Wall Street’s Worst Nightmare: Elizabeth Warren To Run For Senate
Elizabeth Warren, consumer advocate and chief architect of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will announce on Wednesday that she will run for the U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts currently held by Republican Scott Brown.
Should Warren prevail in defeating the six candidates who have already announced their intention to compete in the Democratic primary, the result may be the greatest economic boon to Massachusetts media outlets since the days of Kennedy money as Wall Street ponies up serious bucks in an effort to defeat their arch-nemeses. Democratic contributors can be expected to respond in kind as bringing the Massachusetts senate seat back into the Democratic column is considered an important key to retaining the Democratic majority in the Senate.
While Warren is not expected to make a formal, public announcement, the Boston Globe reports that a video will go up on Warren’s website tomorrow announcing her intentions and saying, in part—
The pressure on middle class families are worse than ever, but it is the big corporations that get their way in Washington. I want to change that. I will work my heart out to earn the trust of the people of Massachusetts.
If track record counts for anything, you can believe that Elizabeth Warren will do precisely as she says. Because of that track record, the Harvard Law professor, who went to Washington and built a major following by relentlessly attacking the financial institutions for their anti-consumer agenda, will surely have the support of national progressives and Democrats, support she has unquestionably earned.
The possibility of Warren’s election presents GOP senators with a rich dose of irony. Warren was the obvious and most deserving person to serve as the first leader of the CFPB, the consumer protection agency she almost single-handedly created. However, in an effort to protect their Wall Street cronies and financial backers, the Republicans in the Senate made it very clear that her nomination would never be approved.
As the administrator of the CFPB, Warren would have been under the thumb of Congress. As a member of the Senate, it will be a very different story.
Payback can be rough.
By: Rick Ungar, Mother Jones, September 13, 2011
Texas-Style Tort Reform: Rick Perry’s Texas Health Care Hoax
In his quest to win the Republican presidential nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is perpetuating a convincing hoax: that implementing Texas-style tort reformwould go a long way toward curing what ails the U.S. health care system.
Like his fellow GOP contenders, Perry consistently denounces “Obamacare” as “a budget-busting, government takeover of healthcare” and “the greatest intrusion on individual freedom in a generation.” He promises to repeal the law if elected.
Unlike those in the “repeal-and-replace” wing of the Republican Party, however, Perry has emerged as leader of the “repeal-and-let-the-states-figure-it-out” wing that believes the federal government has no legitimate role in fixing America’s health care system.
“To hear federal officials tell it, they’ve got all the answers on health care and it’s up to the rest of us to sit, wait and embrace whatever solution — if any — they may eventually provide,” Perry wrote in a newspaper commentary in 2009. “I find this troubling, since states have shown they know a thing or two about solving problems that affect their citizens.”
Even as he points with pride to the alleged benefits of malpractice and other tort reforms that have been enacted during his tenure as governor of Texas, Perry says he is opposed to tort reform at the federal level. He cites the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, which states-rights advocates say limits the role of the federal government.
But if Perry had his way, all the states would do as Texas did in 2003 when lawmakers enacted legislation, which he championed, limiting the amount of money juries can award patients who win malpractice lawsuits against doctors and hospitals. The legislation capped non-economic (pain and suffering) damages at $250,000 in lawsuits against doctors and $750,000 against hospitals. A few months after he signed the bill into law, the state’s voters narrowly passed a constitutional amendment, also endorsed by Perry, which had the same effect. Proponents of the amendment wanted to be sure the new law would be constitutional.
Texas, he wrote in that 2009 commentary “stands as a good example of how smart, responsible policy can help us take major steps toward fixing a damaged medical system, starting with legal reforms.”
As a result of the 2003 tort reform law, malpractice liability insurers reduced their rates in Texas and, according to Perry, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in the state “skyrocketed.”
He says that in the first five years after tort reform was enacted, 14,498 doctors either returned to practice in Texas or began practicing there for the first time.
Tort Reform Backfires in Texas
That certainly sounds impressive — so long as you look at that number in isolation. But when you look at how Texas stacks up with the rest of the country in terms of physician growth in direct patient care, tort reform appears to have given Texas no leg up in competition with others states for doctors. In fact, according to statistics compiled by the American Medical Association and other physician organizations, Texas has actually lost ground when it comes to the number of doctors practicing in the state since tort reform was enacted. Big time.
In 2008, the number of physicians in patient care per 10,000 civilian population in the United States was 25.7. At just 20.2 doctors per 10,000 people, Texas ranked near the bottom of the 50 states. In fact, only nine states fared worse. In 2000, three years before tort reform, Texas was still bringing up the rear, but not as badly. Back then, 11 states fared worse than the Lone Star state.
Even more revealing, the number of doctors in patient care increased 13.2 percent nationwide from 2000 to 2008. It increased only 12.8 percent in Texas. The rate of growth was actually greater in 41 other states and in Washington, D.C. than it was in the Lone Star state.
