Quote :

"i'm really starting to wonder if the average American democrat understands economics in our country............ "

On thing to ponder is that average American economist is a democrat. At least among political contributions fo which we have good data 5 times as many economists gave to Democrats as Republicans.

Interestingy, for Academic Economists the ratio was 4 to 1. For Non-Academic economists the ratio was 6.4 to 1. Indicating that Ivory tower economists may be slightly less democratic than the average economist.

While that may seem strange the education effect is most likely the undercurrent. PhDs are overwhelming Democrats.

In studies by the Chronicle if I remember correctly of party registration by university faculty, economists had the most right leaning part registration of any members of the faculty. Economists being democracts by a 3 to 1 margin. I believe the average was somewhere around 9 to 1. And that Antropolgists topped out at 28 to 1 or something in that range.

Quote :

"The premiums that they would be forced to pay? I mean, how else will Obama pay for this (among other things)?"

One of the issues that gets very little play is the outline of Obama's Health Care plan. Those who believe that it is Universal Health Care, much less socialized medicine will be sorely disappointed.

First I think people confuse those two ideas.

Socialized Medicine implies some form of a single payer system or at least a single payer backstop. That is everyone is automatically enrolled in a government plan but you can choose to add a private plan on top of that.

Universal Health Care would be some series of regulations and mandates that ensures that every American is covered. It could be entirely private but with a series tax credit and subsidies for American's who don't have a job.

Obama's plan simply allows people to buy into the Federal Employees pool. If you don't want to buy, you don't have to buy and there is no mandate that everyone be covered. Indeed, it is almost certain that everyone will not be covered.

His other part about pre-existing conditions and preventive care are bridge solutions made possible by the federal opt-in. My understanding on pre-exsting conditions is that private insurance must cover them. However, if you have a lapse in coverage and do not choose to opt-in to the federal coverage then the insurance company can charge you an enrollment fee in the thousands of dollars. This is the fine I think McCain kept trying to get at.

The enrollment fee is designed to avoid patients waiting until they are sick and then getting coverage. This is considered feasible since everyone can always opt-in to federal insurance and avoid the fee.

Covering preventive care is a no-brainer that doesn't always happen today because of a prisoners dilemma type situation. No insurance company can be sure that the prevention you buy will go towards saving them money rather than another insurance carrier.

You could spend $1000 today to prevent a $10,000 procedure ten years from now. However, you may be spending $1000 of Cigna's money to prevent BCBS from paying $10,0000 ten years from now if you switch companies. How is that in Cigna's best interest.

11/4/2008 8:35:42 AM

Obama is shown to not be a US citizen. The era of the gaffe begins, all hail commander and chief Biden.

Oh, wait, what am I thinking, Obama much like his hero FDR will just stack the courts to make whatever he wants "legal". In an ironic twist this new departure from original intent will usher a daunting challenge from Arnold in 2012.

mathman eagerly awaits the Palin/Huckabee ticket sure to come in 2012.

Oops, error, I assume there will be elections in 2012.

11/4/2008 9:20:11 PM

^^^^yep

[Edited on November 4, 2008 at 9:29 PM. Reason : .]

11/4/2008 9:29:03 PM

^^damn, that dude's a fuckin' kook

11/4/2008 9:30:05 PM

One of the first initiatives should be to reclaim the Wu Tang clan from the Chinese that they lost in the racial draft.

11/4/2008 10:18:10 PM

Quote :

"PhDs are overwhelming Democrats."

that has to do with the old tried-and-true positive correlation of education with liberal ideology

i think it has much less to do with knowledge of economics.......based on my observations

11/6/2008 11:33:50 PM

http://change.gov/

Has this already been posted?

Obama's already launched a site on a .gov domain, and it's a very nice site too.

It's about time we had a technology aware president, hopefully he can bring this type of communication and efficiency to other areas of the whitehouse.

11/6/2008 11:37:49 PM

yep, i'lm already subscribed to the RSS feed.
And I hope he will continue to develop the iPhone application and youtube channels.

I think it will be awesome to get feeds of videos, pictures, speeches, laws, bills, etc, in real time through that site, presumably whitehouse.gov also, youtube, facebook, iphone, etc. Truly, it will be the first time we can stay connected in real-time to the President


btw, they're still updating the blog on his campaign site. he has some good posts recently with pictures and newspapers
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/hqblog

[Edited on November 6, 2008 at 11:58 PM. Reason : .]

