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U.S. Is--By Far--The Most Popular Country To Migrate To

Gallup:

Every day, migrants leave their homelands behind for new lives in other countries. Reflecting this desire, rather than the reality of the numbers that actually migrate, Gallup finds about 16% of the world's adults would like to move to another country permanently if they had the chance. This translates to roughly 700 million worldwide -- more than the entire adult population of North and South America combined ...

The United States is the top desired destination country for the 700 million adults who would like to relocate permanently to another country. Nearly one-quarter (24%) of these respondents, which translates to more than 165 million adults worldwide, name the United States as their desired future residence. With an additional estimated 45 million saying they would like to move to Canada, Northern America is one of the two most desired regions.

The rest of the top desired destination countries (those where an estimated 25 million or more adults would like to go) are predominantly European. Forty-five million adults who would like to move name the United Kingdom or France as their desired destination, while 35 million would like to go to Spain and 25 million would like to relocate to Germany. Thirty million name Saudi Arabia and 25 million name Australia.

Roughly 210 million adults around the world would like to move to a country in the European Union, which is similar to the estimated number who would like to move to Northern America. However, about half of the estimated 80 million adults who live in the EU and would like to move permanently to another country would like to move to another country within the EU -- the highest desired intra-regional migration rate in the world.

May 8, 2010: The Day The Republican Party Began To "Crack Up"

Dana Milbank:

Future historians tracing the crackup of the Republican Party may well look to May 8, 2010, as an inflection point.

That was the day, as is now well known, that Sen. Robert Bennett, who took the conservative position 84 percent of the time over his career, was deemed not conservative enough by fellow Utah Republicans and booted out of the primary.

Less well known, but equally ominous, is what happened that same day, 2,500 miles east in Maine. There, the state Republican Party chucked its platform -- a sensible New England mix of free-market economics and conservation -- and adopted a manifesto of insanity: abolishing the Federal Reserve, calling global warming a "myth," sealing the border, and, as a final plank, fighting "efforts to create a one world government."

One world government? Do our friends Down East fear an invasion from the Canadian maritime provinces? A Viking flotilla coming from Iceland under cover of volcanic ash?

I was pondering this mystery while on the elliptical machine this week and watching Glenn Beck (I find he increases my heart rate), when I heard him inform his viewers that "they" -- President Obama and friends -- "are creating a global governance structure."

"Social and ecological justice and all of this bullcrap," Beck told his viewers, "is man's work for a global government." Beck -- who is second in popularity only to Sarah Palin among the type of Tea Party activists who hijacked the Maine GOP -- tossed out phrases such as "global standards" and "global bank tax" -- all part of a conspiracy by the "global government people." He further provided the news that "Jesus doesn't want a cap-and-trade system."

Not once did Beck refer to the big news events of the day, such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to the White House or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It was as if he had created a parallel universe for his 2-million-plus viewers. Similarly, on Monday, when Obama nominated Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, Beck omitted that news in favor of a fanciful administration attempt to restore the broadcast Fairness Doctrine. On Tuesday, USA Today had the headline "Tax bills in 2009 at lowest level since 1950" (the nonpartisan Tax Foundation put it at 1959); Beck skipped that, instead saying he doesn't want changes to the Internet "at least until people aren't worshipping Satan, you know, in office." (Beck maintained later that he really wasn't "saying that Obama was a Satan worshipper.")

Beck justifiably credited his viewers for "what happened to Bob Bennett in Utah." He warned: "People in Washington, you should be terrified."

We should be terrified -- particularly the Republicans, whose party is turning into this One-World-Government, Obama-worships-Satan, Jesus-opposes-climate-bill mélange. And Beck is only part of the trouble. Consider these GOP milestones of recent days:

The GOP Is Committing "Political Suicide"

Conservative Michael Gerson:

Has the Republican Party become, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently charged, the "anti-immigrant party"?

The accusation is overbroad ... But it would be absurd to deny that the Republican ideological coalition includes elements that are anti-immigrant -- those who believe that Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to American culture and identity. When Arizona Republican Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth calls for a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico, when then-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) refers to Miami as a "Third World country," when state Rep. Russell Pearce (R), one of the authors of the Arizona immigration law, says Mexicans' and Central Americans' "way of doing business" is different, Latinos can reasonably assume that they are unwelcome in certain Republican circles.

The intensity of these Republican attitudes is evident not just from what activists say but also from what Republican leaders are being forced to say. Sen. John McCain, a long-term supporter of humane, comprehensive immigration reform, has run a commercial feeding fears of "drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder" by illegal immigrants.

Never mind that the level of illegal immigration is down in Arizona or that skyrocketing crime rates along the border are a myth. McCain's tag line -- "Complete the danged fence" -- will rank as one of the most humiliating capitulations in modern political history.

Ethnic politics is symbolic and personal. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gained African American support by calling Coretta Scott King while her husband was in prison. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater lost support by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A generation of African American voters never forgot either gesture.

Republicans have now sent three clear signals to Hispanic voters:

California's Proposition 187, which was passed in 1994 and attempted to deny illegal immigrants health care and public education before being struck down in court; the immigration debate of 2006, dominated by strident Republican opponents of reform; and now the Arizona immigration law. According to a 2008 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, 49 percent of Hispanics said that Democrats had more concern for people of their background; 7 percent believed this was true of Republicans. Since the Arizona controversy, this gap can only have grown. In a matter of months, Hispanic voters in Arizona have gone from being among the most pro-GOP in the nation to being among the most hostile.

Immigration issues are emotional and complex. But this must be recognized for what it is: political suicide. Consider that Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona, 44 percent in Texas, 47 percent in California, 54 percent in New Mexico. Whatever temporary gains Republicans might make feeding resentment of this demographic shift, the party identified with that resentment will eventually be voted into singularity. In a matter of decades, the Republican Party could cease to be a national party.

Even describing this reality invites scorn from those who regard immigration as a matter of principle instead of politics. But this represents a deep misunderstanding of politics itself. In America, political ideals are carried by parties. Republicans who are pro-business and pro-life, support a strong national defense and oppose deficit spending depend on one another to achieve influence. Each of these convictions alienates someone -- pro-choice voters, economic liberals, pacifists. But Republican activists who alienate not an issue-group but an influential, growing ethnic group are a threat to every other constituency. The vocal faction of anti-immigrant Republicans is not merely part of a coalition; it will eventually make it impossible for anyone else in that coalition to succeed at the national level.

