Rhinocrisy

Let’s imagine exposing legislation to the scrutiny of the Internet.

I don’t mean that any member of the public could propose new bill text; that would still be the purview of individual legislators. But when they submit legislation, it shows up in a “Recent Changes” style docket. Any member of the public could view it. They could highlight pieces of it by voting it up or down. They could attach explanatory comments to the text. There could be ways for people to directly register their approval or disapproval of particular portions of the text. There could also be indirect ways for you to register your approval, as mediated by trusted experts: for example, the Sierra Club could run a subscription service that would annotate bill text for me, highlighting the portions of text they find good, and worth supporting, or extremely distressing and probably worth fighting. I could subscribe to a number of groups that maintained such lists; smaller groups could focus on narrower issues, like just abortion, or just research funding for physicists. I could weight the contributions of such groups and get a picture of how much they are in agreement or disagreement; I could identify places of conflict in my set of political views and perhaps adjust them. In the aggregate, I could get a picture of how often bill text agreed or disagreed with my positions. I could get a picture of how often my Congressperson voted against what I wanted, and in what specific ways. We could express ourselves to our legislators as a community.

Such a tool has a few nice features: first, if it were visible, it would give advocacy groups a better way to engage with voters and legislators; it would give them a clearer role in the political process, as a way to aggregate the voices of disparate constituencies. The modern mechanism requires money; this would require some as well, but the volume of bill text is not tremendous, and individual organizations could probably make a contribution more cheaply than they could buy the support of a legislator, where they risk merely being outbid by wealthier interests. Second, it is democratic; an organization with a small staff might succeed in making a significant contribution to the political process merely by dint of a large number of subscribers. Third, it reduces the role of the legislator to a helpless automaton. There is really no reason why, if such a system accurately reflects the desire of your constituents, a legislator should vote against it. Therefore, there is really no reason why you should reelect a legislator who continually misrepresents you.

Representing political viewpoints as a pastiche of intersecting interests is definitely the way modern politics already functions; individual interest groups are already engaging legislators on behalf of the voters. Currently they do this by direct bribery, which means the function of voting is essentially null; money determines who wins elections, and thus determines the course of voting. But even in a best case, voting for a single individual forces a narrowing of political choice and power; the legislator has little or no information about what the voters want, and the voters have no simple, efficient to present it, and their only mechanism of power is the vague hope that the person they are electing will manage to represent them accurately over the next few years. If the legislator’s vote is merely a binary filter on a much more complex representation of individual’s political interests (I agree with Greenpeace, CEPR, Global Exchange, Atheists of America, etc. in that order; you agree with Grover Norquist, the Heritage Foundation, the NRA, etc.), it broadens the efficacy of the democratic function.

Also, this system would be much harder to buy. While it’s possible that I might be suckered into subscribing to the ideas of a group that I don’t in fact agree with, it’s much easier for me to trust individual groups when their advocacy is passive, and their record is open to examination and recommendation.

Finally: since this is merely an annotation of publicly-available bill text available at places like thomas.loc.gov, it requires no legal adjustments to be brought into place. Someone could create such a site tomorrow.

This is only one possible way we might be better utilizing the radical democratization of the Internet.

So, following the downgrade and the resulting stock-market plunge, it’s worthwhile to shine a little light on S&P, to eradicate my own ignorance, anyway. If you wish to peer over my shoulder, I’m noting down my observations here. The company is a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill (yes, the guys who made your Geometry textbook), led by one Deven Sharma, a Bihari of relatively modest background (he has a degree in business management from OSU). Mr. Sharma last year penned an editorial in the WSJ complaining that they may be held to account (that is, face liability) for their rating standards, and calling for the repeal of ratings requirements on the debt held by certain investors. That is, the correct response to the colossal failure of ratings agencies to correctly identify CDOs, etc., as radioactive bombs, should be to remove ratings requirements from debt – that is, debt could simply be unrated, and a rating is merely a suggestive imprimatur bearing no significant or determining weight.

