A simple (but long) explanation of Gamestop, RobinHood, Capitalism, and Socialism

First, let me say that capitalism isn't "less government" and socialism isn't "more government." But seeing as how many people are confused by that, I'm going to relate them to those concepts in a general way because for some people that will make the sides clearer.

Second, this is laid out in three parts.  The first indentation at the top is a description of what has happened so far. After that, without indentation are the answers to questions about socialism and capitalism. At the end are two indented parts, one for other considerations and the other for what will happen.

This is what happened.

Several institutional investors (hedge funds) placed large bets that GameStop, the company that sells computer and video games in malls, was going to fail.

GameStop, it should be said, made money last quarter. That doesn't mean that their business could continue forever, just that they weren't insolvent yet.

The bets that were placed on the failure of GameStop are called "shorting" the GameStop stock ($GME).  The bets were noticed by other investors, and so more bets were placed.

When this happens, people generally see the end coming and they try to sell their stock for the best price that they can get, which means that they sell their stock *NOW* before it goes down further.

Selling stock reduces the price of the stock, creating more rush to sell stock.  The stock would then go down further, and if it would go low enough, generally the company would be unable to get loans because they would be considered worthless on the markets, and they would have to declare bankruptcy.

However, in this case what happened was that Redditors from /r/WallStreetBets looked at the shorting of GameStop stock and decided that it was creating what might be called an upside-down bubble. GameStop *wasn't* dead yet, and so acting as a group of small investors, they went out and bought $GME.

Buying stock increases a stock price.  This countered the slide started by the shorting and was enough to increase the value of the GameStop stock.

So, here where I don't know if it was just the original /WallStreetBets folk or a second layer of people that I'm going to call the F*ckWallStreet people. They realized that if the $GME stock didn't go down, they hedge fund bets would lose, and they would lose their money.

So the F*ckWallStreet people doubled down on the $GME and the price went WAY up to at least 14,300% of what it originally was. 

Now, shorting is a bit different than a bet you'd have with your friends. Instead of being out just the money they laid out on the bet, if the stock price went UP above the original price of the stock, you OWE the difference on the increased price of the stock to the person you bet with. (Technically, you need to purchase the stock, so that means that this is driving the stock price higher as you fight with small investors for them).

That meant that at least one of the hedge funds, Melvin Capital, was bankrupted by the increase on the stock price.  There may be more by now.

And here's the thing about the psychology of the F*ckWallStreet people, their main motivation was that they wanted to fuck Wall Street (the institutional traders, basically). The name I chose was no coincidence, eh?

So they realized that they could really, really hurt some hedge funds, and so the strategy spread to a few other companies.  AMC movie theaters ($AMC), BlackBerry ($BB), Macy's ($M), Nokia ($NOK) and National Beverage ($FIZZ) have apparently also seen increases.

Ok, now if you invested at few hundred dollars on Monday, on Wednesday you could have tens of thousands of dollars, and the news was reporting on the "GameStop stock" thing. That news exposure actually increased the demand on GameStop stock by two groups, the loveable F*ckWallStreet group and people that wanted to make money (i.e. Latecomers).

Today is Thursday, and what happened is that retail (RE: small investor) trading platforms suspended the ability of users to *buy* $GME and other affected stocks.

The reason that RobinHood gave is that they were trying to "protect" their users from the bubble that was being created. This would be the Latecomers that were mentioned two paragraphs back, who were buying high priced GameStop stocks on the hope that it would go even higher.

But you'll notice, they still allowed users to *sell* GameStop and other affected stocks ("close their position" is the jargon they use). And when a stock is sold, the price goes down. So users could sell their stock, but only for *less* than what it was worth at Wednesday's high point.

So if all the small individual investors were only allowed to sell their stock, you should ask "Who was still allowed to buy?" Funny thing, the answer is institutional investors, like the hedge funds that desperately needed to drive down the price of the stocks that the individual investors were holding in order to cover their short positions.

Here's the thing though, the F*ckWallStreet people were never really in it to make money.  They didn't want to be "protected" from bubble losses, their whole point was to create a bubble that was going burst under Melvin Capital and other hedge funds. So when RobinHood and other platforms froze their ability to buy, they were actively protecting hedge funds from the F*ckWallStreet investors.

You might enjoy the irony in that: a company called RobinHood was protecting the rich from the poor(ish).

Knowingly driving down the price of a stock could also be called "stock price manipulation" so now there is at least one class action lawsuit (same link as last time) by the people affected by RobinHood closing down the ability of people to buy more $GME stock.

Lots of people are pissed, including politicans from both sides of the aisle. They have differing motives, but are coming to similar basic conclusions.  

First off, the left side you have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is pissed off about the manipulation of the stock price to hurt small investors, because until recently she probably wasn't rich enough to own stocks, and identifies with those small investors.

On the right side you have Ted Cruz, who is pissed off that the F*ckWallStreeters were stopped, probably because hedge funds give millions of dollars more to Democratic Party politicians and seeing them collapse is highly enjoyable for a Republican.

The politicians that you probably won't hear excoriating RobinHood et al., are people like Schumer (D, who got millions and millions of dollars from Wall Street), Pelosi (D, the same), McConnell (R, who suckled on the Wall Street teat too) and former Senator Kelly Loeffler (R, who is married to the head of the NYSE).

So, in the comments on Twitter, I see a lot of people arguing about FREE MARKET CAPITALISM and SOCIALISM and wondering which of those would have solved this.

Neither of those things works like that, but let's look at what people are actually asking.

So the first question is "Would a free market have helped?" and what they usually mean is "Wouldn't free trading of the stocks have helped?"

It certainly would have helped the users of the RobinHood App, who wanted to keep trading. But RobinHood App is a private company, and they are free to set the rules by which their users trade.  I'm sure there is some language in their user agreement that allows them to close down trading if they wish.

So what people that want a "free market solution" are actually asking for is to be free of the rules that the RobinHood App set, they want to take their ownership of stocks to a different platform and continue to buy and sell there.

Except, by asking for a free market, they don't seem to realize that RobinHood would still be able to set their own rules for use as a private company.  Additionally, in a free market, stock price manipulation wouldn't be illegal, so there would be no class action lawsuit through which they could seek redress.

The next question is "Would socialism have helped?" and what those people usually mean is, "Wouldn't increased regulation have helped?"

Maybe. Some kinds of regulations could have helped people get their money and stocks out of RobinHood and the other retail stock traders, but only if regulators had seen this coming (which I don't think anyone could have). Thankfully, at least the "don't fuck with stock prices" regulation was in effect so that users can sue the apps that they used that ended up screwing them.

The next question is "Would socialism have helped?" and what *these* people mean is, "Wouldn't socialism have helped?"

No. Socialism doesn't work like that. Stock markets like the NYSE would be incredibly different under any *remotely* socialist system. Under communism, any kind of stock exchange would be virtually impossible.

But here's the thing, we exist in a system that is mostly capitalist and partly socialist. Pure free market capitalism has never existed because it fucks everyone so quickly. "Pure" socialism, as it has been previously been attempted, still fucks up people, but slower.  Things could be better, but that means different regulations (maybe more, probably not less). That doesn't mean America is going to be more socialist or more libertarian. Being better means better politicians.

Next, there is an additional concern that I need to address that I feel is relevant to the story but I didn't want to include above.

One thing that has been talked about in a few places is the existence of high frequency trading (HFT), where a computer system buys and sells stocks based on algorithms in fractions of a second.

Apparently, RobinHood the app, was selling their user's trades to HFT companies, so that the high frequency traders could see the trades that users were making fractions of a second before RobinHood could make them.

This means that it wasn't just users that were making money on the stock increases that were occurring when they bought shares of $GME and other affected stocks, some institutional investors were making money buy buying stocks fractions of a second before the small investors.

And when you buy a stock the price goes up.

These HFT sales are, in my opinion, a kind of mirror to the other investors that sell a stock when they see an institution short a stock. What they are creating is "momentum," that is, more people follow along when one person does something. Maybe "person" is the wrong word there.  Maybe "actor" would be more precise since there are small traders, HFT computers, and big investment firms all involved.

