A Compromise I Could Live With

There's been a lot of talk--a lot, a lot, a lot--about the public health insurance option in the House health care bill. Many liberals have boldly stated that its absence in the final reform bill would be a deal-breaker. Many conservatives have said the same about its presence in the final bill. More than any other single feature of the reform plan, this one seems to be driving the debate.

So what is it and why is it important? Despite the dire warnings that this bill signals the second coming of Stalin (or Hitler!), in actuality it represents an incremental change from the status quo precisely because a conscious decision was made on the part of its architects to disrupt our existing system as little as possible. The House bill establishes new regulations of the practices of insurance companies and of the product that they offer. But it also introduces a mandate that requires nearly everyone to buy insurance (offering affordability credits to help people who might have trouble affording coverage).

The role of the public health insurance option is to compete with the private insurance companies and make sure they're working to control costs. We don't want to force people to buy a product from these companies and then watch them jack up premiums and try to skirt the quality regulations we're going to put on them. But, you might ask, won't insurance companies already have an incentive to lower costs and provide a quality product so that they can gain market share (particularly since the new bill creates a Health Insurance Exchange that will introduce a more competitive situation)? Perhaps, but I would argue that there's a good chance they won't. Certainly right now they don't:

Several studies show that in lots of places, one or two companies dominate the market. Critics say monopolistic conditions drive up premiums paid by employers and individuals. . .

"There is a serious problem with the lack of competition among insurers," said Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, one of the highest-cost states. "The impact on the consumer is significant."

Wellpoint Inc. accounted for 71 percent of the Maine market, while runner-up Aetna had a 12 percent share, according to a 2008 report by the American Medical Association.

According to a 2002 letter from the GAO, the largest insurer in Ohio, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, controlled 32.6% of the health insurance market in the state. The five largest carriers in the state controlled 66.4% of the market. This is actually a pretty competitive situation relative to some other states. So good for us.

The "compromise" being offered by Republicans and conservative Democrats is one in which the public option is dropped and replaced with non-profit co-ops--so far, what exactly these will be hasn't been articulated by anyone (leading one to suspect its proponents don't actually know) but, broadly, these non-profit insurers are supposed to offer the same competition to private for-profit insurers that the government's public option would provide but without all that icky government interference. If we actually started such co-ops from scratch, it's exceedingly unlikely they would be able to do what the public option could do because there are barriers to entering the insurance market that make getting on your feet difficult. The public option wouldn't face those issues.

However, the scariest possibility is that these co-ops wouldn't be built from scratch:

Mr. Conrad’s own state demonstrates the uncertainties surrounding cooperatives. Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota dominates the state’s private insurance market, collecting nearly 90 percent of premiums. As a nonprofit owned by its members, the company would hope to qualify as a co-op under federal legislation, said Paul von Ebers, its incoming president and chief executive.

What the shit? We're going to bring in Blue Cross Blue Shield to compete with insurance megaliths like...Blue Cross Blue Shield? That idea better earn itself a Colbert segment because that's The Craziest F#?king Thing I've Ever Heard. So, as a fan of the public option and a skeptic of the ability of co-ops to replace it, what sort of bipartisan compromise would I, Senator Stanek, agree to? I might be able to get behind the one moderate Republican Senator Olympia Snowe seems to want:

As for the details, Ms. Snowe has been the rare Republican willing to show any interest in a public health insurance plan as an option, though she favors a trigger to institute such a government-operated program only if private health insurers do not make coverage more affordable.

The House bill already contains time-sensitive provisions that are triggered by the conditions on the ground, so to speak, after some amount of time. For example, the House bill helps to pay for itself by imposing a small surcharge on incomes over $350,000. But, written into it, the House bill has automatic adjustments to that tax based on how things look in a few years. If the bill's reforms have saved more than $175 billion by December 31, 2012, then the tax is eliminated for incomes between $350,000 and $1 million. If, on the other hand, savings by that date have totaled less than $150 billion then the tax doubles. Otherwise nothing changes.

So I'm open to the idea of making the introduction of the public option contingent on the rate of premium increases or savings or something over some specified time period: shape up, save money, and provide a quality product, private insurers, and the public option won't be necessary. But if things get out of hand, the public option will be automatically created--no legislative approval or tweaks necessary. Of course the devil is in the details (under what conditions exactly does the public option kick in?) and I think the threat would have to always be there if its purpose is to be served--otherwise insurers could play nice for a while then jack up rates when the pressure is off. That is, the threat should always be on the table, it should have no expiration date.

To me this seems like it has the makings of a decent compromise: if the need for a public option doesn't dissipate within some specified time of these reforms kicking in, the public option will be there. If not...well, we wouldn't need it anyway. Am I missing an important reason this doesn't seem to have been put on the table yet?

Us and Them

I often detach from the political landscape and view society through the lens of the political absurdist or even, perhaps, the political nihilist. But at heart I'm something of an ideologue and, while I try very hard to respect views on the appropriate role of government in our society that differ from my own, sometimes it's very hard not to get angry at the other side. I offer you a brief study in contrasts between one of the most liberal senators, the now-departed Senator Ted Kenney, and one of the most conservative senators, Tom Coburn, on the issue of health care.

The Liberal:

(I love the shoutout to Sherrod Brown.)

The Conservative:


Watch the videos and compare them, I implore you. Watching Coburn tell that weeping woman that the government can't help her makes me sick to my stomach. And knowing that Senator Kennedy is gone and there's one less incredible advocate for working together through government to better the lives of everyone in the polis--well, it just makes me sad all over again.

God Does Not Play Atari

Quantum mechanics is a field that's hit hard by questions of interpretation. On the one hand, at the center of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics lies an equation--the famous Schrödinger equation--that evolves with time in a way that's entirely deterministic. However, it describes systems with wave functions (the things you actually stick into the equation to see how they evolve) that allow systems to seemingly be in multiple different states at once ("superposition"). Of course, when we actually measure the system to see which state it's in we do find it to be in a single state. But the theory doesn't tell us which state we'll find it in, it merely gives a probabilistic picture that tells us there's some chance it'll be in this state, some chance it'll be in that state, and so on. Taken at face value, it seems as if the wave functions describing systems go from evolving deterministically in a superposition of states to mysteriously collapsing down to a single state through a hazily understood process ("measurement") that doesn't seem to have deterministic outcomes.

