Jacob S. Hacker is a bad-ass.

Jacob S. Hacker has a not-for-the-layperson book about the public/private nature of the American welfare state. His main issues are illustrating the path-dependent nature of the evolution of these programs, and he highlights the importance of applying the same type of government/institutional analytical framework to non-governmental actors in the game. He shows how organized labor played a vital role in securing pension benefits for all Americans but acquiescent on the health front; he shows the ruthless AMA lobby fighting against national health care in the 1930’s – and perhaps most importantly, how private insurance flourished in the absence of a governmental program between 1935 and 1950. After this point, every subsequent debate about national health care has really been a debate about expanding “private” (heavily subsidized) health insurance.

Hacker more recently authored the public option that was left out of the Senate bill.

This quote is from that turning point - where the future of the American health system had been decided by means of subterranean politics and the tax code. Not all at once, of course, but this is the point at which we know where the path is leading...

There was, in short, every sign that private health insurance had won out for employed Americans, just as there was every sign that Social Security would remain the core provider of retirement income.

No votes on this outcome had been taken. No grand alternatives had been put to citizens for a test. Indeed, judging by the debates that did transpire after 1950, there were no real choices to be made. Private insurance received ever more costly subsidies. Yet defenders of the voluntary way denied that government was implicated at all. Some Americans were well served and others were left out, but discussion of winners and losers was lost in the celebration of private progress and the complexities of tax tables. Americans had found themselves caught up in a fierce battle over national health insurance, but the increasingly privileged place of private insurance in the American social welfare regime prompted little debate at all.

And I love this quote, which perfectly sums up the role of the American government in health care in the 20th century:

The federal government had first built up the technological prowess of the medical complex, then become a generous subsidizer of private health insurance, and then finally stepped in as a largely passive financier of private medical care itself.

Cheery thoughts for a cold Friday afternoon.

Jerome David

I had lunch on Thursday in a place called Urban BBQ. It's located right next door to a purveyor of fine beers that had a truly impressive selection of craft ales. Not knowing what I was doing, I picked out a Mont Blanc blond, a six of 14er ESB, and a Belgian-style ale from Argentine made by a brewery named "Jerome." (I got the Cerveza Diablo.)

As we made our way to the front to pay, one of my friends found out from his phone that J.D. Salinger had died.

I got home that night and thought about that famous Jerome some. I drank the Jerome ale. I had much too much homework to do, but I still set aside some Friday metro reading - Seymour, An Introduction.

A lot of people talk about how the last novella in the Glass family saga is dark, disjointed, and of course, serves as the final coda for Salinger's most challenging and (to some) infuriating characters. I always enjoyed "Raise High the Roof Beam" and "Seymour" because of the tone, the playfulness, and Salinger's refusal to put any meat on Seymour Glass's skeleton. But as I reread it this time, I also realized that there's something else that happens in "Seymour": it's Salinger erasing himself shortly before he disappeared. Here he confuses his own biography with Buddy Glass's and suggests that Salinger's body of work is in fact Buddy's.

At this point, it doesn't seem to me merely chummy to mention that I've written about my brother before. For that matter, with a little good-humored cajoling I might conceivably admit that there's seldom been a time when I haven't written about him, and if, presumably at gunpoint, I had to sit down tomorrow and write a story about a dinosaur, I don't doubt that I'd inadvertently give the big chap one or two small mannerisms reminiscent of Seymour - a singularly endearing way of biting off the top of a hemlock, say, or of wagging his thirty-foot tail. Some people - not close friends - have asked me whether a lot of Seymour didn't go into the young leading character of the one novel I've published. Actually, most of these people haven't asked me; they've told me. To protest this at all, I've found, makes me break out in hives, but I will say that no one who knew my brother has asked me or told me anything of the kind - for which I'm grateful, and, in a way, more than a bit impressed, since a good many of my main characters speak Manhattanese fluently and idiomatically, have a rather common flair for rushing in where most damned fools fear to tread, and are, by and large, pursued, by an Entity that I'd much prefer to identify, very rougly, as the Old Man of the Mountain.

RIP.

how long does it take to invent a civil right?

