A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



April 30, 2014

Republican replacement

The Republican replacement for Obamacare is Fauxbamacare

Scott Brown, who's now running for Senate in New Hampshire, has found the perfect position on Obamacare. He's for it. He's just not for calling it Obamacare.

In an interview with WMUR, he called Obamacare a "disaster." Then he was asked what he's for  — and he went on to describe Obamacare.

"I've always felt that people should either get some type of health care options, or pay for it with a nice competitive fee," he said. "That's all great. I believe it in my heart. In terms of preexisting conditions, catastrophic coverages, covering kids, whatever we want to do." He even said it could "include the Medicaid expansion [for] folks who need that care and coverage."

Oh, he also promises his plan won't raise taxes, cut spending on Medicare, or make people drive very far to go to the hospital. So his plan will have more generous insurance options and no way to pay for them. In other words, his plan will be like Obamacare, but even better! Call it Fauxbamacare.

Brown is picking up on a real opportunity here. The polls around Obamacare are frustrating both to the law's principled supporters and its principled opponents. There is, in theory at least, a huge opening for an unprincipled opponent — someone who opposes "Obamacare", but supports virtually all of the policies in Obamacare.

Someone who supports Fauxbamacare.

In September 2013, CNBC found that 46 percent of the public said they were opposed to "Obamacare," but only 36 percent of the public said they were opposed to "the Affordable Care Act." In other words, the name Obamacare boosted opposition by 10 percentage points.



The disconnect runs deeper. The Kaiser Family Foundation has found that the component parts of Obamacare poll highly even as the law itself remains unpopular. They also found that Obamacare's most popular provisions were its least well-known, and vice versa.

Meanwhile, repeal remains an unpopular position. A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released this morning found that though only 38 percent of Americans approve of Obamacare, 58 percent want to see their member of Congress work to improve Obamacare. Only 38 percent want their member of Congress to repeal the law.

That, if anything, understates the danger of promising repeal. Before Obamacare launched, repeal was a politically reasonable position. You can take away something people don't yet have. But now that well over 10 million people depend on Obamacare for their insurance repeal would be a disaster for the GOP. It would mean canceling more insurance policies than Obamacare ever dreamed of.

Of course, the GOP's position has never been repeal. It's always been repeal-and-replace. The problem is they've never quite come up with a replacement. There's a good reason for that. Obamacare borrows quite a bit from conservative health-care policy thinking. It's modeled off Mitt Romney's reforms in Massachusetts, which were in turn modeled off the reforms Senate Republicans put forward in 1993.

Republicans could have seen Obamacare as a victory. Instead, the party underwent a we-have-always-been-at-war-with-Eastasia process and turned against ideas they'd once seen as uncontroversial (Sen. Chuck Grassley, June 2009: "I believe that there is a bipartisan consensus to have individual mandates.").

The problem with turning against all those ideas is that it's actually really difficult to come up with workable health-reform plans that aren't also terrible politics. Obamacare is a good example of just how hard it is: it's a plan so politically appealing that both Republicans and Democrats have turned to it, and yet it's still terrible politics!

But the polls are clear. The American people don't want Obamacare. However, they like what's in Obamacare. And they don't like it when Republicans try to get rid of Obamacare. Brown's position shows Republicans a way out: a rebranding of Obamacare, accompanied, perhaps, by some vague tweaks and changes to be named later. Fauxbamacare, in other words.

Republicans Oppose.........

Republicans Oppose Training Libyan Pilots and Nuclear Scientists in US Because of Benghazi


"Using what happened in Benghazi to prevent an action that would increase our national security is short sighted and unfortunate."

The Obama administration is considering lifting the decades-old ban barring Libyans from coming to the United States to train as pilots and nuclear scientists. But House Republicans are voicing fierce opposition to the proposal, citing one particular reason: Benghazi.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began the process to rescind the ban last year, following requests from the Defense Department and the Department of State. Rebuilding Libya's military and police forces is critical to promoting democracy and combating extremism in the country, some security experts say, and the ban makes it harder for the US government to aid Libya's military.

But House Republicans don't see it that way. At a hearing earlier this month, they equated lifting the ban to aiding terrorists in the region, repeatedly citing the 2012 attack against the US consulate in Benghazi. "Given the desire of radical regimes and terrorists to obtain or build nuclear weapons or dirty bombs, do we want to possibly train Libyan terrorists in nuclear engineering?...It does not appear that national security has been adequately considered in the effort to end the prohibition," said Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.). Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) noted that "a teacher named Ronnie Smith was murdered in Benghazi. There've been no arrests. I've heard nothing about it." When Representative Steve King (R-Iowa) took the floor, he asked nine consecutive questions related to security in Benghazi.