Certain members of the original generation of founders of quantum mechanics--Einstein being the most prominent--found this state of affairs unsatisfying. Einstein didn't believe this indeterministic outcome could really be the way the universe worked and famously wrote:

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice. -- Albert Einstein, Letter to Max Born (4 December 1926)

Einstein and two other physicists famously came up with a "paradox" to show the absurdity of this indeterministic view of the universe called the EPR paradox. It's based on a phenomenon known as entanglement, in which the states of two particles are connected in some way. Here's a simple way of understanding the paradox: suppose you've got a pair of gloves. Clearly, if one glove is left-handed, the other must be right-handed. But suppose these are quantum gloves and thus, prior to measurement, they each exist in a superposition of their two possible states (left-handed and right-handed). If I were to measure one, there would be a 50/50 chance of finding that it's a left-handed or right-handed glove because, as far we can tell, it isn't in a particular state before I measure it. Suppose I drop both of my quantum gloves--unmeasured--into different boxes and ship them off to friends who are ten light years apart. When one of my friends opens her box, the quantum glove will "collapse" into a single state. Let's say she finds her glove to be right-handed. She thus immediately knows--because the gloves are a pair ("entangled")--that its heretofore unmeasured and uncollapsed partner glove must be left-handed. There can't be any doubt about what my second friend will find when he eventually gets around to opening his box: a left-handed glove. Now, Einstein had made his name in no small part by declaring that information can't travel between two points faster than the speed of light so he seemed to have spotted a problem: how does the second glove instantaneously know that it has to "pick" the left-handed state when my friend gets around to opening it?

Einstein believed this paradox showed that even before I put my quantum gloves in their respective boxes and shipped them off they each had instructions (unbeknownst to me) that told them which state to pick when they collapsed: they conspired together somehow before I separated them and shipped them light years away. Some physicists continued that spirit, attempting to develop pictures of quantum mechanics that contained "local hidden variables"--secret instructions that we're not privy to that tell a wave function how exactly to collapse when measurement happens. In the 1960s, a famous piece of mathematical physics called Bell's theorem (and subsequent related experimental work over the next two decades) showed that local hidden variables do not seem to be consistent with the way our universe works.

But some physicists still dream of finding an underlying determinism behind quantum mechanics. One of the more well known is Nobel prize winner Gerard 't Hooft; you can see a bit of that in this excerpt from a brief Physics World interview with him from a few years ago (a handful of physicists were asked to discuss the current state of quantum theory):

Quantum mechanics could well relate to micro-physics the same way that thermodynamics relates to molecular physics: it is formally correct, but it may well be possible to devise deterministic laws at the micro scale. However, many researchers say that the mathematical nature of quantum mechanics does not allow this - a claim deduced from what are known as "Bell inequalities". In 1964 John Bell showed that a deterministic theory should, under all circumstances, obey mathematical inequalities that are actually violated by the quantum laws.

This contradiction, however, arises if one assumes that the particles we talk about, and their properties, are real, existing entities. But if we assume that objects are only real if they have been precisely defined, including all oscillations as small as the Planck scale - and that only our measurements of the properties of particles are real - then there is no blatant contradiction. One might assume that all macroscopic phenomena, such as particle positions, momenta, spins and energies, relate to microscopic variables in the same way thermodynamic concepts such as entropy and temperature relate to local, mechanical variables. Particles, and their properties, are not (or not entirely) real in the ontological sense. The only realities in this theory are the things that happen at the Planck scale. The things we call particles are chaotic oscillations of these Planckian quantities. What exactly these Planckian degrees of freedom are, however, remains a mystery.

What am I building up to? Well, the physics arXiv blog has a good find this week: Gerard 't Hooft has a paper up on the arXiv (an archive of preprints of scientific papers) this week suggesting that the universe acts like a cellular automaton. If you're not familiar with what that is, wiki is always a handy companion. Essentially it's a grid of cells that have certain rules--dependent on the states of neighboring cells--for taking a certain state (e.g. "on" or "off"--black or white). You can set up an initial state and then the grid evolves with time. Have a look at the most famous cellular automaton, Conway's Game of Life (not to be confused with Conway's Irish Ale).



Kind of reminds you of an Atari game (indeed, some Atari games were influenced by cellular automata). So what does the arXiv blogger have to say about this paper? Here's a teaser (read the rest if you're interested):

How Entanglement Could Be Deterministic

A Nobel Prize-winning physicist has developed a model of the universe as a cellular automaton that allows entanglement to be deterministic.

The universe is cellular automaton in which reality is simply the readout of a giant, fantastically complex computing machine. That's the conclusion of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft, who says this also means that quantum mechanics is a deterministic theory.

The key new feature of this deterministic model is that it specifically allows for the quantum phenomenon of entanglement.

Is Gerard 't Hooft's quest for determinism futile or is he on to something with his latest ideas? Does God play dice or does He play Atari? I don't know but 't Hooft's certainly an interesting guy worth hearing out.

Political Absurdism

In a roundabout way, I broached the topic of political nihilism in a previous post. In this one we’ll consider another road, one that I’ll tentatively call political absurdism (referring broadly to the absurdist creation of personal meanings in the face of the apparent absence of universal meaning).

In describing his first Senate campaign in 1984, Al Gore wrote in The Assault on Reason of his political consultant’s suggestion when his opponent was narrowing Gore's lead: “If you run this ad at this many ‘points’ [a measure of the size of the advertising buy], and if Ashe responds as we anticipate, and then we purchase this many points to air our response to his response, the net result after three weeks will be an increase of 8.5 percent in your lead in the polls.”

I authorized the plan and was astonished when three weeks later my lead had increased by exactly 8.5 percent. Though pleased, of course, for my own campaign, I had a sense of foreboding for what this revealed about our democracy. Clearly, at least to some degree, the “consent of the governed” was becoming a commodity to be purchased by the highest bidder.

The former Vice President, good and decent man than he is, lamented the “trend in U.S. politics towards ignoring facts and analysis when making policy decisions.” Long known (and, sadly, often ridiculed) for being a strong proponent of the Internet, Gore believes this medium offers the antidote: a free and fair marketplace of ideas where reason can dominate in separating the good from the bad. I would respectfully suggest that the reality is exactly the opposite. Ironically, the more ways we find to involve The People in the political process, the less effective our democratic system becomes. People are easily swayed by frames and frequently come under the control of others. At the risk of sounding condescending, I'll suggest that they becoming unwitting pawns in a chess game they don't fully comprehend.

