Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his State of the Union address. A major theme of the speech will be jobs and the economy. Let's hope the president spares a few minutes for Wall Street reforms that might prevent a repeat of the economic collapse that we're slowly starting to recover from.
House Republicans will hold a symbolic vote to overturn health care reform on January 12. The bill, which would repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and set the nation's health care laws back to the way they were last March, has no chance of becoming law. The GOP controls the House, but Democrats control the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced that the Senate Democrats will block the bill.
Suzy Khimm of Mother Jones reports that the 2-page House bill carries no price tag. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the ACA would save $143 billion dollars over the next decade. The GOP repeal bill contains no alternative plan. So, repealing the ACA would be tantamount to adding $143 billion to the deficit. So much for fiscal responsibility.
Why are the Republicans rushing to vote on a doomed bill without even bothering to hold hearings, or formulate a counter-proposal for the Congressional Budget Office to score? Kevin Drum of Mother Joneshazards a guess:
[Speaker John] Boehner [(R-OH)] knows two things: (a) he has to schedule a repeal vote because the tea partiers will go into open revolt if he doesn't, and (b) it's a dead letter with nothing more than symbolic value. So he's scheduling a quick vote with no hearings and no CBO scoring just so he can say he's done it, after which he can move on to other business he actually cares about.
An opportunity?
Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly argues that all this political theater around repealing the Affordable Care Act is an opportunity for Democrats to remind the public about all the popular aspects of the bill that the GOP is trying to strip away.
Last weekend several key provisions of the ACA took effect, including help for middle income seniors who are running up against the prescription drug "donut hole." Until last Saturday, their drugs were covered up to a relatively low threshold, then they were on their own until they spent enough on prescriptions for the catastrophic coverage to kick in again. Those seniors will be reluctant to give up their brand new 50% discount on drugs in the donut hole.
Another crack at turning eggs into persons
A Colorado ballot initiative to bestow full human rights on fertilized ova was resoundingly defeated for the second time in the last midterm elections. Attempts to reclassify fertilized ova as people are an attempt to ban abortion, stem cell research, and some forms of birth control. Patrick Caldwell of the American Independent reports that new egg-as-person campaigns are stirring in other states where activists hope to take advantage of new Republican majorities.
Personhood USA, the group behind the failed Colorado ballot initiatives, claims that there is "action" (of some description) on personhood legislation in 30 states. Caldwell says Florida may be the next battleground. Personhood USA needs 676,000 signatures to get their proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot. Right now, they have zero, but they promise a "big push" in 2011.
Ronald McDonald = Joe the Camel
In AlterNet, Kelle Louaillier calls for more regulation of fast food industry advertising to children. New research shows that children are being exposed to significantly more fast food ads than they were just a few years ago. Other studies demonstrate that children give higher marks to food products when they are paired with a cartoon character. Louaillier writes of her organization's campaign to prevent fast food companies from using cartoons to market fast food to kids:
For our part, my organization launched a campaign in March to convince McDonald's to retire Ronald McDonald, its iconic advertising character, and the suite of predatory marketing practices of which the clown is at the heart. A study we commissioned by Lake Research Partners found that more than half of those polled say they "favor stopping corporations from using cartoons and other children's characters to sell harmful products to children."
Local elected officials are joining the cause, too. Los Angeles recently voted to make permanent a ban on the construction of new fast food restaurants in parts of the city. San Francisco has limited toy giveaway promotions to children's meals that meet basic health criteria. The idea is spreading to other cities.
2011 trendspotting: Baby food
The hot new snack trend for 2011 is mush, as Bonnie Azab Powell reports in Grist. In an attempt to burnish its portfolio of "healthier" snack options for kids Tropicana (a PepsiCo company) is introducing a new line of pureed fruit and vegetable slurries. The products, sold under the brand name Tropolis, feature ground up fruits and veggies, vitamin C, and fiber in a portable plastic pouch. These "drinkified snacks" or "snackified drinks" will be priced at $2.49 to $3.49 for a four-pack, making them more expensive than fresh fruit.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
Editor's Note: Happy Thanksgiving from the Media Consortium! This week, we aren't stopping The Audit, The Pulse, The Diaspora, or The Mulch, but we are taking a bit of a break. Expect shorter blog posts, and The Diaspora and The Mulch will be posted on Wednesday afternoon, instead of their usual Thursday and Friday postings. We'll return to our normal schedule next week.
by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Wednesday is the heaviest travel day of the year in the United States, as millions of Americans head home to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some of you are probably reading this dispatch on PDAs as you wait in an interminable line at airport security. Here's some food for thought.
At Grist, food writer Michael Pollan officially declares himself a Rules Guy. Don't worry, that doesn't mean he won't accept a Friday dinner invitation offered after noon on Wednesday. Pollan thinks that our healthy eating skills are passed down to us as part of food culture. In this era of drive-through windows and meal replacement bars, a lot of the old wisdom is falling by the wayside and Americans are finding themselves adrift in a sea of calories. On the eve of Thanksgiving, Pollan provides some helpful guidelines for avoiding the food coma:
[M]any ethnic traditions have their own memorable expressions for what amounts to the same recommendation. Many cultures, for examples, have grappled with the problem of food abundance and come up with different ways of proposing we stop eating before we're completely full: the Japanese say "hara hachi bu" ("Eat until you are 4/5 full"); Germans advise eaters to "tie off the sack before it's full." And the prophet Mohammed recommended that a full belly should contain one-third food, one-third drink, and one-third air. My own Russian-Jewish grandfather used to say at the end of every meal, "I always like to leave the table a little bit hungry."
But wait, there's more!
