Advertisements for the Health Care Compact Alliance, whose leadership includes Houston construction mogul Leo Linbeck III, are plastered all over Monday’s email from Rasmussen, containing the results of two surveys, one showing that nearly 70 percent of respondents are “Still Angry At Government’s Current Policies” and one showing that 58 percent “Now Favor Health Care Repeal.”

Read the Texas Independent for previous reporting on the Health Care Compact Alliance.

The email also links to a commentary written by The Washington Examiner’s Michael Barone touting conservative policies in Texas and other states as the reason for rapid population growth in those areas, compared to states such as California.

In the column, titled “The Eyes of Texas Are Sparkling in the 2010 Census,” Barone writes:

“California for the first time in its history grew only microscopically faster than the nation as a whole (10 percent to 9.7 percent). Metro Los Angeles and San Francisco increasingly resemble Mexico City and Sao Paulo, with a large affluent upper class, a vast proletariat and a huge income gap in between.

Public policy plays an important role here — one that’s especially relevant as state governments seek to cut spending and reduce the power of the public employee unions that seek to raise spending and prevent accountability.

The lesson is that high taxes and strong public employee unions tend to stifle growth and produce a two-tier society like coastal California’s.”

On the contrary, a 2008 study by the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed income inequalities in California and Texas to be comparable. In terms of income ratios (calculated by dividing the average family income of high earners by that of middle- or low-income earners), California ranked 8th among the states when comparing the top quintile to the bottom quintile, 3rd when comparing the top quintile to the middle quintile, and 9th when comparing the top 5 percent to the bottom quintile. A ranking of 1st would signify the state had the most income inequality.

Texas, meanwhile, ranked 9th, 5th and 11th in those categories, respectively.

In the mid-2000s, the bottom quintile in California on average earned $18,312 (in Texas, $16,088); the middle quintile earned $50,981 (in Texas, $44,574); the top quintile earned $145,358 (in Texas $126,658); and the top 5 percent earned $243,386 (in Texas, $211,038).

In both California and Texas, income for high-earners increased at a faster rate than income for low- or middle-earners, both when looking at changes from the late 1980s to mid 2000s, and changes from the late 1990s to mid 2000s.

The paper provides indispensable coverage on D.C. politics, regional transportation, crime—all the rugged beats that a city daily should own. Then you turn the pages, through the national politics and the business. And you land on the opinion/commentary pages. It’s a strange lineup that’s preaching to one of the country’s most liberal jurisdictions.

I’d offer that when there’s no local news scoop to lead the paper, the front page is often more conservative than other publications too. But it certainly has worked out for the paper as the competition at The Washington Times reels.

iStockphoto

Amid the obstructionists’ claims that health care reform is “socialist” or a means of speeding Grandma towards her deathbed, a large focus of the conservative position on health care reform has been that frivolous lawsuits drive up health care costs and require doctors to practice “defensive medicine” that’s costly and wasteful.

In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Charles Krauthammer put “tort reform” on the top of his wish-list for reducing the costs of the health care system. Gov. Rick Perry of Texas in the Washington Examiner boasts that Texas tort reform that capped injured patient’s damages was the answer to his state’s problems. And the American Medical Association has said it won’t support any health reform bill that doesn’t reduce liability for doctors. “If the bill doesn’t have medical liability reform in it, then we don’t see how it is going to be successful in controlling costs,” James Rohack, president-elect of the organization, told Politico in March. “Why spend the political capital and energy in passing a bill if it is not successful?”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

So far Republicans have mostly focused on tearing apart any reform with a role for the federal government, portraying it as the government dictating how long old people get to live. But an undercurrent of those complaints is the insistence of doctors, hospitals, insurance companies and ideological conservatives that medical malpractice claims are out of control and a leading cause of rising health care costs.

The health economists and independent legal experts who study the issue, however, don’t believe that’s true. They say that malpractice liability costs are a small fraction of the spiraling costs of the U.S. health care system, and that the medical errors that malpractice liability tries to prevent are themselves a huge cost– both to the injured patients and to the health care system as a whole.

“It’s really just a distraction,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth.” “If you were to eliminate medical malpractice liability, even forgetting the negative consequences that would have for safety, accountability, and responsiveness, maybe we’d be talking about 1.5 percent of health care costs. So we’re not talking about real money. It’s small relative to the out-of-control cost of health care.”

