Greg Sanders

A defense of the fiscal responsibility of the Senate Health bill

2009-11-21T10:34:08-05:00

Tyler Cowen attacks those of us who support the bill claiming we retreat into the relative. In short, he doesn’t believe the various automatic cuts will happen and is unsatisfied with our defenses of those cuts.

This fight gets more into political science than economics as such. The economics of the bill as written are covered by the CBO, the question is whether the politics of the bill are sustainable.

Here’s why I think they are:

Assuming no changes to the filibuster as implemented in the 21st century, post-passage it will be possible to defend the fiscal responsibility of the bill with 41 votes rather than the 60 votes otherwise required (or 51 votes and luck of the draw if using reconciliation).
People with expensive health plans are elite, but they lack the organizational infrastructure and natural ties held by the doctors and elderly who have blocked automatic Medicare cuts. Their negotiating clout is undercut by the fact that the group contains natural enemies: union workers and corporate execs. Further, their numbers will be decreased by many companies choosing to simply avoid the health care excise by giving more taxable income.
Democrats, under the prior Democratic president, managed to balance the budget. The good economic times of the 90s were certainly critical to that happening, but we managed it nonetheless largely due to the revenue raising that helped lose us the Congress. Why would we do it again after losing the Congress the last time? I don’t believe in politician fiscal hawks, but I do believe that your average Democratic Representative and Senator faces more elite pressure to do something about the deficit than expand health benefits. Universal Healthcare does address a core middle class concern, but things like the level of subsidies and the benefits of the bronze plan are going to be lower priority for Democratic leadership than being described by the media as fiscally responsible. If this wasn’t the case, then why did the Reid bill come it at $856B rather than maxing out the $900B the President suggested. Liberal bloggers, such as myself, won’t get their in a better world cost reductions but we also won’t get our better world benefits for the poor.
This will make it easier to raise the eligibility age for Medicare once universal healthcare is in place. We can do something sensible like index it to the expected lifespan. Obviously this will be grandfathered in due to the political clout of the elderly, but those who aren’t that near receiving benefits are a larger group that won’t be as motivated.
Some of the bloggers Tyler is critiquing are willing to say that the new mammogram guidelines could well be a good idea and that critics should provide counter arguments based on science. There may well be strong counterarguments, I’d be curious if the false positive downsides still outweighed the detection upsides if we’re talking African American and/or lower income women, but I need to see that data before I go along with the critique. Furthermore, when it comes to things like mammograms, many people are averse to getting tests in the first place, stopping government encouragement for those under 50 without special risk factors, even if coverage is maintained, should make a difference in usage. I will concede that this up roar and HHS concessions does bad for us, but the strength of the response on breast cancer is the exception as advocates for breast cancer patients are highly organized and feminist groups are on edge after being backstabbed in the House. There was not a political response of the same magnitude of recommendations on prostate cancer screens. Interestingly enough, the American Cancer Society didn’t object to those, so I think their critique on changing mammogram standards should certainly get a fair hearing. Also, I’ll note the fact that the timing of this release shows the scientific independence of the review process, the timing was awful.

40-40K more troops may be all thats [potentially] available for Afghanistan

2009-11-21T00:16:28-05:00

Spencer Ackerman has some detailed reporting on how many troops would be available for an Afghan surge given current policies. Via the Armchair Generalist I’ve also got a clip of him discussing it on Rachel Maddow.

This makes sense. After all, troops have been fairly slow to leave Iraq and extended deployments showed that we were already at capacity. None of this is to say that we couldn’t leave Iraq faster or consider pulling back from some of our other global bases, I think either could be done responsibly. Alternately we could decrease the dwell time troops get at home or call up more reserves, which I think would be a terrible idea.

Since I do try to run a datablog here, I’d like to highlight two terrific charts on Ackerman’s piece. He’s got a breakdown of Army National Guard and Army combat brigade deployment data. I think he really raises the bar with those tables, check them out.

[Update: Clarified headline to signify that I’m discussing what Obama could send, not how many troops he’s likely to send.]

Help Afghan governance, keep the Afghan police from burning detainees with hot oil

2009-11-20T11:47:53-05:00

Just read a Foreign Affairs article [by Mark Moyar] on legitimacy in Afghanistan. The broad takeaway was that performance, not elections brings legitimacy. That's probably true to an extent. The strong point of elections is more removing inept leaders than in selecting skilled ones.

That said, this bit gave me pause:

Placing American combat advisers and troops alongside the Afghans will help address the governance problem as well. In provinces where U.S. troops go everywhere with the Afghan National Police, the American presence deters the police from setting up the roadside checkpoints they have customarily used to shake down passers-by. The Americans do not allow the Afghan policemen to beat civilians over the head with rocks or burn detainees with hot oil, which they have been known to do elsewhere.

It's one thing to act to leverage the power of the police and help them accomplish their missions. It's quite another to have our job be to keep them from going completely out of control.

Preview of coming numbers

2009-11-18T21:44:56-05:00

I'm fairly exhausted tonight, so I'm posting from the phone. Sadly I haven't figured out an efficient way to post links so this will just mention good posts but not link to them at this time. Maybe I need to master post by email, I think several apps have options to share things vkia email.

Regardless, I've seen three bits of security data I want to post about.
1 total cost of the wars to date, from CRS via Yglesias.
2 number of troops available to surge in Afghanistan. Apparently absent accelerated withdrawal from Iraq, 40k is the max, data from Ackerman.
3 Unintentional civilian deaths outnumbering intentional deaths. Multiple sources on that.

Quick comments on EA Sports Active Life

2009-11-17T23:23:42-05:00

Doing a proper review seems a bit pointless since the new version is out. Let’s just say that the general consensus: Wii Fit is good for exergaming, Activelife is good for exercising, seems about on the money. Comparing calorie counts with Wii Fit plus, the 30 day challenge seems to burn about 50%-100% more calories, minute per minute, than a reasonably strenuous mix of wii fit activities. Active Life Routines also help you get those 30 minutes done with less interruptions.

I actually do miss a lot of the cute features in Wii Fit: neat island backdrop, seeing friend’s Miis, and some of the games. Active Life is a bit more tethered to reality in ways that I don’t think are necessary to be an effective exercise program but may be better suited to the target audience.

I’m currently working my way through the 30 day challenge. It’s a great feature, it handles your routine picking for you and lets you pick a difficulty. Hard is rather hard, I’ve kept with it for now but may need to drop to medium before the end. One annoyance though, if you end after midnight, the whole thing counts as the next day. Since you only get a new 30 day challenge the day after completing the previous one, this rather breaks up the schedule a bit.

One other slight note of annoyance: the directing on the videos is bad. They do a good job showing the exercises, but it’s not necessary to smile constantly while doing so. That creeps me out a little. Also I’m terrible at inline skating but slowly figuring out the tricks.

One bit of tech synergy that might work well with exercise gaming: picture in a picture television. Active life uses the picture in a picture concept, but I don’t see any reason it couldn’t be combine with watching another show entirely rather than watching an avatar duplicate the exercise. Unlike wii fit, you don’t really have single exercise 30 minutes options, probably for the best, so dual-gaming is likely out, but I wouldn’t mind working through my DVD backlog.

Would staggered regional elections help with post conflict reconstruction?

2009-11-15T08:38:55-05:00

Elections can lead to more violence for a range of reasons, but it can't help that monitors and security forces have to cover the whole country. This likely wouldn't work for general presidential elections but could work for the legislature. I don't think staggered terms are part of the problem with our Senate. I'm not sure if it would be better to have regional blocks or just a mix of elections throughout the country. Blocksb would be easier to administer but they may throw off the politics by varying the importance if regions.

Progress on Guantanamo bay

2009-11-14T23:23:39-05:00

It took long enough, but it appears that the administration is finding ways to deal with the detainees at Guantanamo. A few of the big names are being transferred to federal court to await trial and apparently there’s a nigh empty prison in Illinois that may end up taking even more (hat tip, James Lamond of Democracy Arsenal). From the the story, the admin still isn’t committing to much and there’s a law to deal with.

