In response to Max Sawicky's post, below: Well, Max, I’m not quite sure where you and I disagree. I was writing about which tactics are useful when, and arguing that nostalgia doesn’t help in answering that question. I’m certainly not against straight white people demonstrating (if you'll pardon the joke, some of my best friends ...). I’m saying that today’s antiwar demos strike me as too predictable to be especially effective, that they are neatly choreographed exercises, surprising no one. Just look at how different they are from those 1960s demos being described in TPMCafe posts.

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I guess there's nothing surprising about the press writing about the cold weather instead of Senator Obama's speech. But why say that it was subzero and also that it was 7 degrees F? I'm not thinking seven is warm but it is higher than zero; at least I thought it was.

Barack Obama has already had to endure stories of surpassing silliness and evil innuendo and absolute falsehood. More is in store for him and all who hope for a better America. But let the word go forth: plus seven is not below zero.

One of the largest expenses faced by the American middle class is paying for college. Whether it’s trying to help finance their children's college educations, or paying off their own college debts, this expense costs middle class Americans thousands of dollars. However this burden just hit a new high today as the first American college raised its tuition and mandatory fees to over 50,000 dollars a year. If you put five children through college at this rate it would cost one MILLION dollars.

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Here's something to look forward to: four hours on the "News War," a four-parter that, I take it, surveys all manner of political and economic impacts on news, starting next Tuesday the 13th, produced by a maestro, Lowell Bergman. The website includes a compelling clip of Bergman's interview with William Safire on why journalists deserve shields 90 percent of the time, which sounds about right to me. I wonder if Bergman asked the author of Spiro Agnew's speeches if he regrets his contributions to government savaging of the press.

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Nelson Polsby, one of the giants of American political science, died Tuesday in his home in Berkeley, California.

If you ever took an intro to American political science class, odds are that you read his work or bought one of the 11 editions of his classic, Presidential Elections, which he co-wrote with his equally influential colleague, Aaron Wildavsky.

Personally, I owe my own foray into political science – and my doctorate -- to Nelson. His book, Political Innovation, was a shaping influence on my own work on partisan change; my supervisor had his doctoral studies supervised by Nelson; and when it came time for my own doctoral exam, Nelson was my outside examiner.

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The blogosphere jumped from one pseudo-controversy to another yesterday. First, the Edwards campaign won praise from the netroots for keeping its controversial bloggers, although Garance Franke-Ruta at TAPPED notes that the media war is probably far from over. Chris Bowers, in a post title "This Isn't Over," calls for the netroots to keep pushing on the media issue and supporting Edwards to make his decision worthwhile.

Next up in the world of over-hyped controversies: Air Pelosi. Josh started covering the way this story was spreading on Wednesday, and yesterday others chimed in with their own understandable exasperation. Kevin Drum called the story the beginning of the "silly season," although Matt Yglesias warns against dismissing such "silly" stories considering their serious effects as conservative propaganda. John Aravosis (agreeing with the Speaker herself) thinks the controversy is based on a very real double standard.

Away from the "silly season," Josh, Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias and Robert Farley discussed the recent trend of downed helicopters in Iraq.

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The Presidential campaign is heating up which is amazing considering that we are a year away from the first caucus and primary. Not long ago, Presidential campaigns didn't start until the year of the election and sometimes well into the year. LBJ's campaign in 1960 did not start until days before the convention, but of course he didn't get nominated!

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Part one of the case for industry compacts sealed by Federal rules as a key means to reduce climate change, and I quote....

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Why? Well because our political system is deeply flawed, failing miserably at respecting the consent of the governed. Count me among those irritated by E.J. Graff's anti-nostalgia for the 60s. For one thing, I took it as a response to my post, so if you like count me among the self-absorbed too.

Of course, it's not about anybody's neuroses, and least of all is it a fantasy of "that brief, odd, utopian-dreamy moment."

