Sky Still Falling

A “2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.”
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Atul Gawande’s examination of post-tort reform Texas found that the threat of lawsuits had little to do with the price of procedures.
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So tort reform isn’t actually empirically important; it is merely politically correct.
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Sorry to hammer at a minor parenthetical in this post, but it is impossible to argue in good faith that tort reform is one of the 25 most important factors in the cost of health care.

Nice piece, but one quibble:
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Now there’s plenty of blame for the spill to go around, including the Obama Administration’s lugubrious reaction to the stink emanating from the Minerals Management Service
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In fairness, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar laid down the new ethics rules for MMS on January 29, 2009 — little more than a week into the Obama presidency — and set down notice that the old system had to change.
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Now, in retrospect, they probably should’ve gone further and pushed the old MMS head and his associates out the door sooner than they did. But given how slowly Congress was moving on Obama’s executive branch appointments in 2009 with all the Republican holds, I’d imagine that new MMS appointments were a relatively low priority.

Joe:

Would you call this one of the successes or an incomplete?

==

Here’s a note from a Census worker — this one from Manhattan:

“John: I am on my fourth rehire with the 2010 Census.

“I have been hired, trained for a week, given a few hours of work, then laid off. So my unemployed self now counts for four new jobs.

“I have been paid more to train all four times than I have been paid to actually produce results. These are my tax dollars and your tax dollars at work.

“A few months ago I was trained for three days and offered five hours of work counting the homeless. Now, I am knocking (on) doors trying to find the people that have not returned their Census forms. I worked the 2000 Census. It was a far more organized venture.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/two_more_census_workers_blow_the_OqY80N3DBTvL17VmxKKR0O#ixzz0p4DSrp5C

Palin picks a dud:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/26/washington-backed-gop-candidate-defeated-in-idaho/
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Here’s some more good news on the economy:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/05/26/news/economy/new_home_sales/index.htm

“Pete may be right that Obama is headed for failure…or he may be wrong; I’m quite confident that he really doesn’t have a clue.”

Nice use of the semi colon…Lost art…Fowler would be proud..I was expecting a but…but the semi colon is elegant…Congrats…

Maybe you want to ask Joe about this, too:

especially in the…need to shrink or eliminate Medicaid by moving recipients into market-oriented health care exchanges

What’s the New Democrats’ plan for this?
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Doesn’t quite sound like single payer is coming later, does it?

Elvis–I’m pretty sure that these reports underestimate the costs of defensive medicine…which are impossible to pin down, but seem a logical response to the threat of litigation…and yes, Stuart, I’m in favor of the proposal included in the Wyden-Bennett bill that would eliminate Medicaid, which is apatheid medicine for the poor, and include those citizens in the health care exchanges with the rest of us.

If Obama does get re-elected, I’m sure the stories will fly that nothing can be expected from a lame duck president, probably before he gets sworn in again. Or else the right will will crow that Obama can forget a third term. Real America just wouldn’t stand for it.

Thanks very much for your reply, Joe.
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I could certainly be missing it, but I am unaware of any empirical basis for the belief that tort reform would significantly reduce health care costs. Sure, it could reduce the practice of costly defensive medicine, just as eliminating enforcement of regulations of the banking and oil sectors might encourage innovation and GDP. But these are empirical questions. And we have data:

Proponents of limiting malpractice liability have argued that much greater savings in health care costs would be possible through reductions in the practice of defensive medicine. However, some so-called defensive medicine may be motivated less by liability concerns than by the income it generates for physicians or by the positive (albeit small) benefits to patients. On the basis of existing studies and its own research, CBO believes that savings from reducing defensive medicine would be very small. … when CBO applied the methods used in the study of Medicare patients hospitalized for two types of heart disease to a broader set of ailments, it found no evidence that restrictions on tort liability reduce medical spending. Moreover, using a different set of data, CBO found no statistically significant difference in per capita health care spending between states with and without limits on malpractice torts.

