“No Unchecked Corporate Power”: If Republicans Love Competition, Why Do They Still Hate Obamacare?
When asked what makes the world work, any self-respecting right-wing Republican knows the politically correct answer: competition! (With at least one exclamation point.) It is the paramount principle and universal solvent perennially touted by the right to cure whatever ails us – in the abstract.
What they don’t seem to like so much, in reality, is the competitive impact of the Affordable Care Act, which is forcing health insurance companies into a contested marketplace – and seems to be driving down rates, state by state. The latest data arrived this week from New York, where insurance regulators announced that the new rates approved for 2014 will be 50 percent lower, on average, than current rates.
That stunning report follows similar news from California, where rates may drop by as much as 29 percent, as well as Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and several other states where the early indications show rates declining. Based on data compiled from 10 states and the District of Columbia, the Department of Health and Human Services says that 2014 premiums for mid-range (or “silver”) health care plans in those states will be nearly 20 percent lower on average than its own earlier estimates.
The reason is simple, as anyone familiar with the American health care marketplace knows. Most states until now have had no meaningful competition among insurance companies — and certainly nothing like the health insurance “exchanges” created by Obamacare to guide consumer choices.
In states that have actively promoted the exchanges, real competition is arising thanks to a marketplace that allows consumers to examine and understand choices, plans, and prices with ease. “That’s a very different dynamic for these companies, and it’s prodding them to be more aggressive and competitive in their pricing,” explains Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reform.
For those of us who preferred (and still favor) a single-payer system providing Medicare to everyone, the compromises of Obamacare always provoked doubts about efficiency and fairness. Many liberals supported the Affordable Care Act reluctantly as a bad deal that was acceptable only in lieu of no deal.
But why do self-styled conservatives continue to hate health care reform with such ferocity? They may not care that it is truly “pro-life” and “pro-family,” with the clear promise of saving thousands of lives annually among families that were previously uninsured. Yet they should surely appreciate a statute that promotes competition where there was none, improving services and reducing prices through freer enterprise.
Solving that conundrum exposes one of the ugly little secrets of the Republican right today – and one of many reasons why that movement no longer merits the honorable title of “conservative.” For what we can now observe in practice is that the Republicans perversely prefer a corporate marketplace without competition over a marketplace with competition overseen by government. While European conservatives have long accepted the need for strictly regulated markets, especially in health care, their American counterparts would rather allow corporate power to run unchecked at whatever cost.
It is an ideological preference that damages public health, ruins finances both public and private, and actually kills people every day, but it also swells corporate profits – which seems to be the primary value cherished by Obamacare’s partisan opponents. Such destructive irrationality is what passes for “conservatism” in our time.
So the congressional Republicans persistently attack and undermine reform, as they did by passing a resolution this week to delay the law’s individual mandate. Rather than do anything productive, they proceeded with that meaningless action. And they did so despite warnings from the insurance industry that a delay would only increase rates for everyone.
Supporters of the Affordable Care Act have long reassured each other that the law would gain popularity someday. But if present trends continue, the public may come to realize as early as next year that the benefits of Obamacare greatly outweigh the flaws – and that the law’s opponents offer nothing to most Americans except higher rates, less coverage, and a sicker, sadder, harder life.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, July 19, 2013
“Trayvon Martin Could’ve Been Me”: A Difficult Journey To Becoming A More Perfect Union, Not A Perfect Union, A More Perfect Union
Last weekend, not long after the jury delivered its verdict in the George Zimmerman trial, President Obama issued a written statement, urging all Americans to “respect the call for calm reflection from two parents who lost their young son.” Today, however, the president made an unexpected appearance at the White House press briefing room to speak to the issue in more detail.
For those who can’t watch the video, this was a rather remarkable moment for the nation’s first African-American president, who reflected on the story and race in America with an eloquence that has sometimes been lacking of late.
President Barack Obama emerged Friday to give voice to African Americans’ reaction to last weekend’s verdict in the George Zimmerman case, saying that Trayvon Martin “could have been me 35 years ago.”
