Barack Obama

You are currently browsing articles tagged Barack Obama.

“It Is A Time Of Healing”

October 23, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The Ebola “crisis” in America is an example of more than one bias at play. It’s Availability Bias, with so much media focus on an illness that has killed exactly zero American citizens on U.S. soil, when the flu season will likely claim hundreds as it did last year. It’s also Confirmation Bias, with those opposed to President Obama angling to position this domestic “plague” as a lack of leadership on his part. The more important news of the success of the Affordable Care Act, which raises the threshold for plague in this country, is lost in the hollering.

Ebola and ISIS beheadings and other modern challenges deserve attention, to be sure, but there is a more-hopeful parallel narrative we often ignore. From a New Statesmen article by Matthew Barzun, the U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain:

“We live in challenging, complex, even confusing times. Our world is in constant flux. Charles Dickens’s description of the French Revolution seems just as appropriate today: it is the worst of times. Indeed, it may be even more true now, as the changes are global, rather than confined to one or two countries. Newspaper headlines suggest as much. They are littered with demoralising words such as ‘beheadings,’ ‘aggression,’ ‘hatred’ and ‘fever.’ Of course, ISIL is engaged in barbarity in the Middle East that is reminiscent of some of the most grotesque of the 20th century, while the ebola virus poses a global public health threat on a scale as large as anything we’ve seen in recent decades.

At the same time, the number of refugees and internally displaced people presents a great humanitarian challenge. And human rights violations abound in many parts of the world. But here is an equally valid and, I concede, sweeping narrative that suggests this is also the best of times.

It is a time of levelling. The world has reduced extreme poverty by half since 1990. Global primary education for boys and girls is now equal.

It is a time of enduring. The number of deaths among children under five has been cut in half since 1990, meaning about 17,000 fewer children die each day. And mothers are surviving at a nearly equal rate.

It is a time of flourishing. Deaths from malaria dropped by 42 per cent between 2000 and 2012. HIV infections are declining in most regions.

It is a time of strengthening. Africa is above the poverty line for the first time. Tens of millions have been lifted out of poverty in China. The debt burden on developing coun­tries has dropped 75 per cent since 2000.

It is a time of healing. The ozone layer is showing signs of recovery thanks to global action. And all the while, the technological and communications revolution is making more people better informed than at any time in history.

So why are we intent on fixing our lens on the chaotic?”

Tags: ,

“The Breathtaking Implications Of The Research Are Also Becoming Clear”

October 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Not having a television makes it easier to live outside the idiot broadcast and cable news culture populated by loudmouths like Sean Hannity, who looks like the equipment manager of a lacrosse team that’s been suspended for hazing, and Chuck Fucking Todd, who announced that the President’s administration was “over” when there were still three full years to go. The important work continues apace despite what that sputtering Van Dyke says. The opening of “Obama’s Moonshot Probes the Space Inside Our Skulls,” Anjana Ahuja’s Financial Times piece:

“Every president needs a blockbuster science project to crown his time in the White House. While John Kennedy reached for the stars, Barack Obama decided to reach for the synapses. A year on from his pledge to unravel the secrets of the human brain, researchers are beginning to spell out how they will tackle this challenge.

The breathtaking implications of the research are also becoming clear; within a generation science may acquire the power to predict a person’s future capacities and possibly determine their life chances. The central idea of Mr Obama’s Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative is to understand how the human brain choreographs all the astonishing feats it pulls off. It is the seat of learning and the organ of memory. It generates our character and identity, and influences our behaviour. It is our brains, more than anything else, that make us who we are today – and shape who we will become.

But that neural versatility acts as a veil. How does the squidgy, three-pound lump between your ears – filled with nerve cells (neurons) firing tiny impulses of electricity across junctions called synapses – accomplish such a wide array of functions? Research grants announced this month shed light on how Mr Obama’s vaunted cerebral exploration will proceed. One avenue will be to catalogue the differences between healthy neurons and diseased ones. This will spur research into neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, which cast a shadow over ageing societies.”

Tags: , , ,

“Republicans Are Suddenly Asking Very Democratic Questions About What Federal Government Can Do To Improve Public Health”

October 17, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

A good way to guard against an epidemic in America would be to extend the Affordable Care Act to all citizens, to make it truly universal. But Ebola has flipped the script at the midterm elections, with government-hating Republicans who fought Obamacare and planned to use it as a rallying cry despite its early successes, now decrying the government’s lack of intervention. From Gary Silverman at the Financial Times:

“Republicans are suddenly asking very Democratic questions about what federal government can do to improve public health. Bloomberg News even reported that members of the appropriations committees in the Republican House and Democratic Senate are working on ways to throw more money at the problem. This would be done by increasing anti-Ebola spending in a bill aimed at keeping the government operating after December 11.

Yet the newfound Republican faith in the federal solutions has been accompanied by a hardening of hearts when it comes to the man behind Obamacare.

Conservatives are seizing on the spread of Ebola as evidence of the president’s unreliability – linking it to the advances of Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, management deficiencies at the Secret Service and the arrival of illegal immigrants from Mexico.”

