How to Build Resilient Communities in a Chaotic World

How to Build Resilient Communities in a Chaotic World
Cultural historian and visionary critic Mike Davis has already wondered why our approach to homeland security doesn't draw from the example of "victory gardens" during World War II. In 1943, just two years into the war, 20 million victory gardens were producing a staggering 30-40% of the nation's vegetables. Thousands of abandoned urban lots were being cleared and planted by tenement neighbors working together. The Office of Civilian Defense encouraged and empowered such projects, but the phenomenon was also self-organizing because citizens on the home front wanted to participate, and home gardening was, after all, a delicious way to be patriotic.

Rebecca Solnit, author of Hope in the Dark, reports that, within the de-industrialized ruins of Detroit, a landscape she describes as "not quite post-apocalyptic but... post-American," people are homesteading abandoned lots, growing their own produce, raising farm animals, and planting orchards. In that depopulated city, some have been clawing (or perhaps hoeing) their way back to a semblance of food security. They have done so because they had to, and their reward has been harvests that would be the envy of any organic farmer. The catastrophe that is Detroit didn't happen with a Hurricane Katrina-style bang, but as a slow, grinding bust -- and a possibly haunting preview of what many American municipalities may experience, post-crash. Solnit claims, however, that the greening of Detroit under the pressure of economic adversity is not just a strategy for survival, but a possible path to renewal. It's also a living guidebook to possibilities for our new Department of Homegrown Security when it considers where it might most advantageously put some of its financial muscle while creating a more secure -- and resilient -- America.

As chef and author Alice Waters has demonstrated so practically, schools can start "edible schoolyard" gardens that cut lunch-program costs, provide healthy foods for students, and teach the principles of ecology. The food-growing skills and knowledge that many of our great-grandparents took for granted growing up in a more rural America have long since been lost in our migration into cities and suburbs. Relearning those lost arts could be a key to survival if the trucks stop arriving at the Big Box down the street.

The present Department of Homeland Security has produced reams of literature on detecting and handling chemical weapons and managing casualties after terrorist attacks. Fine, we needed to know that. Now, how about some instructive materials on composting soil, rotating crops to control pests and restore soil nutrients, and canning and drying all that seasonal bounty so it can be eaten next winter?

It's not just about increasing the local food supply, of course. Community gardens provide a safe place for neighbors to cooperate, socialize, bond, share, celebrate, and learn from one another. The self-reliant networks that are created when citizens engage in such projects can be activated in an emergency. The capacity of a community to self-organize can be critically important when a crisis is confronted. Such collective efforts have been called "community greening" or "civic ecology," but the traditional name "grassroots democracy" fits no less well.

Ideally, the greening of homeland security would mean more than pamphlets on planting, but would provide actual seed money -- and not just for seeds either, but for building greenhouses, distributing tools, and starting farmers' markets where growers and consumers can connect. How about raiding the Department of Homeland Security's gluttonous budget for "homegrown" grants to communities that want to get started?

Here's the interesting thing: Without federal aid or direction, the first glimmer of a green approach to homeland security is already appearing. It goes by the moniker "relocalization," and if that's a bit of an awkward mouthful for you, it really means that your most basic security is in the hands not of distant officials in Washington but of neighbors who believe that self-reliance is safer than dependence. In this emerging age of chaos, pooled resources and coordinated responses will, this new movement believes, be more effective than thousands of individuals breaking out their survival kits alone, or waiting for the helicopters to land.

Return to Sanity This is Not George Bush's budget

This is not George Bush's budget
"Elections have consequences" is one of those political clichés that gets thrown around a lot in this city, especially in the first few months of a new administration. But President Obama's $3.5 trillion budget proposal, released Thursday, actually reminds you that clichés become clichés for a reason: They're true.

The 142-page proposal laid out a sweeping, ambitious agenda for the future: Obama would raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for healthcare for the uninsured; cap pollution emissions; put billions more dollars into infrastructure and new technology, building on the money in the massive economic stimulus program Obama already pushed through Congress; invest in new education programs; and roll back the U.S. troop presence in Iraq and, more slowly, Afghanistan. There were proposals to save money by modernizing the healthcare system, only paying for treatments that are proven to work, and by eliminating federal farm subsidies to the biggest and wealthiest recipients, mostly agribusiness interests. This is not, in other words, George W. Bush's budget.

"A budget is more than simply numbers on a page," Obama said Thursday morning. "It is a measure of how well we are living up to our obligations to ourselves and one another. It is a test for our commitment to making America what it was always meant to be -- a place where all things are possible for all people."

Of course, in other ways, it is George W. Bush's budget, and then some; though Obama and his aides spent the last week talking about the importance of fiscal responsibility, and promising belt-tightening to come, the proposed budget would still lead to record federal deficits. For fiscal year 2010 alone, the first year covered by Obama's proposal (which begins on Oct. 1), the government would run a deficit of nearly $1.2 trillion. That had Republicans shrieking Thursday, though the GOP wasn't anywhere near as outspoken about Bush's budget-busting administration -- which Congress happily enabled when Republicans controlled it.

"Where is the spending restraint?" asked Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who was all set to join Obama's administration as commerce secretary until he (allegedly) realized he didn't actually agree with him on economic policy.

Administration officials had a ready answer to any complaints about the deficit -- it wasn't their fault. Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag started off a briefing for reporters by saying Obama's White House had inherited two different $1 trillion deficits from Bush. The first one, caused by the crumbling economy, represented the difference between what the country's economic output should be and what it will be this year; the second was the actual federal budget deficit left by the previous administration. If the government simply stuck to Bush's policies for the next 10 years, Orszag said, the deficit would eventually reach $9 trillion.

While Republicans focused on the sheer size of the deficits, the proposed tax increases also loomed as a political flash point. Obama would let the Bush tax cuts expire next year, as scheduled, instead of wiping them out this year, as he once suggested; the administration decided the recession is too severe to risk raising any taxes immediately. But starting next year, families making over $250,000 would see new limits on the size of the tax deduction they can take for charitable donations (which isn't likely to please nonprofits already struggling for money thanks to the economy). The administration had an answer for that, too -- it's unfair, Orszag said, to let a rich donor get a larger tax break than a middle-class donor would if they each gave the same amount of money to a charity.

The biggest change, from an accounting standpoint, had to do with what the budget acknowledges. Every year since 2003, the existence of a war in Iraq has, evidently, caught the federal government completely by surprise. Months after the Bush administration released its budget plans for the year, officials would remember that there were thousands of troops fighting overseas -- who needed billions of dollars in federal cash -- and send an "emergency" request for funds to Capitol Hill. Natural disasters, which strike the U.S. every year, were treated the same way. Obama's budget covers 10 years, instead of the five-year horizon Bush used, in order to show the long-term effects of his policies. And over the next 10 years, it includes $3.7 trillion that was always kept out of the official budget, but was spent anyway, by the previous administration.

"For too long, our budget has not told the whole truth about how precious tax dollars are spent," Obama said. "That kind of dishonest accounting is not how you run your family budgets at home; it's not how your government should run its budgets, either. We need to be honest with ourselves about what costs are being racked up -- because that's how we'll come to grips with the hard choices that lie ahead."

Obama's aides indicated they think the economy will recover quickly -- the recession, according to the projections the administration used, will end next year, and the economy will grow by 3.2 percent. Christina Romer, the head of the Council of Economic Advisors, defended the numbers, but she hedged them a little: "We are economists, not soothsayers."

In the end, exactly how much Thursday's release will really mean is unclear. The annual posting of the White House budget outline always sets off a frenzy in Washington, one that's vastly out of line with what the document actually means. Various interest groups and local lawmakers pore over the White House proposal looking for ways to be outraged by it; the media breathlessly reports proposed cuts and increases alike as if the budget proceeded, magically, from the Government Printing Office into law. In fact, for better or for worse, Thursday was just the beginning of a long, often tortuous process.

