Spending!

According to the CRS, the marginal cost of continuing the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $11 billion per month, with no end in sight. . . . According to OMB director Peter Orszag, it costs about $1 million per year per soldier in the field, so adding 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan, as President Obama is expected to do next week, will cost another $30 billion per year.

Meanwhile, the healthcare bill that will apparently doom our country's finances forever is slated to cost ~$90 billion per year.

Our country's political system amazes me.

hat tip: Bruce Bartlett

we're doomed

Dan Drezner, on how the apocalypse planning we see in the movies would work in the real world:

When the movies do it -- and here I'm thinking about Deep Impact, The Core, Children of Men, etc. -- there's usually a coterie of Really Smart People, or a Council of Elders, or some other expert-driven body that devises a risky but brilliant plan to solve the problem.

In the real world... well, I suspect the following would be true:

* There would be initial and profound disagreement among experts over what precisely to do;
* After a scientific consensus began to emerge, dissenters would go back to their home governments to lobby for political support
* There would be rampant suspicion of any multilateral effort by those asked to make an outsized contribution;
* The cost overruns... oh, the cost overruns;
* Conspiracy theories would pop up all over the friggin' place
* The plan wouldn't work.

Robert Reich on what happened to the Public Option

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada -- which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a "Medicare-like plan" that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn't hear of it, and Republicans and "centrists" thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

So the compromise was to give the public option only to Americans who wouldn't be covered either by their employers or by Medicaid. And give them coverage pegged to Medicare rates. But private insurers and ... you know the rest.

So the compromise that ended up in the House bill is to have a mere public option, open only to the 6 million Americans not otherwise covered. The Congressional Budget Office warns this shrunken public option will have no real bargaining leverage and would attract mainly people who need lots of medical care to begin with. So it will actually cost more than it saves.

But even the House's shrunken and costly little public option is too much for private insurers, Big Pharma, Republicans, and "centrists" in the Senate. So Harry Reid has proposed an even tinier public option, which states can decide not to offer their citizens. According to the CBO, it would attract no more than 4 million Americans.

It's a token public option, an ersatz public option, a fleeting gesture toward the idea of a public option, so small and desiccated as to be barely worth mentioning except for the fact that it still (gasp) contains the word "public."

And yet Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson mumble darkly that they may not even vote to allow debate on the floor of the Senate about the bill if it contains this paltry public option. And Republicans predict a "holy war."

Story here

Being President has perks

Quote of the Day II

"College Football Fan Gauges Girlfriend's Interest in a Plus-One System"

hat tip: College Humor

Quote of the Day

You gave this president an economy falling off the cliff.

- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, going after a Republican Congressman at a hearing on financial regulation.

hat tip: Derek Thompson at the Atlantic

James Kwak

Just a note that I've really been enjoying James Kwak's stuff at the Baseline Scenario. Maybe it's because of our similar backgrounds - both former McKinsey, now in law school, though he has a truck load more experience between those two events now in me - but I've found his analysis of what to do with our banking system very sharp.

Yglesias is wrong - it's good the Hornets fired Byron Scott

Matt Yglesias knows nothing about basketball.

Normally I don't care about this since he writes about the Wizards. But, now that he's writing about the Hornets I have to speak up.

He argues that the Hornets should not have fired Byron Scott because they have several terrible players - who could do better? I know who - anyone.

If you have any grasp for the nuance of the game - or even the non-nuances, like losing to the Knicks by having them repeatedly dunk on you - the fact that Byron Scott is a terrible coach is obvious. The Hornets' defensive rotations make no sense, and the players always seem lost. The offense repeatedly breaks down, and the right players don't get the ball in the right places at the right moments. The wins we do have are usually due to Chris Paul's individual brilliance or something he cooks up with one of his big-man teammates - what the coach puts out there almost never adds anything.

In addition, his main selling-point has always been that he's a "player's coach", a guy who can reach and motivate his players. That has been true at times. Since at least the middle of last year, it has not been true with these Hornets. They had visibly quit on him last year - heck, it became a regular feature in Bill Simmons' columns, how the Hornets - and especially Chris Paul - would roll their eyes, not look at him, or just walk away from him when he spoke. It has continued this year. Chris Paul is too classy on the court to show his disgust too much, but at times you could see the frustration in his shoulders as another botched play when wrong, he ran to try to remedy things, and Byron Scott yelled on sideline, confused.

That all probably wouldn't convince a guy like Yglesias, who tries to use numbers to make up for his lack of knowledge of the game. So, I'll add this - the guy's record utterly mediocre, and the only teams he has won with have featured the best point guards in the game at the height of their play. He's able to win by not getting in the way when you have a stacked team and a brilliant floor general to relieve him of having to do his job. Otherwise, his teams stink. That's the best that can be said of the man.

Quote of the Day

"[The] only Republican to vote for the Dems health care reform bill is also one of, I believe, only two in the House GOP caucus with any actual experience living in a Communist country as opposed to the fantasy-Tea Bag version of Communism / Socialism / Fascism / Dictatorshipism. That's Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA), who came to America as a refugee from Vietnam."
-TPM

Yes.