The three of us -- the president of the United Steelworkers from Pittsburgh, a Corporate CEO now living in New York, and the former senior U.S. Senator from Michigan -- wrote in this space on August 5 about the jobless economic recovery we believe the nation is in, one in which, 20 months after this recession began, more than 18% of the nation's workers -- 30 million in total -- are still effectively unemployed and even the nation's full-time employees are working only an average of 33 hours a week.
Three-part Prescription
We offered a precise three-part prescription of what we feel needs to be done.
Part one calls for Congress and the administration to immediately enact an all-of-government industrial policy that puts American workers first, is comparable to the policies of our major trading partners, and is integrated with our nation's efforts to be the world's dominant manufacturer of green technologies and components.
Part two calls for four related initiatives by the Administration and Congress:
1. Fund a 10-year (not the current two-year) program of significant public investment to upgrade and rebuild our nation's infrastructure.
2. Adopt a "Buy American" requirement for all federal procurement, as America is now the only nation among the major developed nations and China without a meaningful "buy domestic" program.
3. Enact major corporate tax reform that creates new incentives for corporations to create jobs in America and eliminates the current incentives for them to relocate jobs overseas. This reform should include reducing the corporate income tax and payroll tax and moving to a value-added-tax or VAT to replace that lost revenue.
4. Ensure that loans and credit facilities are readily available to the nation's small and medium size businesses and manufacturers.
Part three calls on the administration and Congress to demand that our trade agreements have meaningful labor and environmental standards, forbid illegal subsidies and currency manipulation, and do away with "one size fits all" approaches that ignore significant differences in levels of development, forms of government, and reciprocity. Most urgently, we need to fundamentally rework our trade relationship with China to counter the unfairness of China's severely undervalued currency and its massive and often illegal business subsidies, which have been decimating our economy and destroying millions of American jobs for nearly a decade.
We thought our prescription was pretty simple and compelling and that it would get the immediate attention of the administration.
Boy, were we wrong.
Instead, the administration, the Treasury and the Fed seem to feel that we have already more than hit bottom, and they have already declared or are about to declare the recession officially over.
It's almost as if the administration is opting for a rose-colored-glasses PR strategy rather than taking a hard-nose look at actual consumer and employment figures and their trends, and modifying its economic policies accordingly.
It is still very clear to the three of us that the economic stimulus plan will not move the country toward anything approaching full employment and, most important, that the jobless recovery has already started "feeding back" on itself, as evidenced by four key indicators:
First, consumer spending, despite the benefits from millions of $500 stimulus checks and the "cash-for-clunkers" program, remains in a very deep malaise, which is understandable given the current massive unemployment and under-employment. For example, we are already seeing some truly horrible back-to-school retail numbers.
(This said, however, we shouldn't, at the same time we are considering the current low level of spending, be wishing for consumer spending that is overly robust. How disappointing it was to recently hear Fareed Zakaria say that "U.S. consumer spending is the key to global economic rebound", when relative to all other major developed countries, the U.S. economy has in fact for years been overly dependent on individual consumption, at a staggering 70% or so of GDP. The correct "key" going forward is not re-inflating the consumer spending balloon, but rather it is consumer investment and savings derived from fair wages paid to a near fully-employed workforce.)
Second, the percentage of U.S. homeowners who owe more than their house is worth will nearly double to an almost unbelievable 48% in 2011, from the already numbing level of 26% today, according to Deutsche Bank. And as the household mortgage problem persists and home equity values continue to shrink, the commercial real estate sector is quickly becoming the next great Sword of Damocles - already the amount of non-performing commercial real estate loans is massive and the thread that's keeping this particular Sword from dropping is wearing very thin.
Third, the continuing trade deficit, which is currently around 2.2% of GDP, subtracts more from the demand for American-made goods and services than the stimulus plan adds, and yet with the trade policies now in place, this deficit is certainly not going to shrink and in fact it is probably going to get worse.
Fourth, even if one accepts GDP growth as the primary measure of economic vitality, which notably we don't, the so-called "recovery" of GDP in the second quarter was mostly due to one-time accelerated government spending in general and on transfer payments, and the expected GDP "recoveries" in the third and fourth quarters will be just as questionable, because they will be mostly the result of a resuscitated Wall Street rather than, as we need, a revitalized Main Street.
(Frankly, the continued use of GDP growth as the primary measurement of economic strength is beyond lame - to quote Eric Zencey in the New York Times, if we "kept our checkbooks the way GDP measures the national accounts, we'd record all the money deposited into our accounts, make entries for every check we write, and then add all the numbers together", which of course would measure only our combined in-and-out activity and teach us little about our true financial condition. The same can be said about GDP growth as a measure of the true state of the U.S. economy.)
U, V or W - or L?
An economic recovery typically takes one of three shapes: a U-shape (sharp downturn followed by slow and gradual rebound because consumers are slow to start spending); a V-shape (dramatic tumble which produces a similarly sharp upswing that is ignited by quick re-hiring of employees); or a W-shape (recovery cut short by a second recession followed by a second rebound, which is what happened in 1980-1982).
The administration, the Treasury and the Fed, who, as we said, feel that we have already more than hit bottom, believe that we are already on the upward part of either a U-shaped or even a V-shaped recovery. We -- and others -- strongly disagree, and that's bad news.
A number of world-class economists whom we respect believe that at best we are in for a W-shaped recovery, with a double dip recession hitting us by 2011. However, we are even more concerned.
Looking closely as we do at both effective unemployment and the quality of existing employment, we believe that we are in fact looking at the worst possible shaped recovery of all, which is an L-shaped one.
An L-shaped recovery reflects a precipitous decline, which is what we started to see in December 2007, followed by a prolonged period of large-scale unemployment and economic malaise, which is what we are seeing now. And "L-shaped recovery" is just shorthand for the much more personally-felt characterization, which is jobless recovery.
We come to our conclusion about this being a jobless recovery because of the massive number right now of uncounted unemployed workers. Each month the Bureau of Labor Statistics determines the number of workers officially unemployed, and in doing so they largely ignore workers who are either part-time of necessity, marginally attached, or have quit the labor force out of frustration.
Even in past recessions, the number of unemployed workers not counted almost never exceeded a third or so of the official number. Now, however, there are 600,000 more uncounted unemployed workers than counted ones, which makes the total number of unemployed workers 29.5 million, instead of the official 14.5 million, and makes the effective unemployment rate a staggering 18.4%, instead of 9.4%.
If BLS doesn't pay much attention to these all-inclusive numbers, middle and lower class Americans in every city and town certainly do, because they are either experiencing them firsthand or watching their neighbors do so. This is why U.S. consumer confidence has just fallen back to the very low level it was just after the Inauguration, and why Main Street disagrees so strongly with the Federal Reserve's and the Administration's assessment of the state of recovery of our economy.
As we said, this contrast of views is now so extreme that it's almost as if some in the Administration and on Wall Street are trying to employ false assessments and pronouncements in order to create a "consumer confidence multiplier".
So, what does a jobless recovery today mean for tomorrow?
For one thing, it means that budget cutting and slashing by the States will continue around the country for at last another year or two (or even three), since the $70 billion that is still forthcoming to them from the February stimulus plan is but a third of their current overall budget shortfall of around $210 billion. And few things will be more de-stimulative into the medium term than these trashed budgets.
It means that we haven't seen the end of the rise in the savings rate, which has already gone from less-than-zero during the housing bubble to around 7% today and which now looks poised to increase to 10 or even 13% in the near future. In principal, as we've said, much more consumer savings than zero is a very good thing, and 7% would be a pretty good level to stay at. However, because of the pervasive uncertainty which a jobless recovery generates, a reasonable savings rate can quickly turn into an over-savings rate, which would be as de-stimulative into the long term as the nation's broken State and municipal budgets.
It means the destruction or, at best, deterioration of our human capital. Workers who tend to be unemployed for long period of times tend to lose skills or fail to keep up with the latest work practices and innovations, and thus they are less prepared and less productive than those who remain actively engaged in the workforce. Future productivity and wages suffer as a result, and we end up with even more mismatches of skills and jobs.
It means that we will not soon be able to rebuild, and sustain, the great commercial engines that fostered the broad American middle class of the past century and underpinned the global prosperity of the past quarter-century. Nor will we soon be able to bring an end to America's sorry status as the world's largest debtor nation, which carries great risks to our national and economic security.
Finally, and very important, a jobless recovery today means that tomorrow we will struggle greatly to pay for the health care reform and energy reform that the vast majority of Americans want to see. How can we comfortably give more than 100 million Americans some amount of expensive health care coverage that they don't have now and at the same time give the entire nation energy that is materially carbon freer when nearly 30 million workers are effectively unemployed, when the other 131 million workers are working on average only 33 hours a week, and when, at enormous additional cost, we must remain the world's greatest military power?
And so one more time...
In order to carry out these important national missions, the Obama Administration must focus, in ways it has not done so far, on making sure that we soon again have a vibrant middle class. And so one more time:
We need an all-of-government national manufacturing & industrial policy.
We need significant public investment in infrastructure, a "Buy American" requirement for all federal procurement, major corporate tax reform, and robust loan making to the nation's small and medium size businesses and manufacturers.
We need trade agreements, especially ones with China, that are fair to American workers, balanced between the parties, and have teeth.
And because we have so delayed implementing these initiatives, we now also need to do an even better and much more extensive job of extending unemployment benefits, reworking home mortgages, and providing basic needs for unemployed workers and their families. Ten million workers have now been unemployed for at least six months, and all of them for sure, as well as most of the 20 million additional workers who became unemployed after them, have by now lost their safety nets.
Leo Hindery Jr. is chair of the Smart Globalization Initiative at the New America Foundation and an investor in media companies. He is the former CEO of AT&T Broadband and its predecessors, Tele-Communications, Inc. and Liberty Media. Leo W. Gerard is international president of the United Steelworkers and a member of the executive council of the AFL-CIO. Former Michigan Senator Donald W. Riegle Jr. is also a member of the Smart Globalization Initiative and chair of government relations at a global advisory company. He was chair of the Senate Banking Committee from 1989 to 1994.
We are at a particularly sensitive, and difficult, stage with Iran, one that calls for a thoughtful, nuanced approach vice simply defaulting to policies of the past. So, where do we go from here?
We in the West, and particularly in the United States feel compelled to honor the bravery and sacrifice of the Iranian people. And we should. But we must recognize their actions for what they are; an almost desperate effort to convince the ruling Islamic regime that what they are asking for is not inimical to a strong, independent and Islamic oriented Iran. In fact, their desire for freedom of expression and representative, accountable government is a sign of the very strength that all Iranians seek and potentially a natural progression to the path that the clerical regime itself has claimed it represents. These are of course ideals, and ideals often run smack up against the realities of power, money and narrow special interests. That is what is happening in Iran now. What we are seeing play out is not about religion. The Islamic wave that carried and supported the "79" revolution is largely spent. What we are seeing now in Iran is power politics at its most base and brutal. Religion has become at best a tool and at worst a weapon in the hands of those who hold power and a bludgeon to be used against those who seek to dilute the power of those at the top, or share more fairly in the enormous wealth of the Iranian nation. The "opposition", large numbers of whom are card carrying members of the Islamic regime from its very inception - and many of whom literally sat at the feet of the Imam, Ayatollah Khomeini - now appear to see a different road ahead, one that reintegrates Iran into the international community of nations and celebrates and promotes a proud and prosperous Iran. Their vision clashes with that of the ruling elite, one that includes elements of both the clerical and military establishments desperately fearing any change in the status quo, and they are paying a price for their presumption.
Yes, we must honor and recognize their efforts, but, this is not our fight. As the ongoing "showtrials" clearly demonstrate, any attempt to too directly support or bolster the oppositions' efforts to challenge the regime merely plays into the hands of the hardliners by providing them with an even bigger stick with which to strike back. And, not once have they asked us to do so. Not once among the flood of videos, twitters or other messages coming out of Iran have we seen a plea for intercession or material support. They have asked only that we see and hear their struggle. In addition, we in the West must keep in mind several truths - The fact is that the Iranian people participated in and brought about the revolution that overthrew the Shah. They did this because they were dissatisfied with what their leaders were doing, and not doing, on their behalf. So, they opted for change. True, the initial vision of many of a truly representative and responsive government, one that would work to realize the best possible future for all of its people, was highjacked early on and they are now living with the result, as have many revolutionary societies in history. At the same time, however, we must recognize that many in Iran are in fact far better off than they might have been otherwise. Education and literacy have increased dramatically, particularly among women; quality medical care is available throughout much of Iran; rural electrification and transportation is reaching areas as never before. And while many are struggling to make ends meet due to financial mismanagement and corruption, and a generally dysfunctional economic system, the vast majority have enough to eat. And they are proud of what they have accomplished. As a result, many Iranians are not so much looking for wholesale change as a natural evolution of the revolution they helped bring about. So,while they have realized the basics that most seek in their lives, as defined by Maslow's "Needs hierarchy" they now clearly seek more. And this is the rub. With this, you might say that the Islamic regime is to a degree a victim of its own success. Having lifted the overall level of living standards they are now forced to deal with the informed populace and raised expectations that naturally follow. And while the people are demanding that they do so this is something they must do on their own.
We can, however, help. We have tried the sanctions route. As a single threaded strategy it has proven largely ineffective and has in fact strengthened many of the very institutions we seek to weaken. Many among the ruling elite in fact seek to preserve the status quo of sanctions given the historical personal benefits they have seen. There have been some limited successes, U.S. Treasury actions for example, and following this strategy allows us to point to concrete steps aimed at confronting and mitigating Iranian mischief in the region. But an objective analysis of sanction's efficacy simply does not support continuing to rely on this course of action as the sole pillar of U.S. policy. Another simple truth is that the Islamic regime has proven itself to be too resilient and resourceful to be brought down via this route. And regardless of wishful thinking among some, barring a dramatic change in the international strategic landscape (read Russia and China) this is unlikely to change anytime soon. In order to have some chance of success we simply must continue to pursue some level of direct engagement. Politically, this is difficult, particularly given the appalling behavior of the regime in reaction to their botched handling of the Presidential election. It is also less satisfying to us in the West than an aggressive, can do - or gotta do something/anything - type of approach. But, it has become abundantly clear that our ability to positively influence events inside Iran from a distance is extremely limited. Lastly, based on the realities we are faced with, implementing an effective sanctions regime alone is simply not realistic and leads us into a trap that significantly limits our options by forcing us to rely overly on the good will of others, some of whom do not have the best interests of the U.S. at heart (again - read Russia and China). Bottom line - We need to put our Iran policy back in the hands of those who are best prepared to protect U.S. interests, Americans.
Let's not kid ourselves. There are no easy or quick fixes here. And at this point, given the intense historical distrust and fear of the U.S. by Iran's leadership, exacerbated by recent events, the hardest step of engagement will be the first. In addition, another hard truth - the Iranian leadership simply does not believe it must engage with the U.S. in order to survive. Thus, like it or not, they will need to be convinced that it is to their overall advantage to do so, and not just ours. So, in all likelihood, and as distasteful as it may be, in order to move the process forward the U.S. will have to make the first move in order to demonstrate some level of good faith. This will place Iran's leadership in the position of having to respond to a concrete action vice a nebulous expression of intent. What does this all mean? Simply put, the only real chance for success in reaching out to Iran is to implement a carefully crafted strategy of engagement and containment. Call it a policy of "entainment," if you will. What would make this different from past efforts? It is clear that without the U.S. at the table the Iranians have little incentive to take either sanctions or engagement very seriously. But, with the U.S. directly involved, Iran's leadership will for the first time be able to truly measure the cons of continued containment versus the pros to be had via the adoption of a serious and comprehensive diplomatic relationship with the U.S. -- and the broad, tangible benefits that could ensue. And make no mistake about it - we will need to clearly demonstrate that there are significant long term benefits to be had from unclenching the proverbial fist.
How to begin? The sanctions/containment component is largely already in place. Recent discussion of embargoing refined gasoline is unlikely to make any significant impact, particularly given the Iranian leadership's current focus on mitigating this strategic vulnerability. This clearly falls into the "gotta do something/anything" category. Better to focus initially on demonstrating that the U.S. is truly serious about developing a new relationship by implementing unilateral actions aimed at specific issues impacting Iran as a nation. An example of how to do this? The recent series of air crashes in Iran points to serious problems in this key sector. Part of this appears to be Iran's increasing reliance on Russian aircraft. If the U.S. were to relax sanctions specifically to allow Iran's airlines to improve maintenance and safety, and perhaps even purchase western aircraft, this would have an immediate and positive impact on all Iranians. Given the severity of the problem and the significant number of deaths that have already occurred, Iran's leadership would be hard pressed to simply reject this offer without looking even more petulant or uncaring than they already do to the Iranian populace. They would also be pressed to respond in some manner other than the deafening silence we have seen so far. For those that would point to the potential dual-use aspects involved - there is that potential - but that is the nature of compromise.
There are certainly other actions that could be taken but this is not the venue to explore them. In the end, the issue here is how to find a way forward out of the untenable and increasingly dangerous situation in which we currently find ourselves. For a variety of reasons we have been able to muddle through vis a vis Iran over the last 30 years. We no longer have this luxury. The accelerating Iranian nuclear program, and the alarm it is generating in the region and the west, is a game changer and must somehow be addressed. The worst case scenario is one in which we find ourselves facing a nuclear armed Iran convinced that its very survival is at stake. At best, we owe it to all concerned to find a way to re-integrate Iran back into the international community of nations. At a minimum, we must reach a Modus Vivendi that minimizes the risk of military confrontation, the results of which would be catastrophic.
Several leading Democrats voiced concern Monday about an apparent White House shift on health-care reform, objecting to signals from senior administration officials that they would abandon the idea of a government-run insurance plan if it lacked the backing to pass Congress.
The headline of a recent USA Today article read: FEDS TRY TO DETECT 'LONE OFFENDERS.' Lone offenders being: "lone attackers who may be contemplating politically charged assaults."
That, of course, could be anyone.
