative rabbis.

From Haaretz:

[Michelle Obama's cousin] is well-known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the much smaller, and largely separate, world of black Jewish congregations...

McCain's father-in-law/financier was a felon

Whose wealth do you think bought all these houses for Senator John McCain? That would be Mr. Jim Hensley's - Jim Hensley has sired Cindy Hensley McCain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Hensley

From Wikipedia:

In 1948, [Jim Hensley and his brother] were prosecuted by the federal government and convicted of multiple counts of falsifying liquor records in a conspiracy to conceal illegal distribution of whiskey against post-war rationing regulations. Jim Hensley received a six-month sentence (later upheld but suspended by an appeals court) while his brother received a year in federal prison, and both were fined.

Videira is undergoing a fitness program but is not injured

So reported the Hamilton Accies official site on Friday, October 3. It is not surprising, therefore, that he did not feature today for the reserves against their counterparts at Hibs.

Palin's pastor is an anti-Semite

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/10/06/florida/index.html

Palin was there, apparently, while he was blaming the "Israelites" (a.k.a. Jews) for what plagues us.

One Grandma is already voting Obama (according to little Bro). The other Grandma isn't voting. Grandmas kick butt irrespective of their political beliefs, quite frankly. Grandpa McCain (he's a grandpa age wise, at least) is the only known grandpa not to kick butt.

Palin quotes anti-Semite

http://gawker.com/5048188/palin-quoted-antisemitic-author-in-rnc-speech

The implication that people from small towns (read: white people from small towns) are somehow more genuinely American than other Americans: I argued that it's racist, and it probably is, but it is also anti-Semitic. My fellow Yehudim - this is unforgivable.

Mike Videira features in neither the reserves nor the first team

I don't know what that means. He had gone off in the previous reserve fixture in the 45th minute (at the half?). He didn't even make the bench for either the reserves nor the first team this time around. Is he injured?

Really Large Number

From Forbes (via The Volokh Conspiracy):

In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy.
"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."