I am not happy about the restrictions on transferring detainees Stateside. It is nothing but rank cowardice and foolishness, they aren’t super powered mutants nor are they leaders of cartels that can effectively lead operations from prison. The public relations debacle that is Guantanamo Bay drives enemy recruitment, the consequences for that are real and deadly, but the illusion of a homeland that can be completely isolated from the world seems to drive willingness to but deployed troops at risk to protect against non-existent dangers at home.

153 billion dollars

2009-11-11T23:32:34-05:00

That's the amount, in 2008 dollars, we've spent on contracts performed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and their theaters since 2001. Check the map for the breakdown. It shouldn't surprise anyone that Iraq has the majority of the spending, Iraq has had many more troops and most of the spending goes to supporting them. It's important to keep in mind that while private security contractors tend to make the most news, they're direct contracts only account for $6 billion of the $153 billion. That said, if you want to account for sub-contracting than you can probably double or triple that figure.

Check back over the next week if you're curious who is spending that money and want details on what they're buying. For those that are impatient, the results are available in this overview newsletter.

Part of my job is to follow and study financial and industrial aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. On this veterans day I do want to thank those that have served and also to do my part to help people understand this part of the wars. So, if you've got any I'll do my best to help bridge the civil-military gaps in knowledge.

Ta-Nehisi Coates gets me excited about Dragon Age

2009-11-11T11:00:43-05:00

I've been a bit meh on Bioware's new game Dragon Age despite being a big fan of the company. I think there's two main drivers:

I'm basically sick of conventional western fantasy as a setting.
The marketing has been pretty low key so it hasn't caught my attention aside from some Penny Arcade comics.

I'm really enjoying Avatar: The Last Airbender right now, so I won't go so far as to say I've entirely soured on fantasy, but at this point I tend to see it as a net negative as a setting. There's just so much that's either been done to death or is problematic. I prefer settings that deal with issues that we are presently wrestling with or that are unfamiliar. This is why I want to figure out ways to do more modern settings in DnD. DnD does fantasy well and has some settings that do work for me such as Eberron, Planescape, maybe Spelljammers, our current tabletop game campaign settings.

Anyhow, Coates has one of the best communities for discussing my cultural interests that I've ever seen. I tend to get along well with people that are drawn to his writing and he also puts in the work to maintain it. If you want a place to talk about some of these issues, I really recommend it. I don't actually usually hang out on gaming site boards (with the exception of Brainy Gamer), but if you want to talk about the cultural aspects rather than the mechanical aspects I can't recommend his comment threads highly enough.

Anyways, here's the bit that got me excited about Dragon-Age:

As a fan of Bioware, I've been waiting on Dragon's Age for a long-time now, and it really doesn't disappoint. It reminds me a lot of Oblivion, but better. I think Oblivion offers more options, in terms of customizing, but the game was just too big for me. It felt really lonely, and combat felt non-intuitive. The thing about Dragon's Age is you can actually see people doing cool shit--like ripostes etc.

My one beef with the game is the gore--it's way too much.. But the gore actually makes the game look less mature. It makes it feel like it was built for twelve year olds who want to feel like their doing something forbidden...

Back on story, It felt right to play the descendants of slaves (What can I say? Even when I'm role-playing, I'm hood.), so I picked an elf. I don't want to say too much about the game, but the sequence where you have to storm the castle and save your betrothed is really intense. I'll have more to say as I get further in. But for right now, color me impressed.

Preliminary Droid Review

2009-11-11T00:38:05-05:00

I am generally pleased. There's many lauditory reviews so I'll focus on downsides: 1 Touchscreen buttons sometimes resist triggering and other times go off when brushed over. 2 While the multitasking works great, not all apps seem to qualify, which can be tricky if you lose data when switching away. 3 Battery life drains fast if you run an app in the background. No big surprises and most of these point probably apply to many touch phones. To close on a positive not, I love the power cord, it is a usb cord [and an adaptor that let's you plug a usb dongle into an outlet. It keeps the number of wires down and that plug adaptor might help me charge other apps. The only problem there is that it is quite short. Also, appropriately, this post got prematurely posted due to my brushing the post button, but I'm still happy enough with the phone that I've gone back and finished my praise of the power options.]