Sad day for boaters and others...

We have learned that surfing and sailing Legend Hobie Alter has passed away in his home yesterday. A sad day for all of of who have indeed surfed or sailed on something with a Hobie Logo on it. And really, who hasn’t?

Hobie was an innovative and dedicated pioneer in surfing, and he did much the same in sailing, in both cats (Hobie 14,16) and monos (Hobie 33). He’ll be missed by many, but the legend lives on every day at a beach, wave or marina near you.

Myths

10 Poverty Myths, Busted

by Erika Eichelberger

1. Single moms are the problem. Only 9 percent of low-income, urban moms have been single throughout their child’s first five years. Thirty-five percent were married to, or in a relationship with, the child’s father for that entire time.

2. Absent dads are the problem. Sixty percent of low-income dads see at least one of their children daily. Another 16 percent see their children weekly.

3. Black dads are the problem. Among men who don’t live with their children, black fathers are more likely than white or Hispanic dads to have a daily presence in their kids’ lives.

4. Poor people are lazy. In 2004, there was at least one adult with a job in 60 percent of families on food stamps that had both kids and a nondisabled, working-age adult.

5. If you’re not officially poor, you’re doing okay. The federal poverty line for a family of two parents and two children in 2012 was $23,283. Basic needs cost at least twice that in 615 of America’s cities and regions.

6. Go to college, get out of poverty. In 2012, about 1.1 million people who made less than $25,000 a year, worked full time and were heads of household had a bachelor’s degree.

7. We’re winning the war on poverty. The number of households with children living on less than $2 a day per person has grown 160 percent since 1996, to 1.65 million families in 2011.

8. The days of old ladies eating cat food are over. The share of elderly single women living in extreme poverty jumped 31 percent from 2011 to 2012.

9. The homeless are drunk street people. One in 45 kids in the United States experiences homelessness each year. In New York City alone, 22,000 children are homeless.

10. Handouts are bankrupting us. In 2012, total welfare funding was 0.47 percent of the federal budget.

Adult Conversation

Ryan Unsuited to Lead ‘Adult Conversation’ About Poverty

by Greg Kaufmann

These days, a favorite talking point of Republican Congressman Paul Ryan’s is calling for an “adult conversation” about poverty.

“It’s time for an adult conversation,” he told The Washington Post.

“If we actually have an adult conversation,” he said in remarks at the Brookings Institution, “I think we can make a difference.”

The problem is that a prerequisite for any adult conversation is telling the truth and it is there the congressman falls monumentally short.

In addition to Rep. Ryan’s recent, racially-coded comments about “our inner cities” where “generations of men [are] not even thinking about working,” his rhetoric around policy should raise red flags for anyone — including the media — assessing his credibility.

A report from Emily Oshima Lee, policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, examines the hatchet job Rep. Ryan did on Medicaid in his 204-page account of antipoverty programs that The Washington Post generously described as a “critique.” Indeed, Ryan’s report — which would have been flagged by my excellent 10th grade English teacher for misrepresenting and cherry-picking data — is a dangerous disservice to a public which has neither the time nor the staff that Ryan has at his disposal to delve into literature assessing antipoverty programs.

Lee notes that Ryan misuses research to imply that Medicaid coverage leads to poorer health — that people enrolled in Medicaid will have worse health than those with private insurance and the uninsured.

“The privately insured comparison is patently unfair because these people tend to be higher income and that comes with a whole host of health privileges,” said Lee.

She notes that Medicaid enrollees tend to struggle a lot more with chronic conditions and illnesses than other populations.

“A large body of literature identifies various social determinants of health, including socioeconomic status and living and work environments, as risk factors for poor health outcomes,” writes Lee, in my opinion admirably resisting the temptation to add, “duh.”

As for the uninsured being healthier — it would be one thing if Ryan were making an “apples to apples” comparison, but he’s not.

“The uninsured is a diverse group and doesn’t only include low-income individuals. It may include people who are high-income and don’t really want insurance but can afford health services, and lower-income people who may not have previously enrolled in insurance for a number of reasons — including cost and not having any real health issues,” Lee says. “But again, to imply that Medicaid is somehow making people worse off is absurd.”

Ryan also argues that Medicaid coverage has little positive effect on enrollees’ health. But as Lee points out, Ryan conveniently overlooks studies showing an association between Medicaid and lower mortality rates; reduced low-weight births and infant and child mortality; and lower mortality for HIV-positive patients, among other heath benefits.

“In general, we need more data to accurately assess the effect of Medicaid coverage on people’s health,” Lee continues. “But several studies do indicate positive health and non-health effects of coverage — such as increased use of preventive care and greater financial security.”

Rep. Ryan also plays on fears of low-income people abusing the welfare system when he asserts that Medicaid coverage improperly increases enrollees’ use of health care services, including preventive care and emergency department services. Ryan makes this case too by comparing Medicaid enrollees to uninsured people, who, as Lee writes, “are less likely to use health care services due to significant financial barriers.”

“Presenting data that Medicaid enrollees use more health services than the uninsured affirms that insurance coverage allows people who need care to seek it out,” writes Lee, “and that being uninsured is a major barrier to receiving important medical care.”

Further, one of the two studies Ryan references explicitly states that “neither theory nor existing evidence provides a definitive answer to… whether we should expect increases or decreases in emergency-department use when Medicaid expands.”

Despite Ryan’s shabby work when it comes to antipoverty policy, the media repeatedly seems willing to overlook it. That’s another strike against the prospects of a truly adult conversation about poverty — in addition to honesty, it requires accountability.

Clone dinosaur

'Scientists clone dinosaur': They haven't, they won't and they never will - here's why

By James Vincent

An extraordinary story of the world’s first cloned dinosaur has got a lot of traction on Twitter and inspired alarmist comparisons to Jurassic Park. It is also, not unexpectedly, a complete fake.

The article claims that scientists at Liverpool’s John Moores University are currently incubating a baby Apotosaurus nicknamed "Spot", after retrieving the creature’s DNA from a fossil and injecting it into the womb of an ostrich.

"Those in the scientific community say the dinosaur cloning – the first ever of its kind – is a milestone for genetic engineering," reads the article posted on news-hound.org, a site that has previously fooled the internet with its story about a "Shipwrecked British woman saved by Google Earth".

The hoax even includes a picture of the supposed baby dinosaur (it’s actually a very young baby kangaroo) as well as fabricated quotations from scientists at the University, one of which just happens to share the same name as the survivor in the fake shipwreck story. From the article:

"I used to think this kind of thing could only happen in the movies," said Dr. Gemma Sheridan, a LJMU chemistry professor. "But we’re making it happen right here in our lab. It’s astounding."

Interestingly, there is actually a real Gemma Sheridan, but she is neither a shipwreck survivor nor a chemistry professor. Instead, she happens to just be a friend of the owners of the site, who apparently keep on using her name as a joke (for which she attracts a fair bit of attention on Twitter).

The story has certainly caused a stir on social media sites, with users sharing the story and commenting that "this is not going to end well". There are also the expected comparisons to Jurassic Park – best seen as a testament to the just-plausible-enough-sounding science at the heart of the story.

In the film, scientists clone dinosaurs by extracting dinosaur blood (and DNA) from mosquitoes fossilised in amber. Unfortunately, this method of bringing back to life ancient ‘ thunder lizards’ was thoroughly debunked in September last year, when a group of scientist declared that they had put "the final nail in the Jurassic Park coffin".

The researchers from Manchester University attempted to extract DNA from insects preserved in copal (an intermediate stage between tree resin and amber) that ranged in age from 60 to 10,600 years old. Using the most advanced extraction methods available (which have previously been successful in retrieving DNA from other types of preserved life forms) they were completely unable to reclaim any DNA – ancient or otherwise.

This is simply because DNA molecules just aren’t that tough. They have a half-life of only about 521 years and various environmental conditions – including temperature, microbes, and oxygenation – will only speed up the process of degradation. And although the oldest authentic DNA sequence is thought to be about half a million years old, this is still 65 million years too young to have anything to do with dinosaurs.

For fans of Jurassic Park, this is probably mixed news - dinosaurs going on a rampage on a remote island certainly sounds pretty terrifying but it would also be a sci-fi dream come true. If you're still determined to get some face time with a Velociraptor then forget about the DNA and try building a time machine instead.