The reason is that politics on a mass scale becomes an exercise in manipulation. Instead of simply presenting facts and analysis, politickers often seek to take advantage of the vagaries of human psychology using what an old professor of mine called “cognitive tricks.” The way an issue or proposal is framed or the way a problem is defined can have enormous influence in shaping perceptions. The effects that the precise wording of a poll question or the order of candidates’ names on a ballot can have in shaping opinions or affecting a candidate’s vote share are well-known. Chalking this up merely to laziness—or worse, stupidity—on the part of the public seems too easy.

In the 1910s and ‘20s, a nephew of Sigmund Freud named Edward Bernays pioneered the use of psychology to shape public opinion for marketing purposes. Bernays viewed groups of men as dangerously irrational and so he advocated using his techniques to control them. In a famous book called Propaganda, Bernays explained the role of popular manipulation in a democracy:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.

In a world where external factors color individual perception—or acknowledgement—of facts, the notion of a democratic or republican system as one in which individual political preferences are pooled and sorted out rationally in a political marketplace of ideas seems quaint. The public becomes merely another political tool to be harnessed and wielded against one’s foes. The impartial observer finds himself in a system devoid of any overriding truth. The "truth" is whatever one can convince a large enough slice of the population to believe (contrast this with the notion of using rational argumentation to bring opponents--through reason alone--to discover that which is already, and independently, true). Popular support can be generated and opinions manufactured to support virtually any political position, subject to the limits of inertia. If you're not convinced, go back and consider the role of astroturfing in manufacturing public opinion.

This situation is not quite like the political nihilism I described in the other post as "purposelessly drifting through the political landscape." In this quasi-absurdist conception of the political process, certain luminaries with ideological direction and policy purpose seek to actively reshape that political landscape to conform to their own personal truths. These opinionmakers need not be elites like public officials or media figures. They can be ordinary members of the public, driven to press their case and gifted with a knack for manipulation or persuasion. The result of accepting the absence of something akin to absolute truth is the ascension of what Orwell called doublethink. This is the reason that virtually no one is entirely consistent in his political beliefs (the starkest examples, of course, involve things like praising Medicare while decrying "government-run health care").

What's the moral here? That if you have a policy direction in which you wish to go, your objective must simply be to win. Though we'd like to believe that involves a high-minded approach, it likely requires the fine art of manipulation that's often referred to euphemistically using phrases like "message crafting" and "issue framing." One must change the perceptions of others, yes, using methods that might best be described as tricks or gimmicks. Consent does, as Mr. Gore discovered so long ago, become a commodity--or, rather, the consent-generating psychological tactics that media consultants use to build support for campaigns become the commodity. Is this the best way to view the political and policymaking process? I don't know. But I hope to follow up on this post soon using a current real-world example to flesh out some of these notions.

The Lion of the Senate is Gone

For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. -- Ted Kennedy

With the sad news this hour that Senator Kennedy has died, I want to put up the eulogy he gave for his brother 41 years ago. I've always rather liked it.



A beer in your honor, sir.

The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.

What Lies Ahead?

I've been thinking about the future a lot lately. Since it's easier to tread in the footsteps of others than to forge your own path, my thoughts have been guided by the imaginings of others. Namely, the writers of the science fiction films I know and love. It seems to me that it's possible to classify the different types of futures that these film-makers have envisioned into a few sci-fi archetypes. Here's what I've got:

The Utopia

The first future we'll consider is also the rosiest. It presumes a steady betterment of society, culminating in a reduction of social, economic, and personal shortcomings to the point that the world is essentially perfect, at least when compared to today. The clearest manifestation of this picture of the future can be found in Star Trek, though cracks in the Utopian facade become apparent at various points in the different franchise series. Money has (mostly) ceased to exist, as have most forms of human want.

Free of the burdens of, well, reality, man is free to tap into his inner nobility. People are explorers, scholars, philosophers. Peace reigns. In short, this is the future everyone dreams of but, perhaps secretly, most people don't believe is truly possible.

The Technocracy

Next we come to a slightly different picture of the future. Like most examples of The Utopia, The Technocracy boasts large technological advances that have forever altered society. However, the Technocracy has significant dystopian characteristics. While technology has--to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke--reached a point where it is indistinguishable from magic, it has created a world that is increasingly cold, impersonal, and perverse. Human beings exist but their humanity is slowly melting away. Movies like Minority Report--in which people are preemptively jailed based on technology-provided predictions of future guilt-- and Gattaca--in which destinies are shaped by a sort of technologically-ascertained genetic determinism--give us glimpses of such a future.

In some forms of The Technocracy, technology has supplanted God as an object of devotion and worship. In the most unsettling versions of this future, man himself has, in essence, become God with technology left, ironically, to provide the humanity that man has come to lack. 2001: A Space Odyssey famously features a computer, HAL 9000, who acts in a more human manner than the two detached, emotionless human astronauts with whom he is Jupiter-bound. I'll touch on Ray Kurzweil's non-fiction picture of a future Technocracy later but for now I'll mention that he foresees a fusion of man and technology to the point where essentially a new species is born.

The Wasteland

This future inherently assumes that the hubris of man will lead to his downfall. In The Wasteland, the human race has been partially or mostly destroyed and the remnants of humanity are locked in a constant struggle for survival. In most incarnations, it is the inevitable outcome of the Technocracy. For example, in Terminator and The Matrix the creation of advanced artificial intelligence ultimately backfires and leads to the destruction of much of the human race. In 12 Monkeys, human tampering with dangerous viruses kills most of the population and drives the survivors to a primitive existence underground.

The Wasteland is invariably post-apocalyptic. Regardless of whether he retains a measure of technological prowess, man has regressed substantially. His (perhaps foolish) primary goal is to regain what has been lost, often without any clear conception of how he will prevent history from repeating itself. I would classify the future depicted in the original Planet of the Apes as The Wasteland because it contains numerous themes of rebuilding a fallen society (the astronauts' entire voyage is designed for such purposes: of the woman astronaut, Charlton Heston explains "She was to be the new Eve" and it seems clear he has similar designs on the mute future-human Nova).


The Hellhole

In this future, the excesses of humanity have run amok. Unlike in The Wasteland, however, these excesses haven't necessarily all but destroyed man: they have merely made his existence miserable. Exploding populations, dwindling resources, and growing environmental devastation combine to lower the average standard of living. Soylent Green exemplifies this future. As Charlton Heston realizes just a bit too late, "The ocean is dying, the plankton is dying… It's people! Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Soon, they'll be breeding us like cattle—for food."

