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Monday, September 30, 2013

The Affordable Care Act and the 1964 Civil Rights Act

At The Washington Examiner, Michael Barone contrasts the passage of the Affordable Care Act with enactment of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  The former passed on a party-line vote, contained drafting errors that will plague implementation, and never won public approval.  The latter was different:
Congress had passed, after much deliberation, civil rights laws of narrower scope and lesser effect in 1957 and 1960. It proceeded with careful deliberation to pass a stronger bill this time.
The House Judiciary Committee reported a bill in November, just before Kennedy’s assassination. The chairman of the Rules Committee, Howard Smith of Virginia, said he would not allow it to be considered.
Supporters sought the signatures of a majority of House members needed to bring the bill to the floor. They got them after members heard from their constituents over the winter break. The bill went to the floor in February and passed with bipartisan support, 290-130.
In the Senate, Southerners launched a filibuster that lasted 57 working days. It then required 67 votes to cut off debate. But in June, 71 senators voted for cloture and the bill passed 73-27.
Full compliance with the public accommodations section was not immediate. In Georgia, Lester Maddox closed his restaurant rather than serve blacks and was elected governor, narrowly, in 1966.
But after Congress acted in such deliberate fashion, and the Supreme Court upheld the law, white Southerners largely acquiesced. Traditional Southern courtesy replaced mob violence. Minds and hearts had been changed.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Taxes and Expatriation

A number of posts have discussed expatriation, the process of losing or giving up citizenship.

At the BBC, Thomas Geoghegan reports that 1,131 people renounced US citizenship in the second quarter of 2013, compared with 189 during the same period in 2012. The apparent reason is the Foreign Accounts Tax Compliance Act, a new law that will require financial institutions across the world to report the assets and incomes of all US citizens with more than $50,000 on their books.
Suddenly, some expats are waking up in a cold sweat. They have always had to file tax returns and disclose foreign accounts on a form called the FBAR, although in practice many didn't. But now Fatca means they have to be more rigorous or face huge fines, in the knowledge that the US authorities could know a lot more than they have in the past. 
Many would say the IRS is only trying to get what it is owed, but critics say that in trying to track down the wealthy tax-dodgers, ordinary people are being dragged into an expensive and time-consuming form-filling nightmare. And for some, it's become too much. 
Bridget, who asked the BBC not to use her real name, gave up her US citizenship in 2011, 32 years after leaving for a new life in Scandinavia. 
"This has nothing to do with avoiding taxes. I was never in danger of having to pay taxes in the US since I pay more here. The issue for me was that it was becoming harder and harder to follow the tax code and comply. It was difficult already but when I knew Fatca was coming, I thought, 'Do I want to go through with it anymore?'"

Saturday, September 28, 2013

Trusting the People

Since 2009, trust has declined. In fact, the American people increasingly distrust themselves. Gallup reports:
Americans' trust in "the American people" to make judgments about political issues facing the country has declined each year since 2009 and, at 61%, is down nearly 20 percentage points from its recent peak in 2005. Still, that exceeds the 46% of Americans who trust the "men and women … who either hold or are running for public office," which is one point above the historical low from 2011.

The results are based on Gallup's annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. The same poll found that Americans' trust in the federal government to handle domestic and international problems, their trust in the news media, and their trust in the three branches of the federal government, and in state and local governments are all at or near historical lows.
Americans' trust in political officeholders and candidates has also generally trended downward in recent years, apart from a spike in September 2008, during the fall presidential campaign. That year, Americans viewed the major-party candidates -- Barack Obama and John McCain -- more positively than any other recent pair of presidential candidates. 
The public's declining trust in the American people to make judgments about political issues could be part of a more general process of declining trust in most governing institutions. It may also be an outgrowth of increasing polarization in the United States on key issues. Americans may trust "the people" less when they are more conscious that segments of the population hold views radically different from their own.





Friday, September 27, 2013

Climate Change, Polarization, and American Distinctiveness

At least half the public in 24 of the 39 countries say climate change is a major threat to their nation. People in Greece (87%), South Korea (85%), Brazil (76%), Lebanon (74%) and Japan (72%) express the highest levels of concern.
However, China and the U.S., the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters, are among the least worried about climate change. About four-in-ten Americans (40%) and Chinese (39%) say it is a major threat to their countries. Only those in the Czech Republic, Jordan, Israel, Egypt and Pakistan are less concerned than the Chinese and Americans.
There is a sharp partisan divide on this issue among Americans, with Democrats (55%) more than twice as likely as Republicans (22%) to view climate change as a major threat.
Another Pew Research survey in March also found large partisan divisions on views toward global warming. While 87% of Democrats believe there is solid evidence of global warming, just 44% of Republicans agree. Similarly, Republicans express more doubt about humans’ role in climate change; 19% say global warming is a result of human activity compared with 57% of Democrats.

