Based on analysts’ earnings forecasts for 2009, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is on track to pay out as much as $20 billion this year, or about $700,000 per employee. That would be nearly double the firm’s $363,000 average last year, and slightly higher than the $661,000 for the average Goldman employee in fiscal 2007, according to analyst estimates reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Some bills get the veto, other sail right through:
“In this down economy, our dairy farmers had no safety net and were essentially in freefall. I commend the leadership of the General Assembly for their strong endorsement of this bill. The legislation had broad bipartisan support, a testament to the importance and urgency for finding a solution, much sooner rather than later,” Governor Rell said. [...]
According to the state Department of Agriculture, which will administer the quarterly payment program, Connecticut dairy farmers lose about $1 for every gallon of milk they produce. The amount of the payment would be based on how much milk each farm produces and the costs to produce it, such as feed, equipment, fertilizer and fuel. The state payment is intended to help the dairy farmer absorb some of the financial losses.
I used to lose a dollar for each dollar I gave away — but after a short while, I realized that I wasn’t in a very lucrative sector of the economy. Apparently I should have held out for a little longer.
Meanwhile, today on the cutting board:
House Bill 5021, An Act Concerning Wellness Programs and Expansion of Health Insurance Coverage: This bill would have expanded mandated health insurance coverage for individual and group policies in several ways. It would have increased the coverage limit for mandatory ostomy supplies and add mandatory coverage for prosthetics, wigs for hair loss associated with alopecia areata, hearing aids for children between ages 12 and 18 and leukocyte testing for bone marrow transplants. It also prohibited copayments for colonoscopies and required group health insurance policies to offer a health wellness program that provides incentives to participate.
The Governor noted that each of the provisions have merit and would provide additional benefits to people with serious medical conditions, but expressed concern over the significant cost to taxpayers, policyholders and employers in the future. The bill’s mandate would not affect the state health plan until Fiscal Year 2012, but the Governor cited a review by the non-partisan Office of Fiscal Analysis that indicated “the FY 12 cost of these mandates could be significant.”
“The simple truth is that we cannot afford this bill,” Governor Rell said. “It would be fiscally irresponsible to burden our recovery with these significant future costs.”
So some bad news for leukemia and myeloma patients, as insurers won’t be required to cover the cost of testing for donor matches. Fortunately, the bill passed by a veto-proof margin in the Senate (with a number of Republican yes votes and Democratic no votes), and would make the 2/3 cutoff in the House if three of the four absent votes (all Democrats) vote “aye” on a veto override. And if that doesn’t work, there might still be time to reclassify kids with leukemia as dairy farmers so they can get a little help from the state…
Also vetoed: HB 6502 (the “healthcare for janitors” bill that would remedy the odd situation where the state government’s janitors are the only state employees without health coverage, passed by wide veto-proof majorities), SB 1078 (establishing a Long Island Sound Commission, passed unanimously — so we can observe which Republicans switch their votes when the Governor wags her finger), and SB 1080 (a bill requiring restaurants post calorie counts on their menus, which is short of 101 votes in the House).
And just as a bonus fun item, one quote from the veto message (and I didn’t erase anything from between the two paragraphs):
While the subcommittee would have included the Commissioners of the departments of Correction, Public Safety and Mental Health and Addiction Services, the Governor said, representation from the Office of the Governor is important as well. “True reform requires all stakeholders to be present at the table. This bill is woefully lacking in that regard.
“I also take note, once again, of the size and bureaucracy of state government,” Governor Rell added. “Every year we enact legislation creating more study groups, task forces, boards and commissions. Sadly, far too often there is little attempt to reach consensus without legislation.”
The size of government is too big — but if you wanted to start a new committee, having only four gubernatorial appointments isn’t enough.
Rell vetoed the Democratic budget proposal (veto message from iBlog West Hartford at MLN):
“Instead of reducing spending as families and businesses across Connecticut have done, Senate Bill 1801 does nothing to reduce the size or cost of a government that has outgrown the taxpayers’ ability to pay for it. Rather, it pushes the pain of sacrifice off the state bureaucracy and onto the state’s taxpayers. I cannot allow that to happen. Senate Bill 1801 calls for $2.5 billion in new taxes on the people and employers of Connecticut in the midst of the greatest global economic downturn since the Great Depression: exactly the wrong move at exactly the wrong time.”
