Not a dead Polish economist but a live Yale professor. I tend to resist totalizing theories, but the peroration caught my eye:

On a separate thread where folks are discussing possible legal challenges health care bill, I said I'd look around to see if there have been any challenges to Massachusetts mandatory coverage law and how they fared. This is by no means comprehensive:

Mass.
Against the Mass. law, I could find only one challenge and that was thrown out on what seem to be procedural grounds rather than on the merits. (I can't find the slip op. online to confirm).

Tea Party Challenges

Matt Taibbi:

This is what Barack Obama did to “earn” the Nobel Prize. He put the benevolent face back on things. He is a good-looking black law professor with an obvious bent for dialogue and discussion and inclusion. That he hasn’t actually reversed any of Bush’s more notorious policies — hasn’t closed Guantanamo Bay, hasn’t ended secret detentions, hasn’t amped down Iraq or Afghanistan — is another matter. What he has done is remove the stink of unilateralism from those policies.

They’re not crazy-ass, blatantly illegal, lunatic rampages anymore, but carefully-considered, collectively-run peacekeeping actions, prosecuted with meaningful input from our allies.

Via Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi explains Obama's Nobel Peace Prize by providing some very insightful commentary about who is - and isn't - eligible for Nobel Peace Prizes and why:

Forum: Voices of Reason for Health Care Reform

The program will be on Thursday October 22 from 7:00-9:00 p.m. at Ivy Tech Community College, in Ivy Hall Auditorium. This event is free and open to the public.

Panelists include:

* James G. Anderson, Ph.D. Purdue University Professor of Medical Sociology; Professor of Health Communication; Fellow, American College of Medical Informatics
* Julia Vaughn, Health Policy Consultant with Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, member of the Steering Committee of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan

[cross posted at NPR Check]

Consider these two screen shots from NPR's website:

From a story on Thursday's Morning Edition:

and from Thursday's All Things Considered

Any grade schooler with a rudimentary understanding of the innocent until proven guilty concept could figure out what is wrong with the titles of these web articles: both refer to TERRORISTS, when what is at issue are detainees of the US government suspected of involvement in terrorism (or guerrilla warfare) who have NEVER faced any semblance of legitimate due process that would justify calling them "terrorists." In fact, someone with just a bit more knowledge of recent US detention policies would suspect that most detainees in the US "war on terror" are probably innocent.

Unfortunately, instead of a grade schooler, NPR's two pieces on US rogue detention are led by "a magna cum laude graduate of Yale," Ari Shapiro.

So said Pyrrhus, of the Pyrrhic Victory. And Professor Krugman:

So the odds now are that the [health care reform] thing hangs together, and reform is indeed enacted this year. It will be a highly flawed product; we’ll probably spend much of the next decade trying to fix it.

But it does look as if it’s going to happen. And that will be a huge victory for ["]progressives["].

In what universe does a policy that we know going in will take 10 years to fix get declared a victory?

Health care reform panel set for Thursday night

Participants in the panel discussion include Washington, D.C. resident Donna Smith of the National Nurses Organizing Committee; Rob Stone, a Bloomington, Ind.-based emergency room physician and Indiana coordinator for Physicians for a National Health Program; and William Connolly, a professor of philosophy and religion at the University of Evansville and a member of the steering committee of Hoosiers for a Commonsense Health Plan.

And [a|the] public [health insurance]? [plan|option] won't make a damn bit of difference. Even WaPo's figured this out (and do click through and read to the end for a totally buried quote-of-the-decade from Baucus):

Any health-care overhaul that Congress and President Obama enact is likely to have as its centerpiece a fundamental reform: Insurers would not be allowed to reject individuals or charge them higher premiums based on their medical history.

But simply banning medical discrimination would not necessarily remove it from the equation, economists and health-care analysts say.

If insurers are prohibited from openly rejecting people with preexisting conditions, they could try to cherry-pick through more subtle means. For example, offering free health club memberships tends to attract people who can use the equipment, says Paul Precht, director of policy at the Medicare Rights Center.

In fact, there's an entire consulting industry devoted to helping insurance companies figure out cherrypicking techniques, and train employees how to use them. Like:

Being uncooperative on insurance claims can chase away the chronically ill....

And to avoid patients with costly, complicated medical conditions, health plans could include in their networks relatively few doctors who specialize in treating those conditions, said Mark V. Pauly, professor of health-care management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.

By itself, a ban on discrimination would not eliminate the economic pressure to discriminate.

"It would probably increase the incentive for cherry-picking," Pauly said. "I'm strongly motivated to try to avoid you if I'm not allowed to charge you extra."

A straightforward way to reduce gamesmanship is to standardize benefit packages, Precht wrote in a July report.

In other words, plain vanilla policies. Exactly what the Dems rejected in financial reform. Na ga happen.

AP, but anyhow:

Professors and students themselves also are noticing the quiet on college campuses, which were hotbeds for "Obamamania" during the campaign.
"They're supportive, but in a bystander kind of way," says Laura Katz Olson, a political science professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Certainly, health care was on their priority list then, and remains so. An AP-GfK poll conducted earlier this month found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds rated such reform as "very" or "extremely" important. So far, though, the proposed health care overhauls have failed win the support of a good number of them. Only about half of them said they approved of the way the president was handling health care and only 38 percent said they supported health care plans being discussed in Congress.

[Mary Ellen Balchunis, a political science professor at LaSalle University] thinks the president could boost youth support on these and other issues — and get them influencing their parents, as they did in the election [Thanks, guys!] — if he mobilized and spoke directly to them, the way he did during the campaign. He could for instance, make use of the well-organized student groups that campaigned for him to push the issues of the day.

Hey, I've got an idea!

Interesting, and in WaPo:

LONDON -- [I]n a few communities, people are taking a different tack: printing their own money and spending it. No, the queen's image on the iconic British pound isn't being counterfeited. Instead, some communities are producing their own scrips -- some of the latest have painter Vincent van Gogh's face on them -- which can be used much like cash at participating businesses.

The latest community to do so is Brixton, the second area in Britain this month that introduced its own currency. With an initial run of 40,000 notes in various denominations, it is the most ambitious project here of its kind so far.

Sometimes called Britain's Harlem, the Brixton is a multiethnic area in south London with a large African Caribbean population and a vibrant atmosphere. The kind of mind-set seen in this bustling and close-knit community is crucial for any local currency plan to work, say economists, adding that like any other form of exchange, the success of the Brixton pound will hinge on the continued confidence and willingness among people to use it.

The first Brixton pound entered into circulation last week when Christopher Wellbelove, mayor of Lambeth, the borough that encompasses Brixton, waved a sepia-toned one-pound note in the air at a town hall meeting where it was unveiled and used it to buy a box of tomatoes. (He got a good deal, said many at the scene.)

Tomatoes!

[Just cross-posted to Kos. How about a recommendation? And welcome, Eschatonians, Paul Krugman, Digby, Andrew Tobias, and Sadly, No readers. And Avedon, you know I do.]

[And readers, if you want others to read this post, you can use the Digg or Reddit buttons below to recommend it.]

ONE CURRENT PERMATHREAD on Big Orange is that Krugman and Obama are feuding or having a vendetta. Which, when you take a step back, is bizarre. That movement conservatives and Villagers like stone Bush enabler William Kristol, like David Brooks, Broderella, and Andrew Sullivan are all good with Obama isn't even mentioned in passing by Obama's fan base. And yet those same enthusiasts spend inordinate amounts of time vilifying Paul Krugman, a true progressive who was there for us from the earliest dark days of the Bush regime.

Curious. What's really happening?  Read more…