Thursday, September 26, 2013

Jobless Recovery

Americans are losing faith in the nation’s economic recovery even as forecasters expect growth to accelerate, according to a Bloomberg National Poll.
Fewer people anticipate improvement in the economy’s strength over the next year than in the last survey in June, with 27 percent saying the expansion will be more robust, down from 39 percent who expected improvement three months earlier.
Forty-four percent of poll respondents say they expect the economy, which has expanded for nine consecutive quarters, to remain about the same, while 28 percent see it weakening.
We’re still in a recession; I don’t know why they say it’s over,” says Chris Sams, 28, a disabled Navy veteran from Daingerfield, Texas. “It may be over in Washington, D.C., where the per capita income is higher than anywhere else, but down here the minimum wage is the highest wage.”
The results of the Sept. 20-23 poll reflect public impatience with an economy that has grown at an average rate of 2.1 percent since the recession’s June 2009 end, a full percentage point below the 50-year average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Growth will slip to 1.60 percent this year, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists, before rebounding to 2.65 percent growth next year.
There are a lot of ways to gauge how bad the Great Recession was and how slack the recovery has been, from the stagnation of household incomes to the increase in young adults living with their parents. But perhaps no metric hits more people harder than jobs — specifically, how many were lost and how slowly they are coming back.
In fact, not only were more jobs wiped out in the Great Recession than any other post-World War II downturn — 8.7 million, or 6.3% of the pre-recession peak payroll — but it’s taking longer to regain them than it did in the previous two post-recession recoveries combined.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Gingrich on Shutdowns and Presidential Power

From Newt Gingrich, Lessons Learned the Hard Way (HarperCollins, 1998), pp. 10, 41:
We had not only failed to take into account the ability of the Senate to delay us and obstruct us, but we had much too cavalierly underrated the power of the President, even a President who had lost his legislative majority and was in a certain amount of trouble for other reasons. I am speaking of the power of the veto. Even if you pass something through both the House and the Senate, there is that presidential pen. How could we have forgotten that? 
 ...
The idea of a grand showdown on spending had long been a staple of conservative analysis. Even before Reagan's inaugural, he had been approached by one prominent conservative who urged him to force a showdown over the debt ceiling and simply refuse to sign on to one until the Democratic Congress reined in its spending plans. Reagan rejected this idea with a comment I wish I had understood better at the time. The conservative activist who told me that story was convinced that Reagan would have won such a showdown. For fifteen years I agreed with him, but I was to learn something about the American people that too many conservatives don't appreciate. They want their leaders to have principled disagreements but they want these disagreements to be settled in constructive ways. That is not, of course, what our own activists were telling us. They were all gung ho for a brutal fight over spending and taxes. We mistook their enthusiasm for the views of the American public."
From Newt Gingrich, Real Change (Regnery, 2009), p. 24:
What was most misunderstood about our victory by the media and even many in the Republican Party was that even though voters were angry about their government in 1994, they were not anti-government. The Republican Party cannot win over time as the permanently angry, anti-government party because neither appeals to most voters.  It can win as the pro-good government and pro-limited government party.

Filibuster?

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) just finished a very long speech about the Affordable Care Act. A number of posts have discussed Senate filibusters, but Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post reminds us that the term is not a formal one.
But, here’s the dirty little secret of a filibuster — there is no real definition of it. Here’s how the U.S. Senate defines it: ”Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.”
We put the question of what is a filibuster to Paul Kane, resident WaPo congressional genius, and he drew a comparison to the talk-a-thon put on by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders back in 2010 to protest the tax deal. A cloture vote had already been scheduled when Sanders started talking — and went on after he finished.
“What Sanders did then is what Cruz is doing now — trying to convince his colleagues to vote against the cloture motion,” PK wrote to us in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. “If by some modern miracle Cruz were to succeed and tomorrow afternoon 41 senators voted no, what would we say happened? We would say they filibustered the [congressional resolution].”
And here’s more from PK:
Here’s how strange this situation is. When Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office touts the growth of filibusters in the modern Senate, his advisers count the number of times he has to file a motion to break a filibuster and when those votes are held to invoke cloture. (See this great chart that Wonkblog put together in July to see the growth in those motions and votes.) So, when the Senate votes this afternoon on a 60-vote hurdle to continue advancing the bill, Reid’s office will count that vote as an attempted filibuster. Yet Democrats are arguing that the marathon speeches leading up to that vote, themselves, do not amount to a filibuster.

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Trends in Unauthorized Immigration

Many posts have discussed unauthorized immigration. Pew reports:
The sharp decline in the U.S. population of unauthorized immigrants that accompanied the 2007-2009 recession has bottomed out, and the number may be rising again. As of March 2012, 11.7 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, according to a new preliminary Pew Research Center estimate based on U.S. government data.
The estimated number of unauthorized immigrants peaked at 12.2 million in 2007 and fell to 11.3 million in 2009, breaking a rising trend that had held for decades. Although there are indications the number of unauthorized immigrants may be rising, the 2012 population estimate is the midpoint of a wide range of possible values and in a statistical sense is no different from the 2009 estimate.
  Following a recession-related decline, U.S. unauthorized immigration may be on the rise

Monday, September 23, 2013

Views on Government Power

Previous posts have discussed attitudes toward government and its power.  Gallup reports:
Six in 10 Americans (60%) believe the federal government has too much power, one percentage point above the previous high recorded in September 2010. At least half of Americans since 2005 have said the government has too much power. Thirty-two percent now say the government has the right amount of power. Few say it has too little power.
...
During the 2008 presidential race, about half of Republicans and Democrats held this view. By September 2009, however, views became much more polarized: 25% of Democrats were concerned with the government's power, compared with 78% of Republicans. Since that low point, Democrats have become more likely to view the government as too powerful, with 38% this year saying so -- for a gap of 43 points between the parties.

