Category: America

Obama: undoing the death spiral

Going into today’s election, even if there is a massive jerk of the electoral knee and all the wackos — witches, Aqua Buddhists, whatever — get elected tonight, I’m grateful for the last two years under Obama.

Not because he’s lived up to his hype. The second coming of Jesus couldn’t have lived up to the expectations placed on his shoulders. But because he’s the only politician in a generation to have looked at our current problems–rising costs to employers, burdens on the individual, impossible budgetary challenges to state and local governments–and have the courage to confront some of the real causes rather than just bemoaning the effects.

I’m talking about health care reform. Spiraling health care costs are used by systems dynamics textbooks as classic examples of reinforcing feedback loops, where over time the cost of coverage rises higher and higher in an accelerating fashion. Sterman’s book says that this explains the failure of the so-called “medigap” coverage plans that covered the difference between what Medicare would pay and the actual cost of health care plans:

…In the late 1980s… underwriters had to raise premiums, including the premiums for medigap and Medex. In response, some of the elderly were forced to drop their medigap coverage. Others found they could get lower rates with other carriers or by signing up for plans offering fewer benefits or which capped benefits for items such as prescriptions. However, only the healthiest seniors were eligible for those other, cheaper plans. The sickest of the elderly…those with so-called pre-existing conditions…were not eligible for less expensive coverage or HMOs and had no choice but to stay with medigap…. As medigap losses mounted, premiums grew…[forcing] still more of the comparatively healthy elderly to opt out of medigap… Those remaining with the plan were, on average, sicker and costlier, forcing premiums up further. (Sterman, 176)

What Sterman describes in the context of a case study from the 1980s and 1990s is what is technically called a death spiral–a case where market failures (the inability of the market to provide coverage at reasonable costs) resulted in the destruction of all the health plans that were there to meet that coverage (“by 1997 only Medex remained.”) The same sort of death spiral was in effect for the broader market, with secondary effects that included precipitous increases in the cost of health care coverage for businesses and governments, with no market force in site to stop it.

Obama’s health care plan put together a set of measures to ensure that the size of the pool remained stable, including eliminating the pre-existing coverage denial that caused seniors to flee their medigap plans in the first place. There are certainly flaws in the plan, but by and large it is the first serious attempt to get the insurance market under control and reverse some of the insane cost spiral that affects every American business and every American.

Did the Republicans in Congress attempt to propose a credible counter policy to address the crisis? Did they hell. They trotted out lying rhetoric about “death panels” and demonstrated the shortest path to Godwin’s Law.

So tonight when reactionary commentators are cheering about the rolling back of progressive initiatives, think of this: at least the progressives, for all their flaws, saw with clear eyes a real threat to America’s competitiveness and tried to fix it.

Happy birthday, Mr. Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was born 267 years ago, on April 13, 1743. Seventy-six years later he would lay the cornerstone at the University of Virginia.

I’ll have a few more thoughts later about Mr. Jefferson, UVA, and Founder’s Day, but for now two thoughts from the man himself:

Determine never to be idle…It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.

Vadala follow-up: untangling the issues

It’s been an interesting few days. While I was tied up at work, home, and a class, a lot of debate raged about my open letter to Peter Vadala, both here and where it was replicated on Facebook. (Side note: the major difference between this blog and Facebook was that here a bunch of total strangers were arguing theology with me and each other, where on Facebook it was all my friends. Vive le network socíale.)

Part of the debate was spurred by the abruptness of the letter, in which I reacted to a complex situation in a brief and simple way. As a result, I simultaneously accused Vadala of uncharity and was myself highly uncharitable.

But part of it is that it’s a complex situation. In the comments thread around the post on Facebook (you have to be my friend there to see the link), we discussed employment law, courtesy, theology, gay marriage, prejudice against homosexuality generally, free speech and the heckler’s veto, the Great Commission of Christianity, Biblical interpretation, queer deportment, and behavior in a pluralistic society. On this blog, there was some name calling and a lot of Scripture verses, which were somewhat to the point.

