The worst reporter in America

Cokie Roberts, ladies and gentlemen. Cokie Roberts.

This morning, I was treated to yet another of Ms. Roberts so-bad-its-barely-even-wrong little postcards from pre-1992 Democratic lobbyist land. She was criticizing the MoveOn for 'pushing' Democratic Senators on health care and energy issues 'without realizing that these Senators would be up for reelection, and there's only so far they can go without getting in trouble back home.' (Not an exact quote. Maybe later I'll find the real quote and compare it to my recollection.)

There are several conventions required in order for that bit of garbage to make sense:

1. People from states other than NY, CA, and MD are not smart enough to want things like affordable healthcare and clean energy
2. People from states such as NY, CA, and MD who join groups such as MoveOn are too stupid to act in their own best interests
3. People from Washington DC are the only ones smart enough to scurry around in oh-so-intriguing back rooms and put together the deals that keep this Republic chugging along down the track
3.a. Sometimes, reporters with really good access to sources (as opposed to reporters who really read things, call people, and write down the product of reading and calling) can shed a little light on how that happens

Here's a piece by Jack Shafer criticizing her, too: http://www.slate.com/id/2216890/

My friends, harking back to a quote I hear placed in the mouth of Thomas Jefferson, I would almost rather have a government without newspapers, than newspapers with reporters like Cokie Roberts.

MJ

I've have mixed feelings about the death of Michael Jackson. I never really listened to any of his music until college, where I developed a serious appreciation for '80s hits that I'd bypassed while spending the first 10 years of my life (I was born in '79) listening to Crystal Gale and the Eagles.

As a child during MJ's peak, I remember him largely as a figure of unvarnished terror. I must've been maybe 3 or 4 when I first saw the Thriller video playing on a display TV during Halloween season while shopping for a costume at Jamesway, and I remember having nightmares about it for weeks.

Around the same time, my parents (who were unaware of my fear of werewolf-Michael), as part of their sporadic attempt to keep my musical tastes from totally alienating me from my peers (see their 1991 purchase of New Kids concert tickets), installed in my bedroom a seriously creepy poster of MJ and ET., which engendered a new round of nightmares until being taken down.

For the following 15 years, I had a hazy idea of Michael Jackson as a weirdo celebrity, with any reference to his actual body of work made hazy by my better familiarity with Weird Al's "Eat it" and "Fat". In college I drunkenly sang along to MJ's hits from my spot at the beirut table, although usually slipping "Ham on, ham on, ham on whole wheat... all right" into Beat it.

I watched Michael's descent into MacCauley Culkin-befriending, baby-dangling weirditude with the eye of the prescient- hadn't I known from the age of 3 that this guy was scary? - but with a sense of regret at the wasted talent.

This morning, after hearing yesterday's news, I felt a weird urge to memorialize MJ by facing down my childhood fears, and I became the 136,457,280th person to watch Thriller on Youtube.

Waiting Room

One of the things I'm getting really sick of hearing from anti-reform folks during the health care debate is that, under any kind of reform, health care in the US would go from being immediately available to a six month wait:

Thus, the public option will crowd out other insurers and achieve monopoly pricing power. Once monopoly pricing power is achieved, then you will see a decline in both quality and supply of health services. The key is the lack of supply. At the monopoly price, the number of people willing to provide heath services will be suboptimal. This is why you have to wait six months for a CAT scan in England. Effectively, supply is rationed.

I'm not sure what kind of healthcare utopia conservatives have been living in. As a big-firm lawyer in NYC, I have (comparatively) pretty fantastic health insurance. However, I can't go see my dentist because I inadvertantly signed up for the DPO instead of the PPO plan- and can't switch until the enrollment period in November; it's a month wait to see my gastroenterologist, and about the same to see my dermatologist. My wife, who (like I did while in law school) is using the low-ranked Beech Street insurance, has had to wait months to see doctors, and several times has had to not go to a recommended doctor because of the wait. We're in New York City, which has one of the highest concentrations of doctors (and specialists) in the US- and our situation doesn't appear to be abnormal.

