Oh, Thank you for chiming in! I'd hoped an Ohioan would stop by and give us the scoop--or at least a ground-level perspective on the investigation.

So you're saying there may be some fire under the smoke? Even so, it sounds like these people have been around, and doing whatever they're doing, for a long, long time. Curious that the FBI/IRS just noticed it in the past month, no?.

Posted at August 10, 2008 3:00 PM in response to A political prosecution in Ohio? NYT doesn't ask.

OH! My kingdom for a preview function! Sorry about the formatting errors...

Posted at August 10, 2008 2:09 PM in response to A political prosecution in Ohio? NYT doesn't ask.

I think it's safe to assume that you're not a supporter of Hillary. Therefore, what you think of her or her gender isn't the issue. The point is that her gender IS important to a lot of the women who support her--women whose votes we'll need in the general, no matter who the nominee is.

What she "brings" to the ticket is those supporters. Steve and Liam *seem* to be saying that those supporters are of no value. No, that's not what they *actually* said. But that's what it feels like they said. Again, I don't think she should be V.P. But using that "no value" argument is going to piss off those supporters. Hell, it pissed ME off, and I'm not a partisan in this. I like both of the remaining candidates.

There are other reasons she might not be the best pick for V.P. Use those.

Posted at March 11, 2008 8:02 PM in response to Why Hillary Will Take the Vice-Presidency

She brings nothing of value to the ticket.

Yeah. It's not like the women's vote is important to Democratic chances or anything...

Oh, wait...

Maybe women should just stay home if she's not on the ticket. Then we can discuss what might or might not be a "value" for the ticket.

My point is not that he should offer her the spot. As I've posted elsewhere, I wouldn't want her on the ticket as V.P. anyway. It would be a demotion - if she's not at the top of the ticket, she'd have far more power, in her own right, as a Senator. And, maybe she *should* stand for Majority Leader, although I'm not sure about that either.

My point is this immediate, automatic dismissal of the first serious female candidate as not "bringing anything of value." It may look that way to you, as a man. I can assure you, for me and many other women--especially my age--it is of enormous value.

(Before the obamabots chime in, yes, I know there are many women supporting Obama. Not discounting that. But you'd have to be particularly--and I suspect, willfully--blind not to see how insulting this "argument" is.)

Of course, the way things are going for Spitzer, maybe she should run for Governor of NY.

Posted at March 11, 2008 6:18 PM in response to Why Hillary Will Take the Vice-Presidency

I have recently read of an idea called "cram-down" and I wondered if you had any thoughts on that. If I understand it correctly, "cram down" (during bankruptcy, or maybe foreclosure proceedings) would reduce the mortgage to the fair market value of the house, and everything above that would be considered "unsecured debt" to the bank. This would take legislation amending bankruptcy laws.

I may have misunderstood, or described it incorrectly (if so, please enlighten me if you can), but can you explain what the pros and cons might be of such a solution?

Posted at December 10, 2007 10:51 AM in response to The Teaser Freezer verse the Housing Market Meltdown

A graphic to illustrate. I made this graphic using the information from this 2004 report (pdf) from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy

When I reduced it to fit on a 8-1/2 x 11 page, the text got muddy, so I decided I needed to do it over again, and never got around to it. But it still illustrates this issue pretty well, I think.

Posted at April 30, 2006 10:23 AM in response to Raising Taxes on People Who Work

In my view, it's a risk vs. reward question. I start from the premise that the current system is the problem. The only "people" it really works for are the insurance companies and, increasingly (as more diseases are treated by drugs), the pharmaceutical companies.

Given that premise, what are the risks of pursuing an incrementalist approach? In my view, the biggest risk is that, if we win, we simply perpetuate the problem - in perhaps a slightly mitigated form, but the current system will still be in place, helping the fewest number of people at the greatest cost. In that sense, "winning" is virtually indistinguishable from "losing" -because the risks of losing with an incrementalist approach are that the problem is perpetuated, and the reward of winning is that the problem is perpetuated - except that if we "win," we'll be complicit in that perpetuation.

What are the risks of pursuing a "UHC" approach? Well, if we lose, the system is perpstuated. That risk is absolutely cancelled out by the fact that it's the *same* risk as persuing an incrementalist approach.

But what are the rewards of pursuing a "UHC" approach? It fixes the problem AND provides the opportunity for a paradigm shift in both the way the Democratic party is perceived by the working class AND the way we as a society view government's value in solving problems.

We need not argue that government can solve *every* problem, but we can, and should, argue that government can, and should, have a role in solving problems that affect ALL of us.

In short, we won't be much worse off if we lose (and in pure partisan terms, I'd suggest we'll be better off if we lose on a UHC approach than we will be if we win on a incrementalist approach), and we'll be far, far better off - both as a country and as a party - if we win on an UHC approach.

I say we go for broke.

Posted at March 5, 2006 12:56 PM in response to How Scared Are We?

I say try the Kennedy/Stabenow bill. Why? Because I think the donut hole will become an issue sooner than you or most seniors think it will.

One thing that doesn't seem to be clear to most people is that the donut hole kicks in after most seniors have spent just $750, not the $2,250 number that has gotten all the attention. The $2,250 is the amount of *total* drug costs, not your out of pocket costs.

This graphic ("borrowed" from a pdf on the website of my dad's employer, DuPont) says it better than any text description I've seen or could write.

People have that $2,250 number stuck in their heads, and even my mom (who's no dummy with numbers, she kept books for several of the organizations she belonged to for years), told me that it wouldn't affect them because they "only" spent $1,500 on prescriptions (their portion of the prescription drug benefit my dad's former employer offered its retirees) last year. And they don't take a lot of prescriptions, and several of them are generics.

The donut hole will be an issue long before the midterms, and I suspect even "moderate" dems will come flocking to a message of "we will eliminate that for you" after hearing from their constituents.

Posted at March 2, 2006 11:48 AM in response to The Politics of the Doughnut Hole

Firefighting is, I think, not the most favorable ground for fighting the "equality" battle. It requires a physical strength that fewer women than men meet. (I was going to say most women don't meet, but I don't know if that's true. And I also don't know if most men could meet it these days either, in this land of couch potatos).

In general, I've always felt that anybody who *could* do the job should have an equal opportunity to *get* the job - and if they get the job, to be free from harassment or unfair practices to drive them out.

But I don't agree with lowering standards that actually *matter* on the job. Now, when they used to have "standards" like "you have to be six feet tall," that's just a ruse to keep women out. But being able to carry an unconscious person out of the burning building? That's a reasonable requirement for a firefighter, IMHO. If a woman can't do that, she doesn't get the job and that should be the end of the matter. Same as if a man couldn't do it.

Posted at February 14, 2006 2:54 PM in response to The skinny pink paycheck...

You might want to remember that Paul Hackett didn't get into the race until Sherrod Brown said that he wasn't going to. Brown changed his mind when DeWine started looking more beatable. Who's the "team player" now?

Posted at February 14, 2006 9:46 AM in response to Statement from Paul Hackett