Now we're talking --- James Galbraith goes against the tide

In my mind I have been questioning the wisdom of raising the retirement age for receiving full Social Security benefits, which seems to be the Beltway CW. Why force people who often won't live a long time to continue working, or in many cases, fruitlessly looking for work, until age 67, 68 or more? Here's an excerpt from Now we're talking --- James Galbraith goes against the tide.

The most dangerous conventional wisdom in the world today is the idea that with an older population, people must work longer and retire with less....

Older people who would like to retire and would do so if they could afford it should get some help. The right step is to reduce, not increase, the full-benefits retirement age. As a rough cut, why not enact a three-year window during which the age for receiving full Social Security benefits would drop to 62 -- providing a voluntary, one-time, grab-it-now bonus for leaving work? Let them go home! With a secure pension and medical care, they will be happier. Young people who need work will be happier. And there will also be more jobs. With pension security, older people will consume services until the end of their lives. They will become, each and every one, an employer.

Obama could take a history lesson from FDR's 1936 re-election

H.W. Brands, the author of "Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt" has a great opinion piece published today that says what I feel about our president:

Many of Obama's supporters wish he would emulate Roosevelt's combativeness. They have lamented his efforts at bipartisanship, which yielded him little, they say, and cost him the political momentum of 2008. But Obama has generally ignored such counsel. Some of this difference owes to diverging temperaments and personal styles; where Roosevelt relished getting angry in public, Obama apparently does not.

Read the whole thing.

Faux News asks 7 Times, but Fiorina Fails To Give One Solution To Cut Spending

Via ThinkProgress:

Today on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace gave Fiorina a chance to lay out her actual plan. Touting her “tough, bottom-line business executive” motto, Wallace pointed out that Fiorina also wants “to extend all, all the Bush tax cuts which would add $4 trillion dollars to the deficit…where are you going to find $4 trillion dollars to cut?” But when Fiorina retreated to recycled response of government waste and an earmarks ban, a frustrated Wallace begged Fiorina seven times to “name one single entitlement expenditure you’re willing to cut” because “that’s where the money is.” Fiorina’s only response? “You’re asking a typical political question”.

Video here.

Amnesty International USA in SF for 50th Anniversary Conference

You can register online for the 50th Anniversary Annual Conference of Amnesty International USA. It will be held in San Francisco on March 18-20, 2011. If you register by January 15, 2011, the regular rate is $90 member, $100 non-member.

March 18 - 20, 2011
The Fairmont Hotel
950 Mason Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

The conference promises amazing speakers, prominent human rights leaders, and special celebrity guests, as well as panel discussions of AIUSA's core human rights campaigns and new strategies for mobilizing the human rights movement on both local and national levels. It's an opportunity to gain skills in human rights advocacy, volunteering and community organizing.

Quote of the Week

It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.

--Robert F. Kennedy

Can You Decipher This License Plate?

Wicked : Wonderful & Something Bad

I went to see the musical, "Wicked," in San Francisco last week. Of course, I latched on to the socio-political themes in the play. Two quotes, both from the character of the Wizard, stuck in my head.

In the show, the Wizard is more manipulative, pretending to be doing things for the good of Oz and to be subjugating the animals for the greater good, but it becomes clear through the course of the evening that he is doing these things only to remain in power, and that his scapegoating of the animals (pun intended) is because

"one sure way to bring people together is to give them a really good enemy."

And from the song, Wonderful, the Wizard sings:

Where I'm from, we believe all sorts of
things that aren't true. We call it - "history."
A man's called a traitor - or liberator.
A rich man's a thief - or philanthropist.
Is one a crusader - or ruthless invader?
It's all in which label
Is able to persist.
There are precious few at ease
With moral ambiguities,
So we act as though they don't exist.

This rings true, for who does not know that "History is written by the victors, not the vanquished," and "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter"?

Pete Stark: "Medical Unicorns"

Why are co-ops a non-starter in the health care reform debate? Because they won't work. On Thursday Pete Stark blasted them:

there is no real example of either the regulation [of health co-ops], or how you would establish them, or where they would get enough people to have a purchasing base. So you might as well talk about unicorns.

From a paper released Thursday,

a public health insurance option could also lead to a more transparent market. As long as insurers conceal provider prices, price competition in provider markets is unlikely. As long as coverage protocols and utilization data are concealed, quality competition among plans is unlikely. The coverage protocols and provider payment rates of the public option, on the other hand, would be open to the public. And data on the utilization of health care services under the public plan would be available for expert analysis and reporting, just as Medicare data are now.

Finally, the public option is necessary as a backstop against risk selection. It takes more than simply prohibiting risk selection to stop it. Even with risk adjustment and strong non-discrimination rules, private insurers are likely to find a way to dodge people whose costs are expected to be high in order to protect profitability. The job of the public option, on the other hand, is to accept, not to avoid, risks and to be accountable to the public, not shareholders.

What mcjoan said:

That's what all the fuss is about, why this has become the key element of a proposal for so many people. We want the damned reform to actually work. Co-ops won't make it work, they just aren't going to be robust enough to do the job. Insurance reform is really good, and we very much need that, too, but it isn't going to be enough either. For one thing, does anybody seriously believe that our government could set up a strict regulatory scheme that insurance companies would actually follow? That'd be a first.

Barack Obama's Farewell To Ted Kennedy

From CBS here is the video from Senator Kennedy's funeral today and a truly magnificent farewell from the President.

Untold stories: thousands of American expats are medically exiled health care refugees

Moving testimonial about a little-known aspect of our current health-care system:

Cartoon Explains the Public Plan in under 5 Minutes

Great cartoon does an awesome job of explaining the proposed new federal health insurance plan:

There And Back Again: An Inaugural Adventure

An Oklahoma meteorology student, Greg Blumberg, had almost the exact same experience at Barack Obama's inauguration that my daughter and I had, including

We got stopped here. This was the end of our trip.

Go take a look. The photos at the site explain better than I could ever do in words what horrendous crowd management conditions existed that day.

What Health Care Overhaul Means For You

In this NPR article, What Health Care Overhaul Means For You, there is a good interactive visualization of what the healthcare public option proposal would mean for Americans with different levels and types of coverage.  One of the commenters there wrote:

It has been my experience that people who have a disdain for helping others have never really had the experience of bad luck or disaster. Though some people who experience difficulties become hardened or bitter against others, most don't. Once these people find themselves in a situation really beyond their control with their heads underwater and struggling to stay afloat, then they start to get the rest of us who have experienced some of the rougher waters of life and who have learned that many times those who suffer don't "deserve it". That’s why I believe in safety nets. …

I don't understand this reluctance of Americans to spend American money on our own people. People had no problem giving Bush/Cheney a trillion dollars for their "war" for a country on the other side of the planet, why aren't you willing to spend our money making sure our own are cared for? All Americans deserve universal health coverage. Every other country that provides health care to all (including people who get sick when visiting their country) provides this care and it costs them a LOT LESS than what Americans are paying right now - and we aren't getting universal care!

I could not agree more.