Brief Commentary on The Church Scandal

Just remember that Thomas Becket was sainted largely for his insistence that priestly offenders be tried in ecclesiastical courts, not civil courts.  (see also here)

In late 1163 Henry decided to abolish certain privileges enjoyed by the clergy, which exempted them, when they were accused of crimes, from the jurisdiction of the civil courts. Criminous clerks, as they were known, were instead allowed to stand trial before a bishop in the ecclesiastical (church) courts, which usually resulted in much milder punishments.

So the Catholic Church has been defending it's criminals for thousands of years, while granting its highest honor to those who protect them.

We Have Eaten the Low-Hanging Fruit. What Next?

The Health Bill is now Law.  I'm not sure how it will work out.  I think it will benefit me personally.  The rest of us may have to wait to find out.

One thought that I haven't seen anywhere else.  Let's be generous and assume that the deficit reduction mechanisms actually work, and this bill is deficit neutral (or even slightly beneficial as the CBO claims).  Now, I don't really believe it will work that way, but let's say they do work.

The mechanisms involve roughly one trillion dollars in higher taxes on the rich, and savings in Medicare.  No skin off my back (for now).  These are, to some extent, the easy fixes, the most politically palatable, the "low hanging fruit" in the battle to decrease our deficits.

One trillion dollars is a lot of low-hanging fruit.  Instead of using them to pay down the deficit, we have eaten them.  Eaten them for a reasonable cause, but eaten them.  They are gone.  When the time comes to really tackle the deficit, we will have to reach higher.  One trillion is "easy" deficit reduction is gone.  Get ready for higher taxes that impact the middle class, and large cuts in other government programs.


Upon further searching, I noticed that Greg Mankiw makes a similar point here.

Clever media reporting on the CBO numbers

Most of the news articles say something like:

"cut federal deficits by an estimated $138 billion over a decade. 

Congressional analysts estimate the cost of the two bills combined would be $940 billion over a decade."

Now, maybe I'm missing something, but the only way this math works is if the bill involves a tax increase of 940+138 billion.  Which is 1.078 trillion. According to the WSJ,

        "The answer lies mainly in new taxes and curbs on Medicare spending."

Duh, so I was half right.  Wish the rest of the media would be more honest.  The New York Times does mention, in passing

"it would reduce projected federal budget deficits by $138 billion over the next decade, with additional tax revenue and Medicare savings."

I like their use of "revenue" and "savings".  Next time Republicans want to cut a government program, I assume the Times will call that "savings", not a "cut".  Sure they will.  Buried near the bottom are the hard figures of $438 billion in new taxes.   (Same for the Yahoo article)  The L.A. Times, somewhat more honestly, calls them "cuts in federal Medicare expenses", which, of course, are certainly not cuts in your Medicare benefits.  No sirree Bob.  Nice spin by the mainstream media.

Anyway, hope that clarifies things for anybody else who was confused.  Now, the benefits of the bill and greatly increased coverage will, all in all, likely be worth the extra taxes and Medicare cuts.  Especially for those of us who aren't rich and aren't on Medicare.  :-)  I just wish both sides could have a serious discussion of these vital issues and act like grownups.

re: Jim Bunning. Paul Krugman, like many is wrong

Paul Krugman writes an editorial that can't get two sentences without being wrong.

"For days, Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky exploited Senate rules to block a one-month extension of unemployment benefits"

Jim Bunning did not exploit some obscure Senate rule.  The Senate asked for unanimous consent on a bill and he said no.  Surely well within his rights - if all Senators are required to unanimously support all bills, there's no point in having them.  Apparently, Krugman is unaware of the whole purpose of the Senate, to vote yes or no on things, and thinks that voting no in itself is an evil, exploiting a Senate rule.

Actually, Bunning wanted the Senate to follow it's own rules, "PayGo", and pay for the$10 billion expense.  Note that one of those links leads to the Democratic Senate Budget Committee website, which says:

However, this point of order is not self-enforcing like the sequestration process; a Senator must raise the point of order against any violating legislation.

In other words, Bunning followed precisely the rules, as created by the Democrats, to raise the point of order about Paygo.  To balance the cost, he proposed, quite reasonably, using some TARP funds.  He also proposed removing the "black-liquor" tax-credit.  But this was nixed on a procedural issue by Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif).   Nobody is writing how she exploited Senate rules to block his bill.

Some of the angst was that the benefits were about to expire in days.  True - real people would be affected, and that would be painful.  Harry Reid decared it an "emergency", as one of his aides wrote:

“The short term extension of expiring provisions is designated emergency spending because in economic downturns of this magnitude the Senate has traditionally treated extraordinary assistance to the unemployed as an emergency,”

Now, the Senate knew a long time ago that unemployment was running out for some recipients.  Was the Senate suddenly surprised that the economy is in bad shape?  Did they have a mass fantasy that millions of new jobs would be created in February?  No, they are too lazy to plan ahead, and rushed through some last minute bill.  Hmm, that does sound "traditional" for our representatives, so I agree with that part of the statement.

All Harry Reid had to do was

1. agree quickly to spend TARP funds
2. agree quickly to allow Bunning's black-liquor amendment to proceed
3. Call for a cloture vote.  Presumably, it would pass about 98-2, and the Bill would then get passed.

But the Senate leader chose to try to make a political point, trusting the press to misreport the facts.  As Paul Krugman, unsurprisingly, did. See here for a blog about more misreporting of Bunning's actions as a "filibuster".  But it may have backfired - enough people are getting the truth to realize that Bunning may have picked the wrong time and place for his solitary stand, but he definitely had some right on his side.

One later addition.  As part of his column, Krugman writes that Republicans are in a weird moral universe, and that extending unemployment is "textbook economics".  However, as James Taranto points out, in Krugman's own textbook, Krugman wrote:

"Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect"

 Now, these are unusually tough times, I don't think that this one instance of extending unemployment insurance will cause structural unemployment, but a good find by Taranto.