 

Tags: ,

“Mr Obama Will Leave The U.S. At Least As Segregated As He Found It”

October 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

In the Financial Times, Edward Luce wonders about the deepening of divisions in American among African-Americans and whites during the two terms of our first black President. The Great Recession, I think, is largely to blame. Those most vulnerable got most hosed by that debacle. It was actually a great investment opportunity for others who had the available funds to buy cheap. Without Obama’s maneuverings to save large banks and industries, imperfect though they were, the cratering would have been far deeper. Meanwhile, the Affordable Care Act has been a great boon to lower-income Americans of all races. I would think in the longer term, having our appellate courts stocked with moderates and progressives will eventually be a help to those who have less. From Luce:

“Mr Obama shot to prominence in 2004 when he said there was no black or white America, just the United States of America. Yet as the continuing backlash to the police shooting of an unarmed young black man in Ferguson has reminded us, Mr Obama will leave the US at least as segregated as he found it. How could that be? The fair answer is that he is not to blame. The poor suffered the brunt of the Great Recession and blacks are far likelier to be poor. By any yardstick – the share of those with subprime mortgages, for example, or those working in casualised jobs – African-Americans were more directly in the line of fire.

Without Mr Obama’s efforts, African-American suffering would have been even greater. He has fought Congress to preserve food stamps and long-term unemployment insurance – both of which help blacks disproportionately. The number of Americans without health insurance has fallen by 8m since the Affordable Care Act came into effect. Likewise, no president has done as much as Mr Obama – to depressingly little effect – to try to correct the racial bias in US federal sentencing. Bill Clinton was once termed ‘America’s first black president.’ But it was under Mr Clinton that incarceration rates rose to their towering levels.”

 

Tags: ,

“Obama Has Emerged As One Of The Most Consequential And, Yes, Successful Presidents In American History”

October 9, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

I’m likely in the minority as someone who voted twice for President Obama and is very pleased with the results. He’s been bolder in certain ways than I anticipated, and I think he’s avoided a lot of twentieth-century pitfalls and set us up well for the twenty-first-century landscape. Most of his most ardent critics seem to me frivolous or hypocritical or dangerous. We’re a brighter, better-positioned nation for his leadership. Paul Krugman feels similarly about 44, as he demonstrates in his Rolling Stone essay, “In Defense of Obama.” The opening:

“When it comes to Barack Obama, I’ve always been out of sync. Back in 2008, when many liberals were wildly enthusiastic about his candidacy and his press was strongly favorable, I was skeptical. I worried that he was naive, that his talk about transcending the political divide was a dangerous illusion given the unyielding extremism of the modern American right. Furthermore, it seemed clear to me that, far from being the transformational figure his supporters imagined, he was rather conventional-minded: Even before taking office, he showed signs of paying far too much attention to what some of us would later take to calling Very Serious People, people who regarded cutting budget deficits and a willingness to slash Social Security as the very essence of political virtue.

And I wasn’t wrong. Obama was indeed naive: He faced scorched-earth Republican opposition from Day One, and it took him years to start dealing with that opposition realistically. Furthermore, he came perilously close to doing terrible things to the U.S. safety net in pursuit of a budget Grand Bargain; we were saved from significant cuts to Social Security and a rise in the Medicare age only by Republican greed, the GOP’s unwillingness to make even token concessions.

But now the shoe is on the other foot: Obama faces trash talk left, right and center – literally – and doesn’t deserve it. Despite bitter opposition, despite having come close to self-inflicted disaster, Obama has emerged as one of the most consequential and, yes, successful presidents in American history. His health reform is imperfect but still a huge step forward – and it’s working better than anyone expected. Financial reform fell far short of what should have happened, but it’s much more effective than you’d think. Economic management has been half-crippled by Republican obstruction, but has nonetheless been much better than in other advanced countries. And environmental policy is starting to look like it could be a major legacy.”

Tags: ,

“Do You Think The President Has Emotionally Checked Out Of The White House Already?”

September 5, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Chuck Todd, who grows irate, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit in advance of taking over Meet the Press. One exchange about the perception that President Obama has become emotionally disengaged:

“Question:

Do you think the President has emotionally checked out of the White House already? Any chance you will ask him about his seemingly lackluster attitude lately and press him on how his personal struggles may negatively shape our Country’s future during such challenging times?

Chuck Todd:

I’ve heard this from a lot of Obama observers, not just from folks who don’t know him, but from folks who think they DO know him. That said, sometimes when the news is as horrid as it is right now, with his polls in the tank… folks end up assuming that all of this is impacting him more than maybe it is. Perhaps if we were in his shoes, we’d feel depressed or lackluster so we assume he must too… I always am leery of trying too hard to put a politician on the couch. But you aren’t alone in thinking this.”

Tags: ,

“I Think President Putin Represents A Deep Strain In Russia That Is Probably Harmful To Russia Over The Long Term”

August 3, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

When Vladimir Putin went aggressive with Ukraine, he was heralded by some in this country as appearing “strong” and President Obama as seeming “weak,” although you’d have to be pretty simple to view things that way. Putin was sticking his foot in it but good–his ass, too–becoming ensnared in a quagmire the way the U.S. did when invading Iraq, leaving himself wide open for things to career out of control (like MH-17 being shot down). Putin was a 20th-century leader adrift in the 21-st century, a visitor from the past trying to commandeer the future, and that never turns out well.

One passage from the new long-form Economist interview with Obama, which focuses on his dealings with Russia and China:

“The Economist: 

Because that is the key issue, whether China ends up inside that system or challenging it. That’s the really big issue of our times, I think.

President Obama: 

It is. And I think it’s important for the United States and Europe to continue to welcome China as a full partner in these international norms. It’s important for us to recognise that there are going to be times where there are tensions and conflicts. But I think those are manageable.

And it’s my belief that as China shifts its economy away from simply being the low-cost manufacturer of the world to wanting to move up the value chain, then suddenly issues like protecting intellectual property become more relevant to their companies, not just to US companies.

One thing I will say about China, though, is you also have to be pretty firm with them, because they will push as hard as they can until they meet resistance. They’re not sentimental, and they are not interested in abstractions. And so simple appeals to international norms are insufficient. There have to be mechanisms both to be tough with them when we think that they’re breaching international norms, but also to show them the potential benefits over the long term. And what is true for China then becomes an analogy for many of the other emerging markets.

