The incredible shrinking health reform

December 15th, 2009

Two thoughts on the incredible shrinking health reform bill (well, it’s probably not the bill itself that’s shrinking, just the reform):

1.  Joe Lieberman has become a nihilist: he has no loyalties and no constituency.  I don’t know that he could do anything to get re-elected in 2012, so he’s basically accountable to no-one.  Like a suicidal terrorist, such a person is hard to defend against, because he has nothing to lose.  As Nate Silver has pointed out, Lieberman has all the leverage.  (Dems even need Lieberman on other issues — he’s playing an important role in climate change legislation.)

What we need is a progressive with a steel spine and brass balls, willing to bargain as hard as Lieberman has but in the other direction — that is, by threatening (and meaning it) to vote against cloture unless the bill gets more progressive.  The problem is, there are a lot of other good things in the bill from the progressive standpoint, so it’s a lot harder for a progressive to threaten to blow up the whole thing.  It’s a game of chicken, but Lieberman is driving a 1985 Chevy Caprice while progressives are in a brand new Prius with kids in the back seat.

Is there a progressive who can stare down Lieberman? I’d say Bernie Sanders, but the problem is that Bernie Sanders is a rational human being.  We need a progressive who’s willing to make a last stand on health reform, but who is approximately as crazy and egomaniacal as Lieberman, and who has even less to lose.  Roland Burris, this is your calling.  This is your shot at redemption.

2. The policy details will have political consequences for Democrats, and contrary to Rahm Emanuel’s reported urging for Harry Reid to just pass whatever he can, there’s a real political danger of doing too little. This article by Kos (quoting another blogger) says it better than I can:

“The people who are demoralized so much that they check out are probably not the same people writing or reading political blogs.  They’re probably the least political of the bunch, the people who get no pleasure from the game and only want results.  That’s why they’re the most likely to focus their ire on the nebulous “Democrats”—the more in the know you are, the more likely you are to realize that more Democrats are on the side of right than not on this issue, and that it’s a coalition of conservative Democrats and Republicans that are the main obstacle.  It’s the people least interested in the details who are likely to say, “No matter who I vote for, my life doesn’t get any better, so why bother?” We’ve known all along that the greatest danger for Democrats is that they pass a bill so weak that the public at large doesn’t appreciate it.  It’s when the public appreciates legislation that Democrats can really shine, because they can work to protect popular legislation against Republicans.  But in order to do that, they have to pass it.

Pointing this out feels like a threat, and that seems mean, especially when a lot of Democrats are trying really hard to do the right thing.  But it’s not a threat.  It’s just the ugly truth, and it’s better to have it out on the table than to delude ourselves about it.  Few people can make good decisions with less information, and I really don’t think that liberal Democrats, who have a tendency to want to see the best in people and be conciliatory much of the time, are really working in their or our best interests if they don’t understand how much the Democratic majority hangs in the balance if they fail.”

[...] The problem are the marginally engaged Democrats, and without them, we’re going to get creamed next year. According to that latest poll, only 39 percent of 18-29 year olds will definitely or probably vote. 39 percent. And why should they? They’re likely to get stuck with an expensive mandate to reward insurance companies by purchasing their overpriced, under-delivering products. [...]

See the point? No one is arguing that Democrats shouldn’t turn out. We’re terrified that they won’t. And whether they vote or not is dependent on what Democrats can deliver in DC. Right now, it’s not much of anything, and if this keeps up, Democrats are in deep shit.

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Time for open social networking technical protocols

December 14th, 2009

I’ve had this idea for a long time, but the recent (and entirely justified) hub-bub over Facebook’s new “privacy” settings (which even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand) prompt me to write it down here.  We need an open, distributed technical protocol for Facebook-style social networking.

Why? Well, Facebook-style social networking is great (for some things).  It’s no substitute for real meatspace interaction, but it’s a nice way to keep in casual contact with friends at a distance.  It’s also nice to be able to announce your engagement with a blurry iPhone photo 15 minutes after the fact (as a childhood neighbor of mine recently did — I wouldn’t have known to congratulate her without Facebook), and to share photos of your adorable baby daughter or a news article you found interesting.  It’s not for nothing that Facebook is one of the most popular sites on the internet.

