Today the Senate Finance Committe (made up of both republicans and democrats) released their long-awaited “compromise” healthcare bill.  Since Obama’s healthcare speech last week (Read or watch the speech here) this seems to be the bill everyone’s been looking to as the hope for the future.  Some of that may be warrented but there’s still a long road ahead.  I’ve provided details and links after the jump

Links

For the full text of the bill (which seems to be formatted in an odd paragraph format) see here:

http://finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/091609%20Americas_Healthy_Future_Act.pdf

For a brief but thorough official 18 page summary see here:

http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2009press/prb091609.pdf

For the Congressional Budget Office’s always excellent and always non-partisan analysis see here:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/105xx/doc10572/09-16-Proposal_SFC_Chairman.pdf

For a summary of the CBO analysis, from their blog see here:

http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=354

And for CNN’s description of the bill, which seemed to me to be the most balenced and informative of the major news outlets articles see here:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/16/health.care/index.html

Summary

So what does it contain?  Well it’s similar to many of the bills completed in the last few months in that it contains subsidies for those who can’t afford insurance, a mandate for individuals to purchase insurance, new regulations preventing insurance companies from dropping patients mid coverage or denying them insurance due to pre-existing conditions, mechanisms for eliminating waste from medicaid, and it creates a health insurance exchange.  But it’s also clearly designed to appeal to republicans and thus has some important differences from previous bills, specifically:

-It does away with the “public plan” (read more about the public plan) and replaces it with a series of co-ops (read more about healthcare co-ops)

-It includes more detailed provisions against providing funding for illegal immigration, adding stronger enforcement mechanisms

-It discusses abortion explicitly, reinforcing the old capp’s amendment, making clear that no tax dollars would be used to pay for abortions, except in cases of rape, incest, or immediate threat to the life of the mother, as it has always been in medicare and medicaid.  It also allows all state abortion regulations to stay in place

-Encourages tort reform, the details of which are to be decided by individual states

It’s also important to note that the CBO analysis was also released today and on the two big statistics everyone’s looking for the bill does decently well.  Ten years out the CBO predicts that the projected number of uninsured will be reduced from 54 million, to 25 million (pg 16), and the federal deficit will be REDUCED by 49 billion (pg 3)! That second number is significant because while Obama has always maintained that he would not sign a bill that wasn’t at least deficit neutral, this is the first completed bill I’m aware of that actually is.

Reception

The bill was received with optimism by the president, and by democratic leaders of the senate, but some democrats there have expressed concerns, namely Jay Rockefeller, who has come out in open opposition to it, and fellow finance committee member Ron Wyden.  In fact, as of right now, nobody on the Senate Finance committee aside from Baucus has endorsed the bill, and no republicans are committed to support it.  Not even the moderate Republican Olympia Snow who the white house has been working with extensively.  But the markup process will proceed for the next several weeks and it’s quite likely that a few republicans will be on board by that time.  Acquiring the support of at least a few senate republicans is a necessity since democrats do not have the majority necessary there to pass the bill on their own.  But moderating the bill wasn’t motivated purely by a desire to attract republicans, several moderate democrats were also somewhat uncomfortable with some of the provisions of the house bill and their support should also be more reliable with the Baucus Bill.

Unfortunately, widespread republican support on this, or any bill, cannot be expected.  Upon the Senate Finance Committee Bill’s release today, Mitch McConnel (R-Kentucky) released a statement saying “This partisan proposal cuts Medicare by nearly a half-trillion dollars and puts massive new tax burdens on families and small businesses to create yet another thousand-page, trillion-dollar government program.”  With all due respect to Mr McConnell, the first concern about cuts to medicare has already been widely debunked, there are new taxes for very few Americans but I think anyone looking at the numbers would say massive is a gross overstatement, the bill is not a thousand pages but is only 223 pages (almost half of which is just describing existing policies) and the CBO clearly predicts a gross cost of a bit over 800 billion dollars over ten years and a net cost of -49 billion.

But this kind of response was to be expected.  I tend to agree with Obama’s assessment in his speech last week that there are

“those who have made the calculation that it’s better politics to kill this plan than improve it”.

Back in July, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said in a conference call, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him”.  And since that time, I think, many republicans have committed themselves firmly to the idea that killing reform in the hopes that it will destroy Obama and get them more congressional power in 2010 is the best course of action.  The fact that republicans have yet to submit a proposal that is even halfway serious seems to support this theory.  Not that this is new behavior for congress.  It’s unfortunately common for one party to oppose good, moderate proposals simply for strategical reasons, especially when that party is the party out of power.  But I guess I had just hoped that with a healthcare crisis immediately looming, and with this being a subject that deals with the very life and death of American citizens, everyone would be putting forth a good-faith effort.

Anyway, this is important because it means that Democrats can really only hope to pick off a handful of republicans to support this bill, and they risk losing a corresponding number of liberals at the same time.  It’s a difficult task to balance.  And it’s beginning to upset liberals, Like Rockefeller and Wyden, who feel that Democrats “are being asked to support a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have bipartisan support.”  The compromise without the cover.  This same concern was present back in Stimulus days when extensive bipartisan talks resulted in a strikingly conservative final bill (with the final product being 42% tax cuts and 58% spending, nearly equaling Rush Limbaugh’s stimulus proposal in the WSJ of 48% tax cuts and 52% spending), but it still passed on a nearly party-line vote.

In the end will liberals say, “enough is enough” and push through a bill using a public plan with no republican support?  Will they use the controversial budget reconciliation method to do it?  Or will they stay on board with a compromise bill as it continues to be modified to meet republican needs to draw those precious few to their side?  Time will tell.  Personally, as much as I think a public plan would be a better choice, I think budget reconciliation is the wrong way to go at this point.  I think Americans prefer a bi-partisan bill, even if that bi-partisanship amounts to 57 democrats and 3 republicans.  And while I’ll reserve my final judgement for when mark-ups are finished, I think baucus’s bill looks decent so far.  Frankly, if it weren’t for the possibility of securing something “better” I think democrats would be thrilled with it.  I hope the liberal democrats realize that it would be silly if we took 0 steps forward because people were upset about taking 3 steps forward instead of 4.