Boycotting Arizona Begins To Bite; State Responds With Rebranding Campaign

The Arizona Republic:

Acknowledging that Arizona has developed a serious image problem because of its tough new immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer and tourism-industry leaders said Thursday that they will launch a new effort to stanch the flow of lost trade and convention business in the state.

The legislation and firestorm of negative publicity that followed brought calls for boycotts, moved groups to back out of local conventions and led several cities to cut business ties with Arizona companies.

The loss of business is critical in a recession-battered state vitally dependent on visitor spending.

"It's up to us to get the truth out there. This is impacting Arizona's face to the nation," said Brewer, who blamed the controversy on misconceptions about the law.

A new task force is charged with rebranding and repositioning the state as a unique destination spot.

That is sure to be a tough task after weeks of talk-show comedians, celebrities, politicians and others making Arizona a punch line, calling the law racist and drawing comparisons to fascism and Nazi Germany ...

One of the task force's first goals will be trying to stop the trend of boycotts, officials said. An early plan for how to do that is due in about a month.

"The end goal is to reassert that we are a safe, inviting, diverse and culturally aware community," said Steve Moore, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Brewer agreed to transfer $250,000 from the Arizona Department of Commerce to the Arizona Office of Tourism to support the effort.

Tactics will likely include not only a marketing campaign but direct contacts with the tourism industry elsewhere in the country.

The backlash against Arizona couldn't come at a worse time, convention and business leaders say.

The state, which took in $18.5 billion in visitor spending in 2008, has seen its tourism industry struggle in the past couple of years as the U.S. economy sagged ...

Arizona In 2010 Really Does Think It Is Alabama In 1954

The Lede:

Just weeks after adopting a controversial immigration law denounced as racist by its opponents, Arizona has adopted a new measure restricting what can be taught in ethnic studies classes in the state’s public schools.

The new law, which suggests that students are “taught to resent or hate other races” in such courses, was promoted by opponents of a Tucson school district program devoted to the study of Mexican-American history and culture.

When the measure was signed into law by Gov. Jan Brewer on Tuesday, the Arizona Daily Star explained:

State schools chief Tom Horne, a Republican running for attorney general, says the district’s ethnic studies program promotes “ethnic chauvinism” and racial resentment toward whites.

One provision of House Bill 2281, passed last month by the state Legislature, says that Arizona’s government:

Prohibits a school district or charter school from including in its program of instruction any courses or classes that:

•Promote the overthrow of the United States government.

•Promote resentment toward a race or class of people.

•Are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.

•Advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.

Judy Burns, the president of the Tucson district’s governing board, told the Los Angeles Times the measure was misguided because, “We don’t teach all those ugly things they think we’re teaching.”

Mr. Horne, the state’s superintendent of public instruction, told reporters on Wednesday that he wanted to learn more about the Tucson Unified School District’s courses in African-American studies, Native American studies and Asian studies. But, the Arizona Daily Star reported, “He said he felt he knew enough about Mexican-American studies and intends to go after” the district when the new law comes into force in December.

Mr. Horne also showed reporters a photograph of what he said was “a protest against my bill by students and teachers at Tucson High School and, as you can see, they are dressed up as revolutionaries.”

The same day Mr. Horne told NPR:

One of the functions of the public schools is to take kids of different backgrounds and teach them to treat each other as individuals. And this ethnic studies program does the opposite. It divides kids up by race.

In Mr. Horne’s run for state attorney general he has made his fight against Mexican-American studies a focus. The main page of his campaign Web site is now almost entirely devoted to trumpeting his efforts “to ban ethnic studies.”

According to The Arizona Daily Star, Mr. Horne’s battle against the Tucson district’s Mexican-American studies program “goes back to 2007, when activist Dolores Huerta spoke at Tucson High and told students that Republicans hate Latinos.” When Mr. Horne sought to counter this message by bringing Margaret Garcia Dugan, a Latina Republican who is his deputy, to speak at the school, “students stood up, turned their backs to her and put their fists in the air.”

Mr. Horne and Ms. Garcia Dugan told the Daily Star on Wednesday “that they had never seen such disrespect from students to a speaker, and they firmly believed that the students didn’t learn to be rude at home, but in the classroom.”

Updated | 8:02 p.m. In a new post, Justin Elliot of Talking Points Memo has more on Tom Horne and the new law.

Va Governor Admits Mistake & Acknowledges Slavery Had Something To Do With The Civil War

A Wash Post follow-up to yesterday's Imagine If Germany Announced That April Was Going To Be Nazi Month ... That's What Va Just Did:

After a barrage of nationwide criticism for excluding slavery from his Confederate History Month proclamation, Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) on Wednesday conceded that it was "a major omission" and amended the document to acknowledge the state's complicated past.

A day earlier, McDonnell said he left out any reference to slavery in the original seven-paragraph proclamation because he wanted to include issues he thought were most "significant" to Virginia. He also said the document was designed to promote tourism in the state, which next year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.

However, Wednesday afternoon the governor issued a mea culpa for the document's exclusion of slavery. "The proclamation issued by this Office designating April as Confederate History Month contained a major omission," McDonnell said in a statement. "The failure to include any reference to slavery was a mistake, and for that I apologize to any fellow Virginian who has been offended or disappointed."

McDonnell also called the nation's first elected black governor, L. Douglas Wilder (D) of Virginia, and the chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, Del. Kenneth Cooper Alexander (D-Norfolk), to apologize after they said they were offended by the document. McDonnell told them that he would alter the proclamation to include slavery and acknowledge that it was the cause of the Civil War.

The original declaration called on Virginians to "understand the sacrifices of the Confederate leaders, soldiers and citizens during the period of the Civil War." McDonnell added language to the document that said slavery "was an evil and inhumane practice that deprived people of their God-given inalienable rights and all Virginians are thankful for its permanent eradication from our borders."

But his decision to declare April Confederate History Month continued to cause a firestorm Wednesday, with national media descending on Richmond and Democrats and African Americans accusing the new governor of ignoring the state's role in slavery.