But Facebook (the company) keeps stepping in it, hard, and pissing off their users (at least their more attentive users).  A year or two ago there was a big brewhaha when Facebook tried to claim ownership over users’ content, most notably photos, which I think is when I first started thinking about this.  Now Facebook is (still) failing to give users adaquate control over, or reasonable defaults about, who sees what.  While most of the advertisements FB targets at me are just dumb, I have plenty of friends who find the ads they get offensive.  And then there’s the persistent availability and server-error problems I’ve been having recently…

Wouldn’t it be great if I could host my own Facebook-ish thing on my own server, where my content is under my control?  My friends could subscribe to my activity, and similarly I could subscribe to theirs.  Because it would be self-hosted, I wouldn’t have to look at ads.  I could customize my user interface to my heart’s content, and I could configure access restrictions however I wanted.  To me, it’s the obvious evolution and cross-breeding of blogs and social networking.

Technically (and here’s where you non-computer geeks might start to zone out…) a lot of the groundwork is already in place.  RSS has shown how to do subscription on the internet.  Authentication is a little trickier, but OpenID provides a reasonable model for that.  I think the hardest part would be search: without a centralized database, how do you find that kid you knew in grade school?  But I bet somebody could figure that out.  (If only there were an internet giant who had mastered search…)

Don’t worry, I have an answer for your most obvious objection, which is, “but most people don’t pay for their own web-hosting service.”  Most people don’t host their own blog, either: they use one of the countless blog-hosting services, most of which are free (ad-supported), all of which have to compete with each other to offer the best service, and all of which make your blog feed available over standard RSS protocols.

I think the biggest difficulty, the reason this won’t actually happen in the short term, is the problem of migration.  The whole world is invested in Facebook — they’ve uploaded all their photos, built up their network of friends.  Facebook is too big to fail.  For me to successfully strike out on my own with my own self-hosted, open, distributed social networking platform, I need a way to integrate all of my friends who still use Facebook: I need to be able to subscribe to their Facebook activity, and I need my activity to get published to them on Facebook — preferrably seamlessly.  Facebook has an API, but I doubt its extensive enough to support full bidirectional proxies, and of course it’s in Facebook’s interest not to allow such a thing.

But in the long-run, Facebook, I believe while your days may not be numbered, your years could be.  Social networking didn’t start with you, and it won’t end with you.  Like Google, Facebook has achieved a market dominance that will be hard to dislodge, but unlike Google, Facebook’s basic service is something that lends itself to open standardized protocols and a decentralized ecosystem.  We’ll always need a way to find stuff on the internet, but we won’t always need a special website for social networking: someday that will just be part of how the internet works.

Readers, discuss: how does the transition from centralized service to open distributed protocol happen?  What are the historical precedents?

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Seven bands in three weeks

December 5th, 2009

In an effort to add more fun to my life, I’ve done more of two things recently: contra dancing, and going to concerts of live music.  In the last three weeks I’ve seen a total of seven bands.

The first concert was Neko Case.  The opening band was the two-person core of Calexico.  I’d heard good things about Calexico, but didn’t know much about them outside of their excellent joint album with Iron and Wine.  They played a significantly reinterpreted version of my favorite song off that album, He Lays In The Reins. I’ll confess allegiance to the original, but I enjoyed hearing their take on it, and more generally I liked their sound and thought they gave a good show — I’ll get around to checking out more of their stuff at some point.

Neko Case also gave a solid concert, but I have to say she was the least rewarding of the three headliners I’ve seen recently.  The performance was very straightforward, without much variation from the studio versions, and Neko Case doesn’t actually have a particularly dynamic stage presence — she leaves that to her backup/harmony singer.  It wasn’t a bad show or anything; I still had a good time, but I like live music because I like to see how an artist or band reinterprets songs live, and this was a bit like seeing the studio album performed.  Middle Cyclone is a great album, though.

