I'm coming home... home sweet home...

I will be back soon. Stay posted! As always, many thanks to 44 who is the only reason I can keep going.

The Face of Heath Care in the Health Insurers' America

Wendell Potter (scumbag who decided not to be a scumbag anymore):

I was beginning to question what I was doing as the industry shifted from selling primarily managed care plans, to what they refer to as consumer-driven plans. And they're really plans that have very high deductibles, meaning that they're shifting a lot of the cost off health care from employers and insurers, insurance companies, to individuals. And a lot of people can't even afford to make their co-payments when they go get care, as a result of this. But it really took a trip back home to Tennessee for me to see exactly what is happening to so many Americans.

[...]

...what I saw were doctors who were set up to provide care in animal stalls. Or they'd erected tents, to care for people. I mean, there was no privacy. In some cases-- and I've got some pictures of people being treated on gurneys, on rain-soaked pavement.

And I saw people lined up, standing in line or sitting in these long, long lines, waiting to get care. People drove from South Carolina and Georgia and Kentucky, Tennessee-- all over the region, because they knew that this was being done.

[...]

It was absolutely stunning. It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States. It was like a lightning bolt had hit me.

Watch the entire interview at Bill Moyers Journal.

"It was like being hit by lightning. It was almost-- what country am I in? I just it just didn't seem to be a possibility that I was in the United States."
- Wendell Potter

Make a Factory Farmer Furious, Eliminate Meat from Your Diet

Ezra Klein:

The debate over climate change has reached a rarefied level of policy abstraction in recent months. Carbon tax or cap-and-trade? Upstream or downstream? Should we auction permits? Head-scratching is, at this point, permitted. But at base, these policies aim to do a simple thing, in a simple way: persuade us to undertake fewer activities that are bad for the atmosphere by making those activities more expensive. Driving an SUV would become pricier. So would heating a giant house with coal and buying electricity from an inefficient power plant. But there's one activity that's not on the list and should be: eating a hamburger.

[...]

The visceral reaction against anyone questioning our God-given right to bathe in bacon has been enough to scare many in the environmental movement away from this issue. The National Resources Defense Council has a long page of suggestions for how you, too, can "fight global warming." As you'd expect, "Drive Less" is in bold letters. There's also an endorsement for "high-mileage cars such as hybrids and plug-in hybrids." They advise that you weatherize your home, upgrade to more efficient appliances and even buy carbon offsets. The word "meat" is nowhere to be found.

[...]

I've not had the willpower to eliminate bacon from my life entirely, and so I eliminated it from breakfast and lunch, and when that grew easier, pulled back further to allow myself five meat-based meals a month. And believe me, I enjoy the hell out of those five meals. But if we're going to take global warming seriously, if we're going to make crude oil more expensive and tank-size cars less practical, there's no reason to ignore the impact of what we put on our plates.

Keepng the People Entertained, Not Informed

The mainstream media excels at covering up or ignoring real news, distracting Americans with endless mountains of crap.

Media Matters:

Three Times reporters live blogged the event (i.e the photo op), which is just too dumb for words. Everybody in D.C. knew there would be no actual news from the White House visit from Prof. Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley. That was a given. But of course, that didn't stop the press from over-covering the non-event. In fact, I think the promise of news-free event only encouraged more coverage because it took the pressure off reporters to do any reporting.

Gusher-Up Economy: Your Tax Dollars, Their Bonuses

Automatic Earth:

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today published a report entitled "'The Heads I Win, Tails You Lose' Bank Bonus Culture". The numbers tell their own story. In 2008:

* JPMorgan Chase: $25 billion in TARP funding,, earned $5.6 billion, paid $8.69 billion in bonuses
* Goldman Sachs: $10 billion in TARP funding, earned $2.3 billion, paid $4.8 billion in bonuses
* Morgan Stanley: $10 billion in TARP funding, earned $1.7 billion, paid $4.5 billion in bonuses
* Citigroup: $45 billion in TARP funding, lost $27.7 billion, paid $5.33 billion in bonuses
* BoA/Merrill Lynch: $45 billion in TARP funding, lost $23.6 billion, paid $6.9 billion in bonuses

In total, 4613 bankers and traders received bonuses of more than $1 million at these 5 financial institutions, all of which would in all probability have collapsed if not for taxpayer assistance. The TARP funding is by no means the only way they got access to the public trough. While some have returned TARP funds, the other types of funding, while there's no doubt they add up to a far higher total than the combined $135 billion in TARP funds, exist in a much more opaque territory. There are numbers available of what the banks received from the AIG bail-out; Goldman Sachs, for example, was handed $13 billion.

Progressives in Congress Grow a Spine

Hope springs eternal.

Dear Madame Speaker, Chairman Waxman, Chairman Rangel, and Chairman Miller:

We write to voice our opposition to the negotiated health care reform agreement under consideration in the Energy and Commerce Committee.

We regard the agreement reached by Chairman Waxman and several Blue Dog members of the Committee as fundamentally unacceptable. This agreement is not a step forward toward a good health care bill, but a large step backwards. Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, for a public option with reimbursement rates based on Medicare rates - not negotiated rates - is unacceptable. It would ensure higher costs for the public plan, and would do nothing to achieve the goal of "keeping insurance companies honest," and their rates down.

To offset the increased costs incurred by adopting the provisions advocated by the Blue Dog members of the Committee, the agreement would reduce subsidies to low- and middle-income families, requiring them to pay a larger portion of their income for insurance premiums, and would impose an unfunded mandate on the states to pay for what were to have been Federal costs.

In short, this agreement will result in the public, both as insurance purchasers and as taxpayers, paying ever higher rates to insurance companies.

We simply cannot vote for such a proposal.

Sincerely,

57 House Progressives

CBD to tackle overpopulation

Very good news. The best environmental group in the country (unlike the Sierra Club, they don't cave or cater to hunters and developers) is going to tackle the overpopulation crisis.

Center "Biodiversity Briefing" Tackles Overpopulation Crisis -- Listen Now

Everyone's talking about carbon footprints, but it's time to talk about too many feet. So that's just what we did in the latest of the Center for Biological Diversity's quarterly "Biodiversity Briefing" series, in which Executive Director Kierán Suckling confronted the elephant in the environmental movement -- human overpopulation. We're now at 6.7 billion people, and it's estimated we'll be at 9 billion by 2020, which doesn't leave much room for the birds, plants, fish, snails, bears, wolves, butterflies, and whales the Center's striving to protect. Would we want to live in a world with that many people? Can we avoid destroying the natural world through consumption reduction alone? The answers, unfortunately, are no and no.

The Center is working on a massive communications strategy to bring the overpopulation problem into the public eye, and we're developing policy solutions to tackle its complexities. "Simply put," as Suckling said, "overpopulation has the potential -- not the potential, the certainty -- of overwhelming all the good work that we do." If we don't stop it, that is.

Kierán Suckling's briefing can be heard here.