Momentum is seen throughout this entire situation. Shorting creates momentum.  r/WallStreetBets created momentum.  The F*ckWallStreet people created more momentum. Then the Latecomers created momentum. When RobinHood and the other stopped their users from buying, they were meddling with momentum.

Momentum is a huge deal in stock trading. Any opinion on a financial news show is probably an attempt to create or increase momentum, and those networks are built around that.

It's also dangerous. The latecomers are probably going to lose thousands, maybe millions of dollars because they were following the momentum. Melvin Capital was effectively killed by momentum, created not only by the small investors but the HFT competitors that magnified what those small investors were doing.

I'm personally in favor of a trading tax, probably a cent or less per transaction. That would instantly kill the HFT. It would also make following along after other actors slightly less desirable, and so it might slightly reduce momentum in stock trading and decrease volatility overall.  I think that would be a good thing.  You might disagree.

Finally, what do I think is going to happen with this?

People are angry at RobinHood, and that's pretty reasonable. They did something to protect rich investment firms from their clients. This lawsuit is not good news for them.

On the other hand, they protected the big rich investment firms, and investment firms don't like it when they get hurt, so they might pull some strings in the background to help out RobinHood.  And maybe the SEC will just give RobinHood a slap on the wrist.

That would be really bad.  Not for RobinHood or the big rich investment firms directly, they'll probably be happy with an outcome where they take zero responsibility for screwing people. It would be really, really bad for confidence in the stock market, specifically the New York Stock Exchange, which is currently owned and operated by Intercontinental Exchange, a public company traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol $ICE. That's the company that Kelly Loeffler's husband started and runs.

Is anyone else smelling a market opportunity?

It seems like a stock exchange that guarantees that it treats the small individual investor equally to the larger institutional traders, perhaps by requiring institutional firms to abide by the same rules and restrictions as small investors and forbidding small investors to be locked out of opportunities like RobinHood did? Perhaps that forbids high frequency trading and has rules in place that limit volatility?

Maybe, and this is just spit-balling, the company running the exchange could institute rules that would limit the hedge funds that it trades from owning huge shares in it, unlike Intercontinental Exchange (NYSE $ICE).

Maybe that would also cause people to pressure their companies to switch their 401(k) and other institutional investments to this new, less risky and more fair stock exchange.

That would probably cause a massive dip in the stock price of a company that runs the NYSE.  Gee, they'd probably have to worry about a bankruptcy of their own then, eh?

Of course, I can't do this.  I don't have the billion dollars or experience required to establish a new stock exchange and marketing campaign by Monday, February 1st, 2021.  But if someone was inspired and wanted to run with it, I'd be happy to take a few million in options as payment for the idea.  I even have more suggestions, and a communications company that could advise.

Of course, it's not quite that simple. A more realistic prediction is that the pro-corporate politicians in our government will intervene somehow, and even though that will cause some sort of confidence crisis involving the NYSE, nothing will really change while small investors find themselves restricted by their retail stock brokerages, until eventually something else breaks. Who knows what that crisis will be, or what will happen then.

I think that's enough for an evening.  Let's see how things go, and how my predictions hold up.  Cheers.

The Libertarian's Minimum Wage

I was letting YouTube run for background noise and this started playing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BhcdVubtZ0

It's Sam Seder debating a Libertarian Professor Walter Block.  Even if this link is down, you can probably find it with a search of YouTube.

I got about half way through before I got so angry that I had to stop it.  For a professor (of Economics?  I have trouble believing that) he seems to have a really limited understanding of basic economics.

The Professor's argument is that a minimum wage of $7 per hour interferes with a free market of a boss hiring a worker paid at $6 per hour to work productively because the boss would be losing $1 per hour on the transaction.  When Sam countered that real world data doesn't demonstrate that, Professor Block makes an argument that there is a disconnect between the regulation and the eventual effect, his example is the automatic elevator taking over for the human elevator operator taking many years after the raise of the minimum wage from $0.40 to $0.70.

There's a massive glaring flaw in that argument that should have been obvious to absolutely any thinking person.  A boss wouldn't ever hire a worker at $6 per hour to generate $6 dollars of productivity.  It would be, for the boss, actually a loss, because there are external costs to the hiring of a person: insurance, infrastructure, utilities, rent, blah, blah, blah.  If those costs come up to $1 per hour, then the boss would need to hire that worker and pay them $6 per hour for $7 per hour of productivity to break even.

Again, that generally wouldn't happen because any real boss is trying to make money for the company and himself.  So a boss would go out and hire a worker for $6 dollars an hour, pay $1 for their external costs, and then try to get the greatest amount of productivity out of that worker because that gap between costs and productivity is where the profit comes from.

The Professor is also ignoring the more salient fact about wages and productivity that came up when I went to hear Eric Schmidt talk.  Wages and productivity are not necessarily related.  Since 1973, productivity has increased 73% while inflation-adjusted hourly wages have basically stagnated.  Schmidt also ignored that disconnect, although he later revised his statement to be specific to technical workers.

The current model of the economy isn't to pay someone $6 per hour, $1 per hour of costs, and make $1 of corporate profit.  It's to pay someone $6 per hour, $1 per hour of costs, and then make $4 per hour of corporate profit.

When the government raises the minimum wage by a dollar, to $7 an hour, the equation for the boss isn't becoming negative, it's thinning the margin of profit from $4 per hour to $3 dollars per hour, even if they don't pass those cost on to the consumer, which sometimes they do.

Also, aside from the Professor's evident ignorance of those clear facts, he's just a terrible, terrible communicator.  His inability to stick to the point, his whining about being interrupted, and his soliloquies for every answer are grating.  I doubt I could talk to him for very long just based on those issues. 

Using the internet to redo politics, again

You know one thing that the internet is really good at?  Accessing large databases from anywhere.  That's Google, Facebook, Twitter, and just about any message board in the world.  Those are massively huge databases, and those websites are pulling content out of them on the fly.  Often people are adding content, and it's filing that into the database and feeding it to your friends when they scroll down the Facebook wall in nearly real time.

There's a database that's really important to elections: voter data.  Especially the public voter data of registered voters that they can get from election districts which has a name, an age, a political party, an address, and maybe a phone number.  When you volunteer for a campaign you generally end up doing one of two things, both of them connected to that data.  The first is make phone calls to people to ask them for money, ask them to volunteer, or ask for their vote in the election.  The second is to go out on the street and actually knock on people's doors and ask them to come out to vote, called canvassing.

Those work. They show your neighbors that the candidates have dedicated people working for them, and it really sticks the name of the candidate in a percentage of people's heads, and going house-to-house gets a certain percentage of people out to vote.

But the way that that data is handled is a disaster.  For both previous presidential campaigns I made phone calls at least once.  Both times I was handed a sheaf of paper printouts with the names of the people that I needed to call, and I called down the list and marked a box with the responses.  The given responses were usually "no answer," "refused," "willing to volunteer," and "willing to donate."

Nearly immediately I ran into a ton of problems.  The first was "That's not me, I just got this phone number."  That's not a no answer, and it's not technically a "refused to answer" either.  It might mean that the number was listed wrong, it was changed to another person, or that the person is lying and doesn't want to talk to me.  But that doesn't mean that the person couldn't be contacted through another number or by email, or that the lying person wouldn't mind getting emails.

The second was "I was just called by the campaign five minutes ago" or "I've been called five times by the campaign today" and one caller actually said "If I get another phone call tonight from you I'm not going to vote for Obama."  You know why that was happening?   Because in the database that the Obama administration was keeping listed these people as "need to be contacted" and multiple call locations would just print out the top of the list.  At the end of the day, all that data needed to be put back in the system so that people could be marked as "contacted." That meant tons of confusion about who needed to be contacted, who had been contacted, and who didn't need to be contacted again, and another round of volunteers who had to input the data.