Sheila Johnson, one of McDonnell's most prominent black supporters and the wealthy co-founder of Black Entertainment Television, condemned the proclamation, calling it "insensitive" to Virginia's complicated and painful history.

"If Virginians are to celebrate their 'shared history,' as this proclamation suggests, then the whole truth of this history must be recognized and not evaded," said Johnson, who participated in a political ad for McDonnell's gubernatorial bid last fall and headlined several fundraisers during his campaign against Democrat R. Creigh Deeds.

State Sen. A. Donald McEachin (D-Richmond), a member of the black caucus, accepted the governor's apology Wednesday but said he was disappointed that the state had to undergo the embarrassment and national scrutiny that followed the proclamation. "It's a black eye," he said.

McDonnell revived a controversy that had been dormant for years. Confederate History Month was started by Gov. George Allen (R) in 1997. Allen's successor, James S. Gilmore III (R), included anti-slavery language in his proclamation.

In 2002, Mark R. Warner, Gilmore's successor, broke with their actions, calling such proclamations a "lightning rod" that did not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia. Four years later, Gov. Timothy M. Kaine was asked to issue a proclamation but did not.

New Health Law Reverses Trend Of Increasing Inequality In America Begun By Reagan

A fascinating column by David Leonhardt discussing the little noted but powerful impact the new health law will have on reversing the trend Reagan started of increasing inequality in America. He concludes with a nearly independent essay on how Reagan-like Obama is (remember that brouhaha during the campaign when he suggested he was?):

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Speaking to an ebullient audience of Democratic legislators and White House aides at the bill-signing ceremony on Tuesday, Mr. Obama claimed that health reform would “mark a new season in America.” He added, “We have now just enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care.”

The bill is the most sweeping piece of federal legislation since Medicare was passed in 1965. It aims to smooth out one of the roughest edges in American society — the inability of many people to afford medical care after they lose a job or get sick. And it would do so in large measure by taxing the rich.

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

Finally, the bill will also reduce a different kind of inequality. In the broadest sense, insurance is meant to spread the costs of an individual’s misfortune — illness, death, fire, flood — across society. Since the late 1970s, though, the share of Americans with health insurance has shrunk. As a result, the gap between the economic well-being of the sick and the healthy has been growing, at virtually every level of the income distribution.

The health reform bill will reverse that trend. By 2019, 95 percent of people are projected to be covered, up from 85 percent today (and about 90 percent in the late 1970s). Even affluent families ineligible for subsidies will benefit if they lose their insurance, by being able to buy a plan that can no longer charge more for pre-existing conditions. In effect, healthy families will be picking up most of the bill — and their insurance will be somewhat more expensive than it otherwise would have been.

Much about health reform remains unknown. Maybe it will deliver Congress to the Republicans this fall, or maybe it will help the Democrats keep power. Maybe the bill’s attempts to hold down the recent growth of medical costs will prove a big success, or maybe the results will be modest and inadequate. But the ways in which the bill attacks the inequality of the Reagan era — whether you love them or hate them — will probably be around for a long time.

“Legislative majorities come and go,” David Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, lamented on Sunday. “This health care bill is forever.”

•

Since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign in 2007, he has had a complicated relationship with the Reagan legacy. He has been more willing than many other Democrats to praise President Reagan. “Reagan’s central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic,” Mr. Obama wrote in his second book, “contained a good deal of truth.” Most notably, he praised Mr. Reagan as a president who “changed the trajectory of America.”

Details Of The Health Subsidies For The Lower Middle Class Become Clear

Wash Post:

The final health-care legislation that House Democrats are striving to pass this weekend would give about 19 million Americans subsidies averaging $6,000 to help pay premiums and other insurance charges, an unprecedented government investment in private health policies that leaves lingering questions about whether coverage would truly become affordable.

The details of the subsidies, which emerged in the past day, provide the clearest picture yet on a central question that has hovered over the health-care debate since it began a year ago: How much help would the government give people to cope with the expense of medical insurance?

In the final version Democrats produced, the subsidies would be part of a two-prong approach by the government to extend coverage to the vast majority of people who are uninsured. That effort is predicted to cost nearly $800 billion, more than $4 of every $5 of the legislation's total cost.

The private insurance subsidies would begin in 2014 and be intended for people eligible to buy coverage through insurance exchanges that would be created the same year.

The money the government spends to subsidize private policies would eclipse that devoted to a historic expansion of Medicaid, according to House aides and congressional budget analysts. And the subsidies are tilted more toward lower-income Americans than the measures in the Senate's version of health-care legislation.

The large infusion of federal money into insurance coverage would address one of the twin goals that have been at the heart of every attempt to redesign the nation's health-care system for decades: making health care more accessible and slowing medical costs. As Congress approaches what Democrats on Capitol Hill and in the White House are heralding as the finale of a year-long debate, policy experts across the ideological spectrum differ over how well the legislation would succeed at either goal.

Even some proponents of the subsidies say that, generous as they are, their buying power could erode over time in an era of rapid medical inflation. Some critics say the Democrats' approach of creating state insurance exchanges would help some Americans, those who now look for insurance policies individually or in small groups, but provide fewer new purchasing alternatives to most Americans, who rely on coverage through their jobs.

Still, liberal groups eager for the health-care legislation to pass are heaping praise on the final version of the subsidies, released Thursday among a set of changes to the Senate bill. "This is a huge step in the direction of making coverage and care affordable," said Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA, a left-leDaning consumer health lobby.

Specifically, the subsidies would come in two parts, both available on a sliding scale to Americans with incomes too high for Medicaid. That would span families of four with incomes from $29,000 to $88,000 and individuals with incomes from $14,000 to $43,000.

President Hails Promise Of Broadband

National Journal:

President Obama Tuesday commended the FCC and its staff for its work on the national broadband plan, saying expanding broadband high-speed Internet access will help "build a foundation of sustained economic growth and the widely shared prosperity we all seek."

In a statement issued on the same day the FCC formally sent its broadband plan to Congress, Obama said his administration "will build upon our efforts over the past year to make America's nationwide broadband infrastructure the world's most powerful platform for economic growth and prosperity, including improving access to mobile broadband, maximizing technology innovation, and supporting a nationwide, interoperable public safety wireless broadband network."

