Links worth reading

What have I been reading over the last month?

• Glenn Greenwald on media propaganda surrounding drone victims
• Jed Rakoff on how our criminal justice system forces innocent people plead guilty to crimes they didn't commit 
• SWAT team blows hole in chest of 2-year-old for no reason, consequence free
• Al-Jazeera on voter suppression in the United States
• Obama administration sides with employer in flagrant wage theft case
• Glenn Greenwald on American media propaganda reporting on Latin America
• Alana Semuels on National Nurses United
• Glenn Greenwald asks: How many Muslim countries has the United States bombed or occupied since 1980? ("Reflecting their single-minded obsession with demonizing Muslims...they notably neglect to note thriving gay communities in places like Beirut and Istanbul, or the lack of them in Christian Uganda.")
• Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain on the horrific conditions of post-intervention Libya

Comparing the administrative costs of Obamacare to single payer

Above: Critics of Obamacare from the right
Below: Critic of Obamacare from the left

Since this is a very long post, I wanted to emphasize at the beginning that we're most interested in two numbers: $5 billion and 27 million. Obamacare is (at least) $5 billion more expensive than single payer. And, Obamacare leaves 27 million people uninsured that would otherwise be covered by single payer. Essentially, our political system chose to pay $5 billion to prevent 27 million people from getting health insurance.
[UPDATE]--The $5 billion number comes from only start-up costs for the Obamacare website and exchanges--so only for the exchanges and only through 2014. Himmelstein and Woolhandler use CMS estimates to calculate the increase in administrative costs caused by Obamacare to the entire health care system (public and private) from 2014 to 2022: over a quarter of a trillion dollars. See full update at the bottom of this page.



This is the third and final post on how the design of social welfare programs affects their administrative cost. The first two posts (part 1, part 2) established the theoretical framework, exploring how various aspects of social policy design, like eligibility, actuarial values, economies of scale, etc, should affect administrative cost and program efficiency. Of course, theory does not always match reality, so a separate series of two posts compared the individual and aggregate costs of the American versus social democratic welfare states using real world data. This demonstrated that the theory behind program design is sound: the theoretical administrative efficiencies of the social democratic model indeed result in enormous cost savings in the real world.

Missing thus far is an example of social policy analysis using the lessons of administrative design on a real world social welfare policy. This post concludes this series on administrative cost by performing such an analysis on Obamacare. We will examine all the areas of administrative cost (and waste) covered in parts 1 and 2: universal eligibility, actuarial values, economies of scale, automatic enrollment, and other, miscellaneous administrative issues. Since we've already established that the social democratic (single payer) system is the most efficient option, we will compare the administrative structure of Obamacare to the single payer model, and how Obamacare's design makes it less efficient than single payer.

Before beginning, it's worth reiterating that Obamacare is basically the law Obama wanted, not something watered down to get conservative votes (see here and here) (and recall that every single Republican in both houses of Congress voted against the bill, minus one abstension).

Obamacare and universal eligibility
Single payer systems derive much of their efficiency from universal eligibility. When everyone is eligible, there is no need to hire legions of bureaucrats to ensure that all applicants meet eligibility requirements, or verify that all current beneficiaries remain eligible. Every step away from universal eligibility means that some system must be created and staffed by bureaucrats to ensure that only eligible applicants are able to participate, and this does not happen for free.

Links worth reading: Obama's very busy week

Obama destroys lives of 70,000 people in exchange for a few votes from white people

• [O]ne longtime activist burst into tears when asked how the decision might affect his friends and family.
• To wait nine more weeks means the President has agreed to deport more than 70,000 people, more than 1,100 every day, and continues cementing his legacy as the Deporter-in-Chief.

3 more years of war in Iraq

• For those who favor air strikes: if, as most regional and military experts predict, it turns out that airstrikes are insufficient to seriously degrade ISIS, would you then favor a ground invasion?...For those who keep running around beating their chests talking about the imperative to “destroy ISIS”: will that take more or less time than it’s taken to “destroy the Taliban”? Does it ever occur to such flamboyant warriors to ask why those sorts of groups enjoy so much support, and whether yet more bombing of predominantly Muslim countries – and/or flooding the region with more weapons – will bolster rather than subvert their strength?
• Is Obama’s new plan something he genuinely believes in? Or does he recognize it’s stupid, and is just doing it for the optics? There’s a dismal precedent for the latter option: His decision to extend what he knew was a dead-end war in Afghanistan for two years because of the bellicose promises he’d made in order to look tough during his first political campaign. That time, he traded about 1,300 American lives for optics.