The third was, "I'd love to volunteer or donate . . ." As the person on the phone with them though, there was no way for me to take a donation over the phone.  You're not going to be having volunteers taking credit card information, and without access to their email address, there was no way to actually follow up with that specific individual to remind them to donate when they aren't on the phone.  Once you say "go to the website" then you have to hope that they will follow through on their own.  The same is true for volunteering, where I would often check the "willing to volunteer" box on the sheet of paper, but couldn't give them any up-to-date information on ways to volunteer in their area without asking them to go to the website on their own.

A secure xml database with a every person's basic information input (no credit card information) that volunteers could access directly could have solved all of those problems.  First, it would have been much easier to change between phone contact and email contact, and incorrect numbers could be marked without necessarily deleting the person entirely off the lists (you could even email them to check if they'd moved or changed phones).  Second, marking responses could be done directly to the database to make sure that people weren't called five times in a row.  Third, a system that allowed flags for different kinds of follow up would have made the lives of the campaign directors much easier by tracking those requests.

Let's say you have that information in a database already.  Perhaps you create an iPhone app that can access one or two records at a time.  The app could allow a volunteer to contact the next person on the list with one touch, and lock out the entry for 15 minutes so that it wouldn't pop up for anyone else.  At the end of the call, the app could present questions for the volunteer with buttons as simple as "Yes" and "No" that would allow the campaign to control the information gained, such as "already contacted," "needs follow-up," or create flags and messages that later volunteers could follow up on.  That information can flow directly into the database, or it can be sent to a trusted supervisor anywhere in the country to be reviewed before being input. 

The flags could be used to create lists of people that need assistance getting to the polls, or who want to volunteer.  If the person contacted speaks Spanish, it could be tagged for follow-up by a Spanish speaking volunteer.  The system could keep track of issues that voters care about and call scripts could add specific information based on what the system knows about the political views of a particular candidate.  All of this could basically function in real time. 

With the prevalence of smart phones, a similar system could be used by canvassers going door to door, getting information to the campaign as people are contacted.  You could even have multiple rounds of canvassers hit the same neighborhoods at the same time without fear that you would knock on the same door multiple times.

And having that better data would improve the analytics of the campaign by a thousand fold. How many people need follow up?  What kinds of questions are they asking the volunteers who are calling?  How many people in a given location need rides the day of the election?  Are certain canvassers getting better responses, and if so what are they doing to be more effective?  Are certain people better at talking to people on the phones?  And you can have records of which person contacted which other person and perhaps even have the same people following up. Imagine the experience of knowing that "Jackie from the Obama campaign" is the only person who will call you, and you can ask her questions and she'll get back to you if she doesn't know the answers.  She speaks your language, and can arrange a local ride to your specific polling place for you.

Let's go back to the watch party I mentioned in the previous post.  People might be uncomfortable inviting other people over for a watch party in their homes, but what if they know that campaign has all the information on those people, and it will usually be the same people coming to events every time?  It's the same concept as Uber, you have a trusted group of people whose information is on file getting electronically matched together to create a better experience for the host and for the participants. By building a community of people with the same views, you get them more involved in the process.

From the perspective of the volunteer, this system also makes so much more sense.  You can make calls from anywhere, at any time, for just a few minutes or a few hours.  You can canvass in your own neighborhood for 30 minutes after work instead of needing to take four hour shifts.  You can even reward the volunteers who canvass and do the most calls with campaign swag that they can show off in person.  Perhaps the best caller and the best canvasser in an area can get VIP passes to a candidate event when Obama is in the area, and get to shake hands and get a picture?

Supervisors could also review new input from anywhere, even while out canvassing themselves, or even across the country.  The system would allow people in Maine to help out people in Hawaii if Hawaii volunteers got overwhelmed.  Programmers could even create different user interfaces, as long as the architecture of the database was properly structured, analogous to the way that Facebook on a desktop computer is different than on a phone, or the way that Tweetdeck allows different access to twitter than the native app does.

Finally, this kind of system could be useful even more for down ticket races.  What if Jackie called you back for the midterms to ask you to vote?  Maybe even for your mayor or city council person?  By building relationships between volunteers and voters you could drastically impact local races.  You could print up direct mailers specific to individuals to keep them informed about their specific local elections, and the issues that they care most about.

This is the system that the Democratic Party needs to build to mobilize the next generation of political supporters.  The paper and pen canvassing and random calls make the party look disorganized and out of touch with modern technology.  The party will also be moving into step with the current culture of personalized information technology and using technology to connect local volunteers together toward common local, state, and national goals.

The Terrible Debate Event

Quick vignette, which is partially responsible for the idea in the next post.

When Barack Obama got elected the first time he used his website to gather millions of small donations and develop email lists full of donors and volunteers.  His fundraising was relatively spectacular, and Bernie Sanders is doing much the same thing this election cycle.

I was living in New York City during most of the 2008 election cycle and I didn't have a television and wanted to watch the debates.  Barack Obama's campaign had a system to find debate watching parties.  I had this image in my head of going into someone's house with two or three other people and watching the debates and eating Doritos, and maybe talking with some like minded people about politics.

Instead I ended up watching at a club just off 23rd St. & 5th Avenue.  I showed up and there was a line . . . and then the guy at the door told me there was a $40 cover to get in.  That was ridiculously expensive to me.  I was still looking for a job and burning through my savings living in Manhattan.  And then the woman behind him said something about how if I'd paid in the last few hours it might not have shown up on the printed list.

So I was like: Yeah, I did that.  They let me in.

I hate bars and nightclubs usually, but this was a bit more of a lounge.  Most bars are so loud that they give me headaches in moments, and usually so loud you can't actually hear the subtleties of the music anyway.  And this was after the cigarette ban in NYC, so it wasn't the stink of cigarettes but of perfume and aftershave that hit me like a brick wall.  It still felt like a terrible place to me and I hated it.

They had a TV.  A big one, but it seemed like the seats around it were all full, so I sat closer to the bar.  I can't remember exactly the exchange, but I think a server came by and when I said I didn't want to have a drink she said there was a one drink minimum, maybe a two drink minimum?  So I ordered a drink.  It was $25.

I'm pretty sure that no matter what the minimum was, I only had one drink, mostly because I don't think I could have had enough cash on me for two.  It was a terrible experience because even though it was a "watch party" it was still a lounge and so there was loud music in the background and I basically caught one word out of five off of the TV. 

I left immediately after the debate and that was the most expensive club experience I had while I lived in NYC.  It was also the only time I tried to use the Obama website to attend any kind of political function in New York or Boston.

Serious Politics

A liberal approaches an evangelical voter and asks: "If you had to choose between (a) outlawing abortion and seeing the number of abortions, especially unsafe abortions, go up, or (b) keeping abortion legal but seeing the number of abortions reduced overall, which would you choose?"

If you've ever actually tried to ask an evangelical Christian voter the answer to this, you know what the answer is.  It's (c): They want to outlaw abortions and see the number of abortions reduced overall.

This isn't the only question to which the answer is (c).  Fiscal conservative voters want taxes lowered and the national debt to go down.  Many voters want to pay less for schools and hire better teachers.  Law and order types want to reduce drug use and continue to spend money on enforcement only when treatment would work better.  The majority of Americans want to see healthcare costs go down but don't want to try any of the numerous systems that European countries have used to reduce their costs far below ours.  Certain parts of the right want to see Islam banned and religious freedom upheld at any cost.

I've seen so many people give these kinds of answers so many times, and I want to address it for what it is.  The answer (c) is the answer of wishful thinking.

The question itself is a serious one.  When someone offers a choice, (a) or (b), generally these choices are informed by evidence and research.  We know that unsafe abortions go up when the procedure is banned (we're even seeing that resurgence in parts of Texas right now).  We know that reducing taxes from current levels inflates the national debt.  We can see that all other countries pay less than Americans do right now for healthcare.  The question understands these connections and is asking for the priorities of the person being questioned.  Yes, we understand that you oppose abortion on moral grounds, but given the reality of the situation, would you prefer standing by your principles or accepting the lesser evil?

Whenever you get the answer (c) you know that you're dealing with someone who doesn't take politics seriously.  They're not willing to make real choices with consequences, so they deny that there is a choice at all.  To them, there are no correlations or causations between related things, there are only good things and bad things.  Abortion bad.  Lower taxes good.  National debt bad.  War good.  None of those decisions is allowed to have a consequence that isn't intended or even mildly detrimental.

