Jon Our Steward

Two weeks ago Fox News (or Faux News as I like to call it) showed video clips of a “teabagger” protest outside of the capitol in Washington D.C. against healthcare reform. The anchors remarked happily about how great number of people in attendance. Any casual viewer wouldn’t have given the coverage so much as a second thought—so thankfully there was a sharp, trusted news source that caught the problem with Fox’s coverage.

The first clip aired showed a protest happening on clear-skied fall day, autumn in full swing. The second clip, rolled as if it were a continuation of the first, just from a different pan and angle, was of a large group of people, carrying signs on a grey, cloudy, summer day with trees in full green foliage. These clips were of two different protests, pointed out the trusted news anchor; the first of the anti-health care reform rally, and the second from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 rally that had taken place months earlier.

So whose careful eye caught the “mistake” (and I use that term loosely)? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t CNN, or even MSNBC. It was a source that Americans have come to trust just as much, if not more, than Brian Williams, Dan Rather, Anderson Cooper, Charlie Gibson, and their respective networks. In Jon they trust, and rightly so. It was Jon Stewart, the man whose show kept me sane during the Bush Administration, and who keeps me hopeful today.

There are two stories here. The first is that Fox distorts, manipulates, and sometimes just plain old lies in their “news” coverage. The second is that in a nation that champions a free press, it is a fake news comedy show that often displays more integrity, grit, and willingness to pursue the truth and hold public figures accountable for their words than the mainstream media.

It was Stewart, after all, who succinctly broke down the Fox strategy with helpful video clips: the opinion wing—that’s Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity—makes outrageous claims and accusations, founded neither in reality nor fact, and then the following day Fox News reports on these rumors and conspiracies as, “some say…” but never mentioning that those who “say” are Fox personalities and they said it the previous night during their Fox shows.

But beyond the humorous, if sad, moments of catching Faux News with its pants around its ankles, Stewart and his Daily Show have become indispensible not for sophomoric humor, but for what has become its fight for political and media accountability and rationality.

As is becoming more and more the case, while the mainstream media jockey for ratings with up to the minute coverage of balloon boy type incidents, Stewart remains the stalwart inquisitor who not only holds people to their words, but to hold them to reason as well. Where the rest of the news media has decided that they will report (barely), and you will decide, a fake news comedy show has the courage to state that while there may be two sides to every story sometimes one side is true and one side is not. That sometimes one side makes sense, and the other is insanity.

Some of Stewart’s best moments come from his stinging social critique and stern, but fair, questioning of guests that far outpaces the lackadaisical loquacity they are often allowed on CNN, a network more apt to fact check Saturday Night Live than a US Senator—anyone who has seen his “leave it there” montage will know exactly what I mean. But more often, his best moments come from the hypocrisy and inconsistency of his “victims” themselves. Woe to you if you are the subject of a Daily Show video montage, because like Joe Lieberman, you will rue that footage from 2006 when you supported universal health care that will be run side-by-side with current footage of you opposing it.

Though he spares no ridicule for those who provoke it, for the most part Stewart is congenial with his guests…he has to keep them coming back after all. But being congenial does not mean he throws them softballs. I said stern but fair, and that is exactly what he has been to the likes of Bill Kristol, whom he trapped into admitting that the government can in fact provide the highest quality health care (to members of the military). Kristol tried to work his way out of this corner by saying that while yes the government did a good job, it was far too expensive, and undeserved, to be lavished on ordinary Americans in the same way. Tried. It didn’t go over too well with the audience.

“Hey man, did you see The Daily Show last night?” has perhaps become the most common refrain among liberals. Personally, I think he has the best job in the world; one that I wish I had but am glad that he is doing. There’s an unspoken recognition that Jon’s got our backs. That when we want to just tear our hair out (like I do now with Obama’s decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan), all we have to do is wait until 10:00. Politicians will keep making fools of themselves, and a mess of the country, and The Daily Show will keep turning our despair into wary laughter.

As much by his own effectiveness as by news media incompetency, Stewart has made The Daily Show a significant force in American political culture. Over the summer, the Huffington Post joked that a government release of torture documents had been timed to coincide with a Daily Show hiatus, noting that Sarah Palin had resigned on the first day of a Daily Show vacation as well.

It was a joke, but in a lot of ways it makes sense. If I were a politician or the government releasing potentially embarrassing information, I would be sure to steer clear of wrath and ridicule from Stewart and his correspondents.

To The Democrats, If Anyone Is Listening

Will the Democrats ever get it? Tuesday’s election was not a referendum on the Obama Administration, but it was a referendum on the prevailing wisdom of the Democratic Party and it’s candidates. To me it is mind-numbingly obvious: when Democrats try to flee that “D” next to their names, when they run to the center and center right, they fail and fail big. Only 24% of Americans identify as Republicans. 24%. Americans do not want to choose between a Republican and a Republican-lite, yet the Blue Dogs and conservadems just seem incapable of understanding this plain fact.

Creigh Deeds managed to pretty much say everything for me. He failed to run as a progressive, and he failed to win Virginia. By the end of his campaign, Deeds was running ads attacking Obama’s clean energy agenda. Instead of defending his past record on the environment, and fighting back against his opponent’s lies and misrepresentation of climate legislation, Deeds joined him. Instead of campaigning on a pro-labor platform, Deeds took support form the SEIU for granted and opposed the Employee Free Choice Act. Instead of calling out his opponent on healthcare reform, he argued against the public option and voiced a preference for “opting out” were he to become governor of Virginia.

And what happened? Obama voters stayed home. Although Obama carried Virginia with 52% last fall, this year only 43% of those who showed up at the polls voted for him[1]. Faced with the prospect of having a Republican who would do his best to fight change, or a Democrat who would do almost as good a job fighting change, I am tempted to say that they actually made the right choice. If you are going to elect an obstructionist who is not on board with a progressive platform, it’s better to just let him be from the opposition party, rather than a Blue Dog who will just cause problems from within.

The Democrats don’t even seem to have ears enough to hear that prominent Republicans want them to do exactly what they are now attempting to do—move to the right and abandon the progressive agenda that America gave them the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate to enact. Hours after their victory in Virginia, the NRCC immediately stated that the election results were a warning shot fired across the bow of the Democratic Party. Republican Rep. Eric Cantor publicly concurred, commenting that moderate Democrats and Blue Dogs should take it into account when deciding what to do about health care reform.

Well obviously we should listen to the NRCC and Eric Cantor—they only have Democrats’ best interests at heart…duhhh.

But that’s exactly what Blue Dogs like Sen. Blanche Lincoln are doing—urging the party’s leaders to delay legislation on health care reform and climate change until after the 2010 midterm elections. The Democrats have always been their own worst enemy. They were not willing to have the backbone to stand up to the Bush Administration when they were in the minority, and now that they are in the majority, it appears they are still suffering from their spineless-syndrome.

Let’s look at another election, one that hasn’t happened yet. Harry Reid’s reelection in Nevada. Polling done by Research 2000 for DailyKos shows Senate Majority leader Reid trailing to two no-name candidates: Danny Tarkanian, a former college basketball player and real estate agent leads him 45-40, and Sue Lowden, head of the state GOP leads him 44-41. Surely this is a sign that health care reform is hurting Democrats’ chances on the ballot, right? Wrong. In Nevada, the creation of a “government administered health insurance option” (as it was polled) enjoys a 12-point margin of support, including 80% of Democrats and 50% of Independents. Harry Reid’s seemingly utter ineffectiveness, as a Senate Majority leader is why no-name candidates are beating him in the polls—and that stems from his unwillingness to commit to strong legislation and stop bending over backwards in the hopes of a completely meaningless vote from Olympia Snowe.