Because this is Obama's first year in office, the administration won't release detailed budget numbers until April. After that, in theory, Congress has to write, debate and pass a budget resolution, plus 12 different appropriations bills, before most of the ideas in the White House proposal ever have any actual impact. But most years, lawmakers can't quite manage to do that; several times during the Bush administration, Congress never bothered to pass a budget resolution, and it's rare that all 12 spending bills are handled individually. (The $410 billion omnibus spending bill the House passed Wednesday wrapped nine of the usual 12 up in one messy package.)

"People think budgets are about numbers, but they're really about priorities," said Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a budget watchdog group that tends to hound Republican and Democratic presidents alike about spending. "You put additional specificity into what you care about, and you obfuscate or defund things you don't. You can't help but think about smoke and mirrors when you talk about budgets."

Even so, the priorities Obama laid out Thursday couldn't be more different from those of his predecessor. But putting the budget document out is the easy part. Now Obama has to sell everything in it. Otherwise, this election won't turn out to have quite so many consequences, after all.

Economics Refresher Course for Republicans

Economics Refresher Course for Republicans from a Dkos diary
I just wrote a lengthy response to some of the ill-informed wingnuts on Politico.com and thought I'd share it here as well. I usually don't bother trying to straighten them out but after watching such an excellent speech by President Obama tonight I just couldn't let them get away with their lies.

I'm not saying anything that hasn't been said before, and probably better, by others here and elsewhere. But you never know how people will respond when the same information is explained a different way. So in hopes that what I say below may connect with some of you or maybe help you make your point to somebody else, I give you my explanation for why the Obama administration's approach to economic stimulus is the only one that really makes any sense at all. There's some snarky comments about Bobby Jindal as a bonus.

I have to get some sleep now. I have to be at the trainer in just over 4 hours.


Economics 101: GDP = C+ I + G + (X-M)
C = Consumer Spending
I = Business Investment
G = Government Spending
X - M = Trade Balance (Exports - Imports)

The problem the Obama Administration has to solve, to keep the economy (as measured by GDP) from collapsing, is to stabilize and eventually increase C, I or G (trade balance is more of a side-effect than a causality). Now you may have heard that C and I are way down. Conservatives would tell you the solution is easy, cut taxes and give consumers and businesses more money to spend. There are a couple of problems with this. One is that, with the exception of very low-income people who are desperately trying to feed, clothe and shelter their families, consumers don’t spend this money during times of recession. They are scared they are going to lose their jobs, so instead they save it or use it to pay off debt (neither of which directly contribute to GDP). That is why Bush’s 2008 tax rebate was widely considered an expensive failure. Economists (and the data) agree that it would have been much more effective if it had been targeted at low-income families. That is why Obama is, smartly, targeting tax cuts (which make up 40% of the stimulus package) to families earning less than $75k. And yes there are many families out there who earn so little that they don’t have to pay income tax but they still pay payroll taxes so don’t give me that crap about giving money away to people who don’t pay taxes. The second problem with consumer tax cuts is that people have to have income (aka jobs) to benefit. And this economy is losing jobs at a faster pace than anybody can remember.

So now the argument changes to tax cuts for the businesses to keep people employed and build new factories, etc. This argument too falls flat on its face. With consumers not buying, inventories are growing and it doesn’t make good business sense to produce more when you can’t even sell what you already have sitting on the shelves. Plus, even if this weren’t true, factories require long planning periods, etc. Studies have shown that each $1 cut in business taxes only injects 30 cents into the economy. Compare that to the $1.63 bang you get for each additional buck in unemployment benefits.

By the way, remember how John McCain always talked about the corporate tax rate in the United States scaring away employers (which isn’t really true since two-thirds of U.S. Corporations paid no income tax between 1998 and 2005)? Remember how he spoke in glowing terms about Ireland and promised he would make our economy look more like theirs? You might want to check up on how they are doing these days.

So since there isn’t much we can do about C or I, that leaves us with G. In times of crisis, the government is the only entity with enough resources to make up for the drop in C and I. There are lots of ways for the government to spend money but Obama is focused on the smart ways. Instead of just spending a lot of money and not having anything to show for it, they are going to spend the money in ways that will not only shore up GDP in the short-term but also leave us a more sound infrastructure, a better educated workforce, less dependent on foreign sources of energy, a better climate and a safer and more cost effective health care system (which will save us lots of money on Medicare especially as baby boomers start retiring).

The money that goes to the unemployed will help them buy groceries, which is not only the right thing to do but will also mean jobs for the people who make and ship the food and work at the grocery store. And then those people can go out and spend their paychecks too.

The money that goes to the states to help them with their budgets will mean they don’t have to layoff first responders, teachers, nurses, etc. And yes, you guessed it, those people all have to buy food and clothes and maybe splurge on a meal out (prepared and served by, you know, more job-having people).

What's that? You're okay with that type of spending? Not just the wasteful spending? Like the money for volcano monitoring that Bobby Jindal attacked in his response? Think about this for a second. Won't that money give jobs to not only scientists but also the people who design, manufacture and deliver the monitoring instruments? And the people who work in the offices that provide those services? And don't all those people buy groceries and clothes and go out to eat? Not so wasteful after all, is it? There is also, you know, the added benefit of potentially saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars of property (h/t Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight.com). Maybe you don't care because like Bobby Jindal you don't live anywhere close to a volcano. Louisiana may not have volcanoes but they do have hurricanes (the name Katrina ring a bell?). But if you insist this is wasteful spending, fine, let's do it your way and cut spending for N.O.A.A. and the National Weather Service. That way we won’t have to worry about those pesky warnings about tornadoes, earthquakes, or blizzards either. Don’t you just hate when they interrupt your favorite television show? Besides nothing makes for better reality television than video of places like Greensburg, Kansas after a tornado wipes it off the map.

Now of course we could do nothing and not spend any money. Of course that will put even more on the shoulders of our children and really would be an act of generational theft. Doing nothing would mean big drops in GDP. Tax revenues are directly correlated to GDP so now governments (federal, state, local) are taking in even less money. So not only will they have to start laying off workers (police, fire, nurses, etc) but there will also be an increased demand for unemployment, food stamps, etc. I guess we could let those people starve or turn to crime (there won't be any police to stop them) but even the most cynical conservatives say they support a basic social safety net. So what happens when revenues decrease and expenditures increase? Oh yeah, your deficit gets bigger! So under this scenario do we not only do nothing in the short-term to stop the economic decline or make any kind of long-term investment in our future but we also end up with even larger deficits that our children will have to pay off. And good luck to them doing that because the governments won't be able to do things like maintain roads, so people won't be able to get to work and trucks won't be able to make deliveries.

Finally, and quickly because I do need to get some sleep tonight, as far as Ben Bernanke’s testimony today, all he really said was things will go well in 2010 if things go well. In other words, in true Fed Chairman fashion, he didn’t say much of anything. The underlying theme of his testimony though, as President Obama said tonight, is that the economy is doomed unless we get credit flowing again. Because if the stimulus works and consumers regain confidence and businesses are willing to invest in increased production capacity, they will still need access to loans to finance buying a car, building that factory, or to cover the gap between when a product is built (and the employees paid) and when the revenue comes back. That is why President Obama spent so much time talking about making sure the banks that accept taxpayer money actually use it in ways that benefit taxpayers instead of the Bush/Paulson approach of just giving them a bunch of money without any concern about how it was used.

They're paying far less of their incomes in taxes than average Americans

They're paying far less of their incomes in taxes than average Americans
by Chuck Collins and Sam Pizzigati
We've seen, in recent weeks, an outpouring of public outrage over the mega millions that keep flowing – despite the escalating economic meltdown – into the pockets of America's top bankers and corporate executives.

"I'm angry," Sen. Claire McCaskill (D) of Missouri told her Senate colleagues late last month, as she introduced a bill to cap pay for bailed-out CEOs at $400,000 a year. "Wall Street [is] kicking sand in the face of the American taxpayer."

