Later On

It’s not yet evident here in Monterey.

From the Washington Post:

Within a year

– Provides a $250 rebate to Medicare prescription drug plan beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out.

90 days after enactment

– Provides immediate access to high-risk pools for people who have no insurance because of preexisting conditions.

Six months after enactment

– Bars insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick.

– Bars insurers from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions.

– Bars insurers from imposing lifetime caps on coverage.

– Requires insurers to allow young people to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26.

2011

– Requires individual and small group market insurance plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans would have to spend at least 85 percent.

2013

– Increases the Medicare payroll tax and expands it to dividend, interest, and other unearned income for singles earning more than $200,000 and joint filers making more than $250,000.

2014

– Provides subsidies for families earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level — or, under current guidelines, about $88,000 a year — to purchase health insurance.

– Requires most employers to provide coverage or face penalties.

– Requires most people to obtain coverage or face penalties.

2018

– Imposes a 40 percent excise tax on high-end insurance policies.

By 2019

– Expands health insurance coverage to 32 million people.

Zachary Roth at TPMMuckraker:

Now that President Obama has signed health-care reform into law, opponents of the bill are pinning their hopes of stopping it on a last-ditch legal strategy. A group of 13 state attorneys general has filed suit (pdf), arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

The bid seems far-fetched at first. But the Roberts Court has recently shown a willingness to strike down landmark legislation — charges of judicial activism be damned. So, given the stakes, it’s worth asking: Could health-care reform have made it through the congressional gauntlet, only to end up dying in the courts?

In recent media appearances, the AGs — the most high-profile of whom have been Ken Cuccinelli of Virginia, Bill McCollum of Florida, and Henry McMaster of South Carolina — have made a grab-bag of claims, among them that the bill violates state sovereignty. That’s a contention that no court is likely to have much time for. As Steve Schwinn, an associate law professor at John Marshall Law School has written, state laws that aim to override the federal mandate "are almost surely unconstitutional, as conflicting directly with the federal requirement."

The stronger argument in the arsenal of the AGs — many of whom happen to be running for governor — relates to the Commerce Clause, the section of the Constitution that empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce. The AGs focus on the provision of the bill that requires almost all Americans to obtain health insurance. They argue that imposing a penalty on people merely for declining to buy insurance is outside the scope of Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause. "For the federal government to be telling people that they must buy health insurance, or they must buy anything at all, is not one of the powers that is give to the federal government by the Constitution," McMaster declared on Fox yesterday. "Nowhere does it say that the federal government can require a private citizen to go out and buy health insurance or anything else. It’s not a part of the Commerce Clause power."

This argument isn’t, as some reform supporters may wish to see it, merely a bizarre and desperate concoction of the far-right wing — akin, for instance, to the pseudo-legal arguments advanced by "Constitutionalists" for why Obama’s presidency is illegitimate. Over the last six months, it’s been embraced by several respected conservative legal scholars. And more importantly, an emerging jurisprudence from the conservative court does show a willingness to limit the scope of the Commerce Clause.

Last September, David Rivkin and Lee Casey, former Justice Department lawyers during the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations who played prominent roles in support of the Bush 43 administration’s detention policies, noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that in a 1995 case, U.S. v. Lopez, the Supreme Court invalidated a law that made it a crime simply to possess a gun near a school, holding that the law did not "regulate any economic activity and did not contain any requirement that the possession of a gun have any connection to past interstate activity or a predictable impact on future commercial activity." Likewise, Rivkin and Casey wrote, a health-care mandate also wouldn’t regulate any "activity." "Simply being an American would trigger it."

Randy Barnett, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown Law School, agrees: …

Continue reading.

Interesting article at Essential Reads by Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at LSE:

Harriet Hayes:  I don’t even know what the sides are in the culture wars.

Matt Albie:  Well, your side hates my side because you think we think you are stupid, and my side hates your side because we think you are stupid.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, Nevada Day, Part I

It is difficult to define a whole school of political ideology precisely, but one may reasonably define liberalism (as opposed to conservatism) in the contemporary United States as the genuine concern for the welfare of genetically unrelated others and the willingness to contribute larger proportions of private resources for the welfare of such others.  In the modern political and economic context, this willingness usually translates into paying higher proportions of individual incomes in taxes toward the government and its social welfare programs.  Liberals usually support such social welfare programs and higher taxes to finance them, and conservatives usually oppose them.

