Later On

Take a look.

Perhaps you’ve read Sue Lowden and her “chickens for checkups” idea: bartering with your doctor over your healthcare. (See three posts by Steve Benen as he gradually becomes convinced that (a) she’s serious, and (b) she’s not backing down: first, second, third. They get progressively funnier.)

I think she’s got a great idea. I have to see my doctor on a follow-up visit in a couple of weeks, so I’ll just swing by Safeway and pick up a chicken, if he’s agreeable. Not a live chicken, that he or his wife would have to kill, clean, and butcher, but a nice whole chicken already cleaned and with the giblets in the cavity. I happen to have one at home right now: $4.66 total. I’d say that was a bargain.

I hope that I don’t have to give my gastroenterologist 100 chickens for my colonoscopy—though in fact that would be a bargain, given what I actually had to pay.

Still, the idea’s appealing: stop by the supermarket and pick up a chicken or two for the doctor before your next visit. Tell him Lowden sent you.

The previous post had an unexpectedly enlightened review of a book by a solid conservative, which gives one hope. But then one turns to what’s happening in Congress. Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress:

Several news outlets are reporting that Republicans are preparing to re-litigate the health care reform debate by blocking the nomination of Donald Berwick, Harvard University professor, to head the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As the Washington Post notes, “Democrats in the Senate said that, given Berwick’s national stature and broad-based support, he would be easily confirmed under ordinary circumstances,” but “Berwick must first clear the Senate Finance Committee, where ranking Republican Charles E. Grassley (Iowa) said that he plans to vigorously ‘explore the nominee’s preparedness for the enormous challenges that face the agency.’”

The Republican Policy Committee has already prepared a memo — which was obtained by The Wonk Room — that links Berwick to the British health care system and presents him as someone who supports rationing and a government takeover of health care (Download the full memo HERE):

Donald Berwick, President Obama’s nominee to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), has a history of support for government rationing of health care resources on cost grounds. He has spoken favorably about Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), which denies patients access to life-saving treatments the National Health Service (NHS) deems too expensive.The American people should have their eyes open to the ramifications of NICE-style rationing in the United States as part of Democrats’ brave new health care world. … They may see a Medicare Administrator who explicitly advocates for rationing as indicative of Democrats’ government takeover of health care…

All this is to be expected, particularly since Republicans have pledged to turn the 2010 midterm elections into a referendum on health care reform. But Berwick, no matter how “radical” Republicans consider him to be, will be working within the confines of a fairly conservative law.

Republicans are deliberately misinterpreting Berwick’s comments about transforming the American health care system from one that pays for the quantity of care into one that pays for value of care. Berwick has built a reputation of finding innovative ways of squeezing value out of every health care dollar and “persuading hospital administrators and doctors to adopt his recommendations.” But his approach — which is based on the idea that “less intensive, less invasive — and less expensive — healthcare can sometimes be more effective than the most aggressive care” — is nothing like the one-size-fits all government-takeover caricature.

Instead, he understands that to find solutions to specific problems, different communities will have to experiment with different solutions. “How could Congress possibly know enough to specify for every community, the exact design for care that is safe, effective, timely, patient-centered, equitable and sustainable?” Berwick asked during a speech in December. “The legislation does contain long sections focusing on quality,” Berwick acknowledged, “and there legislators lay out possibilities. But it is up to health care communities to test, adapt and perfect these strategies in real world.” His focus on improving care quality, while lowering costs has won over some fairly influential admirers. Nancy Nielsen, the immediate past president of the American Medical Association praises Berwick’s “ability to inspire doctors and hospital administrators to work together.” “Don is so widely respected because he has worked in such a collaborative way,” she said.

That behavior seems much more typical of the GOP today.

Jim Manzi reviews Liberty and Tyranny:

Jonah notes Ross Douthat’s very interesting post, in which Ross had this to say:

Conservative domestic policy would be in better shape if conservative magazines and conservative columnists were more willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.

I thought some about this over the past few days, and took this as a direct challenge.
Here goes.