11/6/2008 11:54:16 PM

kwsmith2 or anyone else

What I'm worried about is what people enrolling in the new public plan (or the expanded Medicaid program) will cost tax payers. This is essentially just extending the federal government's obligation to pay for individual's health care bills in an environment of rapidly rising health care costs.

This is worrisome because, as Paul Krugman frequently points out, we will have trouble funding Medicare and Medicaid in the future because meeting these new rising costs will require significant tax increases. I don't see how extending the public's obligation so that the federal government pays for MORE people's health care bills will not make this problem worse.

Now, you say that "preventative care is a no brainer" and I'm assuming that you mean you think it will lower costs. That's exactly what Obama has been saying through out the campaign. But there is really no evidence to back up those kinds of assertions. Here's Johnathan Gruber of MIT on the subject, a health economist that advised the Obama campaign:

Quote :

"“It’s a nice thing to think, and it seems like it should be true, but I don’t know of any evidence that preventive care actually saves money,” said Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist... "

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/business/08leonhardt.html

However, Obama is smart. He also has good advisers like Jason Furman, who not long ago proposed health care reforms similar to John McCain's. I'm hoping that he will ditch this campaign idea, it may piss off some in his base, but he says he's willing to tell voters hard-truth. Besides, I doubt it will cost him much political support. It's not like most of his supporters ever understood what he was saying anyways...most I've ever met thought he was going for a Canada-style single-payer system).

[Edited on November 7, 2008 at 9:36 AM. Reason : ``]

11/7/2008 9:31:35 AM

Quote :

"However, Obama is smart. He also has good advisers like ..."

in a nutshell, this was my voting thesis

11/7/2008 10:41:05 AM

first 10 days:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/07/america/gun.php

11/7/2008 10:56:28 AM

For those saying he isn't interested in banning guns:

Quote :

"Address Gun Violence in Cities: As president, Barack Obama would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals who shouldn't have them. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent, as such weapons belong on foreign battlefields and not on our streets."

http://www.change.gov/agenda/urbanpolicy/


Making guns childproof sounds good, but when that kind of legislation has been written in the past it usually is written in a way that makes most currently legal guns illegal. The AWB is and was unnecessary. They're hardly used in violent crime, but their "evil" looks make them an easy and emotional first target. Finally because local mayors want it in order to go ahead with lawsuits against firearms manufacturers, Obama wants to repeal the Tiahrt amendment, despite the fact that both the BATFE and the Fraternal Order of Police both oppose it.

11/8/2008 7:16:31 PM

Quote :

"Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/08/AR2008110801856.html?sub=AR

Obama is looking to rescind some of the gov-power-expanding orders Bush put in place.

11/9/2008 7:39:11 PM

that makes the libertarian in me happy

11/9/2008 7:50:33 PM

^^ sweet.

11/9/2008 8:28:40 PM

^^the libertarian in you should read what the article says

everything that is mentioned in the article to be undone (other than the abortion education abroad) either means more government spending or more government regulations

i think those are both the opposite of what you're supposed to believe

[Edited on November 10, 2008 at 2:11 PM. Reason : asdf]

11/10/2008 2:09:01 PM

The "first 100 days" is an artificial construct and should be abandoned by all presidents.

11/10/2008 2:15:19 PM

We should only elect presidents for 100 days since that is obviously where most of their focus is.

11/10/2008 2:46:16 PM

^ Nah, it's where most of the media's focus is. This puts undue pressure on presidents.

11/10/2008 2:55:55 PM

this is just weird...

11/10/2008 5:52:28 PM

Quote :

"everything that is mentioned in the article to be undone (other than the abortion education abroad) either means more government spending or more government regulations i think those are both the opposite of what you're supposed to believe"

he's UNDOING executive orders. tell me, how does Bush's BAN on stem cell research fit libertarian ideals?

Executive Orders are probably the most undemocratic, un-libertarian construct that the executive branch has. I'm not saying that all exceutive orders are necessarily bad, but they tend to subvert the constitutional separation of powers. Bush II has been a prolific abuser of the executive order.

11/10/2008 6:01:27 PM

^ Bush did not ban stem cell research.

11/10/2008 10:38:11 PM

yes, essentially, he did.

are you picking some semantic point?

