Later On

Our nutritional information labels are just the first baby step. Getting more and better information on processed food will be a big fight for each step—cf. getting safety glass into automobiles: it had to required by law, window by window, with the automotive industry fighting every step of the way. Marion Nestle has this:

Several Danish consumer groups have banded together to oppose the food industry-backed GDA system for ranking the nutritional quality of processed foods.  The GDA (the Guidance Daily Amount) system is already in use on some products and food industry groups want it required for all European Union food labels.  Of course food companies want it.  It doesn’t use the U.K.’s red/yellow/green traffic light system that encourages people to avoid the red-labeled products.

The “Stop GDA” campaign argues that the GDA system encourages purchases of processed foods at the expense of the real foods.  It has produced a clever pamphlet to back up this argument.  Its criticisms apply just as well to all scoring systems for food products, except the traffic lights.

From Congressional Quarterly:

Democrats on Tuesday used the latest recommendations of a panel that studies Medicare’s payment systems to make the case for the creation of a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of a broad health care overhaul.

As Congress prepares to tackle a health care overhaul proposed by President Obama, no issue is causing more friction than the idea of creating a government-run insurance plan that would be open to most or all Americans. Most Republicans and private insurers oppose the idea, seeing it as a back-door path to a European-style government-run health care system. But many Democrats say it is needed to achieve systemic changes in the health care system.

Democrats on the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee pointed to fast-rising costs in Medicare’s prescription drug program as evidence of the need for a government insurance plan to compete with those offered by private insurers. There currently is no government-run drug plan available to seniors enrolled in Medicare.

Continue reading.

The GOP’s stated reason for opposing government-run insurance and single-payer healthcare is that the government is no good at running things, whereas private enterprise can do a good job efficiently. (This requires ignoring what’s happening in the financial market.) But if they really believe that, why on earth would they object to having private insurers compete with a government plan: if the GOP is right, people will overwhelmingly go for the private plans, and the government-run plan would just wither away. But even the GOP doesn’t believe the case it’s trying to make.

Very good post at Balloon Juice (do click and read), emphasizing again the choice that must be made regarding embryos left over from in-vitro fertilization: throw them away? or use them to do research that could make millions healthy? Which option is more "pro-life"?

Some may point out that there’s a program to adopt those left over embryos: the "snowflake" babies (so called, apparently, because the adoptees are always white). As I point out in this earlier post, by July of 2006 adoptive parents had taken 128 from the 400,000 available, an adoption rate of more than three-hundredths of 1%. The other 99.96% will either be thrown in the trash or used for medical research to save millions of lives. Which makes more sense, ethically, morally, and in terms of common sense?

Do you floss? Daily? Monkeys do (at least some monkeys). Video at the link.

Via Kevin Drum, this excellent and informative chart from Justin Fox:

Click to enlarge. Since the graph is based on percentage of the workforce, the comparisons are valid. (I.e., looking at percentages instead of absolute numbers corrects for the growth in the size of the workforce.)

Now today’s recession (the one that started Dec. ’07) looks much less frightening. The curve hasn’t started to flatten, but the descent is much more gradual than in the depression that began in 1929.

I don’t currently have a Kitchenaid mixer, but I have had them. They’re great, and take a look at this:

It works great, it says here.

Some very good points by knowledgeable insiders. Click and read.

Excellent point made by Stauber:

Most western democracies guarantee their citizens a right to medical services through their own version of government managed single payer health care. But such a system has been attacked in the US as "socialized medicine" since the 1950s especially by lobbyists for the insurance and drug industries who would see their profits decline. Although Barack Obama was elected on a health care reform platform, his version ignores single payer. Nor is it advocated by his allies in the well-funded coalition called Health Care for America Now, composed of MoveOn, USAction, ACORN, Americans United for Change, the unions SEIU and UFCW and other liberal heavy hitters. Journalist Russell Mokhiber, founder of the new group Single Payer Action, notes that no advocate of a single payer system was invited to the recent White House summit on health care reform. Only protests by Progressive Democrats of America and others won an invitation for Congressman John Conyers, sponsor of the United States National Health Care Act: H.R.676. Mokhiber quotes Dr. David Himmelstein of Physicians for a National Health Program: “The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he’s caving in to corporate health care interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform," even though "the majority of Americans favor single payer, and it’s the most popular reform option among doctors and health economists."

