One of the great things about the internet is that it helps expose the myth of the "liberal media" by opening things up for actual liberals, who often say reasonably smart things and don't even seem to Hate America all that much.

Anyway, Atrios: "My marker for Obama was whether he'd get a health care bill with a public option. He didn't."

And Reich: "Obama's health bill is a very conservative piece of legislation, building on a Republican rather than a New Deal foundation...We will not return to the New Deal or the Great Society, but nor will we continue to wallow in the increasingly obsolete Reagan view that we don't need a strong and competent government."

Comments

[Bubba]

Look at how quickly the braying prattle begins!

Meanwhile, here's your health care "reform" by the numbers, with appropriate sources and links provided.

Here are several of my favorite numbers from this list:

"8 to 9 million-- Number of people predicted to lose their employer plan (CBO)

$11,543-- Employer incentive to drop coverage for a $30,000 a year worker with family [Tax subsidy in the exchange minus tax subsidy at work minus $2,000 fine] (IRET)

8.5 million-- Number of seniors and disabled people at risk of losing their Medicare Advantage plan (Medicare Chief Actuary)

3 million-- Additional people who will likely lose Medicare Advantage plan benefits (Medicare Chief Actuary)

111%-- Premium increase for individual insurance (AHIP)

54%-- Premium increase for individual insurance (BlueCross BlueShield)

106%-- Premium increase for individual insurance (Wellpoint)

$2,100-- Premium increase for the average family (CBO)"

[Andrew Brod]

Hee hee hee! Bubba at work is a thing to behold.

In fact, the CBO did not say that 8 to 9 million people would lose their employer health plans. What it said is that those people would find better deals through the insurance exchanges and would therefore choose to drop their employer plans. There's a big difference.

Keep in mind that Bubba's not citing CBO, but rather a conservative blogger who's misinterpreting a CBO assessment. His other "facts" are similarly slanted. But hey, at least he's not advocating armed insurrection.

[Bubba]

"Keep in mind that Bubba's not citing CBO, but rather a conservative blogger who's misinterpreting a CBO assessment."

Keep in mind that Brod does not possess anywhere near the credentials necessary to be considered in Goodman's league, particularly as it pertains to Goodman's area of expertise.

Wwhen evaluating Brod's comment, Keep in mind this excerpt from the CBO report:

"Between 8 million and 9 million other people who would be covered
by an employment-based plan under current law would not have an
offer of such coverage under the proposal."

Let's compare that to Goodman's point, as quoted above:

"8 to 9 million-- Number of people predicted to lose their employer plan (CBO)"

I've already anticipated his rationale, and it's a typical nit-picking type of distraction from the point we've come to expect from people like him..

[justcorbly]

Reich's analysis is accurate. This is legislation Nixon could have supported. That the GOP and conservatives are apoplectic shows how far to the extreme right they've slipped since the 1970's.

Reich notes that Americans distrust government. Distrusting government, however, is not the same as expecting government to fail in every endeavour, or holding that government should endeavour to do nothing.

Meanwhile, conservatives, I think, have reached the point where this basic tenet of their faith (and faith it is) has become so vital for them that they are prepared to make government incompetent and untrustworthy lest that faith be shaken.

It's also worth noting that American distrust of government also extends to most of the other large institutions that dominate our lives. People who would have us find someone other than the government to trust need to identify who that might be.

[bubba]

Greg Mankiw:

"How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes need to rise to pay for his vision of government?"

Via The corner.

[bubba]

Here's the Mannkiw link

Here's the excerpt from the Bennett link:

"Let’s be clear about one thing: On Saturday, the president said 'this is a middle of the road bill.' It is not.

The National Journal aggregation of polls has a 7 percent national opposition deficit (50 percent oppose, 43 percent support). Not one Republican — not Olympia Snowe, not Sue Collins, not Tom Coburn, and not Jim Inhofe — is supporting this.

