Blog entry

H1N1 & My Famiy

Terrance Heath — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:33:11 -0800

We'd talked about it earlier in the week, but hadn't really made a definite decision to go. Then, Sunday morning I came downstairs to find this Washington Post story on the computer monitor.

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, 6-year-old Heaven Skyler Wilson dragged herself off the school bus that dropped her in front of her home on a rural road in Jetersville, just south of Richmond. The little girl, who had never had so much as an ear infection in her life, was pale and feverish and complained of an upset stomach.

The next day, Heaven's grandmother, Pat Sparrow, took her to a nearby clinic. Heaven, usually a bright, bubbly girl with blond pigtails, dimples and effusive energy, had a sore throat and a 103-degree temperature. The doctor swabbed her for the flu, and the test was positive.

It was just something going around, Sparrow said she was told. The doctor told Sparrow to take Heaven home, give her Tylenol and chicken broth, and let her rest.

By the next morning, Heaven couldn't breathe. Sparrow called 911.

...Two weeks later, on Oct. 21, ravaged with double pneumonia and a staph infection that deprived her brain of oxygen, Heaven was disconnected from the respirator. She lived for four minutes.

At 11:18 p.m., Heaven died in the arms of her mother, Sara Wilson. "You never heard such an awful scream from someone who loved her child so much," Sparrow said, her voice shaking.

He was already packing the kids lunches at that point. So I knew that after swimming lessons, we'd be headed to the H1N1 vaccine clinic held this Sunday in Montgomery County. The end of our H1N1 saga — that is, the saga of getting the kids vaccinated — was finally in sight. And, as my husband said when he asked if I saw the article, "You just want to know you've done everything you can to protect your children."

But, until Sunday, there wasn't much we could do.

It's been months. First, Parker's school was going to have a vaccine clinic — appropriate since at least a few children at his school (that we know of) had come down with H1N1. Not to mention that some kids at Dylan's daycare had it too. But the school clinic was cancelled due to a shortage of the vaccine.

We called the kids' pediatrician and were told that they had the nasal spray vaccine. That would would work for Parker, but Dylan was too young. Then we got the kids there only to find out that they had the nasal spray for the regular flu virus. Not H1N1. There was a swine flu vaccine clinic earlier, but we weren't able to make it in time, and we found out later the if we had made it we'd have had to contend with long lines and chaos.

BETTY ANN BOWSER: That pretty well summed up the situation outside a Montgomery County public health clinic in suburban Washington, as some 2,000 area residents lined up to get vaccinated against the H1N1 virus.

It's a scene playing out across the country, demand outstripping supply. It was a particularly dramatic at this Rockville, Maryland, clinic today, as lines snaked around the building, through the parking lot, and down the block.

Within minutes of opening its doors, health care officials let the crowd know that swine flu shots were going fast to the people most at risk: pregnant women, children under the age of 2, and people with underlying health conditions.

And probably would have gone through that only to have them run out of vaccine.

The only thing more infuriating that the wait was learning that my kids would've had the vaccine by now, if they worked on Wall Street.

While thousands of at-risk Americans wait, some big Wall Street banks have already secured the hard-to-find H1N1 vaccine for their employees.

Building on a story that BusinessWeek broke, NBC reports that employees at the New York Stock Exchange, bankers at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, and employees at the Federal Reserve have all received swine flu vaccine doses to administer to their employees.

In particular, NBC reports that Goldman Sachs has received 200 doses of the vaccine -- the same amount as Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. Wall Street banks, like many other companies, put in requests for the vaccine but seem to have had something of a leg up on securing doses.

Dr. Nancy Schnyderman, NBC's chief medical editor, chimed in on this seeming disparity:

"I think they probably played by the rules, there are corporations all over the country who put in there dibs...But, what a sore eye for Wall Street. Wouldn't have been lovely if they had said, look we put it in our dibs, we played by the rules, but we're going to donate our 200 doses."

Most infuriating, perhaps, is the idea that the reasons for the shortage are some kind of mystery.

County health departments around Maryland are receiving doses of the 2009 novel H1N1 vaccine and administering it to people in target groups, but the supply is still not what health officials would like it to be, and the reasons for the continued slow distribution pace aren't entirely clear.

