Author: Mark Tokarski

Just a man who likes to read, argue, and occasionally be surprised.

A Real S.O.B.

From Murial Kane of Raw Story:

A new book about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp. owns Fox News, is to be released next week. Its most sensational revelations involve what the author describes as Murdoch’s loathing for leading Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly.

Politico received a pre-publication copy of Michael Wolff’s The Man Who Owns the News and reported on Friday that Murdoch is not only embarrassed at times by his ownership of Fox News, but that he “absolutely despises” O’Reilly, who is that network’s top-rated personality.

Moral Hazards

The 1990’s saw an attack on Medicare from the right wing – said Newt Gingrich, the program was “Soviet-style health care, too bureaucratic, too centralized, too dominated by government.” Gingrich is a smart man, but is blinded by ideology. Anyone who can compare private health insurance to government-run and say the latter is “too bureaucratic” is missing the big picture.

The primary thrust these days from the right are HSA’s – health savings accounts. The objective is to counter what insurers call a “moral hazard” – the idea that people use too much health care when it is provided by others. HSA’s force people to save for their own care, making them cautious about spending, thereby making only medically necessary expenditures.

HSA’s are appealing to younger, wealthier people. These people have fewer medical problems, and are attracted to the idea that they can accumulate cash in an IRA-like fashion that could later be converted to an IRA account. But medical costs are like the angel of death hovering over all of us, affecting only a few at a given time. A major medical problem quickly wipes out an HSA, and the owner becomes part of the larger scheme again. The overall thrust of HSA’s is to segregate the population into sick and healthy, forcing larger costs on the sick, negating the benefits of large insurance pools of healthy and unhealthy alike. That’s a moral hazard.

HSA’s face another moral hazard – the fact that financial institutions are drawn to the deposit and fund-management aspects of the program. Their main objective is to build up deposits, but HSA’s also offer opportunity for fees for account processing. As with mutual funds, these fees draw down asset accumulation and income stream over time – a subcommittee of the Senate Finance Committee found that mutual funds on average lose 26% of their accumulation to fees. (Social Security drain: 3%.)

People do tend to spend less on medical costs when they are dependent on HSA’s. The problem is that most of us don’t have a crystal ball, and don’t know what’s important, what is not. HSA’s end to decrease the chance for early detection, meaning later and more expensive treatment of diseases and conditions. Furthermore, poor people are most likely to scrimp on expenditures, meaning that they would, as with the current insurance system, get the short end of the stick.

The above are condensed thoughts from Jill Quadagno and J. Brandon McKelvey from an essay entitled “The Transformation of American Health Insurance”, not available on the web. (The 26%/3% figures come from a Sen Max Baucus aide on the Senate Finance Committee whose name eludes me. He was here in Bozeman to address seniors are part of the Wonderlust program.) Here’s an interesting excerpt:

In the past few years, Congress has enacted measures that have given private insurers a larger role in Medicare, most recently with the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which created Medicare Advantage, a private insurance option. There is already evidence that inserting private insurance into a social insurance program exposes beneficiaries to the risk of abuse. The private insurers who run Medicare’s new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush Administration have used deceptive sales tactics and improperly denied claims to thousands of beneficiaries. The problems include improper termination of coverage for people with HIV and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls. In 2007, Medicare imposed more than $770,000 in fines on eleven companies for marketing violations and for failing to notify beneficiaries about changes in costs and benefits in a timely fashion. Many of the marketing abuses occurred in sales of the Medicare Advantage product.

Sounds like we need to deregulate.

But seriously, folks, private insurers and patients are at odds with one another, one seeking health care, the other benefiting only when that care is denied. It’s a system in conflict with itself, and doomed to fail. Yet it is the only one that free-market types can fathom for us.

It is probably best to jettison the free-market types. They are a moral hazard.

For the Underemployed

Here’s a way for the unemployed to pass the time – the 100 greatest movie characters of all time. You have to hit them one by one, and I do think that Dr. Emmett Brown (76) should be 43, and #75, Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand in Fargo) should be more like 28, but it’s a fun list. Here are the top ten:

10: Don Vito Corelone
9: Ellen Ripley
8: Captain Jack Sparrow
7: The Dude
6: Indiana Jones
5: Dr. Hannibal Lecter
4: Han Solo
3: Heath Ledger as “The Joker”
2: Darth Vader
1: Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt in Fight Club)

I sure didn’t see that #1 coming. Here’s some others – 91: Scarlett O’Hara; 74: ET (I did not know ET’s voice was done by Debra Winger); 70: Atticus Finch; 55: Lt. Frank Drebin; 53: Luke (Jackson – not Skywalker); 46: Anton Chugurh – the best villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter, IMO; 34: Rocky; 27: Daniel Plainview (I get depressed just thinking of that movie); and #23: Harry Callahan.

Oddly missing: Jake LaMotta, Rambo, Rhett Butler, Dorothy, Jim Stark, and Ray Kinsella – some very memorable characters.

It’s a clickathon – a good way to sell banner ads. But fun.

Professions and IQ

The chart below represents IQ spans for various professions. My profession, accounting ranges from 92 to 123 or so. My son’s profession, high school teacher, has the same range. My brother’s profession, minister, has the same range. At the high end are college professors and medical personnel. (No wonder most Phd’s are liberals.) Scientists score high, as do lawyers.