The Economist:

What about the people who are just outright difficult? Russia being the obvious example at the moment. You tried to ‘reset’ with Russia. Angela Merkel spent the whole time telephoning Vladimir Putin. To what extent do you feel let down almost personally by what’s happened?

President Obama: 

I don’t feel let down. We had a very productive relationship with President Medvedev. We got a lot of things done that we needed to get done. Russia I think has always had a Janus-like quality, both looking east and west, and I think President Putin represents a deep strain in Russia that is probably harmful to Russia over the long term, but in the short term can be politically popular at home and very troublesome abroad.

But I do think it’s important to keep perspective. Russia doesn’t make anything. Immigrants aren’t rushing to Moscow in search of opportunity. The life expectancy of the Russian male is around 60 years old. The population is shrinking. And so we have to respond with resolve in what are effectively regional challenges that Russia presents. We have to make sure that they don’t escalate where suddenly nuclear weapons are back in the discussion of foreign policy. And as long as we do that, then I think history is on our side.”

Tags: ,

“We Don’t Talk About Obamacare”

July 22, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Many Kentuckians who now have Obamacare love the care and hate Obama. When it comes to affordable health insurance, they need it, they want it, they wish they could live without it. Passages follow from a BBC piece about the health-care reform that dare not speak its name in the Blue Grass State and an Ezra Klein Vox post about the aftermath of the Halbig case ruling.

_________________________

From Claire Bolderson’s “Obamacare in Kentucky: The luxury of seeing a doctor“:

“Liberty Sizemore leans back in her chair and beams. The 26-year-old filling station cashier has just been told her enrolment in Obamacare is complete.

Now she can have her first routine doctor’s appointment for seven years.

‘I am so happy,’ says Sizemore as she waits at the Grace Community Health Centre in Clay County, Kentucky, ‘I’ve not had insurance since I turned 19.’

But Sizemore is also nervous. She is seriously overweight and was warned in her teens that she was likely to develop diabetes. Without health insurance she has not been able to afford tests or check-ups to see if she has indeed got the disease.

‘I’ll go to the hospital only in an emergency,’ says Sizemore, who is still paying off the $10,000 bill for removing her appendix two years ago.

‘That’s what’s on my credit card right now,’ she sighs, ‘hospital bills.’

Sizemore is one of 421,000 people in Kentucky who’ve signed up since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, came into force last October.

Like many, she now qualifies for Medicaid, the government programme that pays for health care for the poorest Americans. Under the new law, the federal government offers states money to expand Medicaid so that many more people on very low wages, like Liberty Sizemore, are covered.

There are also federal funds for new state insurance exchanges where Americans can shop for private plans. Some plans are heavily subsidised by the government, depending on the applicant’s income level.

Kentucky is one of a minority of states – and the only one in the South – to have taken Washington’s money and embraced all the reforms.

But it has done it without embracing the man after whom they are named.

‘The president is not all that popular in the state,’ says Democratic Governor Steven Beshear, pointing to Mr Obama’s 34% approval rating in Kentucky (eight points below the latest national figure reported by Gallup). ‘So we don’t talk about Obamacare,’ he explains.”

_________________________

The opening of Klein’s “No, the Halbig case isn’t going to destroy Obamacare“:

“The Halbig case could destroy Obamacare. But it won’t. The Supreme Court simply isn’t going to rip insurance from tens of millions of people in order to teach Congress a lesson about grammar.

As Adrianna McIntyre explains, the Halbig case holds that Obamacare’s subsidies are illegal in the 36 states where the federal government runs (or partly runs) the exchange. The plaintiffs rely on an unclearly worded sentence in the law to argue that Congress never intended to provide subsidies in federally-run exchanges and so the subsidies that are currently being provided in those 36 states are illegal and need to stop immediately.

This is plainly ridiculous. The point of Obamacare is to subsidize insurance for those who can’t afford it. The point of the federal exchanges is to make sure the law works even in states that can’t or won’t set up an exchange.

For Congress to write a law that provides for federal exchanges but doesn’t permit money to flow through them would have been like Congress writing a transportation law that builds federal highways but doesn’t allow cars, bikes or buses to travel on them.

That was…not what Congress thought it was doing.”

Tags: , , , ,

1 Thing About Eric Cantor’s Defeat

June 11, 2014 in Politics | Permalink

  • It’s difficult to stress too much what a small election Eric Cantor-David Brat was in terms of reflecting any larger picture about America and how disproportionate the ramifications will likely be. The final vote tally was 36,120 for Brat and 28,907 for Cantor. That’s barely more than 65,000 ballots cast. It’s in no way a bellwether of America nor of Virginia outside of the 7th Congressional District. It probably says as much about universal dislike of the soon-to-be-deposed Majority Leader as anything else. But because of the stunning nature of the upset, it will likely tilt the GOP further right at a time when the Tea Party pull had been flagging. Smooth sailing for Lindsey Graham against party “purists” won’t make a ripple against Cantor’s Titanic. It certainly will make governance more difficult for President Obama for the rest of his term, but his goal of establishing a transformative administration rather than a transitional one has always been somewhat predicated on having a Democrat succeed him. This jolt to the right for Republicans makes that more likely, especially with the sharp demographic challenges that they have in national elections where gerrymandered districts can’s serve as a bulwark. Nothing could be more satisfying than Cantor being done in by the extremists he marshaled to scuttle good government, but his loss will likely be given far greater significance than it should.•

Tags: , ,

“SpaceX Already Has The Lowest Launch Costs In The Industry”