"I will not tolerate it," President Obama added a few days later, as he announced a $500,000 executive pay cap at firms getting substantial bailout dollars.

The amount of money that goes into executive pockets is staggering. So is the amount that comes out of those pockets in taxes: precious little. America's super-rich are paying far less of their incomes in taxes than average Americans who punch time clocks. This is grossly unfair. The good news: Under Mr. Obama's new plan to cut the deficit in half, the very richest Americans will start paying something closer to their fair tax share.

It's been a while since they've done that. As recent IRS data show, these elites are paying less in taxes – much less – than their deep-pocket counterparts used to pay. In 2006, the 400 highest-income Americans together reported $105 billion in income, an average of $263 million each.

Having trouble visualizing that? To pocket $263 million a year, you would have to take home over $60,000 an hour – and work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for an entire 12 months. Sounds tiring, doesn't it? But most of the top 400 make their fortunes buying and selling assets, everything from stocks and bonds to the exotic paper that helped inflate the housing bubble.

Uncle Sam taxes income from those assets – whether that income be capital gains or dividends – at a much lower rate than income from work.

The current top tax rate on "ordinary" work income sits at 35 percent. But dividends and capital gains from the buying and selling of most assets face only a 15 percent top rate. That's why in 2006, America's top 400 paid just 17.2 percent of their $263 million average incomes in federal tax.

Millions of middle-class American families, once you tally income and payroll taxes, pay far more of their incomes in tax. One particularly striking example from billionaire investor Warren Buffett: In 2006, he paid 17.7 percent of his income in total taxes. His secretary, who made $60,000, paid 30 percent of hers.

How did we end up with this sorry state of affairs? Lawmakers in Congress have spent the past several decades systematically slicing the tax rates on America's top income brackets. Their rationale? Lower taxes on the top, free up capital for investment, and boost productivity.

In actual economic practice, those lower taxes have served instead to fuel speculation and increase budget deficits. For the ultrarich themselves, the tax savings have been nothing short of breathtaking. Back in 1955, America's top 400 paid more than 50 percent of their incomes in federal tax, almost triple the rate of today's top 400.

We can fix this. Obama just announced his plan to end the Bush administration's high-income tax cuts. This is an important step. We can insist, also, that lawmakers end the preferential treatment of dividends and capital gains. And we can raise the tax rate that kicks in when taxpayers start collecting more than $10 million and $20 million a year.

Steps like these would help get our future in order. But what about the past – and all those windfalls the super-rich have been pocketing as our economy veered into the ditch? Are we going to have to watch these billions multiply, generation after generation, into a new American aristocracy of wealth?

Not if we save the estate tax, the only federal levy on grand accumulations of private wealth. The rich and their retainers have been trying to repeal the estate tax for 20 years now. They haven't succeeded, but they have slashed the tax rate on the fortunes the ultrawealthy leave their heirs.

Congress is about to begin debating legislation that would freeze the estate tax at the current bargain-basement rate set by President Bush. We can't let that happen. More than ever, America needs its ultrarich to chip in more.

Conservatives Use Economic Crisis as Excuse to Destroy Social Security

Conservatives Use Economic Crisis as Excuse to Destroy Social Security
With the enactment of a large economic stimulus package, fiscal conservatives are using the temporary deficit increase to attack a perennial target -- Social Security and Medicare. The private-equity investor Peter G. Peterson, who launched a billion-dollar foundation last year to warn that America faces $56.4 trillion in "unfunded liabilities," is a case in point. Supposedly, these costs will depress economic growth and crowd out other needed outlays, such as investments in the young. The remedy: big cuts in programs for the elderly.

The Peterson Foundation is joined by leading "blue dog" (anti-deficit) Democrats such as House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt of South Carolina and his counterpart in the Senate, Kent Conrad of North Dakota. The deficit hawks are promoting a "grand bargain" in which a bipartisan commission enacts spending caps on social insurance as the offset for current deficits.

President Obama's economic advisers devised today's White House fiscal responsibility summit to signal that the president takes the deficit seriously and to lay the groundwork for such a bipartisan deal. Originally, Peterson was slated to be a featured speaker.

But Capitol Hill sources say that Democratic congressional leaders were skeptical of the strategy. The summit has been reduced to a lower-profile, half-day event; Peterson will attend but no longer has top billing, and Obama reportedly is lukewarm about the idea of a commission.

Obama should indeed be wary of such a plan, and official briefings on his first budget suggest that he will drastically reduce the deficit by 2013, but without going after social insurance.

What's wrong with the story of entitlements wrecking the economy? Plenty.

For starters, the $56 trillion "unfunded liability" figure relies on creative accounting. Only about $6.36 trillion is the actual public debt, according to the U.S. Treasury. Most of the number Peterson cites is a combination of the 75-year worst-case projections for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These three programs face very different challenges and remedies. Social Security's accounts are actually near long-term balance. The Congressional Budget Office puts the 75-year shortfall at only about one-third of 1 percent of projected gross domestic product.

Social Security is financed by taxes on wages -- and since the mid-1970s, wage growth has stagnated. If median wages rose with productivity growth, as they did during the first three decades after World War II, Social Security would enjoy a big surplus. Even without a raise for working America, Social Security needs only minor adjustments.

Medicare really does face big deficits. But that's because Medicare is part of a hugely inefficient, fragmented health insurance system. It makes no sense to "reform" Medicare in isolation.

If we just cap Medicare, needy seniors would get bare-bones care while more affluent people could supplement their insurance out of pocket. The decent cure for Medicare's cost inflation lies in comprehensive universal health insurance so that the entire system is more efficient and less prone to inflation. You don't hear many budget hawks supporting that brand of reform.

The deficit hawks' story also contends that we are sacrificing our children's future by too much (deficit) spending on the elderly. In fact, today's young adults are already falling out of the middle class because of the high costs of the investments we don't adequately finance socially -- child care, college tuition and health insurance. But fiscal conservatives seldom call for increased investment in the young. Today's young, of course, will be tomorrow's retirees, and they will need social insurance, too.

The overall bottom line? The economy we bequeath to our children has everything to do with getting growth back on track and almost nothing to do with imagined future deficits.

History provides a parallel. At the end of World War II, the public debt was about 120 percent of GDP -- about three times today's ratio. Yet the heavily indebted wartime economy stimulated a quarter-century postwar boom -- because all that debt went to recapitalize American industry, advance science and technology, retrain our unemployed and put them to work.

We need to increase public spending and debt now to restore economic growth and then gradually reduce the debt ratio once recovery comes. Social Security has little to do with this challenge. Nor does Medicare, if we reform our overall health system.

Since the early 1980s, Peter G. Peterson has been warning that future entitlement deficits would crash the economy. Yet when the crash came, the cause was not deficits but wild speculation on Wall Street.

Now, with 401(k) plans swooning and health benefits being cut, Social Security and Medicare are the two bedrock programs that keep tens of millions of elderly Americans from destitution. Why perversely cut these programs to pay for the sins of Wall Street? The attack on social insurance is really an ideological assault, dressed up as fiscal high-mindedness.

Republicans Encourage a New Civil War, Seriously

Republicans Encourage a New Civil War, Seriously
Bill Clinton's election in 1992 gave rise to the American "militia movement": hordes of overwhelmingly white, middle-aged men from suburban and rural areas who convinced themselves they were defending the American way of life from the "liberals" and "leftists" running the country by dressing up in military costumes on weekends, wobbling around together with guns, and play-acting the role of patriot-warriors. Those theater groups -- the cultural precursor to George Bush's prancing 2003 performance dressed in a fighter pilot outfit on Mission Accomplished Day -- spawned the decade of the so-called "Angry White Male," the movement behind the 1994 takeover of the U.S. Congress by Newt Gingrich and his band of federal-government-cursing, play-acting-tough-guy, pseudo-revolutionaries.

