Obama's Nobel Peace Prize

I, like most people, was stunned to wake up and find that Barack Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. I really have no idea how the deliberations on these things go beyond looking at the description of the proper recipient from Nobel's will. It said that the prize should be awarded:

. . . to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.

I think you can make a credible case for all three of these criteria on Obama's behalf. But pretty much any US President is in a position to come out on top there every year if he's interested in peace and committed to multilateralism. So, only in the weakest sense of the term do I think that Obama "earned" the prize.

Over the course of the day, the rationale for Obama's selection became a bit clearer. In an interview with the New York Times, the Nobel Peace Prize's new committee chairman said:

It’s important for the committee to recognize people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year. We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik. It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world.

He then went on to use the examples of Willy Brandt, who won the prize in 1971 while Chancellor of Germany for his policy of rapprochement with the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), despite the fact that his policy had yielded few results at the time he won.

This seems somewhat akin to handing out gold medals in the Olympics to the athletes with the most promise. The point of prizes like Olympic medals and the Noble Peace Prize is to reward achievement, not promise of it. I strongly believe that Obama is going to achieve things during his time in office, but he hasn't yet. But giving him the Prize now degrades its value. So, when Obama wins again for something like brokering a deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, it will mean just a little less.

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Update: Hat tip to my friend TD for emailing me a particularly well-phrased question that helped me work out my thoughts on this.

Listening to The Clash's Sandinista! Again

I've been a huge fan of The Clash since I was a kid. While a lot of bands that I liked in my youth are now embarrassing to even mention (ahem, Def Lepard), my appreciation for The Clash has grown considerably. The band's 1979 release London Calling has been one of my default "play this" albums for well over 20 years.

"Spanish Bombs" is for me the quintessence of punk: it's both a rocking tune and a decent introduction to the Spanish Civil War. As a special bonus, the "oh my corazon" refrain rendered in Strummer and Jones' thick Brit accents is strangely endearing. Another song on that album, "Lost in the Supermarket", is hands down the most clever critique of consumerism I've ever found; every time I walk into a big-box store, it's queued in my internal sound track.

But, for some reason Sandinista!--the album that many critics consider to be the band's greatest achievement--never really got to me. I've owned the CD for many years and have probably listened to it every couple of years, but, always left with the feeling that the next time I was in a Clash mood, I'd put London Calling on. Tonight was different for some reason. I put Sandinista! on in the background while I was doing some cooking, and this time the album "took".

The first thing that hit me was just how extraordinary Paul Simonon's bass-playing is on this album. This probably caught my attention because the mixing on the album pushes the bass rather hard (and it works). The brilliant, jazzy "Look Here" is one example. The riff is a pretty standard one from the jazz bass repertoire, but Simonon gives it a Clash signature, in part by playing what you'd expect to hear on an upright bass on an electric. "One More Time" is another example, but this time in a ska piece (and one that includes among Strummer's most brilliant lyrics: "you don't need no silicon/to calculate poverty." This song was recorded in 1979, i.e., before the birth of the personal computer.)

After my revelation about Simonon while listening to Sandinista!, I went back to my usual Clash fix, London Calling, to hear if I'd been missing something in that album. And I had. It is clear to me now that Simonon's bass is one of the driving forces on this album as well. If you take his bass work out of "Lost in the Supermarket", the song loses its musical soul and with it the substantial punch behind Strummer's lyrics. And "Koka Kola" becomes just another song.

Thoughts on the President's Speech

I'm much happier with this speech than I'd expected. I think the President made a strong case for the public option, which was in itself good. And he also referred to a plan that includes the public option "my plan". That's good, too.

But, even better, I think the President drew a line in the sand on the public option. A fine line, and a line that is open to some interpretation, but a line nonetheless. I haven't gone back to the video to confirm my notes, but I am pretty confident that I got at least the gist: he's open to any alternative to the public option that achieves its goals, that is, anything that insures that all Americans have access to affordable insurance. Short of a single-payer system--which is certainly not in the cards today and I doubt will be in my lifetime--I don't see how you achieve that goal without a government-backed insurance plan that introduces real competition into the market.

