Guest Entry: iPhone bumps and the road to recovery By PAUL KRUGMAN

KRUGMAN: iPhone bumps and the road to recovery

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: Sunday, September 16, 2012 at 3:00 a.m.

MIKE SMITH / Las Vegas Sun

Are you, or is someone you know, a gadget freak? If so, you doubtless know that Wednesday was iPhone 5 day, the day Apple unveiled its latest way for people to avoid actually speaking to or even looking at whoever they’re with.

So is the new phone as insanely great as Apple says? Hey, I’ll leave stuff like that to David Pogue. What I’m interested in, instead, are suggestions that the unveiling of the iPhone 5 might provide a significant boost to the U.S. economy, adding measurably to economic growth over the next quarter or two.
Do you find this plausible? If so, I have news for you: You are, whether you know it or not, a Keynesian — and you have implicitly accepted the case that the government should spend more, not less, in a depressed economy.

Before I get there, let’s talk about where the buzz is coming from.
A recent research note from JPMorgan argued that the new iPhone might add between a quarter- and a half-percentage point to GDP growth in the last quarter of 2012. How so? First, the report argued that Apple was likely to sell a lot of phones in a short time. Second, it noted that although iPhones are manufactured overseas, most of the price you pay when you buy one is domestic value-added — retailing and wholesaling, advertising and profits — all of which counts as part of GDP. Finally, it took some plausible guesses about the price of each phone and the number of phones sold, and used those guesses to make an estimate of the impact on GDP.

It’s all pretty straightforward. But the implications are wider than most people realize.
The crucial thing to understand here is that these likely short-run benefits from the new phone have almost nothing to do with how good it is — with how much it improves the quality of buyers’ lives or their productivity. Such effects will kick in only over the longer run. Instead, the reason JPMorgan believes that the iPhone 5 will boost the economy right away is simply that it will induce people to spend more.

And to believe that more spending will provide an economic boost, you have to believe — as you should — that demand, not supply, is what’s holding the economy back. We don’t have high unemployment because Americans don’t want to work, and we don’t have high unemployment because workers lack the right skills. Instead, willing and able workers can’t find jobs because employers can’t sell enough to justify hiring them. And the solution is to find some way to increase overall spending so that the nation can get back to work.

So where can more spending come from? Businesses are sitting on lots of cash but, for the most part, have seen little reason to do a lot of investment. Why expand your capacity when you don’t have enough sales to make full use of the capacity you already have? And because businesses aren’t spending a lot, incomes are low, so consumer demand is low, which perpetuates those low sales.

Yet depressions do end, eventually, even without government policies to get the economy out of this trap. Why? Long ago, John Maynard Keynes suggested that the answer was “use, decay, and obsolescence”: Even in a depressed economy, at some point businesses will start replacing equipment, either because the stuff they have has worn out or because much better stuff has come along; and, once they start doing that, the economy perks up. Sure enough, that’s what Apple is doing. It’s bringing on the obsolescence. Good.

But why suffer through years of depressed output and high unemployment while waiting for enough obsolescence to accumulate? Why not have the government step in and spend more, say on education and infrastructure, to help the economy through its rough patch? Don’t say that the government can’t add to total spending or that government spending can’t create jobs. If you believe that the iPhone 5 can give the economy a lift, you’ve already conceded both that the total amount of spending in the economy isn’t a fixed number and that more spending is what we need.

And there’s no reason this spending has to be private.
Yet far from using public spending to support the economy in its time of trouble, our political system — driven by a combination of ideology, exaggerated deficit fears and Republican obstructionism — has moved to make the depression worse. Yes, unemployment benefits and food stamps are up, because so many more people are in need; but government employment has plunged, as has public investment.

Now, despite all this, we will eventually recover. Over time there will be more equipment that needs replacing, more iPhone-like innovations that boost spending, and, in the long run, we will exit this economic trap. But, as Keynes famously pointed out in another context, in the long run we are all dead. To borrow a phrase from myself, why not end this depression now?


Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times.