Obama has failed on health care reform

He refused to take a strong stand on single payer. He is far too willing to compromise. He is unwilling to challenge the insurers. He wasn't willing to organize and build momentum for true reform.

"The outcome is already foretold."

"I think that reform is, in fact, dead."

Obama weakening "the academic function and democratic ideal of the community college"

Obama is focused on job training and job training is not education.

Dissident Voice:

For the Obama administration and those who support their education policies and discourse, “education” has become narrowly defined as “job training” and “workforce development.” As a result, those attending community colleges are no longer viewed as citizens or learners (or even at times as students) but rather as economic entities, as “workers” or a “workforce.” No longer is the talk about teaching and the intellectual and social development of students, but rather about “high demand jobs,” “economic stimulus,” “training,” and “skill development.” The message repeated over and over again from politicians, community college leaders, and the media is that, with respect to the community college, what matters is job training and how quickly one completes it—and that what’s good for business and its bottom line is paramount.

[...]

Instead of being educated to make informed choices of their own, community college students are being thrown back into dependent and subservient positions in an economic moment of unequaled peril. Instead of being educated to insert themselves into the political process of restructuring a society of fair values and green energy, they are being trained to stay out of the way and hope that their wages, which haven’t kept pace with corporate profits, will be enough to feed their children.

Simply put, job training and workforce development is indoctrination. It is not education. It has no socially constructive or just outcome, particularly at a time of upheaval and uncertainty. It is a failure of everything that a liberal arts education contributes to a just and democratic society.

Cops

Racism is alive and well in the Boston Police Department.

Raw Story:

The Fox affiliate in Boston has published the text of the email Boston police officer Justin Barrett sent in which he referred to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as a "banana-eating jungle monkey."

It now appears Barrett's email was a letter to the editor of the Boston Globe, complaining of the Globe's coverage of the Gates arrest on July 16.

Of Gates, Barrett wrote: "He is a suspect and will always be a suspect."

"If I was the officer [Gates] verbally assaulted like a banana-eating jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC [pepper spray] deserving of his belligerent non-compliance."

Nicely put, Bob!

Bob Cesca:

Dear Congress,

Another 14,000 Americans lost their health insurance today.

Zero members of Congress lost their health insurance today.

And Max Baucus made another $1500 in bribes from the healthcare industry today.

Good job, Congress.

Bob

Bringing home the bacon

CAFO hogs

Arun Gupta:

The food industry has successfully appropriated the childhood creation of bacon dripping with syrup and repackaged it as a product that provides us with a coveted but deadly hit of salt, fat and sugar.

We know this food is killing us slowly with diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. But we cannot stop, because we are addicts, and the food industry is the pusher. Even if we could opt out completely (which is almost impossible), it is still our land being ravaged, our water and air being poisoned, our dollars subsidizing the destruction, our public health at risk from bacterial and viral plagues.

Changing our perilous food system means making choices — not to shop for a greener planet, but to collectively dismantle factory farming, giant food corporations and the political system that allows them to exist. It’s a big order, but it’s the only option left on the menu.

Just think, you could stop eating bacon and help to destroy an entire industry!

"Material life is always better, on average, in those capitalist economies with well-organized workers."

Are you well-organized? Are you happy with America's ever-growing inequality?

Michael D. Yates:

What is never said, because it cannot be said, is that inequality is a normal feature of capitalist economies, and growing inequality is a natural consequence of capitalism when there is a quiescent working class, as is the case in the United States and much of the world.

The evidence for the propositions, that capitalist economies are profoundly unequal and are more unequal the less collectively powerful workers are, is overwhelming. The productive wealth—what we call the means of production—of every capitalist economy is owned by a tiny minority of individuals. And this is true no matter what party is in power or what country we are examining. Material life is always better, on average, in those capitalist economies with well-organized workers. It is no accident that throughout Europe, and especially in the Scandinavian nations, working people enjoy guaranteed vacations and holidays, subsidized or free health care, greater access to higher education, and prohibitions against arbitrary dismissal. Unions are strong there (though in many places increasingly less so). In the United States, however, where unions are rare, workers have none of these things. Since the mid-1970s, the owners of the means of production have waged unrelenting warfare against workers and their unions, and the results are everywhere apparent—workingmen and women have become more and more subservient to the vagaries and cruelties of the marketplace. If you get sick, too bad. If your plant closes, fend for yourself. If you get old, keep working.

Ye are many--they are few

"It is like acid always burning in my brain that the stupid butchering of the last war taught men nothing at all, that they sank back listlessly on the warm manure pile of the dead and went to sleep, indifferently bestowing custody of their future, their fate, into the hands of state departments, whose members are trained to be conspirators, card sharks, double-crossers, and secret betrayers of their own people; into the hands of greedy capitalist ruling classes so stupid they could not even see when their own greed began devouring itself; into the hands of that most debased type of pimp, the politician, and that most craven of all lice and job-worshippers, the bureaucrats."
- Eugene O'Neill

Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth
like dew
Which in sleep had fallen
on you--
Ye are many--they are few.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

More "artists of resistance" from Howard Zinn here.

"We're junking bonds; we're dropping bombs we've made by guzzling gasoline."

Mia Doi Todd - The Way

I’ve been looking for a way out
Of this crazy situation now--
The world in crisis; seems like paradise
Was lost and won’t be found
And all of life is endangered
And on the verge of breaking down.

I wake up all fear and dread-locked
By all the things I cannot talk about.
We built our house of cards on ignorance,
A landfill of deceit. The walls are hollow
And we listen, worry what they will secrete.

Woe woe woe woe is we.

We all know they’ve got it fixed
In politico-economics.
We’re junking bonds; we’re dropping
Bombs we’ve made by guzzling gasoline.
Public confidence is shaken
Like the apple from the tree.

Namu Amida Butsu, gomen.
Forgive me for my trespasses.
I do my best to exist east of Eden,
West of garbagetown, over-accumulated
Karma. Armageddon, full meltdown.

Woe woe woe woe is me.

I’ve been looking for a way out
Of this crazy situation now--
Our world in crisis; seems like paradise
Was lost and won’t be found
And both our lives are endangered
And on the verge of breaking down.

Woe woe woe woe is we.

Then the garden gates swing wide,
And we enter paradise.
We are angels; we are good.
We open our wings; we’ve understood
How time and change are fine,
They’re the way. They’re the way.

Obama's "not the kind of guy to rock the boat."

Dntel - Rock My Boat, featurign Mia Doi Todd

Doug Henwood:

...the public is getting nothing in return for the vast amounts of [bank bailout] money spent. We don’t know where the money is going—it’s completely opaque. The Fed has admitted that they either don’t know, or they’re not telling. There was an amazing exchange in Congress a few weeks ago between the Fed’s Inspector General, or whatever her title was, and a Republican congressman who was asking her where the money has gone. She was either incapable of giving an honest answer or didn’t know the answer but she just couldn’t even lie effectively. It was remarkable. We don’t know where all this money is going.