Some will fault me for advocating that the Democratic Party play to its base by citing the demise of the republican Party as a result of its doing just that. In the last year, we have seen the Republican Party increasingly marginalized into mere regional relevancy. Polling from, Research 2000/DailyKos, the only polls to break data down geographical, show this. Not only is there no Republican represenative from all of New England, but the party’s favorable/unfavorable ratings from the Northeast, South, Midwest, and West are as follows:

Northeast: Fav – 6%, Unfav – 89%

South: Fav – 48%, Unfav – 37%

Midwest: Fav – 10%, Unfav – 78%

West: Fav – 12%, Unfav – 77%

*(poll from September 18, 2009)

The Republican Party has become the party of conservatives in the Southern United States. End of story. So why, whyyyyyyy are the Democrats refusing to see this reality???

To the Democratic Party if any of you are listening: Voters elected you because you ran on a progressive platform. Obama ran much farther to the left than the conservative elements of the party would have cautioned and he won because he did. If you want to lose the 2010 elections, then go ahead and don’t do anything meaningful with your control of government. Unexcited Obama voters and progressives will stay home on election night just like they did in Virginia and change will finally come to Washington—you will be out of power and the republicans will be back in power.

The Republican Party has become the party of no. Don’t let yourselves become the party of “not yet.”

---

[1] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091104/ap_on_el_gu/us_election_obama_voters

Support Innovation and Equality of Opportunity; Maintain Net Neutrality

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all information and Web sites are created equal … That’s the basic premise of net neutrality, which echoes our Constitution and Declaration of Independence in holding that the transmission of data over the Internet should be equal, regardless of the content or origination of that data.

This is more or less the way the Internet operates today; data from Google is transmitted just as quickly as data from an obscure and infinitely less influential Web site. Call it the equality of opportunity for information to reach your computer. Or for you libertarians out there, the freedom of an individual to access whatever Web sites and information he pleases.

However, just because this is the way the Internet operates today does not necessarily mean it will be the way the Internet operates next year. At least, not if opponents of net neutrality get their way and are successful in defeating legislation before Congress, which would put this status-quo way of operating into law and establish regulations. In August, Massachusetts Representative Ed Markey introduced the “Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009,” having twice been unsuccessful at pushing net neutrality as an amendment rather than a stand-alone bill. The act would forbid Internet service providers (ISPs) to “block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair or degrade” access to lawful content from a lawful application or device.

The absence of net neutrality would be tantamount to phone companies controlling whom you can call and throttling the call quality to certain numbers at their discretion. It would mean that companies like AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner would be able to actively discriminate against competitors and serve their content at faster speeds or even prevent you from accessing or viewing certain information. Sound too far-fetched? It shouldn’t, because it has already begun to happen. Earlier this year, in July, AT&T blocked the message boards of the popular site 4chan.org.

Regulation is even more important in the absence of competition, and in many areas of the United States, consumer choice is generally limited to one or two ISPs: the local cable or telephone providers. It doesn’t take a lot of work to guess that the two aforementioned industries are not the biggest fans of net neutrality, but the movement is not without powerful backers. Basically, the camps are split into service providers and content providers, with Ebay, Amazon, Vonage, Microsoft and Google all supporters of net neutrality legislation.

Google’s “Guide To Net Neutrality For Internet Users” reads, “Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the Internet. In our view, the broadband carriers should not be permitted to use their market power to discriminate against competing applications or content.” Fundamentally, net neutrality is also about innovation. In an industry where today’s most prominent Web sites and companies started out as small, nearly unknown pet projects, granting large established players the keys to a new gate in front of the Internet would stifle the next generation of content and web 3.0, whatever that turns out to be.

But as with most things in our political system, money talks, and the telecoms and cable companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been talking a lot with hundreds of millions of dollars. To be exact, $334 million since 2007. It’s irritating that a bunch of old guys on Capitol Hill who probably still use VCRs and think the Internet is “a series of tubes” (thank you, Ted Stevens) have power over the future of it, but it’s even more irritating when the same bunch of old guys have their hands stuck in the money jars of corporations more concerned about their own power and control of content than about innovation and consumer freedom.

Representatives and Senators from both parties have received large amounts of money from the telecom and cable companies. In fact, 70 Democrats from the House of Representatives cosigned a letter to the Federal Communications Comission (FCC) arguing against net neutrality regulation. In the Senate, 20 prominent Republicans are staunchly opposed to keeping the Internet open and equal. John McCain holds the privilege of being the number one recipient of donations from the telecom and cable industry--nearly $2 million.

However, for once, money doesn’t seem to be all that matters on Capitol Hill: Markey himself is one of the top recipients of donations from opponents of net neutrality, at $370,000. And the Obama administration, also a large recipient of donations, has lined up in support of net neutrality. Julius Genachowski, FCC Chairman, speaking with Wired magazine on Sept. 21 states his position quite clearly: “The Internet’s creators didn’t want the network architecture, or any single entity, to pick winners and losers. The principles that will protect the open Internet are an essential step to maximize investment and innovation in the network and on the edge of it by establishing rules of the road that incentivize competition, empower entrepreneurs and grow the economic pie to the benefit of all.”

For the sake of streaming video, offensive 4chan forum posting, lolcats and the creator of the next Facebook, let’s hope net neutrality scores a resounding victory with the passage of Markey’s bill. But regardless, I doubt anyone will be torrenting the CSPAN coverage.

This was originally published in the Opinion section of The Amherst Student.

Healthcare Hullaballoo

So most of my recent posts have been about health care, but I promise after this I will branch back out and write on some different topics. I just want to conclude my health care binge with an article I wrote for The Indicator, a campus magazine. It was originally published in the September 24 issue of The Indicator.


Michael Moore’s SiCKO begins with stories about a woman whose post-car accident ambulance ride was denied by her insurer because it wasn’t preapproved, and about a young girl in need of cochlear implants, but who only received one because apparently a cochlear implant for the right ear was OK, but for the left ear it was an “experimental procedure.” We are all familiar with the health care horror stories, the tragic bankruptcies and preventable deaths that have befallen both the insured and the uninsured alike. There are few serious people who will dispute that the health care system in the United States is in need of urgent attention. The more serious among us know that this predicament calls for more than just reform; we need a health care transplant, if you will.

As Barack Obama finally stated in his address to Congress on September 9, the United States remains the only industrialized democracy that does not provide access to medical care to all of its citizens. Even without providing every citizen with care, an enormous amount of money is infused into the healthcare system. We spend far more per person ($6096 in 2007 dollars) and as a percentage of GDP (16%) on health care than any other country in the world. Yet the United States currently ranks 33rd in infant mortality rates, and came in at 37 in the last WHO ranking of world health care systems. Spending twice as much per capita as the next closest nation (Germany) without better results to show for it demands an explanation. Allocating such funds without even managing to cover all of our citizens is completely inexcusable—a kind of inefficiency I would think most fiscal conservatives would also reject.

A likely explanation lies in the fact that whereas German insurers are non-profits that don’t compete, American insurers advertise, pay stock dividends, rack up corporate profits and generously compensate their executives. Indeed, a good 30% of US health care expenditure is insurer overhead costs. This makes sense logically: If health care is treated as a commodity in a market based system, then the goal is profit. If there were no profit from health care, no private insurers would exist. And that is exactly the point of the European systems in question. These systems treat health care as more than a commodity to be enjoyed by the wealthy—they recognize that health care is a basic human right to be afforded to all peoples regardless of economic means.

Health care is different from, say, the computer market. In that market, companies make money by building the best computers they can in order to attract consumers to buy their product. In the health care market, where it is difficult to switch providers, or even to buy insurance in the first place, profit is not made by providing the best care possible, it is made by denying expensive, but often necessary, claims and procedures. Let me repeat myself: Neither you nor your doctor is currently in charge of your health care. A corporate bureaucrat with a mandate to keep costs low by denying your health care claims is in charge of your health care. It astonishes me that anyone could look at the system we have now and claim to be afraid of government rationing of care. We already have health care rationing, and the government is not doing it. We have rationing by economic means, and then by the profit motive. I am far more worried about Blue Cross/Blue Shield being unwilling to pay for an “experimental procedure” should I ever need one than I would be about enrolling in a public insurance option.

