Sometimes, Life is Unfair

An acquaintance of mine is a musician, a cello player. He and his fiance, a violinist, were recently in an automobile accident and sustained severe head injuries. Severe enough that their rehabilitation involves their therapists teaching them how to eat and speak. Normally, speech therapists help you overcome speech and memory errors - if they actually have to teach you to speak because you can't, that's a bad sign.

It's more likely than not that they will never be able to resume their careers as musicians and that they will require long-term care for the rest of their lives, at significant expense to the state (or perhaps their families, but their folks aren't exactly loaded), and that their families will experience a significant burden in caring for them.

Not that this should happen to anyone, but why wasn't it the person who hit them who experienced this severe a head injury? Or why couldn't that driver have been paying more attention, or be going a few miles an hour more slowly?

Some Christians say that everything that happens is part of God's plan, and the parents of one of these folks asked, is this really God's plan for my kid? This seems so unfair.

My response is that yes, it is unfair. Personally, I don't believe that God plans for bad things to happen to people. But Christians of both strains of thought would say, I think, that God is with us always, and that God is especially with those who are suffering. God is taking special care of my friends and their families - even if it isn't obvious.

An Open Letter to President Obama

Dear Mr. President,

I'm concerned with the direction the country is going, and I'd like to give you some feedback on how I see you have handled things.

First, I'm a progressive. I strongly support many of your administration's policies. A number of my fellow progressives have complained that we weren't able to pass single-payer legislation or to put a public option (non-US readers - this means the government would compete against private insurers across the entire market) in health reform, or to fully rein in the big banks with financial reform. I share their concerns, but we passed what we could, and it was a good first step.

However, you and your team seem to have gone out of your way to insult the left. You say all we do is complain. You spend more time insulting the left than confronting the right. I think I have you figured out, Mr. President - you're a moderate to liberal, 1980s or 1990s era, Republican. That's fine - congratulations on health reform, financial reform, getting bin Laden, and all the rest. I'd rather a Democrat do it, but whatever. We passed

Second, Mr. President, your party (the Republican Party, that is), is quite different from Republicans of your era. They moved well to the right, starting in or about the late 1990s. At present, your fellow Republicans in Congress are far more conservative than the average American. My impression is that they have these priorities: 1) making you a one-term president, 2) eliminating most spending on government supports for the poor, 3) keeping tax rates for the wealthy low, and 4) spending more on defense. In fact, the Ryan budget would essentially eliminate Medicare, and it would probably leave inadequate support for the middle class as well. So, your party isn't particularly concerned about the middle class, either.

Third, Mr. President, your conduct during the debt ceiling negotiations worries me. When you were negotiating with your (Republican) colleagues during the government shutdown, you should have made them raise the debt ceiling as well. You failed to. You also made a whole bunch of policy concessions to them. Such as volunteering to raise the Medicare retirement age to 67. Mr. President, if we're raising the Medicare age to 67, we'd better be getting a LOT of increased taxes (weighted to the rich). Others have commented that it won't save as much money as you'd think, that it would raise overall healthcare costs, and that it could raise prices in the insurance exchanges, but consult your policy advisors on that. Anyway, you negotiate very weakly. You act as if your (Republican) colleagues. They're not. You've given them so much that they think you'll roll over and play dead.

Fourth, you haven't defended your administration's achievements or its nominees. You haven't sold the public on health reform. You refused to defend Elizabeth Warren, who would have headed the financial reform folks, against unreasonable attacks. You didn't defend Milton Diamond, who won a Nobel prize in economics against unreasonable attacks from Richard Shelby that he was unqualified. Your (Republican) colleagues are working at every step to undermine you. Your silence is only encouraging your fellow Republicans, who aren't anything like you.

Fifth, you've lost your way. I know you're a moderate Republican. However, you need principles. You need to communicate those principles to the American people and you need to defend them fiercely. Your team seems obsessed with capturing independents. So, you've tried to be reasonable. Well, this isn't working so well. America needs leadership.