Two justice systems

Judge: Probation for du Pont heir in daughter rape because ‘he would not fare well’ in prison

By Tom Boggioni

A Superior Court judge who sentenced an heir to the du Pont fortune to probation for raping his 3-year-old daughter wrote in her order that he “will not fare well” in prison and suggested that he needed treatment instead of time behind bars, according to Delaware Online.

Court records show that in Judge Jan Jurden’s sentencing order for Robert H. Richards IV she considered unique circumstances when deciding his punishment for fourth-degree rape. Her observation that prison life would adversely affect Richards confused several criminal justice authorities in Delaware, who said that her view that treatment was a better idea than prison is typically used when sentencing drug addicts, not child rapists.

Jurden gave Richards, who had no previous criminal record, an eight-year prison term, but suspended all the prison time for probation.

“Defendant will not fare well in Level 5 [prison] setting,” she wrote in her order.

“It’s an extremely rare circumstance that prison serves the inmate well,” said Delaware Public Defender Brendan J. O’Neill, whose office represents defendants who normally cannot afford a lawyer. “Prison is to punish, to segregate the offender from society, and the notion that prison serves people well hasn’t proven to be true in most circumstances.”

O’Neill explained that he has previously argued that case if a defendant was too ill or frail for prison, but he had never seen a judge cite it as a “reason not to send someone to jail.”

He added that the public might come to see Richards sentence as the result of “how a person with great wealth may be treated by the system.”

According to court records Richards is listed at 6 feet, 4 inches tall and weighing between 250 and 276 pounds.

Court records do not cite any physical illnesses or disabilities.

Richards, who is unemployed and supported by a trust fund, owns a 5,800-square-foot mansion in Greenville , Delaware, and also owns a home in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach.

His great-grandfather is du Pont family patriarch Irenee du Pont, and his father is Robert H. Richards III, a retired partner in the Richards Layton & Finger law firm.

The rape of his daughter came to light in December of 2007, when the girl, then 5, told her grandmother that Richards sexually abused her.

The grandmother, Donna Burg, said that the girl reported that her father told her it was “our little secret” but said she didn’t want “my daddy touching me anymore.”

The girl said her father molested her in the bedrooms of both her mother and brother in their home, according to the arrest warrant.

His wife, Tracy Richards told police he admitted abusing his daughter, when she confronted her then-husband, and that he explained , “it was an accident and he would never do it again.”

A lawsuit filed by his then-wife also accused him of molesting their 18-month-old son.

Richards was arrested and then freed on $60,000 secured bail while awaiting trial on the charges that could have put put him behind bars for years.

While defense attorney Joseph A. Hurley said that it makes sense to him that the judge would be concerned about Richards’ time in prison, stating, “Sure, they have protective custody, but that is solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. We’re not a third-world society,” Kendall Marlowe, executive director of National Association for Counsel for Children, said that individuals who abuse youngsters deserve to be punished.

“Child protection laws are there to safeguard children, and adults who knowingly harm children should be punished,” said Marlow.

“Our prisons should be more rehabilitative environments, but the prison system’s inadequacies are not a justification for letting a child molester off the hook.”

The sad tale of how the Supreme Court’s approach to money in politics helped create the Inequality Era.

More Than Corruption Threatens the Integrity of Our Democracy

By Adam Lioz

What does it mean to corrupt an elected official?

A coal executive walks into a member of Congress’s office with a $100,000 check in hand and says, “I will hand you this check if, and only if, you vote against any fracking permits on federal land—it’s bad for the local water supply, and besides I don’t need the competition.” The Representative accepts the check and then votes “nay” when the time comes. Is that corrupt? Most people would say yes—it’s a paradigm case. After all, there is a quid pro quo exchange—you do this, I give you that.

Does it make a difference if that check goes into the Congressman’s personal pocket, his campaign account, or to an allied Super PAC? Probably not to most people. The Congressman wants to be re-elected, probably more than he wants a Porsche, so either of the latter scenarios certainly provides a thing of value.

Now what if an environmental group walks into the same Congressman’s office and says “We’re here to talk to you about the upcoming vote on fracking permits on federal land. Fracking is bad for the environment. As you know we release an environmental scorecard each election year and we’ll be scoring this particular vote.  We also endorse candidates and we make those decisions in part based upon a representative’s score. So, we hope you’ll be with us on this vote, Congressman. Oh, and here’s a list of the other issues we plan to score this year. It would be great if you’re in the right place and we can advise our members in your district that you deserve to be re-elected.”

Corruption? The quid pro quo is just as explicit—you vote this way, I give you a thing of value (i.e. our endorsement).

Some might say so, but most of us would probably say, “no—that’s democracy.” The environmental organization isn’t buying a vote with money, rather it’s organizing people and translating the power of an organized citizenry. In a nutshell, it’s bargaining with votes.

So, what’s the difference, in a democracy, between bargaining with money and bargaining with votes? Here’s one thought: the difference is that—at least in theory—everyone has an equal vote to bargain with. Not so financial bargaining power.

What offends us about money-for-vote exchanges isn’t the quid pro quo nature of it so much as that this type of bargaining doesn’t take place on a level playing field. After all, it’s only the prospect of contributing substantially more than fellow citizens that raises the prospect of undue influence. If we could all afford to give a Member of Congress a $100,000 bribe or campaign contribution, that check probably wouldn’t buy much.

We have a gut-level sense that we should come to the political table as equals in America, and in a very real way our outrage over corruption can be traced to the ways in which bargaining for legislative success with money leaves us far short of this ideal. It violates our basic sense of political equality—birthed in the Declaration of Independence, baptized through a Civil War, nurtured through the Progressive Era, tested and matured through the Civil Rights battles of a prior generation.

The U.S. Supreme Court doesn’t get this. For forty years, multiple generations of justices have shaped and mis-shaped constitutional law, and especially First Amendment doctrine, by (at times willfully) ignoring this basic insight. And, the consequences for our nation have been dire.

This is the story of how the Court’s fundamentally misguided approach to money in politics has helped create a vicious cycle, ultimately leading us into a new Inequality Era in which the income gap expands endlessly and the size of a citizen’s wallet determines the strength of her voice—reinforcing trends that if left unchecked will spin us towards plutocracy. And, it’s the story of how—while at first glance tangential—a new money in politics jurisprudence is perhaps our best hope for working families to get a fair shot at economic security.

The striking increase in economic inequality and accompanying decline in class mobility in the United States since the 1970s has been well-documented. The U.S. is now the single most unequal nation in the “developed world” with respect to income, and has fallen behind France and Pakistan, among others, when it comes to economic mobility. Economist Emmanuel Saez reports that between 2009 and 2011 the real income of 99 percent of Americans shrank by 0.4 percent, but the top one percent saw gains of 11.2 percent—in other words the top 1 percent experienced 121 percent of the income gains in the first two years of recovery from the Great Recession. The bottom line is that the poor in the U.S. gaze at their wealthier compatriots across a huge and widening chasm, with scant chance of ever crossing it themselves.

The political class is starting to notice, which is heartening even if long overdue. President Obama made a much-publicized speech on economic inequality in December and has signaled his intention to focus much of the remainder of his administration grappling with it. Bill DeBlasio swept to a landslide victory in New York’s mayor’s race on a message about “two New Yorks”. And, Elizabeth Warren has, of course, become a hero to the progressive left by focusing on kitchen table economic issues.

This is important because staggering inequality is no accident of history or inevitable result of global economic forces. Rather, as Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson documented extensively in their 2010 book Winner Take All Politics, a string of government policies enacted (or avoided) over the past few decades have brought us to where we are today: lower marginal tax rates, weak rules governing the right to form a union, repeal of basic regulations on capital markets, lack of rules governing executive pay. To this list, one might add the declining real value of the minimum wage, receding per-pupil investment in higher education, tax loopholes, and direct subsidies benefitting large corporations at the expense of small businesses.

This reality raises a profound question. Why, in a democracy—where each citizen in theory has equal voting power, and where votes are the ultimate arbiter of who ascends to political power—would a government comprised of elected officials craft economic policies that cater to the interests of a small minority and foster rather than combat economic inequality?