Obama's economic stimulus package enacted last year included $7.2 billion to provide grants aimed at improving broadband access and adoption and also mandated that the FCC draft the national broadband plan it unveiled Tuesday.

"Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highways, so too must we harness the potential of the Internet," the president said.

FCC Plan To Bring 100 Mb Broadband Connections To Everyone

Wash Post:

The Federal Communications Commission announced on Monday its long-awaited plan to bring broadband Internet connections to every home and business in the United States, part of an ambitious, multibillion-dollar attempt to create a new digital infrastructure for the nation's economy.

The national broadband plan outlines dozens of policy recommendations aimed at raising the portion of people with high-speed Internet connections to 90 percent, from the current 65 percent, over the next decade and significantly increasing the connection speeds of homes with such service.

Mandated by last year's stimulus legislation, the plan will be presented to Congress on Tuesday and is widely expected to set the FCC's agenda for years to come. It would move the commission squarely into the age of the Internet, creating a federal mandate for installing thousands of miles of new fiber-optic cable and erecting many cellphone towers.

Many of the FCC's proposals are short on details, and lawmakers and the agency can accept or reject any number of the ideas.

"The real test begins now, and the final grade will depend on the commission's execution of future proceedings that will be required to transform the national broadband plan into reality," said Andrew Schwartzman, president of Media Access Project, a public interest group.

The proposal drew praise from some industry leaders and public interest groups, who said the plan could introduce more competition into the market for broadband services and help bridge a digital divide that has excluded low-income and rural residents from the Web. But analysts and telecommunications scholars said carrying out the dozens of recommendations will be difficult, particularly if companies argue that new regulations will hurt investments and jobs.

Mid-size broadband providers, such as TW Telecom and Cbeyond, are shaping up to be the plan's biggest beneficiaries, gaining access to more subscribers and the rights to federal funds to expand their networks. Makers of network equipment, such as Cisco, and creators of Web-based content, such as Google, could also experience significant boosts in their business. And cellphone carriers could reap big gains from a proposal to allocate a large chunk of airwaves for the next generation of smartphones and portable devices.

Major providers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon Communications, would gain broader subscriber bases, but they could be forced to share their wireless and fixed-wire networks with smaller rivals, exposing them potentially to stiffer competition  ...

The FCC said it would fund its proposals by tapping an existing $8 billion annual fund for providing phone service to rural areas. In the past, rural carriers that rely on the fund successfully opposed attempts by lawmakers and the agency to redirect its resources.

The agency would also seek up to $16 billion from lawmakers to build and operate a dedicated network for public safety responders. The agency said it could raise more money from auctioning the spectrum intended for wireless use.

The United States has fallen behind other developed nations in the deployment of high-speed Internet. Some global rankings put the United States at 16th in terms of access, speed and affordability behind nations such as Japan and Australia. South Korea offers 100-megabit-per-second connections to nearly all of its population; most U.S. broadband subscribers have connections that average 3 to 4 megabits per second. The FCC's plan envisions bringing 100-megabit-per-second access to 100 million homes by 2020, as well as 1 gigabit-per-second connections to libraries and schools.

Texas Textbooks Cartoons

Why The Right Is Fighting So Hard: Because Health Reform Is "deeply, deeply progressive"

Ezra Klein:

Reading Chris Bowers's excellent list of the progressive priorities fulfilled or partially fulfilled by the health-care bill's sidecar amendments is a reminder of how peculiar the framing of this debate has been. There's no doubt that progressives have suffered some real losses in the legislative process. The public option, for one. But along the way, a lot of progressives have lost sight of the fact that the very existence of this legislative process is a huge progressive victory.

Five years ago, no one had ever heard the term "public option." But progressives had been talking about the uninsured for decades. There's probably no more constant lament in Democratic campaigns than the plight of the nation's 50 million uninsured. And this bill is, fundamentally, an effort to address that. Once it's up and running, it spends $200 billion a year to help low-income and working-class Americans afford health-care coverage. About 15 million of those people will become eligible for Medicaid, which is public insurance. Another 15 or so million will get private insurance.

But that private insurance will now be a very different beast: It will have to spend 85 percent or 80 percent (depending on the market) of every premium dollar on care. It won't be able to reject people for preexisting conditions. It will be in a regulated exchange where it has to justify premium increases and bad behavior or face exclusion. And those exchanges, regulations and subsidies will also create the core structure of a universal health-care system in this country, which should be comforting to progressives who look to the improvements in Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and CHIP and the EITC and know that the history of American social policy is that, in general, we build on our imperfect foundations and make them stronger and fairer over time.

I don't want to suggest this bill is all progressive victories. It isn't. It isn't single-payer and there's no public option, and though I think the excise tax is a progressive tax, I grant that reasonable people disagree on this matter. But the fact of it is that this bill represents an enormous leftward shift for American social policy. It is not, in my view, a sufficient leftward shift, but it is unmatched by anything that has passed into law in recent decades. Progressives have lost some very hard battles but are on the cusp of winning an incredibly important war. For all its imperfections, health-care reform itself is deeply, deeply progressive. And if you don't believe me, just ask the conservatives who have made opposing it their top priority.

Climate Change Opponents Join With Anti-Evolution Creationists To Spur American's Idiotic Attachment To Denialism

NY Times (For more, see A Blue View's Denialism category and/or buy the book that named the phenomenon: Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives):

Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

The bill, which has yet to be voted on, is patterned on even more aggressive efforts in other states to fuse such issues. In Louisiana, a law passed in 2008 says the state board of education may assist teachers in promoting “critical thinking” on all of those subjects.

Last year, the Texas Board of Education adopted language requiring that teachers present all sides of the evidence on evolution and global warming.

Oklahoma introduced a bill with similar goals in 2009, although it was not enacted.

The linkage of evolution and global warming is partly a legal strategy: courts have found that singling out evolution for criticism in public schools is a violation of the separation of church and state. By insisting that global warming also be debated, deniers of evolution can argue that they are simply championing academic freedom in general.

Yet they are also capitalizing on rising public resistance in some quarters to accepting the science of global warming, particularly among political conservatives who oppose efforts to rein in emissions of greenhouse gases.