Unions representing airline pilots and flight attendants are advising their members to avoid the the TSA's new backscatter x-ray scans because of concerns about the long-term health effects of x-ray radiation. Crew members who refused scans have been subjected to new "enhanced" pat-down searches. This week, the TSA granted an exception to pilots, but not to flight attendants. As I reported for Working In These Times, all crew members go through the same FBI background check and fingerprinting process. "Don't touch my junk!" has become a rallying cry for passengers, particularly white men, who are not accustomed to being asked to give up any part of their body's autonomy for the greater good. Is it a coincidence that 95% of pilots are men and three-quarters of flight attendants are women? [Update: The TSA has relented. The agency announced Tuesday that flight attendants will now get the same exemption as pilots.
Adam Serwer argues in The American Prospect that it's easy to demand tough security measures when the presumed targets are faceless Muslims in a distant country. When air travelers are asked to compromise their own privacy in the name of security, the tradeoff suddenly seems very different.
Employee health insurance deductibles are skyrocketing at Whole Foods and CEO John Mackey is trying to blame the increase on health care reform. "This is very important for everyone to understand: 100% of the increases in deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums in 2011 compared to 2010 are due to new federal mandates and regulations," Mackey wrote in a corporate memo. In fact, as Josh Harkinson reports in Mother Jones, Mackey's memo is pure, organic BS. The provisions in the Affordable Care Act that might increase costs won't go into effect until 2014, so it's hard to figure out how federal policies could be responsible. Health insurance costs were rising by about 5% per year, year after year, before the Affordable Care Act passed. The truth is that health insurance is getting more expensive because health care is getting more expensive. As Harkinson points out, one of the reasons that health care is getting more expensive is because corporations like Whole Foods are pushing more of their employees into part-time work to avoid covering them. Of course, when those workers get sick, someone has to pick up the cost of their care. So those who have insurance, including some of Whole Foods' own employees, have to pay more to make up the difference.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about health care by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Pulse for a complete list of articles on health care reform, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.
As report after report has detailed, Americans have been getting sicker and heavier over the last few decades.
By sicker, I don't mean getting more colds, I mean heart disease, diabetes, reproductive health problems and cancer.
By heavier, I mean even with respect to the fact that given a normal range of body types, very few people look like waifish teenage fashion models and that's perfectly fine. Really, it's fine. No, I remember when Type II diabetes was commonly referred to as adult onset diabetes, but you just don't hear that as often now that children are getting it and there's an epidemic of obesity in infants and under-10s.
While there are some lifestyle factors at work that people can address on their own, these major demographic changes have come on much too rapidly to be solely accounted for by biology and personal choices. More, putting the blame solely on individuals often seems to prevent our taking responsibility for collective action to fix the economic and environmental causes of all this bad health.
Though what if you knew that even some of the obesity epidemic was being caused by additives we're absorbing from food containers and consumer goods, from bad official nutritional guidelines, or from agricultural chemicals? What if you knew that the government standard for testing to see if synthetic compounds were safe, or were being consumed in safe amounts, came to believing the manufacturers' solemn word that no one will drop dead on contact? What if you knew that some people were profiting from creating an environment in which it's almost a miracle that anyone is healthy and fit? Would you think differently about how the problem should be solved?
Also, you don't have to imagine if all that were true, because even obesity can be partly caused by synthetic compounds that have been introduced to our environment and food supplies with extremely little safety testing. And that's really just the tip of the iceberg.
If you've never experienced the CDC's Evolving Map of Obesity Rates, then do yourself a favor and check it out. The graphs are simple: a color-coded maps that get updated every year. Yet the ugly truth revealed is harrowing: Obesity rates that would have been considered unimaginably high as recently as the 80s would now be considered unattainably low. Each year the situation deteriorates. We are barreling headfirst into a health nightmare. 2008 was the worse year on record with 6 states having obesity rates above 30%.
Over the course of long Presidential campaign I was struck with how intertwined the major problems facing the U.S. and the world really are. And, while the debate moderators considered it obvious that the economic collapse would prevent the incoming administration from working on anything else, I was seeing it as another piece of the puzzle. Here are some of the major issues government should be addressing:
1. Global warming/death of life on earth
2. Economy/jobs
2a. Auto industry failing
3. Dependence on foreign oil and resultant cultural/security issues
4. Obesity and resultant health costs
Barack Obama wants to invest in infrastructure. Yesterday, many of the nation's governors pushed infrastructure spending as a job creation tool for America. I hope this involves more than building new roads and bridges because it's an opportunity to reinvent the country in ways that can begin to address all of the problems listed above.
How about a nation connected by high speed electric rail? Joe Biden is for it. How about downtowns accessible by rail, by bike, by foot but not accessible by car (helps with fitness too)? How about an auto industry that begins to phase out gas-powered cars and is required to immediately increase production of electric cars? We're paying for that industry's survival anyway.
What else? Please put some bones on this "green new deal" in comments.
The Evolution of Mike Huckabee
By Kerry Trueman, Eating Liberally
Ah, the ghosts of Christmas past. Here's a souvenir from the days when Mike Huckabee was a morbidly obese diabetic whose doctor gave him ten years to live if he didn't shape up.
That was four years ago. Huckabee took his doctor's warning to heart and shed more than a hundred pounds by adopting a healthier diet and
becoming a marathon runner. Now that he's half the man he was, Huckabee's a great poster boy for eating right and exercising. He's one of those rare Republicans, along with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who's been willing to condemn the sale of junk food in schools.
He's also one of the only two Republican presidential candidates (along with John McCain) who's willing to concede that climate change is a real crisis. But as progressive as he may be on issues like the obesity epidemic and global warming, Huckabee doesn't believe in evolution. Guess he hasn't seen this video:
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