Health care reforms alone will be a welcome, necessary measure, but they are bound only to increase health care costs in the absence of a public option. Insurance companies will not take a hit to their profits by having to cover those with preexisting conditions and eliminating lifetime and annual coverage caps. They will just increase premiums to make up for these added costs. We need a competitive insurer, one motivated by providing patients with the care they need, not denying as much of it as they can to generate the largest profit possible. By fulfilling this criterion, the public option can keep the got-profit industry in check.

So why has President Obama strayed from his campaign stance that if he were designing a system from scratch, he would choose a single-payer system? There is an undercurrent in American politics of reticence to admit when the United States is not the world’s best, and to search for “uniquely American” solutions to American problems. I believe that such sentiment is ultimately destructive, because it prevents us from finding the best solutions to our problems, when such solutions may come from the example of another country’s example. Thus far, nobody in the administration or the Congress has been willing to look to Europe for the solution to the health care conundrum. It is no sign of weakness to admit to America’s faults and to admit to others’ successes. Were I leading the push for health care reform, I would make it a priority to attempt to combine the best parts of our peer nations health care systems into a bill. We often boast of being the world’s cultural melting pot, so why is it not also acceptable to be the melting pot for ideas?

I am not naïve enough to believe that we would ever achieve single-payer health care in this country, but anyone who has ever bargained for anything knows that you never open a negotiation with a compromise—and that’s what the public option was supposed to be: the compromise. Had the President at least made it look like he were capable of generating significant support for a single-payer push, the backlash of lies, hate-speech and paranoia would have been burned out against it, and the public option would look like a magnanimous compromise deal.

However, before the opening shots were fired on the health care debate, there was already a casualty: bipartisanship. Bipartisanship was dead, but the Democrats failed to realize it, and that has been the main problem. Republicans like Kent Conrad publicly proclaimed that they wanted to “break” Obama on health care, but the Democratic Party has mostly willfully ignored such claims. It should be obvious that the Republican Party does not want a strong, successful public option. Such a new government program would be more than just a partisan political victory—it would be an ideological victory, proving that government is not always the problem, and can even be the solution when the private market fails. Yet the Democrats have seemed willing to risk the success of health care reform by watering down potential bills in an attempt to garner one or two unnecessary Republican votes. In fact, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced on September 16 that the Republican Party would not support the bill authored by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), a bill that was purposely watered down and dispensed with the public option in hopes of engendering Republican support. Clearly the Republican Party is not interested in meaningful health care reform, and it’s not too difficult to figure out why.

A successfully implemented public option would push the ailing Republican Party even further into obscurity for the next two decades. In fact, the best thing that could happen for the Republicans politically is for Obama to fail and fail big. Why else would the far right be so dead-set against a public option? Either government is inept and inefficient as they claim, in which case no one would have an incentive to join the public plan because it would be neither cheaper nor provide better care, or the public option is something that will actually work to insure the uninsured and drive down costs and regulate moral hazard in the insurance industry by competing against the profit motive. It’s the second scenario that provides the right wing with the incentive to vigorously oppose it.

The polling data supports my hypothesis: Obama’s approval ratings have dropped, but the Republicans’ approval ratings have not risen. They have stayed relatively stable, hovering near 24% throughout the summer. If Americans truly did not want a public option, and did not want the Democrats to pass a bill on their own or through reconciliation, then the Republicans approval ratings should have risen with their increased opposition to health care reform. Furthermore, nearly every poll shows large majority support for a public option. Even in red Arkansas, 55% support a public option, and national support among doctors is at 73%. Thus the fall in Obama’s approval ratings is most likely to be attributed to disaffected progressives and liberals who want the president to take a stronger, more inspiring stand for the real change he promised in his campaign.

Unfortunately, Obama has failed to make health care a moral crusade. It should be a moral issue for the right-to-life camp; it should be a moral issue for humanitarians; and it should be a moral issue for anyone who cares about their fellow Americans. He has thus far failed to inspire and to mobilize his millions of followers in support of a clear, coherent plan. That’s partly because he has not expressed such a specific plan but only a set of vague goals. Every few weeks Americans hear Obama waffling back and forth in support of the public option. That is not what America needs. Obama’s support is waiting to rise up, whenever he finally decides to stand up for himself. He has let the extreme right wing take control of the debate for far too long; it’s pathetic that the death panel rumors are so pervasive that he had to denounce them to the joint session of Congress.

The message that needs to come forcefully from the administration is that health care is a matter of human decency, and it America has been remiss in its moral duty for far too long. They should also make clear that the public option is non-negotiable, and they should make it the centerpiece of the “Edward Kennedy Memorial Heal America Act.” Then, by reconciliation if need be, the Democrats should pass that bill and challenge opponents to go ahead and vote against it. When universal health care is as successful and beloved as Medicare and Social Security, the naysayers will be held accountable, and the Democrats will enjoy the secondary political benefits of success. But both conservative and liberal Americans will enjoy the primary benefits of better, more efficient and more equitable health care accessible by all.

Obama The Orator

Last night we saw a flashback to the Obama of last fall. The campaign Obama. The one that could inspire a movement and achieve a great victory. Too bad it was months too late, but as they say, I guess it's better late than never. The right wing and extremists have controlled the healthcare debate for far too long. It's truly pathetic that Obama had to call out the "death panel" lies in his speech at all...

But I still don't think it was enough. He still hasn't made healthcare into the moral crusade that it needs to be. Healthcare is a basic human right. He skirted around the edge of that when he mentioned (finally) that we are the only advanced democracy in the world that does not provide healthcare to its citizens. But that's where the focus should be. If its all about markets and competition, and economics, and budgets, then there is room to fail. Moral crusades do not fail. Moral crusades shift cultural understandings, they shift political spectrums.

Make it a moral crusade, and then make the Republicans stand against it. Make them get up and say that not everyone deserves to be treated when they are sick or injured. Make them get up and say to their constituents that their lives have a monetary value and nothing more. And make them get up and vote against the strongest possible healthcare bill and then face the consequences of it in the next election. Poll after poll shows that while the Democrats approval ratings are sliding, the Republicans' ratings have remained very, very low, with no movement. Clearly they are not scoring political points for obstructing healthcare, but the Democrats are losing points for continuing to pander to them in a misguided spirit of bipartisanship. Americans did not vote for bipartisanship last November; they voted for change.

Healthcare may not be a make or break issue for the Democrats and the Obama administration--they won't slide away into obscurity . But the Republicans might. If heathcare passes in spite of their attempts to kill it, and then it becomes as successful a program as Social Security and Medicare, it will be the death knell for the Republican Party for the next two decades. And that's also the kind of long-term thinking we need right now.

Updates to the Website

You may notice that if you highlight any words or sentences, a little box pops up with some different options. Welcome to the FinderFox widget that I just added to the site. It allows you to tweet a quote or look up unfamiliar terms. Of course, copy/paste functionality works just as it normally does.

Let me know if you like/dislike the new feature.

Ridiculousness and Whatnot

The stuff coming out of the extreme right wing lately is just nuts. Forget about the loud, sometimes borderline violent, interruptions of town hall meetings--that pales in comparison to the people who have been bringing their guns along to angrily denounce the President at his town hall meetings. And not just handguns, but assault rifles as well.

It's even more outrageous when you remember that two anti-war demonstrators were arrested for wearing anti-Bush t-shirts to one of Dubya's speaking events back in 2004.

