All Life Is Problem Solving

In a reply to my post on a progressive deficit reduction plan, a commenter suggested that holding Federal interest costs at the rate of .0226 in the coming years would “crush” retirees and savers, and throw them under the bus. Presumably, the commenter feels the same about the possibility I brought up of eliminating interest [...]

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This is a reply I wrote to Bryce Covert, MJ, and Richard Kirsch, formerly of HCAN, at the New Deal 2.0 (ND20) site. MJ expressed the view that both the private sector and Government are corrupt these days and that neither can be trusted. I agree with MJ about corruption in Government these days, but [...]

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Dean Baker had an interesting post in HuffPo on August 2nd on the Alan Blinder/Mark Zandi study. It’s the best take on it I’ve seen thus far. He says: “. . . A new study by Princeton University Professor Alan Blinder and Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, examined the impact of the [...]

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Earlier today, I wrote about “sidecar reconciliation” and the difficulty of passing it, and concluded, in light of Lawrence O’Donnell’s remarks on MSNBC about parliamentary maneuvers, encountered a number of times each day, still needing 60 votes to overcome them, that Republicans can block HCR through reconciliation if they want to. I said, further, that [...]

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Many progressives, even though they’ve been working for a PO-based health care reform bill, have 1) never given up Medicare for All as the goal of their activity, and 2) decided, in the first quarter of 2009, that Medicare for All could not pass the new Congress. They then reacted to their realization by concluding [...]

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It’s important to sharply distinguish strategy from tactics in health care reform. I think strategy is about your goal and overall orientation toward getting health care reform, while tactics are about the low-level things you do to get from point-to-point in getting the strategy implemented. Tactics are influenced by strategy in the sense that tactics [...]

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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy Congressman Alan Grayson (D-FL) is justly famous for saying that the Republican health care plan is for people to go ahead and die quickly when they get sick. But, a few days ago, in an appearance on Ed Schultz’s MSNBC show, he expressed [...]

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I think “groupthink” is a general pattern in this Administration. Not the simple groupthink that considers only one alternative and never discusses anything else, but a more complex sort of groupthink about frames. Obama looks at alternatives in deciding on policy, alright. And he appears to be rational in his consideration of them. So far, [...]

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How many times do they have to prove it? These health insurance companies are just no good. You can’t negotiate with them. They have to get everything they want, or they’ll take their marbles and go home. After all, they’re the princes of the earth. They’re entitled! Today, the health insurance companies, through AHIP, released [...]

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On September 19, Katherine Q. Seelye, a New York Times “reporter” provided one of the most biased “hit pieces” I’ve seen yet on Medicare for All. The piece is called “Medicare for All? ‘Crazy,’ ‘Socialized’ and Unlikely,” implying that Seelye thinks it’s all three. But what does she say to support her implied characterization. Well, [...]

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