Both substantively and tactically, I think that the President made a smart move by mentioning medical malpractice reform. Republicans have a valid point about fear of lawsuits and the cost of medical malpractice insurance being a contributor to the rising cost of health care. It is far from the biggest cause, but it is a cause and we should be looking at ways to address everything that's contributing to the spiraling cost of health care in the US. I'm genuinely interested in what happens with this. Tactically, of course, it makes it just a little bit harder for the Republicans to use malpractice reform as their default alternative to broader health care reform.

Update: Josh Marshall also notes the President's drawing a sort of faint line in the sand on the public option, though he is a bit more skeptical than I am. I agree with Josh's contention that there is a lot of wiggle room in the President's position, but, I think it gives those of us who support the public option rather more leverage than I'd expected from the speech.

Live Blogging the President's Health Care Address

7:16--Here we go! Don't want to throw anything at the TV. Yet. I am not optimistic about this speech.

7:18--Think he struck about the right tone on the economic recovery by pointing out success in pulling the economy "back from the brink" but acknowledging work ahead and committing to do that work.

7:19--"Not the first President to take up this call, but I am determined to be the last." Like the fight. Let's see the substance.

7:20--Framing the state of affairs as a failure is good.

7:21--Hadn't heard the "30m who can't get health insurance" number before. Can't because they can't afford it, or, because of pre-existing conditions?

7:24--Going at the cost issue now. Not sure how he is going to wriggle around needing the public option to bring in competition and drive down costs.

7:28--"The time for games has passed". The Obama v Congress things would have been so much better earlier this summer, but, it may still work.

7:29--The Beef, Part I: You got insurance? Great. You can keep it. But, we make it better:
a) no more exclusions for pre-existing conditions.
b) illegal for insurance companies to drop policies on sick.
c) illegal for insurance companies to set coverage caps.
d) set limits on out-of-pocket expenditures
e) require insurance companies to cover preventive care, e.g., colonoscopy

7:32--The Beef, Part II: No insurance? Ok. We got an insurance exchange for you where you can shop, leveraging the law of large numbers to keep prices down. Insurance companies have an incentive to participate because there is money to be made.

7:35--The Beef, Part III: What about those who don't want health insurance? They are costing us money. People will be required to carry basic health insurance and businesses will be required to provide as well. ~95% of small businesses exempt. "Improving our health care requires everyone to do their part".

7:38--What was that? Somebody shouted out something that made Pelossi and Biden blanch. Will be interested to find out who it was and what they said--it was in response to Obama's calling the claim that reform would include coverage for illegal aliens.

7:41--Sounds like the same asshole said something when Obama said he didn't want to put health insurance companies out of business.

7:41--Defense of the Public Option, starting now. Come on, Obama. Make the case.

7:43--Saving from lower admin costs, no profits.

7:44--He refers to the public option as part of "my plan". Surprising. But also opens to door to a law that doesn't have it.

7:45--"If Americans can't find affordable insurance, we will provide you with a choice." That seems to be his line in the sand. I wonder where we can wiggle from there?

7:46--How are we paying for it? Will not sign on to a bill with a plan that will add to the deficit.

7:47--Most of this can be paid for by reducing waste. Contentious point, let's see how he makes it.

7:49--What are these Medicare subsidies to doctors that are going away?

7:52--Fee for insurance companies' most expensive policies. Makes a lot of sense. These plans add no measurable results in terms of health outcomes.

7:53--Very clever bone tossed to the Republicans on malpractice insurance. Will be interesting to see how this is fleshed out.

7:54--Bending the arc.

7:55--Here's the [political] plan: If you're serious, my door is open. If you just want to kill the plan rather than make it better, pound sand. If you talk shit, we will call you on it.

Tuesday's Gmail Fail

Google has posted their official explanation of Tuesday's nearly two-hour Gmail collapse:

Here's what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a small fraction of Gmail's servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn't in itself a problem — we do this all the time, and Gmail's web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.

However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system "stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!". This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn't access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn't be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don't use the same routers.