And we’re not getting any significant institutional change out of it. The Obama administration seems to want to recreate the status quo before the bust. They occasionally talk about creating a new economy, a new economic model, but they’re not really doing it. They really seem to be in awe of Wall Street power and unwilling to challenge it in any significant way.

[...]

I didn’t expect a massive transformation from Obama. I knew he had a lot of support in Wall Street and is not the kind of guy to rock the boat. He’s not going to expropriate the expropriators.

[...]

Obama is a guy who has been created by the meritocracy and it has treated him very well. He’s kind of in awe of wealth and power and much less willing, for personal reasons, to challenge such interests.

[...]

I thought for a while there was a possibility that the Obama administration would represent some kind of a post-gilded-age, capital P progressive era reconstruction of the American elite. That has not happened yet. It seems they’re still the same old gang, stumbling onwards. But if the economy still stays weak, which I think it will over the coming years, that may change. They may realize, perhaps, that they need to pull their shit together and come up with a longer-term strategy for accumulation and growth.

Pull their shit together? I don't think it's going to happen.

"Obedience is a lever used by ruling classes everywhere to bend people to their will."

Francois Tremblay:

Obedience is a lever used by ruling classes everywhere to bend people to their will. Obedience is rationalized on the basis of “people are innately evil and need leaders/order/direction.” It has been made clear to everyone that no purpose can ever be accomplished without superiors ordering inferiors around, and that if everyone was free they would tear everything apart by chaos and disorder.

[...]

All hierarchies depend on the capacity to order people around, on the ability of superiors to use rewards, threats or punishments to dictate people’s thoughts and actions. That is how a hierarchy sustains itself and its objectives. But most hierarchies get inferiors to order around by appealing to their self-interest as well, offering them money, power (of the petty kind), and the possibility of becoming a superior like them. So this especially appeals to people who are in a game condition as regards to that hierarchy (”I must have a career,” “I must be a good citizen,” and so on).

I follow orders from managers because I want to make money. The fact that I am making money is predicated on the exploitation of a great number of people (the customers of the store, who are subject to all sorts of fraudulent or manipulative selling techniques, the producers, who are subject to pressure from a business oligopoly, the taxpayers who pay subsidies, the victims of eminent domain, and so on). Therefore my job is just as much naked profiteering as the CEO who makes more than ten million dollars a year, albeit on a much smaller scale. And this is merely by being employed by a perfectly average grocery store, not a military organization or a mind-bending cult.

The mindset that results is one of “control or be controlled.” People who have power learn to interact with others by manipulating them and lying to them, until it becomes a second nature.

Fuck the Federal Reserve

Eliot Spitzer:

The Federal Reserve has benefited for decades from the notion that it is quasi-autonomous, it’s supposed to be independent. Let me tell you a dirty secret: The Fed has done an absolutely disastrous job since [former Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker left.

The reality is the Fed has blown it. Time and time again, they blew it. Bubble after bubble, they failed to understand what they were doing to the economy.

The most poignant example for me is the AIG bailout, where they gave tens of billions of dollars that went right through — conduit payments — to the investment banks that are now solvent. We [taxpayers] didn’t get stock in those banks, they didn’t ask what was going on — this begs and cries out for hard, tough examination.

You look at the governing structure of the New York [Federal Reserve], it was run by the very banks that got the money. This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous, it is time for Congress to say enough of this. And to give them more power now is crazy.

The Fed needs to be examined carefully.

Cindy Sheehan interviews Gore Vidal

Catch the interview at Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox.

"I'm alarmed by Obama."
- Gore Vidal

"I think that he got off on the wrong foot and he's staying on the wrong foot on practically every issue that comes up. What is he doing apologizing to this cop for? ... I no more believe Sargent Crowley than I would believe the tooth fairy."
- Gore Vidal

"Dear God, the Pentagon has you by the throat."
- Gore Vidal

Chumbawamba

Chumbawamba FAQ:

Being anti-capitalist, what do you think about bootleg copies of your albums? Is it possible to get your albums in MP3 format?

Bootlegging and MP3 are two different genres. In bootlegging someone is usually trying to make a quick buck from releasing a crap quality live recording or some dodgy studio out-takes, whereas MP3 is more about people downloading music free of charge. We'd be much less likely to object to MP3 than to a bootlegger because selling records without our permission is vastly different to people having access to our stuff for free. Having said that, our record companies and publishers probably take a different view as they don't make any dosh out of MP3. Well, not yet anyway. I think it is possible to get our last album in MP3 format but we weren't the ones who put it up on the web. As for our old stuff, Anarchy, Showbusiness and Swinging with Raymond all went through One Little Indian and they are as unlikely as Universal and EMI to put them up on the web for free. When WYSIWYG was first released, EMI slapped a 'copying is killing music' logo on it without discussing it with the band first; when we contacted the label and explained we didn't believe or agree with the sentiment the label agreed to remove it from subsequent pressings. I was surprised to hear that Metallica are suing fans for downloading their album from the internet. That must be because Metallica are really skint and can't afford to let a few cybernauts get hold of their album for nothing, and if you believe that then Britney Spears isn't the latest in a long line of teenage Barbie dolls in an industry run by middle aged men obsessed by pre-pubescent flesh.

[...]

Some of our stuff is available on i-Tunes in various countries now.

New Songs for Peace:

Q: At this age of conformity, you have made some pretty bold statements with your music. Do you wish more songwriters would be as bold?
A: Yes, the most interesting songwriters for me are the ones who are not limited by the demands of the market - cos all the market demands is that artists say nothing too controversial.

Democracy Now! has a nice interview with the band from 2003.

This is the good ship lifestyle
All my friends jumped ship
I elect me the captain
This is the loneliest voyage
I've ever been on
Up in the crow's nest
Over there! I see land!
First mate? There is no first mate
This is the good ship lifestyle
(Chorus)
Sail away from the world
Sail away from the world
So steer a course
A course for nowhere
And drop the anchor
My little empire
I'm going nowhere
This is the good ship lifestyle
I'm going nowhere
This is the good ship lifestyle
I'm going nowhere
This is the good ship lifestyle
I fly my very own flag
TV dinners for one
At the captain's table
Repel all boarders
Draw the curtains tighter
Where's the crew? There is no crew
This is the good ship lifestyle
(Repeat chorus)

Texas Tech's Chancellor hires "friend" Alberto Gonzales

[source]

Wingnut welfare is alive and well.

Raw Story:

The former attorney-general under President George W. Bush will soon be teaching "Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch" at Texas Tech -- a job for which, at least 40 of the school's professors say, Gonzales is profoundly unqualified.

As of last count, 45 staffers at Texas Tech have signed a petition urging the school's chancellor to rescind the offer of a teaching job to Gonzales, reports the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

[...]

Evidently, the Bush administration alum was hired directly by the school's chancellor, Kent Hance, whom the petition describes as a "good friend" of Gonzales.

Hance earns $527,000 a year to make idiotic decisions like this one (odds are this hiring was prompted by phone calls from his other friend, George W. Bush).