He also suggested that the outcome of the case could have been different if Martin were white. “If a white male teen would have been involved in this scenario,” he said, “both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.”
Obama went on to reflect on his own experiences as a black man, drawing scrutiny in department stores, hearing car-door clicks as he walked down sidewalks, and seeing women clutch their purses nervously with him in an elevator. “The African-American community is looking at this through a set of experiences and history that doesn’t go away,” he said.
Obama also broached the subject of “racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws” — including the death penalty and drug laws — which generally is left out of our public conversation.
But perhaps most provocatively, the president reflected on an imaginary scenario. “If Trayvon Martin was of age and was armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk?” Obama asked. “If the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we should examine those laws.”
It was a rather remarkable display. A transcript of the remarks is below.
The president said the following:
I wanted to come out here, first of all, to tell you that Jay is prepared for all your questions and is very much looking forward to the session. The second thing is I want to let you know that over the next couple of weeks, there’s going to obviously be a whole range of issues — immigration, economics, et cetera — we’ll try to arrange a fuller press conference to address your questions.
The reason I actually wanted to come out today is not to take questions, but to speak to an issue that obviously has gotten a lot of attention over the course of the last week — the issue of the Trayvon Martin ruling. I gave a preliminary statement right after the ruling on Sunday. But watching the debate over the course of the last week, I thought it might be useful for me to expand on my thoughts a little bit.
First of all, I want to make sure that, once again, I send my thoughts and prayers, as well as Michelle’s, to the family of Trayvon Martin, and to remark on the incredible grace and dignity with which they’ve dealt with the entire situation. I can only imagine what they’re going through, and it’s remarkable how they’ve handled it.
The second thing I want to say is to reiterate what I said on Sunday, which is there’s going to be a lot of arguments about the legal issues in the case — I’ll let all the legal analysts and talking heads address those issues. The judge conducted the trial in a professional manner. The prosecution and the defense made their arguments. The juries were properly instructed that in a case such as this reasonable doubt was relevant, and they rendered a verdict. And once the jury has spoken, that’s how our system works. But I did want to just talk a little bit about context and how people have responded to it and how people are feeling.
You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago. And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.
There are very few African American men in this country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store. That includes me. There are very few African American men who haven’t had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars. That happens to me — at least before I was a senator. There are very few African Americans who haven’t had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she had a chance to get off. That happens often.
And I don’t want to exaggerate this, but those sets of experiences inform how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear. The African American community is also knowledgeable that there is a history of racial disparities in the application of our criminal laws — everything from the death penalty to enforcement of our drug laws. And that ends up having an impact in terms of how people interpret the case.
Now, this isn’t to say that the African American community is naïve about the fact that African American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system; that they’re disproportionately both victims and perpetrators of violence. It’s not to make excuses for that fact — although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context. They understand that some of the violence that takes place in poor black neighborhoods around the country is born out of a very violent past in this country, and that the poverty and dysfunction that we see in those communities can be traced to a very difficult history.
And so the fact that sometimes that’s unacknowledged adds to the frustration. And the fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush and the excuse is given, well, there are these statistics out there that show that African American boys are more violent — using that as an excuse to then see sons treated differently causes pain.
I think the African American community is also not naïve in understanding that, statistically, somebody like Trayvon Martin was statistically more likely to be shot by a peer than he was by somebody else. So folks understand the challenges that exist for African American boys. But they get frustrated, I think, if they feel that there’s no context for it and that context is being denied. And that all contributes I think to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, that, from top to bottom, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different.
Now, the question for me at least, and I think for a lot of folks, is where do we take this? How do we learn some lessons from this and move in a positive direction? I think it’s understandable that there have been demonstrations and vigils and protests, and some of that stuff is just going to have to work its way through, as long as it remains nonviolent. If I see any violence, then I will remind folks that that dishonors what happened to Trayvon Martin and his family. But beyond protests or vigils, the question is, are there some concrete things that we might be able to do.
