Stupid People

This image from the BBC article Why Do People Often Vote Against Their Own Interests

Here's a few key paragraphs from the article:

But it is striking that the people who most dislike the whole idea of healthcare reform - the ones who think it is socialist, godless, a step on the road to a police state - are often the ones it seems designed to help.

In Texas, where barely two-thirds of the population have full health insurance and over a fifth of all children have no cover at all, opposition to the legislation is currently running at 87%.

It is a befuddling phenomenon to me. The basic thesis is that the politician with the best story wins. Check out this anecdote:

He uses the following exchange from the first presidential debate between Al Gore and George Bush in 2000 to illustrate the perils of trying to explain to voters what will make them better off:

Gore: "Under the governor's plan, if you kept the same fee for service that you have now under Medicare, your premiums would go up by between 18% and 47%, and that is the study of the Congressional plan that he's modeled his proposal on by the Medicare actuaries."

Bush: "Look, this is a man who has great numbers. He talks about numbers."I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the internet, but he invented the calculator. It's fuzzy math. It's trying to scare people in the voting booth."

Mr Gore was talking sense and Mr Bush nonsense - but Mr Bush won the debate. With statistics, the voters just hear a patronising policy wonk, and switch off.

For Mr Westen, stories always trump statistics, which means the politician with the best stories is going to win: "One of the fallacies that politicians often have on the Left is that things are obvious, when they are not obvious.

No matter how you slice it; facts come up short and stories, no matter how flawed, are king.

Just Make It Simple

Last night Jon Stewart interviewed Doris Kearns Goodwin, noted presidential historian. In his first question about the SOTU he asked what she thought and she said I thought his words were good but will they lead to action. She gave the example of LBJ in '65 talked about Medicare, Education, and Black voting rights and he got them all in six months time. Later in the interview Jon Stewart said Reagan was able to articulate a simple vision... with health care why can't they say here's the four things that are broken: pre-existing conditions, drug prices, expand medicare to 55, and revamp tort reform. Let's fix that. Wow that makes sense and the Republicans know it. Already the Repubs are starting to say we want to take simple steps instead of 1000 page bills. I know that changing legislation is messy and it can't be broken down into four bullet points but the message and vision could be simplified.

Why does Jon Stewart get this and the rest of the media are fumbling around with their heads up their asses?

State of the Union

Great speech and a call to action. It was the Obama I voted for and the Obama I wanted to lead this country. I hope the Democrats in the chamber were listening. Obama was elected by a 6 point margin, a very good margin and mandate, and the Democrats were swept to healthy majorities is both houses. Here's the part of the speech that struck me:

Unfortunately, too many of our citizens have lost faith that our biggest institutions—our corporations, our media, and, yes, our government—still reflect these same values. Each of these institutions are full of honorable men and women doing important work that helps our country prosper. But each time a CEO rewards himself for failure, or a banker puts the rest of us at risk for his own selfish gain, people's doubts grow. Each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith. The more that TV pundits reduce serious debates to silly arguments, big issues into sound bites, our citizens turn away.

No wonder there's so much cynicism out there. No wonder there's so much disappointment.

I campaigned on the promise of change—change we can believe in, the slogan went. And right now, I know there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change—or that I can deliver it.

But remember this—I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I could do it alone. Democracy in a nation of 300 million people can be noisy and messy and complicated. And when you try to do big things and make big changes, it stirs passions and controversy. That's just how it is.

Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what's necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what's best for the next generation.

This is a call to action if I've ever heard one. This is a time when democrats in both houses are calling retreat, a time when democrats are sacrificing everything they believe in the sake of reelection. A time when we as constituents need to call into question what our elected leaders believe in and a time to actually call and write our elected leaders. We need to tell them what we want and to get involved in the process or this next decade will be another lost decade.

Obama's Waterloo

Over the Summer, when Jim DeMint claimed that by blocking health care reform it would be Obama's Waterloo he was really saying that the Republicans would not support it only because it was Obama's agenda. Even if there were ideas the Republicans liked they would unite against it, use their media machine to squash it, and stomp all over the bloody remains of it.
Yesterday I heard two stories on NPR, the last Bastien of true journalism. One highlighted the fact that the current Health Care bill passed in both houses is not that dissimilar than the health bill the Republicans crafted to counter the Clinton bill in the '90s. And, I heard Lamar Alexander (R-TN) state to Robert Siegel that the Republicans favor a step by step approach and not the comprehensive approach favored by the Democrats

SIEGEL: But realistically, are we at a moment when if Republicans could see three of their six steps combined with three things that Democrats like and that you might not like that much, are we at a time when that actually can make sausage in the legislature? Or is this a time when nothing is going to happen?