June 8, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

Critics of President Obama as a big-government champion certainly aren’t talking about about space exploration, which he seems content to leave to Elon Musk and other private market entities. There’s little doubt that Space X is more cost effective than NASA’s Space Launch System will be, but corporations can change course on projects based on economics, personnel and stock prices, whereas the government has to stay the course. Probably best to have a competition between public and private. That should be the new Space Race. From the Economist:

“SpaceX, the most successful of the private firms, is planning to build a super-heavy Falcon rocket of its own that would be even beefier than the SLS. If all goes to plan, the so-called Falcon XX could reach lunar orbit in the early 2020s and go on to Mars later in the decade, ten years ahead of the SLS. SpaceX already has the lowest launch costs in the industry. It is working on making its rockets reusable, which would cut prices even further. Some (admittedly speculative) estimates say that NASA could cut its costs by a factor of 25 or 50 by going with the Falcon XX rocket instead of the (non-reusable) SLS.

But this is not just an argument about money and jobs. The charitable interpretation of Congress’s plan is that it takes its inspiration from the greatness of the government-run Apollo programme. But Mr Musk is equally forceful when he says that ‘NASA’s most valuable role is to fund advanced science projects such as the Hubble space telescope or the Curiosity Mars rover—things that are valuable for humanity as a whole [and] where there’s not an obvious commercial transaction.’ The rest, in other words, including colonising Mars, Mr Musk’s ultimate aspiration, should be left to entrepreneurs.”

Tags: ,

1 Thing About Obamacare Reportage

April 2, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

  • Why do reporters keep asking Republican leaders for their alternative to the Affordable Care Act, as it were an opinion and not a law? After two national elections, passage in Washington (albeit partisan passage) and being upheld by a right-leaning Supreme Court, the legislation is still treated as something less than the law of the land. I suppose it’s liberal journalists trying to put the GOP on the spot because the party doesn’t have an alternative and doesn’t want one, really–it just wants the ACA to go away the way it wants legalized abortion to go away. But what’s the point? Even if Congress swings to the GOP in our gerrymandered country in the 2014 midterms, it won’t signal any chance at repeal with President Obama in the White House until the beginning of 2017. With tens of millions of people being insured by then through Obamacare, repeal is likely a moot point permanently.

Tags:

“I Don’t Want To Die, Especially Just Because I Don’t Have Enough Money To Go In The Hospital”

March 30, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Because many are more driven by ideology than pragmatism, legislation like the Affordable Care Act isn’t only measured by accomplishment but also by party affiliation. Close to seven million previously uninsured Americans will have health insurance at this year’s deadline (and that’s not counting those added to Medicaid). Sick people who were denied insurance or had their policies cancelled when they became ill are now protected. The number of uninsured has dropped sharply and spiralling healthcare costs have slowed for the first time in memory. In future years, as we get closer to the goal of 30 million newly insured, that number will likely be attended by a lot of job creation. Universal coverage may be the low-hanging fruit that can boost employment. But the GOP will run against Obamacare in the 2014 and 2016 elections, and it will resonate with some.

An excerpt from Terry Gross’ 2009 interview with the late singer-songwriter Vic Chestnutt, whose was left largely paralyzed in a car accident while a teenager, and lived in debt his whole adult life because he wasn’t able to get health insurance:

“Terry Gross:

So, what are your thoughts now as you watch the health care legislation controversy play out?

Vic Chestnutt:

Wow. I have been amazed and confused by the health care debate. We need health care reform. There is no doubt about it, we really need health care reform in this country. Because it’s absurd that somebody like me has to pay so much, it’s just too expensive in this country. It’s just ridiculously expensive. That they can take my house away for a kidney stone operation is -that’s absurd.

Terry Gross:

Is that what you’re facing the possibility of now?

Vic Chestnutt:

Yeah. I mean, it could – I’m not sure exactly. I mean, I don’t have cash money to pay these people. I tried to pay them. I tried to make payments and then they finally ended up saying, no, you have to pay us in full now. And so, you know, I’m not sure what exactly my options are. I just – I really – you know, my feeling is that I think they’ve been paid, they’ve already been paid $100,000 from my insurance company. That seems like plenty. I mean, this would pay for like five or six of these operations in any other country in the world. You know, it affects – I mean, right now I need another surgery and I’ve been putting it off for a year because I can’t afford it. And that’s absurd, I think.

I mean, I could actually lose a kidney. And, I mean, I could die only because I cannot afford to go in there again. I don’t want to die, especially just because of I don’t have enough money to go in the hospital. But that’s the reality of it. You know, I have a preexisting condition, my quadriplegia, and I can’t get health insurance.

Terry Gross:

Is it true you can’t get good health insurance?

Vic Chestnutt:

I can’t get – I’m uninsurable.•

Tags: , ,

“Page Suggested Sharing Information With The ‘Right’ Companies”

March 20, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

I admire Google for its Bell Labs-sized ambitions, but Larry Page telling us to trust his company with our private information is only slightly less ludicrous than Mark Zuckerberg lecturing the President about the NSA. It’s just a ruse to try to convince the more gullible among us that Silicon Valley isn’t Big Brother-ish. That’s a lie, of course. The government and Google and Facebook and, to a good extent, the rest of us, are all working in the same direction: to gather as much data we can to survive in the Information Age. Page and Zuckerberg want what’s inside your head; they even want to implant information there. I don’t doubt that Page has plenty of noble intentions, but a publicly traded behemoth’s largesse only goes so far. The beast must be fed.