The next week was a very different sort of show: a band I’d heard good things about, but had only gotten around to checking out six days before: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros.  But I’d heard (correctly) that they’re phenomenal live, and discovered they were going to be in Northampton that weekend, so I figured I shouldn’t miss it.  The first opener was a band called Local Natives, who were good, but I don’t have much else to say about them.  The second act was Fool’s Gold, whose album I’m listening to for the first time tonight as I write this — they’re a really interesting Los Angeles band with a heavy African influence and an Israeli bassist/singer who sings mostly in Hebrew.  The lead guitarist was fantastic.

Both of those bands had at least six or seven members, so crowded stages was kind of the theme for the night: for those of you who’ve never heard of them, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros are a ten-piece anchored by a guy named Alex, who basically looks like Jesus in a dirty white suit (when he’s not shirtless), and who concocted this fictional messianic alternate identity named Edward Sharpe.  He’s genuinely (as far as I can tell) all about love and music and togetherness, and he and his girlfriend and co-singer Jade (an adorable woman whose big southern voice is incongruous with her tiny stature) often sing blissfully directly to each other. Alex stomps around and convulses and jumps down to hold hands with the crowd (I shook his hand).  It’s joyous pandemonium. There were some sound difficulties (understandable — the poor sound guy was working really hard that night) and the crowd was singing along so loud I actually had a little trouble hearing the band, but everybody was really into it, and I left absolutely drenched in sweat from dancing.

The best show of the three was last night, and the only one for which Julie could join me: Josh Ritter.  The opener was The Low Anthem, who are a really talented new band with a great story: a year and a half ago they were working at the Newport Folk Festival collecting recycling and hocking demo CDs.  Six months ago they were performing at the Newport Folk Festival, for its 50th anniversary, with the likes of Pete Seeger and the Decemberists (and Neko Case and Josh Ritter, for that matter).  The Low Anthem’s lead singer has a striking stylistic range, from a smooth falsetto to a rough blues roar, and the band’s sound spans a corresponding range, with excellent results throughout.  All four members are talented multi-instrumentalists, and throughout the show they traded off who played what (drums, organ, upright and electric bass, guitar, bowed cymbals, etc.). Go find their song Charlie Darwin on Myspace or YouTube — it’s gorgeous.

Josh Ritter has to be among the better performers I’ve ever seen. He’s earnest and heartfelt and warm on stage — he had a huge grin throughout the whole show, and interjected stories and jokes between songs.  He played a lot of new material, and I think that his upcoming album might be his best yet — I can’t wait to hear it.  But he also played a lot of his older material, both from his more recent albums and old favorites that he’s been playing a long time.  But unlike Neko Case, Josh Ritter keeps this material fresh — even, I gather from his tour blog, from night to night — changing instrumentation or tempo. Even more importantly, he performs with enthusiasm and joy. And the music itself is great: the breadth and depth of allusion and imagery in his lyrics puts him in a league with the likes of Dave Carter or Colin Meloy. It was a great show.

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Posted in Concerts, Life, Music, Reviews | 2 Comments »

Lucky Coyote

December 2nd, 2009

Marketing for the Honda Fit [caution: automatic audio at link] likes to promote the flexible cargo capacity of the interior.  What they don’t mention is that apparently there’s also room for a live coyote behind the front fender.  You know, in case you happen to hit one while driving through the desert at 75 mph and incorrectly assume you killed it.

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My letter to my congressman

November 14th, 2009

Representative Neal:

I am writing to express my grave concern about your vote in favor of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House health care reform bill. My concern is that while the compromise bill prior to the Stupak-Pitts amendment maintained the status quo with respect to federal funding of abortions, Stupak-Pitts in effect represents a dramatic restriction of access to a legal and (at times) medically necessary procedure. The impact of this restriction would fall disproportionately on lower-income women, but there appears to be danger that even better-off women would see their coverage disappear. The proposals in the amendment for single-purpose supplemental “riders” are unrealistic and unworkable, and represent a misunderstanding of the need for care for situations that are almost never anticipated in advance. Stupak-Pitts goes too far beyond the existing (”Hyde”) stand-off.

