Citing No Data, Gary Bauer Claims Two-State Scenario ‘Rejected By Vast Majority Of Arab Muslims’
Citing No Data, Gary Bauer Claims Two-State Scenario ‘Rejected By Vast Majority Of Arab Muslims’
Last week, the pro-Israel, pro-peace group J Street successfully shamed the neocon Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI) into finally endorsing a two-state solution, which they had previously refused to do.
In Politico today, however, ECI board member Gary Bauer shares his concerns with the two-state formula, noting that extremists oppose it. For some reason, he doesn’t note that some of those extremists are on the Israeli side, or that they’re lobbying Congress against two states right now.
“Apart from disagreements over what form a two-state solution would take,” Bauer writes, “there is the fundamental question of whether the Palestinians ultimately want to co-exist with a Jewish state“:
There are strong indications that the Palestinians envision a two-state solution only as a first step toward their final destination: one state ruled by an Arab Muslim majority.
Palestinian official Sufian Abu Zaida recently abandoned a two-state position. After Netanyahu’s two-state endorsement last summer, Abu Zaida mocked him, saying, “Do you think you are doing us a favor when you agree to two states? No favor at all. From my side, from the Palestinians’ side — let there be one state, not two.”
These and other statements have created skepticism among American Jews about the Palestinians’ intentions. A 2007 survey found that 82 percent of American Jews believed that “the goal of the Arabs is not the return of occupied territories but rather the destruction of Israel.”
Other polls show that the two-state scenario is rejected by the vast majority of Arab Muslims, especially youth. As Condoleezza Rice said in 2008, “Increasingly, the Palestinians who talk about a two-state solution are my age.”
You’ll notice that, apart from a 2007 survey of what American Jews “believe,” Bauer presents no actual data to support his assertion that Arab Muslims don’t support two states. And no, non-specified “other polls” plus “something Condoleezza Rice said in 2008″ do not equal “data.”
But here’s some: A July 2010 public opinion poll of the Arab world conducted by Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution found that 86% of respondents were “prepared for peace if Israel is willing to return all 1967 territories including East Jerusalem.”
While it’s unlikely that all of the 67 territories will be returned — it’s generally understood that the Palestinians will be compensated through land swaps — this data, at the very least, dispatches Bauer’s “Arab rejectionist” chimera.
Interestingly, while Bauer insists in his article that his concern is protecting “Israel as an independent Jewish state,” he says nothing about that state being democratic. Maybe someone should ask about that.
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Deficit Fraud Kirk Proposes Tiny Spending Reduction That Would Be Swamped By His Massive Tax Cuts
Deficit Fraud Kirk Proposes Tiny Spending Reduction That Would Be Swamped By His Massive Tax Cuts
When we last encountered Illinois’ Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk, he was scaring farmers into thinking that they’re going to have to pay the estate tax, when it affects just 1.6 percent of farm estates. And Kirk isn’t any more concerned about the details when it comes to federal spending, if the “Five Top Policies to Control Spending” he released yesterday are any indication.
“In order to prevent a Greek tragedy right here in the U.S., we should take quick action on the emerging sovereign debt crisis and reduce government spending here at home,” Kirk says, hewing to the Greek theme that he favors. Kirk’s five ideas are: “Enact a line-item veto; End earmarks; Require a supermajority to spend beyond our means; Enact Senator Simon’s balanced budget amendment; and Reestablish the Grace Commission with special procedures to implement approved spending cuts.”
Progress Illinois referred to the plan as “Kirk’s vapid spending reforms.” Indeed, the plan shows that Kirk is either woefully uninformed about where the problems in the federal budget lie, or he’s not at all interested in actually addressing the deficit.
The line-item veto, as Progress Illinois noted, has not only been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, but would likely just lead to increased political horse-trading when it comes to spending, not any actual reductions. The exact balanced budget plan that Kirk mentions was defeated by the Senate in 1994, and even conservatives realize that preventing the federal government from ever running a deficit is “a stupid idea.” Calling for a balanced budget amendment is a political trick, not a serious budget proposal.
It’s unclear what Kirk’s proposal to “require a supermajority to spend beyond our means” would actually be in practice. And like any good politico, Kirk suggests a commission to make spending cuts, outsourcing Congress’ duties to some other body.
The only cut that Kirk explicitly identifies is to end earmarks, which, in total, amount to less than one percent of the federal budget (about $20 billion). Remember, Kirk wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and completely eliminate the estate tax, which together cost about $1.6 trillion over ten years. Against that, the paltry $20 billion he saves from eliminating earmarks is a drop in the bucket.
Like other Republican senate hopefuls, Kirk’s plan is long on rhetoric, but short on actual spending cuts, while flat-out ignoring the real long-term drivers of the deficit: giant tax cuts, health care spending, and the defense budget. But of course, the real trouble here is that balancing the budget on the spending side alone, while also enacting trillions in new tax breaks for the rich, would require absolutely draconian cuts to highly popular programs that many people depend upon. So it’s better to just not tell anyone what your plans are.
Associated Press Debunks The ‘Birth Tourism’ Myth
Associated Press Debunks The ‘Birth Tourism’ Myth
Earlier this summer, when Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested that he may try to amend the Constitution to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship, he argued that “[p]eople come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child. It’s called ‘drop and leave.’” Graham also claimed that there is a rampant problem of “birth tourism,” or pregnant women coming to the U.S. on tourist visas simply to have children who are automatically American-born citizens. Meanwhile, other lawmakers support changing the 14th amendment’s citizenship requirements because granting automatic citizenship “encourages” illegal immigration.
However, the Associated Press reports that, though it exists, the trend is “not as dramatic as some immigration opponents have claimed”:
Out of 340,000 babies born to illegal immigrants in the United States in 2008, 85 percent of the parents had been in the country for more than a year, and more than half for at least five years, Jeffrey Passel, a senior demographer for Pew, told The Associated Press.
