I’ve been waiting a while for Steve Scalise’s press conference, but I don’t think I need to wait any longer. This afternoon, he is gong to present the Republican Study Committee’s “alternative” to Obamacare. The reason I don’t have to wait is that I’ve always known what their alternative is: the same conservative wish list that they always want. Bruce Alpert at nola.com provides us with a preview, Rep. Scalise’s Conservative Caucus Presents Alternative to ObamaCare.

The main thing that the Republicans are offering is high risk pools to cover people with pre-existing conditions. This is the perfect conservative policy. You see, it seems to fix a problem without really doing it. The high risk pools are more or less the answer for the problems faced by rich people with pre-existing conditions. So people with pre-existing conditions can go to these high risk pools, but most won’t be able to afford them. Brilliant.

The next idea is to “increase competition” by allowing people to buy insurance across state lines. All this will do is cause all the insurance companies to relocate in the state that has the least regulation—just like now happens in the credit card industry. Aaron Carroll explains what the end result would be, “What we would have is a world where it would be likely cheaper for those who don’t need health care to get insurance. For everyone else, especially those who need care, insurance would be more expensive, and care harder to obtain.” That’s a typical reverse Robin Hood kind of policy: take from those in need and give to those not in need.

The plan also includes health savings accounts (HSAs). They allow people to buy high deductible insurance policies at reasonable prices while having tax deferred savings accounts to pay for everything up to the deductible. The problem is that for a plan with say a $2,000 deductible, you will still be paying over $100 per month—most likely much more. That’s not a great deal when you consider that more than half of the uninsured will be able to buy a normal insurance plan for about $100 with Obamacare. There is also the problem that people with HSAs are incentivized to avoid preventative care. What’s more, these are not really plans for the poor; those most able to use them are probably already getting insurance from their employers.

Basically, the Republican Study Committee’s answer to the healthcare crisis in this country is the same as it always is: the magic of the marketplace will fix everything. It is like the old cartoon of the two mathematicians at the chalkboard. There is math on the right and the left connected with “Then a miracle occurs.” We start with high healthcare costs that have existed despite all kinds of free markets working on the problem. And we end with low healthcare costs. How? Magic! Of course the Republicans don’t actually believe in the magic of the marketplace. They simply don’t want to do anything to help the poor and weak. This plan that Steve Scalise is presenting is not actual policy; it is simply political cover. But don’t be surprised if it gets a lot of good media attention.

Update (18 September 2013 1:05 pm)

I blew it! I forgot one of the Republican’s favorite policy ideas: tort reform! Yes, allowing people to not sue their doctors for malpractice is going to save our medical system! This too is a myth. Anyway, The Hill provides a preview of the official plan. I thought this part from the article was telling:

This is why Republicans always come up with bad policy. They start with everything that they can’t do. So they never approach any problem with, “What’s the best way to solve this?” And so they provide justifications for why all the things they always want to do will fix this problem. It’s just propaganda, not policy.

Matt Yglesias is a curious fellow. Yesterday he wrote, Post-Ballmer Microsoft Announces Plan To Become Much Lamer. By “lamer” he means that instead of doing something interesting with its cash flow, Microsoft is doing a stock buyback and paying more dividends. Instead, he thinks that Microsoft should find a way to “elbow into new markets.” He admits that this has not worked out all that well for the company over the past few years, but that it has been really good for the industry and for the world.

This is an argument that Yglesias has to make every couple of weeks. I think it’s like Tourette syndrome or something, because it doesn’t make sense. Capitalism doesn’t work by having companies do what is best for everyone. The idea instead is that everyone tries to do what is best for themselves and given time, it will end up that everyone does better. It is ridiculous to call for companies to do anything but look out for their own best interests. And Yglesias must know this.

I get into this argument a lot, especially with conservatives. Most liberals understand that companies are not going to, for example, pay higher wages out of the goodness of their hearts, even though it might be better for the economy as a whole. This goes right along with liberal thinking about the need for rules and regulations in the market. Conservatives, on the other hand, are generally more outraged when they see companies taking advantage of employees or exploiting loopholes. And strangely, this allows conservatives to maintain their belief in not regulating businesses. The idea is that businesses will do what’s right if government just “gets out of the way.” But that is not how capitalism works nor is it the way we should want it to work.

