Hurricane Irene

I'd rather be suffering through record heat in Oklahoma than going through Hurricane Irene back home in Philadelphia, thank you very much. According to the New York Times, the storm made landfall in North Carolina about 7:30 Saturday morning, and continued to move slowly northward along the Atlantic Seaboard as of a little after midnight Sunday morning. New York City shut down in anticipation of the the storm's arrival, including the city's subway system.

A variety of online written and live video sources reported that there were some deaths. The highest number I heard so far was nine. This seems like a remarkably low number given that the hurricane is affecting the nation's most heavily populated area. The relatively weak but massive hurricane seems to be causing widespread flooding and power outages.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a time-lapse video of the storm as it made its way from Puerto Rico and the Bahamas to the East Coast of the United States, and a graphic that will let you track the storm.

Given that it is seriously past my bedtime, I am reminded of  this old folk song.

More news on the student exchange from hell

The New York Times has picked up the story, which I found re-posted by the National Guestworker Alliance. The Times has a lot more information than what I was able to find online yesterday.

Yesterday, someone asked me, "But why didn't the students find out exactly what kind of job they would have?" I think that's a good question, but on the other hand, look at the Web site for the Council for Education Travel, USA, which the Times identified as "the organization that manages the J-1 visa program for the State Department." (This is the student cultural exchange program.) There is nothing on the organization's site that would arouse my suspicion.

On the other hand, the response given by their spokesperson to the Times didn't sit right with me.

Rick Anaya, chief executive of the council, said he had brought about 6,000 J-1 visa students to the United States this summer. Mr. Anaya said he had tried to respond to the Palmyra workers’ complaints. “We are not getting any cooperation,” he said. “We are trying to work with these kids. All this negativity is hurting an excellent program. We would go out of our way to help them, but it seems like someone is stirring them up out there.”

If people are being overworked and ripped off--apparently the tipping point came when the students discovered they were being charged much more for rent than other tenants in the apartment complex where they are housed--you can't expect them to have a positive attitude.

The student cultural exchange from hell

On Wednesday, an incredible story showed up in my e-mail inbox from the folks at Jobs With Justice.

According to  Jobs With Justice, this summer the Hershey's Company has been exploiting hundreds of student guest workers who thought they were coming to the United States on a cultural exchange. These students reportedly paid between three and six thousand dollars to take part in this program. Instead of a cultural exchange, they have been packing chocolates for Hershey's under abusive conditions. After automatic deductions for rent in company housing, the students are said to make only $40-$140/week.

Some of the students themselves tell their grim story. I found a link to the following video included with the Harrisburg Patriot News coverage of a Wednesday protest at the warehouse where the students work. A civil disobedience action that was part of the protest resulted in three arrests.



These jobs would otherwise be living-wage union jobs for people living in Central Pennsylvania, who could surely use the work. The students' supporters have blamed the Hershey company's willingness to subcontract the jobs for creating the situation.

According to the Associated Press, "An official for the The Hershey Company said the packing plant is run by another company, Excel(sic), and like all vendors is expected to treat workers fairly." The Harrisburg Patriot-News reports that "The warehouse [where the students work] is operated by Exel, an Ohio-based logistical firm that provides services for businesses in the Harrisburg area."

A Hershey's company Web page says that company seeks to "provide high-quality Hershey products while conducting our business in a socially responsible and environmentally sustainable manner." If they're sincere about being socially responsible, doesn't that include some responsibility to make sure that their contractors are also socially responsible?

The protester are demanding the end of exploitation of the student workers, the return of the fees they paid to come to the US, and that Hershey's hire local workers at a living wage to do this work. The students have also filed a complaint with the State Department alleging violations of the J-1 visa program under which they were brought to the United States. You can find more information about the protest at Web sites of the National Guestworker Alliance and Jobs With Justice.

Obama as the New Nixon?

