Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Weekly Pulse: Obama To Promote Health Plan at Summit (11:05 am)
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
On Monday, the White House released its plan for health care reform, which resembles the Senate bill with additional concessions for liberals and labor unions. Tomorrow, President Obama will hold a televised health care summit. Obama is billing the summit as a last-ditch attempt to solicit Republican ideas for health care reform. In fact, he’s hoping to give the GOP enough rope to hang itself.
It takes two…
As Katrina vanden Huevel argues in the Nation, bipartisanship takes two parties, but the Republicans have refused to negotiate unless health care reform starts over from scratch. That’s not bipartisanship, that’s showboating. President Obama is giving the Republicans one last chance to waste the entire country’s time so that he can point to the sorry spectacle and say, “Look, what they made us do.”
In other words, the White House has finally accepted what progressives have been saying for months: There’s no way to pass an acceptable health care reform without using the budget reconciliation process to circumvent the filibuster.
What’s in the White House plan?
What does the White House want for health reform? Kevin Drum of Mother Jones summarizes some highlights of the Obama plan: Increasing premium subsidies for working families; delaying the so-called “Cadillac” tax on expensive health plans and increasing the threshold at which plans are subject to tax; and empowering the Department of Health and Human Services to crack down on exploitative premium hikes, like the 39% increase recently announced by Anthem of California.
In AlterNet, Byard Duncan points to a lesser-known but important facet of the president’s plan, reviving the Indian Health Care Improvement Act—which would modernize the Indian health care system, which serves 1.9 million Native Americans and indigenous Alaskans, and not a moment too soon. American Indians are 3 times more likely to die of diabetes, 5 times more likely to die of alcoholism, and 6 times more likely to die of tuberculosis than any other ethnic group. If Obama’s plan is approved, the Indian Health Service (IHS) will get a 13% budget increase to address these and other... read more
posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | 1 comment
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Weekly Audit: The Global Economic Crisis (11:30 am)
By Zach Carter, Media Consortium Blogger
Over the past thirty years, Wall Street has waged a steady war against governments around the globe, convincing policymakers of various ideological stripes that whatever raises profits for bankers and traders will be good for the rest of society. It’s a very simple and appealing portrait of how the world works. Unfortunately, it’s completely wrong.
Profiting from hunger
In an interview with AlterNet’s Terrence McNally, economic luminary Raj Patel explains the connection between widespread global poverty and wild Wall Street profits. Markets are defined by a set of rules—if those rules completely disregard social welfare, then the participants in those markets will ignore them as well. When traders can make a quick buck speculating on the price of rice, they will, even if that speculation drives up the price of a basic necessity and makes people go hungry.
We’ve known this for a long time, but as Patel illustrates, governments have allowed financial bigwigs to rewrite the basic rules of the road so that Wall Street can extract profits from anything—even hunger. That process created several crises in the developing world over the past few decades, and has now ravaged the economies of the United States and Europe. As Patel notes:
By basically gaming the system with regulations — that they authored — which encouraged a certain kind of playing fast and loose with the numbers, it was possible through some creative accounting for huge amounts of systematic risk to be kicked off into the future and ignored. And of course when the catastrophic risk was realized, everyone ran for the hills and started demanding public support.
Financial turmoil in Greece
This political sleight-of-hand is demonstrated by the looming fiscal crisis in Greece. As Richard Parker explains for The Nation, Goldman Sachs colluded with prior Greek administrations to hide the nation’s fiscal situation from both its own citizens and investors (Parker is an adviser to current Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou). Goldman was not interested in fair play—it was interested in making money off of the Greek government in any way it could. If that... read more
posted by Zach Carter | start the discussion
Monday, February 22, 2010
Weekly Mulch: Green Products, Green Energy (1:43 pm)
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Some people live off the grid, eat local food, and have an energy footprint so minuscule that even the canniest hunter couldn’t track them down. But the rest of us buy from supermarkets, get our energy from at least in part from traditional sources like coal, and occasionally forget to turn off the lights when we leave the house. For those of us who are still living with one foot in the old energy world, here are a few helpful hints about what you should buy and what the consequences of shifting to “clean energy” sources like natural gas and nuclear energy are.
Green consumption
Mother Jones’ Julia Whitty points out a useful tool for correcting any misconceptions about how green a company actually is. It’s an assessment that graphs public perception of a company’s environmentalism against its practices. Besides making sure you’ve got the right idea about Starbucks or Nike, Whitty writes, “You can also get a pretty good sense of how sectors perform in relation to other sectors: food and beverage, bad overall; technology, better overall.”
One of the biggest energy expenditures that many of us indulge in is airplane travel. Just one flight can enlarge your carbon footprint dramatically. Although flying may never be truly green, Beth Buczynski reports at Care2 that one airline is moving in the right direction. British Airways is planning the first “sustainable jet fuel” plant.
The plant will make a biofuel, which generally has plenty of drawbacks, but this one sounds pretty good. The company says it will source its raw materials from local waste management facilities and produce relatively harmless waste products.