Insurance costs about $50-$60 billion a year, Baker estimates. As for what’s often called “defensive medicine,” “there’s really no good study that’s been able to put a number on that,” said Baker.

Krauthammer cited a study by the Massachusetts Medical Society that found that five out of six doctors said they ordered additional tests, procedures and referrals to protect themselves from lawsuits. He also relies on a much-criticized study from the libertarian Pacific Research Institute on the civil justice system to conclude that “defensive medicine” wastes more than $200 billion a year.

Baker is skeptical, and makes the point that “defensive medicine” is not the same thing as wasteful medicine. “Like defensive driving, some defensive medicine is good,” he said. “To change behavior. When you drill down those studies, you see that what it means is, doctors are more careful with patient records. They spend more time with the patient. They’re more careful to say hello and goodbye to the patient. That’s good.”

Other health economists agree that “defensive medicine” is not the main driver of costs, and malpractice liability reform is not a panacea.

“If you were to list the top five or ten things that you could do to bring down health care costs that would not be on the list,” said Michelle Mello, a professor of Law and Public Health at Harvard.

Still, that doesn’t mean the medical liability system we now have is a good one. Mello estimates the costs of so-called “defensive medicine” to be far less than Krauthammer does — around $20 billion a year. “So there’s some savings to be had and frankly the health reform package has not come up with a lot of ideas for major savings.”

President Obama at a recent town hall meeting said he wants to reduce doctors’ insurance premiums, but that, based on his conversations with health care experts, “the evidence at least is that that is a very small, maybe not even a measurable factor in the reason that health care costs are going up.”

“He gets it,” said Baker.

Although damage award caps could slightly limit the future growth of liability insurance premiums – about 6 to 13 percent over time, says Mello, “it tends to be oversold as a solution and it’s pretty unfair to patients.”

Annual jury awards and legal settlements involving doctors amounts to “a drop in the bucket” in a country that spends $2.3 trillion annually on health care, Amitabh Chandra, another Harvard University economist, recently told Bloomberg News. Chandra estimated the cost of jury awards at about $12 per person in the U.S., or about $3.6 billion. Insurer WellPoint Inc. has also said that liability awards are not what’s driving premiums.

And a 2004 report by the Congressional Budget Office said medical malpractice makes up only 2 percent of U.S. health spending. Even “significant reductions” would do little to curb health-care expenses, it concluded.

A study by Bloomberg also found that the proportion of medical malpractice verdicts among the top jury awards in the U.S. declined over the last 20 years. “Of the top 25 awards so far this year, only one was a malpractice case.” Moreover, at least 30 states now cap damages in medical lawsuits.

The experience of Texas in capping damage awards is a good example. Contrary to Perry’s claims, a recent analysis by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker found that while Texas tort reforms led to a cap on pain-and-suffering awards at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which led to a dramatic decline in lawsuits, McAllen, Texas is one of the most expensive health care markets in the country. In 2006, “Medicare spent fifteen thousand dollars per person enrolled in McAllen, he finds, which is almost twice the national average — although the average town resident earns only $12,000 a year. “Medicare spends three thousand dollars more per person here than the average person earns.”

Still, many health policy experts don’t believe the current malpractice liability system is either efficient or fair. Mello and others favor an alternative compensation system that takes the issue away from courts and juries and gives it instead to a panel of independent experts to judge whether malpractice occurred and what compensation should be provided. That’s unlikely to bring about significant cost savings, though, because it would encourage many more claims to be filed. Currently, only about two of every 100 patients injured by malpractice ever receive compensations. “The new system would make it a lot easier to file claims,” said Mello, and would reduce the uncertainty doctors complain about from jury awards.

Such a system implemented at a hospital could mean the hospital pays for malpractice insurance, with premium costs tied to the number of claims. The hospital then has an economic incentive to ensure its doctors are providing good care. Currently, Mello says, most insurance is not “experience-rated”, meaning premiums aren’t tied to the number of claims filed against the doctor.