Paul Krugman has a link to a fascinating and thoughtful post by Bruce Bartlett, a former economic adviser to Ronald Reagan and Treasury Secretary under George H.W. Bush. Bush argues that Barack Obama has been a moderate conservative president who continues the policies of his Republican predecessors--just as Richard Nixon was a moderate liberal who continued and expanded the Great Society programs of Lyndon Johnson.

In the process, Barlett gives a concise and cogent analysis of much of the political and economic history of the United States since the Second World War. For instance:

Liberals initially viewed Bill Clinton the same way conservatives viewed Eisenhower – as a liberator who would reverse the awful policies of his two predecessors. But almost immediately, Clinton decided that deficit reduction would be the first order of business in his administration. His promised middle class tax cut and economic stimulus were abandoned.

By 1995, Clinton was working with Republicans to dismantle welfare. In 1997, he supported a cut in the capital gains tax. As the benefits of his 1993 deficit reduction package took effect, budget deficits disappeared and we had the first significant surpluses in memory. Yet Clinton steadfastly refused to spend any of the flood of revenues coming into the Treasury, hording them like a latter day Midas. In the end, his administration was even more conservative than Eisenhower’s on fiscal policy.

And just as pent-up liberal aspirations exploded in the 1960s with spending for every pet project green lighted, so too the fiscal conservatism of the Clinton years led to an explosion of tax cuts under George W. Bush, who supported every one that came down the pike. The result was the same as it was with Johnson: massive federal deficits and a tanking economy.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

Oklahoma City and Oslo

Today both The Southern Poverty Law Center and Common Dreams have interesting analytical pieces comparing the recent tragic act of terrorism in Oslo with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Both posts point out that it's wrongheaded and dangerous to scapegoat Muslims as a threat to peace when right-wing Christian fundamentalists pose a serious threat.

The Common Dreams post is authored by Pierre Tristam, and crossposted from FlaglerLive.com. Tristam points out that after both incidents, news media initially made the assumption that the attacks were the work of Muslims:

After the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, speculation flew on television news stations about Arab terrorists seen in the vicinity of the federal building. The thought that a home-grown, Midwestern Army veteran of the first Gulf war could possibly murder 168 people, including 19 children at a day care center, seemed as foreign as those Islamic lands that were then inspiring so much of bigotry’s latest American mutant. McVeigh turned out to be as all-American as he could possibly be, with extras. His paradoxical worship of the Second Amendment was the faith that fueled his hatred of a government he felt had betrayed American ideals by enabling what he called “Socialist wannabe slaves.” His idealism of a golden-age white America was the Christian translation of al-Qaeda’s idealized caliphate.

It became quickly evident that the bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utoya Island on Friday had been carried out by Anders Breivik, who surrendered to police 40 minutes after beginning his killing spree on the island. Yet the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial on Saturday putting the blame for the attack on Islamist extremists, because “in jihadist eyes,” the paper said, “it will forever remain guilty of being what it is: a liberal nation committed to freedom of speech and conscience, equality between the sexes, representative democracy and every other freedom that still defines the West."

Of course, the problem is that there are is a strong, right-wing contingent of Anglo Westerners that is very much in opposition to such notions as freedom of speech and equality between the sexes. As SPLC's Heidi Beirich points out, Oslo terrorist Anders Breivik recently published a 1500-page tirade in which he accused something called "cultural Marxism"--meaning liberalism and multiculturism--with destroying "European Christian Civilization." Lest we merely dismiss Breivik as a lone fanatic, we should keep in mind that

Fears of “cultural Marxism” have a long pedigree in this country. It’s a conspiratorial kind of “political correctness” on steroids — a covert assault on the American way of life that allegedly has been developed by the left over the course of the last 70 years. Those who use the term posit that a small group of German philosophers, all Jews who fled Germany and went to Columbia University in the 1930s to found the Frankfurt School, devised a cultural form of “Marxism” aimed at subverting Western civilization. The method involves manipulating the culture into supporting homosexuality, sex education, egalitarianism, and the like, to the point that traditional institutions and culture are ultimately wrecked.