This overcrowded, under-supplied future can lead to a different level of self-awareness than The Wasteland. While Wastelanders think of little else than rebuilding their pre-Fall society, Hellholers understand that their path is irreversible. Their world has a set of new--largely unpleasant--constraints on it that must simply be accepted. The environment cannot be repaired, the population can only be curbed through very unpleasant corrections (e.g. famine and war). Whether or not we take responsibility for our mistakes (or make any sort of amends), we pay for them. And it is impossible to ignore or forget this fact.


Corporatocracy

The last picture of the future might be the most disturbing because it hits so close to home. In the corporatocracy, power is concentrated largely (perhaps almost exclusively) in the hands of amoral corporations. The Alien franchise is the clearest example of this future. The sinister Weyland-Yutani corporation habitually endangers the lives of its crews and colonists in the pursuit of "the perfect organism," presumably so that they may construct the perfect weapon. The Corporation either has its own private military or it has jurisdiction over military matters (I'd have to see Aliens again to know for sure).

This is a future in which individuals do not matter. We have ceded our moral authority--indeed, ourselves--to stateless, conscience-less, profit-seeking organizations. Men and governments have given way to shareholders and corporations.

Of course, not all sci-fi movies are easily classified because many blur the lines between these categories. Blade Runner, for example, has elements of all of these archetypes (except, of course, The Utopia). It's a Technocracy but with terrible side effects of its technological advances hinting at a slow lurch toward The Wasteland. At the same time, there are hints of a corporatist society that faces many of the problems characteristic of the Hellhole. These rules are all sort of fast-and-loose but I think they generally hold. If I've forgotten any categories, let me know.

This post wouldn't be complete if I didn't throw in a reference to the predictions of inventor/futurist Ray Kurzweil. I haven't read his books so my knowledge of these predictions extends no further than that wiki article. But it's clear that Kurzweil expects The Technocracy and, while he eagerly awaits it, I find his predictions deeply unsettling. In the future Kurzweil envisions, technology redefines existence far more than in even the most ambitiously Technocratic future captured on film. Here's a sample of what he believes the year 2099 will be like (notice how that final bullet point neatly sidesteps the possibility of the Technocracy giving way to The Wasteland):

● Humans and machines merge together in the physical and mental realms. Cybernetic brain implants enable humans to fuse their minds with AI's.
● In consequence, clear distinctions between humans and machines no longer exist.
● Most conscious beings lack a permanent physical form.
● The world is overwhelmingly populated by AI's that exist entirely as thinking computer programs capable of instantly moving from one computer to another across the Internet (or whatever equivalent exists in 2099). These computer-based beings are capable of manifesting themselves at will in the physical world by creating or taking over robotic bodies, with individual AI's also being capable of controlling multiple bodies at once.
● Individual beings merge and separate constantly, making it impossible to determine how many “people” there are on Earth.
● This new plasticity of consciousness and ability for beings to join minds seriously alters the nature of self-identity.
● The majority of interpersonal interactions occur in virtual environments. Actually having two people physically meet in the real world to have a conversation or transact business without any technological interference is very rare.
● Organic human beings are a small minority of the intelligent life forms on Earth. Even among the remaining Homo sapiens, the use of computerized implants that heavily augment normal abilities is ubiquitous and accepted as normal. The small fraction of humans who opt to remain "natural" and unmodified effectively exist on a different plane of consciousness from everyone else, and thus find it impossible to fully interact with AI's and highly modified humans.
● "Natural" humans are protected from extermination. In spite of their shortcomings and frailties, humans are respected by AI's for giving rise to the machines.

Scary stuff. Any thoughts on which one of these possible futures is most likely to come to pass?

Sleeping in the Ship of Theseus

The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned [from Crete] had thirty oars, and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their place, insomuch that this ship became a standing example among the philosophers, for the logical question of things that grow; one side holding that the ship remained the same, and the other contending that it was not the same. —Plutarch, Theseus

This is an old philosophical question: if I take a thing and replace every bit of it piece-by-piece with new parts does it remain the same thing? In the case of a boat, the question isn't particularly important, though it is somewhat interesting. But--assuming consciousness and the sense of I stem entirely from the functioning of the human brain--when one considers a person or a brain, the stakes are a bit higher.

When I applied to UChicago those many years ago, one of the essays I chose to write was on the topic of teleportation. It was a philosophical prompt:

In a book entitled The Mind’s I, by Douglas Hofstadter, philosopher Daniel C. Dennett posed the following problem: Suppose you are an astronaut stranded on Mars whose spaceship has broken down beyond repair. In your disabled craft there is a Teleclone Mark IV teleporter that can swiftly and painlessly dismantle your body, producing a molecule-by-molecule blueprint to be beamed to Earth. There, a Teleclone receiver stocked with the requisite atoms will produce, from the beamed instructions, you—complete with all your memories, thoughts, feelings, and opinions. If you activate the Teleclone Mark IV, which astronaut are you—the one dismantled on Mars or the one produced from a blueprint on Earth? Suppose further that an improved Teleclone Mark V is developed that can obtain its blueprint without destroying the original. Are you then two astronauts at once? If not, which one are you?

I don't know what I wrote (hey, when you look this good, you don't have to know anything) but I do remember that this question has always boiled down to one thing for me: continuity of consciousness. Of course, this question is merely a high tech reformulation of the question posed by the Ship of Theseus. We're breaking down a person and rebuilding them somewhere else from something else. The problem is again the same when one considers the possibility of mind-uploading in the future--if I transfer my consciousness into a machine, is it still me?

This question is important because before I teleport or transfer my mind to a machine I'd like to be sure that I'm not simply killing myself and letting a duplicate--granted, one who has all of my memories and the distinct sense of being me--take my place. One way of asking this question might be: is the transition from this mode of experience to the next one (i.e. this body to the new one, or this body to the machine) smooth? Or do I experience a discontinuity in my conscious experience?

If we compare these seminal events (teleportation or mind-uploading) to everyday experience, the difference seems stark. But in part this assumes a static present that is illusory. Our bodies are, like the Ship of Theseus, in constant flux, undergoing a constant give-and-take with our environment. Like the Ship, over time our bodies are slowly replaced with new parts as molecules and nutrients freely flow in and out. And yet this is not scary because I seem to experience continuity of consciousness. My body may be made of entirely different materials than it was a decade ago but there haven't seemed to be any sudden, sharp breaks in my sense of I. My consciousness has carried on smoothly over this period, even as my body was being replaced.