"(We) have not yet gotten to the point where we're turning that trickle (of vaccine) into a stream, and certainly not at the point where we're turning that stream into a river," said David Paulson, spokesman for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Earlier this year, health officials were optimistic about having sufficient supplies of vaccine for everyone who wanted it, but their initial estimates now seem to have been greatly overestimated.

A shortage has caused vaccine seekers to wait in long lines, while others have been turned away. Vaccine clinics in Montgomery County at the end of October closed less than an hour after opening when demand far outpaced supply.

Or perhaps it's that the shortage is the result of some kind of government mix-up, or even Obama's fault (by the same congressmen who voted against an appropriations bill that contained special funding to fight H1H1, because they didn't want to vote for Cash for Clunkers).

Comments on news stories and blog posts usually include a few reading "This is the face of government-run health care." The truth is, this is what you get with the private sector handling public health.

According to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, the government was misled by these companies, which failed to report manufacturing delays as they arose. Her department, she says, was "relying on the manufacturers to give us their numbers, and as soon as we got numbers we put them out to the public. It does appear now that those numbers were overly rosy."

If, in fact, there's a political parable here, it's about Big Government's sweetly trusting reliance on Big Business to safeguard the public health: Let the private insurance companies manage health financing; let profit-making hospital chains deliver health care; let Big Pharma provide safe and affordable medications. As it happens, though, all these entities have a priority that regularly overrides the public's health, and that is, of course, profit—which has led insurance companies to function as "death panels," excluding those who might ever need care, and for-profit hospitals to turn away the indigent, the pregnant, and the uninsured.

As for Big Pharma, the truth is that they're just not all that into vaccines, traditionally preferring to manufacture drugs for such plagues as erectile dysfunction, social anxiety, and restless leg syndrome. Vaccines can be tricky and less than maximally profitable to manufacture. They go out of style with every microbial mutation, and usually it's the government, rather than cunning direct-to-consumer commercials, that determines who gets them. So it should have been no surprise that Big Pharma approached the H1N1 problem ploddingly, using a 50-year old technology involving the production of the virus in chicken eggs, a method long since abandoned by China and the European Union.

Chicken eggs are fine for omelets, but they have quickly proved to be a poor growth medium for the viral "seed" strain used to make H1N1 vaccine. There are alternative "cell culture" methods that could produce the vaccine much faster, but in complete defiance of the conventional wisdom that private enterprise is always more innovative and resourceful than government, Big Pharma did not demand that they be made available for this year's swine flu epidemic. Just for the record, those alternative methods have been developed with government funding, which is also the source of almost all our basic knowledge of viruses.

So, thanks to the drug companies, optimism has been about as effective in warding off H1N1 as amulets or fairy dust. Both the government and Big Pharma were indeed overly optimistic about the latter's ability to supply the vaccine, leaving those of us who are involved in the care of small children with little to rely on but hope—hope that the epidemic will fade out on its own, hope that our loved ones have the luck to survive it.

You'd think the meltdown and the bailout would have been a lesson to the government about trusting big business with the public good. And in the midst of a health care debate, it's worth noting that millions of Americans who had the greatest need for the vaccine had to wait for it and continue to wait for it, while the highest bidders (Wall Street) gets waved to the front of the line. More personally, my kids — and thousands like them — have been waiting while Wall Streeters got their shots first. Had I known, I'd have put them in business suits and taken them to New York to try passing them off as brokers. (Junior Associates, maybe? The very, very new guys from accounting?)

Speaking of lines and waiting, we were indeed among the hundreds waiting in line for the vaccine on Sunday.

The Centers for Disease Control says cases of the swine flu are decreasing, but it's still asking people to get vaccinated. Hundreds tried to do that Sunday at a vaccination clinic in Montgomery County (web | news) .

Some people said it was a never ending line for the first weekend clinic in Montgomery County. Hundreds of people spent part of their Sunday filling the Montgomery County campus in Rockville hoping to get the mist or shot. The vaccine was offered to those considered to be high risk, including anyone age six months to 24 years, pregnant women and people taking care of young children.

For Suvita Melehy and her family, finding a place to get the H1N1 vaccine, hasn't been easy.

