In criticizing the Stupak Amendment this past Monday, the NYT Editorial Board wrote:
The bill brought to the floor already included a careful compromise that should have satisfied reasonable legislators on both sides of the abortion issue. The vast majority of people expected to buy policies on the new exchanges would pay part of the premium and receive government tax credits to pay for the rest. The compromise would have prohibited the use of the tax subsidies to pay for almost all abortions, but it would have allowed the segregation and use of premium contributions and co-payments to pay for such coverage.
I'm opposed to the Stupak Amendment and broadly in favor of abortion rights, but I don’t see how this original compromise could be considered “reasonable.” Money is fungible. There is no way to 'segregate' the tax subsidies from the abortion coverage. Either the federal government funds abortion or it doesn't.
This seems a rather obvious point. In fact, read what the NYT Editorial Board wrote just over a year ago in its commentary ('Money Really is Fungible') on executive pay caps:
Just weeks after the Treasury Department gave nine of the nation’s top banks $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to save them from unprecedented calamity, bank executives are salting money away in billionaire bonus pools to reward themselves for their performance.
Outraged? The bankers (who didn’t anticipate the subprime crisis) were ready for that. So they are assuring everyone that this self-directed largess won’t be paid with the same dollars they got from taxpayers. They’ll use other ones.
What we want to know is will they be marking the bills so they can be sure which is which?
Is there any real difference between these two situations, other than the fact that the former involves abortion and the latter involves greedy bank executives? How can you recognize the absurdity of one scenario, and consider the other “reasonable”?
If the NYT Editorial Board was honest, it would make the case that abortions should be publically funded. Instead, it has decided to chastise abortion opponents who refused to accept an illogical compromise.
Update: Conor Friedersdorf responds to Ann Friedman's post on the Stupak Amendment:
There are many women in the United States who oppose abortion, and if asked would agree that federal money shouldn’t fund it, so the assertion that the amendment throws 50 percent of the population under the bus isn’t accurate, unless one takes the position that these anti-abortion women are suffering from false consciousness.
Friedman's reply:
Actually, no matter what their beliefs about abortion, every woman in this country is indeed screwed over by this amendment. Many, many women who are opposed abortion rights have exercised those rights themselves -- whether for health reasons or because, when it came right down to it, they simply found themselves making a different choice than they thought they would in that situation.
Megan McArdle is concerned with Friedman's argument:
[A]s a response, this seems to trivialize the preferences of pro-life women in a way that I find pretty disturbing from feminists. In what other area of life is it okay to pat the little lady on the head and tell her that she doesn't really want what she says she wants, because she might regret it later?
. . .
Obviously, since I'm pro-choice, I think you can argue against abortion control in many effective ways. But this is not one of them--at least not if you hew to the feminist notion that women are entitled to their own choices and preferences as individuals, not lumped in with some vast undifferentiated mass of women who all want the same thing.
When Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan [murdered 13 people] in Fort Hood, Tex., last week, many Americans had an understandable and, in some ways, admirable reaction. They didn’t want the horror to become a pretext for anti-Muslim bigotry.
So immediately the coverage took on a certain cast. The possibility of Islamic extremism was immediately played down. This was an isolated personal breakdown, not an ideological assault, many people emphasized.
Major Hasan was portrayed as a disturbed individual who was under a lot of stress. We learned about pre-traumatic stress syndrome, and secondary stress disorder, which one gets from hearing about other people’s stress. We heard the theory (unlikely in retrospect) that Hasan was so traumatized by the thought of going into a combat zone that he decided to take a gun and create one of his own.
A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.
There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility. He didn’t have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
A few thoughts on the recently-passed Stupak Amendment, which limits federally-subsidized abortion coverage . . . .
First, President Obama feverishly (and, at the time, disingenuously) denied allegations that the health care reform bills before Congress would allow for any federal funding of abortions. This was essentially the status quo under the Hyde Amendment and subsequent legislation. No one should be surprised that this amendment passed, since the president had promised as much.
Second, the amendment does not prohibit federal funding for all abortions. There are exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother. These exceptions fit with the mainstream view on abortion rights.
Third, a strong plurality of Americans believe that abortion should be "legal only in a few circumstances." This is reflected in the composition of the House of Representatives, where a majority of legislators supported the amendment. Those who are broadly in favor of abortion rights (myself included) must acknowledge that we live in a democracy where relatively few Americans support a universal right to abortion. Most people have complex views on the subject.