Last, you're going soft on your fellow Republicans. This strikes me as odd. The thing is, the Republicans have really learned to be ruthless. If you don't want to replay the debt ceiling fight the moment you get re-elected (assuming that you do), you need to learn to do the same. I thought your political team was a bunch of thugs from Chicago - either they've gone soft (and you should fire them), or you should listen to them more.

For Christians, the only acceptable reaction to Osama Bin Laden's death is, "Lord have mercy"

Mike Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister and possible Republican candidate for President, recently made a statement about Osama Bin Laden's death by saying, "Welcome to hell, Bin Laden."

I do not presume to speak for God. However, based on my reading of the Gospels and my understanding of God, I would instead argue that the only acceptable response for Christians is, "Lord have mercy."

Yes, may God have mercy on Osama Bin Laden. He went astray of God's will. He went against the teachings of his religion. He could have turned. He could have repudiated violence. He could have worked for peace, not for war.

And God have mercy on us! We are so quick to war, so quick to celebrate death. I think God must be happy that al-Queda has sustained a severe blow, and we have every right to be happy about that as well. But God loves all of His children, including Osama bin Laden.

Meanwhile, there is much work to be done. Al Queda must be destroyed. But Robert Pape and Jenna Jordan argue that we might want to withdraw most of our military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, while using intelligence and small scale covert operations against al Queda - because our military presence helps fuel support for al Queda. In addition, we must continue to make fundamental changes in our foreign policy towards countries that are predominantly Muslim. We must support the Arab Spring - a repudiation, by the way, of al Queda's theology of armed insurrection.

And, as an aside, the guy who got Abu Musab Al Zarqawi without torture says that contrary to the apologists, torture most likely impeded bin Laden's capture.

As Martin Luther King said, you cannot kill hate. War can, if used correctly, contain hate. But ultimately, peace is what kills hate, and we must work doubly hard to win the peace.

Musing on Political Centrism

Kathleen Parker, writing in the Washington Post, wonders if a centrist political movement could succeed in the U.S. As a progressive, I would welcome the chance to work with centrists to get the country back on track with sensible public policies.

That having been said, I want to work first and foremost to create sensible public policies. Parker claims that many moderate Democrats were "purged" in state and local elections. That may well be. But let's consider the cases of Sens. Blanche Lincoln and Joe Lieberman. Both are moderate Democrats in the Senate. During the health reform debate, both eventually voted with the Democrats. However, Sen. Lincoln opposed the public option, despite earlier appearing to endorse it on her website. Sen Lieberman opposed the public option as well. When Sen. Reid, the majority leader, proposed replacing that with a Medicare buy in for people aged 55 and older, Lieberman essentially threw a fit and demanded that the Medicare buy in be removed. When campaigning as a Vice Presidential candidate with Al Gore in 2004, Lieberman endorsed a Medicare buy in.

Both a public insurance plan and a Medicare buy in could have reduced national health expenditures significantly and the deficit, assuming they were designed properly. Most of the long run deficit is driven by health care costs covered by the Federal government. These options would reduce compensation to doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Insurance companies would have to adapt, and they would see very significant competition with a public plan. But there's no intrinsic reason why providers, insurers, and healthcare companies couldn't adapt.

The public plan and Medicare buy in were arguably sensible public policies, or at least they had sensible goals, Lieberman and Lincoln opposed them. That opposition appeared to be protecting business interests over the public interest. And for what? They never articulated a clear reason behind their opposition. The logical conclusion is that their opposition was solely for political reasons. They could have said, a public plan's lower payment rates could lead to problems with people being able to see doctors. Lower payment rates could constrain medical innovation. They could have counter proposed: let's raise the excise tax on high cost health insurance plans instead. If you do that, you'll get my vote. That would arguably have been good public policy as well. But they chose to vote based on politics, not good policy.

Lincoln was defeated in Arkansas' Senate race. Lieberman is not up for re election, but I understand that he will probably have difficulty winning re election in Connecticut in 2012. Perhaps they will complain that they were "purged". But these two may have deserved it.