Now, Matt Yglesias is not a conservative. But he does have a distinctly pro-market bias. Of course, so do I! So I don’t really understand where he’s coming for. When he was earlier saying that Apple ought to reduce its huge profit margin on the iPhone, at least he had a business strategy. He claimed that Apple could destroy the smartphone competition. But in the case of Microsoft, he admits that doing what is best for the consumer market has not been good for Microsoft. So why should they do it? Microsoft is not in the business of making the lives of people better; it is in the business of making money.

Over thousands of years, we have seen that expecting businesses to do what is best for the society at large is a vain hope. And I think loose talk by people like Yglesias is quite harmful. It perpetuates the myth that businesses do something other than relentlessly pursue profits. And that gives people all kinds of strange ideas like “trickle down” economics. “Once the companies are profitable enough, they will raise wages!” No, not really. Have the incredible profit margins that Apple makes caused them to move production to the United States? Have they caused them to invest more money in R&D? Have they done anything other than allow the company to pile up more and more money? No. No. No.

We need to manage the economy so it works better for the society at large. Markets really are helpful in distributing the resources of an economy. But left to itself, the economy doesn’t function well even for the richest people. We must get past the notion that businesses are going to do what’s right by the people. They won’t and we should expect them to.

What if the United States government shutdown and the House Republicans didn’t care? I mean, really: even after a month they didn’t care. They thought it was great! Maybe it would be a good chance to shake up those 47% senior citizens living the easy life with their $1,000 monthly pensions! I really do wonder, because now a government shutdown seems all but inevitable. And I’ve begun to wonder if I wasn’t wrong before about it quickly resolving itself.

An even bigger concern is that the government shutdown will go this way. The press and business communities will freak out. Boehner will go to his caucus and say, “This is bad for us.” Then he will offer them what he’s been offering all along, “Pass the continuing resolution and then we’ll push our case over the Debt Ceiling.” My hope was that a government shutdown would scare the Republicans away from the Debt Ceiling showdown. But now I think a government shutdown is at least as likely to lead to a Debt Ceiling crisis.

The current situation reminds me very much of the film The Rock. John Boehner is General Hummel, who is trying to blackmail the government but has no intention of killing the hostage (basically, the people of San Francisco). “This mission was based on a threat of force. I’m not about to kill 80,000 innocent people. Do you think I’m out of my fucking mind?!” I’m afraid that it will all play out as it does in the movie. Right after giving that speech, the others mutiny and soon everyone is dead.

It is not like a government default is all bad. As I’ve noted before, it will most likely destroy the Republican Party as a going concern. And Adam Davidson offers an even better silver lining in, Our Debt to Society. He argues that defaulting on our debt will cause other countries to stop seeing the dollar as a reserve currency. This will devalue the dollar. That would be great! It would increase the cost of imported goods and lower the cost of exported goods. It would create a hiring boom and do a lot to help our flagging manufacturing sector.

Of course, the rich hate such an idea. For those who already have lots of dollars, seeing them go down in value is a bad thing. But a lower valued dollar is just what the doctor ordered. Currently, we import more than we export. Normally, this offset would be fixed by our dollar sinking in value compared to the money of the countries we are importing from. But because of the United States’ role in providing the reserve currency, our dollar stays artificially high. (It is also the case that since the Clinton administration, the government has tried to keep the dollar overvalued because it cares a whole lot more about the rich than the poor.)

The other side of default is that Thomas Frank may be right in The Wrecking Crew. In that book, he argues that the Republicans keep political advantage by destroying everything whenever they are in power. They run up big debts so that when a Democrat gets into the White House, he has to work on the debt rather than improving social programs and the economy. (I don’t think they actually have to, but that’s a subject for another day.) The truth is that a government default would increase government borrowing costs. This would put yet more pressure on the government to cut services. So even if the Republicans get booted out of power, the conservative movement could be the ultimate winner.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I know that disruption is usually a bad thing, regardless of how things get sorted out in the end. And I really feel that the Republicans are more serious about this fight than is good for a democracy.

If I had to name the greatest songwriter of the 20th century, it would be Chuck Berry. But the second best would have to go to Hank Williams who was born on this day in 1923. Of course, I have a soft spot for people like Williams who are great artists but not so good at life. In his case, though, I think he had a lot of physical problems and pain—things that were never really diagnosed much less treated. (The same is true of Charlie Parker, whose birthday I seem to have missed!) In the end, he did not die from drugs but from bum heart. The Wikipedia page notes (without reference or argument) that this was “exacerbated by pills and alcohol.” Such is the level of thinking about drugs that everyone just “knows” that alcohol would make his heart worse. I’m curious how that would work.