The answer is simple and intuitive, but some pioneering recent political science research has put the details in starker relief than ever before. The bottom line: the wealthy prefer policies that make them even richer (often by stifling mobility and security for those lower down the ladder), and government responds almost exclusively to their preferences. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Differing preferences are hardly surprising. The wealthy, after all, do not live or work like typical members of the general public, so why should they think like the rest of us? And, in a 2013 study called Democracy and the Policy Preferences of Wealthy Americans, political scientists confirmed that the policy preferences of the very rich differ substantially from those of the general public—especially on key questions about how to structure the economy. The wealthy prefer deficit reduction to job creation, and are more adverse to taxes and regulations. Nearly twice the percentage of the public (78 percent) than the wealthy (40 percent) support a minimum wage “high enough so that no family with a full time worker falls below the official poverty line.” Other studies of the merely affluent confirm that the divergence in preferences over the economy does not apply only to the very rich.

This would not be cause for concern if the economic elite’s influence on public policy accorded with their numbers. The top one percent—or one tenth of one percent—may desire different outcomes than the broad public; but by definition there are not very many people in this cadre, and so they would not be able to achieve their desired ends without convincing a large number of their fellow citizens of the wisdom of their preferences. This is how we would hope a democracy—characterized by a rough form of political equality consistent with the principle of one person, one vote—would operate.

Of course, it will shock no one that in fact the wealthy are able to exert disproportionate influence on the political process in the U.S. But the degree of disparity of influence that can be documented in black and white may surprise even some of the most seasoned political observers.

In a landmark 2012 study called Affluence and Influence, Princeton political scientist Martin Gilens set out to measure the relationship between Americans’ preferences and actual policy outcomes across the income spectrum. What he found is deeply troubling.

Government responsiveness is strongly tilted towards the most affluent among us, and average Americans have staggeringly little impact on policy. Tellingly, when the preferences of the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans conflict with those of the rest of the population, the 10 percent trumps the 90 percent.

And, just as the sharpest break in preferences occurs on economic policy, the same goes for responsiveness.  It appears our elected representatives listen to the rich much more than the rest of us when it comes to the role the government should or shouldn’t play in shaping a fair economy. In this light it’s not shocking that Washington has been obsessed with reducing deficits in recent years while the rest of the country has consistently prioritized putting their neighbors back to work.

The dominance of the wealthy has been getting worse over time, which suggests that government responsiveness to the wealthy is not a constant (and some would say inevitable) state, but rather is itself responsive to particular policy or economic conditions.

Gilens’s exhaustive study leads him to conclude that “[t]he concentration of political influence among Americans at the top of the income distribution is incompatible with the core democratic principle of political equality,” and “[t]he patterns of responsiveness found in previous chapters often correspond more closely to a plutocracy than to a democracy.” Strong words from a sober academic, not a talking head or strident activist.

Why, exactly, do the wealthy have so much influence? One answer is that wealthier Americans are much more active citizens, as reflected in voter registration and turnout rates, membership in civic organizations, and more. But, basic math dictates that even large differences in voting rates and other forms of civic participation would not likely, on their own, lead directly to the extreme differential in responsiveness described above—there just aren’t enough rich people.

It is when the wealthy make use of their greatest comparative advantage, by breaking out their checkbooks, that they can multiply their influence in virtually unlimited ways. It is the role of money in contemporary American politics that, more than any other single factor, drives government’s differential and undemocratic responsiveness to the wealthy.

Simply put, our permissive campaign finance system allows a tiny number of wealthy donors to set the agendas in Washington and state capitols across the country. Roughly speaking, they do this in three ways.
First, rich donors act as gatekeepers, determining who runs for office in the first place, long before voters have their say at the polls. Is it a coincidence that we have plenty of lawyers and business owners in Congress, but hardly any teachers or electricians? It helps to have rich friends and associates to get your campaign off the ground.

Next, the donor class shapes candidates views as aspiring officeholders spend an inordinate amount of time with a tiny (rich) slice of the country while on the campaign trail (or, more accurately, while in a call room). Consider that 2012 U.S. Senate candidates raised 64 percent of their funds in contributions of at least $1,000, from just 0.04 percent of the population, and you’ll have a sense of exactly who candidates are talking to. “Every night I would lock myself in a room with a bag of chips and some strong coffee and make my calls, homing in on people who could ideally give me at least $500 or $1000 or more,” says Current Common Cause President Miles Rapoport of his 1998 run for Congress. “And, when I was talking with these potential donors I found that their problems and concerns weren’t the same as the majority of folks I was looking to represent in Congress… I wasn’t changing my positions, exactly, but there was definitely a shift in emphasis, and I could feel myself shifting as I spent more and more time talking to a very narrow set of wealthy donors."

Finally, big donors give their favored candidates the best chance to win. Money doesn’t always carry the day, but ask any candidate, consultant, or party recruiter and she’ll tell you it certainly helps. The biggest spending candidate routinely wins 80-90 percent of congressional races. Outside spending complicates the picture, but doesn’t change the fundamental math: if you want to give yourself the best possible shot to win you’re going to do everything possible to keep the campaign cash flowing in the door and the ads up on TV.

Outside spending fueled by unlimited contributions in the wake of Citizens United has also greatly increased the share of campaign spending by the super wealthy. In 2012, 28 percent of all disclosed political contributions came from fewer than 32,000 people—who the Sunlight Foundation calls the “political one percent of the one percent.”

In addition, the wealthy (often corporations) spend billions on lobbying to influence officials once they’re in office, paying for relationships, access, and a sympathetic ear when national policy affects the bottom line.
All this spending fuels the vicious cycle mentioned above: the wealthy pour money into politics; elected officials who depend upon their largess write economic rules that cement the status of economic incumbents; the already-haves become the have-much-mores; and in turn reward the “public servants” who have tilted the playing field in their favor.

Americans have noticed, and are working to break and reverse the cycle. But there are some obstacles in our path.

The story outlined above is, fundamentally, about the uneasy relationship between the representative democracy the founders designed and the (moderated) capitalism that has evolved to complement it. Our twin commitments to democracy and capitalism leave most Americans with the general sense that every citizen has an equal right to participate in political life, but not necessarily the right to possess an equal number of dollars or widgets. We’re tolerating a lot of inequality in our economy right now; but most of us don’t think this should spill over into our political life.

Without proper protections, however, this is exactly what happens. Those who are successful (or simply lucky) in the economic sphere can translate their economic might directly into political power.

So, robust rules governing the use of money in politics are our best hope for protecting the primacy—and legitimacy—of our democracy. These rules are the only way to ensure that (perhaps legitimate) inequalities in the economic sphere don’t become unwarranted disparities in political power. It is how we should make the principle of one person, one vote come alive.

This is where the Supreme Court enters the picture.

The American people have long recognized that in order to provide working families a fair shot at upward mobility and basic economic security, democracy must write the rules for capitalism, not the other way around. That’s why Progressive-era reformers didn’t just pursue wage and hour laws, but also protections against corporate dominance of politics. Theodore Roosevelt said, “[t]here can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains.” And since then the People have passed many laws intended to rein in corporations and wealthy individuals—through their elected representatives, or directly through the ballot initiative process.

But, the Supreme Court has, time and again, stepped in to eviscerate common-sense rules intended to prevent wealthy interests from translating economic might directly into political power. Like widening economic inequality, this trend took flight in the 1970s.

In 1976’s Buckley v. Valeo—considered the seminal campaign finance case—the Court struck campaign spending limits and equated money with speech. Buckley also gave us the fundamentally flawed idea that fighting quid pro quo corruption and its appearance are the only legitimate reasons to regulate political money. And, the Buckley Court explicitly rejected an interest in promoting political equality—writing that “the concept that government may restrict the speech of some … in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment …”

The Roberts Court has been consistently hostile to campaign finance laws, culminating in 2010’s Citizens United, which gave corporations the same First Amendment “speech” rights as individuals; opened the door to billionaire-funded Super PACs and unlimited, undisclosed “dark money;” doubled-down on the corruption only focus; and narrowed the definition of corruption substantially. Justice Kennedy wrote for the 5-4 majority that “ingratiation and access … are not corruption.”

Justice Roberts followed this up in a 2011 case, writing specifically that limiting political money to level the playing field between wealthy donors and ordinary citizens is forbidden—only preventing quid pro quo corruption is allowed.