In South Dakota, a resolution calling for the “balanced teaching of global warming in public schools” passed the Legislature this week.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant,” the resolution said, “but rather a highly beneficial ingredient for all plant life.”

The measure made no mention of evolution, but opponents of efforts to dilute the teaching of evolution noted that the language was similar to that of bills in other states that had included both. The vote split almost entirely along partisan lines in both houses, with Republican voting for it and Democrats voting against.

For mainstream scientists, there is no credible challenge to evolutionary theory. They oppose the teaching of alternative views like intelligent design, the proposition that life is so complex that it must be the design of an intelligent being. And there is wide agreement among scientists that global warming is occurring and that human activities are probably driving it. Yet many conservative evangelical Christians assert that both are examples of scientists’ overstepping their bounds.

John G. West, a senior fellow with the Discovery Institute in Seattle, a group that advocates intelligent design and has led the campaign for teaching critiques of evolution in the schools, said that the institute was not specifically promoting opposition to accepted science on climate change. Still, Mr. West said, he is sympathetic to that cause.

“There is a lot of similar dogmatism on this issue,” he said, “with scientists being persecuted for findings that are not in keeping with the orthodoxy. We think analyzing and evaluating scientific evidence is a good thing, whether that is about global warming or evolution.”

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist who directs the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University and has spoken against efforts to water down the teaching of evolution to school boards in Texas and Ohio, described the move toward climate-change skepticism as a predictable offshoot of creationism.

“Wherever there is a battle over evolution now,” he said, “there is a secondary battle to diminish other hot-button issues like Big Bang and, increasingly, climate change. It is all about casting doubt on the veracity of science — to say it is just one view of the world, just another story, no better or more valid than fundamentalism.”

Not all evangelical Christians reject the notion of climate change, of course. There is a budding green evangelical movement in the country driven partly by a belief that because God created the earth, humans are obligated to care for it.

Yet there is little doubt that the skepticism about global warming resonates more strongly among conservatives, and Christian conservatives in particular. A survey published in October by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that white evangelical Protestants were among those least likely to believe that there was “solid evidence” that the Earth was warming because of human activity.

Only 23 percent of those surveyed accepted that idea, compared with 36 percent of the American population as a whole. [For more see New Poll Shows Fewer Americans "Believe" Global Warming]

A Parable For Our Times (cartoon)

 
 

"For Human Spaceflight, Can Measured Beat Bold?"

NY Times:

President George W. Bush ... After the shuttle Columbia’s disaster in 2003, he introduced a “new vision” to revive the floundering space program. It included post-shuttle propulsion systems and crew-carrying vehicles. The goal was a return of astronauts to the Moon by 2020. Sometime after, to Mars.

But the costs of fighting wars while cutting taxes left little money to support the undertaking. Although several billion dollars have already been invested in advanced hardware, the goals seem illusory, and public support seems thin.

Once again, experience brought reminders, so often overlooked, that Apollo was not a realistic model for future endeavors in space exploration. Going to the Moon had been, above all, a campaign in the cold war. The Soviet Union was the feared adversary, even more so after the Sputnik surprise and after Yuri Gagarin’s flight made him the first man in space, in spring 1961.

Early on, the political scientist John M. Logsdon at George Washington University made a study of the decision-making process leading to Apollo. Dr. Logsdon concluded that Apollo was “a product of a specific time in history” and a singular crash program responding to a perceived threat to the country. It did not represent a firm commitment by society to open-ended space exploration.

Norman R. Augustine, an aerospace industry executive, acknowledged as much when he led a task force that contributed to the first President Bush’s proposals. “The heavy driver for the space program used to be competition with the Soviets,” Mr. Augustine said at the time. “Today, there is not that clear competition but the fundamental values of exploration that drive us. They are less tangible, but no less important.”

If one thing is clear and encouraging in President Obama’s proposals, it is the recognition of Apollo’s exceptionality. Mr. Augustine also served on the committee that advised Mr. Obama, and his point about the changing political matrix has apparently sunk in.

“We’ve been trying to relive Apollo for 40 years, unsuccessfully,” NASA’s deputy administrator, Lori B. Garver, said in an interview with editors and reporters of The New York Times. “For too long NASA overpromised and underdelivered, and now we will be doing things differently.”

That remains to be seen. Congressional committees have not begun to examine the proposals and the modest budget increases for NASA. The administration’s plan may be “bold and game-changing,” in Ms. Garver’s words, but several aspects are likely to stir controversy or at least call for closer study.

In contrast to the past, the new plan sets no definite timetables, cost estimates or destinations. Nor is there extravagant rhetoric about knowledge and adventure. The Kennedy eloquence about sailing “this new ocean” was effective primarily because the nation felt the need to demonstrate its technological superiority in war and peace.

The Average Amercian Spends As Much On "Home Connectedness" As Gasoline Or Eating Out

NY Times:

John Anderson and Sharon Rapoport estimate they spend $400 a month, or close to $5,000 a year, keeping their family of four entertained at home. There are the $30-a-month data plans on their BlackBerry Tour cellphones. The Roanoke, Va., couple’s teenage sons, Seth and Isaac, each have $50 subscriptions for Xbox Live and send thousands of texts each month on their cellphones, requiring their own data plans. DirecTV satellite service, high-speed Internet access and Netflix for movie nights add more.

“We try to be aware of it so it doesn’t get out of control,” said Mr. Anderson, who with his wife founded an advertising agency. “But, yeah, I would say we’re pretty wired.”

It used to be that a basic $25-a-month phone bill was your main telecommunications expense. But by 2004, the average American spent $770.95 annually on services like cable television, Internet connectivity and video games, according to data from the Census Bureau. By 2008, that number rose to $903, outstripping inflation. By the end of this year, it is expected to have grown to $997.07. Add another $1,000 or more for cellphone service and the average family is spending as much on entertainment over devices as they are on dining out or buying gasoline.

And those government figures do not take into account movies, music and television shows bought through iTunes, or the data plans that are increasingly mandatory for more sophisticated smartphones.