Still, he left us a great songbook: “Move it on Over”; “Lovesick Blues”; “Why Don’t You Love Me”; “Cold, Cold Heart”; “Jambalaya (On the Bayou)”; and “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” And of course, there is “Hey Good Lookin'”:

The great novelist Ken Kesey was born in 1935. He was an interesting guy. He only left us two novels, but they were both great: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion. The remaining 37 years of his life, he just fiddled around. And why not? It seems like he was having a great time. My problem with J. D. Salinger is that he was a recluse except when he was out trolling for young co-eds. And maybe it’s just a generational think, but I never engaged with The Catcher in the Rye, but I very much did with Kesey’s novels. Plus: Kesey’s novels are distinctly more filling. Of course, we know that Kesey must have been a lot of fun to hang around with—whether you were a pretty young girl or not.

Other notable birthdays: Justice Warren Burger (1907); actor Roddy McDowall (1928); actor Anne Bancroft (1931); the great comedic actor John Ritter (1948); novelist Mary Stewart (97); Justice David Souter (74); and film director Bryan Singer (48).

The day, however, belongs to the great poet William Carlos Williams who was born on this day in 1883. Unlike other great poets of that time like T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, Williams is joyously devoid of uncomfortable political overtones. To me, what is most important about his work is how he manages to plug into the musical nature of everyday speech. Especially in the twentieth century, there has been a tendency among poets to neglect the sound of their work. To me, it doesn’t much matter what else is going on, if it doesn’t sound interesting, it doesn’t work. For all my dislike of E. E. Cummings, he clearly enjoys playing with the sound of his words. Of course, Williams is more than just sound. He was a keen observer of life and there is a kind of stark spirituality to it that I greatly admire. But that may come out of my great interest in his earlier work.

I’m sure you know “The Red Wheelbarrow,” so I won’t bore you with it, even though I find it eternally fascinating. Instead, here is “The Dark Day,” which is from the same period (from Sour Grapes):

I never have much to say about Williams’ best work. I just feel that I enter its world. In this, I like the image of people “drawn in upon themselves.” I’ve never given it much thought, but that is how people walk the rain—especially a rain that has gone on so long that everything is soaked. There is also the great sense of being inside, watching what goes on outside. We are insulated except for the “interminable talking, talking, talking.” But I don’t pretend to understand it all. I have no idea what he means about the white poppy. I’m even unclear about the ending, except for the vague notion that with endless repetition time could as easily go backward as forward.

Happy birthday William Carlos Williams!

I just watched the end of today’s Special Report with Bret Baier. For those not familiar, the show ends with a discussion amongst commentators. The star is Charles Krauthammer. And it is clear why he is such a big deal among conservatives. Compared to the knee jerk Obama haters, he comes off like a fucking sage. Baier himself stays above the fray. This allows him to say, at the end of show, immediately after the commentators, “That’s Special Report for this time, please tune us in next time, and in the meantime, more news is on the way—fair, balanced and unafraid.”

The other two commentators were Weekly Standard columnist Stephen Hayes and then some blond female commentator. (It’s hard to keep them straight on Fox News!) What was most evident with them was how they were against whatever Obama did. Most of the segment was about how Obama gave a “political” speech about how we shouldn’t shut the government down when the Navy Yard shooting had not worked itself out of media’s focus. It was really amazing because there is absolutely no doubt that whatever Obama said or did or did not say or did not do, they would have complained. But not to worry, because it was “fair, balanced, and unafraid.”

Watching a little of what used to be Shepard Smith’s show, I was amazed at the unrelenting negative tone about everything going on in the country. It isn’t that I don’t largely agree with the feeling. But the not at all subtle subtext was, “Things suck because of that Kenyan socialist in the White House!” There are other aspects of the slanting of the news. In particular, there is simply the choice of what stories to run. If you don’t normally watch Fox News, you really should do it now and then. Stories that aren’t even in the mainstream press are huge and stories that are huge in the mainstream press don’t even get covered on Fox.