What if anti-Bush protesters had shown up with guns? Can you imagine the outrage we would have heard from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh about how they were unpatriotic, anti-American, domestic terrorists, crazy liberals, etc. etc.?? They would probably have been promptly shipped off to Guantanamo. The hypocrisy is just absolutely stunning.

And unfortunately, the Obama administration continues to be completely inept at selling healthcare reform. For the last time, stop with the bipartisan nonsense: the Republicans want, need, Obama to fail. Because if healthcare reform succeeds, then it will be the ultimate repudiation of conservative governing ideologies. Forget the Republicans, who have nothing to gain from your success, and just push through a strong public option already! Because if you just have more regulation about taking people with preexisting conditions, and eliminating lifetime coverage caps, it will backfire because insurance companies will make up their losses by just raising premiums even more. There MUST be a strong public option, and not some network of co-ops that can be easily co-opted by the insurance industry.

Obama did a terrible job of answering this college student's challenge. The kid wanted to know how private corporations could compete with a public option which isn't concerned about making a profit. Instead of selling out the public option as he did, this should have been Obama's response:

"Healthcare is a human right, not a commodity. The rest of the industrialized and post-industrial world recognizes this, we need to as well. It's not about making a profit, it's about providing care, treating disease, healing the sick. Those goals are at odds with profit. Insurers don't make money by providing payment and care, they make money by denyign it, and America deserves better."

Healthcare Reform Is Dying

It's not looking very good. Healthcare reform is faltering, possibly on the brink of flat-lining. The conservatives and insurers are well on their way to doing it again, helped along by incompetent, spineless Democrats. It was really doomed from the start, when Obama failed to push single-payer as a serious option. Not that I am under any illusions we would have ever ended up with single-payer, but if it at least looked viable then the right wing and the industry would have had to expend their dollars and hatred and energy defeating it and bringing it down to a public option compromise. Now instead, the public option will be compromised, and we will end up with something so anemic and emaciated it won't have been worth it.

Already the insurers have spent close to a million dollars a day lobbying and buying off senators and representatives:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

And now Glenn Beck and the Republican party are succeeding at turning out rabid dogs not just to protest, but to violently protest against reform that would end up benefiting them in the long run (but hey, whoever said people could think for themselves?)

I'm not too hopeful on this one. The recess is only going to make it worse. Every senator and representative is going to be accosted by these Glenn Beck minions at town halls, and every TV station will be flooded with ads from the big lobbies. And then congress will reopen session and the Blue Dogs and the Republicans will defeat meaningful healthcare reform, even if some ghost of a bill gets passed.

Climate Change Action Must Happen Now

This is in response to a debate I have been having with Austin Thompson, fellow Policy Matters Ohio intern and blogger. We decided to take our verbal office debate to the blogosphere, probably to the relief of everyone else in the office. His original post can be found here.

By the way, click on the images and they will open in a new window at full size so that you can actually see them.


It is human nature to be fixated on the present. It’s the problem we have with politicians who are always looking to the next election cycle to guide their decision making instead of the future impacts of those decisions; it’s was the problem with Wall Street whose goal of short term, immediate profits helped to create our current economic mess, it’s been and will probably continue to be the problem with US foreign policy, that looks to action in the present with disregard for the long term consequences of those actions. And it’s the problem with our global attitude towards climate change, even among those who are well intentioned.

Specifically to this debate, on whether the world’s top priority should be the global poverty or stopping (or at least mitigating as much as possible), global warming and its subsequent effects, this discord between the short term and the long term is central. The present realities of world poverty are a harsh indictment of our global priorities, and the greed that has driven western economic development. We have a responsibility to all those whose human rights are not met—Austin and I are certainly in agreement on this. But to advocate that the third world pursue economic development in the same manner as the West is illogical and wrong.

Such pursuit of economic development at the cost of status quo (and more realistically, increased) emissions will backfire massively on the very people Austin is trying to protect from the vastly negative consequences of climate change. He seems to take a slightly defeatist attitude, acknowledging that even if all emissions were to cease today, the world would still experience warming and the subsequent consequences. However, as the recently released Stern Review, commissioned by the British government, reports, “The consequences of climate change will become disproportionately more damaging with increased warming.” (see figure to the left for the relationship between warming and its various consequences...most are exponential, and the ones that offer brief benefits to certain latitudes quickly become negatively exponential) While we are committed to a certain degree of warming, we still have a choice as to how much more we will cause. The consequences of further warming are, as I have stated, exponential with every degree increase in temperature, and will also be disproportionate in their effect on the world’s poor.

I’m going to assume that nobody reading this is a global warming denier (if you are, I’ll be happy to drown you in a deluge of irrefutable logic, facts, and paleoclimatology history). So I’m going to skip all the basics about how global warming is caused, and the proofs, and just go straight to the impacts, and what various scenarios mean for us all.





Where We Are Now

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified various scenarios for world growth and development, both economic and population. The general consensus is that if we remain at the status quo, we could be facing a global average warming of 3º C by mid century. This is bad enough on its own, but the possibility of positive feedbacks (the release of CO2 from soil and methane from permafrost due to increased temperatures) could cause additional degrees of warming. The scenario we should be aiming for is B1 (the green line). Interestingly enough, this scenario is not one at odds with world economic growth, which suggests that we may be able to have our cake and have the third world eat it too, but we will get to that later.



So what does a warming of 3º mean? Unfortunately, it means bad things, but keep in mind that each additional degree of warming will mean exponentially greater damages.



Water

Global warming will both decrease and increase different populations’ access to water, but unfortunately it won’t do so in a helpful manner. Water shortages will be compounded, and wet regions of the world will be at increased risk of large scale flooding. In Africa, the Middle East, Southern Europe, and parts of Central and South America, water will become scarcer for 1-4 billion people, exacerbating current problems and hampering growth and development in the largely agriculture based economies of the third world. In South and East Asia, 1-5 billion people will receive more water, but it will come during the rainy season, which means more serious flooding.

Glacial melt currently provides water to seven of Asia’s largest rivers, and supports the needs of hundreds of millions of people. For these inhabitants of China, the Indian subcontinent, and the Andes region, glacial melt and loss of mountain snow holds severe consequences. Glacial melts will increase flooding during the wet season, and during the dry season when the glaciers have completely melted, access to water will be limited.

Food

Let’s start with the (semi) positive. Slight warming may lengthen the growing season in high latitude regions (the US, Europe, Siberia, Australia, parts of China), leading to slightly increased agricultural output. However, it will be outweighed by the disruption to agriculture in the rest of the world, and at any rate, increased output in these regions does nothing to help the world’s poor, who will be the most affected by disruptions to farming. Models for temperature increases of 2º and 4º C show decreases in worldwide cereals production of 5% and 10% respectively. Models for temperature increases of over 5º are sketchier, but weather phenomenon, (more frequent and stronger storms), increased droughts, and societal upheavals caused by coastal flooding and displacement of peoples due to sea level rise are sure to effect world food production negatively. The acidification of oceans has the potential to disrupt marine ecosystems that are critical to sustaining the populations of fish that provide livelihood and sustenance to hundreds of millions of the world’s inhabitants.



The Stern review reports that at 3º of warming, an additional 150-500 million people worldwide will go hungry and suffer from malnutrition. Of course these won’t be the wealthy or the middle class (who will be able to cope with higher food prices), they will be the poor. I like logic, so I’m going to have a little logical aside regarding seafood: as the world’s oceans are overfished (that’s for another post), and disrupted by climate change, certain species of seafood will undoubtedly become rarer, thus increasing the economic incentive to capture and export them to wealthy markets in North America and Europe. This could lead to competition with local fishers off the coasts of third world countries—competitions those local fishers are bound to lose.

The Garnaut Climate Change Review submitted to the Australian government in February of 2008 notes that by 2040 warming will have reduced by 30% the available land for rice and grain production in China—at a time when that nation will need to boost its food production by 40% to meet the needs of its population. How can China accomplish such a feat with 1/3 less production capacity? The result will inevitably be much higher prices for basic foodstuffs. Forget the failed ethanol experiment…this is where the real danger lies. This is where the real food riots will come from.