For many people, the subscriptions and services for entertainment and communications, which are more often now one and the same, have become indispensable necessities of life, on par with electricity, water and groceries. And for every new device, there seems to be yet another fee. Buyers of the more advanced Apple iPad, to cite the latest example, can buy unlimited data access for $30 a month from AT&T even if they already have a data plan from the carrier.

“You don’t really lump these expenses into a discretionary category,” said Robert H. Frank, an economics professor at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. “As the expectation of connectedness increases, it’s what is expected for people to be functional in society.”

Americans are transforming their homes into entertainment hubs, which is driving up the amount of money they spend, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

“More people are creating experiences in their homes that are very similar to the kinds of public experiences they enjoy in movie theaters and concert halls,” he said. “Our homes are bristling with technology.”

Most people think home entertainment is cheaper. “Every time I want to go to Fenway Park or see the Killers in concert, I’m paying $50 to $100 each time. But once you build and install that home system, its basically pennies per minute of enjoyment,” said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.

But they do not take into consideration the long-term economic effect — both in the maintenance and operational costs — of the devices they purchase. “A subscription model is the perfect drug,” Mr. McQuivey said. “People see $15 per month as a very low amount of money but it quickly adds up.” ...

Ms. Goodall says she dreads the day when her sons, 1 and 4, get bitten by the texting craze, as her 12-year-old nephew has.

“We’ll probably have to sign our sons up for cellphones even sooner than we’d like because we don’t have a home phone,” she said. “I’m not looking forward to dealing with that set of issues.”

Factually-Based, Secular Abstinence-Only Curriculum Found To Be Effective

Maybe "Abstinence-only programs work, study says" is changing minds. Mine included. The NY Times:

A study of middle-school students that found for the first time that abstinence-only education helped to delay their sexual initiation is already beginning to shake up the longstanding debate over how best to prevent teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

“This is a rigorous study that means we can now say that it’s possible for an abstinence-only intervention to be effective,” Dr. John B. Jemmott III, the University of Pennsylvania professor who led the study, said Tuesday, hours after results of the study were released. “That’s important, because for some populations, abstinence is the only acceptable message.”..

Dr. Jemmott’s research followed 662 African-American students at urban middle schools, who were paid $20 a session to attend the classes, plus follow-up and evaluation sessions. The abstinence-only classes covered HIV, abstinence and ways to resist the pressure to have sex ...

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, appears just as the Obama administration is eliminating federal financing for abstinence-only programs, and starting a pregnancy-prevention initiative that will finance programs that have been shown in scientific studies to be effective.

Recognizing the political sensitivity of the research, and how unexpected are its results, the journal ran an accompanying editorial cautioning that public policy should not be based on the results of a single study and that policy makers should not “selectively use scientific literature to formulate a policy that meets preconceived ideologies.”

“The results may be surprising to some in that the theory-based abstinence-only curriculum appeared to be as effective as a combined course and more effective than the safer-sex only curriculum in delaying sexual activity,” the editorial said. “None of the curricula had any effect on the prevalence of unprotected sexual intercourse or consistent condom use.”

The executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, Valerie Huber, said she hoped that the new study would lead to restored federal support for abstinence programs.

“The current recommendation before Congress in the 2011 budget zeroes out abstinence education, and puts all the money into broader comprehensive education,” Ms. Huber said. “I hope that either the White House amends their request or Congress acts upon this, reinstating abstinence education.”

Ms. Huber also said she found it especially interesting that African-Americans were the focus of Dr. Jemmott’s study since, she said, “our critics would contend that the abstinence message would be least effective with the most at-risk youth.”

Even longtime advocates of comprehensive sex education heralded the findings.

“This new study is game-changing,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, in a statement. “For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex and reduce their recent sexual activity as well. Importantly, the study also shows that this particular abstinence-only program did not reduce condom use among the young teens who did have sex.”

Ms. Brown noted that the abstinence-only classes in the Jemmott study centered on people with an average age of 12 and that unlike the federally supported abstinence programs now in use, did not advocate abstinence until marriage.

The classes also did not portray sex negatively or suggest that condoms are ineffective, and contained only medically accurate information. Dr. Jemmott’s abstinence-only course was designed for the research, and is not in current use in schools.

The New American "cult of selfishness ... the sour, us-first mood that’s settled over the country"

Gail Collins nails it. A must read column:

Last November, the Justice Department announced that the terror trial of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan. Almost everyone in New York rallied around. This was seen as standing up to terrorism.

“It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade Center, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Now everything’s flipped. The politicians are running for the hills, and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams.

“There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers and less disruptive,” said Bloomberg.

And the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere else. [see KSM Trial: If Not Manhattan, Where?] People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.

But this feels very wrong.

The Bloomberg rebellion fits right into the sour, us-first mood that’s settled over the country. It’s part of the same impulse that caused Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska to decree that a historic overhaul of the country’s messed-up health care system was not going to happen unless his home state got a special exemption from sharing the costs.

Or the Not-in-My-Backyard uprising that followed President Obama’s attempt to move the Guantánamo prisoners into American maximum-security lockups. No matter how remote the prison, local politicians said that the danger was too great to bear. Both of Montana’s Democratic senators immediately decreed that their entire state was a no-go zone.

Or the Republican race to the other side of the room any time the Obama administration proposes anything. Rudy Giuliani, who watched “in awe of our system” when terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was convicted in a civilian court in Virginia, instantly attacked the plans for the Manhattan trial. Giuliani kept finding everything Obama did worse and worse until he finally flipped completely over the edge and claimed that there had been no terrorist attacks in the United States during the Bush administration.

It’s all part of a cult of selfishness that decrees it’s fine to throw your body in front of any initiative, no matter how important, if resistance looks more profitable.

The economy has a lot to do with this. So does Washington’s increasing confidence that Barack Obama can be rolled. We’re currently stuck in a place where people no longer feel as though they need to be part of the solution.

2010: A Space Odyssey (cartoon)

 

The GOP's Stages Of Grief As They Come To Grips With Being "on the wrong side of history"

Charles Blow:

The attack on the Republican establishment by the tea party folks grabs the gaze like a really bad horror flick — some version of “Hee Haw” meets “28 Days Later.” It’s fascinating. But it also raises a serious question: Are these the desperate thrashings of a dying movement or the labor pains of a new one?

