Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Santorum’s a weasel II

Last week congress dramatically cut programs aimed at low-income Americans. Senator Santorum framed it this way:

“What we’ve done here today is we’ve made some changes to those programs that make those programs better, more efficient and more targeted to the people in need,” Santorum said. “That is not cutting benefits to those who are entitled to entitlements; it is making those programs work better and in the context of more fiscal responsibility.”

Here’s an example of making a program “work better:”

[Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Director Bob] Greenstein says one of the most potentially damaging provisions would require those applying for Medicaid to present proof of citizenship—either a birth certificate or passport.

Many low-income Americans don’t have access to their birth certificates—or don’t have one at all.

For example, African Americans born in the south in the 1930s and ‘40s—as many as 20 percent, according to one study—don’t have birth certificates because hospitals wouldn’t accept black women in labor.

As a result, Greenstein says, ”We’re facing the prospect of significant numbers of elderly black Americans being thrown off of Medicaid because they can’t provide a birth certificate—because they weren’t born in a hospital due to discrimination.”

At the same time the senate did find $100 million a year for five years for Santorum’s initiative to promote marriage and encourage fatherhood.

RELATED: The senator’s change of heart on ID earned him a warning from the American Family Association that conservatives can no longer trust him; they say “he needs to be careful.”

Consensus prediction: Google’s goin’ down

Thomas Hawk has a roundup of geek predictions for 2006. He’s got them arranged by topic - Apple, Acquistions, Blogs… This is his Google section:

Jason Calacanis:  Google’s stock will take it’s first significant hit (> 15% drop) at some point during the year, but not because of their earnings but rather some outside factor (think advertising slow down, terrorist attack in the US, tech bubble bursting, etc). Google’s stock will end the year basically flat (+/-10%) while their earnings soar.

Dan Tynan: As part of its ongoing agreement with NASA, Google will secure exclusive advertising rights to the moon, where it plans to run text ads on the lunar surface. To increase traffic, the search company will distribute free telescopes to every human on the planet.

David Kirkpatrick, Fortune Senior Editor: Yes, I love Google, but my first prediction is that a year from now we won’t think that the search company is the invincible behemoth that we do now.

Oliver Thylmann: The Google Bubble will Burst.  Google is immensely overvalued and that valuation will need to come down.

HelloCompany: Google will buy Gannett and install its Click-to-call button beside every classified on the Gannett network.

Dave Winer: Google will make a deal with the Time-Warner movie companies, and start movies.google.com for on-demand distribution over the Internet.

Jason Calacanis:  Google Adsense for Podcasts and/or Video will debut in Q2/Q3 of 2006--Yahoo and Microsoft will follow shortly after that.

John Battelle: Google will stumble, some might say badly, but it will be significant.

Jason Calacanis:  After obsessing over Google for years while writing The Search, John Battelle sells his Federated Media network to the them.

John Battelle: Google and Yahoo will both enter the video (nee television) advertising marketplace.

I know, not everyone says Google’s goin’ down. But a good many do. Hawk recommends the prediction collections of Alex Barnett and Fred Wilson as well.

Name the student!

I’ll have to think this through, but my gut reaction is they should name the perp:

Rogers Cadenhead notes that the New Bedford (Mass.) Standard-Times has yet to apologize for running the story about a student’s bogus claim that he was interrogated by homeland security agents after checking out Mao’s “Little Red Book.” Also, the paper hasn’t named the hoaxster. “At what point does a newspaper find sufficient cause to break a confidentiality agreement?” asks Cadenhead. “The 22-year-old student knowingly lied to the newspaper and harmed its reputation across the entire planet.”

We must know so Jimbo can revoke his Wikipedia account.

Pulp fiction

Who reads these books?

For nearly 15 years, she has been denounced, at various times, as a deeply subversive rogue feminist who equated marriage with slavery; an overreaching social engineer bent on nationalizing the American health care system; and a disturbingly acquiescent wife too willing to stick with a straying husband. Now, in the latest incarnation offered up by her critics, she is the scheming, probably unstoppable front-runner for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, currently presenting herself as a moderate - via another insidious “makeover” - but hellbent on returning to her left-wing agenda once in power. Dick Morris and Eileen McGann [aka Mrs. Morris], in “Condi vs. Hillary: The Next Great Presidential Race,” can barely contain their alarm. “Do not underestimate this woman!” they warn.

In fact, the authors argue (over and over again), Hillary Clinton may be so powerful, so stealthy and so determined that only an extraordinary candidacy by Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, can stop her. As millions of right-thinking Americans realize the dangers of a Hillary presidency, the authors suggest, a draft-Condi movement will spring up at the grass roots, producing a kind of Manichaean catfight in the general election. That, at least, is the conceit of this book, its particular niche in the crowded marketplace of Hillary lit.

Very quickly, this argument begins to feel more obsessive than provocative.

The review also looks at The Case for Hillary Clinton By Susan Estrich:

Estrich has a rather touching belief that, if elected, Clinton would profoundly change not just the government but the culture, reinvigorating the feminist movement around the world. (Reading Estrich after Dick Morris produces a kind of ideological whiplash.) But she correctly identifies a core belief among many Democrats - that Clinton may have a lock on the nomination, but cannot win the general election because (not to put too fine a point on it) too many people hate her.