This is stunning incompetence from an organization that I've come to expect excellence from. First, not having good data on traffic load before undertaking an upgrade of this sort is indicative of incredible sloppiness. Second, having a router overload algorithm that defaults to shutting down routers rather than simply routing traffic more slowly is idiotic (up to a point--at some point traffic becomes so slow as to render it useless).

Google says that they've addressed these issues, but, I have to say this shakes my faith in a company that I've come to regard as a paragon of excellent quality and service.

Bill Clinton's Success in North Korea

I expected the resolution of the imprisonment of American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee in North Korea to be resolved as a side-deal with the North Koreans. The scenario I envisioned was something like a standoff between the US and North Korea over an intercepted North Korean ship suspected of carrying components for nuclear weapons bound for Burma.

The actual result was substantially better. The women are safely home in the US rather than facing hard labor in the North Korean gulag. That's obviously good. Less obviously good is that it came at a lower price to the US than in the scenarios I'd imagined. North Korea really had few chips to play so the relative value of their hostages was low. Consequently, the price the US paid was having a former president sit on a stage looking at Kim Jong Il like he'd just farted. I'm good with that.

Amazon's Kindle Caper, Redux

Andrew Sullivan flags a case of a student who lost his summer reading homework when Amazon nabbed his copy of 1984. I alluded to such a possibility here when the story initially broke.

What Is In Your Health Care Bill? Part 2

Picking up where I left off in Part 1 of my analysis of a list of claims about H.R. 3200 that is circulating around the Internet.

pg 124 lines 24-25 HC No company can sue the Government on [sic.] price fixing. No "judicial review" against Government Monopoly

Probably because this isn't price fixing. Also not clear how this is a "government monopoly" in that the government is merely creating a mechanism by which private companies compete for customers. (A single-payer system would be a monopsony, but unfortunately that's not in the cards.)

pg 127 Lines 1-16 HC Bill - Doctors/ #AMA - The Government will tell YOU what you can earn.

Nothing in the bill requires that a physician participate in the program.

Pg 145 Line 15-17 An Employer MUST auto enroll employees into public option plan. NO CHOICE

Not true. First, the bill requires that the employer auto-enroll employees at the lowest priced option, not the public option. Second, p 148, line 3 allows for employees to opt out.

Pg 146 Lines 22-25 Employers MUST pay for health care for part time employees and their families.

True, in part. The requirement is that employers pay for part-timers on a pro-rated basis based on the number of hours they work vs. the number of hours of full-time employees work. Without a requirement like this, unscrupulous employers (or any employer with a fiduciary responsibility to investors for that matter) would make as many jobs part time as possible to skirt the requirement.

Pg 149 Lines 16-24 ANY Employer with a payroll over $400k who does not provide the public option will pay 8% tax on all payroll/pg 150 Lines 9-13 Business with a payroll between $251k & $400k who doe not provide the public option well pay 2-6% tax on all payroll

True. If you are going to require employers to provide insurance, this seems like a pretty fair penalty for those who break the law.

Pg 167 Lines 18-23 ANY individual who does not have acceptable health care according to the Government will be taxed 2.5% of their income.

True. The "acceptable health care" according to the government is a plan that meets the requirements for the "basic" plan. The tax is also capped at the average price of such a plan, so the intent is clearly to motivate people to get insurance.

Pg 170 Lines 1-3 HC Bill Any NONRESIDENT Alien is exempt from individual taxes. (Americans will pay)

Seems to be correct, not sure what the reason for this is given that I believe that nonresident (but still legal) aliens are eligible for benefits. One interesting thing is that there is a corollary for US citizens who don't live in the US: they are also considered to be covered and not subject to the tax.

Pg 195 HC Bill -officers & employees of the health care Administration (Government) will have access to ALL Americans financial and personal records.

This is an absurd claim. The bill modifies the laws governing the IRS to require them to provide the Health Care Administration with basic tax information (income, number of dependents, etc.) necessary for determining a person's eligibility for insurance subsidies. Your bank account, investment portfolio, divorce proceedings, etc. are safe from the HCA.