But let's delve a bit deeper. If I were experiencing discontinuities in consciousness, if my consciousness were dying and a different but equivalent one were taking its place (say, every hour), how would I know it? The sense of a conscious self that I'm experiencing at this moment would be less than an hour old, yet it would share all of the memories of its predecessors, since the information contained in the hardware of my brain (i.e. memories) is still there to be accessed at will. I would then die within the hour--my lifetime limited to the brief period between discontinuities in consciousness--only to be replaced by someone else.

I'll illustrate why I say this discontinuity is equivalent to death with an example from Star Trek: The Next Generation. The transporters in Star Trek seem to operate according to the same principle as Dennett's thought experiment above: the body is destroyed on the transporting pad, the information of how to build a person is relayed to the destination, and a new version of the person is reconstructed from local materials. In an episode called "Second Chances" we (and the crew of the Enterprise) discover that years earlier a transporter mishap had led to two materializations: one Will Riker was beamed back to his ship, another rematerialized at the transport point after the original transporting-Riker's body was destroyed. The result was that two copies of Riker after the time of that botched transport exist: Will Riker and Tom Riker. They may be "the same person" in almost every technical sense but ultimately, since they clearly have distinct conscious experiences, they cannot really be the same person. Thus there cannot be a smooth transition of conscious experience from before-transport to after-transport and, I suspect, when the body is destroyed during the transport process, the "original" person dies and consciousness ends. Both Tom and Will #2 are recreated at their destinations but that's little comfort to the original transporter (Will #1) as his conscious experience in this universe has come to an end.

Now I mused earlier about the possibility of such a discontinuity happening naturally every hour or so. Clearly there's no reason to think this is the case, though I don't think we can rule it out. But what about every day? We experience a discontinuity of consciousness every single night when we fall asleep. Is it possible that in the interregnum between sleeping and waking--in the trough between dreams--our consciousness dies and a new one is born? Every time we awaken our minds would literally be born anew. We believe we are the guy who went to sleep the night before when in fact he is effectively dead, replaced by a new consciousness (confusingly, us). Sleep, then, is equivalent to the transport or mind-uploading process in that we experience a discontinuity of conciousness that signals the death of the original and the creation of the replacement.

Is this even remotely possible? I have no idea. But for a time last night I was afraid of sleep. So seize the day--it may be the only one you ever experience.

Weyland-Yutani Says "NO!" to Universal Health Care

As a great lover of unsolicited mail from corporations that won't exist for centuries, I pass the following note from my inbox on to you:

Dear Friend,

I am writing on behalf of the evil venerable megacorporation Weyland-Yutani—which, in addition to its many other holdings, recently acquired a majority share of the health insurance market in the inner solar system—to share with you the dangers of attempting what so many others have accomplished successfully: constructing a system of universal health care.

While our foes at liberal media outlets like Wikipedia describe us as “consistently. . .exhibiting the worst aspects of corporate profiteering, willing to sacrifice decency and human life in the pursuit of profit,” nothing could be further from the truth! We are fighting to preserve JusticeFreedomAndTheAmericanWay™ itself and to prevent the government from trampling on the rights of the little guy: insurance conglomerates like Weyland-Yutani.

Regulating the products offered by corporations is outrageous--tyrannous, even--and serves no useful social purpose that we can see. We certainly don't want government bureaucrats poking their noses into a business that's rightfully done by profit-seeking private sector bureaucrats. We finally decided that enough is enough. Corporations like Weyland-Yutani have to stand up and shout it to the rafters: we want our country back! Our demands are simple: aside from funneling taxpayer money to citizens who are then forced by law to spend it on our product, the government should remove itself entirely from our industry.

Further, the government must drop this insidious "public option" proposal. The creation of a public health insurance option to compete against private insurers is madness. Ask yourself: would the Founders approve of the creation of new legal entities that cannot be found in the Constitution? We here at Weyland-Yutani would bet our corporate personhood that they would not. We urge you to do your civic duty as loyal W-Y customers: find someone--preferably an elected official--willing to engage in a reasonable debate on these weighty questions and shout them down! Remember, subsidies and mandates to buy our insurance are good, consumer protection regulations and increases in competition are dangerous overreaches of federal authority.


Truthfully yours,


Xeno M.
President, Weyland-Yutani

So I ask: Does it amuse you? Suggestions for pumping up the funny (while not obscuring the underlying message) would be much appreciated.

ThoughtFood: The market-based alternative

I'm a guy who generally believes in considering all the alternatives. The health care reform discussion that's going on now is proceeding with a certain mindset, one that asks "how can we insure more people?" Many advocates on the left stress the need for a single-payer system, in which insurance companies largely cease to exist and the government picks up the tab when anyone visits private health care providers. The reform plan introduced in the House preserves the existing system of private insurers and employer-based coverage because a conscious decision was made to disrupt as little as possible the system we've all grown accustomed to.

But there is another (somewhat radical) possibility that doesn't involve keeping the present insurance-based system or turning it over to the government. The point of insurance, as we all know, is to pool people's resources so that when something fairly expensive--but relatively rare--happens to someone in the pool, his expenses are significantly lessened. So you might pay for car insurance so that if you get into an accident you're shielded from most of the costs, but your insurance doesn't pay for you to fill up on gas, get routine maintenance done, and so on. The less expensive every-day stuff is paid for out of your pocket.

A common complaint about health insurance is that it doesn't work the way other forms of insurance work. Health insurance does pay for all the routine "everyday" things. Since people aren't directly handling their own money, the normal urge to be prudently frugal is significantly reduced and quite a bit of money is potentially being spent that might otherwise not be spent. Moreover, when you go to a doctor you've got to find one who takes your insurance (i.e. has a deal with your insurance company)--not exactly a very competitive situation.

That's why some people advocate for a system in which health insurance only applies to catastrophic (i.e. highly expensive) events with the rest of the costs being borne by individuals, who are free to shop around and force health care providers to compete more directly with each other. If you get some time, there's a thought-provoking article along these lines in The Atlantic: have a read (I highly recommend reading the whole thing). The author gets to his policy suggestions on the last page. Here's a bit of that:

First, we should replace our current web of employer- and government-based insurance with a single program of catastrophic insurance open to all Americans—indeed, all Americans should be required to buy it—with fixed premiums based solely on age. This program would be best run as a single national pool, without underwriting for specific risk factors, and would ultimately replace Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. All Americans would be insured against catastrophic illness, throughout their lives. [. . .]