Suvita Melehy said, "We have been looking for a long time to try and find some place that we would be able to give them the vaccination."

After a few anxious hours, they were finally successful at getting the vaccine.

The wait turned out not to be so bad. We raced over after swimming lessons to find a depressingly long line. After parking the car, we raced to get to the en of the line, with the hubby carrying Dylan and me bringing up the rear along with Parker. The hubby grabbed the necessary forms while I made Dylan a bottle and gave Parker the PB&J we'd packed for him. Then I went in search of the volunteer who'd been handing out clipboards and pens (to fill out the forms).

By the time I got back, we heard the two hour wait was actually more like an hour. Fortunately, that was correct. Within an hour, we were in the building and from there, it was a short wait to get the kids vaccinated. I don't know how chaotic the previous clinic was. (Though I've heard armed guards were present at the earlier clinic, I only saw a few police officers on Sunday.)

Based on what I saw, either the county government learned from the mistakes of the previous clinic, or perhaps government is perfectly capable of distributing a vaccine once if finally get it from the producers. I can only imagine that perhaps the shortage (and the ensuing parental panic) might have been less intense (and less of a surprise) if the government had more say in the production.

Why would parents be anxious? I'll refer you again to the Washington Post story above. We want to do everything we can to protect our children. But when it comes to something like H1N1 — or toxic toys in the toy box, or e. coli in the grocery cart — we can't do all that much. We can button up over coats, hand out more chewable vitamins, tell our kids to cover their coughs and sneezes (and just hope their classmates do the same), insist our kids wash their hands (and wash ours) every hour on the hour, and just hope our kids don't get sick — or that they can get treatment if they do get sick.

But we don't want them to get sick. Wanted them to get the vaccine.

And they did. Parker was nervous, but very brave and only winced a little as the needle went in and came back out so quickly he wasn't sure it was over. Dylan's vaccine happened so fast that he didn't have time to react until it was over (partly because Parker and I were doing our best to distract him). With that, I became the only member of my family (being over 24, under 64, not a health professional, and not having a chronic condition) who hasn't gotten the vaccine. My doctor's office has a sign on the door saying they don't have the H1N1 vaccine and don't know when they're going to get it. So I wait. That fine, so long as my kids aren't still waiting.

After wiping a few tears, and putting jackets back on, we went back to the car and Dylan promptly fell asleep on the way home. My husband and I breathed a sigh of relief. We're not entirely out of the woods. Both boys will need follow-up vaccines in 28 days in order to get the benefit of the vaccine. They have a pediatrician's appointment between now and then. I just hope their doctor gets the vaccine, and has it to give to them.

After all, you want to know you've done everything you can for your children, and that when you do all you can they will be able to get the help they need.

South Korea Trade Deal A Bad Deal

Clyde Prestowitz — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 11:04:12 -0800

In pledging to push for congressional passage of a U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, President Obama is showing his inexperience as well as the "no change we can believe in" attitudes of his economic advisers.

Like China, Korea has an export-led, neo-mercantilist economic growth strategy. Each time the United States has negotiated trade agreements with these kinds of economies, it has wound up with dramatically higher imports and only small, if any, gains in exports. This is because the U.S. and the export-led economic systems are asymmetrical and largely incompatible.

Export-led economies don't want imports except of the raw material and components necessary to produce their exports. There are many ways to impede imports other than tariffs and quotas. In Korea, for example, antitrust enforcement is very weak. Large chaebols like Samsung and Hyundai control much of the distribution chain. So even if tariffs are zero, foreign exporters may not be able to find distributors to carry their products. Or take intellectual property: The best treaty language in the world for protection of intellectual property won't protect it if the nationalistic court system doesn't enforce the law.

A high-ranking Korean official recently admitted to me that the conclusion of the free trade deal between the U.S. and Korea would not result in any significant increase in U.S. exports to Korea.

Some are warning that the recent conclusion of a free-trade deal between the European Union and Korea will put the U.S. at a disadvantage in the Korean market. I'm not very worried about this. The Europeans are unlikely to gain much benefit from the deal and I'd be willing to bet that Korean exports to the EU will climb much more rapidly than EU exports to Korea.

If the president really wants to do a deal with Korea, then let us do a really meaningful deal which would include antitrust enforcement, currency manipulation, truly equal treatment in terms of distribution availability, buy-national policies, and investment incentives. Indeed, let's be bold and propose not a free-trade agreement, but an economic union under which conditions for all market participants would be exactly the same.

China: Smart Intern, Stupid Question

Eric Lotke — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:56:08 -0800

A really smart student intern I’ve had the privilege of working with (Jonathan Flack, GWU 2010) asked a really stupid question. “Why,” he asked, “Do we give China everything it wants? Why don’t we challenge them?”

This intern knows what’s going on. He knows about our $2 trillion trade deficit, the manipulation of the Yuan, and dumping of steel pipes in the US markets. Of course, he also knows about human rights and Tibet. But most importantly, he knows that economically China is eating our lunch.

He wants to know why our government doesn’t do something about it. He wants to know why we don’t take them on, rather than giving them the Olympics.

It didn’t take long for him to understand the answer. China isn’t the only winner in this U.S. trade imbalance. US corporations win big too.

-- Nike opens up sweat shops, makes sneakers in China for cheap, and sells them in America for $90 a pair. Who wins? Nike.

-- Nortel and Sun help China develop web censoring equipment. Who’s it good for? Nortel and Sun.

Our approach to China sadly indicates whose side our government is really on. The people need change. Big Business likes the status quo. The Obama administration is wrestling with priorities. Even my intern sees who’s losing.

————
PS: What if we don’t change the status quo? Check out my novel, 2044. 2044 starts where George Orwell’s 1984 left off. The problem isn’t Big Brother; it's Big Brother, Inc.

China is Unhappy with Spy Label

Steven Capozzola — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:03:38 -0800

The Associated Press reports that China has criticized last week's U.S.-China Commission (USCC) report for asserting that Chinese spies are aggressively stealing U.S. secrets. Beijing warns that the report is "full of prejudice" and that it could damage U.S.-China relations.

This is laughable. Not only are China's espionage, cyber attacks, intellectual property theft, piracy, and counterfeiting all widely documented, but Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) Senior Analyst Kerri Toloczko can relate her own personal experiences with Chinese spying. A former USCC Comissioner, Toloczko's home computer has been hacked numerous times by China--just one consequence of her Congressional appointment to the USCC. Toloczko reports that other USCC Commissioners have also endured such hacking.

Beijing may not like being called a spy, but it's no exaggeration to say that China is guilty of cheating on many, many fronts. And until a tough line is taken against their bullying, nothing will change.

The Insincerity Of The Public Option Haters

Bill Scher — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:41:10 -0800

When Sen. Joe Lieberman first announced he would filibuster any health care bill with a public option, I noted that he lied, falsely calling the public option an "entitlement program" that would be "trouble ... for the national debt." In fact, the public option is an "option," not an entitlement, which would help our federal government save money.

Yesterday on Meet The Press, Lieberman didn't exactly lie, but deployed -- as his Senate colleague Al Franken coined in his old radio program's "Wait, Wait, Don't Lie To Me" game show segment -- the "Weasel."

And Lieberman's Weasel brightly illuminates the blatant insincerity on the part of the crusaders against the public option.

Lieberman said on Meet The Press:

[The public option] won't even lower the cost of health insurance, which the advocates said it originally would, because the Congressional Budget Office has now said to us that the public option in Senator Reid's bill will actually charge more for insurance than the average charge by health insurance companies.

Yes, it's true that the CBO estimates that Reid's version of the public plan would end up offering premiums that are "somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans" it would compete against in the proposed health insurance "exchanges."

But Lieberman willfully leaves out two key pieces of information.

1. All insurance premiums would be reduced. The CBO also concluded that Reid's reform package, including the public option, would reduce the overall average premium for all plans in the exchanges, public or private. An earlier CBO report of the similarly structured House public option determined the mere existence of a public option "would place some downward pressure on the premiums of private plans".

2. The public option was weakened to appease insurance industry defenders like Lieberman. All year long conservatives, and some alleged "moderates," have accused the public option of being a Trojan Horse intended to decimate private insurance, not compete with it.

