Safire's Star Dims

We note the passing of longtime New York Times columnist William Safire.

He was a conservative in the best sense: concerned about the conservation of liberty, non-dogmatic in many areas.

His columns which were most enjoyable were those "On Language" in the Magazine, focusing on words and phrases, the history of their use, and pointing out unusual and erroneous usage.

He is also remembered for his job, prior to the Times, working as a speechwriter for the Nixon Administration. He invented potent Agnew speech phrases like "effete corps of impudent snobs" (referring to antiwar protestors) and "nattering nabobs of negatism" (about critics of the Administration).

Yes, he was a battler, and on the wrong side, but he showed a sense of honor. And he left that dishonored administration before it was publicly exposed through Agnew's corruption, Nixon's foul-mouthed tapes, and the Watergate break-in and cover-up.

He could also be extremely clueless. He never seemed to get over the end of the Cold War--you could rely on him to take the view that was most suspicious of Russia afterwards, no matter the identity of its leadership or the circumstance.

I was one of many who called him out for an egregious and inexplicable error in a reference in December '05:

I was somewhat appalled to decode the following sentence from your Sunday Magazine piece called "Whitelist":
Worm first appeared in the context of evilware in a 1975 sci-fi novel by John Dunner.
What shocked me was not that you would have offered up the reference, which I think is a fine one, but that your fact-checkers would miss the obvious error in the name of the author, John Brunner.

You owe the author a specific mention of the book in which "worm"is introduced, Shockwave Rider, one of the classic novels of sci-fi. Personally, I'm a fan of The Sheep Look Up, which comes pretty close to describing this year's natural disasters and the public reaction to them.

I would have liked to see some more in-depth discussion of the various biological analogues used in computer lingo about "malware". Besides the "Virus" and "tapeworm" (the full name of Brunner's concept), and the ubiquitous "bug", there are also references to sexual intercourse. And, to the nonliving world of personnel mines. Could be quite a colorful follow-up.

P. O.'d,, but Not Dead Yet

Two amendments to add a public option to the Baucus version of the health care reform bill failed in the Finance Committee (which Baucus chairs) yesterday. A "robust" p.o. (I use small letters, as opposed to "P.O.'d") amendment from Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), which would give the new offering the level of discounts Medicare has for two years, fell by a 15-8 vote (all 10 Republicans, and 5 Democrats voting against), after a five-hour debate. Soon after, an amendment proposed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) which did not have that aggressive provision, fell by a 13-10 vote.

The three Democratic Senators who voted against the Schumer proposal were Baucus, Kent Conrad (N.D.), and Blanche Lincoln (Ark.) There will be a movement to demonize those three, and possibly to a lesser extent Sens. Carper (Del.) and Nelson (Fla.), who voted against the Rockefeller amendment but for the Schumer proposal. I don't like their votes, but I'm not quite ready to condemn them just yet.

Yesterday's votes mean that the bill which will be reported out of the Finance Committee will not have a p.o. in it (it will have money to support Conrad's pet co-ops, though), but that does not mean the end of the story. Strong p.o. supporters, like Rockefeller, Schumer, and Tom Harkin (Iowa) came out of the session encouraged by the vote and by the debate.

Unfortunately, the debate was not televised live, but from the snippets I saw of the debate, I would be encouraged, too. The arguments against the proposal sounded lame and unconvincing--for example, Orrin Hatch (Utah) complained that we'd be turning health care over to "the folks who destroyed the banks and the auto companies". I hate to give you the news, Orrin, but the private banking and auto companies who were destroyed did that all by themselves--the government is just coming around to pick up the pieces and try to put them back together. The proponents had all the good arguments on their side: more competition, challenging the health insurers' harmful practices, and the fact tha the p.o. is no entitlement program--it would be a self-sustaining, optional offering. If it's a weak one, it would be no threat to the private insurers, and thus insignificant.

The debate will go to the Senate floor, and the search will continue for a formula that can get enough Democratic votes to make it a winner--51 might well be enough, but they will try to get to 60 first. It was clear from the p.o. supporters that they will bring an amendment to the floor, and they claim to expect it to succeed. My condemnation will be for any Democrats who go against the p.o. in the floor vote, if it fails there; it will be fierce, and it will be backed up with my wallet. With regard to 2010, I've become a single-issue voter.

Clearly, a trigger approach will not do at this point; the p.o. will take time to gear up, and it is unclear how widely it will be available. A trigger approach means private insurers will be able to gouge the public more time--it implies they will not improve their methods.

