Clip File: Lieberman

On Tuesday, Sen. Joe Lieberman announced that he will join a Republican filibuster against health care reform if it includes a public option provision. The Democrats would get more respect if they had the courage and integrity to dump the self-righteous hypocritical fraud.

Lieberman Twists the Knife by Robert Scheer (truthout 2009-10-30)
Top 15 Lieberman Betrayals: Joe's Worst Double-Crosses by Rachel Weiner (Huffington Post 2009-10-27)
Lieberman vs Sanders (Single Payer Action 2009-10-29)
Lieberman Marching Further Right in 2010: Former Dem Veep Candidate Plans to Campaign for GOP by Jonathan Karl (ABC News 2009-10-30)
Jon Stewart Takes On Media, Lieberman Over Public Option (The Daily Show/Comedy Central 2009-10-28)
Backpfeifengesicht = Lieberman by Norman Lear (Huffington Post 2009-10-30)

Backpfeifengesicht. Really. Look it up.

Health Care Reform: Lack of Insurance May Have Figured In Nearly 17,000 Childhood Deaths, Study Shows

Under the various proposals being considered by Congress, health care coverage is likely to be universal or nearly so. But will it be affordable? Unless the new system is single-payer, or at least includes a robust public option -- consumer option, as Speaker Pelosi is calling it now, it will not save money and the number of deaths will continue to be needlessly high.

This press release from the John Hopkins Children's Center (2009-10-29) provides background on the problem:

Lack of health insurance might have led or contributed to nearly 17,000 deaths among hospitalized children in the United States in the span of less than two decades, according to research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, the study, published Oct. 29 in the Journal of Public Health, is one of the largest ever to look at the impact of insurance on the number of preventable deaths and the potential for saved lives among sick children in the United States.

Using more than 23 million hospital records from 37 states between 1988 and 2005, the Johns Hopkins investigators compared the risk of death in children with insurance and in those without. Other factors being equal, researchers found that uninsured children in the study were 60 percent more likely to die in the hospital than those with insurance. When comparing death rates by underlying disease, the uninsured appeared to have increased risk of dying independent regardless of their medical condition, the study found. The findings only capture deaths during hospitalization and do not reflect deaths after discharge from the hospital, nor do they count children who died without ever being hospitalized, the researchers say, which means the real death toll of non-insurance could be even higher.

"If you are a child without insurance, if you're seriously ill and end up in the hospital, you are 60 percent more likely to die than the sick child in the next room who has insurance," says lead investigator Fizan Abdullah, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric surgeon at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

The researchers caution that the study looked at hospital records after the fact of death so they cannot directly establish cause and effect between health insurance and risk of dying. However because of the volume of records analyzed and because of the researchers' ability to identify and eliminate most factors that typically cloud such research, the analysis shows a powerful link between health insurance and risk of dying, they say.

"Can we say with absolute certainty that 17,000 children would have been saved if they had health insurance? Of course not," says co-investigator David Chang, Ph.D. M.P.H. M.B.A. "The point here is that a substantial number of children may be saved by health coverage."

"From a scientific perspective, we are confident in our finding that thousands of children likely did die because they lacked insurance or because of factors directly related to lack of insurance," he adds.

Given that more than 7 million American children in the United States remain uninsured amidst this nation's struggle with health-care reform, researchers say policymakers and, indeed, society as a whole should pay heed to their findings.would

"Thousands of children die needlessly each year because we lack a health system that provides them health insurance. This should not be," says co-investigator Peter Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., director of Critical Care Medicine at Johns Hopkins and medical director of the Center for Innovations in Quality Patient Care. "In a country as wealthy as ours, the need to provide health insurance to the millions of children who lack it is a moral, not an economic issue," he adds.

In the study, 104,520 patients died (0.47 percent) out of 22.2 million insured hospitalized children, compared to 9, 468 (0.75 percent) who died among the 1.2 million uninsured ones. To find out what portion of these deaths would have been prevented by health insurance, researchers performed a statistical simulation by projecting the expected number of deaths for insured patients based on the severity of their medical conditions among other factors, and then applied this expected number of deaths to the uninsured group.

In the uninsured group, there were 3,535 more deaths than expected, not explained by disease severity or other factors. Going a step further and applying the excess number of deaths to the total number of pediatric hospitalizations in the United States (117 million) for the study period, the researchers found an excess of 16,787 deaths among the nearly six million uninsured children who ended up in the hospital during that time.

Other findings from the study:

More uninsured children were seen in hospitals in the Northeast and Midwest than in the South and West. However, hospitals from the Northeast had lower mortality rates than hospitals from the South, Midwest and West. Insured children on average incurred higher hospital charges than uninsured children, most likely explained by the fact that uninsured children tend to present to the hospital at more advanced stages of their disease, which in turn gives doctors less chance for intervention and treatment, especially in terminal cases, investigators say. Uninsured patients were more likely to seek treatment though the Emergency Room, rather than through a referral by a doctor, likely markers of more advanced disease stage and/or delays in seeking medical attention. Insurance status did not affect how long a child spent overall in the hospital.

The research was funded by the Robert Garrett Fund for the Treatment of Children.

Co-investigators in the study include Yiyi Zhang, M.H.S.; Thomas Lardaro, B.S.; Marissa Black; Paul Colombani, M.D.; Kristin Chrouser, M.D. M.P.H.

Change Watch: Obama signs bill that will hide torture pictures

The Homeland Security appropriations bill President Obama signed into law last week includes a provision authorizing the Defense Department to continue to conceal photos documenting the torture and abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody, according to reporting in The Washington Independent.

The American Civil Liberties Union had specifically sought those photos, and sued to get them, among other documents relating to detainee abuse, in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The exemption signed, however, is much broader than simply the photos sought in the lawsuit. It would apply to any other photos taken between Sept. 11, 2001 and Jan.22, 2009 that the Secretary of Defense has certified would, if released, endanger U.S. citizens, servicemen, or employees overseas.

President Obama had agreed to release the photos, but changed his mind after consulting with DOD secretary Robert Gates and others at the Pentagon, who warned the photos would endanger U.S. servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan by making the Afghan resistance fighters mad at us.
New York Rep. Louise Slaughter defends the Freedom of Information Act during the debate over releasing photographs of American personel abusing detainees.

The provision was the inspiration of Sen. Joe Lieberman (it almost goes without saying) specifically to thwart the ACLU suit. Although a federal appeals court last year ordered the government to produce the unclassified photos, ruling that the Freedom of Information Act can’t be trumped by citing unspecified dangers to unspecified potential targets of the anger that the information may produce, the government refused to release the pictures and appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court. The bill signed Wednesday was supported by nearly all Democrats, despite including the language weakening the FOIA and attempting to get around both lower court rulings and any similar future judgment by the high court.

Leadership: Obama has a "West Wing" moment

President Obama flew to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the return of remains of 18 U.S. personnel killed in Afghanistan, "the first president to do this since 9/11." In addition to signaling that he is prepared to assume the full burdens of his office in ways his predecessor was not, it also suggests that, whatever he concludes about ending or expanding the AfPak war, his deliberations will be more than a session of "Risk 2010."

Labor: US Steelworkers to Experiment with Factory Ownership

"...job creation, but with a new twist. Since government efforts were being stifled by the greed of financial speculators and private capital was more interested in cheap labor abroad, unions will take matters into their own hands, find willing partners, and create jobs themselves, but in sustainable businesses owned by the workers."