What was most remarkable about this allegedly "anti-government" movement was that -- with some isolated and principled exceptions -- it completely vanished upon the election of Republican George Bush, and it stayed invisible even as Bush presided over the most extreme and invasive expansion of federal government power in memory. Even as Bush seized and used all of the powers which that movement claimed in the 1990s to find so tyrannical and unconstitutional -- limitless, unchecked surveillance activities, detention powers with no oversight, expanding federal police powers, secret prison camps, even massively exploding and debt-financed domestic spending -- they meekly submitted to all of it, even enthusiastically cheered it all on.

They're the same people who embraced and justified full-scale, impenetrable federal government secrecy and comprehensive domestic spying databases conducted in the dark and against the law when perpetrated by a Republican President -- but have spent the last week flamboyantly pretending to be scandalized and outraged by the snooping which Bill Moyers did 45 years ago (literally) as part of a Democratic administration. They're the people who relentlessly opposed and impugned Clinton's military deployments and then turned around and insisted that only those who are anti-American would question or oppose Bush's decision to start wars.

They're the same people who believed that Bill Clinton's use of the FISA court to obtain warrants to eavesdrop on Americans was a grave threat to liberty, but believed that George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law was a profound defense of freedom. In sum, they dressed up in warrior clothing to fight against Bill Clinton's supposed tyranny, and then underwent a major costume change on January 20, 2001, thereafter dressing up in cheerleader costumes to glorify George Bush's far more extreme acquisitions of federal power.

In doing so, they revealed themselves as motivated by no ideological principles or political values of any kind. It was a purely tribalistic movement motivated by fear of losing its cultural and demographic supremacy. In that sense -- the only sense that mattered -- George Bush was one of them, even though, with his actions, he did everything they long claimed to fear and despise. Nonetheless, his mere occupancy of the White House was sufficient to pacify them and convert them almost overnight from limited-government militants into foot soldiers supporting the endless expansion of federal government power.

But now, only four weeks into the presidency of Barack Obama, they are back -- angrier and more chest-beating than ever. Actually, the mere threat of an Obama presidency was enough to revitalize them from their eight-year slumber, awaken them from their camouflaged, well-armed suburban caves. The disturbingly ugly atmosphere that marked virtually every Sarah Palin rally had its roots in this cultural resentment, which is why her fear-mongering cultural warnings about his exotic, threatening otherness -- he's a Muslim-loving, Terrorist-embracing, Rev.-Wright-following Marxist: who is the real Barack Obama? -- resonated so stingingly with the rabid lynch mobs that cheered her on.

With Obama now actually in the Oval Office -- and a financial crisis in full force that is generating the exact type of widespread, intense anxiety that typically inflames these cultural resentments -- their mask is dropping, has dropped, and they've suddenly re-discovered their righteous "principles." The week-long CNBC Revolt of the Traders led by McCain voter Rick Santelli and the fledgling little Tea Party movement promoted by the Michelle Malkins of the world are obvious outgrowths of this 1990s mentality, now fortified by the most powerful fuel: deep economic fear. But as feisty and fire-breathing as those outbursts are, nothing can match -- for pure, illustrative derangement -- the discussion below from Glenn Beck's new Fox show this week, in which he and an array of ex-military and CIA guests ponder (and plot and plan) "war games" for the coming Civil War against Obama-led tyranny. It really has to be seen to be believed.

Before presenting that to you, a few caveats are in order: There is nothing inherently wrong or illegitimate with citizens expressing extreme anger towards the Government and the ruling political class. There isn't even anything wrong or illegitimate with citizens organizing themselves into a movement that -- whether by design or effect -- is threatening to entrenched elites. If anything, we've had too little of that. In fact, it's only a complete lack of fear of a meek, passive and impotent citizenry on the part of political and financial rulers -- a certainty that there will be no consequences no matter what they do -- that could have given rise to the endless corruption, deceit, lawbreaking, destruction, and outright thievery of the last eight years. A political and financial elite that perceives itself as invulnerable from threat or consequence will inevitably vest itself with more power and more riches. That's what we've had and, largely, still have.

But this Rush-Limbaugh/Fox-News/nationalistic movement isn't driven by anything noble or principled or even really anything political. If it were, they would have been extra angry and threatening and rebellious during the Bush years instead of complicit and meek and supportive to the point of cult-like adoration. Instead, they're just basically Republican dead-enders (at least what remains of the regional/extremist GOP), grounded in tribal allegiances that are fueled by their cultural, ethnic and religious identities and by perceived threats to past prerogatives -- now spiced with legitimate economic anxiety and an African-American President who, they were continuously warned for the last two years, is a Marxist, Terrorist-sympathizing black nationalist radical who wants to re-distribute their hard-earned money to welfare queens and illegal immigrants (and is now doing exactly that).

That's the context for this Glenn Beck "War Games" show on Fox News this week -- one promoted, with some mild and obligatory caveats, by Michelle Malkin's Hot Air. In the segment below, he convened a panel that includes former CIA officer Michael Scheuer and Ret. U.S. Army Sgt. Major Tim Strong. They discuss a coming "civil war" led by American "Bubba" militias -- Beck says he "believes we're on this road" -- and they contemplate whether the U.S. military would follow the President's orders to subdue civil unrest or would instead join with "the people" in defense of their Constitutional rights against the Government (they agree that the U.S. military would be with "the people"):-------video at link.

Corporate America, Ground Your Jets

Corporate America, Ground Your Jets by Barbara Ehrenreich and Chuck Collins
A ban on private jet ownership for recipients of funds from the Trouble Assets Relief Program passed the U.S. House of Representatives and awaits action in the Senate.

But now is the time for all of America's corporate titans to surrender their private jets -- and not just as symbols of greed. Private jet travel imposes heavy costs on to the rest of us, first by straining air traffic control systems. Although commercial airlines are mostly to blame for airport delays, private jets add to the congestion, particularly in the New York City airspace where commercial flights only account for 53 percent of the air traffic. The Big Apple's delays compound through the air system, triggering a third of all delayed flights nationwide.

Private jets also contribute disproportionately to global warming. A private jet passenger, with his or her Godzilla-size carbon footprint, puts five times more carbon into the atmosphere than a commercial jet passenger. An hour aloft in a private jet burns as much fuel as a year of driving. Furthermore, as Britain's anti-terror chief has warned, private jets pose an unacceptable security risk, since there's nothing to stop passengers from carrying weapons aboard, never mind 4-ounce containers of lotion. The U.S. Homeland Security department agrees, but eight years after 9/11, it still hasn't adopted security rules for private jets.

Meanwhile, the rest of us, as taxpayers and commercial travelers, subsidize private jet travel through fees, infrastructure funds and tax breaks. Private jets use 16 percent of air traffic control system services, but pay only 3 percent of the costs, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. And a third of airport improvement funds over the last couple years have gone to fix up small, remote airports serving primarily private jets, such as Oregon's North Bend airport, where 5,000 wealthy golfers a year are able to land their private jets before playing at the world-class Brandon Dunes course.

If it's too painful for the super-rich to abandon their stratospheric sybaritism, Congress should at least impose a luxury tax on private jets to offset their environmental impact. They should also fix the FAA's funding structure to require private jets to pay their fair share of the air traffic control system costs and impose a few security requirements. But ideally, the high fliers should come down to earth with the rest of us. Maybe if more powerful CEOs had to endure the delays, indignities and discomforts of commercial air travel, they would throw their tremendous clout behind a transportation policy that works for everyone.

Finally, Some Help For Homeowners

Finally, Some Help For Homeowners
More than four months after the federal government claimed it was moving to address a mortgage crisis that threatened to take away the homes of millions of American families, steps are being taken to do just that.

All that was required was the exit of a president (George Bush) and a treasury secretary (Hank Paulson) who, in the best interpretation, were too economically inept to do what was needed, and, in the worst interpretation, used the crisis to steer hundreds of billions of dollars into the accounts of their buddies on Wall Street.