The hearing came in the wake of a letter Goodlatte, Gowdy, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) sent to DHS on March 19, calling the proposal "dangerous and irresponsible." In that letter, House Republicans criticized DHS for continuing to move forward with the proposal without taking their concerns into account.

"The United States supports the aspirations of the Libyan people as they participate in their democratic transition after 42 years of dictatorship," a DHS official tells Mother Jones. "As part of this effort, we are reviewing US policies that have been in place since before the Libyan revolution to see how they might be updated to better align with US interests." The official noted that the review is not yet final.

The Reagan Administration implemented the ban in 1983 following a series of terrorist attacks involving Libyan nationals in the late 1970s. The ban, which applies to Libyans who wish to come to the United States for aviation and nuclear training, harkens back to a time when dictator Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s nuclear program was still active. In the years following, Libya dismantled its nuclear program, the US lifted its ban on Americans traveling to Libya, and in 2011, Qaddafi met a bloody end following political uprising. The US has now committed to training and equipping the new Libyan national army, with training taking place in Bulgaria, but proposals to train pilots in the US and update the country's fleet have been stalled by the visa restrictions.

Security experts say that updating Libya's military is critical to promoting stability in the country. (Earlier this month, the interim prime minister stepped down after there was an armed attack on him and his family.) Frederic Wehrey, a lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force Reserve who served as a military attache in Libya in 2009 and 2011, tells Mother Jones that while the US should proceed carefully in vetting and training Libyan forces, "the notion that they're going to come here surreptitiously and use the pilot program to wage attacks is vastly exaggerated." He adds, "It's quite surprising that the opposition [to lifting the ban] hinges on this notion that Libya is a country of all extremists, whereas the military that the US is engaging with is one of the more pro-US, pro-Western elements in the country."

Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for International Affairs Alan Bersin emphasized at the hearing that there are "extra layers of security and vetting" for people who come to the US to work in flight maintenance and nuclear-related fields. He also noted that helping Libyan nuclear scientists get employment that is not hostile to the United States is "in our interest."

Lawmakers who support lifting the ban say that House Republicans are fixating on Benghazi, without taking into account the complex security concerns in the rest of the country. "When my colleagues on the other side of the aisle nevertheless raise the Benghazi attack as well as other terrorist incidents within Libya as grounds for keeping the visa restriction in place, we must keep in mind that there is a difference between the extremist forces behind these incidents and the pro-Western Libyan military that's trying to defeat them, and that's the point of lifting the visa restriction," Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said at the hearing.

"The potential lifting of this Qaddafi-era ban would increase our ability to provide security support to the Libyan government and support its border control and counterterrorism efforts—exactly the work we need to do more of post-Benghazi," an Obama administration official says. "Using what happened in Benghazi to prevent an action that would increase our national security is short sighted and unfortunate."

Bundy....

Sheriff urged to clamp down on armed militiamen around Bundy ranch


A growing number of Bunkerville residents want to see the armed militiamen guarding rancher Cliven Bundy leave Nevada, according to a letter from Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., to Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie.

Horsford, whose congressional district includes Bunkerville, wrote that his constituents are concerned about Bundy supporters carrying weapons near local churches, schools and elsewhere.

Militia members flocked to Nevada to support Bundy in his fight with the government over his refusal to pay fees for his cattle to graze on federal land.

“I urge you to investigate these reports and to work with local leaders to ensure that their concerns are addressed in a manner that allows the community to move forward without incident,” Horsford wrote to Gillespie.

The letter also says militiamen have a presence on state and local roads as well as federal highways. In some areas, according to the letter, militiamen have set up checkpoints where drivers are stopped and asked to provide a proof of residency.

They’ve been seen carrying high-caliber weapons and keep a round-the-clock security detail on Bundy.

Many of the militiamen, attracted by Bundy’s views on state’s rights and public lands, traveled from across the country to support him in his stand against the Bureau of Land Management.

Bundy owes the BLM $1 million in grazing fees. Earlier this month, the agency called off a roundup of Bundy’s cattle after escalating tensions between federal agents and militia members.