Thanks so much for responding to commentary, Joe Klein.
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It’s funny, though, how you New Democrats don’t mention quite as often that other privatization plan– I mean “fix” coming down the road. You know, the one for moving seniors from that Apartheid medicine for the elderly (called Medicare) into junk insurance exchanges with the rest of us?
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‘Cause it’s all about helping those poor people in some other neighborhood, isn’t it? Gosh, we liberals are predictable saps.
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It’s funny how much I agree with the sentiment; Medicaid is precisely the wrong kind of public program, in that it doesn’t address the core problems with health care in the US. I agree with you that tiering health care access along class lines –one for the welfare class, one for the middle class– is terrible policy, and its issues are precisely the fault of the mindset of the next generation of liberals (yours) who came after the New Dealers.
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Do you hear what I’m saying, Joe Klein? I think that the old, inadequate, wrong-headed 1970′s liberalism, “benevolent” liberalism, as laid out by corrente at this link

…I started to note what I would call a split in the Party between those who sought economic justice for the middle class, and those who sought social benevolence for the poor.
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I’m always on the side of helping the poor, but in policy terms, I’ve always thought what helps the poor most is to empower the middle class. Policies that target only the poor through subsidies and welfare programs, and sort of ignore the plight of the middle class over the last several decades, don’t leave those on the bottom with anywhere to move up to.
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Further, often the needs of the poor can only be met through vigorous funding of public programs, not simple charity. And, at this time of economic lopsidedness, often policies need a broader scope than limiting social programs to the least among us.
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When social programs include the majority of working people they are extremely empowering and hold great staying power. Medicare and Social Security are two examples. Both programs are taxpayer supported by the broad populous. Neither is a welfare program. Social Security, particularly, is a program where what you put in is basically what you get back. It puts everybody on the same playing field and no one who pays into those programs thinks they are recipients of the gift of health care or the gift of retirement security.

is absolutely wrong for America.
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In other words, I supported Wyden-Bennett too, as a step toward a sustainable health care system that my country’s people deserve.
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The difference between you and I is that I know that, despite Village orthodoxy, Medicare is much, much better at delivering health care than private insurers, and the goal of policy should not be to make those, bloated, accountability-less private sector health insurers –those state-by-state monopolists– more like Medicare, and not to make the public systems more like the incomparably expensive and inadequate private insurance markets.
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You still think that the model is the private health insurance market, because you’re trapped in Third Way ideology with respect to where the compromise should be between free markets and state intervention. We, this other kind of liberal that came after your generation opened their ideological mouths to Reaganism like greedy chicks in the nest, know that’s not the right model –and that the hyper-inflation that 16% of GDP on health care prices in the US indicates is evidence of that.
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I’m not saying that Canada’s or Britain’s systems are the only true paths forward –like you, I don’t think that a sustainable system requires single-payer or a VA-style model– but Germany’s system looks pretty darn good (and is better and cheaper than the Swiss’).
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I am saying that the Third Way privatization plans for Medicare, these piecemeal exchanges and New Democrats’ abiding faith in the wisdom of “market-oriented” (too big to fail-creating) policies are exactly the wrong way to go about fixing our problems, and that Democrats will be punished by the electorate for these radical and destructive experiments, just like the old post-Great Society liberal Democrats were for their orthodoxy and stupidity.
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My gratitude once again for your response, Joe Klein, and thank you for reading and considering this.

Let me rephrase that so it is perfectly clear, since I don’t have a way of editing that post:
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“…the goal of policy should be to make health insurers more like Medicare, not to make the public systems more like the incomparably expensive and inadequate private insurance markets.”

53_3, we’ve got some contractors at work and one of the guy’s truck has a “Palin/Jesus 2012″ bumpersticker on it. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Jesus couldn’t run because he wasn’t born here. Of course it didn’t stop Obama so….

No one even knows who Pete Wehner is, no less cares what he or James Carville thinks. But as long as you’re dating yourself, you must realize that you’re running out of time to do something useful with that high perch you’ve been given. After witnessing the past two years of serial, corporate-driven disaster, only a complete corporatist tool would fail to understand that if we don’t wrest control of government from industry, “we’re [all] about to die down here”.
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In confronting the number one threat to the nation and the world, so far Obama has earned about a D- and that’s giving him credit for the modicum of regulation he’s gotten through the Congress. Why don’t you start writing about something that actually matters (or is that not your beat)? This political bullsh!t that avoids the anti-constitutional, anti-democratic (one board member, one vote) 800 lb. gorilla in the room is literally killing us.