I started to read Mark Levin’s massive bestseller Liberty and Tyranny a number of months ago as debate swirled around it. I wasn’t expecting a PhD thesis (and in fact had hoped to write a post supporting the book as a well-reasoned case for certain principles that upset academics just because it didn’t employ a bunch of pseudo-intellectual tropes). But when I waded into the first couple of chapters, I found that — while I had a lot of sympathy for many of its basic points — it seemed to all but ignore the most obvious counter-arguments that could be raised to any of its assertions. This sounds to me like a pretty good plain English meaning of epistemic closure. The problem with this, of course, is that unwillingness to confront the strongest evidence or arguments contrary to our own beliefs normally means we fail to learn quickly, and therefore persist in correctable error.

I’m not expert on many topics the book addresses, so I flipped to its treatment of a subject that I’ve spent some time studying — global warming — in order to see how it treated a controversy in which I’m at least familiar with the various viewpoints and some of the technical detail.

It was awful. It was so bad that it was like the proverbial clock that chimes 13 times — not only is it obviously wrong, but it is so wrong that it leads you to question every other piece of information it has ever provided.

Levin argues that human-caused global warming is nothing to worry about, and merely an excuse for the Enviro-Statists (capitalization in the original) to seize more power. It reads like a bunch of pasted-together quotes and stories based on some quick Google searches by somebody who knows very little about the topic, and can’t be bothered to learn. After pages devoted to talking about prior global cooling fears, and some ridiculous or cynical comments by advocates for emissions restrictions (and one quote from Richard Lindzen, a very serious climate scientist who disputes the estimated magnitude of the greenhouse effect, but not its existence), he gets to the key question on page 184 (eBook edition): …

Continue reading.

If conservatives actually start taking this approach, then there’s hope.

UPDATE: But of course conservatives won’t, because people with minds open to persuasion by reason and facts are not conservatives, they’re liberals. Andrew Sullivan blogs:

Larison on Manzi’s latest and the blowback:

The other day, Ross called for other conservatives to be more critical of Republican politicians and conservative “entertainers,” and Jim Manzi made the mistake of taking up this challenge and applying intellectual rigor and honesty to a prominent conservative radio host’s book on a subject he understands fairly well. The inevitable circling-of-the-wagons that has followed illustrates perfectly the problem Manzi was trying to address in Levin’s work. Not only do Manzi’s colleagues automatically defend Levin’s sub-par arguments, but they regard it as horribly bad form to dare criticize those arguments with the vehemence that their poor quality would seem to merit. Small wonder that there are so few “magazines and conservative columnists…willing to call out Republican politicians (and, to a lesser extent, conservative entertainers) for offering bromides instead of substance, and for pandering instead of grappling with real policy questions.”

Anonymous Liberal chimes in:

First, notice that neither Lopez nor McCarthy bother to address any of Manzi’s substantive points. They’re simply taking issue with the fact that he dared to use strong terms in critiquing the work of a member in good standing of the conservative media. McCarthy’s call for “civility” is particularly rich given that McCarthy himself has made a career out of posting totally off-the-wall and unhinged rants against his favorite left of center targets. The reference to Levin’s “widely-acclaimed book” is also unintentionally hilarious. The only acclamation the book received, of course, was from other members of the epistemically-closed community that Manzi’s describing, people who simply accept whatever a clown like Levin says at face value.

Lopez’ response is even more telling. In short, she says that Levin is defending the world against Tyranny and that’s all that matters. At a time when Freedom itself hangs in the balance, it makes no sense to go after one of the good guys. This kind of tribalism epitomizes everything that is wrong with the right wing approach to politics.

Steve Benen:

How Wall Street operates would seem to be of interest to the Tea Party crowd. After all, this is a matter at the core of many of their ostensible concerns — powerful elites, acting irresponsibly, ignoring the needs of the American mainstream, generating devastating consequences for everyone.

The legislative fight over reforming Wall Street, then, should be of great interest to the so-called "movement." But as Benjy Sarlin explained, Tea Partiers seem to be taking a pass on the major legislative fight of the day.

Tax Day rallies last week in Washington, D.C., were devoid of signs, slogans, and speeches on the finance bill, and influential right-leaning websites like Red State and Hot Air have all but ignored the issue this week, despite major movement on the Democrats’ legislation. There are some exceptions … but by and large there’s been no high-profile campaign to defeat the bill, and a number of conservative activists concede that the grassroots are inactive.