To reassure critics, both the House and Senate versions rejected the "robust public option" we at Campaign for America's Future originally championed, in which the public option could fix reimbursements to health care providers at rates akin to Medicare, currently lower than what private plans offer.

The Congressional Budget Office agreed that such a structure would provide more competitive pressure and cut more costs, without undermining the private insurance industry -- only an estimated 4 million in our nation of 300 million would end up choosing the Senate's version of a public option.

But right-leaning Dems continued to abandon their supposed interest in reducing the deficit to protect the insurance lobby, and congressional leaders had no choice but to offer a weaker version, which couldn't fix rates, but would have to negotiate with providers just as private plans do.

While CBO said the weaker version wouldn't save as much money, it still saves some and, as noted above, helps reduce premiums overall.

How does Lieberman respond to winning such a concession? He spits on it.

He twists the CBO analysis. He pretends "advocates" were misleading about the public option's potential when it was weakened to appease myopic politicians like him. He makes the completely contradictory argument that public option premiums that are a little higher than private plans somehow constitute a devastating threat to his insurance company CEO constituents.

Surely he's read the CBO report. So he knows he's a weasel. He knows he does not have a sincere argument against the public option, and he is merely shilling for the insurance industry. Which makes it incredibly difficult to deal with him, and the political reality is, his vote is needed.

But if the non-insurance industry CEO constituents of Lieberman, and those of the other holdouts Sens. Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln, hold their Washington representatives accountable for their insincere arguments, those Senators may recognize that there are more people in their states worried about skyrocketing health care costs than there are CEOs worried about skyrocketing health care profits.

The LiberalOasis Radio Show: Copenhagen Preview

Bill Scher — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:30:16 -0800

Today, President Obama meets with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, with the Copenhagen climate summit two weeks away and their two nations very far apart on any climate agreement. Any international agreement will require the US, India and China to find some common ground.

On Saturday's LiberalOasis Radio Show, airing on WHMP in Western MA, I discussed the international fault lines that must be overcome for a successful Copenhagen summit with David Roberts of Grist.org. Listen below.

Progressive Breakfast: ConservaDems Still Threatening Filibuster

Bill Scher — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:26:11 -0800

The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day

Talk Of Public Option Compromise After Initial Senate Vote

CQ sizes up the state of play on public option: "Four senators — independent Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Democrats Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas and Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana — who voted to begin debate on the bill have said they will likely later oppose any move to end a filibuster and pass the measure unless the public option proposed by Reid is significantly altered or removed. On the other side of the issue, Bernard Sanders, an independent from Vermont, released a statement Sunday saying that there are a 'number of senators, including myself, who would not support final passage without a strong public option.' A compromise could emerge from talks on a proposal by Thomas R. Carper, D-Del. He has suggested a public option available only in states where private insurers fail to offer insurance plans that meet yet-to-be-defined cost standards, or in states that choose to offer a public plan in competition with private insurers."

Wonk Room's Igor Volsky notes that Sen. Lincolin's website still says she support public option: "Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals as those of a public plan."

DailyKos' nyceve reports on health care crisis at free clinic in Lincoln's state of Arkansas: "I learned a lot from the doctors, nurses, volunteers and American heroes who came to render compassion and mercy for their fellow citizens. I learned about little things like for many patients who come to these events, even a $4.00 prescription at WalMart is unaffordable. Many of these people are only able to get part time jobs which don't give them benefits, or they have been laid off because of the economy. I met a woman who works full time and cannot afford the $400 a month for the premium ... These are some of the people who Blanche Lincoln neglects, they will deliver her a message on Election Day, if she continues to work against the people of Arkansas."

Democrats stlll reaching out to Maine Republicans. NYT: "The two moderate Republican senators from Maine, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe, say Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, reached out to them after he unveiled the Senate measure, encouraging them to bring forward their ideas and concerns. Ms. Collins also received a personal visit from a high-level Obama emissary, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former senator who worked closely with her on various issues as part of a bipartisan coalition."

Bloomberg reports that Snowe hasn't decided whether to offer trigger amendment on Senate floor.