But the triptych that went with the article was of Ted Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph and James Von Brunn. The not so subtle message: beware the evil white man. Clearly the mainstream media, which I know is evil because I read it in a blog, is at war with white males. Or as some -- not me -- would refer to them: "whitey."
Every time a white male governor secretly leaves the country for five days to be with his "soul mate," or some patriot shows up at a town hall meeting on health care reform packing a loaded gun the mainstream media flogs the pony. Simultaneously, they indict the dozens and dozens of white men who go to work when they're supposed to, try not to call the president a racist-Nazi-socialist-fascist-death paneler, and who can engage in the First Amendment without doing an open carry of the Second Amendment.
It's painful watching the ongoing, vicious denigration of "whitey"... and can I just tell you how much I hate that word? One of my best friends is a white guy. He's good people. A credit to his race. I had lunch with him once, and not only did he pick up the check, he tipped very well.
And once you get to know a white guy, you come to understand that the way some of them act; it's a cultural thing. White guys are and have always been a minority in America. Going back to the first population count in 1790 white men made up only 41 percent of the population. Now, they're less than 32 percent. And, as a minority, they've had a long history of oppression over the last six months. They're down to six of nine spots on the Supreme Court, 82 out of 100 Senators and a scant 79 percent of the CEOs of the Fortune 500 Companies.
How would you like to literally wake up one morning and face those kinds of losses to your hegemony? It makes for a sense of peril which does not fade just by watching a couple of episodes of Mad Men and getting nostalgic for the good old days.
And then all people ever want to do is blame white guys for everything. "You started the war in Iraq." "You ruined the economy." "You fired Paula Abdul from American Idol." Bitch, bitch, bitch.
Heck, if that were me getting continually hit up like that, I'd probably start demanding to see people's birth certificates and arresting them in their homes for no good reason, too.
Under the circumstances, we can't get any more mad at "whitey" -- and, seriously, I mean it: I never want to hear that word again -- for being the way he is than we can a bird for flying.
President Obama, when he was still Senator Obama, called it: "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Instead of blaming white men for all that's wrong with America, let's try walking a mile in their frustrated, little shoes.
A Rasmussen poll now has the Republican Party as more trusted on the healthcare issue than Democrats. That's insanity. The Republicans have killed all efforts at healthcare reform before, they're killing it as we speak and they almost exclusively represent the interests of the private insurance companies who want to continue to jack up our rates (private insurance premiums have gone up 119% in the last ten years).
So, how are they winning? Because the Democrats brought a scalpel to a gun fight. The Republicans have attacked and attacked and attacked. Meanwhile, what has been the Democratic response? They're reaching out in a spirit of bipartisanship. Why???
Someone says they're going to bite your head off and will almost all vote against you, what is your purpose in continuing to reach out to them? They say they will under no circumstances vote for real healthcare reform with a public option, which you have said many times before is essential. They are in essence saying the only way they would vote for your bill is if they were positive it sucked. So, why do the Democrats continue to help the Republicans in killing this thing?
It is the unbearable weakness of Democratic being. They cannot find it in their hearts to strongly argue for their own position. To be fair, in this case, the weakness is mainly Obama's. The White House has clearly indicated this weekend that they have already given up on the public option -- and they're still begging the Republicans to work with them. Frankly, it's pathetic.
This continual and monumental weakness has a price. When the other side makes its case and you don't -- you lose. The Republicans never hesitate to make their case, even if they have to lie, cheat and scaremonger to do it. While the Democrats are scared of their own shadow. Obama is playing patty-cakes out there in his town halls. When is the last time he threw a real punch?
Grassley says Obama wants to kill your grandmother. And what's the price for this hideous slander? Obama promises he'll continue to reach out to him. Why? Are you looking for advice on how to kill grandma? The guy just spit in your face. What are you going to do about it?
This isn't a matter of being pointlessly tough so we can feel good. We're losing the debate! It's because our leaders refuse to make the case. The other side might be vicious liars, but at least they have some lions who are willing to fight. Who do we have? Obama and his team of weaklings?
Now, I see why they didn't ask Howard Dean to be part of this administration. It's because he doesn't fit in. He's a fighter. He believes in real healthcare reform and is willing to fight for it. Just compare Dean's appearances on television and Sebelius's. It's a joke. When is the last time you saw her make a forceful and convincing case for the public option, or for that matter any part of the reform proposal?
It looks like they didn't ask Dean on board because they never believed they were going to do the public option in the first place. They didn't wan't a guy in there who was a believer. They got bucklers because they wanted bucklers.
A friend of mine just asked me why we don't hold this issue up for a vote with the public. I said we did; it was called the 2008 election. We gave the Democrats the White House, an overwhelming majority in the House and a filibuster-proof Senate. How much clearer did we have to be?
The problem is that the party we voted for isn't the party we got. At some point there has to be a price for not ever delivering on your promises, and worse yet, not really trying very hard. If Obama continues to bring the weak sauce, there has to come a point when we begin to wonder why we elected him as well.
GLENDORA, Calif. — California authorities say a man caused a traffic jam when he threw money onto a Los Angeles-area freeway and people dashed into the lanes to grab the cash.
California Highway Patrol Sgt. Kurt Stormes says the man tossed money from his car on Interstate 210 in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendora shortly before noon Sunday.
Stormes says about 10 people ran into traffic lanes to get it.
CHP officers recovered about $1,000.
The 56-year-old man then went to the Police Department in nearby Azusa. Police Lt. Steve Hunt says the man told officers he wanted to kill himself and was hospitalized for mental evaluation. His name wasn't released.
Authorities asked anyone who picked up the man's money to turn it in so it can be returned.
One of the chief Blue Dog Democrats in the House made the case on Monday that fellow members of his party should get behind health care legislation that included cooperative insurance coverage rather than a robust public plan.
Rep. Jim Cooper, (D-Tenn), who played a key role in tripping up the health care reform efforts during the Clinton administration, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that "co-ops" could be an ideal substitute for a government-run plan, provided that they protect consumer rights and keep insurance companies honest.
More than anything else, the Tennessean made the case that the proposal would be the best vehicle by which to get the 60 votes needed for passage in the Senate.
"A co-op is really used over three-quarters of the land area of America so we buy our electricity that way," said Cooper. "It's a creature of the New Deal. It's worked really pretty well over all the country for 70 or 80 years. It's owned by the customers; it is not owned by the government. It works. It works real well. There are good ways to solve this problem.... We can solve any problem we want to in this great country. Let's put our minds together and calmly and rationally solve this health care problem. It's eluded every president for 60 years, but we can do it and we can do it without a big government solution."
The news in this nugget isn't just that Cooper's on board with the co-op approach. A centrist Democrat with a history of expressing concerns about government involvement in health care, his support for such an approach is somewhat expected. What's of interest is the extent to which the center of the health care debate has been shifted in a matter of weeks. Three committees in the House of Representatives have already passed pieces of health care legislation with a fairly strong public option. As has one committee in the Senate.
Discussion of cooperatives by Cooper, Senator Kent Conrad, (D-N.D.), and others of a co-op alternative truly is an instance in which the party is negotiating against itself, with the moderates dominating the conversation. And while Cooper's co-panelist, Rep. Phil Gingrey, (R-G.A.), seemed to offer philosophical support for the cooperative structure, it doesn't seem likely that the proposal will win much Republican backing. Late on Monday, the Republican National Committee released a statement declaring its opposition to this (already considered) compromise approach.
"PUBLIC OPTION" BY ANY OTHER NAME IS STILL GOVERNMENT-RUN HEALTH CARE," read the headline.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack just delivered on President Obama's campaign pledge to restore the protections for America's wild forests that George Bush tried to strip away. Earlier this year, Vilsack moved to personally review all proposed roads or logging projects in the roadless portions of the national forests -- some 58 million acres of the best of what remains of wild America. In a Seattle speech, the Secretary declared that the Obama administration would not appeal a recent 9th Circuit opinion restoring the roadless rule in most of the states, but would appeal a decision by Judge Brimmer in Wyoming blocking the rule in that state.
But Vilsack went further than making it clear that the administration now seeks to restore the Clinton-era roadless protections. He also declared that his agency would rewrite the rules governing the national forests, accepting a June Court decision to throw out Bush-era rules that stripped forests of the protection provided by reviewing their management plans for impacts on endangered species.
Vilsack acknowledged for the first time that climate change and fragmentation are a serious threat to the health of our forests. "I'm here to tell you we have our own deforestation problem right here in the U.S. of A.," he said. "Just keeping forests as forests remains a significant challenge." He promised to manage the forests to increase their resilience to the threat of climate change, saying that 40 million acres are at risk over the next decade.
My friend California congressman Sam Farr used to say that the conflict over the national forests was between politicians who liked their forests vertical, and those who wanted them horizontal. Secretary Vilsack and President Obama have made it clear -- they're standing tall for forests that keep standing tall for us.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is tripling the number of workers processing Cash for Clunkers transactions as some dealers complain the government has been slow to reimburse them for the car incentives of up to $4,500 per vehicle.
An administration official said Monday the Transportation Department hoped to have 1,100 public and private sector workers processing the vouchers by the end of the week, up from a work force of about 350 through the end of last week.
Employees at a department service center in Oklahoma City have taken the lead in processing the vouchers, the official said, and workers have responded to calls for voluntary overtime to process the forms. The official was not authorized to discuss the work force issues publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Dealers have reported submitting tens of thousands of dollars – in some cases more – worth of rebates to the federal government for repayment that are still outstanding. Many report they have been repaid for only a small fraction of the deals they made under the program, creating strain on cash flows at dealers nationwide.
Rick DeSilva, who owns Hyundai and Subaru dealerships in northern New Jersey, said an inspector from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is overseeing the program, visited his offices Monday to review his dealerships' paperwork. Until now, none of the 70 Cash for Clunkers deals DeSilva made have been reimbursed.
"Every car that goes out, you are $4,000 behind the 8-ball," said DeSilva, who is still owed about $280,000.
The National Automobile Dealers Association applauded the boost in staff reviewing the dealer claims. "Anything that will speed up the dealer reimbursement process is welcome news," NADA spokesman Charles Cyrill said.
The government said Monday that dealers have submitted requests for rebates that total $1.6 billion – more than half of the money provided to the program – through the online system set up to process and pay the claims. The program has led to more than 390,000 vehicle sales.
Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., who is challenging Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter in the state's Democratic primary, urged President Barack Obama to increase staffing levels in a letter Sunday. Sestak wrote that many dealers face a loss on each transaction until the government reimburses them.
"Carrying a loss for an extended period will put them out of business – meaning more lost jobs," Sestak wrote.
With the increased staffing, the government's work force is much larger than originally anticipated. A week before Cash for Clunkers formally began July 27, NHTSA estimated it would need just 30 new hires and 200 contractor workers to handle the program over a six month period, according to the guidelines drafted by the agency.
But dealers flooded the online reimbursement system shortly after the program began, overwhelming the computer system and staff set up to process the deals. That led to big delays for dealers trying to file the paperwork they needed to get paid back for the rebates.
Under the program, car buyers are eligible for vouchers of $3,500 or $4,500 depending on the fuel efficiency of the vehicles they trade in and buy. Dealers subtract the rebate from the sales price, and then submit paperwork to the government certifying the sale with the assurance that the trade-in will be scrapped.
NHTSA has told dealers they can expect to wait 10 days to be repaid if their paperwork is in order and the deal is approved. But if there is a problem, dealers must resubmit their claim, leading to another potential waiting period. Dealers typically borrow money to put new cars on their lots and must repay lenders within a few days of a sale.
Government officials have said some of the submitted paperwork has been incomplete or inaccurate, leading to delays.
ATLANTA — A former college professor and his wife were apparently attacked and killed by nearly a dozen dogs along a rural northeast Georgia road where their bodies were found mutilated, authorities said Monday.
Preliminary autopsy results from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation showed Sherry Schweder, 65, likely died of injuries from a dog attack, Oglethorpe County Sheriff Mike Smith said. Autopsy results for her husband, Lothar Karl Schweder, 77, were not yet available, but Smith said it's likely he was also attacked by dogs because the scene was so grisly.
Smith said officials were going to round up at least 11 dogs seen in the area where the couple's bodies were found Saturday morning by five passers-by.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the mixed-breed dogs were feral or someone's pets. There had been no recent complaints about vicious dogs in the area, Smith said.
Stephanie Shain, a spokeswoman for the Humane Society of the United States, said it was "uncommon" for people to be bitten to death by dogs, citing federal figures that the average number of fatal dog bites each year is 16.
The bodies were found along a dirt road near the couple's home in Lexington and had been there for at least 24 hours before they were found, said Madison County Coroner James Mathews.
A family friend told the Athens Banner-Herald that Lothar Karl Schweder was a retired professor who had taught German at the University of Georgia, which is about 20 miles away in Athens. German Department head Martin Kagel said it might be possible he worked there part time or more than 20 years ago.
Sherry Schweder was a bibliographer at the university's library, where she had worked since 1974, selecting books and journals for the school's humanities collection, said librarian William Potter.
"She was one of my favorite colleagues here," said Nan McMurry, Sherry Schweder's supervisor who had worked with her for about 20 years. "She was really a kind of quiet and self-effacing person, but she was one of the most intelligent and most well-educated people here."
McMurry said Sherry Schweder had many dogs and cats, though authorities don't think her own animals attacked her.
York Schweder, one of the couple's two sons, had left for Georgia after hearing about his parents' death, said his mother-in-law, Toni Mora, who answered the phone at his home in Hutchinson, Kan. York Schweder did not immediately return a message left Monday on his cell phone.
A new report from the Citizens Utility Board finds Illinoisans on average overpay by more than $330 a year for cell phone service.
Taken together, Illinoisans spend $728 million a year too much on cell phone service.
"Illinois callers are paying dearly for bloated bills burdened with too many services they don't need and too many minutes they'll never use," CUB Executive Director David Kolata said in a statement.
The CUB collected data from nearly 7,000 users with an application that allows people to compare their rates with those of leading competitors. (Check yours here.)
The study found that 73.4 percent of Illinoisans pay too much and that the average user wasted 439 minutes a month. Read the full report:
Uptown residents are furious over escalating neighborhood violence and what they perceive as their alderman's ambivalence to it.
Fed up after Ald. Helen Shiller (46th) was not responsive to their concerns about recent shootings and a full-street gang fight, a group of her constituents organized a protest outside Monday night's Olympics bid community meeting at Truman College to demand swift action.
"Ald. Helen Shiller has a history of ignoring obvious threats to public safety, and ignoring her bosses," reads a flyer announcing Monday's protest. "Her bosses want to speak to her, and if she won't come to them, we will come to her."
Another flyer circulating, this one from a similar protest outside Shiller's office last year, shows the alderman's face on the side of a milk cartoon under the label "Missing."
Reports of nightly violence in Uptown bubbled over last week, after an Uptown resident shot video of what appeared to be near-riots by rival gangs at the corner of Sheridan and Leland and posted it on the community news blog Uptown Update.
Shiller's office did not return several calls for comment from the Huffington Post Monday. Her secretary's and chief of staff's voice mail boxes were full and unable to accept messages. Shiller's office also did not respond to requests for comment from CBS 2 and NBC Chicago.
I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want. - Mark Twain
Have you ever sat down and thought seriously about what you truly love? What you're good at? What you want to accomplish in life? What are the obstacles that are stopping you? Most people don't. They accept what they "should" be doing, rather than take the time to figure out what they want to be doing.
We all have our own loves, insecurities, strengths, weaknesses, and unique capabilities. And we have to take those into account in figuring out where our talents and desires intersect. That intersection is what I call your "blue flame"--where passion and ability come together. When that blue flame is ignited within a person, it is a powerful force in getting you where you want to go.
I think of the blue flame as a convergence of mission and passion founded on a realistic self-assessment of your abilities. It helps determine your life's purpose, from taking care of the elderly to becoming a mother, from being a top engineer to becoming a writer or a musician. I believe everyone has a distinct mission inside of him or her, one that has the capacity to inspire.
So how do you figure out your bliss? There are two aspects to getting good information. One part comes from within you; the other part comes from those around you.
Part I: Look inside
1. Get your mind ready for a deep self-assessment. Some people pray. Others meditate or read. Some exercise. A few seek long periods of solitude.
2. Shift your mindset. Throw away the usual constraints you put around possibility - the doubts, fears, and expectations of what you "should" be doing. You have to be able to set aside the obstacles of time, money, and obligation. (For some thoughts on whether following your passion will lead to better financial rewards, check out this post at The Art of Nonconformity.)
3. Create a list of dreams and goals. Some will be preposterous; others overly pragmatic. Don't edit yourself at all right now. Next to that first list, write down in a second column all the things that bring you joy and pleasure: the achievements, people, and things that move you. The clues can be found in the hobbies you pursue and the magazines, movies, and books you enjoy. Which activities excite you the most, where you don't even notice the hours that pass? 4. Start to connect these two lists. Looki for intersections, that sense of direction or purpose. It's a simple exercise, but the results can be profound.
Part II: Look outside
1. Call on advisors and friends. Ask the people who know you best what they think your greatest strengths and weaknesses are. Ask them what they admire about you and what areas you may need help in. 2. Discuss your self-assessment with them. Ask them to be candid about their reactions.
3. Make decisions. Use the information from your own review and what you got back from others to establish a mission statement and plan of action. For help in setting goals, see my earlier post, Five Steps to Setting Goals. This post is based on Chapter III in Never Eat Alone.
Once you do the exercise, jump back in here and tell me: What did you learn?
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- Former Colorado lawmaker and El Paso County Commissioner Douglas Bruce was cited for trespassing Saturday in a Costco parking lot in Colorado Springs.
Everyone has their own opinion as to what the federal government does best -- which government dollar is the most well-spent, in other words. Some would say the military, or Medicare, or farm subsidies. For me, it's a close tie between the Interstate Highway System and the National Park System, both of which I appreciate whenever I get a chance to use them.