Economies of scale, avoiding administrative problems, and automatic eligibility: why social democratic/single payer systems are more efficient

Image: source

Update: Part 3 can be found here

Social democratic programs can provide social welfare services more efficiently--higher quality at a lower cost--than other types of public social welfare programs, as well as the private market. My first post on this issue dealt mostly with actuarial values, and for good reason. For all social welfare services--from health insurance to child care--actuarial values are of primary importance; for disability insurance and defined benefit pensions--a category that includes Social Security--actuarial values are the entire story (much more about retirement benefits in the first post on this issue, as well as here and here).

But in my excitement over actuarial values (I'm not like most people), I failed to elaborate the other factors that make social democratic programs more efficient than other program designs and the private market: economies of scale and other administrative issues, mostly centering around eligibility.

The one graph that proves that welfare (AFDC / TANF) is not a work disincentive

Image: Bill Clinton, masquerading as a liberal, signs TANF into law. (source)


TANF--also known as "welfare"--was designed with one thing in mind: laziness. Republicans and Democrats alike couldn't stand the idea of someone capable of working choosing not to work, so they established complicated rules about "work activities" (a polite euphemism for unproductive busywork) to ensure that no one on TANF was idle. They obviously assumed that the majority of people on AFDC, the program TANF replaced in 1996, did not actually need government assistance, as they created time limits: families cannot collect TANF benefits for more than 24 consecutive and 60 total months. And, no childless adult can receive any type of welfare benefit.

TANF rests on the assumption that people who don't work are idle because they want to be; the key challenge of welfare is to motivate unmotivated people into finding gainful employment. After all, anyone can get a job. (not)

But let's look at this another way. The American safety net is designed to keep people in paid employment and off welfare. The work activity requirement means you can't be idle and on welfare (and is designed to frustrate people into leaving welfare to get a job); the time limits mean you can't make a career out of your welfare benefits. This stands in stark contrast to other countries, whose safety nets are more like safety hammocks--so generous they encourage people to avoid work and live high off the government dole.

Stated differently, we must have a stingy safety net or people will become dependent on welfare and choose not to work.

But if this is true, then the United States should have more people working than countries with more generous safety nets. What if we compare the United States' employment-to-population ratio (the number of people ages 15 to 64 who have jobs divided by the total population of people ages 15 to 64) to that of the social democracies? If a stingy safety net really does encourage people to work, then the United States should have a far higher employment-to-population ratio. It does not:

Food stamp cuts and the liberal Democrat myth

I don't have time to write in detail on this issue, but I don't want to ignore it, either.

The Associated Press described the ultimate deal as having “a mostly symbolic cut in food stamps.” Is that accurate?

It’s not accurate, and shows you in a few words virtually everything wrong with the American media today. It shows you class bias, reporters listing as a fact something that’s an opinion, it shows you lack of empathy.

If the reporter’s own mother was losing $90 of foods a month out of an already-meager allotment, or the reporter’s son or daughter, I very much doubt that reporter would describe that loss as merely symbolic. I don’t know that reporter thinks their own breakfast, their own lunch, or their own dinner is merely symbolic. This is real money coming out of the grocery carts of real families.

Long story short: the Democrats proposed cutting food stamps by $4 billion over ten years. The Republicans proposed cutting food stamps by $20 billion over ten years. The compromise was cutting food stamps by $8 billion over ten years, while increasing farm subsidies for huge (already profitable) agribusiness corporations by $15 billion.

No, the "401(k) revolution" was not a "failure"; it was a spectacular success

Image: Wall Street watches out for senior citizens. They can make an awful lot of money off them. (source)


I recommend reading this piece by Lynn Stuart Parramore, as it is among the most clear and concise descriptions of how the "401(k) revolution" (her words) is in the process of upending the retirement security of the vast majority of Americans, but also how it is a major driver of inequality. As she explains, the rise of the 401(k) added a tremendous amount of fuel to the inequality fire (for more, here's a useful Wonkblog summary of a much longer EPI report).

But Parramore makes a mistake very common to many liberals lamenting the rise of the 401(k). I'm not implying that she is in any way unique--this mistake is extremely common across the political spectrum, including liberals. That mistake occurs from beginning to end in the tale of the 401(k). Act one: 401(k)'s are born:

Thirty years ago, as laissez-faire fanaticism took hold of America, misguided policy-makers decided that do-it-yourself retirement plans, otherwise known as 401(k)s, would magically secure our financial future in the face of gyrating markets, economic crises, unpredictable life events, stagnant wages and rampant job insecurity.