A number of hate groups, including the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), have raised the spectre of cultural Marxism as a way to explain contemporary events (click here to watch the CCC’s DVD on the theory). Some prominent conservatives also adopted the conspiratorial theory (culturalmarxism.org features MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan and Texas Congressman Ron Paul). In 2002, William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right outfit long headed by the now deceased Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of the Moral Majority), gave a speech about the theory to a Holocaust denial conference. Saying he was “not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred,” Lind went on to lay blame for “political correctness” and other evils on so-called “cultural Marxists,” who, he said, “were all Jewish” (Lind is mentioned in passing in Breivik’s manifesto).

As an apprentice librarian, I believe it's important to uphold everyone's right to free speech, even when this speech is hateful. But it's important to recognize that hateful speech does have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are extreme.

A synonym for "debt crisis"? How about "charade"?

Economist Michael Hudson, interviewed on Democracy Now! has an unusual way of pronouncing the word "charade," but his analysis of the artificial crisis around raising the federal debt ceiling is very revealing:

AMY GOODMAN: So, Michael Hudson, what could President Obama do?

MICHAEL HUDSON: He could say, "This debt ceiling has nothing to do with policy. You want to argue about the tax policy? Fine, let the Democrats and Republicans do it under non-crisis conditions. But this has nothing to do at all with the debt ceiling. If you want to refuse to increase the debt and plunge the economy into disaster, maybe you’d better talk to your campaign contributors and see what they want, because I know what they say. Your campaign contributors, in the Republicans, are my campaign contributors. They don’t like crises." And you’ll find that it’s all—the charade will—it’s just like pricking the balloon.

I've almost decided to just stop worrying about the debt limit. As Dean Baker points out, there could be some positive effects from failing to raise the debt limit:

If the question is default, that would end the supremacy of the U.S. financial industry. The downturn from a default would be very bad news for all of us, but the end of the supremacy of the U.S. financial industry would likely be good news for the rest of us. This would radically reduce the political power of this sector and their ability to steer the government to serve Wall Street's agenda. We could instead pursue economic policies that serve the rest of the economy with the resources consumed by the financial sector redeployed to more productive uses.

All work and no pay (but you could run off to Camp NaNoWriMo)

Over at Truthout, they've picked up this excellent description of the conditions faced by US workers today, from "part time" college instructors, to working mothers, to blue collar workers, to the people who work in your local big-box chain store. The original article, by Monica Bauerlein and Clara Jefferey, comes from Mother Jones.

On a bright spring day in a wisteria-bedecked courtyard full of earnest, if half-drunk, conference attendees, we were commiserating with a fellow journalist about all the jobs we knew of that were going unfilled, being absorbed or handled "on the side." It was tough for all concerned, but necessary—you know, doing more with less.

"Ah," he said, "the speedup."

His old-school phrase gave form to something we'd been noticing with increasing apprehension—and it extended far beyond journalism. We'd hear from creative professionals in what seemed to be dream jobs who were crumbling under ever-expanding to-do lists; from bus drivers, hospital technicians, construction workers, doctors, and lawyers who shame-facedly whispered that no matter how hard they tried to keep up with the extra hours and extra tasks, they just couldn't hold it together. (And don't even ask about family time.)

I so wish I had written it myself. I have so lived every sentence and paragraph of this article, and I bet you have, too. Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing, because it holds the open secret to why ordinary people are getting kicked in the teeth by this economy. Fewer workers are working harder and harder for no increase in pay, while corporate profits are up 22 percent. (And the f***ers don't even want to pay taxes on their ill-gotten gains.)

But enough ranting for the moment. I'm heading off for Camp NaNoWriMo to play with my novel. You could go, too.

Sharing the pain to reduce the deficit

Richard Eskow at Campaign for America's Future has a good analysis of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders "Shared Sacrifice" plan for addressing the federal debt and deficit. As Eskow points out:

The question is whether we reduce the deficit only through spending cuts, or also by raising taxes on the rich. This should be an easy issue for Democrats to stand on ... and run on. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that 72% of of those surveyed agreed that federal taxes should be raised for households making more than $250,000 - including 55% of Republicans. Yet even with the GOP leadership far to the right of the country on this issue, Democrats haven’t taken an unequivocal position.