Which is why it was heartening to see President Obama taking his family to visit two of the crown jewels of the National Park System -- Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. Most presidents don't even get around to visiting a National Park in their first year in office, unless you count the many places in Washington, D.C. which are administered by the National Park Service (technically, even the White House would count, under this designation). And even when most presidents do visit National Parks, it is usually to make a political point or push a specific piece of legislation, with a park as a convenient photo-op backdrop.
But Obama and his family weren't pushing any environmental legislation or making any kind of political point this past weekend. They looked like any other tourist family, there to enjoy the spectacular beauty with their kids (except for the Secret Service detail, of course). Barack Obama made a trip West with his own mother and grandmother when he was a young boy, and he obviously was taking the opportunity to do the same with his children. What could be more American and more family-oriented than that?
Some in the media didn't agree, and wrote fairly snarky reports of the Obamas in the parks. I chalk this up to the elitism of the coastal set, who sneeringly look down their noses at anything in what they like to call "flyover country" (since you're obviously supposed to fly over it on your way from one coast to the other).
Their loss. America has lots to offer, and much of it is hundreds of miles from a coast. Admittedly, there are some pretty boring parts of America (the Great Plains spring to mind), but there are also wonders to behold, tucked away here and there, that you'll never see unless you get in a car and drive there.
To be fair, I have to admit my own bias, which you've probably already guessed by now. I am unashamedly and unabashedly pro-park. I just got back from a trip where I visited my thirty-second National Park (Capitol Reef, in Utah). Since there are only 58 parks in all (eight of which are in Alaska, which I have yet to visit), I consider myself well on my way to seeing most of them in my lifetime.
Of course, the number of official National Parks changes over time, too. When I was growing up, for instance, there were only 35 National Parks. Some other sites (National Monuments, National Historic Parks, etc.) got upgraded to National Park status, and a few even got downgraded (to National Recreation Areas, for one). National Monuments I've visited have since become National Parks (Great Sand Dunes, in Colorado, for instance). But whatever their official designations, all are encompassed within the National Park System.
The Obamas picked a good park to start with, since Yellowstone was the first National Park in not just America but in the whole world. It became a National Park before the National Park Service or System even existed (which took place around 50 years later, in 1916). Yellowstone became a National Park owned by the federal government because there wasn't any state government in the area at the time (Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho all became states later). And anyone who has been to see it can easily tell why it had to be protected -- because it is simply spectacular. Beautiful enormous canyons, waterfalls, rivers, and mountains all lie within the park's boundaries, but what makes it truly unique are the hot springs and geysers. Everyone knows "Old Faithful" of course, but there are hundreds of other thermal miracles to see as well, including deep pools of hot water the color of emeralds -- or any other color in the rainbow you'd care to look at.
Likewise, the Grand Canyon does not disappoint. Some sights you travel to and kind of shrug your shoulders and say "Eh... it's not as spectacular as I thought it would be." Some things look a lot bigger in photos than they do when you're standing in front of them, leading to a sense of disappointment. The Grand Canyon is not one of these sights. It's big. Really, really big. Stupendously big. Mere words cannot describe its bigness. Even mere photos cannot capture its gargantuan size -- because no lens is that wide. You stand on its rim and look way, way off in the distance, and you can barely see the other side of it, miles away. You look down into it -- down, down, down -- and when you think you've spotted the bottom, you find there are more layers beneath that. You finally focus on the Colorado River (the culprit who carved the thing), and it is hard to believe how far down you're actually seeing. Quite plainly, it is almost too big for human minds to conceive.
The word "awesome" is massively overused, mostly because it's just so darn awesome to say. But only very rarely is anything labeled "awesome" truly full of awe, or awe-inspiring. Both Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, however, measure up to the word -- I defy anyone to see either of them and not leave with a sense of awe.
In fact, I encourage everyone, no matter what part of these United States you live in (or even if you live elsewhere), to take a "trip out West" at some point in your life. Get in a car, and go explore everything west of Denver. Your choices of what to see along the way are numerous and varied. You can see the most beautiful mountains this country has to offer (my personal choice, as well as every magazine advertisement ever to use a mountainous backdrop, would be the Grand Tetons). You can also see: glaciers, deserts, canyons, natural bridges, giant trees, huge cliffs and waterfalls, cacti, rivers, sand dunes thousands of miles from an ocean, oyster shells on the top of a mountain ridge, the lowest point in the Western Hemisphere (Badwater Basin, Death Valley National Park, 282 feet below sea level), the highest point in America (Denali), volcanoes (dormant ones in the continental U.S., active ones in Hawai'i), seashores, lakeshores, landscapes that make you think you're on another planet (White Sands, Bryce Canyon, Joshua Tree), humongous caverns, balancing rocks, Native American ruins, a rain forest (Olympic), petrified wood, dinosaur bones, hot springs, and (of course) geysers like Old Faithful.
That's all just west of Denver, mind you. There's plenty of other stuff to see in the other direction, too. But seeing President Obama and his family take in two of the western parks (just after I got back from seeing some of them myself) prompted me to write this paean to the parks out West, to strongly encourage everyone -- yes, even you! -- to plan on a trip like this at some point. It's worth it.
And it's worth every single one of my tax dollars that go to pay for it. Yours, too.
Chuck Hagel, former Republican Senator from Nebraska, Vietnam veteran, and short-lister for various Obama national security cabinet posts, is soon to be named as co-chairman of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, according to Al Kamen of the Washington Post. Hagel, known for his independent views and national security expertise, could use this new position as a senior intelligence oversight official to influence to Obama administration policy.
Or not. Much will depend on whether the Obama administration starts paying attention to the PIAB. Obama has waited more than seven months to name new PIAB members, having left the panel "kind of running on autopilot," to borrow a turn of phrase from Homer Pointer, staff counsel to the PIAB.
Also uncertain: whether Obama plans to restore PIAB oversight authority taken away by Bush executive orders. Previously, PIAB had been empowered to refer possible criminal and civil violations directly to the Department of Justice, and exercised strong oversight over intelligence agency inspectors general. But Bush significantly weakened the PIAB last year by removing the body's oversight and legal powers, effectively reducing it to an advisory role.
Hagel's appointment to the PIAB could be a signal that the Obama administration intends to reinvigorate the neglected board and intelligence oversight efforts, perhaps to assuage concerns from the progressive base that Obama has not moved fast enough to end Bush-era national security excesses. Despite a widely praised speech last week by top national security adviser John Brennan that supposedly marked a dramatic shift in US counterterrorism, Obama's reform-minded criticspoint out that many Bush policies remain intact. Tough-talking, outspoken Hagel could serve as a counterweight to advocates of retreaded Bush intelligence policy, such as Brennan and CIA Director Leon Panetta.
Unfortunately, a Hagel-helmed PIAB is unlikely to suddenly mount a campaign of intelligence reform and accountability. By all accounts, Hagel is an Obama loyalist, gamely unwilling to rock the boat if his eye is on succeeding Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense.
The Obama national security team has shown little interest in the PIAB over the past seven months, which fits with the Obama administration's demonstrated preference for retaining the substance of Bush-era national security policies (state secrets, drone strikes) with superficial changes in rhetoric (no more 'War on Terror') and symbolism (transplanting Guantanamo, flawed procedures and all, to Michigan or Kansas). Hagel will give Obama more bipartisan credibility, and more of that appearance of change without the risk of actual change.
I just returned from visiting several countries and spoke to citizens from England to India while away. In each country there exists a government run plan, paid for by tax dollars, that co-exists with private insurance plans for those who wish better coverage and who can pay for it. While many told me health care is "free", it really isn't since the taxing structure varies from 20% to a high of 60%. Of course, the lower range here fits into our present taxing structure. What is also of significance is that those who I spoke to from the U.K. really like their NHS (National Health Service) that is supplemented by private insurance on an as-pay basis. While all these chats occurred, I was able to see much of what, and how, Fox TV was reporting on the raucous taking place at town hall meetings in various parts of the country. Blended into this was the lack of intelligence from such pundits as Coulter, Hannity and their minions. Such a juxtaposition left me wondering why, for example, the Fox TV type reporting does not track what I was being told first-hand by citizens of several countries. Of course, I then answered my own inquiry: those who oppose health care reforms do so because it will bring victory next year for those running for public office who support reform. The opposite is equally true -- if health care reform fails, those opposing it now will likely succeed in their bids for elected office then. And all the while, the "poker chip" in the arena in which health care reform sits is the health, safety, and lives of every American. We should all bristle at the thought that the game of politics here uses our lives and very health as if they meant nothing than being elected or defeated for public office. Recall the memorable line in the movie of some years past, Network: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more". Well, the month of August is time for all who support health care reform to stand up and utter the same line, only with respect to telling elected officials to stop using our health and lives as nothing more than poker chips for next year's elections.
I no doubt believe that some who have spoken up at these meetings speak from the heart; others no doubt speak because they are influenced to say what they have said by others, particularly those who oppose what President Obama is trying to achieve. All sides require an audience, but all sides to an issue as well must be respectful of dissenters and their ability to be heard. After all, this is the Democratic way and what the First Amendment provides.
Having listened to the Fox TV channel reporters and pundits, and then those who vociferously were trying to preclude supporters of health care reform from speaking out reminded me of what FDR said decades ago: we have nothing to fear but fear itself. The debate over health care reform has turned to politics of fear and fear-mongering, instead of focusing on facts and reality. What FDR said years and years ago is no less true today when it comes to health care reform than when he put forth those words. Those opposing reform fear it because, well, they fear -- fear. For example, when speaking about the public option, immediately we hear that the government is taking over health care; that we are becoming a socialized nation (like in England and in Canada); that a public plan will be used to fund abortions; or that public finds will be used to advance euthanasia. Each one of these propositions is false, inaccurate and dishonestly stated. They are flat out lies. Add to this list what (Sarah) Palin has said about "death panels" and that we want our doctors to treat us, not some bureaucrat or insurance company. For all those reading this story, let me tell you first hand that Palin knows not of what she speaks! She is a buffoon on these points. Let me refer you to three United States Supreme Court decisions where the issue of managed care companies making decisions on how to treat patients was a focus point: Carle Clinic v. Herdrich, Aetna v. Davila, and Cigna v. Calad. I should know, since I was a legal counsel for one of the amicus (friend of the court) parties who filed a legal brief in these cases. And, let me refer you to government-run programs from which no one runs: Medicare, SCHIP, and coverage for our brave women and men in uniform. When was the last time an opponent of health care reform wanted to eliminate these programs?
Another tidbit. To those of us who are insured, know that the premiums we pay and the services provided by doctors and hospitals have built into them a percentage that will cover those 47 million+ who obtain free health care because they have no insurance or who cannot afford insurance. Do we still want to waste our hard earned income or trust fund accounts in this manner? Surely not.
We have also heard that we need tort reform, since that is driving up health care costs. I have studied this cause and effect relationship for over 20 years, including five years as chair of a committee of a large professional organization that looked into this. There is no meaningful linkage between tort reform and lowering health care costs. Equally specious is that by placing limits on certain damages, there will be lower health care costs. There are states which have such "caps" yet the costs of health care continue to spiral out of control there -- as in those states which do not have any such limits.
Again, Americans are more influenced by those who profit from fear than fact. That is why, I surmise, those individuals and corporate interests and their backers who don't want health care reform just criticize reform without showing the nation what will work.
To sum up, I titled this piece as a last story. It is "last" because when fear takes over for fact and reality, there is nothing new to say over what has been told. Our only recourse is to return to the basics: health care is a right, or basic service, for all Americans or those seeking citizenship in earnest; that without reform, millions more will need health care they can't afford and our system of health care will go bankrupt; that a public option is intended to co-exist with the private market so that there will be sufficient competition to drive down costs of premiums and health care services; that there will be no exclusions for pre-existing conditions; there will be no rescission of health insurance coverage by insurers once medical care has been rendered and received by a patient; that it will be more costly for an employer to provide only a public plan to the exclusion of what they currently offer their employees than a public plan together with the various plans presently offered; that there exists sufficient motivation for those providers to stay as providers as well as incentives for those seeking careers in the health care professions; and that we as Americans take responsibility for our own health -- if that takes some sort of incentive too, then it must be included now in any reform package.
These days, Rush Limbaugh's talk compares Obama to Hitler, health care to Nazi Germany, Democrats to socialists. He has excited well organized followers to take that message to the public venue. They show up at Congressional town halls across the country. At the least, they hold signs outside that read "Obama is a socialist. It's a bit more serious when they shout down others who are trying to speak. At the worst, they draw a swastika on Congressional offices which is what happened to the office of Representative David Scott of Georgia.
This rhetoric is not new. It dates back to 1915 - the first time the government considered health care reform. Since people started to organize in favor of heath care, opponents have stirred up hateful opposition, inducing Americans' fears of communism, fascism, and socialism.
In early July federal officials promised more than $67 million in stimulus funds to prevent homelessness in Illinois. They saw it as a way to help families struggling with an unprecedented foreclosure crisis.
State officials, fresh from a battle to balance a $9 billion budget deficit, saw it as a golden opportunity to cut back.
While comforting her daughter on the way to the nearby emergency room, Maria had a thought she didn't express. "Times are tough -- I'm so glad we've got health insurance." Ana's cut just above her forehead was still bleeding, and would probably need stitches. At the hospital, which was listed on her insurance plan, Maria was relieved when the doctors told her Ana's head injury was minor and that they'd fixed her cut so it would quickly heal. A week later, as she watched a recovered Ana happily resume active play with her friends outdoors, Maria opened the letter from her insurance company. And gasped. Thanks to her insurance, the ER visit would only cost her $50, as she'd expected. But, despite the insurance company's contribution, the bills didn't stop there. The total charges Maria faced paying for Ana's care in the ER topped three thousand dollars!
We've all heard about the heartbreaking cases where insurance companies have canceled coverage and refused to pay hospital bills for patients after they've received treatment. But, as in Maria's case, even when the insurance company forks out their required share, patients and their families could still be on the hook for big bucks. When she aimed for her "in-plan" emergency room, Maria didn't know that, while the ER itself was "in-plan," its doctors, hired on contract, were not. And, the CT scan they'd ordered to ensure that Ana didn't have bleeding on the brain, performed in a trailer adjacent to the hospital, had been done by a partner company of Radiology doctors, who -- you guessed it -- were also not participants in Maria's preferred provider insurance.
Because the ER and the X-ray doctors were "out of plan," Maria's insurance company would only pay 60% of their fees, not 80% as with "in plan" providers. To her dismay, Maria quickly discovered that, for out-of-plan providers, the insurance would pay 60% of the rates it had negotiated with in-plan doctors. Anything over that became Maria's responsibility. In-plan doctors might bill the insurance company $500, of which $400 would be paid by the insurance company and $100 by Maria. Out-of-plan doctors who had no deal with the insurance company could charge much more -- $1000, for example -- for the same service. The insurance company would then pay 60% of the $500 agreed upon for in-plan doctors -- not the $1000 demanded. The final insurance payout would be $300 and Maria would be left with a $700 bill. Had the ER warned Maria that their doctors' services might be out-of-plan so that she could opt to go to another facility? Not a chance.
As a doctor, I've seen many cases like Maria's, where patients think they're abiding by insurance company rules, only to find that their final bills are overwhelming. That's why it's critical for everyone who "has health insurance" to "read the fine print" and develop an "emergency preparedness plan" for healthcare that ensures you or your family won't be caught in a financial bind in case of illness or injury. Here are six steps to giving your insurance a "check-up":
First, pull out and read the insurance company contract. Are there any exclusions, areas or types of care that are not covered? If so, you may need to consider buying a supplementary insurance plan or investing in a medical savings plan -- in advance.
You probably have your favorite doctors -- but are they still part of your plan? Contracts between insurance companies and medical groups or practitioners change frequently. You may want to review and ensure that your doctor is still participating in your insurance plan on at least a quarterly basis.
Your local hospital or hospitals may also have agreements with the insurance plan, but, as in Maria's case, some of their contractors or partners may not. Your quarterly review should include clarification of what hospital services are "in-plan" and what services may be or may have become "out-of-plan."
Once you've identified the doctors and health care facilities you may be visiting, and ensured they're "in-plan," develop your own "healthcare emergency plan" in case of illness or injury. Designate which doctors you will try to see, and which hospitals/ERs you are going to patronize in advance of need.
If you have an emergency that is handled by a 9-1-1 call and subsequent ambulance transport with emergency medical technicians, you may not have a choice about which hospital the ambulance is directed to take you. Obviously, your medical condition will guide the EMTs and the doctors -- the nearest hospital may be a life-saving choice, even if it's not a participant in your insurance plan. The EMTALA law requires that all ERs see and treat all patients until they are medically stable -- whether or not they are insured. However, less critical "emergencies" may afford you some input into the ambulance team's decision where to drive you -- don't be afraid to suggest a particular ER close by that is within your insurance plan.
Finally, after a service is provided, remember that many healthcare bills are negotiable -- even with insurance companies. Do try to appeal an insurance company decision if you believe you were treated unfairly or erroneously. And, you might also be successful if you approach non-plan doctors and ask if they might consider reducing their charges in your case to the level of in-plan reimbursement to reduce your out-of-pocket costs.
That's exactly what Maria did. Fortunately, the out-of-plan doctors agreed to reduce her charges to her plan levels in her case, resulting in a much more manageable bill for Ana's ER visit. Maria hopes Ana won't need another ER visit in the future, but, with her own "healthcare emergency plan" now in place and up to date, Maria knows if illness or injury strikes, she'll be prepared to do the best for her family, medically and financially.
Newsday last week rejected an advertisement from the Tennis Channel that sharply criticizes the newspaper's parent company, Cablevision, for not carrying the network.
"Thanks for nothing Cablevision," says the ad, which shows a tennis racket smashing a cable box.
Why is asking so important? In the Information Age, leaders must manage knowledge workers. Peter Drucker has defined knowledge workers as people who know more about what they are doing than their boss does. It is hard to tell people what to do and how to do it when they already know more than we do. In today's rapidly changing world, we need to ask, listen and learn from everyone around us.