Defined as such, liberalism is evolutionarily novel.  Humans (like other species) are evolutionarily designed to be altruistic toward their genetic kin, their friends and allies, and members of their deme (a group of intermarrying individuals) or ethnic group.  They are not designed to be altruistic toward an indefinite number of complete strangers whom they are not likely ever to meet or interact with.  This is largely because our ancestors lived in a small band of 50-150 genetically related individuals, and large cities and nations with thousands and millions of people are themselves evolutionarily novel.

The examination of the 10-volume compendium The Encyclopedia of World Cultures, which describes all human cultures known to anthropology (more than 1,500) in great detail, as well as extensive primary ethnographies of traditional societies, reveals that liberalism as defined above is absent in these traditional cultures.  While sharing of resources, especially food, is quite common and often mandatory among hunter-gatherer tribes, and while trade with neighboring tribes often takes place, there is no evidence that people in contemporary hunter-gatherer bands freely share resources with members of other tribes.

Because all members of a hunter-gatherer tribe are genetic kin or at the very least friends and allies for life, sharing resources among them does not qualify as an expression of liberalism as defined above.  Given its absence in the contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, which are often used as modern-day analogs of our ancestral life, it may be reasonable to infer that sharing of resources with total strangers that one has never met or is not likely ever to meet – that is, liberalism – was not part of our ancestral life.  Liberalism may therefore be evolutionarily novel, and the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely than less intelligent individuals to espouse liberalism as a value.

Analyses of large representative samples, from both the United States and the United Kingdom, confirm this prediction.  In both countries, more intelligent children are more likely to grow up to be liberals than less intelligent children.  For example, among the American sample, those who identify themselves as “very liberal” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 106.4, whereas those who identify themselves as “very conservative” in early adulthood have a mean childhood IQ of 94.8.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve mentioned a few times that the healthcare legislation will now start being improved and polished. Jon Walker at FireDogLake nominates 6 high-priority fixes:

This health care reform bill passed late last night and soon to be signed into law is a seriously flawed piece of legislation, for it fails to achieve the goals of real health care reform. Now that it is essentially the law of the land, the country needs to work diligently at the federal and state levels to correct many of the most egregious problems with the legislation before the reform package fully goes into effect in 2014. The six main areas that need to be fixed are: cost control, enforcement, individual mandate, abortion, competition, and immigration.

1) Lack of Real Cost Control

This bill does not create real cost control and will not bring down premiums for most Americans. Congress and state legislatures need to adopt real cost control measures like: drug re-importation, Medicare direct drug price negotiation, a public insurance option, Medicare buy-in, or a central provider reimbursement negotiator (all-payer system). These changes would save the government and regular Americans hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

The bill also needs to provide a better pathway for states to opt-out of this bill so they can experiment with better health care models that could truly bring down cost.

2) Dangerously Weak Enforcement

There are some good new regulations, but regulations are only as good as the strength of the agency tasked to enforce them. This bill is dangerously lacking in this area, leaving enforcement mainly up to the same state insurance commissioners that now often lack the will, funding, or power to hold the private insurance companies honest. Only a national exchange and a federal insurance commissioner would have the power to make sure the new regulations are more than over-hyped window dressing.

3) Individual Mandate

The individual mandate, which uses the IRS to force people to buy a product from a poorly regulated private industry, is an affront to the American people. The policy is not needed, and must be corrected before it has a chance to go into effect. People must be offered the choice of a public alternative, or the individual mandate must be repealed. Alternatives like a back premium payment system could achieve a similar policy goal to an individual mandate without a massive expansion of the IRS or government coercion.

4) Abortion

This bill is a massive rollback of a woman’s right to choose. It would take away the abortion coverage of millions of Americans. The system of exchanges and affordability tax credits could easily be modified to ensure federal funds are not used to pay for abortions, while still not taking away the ability of women and small businesses to buy insurance packages that cover abortion. Having an individual mandate that forces women to buy insurance, but also a law that prevents them from getting insurance that covers a legal medical procedure, is a disgusting abuse of women’s rights.