Funny you should mention about who Pete Wehner is, as I didn’t know either. Nor was I aware of Dionne. I have visited both after reading here and find both to be good writers offering interesting reading at opposite perspectives. Thanks, Mr. Klein.

Speaking of the Village and it’s penchant for relentless b-s:
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“This is what happens in a town where politics is the local industry, its players expect upper-middle-class lifestyles, and unless you’re exceptionally smart and at least a little bit lucky, the compensation for independent thinking is far less than the remuneration for its converse, especially if you can get your book jacket shown on Fox News.”
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Conor Friedersdorf

…and also:

“When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not to fall in meekly behind them.”–Howard Zinn

SZ, I’d add that Zinn is the forefather of Jane’s veal-pen metaphor. We know the groups she’s referring to, but Zinn’s was far more penetrating b/c it’s steeped in what today is deemed heresy, class discourse. That the middle class is given just enough breadcrumbs from the master’s table, just enough delusional fantasy that he might become a master someday, that he’s more than willing to turn on or at the least ignore those less fortunate than he. This too, IMO, is the veal pen.
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And Chip Berlet is channeling Zinn here:
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http://www.progressive.org/print/139701
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What’s astonishing to me is the reverence the netroots has for Zinn, yet they so utterly ignore his core philosophy.

“I have visited both after reading here and find both to be good writers offering interesting reading at opposite perspectives.”
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Really? I find Dionne to be a smart, sincere, occasionally insightful left-of center thinker. Wehner, as Joe Klein suggests, is a dishonest, right-wing, hack propagandist who seems never to have had an original thought in his life. YMMV.

shepherd, I offered no judgement beyond the opposite perspective comment. You find Dionne as you find him and Wehner as you find him. So? I am surprised? Wehner represents a view that I do not agree with, but am interested to know what it is. You are not so inclined, apparently, and wish to sit in the choir listening to the preacher. Good. I like to venture into the right wing fields. Not good? Give me a break.

“I like to venture into the right wing fields.”
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Sorry dude, maybe I’ve been at this longer than you but, by now, I find those fields to be consistently, irredeemably fallow.

JK maybe you discount one study. We in California have been living with the results of tort reform. It has not lowered doctor’s liability premiums. Can you believe that?
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/tort-reform-questionable-success-and-obvious-shortcomings-132541.php

Dude, I would guess that you have been at “this” much less longer than me. If I knew what YMMV meant, I would probably offer another comment. Must be some Dude texting thing, I have no idea.

Dude, one more thing, even more weird, Dude. I am on your side.

freeper: I worked on the 1980s census under Reagan. Organized it was not. If fact, most census takers are paid by piece work. If someone wasn’t home you guessed the information needed for the long form. You could do ok by turning is guess work. When it was turned in no audit was done.
It would be much more efficient to use statistical modeling for the census. But, of course, the Reps oppose this.

Sorry for the typos. My freaking fingers are out of control. Need to get back to my knitting.

Is it “Lebowski Wednesday” in the States today?

Apr,.
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Sometimes one can learn from the Trolls and I did, months ago, wrestle one fact out of our Dr Earl Josef Mengele:
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Nusance lawsuits for only a few thousand dollars – cheaper than hiring the attorneys to contest the suits are the primary cost of lawsuits.
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The few huge suits are so few that, when divided out among all of the doctors, it is not significant at all and the huge suits do have merit since they either won in a trial or are settled with the knowledge that the plaintiff would win against the doctor.
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So, tort reform limiting the amount of damages makes being a negligent, awful, doctor cheaper, but, does not help prevent the far, far more numerous and, therefore, more expensive nuisance lawsuits.

Apparently, my “mileage” varies quite a bit.
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Perhaps I’ve been too hard on Joe’s longevity and relevancy.

