The View from Right Field

A Cubs Hero, Adrian Cardenas, Retires

In July of 2012, I wrote a post in which I called Adrian Cardenas a “Cubs hero”.  I called him a Cubs hero because he broke up a no-hitter that A.J. Burnett of the Pittsburgh Pirates had going against the Cubs with two outs in the bottom of the eighth.

After the season was over, I lost track of Adrian.  I now find that he retired, or as he says, quit, after the season last year.  He wrote a very interesting article about quitting that was posted at NewYorker.com yesterday.  You should read it; it’s good.

Just one comment, other than to say “thank you” to Adrian, once again, for breaking up the no-hitter:  The paid attendance at the game was 33,000, not the 45,000 that Adrian mentioned.  On the other hand, there were a lot more than 45,000 fans cheering if you count all of us watching on TV and radio.

Mistakes in Health Insurance: East Germany in 1982; United States in 2013

In 1982 we took a trip to East Germany.  While we were there, we met a young East German couple.  Here is a short excerpt from the report I wrote, in 1983, about the trip*:

“At another point in our conversation, we told Helga and Albert that in the United States, it was common for people to be able to decide whether they wanted to buy health insurance for themselves.  Helga noted that in East Germany one did not have such decisions to make.  She said that the government made these decisions for people so there was no need to worry about making mistakes.”

And to think that now, 31 years later, our government is deciding what kind of provisions should be in the health insurance that we buy – so we too, like East Germans in 1982, do not need to worry about making mistakes.
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* A long time ago, I posted a copy of the whole report here.  I am probably prejudiced, but I think it makes for interesting reading about a country that no longer exists.

Obama Lied. My Health Plan Died.

Here is what President Obama said about his healthcare plan, when he was trying to get it passed:

"If you like your insurance plan, you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you."

Here is Jay Carney explaining what the President really meant:

JAY CARNEY: Well, let's just be clear.  What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there is going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services every insurance provider has to provide.  So that an individual shopping for insurance, when he or she purchases that insurance knows that maternity care is covered, that preventive services are covered, that mental health services are covered, that the insurance policy you buy doesn't have an annual limit or a lifetime limit, that there are out of pocket expenses capped at a maximum level, both annually and for a lifetime.

So, it's true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.  There are some that can be grandfathered, if people want to keep insurance that is substandard.  But what is also true, Americans who have insurance on the existing individual market will now have numerous options available to them and 6 out of 10 will pay less than $100 per month in premiums for better insurance.

It's not even an apples and apples comparison.  This is qualitatively better insurance coverage than what was available in many cases to Americans around the country. In many areas where the insurance market was so lightly regulated you often didn't know what you were getting.  So you could sign an insurance policy, get that plan, pay a lot of up front money, premiums, out-of-pocket expenses, and then find out that because of the fine print, it does not cover the actual condition that you have.  That will no longer be the case.  So, I get that, you know, what the effort here is, but the fact is –

ED HENRY: But the president said one thing and you are admitting that that's not going to be the case.  That not everyone is going to keep their plan.  That they will admiringly wind up with probably better insurance in the long run.  So, they may be healthier, that should be said.  But the president sold it as if you have a plan, you will get to keep it and that's not true.

CARNEY: Ed, I appreciate what you're trying to do.  Eighty-plus percent of the American people already get insurance through their employer, through Medicare or through Medicaid.  They don't have to worry about or change anything.  Those remaining individuals who do not have insurance at all now will have it available to them through, or don't have insurance at all and get it through the individual market will now have it available to them through expanded Medicaid services in those states that have accepted the expanded Medicaid program, as well as through the health care marketplaces.  And it is correct, I take your point, it is correct that substandard plans that don't provide minimum services that have a lot of fine print that leaves consumers in the lurch often because of annual caps, or lifetime caps, or carve outs for some preexisting conditions, those are no longer allowed because the Affordable Care Act is built on the premise that health care is not a privilege, it is a right and there should be a minimum standard of plans available to Americans around the country.*

In other words:  “Of course it’s not true.  But the plans these people had were bad plans, and they are stupid to not realize that they shouldn’t want them.  We’re going to give them what they need, regardless of what they think they want.  Because we know what’s good for them, even if they don’t.  And they should thank us – because we’re smarter.”
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* I’m sorry I had to put all of that in really small print, but Mr. Carney’s explanation really does sound that the kind of fine print they always in legal documents or the stuff at the end of those radio commercials where the announcers talk really fast.

