Posted Thu, Apr 26, 10:08 a.m.

While I agree with Anthony Robinson's central thesis that voters should have reasonable expectations of presidential candidates, I don't think it's unreasonable for voters to be cynical about the American political process right now. That's because lobbyists and special interest groups, with their now-unlimited power to contribute and advertise under ...

Posted Wed, Apr 25, 12:17 p.m.

Amazing that TVD considers it a "very small molehill" that senior Secret Service agents revealed to him that Spiro Agnew was regularly meeting with people they considered unsavory -- which led them to describe Agnew as a "damn crook" -- and neither the agents nor TVD did anything to report ...

Posted Wed, Apr 25, 9:50 a.m.

sjenner, a federal judge did not buy your argument as advanced by Bill Clinton in the Monicagate case. Read it below. As far as who TVD could have reported this conversation to, the events of Watergate showed there were courageous members of Congress of both parties who were willing to ...

Posted Tue, Apr 24, 5:30 p.m.

To Crosscut editors: Folks, the more I think about NickBob’s questions, the more I think Crosscut and TVD have a serious ethics in journalism problem on their hands, and maybe more. TVD writes 43 years after the fact that two senior Secret Service agents revealed to him in 1969 that ...

Posted Mon, Apr 23, 8:53 p.m.

We're still waiting to hear TVD's responses to NickBob's sharp questions about what the Secret Service agents told him about Nixon and Agnew, whether there were issues of laws or government ethics being broken (it sounds like there was), what the agents' reporting responsibility was, what TVD's reporting responsibility was, ...

Posted Mon, Apr 23, 1:32 p.m.

Actually, the Arizona immigration law had its origins in the Corrections Corporation of America working with the right-wing American Legislative Exchange Council to pass a law that would help fill its for-profit beds with illegal immigrants who were detained. See the NPR and other good reports on this last year. ...

Posted Mon, Apr 23, 10:19 a.m.

This piece reads like a free association stream of cranky complaints, but it's hard to see what it tells us about current politics and culture. Oh please, the Secret Service never engaged in this kind of behavior before in the wonderful old days? They watched and enabled JFK to engage ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 2:18 p.m.

Congrats to Eli Sanders and The Stranger for winning the Pulitzer for that terrific story!

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 11:29 a.m.

I agree with Knute that the candidates should be prominently discussing the revenue and tax loophole issues. I disagree with him, though, that the Lean/Total Quality Management approach can't be effectively applied to many processes of government and that it's specific to manufacturing. Many health care providers, such as Group ...

Posted Sun, Apr 15, 8:49 p.m.

Here's a good historical piece by an eminent Princeton historian on the history in the U.S. of purporting to set "set aside" parties and partisanship. The bottom line is that it's always been a ploy for achieving one's own political agenda. Parties have existed historically for a very good reason: ...

Posted Sat, Apr 14, 6:19 p.m.

BTW, I can't access the WSJ piece afreeman cites, but what I can see suggests that the interview subject is a classic, Burkean conservative. The problem is that today's Republican Party has nothing to do with Burkean conservatism. It's changed even in the last three years. It's now a radical ...

Posted Sat, Apr 14, 6:12 p.m.

Sorry, afreeman, but anyone paying attention to the Republican presidential nomination contest should be able to see that the criticisms contained in Lightfoot's piece fit much more snugly to one side than the other. False equivalence in politics is not a productive exercise, any more than it is in medicine, ...

Posted Fri, Apr 13, 9:02 p.m.

Judy, with all due respect, what's this "we" stuff? Whether this comes from Robinson's book or Judy's review or both, what I see here is more of the conventional media false equivalence -- "both sides are equally guilty" and that sort of thing. This is not helpful to figuring out ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 2:30 p.m.

We're still waiting for TVD to take a position on raising the capital gains tax. Contrary to his assertion, raising taxes on wealthy people would have a major impact. Just letting the Bush tax cuts for wealthy people expire at the end of the year would produce hundreds of billions ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 11:18 a.m.

This is an appropriate moment to quote Paul Krugman's dead-on comments about "bipartisan centrist" commentators: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/opinion/krugman-the-gullible-center.html?_r=1&hp; Well, ask yourself the following: What does it mean to be a centrist, anyway? It could mean supporting politicians who actually are relatively nonideological, who are willing, for example, to seek Democratic support for ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 11:02 a.m.

Good comment by Richard Borkowski. I'd like to see TVD actually take a position on President Obama's proposal to increase the capital gains tax, a la Ronald Reagan, rather than engaging in even-handed scorn for both sides, which really is false equivalence. BTW, the statement that Afghanistan in the longest ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 10:52 a.m.

As Dick Nelson and I pointed out, contrary to what TVD claimed, the Affordable Care Act allows people to satisfy the individual mandate by obtaining what is essentially catastrophic coverage. See this AP article today. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2017948426_apussupremecourthealthcaremisunderstanding.html?prmid=4748

Posted Sun, Apr 8, 3:35 p.m.

Stephen, as quiller aply notes, his comments are a "micro view" that hardly prove older workers are easily going to be able to find work and continue in the labor force in decent jobs with benefits. I'm glad for quiller but the woman in that NPR piece I linked to ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 11:38 a.m.

Here's a not uncommon story of an older worker's travails in trying to find a job: http://www.npr.org/2012/04/06/150126242/for-long-term-unemployed-help-is-running-out

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 10:53 a.m.

When anyone writes about this subject of Boomers in the workforce, I think it's essential to discuss the massive problem of age discrimination in hiring and the workplace. Older workers and younger workers were hardest hit by layoffs associated with the financial crash-driven recession, and those groups are having the ...

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 1:57 p.m.

Again, you haven't been reading my posts very carefully. They all deal substantively and in depth with the points the writer has raised. Go back and look.

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 1:43 p.m.

PJS, you seem to have skipped neatly over my subtantive comments about Romney's positions, the nature of today's Republican Party, and Bush, Rubio, Pawlenty, Christie, and Ryan.

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 1:22 p.m.

We still await TVD's analysis of Mitt Romney's positions on the budget, climate change, taxes, financial regulation, Medicare, Iran, Iraq, etc. etc. and how they comport with TVD's notion that Romney is a "moderate, entirely conventional" Republican. He absolutely refuses to face how far to the right Romney and his ...

Posted Tue, Apr 3, 10:50 a.m.

Excellent piece. Now think about the impact of cutting benefits and delaying eligibility for Social Security and Medicare, and capping and block granting Medicaid, and eliminating programs like the Basic Health Plan on folks in these situations. More reporters and opinion writers need to get out and talk to regular ...

Posted Sun, Apr 1, 11:20 p.m.

Richard, TVD should know better? If he has "deep knowledge" of policy matters, how could he make such a deeply bogus statement? You're being way too generous here. Let's honestly call out b.s. without being so Northwest Nice.

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 2:35 p.m.

TVD, citing your bonafides from decades ago obviously does not make you an expert on the Clinton plan or the Affordable Care Act (given your many factual misstatements and oversights) or many other issues you pontificate about. And it doesn't even make you an expert on the history and politics ...

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 10:54 a.m.

As usual, where to even start with this TVD column in terms of inaccuracies and unfounded and misleading statements. Most opinion writers recognize that they can't be expert in all fields. A big part of TVD's problem is that he feels he can write about everything knowledgably and accurately. That's ...

Posted Thu, Mar 29, 1:46 p.m.

Another remarkable TVD column, in which he cites a Seattle Times article that has little or nothing to do with Jay Inslee's campaign strategy as evidence of Inslee's campaign strategy. And even when the Times writer posts a comment pointing that out, TVD refuses to acknowledge it and changes the ...

Posted Fri, Mar 23, 10 a.m.

Good article but it should have mentioned that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act goes a long way toward solving the health insurance problem for home care workers by providing a large subsidy for working-poor people to buy private coverage, or else qualify for expanded Medicaid coverage, through the ...

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 5:40 p.m.

Yeah but you didn't correct the poor editorial judgment in using the term Obamacare in the headline and subhed.

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 4:39 p.m.

Folks, I'm going to ask you again not to use the pejorative term "Obamacare" in headlines and subheds. You know very well that it's a term that is widely used by conservatives to deride the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The law is "colloquially" known as Obamacare primarily to ...

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 11:44 a.m.

This type of effort is important and needed. I suspect it will illuminate the huge problems the unemployed are having with health care and health coverage. At a time when so many people have lost their employer health coverage, it's stunning that so much of the public doesn't understand the ...

Posted Tue, Mar 13, 5:49 p.m.

Actually, Afghanistan already was "an issue of urgent national discussion" before the shooting, given the Koran-burning incident involving U.S. soldiers last month and the ensuing riots and killings of U.S. troops and others, the intense Afghan anger over the killing of eight young Afghans in a faulty NATO airstrike last ...

Posted Mon, Mar 12, 10:37 a.m.

Say what, TVD? We should just give the Israelis the "updated military systems" they seek, meaning huge bunker buster bombs and aircraft so they can go ahead and start a disastrous war with Iran that we will inevitably be dragged into and have to take over? Now there's some sage ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 6:02 p.m.

If TVD looks around, I would say he's the one riding in the conventional wisdom elevator. The major media are dominated by ideologues of the "bipartisan centrist" variety who obsess about the costs of social insurance programs and hardly ever speak to ordinary working Americans, mostly talking to other desk ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 10:29 a.m.

NickBob and Bobo make excellent points. More false equivalence from TVD. There are very large differences between Obama and Romney, and if Romney is elected with a hard-right Republican Congress, Romney the "moderate" will have to implement a hard-right agenda. To refer to Romney as honest is quite amazing. This ...

Posted Wed, Mar 7, 11:37 a.m.

Interesting piece. I wonder whether there's also a prevalence of female "circumcision" in those communities, which would create plenty of additional health problems. Any word on that, Collin?

Posted Wed, Mar 7, 11:14 a.m.

dbreneman, your reinsurer idea is the tangent. Having a whole bunch of little health insurance companies all trying to cherrypick the healthiest enrolless is a health system nightmare. And you want that backstopped by the "gubmint," with taxpayers on the hook? What kind of free-market idea is that? In health ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 5:33 p.m.

