Here’s how to write a story about healthcare.  No quotes from politicians.  No anecdotes to prove a point.  Just useful facts.

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

…The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill — and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

…Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.

For most of the last three decades, tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly. Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile — about $300,000 today — real pay has roughly doubled.

The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies — tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net — have contributed to them.

I left in the hyperlinks in the story.  They are good sources.

Cross posted on Commonwealth Commonsense.

Charlottesville Daily Progress is reporting that police have been alerted that a gas line was severed at the home of Rep. Tom Periello’s brother.  Tea party activists recently posted the address of what they thought was the Congressman’s residence.  But it was that of his brother.

Conventional wisdom is that attacking Fox News does little for the Obama administration.  It energizes about one-fifth of the population, let alone Fox CEO Roger Ailes and owner Rupert Murdoch.  It’s not just to play to Obama’s base. 

The Obama guys are smart.  What is the thinking behind their attacks?

Pat Buchanan highlighted a truth the mainstream media is loathed to promote:  They are culpable to pressure to emphasize conservative views. 

“I know when we hit the New York Times, for example, in the 60s, all of sudden they blossomed with an op-ed page that had some conservatives on it and had conservative voices on it, and all the other newspapers did as well,” [said Pat Buchanan on the Chris Matthews show yesterday about his efforts while in the Nixon administration].

Whether that kind of public admonishment would work against conservative media such as Fox News is debatable. I can’t imagine Rupert Murdoch caving to this kind of pressure from the Obama administration. 

During the segment below, Matthews made the claim that Fox has journalists who do not reflect an agenda in their reporting.  He cited specifically Major Garrett, Shepherd Smith and Britt Hume. I don’t know much about Garrett’s or Smith’s reporting.  It’s hard not to see Hume as biased, however, despite his past as a reporter.  In any case, if some of these more objective journalists feel frozen out, their only choice will likely be to find another job.

But despite the comments coming from the White House, David Axelrod said the administration would continue to appear on their shows.  He didn’t say which.

While Buchanan defended the administration’s right to attack Fox, he said in this case it would be counterproductive.  He also made this comment about his efforts against the New York Times, “We did it out of necessity, not out of some kind of planning.”  I’m not sure what that means.  It may be that Obama thinks it is necessary to reign in Fox News.

A more plausible reason is to send a warning shot to mainstream media:  If you start bloviating against me, I’ll freeze you out, or at least disparage you publicly.  Journalists live and die for access.

But I suspect that the real message is this:  Fox can say whatever it wants, but we’re tired of the MSM picking up every charge Fox makes and taking it seriously. 

For example, the death panels.  Because they can get hundreds of people to show up making an absurd charge doesn’t mean the MSM should give it credence by covering it all out of proportion.  The recent announcement by the editor of The Washington Post that it would more carefully monitor Fox and right-wing talk radio to make sure their views are reflected in The Post’s  coverage is disturbing.  What that means, of course, is that if an outlet has the backing of large enough caches of cash to make noise, their views are examined.

Much of the August town hall meeting shenanigans and a lot of the opposition to health care are fueled by very rich people.  (The same can be said of liberal views, but I would suspect there is less money behind them.)  But the lesson is clear.  Find enough money to make a lot of public noise and your viewpoints are elevated, while those voices without access to cash are muted or ignored.  I suspect that’s where the Obama administration may want a more level playing field.  It's not a beanball thrown at Fox so much as it's a brush backpitch at MSM.

Oh will there be some ‘splainin’ to do!

UPDATE:  This could turn tragic.  The balloon has landed…and no boy is aboard.

UPDATE 2: MSNBC is reporting that KUSA-TV in Denver is reporting that the boy has been found…alive….in his house.  If true, this is good news – for all of us.  For the cops and the family, there are questions.  A police sheriff is saying that the boy was in a box – but not in the balloon, but one in the attic of his family’s garage.  It was the boy’s brother who told police the boy had climbed in the box attached to the balloon before it took off.  There is a question whether there ever was a box attached to the balloon.

Everyone is speculating why the 6-year old kid was hiding. 

Now MSNBC is dragging this story out.  A woman who switched places with his mother for a reality show said the kid was “a prankster.”  But she speculates that the kid was probably hiding not to fool somebody, but because his father would kill him when dad finds out he let the balloon take off.

Sounds good to me.  Move along, folks.  Nothing to see here.

We Boomers never age. Now 60 is the new 50, just as 50 was once the new 40, 40 the new 30, and 30 the new 20. But it’s getting harder to convince ourselves.

A week ago I helped a close friend celebrate her 60^th birthday. She embraced the other decade milestones. But not this one. She lamented her body breaking down. Nothing major, but we don’t heal as quickly. I could empathize. I’m 61. A month ago a slipped disk started to complain. Within days I couldn’t walk. I still have pain. But her angst was more existential. At 60, there’s no question but that you’re more than half way home. What is yet to be accomplished? She and I can look at our children, all in their twenties, with a sense of pride. We see young adults with strong moral foundations. They ask the right questions. They’ve made mostly good choices. They haven’t found their calling yet, but we feel confident that they will. But we wonder, what has been our calling? “At 60,” she said, “there may be only 20 good years left.”

Or even less. The day after her celebration, my wife’s brother died. Jimmy was 63. It was sudden, though not unexpected. His health was poor, for which he bore a lot of responsibility. The cause of death is unknown a week later. We may never know, but it would surprise no one if the official explanation is that his body just gave out.

Karla and I spent most of the week in Dallas. We cleaned his house and inventoried his possessions. Where were his bank accounts? Where is the title for his truck? Does he have any insurance policies? Where is all his stuff?

He and I didn’t have much in common, except Karla. He has the largest vehicle I have ever seen on two axles. His pick-up truck has huge tires, a jacked-up suspension and a front grill that look as if it were made to substitute for dynamite. In his obituary, his family wrote not that he was the proud brother of two sisters or of two nieces and a nephew. No, he was “a proud NRA member.” There were dozens of guns in his house. Some were in a gun rack but others stashed around the house as if he were expecting a raid by cowboy marauders. We loaded the guns into our little red rental car to move to safety. I feared if I were stopped by the police, I would end up in Gitmo. There would be no explanation for that arsenal other than I was a terrorist.

He left no children behind, but both parents survived him. Their father is 89. Mother is 90. “Parents shouldn’t bury their children,” she kept saying. It wasn’t the only thing she repeated. She’s a physical marvel, but her short term memory is going. While Karla and her dad were off to examine the contents of Jimmy’s shed, my job as to take her with me on my errands and then to her son’s house. She wanted to help out. As we left, she couldn’t find her glasses. We told her she wouldn’t need them. She agreed, but over the next hour, she remarked no fewer than three dozen times, “Where are my glasses? I can’t see anything without my glasses.” She proved it when I assigned her the task of cleaning the refrigerator that had already been emptied of food. She wiped a damp rag over a few spots, but clean it wasn’t.

It’s hard when a young child dies. That short life is potential unfulfilled. But when one dies at 63, surviving parents see the entire arc of that life. I think that must be just as hard. Did his life fulfill its potential?

My wife has cousins throughout Texas. Many of them came to pay their respects. Childhood friends eulogized Jimmy as a happy-go-lucky kid who was respectful of women. I never knew him to be disrespectful of women, but it was nice to hear that that quality struck a chord in a woman who knew him as a boy. Unfortunately, I never knew him as happy-go-lucky. His life was hard, especially in his final years. He served his country but paid a price, suffering post-traumatic stress. In his last years, there was little to be happy about.

Had he taken care of himself, he might have some years left to find happiness. That he didn’t was tragic. Instead his father found him in his bed, cold.

At only 63.

It wasn’t the new 50.

We Boomers never age. Now 60 is the new 50, just as 50 was once the new 40, 40 the new 30, and 30 the new 20. But it’s getting harder to convince ourselves.

A week ago I helped a close friend celebrate her 60^th birthday. She embraced the other decade milestones. But not this one. She lamented her body breaking down. Nothing major, but we don’t heal as quickly. I could empathize. I’m 61. A month ago a slipped disk started to complain. Within days I couldn’t walk. I still have pain. But her angst was more existential. At 60, there’s no question but that you’re more than half way home. What is yet to be accomplished? She and I can look at our children, all in their twenties, with a sense of pride. We see young adults with strong moral foundations. They ask the right questions. They’ve made mostly good choices. They haven’t found their calling yet, but we feel confident that they will. But we wonder, what has been our calling? “At 60,” she said, “there may be only 20 good years left.”

Or even less. The day after her celebration, my wife’s brother died. Jimmy was 63. It was sudden, though not unexpected. His health was poor, for which he bore a lot of responsibility. The cause of death is unknown a week later. We may never know, but it would surprise no one if the official explanation is that his body just gave out.

Karla and I spent most of the week in Dallas. We cleaned his house and inventoried his possessions. Where were his bank accounts? Where is the title for his truck? Does he have any insurance policies? Where is all his stuff?