The NSA Tracks Our Phones; Now Government Wants to Track Our Cars

According to this article in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune, the federal Highway Trust Fund will soon be broke.  As cars get more fuel-efficient, people buy less gas, which means the federal government collects less money from the federal gas tax, which is 18.4 cents per gallon and hasn’t been raised in twenty years.

In order to get more money for the Trust Fund, some people are proposing that we install a device in every car that would keep track of each mile the car drives and would then transmit the information to the government, which would send a bill to the motorist.  If a GPS and a timer were included in the device, it would allow for variable charges based on when and where the car was driven.  Some environmentalists and highway planners like the idea of variable charges, also called “mileage-based user fees,” because they could be used to reduce congestion and emissions.  The Reason Foundation, a libertarian organization, likes the idea:

“‘This is not just a tax going into a black hole,’ said Adrian Moore, vice president of policy at Reason.  ‘People are paying more directly into what they are getting.’”

Hmmm, let’s see.  The NSA is already checking our phone records and e-mails to see whom we are contacting and, in the case of phone records, how long we talk to people.  They are also collecting our e-mail buddy lists and address books.  Now somebody is suggesting we should have a GPS-type device in our cars that will record where we are driving and when – and send that to the government, too.

To say that is a little scary is an understatement.  I wonder if the people in Washington can be trusted with this kind of information – and power.  But almost everybody in the Tribune article thought it was a great idea.  The only hint of any concern was this: 

“The tea party is aghast.  The ACLU is deeply concerned, too, raising a variety of privacy issues.”

The Tea Party and the ACLU are not what you would normally think of as natural allies, but in this case, they have it right.  This is too much information to give the government, especially when there is a much easier way to raise the money for the Highway Trust Fund: just raise the federal gas tax.  That is a much better idea than having the government tracking our every step.

Sanctions on Iran: It’s a Matter of Trust

The Obama administration is pushing hard to get Congress to wait on new, tougher sanctions on Iran.  The Administration feels that its diplomatic efforts need time to see if they can work.  The Administration is hopeful about its negotiations with new Iranian President Hasan Rouhani and argues that further sanction would undermine President Rouhani’s position vis-à-vis hardliners in Iran.  President Rouhani is, in the Administration’s view, fighting hardline groups in Iran who want to continue Iran’s nuclear program and who are critical of any outreach to the West.

According to The Wall Street Journal:

“New sanctions in Iran, Obama administration officials believe, could only embolden the hard-liners to attack Mr. Rouhani.  ‘We can always impose new sanctions later if the Iranians pull back from the talks,’ said a senior U.S. official.”

I understand the Administration’s position.  What the Administration is missing, however, is a couple of things.  First is trust.  Lots of members of Congress don’t trust the Administration.  Failed budget negotiations between the President and House John Boehner have eroded trust.  Senator Marco Rubio says one of the reasons that immigration reform is going to have a hard time passing is because people in Congress don’t trust the Administration to follow through on its promises of enforcement if the law is passed.

When it comes to foreign policy, the President’s indecision on Syria make it hard for anyone, in Congress or elsewhere, to know what his final position will be on any matter.  It’s like musical chairs – without knowing how many times the band is going to play.

More specifically on Iran, while the Administration touts the success of sanctions on Iran, what they don’t say is that many of the current sanctions were passed over the Administration’s objections.  The Administration likes the results, but it opposed the policies in the first place.

This is where the Administration’s comment that “we can always impose new sanctions later” doesn’t work.  Many in Congress don’t trust the Administration to do it.  They are worried the Administration will always think that one more negotiation session will result in success; that one more delay will get the Iranians to agree.  They don’t think that the Administration would ever admit negotiations had failed and support new sanctions or that they would do it too late.

Second, it’s not just a matter of the United States imposing new sanctions if talks with Iran fail.  To the extent sanctions are working now, it is because lots of countries are imposing them.  It hasn’t been easy to get some of those countries to agree to sanctions.  If we back off now, other countries will, too.  If talks fail, we not only have to impose new sanctions ourselves, we have to get other countries to impose them, too.  Many countries don’t care about Iran’s nuclear program.  They just want to buy oil.  They just want to sell stuff.  Re-imposing sanctions, after backing off on them, would be really hard, if not impossible. 