Hot air from natural gas companies
But the hazards of many “clean energy” sources make going off the grid sound better and better. More and more information is coming out about the environmental hazards that accompany the mining of natural gas, one of Washington’s new energy fascinations. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report on natural gas late last week, and Kate Sheppard reports at Mother Jones that Halliburton, a major... read more
posted by Sara Laskow | start the discussion
Friday, February 19, 2010
Across the Pond, Another Bush-Era Torture Denial—and Revelation (12:28 pm)
Denial may be a contagious disease, as evidenced by the disturbing parallel between former President George W. Bush and Jonathan Evans, head of the UK’s MI5 security service: Both denied using torture.
Given the recent revelation that Evans knew about CIA torture tactics used on Binyam Mohamed—despite parliamentary testimony to the contrary—it seems that Britain’s loyalty to the United States is more important than its defense human rights.
Mohamed, an Ethiopian-born British resident and devout Muslim who traveled to Afghanistan in 2001 to live under the Taliban’s Islamic government, was arrested by U.S. forces in 2002 in Pakistan when he attempted to return to Britain. Authorities accused Mohamed of attending al-Qaeda training camps while in Afghanistan, and also believed he conspired with former Chicago resident and convicted terrorist Jose Padilla.
Mohamed, now 31, was detained and interrogated in Pakistan by American and British agents and then brought to Morocco, where he claims he was subjected to brutal torture. He then spent the next four years incarcerated at Guantanamo. Upon his release in February 2009, Mohamed accused the UK of harboring knowledge of torture techniques used against him—a charge now confirmed by the M15’s Evans.
On February 11, Evans wrote an article arguing that while protection of U.S. intelligence is of the utmost importance to Britain’s security, there was no such intelligence regarding Mohamed’s treatment while he was detained. “We did not practise mistreatment or torture then and do not do so now, nor do we collude in torture or encourage others to torture on our behalf,” he wrote in the Telegraph, a British newspaper.
Not so fast. As revealed by a British appeal court on Monday, it seems the MI5 head admitted knowledge of the CIA’s “new strategy” of tortured interrogations in 2008. He approached the British Intelligence and Security Committee with his confession after the group had already published a report based on previous MI5 leadership testimony that the UK was entirely unaware of the use of torture on American detainees.
Moreover, not only did MI5 agents have knowledge of the violence, but they actually assisted with Mohamed’s interrogation while... read more
posted by Diana Novak | start the discussion
Weekly Mulch: Nuclear Plants Will Go Up in Georgia (10:51 am)
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
If you were to look out to the horizon of the clean energy field right now, you would see the hazy outlines of nuclear reactors. President Barack Obama announced this week that two new nuclear plants will go up in Georgia, built on the promise that the federal government will guarantee $8.3 billion in loans—nearly the entire estimated cost of the project.
“It is a slap in the face to environmentalists,” says Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive. “Though these will be the first nuclear reactors constructed in more than three decades, Obama still labeled them, somehow, as part of the “technologies of tomorrow.””
The president’s announcement wasn’t the only environmental downer this week. Expectations for the next international climate negotiations, to be held in Mexico at the end of 2010, are already low, and yesterday Yvo de Boer, the United Nations’ top climate negotiator, said he would step down this summer and join the private sector. To top it all off, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) now faces sixteen lawsuits that would block its ability to decrease carbon emissions, including one backed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R).
A nuclear error
Although the Georgia reactors would be the first new nuclear construction in the country in decades, they mark the beginning of what the Obama administration hopes will be a shift towards nuclear energy. In the 2011 budget, President Obama proposed an expansion of the loan guarantee program that funds projects like these from $18.5 billion to $54.5 billion.
These nuclear projects deserve close scrutiny. At AlterNet, Harvey Wasserman details the problems with the Georgia reactors. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) already rejected the initial designs for the plant. That means the estimated cost could well exceed the projected $8.5 billion, which Wasserman says, was low at the start.
“Over the past several years the estimated price tag for proposed new reactors has jumped from $2-3 billion each, in some cases to more than $12 billion today,” he explains.
Risky business
In the past, energy firms like The Southern Company, the Atlanta-based group that is... read more
posted by Sara Laskow | start the discussion
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Weekly Pulse: Bayh-Partisanship=Giving Your Seat to a Republican (11:12 am)
By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium Blogger
You will be shocked, shocked to hear that a Blue Dog Democrat who made a career out of undermining his own party is sucker-punching them on his way out. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana abruptly announced this week that he would not seek reelection in November. Bayh’s departure is ratcheting up insecurity in the Democratic caucus at the very moment they need to take decisive action to pass health care reform.
Bayh could easily have won a third term, but it’s unclear whether any other Democrat can hold the seat. To add insult to injury, Bayh waited until 24 hours before the filing deadline for Democratic primary candidates, sending Indiana Dems scrambling to find a candidate to run in his place. Bayh’s tardiness was calculated. Since no Democrats were ready to file by the deadline, the Indiana Democratic establishment will get to handpick Bayh’s successor.