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Last week the Senate Banking Committee took aim at abusive credit card practices. Yesterday, Senator Dodd was back, focusing this time on predatory mortgages. Two points don't make a trend, but the same mad-as-hell attitude about abusive lending practices are a sure sign that it is a new day in Washington.

The practices are truly vile: Refinancing people from mortgages they can afford to mortgages that will cost them their homes. Targeting African-Americans and Latinos to sell them more expensive loans than they would qualify for. "Upselling" or, as I like to think of it, mortgage brokers taking a bribe from the lender to place a costlier loan with a family. The litany is long, and no one is rushing to rewrite the laws that permit these activities. But the lending industry has to be sweating just a little.

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In an interview with Ralph Nader the other day, Wolf Blitzer showed clips from the documentary “An Unreasonable Man” in which Joan Claybrook of Public Citizen and I, independently, denounce Nader for having campaigned, in 2000, in swing states like notorious Florida rather than pick up easy votes in New York, California, and other safe zones—which on the face of it he should have done had his sole objective been to pick up 5 percent of the vote and thus guarantee Federal funds for the Greens in 2004.

(Blitzer falsely—in fact, ridiculously--calls me a “supporter” of Nader. But moving on.)

Nader says this:

The film has a professor at Harvard who looked over our schedule. I spent 28 days in California, two and a half days in Florida, for example. So those statements are factually false.

Nader is referring to the Harvard political scientist Barry C. Burden, and the article in question, if you want to get technical, is “Ralph Nader's Campaign Strategy in the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election,” American Politics Research, Vol. 33, No. 5 (2005), pp. 672-699 (2005). I have read it. It’s not the exculpation Nader devoutly wishes.

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Craig Unger's article in VANITY FAIR is, I don't even know the word.

You just have to read it. The bottom line is that the exact same people who got us into the Iraq war are on the verge of convincing Bush to attack Iran.

The article even quotes Binyamin Netanyahu, one of the neocons' mentors, as saying that Iraq was the wrong war in the first place. Iran was the war he wanted although Iraq was okay too.

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What do you get when you combine the right-wing echo chamber with a complicit mainstream media, a confused presidential campaign and netroots credibility in the balance? An absolute flood of discussion.

I'm not crazy enough to try to summarize all of the commentary on the Edwards blogger issue yesterday, but suffice it to say pretty much everyone chimed in on this one and it's not over yet.

A few other things got people talking...

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As anyone who knows my writing knows, I'm a big fan of SEIU and Andy Stern's leadership in fighting on behalf of working families. But count me in the skeptics camp as far as this new partnership with Wal-Mart.

The US health care system is obviously screwed up-- costing twice as much per patient as European health care systems, loaded up with useless paperwork, and pervaded by special interests like the pharmaceutical companies that pile on costs that no other country pays.

But the unique problem for the US isn't that much of the financing for health care comes from employers. I'm not even sure what Andy Stern means when he says that the US is "the only industrialized nation on earth that puts the price of healthcare on the cost of our products," since Japan and many European countries pay for health care with heavy mandated health care assessments on payrolls:

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My good friend Harold Meyerson has a wise column in today's Washington Post about the three top Democratic presidential contenders and their performances before the recent DNC meeting. Harold talks about Obama's, Edward's and Clinton's appearances, focusing on their discussions of politics, economics and of course, the war with Iraq. But, his take on support for organized labor is especially important. All of them have above average labor records; any of them would be light years better than what we have now and what we could have, but Edwards has gotten himself out there early as the candidate of labor. He's been on the picket and organizing lines; his own history is of the son of a mill worker, and he genuinely seems to get the economic divide in our country, between the haves and have nots. But, still. But still.....

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Seven Republican Senators -- seven renegade samurai, or ronin --- have essentially blasted in a letter just prepared in the last hour both the Democratic and Republican leadership for behind-the-scenes gamesmanship that undermined a floor debate about America's options in Iraq.