Cringeworthy

Justice Scalia Makes Epic Blunder In Supreme Court Opinion


Legal experts say Justice Antonin Scalia erred in his dissent in the 6-2 decision Tuesday to uphold the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate coal pollution that moves across state lines. The Reagan-appointed jurist argued that the majority's decision was inconsistent with a unanimous 2001 ruling which he mistakenly said shot down EPA efforts to consider costs when setting regulations.

"This is not the first time EPA has sought to convert the Clean Air Act into a mandate for cost-effective regulation. Whitman v. American Trucking Assns., Inc., 531 U. S. 457 (2001), confronted EPA's contention that it could consider costs in setting [National Ambient Air Quality Standards]," Scalia wrote in his dissent, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.

The problem: the EPA's position in the 2001 case was exactly the opposite. The agency was defending its refusal to consider cost as a counter-weight to health benefits when setting certain air quality standards. It was the trucking industry that wanted the EPA to factor in cost. The 9-0 ruling sided with the EPA. The author of the ruling that Scalia mischaracterized? Scalia himself.

The conservative justice's error was noted by University of California-Berkeley law professor Dan Farber, who called it "embarrassing" and a "cringeworthy blunder."

"Scalia’s dissent also contains a hugely embarrassing mistake. He refers to the Court’s earlier decision in American Trucking as involving an effort by EPA to smuggle cost considerations into the statute. But that’s exactly backwards: it was industry that argued for cost considerations and EPA that resisted," Farber wrote on the environmental law and policy blog Legal Planet. "This gaffe is doubly embarrassing because Scalia wrote the opinion in the case, so he should surely remember which side won! Either some law clerk made the mistake and Scalia failed to read his own dissent carefully enough, or he simply forgot the basics of the earlier case and his clerks failed to correct him. Either way, it's a cringeworthy blunder."

Doug Kendall, the president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, a liberal legal advocacy group, said the error was mystifying and very unusual for a Supreme Court justice.

"It is a mind-blowing misstatement of a basic fact of the American Trucking Association ruling which Justice Scalia himself wrote. And it's not just a stray passage -- it's the basis for an entire section of the dissent," Kendall said. "It is very unusual to see a passage that so clearly misstates the fundamental facts of a prior ruling, especially one written by the justice himself."

Court Strikes Wisconsin

Federal District Court Strikes Wisconsin Voter ID in ACLU Case


Here are my initial thoughts on Frank v. Walker, in which a federal district court held that Wisconsin’s voter id law both violates the Constitution and Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act:

1. This is about the best possible opinion that opponents of voter identification laws could have hoped for. It is heavy on both facts and on law. It is thoughtful and well written. It finds that a voter id law serves neither an anti-fraud purposes (because “virtually no voter impersonation occurs in Wisconsin and it is exceedingly unlikely that voter impersonation will become a problem in Wisconsin in the foreseeable future”) nor voter confidence purposes.

It finds that it burdens lots of voters (up to 300,000) voters. It finds these burdens fall especially on Black and Latino voters and that the reason is does is poverty, which is itself the result of prior legal discrimination.It enjoins enforcement of the law for everyone, and expresses considerable doubt that the Wisconsin legislature could amend the law to make it constitutional. It is about as strong a statement as one might imagine as to the problems the voter id law.

2. Wisconsin is likely to appeal, and it is unclear how the case will fare in the 7th Circuit and possibly the Supreme Court. (Further making this complicated is that there are state case putting voter id on hold and now pending before the State Supreme Court.) A special twist is that Judge Posner of the Seventh Circuit made controversial remarks about voter id laws being a means of voter suppression, and expressing regret about his earlier decision in the Indiana voter id case. It is not clear what role, if any, he will play in any appeal.

3. Both the constitutional law and VRA section 2 claims are controversial. On the con law point, the judge purports to apply the “Anderson-Burdick” balancing test that the Supreme Court applied in upholding Indiana’s voter id law in the Crawford case. The judge purports to apply Crawford, but reaches a different result. It is not clear that this is a fair application of that test–which seems to suggest at most that the law be upheld as to most voters but create an “as applied” exemption for a specific class of voters. The judge said that this was not practical in this case given the large number of Wisconsin voters who lack id. It is not clear that the appellate courts will agree.

4. On the VRA issue, this is the first full ruling on how to adjudicate voter id vote denial cases under section 2. The key test appears on page 52 of the pdf: “Based on the text, then, I conclude that Section 2 protects against a voting practice that creates a barrier to voting that is more likely to appear in the path of a voter if that voter is a member of a minority group than if he or she is not.