Dick Armey, president of Tea Party organizer FreedomWorks, acknowledged in an interview that his group has yet to make its mark on the debate.

"We haven’t had a chance to study it," Armey said.

What an interesting response. The Tea Party crowd didn’t study the health care bill, but the activists opposed it. They didn’t study tax policy, but they’re still whining incessantly about tax increases that haven’t happened. They didn’t study budget policy, but they still think Obama is responsible for huge deficits (he’s not).

But when it comes time to bring some accountability to a financial industry that pushed the global economy to the brink, Armey and his band of confused followers "haven’t had a chance to study it"? Since when does that matter?

Steve M. takes a compelling stab at explaining what’s up:

What’s really happening is that the GOP/teabag complex is having a little trouble getting the messaging on this one right. The big kahuna leaders can read a poll, and they know that, even as skepticism about affirmative government increases, Wall Street reform remains popular with the public at large. So they’re a tad reluctant to send a big ol’ tea party bus out there with anti-reform slogans — that might hurt the movement’s indie cred. They’re reluctant to urge the rank-and-file teabaggers’ Pied Pipers on Fox News to go full bore into transmitting anti-reform talking points — at least not until really solid talking points can be developed.

Chisun Lee for ProPublica:

The government is failing in more and more cases to produce evidence that the men it has imprisoned at Guantanamo belong there, according to ProPublica’s latest look at the lawsuits that some 100 captives have filed in federal court to seek their freedom. But the Obama administration continues to challenge the courts’ authority to make it release the prisoners.

In 34 out of the 47 cases that have been decided so far — over 70 percent — detainees have won judgments that the United States is subjecting them to indefinite detention as al-Qaida or Taliban enemies without proof, and that they must be released. Federal judges have been reviewing classified intelligence and interrogation reports since June 2008, when the Supreme Court recognized the detainees’ right to sue. The remaining prisoners have been held seven years or longer.

Even with the sensitive information blacked out, the judges’ opinions offer reams of detail about what the detainees were doing when they were captured, how the U.S. took custody of and interrogated them, and why the courts have rejected specific pieces of evidence as unreliable or even completely unbelievable in the vast majority of the cases. These opinions are summarized and also available in full in ProPublica’s updated database.

In ordinary criminal cases, a court order of release because of unjustified detention results in … release. But in the terrorism detention cases, it promises no more than the "possibility" of release, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week. Asked if the executive branch could take 10 years to release a detainee against whom there is no good evidence, he said only, "You would hope not."

The administration is expected to elaborate on its position that the courts can’t make it release unlawfully imprisoned captives at an appeals court argument this Thursday. The dispute holds implications beyond Guantanamo, because at its core it questions the meaning of the constitutional doctrine of habeas corpus — a fundamental American guarantee against unjust imprisonment — in the potentially expanding context of terrorism detention.

Despite denying its duty to do so in court, the administration has quietly been releasing many of the detainees who’ve won their lawsuits, known as habeas petitions. Twenty of the men have been transferred to other countries, while 14 remain at Guantanamo as the government appeals the judges’ decisions.

And, of course, Obama is the first American President to take on the role of judge, jury, and executioner, being willing to have American citizens killed merely on his say-so. To my mind, this is very much vigilante justice and murder.

Dan Colman at Open Culture:

Google and the Russian Railways recently joined forces to create a virtual tour of the historic Trans-Siberian railroad. It’s the longest railway in the world, moving from Moscow to Vladivostok, cutting across two continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. Now, you can take the six-day journey from the comfort of your own home. Through a special page on Google Maps, you can watch video of the trip unfold, as if you were a passenger, and also enjoy classic Russian literature, music and photos along the way. As you roll out of Moscow, start listening to a free audio version of Tolstoy’s War & Peace (in Russian, of course) and ease into the 150 hour trip. How’s that for an epic virtual journey?

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

From a conversation on Twitter yesterday about financial reform:

Brian Beutler: Corker warns that the GOP is screwing up by lying about reg reform:http://bit.ly/d9HXyw

Matt Yglesias: Has "lie like crazy" ever failed as a political strategy?

Bizarrely enough, it looks like the answer might be yes. GOP wordmeister Frank Luntz famously advised Republicans a couple of months ago to attack any financial reform bill as a "bailout" regardless of what was actually in it,and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell took that to heart and has been doing exactly that ever since.