These people have been around for years, but this year I think we're seeing a massive increase in them.  They're the current supporters of Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump isn't politically correct, but most of the time he isn't correct either.  He gives answer (c) constantly.  He wants a multi-billion dollar border wall and he will get Mexico to pay for it.  He'll be a complete jerk to other leaders and they will all respect him and capitulate to his demands.  Trump will cut taxes and balance the budget within a year and create the best economy the world has ever seen.  Trump will be sexist and racist and a bigot and he'll be the best possible president for everyone in the country.

None of those are serious positions.  I get why his positions are attractive: he wants his cake and to eat it too.  In a fantasy land, they sound lovely and magical.  But anyone who only gives (c) answers isn't a serious politician.  He may be in the lead and thus a "serious contender" for the nomination, but he's not a serious person.

The people that follow him are also not serious.  They may shout and (may) vote, but they're not seriously interested in making this country better.  They're not even willing to listen to the truth, much less hard truths.

You can tell just by listening to them talk.  They don't weigh positions.  They don't make hard choices.  They simply find something that sounds good and rally around it mindlessly without doing a basic check to tell if the proposal makes sense.

Conservatives, true ones anyway, aren't rallying around Trump.  They don't even understand him, even though they are partly to blame for him.  They're the ones that have been preaching the political prosperity gospel: believe in True Conservatism and God shall deliver, but that's because conservatives have the most serious of motives: winning.  They looked at the numbers and recognized that they were in trouble, and so pushed a narrative and a situation that would allow them to win despite demographics that were working against them.  Now they're overwhelmed by the voting population that they created, one that isn't happy to work with any conservative serious positions just like they won't work with any liberal serious positions.

I'm not saying that Trump supporters aren't dangerous.  They are.  They're seemingly willing to ignore any criticism and their chosen focus is definitely unhinged.  If he's elected, I think he would be a terrible President of the United States.

But there are two things that I think need to be recognized.  First, it's not Trump that created this group.  If anyone is ultimately responsible it's probably Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, but even they can't claim total credit.  Instead, it's this group that is creating the Trump candidacy and the popularity of Fox News.  The power is flowing upward from the choice (c) voters and is creating a space for a crazy person to stand on.

Second, everyone else, all of the reasonable people, need to recognize when they're dealing with choice (c) voters.  I don't think that talking to most of them will do much good (as per the adage "You can't reason someone out of something they weren't reasoned into") but instead of wasting time and energy, you have to accept that these people are real-life trolls and that attention only feeds them.  You can't rely on them to let you know that they're being crazy and irrational, you need to take that responsibility on yourself.  

Gay Marriage in New Mexico

Congratulations to my home state, New Mexico, for becoming the 17th and most recent state to allow gay marriage. 

Syria

I have a few comments to make about the current political situation in the U.S. regarding military action in Syria.  Right now that looks like it will be no military response, although obviously I can't know what will happen with any certainty in the future.

First, I do believe that sometimes "intervention" can make a positive difference, both to American security and to the well-being of the non-American civilian population (the Syrians, in this case).

Second, I think that there is a moral obligation to oppose the use of chemical and biological weapons. And nuclear and neutron weapons, and any other indiscriminate weapon that will likely kill civilians and fighters in an area at the same time.

Third, I think (albeit with very little clear evidence) that Assad used some sort of chemical weapon in Syria, on Syrian civilians including children.

However, I don't think there should be U.S. action taken in this instance.  I think we're going to have to sit and watch what happens.  That is not because we couldn't make a positive difference, not because we don't have a moral obligation, or because I don't think it happened.

The problem is with us.  The U.S. us, that is.  We screwed up publicly with Iraq, and the parallels between that situation and this one are pretty clear to everyone, to all of the other countries that are sitting around watching us.

At the level of countries and international politics, you only get one colossal error, one chance to cry wolf, before you lose the trust of those other countries.  That's supposed to be why international politics is supposed to be the big leagues and that the "stakes are so high."  You have to take your reputation seriously at this level because all countries know that the consequences for their actions are severe. This is as big and as bad as it gets, there is no larger stage to play and act upon.

Before I continue, I guess I also have to be clear that changing a president isn't like becoming a different "person" in the sense that countries are people.  I'm personifying here, but in my view history often personifies the actions of countries.  England was a colonial power.  Switzerland is famously neutral.  Japan attacked the U.S. at the beginning of WWII.  I could say that Queen Elizabeth I was behind British colonialism and that Admiral Yamamoto attacked Pearl Harbor but the personification of Switzerland as neutral goes way beyond a single leader (and possibly even a single government) so that's probably the best example of what I'm talking about: It isn't Bush that attacked Iraq and Obama that wants to attack Syria.  Instead, it's the United States that attacked Iraq and now wants to attack Syria.

And it's the U.S. that screwed up, the U.S. that put our reputation on the line, and the U.S. that messed that up, and now we (the U.S.) have to live with the consequences of our collective actions.

The U.S. reputation right now, at least from what I can see, is that we are quick to use poorly planned military force nearly unilaterally.  That "unilaterally" part is the most complicated and most important bit of that, since it can be argued that we acted with a willing coalition of international forces in Iraq.  I would argue that it doesn't matter to our reputation, because even though we asked for international support for Iraq, we asked the world to believe us and that was when we staked our international reputation on it.  They were doing us a favor, trusting us, with the expectation that we were taking their trust seriously.

Now we're saying, hey, look at this, this is a similar situation and we should go do something! But the rest of the world is looking at us, not trusting us because last time we lied.

And let me go back for a moment, not only did the United States lie, but we lied knowing that we were doing it in the biggest leagues.  How could we have taken our reputation so lightly?  The rest of the world looks at us and says "They knew what they were doing" and honestly I can't really argue with that.  The discussions happened before we invaded Iraq, the doubts were articulated but the warnings about what would happen to our reputation if we were wrong were wrong.

We did take our reputation lightly.  And people died in Iraq (Americans and Iraqis, and many others too).  And now, when we might be able to help Syria, we can't convince the others to come with us, and if we go alone then we will definitely be the country that acts unilaterally, and we'll be the country stockpiling more weapons than anyone else, and we'll be the people that didn't really think through our actions either.

If this were a town, what if there was one person that owned more than half the weapons, was well-known for being a hothead, and wanted to go kick in someone else's door even though he was wrong the last time he kicked in a door?  He'd be dangerous.  You wouldn't necessarily say so to his face because he's holding a couple of guns, but couldn't trust him.

And that's the situation we're in.  And it sucks but for Syria because I suspect a lot more people will die.  And it sucks for Barack Obama because I think he wants to help.  And is also sucks because if we're right this time then we won't have acted and we'll still get blamed for letting it happen.

The thing that we should do, as an adult country and with a responsible leadership, is try to act like the reasonable and rational personified country that we are.

So we need to watch and do nothing, and we need to clearly illustrate to everyone else that, "Yes, we were wrong before.  To acknowledge that we acted badly, and to show you that we can and should be trusted, we will wait for you to see that on this one we are correct.  We won't act alone, in someone else's house, and without the support of the community."

But we should talk about what is going on in Syria.  We need to communicate to the rest of the world that are engrossed in their own business that Syria is important too, and that they should care.  We need to convince them that we can't, (as a rhetorical town of personified countries in an overly extended metaphor) just let Syria hurt itself.  That it shouldn't be the U.S. doing the policing but everyone should work together to keep the world together (and at peace).

Here's the thing, reputations aren't more important than people.  If I was the president and I could save a million people, even if I knew I'd personally get thrown in jail and "United States" would be a cuss word for a century, I would probably do it.  But I wouldn't do it if my reputation (and my country's continuing reputation) could save hundreds of millions over that same century.

I think that it can.  I hope that it can.

And I think that what is happening in Syria is a tragedy, and that it is partially our fault that we can't do more to help them.  

Best Wishes

I sincerely hope that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and Scott Brown have long, healthy and happy lives, filled with family and friends and happy occasions that are too numerous to count.

