The good news is, it’s finally raining.
The bad news is, it’s so hot today (97 degrees) that it just feels like a giant steambath.
Month: June 2010
Kindness Is A Crime
In a May 7 article, Haaretz reporter Ilana Hammerman described in dramatic detail a crime she had methodically planned and committed. In defiance of laws supposedly related to Israel’s security, Hammerman picked up three teenage Palestinian girls in their village in the West Bank, took them through the Betar checkpoint, and drove them into Tel Aviv. There they ate ice cream, visited the mall and museum, and played in the sea. Even though the girls lived just a few kilometers from the beach, Israel’s military occupation had prevented them from ever visiting it before their illegal “day of fun.”
Hammerman wrote in her account of the experience, “If There Is A Heaven:”
“The end was wonderful. The last photos show them about two hours after the trip to the flea market, running in the darkness on Tel Aviv’s Banana Beach. They didn’t want to stop for even a minute at the restaurant there to have a bite to eat or something to drink, or even to just relax a bit. Instead they immediately removed their sandals again, rolled up their pants and ran into the water. And ran and ran, back and forth, in zig-zags, along the huge beach, ponytails flying in the wind. From time to time, they knelt down in the sand or crowded together in the shallow water to have their picture taken. The final photo shows two of them standing in the water, arms around each others’ waists, their backs to the camera. Only the bright color of their shirts contrasting with the dark water and the sky reveals that the two are Yasmin and Aya, because Lin was wearing a black shirt.”
But the fun ended as soon as a group called The Legal Forum for the Land of Israelfiled a request with Israeli Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein demanding that Hammerman be prosecuted for breaking the country’s “Law of Entry to Israel” forbidding Israelis from assisting Palestinians in entering Israel. If Weinstein agrees to the request, Hammerman could face as much as two years in prison.
S.O.S.
Just got off a conference call with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and she practically begged for our help in getting people to flood their local senators’ offices for the jobs bill now being filibustered by Republicans.
“We don’t have even one Republican willing to help us break this filibuster,” she said. “We have every anticipation that we will not have the votes. It’s become very clear that the Republicans in the Senate want this bill to fail.”
She said every time the Republicans raised an objection, and the Democrats responded, they changed their objections again.
“It’s a cynical move, because it doesn’t serve them in terms of their elections this fall. They have decided they want this economy to fail, and they’re willing to take the country down with them,” she said in an emotional conference call.
Republicans have claimed that the extended unemployment benefits can’t be covered as an emergency. “If 15 million people without jobs isn’t an emergency, I don’t know what is,” she said.
Stabenow said Democrats have paid for the job provisions in this bill. “When you look underneath, they [Republicans] are protecting wealthy investors who are sending jobs overseas and the big oil companies,” she said. The Democratic bill removes tax incentives for sending jobs overseas, and increases the charge per barrel for cleaning up oil spills.
“We desperately need to keep this economic recovery going. Unemployment benefits help people keep food on the table, and a little gas in the car to go look for work,” she said.
“The Republicans are counting on the fact that no one’s going to know what’s going on here. It would help us if offices were flooded with emails, and phone calls and outrage when we come back next week.”
“What we really need an echo chamber, and that’s why I’m asking for your help. They may think this is a game, but it’s not a game. If they think it’s a game, shame on them.”
She said the Democratic leadership is working on a public appeal.
“The inability to get Republican votes on this does not bode well for any future bills,” the Michigan senator said. “They are purely just into election mode for the fall, and think if they can create as much pain as possible, people will not vote at all or vote for those who are not in the majority.
“But we’re not giving up. We’re determined, and we will continue to fight. This is not some cynical game here, this is about real people.”
Speak Out
Look, I know it’s summer and you have things to do. But we really need as many people as we can get out to attend this national town hall Saturday:
This Saturday an organization called AmericaSpeaks is sponsoring a “National Town Meeting” on the budget deficit in twenty cities. Although organizers claim to be non-partisan, a review of their materials reveals an ideological bias in some key sections — a bias that’s likely to manipulate attendees into “spontaneously” deciding that the social safety net must be cut (with some limited tax increases possibly thrown in for camouflage.)