The rest of the story: 'One Worker, One Vote:' US Steelworkers to Experiment with Factory Ownership, Mondragon Style by Carl Davidson (SolidarityEconomy 2009-10-27)

The Media: Amy Goodman

by Bill Moyers (truthout 2009-10-27)

Amy Goodman's new book is "Breaking the Sound Barrier." (Photo: Riza Falk/flickr)

This is Bill Moyers's introduction to Amy Goodman's latest book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," published by Haymarket Books.

You can learn more of the truth about Washington and the world from one week of Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now!" than from a month of Sunday morning talk shows.

Make that a year of Sunday morning talk shows.

That's because Amy, as you will discover on every page of her new book, "Breaking the Sound Barrier", knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power. Like I. F. Stone, she values the facts on the ground; unlike the Sunday beltway anchors, she refuses to take the official version of reality as the definition of news, or to engage in Washington's "wink-wink" game, by which both parties to an interview tacitly understand that the questions and answers will be framed to appear adversarial when in fact their purpose is to avoid revealing how power really works. Quick: recall the last time you heard a celebrity journalist on any of the Sunday talk shows grill a politician on what campaign contributors get for their generosity. Try again: name any of those elite interrogators who skewered any politician for saying that "single-payer" wasn't on the table in the debate over health care reform because "there's no support for it." OK, one last chance: recall how often you have heard any of the network stars insist that Newt Gingrich reveal just who is funding his base as the omnipresent expert on everything.

See?

Now read "Breaking the Sound Barrier" for a reality check. And tune in to "Democracy Now!" to hear and see the difference an independent journalist can make in providing citizens what they need to know to make democracy work.

It takes the nerves, stamina and willpower of an Olympic triathlete to do what Amy Goodman does. That's just who she is, this quiet-spoken tornado of muckraking journalism: Edward R. Murrow with a twist of Emma Goldman, a Washington Post reporter once noted - willing to take on the powers that be to get at truth and justice, then spreading the word of those two indispensable gospels to the republic and the world beyond. Amy Goodman goes where angels fear to tread. Beaten by Indonesian troops while she and a colleague - also beaten - were covering East Timor's fight for independence. Hiking dangerous African deltas to get to the bottom of Chevron Oil's collusion with the Nigerian military. Or closer to home, in New Orleans or Appalachia or facing down the police when her colleagues were arrested in Minneapolis during the 2008 Republican National Convention (they threw her in the slammer, too).

Through her reporting, we hear from people who scarcely exist in news covered by the corporate-owned press. We learn about issues of war and peace and social wrong. She is impervious to government subterfuge or spin. "Goodman is the journalist as uninvited guest," that Washington Post reporter wrote. "You might think of the impolitic question; she asks it." And once it's been asked, she refuses to take "no comment" for an answer. She returns to a story time and again, continually digging, refusing to let her audience or investigative target forget how important it is to nail down just who's responsible and what needs to be done.

On top of everything else, she finds time to take her message out to a broad public with speeches and books and a weekly newspaper column, from which her collection of essays, "Breaking the Sound Barrier," has been selected. I'd be envious if it didn't appear unseemly. Let's just say I'm in awe. Read this collection and revel in the truth-telling. Be outraged by what you learn from it and renew your oath as a citizen. "We stand with journalists around the world who deeply believe that the mission of a journalist is to go where the silence is," Amy Goodman said in December 2008 when she accepted the Right Livelihood Award for personal courage and transformation. "The responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful." And, at a time when the future of journalism is in question, this ringing rationale for our embattled but essential craft: "It's the best reason I know for us to carry our pens, our microphones, and our cameras, both into our own communities and out to the wider world."

Right on.

"As an organization, truthout works to broaden and diversify the political discussion by introducing independent voices and focusing on undercovered issues and unconventional thinking."

Clip File: Is Afghanistan Obama's Vietnam?

"It was always a bad year to get out of Vietnam." -- Daniel Ellsberg

Here's Newsweek speculating at the beginning of this president's term. The analogy between the two adventures, the authors say, isn't exact. But in the months since this analysis was written, it has become only clearer that the U.S. has neither a coherent plan nor a convincing rationale for opposing the Taliban and that there are no good choices for moving forward.

About a year ago, Charlie Rose, the nighttime talk-show host, was interviewing Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the military adviser at the White House coordinating efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have never been beaten tactically in a fire fight in Afghanistan," Lute said. To even casual students of the Vietnam War, his statement has an eerie echo. One of the iconic exchanges of Vietnam came, some years after the war, between Col. Harry Summers, a military historian, and a counterpart in the North Vietnamese Army. As Summers recalled it, he said, "You never defeated us in the field." To which the NVA officer replied: "That may be true. It is also irrelevant."

Vietnam analogies can be tiresome. To critics, especially those on the left, all American interventions after Vietnam have been potential "quagmires." But sometimes clichés come true, and, especially lately, it seems that the war in Afghanistan is shaping up in all-too-familiar ways. The parallels are disturbing: the president, eager to show his toughness, vows to do what it takes to "win." The nation that we are supposedly rescuing is no nation at all but rather a deeply divided, semi-failed state with an incompetent, corrupt government held to be illegitimate by a large portion of its population. The enemy is well accustomed to resisting foreign invaders and can escape into convenient refuges across the border. There are constraints on America striking those sanctuaries. Meanwhile, neighboring countries may see a chance to bog America down in a costly war. Last, there is no easy way out.

The rest of the story: Obama's Vietnam by John Barry and Evan Thomas (Newsweek 2009-01-31).

Other links:

"....If counterinsurgency, according to current doctrine, is all about securing the population, if securing the population implies not simply keeping them safe but providing people with good governance and economic development and education and so on, what then is the requirement of a global counterinsurgency campaign?...Are we called upon to secure the population of the entire globe? Given the success we've had thus far in securing the population in Iraq and in Afghanistan, does this idea make any sense whatsoever?" -- Interview with Col. Andrew Bacevich, Ret. (Frontline 2009-09-21)

Obama's Choice - Failed War President or the Prince of Peace? by Nick Turse (TomDispatch 2009-10-22): "While the armed forces can do many things, the one thing that has generally escaped them is that ultimate endpoint: lasting victory." (see, also: The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives by Nick Turse, an expose of the pervasive impact of the military-industrial-entertainment complex on the, uh, homeland)

Another indication of the moral bankruptcy of American policy: "The US military in Afghanistan is to be allowed to pay Taliban fighters who renounce violence against the government in Kabul," although it could be argued that those willing to be bribed will probably feel more comfortable in the company of the corrupt Karzai narcogarchy, anyway. -- U.S. to pay Taliban to switch sides (BBC News 2009-10-28)

More troops? Seriously: Troops In Afghanistan Outnumber Taliban 12-1 by Slobodan Lekic (Huffington Post 2009-10-27)

And, finally, a rare act of principle by a U.S. government functionary: U.S. official resigns over Afghan war: Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting by Karen DeYoung (Washington Post 2009-10-27)

quote unquote: W.E.B. Dubois on action

"Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow,
not some more convenient season.
It is today that our best work can be done
and not some future day or future year.
It is today that we fit ourselves

for the greater usefulness of tomorrow."