I was a 2000 Census taker.
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It was a disorganized mess then, too.
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It is more than a little difficult to gather about 100k people, pick who is in charge of whom, get them together, train them, weed out the slackers and cheaters and then come back for an audit and then disperse them and the vast majority of the agency for another ten years.
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I could not imagine it being any less clumsy than if it were done by a private business other than it would probably pay less and tolerate more slackers.

I should let Zinn [click] speak for himself:
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“It’s interesting what you say about the middle class, blinding itself, protecting itself from what is happening to so much of the population. And this is so much the history of the United States which developed perhaps the largest middle class. That is, the United States has had enough wealth so it could bribe enough people in the population to create a middle class which became useful as a buffer between the very rich and that part of the population which could not even rise into the middle class. So the middle class, in the United States, has always been enticed by the establishment into thinking that it can rise into the upper class and not told that it can also descend. The result is that the United States educational system teaches us from the very beginning that we are not a class society. To use the term ‘class,’ in the United States? it’s just a term you use for school, right? This is my class? sort of thing.”

53_3,
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Classic Tea Party moment in that article:
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” But Ward apparently damaged his bid in recent weeks, allegedly plagiarizing from a speech President Barack Obama made at the 2004 Democratic convention. He also mistakenly alluded that Puerto Rico was a country during a recent debate.”
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If it were anybody but the president he hates, it wouldn’t have been half as pathetic for Ward.

jcapan, what the F? You always present riddles that I don’t know what the answer is. For the sake of argument, the American middle class is the most advanced evolvement in civilization. It is mimicked in every society that can hope for it. It’s diminution by the politicians and the so-called Capitalists stalking the hallways in DC are the problem. Not the middle class.
Did I misunderstand what you say?

Never mind. I will be absorbed in reading now.

JK~
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What sort of petty crap is this? Not your finest work. I see lots of hyperbole, a slight dose of self-glorifying grandiosity, and of course, as per usual, a bit of personal vendetta. You come across as much more deserving of our time when you talk issues, rather than people. And, please, for the sake of your own image -which is teetering on the brink of delusional grandeur- stop trying to coin new phrases, historic phrases if you will, that should be best left to future reflection.

“I worked on the 1980s census under Reagan. Organized it was not.”

It is not a question of organization. Most government activities by their very nature are inefficient. The question to ponder (of course liberals will out of hand dismiss) is the great job creation and growth we supposedly have seen is nothing more than the same Census worker being hired 4 times, thus creating 4 new jobs.

“Bush Assistant Commissar for Pretentious Propaganda”
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Neither this writer nor this thinker’s finest hour, neorationalist86, not at all.

Most government activities by their very nature are inefficient.
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Where is your evidence for this?

your own image -which is teetering on the brink of delusional grandeur
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If you’ve ever read an account of one of Klein’s temper tantrums, you’d realize that the quoted statement is pretty generous.

SZ~
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Yea, quite possibly one of the most contrived “titles” he’s written, and he’s written quite a few.

Zinn is the forefather of Jane’s veal-pen metaphor.
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That’s actually a fantastic insight, I hadn’t thought of that at all.
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I don’t subscribe to Marxist or post-Marxist class analysis that posits the traitorous nature of the petty bourgeoisie is primarily responsible for their lack of solidarity with the welfare class against capital.
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I think that this analysis is insufficient, and clings too tightly to class struggle orthodoxy, which, lest we forget, is ultimately derivative of that lunatic reifist Hegel’s theories of history.
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There are other significant forces at work in the human psyche, in other words, that are left unexamined when the determinism of relations of production is concluded, as a materialist (or an economist) would tend to do. Breadcrumbs don’t really account for the creation of demand or of spectacle, or the agency of individuals, or the unpredictable quirks of history and geography. There are other reasons than breadcrumbs that motivate aggregates of people at different times and places to assume or to reject their given roles.
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Not that I’m arguing for structuralism, either, though.
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Nor am I in denial of the existence of class in American economic and political life. We should be careful, however, when we reject the description of this culture as “without classes” not to superimpose orthodoxy, especially that derived of European historical context on our strange land.
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As all-engulfing as tendency toward commodification may be once acquired (or imposed), no nation or people has come to capitalism completely, nor rid itself of its history, language or the relations of production prior to The Markets. To forget this is to be enamored of the completeness of models.

