All the sins of Larry Summers that justified his comeuppance

Since yesterday, when Larry Summers announced that he is taking his name out of consideration for the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, I have received two emails from old friends.  Hey, Judy, what do you think of that?  (As if they didn't know!)
Let us not cry for Larry and his lost dream.  He will have to satisfy himself in his comfy office at Harvard, and at whatever hedge fund he's hanging out at these days.  The man will not starve, though a little bit of fasting might not hurt him.
Still, it is time for me to lay out ALL of his sins, and to wonder why President Obama would ever have thought he would be acceptable to his (Obama's) base.  Most of these you will know about.  One, however, was embedded deep in one of Summers' op-ed pieces in the Washington Post over the past year.  It's the most cardinal sin of all.

Recap:  The frequently mentioned sins:  

1.  Responsible for the Financial Crisis:  He and his mentor (Bob Rubin) disparaged Brooksley Born, of CPSC, back in the 1990's, when she tried to get the Clinton Administration to do something about  the danger of unregulated derivative markets.  Those two, along with Alan Greenspan, snickered at little Brooksley who, as female, could not possibly understand the workings of big finance.  Eventually, to ensure their point of view, the four horsemen (Rubin, Greenspan, Summers and Gramm)  shepherded the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000 through Congress near Christmas 2000.  Did Clinton even know what he had signed?  Well, not his greatest hour, but he listened to his advisors.  His advisor, our boy Summers, was not only wrong on the issue, he was arrogant about opposing views.   Unlike Alan Greenspan, he has never apologized for his role in the fiasco.

2.  Harvard Remarks on Women:  After alienating the faculty (let's forgive that), he made some remarks about women and math, which were probably inadvertent but which reflected an unscientific mindset and a clear bias against women.  He was pointing out the achievement gap in higher math between men and women. That's simple fact.  He argued for more research on the causes of same.  That's good.  But, then, he couldn't stop.  He said his "hunch" was that the cause of the gender gap is genetic and not environmental.  Ah, Larry. There it is.  No evidence, but your null hypothesis (needing to be disproven) was genetic male superiority!  Done as President of Harvard.  Yea!

3.  Performance in the White House during the Obama years.  Divisive, dithering, turf-conscious.  Ron Susskind's book, "Confidence Men" laid it all out.  I needn't say more.  Here is the New York Times article that describes Summers and what everyone (except the President, apparently) thought about him.  I will say no more as this item makes me wonder about my own crush on President Obama.  I don't want to go there.

The Mortal Sin:  (not mentioned in any of the news articles)

1.   The man supports the building of the Keystone Pipeline.  Why, he's such a genius that he knows about energy policy and global warming even better than the vast majority of climate scientists,   When I read his Washington Post Column (on economic growth) in which he put forth his argument, I felt obliged to write an angry letter to the Post editor asking why they print this man's drivel after his performance in numbers 1, 2, and 3 above. (I thought I was being clever, but my screed was not published.)  I have just spent a half hour looking for that opinion piece in the Post and could not find it.  But here it is, reprinted in a Reuters-India paper.

RIP, Public Servant Summers!  Enjoy retirement advising the hedge fund managers.

SCOTUS OPINION on Obamacare- Read it here!

Here is the C-span link to the Supreme Court opinion on the ACA.
Who would have thought that logic (i.e., a mandate that is enforced as a tax is a tax! and Medicaid is a voluntary program, that States can opt out of in pieces) would prevail?

Is this another switch in time that saved nine?  Or the opposite?  Only time will tell.  My relief tells me exactly where my own opinions lie.

What's the best outcome of SCOTUS on Obamacare?

Here we are, on the possible eve of the supreme court's decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).  I've been grappling with what I want to see as the outcome, from the standpoint of what's good for the health care system, what's good for Obama's reelection, for the Democrats in Congress, and finally, for the crowd of  people who deeply believe that a single-payer health care system (a la Medicare) is best for the entire country.  To clarify, when I think about what's good for the health care system, I have in mind the ultimate effects on cost, quality and equality of access...those three competing objectives of public policies governing the delivery of health care.
What's good for Obama's re-election?  I believe the best thing for Obama politically speaking  is to have the whole bill nullified (except for the Medicare provisions, which nobody is talking about anyway).  That would wipe out the state-level exchanges, the insurance mandate (of course), and all the Medicaid provisions that expand access to Medicaid to all individuals and families with incomes less than 133% of the Federal poverty line (about $14K for individuals;  and $31K for a family of four).  I can't imagine how striking down the insurance mandate could leave in tact the ban on insurers discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions, or even the requirement to cover the under-26 crowd (even though some major insurers say they will keep that one.)
I think it would be good for voters to go back to square zero on health care.  It would take the fire out of the conservatives' righteously(?) indignant bellies over the mandate, while leaving the rest of the country to mull the alternatives.
What's good for the Democrats in Congress?  Re-election wise, see above.  Ideologically wise?  What ideology?  Dollars (theirs)  is what matters to them.
What's good for the Single-payer ideologues?  This is a no-brainer.  The mandate goes, the Medicaid provisions stay.  Most Americans do not realize that the Medicaid provisions, in addition to expanding eligibility, require Medicaid to pay for physician services at Medicare rates..  We hear a lot about how Medicare fees are low compared with private rates, but Medicaid fees are 30% lower than that!  And, to top it all off, the Federal government will pick up the entire tab for the health care costs of the new eligibles.  (Yes, yes, that's for 2 years, after which the Federal % drops to 90% and the Medicaid fee schedule rule drops, but who believes that the doctors won't have the clout to extend the fee schedule, just as they have managed to keep fees from plunging under Medicare's law by one-year extensions?)
Bottom line:  an extension of the Medicare-like single-payer system to a greater part of the population, and a gradual acclimation of the public to the idea that universal coverage can only come from a single-payer system.
What's good for the Health Care System?   At this point, I am rooting for a complete nullification, though  I am aware it's a long-shot.  That's because I don't believe in a single-payer system. So, what I mean is that if the mandate is going to be shot down, then I hope they shoot down Medicaid, too. That way, in having to start from scratch, perhaps Congress will put all the people into exchanges, which will treat the lower-income folks with the same respect they treat others. And, instead of  "exchanges," it should be "exchange."   I believe in a regulated market place (much like the Federal Employees Health care system) that offers competing plans meeting minimum coverage requirements.  The exchanges sounded like a good idea, but they are implemented at the state level, which doesn't allow much ability to pool risks, especially in smaller states.  (The state-level exchanges came from the Senate and its nefarious (Demorcatic) leadership, while the (Democratic) House bill had a national exchange system that would have guaranteed a large pool of enrollees.)
At this point, it would be worthwhile to go back to ground zero and let the nefarious Republican leadership deal with the consequences of its political intransigence and the public with another failure of our country to make access to health insurance (and therefore decent access to health care) a right.
What do you think?

