Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Cont'd

So this blog writer app on my phone doesn't have support for drafts or edits! Continuing from my previous thoughts:

Case in point: today I was riding around with a conservative fellow who is the pro-business, former executive for a health insurance giant, has multiple homes and fancy cars type. He is talking about how Obama is in trouble because now the Left is hating on him for the health care situation.

On the road we passed a beat up pickup truck with an NRA bumper sticker that says "when you pry it from my cold dead hands".

Both the Mercedes driving former health insurance exec and the pickup truck arms bearer are supposedly in the same political party, but it's pretty hard to believe. Whereas the disagreers on the Left seem miles closer by comparison.

At least on the left our sub-factions don't have diametrically opposed desires. What do you think a real Libertarian would say about abortion rights or gay marriage? The isolationist preferences of a social conservative don't jive at all with the interventionist tendencies of a neocon.

Compare that to the Left's pragmatist vs. the idealist. They still both want the same things, they just have different ideas about how to achieve them.

Now, at a certain point you do see some fractures on the left. There's much discussion recently of the "third way" - using private enterprise to pursue the public good, largely through subsidies. And that can run counter to the hardcore socialist condemnation of the profit motive as a drain on public goods.

And again I come back to the question of "where am I on this spectrum?" I certainly am highly suspicious of private sector involvement in public goods. I don't trust private enterprise with public parks, national defense, firefighting or public safety, and I don't see why I should trust them with health care.

However I can be convinced that with proper (heavy) regulation and subsidies, health care reform can be achieved. And perhaps that is a more realistic way of getting there. But I don't think, all other things being equal, that the private sector path is preferable. And I would be surprised to hear a Democrat argue that losing the public option is the 'better' choice in any sense other than increasing the chances of passing reform.

If anything, I feel like my political energies are best spent pushing for better regulation to protect citizens from the private sector than worrying about the purity of how health care is reformed. And that I think is something that falls in the old "80% of things we can agree on" category, and it doesn't really cost anything.

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

A different kind of civil war

My health care reform reading of late has had a lot of mentions and examples of a so-called split amongst progressives aka liberals aka democrats (the whole big tent for the sake of discussion).

Several different terms have been tossed around as appellations for the two sides, but it's probably better to just describe them.

On one side we have the people disappointed with the compromises made to the likes of Lieberman and Nelson. People like Howard Dean who are really ticked off at how 'real' reform has been sold out to expedience.

On the other had you have people who are willing to accept the cutting of deals and who view the 'bill-killers' and public option die-hards as naive. This group could broadly be said to feel that even a modest amount of progress is still progress, and that shouldn't be jeopardized by idealism.

And to start I think that's the least loaded way to describe them. Some might call them idealists and pragmatists, though I think even those words might be a little loaded (since idealism usually implies an unattainable goal).

But what I found interesting about this split is that since I'm a progressive/liberal/Democrat, I must fall into one of these camps, yes? And yet I struggle to identify firmly with either one, and even to find a firm dividing line between them.

Looking at the republican situation there is a much clearer split between the three subgroups of conservatives: neocons, libertarians and the religious right.

Sunday, December 13, 2009

F U Joe Lieberman

Dear Joe,

You are an unprincipled shill for the insurance industry that pays your wife's salary. How much money will you make from dicking over health care reform? Thanks for putting the interests of your bank account so blatantly ahead of those of the citizens of this country.

You've made it pretty clear on the record that the only criteria for determining what is a good or a bad idea in health care reform is whether it will result in your insurance company friends increasing their profits.


Mandating that 30 million citizens have to buy insurance from private companies? You think that's swell.

Doing anything about the cost of health insurance? Well that just won't do, for an ever-changing set of reasons, none of which make any sense.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/joe_lieberman_lets_not_make_a.html

Your lack of moral fiber makes me want to puke. Just quit the senate and go pick up the insurance industry job that is waiting for you, and take Evan Bayh with you. Actual representatives of American citezens have real work to do.

Friday, December 11, 2009

A conversation on facebook

I will (probably never) get around to reformatting this later, but in the interests of preserving some discussion about the internet:

John Gates The internet is a cesspool. Human discourse is doomed.