Cliff: Inquam proinde is est.

Hervoragende Leistung vorgestern, kevin!

Cliff, do you really want to argue that an institution that has no competition and NO FEAR of losing it’s job is going to be self-motivated to be as efficient as possible? The mere involvement of the SEIU and other government unions makes sure that the weakest and least productive workers are protected and still have jobs. The best workers don’t need protection; they are in demand.

Cliff, have you never been to the DMV?

I don’t know your crazy moon language, and Wednesday ain’t over yet.

Well, how about you then, xxception? Can you point to any evidence for your claims?
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I know this is a commonly held belief on the right, but I don’t think I’ve seen any evidence of it.
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Can you show me how privately run health care is more efficient than government run health care?
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Can you show me how private enterprise can educate the populace more efficiently than the NEA?
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Can you show me how private enterprise can prevent aircraft accidents more efficiently than the FAA?
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Can you show me how private enterprise can guarantee the quality of our food and drugs? Does private enterprise even recognize this as a need?

Yeah, it sucked a whole lot worse than all those other privately run driver’s license outfits that are just sitting around!

First, the SEIU also unionized private sector janitors.
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When seeking tuition money in Boston, I was one of one hundred and twenty five mall security.
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Their strike was not even slightly viscous. All of the companies negotiated as a group and, so all of the companies were on strike at the same time.
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I wondered, at first, why scabs and strikers were waving to to each other. The strikers spent half their time striking for $10 per hour and the other half of the time scabbing for other companies for $15 per hour.
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Also, here is what business week has to say about unions:
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“Many in the business community are not blind to these benefits, but they still fear that more robust unions will cut into profits and thereby slow down investment and growth. This concern, as far as empirical research can tell, is simply misplaced. Within the U.S., there is no correlation between unionization and the probability of a firm’s failure, and looking around the world, there is no correlation between the extent of unionization and aggregate rates of growth. ”
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http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/jun2009/ca20090623_995100.htm
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Large organizations such as insurance companies, hospitals, banks, financial institution, universities, the military and other government agencies need administrators and rigid, uniform ways of doing things. Hence, bureaucracy.
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I almost respect the more anti-government (also anti-business) anarchists since they had a solution: no large institutions at all.
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Black flagged Anarchists did control a few villages of Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Of course, among other things, they would elect their officers and were not required to follow orders and received no outside funding from the Russians as the communists did, so they were crushed very shortly afterward.
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This was documented in George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.
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Libertarians are the biggest dreamers of all. Everything started out non-government. If it weren’t for private sector failures, we would not have anything but law enforcement and military from government.

The DMV in WA is pretty efficient. You can do most routine things online (license renewals, tabs). If you take an emissions test, the results get uploaded immediately to the DMV database.
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The DMV in NYC was like Sarte’s h*ll. (But that was 20 years ago, for me…)

“I think that this analysis is insufficient, and clings too tightly to class struggle orthodoxy”
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Agreed, but any analysis of the failing/ed experiments in capitalism & democracy in America is useless without it. Insufficient, yes, but still essential.

“That rug really tied the room together.”
From the profound Lebowski, Dude.

The point is to the learning impaired, not the inefficiency. It was such an easy system to scam, then and now. Piece work is still used and still abused.

It is terrible when a worker might be protected from the abuses of an employer. We know from history how fair they were before unions started representing workers. We can see from the actions of BP that captalism is always honorable. They can be trusted.
Please, please study history.

Geez Cliff, Somolia is an example of a country with no federal government interring and certainly gun ownership insures everyones security. No unions, no regulations. Do you suppose some of our reactionary friends might enjoy living there?

correction: interring should be interfering.

They would, except for all the, you know, black people.

Sie sind zu freundlich.

This is usually when the libertarian asks, “Well, listen, if you had an important letter to mail tomorrow, would you trust the US Post Office, or would you use FedEx?”
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One letter, one time? I might use FedEx, sure. Their ground letter rate is a lot more than the 44-cent stamp, but I’d spring for it if it was one special instance and I wanted to track it online.
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But if I were, say, a nation of 300 million people, one that sends out 660 million pieces of mail each and every day, then that cost differential would really add up. That would certainly make me choose the evil socialized postal system.

