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Quote of the Day: "I Have to Thank Obamacare for Saving My Life"

by Kelle08Lrfcb Posted on March 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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From Kathy Bentzoni of Slatington, Pennsylvania, who signed up for Obamacare after giving up her “useless” old coverage because it was too expensive and denied all her claims. A few weeks ago, knowing she could afford it, she went to the ER complaining about numbness in her fingers:

Where would I be without Obamacare? ER, 3 units of blood, multiple tests in the hospital and a 5-day inpatient stay without insurance? Probably dead.

I have to thank Obamacare for saving my life.

Bentzoni would have been treated in the ER regardless of her insurance status. Without insurance, though, she might not have gone. Or she might have waited too long. But on March 1, knowing that it wouldn’t bankrupt her, she went in time to avoid the worst. And thanks to Obamacare, she can afford the ongoing care she’ll need to treat her rare blood disorder.

This is from a piece at CNN highlighting five Obamacare success stories. More like this, please.

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Quote of the Day: "I Have to Thank Obamacare for Saving My Life"

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The British Economy Is Not a Poster Child for Austerity

by CarmeloUBYX Posted on March 12, 2014

Mother Jones

Keith Humphreys notes that economic growth over the past year has been similar in Britain and the United States even though the two countries adopted very different responses to the Great Recession:

But don’t expect the similar levels of growth in the two countries to shake many people’s faith in their economic views. Most of the “slim government” crowd will argue that Britain didn’t cut enough (or that the U.S. growth isn’t real) and that’s why the U.K. hasn’t left the U.S. in the dust. Most increased government spending supporters will see proof that the stimulus wasn’t big enough (or that the U.K. growth isn’t real) because if it had been U.S. growth would be dwarfing that of the sceptred isle.

Many people seem to have stable preferences about whether they want government bigger or smaller. They will point to current economic conditions as the reason for why their preferences should prevail, but their preferences do not change when those putatively justifying economic conditions fade away. Neither are most people fazed when the government spending policies they support (as well as those that they oppose) deliver different results than they expected. Motivated reason is such a force in this particular policy area that rather than arguing over what current economic conditions particularly require, debaters are probably better off cutting to the chase and arguing directly about the real issue: Disagreement about how big or small we want the government to be.

I don’t think this is fair. If you want to compare Britain and the US, you have to look at their entire growth trajectory since the start of the recession. The chart on the right is taken from OECD numbers, so it’s an apples-to-apples comparison. And really, there is no comparison. As of 2012 (the most recent figures available from the OECD) Britain’s GDP was still 3 percent below its 2007 level. By contrast, US GDP was 4 percent above its 2007 level.

We can argue all day long about what caused this divergence, but I think the raw data is fairly unequivocal. Whatever the reason, the US economy really did suffer less and recover more robustly than the British economy.

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The British Economy Is Not a Poster Child for Austerity

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President Obama Takes on Overtime Rules

by MicaelaL71 Posted on March 12, 2014

Mother Jones

From the New York Times:

President Obama this week will seek to force American businesses to pay more overtime to millions of workers, the latest move by his administration to confront corporations that have had soaring profits even as wages have stagnated….Mr. Obama’s decision to use his executive authority to change the nation’s overtime rules is likely to be seen as a challenge to Republicans in Congress, who have already blocked most of the president’s economic agenda and have said they intend to fight his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25.

This is obviously just the latest in Obama’s long series of Constitution-crushing moves that flout the law and turn the president into a despot-in-chief, gleefully kneecapping Congress and — wait. What’s this?

In 2004, business groups persuaded President George W. Bush’s administration to allow them greater latitude on exempting salaried white-collar workers from overtime pay, even as organized labor objected….Mr. Obama’s authority to act comes from his ability as president to revise the rules that carry out the Fair Labor Standards Act, which Congress originally passed in 1938. Mr. Bush and previous presidents used similar tactics at times to work around opponents in Congress.