From a WSJ report of a conversation between Page and Charlie Rose, a handsome robot who once had an epiphany on a tennis court:

“In what has become a Silicon Valley ritual, Page criticized electronic surveillance by U.S. intelligence agencies, based on leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

‘We need to know the parameters of what the government is doing and why,’ Page said. ‘The government has done itself a disservice. I’m sad that Google is in the position of protecting you from what the government is doing.’

When it comes to individuals trying to shield themselves from private companies, however, Page said people shouldn’t be ‘throwing the baby out with the bath water.’

Page suggested sharing information with the ‘right’ companies is important for technology to advance, and that Google is among those companies. ‘We spend a lot of time thinking about these issues,’ he said. ‘The main thing we need to do is provide (users) choice” and show them what data will be used.'”

Tags: , , ,

“There Is A Difference Between What People Say Loosely Or In Speeches And What We Publish”

March 12, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

Last year Seymour Hersh made comments about the official U.S. government report regarding the Obama bin Laden killing, labeling it as “bullshit.” It was taken to mean initially that the journalist believed the terrorist hadn’t actually been eliminated, but he quickly clarified, saying that bin Laden was dead but that the White House version of the mission was fantastical. In a wide-ranging New Republic interview conducted by Isaac Chotiner, New Yorker editor David Remnick pushes back at his contributor’s assertion. An excerpt:

“Isaac Chotiner:

Speaking of Hersh, he claims that the U.S. government’s story of the Osama bin Laden raid is bullshit. What do you say to that given that your magazine ran a piece that relied heavily on government sources?

David Remnick:

I thoroughly stand by the story we published.

Isaac Chotiner:

And his comments?

David Remnick:

Look, there is a difference between what people say loosely or in speeches and what we publish. All I can be in charge of is what we publish. I have enormous respect for him.

Isaac Chotiner:

Hersh wrote a piece a few months back hinting that the rebels were the ones who used chemical weapons in Syria. Why did that run in the London Review of Books and not The New Yorker?

David Remnick:

Or The Washington Post. I have worked with Sy on many dozens of pieces and am proud of that work. And a lot of those pieces had the potential to break a lot of crockery. I was willing, and am still willing, to go to the wall with investigative journalism. But if he and I disagree, it is not an easy thing. I hope we will work again together. I hope you will print this: I wish him all the best, and I think he is one of the great journalists of our age.”

Tags: , , ,

“The Transformation Came Too Late To Rescue Its Reputation For Technical Competence”

February 18, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

The private sector is often as incompetent as the government was in its botched Healthcare.gov launch, despite what techies and extreme free-marketers might have you believe. Mistakes in privately held technology companies are common, launches and relaunches are disasters, sites (like Twitter) have trouble with stability for years. I think Clay Shirky gives this truth no mention in his new Foreign Affairs piece about the Affordable Care Act tech meltdown, but it contains a lot of important points about project management. The opening:

“Late last October, the management expert Jeffrey Zients was given a mandate to fix HealthCare.gov, the website at the forefront of U.S. President Barack Obama’s health-care reform, after its disastrous launch. Refusing to engage in happy talk about how well things were going or how soon everything would be fixed, Zients established performance metrics for the site’s responsiveness, insisted on improvements to the underlying hardware, postponed work on nonessential features, demanded rapid reporting of significant problems, and took management oversight away from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS, a federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services) and gave it instead to a single contractor reporting to him. The result was a newly productive work environment that helped the website progress from grave dysfunction in early October to passable effectiveness two months later.

Zients’ efforts demonstrated the government’s ability to tackle complex technological challenges and handle them both quickly and effectively. Unfortunately for the Obama administration, the transformation came too late to rescue its reputation for technical competence. Given that the people who hired Zients clearly understood what kind of management was required to create a working online insurance marketplace, why did they wait to put in place that sort of management until the project had become an object of public ridicule? And more important, is there any way to prevent other such debacles in the future? The answers to both questions lie in the generally tortured way that the government plans and oversees technology.”

Tags: , ,

“Since Emanuel Took Office, However, Things Have Polarized”

February 16, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

Chicago, the major American metropolis with the most stubborn racial divides, has seen its tale of two cities be told with even greater emphasis since Rahm Emanuel became Mayor. From Edward Luce’s insightful Financial Times article about the former Obama chief of staff:

“Crudely measured, Chicago is roughly a third white, a third black and a third Hispanic. Most Chicagoans seem to accept it that way. ‘We are the most segregated city in America,’ goes the joke. ‘Ain’t it great?’ Since Emanuel took office, however, things have polarised. Most white Chicagoans support him – as do a majority of Hispanics, according to the polls. Most African-Americans no longer do. The corporate world within Chicago’s elevated rail ‘loop’ has rarely had it so good. The same goes for pockets inside its largely Hispanic West Side. But Chicago’s South Side, where a young Obama cut his teeth as a community organiser, continues to fester. A rash of school closures last year did little to help. ‘Black families who can leave Chicago are still leaving,’ says Cobb. They call it ‘degentrification.’

Emanuel’s often testy relations with Chicago’s black neighbourhoods could be pivotal to his re-election next year. The gulf between the two Chicagos is at least as big as that between the ‘two New Yorks’, which Bill de Blasio, the new mayor of the Big Apple, has promised to bridge. De Blasio comes from the Democratic party’s liberal (‘Sandinista’) wing and promised to make New York’s Upper East Side pay more to make life better for its underclasses. Emanuel is closer to Michael Bloomberg, de Blasio’s predecessor, who drew on his philanthropic networks to revitalise New York’s economic heart. Both are enthusiasts for non-union charter schools. De Blasio, on the other hand, is a champion of the unions.