It’s quite clear why S&P’s president feels this way; he wants to punt. In the boom time he was happy to rubber-stamp junk and collect his commissions on it; now that the obvious deficiency of his agency (viz., their complete lack of any accountability for their ratings) has come to light, and some people in Congress are proposing an accountability mechanism, suddenly, S&P ratings should only be considered “just one of many tools”.

He also says:

[O]ur criteria for rating a security [following post-recession corrections] as AAA (our highest designation) include consideration of what could happen to a security if the country faces an economic scenario on par with the Great Depression.

Bear in mind that this was written well over a year ago. Now, it’s arguable that S&P was spot-on for rating all of that crappy debt AAA, since as it turned out, it was backed by the U.S. government. The government took the hit on behalf of all of that shitty debt, and now that its debt situation looks precarious, S&P wants to downgrade THEIR rating. This is high irony – if they had just done their fucking job correctly in the first place, instead of being greedy banksters, there would have been no need for a downgrade of U.S. government debt. S&P screws the pooch twice – first by not doing the job a ratings agency should (actually rating debt correctly), and then pillories the government (and the entire world) for cleaning up after their mess. Die in a fire, S&P.

None of which is to say, of course, that we don’t deserve a downgrade. We’re like a Bantustan right now, except without the political cohesion.

Lots of exciting stuff going on in the world these days, momentous, world-shaking events. And we all know what that means: now’s the time for dictators to swiftly crush their rebellious populace, while everyone is distracted by tsunami footage.

So, keep an eye on US ally Bahrain, where evil king Hamad has just imported troops from surrounding dictatorships (UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) to shoot and kill the angry plebes. Sounds reasonable, right? Fortunately our government is right on top of things: they are carefully evacuating all non-essential personnel from the US military base in Bahrain, and Secretary of State Hillary “Why Isn’t This Evil Shrike Dead Already O Lord”^* Clinton took the vital step of urging “all sides” to remain calm – gun-wielding foreign soldiers AND unarmed civilian protesters. In fact, it seems like all of our government officials, all the way up to the big Cheese himself, are “deeply concerned”.

Some of you might be wondering: “Wait, what was that about a US military base in Bahrain?” Well, what about it? That doesn’t really affect our deep, deep concern. After all, why would that be relevant?

“The welfare of our personnel and their families is of the utmost importance. This Authorized Departure is being ordered to allow family members who have concerns about their safety to depart without incurring an undue burden. We remain committed to our long-standing partnership with Bahrain.”

^* I am told the story of how she acquired this nickname at Wellesley is hilarious and instructive.

So, Obama is in India, as the NY Times points out, to “lift longstanding restrictions on exports of closely held technologies”. It shouldn’t take a huge effort to read through the unfortunate lede-burying going on. Couple that with the recent well-publicized sale of arms to Saudi Arabia^* and draw the straight line.

The “high tech” industry is one of the few remaining robust American manufacturing sectors, and one of the only ones with a product that retails in the hundreds of millions of dollars. For a country starving to death thanks to oil imports (which constitute somewhere around 50% of the US trade imbalance) and non-existent manufacturing, a quick-fix tour peddling arms to unstable, nuclear-armed, war-prone regions of the world is clearly too good an opportunity to pass up.

The Times also points out that this is Obama doing his necessary kowtowing to prove to American business (i.e., the war industry) that, humbled by his defeat, he is fully prepared to be their lackey:

Still, one of Mr. Obama’s main audiences in many ways seemed to be America’s chief executives, many of whom spent the recent campaign accusing the White House of being antibusiness and pouring money into the coffers of Republican candidates and groups that aimed to defeat the Democrats.

…“It’s unprecedented,” [Jeffrey Immelt of General Electric] said in an interview, praising Mr. Obama for talking up trade, a politically risky move for a Democrat. “I don’t remember President Bush ever having a mission like this. I think it’s quite rare and I hope the first of many.”

