Friday, January 10, 2014 11:51:33 AM
Christie Is the True Face of the Republican Party
By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Posted: 01/09/2014 5:59 pm
Some Republicans are claiming Chris Christie isn't really one of them. Some pundits are claiming, even as scandal erupts around him, that he's a "different kind of Republican." He's more than that: He is the archetypal Republican, the incarnation of its arrogant, corporatist soul.
It's like we said a while back [ http://ourfuture.org/20120412/chris_christie_the_heartless_smug_bullying_embodiment_of_the_republican_party ]: Christie is "the heartless, smug, bullying embodiment" of his party. He and his staff reflect a world in which other people are nothing more than rubes to be manipulated and exploited, whether they're trying to escape the trap of long-term unemployment or Fort Lee during the morning rush hour.
The conventional wisdom says that Christie's not like other Republicans. Pundits say he's a "moderate," a "pragmatist," a counterbalance to the far-right ideology of the Tea Party Republicans. But no leading Republican is really moderate, including Christie. And at the end of the day they're all pragmatists, ready to do whatever it takes to serve their paymasters' agenda.
Democrats and liberals routinely express frustration and bafflement at Republican hypocrisy. "They claim to hate big government," they'll say, "but they want to expand the Defense Department. They say they want government out of our lives, then vote to control women's sex lives or manage a brain-dead woman's care from the nation's capital."
Well, yeah.
It's true that Republicans are hypocritical in word and deed. But while they may be false to an ideology, they're always true to their mission: to promote and serve the interests of big corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. And when it comes to that agenda, all of them -- the Chris Christies as well as the Paul Ryans -- are as extremist as the political climate will permit. Whether the subject is taxation, "corporate personhood," or the future of the planet, there's no room for either moderation or ideology in the service of corporate goals.
That's why the party's few real ideologues - the Ron Pauls and Rand Pauls - frustrate the leadership so much. Unfortunately, when Republicans aren't hirelings they're usually extremists. And when party leaders complain that other Republicans aren't "moderates" or "pragmatists," what they're really saying is that they won't behave like Rep. Spencer Bachus (who famously said that the institutions of government exist "to serve the banks [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/13/incoming-gop-chairman-congress-exists-serve-banks/ ]"), or, like the ever-"pragmatic" Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, work with corporate-friendly Democrats to fund Defense Department boondoggles.
Why does Christie sound so much more moderate than Mitch McConnell? Because he holds his elective office in New Jersey, and McConnell holds his in Kentucky. You need the right salesman to make the sale. That's Job One. Once you've closed the deal, your objective is to shaft your customers as much as you can without losing the business altogether. That's the Republican Party's business model in a nutshell.
"Different"? Christie embodies his party perfectly. Arrogant? Check. Bullying? Check. Indifferent to the well-being of constituents? Check. He may sound like a different kind of Republican, but he governs the same way the others do.
Tax giveaways for big corporations? Christie doled out $1.57 billion [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/nyregion/christie-gives-new-jersey-firms-tax-breaks-for-short-moves.html?pagewanted=all ] for "job creation," with far fewer jobs created than across the river in New York State.
Following the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) agenda funded by the Koch Brothers and other big corporate interests? As the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported in 2012 [ http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/alec_model_bills_used_in_nj_la.html ], "At least three bills, one executive order and one agency rule accomplish the same goals set out by ALEC using the same specific policies. In eight passages contained in those documents, New Jersey initiatives and ALEC proposals line up almost word for word."
Meet the new GOP, same as the old GOP.
And say what you will about him, but Chris Christie is a hell of a salesman. He's managed to make this radical corporatist agenda look "moderate."
We're probably obliged to point out that there's no evidence Christie was personally involved in this political retribution scandal. (Those of us who remember Watergate may experience some déjà vu at this point.) What we do know is that Christie picked the people who wrote those emails, and the attitudes revealed in them reflect precisely what we've seen in Christie's own personality.
Listening to his press conference, it was easy to imagine Christie's face morphing from one famous Republican to another, the way those young people's faces did on Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video. The passive voice ("you are human and mistakes are made") and "I am not a ..." construction ("I am not a bully")? Pure Nixon. The grandiosity, paired with a refusal to accept responsibility? Pure Cheney.
Then there was the narcissistic focus on how the scandal affected him -- rather than, say, the elderly woman who died or the children who were trapped for hours in school buses. That's pretty much any leading Republican of the last 50 years.
As is so often the case in the corporate world, the GOP's culture is shockingly insensitive to the human consequences of its actions. George W. Bush "joked" about not finding weapons of mass destruction after hundreds of thousands of people died under false pretenses in Iraq. Christie joked that he was no longer in the "traffic study" business.
Theirs is a culture where people, even children, are either allies or enemies. Hence the Christie staffer's suggestion that there was no need to feel badly about the kids on those buses because they were "the children of Buono voters," referring to state Sen. Barbara Buono, Christie's gubernatorial opponent last year. The sins of the fathers ...
The truth is, there's no such thing as a "new Republican." Today's Republican Party doesn't reflect a viewpoint. It reflects a strategy -- one intended to maximize the wealth of those it serves. The pundits cheering [ http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/01/09/good-news-for-chris-christie/ ] Christie's press conference performance, like Politico's Mark Halperin and right-winger Erick Erickson, would've applauded Nixon's "third rate burglary" defense.
The Republican Party has finally achieved spiritual death -- and Chris Christie is its face. Gaze upon it as you would the face of Ozymandias [ http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/ ]. Then look on its works, and despair.
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David Wildstein Held In Contempt After Refusing To Testify About Bridge Scandal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/david-wildstein-contempt-chris-christie_n_4569680.html
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Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/chris-christie-the-true-f_b_4571280.html [with comments]
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The Slow Grip of Poverty
By Carly Paul
Living in Colorado
Posted: 01/08/2014 4:23 pm
First of all, right now I am not working. The last day of my last job was September 15, 2011. My disability case is in the third, and last, round of appeal and if I don't get it this time, I will be back to being the working poor again. My disability is a mental illness: I'm bipolar. I was born this way, I always was this way, and I will always be this way. I started working when I was 14 years old. By the time I got fired for the last time in 2011 and I filed for disability, I had worked my full 40 quarters. Basically, I qualify for retirement, full Social Security benefits -- not just Social Security disability.
Let me tell you a little about me. I am educated. I have a Bachelor's of science from a major university in Colorado. I have a patent pending for a product I invented. I am the antithesis of lazy, but I'm still fat as all get out. I eat very healthy and I usually exercise regularly. I have aspirations to one day have a Master's degree.
I own my own home, kind of. It's in the divorce paperwork that I get the house. But my credit is miserable... the word that comes to mind is "leper" because when I got fired from my last job I couldn't pay my bills anymore. Unemployment is a fraction of what you make, and then with my divorce happening at the same time, and going from a dual income to a single income on top of getting fired again, there was a vegan's chance in Texas that I would be able to make ends meet. As far as the house goes, I bought it by saving up all my money, living on 60 percent of what I made in about two years, and using my husband-at-the-time's credit score and my little pile of cash for the down payment and some furniture and paint. The house is now my joy and proud fortune and also my greatest anxiety. What if I don't get approved for disability, and I can't repair my credit by Dec 31, 2014 like the terms state? What if I am too far gone? Will I really be homeless this time?
During the time that I was married, with both of us working, saving up money, buying a house, we were still below average income for a married couple. As much as I've ever been able to work in my entire life, since I was 15, and qualifying for full Social Security benefits by age 29, I have only ever been able to work part time because of my mental illness. Like I said, I'm the antithesis of lazy.
I come from a pretty wealthy neighborhood in Southern California. My dad always had money, and so did my mom. But I remember having to fight for every dollar they spent on me, even as a child. I remember as young as 8 years old, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to afford it or work for it. In high school I was borrowing money from my friends to afford lunch until my next paycheck. I'll say it so you don't have to... yes, my family puts the FUN in dysfunctional. But this is where things get really weird, and you can really see the sneaky, dirty fingers of poverty take their firm grip around my throat.
Because of the nature of my illness and the dysfunction of my family, and being that I did everything I did without any help, I got a bunch of credit cards during the brief time I lived on campus. Because I was an unmedicated bipolar type 1, I spent lots of this "fake" credit card money on things that I didn't need or even want, because that's sometimes what unmedicated bipolar type 1 people do when they are manic. Within six months, I had run up about $5,000 in debt, and before that I didn't even know what a credit card was or how to get one or how they worked. Isn't a parent supposed to tell you about that stuff at some point? How does a person learn? This was before the Internet, before cell phones, but it wasn't before dinnertime, before parenting. That was the first finger of poverty around my throat.
Since there was no place to really work where I moved, and no one to really sell things to either there, I decided to move with my new best friend to a nearby city in Colorado. My car got repossessed almost as soon as I moved. I didn't know anything about that either. One day, it was just gone, and all of a sudden I was a person whose car had been repossessed. Even though I felt like I could breathe easier at the time because I was relieved that the phone calls had stopped, this was the second finger resting gently on my larynx until I tried to move; then I could really feel the pressure. If I filled out an application for an apartment, that repossession hurt my credit, and I was denied. When it came time to buy a car many years later, I was denied because of that repossession, and so on.
During the early years of my marriage and my engagement, I worked anywhere from two to three jobs simultaneously, up to 17 hours a day. An oft-overlooked perk of being bipolar is that you can stay awake for days, and since I'm not lazy, I would really rather be working than doing anything else. I would get to the YMCA to lifeguard or teach swimming lessons around 4:45 or 5 a.m., leave there between 10 a.m. and noon, get to the next job between 11 a.m. and noon and stay there until five or six, and then finish out the dinner rush and close the restaurant at the third job. During this time, my fiancé/husband was in his manbaby phase, and worked at either Sherwin Williams, Hollywood Video, or the same restaurant as me, or any combination of those up to two. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term manbaby, this phase begins at birth and usually lasts until the age of 30 but can go on as long as the man insists. Many men actually die babies. And that's that.
The difference was that since I was working so much, he knew there would be enough to pay for all the bills and he felt very entitled to spending every last cent on as much junk food, cigarettes, and video games/movies as he could fit into our apartment. So, why didn't I say "Hey, we have more than enough money and we need to live below our means, and save for the future"? Well here is why. First of all, refer to fingers one and two. Second of all, I was still mostly a kid, with a severe mental illness, just trying to pay rent, eat food, get things. And third of all, because my marriage was ridiculous. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in survival mode. And that's the third finger. What a strong grasp it has on me now. Whether it actually strangles me to death or not, I'll never be able to get away.
During the roughly 12 rough years I was married I did accomplish loosening the grasp poverty had on me. When I say loosen, I mean that in the true sense of the word loosen, like its grip was firm but not tight. During this time I kept working my part time jobs and getting fired, one after another, and he kept working his full-time jobs and then quitting, just walking off. I didn't even know I could file for unemployment until my last job fired me! To find out that I, Carly, could get unemployment -- that I could get money and also work my ridiculous low paying jobs -- and somehow escape some of the fear and anxiety and the shame of inevitably being fired for my illness yet again... and even though the grip was firm but not tight, this was the fourth finger: The way I saw myself, and the mounting list of terminations on my resume of low paying jobs.
When I was 25 I decided I wanted to really make a difference in my life. I found something I was passionate about, and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of obese people, and those who suffered from diets. So I decided to try again at college, and I enrolled as a health science major. During my time at school, I worked at one or two jobs at a time. I was medicated for part of the time, which is I think the entire reason I was able to graduate or even make it to class. That is not to say it was a walk in the park. I still had a mental illness, it was still disabling, I could barely function. The only reason I didn't get fired from school was because I paid them in order for me to be there.
Poverty sits on top of me, like an intruder in my house that snuck into my bedroom and I can't get it off of me, and I wake up struggling to breathe. Every day. I thought things would be okay. I hoped they would be okay more than I thought they would be okay. Why would I do that? I know I'm a poor person. I know I have a disability. I know I can't keep a job. I know all of this. Why would I have thought something like getting myself into a house would be a good idea? Trying to manage my money myself? I know I can't do that! But I didn't want to ask for help, I didn't want to say I couldn't.
Well those days are long gone. Like this far: looooooooooooong gone. I have been denied disability the standard one time, like everyone else. The doctor from the Social Security administration who evaluated me sent his letter of recommendation: "She is not able to work, and cannot take care of herself. She needs immediate approval of benefits." The result? DENIED. Then on to my appeal, in front of a judge, with my lawyer. The prosecution rested their case and made their recommendation to the presiding judge: there is no way this girl can sustain gainful employment. Two weeks later, my letter came: DENIED. So now, my third and final appeal.
And the trouble I'm in is this. I need medication in order to function in any capacity, especially at work. I have a severe mental illness. I am unemployable. I cannot work more than part time, and I can't go without medication, and I have to have regular access to health care. Part time work often does not offer insurance. The places that do, I have already been fired from. I cannot follow a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies, even while medicated without help, in my own kitchen, without the threat of being written up looming over me. Imagine how that translates to on the job performance! I am sure there is something in the Affordable Care Act for me, but I wonder how "affordable" this Obamacare really is, considering the amount of money I will really be making working a low wage with part-time hours.
This is how I came to be in poverty's grip. It was not overnight, and it was not all because of me, and not all because a system that failed me, and not all because of a dysfunctional family, and not all because of overblown capitalism, and not all because of any one thing. It was a very unfortunate combination of things, mostly unfortunate because of the constant suffocation and confusion. And I'm sure it's that way for every single person who wakes up every morning with poverty choking them in their beds while the rich people on the other side of town wake up in peace.
You know what you can't say about me, and I don't want to hear it, so let's just get a few things clear right out of the gate. First of all, as I've said, I'm the antithesis of lazy. Second, I'm not greedy. I donate money all the time, even though I have very little. Third, I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't do drugs and never have. I don't have children. I don't sell my food stamps for whatever you would accuse me of selling them for. Whatever you want to accuse me of frivolously spending money on, I also don't do that. Yes, I have walked to work in blizzards, in negative degree weather, for miles, in the dark, so I don't want to be accused of that kind of unwillingness either. I have gone to school, finished school, started my own company, and closed it down. But poverty is a worthy adversary, and it takes more than a degree and inventing a product to overcome it. It takes more than a village, it takes more than raising a child in wealth. Poverty is not a choice we make but rather a series of consequences of other people's choices and a handful of our own, just like affluence. We just hope that there will be a morning, some morning, even just one, where we don't wake up with that uninvited intruder in our bedroom, making us struggle to breathe.
Carly's story is part of a Huffington Post series profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet. Learn more about other individuals' experiences here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/@working_poor ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carly-paul/the-slow-grip-of-poverty_b_4516679.html [with comments]
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Marco Rubio's Cure For Poverty? Subsidize Crummy Jobs, Make Massive Block Grants
Sen. Marco Rubio talked about reforming anti-poverty programs and improving income mobility at an American Enterprise Institute event on Jan. 8 in Washington.
Alex Wong via Getty Images
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 01/08/2014 6:06 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 10:03 am EST
WASHINGTON -- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio joined the Republican chorus declaring Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" a failure Wednesday and proposed his own cures, which include subsidizing work that doesn't pay a living wage and shifting all poverty programs to the states.
Rubio, one of the lead GOP prospects for the 2016 presidential contest, unveiled his plans in a speech sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. The talk seemed aimed at convincing people that he and his fellow Republicans do hold the concerns of the poor close to their hearts, despite what Democrats may say, and perhaps getting a jump on the kind of arguments about the "47 percent" that helped sink Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign.
The senator argued that poverty remains a major problem in America and cited numerous statistics, including the country's soaring income inequality since 1980. He said those numbers show that LBJ's "big government" philosophy simply doesn't work and that America needs to be more concerned about "opportunity inequality."
"These economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. And they will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas," Rubio said. "Five decades and trillions of dollars after President Johnson waged his War on Poverty, the results of this big-government approach are in."
But Rubio insisted that pursuing Democratic goals such as raising the minimum wage was not part of the solution.
"Our current president and his liberal allies propose that we address this by spending more on these failed programs and increasing the minimum wage to $10.10," Rubio said, mocking the idea. "Really? That is their solution to what President Obama has identified as the defining issue of our time? Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream."
Instead of requiring employers to pay something closer to a living wage, Rubio proposed having the government supplement the stingy pay at many companies.
"We should pursue reforms that encourage and reward work. That’s why I am developing legislation to replace the earned income tax credit with a federal wage enhancement for qualifying low-wage jobs," Rubio said. "This would allow an unemployed individual to take a job that pays, say, $18,000 a year -– which on its own is not enough to make ends meet –- but then receive a federal enhancement to make the job a more enticing alternative to collecting unemployment insurance."