I hope the same for Obama, Biden, and Warren, but that they also have long and successful careers after winning today's elections.

Best wishes to all.

Please Stop Lying

Look, we both know that you're lying to me.

I know why I support Barack Obama.  He's not a perfect President, but he's done a lot of good things during his time in office. When I weigh the positive things that he says he will do (and the positive things that he has done) against the points where I disagree with him I come out with a net positive.  He's a worthwhile person to vote for on his own merits, although I remain hopeful the Democrats will present even better  candidates in the future.

But I have absolutely no clue why you support Mitt Romney, and that's because you keep lying to me about it.

This isn't a politician or a political pundit problem, this is the problem that happens when you, as a Republican voter, try to explain to me why you support Willard Mitt Romney, especially after having supported George W. Bush.

You don't like East Coast ivory tower elitists?  Bush went to Yale.  Romney has two degrees from Harvard.  They both have rather advanced degrees in business too.  It seems like you're pretty comfortable with East Coast elitists, actually.

You want business experience?  You know that Bush's oil company eventually had to be shuttered and bought by family friends, right?  And both of them started in management because of their fancy educations, it's not like they worked their way to the top of a company through the sweat of their brow. And don't get me started on the multi-million dollar loans that Romney got from his father in order to found Bain.  He didn't inherit anything from his father, right.

"Someone that you can have a beer with?" That's bull.  Obama drinks beer.  Bush is an alcoholic and doesn't drink, Romney just doesn't drink for religious reasons.

A good Christian man?  Okay, just to point out that the only Protestant in the race for President or Vice-President this year is Obama, and that Mormonism is generally considered a cult by evangelical and fundamentalist Christians.

But remember when you Republicans said that we needed someone with military experience (which neither Romney nor Ryan has), a Washington outsider (which neither Romney nor Ryan are), someone that understands middle class values (please), and then attacked Kerry for being a flip-flopper (because consistency is key to winning conservative votes or something)?  All of those things are lies.  Obvious lies, because when Democrats put forth candidates that fill those qualifications, Republicans don't vote for them.

I'll grant you that Romney and Bush have had more business experience than Obama and Clinton have had (possibly combined . . . did Clinton run his own law firm? I don't think so.), although I'd be more than happy to argue the content of that experience with you.  Romney's experience is in capital investment, so are we going to stipulate that the experience that running the U.S. government requires right now is giving massive amounts of money to private corporations?  But you know what, Republicans also ran John McCain, a man with zero business experience and teamed him up with Sarah Palin, a woman with zero business experience.  So, you know, it's not even like Republicans have this single issue as a consistent thread through their candidates.

Altogether, the general comments about why you should vote for the Republican are transparent lies, because your criteria change from election to election.

I vote for the person that (1) can win and (2) best represents my opinions on national issues.  That's just me, not every Democrat in the country, but it's better than the 50 million people in this country that are going to vote for a Republican candidate for reasons that they're not actually going to talk about truthfully.

And after all that, all the lies about why Bush/Romney/McCain are just the kind of guy that you want in the White House, then there are all the things that the specific accusations that you make about Obama that are patently false.

He's a communist or a socialist?  Hardly.  He's a darn good capitalist with minimal regulatory impulses. Oil drilling permits are up, banks are still allowed to speculate with invested money still, and Obamacare was a massive boon to private insurers.

Speaking of Obamacare, he's not going to sentence your grandmother to death panels, doctors don't hate him, and repealing Obamacare would cost America billions of dollars.  Heck, even the "he's cutting $700 billion dollars from medicare" thing is a transparent lie under even cursory examination.

He doesn't believe in America? Okay, aside from the ludicrous nature of accusing the President of a country of "not believing" in the country that he leads, every action he takes as President and speech he gives just underlines the lie in this.  A President that didn't believe in America wouldn't have necessarily have fought for American jobs in the car companies.

He apologizes for America?  No, he really hasn't and anytime anyone asks for actual video footage of these world-wide apology tours that he's rumored to have done, the answer is "Well he has!" Gods, what terrific lies.

He's bribing voters with government handouts . . . ?  That argument would make a lot more sense if the Bush taxcuts hadn't involved sending out checks, poor white people on government assistance didn't vote for Republicans in such high numbers, and the number of government workers wasn't falling under Obama.

Obama is so weak that terrorists are going being emboldened to attack the USA?  Again, that's bull.  He killed Osama bin Laden, he's the one that conducted operations in Libya, he's not the one that couldn't even declare a date for leaving the countries he invaded because he didn't know what he was doing.

I'm not even going to touch the insanity that is birtherism or the claims that he's a Muslim.  I'm just going to pretend that you don't believe that stuff for a minute.

He's a divider not a uniter?  He bent over backward to work on Republican proposals and plans, and couldn't even get votes on their own legislative agendas.  They just quit working to prevent him from having any achievements for even the smallest things.

He's attacking freedom?  Okay, first, the party of George W. Bush is making that claim, really?  How can you mantain a straight face. Secondly, how exactly is he rolling back, attacking, or otherwise limiting freedom?  A reminder that Obama's not proposing a constitutional amendment to limit your ability to form relationships, nor your ability to control medical decisions regarding your own body.  Those are Republican proposals (so much for the limited nature of the federal government, eh?).

You get what all of this stuff has in common, right?  All of the personal attacks on Obama, all of the party attacks on the Democratic Party, and all of the bizarre policy attacks?

They're all f*cking lies.

None of this bullshit is true at all.  Seriously, look through the list.  None of those positions or accusations are true.

So here's what I'm asking you to do.  Please, just stop lying to me.  In the meantime though, while you continue to spew this filth all over yourselves and your reputations, I'm just going to have to stand back and try my best to ignore you.

Maybe, when you've stopped lying about every conceivable political stance that you and your party hold I'll reconsider.

Racism

Sometimes the thing that scares me the most about racism is how abjectly people deny racism. And then they ten times more strongly deny their own racism.

If you can't see the issue of race when an unarmed black teenager is shot after being chased by a neighborhood watch, then you are denying the existence of racism.

If you can't see the issue of race when saying that making a character black instead of white makes her death less emotional, you are denying your own racism.

I'm racist sometimes. It sucks to say that, but it's true. And instead of trying to deny that, I try to realize when it happens so that I can correct myself.

Were I to pretend to not be racist though, I would have to actively pretend not to care when I slipped up or white-washed a character (I thought Cinna was white. I also think that Lenny Kravitz did a great job in the role). And that's the most harmful bit about all the racism that's floating around right now. If you're denying it, you're actively making racism worse, not better.

Gingrich in the lead

I have just a quick response to Newt Gingrich's win in South Carolina:

You can't vote for Gingrich and claim that you aren't defending outright corruption. This isn't a guy who can plausibly deny wrongdoing, and no matter what you think of Obama, you can't say that he's been investigated and found guilty of corruption like Gingrich has.

I can't really believe that Republicans have voted for him, and it's really kind of sad. I feel really sorry for people that support him, because I just don't understand them.

There has been a question that's been swirling around in my head recently about Gingrich, but it's on a more personal matter:

"Mr. Gingrich, as the candidate of the family values party and as a faithful Catholic, who do you think more exemplifies the family values that you want to see most Americans follow, you or President Obama."

He'd have to reject the premise of the question, but it would still be fun to ask.

The American Downgrade

What a boring subject to lead off returning after a year absence, but here it is, a post on America's credit rating.

The justification that S&P seems to give for the reduction in credit rating from AAA+ to AA+ of the United States seems to hinge on three main factors:

1. Government instability
2. The possibility of default in the future
3. Possible insolvency issues by not increasing revenues.

It's "the right" as a unified group that are arguing explicitly against new tax revenue (3) and the Tea Party/Michelle Bachmann groups that were against raising the debt ceiling on principal (2). Dems and the left are definitely a party to 1 though, and so they have some responsibility there. But really, if you want to assign blame for this (and really, let's) then it's pretty obvious that one side owns a much, much larger share of this fiasco than the other.