-- W.E.B. Dubois

Health Insurance: Long-term care

 The Next Big Health Care Reform Fight

What finally kills people -- financially, physically, psychologically, metaphorically -- is trying to figure out how to pay for long-term medical expenses. According to the government, one year of care in a nursing home, based on the 2008 national average, costs over $68,000 for a semi-private room. A year of home care, assuming the need for periodic personal help from a home health aide (the average is about three times a week), costs almost $18,000 a year. While conservatives have been preoccupied with saving Americans from having socialized medicine foisted on them by Commissar Obama, it hasn't completely escaped their attention that an even more nefarious insurance program -- a plan to create public insurance for long-term care that would have the government interceding to prevent citizens in long-term care from being driven bankrupt or crazy by medical bills -- has been sneaking through Congress.

The proposal is known as the CLASS Act, short for Community Living Services and Support. The idea has been around for years, and the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) pushed to have the measure included in the health-care overhaul package that passed the Senate health committee in July. A similar measure was also adopted by voice vote in one of the three House committees handling health care.

This diabolical, morale-destroying scheme would be, get this, "available to anyone, including those who are already disabled." Similarly to Comrade Reid's public option plan for the states, people would be strong-armed into the program automatically, unless, of course, they themselves chose to opt out, and would pay a premium in exchange for insurance against "the cost of home care, adult day programs, assisted living or nursing homes after they had been enrolled for at least five years. Premiums and benefit levels would be set by federal health officials," you know, bureaucrats, "but advocates predict that the program would provide beneficiaries with a minimal sum, around $75 a day" (you do the math).

(Okay, I'll do it: $68,000/yr. comes to a little less than $5,700/mo. $75/day adds up to roughly $2,250/mo. Rounding off generously on both ends, you still end up with a gap of $3,000/mo or $36,000/yr. Considering that the annual median household income is around $50,000 -- and much lower for many seniors and anyone unable to work because they're in need of long-term care, under the best of circumstances the program isn't going to head off a lot bankruptcies).

The proposal has gained momentum in recent days as Democrats in both the House and Senate cast about for cash to help finance a final health package. Because the program would begin taking in premiums immediately but would not start paying benefits until 2016, congressional budget analysts have forecast that it would generate a nearly $60 billion surplus over the next 10 years, cash that would help the larger measure's balance on paper.

Predictably, the usual antis -- "including the Congressional Budget Office and the American Academy of Actuaries," a group I know I rely on for political judgments, especially around Halloween -- have popped up with dire warnings about spiraling costs. Descending into self-parody, Sen. Kent Conrad called the CLASS Act "a Ponzi scheme of the first order, the kind of thing that Bernie Madoff would have been proud of," and he vowed to block its inclusion in the Senate bill. As befits a member of the people's house, Rep. Earl Pomeroy, also a Blue Dog Dem, admitted there is a problem that needs addressing, but warned the solution would require some tough decision-making, of which he avowed he is capable, "not some provision cooked up by advocacy groups at the last hour" (see, "idea has been around for years," above).

"It is not a Ponzi scheme," said Larry Minnix, president of the American Association of Homes and Services for the Aging, which represents nonprofit providers and is one of more than 200 consumer and other groups supporting the legislation. "It is a consumer-funded insurance pool that provides people a cash benefit to help with simple chores of daily living so they can remain independent."

Oh, sure. Who're you going to believe, some non-profit consumer activist Little Goody Two-Shoes or a seasoned, tough decision-making legislative adept beefed-up like Popeye on the carloads research spinach trucked in to Washington every day by the insurance industry out of the goodness of their hard little hearts?

The rest of the story: Proposed long-term insurance program raises questions by Lori Montgomery (Washington Post 2009-10-27)

Clip File: The Empire Strikes Out

Welcome to 2025 - American Preeminence Is Disappearing Fifteen Years Early

"...So, welcome to the world of 2025. It doesn't look like the world of our recent past, when the United States stood head and shoulders above all other nations in stature, and it doesn't comport well with Washington's fantasies of global power since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. But it is reality.

"For many Americans, the loss of that preeminence may be a source of discomfort, or even despair. On the other hand, don't forget the advantages to being an ordinary country like any other country: Nobody expects Canada, or France, or Italy to send another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, on top of the 68,000 already there and the 120,000 still in Iraq. Nor does anyone expect those countries to spend $925 billion in taxpayer money to do so -- the current estimated cost of both wars, according to the National Priorities Project.

"The question remains: How much longer will Washington feel that Americans can afford to subsidize a global role that includes garrisoning much of the planet and fighting distant wars in the name of global security, when the American economy is losing so much ground to its competitors? This is the dilemma President Obama and his advisers must confront in the altered world of 2025."

The rest of the story: Welcome to 2025 - American Preeminence Is Disappearing Fifteen Years Early by Michael T. Klare (TomDispatch 2009-10-27)

Clip File: too big to fail = too big to survive

Whether it's using the antitrust laws or enacting a new Glass-Steagall Act, the Wall Street giants should be split up -- and soon.

And now there are five - five Wall Street behemoths, bigger than they were before the Great Meltdown, paying fatter salaries and bonuses to retain their so-called 'talent,' and raking in huge profits. The biggest difference between now and last October is these biggies didn't know then that they were too big to fail and the government would bail them out if they got into trouble.

Now they do. -- Robert Reich

The rest of the story: Too Big to Fail: Why the Big Banks Should Be Broken Up, but Why the White House and Congress Don't Want to by Robert Reich (Robert Reich's Blog 2009-10-25)

Clip File: The inevitability of an American single-payer health system

"Amidst the ideological back and forth that is the health care reform debate of 2009, recent studies reveal a growing reality that each of us can easily understand, no matter what our ideological point of view.

"It will not be long until the private health insurance model will no longer work – for anybody.

"It’s got nothing to do with public options or single payer advocates just as it will have nothing to do with those prepared to defend America from socialism at all costs.

"The simple fact is that single-payer, government controlled health care is inevitable because the trajectory of the private health insurance system reveals that it is doomed to fail – and sooner than we might realize."

The rest of the story: The inevitability of an American single-payer health system by Rick Ungar (True/Slant 2009-10-20)

Change Watch: Leaderless -- Senate Pushes For Public Option Without Obama's Support

"Who knew that when it came down to crunch time, Harry Reid would be the one who stepped up to the plate and Barack Obama would shy away from the fight?"

The rest of the story: Leaderless -- Senate Pushes For Public Option Without Obama's Support by Sam Stein and Ryan Grim (Huffington Post 2009-10-24)

Action: Let Harry Reid know you support his effort to include a public option.

Health Care: Public option endgame

I'm down with flu, but I wanted to make sure you saw this updating of the status of the public option:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Take action: Contact your representatives in Congress to let them know you want a robust alternative to private health care insurance.

Clip File: Pensions -- The Next Casualty of Wall Street

"Nobody wants to admit it, but the next casualty of the Wall Street meltdown will probably be your golden years. For years corporations have been trying to choke the life out of traditional pensions, working hard to get out from under the risk-and the cost-of providing for their retirees. Between last year's credit crunch and changes to federal pension laws, they may get their wish.