And immigration experts say it’s extraordinarily rare for immigrants to come to the U.S. just so they can have babies and get citizenship. In most cases, they come to the U.S. for economic reasons and better hospitals, and end up staying and raising families.
Watch ABC’s segment on “birth tourism”:
The Associated Press concedes that, “some pregnant Mexican women do come to the United States. In border cities like Nogales, women have been coming to the U.S. for decades to give birth.” However, the article explains that most of those women are seeking better medical care, not citizenship.
All in all, neither citizenship nor health care is what drives immigrants to the U.S. Princeton University sociologist Douglas Massey, who is quoted in the piece and has surveyed Mexican immigrants to the U.S. for 30 years, has explained in the past that “no one ever mentioned having kids in the U.S…what our work shows is that migrants come in response to labor demand in the U.S. and are motivated by economic problems at home.”
In fact, Massey suggests that tightened border security might be responsible for the number of pregnant, immigrant women giving birth in the U.S.: “They end up having babies in the United States because men can no longer circulate freely back and forth from homes in Mexico to jobs in the United States and husbands and wives quite understandably want to be together.”
Finally, if the 14th amendment really was driving undocumented immigrants to the U.S., sociologists note there would be a higher percentage of women of child-bearing age in the U.S. illegally compared to men of the same age. However, data shows just the opposite. Undocumented men significantly outnumber undocumented women.
As The Employment Slog Continues, Successful Jobs Programs Should Be Renewed
Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released another report showing that job-creation continues to slog along at a less-than-encouraging pace. The economy lost 54,000 jobs in August (though 67,000 private sector jobs were created) and the unemployment rate remained essentially unchanged.
June and July’s job creation numbers were revised upward somewhat, but the fact remains that this level of job creation is not enough to foster an acceptable recovery. In fact, as Derek Thompson noted, “if every twelve months, we added as many jobs as the best year in the last decade, we wouldn’t get back to full employment for another eleven years.” Calculated Risk has the graph:
The Obama administration has been dropping some hints that a new job creation package is in the works, and it has been appropriately hammering Senate Republicans for obstructing a bill providing tax credits and loans to small businesses. But given the deficit hysterics that have gripped Capitol Hill, the chance that a substantial jobs program emerges are, as Edmund Andrews put it, “somewhere between zero and zero point zero.”
However, there are some under-the-radar things that could be done, like renewing the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund, which is set to expire in a few weeks. As Joy Moses and Melissa Boteach note, “this program has enabled 35 states to partner with the private sector over the past year and a half to create more than 240,000 new jobs for low-income and long-term unemployed workers.” Republicans in Congress enjoy mocking this particular program, but it has substantial support amongst Republicans at the state level that could help push a renewal through.
Also, it’s rather mystifying that, with the Obama administration talking about payroll tax cuts to boost the economy and emphasizing its intention to preserve the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, no administration figures are talking about an extension of the Making Work Pay tax credit, which was passed as part of the Recovery Act.
As Jamelle Bouie noted, “the fact that we’re talking about ‘extending the Bush tax cuts’ and not ‘passing the Obama tax cuts’ is a real political failure on the part of the Democrats.” Indeed, Obama’s signature tax cut, which he campaigned heavily on, is garnering no attention whatsoever, and seems destined to expire with little fanfare.
Now, neither of these measures would provide the sort of large-scale job creation necessary to push the economy out of its sluggish current state. But they would help on the margins, and given political constraints, might be the best that we can hope for.
Financial Reform Rulemaking Gets Underway With Mega-Banks Lobbying For Weaker Derivatives Rules
Financial Reform Rulemaking Gets Underway With Mega-Banks Lobbying For Weaker Derivatives Rules
One of the legitimate criticisms of the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform bill that passed this year is that it leaves a lot of the details of reform up to regulators, instead of laying out hard-and-fast rules. There are pros and cons to this approach, but one of the big drawbacks is that the rule-making happens when the subject has faded from public view, giving the financial services industry even more influence over the process than it already has.
Case in point, the country’s biggest banks have been meeting with officials at the Federal Reserve in an attempt to shape the new rules governing derivatives trading:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and others have also discussed tough rules for derivatives with government officials. Citi executives, meeting with the Fed on Aug. 18, expressed concerns about the effect of the new rules on U.S. firms. “Citigroup representatives also expressed concerns about a narrow interpretation of the definition of hedging and the importance of retaining their ability to hedge across markets,” the meeting summary prepared by the Fed said.
Non-financial companies and lobbying groups are also trying to influence the new derivatives rules, including the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
First, I’m glad to see that these meetings were disclosed relatively quickly. Other bank regulators, including the FDIC, have been planning to make a concerted effort to disclose their meetings with private sector representatives regarding the implementation of Dodd-Frank, and it’s good to see the Fed follow suit.
But on to the substance. The derivatives title of Dodd-Frank is one of the better parts of the bill, bringing much-needed transparency to an unregulated market and restricting some of the riskier derivatives trading in which banks can engage, by forcing them to move certain activities into a separately capitalized subsidiary (although this provision was watered down from a much-stronger one at the very last minute). But activities that qualify as related to hedging risk don’t have to be walled off.
Therefore, it’s in the banks’ interest to have as much activity as possible qualify as hedging, which is what these meetings seem to have been about. But the wider these definitions are, the less effective Dodd-Frank is going to be and the more risky trading will occur in the heart of the financial system. The added lobbying of the Chamber and API, which both falsely portrayed the effect that financial regulation would have on corporations while negotiations were ongoing, is only going to tip the scales in favor of a wider definition and more risk in the system.
If regulators don’t craft strong rules during this implementation stage, financial reform isn’t going to amount to much. And, sadly, there’s no logical counterweight that has as much at stake in the discussion.