Guest Entryby David R. Dow | August 14, 2012 4:45 AM EDT : Supreme Court Outlawed Executing Mentally Retarded, But Texas Does It Anyway

Supreme Court Outlawed Executing Mentally Retarded, But Texas Does It Anyway

How do you openly flout a landmark Supreme Court ruling and not suffer any consequences? David Dow writes: Ask Texas!

by David R. Dow  | August 14, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Last week Texas killed Marvin Wilson—the 484th person the Lone Star State has executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977. Wilson’s execution became national news because he was mentally retarded: his IQ had been measured at 61. He was also my client.

When I first met Wilson nearly seven years ago, he was soft spoken, almost shy. His reading and writing skills were around the level of my son’s, who was 5 at the time. He told me getting convicted of murder was good because it gave him an opportunity to learn a lot of things. I asked him what he meant. He said, “You know, how to live on your own and things.”

In 2002 the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that it was unconstitutional to execute the mentally retarded. You might think that would have ended the execution of the mentally retarded, but you would be wrong.

Why? Because Texas executes the mentally retarded anyway, and the federal courts don't seem to care. In a 2004 decision the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals issued a decision called Ex parte Briseno, which basically said it is OK to execute people who are mentally retarded, so long as their retardation is “mild.” That is not what the Supreme Court said in Atkins. In fact, it is pretty much the opposite of what the Supreme Court said. Without putting too fine a point on it, doing the opposite of what the Supreme Court says is what is known as being lawless. Which raises the question: If you do something over and over again, and court after court appears not to care, is it still lawless?

Let's not dance on the head of that pin just yet. Instead, some background: Wilson’s legal team, which included five lawyers as well as five law students from the University of Houston, where I teach, asked both state and federal courts to halt his execution. We had several arguments, but the one incontestable proposition was that Wilson was mentally retarded. Five IQ tests and testimony from numerous witnesses proved it. During the state court litigation, the only psychological expert to express an opinion testified that he was retarded. The state neither undermined his testimony nor had its own expert dispute that claim. So if the Supreme Court says you cannot executed the mentally retarded, and the only expert to testify says Marvin Wilson was retarded, how is it possible he got executed? Welcome to Texas!

A protester outside the Supreme Court on June 29, 2012 in Washington, DC. Inset: Marvin Wilson (Getty Images; AP Photo)

Here’s an interesting statistic: nationwide, about four in 10 death-row inmates raising Atkins claims have prevailed. But in Texas, that number is 1 in 4. One possible explanation for the disparity is that Texas does not send as many mentally retarded people to death row. But I've been a death penalty lawyer for more than 20 years, and I can tell you firsthand that explanation doesn’t fly.

Which leaves the second, and true, explanation: Texas has found a way to circumvent the Constitution, and neither the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit nor the Supreme Court appears to care. That might surprise you, if you believe in that thing called the rule of law, but death-penalty lawyers in Texas aren't surprised, because this has happened before.

In 1989 the Supreme Court handed down a decision called Penry v. Lynaugh. The case involved an inmate, Johnny Paul Penry, with an IQ in the mid-50s. The court in that case declined to prohibit the execution of the mentally retarded, but it did say that the Texas system was fundamentally broken, because juries had no way to spare certain defendants from death, even if they believed those defendants should be sentenced to life in prison.

Doing the opposite of what the Supreme Court says is what is known as being lawless. But if you do something over and over again, and court after court appears not to care, is it still lawless?

I gave an interview after that decision saying its consequences would be dramatic; I predicted scores of death-row inmates in Texas would benefit. But I was young and naive. I did not realize Texas would ignore the decision, and that the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court wouldn't care. But that is precisely what happened. Over the next 15 years, more than 100 inmates with powerful so-called Penry claims got executed. They argued their juries had not had any way to sentence them to life in prison rather than death, even if those juries had wanted to spare them. Yet neither the Texas courts nor the Fifth Circuit nor even the Supreme Court did a thing. Finally, a decade and a half later, after nearly everyone with a Penry claim had already been executed, the Supreme Court broke its silence and issued a searing rebuke to both the state court and the Fifth Circuit, saying they were being unfaithful to the ruling in Penry.

The rebuke was treated as a big deal by the national media. Overlooked was the fact that the Supreme Court knew what had been going on in Texas all along. Yet the justices did nothing, and by the time they decided to say something, they knew full well that virtually every inmate whose life had depended on the faithful application of the Penry decision had already been buried. 