I am new to your district, and while your vote would have raised my ire in any case, I took particular notice because your prior record on reproductive rights issues appears to be fairly good, and because you represent what is generally considered to be a “safe Blue” Democratic district. This is *NOT* a good first impression to make on a pro-choice progressive voter such as myself, and it means I will be watching your votes more carefully in the future. In addition to being bad policy, Stupak-Pitts is also bad politics: if Democratic control of both houses of Congress and the White House results in backward progress on the Democratic agenda, you will have a hard time maintaining the Democratic majority. As your past record appears to be fairly good, I am hoping your vote on Stupak-Pitts represents merely an imperfect understanding of the intent and ramifications of the amendment, which would be only irresponsible; if, on the other hand, your vote represents a change of heart on reproductive rights or foretells of weak political will on other progressive priorities, you can expect me to support a primary challenger who better represents my views.

Sincerely,

[Me]

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feverish wit

November 6th, 2009

About a week ago I was listening to some radio story about H1N1 and flu vaccines and such, and the interviewee was explaining that the real worry is that if H1N1 (which is generally virulent but mild) isn’t contained it may eventually ‘meet’ (so to speak) the avian flu (which is not as easily transmitted, but is more deadly), creating a more dangerous hybrid.  ”When is that likely to happen?” the interviewer asked, and immediately I couldn’t help but yell out gleefully at the radio: “When pigs fly!”

I am reminded of this because I have come down with something which might be a deadly swine flu/bird flu hybrid, but is more likely just a cold.  Everyone I know has been sick for weeks, and I haven’t been sick with so much as a severe cold in more than a year, so really, I was well overdue.  It killed my productivity today, and may put a damper on my social plans for the evening (contra dancing when you might have the flu == really not cool), but I’m hoping it won’t be so bad as to kill our Sunday Friendsgiving plans.

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Posted in Life, Politics & Current Events | 1 Comment »

Everything but marriage?

November 5th, 2009

The results of yesterday’s referenda in Maine and Washington have me wondering about strategy in the campaign for gay civil rights. Maine pulled a California and stripped gay people of an existing right to marry, while in Washington voters approved what’s been described in the news as “everything but marriage” — that is, all the benefits, just not the name.

Now, as I said in my Facebook status last night, I’m not so sure the civil rights of a minority should be subject to popular referendum, but that’s somewhat beside the point. I also want to stipulate before going any further that I don’t believe “separate but equal” is really equal. With those caveats out of the way, what I’m wondering is this: would it be a better strategy to push not for “marriage” equality but rather emphasize full legal benefits?

This actually accords with my long-held position that the government shouldn’t have anything to do with marriage — civil unions for everybody, gay or straight, and the “marriage” part is up to your chosen religion.  Of course, campaigning to take marriage away from straight people isn’t likely to be a successful approach, so while I actually think that’s the correct policy, I’m not advocating that angle as a political PR strategy.

But it seems like most of the most impassioned opposition to gay civil rights has to do with the word “marriage”.  And, though I reiterate my understanding that full affirmation and recognition of gay partnerships is important, isn’t the more substantive practical issue the one about whether your partner can be on your health insurance, visit you at the hospital, etc?  Maybe we can get the tangible civil rights now, while we wait for public attitude about the “m”-word to evolve — as I believe it slowly is, Maine’s regression notwithstanding.

If we’re successful on the tangible rights front, perhaps that will actually help to accelerate the acceptance of gay partnerships, as people see that giving gay folks the rights us straight people have doesn’t detract in any way from our straight marriages. As for whether we call full-legal-and-governmental-benefits civil union a “marriage”, take that up with the institution to which it belongs: your religion.

What do you think?  Is this the correct principled position? a prudent tactical retreat to refocus energy on another front? or a spineless acceptance of defeat? How will we win full equal rights for homosexual people?