While American citizens saw a procedural motion to move to "debate" the Warner-Levin Iraq War Resolution lose a 49-47 vote, what they did not see was a snarling, nasty tug-of-war between Reid and Durbin on one side and McConnell and Lott on the other that ripped the guts out of any possible comity needed to get to that debate.

This writer has learned that Senators John Warner, Olympia Snowe, and Chuck Hagel -- and others -- were highly irritated, angry in fact, with both sides and elected to vote against the procedural motion until the party leaders on both sides of the aisle ceased their antics.

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a short peevish post that was widely (and probably rightly) thumped. Since the main Coffeehouse discussions moved on so quickly to other subjects, I decided to abandon the topic, but some of the readership doesn’t want to forget. So let me explain what I meant, what I didn’t mean, and offer up a willingness to be wrong... and then I will let it drop.

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In an otherwise solid piece about Oklahoma’s universal pre-K program -- the nation’s gold standard that also happens to be in a solid red state -- the Times’ David Leonhardt fumbles toward the end when he writes: “…preschool cuts across some of the usual ideological lines. Liberals like its antipoverty bent; conservatives prefer education to straight income redistribution….The biggest opponents tend to be religious conservatives worried about the creation of a nanny state.” Leaving aside that liberals support universal pre-K for all kinds of good reasons beyond its ‘bent’ (sic), the broad conservative movement – not just the religious right -- HATES the idea. Why? Not only because it’s an expansion of government, but because it’s an expansion of government that also works. Movement conservatives really hate stuff like that, because it makes their cerebrums itch.

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This is the inaugural post for what may become a regular feature here in at TPMCafe: a survey of the previous day's discussion in the liberal (and occasionally conservative) blogosphere. Rather than trying to summarize a whole day's work, I'll focus only on the issues that generated engaged discussion and actual disagreement. Kinks, such as the possible lameness of the feature's name, will be ironed out as I go.

It was another bad day in the blogosphere for Joe Klein. His sole defender in a debate with Arianna Huffington over whether or not he opposed the invasion of Iraq, Andrew Sullivan, could only muster the consolation that at least he's not Mickey Kaus. Kevin Drum wonders why, if Klein is being honest that he opposed the war in private, he didn't have the courage to say so more forcefully in public. Atrios would like to see Klein turn his answer to that question into a column.

The political wisdom of policy details in presidential politics was the Big Think Topic of the Day.

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Mega-corporations like Wal-Mart and AT&T, unions and progressive non-profits have announced a partnership called "Better Health Care Together" to deal with America's unaffordable health care crisis.

Compromises and negotiations between business and activists have a strong track record historically. For good or bad, American business is too big to be left off the political bargaining table. If it works, BHCT might make a great example of not sacrificing the good for the perfect.

Tomorrow marks the debut of a new journal: The Harvard Law and Policy Review. I am pleased as punch because some of my students founded the journal--and I (nearly always) love what my students do. Long-time readers of Warren Reports will recognize not only the co-founders (Michael Negron and James Weingarten), but some key staffers (Jason Spitalnick, Derek Lindblom, Dan Geldon). These folks are out to change the world. They have a vision to integrate policy and academic debates on critical issues, and they have created a new vehicle for those debates.

For me, the most exciting part of the journal is that it features middle class economic issues front-and-center. Grouped together as part of a discussion on reducing the price of opportunity, the journal has pulled in Jacob Hacker for a piece on the new economic insecurity, Michael Lind on the smallholder society, Michael Barr focusing on savings, and a piece from my co-blogger Ganesh Sitaramen, College Board economist Sandy Baum and me on paying for college.

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According to Kaulkin Ginsberg’s recent Healthcare ARM Report, 2006, approximately $4 billion of delinquent healthcare debt was sold last year. These debt sales happen when healthcare providers sell the right to receive payment on a debt. The buyer pays less than the full amount of the debt, taking into account the time and expense of collecting on the debt and the possibility that the debt will not be collected.