Oh. So he’s just doing the same stuff that every other president has done. Sorry about that. You may go about your business.

For what it’s worth, this gets to the heart of my impatience with all the right-wing hysteria about how Obama is shredding the Constitution and turning himself into a modern-day Napoleon. I’m not unpersuadable on the general point that Obama’s executive orders sometimes go too far. But so far no one has provided any evidence that Obama has done anything more than any other modern president. They all issue executive orders, and Obama has actually issued fewer than most. They all urge the federal bureaucracy to reinterpret regulations in liberal or conservative directions. They all appoint agency heads with mandates to push the rulemaking process in agreeable directions. And they all get taken to court over this stuff and sometimes get their hats handed to them.

Is Obama opening up whole new vistas in executive overreach? I don’t see it, and I don’t even see anyone making the case seriously. You can’t just run down a laundry list of executive actions you happen to dislike. You need to take a genuinely evenhanded look at the past 30 or 40 years of this stuff and make an argument that Obama is doing something unique. Until you do that, you’re just playing dumb partisan games.

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President Obama Takes on Overtime Rules

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The Mystery of the Disappearing Malaysian Plane Deepens Even Further

by AlysaHeiman Posted on March 11, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest strangeness surrounding the disappearance of that Malaysian airliner:

As a search continued Tuesday for a Malaysian airliner that mysteriously disappeared, Malaysian military officials said radar data showed it inexplicably turned around and headed toward the Malacca Strait, hundreds of miles off its scheduled flight path, news agencies and Malaysian media reported.

….Search teams from 10 nations had initially focused their efforts mainly east of the peninsula….A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed that the plane changed course and said it was believed to be flying low, the Associated Press reported.

It is, of course, mysterious that the plane veered off course and turned west an hour after takeoff. But that’s not the real puzzle. The plane disappeared on Saturday. If the Malaysian military tracked it turning west into the Malacca Strait in real time, how is it that it took them three days to bother telling anyone about this? That seems damn peculiar even if things were just generally fubared at the time. Here’s another account:

The Malaysian air force chief did not say what kind of signals the military had tracked. But his remarks raised questions about whether the military had noticed the plane as it flew across the country and about when it informed civilian authorities.

According to the general’s account, the last sign of the plane was recorded at 2:40 a.m., and the aircraft was then near Pulau Perak, an island more than 100 miles off the western shore of the Malaysian peninsula. That assertion stunned aviation experts as well as officials in China, who had been told again and again that the authorities lost contact with the plane more than an hour earlier, when it was on course over the Gulf of Thailand, east of the peninsula. But the new account seemed to fit with the decision on Monday, previously unexplained, to expand the search area to include waters west of the peninsula.

And yet another:

It is unclear why the west coast contact, if correct, was not made public until now. Asked on Monday why crews were searching the strait, the country’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters: “There are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can’t.”

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

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The Mystery of the Disappearing Malaysian Plane Deepens Even Further

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Short-Term Unemployment Is In Pretty Good Shape. Long-Term Unemployment Continues To Be a Catastrophe.

by PennyChilton Posted on March 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Via Zachary Goldfarb, here’s a chart from the 2014 Economic Report of the President. It shows unemployment rates of various durations, and I’ve redrawn it a bit to scale everything to 100 in 2007. That gives you a clearer idea of what’s going on. As you can see, short-term unemployment levels are nearly back to their 2007 levels and continuing to drop. Long-term unemployment, by contrast, is still three times its 2007 level.

For all practical purposes, long-term unemployment is now practically our entire unemployment problem.

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Short-Term Unemployment Is In Pretty Good Shape. Long-Term Unemployment Continues To Be a Catastrophe.