Whenever Bill O’Reilly comes on The Daily Show, he claims that Fox News is “fair and balanced” when it comes to the “straight news” guys like Baier and Smith. And Jon Stewart lets him get away with it! The reality is just the opposite. At least the “opinion” shows are explicitly that. The “straight news” shows are supposedly objective but they are 100% pernicious propaganda 100% of the time.

I have often been inclined to think that Fox News doesn’t matter. After all, it is only preaching to the choir. But it really does do a lot of damage. It makes people (mostly old) reflexively conservative. It trains people to not only suspect the government but also any media outlet that isn’t explicitly conservative. I see it on this website. I work very hard to at least understand all sides of the issues. But I get commenters who have clearly only ever gotten information from conservative radio, blogs, and television. For example, there are loads of people around who are sure that inflation is being misreported because they’ve seen the price of milk increase. These are probably not idiots, but they are people who have been conditioned to believe that there is only one Truth and that truth comes from the likes of Fox News.

Okay, it is Constitution Day, which celebrates the adoption of the United States Constitution in 1787—that’s 226 years ago! I know that there are a lot of people who think that the Constitution is frozen in time because life today is so very similar to life 226 years ago. And a lot of other people think that the Constitution consists entirely of the Second Amendment. Like Mark Kessler, who is running for sheriff to “be on top of getting the constitution back into the courthouse and prevent the libtards from trampling over my rights and your rights to own guns to.”

One of my greatest disappointments as an American is that on the right, people have turned the Constitution into a religious document. The founding fathers were not gods. The document was not divinely inspired. And above all else, it is not now and never was a perfect document. But it has served us pretty well over the years, and I’m certain it will continue to do so. Of course, I don’t think it is quite up to the challenges that we face going forward. Perhaps after 226 years, it is time to rework it.

But in celebration of Constitution Day and all that the document has meant and all that it continues to mean, I present “Schoolhouse Rock”:

H/T: Ed Kilgore

If America has the seeds of home grown terrorism, it is not in the form of radicalized Muslims. It is in the form of our gun culture—specifically, those at the far edge of it; those who consider themselves “libertarian” and “constitutionalist.” I don’t see there being any problem with your average guy who likes to enjoy nature by killing the animals in it. That’s a thing that people like to do. I don’t get it, but I sort of see the way it works. It is like dogs chasing after cats. Dogs don’t hate cats, but it is fun to chase after things that are hard to catch. That’s the basis of most video games. When it comes to American gun culture, that is the vast majority.

What is of concern are those who think they must have guns to protect themselves from a tyrannical government. Before discussing them, let’s start by noting just how delusional these people are with regard to their potential success. Among these kinds of people, Randy Weaver is a hero, even though he was a very dangerous bigot. But they respect him because he “stood up” to the ATF. But if the government was really all that tyrannical, it would have just bombed the compound and that would have been that. Yes, these people could do some minor damage if they used guerrilla tactics, but it would be limited. If you allow a society to get to the point of armed conflict, you’ve already lost.

What greatly concerns me is what these people are claiming with their rights to armed revolt. What is it that justifies them to start killing other people? Would universal background checks be enough? Or would it take concentration camps for registered gun owners? Based upon the rhetoric of the supposedly mainstream National Rifle Association, it is much closer to universal background checks. And that’s frightening. Because just about no matter how you look at it, that would be terrorism.

It doesn’t help that the American media and government allow the public to think that Islamic terrorists just hate us. There’s little acknowledgement that these people at the very least feel aggrieved. They think they are fighting tyranny. So such American terrorists could blithely assume that they weren’t terrorists because they had a grievance. I don’t think most people would doubt our drone killing of innocent children is a more just reason for an terrorist than the fact that the government is limiting the supply of large capacity magazine clips.

So I really do worry what would throw these supposed freedom fighters over the edge. The whole Oklahoma City bombing did push many back from the precipice. But that memory seems to have faded. Since Obama took office, I’ve heard a lot more talk of tyranny. This is interesting when you consider how quiet it was during the Bush administration. But in a sense, the two administrations work together. Bush convinced them that there really was an existential threat to the United States. And Obama (because he’s a Kenyan socialist) convinced them that he was that threat.

These people really represent a terrorist gunpowder keg, just waiting for anything to set them off. But you can be certain the mainstream media won’t call them terrorists, because clearly, they don’t hate us for our freedom.