Emma Goldman on "Misconceptions of Anarchism"

The N.Y. Times does a fun TimesTraveler feature, featuring headlines from the same day 100 years ago. Emma Goldman was featured on July 24th.

Saturday, July 24, 1909

Emma Goldman spoke to a gathering of 200 people in Harlem yesterday under unusual circumstances: there were no policemen there to stop her from saying what she had to say. The title of her talk was “Some Misconceptions of Anarchism.” She said: “Many people are afraid to come to an Anarchist meeting because they fear that they will be blown up. Isn’t it stupid to be afraid of violence when you are in the midst of it all the time? These people are not afraid of violence: only of individual violence. They have no objection to battlefields, and policemen, and electric chairs, and other ornaments of the present system. So long as violence is committed in the name of the State they are happy. As a matter of fact the Anarchists don’t propagate violence. They only struggle against what already exists, and it is necessary to fight existing violence with violence. That is the only way that a new peace can dawn.”

She loses me in the last two sentences. I agree with Howard Zinn that Violence Doesn't Work.

"It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives --- young lives, old lives and lives in the making."
- Emma Goldman

"I believe that militarism will cease when the liberty-loving spirits of the world say to their masters: 'Go and do your own killing. We have sacrificed ourselves and our loved ones long enough fighting your battles. In return you have made parasites and criminals of us in times of peace and brutalized us in times of war. You have separated us from our brothers and have made of the world a human slaughterhouse. No, we will not do your killing or fight for the country that you have stolen from us.'"
- Emma Goldman

No War but the Class War

[source: Chumbawamba - Well Done, Now Sod Off]

Six in the morning don't want to wake
Sun laying low and the world sleeping late
Hate like the river runs heavy and deep
Oh I wish that they'd sack me and leave me to sleep

Five days from seven the week's hardly mine
The alarm clock's gone over to enemy lines
Waste my time working for cowards and creeps
Oh I wish that they'd sack me and leave me to sleep

Rain strikes the window heralds the day
Rain won't you wash these eight hours away?
Rain feeds the river runs heavy and deep
Oh I wish that they'd sack me and leave me to sleep

Birds on the windowsill sing in the dawn
By the time that I'm home all this day will be gone
Spend my life sowing what others will reap
Oh I wish that they'd sack me and leave me to sleep

Rain strikes the window heralds the day
Rain won't you wash these eight hours away?
Rain feeds the river runs heavy and deep
Oh I wish that they'd sack me and leave me to sleep.

"War is the greatest terrorism."

"War poisons everybody who engages in it."
- Howard Zinn

"They cannot carry out wars without us. ... When people decide that they are not going to support the government.... When the government simply cannot find enough people to carry on the war, then the war must come to an end."
- Howard Zinn

"Words, words is all ... declaring peace, wall to wall."

Strap these words
Around your waist
Open arms
A last embrace
Go make your peace
Commonplace
Take the train
A last goodbye
Throw your rhymes
At passers-by
'One Love'
On your hi-fi

Words
Words is all
Around the underground
And ticket halls
Declaring peace
Wall to wall

Back in Leeds
The news we heard
No-one killed
And no-one hurt
Wish all the young men
Used only words

Words
Words is all
Around the underground
And ticket halls
Declaring peace
Wall to wall.

Find the right Obama for you...

(h/t Dennis Perrin)

"Capital is the Real of our lives."

Will people ever become as real as capital?

Slavoj Žižek:

The financial meltdown has made it impossible to ignore the blatant irrationality of global capitalism. In the fight against Aids, hunger, lack of water or global warming, we may recognise the urgency of the problem, but there is always time to reflect, to postpone decisions. The main conclusion of the meeting of world leaders in Bali to talk about climate change, hailed as a success, was that they would meet again in two years to continue the talks. But with the financial meltdown, the urgency was unconditional; a sum beyond imagination was immediately found. Saving endangered species, saving the planet from global warming, finding a cure for Aids, saving the starving children . . . All that can wait a bit, but ‘Save the banks!’ is an unconditional imperative which demands and gets immediate action. The panic was absolute. A transnational and non-partisan unity was immediately established, all grudges among world leaders momentarily forgotten in order to avert the catastrophe. (Incidentally, what the much-praised ‘bi-partisanship’ effectively means is that democratic procedures were de facto suspended.) The sublimely enormous sum of money was spent not for some clear ‘real’ task, but in order to ‘restore confidence’ in the markets – i.e. for reasons of belief. Do we need any more proof that Capital is the Real of our lives, the Real whose demands are more absolute than even the most pressing demands of our social and natural reality?

"The cause of the crisis we face is minority rule."

13 years ago I came to California to go to graduate school. I have made California my home. It is horrible to see the California higher education system, once considered the finest in the nation, a system that nurtured my mind and broadened my horizons, suffering at the hands of the terrorists in Sacramento.

George Lakoff to UC President Yudof:

* The cause of the crisis we face is minority rule.

Right now a minority one-third plus one in the legislature determines our revenues and budget. This is a tyranny of the minority, and that tyranny threatens one of the world’s great institutions, the institution that you are guardians of.

* You have a moral obligation to protect this institution from the tyranny of the minority.

Through your access to the press, to business interests, and especially to the hundreds of thousands of UC alumni throughout the state, you have a power you can and should exercise: the power of information, and behind it, the moral authority of majority rule, that is, the authority of democracy itself.

* A state government has a moral mission to empower its citizens.

It does so through building roads and public buildings, maintaining public health, controlling our energy supply, stewarding the environment, providing needed public services — and above all through education. No one earns a living in this state without such empowerment by the government. No one makes it on his own.

The University of California, through its faculty, has played a central role in empowering Californians and California. The Regents historically have made this possible. It is your duty to protect what is great about this university, and not be complicit in its destruction.

We must organize, organize, organize. Both in support of higher education and against the tyranny of the minority. Not just faculty, but students, their parents, and alumni. They must be organized to do very specific things, not just once, but by regularly writing to their legislators, writing letters to the editor, speaking out in their communities. We are at two tipping points. The life or death of our great university, and the life or death of a functioning state government. We have never faced anything like this before.

"Things have gone seriously wrong when police feel justified in slapping cuffs on people who stand up for themselves and speak their minds."

Do you believe in free speech? Or deference to authority?

This Can't Be Happening:

Crowley's cop backers, and the predictable right-wing punditry, claim that he is owed an apology by President Obama, because the president directed his criticism "at the wrong person." They say it was Gates who behaved "stupidly."

That is to say, in their view if a police officer comes into your house and accuses you of being a burglar, you are "stupid" if you protest--especially if you are a black man and you suspect that the officer in question made his assumption because you are black. In the view of these "superior" officers, and of Sgt. Crowley, the appropriate behavior for a citizen confronted by a police officer is abject submissiveness, a Buddha-like calmness, and, of course, deferential politeness.

Now I suppose it might be the better idea, if you don't want any trouble, to say "Sir" to a cop who stops you or who asks for ID, but what the hell kind of country is that? Where does it say that if you feel wronged by the police you have no right to tell them what you think?