AmericaSpeaks (the odd formatting is theirs) is part of a well-coordinated media campaign. It’s no coincidence that the self-described centrist group Third Way sponsored an event this week in Washington, just before this “town meeting,” which also emphasized “defeating the deficit.” That event was called “Back in Black,” which happens to be the name of a song by rock group AC/DC. Given what’s likely to happen if we slash spending even more in this troubled economy, they might have done better to name it after another one of the band’s favorites: “Highway to Hell.”
The “town meeting” is being touted as a politically-neutral chance for people to be heard but, while their materials are genuinely objective in some places, the presentation is manipulative in others. “America” may “speak” on Saturday, but organizers seem to be writing its script, encouraging participants to make the right statements for media consumption. The objective may be to promote the idea that “ordinary Americans” are more worried about the deficit than they are about jobs, health coverage, or financial security. Consider this table:
That Social Security figure looks shocking. But the table doesn’t tell you that Social Security is a separate program, an independently-financed social insurance fund that can pay all of its planned benefits until 2037 or 2042 (depending on which assumptions are used), after which it can pay 75% of those benefits. For attendees who don’t have that information – that is, most of them – it will look as if this self-funded and independent program is eating the Federal budget alive.
[…] The workbook repeats stale, misleading talking points from the health reform debate. It doesn’t explain that “Single Payer”/Medicare For All would be no more intrusive on medical decisions than today’s extremely popular Medicare plans, or that it would eliminate profit-driven corporate decision-making from the health process.
Their third medical choice was “More Regulation Under the Current System.” It reads in part, “Policymakers would regulate this system much more, with government boards providing stricter rules on the service (providers) must deliver …” Instead of presenting this mythical proposal, which no one has actually proposed, they could have described the real proposal from which this Frankenstein variation has been invented. It’s called “evidence-based medicine,” and it would involve discovering which treatments are most effective and encouraging their use. While there’s a genuine debate to be held about evidence-based medicine, it shouldn’t involve scare tactics.
Needless to say, there’s no mention of other popular cost-saving proposals, like the public option plan that would put the government and private insurance in competition. Polls show the public option was supported by 71% of Americans and more than half of all Republicans.
In other words, the workbook’s designed to manipulate attendees into rejecting “nutty proposals from the left and right” so they can be guided into conversations about cutting Social Security and raising premiums or out-of-pocket costs in Medicare and Medicaid.
We’re Number 7!
The United States ranked last when compared to six other countries — Britain, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand, the Commonwealth Fund report found.
“As an American it just bothers me that with all of our know-how, all of our wealth, that we are not assuring that people who need healthcare can get it,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis told reporters in a telephone briefing.
Previous reports by the nonprofit fund, which conducts research into healthcare performance and promotes changes in the U.S. system, have been heavily used by policymakers and politicians pressing for healthcare reform.
Davis said she hoped health reform legislation passed in March would lead to improvements.
The current report uses data from nationally representative patient and physician surveys in seven countries in 2007, 2008, and 2009. It is available here
In 2007, health spending was $7,290 per person in the United States, more than double that of any other country in the survey.
Australians spent $3,357, Canadians $3,895, Germans $3,588, the Netherlands $3,837 and Britons spent $2,992 per capita on health in 2007. New Zealand spent the least at $2,454.
This is a big rise from the Fund’s last similar survey, in 2007, which found Americans spent $6,697 per capita on healthcare in 2005, or 16 percent of gross domestic product.
“We rank last on safety and do poorly on several dimensions of quality,” Schoen told reporters. “We do particularly poorly on going without care because of cost. And we also do surprisingly poorly on access to primary care and after-hours care.”
Hanging The Unemployed Out To Dry
Sen. Whitehouse: Cutting People Off Is ‘Just Plain Nuts’
Why are Republicans so consistently morally bereft? (And why do so many Democrats take their cue from them?) Thank heavens for senators like Sheldon Whitehouse, who speak so powerfully about the plight of the unemployed:
A trio of Senate Democrats took the floor Tuesday evening to denounce the Republican party for its unwillingness to add the cost of extended unemployment benefits to the deficit. Extended unemployment benefits put in place by the stimulus bill expired on June 1, interrupting checks for some 903,000 people so far.