But Mello, who has advised the Obama administration on malpractice reform, doesn’t expect to see such proposals coming out of Congress or the White House anytime soon. “Trial lawyers don’t embrace proposals that would remove their role in the malpractice system,” she said. And they have a lot of influence with Democrats in Washington.

It is clear that the founder of ACORN is so embarrassed by the taint associated with the organization that he has decided to rename a spin off of it.  It is difficult to read it as anything outside a slap at the ACORN name.

It’s been hours since the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now informed me that Kevin Mooney’s story in the Washington Examiner, about a pending “name change” for the group, was wrong. And yet I just got this release (via Danny Diaz, a consultant who is working with anti-Employee Free Choice Act groups) from the Republican National Lawyers Assocation in which Michael Thielen falls for the story hook, line, and sinker.

The notion that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – also known as ACORN – could simply change its name and wipe away the taint from the fraud it has perpetuated against our electoral system and the American people is laughable. ACORN can call itself whatever it wants, but it is still an enterprise that is being investigated by law enforcement officials and prosecuted in the court system…

And etc.

But the story isn’t true!

Mooney misinterpreted the actions of Wade Rathke, the founder of ACORN, who runs a separate group now, and he spoke to several ex-ACORN employees who have been campaigning against the organization. Here’s what ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told me:

ACORN is not changing its name.  ACORN International is a five-year old organization from which ACORN withdrew a year ago as part of an overall restructuring process and requested that they stop using the ACORN name, which they have now done. Wade Rathke was fired as Chief Organizer of ACORN in June 2008.

Mooney actually gets in this in his story — yes, the one about ACORN changing its name.

Arthur Schwartz, the general counsel for ACORN, has sent a “cease and desist” letter to [anti-ACORN group ACORN 8] instructing them to discontinue using the name ACORN in a connection with their activities. This same letter threatens legal action if the ACORN 8 members do not provide written assurances that they will comply with this demand by the end of June.

“It is a violation of federal and state law for you to use the ACORN name and mark without the written permission of ACORN,” the letter states. “Should you continue to do so, you will be liable for monetary and injunctive relief.”

ACORN is not changing its name. ACORN International, a five-year old organization of overseas former ACORN affiliates, did. ACORN withdrew from ACORN International a year ago as part of an overall restructuring process and requested that they stop using the ACORN name, which they have now done.

More about the Examiner, which has been running daily stories about union and community group scandals — not so many openly refuted by the subjects — in this story.

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In the past, you’ve probably heard about secret holds in the Senate, in which a single senator hides behind the rules to block a nomination while remaining anonymous.  Grassley wouldn’t do that. Fastidious about keeping the public informed on what he’s doing, if Grassley tries to stop a nominee, he’ll do it out in the open, by name, and he’ll tell the White House exactly why he’s doing it.  And he’ll keep doing it until he gets what he wants.

Basically, the political oomph of the story depends on Grassley and on Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).

Clockwise from top left: Byron York, Michael Barone, David Freddoso and J.P. Freire (YouTube screenshots)

For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use of technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible.

“The [Freedom of Information Act],” Tapscott wrote in a 2004 commentary, “has been subverted from its original intent – shining light in all corners of the federal establishment – and used instead by the bureaucrats, special interests and politicians who live off the Nanny State, especially those hiding behind closed doors in places like Health and Human Services, the Education Department and Housing and Urban Development.”

Image by: Matt Mahurin

Sitting up straight in his office at the Washington Examiner, where Tapscott has been the editorial page editor for three years, he repeats the point. “There are 57 people in the Freedom of Information Hall of Fame,” he says. “Three of them are conservatives — two of them, if you don’t count me. Now, that’s a problem.”

Since its launch in 2005, the second daily metro newspaper owned by conservative billionaire Phillip Anschutz (the first was the San Francisco Examiner) has struggled for an identity in a city crawling with political journalists. But since the November 2008 election, the Examiner has beefed up its staff and pulled prominent right-leaning reporters and pundits away from publications like The American Spectator and National Review. Tapscott and a growing staff of political and opinion writers are carving out an identity as the conservative version of the left-leaning opinion and investigative journalism sites that — in the view of many conservatives — have used reporting to embarrass conservatives and the Republican Party.