"Nearly $4 trillion worth of retirement savings were wiped out in the first weeks of the 2008 financial freefall. Half of the drop was concentrated in traditional pension plans, also known as defined-benefit plans. While most workers in these plans haven't had their monthly benefits cut, unlike the 46 million people riding the stock market with 401(k) defined-contribution plans, the storm clouds are gathering."

The rest of the story: Pensions -- The Next Casualty of Wall Street by Mark Brenner (Labor Notes 2009-10-23)

The Media: The White House plays 3-Card Monte

The Obama Administration's War on Fox News is such a weird, over-the-top distraction and side show, it's hard to think that it's not an intentional distraction and side show (Democrats Urged to Stay Off Fox - The Wrap). Any chance that the White House hopes to divert the attention of Democrats from its failure to achieve much of anything nearly a year after the election that was going to change everything?

(bail out the banks) "ATTACK FOX" (no public option) "BLAME FOX" (expand Afghan war) "FOX IS NOT A NEWS ORGANIZATION" (trash habeas corpus and legal representation) "BAN FOX" (throw out treaties) "FIRE BECK" (defy Congress) "TURN OFF FOX" (undermine the Constitution) "FOX IS AN ARM OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY" (nullify laws with signing statements) "FOX FOX FOX and FOX"

White House spokespeople are saying that the Prez won't condescend to appear on Fox News until at least 2010. And MoveOn.org is slavishly trying to get the rest of the party to "stay off FOX for as long as he does." Call me old fashioned, but I can't help but think how much better off the country would be if Alan Grayson, Marcy Kaptur, Anthony Weiner, Russell Feingold, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, Lynn Woolsey, Patty Murray, Jack Reed, Pete DeFazio, Jim McDermott, Jerry Nadler, Pete Stark and every other member of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party took any opportunity to go on Fox and every other media outlet to give the good folks tuning in as much access to the truth as possible. You can't really blame Obama, Emanuel, Pelosi, Reid, Baucus, et al, if they'd rather have progressives chasing Foxers than bothering their little heads over such lesser matters as the war in Oilistan or the country's desperate need for affordable, universal health care. The White House can carry on about Faux News as much as it wants, however, but nobody is going to be fooled. It wasn't Bill O'Reilly who declared Medicare-for-All "off the table," nor is it Sean Hannity sending troops to Afghanistan.

This is not say that Fox is a responsible news operation, or any kind of news operation at all. It gives nothing to Fox, though, to wish the White House would focus on governing and leave the political fisticuffs to others. Plenty of sharp Democrats, journalists and others are ready and willing to take Fox on, as MediaMatters does in this video compilation rebroadcast on MSNBC:

Health Care: We Can Have Obama's Staggeringly Complex Plan to Save the Insurance Industry

Or we can have Medicare for All.

See: The Simple Solution to the Health Care Crisis: Medicare for All by Dave Lindorff (CounterPunch 2009-07-24)

Change Watch: War on Terror II

The Obama administration makes reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place.

"We know the rules by now, the strange conventions and stilted Kabuki scripts that govern our cartoon facsimile of a national security debate. The Obama administration makes vague, reassuring noises about constraining executive power and protecting civil liberties, but then merrily adopts whatever appalling policy George W. Bush put in place. Conservatives hit the panic button on the right-wing noise machine anyway, keeping the delicate ecosystem in balance by creating the false impression that something has changed. We've watched the formula play out with Guantánamo Bay, torture prosecutions and the invocation of 'state secrets.' We appear to be on the verge of doing the same with national security surveillance.

"Last week, the Senate Judiciary Committee seemed to abandon hope of bringing any real change to the Patriot Act. A lopsided and depressingly bipartisan majority approved legislation that would reauthorize a series of expanded surveillance powers set to expire at the end of the year. Several senators had proposed that reauthorization be wedded to safeguards designed to protect the privacy of innocent Americans from indiscriminate data dragnets--but behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the Obama administration ensured that even the most modest of these were stripped from the final bill now being sent to the full Senate."

The rest of the story: 'War on Terror' II by Julian Sanchez (The Nation 2009-10-19)

Democracy: 23 Proposals to Revitalize the US Constitution

I find myself unpersuaded by many of Larry Sabato's 23 Proposals to Revitalize the US Constitution. Drawn from his book, A More Perfect Constitution, where they are well-argued, they are certainly worthy of consideration. To my mind, though, he gives too little emphasis to rebuilding accountable institutions (labor unions, political parties, community groups), and it strikes me that some of the ideas he embraces where adopted have turned out to have unintended consequences: term limts, for example, meant to encourage frequent rotation of office (the political value of that goal escapes me, but never mind) has in practice tended to increase the power of bureaucracies and lobbies, not an outcome Sabato desires, I think. I have no disagreement, however, with his basic premise that our political system is seriously in need of reform. Here's the list:

Congress:

1. Expand the Senate to 136 members to be more representative: Grant the 10 most populous states 2 additional Senators, the 15 next most populous states 1 additional Senator, and the District of Columbia 1 Senator. [See, Democracy: How do we achieve One Person One Vote? (Impractical Proposals 2009-10-09)]

2. Appoint all former Presidents and Vice Presidents to the new office of “National Senator.”

3. Mandate non-partisan redistricting for House elections to enhance electoral competition.

4. Lengthen House terms to 3 years (from 2) and set Senate terms to coincide with all Presidential elections, so the entire House and Senate would be elected at the same time as the President.

5. Expand the size of the House to approximately 1,000 members (from current 435), so House members can be closer to their constituents, and to level the playing field in House elections.

6. Establish term limits in the House and Senate to restore the Founders’ principle of frequent rotation in office.

7. Add a Balanced Budget Amendment to encourage fiscal fairness to future generations.

8. Create a Continuity of Government procedure to provide for replacement Senators and Congresspeople in the event of deaths or extensive incapacitation.

Presidency:

9. Establish a new 6-year, 1-time Presidential term with the option for the President to seek 2 additional years in an up/down referendum of the American people.

10. Limit some Presidential war-making powers and expand Congress’s oversight of war-making.

11. Give the President a line-item veto.

12. Allow men and women not born in the U.S. to run for President or Vice President after having been a citizen for 20 years.

Supreme Court:

13. Eliminate lifetime tenure for federal judges in favor of non-renewable 15-year terms for all federal judges.

14. Grant Congress the power to set a mandatory retirement age for all federal judges.

15. Expand the size of the Supreme Court from 9 to 12 to be more representative.

16. Give federal judges guaranteed cost of living increases so pay is never an issue.

Politics:

17. Write a new constitutional article specifically for the politics of the American system.

18. Adopt a regional, staggered lottery system, over 4 months, for Presidential party nominations to avoid the destructive front-loading of primaries.

19. Mend the Electoral College by granting more populated states additional electors, to preserve the benefits of the College while minimizing the chances a President will win without a majority of the popular vote.

20. Reform campaign financing by preventing wealthy candidates from financing their campaigns, and by mandating partial public financing for House and Senate campaigns.

21. Adopt an automatic registration system for all qualified American citizens to guarantee their right to vote is not abridged by bureaucratic requirements.

Universal National Service:

22. Create a Constitutional requirement that all able-bodied young Americans devote at least 2 years of their lives in service to the country.

National Constitutional Convention:

23. Convene a new Constitutional Convention using the state-based mechanism left to us by the Framers in the current Constitution.