Sen. Mark Begich says version of public option is sure to change. Anchorage Daily News quotes: "I'm not going to let the bill live or die on that single item ... The way Reid has his laid out is not the way it's going to be the way it ends up"

W. Post reports Sen. Durbin is "suggesting that lawmakers may be forced to cut into their holiday recess to work on the bill"

Ezra Klein rips logic of W. Post colleague David Broder: "Huh? The net increase of $160 billion in the first 10 years is part of CBO's analysis, not a caveat to it. It doesn't mean the bill doesn't cut the deficit, it just means that overall spending is larger before you add revenues into the equation. Moreover, the CBO continues: 'during the decade following the 10-year budget window, the increases and decreases in the federal budgetary commitment to health care stemming from this legislation would roughly balance out.' In other words, the revenue and the savings grow more quickly than the costs. Extend that line out further and, yes, federal spending on health care falls as a result of this bill. In other words, the bill satisfies Broder's conditions. But he doesn't come out and say that."

USA Today catches up with citizens once opposed to Clinton's 1994 health care bill, supporting Obama after seeing crisis worsen: "...the years since Clinton's failed effort have seen the cost of medical services nearly double and softened some of the skepticism voiced by Americans in 1993 and 1994. The percentage who say Congress should pass comprehensive legislation, rather than dealing with health care incrementally over several years, has increased by 10 points..."

India PM At White House Today As Nations Prep For Climate Summit

The Vine's Jesse Zwick previews today's White House visit by India's prime minister, and impact on climate summit in Copenhagen: "...on none are the two hesitant allies more at odds than the conditions for a global climate treaty ... Earlier this month in Barcelona ... India again caused sparks by threatening to walk out on the Copenhagen talks along with the rest of the developing nations unless rich countries (cough, cough, the U.S.) agreed to deeper cuts and more money. There are now only two weeks before COP15 and this will be the last chance for Obama and Singh’s diplomats to get on the same page, or at least learn to be a little more polite."

AP reports 65 heads of state are now planning to attend: "Sixty-five world leaders have said they will attend the Copenhagen climate summit in December, and several more have responded positively to invitations, Danish officials said Sunday. But the world's top three carbon polluters - the United States, China and India - have not indicated whether their leaders will attend the meeting, and that could have a big impact on its chances of reaching a deal."

Change.org's Mike Smith flags a report that President Obama is laying groundwork to achieve a binding global treaty in 2010: "...Obama's advisers say he is pushing a private solution that involves making an international, binding agreement at a scheduled meeting in Mexico City next year. He has already had talks with Danish PM Løkke Rasmussen — the host and chairman of the climate talk — about the possibility."

Overdraft Free Reform Loses One Backer

Fed step on overdraft fees prompts one House member to drop support for related bill. The Hill: "Rep. Rubén Hinojosa (D-Texas) took his name off the co-sponsors list for the bank overdraft bill backed by Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.) ... he dropped his support for the bill because of the Fed’s recent action on overdraft fees. The Fed issued a rule on Nov. 12 that would require banks to ask consumers permission before subscribing them into overdraft fee programs ... Maloney and Frank’s bill goes farther than the Fed. It would restrict the number of overdraft fees that banks may charge to one per month or six per year and also limits the total fees that banks may charge. Under the bill, banks would have to charge fees proportional to the overdraft."

NYT reports executives of failed financial institutions left with millions, offers lessons for reform: "...three professors at Harvard are ... saying it is an urban myth that executives at Bear and Lehman were wiped out along with their companies ... At Lehman, the top five executives received cash bonuses and proceeds from stock sales totaling $1 billion between 2000 and 2008, and at Bear, the top five received more than $1.4 billion ... 'There’s no question they would have done massively better had their firms not collapsed,' said Lucian Bebchuk, one of the study’s authors. 'But the wealth of those top executives was hardly wiped out. The idea that they were devastated financially has kind of colored the picture people have about what payoffs they were facing.' Many of the solutions that policy makers and regulators are considering for Wall Street pay are tactics that were already in place at Lehman and Bear ... Critics of compensation reform have pointed to these two firms as examples of why change in pay practices may not make a difference and have said the focus should be on things like risk management and regulatory oversight."