Emanuel’s Chicago versus de Blasio’s New York may be the closest America has to an experiment in how to make its cities both liveable and competitive in the 21st century. ‘Look, we face international forces that are far bigger than us,’ Emanuel told me in an interview in Mexico City, which he was visiting to inaugurate a city-to-city partnership (almost a quarter of Chicagoans were born in Mexico). I had asked him whether he and de Blasio were rivals. ‘We both have a great amount of concentrated wealth and great poverty,’ he replied. ‘My challenge is to make it a still-great city for the middle-class families that are the bedrock of Chicago.’

Emanuel’s impact so far depends on whom you ask.”
__________________

“It’s supposed to be fun”:

Tags: , , ,

“After A Miserable Year, Obama’s Presidency Is On The Clock”

January 19, 2014 in Books, Excerpts, Politics, Sports | Permalink

I’m there whenever David Remnick focuses on politics or boxing or writers. Other topics also, but those three in particular. The New Yorker EIC touches on that trio of subjects in a piece about President Obama, who is trying to sprint to the finish line rather than run out the clock. Three quick clips from the early stages of the article follow.

____________________

Obama spent his flight time in the private quarters in the nose of the plane, in his office compartment, or in a conference room. At one point on the trip from Andrews Air Force Base to Seattle, I was invited up front for a conversation. Obama was sitting at his desk watching the Miami Dolphins–Carolina Panthers game. Slender as a switch, he wore a white shirt and dark slacks; a flight jacket was slung over his high-backed leather chair. As we talked, mainly about the Middle East, his eyes wandered to the game. Reports of multiple concussions and retired players with early-onset dementia had been in the news all year, and so, before I left, I asked if he didn’t feel at all ambivalent about following the sport. He didn’t.

“I would not let my son play pro football,” he conceded. “But, I mean, you wrote a lot about boxing, right? We’re sort of in the same realm.”

____________________

When Obama leaves the White House, on January 20, 2017, he will write a memoir. “Now, that’s a slam dunk,” the former Obama adviser David Axelrod told me. Andrew Wylie, a leading literary agent, said he thought that publishers would pay between seventeen and twenty million dollars for the book—the most ever for a work of nonfiction—and around twelve million for Michelle Obama’s memoirs. (The First Lady has already started work on hers.) Obama’s best friend, Marty Nesbitt, a Chicago businessman, told me that, important as the memoir might be to Obama’s legacy and to his finances, “I don’t see him locked up in a room writing all the time. His capacity to crank stuff out is amazing. When he was writing his second book, he would say, ‘I’m gonna get up at seven and write this chapter—and at nine we’ll play golf.’ I would think no, it’s going to be a lot later, but he would knock on my door at nine and say, ‘Let’s go.’ ” Nesbitt thinks that Obama will work on issues such as human rights, education, and “health and wellness.” “He was a local community organizer when he was young,” he said. “At the back end of his career, I see him as an international and national community organizer.’

Yet no post-Presidential project—even one as worthy as Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs or Jimmy Carter’s efforts to eradicate the Guinea worm in Africa—can overshadow what can be accomplished in the White House with the stroke of a pen or a phone call. And, after a miserable year, Obama’s Presidency is on the clock. Hard as it has been to pass legislation since the Republicans took the House, in 2010, the coming year is a marker, the final interval before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming.

____________________

Obama’s advisers are convinced that if the Republicans don’t find a way to attract non-white voters, particularly Hispanics and Asians, they may lose the White House for two or three more election cycles. And yet Obama still makes every effort to maintain his careful, balancing tone, as if the unifying moment were still out there somewhere in the middle distance. “There were times in our history where Democrats didn’t seem to be paying enough attention to the concerns of middle-class folks or working-class folks, black or white,” he said. “And this was one of the great gifts of Bill Clinton to the Party—to say, you know what, it’s entirely legitimate for folks to be concerned about getting mugged, and you can’t just talk about police abuse. How about folks not feeling safe outside their homes? It’s all fine and good for you to want to do something about poverty, but if the only mechanism you have is raising taxes on folks who are already feeling strapped, then maybe you need to widen your lens a little bit. And I think that the Democratic Party is better for it. But that was a process. And I am confident that the Republicans will go through that same process.”•

 

Tags: ,

“Obamacare Is Awful…Obamacare Is A Godsend”

January 1, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Obamacare is far from perfect, but for tens of millions of Americans it’s the difference between life and death. I can’t believe how often that point gets lost in the discussion. As if we aren’t all unique people who mean something special to those close to us. People with health insurance don’t face death panels, but people without it potentially face them every day.

I think there are a few economists who read the blog, and it would be appreciated if you could refer me to any studies of what tens of millions of newly insured people will mean to the economy. I would think it would be a boon, but I’d like to read what non-demagogue professionals have to say.

From a new Michael Moore op-ed in the New York Times that looks at both sides of the Affordable Care Act:

“TODAY marks the beginning of health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act’s new insurance exchanges, for which two million Americans have signed up. Now that the individual mandate is officially here, let me begin with an admission: Obamacare is awful.

That is the dirty little secret many liberals have avoided saying out loud for fear of aiding the president’s enemies, at a time when the ideal of universal health care needed all the support it could get. Unfortunately, this meant that instead of blaming companies like Novartis, which charges leukemia patients $90,000 annually for the drug Gleevec, or health insurance chief executives like Stephen Hemsley of UnitedHealth Group, who made nearly $102 million in 2009, for the sky-high price of American health care, the president’s Democratic supporters bought into the myth that it was all those people going to get free colonoscopies and chemotherapy for the fun of it. …

And yet — I would be remiss if I didn’t say this — Obamacare is a godsend. My friend Donna Smith, who was forced to move into her daughter’s spare room at age 52 because health problems bankrupted her and her husband, Larry, now has cancer again. As she undergoes treatment, at least she won’t be in terror of losing coverage and becoming uninsurable. Under Obamacare, her premium has been cut in half, to $456 per month.