On a discussion later that day on Jim Lehrer's Report on PBS, a freshman Democrat from Colorado made an interesting point: the Republicans could kill the public option if they got on board. If they continue with their unyielding opposition to the proposed legislation, the resulting bill--and there will be a bill--will be more unfavorable to them.

Obama Scores Against Stiff Defense

Pres. Obama announced yesterday that he is scrapping the Bushite plan for Missile Defense systems based in the Czech Republic and Poland designed to repel the threat of missile attack from "Iran".

This is the kind of good decision-making that we expected from Obama, and we want to be among the first to hail it. I have been going on about this one for about two years now. Obama's decision extracts an unnecessary thumb from the eye of the Russians, who never really believed that it was anything other than a clumsy effort toward encirclement of them. It may well pay off in some assistance from them with regard to reducing the threat of Iran's developing nuclear weapons.

But that is not, and should not, be the main point. This is elimination of an unnecessary defense system that does not promise to defend anyone from anything anytime soon, if ever. Instead, Obama continues to play the missile defense game, but in a smarter way, with mobile systems, which might be able to defend Israel from Iranian attacks (a much more plausible concern than Iran's attacking Central Europe).

Officially, the Czech and Polish governments will be upset. Their notification of the change may not have been handled in the most diplomatic way. I'll bet that majorities of their citizens (unlike their governments' leadership, which currently tends toward the extreme right) understand and approve of the decision, though.

Health Care Update

Paul Krugman had it about right: the Baucus bill is inadequate as it stands, but it can be improved enough to make it worthwhile.

To paraphrase him, three improvements are needed:
1) The employer mandate section is hopeless, penalizing employers for the number of employees getting subsidies to help pay for their insurance. This needs to be replaced with a simple "pay or play" provision--either employers pay in for group insurance, or pay into a pool to help their employees get it.

2) There is not enough money in the bill for subsidies for the poor to get insurance--the result would leave the society far short of universal coverage.

3) The provisions to increase competition on insurance--the co-ops--are inadequate. I believe they would help in some rural areas, but for the typical urban dweller, a public option is needed.

If these don't come up, or if it goes in the demagogic other direction, focusing on political culture wars about abortion, illegal immigrants, and malpractice insurance, the bill will die. And should. There will be another, though...

Updates from the Peanut Gallery

The new figures from the Lewin Group, an independent study group (though sponsored by United Healthcare) are that about 20 million Americans would take up a public option--as it came out of the House committees, i.e., after the provisions which would give it the same mandated discounts medicare enjoys. This down from 100 million; it's a good balance between truly providing competition and crowding out the private insurers (which most people don't want).

Finally, I just finished reading a long, incisive piece in The Atlantic by David Goldhill (called "What Washington Doesn't Get About Health Care--Here's How to Fix It" on the cover, but titled "How American Health Care Killed My Father" at the head of the article). Basically, he calls for the elimination of "comprehensive" health insurance (including for Medicare!) and scares the beejesus out of the reader. Not even single-payer could save us, and none of what's on the table would do much. Don't read it, even though it's packed with accurate information--his subtitle should be something like "Save America $1.6 million and Kill Yourself--Today!" It's that depressing.

Don't Blame Sen. Bingaman
Our Senator Jeff Bingaman should not be tarred with the Baucus brush (Bauchanalia?), though he was one of the infamous Gang of Six (along with "Coops" Conrad, "Frosty" Snowe. "Crass" Grassley, and Enzi "Face"). Bingaman was the well-meaning orthodox liberal in the group, trying to uphold progressive values, though not always succeeding. He has not endorsed the Baucus formulation as it stands, though commending the effort, and has announced he will support the public option in an amendment to be proposed before the full Committee (where it may well pass).

Here is his statement on the release of the Baucus draft.

Obama and the U.N.: Pt. 2

Pres. Obama visits the United Nations next week. In addition to a speech to the General Assembly (see this post for what I think he should say), he will chair a session of the Security Council devoted to the topic of nuclear weapons.

What goes on behind the scenes at the U.N. is always much more significant than what happens in the public appearances, though. Obama's visit will be an opportunity for diplomacy-by-proxy with China, Russia, and India on such topics as countering North Korea's aggressive moves, keeping Iran's nuclear developments under control (under threat of additional sanctions), and coming ujp with something positive in the conference on climate change in Copenhagen later this year.