That's why it's hilarious when Michelle Bachmann tries to say that President Obama has "destroyed the credit rating of the United States." Really, she thinks that? Lol.

This is, pretty explicitly, what everyone said the consequences of the default would look like, and she's the one that had no problem arguing for going further than we did.

Prop 8 Overturned

Congrats to Californians of all color, race, creed and sexual orientation. Today, a travesty of justice was overturned.

Gay people can and should be able to marry the people that they love: and it doesn't affect the rights of straight people to do the same thing.

If you're looking for good analysis, I recommend Towleroad's coverage, and their page of reactions as well.

Health Care Reform Passage

To anyone who thinks that Republicans will fight to repeal the recently passed health care bill:

GWB didn't end abortion. He didn't end Medicare or Medicaid. Massachusetts passed gay marriage on his watch. He didn't pull out of NAFTA and barely reduced regulation on any industry. He didn't even manage to get the 10 Commandments displayed in Federal court houses.

That was despite having majorities in the house and senate and having a plurality of Republican appointed Supreme Court appointees.

In fact, he really didn't try. But he made sure that every time there was an election, abortion and gay marriage were brought up so that people would go vote for the Republicans to repeal those things.

They had plenty of chances.

Republicans don't really want to repeal this bill. They like it when things get done because, hey, sometimes they need to get done. But they want the Democrats to do them so that they can demonize them and then retake power and then . . .

. . . well, you have to understand, Bush really didn't get any of his major initiatives done while in office. Not abortion, not gay rights, not economic deregulation. He managed a tax cut and that's about it.

So, that's what you're planning on voting for. Things aren't going to change in the future. The Republicans are going to keep doing the same old song and dance, but they're not actually going to do what you want them to do.

Placebos and Patient Care

I've had a single article open in my browser for a few days now: "The Cost Conundrum" by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker. I think it makes an important case for a certain kind of health care reform and I would like to discuss it for a minute, and the use of placebos below.

There are a lot of great New Yorker articles and this is clearly one of them. It is written from the perspective of a medical professional but is clear, concise and compelling to read. It's an examination of the health care system of McAllen, Texas. McAllen has the second highest health care costs in the country, per capita, after only Miami.

The article points out that despite high costs McAllen doesn't have particularly good health care, scoring below average on 23 out of 25 items, and wonders what the difference is between McAllen and a place with well recognized excellence but low cost such as Rochester, MN.

My only criticism of the piece is that it buries it's conclusion a bit. What Dr. Gawande found is that there is a difference between doctors in high cost and low cost areas. In low cost/high quality areas, the doctors were more likely to focus on patient care above profits. They worked in systems designed to reward patient health and satisfaction and the ability to work with other doctors instead of maximizing doctor's profits.

In high cost/low quality areas, the doctors were more likely to share what is euphemistically called in one section of the article "entrepreneurial spirit." Instead of focusing on patient care they were more likely to focus on the bottom line. In one hospital doctors owned shares of the company and thus reaped the rewards of higher profits. They have a direct incentive to increase the costs for patients and by extension the health care costs for the entire region.

Increased costs for patients means higher taxes for Medicare/Medicaid, longer waits in emergency rooms and more wasteful bureaucracy. In order words, it basically costs all of us more money in the form of taxes.

This isn't something that can be controlled by the free market because health care costs are basically uncontrollable. It's difficult to choose what hospital an ambulance will take you too or what the general "patient care vs. profit" climate of a regional health care system is. Since the need for health care exists anywhere there are people and the ability to choose the best option is limited there has to be an outside influence to prevent the sort of behavior that drives up costs and good care down. As Dr. Gawande quotes Dr. Lester Dyke: "Any plan that relies on the sheep to negotiate with the wolves is doomed to failure."

I think that the reaction to the above issues for most humans is obvious: people want good health care and they understand the need for some sort of governmental intrusion into their lives to make sure that they get it. Because that conclusion is so obvious, I want to take a bit of a tangent for a moment.

There's another name for the behavior by doctors that results in high cost, low quality care. Some Christians that I know would call it greed. As much as greed is a problem for the deeply religious, it's also held up as an enshrined right by the libertarian segment of our population.

It's a weird divide, but it's a very clear cut one. You can't both believe in letting the market solve all problems and taking care of the poor. You can't believe that capitalism solves all problems while believing that greed is a bad thing.

I think that a lot of the current accusations of socialism and communism toward anyone who wants to impose limitations on a capitalism are a sort of fearful reaction to admitting that there is anything wrong with the acquisition of as much money as possible. If everything else is worse than what you're doing then you don't have to admit that what you are doing is bad. Since socialism and communism are bogeymen, any nuanced position has to be equated with them in order to prop up one's moral stance.

This leaves the libertarians in the Republican party with a clear and simple position: Anything interferes with the quick and vast accumulation of money is a bad thing. The sheep must negotiate with the wolves or else the world will end. Greed has to be good and pure and necessary.

Still, it seems clear that doctors that go into the business of health care with the primary goal of making money actually harm the people that are in their care. If, as a patient, you want to get better then you want a system that focuses on rewarding the doctor for the best outcome while restricting the direct profit that your doctors can make charging you for tests. Overall, that's going to mean that doctors are going to have to give up the lure of massive quick profits on the patients that they treat. That's going to require a major social shift though, because I can't imagine that greed is an easy habit to give up.

Speaking of cheap health care, there is another issue that I've been thinking about recently that is on the opposite moral spectrum but relates to the same issue of patient care.

This is something that most people have been taught not to do from a young age and the Bible specifically repudiates but may provide a basis for better health care: Lying.

I think that we need to establish medical guidelines for lying to patients in the form of prescribing placebos.

A recent article in Wired examines placebos from a perspective that challenges the view that most people have held since the discovery of placebos: not as something to be avoided during the testing phase of a scientific study but rather as a powerful effect in it's own right that can be used to help people.

Let's be clear, I'm not suggesting that doctors should lie to patients about their conditions or the possible outcomes of their diseases, but I do think that there should be ethical guidelines for doctors to prescribe placebos to patients that may help millions of people recover from their ailments.

There are two kinds of possible placebos; those that contain no medications whatsoever--the proverbial sugar pill--and real medications that are given in doses too low to have proper chemical affect. I can see some argument for the former as less harmful due to the decreased likeliness of side effects but I actually see the latter as more likely to be prescribed by doctors. With medications given below the indicated dose the doctors themselves can feel that they are giving the patient something that does actually clinically do something and decreases the chances that the patient may figure out that the medication that they're on isn't chemically relevant to their recovery.

It doesn't change the fact that the doctors would in some sense have to lie to the patients about the drugs that they are being prescribed. Just the phrase "studies have shown that patients that take this substance report less continuing pain" is a lie of omission. Some patients may force doctors into positions where they need to both be trusted and still prescribe a placebo, requiring a more direct lie.

Until there are ethical guidelines recognized by the wider medical community doctors may be at risk prescribing placebos for malpractice suits. Lawyers, not understanding the nuances of patient care, would probably seize any confirmed placebo prescription as evidence that the doctor didn't care enough about a patient to prescribe something "real." We'd see class action lawsuits against hospitals that didn't prescribe high enough doses of painkillers and psychiatric drugs. But placebos can help patients with a minimum of side effects and complications and generally recognized standards will prevent doctors from getting in trouble when they try to help their patients.

In this current climate of reduced spending and high pressure to cut costs there is a great incentive to get that placebo improvement with minimal production costs. Even using drugs at the subeffective dosing, that can mean substantially reduced costs to the patients and to the clinics and hospitals while improving the standard of care. I will say that personally I think that using the most expensive chemicals in doses that are not effective is unethical because it creates both a cost to the patient without a substantial enough gain. Any placebo medication should be on the ultra low end of the drug cost scale, not more than two to four dollars for a month's worth of pills, perhaps slightly more for a subeffective dose of a medication that a patient will have name recognition with.

Just looking back over the last couple of paragraphs, I want to explicitly clarify that when I say that doctors should be prescribing placebo medications they should be doing so in addition to the efficacious drugs that will actually help in the patients recovery. I would never suggest that we give out placebos in the place of cancer medications, but the judicial use of placebos may reduce the side effects of those drugs when given in tandem.