Whatever the cause of the delay, President Obama on Wednesday offered the response that was needed -- or, at the very least, a piece of the response that was needed.

The president proposes to take administrative actions to spend $75 billion of the Financial Stabilization Fund on facilitating modifications in existing loans and he wants to require lenders that are accepting tax dollars to adopt foreclosure prevention protocols to prevent unnecessary foreclosures.

These are meaningful steps.

Indeed, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), the national organization that has been in the forefront of the struggle to keep working families in their homes -- and has taken a lot of hard hits in the media and Washington for doing so -- refers to Obama's move of Wednesday as "the first federal effort to fight foreclosures since the crisis that brought down the economy began two years ago."

The president's ambitious plan could help as many as nine million American families that are currently struggling to make mortgage payments or whose homes are now worth dramatically less than the amount they paid for them. The housing plan uses incentives to homeowners and lenders to ease and encourage the process by which home loans can be restructured or refinanced to avoid foreclosure.

"The plan I'm announcing focuses on rescuing families who have played by the rules and acted responsibly," says Obama, who added that the plan would do this "by refinancing loans for millions of families in traditional mortgages who are underwater or close to it; by modifying loans for families stuck in sub-prime mortgages they can't afford as a result of skyrocketing interest rates or personal misfortune; and by taking broader steps to keep mortgage rates low so that families can secure loans with affordable monthly payments."

That's the right sentiment, even if the precise strategy adopted by Obama tends to reward banks and bankers that acted irresponsibly. (More on savvier approaches in a moment.)

This is not a particularly new notion, however.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chair Sheila Bair was promoting a plan to modify mortgages last fall.

Had the Bush White House and the Department of the Treasury listened to Barr -- and to members of Congress such as California Democrat Maxine Waters -- back then, hundreds of billions of dollars might have been saved. And the dollars that were spent might have actually gone to address the real crisis, as opposed to the demand from Wall Street for money to pay bonuses, bail out speculators and keep stockholders happy.

"In the end, all of us are paying a price for this home mortgage crisis. And all of us will pay an even steeper price if we allow this crisis to continue to deepen," Obama explained in Phoenix, where he announced his initiative. "But if we act boldly and swiftly to arrest this downward spiral, every American will benefit."

We should have acted "boldly and swiftly" -- and in a fiscally-responsible manner -- last fall. Hundreds of wasted billions later, we finally are. For that, Barack Obama and his administration deserve a good deal of credit -- just as George Bush and his administration deserve a great deal of blame.

The lesson is an important one.

Focus on the people who are hurting -- not the bankers who are threatening them -- first.

Bush, Cheney and Their Lawyers Should be Prosecuted

War Criminals, Including Their Lawyers, Must Be Prosecuted
Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA's secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. "My view is also that nobody's above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen," Obama said. "But," he added, "generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards." Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn't have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush's watch.

The smoking gun that may incriminate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., is the email traffic that passed between the lawyers and the White House. Isikoff revealed the existence of these emails on The Rachel Maddow Show. Some maintain that Bush officials are innocent because they relied in good faith on legal advice from their lawyers. But if the president and vice president told the lawyers to manipulate the law to allow them to commit torture, then that defense won't fly.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Armed Services Committee found that "senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

Cheney recently admitted to authorizing waterboarding, which has long been considered torture under U.S. law. Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft met with Cheney in the White House basement and authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to an ABC News report. When asked, Bush said he knew about it and approved.

John Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal oped that Bush "could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11."

A representative of the Justice Department promised that OPR's report would be released sometime last November. But Bush's attorney general Michael Mukasey objected to the draft. A final version will be presented to Attorney General Eric Holder. The administration will then have to decide whether to make it, and the emails, public and then how to proceed.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, we promised to extradite or prosecute those who commit, or are complicit in the commission, of torture. We have two federal criminal statutes for torture prosecutions - the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (torture is considered a war crime under U.S. law). The Torture Convention is unequivocal: nothing, including a state of war, can be invoked as a justification for torture.

Yoo redefined torture much more narrowly than U.S. law provides, and counseled the White House that it could evade prosecution under the War Crimes Act by claiming self-defense or necessity. Yoo knew or should have known of the Torture Convention's absolute prohibition of torture.

There is precedent for holding lawyers criminally liable for giving legally erroneous advice that resulted in great physical or mental harm or death. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to "legally" disappear political suspects to special detention camps.

Almost two-thirds of respondents to a USA Today/Gallup Poll favor investigations of the Bush team for torture and warrantless wiretapping. Nearly four in 10 favor criminal investigations. Cong. John Conyers has introduced legislation to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. Sen. Patrick Leahy advocates for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; but this is insufficient. TRC's are used for nascent democracies in transition. By giving immunity to those who testify before them, it would ensure that those responsible for torture, abuse and illegal spying will never be brought to justice.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials including lawyers like John Yoo who gave them "legal" cover. Obama is correct when he said that no one is above the law. Accountability is critical to ensuring that our leaders never again torture and abuse people.

Fox News promoted numerous myths and falsehoods about Obama and the economic stimulus bill

Fox News promoted numerous myths and falsehoods about Obama and the economic stimulus bill
In Fox News' special, Trillion with a T, Bret Baier promoted or repeated several myths and falsehoods about President Obama and the economic recovery bill, including that some of the spending in the bill -- which Obama has now signed into law -- isn't stimulus; that the bill will lead to "the government deciding which procedures you can have and which ones you can't"; that it would prohibit any religious activity in facilities receiving money; that the Obama administration advocated cutting the defense budget by 10 percent; and that Obama admitted "there might be some pork" in the bill.

In the "exclusive Fox News investigative report," Trillion with a T, which aired February 14-16, host and Special Report anchor Bret Baier promoted or repeated several myths and falsehoods about President Obama and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which Obama signed into law on February 17. These myths and falsehoods include: the assertion that some of the spending in the bill isn't stimulus; the assertion that the recovery bill will lead to "the government deciding which procedures you can have and which ones you can't"; the assertion that the bill would prohibit any religious activity in facilities receiving money; the assertion that the Obama administration advocated cutting the defense budget by 10 percent; and the assertion that Obama admitted that "there might be some pork" in the bill.

Spending in the bill isn't stimulus

Several times during the program, Baier uncritically aired and repeated the myth that some of the spending in the bill is not stimulus. Twice, Baier uncritically aired Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) stating that the bill is not an economic stimulus bill, once stating, "We need an economic stimulus bill, not a big government stimulus bill," and also singling out funding for school lunches and Amtrak: "We're stimulating big government, we're not stimulating the economy here, you know? It's the three quarters of a billion for the after-school lunch program. It may be a decent program on its own, but doesn't stimulate the economy."

Baier also stated that "stimulus opponents" found a "series of provisions they claim have little to do with stimulating the economy. Tax breaks for Hollywood, a pro-union 'buy American' provision that had our allies threatening a trade war, and even a provision for sexually transmitted disease prevention." Additionally, Baier uncritically reported that "Republicans, meanwhile, issue lists of spending items they say do not belong in an emergency bill that's supposed to stimulate the economy," again suggesting that those "spending items" would not "stimulate the economy":

BAIER: Republicans, meanwhile, issue lists of spending items they say do not belong in an emergency bill that's supposed to stimulate the economy. One billion dollars for the U.S. Census Bureau; $300 million for the purchase of cars with better fuel economy, such as hybrid and electric vehicles; $1.3 billion for Amtrak; $650 million to help people switch to digital TV; $200 million for a new Department of Homeland Security headquarters; $25 million for the Smithsonian Institution; $165 million the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service for resource management. Republicans also point out that since hundreds of billions will be given to states and cities to spend how they wish, there is no telling what that money will ultimately be used for. Of course, one politician's pork is another's good government. President Obama defends the millions for fuel-efficient and hybrid cars.