To use this chart: Find your profession. Go to the far right end of the bar. That’s where you belong – at the very top of your profession.

h/t: Dr. Peter Rost

iq-range-occupations1

Bailouts as a Union Busting Tool

Firedoglake asks the question:

Anyone else noticed that somehow the banks and brokerages and so on getting all the huge bailouts don’t seem required to come up with a plan for “long term economic viability”, but somehow the Big 3 do? Why is that? If it’s true that this financial crisis is such that banks can’t be expected to be viable on their own, why is it that Detroit has to be?

My best answer? Citibank is not troubled by labor unions.

Republicans: Mind Your Flock

I just finished reading Chris Hedges’ book American Fascists. Hedges is a Harvard Divinity graduate and a deeply religious man, the son of a minister. He’s put off by the Christian Right, and in the book likens their leaders to others with less savory reputations, like Mussolini, Stalin, and Godwin. I found the book interesting, but I think a bit overblown. The right wing Christians are useful to politicians, but are much like Fredo Corleone – that is, even though well connected, out of the loop.

But lately (Vice President Sarah Palin anyone?), they’ve been having close encounters with real power. It is troubling.

Here’s what Hedges has to say (in an interview with Michelle Goldberg) about the persistent question on whether George W. Bush is a true convert or a poseur:

I think he’s a believer, to the extent that this belief system empowers his own arrogant sense of privilege and intellectual shallowness. When you know right and wrong, when you’ve been mandated by God to lead, you don’t have to ask hard questions, you don’t have to listen to anyone else. I think that plays into Bush’s character pretty well.

I think there are probably other aspects or tenets of this belief system that he finds distasteful and doesn’t like. But in a real sense he fits the profile: a washout, not a very good family life – apparently his mother was a horror show – he was a drunk, allegedly used drugs, coasted because of his daddy, reaches middle age, hasn’t done anything with his life, finds Jesus. That fits a lot of people in the movement.

There’s a chapter on this weird Rapture stuff – the idea that true-believing Christians will be taken from the earth, that the rest of us will die horrible prolonged deaths, and then they will come back to rule. (A priest once told my son that they really blew it when they put the Book of Revelations in the Bible – they should have used Star Wars instead.) In another part of the book, Hedges mentions in passing the concept of the “Master Race”. That’s all that their eschatology is about – the penultimate time for them, when they take control of all. They are the Master Race.

They’d be just another cult waiting for a comet if there weren’t so damned many of them. They have untoward effects on us all. They threaten the first amendment, the separation of church and state, and are really bad for the environment – they believe that since the end is near, there’s no sense in preserving the earth’s resources. God will provide in abundance anyway. (Many of us remember James Watt, an end-timer who was Secretary of the Interior under Reagan. He once told Congress “I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns, whatever it is we have to manage with a skill to leave the resources needed for future generations.”) They can do real and lasting damage.

I get a bit testy around fundamentalists. You can’t reason with them – they are out of reach. They are so certain they are right that they can be Machiavellian in pursuit of their goals, as when, according to Stephen Spoonamore, a few of them rigged the 2004 presidential election in Ohio (“saving babies”). When you are right, when you know you are right, when you know everyone else is wrong, when God is on your side, any means justifies your ends. Hence, Inquisitions.

This too shall pass, I keep thinking. But it’s lingering. We have people in high office with crazy belief systems, like Rep. Michelle Bachman and Gov. Sarah Palin and U.S. Senator Mark Pryor, who said in Bill Maher’s movie Religulous that you don’t have to pass an IQ test to be a U.S. Senator. But there’s a supreme shallowness with these people that they exhibit before us proudly – they are not interested in complications or nuance. They are simple people with simple answers.

Throughout U.S. history there have been extremes of religious fervor, which we call Great Awakenings. What’s happening now is merely a continuation. The U.S. is off-the-charts religious and fundamentalist. It’s a wonder that we get intelligent pragmatists elected to the presidency. It’s time now for the Republicans to control their base. They are coming too close to the seat of power. Give them minor jobs, keep them busy, but by all means, keep them out of power.

Jo-Mentum

Joe Lieberman wants to be president. It’s as plain as the nose on my face. His first chance was in 2000, as Al Gore’s running mate. Though they didn’t win, it did position him favorably for a shot at the 2004 nomination. Jo-mentum ran that year, but was never taken seriously, never rising from low digits in the polls. He was probably insulted.

In 2008, Joe probably saw a road to the White House through John McCain. He probably thought he would be the running mate, and would land, at last, the vice presidency, and later the presidency should McCain kick off early or decide not to run after four years.

The parties don’t disagree on Iraq, or Afghanistan, or the so-called War on Terror. There was no substance to Joe Lieberman supporting McCain beyond his own personal ambition.

He’s not that hard to figure out.

The Folly of Appeasement

From Digby:

In a letter to Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), [Senate Majority leader Mitch] McConnell urged Reid to adopt a more conciliatory tone and warned him that Republicans will unite against Democrats if he does not. The letter was signed by all 40 GOP senators and two Republican incumbents who are awaiting the results of elections in Georgia and Minnesota.

That would include moderates Olympia Snow and Susan Collins of Maine. The Republicans run a tight ship. With the likes of Joe Lieberman and Diane Feinstein in the mix, I doubt that the magical sixty vote marker is of any importance.