 Do you think the federal government today -- [ROTATED: has too much power, has about the right amount of power, or has too little power]? Views by party

Media, Oppo, and Cruz

Many posts have discussed opposition research.  Campaigns routinely provide news media with negative information about their opponents.  But politicians use oppo outside the campaign season as well, plying reporters with material about colleagues and rivals that they want to take down.  Such tactics even take place within the parties, as this Fox News exchange reveals:

CHRIS WALLACE: Karl, this has been one of the strangest weeks I've ever had in Washington. And I say that, because as soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats, but from top Republicans who -- to hammer Cruz. Why are Republicans so angry at Ted Cruz?

KARL ROVE, FORMER BUSH WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: Well, because this was a strategy laid out by Mike Lee and Ted Cruz without any consultation by -- with their colleagues. Mike Lee of Utah lays it out on July 9th without having ever brought it up at the Thursday meeting and the senators to say we've got an idea. I would suspect today, with all due respect to Mike, junior Senator from Texas, I suspect this is the first time that the endgame was described to any Republican senator. They had to tune in to listen to you to find out what Ted's next step was in the strategy. And look, you cannot build a congressional majority in either party for any kind of action, unless you're treating your colleagues with some or certain amount of respect and saying, hey, what do you think of my idea, and instead, they have dictated to their colleagues through the media, and through public statements, and not consulted them about this strategy at all.
I do want to (inaudible) one small thing that Senator Cruz said. He said, Republicans enjoy an advantage on health care in "The Wall Street Journal" poll this week. I wish it were true. The advantage in "The Wall Street Journal" poll was Americans favorite Democrats, trust Democrats more on health care, 37 to 29. Now, the bad news for the Democrats is, this is a historic low number for them. But Republicans don't have an advantage on it, at the time of the 19 -- the 2010 elections it was 42-32, so they had a ten point advantage now, they are -- they've got an eight point advantage.

Sunday, September 22, 2013

Knowledge, Deliberation, and Economic Policy

The Federal Reserve this week decided not to end an important policy.  The public, which knows very little about the Fed, scarcely noticed. On the eve of the decision, Reuters explained:
The Fed's $2.8 trillion "quantitative easing" program has, among other things, lifted stock prices to record highs, driven interest rates to record lows and put a floor under what had been a reeling housing market.
Yet barely a quarter of Americans even know what it is.

A poll leading up to the Fed's pivotal decision, expected Wednesday afternoon, found just 27 percent of U.S. adults could pick the correct definition of quantitative easing from among five possible answers
... 
 Twelve percent of respondents thought QE was a computer-assisted program that the Fed uses to manipulate the dollar. Another 11 percent thought it was part of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform legislation enacted following the crisis.
To be sure, two of the more popular incorrect answers - "a way the Fed makes it easier for commercial banks to borrow money from Fed and relend it to consumers," and "when the Fed repeatedly lowers its official interest rate" - were in the right ballpark, if not completely on target.
After all, quantitative easing is geared to reducing borrowing costs.
But for a Fed that has emphasized how important communications are - and how much the effectiveness of its policies depends on the public's understanding of their impact on inflation and employment - the fact that 73 percent of respondents cannot define the critical program suggests the Fed has a serious communications challenge.
 TechCrunch reports on deliberative polling, one effort to address the problem.
Most Americans are ignorant of policy issues. Two-thirds can’t name a single Supreme Court Justice, only 37 percent of young Americans can’t find Iraq on a map, one-third believes President Obama is a Muslim, and (as of 1999) 20 percent still think the sun revolves around the Earth.
Despite their lack of knowledge, Americans will answer questions related to things they know nothing about. Last year, 39 percent had an opinion about a completely imaginary budget plan.
Which is where “deliberative polling” comes in. It’s a social-statistical process of educating a randomly selected group of citizens in an attempt to understand what Americans would think about an issue.
And we’re going to be testing it out here on TechCrunch.
We’re going to be the media partner on a $165,000 Knight Foundation grant to business consulting firm, Refram It, which will develop a new method of deliberative polling for media organizations.The godfather of deliberative polling, Stanford Professor James Fishkin, will be helping us adapt the procedure (note: TechCrunch is not the recipient of the grant, it is the media partner. Reframe it is the recipient).
Specifically, Fishkin and Reframe It, a company co-founded by his son, Bobby Fishkin, will conduct two deliberative polls related to a few technology policy issues, including immigration reform and the National Security Agency. Over the next few months, we will publish stories about the process of deliberative polling and (hopefully) release the first results later this fall.

Saturday, September 21, 2013

Shutdown and Default

Congress has not passed any of its regular appropriations bills to fund the government after October 1. Therefore it ha to pass a continuing resolution (CR), which the Senate defines this way: "Legislation in the form of a joint resolution enacted by Congress, when the new fiscal year is about to begin or has begun, to provide budget authority for Federal agencies and programs to continue in operation until the regular appropriations acts are enacted."  The Republican-led House has passed a CR that would defund the health care law.  The Democratic-led Senate will surely reject it.  If the chambers cannot agree, there will be a partial government shutdown until they do.  The Wall Street Journal explains:
Q: Will the government really “shut down” on Oct. 1?
A: No. The government will not shut down, even if Congress does not pass a bill by Sept. 30. President Barack Obama will still live at the White House. The mail will still be delivered. Air traffic controllers and meat inspectors will still show up for work. There will, however, be a partial government shutdown if Congress doesn’t act. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be sent home without pay. National parks will close. Military service members very likely won’t get paid. The people answering the phone at the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security office might not be answering the phone anymore. If you need a new passport, you’ll probably be in trouble. The impact will be uneven, but there will be an impact. There was a partial government shutdown in 1995 and 1996, but this one could be bigger because Congress hasn’t passed any spending bills this year. More things will grind to a halt.
Q: Why wouldn’t the whole government just topple over?
A: Good question. There are two basic kinds of government spending. “Mandatory” spending is spending that is essentially on auto-pilot. Think of Social Security and Medicare benefits. “Discretionary” spending is money that must be approved by Congress each year. It’s “discretionary” spending that gets hit during a shutdown. Also, there are provisions in law that allow the government to continue protecting itself (so the military will still be in force, and border security will continue), as well as carry out other duties. And federal employees considered “essential” will still come in to work and get paid.
 AP explains, however that an even larger problem lies just beyond the CR fight. Every so often, the government has to raise the debt ceiling so that it can continue to borrow money.  If it cannot do so, it starts to run out of cash.
A default would occur if the government is no longer able to borrow and has run out of cash to pay all the bills coming due. Then, the government has to rely on cash coming in to pay whatever bills it can.
Since the government has never defaulted, it's impossible to know for sure how it would behave. But it's commonly assumed that Treasury would make sure that it would meet interest payment so as to not alarm financial markets and prompt U.S. creditors to stop "rolling over" debt by reinvesting bonds when they mature.
"If the federal government actually were to default on its debt obligations, the full faith and credit of the U.S. government is in question and it can have devastating effects on Treasury's ability to borrow and on the stability of financial markets in general," said Keith Hennessey, former Director of the National Economic Council in the George W. Bush White House.
Earlier this year the GOP-controlled House passed legislation requiring Treasury to "prioritize" its obligations to pay interest payments and Social Security benefits first if there's not enough cash to pay all the bills.
But while it's relatively easy to prioritize interest payments, Treasury's computer systems aren't programmed in such a way that it'd be easy to pick and choose what payments to make.
In an internal review after the 2011 debt crisis, Treasury officials told an agency inspector general that best option in a cash crunch would be to delay payments. In other words, Treasury would figure out how much a particular day's bills cost and then pay those bills when enough cash came in. That would mean the government would quickly fall behind on its payments.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Confidence in the Media

Americans' confidence in the accuracy of the mass media has improved slightly after falling to an all-time low last year. Now, 44% say they have a great deal or fair amount of trust and confidence in the mass media, identical to 2011 but up from 40% in 2012, the lowest reading since Gallup regularly began tracking the question in 1997.

The latest results are based on Gallup's annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8. Americans have consistently been more distrusting than trusting of the media each year since 2007, in contrast with 1997 through 2003, when the slight majority expressed trust in the media.

This year's bump in confidence comes mainly from independents and Republicans, after these groups' trust in the media dropped last year amid a heated presidential election race in which Mitt Romney supporters may have felt their candidate was being treated unfairly. Democrats' confidence, however, has been inching up since 2011.
...
Consistent with Republicans' and independents' dissatisfaction with the media, far more Americans say the media are too liberal than too conservative, 46% vs. 13%, as was the case in 2011, and every year since Gallup has been tracking this trend. Thirty-seven percent currently describe the media's political leanings as "just about right."

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Governing Party?

Yesterday, President Obama said (h/t Charles Lofgren):
You have never seen in the history of the United States the debt ceiling or the threat of not raising the debt ceiling being used to extort a President or a governing party, and trying to force issues that have nothing to do with the budget and have nothing to do with the debt. 
Under the Constitution, the federal government is more than just the president. It does not make sense to speak of a single "governing party" in the United States.  In James Madison Rules America, William Connelly writes:
In our separation-of-powers system, neither party is ever simply the government or the opposition, unlike the British parliamentary system, where each party knows where it stands. The quandary persists for congressional parties whether under conditions of so-called unified or divided government. The quandary is obvious under divided government.
Republicans may oppose the president, but their majority in the House of Representatives is very much part of the government.