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As the battle for healthcare reform rages on, many of the myths that I once expected to quietly die have instead become stronger and more entrenched. In particular, the degree of misunderstanding surrounding the “public plan” portion of healthcare reform proposals continues to astound me, both on the Right and the Left. I addressed some of those concerns in a post last week entitled “All About the Public Plan” and I think some of the misconceptions I discussed in that article have pertinence to the discussion of alternate reform mechanisms as well. Especially in regards to Co-ops, I think misunderstandings on the part of the Left have hobbled any chance at real discussion of this viable public plan alternative. So hopefully this will help clear some things up:

What is the Healthcare Co-op?

First off, it’s important to know that when we’re talking about co-ops, we’re not talking about the local health insurance co-operatives found in states like Wisconsin. CNN recently wrote an entire article while apparently operating under this misunderstanding, and pretty much all of the statements deriding co-ops that have come from Gov. Tom Pawlenty recently also fall into this category. We are talking about a single, national co-operative or small group of cooperatives, given special permission to compete nationally across state lines to provide competition to the overly-consolidated private health insurance markets. To fully understand this type of co-op, you should first go back and read “All About the Public Plan” if you haven’t already. Seriously, you won’t understand this article without it. I’ll wait… Okay, are you done? Do you understand what the Public Plan is? The Co-op is exactly the same, except administered by elected board members rather than government appointed officials. Literally, that is the only difference I have been able to come up with.

Disadvantages of the

Healthcare Co-op

Now I should clarify that the Co-op idea has the potential to be exactly the same as public plan proposals, and would likely function almost exactly like the public plan, but since no bill has actually been written up with a co-op component, we can’t say for sure yet exactly what it would be like. Sen. Kent Conrad, one of the first to propose co-ops in the context of the current healthcare reform debate has said that they could operate on a state level, a regional level, or a national level. It’s a national healthcare co-op that would function like a public plan. State or regional co-ops would probably be beneficial but would not have nearly the same strength in bargaining power as a national co-op or a public plan and thus would be a less formidable competitor to private insurers. So this remaining ambiguity is certainly one disadvantage to dumping the public option in favor of a co-op.

The only other reasonable argument I’ve heard against the healthcare co-op is that since administrators would not be appointed by the government, it’s not a guarantee that the co-op would remain dedicated to its original mission of lowering America’s insurance premiums. There’s not much to prevent the administrators of the co-op from pursuing the interests of their organization over those of the American people should they ever come into conflict. The primary situation in which that might occur would be if the co-op became too successful and threatened the fabric of our private insurance industry. In that situation, those not participating in the healthcare co-op would not have any direct input into its operations, while those who are members would have only an incentive to increase the size of their organization to grow their risk pool. Of course we’d still have some control over the co-op through legislation, but as we’ve seen that can be a slow and arduous process. In other words, a government administered program would theoretically give the American people (through our elected officials) somewhat more direct and time-sensitive control over how the plan operates.

Advantages of the

Healthcare Co-op

While I’ve stated several times in the past that I believe it to be very unlikely that a public plan would bankrupt private industry, it’s impossible to say that it could never happen. With that in mind a state or regionally based healthcare co-op plan would essentially eliminate that risk, which should ease the minds of conservative reform opponents.

But I think the primary advantage is political. It’s clear that, due to unfortunate naming, insurance company smear tactics, and the white house’s perplexing decision to sit back and let the wings define the debate for the first several months, the public plan has become a very, very controversial proposal. To many conservatives it has become synonymous with “Socialized medicine” and a “government takeover of healthcare”. If a strong, national, healthcare co-op would give us nearly the same result without the controversy then it seems like the logical choice.

I know some are frustrated with that option because they see it as a sign of giving in to misinformation. Yes it’s true that the Public plan has been unfairly smeared and is almost universally misunderstood. Yes it’s true that if it were abandoned, healthcare reform opponents would trumpet from the hilltops that they were clearly right all along and that their protests and screaming had succeeded in averting socialism. The liars would be gratified and the screamers would not learn their lessons, and that would be frustrating. But there will always be liars and there will always be screamers. One win or loss on one item of policy will not change that. Are we willing to accept no reform at all in place of a healthcare system with a strong national co-op, or even strong regional co-ops, for reasons that essentially amount to pride?

Unfortunately I’ve found that this is a frequent occurance in politics. Idealogues often get their way because they’re loud and more than willing to lie their faces off. But if anything is going to be accomplished then somebody has to compromise, and it won’t be them. And in the end, I think it’s less about who believes they won or lost and more about the end result for the American people. I think the most noble policy makers are those who pragmatically seek the best result for their constituents. They’re rarely anyone’s hero, they don’t often make the news, and they don’t have a rabid fan base since they’re not out there boldly and defiantly waving some ideological banner. But they’re the one’s we can thank for most of the positive change that has actually been enacted over the years.

Conclusion

So is the co-op the way to go? If that’s what we have to do to get a bill passed, then I say yes. And all signs from the Senate say that the public plan is a no-go there. I’m all in favor of a public plan, I think it’s the superior choice. But not by so much that healthcare reform is worthless without it. I think it’s wise to push the public plan as much as we can and fight the misunderstanding that’s out there. But when it becomes clear that it will not succeed, we need to accept the co-op and move forward as quickly as possible, before the next smear campaign has time to gain momentum. I really liked what Pres. Obama had to say about this subject in his healthcare address last week actually. and I’ll let his words close out this article.

“It’s worth noting that a strong majority of Americans still favor a public insurance option of the sort I’ve proposed tonight. But its impact shouldn’t be exaggerated – by the left, the right, or the media. It is only one part of my plan, and should not be used as a handy excuse for the usual Washington ideological battles. To my progressive friends, I would remind you that for decades, the driving idea behind reform has been to end insurance company abuses and make coverage affordable for those without it. The public option is only a means to that end – and we should remain open to other ideas that accomplish our ultimate goal. And to my Republican friends, I say that rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate concerns you may have.