The bottom line is that for nearly forty years when evaluating any limits on the use of money in politics, the Court has focused only on one narrow concern: is this regulation necessary to fight corruption or its appearance? And, in the last decade, the Roberts Court has clarified that it’s only willing to recognize one very narrow type: quid pro quo corruption of individual officeholders (as opposed to more systemic forms of corruption).

In addition to being intellectually misguided, focusing on the effect of money on individuals misses the forest for the trees. The reality is that money buys elections more often than it buys politicians. While officeholders may at times alter their votes or priorities in response to particular contributions, most elected officials are probably not “corrupt” in this way most of the time. The “coal executive handing over a big check to buy policy” scene that opened this article is actually pretty rare in D.C. If special interests or wealthy individuals can ensure that their friends, associates, colleagues, or neighbors are elected to Congress, there will be comparatively little need to bribe them once in office.

And, the question is inherently limiting. Addressing the role of money in politics is not just about clean governance—it’s about shifting fundamental power dynamics in American society to facilitate meaningful representation for all citizens. As noted above, much more profound questions about the relationship between capitalism and democracy, and the role of each citizen in that democracy, are at stake. Even if we are able to eliminate all financial quid pro quo “corruption” from the electoral process, money would still exercise tremendous influence on elections and hence policy outcomes.

Prior to Citizens United, some reformers believed that we could justify most, if not all, necessary reform measures under a broadly-conceived anti-corruption rationale—even if much of the public support behind such policies was based upon a desire to level the playing field and prevent large donors from drowning out the voices of non-wealthy citizens. But, the corruption interest was always inadequate; and the Roberts Court has made it almost completely unavailing.

The Supreme Court’s current campaign finance jurisprudence has placed out-of-bounds the fundamental reforms needed to enable ordinary citizens to claim our democracy from billionaires and special interests and hacked away at the basic protections needed to safeguard the integrity of our democracy. Limiting the government’s interest to fighting corruption (as narrowly understood as possible) has been the anti-regulatory justices’ primary tool.

Any day, the Court might make things worse. In a case argued in October called McCutcheon v. FEC, Senator McConnell, the RNC, and a wealthy coal executive have asked the justices to strike the limit on the total amount a rich donor is permitted to contribute to all federal candidates, parties, and PACs combined—a limit that’s already twice the yearly income of an average American family. Reformers should win the McCutcheon case under the Court’s current approach—there are good arguments that striking “aggregate limits” seeds the ground for more corruption. But, the case would be a total slam dunk if a broader range of concerns were considered. For example, it obviously undermines political equality for one very rich person to dump millions of dollars into our political system.

So, while important work remains to defend the few remaining effective campaign finance laws on the books, now is the time to turn our attention to achieving the type of transformative change in the legal-constitutional landscape that will enable policy advocates to once again go on the offensive to start building a democracy in which the strength of a citizen’s voice no longer depends upon the size of her wallet.

To truly honor the First Amendment and to safeguard our democracy, the Court must remove its blinders and take a fresh, honest look at the full scope of core values at play. The vast majority of Americans don’t think it’s fair for one person to flood the system with hundreds or thousands of times more money than his fellow citizens can afford to spend or give, amplifying his voice with a million-dollar megaphone and drowning out his fellow citizens. The founders never intended the First Amendment to be a tool for use by wealthy donors to dominate our political discourse by crowding out the rest of America. There is room under the First Amendment to regulate money in politics to promote a diverse, robust conversation around candidates and causes while honoring political equality or other important values that help us achieve a truly representative government that accords with the principle of one person, one vote.

Over the past several years, scholars have proposed various pathways out of the current jurisprudential box. Some of these build out from the concept of corruption. Other theories speak to the value of political equality or the effective workings of democracy itself. And, some propose additional compelling government interests in regulating money that the Supreme Court has not considered or accepted, such as maximizing citizen participation or protecting candidates’ and elected officials’ time from the constant demands of fundraising so that they may focus adequately on the tasks of governance.

Regardless of the exact approach, it’s time for an enduring interpretation of the Constitution that empowers the People to enact protections that strive not just for clean governance, but also to make democracy work for all Americans.

We can achieve this in two ways. We can transform the Supreme Court’s approach to money in politics by developing and promoting robust interpretive frameworks that go beyond corruption; promoting these ideas with legal and popular audiences; and ensuring that newly appointed justices share the public’s common-sense understanding of the Constitution. Or, we can amend the Constitution to clarify that the People have the power to rein in the influence of big money. Either way will do—but it’s time to get moving.

We now stand at a crossroads. In the wake of Citizens United, we will either pick ourselves up and fight our way towards a truly representative democracy, or we will continue our recent slide towards plutocracy. We will take decisive action to break and reverse the vicious cycle of economic and political domination by the wealthy minority, or we will allow the cycle to spin out of control—possibly until it builds too much momentum to stop peacefully.

To choose representative democracy, we must rescue our Constitution. This is the task to which the great legal minds of our day must apply themselves. It won’t be easy, but we can’t afford to lose. It’s only government that is truly of, by, and for the people that hangs in the balance.

Double Spill

BP Doubles Initial Size Estimate of Lake Michigan Oil Spill

By Steve Horn

Three days after spilling crude oil into Lake Michigan, BP has doubled its spill estimate to between 470 and 1228 gallons. The leak happened at its refinery in Whiting, Ind.

Although some of the oil has been cleaned up, it's unclear how much is left in the lake, a drinking water source for about seven million Chicagoans.

Located just across the Illinois-Indiana state border, Whiting is home to the sixth largest refinery in the U.S. The refinery just went through a $4 billion “modernization project,” giving it “the capability of processing up to about 85 percent heavy crude.” That's up from its original 20 percent, says BP's website.

“Frigid temperatures caused some of the oil to harden into a waxy consistency that made it easier to collect,” BP spokesman Scott Dean told The Chicago Tribune. “Crews used vacuum trucks to suck up any liquid oil that washed ashore.”

The day after the spill, U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), as well as U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) issued press releases in which they pledged to hold BP accountable for the spill. Durbin and Kirk also wrote a follow-up letter to BP, requesting a meeting with BP.

“Any unanticipated spill is cause for concern, but given the Whiting refinery’s recent expansion of its operations to double the amount of heavy oil sands being processed, this spill raises questions about the long-term safety and reliability of BP's new, expanded production at Whiting,” they wrote.


Chicago Mayor (and President Obama's former Chief-of-Staff) Rahm Emanuel had similar things to say.
“I expect a full accounting to the public,” said Emanuel. “I want a report on what happened, how it happened, why did it happen, how much happened and how do you prevent it from ever happening again.”

Though BP claims it's “recovered the vast majority of oil that had been visible on the surface,” questions remain.
For one, what type of oil was spilled? The refinery processes tar sands bitumen, which sinks in freshwater, a point alluded to in Kirk and Durbin's letter to BP.

According to a March 25 EPA press release, the “U.S. Coast Guard has flown over the area and has not observed any visible sheen.”

EPA has also deployed a “Shoreline Cleanup Assessment Team,” which consists of employees of the Coast Guard, EPA and BP. The team says it “saw minimal oiling of the shoreline and recommended a small manual removal crew conduct maintenance along the shoreline” and posted some pictures of its cleanup efforts online.

The EPA's account has become the widely accepted one in local and national media. But a video placed on The Chicago Tribune's website calls some of it into question.

The cleanup crew can be seen hundreds of feet offshore in Lake Michigan, with a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter flying above them. BP denies any oil is still straggling in the lake far offshore.

“It's in the lake, yes, but it's not moving around freely,” said Dean. “It's been kind of contained because of the weather and of the geography of the lakefront there.”

BP has a history of playing down the size and impacts of its spills. The 2010 Gulf of Mexico mega-spill serves as Exhibit A.

As with the BP's Gulf of Mexico disaster, the company is running the show in Chicago, as “press calls to US EPA were routed directly to BP to answer,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

This isn't the first time BP Whiting has been at the center of controversy.

The facility is the source of the massive mounds of petcoke currently burying portions of the southeast side of Chicago. Described by Oil Change International as the “coal hiding in the tar sands” because it can be co-burned in coal-fired power plants, until now petcoke storage was the hottest environmental issue in the Windy City.

On March 4, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit against the Koch Industries subsidiary KCBX for spilling petroleum coke (“petcoke”) into Lake Michigan at its holding facility on the Calumet River, a tributary into Lake Michigan.