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probably of interest primarily to my colleagues

October 22nd, 2009

The Chancellor of my university occasionally sends a mass email to the campus, updating everyone about the administration’s efforts to cope with a projected $50 million budget deficit.  This was my reply to the email he sent this afternoon (sadly, I spotted a couple minor typos only after hitting send…oh well).

Chancellor —–,

I want to thank you for your continued efforts to communicate with the [University] community.  These occasional updates regarding the health and structure of the institution have been helpful in understanding what is happening, and suggest that you take seriously the importance of transparency and dialog as the university navigates these difficult times.

Your explanation of the difference between operating and capital budgets does help to address what I am sure is the question you have gotten: why is the university spending money on such-and-such new construction instead of on people?  Your explanation helps to explain why, for example, the university can’t simply stop a capital project that has been planned, in reaction to the budget crisis.

This letter was silent, however, about the more fundamental question of the university’s priorities.    Regardless of the structural constraints you detail, it is discouraging to graduate students trying to make ends meet to see a brand new athletic and recreation facility constructed while the roof leaks in the [academic building], the University Health Service is shuttered overnight, and graduate student health benefits are slashed by more than 50%.  I recognize that many of the budgetary constraints the university now faces are consequences of decisions made before your tenure here started, but I think it would hearten the people who work on the university’s core missions–education and research–if you could demonstrate with tangible action that the administration values us, and provide some reassurance that one of the lessons the university administration has taken from this crisis is the need to put in place safeguards that will protect those core missions and the people who serve them in future crises.

Sincerely,

[me]

Graduate student and Teaching Assistant, Department of —-

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Next time you eat a hamburger, consider the role of government

October 3rd, 2009

An adamant locovore friend of mine just posted on facebook this NYT article about how your hamburger might leave you paraplegic.

Jeezus.

Roughly every other paragraph there was a line in that article that made my head want to explode.

So, I imagine the prescription of my many locovore or otherwise-food-activist friends is “buy local” (if not, “don’t eat meat”), which in principle I’m all about. My problem* is that I don’t really want to spend so much time/energy(/money) hunting down food I can be confident is safe. It’s not that I’m lazy or apathetic, exactly, but that I was raised in a society that suggests I should be able to be lazy and apathetic about this.

That is to say, I think one of the luxuries to which I am entitled, by virtue of living in a country that likes to proclaim itself as the richest and otherwise most developed in the world, is being able to buy a package of ground beef at the grocery store without wondering whether it’s going to try to kill me.  It’s not that I don’t ever want to think about where the ground beef came from, or the ecological or even moral implication of my choice to eat it.  It’s just that I don’t want to have to think about that at 7:30 on a Wednesday night when I’m so hungry (and sleep-deprived, and busy, etc.) that I’m dizzy.

What I’m saying is, food safety in this country is (apparently) a giant market and regulatory fuckup.  This is what government is for, and I’m all about big government if it means I don’t have to spend three hours researching my hamburger.  I’m happy to pay for it, in the form of higher taxes or higher costs, but I want it built in to the price I pay at the grocery store (or, although this is less direct, into my Form 1040).  It has to be the role of government, because in order to work, those costs have to be built in to all the ground beef I’m choosing between.

And really, this should be taken to its logical extreme: I want the cost of my ground beef to also reflect the ecological impact of its production as well, and for that matter the downstream societal cost of my eating it (i.e., if I eat too much of it, I’ll be a burden on the health care system).  But not just ground beef: if I’m going to make rational choices, my potato chips shouldn’t be cheaper than actual potatoes.

But I’m a busy guy, and I don’t really want to figure it all out myself. Practically speaking, it’s impossible for me to figure it out for myself anyway without a lot of help, because I eat a lot of different things in a week.  And the market won’t help me on its own, because it’s not in Cargill’s economic interest to tell me where my hamburger came from, and it’s not in their economic interest to improve their safety testing procedures.  So it’s the role of government to make them do it.  That’s what government is for.  I’ll pay a few cents more for my ground beef, and you pay a few cents more for yours, and we’ll put all those few cents together and hire somebody to make sure our ground beef isn’t poisonous.