Worst Notion of 2009: Nomination
In its September 7 issue ("Understanding Teddy"), Newsweek gave voice to one of the worst intellectual ideas of this era--"nuclear optimism". An article titled "Why Obama Should Learn to Love the Bomb" should be satire, or comedy, and, to honor the memory of Stanley Kubrick and my favorite movie, "Dr. Strangelove", should not argue with a straight face for the value of keeping nuclear weapons around. But that's what the article's author, Jonathan Tepperman, does--at great length.

Tepperman promises that a "growing and compelling body of research suggests...the bomb may actually make us safer." Not just the US safer, given the other nations which have it--everybody. The closest thing to any research in the article are suggestions that the participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and in the India-Pakistan skirmish over Kashmir in 1999 (when both countries had the bomb) were rational enough to realize that both sides would lose in a nuclear exchange. Well, duh!

The suggestion is not just that Obama can not succeed in eliminating nuclear weapons from the world during his administration--OK, we can all agree that's probably true--but that he should not even suggest their elimination as an objective. The suggestion instead is that we should trade--permanently--a small chance of nuclear war for a larger chance of preventing conventional wars among major powers. In support of this thesis, he points out that nuclear weapons haven't been used on inhabited territory in 64 years, and that there have been no major wars between nuclear-armed nations during that time, either.

Intellectually, he would have an argument if he could prove that there are no circumstances under which a nuclear-armed nation would use them. However, if that were true, they wouldn't be such a good deterrent, would they? And, there is the fact that they WERE used 64 years ago. If you told me there was only a 10% chance they would be used in the next 64 years, I'd still say we can't afford the risk--if we can figure out how to get rid of them.

That's actually the sticking point in total elimination of nukes; the last part, when the few remaining weapons would be permanently disarmed. At that time, there might be a temptation for some nation to cross back over the threshold in order to obtain a decisive, if temporary, advantage. There probably would have to be some international agency, with the highest level of security and protection from the world's great powers, that would have to maintain a deterrent against cheating, because it's simply not that hard for an advanced country to bring them back at any time.

There's one or two good suggestions Tettenbaum makes, things we should do regardless of the long-term objectives (which are and should remain: nonproliferation, progressive reduction, and removal of the hair-trigger). The notion of "nuclear forensics", which would make the origin of any nuclear materials transparent, is a good one that would help ensure against a nuclear power surreptitiously acting through others, like a terrorist group, or improperly disseminating nuclear materials to other countries (as Pakistan did in the '90's). Second, there is benefit in all major nations knowing everyone's capabilities, or lack thereof, which would prevent blackmail, unpleasant surprises, or unknown dangers. (Apparently South Africa had the bomb and gave it up?)

The bottom line for me remains this: those nations which have nukes should have obligations, and they should be substantial and continuing ones. Those that don't agree to them should be punished harshly. When the downside is sufficient, the upside won't look so attractive to nations like iran or North Korea. Just ask the Japanese--they understand the downside very well.

Like a Rug

In our confessional society, there are few transgressions that are not fixed by a sufficiently-sincere-looking admission of guilt and regret. That assumes that a lawsuit or criminal case is not involved, of course. This may be changing, though...

The movement to penalize Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina for his boorish "You lie!" exclamation during Pres. Obama's health care speech seems to have some legs. Maureen Dowd basically accused him of racist motivation, and his fellow S.C. Rep. Jim Clymer, a leader in the Democratic caucus, wants to introduce a motion in the House to censure him for his misconduct. This after Wilson made direct, personal apologies to Obama and V.P. Biden and after both publicly forgave his behavior.

If there was a hint of a racist lash in Wilson's "refusal to accept the legitimacy of an African-American President", the backlash was a huge inflow of money for his campaign chest. So, this is the re-backlash. Clymer takes Wilson to task for intentional confrontational behavior in the past, like having a rowdy town hall meeting in Clymer's district.

The purpose of the re-backlash is to hound him from public life, and here I'd have to say that the ends would justify some extraordinary means. A censure motion does not have to pass in order to do vast harm, but it can also backfire. I would suggest that a pattern of behavior needs to be justified, or that Wilson is in fact a sociopathic liar, to prevent him being able to make a PR campaign as a victim of some misguided PC notions and come out of this thing stronger than before.