Emphasis added. I’m disappointed in Obama that he won’t even make a case for single-payer.

I really like Mary Kane’s reporting on business and financial matters. Here are two good columns worth clicking through to read:

The Peculiar Ethics of AIG Employees and Their Bonuses, which begins:

Andrew Ross Sorkin takes a shot at explaining why we have to pay those AIG bonuses today in The New York Times. Sorkin explains that he knows it’s not a popular view to even try to justify the bonuses — but it’s the new reality of  how the business world works in post-bailout America.

And it’s all far worse than you might think.

Sorkin offers an answer to a question I’ve been asking for a while: …

Bailed Out Firms Finding Ways to Flout Compensation Caps, which begins:

More news on the business ethics front: Some Wall Street firms receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer bailout funds are finding creative ways to get around executive compensation limits imposed by the government, The Wall Street Journal reports: …

I remember this exercise from gym class in jr high. Via Lifehacker.com.

Two items from CAP:

Republicans have appointed Sen. John Thune (R-SD) to coordinate a broad campaign aimed at defeating the Employee Free Choice Act. Thune is working to focus "the lobbying power of business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and coalitions such as the Alliance for Worker Freedom against the measure."

A new Gallup Poll finds that a majority of Americans, 53 percent, favor the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for unions to organize workers. "Independents lean in favor of such a law, 52% vs. 41%." Thirty-nine percent oppose the legislation.

Again from CAP:

Responding to a new report on Rep. John Murtha’s (D-PA) questionable connection to a defense research center, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas writes that it is time to stop tolerating "any corruption in our ranks." "House Democrats have been blocking an ethics investigation into this matter," writes Kos. "That has to stop now."

Damn straight, I say.

Received via email from the Center for American Progress:

"The Obama administration is considering making veterans use private insurance to pay for treatment of combat and service-related injuries," a move that has earned widespread criticism from veterans groups. IAVA Director Paul Rieckhoff said the proposal "is bad for the country and bad for veterans," while Joe Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, called it "a betrayal." Watch Rieckhoff discuss the idea with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow:

Elana Schor at TPM talks to Rep. Sherman:

Rep. Brad Sherman (CA), a senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, told TPMDC today that the Obama administration could have prevented excessive bonuses from being paid out at AIG — but it missed the chance.

Sherman told me in an interview today that the Treasury Department wouldn’t have to be withholding $30 billion in aid from AIG until the company restructures its bonus payments, because Congress already had given Treasury the authority to prevent those bonuses from being paid.

Referring to the original bailout Congress passed in October, Sherman told me:

We had a provision in there that said Treasury was supposed to establish, by regulation, standards for executive compensation. We required that to be done — had it been done, it would have been binding, whether [or not] these contracts had been signed earlier. It’s entirely within the power of the federal government to have contracts modified [at companies receiving public aid]. Nixon had contracts modified by the federal government. We gave a similar power to Treasury.

Sherman voted against the bailout, he explained, because he didn’t believe that Treasury would use the power given to it by Congress. As it turned out, the department ultimately exercised its executive compensation powers last month, but the final regulations were riddled with loopholes — and only applied to companies receiving “extraordinary” assistance from the government in the future, a standard that no company has officially met so far.

Sherman has been at the forefront of the debate over executive compensation since the earliest days of the bailout. It was Sherman who first sounded the alarm to TPMDC over efforts to remove CEO pay caps from the stimulus bill, sparking a flurry of public attention that kept the caps (somewhat) intact.

The California Democrat believes that the solution to AIG’s woes is outright government receivership, a prospect that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) raised with me earlier today.

But Sherman also counseled …

Continue reading.

UPDATE: From a comment to the original post:

One speculation might be that since the Treasury Department is filled with bankers, many of whom already have Wall Street experience and further down many who want jobs on Wall Street when they leave government, they already agree with Wall Street that government has no business interfering with what happens on Wall Street.