Things have gone seriously wrong when police feel justified in slapping cuffs on people who stand up for themselves and speak their minds.

Life's a bitch: Rick Wagoner's "bare bones" pension

The maker of crap, environment-destroying cars gets a crap pension. All's right with the world (except it's not).

guardian.co.uk:

Former General Motors chief executive Rick Wagoner, who was fired by the Obama administration in March, is retiring with a pension package worth $8.6m (£5.2m) after delicate political negotiations over his entitlements from the newly restructured carmaker.

Wagoner, 56, will get $1.64m annually for his first five years of retirement and will subsequently receive a yearly pension of $74,030. The sum, revealed in a regulatory filing by GM, represents the "bare bones" of Wagoner's contractual entitlement after 32 years' service at the company, which owns brands such as Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Vauxhall and Hummer.

"They believe that your enemy is your enemy and that you never give your enemy an inch."

All of the nonsensical crap that comes out of Republican mouths has its origin in one simple rule...

Ian Welsh:

The fundamental rule of parliamentary democratic politics if you are the opposition party is this:

Whatever the ruling party does is wrong

[...]

So the Republicans have taken parliamentary opposition one step further. Instead of just opposing everything but letting it pass, then running against it, they figure why not oppose everything in the hopes of weakening policy to the point where it doesn’t work? The stimulus bill was compromised to the point where it didn’t do the necessary job. The global warming bill likewise, and the health care bill appears headed for the same fate.

Lousy policy leads to lousy outcomes. Lousy outcomes make the population unhappy, and less likely to vote the incumbents back in.

What the Republicans are doing makes perfect sense from an electoral point of view. Voters are not going to primarily blame Republicans for Democrats failing to govern effectively.

This is something that many Democrats, especially older ones who came from a more genteel era, or those who some sort of strange genetic disposition to compromise (Obama) don’t seem to get. But Republicans get it in their limbic system. They believe that your enemy is your enemy and that you never give your enemy an inch. When you’re on top, you give them the boot, when you’re down, you knaw at their ankles till they bleed out and fall.

Comity and compromise only work with people who believe in them. Contrary to the moronic statement “it takes two to fight”, it actually takes two to make peace. When one person wants to fight, and one won’t fight, what happens may not be fighting, but it certainly isn’t peace.

Get to know Howard Zinn

Over the past few months I have been paying lots of attention to Noam Chomsky and Edward Abbey. Now I'm on to Emma Goldman and Howard Zinn. Next up, probably, Arundhati Roy. My radicalization continues.

Lots of great Zinn can be found here. 10,004 people have seen this video. How many of those have seen it through to the end? Be one of the lucky few.

"War is not a solution, fundamentally, for any serious problem."

"To walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict."

N.Y. Times:

While “In the Loop” is a highly disciplined inquiry into a very serious subject, it is also, line by filthy line, scene by chaotic scene, by far the funniest big-screen satire in recent memory. The hand-held camera work, the hectic jump-cuts and the grubby visuals may resemble television, but the restless pacing and drab appearance serve a clear aesthetic purpose. The film visits some of the world’s great monuments to liberty and order on both sides of the Atlantic — 10 Downing Street, the White House, the United Nations headquarters — and they’ve never looked worse, as if shot through a filter made of grime.

And at the end you may feel a little unclean, which is also evidence of Mr. Iannucci’s satirical rigor. The people in whose hands momentous decisions rest are shown — convincingly and in squirming detail — to be duplicitous, vindictive, small-minded and untrustworthy. But why should they be any different from the rest of us?

The Civilian Slaughter of Obama's War

"Unfortunately, a battlefield is a very messy place and it's very hard to tell people from each other."

"About 251 times as many people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq than in the ghastly attacks of September 11, 2001."
[source]

" "Civilian casualties are historically, by definition, a part of war, really. Should they be as big news as they’ve been?"
- Fox's Brit Hume

"In Afghanistan, as in Serbia and the Persian Gulf, it all feels so effortless, so painless, and so right. Why bother to ask the moral questions? Since the price in U.S. lives is so small, why bother our consciences at all? Each war makes it easier to start the next war, with no questions asked and no bodies counted."
[source]

Obama, Fucking Up by Imitating Bush

[source]

Ian Welsh:

This is not the Bush administration, but the primary assumption of the Bush years that nothing would get through Congress that wasn’t bought and paid for; that wasn’t fatally compromised at very best still holds in only a mildly mitigated form. Yes, Obama and the Democrats sometimes try to do the right thing while Bush almost never bothered, but the bills that come out at the end are still awful.

This year is effectively over. Obama’s ratings are dropping and will continue to drop as the economy doesn’t improve for ordinary people. In future years he will reap what he has sown: bad policy will lead to bad real results, and Obama and the Democratic Congress will be blamed for that. They will deserve it.

Hope I’m wrong about this.

But I wouldn’t bet on it. Even hope wears thin over time.

Robert Hormats, Obama Undersecretary of State Nominee and Genocide Promoter

Obama wants another Goldman Sachs asshole - this one thinks doing business with genocidal regimes is acceptable - to join his administration.

Public Accountability Initiative (via Eyes on the Ties):

As Goldman exec, Obama nominee played key role in Sudan-linked IPO

Despite human rights concerns, State Dept nominee pushed through illegal PetroChina offering

President Obama’s recent nominee for undersecretary of state, Robert Hormats, is another in a long line of Goldman Sachs executives to secure influential posts in government. But his nomination deserves special scrutiny, above and beyond growing concern surrounding the bank’s influence in government.

Hormats played a crucial role in a 2000 Goldman Sachs deal that was fervently opposed by religious groups and human rights advocates and later cited by the SEC as an example of illegal market manipulation: the $3 billion initial public offering of PetroChina, a company with ties to Sudan’s genocidal regime.

Banks are crooked. America needs a Consumer Financial Protection Agency

California Closed - Who speaks for Nori?

Meet Nori:

In 2001, while driving to the market in her old VW bug, Nori suddenly lost her vision and collided head on into oncoming traffic. She was rushed to the hospital, her face crushed. Internal injuries destroyed what was left of her kidneys and forced her into dialysis 3-4 times a week for the remainder of her life. She never regained her sight.

Since then, friends help where we can. I have taken over organizing her bills and dealing with the collection agencies. We were able to get her a few hours of in-home care after endless calls to social service agencies. But at the end of the day Nori is forced to live on a grand total of $890 a month. $561.00 comes from Social Security and the rest from State Disability Insurance.

So what does that 890.00 look like? After paying $646 a month for rent, utilities, and weekly ambulance service for dialysis treatments, Nori is left with only $8.13 a day for everything else; food, toiletries, clothing, and whatever household supplies she needs. To make matters worse, Sacramento recently cut her benefits by $20.00 a month, leaving her only $7.46 a day to live on.

Let me repeat that. $7.46 a day.

Last week Nori called me in tears, saying the Governor was cutting off the state portion of her monthly SSI check. She was terrified she would lose her home of 25 years and end up in the street.