For example, some have suggested that that the public option go into effect only in those markets where insurance companies are not providing affordable policies. Others propose a co-op or another non-profit entity to administer the plan. These are all constructive ideas worth exploring. But I will not back down on the basic principle that if Americans can’t find affordable coverage, we will provide you with a choice. And I will make sure that no government bureaucrat or insurance company bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need.”

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Well needless to say there’s a lot going on in the healthcare arena lately.  In case you missed it, the House of Representatives released their healthcare bill last week.  I’m planning on writing up my analysis of it but unfortunately I’ve got midterms early next week so you’ll all have to wait a week or so for that.  But in the meantime I thought I’d provide some basic information about what the bill contains since I’ve had several people recently express frustration to me that they don’t know where to get an objective description of the contents of the bill.  So I’ve provided some helpful links after the jump.

The text of the bill can be found here:

http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Its 1018 pages. So they have prepared summary sheets of the most important points, broken down by topic:

Public plan: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-PUBLICOPTION-071409.pdf

Guaranteed Benefits: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-BENEFITS-071409.pdf

The Health Insurance Exchange: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-EXCHANGE-071409.pdf

Making Coverage Affordable: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-AFFORDABILITY-071409.pdf

Paying for Healthcare Reform: http://edlabor.house.gov/documents/111/pdf/publications/AAHCA-PAYINGFORHEALTHCAREREFORM-071409.pdf

And finally, here’s the CBO’s (Congressional Budget Office) analysis of the bill. They’re a non-partisan research organization that does forecasting for congress:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10430/House_Tri-Committee-Rangel.pdf

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Well its been a while hasn’t it?  Sorry about that.  I’ll be posting with more regularity in the future.  As many of you know I recently got back from an AMA conference in Chicago and it was a surprisingly eye-opening experience in a lot of different ways.  There’s no way I can cover it all in one post so I’m just going to talk about one of the issues that was discussed at this meeting.  There is a now-famous article that was recently published in the New Yorker entitled “The Cost Conundrum” which analyzes some of the drivers of high healthcare costs.

Everybody was talking about this article.  The President of the AMA called the article a “watershed moment” for healthcare reform.  Supposedly President Obama had everyone on his healthcare team read the article.  So if you have even a passing interest in healthcare policy and reform, you should probably read it too.  So for your enjoyment I’ve posted a link to it after the jump.

But first, a quick warning.  While I think this article is extremely important and talks about an often-overlooked issue driving healthcare costs, we should keep in mind that it brings attention to this issue by focusing on an extreme case.  The behavior of the doctors in McAllen TX discussed in this article is in no way typical.  They are identified as an unusual case in the article but its still important to keep that idea in mind.  And the way this is portrayed as almost the sole driver of rising healthcare costs near the end is a bit misleading.  I don’t think very many people studying the economics of healthcare would speak quite so strongly.  And finally we should keep in mind that this is not a new problem, but has been talked about by organized medicine for years now.  There are plenty of physicians who support the principles laid out in this article.  In fact some companies, particularly in California (Kaiser), long ago embraced the capitated model recommended by this author (there’s even a mention of Sacramento as a “low-cost city”!)

So my point is, this article rips a lot on doctors.  Some of it is warranted but it uses extreme examples and a bit of hyperbole to make its case, without really acknowledging the work physicians have already been doing for a while to solve this problem.  With that said it brings attention to an important issue and makes recommendations that I (and many other students and physicians) wholeheartedly support.  So with no further delay, your article awaits.

The Cost Conundrum by Atul Gawande

ps – its really long.

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Breaking News!  Tomorrow morning Pres. Obama is expected to announce that he has chosen John Huntsman Jr., governor of Utah and moderate republican as the new ambassador to China.  And sources say Governor Huntsman has accepted the ambassador position.  He learned Chinese while serving a mission for the church in Taiwan and he has an adopted daughter from China.  He also served as Ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and worked in the Reagan Whitehouse.  I’ve always liked Gov. Huntsman and he seems to be extremely qualified for this position.  And I’m pleased to see Pres. Obama reaching across party lines to appoint more Republicans to important positions.  The full article follows:

SALT LAKE CITY — President Barack Obama intends to name Utah’s Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman, seen by many as a potential GOP presidential contender, to be ambassador to China, a source close to the governor said Friday night.

The popular moderate governor has accepted the appointment, said the source, who would speak only on condition of anonymity ahead of a White House announcement expected Saturday. Repeated messages to Huntsman’s spokeswoman and other staffers went unreturned Friday. The White House would not confirm the nomination.

Huntsman, a two-term governor, is fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan. One of his seven children, Gracie Mei, was adopted from China in 1999 after she was abandoned in a vegetable market.  He made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives.

Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Huntsman is a Republican who “seems to understand the party has to adjust _ not stubbornly believe that everything is OK and it is the country that has to change.”  Huntsman’s positions on the environment and other issues have led some to consider him a potential contender for president in 2012.

He signed an initiative that would set a regional cap-and-trade effort to reduce global warming. In a 2006 speech at Shanghai Normal University, Huntsman spoke of the need for China and the U.S. to work together on environmental issues.  ”The United States and China must be good examples and stewards of the Earth. We must match economic progress with environmental stewardship. The effects of industrialization are felt worldwide,” Huntsman said then.

Throughout his tenure as governor, Huntsman’s background as a diplomat has been evident. He preferred to win over opponents in private meetings rather than using his bully pulpit to give rousing speeches.

One of his most significant achievements was loosening the state’s restrictive liquor laws over the objections of many in heavily Mormon Utah in an effort to make the state more appealing for visitors. It was a feat many here didn’t think would be possible in Huntsman’s lifetime.  However, Huntsman has drawn the most attention for stating he favors civil unions for gay couples even though he backed a state constitutional amendment passed in 2004 that prohibited same-sex marriage.  Huntsman’s comments on civil unions drew the ire of conservatives in his own state and elsewhere.

