Month: June 2017

                 O Canada

O Canada

Your air and streets are clean.

The wind may be cold,

But your people are never mean.

 

Gretzky and Sid; Orr and the rest

Your hockey’s still the best.

Trump makes us ill.

O Canada, where sanity reigns still.

 

God keep your land

A place where we can go.

O Canada, we long for Justin Trudeau.

O Canada, we long for Justin Trudeau.

 

Blogging will resume next Wednesday.

In those very limited circumstances where the terrorists are segregated from the general population, they can be eliminated by the ruthless use of physical force. Otherwise, successfully fighting terror requires patience and fortitude more than anything else.  Effective police work, cooperation with the public, and control of the ideological narrative are essential, and overreactions must be avoided. Terror will stop when it becomes clear that it won’t work.

You can’t discredit your opponents; they can only discredit themselves.  I’ve always thought it would be a good idea to put terrorists on TV and have them interrogated by people who know the subject much better than they do. Watching an Islamic terrorist make a fool of himself in public talking about his religion would do more than anything I can imagine to deter wannabes.

As I noted on Tuesday, acts of terror can accomplish political goals when they drive the government to overreact and force waverers to choose sides.  Imagine how this will play out with President Trump, who has a simple-minded belief that toughness is the solution to all political problems.

When the next big terror attack comes in this country, Trump is going to go nuts, and things will get very ugly in a hurry.  It’ll be awful.  Believe me.  Believe me.

To the very limited extent that the GOP is genuinely interested in health care reform, the rationale for it would run like this:

1. High prices for health care in the US are driven by the fact that most payments are made by insurance companies, not the consumer.
2.  Therefore, the solution to the problem is to require the consumer to have more “skin in the game;” i.e., vastly higher deductibles and co-pays.  That will deter wasteful spending and unwise lifestyle choices.
3.  However, we acknowledge that even salt-of-the-earth GOP voters can be unlucky with their health, and should be protected from financial ruin under those circumstances.
4.  Therefore, we should be moving towards a system of universal catastrophic health insurance.  That would also protect hospitals and medical providers.

The Senate bill reflects this kind of thinking.  Unlike the House bill, and like Obamacare, it ties subsidies to the ability to pay.  However, the subsidies are deliberately designed to push everyone into a high deductible plan.  These plans will leave virtually everyone with less coverage than they have today;  that is a feature, not a bug, in the legislation.

The bill also eliminates the odious individual mandate, so it will be up to each individual American to decide if the coverage is worth it to him or not.  CBO projects that most Americans will refuse to pay large sums of money for insurance that is useless to them under all but the most dire circumstances;  the remedy for that is the emergency room, and refusing to pay.  The GOP thinks catastrophic insurance has enough value that people will be flocking to purchase it even if they can’t use it on a day-to-day basis.

I think CBO is right.  Furthermore, the GOP, by drafting the bill in secret, and by campaigning against high Obamacare deductibles, has done nothing to prepare the American people for this change in policy.  Why on earth would anyone support getting skimpier coverage, and cutting taxes for the rich, without even hearing a policy argument for the proposition that too much insurance is a bad thing?

Realistically, there are only three ways to get to a universal catastrophic health care system:  a beefed-up individual mandate; a single-payer system; or the elimination of the requirement that emergency rooms provide service regardless of ability to pay.  The Senate bill features none of these.  It cannot work.

On the woman called Queen of the May.

Lots of Tories don’t want her to stay.

She was hurt by the fire.

Her condition is dire.

Can she last?  I just don’t see a way.

Tim Tebow was a great quarterback at the University of Florida.  In spite of a few improbable victories with Denver, he was a flop in the NFL.  Today, he is pursuing a quixotic second career in baseball.  He has no realistic hope of succeeding, but the quest continues, abetted by the economic self-interest of the New York Mets organization.

What sets Tebow apart from other athletes is his unabashed and clearly sincere Christian idealism.  He is essentially an icon for the religious right.  People will come from miles around to see him play, even if he isn’t any good, because they find him inspiring.

Tebow and Donald Trump have only one thing in common:  their supporters are the same people.  How can that be?

I think you should view Tebow as representing the hope, and Trump the fears, of the religious right.  Tebow is America as it was, and should be;  Trump, for all of his innumerable flaws, is the shield that protects them from the decay of a godless society.

 

The period between about 1880 and 1914 was a sort of golden age for terrorists. Technological change was reshaping the world with unprecedented speed, political systems were not keeping pace, and new and more destructive weapons were becoming more widely available;  as a result, both the US and Europe experienced a wave of bombings and high-profile assassinations.  The threat ultimately diminished, however, in the face of political reform, higher living standards, and the even greater violence of World War I.

Some Islamic terrorists clearly aspire to a heavenly reward, not one on earth., which sets them apart from 19th century anarchists.  That leads to today’s question:  will Islamic terrorism, like the terrorism characteristic of the end of the 19th century, disappear if it does not result in tangible political gains for the terrorists?