“That’s not possible”, I said, “Let me look into it.”

To my horror, not only was it possible, it was true. In July, the State of California began issuing IOU's to recipients of Supplemental Security Income. The Federal Government stepped and in agreed to fill the gap for July and August, but after that, Nori’s income will drop by a third. The $561 she would be left with will not even cover her rent.

How is this possible? I look at Nori and think, "That could be me." One accident away from becoming profoundly dependent on a system more interested in politics than people.

Who speaks for Nori?

Not the Republican legislative minority who would rather cut the funds of a blind woman on dialysis than put a tax on oil revenues and cigarettes

Who speaks for Nori?

Not Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said of the budget stalemate in California, “Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don’t walk out of here depressed,” Whatever happens, “I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight. I’m going to lay back with a stogie.” This while Nori's body must take on the added stress from fear of losing her home.

Who speaks for Nori?

Not the Health Insurance Industry, spending $1.4 million dollars a day to strangle comprehensive health care reform.

Who speaks for Nori?

Not Senator Dianne Feinstein, who recently stated passing health care reform in the Senate was too “difficult.”

Who speaks for Nori?

WE speak for Nori.

"Seize the radical moment at hand"

Danny Schechter:

Isn't THE issue not right in front of us? Can't we see it? Can't we respond to the opportunity that all the specialized reform groups—environmentalists, media reformers, election fixer and even the unions seem to be missing when it comes to a unified response.

Clearly, we are, if we ever were, in a revolutionary time. The world economy is imploding. Unemployment is growing with the IMF predicting hundreds of millions out of work amidst fears of mass starvation. In our country all the stimulus programs and bailouts are not up to the task of economic recovery. Even liberal economists like Robert Reich and Paul Krugman see that. The right wing senses that this is the issue, the ticket, to get back into power because Obama's programs will most certainly fail.

[...]

The best indications now are that he will fail, because he will be unable—indeed he will refuse—to seize the radical moment at hand.

Every instinct the president has honed, every voice he hears in Washington, every inclination of our political culture urges incrementalism, urges deliberation, if any significant change is to be brought about. The trouble is that we are at one of those rare moments in history when the radical becomes pragmatic, when deliberation and compromise foster disaster. The question is not what can be done but what must be done.

Disconnects

Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate:

Here are some examples of “disconnects”:

* The public school teachers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania built a powerful union and broke once and for all the arbitrary power of the school board to determine how the teachers worked and pay they received. To win their union they struck, defying court injunctions even after their union offices were padlocked and their treasury impounded. Yet not one of these militant unionists stood up for my sons’ refusal to say the Pledge of Allegiance. In fact, the teachers treated my sons as if they had committed a crime.

* There is no question that the government responded to the rise of a militant and working class black movement in the 1960s and 1970s by the mass imprisonment of black men and women. This was compounded by the decline of U.S. manufacturing, which disproportionately harmed black workers, and because of the resulting unemployment and its effects, led to further black imprisonment. Those imprisoned are overwhelmingly workers. Yet white workers and unions have given this little thought and, if anything, have accepted the mainstream analysis that there is something wrong with the character of black persons and with the family structure of the black community. The U.S. labor movement has never, to my knowledge, publically and forcefully condemned the racist and anti-working class nature of the prison system.

* Today, wars are almost always connected to U.S. imperial interests. Yet, working people continue to send their children off to war and seldom make this connection.

* Workers are too often prone to blame unions for whatever ails the economy. How can this be?

* Unions themselves too often mimic in their internal structure that of their presumed class enemy and, in the process, alienate their own members.

Rebel Girls

It's the unemployment, stupid

[source: The Atlantic]

L.A. Times:

California shed 66,500 jobs in June, and more losses loom as double-digit unemployment spreads to state and local governments, once reliable bastions of employment security.

June's 11.6% unemployment rate, a post-World War II record, stayed level from a revised May figure. Construction, professional services and international trade continue to top the state's jobless categories.

But in a troubling sign, governments -- a stable part of the state's economy for a decade -- have been laying off thousands of workers in recent months. And far more losses are ahead.

Here's John Nichols on unemployment, the issue Obama failed to confront while he was busy bailing out the banksters.

Lights, Camera, Destruction. Our insatiable appetite for entertainment is killing us

Think of all the movie, music, and t.v. production that happens on this frail planet and how much damage it does to the environment.

Via AlterNet:

The carbon emissions of Bono's band's world tour are equivalent to the waste created by 6,500 average British or Irish people in an entire year.

"Yes, my friends, the government is better at some things than private companies, and health insurance is one of them."

Ian Welsh:

Every time someone starts whining about how taxes have to rise to pay for universal healthcare I want to smash my head against the nearest brick wall (since that’s softer than most of the skulls in Congress or the media). [...] America is already paying more than enough money to give everyone health care, but because so much of it is being wasted, 48 million are uninisured and 62% of all bankruptcies are caused by health care problems, and 75% of those had what in the US is laughably refered to as “health care insurance”.

[...]

Does it matter who you pay your health care money to? The government or the insurance companies, as long as you get care? And if the government can do it for cheaper, so you’ll have more money left over, for better care (and yes, Virginia, every country in the world with real universal health care has better overall results than the US) why wouldn’t you want that?

But no politicians comes out and says this. “We are paying too much for health care. You, my fellow citizens, are paying too much for bad health care. What we are going to do is make sure that you get good health-care for less money. Because yes, my friends, the government is better at some things than private companies, and health insurance is one of them.”

This is the bottom line—single payer—Medicare for all—is cheaper and provides better results than the current system.

Bernie Sanders: with private insurance, "you've committed the crime of getting sick."

Two-Minute Hate

Great idea from Media Matters. A daily two-minute compilation of right-wing hate.

Thank you, Media Matters!


Wikipedia:

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Two Minutes Hate (more properly, "Two Minutes' Hate" or "Two-Minute Hate") is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting The Party's enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them and the principles of democracy.

OMG!

Darn, what a character that crazy Randall Terry is!

Just what we need, now that the "pro-life" movement has gotten boring and tepid. Scott Roeder must have inspired Terry to make a comeback—just like Tim McVeigh inspired Ted Kaczynski to get his act together and retake the spotlight after that impudent upstaging in Oklahoma.

It’s about time the Washington Post gave us a charismatic celebrity to rediscover, now that the Jackson funeral is over—they even ran their profile concurrently with the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. Now that’s what I call a sense of timing!

You were right about the WP, #44.

Sanders on health care and stories that "speak of a third-world kind of coverage."

Americans were bequeathed the dream of a nation dedicated to valuing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We have used that gift to achieve enormous inequalities, a dysfunctional, self-hating government and a grossly unjust health care system. Why?

Jane Hamsher: "This is a game-changing moment. [...] Progressive votes matter."

I begin to weary of this motif.

WSJ:

WASHINGTON -- It is more important that health-care legislation inject stiff competition among insurance plans than it is for Congress to create a pure government-run option, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said Monday.