My prediction for 2012 Republican Presidential Ticket

One of the joys of having this little personal blog is that I can indulge my favorite hobby-- to be able to say "I said that this would happen."  This post is to go on record with my prognostication for the republican ticket in 2012.  That way I can say, "See?.."
or, more likely, "Well, I don't  know diddly about politics, and never said I did."  (That latter statement is true.)
Here goes:
Republican Nominee for President, 2012, Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana
Republican Nominee for Vice-President, 2012, Marc Rubio, newly elected Senator from Florida.
This prediction should in no way be considered an endorsement of the above.  I'm just having fun with my told-you-so hobby.  You, dear reader, may have been a recipient of such statements in the past regarding all manner of things, and you know that I live for the times when you say something to me like,  "Do you remember way back in 2007, Judy when you told me to sell my house now rather than to wait for the price to improve?"  Well, you were right!
Now, if you REALLY want to have fun with me, why don't you counter --in the comments -- with your own predictions.  And then we can compare our prescience in September 2012 (God willing).

Obama email list for sale- comments

Great comments came in on Obama email list post (see end of previous post to get access). But, readers say it's hard to leave comments, cause to do so apparently requires a google email account. To heck wit 'em! If you don't want the hassle, just send comments by email to jwagner@bethesda20817.net. I'll give you credit for ideas I steal, either by indicating that my old friend "Anonymous" told me... , or by first name and last initial, if you give permission. But, the gist of Ben and Michael's comments was that I shoulda checked the privacy policy on both the campaign and change.gov websites. Who does that these days? All that fine print! Sort of like a reading a sub-prime mortgage. Anyway, from those helpful guys' info, I learned that campaign privacy policy says:

• It is our general policy not to make Personal Information available to anyone other than our employees, staff, and agents. We may also make personal information available to organizations with similar political viewpoints and objectives, in furtherance of our own political objectives.


• Online petitions and Personal Information: We treat your name, city, state, and any comments as public information. We may, for example, provide compilations of petitions, with your comments, to national leaders, without disclosing email addresses. We may also make comments along with your city and state available to the press and public online.
  
• Opting out and modifying information: "Subscribers to our e-mail list may terminate their subscriptions via a link at the bottom of each email sent from BarackObama.com.

Well, after reading this myself I'm not sure that the privacy policy actually says that it can sell email addresses. (Remember, collateral is a contingent contract of sale.) And, what political organization (except the DNC? or a PAC?) had the money to lend to the Obama campaign? Well, at least they didn't contemplate selling the email list to AIG. (I hope.) I expect dot-coms to sell my email adddress, but not political campaigns. If you think this issue isn't worth worrying about, you'll enjoy the comment by Anonymous, who argues convincingly that no commercial enterprise worth its salt would value the Obama list, cause it is simply too unfocused. So, that's the end of my worrying about Disappointment #1.

The Selling of Obama Campaign's Email List

Here's alarm bell #1 that the Obama team is just a tad more manipulative and less idealistic than they'd like us to believe. In an article Monday in the Washington Post about Obama campaign's pathbreaking use of the internet, it was reported that

• "The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said."
• "At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama."

Are the senior aides so tone deaf that they don't realize what it means to use my email address as collateral? Collateral is, in effect, a contingent sale of an asset, in lieu of paying a debt. That means the Obama campaign organization was willing to sell MY EMAIL ADDRESS to banks, rich investors (Mark Rich?), or companies to get more money for his campaign. What's more, they can still do it again at any time in the future. I didn't sign on to a barrage of junk mail when I gave money to the campaign, and I sure wouldn't have given through the internet if I'd known I was creating a tradable asset!

Already, I'm getting pitches from the DNC for money. Were the emails given away to DNC or sold to it? Either way, this is a snarky development. Even Though I'm counting this as disappointment #1, Obama's decision to walk away from public funding in the general election annoyed me. But I became reconciled when I realized the funny money through other sources still flows freely in both parties. Can anyone give me a reason to be reconciled to this news?

Another question I need to research is whether the new http://www.change.gov/ site for the transition (which I advised we use to foil the Larry Summers appointment) is just another asset development project for future Obama or democratic campaigns.

What to do? At the very least, you can mark all future Obama campaign emails and DNC emails as "junk". (I've done that.) Any other ideas for how to make sure political use of the internet doesn't become commercial use of political support? Feel free to leave a comment below (even if, or especially if, you disagree!), or email me at jwagner@bethesda20817.net to continue the discussion off-line.