Around twenty years, apparently. The whole article is worth a read, as it gives a nice historical perspective of the relationship between both parties and the courts. But the next time you hear that canard about “judicial activism” being the provenance of the left, remember this quote:

For many decades, into the nineteen-eighties, it was widely agreed among judges and scholars that the right to bear arms belonged only to militias, and thus the Second Amendment imposed no limits on the ability of states and localities to enact gun-control laws. Warren E. Burger, the former Chief Justice (and no liberal), said that any other view of the law was a “fraud,” and Robert Bork (ed. note: !!!!!), the conservative hero, said much the same thing. But Meese and his allies in the National Rifle Association were indefatigable in pushing an opposing interpretation, and their position became widely adopted, first in the Republican Party and then among many Democrats. Finally, in 2008, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Antonin Scalia (who was appointed while Meese was attorney general), struck down a District of Columba gun-control law as a violation of the Second Amendment. A fringe position – a “fraud” – two decades earlier had become the law of the land.

Is it precocity or precociousness?

Either way, after many years of always being among the youngest to do ______, it's somewhat of a relief to be among the oldest people in my class now. I did find one person, so far, who is older than me. On hearing us discuss our ages, a much younger guy across the table from us rolled his eyes and said, "Christ. Why don't you guys go watch The Breakfast Club or something?"

And maybe it's just because I'm wearing a backpack now, but I keep getting carded! Ok, maybe it's because we were at (ugh) The Tombs, but still - I'll take it.

The Doobie Brothers

We were up in NYC with Papa Bear over New Year's Eve. After a long and frigid new year's eve, we took it pretty slow on the first. Virginia Tech was playing a bowl game that night, which had Ms. Abstract Citizen quite excited. So, as part of the family left to take in a horrifying amount of Abba songs, I convinced my dad to stay in with us and watch the third or fourth American football game of his life. (He dimly remembers a Super Bowl game in 1979 or so.)

During the conversation, I mentioned that I won't be checking the "latino" box on my grad school application, going instead with my old standby - "other." (More on that in a different post.) Papa Bear was, I suppose, happy to hear this.

The game continued, and we continued to explain the intricacies of American football to him. We were drinking Catena, St Emilion, eating food from Balducci's next door, and generally having a grand time. Till the halftime entertainment started. "Who are these people? They're friends of your brother's, right?" I chuckled. "Who, the Doobie Brothers?"

My dad: Wait. Really? This is really the Doobie Brothers?
Me: That's what they said last commercial. Halftime entertainment is the Doobie Brothers.
My dad: There's a history there. The Doobie Brothers. You won't check the "latino" box, and there's a story about this...

And down that rabbit hole we go. It seems that many moons ago, while my dad was a grad student, the Latin American Studies Center at Berkeley was having a party. Brazilians don't quite fit into a lot of these categories, but my dad decided to be a sport anyway and go. As he tells it, they were playing insufferably "native" music. Stuff that's basically as "authentic" (whatever that means) as your average subway-musician's take on "El Condor Pasa." (God, how I hate that song.) You know, music with costumes, flutes, and so on.

My dad and some of the other Brazilians imposed on the organizers to play some Brazilian music. This was, ostensibly, a latin american-themed party, and while we're not Latinos or Hispanic, we are proudly Latin American. So, he got them to play a Rita Lee tape.

There's an old leftist mentality in parts of Latin America that considers Coke to be an imperialist drink, and rock to be its cultural equivalent. Well, these were these kinds of people. And Rita Lee, Caetano Velos, and the other tropicalistas were the first big artists to openly embrace American rock during the turbulent 1960s. And her stuff in the 1980s was unabashedly commercial. But she is important, as any fan of Beck's and other post-tropicalista artists ought to know. Does it get much better than "Panis et Circenses"...?



Anyway, enough background about Rita Lee. Let's move on to the punchline. One of the Chilean organizers gets tired of the lone representative of Brazilian music after a few minutes. He changes the tape, finds my dad, and returns the cassette to him, saying, "Here's your Doobie Brothers, or whatever the hell it was."

May everyone's 2009be full of contextually-inappropriate contempt for the Doobie Brothers.

"Shit happens. People change."

Updating a previous item on my sister's (and hence, I assume, all of her sub-Y generation's) slang choices..."Shit happens, people change" is my sister's favorite new refrain, to be deployed only in relation to trivial topics. As in:

Me: Hey, I thought we had lunch plans today?
Sis: Well, you know. Shit happens. People change.

I love it and promise to begin overusing it starting right now.

Family! Family!

Grandmother and aunt are here from Rio. The cumulative effect at my mom's house - the two sisters and mom - is deafening and exhilarating. My aunt is loud, brash, playful - I guess there's some precedent in the family for that, but I'm never sure where it comes from. Also, she was wearing this weird necklace that looked like it was made of meatballs.

One of her favorite expressions is to refer to the U.S. as a "colossus." THis usually happens in relation to fairly trivial things, like...I don't know, good olive oil. "See this? It's Italian. Not like the cans of Portuguese mazola we get. That's what happens in a civilized country: you get choices. This country, I tell you, it's a giant. A colossus."