Note how the rise of the 401(k) is described as a mistake. Some "misguided" people made a mistake, and we're about to feel the very serious effects of that poor decision. The "misguided policy-makers" honestly thought this was a good idea--but good intentions do not make good policy, and their plan is about to backfire:

Instead of having predictable streams of income from traditional pensions, ordinary people with little financial expertise would suddenly transform themselves into financial gurus, putting money aside and managing complicated investments in tax-deferred accounts.

Note how Parramore explains that "ordinary people" were expected to benefit from 401(k)'s. It's not that 401(k)'s were expected to help only the wealthy or only the investor class. They were designed to--and expected to--help everyone, including "ordinary people."

(By "traditional pensions," Parramore means defined benefit pensions. For those unacquainted, a defined benefit pension is an agreement that an employer will pay an employee a specific dollar amount each month from the date the employee retires to the date the employee dies. 401(k)'s are defined contribution, meaning the employer agrees to contribute a specific percentage (the "employer match") to a bizarre financial instrument, which is invested in the stock market and will pay out money to the employee once she retires. Of course, some employers don't actually offer an employer contribution--in other words, the "employer match" or "defined contribution" is zero.)

She succinctly describes how the entire scheme has already violently backfired:

Reality check: In 2007, the financial crisis destroyed America’s retirement fantasy. Jobs evaporated or were downsized. The stock market took a nosedive. Millions of Americans who had worked hard, straining to sock away a portion of their salary for 401(k)s, watched helplessly as a black cloud formed over their golden years. In October 2008, the Congressional Budget Office revealed that Americans had lost $2 trillion in just 15 months — money that will likely never be recovered.

And, she gets close to the crux of the issue in concisely describing how 401(k)'s have enabled a further rise in inequality--

The report reveals that median retirement savings today stand at a paltry $44,000. But if you start looking at affluent America, the picture changes dramatically. A household at the 90 percentile of the retirement savings distribution had nearly 100 times more socked away for retirement than the median household. And the top 1 percent? Households at that lofty level had stashed more than $1.3 million in retirement account savings.

In a nutshell, the 401(k) revolution created a few big winners and turned most of us into losers.

--but ultimately misses the point. Liberals have the what and the how of 401(k)'s nailed down, but usually miss the why.

Augmenting this understanding with the why of 401(k)'s is of utmost importance, because many liberals assume that pointing out the disastrous results of the 401(k) revolution is a key first step in changing policy. In their minds, if we could only prove that the policies that enabled the rise of 401(k)'s resulted in bad policy outcomes, our political system would be convinced that it's time to reverse course.

The problem is, the movement towards 401(k)'s has not been a mistake, and it certainly has not been a failure. It is going exactly according to plan. 401(k)'s indeed are a vastly inferior system for the vast majority of Americans, but 401(k)'s were not created to help ordinary people save for retirement. They were created and expanded for very different reasons. To the people who ushered in the 401(k) revolution, the retirement "nightmare" beginning to swallow recent American retirees has not been a nightmare at all. It has been an especially enriching and welcome development.

Remember as you're reading: defined contribution pensions are a vastly inferior model to defined benefit pensions. Defined benefit pensions can provide the same retirement security as a defined contribution pension, for 45% less cost. Additionally, research argues that putting money in a 401(k) is generally harmful for low income workers. Whatever the reason to switch from defined benefit to 401(k), it should be a really good reason in order to make up for the enormously higher cost and other weaknesses. You be the judge:

Obama on undocumented immigration: can't or won't?

Image: Latino protesters against President Obama's immigration policy..."LATINOS ? OBAMA" (source)

Recently, President Obama caused a stir by insisting that he legally doesn't have the power to stop deportations of undocumented immigrants. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't weigh in on whether or not that's actually true. Rather, it's important to note that the weight of the evidence argues persuasively that Obama has no interest in helping undocumented immigrants, regardless of whether or not he actually can.