And the president absolutely ruined his approval ratings on this: Gallup now has 47 percent of the American people approving of his presidency, 47 percent opposing; for two days last week, he had more disapproving than approving of him (47 to 46). Last night’s vote still had 34 Democrats voting against it, which means that more Democrats joined Republican opposition than did Republicans join Democrats in support. By definition, this is not middle of the road."

[sean coon]

I laughed pretty hard last night when one of the gop speakers waxed poetic about the evil 'elites' in washington and how washington can't be trusted.

These people do realize that their resumes are just as elite and that they are career politicians working out of washington... right?

That was rhetorical of course. Drama queens, the whole lot.

[John Burns]

Hmm. who was it that said this? "They've seen me make decisions, they've seen me under trying times, they've seen me weep, they've seen me laugh, they've seen me hug. And they know who I am, and I believe they're comfortable with the fact that they know I'm not going to shift principles or shift positions based upon polls and focus groups." —

[justcorbly]

I think I'm gonna follow Bubba's example and start linking to L. Ron Hubbard quotes to prove Scientology is right. Or maybe Velikovsy to prove the Solar System operates like a pool table.

[Bubba]

You don't need to link to anyone to prove that you are not capable of a credible response to the logic and common sense of Mankiw's points, corbs.

As is the case with economics, you have many times demonstrated your alternately clued reality about those qualities. It's one of the constant things we can rely upon here, and for that, you have my thanks.

[Andrew Brod]

Bubba's right that we should read what Greg Mankiw says. Sure enough, Mankiw has doubts about the fiscal projections made for the health-reform bill. But he also acknowledges the claims and values of the other side. He doesn't refer to the bill as a "monstrosity," as Bubba has done at least once.

So if we're quoting Mankiw, let's quote this: "I can see arguments on both sides. Life is full of tradeoffs, and so most issues strike me as involving shades of grey rather than being black and white. As a result, I find it hard to envision the people I disagree with as demons."

Just like Bubba!

And: "I like to think of the big tradeoff [in economics] as being between community and liberty. From this perspective, the health reform bill offers more community (all Americans get health insurance, regulated by a centralized authority) and less liberty (insurance mandates, higher taxes). Once again, regardless of whether you are more communitarian or libertarian, a reasonable person should be able to understand the opposite vantagepoint."

Just like Bubba!

[sean coon]

Haha. Bubba is totally a shades of gray guy. Dare I say post-modern?

[Andrew Brod]

FWIW, I didn't print out Mankiw's quote because I agree with his characterization of the tradeoff, especially as it relates to higher taxes, because...

1) The CBO scored the bill as reducing the federal deficit over 10 years;

2) The bill's potential for reducing the deficit beyond 10 years is even greater; and

3) The CBO's is prevented from costing out untried behavioral mechanisms. So if a provision of a bill has the potential to cut costs over time by, say, altering the incentives of health-insurance buyers, the CBO cannot take that into account. The result is that the CBO has overstated the cost of every major health-care bill it's analyzed over the last few decades.

I reproduced Mankiw's remarks to show that he's a decent guy, and that disagreement doesn't have to be disagreeable.

[bubba]

Ah yes, Brod: Ever the BS artist:

"1) The CBO scored the bill as reducing the federal deficit over 10 years;

2) The bill's potential for reducing the deficit beyond 10 years is even greater...."

What Brod doesn't say is that CBO can only score the bill based on the assumptions given,six years of benefits for 10 years of taxes and Medicare cuts

What he also neglects to mention to mention is that tCBO saaid the "reconciliation" fixes add to the deficit, and increase the costs dramatically.

Why, Brod? Do you get some sort of perverse pleasure not telling the truth?

And then he splooges all over himself trying to deflect attention away from what Mankiw, his academic better, said:

"How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes need to rise to pay for his vision of government?"

Speaking of BS, please PLEASE, no one squeeze Coon's head!