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Douglas W. Elmendorf specifically refuted the claim that there is spending in the bill that isn't stimulus. In January 27 testimony before the House Budget Committee, Elmendorf said (from the Nexis database): "[I]n our estimation -- and I think the estimation of most economists -- all of the increase in government spending and all of the reduction in tax revenue provides some stimulative effect. People are put to work, receive income, spend that on something else. That puts somebody else to work."

Also, as Media Matters has noted, in analyzing the House version of the bill and the original Senate version, the CBO stated that contrary to the claim that the legislation is not an "economic stimulus bill," it expects the measures to "have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years." Additionally, in his January 27 written testimony, Elmendorf said that the House version would "provide massive fiscal stimulus that includes a combination of government spending increases and revenue reductions." Elmendorf further stated: "In CBO's judgment, H.R. 1 would provide a substantial boost to economic activity over the next several years relative to what would occur without any legislation."

Moreover, economists say that the notion that all spending is stimulative is a basic economic principle. Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has written, "[S]pending is stimulus. Any spending will generate jobs. It is that simple."

The Recovery Act will lead to government restrictions on medical treatments

Baier uncritically repeated Rep. Jeff Flake's (R-AZ) assertion that the act "could lead to rationed health care" and uncritically aired Flake's claim that the bill will lead to "government deciding which procedures you can have and which ones you can't." The assertions echoed false media assertions -- repeatedly rebutted by Media Matters -- about the bill's health-care information technology provision based on a distortion that originated in a February 9 Bloomberg "commentary" by former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, as well as similar misrepresentations regarding the act's funding for the Comparative Effectiveness Research program.

In fact, the provision in the enrolled version of the act regarding the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology does not mandate that the federal government "decid[e] which procedures you can have and which ones you can't" or otherwise interfere with doctors' treatment decisions. Rather, the provision addresses establishing "a nationwide health information technology infrastructure that allows for the electronic use and exchange of information" in order to create "an electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014," thereby reducing "health care costs resulting from inefficiency, medical errors, inappropriate care, duplicative care, and incomplete information" and providing "appropriate information to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care." Similarly, a provision in the act establishing a Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research and calling for funding to "be used to accelerate the development and dissemination of research assessing the comparative effectiveness of health care treatments and strategies" and for the health and human services secretary to "consider any recommendations" by the council provides for no federal ban on treatments, regardless of effectiveness or cost-efficiency.

The Act will prohibit any religious activity in facilities receiving money

Baier uncritically aired Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-SC) false assertion that under the Recovery Act, "[i]f [universities] take any money, you can't have prayer groups meet in a dorm anymore."

In fact, as Media Matters has noted, the section in question provides funding "for modernization, renovation, or repair of institution of higher education facilities that are primarily used for instruction, research, or student housing," and prohibits the use of such funds for "modernization, renovation, or repair of facilities ... used for sectarian instruction, religious worship, or a school or department of divinity ... or in which a substantial portion of the functions of the facilities are subsumed in a religious mission" [emphasis added]. It thus would not ban recipients of that funding from having "prayer groups meet in a dorm," as DeMint claimed.

The Obama administration asked the Pentagon to cut its budget by 10 percent

Baier falsely asserted that "as the U.S. fights two major wars, the administration is asking the Pentagon to cut its budget by 10 percent." In fact, as Josh Rogin reported in a February 2 Congressional Quarterly article, the Obama administration has actually proposed increasing the Pentagon's fiscal year 2010 budget by about $14 billion from its 2009 budget. In stating that the Obama administration asked "the Pentagon to cut its budget by 10 percent," Baier was comparing the administration's 2010 budget request for defense spending with what Rogin reported was "a $584 billion draft budget request compiled last fall by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for fiscal 2010."

Obama admitted there "might be some pork" in the recovery bill

Baier quoted Obama saying at a February 9 town hall in Elkhart, Indiana, "I'm not going to tell you that this bill is perfect. I mean, it's coming out of Washington, it's going through Congress." Baier then baselessly asserted that "Obama admits: Sure, there might be some pork." However, during the Elkhart town hall, Obama twice refuted the notion that the bill contained pork, noting that "there aren't individual pork projects that members of Congress are putting into this bill" and later refuted the suggestion that funding for clean energy is pork:

Will DC "Reformers" Create a Health Care System as Skewed Towards the Rich as the Rest of the Economy

Will DC "Reformers" Create a Health Care System as Skewed Towards the Rich as the Rest of the Economy
Princeton health care economist Uwe Reinhardt recently recalled asking Victor Fuchs, a colleague, "When will we ever have universal health insurance in the U.S.?" Fuchs' answer: "Not until World War III, a Great Depression, or a major epidemic that threatens everyone."

In other words, Fuchs believed that it would take a catastrophe before Americans might finally realize that we are all in one boat together: Wars, natural disasters and economic upheaval can create great solidarity.

We may not have long to wait for that moment. Despite President Obama's best efforts, it is all but inevitable that this recession will deepen. As the president recently warned, this is not an "ordinary, run-of –the-mill" recession. In the worst-case scenario, the meltdown could lead to a "lost decade" of growth.

At this point, America's middle-class finds itself on the edge of a cliff. As unemployment rises, it will become apparent how quickly an upper-middle-class family can find itself part of the middle class -- no longer able to afford private school, skiing vacations, or, in the worst case scenario, the payments on a mega- mortgage. Meanwhile, middle-class families risk slipping quietly into the nearly invisible lower-middle-class -- a group often referred to as "the working poor."

Rising insecurity should mean that the push for health care reform will build. But the recession cuts both ways: it also means that government tax revenues will shrink, leaving fewer dollars for the subsidies we will need if we hope to cover everyone. Conservatives will say that we simply can't afford health care reform.

Already, despite much talk of bi-partisanship, the debate over the fiscal stimulus passage makes it clear that conservatives are not in a compromising mood. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman pointed out that "centrist" Republicans have joined conservatives in stripping the stimulus package of $80 billion worth of programs that included "much needed spending on school construction," help for the unemployed, Food Stamps and aid for cash-strapped sates -- "the measures that would do the most to reduce the depth and pain of this slump" for those who will be hit hardest. The version of the bill that cleared the Senate cut more than $50 billion from programs that specifically help children such as Head Start, school construction, education for disadvantaged children, and prevention programs

"How did this happen?" Krugman blames, "President Obama's belief that he can transcend the partisan divide -- a belief that warped his economic strategy." The Princeton economist points out that "many people expected Mr. Obama to come out with a really strong stimulus plan, reflecting both the economy's dire straits and his own electoral mandate. Instead, however, he offered a plan that was clearly both too small and too heavily reliant on tax cuts. Why? Because he wanted the plan to have broad bipartisan support, and believed that it would. In the end, they barely escaped a filibuster with 61 votes. What does this mean for health care legislation?

There is a real danger, Uwe Reinhardt confides, that politicians will settle for universal coverage that continues to ration care according to ability to pay -- leaving us with a sharply tiered system. This, Reinhardt says, is what he thinks will happen, "unless we, the more affluent, step forward to tax ourselves."

On the question of opening our wallets in order to cover everyone, the most recent Kaiser poll on health care reform conducted less than two months ago, is not encouraging. It shows that “the public is split down the middle in its willingness to sacrifice financially in order to cover more individuals: roughly half (49%) say they are not willing to pay higher insurance premiums or taxes, while a similar percentage (47%) say they are. There are big partisan differences here, with most Democrats (59%) saying they are willing to pay, most Republicans unwilling to pay (67%), and independents divided (49% willing, 47% unwilling)".

When asked whether the economic meltdown makes reform more or less likely, the answers again split along partisan lines: "more than three-quarters (77%) of Democrats think health reform ‘is more important than ever' due to the economy, while six in ten (62%) Republicans believe the nation "cannot afford to take on health reform now."