It is true that malpractice insurance rates dropped in Texas after tort reform was enacted, but Texans would be hard pressed to claim any direct benefit from that drop — except, that is, Texans who are doctors.
The Dallas Morning News published a chart earlier this year showing that the average malpractice rate charged ob/gyns in Texas by the state’s largest domestic insurer of physicians fell from $53,752 in 2003 to $33,881 in 2011. The paper reported drops of similar percentages for doctors in family practice and general surgery.
Advocates of tort reform have long claimed that one of the reasons for escalating health care costs is the “defensive medicine” doctors practice, such as over-treating and prescribing more medications and diagnostic tests than necessary, out of fear of being sued. Well, if Texans believed their own health insurance rates would go down once tort reform made defensive medicine less prevalent, they have by now been disabused of that notion. The chances of a Texas family saving a few bucks on premiums would actually be greater if they moved to another state.
In 2010, the average premium for family coverage in Texas was $14,526. That’s $655 higher than the U.S. average. Those numbers seem to indicate that doctors have not passed on their own insurance savings to their patients and that they are not practicing medicine any less defensively than before tort reform was enacted.
Not only are Texans paying more for their own insurance while doctors are paying less for theirs, their chances of getting employer-subsidized coverage is less than it would be if they lived in another state. The Dallas Morning News, citing statistics from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and other sources, reported that a smaller percentage of employers in Texas offered coverage to their workers last year than in the U.S. as a whole (51 percent and 53.8 percent, respectively). And the Texans who do have coverage through the workplace are contributing far more out of their own pockets for that coverage than people who live in most other states. In Texas last year, the average employee contribution toward company-sponsored coverage was $4,500. The U.S. average was much lower: $3,721.
Another statistic Perry is not likely to mention when he talks about the benefits of tort reform is the number of Texans who are uninsured. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that Texas continues to be the state with the highest percentage of its residents without coverage, a whopping 25 percent last year, compared to about 16 percent nationwide. It was dead last in 2003 and it is dead last now.
All this should leave us wondering what “thing or two” states have come up with to solve the problems that affect their citizens. Considering the dismal state of health care in Texas, perhaps Perry had Massachusetts in mind.
By: Wendell Potter, Center for Media and Democracy, September 1, 2011
Texas Ranks Dead Last In Total Job Creation, Accounting For Labor Force Growth
Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), since he launched his presidential campaign on Saturday, has paraded around the stat that “since June of 2009, Texas is responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.” “Now think about that. We’re home to less than 10 percent of the population in America, but 40 percent of all the new jobs were created in that state,” Perry says.
This stat leaves out a lot of the story. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has promoted the number, but “it acknowledges that the number comes out different depending on whether one compares Texas to all states or just to states that are adding jobs.” Between 2008 and 2010, jobs actually grew at a faster pace in Massachusetts than in Texas.
In fact, “Texas has done worse than the rest of the country since the peak of national unemployment in October 2009.” The unemployment rate in Texas has been steadily increasing throughout the recession, and went from 7.7 to 8.2 percent while the state was supposedly creating 40 percent of all the new jobs in the U.S.
How is this possible, since Texas has created over 126,000 jobs since the depths of the recession in February 2009? The fact of the matter is that looking purely at job creation misses a key point, namely that Texas has also experienced incredibly rapid population and labor force growth (due to a series of factors, including that Texas weathered the housing bubble reasonably well due to strict mortgage lending regulations). When this is taken into account, Texas’ job creation looks decidedly less impressive:
Clearly, there is no miracle for Texas here. While over 126,000 net jobs were created in Texas over the last two and a half years, the labor force expanded by over 437,000, meaning that overall Texas has added unemployed workers at a rate much faster than it has created jobs. And although states like Michigan have lost jobs (29,200 since February 2009), the state’s labor force has shrunk by over 185,000 since then. As a result, while there are fewer jobs, there are significantly less workers looking for them.
As Paul Krugman put it, “several factors underlie [Texas’] rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.” But they have little to do with Perry’s policies.
Now that certainly doesn’t make the situation in Michigan a good one, as contraction of the labor force is one side effect of the prolonged recession and unemployment there is still 10.6 percent. However if there is a real “miracle” here, it is North Dakota, which has seen over 27,000 new jobs and a labor force expansion of only 3,700, resulting in about 24,000 new jobs for workers who previously had none. But no one is proclaiming the “North Dakota miracle” and saying that Gov. Jack Dalrymple (R-ND) should be running for President.
By: Think Progress, August 17, 2011. Data for this post was compiled by Matt Separa, Research Assistant with the Economic Policy Team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund
Basic Civility: Who Will Teach Congress to Behave?
To make sense of the vitriol, lack of cooperative spirit and just bad manners being displayed on Capitol Hill, look no further than Massachusetts.
It’s not that the Bay State is unusually mean or even rude. Visitors flocking to the Cape, the Berkshires or Boston’s North End will surely find friendly people. But recent news in Massachusetts demonstrates just how high our tolerance for—even celebration of—bad behavior has become.