How would we pay for most of our health care? The same way we pay for everything else—out of our income and savings. Medicare itself is, in a sense, a form of forced savings, as is commercial insurance. In place of these programs and the premiums we now contribute to them, and along with catastrophic insurance, the government should create a new form of health savings account—a vehicle that has existed, though in imperfect form, since 2003. Every American should be required to maintain an HSA, and contribute a minimum percentage of post-tax income, subject to a floor and a cap in total dollar contributions. The income percentage required should rise over a working life, as wages and wealth typically do.

All noncatastrophic care should eventually be funded out of HSAs. But account-holders should be allowed to withdraw money for any purpose, without penalty, once the funds exceed a ceiling established for each age, and at death any remaining money should be disbursed through inheritance. Our current methods of health-care funding create a “use it or lose it” imperative. This new approach would ensure that families put aside funds for future expenses, but would not force them to spend the funds only on health care.

What about care that falls through the cracks—major expenses (an appendectomy, sports injury, or birth) that might exceed the current balance of someone’s HSA but are not catastrophic? These should be funded the same way we pay for most expensive purchases that confer long-term benefits: with credit. Americans should be able to borrow against their future contributions to their HSA to cover major health needs; the government could lend directly, or provide guidelines for private lending. Catastrophic coverage should apply with no deductible for young people, but as people age and save, they should pay a steadily increasing deductible from their HSA, unless the HSA has been exhausted. As a result, much end-of-life care would be paid through savings.

Anyone with whom I discuss this approach has the same question: How am I supposed to be able to afford health care in this system? Well, what if I gave you $1.77 million? Recall, that’s how much an insured 22-year-old at my company could expect to pay—and to have paid on his and his family’s behalf—over his lifetime, assuming health-care costs are tamed. Sure, most of that money doesn’t pass through your hands now. It’s hidden in company payments for premiums, or in Medicare taxes and premiums. But think about it: If you had access to those funds over your lifetime, wouldn’t you be able to afford your own care? And wouldn’t you consume health care differently if you and your family didn’t have to spend that money only on care?

For lower-income Americans who can’t fund all of their catastrophic premiums or minimum HSA contributions, the government should fill the gap—in some cases, providing all the funding. You don’t think we spend an absurd amount of money on health care? If we abolished Medicaid, we could spend the same money to make a roughly $3,000 HSA contribution and a $2,000 catastrophic-premium payment for 60 million Americans every year. That’s a $12,000 annual HSA plus catastrophic coverage for a low-income family of four. Do we really believe most of them wouldn’t be better off?

As a bonus, here was Ted Kennedy's reaction to George W. Bush's push for greater reliance on HSAs: Bush's Health Savings Accounts Will Make A Bad Situation Worse. Of course, if you read the above article, you'll note that the author at least tries to address many of the shortcomings Kennedy points out in the Bush proposal.

A statesman isn't an anachronism?

Impressive, if true:

Rep. Leonard Boswell (D-IA) claims that President Obama told him "he's willing to be a one-term president if that's what it takes to get health care and energy reform," reports Radio Iowa.

Said Boswell: "The president (said), 'I'm not going to kick the can down the road.' And he said that and I said, 'Well, that's something I'm kind of used to from southern Iowa, you know. I know about kicking the can down the road.' And he said, 'No, if it makes me a one-term president, I'm going to, we're going to take it on because the country is in need of us taking this on.' I respected that very much."

Time Travel (Fiction) Quiz

For fun.

I only got 15.

Bad Congressman!

Apparently Congressman Steve Latourette had a town hall meeting today (I must've missed the memo). Below is a video from a progressive blogger who cornered him after the event. Frankly, the video just makes me wish these guys were better-prepared to face legislators--preparing a question doesn't do much good if you're not in a position to challenge a false answer. Anyway, have a look (I especially like the lady who shows up toward the end of the video):



I feel compelled to make a few brief comments:

0:57 It's nice to see an admission that prominent radio/TV conservatives are entertainers but as a stand-alone statement this is a cop out. They're still influencing opinions and spreading lies and one would (naively) think that as a public official it's Latourette's job to dispel the myths.

1:23 Conflating the public option with the reform plan as a whole is disingenuous. The CBO estimates about 12 million people will be in the public option in a decade. The vast majority of people will have employer-based or private insurance purchased through a Health Insurance Exchange. So the health care system post-reform will be "government-run" due to the presence of a public option in the same way that it's "government-run" right now due to the existence of Medicare.

1:30 Latourette points out that Medicare is expensive. I assume we're supposed to take this to imply that the public option will similarly be expensive. What he doesn't mention is that H.R. 3200 specifically sets up a self-financing public option: the public option's benefits plans and administrative costs are to be financed entirely through premiums paid by enrollees. It isn't authorized to tap into general revenue as Medicare is. But won't the public option be absurdly expensive like Medicare? Medicare is aimed primarily at people aged 65+. It would be tough to pick a more expensive demographic to provide with universal health care (if something like 70-80% of health care expenses are incurred toward the end of one's life then is it surprising that a program designed to treat the elderly is expensive?). The comparison isn't apt and I would hope that a U.S. Congressman who will soon be in a position to vote on this bill understands that.

3:42 "All over my district, BarackObama.com sent out emails encouraging people to come." Yes, both sides are organizing. I myself received one of the emails he mentioned; here's the beginning of it:

stanek --

All throughout August, our members of Congress are back in town. Insurance companies and partisan attack groups are stirring up fear with false rumors about the President's plan, and it's extremely important that folks like you speak up now.

So we've cooked up an easy, powerful way for you to make a big impression: Office Visits for Health Reform.

All this week, OFA members like you will be stopping by local congressional offices to show our support for insurance reform. You can have a quick conversation with the local staff, tell your personal story, or even just drop off a customized flyer and say that reform matters to you.

We'll provide everything you need: the address, phone number, and open hours for the office, information about how the health care crisis affects your state for you to drop off (with the option of adding your personal story), and a step-by-step guide for your visit. [. . .]

Contrast that with the memos of lobbyist-funded conservative groups documented by ThinkProgress. One such memo offers "best practices" for conservative activists to use against any Congressperson who "supported the Socialist agenda of the Democratic Leadership in Washington," including:

– Artificially Inflate Your Numbers: “Spread out in the hall and try to be in the front half. The objective is to put the Rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up. The Rep should be made to feel that a majority, and if not, a significant portion of at least the audience, opposes the socialist agenda of Washington.”