Luckily the vicious skull-fucking and skin-melting will be reserved for our children's generation, along with the catastrophic drought and infrastructure collapse. God rest ye merry, gentlemen. You're doing the Lord's work.

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^* Thanks to Saheli for pointing out the excellent “War is Business”.

This kid has just discovered a candy store, one I’ve been wishing for since I came to San Francisco: digital newspaper archives, going back to 1869, of the San Francisco Chronicle.^* Here’s a piece of flavor, a quote from William Coleman, head of the second Vigilance Committee. If you’re unfamiliar, the Vigilance committees were fascinating bits of early San Francisco history, spontaneous, but extremely well-organized and orderly, expressions of public wrath against corruption and criminality. In this case, the group that Coleman spoke for formed to deal with one James Casey, a felon and apparently low character elected to the position of district supervisor. Casey responded to allegations of ballot-stuffing (and other criminality) by newspaper editor James King by waiting for King and shooting him in the chest. He then surrendered himself, confident of the protection of the authorities. Unfortunately for him, the vigilance committee speedily formed (with two thousand men swearing the oath), and in a matter of days “encouraged” the sheriff to give up Casey, tried him, and hanged him. Quoting Coleman:

Who made the laws and set agents over them? The people.
Who saw those laws neglected, disregarded, abused, trampled on? The people.
Who had the right to protect those laws and administer where their servants had failed? The people.
The people are the power; it is theirs by birthright, and when they delegate it, it is expressed and implied that upon wrongdoing the servants shall be pushed aside, formally or informally, and their places promptly filled by other and better agencies.

Enough to make any anarchist teary-eyed.

Obama, this morning:

And so the question then is, are we going to be able to put together a package that includes safe, secure nuclear power; that includes new technologies so that we can use coal — which we have in abundance and is very cheap, but often is adding to our greenhouse gases — can we find sequestration technologies that clean that up; can we identify opportunities to increase our oil and natural gas production in a way that is environmentally sustainable? And that should be part of a package with our development of clean energy.

Answer: no. We’ve talked about clean coal here before, and how it’s at best on a twenty-year time horizon before it becomes viable technology. “Twenty years” basically means “never going to happen”, or “this is science fiction”, so whenever you hear someone talking about “clean coal”, understand that they’re talking through their hat. Oil and gas are tapped out domestically; that is simple geological fact against which there is no argument. The only sources left are offshore, which are expensive and environmentally problematic.

Nuclear power has been a mess for many years; some people are now discussing thorium as a safer, cleaner, cheaper, and all-around better alternative to uranium. India is really into it. Maybe that’s a reasonable plan; I don’t know enough to comment.

But I’d like to take issue with Obama saying this:

I am very firm in my conviction that the country that leads the way in clean energy — solar, wind, biodiesel, geothermal — that country is going to win the race in the 21st century global economy. … [W]e can’t overnight convert to an all-solar or an all-wind economy. That just can’t happen.

Here’s an idea: stop funding that unwinnable war in Iraq. Just end it. Then, use that money to spark research on clean energy. If you’re really very firm in your convictions, put some money where your mouth is.

The new Obama administration White House website is very snazzy, and apparently done by the same folks who designed his campaign website. I can’t help but feel a little disappointed, though. One of the things I loved most about the Bush website was the easy availability of press briefings. Transcripts were available almost as soon as the briefing was finished. By contrast, the Obama website has nothing, yet. Maybe that will change.

Anyway, to business: Gibbs’ response regarding drone attacks on Waziristan/Pakistan:

Q Exactly. There is skepticism among Republicans whether or not this could happen. What kind of reassurances is he giving? Then, on Pakistan, was he consulted before the strike, or did he consult with Pakistan on that?

MR. GIBBS: Well, let me take your Pakistan question first. As you know, I’m not going to comment on those matters.

