The United States today agreed to pay $1.4 billion to settle a class action lawsuit over the Interior Department's mismanagement of Indian trust accounts.

The potential settlement, which must still be approved by Congress and the courts, would bring a close to the long-running Cobell Indian trust case, and would result in payments to roughly 300,000 individual Indian trust accounts. It would also create a $2 billion program to consolidate ownership of Indian trust lands.

Urging acceptance of the deal: Attorney General Eric Holder and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Here's a fantasy sports ethical question. Hypothetical - You have clinched the top spot in your fantasy football league. The team you want to avoid is fighting for the 2nd,3rd or 4th spot, but is definitely in the playoffs. Your team will play the 4th place team in the playoffs. In the last week of the regular season, you are playing the team you want to avoid in the playoffs. Is it ethical to throw the last game of the season to avoid playing that team in the first round of the playoffs?

Any resemblance to the actual situation in my FFL is purely coincidental. This is an Open Thread.

You've probably read about the idea of bypassing a House-Senate conference on the Health Insurance Premium Assistance Bill so that President Obama can tout it in his State of the Union address. apparently, House liberals are not pleased with the notion:

Two well respected House liberals — Jan Schakowsky and Jerrold Nadler — expressed skepticism about the current public option compromises emerging from the Senate, and vowed that House Dems would not be railroaded into swallowing the Senate bill. “It would be a mistake to think that the House leadership will go into any kind of conference committee with the expectation that we’re just gonna sign on to the Senate bill,” Schakowsky told me. “The House intends to negotiate with the Senate. We expect those deliberations to be vigorous. The House is not simply going to sign on the dotted line.” [. . .] “The House is not going to be dictated to,” Nadler told me.

We'll see. Giving Obama the chance to include "health care reform" as an "accomplishment" in his speech is one of the lousiest reasons I have ever heard for such a thing.

Speaking for me only

I've gotten oh so bored with the whole "Obama, Love Him Or Leave Him" stuff, but Glenn Greenwald wrote a good post about all of it. Anyway, as regular readers know, sometimes I support the President, sometimes I criticize him. Depends on whether he adopts policies I agree with or not.

I also never miss an opportunity to republish this post:

How about that?

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is a must have vote. He just gave his Democratic colleagues some breathing room. Lieberman said he's open to both the Medicare buy-in idea, and a separate proposal to extend the private system that insures federal employees to individuals and small businesses.

Who'da thunk it?

Speaking for me only

Heh:

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) says a Medicare buy-in approach will be a hard sell with her. She told reporters this afternoon that she's not inclined to support the idea, currently being discussed by liberal and conservative Democrats seeking a compromise on the public option. [. . .] She's expressed her doubts to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "I told him I have concerns," she said. "The Medicare buy in is problematic." A reporter asked if that meant she's not inclined to support the idea. "Correct," she said.

Now what? Hey, I have an idea, reconciliation.

Speaking for me only

Even if I agreed with this column from Ezra Klein, and I do not, what is the point of writing a column NOW urging that employer health insurance costs be taxed? It has as much chance of passage as single payer. And even if it was a good time, do you find this convincing?

[H]ealth-care coverage is not a benefit. It's a wage deduction. When premium costs go up, wages go down. When premium costs go down, wages go up. Yet workers don't know that.

(Emphasis supplied.) They "don't know it" because it is not true. Health care coverage is indeed a benefit and it is ridiculous to state it is not. Should it be? Probably not. But that is like arguing that a pension or vacation time is not a benefit. Obviously both are. Whether it should be a tax-subsidized benefit is another question and I think there is a good argument that it should not be, IF we were starting a system from scratch. But we are not. More . . .

Your turn.

This is an Open Thread.

One of the more frustrating aspects of Village Wonk blogging on the health care issue is the disconnect between the political ramifications of imposing an individual mandate without offering those you are forcing to buy insurance an affordable option. In their mind, the solution is to write about increasing the subsidy levels. Of course, they know that when President Obama said the bill could not cost more than $900 billion, that foreclosed a realistic subsidy level (might as well say let's do single payer or Wyden-Bennett. Never going to happen.) Besides that, they ignored how this approach merely was more feeding of the beast known as the health insurance industry and served to undermine their other pillar of concern - cost controls.

I have criticized them for this for months and months. Now we have a new and important wrinkle - the Medicare buy-in. Some continue to have faith in the Exchange idea. I have long stated I do not. I do believe that a Medicare buy-in available to persons eligible for the Exchange (which would be everyone whom the individual mandate will force to buy insurance) would solve both the cost containment problem and the political problem of forcing people to buy insurance. Jon Cohn writes:

One of the changes being pushed by the liberals would lower the age of eligibility for Medicare to 55, from 65. Another would expand Medicaid to cover people with incomes up to 150 percent of the poverty level (up to $33,075 for a family of four). The Senate bill, as it now stands, would expand Medicaid to cover people up to 133 percent of the poverty level ($29,327 for a family of four.)

A third liberal proposal would require insurers to spend a specified share of premiums — about 90 percent — on clinical services and activities that improve the quality of care. This would, in effect, limit the profits that insurers could make. [ . . .] Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is taking the lead in drafting the proposal to let people 55 to 64 “buy into” Medicare. In May, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, introduced a bill to provide access to Medicare for people in that age group. “I’ve been for that since 2001,” he said.

(Emphasis supplied.) I hope Senators Brown and Rockefeller are writing a provision that states that anyone of any age subject to the mandate (which means everyone who goes into the Exchange) will have the Medicare buy-in option. Otherwise, the mandate should be scrapped. Another possibility, it seems to me, would be to allow states to opt out of allowing their residents to buy in to Medicare. I'm sure North Dakotans will appreciate that.

Speaking for me only

The beginning of the end of the US presence in Iraq is providing us with a bit of a preview of what we can expect. Baghdad bombings:

A series of devastating car bombings rocked Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 121 people and wounding hundreds more, according to preliminary accounts by witnesses, the police and hospital officials. Five bombs in all, including at least three suicide attacks, struck near a college, a court complex in western Baghdad, a mosque and a market and a neighborhood near the Interior Ministry in what appeared to be a coordinated assault on the capital.

[. . .] The attacks came as Iraq’s Presidency Council announced a date — March 6 — for the country’s long-delayed parliamentary elections. [. . .] Many victims linked the attacks to the protracted political jockeying over holding the election, which was originally scheduled for January. “Are we cursed?” yelled a young woman near the mosque that was struck in Qahira, in northeast Baghdad. She had burns over her arms and legs. “When will we be finished with this election issue?”

(Emphasis supplied.) Of course elections are not the issue. Power is. The struggle between Sunni and Shia, and different factions of Sunni and Shia, will continue long after the US is gone.

That is Iraq's future.

Speaking for me only

You know what? Ezra Klein had a good day today. On his blog and on Olbermann. Frank. On point. And good analysis. Keep it up Ezra. Imo of course.

This is an Open Thread.