So many angles. Where to begin? I think, perhaps, with an acknowledgment that my knee-jerk response to a perceived injustice overlooked a lot of complexity.

I still feel that MassResistance’s use of Vadala’s firing to protest gay marriage is, as the Tin Man has put it, completely beside the point. This discussion would have come up without Massachusetts legalizing gay marriage–Vadala would have told the manager how much he disapproved of homosexuality regardless. But my response lacked, ironically enough, a certain charity. Perhaps I should have tried to remove the beam in my eye first.

The central question is still unanswered: what did I mean when I accused Vadala of a lack of charity? What do I mean when I acknowledge my own lack? I’m not talking about tax deductions, but the Christian concept of unconditional love for others, or caritas as it’s expressed in the Latin.

Caritas is one of the core virtues; not accidentally, the liturgical poem “Ubi Caritas” states that “where there is charity and love there is God.” The Greek translation agapē may be closer to the mark, describing God’s response to man through the gift of his Son. I like Thomas Jay Oord’s (uncited) quotation in the Wikipedia article: “an intentional response to promote well-being when responding to that which has generated ill-being.”

So let’s break it down: was the manager charitable in (allegedly) continuing to talk about her upcoming wedding after noting that it made Vadala uncomfortable? No.

Did Vadala show charity by telling her that he thought homosexuality was wrong? Depends–he may have thought he was witnessing to her, but it was certainly not promoting well-being to pour disapproval on her love for her partner.

Did the manager show charity by reporting him to HR? Probably not. We don’t have the context to know whether she wanted or expected him to be fired. (But he was certainly at this point in violation of his employment agreement; see Tin Man’s assessment above.)

Did Vadala and MassResistance show charity by using Vadala’s case to sow fear about gay marriage laws? I’d argue not; they responded to ill-being by trying to use it to generate more ill-being.

Did I show charity in the open letter? No. I kneejerked, almost never a charitable move.

Right now the only charity has been with my friends who have helped turn my kneejerk into a serious discussion, for which I’m grateful.

But, and let me return one last time to my point about this whole thing: the use by MassResistance of Vadala’s faith-based objections to bludgeon the happiness of others is an act of supreme uncharity, and unbecoming to their cause.

Open letter to Peter Vadala

Please also see the follow-up to this post.

I was watching the evening news tonight, something I do rarely, when my attention was caught by a local item about a man named Peter Vadala being fired from his job because he “expressed his opinions” about gay marriage.

The story went on to clarify: a coworker mentioned that she was getting married to another woman, he apparently told her at length how wrong he thought gay marriage was. She complained to HR and he got the sack. The termination letter was then described, in which the company essentially said, you’re welcome to your beliefs but don’t use them to make other people uncomfortable in the workplace. Now he’s on MassResistance.org telling people in other states that if their state legalizes gay marriage, they too could be fired.

The real lesson of Peter Vadala, though, is that if you can’t keep from using your beliefs as a bludgeon, you can be fired. And rightfully so.

Here’s the letter I wrote to him through MassResistance:

I’m sorry for Peter Vedala that he hasn’t learned an important professional lesson: don’t impose your beliefs on others.

I’m also sorry that he hasn’t learned about Christian charity.

I was further sorry to see him digging himself in further in continuing to claim that he is being persecuted for his faith. If I were his manager, I would have terminated him in a heartbeat for creating a hostile work environment, and I would have had cause.

Eight years ago today…

Tragedy:

…Forget about everything else. Here’s the story on washingtonpost.com.

Dave Winer has a good weblog of news stories as they come in. Use your common sense to sort through news and rumors. Don’t trust anything that isn’t linked.

The context: I had already awakened and written a short blog post, and was at work in the library at the MIT Sloan school, before I started seeing the headlines on Yahoo.

Note that the Washington Post story I linked to is no longer available. I didn’t link directly to Dave’s story, but his homepage is still there, of course, and his archives have the stream of September 11 news as it happened. Most of the news sites were slammed, but the blogs kept running.

Eight years on. Different leadership, different perspectives on how to keep us secure.

Osama Bin Laden is still at large.

Doug Ketcham is still missed.

We are still here.