PG 203 Line 14-15 HC - "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax" Yes, it says that

No, it doesn't. What it says is "The tax imposed under this section shall not be treated as tax imposed by this chapter for purposes of determining the amount of any credit under this chapter or for purposes of section 55." In other words, you can't deduct the tax for not having health insurance (it's really a penalty that is administered by the IRS, I'd argue) from your income for purposes of determining your eligibility for health insurance subsidies.

Coming up next, a look at a whole group of claims that are based on the assumption that Medicare and Medicaid don't exist (and are probably a bad idea). . .

What Is In Your Health Care Bill? Part 1

A document of unknown provenance purporting to provide the low-down on the House health care bill is making its way around the interwebs and fax machines. It turns out to be filled with fabrications and distortions. Here's the approximately the first half of the document with commentary and factual corrections:

There is a lot of talk about the Health Care Bill, HR 3200. It is said some lawmakers who voted on it have not even read it. You can access the health plan that passed the House of Representatives, all 1017 pages. Here's the link: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi- bin/getdoc.cgidbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h3200ih.pdf

Bad link. Try this:
http://docs.house.gov/edlabor/AAHCA-BillText-071409.pdf

Pg 22 of the HC Bill MANDATES the Government will audit books of ALL EMPLOYERS that self insure!!

What the bill requires is a study of "the large group insured and self-insured employer health care markets". The study does include an analysis of "[t]he financial solvency and capital reserve levels of employers that self-insure by employer size", but this is hardly an audit.

Pg 30 Sec 123 of HC bill - THERE WILL BE A Government COMMITTEE that decides what treatments/benefits you may have. Pg 29 lines 4-16 in the HC bill - YOUR HEALTH CARE will be RATIONED!!!

Sec 123 describes the establishment of the "Health Benefits Advisory Committee", a board headed by the surgeon general and comprised mostly of non-government employees. Its purpose is to establish a minimum level of benefits, things like coverage for hospitalization, prescription drugs, and maternity care.

Pg 42 of HC Bill - The Health Choices Commissioner will choose Your [sic.] health care Benefits for you. You have no choice.

Again, this refers to establishing minimum standards for Qualified Health Benefits Plans (QHBPs).

PG 50 Section 152 in HC bill - Health care will be provided for ALL non US citizens, illegal or otherwise

What the bill says is "Except as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services." Section 246 explicitly prohibits the federal government from paying for these services, however.

In other words, this is exactly the way things work now: patients who show up at a hospital and need treatment get it, irrespective of their immigration status, hair color, sex, etc.

Pg 58HC Bill - will have real-time access to individuals finances & a National ID Healthcard will be issued

This refers to Section 1173A which provides for standardization of electronic administrative transactions, the intent of which is to reduce administrative costs by having a standard system for claims administration and payment. One of the goals for this system is that at the point of service, a health care provider should be able to determine what kind of coverage the individual has and what their financial responsibility (co-payments, etc.) are. In other words, Big Brother won't have access to your bank statements, just to information about your health care coverage.

Also, the bill says that this "may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card". [emphasis mine] Kinda like the one you probably have right now (if you have insurance, of course).

Pg 59 HC Bill lines 21-24 Government will have direct access to your banks accounts for election funds transfers

You'll have the option to make your copayments via electronic transfer. Or not. "Direct access to your bank accounts"? Hardly.

PG 65 Sec 164 Not everyone will have to go on the plan. There will be a separate, subsidized plan for Government [sic.] retirees and their families including Unions [sic.] & community orgs (ACORN).

I don't see anything in Section 164 that has anything to do with this.

Pg 72 Lines 8-14 Government is creating an health care Exchange to bring private health care plans under Government [sic.] control.

Government regulation does not equal government control. The bill proposes creating a Health Insurance Exchange and participating insurers will have to abide by the rules for those insurers, including providing minimum benefits as discussed above. This supplements the current system in which health insurance coverage is tied to your employer: loose your job, loose your coverage and God help you if you have a pre-existing condition when you try to get new insurance.

PG 84 Sec 203 HC bill - Government mandates ALL benefit packages for private health care plans in the Exchange

No, this is not true. The bill establishes minimum requirements (and sets pricing standards) for participating insurers. In a nutshell, there are four tiers of coverage--basic, enhanced, premium, and premium-plus--and participants must offer all plans beneath the top level of coverage that they offer. e.g., if you offer a premium plan, you have to offer both basic and enhanced plans as well. As I read the bill, an insurer can offer whatever it wishes under premium-plus plans so long as it plays by the rules for its basic, enhanced, and premium plans.