The rest of the president's statement was also problematic.

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler writes:
In 1973, when Richard Nixon was president, Democrats in the Senate, including Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Sen. Walter Mondale (D-Minn.), sought to attach a campaign finance reform bill to the debt ceiling after the Watergate-era revelations about Nixon’s fundraising during the 1972 election. Their efforts were defeated by a filibuster, but it took days of debate and the lawmakers were criticized by commentators (and fellow lawmakers) for using “shotgun” tactics to try to hitch their pet cause to emergency must-pass legislation.
President Obama said that GOP lawmakers now are trying to “extort” repeal of the health care law via the debt limit, but that’s also what Democrats wanted to do with President Nixon, who opposed the campaign-finance reforms.
Indeed, Linda K. Kowalcky and Lance T. LeLoup wrote in a comprehensive study of the politics of the debt limit, for Public Administration Review, that “during this period, the genesis of a pattern developed that would eventually become full blown in the mid-1970s and 1980s: the use of the debt ceiling vote as a vehicle for other legislative matters.
...
 Clearly, Obama’s sweeping statement does not stand up to scrutiny, even with his caveat. Time and again, lawmakers have used the “must-pass” nature of the debt limit to force changes in unrelated laws. Often, the effort fails — as the GOP drive to repeal Obamacare almost certainly will. But Kowalcky and LeLoup speculate that one reason why Congress has not eliminated the debt limit, despite the political problems it poses, is because lawmakers enjoy the leverage it provides against the executive branch.

The DC Area is Doing Well

In May, The Wall Street Journal reported:
As other American cities have been buffeted by an uneven economy, Washington's property market has been buoyed two forces specific to the capital city: a surge of federal contractors and a rising tide of government spending. The result: what real-estate agents and developers are calling an unprecedented real-estate surge.
Business Insider reports:
Of the six counties in the United States with median income greater than $100,000, of course four of them are in the D.C. metro area.
  • Loudoun County, Va. — $115,574
  • Falls Church City, Va. — $114,409
  • Fairfax County, Va. — $105,416
  • Los Alamos County, NM — $103,643
  • Howard County, MD — $103,273
  • Hunterdon County, NJ — $100,980
From a Census release (emphasis added):
According to the report Household Income: 2012, which compares American Community Survey statistics from 2000 to 2012 and from 2011 to 2012:
  • From 2000 to 2012, the District of Columbia (23.3 percent) had one of the largest increases in median household income, going from $53,995 to $66,583. Other states with increases in income included North Dakota (17.0 percent), Wyoming (6.9 percent), Louisiana (4.2 percent) and South Dakota (4.1 percent). Not all of these states are statistically different from one another.
...
  • Mississippi had the lowest median household income in 2012 at $37,095, while Maryland had the highest median household income at $71,122.
...
  • Among the 25 most populous metropolitan areas, the Washington, D.C., metro area had the highest median household income in 2012 at $88,233, while the Tampa-St. Petersburg metro area had the lowest median house income at $44,402.
According to the report Poverty: 2000 to 2012, which compares poverty rates from 2000 to 2012 and from 2011 to 2012:
  • The number and percentage of people in poverty did not have a statistically significant change in 43 states and the District of Columbia between 2011 and 2012, while in three states (California, Mississippi and New Hampshire) the number and percentage of people in poverty increased. In New Jersey and Wyoming, the number of people in poverty increased. In Minnesota and Texas, the percentage of people in poverty declined.
  • No states showed a statistically significant decline in the percentage of people in poverty from 2000 to 2012.
  • For 2012, states with the lowest poverty rates included New Hampshire (10.0 percent), Alaska (10.1 percent), Maryland (10.3 percent), Connecticut (10.7 percent) and New Jersey (10.8 percent). Not all of these states are statistically different from one another.
  • States with the highest poverty rates for 2012 included Mississippi (24.2 percent), New Mexico (20.8 percent), Louisiana (19.9 percent), Arkansas (19.8 percent) and Kentucky (19.4 percent). Louisiana, Arkansas and Kentucky are not statistically different from one another.
...
  • Among the largest 25 metropolitan areas, poverty rates in 2012 ranged from 8.4 percent in the Washington, D.C., metro area to 19.0 percent in the Riverside-San Bernardino metro area.

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The Revolving Door and the Affordable Care Act

Washington’s health care revolving door is spinning fast as the new online health insurance marketplaces, a central provision of President Obama’s health care law, are set to open Oct. 1. Those who had a hand in the law’s passage are now finding lucrative work in the private sector, as businesses try to understand the complex measure, reshape it by pressing for regulatory changes — or profit from it.
That means boom times for what might be called an Obamacare cottage industry, providing work for dozens of former administration and mostly Democratic Congressional officials whose immersion in health policy minutiae, and friendships, make them invaluable to private business.

Dr. Dora Hughes, for example, has a medical degree from Vanderbilt and a master’s in public health from Harvard and never envisioned joining a law firm. But Dr. Hughes, a former Obama administration official, has something Washington lawyers and lobbying shops covet: an insider’s understanding of the new health care law.