In a March 26 article about the oil spill, NRDC Midwest Program Director Henry Henderson said it's too soon to take BP at its word about just how big or small the spill is and what its ongoing impacts may or may not be.

“[I]t’s still not clear what kind and how much oil made its way into Lake Michigan from the refinery. A day later, we still don’t know.” wrote Henderson. “The public needs to know what has made its way into their drinking water sources and whether it is being adequately cleaned.”

Shame of American Politics

The Shame of American Politics: GOP Presidential Hopefuls now Trek to Las Vegas seeking Adelson Blessing

By Juan Cole

A series of pro-corporation Supreme Court decisions and the latter’s disingenuous equation of money with speech, including “Citizens United”,have turned the United States from a democracy to a plutocracy. It is not even a transparent plutocracy, since black money (of unknown provenance) has been allowed by SCOTUS to flood into elections. These developments are not only deadly to democracy, they threaten US security. It is increasingly difficult to exclude foreign money from US political donations. We not only come to be ruled by the billionaires, but even by foreign billionaires with foreign rather than American interests at heart.

The most frightening scenario is for corrupt money to dictate our politics. Casinos may no longer be mobbed up the way they were in the 1950s and 1960s, but they [pdf] are still significantly implicated in government corruption.

The perniciousness of this growing plutocracy was on full display on Saturday, as GOP governors Scott Walker, Chris Christie and John Kasich trekked off to Las Vegas in an attempt to attract hundreds of millions in campaign donations from sleazy casino lord Sheldon Adelson. Since Adelson is allegedly worth $37 billion, he could fund the Republican side of a presidential election (which costs $1 billion) all by himself. In the last presidential election he is said to have donated $100 million.

There is no way to mince words here. These practices are absolutely disgusting.

The problems with having one man have $37 billion and with his ability to buy candidates their elections are that any one man might be extremely eccentric. What if he wanted to start the Iraq War up again? Do we have to do it?

The case of Adelson exhibits all these issues of corruption and eccentricity. Much of his current fortune is recent and derives from the Macao casino, and Adelson has admitted to “likely” breaking Federal rules against using bribes to do business in other countries. (A reference to allegations that his company was involved in rewarding legislators of the Chinese Communist Party for supporting his Macao project.) There was a time when this admission alone would put the donor off limits for mainstream politicians.

Adelson has kooky political ideas. He is a determined union-buster.

He actually mused in public about nuking Iran:

“You pick up your cell phone and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say ‘OK, let it go’and so there’s an atomic weapon goes over, ballistic missiles in the middle of the desert that doesn’t hurt a soul, maybe a couple of rattlesnakes and scorpions or whatever”

He was also a proponent of the Iraq War and of “staying the course” (staying in Iraq forever)?

Adelson is a big backer of Israeli far rightwing PM Binyamin Netanyahu and has said that granting Palestinians their own state is akin to Russian roulette. He owns the right wing Israeli newspaper Israel Ha-Yawm .

What if a billionaire from a religious cult (other than the Likud Party I mean) was allowed to buy our politics, say a Moonie? What implications would that have for our policy toward North Korea?

Adelson has a right to vote and advocate for his candidates. But the idea that he and his like should choose the next president is too awful to contemplate. One person, one vote isn’t one person, $100 million worth of votes. That isn’t democracy…

Occupied territories

Chris Christie apologizes for ‘occupied territories’ remark

By KENNETH P. VOGEL

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie apologized to Sheldon Adelson in a meeting Saturday for stepping on a fault line in Middle East politics during a speech he gave earlier in the day, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

Invoking a 2012 trip he and his family took to Israel, Christie recalled in the speech: “I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories across and just felt personally how extraordinary that was to understand, the military risk that Israel faces every day.”

While the story was intended to forge common cause with Adelson and the several hundred donors to the Republican Jewish Coalition to which Christie was speaking, his use of the term “occupied territories” set off murmurs in the crowd. The term refers to lands in which Palestinians live where Israel maintains a military presence, including the West Bank.

But the term is rejected by some conservative Zionists like Adelson who see it as validating Palestinian challenges over Israel’s presence. Other supporters of Israel oppose the use of the term as well.

Not long after his speech, Christie met with Adelson privately in the casino mogul’s office in the Venetian hotel and casino, which hosted the RJC meeting.

The source told POLITICO that Christie “clarified in the strongest terms possible that his remarks today were not meant to be a statement of policy.”

Instead, the source said, Christie made clear “that he misspoke when he referred to the ‘occupied territories.’ And he conveyed that he is an unwavering friend and committed supporter of Israel, and was sorry for any confusion that came across as a result of the misstatement.”

Adelson accepted Christie’s explanation, the source said.

The mini-controversy and quick apology highlight both the importance of Adelson as the reigning mega-donor in GOP politics, as well as the tricky terrain that Middle East politics can pose for American politicians courting Jewish donors and voters.

Before the meeting, Adelson ally Morton Klein, president of the hawkish Zionist Organization of America, had confronted Christie about his use of the term, telling POLITICO he explained to the New Jersey governor that “at minimum you should call it disputed territories.”

Christie was non-committal, said Klein, who concluded afterwards that the governor “either doesn’t understand the issue at all, or he’s hostile to Israel.”

Besides the comment, Christie largely impressed the crowd Saturday night with tales of his own trips to Israel.

He also criticized the Obama administration’s approach to foreign policy, which the crowd distrusts deeply.
“We cannot have a world where our friends are unsure of whether we’ll be with them, and our enemies are unsure of whether we’ll be against them,” Christie said to loud applause.

Christie recounted meeting the hawkish Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an RJC favorite, and being “extraordinarily taken by his strength and resolve.”

Christie was one of three Republican governors to speak to the crowd Saturday night. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio also spoke to the crowd, offering a strong defense of Israel, too.

The three governors are considered likely contenders for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016. Party stalwarts hope their attendance this weekend will help convince Adelson to support an establishment candidate in the next presidential, rather than a dark horse candidate like Newt Gingrich who he propped up with millions in 2012.

Whales win one....

International Court of Justice upholds Australia's bid to ban Japanese whaling in Antarctica

By Andrew Darby

The International Court of Justice has upheld Australia's bid to ban Japan's Antarctic whaling program.
ICJ president Peter Tomka said the court concluded the scientific permits granted by Japan for its whaling program were not scientific research as defined under International Whaling Commission rules.

Mr Tomka said in The Hague that the court was persuaded that Japan had conducted a program for logistical and political considerations, rather than scientific research.

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The court unanimously found it had jurisdiction to hear the case, and by 12 votes to four found that special permits granted by Japan in connection with the program, JARPA II, did not fall within the IWC convention.
It therefore ordered that Japan revoke any scientific permit under JARPA II and refrain from granting any further permits.

Prominent Australians welcomed the ICJ's decision.

Australia sought an order from the International Court of Justice to stop the Japanese whale hunt in a case launched by the Rudd government in 2010.

The case began as tortuous diplomatic negotiations for Japan to phase out its Antarctic hunt broke down in the International Whaling Commission.

Other anti-whaling nations, including the United States, warned Australia against going to the court to fight the hunt which kills hundreds of whales each summer.

Washington's IWC Commissioner, Monica Medina, said that it was an uncertain gamble on whales' lives.
"This is a 'bet-the-whales' case," Ms Medina said then.

But a series of opinions by legal expert panels gathered by international wildlife conservation groups encouraged the then environment minister, Peter Garrett.

He argued strongly inside the Rudd government for taking on Japan, WikiLeaks documents showed.

When the case came to hearing in the Hague last June, it hinged on the court's view of the IWC convention's clause letting any member nation conduct its own scientific whaling program, despite a global moratorium on commercial whaling.

The Australian government's counsel, Bill Campbell, QC, told the 21 judges they had an important opportunity to decide for the world what did, and did not, constitute scientific activity.

"In short, Japan seeks to cloak its ongoing commercial whaling in the lab coat of science," Mr Campbell said.
"It simply is not science."

Japan currently issues its fleet with a scientific permit for a quota of up to 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and 50 humpbacks, with the humpback quota currently "suspended".

Then attorney-general Mark Dreyfus said the case was not about an Australian "civilising mission" against Japan.

"This case is about one country's failure to comply with its legal obligations not to conduct commercial whaling," Mr Dreyfus said.