This morning, Paul Krugman posted an article, This Is Not a Crisis. What he’s getting at is the claim by conservatives that we must do something about our “out of control spending!” As I am always quick to point out: Republicans Don’t Care About Economy. They only use it as an excuse to cut social programs for the poor.

Krugman wrote: “[W]e are nowhere near fiscal crisis; we aren’t even looking at anything like a fiscal crisis 15 or 20 years from now. So budget deficits, entitlement reform, and all that simply don’t deserve to be policy priorities, let alone dominate the national discussion the way they did for the past few years.” And of course, he’s exactly right. The problem isn’t so much the Republicans, however. We know what they are about. The problem is the long history of the supposedly liberal Democrats fretting about budget deficits. It’s no wonder we are arguing this point on the Republicans’ terrain; there is no other terrain allowed in polite company.

But what most struck me in the article had nothing to do with politics and economics. After the article title, “This is not a crisis,” he presented this image:

Then he followed it when this, “It’s not even a picture of a crisis.” That’s classic Krugman. It’s an obscure joke. He’s referring to the Rene Magritte painting The Treachery of Images:

Written on the painting is, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe.” In English, it is, “This is not a pipe.” And indeed, it is not a pipe; it is a picture of a pipe.

Oh, you are a droll one, Dr. Krugman!

I know that not all conservatives are racist. And not all racists are conservative. But it’s fair to say that most racists are conservative. What’s more, if it weren’t for white racial resentment, Republicans would not be an important force in national politics. And I understand: we all have our demons—irrational attitudes that we do our best to fight. But too often in this country, one side of the political establishment fosters our worst impulses and makes what should be shameful, acceptable and even thrilling.

Yesterday, Nina Davuluri became Miss America 2014. Normally, Miss Whatever pageants come and go without my ever noticing. But this year was different because Ms. Davuluri is different: she is the daughter of two people originally from India. Now when I think of India, I think of this great line from Roger Hodge describing Obama’s tendency to look at things on the one hand and then the other, which he described as being “like some hyper-discursive blue-skinned Hindu deity.” Other than that, India for me is Satyajit Ray, Gandhi, and my favorite food in all the world.

To most American, however, India is just a place filled with those people who attacked us. This is despite the fact that India is more Hindu (80%) than America is Christian (75%). So after Davuluri won the pageant, the ignorance and hate came out in abundance. On Twitter, of course! POOKIE tweeted, “And the Arab wins Miss America. Classic.” De La Rutherford offered, “Congratulations Al-Qaeda. Our Miss America is one of you.” And Wendy Fraser got right to the point, “nice slap in the face to the people of 9-11 how pathetic.” Of course: Davuluri is not Arab; she is not Al-Qaeda; and neither she nor her “people” had anything to do with 9/11.

There were other tweets that were only racist—they appeared to know that not all darker skinned people are from the same country. There were a number of 7-11 “jokes.” For example, CHEEZ-IT tweeted, “Miss America? You mean Miss 7-11.” I would only note that a lot of convenience stores that seem to be owned by Indians are actually owned by Pakistanis, who are in general Muslims. If these people would just educate themselves a bit more, they could get their hate out into public much more effectively!

Much of the anger seems to have come from people who wanted Miss Kansas, Theresa Vail, to win. She was in the Kansas Army National Guard. She enjoys hunting, supposedly. She has tattoos. She’s blond. Basically, she’s a redneck’s wet dream. I hate to ruin the fantasy, but Vail is actually a French name, although it probably came through England, so that may take some of the sting off. Regardless, she’s a pretty girl. Personally, I think Davuluri is prettier and looks more like the kind of young lady I would want representing my nation at mall openings all across this great land of ours. But whatever; I don’t claim to be a good barometer of the country.

But what was most offensive in the tweets was the idea that someone whose parents immigrated to the United States is not a real American. Savannah Dale tweeted, “Miss New York is an Indian.. With all do respect, this is America.” (I think we should all “do respect,” but I don’t think that’s what she meant.) To me, there is nothing more real than people who choose America over the land that they were born in. So while the rest of the ignorance and intolerance bugs me, this idea really makes me angry. This is really at the base of my disappointment with America. All the ideals that I grew up believing in are thrown to the side by vast swaths of people who call themselves “real Americans.”