Unfortunately for McConnell, it turns out there really is a limit to just how baldly you can lie and get away with it. The Senate reform bill quite plainly bans bailouts, and McConnell found himself under attack from all corners. President Obama called him out on this, PolitiFact labeled his statements flatly false, fellow Republican Bob Corker told reporters McConnell was wrong, and even Mark Halperin refused to dredge up some unlikely way to defend him. And guess what? It might actually be working:

After a week of attacking the pending legislation as a ticket to new taxpayer "bailouts," McConnell is striking a different tone. Monday on the Senate floor, he called for lawmakers to move beyond "personal attacks and questioning each others’ motives" to "fixing the problems in this bill."

And McConnell conceded, after being chastised by no less than President Obama in his weekly radio address, that "both parties agree on this point: no bailouts. In my view, that’s a pretty good start."

…."I’m happy to hear my counterpart, my friend, Senator McConnell talk about the need for more negotiations," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), in remarks on the floor following McConnell’s speech Tuesday. "We don’t stand in the way of that."

Granted, McConnell might just be changing tactics. And his change of heart may be motivated more by politics than the pummelling he took over this. After all, the bailout lie wasn’t really any worse than the death panel lie. The big difference is that healthcare reform was unanimously opposed by conservatives, so nobody minded the lie. Financial reform is a little different, and relentless hostility could pretty easily backfire. That makes lies a little more costly.

Still, we seem to have reached a limit of some kind, and McConnell crossed it. Maybe we should name this the McConnell Line or something so that we know when future politicians have crossed it.

David Lightman and Kevin Hall in McClatchy:

The Senate Agriculture Committee Wednesday approved by 13 to 8 tough new curbs on derivatives, the financial tools that had a big role in worsening the 2008 financial crisis — a bipartisan vote that sent a strong signal that a broader financial regulatory overhaul is within reach.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, joined the 12 committee Democrats in approving the new derivative limits, the first time a Senate Republican has joined with the Democrats in favor of key financial legislation. Other GOP members also talked in more conciliatory terms.

The derivatives vote was the final, and probably the most difficult, stop for the bill before it reaches the full Senate, perhaps as soon as Thursday. It is expected to be added to legislation that would change how financial institutions are regulated.

‘Wall Street’s interests are different from Main Street’s…Wall Street’s interest is to keep inefficient markets. This (legislation) is to provide efficient markets,” said Commodity Futures Trade Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, who worked at Wall Street financial giant Goldman Sachs for 18 years.

The committee measure would bring new transparency to a market that has thrived on private, often asymmetrical information flows that critics believe have worked to the benefit of Wall Street.

It would require that derivatives be traded through clearinghouses, where there is a referee between two private parties. Many derivatives would also have to be traded publicly on an exchange, where their buyers and sellers could be tracked.

Both the clearinghouses and exchanges would trigger far greater reporting to regulators about the trade, giving the government a greater understanding of these murky markets than now exists.

Kevin Hall reporting in McClatchy:

Angered at what it viewed as foot dragging, a special panel charged with getting to the bottom of the nation’s deep financial crisis issued a subpoena Wednesday to compel information from Moody’s Corp.

It was the first such subpoena issued by the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, and comes just days before Moody’s CEO Raymond McDaniel Jr. is scheduled to appear before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

In a statement, FCIC Chairman Phil Angelides and Vice Chairman Bill Thomas accused Moody’s of “failing to comply with a request for documents in a timely manner.”

Their subpoena follows a Monday news conference by California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown to announce court action against Moody’s to compel the company to comply with a subpoena Brown issued seven months ago.

Moody’s is under pressure on many fronts for its role in providing the investment grade ratings to complex financial deals backed by U.S. mortgages that proved to be anything but investment grade. These deals helped deepen the nation’s housing crisis, which provoked the broader financial crisis.

As a credit-rating agency, Moody’s enjoys free-speech protections since its business amounts to providing opinions about the credit worthiness of bonds and other securities. But the company is now facing class-action lawsuits, a suit by the state of Connecticut and a probe by the California attorney general because not only did it give an opinion but also consulted on the composition of complex deals it rated.