I know that Eric Holder is reviewing what happened down there, but I think it’s important for people to have some clear expectations here. Traditionally, these are issues of state and local government, the criminal code. And law enforcement is traditionally done at the state and local levels, not at the federal levels.
That doesn’t mean, though, that as a nation we can’t do some things that I think would be productive. So let me just give a couple of specifics that I’m still bouncing around with my staff, so we’re not rolling out some five-point plan, but some areas where I think all of us could potentially focus.
Number one, precisely because law enforcement is often determined at the state and local level, I think it would be productive for the Justice Department, governors, mayors to work with law enforcement about training at the state and local levels in order to reduce the kind of mistrust in the system that sometimes currently exists.
When I was in Illinois, I passed racial profiling legislation, and it actually did just two simple things. One, it collected data on traffic stops and the race of the person who was stopped. But the other thing was it resourced us training police departments across the state on how to think about potential racial bias and ways to further professionalize what they were doing.
And initially, the police departments across the state were resistant, but actually they came to recognize that if it was done in a fair, straightforward way that it would allow them to do their jobs better and communities would have more confidence in them and, in turn, be more helpful in applying the law. And obviously, law enforcement has got a very tough job.
So that’s one area where I think there are a lot of resources and best practices that could be brought to bear if state and local governments are receptive. And I think a lot of them would be. And let’s figure out are there ways for us to push out that kind of training.
Along the same lines, I think it would be useful for us to examine some state and local laws to see if it — if they are designed in such a way that they may encourage the kinds of altercations and confrontations and tragedies that we saw in the Florida case, rather than diffuse potential altercations.
I know that there’s been commentary about the fact that the “stand your ground” laws in Florida were not used as a defense in the case. On the other hand, if we’re sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms even if there’s a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we’d like to see?
And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened? And if the answer to that question is at least ambiguous, then it seems to me that we might want to examine those kinds of laws.
Number three — and this is a long-term project — we need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African American boys. And this is something that Michelle and I talk a lot about. There are a lot of kids out there who need help who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them and values them and is willing to invest in them?
I’m not naïve about the prospects of some grand, new federal program. I’m not sure that that’s what we’re talking about here. But I do recognize that as President, I’ve got some convening power, and there are a lot of good programs that are being done across the country on this front. And for us to be able to gather together business leaders and local elected officials and clergy and celebrities and athletes, and figure out how are we doing a better job helping young African American men feel that they’re a full part of this society and that they’ve got pathways and avenues to succeed — I think that would be a pretty good outcome from what was obviously a tragic situation. And we’re going to spend some time working on that and thinking about that.
And then, finally, I think it’s going to be important for all of us to do some soul-searching. There has been talk about should we convene a conversation on race. I haven’t seen that be particularly productive when politicians try to organize conversations. They end up being stilted and politicized, and folks are locked into the positions they already have. On the other hand, in families and churches and workplaces, there’s the possibility that people are a little bit more honest, and at least you ask yourself your own questions about, am I wringing as much bias out of myself as I can? Am I judging people as much as I can, based on not the color of their skin, but the content of their character? That would, I think, be an appropriate exercise in the wake of this tragedy.
And let me just leave you with a final thought that, as difficult and challenging as this whole episode has been for a lot of people, I don’t want us to lose sight that things are getting better. Each successive generation seems to be making progress in changing attitudes when it comes to race. It doesn’t mean we’re in a post-racial society. It doesn’t mean that racism is eliminated. But when I talk to Malia and Sasha, and I listen to their friends and I seem them interact, they’re better than we are — they’re better than we were — on these issues. And that’s true in every community that I’ve visited all across the country.