The Boston Globe informs us that the Boston School Committee is drafting rules for basic civility at its public meetings. This is not a response to shouting and disruption by children, who by definition are still learning how to behave in public and how to adjudicate disagreements with honor and mutual respect. No, the school committee’s actions are a sad response to the heckling and all-around disrespect shown by adults—parents and teachers—who have been unhappy with school closings and other matters before the committee. Disruptive students have been at the meetings, too, which makes it worse, since the lesson they are learning at the meetings is that it’s acceptable to shout and be rude to display one’s unhappiness with a public policy. One protestor last December yelled “liar” at Superintendent Carol R. Johnson. Was this individual merely parroting the behavior of Rep. Joe Wilson, who yelled, “You lie!” at the President of the United States during a live, nationally-televised speech in the House chamber?
Remarkably, some of the adult activists have not been shamed at the fact that they must be treated as recalcitrant children. The Globe quotes the teacher’s union president, Richard Stutman, jokingly comparing the decorum rules to Stalinist Russia. That’s not only an insult to the people who lived in the brutal dictatorial regime, but an insult to public education. Surely, teachers do not instruct their students that self-control and civility are akin to totalitarianism.
But if the school meetings aren’t distressing enough, Massachusetts can look to its professional football team, the New England Patriots. The team recently signed Albert Haynesworth, whose behavior, on and off the field, was so poor that the Washington Redskins couldn’t stomach him anymore. In sports, the bad boys are often given a pass if their on-field passes are complete. But Haynesworth—who was paid $35 million to play in 20 games and didn’t always show up for practice because he didn’t like the coach’s defense strategy—became just too much for the ‘Skins, who traded him to the Patriots for a fifth-round draft pick. At least Haynesworth won’t be a double burden to the Pats, since Randy Moss, another behavior problem, left the team last year and announced Tuesday he would retire from the sport. Defenders note that Patriots coach Bill Belichick whipped Moss into shape. Haynesworth could be a heavier list; at one point, he was juggling four different legal cases against him even as he feuded publically with his coach.
We should expect more from members of Congress, who have been through campaigns and theoretically should know better. But the public—even as they deride the dysfunction and bad manners in the Capitol—are enablers, rewarding malcontented lawmakers with campaign contributions. Republican Wilson and former Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson, who famously accused Republicans of wanting people to die as a way of saving on health costs, were two of the biggest fundraisers last election cycle, with much of the cash coming from out of state. Grayson lost, but the message was clear: acting up is profitable. And both Democrats and Republicans are raising money off the recent uproar over Republican Rep. Allen West, a Tea Party movement favorite who sent an email to a colleague, Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, calling her “the most vile” member of the House. Wasserman Schultz had criticized West’s approach to Medicare, although she did not name him in the floor speech that led West to accuse Wasserman-Schultz of not acting like “a Lady.”
The Boston School Committee may be able to teach civility to adults who apparently never learned how to sit still and listen. And perhaps Belichick can control Haynesworth. Who will do the same for members of Congress?
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, August 2, 2011
John Adams On The First Independence Day
On the morning of July 3, 1776, John Adams, delegate to the Second Continental Congress from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wrote his wife Abigail:
Yesterday the greatest question was decided, which ever was debated in America, and a greater, perhaps, never was or will be decided among Men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony ‘that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, and as such they have, and of right ought to have, full power to make war, conclude peace, establish commerce, and to do all the other acts and things which other states may rightfully do.’ You will see in a few days a declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God and man. A plan of confederation will be taken up in a few days.
When I look back to the year of 1761 and recollect the argument concerning writs of assistance in the superior court, which I have hitherto considered as the commencement of the controversy between Great Britain and America, and run through the whole period from that time to this, and recollect the series of political events, the chain of causes and effects, I am surprised at the suddenness as well as greatness of this revolution. Britain has been fill’d with Folly and America with Wisdom, at least this is my Judgment.
Time must determine. It is the will of Heaven that the two countries should be sundered forever. It may be the will of Heaven that America shall suffer calamities still more wasting and distressing yet more dreadful. If this is to be the case, it will have this good effect, at least: it will inspire us with many virtues, which we have not, and correct many errors, follies, and vices, which threaten to disturb, dishonor, and destroy us. The furnace of affliction produces refinement, in states as well as individuals. And the new governments we are assuming, in every part, will require a purification from our vices and an augmentation of our virtues or they will be no blessings.
The people will have unbounded power. And the people are extremely addicted to corruption and venality, as well as the great. I am not without apprehensions from this quarter, but I must submit all my hopes and fears to an overruling Providence, in which, unfashionable as the faith may be, I firmly believe.
In the evening, he sent a second letter, in which he wrote:
The second day of July, 1776, will be memorable epocha in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations, as the great Anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp, shews, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of the continent to the other, from this time forward forever.
You will think me transported with enthusiasm; but I am not. I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph, although you and I may rue, which I hope we shall not.
Happy Birthday America.
By: Peter Roff, U. S. News and World Report, July 3, 2011
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