After nearly four years as counselor to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, she left government last year to work for Sidley Austin, which represents insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device makers and others affected by the law. She is not a registered lobbyist, but rather a “strategic adviser,” although some call that a distinction without a difference.
...
The health care industry now spends more money on lobbying in Washington than any sector of the economy — more than $243 million last year alone, slightly higher than the $242 million spent by financial, insurance and real estate companies, according to the Center for Responsive Politics here.
Of the “revolving door lobbyists” profiled by the center, those specializing in health care account for 12 percent, more than any other economic sector.

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Poverty and Income in 2012

A release from the Census:
The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that in 2012, real median household income and the poverty rate were not statistically different from the previous year, while the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.
Median household income in the United States in 2012 was $51,017, not statistically different in real terms from the 2011 median of $51,100. This followed two consecutive annual declines.
The nation's official poverty rate in 2012 was 15.0 percent, which represents 46.5 million people living at or below the poverty line. This marked the second consecutive year that neither the official poverty rate nor the number of people in poverty were statistically different from the previous year's estimates. The 2012 poverty rate was 2.5 percentage points higher than in 2007, the year before the economic downturn.
The percentage of people without health insurance coverage declined to 15.4 percent in 2012 ─ from 15.7 percent in 2011. However, the 48.0 million people without coverage in 2012 was not statistically different from the 48.6 million in 2011.
These findings are contained in the report Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2012. The following results for the nation were compiled from information collected in the 2013 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).

Know Your Fed

Many posts have discussed political knowledge. This past weekend, Lawrence Summers put an end to weeks of speculation by withdrawing from consideration to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve.  The matter was a big deal to the political elite.  The general public scarcely noticed. David Wessel writes at The Wall Street Journal:
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll asked respondent to rate their feelings toward Mr. Summers. Some 69% didn’t recognize his name or didn’t have an opinion.
Among the rest, more than half described their attitude toward him as “neutral.” Of the 13% who actually expressed a view, it was negative by 2-to-1.
Mr. Bernanke is somewhat better known, but still 45% said they didn’t know who he was or didn’t have an opinion. That is down from 67% in September 2007, before the financial crisis hit.
The remainder of respondents split about evenly among those with positive, negative or neutral feelings toward Mr. Bernanke.
J.P. Morgan Chase, the big bank, is much better known than either Mr. Summers or Mr. Bernanke. Fully 80% of the respondents told the pollsters that they recognized the brand. Among those who expressed opinions about the bank, nearly three times as many were negative as positive.

Monday, September 16, 2013

Russian Official Gloats Over Navy Yard Shootings

A shooting at the Washington Navy Yard that killed several people and injured more Monday is “a clear confirmation of “American exceptionalism,” Russia’s parliamentary foreign affairs chief Alexey Pushkov tweeted.

“A new shootout at Navy headquarters in Washington - a lone gunman and 7 corpses. Nobody’s even surprised anymore. A clear confirmation of American exceptionalism.’”
Новая стрельба у штаба ВМС в Вашингтоне - одинокий стрелок и 7 трупов. Никто уже не удивлен. Наглядное подтверждение "амер.исключительности"
The USA should part with the notion of American exceptionalism. It contradicts the principles of equal rights and smells of political racism
Pushkov was tweeting based off unconfirmed reports of the shooting, the exact number of victims of which is still unknown. The AP cited a Pentagon official as saying that several people were killed and as many as 10 injured.
Pushkov is not the first Russian lawmaker to gloat at the U.S. on Twitter after the White House accepted a Kremlin proposal to avert a strike on Syria. Last Friday, a Duma colleague and former Olympic athlete tweeted a racist photo of Barack and Michelle Obama, then refused to apologize.

Sunday, September 15, 2013

Affordable Care Act Problems

The Obama administration on Friday denied a request from labor unions to have their healthcare plans receive tax subsidies under ObamaCare.

A White House official said the Treasury Department has determined that the healthcare plans used by many union members — known as multi-employer or Taft-Hartley plans — cannot be made eligible for subsidies that are intended to help uninsured people afford coverage.

“The Treasury Department issued a letter today making clear that it does not see a legal way for individuals in multi-employer group health plans to receive individual market tax credits as well as the favorable tax treatment associated with employer-provided health insurance at the same time,” the official said.

Nevertheless, the administration said it plans to work with unions to make sure members can obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges.

The Los Angeles Times reports:
The doctor can't see you now.

Consumers may hear that a lot more often after getting health insurance under President Obama's Affordable Care Act.
To hold down premiums, major insurers in California have sharply limited the number of doctors and hospitals available to patients in the state's new health insurance market opening Oct. 1.
New data reveal the extent of those cuts in California, a crucial test bed for the federal healthcare law.
These diminished medical networks are fueling growing concerns that many patients will still struggle to get care despite the nation's biggest healthcare expansion in half a century.
Consumers could see long wait times, a scarcity of specialists and loss of a longtime doctor.
"These narrow networks won't work because they cut off access for patients," said Dr. Richard Baker, executive director of the Urban Health Institute at Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles. "We don't want this to become a roadblock."