"The goal is to have a means and a mechanism to keep the private insurers honest," he said in an interview. "The goal is non-negotiable; the path is" negotiable.

I begin to weary of this motif.

Common Cause:

The major health interests have spent an average of $1.4 million per day to lobby Congress so far this year and are on track to spend more than half a billion dollars by the end 2009.

Make yourself sick reading the whole report.

I begin to weary of this motif.

"Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don't walk out of here depressed," Schwarzenegger said. Whatever happens, "I will sit down in my Jacuzzi tonight," he said. "I'm going to lay back with a stogie." [source]

And yet the Wall Street bonuses freely flow...

Roubini:

The June employment report suggests that the alleged ‘green shoots’ are mostly yellow weeds that may eventually turn into brown manure. The employment report shows that conditions in the labor market continue to be extremely weak, with job losses in June of over 460,000. With the current rate of job losses, it is very clear that the unemployment rate could reach 10 percent by later this summer, around August or September, and will be closer to 10.5 percent if not 11 percent by year-end. I expect the unemployment rate is going to peak at around 11 percent at some point in 2010, well above historical standards for even severe recessions.

It’s clear that even if the recession were to be over anytime soon – and it’s not going to be over before the end of the year – job losses are going to continue for at least another year and a half. Historically, during the last two recessions, job losses continued for at least a year and a half after the recession was over. During the 2001 recession, the recession was over in November 2001, and job losses continued through August 2003 for a cumulative loss of jobs of over 5 million; this time we are already seeing more than 6 million job losses and the recession is not over.

The details of the unemployment report are even worse than the headline. Not only are there large job losses right now, but as a way of sharing the pain, firms are inducing workers to reduce hours and hourly wages. Therefore, when we’re looking at the effect of the labor market on labor income, we should consider that the total value of labor income is the product of jobs, hours, and average hourly wages – and that all three elements are falling right now. So the effect on labor income is much more significant than job losses alone.

he details also suggest that other aspects of the labor markets are worsening. If you include discouraged workers and partially-employed workers, the unemployment rate is already above 16 percent. If you consider also that temporary jobs are falling now quite sharply, labor market conditions are becoming worse. And the average duration of unemployment now is at an all-time high. So people not only are losing jobs, but they’re finding it harder to find new jobs. So every element of the labor market is worsening.

"No longer equal before the law."

Patti Smith - Declaration of Independence
Tell me, what was there to celebrate on this Fourth of July? We live in a land where the most powerful get away with mass murder, torture, and warrantless invasions of privacy, where police regularly kill with their tasers, where your health care and finances are subject to the whim of unregulated behemoths, where government serves the interests of the powerful few and ignores the will of the majority on countless issues, where the incarceration rate is the highest in the world, and on and on. Is this what the founders fought to bring about through the Declaration of Independence?

Ian Welsh:

Nothing strikes at the heart of the revolution, at the heart of the struggle for independence than this, that America has become not a nation of laws, but a nation of men, where some men are more equal than others. To be sure it has always been true that the rich and powerful have been more apt to escape Justice’s blind grasp. Yet at the same time, there can be no question that in the last eight years the greatest lawbreakers, the greatest mass murder in the country was also the highest official in the country. And that he and his accomplices will get away with their crimes, not because we don’t all know they’re crimes, but because the idea of accountability, of equality before the law, for the highest government officials is now dead.

There are certainly those who cry out for justice. But, let’s be frank: they don’t matter, because the people in power—in Congress and the executive branch, and quite probably on the Supreme Court (though we can’t be sure about that)—don’t believe that the laws apply to them in the same way they apply to ordinary people.

All men, in the land of the free, in the land of the brave, are no longer equal before the law.

Journalism in bed with the policy-makers, courtesy of the Washington Post.

This Fourth of July, Question Your Patriotism

With Mark Twain and Green Day.






My name is no one, the long lost son
Born on the 4th of July
Raised in the era of heroes and cons
That left me for dead or alive

I am a nation, a worker of pride
My debt to the status quo
The scars on my hands and a means to an end
Is all that I have to show

I swallowed my pride and I choked on my faith
I've given my heart and my soul
I've broken my fingers and lied through my teeth
The pillar of damage control

I've been to the edge and I've thrown the bouquet
Of flowers left over the grave
I sat in the waiting room, wasting my time
And waiting for Judgement Day

I praise liberty
The "freedom to obey"
Is the song that strangles me
Oh, don't cross the line

Oh dream, America dream
I can't even sleep
From the light's early dawn

Oh scream, America scream
Believe what you see
From heroes and cons.

Patriotism is merely a religion—love of country, worship of country, devotion to the country's flag and honor and welfare.

In absolute monarchies it is furnished from the throne, cut and dried, to the subject; in England and America it is furnished, cut and dried, to the citizen by the politician and the newspaper.

The newspaper-and-politician-manufactured Patriot often gags in private over his dose; but he takes it, and keeps it on his stomach the best he can. Blessed are the meek.

Sometimes, in the beginning of an insane and shabby political upheaval, he is strongly moved to revolt, but he doesn't do it—he knows better. He knows that his maker would find it out—the maker of his Patriotism, the windy and incoherent six-dollar sub-editor of his village newspaper—and would bray out in print and call him a traitor. And how dreadful that would be. It makes him tuck his tail between his legs and shiver. We all know—the reader knows it quite well—that two or three years ago nine-tenths of the human tails in England and America performed just that act. Which is to say, nine-tenths of the Patriots in England and America turned traitor to keep from being called traitor. Isn't it true? You know it to be true. Isn't it curious?

Yet it was not a thing to be very seriously ashamed of. A man can seldom—very, very seldom—fight a winning fight against his training; the odds are too heavy. For many a year—perhaps always—the training of the two nations had been dead against independence in political thought, persistently inhospitable toward Patriotism manufactured on a man's own premises, Patriotism reasoned out in the man's own head and fire-assayed and tested and proved in his own conscience. The resulting Patriotism was a shop-worn product procured at second hand. The Patriot did not know just how or when or where he got his opinions, neither did he care, so long as he was with what seemed the majority—which was the main thing, the safe thing, the comfortable thing. Does the reader believe he knows three men who have actual reasons for their pattern of Patriotism—and can furnish them? Let him not examine, unless he wants to be disappointed. He will be likely to find that his men got their Patriotism at the public trough, and had no hand in their preparation themselves.

Rent-a-tabloid...

This pretty much sums up the way mainstream news media works these day. It's all about privileged access. Journalistic independence be damned. Sickening.

N.Y. Times:

Katharine Weymouth, the relatively new publisher of The Washington Post, is a lawyer who worked for the company for 12 years and was educated at the Harvard School of Business, so she is hardly a naïf in running a business.

[...]

As first reported in Politico, The Washington Post had sent out a brochure offering sponsorships — a fee of $25,000 for one, or $250,000 for an entire series — for an exclusive “Washington Post salon” at Ms. Weymouth’s home in which officials from Congress and the administration, lobbyists and, yes, the paper’s own reporters could have a quiet, off-the-record dinner, discussions to be led by Marcus Brauchli, the newspaper’s editor. Theoretically, you can’t buy Washington Post reporters, but you can rent them.