And so we have to be vigilant and we have to work on these issues. And those of us in authority should be doing everything we can to encourage the better angels of our nature, as opposed to using these episodes to heighten divisions. But we should also have confidence that kids these days, I think, have more sense than we did back then, and certainly more than our parents did or our grandparents did; and that along this long, difficult journey, we’re becoming a more perfect union — not a perfect union, but a more perfect union.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 19, 2013
“The Wall Street That Cried Wolf”: Banks Complain About Onerous New Regulations While Reaping Record Profits
The headlines have been nothing short of dazzling: “Bank of America profits soar“; “Citigroup’s profits surge“; “Bank boom continues: Goldman Sachs profit doubles.” In fact, the six biggest Wall Street banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo and Morgan Stanley – all beat their profit expectations in the most recent quarter, according to results announced over the last week. JP Morgan Chase is even on pace to make $25 billion (yes, billion with a b) this year.
If you’re thinking that these numbers don’t at all square with the ominous warnings of bank executives and lobbyists, who have been saying non-stop that new regulations meant to safeguard the financial system and prevent a repeat of the 2008 financial crisis are going to irreparably harm their ability to do business, you’re right. But that hasn’t stopped the banks’ griping.
The latest iteration of this argument played out after regulators recently announced new rules regarding bank capital – the financial cushion banks must keep on hand to guard against a downturn. Failed presidential candidate turned bank lobbyist Tim Pawlenty, for instance, said that the new rules “will make it harder for banks to lend and keep the economic recovery going.” JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who has been scaremongering for years about various regulations, warned that the new rules would put U.S. banks at a competitive disadvantage with foreign lenders.
But this same dynamic has been playing out since the Dodd-Frank financial reform law was signed by President Obama in 2010. Banks and their allies complain about onerous new regulations, while at the same time reaping record profits.
And as the New Yorker’s John Cassidy explained, those profits are due to many of the same practices that helped cause the 2008 debacle in the first place: “an emphasis on trading rather than lending, a high degree of leverage, and implicit subsidies from the taxpayer.” That would seem to make the case that new regulations, rather than going too far, have not gone far enough.
Perhaps that’s why banks haven’t been crowing about their new avalanche of profits, and Dimon is even warning about an upcoming profit squeeze. As the Financial Times’ U.S. banking editor Tom Braithwaite explains:
In the next 12 months the Fed will hit the banks with a new flurry of measures. … Those are coming, they are serious and the banks fear them. There is an outside chance that lawmakers will go even further, such as by restoring the split between investment banking and commercial banking known as Glass-Steagall. There is still plenty to play for in deciding how painful the next round of regulations will be.
But, with every earnings season, warnings of calamity look more and more hollow.
One of the major knocks against Dodd-Frank – beyond the obvious one that it left the biggest banks even bigger than they were before the financial crisis – is that it left too much discretion to regulators to write new rules. Corporations and trade organizations familiar with how the agency rule-writing process works are almost inevitably going to have the upper hand in such a system. And there are still so many rules left to be written – some 60 percent, according to the law firm Davis Polk – that Wall Street will have ample opportunity to water the law down to meaninglessness.
But it’s hard to keep saying with a straight face that new regulations will spell doom for the industry when the new rules that are in place so far, which were accompanied by similarly dire warnings, have done nothing to even dent Wall Street’s bottom line. In fact, the huge pile of profits may be the best thing that could have happened for those trying to bring a modicum of sanity back to Wall Street regulation.
By: Pat Garofalo, U. S. News and World Report, July 18, 2013
“We Were Wrong”: What If Republicans Had Come To This Realization Sooner?
It took over 700 days, a recess appointment, and a nuclear-option showdown, but a prominent Republican senator yesterday took stock of his party’s efforts to reject Richard Cordray and nullify the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He reached an interesting conclusion.
“Cordray was being filibustered because we don’t like the law” that created the consumer agency, said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina. “That’s not a reason to deny someone their appointment. We were wrong.”
That’s not a phrase we often hear from politicians, especially congressional Republicans, and it’s a welcome concession. Indeed, since I made the same argument on Monday, I’m delighted by Graham’s candor.
Perhaps, if Senate Republicans had come to this realization just a little sooner, Elizabeth Warren would be at the CFPB right now and Scott Brown would still be making Wall Street happy as a senator.