Health

The combined effects of restricted access to water (especially clean water) and food will have bad enough effects on world health, but add to that an increased incidence of vector (think mosquito) borne diseases, and the impact starts to be very significant. And we aren’t even considering natural disaster related deaths. As parts of the world become warmer and wetter, mosquitoes and the diseases they carry will become more prevalent. This means that tens of millions more will be exposed to malaria in Africa, and dengue fever exposure will increase worldwide.

Land

Rising sea levels is one of the easiest effects of climate change to latch on to. It’s something tangible, measurable, and very, very, real. Just days ago, Oxfam warned that 75 million people living on Pacific Islands will have to relocate by 2050 due to projected sea level rise. These people will become the first international climate change refugees, and will pose enormous questions in terms of the logistics, space, and cost to be relocated in other nations. Worldwide more than 200 million people and $1 trillion in assets inhabit coasts under 1 meter above sea level. It will require large expenditures to erect flood barriers and levees to protect these areas, and the Stern Review concludes that “between 7 – 70 million and 20 – 300 million additional people will be flooded each year by 3º to 4ºC of warming causing 20 – 80 cm of sea level rise.” In addition to island nations, the report identifies South and East Asia and Africa as at particular risk.

Environment

To me, the environment stands alone as a consequence of global warming. Our obligation is not only to ourselves, but to the numerous other species and wildlife that share our planet. A 3ºC warming will put 20-50% of all land species at risk of extinction, and will likewise devastate oceanic life and reefs, as well as destroy a sizeable portion of the world’s valuable wetlands. The Native Americans had a philosophy that the Earth does not belong to humans, but that humans belong to the Earth. However (and I’ll admit, I’m assuming now), I don’t know if this is a valid argument to Austin, and if not, then it’s a debate for another time. So how about the cost to human society of this further environmental damage?

It’s enormous. 50 million people (including indigenous populations) live in the world’s high growth forests or rely directly on them for their livelihood. Unfortunately for them, warming will result in decreased rainfall over the Amazon, and massive dieback due to the drying. So good luck indigenous peoples (by the way, a carbon market would allow these groups to be compensated for the care they take in preserving their forests—yet another way in which action to curb emissions can economically help the developing world). The Garnaut Review estimates that global warming at current trends will cost Australia $1.3 Trillion AUD (as of today, that equals $1.09 Trillion USD) in ecosystem services. As Tim Wirth, former Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs in the Clinton Administration famously stated, the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.

Economic and Social Consequences

The future cost to economies (especially developing economies) of the aforementioned events will be tragically high. The Stern Review estimates that by 2100 the consequences of global warming could cost India and Southeast Asia 9-13% of GDP. Current warming trends will cost developing countries 5% of their GDP annually in the future. John Houghton, in his authoritative textbook, Global Warming: The Third Briefing, notes several studies which conclude that a 2.5ºC temperature rise will cost 2% of GWP (gross world product) annually, and a rise of 6ºC, 7% of GWP.

In verbal discussions, Austin has argued that because we will experience irreversible effects of global warming in the future even if we cut emissions now, the correct policy should be for developing nations to further develop their economies, even through dirty energy, so that they can face the impending economic consequences. But keep in mind that global warming becomes exponentially worse with each degree rise in temperature. That’s why what Austin is advocating won’t work, because it will inevitably result in increased emissions and further increases in warming, and will just make the developing world WORSE OFF in the future.

Some degree of climate change is irreversible, but the speed and severity of that climate change is yet to be determined, and it will also determine the ability of the developing world to respond to its threats. The developing world recognizes this. The island nation of Tuvalu is already experiencing the effects of global warming, and it knows that its very survival as a nation depends on the future speed and severity of sea level rise. Call this tiny island nation the canary in the coal mine if you will; a canary that has pledged to go entirely carbon neutral, even at the cost of $20 million dollars (a significant sum for a nation of only 11,000 citizens).

Drought and the decreasing availability of water in Africa will push hundreds of millions more into poverty, as they attempt to cope with rising food prices, and the loss of their livelihoods. Again, economic development in the present will be meaningless in the future when ever-increasing shares of income and GDP will have to be spent on basic necessities and on responses to natural disasters and other consequences of the severe climate change it will cause.

These economic consequences, and the need for relocation of hundreds of millions of refugees will probably lead to more conflicts and resource wars. The scarcity of water could lead to conflict among the ten countries that share the Nile in Africa, and the 17 countries that share transboundary watercourses in West Africa. Furthermore, anyone who expects increased international cooperation among times of higher tensions over resources is a fool. Nations will do what is necessary to secure the land and natural resources needed to sustain their economies and standard of living. Expect the west to become more heavily fortified against immigrants and climate refugees, and expect the developed world to win those resource wars (most likely at the expense of the poor).

Mitigation

Obviously the developed world has much higher per capita emissions than the developing world (although when you look at total emissions, it’s about equal between the US, EU, UK, Japan, China and India). However, developing nations will account for 75% of the projected increase in emissions from now until 2030, with China alone being 30% of that figure. So while the greatest cuts in emissions will obviously be expected to come form developed western nations, any progress made there will be negated if developing nations continue on current emissions growth trends.

So now take a quick break and scroll back up to the beginnings of this post briefly, to the IPCC growth and emissions graph. That graph is for the following scenarios (A1F1, A2, B1, B2). Take a good look at that graph, then come and rejoin me down here at the chart that details the preceding scenarios.


As you saw, scenario B1 is the one with the lowest future emissions—the scenario we should be aiming for. Scenario B1 is also the scenario with the second highest rate of growth for world GDP, and one of the closest convergences between the GDP and standard of living in rich and poor countries. In short, scenario B1, world growth based on environmental sustainability (which I argue is also economic sustainability), mitigates global warming and its future consequences, while bringing the world closer to economic equality. Yes it is surpassed slightly by scenario A1F1 in terms of economic growth and degree of convergence, but A1F1 will take us to the dangerous levels of global warming that will result in human and economic catastrophe in the future. So when you take a long term focus, much of the additional economic growth of scenario A1F1 will be spent dealing with the destruction caused by natural disasters, increased prices for food and resources, relocating refugees, and resource wars and conflicts.

It is far, far less expensive to act now to deal with climate change than to continue to wait and act later, when the consequences and costs are far greater. The Stern review concludes that the cost of transitioning the world’s economy and stabilizing emissions at today’s levels would be from 1-2% of GWP. Yes that’s significant, but if we do nothing, or act too late, that same one time expenditure will be demanded of the world annually in the future. And that’s at a very conservative estimate for temperature rise. If emissions continue to grow, the 6ºC temperature rise with its corresponding future cost to the world’s economy of 7% of GWP annually becomes even more likely.

Transitioning the world to an environmentally sustainable energy policy will cost money, yes, but it offers its own opportunities for economic growth. Already the tiny market for renewable energy generation products alone is valued at $38 billion, and employs 1.7 million people. And that is without any truly significant world effort or expenditure. In 2005, this sector grew by 25%, and renewable energy only accounts for only 7% of world energy production. Consider also, that world energy needs will continue to grow rapidly in the future, so growth opportunities for renewable energy is greater than just the 93% of the market available today.

Much talk has been made in the United States about “green jobs” to inject new life into our economy; jobs lost in the steel and auto manufacturing industries will be regained by new jobs manufacturing wind turbines and solar plants. Weatherizing homes, and building and installing alternative energy facilities will create new jobs. Again in verbal debate, Austin claimed that while he has heard all this talk, he has not seen any evidence of actual job creation. I’m sorry to be blunt, but that’s utterly ludicrous. The 1.7 million people employed by the alternative energy industry directly would certainly disagree, as would the millions more whose employment is affected indirectly. However if Austin means why hasn’t the entire laid off manufacturing base of the United States been put to work building and installing new wind turbines and solar panels, then I agree…they should be, and that’s why we need to start acting and spending money to make that happen NOW.