The effects that placebos have are in that vein: reducing side effects, lowing the perception of pain, perhaps improving general mood slightly. Since they are not clinically effective they should not be prescribed instead of something that actually works.

The question is, would the prescription of placebos help people? It seems clear that if they are prescribed in tandem with real medications for the purposes outlined in the previous paragraph then the answer is yes. Since placebos already have a measurable medical effect we shouldn't fear to use that effect to the benefit of the patients that we treat. Instead, we should incorporate it when possible as a cheap and surprisingly effective treatment for real symptoms and protect the doctors who want to use it to help their patients.

RG's Account of President Obama's Speech

RG responded to President Obama's Speech last night, but he did get a few things wrong. Since this response is so long, I think I should post it here on my blog.

Obama's comments are the quoted text, RG's comments are in blue and mine are in red.

—————————————————————–

“But thanks to the bold and decisive action we have taken since January, I can stand here with confidence and say that we have pulled this economy back from the brink.”

The bank bailout and the economic stimulus bill were passed under the Bush administration. All that the President has done is implement the measures taken by the Congress before he was elected.

Actually, the big economic stimulus bill and bank bailout were passed under the Obama Administration. Remember, $800 billion? And isn't your side accusing him of creating record deficits? How can he be creating record deficits if he isn't the one spending the money?

“I am not the first president to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.”

A nice piece of rhetoric (I mean it sincerely), but it reveals his ever-present arrogance. All the problems with health care will be forever solved by him and his administration? Wow!

Considering how little has been done for the last few decades, I suspect he means that he will be the last to implement necessary reforms, not the last to handle healthcare at all.

”There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.”

That number seems to change a lot. I thought the President had said that there were 47 million uninsured people.

RG is simply conflating three different numbers here. Obama is talking about people with pre-existing conditions, that are two old, or facing substantial medical costs that are rejected by the insurance companies (in a way eerily similar to death panels). They may be able to afford insurance but are uninsured because the insurance companies don't want to pay.

There are other people who cannot afford coverage. There are a lot of children in this group.

The 47 million number that RG is talking about is the actual counted number of uninsured people in the United States. The people that don't have insurance because of one of the above reasons, a combination of the two, or just that they don't want it.

“And it’s why those of us with health insurance are also paying a hidden and growing tax for those without it — about $1000 per year that pays for somebody else’s emergency room and charitable care.”

I don’t get it. I thought he liked it when people pay for other people’s health care.

It's quotes like this that illustrate why the right doesn't understand progressives or liberals.

”We know we must reform this system. The question is how. “

Ah, but who is the “we”? I think that is the bigger question. I tend to be very cautious whenever people say that “we” need to do something. In meetings where people say that, I always ask, “Who do you mean when you say we?” Often they mean everyone else should pay for their big idea.

Perhaps he was talking to the people in the room with him: the elected representatives of our government.

“But either one[, single-payer public insurance or individual, private policies,] would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have.”

No, it would disrupt their health insurance. Why does the president continually equate health insurance with health care?

Lots of people without health insurance still get health care.

First, insurance pays for ongoing healthcare costs for many people so any disruption in health insurance is also a disruption in health care. If you lose your insurance, you'll also lose your ability to pay for your prescription medications.

Second, show me the "lots of people" without health insurance who have cancer or diabetes or other serious chronic diseases that manage to get regular care. I very much doubt that they make up more than one percent of the 47 million uninsured.

“But what we have also seen in these last months is the same partisan spectacle that only hardens the disdain many Americans have toward their own government.”

This is the same tired canard used by politicians on both sides. If it disagrees with my agenda, it is partisan. If it agrees with my agenda it is not.

Weren't you complaining about partisan spectacle yesterday, RG? Gee golly wilikers, that sure went away fast.

“Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.”

Maybe. But the President said some pretty scary things in his speech. Again, it’s a politically motivated rhetorical device. When the Republicans want something, they try to scare people in one way. When the Democrats want something, they try to care people in a different way.

The President didn't say that your Grandmother would be killed if you didn't assist him in health insurance/care reform. That was Palin arguing for the opposite point of view. The President said that we have a moral obligation to fix healthcare in this country, something that apparently Christians like RG disagree with.

“Some have dug into unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise.”

Yes, but both sides have done so. Compromise does not mean, do it my way.

The Republicans have shown that they are unwilling to pass any bill even with massive concessions. However, the American people decided to put the Democratic Party in control of the country. They reached out and now that they've been rejected the Democrats should get down to business and fix things.

“Too many have used this as an opportunity to score short-term political points, even if it robs the country of our opportunity to solve a long-term challenge.”

I’m not sure what “political points” means. Is listening to the people who elected you scoring political points? Is being accountable to the citizens scoring political points? Is representing your constituents scoring political points? If so, I like it.

In this context it's obvious that Obama is talking about the scare tactics used by the Republicans, however I will say that fixing healthcare is one of the reasons why I voted for Obama. If he represents me and my fellow constituents (the ones that voted him into office) by overriding the Republican and reforming healthcare, I will probably vote for him again.

“Well the time for bickering is over.”

Does that mean that the Democrats will give in? Oh, he means that the Republicans should give in. Nothing partisan there!

So much for an end to bickering.

“It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance.”

Until they no longer have it and must resort to the government-run plan.

Some of the reforms that Obama talked about last night become relevant here. If the reform bill passes, then insurance companies couldn't just drop you for no reason for a pre-existing condition. If you like your insurance, this plan will allow you to keep it even if you start to cost the insurance company money and prevent you from becoming a victim of rescission.

“It will provide insurance to those who don’t.”

No it won’t. It will put even more people on government welfare rolls. A quicker, easier way would be to expand Medicare and Medicaid.

. . . RG supports the expansion of government agencies? Huh. I never would have guessed.

“And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.”

I have not seen or heard about one measure that is aimed at cutting costs. Not even one. The plan will not cap salaries or fees. It offers no incentives for people not going to the doctor for minor illnesses or for going to a private practice instead of to the emergency room. The only thing that comes close to a cost-cutting measure is counseling people about how they can die sooner instead of getting ongoing treatment.

RG may be a bit hard of hearing. Expanding insurance will lead to fewer emergency room visits and less back end taxes on all Americans. The "public option" will only be self-sufficient. Obama specifically mentioned capping fees. And perhaps RG missed the part where Obama specifically referred to the death panels as lies. These plans will be based on other plans that have been shown to work.

“First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.”

Require, no. But it would make the government-run plan cheaper, which would entice many businesses and individuals to choose it.

It's possible that the government plan may be more expensive, especially if the insurance companies manage to remove the provisions that keep them from rescission or from dropping sick people. That will make a government plan more expensive medically, although the administrative costs will be lower.

“What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you.”

Until they go bankrupt or close up shop because they can no longer compete against a government plan that looks cheap because it is paid for with fictional dollars that our government churns out like a magical ATM machine.

RG fails to realize that countries with "socialized" medicine still manage to maintain private insurance companies. And they still make money even. However, instead of making billions of dollars rejecting the claims of dying middle class people they only make millions in profits. How sad.

“Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition.”

Which is one reason that some of them will fold or close. They are not in the business to be nice. And they do not have fancy money-making machines like Uncle Sam. They are in the business to make money. They do it by gambling that people will not get sick. They do not make money by kindly agreeing to pay all medical costs for everyone with chronic or terminal conditions.

So what are people like me supposed to do? I don't make that much money and if I can't get insurance why should I work if all of my money is going to go to medical bills? I would be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt if I didn't have insurance and when it expires I'm probably not going to be able to get it renewed.

People that are all healthy are not the people that need health insurance.

The really scary thing is that RG doesn't realize that dying people are depending on these companies and that "not being nice" means that people will die. Not maybe die but will die. That's why I think that healthcare/health insurance is not something that should be done privately. I disagree with a business that makes money off of people that are hurt and dying.

“We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick.”