Officials in Michigan last month canceled a GOP county fundraiser where Huntsman was to speak; they said he had abandoned important party principles.

Huntsman’s career began as a staff assistant in the Ronald Reagan administration and he also served as ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and as a deputy U.S. trade representative and U.S. trade ambassador under President George W. Bush.  Utah’s only Democratic member of Congress, U.S. Rep. Jim Matheson, said he was pleased with the appointment. “It’s a great bipartisan appointment by the president,” he said.

Before becoming governor in 2005, Huntsman made millions serving as chairman and CEO of his family chemical company.  If confirmed by the Senate, Huntsman will succeed Clark Randt as U.S. ambassador to China.

Randt, a classmate of former President George W. Bush at Yale University, served as Washington’s top envoy to Beijing from July 2001 until January, making him the longest-serving U.S. ambassador to China since the two nations established diplomatic ties.

Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert would become governor until a special election in 2010.

-Huffington Post

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Well with finals over and done with you can expect to get a lot more posts from me in the coming weeks!  And we start out today with some very exciting  news.  President Obama held a press conference today for what he called, “a watershed event in the long and elusive quest for health care reform.”  The American Hospital Association, the American Medical Association; PhRMA; AdvaMed; America’s Health Insurance Plans, the SEIU, and the Greater New York Hospital Association and the California Hospital Association announced a new cooperative effort to drastically reduce the rate of growth of healthcare costs beginning immediately.  They pledged to cut the rate of growth by 1.5%.  This may not seem like a lot but this means a cut from about 7% to 5.5%, bringing us much closer to the annual rate of income growth which tends to hover around 4-5% but which has at times grown to near 6%.  And that’s what really matters, that’s really our baseline here.  If healthcare costs can be reduced such that their growth is equal to the rate of income growth in the US then the future of healthcare suddenly gets a lot rosier.  And this commitment brings us much closer to that goal.

And this is also great news for America’s future financial security.  Many people don’t realize the huge impact that rising healthcare costs have on our country’s national budget.  The reasons why that is are a subject for another article but even a savings of 1.5% will mean much smaller deficits and less national debt.  One Obama aid put it this way:

“I don’t think there could be a more significant step to help struggling families and to help the federal budget than reducing the growth rate of healthcare spending by 1.5 percentage points per year. With regard to the federal budget… the only way that we are going to restore the nation to a sound fiscal path over the long term is to reduce the growth rate in health care costs… Reducing the growth rate of health care costs overall by 1.5% per year would virtually eliminate the nation’s long term fiscal gap. … This, by an order of magnitude, is far more important [than Social Security or related reforms] to the fiscal trajectory that we’re on, especially over the long term, than anything else that could be done.”

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic but nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman was almost as excited:

“And serious cost control would change everything, not just for health care, but for America’s fiscal future. As [Budget Director Peter] Orszag has emphasized, rising health care costs are the main reason long-run budget projections look so grim. Slow the rate at which those costs rise, and the future will look far brighter. I still won’t count my health care chickens until they’re hatched. But this is some of the best policy news I’ve heard in a long time.”   And later says, “…shaving 1.5 percentage points off the growth rate of health care spending. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually huge: achieving that goal would save $2 trillion over the next decade.”

So certainly nothing to sneeze at.  The details of how these savings will be accomplished were not released today but will be revealed over coming weeks.  As for why they’ve chosen to independently take this step?  The only answer from the industry was that they’re being “good Americans”.  This commitment will have no enforcement mechanism beyond the press and there will be no formal regulations.  Apparently the industry just came to this conclusion themselves.  Fantastic, if its that simple, but some fear this may be a preemptive attempt to block the healthcare reform that’s currently taking shape in congress.  Insurance companies can ask for patience first to see if their efforts are sufficient or they can claim that they tried to do their part but congress simply wouldn’t compromise.

I’m actually more optimistic.  In the industry’s statement on the issue they implicitly endorsed the healthcare economics currently being used by the administration to justify healthcare reform.  Which means that somewhere there has been a fundamental shift.  Previously, the insurance industry was holding up their own fringe economists to testify on their behalf against the wave of economic opinion opposing them.  Sort of like the tobacco industry doctors or the oil company ecologists.  But it seems they’ve accepted the fact that they’re part of the problem.  Of course the fact that they can suddenly reduce cost growth by 1.5% just for the heck of it seems to validate that idea as well. There’s been easily reducible waste in the private healthcare system for some time now, and this commitment just highlights that fact.

Healthcare reform plans will be presented in the next few months and I suppose the industry’s intentions will become clear then.  I’ll keep you updated as events unfold and as more details about these cost-reducing measures come to light.

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One of my absolute favorite political sites on the internet, Politifact.com, recently won a pulitzer prize!  They were apparently the first exclusively online news organization to do so.  And they really, really deserve it.  They do top-notch fact-checking of most of the controversial statements being thrown around by public officials.  They’re also running an “Obameter” where they keep track of over 500 of Obama’s campaign promises and record which ones are kept and which are broken, with comprehensive explanations for each.

Every time I start to get depressed about the sorry state of investigative journalism, the decline of objective reporting and rise of partisan pontificating, or the way our news media has devolved into a megaphone for the most apocalyptic, opinionated, and insane of our politicians and pundits, I surf on over to politifact.com and bask in their worship of sweet, sweet facts, and it gives me hope.  Seriously, if you have even a passing interest in politics, you should probably bookmark politifact and check it a couple times a week.  They only update every once in a while.  If they expanded into a full news agency I’d probably make them my number one source of political information.  Another fantastic, and equally objective, site is Factcheck.Org.  I know I’ve promoted them both before but seriously, check them out:

www.PolitiFact.com

www.FactCheck.org

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Thanks to Joel for this tip.  It turns out my old stake president from my Glenwood days, Larry Echohawk, just got asked to head up the bureau of indian affairs!  Here’s a portion of the Salt Lake Tribune article about it:

President Barack Obama on Friday picked Brigham Young University law professor Larry EchoHawk to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs, making him the first high-profile Mormon and first Utahn to join the administration’s senior ranks.

EchoHawk, a member of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma, has lived and worked throughout the West. He made history in 1990 as the first American Indian elected to statewide office when he won Idaho’s attorney general race. After a failed bid for Gem State governor, EchoHawk, a Democrat, relocated to Utah, where he started teaching courses on criminal law and federal Indian law at BYU.

“Larry EchoHawk has the right leadership abilities, legislative experience and legal expertise,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said, “to bring about the transformative improvements we all seek for Indian country.”

The rest of the article can be found after the jump.

EchoHawk’s official title — if the Senate confirms him — would be assistant secretary for Indian affairs within Interior. He would lead the bureau responsible for providing services to 1.7 million American Indians and Alaskan natives and for managing 66 million acres held in trust by the United States for tribes. ”I, for one, have been anxiously awaiting this appointment,” said Forrest Cuch, director of the Utah Division of Indian Affairs, “and I was wondering why it was taking so long.”

For months, rumors of EchoHawk’s impending selection have been bandied about among Indian communities. The Salt Lake Tribune first reported his likely nomination in early February. But some tribes objected to the choice because of his previous stance on Indian gaming.

While he served as Idaho’s attorney general, EchoHawk suggested changing that state’s constitution to prevent gaming on tribal lands. In recent weeks, he has reached out to tribal leaders in Idaho, saying he regretted those actions, according to Indian Country Today. Cuch said the dispute has been “blown out of proportion.”  ”Larry is a very reasonable person. He is going to work with all the factions and all groups, simple as that,” he said. “And he is very diplomatic in working with state and other entities, and that is what tribes must do.”

His BYU colleagues also credited EchoHawk, 60, for his judgment and willingness to delve into difficult issues.  ”His scholarship has focused in practical problems like juvenile justice on the reservation,” said former law school dean Kevin Worthen, now BYU’s vice president for advancement. “He can make headway on even the most difficult challenges.”

EchoHawk also is involved in a Pocatello, Idaho, law office that bears his name. His sons, Paul and Mark, work there as well.  ”We are very proud of him,” Paul EchoHawk said moments after hearing of his father’s nomination, “and we’re very excited about the positive things he can do in that position for Indian country.”

Larry EchoHawk, a former U.S. Marine, earned a bachelor’s degree at BYU, where he also played football, and a law degree at the University of Utah.  He and his wife, Terry, have six children and 22 grandchildren. He also is the president of an LDS stake.

mcanham@sltrib.com

Tribune reporter Brian Maffly contributed to this story.

From Article: Utahn picked for Indian Post

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Hey look, a timely article for a change!  Finally I’m addressing a phenomenon before it happens and not days/weeks after it has passed.  Anyway, you may or may not have heard about the “tea-party” anti-tax movement that’s developing around the country.  This tea-party movement consists of people gathering in various cities on April 15th holding protests about the “terrible taxes burdening americans”, and what they see as America’s coming descent into socialism.  Here’s a quote from one of the two fawning FoxNews articles that were up about it today.  From one of the organizers of the tea party protests:

“People are getting killed — they’re getting hammered with taxes and it’s not the way this country is supposed to be run. … We want to fight back,”

Are people really getting hammered with taxes?  I don’t challenge their right to gather and protest taxes or whatever they want, but they may want to check a few facts first.  And to make it convenient for them, I’ve gathered the pertinent graphs and information after the jump.  I should also note before I begin that not all tea-party participants are claiming taxes are too high and that some are doing this for other reasons (to protest the stimulus, just to express their anger that McCain lost etc), I’m not addressing those concerns here.  But these tea-parties are being billed as “anti-tax protests” so this is a significant part of what they’re organizing for and this article will address that issue.  Anyway, as best as I can deduce, here’s some relevant historical perspective…

Taxes on the Average Family

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First up is this graph showing data compiled from the treasury department.  It only runs up to 2006 but I’m fairly certain the tax rates haven’t changed since then.  It clearly shows that the median-income family of four’s average effective income tax rate is currently at its lowest level since at least 1955.  And Obama’s budget will lower that substantially as described in this AP article.

Also, in this analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities from 2001 we read, “…this analysis’ update of the CBO data on overall federal tax burdens finds that when households’ total federal tax burdens are considered — including their payroll, excise, and other taxes, along with the income taxes they pay — most categories of households will face a lower average tax burden in 2001 than in any year from 1979 to the present. (1979 is the first year these CBO data cover.) For example, the middle fifth of taxpayers will pay an average of approximately 16.3 percent of income in total federal taxes in 2001, the lowest percentage during the 22 year period examined.”  And once again, for all but the highest earners, these tax rates, already at historic lows, are only going to fall further under Obama’s budget.

Taxes on Corporations

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What about our poor businesses and corporations?  I mean during the election the (misleading) statistic that America’s corporate tax rates are higher than any other industrialized country was thrown around left and right!  And some members of congress have continued to call for them to be lowered further.  As we can clearly see from the accompanying graph, corporate tax rates are also at near record lows.  Whether or not they need to be lowered further from here is a topic for another article.  But the fact that they’re already lower than they’ve been in 50 years should be enough to make tea-party organizers think twice.

It’s been surprisingly difficult for me to find information on what specifically  Obama’s proposed budget would do to corporate tax rates but it seems that it includes a mixture of focused tax breaks and closure of current tax loopholes and there is some uncertainty about how it will end up affecting the average corporation.  But any change in the average rate will be a matter of a few percent and won’t substantially change our position on the graph.