5) Lack of Health Insurance Competition

The bill will do almost nothing to address the problem of lack of competition in the health insurance market. Repealing the anti-trust exemption and adding a public option would be two big steps toward solving the problem. Creating an all-payer system would make it easier for new insurers to enter new markets. Requiring a standardized insurance package, instead of a confusing set of choices based on actuarial value, would allow Americans to do real apples-to-apples comparison shopping. Finally, adding much stronger risk adjustment mechanisms would force insurance companies to compete on quality instead of on avoiding the sickest Americans.

6) Immigration

Under this almost-law, undocumented immigrants would not be allowed to buy insurance on the new exchanges, even if they are willing to pay the full cost of the insurance with their own money. This policy is not only cruel and immoral, but fiscally irresponsible. The more undocumented immigrants that pay for their own health care, the more taxpayers save by not being forced to pick up the cost of undocumented immigrants’ uncompensated care when they use the emergency rooms.

The White House and Democratic leaders have made many promises about health care reform throughout this long and winding process—from guaranteeing affordable, quality care for everyone to pledging tougher regulation of the medical industrial complex that created this broken system in the first place. If the majority party wants to honestly deliver on these promises—not to mention if they want to remain in the majority—then a concerted and immediate effort is required to prove that this week’s legislation is truly the first step toward reform, and not the last.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com:

This is response to the numerous critics who have suggested that the Democrats were somehow unethical, anti-democratic or even tyrannical to enact their health care policy at a time when it polls poorly in most opinion surveys. I find this argument to be exceptionally weak. You can certainly argue that the health care bills are bad policy and that enacting them in spite of what seems to be substantial opposition is foolhardy — and it absolutely is unusual for Congress to enact bills of this magnitude with such tenuous public support.

But unethical? Was the "will of the electorate" breached? I think any such framing has to contend with the following 14 arguments:

1. That Obama and Democratic Congress were democratically elected by very robust majorities on a platform which explicitly included health-care reform and has since time immemorial

2. That the voters have almost immediate recourse in the form of midterm elections that will take place in eight months and a Presidential election that will take place in two years — both of which come before the most substantial parts of the legislation are enacted.

3. That polls show the overall concepts of reforming the healthcare system and providing for universal coverage were popular at the start of the process and remain reasonably popular now.

4. That polls show that the specific details of the Democratic plan are (mostly) popular, and that when a neutral and accurate description of the contents of the bills are read to the respondent, support usually increases to plurality or majority levels.

5. That substantial elements of the public lack basic knowledge about verifiable facts of the bill, sometimes because of deliberate misrepresentations on the part of the bill’s opponents.

6. That history suggests that endeavors of this nature (Medicare, Social Security, Romneycare) generally become popular and are appreciated by the large majority of voters at some point after they become law.

7. That a tangible percentage of those who register as opposed to the bill oppose it from the left — probably enough to form a majority with those who support it — and may nevertheless prefer it to the status quo (the more explicitly a poll compares the current proposals with the status quo — see Question 25 here — the more favorable the results tend to be).

8. That opinion polling is an inexact science — especially on complex questions like health care — and that it is sometimes conducted by those with perverse incentives.

9. That manipulating the opinions of voters in order to affect instantaneous public opinion surveys has become a more-or-less explicit goal of all parties in a legislative negotiation, and that the winner of the "game" of manipulating public opinion will often simply be the most skilled craftsman/technician (of course this is also true to some large extent of electoral politics).

10. That the polling is impacted by the fact that the health care bills tend to help a small number of people greatly (the uninsured) while potentially hurting a larger number of people slightly (such as through higher deficits and taxes) — and that these inequities stem not from the "state of nature" but from arbitrary policy decisions made by past U.S. governments that benefited certain groups (such those employed by large businesses) at the expense of others: Is this also a kind of ‘tyranny of the majority’?

11. That the groups who would benefit the most from health care reform tend to be politically disenfranchised and may not have their views reflected by polls, especially those of registered or likely voters.

12. That only a relatively small minority of the public wants the Congress to give up on health care reform, but that there are few obvious alternatives to the current proposals that are both politically tenable and fiscally responsible.

