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Some Democrats Stand in the Way of Filibuster Reform

  By Congress, Politics

It’s many of the Senate Democrats that are standing in the way of filibuster reform. They are worried about not having the filibuster if the Democrats are in the minority again. The argument is not entirely wrong. But it shows a lot less confidence in our party and ideals and most importantly democracy (with a small d) than we Democrats should have. The filibuster we have today is not only undemocratic, it is unconstitutional. Continue reading

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Ask Allyson Schwartz to Run for Governor!

  By Pennsylvania, Progressive Politics

Barack Obama is back in office and moving in a liberal direction. So now it’s time to think ahead about building progressive power. The most important thing we can do in Pennsylvania is to replace Tom Corbett as Governor. So it’s a little surprising to me is that, with all the talk about this candidate or that, the one Pennsylvania politician who is best placed to defeat Governor Corbett, Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz, is not being asked by everyone to run. The main reason, I suspect, is that most people who pay close attention to politics don’t think she will do so. And some folks, for the usual reasons, have trouble getting their head around the idea of a woman as Governor. I have no inside knowledge about whether Congresswoman Schwartz is considering a race. But I strongly believe that she should run. After explaining why, I’ll come back to the issue of… Continue reading

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Is Socrates A Model for the Rest of Us?

  By Uncategorized

An earlier and very different version of this paper appears under this title in Craig de Paulo, Patrick Messina, and Marc Stier, eds. Ambiguity in the Western Mind(Peter Lang, Inc. International Academic Publishers, 2005). The current text is a substantial revision that brings out some themes that were only implicit in the early version.  The original text was written to be delivered as a talk at conference sponsored by the Intellectual Heritage Program of Temple University entitled “Ambiguity in the Western Tradition.” It was directed not to specialists on Plato but to anyone interested in the issues raised by the text. As such, my argument does not turn on any disputes about the meaning or translation of particular passages. So, it has not seemed necessary to point the reader to the particular passages I paraphrase. Continue reading

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Single Payer Advocates Can’t Make Up Their Minds About the Problem With the ACA

  By Health Care

Ever since the Affordable Care Act was passed, the left wing critics of it—especially the single payer advocates—have said, wrongly, that it was passed at the behest of the insurance companies and that subsidies in the exchanges are a handout to them. This was never true for few reasons, not least because the insurance companies spend at least a hundred and forty million or so opposing the ACA. Now, to my great surprise, one of the leaders of the single payer movement in PA, Chuck Pennacchio, has posted an article on Facebook in which he seems to entirely reverse direction without noticing it. Continue reading

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David Brooks Gets It Wrong About Education and Health Care

  By Education, Health Care, Taxation

David Books outdid himself today in writing post about education and health care that is completely misleading about improvements in both in the last fifty years and about the limits of productivity increases in both areas. It takes more than a FB status update to explain why. Read this blog post for details. The short story though, is that if you really think there haven’t been any improvements in either education or medical care in this country since 1960, you don’t deserve to have your opinions appear on the op-ed page of The New York Times. And if you think that huge productivity increases in labor intensive fields are possible, then maybe you should explain why NY Times columnists do only two columns a week instead of the three they did in the 1960s. Continue reading

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What the Pundits Missed About President Obama’s Speech

  By 2012, Philosophy, Politics

It’s not easy to come up with instant analysis of a political speech. But, even if we grade them on a curve, it seems to me that the pundits have utterly missed the point of the President’s speech last night. Most of them seem to have found it uninspiring. Yet there is no question that the audience in Charlotte was moved by the speech. Hell, I was moved by the speech and, frankly, I tend to hold events like this at an analytical distance which makes it hard for me to get caught up in them. The pundits were right to say the speech was about the future not the past and that it proposed a continuation of Obama’s  basic approach to governing. And they were right to say that there were no bold new ideas in it. (Few Presidents do something as big and bold as health care reform and then have an… Continue reading

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What the Court Did, Why, and What it Means for Politics and Health Care Policy

  By Health Care

We got very good news from the Supreme Court today. There are no constitutional barriers to the ACA going fully into effect. The exchanges, subsidies for insurance and the expansion of Medicaid will provide affordable insurance for over thirty million people who don’t have it now. Over a hundred million people will be protected from losing their insurance or paying more if they have pre-existing conditions or are older or women. And the provisions already in place—that make preventive care free, that reduce pharmaceutical costs for seniors, that enable people 26 and younger to stay on the insurance of the parents—will remain in place. This is all great news. And it would not have happened without all the hard work you did in support of what became the ACA. That work didn’t stop after the legislation was passed. As I explain more below, the decision today was in no small… Continue reading

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Two Thoughts in Advance of the Supreme Court Decision

  By Health Care

Can we progressives not attack each other after the decision? I’m going to be writing more about the ACA and the Court after we hear the decision. But here is one plea in advance of the decision: can we progressives not get in a circle and start shooting at one another? That means, can the single payer folks not lead off with “if Obama only had pushed single payer through Congress we wouldn’t have to worry about the Court today?” Everyone who pays any attention to Congress knows that single payer had no chance in 2009-2010 and it does the progressive cause no good to make up stories about what is politically possible and what is not. More importantly we need to unite against the enemy, which is not the supporters of Obamacare but the corporate conservatives who, if they get their way today, are going to go after Medicare… Continue reading

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What’s the Rush? Save the Cohen Wage Tax Rebate!

  By Philadelphia, Philadelphia Taxes, Taxation

One of the last accomplishments of long time progressive Councilmember David Cohen—a rebate on the wage tax for those with low incomes—may be repealed tomorrow. It shouldn’t be. There are good policy arguments both for and against the wage tax rebate. I’ll come to some of them in a moment. But, frankly, at the moment those arguments are secondary. The key reason not to repeal the legislation tomorrow is that the decision to put off AVI for a year means that Council is going carry out a broad examination of taxation in the city next year. The Cohen wage tax rebate is not scheduled to go into effect until 2016 anyway. So there is plenty of time to reconsider it as we think through the future of taxation in Philadelphia. Any city like Philadelphia has to balance considerations of progressivity and economic growth. While, progressive taxation has very little negative… Continue reading

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Bonnie Raitt in Philadelphia, June 16, 2012

  By Music

I have absolutely no capacity for objectivity about Bonnie Raitt. But I think her performance last night in Philly was the best of the four I’ve seen. (Pictures are here.) She was energetic and engaging, powerful and emotional. Both the ballads and the rockers were great. And, as always, it was just wonderful being the presence of her because, well, she’s just a mensch. I saw her for the first time in the fall of 1972 as a college freshman—sitting right in front of her at McConaughy Dining Hall as she sang, played guitar and joked around. I was 16, she was 22. (Maria Muldaur, who had just released Midnight at the Oasis, was the warm-up!). I developed a bit of a crush. And I’ve admired her voice, musical choices, activism, and sense of humor ever sense. Amazingly enough, I’m 56 and she’s 62 now. And at least she has aged well!… Continue reading