The presence of a barrier that has this kind of disproportionate impact prevents the political process from being ‘equally open’ to all and results in members of the minority group having ‘less opportunity’ to participate in the political process and to elect representatives of their choice.” The judge also approaches the causation/results question in a straightforward way. It is not clear whether the appellate courts will agree or not agree with this approach, which would seem to put a number of electoral processes which burden poor and minority voters up for possible VRA liability.

In sum, this is a huge victory for voter id opponents. But time will tell if this ruling survives.

We will kill them better next time...

Oklahoma botches execution, raising questions on death penalty in U.S.

Oklahoma inmate Clayton Lockett died during a botched execution on Tuesday, minutes after a doctor had called a halt to the procedure, raising more questions about new death penalty cocktails used by the state and others.

Thirteen minutes after a doctor administered a lethal injection at the state's death chamber in McAlester, Lockett lifted his head and started mumbling. The doctor halted the execution, said state corrections department spokesman Jerry Massie.

Lockett died of an apparent massive heart attack about 40 minutes after the procedure started, he said. "We believe that a vein was blown and the drugs weren't working as they were designed to. The director ordered a halt to the execution," Massie said.

The troubled execution was expected to have national implications, with lawyers for death row inmates having argued that new lethal injection cocktails used in Oklahoma and other states could cause undue suffering and violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment.

"This could be a real turning point in the whole debate as people get disgusted by this sort of thing," said Richard Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, which monitors capital punishment.

"This might lead to a halt in executions until states can prove they can do it without problems. Someone was killed tonight by incompetence," Dieter said.

Witness Ziva Branstetter told broadcaster MSNBC Lockett was thrashing about and appeared to be in pain. The state blocked off the scene from witnesses a few minutes after the troubles started by drawing a curtain on the execution chamber.

"His body was sort of bucking. He was clenching his jaw. Several times he mumbled phrases that were largely unintelligible," she said.

The execution had been put on hold for several weeks due to a legal fight over a new cocktail of chemicals for the lethal injection, with lawyers arguing the state was withholding crucial information about the drugs to be used.

Last week, the state Oklahoma Supreme Court lifted stays of execution for Lockett and another inmate who was also scheduled to be executed on Tuesday, saying the state had provided them with enough information about the lethal injection cocktail to meet constitutional requirements.

The other inmate, Charles Warner, who was scheduled to be put to death two hours after Lockett on Tuesday, has been granted a 14-day stay of execution after the problems.

"I have asked the Department of Corrections to conduct a full review of Oklahoma's execution procedures to determine what happened and why during this evening's execution of Clayton Derrell Lockett," Governor Mary Fallin said.

Oklahoma had set up a new lethal injection procedure and cocktail of chemicals earlier this year after it was no longer able to obtain the drugs it had once used for executions.

"After weeks of Oklahoma refusing to disclose basic information about the drugs for tonight's lethal injection procedures, tonight Clayton Lockett was tortured to death," said Madeline Cohen, an attorney for Warner.

Oklahoma and other states have been scrambling to find new suppliers and chemical combinations after drug makers, mostly in Europe, imposed sales bans because they objected to having medications made for other purposes being used in lethal injections.

Attorneys for death row inmates have argued that the drugs used in Oklahoma and other states could cause unnecessarily painful deaths, which would amount to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Oklahoma uses three drugs in its new lethal injection mixture, which consists of midazolam to cause unconsciousness, vecuronium bromide to stop respiration and potassium chloride to stop the heart, the Department of Corrections said.

In order to obtain drugs used for execution, Oklahoma and other states have turned to compounding pharmacies, which are lightly regulated agencies that combine chemicals for medical purposes.

Lawyers for death row inmates have argued there may be problems with purity and potency of the chemicals that come from these compounding pharmacies, raising questions about whether they should be used to prepare lethal injection drugs.

Lockett, 38, was convicted of first-degree murder, rape, kidnapping and robbery for a 1999 crime spree with two co-defendants. He was found to have shot teen-ager Stephanie Nieman and buried her alive in a shallow grave where she eventually died.

Warner, 46, was convicted for the 1997 first-degree rape and murder of 11-month-old Adrianna Waller, who was the daughter of his then-girlfriend, Shonda Waller.