The WonkLine: September 3, 2010
The WonkLine: September 3, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
National Security
“Israeli and Palestinian negotiators cleared the first hurdle on Thursday in their elusive quest for Middle East peace: they agreed to keep talking, two weeks from now in Egypt.”
“North Korea is preparing its biggest political gathering in 30 years, drawing parallels with the 1980 summit that ensured Kim Jong Il’s succession amid speculation he will transfer power to his youngest son.”
“One of the principal owners of the Afghan bank at the center of an accelerating financial crisis…said depositors had withdrawn $180 million in the past two days.”
Health Care
“An estimated five million uninsured children in the United States were eligible for Medicaid or the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) but were not enrolled in either plan, according to a new report.”
“As health care costs continue their relentless climb, companies are increasingly passing on higher premium costs to workers.”
Don Berwick responds: “Former health and human services secretary Michael Leavitt was incorrect in calling the Affordable Care Act’s Medicare reforms an ‘illusion’”
Immigration
Senate candidate Carly Fiorina (R-CA), who has taken a hardline stance on immigration, said Wednesday night that she would support the DREAM Act, a measure that would legalize many undocumented students.
Of the 37 gubernatorial races this year, candidates in more than 20 states have endorsed adopting a strict Arizona-style immigration law.
Contributions by unauthorized immigrants to Social Security “are much larger than previously known,” totaling a net benefit of somewhere between $120 billion and $240 billion.
Economy
The economy lost 54,000 jobs in August (but added 67,000 private sector jobs), and the unemployment rate held steady, according to the latest report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
According to a new Pew Research Center survey, “just over a quarter of the nation’s 139 million currently employed workers endured a bout of unemployment during the Great Recession.”
Obama administration officials “are shooting down a Washington Post report claiming the president’s economic team is considering a second stimulus package.”
16.4 Million Employees Eligible For Small Business Health Credit, 3.4 Million Will Benefit
16.4 Million Employees Eligible For Small Business Health Credit, 3.4 Million Will Benefit
The Commonwealth Fund is estimating that about 3.4 million workers, employed by roughly 1 million small businesses, will take advantage of the new health care tax credit offered under the health care law by 2013. “Overall, 16.6 million employees of small businesses are eligible for the tax credit.”
How much would employees and employers save? The study breaks it down:
To illustrate how the tax credit might work in practice, a company with 10 or fewer workers and aver- age wages of $25,000 would be eligible for the full tax credit. Assuming that the company has a per-worker family premium of $9,435 and contributes 50 percent of the premium, it would be eligible for a tax credit of $1,651 per worker, or 35 percent of its premium contribution in the years 2010–2013, leaving it with a balance of $3,067. Beginning in 2014, the company would receive 50 percent of its premium contribution or $2,359, leaving it with a balance of $2,359. A tax-exempt organization in that year would receive a slightly lower credit (35% of its premium contribution) of $1,651 per worker.
This report will help give some context to the anecdotal accounts about small businesses applying for the credits and also lower expectations about how many firms will actually take advantage of the benefit. The study predicts a relatively modest pick up for two reasons 1) until 2014, small businesses will still face all of the barriers to entry that they do now and 2) companies that already provide coverage are more likely to apply for the credit. Conversely, encouraging small businesses to begin offering coverage will probably require a far more significant price incentive. The full credit may help small businesses begin offering insurance, but since the credit declines over time and as the size of the company decreases and the average wages of their employees goes up, many employers may be reluctant to hop into the insurance business until 2014.
Is A Renewed Israeli Settlement Freeze Achievable?
Is A Renewed Israeli Settlement Freeze Achievable?
At the top of a good article on the prospects of a renewal of the Israeli settlement moratorium, my friend Eli Lake of the Washington Times unfortunately deploys a bit of right-wing Israeli jargon, referring to “the disputed territory of the West Bank.” The West Bank is “disputed” in the same sense that control of Kuwait was “disputed” by Iraq, in other words, a claim taken seriously by no one other than the occupying power. The United States, the Palestinians, and the rest of the international community, as well as large part of the Israeli polity, recognize this — including, notably, settler patron saint Ariel Sharon, who recognized Israel’s presence in the West Bank as an “occupation” in 2003.
This may at first seem a rather semantic point, and so it is, but in this conflict semantics tend to be really important. Treating the West Bank as “disputed” rather than “occupied” not only denies that international humanitarian law regarding the disposition of occupied territories applies there, it also suggests that, having lost over 75% of their homeland, the Palestinians should have to negotiate over the “disputed” remaining 25%. As with Netanyahu’s attempt to treat the settlement freeze as a “concession” rather than a pre-existing Israeli obligation, it’s a shrewd bargaining tactic. In terms of building trust between the parties, however, it’s not helpful.
Considering various methods by which the moratorium — the actual impact of which, as the New York Times reported in July, has been minimal — might be extended, Lake talked to Ori Nir of Americans for Peace Now, who “said one possible compromise would be for Mr. Netanyahu to decline to formally renew the moratorium, but for the defense minister, Ehud Barak, whose Labor Party favors the settlement construction freeze, to issue far fewer construction permits for the West Bank“:
“What is possible and maybe even likely to happen is that while the moratorium will not be officially extended, wholesale planning and construction in settlements will not resume because the Defense Ministry is responsible for issuing these permits, and Defense Minister Barak has both the interest and ability to issue these permits very sparingly,” Mr. Nir said.
An interesting idea, though one that also challenges previous Israeli claims that the growth of settlements are a legal bureaucratic process that cannot be stopped. In fact, they can be stopped at any time, though at a political price.
On that point, Daniel Dayan, chairman of the largest settler organization in the West Bank, the Yesha council, told Lake that the settlers “have succeeded in creating political leverage that will not allow Netanyahu to extend the moratorium,” and that even a “de facto” construction freeze of the sort Nir suggests would be opposed by his council:
“Even if the moratorium is not formally extended but the tenders for construction are not signed that will mean a de facto extension of the moratorium and that would be totally unacceptable for us,” he said.
