The Story of Bottled Water

Why pay 2000 times more for water?

Health care reform passes

The House passed the Senate version of health care reform last night 219-212, with every single Republican voting against the measure.  The Senate bill goes to Obama's desk for his signature (a guarantee) and we finally join the ranks of every other industrialized country in providing health care for nearly every citizen.

Here's what's in the bill.

The process isn't completely played out yet, because the House also passed a reconciliation bill that adds a few improvements to the Senate's health care bill.  This reconciliation will have to be approved by the Senate, and then (if amended) go back to the House before hitting Obama's desk.  This bill includes:

• A smaller price tag
• More generous subsidies to low-income Americans
• A new 3.8 percent tax on unearned income (things like interest, dividends and royalties)
• A higher Medicare tax for families making more than $250,000 (and individuals with incomes over $200,000).
• The "Cadillac tax" on very good health insurance plans would have a higher cutoff and be implemented later (2018). 
• Closes the Medicare prescription drug donut hole
• Several provisions to reduce Medicare fraud and waste

You can also see a 7-page summary of the reconciliation bill here.

Supreme Court and the 2nd Amendment

The Supremes will soon be ruling on a Chicago ban on handguns, but this thoughtful and thorough piece on the issue notes that the big legal test is yet to come:

But the ultimate showdown over gun control in America will be waged in a future legal case not yet on the high court's radar, analysts say. At issue in that case: Are Second Amendment rights as fundamental as freedom of speech and religion, or will gun rights be subject to lesser constitutional protection?

For example, in the 2008 case striking down the DC handgun ban, Justice Scalia noted:

The majority justices addressed this issue briefly in the Washington decision. "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited," wrote Justice Antonin Scalia.

"Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," Justice Scalia said. (For Monitor coverage of the Washington decision, click here.)

What may make the difference is how state judges have decided on gun control laws

In assessing the constitutionality of gun-control laws, Mr. Henigan said, state judges have placed significant weight on the government's interest in regulating firearms as a means to protect public safety. The Supreme Court should adopt the same rationale, he said.

It will certainly be an interesting time.

Why Digital Rights Management (copyright protection) Doesn’t Work

The Brads: "Why DRM Doesn’t Work", a sister post to "Why People Pirate Movies" earlier this month.

Click through to see the full size image

You know you are a liberal when...

...a smackdown from Sen. Harry Reid to Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gets your blood moving:

As you know, the vast majority of bills developed through reconciliation were passed by Republican Congresses and signed into law by Republican Presidents – including President Bush’s massive, budget-busting tax breaks for multi-millionaires. Given this history, one might conclude that Republicans believe a majority vote is sufficient to increase the deficit and benefit the super-rich, but not to reduce the deficit and benefit the middle class. Alternatively, perhaps Republicans believe a majority vote is appropriate only when Republicans are in the majority. Either way, we disagree.

Thanks to Paul Krugman for the link and for passing along the summary: reconcile this!

We Dwell in Darkness

Well, we'd be better off if we did.

I bet the International Dark Sky Association will like this.

Antibiotics are for people, not healthy cows

And if we don't stop using them on healthy animals, we will keep developing diseases for which we have no treatment.

There is a bill in Congress to fix this, but it's stalled in this committee.  If you see your Rep. in this list, time to make a phone call.

I've written on this subject several times since 2006, so get your fill here.

Taxing the bad beats subsidizing the good

Grist:

In a recent study using food subsidies and taxes to encourage healthier food purchases, researchers at SUNY learned something interesting:

• If you use subsidies to make healthy food cheaper, people buy more healthy food, but they use the savings to buy junk food.
• On the other hand, if you tax junk food, people buy healthy food instead.

The funny thing is, this was a psychology study, but an economist could have told you this would happen. When you lower the price of a good (healthy food), it creates an "income effect." People have more money and they will allocate it according to what goods will maximize their happiness. Since they can already afford more healthy food, it's not hard to imagine that the savings from cheaper health food goes to junk.

By solely taxing junk food, however, you don't have an income effect, but instead a substitution effect. People shift from junk food to healthy food because they can get more (and more happiness) per dollar that way.

The same concept applies to energy policy, and is why making renewable energy cheap (with tax credits) will not be sufficient to shift people away from dirty energy (coal, natural gas, fuel oil, etc). Instead, we need ways to increase the price of bad things, such as a carbon tax.

And there's another dilemma. Do you impose a carbon tax or price ALONE which will shift people away from dirty energy AND encourage conservation, or do you give the revenues back? A cap-and-dividend policy, for example, is much more politically palatable because most people get a bigger dividend than they will expend in higher energy consumption, but it also means there's only an incentive to shift consumption to clean energy, and not to reduce it.

If journalism were like health care

A satirical look by Nicholas Kristof
.

Two columns on the deficit

I'm not a deficit hawk, only a structural deficit hawk.  I only care about deficits when idiot policy makers make them permanent by cutting revenue without spending (Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty is a big winner here). 

So here are a couple interesting columns on deficits and their political causes:

• Paul Krugman notes that Republicans have tried for years to run the federal fiscal ship aground so that they could "drown government in a bathtub."  Well, the ship ran aground, are they cutting government?  Nope, defending Medicare.  And opposing cost controls for the health care bill.  And a climate bill that would reduce the deficit.  Read more 
• Stephen Cohen discusses how the state of American infrastructure is a clear indication we are under-taxed.  Roads, bridges, schools, they need cash to operate smoothly.  Read more 
• .

Why People Pirate Movies

Dealing with Climate Change Deniers at the Office

Presidential Approval Tracker (back to 1945!)

This is what makes the web great:
The Gallup Presidential Approval Tracker shows approval ratings back to 1945 and lets you compare presidents over the same time frame in their terms. Who knew that the first George Bush was so popular?

And who knew that Obama really is the second coming of Reagan? (at least by this metric)

Knowledge is power, but is it happiness?

Oh, all the games I could have won...

Conservatives say stupid things about snow; media dutifully reports that they say them | Grist

Grist: "snow disproves climate change...This is obviously something that only extremely ill-informed (or stupid) people would say."

But if you're a media reporter, you apparently can't point that out (unless you're a satirist). It's killing reasonable political discourse, and it's just downright sad that you can get away with it.

Demand Question Time

America can benefit from an "unfettered and public airing of political differences by our elected representatives." In the same room, talking to each other. If you think this is a good idea, too, check out Demand Question Time.

How Coca-Cola fought for our right to be obese

MinnPost: "How Coca-Cola fought for our right to be obese"

1. Fund studies attempting to debunk soda pop/fat link
2. Give money to low-income advocacy groups, since low-income folks drink more pop and are disproportionately impacted by concepts like a sugared drink tax (unless they cut back, of course)
3. Profit!

Primary study linking autism to vaccines has been retracted

The myth of the vaccine-autism connection has been dealt a severe blow, thanks to actions by the British medical Journal, The Lancet. Although the study authors had already retracted the original 1998 findings by 2004, the journal has published a full-blown retraction of the original study, excoriating the unethical practices of the doctor who led the "research."

A nice examination of the filibuster issue in the Senate

MinnPost:

I think I agree with Black that the filibuster should simply be dumped. When the parties had moderates, it could work. But right now, it's a barrier to basic governance.

How Google has changed everything