Let’s not take a victory lap yet, but build on what there is to get what we deserve: universal quality health care.”

Tags: ,

“We Value And Identify With Our Own Names”

December 23, 2013 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Ima Hogg, 1900.

Scientific studies (which I mostly don’t believe) have long shown that those with more common names fare better in life than those with unique ones. Barack Obama is a small sample size, but he’s done fairly well personally and professionally. And then there’s Ima Hogg, who was the celebrated belle of Texas as well as un-porcine. Well, she did have family connections, so I could be talking about another exception. I suppose the one area in which a name can have an impact is when it allows an employer with biased hiring practices to know the race or ethnicity of the applicant. That does have a bearing on happiness.

The opening of an interesting New Yorker blog post on the topic by Maria Konnikova:

“In 1948, two professors at Harvard University published a study of thirty-three hundred men who had recently graduated, looking at whether their names had any bearing on their academic performance. The men with unusual names, the study found, were more likely to have flunked out or to have exhibited symptoms of psychological neurosis than those with more common names. The Mikes were doing just fine, but the Berriens were having trouble. A rare name, the professors surmised, had a negative psychological effect on its bearer.

Since then, researchers have continued to study the effects of names, and, in the decades after the 1948 study, these findings have been widely reproduced. Some recent research suggests that names can influence choice of profession, where we live, whom we marry, the grades we earn, the stocks we invest in, whether we’re accepted to a school or are hired for a particular job, and the quality of our work in a group setting. Our names can even determine whether we give money to disaster victims: if we share an initial with the name of a hurricane, according to one study, we are far more likely to donate to relief funds after it hits.

Much of the apparent influence of names on behavior has been attributed to what’s known as the implicit-egotism effect: we are generally drawn to the things and people that most resemble us. Because we value and identify with our own names, and initials, the logic goes, we prefer things that have something in common with them. For instance, if I’m choosing between two brands of cars, all things being equal, I’d prefer a Mazda or a Kia.

That view, however, may not withstand closer scrutiny.”

Tags: , ,

1 Thing About Jay Leno’s Obamacare Jokes

December 11, 2013 in Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

I understand that Jay Leno, the make-believe working-class hero, is just a buffoon with a talk show and that nothing he says to a dwindling late-night television audience really matters. He practices some sort of moral equivalency even when none is deserved because he wants to appeal to the widest viewership possible. He panders. But it is a little infuriating that he continually refers to Obamacare as something that Americans “don’t want.” You know, because the uninsured would rather get sick and die. So much neater that way. Real closure.

There are millions of citizens in this country who want Obamacare. Actually, they desperately need it. Their lives and the lives of their children depend on it.

A deserved shot or even a cheap shot against the President is fair game. But a wealthy person taking a cheap shot against poor, working poor and moderate-income Americans in the service of pandering isn’t.•

Tags: ,

“Aides Quickly Set Up The Security Tent — Which Has Opaque Sides And Noise-Making Devices Inside”

November 10, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Abraham Lincoln, an early adopter of technology, didn’t have to worry about electronic surveillance intercepting his telegraphs, but President Obama has no such luxury. The U.S. has been pilloried recently for spying on our allies, but every nation is likely doing it. You know why? Because we can. From Michael S. Schmidt and Eric Schmitt in the New York Times:

“WASHINGTON — When President Obama travels abroad, his staff packs briefing books, gifts for foreign leaders and something more closely associated with camping than diplomacy: a tent.

Even when Mr. Obama travels to allied nations, aides quickly set up the security tent — which has opaque sides and noise-making devices inside — in a room near his hotel suite. When the president needs to read a classified document or have a sensitive conversation, he ducks into the tent to shield himself from secret video cameras and listening devices.

American security officials demand that their bosses — not just the president, but members of Congress, diplomats, policy makers and military officers — take such precautions when traveling abroad because it is widely acknowledged that their hosts often have no qualms about snooping on their guests.”

Tags: , , ,

“The Apollo 10 Astronauts Could See Los Angeles As A Cancerous Smudge From 25,000 Miles In Outer Space”

October 25, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech | Permalink

President Obama believes in Affirmative Action and improving health care and the environment, but so did President Nixon. Before big money, lobbyists and religion became entrenched in American politics, there was common ground. The opening of “Fighting to Save the Earth From Man,” a gated article from the February 20, 1970 issue of Time:

“The great question of the ’70s is:

Shall we surrender to our surroundings or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land and to our water?

—State of the Union Message

NIXON’S words come none too early. The U.S. environment is seriously threatened by the prodigal garbage of the world’s richest economy. In the President’s own boyhood town of Whittier, a part of metropolitan Los Angeles, the once sweet air is befouled with carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, lead compounds, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, fly ash, asbestos particulates and countless other noxious substances. The Apollo 10 astronauts could see Los Angeles as a cancerous smudge from 25,000 miles in outer space. Airline pilots say that whisky-brown miasmas, visible from 70 miles, shroud almost every U.S. city, including remote towns like Missoula in Montana’s ‘big sky’ country. What most Americans now breathe is closer to ambient filth than to air.

The environment may well be the gut issue that can unify a polarized nation in the 1970s. It may also divide people who are appalled by the mess from those who have adapted to it. No one knows how many Americans have lost all feeling for nature and the quality of life. Even so, the issue now attracts young and old, farmers, city dwellers and suburban housewives, scientists, industrialists and blue-collar workers. They know pollution well. It is as close as the water tap, the car-clogged streets and junk-filled landscape—their country’s visible decay, America the Ugly.

Politicians have got the message.”

