Real Violence in Iran Ongoing, Under Ayatollah Generalissimo Khamenei

UGLY 'SUPREME LEADER' USES LAW TO CRUSH THE SOUL OF THOSE YEARNING TO LOOSE THE GENERALISSIMO'S LEASH

Real violence continues in Iran.

• The war of words is amounting to nothing more than that, as the hardliners clearly have the upper hand in all elements of the struggle. Full arrest of the most popular political opposition is close or at hand and the State careens toward nuclear confrontation with the West, just as the Ayatollah Generalissimo so obviously wants...
  
• Students at University are ... having their lives ruined for ... protesting.
• The detestable cycle of intimidation, in service of the Big Lie, continues, as journalists are made the enemy of the state, rounded up and intimidated into ... service of the Big Lie.
  
• The show trials go on, a necessity for the judicial tyranny that is modern day Iran. They purge - that's what they know. The foreign service will lose some 40 people who voiced sympathy for protests, protesters, and protesting.
  
• Allegations of torture, death (some now confirmed) and rape in prison have been made by serious people, who were, of course, immediately arrested and all their documents, reportedly seized.

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Impatient on Healthcare

TIME ENOUGH

It seems to me that quite a few are impatient on healthcare and impatient with the White House.

Legislative change of this size isn't likely to come via a back-room deal and isn't going to happen in the space of four or eight weeks. It alarms me that Alexrod thinks this is the "ninth inning".

If one had to guess, it would be 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Afterall, 'health' is a fairly 'technical sale', so there has to be time spent for the details to get known and widely disseminated, and so forth.

BIDEN YOUR TIME

I like the idea of Joe Biden talking about the plan details, ahead of the President.

Bush did well with Cheney testing the waters with various messages and so forth, before he stepped in.

It's a clever way to protect the Legislator in Chief and fine-tune the approach, before the big guns are called out.

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Today's Young Conservatives

Young, fact-free, party tenting for Beck and Hannity:

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Why does George Will hate the troops?

...and I want to be the first indirectly to question his patriotism.

I mean honestly, expect to be done unto, as you do unto others. It's not as though we don't remember the Bush era, just because of an election last fall.

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Preserving an Important Distinction

AS writes, "Now [torture] is legitimate according to Charles Krauthammer ... if it saves merely one life."

Actually, the standard is somewhat different. CK's example, from which this is drawn, supports torture on the mere possibility of saving a life, not on actually saving a life.

To me, this is a subtle, epistemological distinction that has non-trivial moral implications.

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Compromise on Health Care: I am the 'middle'

TAX ON TRADE WITH LOW-WAGE COUNTRIES

One problem with the Dem 'negotiating' position is that they are not proposing their own compromises.

I have one, for the intractable Senator Grassley, finance committee.

Not only do we 'ship jobs overseas', but we force workers to face foreign, low-wage competition, so that companies do not want to pay benefits, at home, like health care, for American-based workers (why should they, if they can hire someone overseas who doesn't require it?).

To compromise, we can pay for the social net that global competition erases by levying a 'competitiveness tax' on low-cost countries. In most cases, the wages in these countries are so low that the process of 'globalization' will continue apace, despite even a medium-sized tax.

If the good Senator doesn't 'get that', perhaps we can help him along by eliminating the tariffs that protect his good state ... ? I mean, it's hard to entact such taxes; but, hey, in today's America, it's fashionable on the right to ignore the facts, so they may not even care or notice.

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Health Care in Civilized Countries

Here's a thought for Senator Joe Lieberman and his staffers: the U.K. enacted health care reform circa 1948, creating the NHS, in a financial mode that has more or less stood the test of time (i.e. the consumer tastes of the nation).

Reforms, according to my quick scan, were discussed as early as 1942 (Beveridge Report).

So, tell me, was Britain a wealthy country, at the end of the war? Did they choose to wait, until days of surplus or plenty to do what made sense to them?

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King George's Executioner

GOP LEADER PREPARED TO DECRY U.S. CONSTITUTION AS 'OUTRAGEOUS POLITICAL ACT'

After Cheney's latest FOX appearance on the weekend, it should be clear that Dick Cheney might well seem like Saddam Hussein at his trial, denying the authority of the judge and calling on witnesses to show him their National ID card.

He's a beacon to young conservatives, don't you think?

They can dust-up their resumes, with him as an example: "Position Wanted: Job so senior one can make no mistakes, but only have 'regrets' (usually paid for by others)."

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The Last Lion of the Senate

Ted Kennedy's life and work in the Senate, I hope, should be a lesson to its 'blue dogs' amok, that they will not be remembered by their countrymen, when they hold up progress.

Teddy was one of the few left who could 'take the floor'.

A few years ago he dusted-up the place on hate crimes, with an impassioned speech. Nothing you'd ever hear out of today's media-savvy, TV-conscious soundbiters. The bulk of that is not on youTube, but the introduction of the bill is:

Here is Kennedy, with words that seem prophetic given what we now know about how far King George "The Decider" was willing to go:

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The Economics of the New Healthcare

Paul Krugman says it's Switzerland, more or less, that's on offer. I understand the point.