@Cliff: Sorry to be obtuse. You asked the question:
“Where is your evidence for this?”, and, on behalf of freep, I replied: “Because I said so”, which kinda sounded like, “I say so, therefore it is”, which I translated into Latin somewhere on the web because it was 11PM and I was getting tired and silly.
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Didn’t check on what “feeding”, “trolls” and “Thursday” were in Latin…good idea, though!

Our local UPS store is slower than the local USPS, but not as slow as the USPS the next town over.
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Could it be that… *gasp*…people and businesses are different??!?

“It was a far more organized venture.” — freeinpa at comment 3.
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“It is not a question of organization.” — freeinpa at comment 9.
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Okaaaaay, freeinpa.
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Honestly, I don’t even need to say any more about this little faux pas, do I?

freeinpa caught in self contradiction at 14.

Need to put an end to the SEIU bashing. For one, they are not that powerful, two, their purpose is to give workers leverage in negotiations, and three, they are hardly part of any of the problems we face as a county.
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You would probably cheer about abolishing both them and ACORN, but, in reality, you would have accomplished absolutely nothing for the country.
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Maybe, xxception, instead tossing snot to see if it will stick, write about useful solutions.

Art,
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You havn’t been to the one in the Renton Highlands. The inefficiency is not due to the workers, but bad planning by the manager. (don’t know of managers are SEIU).
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The holdup is due to the fact that before you get a number, you have to wait in this “triage” line first, while a single individual at the desk sorts ‘em.
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If you have someone that needs a lot of help, you are stuck. No cutting to get a number.
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It’s so bad there I go to the one on Rainier. At that one, you pull your own number. People sort themselves.

When you think about it, Somalia does indeed practice unfettered free enterprise.
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The piracy is a big breadwinner. Arms trade flourishes too.

Also, you forget much of the success that unions played in raising the standard of living for the average working American.
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Labor unions, together with labor laws advocated by the labor unions and rank and file workers, served to put an end to the Dickensian economy that was the bane of US workers since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
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Look up “phossy jaw”, Bhophal, “Love Canal”. Mining safety (big issue this very day), Oil platform safety regulation (again, as current as you can get.

I’ve been to the NYS DMV about six times.
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Five of them took between two and three hours.
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I showed up on a rainy weekday afternoon and I was in and out in about 35 minutes.
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It’s hit or miss with that.
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Personally, I think if any governor wants to get 3-5% more votes, by hiring more people speed up the DMV as well as a few other state agencies with more people to handle the long lines and that governor, Democrat or Republican, will be over the top for the next election.

I could just imagine a libertarian country with everything run by private, for profit businessess.
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Man with Indian Accent, “Hello, Johnson’s police service, my name is Booby, what is your account number?”
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Man on other end of the phone speaking in a whisper, “my bank is being robbed, I am hiding under a desk. I am at…”
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“Sir, I am going to need your account number beginning with the numbers 4487 followed by a dash.”
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“The gunman just killed a teller! Get some cops to 981-”
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“I am so sorry, sir. I can not hear you with the sounds of screaming, can you repeat your account number and please speak a little louder?”
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“I don’t have my account number with me! I’m at..”
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“Well, sir the account number is conveniently located at the top of you bill on the upper left hand sid-”
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“I need cops now! Get me your manager!”
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“I am so sorry, I could not serve you, will you be willing to take a survey about the services you have received at the end of this phone call?”
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“Help me!”
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“I will transfer you to your manager…”
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Phone on hold, Rod Stewart’s song comes on “Have I told you lately that I love you…”
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Man jumps out from behind desk and volunteers to die rather than hear more Rod Stewart.

Why is it that every right-winger uses the DMV, specifically, as their example? Is it the example written on the Young Republicans club flyers or something?
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And aren’t DMVs examples of *state* government inefficiency, rather than federal?