It wasn’t always this way. In 2004, Tapscott and many other conservatives looked at the reporting and fallout of a badly flawed CBS News report on President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard as a watershed moment, the arrival of a form of citizen journalism that could do distributed research and bring down media titans. Tapscott was awed by the “reporting power demonstrated by the blog leaders in Rathergate such as Littlegreenfootballs.com and [Powerlineblog.com],” he wrote at the time. And in 2006, Tapscott joined forces with conservative and liberal bloggers to uncover the identity of a senator who put a hold on anti-earmark legislation. But conservatives point to that period as the tipping point when liberal-leaning sites like Talking Points Memo, whose Muckraker blog chased the “secret hold” story, overtook conservative sites. By the time that voters went to the polls to elect Barack Obama, conservatives saw sites such as TPM, The Huffington Post, Media Matters, Pro Publica, and the Center for American Progress as part of a new left-wing conspiracy. The Examiner has beaten other outlets to the punch in putting together a right-leaning answer to that.

“I don’t think TPM has any special claim to the type of reporting we do,” said Josh Marshall, the editor of TPM. “If the Examiner wants to get reporters down into the weeds holding the administration and Congress to account with tough, by-the-books reporting, I think that’s not only possible but a great thing.”

If a number of other conservative publishers have their way, the Examiner will get more competition. PajamasMedia, the blog conglomerate that grew out of the “Rathergate” story, is talking to potential reporters for an investigative journalism site. Jennifer Rubin, the site’s Washington editor, declined to discuss the plans but pointed to the site’s coverage of anti-tax “Tea Parties” as proof that “the old model of elite journalists peddling liberal opinion as ‘objective reporting’ is dying.” NewMajority.com, an opinion-heavy site launched by conservative writer David Frum on Inauguration Day, employed former Republican National Committee staffer Moira Bagley as an investigative reporter, but published only 11 of her stories before letting her move on in mid-February. Journalist and commentator Tucker Carlson is currently interviewing conservative journalists for a new site tentatively called The Daily Caller, although he declined to discuss it with TWI, explaining that he had “launched too many ventures that were heavily publicized before they were prepared for scrutiny.”

But Tapscott’s paper has gotten there first. After Anschutz’s Baltimore Examiner newspaper was closed in February, more resources were allocated to the Washington paper. They’ve been used to scoop up talent from other conservative media. Tim Carney wrote a column about the lobbying industry while still editing the Evans-Novak Political Report; when founder Robert Novak decided to shutter it in January, Carney moved to the Examiner full-time. One week later, the paper hired Byron York away from a nine-year stint National Review, where he’d been the magazine’s lead political reporter. At the start of June it poached David Freddoso also of National Review, the reporter who’d written the bestselling “The Case Against Barack Obama” for Regnery, and it hired J.P. Freire, who had recently left The American Spectator, to be the managing editor of the editorial pages.

In his modest office, a short walk away from the Examiner’s newsroom, Tapscott can’t pour enough praise on the new hires or on the columnists that have been added to the paper’s lineup, including former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt, and political encyclopedia Michael Barone, hired away from U.S. News and World Report. Scott Ott, a political satirist who won fame in the conservative blogosphere for his site “Scrappleface,” now puts his satire in a weekly column. In a 2004 blog post, Tapscott had mulled over what could happen if a newspaper grabbed fresh political commentary and put it in one place. “If The Washington Post were to sign on Powerline not merely for weekly op-eds and/or the reprint rights but as members of the reporting team,” he speculated, “the Posties would have the collective talents, experience and insight of Hindrocket, The Big Trunk and Deacon to help shape the paper’s reporting agenda, assist in developing major stories and generate new sources for the reporting staff.” Five years later, he’s doing just that.

According to Chris Stirewalt, the paper’s bow-tie-wearing political editor, that lineup has brought attention to the paper that’s also boosted the political coverage. “Two years ago,” says Stirewalt, “people were saying ‘Gosh, if only if there was a vertically integrated place where I could get all this stuff.’ I promise you that two years ago, nobody said ‘You know, if you have Barone and York and Carney and this kid in a bow tie writing columns in a newspaper it would be really cool. That was serendipity. Sometimes if the people are available and the money is there, things come together.”