– Be Disruptive Early And Often: “You need to rock-the-boat early in the Rep’s presentation, Watch for an opportunity to yell out and challenge the Rep’s statements early.”

– Try To “Rattle Him,” Not Have An Intelligent Debate: “The goal is to rattle him, get him off his prepared script and agenda. If he says something outrageous, stand up and shout out and sit right back down. Look for these opportunities before he even takes questions.”

I'm not seeing the equivalence.

5:03 Latourette repeats a claim he made earlier in the video: the most ardent supporters of this bill see it as a vehicle for single-payer. He admits he has no idea what percentage of Democrats are in on this devious conspiracy but he names Barney Frank and Dennis Kucinich as examples. Kucinich, as I mentioned a few posts ago, has publicly said he's undecided on H.R. 3200 (he's busy pushing H.R. 676--you know, the actual single-payer bill). Frank did say recently--when confronted by a single-payer advocate with a video camera--that a he thinks "if we get a good public option it could lead to single-payer." However, this is hardly an admission that the system set up under H.R. 3200 will naturally evolve into a single-payer system (CBO analysis would indicate that this isn't even remotely true). I imagine he meant it in a public relations sense--right now single-payer isn't popular enough among legislators or the general public. A well-run public option might soften the ground for single-payer if people decide they're not really so averse to the idea. Regardless, Latourette was not being very truthful, was he?

So, yeah. I'd like to see a little more real-time fact-checking but I realize that's easier said than done.

P.S. Here's a piece of the discussion mcmahon and I had after I showed him this video:

me: i'm going to write a quick speakeasy post about this
mcmahon: oh jesus christ stanek, what is this, blogger day at the beach?

Guess so.

Birthers, Deathers

I wonder why so many on the extreme right oppose expanded health care access when it's increasingly clear that so many of them could really benefit from expanded mental health coverage.

Disappointment

Amid recent news of an apparent deal between the Obama administration and Big Pharma, it seems many on the left are angry or disappointed with what they view as a mounting list of capitulations or broken promises from the president. Have a cartoon, guys!

How Delightfully Confusing

Apologies for the health care post overload recently but there's much to be said. I want to make a quick note about the merits of message coordination.

On the way home from lunch at my local brewing establishment, I happened to hear part of a tele-townhall meeting held by Dennis Kucinich. The townhall was on the topic of health care and the little Congressman was taking calls and answering people's questions. It didn't take long for me to realize that the bill he was promoting and explaining was a "Medicare for all" plan, not the plan before Congress now. Kucinich was pushing H.R. 676, a single-payer plan that has been introduced in the past few Congresses. Single-payer systems work like Canada's Medicare: virtually everyone gets their insurance through the government, even if hospitals and doctors remain private. What Kucinich arguably should have been talking about was H.R. 3200 (wow, what a shit wiki page), the health care bill that's going to be voted on in September and discussed throughout the month of August.

That's not to say I think single-payer is without merits or that it shouldn't be be a subject of public discussion (in some ways, I suspect it would be a better idea than the current plan). But at this moment, people are confused about the health care plans being devised in Congress. Republicans are in full fear-mongering mode, yet I'm not seeing a coherent, coordinated explanation of the reforms in question being made by the Democrats. In fairness, there isn't currently a plan, there are multiple plans. But I think House Dems should be at home this month selling the House bill (and, as we've seen, some are, despite astroturf opposition). And Kucinich's decision to sell a single-payer system instead of educating constituents on H.R. 3200 strikes me as counterproductive and irresponsible. He did try and clarify that the two are different bills--apparently he's undecided on H.R. 3200--but I wonder how many people who listened to him will now believe that Congress will be voting on "Medicare for all" when they go back in September?

To make it all more confusing, Congress will be doing just that. For the first time ever, Congress is going to take a floor vote on single-payer health care. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), the guy in the video a few posts down daring Republicans to vote against Medicare, will introduce an amendment to H.R. 3200 that effectively strips out most of its 1,000+ pages of text and inserts much of the language of H.R. 676. Speaker Pelosi has indicated that she's going to allow this and that the House will indeed vote on replacing the plan currently under consideration with a single-payer plan. I assume this is meant to try and appease the liberals who are upset that single-payer was never on the table during this ongoing health care debate, though I wonder what would happen in the unlikely event that House Republicans decide to play a high-stakes game of chicken and actually vote for Weiner's amendment?

What's the takeaway point of all my hand-wringing? People are confused--bombarded with misinformation actually--and this stuff isn't helping.

On a totally unrelated note, here's a cool link: Recovery Tracker, Lake County.

Getting out of hand

To add onto that last post, we have some news from ThinkProgress:

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the president of the freshman Democratic class has revealed that “at least one freshman Democrat” has already been “physically assaulted at a local event.” Connolly warned that conservative groups had taken things to a “dangerous level“:

“When you look at the fervor of some of these people who are all being whipped up by the right-wing talking heads on Fox, to me, you’re crossing a line,’ Connolly said. ‘They’re inciting people to riot with just total distortions of facts. They think we’re going to euthanize Grandma and the government is going to take over.”

No word yet on any details of who he's talking about or how that person was assaulted so maybe it's nothing. And frankly I don't know if it's the rent-a-mobs that are getting crazy or if they're just whipping the more deranged rightwingers into a frenzy (see this Daily Kos diary on how threats against Obama's life are up 400% from the threats received by his predecessor a year ago).

Moreover:

TOWN HALLS GONE WILD: In one incident of right-wing outrage, protesters surrounded Rep. Tim Bishop (D-NY), forcing police to escort him to his car. In another, anti-health care protesters hung up an effigy of Rep. Frank Kratovil (D-MD) outside his district office in Salisbury, MD. The city was the site of a recent symposium on the dangers of "government-run health care," sponsored by a group called "Patients First," a project of AFP. Two nights ago, Reps. Steve Kagen (D-WI) and Steve Driehaus (D-OH) had to face down angry mobs. Kagen, whose town hall was targeted by the Wisconsin chapter of AFP, was "repeatedly disrupted" by "incomprehensible" shrieks and shouts from conservatives. And just last night, Fox's local Houston affiliate reported that at a rowdy town hall hosted by Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), some attendees admitted "they don't live in the district."

I forgot to mention in the post below that someone in the crowd of protesters that accosted Lloyd Doggett had a marble tombstone with the Congressman's name on it. These people are coming unhinged.