The report notes that healthcare providers set aside $129 billion each year to cover bad debt. From these numbers the report forecasts an increase in the sale of healthcare debt in future years. Given that more and more consumers are purchasing medical care on credit (because they are U-N-I-N-S-U-R-E-D, Congress), healthcare providers will increasingly be forced into the role of lenders. Selling the debt makes sense for healthcare providers because it provides them with immediate cash (they have their own expenses to pay) and gets them out of the unsavory business of debt collection.

What effect would an increased market in healthcare debt mean for consumers? It’s not clear, but I think it’s safe to assume that professional debt collectors will be more aggressive than healthcare providers in collecting this debt. Stay tuned...

Warren Reports readers who are also Facebook members: check out (and join) the Facebook group TPM Fans.

I feel indebted to SLATE for publishing this delightful quiz gauging whether one is or isn't a "liberal anti-semite."

I don't like seeing SLATE getting the jump on TPM when it comes to finding humor in sheer stupidity but they did. Give em credit.

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Although the 2008 presidential campaign has already been filled with speculation, positioning, mistatements, apologies, and explorations, John Edwards' concrete proposal for universal health care may be the first serious policy prescription from any of the campaigners. And it is an ambitious first salvo, which promises to give us a serious debate about America's future. Edwards floated the idea last year, but yesterday released concrete details (pdf), including a frank acknowledgment that the 120 billon dollar plan will require a roll-back of the Bush tax cuts on upper-income Americans.

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It's not just morally sound; it's also politically astute for Democrats to sound the call on the Gore trumpet for dramatic, long-term, competent, thorough action to stop global warming and at the same time begin to abate its effects.

The day should come when releasing carbon into the air will be thought to be like putting lead in water or mercury in fish or nicotine in lungs. Coal won't be burned except under conditions permitting sequestration of the emissions. Nuclear power will be welcomed. The energy industry will be disaggregated, subjected to disruptive entrepreneurship, and reshaped along lines that eschew oil and preclude carbon emissions.

Do I mean all carbon under all circumstances?

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Want to make a deal? Privatization is in the air and the multinational profiteers are circling. And the action is bipartisan and involves big money:

• The District of Columbia, Illinois and Indiana have all announced that they are looking to hand over their state lotteries to private firms for billions of dollars.
• Last year, Indiana got $3.8 billion from an Australian-led consortium for a 75-year tollway lease on the same day Virginia signed over its Pocahontas Parkway as a 99-year lease to a private company and Texas approved a $1.3 billion bid by a consortium led by Cintra to build and operate a 40-mile toll road out of Austin.
• Indiana is also planning to contract out management of part of the state's social services system in a $1.16 billion contract.

Why do these deals keep happening, despite the contractor scandals in the headlines?

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Question: Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is round?

Out of 55 Republican Representatives and Senators, seven said yes. Forty-six said no.

Just kidding.

Actually, the question was this:

Question: Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?

And the envelope, please:

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Last week, State Farm agreed to pay 80 million dollars to settle suits filed by homeowners who were hit by Hurricane Katrina. Meanwhile, Congress will soon weigh legislation that could bring the biggest changes to the insurance game in decades.

Much of this litigation and legislation turns on the problem that insurance contracts are filled with incomprehensible language that fails to put consumers and regulators on notice as to what is and is not covered. For example, the industry refused coverage for Katrina, by characterizing much of the damage as “flood damage” and by relying on an arcane “anti-concurrent causation clause” that kicks in when there is even a drop of water. One commentator explains that insurance contracts “may as well be written in hieroglyphics. They are nearly impossible to decipher, [with] one incomprehensible clause after another.”[1]

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Given that the Iraq escalation is going to drain more National Guard and money resources from the states, over twenty states legislatures have now introduced resolutions condemning the escalation. I'm proud that Progressive States Network has been doing the lead organizing on this effort (you can see the campaign page at http://www.progressivestates.org/iraq) but the speed of the response by state leaders reflects the grassroots energy against this idiotic escalation across the country.