So why doesn’t the Supreme Court make a bigger stink when its own rulings aren’t followed? Isn’t that its core purpose, after all? To lay down the law of the land for all other courts?

There are at least two explanations for why this happens. One is that over the past quarter century or so, the federal courts have taken a largely hands-off approach to the administration of criminal justice. They let the states do what they want. In part this attitude is required by a federal law enacted during the Clinton Administration, but more fundamentally, it dates to an ideological shift in the mid and late 1980s that resulted in a greater judicial indifference to legal violations in criminal cases. When a murder trial in China takes less than a day, or Islamists in Mali chop of the hand of a condemned thief, we look down our noses at the crudity of those legal regimes. But ignoring the rights of the accused in a stadium filled with screaming hordes is not all that different from disregarding the rights of an accused in a courtroom full of reporters.

Another factor is that the Supreme Court is a fundamentally conservative institution. Every once in a while, it will do something dramatic—strike down racial integration, uphold a woman's right to control her own body, prohibit the execution of the retarded—but those decisions are remarkable because they are exceptional. And more important, after nearly every controversial decision, the justices seem to have a Lady Macbethian urge to wash their hands of what they have done. They back away and hem and haw and leave it to the lower courts to implement their decisions. But if the lower courts balk, the decision does not get implemented.

It obviously doesn’t happen all the time—the mere prospect of being rebuked by the Supreme Court probably makes lower courts reluctant to be altogether contemptuous of their rulings. But it happens often enough to be worrisome, and what’s worse, it happens mostly in cases involving the powerless.   

The weeks leading up to Wilson’s execution involved complicated legal issues, but we gave up trying to explain the details to him. He knew there was activity, of course, but he was simply incapable of understanding it.

The fact of his mental deficiency may not matter to you, since he was unquestionably guilty of participating in a crime that included a murder. You might say that even the retarded should know not to kill. I could argue with you that you are wrong, but if you also respect the rule of law, you would have to acknowledge that, so long as the Supreme Court has the final say on what the Constitution means, the states are not permitted to execute the retarded. That they do anyway, and do so with impunity, reveals more about our attitude toward the rule of law than our attitude toward crime.

See Texas Would Make Hitler Proud; The Nazification of America on YouTube.

Guest Entry: One Woman’s Data Trail Diary By SCOTT SHANE August 31, 2012, 5:16 pm

 [From The New York Times  Ron]


August 31, 2012, 5:16 pm

One Woman’s Data Trail Diary

By SCOTT SHANE

As part of The Agenda, The Times's look at major issues facing the next administration, we have been examining the trade-offs, more than a decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, between security and privacy and civil liberties. Some readers have written in about the electronic data trail that all of us leave as we go about our lives, using the Internet and carrying smartphones.

Heidi Boghosian, a New Yorker and author of a book on surveillance scheduled for publication next year, "Spying on Democracy: A Short History of Government/Corporate Collusion in the Technology Age," agreed to try to document her own data trail on one recent day. Her account, below, is nothing extraordinary - and that's the point. It is impossible to live in urban, wired America without leaving clues about ourselves, our movements and our views everywhere. And it is all but impossible to be certain who is looking at the resulting data or video and how much of it is accessible to federal, state or local government.
Ms. Boghosian is executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a group of self-described radical lawyers and law students founded in 1937, and between her day job and her book research, she thinks far more than most people about surveillance and privacy. But the exercise of documenting her day was nonetheless informative, she said.

"Definitely, for me, going through the process reinforced my sense of the role corporations play in our daily lives," she said. "And I don't think most people realize the extent to which corporations cooperate in turning over personal information to the government."
Here is the record she made:

A Day of Surveillance:

 

(1) 8:30 a.m.: Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) in hallway permits private landlord to monitor departure of tenant from apartment building at 173 Avenue A, New York, N.Y. A sign is posted alerting tenants that their actions are being monitored.

(2) City-owned video surveillance camera, mounted atop a streetlight pole, records pedestrian and vehicular traffic on corner of Avenue A and 11th Street.