“I understand the point about the debt and the deficit and the spending,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). “But to me, that doesn’t have an enormous amount of credibility, because when President Clinton left office, he left an annual surplus… At the end of [George W. Bush’s] term, we had $9 trillion in debt.”
“We would have none of this if it hadn’t been for the Republican debt orgy that they went through,” Whitehouse said.
There are currently five jobseekers for every available opening, but a major obstacle to reauthorizing currently-expired extended benefits has been deficit concerns supplemented by the suspicion that the benefits discourage people from looking for work. Rep. John Linder (R-Ga.) called the benefits, which average $320 per week, “too much of an allure.” Democrats in both the House and Senate, too, have said business owners tell them they’re having trouble hiring because of extended benefits.
Whitehouse confronted that argument.
“The notion that you’re going to cut off somebody’s unemployment insurance and have them go out and find a job is just plain nuts,” said Whitehouse. “There aren’t a lot of people lying around enjoying the luxury of unemployment insurance payments. They want to be getting to work.”
In normal times, states provide six months of benefits to people laid off through no fault of their own, but to fight the stimulus bill and subsequent measures to fight the recession provided the unemployed 99 weeks of benefits in some states. The House passed a bill to reauthorize the benefits, along with several other now-expired domestic aid programs, but the bill is stalled in the Senate, as unified Republicans and Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson withhold their support.
SCOTUS
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court weakened a key anticorruption law today, ruling that the law against “honest services” fraud is too vague to constitute a crime unless a bribe or kickback was involved.
The decision is likely to have a wide impact and could affect recent convictions of public figures and corporate executives.
They include former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling and former Chicago newspaper magnate Conrad Black, both of whom had appealed to the Supreme Court. They were convicted on other charges as well, however, and those convictions still stand.
Why Can’t Anyone Answer This Simple Question?
I keep reading all kinds of conspiracy theories as to why the press is unable to cover the Gulf oil spill and its cleanup. People say all kinds of crazy things when there’s an information vacuum. But I’m starting to wonder if there’s really some sensational explanation for why BP gets to keep the press from reporting on the cleanup sites, because I haven’t heard a good reason yet. Now that Helen Thomas is gone, there’s no one capable of asking a question until they get a real answer:
Mac McClelland, whose reporting from the Gulf for Mother Jones has been indispensable, brings us this latest bag of bull from BP, which insists that it’s not trying to restrict press access to public spaces.
According to McClelland, this was filmed on non-BP property in Houma last week by Drew Wheelan of the American Birding Association, who was stopped from filming by a Louisiana state police officer:
Wheelan: “Am I violating any laws or anything like that?”
Officer: “Um…not particularly. BP doesn’t want people filming.”
Wheelan: “Well, I’m not on their property so BP doesn’t have anything to say about what I do right now.”
Officer: “Let me explain: BP doesn’t want any filming. So all I can really do is strongly suggest that you not film anything right now. If that makes any sense.”
It makes no sense, unless, of course, BP has some authority over police and sheriff’s departments in Louisiana, a scenario that BP denies but which seems to crop up again and again. WDSU-TV’s Scott Walker, whose own encounter with an official who attempted to deny him access to a public beach went viral, received an apology from a BP flack nine days later.
Wheelan’s encounter didn’t stop there. Read McClelland’s entire report, and the next time someone asks you “Well, what do you want President Obama to do?”, tell them he could start by looking into why a foreign corporation seems to be allowed to act with extralegal authority on U.S. soil. It’s the sort of thing you’d think the Tea Party might care about, too.
Ending Homelessness
So the Obama administration wants to end homelessness in ten years, and they’ve released guidelines to that effect. (No funding allocated, though.)
It strikes me that allowing unemployment benefits to lapse and not fighting for mortgage cramdowns to help those losing their homes — while trying to stop homelessness — is like driving a car with one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator.