SUNDAY, NOV 24, 2013 • THE BULLETIN
F3
OMMENTARY
ou es ea w on' save he Obama administration once gave us "man-caused disasters" for acts of terrorism and "workplace violence" for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to mask the Obamacare disaster. The president and his advisors apparently knew long ago that millions of the insured would face cancellations or premium hikes once Obamacare would be fully implemented. Yet to get the 906-page bill passed, they had to convince the public of the very opposite scenario. So they repeated ironclad guarantees that no one would lose their coverage or doctors — "period!" Now the administration explains the deception by going after both the ethics of the insurers and the intelligence of the previously insured. That task required language to be altered. The newly canceled health plans are suddenly rebranded by the administration as "subpar." Only in autumn 20L3 is the supposedly unaware public told that, years ago, "bad apple" insurance companies sold them "substandard" plans. According to Obama, millions of Americans were once ignorant or uninformed, and thus will soon be pleased about their cancellations: "So the majority of folks will end up being betteroff.O fcourse,because the website's not working right, they don't necessarily know it."
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about Obamacare by simply declaring that Obama "clearly misspoke." Does the Times think a real estate agent "misspeaks" when he sellsa two-bedroom house by falsely assuring that it is a three-bedroom home? By that l o gic, th e l egions of The administration has also downObama supporters who desperately played the disaster by claiming that sought and won exemptions from the more than 30 million people who Obamacare are not "better off" now, lost their coverage represent only "5 percent" of the insured. But even but those stuck with it will be? The president was not through re- if that number is not far too low, try inventing history. If Obama spoke using that minority percentage aruntruths on more than 20 occasions gument on issues like gay rights. If in selling Obamacare, he also made a millions of gays represent only about post-facto attempt to sneak a qualifier 5 percent of the population, is federal into his serial false promises: "What policy that affects gays negatively not we said was you can keep it if it hasn't really that important? changed since the law passed." A national website that has comBut there is no record that Obama pletely failed and for nearly two or his lieutenants had ever publicly months denied millions of applicants said such a thing. The president's at- the chance to sign up for health insurtempt to airbrush history is similar ance is dubbed a mere "glitch." Had to the commandments on the barn the website been down for only a day wall in G eorge Orwell's "Animal or two, would that foul-up be called a Farm." One day the commandment "glitch-let"? "All Animals are Equal" mysteriously From t h e ve ry beg i n ning, appears rewritten with a new qualifi- Obamacare defied the laws of comer beside it, as if it had been there all mon sense and basic logic. Providalong: "All animals are equal — but ing more coveragefor more people some animals are more equal than cannot result in radical reductions in others." costs, as promised — unless a shopThe New York Times — which not per normally can buy more and betlong ago gave us the new term "white tergroceries for cheaper prices.How Hispanic" to de-emphasize the milogical was expecting indebted young nority status of George Zimmerman people to voluntarily pay more for inin the Travyon Martin case — is also surancethey would rarely use in orguilty o f O b amacare-speak. The der to pay for others to use it a lot? Times rebranded Obama's untruths Not a single Republican voted for
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
CHARLES LANE
Obamacare. Some skeptical Democrats had to be bought off with the promise of special deals. Pet businesses, unions and congressional staffers were given exemptions not available to the public from coverage that was supposedly wonderfuL The freebie provisions of keeping kids on parental plans until they turn 26 and ensuring coverage for those with pre-existing conditions were cynically frontloaded before the 2012 election — while the painful details and higher costs were backloaded after the president's expected re-election. An architect of the bill, Sen. Max Baucus, called it a "train wreck." Before full implementation, the Affordable Care Act became emblematic as the president's "signature" achievement and thus had to be airbrushed as something successful and popular to cement Obama's legacy. To square that huge circle, words had to change their meanings to fabricate a reality that did not exist. So what takes away patients' insurance and costs more was declared the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Keeping your existing plan was "substandard" coverage. And Obama had warned us all along that it might be canceled. All that is now there on the barn wall. — Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.