[Andrew Brod]

Mankiw is most certainly my "academic better." But if that's the criterion we're going to use, then Krugman is Mankiw's academic better. I don't see a Nobel on Mankiw's shelf. Shall we talk about what Krugman thinks about the long-term fiscal implications of healthcare reform? By Bubba's reasoning, Krugman's views trump Mankiw's.

In addition, Mankiw notes that his Harvard colleague, David Cutler, sees important cost-control features in the reform bill. Cutler is a health economist and hence is Mankiw's academic better on matters of health economics.

[Andrew Brod]

Here are a few others, 40 of the top health and public-finance economists around, including such health-economics stars as Aaron, Cutler, Gruber, and Reinhardt.

[bubba]

In other words, Brod has no reply to the information provided by CBO to Paul Ryan, which provide all the evidence we need about the real cost of "reform', and Brod has no answer for Mankiw's question:

"How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes need to rise to pay for his vision of government?"

It's understandable why Brod doesn't want to address the question.

[Andrew Brod]

I already answered that question. I said I think the premise of Mankiw's question is wrong. Then Bubba alluded to the fact that Mankiw's a Harvard economist and I'm not, and so I replied by naming (directly and indirectly) 42 high-profile economists who believe that the health bill contains cost controls and will lead to deficit reduction.

And as anyone who engages in "deep thought" knows, 42 is a very important number.

[Andrew Brod]

Damn! I just realized that I double-counted David Cutler. Okay, so I'm one short of the answer to Everything.

[Andrew Brod]

I've been asked by someone about 42.

[bubba]

"Then Bubba alluded to the fact that Mankiw's a Harvard economist and I'm not, and so I replied by naming (directly and indirectly) 42 high-profile economists who believe that the health bill contains cost controls and will lead to deficit reduction."

You lso said the former Enron advisor Paul Krugman's views should trump Mankiw's, because of the Nobel Prize! WAY too funny, particularly in considerationof things like this:

"New York Times columnist Paul Krugman says he believes the United States needs a 'mega-Watergate' scandal to uncover a far-reaching right-wing conspiracy, going back forty years, to gain control of the U.S. government and roll back civil rights...

....Krugman described the conspiracy as 'the coalition between the malefactors of great wealth and the religious right.' He offered no further details about who, precisely, is in the conspiracy but said that substantial chunks of the media are part of this same movement.'

'It's a movement that has been building,' Krugman told the audience. 'The one thing I think that you really have to say is that people on the left — the position formerly known as the center — people like myself have been asleep for a long time. We just didn't take it seriously. We sat through all the Clinton scandals and said oh, you know, there's probably some funny stuff going on there [and] didn't understand the extent to which this movement was being built.'"

....and then we have further Krugman Conspiracy Theory withthis:

"Nice paraphrasing, Paul. Goebbels would be proud. He actually was referring to LBJ’s economic policies, but since the c
urrent Speaker of the House wants to turn this into a civil rights issue, I can see why all opponents are racists in his mind. The editor even notes this fact at the bottom of the column."

Krugman makes corbs sound like a sensible moderate by comparison.

As well we know, Krugman is a clown, a shameless political hack who long ago lost any academic and intellectual integrity he may have possessed.

As Don Boudreaux commented:

"I was attracted to economics for a reason quite the opposite of the one that appealed to Mr. Krugman, namely, because it helps explain how incalculably complex and productive social orders emerge from billions of individual actions, where no one of these actions is meant to achieve anything more than improvement in the welfare of the individual actor.

This type of economics – associated most famously with Adam Smith – teaches that it is hubris of the most extreme sort to imagine that problems can be solved by pushing buttons. Social-engineer wannabes such as Mr. Krugman might mean well, but they are dangerous; they suffer from what another Nobel laureate economist, F.A. Hayek, called 'the fatal conceit.'"

But our boy Andy Brod (among other Usual Suspects) looks up to him. Maybe even wants to grow up to be just like him.

Go figure.

[Andrew Brod]

Of course it's laughable for the conservative blogger Bubba cites in this post (does he really think these guys are persuasive?) to get het up about the button-pushing quotation. As if conservatives haven't been pushing their own buttons for years. The conservative/libertarian fantasy is that only the evil liberals "push buttons" and engage in social engineering. Pot and kettle, dude.