While Rubio cast his idea as a way to help individuals, it could also be a boon to corporations such as Walmart and McDonald's, which both rely on [ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-15/mcdonalds-low-wages-come-with-a-7-billion-side-of-welfare ] the taxpayer-funded federal safety net [ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/are-american-taxpayers-subsidizing-walmarts-low-wages ] to support their low-paid workers to the tune of billions of dollars [ http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs ].
Rubio added that the point was not just to support those people, but to give them tools to advance. "The only solution that will achieve meaningful and lasting results is to provide those who are stuck in low-paying jobs the real opportunity to move up to better-paying jobs," he said.
Yet in the past, the senator hasn't been the most robust supporter of the sorts of educational programs that help people advance themselves.
Although he did not propose any other specific solutions beyond subsidizing crummy jobs, Rubio did say that the federal government should shift the responsibility for dealing with poverty to the states.
"Our anti-poverty programs should be replaced with a revenue-neutral [meaning, among other things, that the amount spent/put in by the federal government could not go up in response to/during a recession/depression and the resulting greater needs, which also would correspondingly eliminate that portion of counter-cyclical increased federal {deficit} spending in response to/during a recession/depression] flex fund," he said. "We would streamline most of our existing federal anti-poverty funding into one single agency. Then each year, these flex funds would be transferred to the states so they can design and fund creative initiatives that address the factors behind inequality of opportunity."
He accounted for his lack of specificity by suggesting the detailed solutions should be left to the states.
"Instead of continuing to pour money into our existing programs, we need to reform them through innovative and highly targeted solutions. But that is something the federal government is incapable of delivering," Rubio said. "Washington is too bureaucratic and resistant to change. And its one-size-fits-all approach to policy is not conducive to solving a problem as diverse as this one."
Some progressive economists were not impressed with Rubio's speech, suggesting that he hadn't actually thought that carefully about the problem.
"This sounds like he has no idea of the structure of programs and how they took the shape they did," said Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
"His 'wage enhancement' would run into real problems for people working multiple jobs. Does he want to subsidize wages for people earning $36,000 a year by the same amount as someone earning $18,000 a year?" Baker said in an email. "And, since it won't depend on family size, does he intend to cut his EITC [earned income tax credit] equivalent for workers with 2-3 kids? If not, then we will have to spend more, not less on this program."
"This is not close to being a serious plan to address poverty," Baker added.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/marco-rubio-poverty_n_4564084.html [with embedded video clip, and comments]
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Conservatives claim ‘War on Poverty’ failed
Hardball with Chris Matthews
January 8, 2014
Marco Rubio argued Wednesday that the fact that so many Americans remain in poverty proves that the “War on Poverty” has been lost. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Michael Tomasky discuss.
©2014 NBC UNIVERSAL
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/conservatives-claim-war-on-poverty-failed-110343235927 [with comments] [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesq75nmHGY (with comment)]
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Jane Freeman, Widow Of Food Stamp Founder, Discusses The 'Need And The Embarrassment'
Jane and Orville Freeman, pictured in 1978.
(Photo By John Sunderland/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 01/08/2014 5:48 pm EST | Updated: 01/08/2014 6:14 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- Jane Freeman remembers being at the grocery store one day after she and her late husband, Orville Freeman, had moved back home to Minnesota from Washington.
"I stood in line behind several ladies who were having to count out, and who were having language difficulties trying to count out their food stamps," Freeman remembered. Her husband, who died in 2003, had overseen the creation of the Food Stamp Program as Secretary of Agriculture in the 1960s.
Jane Freeman watched the clerk help the ladies sort out which things they could buy with their food stamps, and when they realized they didn't have enough money, which things they would leave at the register.
"It did delay people in line and some people were unhappy about it," Freeman, 92, said in a recent phone interview. "To me, it just showed the need and the embarrassment."
The Freemans were at the forefront of the "War on Poverty" when Lyndon Johnson declared it on this day in 1964, and the nutrition assistance program Orville Freeman helped create remains one of the most important tools in the federal government's antipoverty arsenal.
Republicans are marking the 50th anniversary of the start of the "war" with big speeches about finding new ways to wage it. In the background, reduced food stamp spending is a centerpiece of Republican policymaking this year.
"I'm afraid it's most of the party's agenda," said Freeman, who described herself as an ardent Democrat.
HuffPost had asked Freeman if any particular memory about food stamps stood out to her, and the grocery store anecdote is what came to mind. The story might seem somewhat banal, but between the need, the embarrassment, and the frustration of people in line, it's got almost everything.
First, the need: Food stamp spending has more than doubled since 2007, thanks mostly to a bad economy that has made more Americans than ever eligible for help. Currently 47 million receive monthly benefits. Republicans want to cut the program by about 5 percent, which would result in nearly 4 million fewer beneficiaries next year. Coincidentally, almost the same number of food stamp recipients are lifted from poverty by the program, though the effect of food stamp benefits is omitted from the official poverty estimate.
Next, the frustration: Stories abound about hardworking taxpayers watching as they wait in line behind people using food stamps to buy groceries. This summer Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told the tale of a constituent who saw someone use his food stamp debit card to buy crab legs [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/food-stamps-resentment_n_3518821.html ], something the hardworking taxpayer couldn't afford for himself.
Finally, the embarrassment: Many Americans are ashamed to receive benefits, but not all. Last year House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pointed to the story of a California surfer and rock musician [id.] who was not embarrassed that he used food stamps and was unashamed to admit that he didn't want a regular job. To Republicans, the food stamp surfer is evidence that too much government spending saps people of the will to work.
But to an ardent Democrat like Freeman, taking food money away from poor people is not doing them a favor.
"To see something that has been so important and so helpful for 50 years now, to now start chopping it off when the need is so great -- the way to get food to the hungry is established and good," Freeman said. "It just baffles me that people want to cut it."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/war-on-poverty-food-stamps_n_4561730.html [with comments]
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The Senate's New Unemployment Deal Is Already Falling Apart
01/10/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/senate-unemployment-insurance_n_4571118.html [with comments]
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Doctor In Ron Johnson's Anti-Obamacare Story Refutes Claim
By Shadee Ashtari
Posted: 01/09/2014 8:37 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has long attributed his inspiration for entering Washington politics to a mission of repealing the Affordable Care Act. A common thread in the tea party-backed senator's calls for repeal is a story involving a reconstructive heart surgery that saved his infant daughter’s life 30 years ago, during the freer health system before Obamacare.
But the doctor Johnson credits with the lifesaving heart surgery seems to disagree, according to progressive news blog Uppity Wisconsin [ http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/doh-doctor-ron-johnson-fighting-supports-obamacare ].
In numerous speeches and op-eds, Johnson claimed the work of Dr. John Foker would not have been possible under the Affordable Care Act and its stifling regulations. If his family had lacked the freedom to access doctors qualified to reconstruct his daughter’s heart, Johnson argued, his baby wouldn’t have survived.
In a 2012 interview [ http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sen-johnson-health-care-freedom-saved-my-daughter-s-life-obamacare-will-lead-rationing ] with CNS News, Johnson said:
I would not have run for the U.S. Senate had Obamacare not been passed. … Our story has a happy ending because we had that freedom. … That’s what this health care law is all about, it’s an assault on our freedom. It’s going to lower the quality of our care. It’s going to lead to rationing. The types of medical innovation that saved my daughter’s life [and] that saves millions of Americans -- I won't say it’s going to come to a grinding halt, but it’s going to be severely limited.
According to Uppity, however, Foker is not only “generally supportive” of the Affordable Care Act, but contends that President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law does not go far enough.
"Unfortunately, it was written by the insurance and drug companies, so not great,” Foker told Uppity via email. “Most of the many flaws of American medical care are still present."
Foker argued that Republican lawmakers should relish the ACA’s “private-solution” approach to health care reform as he criticized the GOP for obstructionist political tactics. “They’re never happy,” Foker concluded.
Contrary to Johnson’s fears, Foker was, and remains, a professor [ http://www.surgery.umn.edu/divisions/cardiothoracic-surgery/john-foker/index.htm ] at the University of Minnesota’s medical school -- a public institution -- and performed the lifesaving surgery on Johnson’s daughter at the government-funded university’s medical center.
Moreover, the innovative procedure that Johnson credits for saving his daughter’s life was not developed as the “wonderful result” of health law “freedom,” but was first performed in the more socialized health systems of Brazil and France, as pointed out by Think Progress' Igor Volsky [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/03/24/171997/johnson-oped-2/ ].
On Monday, Johnson announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/ron-johnson-obamacare-lawsuit_n_4550398.html (at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95621898 and preceding and following)] a lawsuit seeking to exclude members of Congress and their employees from qualifying for employer-sponsored health insurance, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the Obama administration to force him to decide which staff can keep federal contributions to their plans.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/ron-johnson-obamacare-doctor_n_4571524.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Obamacare’s ‘victims’
Who are the people willing to identify themselves as casualties of the Affordable Care Act — and did they really 'shop' in the exchanges?
January 2, 2014
http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2014/01/02/obamacares-victims/ [with comments]
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Anatomy of an Obamacare ‘horror story’
Texas daily went digging for victims of the ACA and Surprise! Reporter unearthed three Tea Partiers who hate the new law.
January 3, 2014
http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2014/01/03/anatomy-of-an-obamacare-horror-story/ [with comments]
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Ft. Worth Star-Telegram [known locally as the 'Startlegram'] apologizes for Obamacare story
1/8/14
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/ft-worth-startelegrams-obamacare-mea-culpa-180798.html [with comments]
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Star-Telegram report on Affordable Care Act left out key information
Jan. 06, 2014
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/06/5464752/star-telegram-report-on-affordable.html [with comments]
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The Last Great Class Equalizer In New York Faces A Tech Threat
01/06/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/fly-cleaners-brooklyn_n_4536986.html [with comments]
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Elizabeth Warren: New Mortgage Rules 'Protect Consumers From Being Tricked'
By Eugene Mulero
Posted: 01/08/2014 7:15 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 12:24 am EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) praised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new slate of mortgage rules on Tuesday, saying they will curb shady practices aimed at "tricking and trapping people" into unaffordable loans.
The rules "will force mortgage lenders and servicers to compete by offering better rates and better customer service," Warren said on the Senate floor, adding, “Our whole economy will be safer. Not completely safe, but with a new cop on the beat, it will be safer.”
The CFPB is Warren's brainchild. President Barack Obama tapped her to help establish the agency after it was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
The rules, which take effect Friday, will bar a host of abusive practices in the mortgage lending, loan collection and foreclosure processes. Last year, major banks agreed to a multibillion-dollar settlement over such foreclosure improprieties as the use of fabricated documents and forged signatures to evict homeowners.
Under the CFPB rules, banks that collect loan payments will be barred from initiating a foreclosure until a borrower is at least 120 days delinquent on his or her loan. Lenders must also determine that borrowers have the ability to repay a mortgage before issuing a loan, and mortgage brokers will be prohibited from receiving kickbacks for steering customers into higher-cost loans.
"The CFPB’s new rules will prohibit this sort of under-the-table dealing and protect consumers from being tricked by people they think they can trust," Warren said.
The new rules do not go as far as some consumer advocates wished. They do not, for instance, require banks to implement loan modifications with borrowers who fall behind, even when the value of the loan to the bank or investors would be maximized by cutting the borrower a break.
Warren acknowledged that the rules are not perfect and criticized the expansion of big banks in the half-dozen years since the financial crash. "Even today, the too-big-to-fail banks that nearly crashed the global economy in 2008 are nearly 40 percent bigger than they were back then," she said.
Nevertheless, Warren said the new mortgage standards "will make a real difference for millions of families who own, or who hope to own, their own home" and "show once again that government can fix problems."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/elizabeth-warren-mortgage-rules_n_4562120.html [the YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eezx5FS1MnM (with comments), as embedded; with comments]
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Elk River Chemical Spill In West Virginia Prompts State Of Emergency Declaration
By JOHN RABY
01/09/14 10:04 PM ET EST
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — At least 100,000 customers in nine West Virginia counties were told not to drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes using their tap water because of a chemical spill into the Elk River in Charleston, with Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declaring a state of emergency Thursday for all those areas.
The chemical, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, leaked from a tank at Freedom Industries, overran a containment area and went into the river earlier Thursday. The amount that spilled wasn't immediately known, but West Virginia American Water has a treatment plant nearby and it is the company's customers who are affected.
"The water has been contaminated," said Tomblin, who didn't know how long the emergency declaration would last.
Officials, though, said they aren't sure what hazard the spill poses to humans and that there were no immediate reports of people getting sick. It also was not immediately clear how much spilled into the river and in what concentration.
"I don't know if the water is not safe," said water company president Jeff McIntyre.
Tomblin said he's asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist the state with supplies of bottled water. But people weren't waiting.
Once word got out about the governor's declaration, customers stripped store shelves in many areas of items such as bottled water, paper cups and bowls.
As many as 50 customers had lined up to buy water at a convenience store near the state Capitol in Charleston.
"It was chaos, that's what it was," cashier Danny Cardwell said.
The don't-drink-the-water declaration involves customers in the counties of Kanawha, Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane. Most of the counties surround the capital city of Charleston, where there was a chemical smell similar to licorice in the air both outdoors and in areas where it had already reached the water supply on Thursday night.
West Virginia lawmakers who just started their session this week won't conduct business on Friday because of the problem and State Department of Education spokeswoman Liza Cordeiro said schools in at least five of the counties will be closed. Many students already missed some time this week because of the frigid weather.
McIntyre said the advisory was issued "because we don't know. I don't have anything to indicate the water is not safe. It's an abundance of caution that we're taking this step. We don't do this lightly, tell our customers not to use the water."
McIntyre said testing is being conducted to determine the concentrations of the chemical that have gone through the water system. But he said the chemical was in a much weaker concentration when it reached the water treatment plant through the river.
"Until we get out and flush the actual system and do more testing, we can't say how long this (advisory) will last at this time," McIntyre said. When the advisory was first issued for five counties, that as many as 100,000 customers were affected. The company has 170,000 customers in 17 West Virginia counties, as well as in Ohio and Virginia.
Freedom Industries did not immediately respond for comment. The Elk River flows into the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston. The Kanawha eventually flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, about 55 miles to the northwest.
Senate Majority Leader John Unger, D-Martinsburg, said all committee meetings have been canceled and lawmakers will adjourn until at least Monday. Other government offices also will be closed.
Unger, who co-chairs the Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources, said dozens of miles of pipe are affected by the spill.
"Flushing it out, that's going to take some time," Unger told The Associated Press. "You can imagine the infrastructure of the piping through the city and all of those counties."
McIntyre and Tomblin said boiling water first to remove impurities won't help as it sometimes does.
"Don't make baby formula," McIntyre said. "Don't brush your teeth. Don't shower. Toilet flushing only."
McIntyre and state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management director Jimmy Gianato said the chemical isn't lethal in its strongest form. Kanawha County emergency officials said the chemical is called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.
According to a fact sheet from Fisher Scientific, the chemical is harmful if swallowed and causes eye and skin irritation and could be harmful if inhaled.
Tomblin said the advisory also extends to restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and other establishments that use tap water.
Two fast-food restaurants near the Capitol, a few miles from the spill site, were closed Thursday night, but across the street, a pizza shop remained open.
And at the Little India restaurant in Charleston, owner Meena Anada said she had been drinking water all day, "but I'm not nervous. I'm not going to die."
Little India bar manager Bill LaCourse said he's endured boil water advisories in the past, "but when they tell you it doesn't do any good to boil the water, what can you do?"
About 12 customers were in the restaurant when LaCourse got the word about the shutdown notice and everyone was asked to leave. The situation repeated itself at other restaurants, where workers said they were concerned about what to do about ice machines, hot water heaters and water itself once the emergency is lifted.
West Virginia Delegate Michael Manypenny, D-Taylor, who co-chairs the water resources committee with Unger, said he's been pushing for stronger oversight of industries in order to protect the state's water resources. He said the spill will add fuel to his argument.
"This leaves a lot of questions," he said. "And I think we're going to need an inquiry on why this happens and what we can do to prevent it."
Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington and Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/elk-river-chemical-spill-wv_n_4571408.html [with comments]
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Chemical spill shuts down much of W.Va. capital
Crews clean up a chemical spill along the Elk River in Charleston, W.Va., which compromised the public water supply of eight counties on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
Jim Cole of Exeter, N.H., got the last few bottles of water at the Kroger in South Charleston W.Va. following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply to eight counties of Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
A Freedom Industries worker places a boom in the Elk River Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014, at the site of a chemical leak in Charleston that has fouled the drinking water in eight West Virginia counties.
(AP Photo/The Charleston Gazette, Chris Dorst)
Residents of South Charleston, W.Va., wait in line at Kroger to buy water following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply of eight counties on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
Laura John of Charleston, W.Va, drove across town to South Charleston, W.Va, to find water following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply of eight counties of Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
By JOHN RABY
Posted: Jan 10, 2014 3:41 AM CST
Updated: Jan 10, 2014 7:22 AM CST
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Schools and restaurants closed, stores sold out of bottled water, and legislators canceled business after a chemical spill in the Elk River in Charleston affected about 300,000 people and shut down much of the city and surrounding counties.
The federal government joined the state Friday in declaring a disaster. In requesting the federal declaration, state officials said about 100,000 customers, or roughly 300,000 people total, were affected.
After the Thursday spill from Freedom Industries hit the river, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin ordered customers of West Virginia American Water not to drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes with tap water.
The state National Guard planned to distribute bottled water to emergency services agencies in the nine affected counties.
The cause of the spill remain unclear.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.wsls.com/story/24413766/wva-chemical-spill-declared-federal-disaster [no comments yet]
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Obama sends disaster aid to West Virginia
David Jackson
7:44 a.m. EST January 10, 2014
President Obama is sending federal assistance to West Virginia, where schools and businesses are closed after a chemical spill Thursday into a Charleston river.
"The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of West Virginia and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts," said an administration statement on Friday morning.
Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency will coordinate efforts with local officials.
Copyright 2014 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/01/10/obama-west-virginia-chemical-spill-emergency-aid/4404257/ [with comment]
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House Republicans Just Quietly Passed A Bill Gutting Hazardous Waste Legislation
A bulldozer works to grade what is left of a 50-foot tall pile of slag left over from 74 years of making nails, wire and fencing from scrap metal at the bankrupt Continental Steel plant in Kokomo, Indiana, on November 10, 2009. The 183-acre site is being cleaned up under the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program. A bill that the House passed Thursday would overhaul the federal Superfund program.
MIRA OBERMAN via Getty Images
By Kate Sheppard
Posted: 01/09/2014 7:11 pm EST | Updated: 01/10/2014 6:33 am EST
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday overhauling the country's hazardous waste laws.
The bill, called the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act [ http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20140106/CPRT-113-HPRT-RU00-HR2279_xml.pdf ], amends both the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (which is commonly known as Superfund [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/cercla.htm ]). It would remove requirements that the EPA periodically update and review solid waste disposal regulations, and would make it harder for the government to require companies that deal with hazardous substances to carry enough insurance to cover cleanup. The bill would also require more consultation with states before the government imposes cleanup requirements for Superfund sites -- places where hazardous waste is located and could be affecting local people or ecosystems [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/ ].
The bill passed by a vote of 225 to 188, largely along party lines. Four Republicans voted against it, and five Democrats voted for it.
Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the bill's sponsor, called the legislation "common-sense revisions of existing rules and regulations." But others were quick to criticize the bill, saying it weakens environmental protections.
The environmental group Earthjustice has said the bill would "gut" the Superfund program [ http://earthjustice.org/blog/2014-january/kryptonite-for-superfund ], which was created in 1980 to ensure that polluting industries pay to clean up hazardous sites. There are currently more than 1,300 sites around the country [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/ ] listed as priority Superfund cleanup sites. Opponents say the changes in the House bill would delay those efforts and put taxpayers on the hook for future cleanups. A group of 129 environmental and local citizens groups have written to Congress urging the defeat of the bill [ http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/Opposition_Letter_H.R.2279.pdf ].
Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the bill a "New Year’s gift to corporate interests" in a statement. "This bill could delay cleaning up toxic federal facilities, free companies to pass their hazardous cleanup costs onto taxpayers, and strangle health safeguards intended to limit harmful ash drifting from steam boilers," said Slesinger.
The bill is not expected to pass in the Senate, and the White House has already issued a veto threat. "The bill's requirements could result in significant site cleanup delays, endangering public health and the environment," President Obama's advisers wrote in a statement of administration policy [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/113/saphr2279r_20140108.pdf ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/house-superfund-bill_n_4571428.html [with comments]
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Plant closure over roach infestation latest setback for Foster Farms
Foster Farms' chicken plant in Livingston, Calif., was shut down by the USDA because of a cockroach infestation.
(Debbie Noda / Modesto Bee / October 17, 2013)
The giant poultry company last year faced a salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 400 people.
By Stuart Pfeifer
January 9, 2014, 6:27 p.m.
The cockroach infestation that closed a Foster Farms chicken plant in Central California was the latest setback for the giant poultry company, which last year faced a salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 400 people.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended operations Wednesday at a Foster Farms plant in Livingston, southeast of Modesto, and the 250,000-square-foot plant remained closed Thursday as the poultry giant tried to remedy the problem.
Several food safety experts said they were surprised that cockroaches prompted the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service to take action when it had failed to do so after last year's salmonella outbreak.
"We'd been urging them to do this for months and months," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy at Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports magazine. "They should have shut it down as soon as the link was made to all these illnesses."
Wednesday's news couldn't have come at a worse time for the troubled company.
In October, Foster Farms President Ron Foster apologized for the salmonella contamination and vowed to work to significantly reduce the bacteria, which has been a problem for poultry producers throughout the country.
Foster Farms was hit by two outbreaks of salmonella, one in 2012 and one last year. In late October, Mexico, a top destination for U.S. poultry exports, blocked imports of chickens from Foster Farms plants in Fresno and Livingston because of salmonella concerns.
Despite intensifying demands for a recall, the USDA allowed the plants to remain open after the company developed new protocols to reduce the rates of contamination.
Foster said the company saw a 25% reduction in sales after the latest salmonella outbreak.
Now, in addition to health issues raised by the new infestation, consumers are confronted by the ick-factor of cockroaches meandering near their future dinners.
The USDA disclosed its decision in a strongly worded letter, which said inspectors found cockroaches at the facility five times since September, most recently on Wednesday. Inspectors spotted roaches this week at a hand-washing sink while "slaughter operations were in progress and exposed product was present on the kill floor," the USDA said.
"Pests are highly unsanitary given that they can come in contact with decomposing garbage or other organic materials," the USDA said in the letter, which was signed by Abdalla Amin, a deputy district manager in Alameda. "Cockroaches and other pests can transmit disease-causing pathogens, including bacteria."
Foster Farms released a statement that acknowledged the presence of cockroaches at the facility. The company said it completed a "sanitization and treatment" procedure and asked the USDA for permission to relaunch operations.
"A single incident is not acceptable, and we are committed to a zero tolerance policy," the company's statement said.
The USDA's decision doesn't affect two other Foster Farms processing plants, which continue to operate.
Glenn M. Young, a professor and food safety microbiologist at UC Davis, said the presence of cockroaches at a food-processing plant can be dangerous.
"Any kind of pest is an issue in a food-processing facility," Young said. "They can serve as a way of vectoring those organisms from one contaminating site to another. Salmonella commonly has a wide host range, which would include even cockroaches."
Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety attorney, said he doubts that the cockroaches found this week had anything to do with the salmonella outbreak. The dangerous bacteria is contained in chicken feces and is often spread during the slaughter and butchering of chickens.
This is why consumers are encouraged to fully cook chicken, a step that destroys bacteria.
"It will impact Foster Farms' bottom line more by grossing people out than it would sickening hundreds of people," Marler said. "I don't think it's a huge deal. It would be more problematic if it were cockroaches in a restaurant or a facility preparing ready-to-eat food."
The USDA said the suspension would remain in effect "until such time as you provide adequate written assurances of corrective and preventive measures to assure that meat and poultry products will be produced under sanitary conditions."
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Related
Chicken still a high health risk, consumer groups say
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-poultry-reports-20131219,0,2410030.story
USDA outlines plan to fight salmonella
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-usda-salmonella-20131205,0,3587259.story
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Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foster-farms-cockroach-20140110,0,2724981.story [with comments]
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Senators Launch Climate Task Force To Break Through 'Special Interest Lies'
By Kate Sheppard
Posted: 01/09/2014 4:50 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 5:04 pm EST
WASHINGTON –- A group of Senate Democrats is planning a new offensive on climate change, one that members hope will galvanize congressional colleagues.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday the group will be "going on the offensive" on climate change to "wake up Congress." Boxer and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) made the announcement in a meeting with reporters.
The Climate Action Task Force has 12 members -- all Democrats -- so far, Boxer said, and will hold an official unveiling Tuesday. The task force's efforts will include public events, floor speeches and bringing more outside partners, like religious organizations and businesses that support slowing climate change, to the table. "Everybody gets it, except for Congress," Boxer said.
Whitehouse said there has long been a "barricade of special-interest lies around Congress and around Washington" when it comes to climate change, and the group seeks to break it down. "Once that barricade is broken, all sorts of things become possible," Whitehouse said.
While the focus is more on advocacy than on promoting specific legislation, Boxer said she believes members could help build momentum for bills on fuel economy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency. Boxer acknowledged that they "don't have the votes" for many of the measures they would like to see passed in the Senate right now, "but we're going to get them."
For its first event, the task force invited former Vice President Al Gore to speak to senators shortly before the Christmas holiday. Members are also engaging key White House staff on the issue; Boxer said she already met with John Podesta, who was tapped to serve as an adviser to President Barack Obama on the climate and other issues.
Whitehouse and Boxer said they believed Senate Democratic leadership has become more receptive to climate work in the last year. They pointed to a speech that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave on the subject last summer [ http://www.c-spanvideo.org/appearance/653168597 ], and noted that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has agreed to invite the group to a meeting.
Whitehouse remains optimistic, because, "victory on this is inevitable," he said.
There are already several other congressional climate groups. There's a Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change [ http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=page/bicameral-task-force-on-climate-change ], which includes House and Senate Democrats. There's also something that Boxer announced in 2012 [ http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/273539-sen-boxer-firms-up-senate-climate-change-clearinghouse-plan ] called the "Climate Change Clearinghouse," a small group of Democrats who meet weekly [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/sheldon-whitehouse-climate-change_n_4269090.html ] to discuss climate science.
Whether the latest group will make a stand on one key issue, like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline the Obama administration is currently considering, is unclear. Boxer said that while she personally opposes it, she does not know if the task force will take a position. A decision on the pipeline is expected this year, and has been a major focus for climate activists.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/senate-climate-task-force_n_4570627.html [ with video "Explaining Science To Climate Deniers" embedded, and comments]
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Ignore Climate Change at Your Peril
Impossible to achieve sustainable development without addressing climate change.
By Mary Robinson
Posted: 01/09/2014 8:00 am
"Extremely dangerous," "Do not travel" -- these are the phrases that have welcomed in the new year along the East Coast of the United States. Extreme weather caused thousands of flights to be delayed, placed the elderly and other vulnerable people at risk due to the extreme cold and impacted negatively on supply chains.
The increasing risk of extreme weather events due to climate change has been acknowledged by President Obama. In June 2013 at the launch of the Climate Action Plan he said: "We're going to need to get prepared. And that's why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid." As part of the plan the president created a bi-partisan Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience last November to advise the administration on how the federal government can respond to the needs of communities nationwide that are dealing with the impacts of climate change.
Recognizing the threat that climate change poses to lives, to business and to the economy and talking action to prepare for and reduce this threat makes sense. The United States alone has experienced 25 extreme weather events since 2011 [ http://www.wri.org/blog/new-report-connects-2012-extreme-weather-events-human-caused-climate-change ] that each caused more than $1 billion dollars in damages, contributing to the loss of more than 1,000 lives and costing each American family roughly $400 each year. To avoid these losses and prepare for life in a climate affected world -- decision makers in municipalities and states have to factor climate change into their plans for growth, job creation and sustainable development.
This week (January 9 and 10), representatives from government, business, academia and civil society are meeting in New York to discuss how climate change should be included in plans being developed at the international level to achieve sustainable development. Work is underway on a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will set an international policy framework applicable to all countries. International policy frameworks such as these are agreed internationally and implemented at the national level, thereby informing how planning decisions are made, finance is invested, and how businesses, energy, health and education systems develop.
The new Sustainable Development Goals build on and supersede the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which focused on development assistance and the relationship between donor and developing countries. The SDGs have a broader scope than the MDGs in several ways. Firstly, they are goals for all countries and not just developing countries as no country has yet achieved sustainable development. Secondly, they are about the environmental, social and economic aspects of development, whereas the MDGs focused predominantly on social development. And thirdly, they are being developed through a more inclusive process than the MDGs, involving not just all countries, but also a wide range of stakeholders.
Curiously, and worryingly, there are those who say that climate change does not belong in discussions on a new agenda for sustainable development post 2015. They fear that the negative and divisive politics associated with the climate negotiations will infect the discussions on the new development agenda. These politics divide the world along the lines of developed and developing countries, while the SDGs are based on the understanding that no country has achieved sustainable development so that this is a challenge we share universally.
Well founded though this fear might be, it is not reason enough to leave climate change out. Climate change is, after all, a development issue. Unchecked, climate change will undermine development gains and increase poverty and vulnerability. A development model based on continued levels of fossil fuel consumption will lead to dangerous levels of global warming. The World Bank's "Turn Down the Heat [ http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf ]" report released last year -- the world we are heading for, in which warming reaches 4°C above pre-industrial levels -- would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems and the ecosystems on which we rely.
Ignoring climate change and letting this happen is not consistent with the vision many people share of a world with greater equality, less poverty, the protection of human rights, more prosperity, jobs and opportunity. Conversely, acknowledging climate change and setting in place policies to address it can make a positive contribution to long term, sustainable growth, job creation and prosperity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found in 2011 that there were approximately 3.4 million green jobs in the U.S., an increase of 4.9 percent from the previous year (compared to an increase of 1.2 percent for all other sectors).
Given these realities it is incomprehensible that any plan to achieve sustainable development wouldn't include climate change. Clearly, adapting to the impacts already being experienced, as well as minimizing future risks and reducing reliance on fossil fuels for transport and energy has to be part of a development strategy, for the U.S. as well as every other country on the planet.
Tackling climate change is a fundamental component of sustainable development, so SDGs without climate change would have no credibility. Climate change must be included in the goals and targets of the SDGs, if the new framework is to be effective. The SDGs should include a climate change goal in addition to the integration of climate change into goals on related issues such as energy, food security, health and water. To ensure that this integration results in action and impact on the ground, measurable targets and indicators specific to climate change must be included under the relevant goals. This may seem ambitious -- but it is also logical, doable and critical if the new goals are to be effective in positively improving people's lives right around the world.
Climate change is a threat, but responding to it opens up a world of opportunity. The transition we need to make towards a carbon neutral world will provide jobs, a healthier planet, greater well-being and if we do it properly, greater equality. We need to change the conversation on climate change and sustainable development to become about how we make this transformation to the way we live life and do business. Communities and individuals are already taking action, forward looking businesses around the world stand ready to make the change. Now we need leadership at the political level to put in place an international framework that enables us to make the transition rapidly, effectively and for the benefit of all. The objective of sustainable development, after all, is "to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."
Mary Robinson [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-robinson/ ] is the president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice [ http://www.mrfcj.org/ ] and was the first woman president of Ireland (1990-1997).
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-robinson/ignore-climate-change-at-_b_4561649.html [with comments]
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No Rape Charge For Suspect In Daisy Coleman Case
Daisy Coleman
01/09/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/daisy-coleman-rape-case_n_4569706.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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More Omaha police fired in ‘caught on tape’ case
Juaquez and Demetrius Johnson, their mother Sharon and two other family members.
[larger at http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/johnson_family_1_800x6001.jpg ]
January 9, 2014
Just days after a federal lawsuit accused Omaha police of excessive force in a widely publicized (see video above) “caught on tape” tape case, two more officers have been fired bringing the total to six.
[...]
http://watchdog.org/123164/omaha-officers-fired-caught-tape-case/ [with comments]; the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ6Ejn0Hnkc [with comments]
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At Issue in 2 Wrenching Cases: What to Do After the Brain Dies
Nailah Winkfield, second from left, the mother of Jahi McMath, and her uncle Omari Sealy, in white shirt, in December of 2013.
Norbert Von Der Groeben/Reuters
Ernest Machado, his wife Lynne and their grandson, Matéo Munoz. His mother, Marlise Munoz, is on a ventilator.
Rex C. Curry for The New York Times
By BENEDICT CAREY and DENISE GRADY
JAN. 9, 2014
In one way, the cases are polar opposites: the parents of Jahi McMath in Oakland, Calif., have fought to keep their daughter connected to a ventilator [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/us/a-brain-is-dead-a-heart-beats-on.html ], while the parents and husband of Marlise Muñoz in Fort Worth, Tex., want desperately to turn the machine off [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?hpw&rref=us ]. In another way, the cases are identical: both families have been shocked to learn that a loved one was declared brain-dead — and that hospital officials defied the family’s wishes for treatment.
Their wrenching stories raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.
“These cases are quite different from those we’ve known in the past,” like Karen Ann Quinlan [ http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/12/nyregion/karen-ann-quinlan-31-dies-focus-of-76-right-to-die-case.html ], Nancy Cruzan [ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/27/us/nancy-cruzan-dies-outlived-by-a-debate-over-the-right-to-die.html ] or Terri Schiavo [ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/national/01schiavo.html ], said Dr. Joseph J. Fins, director of the medical ethics division at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. He explained: “Those patients could all breathe without a ventilator. They were in a vegetative state, not brain-dead, and that distinction makes all the difference.”
A person who has received a brain-death diagnosis cannot breathe on his or her own and is legally dead, in all 50 states. In two states, New York and New Jersey, hospitals must take into account the family’s religious or moral views in deciding how to proceed in such cases. In all others, including California and Texas, hospitals are not required to consult the family in how to terminate care.
Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Oakland pronounced Jahi, 13, brain-dead on Dec. 9. She developed complications after surgery for sleep apnea and lost a large amount of blood. Ms. Muñoz , 33, got the diagnosis at John Peter Smith Hospital after she collapsed from a blood clot when she was 14 weeks pregnant. The hospital, citing a state law, refuses to remove the ventilator because it would harm the fetus, now in its 20th week.
The two cases are poignant in part because of a biological quirk of the body: The patients’ hearts continue to beat. Hearts have their own pacemaker, and with ventilation, the heart can continue to beat for days, even up to a week. But with more aggressive care, it can last months and longer after brain death, experts say, depending on the health of the patient and how much treatment is provided.
That ventilation saved the fetus in the Muñoz case, and probably in the nick of time, said Dr. R. Phillips Heine, director of maternal and fetal medicine at Duke University’s medical school. The diminished blood flow to the fetus when the mother collapsed — she is thought to have been passed out for about an hour before receiving care — “may lead to adverse effects over time, but we have no way to predict that,” Dr. Heine said.
A prolonged heartbeat has created the perception of life for Jahi’s family, while for Ms. Muñoz’s relatives it represents a denial of the right to die.
“The way I’ve described this state is that a part of the organism is still alive, obviously, but the organism as a whole — the human being — is gone,” said Dr. James L. Bernat, the Louis and Ruth Frank professor of Neuroscience at Dartmouth’s medical school.
Diagnosing a brain as “dead” is a matter of determining the function of its most primitive area, the brain stem. The brain stem, the plug of neural tissue at the base where the spinal cord enters the skull, is the body’s plant manager, sustaining systems like muscle tone, metabolic equilibrium and ventilation.
Testing its function requires some expertise, because people with severe brain injuries are often unresponsive and appear brain-dead when they are not. A coma, for instance, is an unresponsive state that often represents a period of recovery for the brain stem and other areas. People generally emerge from a coma within two to three weeks after their injury. If they not, they may enter a vegetative state, in which the brain stem is functioning but higher brain areas are shut down, or what is called a minimally conscious state — in which a patient is occasionally responsive, but not predictably. People who emerge from a vegetative state are thought to pass through a minimally conscious stage before becoming consciously aware.
To determine brain death, four elements are needed, experts said. First, the doctor must rule out other possible explanations for the unresponsive state, like anesthesia, diabetic coma or hypothermia. An injury must also be established, like a blow to the head or blood loss.
Doctors then test the function of so-called cranial nerves, including one that runs to the eye and activates blinking; another in the throat that causes gagging; and a third in the inner ear that allows the eyes to focus on an object when the head is moving. Each of these engages the brain stem. If touching the person’s cornea with a Q-tip does not trigger a blink, or touching the back of the throat brings no gagging, the brain stem is either out of commission or close to it.
The last step is called an apnea test. To perform this, doctors allow the carbon dioxide level to slowly increase in the patient’s blood; once the concentration reaches a certain threshold, anyone with a partly functional brain stem will wheeze for breath. This is the true litmus test for brain death, and it can take about 20 minutes, during which doctors must not leave the room even for a moment, said Dr. Panayiotis N. Varelas, director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
“If the patient tries to breathe, you abort the test immediately and say the patient is not brain-dead,” Dr. Varelas said.
The exact timing of these tests, and the number of times they are done — some doctors perform them all once; others do so twice, separated by a number of hours — vary from hospital to hospital, surveys have found. But botched cases are very rare, experts said; people diagnosed with brain death do not come back.
Under New York and New Jersey laws, people can prolong the provision of oxygen to keep a person’s heart beating for religious or moral reasons. But elsewhere, “life support” is superfluous, if there is no life to support. In that context, the McMath and Munoz cases are different, said Dr. Fins, who is working on a book titled “Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and the Struggle for Consciousness.”
The parents of Jahi McMath “are hoping their daughter will recover and asking to reverse a decision that isn’t under human control,” he said. “In the Muñoz case, the family is asking to reverse a decision that is under human control, and has to do with whether the mother would want to be a mother under these circumstances.”
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/health/the-science-behind-brain-death.html [with comments]
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Robert Gates Memoir Backfires On Obama Criticisms
01/09/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/robert-gates-obama_n_4563743.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Excuse Me While I Troll You: Actually, Joe Biden Was Right
01/09/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/joe-biden-robert-gates_n_4564678.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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@Georgetown University Professor/Fox News Expert Calls For Obama's Assassination
Michael Scheuer
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/03/1267011/-Fox-News-Expert-Calls-For-Obama-s-Assassination [with embedded video, and comments]
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Florida boy says he was barred from speech contest due to critical comments on religion
December 13, 2013
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/13/florida-boy-says-he-was-barred-from-speech-contest-due-to-critical-comments-on-religion/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Florida 5th Grader's Speech on Religious Wars, Golden Rule Deemed Inappropriate, Stripped of Prize
December 16, 2013
http://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-5th-graders-speech-on-religious-wars-golden-rule-deemed-inappropriate-stripped-of-prize-110870/ [with comments]
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School tries to silence fifth-grader’s speech on religion
A Florida student writes about injustices committed "In the Name of Religion"
Dec 17, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/17/school_tries_to_silence_fifth_graders_speech_on_religion/ [with comments]
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Censored Florida lad Zachary Golob-Drake delivers his ‘inappropriate’ speech – and wins a gold medal
Zachary and his mum Rhonda
December 18, 2013
http://freethinker.co.uk/2013/12/18/censored-florida-lad-zachary-golob-drake-gets-to-deliver-his-inappropriate-speech-and-wins-a-gold-medal/ [with comments]
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Full text of Zachary's speech
WRITTEN BY: Zachary Golob-Drake
Posted: Dec 12, 2013 3:05 PM CST
Updated: Jan 09, 2014 4:50 PM CST
In the Name of Religion
The world’s major religions all have messages about coexisting. But oftentimes people have found a way to bend that rule; sometimes people even use religion as an excuse to take each other’s lives. The three major religions on the earth include the Eastern religions, Islam, and Christianity. About one billion people live by the Eastern religions; about 1.4 billion are Muslim; and about 2.3 billion are Christians. Religious differences have always sparked conflict, even leading to warfare and mass murder.
One of the most famous tensions is the Crusades. Beginning in 1065, the Crusades were a series of holy wars which were fought between Christians and Muslims. It was the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Urban II who initiated the first wave of attacks. The European Christian’s intent was to force Christianity upon the Muslim people and to win back the Holy Land, known as Jerusalem. They were some of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
In 1162, about the time the Crusades ended, Genghis Khan was born and later crowned Emperor of Mongolia. Khan was a powerful ruler who conquered many lands and civilizations, which inevitably caused the Mongolian Empire to grow. Khan became so powerful that people considered him a god. Khan was known to tell his victims before causing their deaths, “I am the flail of God; for if you were without sin, he would not have sent me upon you.”
For anyone who thinks religious tensions have ended, they have not. Modern terrorism often has to do with religion. Take the story of 911, for example. On September 11, 2001, hijackers commandeered two jets and intentionally crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York, killing thousands of unsuspecting civilians. It has been confirmed that the hijackers were Islamic extremists who wanted to punish the United States for its immoral behavior.
Religion provides moral guidance for most of the seven billion people on the earth. More than 2,500 years ago, Confuscious offered guidance through the Golden Rule when he said, “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” Both Jesus and Muhammad echoed these sentiments hundreds of years later. This world would be a better place if everybody followed that rule.
Copyright 2013 Zachary Golob-Drake
http://www.wfla.com/story/24207107/full-text-of-zacharys-speech [with comments]
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Sephardic Jews invited back to Spain after 500 years
More than 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews fled Spain because of persecution. Now their descendants are being invited to return.
By Gerry Hadden
PRI's The World
6 March 2013 Last updated at 01:35 ET
Before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, some 300,000 Jews lived in Spain. It was one of the largest communities of Jews in the world.
Today, there are about 40,000 or 50,000 - but that number could be about to swell dramatically.
In November, Spain's justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon announced a plan to give descendants of Spain's original Jewish community - known as Sephardic Jews - a fast-track to a Spanish passport and Spanish citizenship.
"In the long journey Spain has undertaken to rediscover a part of itself, few occasions are as moving as today," he said.
Anyone who could prove their Spanish Jewish origins, he said, would be given Spanish nationality.
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The Inquisition
1478 - Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition established in Spain
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile wanted Spain to be entirely Catholic
1492 - Edict of Expulsion ordered Jews to convert or leave
Muslim converts were called Moriscos. They were expelled in 1609
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The news spread like wildfire among Sephardic Jews around the world.
According to the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, which processes the applications, there were about 6,000 enquiries in the first month alone - including one from an unnamed member of the US Congress.
"My initial reaction was that this was a really thrilling moment - that it was an act of justice," says Doreen Carvajal, a US citizen and reporter with the New York Times in Paris.
"It was a romantic notion on my part. I told my husband, 'I think I'm going to try and get the passport because it closes a circle'. It was very poetic."
Carvajal was brought up Catholic, but a few years ago, she discovered she has Sephardic Jewish roots.
She began to investigate, eventually tracing her family tree back to the 15th Century and the city of Segovia, north of Madrid. She has countless documents, and has detailed her story in a book, The Forgetting River: A modern tale of survival, identity and the Inquisition.
But Carvajal says that when she contacted the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, she learned that she didn't qualify. Not yet, anyway.
Carvajal's family moved from Spain and settled in Costa Rica
Carvajal's family was among the estimated one-third of Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism to escape the Inquisition's clutches. They were known as the "conversos".
So, Carvajal is technically the descendant of converts. She's not a practising Jew herself. She was told she would have to convert back to Judaism before she could get Spanish citizenship.
"It felt like another act of being forced. Here are these people, the descendants of the forced ones, the conversos, being told you have to do this, you have to be a certain religion. So what happens if you're a secular Jew?"
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Sephardic Jews
Jews have lived in Spain since Roman times
Sephardic comes from the Hebrew word Sepharad, which means Spain
Originally used to refer to descendants of the Jews from Spain
They are scattered around the world - in Israel, Turkey, the US, South America, Greece, Bulgaria, France and the UK, for example
Sephardic Jew is now a wider term, and can refer to Jews of Oriental, Asian and African origin
*
The fast-track procedure has not yet taken effect - and Carvajal may well be entitled to citizenship when the rules are finalised.
The secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, Mauricio Toledano, told the BBC that the government is still working on details of the scheme, and when the new law is presented to parliament, it's expected to specifically state that all descendants of Sephardic origin - whether they are Jewish or not - be given citizenship.
In total, about 100,000 Jews fled Spain in the course of the 15th Century. Some went to North Africa, but most settled in the economic powerhouse of the day, the Ottoman Empire - which then stretched from Hungary to Turkey, and beyond that to the south, and was expanding.
About 90% of Jews in modern-day Turkey are Sephardic Jews. Roni Rodrigue, 55, a car dealer in Istanbul, has already claimed his Spanish passport.
"I just thought I have a right to apply for citizenship, so why not."
He did this four years ago, under a pre-existing scheme, and got his papers in 11 months - though some of his friends have been waiting years.
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Conversos and cryptos...
It was the Jews who converted to Catholicism - rather than those who remained Jewish - who faced the greatest persecution under the Inquisition, says Stanford historian Professor Aron Rodrigue.
The conversos were under a constant watch, and it was considered a heresy if they were found to be practising any remnants of their Judaism. They faced fines, imprisonment - and the infamous burning at the stake.
No-one knows how many continued practising their Judaism secretly, under cover. Those who did were sometimes called crypto-Jews.
Some who converted went to Spanish colonies in the Americas, but that offered them little protection - the same Inquisition rules applied there.
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Rodrigue has no plans to move to Spain, and has only been there twice, but says he still feels a connection.
He's a speaker of a dying language, Ladino. It's specific to Sephardic Jews and based on old Spanish, with words borrowed from Hebrew and the many countries in which they have settled since.
Rodrigue's parents spoke Ladino to each other but it has not been passed on to his children, or to most of the new generation of Sephardic Jews around the world.
It's not uncommon, though, for Sephardic Jews to feel the pull of Spain.
"I'm still Spanish in my soul and in my heart," says one British Sephardic Jew, who asked not to be named.
He's building a house in Spain, has bought land, and even a plot in which to be buried.
Like Carvajal, he's been left disappointed by the existing rules for acquiring citizenship, and stands to benefit from the new system.
He successfully went through the process to gain Spanish citizenship some time ago, but says he withdrew his application at the very end, when he discovered he would have to give up his British passport to complete the process - something he was not prepared to do.
The proposed new law, if passed, is expected to allow all new citizens of Sephardic origin to keep their existing passports.
Holy Week in southern Spain is full of ancient imagery
It is well known that when Spain expelled the Jews in 1492 it had a disastrous effect on the economy - many were wealthy textile traders, jewellers and bankers.
"At the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan was said to have commented that he couldn't understand why a great Spanish king like Ferdinand would go without the Jews - who were such a source of wealth - and just give them to him," says Maria Josep Estanyol, a historian at the University of Barcelona.
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Expelled from England
Jews were expelled from the England in 1290 - 200 years before the Spanish Inquisition
There were similar expulsions in France and a number of European countries
It was not until the 1650s that Jews were allowed to live in England again
Many of the first to return were Sephardic Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin
*
"The Sultan was very pleased to receive these Jewish families, who went on to enrich his empire."
For decades, there has been a movement to allow Sephardic Jews to return, but it is unclear why the Spanish government has chosen to bring up the issue again now.
In theory, enticing them back now could give a boost to Spain's shrinking economy, although Estanyol doubts very many will re-establish roots in Spain.
"Given how disastrous things are here today, I'd advise against it," she says.
In the colonies too - an Inquisition prison in Colombia
It has also been suggested that Spain made the offer to mollify Israel, after Madrid supported last year's successful Palestinian bid for a seat at the United Nations.
Whatever the motivation, some Muslim scholars are denouncing the offer as unfair. They point out that their ancestors were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. But no-one is inviting them back.
Gerry Hadden is Europe correspondent for The World [ http://www.theworld.org/ ] - a co-production of the BBC World Service [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio ], PRI [ http://www.pri.org/ ] and WGBH [ http://www.wgbh.org/ ]
Additional reporting Cordelia Hebblethwaite
*
Related Internet links
Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities (in Spanish)
http://www.fcje.org/
Routes of Sefarad
http://www.redjuderias.org/google/index.php?l=en
Casa de Sefarad
http://www.casadesefarad.es/in/movie_entrada.html
European Sephardic Institute
http://www.sefarad.org/english.html
American Sephardi Federation
http://www.americansephardifederation.org/
Around the BBC
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Spanish Inquisition
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003c1bw
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BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21631427
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By Richard (RJ) Eskow
Posted: 01/09/2014 5:59 pm
Some Republicans are claiming Chris Christie isn't really one of them. Some pundits are claiming, even as scandal erupts around him, that he's a "different kind of Republican." He's more than that: He is the archetypal Republican, the incarnation of its arrogant, corporatist soul.
It's like we said a while back [ http://ourfuture.org/20120412/chris_christie_the_heartless_smug_bullying_embodiment_of_the_republican_party ]: Christie is "the heartless, smug, bullying embodiment" of his party. He and his staff reflect a world in which other people are nothing more than rubes to be manipulated and exploited, whether they're trying to escape the trap of long-term unemployment or Fort Lee during the morning rush hour.
The conventional wisdom says that Christie's not like other Republicans. Pundits say he's a "moderate," a "pragmatist," a counterbalance to the far-right ideology of the Tea Party Republicans. But no leading Republican is really moderate, including Christie. And at the end of the day they're all pragmatists, ready to do whatever it takes to serve their paymasters' agenda.
Democrats and liberals routinely express frustration and bafflement at Republican hypocrisy. "They claim to hate big government," they'll say, "but they want to expand the Defense Department. They say they want government out of our lives, then vote to control women's sex lives or manage a brain-dead woman's care from the nation's capital."
Well, yeah.
It's true that Republicans are hypocritical in word and deed. But while they may be false to an ideology, they're always true to their mission: to promote and serve the interests of big corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. And when it comes to that agenda, all of them -- the Chris Christies as well as the Paul Ryans -- are as extremist as the political climate will permit. Whether the subject is taxation, "corporate personhood," or the future of the planet, there's no room for either moderation or ideology in the service of corporate goals.
That's why the party's few real ideologues - the Ron Pauls and Rand Pauls - frustrate the leadership so much. Unfortunately, when Republicans aren't hirelings they're usually extremists. And when party leaders complain that other Republicans aren't "moderates" or "pragmatists," what they're really saying is that they won't behave like Rep. Spencer Bachus (who famously said that the institutions of government exist "to serve the banks [ http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/13/incoming-gop-chairman-congress-exists-serve-banks/ ]"), or, like the ever-"pragmatic" Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, work with corporate-friendly Democrats to fund Defense Department boondoggles.
Why does Christie sound so much more moderate than Mitch McConnell? Because he holds his elective office in New Jersey, and McConnell holds his in Kentucky. You need the right salesman to make the sale. That's Job One. Once you've closed the deal, your objective is to shaft your customers as much as you can without losing the business altogether. That's the Republican Party's business model in a nutshell.
"Different"? Christie embodies his party perfectly. Arrogant? Check. Bullying? Check. Indifferent to the well-being of constituents? Check. He may sound like a different kind of Republican, but he governs the same way the others do.
Tax giveaways for big corporations? Christie doled out $1.57 billion [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/nyregion/christie-gives-new-jersey-firms-tax-breaks-for-short-moves.html?pagewanted=all ] for "job creation," with far fewer jobs created than across the river in New York State.
Following the ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) agenda funded by the Koch Brothers and other big corporate interests? As the New Jersey Star-Ledger reported in 2012 [ http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2012/04/alec_model_bills_used_in_nj_la.html ], "At least three bills, one executive order and one agency rule accomplish the same goals set out by ALEC using the same specific policies. In eight passages contained in those documents, New Jersey initiatives and ALEC proposals line up almost word for word."
Meet the new GOP, same as the old GOP.
And say what you will about him, but Chris Christie is a hell of a salesman. He's managed to make this radical corporatist agenda look "moderate."
We're probably obliged to point out that there's no evidence Christie was personally involved in this political retribution scandal. (Those of us who remember Watergate may experience some déjà vu at this point.) What we do know is that Christie picked the people who wrote those emails, and the attitudes revealed in them reflect precisely what we've seen in Christie's own personality.
Listening to his press conference, it was easy to imagine Christie's face morphing from one famous Republican to another, the way those young people's faces did on Michael Jackson's "Black or White" video. The passive voice ("you are human and mistakes are made") and "I am not a ..." construction ("I am not a bully")? Pure Nixon. The grandiosity, paired with a refusal to accept responsibility? Pure Cheney.
Then there was the narcissistic focus on how the scandal affected him -- rather than, say, the elderly woman who died or the children who were trapped for hours in school buses. That's pretty much any leading Republican of the last 50 years.
As is so often the case in the corporate world, the GOP's culture is shockingly insensitive to the human consequences of its actions. George W. Bush "joked" about not finding weapons of mass destruction after hundreds of thousands of people died under false pretenses in Iraq. Christie joked that he was no longer in the "traffic study" business.
Theirs is a culture where people, even children, are either allies or enemies. Hence the Christie staffer's suggestion that there was no need to feel badly about the kids on those buses because they were "the children of Buono voters," referring to state Sen. Barbara Buono, Christie's gubernatorial opponent last year. The sins of the fathers ...
The truth is, there's no such thing as a "new Republican." Today's Republican Party doesn't reflect a viewpoint. It reflects a strategy -- one intended to maximize the wealth of those it serves. The pundits cheering [ http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/01/09/good-news-for-chris-christie/ ] Christie's press conference performance, like Politico's Mark Halperin and right-winger Erick Erickson, would've applauded Nixon's "third rate burglary" defense.
The Republican Party has finally achieved spiritual death -- and Chris Christie is its face. Gaze upon it as you would the face of Ozymandias [ http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_percy/672/ ]. Then look on its works, and despair.
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David Wildstein Held In Contempt After Refusing To Testify About Bridge Scandal
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/david-wildstein-contempt-chris-christie_n_4569680.html
*
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. (emphasis in original)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/chris-christie-the-true-f_b_4571280.html [with comments]
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The Slow Grip of Poverty
By Carly Paul
Living in Colorado
Posted: 01/08/2014 4:23 pm
First of all, right now I am not working. The last day of my last job was September 15, 2011. My disability case is in the third, and last, round of appeal and if I don't get it this time, I will be back to being the working poor again. My disability is a mental illness: I'm bipolar. I was born this way, I always was this way, and I will always be this way. I started working when I was 14 years old. By the time I got fired for the last time in 2011 and I filed for disability, I had worked my full 40 quarters. Basically, I qualify for retirement, full Social Security benefits -- not just Social Security disability.
Let me tell you a little about me. I am educated. I have a Bachelor's of science from a major university in Colorado. I have a patent pending for a product I invented. I am the antithesis of lazy, but I'm still fat as all get out. I eat very healthy and I usually exercise regularly. I have aspirations to one day have a Master's degree.
I own my own home, kind of. It's in the divorce paperwork that I get the house. But my credit is miserable... the word that comes to mind is "leper" because when I got fired from my last job I couldn't pay my bills anymore. Unemployment is a fraction of what you make, and then with my divorce happening at the same time, and going from a dual income to a single income on top of getting fired again, there was a vegan's chance in Texas that I would be able to make ends meet. As far as the house goes, I bought it by saving up all my money, living on 60 percent of what I made in about two years, and using my husband-at-the-time's credit score and my little pile of cash for the down payment and some furniture and paint. The house is now my joy and proud fortune and also my greatest anxiety. What if I don't get approved for disability, and I can't repair my credit by Dec 31, 2014 like the terms state? What if I am too far gone? Will I really be homeless this time?
During the time that I was married, with both of us working, saving up money, buying a house, we were still below average income for a married couple. As much as I've ever been able to work in my entire life, since I was 15, and qualifying for full Social Security benefits by age 29, I have only ever been able to work part time because of my mental illness. Like I said, I'm the antithesis of lazy.
I come from a pretty wealthy neighborhood in Southern California. My dad always had money, and so did my mom. But I remember having to fight for every dollar they spent on me, even as a child. I remember as young as 8 years old, if I wanted something, I had to find a way to afford it or work for it. In high school I was borrowing money from my friends to afford lunch until my next paycheck. I'll say it so you don't have to... yes, my family puts the FUN in dysfunctional. But this is where things get really weird, and you can really see the sneaky, dirty fingers of poverty take their firm grip around my throat.
Because of the nature of my illness and the dysfunction of my family, and being that I did everything I did without any help, I got a bunch of credit cards during the brief time I lived on campus. Because I was an unmedicated bipolar type 1, I spent lots of this "fake" credit card money on things that I didn't need or even want, because that's sometimes what unmedicated bipolar type 1 people do when they are manic. Within six months, I had run up about $5,000 in debt, and before that I didn't even know what a credit card was or how to get one or how they worked. Isn't a parent supposed to tell you about that stuff at some point? How does a person learn? This was before the Internet, before cell phones, but it wasn't before dinnertime, before parenting. That was the first finger of poverty around my throat.
Since there was no place to really work where I moved, and no one to really sell things to either there, I decided to move with my new best friend to a nearby city in Colorado. My car got repossessed almost as soon as I moved. I didn't know anything about that either. One day, it was just gone, and all of a sudden I was a person whose car had been repossessed. Even though I felt like I could breathe easier at the time because I was relieved that the phone calls had stopped, this was the second finger resting gently on my larynx until I tried to move; then I could really feel the pressure. If I filled out an application for an apartment, that repossession hurt my credit, and I was denied. When it came time to buy a car many years later, I was denied because of that repossession, and so on.
During the early years of my marriage and my engagement, I worked anywhere from two to three jobs simultaneously, up to 17 hours a day. An oft-overlooked perk of being bipolar is that you can stay awake for days, and since I'm not lazy, I would really rather be working than doing anything else. I would get to the YMCA to lifeguard or teach swimming lessons around 4:45 or 5 a.m., leave there between 10 a.m. and noon, get to the next job between 11 a.m. and noon and stay there until five or six, and then finish out the dinner rush and close the restaurant at the third job. During this time, my fiancé/husband was in his manbaby phase, and worked at either Sherwin Williams, Hollywood Video, or the same restaurant as me, or any combination of those up to two. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term manbaby, this phase begins at birth and usually lasts until the age of 30 but can go on as long as the man insists. Many men actually die babies. And that's that.
The difference was that since I was working so much, he knew there would be enough to pay for all the bills and he felt very entitled to spending every last cent on as much junk food, cigarettes, and video games/movies as he could fit into our apartment. So, why didn't I say "Hey, we have more than enough money and we need to live below our means, and save for the future"? Well here is why. First of all, refer to fingers one and two. Second of all, I was still mostly a kid, with a severe mental illness, just trying to pay rent, eat food, get things. And third of all, because my marriage was ridiculous. I didn't know it at the time, but I was in survival mode. And that's the third finger. What a strong grasp it has on me now. Whether it actually strangles me to death or not, I'll never be able to get away.
During the roughly 12 rough years I was married I did accomplish loosening the grasp poverty had on me. When I say loosen, I mean that in the true sense of the word loosen, like its grip was firm but not tight. During this time I kept working my part time jobs and getting fired, one after another, and he kept working his full-time jobs and then quitting, just walking off. I didn't even know I could file for unemployment until my last job fired me! To find out that I, Carly, could get unemployment -- that I could get money and also work my ridiculous low paying jobs -- and somehow escape some of the fear and anxiety and the shame of inevitably being fired for my illness yet again... and even though the grip was firm but not tight, this was the fourth finger: The way I saw myself, and the mounting list of terminations on my resume of low paying jobs.
When I was 25 I decided I wanted to really make a difference in my life. I found something I was passionate about, and I wanted to make a difference in the lives of obese people, and those who suffered from diets. So I decided to try again at college, and I enrolled as a health science major. During my time at school, I worked at one or two jobs at a time. I was medicated for part of the time, which is I think the entire reason I was able to graduate or even make it to class. That is not to say it was a walk in the park. I still had a mental illness, it was still disabling, I could barely function. The only reason I didn't get fired from school was because I paid them in order for me to be there.
Poverty sits on top of me, like an intruder in my house that snuck into my bedroom and I can't get it off of me, and I wake up struggling to breathe. Every day. I thought things would be okay. I hoped they would be okay more than I thought they would be okay. Why would I do that? I know I'm a poor person. I know I have a disability. I know I can't keep a job. I know all of this. Why would I have thought something like getting myself into a house would be a good idea? Trying to manage my money myself? I know I can't do that! But I didn't want to ask for help, I didn't want to say I couldn't.
Well those days are long gone. Like this far: looooooooooooong gone. I have been denied disability the standard one time, like everyone else. The doctor from the Social Security administration who evaluated me sent his letter of recommendation: "She is not able to work, and cannot take care of herself. She needs immediate approval of benefits." The result? DENIED. Then on to my appeal, in front of a judge, with my lawyer. The prosecution rested their case and made their recommendation to the presiding judge: there is no way this girl can sustain gainful employment. Two weeks later, my letter came: DENIED. So now, my third and final appeal.
And the trouble I'm in is this. I need medication in order to function in any capacity, especially at work. I have a severe mental illness. I am unemployable. I cannot work more than part time, and I can't go without medication, and I have to have regular access to health care. Part time work often does not offer insurance. The places that do, I have already been fired from. I cannot follow a simple recipe for chocolate chip cookies, even while medicated without help, in my own kitchen, without the threat of being written up looming over me. Imagine how that translates to on the job performance! I am sure there is something in the Affordable Care Act for me, but I wonder how "affordable" this Obamacare really is, considering the amount of money I will really be making working a low wage with part-time hours.
This is how I came to be in poverty's grip. It was not overnight, and it was not all because of me, and not all because a system that failed me, and not all because of a dysfunctional family, and not all because of overblown capitalism, and not all because of any one thing. It was a very unfortunate combination of things, mostly unfortunate because of the constant suffocation and confusion. And I'm sure it's that way for every single person who wakes up every morning with poverty choking them in their beds while the rich people on the other side of town wake up in peace.
You know what you can't say about me, and I don't want to hear it, so let's just get a few things clear right out of the gate. First of all, as I've said, I'm the antithesis of lazy. Second, I'm not greedy. I donate money all the time, even though I have very little. Third, I don't smoke, I don't drink, and I don't do drugs and never have. I don't have children. I don't sell my food stamps for whatever you would accuse me of selling them for. Whatever you want to accuse me of frivolously spending money on, I also don't do that. Yes, I have walked to work in blizzards, in negative degree weather, for miles, in the dark, so I don't want to be accused of that kind of unwillingness either. I have gone to school, finished school, started my own company, and closed it down. But poverty is a worthy adversary, and it takes more than a degree and inventing a product to overcome it. It takes more than a village, it takes more than raising a child in wealth. Poverty is not a choice we make but rather a series of consequences of other people's choices and a handful of our own, just like affluence. We just hope that there will be a morning, some morning, even just one, where we don't wake up with that uninvited intruder in our bedroom, making us struggle to breathe.
Carly's story is part of a Huffington Post series profiling Americans who work hard and yet still struggle to make ends meet. Learn more about other individuals' experiences here [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/@working_poor ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carly-paul/the-slow-grip-of-poverty_b_4516679.html [with comments]
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Marco Rubio's Cure For Poverty? Subsidize Crummy Jobs, Make Massive Block Grants
Sen. Marco Rubio talked about reforming anti-poverty programs and improving income mobility at an American Enterprise Institute event on Jan. 8 in Washington.
Alex Wong via Getty Images
By Michael McAuliff
Posted: 01/08/2014 6:06 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 10:03 am EST
WASHINGTON -- Florida Sen. Marco Rubio joined the Republican chorus declaring Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" a failure Wednesday and proposed his own cures, which include subsidizing work that doesn't pay a living wage and shifting all poverty programs to the states.
Rubio, one of the lead GOP prospects for the 2016 presidential contest, unveiled his plans in a speech sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. The talk seemed aimed at convincing people that he and his fellow Republicans do hold the concerns of the poor close to their hearts, despite what Democrats may say, and perhaps getting a jump on the kind of arguments about the "47 percent" that helped sink Mitt Romney's 2012 campaign.
The senator argued that poverty remains a major problem in America and cited numerous statistics, including the country's soaring income inequality since 1980. He said those numbers show that LBJ's "big government" philosophy simply doesn't work and that America needs to be more concerned about "opportunity inequality."
"These economic, social, cultural and educational causes of opportunity inequality are complex. And they will not be solved by continuing with the same stale Washington ideas," Rubio said. "Five decades and trillions of dollars after President Johnson waged his War on Poverty, the results of this big-government approach are in."
But Rubio insisted that pursuing Democratic goals such as raising the minimum wage was not part of the solution.
"Our current president and his liberal allies propose that we address this by spending more on these failed programs and increasing the minimum wage to $10.10," Rubio said, mocking the idea. "Really? That is their solution to what President Obama has identified as the defining issue of our time? Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American Dream."
Instead of requiring employers to pay something closer to a living wage, Rubio proposed having the government supplement the stingy pay at many companies.
"We should pursue reforms that encourage and reward work. That’s why I am developing legislation to replace the earned income tax credit with a federal wage enhancement for qualifying low-wage jobs," Rubio said. "This would allow an unemployed individual to take a job that pays, say, $18,000 a year -– which on its own is not enough to make ends meet –- but then receive a federal enhancement to make the job a more enticing alternative to collecting unemployment insurance."
While Rubio cast his idea as a way to help individuals, it could also be a boon to corporations such as Walmart and McDonald's, which both rely on [ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-15/mcdonalds-low-wages-come-with-a-7-billion-side-of-welfare ] the taxpayer-funded federal safety net [ http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-06-03/are-american-taxpayers-subsidizing-walmarts-low-wages ] to support their low-paid workers to the tune of billions of dollars [ http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/corporate-subsidy-watch/hidden-taxpayer-costs ].
Rubio added that the point was not just to support those people, but to give them tools to advance. "The only solution that will achieve meaningful and lasting results is to provide those who are stuck in low-paying jobs the real opportunity to move up to better-paying jobs," he said.
Yet in the past, the senator hasn't been the most robust supporter of the sorts of educational programs that help people advance themselves.
Although he did not propose any other specific solutions beyond subsidizing crummy jobs, Rubio did say that the federal government should shift the responsibility for dealing with poverty to the states.
"Our anti-poverty programs should be replaced with a revenue-neutral [meaning, among other things, that the amount spent/put in by the federal government could not go up in response to/during a recession/depression and the resulting greater needs, which also would correspondingly eliminate that portion of counter-cyclical increased federal {deficit} spending in response to/during a recession/depression] flex fund," he said. "We would streamline most of our existing federal anti-poverty funding into one single agency. Then each year, these flex funds would be transferred to the states so they can design and fund creative initiatives that address the factors behind inequality of opportunity."
He accounted for his lack of specificity by suggesting the detailed solutions should be left to the states.
"Instead of continuing to pour money into our existing programs, we need to reform them through innovative and highly targeted solutions. But that is something the federal government is incapable of delivering," Rubio said. "Washington is too bureaucratic and resistant to change. And its one-size-fits-all approach to policy is not conducive to solving a problem as diverse as this one."
Some progressive economists were not impressed with Rubio's speech, suggesting that he hadn't actually thought that carefully about the problem.
"This sounds like he has no idea of the structure of programs and how they took the shape they did," said Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
"His 'wage enhancement' would run into real problems for people working multiple jobs. Does he want to subsidize wages for people earning $36,000 a year by the same amount as someone earning $18,000 a year?" Baker said in an email. "And, since it won't depend on family size, does he intend to cut his EITC [earned income tax credit] equivalent for workers with 2-3 kids? If not, then we will have to spend more, not less on this program."
"This is not close to being a serious plan to address poverty," Baker added.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/marco-rubio-poverty_n_4564084.html [with embedded video clip, and comments]
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Conservatives claim ‘War on Poverty’ failed
Hardball with Chris Matthews
January 8, 2014
Marco Rubio argued Wednesday that the fact that so many Americans remain in poverty proves that the “War on Poverty” has been lost. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Michael Tomasky discuss.
©2014 NBC UNIVERSAL
http://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/conservatives-claim-war-on-poverty-failed-110343235927 [with comments] [the above YouTube of the segment at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sesq75nmHGY (with comment)]
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Jane Freeman, Widow Of Food Stamp Founder, Discusses The 'Need And The Embarrassment'
Jane and Orville Freeman, pictured in 1978.
(Photo By John Sunderland/The Denver Post via Getty Images)
By Arthur Delaney
Posted: 01/08/2014 5:48 pm EST | Updated: 01/08/2014 6:14 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- Jane Freeman remembers being at the grocery store one day after she and her late husband, Orville Freeman, had moved back home to Minnesota from Washington.
"I stood in line behind several ladies who were having to count out, and who were having language difficulties trying to count out their food stamps," Freeman remembered. Her husband, who died in 2003, had overseen the creation of the Food Stamp Program as Secretary of Agriculture in the 1960s.
Jane Freeman watched the clerk help the ladies sort out which things they could buy with their food stamps, and when they realized they didn't have enough money, which things they would leave at the register.
"It did delay people in line and some people were unhappy about it," Freeman, 92, said in a recent phone interview. "To me, it just showed the need and the embarrassment."
The Freemans were at the forefront of the "War on Poverty" when Lyndon Johnson declared it on this day in 1964, and the nutrition assistance program Orville Freeman helped create remains one of the most important tools in the federal government's antipoverty arsenal.
Republicans are marking the 50th anniversary of the start of the "war" with big speeches about finding new ways to wage it. In the background, reduced food stamp spending is a centerpiece of Republican policymaking this year.
"I'm afraid it's most of the party's agenda," said Freeman, who described herself as an ardent Democrat.
HuffPost had asked Freeman if any particular memory about food stamps stood out to her, and the grocery store anecdote is what came to mind. The story might seem somewhat banal, but between the need, the embarrassment, and the frustration of people in line, it's got almost everything.
First, the need: Food stamp spending has more than doubled since 2007, thanks mostly to a bad economy that has made more Americans than ever eligible for help. Currently 47 million receive monthly benefits. Republicans want to cut the program by about 5 percent, which would result in nearly 4 million fewer beneficiaries next year. Coincidentally, almost the same number of food stamp recipients are lifted from poverty by the program, though the effect of food stamp benefits is omitted from the official poverty estimate.
Next, the frustration: Stories abound about hardworking taxpayers watching as they wait in line behind people using food stamps to buy groceries. This summer Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told the tale of a constituent who saw someone use his food stamp debit card to buy crab legs [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/01/food-stamps-resentment_n_3518821.html ], something the hardworking taxpayer couldn't afford for himself.
Finally, the embarrassment: Many Americans are ashamed to receive benefits, but not all. Last year House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) pointed to the story of a California surfer and rock musician [id.] who was not embarrassed that he used food stamps and was unashamed to admit that he didn't want a regular job. To Republicans, the food stamp surfer is evidence that too much government spending saps people of the will to work.
But to an ardent Democrat like Freeman, taking food money away from poor people is not doing them a favor.
"To see something that has been so important and so helpful for 50 years now, to now start chopping it off when the need is so great -- the way to get food to the hungry is established and good," Freeman said. "It just baffles me that people want to cut it."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/war-on-poverty-food-stamps_n_4561730.html [with comments]
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The Senate's New Unemployment Deal Is Already Falling Apart
01/10/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/senate-unemployment-insurance_n_4571118.html [with comments]
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Doctor In Ron Johnson's Anti-Obamacare Story Refutes Claim
By Shadee Ashtari
Posted: 01/09/2014 8:37 pm EST
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has long attributed his inspiration for entering Washington politics to a mission of repealing the Affordable Care Act. A common thread in the tea party-backed senator's calls for repeal is a story involving a reconstructive heart surgery that saved his infant daughter’s life 30 years ago, during the freer health system before Obamacare.
But the doctor Johnson credits with the lifesaving heart surgery seems to disagree, according to progressive news blog Uppity Wisconsin [ http://uppitywis.org/blogarticle/doh-doctor-ron-johnson-fighting-supports-obamacare ].
In numerous speeches and op-eds, Johnson claimed the work of Dr. John Foker would not have been possible under the Affordable Care Act and its stifling regulations. If his family had lacked the freedom to access doctors qualified to reconstruct his daughter’s heart, Johnson argued, his baby wouldn’t have survived.
In a 2012 interview [ http://cnsnews.com/news/article/sen-johnson-health-care-freedom-saved-my-daughter-s-life-obamacare-will-lead-rationing ] with CNS News, Johnson said:
I would not have run for the U.S. Senate had Obamacare not been passed. … Our story has a happy ending because we had that freedom. … That’s what this health care law is all about, it’s an assault on our freedom. It’s going to lower the quality of our care. It’s going to lead to rationing. The types of medical innovation that saved my daughter’s life [and] that saves millions of Americans -- I won't say it’s going to come to a grinding halt, but it’s going to be severely limited.
According to Uppity, however, Foker is not only “generally supportive” of the Affordable Care Act, but contends that President Barack Obama’s landmark health care law does not go far enough.
"Unfortunately, it was written by the insurance and drug companies, so not great,” Foker told Uppity via email. “Most of the many flaws of American medical care are still present."
Foker argued that Republican lawmakers should relish the ACA’s “private-solution” approach to health care reform as he criticized the GOP for obstructionist political tactics. “They’re never happy,” Foker concluded.
Contrary to Johnson’s fears, Foker was, and remains, a professor [ http://www.surgery.umn.edu/divisions/cardiothoracic-surgery/john-foker/index.htm ] at the University of Minnesota’s medical school -- a public institution -- and performed the lifesaving surgery on Johnson’s daughter at the government-funded university’s medical center.
Moreover, the innovative procedure that Johnson credits for saving his daughter’s life was not developed as the “wonderful result” of health law “freedom,” but was first performed in the more socialized health systems of Brazil and France, as pointed out by Think Progress' Igor Volsky [ http://thinkprogress.org/health/2011/03/24/171997/johnson-oped-2/ ].
On Monday, Johnson announced [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/ron-johnson-obamacare-lawsuit_n_4550398.html (at/see {linked in} http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=95621898 and preceding and following)] a lawsuit seeking to exclude members of Congress and their employees from qualifying for employer-sponsored health insurance, arguing that it is unconstitutional for the Obama administration to force him to decide which staff can keep federal contributions to their plans.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/ron-johnson-obamacare-doctor_n_4571524.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Obamacare’s ‘victims’
Who are the people willing to identify themselves as casualties of the Affordable Care Act — and did they really 'shop' in the exchanges?
January 2, 2014
http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2014/01/02/obamacares-victims/ [with comments]
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Anatomy of an Obamacare ‘horror story’
Texas daily went digging for victims of the ACA and Surprise! Reporter unearthed three Tea Partiers who hate the new law.
January 3, 2014
http://www.healthinsurance.org/blog/2014/01/03/anatomy-of-an-obamacare-horror-story/ [with comments]
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Ft. Worth Star-Telegram [known locally as the 'Startlegram'] apologizes for Obamacare story
1/8/14
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/01/ft-worth-startelegrams-obamacare-mea-culpa-180798.html [with comments]
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Star-Telegram report on Affordable Care Act left out key information
Jan. 06, 2014
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/01/06/5464752/star-telegram-report-on-affordable.html [with comments]
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The Last Great Class Equalizer In New York Faces A Tech Threat
01/06/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/06/fly-cleaners-brooklyn_n_4536986.html [with comments]
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Elizabeth Warren: New Mortgage Rules 'Protect Consumers From Being Tricked'
By Eugene Mulero
Posted: 01/08/2014 7:15 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 12:24 am EST
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) praised the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's new slate of mortgage rules on Tuesday, saying they will curb shady practices aimed at "tricking and trapping people" into unaffordable loans.
The rules "will force mortgage lenders and servicers to compete by offering better rates and better customer service," Warren said on the Senate floor, adding, “Our whole economy will be safer. Not completely safe, but with a new cop on the beat, it will be safer.”
The CFPB is Warren's brainchild. President Barack Obama tapped her to help establish the agency after it was created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law.
The rules, which take effect Friday, will bar a host of abusive practices in the mortgage lending, loan collection and foreclosure processes. Last year, major banks agreed to a multibillion-dollar settlement over such foreclosure improprieties as the use of fabricated documents and forged signatures to evict homeowners.
Under the CFPB rules, banks that collect loan payments will be barred from initiating a foreclosure until a borrower is at least 120 days delinquent on his or her loan. Lenders must also determine that borrowers have the ability to repay a mortgage before issuing a loan, and mortgage brokers will be prohibited from receiving kickbacks for steering customers into higher-cost loans.
"The CFPB’s new rules will prohibit this sort of under-the-table dealing and protect consumers from being tricked by people they think they can trust," Warren said.
The new rules do not go as far as some consumer advocates wished. They do not, for instance, require banks to implement loan modifications with borrowers who fall behind, even when the value of the loan to the bank or investors would be maximized by cutting the borrower a break.
Warren acknowledged that the rules are not perfect and criticized the expansion of big banks in the half-dozen years since the financial crash. "Even today, the too-big-to-fail banks that nearly crashed the global economy in 2008 are nearly 40 percent bigger than they were back then," she said.
Nevertheless, Warren said the new mortgage standards "will make a real difference for millions of families who own, or who hope to own, their own home" and "show once again that government can fix problems."
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/elizabeth-warren-mortgage-rules_n_4562120.html [the YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eezx5FS1MnM (with comments), as embedded; with comments]
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Elk River Chemical Spill In West Virginia Prompts State Of Emergency Declaration
By JOHN RABY
01/09/14 10:04 PM ET EST
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — At least 100,000 customers in nine West Virginia counties were told not to drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes using their tap water because of a chemical spill into the Elk River in Charleston, with Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declaring a state of emergency Thursday for all those areas.
The chemical, a foaming agent used in the coal preparation process, leaked from a tank at Freedom Industries, overran a containment area and went into the river earlier Thursday. The amount that spilled wasn't immediately known, but West Virginia American Water has a treatment plant nearby and it is the company's customers who are affected.
"The water has been contaminated," said Tomblin, who didn't know how long the emergency declaration would last.
Officials, though, said they aren't sure what hazard the spill poses to humans and that there were no immediate reports of people getting sick. It also was not immediately clear how much spilled into the river and in what concentration.
"I don't know if the water is not safe," said water company president Jeff McIntyre.
Tomblin said he's asking the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist the state with supplies of bottled water. But people weren't waiting.
Once word got out about the governor's declaration, customers stripped store shelves in many areas of items such as bottled water, paper cups and bowls.
As many as 50 customers had lined up to buy water at a convenience store near the state Capitol in Charleston.
"It was chaos, that's what it was," cashier Danny Cardwell said.
The don't-drink-the-water declaration involves customers in the counties of Kanawha, Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam and Roane. Most of the counties surround the capital city of Charleston, where there was a chemical smell similar to licorice in the air both outdoors and in areas where it had already reached the water supply on Thursday night.
West Virginia lawmakers who just started their session this week won't conduct business on Friday because of the problem and State Department of Education spokeswoman Liza Cordeiro said schools in at least five of the counties will be closed. Many students already missed some time this week because of the frigid weather.
McIntyre said the advisory was issued "because we don't know. I don't have anything to indicate the water is not safe. It's an abundance of caution that we're taking this step. We don't do this lightly, tell our customers not to use the water."
McIntyre said testing is being conducted to determine the concentrations of the chemical that have gone through the water system. But he said the chemical was in a much weaker concentration when it reached the water treatment plant through the river.
"Until we get out and flush the actual system and do more testing, we can't say how long this (advisory) will last at this time," McIntyre said. When the advisory was first issued for five counties, that as many as 100,000 customers were affected. The company has 170,000 customers in 17 West Virginia counties, as well as in Ohio and Virginia.
Freedom Industries did not immediately respond for comment. The Elk River flows into the Kanawha River in downtown Charleston. The Kanawha eventually flows into the Ohio River at Point Pleasant, about 55 miles to the northwest.
Senate Majority Leader John Unger, D-Martinsburg, said all committee meetings have been canceled and lawmakers will adjourn until at least Monday. Other government offices also will be closed.
Unger, who co-chairs the Joint Legislative Oversight Commission on State Water Resources, said dozens of miles of pipe are affected by the spill.
"Flushing it out, that's going to take some time," Unger told The Associated Press. "You can imagine the infrastructure of the piping through the city and all of those counties."
McIntyre and Tomblin said boiling water first to remove impurities won't help as it sometimes does.
"Don't make baby formula," McIntyre said. "Don't brush your teeth. Don't shower. Toilet flushing only."
McIntyre and state Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management director Jimmy Gianato said the chemical isn't lethal in its strongest form. Kanawha County emergency officials said the chemical is called 4-methylcyclohexane methanol.
According to a fact sheet from Fisher Scientific, the chemical is harmful if swallowed and causes eye and skin irritation and could be harmful if inhaled.
Tomblin said the advisory also extends to restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes and other establishments that use tap water.
Two fast-food restaurants near the Capitol, a few miles from the spill site, were closed Thursday night, but across the street, a pizza shop remained open.
And at the Little India restaurant in Charleston, owner Meena Anada said she had been drinking water all day, "but I'm not nervous. I'm not going to die."
Little India bar manager Bill LaCourse said he's endured boil water advisories in the past, "but when they tell you it doesn't do any good to boil the water, what can you do?"
About 12 customers were in the restaurant when LaCourse got the word about the shutdown notice and everyone was asked to leave. The situation repeated itself at other restaurants, where workers said they were concerned about what to do about ice machines, hot water heaters and water itself once the emergency is lifted.
West Virginia Delegate Michael Manypenny, D-Taylor, who co-chairs the water resources committee with Unger, said he's been pushing for stronger oversight of industries in order to protect the state's water resources. He said the spill will add fuel to his argument.
"This leaves a lot of questions," he said. "And I think we're going to need an inquiry on why this happens and what we can do to prevent it."
Associated Press writers Brendan Farrington and Jonathan Mattise contributed to this report.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/elk-river-chemical-spill-wv_n_4571408.html [with comments]
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Chemical spill shuts down much of W.Va. capital
Crews clean up a chemical spill along the Elk River in Charleston, W.Va., which compromised the public water supply of eight counties on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
Jim Cole of Exeter, N.H., got the last few bottles of water at the Kroger in South Charleston W.Va. following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply to eight counties of Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
A Freedom Industries worker places a boom in the Elk River Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014, at the site of a chemical leak in Charleston that has fouled the drinking water in eight West Virginia counties.
(AP Photo/The Charleston Gazette, Chris Dorst)
Residents of South Charleston, W.Va., wait in line at Kroger to buy water following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply of eight counties on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
Laura John of Charleston, W.Va, drove across town to South Charleston, W.Va, to find water following a chemical spill on the Elk River that compromised the public water supply of eight counties of Thursday, Jan. 9, 2014.
(AP Photo/Tyler Evert)
By JOHN RABY
Posted: Jan 10, 2014 3:41 AM CST
Updated: Jan 10, 2014 7:22 AM CST
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Schools and restaurants closed, stores sold out of bottled water, and legislators canceled business after a chemical spill in the Elk River in Charleston affected about 300,000 people and shut down much of the city and surrounding counties.
The federal government joined the state Friday in declaring a disaster. In requesting the federal declaration, state officials said about 100,000 customers, or roughly 300,000 people total, were affected.
After the Thursday spill from Freedom Industries hit the river, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin ordered customers of West Virginia American Water not to drink, bathe, cook or wash clothes with tap water.
The state National Guard planned to distribute bottled water to emergency services agencies in the nine affected counties.
The cause of the spill remain unclear.
© 2014 Associated Press
http://www.wsls.com/story/24413766/wva-chemical-spill-declared-federal-disaster [no comments yet]
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Obama sends disaster aid to West Virginia
David Jackson
7:44 a.m. EST January 10, 2014
President Obama is sending federal assistance to West Virginia, where schools and businesses are closed after a chemical spill Thursday into a Charleston river.
"The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of West Virginia and ordered federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts," said an administration statement on Friday morning.
Under the order, the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency will coordinate efforts with local officials.
Copyright 2014 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2014/01/10/obama-west-virginia-chemical-spill-emergency-aid/4404257/ [with comment]
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House Republicans Just Quietly Passed A Bill Gutting Hazardous Waste Legislation
A bulldozer works to grade what is left of a 50-foot tall pile of slag left over from 74 years of making nails, wire and fencing from scrap metal at the bankrupt Continental Steel plant in Kokomo, Indiana, on November 10, 2009. The 183-acre site is being cleaned up under the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund program. A bill that the House passed Thursday would overhaul the federal Superfund program.
MIRA OBERMAN via Getty Images
By Kate Sheppard
Posted: 01/09/2014 7:11 pm EST | Updated: 01/10/2014 6:33 am EST
WASHINGTON – The House of Representatives passed a bill on Thursday overhauling the country's hazardous waste laws.
The bill, called the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act [ http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20140106/CPRT-113-HPRT-RU00-HR2279_xml.pdf ], amends both the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (which is commonly known as Superfund [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/policy/cercla.htm ]). It would remove requirements that the EPA periodically update and review solid waste disposal regulations, and would make it harder for the government to require companies that deal with hazardous substances to carry enough insurance to cover cleanup. The bill would also require more consultation with states before the government imposes cleanup requirements for Superfund sites -- places where hazardous waste is located and could be affecting local people or ecosystems [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/ ].
The bill passed by a vote of 225 to 188, largely along party lines. Four Republicans voted against it, and five Democrats voted for it.
Rep. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), the bill's sponsor, called the legislation "common-sense revisions of existing rules and regulations." But others were quick to criticize the bill, saying it weakens environmental protections.
The environmental group Earthjustice has said the bill would "gut" the Superfund program [ http://earthjustice.org/blog/2014-january/kryptonite-for-superfund ], which was created in 1980 to ensure that polluting industries pay to clean up hazardous sites. There are currently more than 1,300 sites around the country [ http://www.epa.gov/superfund/sites/npl/ ] listed as priority Superfund cleanup sites. Opponents say the changes in the House bill would delay those efforts and put taxpayers on the hook for future cleanups. A group of 129 environmental and local citizens groups have written to Congress urging the defeat of the bill [ http://earthjustice.org/sites/default/files/files/Opposition_Letter_H.R.2279.pdf ].
Scott Slesinger, legislative director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, called the bill a "New Year’s gift to corporate interests" in a statement. "This bill could delay cleaning up toxic federal facilities, free companies to pass their hazardous cleanup costs onto taxpayers, and strangle health safeguards intended to limit harmful ash drifting from steam boilers," said Slesinger.
The bill is not expected to pass in the Senate, and the White House has already issued a veto threat. "The bill's requirements could result in significant site cleanup delays, endangering public health and the environment," President Obama's advisers wrote in a statement of administration policy [ http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/legislative/sap/113/saphr2279r_20140108.pdf ].
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/house-superfund-bill_n_4571428.html [with comments]
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Plant closure over roach infestation latest setback for Foster Farms
Foster Farms' chicken plant in Livingston, Calif., was shut down by the USDA because of a cockroach infestation.
(Debbie Noda / Modesto Bee / October 17, 2013)
The giant poultry company last year faced a salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 400 people.
By Stuart Pfeifer
January 9, 2014, 6:27 p.m.
The cockroach infestation that closed a Foster Farms chicken plant in Central California was the latest setback for the giant poultry company, which last year faced a salmonella outbreak that sickened more than 400 people.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture suspended operations Wednesday at a Foster Farms plant in Livingston, southeast of Modesto, and the 250,000-square-foot plant remained closed Thursday as the poultry giant tried to remedy the problem.
Several food safety experts said they were surprised that cockroaches prompted the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service to take action when it had failed to do so after last year's salmonella outbreak.
"We'd been urging them to do this for months and months," said Jean Halloran, director of food policy at Consumers Union, the advocacy arm of Consumer Reports magazine. "They should have shut it down as soon as the link was made to all these illnesses."
Wednesday's news couldn't have come at a worse time for the troubled company.
In October, Foster Farms President Ron Foster apologized for the salmonella contamination and vowed to work to significantly reduce the bacteria, which has been a problem for poultry producers throughout the country.
Foster Farms was hit by two outbreaks of salmonella, one in 2012 and one last year. In late October, Mexico, a top destination for U.S. poultry exports, blocked imports of chickens from Foster Farms plants in Fresno and Livingston because of salmonella concerns.
Despite intensifying demands for a recall, the USDA allowed the plants to remain open after the company developed new protocols to reduce the rates of contamination.
Foster said the company saw a 25% reduction in sales after the latest salmonella outbreak.
Now, in addition to health issues raised by the new infestation, consumers are confronted by the ick-factor of cockroaches meandering near their future dinners.
The USDA disclosed its decision in a strongly worded letter, which said inspectors found cockroaches at the facility five times since September, most recently on Wednesday. Inspectors spotted roaches this week at a hand-washing sink while "slaughter operations were in progress and exposed product was present on the kill floor," the USDA said.
"Pests are highly unsanitary given that they can come in contact with decomposing garbage or other organic materials," the USDA said in the letter, which was signed by Abdalla Amin, a deputy district manager in Alameda. "Cockroaches and other pests can transmit disease-causing pathogens, including bacteria."
Foster Farms released a statement that acknowledged the presence of cockroaches at the facility. The company said it completed a "sanitization and treatment" procedure and asked the USDA for permission to relaunch operations.
"A single incident is not acceptable, and we are committed to a zero tolerance policy," the company's statement said.
The USDA's decision doesn't affect two other Foster Farms processing plants, which continue to operate.
Glenn M. Young, a professor and food safety microbiologist at UC Davis, said the presence of cockroaches at a food-processing plant can be dangerous.
"Any kind of pest is an issue in a food-processing facility," Young said. "They can serve as a way of vectoring those organisms from one contaminating site to another. Salmonella commonly has a wide host range, which would include even cockroaches."
Bill Marler, a Seattle food safety attorney, said he doubts that the cockroaches found this week had anything to do with the salmonella outbreak. The dangerous bacteria is contained in chicken feces and is often spread during the slaughter and butchering of chickens.
This is why consumers are encouraged to fully cook chicken, a step that destroys bacteria.
"It will impact Foster Farms' bottom line more by grossing people out than it would sickening hundreds of people," Marler said. "I don't think it's a huge deal. It would be more problematic if it were cockroaches in a restaurant or a facility preparing ready-to-eat food."
The USDA said the suspension would remain in effect "until such time as you provide adequate written assurances of corrective and preventive measures to assure that meat and poultry products will be produced under sanitary conditions."
*
Related
Chicken still a high health risk, consumer groups say
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-poultry-reports-20131219,0,2410030.story
USDA outlines plan to fight salmonella
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-usda-salmonella-20131205,0,3587259.story
*
Copyright © 2014, Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-foster-farms-cockroach-20140110,0,2724981.story [with comments]
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Senators Launch Climate Task Force To Break Through 'Special Interest Lies'
By Kate Sheppard
Posted: 01/09/2014 4:50 pm EST | Updated: 01/09/2014 5:04 pm EST
WASHINGTON –- A group of Senate Democrats is planning a new offensive on climate change, one that members hope will galvanize congressional colleagues.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Thursday the group will be "going on the offensive" on climate change to "wake up Congress." Boxer and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) made the announcement in a meeting with reporters.
The Climate Action Task Force has 12 members -- all Democrats -- so far, Boxer said, and will hold an official unveiling Tuesday. The task force's efforts will include public events, floor speeches and bringing more outside partners, like religious organizations and businesses that support slowing climate change, to the table. "Everybody gets it, except for Congress," Boxer said.
Whitehouse said there has long been a "barricade of special-interest lies around Congress and around Washington" when it comes to climate change, and the group seeks to break it down. "Once that barricade is broken, all sorts of things become possible," Whitehouse said.
While the focus is more on advocacy than on promoting specific legislation, Boxer said she believes members could help build momentum for bills on fuel economy, alternative fuels and energy efficiency. Boxer acknowledged that they "don't have the votes" for many of the measures they would like to see passed in the Senate right now, "but we're going to get them."
For its first event, the task force invited former Vice President Al Gore to speak to senators shortly before the Christmas holiday. Members are also engaging key White House staff on the issue; Boxer said she already met with John Podesta, who was tapped to serve as an adviser to President Barack Obama on the climate and other issues.
Whitehouse and Boxer said they believed Senate Democratic leadership has become more receptive to climate work in the last year. They pointed to a speech that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gave on the subject last summer [ http://www.c-spanvideo.org/appearance/653168597 ], and noted that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, has agreed to invite the group to a meeting.
Whitehouse remains optimistic, because, "victory on this is inevitable," he said.
There are already several other congressional climate groups. There's a Bicameral Task Force on Climate Change [ http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/index.php?q=page/bicameral-task-force-on-climate-change ], which includes House and Senate Democrats. There's also something that Boxer announced in 2012 [ http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/273539-sen-boxer-firms-up-senate-climate-change-clearinghouse-plan ] called the "Climate Change Clearinghouse," a small group of Democrats who meet weekly [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/13/sheldon-whitehouse-climate-change_n_4269090.html ] to discuss climate science.
Whether the latest group will make a stand on one key issue, like the proposed Keystone XL pipeline the Obama administration is currently considering, is unclear. Boxer said that while she personally opposes it, she does not know if the task force will take a position. A decision on the pipeline is expected this year, and has been a major focus for climate activists.
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/senate-climate-task-force_n_4570627.html [ with video "Explaining Science To Climate Deniers" embedded, and comments]
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Ignore Climate Change at Your Peril
Impossible to achieve sustainable development without addressing climate change.
By Mary Robinson
Posted: 01/09/2014 8:00 am
"Extremely dangerous," "Do not travel" -- these are the phrases that have welcomed in the new year along the East Coast of the United States. Extreme weather caused thousands of flights to be delayed, placed the elderly and other vulnerable people at risk due to the extreme cold and impacted negatively on supply chains.
The increasing risk of extreme weather events due to climate change has been acknowledged by President Obama. In June 2013 at the launch of the Climate Action Plan he said: "We're going to need to get prepared. And that's why this plan will also protect critical sectors of our economy and prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change that we cannot avoid." As part of the plan the president created a bi-partisan Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience last November to advise the administration on how the federal government can respond to the needs of communities nationwide that are dealing with the impacts of climate change.
Recognizing the threat that climate change poses to lives, to business and to the economy and talking action to prepare for and reduce this threat makes sense. The United States alone has experienced 25 extreme weather events since 2011 [ http://www.wri.org/blog/new-report-connects-2012-extreme-weather-events-human-caused-climate-change ] that each caused more than $1 billion dollars in damages, contributing to the loss of more than 1,000 lives and costing each American family roughly $400 each year. To avoid these losses and prepare for life in a climate affected world -- decision makers in municipalities and states have to factor climate change into their plans for growth, job creation and sustainable development.
This week (January 9 and 10), representatives from government, business, academia and civil society are meeting in New York to discuss how climate change should be included in plans being developed at the international level to achieve sustainable development. Work is underway on a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that will set an international policy framework applicable to all countries. International policy frameworks such as these are agreed internationally and implemented at the national level, thereby informing how planning decisions are made, finance is invested, and how businesses, energy, health and education systems develop.
The new Sustainable Development Goals build on and supersede the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which focused on development assistance and the relationship between donor and developing countries. The SDGs have a broader scope than the MDGs in several ways. Firstly, they are goals for all countries and not just developing countries as no country has yet achieved sustainable development. Secondly, they are about the environmental, social and economic aspects of development, whereas the MDGs focused predominantly on social development. And thirdly, they are being developed through a more inclusive process than the MDGs, involving not just all countries, but also a wide range of stakeholders.
Curiously, and worryingly, there are those who say that climate change does not belong in discussions on a new agenda for sustainable development post 2015. They fear that the negative and divisive politics associated with the climate negotiations will infect the discussions on the new development agenda. These politics divide the world along the lines of developed and developing countries, while the SDGs are based on the understanding that no country has achieved sustainable development so that this is a challenge we share universally.
Well founded though this fear might be, it is not reason enough to leave climate change out. Climate change is, after all, a development issue. Unchecked, climate change will undermine development gains and increase poverty and vulnerability. A development model based on continued levels of fossil fuel consumption will lead to dangerous levels of global warming. The World Bank's "Turn Down the Heat [ http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf ]" report released last year -- the world we are heading for, in which warming reaches 4°C above pre-industrial levels -- would be one of unprecedented heat waves, severe drought, and major floods in many regions, with serious impacts on human systems and the ecosystems on which we rely.
Ignoring climate change and letting this happen is not consistent with the vision many people share of a world with greater equality, less poverty, the protection of human rights, more prosperity, jobs and opportunity. Conversely, acknowledging climate change and setting in place policies to address it can make a positive contribution to long term, sustainable growth, job creation and prosperity. The Bureau of Labor Statistics found in 2011 that there were approximately 3.4 million green jobs in the U.S., an increase of 4.9 percent from the previous year (compared to an increase of 1.2 percent for all other sectors).
Given these realities it is incomprehensible that any plan to achieve sustainable development wouldn't include climate change. Clearly, adapting to the impacts already being experienced, as well as minimizing future risks and reducing reliance on fossil fuels for transport and energy has to be part of a development strategy, for the U.S. as well as every other country on the planet.
Tackling climate change is a fundamental component of sustainable development, so SDGs without climate change would have no credibility. Climate change must be included in the goals and targets of the SDGs, if the new framework is to be effective. The SDGs should include a climate change goal in addition to the integration of climate change into goals on related issues such as energy, food security, health and water. To ensure that this integration results in action and impact on the ground, measurable targets and indicators specific to climate change must be included under the relevant goals. This may seem ambitious -- but it is also logical, doable and critical if the new goals are to be effective in positively improving people's lives right around the world.
Climate change is a threat, but responding to it opens up a world of opportunity. The transition we need to make towards a carbon neutral world will provide jobs, a healthier planet, greater well-being and if we do it properly, greater equality. We need to change the conversation on climate change and sustainable development to become about how we make this transformation to the way we live life and do business. Communities and individuals are already taking action, forward looking businesses around the world stand ready to make the change. Now we need leadership at the political level to put in place an international framework that enables us to make the transition rapidly, effectively and for the benefit of all. The objective of sustainable development, after all, is "to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."
Mary Robinson [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-robinson/ ] is the president of the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice [ http://www.mrfcj.org/ ] and was the first woman president of Ireland (1990-1997).
Copyright © 2014 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-robinson/ignore-climate-change-at-_b_4561649.html [with comments]
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No Rape Charge For Suspect In Daisy Coleman Case
Daisy Coleman
01/09/14
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/09/daisy-coleman-rape-case_n_4569706.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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More Omaha police fired in ‘caught on tape’ case
Juaquez and Demetrius Johnson, their mother Sharon and two other family members.
[larger at http://watchdog.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/01/johnson_family_1_800x6001.jpg ]
January 9, 2014
Just days after a federal lawsuit accused Omaha police of excessive force in a widely publicized (see video above) “caught on tape” tape case, two more officers have been fired bringing the total to six.
[...]
http://watchdog.org/123164/omaha-officers-fired-caught-tape-case/ [with comments]; the YouTube, embedded, at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ6Ejn0Hnkc [with comments]
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At Issue in 2 Wrenching Cases: What to Do After the Brain Dies
Nailah Winkfield, second from left, the mother of Jahi McMath, and her uncle Omari Sealy, in white shirt, in December of 2013.
Norbert Von Der Groeben/Reuters
Ernest Machado, his wife Lynne and their grandson, Matéo Munoz. His mother, Marlise Munoz, is on a ventilator.