This is a speculation, but I don’t think it is much of a stretch from reality.

I often used dried mushrooms. Edward Schneider loves them and has some good recommendations at the link. In particular, he links to Earthy Delights, an on-line source for a great variety of dried mushrooms. I ordered some and will be experimenting with them in days to come.

ThinkProgress reports:

Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, Larry Summers, head of President Obama’s National Economic Council, called insurance giant AIG’s plan to pay out $165 million in bonuses “outrageous” but insisted there was little the government could do about it. This despite the $170 billion in taxpayer funds that have been given to AIG. Summers cited the sanctity of contracts:

SUMMERS: We are a country of law. There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system.

Summers said that efforts by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner had successfully “scaled back” the bonuses, but AIG chief Edward Liddy, defending the bonuses, told Geithner, “quite frankly, AIG’s hands are tied.”

Of course, not all contracts are sacrosanct. When Detroit’s Big Three arrived in Washington last year to plead for federal bailout funds, the right wing demanded that the United Auto Workers ignore their contracts and accept “steep cuts in pay and benefits” — on top of the cuts they already shouldered in 2007. The UAW agreed to “make major concessions in its contracts,” acceding to most of the right’s demands:

UAW President Ron Gettelfinger emerged from the meeting to say the union would rework a retiree health care trust fund, eliminate the union’s maligned jobs bank program…and cut additional measures that would loosen the union’s trademark job-security protections.

Along with other commenters, the American Prospect’s Robert Kuttner pointed out the government’s double standard on contracts, telling George Stephanopoulos yesterday, “You don’t think when the auto workers come in as part of the auto rescue deal, they’re not being asked to abrogate contracts? Of course they are.”

The Obama administration also supports rewriting mortgage contracts. It “has moved aggressively to pressure lenders to renegotiate the terms of mortgages,” and Obama supports an idea to allow bankruptcy judges to change the terms of a mortgage to help homeowners stay afloat.

To his credit, Obama today ordered Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses.” But it’s still clear that while workers’ contractual benefits can be eviscerated in the name of bailout eligibility, millionaire bankers’ bonuses are a more sacrosanct part of “a country of law” where “there are contracts.”

Update: The Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo explains why the AIG bonus debacle makes the perfect case for nationalization.

Update: Writing on Huffington Post, four economists aren’t buying the administration’s argument that its hands are essentially tied. It is "quite possible to abort this outrage by decisive exercise of public authority," they write, adding, "Remember that this is a firm that is 79.9% owned by the United States government." They argue that Treasury should order the payments halted, that Liddy be forced to resign, and that an investigation into AIG be launched.

He may be infallible, but it’s only on matters of faith and morals and when speaking ex cathedra. On HIV treatment and prevention, he’s just this old German crank full of wrong notions. The BBC reports:

Pope Benedict XVI has said that handing out condoms is not the answer in the fight against HIV/Aids, as he makes his first visit to Africa as pontiff.

Speaking en route to Cameroon, he said distribution of condoms "increases the problem". The Vatican urges abstinence.

The Pope will also visit Angola on his week-long trip, where thousands are expected to attend open-air masses…

… Speaking to reporters on his way to Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, the Pope said HIV/Aids was "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which can even increase the problem".

The solution lies in a "spiritual and human awakening" and "friendship for those who suffer", the AFP news agency quotes him as saying.

While in Africa, the pontiff is expected to talk to young people about the Aids epidemic and explain to them why the Catholic Church recommends sexual abstinence as the best way to prevent the spread of the disease.

He gave a similar message to African bishops who visited the Vatican in 2005, when he told them that abstinence and fidelity, not condoms, were the means to tackle the epidemic…

Full story here. I would be very interested in seeing evidence that distributing condoms increases the rate of AIDS.

I went for a shave stick this morning, and the Patchouli was a blast from the past. The Rooney Style 1 Size 1 produce an excellent lather, and the Gillette NEW with a Wilkinson Sword blade did a fine job. Penhaligon’s Blenheim Bouquet provided a fine finish, which I shall now complement with a mug of coffee.