Fourth, a person's stance on abortion is not strongly associated with gender. In fact, most studies I've seen show no statistically significant difference between men and women on this issue. Today, women are more likely to call themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice."
Update: Ezra Klein makes an interesting point:
[T]he biggest federal subsidy for private insurance coverage is untouched by Stupak's amendment. It's the $250 billion the government spends each year making employer-sponsored health-care insurance tax-free.
That money, however, subsidizes the insurance of 157 million Americans, many of them quite affluent. Imagine if Stupak had attempted to expand his amendment to their coverage. It would, after all, have been the same principle: Federal policy should not subsidize insurance that offers abortion coverage.
This is certainly how economists and policy analysts would view the situation. Although, I suspect most ordinary Americans would recognize a slight difference between providing a direct federal subsidy for health insurance and merely lifting the tax on employer-provided insurance.
I wonder if Ezra shares Greg Mankiw's fears about marginal tax rates . . . .
Unless I'm missing something, in the 31 states in which voters had a say on whether or not gay marriage was going to be the law of the land, they all rejected it. Every single state.
. . .
[U]nless you're prepared to call more than half the country bigots -- and I have no doubt that many, perhaps most, gay marriage supporters are, and let that self-serving explanation suffice -- maybe, just maybe, you ought to ask yourself if there's something else going on here. And that maybe, just maybe, serious attention should be paid, instead of paying attention long enough to insult people who disagree with you as evil people who deserved to be excoriated and harassed.
I probably wouldn't use the word "bigot." I don't think, for instance, that half this country thinks hate crimes against gays is a good thing. But I have no problem believing that half the country--maybe more--is deeply prejudiced against gays. This generally fits into my view of all -isms. I think prejudice is part of who we are as humans, and thus as Americans. Following from that, I think prejudice is one of the many forces that influence how we vote. Hence the notion that half this country is deeply prejudiced against gays really doesn't shock me.
The lamentable fact is that the two parties are, themselves, little more than narrow special interests. Their competition for short-term political and/or monetary gain has jeopardized the state’s long-term economic health and left it with a tarnished national reputation. Where the major parties have differed, their differences have been inconsequential. Where they’ve been the same, their similarities have been destructive.
They have contributed equally to gross overspending in Trenton by consistently pandering to the pay, pension and retirement policies demanded by powerful public employee unions. Democrats have financed the spree with tax hikes, Republicans with borrowed money, and both with pension-fund raids.
How do we now signal them that this has got to stop if not by rejecting their anointed candidates? How if not by electing Chris Daggett?
I interviewed Daggett this past weekend, and I can attest – this independent too is a much more attractive candidate than his official Republican rival.
His proposals for balancing the state’s books are detailed and workable. He’d extend the state’s 7% sales to cover services as well as goods. He’d end the hodge-podge of property tax rebates. He’d then use the money gained to finance an across-the-board property tax cut and also reductions in corporate income taxes. (A fuller statement of the plan can be read here.)
Daggett emphasizes New Jersey’s most important environmental issue: the preservation of open spaces from urban sprawl. He’d use state funds to buy and preserve open land. He favors major ethics reform to try to clean up New Jersey’s notoriously corrupt political culture.
Like most New Jersey Republicans, he is unexcited by social issues, accepting the status quo on abortion, guns, and gay rights. (On that last, he says he’ll leave the issue to the legislature. If they pass same-sex marriage, he’ll sign it.) And make no mistake: Daggett has been a Republican almost all his life. A protégé of former Governor Thomas Kean, he was appointed as state Environmental Protection Agency administrator by Ronald Reagan.
Daggett would make a very good governor.
Sometimes the two-party system can be so frustrating . . . .
Update: Chris Christie is the projected winner. It doesn't look like Daggett made much of a dent in the end.
Kind of depressing.
Update II: In hindsight, maybe I should've voted for Gary Stein for governor. Check out his awesome ballot statement (pdf).
I do not object to claims such as,
A: "Based on our models of the economy, we believe there would be X million fewer jobs today without the stimulus."
But it is absurd to suggest that you can say,
B: "We have measured how many jobs the stimulus has saved or created, and the number is X."
Economists are capable of making statements such as A, but it is beyond our ken to make statements such as B. Statement B is, of course, much stronger than statement A, as it purports to be based on data rather than on models. Unfortunately, we are hearing statements like B much too often from administration officials. A good example is here, where can you "learn" that 110,185.36 jobs have been created or saved in California alone.
