The Commentariat -- March 27, 2012
My column in today's New York Times eXaminer shreds -- if I do say so myself -- David Brooks' "historical perspective" on "Obamacare." The NYTX front page is here. You can contribute here. ...
** Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker: how Barack Obama came around to supporting the individual mandate and why the C.B.O. is sometimes a banana. ...
... Dean Baker: It ain't just the tax code that accounts for growing income & wealth inequality in the U.S. A good, short read.
"Think of the Teachers and Cops!" Noam Scheiber of The New Republic on the latest anti-Volcker rule excuse, this one promulgated by Democrats who are beholden to the financial industry: really, it's wrong to regulate financial transactions because many of those trades involve financial instruments that may be owned by pension funds for public employees and other ordinary Americans. CW: Scheiber points out the obvious, "... when you take into account the risks the Volcker Rule is designed to check, it’s almost certainly a net positive for the average teacher or cop." ...
... Here's the underlying reporting by Robert Schmidt & Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg News. Title: "The Fight over the Volcker Rule Is Shifting in Wall Street's Favor." No kidding.
N. C. Aizenman of the Washington Post: "The individual insurance mandate, which requires virtually all Americans to obtain health coverage or pay a fine, was the brainchild of conservative economists and embraced by some of the nation’s most prominent Republicans for nearly two decades. Yet today many of those champions — including presidential hopefuls Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — are among the mandate’s most vocal critics. Meanwhile, even as Democratic stalwarts warmed to the idea in recent years, one of the last holdouts was the man whose political fate is now most closely intertwined with the mandate: President Obama." ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "Just by getting this case to the high court ... the far right wing has already won something. As recently as three years ago, the idea of an individual mandate ... was largely uncontroversial.... As late as the spring of 2009, prominent Republican lawmakers like Charles Grassley ... publicly embraced the idea of the mandate as part of health care reform. If he or any other leaders of the GOP thought the mandate was an unholy violation of liberty, they kept it to themselves." ...
... Washington Post Editors: "... the individual mandate is necessary and constitutional." ...
... Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza of The Atlantic provides a primer on how the Supremes have interpreted the Commerce Clause, the Constitutional basis for the government's case defending the individual mandate.
Tea Leaves
CW: I just listened to all of the oral arguments on the ACA from yesterday -- which were actually about the AIA (the Anti-Injunction Act of 1867), and I have to say I was a bit at sea. However, Amy Howe of Scotus.blog provides an excellent explanation "in plain English" of what the lawyers were talking about & what the justices were asking. ...
... Also, super-helpful is the analysis by Lyle Denniston of Scotus.blog. ...
... Dahlia Lithwick provides a lively account of the relatively boring proceedings. ...
... Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic: "... as George Washington University Professor Orin Kerr noticed, Chief Justice John Roberts did start one intriguing exchange towards the end. While questioning Gregory Katsas, the lawyer representing the states challenging the mandate, Roberts wondered whether the mandate really qualified as a mandate given the relatively weak penalties. (Remember, the maximum penalty for violating the insurance requirement and failing to pay the fee is a forfeiture of future tax refunds; there is no criminal sanction.) As Kerr notes at the Volokh Conspiracy blog, the whole premise of the lawsuits is that the mandate is a command (in this case, a command to buy insurance). But the Court could rule that the mandate is just a financial incentive for obtaining insurance, presumably rendering it constitutional." ...
... Consensus Opinion. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "The fate of the Affordable Care Act will likely be decided before the 2012 election, as the first day of much-anticipated oral arguments at the Supreme Court concerning Obamacare showed the justices wary of the case for delaying a ruling."
Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times: "On Friday, Charlie Savage reported in the Times that Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. had signed new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center that will allow it to collect more information about Americans, regardless of whether they have any connection at all to terrorism, and to keep it much longer.... In many cases, President Obama has merely kept in place President Bush’s more troubling national security policies. But in this instance he’s actually gone farther, in exactly the wrong direction."
President Obama spoke at Hankuk University in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday:
Frances Robles of the Miami Herald: "As thousands of people gathered [in Sanford, Florida] to demand an arrest in the Trayvon Martin case, a more complicated portrait began to emerge of a teenager whose problems at school ranged from getting spotted defacing lockers to getting caught with a marijuana baggie and women’s jewelry." See also story links in yesterday's News Ledes. ...
... Judd Legum of Think Progress: "Over the last 48 hours, there has been a sustained effort to smear Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African-American who was shot dead by George Zimmerman a month ago." ...
... Emily Bazelon of Slate finds the newly-leaked police account less than credible. ...
... CW: here's something I don't get. Why is Zimmerman a right-wing cause celebre? I just don't see the fatal shooting of an unarmed kid as a political issue, and I definitely don't see any political point to taking sides and spreading lies about Martin or Zimmerman. I link to stories that report differing views because it seems to be the facts surrounding the shooting are the most important matter. Yet somehow there's a loud cacophony on the right bashing everyone from President Obama to Martin. The only explanation I can come up with is -- the right-wing blogosphere is essentially racist. Could it be?
Up with Chris Hayes on Atheism in America. More here:
Right Wing World
Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post: "It’s hard to point to a single priority of the Republican Party these days that isn’t steeped in moral failing while being dressed up in moral righteousness."
Thomas Edsall in the New York Times: "Assuming Romney is the 2012 nominee, renegade primary voters are doing their level best to submarine general election appeals to independents. There are signs that base Republican voters won’t turn out for Romney.... These lukewarm Republican primary voters are, in effect, threatening to abandon the nominee after forcing him to pass ruthless ideological litmus tests."