PG 85 Line 7 HC Bill - Specifications for of Benefit Levels for Plans which means the Government [sic.] will ration your health care/Specifications of Benifit [sic.] Levels for Plans [sic.] like AARP member plans- your health care will be rationed

I certainly don't get this from p 85, line 7. I'll take up the notion of health care rationing another time (hint: it's already rationed and the folks doing the rationing do not exactly have your interests at heart).

PG 91 Lines 4-7 HC Bill - Government mandates linguistic appropriate services. Example - Translators for illegal aliens

Turns out to be a bad example since the bill explicitly prohibits government coverage of illegal aliens.

Pg 95 HC Bill Lines 8-18 The Government [sic.] will use groups i.e., ACORN & Americorps to sign up individuals for the Government [sic.] health care plan

Makes sense to me--if you develop a program like this you should promote it. And, sure, the government would likely consider ACORN (the boogey man of the right) for this roll--they are damned good at community outreach especially in communities that are otherwise hard to reach. Americorps would also be a good choice since it is, well, a government program. I'd think that religious groups would also be good candidates.

PG 102 Lines 12-18 HC Bill - Medicaid Eligible Individuals will be automatically enrolled in a national Medicaid program. No choice

A fine idea that will save a lot of money. The overwhelming majority of people who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled aren't enrolled because they don't know they are eligible. These are exactly the kind of patients who, for example, present at emergency rooms on the verge of diabetic coma because they haven't been receiving regular health care.

More later . . .

Obama's Veto Threat Spikes F-22 Purchases

Question: How hard is it to stop Congress from blowing a couple billion bucks on a weapons system the Secretary of Defense, Air Force brass, President and pretty much the entire defense community agree is a complete waste of money?

Answer: Damned near impossible.

Why Michael Vick Should Never Play Pro Ball Again

The New York Times has a story today about the uncertainty surrounding Michael Vick's returning to the NFL. For those of you who don't recall, Vick was convicted in December of 2007 for running a dog fighting ring based at a property he owned in rural Virginia. The dog fights that Vick sponsored and trained animals for were either fights to the death or "surrender" of one dog, in the case of the latter animals were "euthanized" by such humane measures as shooting, hanging, and drowning.

My first reaction to the possibility of once again being a highly paid athlete, hero, and role model for kids was outrage. Then I stopped to wonder why I was so outraged. After all, professional athletes and entertainers get caught doing all sorts of horrible things and many return to their former careers after a stint in the pokey. Why should it be any different for Michael Vick?

I think that there are two reasons.

First, Vick wasn't caught in a single "oops", but rather was convicted of maintaining a side business whose purpose was to abuse dogs for the fun and profit of his friends in colleagues. This isn't the equivalent of being caught with a hooker, it is getting caught running a whore house. Second, what Vick was doing was in his mind a sport. For a person to engage in this sort of activity in this sort of thing and believe it to be a sport while at the same time earning a living as a professional athlete is perverted.

This man should never see the inside of a professional football stadium again.

A Friend Asks about Health Reform

A conservative friend of mine sent me the following email this morning:

Tell me what’s wrong with this idea:

• Mandate that any employer offering health insurance must also offer the job without the insurance (ie at a higher take home rate) [this would very likely motivate people to go for the dollars and buy their own insurance, insurance that is likely to be true catastrophe insurance not an expensive maintenance contract]
• Mandate that everyone should carry a minimum level of catastrophe level insurance [like auto]
• Set up safety net to cover low income folks with the subsidy calculated based on market rate of minimum catastrophe insurance rates and the subsidy progressive, ie lower subsidy as one’s income approaches the trigger (eg, $75k) and higher as income goes lower

In my mind, people would finally be cost sensitive to insurance, deductibles and medical care; insurance policies would develop away from employers and control of care would remain with doctors/patients.

I think that these are all good suggestions that would drive costs down. There are a few things missing, however.