And the twenty states aren't just the usual suspects -- see here for the full listing of states but they include Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma and North Dakota -- but for a taste of what's happening in the states, check out this video from a legislative hearing in Kansas, where combat veteran Thomas Young testified.

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My thanks to TPM Cafe for inviting me to respond for a second, and final, time to the numerous letters about my essay on Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic. I am particularly pleased by Ernest Wilson's post since it concerns how Americans get their information but also because we knew each other many years ago at Berkeley. It is good to hear from you, Ernie. You recognize that the problem of an informed public, one of the most rudimentary requirements in order to play the citizen role in a republic, depends on whether the people have enough information to do elementary oversight of the government. In the U.S. today, the answer is an unequivocal no -- not just because of secrecy but also because of the failings of the "free" press. The Australian reactionary, Rupert Murdoch, exemplifies the most corrupt practices of the old Fleet Street. (If you can ever find a copy of Murray Sayle's legally suppressed Crooked Sixpence [1960], it is probably the most hilarious roman à clef ever written on how the press lords operate.) Today, Murdoch owns the most popular jingoist and right-wing TV channel, Fox, and is now threatening to buy a large percentage of the Los Angeles Times. All of the TV channels are in the hands of conglomerates who are in the "news business" only for the advertising revenue. The Romans actually got better circuses. So long as it is still beyond the "Department of Justice," the Internet offers the only conceivable relief.

My approach to this problem is, I suspect, typical.

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Count me with the ever-levelheaded James Fallows, weekend wise man David Kurtz, and motherblog commander Josh in worrying out loud that the Crackpot-in-Chief and his Crony-in-Chief, playing their usual game of double-down, are going to look for a way out--a way sideways, really--from their impossible mission in Iraq by pretexting their way into war with Iran.

If any underscoring is needed, never forget how reckless this crew is, how unaccountable not only in the sense of heedless but in the sense of irrational. Here is Karen DeYoung in this morning's WP:

The success of the Bush administration's new Iraq strategy depends on a series of rapid and dramatic political and economic reforms that even the plan's authors have little confidence will work.

And further down, a tidbit of the way they "think":

"They wondered could I give them some [names] from the provinces or anywhere" from which to construct a new political base, recalled one think-tank expert called to the State Department in December.

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In the debate on Iran the Bush administration seems to be doing similar posturing, spinning and framing as we saw in the run-up on Iraq. Maximize the sense of threat; make some effort at diplomatic options, but only some, and while casting aspersions on their prospects; and start ratcheting up military measures.

Some Bush critics question whether the issue of Iranian nuclear proliferation itself is overblown in one or both of two respects. One is the strength of the evidence that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. The other is how serious an issue it is even if they are.

I do think the evidence is pretty strong that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. And I do think that it’s a serious issue both directly in terms of Iran with nuclear weapons and indirectly in its fueling further proliferation effects on the region.

In that context I’ve done an analysis of sanctions against Iran, just issued by the Century Foundation. Sanctions are not to be oversold; they’re always a component of a strategy, not a strategy in themselves. But they also shouldn’t be undersold, including in this case.

For 20 years, we have heard all about the business case for offering workers maternity leaves, flexible schedules, and other benefits. But those discussions virtually always focus on the business benefits of keeping high-human capital workers – managers and professionals. The Project on Attorney Retention (PAR), for example, has made headway with employers by publicizing estimates that losing a second-year associate costs law firms in excess of $200,000.

Much less work has been done on how offering family-friendly benefits helps the bottom line of businesses that employ low-wage workers. So I want to make sure that people notice the story on the front page of The New York Times Sunday Business section. Attracted by the picture of Mick Jaggar on the cover, I noticed a story about Steven T. Bigari, who runs a string of McDonald’s franchises in Colorado Springs and spends a lot of time thinking about how to make life easier for his employees.

He’s hemmed in.

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