In spite of some high profile exceptions, my prediction is mostly yes.  Most IS recruits were lured to Syria by flashy videos and promises of an easy and entertaining life, not by the prospect of martyrdom.  Most prospective terrorists will be deterred by failure.  In the long run, absent serious mistakes by the affected governments, Islamic terrorism will burn itself out.

Trump had a pretty good day with SCOTUS yesterday.  He won a mostly symbolic partial victory over the travel ban;  the big news, for him, is that Gorsuch voted with Thomas and Alito to completely lift the injunction, which strongly suggests that he will be able to rely on the votes of Three Stooges on future issues involving the abuse of executive power. In addition, SCOTUS decided to hear the baker case, which is going to have significant political implications in the future.

If, as I suspect, SCOTUS ultimately rules in favor of the baker, Trump will be able to tell his Reactionary supporters that even if he tried to take away their health insurance, he saved them from the gay plague.  Will that be enough to keep them loyal?  I strongly suspect it will.

It can, but only under limited circumstances, as follows:

1.  Terrorist acts can draw the world’s attention to your cause:  If the political system in your country simply isn’t responding to your concerns, you can attract attention (and probably sympathy) by blowing up an airplane, or whatever.  It’s obviously just a first step, but you have to start somewhere.  Would the world be as focused on the plight of the Palestinians as it is without the terror attacks of the 1970’s?

2.  You can force people who are on the fence to choose your side through terrorism:  This can happen in two ways:  either the waverers are intimidated by your brutality; or the government overreacts and turns moderates into enemies.

3.  Dramatic acts of terrorism can sap the government’s will:  If, for example, Country X is trying to maintain a military presence in far-off Country Y, acts of terror may convince the public in Country X that it just isn’t worth it.

Most acts of terror don’t meet these standards and are consequently doomed to political irrelevance.  More on that in subsequent posts.

We passed the 10% mark of Trump’s term a little less than two weeks ago (I know, it seems like an eternity).  Given that, it seems appropriate to review the questions I raised about his administration before he took office, and to see where we stand today:

1.  Which economic scenario is occurring?  I indicated that there were three possibilities:  “Funhouse Reagan” (huge tax cuts with minimal spending cuts); “Reverse Robin Hood” (the same tax cuts with big cuts to anti-poverty programs); and “Trade Warrior” (one of the first two with trade wars).  My prediction was “Funhouse Reagan.”

Thus far, the tax cuts have not become reality, although they are certainly in the works.  The Trump budget fell strongly on the side of “Reverse Robin Hood,” but few people in Congress take it seriously.  Conflicts on trade to date have just been talk.  The most likely outcome is still “Funhouse Reagan.”

2.  Would we have an unconventional foreign policy, or just a blustery traditional one?  On style, the former; on substance, more the latter.  Trump has gone out of his way to offend our allies and to relinquish world leadership to the Chinese.  He also undercuts our diplomatic efforts virtually at every turn.  He hasn’t sold Europe to the Russians or embraced Assad in Syria, however.

3.  How much damage would he do to the Constitution?  Thus far, the judiciary and the political checks and balances in the system have held their own.  It’s early days, however;  call me after we have a legitimate crisis.

This week will be devoted to a discussion of terrorism.  Since the term is a pejorative one, and reasonable people disagree as to its meaning, the discussion has to start with a definition:

The extra-legal use of physical force at a level intended to cause death or severe bodily harm on unsuspecting people for political purposes.

There are a number of issues that inevitably rise when one attempts a definition:

1.  Can a government engage in terrorism?  Absolutely.  If the use of force takes place outside of the operation of law, it can be terrorism.

2.  Is it fair to call it terrorism if there is no peaceful, legitimate alternative?  Yes.  As I use the term, it is a tactic, not an insult.  There was plenty of terrorism in the American Revolution.

3.  Can attacks on security forces ever be considered terrorism?  Yes, if they have no reason to expect the acts will occur.  Acts of violence during what both sides acknowledge is a guerrilla war are not terrorism under my definition.

The key issue for Obamacare’s regulation of the individual market was pre-existing conditions.  The solution has often been described as a “three-legged stool.” Here’s how it works:

1. The insurance companies, in a completely free market, either refuse to accept customers with serious pre-existing conditions, or charge them vastly higher rates.  In order to make insurance available and affordable for these people, resources have to be shifted to them from healthy people.  Theoretically, that could be done through taxes or assessments on existing insurance policies, but a more obvious model existed in the form of group policies with community rating.  That was the option included in Obamacare.
2.  Community rating increases risks for the insurance companies and prices for healthy people.  As a result, young, healthy people get a bad deal from it, and have less economic incentive to purchase insurance, which, if unchecked, could send prices into a death spiral.  The legislative response to this was the individual mandate.  The idea was that, yes, young and healthy people may be getting hosed in the short run, but 20 years from now, someone else will be paying higher prices to support them.  In a sense, the system was built on faith in the future, like Social Security and Medicare.
3.  The individual mandate means that people who can’t otherwise afford it are compelled to purchase insurance.  This issue is resolved by subsidies tied to income and the local price structure.