(Also see, from 2002: One Year and Further thoughts; from 2003: Remembering and moving on; from 2008, Number Three on Flight Eleven).

Open letter to President Obama on copyright treaties and “national security”

I just used the Contact form on whitehouse.gov to send the following to President Obama and am reposting it here. Please reach out to the White House with your own concerns on this matter.

Dear Mr. Obama:

As a supporter, I was surprised to see that Carmen Suro-Bredie, chief FOIA officer in the White House’s Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, rejected a FOIA request for the text of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement by claiming that the proposed treaty was a “properly classified national security secret.”

My concern, as copyright extensions continue to eat away at the public domain, taking value from the public, is that worldwide negotiations about the future of copyright are being held in utter secrecy without any public input–without the public even being told what’s under consideration.

For an administration that pledged transparency and a reversal of your predecessor’s policy of putting things under the seal of “national security” to avoid scrutiny, this is upsetting and unbecoming. Why is this treaty considered a “national security secret”? Surely this would be a good opportunity to practice some of the transparency we were promised.

Sincerely
Tim Jarrett

I’m a little more optimistic than some of the BoingBoing commenters that this can be corrected.

Bobby Jindal is Kenneth the Page

The funniest meme to come out of Tuesday’s very serious speech by President Obama was the chorus of voices who noticed how much Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, who delivered the GOP response, sounded like Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock. A Facebook group helped amplify the chorus of voices asking for a furtherance of the meme. And Jimmy Fallon obliged, spinning up Jack McBrayer, who plays Kenneth, to provide a response to the response to the response:

We are down the rabbit hole.

The meltdown: Where we are, where are we going

There’s a combination of feelings I’ve had over the past months as we work our way through the meltdown and resulting bailout of the banking system and the overall economy. Nausea and dread are pretty high up there; anticipation, wondering when the next shoe is going to drop; puzzlement.

For me the big one is the last one. I’ve got an MBA from a quantitative program, albeit with a focus in marketing rather than finance, and I’ve been having trouble finding a perspective that concisely explains what is going on, much less being able to get enough information that I can explain it to anyone else.

To that end, this interview with Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) on CSPAN was helpful (hat tip to Dave Winer for tweeting the interview). I’ve started it where he begins to explain what actually happened on September 18, when we were hours away from all the funds vanishing out of the banking system via an electronic run on the bank:

So that’s how we got to where we are. The question is, where’s the bottom?

I see conflicting evidence points. Bankruptcies and foreclosures abound, for sure, and there are people who are hungry. But there are still venture deals happening (albeit with existing portfolio companies) and companies are still hiring. So what’s going on? Has the meltdown not trickled all the way down, or are there simply a lot of firms that were less vulnerable thanks to their debt position that are going to ride this out?

A change is gonna come

I drove a historic route this morning on the way to work. Between Arlington Heights and Lexington runs part of Paul Revere’s route, where he famously rode through the countryside warning the people that the British were coming. I followed the route to Lexington Green, where stands a statue commemorating what happened next.

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It’s not a statue of Paul Revere. It’s a statue of an unknown minuteman, standing at the entrance to the green where the citizens of Lexington stood up to the British regulars and helped to begin our fight for the liberty to decide our own fate.

Today we celebrate a historic moment, the election of our first black President. There’s so much he stands for–our ability to transcend past griefs, our turning our back on mediocrity and division and selecting someone who can lead us through our troubles. But the Lexington Green has a word to say about today as well:

It’s not just about the leader and the message, though without the right leader and the right message nothing will happen. It’s about what happens next, about individuals taking up the call and the charge and standing up to make a change. I haven’t felt much of that about our country in the last little bit, but I feel it today.

Putting it in perspective

I don’t have the energy or time to write the summary of how I feel about the election, except to note that others have already done a pretty good job of summarizing for me.

From a campaign strategy perspective, 2008 will be discussed for many years, but a few things I found interesting in looking at what worked this time around are below:

Outperforming past Democratic candidates: Obama versus Kerry and Gore – War Room – Salon.com. By the numbers, it’s an impressive performance, but it’s more impressive if you visualize it, as one poster in a thread on Politico.com did:

the red states are states in which obama did worse than kerry
The red states are states in which Obama did worse than Kerry.