The truth is that there will always be people with marginal opinions. But elites set the terms of the debate. And all of this evil nonsense makes me think of Sarah Palin. She more than any other figure in America has pushed the idea that there is a “real” America. We liberals on the costs are inauthentic. I don’t think that Palin necessarily knows that such claims are racist dog whistles, but I know she doesn’t care. The people who tweeted out these vile thoughts are to be pitied. Their small worlds are all the punishment they deserve. But Palin and really most of the rest of the conservative establishment deserve to be run out of the country. They are the ones who do not understand and appreciate the ideals of this country.

H/T: Richard Barry

Update (16 September 2013 10:49 pm)

I blew it! I just found this perfect picture of Vail with a young deer she tortured to death. Don’t she look happy?! Maybe all the bigots are right: she is the perfect representative of our country.

On this day in 1386, King Henry V was born. He died of dysentery at the age of 36. It wasn’t always so good to be king. The truth is that what the conservatives say is true: it is better to be poor in America today than it was to be King of England in the 14th century. The problem is, if we followed conservative policy, our presidents would today be dying of dysentery at the age of 36. We have gained much as a result of the free market, but we have gained even more by having a strong and stable government that has worked for the general welfare.

A couple of businessmen have birthdays today. The first is James Cash Penney, the man who started the department store that bears his name, was born in 1875. He lived to be quite old, so when I was a little boy eating a grilled cheese at the J. C. Penney coffee shop (they really had them), the old man was still alive. Just two years after he was born, Jacob Schick was born. He got the first ever patent for an electric razor. After the United States government gave him this monopoly right, he paid it back by evading taxes. In order to avoid prosecution, he moved to Canada. That’s a typical American businessman for you: all in favor of the rights that the government provides but totally against any responsibilities toward it. He died soon after, so there’s that.

The fine French composer Nadia Boulanger was born in 1887. But she is better known as one of the greatest music educators of the twentieth century. A partial list of her students is shocking: Aaron Copland, Igor Markevitch, Dinu Lipatti, Astor Piazzolla, Quincy Jones, and Philip Glass. I enjoy her work very much, but I don’t think she ever got beyond her love of Debussy. But if you have to be stuck somewhere, that’s a very nice place to do so. Here his her Fantaisie Variée pour Piano et Orchestre:

Two giants of television were born in the 1910s. First was Paul Henning, who was born in 1911. He was a comedy writer who went on to create some of the classics of “ruralcom,” such as Petticoat Junction and The Beverly Hillbillies. Then in 1914, Allen Funt was born. He actually did a lot of different things in radio and television, but he will always be remembered for Candid Camera. It’s very interesting to watch it now because it is so sweet compared to similar shows now. Here is a very funny bit with a woman who drives into a gas station without a motor:

Actor Peter Falk was born in 1927. He is most remembered for Columbo, but he was a whole lot more than that. Here he is in A Woman Under The Influence as Nick , who is not really dealing well with the life he finds himself leading:

The great B.B. King is 88 today. He is not one of my favorite guitarists. It isn’t because his playing is bad, of course. It is simply that just about every rock musician of the last 60 years has ripped him off so thoroughly that he sounds kind of generic to me. Still, he’s very pleasant to listen to, with an easy and soulful style that most people can’t copy:

Also having birthdays today: Anne Francis (1930); Elgin Baylor (79); Ed Begley Jr (64); Mickey Rourke (61); David Copperfield (57); Jennifer Tilly (55); and Amy Poehler (42).

The day, however, belongs to the great actor Lauren Bacall who is 89 today. No one can quite compare to Rosalind Russell, but Bacall is a close second. She’s just so great up there on the screen, so smart and sexy. And she outlived both her actor husbands, although admittedly Bogart was 25 years older than she was. Here is a great scene from The Big Sleep, although you really can tell that it is a reshoot. It is great to see the two of them together, but it doesn’t belong in the story at that time:

Happy birthday Lauren Bacall!

You know how no major media outlet ever reports on people dying of malaria? It is, as they say, “dog bites man.” It isn’t news. It would be like publishing an article, “President uses bathroom multiple times per day.” Yet when someone goes out in public and kills a large group of people, it is all over cable news. Why is that? It strikes me as completely “dog bites man.” Yet the media are feasting on the Navy Yard shooting today.