In a call with state Democratic officials, Bayh said his abrupt departure is for the best, as Evan McMorris-Santo reports for TPMDC. According to Bayh, he’s doing the party a favor by sparing them a contentious primary process. Thanks a lot.
What does this mean for health care reform?
What does Bayh’s departure portend for health care reform? Monica Potts of TAPPED argues that replacing a conservative Democrat like Bayh with a moderate Republican won’t make that much difference. Bayh was never a reliable Democratic vote.
But Tim Fernholtz of TAPPED dismisses this view as naive. Fernholtz predicts that, for all of Bayh’s faults, the senate will be much worse without him: “In essence, the difference between this insubstantial Hoosier and, say, [GOP hopeful] Dan Coats, is simple: You can buy off Bayh.” Bayh voted for health care reform and the stimulus, no Republican, no matter how “moderate” is going to vote that way.
Anyone who expects a moderate Republican from Indiana to support any part of the Democratic agenda is deluded. On the other hand, the Senate Democrats already passed their bill, their only remaining task would be to pass a “fix” through budget reconciliation to make changes in... read more
posted by Lindsay Beyerstein | start the discussion
Friday, February 12, 2010
Weekly Mulch: ‘Global Weirding’ vs. Climate Skeptics’ Slushy Thinking (10:49 am)
By Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium Blogger
Climate skeptics found plenty of reasons to dig out their dreary critiques this week, between the continuing controversy over erroneous reports from the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) and the record-breaking snowfall on the East Coast. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and his family built an igloo which Inhofe then dubbed “Al Gore’s house” in the streets of Washington, D.C. The Virginia GOP ran ads attacking the state’s Democratic representatives for their support of cap-and-trade and urged voters to “tell them how much global warming you get this weekend.” And skeptics across the world claimed that the smaller mistakes in IPCC reports undermined the organization’s broad conclusions on climate change science.
Let’s plow through this slushy thinking before it piles up too high.
Snow still happens in a warming world
In the winter, it snows, and one snowstorm does not overthrow all of climate science. “Perhaps it’s time for a refresher,” wrote Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones. “’Weather’ and ‘climate’ are not the same thing. Weather is what happened yesterday or may happen tomorrow; climate patterns occur over decades.”
“We can absolutely expect climate change to bring blizzards in places that don’t normally see a lot of blizzards, like Washington, D.C.,” chimes in Jonathan Hiskes at Grist. “Climatologists expect just this sort of ‘global weirding’: less predictable, more extreme, more damaging.”
Cold temperatures, even record lows, do not contradict the extensive body of evidence that global temperatures are rising. As Hiskes points out, erratic weather patterns support climate change theories, and the coming seasons will feature more newsworthy weather events. Chalk up the snowfall that shut down the federal government for almost a week as a bad sign, akin to harsh storms like Hurricane Katrina.
Climate science stands despite IPCC errors…
The IPCC messed up. The international organization is meant to gather and review the body of climate change science and produce definitive reports on that field. But in past reports, the organization included a few facts unsupported by real scientific research. Mother Jones’ Sheppard runs down these mistakes: the IPCC cannot back up its... read more
posted by Sara Laskow | start the discussion
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Conflict As Commodity (12:53 pm)
“Welcome to the world of strategic analysis where we develop weapons that don’t work to meet threats that don’t exist.”—Pentagon planner Ivan Selin, 1966
Thanks to Romania, those of you haunted by vague fears might finally get a so-so night’s sleep. It was claimed on a recent day, purportedly in Bucharest, that Romania has agreed to help ward off unspecified threats to indeterminate countries by allowing unproven U.S. anti-missile systems on its territory. With the alleged news, something like a sigh of relief is rumored to have wafted across various lands.
The proposal that Romania stand athwart the moot menace came, it is said, from President Obama. He had previously nixed the installation of a grander but more problematic missile defense in Poland that would have been reliant on radars based in the Czech Republic. That system would have putatively protected northern Europe, including Iceland and the Faeroes, from improbable assault by incipient Iranian rockets.
In writing ads, as I once did, basic products like salt and sugar are classified as commodities, meaning one brand is as good as another, and therefore minimally promoted. War has become a commodity in America. It used to be heavily advertised, with scary images and copy warning us of specific threats from certain countries or ideologies supposedly out to get us.
Gen. MacArthur put this eloquently back in 1957: “Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear—kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor—with the cry of grave national emergency…Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet in retrospect these disasters seem never quite to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.”
But that was many wars ago. By now the basing of troops and weapons at preposterous cost in remote parts of the world to meet nebulous threats has become quotidian. Resort to violence in yet another country unknown to most Americans is hardly noticed.
The Romanian deployment, relegated to the inside pages of the print press and all but... read more
posted by Pete Karman | 1 comment
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