Although intended to advance democracy, some of these proposals strike me as anti-democratic.  Why should former leaders who have lost the confidence of the citizenry, a Jimmy Carter, say, or a George W. Bush, be restored to a degree of power by lifetime appointment to the Senate? (And vice presidents?  Makes you wonder for a minute if Sabato is kidding.) Unless you adopt other "reforms"  -- regional qualifications?  race and gender quotas? -- it's difficult to see why additional  justices would make the Supreme Court any more representative. Term limits actually limit the power of voters to decide who will represent them. A balanced budget amendment would restrict the ability of future generations to deal flexibly with crises like the current financial meltdown (and why not deficit-finance infrastructure projects, if it is intended that future generations will reap the benefits?). The line-item veto is a direct attack on representative democracy.

In making his case, Sabato, who is founder of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, is a good deal more subtle, cogent and persuasive than he comes across in outline. The reforms he suggests reflect the values he believes are already present in the Constitution: pragmatism, flexibility, fairness, the quest for equality and for justice. Whether his particular suggestions are the best ones to achieve a more perfect constitution, they are commendably thoughtful and well articulated.

Maybe, eventually, a constitutional convention will be needed to get the American experiment back on course. In the meantime, there are more limited actions -- serious campaign finance reform, an amendment to retire the electoral college, weekend voting, instant run-offs, proportional representation -- that will tend to make the system more responsive and accountable. The struggle for reform has just begun. The debate will continue. The road to go is long. A More Perfect Constitution makes a good start.

Source: "23 Proposals to Revitalize the US Constitution," from A More Perfect Constitution: Ideas to Inspire a New Generation by Larry J. Sabato.

Economic Justice: The Corporation

Corporations have no soul to be saved, no body to be incarcerated, thus they are difficult to motivate toward good. When they were delivered to life by the Supreme Court, they became "people," but what kind of people are they? If the financial meltdown -- or Michael Moore -- has piqued your interest in the workings of capitalism, this three-hour documentary will blow your stocks off.

"You'd think that things like disasters, or the purity of childhood, or even milk, let alone water or air, would be sacred. But no. Corporations have no built-in limits on what, who, or how much they can exploit for profit. In the fifteenth century, the enclosure movement began to put fences around public grazing lands so that they might be privately owned and exploited. Today, every molecule on the planet is up for grabs. In a bid to own it all, corporations are patenting animals, plants, even your DNA. Around things too precious, vulnerable, sacred or important to the public interest, governments have, in the past, drawn protective boundaries against corporate exploitation. Today, governments are inviting corporations into domains from which they were previously barred." -- from the website.

Clip File: Effects of Military and Domestic Spending on U.S. Employment

"This study focuses on the employment effects of military spending versus alternative domestic spending priorities, in particular investments in clean energy, health care and education. We first present some simple alternative spending scenarios, namely devoting $1 billion to the military versus the same amount of money spent on clean energy, health care, and education, as well as for tax cuts which produce increased levels of personal consumption. Our conclusion in assessing such relative employment impacts is straightforward: $1 billion spent on each of the domestic spending priorities will create substantially more jobs within the U.S. economy than would the same $1 billion spent on the military. We then examine the pay level of jobs created through these alternative spending priorities and assess the overall welfare impacts of the alternative employment outcomes."

The rest of the story: The U.S. Employment Effects of Military and Domestic Spending Priorities: An Updated Analysis by Robert Pollin and Heidi Garrett-Peltier (Foreign Policy in Focus 2009-10-09).

Resource: Low -Tech Magazine

With a slogan like "Doubts on technology," it's not surprising that Low-Tech Magazine "refuses to assume that every problem has a high-tech solution." The topics give away the game: the history and future of industrial windmills, homes heated by burning tires, water-powered cable trains, the hidden costs of digital technology, "A world without trucks: underground freight networks" and "Life without airplanes : reintroducing ocean liners." Low-Tech Magazine offers fascinating, practical alternative thinking about technology and its uses.

Health Care Reform: What is to be done?

On last night's MSNBC Countdown, Keith Olbermann looked at the Senate health care reform bill, the prospects of the public option, Sen. Reid's leadership, and with Florida Democratic Rep. Alan Grayson the need for public action if reform is to succeed.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here's former governor Howard Dean on the same subject:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So what should the public do? Olbermann ends by quoting Frederick Douglas: "Agitate. Agitate. Agitate."

Clip File: Bullet Trains for America?

"The Obama administration has revived the dream of building high-speed rail lines to rival those of Japan and Europe, but the tracks are littered with political and financial obstacles." -- Bullet Trains for America? by Mark Reutter (The Wilson Quarterly)

Can we get more people to take the stairs by making it fun?

Health Care: Single-payer may be on life-support, but it's not dead yet

It's do or die time for Medicare for All!

Although media coverage of the health care reform debate is focused on the Senate finance (Baucus) committee's bill (which was largely drafted by current and former executives at Wellpoint, the nation's largest private health insurance company and the dominant member of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association), several congressional votes on single-payer Medicare for All are imminent.

Sometime in the next two or three weeks, Rep. Anthony Weiner's (D-NY) amendment that would substitute single-payer legislation (along the lines of Rep. John Conyers' HR 676, which has deep support in the House) for the Democratic leadership's bill, HR 3200, will come up for an up-or-down vote on the House floor. In addition, a provision in HR 3200 that was secured by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) allowing individual states to adopt their own single-payer systems will be challenged by representatives of the insurance industry. Meanwhile, in the upper body, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) will introduce two single-payer amendments to the Senate bill, one to create a national single-payer plan and the other to allow individual states to adopt single-payer.
Action: Contact Congress and ask them to vote "yes" on the Weiner, Kucinich, and Sanders amendments for single-payer. Go here to call Congress for free: the site matches your zip code to your representatives, provides a simple call script, and is toll-free. Or, call the congressional switchboard directly at 202-224-3121.

Rep. Anthony Weiner's CountdownToHealthcare.com
Read the Kucinich and Weiner amendments
Senate Finance Committee Approves Sen. Baucus' Health Care Bill
by 14-9 Vote -- Snowe the only Republican to vote yes; Wyden and Rockefeller vote yes reluctantly by Huma Khan, Byron Wolf and Jonathan Karl (ABC News 2009-10-13)
Why we must vote on the public health care plan by Rep. Anthony Weiner (Politico 2009-07-22)
New twist in Washington gives public option backers some hope by Daniel Barlow (The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus 2009-10-13)

Health Care: Rep. Alan Grayson keeps up the pressure for real health care reform

Speaking for the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, Florida Democrat Alan Grayson reminds his colleagues of the life-and-death urgency of reforming health care insurance to make it universal, portable, affordable and cost-saving.
He appeared Friday on MSNBC's Countdown.
In an aside, as the White House and the Democratic House and Senate election committees begin their biennial search for Blue Dogs like Kirsten Gillibrand to run against progressives in the primaries, Grayson offers the reminder, too often ignored by party moderates, that "You can NOT beat a Republican by being one."

Grayson Watch:
Health Care: Something needs to be done about Alan Grayson (Impractical Proposals 2009-10-01)
Health Care: Democrat feeds the GOP a bitter pill (Impractical Proposals 2009-09-30)
The Fed: Geithner wants to let the foxes run the chicken coop (Impractical Proposals 2009-09-11)

Change Watch: Door Opens to Health Claims Tied to Agent Orange

It's about time:

Under rules to be proposed this week, the Department of Veterans Affairs plans to add Parkinson’s disease, ischemic heart disease and hairy-cell leukemia to the growing list of illnesses presumed to have been caused by Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant used widely in Vietnam.