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No, University Students Should Not Be Forced to Have Facebook Accounts

by Chana6228ztgwm Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Thoreau attended a teaching conference this weekend. The keynote speaker had some things to say about communicating with the kids these days:

One small observation: The guy was insisting that we need to move all of our digital communication with students away from email and course management systems (Blackboard, Moodle, etc.) and instead communicate with students entirely via Facebook, posting assignment links there. I shall refrain from speculating on what sorts of stocks are in his retirement portfolio. Instead, I will note that while he was standing up there saying “Look, I’m old, you’re old, we’re all old, so we need to get with the times or become obsolete, now move your class to Facebook already!”, the Kids These Days are actually becoming less interested in Facebook. You could say that he proved his own point about faculty being old and out of touch, except he’s an administrator in his day job. So he actually proved that administrators are out of touch.

I am completely out of touch with both kids and universities, plus I’m an old fogey. And if you really want to know the truth, I’m not sure why university professors need to communicate with their students digitally at all. Don’t they still meet a couple of times a week in meatspace, like we used to when I was a lad? Can’t assignments and office hours and so forth be sufficiently communicated during class time?

But fine. I get it. We all communicate digitally these days, so university professors need to do it too. But you know what? University students actually do know how to use email. Sure, they might consider it something that’s mainly used for sending messages to grandma and grandpa, but they all know how to use it. And it has the virtue of being universal, extremely flexible, and supporting embedded links to any old thing you want. Students who plan to find jobs after graduation should probably know how to use it.

But my real point is this: If I were a student, I’d be pissed if I were actually forced to get a Facebook account in order to communicate with a professor. Maybe I don’t like or trust Facebook. And what if my other professors all have different favored ways of communicating? Am I forced to get a Tumblr account and a Pinterest account and a Google+ account and a Twitter account? That would be annoying as hell. Why should any of those things be required merely to be a student? Email is free, easy to use, and isn’t a vehicle for creating more Silicon Valley zillionaires. Any student who can’t be bothered to use it has way bigger problems than having to endure a slightly fogeyish professor.

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No, University Students Should Not Be Forced to Have Facebook Accounts

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Europeans Unhappy Over High American Capital Standards

by Chadwick15O Posted on March 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Fed has adopted rules that require foreign banks operating in the US to maintain the same capital standards as US banks. German bankers are unhappy about this:

In comments prepared for a speech in Berlin Monday, Andreas Dombret said that recent U.S. regulatory initiatives, “such as the enhanced standards for bank holding companies and foreign banking organizations, worry me. They seem to contradict the need for international cooperation.”

….The Fed recently approved new rules that force the largest international banks operating in America to establish U.S.-based “intermediate holding companies,” which will be subject to the same capital and liquidity requirements as domestic banks….European bankers have sharply criticized the move. “This is a considerable competitive handicap for European banks, as their U.S. competitors aren’t subject to any equivalent requirements in the EU,” said Michael Kemmer, head of the Association of German Banks last month.

Well, in that case, I recommend that the EU raise its capital standards and then subject American banks to it. Instead, last month they decided to ease leverage standards. I guess they’ve already forgotten what things looked like back in 2010. In case you have too, the chart on the right tells the story.

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Europeans Unhappy Over High American Capital Standards

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A Cool But Splendid Spring in the Northeast

by Myrna Posted on April 26, 2013

A short walk on a beautiful spring day. View original:   A Cool But Splendid Spring in the Northeast Related ArticlesStudy Charts 2,000 Years of Continental Climate ChangesSustaining Cities on a Crowding PlanetA Photographer’s Focus Shifts from Suffering to Serenity

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A Cool But Splendid Spring in the Northeast

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A Photographer’s Focus Shifts from Suffering to Serenity

by Myrna Posted on April 22, 2013

A photographer whose career has focused on suffering turns to serenity. Link: A Photographer’s Focus Shifts from Suffering to Serenity Related ArticlesAn Earth Day Thought: Litter MattersArctic Nations Seek Common Management of Fishing as Open Water SpreadsBasketball Giant Keeps Pressing China on Rhinos and Ivory

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A Photographer’s Focus Shifts from Suffering to Serenity

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