The red states are the states where Obama did worse than Kerry. That’s a pretty good illustration of the heart of social conservatism in the US.

That aforementioned thread suggests that there was some interesting gamesmanship going on in the end to bring the McCain campaign so deep into Pennsylvania, a state that it ultimately lost by a double digit margin.

Interesting that even after a blowout, there’s pressure from the media saying Obama needs to move to the center.

Both McCain and Obama’s campaign systems were hacked and compromised, and Palin took runaround money meant to buy three suits for the convention and bought enormous quantities of clothes for her family and herself, including some items that have apparently been lost.

Threats to Obama, as monitored by the Secret Service, were directly correlated to Palin’s feral rallies.

Fired Up, Ready to Go

I voted this morning at around 8:25 am. I was number 325 at my precinct; a line about 100 people long had been there at 7 am, so I was catching things at a brief resting point. There was a PTA bake sale on the way out. It was a traditional end to a most untraditional election.

This has been the most amazing presidential election I can remember. I followed 2004 closely but wasn’t too plugged into it–went into the general election behind Kerry but was never a huge fan. As I drove cross country the week of the Democratic National Convention listening to podcasted speeches on my iPod, the one that impressed me most was Barack Obama’s, and I didn’t know who he was then. I think we all do now.

Now we’ll see what happens. I’m “fired up, ready to go” but I’m also nervous as hell. It’s been too long a road and there have already been too many notes about dirty tricks for me to relax now. But we knew it would be a long road and I’m ready for a long night tonight if necessary.

There are things I can think of to pass the time–like a little online competition to see who guesses the electoral college split–but I don’t want to jinx the outcome. So for now, to work, and we wait.

And watch the early returns. By all indications this will be a huge turnout election, and it’s already breaking some precedents–like Obama becoming the first Democrat to win in Dixville Notch, NH since 1968.

By the way–when did they stop handing out “I voted” stickers?

Worth reposting: an open letter to American social conservatives

I don’t often repost entire blog posts, but this needs to be disseminated widely. Thanks to Estaminet for saying what I wanted to say. Take a look at this and spread it to your friends and family:

estaminet: an open letter to american social conservatives.

Please stop.

Please stop saying that Barack Obama is Muslim. He’s not. He, and his family, are faithful Christians, and have demonstrated that in word and deed. (And even if he were Muslim, that shouldn’t be a strike against him.)

Please stop saying that Barack Obama is an “Arab.” He’s an American, or he wouldn’t be qualified to run for President.

Please stop saying that Barack Obama seeks to destroy Israel. He doesn’t. He, like every other sane-minded person in this crazy world, wants to see an end to violence in the Middle East. In that vision, he supports Israel’s sovreignty.

Please stop saying that Barack Obama is the antichrist. First of all, the Revelation of John was written in a literary code, and no one can say for sure what the high-flung, apocalyptic rhetoric of that book really means. Second, one of the main points of the book is that, if and when the end of the world comes, we won’t know it’s coming. People have been looking for signs for ages now — since the book was written. You’re using the Bible to fit your own fears and prejudices, and that’s not right.

Please stop saying that, if Barack Obama is elected President, he’ll make everyone in the country do X, Y, and Z. Since when has any President ever been able to make Americans do something? (Not counting the draft for a minute — let’s focus on the so-called “family” issues.) No one will force you to marry someone of the same gender, no one will force you to have an abortion, and no one will force your children to be communist transvestite Phish roadies or whatever. You and your children will have as much ability to intelligently decide your lives’ paths for yourselves as you ever did. If other people in America have the freedom to live their lives as they see fit (which is, after all, what America’s always been all about), the country will be a better place.

Please stop being afraid of people who are different from you, and thinking that, if Barack Obama is elected President, that “the blacks will take over.” (Seriously. I’ve read that you’ve said that. I’ll look up the source later.) Everyone’s afraid, in some way, of everyone else. Let’s try talking to each other, and treating each other as people. And, by the way, things are going to change in this country’s race relations no matter who’s elected.