Forgive me for not getting too worked up when the GOP threatens that healthcare reform will result in long waits to see my doctor.

Adultery still a crime in SC

One interesting fact gleaned from blogs reporting on the Sanford story- both extramarital and non-marital/premarital sex are still violations of the South Carolina penal code- with penalties of 6-12 months in prison or a $500 fine:

SECTION 16-15-60. Adultery or fornication.
Any man or woman who shall be guilty of the crime of adultery or fornication shall be liable to indictment and, on conviction, shall be severally punished by a fine of not less than one hundred dollars nor more than five hundred dollars or imprisonment for not less than six months nor more than one year or by both fine and imprisonment, at the discretion of the court.

SECTION 16-15-70. "Adultery" defined.
"Adultery" is the living together and carnal intercourse with each other or habitual carnal intercourse with each other without living together of a man and woman when either is lawfully married to some other person.

SECTION 16-15-80. "Fornication" defined.
"Fornication" is the living together and carnal intercourse with each other or habitual carnal intercourse with each other without living together of a man and woman, both being unmarried.

Sanford's conduct would get him fired from any other job

CNN is reporting that Governor Sanford has admitted being unfaithful to his wife during his southern hemisphere sojourn. I don't really care what he was up to in Argentina- the point that the GOP is awfully hypocritical about the "sanctity of marriage" is a well-beaten deceased horse at this point- but I will say this: Almost any American who took a week-long, unscheduled, non-emergency vacation without telling his employer and without arranging for somebody to cover his responsibilities in his absence would be fired.

I shall not be surprised if we find out that Sanford thinks himself more indispensible than the average American.






Back after a long break wherein I got married. Thanks to all who are still checking in.

Pop quiz: who is most likely to shill for banks?

I'm frustrated by the apparent failure of bankruptcy reform efforts in congress. The New York Times just published an interesting article on where this ship ran aground. A couple of excerpts, briefly:

[...] the banks defeated the bankruptcy change — the industry picturesquely calls it the “cramdown” provision — by claiming that it would push up interest rates and slow the housing market’s recovery, even though academic studies have countered such claims.

The industry also steadfastly refused offers to negotiate over a weaker version. And it poured millions of dollars into lobbying: four of the industry’s top trade groups spent nearly as much on lobbying in the first three months of this year as they did in all of 2001.

[...] an industry strategy of dividing the Democrats had the most success. One target was Senator Mary Landrieu, the moderate Democrat from Louisiana.

I'm really disappointed in that one, because I gave up a month of my own time to go to Louisiana to volunteer in Sen. Landrieu's Dec. '02 runoff. (My supervisor was Mitch Stewart, who was the Iowa caucus director of Obama, and now sends most of you weekly emails as the national head of Organizing for America). Back to article:

Throughout it all, the banks took advantage of the Obama administration’s seeming ambivalence. Despite its occasional populist rhetoric, the White House was conspicuously absent from weeks of pivotal negotiations this spring. “This would have been a much different deal if Obama had pressed it,” said Camden R. Fine, head of the Independent Community Bankers of America and one of the chief lobbyists opposing the bankruptcy change. “The fact that Obama effectively sat it out helped us a great deal.”

That one I'm more OK with - it's not like the White House was off twiddling it's thumbs. The article goes on:

The industry’s worst fears began to come true in early January when Senator Charles E. Schumer announced that he had persuaded Citigroup to endorse the idea. Mr. Schumer had held discussions with Vikram S. Pandit, Citigroup’s chief executive, and Lewis B. Kaden, a vice chairman. Mr. Schumer then spoke to other top executives, including Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, hoping to peel more big banks away from the opposition.

The article goes on to explain that the reform bill's strongest proponents were Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chuck Schumer of New York, while Tom Carper of Delaware and Tim Johnson of South Dakota opposed the bill.

I can go on at length some other time about the economic and legal reasons why the consumer bankruptcy laws need changing, but let me just ask you a question from the political perspective: what does it mean when the senators from New York and Illinois want to get rid of special interest bank legislation, but the senators from those financial hubs of South Dakota, Delaware, and Louisiana work to keep it?