That Bubba's mischaracterized both Krugman and economics is, I suppose, unsurprising. But he's right about one thing. I wouldn't mind growing up to be like Krugman. He's my academic better, isn't he?

It's worth noting that before Bubba took this post in his own direction (and I followed), the original point was liberal unhappiness with the just-passed reform bill. I presume the right can't accept that, because it implies that the bill is more moderate than they want anyone to know. Here's an excellent illustration (scroll down for the graph). The figures are from late 2009, but the top-line opposition to the bill has actually narrowed since then.

[Andrew Brod]

By the way, I think Hayek is great. He taught us much about economics and economies. "The Road to Serfdom" is a classic, in my view, and it's on my bookshelf as I type this. The problem with guys like Bubba is that they cherry-pick from the economists they know they agree with and ignore all the others. The fact is that our understanding of economics would be worse if not for the writings of both Keynes and Hayek. But for single-minded folk, there is only One True Path.

[Bubba]

Andy aspires to get him some of that fatal conceit that his hero possesses.

Has you mom bought you any of those cool Krugman Method pajamas yet, Andy?

You know the kind.....the ones that have so many holes in them they don't even cover your ass, which is convenient when you have a little accident every time you get so full of it, you can't contain it?

[bubba]

Andy's hero strikes again:

"If Krugman knew anything about history, he would know that his fabrication made no sense, since Republicans supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act more heavily than Democrats. But Krugman is both too ignorant to be aware of that well-known fact, and too lazy to look it up. To all appearances, he hasn't spent more than 30 minutes on a column in years. Presumably the Times justifies keeping him on the payroll with the comforting reflection that he isn't quite as mean-spirited as Frank Rich."

[Andrew Brod]

Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Yes, let's villify Krugman for quoting the Washington Post. The cad! Of course the K-man's larger point, that the Republicans used fear-mongering to oppose the healthcare-reform bill, is still valid. Having the right Gingrich quotation would have meant a slightly different column, to be sure, but one with the same basic point.

I'm also amused by the Republican fixation on the voting for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As though that has any relevance for 2010. Yes, Republicans were much more supportive of civil rights in 1964. No question about it. 82% of Republican Senators and 80% of Republican House members voted for the bill, as opposed to the Democrats' 69% and 61%.

But what does this really tell us? That Republicans used to support civil rights. Just as they used to support cap and trade (hell, they invented it!). Just as they used to support healthcare reform, including bills virtually identical to the one that just passed. The 2010 edition of the GOP is very different than the 1964 edition, and reminding us again and again about the Civil Rights Act drives this home.

Who were those Democrats opposing the 1964 bill? Southern Democrats, who are now mostly Republicans!

[Account Deleted]

Earlier in this thread we spoke about tradeoffs.

I was reminded of a wise man who once said that any nation that would trade a little liberty for a little security deserves neither and will lose both.

[bubba]

in his haste to run his mouth, Little Lord Andy failed to comprehend what Hinderaker actually said about the quote.

Laugh it up pal.....You're just as intellectually lazy and academically wrong as your hero.

The only difference is you got tossed off the payroll at the N&R, while Krugman still manages to hold his post at the Great Sinking Ship of the Dead Tree Media

Try again, son.

[John Burns]

When Hinderacker wins a nobel prize in economics, he can talk. until then, he's just a lawyer in Minnesota who obviously does not have enough work to do.

[Andrew Brod]

Jeff, it was Ben Franklin: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." The qualifiers imply that it's up to us to differentiate the appropriate tradeoffs from the inappropriate ones.

[bubba]

"When Hinderacker wins a nobel prize in economics, he can talk....."

When Krugman stops being the political hack/buffoon that he is, starts making positive contributions to profession, and reacquires some academic and intellectual integrity, there will be less need to expose him for what he really is.

I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.