Death of the super model (Ruben Andersson, 6/30/09, guardian.co.uk)
The Swedish dream is no more.Swedes were roused from this dream with the 1986 assassination of prime minister Olof Palme. Palme might have left behind "a country where no one was poor and no one had room for optimism" as Andrew Brown puts it, but it was Sweden's homemade financial meltdown of the 1990s that finally killed off the dream. Poverty was added to the pessimism. Savage cuts hit schools, unemployment rocketed, the krona sank – leaving the social system in a disarray from which it has not recovered. The conservative government at the time has lately been praised worldwide for its handling of the crisis. Actually the bankers were rewarded, not punished, while the rest of the country is still reeling from the cuts, selloffs and dashed dreams the crisis provoked. But the idea of a well-oiled Swedish model insulated from the shockwaves of capitalism runs on like a Volvo. The reality, like troubled, Ford-owned Volvo itself, is more globalised and gloomy than that.
Take healthcare. Swedes do not enjoy free public care: it costs to see a GP. That is, if you manage to see one. Queues are long and scandals rack the system. Psychiatric care, the source of many such scandals, has a near-medieval penchant for authoritarianism with few European equivalents. People are locked up for months for not taking medicine, given no therapy, and spat out of the system into despair and destitution. The mentally ill die in wards and in outpatient isolation. And they do not even have charities to turn to because state-run healthcare is supposed to work: this is Sweden, after all. [...]
Even being in the system is less rewarding than it was. Unemployment benefits are falling behind those of other countries, and access to social security involves Big Brother-style controls most Europeans would abhor. The state's iron grip remains even as the care that used to go with it has gone. Swedes might lack Britain's profusion of CCTVs, but their lives are scrutinised by an armada of bureaucrats. A new law lets authorities tap all phone and internet traffic crossing the borders. Norwegian lawyers have sued over privacy infringement, leaving the prime minister perplexed – because in Sweden, the state is there to help us.
Just as Sweden was in the vanguard of postwar social democracy, it has since the 1990s become a neoliberal experiment.
The John Roberts Method: How the Supreme Court is patiently bending the law to the right. (Tom Goldstein, June 30, 2009, New Republic)
Here is what strikes me most about this Term. The Court is moving steadily in the direction of rolling back Warren Court-era precedents that conservatives view as significant overreaching of the judicial role. To be clear, that isn't the Court's principal occupation. Most of its docket is filled with important but ordinary questions of federal law. But it is a significant trend.I am struck in particular by the opinions of the Chief Justice that seem to lay down markers that will be followed in later generations of cases. NAMUDNO details constitutional objections to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that seem ready-made for a later decision invalidating the statute if it is not amended. Herring contains significant language that can later be cited in favor of a broad good-faith exception to the Fourth Amendment exclusionary rule that applies to individual police mistakes.
If I'm right about the direction of the case law, the Court's methodology is striking. It is reinforcing its own legitimacy with opinions that later can be cited to demonstrate that it is not rapidly or radically changing the law. This approach may be in the starkest relief if next Term the Court cites its recent decision in Wisconsin Right to Life as precedent for concluding that McConnell v. FEC and Austin v. Michigan have been significantly undermined and should be overruled. The plurality and concurrence in Wisconsin Right to Life famously debated how aggressively the Court should go in overruling prior campaign finance precedent. The Chief Justice urged patience--not moving more quickly than required--and the wait may not have been long.
Fortunately, the UR too is an intellectual rather than a governor so he's appointed an Alito-type, not a Roberts/Miers-type.
Health Savings Accounts Can Save Michigan Money (Mr. Michael D. LaFaive and Mr. James Porterfield, June 30, 2009, Mackinac Center)
(Editor's note: The following is an edited transcript of testimony Fiscal Policy Director Michael D. LaFaive to the Michigan House Tax Policy Committee on June 21, 2009.) [...]A Health Savings Account (HSA) is a thrice blessed tax-advantaged account into which money is placed by an employer and or an employee to pay for ongoing medical expenses. These accounts are married to a qualified consumer-directed health plan (CDHP) insurance policy to cover unpredictable big-ticket expenses.
Most people have become familiar with the general concept: The money in the HSA is spent for routine or less costly types of care, up to the point at which the deductible is met and then the actual insurance kicks in. For example, a 2009 federal law requires that HSA deductibles be at least $1,150 for self-coverage and $2,300 for family coverage. There are ceilings, too. These accounts are "thrice blessed" because money going in is untaxed by the federal government, it earns interest tax free, and it can be withdrawn and used for qualified medical expenses tax free.
Savings accrue to employers because high deductible insurance premiums cost less than premiums associated with more traditional insurance, including PPOs or HMOs. The opportunity to rein in health care costs and also provide consumers with greater health care choices has led to an explosion of growth in the use of HSAs. An estimate by the AHIP Center for Policy and Research indicates that the number of people using HSA/CDHPs has grown from 1 million in early 2005 to more than 8 million by January 2009. In 2008, large and small group HSA coverage leapt 35 percent and 34 percent respectively.
In the fall of 2007, my colleague James Porterfield and I published a short essay that included very conservative estimates on what the state could save if it adopted HSAs for all its civil service employees. We estimated savings of $16.2 million in the first year with total savings growing to $1.1 billion through 2015. The assumptions included the state (as employer) paying 100 percent of the legally allowable contributions to the employees' HSAs, and 100 percent of the premiums associated with the high-deductible insurance policy. As an aside, this is a very rare occurrence. A survey of 6,000 employers nationwide published by Information Strategies Inc. indicated that fewer than 10 percent provided employees with 100 percent premium support.