Krugman rips front-age NYT article promoting "Deficit Hysteria" "Urg. Big piece on the front page saying that, on the one hand, some people say that we’re going to have a debt crisis any day now, while on the other hand … well, actually we never hear from the other side. As Dean says, the numbers don’t fit the scare story — a decade from now interest payments will reach a level not seen since … 1992. And the market seems unworried, since long-term rates remain low."

What Ever Happened to the Good Times the Tax-Cutters Promised?

Sam Pizzigati — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:30:37 -0800

Don't expect an answer from the ranters and ravers who frequent 'Tea Parties' — or the politicians who egg them on.

You don’t have to dig particularly deep, in the United States today, to find some striking similarities between today’s virulently anti-Obama “Tea Party” crowd and the media darlings who birthed the “Tax Revolt” phenomenon back in the late 1970s.

The Tax Revolters burst onto the national scene amid an inflation-battered economy. They blamed “big government” for what ailed America, and they offered a simple remedy: cut taxes. Lower taxes, they promised, would get average Americans back on track.

The Tea Party zealots have, like the Tax Revolters, also coalesced in tough economic times. They attack “big government,” too. They even make the same promises about taxes.

But the Tea Party types, so far at least, haven’t scored any early political success. The Tax Revolters did. In 1978, in a ballot-box stunner, they passed a statewide initiative in California known as Prop 13, an unprecedented cap on property taxes.

Within a few short years, almost half America’s states had followed suit with tax cuts and caps of their own. In 1980, at the national level, this Tax Revolt surge would carry Ronald Reagan into the White House. One year later, a pliant Congress would give President Reagan the biggest across-the-board federal tax cut in U.S. history.

Tax relief had become, in the wink of an eye, America’s most potent political creed. Tax cutting and capping would go on to dominate the nation’s political discourse for the next three decades, an entire generation.

And what do we have to show for all this cutting and capping? Last week, researchers offered up two new studies that offer up a useful assessment.

The first, funded by the Social Security Administration, looks at the wealth of American families. That wealth, the Tax Revolters assured us,would start amassing again once taxpayers yanked “big government” out of our pockets.

The second new study zeroes in on state and local taxes. After years of tax revolting, this Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy report asks, who exactly is paying taxes at the state and local level? Who has benefited the most, in tax terms, from the Tax Revolt the Tea Party zealots are now so fervently seeking to extend?

The answer: The rich have benefited the most. The Tax Revolt that began back in the late 1970s has, in state after state, let the affluent off the tax hook.

In fact, notes the new Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy analysis, “nearly every state and local tax system takes a much greater share of income from middle- and low-income families than from the wealthy.”

In the entire United States, the analysis adds, “only two states require their best-off citizens to pay as much of their incomes in taxes as their very poorest taxpayers must pay, and only one state taxes its wealthiest individuals at a higher effective rate than middle-income families have to pay.”

America’s most affluent 1 percent now pay, on average, just 6.4 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes. But they actually pay even less than that, since they can deduct their state and local taxes from their federal tax bill. The state and local tax burden on America’s rich, after taking this offset into account, drops to 5.2 percent.

Middle-income families — to be precise, those families who make up the middle fifth of America’s income distribution — pay, after the federal offset, 9.4 percent of their incomes in total state and local taxes.

America’s poorest families pay even more. Tax collectors take 10.9 percent of the incomes of households in the nation’s bottom 20 percent, more than double the share they take from the incomes of the nation’s top 1 percent.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy paper, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, covers non-elderly households. Incredibly, the study details, some states “ask their poorest residents — those in the bottom 20 percent of the income scale — to pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as they ask the wealthy to pay.”

Now you could argue that none of this matters. The Tax Revolters, after all, didn’t claim that their tax cutting and capping would have low- and middle-income people paying taxes at a lower rate than the rich. They claimed, instead, that massive tax cuts, taken as an amorphous whole, would help just about everybody get considerably richer.

That hasn’t happened, as Brookings Institution researchers Barry Bosworth and Rosanna Smart document in a paper just published by the Boston College Center for Retirement Research, with funding support from Social Security.

Bosworth and Smart “explore the consequences of the housing price bubble and its collapse for the wealth of older households.”