13. That the United States is a constitutional republic rather than a direct democracy.

14. That were the Congress closer to a direct democracy — such as by having proportional representation of Senators, non-gerrymandered congressional districts, and a norm for majority-rules procedures in the Senate — health care reform would have been signed into law months ago and would likely be substantially more liberal and sweeping than the reforms that have in fact been enacted.

The World Health Organization has some interesting statistics. You can see them in this article in the Guardian, and I also copied the figures into an Excel spreadsheet (click the link to download) so that you can sort on any column.

UPDATE: Unnecessary effort on my part. They already provided a better spreadsheet for downloading.

Chart via Andrew Sullivan (click to enlarge):

From Crooks & Liars:

Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President’s signature on the health care bill:

1. Adult children may remain as dependents on their parents’ policy until their 27th birthday
2. Children under age 19 may not be excluded for pre-existing conditions
3. No more lifetime or annual caps on coverage
4. Free preventative care for all
5. Adults with pre-existing conditions may buy into a national high-risk pool until the exchanges come online. While these will not be cheap, they’re still better than total exclusion and get some benefit from a wider pool of insureds.
6. Small businesses will be entitled to a tax credit for 2009 and 2010, which could be as much as 50% of what they pay for employees’ health insurance.
7. The “donut hole” closes for Medicare patients, making prescription medications more affordable for seniors.
8. Requirement that all insurers must post their balance sheets on the Internet and fully disclose administrative costs, executive compensation packages, and benefit payments.
9. Authorizes early funding of community health centers in all 50 states (Bernie Sanders’ amendment). Community health centers provide primary, dental and vision services to people in the community, based on a sliding scale for payment according to ability to pay.
10. AND no more rescissions. Effective immediately, you can’t lose your insurance because you get sick.

I think that most people will see these as good and valuable. Interesting that the GOP has decided to run this November on repealing these benefits, but of course few would say that the GOP is intelligent.

Nicki Gostin at Kitchen Daily:

McDonald’s officials in Shanghai attempted to reassure customers that their food is fine to eat after a Denver nutritionist published claims that it is packed with preservatives.

Joann Bruso, whose website is called BabyBites.info, left a Happy Meal (a product primarily eaten by children) out for one year…that’s right a whole year. The horrifying results? She alleges that the food did not change at all.

“It sat on my shelf for a year as a silent witness to our fast-food industry. It never smelled bad. The food did not decompose,” she wrote.

McDonald’s issued the following statement: “No preservatives are added to the beef patties in McDonald’s hamburgers.” It went on to trumpet McDonald’s commitment to sanitation and freshness.

It may be true that there are no preservatives in the meat, but what they shrewdly omitted is what goes into the buns, lettuce, cheese and sauces.

On the McDonald’s website over a dozen ingredients are listed for a Big Mac bun including azodicarbonamide. (Maybe they should include that in the little ditty listing the ingredients: Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on an azodicarbonamide sesame-seed bun!)

The cheese has something called calcium disodium EDTA, to protect its flavor, and the fries have sodium acid pyrophosphate. Even the pickle slices contain preservatives. After reading the Dr. Seuss-like list of ingredients one could hardly describe it as a paragon to freshness (it barely even resembles food).

UPDATE: Marion Nestle very skeptical of this study.

Hilary Parker tells us that something we’ve all suspected is true:

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.
In addition to causing significant weight gain in lab animals, long-term consumption of high-fructose corn syrup also led to abnormal increases in body fat, especially in the abdomen, and a rise in circulating blood fats called triglycerides. The researchers say the work sheds light on the factors contributing to obesity trends in the United States.
“Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn’t true, at least under the conditions of our tests,” said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. “When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they’re becoming obese — every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don’t see this; they don’t all gain extra weight.”

A Princeton University research team, including (from left) undergraduate Elyse Powell, psychology professor Bart Hoebel, visiting research associate Nicole Avena and graduate student Miriam Bocarsly, has demonstrated that rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup — a sweetener found in many popular sodas — gain significantly more weight than those with access to water sweetened with table sugar, even when they consume the same number of calories. The work may have important implications for understanding obesity trends in the United States.

In results published online March 18 by the journal Pharmacology, Biochemistry and Behavior, the researchers from the Department of Psychology and the Princeton Neuroscience Institute reported on two experiments investigating the link between the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup and obesity.