This is building off a previous post I wrote about how President Obama doesn't care about the plight of illegal immigrants. It's textbook liberal Democrat myth. To summarize that post:

• Advocating for immigration reform does not make you a liberal. President Reagan signed into law that eventually gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. John McCain proposed an immigration reform bill that would have provided amnesty to undocumented immigrants in 2008, shortly before winning the Republican nomination to run for President. In 2007, President George W. Bush tried (and failed) to push another bill that would have granted amnesty to undocumented immigrants. Senator Obama helped to kill that bill.
• When, as President, Obama released an immigration reform bill in early 2013, he did so only grudgingly. United States law requires green card holders to wait 5 years before becoming a citizen; the amnesty bill Reagan signed into law required undocumented immigrants to wait an additional 18 months. Obama's plan required undocumented immigrants to wait an additional eight years! Obviously, Obama has to expect his proposal to be the left-most point of the debate; any compromise with Republicans will thus be further to the right than his original proposal. Obama is a smart man; he knows this to be true. That is precisely what he wants to happen. Either Obama and his entire team of advisors are so stupid that they can't game out politics further than an armchair blogger--or he wants a very right-wing immigration reform plan. Remember, he's already in his second term and doesn't need to worry about reelection.
• Others have pointed out that Obama claimed throughout his first term that he could not legally order ICE to defer deportation action against undocumented immigrants who were brought into the country illegally by their parents as children (the so-called "DREAMers"). Then, while running for reelection in 2012, he suddenly ordered ICE to do exactly that, with no legal challenges or consequences whatsoever. As I pointed out, there is no doubt that he did so to help win reelection.
• Even Republicans have a modicum of understanding for the situation of people whose parents brought them across the border as young children--and who thus know no other country as "home." It's very difficult to attack a decision to protect this small fraction of undocumented immigrants. His decision to create a loophole for just DREAMers took very little courage.

Read the full post for more details.

All right then, let's take a look at what immigration enforcement has looked like under the Obama administration. Reminder: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a branch of the Department of Homeland Security; obviously, Obama appoints the head of DHS and is thus directly responsible for the general direction of ICE efforts, even if he isn't responsible for specific initiatives. Under Obama's leadership, ICE will have deported 2 million people by 2014--in just six years, Obama will have deported more people than were deported from the years 1892 and 1996--combined. In the eight years he was president, George W. Bush deported 2 million undocumented immigrants; Obama will have managed to deport that number of undocumented immigrants in just five years(!). And, the US spends more on immigration enforcement than all other federal law enforcement categories combined, and illegal border re-entry is the most prosecuted federal crime. This isn't a symptom of increased undocumented immigration; undocumented immigration has been on a steady decline since 2008, shortly before Obama was inaugurated. It doesn't have to be this way.

It's worth pausing to note that Congress controls budgeting, and Obama doesn't necessarily have a say in all of this. Nevertheless, if this isn't the outcome Obama wanted, why did he appoint an immigration enforcement hawk to head up DHS? Does anyone really think Obama was surprised when he learned ICE was setting deportation quotas? Indeed, Obama controls Department of Justice priorities; if he can order federal prosecutors to disobey (an extremely unjust) federal law in order to keep low-level drug offenders out of prison, he can at least order federal prosecutors to shift resources away from prosecuting undocumented immigration. Clearly, Obama has no qualms about bending the rules to prevent a perceived injustice; it's just that he doesn't see immigration law as being as unjust as mandatory minimums (except, as outlined in my previous post, when it's electorally necessary). In sum, Obama isn't an immigration dictator, but he isn't powerless, either.

The 1% Consensus

Image: Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the current Supreme Leader of Iran (source)

So--there's this proposal in Iran that's not very controversial. 71% of the general public support it, with wide agreement among different age and racial groups. There are two political parties. Supporters of one political party favor the policy 91% -9%, and supporters of the other political party are split down the middle (50% in favor, 48% opposed). Since the Iranian government refuses to implement this policy, would you call Iran a democracy?

This doesn't describe Iran, of course; it describes the United States and the incredible, widespread public support for increasing the minimum wage. If a rational person would argue that Iran is not a democracy if it disregarded popular opinion so blithely, why should that not be true of America? How would you not conclude that the American government does not serve its people, but rather its corporate overlords? Remember, the Democrats--whose supporters favor a minimum wage hike 91% to 9%--controlled the Presidency and both houses of Congress from 2009 to 2011 and had a fillibuster-proof majority for most of 2009. Granted, there were other important legislative priorities, like health care reform (though that, too, was a shameless corporate sellout), but when the Democrats were one vote shy of 60 in the Senate, how could they not find one single moderate Senator in a party where 50% of voters support increasing the minimum wage? It's almost like they weren't even trying. And, it's interesting that a minimum wage hike would require breaking a Senate filibuster but the Wall Street bailout didn't.