Yet, under the new scheme, what keeps healthcare companies, profit maximizers, from hiking their prices?

Afterall, you see the proposal to drop inter-state regulations for insurance companies. So, could we end up with an American healthcare oligopoly? We dropped inter-state bank regs and got giant banks. How'd that work out? (I mean, will Bernanke's Fed drop a study comparing all the putative consumer cost savings of bank mega-mergers with the cost of the our current bank-oriented bailout, priced in trillions, now, in deficit and lost output?).

Compare also how telecom deregulation helped consumers, with fierce, beneficial price competition. Today's Comcast price of phone-internet-TV: $109/month. Today's FIOS price of phone-internet-TV: $109. Yes, that's right, there is no price competition at all going on, at least in my local market. (Out of pocket European costs are a fraction of that, so ...).

A THREE-PAYOR SYSTEM?

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Well, if everyone is forced to buy your insurance product, then it stands to reason you put all your profits into marketing, until you reach an oil-market like cartel power with just two-or-three other providers. Large companies will buy from the largest insurers - we wouldn't expect "IBM" to buy insurance from a new entrant to the market, with a low price. That behavior will hasten the path to consolidation, one could argue (unless large accounts are profitless for health insurers - I don't know). What's more, instead of paying for healthcare, consumers will be paying for ... insurance marketing. (!)

Maybe I'm wrong. Afterall, Switzerland does have many sellers of basic insurance.

But, they tier the market and charge based on 'individual risk' for all tiers, including the right to refuse insurance beyond the "basic sickness" contract. Put another way, there seems to still be a Swiss role for insurance companies to compete on how well they manage their risk pools.

Change needs to come, and these questions are not a clear indictment of HR3200.

Maybe it is a non-issue, because it is already an issue? For the small business, they already face significant oligopoly (someone should brief Kathleen Sibelius on just how little competition there is in this critical marketplace, one that everyone seems to target):

The five largest [insurance] carriers, when combined, represented three-quarters or more of the market in 19 of the 34 states supplying information, and they represented more than 90 percent in 7 of these states.

Better minds than mine, hopefully, have been in on designing what looks like a minimum standards health contract, that will pass for 'systemic reform'.

But, it would pay to have leading economists (and lawyers) give an idea of how they think insurance companies will respond to changes in their regulatory environment, of the kind proposed. At a minimum, it would be nice to know whether premiums really will come down in the near term, under the proposed give-get.

Last, if running an American health insurance oligopoly is the price to pay for universal care (10% of the total US healthcare bill is hundreds of billions), it would be nice to see that there is some thought to how that formulation actually drives administrative costs out of the system ...

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Secular Mullahs Among Us

Christopher Hitchens has provided great fun, skewering what he often calls the charlatans of the Christian faith, money grubbers who set themselves up in the worst possible ways. Dawkins isn't far behind.

But, keep an eye out for the secular mullahs, the secular charlatans, too.

They exist.

Look at this 'birther movement' closely. Have a look at how the regional Republican party is able to ... er, transcend fact-based analysis, on so many topics ('death panels', murderous immigrants stealing healthcare benefits, ...). They can even mobilize an army of 'believers', of quasi brown shirts, pretending to be independently motivated, concerned citizens at town hall meetings. (It wasn't just Roman emperors who paid for crowds, clearly).

There are plenty of secularists who are willing to exploit ignorance and superstitions. One doesn't have to single out the faith community or imply that it contrasts with a better world, one lead by 'secular reason'. It's plain that's an incomplete comparison, n'est pas?

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Give and Get: A Mandate For a Public Plan

HEALTHCARE REFORM, NOT INSURANCE REFORM

In the House Bill 3200, everyone will pay for healthcare. Those 'voluntarily without' will be taxed. The full power of the government will be used to collect money from them - you cannot discharge taxes or escape the taxman.

...if you are going to force people to have a plan - or to pay taxes if they do not - you should at least give them a high-quality, public, not-for-profit plan to choose,

It seems to me if you are going to force people to have a plan - or to pay taxes if they do not - you should at least give them a high-quality, public, not-for-profit plan to choose, even over their employer provided under-insurance plan. That's the real give-get.

Otherwise, you are just passing out big treats to the wealthy, who will no longer be subsidizing hospital care for the have-nots, and to the insurance companies, who will get a huge boost in enrollments, from the government mandate (as well as an implicit profitability guarantee from forced buyers).

If there are Senators, like Leiberman, who cannot stomach doing that, if one wants to 'start small' as Hillary once opined, but with reasonably big and far-reaching impact, then just start with dental. Offer up a public dental plan that everyone can opt into, re-directing their employer dollars, if they choose. The plan should refuse none and provide at least as good dental as the Senate gets, in terms of caps and co-pays.

The cards will fall in line after that.

Hey, a small, on-target start is better than a bad plan, I think.

The Democrats should be fighting for consumer choice, no matter how much some of them have forgotten. Something like what I've described would really put The People in charge of their healthcare.