Just retired from the USPS. The clerk union, which was formed in its current form in 1973?, biggest reason for formation was the arbitrary decisions concerning personal which management used in a militaristic manner(most people were from the military at that time). That’s about the only good thing the union did IMHO. If you came to work you didn’t get fired(productivity had nothing to do with continued employment).

Before the USPS, I was an air traffic controller with the FAA until Aug of 1981. For those old enough that date has significance. The union was good for safety reasons, but when it proposed way too high of a pay increase, Reagan fired all those who struck.

Before the FAA, it was the military. No union there for obvious reasons.

I guess my point is unions protect those who produce little and in the end, productive people, for the most part, see no point in doing the best they can because there is no reward for that(in the USPS specifically, for an air controller less than your best will kill people, so you do your best).

Politically I’m middle of the road although I would rather have a domineering company to work for than a domineering government that will control what you are allowed to do and think and say, which IMHO America has been heading to for the last 80 or so years, much faster now these days.

Panama anybody?

I have worked union jobs. I was a teacher. And, I sorted cranberries. Now there is a mind numbing job. The job occasioned me to become a Teamster Union member. After working on the belt sorting cranberries and going a little crazy, I went upstairs and asked to assemble shipping boxes. The person assembling let me do that exciting job. However, I was pulled off it because the box assembler made 5 cents more an hour than the cranberry sorter. Did I think this was stupid? Yes.
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However, I appreciated the Union when the managers did not open the ventilation system and many people went home sick from propane gas inhalation, against management’s wishes. The Union got the ventilation systems opened. I appreciated the Union when they convinced management to let us bring blankets to cover our knees when we worked the night shift and it was unbearably cold. I respected the Union when it represented women and made the company accept them as able to operate fork lifts to move palettes. It paid a lot more than sorting cranberries. As a working mother, I appreciated the fact the Unions made management give us 24 hour notice when we had to work overtime. I appreciated that the Union made them enforce safety standards and standards on break time. I liked that the Union negotiated so that we received a living wage. None of these concessions were willingly given by management.
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“Politically I’m middle of the road although I would rather have a domineering company to work for than a domineering government that will control what you are allowed to do and think and say, which IMHO America has been heading to for the last 80 or so years, much faster now these days.”

Mmmm…middle of the road? And you love those big corporations and hate the big bad government, especially over the last 80 years. Let’s see, that would be about the time the New Deal started under FDR that gave this country 50 of the greatest years of prosperity in history.

Until the early 80′s when those domineering companies started running the show. And you like how these last 30 years have gone compared to the previous 50?

BTW, who have you voted for in say the last 10 presidential elections? Middle of the road, my ass!

Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2010/05/26/sky-still-falling-2/#comments#ixzz0pAq1YNHt

“It has achieved historic success with its economic responses to the Great Recession, including the stimulus package” – vs today news: “The slow pace of economic growth shows the recovery is too weak to generate enough jobs for 15.3 million unemployed people.”
Indeed, “historic success”!
Bravo Joe!
(I just could not resist, had to register just for it…)

I love reading propaganda that is halfways artfully crafted. It’s entertaining to see lies masked as truth and truth twisted in a manner and position rather unbecoming to her.

Like children who read comics and paid $1.00 for the 7 foot tall Frankenstein cutout or 25 cents for pepper gum that had been sitting in some warehouse for four decades, so gullible are the readers of Time, Newsweek and most media news outlets who take the content at face value.

In your first line you reveal what emotionalizes you the most – an amateurish mistake.

“Pretentious Propaganda”

See a professional propagandist never reveals their hand so often. Your lines need some work.

“The truth is, the Administration has a mixed record at the moment.”

Okay so you wanted to paint a rosy picture on a Presidency going down in flames. Prefacing something as “The truth is” is also timeworn and ineffective for making people believe what you are about to tell them is the truth. And then your adjectives for Obama’s “historic” success are a bit over the top and must challenge even the double-digit IQs such “bullpucky” is targeting. After all, all those living in the real world see the state of the economy and the “success” of the Obama administration’s responses. Asking them to swallow “historic” in that slot is a bit much and will backfire as 1/2 your readers will instantly think “he’s full of it”. A better lie would have been presented thus:

“Obama’s efforts have moderated what was a real economic disaster and his administration has taken tremendous efforts to turn things around.”