I understand why the Administration thinks putting off additional sanctions on Iran (and probably even lessening up a little on current sanctions) would be good.  The problem that many in Congress, and elsewhere, have is a lack of trust – in Iran and the Administration.

Drones: Not Pretty But Unfortunately Necessary

Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued reports on Tuesday claiming that civilian deaths from U.S. drone strikes are much higher than the Obama administration has admitted and claiming that the United States is not following the standards President Obama set for drone strikes in a speech he gave last May.

According to a report in The Washington Post:

“In Yemen, Human Rights Watch investigated six selected airstrikes since 2009 and concluded that at least 57 of the 82 people killed were civilians, including a pregnant woman and three children who perished in a September 2012 attack.

In Pakistan, Amnesty International investigated nine suspected U.S. drone strikes that occurred between May 2012 and July 2013 in the territory of North Waziristan.  The group said it found strong evidence that more than 30 civilians were killed in four of the attacks.”

With respect to the standards that the groups are claiming the strikes violated, The Wall Street Journal described them as follows:

“[T]hat a terrorist pose ‘a continuing and imminent threat’ to Americans; that no other government can address the threat effectively; and that there is ‘near-certainty’ no civilians will be killed or injured.”

Three comments.  First, regarding the use of drones:  I understand the advantages of drones.  They are much more accurate that bombing by airplanes.  Our people are not put in danger.  They probably have a lower chance of avoiding civilian/innocent casualties than even a ground attack. 

On the other hand, drones raise all kinds of practical and, unfortunately, legal questions.  For example, drone attacks seem very close to assassination.  Is that okay?  Also, how do you determine when you can use them?  They’re not law enforcement, so they must be some kind of war.  But how do you determine who is the enemy?  When was the war declared or authorized?  What about attacking people in another country’s territory?  When is that okay: sometimes, always, only if the other country can’t or won’t do something itself, etc.?  I don’t have the time or the knowledge to even list all of these questions, let alone answer them, but there are a lot, and the answers are not necessarily clear or easy.

Also, when you use a drone to kill somebody, you are giving up the chance to interrogate them.  (You do, however, avoid the problem of where to send them for questioning and how long to keep them; i.e., “Gitmo”-type questions.  There are some who wonder whether avoiding such issues is one reason the Obama administration has used drones so much.  {Sorry for the cynicism.})

Finally, drones can cause problems for the U.S. with the people we are trying to protect.  A report in The New York Times earlier this week talked about the effects drones can have on communities where attacks are made:

“In interviews over the past year, residents [of Miram Shah, a Pakistani frontier town] paint a portrait of extended terror and strain within a tribal society caught between vicious militants and the American drones hunting them.

‘The drones are like the angels of death,’ said Nazeer Gul, a shopkeeper in Miram Shah.  ‘Only they know when and where they will strike.’ …

[Miram Shah] has become a fearful and paranoid town, dealt at least 13 drone strikes since 2008, with an additional 25 in adjoining districts — more than any other urban settlement in the world.

Even when the missiles do not strike, buzzing drones hover day and night, scanning the alleys and markets with roving high-resolution cameras. …

While the strike rate has dropped drastically in recent months, the constant presence of circling drones — and accompanying tension over when, or whom, they will strike — is a crushing psychological burden for many residents.”

In other words, there are lots of issues with the use of drones.  It’s not simple.  And if you think it’s complicated now, wait until someone flies one over us.

Second, President Obama’s rules for using drones:  Reading them (see the quote from The Wall Street Journal above), they almost sound as if there were written for a textbook.  Certainly, if you are trying to justify the use of drones, especially to people who don’t like the concept of them, they look great. 

On the other hand, I wonder how realistic they are.  They sound more like the kind of thing somebody like President Obama would have included in a campaign speech when he was a senator running to be president than something that would work in the real world.  For example, if there must be a “near-certainty” of no civilian casualties before a drone can be used, how can we ever use them?  Where is the allowance for the fog of war?  Are people being set up for violating them, so commanders can claim it’s not their fault?  Where are the shades of gray?