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Bush Moves Beyond Dereliction of Duty

Someone needs to get Christie Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge in a room together.

For a long time, the worst charge that could be leveled against the Bush administration, including Rumsfeld, was dereliction of duty, for their lack of "A Plan for a Future Iraq". (Paid for in American lives, including the dereliction in Afghanistan, btw).

I doubt many seriously believe that Christie Todd's EPA was going to be allowed to shut down a good part of lower Manhattan. But she should talk to Tom Ridge and see if they can't have a confessional tour, given that Ridge is suggesting that the Administration was indeed interested in subverting the functions of government to political ends, in some of the worst possible frauds on the public.

They outsourced torture. They outsourced assassination, possibly.

And George the senior honestly thinks his son served or was serving honorably. The mind boggles.

Just as the National Security Archives are revealing what Nixon was doing to undermine Chile, perhaps someday we will also find out what Bush authorized for Venezuela.

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An Article 2 Army for a Vice President?

Was anybody surprised by this revelation, that a surrogate President might want a ... personal army?

...the Bush Administration, at the top, was conceptually clueless about how to wage a war against an organization like al-qaeda. And, their process of 'discovery' was so bad and so influenced by their GOP political ideology, that it took years, nearly a trillion dollars of debt-spending, and hundreds of American servicemen's lives for the leaders to clue in, let alone the havoc brought to non-Americans.

The framers of the constitution knew that checks and balances were ineffective, behind closed doors. A get-out-of-jail-free National Security 'secrecy blanket' and a 'classified budget' are as ripe for abuse as grapes for peeling.

The Democrats appear to have no comprehensive "liberal" strategy for national security issues of this type. It's a pity. They could find winnable electoral issues, I think.

Indeed, to some, team Obama's more-of-the-same is well off track.

Last, of course, we see that the Bush Administration, at the top, was conceptually clueless about how to wage a war against an organization like al-qaeda. And, their process of 'discovery' was so bad and so influenced by their GOP political ideology, that it took years, nearly a trillion dollars of debt-spending, and hundreds of American servicemen's lives for the leaders to clue in, let alone the havoc brought to non-Americans.

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Jobs, Jobs, Jobs

DEFINITION OF BI-PARTISANSHIP: INFLUENCE THE LEGISLATION, THEN DON'T VOTE FOR IT, AFTERALL

The regional Republican critique of the "stimulus" makes one laugh, even if CNN thinks it is newsworthy (you could print almost anything on Politico and they would cover it).

Still, as the polls show, you do not have to be right or truthful to be popular. Their disinformation machine is formidable, yes?

PARTY OF NO IDEAS AND BAD IDEAS

Remember when we were told (sold?) we would need tax cuts (except on gasoline...the Pigou Club never disbanded), because that was all that was available to be timely?

Well, more data is in that suggests that you cannot induce job creation through tax cuts, in the short term, either.

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Regarding Krugman's wingflapping, I have to say that it appears that his argument has already lost inside D.C. From afar, it looks like Geithner and the Congress have accepted a quasi-policy of hope, as did Japan. I believe this when I hear phrases like "we are past the peak of foreclosure activity". I have less confidence, today, that so much signals a floor to asset valutions ...

It's not we haven't learned from history. It's that there are forces interested in not having a dispositive test of what we learned in the historical record, like a stimulus without massive tax cuts, for instance, something purely demand-side.

What's more, we are political victims of our own stabilization. The political will to take the bold decisions necessary isn't there because we have unemployment insurance, this time around.

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Quote for the Day

The widest circulation print paper is hardly liberal-biased ...

All of this is par for the course; the WSJ editorial page has been like this for 35 years. Nonetheless, it got me wondering: what do these people really believe?

I mean, they’re not stupid — life would be a lot easier if they were. So they know they’re not telling the truth. But they obviously believe that their dishonesty serves a higher truth — one that is, in effect, told only to Inner Party members, while the Outer Party makes do with prolefeed.

The question is, what is that higher truth? What do these people really believe in?

-Paul Krugman

Uh, ... themselves?

On a less cynical note, the regional Republicans, today, are partly like 60s leftist radicals - they believe only in criticism. How else can one justify holding mutual exclusive beliefs, even allowing for temporization?

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Art for Life

AN ART-LIFE LINK BEYOND AESTHETICS

A topic, a perspective that I suspect Hugh Hewitt, for one, would never understand (or embrace, really).

If we [Iranians] attend the banquet of silence to which we have been invited [by the Iranian government], the result will not only be suffocation and loss of our voices, but also eternal shame for ignoring the bloody murder of Neda [Agha Soltan, the 27-year-old Iranian woman killed by thugs in Tehran, who has become an icon of the struggle]. I believe in what [Julius] Caesar said [in William Shakespeare’s play] that, “a coward dies a thousand times, but the valiant tastes death but once.” Hence, it is with hope for freedom and justice for all Iranians that I take this perilous step [of writing the note].

-Bahman Farmanara, Iranian movie director

Photos of the ballot fraud, unwittingly provided by State Run Media Lie, IRNA.

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