Research shows that asking works. Howard Morgan and I recently published a study involving more than 11,000 leaders and 86,000 of their co-workers from eight major corporations. Our findings were clear: Leaders who ask, listen, learn and consistently follow up are seen as becoming more effective. Leaders who don't ask don't get much better. A few years ago, Alyssa Freas joined us in a similar study with customers and discovered nearly identical results. External customer satisfaction goes up when customer service representatives ask, listen, learn and follow up.
In addition to being supported by research, asking is just common sense. When people ask us for our input, listen to us, try to learn from us and follow up to see if they are getting better, our relationship with them improves.
This seems simple and obvious -- so why don't we do it?
Reviews of summary 360-degree feedback involving thousands of leaders from more than 50 organizations have shown that when the item "Asks people what he or she can do to improve" is included in the company's leadership inventory, it almost always falls near the bottom (if not in last place) in terms of employee satisfaction. As a rule, leaders don't ask.
I recently asked the vice president of customer satisfaction in a major organization if his employees should be asking their key customers for feedback -- listening, learning and following up to ensure service keeps getting better. "Of course," he replied.
"How important it this to your company?" I asked. "It's damn important!" he exclaimed.
I then lowered my voice and asked, "Have you ever asked your wife for feedback on how you can become a better husband?" He stopped, thought for a second, and sighed, "No."
"Who is more important -- your company's customers or your wife?" I asked. "My wife, of course," he replied.
"If you believe in asking so much, why don't you do it at home?" I inquired. He ruefully admitted, "Because I am afraid of the answer."
Why don't most of us ask, even though we know we should? We don't ask, because we are afraid of the answers.
Let me give you a personal example. I am 55 years old, and at my age, one type of input that I should be asking for every year is a physical exam. I managed to avoid this exam, for not one or two years, but seven years. How did I successfully avoid a physical exam for seven years? What did I keep telling myself? I will do it when I quit traveling so much. I'll go after I begin my "healthy foods" diet. I will get that exam after I get in shape.
Have you ever told yourself the same thing? Who are we kidding? The doctor? Our families? No, we are only kidding ourselves.
My suggestions are very simple:
• As a leader:
Get in the habit of asking key co-workers for their ideas on what needs to be done. Thank them for their input, listen to them, learn as much as you can, incorporate the ideas that make the most sense and follow up to ensure that real, positive change is occurring.
As a coach:
Encourage the people you are coaching to ask questions, listen to the answers and learn from everyone around them. Be a great role model for learning, then ask the people you are coaching to learn in the same way that you are. As an executive coach, I find that my clients can learn a lot more from their key stakeholders than they ever learn from me.
• As a friend and family member:
Ask your loved ones how you can be a better partner, friend, parent or child. Listen to their ideas. Don't get so busy with work that you forget that they are the most important people in your life.
Improving interpersonal relationships doesn't have to take a lot of our time. It does require having the courage to ask for important people's opinions and the discipline to follow up and do something about what we learn.
During our health care discussion this morning on my AM760 drive-time show here in Colorado, we focused in on the public option and President Obama's controversial comments about it in Grand Junction over the weekend. In the 8am hour, Congressman Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) happened to be listening in, and decided to make an unexpected call in to discuss the ongoing legislative wrangling. You can listen to the discussion here - it starts about halfway through the clip.
Perlmutter made the point that right now, the important insurance regulatory reforms are still in both the House and Senate bills (specifically, he was referring to the ban on discriminating against patients with a pre-existing condition). He also reminded listeners that the health care debate is still in flux - and that things are bound to change as the process continues.
Knowing the public option topic was on the mind of listeners, I made sure to ask him whether he would vote for a health care bill that did not include the public option. Perlmutter responded that he didn't know. He did, however, seem to begin conflating a public option with the so-called private "co-op" plans that the insurance industry wants substituted for the public option. He didn't go as far as to call them synonymous, but he did seem to suggest that a co-op plan could be as good as a public option - a notion that most empirical data suggests is just not true.
Listen in to the interview here, and decide for yourself how you feel about Perlmutter's position. Though Perlmutter and I agree on far more than we disagree on, I've certainly had my occasional disagreements with him in the past - and may ultimately have a disagreement with him on the health care issue. But one thing you can say about him is that he's a straight shooter always willing to answer tough questions - and I really do appreciate that.
Tune in at www.am760.net or on AM760 on your radio dial tomorrow (Tuesday) in the 8am MT hour - we're going to have on historian Rick Perlstein to go over his Washington Post article this weekend that looks at the historical roots of the conservative anti-health care protests.
Sun-Times Media Group's south suburban SouthtownStar newspaper is eliminating its Saturday edition in favor of a Sunday-through-Friday publication schedule and, as of Monday, has been reformatted as a tabloid, like the company's flagship Chicago Sun-Times.
There are 60 members of the Senate's Democratic caucus -- so why is Sen. Kent Conrad insisting that that there aren't enough votes to pass a public health insurance option as part of comprehensive reform bill?
"The fact of the matter is there are not the votes in the United States Senate for the public option, there never have been, so to continue to chase that rabbit is just a wasted effort," Conrad said on Fox News Sunday.
Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota (pop. 641,481), is presumably assuming that a bill containing a public option would need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. But even if that is the case, not a single member of the Democratic caucus -- including Conrad himself -- has actually announced that he or she would support such a filibuster. And a few Republicans -- Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine -- might not support it either.
"Senator Conrad should leave the vote counting to the leadership," a peeved Democratic leadership aide told the Huffington Post.
Conrad, the Budget Committee chairman, is also a key Finance Committee member, and is one of the bipartisan "Gang of Six" that has taken on the role of lead health care negotiators.
One thing to keep in mind is that there may not be a separate vote on the public option; it could simply come down to an up or down vote on the entire bill, with the public option included. For instance, even if the Finance Committee bill doesn't include a public option, the Democratic leadership, when it combines the bill with the health committee version, could include it. Another outside possibility is that senators could be faced with a bill coming out of conference committee that includes the public option, even if their chamber didn't vote for it initially.
Conrad, somewhat morbidly, appears to be assuming in his whip count that two members of the caucus, Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bob Byrd (D-W.Va.), will be too ill to vote. Conrad has previously noted to reporters that both may not be able to vote because of health concerns.
Byrd, however, made it to several votes just before recess. And health care reform is the defining policy and political goal of Kennedy's life. If both showed up, someone from the Democratic caucus would have to break ranks to kill the public option. Who would do it?
Even Conrad himself is not a definite no. His spokesman said he has yet to take a personal position on the public option.
At least three other caucus members have spoken critically about the public option: Mary Landrieu (La., pop.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.).
Landrieu, however, has said that despite her opposition, she could still vote for a comprehensive reform package that included a public option, depending on the details. She told the Huffington Post recently that it's too early to say whether she should support a filibuster of a bill that included a public option.
Nelson, too, is leaving his options open, saying that there is no bill yet. He told a local Nebraska official in June that he wouldn't filibuster a public option. (Neb. pop.: 1,783,432.)
Lieberman has also said the he is open to supporting it as part of a broad package.
Sen. Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) previously expressed some doubt about the public option but wound up voting for it in the Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee, as did Sen. Jeff Bingaman (N.M.), the third Democrat in the Gang of Six, along with Conrad and Finance Committee chair Max Baucus of Montana (pop. 967,440).
Centrist Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey also voted for the public option in the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; and moderates Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jim Webb (D-Va.) have publicly signed on to the idea.
In May, six other possible no votes -- Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Mark Warner (D-Va.), Arlen Specter (D-Penn.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) -- told the Huffington Post that they were at least open to considering a public option.
When it comes to an up or down vote on the entire bill, one factor all Democrats will surely keep in mind is the cost to their party if health care reform fails.
In a speech in Pittsburgh Thursday to liberal bloggers, former President Clinton argued that the passage of a reform bill will lead to a spike in Democratic approval. By contrast, Democrats paid a high price -- both the House and the Senate -- for failing to reform health care in 1993 and 1994.
And even if a few Democrats either can't make the vote, or defect, three Republicans -- North Carolina's Richard Burr, along with Snowe and Collins -- have said they're open to some form of public option.
"It's okay if you want to have a government option, but you've got to leave the private sector private," Burr told a local paper on Friday. (HuffPost contacted Burr's office and has started the walk-back clock on that one.)
OpenLeft's Chris Bowers has his own whip count going, as does blogger and statistician Nate Silver. They consider a host of alternate scenarios, and reach no firm conclusions, other than with more than 40 firm votes, Democrats could themselves successfully filibuster any attempt to strip the public option out of the full bill
FireDogLake's Jane Hamsher, meanwhile, raises a subject that the Senate doesn't often like to consider: There are, in fact, two chambers of Congress. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has floated her own vote tally, saying that health care reform without a public option doesn't have the votes.
Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, responded to the wavering around the public option by reiterating the threat to block reform that doesn't include it.
"As we have stated repeatedly for months now, a majority of the members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will oppose any healthcare reform legislation that does not include a robust public option. Our position has not, and will not, change," he said. "As Co-Chair of the Progressive Caucus, I look forward to working with my colleagues to develop comprehensive legislation that allows all Americans to choose the healthcare plan that's right for them and their families. But I will not support any bill that does not include a public option."
China's giant panda could be extinct in just two to three generations as rapid economic development is infringing on its way of life, state media said on Monday, citing an expert at conservation group WWF.
The third season of AMC's "Mad Men" debuted to record ratings Sunday night, averaging 2.8 million total viewers for the show's highest-rated episode yet.
The show, which has been a critical sensation and Emmy favorite, premiered 33% higher than last season's premiere — and, in the Adults 18-49 demo, grew 71% to an average of 1.2 million viewers.
Just before dawn on July 29, 2009, the Beijing police apprehended leading Chinese public interest lawyer, Xu Zhiyong, allegedly to question him about possible tax evasion. He has not been heard from since. In an increasingly conservative political environment in China, Mr. Xu's detention is far from an anomaly. Many speculate that the Chinese government's recent crackdown on public interest lawyers is merely a part of the preparations for the 60th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China this fall. But in looking beneath the surface of the government's recent actions, a different narrative emerges.
The apprehension of Mr. Xu, the forced closure of his legal assistance organization, Gongmeng (in English, the Open Constitution Initiative), the investigation of Yi Ren Ping, a non-profit law center that assists AIDS and hepatitis patients with anti-discrimination actions, the recent disbarment of over 20 public interest lawyers, the professional "exile" of a leading legal scholar and outspoken critic to a remote region of China: all of these actions paint the picture of a government that has become increasingly more alarmed by a more vocal and organized group of lawyers. The government, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) which ultimately controls all governmental bodies, has begun to view the development of these non-profit lawyers and legal reform as a threat to its authority and to the one-party rule of the CCP. Recent governmental assaults on the public interest law field are not just a one-off affair. Rather, they show a CCP not looking to embrace the "rule of law," but instead seeking to contain it.
Development of Rule of Law in China from the US & Chinese Perspectives
Both China and the U.S. agree that greater rule of law in China is needed and can benefit China. Virtually every conference between the two nations mentions the need for rule of law development. But what is never articulated is what each means by "rule of law." Many Western scholars claim that rule of law is value-neutral; it is merely a system where laws are enforced in a transparent manner by an independent judiciary and that rule of law can exist regardless of the political system of the country.
And while this is likely true, the U.S. government still largely views rule of law within the rubric of democracy; as the rule of law develops so does democracy and greater protection for human rights. Of the $27 million the government appropriated to rule of law projects in China in 2008, $15 million were administered by the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and another $2 million was designated for non-State Department rule of law projects (see CSR report, p. 2).
China, however, takes a different perspective. While seeing the benefits of rule of law in terms of economic development, international acceptance and respect, and the ability for the central government to have greater control over the provinces, China has largely limited rule of law to the economic sphere and at times, a few other select areas. If a case involves a politically sensitive issue, involves an organized group of plaintiffs, or could unmask government malfeasance, the government will either not allow a case to proceed or will determine the ultimate outcome.
Even with this limited development toward legal reform, many U.S. policymakers believe that rule of law will continue to spread and permeate lawyers', judges' and society's consciousness. This Trojan horse strategy assumes that legal reform in the economic sphere will inevitably spread to all areas of the law and to Chinese civil society. Government will be held more accountable to the people, laws will be administered transparently and all rights, political, economic and social, will be able to be vindicated. But proponents of this theory offer little to no evidence as to why. Why is this inevitable? Why can't China succeed in limiting legal reform to the economic sphere? Why can't rule of law be contained?
In other words, what if China is the black swan in the whole rule of law theory?
Emergence of a More Conservative Legal Ideology in China
Theory of the Three Supremes
The detention of Xu Zhiyong comes amid an increasing conservative political environment in China, at least in terms of legal reform. In December 2007, President Hu Jintao attempted to reassert the importance of the CCP in legal interpretation and reform by announcing his theory of "The Three Supremes:" judges and prosecutors should "always regard as supreme the Party's cause, the people's interest, and the Constitution and laws." Although initially unclear if the Three Supremes were listed in hierarchical order, a recent announcement in July 2009 by a justice minister confirmed the hierarchical nature of the Three Supremes and the preeminence of the CCP when he called upon lawyers to "above all obey the Communist Party and help foster a harmonious society."
The Three Supremes is not just rhetoric. In March 2008, the National People's Congress named Wang Shengjun, a Party insider without any legal training, as head of the Supreme People's Court (SPC), replacing reform-minded and trained lawyer Xiao Yang. Upon taking his position Wang has worked ardently to have the courts conform to the Three Supremes.
A More Organized Public Interest Law Movement
While the government expounds the Three Supremes and imposes this conservative ideology on the legal system, public interest lawyers have become increasingly organized and vocal. In August 2008, a group of 35 public interest lawyers in Beijing issued an internet appeal that requested that the government-controlled Beijing Lawyers' Association (BLA) to conduct free and direct elections of governing officials of the BLA. In December 2008, human rights activists, many of whom are lawyers, signed Charter 08, a petition to the Chinese government calling for greater human rights, the end of one-party rule and an independent legal system. In addition, many of the non-profit lawyers, including Xu Zhiyong, have represented plaintiffs in politically sensitive cases, including cases pertaining to the Sichuan earthquake and the melamine milk scandal. Last year, Xu's organization issued a report blaming Chinese policies in Tibet for the 2008 uprising in that region.
China's Recent Response
Under the doctrine of the Three Supremes, China has not responded kindly to these public interest lawyers. Although the BLA slightly altered its voting rules by allowing for the direct election of representatives who then in-turn elected the governing officials, in February 2009, the local Judicial Bureau sought its revenge. After withholding a license from Li Subin, one of the advocates of the new voting procedures at the BLA, the Bureau issued an order for Yitong Law Firm, which employed Li, to shut down for six months for permitting a non-licensed attorney to practice law.
Liu Xiaobo, a leading human rights activist in China and signatory to Charter 08 was detained by police just hours before the publication of Charter 08. He remains in police custody. He Weifang, a well-known law scholar at the prestigious Peking University has been sent into professional exile and now teaches law in China's most western region, Xinjiang.
Xu Zhiyong has faced a similar fate. In May 2009, tax authorities began to investigate Xu's non-profit legal center, Gongmeng. On July 14, the Beijing office of the National Tax Bureau and the Beijing Local Tax Bureau each issued a notice to Gongmeng for non-payment of taxes on funds donated by Yale University and levied the maximum penalty of five-times the amount owed, or $208,000. On July 17, twenty officials from the Beijing Office of Civil Affairs barged into the Gongmeng offices, confiscating all materials including computers, case files, and furniture, and shut down Gongmeng. On July 29, Xu was apprehended by police for suspicion of tax evasion; he remains in custody.
In a Kafkaesque turn of events, on August 5, after raising at least some funds to pay its fine, the Beijing Public Security Bureau froze all of Gongmeng's accounts. On August 10, in an attempt to discuss this matter with tax officials at the Beijing Local Tax Bureau and the National Tax Bureau, Gongmeng officials were escorted out. Authorities have informed Gongmeng that their recently filed paperwork is invalid because it does not contain the signature of Gongmeng's legal representative, Xu Zhiyong. As this back-and-forth continues, Xu Zhiyong remains in police custody and the fine of $208,000 accrues daily compounded interest of 3%.
Also on July 29, officials from Beijing Cultural Market Administrative Enforcement Unit inspected the offices of Yi Ren Ping, a non-profit organization that files anti-discrimination lawsuits on behalf of people AIDS or hepatitis. Claiming that their search was being conducted under the Measures to Manage Internal Material Publications, a law that was repealed in 2001, the officials seized 90 copies of Yi Ren Ping's newsletter.
China's Containment of Rule of Law
The Chinese Communist Party is unified by one principle: to remain in power. Any organized effort, even if within the confines of the law, will be viewed as a threat to the CCP's authority. In recent months, Chinese public interest lawyers have been effectively organizing themselves, especially through the internet, to challenge the current system. However, these lawyers are far from what the rest of the world would deem radical. They are merely using the laws passed by the National People's Congress to protect people, especially those in disadvantaged groups like rural parents in Sichuan or people with AIDS. They are not looking to overturn underlying constitutional principles; they just want to enforce the law as written.
Even though these lawyers work within the system to improve Chinese society in a way that the law permits, as soon as they amass sufficient numbers, in the minds of the CCP, they are no longer operating within the legal system, but within the political one. In these situations, the CCP will abandon the legal system in favor of the political one.
But this is not to say that rule of law has not taken hold in China. Today, foreign corporations usually receive a fair hearing before arbitration commissions and the majority of cases handled by the courts are ordinary cases that involve little to no Party interference. There has been a marked increase in the professionalism of many judges and lawyers, and there is a sincere effort by many in the profession to develop greater rule of law.
However, those few cases that involve large groups of people or involve issues sensitive to the CCP, often do not receive the same transparent and independent judgment. In these situations, the outcome is ultimately determined by the CCP.
Thus far, China has been successful at confining rule of law development to non-political cases. The actions that have been taken against public interest lawyers in the past two years show China's commitment to maintaining this separation. The government's harassment and detention of public interest lawyers is intended to have a chilling effect on the profession. The low numbers of lawyers who seek a career in the public interest can be seen as a reflection of this impact.