Third, so what do we do?  Drones aren’t perfect.  But the world isn’t, either.  Unless you don’t want to use drones and you are writing the rules so they can’t effectively be used, the rule can’t be that drones can only be used if you never make a mistake.  That’s not going to happen.  If you are willing to use drones, you have to allow for mistakes. 

So, given all the problems and concerns, should we use drones?  The thing to remember, when you look at the problems supposedly caused by drones, you cannot assume, if there were no drones, there would be no problems.

Consider Hiram Shah, the town mentioned in the New York Times article quoted above.  Drones may be causing some problems for the town, but they’re not the only cause.  Communications are difficult in Hiram Shah, but that has nothing to do with the drones.  The Pakistani army disabled the cellphone networks (to make it harder for the militants to communicate) and the Taliban closed the Internet cafes (because young men were using them to watch pornography).

Also, The New York Times notes:

“[A] semblance of normal life continues in Miram Shah.  On market day, farmers herding goats and carrying vegetables stream in from the surrounding countryside.  The bustling bazaar has clothes and food and gun shops.”

Beyond that, problems such as the collapse of state services in Hiram Shah are largely because of the presence of Taliban and other militants terrorizing the town, not because of the drones.  In fact, the drones and any problems they cause are there because of terrorists, not vice versa.  If the terrorists leave, so do the drones.

Also, one should not assume that, if the drones left, innocent civilians would no longer be killed or hurt.  On the same day the articles mentioned above appeared, Bret Stephens wrote in The Wall Street Journal about what is happening in Iraq:  Last Sunday alone, 54 Iraqis were killed and 70 more were injured in two suicide bombings.  In fact, 7,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed so far this year.  And those are deliberate.

Drones are difficult.  It would be nice if we did not have to use them, for all kinds of reasons.  But it is ultimately a question of balance.  There are some really evil people out there that have to be fought.  They are not going to go away just because we would like them to.  It is difficult to know the best way to fight them.  But when self-appointed judges point fingers because what we are doing is not perfect and because we make mistakes, we have to remember that perfect isn’t the standard.  We can only use the tools we have to fight the enemy we must. 

Sometimes drones are the best available tool.  When that is true, we need to use them, though we need to do so as carefully as reasonably possible.  When we make mistakes, we must make it up to the people involved, but we also need to remember that the alternative to not using drones is, in most cases, very much worse than what may come from any mistakes we make in using them.  That is not a justification for not being careful, and it is not a justification for not correcting any mistakes we do make.  It is just a request that we judge people based on the real world we live in, not some pretend world we might like to live in.

When Did President Obama Know the Obamacare Website Wasn’t Going to Work?

According to this quote from Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama did not know about the “glitches” (i.e., close to near total failure) of the Obamacare website until “the first couple of days” of October.  Assuming that is accurate, then either:

(i) the people working on the website didn’t tell the President that there were going to be problems with it, even though they knew it wasn’t ready.  That would not be good.  They should have warned him.

(ii) the people working on the website didn’t realize themselves that the website wasn’t going to work.  That would be even worse.

(iii) the President didn't make any efforts to check to see what was happening on the Obamacare website to make sure it was really going to work like he had been promising it was going to.  That would be worst of all.  He’s the President.  It’s his signature program.  If he’s not following up, who is?  And if he didn’t follow up because he just assumed the government would get it done right and on time, then he’s clueless.  Regardless of whether you think government should or can do things like this, you need to follow up to make sure things get done.  That’s being a good manager.  That’s actually making sure things get done.

Separated at Birth? Ted Cruz and Tom Ricketts

A scary thought, but here are the pictures:

John Cullerton Says Illinois Does Not Have a Pension Crisis

According to the Illinois Senate President, the problem isn’t funding pensions (tell that to the rating agencies), it’s that some people don’t want to keep the state income tax at 5% when it would otherwise go down to 3.75% in 2015.  (Note to voters:  Senator Cullerton didn’t really mean it back in 2011 when he said the income tax hike was temporary.)

Here is some of what Senator Cullerton said in an interview on WGN radio Sunday*:

"People really misunderstand the nature of this whole problem.  Quite frankly, I don't think you can use the word 'crisis' to describe it at the state level. 

It's something we have to deal with, but it's not something that we're on the verge of bankruptcy on. 