And while we’re at it, let’s put labels on those packages of ground beef, saying “this was made out of a cow who walked around in a field and ate grass about thirty miles from here”, or “this was made in a giant factory in Wisconsin, out of bits of thousands of hormone-injected cows who lived miserable lives in Nebraska, Texas, and Uruguay, oh and it might be infected with bacteria from cow shit”. And price them to reflect all the costs associated with those different methods of production.  And put them next to each other in the grocery store, so that when I’m shopping on my way home, hungry after a long day at work, I don’t have to think very hard or look around much to make a good choice.

The pricing-to-reflect true costs thing I can understand is not so easy, politically, and a little tricky from an accounting standpoint.  I still think it would be worthwhile, and ultimately it would benefit society at large, which is what government is for.

But the make-sure-there’s-no-poisonous-cow-shit-in-my-hamburger part?  Seems pretty straightforward.  Which is why I’m having a little trouble wrapping up this rant: I don’t really have a brilliant insight.  Just, when I read an article like the one linked above, I get kind of pissed that my government can’t keep the poop out of my hamburger.  Or, more to the point, doesn’t seem to want to try very hard to do so.

* I almost wrote “beef”, but thought that would just be inexcusable.

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Posted in Politics & Current Events | 8 Comments »

Why we need health insurance reform — now it’s personal

September 17th, 2009

You might think that what with all the hub-bub over health insurance reform, health insurance companies might go out of their way to be on their best behavior just right now.  Oh, wait, they see the same Democratic “leadership” the rest of us do.  Well done, Senator Baucus.

Anyway, the in the midst of watching my spineless political party negotiate with themselves into giving away the farm, I’ve gotten two emails in the past 26 hours that make me want to start throwing bricks through the windows of insurance company executives:

The first is really sad: a friend of mine from college was in a tragic bicycle accident a few weeks ago and suffered traumatic brain injury.  She’s been slowly improving, recently opening her eyes more every day, and showing increased tracking and eye response to light.  But the care available at the hospital has leveled out, and her family has been trying to find a more specialized facility where she can get the care she needs…apparently it’s been difficult as many TBI clinics look for more responsiveness than my friend is currently showing, but they found a place with a wider range of care. Last night I got an email update that her insurance company has prohibited the transition to the rehab center, claiming that the care she would be receiving would be “experimental”.  An appeal by her doctors and therapists has already been denied.

Of course, this is exactly the kind of thing that private health insurance companies do: interfere with care, stand between patients and the care they need, and refuse to pay when it’s actually needed.  And it’s reprehensible.

The second is less heartbreaking and more just petty and stupid.  Just a few minutes ago I got an email from representatives of my union notifying me of a change in my health plan this year.  Due to the financial crisis, the university this summer decided to close the university health center’s urgent care facility from midnight to 8am, to save money.  This fall Aetna has changed our health plan to add a $600 deductible for any off-campus care. This means, to quote the email, “If you have an urgent medical issue in the middle of the night, try to wait it out until UHS urgent care opens at 8am.  Otherwise you will get stuck with a $200 bill (or more for families).”

Now, there’s always been a clause about getting a referral for any off-campus care, with no exception for emergencies, and I’ve always felt that was idiotic: if I had time to get a referral, it wouldn’t be an emergency, would it?  And I’m not going to ask the ambulance to wait while I try to find out which hospital in the strange city in which I’m having my emergency is in Aetna’s network — just take me to the closest hospital!  But now, with the campus health center closed, I have no choice but to incur these extra charges if I have a medical emergency during the night (to say nothing of the fact that I probably drive past half a dozen hospitals between my apartment and the university health center).  The union is preparing to file a grievance, as this change constitutes a benefits reduction and thus violates our contract; situations like this make me glad I have a union to take on the university administration.

So, can we please acknowledge that even with Max Baucus bending over double for the insurance companies who’ve bought him, his watered down plan for adding millions of customers to insurance company rolls without any cost controls STILL doesn’t have any Republican support and is dead on arrival, and get on with passing a real reform bill with teeth?

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