From today's Globe:
"Most Democrats want to see a comprehensive bill that makes significant progress toward providing insurance for nearly 50 million Americans without coverage; Republicans want to focus on smaller steps to lower health care costs." link here
If this is the meme from the mainstream liberal media then we are dead.
Democrats want to take your money and give it to poor people; Republicans want to lower your health care costs. Help!
"The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. . . . [S]oon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."
John Maynard Keynes (The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money)
In case you missed this:
Senator Brown was interviewed by Fox’s Neil Cavuto yesterday, his first national tv interview since becoming our Senator. Cavuto asked him if he would comment on people who claim that the Tea Party extremist language might contribute to acts such as the terrorist who flew a plane into a building with
This is the Senator’s response:
Whoa! Pretend for a moment he was talking about the 9/11 attack. Read what he said again. Sure sounds to me like a rationalization of the lethal attack on the
View the entire interview. The Junior Senator has no idea of what he speaks. He is opposed to government spending and taxing but he admits to not knowing anything about fiscal policy. What in the world does he think fiscal policy is?
Two very good talking points from the Patrick Campaign as reported by Blue Massachusetts Group to counter those who claim Patrick has “done nothing.” Use them when you talk politics to your friends.
1. According to The Federal Reserve Bank of
2. All three major credit rating agencies have given
Moody's cites as the first credit strength of the Commonwealth, "effective management during strained economic times, with a willingness and ability to promptly identify and close gaps through use of both new revenues and spending reductions."
Fitch's report says, "Massachusetts' 'AA' rating reflects considerable economic resources and a record of prudent financial management...the rating outlook is stable based on the expectation that the Commonwealth will continue to address economic and revenue weakening in a manner consistent with its demonstrated sound financial practices."
Standard & Poors notes the Governor's "strong and conservative budget management practices, with swift action to restore balance after identifying revenue shortfalls in the past year." The Commonwealth's stable outlook reflects Standard & Poor's view of the "Commonwealth's proactive approach to managing budget volatility in the past year. Revenue adjustments have been frequent and gap-closing actions have been swift to restore balance."
As pointed out by Blue Massachusetts Group, this contrasts with the performance of Small Government Advocate and often-mentioned Presidential caliber Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s performance.
Moody's Investors Service, one of the nation's premier credit-rating agencies, has a message for the governor and the state: What you've been doing won't work much longer. Stop putting off the hard choices or trouble will ensue.
Moody's cited the state's reliance on one-time solutions and empty reserves in its decision, days before Pawlenty's [final State of the State] speech, to downgrade the state's outlook to negative.
Joseph E. Stiglitz won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2001. While he was in Boston to promote his book on the financial crisis, “Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy,’’ he spoke with Robert Gavin of the Globe staff.
What was the message of Scott Brown’s election to the US Senate?
You might say, it’s the old Clinton message, “It’s the economy, stupid.’’ There are real reasons for people to be unhappy. Were it not for the stimulus package, the unemployment rate wouldn’t be 10 percent, but rather 11, 12, 13 percent.
But some people say the election was a repudiation of this big government approach.
That’s totally wrong, from an economist’s point of view. If we had not spent that money, the unemployment rate would have been much higher. I think people confuse the $787 billion stimulus and the $700 billion bank bailout. The bank bailout failed in that it didn’t lead to more lending, and taxpayers got cheated. That confusion has helped fuel the anger.
What do you think President Obama has done wrong?
Money went into the banks without conditions. In 1996, we passed the welfare bill for the poor and said if you’re going to get welfare, you have to go to training. We put conditions on the poor. When we put the banks on welfare, we didn’t put them on any conditions. And they didn’t use the money to help the economy.
What would you have done?
I would have begun with a vision of the financial system I wanted. I would have played by the rules of capitalism: When you go bankrupt, you don’t get a bailout. I would have had a new regulatory structure. And a bigger stimulus.
Is a second stimulus the right way to go?
It’s clear we need a second stimulus. Two things I would do: Make up for the shortfall in the revenues in states, so they don’t have to fire teachers and close down public services when we need them most. Secondly, make high return investments in technology, education, and infrastructure.
Should we be concerned about $1 trillion-a-year deficits?