But can China succeed in containing rule of law to certain areas? Many look to Taiwan and South Korea as an example of the inevitability of legal reform and democracy in an East Asian society. Both were under authoritarian regimes but eventually developed vibrant legal systems. However, China is in a very different place. Taiwan and South Korea were still dependent on the U.S. for trade and for military protection, and thus heavily influenced by the U.S. China, on the other hand, has become an economic and military powerhouse, beholden to few other nations. One of those countries is, of course, the United States, but China has gained significant leverage in this bilateral relationship by stocking up over $700 billion (!) in US treasury bonds. All the while, it has been able to develop its economy while limiting legal development in the political and human rights spheres. Its continued rise only solidifies the need for this separation in the minds of the CCP leadership.
China's future remains uncertain and only time will tell if rule of law does in fact permeate other areas of Chinese society. However, at this juncture, where China has become an important global power, it is important for U.S. policymakers to re-evaluate their assumptions of the rule of law landscape in China; and to ask themselves, what if China is successful in containing rule of law to certain segments? Can the U.S. live with that reality? Will it have a choice?
Los Angeles Galaxy star David Beckham will miss Wednesday's game against the Chicago Fire at Toyota Park because he received a red card -- and automatic one-game suspension -- on Saturday.
On his Myspace page, "Friend of Coal" professional Bass fisherman Jeremy Starks says this about "clean coal":
When I talk to groups in West Virginia I tell them something that not everyone in my state gets. I tell them that the water around active and abandoned coal mines is almost always some of the cleanest, healthiest flowing water you'll find. And the fishing around mine sites is fantastic. That's actually the reason I asked the Friends of Coal to be my main sponsor.
In West Virginia, billboards featuring Starks line the interstate highways, reading "Clean Water, Clean Coal and Wild Wonderful West Virginia."
In the wake of the TVA coal ash disaster in Kingston, Tennessee, which released over 1 billion gallons of toxic coal waste into the Clinch and Emory Rivers, citizens group United Mountain Defense (UMD) has offered an official invitation to Mr. Starks to come to Kingston to see the disaster with his own eyes.
"We'd like Mr. Starks to come to Tennessee and see for himself that there is nothing 'clean' about coal. This TVA coal ash disaster has not only killed millions of fish, it has polluted the water supply for thousands of people," said Tanya Turner, a representative for UMD.
"Bring your fishing pole to Tennessee, Mr. Starks," said UMD member Matt Landon. "You won't be catching any fish, but you might need it to fend off TVA security if you try and get near the site of the spill. And bring a haz-mat suit too."
"The Roane County community has been devastated by the TVA spill," said UMD board member Bonnie Swinford. "It's not just the fish -- people's lives have been turned upside down by this coal disaster. It's sad that Mr. Starks acts as a paid spokesperson for the coal industry, telling the public that clean water and coal go hand in hand. There's no such thing as clean coal. We need Mr. Starks to tell the truth about dirty coal and dirty water."
The TVA disaster -- over 100 times larger than the 12-million gallon Exxon Valdez spill -- is considered by environmentalists to be the world's worst environmental disaster since Chernobyl.
On Dec 22, 2008, a retaining wall around a 65-foot high impoundment of coal ash from a TVA power plant failed suddenly, sending a tidal wave of ashy sludge into the Clinch and Emory Rivers, and destroyed several homes. Scientists have found high levels of arsenic and other heavy metals in the river following the spill. TVA initially claimed that the coal ash was "mostly inert" and estimated clean-up time at 6 to 8 weeks. After over 6 months of digging, less than 10 percent of the coal ash has been removed, and cleanup costs are now estimated to exceed $1 billion.
Shortly after the spill, experts kayaked around the ash spill to document the effects on fish and water quality. The kayak trip, dead fish and subsequent lab tests showing high levels of toxic heavy metals in the rivers were documented in on-line videos.
After testing water samples in the Clinch and Emory Rivers, Dr. Shea Tuberty, Assistant Professor of Biology at the Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry Lab at Appalachian State University stated "I've never seen levels this high. These levels would knock out fish reproduction ... the ecosystems around Kingston and Harriman are going to be in trouble ... maybe for generations."
A report by Dr. Avner Vengosh, associate professor of earth and ocean sciences at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment, who analyzed water and ash samples from the TVA disaster site, concludes that "exposure to radium- and arsenic-containing particulates in the ash could have severe health implications" in the affected areas.
The "Clean Coal, Clean Water" billboard images of Jeremy Starks can be seen here on the website of Walker CAT, a heavy equipment dealer in West Virginia that sells mining machinery to coal companies.
New York City's election laws are notoriously outdated and arcane, and many of them simply do not make sense. Candidates throughout New York City face trying battles to get on and stay on the ballot. Many are kicked off over extremely minor errors, from typos to the misspelling of a name none of which fairly reflects whether they deserve to be on the ballot. Elections should be about fostering Democracy, not suppressing it. We must act now to reform our election system so that voters are encouraged to participate and qualified candidates are not held hostage by excessive bureaucracy.
It is too late to change New York City's election process before the primaries on September 15th, but there are some steps that our City and State can take to reform these prohibitive laws to make our City's next elections more open and fair. Right now in New York City, I have submitted legislation to create a pro-bono legal counseling service that would help candidates who don't have the resources to hire an election lawyer. This service would be independent of the Board of Elections and provide a final legal review of a candidate's petition submission to help prevent the most common errors that often unfairly kick people off the ballot.
And on the State level, there is even more we can do to eliminate many of the most burdensome requirements current election law places on candidates. I am calling for State legislation that could and should be introduced to: *Eliminate the requirements that only political party members can witness petition signatures, and instead simply requiring that witnesses must be a qualified voter of New York State; *Eliminate requirements related to the gathering of signatures, such as the requirement that signers include their exact town/city/county, as the State has a database to verify this information and so it is no longer necessary; and *Amend the unreasonably restrictive requirement that candidates have only one opportunity to correct errors on their petition filings.
These seemingly small changes would go a long way to opening up our City's election system and ensuring that qualified candidates are not left out of our electoral system for lack of financial resources or legal know-how.
But this fight does not end with ballot access - we must also work to increase voter participation so that our City has a robust election process. We should allow New Yorkers to register to vote online and on election day, and permit early voting and no-excuse absentee voting, both of which now exist in numerous other states and localities. These common sense reforms will help us build an active democracy in our city that makes all elected officials more accountable to the voters.
No candidate should ever be kicked off the ballot over a typo, and no eligible New Yorker should ever be turned away from a polling both because a form was not turned in on time. Please join this fight to ensure that New Yorkers' democratic choice is no longer jeopardized by needless red tape. Visit http://www.billdeblasio.com/petition to sign our petition and make your voice heard!
At its peak level of GDP, the U.S. economy depended on the American consumer for more than 70% of its output of goods and services. It has been the deleveraging of the American consumer, and to a growing extent, his/her unemployment, that has been the catalyst of the U.S. recession. And not only America; the centrality of the U.S. consumer to the overall global economy has meant his pulling back on a debt induced shopping spree, which has sparked a worldwide synchronized recession.
The vast amount of money that Uncle Sam has borrowed to fund a nearly $800 billion economic stimulus program is supposed to substitute for the falloff in consumer demand, stop the avalanche of job losses and in the process regenerate consumer spending. The perception that this policy response was beginning to bear fruit has been the foundation of a recent flurry of statements emanating from the Federal Reserve, intimating that the recession was winding down, with recovery just around the corner. Both the Fed, Obama administration and Wall Street fully expected that the July retail sales figures would reflect a return to growth in consumer spending, juiced up by a taxpayer funding "cash for clunkers" gimmick aimed at kick-starting auto sales.
When the official sales figures were released by the Commerce Department, jaws dropped right through the floor. Instead of the .7% rise that was expected, July's retail sales figures revealed a decline of .1%. However, the reality was much worse than even the posted decline, for the July figures were artificially inflated by a large increase in automobile related products due to "cash for clunkers." Without the engineered car driven increase in consumer purchases, the actual retail sales contraction was .6%.
The ugly truth is that no matter how manipulated official economic statistics are, including the U3 unemployment number, the reality is that total consumer purchasing power, reflecting the number of hours worked multiplied by average wage, has declined to a level that makes it virtually impossible to recreate vigorous economic growth. Despite the happy talk from Washington, I think it would be surprising if the Obama administration does not ask Congress for a second massive stimulus package before the end of the year.
Should a second stimulus package be proposed by President Obama, he may encounter stiff resistance from Republicans and fiscally conservative Democrats over concerns about the exploding national debt. However, it is likely that the Obama administration will place a higher priority on going into the 2010 mid-term elections with the ability to claim they have reduced unemployment rather than positioning themselves as fiscally responsible.
Higher deficits, however, create the danger of inflation and much higher interest rates. Escalating interest rates will serve as a brake on economic expansion, defeating the purpose of deficit funded stimulus programs. Now, in that situation, one can always resort to monetary policy, with the Federal Reserve reducing interest rates. However, in this unique economic disaster our planet is currently navigating its way through, the Fed, as with many central banks throughout the world, has already reduced its funds rate to close to zero.
Could the Obama administration be running out of options? If fall retail sales continue to plummet and unemployment rises, things could get even more ugly for the problematic American economy.
John Horgan, whose article on evolution and war was the subject of my last blog, has written a blog in reply and informed me of a second article that he has written on the subject. Since I accused him of flunking Evolution 101, I shouldn't be surprised that he called me an "arrogant evolutionary reductionist". How ironic, that two thinkers on war should so easily lapse into the intellectual equivalent of saber rattling and war! I hereby apologize and lay down my saber in hope of fostering a more collaborative discussion.
First I will try to achieve a consensus on some basic issues. If we can't agree on these, then we can't even leave square one. Then I will jump to an advanced level by showcasing the work of Peter Turchin, author of War and Peace and War among other books. My hope is that everyone who thinks about war and peace can begin to approach his level of sophistication, even if they don't agree with him in every respect.
Leaving square one: Too often, discussions of war have implicitly or explicitly assumed the following formulae:
(evolution/genes/innate/biology)=(war is inevitable/nothing can be done)
(learning/culture)=(war is preventable/anything is possible)
The point that I was trying to make in my last blog is that these formulae are profoundly wrong and unhelpful. Evolution is all about context sensitivity. All organisms are elaborately designed to change their phenotypes in response to environmental change, according to rules that evolve by prior evolution. Adaptive phenotypic plasticity turns genetic determinism on its head, as I discuss in a chapter of Evolution for Everyone titled "How I learned to stop worrying and love genetic determinism." If we were instructed by our genes to "do X under all circumstances", we would have little capacity for change. But if we're instructed by our genes to "do X under circumstance X', do Y under circumstance Y'..." and if we decide that Y is a desirable behavior, we need merely provide circumstance Y' and Y becomes easy. Knowledge about evolution becomes a powerful tool for environmental intervention.
Moreover, learning and culture do not stand outside the orbit of evolution but must themselves be understood from an evolutionary perspective. Even B.F. Skinner, who most people associate with the "anything is possible" view of human nature, regarded operant conditioning as a product of genetic evolution and a process of evolution in its own right. The if-then rules provided by genetic evolution include the reinforcers that cause behaviors to be learned and transmitted in a more open-ended fashion.
To summarize our progress so far, we can't leave square one on the subject of evolution and war unless we abandon these formulaic assumptions. Evolution is all about change and only by the strangest of secondary assumptions can it be interpreted as an incapacity for change. The interesting question is this: Have smart people already discovered all the answers without using the E-word, or would a sophisticated knowledge of genetic and cultural evolution lead to new answers about the causes and prevention of war?
It's a complex world: In his reply to my previous blog, John chided me for implying that war can be prevented by finding the right environmental context, as easily as sunburn can be prevented by applying sunscreen. Here is the relevant passage:
Wilson, of course, doesn't specify the environmental conditions under which war always occurs. That's because there are no such conditions. For example, war is often linked to population density, environmental degradation, resource scarcity, and sedentary cultures, but war does not always occur when all these conditions are met. Conversely, war may break out and persist when none of the usual risk factors are present. War is both over-determined and under-determined. That is what makes it such a frustrating and fascinating topic for scientific analysis--and why it makes fools of arrogant evolutionary reductionists like David Sloan Wilson.
Gracious! I hope that I can get John to back down from his own fiery rhetoric. First, there is a big difference between no conditions and complex conditions. If there are truly no conditions that cause war, if it is purely random, then there is nothing left to discuss, regardless of whether we are evolutionists, another sort of scientist, or a postmodernist. If the conditions that cause war are complex, with multiple interacting factors (including chance), then outcomes cannot easily be predicted on the basis of single factors. In this case, it is everyone's job to figure out what is going on, in all its complexity, and it is an open question whether a sophisticated knowledge of evolution can contribute to understanding. The important point is that emphasizing complexity is no argument at all against the relevance of evolution. Evolutionists are fully aware that it's a complex world.
In addition, single factors are sometimes so important that they can be straightforwardly identified and changed. In my aforementioned chapter, I discuss the work of Margo Wilson and Martin Daly, who demonstrate a strong relationship between violent conflict among men and early reproduction in women to life expectancy and income inequality in Chicago neighborhoods. If you want men to get along and women to delay reproduction, try providing a social environment that enables the average person to live into their seventies with a relatively equal sharing of resources. That remedy might not be as easy as applying sunscreen, but the results will be as reliable.
I'll end this section with a word about postmodernism, which I mentioned pejoratively in my last blog, prompting HeevenSteven to ask for a clarification. In its extreme form, postmodernism treats science as equivalent to any other belief system without any special claim on what counts as knowledge. It is this position that royniles defines as "something from which the absence of leaves one profoundly enriched and liberated." I recommend the book Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism by philosopher Paul Boghossian for the highbrow version of royniles' definition. As Paul shows, nothing has happened in philosophy to challenge the truth of such statements as "there were mountains on earth before there were people."
There is, however, a more moderate form of postmodernism worth keeping, which emphasizes the extreme complexity and context sensitivity of cultural systems and questions whether assertions of truth in any particular culture, including scientific culture, are in fact part of the culture's ideology. Insofar as postmodernism, relativism, and constructivism merely emphasize complexity and ideology masquerading as truth, they fit comfortably with scientific approaches that also emphasize complexity, including evolutionary theories of human belief systems, as described in my book Darwin's Cathedral and elsewhere.
Jumping to the advanced level: Meet Peter Turchin. The son of a famous computer scientist and pioneer of the artificial life movement, Peter began his career as a biologist specializing in population dynamics, such as the boom and bust cycles of bark beetles. These cycles are influenced by multiple factors and are therefore complex and irregular. If you want to appreciate complexity in the biological world, read Peter's earlier work, which places an equal emphasis on mathematical modeling and the analysis of time series data. At some point Peter decided that he needed a new challenge and decided to approach human historical dynamics in the same way as nonhuman population dynamics, including the same emphasis on mathematical modeling and time series analysis of historical trends in the real world. He calls this approach Cliodynamics, from Clio, the muse of history, and dynamics, the study of temporally varying processes. Peter's most accessible book is War and Peace and War: The Life Cycles of Imperial Nations and his newest book, Secular Cycles, was just published by Princeton University Press. For a shorter introduction to Peter's work, I recommend the article on his website titled "War and the Evolution of Social Complexity: A Multi-level Selection Approach" available on the Cliodynamics website.
It is beyond the scope of this blog to discuss Peter's work in detail; better to read it yourself. The point I want to emphasize here is that Peter is operating at a level of sophistication concerning evolution and complexity that makes the formulaic discussions outlined above seem silly by comparison. That doesn't make Peter's work incomprehensible; he is perfectly able to write for a general audience in addition to his more technical work. It's just that he is making use of contemporary genetic and cultural evolutionary theory. He might not have everything right, but getting it right will require operating at the same level.
I hope that everyone interested in evolution and war can permanently leave square one and gravitate to the level represented by Peter's work. As I concluded my last blog, we have a lot of work to do.
Once upon a time there was an African country that after several years of instability seemed to be moving shakily towards reform and democracy. Its aging despotic president had signed a power-sharing deal with the opposition that created a unity government that would precipitate a new constitution and elections.
Sounds rather like Zimbabwe, doesn't it? But I was actually describing Rwanda in early 1994 -- only months before a genocide that would claim almost a million lives. While the Arusha Accords were being haphazardly implemented (but more often than not being ignored), fanatics in the countryside were setting up militia training bases. Arms and military advisers were being flown in to train and equip these ragtag groupings. President Habyarimana's assassination in April 1994 was the catalyst for a hundred days of massacres, rape and torture.
Zimbabwe is in an eerily similar situation to the one that Rwanda was experiencing before its genocide. After a decade of brutality and economic devastation, it is tempting to hope that Zanu PF's "partnership" with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) shows that Zimbabwe is irreversibly on the road to recovery.
Sadly, however, what we see in Zimbabwe is nothing but a false dawn: a Potemkin peace designed to lure us into the same indifferent complacency with which the world viewed Rwanda in 1994.
The violent repression that has characterised Zanu PF's rule continues, flouting the provisions of the Global Political Agreement (GPA), the power-sharing agreement signed with the opposition in September. Zanu PF considers the unity deal after its defeat at the March 29 polls last year as a mere speed bump in its path of continued authoritarian rule -- a speed bump which creates the illusion that it is prepared to accept reform and genuine democracy.
The Zanu PF militias that unleashed a wave of brutality on suspected MDC supporters as punishment for the 2008 election result have been accused by teachers of setting up "terror bases" at schools.
Even more frightening (and chillingly reminiscent of the prelude to Rwanda's genocide when French weapons were despatched en-masse to Kigali) is the build-up of weapons in Zimbabwe.
Last month the International Peace Information Service (IPIS) revealed that in April 2008, Chinese arms (including several million rounds of ammunition as well as RPC7 rockets and mortars) destined for Zimbabwe reached Luanda, Angola. It has been confirmed that the arms have subsequently reached Harare. Later, in August, an additional 53 tons of ammunition were flown to Harare from the Democratic Republic of the Congo in August 2008.
There's more. David Maynier, the Democratic Alliance's defence spokesperson, has revealed that South Africa is seeking authorization from its National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC) to export ammunition to its neighbor. Maynier has been subsequently vilified by the ANC ruling party which seems more obsessed by how the opposition MP found out about the application than about what the arms will be used for should they be authorized for export.
President Mugabe has unleashed his military on innocent civilians before -- in 1982 he used North Korean-trained troops to torture and massacre thousands in Matabeleland for their alleged support for Zapu, a rival anti-colonialist movement that he eventually forced to merge with his own party.
His army's abysmal rights record continues, with Human Rights Watch recently exposing the army's invasion of the Marange diamond fields in November 2008, where it has subsequently subjected locals to forced labor, torture and murder.
According to two South African MPs, Wilmot James and Kenneth Mubu, who returned earlier this month from Zimbabwe on a fact-finding mission, "There are reports from credible sources of increasing paramilitary activity in the countryside..."
They explained, "Under his [Mugabe's] personal control he has a paramilitary machine consisting of soldiers, thugs, the so-called war veterans and ZANU political commissars. There are the hit squads. The police also collaborate..." They also have reason to believe that in addition to the arms exports uncovered by IPIS, "Mugabe is talking to Venezuela, Cuba and Korea to fund a war-chest in preparation for the referendum and election following on the implementation of the GPA."
While Rwanda's genocide was powered by ethnic hatred, this was merely a pretext: the tragedy was deliberately orchestrated by a shadowy ruling clique which knew its power was in jeopardy, and which refused to sacrifice it at all cost. So while ethnic tensions in Zimbabwe are nowhere near the levels of those in Rwanda in 1994, a similar intensity of hatred exists, as does the same desperate willingness for its rulers to do whatever it takes to remain in power.
The arms flooding in and the paramilitary training in the countryside are deliberate preparations for war -- a war to be inflicted by homegrown postcolonial imperialists on an innocent and undeserving citizenry so that Zanu PF's rapacious supremacy can continue.
We cannot ignore the warning signs. We know what happened in Rwanda in 1994. The world looked away while almost a million people were slaughtered. Will we let this happen in Zimbabwe?
Death, dying and an abrupt step back from death's door have dominated our summer. Lessons to date: you'd better have fabulous insurance and a lot of it, know the difference between "gravely" and "mortally" ill, and have tenacious advocates looking out for your best interests, on whichever side of The Great Divide those interests may lie. All this would have been sufficient to radically personalize "health care" and America's faux-system for me. Then I had to factor in the ubiquitous craziness generated by a fear-mongering, deluded few, acting against their own best interests and on behalf of Big Insurance's obscene mega-profits, devil take the hindmost. Add a dash of my personal furies exacerbated by Atlanta's ever-filthy air keeping me captive indoors month after month while driving up all kinds of directly correlated but uncaptured and dire health-related costs.
What links all three? Ill-gotten gains and a savage disregard for the health and well-being of all but the most privileged among us.
Personal dramas aside, I cannot leave to chance the urgent need for each and all of us to stand up and be counted. To push back against out-of-control Big Status Quo -- abetted by crony capitalists and corporate philistines who have rolled over to this outrage by blindly yielding to the soaring costs eating our economy alive and actively causing death to those who simply can't pony up the ever-bigger buck. Never has there been a better time to challenge the tortured and degenerate Calvinism that lets the powers that be determine that somehow only a wealthy few are worthy of life's blessings.
These collective interests have now clearly demonstrated the depths and breadth of their ignominy. They will do anything -- anything -- to stop reform of our appalling health insurance industry and their richly-rewarded pals. The enormity of what today's slick and, yes, evil spirits are intent on pulling off -- defying the clear will of the American people to reign in the abuses to our health in the name of their profits -- is beyond breath-taking.
We really are seeing the work of the usual suspects. They run this country whenever we let them. They're the all-too well-known, self-aggrandizing Newts and Palinistas. The scum of TV, cable and Radioland. And as usual, they're aided and abetted by the shameless likes of incendiaries including Grassfire.org, ResistNet and other paranoid extremists. And never give a pass to the GOFERs -- Good Old Fashioned Establishment Republicans (with due apologies to authentic gophers).
Their self-serving ideas have wormed their way into uncritical and poorly educated minds with the intention of turning us against each other -- eating away at the core of our democracy -- while profiteers and fundamentalists of all stripes attack the best interests of the vast majority.
Our long cultural legacy bears a disturbing resemblance to the current and unacceptable condition in the extensive industry allegedly responsible for our health. A difference between today and once upon a time is that the scary and loud extremists are no longer relegated to the margins of society. Now, they've captured significant megaphones, which makes them appear to have credibility. It is "standing" that they have not earned, do not deserve, and for which they must be held accountable.
They own, outright, entire systems of mass distribution, including but not limited to the FoxFauxNews phenomenon. While these reactionaries seem always to have been utterly shameless, now they have intimidated the dainty and faint-of-heart that pass themselves off as our main stream media. No surprise, the latter are owned by giant corporations also vested in the outrageous status quo and generating outsized revenues REGARDLESS of the consequences. Craziness gets covered as news, filth flung defending their masters' profits gets respectfully reported as if it were a legitimate perspective. At least Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert remind me to laugh at wicked ways and spur me on to act.
The wrong-wing influence in the public arena is no abstraction to me. Every single day, relentlessly, we are bombarded with the thought-grenades these parasites drop. We get rained on by people and organizations intent on the rabid exploitation of our weakest citizens, barraged by the diatribes, drenched with the lies that the reactionaries spew.
Make no mistake. These are demagogues and fear-mongers who would give cockroaches a bad name. The result? My e-inbox, I regret to report, smokes. And the stuff coming in makes killer-tobacco look mild, radio-active fall-out a balm.
Then we see this same stuff popping up in the garbage dished out by shady characters getting rich off this drek. We receive the end-poison on the airwaves that are allegedly public, witness the blogosphere tainted with anti-truths, distortions and bald-faced lies, peppered with nuttiness like "Life and Government Without Taxes!"
These instruments of kleptocracy have a very long track record of running roughshod over our common wealth. They remain fiercely determined to retain or recapture the reigns of power that for decades have allowed them aggressively to undermine our health, restrict our options and the will to act, while cheerfully enriching themselves. And as practically every person in America can testify -- what gets dished up to us is the WORST health care extortion can buy.
The Bigger the Lie the better. These propagandists care not a whit that the vast majority of the rest of us are suffering the results of what Robert Kuttner aptly described as Everything For Sale and more recently Thomas Frank diligently outed in his reportage of the net result of their minions in The Wrecking Crew.
My horror grows ever greater as I follow the dark places that current, extraordinarily well-funded business interests are merrily plumbing, intent on again having their way with us. While rape, pillage and plunder -- the effects of the current industrial-model, profit-based health administration not-system -- are far from new, they do not improve with age. What we are witnessing is what they have done for decades
As a matter of well-documented fact, the United States has a long and dishonorable history of facile and masterful exploitation of our most vulnerable individuals. The susceptible get stirred up, then cuddle up to their worst fears, grow and cherish their fullblown paranoia.
Yes, the rampant mania we're all witnessing under the cover of August "dog-days" does appear to me to be a misanthropic Hobbesian Leviathan on steroids and the farthest side of sanity. But that is hardly the beginning or the end of it. Be ready.
We do well to remember that America has had more than our fair share of lunacy hovering around the endeavors of our better angels. If you can find a history textbook not distorted, tainted and/or sanitized by the Texas Board of Education and other hard-rightists, you'll find the stories of legions of the disaffected and heavy-hearted arriving here from our first moments on. Dissidents, malcontents, criminals (remember I live in Georgia,) religious zealots, latter-born sons powerless in the face of primogenitor and just plain folks desperate enough to try to start all over.
European diseases had emptied much of the continent of earlier peoples; slavery dulled the entire culture to exploitation; we became expert at xenophobia; flourished by taking what we wanted from those who could not defend themselves -- most workers, all women, too many children -- until the Labor and Progressive movements, one mighty persuasive Depression and a long climb out of its depths and into world war effected changes that opened the way for a genuine middle class.
Alas, reactionaries know how potent demonizing The Other is so they created one. Senator Joseph McCarthy and the Dulles brothers delivered on the fear by the bucket-full and an exhausted, distracted post-war America bought it. Whatever your opinion of the Cold War, one thing is indisputable -- it was astronomically profitable to those Eisenhower clearly warned us about.
It took a while for the reactionaries' waterboy from Wisconsin and his terror tactics to be shamed, but even when McCarthy was held modestly accountable, the Senate vote to censure him was opposed by 22 -- TWENTY-TWO -- Senators, Republicans each and all. It is now abundantly well documented how this first "Joe" is the spiritual wet nurse to a certain confused plumber who shares the name, and a snarly host of others including the sycophant Joe who shills for America's second-favorite stimulant on weekday mornings (along with our most-favored drug: adrenalin.) Not coincidentally, numbers for all of them grow along with profits for the entire anti-health industry that continue to buy political favors, indifferent to party labels. Heavily funded "astroturf" groups add to the noise, confusion, disinformation and distortions.
This dark, stark and,yes, sinister 300 years of baggage rebounds every time those of us vested by our Founders with sovereignty let down our guard. We woke up long enough to get Obama to the White House, but that was the beginning, not the end. In spite of the painful current reality foisted on us by out-of-control pseudo-free-marketeers, we're still in the deadly grip of profit-über alles. Shame on us.
It's hardly news that a well-oiled machine is intensely focused on derailing long overdue reforms to our deeply flawed delivery system, a bloated monstrosity that administers over-priced, under-performing services. OF COURSE the "town halls" we are seeing covered by media outlets as if they were genuine news events are fake, the false-fears shouted manufactured.
However, the deluded individuals who've swallowed whole the lies are real enough. The same arrogance and abuse that is now loosed into the public policy sphere is now countenanced in even the most ordinary day-to-day exchanges.
The Republicans' decades-long and shocking destruction of a civil and civic society leaves us with challenges at every turn. Democrats' complicity is one of those challenges.
Challenges, yes. Intractable, no. Hard? You bet. Worth the effort? Absolutely.
To paraphrase the exemplary Bo Lozoff, if we're going to make the drastic changes that decency and democracy require, it will take practice. So in addition to being a "regular" in my Senators' and Representative's in-boxes, voice-mail and offices, I'm taking my own advice to heart in even the little stuff. Example one:
Yesterday afternoon, I returned to my office to a curt, booming and unfamiliar voice, a message from "Dr. Somebody Something". He demanded that I call back. Immediately. Now we gets lots of calls for companies with names similar to ours, so the mistake was no surprise, but his tone was.
Hey, I'm nice. I called back to tell him he'd reached the wrong number. (OK, the devil made me do what came next.) When he answered, I asked for him by name, dropping the "Dr." part. He shot back 'DR. Somebody!' Then he continued, "Who are you? Who are you with?? And what took you so long to return my call???" As politely as I could manage, I repeated, "I believe you have called the wrong number, sir ... who are YOU and who are YOU with?"
Now he shouted at me, "I AM DR. SOMEBODY and I am CEO of SOMEBODY, INC!" I graciously matched him rank-for-rank. I said, again, that I was extending to him a courtesy in returning his erroneous call, and even managed to laugh at the absurdity of it all as he hurtled the best insult he could manage -- he was taking me off his list! -- and slammed down his phone.
I did not "win". But I did feel I'd make my mark for civility. 'Sides. He WAS a "doctor".
This is not how people in a civil -- as in "civilized" and "civilization" -- society govern themselves. It's also not how decent human beings should talk to each other. This IS how the schoolyard bully gets away with abuse. This is how the Aetnas and erroneous collection agencies and the Rush--Gingrichs prevail. They corrode the private square as surely as they are doing in the public one, advancing the predation of their masters.
We must resist the provocations from Big Insurance and small-time hustlers (including now the arriviste Palin ... trust me, it's the money). We must confront and defeat them, and there's no better or more necessary place than our failed health delivery system.
In the meantime, raw wounds will take healing. It's past time to take back to conversation, on every level, starting with making sure we GET a major overhaul of our health delivery would-be system. And it can happen. That requires immediate attention from us each and all, everyday people choosing to turning down the volume, telling each other the truth, calling people out when the occasions arise, pointing out errors or, as now, lies.
Example number two from my own life. My cousins and I cover a broad political spectrum and several generations. That insures, shall we say, some lively exchanges. AND, across our differences, we quite simply love each other. Over the years, we've actually built some trust. And I dare say, we've learned from each other.
A couple days ago, one cousin forwarded a scorching piece from a garbage-monger intent on denying us all the right to well-being and reform of today's sorry excuse for a system addressing pressing economics and very real heath needs -- getting between me and wellness. I give my cousin credit. His subject line was "????" Another cousin, generally slow to take political bait, is deeply knowledgeable about the entire medical system, from the inside, and she took a very real chance. I could almost hear her inhaling as she took the time to carefully examine the lies and misrepresentions, then offer reasoned, fact-based views in their place.
She carefully demonstrated how and where the misrepresentations and distortions -- and lies -- are costing us. She subject line? "I don't want to start an argument, but..." and she gave us all a chance to learn. Here are excerpts. The page numbers refer to pages of A DRAFT version of the partial reform of our pseudo-system, followed by Republican former Florida Governor "Bob" Martinez's selective perversion of reality. Then my cousin's reality check:
Page 280: (Martinez) Hospitals will be penalized for what the government deems preventable re-admissions. This is already the case with all medicare and private insurance patients now. It protects patients from being kicked out of the hospital because the insurance company or medicare has decreed the number of days for their diagnosis have passed.
Page 298: (Martinez) Doctors: if you treat a patient during an initial admission that results in a readmission, you will be penalized by the government. Same as above. If the doctor is just tired of you or is not making enough money on you he can decide you are ready for discharge. This prevents that. This is an excellent idea and worth the whole bill being passed.
Page 317: (Martinez) Doctors: you are now prohibited from owning and investing in health care companies! Wow. About time. I love it. Doctors really milk the system with this one. I have seen it to many times. Do you want to go to a hospital or nursing home the doctor actually owns? I don't.
Page 318: (Martinez) Prohibition on hospital expansion. Hospitals cannot expand without government approval. This is now called "certificate of need". It very effectively keeps hospitals from over building. There is absolutely no need for a hospital to spend millions of dollars adding beds that are not needed. You and I would pay for that when we go to the hospital and they have big unnecessary building costs. Again I like this one and always have. Hospitals always want the biggest most expensive equipment even if it is already available in the community. Duplication can be avoided and millions of our dollars saved.
Page 321: (Martinez) Hospital expansion hinges on "community" input: in other words, yet another payoff for ACORN. This does not just apply to ACORN - everyone has input. I have even entered comments when hearings were held on hospital expansion. Hospitals would all move to the rich part of town and leave the middle class and poor and small communities without hospitals, if they could. Everyone working in a hospital would prefer their hospital to be in a nice, rich suburb. Is that where you want all the hospitals? Do you want a hospital in a small town near you or do you want them all in the State Capitol?
Page 335: Government mandates establishment of outcome-based measures: i.e., rationing. The VA system bases all their care on outcome based measures. When Vioxx was pulled from the market, it was because the VA system was measuring the outcomes of patients taking this medicine for arthritis. They discovered that not only did the patients have no better outcomes than with Tylenol but that a large portion of them were having Heart Attacks. This outcome based measure saved millions of Americans from taking Vioxx and having heart attacks. All use of chemo therapy drugs is based on outcomes. If one drug is successful and has good outcomes cancer centers tell other cancer centers the outcomes are good. Please do not treat me with a drug or procedure that does not have outcome based evidence behind it.
Page 341: (Martinez) Government has authority to disqualify Medicare Advantage Plans, HMOs, etc. Yea! finally. Some of those guys are crooks and worse.
My cousin's closing comment: "I do not need a Republican, Ex Governor of Florida to translate Health Care for me. He is just simply wrong on some points and lying on others. He covers every 'talking point' given him by the Republicans and the Insurance Lobby. The tactics they are using to scare people, especially the elderly, are a crime."
Now, there was no predicting what any one of the family would say in response, but what came back from the creator of "????" was particularly telling. "THAT's what I needed to know. Thanks! Although it seems we veterans are being used as guinea pigs. Expendable, you know ...."
When the admirable Senator Barbara Boxer was our guest years back, she reminded me that the ship of state is big and bulky and hard to steer. It will take longer than we'd like to get us back on course, especially considering the calamitous eight years we've just endured.
Senator Boxer's doing her part in the Senate -- championing health care industry reform and more -- and inspiring me to do mine. A good way to begin is by not rolling over to bullies, liars and scoundrels as we've been doing since Joe McCarthy, Dick Nixon, then Ronald Reagan and two Bushes insinuated and cheated their way to power.
We can do no less than to get out there and push back if we are to begin to get the kind of health services we've been denied while insurance and HMO executives have taken home disgracefully bloated paychecks.
What we'll get this time is far from perfect. But it IS a huge step in the right direction; it is a start. And given what the "free-market" insurance industry and ancillary bottom feeders have done to us, right now, any measures that genuinely begin to correct today's rotten system heads us in the right direction. Support it we must. Now. There's no time to lose if we EVER are to move back from the ethical, economic and human precipice created by the current predatory delivery system.
The status quo? In the incomparable Lawrence Kasden's words, immortalized by Danny Glover in Silverado, "That ain't right."
You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that Mad Men debuted its third season tonight. For the past month fans have been inundated with Mad MenTwitter avatars, Mad Menwindow-dressings, and Mad Men-themed websites. All that smoke-filled, sexed-up, whiskey-splashed glamour could make an asthmatic teetotaler long for the heady days of the early '60s -- who knew advertising could be so compelling? We know who: the folks at Morning Joe, currently representing the most harmonious blend of advertising and editorial on the airwaves. Don Draper himself couldn't have topped it (and he might even have switched out his whiskey for a Venti Frappucino). From there, the comparisons suddenly seemed obvious. So, in the tradition of merging the media beat with whatever pop culture sensation has captured the Zeitgeist (Harry Potter and the Media Muggles, anyone?), I and my colleagues at Mediaite thought it would be fun to cast the Mad Morning Men (and Women) of Morning Joe. Hey, what else are you gonna do until next Sunday at 10?