Tue at 10:25am · ·
Susan Julian Gates
Tue at 10:54am · Delete
John Gates
John Gates
Misanthropy is the only rational stance.
Tue at 10:57am · Delete
Kris Keimig
Kris Keimig
explain yourself. you sound like tipper gore.
Tue at 11:05am · Delete
Joseph Gagnepain
Joseph Gagnepain
Do you think the internet has made discourse worse, or do you think it's simply given a medium to those who have no facilities for rational and coherent reasoning?
Tue at 11:26am · Delete
John Gates
John Gates
A little from column A, a little from column B.

It's a perfect storm of ignorance and those who benefit from ignorance. Producing nothing, consuming everything.
Tue at 11:32am · Delete
Joseph Gagnepain
Joseph Gagnepain
Well, and the gay's can come on here and talk about marrying each other...
Tue at 11:33am · Delete
Karen Olcott
Karen Olcott
Shows you how desperate people are to be heard!
Tue at 11:55am · Delete
Susan Julian Gates
Susan Julian Gates
Heard by whom? I think we have made a grave mistake in letting people believe that everyone has an opinion worthy of publication. (I am writing this knowing that I am writing my opinion!) Here's what happened thanks to the internet: Every town had the village idiot/crank/nutcase and everyone knew there was that one guy and KNEW he was an idiot/crank/nutcase. What's one in 20,000? Now with the internet ALL the idiots/cranks/nutcases can find each other and that means 12,500 of them and they sure can make a lot of noise and then Fox finds them and they become the "voice of the people," and so on and so on.
Tue at 12:14pm · Delete
John Gates
John Gates
This is why we need to jettison the internet into the sun.
Tue at 12:15pm · Delete
Jason SooHoo
Jason SooHoo
Do you guys want to play Farmville?
Tue at 12:20pm · Delete
John Gates
John Gates
The signal to noise ratio in online communication is in free fall. Every webpage is three sentences of text surrounded by three acres of advertising disguised as content. The comments section of any given news article is inhabited by an astounding array of internet trolls.

There is more rational argument happening about World of Warcraft than there is about health care reform.

I hate the internet.
Tue at 12:22pm · Delete
Karen Olcott
Karen Olcott
what astounds me is that most people are essentially sheep....
Tue at 12:34pm · Delete
Joseph Gagnepain
Joseph Gagnepain
I was being sarcastic with that comment, just to clarify...
Tue at 2:08pm · Delete
Michael T Garlick
Michael T Garlick
People are Sheeple
Tue at 5:33pm · Delete
Frank Julian
Frank Julian
Pull the lever!!!!
Tue at 5:59pm · Delete
Karen Olcott
Karen Olcott
Go get 'em Tiger, and I don't mean Woods either :)
Tue at 8:12pm · Delete
Kris Keimig
Kris Keimig
Here is my view: Everything is the same today as it was yesterday. The internet has only accelerated .

Like, I don't think there are MORE village idiots than there were before. I just think before you were only exposed to one of them and now you are instantly connected to an infinite number. The overall number hasn't changed...

I also don't think the signal to noise ratio is any different; I'm pretty sure we have enough [sardonic] literature to detail that loud, marauding, half-wit sheep have existed for eons and brought society to it's knees (or at least given us painful sleepless nights).

As for "three sentences of text surrounded by three acres of advertising disguised as content" I would point you in the direction of Cosmopolitan, GQ, etc... (all pre-internet piles of crap)

... really. By all of this what I mean to say is that I have always found what comes from 95% of people's brains (and out the mouths) tiring and loathsome. The internet has changed nothing in this regard.
Tue at 8:32pm · Delete
Kris Keimig
Kris Keimig
Two more things...

1) I make my living off the internet as a marketer (this is not a joke - I am basically Don Draper on the internet).

2) Did my last reply prove your initial point (this is my hope).
Tue at 8:34pm · Delete
Joseph Gagnepain
Joseph Gagnepain
I think part of it is the ability to comment on every news story out there. This on the surface seems like a good idea, and certainly free speech and discourse about things are good, but they should be in a separate medium which I have the choice to view. For example, I'm not going to go to the Glen Beck page more then once and view the comments on...See More
Tue at 10:10pm · Delete
John Gates
John Gates
Kris - that's true that the nature of people hasn't changed recently. But my point is actually that the terrain of the internet itself has changed. What was once a valuable resource for finding information has become cluttered with useless information and poisoned with deliberate misinformation.

Websites I once relied on for news are drifting from their original caliber into sound and light shows designed to get you to click through to another page to generate ad revenue - not to deliver actual information.

The signal to noise ratio IS different when 'bad' content grows and 'good' content shrinks. I'm not saying there are more useless idiots out there - humanity has always been composed of 100% useless idiot. But we hadn't figured out how to infect the internet with our idiocy. That time has come.

The ugly and wasteful websites now completely dominate the wonderful and useful. I can count on one hand the ones that aren't now pits of noise and garbage (and actually I am now rearranging my bookmark toolbar so those sites are at the front).

All I can do is vote with my feet and retreat to the places with valuable information and without poisonous irrational discourse. But it bothers me that the places I went first were corrupted by the familiar economics of advertising and the mysterious (and more frightening) forces of denialism. And it's the latter that should scare the rest of you. We're used to capitalism ruining a good thing, but this is different.
Wed at 8:36am · Delete
Karen Olcott
Karen Olcott
One of the best discussions ever, and appreciate the thoughtfulness. Now how do I share this convo?
Wed at 1:44pm · Delete
Frank Julian
Frank Julian
You need to Stumbleupon!
Wed at 6:57pm · Delete
John Gates
Yesterday at 10:35am · Delete
Kris Keimig
Kris Keimig
@John Gates I have [lots] more to say but I feel, at this point, to continue such a long-winded back and forth on your "status" will only cause discomfort for those writing or viewing status.

It will become truly awkward... like the day after... when you find out she is, as you had originally joked, related to you.

What I will suggest is that you continue the conversation on your blog; I will rebut on my blog and in the process of doing so, you will [hopefully] help defeat/revert your own point (by creating a valuable and healthy debate).

Conversely, we could both dress up as our favorite gem character, show up in Drum Hill, go to walmart, pig out at boston market and then play "nad kick" to see who is right.
Yesterday at 1:06pm · Delete

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Scientifically Illiterate

Dr. Nancy Snyderman just finished up a great appearance on Meet The Press. I've never seen her before but she should be doing more than hosting a show on MSNBC with her impressive grasp of science and health care policy. One thing she said really rang true - it went something like "We are in danger of becoming a scientifically illiterate country."

Nothing demonstrated that more aptly than the woman sitting next to her, another Nancy - Ambassador Nancy Brinker. Brinker admirably founded the breast cancer awareness/advocacy group Susan G. Komin for the Cure, but she is also a great example of how her advocacy and lobbying on behalf of increased breast cancer awareness has given her blinders when it comes to science and data.

Backing up, this is all about last week's minor uproar over the release of new federal guidelines for breast cancer and cervical cancer screening. Dr. Snyderman got right to the point by saying that these were scientifically arrived at guidelines and the negative reaction to them is a case of anecdote winning out over data.

Quick summary: The HHS Preventative Services Task Force found that the number of false positives in women in their 40's were large enough, and the number of real cancers caught early small enough, that mammograms for women in that age bracket did more harm than good overall (due to false positives resulting in stress, unnecessary biopsies, etc).

What an example of the battle between science and anecdote! Just like with the vaccine hubbub, in response to scientists saying "statistically early mammograms do more harm than good," anecdoters say "an early mammogram saved this person's life, therefore they must be good for everyone." (With vaccines it is the reverse - scientists say "statistically there is far far more risk in not getting vaccinated than in getting vaccinated," but anecdoters fixate on the one in a million chance that a vaccine might harm them.)

And then when you bring politics into it, it gets worse. Few politicians have the courage to lead and teach by correcting the public's preference for anecdote, instead choosing to back off the issue. This gives ground to those on the right who use public fear for their own political ends (I'm looking at you Rep. Marsha Blackburn - oh hi Dr. Nancy)

People like that really piss me off.

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Fight for it

A few minutes into this clip is a statement that really got me riled (in a good way):

I agree. Let Republicans filibuster a public option. Put together something that is right and good for the American people and let them waste Congress' time reading from cookbooks while the American people live without a basic human right. Democrats need to gather up the cojones to stand up for what is right and let Republicans worry about how they're going to look when they oppose it.



I <3 Shep Smith

Shepard Smith continues to be one of my favorite people on television.


I really appreciate how in just a few sentences he clarifies and challenges the blatant obfuscation by Springer: We'd still have private insurance, private companies and government compete all the time, it's about options.

I don't have cable, so I don't know if these are rare moments for Shep, but every time I hear his name it's because he's telling it like it is in the face of conservative spin.