Lobbying and a Chinese Transaction

Our chapter on interest groups points out that lobbying often targets the executive branch (and in ways that are largely obscure to the general public) and may involve foreign interests.  A recent Open Secrets post illustrates these points:
The United State's largest supplier of pork has cleared a major hurdle in winning approval for its sale to a major Chinese company, thanks in part to a targeted lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill.
The acquisition of the Virginia-based Smithfield Foods, the nation's leading pork producer and processor, was cleared by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), a panel overseen by the Treasury Department, late last week. Shuanghui International, China's largest meat processor, has proposed to buy the company for $4.7 billion -- potentially the biggest Chinese purchase of a U.S. company in history, according to Bloomberg.

Smithfield, which spent $700,000 on lobbying in the first half of this year, specifically targeted CFIUS in its lobbying efforts on the Hill, listing "CFIUS issues related to corporate transaction" as among the issues it lobbied.

The panel's decision comes amid certain misgivings from members of Congress -- including Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee -- who have expressed concerns regarding the impact the buyout will have on U.S. food security. In the past, Shuanghui was the subject of a controversy regarding its use of harmful food additives in pork products

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Putin and Public Relations

The public relations firm Ketchum is responsible for placing a controversial editorial that appeared under Russian President Vladimir Putin’s byline in the New York Times on Wednesday night.
“The op-ed came through the PR firm (Ketchum) and went through the normal editing process,” said New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy in an email to BuzzFeed.
Spokespeople for Ketchum did not return requests for comment.
Ketchum is the main PR firm used by the Russian government. Using documents publicly filed with the Department of Justice, ProPublica showed last year how Ketchum places pro-Putin op-eds under the bylines of “seemingly independent professionals” in various news outlets like CNBC and the Huffington Post.

Friday, September 13, 2013

American Government Workshop for International Students

American history is a lot more interesting than you might think.

Alexander Hamilton:



John Adams Benjamin Franklin in Paris:


An international values gap

Survey on patriotism



Belief in God

Belief in Evolution

Religion and Economic Prosperity: International Perspectives

The Separation of Powers:



Congress and Bicameralism:



Federalism:



Federalism:  about 89,000 governments and about 513,000 elected officials

Federalism and ballot complexity

Partisan Polarization

Parties and Campaigns:



"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters." --Frederick Douglass

Free Speech:  the Unusual First Amendment

Dennis Miller on free speech:

The Media-Government Revolving Door

In our text and on the blog, we discuss two kinds of "revolving doors," one between government and interest groups, and the other between the media and politics.  Two new items discuss the latter.

Time managing editor Rick Stengel (pictured above) is leaving journalism to go work for the State Department, making him at least the 21st reporter to go to work for the Obama administration. Stengel will be the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, Politico and Capital New York report. The last high-profile journalist to leave Time for the Obama administration is Jay Carney, who is currently White House press secretary.
The revolving door also revolves in state capitals, as Katy Grimes writes at CalWatchdog:
In California’s capitol, I have counted more than 40 former news reporters, television reporters and radio newscasters who now work inside the state Capitol, or for a state agency.

The most recent defection from the Capitol press corps is Steve Harmon, former news reporter for the Contra Costa Times. Harmon was recently hired as the communications director for Assemblywoman Nora Campos, D-San Jose, Speaker pro Tempore of the Assembly.

But Harmon is not alone. There are at least 30 other former reporters who have recently worked or still work inside the Capitol.
The California Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes a department created by Sen. President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, and staffed with former news reporters and investigative journalists.

Nancy Vogel, covered state government as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She also worked at The Sacramento Bee, “covering various issues, including water policy, from 1990 to 2000.” Then Vogel took a job with the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes as a principal consultant. Her colleagues at the Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes were John Hill, formerly a reporter with The Sacramento Bee, and Mark Arax, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Vogel now works for the Department of Water Resources as the Director of Public Affairs.

Philip J. Trounstine, a former San Jose Mercury News reporter, was hired by Democratic Gov. Gray Davis as communications director, then went back to journalism as co-publisher and co-editor of political blog Calbuzz.com.

Kate Folmar was a Capitol Bureau reporter for the San Jose Mercury News and the MediaNews Group newspaper company, then was hired as U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s press secretary. Folmar next worked as the political communications coordinator for the California Democratic Party, and served as spokeswoman for Secretary of State Debra Bowen, a Democrat.

Trust and International Problems

Americans' trust and confidence in the federal government's ability to handle international problems has reached an all-time low, with 49% saying they have a great deal or a fair amount of confidence, two percentage points below the previous low of 51% recorded in 2007.

These new data come from Gallup's annual Governance survey, conducted Sept. 5-8, 2013, while Congress was debating the use of military force in Syria, but prior to President Barack Obama's nationally televised address on Syria, and Russia's proposal to avert U.S. military action.