Mr. Dayan added, “It would be inconceivable that less units would be built during Netanyahu than under [the last Israeli prime minister] Ehud Olmert, and if that is the case, we will use the political leverage we have within the Israeli political system in order to override that policy.”
Given the prominence of both the settlers as a movement and the settlements as a key issue overhanging negotiations, Dayan has been getting quite a bit of play, most recently last week, in this article by the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes, in which Dayan suggested that the Palestinian issue could be dealt with simply by committing a crime against humanity and expelling them to Jordan, and calling that “Palestine.” And he’s one of the “reasonable” settlers.
What Drove Rick Scott’s Hospitals To Commit Billions In Medicare Fraud?
What Drove Rick Scott’s Hospitals To Commit Billions In Medicare Fraud?
Rick Scott
Maggie Mahar — whose book Money-Driven Medicine is a bible for those of us trying to figure out why Rick Scott’s Columbia/HCA paid $1.7 billion in fines to the federal government — has published a new more detailed analysis of what drove the company to acquire so many hospitals and commit such shameless Medicaid fraud during the period Scott was its CEO.
Mahar captures a company who was driven not by a desire to improve patient care or outcomes, but the need to constantly expand and acquire new properties. It focused on the price of its stock rather than the quality of its service and it was this mindset that forced Columbia/HCA to cut corners, price gauge and place the safety and health of its patients at risk:
Their goal was growth, and they believed speed was essential. Sometimes they bought a hospital just to close it down, so that it wouldn’t compete with a nearby Columbia property. Scott cared little about the needs of the communities where he bought. “His arrogance and disdain for the concern for communities, was appalling,” said Paul Torrens, MD, MPH, professor of health services management at the UCLA School of Public Health. [...]
In Ohio “Attorney General Betty Montgomery was so outraged by what she characterized as the ‘peremptory, bullying’ tactics that Columbia employed in its failed attempts to acquire Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Ohio and Massillon Community Hospital that she took the company’s Ohio chief aside and delivered a blunt threat,” Business Week reported. “Says Montgomery: I told him that if you want to do business in Ohio, just play it straight from now on. Otherwise, I will fight you in court any time, anywhere.’”
In 1997, when Lawrence Hospital, a community-owned facility in Lawrence, Kan., refused three buyout offers from Columbia, the company took an option on property nearby and sought to build a competing hospital. “‘We like to say here that they approached us in a very aggressive manner to marry them,’ Ray Davis, chairman of the hospital board, told the New York Times. ‘And when we said no, they decided they were going to kill us.’”
[...]
Ultimately, Scott epitomized those CEOs of the 1990s (Enron’s Ken Lay, et. al.) who saw their company, not as an organization that produced a product that they could be proud of–but as a stock. Share price was all. Questions about whether the company was delivering value to its customers were moot. This explains why Scott would be happy to slash nursing staff, bribe doctors to “put heads on beds” (whether or not those patients needed to be hospitalized), and lie to Medicare.
All this correlates well with today’s article about one Columbia/HCA acquisition deal gone bad and contrasts sharply with Scott’s strong defense of his tenure, all the while providing a glimpse into some of the so-called “mistakes” that he has ostensibly taken responsibility for. This isn’t just a few accounting errors or regulatory oversights, it’s an entire business mindset that’s based on short term success but and inch deep commitment.
Grassley ‘Absolutely’ Agrees That The Estate Tax Will Destroy ‘Our Farmers Of The Future’
Grassley ‘Absolutely’ Agrees That The Estate Tax Will Destroy ‘Our Farmers Of The Future’
As I’ve discussed extensively, the currently expired estate tax is scheduled to come back in 2011 at a 55 percent rate with a $1 million exemption. President Obama and many congressional Democrats have proposed permanently setting the estate tax at the 2009 level of 45 percent with a $3.5 million exemption but Republicans, in their constant zeal to reduce the tax burden of the wealthy, blocked that proposal.
Since then, Republicans have been going gangbusters with the claim that the estate tax will devastate family farms across the country. The latest was Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), who “absolutely” agreed with an Agwired interviewer’s assertion that the estate tax will decimate “our farmers of the future”:
Q: I mean, I think that probably, maybe we’ll see your opinion, it just has a huge impact on these people who are major landowners in some cases. Who are going to be our farmers of the future, for example, right?
GRASSLEY: Absolutely, because if we go back to a million dollar estate tax exemption, which is going to happen January 1, we’re going to be selling a lot of farm land to pay estate taxes. And even at $3.5 million, which I think is where we’re going to end up, is still going to be detrimental to some family farmers. But I think that’s where we will end up and I think we’ll do it before the end of the year.
Listen here:
For starters, exceedingly few farms ever pay the estate tax. In fact, in 2001, when the estate tax was at 55 percent with a $675,000 exemption, the American Farm Bureau “could not cite a single example of a farm lost because of estate taxes.” Even if the tax were to come back as scheduled by current law, only one in ten farms would owe any tax at all.
But no one has actually proposed allowing the current law to take its course. Under the Obama administration’s plan to permanently set the tax at the 2009 level — which only needs the approval of the Senate, because it has already passed the House — just 1.6 percent of farms in the country would face the estate tax, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Those farms have an average net worth of about $7 million.
The fact remains that the estate tax overwhelmingly affects the super-wealthy, with nearly two-thirds of the revenue coming from estates worth $20 million or more. Interestingly, Grassley believes that the administration’s plan will be the one that’s adopted, which means he does not see the estate tax cut crafted by Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) as ultimately becoming law.