11/10/2008 11:44:19 PM

"essentially"

11/11/2008 12:49:27 AM

He unduly restricted stem cell research. Hopefully the US can catch back up once the restrictions are scaled back.

11/11/2008 1:00:06 AM

he restricted FEDERAL funding (AKA the government spending money on it)


private companies can do all the research they want



everything mentioned in that article was an additional government regulation that obama planned to implement to undo the bush's lack of regulation


[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 8:49 AM. Reason : except the abortion education abroad]

11/11/2008 8:46:47 AM

Concerning mathman's point, there is an Obama birth certificate out there--I can't vouch for its authenticity, though.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2008/06/13/bobirthcertificate.jpg

But concerning Obama's undergrad years, there are many questions left unanswered.

Obama's Lost Years
September 11, 2008; Page A14

Quote :

"Barack Obama makes his first campaign visit today to his alma mater, Columbia University. Just don't ask the prolific self-diarist to talk about his undergraduate days in Morningside Heights. The Columbia years are a hole in the sprawling Obama hagiography. In his two published memoirs, the 47-year-old Democratic nominee barely mentions his experience there. He refuses to answer questions about Columbia and New York -- which, in this media age, serves only to raise more of them. Why not release his Columbia transcript? Why has his senior essay gone missing? Now in our view, the college years shouldn't normally be used to judge a politician's fitness for office. We're not sure the transcripts of Al Gore, John Kerry and George W. Bush -- which showed them to be C students -- illuminated much for voters. The McCain campaign won't release his records, but we know he graduated at the bottom of his Naval Academy class. But Mr. Obama is a case apart. His personal story, as told by him, made possible his rise from obscurity four years ago to possibly the White House. He doesn't have a long track record in government. We mainly have him in his own words. As any autobiographer, Mr. Obama played up certain chapters in his life -- perhaps even exaggerating his drug use in adolescence to drive home his theme of youthful alienation -- and ignored others. What's more, as acknowledged in 'Dreams From My Father,' Mr. Obama reconstructed conversations and gave some people pseudonyms or created 'composite' characters. Voters and the media are now exercising due diligence before Election Day, and they are meeting resistance from Mr. Obama in checking his past. Earlier this year, the AP tracked down Mr. Obama's New York-era roommate, 'Sadik,' in Seattle after the campaign refused to reveal his name. Sohale Siddiqi, his real name, confirmed Mr. Obama's account that he turned serious in New York and 'stopped getting high.' 'We were both very lost,' Mr. Siddiqi said. 'We were both alienated, although he might not put it that way. He arrived disheveled and without a place to stay.' For some reason the Obama camp wanted this to stay out of public view. Such caginess is grist for speculation. Some think his transcript, if released, would reveal Mr. Obama as a mediocre student who benefited from racial preference. Yet he later graduated from Harvard Law School magna cum laude, so he knows how to get good grades. Others speculate about ties to the Black Students Organization, though students active then don't seem to remember him. And on the far reaches of the Web can be found conspiracies about former Carter national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who became the candidate's 'guru and controller' while at Columbia in the early 1980s. Mr. Brzezinski laughs, and tells us he doesn't 'remember meeting him.' What can be said with some certainty is that Mr. Obama lived off campus while at Columbia in 1981-83 and made few friends. Fox News contacted some 400 of his classmates and found no one who remembered him. He had transferred from Occidental College in California after his sophomore year because, he told the Boston Globe in 1990, 'I was concerned with urban issues and I wanted to be around more black folks in big cities.' He got a degree in political science without honors. 'For about two years there, I was just painfully alone and really not focused on anything, except maybe thinking a lot,' he told his biographer David Mendell. Put that way, his time at Columbia sounds unremarkable. Maybe that's what most pains a young memoirist and an ambitious politician who strains to make his life anything but unremarkable."

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB122108881386721289.html

Obama certainly didn't get the scrutiny concerning grades and drug use that Clinton, Bush, and Kerry did--and the Washington Post has confirmed as much.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/07/AR2008110702895.html

In any event, we're still in the Obama honeymoon and I'm trying to stay positive.

11/11/2008 9:16:08 AM

OBAMA'S FIRST HUNDRED DAYS WILL BE MAD FRESH, YO!!!!

11/11/2008 11:05:31 AM

I can't believe there are people still at it about his birth certificate and so forth. Get a freaking life. lol.