TVD, all these "ceaseless efforts" you refer to did not succeed in getting a single Republican as far as I know to co-sponsor the Medicare legislation in 1965, or to persuade the AMA to support it. As you acknowledge, it passed only because LBJ and the Democrats had gained huge ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 5:17 p.m.

Actually, that's not true. In Germany, the private nonprofit sickness funds are independent entities, as are the hospitals and doctors, which also are private. That's the same model as in most of western Europe. There is no advanced country where the government doesn't play a major organizing role, including in ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 12:38 p.m.

Contrary to what dbreneman says, the origin of European national health insurance systems lies in Germany, which under Bismarck established a system of private "sickness funds" for different groups of workers in different occupations and regions. These were not and are not "governmental" institutions, though there is a governmental framework ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 9:59 a.m.

Actually, the Affordable Care Act allows individual purchasers and employees of smaller companies to buy health insurance through the state insurance exchanges that will start in 2014. In 2017, large employee groups can participate. In the exchanges, people will be able to buy comprehensive plans with no pre-existing condition exclusions, ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 9:44 a.m.

TVD, you keep repeating the same false history about Medicare and you ignore my many attempts to set you straight on this. The establishment of Medicare was not the result of "patient attempts at education and persuasion and reachouts" to opponents. That was a solely Democratic legislative proposal which was ...

Posted Mon, Mar 5, 12:58 p.m.

Here's the new Republican reality that TVD and others involved in the "bipartisan centrism" ideology and the practice of false equivalence can't bring themselves to acknowledge. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/12/120312fa_fact_lizza?currentPage=all Santorum’s CPAC declaration has the ring of truth. As Geoffrey Kabaservice writes in “Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction ...

Posted Mon, Mar 5, 10:05 a.m.

TVD conveniently ignores the polls showing that the public overwhelmingly supports President Obama's compromise position requiring contraception coverage paid for by insurers rather than employers that object to paying. And to the polls that show the public overwhelmingly favors having contraception covered by health insurance. He also conveniently leaves out ...

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 7:53 p.m.

This in today: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/us/ruling-adds-to-string-in-favor-of-same-sex-couples.html?hp

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 12:08 p.m.

OK, if John Carlson thinks the preceding discussion proves his case, then I'm done with this. See Professor Domke's comments above.

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 11:19 a.m.

John, OK, at least now you're talking about DOMA and about the Obama administration's argument that it's unconstitutional. Good. Candidate Obama actually ran on a platform to repeal DOMA. A bill to repeal DOMA would never have passed Congress either when Republicans were in control or now, when they can ...

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 10:15 a.m.

This reminds me of something a UW prof said to me for a 2009 Crosscut article I wrote about the anti-health reform Tea Party protesters. Here's that quote: http://crosscut.com/2009/08/18/health-medicine/19171/ David Domke, a professor of political communication at University of Washington, says it’s now almost impossible to introduce information within the ...

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 9:28 a.m.

John, let's now circle back to the key point you missed. Obama and his administration want to see the Defense of Marriage Act overturned on the grounds that it's unconstitutional. One major reason it's unconstitutional is that it's in direct conflict with the Constitution's "full faith and credit clause." The ...

Posted Tue, Feb 21, 2:58 p.m.

John, what you keep passing over is that if DOMA is overturned, gay people in states that don't allow same-sex marriage could simply go to any of the states where same-sex marriage is legal and recognized, get married, then return to their home states which then would have to recognize ...

Posted Tue, Feb 21, 10:19 a.m.

John Carlson is ignoring a crucial fact. President Obama and his administration have disavowed the federal Defense of Marriage Act, calling it unconstitutional, and are refusing to defend it in the current federal court challenge. That's a hugely different position from the Republicans. If DOMA falls, as it very well ...

Posted Thu, Feb 9, 1:45 p.m.

Good article and valuable legislative effort by Sen. Kline, thank you. I would add that speeding tickets even for marginal speeding infractions, as well as tickets for other minor moving violations, have gotten so expensive that poor and working-class and unemployed people can't afford them, particularly in a bad economy. ...

Posted Wed, Feb 8, 12:49 p.m.

TVD once again fails to address key reasons why GOP voters, and voters in general, are put off by Mitt Romney -- probably because Romney represents TVD's preferred "bipartisan centrist" (though not really given Romney's hard-right positions). GOP voters most likely see Romney as an insincere flip-flopper, a rich, out-of-touch, ...

Posted Mon, Feb 6, 9:17 a.m.

Why waste breath on Gingrich? He never had a chance at the nomination, as Obama and his campaign people have known all along. TVD, why not take a closer look at how Romney and how his positions line up with your view of the ideal "bipartisan centrist"? That would be ...

Posted Fri, Feb 3, 4:31 p.m.

I guess I'm not convinced that the wine industry has to do anything dramatically new packaging-wise to draw in younger wine drinkers. Over the last several years, I've been very pleasantly surprised to encounter more young people in their 20s and 30s who were enthusiastic and knowledgable about fine wine. ...

Posted Sun, Jan 15, 1:32 p.m.

Thanks, Pythagoras, for your incisive comments. Getting back to my comment about the lack of evidence for Rommey's and the Republicans' competition model reducing health care costs or improving quality, here's an excellent presentation of the expert view on this, and on the need to instead consider stronger regulatory measures: ...

Posted Thu, Jan 12, 11:16 p.m.

TVD still has not responded to my requests for him to detail how he would control overall health care spending as well as Medicare spending, and he still hasn't even detailed how he would control Medicare spending except now he says he would add new and higher deductibles (Medicare already ...

Posted Thu, Jan 12, 12:59 p.m.

Actually, TVD, despite my repeated prodding, has never laid out his ideas for controlling the growth of Medicare other than to say something like both Republicans and Democrats know and agree on the solutions, which is simply not true. I cover this regularly, and I can tell you there is ...

Posted Wed, Jan 11, 10:49 a.m.

Unfortunately, TVD muddies an otherwise worthwhile piece on the need to reorder our military priorities with his obsession and misleading statements about our vital social insurance programs. First, while he and other deficit obsessives keep warning that the world will stop seeing U.S. bonds as a safe investment, Treasury bond ...

Posted Sun, Jan 8, 11:13 a.m.

Thanks, Floyd, for the excellent history lesson. Political pundits, including those at Crosscut, should read it closely before ever again describing Mitt as a "moderate." This paragraph in particular hits home: University of California scholar Matthew Dallek wrote in Politico: “If (Mitt) Romney’s positions now aligned with his father’s from ...

Posted Wed, Jan 4, 1:17 p.m.

TVD, we're still waiting for you to square your repeated characterizations of Romney as "moderate" with his stated positions on taxes, Iran, defense spending, Medicare and Medicaid, the environment, regulation on Wall Street and other areas, campaign financing and "corporations are people," abortion, etc. You really need to back that ...

Posted Wed, Jan 4, 12:38 p.m.

Janny Scott's book about Obama's mother received only "scant notice" when it was published??? Huh? Don't an article in the NY Times Sunday Magazine and lengthy reviews in the Times, the Post, and other major publications count? Geez. Actually, TVD, the book received a lot of media notice. Here are ...

Posted Wed, Dec 14, 4:18 p.m.

The problem with this Washington Policy Center analysis is that it ignores the fact that Democratic legislative leaders did not have the votes to pass a balanced package of spending cuts and revenue increases given the insistence of legislative Republicans and conservative "road kill" Democrats that "structural reforms" were needed, ...

Posted Wed, Dec 14, 9:49 a.m.

TVD, with your own secure retirement health insurance (Medicare or whatever you have), you are deeply out of touch with how important a problem it is for Washingtonians and people nationally not to have secure, affordable health coverage. And you seem deeply unaware that without government action on health care ...

Posted Tue, Dec 13, 1:03 p.m.

OK, can you now tell us, based on your objective conclusions, knowledge, and experience, how Romney's campaign positions line up with the bipartisan, moderate agenda you believe will rescue this country? Please be as detailed as you've been in criticizing President Obama's policies.

Posted Tue, Dec 13, 11:07 a.m.

TVD, instead of rehashing your usual complaints about President Obama, why don't you do something new and examine Mitt Romney and his positions and how they line up with your views of what's right? How about Romney's call for expanding the military? Continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Getting ...

Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:16 a.m.

Dead-on analysis by woofer. I'll just add that David Brewster's concluding part about whether congressional Democrats would go along with a Romney "grand compromise" fundamentally misses the political dynamics that woofer analyzes so accurately. Anything Romney would propose would have to be so skewed toward maximizing social insurance and social ...

Posted Sat, Nov 26, 1:10 p.m.

Mark Trahant mischaracterizes the first camp. We do not believe in "rethinking" entitlement promises. We are firmly committed to the Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid social insurance programs (let's call them by the proper name, since we have paid for these benefits all our working lives) and want to find ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 9:19 a.m.

As usual, TVD ignores facts and evidence that don't fit his argument. President Obama was by all accounts deeply involved in negotiations with Speaker Boehner earlier this year on a big deficit reduction deal and had put a lot of Democratic sacred cows on the table, only to have Boehner ...

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 10:53 p.m.

Thank you, TimJ and jwatts, for calling out the nonsense in this article. The "smallest, shared bipartisan sacrifice" would have gotten the negotiators there? Obama and the supercommitee Dems were offering major cuts in Social Security and Medicare, including more means testing and lower COLAs, to that point that a ...

Posted Mon, Nov 21, 2:11 p.m.

Pete Jackson's comments on the supercommittee impasse are more false-equivalence reporting from the media, including the NY Times and NPR. It looks like, as John Kerry said, the Dems did put hard, painful cuts in the social insurance programs on the table -- big cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 7:37 p.m.

The Tea Party's claim to a "moral higher ground"? Please. That was finished in 2009 when supposedly anti-big government Tea Party demonstrators brandished protest signs saying "Keep your hands off our Medicare." It was actually over before it even started when you look at how the Koch brothers funded and ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 11:15 a.m.