The first study showed that male rats given water sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup in addition to a standard diet of rat chow gained much more weight than male rats that received water sweetened with table sugar, or sucrose, in conjunction with the standard diet. The concentration of sugar in the sucrose solution was the same as is found in some commercial soft drinks, while the high-fructose corn syrup solution was half as concentrated as most sodas.

The second experiment — the first long-term study of the effects of high-fructose corn syrup consumption on obesity in lab animals — monitored weight gain, body fat and triglyceride levels in rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup over a period of six months. Compared to animals eating only rat chow, rats on a diet rich in high-fructose corn syrup showed characteristic signs of a dangerous condition known in humans as the metabolic syndrome, including abnormal weight gain, significant increases in circulating triglycerides and augmented fat deposition, especially visceral fat around the belly. Male rats in particular ballooned in size: Animals with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained 48 percent more weight than those eating a normal diet. In humans, this would be equivalent to a 200-pound man gaining 96 pounds.

“These rats aren’t just getting fat; they’re demonstrating characteristics of obesity, including substantial increases in abdominal fat and circulating triglycerides,” said Princeton graduate student Miriam Bocarsly. “In humans, these same characteristics are known risk factors for high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, cancer and diabetes.” …

Continue reading. And avoid ALL food products that contain high-fructose corn syrup—and it’s EVERYwhere, including rice vinegar and Worcestershire sauce. Read the ingredients, folks. (And thank the Democrats that the ingredients are even listed.)

David Weigel in the Washington Independent:

The moment that the House of Representatives passed the health care reform bill, 10 Republican state attorneys general were ready for it. Early Monday morning, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli announced plans to sue on the grounds that the federal government was abusing its “power to regulate interstate commerce” by passing a personal mandate for health care. Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum agreed, calling the mandate an attempt “to fine or tax someone just for living.” On the surface, conservative opposition to universal health care had dusted itself off and charged right back into the fight.

But beneath the headlines, press releases, petitions and donation drives that followed the historic vote, lawyers and legislators are less confident that health care reform can be repealed — much less that it can be repealed quickly. In Idaho and Tennessee, two states where state opt-outs of the federal mandate have passed (in Idaho, the legislation has even been signed by the governor), the people who will decide whether to challenge the bill are treading more carefully than the rhetoric suggests.

“Everybody needs to take a deep breath,” said Bob Cooper, a spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden. “This bill is a few thousand pages long. We need some time to review it. We need time to see whether or not it impinges on rights, how so, and whether we can bring a case that has merit. There are serious sanctions for attorneys who file frivolous lawsuits.”

Mae Beavers, a Republican state senator in Tennessee, was also cautious about how to proceed with a health care challenge. Her Tennessee Health Freedom Act sailed through the upper house, becoming a model for pre-emptive opt-out bills in other states. And while she expects a companion bill to move through the lower house, the possibility of an immediate challenge to the reform bill seemed remote.

“Our legislation says that whenever the national health care would start, our citizens will have a choice,” said Beavers. “I assume it would take a while to put together.”

The problem with a challenge, say conservatives, is that the mandate for health care — an idea with origins on the right that has become anathema ever since its implementation in Massachusetts — will not take effect until 2014. Whether attorneys general can successfully challenge the mandate until then is unclear. Thomas Woods, a conservative scholar who is putting the finishing touches on a Regnery-published book about nullification, suggested that challenges to the mandate will be fruitless, working their way through a legal system that has no great record of repealing major legislation.

“If states file legal challenges,” asked Woods, “who do they file them with? The federal courts! I wouldn’t even go to the legal level. From my point of view nullification is a way to announce to the government that your state is ready to engage in civil disobedience. It boils down to this: We are confident that obeying the will of the people means not enforcing this mandate. So what are you going to do now?” …

Continue reading.

The GOP has consistently said that passing healthcare reform would doom the Democrats in November.

Obvious question: Then why did the GOP fight the legislation so much that not one would vote for it? Wouldn’t they at least not oppose the legislation (though without voting for it) if they truly believed it would hurt the Dems?

As the news stories start to roll out about the benefits of the bill, it’s becoming obvious that this will be a very popular piece of legislation. So it looks as though the GOP were—brace yourself—lying.

