Healthcare like the financial Markets?

This is from Paul Krugman:

September 19, 2008, 7:24 pm

McCain on banking and health

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

This is a September/October 2008 edition. Check out bottom of the first column on Page 30 of the magazine (Page 3 of the PDF)

Federal Taxes paid v. Benefits received

So I am sitting here watching McCain talk about how Obama has requested over $900 Million in federal funds for Illinois. (He did not mention whether this was in 2007, 2008, or over his tenure as a Senator). I will take that figure as about accurate because really I am just concerned with how much states pay and how much they receive in federal money. To this end I visited The Tax Foundation website to check out the 2005 numbers. I can't imagine any of the candidates has had much time to get pork for themselves in 2008. Here are the numbers for the 4 state who have candidates in this presidential election:

Taxes Paid Funds received (in Millions)
Alaska $4,830 $9,230
Arizona $35,988 $44,639
Delaware $6,662 $5,495
Illinois $99,776 $80,778

Alaska received $1.84; Arizona recieved $1.19, Delaware received $.77, and Illinois received $.75 for every dollar sent to Washington. Now that is only 2005, the Foundation does not have more recent numbers yet and I don't have time right now to track down more recent numbers. However, the ratios probably have not changed that much. I will find them when I can or if you have a link, please post. If the ratios are still the same, it is really hard for the candidates from receiver states to call out the candidates from donor states on pork.

It might be interesting to take a look at the Ranks in states for money received per dollar paid in federal taxes. You might notice how Red the top is and how blue the bottom is.

www.mccainpalinvictory2008.com

Go ahead. Visit the site. You might think it is an political site, but there is no way to get through the intro page without going to the donation website. It does specify that the website is run by the RNC and a few state Republican Committees. But really, what I love about the site is their privacy policy. Go ahead. Read the Privacy Policy.

I might also point out that this site comes up first in Google before www.johnmccain.com when you search for McCain 08.

My favorite plays on "I can see Russia from my house"

"I can see the moon from my house, but that doesn't make me an astrophysicist" -Paul Begala

"I can see the highway from my house, can I be Transportation secretary." -I don't know her name, but she was on Larry King's 9pm show on 9/17/08.

Please add your favorites...

Corporate Campaign Contributions

So there is all this talk about donations by Fannie and Freddie to the Obama campaign. Worldnetdaily.com has Obama taking $126, 349 from EMPLOYEES of Fannie and Freddie based on information from Opensecrets.org. (My research on opensecrets, a fabulous website btw, came up with about $109,000, including every election back until 1992, but whatever). They just seem to forgo mentioning that McCain took money from Fannie and Freddie's employees as well. It was only $17,900 according to my calculations, paltry yes, but still worth mentioning. It kind of gives you a air of credibility as a media outlet when you mention both sides. So here you go, right from John McCain's top contributors and Barack Obama's top contributors:

McCain

Merrill Lynch	$298,413
Citigroup Inc	$269,251
Morgan Stanley	$233,272
Goldman Sachs	$208,395
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$179,975
AT&T Inc	$174,487
Blank Rome LLP	$150,426
Credit Suisse Group	$150,025
Greenberg Traurig LLP	$146,787
UBS AG	$140,165
PricewaterhouseCoopers	$140,120
US Government	$137,617
Bank of America	$129,475
Wachovia Corp	$122,846
Lehman Brothers	$117,500
FedEx Corp	$113,453
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher	$104,250
US Army	$103,613
Bear Stearns	$99,300
Pinnacle West Capital	$97,700

	Obama Goldman Sachs $691,930 University of California $611,207 Citigroup Inc $448,599 JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919 Harvard University $435,769 Google Inc $420,174 UBS AG $404,750 National Amusements Inc $389,140 Microsoft Corp $377,235 Lehman Brothers $370,524 Sidley Austin LLP $350,302 Moveon.org $347,463 Skadden, Arps et al $340,264 Time Warner $338,527 Wilmerhale Llp $335,398 Morgan Stanley $318,070 Latham & Watkins $297,400 Jones Day $289,476 University of Chicago $278,885 Stanford University $276,038
	Of note is that McCain's number 1 (employee) contributor is Merrill Lynch, another one of the companies that recently had a collapse. But basically, it should just be pointed out that both of these candidates take money from wall street. It is kinda tough for either to accuse the other of being in bed with Wall Street without admitting their own connections (both took a lot of money from Lehman Brothers). This is politics and the money is (was) on Wall Street. I would also point out that: *McCain has full disclosure of 85.8%, partial disclosure of 3%, and no disclosure of 11.1% of his contributions.
	*Obama has full disclosure of 92.4%, partial disclosure of 1.8%, and no disclosure of 5.8% of his contributions.

Polls

When you get all worked up about the meaning of all of this constant polling just take a look at the chart of the Gallup Daily Presidential Poll. It reads more like two erratic heart beats than any predictor of who is going to win the presidential election. Polls are useful in that they tell the political strategists where they have to focus their efforts in order to win over undecided voters. Yes, McCain got a big bump after the Republican Convention, this will settle out, just as Obama's bigger bump did after the start of the Republican Convention.

In the end, the day before the election, unless something extremely shocking happens, this poll will still read with both candidates in the 40s, probably with a 3-4 point difference between them (flip a coin to see who is in the lead) and this election will be decided by the people Gallup does not call on a daily basis.

Saturday Night Live

OMG, when the season premier of SNL opened, I swear I wasn't sure if that was Tina Fey or really Sarah Palin replacing Barack Obama as he declined to appear due to the Hurricane. The opening skit will go down as one of the best in SNL history.