I guess it sounded like a good idea at the time. Access, and its very close cousin, influence, define the Beltway. Millions of dollars are spent on having the right lobbyists, flacks and lawyers so that you can end up in a room with people who control your destiny.

Palin fan-boy fantasies...

Right Wing Political Productions, Inc., Bill Kristol, CIO (Chief Idiot On-Tap) promotes Palin's apotheosis.

William Kristol:

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble - but it could be a shrewd one.

After all, she's freeing herself from the duties of the governorship. Now she can do her book, give speeches, travel the country and the world, campaign for others, meet people, get more educated on the issues - and without being criticized for neglecting her duties in Alaska. I suppose she'll take a hit for leaving the governorship early - but how much of one? She's probably accomplished most of what she was going to get done as governor, and is leaving a sympatico lieutenant governor in charge.

And haven't conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she'll try to be that. She may not succeed. Everything rests on her talents, and on her performance. She'll be under intense and hostile scrutiny, and she'll have to perform well.

All in all, it's going to be a high-wire act. The odds are against her pulling it off. But I wouldn't bet against it.

Single Payer vs. Public Option

[source]

Why does anyone want the public option? It is very disappointing to see that Digby has joined the Public Option crowd.

Nurses and progressives support single payer.

In a joint statement, the National Nurses Organizing Committee/California Nurses Association and Progressive Democrats of America announced they are stepping up calls and other lobbying efforts to urge Congressional leaders to include discussion of the single-payer option in upcoming deliberations on the healthcare reform legislation now advancing in Congress.

As President Obama holds several public healthcare events, major committees in Congress unveil legislation, and some liberal constituency groups set to rally in Washington Thursday, NNOC/CNA and PDA said that a single-payer/Medicare-for-all approach is "the best way to achieve goals of universality, effective cost controls, and improving the quality of care for all Americans."

All other proposals, the groups said, suffer the same limitations. They:

• Leave the insurance industry, with its emphasis on generating profits and revenues rather than providing care, in control of our health.
• Fail to assure financial security of American families by not cracking down on insurance pricing practices.
• Avoid the strongest cost controls that are achieved in a single-payer system with one shared risk pool that covers everyone, elimination of the administrative waste associated with private insurers, and use of the power of the public entity to negotiate lower costs.
• Does not protect choice of doctor, hospital, and other providers, as occurs in a single-payer system, because insurers can still limit choice to their own approved network of doctors and providers.

Even the public option favored by the President and leading Democrats would not achieve these goals, said NNOC/CNA and PDA. Private insurers would still be able to cherry pick healthier patients through their aggressive marketing techniques, with sicker patients likely being dumped into the public plan. The result is the public plan would face higher costs and the likelihood of having to cut or ration services to stay financially afloat.

Wellstone on Health Care Reform, in 1994: "it is difficult for people to have confidence that we are representing the public interest."

This is Paul Wellstone, from a HEALTH CARE AND CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM debate on the Senate floor, August 08, 1994:

I have to say that much of the struggle over whether or not we will have a fundamental health care reform has to do with our failure to yet enact fundamental campaign finance reform legislation. I want to talk about that campaign finance reform bill in a moment.

Citizen Action came out with a study recently--an analysis of Federal Election Commission data. From January 1993 to May of this year, the health care industry made $26.4 million in political contributions to Representatives and Senators.

In March, it was a staggering $4 million, just in that 1 month alone.

Other data, Mr. President: During Presidential and congressional elections, the 1990-92 cycle, the health industry, broadly defined, spent almost $42 million. Common Cause just came out with a study of these contributions, which I mentioned the other day on the Senate floor, Mr. President. This is a study of PAC contributions--just PAC contributions--to the U.S. Senate over a 6-year period, January 1987 to December of 1993 . During that time, business PAC's contributed $72 million; labor PAC's, $16 million. That is about a 4-to-1 ratio.

[...]

I think part of the reason there is such anger in the country is many people feel ripped off and they think this process is just driven by a big money game. It is not just that. But I do not think it looks right, and I do not think it is right. I said before on the floor of the Senate, and I say it one more time: it is comparable to the referee of a soccer game or football game receiving contributions from the two teams before the game starts. People would say, `We're not sure that referee can make rigorous, objective decisions that would be best for everyone.'

[...]

Every time I am in a debate with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, they talk about how people now are beginning to question whether any health care reform bill should be passed. That is true; $100 million will be spent on TV and other advertising before this is all over and plenty of people are frightened and scared, and people have a right to raise questions. I would not deny any citizen in this country that right.

But the polls also show overwhelmingly that the vast majority of people, throughout all this attack, still say that they believe each and every person should be covered, because they know that if some people go without coverage, it could be them if they become sick or lose their job, and people are absolutely convinced that employers should contribute their fair share.

But when we talk about anything close to what we in Congress, have, with our employer contributing 72 percent, or when we talk about employers contributing 80 percent, making sure that small businesses have a subsidy so they can afford that, that now seems to be off the table. Could that have anything to do with the fact that over the last 6 years $72 million in political contributions has come from business PAC's?

[...]

I heard one of my colleagues the other day say, `You know, the problem is we have to contain costs and we just don't know when to say no. You have all these special interests that are asking for coverage, and we don't know how to say no to those special interests.'

What special interests? People who are uninsured? What special interests? Children? What special interests? My colleague from Iowa is here. People with disabilities who are saying we hope that you will pass a reform bill that will enable us to live at home in as near normal circumstances as possible with dignified home-based care, what special interests are we talking about?

Tuning in to ABC's punditry is tuning out the truth

And why would you want to do that to yourself? George Stephanopoulos is advertising his show:

We've also got a terrific Roundtable.

George Will is back. He'll be joined by Liz Cheney, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Cynthia Tucker and former Bush-Cheney strategist and ABC News contributor Matthew Dowd to talk about comedian turned Senator Al Franken and what his addition to the senate means for the Democrats and the latest on Governor Mark Sanford's future in South Carolina.

You don't want to miss this show.

Does the presence of Cynthia Tucker mean the glass is one-quarter full?

No. That's not nearly good enough. Where's the progressive "pundit"? Nowhere to be found. Permanently exiled to alternative media outlets.

The manufacturing of consent, and the suppression of dissent, continues. One crappy show at a time.

It's lolly-pop journalism. Get your lick of conformity and swallow the narrow beltway mindset. Indigestible. Pitiful. Cowardly.

And let's be honest. A Stephanopoulos show with 40 beltway liberals and 0 conservatives would still suppress the kinds of viewpoints we get from shows like Democracy Now!

“Debate cannot be stilled, and indeed, in a properly functioning system of propaganda, it should not be, because it has a system-reinforcing character if constrained within proper bounds. What is essential is to set the bounds firmly. Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns.”
- Noam Chomsky