Erika Bolstad in McClatchy:

Rep. Don Young of Alaska plans to barrel through the Republican Party’s ban on earmarks by submitting requests regardless of his party’s one-year moratorium on the practice.

So will he get any? No one seems to know, because Republicans have never done this before. Young, a prolific earmarker who’s deeply unhappy with the recently enacted GOP ban, so far appears to be the only Republican who’s submitting any requests, which were due late Monday.

This year, Young’s office has received 289 requests totaling $1.4 billion from various groups, communities and boroughs in Alaska, as well as from the state of Alaska, said his spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny. She added that they were still deciding which projects would be recommended, but that those most likely to get a nod would focus on job creation — their contribution to Alaska’s economy — and health care.

"We will be submitting requests as we always have," Kenny said. "Representative Young’s stance is that as long as Alaskans continue to request federal funding for their projects of interest, he will continue requesting that funding on their behalf."

Since the top Republican on each of the House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittees won’t budget any earmarks as part of the process, however, it will be Democrats who decide whether earmarks are granted. Young, who’s one of the most senior members of the House, has little to lose by flouting the GOP ban.

Ultimately, the decision on whether Alaska will get any earmarks could filter all the way up to the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Rep. David Obey, D-Wis.

Critics long have maintained that the special spending allows powerful lawmakers — not merit — to determine where the money goes. The check on earmarks started earlier this month when Democrats decided to ban earmarks to for-profit companies. They shifted such spending to the Defense Department budget, where small and disadvantaged businesses could present innovative ideas in a competitive bidding process, rather than through earmarks. [This is clearly a result of Nancy Pelosi's initiative in getting independent investigators working on Congressional ethical complaints---see this article. – LG]

Republicans responded with a one-year, flat-out ban on earmarks in appropriations bills. Privately, some Republican congressmen grumbled, but Young so far has been the only one to say he’ll sidestep the moratorium.

Young, the only congressman known to a generation of Alaskans, is perhaps best known for earmarks in the $286 billion highway bill that he oversaw in 2005 as the chairman of the House Transportation Committee. The bill contained $452 million for the Gravina Island and Knik Arm spans, which became known nationally as "bridges to nowhere" and came to symbolize the excess of the earmark age.

Because of Young’s prolific earmarking and the skillful earmarking of Republican former Sen. Ted Stevens, earmarks to the state have come to be known by the House Appropriations Committee under the catchphrase "sweaters for salmon."

Continue reading.

Greenwald:

One Republican leader after the next stood up yesterday to depict the health care bill as a grave threat to democracy because it was enacted in the face of disapproval from a majority of Americans.  Minority Leader John Boehner mourned:  "We have failed to listen to America.  And we have failed to reflect the will of our constituents.  And when we fail to reflect that will — we fail ourselves and we fail our country."  GOP Rep. Mike Pence thundered:  "We’re breaking with our finest traditions . . . . the consent of the governed."  That the health care bill destroys "the consent of the governed" because it is opposed by a majority of Americans has become the central theme of every talking-points-spouting, right-wing hack around.

Of course, these are the same exact people who spent years funding the Iraq War without end and without conditions even in the face of extreme public opposition, which consistently remained in the 60-65% range.  Indeed, the wholesale irrelevance of public opinion was a central tenet of GOP rule for eight years, as illustrated by this classic exchange between Dick Cheney and ABC News‘ Martha Radditz in May, 2008, regarding the administration’s escalation of the war at exactly the same time that public demands for withdrawal were at their height:

RADDATZ: Two-third of Americans say it’s not worth fighting.

CHENEY: So?

RADDATZ:  So?  You don’t care what the American people think?

CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls.

For years, the explicit GOP view of public opinion was that it is irrelevant and does not matter in the slightest.  Indeed, the view of our political class generally is that public opinion plays a role in how our government functions only during elections, and after that, those who win are free to do whatever they want regardless of what "the people" want.  That’s what George Bush meant in 2005 when he responded to a question about why nobody in his administration had been held accountable for the fraud that led to the Iraq War:  "We had an accountability moment, and that’s called the 2004 elections."  Watching these same Republicans now pretend that public opinion must be honored and that our democracy is imperiled when bills are passed without majority support is truly nauseating (of course, Democrats back then protested Cheney’s dismissal of public opinion as a dangerous war on democracy yet now insist that public opinion shouldn’t stop them from doing what they want).