Japan claimed a clear and indisputable right under the convention to conduct its scientific program.

"Australia has pursued an express policy of using the IWC, against its stated purpose, to ban all whaling," Japan's counsel, Payam Akhavan, said.

"It has politicised science in order to impose Australian values on Japan in disregard for international law," Mr Akhavan said.

The decision comes with the whaling fleet under increased pressure from conservationist direct action that brought serious conflict to the far south - much of it in waters off the Australian Antarctic Territory.

However, despite this pressure from Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd, the whalers killed 10,439 minkes and 15 fin whales under scientific permit from the 1986 moratorium until the end of the 2013 season, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

Last season's kill figure has not yet been released.

Established in 1945, the ICJ is the UN's highest judicial body and the only one of five principal UN bodies not located in New York.

The ICJ's judgements are binding and cannot be appealed.

Pain and Pride

A legacy of pain and pride

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran

More than half of the 2.6 million Americans dispatched to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with physical or mental health problems stemming from their service, feel disconnected from civilian life and believe the government is failing to meet the needs of this generation’s veterans, according to a poll conducted by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The long conflicts, which have required many troops to deploy multiple times and operate under an almost constant threat of attack, have exacted a far more widespread emotional toll than previously recognized by most government studies and independent assessments: One in two say they know a fellow service member who has attempted or committed suicide, and more than 1 million suffer from relationship problems and experience outbursts of anger — two key indicators of post-traumatic stress.

The veterans are often frustrated with the services provided to them by the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Pentagon and other government agencies. Almost 60 percent say the VA is doing an “only fair” or “poor” job in addressing the problems faced by veterans, and half say the military is lagging in its efforts to help them transition to civilian life, which has been difficult for 50 percent of those who have left active service. Overall, nearly 1.5 million of those who served in the wars believe the needs of their fellow vets are not being met by the government.

“When I raised my right hand and said, ‘I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America,’ when I gave them everything I could, I expect the same in return,” said Christopher Steavens, a former Army staff sergeant who was among 819 vets polled. He served in Iraq in 2003 and in Kuwait two years ago, where he was injured in a construction accident. Upon leaving the Army last summer, he filed a claim with the VA, seeking medical care and financial compensation. He has not yet received a response.
“It’s ridiculous that I’ve been waiting seven months just to be examined by a doctor — absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

Even so, the vast majority of recent veterans are not embittered or regretful. Considering everything they now know about war and military service, almost 90 percent would still have joined.

“What we did had a positive impact there,” said Texas Army National Guard Sgt. David Moeller, who spent two year-long tours in Iraq. “I don’t regret it. It’s something I’d do over and over again.”

Drawing upon detailed interviews with randomly selected war veterans across all military branches, including those still serving and those no longer in the military, the nationwide poll provides an unprecedented glimpse into the lives and attitudes of modern warriors — an undrafted, all-volunteer cadre, most of whom signed up in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. That force, drawn from nearly every county in the nation and often sent on multiple year-long combat tours, has included more than 280,000 women and thousands of 18-year-olds.

Although more than 6,800 U.S. service members were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, advancements in body armor, transportation and battlefield medicine gave troops a better chance of coming home than any other generation of war fighters.

“They have come back to a nation that has embraced them – warmly, strongly, positively — and put tremendous value and appreciation into their service,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said in an interview. “That is so important.”

Many are thriving — they are attending college, paid in full by the post-9/11 G.I. Bill; they are finding employers who covet their leadership skills and work ethic; they are receiving the medical attention they need. But the poll also found that hundreds of thousands of others feel they have been left behind on an uncharted postwar landscape, fighting for benefits, struggling to land a job, wrestling with psychological demons unleashed by combat or coping with shattered families.

Their responses reveal nuanced views of their lives, their service and their treatment by the government. Almost three in four believe the average American appreciates their service, but fewer — only 52 percent — like talking about their wartime experiences with casual acquaintances or strangers. Nearly 90 percent performed actions in Iraq or Afghanistan that made them feel proud, yet only 35 percent believe both wars were worth fighting.

“I don’t find that to be in any way a contradiction of data,” Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in an interview. “I think that this aspect of service, and being true and trustworthy to the man or woman on your left or right, is probably what mostly drives the 90 percent figure. They’re proud of what they did. They believe they did their job, and potentially the elected governments of Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t do theirs.”

Some of their present-day challenges — securing a well-paying career and coping with credit-card debt — mirror travails of American society as a whole, but other needs are unique consequences of this century’s conflicts: diagnosing and treating traumatic brain injury, acquiring technical skills to compete in a transforming economy and addressing the stress on families from repeated combat tours. More than 600,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who have become partially or totally disabled from physical or psychological wounds are receiving lifelong financial support from the government, a figure that could grow substantially as new ailments are diagnosed and the VA processes a large claims backlog.

“What is different about this generation? We’ve asked them to do a lot more, in a smaller serving force, in some of the longest wars in our history,” VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said in an interview. Multiple deployments have created what he calls “a compounding effect” to health problems and combat stress, with an unknown overall cost. “There’s more work to be done in terms of research and understanding of what the full impact is going to be.”

For many vets, their times in Iraq and Afghanistan were searing experiences. One in three think about their deployments daily. Among them is Nicholas Johnson, a former specialist in the Arkansas Army National Guard, who spent a year in Iraq starting in 2006. His platoon was ordered to fill roadside bomb craters, which required him to jackhammer asphalt while wearing 50 pounds of body armor and gear. He returned home with a fractured vertebra, three fused disks in his back, ringing ears and debilitating post-traumatic stress because of the frequent carnage he witnessed on Baghdad’s roads.

“I can’t get a good job now because . . . I have to be upfront and say I have this disability, I have a tore-up back,” he said. “So now, the factories here in Topeka, where I live now, they’re like: ‘Oh, wow, he has military experience. Great. He has managerial experience. Oh, that’s good. Some college — all right. Oh, he tore his back up. Can’t do that, you know.’ ”

Johnson, who is 32 “but going on 60,” confronts the toll of his service on his drive to a just-over-minimum-wage job at Lowe’s, when he has to avoid Interstate 70 because it reminds him of Baghdad’s insurgent-riddled airport road, when he panics at the sight of trash on the street because that’s what Iraqi guerrillas employed to conceal explosives, when he pops painkillers and anti-anxiety pills, when he has to use a cane to walk or ask his fellow clerks for help moving boxes.

"I left the war zone," he said, "but the war zone never left me."

This generation’s veterans are more diverse than any other contingent America has shipped to war. Thirty-five percent are non-white, more than one in 10 are women and a quarter are now 40 years or older.

But much of the force remains homogeneous: Half are Southerners, two-thirds lack a college degree and almost six in 10 live in a non-urban area.

More than eight in 10 vets served at least one tour in Iraq or in support of that war. Of those deployed to Iraq, 47 percent were sent on two or more deployments, and 29 percent — more than a half-million service members — spent two years or more in the strife-torn country. By contrast, 29 percent of vets who deployed to Afghanistan had two or more tours, and 16 percent spent at least two years there.

The entire group of 2.6 million post-9/11 vets includes hundreds of thousands of troops who did not serve within the borders of Iraq or Afghanistan but who worked in support of operations in those nations from bases and ships in the Middle East and South Asia. Those deployments often were arduous and risky and involved separation from families. In tallying those who served, the Defense Department does not distinguish between them and those who walked on the soil of Iraq or Afghanistan.

More than 730,000 went as members of the reserves or National Guard, forcing them to place their civilian lives on hold for as long as a year, sometimes more than once. It was the largest use of both forces since World War II, greater even than during the Vietnam and Korean wars.

The vets hail from families where service in the military is tradition: More than four in 10 have fathers who were in the military, and half have at least one grandparent who was. Almost 40 percent say all or most of their friends have served in the military. By contrast, a national Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in December found that 32 percent of U.S. adults had “hardly any” or no friends who have been in the military.

Slightly more than half yearn for their time in the wars. Of them, almost two-thirds cited the bonds they forged with fellow military personnel. “It was a unique time,” said Kevin Ivey, a retired Army helicopter pilot who spent a year in Afghanistan starting in 2004. “I miss my crew, the folks I was with, the organization. You make lifelong friendships in war.”