Lockett and Warner had been scheduled to be executed in March but had their death sentences put on hold after lower courts ruled that the state needed to provide more information about the drugs that would be used to execute them and the supplier of the pharmaceuticals.

He is what's called a putz....

Darrell Issa’s Wall Street Hypocrisy Exposed


Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is outraged that the IRS reportedly paid out $2.8 million in bonuses over a two-year period to employees who had been disciplined by the agency.

That’s perfectly understandable, but Issa opened up a can of worms when he told CBS News, “In the private sector, you don’t get bonuses, pay increases and promotions right after you’ve done something wrong, and that’s what’s really wrong with the culture there… At a minimum, people should have a time-out from bonuses and promotions after being found doing something wrong. That should be inherently part of the punishment.”
As The Huffington Post’s Adriana Usero pointed out, that actually happens in the private sector all the time. And in the past, when Wall Street’s wrongdoings plunged the global economy into the worst downturn in 80 years, Darrell Issa didn’t muster the same sense of indignation.

Left unmentioned is the $10.5 million bonus JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon pocketed in 2012, the year that his bank lost at least $2 billion — and as much as $9 billion – in the “London Whale” trades, which Dimon himself described as an “egregious and self-inflicted” error resulting from “poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored” strategies.

This isn’t the first time that Issa has been… less than consistent when it comes to bonuses. In 2011, Politico reported that Issa viewed it as “a contradiction for Obama to have chastised Wall Street bankers for bonuses while not seeking to curb compensation at Fannie and Freddie.” But two years earlier, Issa voted against an amendment to the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, better known as TARP, that would have limited bonuses for bailed-out institutions, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Rich, white and still has troubles...

Rich white thugs, begone


Let’s not get crazy. Let’s not take the NBA’s rather surprising and (cautiously) encouraging smackdown of racist billionaire team owner Donald Sterling – a member, mind you, of the most inbred, powerfully entrenched clubs in history, humans who’ve quite literally gotten away with murder since the dawn of American capitalism (hi, Koch Brothers) as anything other than what it likely is – as rare as an abortion clinic in Texas, as precious as a good book in Idaho.

Depending on your personal cynicism quotient, you can also see the NBA’s double-barreled rejection of Sterling merely as the brand protecting itself; commissioner Adam Silver surely weighed the costs/benefits of various punishments and realized the cultural damage from a wimpy wrist-slap would’ve been far worse than dealing with Sterling’s imminent lawsuits and scowling outcries, et al.

Whatever. From all indications, it’s been obvious for years that Sterling is a long-established racist, a creep and a bit of a monster. Even the NBA knows it. The only real scandal is that it took the league so long to do anything about it.

And let’s skip right by other controversial team owners and murky league histories – that’s never been the purview of this column, and besides, professional sports is so rife with hypocrisy, egomania, celebrity and capitalist doublespeak that to hold the Sterling decision up as some sort of sparkling moral standard would be short lived, and just a little bit gross. Right, Redskins?

Despite all that, there is something very worthy of note in the Sterling story, a potent reminder of the historic tonal shift that’s been underway in American life for nearly two decades now, and which was hammered home most persuasively in the 2012 election.

It’s simply this: old, wealthy white males no longer rule the universe like they used to. They are no longer free to roam like unchecked king of the beasts, safe in the knowledge that the social architecture supports and encourages their every bigoted whim and egomaniacal burp. Obviously? Not even close.

Old, rich white males, once the primary organizing principle of American politics and religion, and therefore the perfect, go-to demon of every female activist and women’s studies program in the land, are literally dying off in power and significance.

To be replaced with – well, who knows what? Some new, mutant form of power and money, to be sure (capitalism never dies – it merely adapts). But at least it ain’t the same old patriarchy anymore, the one that’s ruled since the Romans joined with the church to entrench the male paradigm, demean the Other and make all women whores. Isn’t that amazing? Sort of?

(If you haven't heard this story I will fill you in. The major owner of the Clippers Basketball Team was recorded some how making racially charged comments to his 'girlfriend'. Now to say 'girlfriend' I think is a stretch, the woman, who is mixed race Asian/Caucasian, is what is know as a "Gold Digger". She is basically a prostitute, she lives off the guy, takes his money and he gets something in return. She is given free rain to screw anyone she wants. He just doesn't want her to bring the guys to a game and have to sit with them. He used racially derogatory language to make his point. But she is a whore, they just don't say it in this article.)