I'm with O

I didn't get to see President Obama's speech on health care reform last night until the replays. My comments about it in a moment. One thing I noticed when I got back and logged on (through CNN) was that there was a short, three-page document that outlined "the President's plan". Today's reports feature the text of his speech, and all the buzz around it, but nowhere today can I find a reference to this document, which I consider absolutely essential.

In it, President Obama makes very clear the key points he wants in the bill--they are presented unambiguously (even if the financial targets may be a big stretch). I was wrong, and Obama has come around to a mandate for all individuals to take insurance--but in the context of choice that includes a public option, subsidies for individuals, and, apparently, a waiver for those who can still not afford it.

I am still seeing editorials that say: which plan? where is the plan? Yes, it is a three-pager of talking points, not fully-drafted legislation, but this is a plan I endorse in its entirety--unlike the draft Baucus plan, which has many unacceptable proposals. I want to see this plan endorsed immediately by the full Democratic delegation, which will force the Republicans to play ball, to get their pet peeves (like malpractice reform, or a specific--but unworthy and unlikely--denial of coverage to illegal immigrants) included.

I believe his speech was a game-changer, in this sense: nobody who says they want to "scrap it all and start over" will be a participant in the discussion anymore. There will be a bill, it will start with the 80% of the policy that is agreed upon, and the rest, as Barney Frank says, will be "a negotiation". The public option may be given up, but only when other conditions which require it--like the individual mandate, the Exchange, and the limits on rates for pre-existing conditions or age-based rates--are properly controlled. Again, I can accept that, as long as there is a recorded floor vote on a public option.

The bill will contain some of these negotiated elements if they can get enough Republican support to make sure 60 votes will back it in the Senate (they'll need at least one, with Kennedy's seat vacant). Otherwise, a version that is closer to the House version with less of these negotiated elements will pass--as much as can get by the Senate parliamentarian for being germane to budget reconciliation--with 51 votes or more.

Again, keep this document of Obama's plan for future reference as the bill emerges onto the Senate floor.

Program for the Big Night

President Obama's speech to Congress is coming up tomorrow night (Wednesday). There are many ways he could play this critical public appearance, but I think the following is what he will say, and then what I think he should add:

Obama can not threaten to veto a bill that does not have a public option in it. That will reinforce the stalemate that has already developed. Instead, he will praise the concept of the public option, but emphasize all the other worthy aspects of a potential bill, many of which are essentially agreed upon.

He will not ask for much from Republicans, except to contribute any ideas to achieve the goals he will describe. The bipartisan effort of the Gang of Six Finance Committee Senators is fizzling out, without any real agreement, and with a draft bill that's a non-starter: a mandate to buy, no mandate for employers to provide insurance, and no public option. That draft does have money for health co-ops, which I see as another useful alternative, but no substitute for a properly-constructed public option. He will implicitly endorse the legislative strategy of using the budget reconciliation waiver to the 60 vote requirement in the Senate, which at this point looks like the only way anything real can be accomplished. And, it seems, a lot can be accomplished that way.

I would add one note: Candidate Obama was not in favor of requiring all--by law--to take insurance. I don't think he will support the concept now, either, opting for cleverly-designed incentives (such as reduced prices for pharmaceuticals, tax credits conditioned on taking, and keeping, catastrophic care insurance) rather than coercion. People tend to forget his stance--which was quite distinct from Candidate Hillary Clinton's--in their analysis of the issue and what Obama will require in the health care legislation.

What he should do is insist that such a public option--I would suggest one that is designed to be mildly profitable (the profits going toward Mediare/Medicaid), one that is allowed to negotiate better rates with hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceuticals (just as private insurers can do), one that is available to all Americans, one that does not penalize for pre-existing conditions but rewards individuals for specific healthful behaviors, one that scales premiums for the size of deductible, so that it can be a catastrophic-illness only policy or something much more expensive and providing fuller coverage, and finally I recommend that the captive insurer AIG be enlisted to provide distribution support for it--such an option needs to be brought to the Senate floor for an up-or-down vote at some stage in the legislative process.

Nothing less would be a change to business as usual; a floor vote for a public option is a requirement for us to believe in this change--even if it loses. Then we'll know which Senators deserve our support--and which deserve to get their support from the insurance lobby.

Illegal Sports Betting Notes

Why can Americans bet on sports results in Las Vegas, but nowhere else? (OK, there's the rest of Nevada, if you call that somewhere...)

I read somewhere that the Federal law permits an exception for four states. Nevada is one, Delaware another, and I don't know the other two. Delaware recently decided to allow sports betting, but their law was thrown out by the U.S. Courts for some reason.