We are in the process of revisiting the HSA concept and recalculating our numbers based on insurance costs more in line with those for private sector employees. We do so knowing that state employees currently make premium contributions of 5 percent to 10 percent depending on their coverage. Under our assumptions the state would pay 100 percent of the premiums for the HDIP and fund 75 percent of the legally allowable employee contributions to each civil servant.
Based on these and other assumptions, we estimate first-year savings of $106 million from moving state civil servants into HSAs, and cumulative savings of up to $5.9 billion through 2021. This staggering figure represents the difference between estimated costs of CDHPs at a 3.5 percent annual increase (an upper bound for such plans) versus the upper limit of 9 percent annual increases projected for PPO premiums by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan.
Big Money in Cap-and-Trade (Donald Marron, June 30, 2009)
The number one thing you should know about this bill is that the allowances are worth big money: almost $1 trillion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and more in subsequent decades.There are many good things the government could do with that kind of money. Perhaps reduce out-of-control deficits? Or pay for expanding health coverage? Or maybe, as many economists have suggested, reduce payroll taxes and corporate income taxes to offset the macroeconomic costs of limiting greenhouse gases?
Choosing among those options would be a worthy policy debate. Except for one thing: the House bill would give away most of the allowances for free. And it spends virtually all the revenue that comes from allowance auctions.
As a result, the budget hawks, health expanders, and pro-growth forces have only crumbs to bargain over. From a budgeteer’s perspective, the House bill is a disaster.
Fireworks over Baghdad as Iraqis take over (The National, June 30. 2009)
Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities today after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the US combat role in the country.A countdown clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the Monday midnight deadline passed for US combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside cities.
Euro-Zone CPI Posts First-Ever Drop (ILONA BILLINGTON, 6/30/09, WSJ)
Consumer prices in the 16 countries that use the euro declined in June from a year earlier, marking the first negative reading since records began in January 1997.The euro zone's annual consumer-price-index rate fell 0.1% in June from a year earlier, the European Union's official statistics agency, Eurostat, said Tuesday.[...]
Other data reported earlier Tuesday suggest that consumer prices may continue to fall for some time. The forward-looking producer-price indexes for May from both France and Italy dropped sharply from a year earlier
Rudy's Back! : As speculation builds about his campaign for governor, Rudy Giuliani tells The Daily Beast’s John Avlon how he’d tame the nation’s most dysfunctional legislature. Can America’s Mayor become New York’s Governor? (John Avlon, 6/30/09, Daily Beast)
In Albany, the inmates are running the asylum. The state senate is entering its fourth week of partisan lockdown, cementing its reputation as the most dysfunctional legislature in the nation. Mayor Bloomberg’s successful school reform program could expire mid-week if no action is taken. A recent poll showed that 20% of New Yorkers want to leave the state amid rising taxes, poverty and unemployment rates, and parallels to the bad old days of the 1970s. At least one guy’s not buying it: “Once you say something’s ungovernable,” Rudy Giuliani told me, “You remove accountability.” [...]New Yorkers know Rudy Giuliani does best in a crisis. I’ve seen that up close, working with him in City Hall. And the Empire State is currently wrestling with two huge problems with long-term ramifications.
First, the mess in Albany, where corruption and scandal have left only one out of four statewide elected Albany officials where the voters put them less than three years ago. The serial dysfunction has hit tragi-comic proportions in recent weeks, with party defections and parliamentary games like one party turning out the lights while the other locks the legislative door and hides the key. Literally.
Second, the state economy is a mess: New York has lost 1.5 million people this decade and 195,000 private sector jobs in the past year. Upstate manufacturing jobs have declined by 24% and the only sector growing north of the Hudson River Valley is the government. In the face of the worst economic crisis in a generation, the Democrat-controlled legislature raised taxes by $8 billion and spending by an unprecedented 9 percent.
Some people see parallels to the shape of New York State today and the shape of New York City when Rudy ran for mayor.
Coach quits Colombian team over death threats (Reuters, June 30, 2009)
Santa Fe coach Ruben Israel resigned and left Colombia on Monday after being threatened with death if he did not keep a particular player in his squad.
U.S. to Forgive Indonesian Debt in Exchange for Conservation Plan (Tom Wright, 6/30/09, WSJ)
The United States will sign an agreement Tuesday to forgive nearly $30 million in Indonesian debt in return for the large Southeast Asian country agreeing to protect forests on Sumatra Island, which is home to endangered tigers, elephants, rhinos and orangutan. [...]The U.S. in the past has organized smaller debt-for-nature swaps with countries like Guatemala, Botswana, the Philippines and Peru. Under the Tropical Forest Conservation Act of 1998, developing nations with a significant tropical forest, a democratically-elected government, and an economic reform agenda, are eligible for debt forgiveness in return for conservation efforts.
Iraq's next milestone: the Kurdish question: The survival of the country depends on bridging the Kurd-Arab divide. (The Monitor's Editorial Board, June 29, 2009, CS Monitor)
Tension between Mr. Maliki – an Arab – and the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government in the north has escalated significantly in the last year. It touches issues of fundamental importance – national unity, oil wealth, and the balance of power between the central government and the regions. Left unaddressed – or worse, provoked – the Kurd-Arab divide could split the Iraqi state.