Don’t just take my word for it. Surely you’ve witnessed the birth (and subsequent, ongoing, sputtering death) of the Tea Party – essentially a cult of panicked white Southern males terrified of losing their grip on… well, just about everything?

The Tea Party was born of this exact shift. Theirs is a relatively small, but very vocal gaggle of aging white Southerners clinging desperately to the last vestiges of what made their America “great” – sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, repression, isolationism, guns, sexual dread, anti-science lug-headedness, mal-education and a total lack of fresh salads.

Can we slot the Sterling slapback into this same category? I think we can. After all, the NBA is just like any other major American corporation – hell-bent on protecting and maximizing profits. But until recently, that protection has been afforded by the wealthy elite, the true demon-lords of capitalism. And now they just ate one of their own. And the rest of the country cheered wildly. Well, most of them, anyway.

Which goes to show you – what, exactly? The power of the new, mixed-ethnicity cultural norm? That being a nasty white guy with lots of money and power isn’t enough to do whatever the hell you want anymore? I’m not exactly sure. After all, Sterling got away with it for years. Many others still do. But the culture – with the help of social media – finally caught up.

Indeed, the shift wrought of the Obama Age is messy and imperfect as any upheaval of power in American history. But it’s palpable, and it keeps making itself known in laudable fits and starts. And the good news is, according to the increasingly mixed-race, female-driven demographics of the nation, it’s never shifting back. Sorry, Fox News. And your dad.

But let’s not get too excited. Despite these apparent “advances” in race discussions, despite even what’s happening with gay marriage as it enjoys victory after victory in courts across the land, you have but to look at what’s happening to, say, women’s rights to note that the entrenched male dogma won’t go quietly, and will likely never vanish completely.

Maybe you haven’t noticed? Abortion rights across huge swaths of the nation have been quietly hacked to bits, at the behest of the Republican party, which has employed some of the nastiest tactics and barefaced sexism in history to brutally restrict access to abortion clinics, thus forcing the closure of dozens of women’s health centers since 2011.

And let’s not forget the ever-popular one percent, still cruising along like false gods in the corridors of Wall Street power, fully ensconced in armor built over decades. As increasingly obscene executive salaries prove, the chasm between the working class and the wealthy elite is only getting wider.

And to top it off, it’s all happening with the full blessing of (a sad majority of) the Supreme Court, a gang of five who just can’t resist giving corporations and the wealthy even more power to buy elections and cram their agenda down the national gullet. Hey, it worked for Bush – twice! Right, Scalia?

So that leaves us, where, exactly? Right: messy. Messy and imperfect, but still banging at the armor. You think?

Look, it’s utterly naïve to suggest the race discussion is making massive strides, or that country is on a perfectly healthy course WRT women and minorities, or that power is shifting back to the people. But it also seems obvious that the hoary old hierarchies aren’t holding anymore, that the patriarchal armor is indeed cracking and light might, just might, be peeking through. Isn’t that worth applauding? Just a little?

April 29, 2014

Cross-State Pollution

EPA's Cross-State Pollution Rule Upheld By Supreme Court


Protester arrested as groups fight for a natural food system people can 'trust'

Food Defenders Protest Corporate Takeover of 'Organic' Standards


By Lauren McCauley

Champions of organic food brought the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) meeting to a halt on Tuesday as they raised their voices against what they see as the takeover of the organic standards by the corporate food industry.

The NOSB—an advisory board to the USDA and designed to represent farmers, consumers and other advocates of organic food—is charged with overseeing organic standards and presenting recommendations to the federal government. In recent years, however, critics charge the quality and intergrity of the national organic standards set by the NOSB have been eroded by the influence of a large agricultural interests and powerful corporations in the food industry.

In order to delay the opening of a four-day meeting in San Antonio, Texas, demonstrators stood at the front of the conference room displaying a banner which read: "Safeguard Organic Standards."

Tuesday's protest, organized by the Organic Consumers Association (OCA), was held to draw attention to what the group is calling the "last straw" in the corporate-backed erosion of organic standards: a recent change to what is known as the "sunset process," which determines the synthetic ingredients that are permitted in organic foods.

As explained by Mark A. Kastel, co-director of The Cornucopia Institute, "agribusiness" and corporate food companies "had their minions at the U.S. Department of Agriculture" change the rules in order to push "gimmicky synthetics and nutraceuticals in organic food."