Government, of course, is not a family — it is what families count on in a time of crisis. The right time to scale back our civil services would be during a time of broadening prosperity, not at the moment when we depend on those services the most.
Rell’s cuts would sacrifice 10% of our services — and for what? The proposal she just vetoed would increase taxes by less than a percentage point for families making a million dollars a year. (A household income of $1,000,000 would see a tax increase of $9,500.) Obviously, Rell thinks the middle class can afford to suffer a little more.
Apparently HELP (Kennedy’s committee, currently being overseen by Dodd) has finally put together a public option for inclusion in their health reform bill – and it’s due tomorrow:
The new HELP framework allows the public plan to “reimburse health care providers at rates which will be no more than the average reimbursement rate paid by private plans offered through Gateways.” Under this arrangement, the new public plan would have to negotiate its own rates and play by the same rules as other private insurers within the Gateway (i.e. Exchange) — it “would follow the same rules as private plans for defining benefits, protecting consumers, and setting premiums.” What’s more, the public option would be responsible for attracting providers and would thus have to rely on competitive rates (instead of Medicare-like rates) to retain enough participants.
This is a “level playing field” plan, not a “strong” public plan – meaning that it won’t be able to go as far as the House version in controlling rising healthcare costs. We’ll see how it scores on cost when the Congressional Budget Office rates it over the next couple of weeks.
I haven’t spent a lot of time keeping the old blogroll up to date (there are dozens of great sites that I haven’t included in that sketch over on the right), but it’s worth mentioning that MLN super-friend Jon Kantrowitz has recently started up his own blogging franchise under the auspices of the CT Post and affiliated papers. Check it out.
Ned Lamont celebrates Iraqi Independence Day with an editorial on the Huffington Post (found via Sonoma County DFA):
It’s hard to believe, but today finally marks the beginning of the end of America’s front line military role in Iraq.
Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has named today, June 30th, 2009, an “Iraqi Independence Day” of sorts, a national holiday which he said would celebrate the “great victory” of Iraqis who have repulsed the foreign occupiers (aka their American liberators). With fireworks filling the night skies over Baghdad, all American combat troops are moving out of the major cities and towns, and, ready or not, the Iraqi military and police are taking charge - with plenty of American trainers in tow just in case.
It’s great news that we’re finally leaving the cities – and surprising that it hasn’t been more widely remarked upon elsewhere in the world o’blogs. Even Ned, though, can’t resist a little bit of backseat diplomacy:
As the violence there has subsided, sadly the warring factions have not used the lull to make the tough political compromises necessary for lasting stability. Prime Minister Al Maliki has still not been able to draw up a just division of the oil revenues between Kurds and Sunnis and Shias, he has commandeered the military and been loath to include Sunnis in a national force, and he has been slower still to pay the Sunni Awakening councils whose allegiances could flip again.
That may be true, but that’s a domestic problem – just like we worry about paying off the right religious groups (via the Office of Faith Based Initiatives) and dividing up Federal spending equitably between our different states.
Via Steve Benen, a story in the U.S. News and World Report about how Obama’s “common ground” on reducing abortions by means of expanded access to birth control, sex education, and prenatal care is being rejected by conservatives:
But more conservative religious groups working with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships say they would be forced to oppose such a plan—even though they support the abortion reduction part—because they oppose federal dollars for contraception and comprehensive sex education. This camp, which includes such formidable organizations as the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention, is pressuring the White House to decouple the two parts of the plan into separate bills. One bill would focus entirely on preventing unwanted pregnancy, while the other would focus on supporting pregnant women.
The White House declined a request for comment. Advocates for both plans say the administration has offered no hint about how it will come down on the matter. But with the White House expected to announce its plan on abortion and related issues this summer, advocates on both sides are strenuously lobbying for their plan, arguing that it offers the only true hope for common ground on very thorny issues.
“We welcome the opportunity to seek common ground with this administration . . . and to work on behalf of pregnant women and unborn children,” says Deirdre McQuade, a spokesperson for the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, which is pressuring the White House to decouple pregnancy prevention from supporting pregnant women. “But issues of pregnancy prevention are much more divisive and would only slow down much-needed assistance to pregnant women.”
