Steve Benen: “Republicans would be more willing to talk about health care reform if the president agrees in advance to give Republicans the opportunity to kill health care reform.” Yeah, pretty much.

Benen continues,

In the larger context, it’s a reminder that the summit invitation puts Republicans in an awkward spot. If they participate, they’ll very likely lose the policy debate. If they reject the invitation, they’ll look petty and small (even more so than usual), giving Dems ammunition to further characterize the GOP as knee-jerk partisans, unwilling to even have an open and bipartisan conversation.

That’s probably the real purpose of the summit — flush the Party of No out into the open. It could backfire, however.

An editorial at The Economist does a great job of summarizing Republican “ideas” about health care reform. After explaining why Republican ideas are ridiculous, the editorial continues –

But the fact that Republicans’ ideas do not realistically address America’s health-insurance crisis doesn’t mean they would not be able to present them effectively in a big public forum. Mr Ryan, for example, can give an extremely convincing pitch, focusing on market competition and bending down the curve on health-care inflation. Other Republicans could pretend that we can solve our health-insurance problems by limiting malpractice awards. Democrats can explain that Mr Ryan’s plan would hugely increase the number of uninsured and that malpractice reform is insignificant, but in an open, free-form debate, the arguments would swirl indefinitely in a “he-said/she-said” zone of confusion. Democrats may ignore non-feasible Republican ideas, while Republicans continue to claim that their solutions were never tried. This will only exacerbate the mess.

In other words, just the same nonsense we’ve been having, only televised.

Anyway, today William Jacobson, the hyper-partisan gadfly who writes the blog Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, has found proof of sexism among progressives in their tweets. Referring to what even I think is a stupid non-story that Sarah Palin was caught with speech “crib notes” written in her hand, some persons identified as “progressives” had fun tweeting about Palin’s “hand job.”

Some blog posts are linked also, although I never noticed that TMZ was “progressive.” I thought it was just a celebrity news site. And the Daily Kos entry linked was written by a woman. Further, I question whether a comment is necessarily “sexist” just because it links sex to a woman. Sometimes such comments are just cheap and juvenile.

I mean, there’s a whole website dedicated to Tiger Woods jokes; is that sexist? Or racist (and, if so, which race)?

Even Little Lulu has a post up about the crib notes titled “Hand Jive,” which I understand to be a euphemism for “hand job.” So while I’d say the comment is a bit sexist, it’s a borderline case of sexism.

However, if you want to see real sexism in tweet form, check out Erick Erickson’s “ugly feminists return to their kitchens” remark. Now, that’s sexist.

Of course, as government calling themselves “communist” became ruthlessly dictatorial, peoples’ ideas about communism shifted. But Marx’s original vision was of a society without government where free people, unencumbered by class distinctions, would communally and democratically make decisions together. Yeah, it didn’t work.

I thought of this after reading the comment thread attached to this post at Reason. The blogger dutifully criticizes Sen. Richard Shelby for holding up nominations just to secure pork for Alabama. But most of the commenters don’t see it that way. Example:

Yes,Team Blue is in power.They hold the executive and legislative branches of government.When Team Red is trying to constrain state power I’m rooting for them.

Exactly how Shelby’s act of grandstanding isn’t “state power” also eludes me.

Anyway, some of the commenters refer to themselves as “an-cap,” which I take it stands for “anarchist-capitalist.” The an-caps are opposed to all government, period. When one person issued a challenge, “Who enforces your contracts,” an an-cap had a ready answer — a link to this document, “Privatizing the Adjudication of Disputes,” in which a couple of whackjobs seriously argue in favor of a private, for-profit criminal justice system.

Just read it. It’s one of the most jaw-dropping-ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. The bozos authors criticize the “near-monopoly of law that most governments possess,” and argue in favor of putting “public” courts out of business.

Here’s a radical idea of returning to the good old days:

Legal centralists posit that legal systems must govern everyone to function at all. If lawbreakers could simply drop out of the system, law could hardly protect us from their misdeeds. And yet, history contains many instances of pluralistic legal systems in which multiple sources of law existed in one geographic region. These were much more sophisticated than primitive law. In medieval Europe, for example, canon law, royal law, feudal law, manorial law, mercantile law, and urban law co-existed; none was automatically supreme over the others. Naturally, some jurisdictional conflicts occurred. But this system of concurrent jurisdiction overlapped with a period of economic development (c.1050-1250), not a period of chaos and impoverishment. Apparently these diverse systems did what Thomas Hobbes declared impossible: They created social order and peace in the absence of a distinct, supreme sovereign.

Look at the time peoriod — they are talking about the glory days of European feudalism, folks. I guess you could say there was social order and peace, but there was also serfdom. The real thing, not the kind Friedrich von Hayek wrote about. If you were one of the privileged few born into the aristocracy, I guess life probably was pretty sweet. But otherwise, Hobbes was right — for serfs, life was nasty, brutish, and short.