Let me be clear: I agree that we cannot afford to subsidize care for all at current, wasteful levels of spending. But all families, rich or poor, should receive the same level of evidence-based medicine. (Beware of reformers who talk of "a health care plan for every pocketbook.") And I worry that Republicans will trim government subsidies to a point that we wind up, as Reinhardt suggests, with two or three classes of health care.

This, after all, is what we have today. On the lowest tier, Medicaid pays health care providers significantly less than Medicare pays for the same procedure . On the next tier, Medicare pays primary care providers such small sums that, in cities like New York, many physicians are refusing to take new Medicare patients. On the top tier, patients pay health care providers whatever they choose to charge.

I am not suggesting that all physicians are underpaid under Medicare: in 2005, while Medicare paid only $82 for a 30 minute visit with a PCP, it paid $206 for a 30-minute colonoscopy. Most of the care that Medicare patients receive is at least as good as the care they will receive under commercial insurance. We need to redistribute the dollars that Medicare pays to doctors -- paying for value, not volume. But we do not need to increase total payment.

Physicians who take Medicaid patients, by contrast, are grossly underpaid. And this is a major reason why Medicaid offers "subpar" care. Care-givers are stretched too thin and have too little support. Just two examples from an earlier post: One study reveals that while 77.2 percent of new mothers received timely postpartum care under commercial insurance plans, only 40.7 percent of those on Medicaid were lucky enough to receive the needed follow-up. Another recent study in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that patients who undergo colon cancer surgery in hospitals where more than 40 percent of patients are on Medicaid have a higher risk of death.

A Lopsided Economy -- How Wealth and Income are Distributed

We are, after all, accustomed to living in a sharply tiered society. American families play and work in separate pods, defined, to a large degree, by how much we earn. We send our children to different schools, shop in different stores, live in separate towns, and vacation in different places, segregated by what we can afford. And this, Reinhardt has suggested, is why we are the only developed nation in the world that does not have universal health insurance. We lack "social solidarity."

In other countries, the majority of the citizens are middle-class, and they identify with each other. When it comes to healthcare, the French are willing to pay for high quality, universal coverage because they feel that nothing is too good for another Frenchman. Sadly, in the U.S. we do not feel that way about each other.

As Reinhardt reminded his audience at the conference last week, in our economy the lines separating us are stark. Consider how the nation's wealth is distributed:
--The richest 1 percent own 34 percent of total wealth

--The richest 20 percent own 85 percent of aggregate wealth

--The remaining 80 percent own just 15 percent of the nation's wealth

"This isn't a middle-class country," Reinhardt observed after presenting these numbers. "It's not even a democracy; it's an aristocracy.”

Wealth and power have become consolidated in the hands of a few because, over the past 29 years, income has been distributed so unevenly, allowing the wealthy to speculate on real estate and high-flying stocks. Since the early 1980s those who could afford to play this high stakes game have bid prices ever higher, and as a consequence, their net worth has soared.

Despite the stock market crash of 2000, the real estate bubble kept the wealthy afloat: indeed from 1995 to 2004, the wealthiest 25 percent of the nation saw their net worth (assets minus debt) double while the middle class made meager gains.

We Need to Build an Economy that Works

We Need to Build an Economy that Works By David Korten, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Agenda for a New Economy: From Phantom Wealth to Real Wealth by David Korten, published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2009.

Our economic system has failed in every dimension: financial, environmental, and social. And the current financial collapse provides an incontestable demonstration that it has failed even on its own terms. Spending trillions of dollars in an effort to restore this system to its previous condition is a reckless waste of time and resources and may be the greatest misuse of federal government credit in history. The more intelligent course is to acknowledge the failure and to set about redesigning our economic system from the bottom up to align with the realities and opportunities of the twenty-first century.

The Bush administration's strategy focused on bailing out the Wall Street institutions that bore primary responsibility for creating the crisis; its hope was that if the government picked up enough of those institutions' losses and toxic assets, they might decide to open the tap and get credit flowing again. The Obama administration has come into office with a strong focus on economic stimulus, and particularly on green jobs?--?by far a more thoughtful and appropriate approach.

The real need, however, goes far beyond pumping new money into the economy to alleviate the consequences of the credit squeeze. We need to rebuild the system from the bottom up.

The recent credit meltdown has resulted in bailout commitments estimated in November 2008 to be $7.4 trillion, roughly half of the total U.S. gross domestic product (GDP). Congressional passage the previous month of a $700 billion bailout package to be administered by the Treasury Department sparked a vigorous national debate that focused attention on the devastating consequences of Wall Street deregulation. Other, even larger government commitments, including $4.5 trillion from the Federal Reserve, largely escaped notice. Large as the bailouts were, the failure of the credit system is only one manifestation of a failed economy that is wildly out of balance with, and devastating to, both humans and the natural environment.

Wages are falling in the face of volatile food and energy prices. Consumer debt and housing foreclosures are setting historic records. The middle class is shrinking. The unconscionable and growing worldwide gap between rich and poor, with its related alienation, is eroding the social fabric to the point of fueling terrorism, genocide, and other violent criminal activity.

At the same time, excessive consumption is pushing Earth's ecosystems into collapse. Climate change and the related increase in droughts, floods, and wildfires are now recognized as serious threats. Scientists are in almost universal agreement that human activity bears substantial responsibility. We face severe water shortages, the erosion of topsoil, the loss of species, and the end of the fossil fuel subsidy. In each instance, a failed economic system that takes no account of the social and environmental costs of monetary profits bears major responsibility.

We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress or the corporate press. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale in comparison to what lies ahead.

Even the significant funds that the Obama administration is committed to spending on economic stimulus will do nothing to address the deeper structural causes of our threefold financial, social, and environmental crisis. On the positive side, the financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and that markets work best when deregulated. ....continued at link

Coal-Fired Power Stations Are Death Factories

Coal-Fired Power Stations Are Death Factories. Close Them by James Hansen
A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders. The reason is this - coal is the single greatest threat to civilisation and all life on our planet.

The climate is nearing tipping points. Changes are beginning to appear and there is a potential for explosive changes, effects that would be irreversible, if we do not rapidly slow fossil-fuel emissions over the next few decades. As Arctic sea ice melts, the darker ocean absorbs more sunlight and speeds melting. As the tundra melts, methane, a strong greenhouse gas, is released, causing more warming. As species are exterminated by shifting climate zones, ecosystems can collapse, destroying more species.

The public, buffeted by weather fluctuations and economic turmoil, has little time to analyse decadal changes. How can people be expected to evaluate and filter out advice emanating from those pushing special interests? How can people distinguish between top-notch science and pseudo-science?

Those who lead us have no excuse - they are elected to guide, to protect the public and its best interests. They have at their disposal the best scientific organisations in the world, such as the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences. Only in the past few years did the science crystallise, revealing the urgency. Our planet is in peril. If we do not change course, we'll hand our children a situation that is out of their control. One ecological collapse will lead to another, in amplifying feedbacks.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air has already risen to a dangerous level. The pre-industrial carbon dioxide amount was 280 parts per million (ppm). Humans, by burning coal, oil and gas, have increased this to 385 ppm; it continues to grow by about 2 ppm per year.

Earth, with its four-kilometre-deep oceans, responds only slowly to changes of carbon dioxide. So the climate will continue to change, even if we make maximum effort to slow the growth of carbon dioxide. Arctic sea ice will melt away in the summer season within the next few decades. Mountain glaciers, providing fresh water for rivers that supply hundreds of millions of people, will disappear - practically all of the glaciers could be gone within 50 years - if carbon dioxide continues to increase at current rates. Coral reefs, harbouring a quarter of ocean species, are threatened.

The greatest danger hanging over our children and grandchildren is initiation of changes that will be irreversible on any time scale that humans can imagine. If coastal ice shelves buttressing the west Antarctic ice sheet continue to disintegrate, the sheet could disgorge into the ocean, raising sea levels by several metres in a century. Such rates of sea level change have occurred many times in Earth's history in response to global warming rates no higher than those of the past 30 years. Almost half of the world's great cities are located on coastlines.

