Progressive Breakfast: Rice, Beans and Sotomayor

Silly season continues on Capitol Hill and in conservative circles as the offensive against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor goes into overdrive. Political Animal [1] points to a news item in The Hill [2]:

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ feet with chickpeas — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

While the right shudders at the thought of a pigs'-feet-eating Supreme Court judge, there's at least some worry on the left. The L.A. Times says [3] that abortion rights activists "say they have seen no evidence" that Sotomayor would uphold Roe v. Wade and that "in her only abortion-related decision, she did not come down the way activists would have liked." E. J. Dionne writes [4] that "liberals would be foolish to embrace Sotomayor as one of their own because her record is clearly that of a moderate. It is highly unlikely that she will push the court to the left. Indeed, on many issues of concern to business, she is likely to make the Chamber of Commerce perfectly happy."

[5]An article on The Huffington Post [6] co-written by the dean of the New York University School of Law and the director of its Institute for Policy Integrity analyzes an environmental ruling that was praised by some enviros that was overturned by the Supreme Court. They urge caution in scrutinizing Sotomayor's rulings for ideological leanings, but they do say one thing is clear: "[W]hile we cannot glean from this case where Judge Sotomayor lies on the industry-environmentalist spectrum, we can tell from the decision that she is careful judge, thoughtfully applying the law to the case at hand."

FireDogLake has posted Rachel Maddow's on-point takedown [7] of the right's assault on Sotomayor.

Health Care Cost Storms Continue

AP reports the findings [8] of a Families USA study that "the average family with health insurance shells out an extra $1,000 a year in premiums to pay for health care for the uninsured. And the average individual with private coverage pays an extra $370 a year because of the cost-shifting, which happens when someone without medical insurance gets care at an emergency room or elsewhere and then doesn't pay."

Meanwhile, health care cost problems are making the news in Massachusetts and California.

The Boston Globe says [9] that the once highly-touted Massachusetts effort to provide universal care—weakened by then-Gov. Mitt Romney and other conservative lawmakers—is showing more of its flaws. "The survey of roughly 4,000 adults found that, after seeing initial gains in affordability, an increasing percentage of residents are now reporting problems paying medical bills. It also found that a rising number of residents, especially those with lower incomes, are reporting that they did not get needed care because of costs, which are rising faster than inflation." Nonetheless, "implementation of near-universal coverage in 2006 still put consumers here in a better position than in other states."

Such as California, where the Los Angeles Times reports [10]: "Cuts in funding would end medical insurance for 2 million Californians ... Some at-risk residents might not survive the loss of programs."

A potentially positive note on the political front: The Congressional Budget Office issued a report that addressed whether the the costs to consumers of a government mandate to purchase health insurance should be included in the federal budget. The answer: Not necessarily. The Washington Post: [11] "The Congressional Budget Office said a government mandate requiring people to buy health insurance would not necessarily be considered a new form of federal taxation so long as people had a variety of private plans from which to choose and a government entity was not in charge of collecting their insurance premiums. ...The CBO took a different view of Clinton-era reforms in 1994, concluding that a proposed mandate on employers and employees to buy into a government-run health system would constitute a form of taxation and thus a massive expansion of the federal government. The decision was one of several by the CBO that fueled Republican attacks and helped to torpedo reform efforts. "

Those 'Green Shoots' of Economic Recovery?

Financial Times [12]: "World income is likely to decline by 3.7 per cent this year on a per capita basis as a result of a global financial crisis that had disproportionately affected livelihoods in the developing world, a team of United Nations economists said on Wednesday. In a mid-year update on economic prospects for 2009, the economists revised downward an already pessimistic scenario published in January and warned there were “no green shoots to be seen which could signal beginnings of a new spring.”

Meanwhile, Nouriel Roubini has a lengthy article on Forbes.com [13] entitled "Ten Risks to Global Growth": He details why he thinks a recovery in 2010-2011 will be "sub-par and below trends for a few years." He adds: "There are many yellow weeds that may lead to a weak global growth recovery over 2010-11."

Several sources report that the Obama administration is looking at creating a single bank regulation agency that will replace the alphabet soup of agencies that together failed to prevent the economic collapse, and in some cases acted in ways that fueled it. Wall Street Journal sees [14] a recommendation in mid-June: "The new agency is expected to be a major plank in a proposal that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and White House officials send Capitol Hill in a few weeks with the goal of overhauling supervision of financial markets. Other components under consideration are an agency to police financial products offered to consumers and a beefed-up investor protection regulator."

On another regulatory note, Irwin Statzer writes [15] in the Financial Times that when it comes to antitrust law, "For once, America is running at top speed to catch up with the European Union." While the Bush administration had a generally laissez-faire attitude toward big companies wielding monopoly power to skew the marketplace in their favor, the continent where in some places "laissez-faire" is part of the language saw antitrust actions against companies such as Microsoft and Intel.