Tags: ,

“He Was In No Way Suggesting That Osama Bin Laden Was Not Killed In Pakistan”

October 8, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

One update to the Seymour Hersh comments which suggested that the bin Laden raid story wasn’t legit, which made it sound like the journalist believed the terrorist’s murder was a moon landing on a sound stage. Hersh has made it clear that he was not referring to the actual killing: The Guardian correction:

“Hersh has pointed out that he was in no way suggesting that Osama bin Laden was not killed in Pakistan, as reported, upon the president’s authority: he was saying that it was in the aftermath that the lying began.”

Tags: , ,

“Ever Since Plan B Failed On The Fiscal Cliff In January And You Saw Boehner In Near Tears In Front Of His Conference, He’s Been Crippled”

October 2, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics | Permalink

If members of Congress weren’t paid for days the government is closed and they had no way to recoup the money, there would be no shutdown. And if you’re not making a sacrifice, you’re not making a stand. Of course, the GOP is sacrificing something huge–its last claim to being more than a fringe party–but that sacrifice isn’t intentional. There are three possible reasons for the shutdown:

  • They Think They’ll Win. While this clearly makes no sense to you or I or anyone with any level of sanity, it’s possible that a party, cloistered from the majority or just good sense, thinks somehow Obamacare is going away because of this gambit. Not likely that too many of them believe it, but possible at least for some of the more flat-earth Republican reps. 
  • They’re Putting Personal Gain Ahead Of the Party. Oval office in 2016 be damned, the Republicans in Congress are more concerned with fundraising in their own districts so that they can remain in power. For a party that says it hates the government, these are people who will sell out any potential national ticket in the next national election to out-wingnut future contenders who might challenge them in primaries. This is almost certainly true to some extent.
  • They’re a Poorly Organized and Suicidal Party. I wrote several times during the 2012 Presidential campaign that I disagreed with the prevailing wisdom that Republicans would have no alternative but to return to normalcy if President Obama was reelected. (Obama himself used this reasoning during a debate.) That never was going to happen because it’s no longer a party based on strategy or reason. John Boehner has no authority because there is no authority in anarchy. The GOP is a protest party now and nothing more. And when tens of millions of Americans newly have health insurance with no death panels, no sky falling, this shutdown will be ever more damning. Until all power is lost, the GOP will not remake itself, will not be viable again. It’s not just common sense that works against them–it’s demographics as well.

The opening of Ezra Klein’s new Wonkblog interview with National Review journalist Robert Costa:

“Ezra Klein:

Walk me through the math of the House GOP a bit. Most people seem to think Boehner has around 100 members who largely back him and don’t want a shutdown, and it’s a much smaller group, a few dozen or so, who want to take this to the brink. So why doesn’t Boehner, after trying to do it the conservative’s way as he has been in recent weeks, just say, we’re voting on a clean CR now, as that’s what the majority of the House Republican majority wants?

Robert Costa:

Ever since Plan B failed on the fiscal cliff in January and you saw Boehner in near tears in front of his conference, he’s been crippled. He’s been facing the consequences of that throughout the year. Everything from [the Violence Against Women Act] to the farm bill to the shutdown. The Boehner coup was unsuccessful but there were two dozen members talking about getting rid of him. That’s enough to cause problems. Boehner’s got the veterans and the committee chairs behind him, but the class of 2010 and 2012 doesn’t have much allegiance to him.

The thing that makes Boehner interesting is he’s very aware of his limited hand. Boehner doesn’t live in an imaginary world where he thinks he’s Tip O’Neill and he can bring people into his office and corral them into a certain vote. So he treads carefully, maybe too carefully. But he knows a clean CR has never been an option for him.

Ezra Klein:

But why isn’t it an option? A few dozen unhappy members is an annoyance, but how is it a threat? Wouldn’t Boehner be better off just facing them down and then moving on with his speakership?

Robert Costa:

So there are 30 to 40 true hardliners. But there’s another group of maybe 50 to 60 members who are very much pressured by the hardliners. So he may have the votes on paper. But he’d create chaos. It’d be like fiscal cliff level chaos. You could make the argument that if he brought a clean CR to the floor he might have 100-plus with him on the idea. But could they stand firm when pressured by the 30 or 40 hardliners and the outside groups?”•

Tags: , , ,

“Nothing’s Been Done About That Story, It’s One Big Lie, Not One Word Of It Is True”

September 27, 2013 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies | Permalink

Seymour Hersh doesn’t buy the official line about the raid that erased Osama bin Laden–or much else the media says these days. He tears into his industry in discussion with Lisa O’Carroll of the Guardian. The opening:

“Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism – close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider. 

It doesn’t take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as ‘the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist.’

He is angry about the timidity of journalists in America, their failure to challenge the White House and be an unpopular messenger of truth. 

Don’t even get him started on the New York Times which, he says, spends ‘so much more time carrying water for Obama than I ever thought they would’ – or the death of Osama bin Laden. ‘Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one big lie, not one word of it is true,’ he says of the dramatic US Navy Seals raid in 2011. 

Hersh is writing a book about national security and has devoted a chapter to the bin Laden killing. He says a recent report put out by an ‘independent’ Pakistani commission about life in the Abottabad compound in which Bin Laden was holed up would not stand up to scrutiny. ‘The Pakistanis put out a report, don’t get me going on it. Let’s put it this way, it was done with considerable American input. It’s a bullshit report,’ he says hinting of revelations to come in his book.

The Obama administration lies systematically, he claims, yet none of the leviathans of American media, the TV networks or big print titles, challenge him.

 ‘It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],’ he declares in an interview with the Guardian.”

Tags: , , ,

« Older entries § Newer entries »