Along the way, the two investigators dive into the overall family wealth data the Federal Reserve has been collecting since the early 1980s. Tapping into another federal data set, they bring the family net worth picture up-to-date for 2009.

For low- and middle-income families, their numbers tell a depressing story.

All American households — poor, middle, and rich — have lost wealth since the subprime mortgage collapse and last fall’s financial meltdown. On average, since 2007, Americans have lost 26 percent of their total net worth.

But low- and middle-income households under age 50 haven’t just lost a big chunk of the wealth they held in 2007. These households have actually lost all the wealth they had gained since 1983, the first year with Federal Reserve family wealth data available.

Back then in 1983, the bottom third — by income — of U.S. families under age 50 had an average $24,000 in net worth to their names, as measured in year 2000 dollars. The housing bubble helped boost this bottom-third average net worth to $27,000 in 2007.

Today, in the wake of that bubble’s collapse, researchers Bosworth and Smart put average bottom-third net worth at just $17,000, in those same year 2000 dollars.

Middle-income households under age 50, meanwhile, held an average net worth of $50,000 in 1983. The current net worth of this middle third, after adjusting for inflation: $45,000.

Older households in the bottom and middle income thirds — those over age 50 — have, to be sure, seen their after-inflation net worths increase between 1983 and 2009. But these households have lost at least 22 percent of the wealth they held in 2007. As older families, Bosworth and Smart note, they now “have less time to recover.”

That recovery may take some time.

Back in the middle of the 20th century, governments in the United States routinely taxed the rich to pay for the programs that built a vibrant middle class. The Tax Revolt that began three decades ago, by demonizing taxes, gave the rich a free ride and gutted those programs.

That demonization today continues, with politicos beholden to that rich cynically fanning the Tea Party flames. They don’t care who gets burned. The rest of us should.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online weekly on excess and inequality.

The Week in Blog: Conservatives v. CBO

Bill Scher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 05:07:19 -0800

During this week's edition of The Week In Blog on Bloggingheads.tv, Matt Lewis and I discussed blog reaction to the unveiling of the Senate's health care reform legislation, and how conservatives are responding to the Congressional Budget Office's projection of reduced deficits. Watch it below.

Obama’s First Judicial Nominee Confirmed (5 Months Later)

Rebecca Lehrman — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 14:44:34 -0800

Judge David. F. Hamilton was confirmed Thursday in the Senate to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals 59-39, after breaking a conservative filibuster Tuesday and persevering through a painstakingly delayed process. Senate Judiciary Chairman Leahy (D-Vt.) made the following statement:

“This is a nomination that should be confirmed and should have been confirmed months ago. David Hamilton is a fine judge and will make a good addition to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit."

Judge Hamilton had the support of both his home state Senators – Senator Lugar, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, and Senator Bayh, a well-respected moderate Democrat. He was rated “well qualified” by the American Bar Association, and his nomination cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in June. But despite all this, conservatives had since prevented a final vote, arguing Hamilton was too liberal.

Judge Hamilton is Obama’s seventh nominee to lower federal courts to secure confirmation, though Obama he has sent 27 nominees to the Senate so far. By the end of their first terms, 28 of Bush’s nominees had been confirmed, 27 of Clinton’s nominees had been confirmed, and 42 of Reagan’s nominees had been confirmed.

Sen. Cardin (D-Md.) pointed out: "The president has been more deliberative in sending forward nominations." But, he acknowledged, "we would be well ahead of schedule ... if the Senate would have confirmed those approved" on the committee level.

The Senate conservatives have been doing their best to obstruct Obama’s judicial nominees, and it is taking a toll on American justice. The protracted pace of judicial confirmations is outrageous. These delays interfere with Senate proceedings, the administration of justice, and faith in Obama’s judicial nomination capacities.

President Obama has been quite prudent in his judicial nominations, taking care to reach across the aisle to work with Republican Senators and find well-qualified and bipartisan nominees. After eight years of partisan Bush nominations, the Obama administration should push to fill every judicial vacancy with the best possible judges, before the 2010 elections. We should not be deterred, and hope that conservative senators will stop saturating the Senate with filibusters and start making the progress Americans so desperately need.