When Gingrich's "big ideas" are closely examined by people who know something about the subject, they don't hold up well to scrutiny. I've read his ideas on health care, and his concept that individual patients (consumers) should shop around for the best quality and lowest-price health care services is ludicrous, ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 9:57 a.m.

I agree with everything TVD says here though, if anything, he understates Gingrich personal and political flaws. Many political observers say Gingrich the bomb-thrower inaugurated the era of scorched-earth partisanship and helped destroy bipartisan comity in Congress and the ability to work across the aisle. He was central in the ...

Posted Wed, Nov 16, 11:36 a.m.

Excellent article, thanks for bringing this clunker to our attention. Hope the governor and the legislature get some cojones finally.

Posted Thu, Nov 10, 10:28 a.m.

I agree with GeoffS that David Brewster is engaging in standard mainstream media false equivalence -- blanketly accusing both Dems and Republicans equally of being the problem -- and the national health care debate is a very good example of that. I also agree that the word reform is a ...

Posted Thu, Nov 10, 10:06 a.m.

While Romney got some practice in preparation for his likely debates with President Obama, may I say that Rick Perry (or Herman Cain or Rick Santorum or Michelle Bachman or Newt Gingrich) is no Hubert Humphrey? And while I agree with TVD that Romney is now the prohibitive favorite for ...

Posted Sat, Nov 5, 12:33 a.m.

I personally have had my confidence in conventional Beltway political reporting and punditry like this reduced to historically unprecedented low levels.

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 11:08 a.m.

In terms of raising the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security, Anthony Robinson needs to read the Kaiser Family Foundation report on the impact of raising the Medicare eligiblity age to 67. http://www.kff.org/medicare/8169.cfm The short version is it would save the federal government a modest amount of money, while ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 10:21 a.m.

I'm no fan of Herman Cain, but this anonymously sourced Politico story is the kind of thing that can destroy someone's career and reputation. Unless you've got people coming forward and giving specifics and being willing to be questioned, or at least solid documents that are publicly available, I frankly ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 10:56 a.m.

I think there are real issues about whether voters can trust that Romney can keep his religion and public service separate. The Mormon church's own theology and history works against that. Here's Christopher Hitchens' analysis that harsh but rings true. And also check out the recent NY Times profile of ...

Posted Fri, Oct 14, 6:57 p.m.

People might like to read my 2009 article on the issue of water use by wineries and wine grape growers. http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/41090

Posted Thu, Oct 6, 3:47 p.m.

Along the lines of my comment, Russ Feingold compares the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/russ-feingold-endorses-occupy-wall-street-this-will-make-the-tea-party-look-like-a-tea-party/2011/03/03/gIQANucZNL_blog.html “This is like the Tea Party — only it’s real,” Feingold said. “By the time this is over, it will make the Tea Party look like ... a tea party.”

Posted Thu, Oct 6, 12:41 p.m.

Excellent, wise piece, thanks Knute. I would point out, though, that the Tea Partiers had the advantage of being bankrolled by billionaires, and that explains a great deal of their (actually the Koch brothers') electoral success. Let's not make the mistake of thinking the Tea Party is primarily a grass-roots ...

Posted Sat, Oct 1, 12:39 a.m.

David, didn't you read my original comment? No, I'll give TVD $100 if Hillary runs and he pays me $1 if she doesn't. Sorry, this is an exclusive bet between me and the chief Crosscut political prognosticator.

Posted Fri, Sep 30, 8:06 p.m.

TVD, I'll offer you 100-1 odds on $1 that Hillary doesn't challenge Obama in 2012. How about it? If you take the bet, I can count on an Americano refill at some Seattle espresso joint. Feel free to join me.

Posted Fri, Sep 30, 1:54 a.m.

Sorry, but no serious political observer thinks Hillary is going to challenge Obama for the Democratic nomination. Only in TVD's imagination, fueled by his deeply rooted hostility to Obama.

Posted Mon, Sep 26, 2:08 p.m.

Once again, TVD ignores actual history. Obama and congressional Dem leaders, particularly Max Baucus on the Senate side, strenuously reached across to Republicans for support on health care reform but were rebuffed after wasting nearly a year seeking bipartisan support (though the Dems ended up including many GOP provisions in ...

Posted Sun, Sep 25, 12:42 p.m.

Again, where to start? TVD doesn't seem to be paying attention to what Obama and the Dems previously have done and recently have proposed. Many of the things TVD proposes were in Obama's 2009 stimulus package, such as aid to the states for Medicaid and other programs. Contrary to what ...

Posted Sun, Sep 25, 11:25 a.m.

As usual, where does one start in addressing the TVD's inaccuracies and misleading statements, leaving aside his usual rhetoric about how much better the old, supposedly bipartisan days were. In his knee-jerk hostility to President Obama, TVD doesn't appear to have paid much attention to what Obama has actually proposed. ...

Posted Fri, Sep 23, 10:49 a.m.

Very interesting article, thanks. This ties into the theme of the patient-centered medical home model being used by Group Health Cooperative and Swedish Medical Center, though it suggests that the care teams need to be broadened to include staff to help with social and legal problems. As experts in the ...

Posted Tue, Sep 20, 10:14 a.m.

Terrific interview, thanks for publishing this. The piece might have mentioned the parallel between the failure of generals to recognize needed changes in war tactics and strategies in WW I and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hochschild describes how the British generals planned to use horse cavalry in WW I despite ...

Posted Fri, Sep 16, 11:05 a.m.

I nominate NickBob to take over as Crosscut's chief national political analyst. BTW, is anyone discussing having Obama put Hillary on the ticket with him, and move Biden over to Secretary of State? That would be good politics and good government. It would give Obama's campaign a much-needed boost, and ...

Posted Wed, Sep 14, 11:08 a.m.

Terrific, enlightening interview with a truly wise man. Thanks so much, Robin.

Posted Wed, Sep 7, 11:27 a.m.

Ronald, wine enthusiastis of the 2010s like me are still bemoaning the lack of top-quality Yakima Valley dining and lodging facilities (with a scant few exceptions like Wine O'Clock) to rival those of Napa and Sonoma.

Posted Wed, Sep 7, 9:09 a.m.

I totally agree with NickBob and disagree with TVD on the issue of somehow compromising with Republicans on the issues. Ain't going to happen despite President Obama's strenuous efforts up to now to get congressional Republicans to work with him. He absolutely needs to make a strong jobs and mortgage ...

Posted Sun, Aug 28, 11:45 p.m.

Here's one pundit, God bless him, who escaped the Beltway and talked to ordinary Americans in Oregon about the central importance of jobs. As Willie Nelson said recently, people are more concerned about the ceiling over their head than the debt ceiling. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/opinion/sunday/kristof-did-we-drop-the-ball-on-unemployment.html?_r=1&scp;=1&sq;=yamhill&st;=cse

Posted Sun, Aug 28, 8:56 p.m.

TVD really needs to get out into the country and talk to ordinary Americans, rather than Beltway types, who are suffering in this jobs and foreclosure and no-growth crisis. His and the chattering class's focus on the deficit is astonishingly out of touch with the economic problems facing the masses ...

Posted Fri, Aug 26, 10 a.m.

Here's a good piece on third parties and the dead-skunk center. http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/debunking_the_myth_of_an_indep.php BTW, Americans Elect has already been debunked for accepting secret funding. So much for changing the dysfunctional national politics. I'm in favor of creating a statutory and constitutional infrastructure for a more parliamentary, multi-party system. That's what Nader ...

Posted Wed, Aug 24, 11:30 a.m.

Knute Berger: But the American public also consistently believes it can have all the benefits of government without personally paying for them. We can cut the budget without touching Social Security, Medicare, or defense. I'm sorry that in this otherwise excellent piece, Knute feels obliged to call for cuts in ...

Posted Fri, Aug 19, 9:41 a.m.

How could we have guessed that TVD's reunion would provide grist for more Boomer bashing and flogging the need to reduce the deficit and descriptions of how much better the old days were? Please tell us what racial attitudes and attitudes toward gay people and women's rights were at the ...

Posted Tue, Aug 16, 10:20 a.m.

PJS, I wouldn't say it was taken out of context. Romney surely is smart enough to know that the phrase "corporations are people" resonates with many political and legal meanings. The recent Scotus decision in Citizens United, opening the floodgates to unregulated corporate political contributions, is based on the 19th ...

Posted Mon, Aug 15, 3:22 p.m.

TVD, "hecklers" tried to make Rommey appear to be a corporate lackey??? How hard was that? Romney himself uttered the immortal words, "Corporations are people, my friend." While TVD calls them hecklers, those people in the audience were actually part of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, a grassroots organization that ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 1:08 p.m.

Actually, TVD, you used the S&P; downgrade as a news hook to continue your crusade for cutting spending and social insurance programs (despite knowledgable non-ideologues like Bill Gross and Martin Feldstein saying that's going in the wrong direction right now). So readers like me not surprisingly responded along those lines.

Posted Thu, Aug 11, 10:13 a.m.

Dick, thanks for this good fact check on McKenna's statement about the budget doubling. It also seems the headline is misleading given the article's finding that the general operating budget has grown only a few percent in real terms, though the capital budget has grown about 50 percent. Still, neither ...

Posted Thu, Aug 11, 12:24 a.m.

Bill Gross of Pimco makes the case for focusing now on stimulus rather than deficit cutting even more strongly in this piece: http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/06/pimco-founder-to-deficit-obsessed-congress-get-back-to-reality.php

Posted Wed, Aug 10, 9:26 p.m.

What Bill Gross, founder of Pimco, the world's largest mutual fund, said on NPR today is what most serious, pragmatic, non-ideologues in the business community and on Wall Street are saying -- the priority NOW is growth and jobs. Notice in this whole interview he didn't once mention reducing the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 10, 6:06 p.m.

Djinn, thanks for pointing out that interesting Technology CEO Council report. There are plenty of interesting-sounding ideas in it, like consolidating government purchasing, consolidating administrative services, using more advanced tools for avoiding payment errors, etc. But there are plenty of political obstacles to doing some of these things, many of ...

