From Egypt - a modern revolution

Keep it Loose, Keep it Tight

Is Social Security privatization unconstitutional?

From Jonathan Cohn comes one of those things that you read and wonder, "Why didn't I think of that?"

The idea was to take Social Security, a mandatory public pension program, and turn it into a system of mandatory personal investment accounts...

Conservatives presumably thought privatization was constitutional; otherwise, they would not have worked so feverishly to enact it. But if the principle holds for old-age insurance, it ought to hold for medical insurance, too. In other words, if it’s ok for the government to make you pay for regulated private investments, then it should be ok for the government to make you pay for regulated private health insurance. Yet, as far as I can tell, the folks who spent all of those years promoting Social Security as an all-American, free market innovation are the same ones that now insist the Affordable Care Act is an unprecedented threat to liberty.

This is the kind of thing that gives me hope for Egypt

Christians protecting Muslims while they pray during protests in Egypt

About a month ago (and before the protests), we saw the reverse...Muslims protecting Christians and their slogan of “We either live together, or we die together.”

They give true meaning to...

Republicans: What's your alternative for Hillary St. Pierre?

Hillary's story:

With a court decision on Monday declaring the health care law unconstitutional and Republicans intent on repealing at least parts of it, thousands of Americans with major illnesses are facing the renewed prospect of losing their health insurance coverage.

The legislation put an end to lifetime limits on coverage for the first time, erasing the financial burdens, including personal bankruptcy, that had affected many ailing Americans.

For example, Hillary St. Pierre, a 28-year-old former registered nurse who has Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had expected to reach her insurance plan’s $2 million limit this year. Under the new law, the cap was eliminated when the policy she gets through her husband’s employer was renewed this year.

Ms. St. Pierre, who has already come close once before to losing her coverage because she had reached the plan’s maximum, says she does not know what she will do if the cap is reinstated. “I will be forced to stop treatment or to alter my treatment,” Ms. St. Pierre, who lives in Charlestown, N.H., with her husband and son, said in an e-mail. “I will find a way to continue and survive, but who is going to pay?”

Ezra Klein makes a great point.

In a world where the two parties' top priority on health care was providing answers for the uninsured and cost control, an argument over the best way to do health-care reform would be a very healthy thing. But that's not what we've got. We've got the Democratic Party, whose top priority is to try and solve our health-care problems and who've shown their commitment to that by moving steadily rightward over the last century in a bid to pick up Republican support for some sort of solution, and the Republican Party, whose top priority is that we shouldn't do whatever the Democrats are proposing and have proven their commitment to that by abandoning previously favored policy proposals as soon as the Democrats demonstrated any interest in adopting them.

And that's the fundamental problem here: It's easy to compromise when both sides are committed to solving a problem, because the appeal of solving the the problem is enough to persuade both sides to make concessions. That's why Democrats gave up on single payer, on an employer mandate, on a public option. But it's impossible to compromise when one side is uninterested in solving the problem, as they lack the incentive to make any concessions.

The Democrats tried to have that conversation a year ago. The Republicans decided to say "no" to people like Hillary. But even if they wanted to have discussions about alternatives now, I imagine that would be possible. Is that what they're attempting to do? No. They simply want to repeal the legislation that keeps Hillary's treatment going. There are several pretty crude ways to respond to this kind of tactic. I'll choose the one with the least offensive language...put up or shut up.

The Healer

StartUP America

One of the mistakes liberals make too often is to criticize businesses in one lump sum. We all know the problems related to the power of corporate America. And the risks of "too big to fail" are still being felt all over this country. But we need to recognize that when jobs are the number one issue - the vast majority of those come from businesses. So if we want jobs created, we need to find a way to encourage them to be developed.

For all their blustering about the "free enterprise system" and the value of competitiveness, the truth is that corporate America and their supporters in the Republican party try to do whatever is necessary to reduce competitiveness. One example of this will suffice...merger and acquisition have been the main hallmarks of a so-called "successful" strategy in corporate America. For example, does anyone else live in a major city where one airline is hubbed? Every move that company makes is to limit competition.

Its often the small companies who are best at innovations that threaten these developing monopolies. And that is why Obama - in both word and deed - is doing everything he can to support small business and innovation. Here's what he said in his State of the Union address:

Our future prosperity in part depends on whether or not we are creating an environment in which folks can test new ideas, bring new products to market, and generate new businesses.

And yesterday he followed those words up with the kickoff of StartUP America.

“Startup America” is President Obama’s campaign to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate high-growth entrepreneurship throughout the nation. The Startup America Partnership is a coordinated public/private effort that brings together an alliance of the country’s most innovative entrepreneurs, corporations, universities, foundations, and other leaders, who work in concert with a wide-range of federal agencies to dramatically increase the prevalence and success of American entrepreneurs.

This mission to promote entrepreneurship is a core component of President Obama’s National Innovation Strategy for achieving sustainable growth and quality jobs. Not only do startups bring a wealth of transformative innovation to market, they also have generated all net job creation over the past three decades. Entrepreneurs who are intent on growing their businesses create the lion’s share of these new jobs in every part of the country and in every industry. Moreover, it is entrepreneurs in clean energy, medicine, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and other fields who will build the new industries of the 21st century and solve some of our toughest global challenges.

This initiative will be led by Steve Case, co-founder of AOL, CEO of Revolution LLC and chairman of the Case Foundation. The two founding partners include the Case Foundation and the Kauffman Foundation.

Here are the initiatives goals:

- Ensure access to capital for high-growth startups throughout the country;

- Expand entrepreneurship education and mentorship programs that empower more Americans not just to get jobs, but to create jobs;

- Strengthen commercialization of the $147 billion in annual, federally-funded research and development, which can generate innovative startups and entirely new industries; and

- Identify and remove unnecessary barriers to high-growth startups, both within government and large corporations.

Those tired old corporations whose main goal is to protect the status quo and their territory will have a choice to make...get on board or move aside. Koch brothers...I'm looking at you.

And Republicans, we're still waiting to hear you propose anything related to job creation.