The energy generation facilities being built today will continue to function well into the next thirty years, which makes it even more imperative that we begin acting now to reduce emissions and make sure these new jobs will be at clean energy generating facilities. Furthermore, alternative energy offers the additional benefit to the third world of being independent from western control of oil. Many of the world’s leading solar manufacturers are from developing economies, and draw foreign investment (and will continue to do so) to those countries. Significant world spending on curbing emissions will necessarily involve the developing world, which means massive foreign investment in their nations (which happen to mostly be located in the best places for solar installations on earth).

Conclusion

We have a choice, and we are running out of time, fast. We are already past the 350 ppm threshold for CO2 (at 390 ppm currently), and so far the biggest uncertainty that has shown up in scientists projections is that they have been too conservative—we have blown past them. People are notoriously short sighted, and resistant to change, even when it is in their best interests. But we have a duty to ourselves, and to future generations, who count just as much as do the currently living, to act now with a long-term focus. It is foolish, irresponsible, and immoral to recklessly consume our natural resources (ALL of the world’s high growth forests will be gone by 2100 at current rates) and continue to wreck the fragile ecosystems that sustain us.

It’s sad that the West is at fault for centuries of abuse of the Earth’s resources (and peoples). The developed world sinned terribly against the rest of the world to get where it is, and it should share a significant portion of the costs of averting climate change. The developed world should engage in technology transfers and subsidization of the third world…but we can’t fixate on this and let small details become the focus in what needs to be a larger climate change agenda. As sad as it is, the world will have many chances to address global poverty. The world has only one chance to address global warming, and time is running out.




This has been a pretty long post, and I still had to cut myself short on a number of things I wanted to mention. So I will wait for Austin’s reply, and then delve a little deeper into the mitigation aspect—what needs to be done and how to do it in the least harmful way to the developing world while still fully accomplishing the ultimate goal—next time.

Resources to check out for more information

The Stern Review It is super in-depth, and something I highly recommend reading for your further edification. recommend it. *The graphics and carts all came from the Stern Review.

Garnaut Climate Change Review

Houghton, John. Global Warming: The Complete Briefing, Third Edition. Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Don't Be A Hater

This picture (originally from DailyKos) is disgusting. I just want to get the obvious out there. Whoever made it should be shamed and humiliated, especially for the mockery it makes of Native Americans. But, how far would you be willing to go in your distaste and dislike for it? Far enough to call for censorship and regulation of hate speech? Far enough to support images like this, and vitriolic diatribes against racial, cultural and religious groups to be “not allowed”?

Austin Thompson of The A. Thompson Monitor (it's on my blogroll) and I are in the midst of an intra-liberal disagreement about this. Austin points to European countries, and argues that we should hold hate speech on the same level of censorship that we hold swearing and nudity on broadcast television. I must beg to differ. Censorship of speech is always an extremely dangerous subject, and one with a fine line. If anything, our standards are far too strict in this country. Austin points to Europe, but Europe has a much more reasonable tolerance for nudity and language on public broadcasts. So in one sense, yes, we should tilt more European in our censorship laws. But holding hate speech to the same standard as profanity, as desirable as that may seem, is a bad idea.

Why? Because who defines hate speech? The party currently in power in government? I’m sure rush Limbaugh and the Republican Party would have been thrilled to have defined anti-American, subversive sentiments as hate-speech during the Bush administration and wiped it from radio, television, newspapers, street corners, and the internet. Flag burning anyone? We might wish to stop someone’s vitriolic, hate filled diatribe towards Hispanics and immigrants, for example, but to actually do so would be to dig our own graves. Censorship of speech is a slippery, slippery, slope, and one that we would best avoid descending.

Let’s just stop and consider what we are really talking about here. Are we just talking about hate speech on public airwaves? What about hate speech in public spaces? Or hate speech on a private website, or in a book? Like it or not, racist tards have just as much of a right to assembly as I do. They have just as much right to express their opinions on race as Austin Thompson does. We have collectively decided to hold the right to assemble, to publish, and to verbally express oneself as separate from the material and language being expressed. And that’s a good thing.

In our verbal debate, Austin broached the topic of hate-crimes. Hate crimes occupy a different arena than speech, because they are intent and speech that has been acted on in a manner that violates the rights (life, safety, property) of another. Hate speech that actively incites others to violence and makes serious threats is also in a different realm, and one that I believe can be regulated. But some random racist’s blog that spews insults and stereotypes at minorities is completely different. As awful as it is, it's not something that a government, which is always one election away from the paranoid, xenophobic, militaristic, falsely patriotic whims of the voting populace, should be able to secretly delete all record of having ever existed, or prevent from being viewed.

We all pay a price for the rights and freedoms that we enjoy, and the Bush administration and post-911 hysteria that fed the Patriot Act are two very real, very frightening reminders of how easily those rights can be dissolved and erased. Ridding this nation of racist sentiment and hate may be a well intentioned idea, but one day we might wake up to find that “I hate Black people” has all of a sudden been equated with “I hate America.” And let’s face it; do you really trust Americans enough to distinguish between those two? I don’t, and I hold dear my right to say that on this website.

Let me know what you think, I'm hoping that this will spark some comments and discussion.

Paris

Things in Paris are slower, smaller, slimmer, fresher, denser, tastier, classier, prettier, more fashionable, more expensive, and, I am convinced, better. People walk through the streets of Cleveland to go somewhere; people walk through the streets of Paris because they are somewhere. They walk to walk, eat to eat, play to play. It’s as if every part of life is an end in and of itself in France—except work. Here we live to work, but in France they work to live.

The French view and live life differently, and to spend even a few days among them is enough to convince one that one’s entire life would be better spent among them. Spent among the tiny Smart Cars that cram into nonexistent parking spaces next to hardly larger Peugeots, Citroens, and the inevitable Aston Martin or Lamborghini. Yes the cars are better in France as they are all across Europe. They look better, both in design and upkeep (the French care about detail), and did I mention that a good fifty percent of the taxis in Paris are Mercedes? Brand new Mercedes?

And amidst the street corners crammed with Smart Cars are the brassiers, bistros, where you can sit at a table facing the street and watch life pass you by. The neighborhood patissieres that you walk to every morning for your croissant au chocolat, and perhaps a sandwhich au jambon to take with you for lunch. The patissieres that you return to before dinner (because bread from the morning is of course, no longer fresh) to buy steaming baguettes straight from the ovens. The fromager, or the gourmet food and desert shops like Hediard, which are splattered through upscale neighborhoods like Courselles.

Need I even mention it? The food is definitely better. Rich, succulent, and out of this world. Or, at least, this continent. Buttery escargot, fresh bread, searing steak au poivre, creamy brie, tender salmon, and ooohh the charcuterie. Cured meats like you have never tasted before. I don’t care what kind of ham you buy, you have never really tasted ham until you have had the jambon from an assiette du charcuterie. And all of it fresh, fresh, fresh. Fresher than even possible back here in “the best country on earth.”

It must be this freshness that counteracts the reality of the rich food the French consume on a daily basis. Either that or the urban layout that demands walking and activity. Or both. I saw few overweight people in Paris, and I am convinced that the majority of those I did see were tourists—American tourists. Yes, the people in France are slimmer, prettier, and more fashionable. Women and men included. In fact, Parisians are just downright beautiful. They consistently look good, and challenge you to do the same.