Will this dramatically damaged economic productivity? I'm not sure, but Mankiw's point should be taken seriously.A family of four with an income, say, of $54,000 would pay $9,900 for health care. That covers only about half the actual cost. Uncle Sam would pick up the rest.
Now suppose that the same family earns an additional $12,000 by, for example, having the primary earner work overtime or sending a secondary worker into the labor force. In that case, the federal subsidy shrinks, so the family’s cost of health care rises to $12,700.
In other words, $2,800 of the $12,000 of extra income, or 23 percent, would be effectively taxed away by the government’s new health care system.
[T]he public plan will pay prices equivalent to those of private insurers and may save a bit of money on administrative efficiencies. But because the public option is, well, public, it won't want to do the unpopular things that insurers do to save money, like manage care or aggressively review treatments. It also, presumably, won't try to drive out the sick or the unhealthy. That means the public option will spend more, and could, over time, develop a reputation as a good home for bad health risks, which would mean its average premium will increase because its average member will cost more. The public option will be a good deal for these relatively sick people, but the presence of sick people will make it look like a bad deal to everyone else, which could in turn make it a bad deal for everyone else.I agree with every word of that.
The nightmare scenario, then, is that private insurers cotton onto this and accelerate the process, implicitly or explicitly guiding bad risks to the public option. In theory, the exchanges are risk-adjusted, and the public option will be given more money if it ends up with bad risks, but it's hard to say how that will function in practice.
This also illuminates one of the more problematic inconsistencies in the health-care debate. Insurers have been blamed for, among other things, doing too much to discriminate against bad health-care risks and refusing to pay for care far too often. They've been blamed, in other words, for saying "no." But they've also been blamed for doing too little to control costs.
But that is how they control costs. We saw this in the late-'90s, when tightly managed care brought cost growth down to the 4 percent range but also triggered a public backlash (it did not, however, appear to hurt health outcomes).
As I said in my previous post, I have limited sympathy for Sarah Palin.
However, this, from Andrew Sullivan (on top of the never-ending flogging of Trig Palin conspiracy theories), is outrageous. I saw the reference to the “white trash concupiscence” Palin-slam in Douthat’s column and wondered who could have written that. Despite my knowledge of Andrew’s raging PDS, I was shocked . . . . I fully intend for this to be my last visit to The Daily Dish, and I have to say that at this point, if someone started a campaign to get The Atlantic website to drop Andrew, I’d back it. Imagine the reaction if a journalist/blogger writing about a black politician referred to “ghetto concupiscence”, without even using the word “black.” [Emphasis mine]
Like many such cases, the Kobe Bryant case is primarily a "he said, she said" matter, with ambiguous corroborating evidence that county judge Frederick Gannett characterized as weak even as he sent the case to trial. The woman's sexual activities prior to the alleged rape may well be relevant to the physical evidence; if, as the defense has hinted, she engaged in consensual sex shortly after her encounter with Bryant, it may well be relevant to the question of whether she was raped; if she is mentally unstable, it may well be relevant to her credibility.
These are wrenching questions. Obviously, a woman with a history of mental illness or substance abuse could still be a rape victim. Obviously, the prospect of having embarrassing personal details exposed in court (let alone paraded in the media) may discourage victims from coming forward. Just as obviously, suppressing relevant evidence may result in sending an innocent person to jail. And if it's frightening to put oneself in the place of a sexual assault victim who finds herself on trial in the courtroom, it is no less terrifying to imagine that you -- or your husband or brother or son -- could be accused of rape and denied access to evidence that could exonerate him.
For some feminists, the dogma that "women never lie" means that there is, for all intents and purposes, no presumption of innocence for the defendant. After the 1997 trial of sportscaster Marv Albert, defending the judge's decision to admit compromising information about Albert's sexual past but not about his accuser's, attorney Gloria Allred decried "the notion that there's some sort of moral equivalency between the defendant and the victim" -- forgetting that as long as the defendant hasn't been convicted, he and his accuser are indeed moral equals in the eyes of the law. Wendy Murphy has blasted Kobe Bryant's attorneys for feeding uncorroborated rumors about the alleged victim to the media maw. Yet, appearing on Fox News, she made the claim, highly prejudicial to Bryant and so far untested in a court of law, that the woman "suffered pretty terrible injuries" the likes of which she had not seen despite having prosecuted "hundreds of sex crimes cases."