Many vets see themselves as a cut above the rest of American society, as noble volunteers who stepped up to promote and protect U.S. interests while the rest of the nation went about its business as usual. Sixty-three percent think service members are more patriotic than those who are not in the military; 54 percent think the average member of the military has better moral and ethical values than the general civilian population.

Almost seven in 10 feel that the average American routinely misunderstands their experience, and slightly more than four in 10 believe the expressions of appreciation showered upon veterans — often at airports, bars and sporting events — are just saying what people want to hear. More than 1.4 million vets feel disconnected from civilian life.

“A lot of vets find it easier to talk to each other, especially about their wartime experiences,” said Jennifer Smolen, who served in Iraq for a year with an Army Reserve engineer unit and is now an active member of a Seattle area American Legion post. “There’s a feeling that civilians who weren’t there just don’t get it.”

Moeller, the Texas National Guard sergeant, returned from his first deployment to Iraq with back pain so severe he had to sleep sitting upright. In 2009, when his unit was mobilized again, he “could have waved the medical flag.” But he wanted to head back out with his buddies “to complete the mission, because that’s what I took an oath to do.” So he kept quiet and toughed it out.

When his unit was called up again in 2012 to go to Afghanistan, he once again tried to deploy. “I can make it one more time,” he thought to himself. But an Army doctor thought otherwise. “Isn’t it time you started taking care of yourself?” he suggested.

According to the Defense Department, more than 51,000 service members have been “wounded in action” in Iraq, Afghanistan or in missions to support the wars. That tally doesn’t include Moeller — or hundreds of thousands of others — because the Pentagon counts only those injured as a “direct result of hostile action.” If a wound did not occur on a combat operation, or it was the result of an accident, or it was caused by wearing armor every day for a year, it does not make the list.

But in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there were no front lines, where improvised explosive devices were the enemy’s weapon of choice, where troops wore bulky protective gear most of the time, wounds that do not fit the military’s classic definition became the norm. Traumatic brain injury. Persistent ringing in the ears. Elevated blood pressure.

Once troops returned home and the adrenaline ebbed, they began to confront the cost of all they wore to protect them, of the bone-jarring trips in mine-resistant trucks, of inhaling desert sand pulverized into jagged particles by armored vehicles. Back pain. Blown-out knees. Headaches. Chronic coughs.

For more than 1.1 million vets, serving in the wars has left them in worse physical health, according to the poll. Eighteen percent — about 470,000 current and former service members — reported being seriously injured while deployed to Iraq, Afghanistan or in support of the wars. Some of those wounds have been profoundly life-altering — lost limbs, widespread burns, massive brain damage. Others are more prosaic, often the results of accidents or wear and tear on the body, but nonetheless have saddled veterans with enduring pain.

Edna Harris, a former Army sergeant who deployed twice to Iraq, fell out of a five-ton truck, injuring several vertebrae. When she went to the medical clinic on her forward operating base, all she received were some Motrin pills. Harris is now back home in Jacksonville, Fla., but persistent back pain limits her activities. “I can’t play with my son like I want to,” she said. “I can’t run after him or throw a football with him.”

Kevin Ivey, who flew helicopters for a year in Afghanistan, said that being strapped into a vibrating aircraft for 10 hours a day while wearing body armor led to diagnoses of nerve damage and bone degeneration in his back and neck. “It tore me up pretty good,” he said.

Justin Peachee, a sergeant in the Texas Army National Guard, spent a year as an infantryman in Iraq, hauling a heavy rucksack, rifle and ammunition over his armored vest. His knees now have worn-out cartilage and leaking fluid sacks. He is 26. “I just want my knees to be my knees again,” he said. “I don’t want grandpa knees at this point.”

One in three veterans surveyed by The Post and Kaiser said the VA or the Defense Department has determined they have a service-connected disability, a ratio that is almost identical to the VA’s overall tally. Most have no scars. As with Peachee, Ivey and Harris, their physical wounds are under the skin, or they are inside the brain.

The poll found that the wars have caused mental and emotional health problems in 31 percent of vets — more than 800,000 of them. When more specific questions were asked, the rates increased: 41 percent — more than 1 million — report having outbursts of anger, and 45 percent have relationship problems with their spouse or partner. Both are indicators of post-traumatic stress and could suggest that rates of affliction may be higher than the government has forecast.

Although The Post and Kaiser did not ask respondents the full battery of questions typically used to make post-traumatic stress diagnoses, previous studies conducted for the Pentagon, including one by the Rand Corp. in 2008, have estimated rates of post-traumatic stress or major depression at about 20 percent. Time may explain some of the difference: Every service member experiences the stress of war differently, and some do not feel it for years.

For Adam Schiele, a former active-duty military police officer in the Army, it has taken a decade. In recent months, he has been haunted by an Afghan man’s plea for medical assistance for his badly wounded niece at the gate of a U.S. base — and the initial refusal of American medics, which he describes as callous, to examine the girl. Nothing went boom. Nobody died. It happened a decade ago. But the incident was jostled from the recesses of his mind in the wake of an assault on a fellow guard at the federal correctional institution where he works. Since then, Schiele, who now finds the memory more vivid than ever, has been placed on disability leave.

“I’m sitting at home, hoping it will go away,” he said. “It’s disheartening. It’s discouraging. It makes you feel inadequate.”

Troops “don’t need to be classified as wounded in action to have been wounded,” he said. “A lot of us got hurt. Some more serious than others, but a lot of us sacrificed part of our bodies out there.”

Iraq and Afghanistan vets are making unprecedented use of the Department of Veterans Affairs, largely because of an Obama administration decision to provide five years of free VA health care to all of them. Of the 1.7 million who are no longer serving in the active, reserve or National Guard forces, more than 1 million have obtained health-care services at least once from the VA since 2002 and about 45 percent of them have sought compensation for service-related disabilities. By comparison, about 21 percent of those who fought in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War filed similar claims.

The difference between the nearly half seeking compensation and the third who have received it may help to explain why almost six in 10 vets believe the VA is doing an “only fair” or “poor” job in meeting the needs of their comrades.

Under President Obama, the VA’s budget has grown by more than 60 percent over the past six years, although congressional overseers and veterans’ organizations complain that the department continues to be hobbled by what they consider a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy.

“There’s always room for improvement,” said VA Secretary Shinseki, who believes the widespread frustration is rooted not in the quality of service provided by the VA but in the delay in processing disability claims, which he has pledged to eliminate by the end of next year. Despite the backlog, he emphasized that this generation of veterans has been provided benefits, including college tuition reimbursement through the G.I. Bill and free health care, “in ways that didn’t happen after Vietnam.”

“We’ve asked a lot of this generation,” said Shinseki, a Vietnam War veteran. “We owe it to them."

Overall, more than half of vets say the government is not doing a good job in addressing the requirements of this generation of veterans. But when asked to rate their own treatment, almost 60 percent say the government’s response is “excellent” or “good.” Vets give even higher marks when it comes to their own health care, with more than eight in 10 saying their physical, mental and emotional needs are being well met.

They are far less sanguine about the transition to civilian life. Half think the military is not doing enough to help vets adjust to the world beyond their U.S. and overseas bases, where men and women who never had to worry about where to live or how to write a résumé now must learn to navigate American streets and survive job interviews. Just as many say their own transition to civilian life was either somewhat or very difficult.

Asked to describe why, in their own words, slightly more than a quarter said it was because of employment-related issues, such as adjusting to a civilian-run workplace. A similar percentage said the principal challenge involved the profound differences between civilian and military life. Among those still in the military, 43 percent expect a difficult transition to civilian life.

“There are those that are very much in need of help, but the majority — the vast majority — are less in need of a handout than simply a handshake, an opportunity,” said Joint Chiefs Chairman Dempsey.

Hagel said the military needs to do more to educate business leaders about the skills veterans can provide to U.S. corporations. “There’s where we’re not doing enough,” he said. “We need to keep working at it.”

Overall, two-thirds of vets feel they possess the skills and education required to be competitive in the civilian job market. But there is a significant difference in views between officers, who are required to have at least a bachelor’s degree, and enlisted personnel, most of whom do not have college degrees. Almost a quarter of current and former enlisted troops think the skills they have acquired in the military have no use in civilian employment; only 2 percent of officers feel the same way.

Enlisted vets also report more severe economic challenges. Forty-three percent of them have taken an extra job or worked additional hours because they need the money, compared with just 16 percent of officers. A quarter of enlisted members have had trouble paying their rent or mortgage; only 11 percent of officers say the same.