(3) 9:45 a.m.: Internet Protocol-based, closed-circuit television CCTV/video surveillance camera at Chase Bank A.T.M. on Second Avenue and 10th Street records clear image of person withdrawing money. I.P. video surveillance footage probably transmitted to a central monitoring room and digitally stored (allowing for advanced search techniques), or viewed over the Internet. Intelligent I.P. cameras with video analytics such as motion sensors, facial recognition and behavioral recognition are used to identify abnormal activity in and around banking locations.

(4) 10 a.m.: Customer Loyalty Card at East Village coffee shop Café Pick Me Up, Avenue A and 9th Street, likely allow the business to track and predict customer spending habits.

(5) 10:30 a.m.: iPhone (with G.P.S. tracking) in owner's back pocket allows phone owner's movement and location to be tracked (by government, if cellphone provider gives access) through day and evening, even if phone is turned off, as phone owner walks to Astor Place subway stop.

(6) 10:45 a.m.: Passed by "smart sign" (digital billboard with cameras that gauges demographics of passers-by) that delivers ads tailored to the demographics of the passer-by.

(7) 10:45 a.m.: CCTV in NY subway system monitor boarding #6 subway line to work.

(8) 11:11 a.m.: CCTV in elevator records ride to ninth-floor office in office building. Building security guard has four cameras behind front desk showing elevator, stairways and hallways.

(9) 11:20 a.m.: Facebook software tracks user activities on sites on Internet after logging in and reading a few comments. "Tag Suggestions" feature employs facial recognition technology and suggests name tags after uploading photos.

(10) 11:30 a.m.: Cookies on Internet monitor all Internet searches throughout day on range of subjects; ads appear on screen related to items purchased on line (athletic shoes, face cream).

(11) 1 p.m.: Credit card at Macy's Department store, used for quick purchase, has embedded RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chip, tracking consumer spending habits and providing that information to big business.

(12) 1:15 p.m.: Shoes in Macy's new shoe store all have RFID chips (unique identifier linked to database) in them.

(13) 1:30 p.m. Downloaded iTunes onto iPhone. Online music providers may share personal information with third parties.

(14) 2 p.m.: Video cameras and motion detectors in local supermarket track physical movements of customers (allegedly to aim for improved customer service) as customer drops in to pick up some fruit for lunch.

(15) 2:30 p.m.: Social security number and driver's license information, required by Fulton Street Verizon cellular store winds up in Verizon's digital database, as customer switches from AT&T. Allegedly needed Social Security number to conduct credit check even though customer has had a landline account with Verizon for many years.

(16) 3:30 p.m.: I.P. address may have been included on a bar code on a digital coupon while registering for at hotelcoupons.com to get a discount hotel deal.

(17) 4 p.m.: Continuous, systematic desktop monitoring surveillance of personal use of business computer to access site to order shoes could have been conducted had employer installed software to monitor my real time actions, purportedly to avoid discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits that may result from inappropriate e-mails sent within company.

(18) 6 p.m.: Dropped by anti-fracking protest on West 14th Street. Unmarked police van with tinted windows probably had NYPD Technical Assistance Response Unit (TARU) personnel recording protest activities, especially because several Occupy protesters were present. TARU provides investigative technical equipment and tactical support to all N.Y.P.D. bureaus and also provides assistance to other city, state and federal agencies. The unit employs several forms of computer forensics.

(19) 7:30 p.m.: CCTV cameras inside East Village restaurant while meeting friend for dinner after the protest.

(20) 9:30 p.m.: Surveillance cameras on several buildings passed on way home is captured on tape.

(21) 10 p.m.: Final check of Gmail, and a few Google searches, allow Google to collect even more data on consumer habits and personal interests.

Guest Entry: A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney By DAVID JAVERBAUM

March 31, 2012

A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

By DAVID JAVERBAUM

THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.

The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.

                             (As long as Mitt is in this box he is both                  Moderate and Conservative.)

A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.

But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or “Romneality,” seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly “understands” Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation.

Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.

The basic concepts behind this model are:

 

Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.

Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.

 

Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”

 

Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt 

Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.

 

Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.

 

Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney” (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)

What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.

And all of them losing to Barack Obama.

David Javerbaum is the author of “The Last Testament: A Memoir by God.”