“Don’t change sunset!" the group chanted until police arrived. One protester, Alexis Baden-Mayer, the political director for OCA, refused to disperse and was eventually placed under arrest and carried out.

Citing a recent Consumer Reports survey which found that 7 out of 10 Americans want as few non-organic ingredients approved for organic food as possible, Katherine Paul, OCA communications director, told Common Dreams that "people don't want this stuff in their food."

However, she added, "People don't have time to follow the wonky policy decisions, so it's easy for standards to be eroded without them knowing about it."

The so-called 'sunset process' required that non-organic food materials approved by the NOSB for use in organic foods—such as sausage casings from factory-farmed animals, synthetic vitamins, and the antibiotic streptomycin—must be reviewed every five years. Unless re-approved by a two-third majority vote, the items would be dropped from the list.

As Paul explains, the process was designed to ensure that these non-organic materials would only be temporarily allowed in organic foods until a better, organic option was found.

Under the new rules, non-organic ingredients are no longer dropped after five years and, instead, a majority vote is required to remove them from the list. The rule change "almost guarantees that the list of non-organic materials will just get longer and longer and it will be impossible to get them out," Paul said.

Organic industry watchdog groups—including The Cornucopoia Institute, The Center for Food Safety, The National Organic Coalition, the March Against Monsanto and OCA—are opposed to the change, which the USDA made in September 2013 without any input from the public..

The change to the sunset process, the groups say, is the "last straw" in the food industry's corruption of these safeguards.

"As consumer interest in organic grows, sales grow. These larger companies want a piece of that pie but dont want to play by the rules," Paul said, adding that food industry representatives "get themselves appointed to these boards and manage to, over time, corrupt these standards."

"Little by little these standards are being eroded, for the benefit for larger and larger organic and so-called 'natural' companies," Paul continued.

"Corporate interests, including the industry lobby group the Organic Trade Association, have been gaming the system for years with the help of the USDA,” said Cornucopia's Kastel. Later this week OCA is expected to announce the formation of a new trade association called the Organic and Natural Health Association.

"Our intent is to have a really legitimate trade association with very strict criteria so that companies that belong to this new association will be true organic companies that will be really committed to preserving these organic standards," OCA stated. "Organic has to be a system people trust," added Cynthia Kurkowski, an organizer representing March Against Monsanto-San Antonio.

Dirty

Dirty Money, Dirty Fuels: Why Money in Politics Matters to the Environment

Fast One

Fast Food Pulls a Fast One

2800

2,800 th post....

Here is another marker of my activities... It seems I just hit 1,000 not to long ago. Hope this is enjoyable, I will keep them coming.

Sailing

 One picture imaginary, the other real... The first is a great shot of some beach fun, drawing out some activities on the sand. The perspective is great and each element looks perfect. This was done in New Zealand the other day.
Now this is just a nice shot of a monster racer out doing what it does best. The new design of boat, with the flat wide hull and a swing keel makes racers now so fast yet they just don't seem right some how.....

Imagine that...

Obamacare Skeptic: ACA Misinformation Nearly Killed Me


BY BRIAN BEUTLER

Dean Angstadt hated the Affordable Care Act with intense partisan fervor until it saved his life.

"[T]his year … a faulty aortic valve almost felled Angstadt," writes Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Robert Calandra. "Suddenly, he was facing a choice: Buy a health plan, through a law he despised, that would pay the lion's share of the cost of the life-saving surgeryor die. He chose the former."
Now he's proselytizing for Obamacare.

"A lot of people I talk to are so misinformed about the ACA," the 57-year-old Angstadt said. "I was, before [my friend] Bob [Leinhauser] went through all this for me. I would recommend it to anybody and, in fact, have encouraged friends, including the one guy who hauls my logs."

When you read the article, as you should, keep in mind the following context.

After having spent months and months discouraging enrollmentoccasionally by peddling the outright lie that under Obamacare people can simply wait until they're sick to buy insuranceconservatives now want you to be outraged about the fact that the law sets open-enrollment periods outside of which people can't buy insurance. Even if, like Angstadt, you urgently need valve-replacement surgery.

As political strategies go, persuading people to skip something, then feigning anger on their behalf when they can't access it, is breathtaking in its cynicism. But this was worse than cynical politics. It was playing with people's lives in an insanely reckless way.

Once the alternative to enrolling became clear to Angstadt, his choice was obvious. And everything seems to have worked out alright. But that's only because he happened to get extremely sick during an open-enrollment period.