I have disagreements with the policies endorsed by some on the left, and in particular I disagree with those on the left who are intrinsically suspicious of business. However, most of the left's excesses are aimed at protecting vulnerable populations. Most of the right's excesses are clearly aimed at promoting the interests of the powerful, often at odds with the interests of the general public. It is clear to me which set of excess is the most pernicious.

Thoughts on the 14th Amendment

Last time I blogged, it was only the madmen who were talking about modifying the 14th Amendment. Now, Sen. Lindsey Graham has said he'd like to visit it. Sen. Graham is one of the most moderate and reasonable Republicans left in Congress.

In this case, those who would like to repeal or change jus soli have no leverage. A Constitutional amendment would have to be passed by a two thirds (I think) vote in both the House and the Senate and then be ratified by three quarters of all the states. This is an impossibly high bar to clear. We can assume that the U.S. Constitution will not change barring social collapse.

In any case, I would be willing to revisit the jus soli doctrine somewhat. Not long ago, the Washington Post reported on the practice of birth tourism, where foreign couples come here to have their babies born and automatically acquire citizenship. Many of them will go back to their countries of origin - China was the featured country in the article. However, their children will be able to have the privileges of citizenship, such as subsidized college tuition, without having contributed to the country.

That doesn't seem right. A foreign couple comes here to give birth and their child is a citizen. The child returns 18 years later for school and is eligible for in-state tuition and federal support, but their parents haven't resided here and paid taxes. In contrast, a child who is undocumented and whose parents have lived here and paid their taxes (which is a more common scenario than many think) would not be eligible for such consideration. It would be more fair if we had a guest worker program that would enable the second family to earn their citizenship if they'd resided here for long enough, but we put the first family at the back of the line. Almost all the other OECD countries have revised their citizenship laws.

As I posted earlier, for progressives to even consider changing the 14th Amendment, we would need a guarantee that non-citizens who are able and willing to live and work here had a fair process by which they could become permanent residents and then citizens. We would need for children to be unconditionally eligible for public supports.

If conservatives were willing to trade modifications to the 14th for immigration reform otherwise, I think many progressives would listen. I'd encourage interested and reasonable conservatives to come forward.

NY Times: Attacks on Asians Highlight New Racial Tensions

An article by Gerry Shih discusses racial tensions between African Americans and Asian Americans in San Francisco. Prejudices on both sides must be combated:

George Gascón, the San Francisco police chief, announced last week the emergency deployment of 32 additional beat officers to the Bayview-Visitación Valley neighborhood. Although “crime numbers have not gone up,” Chief Gascón said in an interview, he wanted to address the “tremendous amount of fear and apprehension” among Asians.

It is these historically black neighborhoods in southeast San Francisco that have undergone the sharpest demographic changes in the city in the past 20 years. Decades after Koreans transformed the Fillmore district from what it once was — the “Harlem of the West,” its blocks lined by the swaggering, smoky haunts of jazz lore — Chinese started moving to the Bayview in large numbers.

Community leaders predict that the 2010 census will show the Asian population, almost all Chinese, now making up 40 percent of the Bayview’s residents and as many as 60 percent of Visitación Valley’s.

“At one point, one group may emerge because they’ve got greater population and another group feels pushed out — feels like they don’t have any voice anymore,” said the Rev. A. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church. “It involves a kind of power shift. That, of course, creates some of the tension.”

The rapidly deteriorating climate has alarmed local leaders. The president of the Board of Supervisors, David Chiu, noted that on Wednesday, hundreds of Chinese lined up at a board meeting to tell stories of assaults and intimidation, sometimes without clear motivation, by young African-Americans.

Two days later, a young black man, Amanze Emenike, 21, said he was 12 when he heard older boys talking about why they singled out Asian and Latino immigrants: they would not report the crime and had no gangs to back them up. On Friday morning, on a Hunters Point hilltop with a breathtaking view of the Bay, Mr. Emenike and his sister, Sherry Blunt, 22, recounted their “spree” of crime against Asian and Latino immigrants several years ago.

By the time he was 15, Mr. Emenike said, he and his brother, Armani Bolmer, would get up at 5 a.m. to rob Mexican day laborers who got off the 23 Monterey bus from the Mission district.