Posted Tue, Aug 9, 12:02 p.m.

While Tea Partiers may have been elected to cut spending, polls showed majorities of even self-identified Tea Party and Republican voters favored a debt ceiling deal that included higher taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. So Tea Partiers in Congress were out of touch with their own base. Second, ...

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 10:39 p.m.

"I used the time to meet with a number of capital regulars who, for the most part, had big jobs in previous Democratic White Houses and administrations, the Congress, and the media. The regulars were just as irritated and impatient with the current state of policy and politics as ordinary ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 7:48 p.m.

TVD, most serious economic and health policy analysts recognize that our biggest long-term deficit problem arises from uncontrolled cost increases in the U.S. health care system, of which federal programs are only a part. Cost increases in Medicare, Medicaid, FEHBP, military health care, etc. can't effectively be addressed in isolation. ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 5:35 p.m.

Kieth, we are in an absolute crisis right now. If you are doing much reading and listening to what a wide range of economists are saying, it's consistent with what this Times story today says. The federal deficit can and must wait until we've effectively addressed the lack of growth ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 1:39 p.m.

Here's a report from an economist at the Urban Institute on how unemployment insurance helps the economy during a recession. http://wdr.doleta.gov/research/FullText_Documents/ETAOP2010-10.pdf

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 1:28 p.m.

I guess I'll have to say it again that while TVD takes it as holy grail that public debt (which he defines as expensive entitlements) is the "core" of our current economic problems, that is not the view of most serious, mainstream economics. And I provided two links to support ...

Posted Sun, Aug 7, 1:07 p.m.

Kieth, good question, I am inquiring with the editors. I sure hope they aren't trying to quell civil, evidence-based critical comments. If so, that's going over the line in terms of suppressing dissenting views.

Posted Fri, Aug 5, 10:58 a.m.

This piece is way too light on the immigration issue. Which candidate is going to support the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform with a path to legalization, and speak out against Arizona- and Alabama-type measures in Washington state? Based on what we've seen from current Republican elected officials, we ...

Posted Mon, Aug 1, 2 p.m.

I don't disagree with most of what Mark Trahant says here but I do want to qualify his statement about the key to health care cost control being "managing our expectations." While Americans have a lot of work to do in terms of advance directives and rationalizing end of life ...

Posted Thu, Jul 28, 10:07 a.m.

I'd sure like to see Crosscut and other media take a similar close look at Washington's own Congressman Reichert: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dave-reicherts-brain/Content?oid=5253644

Posted Mon, Jul 25, 10:05 a.m.

Quiller should have mentioned the deep unpopularity of Florida's Republican governor, Rick Scott, which has many Florida Republicans quite worried about the 2012 election.

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 12:03 p.m.

Here's another little something about the Murdoch operations to ponder while we picture TVD's charming little scene of the rumpled Rupert having a second serving of dessert. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/18/business/media/for-news-corporation-troubles-that-money-cant-dispel.html

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 11:18 a.m.

Little evidence that Murdoch has meddled with the editorial content of the WS Journal??? TVD, you've got to be kidding. What about how the Journal has covered (or not covered) the hacking scandal in both its news and editorial pages? Didn't you read Joe Nocera of the Times recently apologize ...

Posted Wed, Jul 13, 11:09 a.m.

This article repeats the highly dubious argument of Bush administration figures that torture led to the successful Bin Laden mission. There are huge holes in that claim and it's been denied by national security officials. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20063366-503544.html http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2011/05/bin-laden-and-torture.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/02reconstruct-capture-osama-bin-laden.html?hp

Posted Sat, Jul 9, 12:05 a.m.

TVD, for people to point out that you don't seem to understand or were ignoring the basic nature of the U.S. justice system -- that the work of a jury is to determine whether the state proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, that only a jury, not a TV ...

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 11:27 a.m.

Mannix, what you say is perfectly cool with me (totally in line with the excellent Boston Herald column Crosscut linked to this morning). But what you aren't doing is what TVD did, denouncing the U.S. justice system because a trial produced an outcome you disagree with, tying that outcome to ...

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 9:21 a.m.

Here are two flat-out serious inaccuracies I recall, and I remember other people calling you out on other inaccuracies over the last couple years. You recently stated that Leon Panetta had been a Republican congressman, which he never was. And you stated that the Democrats would have to pass other ...

Posted Wed, Jul 6, 10:18 p.m.

TVD, you're really stepped out of line in lecturing the commenters here. I could have used much stronger language in commenting on your obtuse article, and I suspect some of the other commenters could have too. We exercised restraint, in line with the uncommonly civil tone of Crosscut's comments for ...

Posted Wed, Jul 6, 2:25 p.m.

TVD, you say all evidence pointed to Anthony's murder guilt. But the TV audience doesn't get a vote. A properly constituted jury in a fair trial found reasonable doubt. That's the way our justice system works, and the way you'd want it to work if you were on trial. Have ...

Posted Wed, Jul 6, 10:59 a.m.

BlueLight, you're beating a dead horse. The Government Accountability Office put that waiver issue to rest in the last month or so, finding there was no favoritism involved in the Obama administration's granting of waivers allowing mini-med plans until 2014. Both corporate and union plans got waivers, and most applicants ...

Posted Tue, Jun 28, 11:04 a.m.

TVD, again, pray tell us how most seniors, who have very limited private incomes and assets, will survive with sharply lower Social Security benefits and Medicare and Medicaid benefits. Those programs already are quite a bit stingier than national pension and health care programs in other advanced countries. You need ...

Posted Fri, Jun 24, 11:44 a.m.

I'd say TVD greatly overestimates the "consensus support" for the Simpson-Bowles recommendations. Once both Republican and Democratic voters learned about the draconian Medicare cuts that would be required to bring Medicare spending growth down to 1% a year (Simpson-Bowles offered no methodology for doing that), the change in the mortgage ...

Posted Fri, Jun 24, 10:50 a.m.

Very muddled piece by TVD. He wants us out of Afghanistan, great, but then he worries about whether Obama is drawing out too many troops or not enough (and throws in a nasty and unfair comparison to Nixon, who flat out lied about his secret plan to end the war). ...

Posted Thu, Jun 16, 11:08 a.m.

Excellent piece, Mark. Mark Zandi, Goldman Sachs, the International Monetary Fund, Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, etc. etc., all have been saying essentially the same thing for many months. It's a no-brainer, cutting federal, state, and local government jobs at this time is guranteed to further depress consumer spending and discourage ...

Posted Mon, Jun 13, 5:13 p.m.

TVD, if we're talking about "informed opinion," plenty of historians would point out how labor union leaders of Tyler's generation moved unions toward policies focused on their member's "narrow, Me-first" interests rather than the broader interests of workers. Let's not forget that labor leaders were not particularly supportive of previous ...

Posted Mon, Jun 13, 1:41 p.m.

Geez, TVD, another piece about how much better everyone and everything was in your heyday. Labor unions were hardly perfect then and they're hardly perfect now. They struggled then and they struggle now with balancing their members' self-interest with the interests of American and international workers in general. You ignore ...

Posted Sat, Jun 11, 12:37 a.m.

Still waiting, C.B. Hall, come on, man, tell us what country so we can check your story.

Posted Fri, Jun 10, 11:06 a.m.

Everyone has the choice in the U.S. to decline even treatment that could be life-saving. That is very different from having public or private health insurers refuse to pay for a medically effective treatment to save someone's eyesight, kidney, or to address any other condition. It's the latter type of ...

Posted Fri, Jun 10, 12:26 a.m.

OK, C.B. Hall, I'm calling you on this one. In what country did your purportedly happen? Let's check on what that country's health coverage policy is now (and then as well). I will be shocked if any advanced European country currently has a policy that its national health insurance system ...

Posted Thu, Jun 9, 5:18 p.m.

Kieth, there are professional organizations in all the advanced countries that do this work of evaluating the effectiveness, safety, and cost-effectiveness of medical interventions (including government agencies such as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Effectiveness in Britain), and there is international consensus on the criteria (though as I ...

Posted Thu, Jun 9, 1:28 p.m.

C.B. Hall's "cataract test" is a criteria that no responsible physician or health policy expert in the U.S. -- conservative, liberal, or in-between --would support. I'll have to check on whether the Canadian, British, German, French, or Swedish health care systems would deny coverage for treatment of a cataract in ...

Posted Tue, May 24, 3:29 p.m.

David, in writing about Rep. Reichert as a possible gubernatorial candidate, don't you have to mention what some insiders talk about -- the David Wu factor? Surely top Republicans have got to be aware of this: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/dave-reicherts-brain/Content?oid=5253644

Posted Wed, May 18, 10:57 p.m.

Animalal, if Group Health is not covering recommended preventive services on a first-dollar basis, then you should file an appeal and recover any deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance charges you've had to pay. It is mandatory under the law, as long as those are preventive services recommended by the authorities cited ...

Posted Wed, May 18, 12:39 p.m.

Several comments on Mark Trahant's article: 1) It should be mentioned that House Speaker Gingrich and congressional Republicans passed a very similar Medicare privatization/voucher/spending cap bill in 1995, and it was that and their very similar Medicaid block grant bill that led to the showdown with President Clinton and the ...

Posted Wed, May 18, 10:59 a.m.

Really, arthurking? Check out the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analysis of the Ryan Medicare plan, which projects that Medicare voucher plans would become increasingly unaffordable to seniors: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12128 Good piece by Anthony Robinson, valuable analysis by Paul Pierson.

Posted Mon, May 16, 4:43 p.m.

Animalal, as I reported in my article, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act prohibits ANY deductible, copayment, or coinsurance charges for recommended preventive services referenced in the law. The purpose, as I wrote, is to encourage people to get these recommended services to prevent illnesses and save money down ...

Posted Wed, May 11, 10:19 a.m.

As I suspected, TVD has no detailed or viable solutions for "dealing definitively" with Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and he doesn't mention what social values he would use to guide his budget cutting. I've been covering these issues for many years and I can assure TVD that good solutions ...

Posted Wed, May 11, 9:54 a.m.