11/11/2008 1:09:07 PM

All the unknowns about Obama's college years and stuff piss me off, not because I'm expecting some huge bombshell Communist-Marxist-America hating scheme to be unveiled, but because he's the president and we deserve to know everything possible about him. What makes him any different than our past presidents?

11/11/2008 1:24:29 PM

i haven't seen mathman or hooksaw or TKEshultz's birth certificates.

i mean i guess they're out there ... somewhere ... but *I* sure haven't seen them ...

have you? has anyone???

11/11/2008 1:30:37 PM

hello

this goes to show that no matter how successful a black man gets, he will still live in gov't housing

flame on

11/11/2008 2:40:16 PM

I had no idea TKEShultz, mathman, and hooksaw were running for the highest public office in all the land.

Congratulations, I wish you guys luck!!!

11/11/2008 2:48:27 PM

my birth certificate was flooded during hurricane floyd

guess i cant run with a copy

11/11/2008 2:57:17 PM

What is this, a freaking frat party? Put down your nattie lites and come up with better posts than that.

11/11/2008 3:34:50 PM

11/11/2008 3:38:26 PM

haha natie lite.

I hate to say it, but that advertising campaign ALMOST made wanna buy me a 6 pack. Good times, young crowd, humorous set up. That's what I want in my beer!

Of course, I still remember what that stuff tastes like. So, since I can afford to buy good beer, I stick with Guinness or Bad Penny Brown from Big Boss.

11/11/2008 4:16:23 PM

You would get snobby about drinking an over-hyped stout.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 4:31 PM. Reason : ]

11/11/2008 4:20:06 PM

Quote :

"All the unknowns about Obama's college years and stuff piss me off, not because I'm expecting some huge bombshell Communist-Marxist-America hating scheme to be unveiled, but because he's the president and we deserve to know everything possible about him. What makes him any different than our past presidents?"

IIRC, Bush had his transcripts leaked, he didn't voluntarily release them. I don't know about Kerry or McCain.

In any case, I can't see why you're so upset about this. It seems you're just looking for something to complain about.

11/11/2008 4:21:13 PM

I'm not too terribly upset or anything.

It "pisses me off" though because anytime somebody asks about it, it's answered with "it's not a big deal" or "who cares." Which is exactly the point -- there is no big deal, so just do it already.

11/11/2008 4:29:08 PM

^ but the other presidents didn't "just do it" did they? They had it leaked by reporters. If reporters just aren't clever enough to leak it, why should Obama do their job for them?

Out of curiosity though i'd like to know how Obama did in school, but i don't see why others are so concerned about it.

11/11/2008 5:21:28 PM

http://obamaaaaaaaa.ytmnd.com/

11/11/2008 5:41:14 PM

What I said wasn't specifically addressed towards Obama keeping a secret, it was in general. To anybody that knows anything, to reporters and the media, to the general public, why don't we know more about him?

11/11/2008 6:21:13 PM

^ If hooksaw's link is accurate, people are digging, they're just not finding anything.

I mean his roommate gave a pretty standard account of a lot of college kids.

11/11/2008 6:26:27 PM

Quote :

"why don't we know more about himare we so lazy?"

11/11/2008 6:35:06 PM

If he graduated without honors at Columbia, and won't release his grades. How did he get into Harvard Law? That isn't exactly easy. Kinda thinking he doesn't release that info because he knows he got in due to his race, not his performance. That wouldn't have been a huge bombshell, but it wouldn't have helped during the election. Doubt it would have changed the outcome, but it probably would have cost him a few hundred thousand votes. So he might have lost North Carolina and a few other close states.

11/11/2008 7:41:17 PM

^ Why would it have costed him votes?

McCain got in to his college based on who his papa was, and that didn't really hurt him.

And besides, Obama would have had to pass his classes on his own anyway. It would have been a shining example of the system working how its supposed to.

[Edited on November 11, 2008 at 7:50 PM. Reason : ]

11/11/2008 7:50:02 PM

its too late to do anything about it now

11/11/2008 8:25:15 PM

wtf ever all you haters....

he graduated with honors from harvard law.

now talk about "how did someone get into _____ college"

lets look at GWB for a moment.

11/11/2008 10:06:08 PM

I'm not hating or suggesting he got where he is because of race or anything else negative.

I just want to see a more detailed background of college than what he chooses to write in his book.

11/11/2008 10:09:22 PM