Guest Entry: Pink Slime Economics By PAUL KRUGMAN April 1, 2012

April 1, 2012

Pink Slime Economics

By PAUL KRUGMAN

The big bad event of last week was, of course, the Supreme Court hearing on health reform. In the course of that hearing it became clear that several of the justices, and possibly a majority, are political creatures pure and simple, willing to embrace any argument, no matter how absurd, that serves the interests of Team Republican.

But we should not allow events in the court to completely overshadow another, almost equally disturbing spectacle. For on Thursday Republicans in the House of 

Representatives passed what was surely the most fraudulent budget in American history.

And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit — but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes.

And we’re talking about a lot of loophole-closing. As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year. That’s a lot of money, even in an economy as big as ours. So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?

None. Not one. He has, however, categorically ruled out any move to close the major loophole that benefits the rich, namely the ultra-low tax rates on income from capital. (That’s the loophole that lets Mitt Romney pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, a lower tax rate than that faced by many middle-class families.)

So what are we to make of this proposal? Mr. Gleckman calls it a “mystery meat budget,” but he’s being unfair to mystery meat. The truth is that the filler modern food manufacturers add to their products may be disgusting — think pink slime — but it nonetheless has nutritional value. Mr. Ryan’s empty promises don’t. You should think of those promises, instead, as a kind of throwback to the 19th century, when unregulated corporations bulked out their bread with plaster of paris and flavored their beer with sulfuric acid.

Come to think of it, that’s precisely the policy era Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are trying to bring back.

So the Ryan budget is a fraud; Mr. Ryan talks loudly about the evils of debt and deficits, but his plan would actually make the deficit bigger even as it inflicted huge pain in the name of deficit reduction. But is his budget really the most fraudulent in American history? Yes, it is.

To be sure, we’ve had irresponsible and/or deceptive budgets in the past. Ronald Reagan’s budgets relied on voodoo, on the claim that cutting taxes on the rich would somehow lead to an explosion of economic growth. George W. Bush’s budget officials liked to play bait and switch, low-balling the cost of tax cuts by pretending that they were only temporary, then demanding that they be made permanent. But has any major political figure ever premised his entire fiscal platform not just on totally implausible spending projections but on claims that he has a secret plan to raise trillions of dollars in revenue, a plan that he refuses to share with the public?

What’s going on here? The answer, presumably, is that this is what happens when extremists gain complete control of a party’s discourse: all the rules get thrown out the window. Indeed, the hard right’s grip on the G.O.P. is now so strong that the party is sticking with Mr. Ryan even though it’s paying a significant political price for his assault on Medicare.

Now, the House Republican budget isn’t about to become law as long as President Obama is sitting in the White House. But it has been endorsed by Mr. Romney. And even if Mr. Obama is reelected, the fraudulence of this budget has important implications for future political negotiations.

Bear in mind that the Obama administration spent much of 2011 trying to negotiate a so-called Grand Bargain with Republicans, a bipartisan plan for deficit reduction over the long term. Those negotiations ended up breaking down, and a minor journalistic industry has emerged as reporters try to figure out how the breakdown occurred and who was responsible.

But what we learn from the latest Republican budget is that the whole pursuit of a Grand Bargain was a waste of time and political capital. For a lasting budget deal can only work if both parties can be counted on to be both responsible and honest — and House Republicans have just demonstrated, as clearly as anyone could wish, that they are neither.

Guest Entry: Hurray for Health Reform By PAUL KRUGMAN March 18, 2012

March 18, 2012

Hurray for Health Reform

By PAUL KRUGMAN

It’s said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. If the same principle applies to legislation, the Affordable Care Act — which was signed into law two years ago, but for the most part has yet to take effect — sits in a place of high honor.

Now, the act — known to its foes as Obamacare, and to the cognoscenti as ObamaRomneycare — isn’t easy to love, since it’s very much a compromise, dictated by the perceived political need to change existing coverage and challenge entrenched interests as little as possible. But the perfect is the enemy of the good; for all its imperfections, this reform would do an enormous amount of good. And one indicator of just how good it is comes from the apparent inability of its opponents to make an honest case against it.

To understand the lies, you first have to understand the truth. How would ObamaRomneycare change American health care?

For most people the answer is, not at all. In particular, those receiving good health benefits from employers would keep them. 