There’s also one encouraging sign of progressives learning how to not get played:
But supporters of the all-in-one approach say that passing a support-only plan is unrealistic in Democratic-controlled Washington. “There would be a strong reluctance in the pro-choice community to trust that if Congress moved support-only, that a prevention-only package would also pass,” says Laser. “There’s also a fear that support-only would be defined as the new common ground. For the pro-choice side, the most important part of common ground is pregnancy prevention.”
Rosa DeLauro is the principal sponsor of a “more-pro-choice” alternative to the expected White House plan, the “Reducing the Need for Abortion and Supporting Parents Act.” The scare quotes are for the fact that the bill doesn’t expand Federal funding for contraception, which – after a decade at shoveling cash to fundamentalists to preach abstinence-only to young adults in public schools – seems like it should be relatively non-controversial (or at the very least, eminently-defendable as a matter of equal treatment to both pro-choice and right-to-life groups).
… to the mighty barcode, friend to retail workers and political canvassers alike.
Actually, I’ve heard it said that the barcode was the first step of two in a fight that radically scaled back the need for labor at grocery stores: the widespread adoption of barcodes led to the end of individual pricing laws, and today prices on the shelves are updated remotely by radio frequency — meaning fewer “stock boys” counting and labeling the inventory. So maybe it hasn’t, in the end, been such a great friend of retail workers.
For political purposes, though, they’re still great, and on a related note I’m considering doing a series of how-to posts on creating a voter file using Connecticut-based data sources. I ran across a series at the blog “Overdetermined,” which touched on many of the challenges involved in setting a file up, but glossed over how to solve most of them. (And, it seems to assume both a flat-file database design and working knowledge of SQL - both problematic.)
Meanwhile, we have turned into a public-relations society. Much of the news Americans get each day was created to serve just that purpose—to be the news of the day. Many of our headlines come from events created by public relations—press conferences, speeches, press releases, canned reports, and, worst of all, snappy comments by “spokesmen” or “experts.” To serve as a counterpoint, we need reporters with expertise.
— Walter Pincus, Newspaper Narcissism
Three cheers again for the Fairfield County Weekly, which has had a recent trend toward publishing political stories that are interesting but which I had no idea I was interested in before they published the piece. We all know from political friends in the state and long-running discussions on different policy issues which bills to follow in the legislature, which ambitious politicos are looking to move up, which perennial subjects will produce some news and some competing press releases, and so on.
In any case, check out this article about the introduction of roving traffic cameras — the way that they’re changing law enforcement practices, and the new privacy concerns that they’re raising. It involves genuine reporting from sources in no fewer than five different cities, and sets the table for a debate that very few people are interested in having just yet. News of the day week that’s not designed to be the news of the day.
A followup thought on today’s signing of the Senate Vacancy bill: a lot of the Republican carping has been about how the Democrats in the legislature are undermining executive power merely because it suits them at this moment: the Republican Governor is popular, both of our Senators are old and ambitious, and the legislature doesn’t want to see a Republican stuffed into that office should a Senator find a job as an ambassador someplace. (H/T to tparty at MLN)
That complaint is, of course, completely accurate, but the hysterical tenor of the criticism obscures the fact that that’s how an awful lot of progress has always been achieved. We don’t have a system of government based on moderation or non-partisan bonhomie: we have a system of adversarial interests, between parties, between branches of government, between regional or ideological factions, and so on.
Legislative Democrats could have stuffed a same-party replacement law (like Wyoming’s, which forced a Democratic Governor to appoint a Republican replacement for Craig Thomas in 2007) through, though maybe not with a 2/3 majority. Since the partisan interests of two branches of State government don’t align — but the status quo was unacceptable to the legislature — the outcome was a bill which put the vacancy into the hands of the public.
None of that is remarkable, except in the way that it contrasts with the behavior of the Congressional Democratic majority during the last two years of the Bush presidency. An adequately confrontational Congress might not have done much to build up their own institutional power during those two years, but when it came to privacy issues, habeus, executive branch secrecy and a range of similar issues, a well-functioning adversarial position would have biased the process towards the interests of the public and away from the opposing views of the two competing branches of government.
It occurs to me that by political placing such a high value on bipartisanship, the default position in national political debates has become gridlock, when confrontation could just as easily devolve power — in the form of valuable information and decision-making authority — to the citizenry instead.