Why not? Should all our medical treatment just be free? Should doctors who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for their training and thousands of dollars more for insurance just give away their services? And who, again, is “we”? And, in this context, what does “should” even mean? Is there some written code somewhere that says that people should not go broke because of illness? For thousands of years people have done so. It is one of the unfortunate facts of life. It should be a good incentive to get a good education, work hard, get good insurance, and take really good care of oneself.

. . . I just need to repeat this. "Is there some written code somewhere that says that people should not go broke because of illness? . . . It is one of the unfortunate facts of life." That must be the fabled Christian compassion on display. Debtors prison was also a fact of life. Does that mean we should bring it back for the United States? People should not go broke because of an accident or illness. Where's the empathy?

Also, I should point out that getting a good education and working hard won't prevent the accidents like mine. People that run red lights don't necessarily check education and job before they plow into you.

”And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies — because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.”

Some insurance plans already do so, because it saves them money in the long run. If not, individuals can pay for them out of their own pockets. How can the government tell a private company what kind of contract they can enter into with private citizens? Why don’t Obama and his rich friends open free preventative care clinics for people if he actually cares about this issue?

They have.

“We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.”

That’s similar to what many Republicans want to do. Rather than have insurance companies restricted to particular regions, they want all insurance companies to operate freely across the country. It would bring health insurance premiums down and/or improve coverage. What Republicans do not want is for the government to be one of the participants in the exchange, providing unfair competition that will drive private companies out of business. That is the opposite of the way governments should treat private industry.

Unless that private industry operates unethically, and there is no way for a company that makes money on sickness and disease to operate ethically. There are some things that we shouldn't allow private companies to profit from, and this is one of them.

”If there are affordable options and people still don’t sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people’s expensive emergency room visits.”

Who is the “we”? It seems like “we” pay either way. Either through the taxes needed to fund the public health insurance option or with higher hospital bills. What difference does it make, except that one gives money to the government and the other gives money to a private company?

Well, one is definitely cheaper than the other. I guess RG doesn't care about reducing the cost that he'll have to pay in taxes.

Then there's that public option, which RG wouldn't have to pay for. Obama plans for it to be self sufficient.

“If some businesses don’t provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors.”

If you want insurance provided for you, don’t work at a company like that. I did once, and I got my own health insurance, and yes, it was expensive.

Lots of people don't have the same choices that RG had. I don't think he understands why Walmart is not most people's dream job.

”That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance.”

That’s fair if people expect others to pay for their medical bills. If a person is prepared to pay for his own expenses or go without, it is not fair for the government to force him to buy insurance.

Whoa, going off talking points there. The insurance companies want everyone to have to buy insurance, and thus most Republicans are extremely pro insurance mandates. You have to wonder if RG supports Republicans that support these mandates.

Of course, weirdly, Obama is right that we should all be involved in this. It's weird to see a Republican with so little patriotism and community spirit. Maybe RG just doesn't realize that sometimes we do have to work together to improve this country.

Of course, it is really a way to push the government plan, since people will obviously choose it if they are required to have some kind of coverage.

Except it won't. Or we'll see, I guess, since RG probably won't believe it until he sees it.

“Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.”

But he naively believes that (1) they will simply accept these new regulations out of the goodness of their hearts and (2) they will continue to make money under the new regulations and with competition from the government. (Or maybe he doesn’t believe it and is duping us.)

First, welcome to the concept of government. They will accept them because it'll be the law.

Second, yes. They will continue to make money under the new regulations and even with the competition from the government.

“In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5 percent of Americans would sign up [for the public plan].”

That’s absurd! Hawaii thought the same thing when they instituted their government-run plan for children. About 85% of the people who signed up for it dropped their private insurance to do so, and there simply wasn’t enough money budgeted. Some of those people could already afford their own private insurance policy, but chose the free government plan. (Duh!)

I'll trust Obama and the CBO over RG on this one. Let's see who's correct.

”But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.”

No government program operates that way. While the government is churning out money in one building, it is sucking it up with a huge vacuum cleaner in all the others.

[citation needed] Of course, things are already bad. RG just doesn't want to change anything.

”And I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.”

How could the President personally see to that? Is it even his job? Besides what does “need” mean. That is the part that scares many people out there. Does a 75-year-old man need a new heart? Does a baby with severe birth defects need life-support in a neonatal unit? In a free market, you can still pay for those things yourself if you are able, or you can beg the hospital and doctors to treat you at a lower fee.

And those for-profit hospitals and doctors will say no. And that 75-year-old man, that baby, and many other people will die.

Because in a true free market, people die because they can't afford medical care. And the people that support the libertarian ideals support that, just like RG does.

Very sad. I can't just watch people die like he does.

“I faced a trillion dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for — from the Iraq War to tax breaks for the wealthy.”

His budget proposal, as widely reported, will have a deficit of around $9 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Why make a big deal of $1 trillion, if you plan to overspend by nine times that amount?

. . . Because the previous party was the "fiscally reponsible" party?

“The plan will not add to our deficit.”

How many times have we heard that before–from the Republicans and the Democrats? How can spending any money, even if it were only one billion dollars, not add to the deficit?

By cutting a billion from the wasteful spending in the budget at the same time?

A Question about Libertarianism

Can anyone think of a libertarian argument against fraud?

It seems to me that in a truly libertarian system there would be no such thing as the prosecution of fraud. Is that accurate?

Specifically, can anyone explain why that isn't the case? Or about copyright? Theoretically, market forces would simply drive people to other vendors, no?

Understanding Anti-Gay Marriage Arguments

So, as far as I understand it, the three main arguments against gay marriage are:

1. It's not traditional. (Also seen as: Marriage is the fundamental unit of society)
   
2. I don't like the thought of gay marriage. (Also seen as: Gay marriage is icky or I don't want my kids to see it)
3. Gay marriage is against my religious beliefs.
4. There isn't any reason that gays should want marriage anyway.

I'm not much for tradition, so I feel that 1. is a hollow argument. Americans try not to legislate our own personal prejudices so 2. is certainly not a valid argument.

3. is more complex. I feel that the best argument against it is pointing out that by legislating a person's religious beliefs you are egregiously violating the first amendment. You see, there are people with other religious beliefs out there that do favor gay marriage. The Unitarian Universalists, the Metropolitan Community Church, the United Church of Christ and many reform Jewish temples all support gay marriage. Those churches represent millions of Americans, all of whom are having their freedom of speech trampled by larger denominations that want to be able to have their own sacraments legally recognized but prevent the smaller churches from doing the same.

The reason for this post is number 4. though. You see, I've noticed that this response is usually related to a single argument against gay marriage. When you ask people why straight people should want legally recognized marriage but gay people shouldn't the answer is usually: for the children.

According to a lot of the anti-gay marriage Christians that I've had the pleasure of being disgusted by over the years, since gay people are incapable of creating a baby, they shouldn't have the legal status that straights have to take care of the child.

Personally, I thought this was ridiculous, and I've pointed this out numerous times. Gay people may not be able to have sex with each other and procreate but the can and do take care of babies through adoption or surrogacy or sometimes even heterosexual sex (we may refer to those people as "bisexual"). Recently, I finally got a response that floored me.

Gay people shouldn't be able to raise children.

Okay, that's a fairly serious negation of my counter argument. If gay (and bisexual) people were not allowed to raise children then that does in fact mean that there would be substantial difference in the necessity for legal protections from gay families.

It would also require tens of thousands of children to be forcibly removed from their parents (sometimes blood parents and often the only parents that the child has known).

Don't forget that this is a Christian that I was talking too. A Christian that apparently thinks so little of gay people that he finds nothing wrong with denying them the ability to raise their children.

You can see him say that in the comments to this post on his blog.

He'll think that I'm being hyperbolic. But I think that when someone gets the point that he is at: denying the ability of gay people to be decent, loving parents, then perhaps a little bit of hyperbolic language is justified.

So, that's his trump argument. Gay people don't need legal protections to protect their children because they shouldn't be allowed to have children. Not only should we not be considered able to make the choice to marry, but we also not be considered good enough to raise children.

If you were curious, that's prejudice. That's what gay people want to get rid of in this world.