(for the record, here is my post arguing against the minimum wage)

I started writing this blog when I realized I was having the wrong debates. I thought there was some uncertainty over the best way to fight poverty without sacrificing economic growth or job creation; there isn't. The reason we don't fight poverty is not because we don't know how, but because our political system doesn't want to. The bifurcation of the middle class into the sort-of-wealthy and working poor doesn't have to happen either; there's no controversy over how to prevent that from happening, either.

However, there is significant controversy over our policy goals. This controversy is usually unspoken; not even Republican Ayn Rand disciples would have the nerve to say that they want people to remain poor, even though that is exactly what they want. Our government usually gets the policy outcome it desires, even if that policy goal is unspoken. Poverty remains high because our government does not desire poverty reduction.

Our political system only values the interests of the rich, often at the expense of everyone else. Political science data bear this out:

Gilens has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s, looking for evidence that when opinions change, so too does policy. And he found it--but only for the rich. "Most policy changes with majority support didn’t become law," Hacker and Pierson write. The exception was "when they were supported by those at the top. When the opinions of the poor diverged from those of the well-off, the opinions of the poor ceased to have any apparent influence: If 90 percent of poor Americans supported a policy change, it was no more likely to happen than if 10 percent did. By contrast, when more of the well-off supported a change, it was substantially more likely to happen.

Unfortunately, Gilens' data only allowed him to divide Americans by decile; he was not able to resolve the top 10% to see the opinions of just the top 1%.  More data, about Congressional representatives:

Obamacare's means testing is a phenomenal waste

Image: This is what Obamacare's means testing looks like, in flow chart form (source)

Much ink has been spilled about what an incredible corporate sell-out Obamacare is (my favorite piece).  But the law's centerpiece--the insurance exchanges--is based on the principle of means testing.  Means testing is always a waste of scarce resources.  As Obamacare's exchanges come online, it's worth pointing out (again) just how phenomenally wasteful Obamacare's means testing is.

Obamacare and why we have a two-tiered welfare state

Image: The illustration from Suzanne Mettler's article on the "submerged state," a key aspect of America's two-tiered welfare system.

A little background: In 2009, as Congress debated the corporate sell-out known as Obamacare, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley proposed an amendment that would force every member of Congress to use the Obamacare exchanges.  Grassley clearly thought that the Democrats secretly expected the exchanges to crash and burn, and would thus be unwilling to rely on them.  Fearing for their health, the Democrats would vote the amendment down, thus exposing their own hypocrisy.

Grassley miscalculated, however.  The Democrats, apparently confident in the principle of the health insurance exchanges, called Grassley's bluff and his amendment became law.  So, starting in 2014, all members of Congress are legally required to purchase health insurance from the exchanges.

This makes no sense, however, because the exchanges are meant for individuals who are not offered insurance through their employer, and the law does not permit employers to make a contribution to insurance their employees purchase over the exchanges.  Members of Congress do get health insurance through their  employer--the federal government--but are somehow expected to use the exchanges.

This creates an odd paradox wherein members of Congress are both expected to utilize their employer-sponsored health insurance, yet legally required not to.  This paradox was ironed out earlier this year, when it was determined that members of Congress would purchase their insurance on the exchanges with the help of the federal government; the federal government will pay the current employer contribution towards Congress' health insurance, and each member of Congress will have to pay the rest of the bill for whatever plan they purchase on the exchanges.

For those making up to 400% of the poverty line, subsidies are available on a sliding scale to help purchase insurance.  Obviously, members of Congress are making more than 400% of the poverty line, and thus would not be eligible for this subsidy.

Ok, done with the background.  This entire fiasco has led to one of the most amazing works of cognitive dissonance I have ever encountered:

U6 Watch: June 2013

Update (8/1/2013): There was a problem with the image I used for the labor force participation rate graph.  Put in a different graph.

Image: A Google image search for "unemployment" found this cartoon (source)

Both political parties have an cynical, poverty-sustaining compromise on the economy.

Both have agreed to use the U3 measure of unemployment in measuring the performance of the economy.  However, this measure makes no sense whatsoever; for June, U3 unemployment rate stayed steady at 7.6%, making it appear that things aren't getting worse.  They are.

The U3 measure divides:

(number of people actively searching for work) / (number people who are working + number of people actively searching for work)

Notice what the U3 measure conveniently leaves out:

Sequestration's Latest Victim: The Constitution

Image: Beneficiaries of the bottom tier of the American welfare system (source)

Updates--see below

I previously wrote about a Wonkblog round-up of media accounts of programs getting axed by the sequester, and how the sequester persists only because these cuts are focused on the bottom tier of the American welfare state.  Contrast the harm the sequester inflicts on the poor with the fact that any sequester cuts that inconvenience the rich were quickly rolled back: few things could more effectively express who our government works for.