He and I didn’t have much in common, except Karla. He has the largest vehicle I have ever seen on two axles. His pick-up truck has huge tires, a jacked-up suspension and a front grill that look as if it were made to substitute for dynamite. In his obituary, his family wrote not that he was the proud brother of two sisters or of two nieces and a nephew. No, he was “a proud NRA member.” There were dozens of guns in his house. Some were in a gun rack but others stashed around the house as if he were expecting a raid by cowboy marauders. We loaded the guns into our little red rental car to move to safety. I feared if I were stopped by the police, I would end up in Gitmo. There would be no explanation for that arsenal other than I was a terrorist.

He left no children behind, but both parents survived him. Their father is 89. Mother is 90. “Parents shouldn’t bury their children,” she kept saying. It wasn’t the only thing she repeated. She’s a physical marvel, but her short term memory is going. While Karla and her dad were off to examine the contents of Jimmy’s shed, my job as to take her with me on my errands and then to her son’s house. She wanted to help out. As we left, she couldn’t find her glasses. We told her she wouldn’t need them. She agreed, but over the next hour, she remarked no fewer than three dozen times, “Where are my glasses? I can’t see anything without my glasses.” She proved it when I assigned her the task of cleaning the refrigerator that had already been emptied of food. She wiped a damp rag over a few spots, but clean it wasn’t.

It’s hard when a young child dies. That short life is potential unfulfilled. But when one dies at 63, surviving parents see the entire arc of that life. I think that must be just as hard. Did his life fulfill its potential?

My wife has cousins throughout Texas. Many of them came to pay their respects. Childhood friends eulogized Jimmy as a happy-go-lucky kid who was respectful of women. I never knew him to be disrespectful of women, but it was nice to hear that that quality struck a chord in a woman who knew him as a boy. Unfortunately, I never knew him as happy-go-lucky. His life was hard, especially in his final years. He served his country but paid a price, suffering post-traumatic stress. In his last years, there was little to be happy about.

Had he taken care of himself, he might have some years left to find happiness. That he didn’t was tragic. Instead his father found him in his bed, cold.

At only 63.

It wasn’t the new 50.

I just learned that my feeds link on my News Commonsense blog was incorrect.  It’s now fixed.

I just learned that my feeds link was incorrect.  It’s now fixed.

David Gregory was just on Hardball and played a clip from his interview with President Obama that will air Sunday on “Meet the Press.”  In the question, Gregory, as have many others, misrepresented what Carter said.  I don’t have the transcript of Gregory’s interview yet, but what he said, to paraphrase, was “Carter attributes most of the opposition to you to racism,” and then asks Obama whether he agrees with that.

As we follow this story, I think we’re going to see that translation of Carter’s remarks take hold—that he blames most of the opposition to Obama on race.  It will become fact the way the meme about Gore inventing the internet became.

Here’s what Carter said:

An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American.

I live in the South, and I have seen the South come a long way. And I have seen the rest of the country that shared the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African- Americans. That racism in connection still exists.

And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of a belief among many white people, not just in the South, but around the country, that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply.

What he’s saying is that a large majority of the people who are carrying the most offensive signs – showing Obama as a witch doctor (clearly racist) or calling him a traitor, a Communist, or wishing his death – are racists.  If you look at the protests in Washington last weekend, the truly offensive signs were not among the majority, though there were quite a few of the distasteful “Bury Obamacare with Kennedy.”  If you look listen to the raucous town hall meetings (which were the minority of town hall meetings, by the way) or viewed the signs outside those contentious arenas, most of them are not personally attacking Obama or are offensive.  Hyperbolic, sure, but not offensive. 

What Carter is saying is that only an “overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Obama is” racist, not most of the opposition. He’s saying that a large portion of the small portion of protestors are racists.

A story oft told, will this book make a difference?

ONE afternoon in November 2006, a policeman spotted an expired license plate on Dorothy Thomas’s 10-year-old Toyota Corolla as she drove through San Jose, Calif. He ordered her to pull over.

Struggling under the weight of thousands of dollars in credit card bills, Ms. Thomas was perpetually short of cash. She had not bought a $10 auto registration sticker. The officer checked his database and recognized that she had already been ticketed once before for the same thing. He arranged to have her car towed away.

“I got down on my knees and begged that officer,” Ms. Thomas recalled.

As she watched her car being hauled off, she sensed that this was the beginning of a descent into a crisis from which she might not easily escape. Without money to pay the towing and storage fees, she could not extract her car from the lot, and the tab soon grew to $1,600. Without a car, she could not reach the hospital where she worked in the administrative offices, so she lost her $16-an-hour job. Without a paycheck, she could no longer pay the rent on her modest home. She moved to Oakland, where a friend lived in a beaten-down, rented house on a street they called Crack Avenue. By year’s end, Ms. Thomas, then 49, was occupying a bunk at a homeless shelter, searching in vain for a job in an economy plagued by unemployment.