The act is aimed, instead, at Americans who fall through the cracks, either going without coverage or relying on the miserably malfunctioning individual, “non-group” insurance market.

The fact is that individual health insurance, as currently constituted, just doesn’t work. If insurers are left free to deny coverage at will — as they are in, say, California — they offer cheap policies to the young and healthy (and try to yank coverage if you get sick) but refuse to cover anyone likely to need expensive care. Yet simply requiring that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions, as in New York, doesn’t work either: premiums are sky-high because only the sick buy insurance.

The solution — originally proposed, believe it or not, by analysts at the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation — is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies. As in New York, insurers are required to cover everyone; in return, everyone is required to buy insurance, so that healthy as well as sick people are in the risk pool. Finally, subsidies make those mandated insurance purchases affordable for lower-income families.

Can such a system work? 

It’s already working! Massachusetts enacted a very similar reform six years ago — yes, while Mitt Romney was governor. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who played a key role in developing both the local and the national reforms (and has published an illustrated guide to reform) has surveyed the results — and finds that Romneycare is working pretty much as advertised. The number of people without insurance has dropped sharply, the quality of care hasn’t suffered, and the program’s cost has been very close to initial projections.

Oh, and the budgetary cost per newly insured resident of Massachusetts was actually lower than the projected cost per American insured by the Affordable Care Act.

Given this evidence, what’s a virulent opponent of reform to do? The answer is, make stuff up.

We all know how the act’s proposal that Medicare evaluate medical procedures for effectiveness became, in the fevered imagination of the right, an evil plan to create death panels. And rest assured, this lie will be back in force once the general election campaign is in full swing.

For now, however, most of the disinformation involves claims about costs. Each new report from the Congressional Budget Office is touted as proof that the true cost of Obamacare is exploding, even when — as was the case with the latest report — the document says on its very first page that projected costs have actually fallen slightly. Nor are we talking about random pundits making these false claims. We are, instead, talking about people like the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, who issued a completely fraudulent press release after the latest budget office report.

Because the truth does not, sad to say, always prevail, there is a real chance that these lies will succeed in killing health reform before it really gets started. And that would be an immense tragedy for America, because this health reform is coming just in time.

As I said, the reform is mainly aimed at Americans who fall through the cracks in our current system — an important goal in its own right. But what makes reform truly urgent is the fact that the cracks are rapidly getting wider, because fewer and fewer jobs come with health benefits; employment-based coverage actually declined even during the “Bush boom” of 2003 to 2007, and has plunged since.

What this means is that the Affordable Care Act is the only thing protecting us from an imminent surge in the number of Americans who can’t afford essential care. So this reform had better survive — because if it doesn’t, many Americans who need health care won’t.

Reading "Caritas In Veritate", "Charity In Truth" by Pope Benedict XVI Part One

The Pope's latest encyclical to the clergy and to "ALL PEOPLE OF GOOD WILL ON THE INTEGRAL DEVELOPMENT OF PEOPLES IN CHARITY AND TRUTH" has stirred a furor on the Right of the political spectrum in the United States and abroad.  In it he calls for a radical revision of the way the people of the world, especially those who are marginalized, are treated.  His reference, not surprisingly, is the Bible, Holy Scripture and the Sacred Tradition of the Catholic Church.  

He writes:  "Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine.  Every responsibility and every commitment spelled out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire Law. (Cf Mt.22: 36-40)"

In the Gospel of Matthew we read:

^'36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

 ³⁷ Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’^{[a] 38} This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹ And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’^{[b] 40} All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”'

The Pope continues, "it is the principle not only of micro-relationships (with friends, with family members and within small groups) but also of macro-relationships (social, economic and political ones.)"

Throughout the encyclical letter the Pope calls for "gratuitous" charity toward the weakest among us, the marginalized, the weak, those abandoned by modern society, by those fortunate nations, those wealthy entities which are organized for the benefit of their members but with little regard for man's primary duty--to care fr his neighbor, to "love [our] neighbor as [we]  love [ourselves.]"

He continues, with reference to modern man's preoccupation with himself,   "I am aware of the way charity has been and continues to be misconstrued and emptied of meaning with the consequent risk of being misinterpreted, detached from ethical living, and in any event undervalued."