Don Draper - Joe Scarborough
Just as Don Draper's voice can dominate a hushed conference room filled with clients, so too does Joe's voice dominate the show that bears his name, though it's decidedly not hushed. Scarborough, a former Congressman, is certainly no stranger to selling, nor does he lack for Draper-esque confidence. We've noticed he's traded in his zipper sweatshirts for dark suits of late, but that's not all it is -- of any character on Morning Joe, he's the one we can most easily see sitting in a darkened bar with a glass of something amber at his side. Besides, couldn't his book on the GOP just as easily have been called Meditations on an Emergency?
Joan Holloway - Mika Brzezinski
And what is Don Draper without a beautiful woman nearby? Mika puts the "Joe" in "Joanie," who keeps things moving at Sterling Cooper with brisk (and bodacious) efficiency. Similarly Mika keeps the trains running on Morning Joe, as well as being the resident sex symbol (and she's got the Peggy Noonan-shocking shoes to prove it). No word on what Mika's college roommate might think.
Pete Campbell - Willie Geist
Oh, we're on to you, Willie Geist. You with your affable smile and quickness to joke -- we've watched your rise through the ranks at MSNBC, always with an eye on the top spot. Like a junior ad executive doing what's necessary to bring in that Clearasil account, you scored that plum 5:30 anchor spot -- just another feather in your cap while you bide your time. Somewhere under your bed, we know there's a box of photographs that will finish Joe Scarborough once and for all. You don't fool us.
Peggy Olsen - Erin Burnett
There she is, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, chipper but professional, girlish but savvy with an eye on the prize. Peggy Olsen? Erin Burnett? Exactly. Both have risen meteorically in their respective workplaces, making the heads of more seasoned types whip around, but they don't mind the gawking (or whispering), they'll just work a little harder like they always do. How else can you get ahead in a man's world?
For more, including Roger Sterling, Betty Draper, that guitar-playing priest — and Pat Buchanan! — continue reading here.
Urban Rustic Locavore grocery shopping has come to Williamsburg with Urban Rustic, a food enthusiast's paradise, stocked only with products sourced from farmers, butchers, cheese makers and other suppliers within a 100-mile radius. Electricity comes from wind power and handwritten tags give info on the origin of each item, which the owners meticulously source for specific reasons (and can tell you exactly why if you ask). Photos on the wall pay homage to the felled trees that were sacrificed to make the earthy floors (the owners were even part of the lumbering process). There's a juice and- coffee bar in the back with a special brunch menu on weekends. Have your order delivered or get your goods to go and have a picnic in the nearby community garden at McCarren Park.
Rubulad Rubulad is an off-kilter urban fun-house in the middle of Bed-Stuy, where art drips off every wall and the party never stops. The three story maze-like space consistently hosts the weirdest, wildest and most packed theme parties in the city, and its stage has been graced by some of the most entertaining, yet oddest musical talent in town. Rubulad, though, is more than just a venue; it is an intricately, decorated fantasy land circus for all the senses. Parties occur on a semi-regular basis (usually bi-monthly) and are typically only announced the day before - sign up for the NonsenseNYC newsletter to be the first to hear.
As a journalist in Afghanistan, or Pakistan... Or Iraq. Or any other war-ravaged land where you don't speak the language, let alone the dialect of the region in which you're expected to unearth and unravel a never-before-told story, there is only one way to get that story: you hire a fixer.
A fixer: translator, shepherd, travel agent, private investigator, Rolodex and secretary, rolled into one for the journalist in a foreign land. To describe these ghostlike figures as indispensable is barely sufficient, since without them, the bylines of many celebrated foreign correspondents and the critical stories they propel back to the West, may cease to exist.
In 2005 and 2006, one of these correspondents, an American named Christian Parenti, filed several reports from Afghanistan for the The Nation. He used a fixer called Ajmal Naqshbandi, a 24-year old cherub-faced Pashtun from Kabul. Parenti left Afghanistan at the end of 2006, and Naqshbandi moved on to another project, this time with veteran Italian radioman, Daniele Mastrogiacomo, sent to cover the war for La Repubblica.
En route to meet with Taliban commanders for an interview in March of 2007, the team is ambushed and kidnapped by a militant group led by Mullah Dadullah - a close aide of Mullah Omar, who is known to boast about his orchestration of various Shia massacres and was once described as "the backbone of the Taliban." Although Italy secured Mastrogiacomo's release, Naqshbandi, in a move that sparked outrage across Afghanistan, was beheaded by his captors a few weeks later.
Ian Olds' Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi is the story of one of the thousands of silhouettes who roam war-zones every day so that we, thousands of miles away, can grasp what is happening on the front-line of wars that affect life on this continent too.
The first time we come face to face with the fixer, he standing at the base of a sandy mountainside in Kandahar, a southern province home to the second largest city in Afghanistan. Parenti is there too, behind the camera. He swings the machine around erratically, before the picture suddenly unblurs and a man comes into focus -- his head conspiratorially wrapped in black scarves to reveal only the top third of a wrinkled, umber face. The man dawdles in the sand as he shifts the weight of the rocket launcher hanging from his shoulder, from one side to the other. Then Parenti pans left, and lands on two more Taliban soldiers, their faces also concealed, Kalishnikovs dangling in their hands.
This is Naqshbandi's life; ferrying one enemy to another on a daily basis, in abandoned buildings and isolated swatches of desert in locations hat regularly make headlines as the latest dire front for NATO and American forces. On this occasion, Naqshbandi has managed to arrange a meeting for Parenti with active Taliban fighters. The gun-toting interviewees confirm that Pakistan has been supporting the Afghani insurgency after a series of questions from Parenti, whose voice is filtered then echoed in the local dialect by Naqshbandi.
With his plump cheeks and a smile that is at once mischievous and ingenuous, Olds' protagonist is instantly beguiling. Perhaps because we know he is destined, unfairly, for such a horrific end, we are quick to take his side.
But Naqshbandi is an enigma, at first innocent and sweet, with each frame his motives are less obivious. In one sequence, Naqshbandi talks with a friend about his work while Parenti and Olds sit obliviously in the back of the car, neither speaks the local language. His friend asks if the reporters will take photos in the village. "If I feel like it I'll let them," Naqshbandi says, "Or I'll just tell them its too dangerous -- 'hide your camera they'll kill us!'
Ultimately for Naqshabandi, Parenti is a paycheck -- and a meager one at that, complaining that The Nation pays nothings compared to the major papers and broadcasters.
"Money matters," he tells his friend. "Because these people, don't have friendship. They don't know anything about it. They know you while you're working with them, but after that they don't even recognize you. These people are all the same; European, American, from London, from anywhere."
In Fixer , the audience is transplanted back and forth from Parenti and Naqshbandi's experience in 2006 -- at times nerve-racking but generally successful from a journalistic point of view -- to grainy Taliban footage of their hostages and other military victories. The Taliban footage is one of the most spectacular elements the film, raw and unnerving, it offers a glimpse into the other side; an eerie glimpse, but an important one. One video shows the gruesome decapitation of Naqshbandi and Mastrogiacomo's driver, censored to the point that we avoid seeing his head being sawn off, but every other part of the victims body, and his killer's working arms, are visible as the Taliban's sentence is carried out.
Old's own work behind the camera is thoughtful and beautiful, certainly intensified by an elegiac soundtrack designed by Jim Dawson, who worked with the director on his critically acclaimed documentary Occupation: Dreamland, which followed a deployment of American soldiers in Falluja.
When Old languidly pans across boundless, arid landscape, it seems amazing that it is this land -- a deserted expanse of rock and dust -- that torments a military machine backed by billions of dollars and the most sophisticated defense technology in the world.
Perhaps the most tragic layer of Fixer, is the hopeless chaos in which Afghanistan is drowned; a growing insurgency; a flaccid government; a people bereft of trust in its 'elected' leaders and repulsed but scared to death of gun-wielding insurgents and regional warlords. And this that was in 2006; five years later, the country is mired in a bloody battle exacerbated by a second front in Northern Pakistan.
But this is life in Afghanistan; it has been so for decades. And one of the most amusing moments in Fixer, happens immediatel after the Kandahar meeting when Parenti asks Naqshbandi if he'll tell his fiance about their day's work. "No, no not at all" he exclaims, "She will kill me." The angry girlfriend -- not the militants -- the real danger, Parenti jokes.
Last year, James Nachtwey -- arguably the modern-day god(father) of war photography -- was bestowed the coveted President's Award at the Overseas Press Club for the fifth time. He dedicated his prize to the Naqshbandis:
"We all know the value of colleagues who often go unsung -- the fixers and translators and drivers who take such great personal risks... to make what we do possible. Whatever abilities we might have, we absolutely need the assistance of people who know the language and the culture and how to navigate hostile terrain. I don't know how many times I've only been as good as my driver. They love their countries. They truly value journalism. When we leave, they stay."
Indeed, for Naqshbandi, Nachtwey's words are especially and tragically gemane. When we leave, they stay.
Fixer: The Taking of Ajmal Naqshbandi premiers tonight at 9 pm on HBO.
For those who don't know the myth, Pandora was created at Zeus's instruction after Prometheus stole the gift of fire. She was gifted by other dieties with talents like beauty, persuasion, curiosity, and music - hence her name which means "All Gifted." Zeus gave Pandora a box full of all of mankind's evils but didn't tell her what was inside; instead he just told her not to open it. Compelled by curiosity, Pandora opened the box and all its contents flew into the world.
The last item in the box was Hope. Pandora slammed the lid shut once she realized what she'd done and trapped Hope inside. Scholars have spent centuries arguing over the basic crux this presents: Is the box a prison for Hope (trapping it away from mankind) or a pantry (saving it for use when needed)?
The National Equality March and EAA also present the same dilemma. I choose to believe Hope's retention is meant to be comforting and not a bane to our existence. In that spirit, I've decided to whole-heartedly endorse Equality Across America and the National Equality March.
The box is open and some unpleasant concerns have flown out recently - and not just around this march.
A History of Oppression Continues
The LGBT community is used to being downtrodden and dismissed. Prejudice, animosity, and apartheid flew out of Pandora's Box long ago. Our community's dealings with these evils isn't anything new; it's also been a part of human civilization for centuries. We still fight to overcome these nightmares and legitimately prove that Americans have properly put aside our differences in favor of our common equality.
Our right to marry was stripped from us at the ballot box in California after the state supreme court had ruled in our favor. Maine is fighting to keep that same right - even though the state's legislature and governor passed and signed this into law. The far right has long complained that we'd only won the right to marriage via the courts, but once they realized that public opinion had shifted and we can now claim our rightful place in society through the legislative process, once again they're trying to overturn those rights.
Don't be fooled, this isn't about which route we take to our natural liberties. This is about forcing their beliefs on a group of people that they despise and disdain. This has more to do with Pandora's "gifts" of intolerance, racism, sexism, antipathy and contemptuousness.
Logistics
Pulling together an event of this magnitude is a logistical nightmare. With only a couple of months left to firm everything up, we're going to have to roll up our sleeves and get to work. Not only do we need to work out the ins-and-outs of what to do with youth who show up without housing plans, transportation issues, speakers who will motivate the attendees, cooperation issues with Gay, Inc., and funding, but there's all the small details and massive egos that will need to be massaged and managed.
As our community's leaders have jockeyed for position to be the top dog, we've undercut the very people we're supposed to be supporting and empowering. This isn't limited to those who work for Gay, Inc. You can see it in communities across the nation. Look to your own state's various LGBT organizations and their interactions with each other and the body politic. As an oppressed group, we take it out on each other. Infighting, hostility and distrust have become common weapons that we use on each other with deft precision. We don't need the right wing to do the damage; we often inflict it on each other.
Even in my own post, I got sidetracked by my concerns and worries instead of taking the step backwards to look at the big picture. We don't have the luxury of slapping something together half heartedly. We need to use the same precision you use to cut a diamond. Our lives, our families and our civil rights are just as valuable and shouldn't be handled like offal.
Owning the Box
It's clear now that this is our strongest and best opportunity to make a communal statement that will resonate. Going to Washington does not take away or diminish other efforts. Consider the IMAX experience versus the Netflix version. The impact of what you see on widescreen can never be entirely duplicated at home.
The reach of the march extends far beyond the individual in-your-face. It is a show of solidarity and force, a statement that is in proportion in its volume to the need for such a statement. The communal voice has been silent since the loss in California. That voice was heard in the wake of Prop 8, but not since. It's time for that voice. While the idea may have been the province of only a few people in its inception, it is now, in its full discussion, owned by many.
The geographic distinctions of time and space, first chipped away at by smoke signals, and telegraph and telephone and radio and TV, are now entirely extinguished by the handheld and instantaneous presence of everyone in view of everyone else. We should not underestimate the power of sentiment generated when people gather to make communal that which can be done privately. People can pray in private but benefit from spiritual asembly. People can do yoga in private but do it better as a class. People can sing in the shower or as part of a choir. There is an amplification and timbre to the communal voice that generates its own music.
Hope Is Not Imprisoned
I don't envy Kip's position. His job is monumental and he'll need every bit of support possible to pull this off. We can't do this on a wing and a prayer. We need to open the box back up and pull out Hope.
Gay, Inc. is not the enemy of the grassroots movement. The young new activists and online media gurus are not diametrically opposed to established lobbying efforts and infrastructure. We have to find a way to bring all of our best activists, strategists and lobbyists together in a way that allows them to work in conjunction while checking our egos at the door.
I'm putting my own reservations aside in favor of Pandora's last and best gift to humanity. None of us can open this box on our own. This time to pry the lid open, it's going to take all of the muscle and determination of our community. After all, we too are "All Gifted."
It's time to take Hope out of the box and use it.
(Crossposted from my home blog, Bilerico Project. Come visit me there to see why both the Washington Post and the Advocate named us one of the top 10 LGBT political blogs in the nation.)
Part of the artisanal food renaissance is having a true understanding of where food comes from, how it's raised and ultimately how it ends up on a dinner plate. The"head to hoof" carnivore movement is Brooklyn butcher Tom Mylan's contribution to the cause. You can find him holding court at Brooklyn Kitchen on Monday nights, teaching sold-out classes in Pig Butchering to rapt students who leave with a hefty portion of fresh-carved meat and an education in animal anatomy. Head to hoof butchering emphasizes having a genuine respect for the animal's life, encouraging the use of all parts of the animal for food. Mylan's Williamsburg butcher shop Marlow & Daughters serves restaurants who align with the cause as well, including Marlow & Sons, Diner and Bonita.
Healthcare reform in America is possible. In fact, four eminent physician leaders wrote an intriguing editorial in The New York Times on Aug. 12 offering the opinion that, in places, it has already been done.
Authors Atul Gawande, Donald Berwick, Elliot Fisher and Mark McClellan - who represent a broad spectrum of physician leadership - note how the healthcare reform debate has funneled into the discussion of only two options: raising taxes or rationing care. Neither fly very well in politics. They are almost always dead ducks.
But then the editorialists raise an option that really does fly and which readers of my Huffington Post columns know I've repeated over and over again: "Change the way care is delivered so that it is both less expensive and more effective."
To counter the widespread skepticism about whether this option is possible, the editorialists make an intriguing argument - it's not only possible, it's already been done! As evidence they list the multitude of examples around America and the world in which more care is available at lower cost - big name places like Mayo and the Cleveland Clinic, but more importantly, from many other "towns big and small, urban and rural, North and South, East and West."
Here's their list: Asheville, N.C.; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Everett, Wash.; La Crosse, Wis.; Portland, Me.; Richmond, Va.; Sacramento, Cal.; Sayre, Pa.; Temple, Tex.; and Tallahassee, Fla. There's not a "magic kingdom" medical center anywhere on this list. That's just America!
Sure enough, the evidence is there. But the evidence only makes one piece of the healthcare reform puzzle.
This puzzle has three parts.
1. Everyone - President Obama, both parties in Congress, healthcare managers, doctors and nurses, and, of course, patients - wants more care at lower cost. Surprise! We have some unanimity in this fractious, bitter debate. We can agree on something!
2. And we can do it! The data shows that more care at lower cost is possible. The editorialists reference many places, right here in expensive, profligate, "greedy," multi-payer America, where more care at lower cost is not only available, it's the norm.
3. Everybody wants it and we can do it. But we can't get it done! Instead we face higher taxes and rationed care. That's the puzzle.
How is it possible that we all want more care at lower cost and data shows that it's available, but we can't achieve it? How is it possible that our healthcare reform options have been reduced to raising taxes and rationing care, which will achieve exactly the opposite - less care for more cost? It's more than a puzzle; it's a trillion-dollar dilemma.
My research at Harvard Business School into the few companies that innovated strategically when others failed to adapt shows that the root cause of our dilemma is the way we are approaching the problem.
For my entire 40 year career as a physician, healthcare executive, scholar, advisor, and patient, we have been "fixing" healthcare. Methods yield outcomes. Therefore, all our past solutions have summed together to create our current condition, which we all agree is tragically flawed. The problem is that our approach is well intentioned, but antiquated and ill-suited to the unpredictable complexities of 21st Century healthcare.
Our current approach seeks to manage the problems of healthcare with methods that worked successfully for mid-20th Century factories. We identify the biggest problems, gather data about them, then bring experts together in meetings to decide upon and implement big solutions. It's data up/implement down, but in the fast-moving, complex world of 21st Century healthcare, these methods can't keep up with the problems.
The faster the rate of change, the more flexible and responsive we must become. As I describe in my forthcoming book, Designed to Adapt: Leading Healthcare in Challenging Times (Second River Healthcare Press, September 2009), adaptive innovators like Intel, Southwest Airlines and Toyota, and a small but growing number of health care organizations, have begun to make a difference. Instead of just implementing a big top-down fix, they are identifying better ways to rapidly adapt by making small fixes exactly when and where they are needed.