Legislation moving through Congress will impose tougher rules against this apparent conflict of interest, but the inquiry commission has until December to report back to Congress on the causes of the crisis and wants information now.

The commission had already announced …

Continue reading.

The Economist:

Innovators deserve to be rewarded for their labours. That basic principle underpins patent law, which offers temporary market monopolies to those who come up with useful inventions. But in the case of gene patents America has been too generous in its application of that sensible principle, according to a set of studies published this week in Genetics in Medicine.

Normally, patents are not granted for naturally occurring phenomena or laws of nature. Nonetheless the American patent office controversially allowed firms to patent diagnostics involving single genes. This has permitted firms to create genetic tests that command monopolies over testing for various diseases. The most famous of these tests involve BRCA1 and BRCA2, two genes with variants linked to increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers.

Defenders of such exclusive gene patents remain unbowed by criticism. But chinks are appearing in their armour. In February a government-appointed committee of experts recommended that America liberalise its patent regime for genes, especially for genetic tests “for patient care purposes”. And at the end of March a federal court issued a bombshell ruling: the patents held by Myriad Genetics, a biotechnology firm, on the BRCA genes within the United States are, it said, “unsustainable as a matter of law”.

In addition, the studies published this week suggest that granting exclusive rights over genes may be doing more harm than good. At the request of the American government, a team of researchers from Duke University, led by Robert Cook-Deegan, spent two years examining the country’s markets for genetic tests for diseases ranging from colon cancer to cystic fibrosis. The chief question they sought to answer is whether the intellectual property arrangements involved helped or hindered public access to those tests.

Their conclusion? That the rules hinder access. For example, …

Continue reading.

Very interesting series of articles in Slate by Marie Lee. Part 1 begins:

Question: why are we giving our nine-year-old a marijuana cookie?

Answer: because he can’t figure out how to use a bong.

My son J has autism. He’s also had two serious surgeries for a spinal cord tumor and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them—"duck in the water, duck in the water"—don’t convey what he means. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing tae kwon do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. Since autistic children like J can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal—Thorazine for kids.

Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children—240,000 of them under the age of 12—for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism, and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side effects. From 2000 to 2004, 45 pediatric deaths were attributed to Risperdal and five other popular drugs also classified as “atypical antipsychotics,” according to a review of FDA data by USA Today. When I canvassed parents of autistic children who take Risperdal, I didn’t hear a single story of an improvement that seemed worth the risks. A 2002 study specifically looking at the use of Risperdal for autism, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed moderate improvements in “autistic irritation”—but if you read more closely, the study followed only 49 children over eight weeks, which, researchers admitted, “limits inferences about adverse effects.”

We met with J’s doctor, who’d read the studies and agreed: No Risperdal or its kin.

The school called us in again. What were we going to do, they asked. As a sometimes health writer and blogger, I was intrigued when a homeopath suggested medical marijuana. Cannabis has long-documented effects as an analgesic and an anxiety modulator. Best of all, it is safe. The homeopath referred me to a publication by the Autism Research Institute describing cases of reduced aggression, with no permanent side effects. Rats given 40 times the psychoactive level merely fall sleep. Dr. Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been researching cannabis for 40 years, says he has yet to encounter a case of marijuana causing a death, even from lung cancer.

A prescription drug called Marinol, which contains a synthetic cannabinoid, seemed mainstream enough to bring up with J’s doctor. I cannot say that with a few little pills, everything turned around. But after about a week of playing around with the dosage, J began garnering a few glowing school reports: “J was a pleasure have in speech class,” instead of “J had 300 aggressions today.”

But J tends to build tolerance to synthetics, and in a few months, we could see the aggressive behavior coming back. One night, I went to the meeting of a medical marijuana patient advocacy group on the campus of the college where I teach. The patients told me that Marinol couldn’t compare to marijuana, the plant, which has at least 60 cannabinoids to Marinol’s one…

Continue reading.

Part 2

Part 3

Check out HealthReform.gov. Lots of good information.

Steve Benen:

Republican leaders, taking their cues from a pollster’s strategy memo, began trying to characterize the Wall Street reform as a "bailout" bill. It’s obvious the argument was a lie. It was equally obvious the GOP didn’t care.

