James Garner (1928-2014) with Diahann Carroll at 1963 March on Washington: #Eliofson
— @BeschlossDC
James Garner (1928-2014), activist
Paul Krugman:
For much of the past five years readers of the political and economic news were left in little doubt that budget deficits and rising debt were the most important issue facing America. Serious people constantly issued dire warnings that the United States risked turning into another Greece any day now. President Obama appointed a special, bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the alleged fiscal crisis, and spent much of his first term trying to negotiate a Grand Bargain on the budget with Republicans.
That bargain never happened, because Republicans refused to consider any deal that raised taxes. Nonetheless, debt and deficits have faded from the news. And there’s a good reason for that disappearing act: The whole thing turns out to have been a false alarm.
I’m not sure whether most readers realize just how thoroughly the great fiscal panic has fizzled — and the deficit scolds are, of course, still scolding
More politics and policy below the fold.
WaPo:
Investigators are still far from an official judgment of what brought down a Malaysia Airlines flight in eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 passengers and crew onboard. But the global court of public opinion, the verdict appears to be rendered.
Vladimir Putin is guilty.
John Dickerson:
If [Elizabeth] Warren joined the race, she would not win, but she would till the ground, putting grit and the smell of earth in the contest. She would energize the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which would then stir up other Democrats who seek to moderate or contain that group. Warren would challenge the Democratic Party on issues like corporate power, income inequality, and entitlements. She would be a long shot and she would have nothing to lose—which means she could keep talking about those ideas out loud. Because Clinton is close to Wall Street and finance executives and Warren is gunning for them, she has the potential to put campaign pressure on Clinton that other candidates can’t. Clinton and other candidates would be forced to explain where they stood more than if Warren weren’t in the race.
EJ Dionne:
Western Europe has been trying to have it both ways with Putin. Its reluctance to go all in against him is understandable enough, given Europe’s dependence on Russian energy. Pragmatists worry that more forceful sanctions could endanger the recovery from the Great Recession.
But when Flight 17 was shot down, pragmatism took on a new meaning. It is not in any way practical to have pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine who seem to have a shoot-first-ask-questions later attitude armed with Russian missiles that can take down civilian airliners.
Sandeep Jauhar:
Of all the ways to limit health care costs, perhaps none is as popular as cutting payments to doctors. In recent years payment cuts have resulted in a sharp downturn in revenue for many hospitals and private practices. What this has meant for most physicians is that in order to maintain their income, they’ve had to see more patients. When you reduce the volume of air per breath, the only way to maintain ventilation is to breathe faster.
As our workdays have gotten busier, we doctors have had less time to devote to individual patients. An internist I know in private practice used to see 15 patients a day. “Now reimbursement is so low I have to see at least 30,” he told me. “If I stay in the room more than 10 minutes, my assistant will call me and tell me to hurry up.”
Racing through patient encounters, we practice with an ever-present fear that we will miss something, hurt someone and open ourselves up to legal (not to mention moral) liability. To cope with the anxiety, we start to call in experts for problems that perhaps we could handle ourselves if we had more time to think through a case. The specialists, in turn, order more tests, scans and the like.
And therein lies the sad irony of the health cost containment paradigm in this country. There is no more wasteful entity in medicine than a rushed doctor.
A Chris Christie review of the zeitgeist from
NJ.com which boils down to: friendly crowds in IA don't ask and Christie doesn't answer (about Bridgegate or running in 2016) and Christie world interprets that as 'everything is just fine' .
Meanwhile, CBS reports:
Gun Control Advocates To Protest Monday As Gov. Christie Visits Connecticut
As WCBS 880′s Jim Smith reported, the group of protesters want to show Christie they are not happy with his handling of gun control in New Jersey.
The protesters will be joined by reinforcements out of New Jersey as the governor makes a scheduled fundraising stop in Greenwich.
Paul Kane:
Senators say that they increasingly feel like pawns caught between Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose deep personal and political antagonisms have almost immobilized the Senate.
The two men so distrust each other, and each is so determined to deny the other even the smallest political success, that their approach to running the Senate has been reduced to a campaign of mutually assured dysfunction.
“It’s pretty bad, and I don’t think there’s any way to fix it,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).
Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), who commutes daily from Wilmington to the Capitol by Amtrak, said he keeps working on small issues, hoping to find bipartisan partners and sneak them into law without getting ensnared in the bigger partisan wars.
Otherwise, he said, “I have a hard time getting on the train in the morning.”
I have a solution. Her name is Alison Lundergan Grimes.