The proposal will make it substantially easier for thousands of veterans to claim that those ailments were the direct result of their service in Vietnam, thereby smoothing the way for them to receive monthly disability checks and health care services from the department.

The rest of the story: Door Opens to Health Claims Tied to Agent Orange by Janes Dao (The New York Times 2009-10-13)

Clip File: 4 Supreme Court Cases That Will Say a Lot About the Direction of Our Country

Would a Human Sacrifice TV Channel be protected by the First Amendment? This and other key questions will be answered this term.

"As the Supreme Court kicked off its new season last week with a brand new justice on the bench, the cases on the docket provided a fascinating glimpse into the judicial soul of the country.

"In the first days alone, there were cases involving dog fighting, a controversial cross on public land, and a number of prickly criminal justice issues.

"The months to come will test laws on some of the most controversial issues of our time, including guns, sex offenders and the uniquely American question of whether teenagers can be sentenced to life without parole. The outcomes will tell us a lot about the future direction of the Roberts court, and what it might mean to have Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the bench."

The rest of the story: 4 Supreme Court Cases That Will Say a Lot About the Direction of Our Country by Liliana Segura (AlterNet 2009-10-12)

Clip File: The West’s 21st Century War in Afghanistan Risks Regional Conflagration

"Today we focus on Afghanistan, but the battle is broader. Every nation has a choice to make. In this conflict, there is no neutral ground..." -- President George W. Bush, announcing the attack against Afghanistan on October 7, 2001

On October 7 the United States’ and NATO’s war in Afghanistan entered its ninth year. The escalating conflict has over the past year become indistinguishable from military operations in neighboring Pakistan where the U.S. and NATO have tripled deadly drone missile attacks and the Pakistani army has launched large-scale offensives that have displaced over 3 million civilians in the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with the province of Baluchistan the next battle zone.

On September 29 the U.S. conducted four drone attacks in Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency in twenty four hours and during the past year has fired over 60 missiles into the area causing more than 550 deaths.

Three days later the Pentagon announced 72 more American military deaths in the fifteen-nation Operation Enduring Freedom, Greater Afghan War theater – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Cuba (Guantanamo Bay Naval Base), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, the Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey and Yemen – bringing the official total to 774.

The U.S. Department of Defense and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) acknowledge that so far this year 406 foreign soldiers have been killed, the bulk of which, 240, are American.

On the eight anniversary of the beginning of the war, however, an authoritative Russian news source estimated that overall “The United States has…lost 1,500 servicemen, while its allies have lost several hundred.”

The rest of the story: Afghanistan: West’s 21st Century War Risks Regional Conflagration by Rick Rozoff (Stop NATO 2009-10-12)

Health Care Reform: What's the difference between "the public option" and Medicare for All?

The opponents of reform have sown considerable confusion about the differences between single-payer health care -- Medicare for All -- and the various health care reform alternatives, including the so-called public option, being debated in the House and Senate. Here are some more resources to help clarify the difference:
Report Card for Single-Payer and “Public Option” (pdf)
More of the Same Is Not Health Care Reform, It’s a Placebo by Leonard Rodberg, PhD
Hold out for single payer by Nick Skala
Bait and switch: How the “public option” was sold by Kip Sullivan
The “Public Plan Option”: Myths and Facts
Health Policy Q & A with PNHP Co-founders Drs. David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (pdf)
Tell them why they’re wrong when they say single-payer is not politically viable! (pdf)
Dr. Len Rodberg, of Physicians for a National Health Program, made a great presentation on single-payer and the public option at a teach-in in New York City. Download Len Rodberg’s slide show (ppt)

And here's a rap kicker.
It's not over 'til it's over. Contact your representatives and let them know you want Medicare for All.

Sonameme further reading about the public option:
Trigger Happy (Time 2009-11-18)
One-Two Punch: Unemployed and Uninsured (Families USA 2009-10)
The House Public Plan: Yes, It's Worth It (The New Republic 2009-11-05)
Trigger Unhappy: What Experience Can Teach Us About Why We Should Not Delay the Implementation of Public Plan Choice by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost (Washington and Lee University)
Trigger Unhappy (The New Republic 2009-11-22)

AfPak: A war of choices

Let's say you're president of the United States and you've just won the Nobel prize for peace. Naturally, you convene a meeting of your war council, where your national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, estimates the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan as follows:

"The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies."

Do you

a) declare you've won and return the troops home,
or
b) ramp up the war and focus it on al-Qaida?

If you're Barack Obama, apparently, you choose b). In fact, according to various reports out of Washington, the president's military advisers are limiting his choices to escalating the war a little and escalating it a lot. The Age reports

Obama will determine how many more US troops to deploy to Afghanistan based only on keeping al-Qaeda at bay.

General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, is believed to have presented Obama with a number of options, ranging from adding as few as 10,000 troops to as many as 40,000.

Missing from the options, of course, are "none" and "return home."

Actually, according to The Wall Street Journal, one of McChrystal's options called for more than 60,000 additional troops, and some officials said the maximum number was even larger. McChrystal is said to be worried that some of Mr. Obama’s senior advisers believe that the Taliban are not a direct threat to the United States. Because it would be hard to justify sending an army more than 100,000 strong in pursuit of a criminal gang that probably numbers less than 100.

The rest of the story: US to switch focus from Taliban to al-Qaeda by Philip Elliott (The Age 2009-10-11)
In the Afghan War, Aim for the Middle by Richard N. Haass (The Washington Post 2009-10-11)
Obama Hears General’s Troop Request for Afghanistan by Peter Baker (The New York Times 2009-10-09)
Afghan War Debate Now Leans to Focus on Al Qaeda by Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt (The New York Times 2009-10-07)

Must read: A War of Absurdity by Robert Scheer (TruthDig 2009-10-06)

Economics: Common sense Nobel

by Jamie Bartlett

This month's most surprising Nobel Prize winner was not Barack Obama but Elinor Ostrom, a political scientist from the University of Indiana who picked up the coveted Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science.

Not only is Ostrom the first female recipient, she is also not an economist. For the past 20 years, the Prize has been dominated by financial economists for their work on weird and wonderful sounding things like "option pricing formula" (Robert Merton, 1997 winner). When the financial markets were inflating the bubble, that was fine. But the Nobel panel clearly gets the zeitgeist. Awarding this year's prize to someone like Robert Engle (the 2003 winner who came up with a new formula for predicting volatility in financial markets) would seem rather odd after the biggest financial meltdown in the modern era. Ostrom, on the other hand, is the perfect choice. Her life has been dedicated to understanding humans can live sustainably with our environment. And coming just a month before the Copenhagen Summit on climate change, it couldn't be more topical.

Ostrom has been entirely devoted to understanding one thing: managing what are known as common pool resources. Common pool resources are resources that are ‘non-excludable' (it is impossible to prevent individuals from using them) and "rival" (use by one individual means that there is less available for next). In other words, no one really owns them, and we can all use them to destruction. Farming on a public field or fishing in common waters are the classic examples. The problem is this that is in everyone's interests to limit usage to ensure there are enough cod in the North Sea for the stock to replenish. But, left to our own devices, we will all over fish and exhaust these finite resources, and all be worse off for it.