Here’s the conclusion of the paper:

For arbitration to live up to its full potential, however, government has to stop holding it back. Public courts should, as a matter of policy, respect contracts that specify final and binding arbitration. Legislatures should abolish laws that hamper ostracism, boycott, and other non-violent private enforcement methods. These small changes would make private courts much more attractive than they already are – and go a long way toward putting the public courts out of business.

“Private enforcement methods.” It sounds so banal. As in sending around that nice Vinnie “the Nickle” De Luca to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Before long a small coterie of people with means will have a monopoly on “private enforcement.” That’s not at all what the authors of the paper intend, of course, but it’s how their ideas would turn out in the real world.

The early Marxist ideal was to eliminate private property, and utopia would follow. The an-caps think that by making everything private, utopia will follow. Both groups value human freedom and desire an end to oppression. Put into practice, seems to me both inevitably lead to the utter subjugation of most people under the rule of a powerful few. Extremists may go around opposite sides of the circle, and their rhetoric and ideals may be utterly different, but sooner or later they end up in the same place.

This is grossly over-simple, but it’s how politics works. Extremist ideas all end up in about the same place, whether they originated on the Left or the Right. That’s because ideas that aren’t based in reality and real human nature generally pave the way for oppression and, eventually, totalitarianism. Anarchism has never brought about greater freedom; it just sets up conditions for some sort of Strong Man, whether tribal warlords or a national dictator, to step into the power vacuum.

All we can hope is that “an-cap” ideas never get put into practice.

For another perspective on Shelby et al., see Krugman.

Well, apparently loan industry lobbyists have brought the plan to a stop.

All together: ARRRRRGHHHH!

Meanwhile, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has put a “blanket hold” on at least 70 of President Obama’s nominations, meaning the nominations can’t be voted on by the Senate until the Dems put together a 60-vote majority. Apparently the Senator is holding the nominations hostage until he gets two lucrative programs for Alabama: a $40 billion contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers and an explosive device testing lab.

It’s not clear to me how one Senator could put a hold on nominations, but several sources are reporting this.

I may have more to say about this later. Right now I’m just feeling pure disgust.

Update: Ezra Klein explains how the “hold” thing works.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

The article also says residents distrust the city government and don’t believe their tax dollars are being spent wisely. But this level of cuts in services is not caused by overpaying a few people or leaving the lights in the library turned on too long.

Thomas Levenson (via Monica Potts) writes,

This is, among other things, what folks like Megan McArdle never seem to get — not merely that governments do things that (a) private entities won’t and or can’t and (b) that are necessary if you are, say, going to have thousands or millions of folks living in close proximity to each other, and (c) those things that need to be paid for — by the people in common, that is to say, by government — include a bunch of stuff essential for a sound economy and any chance of achieving what is commonly thought of as the American way of life.

These cuts probably will hurt business, including tourism. The right-wing model that sees the public and private sector perpetually at odds with each other is a denial of the basic fact that those miraculous free markets wouldn’t exist without governments that provide stuff like roads, bridges, street lights, law enforcement, a stable banking system, garbage pickup, etc., and these are things that have to be paid for somehow. And unless we want to go to a system in which all roads are toll roads, houses burn until the firefighters are paid (it’s been done), and street lights are all coin operated, this means government does these things through tax money.

Levenson is right — “The core Republican idea is destroying the American way of life.”

Recently the President suggested that during tough times, people shouldn’t “blow a bunch of cash in Vegas.” This has been blown up into a scandal. The White House had to issue a statement that the President supports the tourism industry.

Righties are still outraged that the “Underpants Bomber” was read Miranda rights, even after it was revealed the “Shoe Bomber” of 2001 also was read Miranda rights. William Jacobson argues that “Bush did it too” doesn’t make something correct, and for once I agree with him. But this is only a “scandal” because to righties the only way to handle an accused terrorist is to torture him, preferable on video. However, by all accounts the Underwear Bomber is providing actionable intelligence.

We learn that Gov. Mark Sanford didn’t break his marriage vows, because he had the “faithfulness” clause removed when he got married.

Senator Chris Dodd says the President’s new plans to rein in Wall Street are “too grand.” Dear Senator Dodd: STFU.

The health care reform bill is still stalled, and Francisco Franco is still dead.

According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, two of O’Keefe’s associates entered Senator Landrieu’s office in the Hale Boggs Federal Building in New Orleans and tried to pass themselves off as phone company employees. They were wearing phone-company-type work clothes, including hard hats, and told office workers they were there to fix problems with the phone system. O’Keefe was already sitting in the office, saying he was waiting for someone else to arrive. When the associates showed up, O’Keefe began recording them with his cell phone.