Jan Brewer ‘Is Not Talking To Local Media,’ Refuses To Answer Questions On Beheadings Claims
Jan Brewer ‘Is Not Talking To Local Media,’ Refuses To Answer Questions On Beheadings Claims
This morning, I reported on ThinkProgress that Gov. Jan Brewer’s (R-AZ) election campaign pulled all of its advertisements from a local Phoenix station, CBS5’s KPHO TV, after the network reported that “two of Brewer’s top advisers have connections” to private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). The governor’s campaign confirmed it ceased advertising on the station due to the network’s investigation of Brewer. Meanwhile, KPHO still hasn’t received an answer as to whether Brewer’s two top advisers informed her on what their client, CCA, would gain from the signing of SB-1070.
It turns out KPHO isn’t the only Arizona local news station that’s having trouble getting answers from Brewer. Today, Fox10’s KSAZ reported that, following her embarrassing debate against gubernatorial candidate Terry Goddard (D-AZ), Brewer would not answer reporters’ question on why she did not directly respond to Goddard’s accusation that she is damaging Arizona’s image and business prospects by portraying the state as a violent place because of border-related crime. More specifically, both during and after the debate, Brewer refused to address an appearance on Fox News’ On the Record with Great Van Susteren in which she falsely stated that SB-1070 is necessary because there are “beheadings” taking place in Arizona. KSAZ reports:
Goddard accused Brewer of damaging Arizona’s image and business prospects by portraying the state as a violent place because of border-related crime. Goddard said that’s untrue and outrageous and she should admit she’s wrong. “There are no beheadings that was a false statement and it needs to be cleared up right now,” he said.
She responded, “Terry I will call you out, I think you ought to renounce your support of the unions that are boycotting our state.” He dismissed her demand, saying he opposes the boycott.
Afterward, reporters asked her why she didn’t answer Goddard about the beheadings. They said, “About the headless bodies? Why won’t you recant that… do you still believe that?” She turned on her heel and left the post-debate news conference — and the reporters were left grumbling.
Watch it:
At the end of the segment, KSAZ reporter Steve Krafft, remarked, “The governor has repeatedly talked to the national media — she’s become a star around the country…but curiously she is not talking to local media, she is not talking to local reporters.” Ironically, Brewer’s public affairs consultants suggested KPHO reporter Morgan Loew was investigating Brewer simply because he’s “itching to get out of his native Arizona and head to the network big-time.”
Explaining Ron Wyden’s Philosophy On The Individual Health Insurance Mandate
Explaining Ron Wyden’s Philosophy On The Individual Health Insurance Mandate
Over at the Incidental Economist, Aaron Carroll wonders why Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) — a long proponent of the individual health insurance mandate — is suddenly turning against it, pushing the Oregon Health Authority to apply for a waiver from requirement. Carroll attributes this newfound position to the politics of the moment, but I suspect it also has more to do with his philosophy of “choices” — the belief that states should have the freedom to innovate and establish their own health care proposals so long as they can provide the same level of coverage to their residents.
This philosophy has left its footprints on the current health law. Wyden successfully inserted an amendment that would allow states exempt themselves from certain federal requirements by 2017 and he worked out a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), under which a small sliver of the population — individuals and families under 400% of the federal poverty line who receive employer-sponsored coverage and spend 8-9.8% of their income on premiums — could “convert their tax-free employer health subsidies into vouchers that they can use to choose a health insurance plan in the new health insurance exchanges.”
Wyden believes that the more choices people have, the more vibrant and competitive the market and the lower the health care premiums. Wyden’s communications director Jennifer Hoelzer told me that it’s not that Wyden rejects the mandate; he just thinks states should have the option of opting out of it if they think they can do a better job of expanding access and lowering health care costs. She says that Wyden’s state innovation amendment is actually an “antidote” to those who want to repeal the individual requirement. “If you can do just as good or better than the federal law, you can apply for a waiver from that. And if you can cover your residents without a mandate, then you can go ahead and do that,” she said. “Maybe states do stick with the mandates, maybe they don’t, but what it says that all of these federal requirements, if you can prove that you can do just as good of a job without that, the federal government wouldn’t punish you for not complying.” “The federal mandate says you can do it in X,Y,Z and this just gives us the leverage to go a different way,” she said.
So Wyden isn’t so much against the idea of the mandate as he is for the idea of choices and state innovation. But his critics claim that Wyden is overstating the breadth of his waiver. January Angeles, a health policy analyst at the Center on Policy and Budget Priorities, reminded me that Wyden’s waiver does not exempt states from reforming their health insurance markets — extending guaranteed issue and community rating — and argued that “whether or not he gets this waiver, Oregon still has to implement those market reforms.” “There is no way to implement those market reforms” without a mandate, she said. “There is just no way to make it work and have the popular elements of reform and make it work.”
Indeed, according to Sec. 1332 of the health law, Waiver For State Innovation, Wyden would only exempt states from the following requirements:
(A) Part I of subtitle D: ESTABLISHMENT OF QUALIFIED HEALTH PLAN
(B) Part II of subtitle D: ESTABLISHMENT OF QUALIFIED HEALTH PLAN
(C) Section 1402: Reduced cost-sharing for individuals enrolling in qualified health plan
(D) Sections 36B, 4980H, and 5000A of the Internal Revenue Codeestablishment of qualified health plans
States would still have to abide by the insurance market reforms in subtitles A, B, and C. Wyden’s office concedes that “if a state can’t come up with a solution that meets those reforms and all of the other cost and coverage requirements then it won’t qualify for a waiver.” Still, it insists that it’s possible to enact insurance reform without a federal coverage requirement, just like states have been able to cajole drivers to purchase auto insurance without federal assistance. “Senator Wyden wrote the state waiver provision to be purposefully unspecific so that states would be free to innovate new ideas that none of us may have thought of yet,” Hoelzer wrote in an email. “And if they can’t make it work as some are suggesting, then they won’t qualify for the waiver.”