Even code geeks can't rescue Obamacare By Norman Matloff B(oomberg News
recent news item r eported that three programmers, all in their 20s, had whipped up an alternative to the U.S. health-insurance exchange system and claimed it was much more effective than the government's system. The legend of the 20-something coding genius is so powerful that a major news organization seemed to accept that it should be this simple to fix the exchanges. Of course it isn't, and boasts such as this are masking the complexity of the challenge. The Department of Health and Human Services has been mum on the details of the technological problems. But the picture that has emerged s o far is t hat th e f ailure of t h e Obamacare exchanges was largely the result of a lack of understanding of systems-performanceissues,rather than insufficient programming skill. Software that works fine on a small scale can be a spectacular failure when writ large. And expertise in p e rformance comes from experience, especially experience with large-scale hardware and large-scale usage — exactly what most 20-year-old geeks lack. Many talented kids might write great apps for your iPhone, but very few have seriousaccess to large-scale, distributed hardware, and even fewer have written apps that require
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such large systems. In fact, youthful enthusiasm, normally a boon to the quality of projects, may be a negative in this case. The 20-something may be so enamored of the New, New Thing in pro-
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gramming languages and techniques that he might be fitting the problem to the tool, rather than vice versa, and end up developing something that is quite inefficient for the job at hand. Many of those who worked on the health-insurance exchanges — HIX, for short — are probably in their 20s, too. This has been a standard in the industry, as the young are cheaper, in both wages and benefits, and are more willing to work long hours. Young workers typically haven't
had the experience of seeing a project blow up in their face. Sadly, many who worked on HIX now have had such an experience, though they may not highlight this on their resumes. A less experienced programmer may write great code, but have done so only in small-scale settings. Asked to work on a much larger scale, he may not realize the consequences of the manner in which he designs his code. For example, an expert cited by Reuters found that a single mouse click in HIX triggers 92 separate file openings and network transactions. When an iPhone app opens a file, there is no noticeable delay, and those who worked on HIX may not have
thought that 92 such events would be excessive, when multiplied by tens of thousands of users. But files being opened tensofthousands oftimes per second could present a big problem if not handled with a deep knowledge of computer systems. Computer-science curricula (both in the United States and abroad) are to blame, too. A typical graduate is reasonably knowledgeable about computer programming, but knows shockingly little about computer systems. Most graduates couldn't explain something as fundamental as how an operating system boots up, for instance. So they may leave school equipped to w r ite i Phone
apps (they can probably do that by the endoftheir second year of study) but with no inkling of such matters as the time overhead involved in accessing a file or transmitting a network message. Indeed, veryfew curricula even require a course in networks, the backbone of modern information
technology. Computer-science professors often admonish students not to equate the field with just programming, and every program requires a course in the large-scale behavior of algorithms. Yet little attention is paid to the computers themselves. Still, performance issues aside, s ome howler-level bugs are u n doubtedly lurking here and there in the HIX software, and, in this,
the employersof programmers are culpable as well. Many studies have shown a vast range in ability among
programmers. Since computer-science curricula are jobs-oriented, they tend to attract a lot of students who lack a real excitement about the material and who are rote-memory learner types — a potential disaster for a field that relies on creativity and abstraction. Yet many companies treat programmers as exchangeable commodities. And companies that depend on being the low bidder for government contracts may be especially prone to hiring cheap commodity programmers. Any software problem can be f ixed eventually. But it w il l b e a rocky road forthe health care exchanges for some time to come — no matter what you hear from a few 20-somethingcomputer whizzes. — Norman Matloff is a professor of computer science at the University of California at Davis.
Iran sanctions are pointless if no deal's reached hen the Obama administration set up the toughest sanctions ever imposed on Iran, its goal was to force Tehran to the bargaining table. It aimed to address the country's suspect nuclear program by diplomacy ratherthan war. The sanctions worked, contrary to widespread predictions. Under heavy economic pressure, Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, initiated nuclear talks in Geneva. Yet rather than give talks a chance, U.S. legislators from both parties — urged on by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — want to impose even stiffer sanctions soon. Never mind that such a move would probably derail the talks, as well as any hope of curbing Iran's program by diplomatic means. I can u n derstand Netanyahu's thinking: He distrusts Tehran and wants President Obama to back an Israeli military strike on its nuclear sites. But I can't grasp the "thinking" in Congress. Are the sanction hawks really ready to push America into anotherunnecessary Mideast war? The hawks argue that if strong economic curbs pushed the Iranians into talks, then harsher punishment will make them give up their nuclear program. But when it comes to Iran, that kind of strategy has failed badly
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TRUDY RUBIN in the past. One has only to recall the period after 9/11, when Tehran cooperated with Washington in going after their common Talibanenemy in Afghanistan. At that time, U.S.-Iran talks in Geneva seemed set to deliver further cooperation. But after George W. Bush named Iran part of the "axis of evil" in January 2002, it withdrew from the talks. According to Ryan Crocker, who was then the U.S. negotiator in Geneva, the Iranians concluded from Bush's proclamation that America was implacably hostile. A ratcheting up of sanctions now would probably lead Iran to the same conclusion. Another factor propelling the sanction hawks is the claim, also promoted by Netanyahu,that the Obama team was about to give awaythe store in the initial negotiations, including a huge amount of sanctions relief. Yet there was no final deal in play, only an interim proposal under which the Iranians would have frozen most oftheir nuclear program and opened it to more vigorous inspections while talks continued on a