Who's speaking for this Republican majority (and most everybody else) in Washington? Only Sen. Bernie Sanders, Socialist from Vermont. Sanders has unequivocally said that he won't support a deal to raise the debt ceiling unless it includes higher taxes on on the rich. Where are the Democrats? Nancy Pelosi's been marginalized from the discussions, even though a deal won't be possible without the support of Democrats in Congress. The White House and Harry Reid have refused to take a firm stand.

Sanders has gained lots of positive attention from progressives for his speech on the Senate floor Monday, in which he called for each dollar of cuts in social programs to be matched by a dollar of tax increases on the wealthy and corporations in order to achieve deficit reduction, as well as "significant cuts to unnecessary and wasteful Pentagon spending."

As has been noted in this space, the federal deficit and debt are something of a long-term problem for the United States, but their impact has been greatly exaggerated by Republicans looking for an excuse to  help the wealthy at the expense of ordinary people. CAF has a useful Web page that examines this issue in light of the current controversy. A link on that page leads to a commentary by Dave Johnson that illustrates the dangers of crashing the economy if Democrats cave in to Republican demands in order to raise the debt limit.

Most progressives understand that the deficit is not a serious immediate economic concern in a country that is on the verge of a double-dip recession. Cutting government spending at this point is likely to make the problem worse. But the Republicans are not likely to concede any of this. What Senator Sanders has offered is a practical and principled compromise. If Republicans truly believe that reducing the deficit and debt is the most serious problem facing the country, they need to be willing for the wealthy and the powerful to share the sacrifice necessary to make that possible.

If you would like to add your support to this position, Senator Sanders has started a petition to President Obama to urge him to follow this approach. CAF has a page that allows you to contact your senators and congressperson about this issue. Maybe this time the Republicans have gone too far. Maybe ordinary people will be willing and able to take their country back.

Update: If even a Fox News commentator thinks that US corporations should pay more taxes, maybe there is real hope for this solution. (Hat tip to US Uncut for that link.)

Sexual harassment is not the same as private misconduct

In a blog post at thenation.com, Amanda Marcotte dismisses "Weinergate" as destructive gossip. Dana Goldstein begs to differ, expressing anger that Rep. Weiner, an advocate for progressive issues such as universal healthcare, "would risk his important role in the public debate by giving strangers access to such embarrassing photographs He must have—should have!—known there was a chance the pictures could leak, putting his career at risk."

Echidne of the Snakes gets right down to the real issue, which is sexual harassment. (If you follow the link, you'll have to scroll down a bit to find the relevant section):

The case of Gennette Cordova is the one I have most evidence about. She did not invite Weiner's underpants picture and she was not pleased to receive it.

What happened to her next is disgusting. First, the press invaded her campus:

Media outlets from all over the world are calling and sending emails to staff at Whatcom Community College after a lewd photo was sent to a student from the Twitter account of a New York congressman.
Students at the college are being careful about talking to strangers on the campus, said KIRO 7 Eyewitness News North Sound reporter Lee Stoll.
WCC student Kelsey Rowlson said the campus has had a lot more visitors than usual this week.
"(The) 'Today' show was here today and then 'Good Morning America' called yesterday, … New York Times," said Rowlson, laughing.

This is a private individual, mind you. And here are the consequences, as she wrote about them some time ago:

The last 36 hours have been the most confusing, anxiety-ridden hours of my life. I've watched in sheer disbelief as my name, age, location, links to any social networking site I've ever used, my old phone numbers and pictures have been passed along from stranger to stranger.
My friends have received phone calls from people claiming to be old friends of mine, attempting to obtain my contact information. My siblings have received tweets that are similar in nature. I began taking steps, though not quickly enough, to remove as much personal information from the Internet as possible.
Not because I "was exposed as Weiner's mistress" or because I "was responsible for the hack," as Gawker has suggested. I removed my information because I, believe it or not, do not enjoy being harassed or being the reason that my loved ones are targets of harassment.
I have seen myself labeled as the "Femme Fatale of Weinergate," "Anthony Weiner's 21-year-old coed mistress" and "the self-proclaimed girlfriend of Anthony Weiner."

It's like being pecked to death by vultures. Those labels she mentions appear to come mostly from the right-wing blogs. A summary can be found here, though I should warn that the quotes are sexist and racist and just plain nasty. Vultures. Did I already say that?

My only disagreement with Echidne is that vultures actually play a useful role in the circle of life. If vultures could read, they would probably be offended at being compared to the perpetrators of this media circus.

We're not broke

Hat tip to Mike Hall at the AFL-CIO NOW BLOG for posting a link to this eye-opening position paper from the Economic Policy Institute. According to the paper's author, EPI President Larry Mishel

To fully understand the growth trends in income and wealth in recent decades, one must recognize that the growth has been very unequal: households at the top of the scale have seen much faster growth in their incomes and wealth accumulation than have those in the middle or bottom of the distribution. For instance, the top 10% of the income distribution has claimed almost two-thirds of the gains in income since 1979, with the top 1% alone claiming 38.7% of those overall gains. Moreover, the wealth of the median (or ‘typical’) household was lower in 2009 than in 1983, in spite of the 40.3% growth in the average household’s wealth.4 When the median is substantially lower than the average, it indicates very lopsided growth, which has been the case for the past 30 years: there was no growth in wealth for the bottom 80% of households, while those in the top fifth enjoyed a 50% increase.

So if the private sector has grown for the past 30 years (albeit very lopsidedly), and the projections for the next 30 years indicate comparable total income growth for the economy, then what is the story for the public sector?

It is true that all levels of government are facing budget difficulties as a result of falling revenues during the recession. Higher unemployment and depressed economic activity have certainly depressed tax revenues, and past tax cuts at all levels of government have seriously eroded revenues as well. But some policymakers and pundits want to have it both
ways: choke off the revenue stream to governments while slashing budget expenditures. For instance, the current domestic spending cuts proposed by the House of Representatives for this year were smaller than the revenues lost from extending the upper-income Bush tax cuts and the inheritance tax cut legislated last December

In other words, the extremely rich have benefited much more than everybody else from the nation's increase in productivity over the past 30 years. The extremely rich have also enjoyed huge tax cuts. If the rich paid a bit more in taxes, we could afford government programs that help poor and middle-class people. Choosing not to raise taxes on the rich is just that--a choice.

The full EPI report is easy to read and fairly brief. You can see it (and download it) here.

The real apocalypse is unfolding slowly

Just as everyone was about to forget last week's Rapture hoax, here in Oklahoma we saw genuine apocalyptic forces at work yesterday afternoon. At least 13 people died in tornadoes that roared across the Midwest and South on May 24. This followed a tornado that killed more than a hundred people in Joplin, Missouri the day before.

Mother Jones environmental blogger Julia Whitty makes a convincing case that this month's dramatic increase in killer tornadoes has been fueled by a warming ocean:

Unusually warm surface waters in the Gulf of Mexico—about 2 degrees Fahrenheit/3.6 degrees Celsius warmer than normal—may be a factor in this season's tornado frequency and strength, according to National Weather Service director Jack Hayes.

Add that to an uncommonly southward jet stream track, reports Scientific American, and you've got a recipe for the kinds of disasters we've been seeing so far this year.

Her entire post, which includes many useful links and graphics, is well worth reading.

Targeting Justice for Workers

Thanks to the Facebook page of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, I've learned that workers at Target Stores in the New York City area are trying to form a union. The UFCW provides several links to sources of information about this effort.

First, here's an article in the New York Times. Second, here is a post on Gawker. Finally, here is coverage of a controversy over CBS refusing to rent the union billboard space in Times Square to spread their message.

The Times reports that major issues for the workers are low pay and schedules that offer very few hours of work each week. Employees at a Target store in Valley Stream, N.Y. said that they rely on Medicaid and food stamps in order to support their families.

Predictably, a Target vice president told the Times that the company has “great benefits, flexible scheduling and great career opportunities for workers in all stages of life,”and that bringing in a union would wreck this lovely state of affairs.

Writing at Truthout, Mark Provost gives an eloquent explanation of why this argument doesn't hold water. Provost wasn't writing about Target specifically, but his argument certainly applies to the situation of the Target workers:

In the boardrooms of corporate America, profits aren't everything - they are the only thing. A JPMorgan research report concludes that the current corporate profit recovery is more dependent on falling unit-labor costs than during any previous expansion. At some level, corporate executives are aware that they are lowering workers' living standards, but their decisions are neither coordinated nor intentionally harmful. Call it the "paradox of profitability." Executives are acting in their own and their shareholders' best interest: maximizing profit margins in the face of weak demand by extensive layoffs and pay cuts. But what has been good for every company's income statement has been a disaster for working families and their communities.

I agree with Provost almost entirely. Corporate executives must be in really deep denial about what they're doing to their workers, or they wouldn't be able to live with themselves. But the bosses are going to hurt themselves in the long run if they keep shafting their employees. Workers who are badly paid and badly treated are workers who find it harder and harder to give a damn about doing a good job.

We can't count on corporations to have enough enlightened self-interest to know this. Workers need to be able to look out for their own needs. Individual workers do not have the power to defend themselves against corporate employers. This is why workers need the organized power of unions. When workers have what they need to provide a decent life for themselves and their loved ones, everyone benefits.

The end of the world? Been there, done that.

Harold Camping is old enough to know better. Relying on a combination of complicated arithmetic and the interpretation of Biblical prophecies, the 89-year-old California engineer predicted that the world would end today, May 21, 2011. As Chris McGreal of The Guardian explains, one of the signs that the world was nearing its end was (you knew it) the growing acceptability of gay marriage:

Camping has also said that "gay pride" and same-sex marriage are "a sign from God that judgment day is very near". "No sign is as dramatic and clear as the phenomenal worldwide success of the Gay Pride movement. In the Bible God describes His involvement with this dramatic movement … We will learn that the Gay Pride movement would successfully develop as a sign to the world that Judgement Day was about to occur," he writes.

Camping predicted that the apocalypse would begin at six p.m. sharp in each time zone and proceed around the globe, with the saved rising up to heaven and the damned being destroyed by earthquake and fire. Predictably, he was wrong. (I'm no prophet, but my hunch is that God is not nearly so interested in enforcing patriarchal sexual standards as Camping thinks She is.)

Our friend Harold could have saved himself a fair amount of  trouble and embarrassment if he'd read some history. One famous example is that of the Millerites in the 1840s. William Miller analyzed the Book of Daniel, chapters 8 and 9, and

counted 2300 years from the time Ezra was told he could return to Jerusalem to reestablish the Temple. The date of this event was calculated to be 457 B.C. Thus, 1843 became the date of Christ's return. As the appointed year grew closer, Miller specified 21 March 1843 to 21 March 1844 as his predicted climax of the age. The date was revised and set as 22 October 1844.

The resulting failure of the world to end became known as The Great Disappointment. This reminds one of  the famous words of Jesus, that "no one knows the day or the hour" when the end will occur. But the idea of all the troubles of the world ending in an instant, the righteous receiving their just reward, and the evildoers going straight to hell appears to be irresistible to many. Harold Camping is the latest, but he won't be the last.

Back in 1998, PBS's Frontline produced a show called Apocalypse! The show's web page has an analysis of  "apocalyptism" by University of Texas Professor L. Michael White and a historical timeline of the apocalyptic world view, up through 1999. It's too late for Harold Camping, but I hope the rest of you pay attention.

Pink Wave at the Oklahoma State Capitol, May 12

This is what pro-choice activism looks like:

The Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Planned Parenthood of Central Oklahoma were among the sponsors of The Pink Wave.