Regardless, the question many Senate Democrats are asking right now is whether yesterday’s breakthrough — which overwhelmingly tilted in their favor — can help lay the foundation for broader progress, at least in the upper chamber. Greg Sargent reported this morning:
Democrats plan to seize on yesterday’s events to exacerbate what they hope is a developing schism between the GOP leadership/hard right alliance and a bloc of GOP Senators who (Dems are betting) are genuinely fed up with that alliance’s continued flouting of basic governing norms. They hope to renew the push for a return to budget negotiations, with an eye towards replacing the sequester.”
Greg added that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the chair of the Banking Committee and an influential member of the Democratic leadership, is set to deliver a pointed message on the floor this afternoon: “There is a group of Republicans — led by Senator McCain — who are very interested in ending the gridlock and working together to solve problems…. I am really hopeful that the bipartisanship we’ve seen this week will carry over into the budget debate, and that rather than listening to the Tea Party, Republican leaders will listen to the Republican members who prefer common-sense bipartisanship over chaos and brinkmanship.”
There are obviously a whole lot of hurdles between the painful status quo and competent governing, and even if there’s a Senate GOP contingent prepared to be responsible the odds in the House are far worse, but between low expectations and the events of recent years, “we were wrong” is a step in the right direction.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, July 17, 2013
“The Conservative Struggle Against Demographics”: Republicans Should Spend Less Time And Energy Fighting The Inevitable
Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder said Trayvon Martin’s death was “tragic and unnecessary.” The continuing American tragedy is the lingering racial chasm in American society. The U.S. has a black president and a black attorney general. But Paula Deen uses racial slurs, the Supreme Court guts the Voting Rights Act and an innocent 17-year-old black youth dies because he was black and wears a hoodie.
Tuesday, Hillary Clinton and conservative blogger Erick Erickson weighed in on the Zimmermann case.
Erickson wrote, “Bad choices were made by George Zimmerman and by Trayvon Martin.” It’s easy to pick out the bad choices that George Zimmerman made. He decided not to leave the scene after the Sanford police department dispatcher warned him to get out way and let police officers handle the situation. Zimmerman’s biggest mistake, of course, was his choice to shoot an unarmed boy.
It’s much harder for me to identify the mistakes that Erickson thinks Trayvon Martin made. Was it a mistake for him to decide to buy Skittles? Did he set himself up for death by choosing to wear a hoodie? Or was it his choice to be black? Sorry, being black isn’t a choice, is it?
Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that “no mother, no father, should ever have to fear for their child walking down a street in the United States of America.” Fortunately neither the Clintons nor I had to worry that our teenage kids might be gunned down by a vigilante. Chelsea Clinton and my kids aren’t black.
The debate over immigration underscores the persistence of racial hostility in American society. The racial bias in the fight against immigration reform is palatable. Last year, during a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, one of the candidates said the word “Mexico” and the crowd booed.
Republicans and their tea party supporters are fighting a rear guard action to keep the United States white. The Census Bureau estimates that white people will be in the minority in the U.S. by 2040. Demographers believe that the biggest state, California, became a minority white state earlier this year.
Some people just can’t stand the idea that white people in the United States are on their way to becoming a racial minority. Republicans worry, with good cause, that the rapid growth of Democratic demographic groups like Latinos and Asians will consign the GOP to political oblivion.
States with 102 electoral votes have voted for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. The comparable Democratic base is 240. 38 of the 102 electoral votes in the Republican base are from Texas and demography threatens the Republican destiny there.
A majority (55 percent) of residents of the Lone State are either Hispanic or black but the GOP still dominates there because Latino political participation is so low. Mitt Romney won Texas by 1.2 million votes in 2012, but at least three million Latino residents eligible to vote didn’t turn out on Election Day. The Texas Democratic Party and a progressive group, Battleground Texas, have just started an effort to mobilize these Latino voters. If that work is successful, the GOP will lose a big part of its already small national electoral college base.
Demography is destiny, so Republicans and conservatives should spend less time and energy fighting the inevitable than figuring out how to attract supporters among the new American majority.
By: Brad Bannon, U. S. News and World Report, July 18, 2013
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