A poll taken by WorldPublicOpinion.org in the wake of Cheney’s comments found that Americans overwhelmingly believe that public opinion should play a major role in key political debates, with 81% saying politicians "should pay attention to public opinion polls because this will help them get a sense of the public’s views," with only 18% saying "they should not pay attention to public opinion polls because this will distract them from deciding what they think is right."  And 83% believe "that the will of the people should have more influence that it does."

But, for better or worse, our political and media class does not believe that.  That’s why the GOP (with substantial Democratic help) funded the Iraq War indefinitely and without conditions even in the face of massive public opposition.  It’s why the Wall Street bailout was approved by both parties despite large-scale public opposition, and why a whole slew of other policies favored by majorities are dismissed as Unserious by the political class.  The Washington Post‘s Shailagh Murray explicitly said that public opinion is and should be irrelevant to what political leaders do because people are too ignorant to have their views matter:  "Would you want a department store manager or orthodontist running the Pentagon? I don’t think so."  The American political system is now based on the central premise that nothing is more irrelevant than public opinion, and nobody has embraced that premise more enthusiastically than the Republicans who ran the country for the eight years prior to Obama’s presidency, including those now most gravely insisting that public opinion must be respected lest the Republic fall.

Read the rest of this entry »

Greenwald:

One does not normally see this truth stated so starkly in places like Time Magazine — from Michael Scherer’s interesting article on AIPAC’s current strategy to "storm Congress":

The third "ask" that AIPAC supporters will make of Congress on Tuesday is to once again pass the $3 billion in U.S. aid provided annually to Israel. "It’s a very tough ask this year," [AIPAC lobbyist Steve] Aserkoff admitted, noting the U.S. domestic budgetary and economic challenges. Among other major purchases, the Israeli government has announced plans to replace its aging fleet of F-16 fighter jets with new, American-made F-35 fighters, a major cost that Israel hopes will be substantially born for [sic] by American taxpayers.

Those would be the same "American taxpayers" who are now being told that they have to suffer cuts in Medicare and Social Security because of budgetary constraints, who are watching as the most basic social services (the hallmark of being a developed country) are being rapidly abolished (from the 12th Grade to basic care for children, the infirm and elderly), and are burdened with a national debt so large that America’s bond ratings are being degraded by the minute.  Why should those same American taxpayers bear the enormous costs of Israel’s military purchases (as Israel enjoys booming economic growth)?  Especially if the issue is presented as cleanly and honestly as Scherer did here, and especially if Israel continues to extend its proverbial middle finger to even the most basic U.S. requests that it cease activities that harm American interests, how much longer can this absurdity be sustained?

On a related note, a new Rasmussen Poll found that only 58% of Americans now view "Israel as an ally" — down from 70% just nine months ago.  The same poll found that 49% of Americans believe Israel should be "required" to stop building settlements, with only 22% disagreeing.  That’s why the primary objective now of AIPAC and its bipartisan cast of Congressional servants is — as Scherer put it — "to pressure the Obama Administration to avoid airing disagreements publically [sic]."  Indeed:  you can’t have the American people knowing anything about the U.S./Israel relationship and the ways in which the interests of the two countries diverge. 

Having these issues discussed openly and having the American citizenry be informed might shatter all sorts of vital myths, which is exactly what has happened over the last month, which has, in turn, led to this change in public opinion (that, along with the fact that the Israeli Government, by being viewed as the opponent of Obama, has incurred the wrath of large numbers of Democrats who are loyal to Obama and automatically dislike any of his critics or opponents).  That’s why their overriding goal is to hide all these differences behind a wall of secrecy — "the Administration, to the extent that it has disagreements with Israel on policy matters, should find way[s] to do so in private," demanded Democratic Rep. Steve Israel — because an open examination of this "special relationship," how it really functions, and the costs and benefits it entails, is what they want most to avoid.  It’s common in a democracy for government officials to openly air their differences with allies; why should this be any different?