Taxes on the Rich

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Here we go!  Everyone knows Obama’s budget raises taxes on the rich right?  Its part of his socialistic plan for wealth redistribution!  Well this graph shows the top marginal personal income tax rate since 1913 according to the IRS.  And as you can see, the rich have had it relatively easy for the last several years.  The current marginal income tax rate for the rich lies at about 35% and Obama’s budget would move it to a little over 38%, which would be about equal with the 1997 levels on that graph.  And keep in mind we’re talking about the marginal rate.  So it’s only the income the wealthy receive that is above and beyond $250,000 that would be taxed at a higher rate.  Anything they make up to $250,000 would actually be taxed at a lower rate than it was before.  So their overall tax burden will increase by something less than 3%.  And these tax increases aren’t set to kick in until after 2011.

Wealth Redistribution

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A couple more charts and then I promise I’m done.  While we’re on the topic of wealth distribution and tax stratification, lets look at some of that data.  So when pundits and partisans throw around the word socialism in reference to Obama’s tax policies (they also use the term in reference to his spending policies but that’s another discussion) they’re talking about his lowering of the tax burden on the poor and his raising of the tax burden on the rich.  As we’ve already shown, the rich are getting a pretty paltry tax increase and even so, as this graph shows, our tax policies are flatter than they have been in decades.  The tax rates for nearly all households have been dropping since the 60s, but the rates of the richest have been dropping the fastest.

In fact they’ve been dropping so fast that when you take all sources of taxation into account our tax policies are already flat and bordering on regressive!

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When you count sales taxes (which are regressive) and all other kind of specialty taxes (most of which are also regressive), the bottom 20% of income earners in this country pay a larger percentage of their income in the form of taxes than anyone but the highest 20% of earners.  and even then its only 1% less!  So when we are starting with what we see here in this graph, a slight decrease in the tax rates of most and a slight increase in the rates of the rich will not result in a substantially imbalanced tax burden by any means.

So what backbreaking taxes are these tea-parties protesting exactly?  Taxes are at historic lows (some would say they’re irresponsibly low) for almost everybody and for 95% of America they’re set to go down further.  Corporate taxes are also near all time lows and our country’s tax burden is spread fairly evenly amongst all income groups.  The only group facing any kind of tax increases at all are individuals with an income of $250,000 and even then its not until 2011, its less than 3%, and their rate will still be much lower than its been for most of this century.  And furthermore that income bracket voted predominantly for Obama in the last election, knowing full well that increasing their income taxes was one of his campaign promises.  So if these tea parties are being organized to protest increasing taxes we can only assume they’re doing it on behalf of the rich, which seems odd in its own right, but even more so when you realize that most of the wealthy don’t actually want the help.

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Well its long been my position that the largest bias of the media is their bias towards the exciting, tantalizing, scandalous, lurid, and enraging.  Nowhere is this more evident than in the way that the media treats the actions of murderers who commit mass shootings.  I was reading an interesting article in MindHacks (an excellent psychology/neuroscience blog) the other day about this subject and with the immigration center shooting that happened in New York today, I thought this was an appropriate time to post something about it.

A very interesting video clip on this subject and a brief commentary can be found after the jump (which means after you click “continue reading” for my readers who are new to the blog culture)

This video is from a BBC show called Newswipe and contains a bit of commentary about a shooting in germany and an interesting perspective from a forensic psychologist at the end.  Please forgive the bleeped out cussing and sneering tone, it is a British show after all!  ;)

While we didn’t get much coverage of this particular tragedy in the US, it seemed to strongly parallel our national coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings last year.  I mean we were reading essays that he had written for his english class two years ago.  All of his personal webcam videos were broadcast day in and day out.  There were interviews with his family members and teachers.  It was horrible really.  There are thousands of bitter loners out there who feel like they should be famous but the world isn’t giving them a fair chance.  And they now see mass murder as a way to go down in history and make the world see that they shouldn’t have looked down on them.  They know that all they have to do is burst into their school/workplace/local mall and shoot up the place to get their face and story plastered all over cable news for the next several weeks.

But its a hard thing to stop.  Ultimately the news dwells on these details because its what their viewers want to see.  It appeals to our basest and most primal instincts.  Its kind of a modern form of Roman bloodsports.  If everyone else was showing the home videos of the Virginia Tech shooter and one news station refused to do it they’d get destroyed in the ratings.  They’d all have to make the responsible choice together and to do that successfully they’d need an atmosphere of mutual trust that is not even close to existing in the news industry.

It’s a manifestation of a classic economic and business quandary best represented by the famous “prisoner’s dilemma”. A situation in which the “invisible hand” fails to guide self-interested individuals to optimal results because of imperfect information and a breakdown of trust, instead leading all sides to mess themselves over in the long-run in the pursuit of short term goals.  And if modern game theory is correct, there’s really no good way to stop it.

ps – this will be my last post for a few days because it will be a busy weekend for me but i’ll be back with plenty more posts next week.

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Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that there will be plenty more posts coming up over the next several weeks so keep your eyes open. I’m finally through my mid-block round of finals and I’ve got 6 weeks or so until the next one. And we’re now getting into some semblance of a schedule with Jonah so I’ll finally be able to write some of the articles I’ve been building up here. And to start things off here’s a quick one.  You may have heard something about the G20 summit coming up this week and like many people you may have wondered, “What in the world is the G20?”.  Well that bastion of trivia, MentalFloss, put up an article about it today so just click “continue reading” for a quick definition.

From Mental Floss:

“The G20, more officially known as the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, includes banking ministers from 19 of the world’s wealthiest economies, plus the European Union. The group’s inaugural meeting was held in 1999 in Berlin, to strengthen international financial architecture and to foster economic development on a global scale. The member countries represent 80% of the world’s trade, two-thirds of the world’s population, and roughly 90% of the global gross national product. A few of the countries include the US, Japan, Mexico, Russia, South Korea and Saudi Arabia. Basically, the G20 summit gets all of the people who control economy in one room at least once (or in 2008’s case, twice) a year, and asks them to make decisions about things. Whether or not that actually accomplishes anything isn’t immediately evident. The existence of the meeting, however, provides a wonderful physical focal point for the masses of people angry at the current direction of the global economy.”