He goes on to say, "In the social, juridical, cultural, political and economic fields--the contexts, in other words, that are most exposed to this danger--it is easily dismissed as irrelevant for interpreting and giving direction to moral responsibility."

 Then he notes, "The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by meerely techinical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love which overcomes evil with good. (Cf. Rom. 12: 21)"  

^{And turning to the letter of St. Paul to the Romans we read, 21} Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."

The Pope continues to affirm the unity of all peoples.  This has made his encyclical letter unpopular with the Right political wing of parties in the United States as well as other countries. But then it is not the intention of the Church, nor is it Her obligation, to be popular.  Her mission is to speak the truth.  To this end the Pope seeks to bring "charity in truth"

 Continued

 

* All passages in italics are printed so in the original text.

Guest Entry: When Fox News Wins Democracy Loses

Glenn Beck and Fox News have had a toxic effect on the political process, and they're only going to push harder now.

Over the past two years, Fox has gone from a conservative-leaning news source to an active player in politics -- and things have taken an even darker turn as Beck's nightly show on Fox has brought right-wing extremism into the mainstream. Beck routinely launches outlandish attacks painting his progressive targets as part of a sinister conspiracy to intentionally destroy the country.

When advertisers sponsor Fox News, they're not just buying commercial airtime. They're making an affirmative investment in a political game -- one that puts dishonest smears, fearmongering, and vicious attacks ahead of accuracy. Money that goes to Fox funds Beck's conspiracy theories, baseless political attacks, and outright promotion of right-wing candidates for office.

Companies that are considering advertising on Fox need to keep that in mind, and they need to hear from you.

Give your tax-deductible donation today to help us fight Fox, Beck and conservative misinformation.

Every day, we at Media Matters for America monitor Fox News and its allies in the conservative media, researching claims, exposing violent rhetoric, debunking misinformation and preventing falsehoods from spreading unchallenged.

We've had success in making sure others in the press know that Fox is a player in politics, not an observer. We need your help to keep up that fight and get the message out to potential Fox advertisers. Unless it hits them right in the bottom line, Fox News has made it clear it won't rein in Beck and other serial misinformers.

You can be part of that fight.

Give your tax-deductible donation today to help us fight Fox, Beck and conservative misinformation.

Thank you for your support.

David Brock
Founder and CEO
Media Matters for America

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Guest Entry: The Fox News divide that never was

Media Matters: The Fox News divide that never was

The internal divisions at Fox News are notorious. There is the Fox News primary, in which no fewer than five potential Republican presidential candidates and their varied supporters and detractors -- all on the Fox News payroll -- duke it out on a near-daily basis.

There are typical ego-driven competitions between on-air personalities, and an increasingly public divide at the network over dangerously unhinged host Glenn Beck.

But there is one divide that -- contrary to the insistence of Fox News executives -- simply does not exist: the one between its "news" and "opinion" shows.

Last year, The New York Times reported, "Fox argues that its news hours -- 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays -- are objective," and quoted Michael Clemente, the channel's senior vice president for news, as saying: "The average consumer certainly knows the difference between the A section of the newspaper and the editorial page."

This is apparently an argument that works only on the very gullible, and on advertisers who want to pretend that by confining their ad buys to the channel's "news hours" they are not financially supporting very damaging conservative lies and smears.

How telling it will be to see who attempts to maintain this charade, now that Media Matters has published internal emails from Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon to his news staff directing them to call into question indisputable scientific facts in Fox's climate change reporting, and eschew "public option" for variations of "government option" in Fox's health care reform reporting, echoing advice from a prominent Republican pollster on how to help turn the public against reform.

The recently-released emails confirm what sources told Media Matters months ago: Pressure on Fox News journalists to "distort" straight reporting comes right from the top.

In October, one source with knowledge of the situation explained: "[There is] more pressure from Sammon to slant news to the right or to tell people how to report news, doing it in a more brutish way. A lot of the reporters are conservative and are glad to pick up news. But there is a point at which it is no longer reporting, but distorting things. ... [I]f you come in to say, 'ignore points of view and ignore facts,' then you are straying away from being a legitimate news reporter."