All healthcare, like politics, is local. And not surprisingly, all the evidence of programs and policies that deliver more care at lower cost noted in The New York Times editorial are also local. What's the secret formula or silver bullet? In my experience, those great results were the product of the knowledge, creativity and problem solving of people who had the opportunity to adapt their work to getting patients what they needed.
Fortunately, we can harness that creativity and direct the powerful desire of almost everyone in healthcare to make it better for patients through a method called "adaptive design." Instead of moving data up to experts, management can develop new critical thinking skills and embed new coordinated decision-making capability where the information is, very close to the patient.
There clearly is a role for government to accelerate and generalize this success. The policy options I described in my previous column: "My Healthcare Reform Fear: It's Not Who Pays, It's What We Get" can stimulate the growth and development of the thousands of small, local fixes that will truly reform our troubled system.
The physician leaders writing in The New York Times last week have established our objective - more care at lower cost. The history of innovation shows that we will not get there through data up/implement down methods or big, expensive technology. We will achieve that objective by growing locally from thousands of places close to the point of care. How? - By putting in place disciplined, structured ways to harness the knowledge and creativity of everyone in healthcare to focus on getting patients exactly what they need at continually lower cost. Government policy can help make that happen. That's the adaptive design approach. That's the way to fix healthcare.
This weekend I ran into Vincent Pastore, aka Salvatore, "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero and Tony Lip (Carmine Lupertazzi) from the HBO show The Sopranos. Vincent Pastore was one of the characters in Tony Soprano's inner circle. Throughout the show, these characters seemed to be constantly eating spaghetti and other mouthwatering Italian foods.
We both just happened to be signing our books in NYC. We crossed paths at Arthur Ave in the Bronx. One would think Shut Up and Eat(an Italian cookbook by the Italian American actors from The Sopranos) and 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Foodmight be rivals, enemies even. But, having flipped through the cookbook, there are actually more similarities than differences. And, there is quite a bit of overlap in our reading audience. Those who love Italian food often need to find ways to enjoy comfort foods in mindful portions rather than using good foods to be comforting, which puts you at risk for overeating.
Perhaps 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food could be a useful book as Vincent Pastore whisks off to his next TV project. Maybe another reality TV show? Pastore lost approximately 29 lbs in the fourth season of Celebrity Fit Club. Hanging out at Arthur Ave., as he did for the majority of the day, isn't easy for anyone who enjoys to eat. Arthur Ave. in the Bronx is lined with bakeries filled with cannolis and crusty bread, homemade pastas and gallons of olive oil. Try out the Arthur Ave Cafe for homemade food and, if you are lucky, an a cappella song from the owner's mother. You will feel that you are being virtually transported into the cookbook.
Here are observations of the mindful eating overlaps between Shut Up and Eat and 50 Ways to Soothe Yourself Without Food.
1) In Italian cooking, "fast food" does not include McDonalds or Taco Bell. According to Italian cooks, it's common to make a pot of sauce with several pounds of lean meat, cook it slowly and freeze it. When you want dinner, pull out a portion, and microwave. Voila. Food in only a few moments. This jives with mindful eating. Planning ahead can help you make good, healthy food fit conveniently into your life.
2) Food and feelings are intertwined. Each of the recipes in this cookbook are accompanied by a personal story. The actors vividly describe the scents and emotions connected with their home and caregivers. It's no surprise that we turn to food in our most vulnerable moments. Who wouldn't be tempted to transport yourself for a millisecond back to the feelings associated with your childhood? Reading this cookbook reemphasizes why we so easily get caught in using food to manage feelings.
3). Mindful shopping. The actors' families often bought fresh ingredients from the market daily instead of a weekly grocery trip. The ingredients were fresh and they only bought exactly what they needed, no impulse buying. Eating mindfully begins with mindful shopping. Keeping healthy foods handy makes healthy eating one step easier. Thankfully, vegetable markets are popping up all over the country reviving this tradition to some degree.
If you love food, Italian food, or any other kind, rest assured that I am not suggesting cutting these traditional foods out of your life. Instead, learning to eat good food mindfully and finding healthy ways to calm yourself without food can help prevent you from overeating. It's worth the effort to preserve the memories and emotions associated with traditional foods. When you overeat foods you love, the good vibes get transformed into guilt and regret.
Who would have thought Dr. Albers and The Sopranos would have anything in common? Apparently, we both know quite a lot about comfort food and comforting yourself with food.
There's a line in A Few Good Men where Demi Moore says that Marines in Gitmo are very serious. Tom Cruise asks, "Serious about what?" Demi responds, "About being Marines." That's how Jews feel when you try and appropriate the word Nazi, we get very Gitmo about our Jewishness.
You have to understand, Jews are very good at remembering everyone who ever took a shot at us. We have a holiday for most of the biggies ("They killed us, pass the turkey."). But Hitler and the Nazis have a very special place in the pantheon of monsters. Nazi is our N-word. That's why it's not okay with us -- and shouldn't be okay with anyone -- to throw the word "Nazi" around unless you're talking about actual Nazis. It's definitely not okay to use it in a health care debate. In fact, put Nazi and doctor in the same sentence and you come up with one name and one name only -- Josef Mengele, winner of the "Black Badge for the Wounded." That was like the Nazi Oscar for Best Health Care ("I vant to sank zee Academy, mein Fuhrer, and mein agent...").
For all you Town Hallers out there, I'm going to assume you don't know who Josef Mengele was. I assume that because if you did, I'd hope you wouldn't be painting Swastikas on your picket signs.
Dr. Mengele drew a horizontal line across a wall at Auschwitz, five feet from the floor. If you were shorter than that line you were immediately sent to the gas chamber. The line was drawn in the childrens' barracks.
Dr. Mengele performed experiments on live, fully conscious human beings to determine just how much pressure it would take to crush a skull. In order to be precise, he had to administer the experiment very slowly.
Dr. Mengele put people in bread ovens to determine at exactly what temperature the skin would receive first, second and third degree burns.
Dr. Mengele once murdered a thousand women in one day. Why? Because they had lice and it cost less to kill the women than to kill the lice.
Again, Josef Mengele was awarded the most prestigious medal for health care for this "work."
Are you getting it now town hallers, town hollers and town criers? You may not like Barack Obama, but calling him a Nazi makes you sound like a clown, an imbecile and an infant. And continuing to cry about America no longer resembling the one you grew up in only further proves the point that you got it backwards. It's America that did the growing up, and you're the one we no longer recognize.
Can the left learn to keep its mouth shut once in a while? Does the American left know how to win wars or just skirmishes? Does the left want change or does it demand perfection? You can't have both in this life.
No one has been a tougher critic of the Republican Party, the Religious Right and various wing nuts out to destroy the Obama presidency than me. Few ordinary Americans (that I know of) have taken more heat (and hate) for their support of the President than me either. Former right wing religious right leaders like me are never forgiven for joining the reality-based community!
Believe me, with my old "friends" on the right I don't need more enemies! (Just check out Fox News smearing of me last week with insanely out-of-context clips on the O'Reilly Factor lifted and edited from Maddow interviewing me.) So I'm hesitant to knock the left. I guess I don't like the idea of all sides pissed off with me at once. But in the light of how and why the debate over health care is being dominated by the loony right maybe the left is partly to blame for the stalemate on health care reform.
Last week the New York Times noted a lack of enthusiasm on the part of Obama's former foot soldiers when it comes to rising to the occasion and pouring on the support for health care reform. ("Health Debate Fails to Ignite Obama's Grass Roots," August 15.) Why the lack of enthusiasm?
It's because the left has made the classic mistake of going for a whole loaf and therefore risking getting nothing. The left has proved itself as impatient as the right and just as shortsighted, given that the lefty sniping at the Obama administration started almost from day one. And now after barely six months in office the people who worked so hard to get him elected have seemingly lost their enthusiasm for another fight on behalf of Obama.
What sapped the yes-we-can optimistic, hope-filled bedrock supporters' will? Who sapped it?
There is a connection between sniping from the left -- the drip, drip, drip of criticism, the demand for instant perfection, be it from those taking shots Obama's economic policy and claiming that the President is in the hip pocket of Wall Street -- and those saying he cut some sort of evil deal with pharmaceutical companies, and the lop-sided "debate" on health care. The right didn't sap anyone's will who voted for Obama. The left shot itself in the foot.
It seems to me that Obama's critics on the left just don't understand governing. If Franklin Roosevelt had had this quality of "support" from his bedrock constituency there would have been no New Deal and we would have never entered the war to defeat fascism. In fact today's left seems to have a death wish of exercising the "right" to snarky frivolity when it's time to get serious.
The American left has a choice: follow our moderately progressive Democrat president and support him when he most needs it most, or allow our whole project to be derailed by the far (increasingly fascist) right. If it is derailed, sure -- the Republicans played a part. But so did the know-it-all left, all because the left's pontificators -- including those right here in the Huffington Post -- would rather be heard than humbly offer their support to our President (or anyone else) and see change actually happen.
Why?
It strikes me that the left suffers from a sort of crazy First Amendment knee-jerk twitch comparable the the right's sick Second Amendment twitch! The right thinks it must collect guns, the left thinks it must express opinions, and damn the real world consequences. Hey, so Obama fails! Well at least I got my say!
The right is irredeemably sick. The left is just silly. Together the silly and the sick may just do us in. If Limbaugh gets his Obama-must-fail wish, look in the mirror.
On the right the election literally broke their racist brains. This is now the day of the old angry white men once again. And how has the left responded? Did we circle the wagons and hang tough with our young black president? No everyone waded in.
The open question is this: Is the left going to be dominated by its talkers or get on with governance that can only happen with near infinite patience and loyal support? Does the left know how to follow a leader and get something done?
Q: "You mean I have to behave like a regular citizen once in a while and let the people I elect do their job?!"
A: If our self-styled free thinkers decide loyalty is beneath them and have forgotten how to compromise and live in the real world, a few election cycles from now the left is going to find itself reduced to screaming down their far right opposition at town hall meetings.
We have a great president. We have a chance for real change and we'd better use it. Sarah Palin and company are waiting in the wings.
My old friends on the far right are counting on the stupidity of right wing white America to believe their lies. They are also counting on the left being so in love with the sound of its own voice that the left can't govern.
How different things would be right now had everyone who voted for President Obama stuck by him and his administration with total determination, and waited until he had a chance to implement -- and test -- his programs, before wading in with the nit-picking.
The left faces the implacable and loony right. The chips are down. Support the President.
Sony's District 9 topped the box office grossing $37 in its opening weekend. The alien film, produced was produced by Peter Jackson and directed by Neil Blomkamp for an estimated $30 million. Earning its cost of production and more in the debut, the picture is a sure hit for Sony for sheer matter that it can only increase revenue for the year.
The US government has come to an agreement with UBS regarding a long-running tax fraud investigation. This has been a fascinating case to watch for several reasons which I will explain.
First, in the interest of full disclosure, I am a tax attorney and I deal with international transactions. As such, I am familiar with many of the jurisdictions involved.
The days of secret bank accounts are numbered for Americans after UBS and the U.S. and Swiss governments agreed to settle a dispute over whether the Swiss bank should be forced to disclose the names of 52,000 rich U.S. clients suspected of tax evasion.
Lawyers involved in the case said Wednesday's settlement could involve the disclosure to U.S. authorities of 3,000 to perhaps more than 10,000 names of American clients suspected of using offshore accounts to evade taxes.
While details weren't disclosed, the parties have initialed agreements that will "take a little time to be signed in final form," Department of Justice lawyer Stuart Gibson told U.S. District Court Judge Alan Gold during a brief conference call.
The case is expected to be dismissed once a final agreement is in place. UBS and the government had reached a settlement in principle on July 31.
The deal is also expected to put European tax dodgers on notice as other governments are encouraged to seek out hidden accounts.
Let's back up in history to explain what's going on from a macro-perspective. Starting in the late 1990s, the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) engaged in a very serious campaign to limit the impact and availability of offshore jurisdictions. The OECD reframed the debate claiming these jurisdictions engaged in "unfair tax competition." The reason is large industrialized countries were seeing their tax base move offshore and they needed to do something to stop it.
After 9/11 the US and other industrialized countries started attacking off shore secrecy, arguing that it promoted terrorism and organized crime. This argument had traction. As a result, many jurisdictions have signed (and will continue to sign) "mutual assistance treaties." These treaties allow one country to access the financial records of an individual in another jurisdiction if the first jurisdiction meets certain standards. While the standards vary depending on the treaty, the end result has been a continued erosion in offshore secrecy. This trend will continue for the rest of our lives.
Let's come back to the present to explain what is going on. The US -- like most industrialized countries -- has a world wide tax system. That means the US will tax a US resident's/citizen's income regardless of the income's location. In addition, we have a self-reporting system, meaning we tell the government where out money goes. When a US citizen moves money offshore he has to file certain documents with the IRS to be in compliance with the law.
Secrecy helps to shield transfers from this system of self-reporting. Once money moves into a foreign bank account that is numbered, and it's located in a country that has strict secrecy laws, the probability is high that the money will fall into a tacking black hole. There will be some kind of record of the money leaving the country (via a wire transfer or a large withdrawal), but then it disappears. Once the money is in one secret bank account, the account holder will probably move the money to another country with strict bank secrecy laws:
On Friday, John McCarthy, a UBS client in California, agreed to plead guilty to one count of failing to file an annual report to the Treasury Department. A document filed with the plea shows the tax scheme relied in part on channeling funds to a Swiss UBS account held in the name of a Hong Kong entity, the second time accounts in the Asian financial hub have figured in these cases.
.....
Between 2003 and 2008, Mr. McCarthy talked with UBS representatives and the Swiss lawyer in Beverly Hills and Switzerland to hash out details of his business, according to the statement. UBS representatives told Mr. McCarthy that "a lot of United States clients don't report their income and just take it off the top."
At one point, the Swiss lawyer recommended to Mr. McCarthy that he set up a Liechtenstein foundation that would serve as an umbrella over a Panamanian or Hong Kong corporation. That "would allow for an extra layer of privacy and help to conceal" Mr. McCarthy's identity, said the statement of facts.
Mr. McCarthy also transferred funds into other UBS accounts from a bank in the Cayman Islands, the statement says. He is due to appear in federal court on Sept. 14. He faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and fines totaling $250,000.
"Mr. McCarthy has accepted responsibility for his conduct," said his lawyer, Steven Toscher. "He, like many other U.S. taxpayers, has made serious mistakes regarding the use of foreign bank accounts. Mr. McCarthy has decided to get right with his tax obligations and his case should serve as a strong signal to other taxpayers."
Jeffrey Chernick of New York, who pleaded guilty in July to filing a false tax return, also used a Hong Kong corporation and offshore bank accounts to conceal from the IRS commissions paid for sales, according to a statement of facts agreed to by the Justice Department and Mr. Chernick. A lawyer for Mr. Chernick declined to comment.
The UBS case has been fascinating from a legal perspective for several reasons.
1.) UBS settled the case. In doing so, they are possibly exposing themselves to Swiss lawsuits regarding a violation of Swiss banking secrecy laws. That tells us a very important fact: the US government had UBS dead to rights.
2.) This is a major crack in the bank secrecy issue. Switzerland is the gold standard of secrecy. If they crack, expect the bank secrecy issue to fall faster than anticipated.
TARAKAI, Afghanistan A group of Taliban fighters made their announcement in the bazaar of a nearby village a few days ago, and the word spread fast: anyone caught voting in the presidential election will have his finger the one inked for the ballot cut off.
The "Dancing With the Stars" cast for season nine was announced today live on "Good Morning America."
The stage is set for new "DWTS" contenstants to showcase their fancy footwork when "Dancing With the Stars" returns for its ninth season on Monday, Sept. 21.
I'll be honest: I didn't even bother to watch the final round of the 2009 PGA Tournament at Hazeltine. Tiger Woods was leading after 54 holes, and Tiger was 14-0 after leading going into the final round of a major. I figured the Wannamaker Trophy was on its way to Florida already.
Make that 14-1.
Because Y.E. Yang, a household name only in his native South Korea, beat Tiger in the most improbable upset in major championship history.
How did it happen? You can talk about Tiger missing putts and Yang draining them, about the 110th-ranked player going toe-to-toe with the world's greatest player. But the hidden answer came from Yang himself:
"I've sort of visualized this quite a few times playing against the best player in the history of golf, playing with him in the final round in a major championship, always sort of dreamed about this," Yang said Sunday through an interpreter. "I've seen throughout Tiger's career that a lot of players have folded probably on the last day when playing with him.
"So when I was at home or at a tournament watching Tiger in the clubhouse, I'd usually try to visualize and try to bring up a mock strategy how to win, if I ever played against Tiger."
How Yang beat Woods is as stunningly simple as this: he believed he could do it.
Not that he WOULD win. Not that he SHOULD win. But that he COULD win.
"When the chance came, I sort of thought that, hey, I could always play a good round of golf and Tiger could always have a bad day," Yang said. "And I guess today was one of those days."
He wasn't describing one of those woo-woo visualization strategies so often touted these days where you picture a pile of money falling from the sky. Yang emotionally put himself in the situation before it happened, so that when it actually happened, it felt perfectly natural.
It's like Warren Beatty said in Heaven Can Wait, "Let's get to the Super Bowl, and when we get there, let's already have won."
That's a perfect example of how to experience something before it actually happens, something Tiger has honed to an art form. While no one may have stronger belief in himself than Tiger Woods, on this day at least, Y.E. Yang's unstoppable self-belief conquered the world's best.
Of course Yang had to actually perform when his time came. Winning in golf or life isn't a matter of just believing you can do it. You have to DO it.
But my favorite Yang line of all is this:
"I wasn't that nervous, honestly, because it's a game of golf. It's not like you're in an octagon where you're fighting against Tiger and he's going to bite you or swing at you with his nine iron."
Gotta love that guy.
"90 percent of this game is mental. The other half is physical." - Yogi Berra
Visit http://MyCodebreaker.com for a free demonstration of how to install Unstoppable Self-Belief in a fraction of the time it took most champions to get there.
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