Public Policy and Governance – Page 277

I Know I’m a Broken Record…

It really, really gripes me that taxpayers are subsidizing Walmart’s bottom line. I’ve beaten that drum repeatedly, but when I saw this video, the message was presented in so clear and compelling a way, I just had to share.

In fairness, let me point out that this analysis applies equally to the many other greedy recipients of corporate welfare. (McDonalds, I’m looking at you!)

You either believe in markets or you don’t. Walmart and its ilk may beat the drum for capitalism, but they don’t want to abide by its terms, and compete fair and square in the market–without public subsidy.

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Rick Scott: All-Republican

I know that in sports, some players are “All Americans.” In Florida, Governor Rick Scott might be considered “All Republican.” He follows the script of today’s GOP (a party that bears little resemblance to the GOP I once knew and supported), but without the finesse that allows other Republican lawmakers to at least pretend they care about their constituents, and that their policies, however damaging, are based on good intentions.

Scott has been everything you’d expect from a sleaze who–before turning to electoral politics–admitt to 14 counts of Medicare fraud and paid the federal government more than $600 million dollars in fines.

A couple of days ago, the Tampa Bay Times issued a blistering critique of Scott, calling him the worst governor in Florida’s history. Titled “If He Only Had a Heart,” it’s well worth reading in its entirety, but I’ll just share the summary:

In Scott’s Florida, it is harder for citizens to vote and for the jobless to collect unemployment. It is easier for renters to be evicted and for borrowers to be charged high interest rates on short-term loans. It is harder for patients to win claims against doctors who hurt them and for consumers to get fair treatment from car dealers who deceive them. It is easier for businesses to avoid paying taxes, building roads and repairing environmental damage.

Scott may lack their talent to project a “kinder, gentler” facade, but there is an entire cohort of Republican governors operating from the same playbook.

Most, like Indiana’s governor, are much smoother, but the agenda is same.

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I Love It When I Turn Out To Be Right…

Way back in 2000, I wrote a column listing all of the reasons the U.S. should reform health insurance. I was advocating adoption of single-payer (Medicare for All), and I still believe that would have been the simplest and most effective policy–but politics, as we all know, is the art of the possible, and single-payer wasn’t going to fly.

I had a long list of benefits I predicted would flow from universal access to healthcare. Down in the “and also” part of that list was the following:

Individuals would save money. Auto and homeowners insurance premiums would decline, because the underwriting would no longer need to take the costs of medical care into account.

Researchers are now investigating the actual costs and savings attributable to the Affordable Care Act (as opposed to the political talking points and hype). Rand has just issued one such study:

The Affordable Care Act may result in lower automobile insurance rates according to a study conducted by David Auerbach and colleagues at the RAND Corporation that was published on April 9, 2014.

Auto insurance providers pay for some or all medical injury claims that are sustained in automobile accidents in the United States depending on the terms of the policy. The dollar amounts involved are based on an analysis of the amounts that all U. S. auto insurance providers paid for automobile injuries in 2007. The total was $35 billion.

The entire cost of auto injury health care will be taken over by health insurance providers according to the terms of the Affordable Care Act.

I told you so.

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What’s the Threshold for Embarrassing?

When Todd Rokita was Secretary of State, he was the person primarily responsible for Indiana’s effort to disenfranchise poor and minority voters by requiring photo IDs.

He piously assured Hoosiers that this effort was prompted by his concerns over rampant “vote fraud.”

Of course, research has conclusively shown that instances of in-person vote fraud are virtually non-existent; they constitute an infinitesimal percentage of votes cast, and most of those cases occur as part of absentee voting, not in-person casting of a ballot.

Now that he is a U.S. Representative, Rokita has emerged as a climate-change denier. (Why am I not surprised? Clearly, facts and empirical evidence are irrelevant to him.)

So–Rokita sees things that aren’t there (vote fraud) and doesn’t see things that are there (climate change). I think it’s time for an intervention–starting with a removal from public office, where delusional people can do real damage.

The Hoosier state has far too many embarrassments posing as elected officials. We really need to thin the herd.

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Sold!

The sale of American democratic institutions hasn’t exactly been a market transaction. After all, in order for a market to operate, you need a willing buyer and a willing seller, both of whom are in possession of all relevant information.

Instead, we have the House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans who owe their current majority to gerrymandering and voter suppression, preparing to endorse Paul Ryan’s most recent budget. Not only are the American people not willing buyers, those “selling” this travesty are doing their level best to ensure that we have only the haziest notion of what it would really do.

As a fiscally-savvy friend of mine–a REPUBLICAN–posted to Facebook

The Ryan Plan in the House GOP’s own words: “Promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends; also eliminates the death tax. “

In short, the Kochs and the Waltons, two families each at over $100 billion net worth, each worth more than 40% of Americans combined, would likely receive $2-3 billion a year in passive dividend income tax-free, used to buy back more shares from the public and into their own hands to earn more dividends, all compounding and passed on as ever more massive estates to their heirs, who also would received billions a year on income and never pay taxes. Meanwhile, you and I would be paying taxes on our earned income to provide these families with the secure and educated society on which the preservation and growth of their fortunes depend. The end of American capitalism and civil society as we know it. Outrageous. Abominable. Grotesque. Indefensible.

I stole his description because he said it better than I could.

The only thing standing between the 99% and this abomination is a Democratic-controlled Senate–and Nate Silver tells us the GOP has a 60% chance of retaking the Senate in November.

The fact that Federal lawmakers are falling over each other to do the bidding of the wealthy can be explained by lobbying and campaign contributions. What is inexplicable is why the Supreme Court–whose members are insulated from such pressures (and apparently from reality as well)–would further open the floodgates and invite the plutocrats to buy America.

The decision in McCutcheon was about “speech” only in the sense that money talks. More about that tomorrow.

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