As I noted the day after Mitch McConnell started pushing it, the lie doesn’t have to make sense; it doesn’t have to withstand scrutiny; it doesn’t even have to be persuasive. It just has to be repeated enough to muddle the debate.

With that in mind, consider the remarks made this morning by Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), chairman of the House Republican Conference. See if you can pick up on the theme.

"The American people are tired of runaway federal spending, borrowing and bailouts. The legislation being considered by the Senate, which passed the House, is nothing but a permanent bailout and House Republicans are determined to oppose it. Last week, some Democrats said there wasn’t a permanent bailout in this bill. Other Democrats, by the end of the week, said there was a permanent bailout fund in the bill. This may be one of those instances where the left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.

"The truth is, the American people are not deceived here. They see that what’s being passed under the cloak of financial services reform is nothing more than making permanent the Wall Street bailouts that passed, a year and a half ago, in the form of the TARP. House Republicans are determined to bring about financial services reform that begins with ending the era of bailouts."

The transparency of the lie is arguably the most galling aspect. Pence, like McConnell, is lying. But what’s almost impressive about it is the shamelessness — everyone, including Pence, already knows the claim is demonstrably wrong, but he’s decided this is no time for pesky details like facts. There’s an argument to win. Pence is no doubt aware that fact-check pieces will expose his argument as ridiculous, but he’s willing to take that risk. His base won’t mind, and the media probably won’t call him on it anyway.

Before Republicans had even seen the bill, Luntz picked the lie, and urged GOP officials to repeat it, even if it didn’t make any sense. Mike Pence is making clear that Republicans found this advice compelling.

What’s more, Matt Yglesias thinks it’s a strategy that will likely prove to be effective.

The overwhelming evidence is that the media gets bored with these fact checks very quickly and that if you just put your head down and charge forward, you come out a couple of weeks later back into "he said, she said" territory. The only real test for whether or not lying works is whether or not you can bring your ideological fellow-travelers along. Will Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck echo your line? Will the Weekly Standard and National Review? Will the bulk of your legislative caucus? The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Which, in a nutshell, is why our political discourse can be so mind-numbing — Republicans believe they have an incentive to lie with impunity.

And, of course, they’re lying so that Wall Street can pull more lucrative swindles, and they’re lying because Wall Street gave them a great deal of money. One despairs.

From the Center for American Progress in an email:

"We cannot let the narrow interests of a few come before the interests of all of us," President Obama said last year in a call for "an overhaul of U.S. financial regulations." Buoyed by success in the long battle to pass comprehensive health care reform behind them, Congress has set its sights on reining in Wall Street’s recklessness and providing new protections for consumers, reducing risk, and increasing transparency. The bill introduced by Senate Banking Committee chair Chris Dodd (D-CT) "would create a new consumer protection bureau within the Federal Reserve to guard against lending abuses," "create oversight of the enormous derivatives market,"and "give the government authority to wind down large, troubled financial institutions in an orderly way." If institutions that are "too big to fail" repeat the kind of disastrous behavior that sent the global economy into a tailspin in 2008, "the Senate bill gives the government the authority to wind down the firm with no exposure to the taxpayer," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner described. "No more bailouts. Instead, we will have a bankruptcy-like regime where equityholders will be wiped out and the assets will be sold." The legislation’s wind-down provisions are similar to the insurance fund and resolution authority that the FDIC has to safely shut down smaller banks, and the fund is paid for by big banks, not taxpayers. Since September, Dodd has tried to work with committee Republicans Richard Shelby (AL) and Bob Corker (TN) to find bipartisan consensus. However, as a vote grows near, Republicans have been on the attack. Last week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) declared his opposition to the financial reform bill, claiming that it "institutionalizes…taxpayer-funded bailouts of Wall Street banks" and would give the Federal Reserve "enhanced emergency lending authority that is far too open to abuse."

Read the rest of this entry »

Joe Conason in Salon:

With Senate approval of crucial banking reform legislation increasingly in doubt, it is all too clear that the felonies and blunders of the world’s financiers have done nothing to reduce their political domination. Even UBS, the Swiss banking giant that pleaded guilty last year to abetting tax evasion and paid a $780 million fine, can still put in the fix, according to Bradley Birkenfeld, the former UBS banker who helped to expose the tax-avoidance scheme. In recent interviews with the New York Daily News and Reuters, Birkenfeld claimed that U.S. political figures are among secret UBS clients whose names were supposed to be turned over to IRS and Justice authorities in a settlement of federal charges against the bank last year. He says that’s why he is the only UBS employee currently doing time in an American prison, although he has assisted the U.S. government in recovering billions of dollars from crooked UBS clients –  of whom thousands came forward last year under an IRS amnesty program.