Astroturfing

There's nothing more powerful in American politics than a grassroots uprising. The successful reforms of the Progressive Era show what can be accomplished with the active support of The People™. On the other hand, the repeated failures of pushes for universal health care in the United States show how a lack of grassroots support can kill proposals even if they--at least on paper and in opinion polls--are widely popular. Grassroots support is particularly attractive because it can work simultaneously on two entirely different levels: as a bottom-up viral spread of support that catches on between acquaintances, family members, and colleagues, and as a top-down testament in the newspapers and on television to the existence of popular support for a proposal (potentially triggering a positive feedback bandwagon effect that further widens and deepens support).

Today we stand once more on the brink of overhauling the U.S. health care system. Our primary goals as a nation are simple: attack soaring health care costs and reverse alarming growth in the number of uninsured Americans. And once more the forces of opposition are fanning the flames of fear and resentment in a bid to turn public opinion against a popular president and a (hitherto) popular idea.

The House went into recess last Friday and since then we've been hit with a barrage of stories about Congressmen (and some Senators) being confronted by rowdy anti-reform crowds. Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) was shouted down at a town hall meeting the other day by chants of "Just say no!" Patrick Murphy (D-PA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) reportedly had similar experiences in their districts. In a joint appearance, Senator Arlen Specter and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius faced disruptions at a town hall meeting last Sunday. What's going on here? Are we witnessing a grassroots backlash against perceived federal overreaching? No. The indications are pouring in this is the polar opposite of grassroots efforts--the wolf in sheep's clothing known as astroturfing.

As the name would suggest, astroturfing refers to a sort of artificial grassroots. Here's how now-Senator Sherrod Brown describes it in his 1999 book Congress from the Inside:

During the last several years, "artificial" grassroots have sprung up; some call it "astro-turf lobbying." Created and managed by political consultants looking for business between elections, and paid for by corporations looking for broad public support for their political agenda, corporate grassroots have emerged as an increasingly major political force in Congress. During the [1993] health care debate, special interest groups played a major role in defeating the bill.

If these protests are in fact a result of astroturfing, then they are organized and funded by corporate enemies of health care reform (e.g. the insurance industry). The intent, of course, would be to feed the perception--and generate the self-fulfilling prophecy--that the political winds are blowing against H.R. 3200, the health care reform proposal. The primary targets are undoubtedly Democratic Congressmen--particularly Blue Dogs representing red-tinted districts--and the great mass of undecided or wavering voters (if passionate and committed citizens are taking the time to protest the health care bill, perhaps it is a fundamentally flawed bill that will do more harm than good, no?). Have a listen to what Rep. Doggett has to say about the mob at his town hall:



In a recent interview with ThinkProgress, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin warned his colleagues against these sorts of tactics:

DURBIN: Well I think members should be out, speaking with the public, meeting with people who are the health care professionals and talking about the current situation. I’ve done it and I’ll continue to do it. But you know, I hope my colleagues won’t fall for a sucker-punch like this. These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town halls for visual impact on television. They want to show thousands of people screaming ‘socialism’ and try to overcome the public sentiment which now favors health care reform. That’s almost like flooding the switchboards on Capitol Hill. It doesn’t prove much other than the switchboards have limited capacity. So, we need to have a much more balanced approach that really allows members of Congress to hear both sides of the story, rather than being sucker-punched or side-tracked by these types of tactics.

Of course, this sort of thing isn't new. Let's take a trip down memory lane to a sorrowful place, the mention of which should make every American wince: Florida 2000. In those dark days of uncertainty and recounting, public opinion was torn, mostly along partisan lines. At some polling places where recounts were ongoing, outraged local residents attempted to storm and disrupt the process. The most famous such incident--the so-called "Brooks Brothers Riot" in honor of the "conservative business attire" worn by the rioters--took place at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters. This mob of protesters attempted to disrupt the recount by shouting "Stop the fraud!" and "Let us in!" A moving display of the passions felt by voters genuinely worried about the integrity of the election process. Well, actually no. The entire fiasco was orchestrated by a certain Republican candidate's campaign and his party's Congressional leadership. The concerned "locals" in the mob turned out to actually be operatives of said party members. Here's a snapshot of the "protesters":




Now we're seeing the same kind of phony grassroots support being purchased by interests that want to derail the current health care reform efforts. All the examples mentioned above happened over the first weekend of the House recess. I imagine we're going to see a lot more astroturfing before the month of August is over. In a worst case scenario, these corporate capers stall any momentum health care reform has going into September (and trimming off enough Blue Dogs and conservative Senators to make passage contentious) leading to a defeat or emasculation of the legislation. Democrats trudge through 2010 demoralized, embittered, and disillusioned while Republicans emerge from the fight energized. Midterm elections have notoriously low turnouts but, as we all know, decisions are made by those who show up. While a 52-seat Republican pickup in the House, à la 1994, is unlikely, any sort of large gains could further stymie any major policy initiatives the Obama administration wants to push before his re-election campaign. I don't even want to recap the events of the Clinton administration here much less relive them.

But this nightmarish vision need not come to pass. Astroturfing can be beaten by real grassroots support. Emailing or calling Congressmen, or painstakingly working to convince your friends and neighbors, a handful at a time, of the need for real reform are the little steps anyone can make. I think in future posts we'll look at some of the misconceptions (and outright lies) spreading about H.R. 3200 and how best to fight them.

Update: Check out this new ad from the DNC:



Update to the update: According to CNN,

National Republicans turned the tables on their political counterparts Wednesday by redirecting angry telephone calls coming into their switchboard to the Democratic National Committee.

The DNC released a Web video early in the morning accusing the GOP of inciting mob activity at town hall meetings.

At the end of the video, the DNC instructs people to call the Republican National Committee to express outrage. Callers who dial the RNC's main number to voice their concern about the DNC's charges are told to press 1, which sends them to the DNC's main switchboard.

Clever and douche-y, all at once.

Still a Pimp

This is what a badass looks like:

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has pardoned two jailed American journalists and ordered their release following an unannounced meeting with former President Bill Clinton, media reports said Tuesday.

Clinton met earlier Tuesday with Kim after arriving in Pyongyang on a surprise visit, holding "exhaustive" talks that covered a wide range of topics, state-run media said.

Clinton traveled to communist North Korea on a mission to try to secure the release of Americans Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore's Current TV media venture who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in "hostile acts."

He shows up and big, bad (small, short) dictators turn to jelly. Thanks, Bill!