It’s unclear if states will be able to achieve marketplace reform without a mandate and Wyden isn’t necessarily requiring them to abandon the requirement. He’s just encouraging them to adopt innovative policies that can go further in achieving the goals of health care reform.
Pence: ‘C’mon, We Know’ Huge Income Tax Cuts Spur Business Investment
Pence: ‘C’mon, We Know’ Huge Income Tax Cuts Spur Business Investment
A favorite Republican talking point lately is that the businesses are not creating jobs because they are “hamstrung by uncertainty.” According to this argument, the specter of taxes and regulation is paralyzing companies, and if only Congress would preserve the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and promise to not produce any new regulations, a flood of business investment would ensue.
Last night on CNBC, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) told supply-side guru and Reagan disciple Larry Kudlow that the way to get businesses to “unleash” the nearly $2 trillion in cash and assets they’re currently sitting on is to extend the Bush tax cuts for the rich and then cut marginal income tax rates even further. “C’mon, we know what works,” Pence said:
C’mon, we know what works. Larry, you know what works better than most Americans, and that is across-the-board marginal tax relief…We’ve got to demand, whether it’s this fall, whether it’s after the election, or whether it’s in a newly minted Congress next year, we’ve got to demand that we preserve tax relief, no American sees a tax increase on January 1, and then promote across-the-board tax relief on marginal rates that’ll really unleash all that more than $2 trillion in trapped capital in this economy.
Watch it:
It seems like some variation of “c’mon!” has become the Republican leadership’s go-to argument these days, but Pence shouldn’t be so smug when it comes to the efficacy of marginal income tax cuts to spur business investment. As Michael Ettlinger and John Irons found, business investment following the Clinton-era tax increase far outstripped that following either the Bush or Reagan supply-side tax cuts:
One of the basic premises of supply-side theory is that tax cuts will produce substantial increases in business investment. This, however, has not been the case…In the two supply-side eras the average growth rate in real investment was unimpressive: It was 2.8 percent in the seven-year period beginning in 1981 and 2.7 percent in the period beginning in 2001. In the period with higher taxes beginning in 1993, the growth rate was 10.2 percent. In the parallel portions of the business cycles following the tax changes of 1981, 1993, and 2001, investment grew faster under the 1993 tax regime than under either supply-side regime. The average rate of growth was 10.5 percent post-1993, 1.4 percent post-1981, and 6.1 percent post-2001.
“The failure of investment to respond to supply-side tax cuts greatly undermines the central premise of the theory underlying the policy,” Ettlinger and Irons wrote.
What is actually holding businesses back, as Paul Krugman wrote, is that there is not enough demand for their products, due to high unemployment and hour and wage cuts. “After all, why should businesses expand their production capacity when they’re not selling enough to use the capacity they already have?” Krugman wrote.
Pence, of course, doesn’t have the strongest grasp on data, so it’s not surprising that he buys the supply-side voodoo. But the situation is, in fact, the opposite of what Pence and Kudlow frame as common knowledge.
Anti-Stem Cell Plaintiffs File Motion To Stack Appeals Panel With Right-Wing Judges
Anti-Stem Cell Plaintiffs File Motion To Stack Appeals Panel With Right-Wing Judges
Lawyers in the lawsuit attempting to shut down all federal embryonic stem cell funding filed a highly unusual motion yesterday. If their motion is successful, it will effectively stack the court of appeals panel hearing this case with three far right judges who are more likely to side against scientific research than a randomly selected panel of their colleagues:
Cases in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit are randomly assigned to three-judge panels. There’s conflict screening to determine whether any one judge has a financial or other conflict of interest.
In the stem cell case, Judges Douglas Ginsburg, Janice Rogers Brown and Brett Kavanaugh picked up the dispute, heard oral argument in April and issued a ruling in June. The court reversed the dismissal of the claims and remanded the case for further proceedings in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. DOJ is now appealing the issuance of a preliminary injunction that blocks funding for human embryonic stem cell research.
The Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher lawyers for the plaintiffs, Drs. James Sherley and Theresa Deisher, filed a motion about 1:30 a.m. today in the D.C. Circuit asking that the previous panel be assigned to hear the new appeal.
Early in this litigation, the trial judge determined the plaintiffs lack “standing” to bring this lawsuit — effectively saying that, because the plaintiffs haven’t actually been harmed in any way by the defendants, they are not allowed to sue them. The plaintiffs appealed that determination and an appeals panel of Judges Ginsburg, Brown and Kavanaugh decided that the plaintiffs have standing after all and sent the case back to the trial judge to consider the remaining issues.
Typically, when a case ping-pongs between a trial and an appeals court, the case is assigned to one appeals panel to determine standing and a different panel to decide future issues. Nevertheless, the plaintiffs’ motion claims that the court should not follow its normal practice “because the original panel is well-versed in the specific facts and law relating to the present appeal.” It’s tough to believe, however, that this is the real reason why the plaintiffs want to keep their old panel.
Ginsburg, Brown and Kavanaugh are among the most right-wing judges in the country. Brown once compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution.” Ginsburg is a leading “tenther” who once called for America to return to a discredited era when child labor laws were considered unconstitutional. Kavanaugh cut his teeth working for Ken Starr’s Clinton-era witchhunt. When the court randomly assigned these three judges to hear the plaintiffs’ standing appeal, it was like the plaintiffs won the lottery. Their most recent motion is nothing less than an attempt to rig that lottery.
There also does not appear to be much legal support for the plaintiffs’ motion. The motion admits that, although the DC Circuit used to provide for “retention of the same panel that handled an earlier appeal in the same case . . . [,] that system is no longer in place as a formal matter.” Moreover, the motion is only able to find two examples from courts other than the DC Circuit which arguably support their request that their case be heard by the same panel — and one of those examples is nearly two decades old.