The full article can be found here.

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Okay well I know the stimulus bill is passed and settled now so this will likely be my last post on the subject.  But I’ve had several questions recently about whether or not there’s any truth to accusations of pork in the stimulus and while I’ve mentioned some stimulus myths in a previous post (see “ACORN, Fieldmice, Banning Prayer, Socialized Medicine and other Stimulus Fear-Mongering“) and I’ve talked a little bit about pork in some of my previous posts, I haven’t yet focused on it specifically.  So with this post I intend to answer this question to the best of my ability: “Does the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (aka. The Stimulus Bill) contain pork-barrel spending?”

To address this question we’ll first have to decide on a definition for “Pork-Barrel Spending”.  A pretty representative definition can be found at TheFreeDictionary.com:

“A government project or appropriation that yields jobs or other benefits to a specific locale and patronage opportunities to its political representative.”

While the various definitions I’ve found do vary slightly they all seem to agree on the common theme that pork-barrel spending (which is synonymous with “earmarks” according to most sources) is a “pet project” inserted by a legislator primarily for the benefit of that lawmaker’s constituents.  Some examples of “Pork-Barrel Spending” taken from the website of the organization Citizens Against Government Waste include:

• $375,000,000 for an unrequested and unneeded amphibious assault ship in the state of Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.);

• $700,000 for the Admiral Theater in Bremerton, Washington, the district of House appropriator Norm Dicks (D-Wash.), despite a $4.2 million privately-funded facelift; and

• $500,000 for the Olympic Tree Program in the state of Senate appropriator Robert Bennett for the 2002 Winter Olympics.

So now that we’ve established what an earmark is, are they in the stimulus bill?  The short answer, as far as I can tell, is “not really”.  By the standard definition of earmarks, the definition listed above, the definition that has always been used to refer to earmarks in the past, I haven’t been able to find any evidence of any earmarks/pork-barrel spending items in the bill.  I’ve read the bill, and you can feel free to read it yourself (“Read The Stimulus For Yourself“).  The money is doled out very generally to various government departments.  Money intended for private industry is never allotted to particular companies or projects, and those specific projects that are mentioned are solely those run by the federal government, designed to benefit the government itself or the nation as a whole and can not accurately be called “earmarks”.  There are a couple items that could be classified as earmarks using a loose definition of the term and I’ll discuss those at the end of this article.

So what of all the angry rumors of money going to specific dog-parks, butterfly preserves, fieldmice in SF, golf carts, volcano monitoring, and on and on and on.  Some legislators claim that there are billions of dollars of pork-barrel spending in the bill.  Well most of those allegations are based on the same line of reasoning, which I think most readers will find to be pretty tenuously constructed.  We’ll review one of the most outlandish and oft-repeated claims, that there is “8 billion on the stimulus for a levitating train to DisneyLand”, as an example.

So the story of the Levitating train to Disneyland has been told by Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and made its way up to John Boehner, John McCain and Mitch McConnel, before finally being included in Bobby Jindal’s official Republican response to President Obama’s speech to the joint sessions of congress.  This money was supposedly inserted into the stimulus by Harry Reid, or so the story goes, to build a “levitating train” connecting Las Vegas and Disneyland.  Certainly this has to be an outrageous example of government waste gone wild!

Well the truth behind this claim is that Harry Reid, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republican Gov of Nevada Jim Gibbons, have been in talks for some time about building a high speed train to connect Las Vegas and LA.  In fact environmental research was performed last summer to those ends.  And “levitating trains” are in the works.  They’re more commonly called “Maglev trains” and they’re used all over the world because their use of magnets reduces friction allowing for higher speeds, increased safety, and greater energy efficiency.  So the Maglev train to LA became the “levitating train to Disneyland” and I can only assume that choice was made because that phrasing elicits a greater visceral reaction.  Now the rumor about this project being included in the stimulus arose because when the stimulus bill was transfered over from the house to the senate, the amount of transportation department money designated to go to high speed rail projects was increased from 2 billion (i believe) to 8 billion.  Since Harry Reid is in the senate, and he has apparently always wanted a bullet train connecting LV and LA, stimulus opponents jumped on the opportunity to portray this bump in funding as an example of wasteful pork-barrel spending.

Early on this claim may have been somewhat excusable, since Reid’s train may have been eligible for at least some of the money if the Department of Transportation had chosen to fund it.  While still not an “earmark” by the normal definition it, theoretically, could have been some underhanded attempt at an earmark if Reid has some kind of prior, secret, massively illegal agreement with the head of the transportation department.  Not a very likely conspiracy since the Transportation secretary is Republican Ray LaHood, but it was at least theoretically possible.  But after a few weeks the department of Transportation released their map of planned high-speed rail corridors.  And it looks like this: Designated High Speed Rail Corridors.   You’ll notice there isn’t a Las Vegas Train on the list.  And yet myths about this flying, disneyland-bound train persist even to this day and are repeated even by highly regarded stimulus opponents.

So we see that even in this example, there is no money designated for any specific train to anywhere.  There is money (8 billion) in the stimulus bill for high speed rail generally, with the decision of which trains should be funded left up to the transportation secretary.  Nearly all claims of stimulus pork are projects that stimulus opponents believe these departments may use their money on, but it has become common practice to say, “there is money in the stimulus for _____”  when in reality there is money in the stimulus for a particular department and stimulus opponents fear that money may be used for _______.   Remember the definition of Pork-Barrel spending is funding inserted into a bill for a particular “pet project” designed to benefit his/her constituents.  If items that a bill’s funds could possibly be used for in the future count as “pork” or “earmarks” then it is a drastic redefinition of the term, and its a definition that could be used to label any spending someone finds even potentially objectionable as “pork”.