The problem, of course, is not just that the reporting on Fox News is wildly dishonest -- after all, a supermarket tabloid can be wildly dishonest, too -- it's that the lies and smears on Fox News have very real policy implications.

For example, following the release of Sammon's email ordering his news staff to cast doubt on climate science, Zoe Tcholak-Antitch, vice-president of the Carbon Disclosure Project, told Media Matters: "It is very disturbing to hear of this e-mail because it just goes further to sow seeds of doubt among the American population then makes it more difficult for the politicians to stand up for any type of legislation on climate change if they want to get elected."

Tcholak-Antitch added: "It obviously does have an impact on the American public. We are facing an issue that needs to be dealt with in a timely fashion. The danger is that this delays action. While it exists, it delays action and it hinders politicians from passing laws and regulations that will help a clean energy economy and create jobs for American people."

The irony is that News Corp. -- Fox News' parent company and (the blind eye it turns towards Fox notwithstanding) a recognized corporate leader in raising climate change awareness -- cites Tcholak-Antitch's Carbon Disclosure Project as an expert resource on the issue.

New York Congressman John Hall -- a Democratic member of the House global warming committee -- called Sammon's email "regrettable" and warned about the effects this sort of "slanted" coverage has on legislation:

The window of time we have left for action to prevent the worst case scenario may still be closing. ... We can't afford to waste two years if the changes are already happening. It is really important that the public gets educated. I do think Congress responds to public pressure. If the public is being misinformed, we have very little chance of reversing the trend.

Similarly, after Media Matters released Sammon's "government option" email, health care reform advocate Health Care for America Now issued a statement saying: "At a time when right-wing extremists were trying to make the case that the health care reform bill was a government takeover plot, Fox News incorporated politically charged language into its day-to-day reporting to mislead its audience into thinking the public option was something that it wasn't."

Indeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning PolitiFact announced this week that its "Lie of the Year" is the false claim that the health care reform law is "a government takeover of health care." And yet, Fox News' "objective" reporters were ordered to play directly into that damaging narrative.

To be sure, many advertisers have taken a step in the right direction by refusing to support some of Fox News' deplorable "opinion" and "entertainment" shows -- after all, who wants to drag a hard-earned (and valuable) brand identity through the mud by associating it with people who call the president racist, or repeatedly claim "all terrorists are Muslim," or promote anti-Semites, or engage in bizarre conspiracy theories?

In fact, just this week, Omaha Steaks pulled its ads from Beck's show, joining a growing list of over 100 advertisers that have done the same.

But while that may mean that Fox is forced to air "Foundation for a Better Life" commercials -- courtesy of conservative Phillip Anschutz -- five times in a row during Beck's show, it doesn't stop advertisers from subsidizing the lies on dozens of other Fox programs.

When asked several months ago about the Beck advertising boycott, Rupert Murdoch claimed, "We have not lost any business at all; some [advertisers] may have moved to other programs," but "it has not affected the total revenues or the profits."

Last year, Paul Rittenberg, a Fox advertising executive, made the same point to the Times. The Beck boycott "caus[ed] headaches" for Rittenberg's team, the Times reported, but "he said Fox 'hasn't lost a dime' because the ads were moved to different hours" -- presumably hours filled with so-called "objective" news reports that skittish advertisers thought were safely non-controversial.

A year ago, these advertisers may have been able to take false comfort in the Fox News canard that there exists any sort of division between Fox news and Fox opinion programming, but with the release of the Sammon emails, how long will they keep kidding themselves?

Guest Entry by Al Franken: The Fight for Net Neutrality Is Not Over

A couple weeks ago, I told you that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski had released a proposal on net neutrality--but that we didn't have enough of the details to know whether it was a strong one.

Unfortunately, now that we've got more information about his proposal, it's becoming clear that without significant changes it would take us in the wrong direction.

Although the Obama administration is on record as supporting net neutrality, the draft leaves far too many loopholes for corporations to prioritize certain content on the Internet, and even legitimizes some discriminatory behavior.

In short, as it's currently written, it's worse than nothing.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE FCC'S NET NEUTRALITY FAIL.

Rest assured, I won't settle for regulations that do more harm than good. And I won't stop fighting until we have real net neutrality.

Thanks for sticking with me in that fight.

Al