There's an alternate ending to this story, in which Angstadt doesn't get desperate for care until April or May andhaving acted upon the misinformation he's now combatingis uninsured, locked out, can't pay for his surgery, and dies. Or maybe he lucks out, goes bankrupt, and spends his golden years in poverty.

A fate like that awaits those less fortunate or more stubborn than Angstadt, if it hasn't befallen them already, and the conservatives who discouraged them from enrolling before March 31 are refusing to reckon with their culpability.

Richy Rich Elections...

Of Course The U.S. Is An ‘Oligarchy’ — We Keep Electing The Rich


Many people have pointed the finger at two culprits. They point at the political participation problem that poor and working-class people vote less than wealthier and white-collar Americans. And they point at money in politics, at the billions spent on lobbying and political campaigns.

Those are important problems, but we also have to remember another big reason why the wealthy have more influence in politics: Wealthy people are the ones in office themselves.

If millionaires in the United States formed their own political party, that party would make up just 3 percent of the country, but it would have a majority in the House of Representatives, a filibuster-proof super-majority in the Senate, a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court and a man in the White House. If working-class Americans — people with manual-labor and service-industry jobs — were a political party, that party would have made up more than half of the country since the start of the 20th century, but its legislators (those who last worked in blue-collar jobs before getting into politics) would never have held more than 2 percent of the seats in Congress.

For the last seven years, I’ve been studying the startling economic gulf between ordinary Americans and the people who represent them in the halls of power. My research suggests that we have government for the privileged in the United States in part because we have government by the privileged.

Alexander Hamilton once argued that working-class Americans see wealthier people as “their natural patron[s] and friend[s]” and that workers know “that however great the confidence they may justly feel in their own good sense, their interests can be more effectually promoted by the merchant than by themselves.” The idea has been with us ever since.

Unfortunately, economic policy just isn’t that simple. Americans from different classes don’t always have the same interests or want the same policies. As pollsters have known for decades – and as Gilens, Page, and others have shown – working-class Americans are more likely to support higher minimum wages, more progressive taxes, and a stronger social safety net. Affluent Americans, on the other hand, are more likely to support hobbling labor unions and giving tax breaks to the wealthy.

Politicians are no exception. In my research, I’ve found that legislators who spent more time doing working-class jobs are more likely to support progressive economic policies – whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, experienced lawmakers or first-term members, members of Congress or members of a city council. Likewise, lawmakers from high-paying jobs in the private sector are more likely to support the more conservative economic policies typically favored by the wealthy.

The bottom line: government by the rich often promotes government for the rich.

But isn’t the abundance of rich politicians evidence that voters prefer leaders from affluent backgrounds? The truth is, voters almost never have any say in the matter. By the time most Americans get to the polls, the only options on their ballots are wealthy, white-collar professionals. Do you want to vote for a millionaire lawyer or a millionaire business owner?

In the rare elections that pit rich candidates against middle- or working-class opponents, rich politicians don’t tend to have any noticeable edge. Americans seem to like candidates from the middle and working class just fine.

But a strikingly small percentage of candidates come from middle- and working-class backgrounds. In a survey of the roughly 10,000 people running for state legislature nationwide in 2012, I found that just 3 percent came from the kinds of working-class jobs that the majority of Americans hold. When Election Day rolls around, most of us usually have no choice but to vote for a white-collar government.

People who care about political inequality often rail against the explosion of organized money in politics and at inequalities in routine forms of political participation. And they’re right to be concerned — lobbying and campaign donations are at all-time highs, and wealthier Americans are more likely to vote, volunteer for campaigns, and write letters to Congress. But reforming lobbying and campaign finance and increasing routine political participation won’t be enough.

Even if we somehow got a handle on the flow of money in politics, and even if we somehow equalized routine forms of political participation, our political process would still be biased towards what wealthy Americans want. Millionaires would still be the ones setting the tax rates on millionaires. People who have always had health insurance, who have no worries about funding their retirements, and who can afford private schools and expensive colleges for their children would still be deciding policies for the vast majority of Americans who live on shakier economic ground.

Those of us who care about making our government more responsive to middle- and working-class Americans need to keep working to get the money out of our political institutions. But they also need to start asking what we can do to get more working-class people into them.

April 28, 2014

Democrats This November

How the Democrats Can Avoid Going Down This November