The second way pork-claims are justified is very similar.  The US Conference of Mayors issued a report on Jan 17th listing all of the “shovel-ready” projects they had in their cities that could benefit from stimulus money.  You can see these lists, broken down by state and city at StimulusWatch.org.  Of course none of these projects are included specifically in the stimulus bill.  But money is being sent to states to use how they see fit, some of which will trickle down to various cities and will likely be used to fund some of these projects.  So stimulus opponents combed through this list, selected the most ridiculous sounding items, and then paraded them around as pork-barrel spending.  Statements such as this one from Erik Paulson of Minnosota…

“the [stimulus] bill contains a huge amount of spending on many things that are unrelated to saving or creating jobs… It will fund requests such as $2 million for neon signs in Las Vegas, $4.5 million for an eco park featuring butterfly gardens and gopher tortoises, $500,000 for a dog park, $3 million for a municipal golf course clubhouse, $886,000 for a 36-hole disc golf course, $1.8 million for replacement tennis courts, $6 million for three aquatic centers with water slides … the list goes on and on.”

…are simply lists of items from this report from the US Conference of Mayors.  In reality each of these projects would have to compete for stimulus funding and individual states would decide if they get the money.  Obviously the vast, vast majority of projects on these lists will not end up being funded at all, and we have no way of knowing right now which ones will and which ones wont.  And some of the projects on this particular list aren’t even eligible for funding since the Stimulus Bill stipulates that:

“ARRA: Sec. 1604: None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available in this Act may be used by any State or local government, or any private entity, for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, or swimming pool. “

The claims of 3,000 or more pork-barrel spending items in the stimulus bill are arrived at by counting all of the shovel-ready projects listed by US mayors, governors, and government agencies.  Once again, this is a very new definition of “pork-barrel spending” and I think most people will agree its not very accurate, and could even be called purposefully sensationalized and distorted.

Now as I said above, the answer to whether or not the stimulus bill contains earmarks is probably more properly given “not really” than a straight “no”.  Because while 99% of “pork-barrel” claims are accounted for by one of the two methods described above, and its true that there aren’t any elements of the bill that fit the strict historical definition of pork, there are a few items that would probably be considered “earmarks” by a reasonable person.

Specifically, there’s several million dollars for philipino veterans of WWII from US owned islands who never previously received normal veteran benefits.  There’s also a provision in the bill calling for $2 billion for a “near zero emissions powerplant.” Which many suspect is intended to restart FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois.  There’s also $70 million for “supercomputer activities, especially as they relate to climate research.” The Senate Conservatives Fund, a political action committee, says that is probably targeted for the National Center for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md.  The group also cites $250 million that is designated “to repair NASA facilities damaged by Hurricane Ike and to reduce the significant backlog of maintenance and repair projects at NASA facilities nationwide.” That appears to be for the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Those were the only items in the stimulus I could find that could reasonable be construed as earmarks.  Though even these items are not earmarks in the strict sense since they were not planted by any particular legislators and they aren’t really clearly benefitting the constituents of any particular legislator.  But they could be considered earmarks because they contain cash that is specifically set apart for certain companies or projects.  Or at least they appear to be even if not explicitly designated as such.

So that’s it.  Not nearly as exciting or scandalous as its made out to be.  There are a few spending items that could be loosely defined as earmarks, so the administration’s claims that the bill is “earmark free” may be technically accurate though a little bit of a stretch.  But none of the projects often cited by stimulus opponents are mentioned specifically in the stimulus bill and most claims of “pork-barrel spending” are really hard to see as anything other than a misrepresentation, when investigated more thoroughly.

On a personal note I think the lack of significant earmarks in the stimulus bill is a laudable accomplishment.  Completely earmark-free or not its certainly a huge improvement over what we’ve done in the past.  The new “omnibus” spending bill, on the other hand, which is currently making its way through the legislature is unfortunately laden with thousands upon thousands of earmarks.  Most of those were established before the current administration took office but Obama hasn’t specifically spoken out against the pork-filled bill yet.  It remains to be seen whether the relative cleanliness of the stimulus bill signals a new direction for our government or just a momentary reprieve from pork-barrel spending.  Time will tell.

For more interesting stimulus fact-checking be sure to check out Politifact.com and Factcheck.Org both of which were used in researching this article.  They are the two most unbiased, non-partisan political fact-checking groups I’ve come across, and they’re very thorough.  I recommend checking their websites on a regular basis.

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I think this video does a fantastic job of explaining the credit crisis in simple terms.  It doesn’t really discuss some of the newer developments, and it certainly over-simplifies some of the issues at points along the line.  But it explains the events that initially got us into this mess about as clearly and succinctly as they can be explained.  If you’re new to the economics of the credit crisis, you may still be a little shaky after a single viewing, but you’ll certainly understand things much better.  And even if you consider yourself a financial pro, you’ll likely have a clearer understanding of how the various problems facing banks, lenders, investors, and homeowners are connected after watching this.  It’s 11 minutes long but its definitely worth it.  And don’t forget to share your thoughts about it in the comments!

From Vimeo via MentalFloss

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Well I’m a little late to the game on this one but for those of you who missed it, here’s Obama’s speech to the joint session of congress delivered tuesday night.  It was a great speech, which I thought was surprisingly informative, with a fair amount of detail.  He struck a more hopeful tone than he has in the past, which is probably what we need, and what we are ready for.  I was surprised at how many of his statements brought the Republican legislators in the room to their feet.  Of course its in the bizarre format of all Presidential speeches to congress, where everyone claps after every other sentence.  If you don’t want to deal with all of that then you can just read the transcript here.   

One thing that struck me during this talk, but which I’d like to develop further in the future, is how similar all of our values are in America.  I think, as much as political pundits like to portray political differences as a war of values, in most cases we all have very similar basic values and goals, just different ideas about how to go about achieving those things.  Obama touched on values a lot in this speech and when he was talking about those things was there really much there for any of us to disagree with?  If there are some conservatives in the audience maybe they can let us know in the comments.

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