final agreement. The reason for an interim accord — and it's a good one — is to ensure that Iran would not be free to make more nuclear progress during the months of negotiations that would be required for a comprehensive pact. This first step would provide time and space to test whether Iran is serious. The interim accord is still being negotiated between Iran and the "P5+I": the five permanent U.N. Security Council members — France, Britain, Russia, China, and the U.S. — plus Germany. But — and this is important — the sanctions relief offered as part of the interim deal was modest, probably permitting the release of some frozen Iranian assets. That wouldn't, as critics claim, undermine the core sanctions on oil and banking, which have driven Iran to the table. Nor are investors likely to go rushing back to Tehran to sign contracts. "Businessmen will be hesitant, because the sanctions are still in place," said Robert Einhorn, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "Banks are very conservative, and financial sanctions still exist." So again, why has there been such a rush in Congress to ratchet up sanctions? Clearly the Israeli government's strong lobbying effort has had an
impact. To quote one of Israel's leading journalists, Haaretz's Chemi Shalev: "The ferocity of Netanyahu's rage (at reports of the interim deal), accompanied as it was by a volley of protests and insults hurled by many Israeli politicians and commentators, astonished many administration officials in Washington and surprised some ofitsdetractors aswel l." Yet U.S. legislators should pay equal attention to the observations of former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin. He argues that an agreement that decreases the chances of Iran'sreaching the breakout stage — the point where it could produce a weapon in short orderwould be far less risky than a military strike. Yadlin says Israel should focus onthe substance and details of a final accord "even if Iran doesn't accept all of the prime minister's terms." As for America's sanction hawks, they should focus first on U.S. interests,which would be best served by a deal that sharply limits Iran's nu-
Bankers aren't to blame conomic historians debate the causes ofthe Great Depression but few assign much blame to criminal fraud. People saw it differently at the time. When bank failures crippled Chicago in 1933, local prosecutors hunted for guilty parties. They indicted hotel and insurance magnate Ernest Stevens for fraud and embezzlement in connection with his company's defaulted bonds. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years. The Illinois Supreme Court unanimously overturned the conviction a year later, finding that the state had criminalized what was really desperate but n on-felonious financial juggling. "In this whole record, there is not a scintilla of evidence of any concealment or fraud attempted," the court wrote. Alas,the stress had already proved too much for Stevens' co-defendants, his fatherand brother: The former suffered a stroke; the latter committed sutc<de. Obviously, the government should pursue solid cases of wrongdoing. Yet it is also true, as Ernest Stevens' son, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, said in 2007, that "the criminal justice system can misfire sometimes." Appropriate prosecutorial discretion informed the Obama administration's approach to allegations of criminal fraud in the trade of mortgage-backed securities. As Lanny Breuer, then the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division, explained in an interview last year, it's one thing to say, in hindsight, that bankers knowingly sold their victims shoddy securities and quite another to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt. Having reviewed the facts, Breuer concluded not only that he couldn't bring many criminal fraud cases but also that illegal conduct did not cause the crash. Some continue to fan the populist flames. In a recent column, the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel called for "perp walks." U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, whose Manhattan courtroom could be the venue for future trials, gave a speech in which he faulted the Justice Department for a l legedly offering "excuses" not to prosecute "that, on inspection, appear unconvincing." Rakoff disparaged Attorney General Eric Holder for saying that indicting an institution of systemic importance could pose risks to the global economy. This implied, Rakoff said, a "disturbing" DOJ "disregard for equality under the law." Supposedly, this is about accountability and deterrence, not vengeance. But packaging shoddy securitiesbacked by subprime loans has been punished — and deterredby the market. As for accountability, even Rakoff conceded that it's blurred by government encouragement for the securities boom through lax regulation, the Fed's low interest rates and Fannie Mae's purchasesofthe toxic paper. In President Obama's second term, his administration has triedto appease the populists by bringing civil fraud charges against big banks. Although they don't carry jail time, these cases are easierfor prosecutors because the standard of proof is lower. JPMorgan Chase is in settlement talks with the Justice Department, having tentatively
agreed to cough up $13 billion.
— Trudy Rubinis a columnist and
This doesn't satisfy critics such as vanden Heuvel, who rightly noted that the bank's shareholders will ultimately foot the bill. What's really questionable, though, is how Justice conjured up liability. At the time of the bank's alleged misconduct it was widely understood that there was a five-year statute of limitations on civil securities fraud. U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara argued, hypertechnically, that this could be extended to 10 years under an obscure 1989 law making banks liable for fraud "affecting" any federally insured financial institution, including, Bharara said, the alleged offender bank itself. A couple of judges bought this creative argument, and — presto! — the banks' settled expectations were no longer operative. They were legally on the hook. It is human nature, perhaps, to reduce complex historical processes to the machinations of an evil few. The rule of law exists to control that dangerous tendency.
editorial-board memberfor the Philadelphia Inquirer.
— Charles Lane is a columnist for The Washington Post.
clear program and makes it highly transparent. If talks drag on endlessly, Congress can consider additional sanctions. But it makes no strategic sense to pursue them now.