Jared Bernstein has been running a "Sequester Watch" on his always excellent blog, and I'm embarrassed to say I haven't been keeping up.  In installment #14, he rounds up accounts of specific programs being cut: various Head Start programs, inner city schools, mental health services for Native Americans, low income housing, Meals on Wheels, federal public defenders, and others.  This is poverty sustainment; not giving poor children the educational opportunities they need to succeed is an endorsement of their poverty.

Here's another link describing the effect on federal public defenders:

Federal defenders already were facing a 5 percent budget reduction when $85 billion in spending cuts began coursing through federal agencies in March, lopping another 5 percent from the budget this fiscal year. Some courts have limited the hours they hear criminal matters. Defenders across the country are taking up to 15 days without pay, forcing postponements in many criminal proceedings...

The court system’s alternative is to hire private, court-appointed attorneys to represent indigent clients, since by law they must get a lawyer. They are paid from the same pool of money as public defenders. But they cost more, and according to some studies, are less experienced and less effective.

Nachnanoff told lawmakers that public defenders are expecting another hit to their budget of more than 20 percent in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, which would almost surely result in layoffs.

In a letter to the Judiciary Committee, a group of 40 former judges and prosecutors urged Congress to fully fund the defender program.

“These ill-conceived measures undermine not only the Federal Defender system, but the entire federal judiciary, without achieving any real cost savings,” they wrote of the sequestration cuts.

All American citizens have a Constitutional right to a trial and legal representation.  There can be little doubt this right was being trampled before sequestration; there can be zero doubt now that this is now occurring.

But a closer look reveals the cynicism of the sequester: because public defenders are being furloughed, the federal government is actually paying more money for worse representation for poor criminals.  Can there be any question that this is a feature, and not a bug?  Does the American ruling class really find this a convincing argument:

Poor people accused of federal crimes are more likely to go to prison because of the sequester, and we need to help them get adequate legal representation.

or would they rather that poor people suffer from incompetent representation?  That legislators are willing to pay money to ensure worse representation shows that worsening public representation is a pleasant surprise of sequestration, and not an unfortunate casualty.  Constitutional rights are to be protected, but only for the rich.  Remember, we imprison people at a higher rate than the world's autocratic dictatorships:

Sequestration persists because it only affects the bottom tier of American welfare

Image: Beneficiaries of the bottom tier of the American welfare system (source)

Updated below

Over at Wonkblog, Brad Plumer has a very instructive round-up of Americans starting to wake up and notice the sequester.  According to survey data, an increasing minority of Americans are feeling the sequester's impact.  Some are even feeling a "major impact."

While his round-up is based on media reports and should not be considered a complete summary of everyone affected by the sequester, the examples he has unearthed are extremely telling.  Watch how, in every case he cites, the sequester only affects a small group of politically underrepresented Americans--that is, it only affects the bottom tier of America's two-tiered welfare system.  That is why the sequester will persist--not because its effects aren't bad, but because it only affects groups lacking in political influence.  If anyone doubts that fact, note that Plumer starts by pointing out that cuts to air traffic controllers were quickly reversed.  Obviously, a cut that inconveniences air travelers is a cut that affects the rich but not the poor.  Obviously, our political system cannot permit such a cut, and it was quickly reversed.  At the end, he also notes that cuts to meat inspections have been reversed; any cut that could potentially kill rich people (or at least give them diarrhea) can obviously not be permitted, either.  That it also benefits poor people is incidental to it helping the rich.

Here are the examples cited:

The immigration debate and further exposure of the liberal Democrat myth

Image: Latino protesters against President Obama's immigration policy (source)

I hope to write much more about immigration reform as the debate unfolds.  But the question that progressives conveniently ignore is the question of who undocumented immigrants actually have in their corner.

The myth of the liberal Democrat extends to immigration.  Listen to progressives, and Republicans are cruel xenophobic reactionaries happy to allow businesses to exploit undocumented labor, while Democrats like Obama defend the human rights of the oppressed.  Interesting, then, that, as President, Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill that ultimately provided amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants:

Reagan "knew that it was not right for people to be abused," Simpson says. "Anybody who's here illegally is going to be abused in some way, either financially [or] physically. They have no rights."

Reagan said [so] in a televised debate with Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale in 1984.

"I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally," he said.