Please stop objectifying Sarah Palin. Seriously. And yes, you so are. I’ve spent too much time denigrating her myself, in a mean-spirited way. I’ll stop being so mean, if you’ll stop fetishizing her.

Please, please, please stop being so afraid. Your anger and fear is scaring me. It makes me afraid for the future of this country, no matter who wins the election. My own anger and fear scares me, too. Can we both stop being afraid? Can we work together?

The fifty state strategy in action

A piece in the Las Vegas Sun about Howard Dean caught my attention. After the “Dean Scream” got played into the ground by the media, Dean has largely been ignored by the popular press, but I think his actions at the DNC have been substantial in positioning the Democrats in 2008. And it’s instructive to take a look at the actual speech which preceded his “scream”:

Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we’re going to South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico, and we’re going to California and Texas and New York … And we’re going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan, and then we’re going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! Yeah!

I linked to electoral poll results for each of the states Dean called out. It’s interesting to see that while many red states have stayed red, Arizona, North Dakota, and Michigan are all clearly in play, while New Mexico has moved solidly into the “safe Democratic” column. And geez, look what’s happened in Virginia and North Carolina.

I think that the overplaying of the Dean Scream may have been one of the biggest injustices ever done to a presidential candidate by the media, but in the long run, maybe the party is better off for having him in the internal role that he’s excelled at.

The really interesting question, raised by Kos this weekend, is: who will the right find to rebuild the party? Who will play Howard Dean for the GOP?

Should Massachussetts abolish the state income tax?

The endgame of the 2008 election season is interesting in a few ways. First, I find it interesting that Obama’s numbers go way up after people get to see him in action (e.g. during debates), and start to edge back down when robocalls and other personal attacks start to hit. In particular, it’s interesting to compare the projected electoral map from the beginning of the week to today, when Florida becomes a toss-up state again, as well as seeing the effect of ebbing Obama support in West Virginia and New Hampshire (and a gain in South Dakota).

But of more interest to me at the moment is a local question: what if Massachusetts abolished its state income tax? What’s interesting to me is not the question itself, which as I wrote yesterday is an idiotic response to crisis (and the New York Times agrees), but rather how loud the voices are about the question. The question isn’t drawing the same urgent public outcry as the effort to get the legislature to put marriage to a referendum, but it’s a pretty loud outcry nonetheless. And it makes me wonder: what’s really going on? Does being a social conservative in a state like Massachussetts just get more and more frustrating until one feels compelled to hold the recipients of critical government services hostage to get one’s demands met? I sometimes think that if I were conservative here, I’d feel effectively disenfranchised and thus would be inclined to grand gestures.

Nevertheless, there are quite a few people I’ve heard from who think it would be a good idea because it would make the legislature “pay attention” to their concerns about waste. To which I reply: there are more constructive ways to pay attention, and more constructive ways to reform. Specifically, I urge anyone who’s thinking about voting Yes on Question 1 to try making the cuts yourself first, with the Boston Globe’s Massachusetts Budget Game Calculator. The brilliant thing that you learn as you go through the budget item by item is just how limited the options are, and just how many challenges are in your way.

And there are challenges, because the budget is non-linear. Reducing spending in some areas leads to reduced state revenue and federal grants, making the job that much harder. Here’s an example: cutting 25% from the $32.2 billion state budget across the board (a chainsaw of a budget cut, if you will) nominally removes $8 billion in expenditures but only closes the budget gap by $4.9 billion, thanks to losses in federal funds and inability to get revenue. In fact, even a 50% cut across the board still leaves a $2.5 billion deficit.

The irony is that we’re already seeing big cuts in state government, thanks to the market meltdown, and we’ll see more. So even with a nationwide progressive sweep on November 4th (and that’s an unlikely scenario), the state is going to have to be fiscally conservative to make it through the coming recession. And that’s without a yes vote on tax abolition. Proponents of the abolition of the tax claim it will make the state a more attractive place to live and work, but the massive hatchet of Question 1 could ruin us.