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Mark Lloyd, chief diversity officer of the FCC:

Allow me to clear away some mud: I am not a Czar appointed by President Obama. I am not at the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine through the front door or the back door, or to carry out a secret plot funded by George Soros to get rid of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck or any other conservative talk show host. I am not at the FCC to remove anybody, whatever their color, from power. I am not a supporter of Hugo Chavez. The right wing smear campaign has been, in a word – incredible, generating hate mail and death threats. It is the price we pay for freedom of speech. And I do support free speech.

(Hat tip to TWI).

Politico – Group dedicated to creating college football playoff system accuses bowl of violating election laws.

As we go into the break and folks have the time, we are starting to get more numbers run so as to see the effect the two health care versions (House and senate) would have. Paul Krugman does that on his blog today, continuing a theme we’ve been discussing about the safety net:

For people on the left who think this is all a big nothing, consider the subsidies. From the Kaiser Health Reform Subsidy Calculator, here’s the percentage of insurance premiums on the individual market that would be covered by subsidies at different levels of income measured as a percentage of the poverty line (all calculations are for a family of 4 headed by a 40-year-old): (graphic):

“Guys, this is a major program to aid lower- and lower-middle-income families. How is that not a big progressive victory?

For people in the center who worry, as my colleague David Brooks puts it, that there may be unintended consequences if you “centrally regulate 17 percent of the economy”: um, it’s a little late for that.”

In addition, here’s a “what’s in the bill” guide from MSNBC and Kaiser:

Q: I don’t have health insurance. Would I have to get it, and what happens if I don’t?

A: Under both bills, most Americans would be required to have coverage or to pay a penalty. Some would be exempted from the requirement, called an individual mandate, due to financial hardship or religious reasons. Under the House bill, you’d have to have coverage by 2013 or pay up to 2.5 percent of your income; the penalty couldn’t exceed the average cost of a plan sold in the exchanges.

The Senate version would take effect in 2014. The penalty for not having coverage would be in 2014 or 0.5 percent of an individual’s income, whichever is higher. The penalty would rise in 2016 to 0, or 2 percent of income, up to the cost of the cheapest health plan.

This ABC News review looks at the bill from the point of view of the insurance companies, quoting Bob Laszewski, a respected health industry analyst and former industry executive who runs a health care blog:

The Senate bill calls for fines for people who do not purchase coverage and are not exempt from a mandate to buy it. They start at in 2014 and rise to 0 by 2016.

That’s a lot more affordable than what some people would pay for insurance. A sliding scale of subsidies will help people or families with incomes up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or ,200 for a family of four this year. But a family of four with income of ,000 would still have to pay nearly 10 percent of that income, or ,500, toward coverage.

“There aren’t a lot of families with an extra ,500 in their checking account,” Laszewski said. “The problem with this bill is the subsidies are really quite modest, and there really aren’t any penalties.”

An ideal bill for insurers, he said, would pair better subsidies for the uninsured with higher penalties that motivate people to buy coverage and get more healthy people into the risk pools.

An ideal bill for consumers is different than an ideal bill for the industry, of course. Lazsewski has several other posts on the blog about the impact on the industry (no jumping for joy in sight.)

You can find a previous cited article from Jonathan Cohn here, using numbers from Jonathan Gruber at MIT:

If reform doesn’t pass, according to Gruber’s figures, the average premium for the non-group market–that is, the market for people buying coverage on their own–will be around ,000 a year. Right off the bat, you’re spending a fifth of your income on health insurance.

But what does it cover? Policies in the non-group market are notoriously spotty and unreliable. And benefit requirements vary enormously depending on the state. Many allow considerable, sometimes unlimited, out-of-pocket expenses. For the sake of comparison, though, let’s assume you have a policy with a deductible no higher than that allowed for a Health Savings Account. According to Gruber’s projections, that would mean you’re on the hook for–wait for it–another ,000, plus a few hundred in change.

Put it altogether and that’s a total liability of around nearly ,000–about half of your income.

Linda Bergthold has a summary of some other analysis pieces at HuffPo Monday, highlighting some pieces from USA Today and from the Health Affairs blog.

Also, Nate runs some of the same numbers Marcy runs, and comes up with The Senate’s Bill Helps Working Families.

All in all, the numbers suggest that the proposed bills are a reasonable addition to the safety net, and there’s a case to be made for what it does, particularly compared to the cost of doing nothing (no one argues that part – 36% of the insurance buying population had a pre-existing condition), even as we recognize what it doesn’t accomplish and where else we need to go.

OK, that’s the reasonable part. The unreasonable part is brought up by Bob Herbert today:

The tax would kick in on plans exceeding ,000 annually for family coverage and ,500 for individuals, starting in 2013. In the first year it would affect relatively few people in the middle class. But because of the steadily rising costs of health care in the U.S., more and more plans would reach the taxation threshold each year.

Within three years of its implementation, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the tax would apply to nearly 20 percent of all workers with employer-provided health coverage in the country, affecting some 31 million people. Within six years, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, the tax would reach a fifth of all households earning between ,000 and ,000 annually. Those families can hardly be considered very wealthy.

And where do we need to go? It’s great to expand the safety net, but we need affordability for the middle class. The House has a better bill for it, because it avoids the Herbert-described “Cadillac” tax (Kaiser issue brief, .pdf):

The largest element of the financing of the House plan is a surtax on high income taxpayers (raising 0 billion over 10 years), a proposal not included in the Senate bill. The Senate plan, in turn, includes two proposals not in the House bill – an increase in the Medicare payroll tax for high income workers (producing billion), and a new tax on high-premium employer-sponsored health plans (raising 9 billion). Both proposals contain new excise taxes on various health industries, though the scope of the taxes varies – the House taxes only medical device makers (for revenues of billion), while the Senate bill also includes taxes on brand-name drug companies and health insurers (for total revenue of 2 billion).