The most threatening change, from my perspective, is extermination of species. Several times in Earth's history, rapid global warming occurred, apparently spurred by amplifying feedbacks. In each case, more than half of plant and animal species became extinct. New species came into being over tens and hundreds of thousands of years. But these are time scales and generations that we cannot imagine. If we drive our fellow species to extinction, we will leave a far more desolate planet for our descendants than the world we inherited from our elders.

Clearly, if we burn all fossil fuels, we will destroy the planet we know. Carbon dioxide would increase to 500 ppm or more. We would set the planet on a course to the ice-free state, with sea level 75 metres higher. Climatic disasters would occur continually. The tragedy of the situation, if we do not wake up in time, is that the changes that must be made to stabilise the atmosphere and climate make sense for other reasons. They would produce a healthier atmosphere, improved agricultural productivity, clean water and an ocean providing fish that are safe to eat.

Fossil-fuel reservoirs will dictate the actions needed to solve the problem. Oil, of which half the readily accessible reserves have already been burnt, is used in vehicles, so it's impractical to capture the carbon dioxide. This is likely to drive carbon dioxide levels to at least 400 ppm. But if we cut off the largest source of carbon dioxide - coal - it will be practical to bring carbon dioxide back to 350 ppm, lower still if we improve agricultural and forestry practices, increasing carbon storage in trees and soil.

Coal is not only the largest fossil fuel reservoir of carbon dioxide, it is the dirtiest fuel. Coal is polluting the world's oceans and streams with mercury, arsenic and other dangerous chemicals. The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretence that they are working on "clean coal" or that they will build power plants that are "capture-ready" in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants.

The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. When I testified against the proposed Kingsnorth power plant, I estimated that in its lifetime it would be responsible for the extermination of about 400 species - its proportionate contribution to the number that would be committed to extinction if carbon dioxide rose another 100 ppm.

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green. When I show German officials the evidence that the coal source must be cut off, they say they will tighten the "carbon cap". But a cap only slows the use of a fuel - it does not leave it in the ground. When I point out that their new coal plants require that they convince Russia to leave its oil in the ground, they are silent. The Australian government was elected on a platform of solving the climate problem, but then, with the help of industry, it set emission targets so high as to guarantee untold disasters for the young, let alone the unborn. These governments are not green. They are black - coal black.

The three countries most responsible, per capita, for filling the air with carbon dioxide from fossil fuels are the UK, the US and Germany, in that order. Politicians here have asked me why am I speaking to them. Surely the US must lead? But coal interests have great power in the US; the essential moratorium and phase-out of coal requires a growing public demand and a political will yet to be demonstrated.

The Prime Minister should not underestimate his potential to transform the situation. And he must not pretend to be ignorant of the consequences of continuing to burn coal or take refuge in a "carbon cap" or some "target" for future emission reductions. My message to Gordon Brown is that young people are beginning to understand the situation. They want to know: will you join their side? Remember that history, and your children, will judge you.

Elegy for a Toxic Logic

Elegy for a Toxic Logic by Rebecca Solnit
Capitalism imploded more dramatically than anyone had imagined, though once it had, its collapse seemed as obvious as inevitable. That is, underregulated free-market capitalism ate itself before our eyes. At the beginning of the Bush era, now passing from the face of the Earth more like a toxic plume than a morning mist, the then-functional FEMA predicted three major catastrophic risks for the United States: a terrorist attack in New York, a hurricane strike on New Orleans, and a major earthquake in San Francisco. In early 2008, some distinguished sources were predicting an economic apocalypse too, including German president and former International Monetary Fund chair Horst Köhler, who declared, "International financial markets have developed into a monster that must be put back in its place."

When these markets fell apart, so did many of the fundamental premises of the past few decades, which is part of what makes this moment in history so interesting, and so unpredictable. Even trying to grasp it is dizzying, like looking-as Mike Davis put it-into the Grand Canyon and trying to understand its vastness. What exactly collapsed? Not just the financial assumptions of the Bush era, or the Clinton and Bush eras of globalization, or of Reaganomics with its cult of the free market, but something bigger and deeper. It became clear that the American economy had been for almost four decades a desperately ill patient requiring more and more life support to keep it going: get off the gold standard in 1971, then deregulate markets, globalize capital, go for "financialization"-the conversion of more and more aspects of life on Earth into investment opportunities-unto the derivatives and hedges and bundled mortgages that brought it all down.

I have never been able to confirm the adage that the Chinese word for crisis is made up of the characters for disaster and opportunity, but if it isn't true it ought to be. This unforeseen moment has many possibilities. The death of capitalism, or rather the revelation of its profound diseasedness, is an opportunity it would be ironic to call golden. But check out what Michael Pollan wrote last October: "In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. . . . Expect to hear the phrases ‘food sovereignty' and ‘food security' on the lips of every foreign leader."

What he's saying is that the rationale for globalization has unraveled and, in some parts of the world at least, will soon be abandoned. The logic of forcing your local or national economy to stop providing for its own needs and serve instead the global market has been upended. Sadly, as with most calamities, the already poor and hungry will pay and are already paying the greatest price-but we should be careful about being too mournful about this moment in history. The system was designed to produce their poverty and hunger, to grind them down and discard them. When it worked as intended, farmers in India and Korea were committing suicide by the thousand; Mexican farmers were being shoved off their land and essentially dispatched on the long tramp north; Brazil's soybean bonanza was leading to deforestation, displacement of small farmers, soil degradation, and doing nothing for that nation's hungry. The same stories could be told about many nations in Africa-and about American small farmers. It was a system designed to destroy the many for the profit of the few, and it had been producing suffering, hunger, and despair all along. Though its collapse may produce yet more suffering, it opens the way to systems and ideologies that could produce far less. Already unsteady as the World Trade Organization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas failed, globalization itself is faltering, as is the rationale that it is good for the majority of us. It never was, and now the evidence has won the argument.

The sudden rise in petroleum prices helped to undermine the logic of shipping everything everywhere, and domestic shippers have already scaled back. Those fuel prices dropped again in part because consumption itself dropped, but they will not drop to where they were a few years ago. Cheapness-in the United States, if not in Europe-was part of what made polluting the atmosphere fun and easy. The whole argument against doing anything about climate change was that the unregulated free market must not be interfered with, except maybe to commodify the right to pollute. Now that the market had to be interfered with in order to save it from its own folly, that argument is gone. So much of what made the United States such a disproportionate polluter and emitter was our obscene wealth, now somewhat reduced; a decline in snowmobile purchases, overseas vacations, new construction, and so forth is very good news for the environment. The madness of postwar affluence is fading, and Americans are beginning to make very different choices about debt, consumption, and other acts of economic overconfidence-though of course desperation remains unevenly distributed in a world that always had enough for everyone. The early tales of the crash concerned capitalists canceling their yachts, not standing in bread lines.

Still, everything changes. And a logic that was tantamount to religion has collapsed, the logic that made it so hard to do anything about everything: poverty, injustice, environmental degradation, corporations run rampant, economic madness. Now that the logic is gone-or so weakened that it can never come back with the force it had in all policy arguments for the past three or four decades-we have an extraordinary opportunity. Not a gift, not a guarantee, but an opportunity to supply a different logic, one of modesty, prudence, long-term vision, solidarity-and pleasure: all the pleasures that were not being brought to us by a system whose highest achievement was represented by endless aisles of shoddy goods made in countless sweatshops on the other side of the world.

The future has never been more uncertain, but that's not all bad news. This moment could belong to those who want to articulate something that is neither capitalist nor communist but local, durable, humane, imaginative, inclusive, and open to ongoing improvisation, rather than locked in place as a fixed ideology. The moment is ours to seize.