Thank you, Bella, but it's worse than that. Sharply reducing federal, state, and local government spending at this time will have a big negative impact on economic growth and jobs. Goldman Sachs, the International Monetary Fund, and even former McCain adviser Mark Zandi have all said this. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/23/nation/la-na-gop-cuts-20110224

Posted Tue, May 10, 5:52 p.m.

TVD, since you constantly say Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security "must be seriously addressed," you owe it to Crosscut readers to explain exactly what you propose to do to control cost growth in those programs. Contrary to what you've written before, experts do not agree at all on how to ...

Posted Tue, May 10, 11:06 a.m.

I don't expect TVD to back off his extreme deficit obsession, but the rest of us need to realize that the biggest economic threat to the U.S. is chronic high unemployment. As Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed out yesterday on NPR, and as Paul Krugman has repeatedly said, it's destroying ...

Posted Thu, Apr 28, 11:59 a.m.

TVD, what are you talking about??? Panetta was always a Democrat in Congress. I agree with NickBob in objecting to your implied putdown of Obama's cabinet. In fact, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a former insurance commissioner and Kansas governor, is highly respected in the health care and health insurance fields, ...

Posted Wed, Apr 20, 4:36 p.m.

Thanks for this article. It's not easy to decide what medical services have proven value and should be covered but Washington state has a unique and respected process for making these decisions. The WS Journal editorial page and other conservatives can call this a "death panel," but what they typically ...

Posted Tue, Apr 19, 10:08 a.m.

One other thought. I sure wish hiring officials would look individually at people rather than looking at their age. When I was a hiring editor in the 2000s, I hired reporters who ranged from their early 20s to their early 60s and I found no correlation between age, willingness to ...

Posted Tue, Apr 19, 9:43 a.m.

John, thanks for sharing your story, which is an all-too-common one. I wish policymakers and pundits would think about the millions of Americans in their 50s and 60s (and even 40s) in this situation before they tell people they need to work longer and wait until they're 67 for Medicare ...

Posted Sun, Apr 17, 11:15 a.m.

Lots of problems as usual with TVD's domestic issues analysis, though I do thank him for stating flatly that Medicare privatization and Medicaid block grants are bad ideas: 1) Where is the evidence that the short-term federal deficit is dangerous? Most mainstream economists say running a sizable deficit is necessary ...

Posted Tue, Apr 12, 3:47 p.m.

I'd like to point out that $313 million a year in recaptured tax loopholes would pay for nearly three years of the Basic Health Plan.

Posted Mon, Apr 11, 12:08 p.m.

Richard, thanks for clarifying that the $98 bil in tax breaks represents a biennial figure, which you didn't indicate in your article. But there obviously is a connection between the tax breaks and the state budget. The commission said state could realize $14.8 billion (of the $98 billion) by closing ...

Posted Mon, Apr 11, 10:03 a.m.

I lost confidence in the accuracy and credibility of this article when Davis referred to $98 BILLION in savings to taxpayers from repealing the tax loopholes. That's far larger than the state's annual budget.

Posted Sun, Apr 10, 11:17 a.m.

Contrary to how TVD characterizes Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan, I would say it raises frontally the issue of the dangerous and growing wealth inequality in the United States by proposing to slash spending radically on programs that mostly benefit lower- and middle-income people while sharply reducing taxes for wealthier ...

Posted Mon, Mar 28, 4:29 p.m.

Bobo, I guess you had to hear him speak in Yakima in September 2009 to understand what I meant by calling his talk unserious and dishonest. His talk was rambling, incoherent, and almost bizarre. Besides admitting to me before his talk that his two columns on the health care reform ...

Posted Sun, Mar 27, 10:55 a.m.

Cameron, the benefits of the health reform law explicitly do not apply to undocumented residents. They do not qualify for insurance subsidies to buy coverage through the state health insurance exchanges, and they won't even be allowed to use their own money to buy coverage through the exchanges. The law ...

Posted Fri, Mar 25, 1:22 p.m.

Brooks' own newspaper had a decidedly less enthusiastic reaction to his new book. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-the-social-animal-by-david-brooks.html And I disagree with Anthony Robinson that Brooks has a "substantial and growing" influence on our national conversation. Neither conservatives nor liberals take him seriously. E.J. Dionne basically toys with him in their NPR point-counterpoints. And ...

Posted Fri, Mar 25, 1:10 p.m.

In response to David Miller, a number of federal judges around the country have dismissed challenges to the health reform law, specifically the individual mandate provision, on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing. States lack standing because they are not "harmed" by the mandate, which applies only to individuals. ...

Posted Wed, Mar 23, 2:40 p.m.

I'll again point out that most constitutional scholars (and so far three federal district judges) see no contradiction between our Constitution and the health reform law's requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. This falls under the Constitutional provision that Congress has the power to regulate interstate commerce; the health insurance ...

Posted Mon, Mar 14, 11:04 a.m.

I think the problem of government laying off workers deserves considerably more attention in this discussion. We haven't seen the worst yet of local and state public employee layoffs because Olympia hasn't made the big cuts yet. Same for the federal government, as we wait to see what draconian GOP ...

Posted Fri, Mar 11, 10:50 p.m.

Excellent piece, thanks Dick.

Posted Thu, Mar 10, 11:58 a.m.

BTW, I hope folks read the Seattle Stranger's good piece about Rob McKenna, particularly the part about how he hasn't been straight with the public that his lawsuit seeks to invalidate the entire health care law, including the popular parts like ending pre-existing condition exclusions, allowing young people to stay ...

Posted Thu, Mar 10, 11:54 a.m.

Geez, Cameron, those waivers have nothing to do with enforcement of the individual mandate to buy coverage. Those are waivers demanded by companies to allow them to continue offering benefit plans with minimal benefits (known as mini-meds), and those waivers will only apply until 2014, when the mandate and federal ...

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 5:09 p.m.

BlueLight, unionized workers certainly are subject to the health reform law's mandate. I don't know where you got that. There are only a few limited exceptions, including native Americans (who I presume are covered by the Indian Health Service), people with certain narrow religious exemptions, and people who fall under ...

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 5:01 p.m.

PJS, Jeb Bush definitely has a track record of running things, but lots of people would disagree with your statement about the job he did as Florida governor. I lived and worked as a journalist there all through his tenure. He was a highly polarizing figure who spent a lot ...

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 10:07 a.m.

I keep saying don't write off the possibility of the Republican power brokers annointing Jeb Bush, the candidate who would best unite Republican factions and be able to raise an enormous amount of money. The editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and others recently have been urging Bush to run. ...

Posted Tue, Mar 8, 7:30 p.m.

Leah, I like your points but most constitutional scholars (and so far three federal district judges, which AG McKenna skipped over) see no contradiction between our Constitution and the health reform law's requirement that everyone obtain health insurance. This falls under the Constitutional provision that Congress has the power to ...

Posted Tue, Mar 8, 2:37 p.m.

I suggest people read Simon Lazarus' comprehensive analysis of the McKenna litigation to understand the potentially dire impact on civil rights laws and other cherished federal regulations if the Supreme Court upholds his challenge to the health care mandate. http://www.acslaw.org/files/Lazarus%20-%20health%20reform%20lawsuits.pdf As former Massachusetts Republican Governor Mitt Romney noted when signing ...

Posted Mon, Feb 28, 4:27 p.m.

TVD, you seem not to be paying attention. The Wisconsin state employees DID quickly step up and agree to major pay and benefit cuts -- enough to enable Gov. Walker to close the budget deficit. But that didn't satisfy him. As the NY Times said in an editorial the other ...

Posted Thu, Feb 17, 8:13 p.m.

alarmpro, read the Minneapolis Star-Tribune's June 2010 articles on this: http://www.startribune.com/local/95692619.html

Posted Thu, Feb 17, 8:51 a.m.

Yeah, pepper2000, that's the heart of the bill, as my article says.

Posted Wed, Feb 16, 9:46 p.m.

Lewis made a really dumb and reprensible comparison between Nir Rosen's obnoxious remarks about Lara Logan's sexual assault and the legitimate critiques of Saran Palin for her violent and incendiary rhetoric. Lewis embarrassed himself here.

Posted Tue, Feb 15, 7:30 a.m.

The NY Times has some wiser words on this today: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/15/opinion/15tue1.html?_r=1

Posted Mon, Feb 14, 8:11 p.m.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides for a tax penalty of up to $700 or so for failure to buy insurance. But there's no provision, as far as I know, for jailing people who don't comply. That said, I too would prefer a tax-based payment system. It would ...

Posted Mon, Feb 14, 3:24 p.m.

fgruben, like it or not, getting everyone into the insurance pool is the only way to make all the popular provisions work, like banning preexisting condition exclusions. Every health insurance expert, Republican and Democrat, knows this. More serious GOP politicians like Sens. Grassley and Hatch for former Sen. Bob Dole, ...

Posted Wed, Jan 12, 10:38 a.m.

Palin's statement shows that on some level, despite her disavowals of the impact of violent rhetoric, she does get it. If she and her right-wing cohorts actually live the following words from her statement, then they WILL have gotten the message and American political discourse will be greatly improved. We'll ...

Posted Tue, Jan 11, 5:04 p.m.

TVD, first, it's been widely reported that violent crime is significantly down in Arizona, so please don't suggest that illegal immigration has led to an increase there there in killings and other crimes. OK, so you take the position that sick brains are not affected in any way by the ...

Posted Sun, Jan 9, 6:38 p.m.

TVD, you don't address the obvious questions -- why did LBJ decide not to deliver his Four Freedoms speech, and why did you not want him to give it? Surely the need was just as great in LBJ's time as in FDR's time.

Posted Wed, Jan 5, 1:28 p.m.

For those who doubt that cutting mental health services could well lead to bad and dangerous results, check out the recent excellent Stranger cover story on mental patient and hatchet killer Michael LaRosa: http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/the-hatchet/Content?oid=5860130

Posted Wed, Jan 5, 11:12 a.m.