Dollars & Sense on the budget deficit

As I was working on my term paper about the federal deficit, I came across this article on the Web site of the progressive magazine Dollars & Sense. I may or may not use it in my paper, but it's a good read, and author Marty Wolfson manages to take on some common misperceptions. In the current economic situation, in which ordinary people are still suffering, massive government spending would be very useful. But we're not likely to get it. Wolfson explains why:

The ideological opposition to government spending remains a major obstacle. There are those who see an increase in the role of government as something to be avoided at all costs—even if the cost is the jobs of the unemployed.

Even among those who are not subject to such ideological blinders, there is still a political argument that resonates strongly. The argument is that government spending to create jobs will create large budget deficits, which will have terrible consequences for the American people. Politicians, pundits, and other commentators—in a frenzied drumbeat of speeches, op-eds, and articles—have asserted that the most urgent priority now is to reduce the budget deficit.

It is important to note that this argument is focused on current policy, not just the long-term budgetary situation. There is room for debate about long-term budget deficits, but these are affected more by the explosive growth of health-care costs than by government discretionary spending to create jobs.

For more information, read the rest of the article.

An interesting post on deficits and health care...

...which I found on Health Beat while working on my term paper on the national debt. Here is a representative paragraph:

For the GOP, this goal of de-funding the health reform law has been increasingly intertwined with efforts to cut the federal deficit. The most recent conflation was House passage of Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan that included privatizing Medicare and turning Medicaid into a block-grant program—ideas that provoked outcry among seniors and others in town hall meetings around the country. Yesterday, Rep. Dave Camp, (R-MI) who is chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, said that in the face of opposition from Democrats, he will not push forward with the Medicare privatization proposal.

Vermont passes health insurance reform

Something I found while working on my term paper on the national debt: Vermont is "getting closer and closer to enacting a bill that’ll move the state toward a single-payer health-care system," according to blogger Ezra Klein.

Klein links to The Incidental Economist, who plans to summarize that bill next week. (Gotta love a blog with a name like "The Incidental Economist.")

Good news and bad news

Bad news first. The National Partnership for Women and Families reports that the US House has passed a draconian piece of legislation to drastically reduce both public and private insurance for abortion.Among other things, the report says that HR 3 would make permanent the Hyde Amendment prohibition on public abortion funding for poor women and prohibit the District of Columbia from using local funds to pay for abortions. Up until this time, the Hyde Amendment has faced renewal each year.

The good news is that House Republicans seem to have backed off on their plan to privatize Medicare. Thanks to Women's eNews on Twitter for pointing me towards that news item.

Mother Jones Speaks

Hat tip to the AFL-CIO blog for posting this YouTube video of the marvelous labor organizer Mother Jones, reportedly recorded on her 100th birthday:

What is so disturbing about the killing of Bin Laden

Naomi Klein on Facebook posted a link to this useful and disturbing article at thenation.com. Jeremy Scahill reports that Osama bin Laden was killed by sailors from the Joint Special Operations Command. To me, here is the most important part of Scahill's report:

Both President Bush and President Obama have reserved the right for US forces to operate lethally and unilaterally in any country across the globe in pursuit of alleged high value terrorists. The Obama administration's expansion of US Special Operations activities globally has been authorized under a classified order dating back to the Bush administration. Originally signed in early 2004 by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, it is known as the “AQN ExOrd," or Al Qaeda Network Execute Order. The AQN ExOrd was intended to cut through bureaucratic and legal processes, allowing US special forces to move into denied areas or countries beyond the official battle zones of Iraq and Afghanistan. Gen. David Petraeus, who is poised to become director of the CIA, expanded and updated that order in late 2009. "JSOC has been more empowered more under this administration than any other in recent history," a Special Ops source told The Nation. "No question."

If elements in the US executive branch, intelligence services, and military think that they have the right to take out bad guys without any kind of international due process, aren't they operating under the same ethical model that the terrorists are?