They are off, to big box stores and such, running down lists of want's from relatives: laptops, cameras, and so on. I think now I'm old enough to appreciate how much these trips mean to my mom, to have her sister and mother travel this far to visit her. I don't have any particular thoughts about it other than to say that this is the feeling I expect to get from the holidays.

But as a practical matter, I am much more worried about the fantasy football championship. I have been freakishly good at fantasy football - I can't remember ever finishing in worse than 4th place, and I am in the championship game in both of my leagues. I expect to lose both, just as I expect to be handily defeated for the first time in fantasy basketball this week. Ms. Citizen is struggling with a cold, trying to get some sleep.

Oh, look, the Titans' defense just scored. That's good for me.

Well, for once I started writing without a particular message in mind. Maybe later this week I will post some mixtape tracklists I've been working on. Life seems languid right now. I have half a poem sitting at the edge of my mind, and I know exactly 3 things that I want to say in it. But I haven't been bothered to write it down. Short weeks ahead, hopefully wintry ones. Our smart car got its first bumper kiss from some asshole last night, but I've forgiven him already. Off to the Verizon Center, for the ongoing punishment that is the 2008-2009 Wizards season.

Since it's a Sunday, I'll give you one more good line. I was talking to EDS about the complete Bill Evans / Village Vanguard sessions. There's a three disc set that collects all three sets from that Sunday afternoon - definitely one of my all-time favorite jazz events, and to have it all in one nice package is just so reassuring.

We were talking about the incredible vibe of that show - Evans playing slow, ponderous, gorgeous music. Scott La Faro chiming in melodically on the bass, ten short days before his death as the result of a motorcycle accident. Motian brushing the drums, afraid to cause too many ripples. Then we were silent. EDS offered: "It's a Sunday in there, you know? Everyone in that club has got to go to work the next day."

Good line, EDS. It's a Sunday in here too.

"I only like living, that's all." - John Ashberry.

The world is not what it should be.

Charles Lindblom, below, on one of the reasons why stat-driven policy analysis can lack authorativeness. I just love the last few sentences.

A common failure to achieve an authoritative solution to a problem arises because critics or skeptics of the solution can – and do – allege that the problem has been incorrectly defined.

Suppose we begin, as an excise in defining a problem, with the family “Why Johnny can’t read.” To specify the problem more precisely, someone will suggest that the problem is one of reading difficulties among certain urban ethnic groups. But then it will be said that the problem is one of inadequate family incomes for these groups. And to that it will be responded that income itself is not the problem; the problem is basically a deficiency in the family’s ability to implant an incentive to learn to read in children. Hence the problem becomes that of the inadequacy of the urban ethnic family as a social institution – an institution that is failing to perform its required functions. That may provoke the suggestion that the problem is one of defective socioeconomic organization; socioecomonic institutions do no integrate these families into normal social functioning. But perhaps, then, the problem is one of faulty political organization in the society at large, since presumably the right kind of political decision could remedy the faults of the economy, the structure of urban society, and the place of the family in it.

At this point someone is also certain to suggest that politics is not an independent influence on economy and society, being itself dependent upon them. It might then be proposed that the problem is one big interlocked problem of social organization – to which formulation one may or may not add some further problem specifications, such as that the phenomena of social class are the “real” problem. But problem definition at this level can perhaps be counted on to produce another abstract formulation. Any big interlocked problem of social organization, it will be suggested, can only be understood as a product of history and culture. The problem, then, is a fundamental one of a historically produced culture that is inadequate. From which it seems only a small step to the conclusion: the world is not what it should be. That is the problem.

Charles Lindblom and David Cohen. Usable Knowledge – Social Science and Social Problem Solving

The two best statements of the weekend, thus far:

"See, that's what I hate about our country. Isn't it awful? Michael Phelps had, like, this great accomplishment, but now I just hate him!"

-The Arygirl

and...

"I put my pants on both legs at a time. Because I'm different from everyone else. Wait, not different - better."

-Ms. Abstract Citizen

An argument against traveling in the kinds of tony circles that I do

How is it possible that I had never heard Florida described as "God's waiting room" until this past Wednesday?

Clooney on suicide bombers

From an old New Yorker piece that I am only getting around to now:

Clooney, in 2005, speaking about suicide bombers: "But, really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros."

Made me laugh out loud while running the other morning

She said, “It's good to see you back in a bar band, baby!”
I said, “It's great to see you're still in the bars!”

-The Hold Steady