What’s the logic for the Cadillac tax?  The idea is to pay for health care within the health care system itself, rather than going outside the system (the House does this by taxing wealthy individuals.) Some Dem Senators (Landreau, Lincoln and Nelson come to mind) have threatened passage over this if it’s removed. In return, the Senate taxes health care industry components much higher than the House version.

Play with the Health Reform Subsidy Calculator and see where you are at. And look to the House version as a better model for the middle class. It sounds like it’ll take WH intervention to convince the Senate to lower or eliminate the high-premium plan tax. And whatever the final bill looks like, it has to be affordable to those making 90K or less (400% of Federal poverty levels  - all individuals and families with incomes at or below 133% of the federal poverty level will be eligible for Medicaid and between 133 and 400%, there are subsidies.)

In the final analysis, remember we are comparing this to not having insurance at all – unless your current plan gets hit with a hidden tax, in which case you’re going to be looking to retire a few Senators.

From the GREAT STATE OF MAINE…

2009, Part II: 2009 Harder

One year ago in C&J I was very smart:

And here I’ll make my first prediction for 2009: President-elect Obama’s grand vision for unity and bipartisanship will run into a buzzsaw, even as America’s collapse worsens. The scorched-earth Republicans simply can’t help themselves. To them carnage and destruction are just part of their master plan. Collateral damage on a wide scale is of little consequence as long as their country clubs don’t double-book their tee times.

And one year ago in C&J I was very dumb:

On the bright side, at least achieving 60 votes in the Senate will be fairly easy. It looks like Al Franken will be #59, and Maine’s Olympia Snowe (whom I imagine is hyper-embarrassed about what her party has become) will likely be a reliable #60.

Okay, so I batted .500—I’ll take it.

I gotta say, it’s amazing to me that we Democrats should have so much worrying on our minds about 2010. Did no one pay attention to the behavior of the Republican base, leadership, and pundits this year? Did all their Hitlerizing, obstructing, hoping for Obama’s (read: America’s) failure and speaking cuckoo talk not get noticed by the public? Remember their very serious budget proposal? Or their very serious healthcare plan? You mean to tell me that some of those ‘Teabagger Idol’ contestants might have a shot at goin’ to Washington? Wow. Call me a doe-eyed optimist, but I’m not sure I’m ready to buy the notion that we can’t win races against crazy people. (Then again, Michele Bachmann and James Inhofe kinda blow that notion to hell, don’t they?)

But enough looking ahead—this is America, dammit, and we’re reactive, not proactive. So join me below the fold as we re-react in hope and horror to the events of April, May and June in Part 2 of our series, 2009: A Light at the End of the Sphincter? Wear a helmet—there may still be some stray pundit spittle flying through the air.

Cheers and Jeers looks back in There’s Moreville… [Swoosh!!]  Right now!  [GONG!!]

Obama says he has ordered a review of the nation’s watch list system and of its air safety regulations and has asked his national security team to keep up the pressure on terrorists.

Your one stop pundit shop.

Eugene Robinson, sad to say, joins the chorus of those misrepresenting what Janet Napolitano said after the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day. Says Robinson:

Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano’s initial assessment of the Christmas Day airliner attack — that “the system worked” — doesn’t quite match the absurdity of “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” But only because she quickly took it back.

What Napolitano actually said:

Once this incident occurred, everything went according to clockwork, not only sharing throughout the air industry, but also sharing with state and local law enforcement. Products were going out on Christmas Day, they went out yesterday, and also to the [airline] industry to make sure that the traveling public remains safe. I would leave you with that message. The traveling public is safe. We have instituted some additional screening and security measures, in light of this incident, but, again, everyone reacted as they should. The system, once the incident occurred, the system worked.

Bob Herbert says that:

There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s effort to reform health care.

Opinion art of 2009.

Cal Thomas takes the lowest road possible:

This latest incident and the killings at Fort Hood, Texas, by a Muslim Army officer ought to be a verdict on the Obama administration’s strategy of apologizing for America and reaching out to Muslim nations.

Fred Barnes joins the parade of conservatives who are suddenly concerned about public opinion — something he and his ilk ignored during the past eight years of war.

Larry Tye on Lester Rodney:

He was not a welcome ally to many in America’s civil rights movement of the early 1900s, but none could deny the attention-getting power of Lester Rodney, the hot-blooded young sports editor of the paper published by the Communist Party USA.  [...]

In America that meant baseball. The Daily Worker hired as its first sports editor Rodney, a 25-year-old New York University night student from Brooklyn who knew as little about socialism as he did about journalism. Yet Rodney loved the national pastime, and he made ending Major League Baseball’s ban on blacks his passion for more than a decade …

Rodney, who died Dec. 20 at the age of 98, understood that fireballer Leroy “Satchel’’ Paige, slugger Josh Gibson, and other stars of the Negro Leagues had proven they were the equals of the all-white major leaguers. For years, a cadre of crusading sportswriters had covered as many interracial barnstorming tours and Negro League games as their editors allowed, dropping in lines whenever they could pointing out the skill of black players and the stupidity of keeping them out of the majors.

But Rodney was one of the few to take on segregation point-blank.

Test scores cloud the legacy of Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s tenure as Chicago’s schools chief.

Aides who have known Barack Obama since before he took office say he seems more sober than he did a year ago, but also increasingly focused on the issues facing the country.

AP – An Illinois firm agreed to pay a .25 million settlement for importing and selling the popular Thomas & Friends children’s toys that contained lead levels above legal limits and risked sickening children.

The attorney general talks about the former vice president, why the administration’s critics are wrong and what will truly make America a safer place.