Sen. ALEXANDER: Well, we could, but wouldn't it be better to say can't we find three things we all agree on? I would think allowing insurance to be sold across state lines to increase competition, reduce prices might be one of them. Usually, we agree on...

SIEGEL: But some people would say in that case, the risk you run is that the least regulatory state, the elusive state might put out insurance policies, might regulate them and there would be a race to the bottom and everybody would buy policies from state X where they don't do much in the way of regulating insurance.

Sen. ALEXANDER: Well, that's true, but that's a problem you would have to address in the legislation, but permitting more competition across state lines might be the better result. I think on any of these proposals, the difference between Democrats and Republicans isn't just left versus right. It's step-by-step versus comprehensive in our goals.

Siegel didn't let him off the hook he said the Republican energy plan calling for 100 nuclear plants, offshore drilling, and making half of the cars electric sounds like a huge program. Alexander said "Well, it's four steps, though. Each of those four steps is not a big surprise. It's these 2,700 page bills that are big surprise."

So a bill, just because it's 2700 pages, is a big surprise and the status quo is better? Sounds to me like they want to humble Obama even if it hurts Americans. They only want bills in simple 4 step process and will ignore the very ideas they promoted 17 years ago just because they are coming from the other side of the aisle.

Interesting

This story is from NPR morning edition.
I like the part about how

"House- and Senate-passed bills have far more in common with the bill put forward by Republicans in 1993 than with the competing plan pressed by then-President Clinton and congressional Democrats."

and

"...to claim that this bill is somehow a left-wing government takeover is rhetoric of a rather extreme sort, no question about it."

Very interesting...

Obama Polarizing

Over the past year Obama has averaged 88% approval among Democrats and 23% approval among Republicans. That's a 65 point gap and the largest in modern history according to Gallup. I wonder where some of this gap comes from. I mean I'm fairly disappointed that Obama is not more progressive and in some ways he's more like Bush than Clinton. I think I found some answers; at least answers that uneducated ideologues would believe. Here are a few from us4palin.com

1. Obama has wasted an entire year pushing an unconstitutional government take over of health care, and globe trotting… chasing Olympic glory, Nobel Peace Prizes, all the while bowing to the world’s leaders and apologizing for America’s very existence, he is neglecting his job..[sic] note that they use only two periods for an ellipsis a big typographic no no...
2. the most corrupt President in our nation’s history was trying to enrich his cronies, he was totally and completely ignoring his real job.
3. The biggest neglect though has been energy. Obama and his band of communists have no coherent energy policy whatsoever. Oh, they talk about mythical green jobs, but that’s all they are a myth. Pie in the sky.

Some people actually believe this crap. The one I find particularly amusing is the claim that Obama is the most corrupt President in our nation's history. It reminds me of kids on a play grounds calling each other names and the only comeback they can think of is "I know you are but what am I." I think between the private contractors, Blackwater, Cheney, tapped phone lines, closed door energy meetings and 600,000 Iraqi dead that there have been other, more corrupt, administrations.

The Big Lie

It will be interesting to see if the Republicans can work with the now humbled Democrats. A few months ago the Republicans, claiming that the Dems were "not listening" and "blocking their attempts to work across the aisle," had a few ideas. What did they propose? Here's the Republican Health Care Plan:

John Boehner, "a number of steps could be taken
1. letting people buy health insurance across state lines,
2. allowing people and organizations to pool together to buy insurance for lower prices
3. reining in malpractice lawsuits."

Really? What would letting people buy insurance across state lines really accomplish? Selling health insurance across state lines will allow insurers to drop mandated benefits. Additionally companies will race to relocate to whatever state has the weakest consumer protection and insurance laws. it would also guarantee that big insurers would be the only ones left standing.

So what about tort reform? Right now it accounts for about 2% or less of health care costs... If only the growth in health care costs were limited to 2%...

Pooling together? One change that would really affect cost is pooling together. Right now hospitals can negotiate charges and because there is competition hospitals can pick and choose which insurance to accept and for what fee. Larger insurance companies with more members have more leverage. If an insurer has a lock on a community then they can pretty much dictate fee schedules to the hospital. If you take pooling together to it's natural extension it sounds a lot like single payer health care.


so the republican's don't have answers... but that's no surprise.