First, there is no provision for pre-existing conditions which is one of the biggest problems in the current system. A second and related point is that you would not only have to compel people to buy insurance, but also compel insurers to provide it to everyone at a reasonable price.

Imagine that someone with a nasty pre-existing condition--say, diagnosis of pancreatic cancer--and goes to Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Texas and asks to buy catastrophic care insurance. BC/BS will correctly see this person as a ticking time medical cost time bomb. At a minimum this is a person who is looking at an expensive course of treatments with a highly specialized oncologist and also likely one or more complicated and expensive surgeries (perhaps even organ transplant). I could easily imagine that the expected short-term tab for this person's health care would run into hundreds of thousands of dollars and the administrative costs for BC/BS are also likely to be substantially higher than for their typical customer.

If BC/BS is going to sell this person a policy, it is going to be very, very, very expensive because they are not only insuring against unexpected events (this guy could also be in a serious auto accident or develop brain cancer) but also making projections about all but certain costs. In a single-payer system (and, to a lesser extent, with something like the "public option"), this individuals risk just gets priced into the overall risk of the insured pool, i.e., his insurance is subsidized.

A third point is that I think nudging toward catastrophic-care-only insurance is bad policy because it results in both worse health care outcomes and higher costs. For example, maintenance-level care for a diabetic is pretty cheap but catastrophic care (treatment for diabetic coma, renal failure, amputations, etc) is very expensive. We're all better off if diabetics have access to inexpensive, convenient maintenance treatment and policy should nudge in that direction.

Steven Pinker's "Blank Slate"

Just finished reading Steven Pinker's excellent book, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Here are some quick thoughts on it.

Pinker convincingly argues that the nature v nurture debate is all but over and that nature has won. As an adoptee who was raised in a home with a child who was subsequently born to my adoptive parents, this comes as absolutely no surprise to me. I also appreciated Pinker's take-no-prisoners approach to dealing with political critiques of the results of scientific research. He lambasts the political left for its attacks on sociobiology and excoriates the religious right for decrying modern theories of mind as unholy with equal vengeance.

Unfortunately, Pinker ventures into what seems clear to be unfamiliar territory for him when he moves away from science and toward the humanities. For example, he advances the empirically discredited theory that democracies don't fight wars argument several times in support of the claim that the more we know each other, the more civil we become and treats a very simplistic and utilitarian view of the nature of justice as a given. More disappointing--given his core argument that there is such a thing as human nature--he seems to be completely unaware of Marx's arguments for man's inherent nature as a maker of things and a social creature.

Senate Intel Committee Pushing for More Transparency

Spencer Ackerman catches a late-Friday-afternoon release from the Senate Intelligence Committee about the 2010 intel-funding bill. The bill includes new disclosure provisions that are likely to ruffle feathers in the intel community, including a requirement that all members of Congress be briefed on the "features" of briefings received by the "Gang-of-Eight".

A lot hinges on the interpretation of "features", but this has the potential to bring some much needed sunlight. One of the peculiarities of the Gang-of-Eight briefing process is that members are not allowed to discuss anything on which they were briefed, including things that are public knowledge. Un-briefed members clearly can't be held to this standard since, well, they weren't briefed. Just knowing that there has been a briefing on, for example, detainee treatment could be enough to get some members asking the kinds of questions that might have made the path to Guantanamo much more difficult.

Amazon's Kindle Caper

David Pogue reports in today's New York Times:

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

Apparently, the publisher of these books decided that they didn't want to sell electronic versions after all. Amazon's response was not merely to stop selling these books, but to delete them from the Kindle's of people who had already purchased copies and credit their Amazon accounts for the purchase price.

This is outrageous. There are times when a book may be worth far more to you than you originally paid for it. An extreme case is textbooks: imagine discovering the night before a major exam that the textbook you had purchased has disappeared from your Kindle. Less extreme but annoying, imagine you are half way through a Kindle book that you are reading on a beach vacation, and it vanishes between your morning and afternoon chill time under the palapa. This is going to hurt Amazon more than I think they realized.

Oh, the author of the books that disappeared? George Orwell. Fitting.