4:27 PM 01/29/2013
Pioneering 'We-don't-agree-with-you' TV: Judging from FOX's coverage of the Obama Las Vegas immigration speech, here's how the network will attempt the tricky task of fooling its conservative audience into supporting an amnesty--or at least into not noticing that FOX is supporting an amnesty: 1) Play up Hero Rubio; 2) Play up the battle between the Obama plan and the Rubio/Gang of 8 plan, even though there atually isn't a lot of difference between them (as both President Obama and Sen McCain have admitted); 3) Play up the issue of "citizenship," as opposed to the far more important issue of legalization (the ability to live and work here)--thereby avoiding too frequently acknowledging that the Rubio/Gang of 8 plan offers illegal immigrants immediate legalization, which is 95% of the amnesty ballgame; 4) Play up stagey demands (by Rubio and other Republicans) for border "enforcement" before citizenship--even though there's a much greater chance of enforcement efforts breaking down, as they did after the '86 reform, if the anti-enforcement side already has what it most wants, namely legalization (which will inevitably lead to citizenship no matter what happens with enforcement); 5) Don't put dissenters on the air. (The FOX Studio B post-speech analysis featured a Democratic supporter of amnesty and a Republican who called the Rubio amnesty "good legislation"). ....
7:48 AM 01/28/2013
Sometimes a political con is just too transparent to fly: Remember the idea that Mitt Romney had defused the venerable Medicare issue in Florida because Obama had squeezed some money out of the program (money that Romney would inevitably have to squeeze himself)? Right. I suspect the con at the heart of what seems to be the immigration proposal from the Senate "Gang of 8"--seven veteran amnesty supporters plus Marco Rubio--will prove equally unworkable:
9:37 PM 01/27/2013
To all my respectable friends: A big push for "comprehensive immigration reform"--meaning some combination of an amnesty plus some border-securing ("enforcement") measures--begins this week. It will be portrayed in the MSM as a debate between rational bipartisan problem solvers and retrograde bigots. But it's not that easy! Here are six questions to think about:
3:33 AM 01/25/2013
"People born in Mexico are people too!" That was Matt Yglesias' answer to my argument that "uncontrolled unskilled immigration can prevent Americans who do basic work from earning the minimum necessary for equal dignity." Yglesias notes that even uncontrolled immigration helps Mexicans, who can't be considered less deserving than Americans. This is a not-uncommon counter to anyone who makes the leftish wage-boosting argument for immigration control: why should our nation-state and its citizens be the "correct unit of normative evaluation"? What are you, some kind of selfish chauvinist?
8:15 PM 01/24/2013
Obama's EMR-Land of Make-Believe: Another Alert Reader email on Obama's $19B push for electronic-medical-records--opening up a whole new category of unintended consequences: [Emphasis added]
12:20 AM 01/24/2013
Reporters and politicians have to make a fuss about Obama's inauguration address, which was a) not all that well delivered--forced energy--and b) not very grand--lots of bills Obama wants to pass, not much to orient Americans about where they fit at this particular moment in humanity's history--and c) not all that liberal, at least in the conventional big government/small government terms by which it's being measured. (A Democrat defends Social Security and Medicare? No! It's Obama unbound, I tell you.) But two lines in the speech struck me as right and noteworthy, because they make points that often get lost on the left as well as on the right:
3:30 AM 01/23/2013
I don't quite see why the Republicans' move to extend the debt ceiling for 3-months is the first "concession" of a party intimidated by the power of Obama's inaugural speech (as the NYT would have it). Didn't Boehner just get Obama to sign on to the sort of short term extension the President had previously opposed? Hadn't Obama wanted a permanent ceiling fix? ... Kind of clever of the GOPs to jiu-jitsu their bad press image into a legislative turnabout--the MSM was so used to calling them suicidal cliff-jumpers that when they seemed suddenly reasonable Obama couldn't be seen as stopping them. I used to call this the Falwell Maneuver--first you act crazy. Then when you stop acting crazy you get all sorts of praise and influence you'd never have gotten if you didn't act crazy in the first place--or, in this case, if the press hadn't played up the initial craziness for all it was worth. ...
2:51 PM 01/21/2013
Does Fox News now have an All-Amnesty lineup? Looks like it. Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly have now fallen in line behind World Citizen Rupert Murdoch's support of "sweeping, generous immigration reform," including a "path to citizenship." Karl Rove was always on board, of course.