They began to single out Chinese, he said, because they had more money. In 2006, they stalked a Chinese man at the last Muni stop, robbed him, and were arrested hours later.

...

But at these Chinese rallies and vigils, beneath the megaphone-amplified din of positive rhetoric, there are worrying murmurs about revenge, said Henry Der, who was the executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, an influential Chinatown organization, for more than two decades.

“I’m getting e-mails saying, ‘We need to retaliate, it’s time we pick up arms,’ ”Mr. Der said. “And these are from grown, supposedly responsible adults.”

At such a fraught time, leaders like Ms. Tan say they must tread a narrow path between irresponsibly amplifying racial tensions and dishonestly ignoring them.

Part of the frustration, some say, is fueled precisely by the reluctance — both among Chinese and among San Franciscans generally — to discuss such issues.

“Because San Francisco sees itself as very progressive, people just don’t want to talk about these issues,” Mr. Der said. “But that’s how people feel about it. You can’t argue it away.”

...

Mr. Emenike and his sister, Ms. Blunt, said the teenagers involved in the recent attacks were following in his footsteps, as he had followed older boys.

“It’s not ‘this is an Asian person let’s get him,’ ” Mr. Emenike said. “It’s we thinking, ‘this Asian person is probably carrying a large amount of money. And this is our neighborhood, this is our home, why not?’ ”

But if the motivations were largely strategic, and not out of unadulterated racial hatred, they were also influenced by complex emotions and a wariness of change.

“I wake up and I’m hungry, my stomach growling,” Ms. Blunt said. “Why am I just getting by when there’s this Asian walking out of the house with a laptop going to the cafe?”

There is also the frustration at perceived prejudice by Asians. Ms. Blunt still recalls a Chinese classmate in junior high ignoring her requests to borrow a pencil.

“You approach them, and they just keep giving you the cold shoulder,” Ms. Blunt said.

Emenike and Blunt are both to be commended for their candor. At the same time, it is counterproductive for both sides to downplay the role that historical racial tensions have played. In any case, Emenike's essay can be found here.

Social insurance is not outdated

I was told by a friend that Rep. Paul Ryan, a rising star in the Republican party and a fiscal hardliner, remarked that social insurance systems, such as Medicare and Social Security, were outdated. Indeed, Mr. Ryan has offered privatized alternatives: replacing Medicare with a voucher system and allowing Social Security beneficiaries to invest up to 1/3 of their account values in IRA-like investment accounts with a government guarantee of minimum value.

The CBO responded that Mr. Ryan's Medicare vouchers would not keep up with the costs of medical price inflation. After several decades, the vouchers would cover only a fraction of the cost of insurance. As to his Social Security reform, the CBO said it would actually be more expensive than the present arrangement.

Social insurance is not outdated. The alternative, private savings, has already been tried and it failed. Before the New Deal, many elders were in poverty. Before Medicare, access to health insurance ceased for most retirees. Social Security and Medicare substantially eased those problems. Both programs could stand to be improved. Medical costs need to be controlled. Social Security's funding shortfall is a secondary but fixable problem. Taxes will have to be raised and benefits might be cut modestly. Additionally, given the expected decline in the number of workers relative to retirees, it is worth considering investing some of the trust funds in a pension fund arrangement, much as the Canada Pension Plan now does.

Medical and long-term care costs vary a great deal from person to person. If we relied on savings, many people would be bankrupted and a minority would over-save. In addition, socioeconomic disparities in impoverishment and access to care would be reminiscent of countries in the Global South. If we relied solely on savings for retirement security, the same thing would happen - instead, Social Security makes benefits for lower-income people more generous per dollar of tax they pay than for higher-income beneficiaries (i.e. richer folks cross-subsidize poorer folks). In addition, Social Security allows us to pool mortality risk over the entire country, meaning that we can guarantee everybody a stream of income that lasts until they die, plus survivor benefits for spouses and dependent children, plus disability insurance.

Ryan's reliance on a savings system would do none of that. It is his proposal that is foolish and obsolete, not social insurance.