Actually, Seneca, my article was correct that Medicare “probably” would pay for Jim’s dialysis. Medicare eligibility for an under-65 dialysis patient like Jim is not automatic. It depends on whether he has enough work credits or hours. Most patients do but some don’t, according to Todd Seiger, business manager for ...

Posted Tue, Jan 4, 11:29 a.m.

And here's a good new piece from the Spokesman-Review on how the Washington Medicaid cuts will impact dental care: http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2011/jan/04/dental-dilemma/

Posted Tue, Jan 4, 8:36 a.m.

Michael, this article by a respected health policy scholar says transplant coverage under the Oregon Health Plan actually became more generous. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC81116/

Posted Sun, Dec 19, 12:17 p.m.

Ouch, I apologize for my careless misreading of DAM's post, which says he DOES have personal knowledge of the situation. Very sorry! But I still think it's wrong and dishonest for DAM not to disclose who he is, since he was a central player in that situation. It's got to ...

Posted Sun, Dec 19, 12:01 p.m.

If DAM is who I think it is, then DAM is flatly not telling the truth when he says he "has no personal knowledge of the issues surrounding Bonney Lake." I advise DAM to come clean about his identity and not mislead Crosscut readers. If I'm right about the identity ...

Posted Tue, Dec 14, 9:29 a.m.

I should have added that there were dozens of amendments added to the Senate bill by Republicans that made it into the final legislation, and that's partly why the final bill has more cost control than the House version. So Republicans, in spite of their refusal to negotiate, did have ...

Posted Tue, Dec 14, 9:04 a.m.

Once again, the problem with TVD's analysis is that he ignores the plain evidence. Democratic Sen. Max Baucus spent a year, with President Obama's encouragement, consulting with his Republican colleagues on the Senate Finance Committee trying to reach some compromise deal on the health care bill, to no avail (one ...

Posted Mon, Dec 13, 12:59 p.m.

TVD seems surprised that congressional Republicans would not be reasonable and give up their central demand to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and reduce or eliminate the estate tax. He shouldn't be surprised. He assumes the Republicans had a genuine interest in providing a fresh economic stimulus, ...

Posted Mon, Dec 13, 11:54 a.m.

Most judges will say they have to interpret the federal constitution, the state constitution, and statutes because constitutional and statutory language often isn't clear, and it's hardly clear how the language applies to particular cases. Justice Stephen Breyer's 2005 book is entitled Active Liberty: Interpreting our Democratic Constitution. In it, ...

Posted Mon, Dec 13, 10:48 a.m.

To clarify, there is a big difference between a city council or state legislature passing a law -- or voters passing a ballot initiative -- and state or city officials outside the legislative process trying to influence how judges decide cases. The first is how the U.S. constitutional system is ...

Posted Wed, Dec 8, 12:14 p.m.

Sen. Zarelli says the Legislature should have acted sooner because it could see the train wreck coming. What the article doesn't mention is that there was no way to anticipate the outcomes of the three tax-related state ballot initiatives last month. Those outcomes have certainly made the problem bigger and ...

Posted Wed, Dec 8, 11:01 a.m.

TVD, you'd have more credibility with Crosscut readers if you would plainly acknowledge when you say something that's incorrect. Several of us have pointed out your errors about the Wilson-Plame affair. You can read the Washington Post's recent piece. Everyone makes mistakes, though some make more than others. Why not ...

Posted Tue, Dec 7, 3:59 p.m.

TVD and others might want to read the Washington Post's new recap of the Wilson/Plame/Libby/Novak/Cheney/Bush affair, done as a fact check of the new movie Fair Game. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/04/AR2010110407989.html?sid=ST2010110407718

Posted Mon, Dec 6, 10:55 a.m.

TVD completely misrepresents the facts and history of the Wilson/Plame events. I don't expect him to do this, but he needs to go back and read carefully about what really happened. For one thing, Plame ran undercover agents and informers and there was a great risk that when Bush officials ...

Posted Thu, Dec 2, 12:42 p.m.

This David Frum piece contains numerous major inaccuracies, and doesn't reflect some of the late changes Sen. Reid made to address criticisms of the bill. For instance, the latest version removes the repeal on state in-state tuition bans, so states could still apply such bans. The bill would not qualify ...

Posted Mon, Nov 22, 3:02 p.m.

I myself have written straight news pieces for Crosscut, and I would call Chasan's piece pretty much a straight news piece.

Posted Mon, Nov 22, 2:21 p.m.

Notice that I distinguished between the use of the pejorative term in headlines and straight news pieces, where I don't think it's good journalism practice, versus opinion commentaries, where I see no problem with it.

Posted Mon, Nov 22, 1:38 p.m.

Would Crosscut consider not using the term "Obamacare" in headlines and in news stories like this piece about McKenna? As I'm sure the Crosscut editors know, it's become a pejorative term used by critics of the health reform law. The term isn't even accurate, since it was drafted by House ...

Posted Thu, Nov 11, 6:08 p.m.

Good point Debo, but why don't you and everyone else come out from behind the mask and take responsibility for what you're saying?

Posted Thu, Nov 11, 1:13 p.m.

TVD hits a home run with this piece. I'm delighted to be able to wholeheartedly agree with him for once. I plan to share these words with my friends. Thanks, TVD: We honor our veterans most greatly when we spare our young men and women from making sacrifices that earlier ...

Posted Thu, Nov 11, 1:08 p.m.

I agree with the above commenters, particularly David Sucher. I'm mystified by the near-cultish belief of intelligent observers like Floyd McKay in the possibility of compromise with Republicans who have made it crystal clear that they have no intention of compromising. The deficit commission report will be an early test. ...

Posted Sun, Nov 7, 11:58 a.m.

Good piece. I also think the news media have a responsibility to report fearlessly and honestly about who's really doing what rather than engaging in their traditional he-said, she-said false equivalence. When Republicans are being obstructive and uncompromising, reporters, editors, and pundits need to be willing to point that out ...

Posted Thu, Nov 4, 2:17 p.m.

I suggest that TVD and others read Peter Orszag's excellent op-ed today explaining the many ways that the health care reform law will reduce the growth of health care spending and cut the long-term budget deficit in a balanced and responsible way: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/opinion/04orszag.html

Posted Thu, Nov 4, 1:03 p.m.

This Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll is consistent with many other recent polls on the health care reform law -- public opinion is closely divided, many people don't know what's in the law, and many provisions of the law are very popular, such as ending preexisting condition exclusions (which even ...

Posted Thu, Nov 4, 11:51 a.m.

TVD needs to learn more about substantive policy in health care, financial regulation, economic stimulus, etc. before issuing grand statements about what’s wrong with President Obama’s and the Democrats’ policies. But it’s perfectly clear he’s not interested in doing so. Selling health insurance across state lines will only result in ...

Posted Wed, Nov 3, 3:41 p.m.

Good piece, thanks, Mark. It's too often glossed over -- especially among media folks who invariably extol the voting public's "wisdom" -- that our government is polarized because we the people are polarized. We are responsible for the government we get. I like your suggestion of using the "if, then" ...

Posted Tue, Nov 2, 1:40 p.m.

I'd say Brooks is full of it. There's no way I see the Republican/Tea Party rank and file sitting still for a "modest" agenda. They are breathing fire and they are going to push Boehner and the leadership into some wild stuff. And frankly, if the Republicans don't give their ...

Posted Thu, Oct 21, 3:20 p.m.

To DocMaynard, you'll notice I raise that contradiction in the second paragraph of the article. All the winemakers I interviewed described themselves that way without any prompting from me. They seemed well aware of the contradiction between their general economic views and their ambivalence toward this deregulatory initiative affecting their ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 1:15 p.m.

Where does TVD get this notion that there is "no mystery" about how to curb Medicare and general health care spending growth? I've been covering health care for more than 25 years and I don't know anyone who's truly knowledgable about health care who thinks there are obvious, simple fixes ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 12:03 p.m.

One other glaring contradiction in TVD's piece: He approvingly cites Bernanke's position that the Fed needs to focus its policies on job growth and expansionary measures. But then TVD advocates big cuts in federal and state spending that would have a major contractionary impact on the economy. He doesn't seem ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 11:18 a.m.

Normfox got it right on TVD's failure to even mention how much repealing the Bush tax cuts would do to reduce the deficit. He also got it right in nailing TVD for his continued refusal to recognize that the Republicans are mainly responsible for the current government stalemate. That's not ...

Posted Wed, Oct 6, 10:49 a.m.

I think serialcatowner has it right. I don't understand the fetish that David and commentators like Friedman and Broder have for "bipartisan centrism." Elected leaders and the voting public have to make tough choices on major issues. Are we going to have universal health care and bring medical inflation down? ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 11:28 a.m.

May I remind TVD that it was Greatest Generation member Ronald Reagan who pushed through massive, unpaid-for tax cuts -- in other words the type of free lunch TVD associates with Boomers. Reagan's budget director David Stockman recently wrote about what a disastrous policy that was. And it was pre-Boomer ...

Posted Mon, Sep 27, 3:32 p.m.

Lordy Lord, I think heartscribe must be right, even the real TVD couldn't have written some of this stuff, could he??? Let's see. The "less noted, silent Boomers" have worked unglamorous jobs, raised families, bought homes, saved for retirement and their kids' education, volunteered in their churches and neighborhoods and ...

Posted Thu, Sep 16, 10:32 a.m.

Same old misinformation and misinterpretation from TVD here, and once again I feel obliged to point these out. Contrary to what he says, the health care reform law expands Medicare benefits on preventive care, drug coverage, and in other areas. It reduces payments to private Medicare Advantage plans covering about ...

Posted Thu, Sep 9, 3:15 p.m.

"Monument to folly." That's well put, Knute. But it was also much deeper than that. You didn't mention that Custer's mission was to force the Sioux back onto their limited reservation, and they didn't want to go. So while Custer made numerous mistakes in the course of that battle -- ...

Posted Thu, Aug 19, 9:55 a.m.

Thanks, Knute, for the good column, especially this line: "Not Obama's latest flubs or faux flubs, but because of seeing how a man whose job it is to face real problems is so beset by fake ones." Americans, both liberal and conservative, really do need to grow up, as Todd ...