My money is on the former. Anyone who says that this is the dawn of a new age of conservatism is engaging in wishful thinking on a delusional scale.

There is no doubt that the number of people who say that they are conservative has inched up. According to a report from Gallup on Thursday, conservatives finished 2009 as the No. 1 ideological group. But ideological identification is no predictor of electoral outcomes. According to polls by The New York Times, conservative identification was slightly higher on the verge of Bill Clinton’s first-term election and Barack Obama’s election than it was on the verge of George W. Bush’s first-term election.

It is likely that Republicans will pick up Congressional seats in November partly because of the enthusiasm of this conservative fringe, democratic apathy and historical trends. But make no mistake: This is not 1994.

This is a limited, emotional reaction. It’s a response to the trauma that is the Great Recession, the uncertainty and creeping suspicion about the risks being taken in Washington, a visceral reaction to Obama and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness and loss.

Simply put, it’s about fear-fueled anger. But anger is not an idea. It’s not a plan. And it’s not a vision for the future. It is, however, the second stage of grief, right after denial and before bargaining.

The right is on the wrong side of history. The demographics of the country are rapidly changing, young people are becoming increasingly liberal on social issues, and rigid, dogmatic religious stricture is loosening its grip on the throat of our culture.

The right has seen the enemy, and he is the future.

According to a Gallup report issued this week, Republicans were more than twice as likely as Democrats and a third more likely as independents to have a pessimistic outlook for the country over the next 20 years. That might be the fourth stage of grief: depression.

So what’s their battle plan to fight back from the precipice of irrelevance? Moderation? A stab at modernity? A slate of innovative ideas? No, their plan is to purge the party’s moderates and march farther down the road to oblivion.

Erick Erickson, the incendiary editor of the popular conservative blog RedState, appeared on “The Colbert Report” on Monday and said that “no one really knows what a Republican is anymore.”

Split hairs about labels if you must, but the Republican brand already has begun a slow slide into obscurity. And turning further right only hastens its demise. Quiet as it’s kept, many in the party know this. That, alas, is called acceptance.

Another Short-Term Battle For Equality Is Lost, While The Long Term War Is Being Won

Before we get to the near term loss, here's another bit of evidence that in the long term, marriage equality, and equal civil rights for gays in general, is going to win out: the first ever gay sex scene on daytime TV, posted about by Emma Ruby-Sachs (and check out the favorable reaction on this soap opera forum):

ABC is not the most gay friendly station, but they have taken a big step forward: airing a sex scene between two male characters on the soap opera “One Life to Live.” The scene, romantic and adorable, is a pretty amazing break though.

But what I found really incredible is that one of the male actors is out of closet in real life. This means that “One Life to Live” actually showed a gay actor having gay sex on television. As many out actors can tell you, it’s one thing to play a homosexual and another to actually be a homosexual. How incredible that Scott Evans (Oliver) gets to do both.

So, for 2010 I have lots of wishes, many of them have nothing to do with television. But one is that I hope more LGBT media personalities see their sexuality celebrated instead of having it impede their professional progress. 

Here's the NY Times report of the defeat of the marriage equality bill in the New Jersey Senate:

The State Senate on Thursday rejected a proposal that would have made New Jersey the sixth state in the nation to allow marriages involving same-sex couples. The vote was the latest in a succession of setbacks for advocates of gay marriage across the country.

After months of intense lobbying and hours of emotional debate, lawmakers voted 20 to 14 against the bill, bringing tears from some advocates who packed the Senate chambers and rousing applause from opponents of the measure, who also came out in force. The vote ends the effort to win legislative approval of the measure, and sets the stage for a new battle before the New Jersey Supreme Court.

“We applaud the senators for upholding a time-tested institution: marriage,” said Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, which has argued that gay marriage would weaken the social fabric by redefining one of society’s bedrock institutions.

Supporters of gay marriage had hoped to win approval for the measure before Jan. 19, when Gov. Jon S. Corzine, who promised to sign it, will be replaced by Gov.-electChristopher J. Christie, who opposes it.

With the effort to win legislative approval now dead, supporters of same-sex marriagevowed to focus their efforts on the state’s highest court, which in 2006 ordered lawmakers to give same-sex couples the same rights as others whether or not they called such unions marriages. The Legislature responded by enacting a civil unions law, but gay-rights leaders say that the measure still leaves them subject to discrimination when applying for health insurance or trying to visit partners in hospitals, and that they will ask the court to grant them equal treatment ...

The defeat in New Jersey, which has widely been viewed as one of the nation’s most socially tolerant states, was a significant setback for advocates of gay marriage. Last month, a similar measure was defeated in New York’s Legislature, and in November voters in Maine repealed a gay-marriage law in a referendum.

But leaders of Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which has helped coordinate gay rights causes in New Jersey and elsewhere, said they said they were confident that the court would prove more receptive than the Legislature.

Kabuki Airport Security

I'm sorry, I just don't get the clamoring for full body scanners; they just seem way too ineffectual for the money:

1. We're going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on machines that may break laws against the production of pornographic images of children and thereby prevent anyone under 18 from being scanned. Certainly makes sense since there aren't any 17 year old terrorists out there.
2. Further, as The Lede reports, the machines are likely to blur out the places terrorists would hide bombs:

   Stephen Phipson, the president of Smiths Detection, a British company that makes scanning machines, sought to reassure readers of Time that his company’s machines could be set up to avoid picturing genitals, since “our software can blur out parts of the body.”

   Then again if the man who went through security in Amsterdam on Christmas day with explosives concealed in his underwear had encountered a full-body scanner that blurred out that part of his body, it seems fair to ask if he would have been caught or simply waved through to board his flight for Detroit.

3. Finally, no one, their manufacturers included, claim these machines can see a bomb in a body cavity or even under folds of fat.

So they're fantastically expensive machines that give the appearance of high-tech security but would still allow the Christmas bomber to board that Detroit flight and motivate terrorists to recruit children and fat people. They certainly seem iron clad to me.

And while we're pouring all this money into these ineffectual machines, half of all the cargo on commercial flights are not inspected at all. That's right, we're considering spending all this money on these problematic, ineffectual machines while not inspecting half of all the cargo sitting in the bellies of the same planes we've been full body scanned to sit in.

