Blog Archive: August, 2009

Let’s get a few things straight:   

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In this week's edition of The Week In Blog at Bloggingheads.tv, The Heritage Foundation's Conn Carroll pushed an argument voiced by another conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini: that the initial intention of the public health insurance option was to create a Trojan Horse that would bring about single-payer health care and the demise of private insurance. The proof? Prof. Jacob Hacker's original policy papers.

As Ruffini blogged: "It was first raised in 2007 by Berkeley economist Jacob Hacker, and popularized as a device that would "someday magically turn into single payer." ... reading through the founding documents of the public option is about as damning as if one got ahold of a secret dossier of Milton Friedman's proclaiming school vouchers a necessary 'compromise' that would eventually usher in the death of public education in America."

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The New York Times ran an article this morning that has been sparking some commentary in the blogosphere. In a piece that was essentially The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes" put to paper, we were presented with a sad tale of how we should feel sorry for the insurance industry, who are, in fact, the real victims of the health care debate.

I, for one, was wondering when someone would have the courage to stand up for the little guy, the Stephen Hemsley's of the world.

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Here they go again. Religious people—enjoying their right to practice their beliefs as they see fit—trying to take that right away from the rest of us. This time they are coming out in force against health care reform.

USA Today reports that:

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We live in an era where the effectiveness of government has been denigrated for more than 30 years. The echo chamber of the right, particularly since the election of Ronald Reagan, has sought to intimidate anyone who let the romantic notion into their head that government can help. read more »

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When China was accepted into the World Trade Organization, they agreed that if we experienced import surges of Chinese goods that caused "market disruption," we would be allowed to limit the import of those goods. The particular section of the agreement is called "Section 421." read more »

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West Virginia shows us how we could easily win over this key segment of society, working class whites, with a New Deal-style industrial policy. read more »

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The Obama administration realizes that our education system is lagging, but the recently announced ‘Race to the Top’ initiative may not be the solution. The Department of Education’s ‘Race to the Top’ puts up for grabs almost $5 billion of federal dollars to states that devise innovations and demonstrate improvements in K-12 education. This program is a good start in theory, but the fine print promotes broad, sweeping changes that are cause for concern.

First, to be eligible, states are required to link performance with testing. This is similar to the failed No Child Left Behind policy that focused too much on student assessment, and too little on broader factors and gains, when gauging school quality. For those who forgot, NCLB showed little gains in student progress, with schools forced to teach to the test and tests emphasizing low level skills.

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Today’s data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis tells the same old story. National GDP is dropping and personal incomes are dropping along with it. But corporate profits are on the rise.

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