5:51 AM 01/21/2013
More on the Fantasy Life of Journolists: After I posted an item about "wonkblogger" Ezra Klein's confident embrace of Obama's $19 billion push for electronic medical records, I received several emails from readers who know more than I do. The two excerpted below suggest I was wrong: The effect of the electronic records crusade hasn't been disappointing, with cost-savings failing to materialize. It's much worse than that.
4:03 AM 01/18/2013
The Education of Ezra Klein (and Barack Obama) continues: In 2007, Young Ezra Klein was full of enthusiasm about the cost-saving potential of electronic record keeping in the health industry. The failure to rapidly adopt this new technology was nothing less than an indictment of the American Way of Medicine:
12:18 AM 01/11/2013
It hurts to ask: [Note: See updates below; text has been changed as indicated] I was actually kind of shocked today when I went online to register to vote and had was asked to answer a race question--i.e. what was my "Ethnicity/Race"?--in order to finish before finishing the process. I would have thought race questions and voting registration don't mix. I get to vote whichever way I answer, right?
4:55 AM 01/09/2013
The Trojan Coin: Greg Sargent notices that top Republicans have been toning down the macho brinkmanship around the debt ceiling. Boehner says it's only “one point of leverage" for reducing spending. McConnell fudges too, going only so far as to say "there are some examples of leverage coming along, the debt ceiling is one of them ..."
3:40 PM 01/08/2013
Dept. of Fake Budget Sophistication: Speaker Boehner says that, in his recent budget negotiations with President Obama, the president told him "we don't have a spending problem." Instead, Obama said, the government has a "health care problem."
2:37 AM 01/07/2013
I'm not anti-Hagel, I'm anti-anti-anti-Hagel! Slate's Fred Kaplan, defending Chuck Hagel, writes:
3:29 AM 01/04/2013
Paul Krugman concedes that the deficit will be a problem, and that the deficit is created by costly entitlements:
2:45 AM 01/04/2013
Annals of corporatism, Part XXVII: It's one thing if a bank is too big to fail, so the government has to save it if it's in danger of going under. It's another if the bank is too big to be brought to justice, so the government can't even make it obey the laws while it goes about its immortal way. That seems to have been the case recently with HSBC.
3:27 AM 01/02/2013
It's all going according to plan: I got a lot of s**t for this 2001 column. I claim some vindication. By lowering tax rates in his first year in the White House, George W. Bush gave Democrats the chance to raise them again later to pay for the big program they wanted (universal health coverage) but that they weren't going to get out of a Republican president:
5:29 PM 12/31/2012
The New Class of 2012--Young, gifted and ... : Investigative tweeting reveals there's been a gifting orgy underway for a month or two, as rich people rush take advantage of a $5 million tax free lifetime exemption that has been due to shrink to $1M in the new year. Whether or not the still-pending fiscal cliff preserves the $5 million limit, these gifts have been given and presumably won't be given back. That has to be sociologically significant: Lots of rich new young people who in previous generations would have had to wait many more decades to see that much money. I predict more indie films. ...
9:43 PM 12/27/2012
Move On! Before Howard Schultz's "Come Together" stunt, I'm reminded, there was CNBC's "Rise Above" stunt, also apparently an attempt to push for some sort of fiscal cliff Grand Bargain. And CNBC's sister network, MSNBC, has its own "Lean Forward" slogan, of course. Can you Rise Above and Lean Forward and Come Together at the same time? I'll look it up in the kama sutra of corporate smarm--but I think it's probably impossible, ideologically if not anatomically, because "Lean Forward" means "no" on some fiscal cliff comings-together (like Simpson-Bowles).' Maybe if you Lead from Behind (as Katie Scarlet suggested). ...
1:18 PM 12/26/2012
"Room for smarm in your latte?" Isn't there something creepy about Starbucks' CEO Howard Schultz having [in Politico's words] "asked his Washington-area employees to write 'Come Together' on each customer cup today, tomorrow and Friday, as a gesture to urge leaders to resolve the fiscal cliff"? Did Schultz take a poll of his employees--sorry, "partners," he calls them--before ordering pressuring asking them to join in this lobbying effort? What if he were, say, the CEO of Chick-fil-A and he "asked" his "partners" to write "Preserve the Family" on the outside of cups and containers?