Between 57% and 66% of Americans said they had a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in the U.S. government to handle international problems during Obama's first term. This represents a generally higher level of confidence than Americans expressed during the latter years of the Bush administration, when the U.S. was engaged in protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Thursday, September 12, 2013

Tocqueville on Foreign Policy

The Lawrence/Mayer version of Tocqueville's Democracy in America offers some wisdom about current foreign policy issues:
Now, it is this clear perception of the future, based on judgment and experience, which must often be lacking in a democracy. The people feel more strongly than they reason; and if present ills are great, it is to be feared that they will forget the greater evils that perhaps await them in case of defeat (p. 223). 
The American fights against natural obstacles; the Russian is at grips with men. The former combats the wilderness and barbarism; the latter, civilization with all its arms. America’s conquests are made with the plowshare, Russia’s with the sword.  To attain their aims, the former relies on personal interest and gives free scope to the unguided strength and common sense of individuals. The latter in a sense concentrates the whole power of society in one man. One has freedom as the principal means of action; the other has servitude. Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each seems called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world (p. 413, h/t JG)
 


Putin on American Exceptionalism

In our textbook, we discuss American exceptionalism. Vladimir Putin writes in The New York Times:
My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.
Are his last lines sincere? Putin rose through the ranks of Soviet intelligence (the KGB).  He now claims membership in the Russian Orthodox Church, but that organization was subservient to the KGB.

Sincere or not, Putin's remark echo those of some American commentators and political figures.

  • Richard E. Cohen of the Washington Post"Therein lies the danger of American exceptionalism. It discourages compromise, for what God has made exceptional, man must not alter. And yet clearly America must change fundamentally or continue to decline. It could begin by junking a phase that reeks of arrogance and discourages compromise. American exceptionalism ought to be called American narcissism. We look perfect only to ourselves."
  • Michael Kinsley, at Politico:  "This conceit that we’re the greatest country ever may be self-immolating. If people believe it’s true, they won’t do what’s necessary to make it true. The Brits, who suffer no such delusion (and who, in fact, cherish the national myth of being people who smile through adversity), have just accepted cuts in government spending that no American politician — even a tea bagger — would dream of proposing. Maybe these cuts are a mistake or badly timed, but when the British voted for “change,” they really got it."
  • Patrick Smith, at Salon: "To remain as we are, clinging to our myths and all that we once thought made us exceptional, would be to make of our nation an antique, a curiosity of the eighteenth century that somehow survived into the twenty-first. Change occurs in history, and Americans must accept this if they choose to change."
  • Stephen M. Walt, at Foreign Policy: "The only thing wrong with this self-congratulatory portrait of America's global role is that it is mostly a myth. Although the United States possesses certain unique qualities -- from high levels of religiosity to a political culture that privileges individual freedom -- the conduct of U.S. foreign policy has been determined primarily by its relative power and by the inherently competitive nature of international politics. By focusing on their supposedly exceptional qualities, Americans blind themselves to the ways that they are a lot like everyone else."
  • Bill Maher: "I always say in a hundred years this country will be Mormon. It's a stupid religion and a stupid country, they were made for each other and I tell you, one of the things that Americans are going to love about Mormonism, when they find about it, is, first of all, Jesus is an American, and they love the idea that Mormon's embrace, more than anybody, that 'we are the super-duper star spangled best country ever and that if we have any flaw it is that we feel other countries feel bad because our awesomeness is so overwhelming.' But I think we should get over it."

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Federalism, Health, and Education

The law will still make some benefits available everywhere. Starting next year, all insurance plans will be prohibited from rejecting consumers who are sick. Plans cannot put annual or lifetime limits on what they cover. For the first time, all plans will have to provide a standardized set of health benefits.
And millions of low- and moderate-income Americans will qualify for government subsidies to help them buy health insurance if they cannot get coverage through their employers.
The new law will not make health coverage available to all Americans, however.
About half of the states, most with Republican leadership, have rejected federal aid to expand their government Medicaid programs next year, saying it costs too much and imposes too many regulations. That means as many as 5 million of the poorest residents in these states will still not be able to get coverage next year. (Several states are still debating whether to expand Medicaid.)
At the same time, 34 states have elected not to set up new insurance marketplaces, websites where consumers who don't get health benefits at work and don't qualify for Medicaid can shop for standardized health insurance plans.
In those states, the Obama administration will run the marketplaces. Consumers there will still be able to shop online for insurance plans. And Obama administration officials have pledged to help shoppers. But with the federal government stretched thin, the administration had hoped states would provide consumers with an added layer of protection.
The Times also reports on education:
California lawmakers pushed ahead Tuesday with a new state testing plan despite a threat by the Obama administration to withhold federal education funds unless substantial changes were made.

The state Senate approved the overhaul on a 25-7 vote, with Democrats overwhelmingly in support.
AB 484 would end the paper-and-pencil testing system used since 1999. In its place would be computerized tests based on new Common Core learning goals approved by 45 states.
With the new test entering a trial period, there would be no student or school scores released for 2014. The bill could permit a further postponement of scores, if needed, for 2015.
The U.S. Department of Education asserted this week that the state could have continued the current testing regime for most students until results could be provided by the new test.
But a majority of state senators were unmoved.