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 11:41 a.m.

In line with all this, I highly recommend Todd Purdum's new Vanity Fair piece on Obama and the presidency. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/09/broken-washington-201009?currentPage=all POLITICS This is a key excerpt, but there are lots of poignantly true passages and quotes: Durable achievement demands a long time horizon—something that the country as a whole seems ...

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 11:37 a.m.

As usual, the problem is where to start in addressing TVD’s numerous loaded and ill-informed statements passed off as hard-headed realism. 1. His obsession with the federal deficit – and attacking much needed programs like health care and Medicare and school funding and stimulus funding to local governments – is ...

Posted Thu, Jul 29, 12:01 p.m.

TVD, here's the latest on GOP obstructionism. They won't even go along with the Democrats on small business tax cuts, which in any other time would be a knee-jerk yes vote for Senate Republicans. Try to take this into account when attacking Obama for partisanship. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/us/politics/30cong.html?hp

Posted Mon, Jul 26, 2:14 p.m.

Then, cleanhousein2010, legislation would have to be much much much longer than the already long bills conservatives complain about. Every significant law requires extensive rulemaking to cover the various circumstances that Congress can't possibly cover. You also may not realize that bureaucrats are not unaccountable. Federal rulemaking is subject to ...

Posted Mon, Jul 26, 1:09 p.m.

I'm not going to get into all the issues you raise here. But your comment about Dr. Berwick reveals your limited and ideologically skewed information base about at least that subject. Dr. Berwick is a widely esteemed authority on health care quality improvement and efficiency, and has the respect of ...

Posted Mon, Jul 26, 11:19 a.m.

Again, TVD, did you and other voters not notice how Republicans reacted when Obama and congressional Democratic leaders like Sen. Baucus tried to work with Republicans on health care, climate change, financial re-regulation, immigration, stimulus, etc.? If you refuse to acknowledge the fierce Republican obstructionism, that severely undermines the credibility ...

Posted Mon, Jul 26, 9:55 a.m.

There are so many dubious and ill-informed statements in TVD's piece that it's hard to know where to start. 1) Economists across the board credit President Obama's stimulus package with averting a much worse economic meltdown. 2) The "unprecedented" interventions in the economy arose from unprecedented financial system colllapses, in ...

Posted Tue, Jul 20, 10:51 a.m.

Good piece, Mark, thanks. This is what so many people don't understand -- that the big future federal budget deficits are all about rising health care costs and that the only solution is to reduce that rate of increase both in federal and private health care spending. That requires health ...

Posted Mon, Jun 21, 1:42 p.m.

Not to be mean, but in a town with quite a few excellent wine shops, like Vino Verite, Esquin, Pike Western and others, Seattle Cellars didn't have an interesting enough selection to survive. That has to be considered along with the location.

Posted Tue, Jun 8, 11:17 a.m.

People interested in this subject might want to refer back to my 2009 Crosscut article on the patient-centered medical home model that's been implemented at Group Health Cooperative and is also being used by Geisinger, Swedish Medical Center, and other more forward-looking organizations. http://crosscut.com/2009/09/03/health-medicine/19209/

Posted Wed, Jun 2, 10:52 a.m.

Excerpt: That leads to the second theme, which is financial. Medicare and Medicaid cannot continue without major shifts in thinking, in resource allocation, and even in tax support. This isn’t politics; it’s mathematics. We have to reduce costs, raise taxes and make sure more people have access to primary care. ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 9:24 a.m.

Thanks to woofer for improving my proposal. But how about extreme deference by the losing bylined writer to the winning masked blog-off commenter AND a pie in the writer's face?

Posted Thu, May 27, 8:39 p.m.

You mean the "famously liberal" Christopher Hitchens who cheerled for the Iraq invasion and viciously attacked anyone who questioned it? That's just a brand he uses to be a counter-provocateur.

Posted Thu, May 27, 4:47 p.m.

Here’s my proposal. As a satellite evening event to David Brewster’s annual Crosscut membership gathering, Crosscut should hold a masked blog-off, with all the anonymous commenters coming dressed in costumes portraying their online nom de plumes (or else simply wearing nametags over their costumes). The bylined Crosscut writers and the ...

Posted Thu, May 27, 11:14 a.m.

There are two separate issues raised by TVD’s piece. On the issue of whether commenters should give their real names, I would prefer that they did, particularly when they engage in pointed personal criticism. I believe they should take personal responsibility. As a journalist, I never allow my sources to ...

Posted Fri, May 21, 11:42 a.m.

Not so sure it's fake symbolism accomplishing nothing. NPR interviewed Mayor Gordon of Phoenix -- who opposes the boycott -- yesterday, and he said the boycott is already taking a serious economic toll on the city and state in terms of tourism and conventions.

Posted Fri, May 21, 11:09 a.m.

Seems to me that everyone who favors the free market should endorse the concept of people using their market power to help create the kind of society they seek. That's even more true in a political system where commercial interests overwhelm your voting power. I don't give my business to ...

Posted Tue, May 18, 2:58 p.m.

In response to dbreneman's comment, there are actually several major provisions in the health reform law that allow or require interstate sales of health insurance. First, states can agree to establish a common health insurance exchange, where plans would be sold to residents of all the participating states or parts ...

Posted Tue, May 18, 11:52 a.m.

Mr. Chasan fails to address the grave jurisdictional problems with this lawsuit. Article 3 of the Constitution only allows the federal courts to take cases where there is a current, actual controversy or alleged injury. No one will be required to buy health insurance or pay a tax penalty until ...

Posted Mon, May 10, 2:34 p.m.

Excerpt: As I thought about it, it came to me that the observations of these experienced, tough-minded people were not far from those being made by independent voters and Tea Partiers — a general disappointment and disillusionment with things as they are and a frustration that big problems are not ...

Posted Wed, May 5, 10:34 a.m.

Excerpt: Obama owed his 2008 election, in part, to the belief by a majority of voters that he intended to break with such partisanship and polarization and move toward nonpartisan problem solving. For a variety of reasons, that has not happened. Mr. Van Dyk is obviously impervious to the reality ...

Posted Mon, May 3, 10:01 a.m.

The article offers a valuable reminder about the Arizona crime problem. But Mr. Van Dyk undermines the article with his typical "a pox on both their houses" polemic. What he fails to acknowledge, in his evasion of partisan reality, is that the Arizona bill was passed SOLELY by Republicans, with ...

Posted Thu, Apr 15, 2:52 p.m.

Bill, I wasn't commenting on the TAO effort. I was just cautioning about applying conventional "fair and balanced" standards to in-depth, evidence-based reporting which reaches conclusions. I certainly support transparency, accountability, and openness in journalism. But news organizations need to be held accountable for mindless he-said, she-said journalism that distorts ...

Posted Thu, Apr 15, 10:51 a.m.

Not to defend opinion masquerading as evidence or facts (I've criticized Mr. Van Dyk for just that), but let's not defend and celebrate the dysfunctional old model of journalistic "objectivity" either. That model led to the "fair and balanced" coverage promoting the existence of WMD in Iraq, justifying the U.S. ...

Posted Tue, Apr 13, 8:47 a.m.

Good piece, Rick, we'd love to have you come out and speak on this subject here in Yakima. Your military credentials might help get the message through.

Posted Thu, Apr 8, 2:05 p.m.

Excerpt: Our highest foreign-policy, national-security priority right now is to get our American financial and economic houses in order. If we fail on that count, we will be unsafe and ineffectual in the world. There are, however, some things ongoing internationally that have been somewhat obscured during our year-long immersions ...

Posted Tue, Apr 6, 11 a.m.

The writer is always quick to knock down proposed solutions to problems like the budget deficit and health care costs and access, but I don't see him proposing his own realistic solutions. He constantly bemoans the deficit (thanks to NickBob for pointing out that properly managed deficits are not bad) ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 12:47 p.m.

David, "over-the-top" reaction, "extreme statements," "red-faced pounding." ??? President Obama and congressional Democrats passed the market-based health care reforms they promised in the 2008 campaign (and Democrats and some Republicans have been seeking for decades). They won the election with that as a central plank, and they did what they ...

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 1:26 p.m.

Oh my, where to start correcting all the factual errors in this article? 1. The Medicare prescription drug benefit law Mr. Van Dyk celebrates was passed in 2003, not the 1990s, and it contained no funding mechanism, thus greatly enlarging the budget deficit he so often bemoans. 2. The bill ...

Posted Thu, Mar 11, 3:03 p.m.

So now Mr. Van Dyk is criticizing President Clinton for developing a health reform plan and failing to get Congress to pass it? Didn’t Clinton do precisely what the writer has urged President Obama to do from the start – present his own plan and sell it to Congress and ...

Posted Wed, Mar 10, 1:08 p.m.

It’s obviously impossible to get Mr. Van Dyk to see how different Congress and the Republican Party are in 2010 compared with 1965 (for instance, any congressional leader could tell him that it’s impossible for a President or congressional leaders to enforce party discipline the way they could back then. ...

Posted Mon, Mar 1, 12:45 p.m.

Folks interested in real-world experiences with health savings account/high-deductible health plans might want to check out the journal Health Affairs, which has published a number of studies of HSA performance. The findings are very mixed. Here's an excerpt from a 2008 article on whether "consumer-directed" health plans change enrollee behavior: ...

Posted Fri, Feb 26, 11:35 a.m.

BTW, even though Sen. Murray spoke relatively briefly (compared with her overly wordy congressional colleagues), she spoke powerfully and cut to the heart of the issue -- the many Americans who face the plight of the Owens family, where the 27-year-old uninsured mother died for lack of timely health care, ...

Posted Thu, Feb 25, 10:15 p.m.

If the Republicans' repeated statements today of their anti-government ideology did not convince Mr. Van Dyk that there's no way in this life that they were ever going to buy into the central Democratic proposals (near-universal coverage through a mandate and subsidies, strong regulation of insurance, regulated insurance exchanges, vigorous ...

Posted Wed, Feb 24, 2:47 p.m.

Vince, you said it better than I could. Thanks.