Upon leaving the Marine Corps in 2012, April White figured she would find a steady job to support herself and her then-7-year-old son in North Carolina. Although enlisted, she had been a sergeant with supervisory experience, and she had military logistics skills, honed during a 2007 deployment to Iraq. She sent out a raft of applications for secretarial jobs and transportation-related work. She landed just one interview, with an employer who was seeking someone with a college degree, which she lacks.

After four months on unemployment assistance, she signed up for the only option she could find — as a contractor in Afghanistan. “I thought once I got out [of the Marines], life was going to be normal,” she said.
Instead, she had to explain to her son that she was going away again. “I told him, ‘I don’t want to go to Afghanistan, but I need a job.’ ”

Now back in Jacksonville, N.C., White has opted to take advantage of the G.I. Bill to remain close to home, pay her bills and attend a nearby college, where she is taking engineering classes. The VA-administered program, which pays for tuition and provides a stipend for books, school supplies and housing, has been used by almost half of all Iraq and Afghanistan vets. For many, it has served as a hyperbaric chamber to adjust to civilian life, allowing them to stay busy and avoid poverty as they set out to find a post-military career.

“The days of getting out of the military and getting a job — a good job — right away are over,” White said.
 “You have to study, and you have to be patient — and you have to be lucky.”

Despite their overwhelming pride and negligible regret, the veterans look back on the necessity of the conflicts with decidedly mixed feelings. Only 53 percent of them believe the war in Afghanistan has been worth fighting, and just 44 percent say the same for Iraq. Slightly more than a third — almost 900,000 vets — “strongly” believe the Iraq war was not worth it.

Those figures are moderately higher than the population as a whole, but they nonetheless reveal a fundamental nuance in attitudes among the all-volunteer military: Many among this generation of vets regard their service as a profession — almost half signed up intending to serve for at least 20 years — and they have divorced their individual missions from the worthiness of the overall wars.

“Right, wrong or indifferent, it was something we signed up to do,” said Kenneth Harmon, a retired Marine master sergeant who served for 23 years and deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. “It was our job. We got orders. We followed them.”

That detachment was easier for those who saw value in the wars. “When I see people smile because we’re there, when I see kids happy that there are American troops with boots on the ground over there, it had always reaffirmed my belief that we were doing the right thing,” said Santino Fort, a retired Air Force technical sergeant who deployed twice to Afghanistan and once to Iraq.

Others have grown increasingly frustrated as they have heard of developments in both nations, of Afghan President Hamid Karzai refusing to sign a bilateral security agreement with the United States, of the Iraqi city of Fallujah falling to al-Qaeda militants spilling over from Syria. For Peachee, the National Guard sergeant with “grandpa knees,” Iraq now feels “like a big waste of time.”

“We turned it over, and it’s gone back to chaos and anarchy,” he said. “The government and the citizenry don’t have respect for anything that we fought for.”

But that has not soured his view of the Guard. “I joined because I want to do interesting things,” he said. A few months ago, he reenlisted for six more years.

The military, which was showered with money to grow its ranks and acquire new equipment over the past decade, probably will be far smaller when his enlistment ends. And it almost certainly will include more women serving in ground combat roles, a change that half of all post-9/11 vets believe will “not make much difference” on military effectiveness.

Current and former members of the Navy were most supportive — almost two-thirds of them say the Pentagon’s decision to roll back a ban on women in combat positions will not affect war fighting — while the Marines were the most skeptical: 45 percent of them feel that doing so will have a negative impact on the force.

Although women were kept from ground combat jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan, many found themselves in harm’s way. Thousands of others served in key positions on headquarters staffs, in hospitals and within support units. Some were generals.

Although the military is fielding the most gender-integrated force in U.S. history, almost half of female vets say it is not doing enough to prevent sexual assault among service members. Among men, four in 10 share that view.

In a recent VA survey of 1,500 women who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, one in four said they experienced sexual assault — defined as any unwanted contact from groping to rape — during their deployments.

“Just being a woman was an additional stressor,” said Melissa Ross, one of the Post-Kaiser poll respondents, who deployed to Afghanistan as a staff sergeant three times and always wore an extra knife strapped to her back. “Just being a female. Just the amount of fear of ‘What if?’ — ‘What if you have that one airman or Marine or Army guy who doesn’t know you and looks at you just as a female?’ That was the biggest stressor for me daily. That crossed my mind way more than, ‘What if we hit an IED?’ ”

When it comes to their most-senior commander, the vets decisively prefer George W. Bush to Obama. Only a third approve of the way Obama is handling his job, and 42 percent of them think he has been a good commander in chief despite his decisions to bring troops home from Iraq, wind down the war in Afghanistan and increase resources for veterans. By contrast, nearly two-thirds of them think Bush, who launched both wars, was a good commander in chief.

Their views of the two presidents appear to be shaped less by political affiliation than by concern over the Obama administration’s plans to reduce the size of the military, trim benefits for future service members and curtail the purchase of some costly new weapons systems. Nearly half of vets regard themselves as political independents. Among those who identify with a party, the Republican-Democratic split is only 27 percent to 17 percent.

The vets’ political philosophy is more striking: 44 percent describe themselves as conservative, and 29 percent say they are moderates. One-fifth of them are self-described liberals.

But when asked if they would be willing, in these times of federal government deficits, to support a reduction in benefits to future generations of troops, they are overwhelmingly opposed, even if it contributes to future budget shortfalls. Only 12 percent feel that benefits should be curtailed, despite warnings from Defense Department leaders that growing health-care and pension costs are eating into funds for training and equipment.

When it comes to sharing the responsibility of care with the private sector, 63 percent of vets think that they merit special advantages from employers when applying for jobs. By contrast, four-fifths of all Americans feel employers should provide advantages to vets during the hiring process, according to a separate Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted in December.

The military’s retirement program awards pensions and lifetime family health care to those who have served 20 years or more. The system, which provides nothing to those who spend less than two decades in uniform, has left many Iraq and Afghanistan vets — including those who signed up after September 2001, were deployed multiple times but then chose to leave the military — without any retirement benefits.

The vets, however, do not see it as a trade-off. More than half feel the 20-year system provides “about the right amount” of compensation to retirees. But they also want to increase benefits to those who served in the wars and then left before hitting the two-decade mark. Slightly more than half say that group receives fewer benefits than they deserve.

Among them is Jeffrey Arena, a former Army sergeant in the 101st Airborne Division who had two year-long combat tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. He had planned to serve 20 years in the Army and then use his infantry skills to land a law enforcement job. Last year, however, his hip and leg began to hurt during his morning physical-fitness routine. A doctor at Fort Campbell, Ky., told him that a leg injury he suffered in Iraq during a 2006 mission to pursue insurgents was far more serious than he had been told by field medics at the time: He had fractured his femur and torn cartilage in his hip.

The military offered him a hip replacement, which he turned down. “I’m only 35, and I don’t want a hip replacement at 35,” he said. “There would be no more running or jumping. I have three kids. I want to be active with them.”

Replacement or not, the diagnosis spelled the end of his military career. Because he was unable to pass his annual physical-fitness test, the Army moved to retire him on medical grounds. But it deemed him only 20 percent disabled, which meant that he would be ineligible for a military pension or lifetime health coverage, even though he spent 38 months at war and suffered a serious injury while deployed.

“I beat up my body for this nation,” he said. “It should count for something.”

Arena’s last day as a soldier was Feb. 13. In the months leading up to his separation from the Army, he sought to participate in a military-funded internship program that allows departing troops to explore new civilian careers. The initiative has been touted by Army generals as a key step in the transition from military life. But when he asked the commander of his unit for permission, he was turned down. “They told me they didn’t want to pay me for working at another job,” he said. “The Army says, ‘You can,’ but my command said no.”

Worried that his hip injury will disqualify him from law enforcement jobs, he plans to head to flight school in Arizona, where he will live out of a trailer for a year while his family remains at their home in Kentucky.

“In the Army, you’re taught to never leave a man behind. Well, they’ve basically left a man behind,” he said.
“It was easy to send us off to war. Taking care of those who need help — and there are lots of us — will be much tougher. But if our nation is going to send us to war, it has a responsibility to do right by us when we come home.”