These pension (proposals) we've talked about will save annually anywhere from $750 million to $1.5 billion.  So you're still going to have real huge cuts that we'll have to make if we don't raise that income tax higher than what they're scheduled to go down to.

But the pension reform then is about tax reduction – not about the solvency of the pension fund or about diverting money to spend more money for education.

The money that we save by lowering those benefits is going to be used to lower the tax rates."

It is true that Illinois is not on the verge of bankruptcy this year or next.  But someday we will be, unless we make some changes, either reducing pension benefits earned in the future or raising taxes.  The best time to make those changes is now because if we wait, bigger changes will be required and they will hurt more.  Maybe Senator Cullerton figures he will have retired by then, so it doesn’t matter to him.  (Speaker Madigan will probably still be in office. however.  Maybe that’s why he seems to be willing to do a little more.)

Actually, the people who are going to get hurt the most by Senator Cullerton’s blasé attitude are the state’s workers.  They have contributed their share to the pension funds.  It’s the state that hasn’t been contributing its share.  The state does have to pay in the money needed to cover the pension promises we have made to our workers for the time they have already worked.  What we have to do now is be honest with them as to what we can provide them from this point on.  That is the only fair thing for the state’s workers.

Finally, Senator Cullerton said one thing that was absolutely hilarious.  This is from the Chicago Tribune report:

“[Senator Cullerton] said if Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno of Lemont can get the support of a dozen Republicans for the conference committee framework, ‘I think (Democrats) can get 18 votes and pass a bill over to the House.’”

Let’s see if I understand this.  Thirty votes are needed to pass the bill.  The Democrats have 40 seats (i.e., enough to pass the bill all by themselves with ten votes to spare) and the Republicans have 19.  Senator Cullerton is suggesting that, if 12 of the 19 Republicans vote for the bill (that’s 63% of the Republicans), then 18 out of 40 Democrats (that’s 45% of the Democrats) would support it.  Amazing.  If that happens, I would suggest that Senator Radogno should be Senate President and Senator Cullerton should go back to just being majority leader – because Senator Radogno would have been the one who got the job done.
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* Please note that I cannot tell exactly what order these statements were made in.  You may wish to read the whole article in the Chicago Tribune yourself.  It is here.

Shutdown Winners and Losers

The common wisdom on the government shutdown is that the Republicans lost and President Obama won.  I don’t disagree with the former.  The Republican loss was just about assured when they said their goal was to defund Obamacare.  That wasn’t going to happen, so they were going to look like they lost.

But did the Democrats really win?  I know the mainstream media said they did, but the media was going to say that almost no matter what.  In looking through some old Wall Street Journals, however, I found this article by Gerald Seib on October 8: “Democrats’ Goal: ‘Break the Fever’ Of Constant Crises.”*

“Breaking the fever is code for ending the cycle of recurring, last-minute crises over spending bills and increases in the nation's borrowing limit—the debt ceiling.  The White House believes these crises give outsize power to a minority of conservative House Republicans who don't have the strength to push their agenda into law but can, in a crisis, stop the action.

More important, Democrats are convinced they must break the cycle now, or see much of the Obama second-term agenda sink away.

‘The only way for us to go forward is to all make clear that the era of threatening default is over,’ Gene Sperling, head of the White House National Economic Council, said Monday at a breakfast organized by Politico.”

That didn’t happen.  The budget was only put off until January 15 and the debt ceiling until February (maybe March).  Not only that, but the sequester is still in place, with another installment coming January 1, and taxes did not go up.  That sounds more like something Republicans wanted than the Democrats.

As for getting Congress to move on to other things, such as immigration, the farm bill and corporate tax loopholes, like the President mentioned in his post-shutdown press conference, it is hard to see that happening.  Certainly, the President didn’t help himself when he trash talked the Republicans in his press conference: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president, then argue for your position.  Go out there and win an election.”  That’s not the way to get the other side to work with you.**

So, the Republicans clearly lost, but it doesn’t look to me like the President got what he wanted either.
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* This was the title in the print version.  The online title was different, as you can see.

** If the President wants to see how to reconcile with the other side, now that the national parks have re-opened, he might want to go out to Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (it’s only a short detour from Washington), and see how Ulysses S. Grant did it.  I also note that all of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are there because they won an election.