It looks d—d good. I’ll have to look up more recipes and give it a go.

Radley Balko at Reason.com:

The Jonathan Ayers story was already outrageous enough. Last September, Ayers, a 28-year-old Baptist pastor from Lavonia, Georgia, was gunned down by a North Georgia narcotics task force in the parking lot of a gas station. Ayers had not been a suspect in any drug investigation. And even today, police acknowledge he was not using or trafficking in illicit drugs. Instead, Ayers had either been ministering to or having an affair with (depending on whom you believe) Johanna Kayla Jones Barrett, the actual target of the investigation.

Ayers is yet more collateral damage in the boundlessly tragic and wasteful drug war, as are his widowed wife Abigail and the child she was carrying at the time of his death. But that’s really only the beginning of this mess. In a lawsuit filed last week, Abigail Ayers makes some astonishing new allegations about the competence of the police officers who killed her husband, the supervisors who hired them, and the law enforcement agencies and the grand jury that investigated Ayers’ death. Most damning: The police officer who killed Ayers wasn’t even authorized to be carrying a gun or a badge.

Hours before Ayers was killed, police say Johanna Barrett sold undercover officer Chance Oxner $50 worth of crack cocaine. According to an interview Barrett gave to the North Georgian newspaper shortly after Ayers’ death, the pastor had seen her walking near a gas station on her way back to an extended-stay motel where she was living with her boyfriend. Ayers, who had known Barrett for a number of years, offered her a ride back to the motel and gave her the money in his pocket, $23, to help pay her rent.

The police were trailing Barrett at the time. But instead of apprehending her at the motel, they instead followed Ayers, the stranger they’d just seen give her a ride and hand her some cash.

Ayers then pulled into a nearby gas station to withdraw money from an ATM. Shortly after he got back into his car, a black Escalade tore into the parking lot. Three officers, all undercover, got out of the vehicle and pointed their guns at Ayers. The pastor, understandably, attempted to escape. As he pulled out of the station, Ayers grazed Officer Oxner with his car. Officer Billy Shane Harrison then opened fire, shooting Ayers in the stomach. (You can watch surveillance video of the altercation here.) Ayers continued to drive, fleeing the parking lot for about a thousand yards before eventually crashing his car. He died at the hospital.

Read the rest of this entry »

From the Center for American Progress in an email:

Halliburton Co. and KBR Inc. withdrew an appeal yesterday that asked the U.S. Supreme Court to "block a lawsuit by a former military contractor who says she was raped by KBR co-workers in Iraq."

Former Halliburton/KBR employee Jamie Leigh Jones sued the company in 2005 after she was gang-raped by fellow employees and then put in a shipping container for "at least 24 hours without food or water."

Jones tried to sue the company for failing to protect her, but KBR argued that Jones’ employment contract — created for the company under the tenure of then-CEO Dick Cheney — warranted her claims being heard in private arbitration, without jury, judge, public record, or transcript of the proceedings. Basically, KBR argued that Jones’ brutal rape was a workplace injury — nothing more.

But in September, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Jones.

On Jan. 19, KBR petitioned the Supreme Court to to reverse the ruling. The contractor personally went after Jones’ integrity to argue that she shouldn’t have a fair and open hearing, saying she "sensationalize[d] her allegations" for the media.

Now, however, KBR has dropped its appeal, saying that it didn’t want to risk violating a federal provision that "restricts the Defense Department from doing business with companies that prohibit employees from seeking redress for certain crimes through the courts."

That provision was proposed by Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and vigorously opposed by Senate Republicans.

The Republicans who voted against the bill, surprisingly, generally have daughters (whom, I presume, they don’t want to protect against incidents like the one suffered by Jamie Leigh Jones). See this post for the list and the number of daughters each Senator voting "No" has.

Dan Colman at Open Culture:

An intriguing bit of news from the Yale Bulletin. It begins:

For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken.

Action still resulted in an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun, and conservation of energy remained intact. But for the tiniest fraction of a second at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), physicists created a symmetry-breaking bubble of space where parity no longer existed.

You can read more about what went down here. And, if you want to brush up your physics, head over to the Physics section of our Free Online Course collection. There you’ll find free physics courses from Yale, Stanford, MIT and other fine institutions of higher learning.