Why does this happen? Suppose I am concerned about my carbon emissions and decide to walk to work rather than drive. I alone bear the costs of this altruism - getting wet, arriving to work late and so on. But everyone, including people who still drive, benefit just as much as me from the reduction in emissions and congestion that my act of civic duty afforded. I am left with what the economist calls the "sucker's pay-off" - all the costs and just a fraction of the benefit. And because no one can be excluded from enjoying the "positive externalities" of my sacrifice, (known as free-riding), I conclude, quite rationally, that driving to work is the best strategy, and wait for some other sucker to act first. So does everyone else.

Our environment is the biggest and most important common pool resource we have. But apply the logic to installing solar panels, taking a coach to southern France rather than a cheap flight, or taking my rubbish to the recycling point. Then multiply it by 60 million people. Then by six billion. The result is that we are unable to act together to achieve our mutual goals and all rush, quite sensibly and entirely rationally, towards ruin. In 1968 Garrett Hardin rather beautifully dubbed it the "tragedy of the commons".

Traditionally, there have been two major approaches to getting ourselves out of this rather unfortunate spot and they dominate political debate to this day. The first is the oldest of all: a government with coercive powers forcing us to act enforcing restrictions. A Leviathan that can manage the resource for us, setting limits on fishing for example, thereby forcing us to cooperate for the common good. The second is to harness the power of the market: privatise common-pool resources so the selfish farmer bears the cost of his actions, rather than passing it on to society. The economist calls this "internalizing the cost of the externality" - and so he then has an incentive to manage his consumption more wisely. In environmental terms, carbon trading is the obvious example, the "polluter pays" principle.

More than anyone else, Ostrom sought out and theorised a third way, based on the assumption that we do have the psychological and socio-moral capacity to find our way out of this unhappy malaise without coercion. In her classic work Governing the Commons (1990), she showed how across the world communities of people have been able to come together to manage collective resources sustainably, "who" as she puts it "are in an interdependent situation and can organize and govern themselves to obtain continuing joint benefits when all face temptations to free-ride, shirk, or otherwise act opportunistically." In one famous example, Swiss Alpine cheese-makers with a grazing commons for their cattle managed to govern it sustainably with a simple rule - if you got three cows, you can pasture them in the commons, provided you carried them over from last winter - but you can't bring new cows in just for the summer. The community simply polices itself. Everyone knows whose cow is whose and no one transgresses the rule. This is what Ostrom calls polycentric governance.

Her work suits the times. It also has huge practical resonance for any number of local small-scale collective action problems. Her hopes that she would "shatter the convictions of many policy analysts that the only way to solve common pool resource problems is for external authorities to impose full private property rights or centralized regulation" has more than been realized. Her design principles of how to collectively manage resources have been applied all over the world, with the emergence of civic-led groups coming together off and on-line to get things sorted without government intervention. Not only that, Ostrom deserves great praise for the way she conducts the research itself, developing theories in the field by studying people's behavior, rather than generating a-historical models about human nature from a library. All in all, few would begrudge her the Nobel Prize.

And yet as the Copenhagen Summit approaches, some caution is needed. The relevance of Ostrom's award to the Summit - which hopes after all to deal with the greatest collective-action problem the world has ever seen - is widely noted. The timing itself is conspicuous. However, as Ostrom quite openly admits, the conditions for mutual collective management in the way she describes are quite restrictive - it tends to take place in small communities, with high visibility, high social capital, and clear enforceable sanctions. These conditions are certainly not met in a world of six billion people.

Therefore, I hope that Ostrom's work will be taken for what it is - proof that not every common pool problem can be best solved by government or market. But Ostrom herself has always been vocal that many collective action problems do need government enforcement. And when it comes to climate change, we don't have time to experiment with a multitude of potentially interesting civic led options; because we can't really afford to fail. The real task for Copenhagen will be to figure out where Ostrom's insights can be used - often together with government and the market incentivising collectively responsible behavior - and where only the clunking fist of national government legislation will do.

Jamie Bartlett is head of the independence program at the think tank Demos.
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See, also: The Commons: From Tragedy to Celebrity (United for a Fair Economy 2009-10)

You Gotta Laugh: Colbert on Brother Beck

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bend It Like Beck
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Michael Moore

Democracy: How do we achieve One Person, One Vote?

The  so-called Gang of Six -- three conservative Democrats and three conservative Republicans on the Senate finance committee -- have been struggling for months without much luck to devise a health insurance reform plan acceptable to them all. Together representing less than 3% of the U.S. population, they were selected by the White House to forge the chimerical "bipartisan" reform package that was somehow to gain legitimacy by encompassing the values of the party that lost the last congressional and presidential elections instead of merely reflecting the will of the majority. Why these six conservatives, an equal number of them Republicans despite the outcome of the last election, were picked instead of a full spectrum of democratically chosen representatives is one for the history books, but the result so far is that the Senate has had before it a series of proposals far less extensive than polls indicate is desired by voters.

The harebrained elevation of the Gang of Six to the status of super-senators reflects a bigger problem that confounds and constricts our democracy: the Senate itself is a surpassingly undemocratic institution. Born in 1787 of a necessary compromise between the larger and smaller states, the upper house was created to protect the less populous entities from being overwhelmed in the national legislature by those that had more people. At a time when no one thought of himself as an American, it made sense to protect the political sovereignty of the "state" that did hold a person's allegiance.

The nation and the concept of democracy under which it operates have evolved enormously since then; it is no longer tolerable, let alone necessary, to permit vast differences in the value of the individual franchise. The concept represented by the phrase "one person, one vote" is the accepted measure by which we judge democracy today. By that standard, no institution that allots equal power to .5 million citizens in Wyoming and 36.5 million citizens in California, to take one example, can by any reasonable measure be called democratic. The existence of the Gang of Six is emblematic of the sorts of mischief that follow from stunting democracy.

The most efficient way to deal with the Senate would be to get rid of it. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention originally envisioned a Congress consisting of a single chamber but ran into a wall over representation. Delegates from the larger, more populous states wanted the Virginia Plan, which called for the number of each state's representatives to be based on population. Delegates from smaller states liked the New Jersey plan, under which each state would select an equal number of delegates. Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut proposed a "bicameral" legislature as a compromise; the Congress would have two chambers, one representing the people, the other the states. Now that the impasse that engendered the Senate is long past, the simplest solution would be to revert to the unicameral model.

In a country as conservative as ours, though, it may not be possible make such a seemingly radical change. If we haven't even been able to eliminate a dysfunctional relic like the electoral college, how likely is it that we will throw out the Senate, no matter how profoundly it violates democratic ideals? We ought to do what we can, however, to make the body more democratic. The smallest step would be to remove one senator from the 16 least-populous states and grant an additional senator to the 16 with the most citizens. Under such a plan, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia, Washington, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Indiana would have three senators each; Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, South Dakota, Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming would each have one. The other 18 states would continue to have two senators.

Depending how strongly we revere democracy, for most of us this plan wouldn't go nearly far enough, of course. While more fair and equitable than the current arrangement, it would still vastly tilt power toward the inhabitants of small and rural states. If this configuration were adopted, each of those folks in Wyoming would still be worth 32 Californians, although that's a considerable improvement over 72-1; it would take five California senators to Wyoming's one to cut the disproportion in representation to 14-1; and you would need 72 California senators to one from Wyoming to approach the ideal of One Person One Vote.