Public transportation is better in Paris. It’s fast, efficient, on-time, and simple to use. It’s pleasant and clean, and so are the people who use it. That Paris’s subway system was constructed one hundred years ago, beneath an already existing, and ancient city, is incredible. But then, Paris itself is a marvel of urban design. Haussman’s grand tree lined Bouevards that shoot away from the Arc de Triomph in every direction look like rays of the sun when viewed from on high. At night they are. Rays of light that course and pump life through this urban combination of the new and the old, the classic, and the modern. This city of stone, iron, steel, glass, and lights.

But unfortunately I don’t live in Paris, and eventually I returned home. And as I exited customs in Newark, and walked back through security and down the terminal to the gate of my next departure, I saw an Arby's and lots of fat people. Welcome to America.

The Winner Stands Alone

Paulo Coelho lays bare Hollywood’s soul. Or perhaps, as he might agree, lack thereof. Through his flowing writing, Coelho reaches to the very depths of the human condition in an attempt to decipher what truly moves us, motivates us. Unfortunately, the picture that Coelho paints of our deepest desires and darkest aspects of our nature—greed, lust for power and fame, pride—and the sins that we will commit for them, is not a pretty one. Coelho shows us ourselves, bare and naked, and the judgment we must pass is harsh indeed.

The Winner Stands Alone forces its readers to question themselves. How far would you go to placate your pride and lust? What would it take for you to, like Igor, destroy universes? To all those who have ever dreamed of fame, and been envious of stardom…to what lengths would you debase yourself for the chance to grasp at the edge of that dream? And then Coelho twists the knife even further, by forcing young dreamers to confront the possibility that to achieve and maintain that dream, they would be transformed into something other than that which they are. Something they may not like.

Yet for one who displays so much wisdom and insight into the baser behaviors of humanity, Coelho maintains innocence and hope in the very end. That is not to say that the ending is light, because it is dark indeed. Coelho leaves us with two winners who indeed stand alone in their persons, their desires, their morality, their actions, and what they place trust and faith in. He leaves us to decide where the real winner lies; with success at any price, including violence and death, or with the flicker of a hopeful love that would inspire anything except a descent to violence and killing. Coelho clearly favors the latter (as one would hope), and seems to be patiently and hopefully waiting for good to triumph over evil.

But that chapter, that reality in our world, remains unwritten. Paulo Coelho has has taken us to the very edge, but refuses to finish it. He can’t, because that’s our job. All of us.

America Needs a Healthcare Transplant: Part Deuce

So two weeks ago I wrote a piece on the ongoing struggle for healthcare reform in this country, and why we need to look overseas to the European and Canadian models for answers. Since then, there has been some hopeful progress in Congress, with the Progressive caucus vowing not to support any bill without a robust public option, and some Blue Dogs breaking with their caucus to announce their support for a public option (and not one with a trigger). But the fact remains that whatever public option (hopefully) ends up in a bill should still seek to take the very best parts of other nations' healthcare systems. So without further ado, I figured I should let some people from those other nations speak for themselves. In this second installment, I am featuring quotes from an email interview with a friend form Toronto, Canada.

Me: Do you like your doctor and are you free to switch?

Her: We have the freedom to choose the doctors, and the specialists that we want to see.

Me: So conservatives always claim that there are long waits in Canada for even basic procedures--how accurate is that?

Her: The weeks to see a doctor and months for an operation just isn't accurate when serious health issues arise. There are not extensive wait times when health issues of a serious nature arise.

Me: If you were in need of complicated surgery or treatment, would you rather have it done in the United States or in Canada, or in some other country?

Her: My father-in-law just had the procedure of opening arteries in his heart the other month, after going to the hospital for tests. My niece is undergoing treatment for brain cancer in a timely and efficient manner. As a family neither of these major illnesses is causing any financial hardship as all the appointments, procedures and medications are covered by our health care system.

Me: Any other relevant information?

Her: Each citizen and landed immigrant in Ontario receives an Ontario Health Insurance Program (OHIP) card. This is the only documentation that is required when attending doctor's appointments or hospital.

The provincial government pays for the vast majority of health costs. There are some procedures and medications that are not covered - I'm not sure of the entire list, but I do know that recently they removed yearly eye exams for those between 18 - 65; and hearing tests from the list. Our health cards do not cover dentistry.

Thanks so much for the answers to those questions on the Canadian healthcare system! Hopefully I'll have more soon on several European countries.

California Craziness

Things aren't looking so bright in the Sunshine State, where the world's 8th largest economy is locked in a deadlock over a now $29 billion budget deficit. Yet in the midst of the political games, and very scary and serious impending cuts to education, parks, and state welfare programs, lies the opportunity for a fascinating political test of sorts. A gem of a test in fact. Something that political scientists, academics, pundits, and the interested should be literally salivating in anticipation of. But let's back up, and look at what's actually on the table, and what's still cooking in the kitchen.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to veto any bill the state legislature puts before him that either includes new taxes, or doesn't address the entire budget crisis all at once. Of course 1990's tax cuts and Prop 13 (the 1978 bill that made it impossible to raise or introduce new taxes in California without a 2/3 majority) are the reason why California is in this crisis, but the governator has chosen to toe the orthodox conservative line on taxes. Instead, he is proposing some of the most severe spending cuts imaginable:

• Eliminating the Healthy Families Program, which would cut coverage for nearly 1 million children
• Cutting the state’s MediCal program by $1 billion
• Eliminating the state’s main welfare program for the poor
• A 10 percent reduction in CAL Fire’s budget, closing 11 conservation camps and 20 fire stations, staffing each engine with three firefighters instead of four
• Releasing 40,000 inmates (who are “non-serious, nonviolent, non-sex offenders”) and releasing all undocumented immigrant prisoners
• Privatizing prisons (which is only likely to end up costing the state more money in the long run, as privatization is wont to do)
• Making a $3.6 billion reduction to education funding and shutting down all public schools for 18.5 days
• Laying off 51,000 teachers and 90,000 support staff
• Increasing schools’ class sizes by 17 percent
• Laying off 5,000 state workers, those not laid-off will receive a 5 percent salary cut
• Closing up to 220 state parks and/or cutting park funding by $70 million
• Selling state assets, including the Del Mar Fairgrounds and the governor’s mansion
  
• Suspending Proposition 1A from 2004 to borrow up to $2 billion of property tax revenue from local governments
• The consolidation or elimination of more than 30 boards, commissions and departments
• Cutting 18 percent in pay for all state elected officials
• Cutting of 27 positions in the governor’s office; remaining employees will take a 9.3 percent reduction in work hours and pay
• Cutting AIDS testing by $55.5 million

(From www.sdnn.com)

Some of these cuts are insignificant, and perhaps should happen (like selling the governor's mansion and fairgrounds), but the big ones--especially the education cuts--are truly appalling, and will have a devastating effect on California's future and economic competitiveness.

So far the Obama administration has held firm in resisting California's pleas for a federal bailout. Even though I see why Obama is resisting bailing out one state (for fear that the 30 others in crisis will follow), California not only should recieve federal money, but is entitled to it. See, we have this phenomenon in the United States of liberal taxpayers from blue states actually supporting red state conservatives (who decry social programs and taxes) thorugh federal tax welfare. Blue states (with the exception of only recently turned blue New Mexico) pay far more in federal taxes than they recieve back in federal spending. With help from Republican congressmen like Eric Cantor, red states top the list of federal dollars recipients, while their Senators and Representatives are hypocritically raising hell about Obama's stimulus plan, but feeding at the trough and boasting about securing funds for their states. California has it worse than almost any other blue state--it recieves only $0.78 for every $1.00 its citizens pay in federal taxes, ranking 43.

Pragmatically speaking as well, it's a bad idea for the government to let California fail. Time and time again California has been the innovative engine of the United States, economically, environmentally, and socially. California pushes the rest of the country forward, and takes the lead on a myriad of issues that hold global significance. California voters approved a levy to create a high speed rail network (no this isn't irresponsible given their fiscal crisis--it's funded seperately and will benefit California in the long run); California has taken the lead on environmental regulations. It is imperative for the United States that California have the economic ability to continue to be the “early adopter” that pushes the US forward to progressivism when the rest of the country is too slow or resistant.