Posted Wed, Feb 24, 10:39 a.m.

Once again, Mr. Van Dyk, Senate Finance chairman Baucus brought key Republicans into health reform discussions in early 2009, long before any bills were written. The Republicans had months and months to participate in the drafting, and opted not to. Indeed, Sen. Charles Grassley, who knew better, even started ranting ...

Posted Mon, Feb 22, 6:43 p.m.

The writer once again makes statements that are either factually inaccurate, incomplete, and at odds with overwhelming empirical evidence and obvious political reality. First of all, President Obama today released an entire health reform package, not just new restrictions on insurance rate increases. It was available this morning on the ...

Posted Wed, Feb 10, 11:17 a.m.

Geez, where did you get that from what I said???? That's the opposite of what I said. Look it up yourself. Accurate articles about the deficit reduction impact of the reform bills have been written in the NY Times, Wash Post, New Republic, and other publications. Here's one: http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2009/November/19/CBO-Costs-and-Savings.aspx

Posted Wed, Feb 10, 10:07 a.m.

What Mr. Van Dyk and other "deficit hawks" keep ignoring is that health reform is essential to mid- and long term deficit reduction. Here's what Obama said the other day: "We've got to control costs, both for families and businesses, but also for our government. Everybody out there who talks ...

Posted Wed, Feb 10, 12:27 a.m.

"Washington, D.C., dialogue still focuses on the prospects of stalled health-care and cap-and-trade legislation. But, out in the country, ordinary voters and taxpayers are more concerned with a) their personal financial and economic situations,"out in the country, ordinary voters and taxpayers are more concerned with a) their personal financial and ...

Posted Thu, Jan 28, 2:08 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyk, as a ostensible veteran Washington observer, surely you should know that the Joint Chiefs never applaud or react during presidential state of the union speeches. They refrain from such reactions because they must do their jobs in a strictly nonpartisan fashion and obey the orders of both ...

Posted Fri, Jan 22, 2:53 p.m.

Excellent piece generally, but how the writer thinks Obama and the Dems can abandon health reform now without severely demoralizing their base, electrifying the Republicans, and setting the stage for a 1994-style election rout is beyond me. Paul Krugman and E.J. Dionne had it right today, as did these health ...

Posted Thu, Jan 21, 10:45 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyk is flat-out wrong in saying that the tax and fee increases and spending cuts contained in the House and Senate bills would not immediately become law if Congress passes them as part of the current health care legislation. Those provisions absolutely WOULD NOT have to be considered ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 1:51 p.m.

It's hard to know how to respond to sjenner's comments. Many of the people who criticize the Medicare savings in the Democratic health reform bills, including Mr. Van Dyk, are otherwise in favoring of cutting Medicare as part of "entitlement reform." Now the Dems come along and propose Medicare savings ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 11:14 a.m.

Ted Van Dyck continues to misrepresent the health reform legislation in Congress. He is flat-out wrong to say that the legislation would cut present Medicare benefits. In fact, the legislation enhances benefits by closing the doughnut hole in Part D drug coverage. The House bill would create a generous new ...

Posted Tue, Jan 19, 10:52 a.m.

For the record, when I called Kuper for that cost information last week, I had never talked to him before and he had never talked to me. Kuper did not know my views on the governor's position, and frankly I had no view. I simply wanted to find out how ...

Posted Tue, Jan 19, 10:36 a.m.

Once again, Mr. Van Dyck's statements show he's not up to speed on health reform and how his penchant for dismissing his critics as partisan when they legitimately challenge his command of the facts. The Senate Finance Committee was the main game all along, and Sen. Baucus worked tirelessly from ...

Posted Mon, Jan 18, 10:01 p.m.

Mr. Van Dyck claims that health reform legislation "could easily have drawn bipartisan support — with the addition of tort reform provisions and the enabling of health-insurance companies to sell their products across state lines (two provisions that most Democratic legislators would have been willing to concede)." I'll say it ...

Posted Fri, Jan 15, 11:43 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyck is entitled to his own opinions but not his own facts. Contrary to his statement that the health reform bills in Congress would increase the federal budget deficit, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has costed out the bills and found that over 10 years the Senate bill ...

Posted Mon, Jan 4, 1:22 p.m.

"The deficit curve, if not turned in the next 18 months, threatens to bring roaring inflation, high interest rates, and a boom-and-bust cycle like the one we experienced during the late 1970s." The writer likes to rail about deficit spending. But how does he propose to significantly reduce the federal ...

Posted Fri, Dec 18, 1:30 p.m.

It's good that the writer acknowledges the pain of many Americans from losing their jobs, homes, and savings. But he continues to downplay their pain and anxiety related to getting health care since so many have lost or can't afford health insurance -- which in turn has driven many into ...

Posted Sun, Nov 22, 1:48 p.m.

"Republicans have opted out, mainly on the basis of the legislation's cost and the absence of malpractice reform." The author still doesn't recognize that the Republicans never were going to collaborate with Obama and the Dems on health care reform because 1) ideologically they DO NOT ACCEPT the principle of ...

Posted Wed, Nov 4, 7:06 p.m.

As much as the author might wish it, this election will have no impact on how congressional Democrats handle health reform. The slowdown is due to expected tough negotiations on key issues between liberal and conservative Dems. There's absolutely no evidence the gubernatorial races in NJ and Virginia turned on ...

Posted Tue, Oct 13, 12:54 p.m.

There are many dubious and unsupported assertions in this "conventional wisdom" column. Where to start? 1. Most members of Congress would prefer that the health reform legislation disappear? How many Democratic members has the author recently talked to? Universal health care has been the top domestic priority for Democrats for ...

Posted Wed, Sep 23, 4:03 p.m.

VinceInSeattle, thank you for quoting a beautiful and apt passage of Shakespeare to get us past the ugly name-calling! I totally agree on the issue of Democratic Party unity. I intensively covered the Clinton health reform battles, and am amazed that Democrat Jim Cooper and his Blue Dog colleagues haven't ...

Posted Wed, Sep 23, 1:19 p.m.

Mr. Van Dyk, I don't believe in arguing based on the "I'm an expert" approach because readers must evaluate the evidence on its own merits. That said, I've been covering health care for more than 25 years for national publications, including the AMA and AHA publications, have won national journalism ...

Posted Wed, Sep 23, 11:06 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyk argues that new presidents don't necessarily know a lot about particular issues but he himself needs to bone up on health policy. He argues for limited insurance reforms rather than comprehensive reform including covering all Americans. But any serious health policy expert could tell him --and the ...

Posted Fri, Sep 18, 4:14 p.m.

Back to Mr. Van Dyk's denial of the racial component of opposition to President Obama, E.J. Dionne just said it eloquently on NPR, responding to David Brooks' denial of the racist element. Dionne: Most of the President’s opponents are against him based on politics or ideology or the state of ...

Posted Fri, Sep 18, 12:41 p.m.

The charges of racism lack "any substantive foundation"? Look at the signs and flags at that Washington,D.C. "tea bag" rally last weekend. Here's one that was captured in a photo I saw: "Homey don't play dat!!!" Here are more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/racism-marched-at-taxpaye_b_285007.html Packs of taxpayer marchers shuffled down Pennsylvania Avenue proudly waving ...

Posted Sun, Sep 13, 10:14 p.m.

Actually, Mr. Van Dyk, the CBO projected that the cost of HR 3200, the House Democratic health reform bill, would be $239 billion over 10 years, not $1 trillion as you claimed. Here's the link. Let's try to be more accurate in the future. http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10464/hr3200.pdf

Posted Fri, Sep 11, 9:32 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyk, my criticisms of your piece were not "free-ranging broadsides," they were very specific and supported by evidence. Sorry you choose not to engage them. In terms of reaction by experienced political and health policy observers, quite a few very smart people had very different reactions and thought ...

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 4:14 p.m.

Sorry, typo, I meant to say Mr. Van Dyk's repeatedly stated position that Obama should NOT attempt health reform at this time.

Posted Thu, Sep 10, 4:13 p.m.

I think Mr. Van Dyk's assessment of health reform is offbase once again, driven by his repeatedly stated position that President Obama should have have attempted health reform at this time. Very briefly: 1) Obama's "rhetorical swipes" were simply statements that Republicans have been lying about the Democratic legislation, which ...

Posted Wed, Aug 26, 10:35 a.m.

For many years, the Republicans, now supposedly the great defenders of seniors, have proposed cutting the growth of Medicare by even larger sums than the Democrats now propose. The GOP savings would go not to health coverage expansion for other Americans but rather to tax cuts tilted toward wealthy people. ...

Posted Wed, Aug 19, 9:18 a.m.

For those of you who don't want to read the 1,000-page House health reform bill, here's a clear summary from the nonpartisan Politifact that separates truth from falsehood. This addresses many of the pieces of misinformation that have circulated among the anti-reform protesters. Then you can compare it to the ...

Posted Tue, Aug 18, 3:48 p.m.

To Kieth: Medicare is good for you but not good for the rest of the country? Exactly my point. Why not listen to the views of tens of millions of Americans who don't have health coverage or who have insecure or inadequate coverage express their views on that? Medicare was ...

Posted Mon, Aug 17, noon

Mr. Van Dyk has engaged in reflexive Obama bashing ever since the President rudely gnored his advice and took on two major issues that are fundamental to the future health of the U.S. economy -- health care and clean energy reform. Now he's blasting Obama for not writing the health ...

Posted Thu, Aug 6, 12:01 p.m.

Bigelow is certainly correct about Viognier. Of course I know that but I used some shorthand to describe Chelan wines. As to the alcohol levels, if Bigelow checks, he'll find that the good producers I mentioned in my article are bottling Rieslings at 13-13.5 percent alcohol, the same as the ...

Posted Mon, Oct 6, 6:24 p.m.

Sorry, Sarah Palin ain't no Huey Long: Mr. Corr needs to re-read Harry T. Williams definitive bio of Huey Long to realize how unlike Palin is from the Kingfish. Long was a brilliant man who taught himself to be a lawyer and quickly went on to argue and win a ...