How Much is 69 Trillion dollars

69 Trillion dollars was the world GDP in 2008. Actually that figure is the Purchasing Parity Power, PPP. PPP is confusing but it is based on the premise that if you buy a widget in the US for $10 and that same widget in the EU is 8€. So $1 equals .80€ or 1€ equals $1.25. This exchange rate would be used as the relative value for other items and would somewhat equalize the fluctuations in the volatile currency market.

Now bear with me, Our national debt currently is $12 trillion and our GDP is just over $14 trillion. That means our debt is 86% of our economic output. Looked at another way our GDP is about 20% of the total economic output of the world and so is our debt. The EU, in total, just edges out the US in GDP. That being said, the US GDP is almost twice that of the next largest economy, China. So the US and EU account for about 41% of total economic output and that's why when our banks fucked up it rocked the world.

So how much is a trillion? A million seconds is 12 days. A billion seconds is 32 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,709 years or when Woolly Mammoths were still trekking across North America.

Just some interesting fun facts to ponder. For more interesting facts check out. CIA.GOV

Goldman Under Investigation

So that are a few things that really stink about the financial meltdown. I don't claim to understand all of the intricacies of the market or for that matter even some of them (I think they are intentionally confusing). Two of the financial tools that I find interesting are short selling and hedging. Right now Goldman is under investigation for backing risky sub-prime loans and simultaneously betting against them. According to McClatchy Newspapers,

"Goldman was the only major Wall Street firm to safely exit the subprime mortgage market. however, that Goldman sold off more than $40 billion in securities backed by over 200,000 risky home loans in 2006 and 2007 without telling investors of its secret bets on a sharp housing downturn, prompting some experts to question whether it had crossed legal lines."

Now for some definitions
Short Selling: selling a financial instrument without actually owning it. The purpose is to drive down the price. It is a way to manipulate the market and is illegal under SEC rules. Some people claim it's a benign practice but used over and over to artificially drive the price of a financial instrument down can be destructive. Again this is the process of selling something YOU DON'T ACTUALLY POSSESS. Kind of fuct.

Hedging: Off setting your exposure in one market but taking an opposite position in another market. This is what Goldman is accused of doing. By helping to create and promote the credit default swaps that became the toxic assets key to the meltdown and the betting that those very securities would lose value they hedged and won big time. Additionally, they received back 100¢ on every dollar they invested in other toxic assets, because of the AIG bailout.

Now they whole demonic financial system is trying to demonize Obama as anti-capitalist, anti-market, and anti-investment. They (anyone who doesn't share my views) sucker punched Obama on healthcare will they do in again on finance?

Too Big To Fail

Obama wants to ride the populist wave of anger against the big banks and with good reason. Here's a question: Why did Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup, get to keep his job? According to the AP, Pandit claimed that Citigroup was profitable up through February and has agreed to take a $1 a year salary until Citi is profitable again. To date we have bailed out Citi to the tune of $45 billion. The government forced them to cancel their order for a $50 million corporate jet BUT they spent $400 million for the naming rights of Met's stadium. Timothy Geithner let Pandit keep his job while offing the board, a move that is usually reserved for shareholders or the mafia.

The first time this came up we let the losers dictate the terms of the bailout. Scum of the earth like Limbaugh and the entire Fox network were getting the ignorant masses worked up into a Santorum (Santorum "that frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." thanks to Dan Savage) by tossing around terms like NATIONALIZATION and SOCIALISM. Why do these guys get any play? Haven't they been entirely discredited? Look at Sweden's bailout. By taking over the banks Sweden not only solved their banking crisis (one that is remarkably similar to ours) but the final cost was less than 2% of GDP. Our crisis approached 60% of GDP and could have soared even higher. I still think Geithner is a stooge for Wall Street.

I don't know if Obama will win this one, stocks took a tumble around the world and if 401k's start shrinking again populist anger will not hold. The best thing to do is start getting an education about money. If you check this out a few times a week it will all start to make sense (unfortunately) site: Planet Money and listen to the podcast.

The Democrats are Wimpy

In a Research 2000 poll Democrats take a beating for:
1. Not being tougher on the Republicans
2. Not doing enough for the economy
3. Not reigning in Wall Street
4. Being too cozy with lobbyists
5. Not being more progressive in the Senate version of the Health Care bill

Seems like a pretty clear indication that the Dems are just pussies. The sad thing is that I think most Americans want progressive policies and are disappointed in the Democrats ability to deliver.

Healthcare Reform now

More to come later