With considerable justification, Birkenfeld has complained bitterly about his treatment by the government for many months and tried to have his sentence reduced last winter. Now seeking clemency from President Obama, Birkenfeld insists that UBS friends in high places are still using their clout to protect the bank and its clients from the full consequences of its covert war against the Treasury. The ex-banker told Reuters that is why only he, among dozens of UBS bankers and clients implicated in the enormous scheme, is currently incarcerated at a federal facility:

"Where are all the people that are politically connected in Washington that had accounts at UBS?" Birkenfeld asked. "I’m telling you this is a political cover-up. Why is it that the whistleblower is the only guy in jail? I mean, this is insanity," he said.

Stephen Kohn, the executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center who is serving as one of Birkenfeld’s attorneys, described the political power of UBS as "massive," because the bank has "purposely put in high place politicians or former politicians." Of course, the most notorious politician associated with UBS is former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, the firm’s vice chairman, who became a severe embarrassment to his old pal and Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008.

Many observers have wondered why Gramm, whose wife, Wendy, was once an ornament to the board of Enron Corp., continues to be employed by the Swiss. But perhaps he is there to remind the senators and representatives he left behind on Capitol Hill how rewarding retirement can be for politicians who take care of the banks.

Amplifying Birkenfeld’s accusations are the millions of dollars that UBS distributes regularly from Basel and Lugano to Capitol Hill. Amazingly,many politicians who claim to represent the public interest take this money. Ken Silverstein, who has diligently followed the economic and political depredations of UBS for years, asked the most pertinent question long ago: Why would any decent elected official in this country still accept a dime from this outfit?

Nick McKenzie and Rafael Epstein in The Age, in Victoria, Australia:

Police has called for sweeping changes to the way Melbourne’s Catholic Church deals with sex crime allegations, as The Age reveals that only one priest has been defrocked for abuse in the past 14 years.

Nearly 300 allegations of sexual abuse have been substantiated by church investigations since 1996, when the ”Melbourne Response” was set up to deal with complaints. It is believed the abuses were perpetrated by approximately 100 priests, a figure the church will not confirm. Just one priest has been defrocked as a result. Some other priests lost their role serving a parish full-time.

Church sources say police are pushing for change because they do not want accused priests told about covert criminal investigations. Last year detectives feared the church’s independent commissioner, Peter O’Callaghan, QC, may have compromised two covert investigations when he told two priests, through their lawyers, that they were being investigated. He did this without the consent of detectives, who had not yet interviewed the priests. Mr O’Callaghan’s investigation is suspended when police begin theirs – and he argues that priests have a right to know.

Police – and some within the church – also want more direct support for abuse victims.

Police intervened after five victims last year told The Age they had concerns about the church’s handling of their complaints.

The Age can now reveal that in August last year Mr O’Callaghan told an alleged victim that his alleged groping by a priest was unlikely to constitute a crime. In a letter he said: ”Without seeking to dissuade you from reporting the matter to police if you so desire, I must say that the conduct you described is unlikely to be held by a court as criminal conduct.”

Weeks later, police immediately assessed the same complaint as a potential sexual assault. They began an investigation and if the claim is proved it will constitute serious criminal conduct. When asked by The Age about that letter, Mr O’Callaghan refused to comment, citing ”potential court proceedings”.

Mr O’Callaghan is paid by the church to inquire into allegations of clerical abuse, interview victims and the accused priests, and make findings on abuse claims. The findings are used by the church to gauge financial aid for victims…

Continue reading.

Interesting review by Meredith Hindley of a new book on Napoleon’s Russian campaign:

"Brave descendents of courageous Slavs! You always smashed the teeth of the lions and tigers who sought to attack you. Let everyone unite: with the Cross in your hearts and weapons in your hands no human force will defeat you." With these words, Tsar Alexander I appealed to the Russian people to join the fight against Napoleon’s Grande Armée, which began pouring into Russia at the end of June 1812.