Rex C. Curry for The New York Times
By BENEDICT CAREY and DENISE GRADY
JAN. 9, 2014
In one way, the cases are polar opposites: the parents of Jahi McMath in Oakland, Calif., have fought to keep their daughter connected to a ventilator [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/04/us/a-brain-is-dead-a-heart-beats-on.html ], while the parents and husband of Marlise Muñoz in Fort Worth, Tex., want desperately to turn the machine off [ http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/08/us/pregnant-and-forced-to-stay-on-life-support.html?hpw&rref=us ]. In another way, the cases are identical: both families have been shocked to learn that a loved one was declared brain-dead — and that hospital officials defied the family’s wishes for treatment.
Their wrenching stories raise questions about how brain death is determined, and who has the right to decide how such patients are treated.
“These cases are quite different from those we’ve known in the past,” like Karen Ann Quinlan [ http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06/12/nyregion/karen-ann-quinlan-31-dies-focus-of-76-right-to-die-case.html ], Nancy Cruzan [ http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/27/us/nancy-cruzan-dies-outlived-by-a-debate-over-the-right-to-die.html ] or Terri Schiavo [ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/national/01schiavo.html ], said Dr. Joseph J. Fins, director of the medical ethics division at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. He explained: “Those patients could all breathe without a ventilator. They were in a vegetative state, not brain-dead, and that distinction makes all the difference.”
A person who has received a brain-death diagnosis cannot breathe on his or her own and is legally dead, in all 50 states. In two states, New York and New Jersey, hospitals must take into account the family’s religious or moral views in deciding how to proceed in such cases. In all others, including California and Texas, hospitals are not required to consult the family in how to terminate care.
Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Oakland pronounced Jahi, 13, brain-dead on Dec. 9. She developed complications after surgery for sleep apnea and lost a large amount of blood. Ms. Muñoz , 33, got the diagnosis at John Peter Smith Hospital after she collapsed from a blood clot when she was 14 weeks pregnant. The hospital, citing a state law, refuses to remove the ventilator because it would harm the fetus, now in its 20th week.
The two cases are poignant in part because of a biological quirk of the body: The patients’ hearts continue to beat. Hearts have their own pacemaker, and with ventilation, the heart can continue to beat for days, even up to a week. But with more aggressive care, it can last months and longer after brain death, experts say, depending on the health of the patient and how much treatment is provided.
That ventilation saved the fetus in the Muñoz case, and probably in the nick of time, said Dr. R. Phillips Heine, director of maternal and fetal medicine at Duke University’s medical school. The diminished blood flow to the fetus when the mother collapsed — she is thought to have been passed out for about an hour before receiving care — “may lead to adverse effects over time, but we have no way to predict that,” Dr. Heine said.
A prolonged heartbeat has created the perception of life for Jahi’s family, while for Ms. Muñoz’s relatives it represents a denial of the right to die.
“The way I’ve described this state is that a part of the organism is still alive, obviously, but the organism as a whole — the human being — is gone,” said Dr. James L. Bernat, the Louis and Ruth Frank professor of Neuroscience at Dartmouth’s medical school.
Diagnosing a brain as “dead” is a matter of determining the function of its most primitive area, the brain stem. The brain stem, the plug of neural tissue at the base where the spinal cord enters the skull, is the body’s plant manager, sustaining systems like muscle tone, metabolic equilibrium and ventilation.
Testing its function requires some expertise, because people with severe brain injuries are often unresponsive and appear brain-dead when they are not. A coma, for instance, is an unresponsive state that often represents a period of recovery for the brain stem and other areas. People generally emerge from a coma within two to three weeks after their injury. If they not, they may enter a vegetative state, in which the brain stem is functioning but higher brain areas are shut down, or what is called a minimally conscious state — in which a patient is occasionally responsive, but not predictably. People who emerge from a vegetative state are thought to pass through a minimally conscious stage before becoming consciously aware.
To determine brain death, four elements are needed, experts said. First, the doctor must rule out other possible explanations for the unresponsive state, like anesthesia, diabetic coma or hypothermia. An injury must also be established, like a blow to the head or blood loss.
Doctors then test the function of so-called cranial nerves, including one that runs to the eye and activates blinking; another in the throat that causes gagging; and a third in the inner ear that allows the eyes to focus on an object when the head is moving. Each of these engages the brain stem. If touching the person’s cornea with a Q-tip does not trigger a blink, or touching the back of the throat brings no gagging, the brain stem is either out of commission or close to it.
The last step is called an apnea test. To perform this, doctors allow the carbon dioxide level to slowly increase in the patient’s blood; once the concentration reaches a certain threshold, anyone with a partly functional brain stem will wheeze for breath. This is the true litmus test for brain death, and it can take about 20 minutes, during which doctors must not leave the room even for a moment, said Dr. Panayiotis N. Varelas, director of the neuroscience intensive care unit at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.
“If the patient tries to breathe, you abort the test immediately and say the patient is not brain-dead,” Dr. Varelas said.
The exact timing of these tests, and the number of times they are done — some doctors perform them all once; others do so twice, separated by a number of hours — vary from hospital to hospital, surveys have found. But botched cases are very rare, experts said; people diagnosed with brain death do not come back.
Under New York and New Jersey laws, people can prolong the provision of oxygen to keep a person’s heart beating for religious or moral reasons. But elsewhere, “life support” is superfluous, if there is no life to support. In that context, the McMath and Munoz cases are different, said Dr. Fins, who is working on a book titled “Rights Come to Mind: Brain Injury, Ethics and the Struggle for Consciousness.”
The parents of Jahi McMath “are hoping their daughter will recover and asking to reverse a decision that isn’t under human control,” he said. “In the Muñoz case, the family is asking to reverse a decision that is under human control, and has to do with whether the mother would want to be a mother under these circumstances.”
© 2014 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/health/the-science-behind-brain-death.html [with comments]
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Robert Gates Memoir Backfires On Obama Criticisms
01/09/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/robert-gates-obama_n_4563743.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
*
Excuse Me While I Troll You: Actually, Joe Biden Was Right
01/09/2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/08/joe-biden-robert-gates_n_4564678.html [with embedded video report, and comments]
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@Georgetown University Professor/Fox News Expert Calls For Obama's Assassination
Michael Scheuer
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/03/1267011/-Fox-News-Expert-Calls-For-Obama-s-Assassination [with embedded video, and comments]
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Florida boy says he was barred from speech contest due to critical comments on religion
December 13, 2013
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/13/florida-boy-says-he-was-barred-from-speech-contest-due-to-critical-comments-on-religion/ [with embedded video report, and comments]
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Florida 5th Grader's Speech on Religious Wars, Golden Rule Deemed Inappropriate, Stripped of Prize
December 16, 2013
http://www.christianpost.com/news/florida-5th-graders-speech-on-religious-wars-golden-rule-deemed-inappropriate-stripped-of-prize-110870/ [with comments]
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School tries to silence fifth-grader’s speech on religion
A Florida student writes about injustices committed "In the Name of Religion"
Dec 17, 2013
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/17/school_tries_to_silence_fifth_graders_speech_on_religion/ [with comments]
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Censored Florida lad Zachary Golob-Drake delivers his ‘inappropriate’ speech – and wins a gold medal
Zachary and his mum Rhonda
December 18, 2013
http://freethinker.co.uk/2013/12/18/censored-florida-lad-zachary-golob-drake-gets-to-deliver-his-inappropriate-speech-and-wins-a-gold-medal/ [with comments]
*
Full text of Zachary's speech
WRITTEN BY: Zachary Golob-Drake
Posted: Dec 12, 2013 3:05 PM CST
Updated: Jan 09, 2014 4:50 PM CST
In the Name of Religion
The world’s major religions all have messages about coexisting. But oftentimes people have found a way to bend that rule; sometimes people even use religion as an excuse to take each other’s lives. The three major religions on the earth include the Eastern religions, Islam, and Christianity. About one billion people live by the Eastern religions; about 1.4 billion are Muslim; and about 2.3 billion are Christians. Religious differences have always sparked conflict, even leading to warfare and mass murder.
One of the most famous tensions is the Crusades. Beginning in 1065, the Crusades were a series of holy wars which were fought between Christians and Muslims. It was the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Urban II who initiated the first wave of attacks. The European Christian’s intent was to force Christianity upon the Muslim people and to win back the Holy Land, known as Jerusalem. They were some of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
In 1162, about the time the Crusades ended, Genghis Khan was born and later crowned Emperor of Mongolia. Khan was a powerful ruler who conquered many lands and civilizations, which inevitably caused the Mongolian Empire to grow. Khan became so powerful that people considered him a god. Khan was known to tell his victims before causing their deaths, “I am the flail of God; for if you were without sin, he would not have sent me upon you.”
For anyone who thinks religious tensions have ended, they have not. Modern terrorism often has to do with religion. Take the story of 911, for example. On September 11, 2001, hijackers commandeered two jets and intentionally crashed them into the Twin Towers in New York, killing thousands of unsuspecting civilians. It has been confirmed that the hijackers were Islamic extremists who wanted to punish the United States for its immoral behavior.
Religion provides moral guidance for most of the seven billion people on the earth. More than 2,500 years ago, Confuscious offered guidance through the Golden Rule when he said, “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.” Both Jesus and Muhammad echoed these sentiments hundreds of years later. This world would be a better place if everybody followed that rule.
Copyright 2013 Zachary Golob-Drake
http://www.wfla.com/story/24207107/full-text-of-zacharys-speech [with comments]
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Sephardic Jews invited back to Spain after 500 years
More than 500 years ago, tens of thousands of Jews fled Spain because of persecution. Now their descendants are being invited to return.
By Gerry Hadden
PRI's The World
6 March 2013 Last updated at 01:35 ET
Before the infamous Spanish Inquisition of the 15th Century, some 300,000 Jews lived in Spain. It was one of the largest communities of Jews in the world.
Today, there are about 40,000 or 50,000 - but that number could be about to swell dramatically.
In November, Spain's justice minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon announced a plan to give descendants of Spain's original Jewish community - known as Sephardic Jews - a fast-track to a Spanish passport and Spanish citizenship.
"In the long journey Spain has undertaken to rediscover a part of itself, few occasions are as moving as today," he said.
Anyone who could prove their Spanish Jewish origins, he said, would be given Spanish nationality.
*
The Inquisition
1478 - Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition established in Spain
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile wanted Spain to be entirely Catholic
1492 - Edict of Expulsion ordered Jews to convert or leave
Muslim converts were called Moriscos. They were expelled in 1609
*
The news spread like wildfire among Sephardic Jews around the world.
According to the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, which processes the applications, there were about 6,000 enquiries in the first month alone - including one from an unnamed member of the US Congress.
"My initial reaction was that this was a really thrilling moment - that it was an act of justice," says Doreen Carvajal, a US citizen and reporter with the New York Times in Paris.
"It was a romantic notion on my part. I told my husband, 'I think I'm going to try and get the passport because it closes a circle'. It was very poetic."
Carvajal was brought up Catholic, but a few years ago, she discovered she has Sephardic Jewish roots.
She began to investigate, eventually tracing her family tree back to the 15th Century and the city of Segovia, north of Madrid. She has countless documents, and has detailed her story in a book, The Forgetting River: A modern tale of survival, identity and the Inquisition.
But Carvajal says that when she contacted the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, she learned that she didn't qualify. Not yet, anyway.
Carvajal's family moved from Spain and settled in Costa Rica
Carvajal's family was among the estimated one-third of Spanish Jews who converted to Catholicism to escape the Inquisition's clutches. They were known as the "conversos".
So, Carvajal is technically the descendant of converts. She's not a practising Jew herself. She was told she would have to convert back to Judaism before she could get Spanish citizenship.
"It felt like another act of being forced. Here are these people, the descendants of the forced ones, the conversos, being told you have to do this, you have to be a certain religion. So what happens if you're a secular Jew?"
*
Sephardic Jews
Jews have lived in Spain since Roman times
Sephardic comes from the Hebrew word Sepharad, which means Spain
Originally used to refer to descendants of the Jews from Spain
They are scattered around the world - in Israel, Turkey, the US, South America, Greece, Bulgaria, France and the UK, for example
Sephardic Jew is now a wider term, and can refer to Jews of Oriental, Asian and African origin
*
The fast-track procedure has not yet taken effect - and Carvajal may well be entitled to citizenship when the rules are finalised.
The secretary general of the Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities, Mauricio Toledano, told the BBC that the government is still working on details of the scheme, and when the new law is presented to parliament, it's expected to specifically state that all descendants of Sephardic origin - whether they are Jewish or not - be given citizenship.
In total, about 100,000 Jews fled Spain in the course of the 15th Century. Some went to North Africa, but most settled in the economic powerhouse of the day, the Ottoman Empire - which then stretched from Hungary to Turkey, and beyond that to the south, and was expanding.
About 90% of Jews in modern-day Turkey are Sephardic Jews. Roni Rodrigue, 55, a car dealer in Istanbul, has already claimed his Spanish passport.
"I just thought I have a right to apply for citizenship, so why not."
He did this four years ago, under a pre-existing scheme, and got his papers in 11 months - though some of his friends have been waiting years.
*
Conversos and cryptos...
It was the Jews who converted to Catholicism - rather than those who remained Jewish - who faced the greatest persecution under the Inquisition, says Stanford historian Professor Aron Rodrigue.
The conversos were under a constant watch, and it was considered a heresy if they were found to be practising any remnants of their Judaism. They faced fines, imprisonment - and the infamous burning at the stake.
No-one knows how many continued practising their Judaism secretly, under cover. Those who did were sometimes called crypto-Jews.
Some who converted went to Spanish colonies in the Americas, but that offered them little protection - the same Inquisition rules applied there.
*
Rodrigue has no plans to move to Spain, and has only been there twice, but says he still feels a connection.
He's a speaker of a dying language, Ladino. It's specific to Sephardic Jews and based on old Spanish, with words borrowed from Hebrew and the many countries in which they have settled since.
Rodrigue's parents spoke Ladino to each other but it has not been passed on to his children, or to most of the new generation of Sephardic Jews around the world.
It's not uncommon, though, for Sephardic Jews to feel the pull of Spain.
"I'm still Spanish in my soul and in my heart," says one British Sephardic Jew, who asked not to be named.
He's building a house in Spain, has bought land, and even a plot in which to be buried.
Like Carvajal, he's been left disappointed by the existing rules for acquiring citizenship, and stands to benefit from the new system.
He successfully went through the process to gain Spanish citizenship some time ago, but says he withdrew his application at the very end, when he discovered he would have to give up his British passport to complete the process - something he was not prepared to do.
The proposed new law, if passed, is expected to allow all new citizens of Sephardic origin to keep their existing passports.
Holy Week in southern Spain is full of ancient imagery
It is well known that when Spain expelled the Jews in 1492 it had a disastrous effect on the economy - many were wealthy textile traders, jewellers and bankers.
"At the time of the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan was said to have commented that he couldn't understand why a great Spanish king like Ferdinand would go without the Jews - who were such a source of wealth - and just give them to him," says Maria Josep Estanyol, a historian at the University of Barcelona.
*
Expelled from England
Jews were expelled from the England in 1290 - 200 years before the Spanish Inquisition
There were similar expulsions in France and a number of European countries
It was not until the 1650s that Jews were allowed to live in England again
Many of the first to return were Sephardic Jews of Spanish or Portuguese origin
*
"The Sultan was very pleased to receive these Jewish families, who went on to enrich his empire."
For decades, there has been a movement to allow Sephardic Jews to return, but it is unclear why the Spanish government has chosen to bring up the issue again now.
In theory, enticing them back now could give a boost to Spain's shrinking economy, although Estanyol doubts very many will re-establish roots in Spain.
"Given how disastrous things are here today, I'd advise against it," she says.
In the colonies too - an Inquisition prison in Colombia
It has also been suggested that Spain made the offer to mollify Israel, after Madrid supported last year's successful Palestinian bid for a seat at the United Nations.
Whatever the motivation, some Muslim scholars are denouncing the offer as unfair. They point out that their ancestors were expelled from Spain during the Inquisition. But no-one is inviting them back.
Gerry Hadden is Europe correspondent for The World [ http://www.theworld.org/ ] - a co-production of the BBC World Service [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldserviceradio ], PRI [ http://www.pri.org/ ] and WGBH [ http://www.wgbh.org/ ]
Additional reporting Cordelia Hebblethwaite
*
Related Internet links
Spanish Federation of Jewish Communities (in Spanish)
http://www.fcje.org/
Routes of Sefarad
http://www.redjuderias.org/google/index.php?l=en
Casa de Sefarad
http://www.casadesefarad.es/in/movie_entrada.html
European Sephardic Institute
http://www.sefarad.org/english.html
American Sephardi Federation
http://www.americansephardifederation.org/
Around the BBC
BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, The Spanish Inquisition
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003c1bw
*
BBC © 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21631427
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"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
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