Simpler just to dump it.

The Long War: Afghanistan solution

Although there is a need for public pressure on policy-makers, an expansion of the war in Afghanistan will be prevented and a solution to the imbroglio eventually found by realistic members of Congress. Here is California Representative Mike Honda writing on The Hill about one effective program.

With Washington talking about U.S. troops surging in Afghanistan, and with Kabul coordinating its post-election game plan, now is the time to ensure that an alternative aid approach is front-and-center (lest it get tabled again). We know what works in reconstructing and stabilizing this fractured country. The model has spread to all 34 Afghan provinces. It is the National Solidarity Program (NSP), operated out of Afghanistan’s Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development. What stands in its way, however, is the lack of international political and economic wherewithal to sufficiently scale up.

The NSP has become the darling of many members of Congress in Washington. Stories of its efficacy abound: Schools built by the NSP were sheltered from Taliban torching while more expensively built schools by the U.S. Agency for International Development faced attack. Nods to the NSP — including a congressional series on Afghanistan and Pakistan sponsored by the Progressive Caucus, which I co-organized — have been circulating on Capitol Hill as part of an 80-20 campaign rooted in U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. The 80-20 strategy, stemming from the Department of Defense’s counterinsurgency manual, recommends that 80 percent of efforts be diplomatic, political and economic, with military at 20 percent. The NSP, many members of Congress think, should be an integral part of that 80 percent.

The rest of the story: Afghanistan solution by Rep. Mike Honda (The Hill 2009-10-08)

The Bailout: TARP -- threat or menace?

Neil Barofsky, the inspector general of TARP, is nearly as outraged about the mishandling of the bailout as you are.  MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan interviews:
Compare the haste with which our leaders facilitated the theft of $24 trillion of our money with the reluctance of the same exalted personages to spend a fraction of that amount on our health. A hundred or so years ago, our great-grandfathers would have gotten a few neighbors together, driven the wagon to town, burned down the banks, and tarred and feathered the congressman. What're we going to do instead?

See, also: Geithner 'Ultimately Responsible' For AIG Missteps (NPR 2009-10-14)

Health Care Insurance Reform: To do it right will require raising revenues

In order to bring the cost of health insurance reform below the $900 billion limit imposed arbitrarily by the White House, the House of Representatives may have to cut government subsidies for low- and middle-class families unable to afford the mandated insurance. The amount of coverage that people will be required to buy may also have to be reduced. In other words, the mandated insurance would be less affordable and less effective than is called for now. If coverage is to be truly universal and affordable, finding new revenues makes more sense than raising the cost and lowering the coverage for those the legislation is intended to help. The House bill as it stands is about $1.2 trillion. Some House Democrats think a windfall profits tax on the revenue boost insurance companies will get from the bill would be only fair. Others want to raise taxes on people making more than $300,000 a year to help pay the bill's costs. Either is a better idea than cutting subsidies or limiting benefits.

Clip File: More Collateral Damage from the Siegelman Case

This is old news, but like the undead, the policies of the Bush administration have a brutal afterlife.

"...During Bush's tenure, the Justice Department also became politicized to an unprecedented degree.

"One of the most visible among the hundreds of political prosecutions was former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. A Democrat and the only Alabamian to have served in all four of the top state elected positions, he was a choice target of Karl Rove. After several unsuccessful attempts, Gov. Siegelman was convicted of corruption and sentenced to prison. He is presently out as he awaits his appeal. Ninety-one former US Attorneys of both parties have asked President Obama, AG Holder and DOJ to reexamine Siegelman's case....

"Tamarah Grimes was a paralegal working with the prosecution in the case against Don Siegelman. She contacted House Judiciary Committee Chairman Conyers and the DOJ about the prosecutorial misconduct of Alabama US Attorney Leura Canary and her team. For her pains, Grimes was chastised, intimidated, and ultimately fired, her reputation trashed. To add insult to injury, she was denied health insurance and they're trying to rescind her unemployment benefits.

"This is particularly grievous for Grimes because she was the sole breadwinner in her household and her health insurance policy covered her disabled son. Grimes was terminated just eight days after sending a letter to AG Holder, laying out her concerns about the Siegelman case. Her firing will surely have a stifling effect on any other DOJ employees contemplating similar actions. Unemployed and uninsured, she is on the brink of financial ruin. Tamarah may be bloodied but she is also unbowed. She seeks no one's pity."

No doubt Rep. Conyers is looking into Tamarah Grimes predicament and Siegelman's case. How about AG Holder? Has anyone apprised Pres. Obama of what is happening on his watch? How long will this farce be allowed to run?

The rest of the story: More Collateral Damage from the Siegelman Case – Talking with DOJ Whistleblower, Tamarah Grimes by Joan Brunwasser (OpEdNews 2009-10-08).

Further reading: CBS: More Prosecutorial Misconduct in Siegelman Case by Scott Horton (Harper's 2009-02-24)
The Siegelman Case (The New York Times 2009-04-25)
Prosecutors Resort to Fabrications in Siegelman Case (Legal Schnauzer 2009-09-01)
Whistle-Blower Claims in Siegelman Case Unfounded, Office Says by Stephanie Woodrow (MainJustice 2009-10-05)

Health Care Insurance Reform: 30 senators sign letter backing public option

"In the past, it's been House Democrats who've been most vocal in supporting the public option. Now, Senate Democrats are getting on the bandwagon.

"30 Democratic senators (really, 29 Democrats and one independent who caucuses with them, Vermont's Bernie Sanders) joined together on Thursday to send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in which they ask him 'for your leadership on ensuring that the merged health reform bill contains a public insurance option.'"

The rest of the story: 30 senators sign letter backing public option (Salon 2009-19-08)

Clip File: Are Mainstream Media Covering 21st Century Freedom Riders Fighting For Health Care Civil Rights & Ending Wars?

"There are heroes in America -- people who are doing today what the Freedom Riders did in the 1960's -- challenging unjust laws and face arrest for taking a stand. In the 60's they were fighting for racial equality. Today, they fight against inequality in access to health care and against an out of control military adventurism and wars that shouldn't have been started and that should not be continued....

"Imagine how much less effective Martin Luther King jr., Rosa Parks and John Lewis would have been if there was no media coverage of their civil disobedience. Believe me, they planned those acts carefully to maximize media coverage.

"Media coverage amplifies the effectiveness of the protests. Police threats and intimidation make it harder for the media to cover protests and cover the arrests. That sabotages the effectiveness of the demonstrators who are literally putting their freedom on the line, going through the process of getting arrested, handcuffed, put in a police van or bus, fingerprinted, mug-shotted, fined and sometimes charged with crimes -- usually charges that are unsupportable and ultimately dropped.

"Now, with major decisions being made about whether or not to continue the Afghan war and whether or not to give health care to all Americans, it is time of incredible opportunity to employ the non-violent political strategies used so effectively by MLK and Ghandi. And the mainstream media can help or throw away this opportunity."

The rest of the story: Are Mainstream Media Covering 21st Century Freedom Riders Fighting For Health Care Civil Rights & Ending Wars by Rob Kall (OpEdNews 2009-10-08)