However, with a federal bailout not looking like a viable option, the state remains in a crisis. And here is where we get to the good part. I've long been a proponent of Northeast Ohio breaking away from the rest of Ohio (why should we let the conservative, rural south drag us down? Let's create a green, prosperous, urban society on our own). While that proposal is going nowhere, in California, politicians are actually seriously considering creating two seperate state budgets as a way to break the political deadlock.

This would without a doubt be the greatest experiement and head to head test of political ideologies ever conducted in this country. One state with one budget crisis; two seperate solutions happening simultaneously and independently of each other. The political inland can slash services while the liberal coast can make intellegent cuts and increase taxes on things like tobacco and oil, as well as roll back things like the Vehicle License Fee cut that Schwarzenegger preserved during his first term in office.

How cool would it be if this really happened? It would be the ultimate real world test of liberal vs. conservative governing ideologies. And in five years, we would be able to truly say, "we told you so" (or perhas hang our heads in defeat...although I would bet heavily on the former). Are the California conservatives willing to put up? Do they have the balls to put their ideology to the test? Here's to hoping that California is bold enough to go for the only solution that might work, and one that could have far-reaching impacts beyond California and its budget.

Cleveland Eats: La Gelateria

From clevelandeats.wordpress.com, a review of La Gelateria

"Gelato leaves no thick, sticky-sweet feeling in your mouth the way traditional high-butterfat content ice cream does, but rather has a very clean finish."

Full review after the jump.

Revitalizing Cleveland--Bring On The College Kids!!

How many of you plan on coming back to Cleveland after college? Probably close to none. You want to go where to cities that your friends will gravitate to when they graduate—cities with an atmosphere and culture that appeals to young people. Fun cities, cool cities, interesting cities, like New York, San Francisco, Chicago. Maybe even abroad to London, Paris, Zurich, Rome, or Sydney. But Cleveland? The only time college kids have thought about Cleveland in the past year is when they saw the Hastily made Cleveland Tourism Video on CollegeHumor.com (come and look aaat both of our buildings...hey, it's catchy, what can I say?)

And in those few sentences lie Cleveland’s death-knell. We’ve heard it before, the brain drain and lack of brain gain that is ruining Northeast Ohio’s economy and future. But Cleveland has much to offer: A low cost of living, an incredible Metroparks system that should be the envy of every urban area attempting to create citywide green space, a foodie scene swiftly rising to national prominence, and perhaps above all, a small community that instead of being cutthroat like NYC, has the potential to help recent grads network and reach their potential in whatever fields they choose to pursue.

Nevertheless, Cleveland sucks because it lacks the robust social scene and cool jobs to be found elsewhere. It has no robust social scene because few young college grads move to Cleveland, and it lacks the competitive jobs because of this dearth of intellectual capital. It’s a classic catch-22. But it doesn’t have to be this way; my first week at Policy Matters, Tim Krueger, aspiring urban planner and recent Cornell graduate, shared with me his plan for revitalizing Cleveland. After much discussion between the two of us, I am here to present this tweaked and reworked proposal to all of you.

College students move along well-established social paths that don’t run through Cleveland. So the first step in revitalizing this city is to create social pathways to attract graduates. In an ironic way, the economic crisis provides the perfect opportunity for this city. The job market may suck in Cleveland, but it sucks everywhere. Thus, by offering graduates strong social and economic incentives, Cleveland can begin to change the social norms within academia, and position itself as a city worthy of consideration when college students decide where to begin their new lives.

The “Intellectual Capital and Fellowship Program” (if you have a catchier name/better acronym by all means let me know) would offer economic incentives in the form of free rent and an expedited job hunt, social incentives in the form of an automatic social scene and mentorship from a community leader, and would affect social norms within academia by reversing the manner in which new applications are typically solicited.

The Four Part Approach

1. Neighborhood Based - A core component of the Intellectual Capital Fellowship program is that it works through physical space. College graduates want to be independent, but they also want the community interaction and feel of a campus and a dorm. Just look at how everyone holds up examples of young companies like Google, and what they have done with their office spaces—casual, informal, and fun. Working in an office where there’s a snack bar, pool tables, and couches where you can lounge in sweatpants and jeans and do work on your laptop mimics the atmosphere of studying and working in a dorm. Example number two, the New York Times reported on new construction condominium towers that are being marketed to young professionals: “For anyone who has lived on a college campus, the feeling of Metrome and other buildings aimed at young adults in downtown San Diego will be instantly familiar. While they may have been marketed like hip hotels, the feeling of the social life in these buildings is more that of a college dorm.” We envision that the Fellowship would purchase and renovate a warehouse in the flats, Ohio City, or Tremont, and provide loft apartments to program participants—rent free for the first six months, and subsidized rent for the Fellowship’s final six months. This would also have the tangential effects of increasing nearby commerce and real estate development after time.

2. Mentorship – The small size of this program would allow for highly individualized experiences. Fellowship participants would have complete agency in the job search, and unlike a conventional internship model, the end of the Fellowship program is completely irrelevant to the (former) fellow’s tenure at her job. The crux of this individualized job experience would be the creation of a Board of Mentors, comprised of established business and community leaders in Cleveland from different fields. The Board would participate in selecting the fellows each year, and then each Mentor would be paired with one Fellow. Over the course of the yearlong program, Mentors would develop relationships with their respective fellows, and advocate for them on their job searches, as well as help them integrate into socio-professional networks. This relationship could very well continue after the formal end of the program.

3. Social Networks and the Application Process – The manner in which the Intellectual Capital Fellowship Program would solicit applications would be one of its greatest assets in continuing and strengthening its existence. Tim drew inspiration for this section of the Fellowship from his experiences with and observations of social networks during his time at the Roosevelt Institute (national student-run think tank) and the Obama campaign. He points out Summer on the Cuyahoga as an example of what the Fellowship’s application process should not be: Summer on the Cuyahoga solicits applications through college career offices and alumni networks, which means that because it takes one or two students from every school, every year it starts over again with the application process. It never builds its own social network, and never creates the kind of social incentives for students to follow previous graduates from their schools to Cleveland. Instead of this scattered model, the Fellowship would partner with 3 or 4 prestigious colleges and universities to solicit applicant, and would require that each Fellow solicit ten new applications from the most highly qualified individuals they know. The expected result, is that after a few years, almost all potential applicants would already have social connections who had gone through the program, and hopefully chosen to remain in Cleveland. In other words, it could become more normatively acceptable, and possibly even desirable, for students in certain social networks to consider moving to Cleveland after graduation.

4. Student Loan Repayment - Obviously, a major goal of the Intellectual Capital Fellowship is to convince graduates not only to come to Cleveland, but also to stay in Cleveland once the program formally ends. The soaring cost of tuition and the student loans that it engenders offer Cleveland an opportunity to tackle this problem of, “brain gain and brain remain” (I just thought of that one—brain remain—like it?) Participants who establish residency in the city of Cleveland proper at the end of the program, will be eligible two years later to receive $1000 a year, or up to 20% of their annual student loan payment, for the next five years (with back payment for the first two years after the Fellowship), contingent upon their continued primary residency in Cleveland, to be used for the repayment of their student loans. (Or we could just offer them free beer, that might make them come too).

Hopefully a critical mass of bright young graduates could help to turn around the city’s social and job scene by attracting businesses and culture. Or we could just wait for fresh water to become the next world crisis, at which point Cleveland and the Great Lakes region will become the most important area on Earth (you heard it here first—start buying all the lakefront property you can get your hands on). So hit us up and let us know what you think (emails can be sent to ahurst12@gmail.com).