Kevin Baker in the New York Times: "The Republican effort to rally every conceivable outside entity to the party’s cause was wildly successful. Again and again over the years, conservative policy institutes have armed the party’s candidates with intellectual arguments, while the conservative media barrage has blasted a way through to high office for even the most lackluster Republican nominees. Yet increasingly this meant that the Republican Party was outsourcing both body and soul. Both what the party believed in and its ability to do the heavy lifting necessary to win elections was handed over to outside interests — outside interests that did not necessarily share the party’s goals or have any stake in ameliorating its tactics."
Samuel Jacobs of Reuters: "Republican Rick Santorum began his presidential campaign by roaming Iowa in a pickup truck, boosted by peppy television ads that showed him walking through a garden with his wife and holding his youngest daughter. Now, with his frustration apparently building over what he sees as slanted news coverage that favors Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, Santorum and his campaign are showing a dark side."
Alec MacGillis of The New Republic on "Obama's Secret Plan to Give Alaska to Russia." Apparently they're going nuts in Right Wing World because President Obama told President Medvedev that he (Obama) would have more flexibility after the election. CW: This could be because he will have more flexibility after the election, but as MacGillis points out, it well might be because he plans, you know, to give Putin there flying over our airspace the ground underneath it. ...
... Steve Benen: "Mitt Romney is feigning outrage, and Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), who's often confused about U.S. policy in Russia but likes to pretend otherwise, is looking for the fainting couch, but Obama's comments aren't exactly scandalous."
... Daniel Drezner of Foreign Policy is not too impressed with the right's histrionics because, well, they're wrong. ...
... Update. Jennifer Epstein of Politico: "President Barack Obama made light Tuesday of his frank comments to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Before sitting down at a plenary session for a Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, Obama greeted Medvedev. 'Wait, wait, wait, wait,' he said, the AP reported. Grinning, he put his hand over the microphone."
News Ledes
President Obama spoke at the Nuclear Security Summit:
New York Times: "Stung by a cheating scandal involving dozens of Long Island high school students, the SAT and ACT college entrance exams will now require students to provide a photograph when they sign up for the exams, and officials will check those images against the identification the students present when they take the test."
Washington Post: "The Supreme Court on Tuesday considers the main constitutional question in its review of the nation’s health-care overhaul, whether Congress has the power to require almost all Americans to secure health insurance or pay a penalty." ...
... Update: The New York Times The Lede is now liveblogging the hearing. ...
... Update 2: The audio of this morning's session is here. The transcript is here (pdf).
Al Jazeera: "The Syrian government has agreed to accept the six-point plan by joint UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on ending the violence in Syria, the former UN chief's spokesman has said. 'The Syrian government has written to the joint special envoy Kofi Annan, accepting his six-point plan, endorsed by the United Nations Security Council, spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi said ... Tuesday."
Do-Nothing Congress. Washington Post: "House Republicans dropped plans Monday to vote on a three-month extension of federal highway funding, citing insufficient support for the measure. All federally-funded roadwork is slated to grind to a halt on March 31. If Congress fails to act before then, the federal government can not collect $93 million per day in gas taxes, millions of construction jobs could be put at risk and eligible commuters would have to wait longer for a planned boost in employer-paid public transportation subsidies."
New York Times: "The landmark trial of a senior official of the Philadelphia Archdiocese who is accused of shielding priests who sexually abused children and reassigning them to unwary parishes began on Monday with prosecutors charging that the official 'paid lip service to child protection and protected the church at all costs.' The defendant, Msgr. William J. Lynn, 61, is the first Roman Catholic supervisor in the country to be tried on felony charges of endangering children and conspiracy — not on allegations that he molested children himself, but that he protected suspect priests and reassigned them to jobs where they continued to rape, grope or otherwise abuse boys and girls." Philadelphia Inquirer story here.
Al Jazeera: "Eleven suicide vests have been found at the defence ministry compound in Afghanistan, which also houses the residence and office of the Afghan president. Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting from the Afghan capital, Kabul, said on Tuesday ... 'Al Jazeera has been told by a high-level intelligence service source that the 11 suicide vests, packed with explosives and used by suicide bombers, have been found inside the ministry of defence headquarters -- one of the most secure, heavily guarded buildings in the Afghan capital.'"
Washington Post: "House Democrats have released an election year budget proposal they say would begin to curb deficits without making major changes to growing entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid by pairing spending cuts with higher taxes on the wealthy."
Al Jazeera: "Al Jazeera has said it will not air a video that it received showing three shooting attacks in Toulouse and Montauban in southern France this month. The network on Tuesday said the video did not add any information that was not already in public domain. It also did not meet the television station's code of ethics for broadcast." New York Times story here.
New York Times: "Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund, was released on bail on Monday after he was charged with involvement in a prostitution ring in Lille. The filing of the preliminary charges allows for further investigation."
NBC News: "The wife of a U.S. soldier accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians believes her husband could not have carried out the crime. “I don't think anything will really change my mind in believing that he did not do this,’’ Kari Bales told Today’s Matt Lauer in an exclusive interview that aired Monday." Includes video.
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Reader Comments (3)
@Dave S. Re: your comment yesterday on "Mad Men": "This can only end badly."
I've watched every season, though I had to go back & borrow video of the first season from the library. It occurred to me as I was watching last night that I've always sort of ignored the opening credits where Don is falling out of the window of a Mad Ave skyscraper. I always took the credits graphic to be metaphorical. But maybe not.
Marie: You have given me a problem. I hate to read David Brooks and the donut. They make me cringe. However, it is necessary to read Brooks to enjoy the full pleasure of your destroying him.
Just want to thank you, Marie, for giving us the link to Chris's atheism discussion––most enjoyable. Also thanks for the links to those that deciphered the Supreme––ball back to you––Court arguments. I, too, listened to them last evening on CSpan and was delighted to have the women speak as often as they did. One lone voice was silent as usual and one wonders why.