Nevertheless, the motion places the Justice Department in an awkward position. Were DOJ to oppose the motion, they would risk antagonizing Ginsburg, Brown and Kavanaugh even further by potentially implying that they are not well-suited to hear this case. Perhaps for that reason, DOJ informed the plaintiffs that they “take[] no position on this motion.”
If nothing else, this motion is a very clever attempt to shape the result of this litigation long before the case is even briefed. Should the motions succeed, opponents of stem cell research will have their dream panel.
Fiorina Can’t Justify Simultaneously Supporting Tax Cuts For The Rich, Opposing Tax Cuts For Small Businesses
Fiorina Can’t Justify Simultaneously Supporting Tax Cuts For The Rich, Opposing Tax Cuts For Small Businesses
California’s Republican senate nominee Carly Fiorina has been outspoken in her support for extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy (because, hey, they pay for themselves!). At the same time, however, she has scoffed at the recent bills before Congress that extend aid to small businesses and school districts, calling the latter “so full of accounting gimmicks it’s disgraceful.”
Last night, during her first debate with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Fiorina was asked “how do you justify immediate help for the wealthiest Americans, but not for average Californians that might be out of a job?” In response, she recited some scary-sounding statistics about unemployment and said that she wants to cut regulations and taxes:
The vast majority of that [2001 and 2003] tax relief went to middle class Americans…To create jobs we need to make sure that, in particular, our small businesses, our family owned businesses, our innovators, and our entrepreneurs are freed from strangling regulation and freed from taxation.
Watch it:
Still at a loss for why Fiorina opposed both the small business lending bill — which also renews small business tax credits — and the state aid bill? That’s because she neglected to mention them. At all. She didn’t even try. She also claimed that the majority of the Bush tax cuts went to the middle class, when nearly two-thirds of them went to the top 20 percent of income earners.
Later in the debate, Fiorina derided the small business lending bill as “TARP junior” (even though she supported the original TARP), but as USA Today reported this week, small businesses are actually waiting for the bill to pass before they start expanding, as they want to take advantage of the loans it would provide. “I’m still waiting for Congress to sign off on the bill,” said Amarjit Kaur, who runs a convenience store and gas station in Wood Village, OR.
The fact of the matter is that preserving the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans would do next to nothing for small businesses. Neither would eliminating the estate tax, which Fiorina touched upon. And when a bill with actual relief for small businesses came before the Congress, Fiorina opposed it, and then failed to justify her opposition when directly asked.
So all the lip service that Fiorina pays to small businesses is nothing more than a shell in which to house her desire to eliminate taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Igor Volsky and Amanda Terkel have more regarding Fiorina’s debate performance.
Pawlenty Likens Federal Gov To A Drug Dealer, Implies Minnesota Towns, Businesses Are Addicts
Pawlenty Likens Federal Gov To A Drug Dealer, Implies Minnesota Towns, Businesses Are Addicts
Outgoing Minnesota governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty appeared on Fox News and Fox Business last night to defend his recent executive order prohibiting the state from applying for grants provided by the new health care law. Pawlenty’s ban could cost the state $1 billion or more in federal funds, but in his national TV tour last night, the governor compared the federal government to a drug hustler pushing its product on willing addicts:
PAWLENTY: Federal government’s acting increasingly like a financial drug dealer, handing out tastes or free samples, trying to get people addicted, further addicted. And we’ve just had it and we’re not taking the bait anymore. We’re not taking the free samples anymore. This is an executive order that says we’re sending them a strong message, but we’re also going to try to make sure the policies are for Minnesota not because some big federal bureaucracy tells us what to do.
Earlier that night on Fox Business’ The Willis Report, Pawlenty implied he didn’t believe that the grants for insurance premium review or reinsurance “make sense.” Watch a compilation:
Of course, the 97 different entities that applied for reform’s reinsurance grants can rightfully take offense to Pawlenty’s drug-dealing analogy and his dismissal of the money as nonsensical. After all, while his refusal to accept early Medicaid funding could be understood as an unwillingness to spend more state funds on the program, his decision to reject grants that require no state contribution is more difficult to comprehend. In fact, Minnesota was one of only five states to reject the federal grants for rate review.
Pawlenty is suggesting that he has a long record of refusing the federal government’s so-called financial drugs, but he recently signaled that he will accept $263 billion from the federal government to help fund the state’s Medicaid program and took additional dollars to fund abstinence-only programs. In fact, as Amanda Terkel reported yesterday, Pawlenty’s own budget instructed state agencies to apply for federal health care grants.
The WonkLine: September 2, 2010
The WonkLine: September 2, 2010
Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 9:30 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.
Economy
“The unemployment rate rose in nearly half of the nation’s 372 largest metro areas in July,” which is actually an improvement over June, when about 75 percent of cities saw jobless rates increase.
Departing Council of Economic Advisers chair Christina Romer pushed Congress yesterday to “‘finish the job of economic recovery‘ by pumping more cash into the economy through additional tax cuts for businesses and middle-class families, as well as fresh investments in the nation’s infrastructure.”
Are banks playing “foreclosure roulette” with delinquent homeowners?
Immigration
The Pew Hispanic Center found that the number of undocumented immigrants crossing into the U.S. fell by nearly 65 percent in recent years.
Arizona voters overwhelmingly favor even the most controversial provisions within Senate Bill 1070, according to a poll released Wednesday Arizona State University’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
In a debate with Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ), her opponent, Terry Goddard (D-AZ), pointed out that far more economic damage is done by the false comments Brewer has made about violent crime and immigration.
National Security
“The Israeli and Palestinian leaders were to open direct peace negotiations Thursday after committing to work to end the conflict that has endured for six decades.”
“The U.S. military’s war is officially over in Iraq, even as the future of the country remains undecided.”
“The U.S. government designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group Wednesday and accused its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, of involvement in a December suicide bombing that killed seven Americans at a forward CIA post in eastern Afghanistan.”