See? Now isn’t that lie alot easier to swallow than the “historic success” route?

And you also need to better conceal the Bush blame game. After a year and a 1/2 into Reagan’s Presidency no one in the major media was still mentioning Carter’s political advisors and giving them any weight. Such remnant Bush Syndrome only gives weight to the Bush adminstration and makes them larger than life. You and many other journalists give them an almost immortality and prescience that only serves to cheapen and present Obama’s administration as a bunch of no-name lightweights and I know this is not your intent. However when one tries to blame previous adminsitrations for the current administrations failures I guess you have little choice, do you?

Anyways, thanks for the entertaining propaganda. If you really work on it you may someday be really good and graduate from the DC slushpile into a fine craftsman of “pretentious propaganda” but it’s late in the game and you seem content and happy to churn out this subpar propaganda that only works on folks who cant figure out how to work their blu-ray players.

Best regards,

SDAI-Tech1

Wow talking about dodging reality and not taking a look at the facts. Exactly which Obama policy has seen success? Was it that $800 billion stimulus that was supposed to keep unemployment under 8%? (it’s around 10% right now). Or maybe that health care bill that was so great that it doesn’t apply to any member of Congress and those that wrote it.

The problem with you liberal bloggers (and the media, too) is you don’t say anything of importance. I mean why is no one taking this Sestak job offer seriously? If, as the president claims, nothing “improper” happened, why can’t they just come out and tell us what did happen? I’ll tell you why…because he’s got lawyers out the wazoo working night and day to come up with some sort of loophole to get him out of deep water.

And my last point is that you’re just plain wrong about Obama’s poll numbers. In fact, at this point in their presidencies (about 1495 days in), Reagan had about a 56% approval rating and Clinton’s was 57%. Obama’s: 49%.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/124922/Presidential-Approval-Center.aspx

Where did you get your numbers?

My apologies…That should be 493 days in and you are correct about your poll numbers. Reagan and Clinton, however, turned it around. Obama, on the other hand, I just don’t see it happening. He’s too arrogant, too liberal, and is dropping numbers daily.

“achieved historic success with its economic responses to the Great Recession”

Our President and his Administration are smart, sincere folks, but this statement ignores unemployment, stock market, historic deficits. I would love to hear the measure is of “historic success”. Unless it is something like “No nuclear attacks on US soil” or “We can still afford Air Force One”, I’m missing something.

Mr. Klien,
You prove your bias and then try to act objective. The Social Security trust fund went into the black six years earlier than predicted the week following the Healthcare bill signing. The IRS is in charge of healthcare oversight.
CBO now admits the numbers used in the healthcare formula were off by hundreds of billions. A job was offered to drop out of a race. Where are you on this?
If you want to have a real voice be objective.
James Carville’s recent ranting about the oil spill proves that if the most loyal Democratic supporter in this country has the guts to call out Obama. There is a problem with the administrations handling of the disaster. Plain and simple.
Bush Haters United is your banner.
You should pray that Time does not wake up from your liberal dreamland and Obama love festival. Objectivity and balanced reporting of fact are not your forte. Hope you resume is in order for your family’s sake. It take guts to admit Obama can make a mistake. God bless James Carville and all of the the people affect by the spill in the gulf. Shame on you Mr Klien.

Mr Klein,
I made a mistake,
The Social Security trust fund went into the red six years earlier than predicted the week following the Healthcare bill signing.
As you see at least I am honest enough to admit it.

Numbers don’t exist in a void.

Obama’s numbers are the result of a friendly media who practically annointed and crowned Obama themselves (with the help of economy wrecking poppist George Soros) . Reagan “the B-movie actor” was facing nonstop hostile media from day one and Clinton’s first year was so Arkansas-disorganized and ineffectual even his friendly media was not yet as lockstep as the new Obama sycophants.

http://www.abercrombiehot.com
http://www.abercrombiecity.com
http://www.afandhco.com
http://www.afandhco.com