We should. Resources are scarce, and we shouldn’t waste money. If we spend money on a bailout for banks for which we get no return, we have more debt and nothing to show for it. It raises questions about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are adding to our liabilities and not our assets. On nonreturn investments, we have to think very hard.
Is it too late to get the economy going again?
It’s more difficult given the debt is larger, but it’s not too late. Politically, Obama has a more difficult task, but not an impossible task. The difficulty is too many Americans interpret what has happened as a failure of the stimulus, rather than what almost all economists will say, that the stimulus wasn’t big enough. That’s a real challenge for him.
Who’s most to blame for this mess?
The bankers. They undertook too much risk, gambled, and the only people who walked out with money were banking executives. The regulators share some blame. I also blame economists. Economists gave the theory, so called, that you don’t need regulation. Not all economists, but this was a strong view in the profession that provided ideological armor to banks and regulators.
Do you think Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke deserves a second term?
He allowed the economy to go to the brink. He’s not provided the intellectual leadership on the reconstruction of our financial system. The manner in which the rescue was conducted had no consistency, and that policy inconsistency led to the problems. I also feel very concerned about transparency, about democratic processes. When you make mistakes of that colossal magnitude, you ought to be held accountable.
In your book, you talk about the economy being out of balance. What’s the proper balance between government and the market?
The government has played an important role in every successful economy. The government needs to regulate. There’s also a positive role in creativity. Most of the advances in basic science are based on government support. The Internet, for example. A lot of people are afraid if we have regulation, it will stifle innovation, but actually the government plays a very critical role in stimulating innovation.
How long is it going to take to fix this mess?
We’re not going to get out of this very quickly. There are fast and slow ways of doing damage, but no easy way of undoing damage. It would be optimistic to say we will return to normal levels of unemployment [of about 5 percent] before 2012 or 2013.
We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.
What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.
A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.
Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make the Sejm look good by comparison.
Entire column at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html
GOP gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker, hoping to catch the anti-Obamacare wave that propelled Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, risks being dragged down by a war chest heavy with campaign cash from the health-care industry, records show.
Baker’s big-bucks campaign has taken in at least $90,000 from donors connected to hospitals, HMOs and pharmaceutical companies, according to a Herald review of Baker’s donors.
Democrats - still stinging from Brown’s upset win - already are taking aim at the issue. “One of Brown’s major arguments to voters was that he didn’t owe anything to anyone. If people look at Baker’s financing, it’s clear he can’t make that claim,” said Democratic consultant Michael Shea.
Baker, a former CEO of Harvard Pilgrim, scooped up $12,400 from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care employees alone, including donations from CFO James Ducharme and senior vice president Laura Peabody.
He also raked in more than $20,000 from other health-care honchos such as Fallon Community Health Plan CFO Charles Goheen, Tufts Medical Center Vice President Margaret Vosburgh and Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
Baker’s gubernatorial campaign also received:
• $25,000 from other employees at health-care clinics, hospitals and other health-care providers including Beth Isreal Deaconess and Boston Medical Center.
• More than $33,000 from HMOs and health insurance companies such as United Health Group, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Health Plans Inc.
• $2,000 from pharmaceutical agencies such as Pfizer.
Baker’s campaign manager Lenny Alcivar said the money is less than 5 percent of Baker’s total fund raising and vowed the Swampscott Republican won’t be beholden to anyone.
“If the question is independence and freedom from special interests on Beacon Hill, the only answer is Charlie Baker,” Alcivar said. Baker declined to be interviewed.
“Those contributions haven’t kept Charlie Baker from shouting from the rooftops about his number-one priority - keeping health-care costs down.”
Brown, who raised at least $8,000 from health-care-related donors himself, declined to comment on whether Baker’s health-care ties would hurt him. He did say Baker’s knowledge of the industry is vast, however.
“I have heard him speak about health care, and he has an amazing knowledge of the ups and downs of that industry,” Brown said. “He’s very impressive when he speaks about what he went through, what the challenges are and how to deal with them.”
Baker has raised about $2.3 million since August and still boasts a $1.6 million campaign chest, according to his most recent filings with the Office of Campaign and Political Finance. He plans on holding a campaign rally kickoff in Boston tomorrow.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/politics/view.bg?articleid=1229027