Much has been written about how and why Napoleon came to lose more than a half-million men in the Russian invasion. Hitler and his generals even studied the ill-fated campaign hoping to avoid making similar mistakes. But missing from Western scholarship on the Napoleonic Wars is a full-fledged account of how Russia came to smash Napoleon. With Russia Against Napoleon: The True Story of the Campaigns of War and Peace, Dominic Lieven, one of the preeminent scholars of 19th-century Russia, aims to fill the void, tackling not only the French invasion of 1812, but also the battles of 1813-1814. What sets Lieven’s book apart from the handful of other accounts is his prolific use of Russian sources, particularly regimental histories available to Western researchers only since 1991.

After Napoleon destroyed the Russian army at Austerlitz in 1805 and drove the Russians out of Poland, it was only a matter of time before another showdown occurred between the two powers. Russia was unhappy about losing Poland and being compelled to adhere to the Continental System, which circumscribed Russia’s ability to trade, to the detriment of its economy. Faced with economic collapse, Tsar Alexander I decided to ignore France’s blockade against Britain. Napoleon, who abhorred disloyalty, vowed to make Russia see the error of its ways.

Intelligence collected by Russian agents working in Paris in 1810, as well as military intelligence gathered in 1811, suggested that Napoleon wanted a quick, decisive victory. Alexander and Minister of War Mikhail Barclay de Tolly refused to give Napoleon the war he wanted. Instead, they made plans for a long defensive war — one that would last at least two years or more. Initially avoiding a big battle, the Russian army would systematically retreat further into Russia, drawing out and weakening French supply lines. As Alexander explained to Prussia’s Frederick William III: "This system is one which has brought victory to Wellington in wearing down the French armies, and it is the one which I have resolved to follow." Adopting this strategy also meant forsaking Austrian and Prussian support. Russia would have to go it alone.

The Grande Armée began crossing the Neman River into Russia in late June 1812, but it would take Napoleon more than two months to force engagement with the retreating Russians. At the Battle of Borodino on Sept. 7, …

Continue reading.

John Cook at Skeptical Science:

A common skeptic argument is that climate has changed naturally in the past therefore humans aren’t causing global warming now. Interestingly, the peer-reviewed research into past climate change comes to the opposite conclusion. When I try to explain why to people, I usually get blank, confused stares. I gave a presentation to a roomful of engineers this week and after explaining the significance of past climate change, complete with slides of climate sensitivity PDFs and examples of positive feedbacks, the result was a long, silent pause. I asked if anyone understood what I’d just talked about. A few asked some follow-up questions which made it clear they didn’t. So I’m reworking my whole explanation of past climate change in an attempt to make it as clear and simple as possible. Comments, particularly on anything confusing or unclear, are welcome!

In the past, climate has changed, sometimes very dramatically. This has gone on long before SUVs and coal fired power plants. If climate can change on its own, couldn’t current global warming be natural as well? To answer this, first you have to ask why climate has changed in the past. It doesn’t happen by magic. Climate changes when it’s forced to change. When our planet suffers an energy imbalance and gains or loses heat, global temperature changes.

This can happen in a number of ways. When the sun gets brighter, the planet receives more energy and warms. When volcanoes erupt, all the particles suspended in the atmosphere reflect sunlight and the planet cools. These effects are referred to as external forcings because by changing the planet’s energy balance, they force climate to change.

Looking at the past gives us insight into how our climate responds to external forcings. Using ice cores, we can work out past temperature change, the level of solar activity plus the amount of greenhouse gases and volcanic dust in the atmosphere. From this, we can determine how temperature has changed due to past energy imbalances. What we have found, looking at many different periods in Earth’s history, is that when the Earth gains heat, positive feedbacks amplify the warming. This is why we’ve experienced such dramatic changes in temperature in the past. Our climate is highly sensitive to changes in heat.

What does that mean for today? Rising CO2 levels are an external forcing. They’re causing an energy imbalance and the planet is building up heat. From Earth’s history, we know that positive feedbacks will amplify the CO2 warming. So past climate change doesn’t tell us that humans can’t influence climate. On the contrary, the past tells us that climate is highly sensitive to the CO2 warming we’re now causing.

Via Andrew Sullivan: