This week brought disappointing news that Asian-Pacifie world leaders--including President Obama--do not foresee a climate change treaty being signed in Copenhagen next month. This set-back comes on top of a legislative process in Congress that shares many of the shortcomings of the health care reform legislative process. The two are obviously related, as both represent major needed changes in direction that a deeply opposed by entrenched special interests with enormous economic and political clout.
In my previous diary, "Finding the keys," I argued that what we need to be about is building progressive hegemonic power, and that expecting to win pristine major victories right away--such as single-payer health care--was, unfortunately, not only unrealistic (I'm all for demanding the impossible), but also very likely to misdirect us in terms of long-term strategic thinking. The same thing applies to the struggle to combat global warming.
It's not that I don't want the best legislation possible--I wrote several diaries promoting the work of 350.org, which I think is utterly invaluable. But we have to seriously grasp the extent of what we're up against and the extent of the deficits we have in order to be effective over the long haul. 350.org is particularly valuable because it's about shifting the whole framework of debate, and that's arguably the most important thing we need to do. But we also need to connect the shifting framework to everything within the macro-framework as well.
Toward that end, I want to step back from the disappointing big news for a moment to focus on three different story fronts that merit attention in order to reflect on the broader strategic struggle to bring rational decisionmaking to the fore, and put special interest propaganda campaigns in their place. These three fronts are denialism (which involves two different stories), nuclear (concerning a study that undermines claims about the role it can play) and coal (concerning a study that shows its true cost makes it uneconomical even for coal-producing regions). None of these stories is closely coupled with the intricacies of ongoing Congressional action, all are intimately related to the basic conditions in which those intricacies play out.
That title may be a bit out of date, as I started this diary before last weekend, then held it back in hopes of getting cross-tabs that I've yet to receive. But the prospect of a jobs bill now seems a good deal more hopeful than it did just 11 days ago, and these poll numbers--only from the 11 Confederate states--are a powerful reminder that doing a jobs bill now would be politically very smart: favored 3-1 by all voters, and by a whopping 32-1 by Democrats. Aid to states is also favored strongly: 2-1 by all voters, and more than 5-1 by Democrats. From the latest Winthrop Poll:
On the flip: Who's to blame for the financial situation.
Health care reform must build upon what works and improve inefficiencies. Individuals should be able to choose from a range of quality health insurance plans. Options should include private plans as well as a quality, affordable public plan or non-profit plan that can accomplish the same goals of a public plan.
Blanche Lincoln is a liar. She signs a document stating that she supports the public option. Her website says that she would be fine with a public option. And then she does on the floor of the Senate, and promises to filibuster any bill with a public option.
There is still a real possibility that Lincoln could face a high-profile primary challenge next year. The challenger won't be a great progressive, but would still be an improvement over the lying Blanche Lincoln. Further, Arkansas remains a Democratic state at all but the Presidential level, and so that primary challenger might very well have a better chance in the general election than Lincoln.
Let's hope that primary challenge starts sooner, rather than later. Blanche Lincoln is a lair, and needs to be removed from office.
This is also an open thread on the health care vote tonight, which passed 60-39. Senator Voinovich of Ohio did not attend.
If Matthew Hoh could tell you one thing to help you understand the U.S.'s predicament in Afghanistan, he'd tell you:
The presence of our ground combat troops is not doing anything to defeat al-Qaida.
Think about that for a moment. We are paying roughly $1 million per troop, per year in Afghanistan. That's roughly twice the per-troop cost in Iraq. We've suffered well more than 800 deaths in Afghanistan. And yet here is the former top civilian official in Afghanistan's Zabul province, a former Marine who served in Anbar province in Iraq, telling us that the presence of our ground forces does nothing to defeat the organization that's supposedly the target of our operations in that country.
So, if we're not going about the business of defeating al-Qaida in Afghanistan, what are we doing?
We're involved in a civil war in Afghanistan. We're only taking one side in that civil war. And, our presence there is only encouraging the civil war to go on.
The student protests of the 32% fee increases approved by the University of California Board of Regents this week are notable for many reasons, not least because they are one of the few mass responses to widespread applications of the "Shock Doctrine" in the wake of massive budget cutbacks at the state and local level. First a quick review of how massively irresponsibility in drafting the stimulus set the stage for this event--and many similar cutbacks that have gone relatively unnoticed. Then, on the flip, a look at the fee hikes in historical perspective as part of a long-term process of privatization.
As I argued back during the stimulus debate, the failure to use federal dollars to help close state budget gaps was a terrible mistake. First off, every dollar taken out of state spending roughly offsets the stimulative effect of every dollar spent by the Federal government--meaning that until you've closed the state budget gaps (either actually or virtually), every dollar of stimulus spending accomplishes roughly nothing. I say "roughly," because the stimulative effect of spending a dollar can very tremendously, as shown in this chart from a Feb 4 diary:
So, $100 billion to extend the Bush tax cuts forever instead of assisting state governments would cost the economy roughly 700,000 jobs. If the $100 billion were used for temporary across-the-board tax cuts, it would "only" have cost about 230,000 jobs.