So how do the House and Senate bills address the three-legged stool?

1.  Intellectually, Republican politicians reject community rating, because they think bad health is primarily a result of poor lifestyle choices.  That said, they cannot ignore the fact that even some of their middle-class and wealthy constituents have pre-existing conditions and would be ruined without affordable insurance, so they have been unable to eliminate community rating entirely.  The House bill waters it down by providing for optional state waivers and by permitting insurance companies to impose higher prices, relative to Obamacare, on older people.  Since the state waiver provision was unpopular, the Senate bill dropped it, but kept the higher prices for old people.
2.  The individual mandate is eliminated in both bills.  In a lame attempt to avoid the death spiral, the House bill permits insurance companies to impose much higher prices on people who don’t meet a continuous coverage standard.  The current version of the Senate bill does not address the death spiral at all, and is intellectually vulnerable on that ground, but there are strong indications that the bill will be amended this week to permit insurance companies to refuse to cover people with lapsed coverage for six months.  Both of these approaches will make the current “job lock” problem much worse.
3.  The House bill makes a major ideological statement by typing subsidies solely to age–not to ability to pay.  As a result, poor people lost, and relatively wealthy people won. The Senate bill, on the other hand, is just a much stingier version of Obamacare;  it continues to tie the levels of subsidy to income and geographic areas.

The Senate bill keeps more of the current Obamacare framework in place than the House bill.  You could call it “Obamacare Lite,” but I prefer to refer to it as Obamacare’s illegitimate child, because it isn’t intended to solve any of the issues with the existing legislation–it is just an attempt to save money for tax cuts for the rich.

What does all of this mean for the individual market?  We don’t know what, if anything, will ultimately pass, but the most likely outcome is that most Americans relying on the individual market will have a choice between buying more expensive insurance with much higher deductibles and co-pays than they have currently, or deciding not to buy it at all.  In other words, under Obamacare, you were legally required to buy a meaningful insurance plan;  with the GOP approach, you will have a choice between “insurance” and relying on prayer and the emergency room.

For Trump, language is a weapon;  he uses it to deceive, to intimidate, to make himself the center of attention, and to keep people guessing.  He doesn’t use it to tell the truth, because for him, truth is an illusion;  it is power that matters in all of his relationships.

The tapes episode is a perfect example of this.  For the record, I never believed for a minute that any tapes existed.  Nor do I believe a word he says until he puts his money where his mouth is.

The sad fact is that we, as Americans, are just going to have to get used to this, and adjust accordingly.

 

Krugman asks himself in today’s NYT why the GOP would move a health care bill that will do so much damage to many of its supporters, and concludes that many Republicans think their supporters are so wedded to the red tribe that losing their health insurance won’t be enough to change their votes.

Bingo.  They’re probably right, too, barring a change of course from the Democrats on cultural issues.

I noted this morning that someone was doing a search to determine what faction can claim Marco Rubio as its own.  It’s a good question, and one that requires some additional explanation.

When I use the term “faction,” it should be viewed as a separate strain of ideology, or an ideal type, not as an actual form of organization within the GOP. The four “factions” are very different ways of looking at politics and the world that are not always easy to harmonize;  hence, the ongoing disunity of the GOP.

Since no one “faction” is large enough by itself to win elections, at least at a national level, hardly any prominent member of the GOP can be characterized purely as one or another.  Applying my standards to some of your favorite people, here is what you get:

1.  While both Rand Paul and Ted Cruz are clearly part CL and part Reactionary, the mixtures are different.  Paul is essentially a CL, but must accept Reactionary doctrines on social issues to get elected;  Cruz is primarily a Reactionary who sucks up to the Koch brothers on economic issues.
2.  Donald Trump’s ideology, if you could call it that, is self-adoration, but in practice, he is a Reactionary who espouses PBP ideas on tax cuts and deregulation in order to win support from the GOP donor class.
3. I think that if you could strip the innumerable layers of opportunism away from Rubio, he would be a CD.  He has been more willing to consider ideas about tax cuts that are heretical to PBPs than any other prominent member of the GOP.  His idealism about human rights also fits the CD mold.  When push comes to shove with the donor class on economic issues, however, he falls into line with the other PBPs.
4.  Jeb Bush, like his brother, is a PBP on tax cuts and deregulation, and a CD on everything else.  So is Mitt Romney–hence, my references to the “Romney Coalition.”  John Kasich is also a member of this group, which is typically identified as the “moderate” grouping within the GOP.
5.  Paul Ryan is part Reactionary, part PBP.  So is Mike Pence.

If anyone has questions about any other GOP figure, please let me know.