I would suspect the heavy hand of Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid protecting his state, except for one thing: though his hand is heavy, his reach is short--it doesn't even extend very far among the Senators of his own party, much less the courts.

I support the idea of allowing all states to permit sports betting within their states, excluding amateur sports (that would not exclude men's college football or basketball, which are pro in all but name). States could derive much-needed revenue from taxing the profits of the legalized bookie operations. Yes, this is a "stupidity tax", but if it were applied to education (like the lottos and Powerballs) or health care, it would be utilizing stupidity for a good cause.

I think the general Federal aversion to sports betting (excluding Nevada and maybe, if they can get the rules right, three other states) goes back to some betting scandals in the '50's and '60's which took some players down. The laws don't prevent the temptation, or the occasional slip-ups, they just enrich the illegal bookies.

Meanwhile, the online bookies are required to be offshore, and to make good-faith efforts to prevent US persons from participating. These provisions are easily evaded (I won't say how), but I don't do so. Somehow, though, Intrade (which allows legalized betting on non-sports results, which I'm signed up to watch but not play) invited me to work with them. I decided it was some sort of scam and declined.

Event-Specific Notes

I wanted to check the lines on the U.S. Open tennis tournament now in its third day. Ladbroke's (the #1 UK operation; blocked for Americans) had odds on matches that day, even by set, and other nonsense, but didn't have the tournament-championship odds for the men when I checked--I don't know why, but I went to William Hill (#2 in the UK) and they had them. Scaling down the win percentages calculated from the odds to make them add to 100%, you get these: Federer 39, Murray 22, Nadal 11, Djokovic and DelPotro 7.5 each, Roddick 7, Tsonga 2, Soderling 1, Others 4.

Comments on those: Murray's is probably too high because of Brit money, but there is some smart opinion backing him (Agassi and Brad Gilbert, from the TV broadcasters, if I'm not mistaken); Nadal is believed to be unable to run and thus play his game, so that's also probably too high; Federer looks great, but the chances seem about right, as there are several real challengers this year. So, from those odds, I only like the odds on Roddick (he may have been off his Wimbledon form lately, but should rally with the crowd behind him--as it was, he was only a few millimeters behind Federer at Wimbledon) and Soderling (who's proved he can beat anyone if he's hot, and that he has no nerves).

Women's odds (from Ladbrokes, again scaled to 100%--these were taken down after Venus' near-death experience and before Safina's, but they don't seem to have changed anyway): Serena 24, Venus 14, Dementieva 9, Azarenka 8, Clijsters 8, Sharapova 7, Safina 7, Jankovic 5, Kuznetzova 4, Ivanovic (already out), Zvonareva, and Wozniacki 3 each; Stosur 2, Pennetta 1, Bartoli 1, Others 3.

From those quotes, I like bets on Clijsters, Sharapova, Jankovic, and Stosur. And a big one on Serena, of course: I'd say she's more like 50-50 to win it.

English Premier League (also from Ladbrokes, again scaled to 100%): Chelsea 38, Man U. 28, Arsenal 14, Liverpool 10, Manchester City 5, Tottenham 3, Aston Villa 1, All other 1.

None of those quote are crazy. There's a decent chance Man City could organize all their new mercenaries and make a late run for it, but otherwise the only realistic conideration is the usual top 4, and I wouldn't quibble with the relative likelihood of those.

Man U., as three-time defending champs, should deserve the favorite spot, but the loss of Ronaldo is, in fact, a huge blow to their chemistry (as was the shellacking they got from Barca in the Champions League final). Chelsea was threatened by outsiders with big bucks (like Man City, which went after John Terry very hard), but remained largely unscathed, and they look pretty good so far this year. I'd put some money on Chelsea, but really only because they're my team, and I'd put a small flyer on Man City--if they were to pull it off, I'd want some of that action, and I've gotten over my allergy to backing "the best teams money can buy" since Roman Abramovic came to Chelsea.

I draw the line before the Yanks and BoTox, though, of course.

For the record, let's bet an imaginary $2500 as follows: $500 on Roddick @12:1, $100 on Soderling @50:1, $200 each on Sharapova (10:1), Clijsters (8:1), and Jankovic (12:1), $800 on Serena @15:8; $400 on Chelsea @5:4, and $100 on Man City at 14 to 1. The odds quoted here are the ones on the websites, and thus not "fair", but I like their taste just the same.