Health Care
“About 3.4 million workers are employed by roughly 1 million small businesses that are likely to take advantage of a new healthcare premium tax credit by 2013, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund.”
“Forbes magazine this week released its first-ever survey of America’s most profitable hospitals, revealing that 24 hospitals with more than 200 beds make 25 cents or more for every dollar of patient revenue they take in.”
The RAND corporation estimates the effects of the Affordable Care Act on workers’ health insurance coverage.
Carly Fiorina Cites Obama’s Position On Same-Sex Marriage To Explain Her Own Opposition
Carly Fiorina Cites Obama’s Position On Same-Sex Marriage To Explain Her Own Opposition
Tonight during her debate against Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Republican gubernatorial candidate Carly Fiorina cited President Obama’s opposition to same-sex marriage to substantiate her belief that “marriage is between a man and a woman” and moderate her support for Proposition 8:
FIORINA: I do believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but also have been consistant and clear that I support civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. The Defense of Marriage Act had broad bipartisan support. And actually, the position I’ve consistently aspoused is consistant with that of our President and a vast majority of senators in the U.S. Senate…The voters were quite clear about their views on this [Proposition 8] and this is now going through a legal process. Whatever your view about gay marriage, I think many of us would conclude that when voters have such a clear decision, for that decision to be overturned by a single judge seems perhaps not appropriate.
Watch it:
Indeed, in light of the growing support for same-sex marriage from prominent conservatives and Republicans, some Democrats and LGBT activists have expressed concerned that Obama’s continued opposition to marriage will become a serious hinderance. As one prominent Democratic consultant told Sam Stein, “I think they have been put in a tough place by these conservatives and they should be,” the consultant said. “There are a whole group of people who are to the left of them on gay rights. And they are Republicans. It should make them feel uncomfortable.”
At Least 20 Companies On U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Board Of Directors Applied For Grants From Health Law
At Least 20 Companies On U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Board Of Directors Applied For Grants From Health Law
Yesterday, I noted that Koch Industries — the oil, chemicals, and manufacturing conglomerate that has also spent millions of dollars opposing health care reform — applied for federal dollars to bolster its early retiree program. Today, Julian Pecquet of Healthwatch lists other corporations who are accepting the law’s appropriations while funding efforts to repeal it. Pecquet conducted “a state-by-state review” of approved applicants and found that “more than a dozen members of the board of directors of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also been accepted into the program.” They include:
– Pfizer, PepsiCo, New York Life Insurance Company, Eastman Kodak and IBM of New York;
– Rolls-Royce North America, the Norfolk Southern Corporation and the Altria Group of Virginia;
– UPS and Southern Company of Georgia;
– John Deere and Navistar of Illinois;
– AT&T and the Fluor Corporation of Texas;
– U.S. Airways of Arizona;
– Entergy Services Inc. of Louisiana;
– The Dow Chemical Company of Michigan;
– Anheuser-Busch of Missouri;
– FedEx Express of Tennessee;
– CUNA Mutual Group of Wisconsin;
– Pepco Holdings Co. of Washington, D.C.
As Pecquet points out, “being members of the Chamber’s board of directors doesn’t mean the companies agree with all of its stances” (Pfizer supports the law), but it’s probably worth reiterating just how hard the Chamber has worked to scurry reform. “Over the past year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has spent nearly $3 million a week in opposition to President Obama’s major agenda items,” the Washington Post reported last month and poured close to $50 million into anti-reform television ads alone. Now, it plans to spend some $75 million trying to unseat Democrats who voted for the health care law all the while its board members profit from it.
Daniels Lectures States That Aren’t ‘In The Black,’ Fails To Mention He’s In The Black Due To Stimulus
Daniels Lectures States That Aren’t ‘In The Black,’ Fails To Mention He’s In The Black Due To Stimulus
Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R) is having a bit of an on-again, off-again relationship with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus) and the more recent attempt by Congress to aid states by providing them with $26 billion for Medicaid and education. To review, Daniels requested — then publicly opposed — the additional aid package, but ultimately decided to accept his state’s share. Yesterday, he appeared on Fox Business to try and straighten out those who might see hypocrisy in that stance, explaining that he simply doesn’t want to subsidize irresponsible states:
They poured almost all this money into government in various forms, on the theory that some demand would fall out the bottom and maybe somebody’d go to the Walmart and they’d hire a new greeter. Complete failure, as we can all see. I very consistently said that more spending stimulus was not going to be a good idea, especially done that way. The question is, does the check arrive, do we cash it? Sure. This stimulus thing they just did amounts to states that have been responsible, as ours has, are in the black, subsidizing those that have been less careful with their spending. We send the check back, maybe there’d be some emotional satisfaction for a day, but it only makes that subsidy worse.
Watch it:
But Daniels failed to mention that his state’s budget is only in such good shape because of the original stimulus. In fact, his budget includes more than one billion in Recovery Act funds.
“He’s balancing the budget with stimulus money, and then blaming folks giving him the money for doing the stimulus, and then taking credit for balancing the budget and saving the economy in Indiana,” said state Rep. Russ Stilwell (D). “I want to make sure that the people of Indiana realize that this budget survives thanks to support from the federal stimulus package that has often been attacked by the governor,” added state House Speaker Patrick Bauer (D).
Daniels also saw fit to lecture other states about accepting what he calls subsidies, even though Indiana receives $1.05 in federal funding for every dollar it pays in taxes. Many other states receive far less than they pay into the system, including New Jersey, which receives 61 cents for every dollar, or Daniels’ neighbor Illinois, which receives 75 cents.
Of course, Daniels is far from the only GOP governor and conservative movement darling to tout his budget mastery while neglecting to mention the extent to which it depends on the stimulus. Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) said last month that “I hope Richmond would be a model for Washington,” even though his budget relies on $2.5 billion in stimulus money.
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