One of the two “workmen,” Joseph Basel, requested access to the phones. He was allowed access to the phone on the front desk, and according to a witness he took the handset off the phones and manipulated it somehow. Then he and the other “workman,” Robert Flanagan, made some show of calling back and forth with cell phones to show that the phone wasn’t working.

After that, Basel and Flanagan were taken to the GSA office where the main telephone lines could be accessed. It was at that time someone challenged their credentials, and when the two young men said their credentials were in their car, it was not long after that someone figured out the two guys did not work for the phone company.

Based on this, Basel and Flanagan were charged with entering a federal building under false and fraudulent pretenses for the purposes of interfering with a telephone system operated by the federal government, and O’Keefe and Stan Dai allegedly aided and abetted these acts.

Now, all four young men are innocent until proven guilty, and it is possible the affadavit is inaccurate. On the other hand, there is evidence that laws might have been broken, meaning there needs to be a trial. I understand O’Keefe was ordered to go live with his parents until the trial. I assume the other three are out on bail also.

Righties have whined incessantly ever since that it is somehow unfair for these four even to be charged with a crime. So much for the rule of law. Even if you accept the claim that the four were journalists working undercover to get a story, that doesn’t give them immunity from the law. I know journalists sometimes use subterfuge to do exposes of things like bad food handling practices in restaurants or phony massage parlors, but we’re talking about a federal building here. You know, the kind of place terrorists like to case and sometimes blow up.

No, I don’t think for a minute that the four clowns were terrorists. I suspect they were trying to stage something that would embarrass Senator Landrieu. Even so, we can’t be tolerant of people entering federal buildings, or any other potential terrorist target, under false and fraudulent pretenses, even if just for a prank. This is post-9/11 America, after all. If only out of courtesy to fellow citizens, you respect security protocols and don’t ask for them to be lifted just for you. When we start to make exceptions, security is weakened.

It’s way past time for people like Ben Stein to grow up. There are some things one doesn’t do, like yell “bomb” on an airplane, even if it’s a joke. And you don’t pull a stunt like this in a federal building and expect a pat on the head. I don’t think the boys deserve ten years in prison, but if they are found guilty of breaking federal law they should get enough of a sentence to discourage other “pranksters” from pulling stunts like this.

See also “Right-Wing Media Spin the Conservative Activist James O’Keefe’s Crime”

What they’re not noticing, beside the fact that NHS in no way resembles anything being proposed in Washington, is that the U.S. has a huge hospital readmission problem also. This is true in spite of the fact that many Americans who need hospitalization are not admitted even once, never mind again. Readmissions are a significant driver of health care cost in the U.S.

One 2004 study found that “The percentage of multiple hospital readmissions averages between 21% and 27% in the United States today.” However, most of the data for hospital readmission that I could find is confined to hospitals, states, specific illnesses, or programs (e.g., Medicare), but not the nation as a whole. The all-cause readmission rate for patients originally hospitalized with heart failure is 49 percent, for example. If anyone can provide more comprehensive data showing hospital readmission rates for all populations in the U.S., I’d appreciate it.

Of course, on the Right, the Administration is merely caving in to the teacher’s unions. Don Suber, a man robustly dedicated to remaining ignorant of just about everything, writes, “Whatever the teachers unions want, the teachers unions get, and baby the teachers unions want children to be left behind.” Obviously Suber got left behind somewhere, but we all agree there is plenty of room for improvement in the nation’s public schools. For this reason, education policies need to be crafted to improve public education, not hamstring it.

At Huffington Post, former teacher Eric Tipler analyzes what we know about the Obama Administration’s proposed reforms and is mostly impressed.

Sorta kinda related — Ross Douthat tries to argue that “abstinence only” sex education really works just as well as sex education that includes contraceptive information, even though empirical evidence suggests otherwise. Of course, his ultimate point is that the federal government should get out of the sex ed biz altogether and leave decisions about sex ed in schools to local communities.

But as part of his argument that teaching contraceptives doesn’t reduce teenage pregnancies, either, in spite of the fact that it does, he links to an Alan Guttmacher study that allegedly says school sex ed doesn’t change sexual behavior, period. But I looked at the study Douthat links to, and that’s not what it says. “There was particularly strong evidence that four groups of programs are effective at reducing sexual risk-taking or pregnancy,” the study says, and one of those four groups of programs is “sex and HIV education programs with certain qualities.” Later, it explain that one of those qualities was emphasizing the importance of avoiding unprotected sex. Emphasis added.

Naughty Douthat. But this kind of illustrates a weird quirk in the rightie brain — actual results don’t matter. If they like a program because it comprises their values, then it’s a good program, and disastrous results don’t change that.