The results so far: increased Web traffic (up 300 percent since January, according to Web editor Matthew Sheffield) and more attempts to shame federal agencies, members of Congress, and the White House. Some of it has gone largely unnoticed so far. The editorial page’s Kevin Mooney reports a feature called “Dirty Money,” in which he digs through databases to find out which officers or members of unions have been convicted of crimes and how much those unions have given to members of Congress, then calls up the members’ office to ask whether they’ll give the money back. To date, none of them have even given Mooney an on-the-record response; Tapscott hopes to tie that up into a scolding editorial.

York’s political reporting has had a greater calculable impact. In his columns and in his blog, York is given space to hound the White House about embarrassing stories that interest conservatives more than other newsroom’s editors. York wrote multiple pieces on a somewhat obscure complication that preceded Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) turning down an appointment as Commerce Secretary — whether or not the Census would be run from the Commerce Department or from the White House. Since last week, York has filed piece after piece on the firing of Gerald Walpin, an Americorps inspector general who has asked whether his investigation of the Democratic mayor of Sacramento was ended because the target is an ally of the president. Since the paper ran those first stories last week, the controversy has gone up the food chain to Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

Over the next few months, Sheffield wants to update the Examiner’s site to “integrate social media” and build on what’s already bringing links to the site from RealClearPolitics, Fox Nation, and conservative blogs. And this week’s purchase of The Weekly Standard by Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group was welcomed by Tapscott, who might have an even larger pool of conservative talent to draw on for his long-term project. “I am ecstatic about the move,” he said, “and the prospect of working with Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes.”

“I am excited and pleased to be joining The Examiner, which is among the bright new stars of American journalism,” Gingrich said. “This is one of the most unique and crucial eras in our nation’s history and to know what’s going on, you have to be reading this newspaper.”

I wrote that citing Obama’s “sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are” … Maybe “across-the-board” would have been better than “overall,” but I doubt that would have kept a left-wing activist like Matthew Yglesias, or Andrew Sullivan, who has himself been accused of racism and, quite recently, anti-Semitism, from branding me a racist.

York doesn’t seem to realize that “actually are” was just as problematic, but let’s ignore his drive-by accusations of two people who haven’t written themselves into a mini-controversy this week.

My question was why York was engaging in the occasional conservative habit of asking what a Democratic politician’s support would be like if there were no blacks in the equation, something that is usually done after an election to talk down the Democrat’s electoral mandate. You heard a lot of this after November 2008, with conservatives arguing that black voters’ racial solidarity pushed President Obama over the finish line, and that they were “the real racists,” unlike white voters who had been accused for months of possibly lying to pollsters about whether they’d support Obama. York’s answer:

What if a president were wildly popular with one group, and only middlingly popular with another group and yet was often portrayed as being hugely popular with the whole group?  It seems worthwhile to point that out that there are differences within the group — something that is done all the time with political polls.

It’s done all the time because politicians are always trying to expand their margins with various members of their base. It’s rarely done to argue that one group’s extreme support shouldn’t count, because that’s moronic.

It’s the old joke:  Six people are in a bar.  They’re all middle class; their average net worth is about $100,000.  Bill Gates walks in.  Seven people are in a bar; their average net worth is in the billions.  A wealthy group, right?  Internal numbers are revealing.

That’s actually the way that Fox Business Channel views the economy (GDP is up, therefore everyone is richer and has higher wages) but it’s a foolish way of viewing a political poll. Public opinion isn’t about what the average person thinks, but about whether a majority can be cobbled together out of a group of people to push the Congress to make a decision or to re-eleect a politician. If you have one group of actors you can count on, you try and build up your support with other groups. This is what, for example, Mississippi Republicans do as a result of their low support with the state’s large black population — they try to win black votes on the margins and maximize the white vote.

62 percent of whites approve of the job Obama is doing as president. Among blacks, the number is 96 percent.

Obama won 43 percent of the white vote and 95 percent of the black vote. His black support has increased by only one percent, but his white support has soared by 44 percent.

The other strange thing about York is that all of this appeared in one of Washington, D.C.’s three newspapers — a city that’s 55 percent black, with an electorate that’s 56 percent black. The Examiner isn’t generally read by black Washingtonians, though, which might be one reason why the paper’s op-ed brass thought it wise to publish a piece about why those people didn’t really count.

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