What the fuck? If this is “transparent”, I’m going to go replace my windshield glass with corrugated cardboard.^*

^* I just realized I don’t have a windshield glass!^†
† No, it wasn’t stolen. I don’t have a car.^‡
‡ No, my car wasn’t stolen. I never bought one.

Governments throughout history have been tools of oppression; they need not be.

A large part of the reason for my new-found Mike Gravel fanhood is his National Initiative, a piece of legislation/Constitutional amendment he has been promoting for several years. In his own words, the problem with representative democracy:

We’re accustomed to thinking that, when we go to the polls on election day, that we’re exercising our power. Really, what we’re doing is we’re giving our power away, and giving it to politicians who have manipulated the electoral process; and then, once they get in office, they obviously – dictates of human nature require that they will put their interests before the public interest. That’s the way representative government works.

This gives me paroxysms of joy to hear. Yes! finally, someone who actually believes in democracy!

Gravel proposes changes allowing a national initiative process, whereby people can vote directly on federal laws. The details can be read here, if you’re curious. I’m sure there’s room for improvement (for example I’m dubious of the use of public opinion polling as part of the qualification process), but at first pass it seems well-organized and attempts to address some of the major pitfalls of state-level ballot initiatives. Read the section titled “A Strong Deliberative Process” and you will hopefully get a warm, happy feeling in the pit of your stomach.

An interesting twist, as Gravel acknowledges, is that Congress is unlikely to enact legislation which directly undermines its power. To answer that, Gravel proposes that the people vote directly on the issue of creating the initiative (as organized by his non-profit company Philadelphia II, where you can, in fact, start the first part of approving the initiative right now). Would it fly? Who knows? But it’s certainly worth trying, and I think if it did NOT fly, despite approval by a majority of the electorate, it would be quite revealing enough to shake the foundations of this country.

Finally, here’s Gravel himself on the subject. If you don’t already know, you can get your fill of Gravel on YouTube – he posts Q&As with random questions from folks on a regular basis. Golden.

Hillary Clinton, who has a very strong chance of becoming our next President, recently rolled out her new health care proposal. Clinton, as we all know, proposed a widely-unpopular health care reform package back in 1993, when her husband was President. The gist of that package was “all employers must insure their employees via HMO” – along with restrictions on which HMOs were allowed, based on benefits provided. This was poorly-received in all quarters: businesses hated it because it forced them to spend, and didn’t allow them to spend cheaply. HMOs hated it because it privileged some HMOs over others. And everyone else hated it because it didn’t actually solve the problem of managed care in general; it just forced everyone into its arms.

The modern plan is pretty much identical to the one passed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts: that is, we will reduce the numbers of the 50 million uninsured by requiring individuals to purchase healthcare if they are not covered, or else face penalties. A key difference between Romney’s scheme and Clinton’s is that the latter deals with affordability via tax cuts, whereas the former has a subsidized state-run health program.

No one seems to be advocating single-payer healthcare, which seems like the obvious solution. First, despite wild fears of “socialism” and “bureaucracy”, it’s well-demonstrated that government-run health care is more efficient than private health care, in terms of cost. An article in the New England Journal of Medicine comparing the systems of the United States and Canada says:

In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada’s national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada’s private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers’ administrative costs were far lower in Canada.

In addition to efficiency, there is the added issue of keeping down costs. These are related, of course; before 1950, many people didn’t even have private insurance, and medical costs could be paid out of pocket. But health care costs, as a percentage of GNP, have been rising steadily since then. Costs in the US are the highest in the industrial world. There’s considerable debate over why this is, and a number of competing explanations have been advanced. A series of reviews in the Annals of Internal Medicine summarizes seven possibilities:

1. High and rising costs are not such a serious problem.
2. High and rising costs are a problem, but they are created by factors external to the health care system.
3. High and rising costs are caused by the absence of a free market; the remedy is to give patients more responsibility for costs of care and to encourage competition among health insurers and providers.
4. High and rising costs result from medical technologies creating innovation in the diagnosis and treatment of illness.
5. High and rising costs are in part the result of excessive costs of administering the health care system.
6. High and rising costs are explained by the absence of strong cost-containment measures.
7. High and rising costs are the result of the market power of health care providers.