Don’t misunderstand me: I care a great deal about such things. What’s more, I want to do something about them. I would like to make mental health more available to people. I would like to make guns less available. I would like to make the economy better for working men and women; I think our social Darwinian approach to the economy makes a more anxious and volatile population. I could go on (and on and on). There are many things we could do to create a more peaceful society while still allowing gun nuts to have their guns. Of course we don’t. Such measures could have all kinds of unintended consequences like a percent or two reduction in Walmart profits. Can’t have that.

But just because I think such stories are important doesn’t mean that I think the news agencies should care. I’ll go further: I don’t think the American people ought to much give a damn either. The truth is that we don’t really care about gun violence. It has been less than a week since two Colorado state senators were recalled because they pushed very minor changes to gun laws: universal background checks and magazine size limitations. But unlike a gunman killing 12 people, such restrictions to gun rights were an outrage!

So I think we should either do something about our gun murder problem, or we should just shut up. It shouldn’t be hard. As it is, we now pretty much ignore single gun fatalities, unless they involve a famous football player or other “important” American. I’m thinking maybe we could just set a limit. Killings of 12 or 13 are so common, I’m not sure they deserve much more than a passing reference in the newspaper on page 14 along with local police activity. It’s already the de facto policy that shooting sprees of only 3 or 4 are not worthy of national attention. All I’m saying is that we raise that number up to 100.

I think that’s a good number because I don’t remember a shooting spree with 100 deaths. And that would work out great, because then our coverage of shooting sprees would be the same as the amount that we actually care about them.

Afterword

In all seriousness, I know that most people do care and do want to do something. But as the Colorado vote shows, it doesn’t much matter. After Sandy Hook, polling for universal background checks were polling really high: in the 90% range. But when politicians did what the people said they wanted, the people voted them out. I think it is all about attention span. If today’s tragedy had happened last week and the vote was this week, I suspect those legislators would still have jobs. But it doesn’t speak well for us as a people that we can’t remember one of the biggest shooting sprees in American history for even a couple of months.

I was just reading an article by Ed Kilgore over at Political Animal, ‘Twas a Famous Victory. It is about how a lot of liberals are making a big deal of the fact that Pennsylvania has more or less agreed to join in Obamacare by accepting piles of federal money for a Medicaid expansion. Kilgore rightly notes that this is entirely due to the fact that expectations have been so lowered since the Supreme Court first said that states could opt out.

I’m not quite so pessimistic as he is. I figure in the coming years, Republicans will get past this and finally yield to medical providers at least, who do not like the extra cost of treating people who don’t have insurance. There will, of course, be a great deal of unnecessary suffering during that time. But what else can we expect when Republicans are in control? They are going to make life for the poor as bad as possible. As I often say: the only way forward is to destroy the Republican Party.

But there was something in Kilgore’s article that really struck me. After mentioning that it looked like New Jersey was going along with the Medicaid expansion, he wrote, “Chris Christie had vetoed legislation simply accepting the expansion and was preparing his own ill-defined plan.” As regular readers know, I really dislike Christie. He’s a bully and I hate that. But more substantively, he is extremely conservative—especially on economic issues. And he really wants to become president. So I wouldn’t doubt that right now he is pretending to go along just so as to not hurt his re-election chances. I won’t be surprised if he comes up with a reason after the election to kill the Medicaid expansion. That would be an excellent way to shore up support with the national Republican base.

This would, of course, be SOP for Republican governors in blue and purple states: claim to be a moderate and once you are (back) in office, go full Ayn Rand on the liberal rubes who voted for you. After all, even if you have to run for office again, just say a couple of liberal things in the months before the election and all will be forgiven—or forgotten, as the case usually is. Part of this really exasperates me. In North Carolina, I have to stop myself from saying, “Well it’s your own damned fault!” But it is important to stay focused on the positive: next time it will be easier to make the case.

In Chris Christie’s case, it is clear what the appeal is. New Jersey is a very liberal state. Christie has done all kinds of things that the people dislike. But he’s always done it in the same old asshole way that says, “I’m one of you!” Except that he isn’t one of them. He’s just a corporate owned and operated politician who’s watched The Sopranos too many times. I’ve been to New Jersey many times and that isn’t how people act at all. The way Christie acts is the way that many people in New Jersey want to think they act. But that’s because they too have watched too many mob movies and television series. I’m expecting major buyer’s remorse fairly soon. Fantasies only last so long and after his re-election, Christie’s only constituency will be the Republican base.