But making matters even worse than the massive loss in jobs saved or created alone, the state budget culs have wrecked havoc with all manner of state and local agencies and the services they provide. In many cases, the loss of continuity of service is itself quite costly, although ways of measuring these costs are partial and pimative at best. But one thing is quite clear--when the cost is cut-backs in higher education, that cost will continue to be paid for years, if not decades into the future in the form of lost productivity in a less educated and less cretive workforce--at the every least.
As part of their statements, Landrieu and Lincoln are both claiming they will filibuster a bill with the current version of the public option. Landrieu is demanding a trigger, and claims that she is working on a compromise of that sort with Senator Schumer. Lincoln did not specify a trigger as part of her demands. They join Joe Lieberman, who has been threatening to filibuster a bill with a public option for nearly a month.
It is worth noting that, several months ago, both Mary Landrieu and Blanche Lincoln singed the HCAN statement of common purpose which states:
Our government's responsibility is to guarantee quality affordable health care for everyone in America and it must play a central role in regulating, financing, and providing health coverage by establishing:
A truly inclusive and accessible health care system in which no one is left out.
A choice of a private insurance plan, including keeping the insurance you have if you like it, or a public insurance plan without a private insurer middleman that guarantees affordable coverage.
So, these Senators are just flat-out liars. Both Lincoln and Landrieu signed a document stating that it was the "government's responsibility to guarantee... a public insurance plan," and now they both claim they will filibuster a bill with a public insurance plan.
Both of them flipped on the card-check provision of EFCA, too. They are just liars. I don't even know why we deal with lying Senators like these. I certainly don't know why we give to organizations that give them money. How can we believe anything either from these two Senators, or from organizations that are funneling them money? They consistently lie to us about the most important, progressive aspects of the Democratic agenda.
Part of the money you've given to support OpenLeft will be used to hire on a new technical consultant who will be working for all of us to make the site better.
We have a list of things we think will help improve the site in terms of design and tech, but since you're our readers and you paid for it, we want to ask you what you like, don't like, and want to see fixed, in terms of technical work.
Spacing? Ways to improve Quick Hits? Formatting in different browsers? Anything you've got, leave it in the comments.
Most of you probably know this one: A man is wandering around under a street light looking down at the ground. Another man comes up to him, and asks, "What's going on?" The first man says, "I lost my car keys, and I'm looking for them." The second man says, "Here, let me help you. Where did you lose them?" The first man points up the up the street a bit, "Over there," he says. The second man looks at him, puzzled. "But, if you lost your keys over there, why are you looking for them here?" he asks. The First man scoffs at him," It's dark over there. Can't see a thing. The light's much better over here."
I first read this in a book of Sufi stories by Idries Shah. Supposedly, it's ancient, much, much older than cars and modern street lamps. And I believe it. It speaks to an incredibly common foible: look for the solution that's easy to see, comfortable to look for, regardless of whether it relates to the problem. I thought of that story last weekend, as Vastleft did his best to hijack a comment thread in a global warming diary to once again bash Open Left for not fanatically supporting single-payer--even though all of us feel that it's the only practicable solution in the long run. It began with this comment by selise:
"not politically feasible" and "
The real problem, of course, is that--just like with health care reform--there's way too much money being made and to be made by those who are causing the problem in the first place. So actual solutions are not really wanted--so much so that they are simply dismissed as "not politically feasible."
i love this quote and plan to use it frequently, but i'm also reminded of something you, paul, wrote in your previous post:
...civility is not the answer. Civility would be just fine, if accountability were for the wealthy and powerful and not just exclusively for the rest of us, along with more than our fair share of blame.
Rather than civilly adjusting our public expenditures to the private penury of the post-1973 world, we should be quite rudely fighting to restore--and even improve upon--the broad prosperity of the pre-1973 era. Nothing less than that deserves to be called "progressive." Nothing less than that deserves to be "justice." Nothing less than that deserves to be "humane." Nothing less than that should be our bottom line.
these two quotes and what i think you are saying we need to do, seem, at least to me, directly at odds with what we are actually doing here... what i'm referring to is the recent banning of people who were insufficiently civil in demandinng a fight for just and humane healthcare.
how can you write:
Nothing less than that deserves to be called "progressive."
and then not defend the people who were saying EXACTLY that?
There's a big difference between disrupting your true enemies and disrupting those who would be your allies, if only you could stop demonizing them.
In this case, "those who would be your allies" refers specifically to other single-payer supporters who see that goal as something that--unfortunately--we can only achieve in stages. But the principle expressed is far broader than that.