The gist (if I can so blithely summarize a summary of such a complex topic) is that rising costs (and the disparity between the US and the rest of the industrial world) are related mostly to the spread of new medical technology; the relatively greater power of health care providers (e.g. hospitals, pharma companies, etc.) in the market; the fact that doctors are grossly overpaid^* and, in the US, overspecialized, with a lower fraction of general practitioners (and thus, presumably, primary care); and, lastly, a more complicated administrative scheme. This more or less illustrates that cost-containment and coverage are essentially separate problems.

Some attention should be given to the idea of cost containment by removal of third-party payment mechanisms entirely (that is, all medical expenses are paid out-of-pocket, the solution advocated by, e.g., the Cato Institute). A free market in health care seems, at first glance, to be a pretty barbaric solution to any problem, since pricing people out of the market is generally not considered fair for conditions that are often the result of happenstance. Compare:
Ralph: I can’t afford this yacht. I guess I’ll swim at the Y this summer.
with:
Stanley: I can’t afford to have this pituitary adenoma removed. I guess I’ll just live with my gigantism. [ Dunks. ] Swish!

Medical cost is very unevenly distributed; 70% of costs are attributed to only 10% of patients. For the very sick, we must imagine that costs are an unbearable burden, the reverse lottery: I pay you $100,000, and at the end I get to stay exactly the same as I was before (sans hair).

However, other forms of free-market competition can successfully lower costs. Insurance companies were successful in forcing hospitals to lower prices in the 80s and 90s by offering selective contracts on the basis of prices. Private hospitals responded by consolidating into agglomerated networks, effectively forcing insurance companies to play ball and allowing them to raise costs (i.e. make more money). In theory, competition between insurance providers for purchasers could also help lower premiums.

The latter would be unavailable in a single-payer system, meaning that cost containment would have to result from pro-active measures on the part of government. But inter-HMO competition has arguably been rendered ineffective by consolidation amongst hospitals (not to mention consolidation amongst insurance companies). Cost-containment still demands dealing with provider power, and there’s certainly no reason not to remove one layer of enormous complexity, which still leaves the patient as the agent enforcing competition by seeking the best available care.

Keeping down administrative costs is also not to be sneered at. Compare the US and Canada: “After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada.” This means a 14% reduction in costs merely by removing the administrative overhead associated with a private insurance system. This doesn’t suffice to close the yawning gap between the US and other industrialized nations in terms of health care costs, but it helps.

Single-payer systems, however, are radically different from the current wild-haired and thoroughly American mess. They inevitably mean that the government must take more of an interest in actively managing cost-containment by controlling things like the proportion of specialists in the population, information infrastructure, hospital administration, and ultimately, prices and renumeration of physicians, etc. They also mean that the government must be proactive about the supply-side of the equation, by encouraging the population to be healthier in the first place (certainly a laudable form of health care cost-containment). Though there is ample evidence that these measures are effective at reducing per-capita health care outlays, I suspect that they’re just too fucking socialist for the American political class.

^* “The ratio of average physician income to average employee compensation is 5.5 in the United States compared to 1.5 in the United Kingdom and Sweden.”

One in every 6.5 Iraqis is now a refugee (4.2 million out of 27.5 million). Normally that .5 would be a statistical artifact, but in this case, partial people are among the escapees. Which means that maybe the 800 allowed into the U.S. since 2003 made up as many as 1,600 individuals, if the statisticians were counting blown-up people as 1/2 a person each. Which would be very good news since that would mean we had let in 1 out of every 2,625 refugees, rather than just 1 in every 5,250. That would be cheery news, and I haven’t had any of that since the whales escaped Sacramento.