Vox Sentences: Europe and Greece reach deal to reach another deal in the future

1. Athenian technocracy

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, before they became mortal nemeses. (Carsten Koall/Getty Images)

• Greece and Germany made a deal!

  [NYT / Liz Alderman and James Kanter]

• Greece's bailout — financed by other Eurozone states, prime among them Germany — will be extended four months, less than the six Greece had initially requested.

  [Reuters / Jan Strupczewski and Renee Maltezou]

• The catch: Greece has to submit a list of proposed economic reforms by Monday, which the European Commission, European Central Bank, and IMF will evaluate.

  [WSJ / Gabriele Steinhauser, Viktoria Dendrinou, and Matthew Dalton]

• The deal gives those three groups — the "Troika" — a lot of power over Greek economic policy; Greece commits to "refrain from any rollback of measures and unilateral changes to the policies and structural reforms that would negatively impact fiscal targets, economic recovery, or financial stability, as assessed by [bailout monitors]."

  [FT / Peter Spiegel]

• That's a huge concession by Greece's left-wing ruling party, Syriza, but it gives them room to propose reforms different from those required by the current bailout agreement (provided, of course, the Europeans let them).

• Here's the announcement of the agreement, annotated ("On the plus side, you get to pick your own austerity.")

  [Genius / Lorcan Roche Kelly]

• It's a big win for the Europeans, but a temporary one: Greece can still push for a more favorable longer-term deal in four months.

• Greece often gets cast as the irresponsible party here, but the Europeans are demanding it run a surplus for a decade or more, which is basically impossible.

  [Bloomberg / Brendan Greeley]

• During the crisis, capital controls were often mentioned as an alternative to Greece leaving the euro. Here's how that policy works, in case four months from now Greece ends up needing it.

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

2. Fun with tax season

The top of a form 1040 individual income tax return. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

• The federal government sent 800,000 people who got health care from Healthcare.gov inaccurate tax documents.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• 50,000 of those people already filed (faulty) returns.

• The forms gave enrollees the wrong price of a "benchmark plan," defined as a mid-range health plan available through Healthcare.gov in a given area.

  [Kaiser Family Foundation / Cynthia Cox, Larry Levitt, Gary Claxton, Rosa Ma, and Robin Duddy-Tenbrunsel]

• A wrong benchmark plan price can lead tax filers to misestimate how much in the way of insurance subsidies they're eligible for.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• This only happened to people in the 37 states using Healthcare.gov; states running exchanges solo weren't affected by this particular glitch.

  [National Journal / Sam Baker]

• But there have been similar problems with state-level exchanges; California mailed 100,000 incorrect health coverage forms this year, or one in eight of all the forms it send out.

  [AP / Judy Lin]

• In other Obamacare tax news, the administration is opening a "special enrollment period" for people who, while doing taxes, discover they're facing a penalty for not having health coverage.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

3. Arresting the mayor

Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, speaks during a demonstration in support of Mayor Antonio Ledezma on February 20, 2015. (Federico Parra/AFP/Getty)

• The mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, has been arrested, "accused by President Nicolás Maduro of abetting what he called an American plot to overthrow the government."

  [NYT / Girish Gupta and Frances Robles]

• Maduro claims Ledezma tried, with the US and other conspirators, to arrange an attack on the presidential palace using an Air Force jet.

  [CNN / Catherine Shoichet]

• The State Department, naturally, denied the accusations, saying: "The United States does not support political transitions by non-constitutional means."

  [State Department / Jen Psaki]

• Maduro's human rights record has worsened over the past year or so, imprisoning opposition leader Leopoldo López, cracking down on protests, and engaging in torture, according to Human Rights Watch; Daniel Wilkinson, Americas director at HRW, told the Financial Times: "We have never been this worried about Venezuela."

  [FT / Andres Schipani]

• Domestic conditions are terrible in general; the homicide rate is among the highest in the world.

  [Huffington Post / Roque Planas]

• Meanwhile, the collapse in oil prices has wrecked Venezuela's economy; there is massive inflation (officially in excess of 60 percent, probably even higher in reality), a recession, and food shortages.

  [The Guardian / Sibylla Brodzinsky]

• Maduro, who barely won a special election in 2013 after ascending to the presidency upon Hugo Chávez's death, has a 22 percent approval rating, according to a recent poll.

  [Los Angeles Times / Mery Mogollon and Chris Kraul]

4. Misc.

• Harley Quinn was supposed to be a one-off character in Batman: The Animated Series; now she's the best-selling female character in comics.

  [NY Mag / Abraham Riesman]

• One big sign the Democratic consensus on economics has moved left: Larry Summers and Robert Rubin are talking about how we need much more redistribution and more powerful unions.

  [Next New Deal / Mike Konczal]

• The Center for American Progress and the Koch brothers are teaming up to work on criminal justice reform.

  [NYT / Carl Hulse]

• The case for lines: "A world where there is nothing to wait in line for is arguably a less interesting place."

  [NYT / Tyler Cowen]

• The American working class is migrating to the suburbs; how do organizers adapt to that? (My favorite suggestion: have cities annex the suburbs outright.)

  [Jacobin / Karen Narefsky]

• The music theory, biographical context, and visual aesthetics of Taylor Swift's "Style" video, explained.

  [Vox / Kelsey McKinney and Joe Posner]

5. Verbatim

• "How can Hillary Clinton stand up and tell Carson he doesn't know what it takes to escape poverty?"

  [Vox / Jenée Desmond-Harris]

• "Alejandro González Iñárritu is a pretentious fraud, but it's taken some time to understand the precise nature of his fraudulence."

  [The Dissolve / Scott Tobias]

• "Garrett emphasized that he has taken no campaign donations from the knife industry."

  [Washington Post / Rachel Weiner]

• "Lenovo sold its soul to the devil and forgot to get much of anything in return. Homer Simpson would’ve made a better Faustian bargain."

  [Slate / David Auerbach]

• "She has that terrible British strength that makes you wonder how they ever lost India."

  [Moss Hart on Julie Andrews via Vanity Fair / Alex Witchel]

• "'It's crazy. It's like saying that you're really worried about your cocaine addiction, and so you've decided to just do all the blow you have on hand so that it's not there to tempt you anymore,' replied one political writer, who asked for anonymity in case that hastily constructed metaphor didn't land."

  [Huffington Post / Jason Linkins]

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