Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Entitlement Hysteria: “Hysterics” in the D.C. Establishment- including much of the press- start a new round. The facts: The ability to fully fund Medicare and Social Security would cease 2 to 4 years sooner and thus run out of funds if no corrective actions were taken.
A calm NY Times account:
The financial outlook for Medicare and Social Security has significantly worsened, as the bad economy and mounting job losses have pushed both programs years closer to insolvency, according to a grim report issued Tuesday by the Obama administration.
The new projection, in an annual report from the programs’ trustees, says that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2017, just a year after President Obama would leave office if re-elected to a second term. Last year the trustees said they expected the fund to last until 2019.
The trustees also said that Social Security’s reserves now face depletion in 2037, four years sooner than the previous projection of 2041. The projections assume that there are no changes in current benefits, policies and tax rates.
…The shorter deadline for Social Security insolvency does not mean that future retirees would receive nothing after that date.
The trustees noted that even when the Social Security trust fund is exhausted in 2037, tax revenues will presumably continue to come in. But benefits would be limited to the amount paid in that year, and would probably continue at only 75 percent of their promised level — 3 percentage points less than was projected in last year’s report.
The darker picture facing the two programs will complicate the president’s spending plans and policy ambitions; just Monday, the administration raised its estimate of the federal budget deficit this year to $1.84 trillion, the largest on record. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/us/politics/13health.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print
Afghanistan: What Now? Unusual, but not weird that Petraeus wanted a protégé to head troops in Afghanistan; strange that Gates is now saying al-Qaeda is principally in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. So, maybe this is the first step in de-emphasizing, if not exiting Afghanistan. We can hope… and advocate.
In a startling admission, Gates told a news conference he didn't know what new strategy and tactics would be adopted with the arrival of the new U.S. troops in the south, where violence is at the highest levels since the 2001 U.S.-led intervention.
"The challenge that we give the new leadership (is) how do we do better? What ideas do you have? What fresh thinking do you have? Are there different ways of accomplishing our goals? How can we be more effective?” said Gates, who recently returned from Afghanistan.
"In some ways we are learning as we go,” added Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He said he hoped that McKiernan's successor, McChrystal, would “make some recommendations about how to move forward as rapidly as possible." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/67958.html
How to pay for health care: Estate Taxes? Obama floats the idea of targeting the wealthiest:
Struggling to find ways to pay for the president’s signature health care overhaul, the administration on Monday proposed to raise nearly $60 billion more over 10 years mostly from tightening rules for inheritance taxes affecting the wealthiest estates.
The Treasury Department’s proposals, and several others affecting taxation of life insurance and some other financial products, are intended to fill a gap that has opened up in President Obama’s health care plans.
Revised estimates show that his main idea for financing the initiative — a 28 percent limit on deductions for Americans in the top two tax brackets — would raise $266.7 billion over a decade, not $318 billion as he had projected in his overall budget blueprint last February.
Filling that gap actually understates Mr. Obama’s problems in paying for reforming health care. The deductions limit has hit a wall of opposition in Congress, with the Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees among others objecting that it could depress tax-deductible charitable contributions. The proposal accounts for half of Mr. Obama’s proposed $635 billion, 10-year reserve fund to introduce cost-saving changes into health care and to expand coverage to the uninsured; the other half would come from Medicare savings under the Obama budget. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/us/politics/12healthtax.html?ref=us&pagewanted=print
Credit Card Compromise: Trying to protect consumers from abusive practices:
The top senators on the Senate Banking Committee have reached a compromise on a bill that would protect consumers from abusive credit card industry practices, increasing the likelihood that the Senate will pass it as early as this week.
Debate on the bill, co-sponsored by Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), began on the Senate floor yesterday afternoon. The compromise reached between Dodd and Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) over the weekend increases the chances of credit card legislation reaching President Obama this year.
Obama is pushing for swift passage, saying in his Saturday radio address that he wants a bill ready for his signature by Memorial Day. Jen Psaki, deputy White House press secretary, said the president will hold a town hall meeting in Albuquerque Thursday during which he will discuss his commitment to credit card reform.
The House has passed a credit card reform measure that mirrors new rules passed by the Federal Reserve in December. The Dodd bill offers stronger consumer protections than the House bill and the Federal Reserve rules. The Fed's regulations won't go into effect until July 2010. The Senate bill's protections would be enacted nine months after being signed into law.
Dodd had sought to ban all interest rate increases on existing balances. Under the compromise bill, card issuers would be allowed to retroactively bump up rates for any borrower whose payments are 60 days past due. However, if the borrower pays on time for six months, the card issuer would have to restore the original rate. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/11/AR2009051103192_pf.html
John Yoo: Empathy has no place in a Supreme Court Justice. What a surprise- John Yoo, he of the torture justification memos- does the Republican talking point:
In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts compared judges to neutral umpires in a baseball game. Sen. Obama did not vote to confirm Roberts or Alito, but now proposes to appoint a Great Empathizer who will call balls and strikes with a strike zone that depends on the sex, race, and social and economic background of the players. Nothing could be more damaging to the fairness of the game, or to the idea of a rule of law that is blind to the identity of the parties before it.
Empathy has a proper place in other areas of life, such as medicine or charitable work. And the law does take account of a party's identity when necessary - in deciding whether someone has suffered racial or gender discrimination, for example. But judges should not apply these rules differently in individual cases because of the skin color, or sex, or religion of the plaintiff or defendant.
Obama's call for emotive judges contradicts his moderate campaign positions. As a candidate, Obama declared that marriage should occur only between a man and a woman, and he refused to endorse the California Supreme Court's blessing of gay marriage. He agreed that the Second Amendment protected an individual's right to gun ownership, a stance rejected by the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court last year. Candidate Obama attacked the view of the four liberals and Kennedy in last year's decision prohibiting the death penalty for child rapists. http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20090510_Obama_needs_a_neutral_justice.html
Wikipedia: Dubious Source Arguably the lowest form of plagiarism is a student lifting from Wikipedia. Aside from the amorality, it’s also a sign of sloth- Wikpedia is usually one of the first links that come up. And, the site is also consumer friendly: Regular folk can add their say- it is ‘publicly edited’- and entries aren’t necessarily accurate.
When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.
The sociology major's made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer's death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.
…I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn't come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up," he said. "It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact."
So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald's florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30699302/wid/11915829?GT1=40006
-R