This is so stupid it can get us killed!

Here's the The Lede:

While a lot of attention has been paid in recent days to the need to find better ways to screen passengers and their luggage, as aviation security officials try to keep terrorists — or Slovak security officials — from smuggling explosives onto passenger jets, it remains an uncomfortable fact that entirely unscreened packages are still routinely loaded into the cargo holds of those same airplanes.

According to the Transportation Security Administration, it currently screens “at least 50 percent” of the packages loaded into the cargo holds of passenger jets alongside travelers’ suitcases. Last February, the security administration announced that it had “issued security directives to all air carriers requiring that they screen 50 per cent of cargo placed on passenger aircraft,” and was working to meet an August, 2010 deadline set by Congress in 2007 to ensure the screening of every package that flies on these planes.

The following month a report by the Government Accountability Office explained that “TSA’s approach relies on the voluntary participation of shippers and freight forwarders,” in a program where most of the screening is to be done by private companies at the locations where goods are loaded into boxes.

Last month, though, a follow-up report by the GAO noted that “TSA and the industry face a number of challenges including the voluntary nature of the program, and ensuring that approved technologies are effective with air cargo.” The GAO also noted that “TSA also does not expect to meet the mandated 100 percent screening deadline as it applies to air cargo transported into the U.S., in part due to existing screening exemptions for this type of cargo and challenges in harmonizing security standards with other nations.”

On Tuesday, Lauren Gaches, a press officer for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed to The Lede that passenger jets continue to fly with unscreened packages on board.

Yeah, It's Only A Mexican Problem (cartoon)

 

On Christmas Day, Amazon Sold More Kindles Than Physical Books

PCWorld:

Amazon's Kindle e-book reader hit a watershed moment on Christmas Day, when, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books. The company also claims the Kindle is the most gifted item in Amazon's history. These two facts were part of the online retailer's recently announced holiday sales activity.

But in typical Amazon style, the company did not provide any sales figures to back up its claims ... While it may sound impressive to say more e-books than paper books were sold on Christmas Day, I have to wonder about this claim. To me that sounds like claiming you're the most popular restaurant in town, when you have no competition for 20 miles. I'm sure lots of people found a Kindle under the tree this year, and many of them probably took their new toy for a spin online to see how it worked and ended up buying a book. But how many people out there were looking to buy a traditional book versus the volume of Kindle shoppers on Friday? I'm guessing not that many.

But Amazon's announcement about Christmas Day Kindle sales could be a sign of things to come. With other competitors like Barnes & Noble's Nook, Sony's e-reader line up and Plastic Logic's Que reader reportedly set to debut next month, we may see the e-book may take a bigger chunk out of traditional book sales by this time next year.

The Privacy vs. Security Debate

Two divergent comments left on Example Images From Full Body Scanners:

Tommy said...

I think the biggest invasion of privacy would be me and my belonging being scattered from 30,000 feet because somebody was ables to smuggle a bomb aboard the plane 04 January 2010 at 09:44 AM

Jack Bridges said...

I can't believe how Americans are so willing to trade away their freedom and privacy in the name of security. What's next? Implanting everybody with a microchip so we can always trace their location, all in the name of catching people who commit crimes? Or how about putting a recording device inside everyone's home, or training children to spy on parents, so we can catch potential terrorists?

Besides, full body imaging isn't a real solution. An explosive device implanted in the body or body cavity won't be detected by a scanner. Moreover, it could be extracated and exploded in flight or remotely exploded by a cell phone. And even if we drive the terrorists off the airlines, do we not think they will move to buildings, busses, stadia (the plural of stadium), and other crowded places?

Fighting terrorism is a real problem requiring serious solutions, such as exploring the root causes, increasing border security, swift and severe retribution, better tracking of nuclear materials, and intelligence. Of course, as long as people are willing to give up our freedom, what are we really defending? 04 January 2010 at 04:49 PM

And the view of a cartoonist who agrees with Tommy:

 

What do you think?

{11:30 Update} The NPR show On Point had a very interesting discussion on this topic. If you haven't heard it, you can listen here.

Is The Death Penalty On A Long, Slow Road To Oblivion?

Adam Liptak:

Last fall, the American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it.

There were other important death penalty developments last year: the number of death sentences continued to fall, Ohio switched to a single chemical for lethal injections and New Mexico repealed its death penalty entirely. But not one of them was as significant as the institute’s move, which represents a tectonic shift in legal theory.

“The A.L.I. is important on a lot of topics,” said Franklin E. Zimring, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “They were absolutely singular on this topic” — capital punishment — “because they were the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States.”

The institute is made up of about 4,000 judges, lawyers and law professors. It synthesizes and shapes the law in restatements and model codes that provide structure and coherence in a federal legal system that might otherwise consist of 50 different approaches to everything.

In 1962, as part of the Model Penal Code, the institute created the modern framework for the death penalty, one the Supreme Court largely adopted when it reinstituted capital punishment in Gregg v. Georgia in 1976. Several justices cited the standards the institute had developed as a model to be emulated by the states.

The institute’s recent decision to abandon the field was a compromise. Some members had asked the institute to take a stand against the death penalty as such. That effort failed.

Instead, the institute voted in October to disavow the structure it had created “in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.”

That last sentence contains some pretty dense lawyer talk, but it can be untangled. What the institute was saying is that the capital justice system in the United States is irretrievably broken.

A study commissioned by the institute said that decades of experience had proved that the system could not reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. It added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections.

Roger S. Clark, who teaches at the Rutgers School of Law in Camden, N.J., and was one of the leaders of the movement to have the institute condemn the death penalty outright, said he was satisfied with the compromise. “Capital punishment is going to be around for a while,” Professor Clark said. “What this does is pull the plug on the whole intellectual underpinnings for it.”

Example Images From Full Body Scanners

Which is more intrusive, some TSA official you can't see looking at images like this or a TSA official right in front of you putting their hands all over your body? It's not clear to me which is the bigger invasion of privacy. Is it to you?

 

Learn how these full-body scanners work.

"Scientists are poorly equipped ... to respond when science comes under attack"

Whether it's the hacked climate emails or evolution, as discussed in this Wash Post article, or mammogram recommendations and vaccine phobia as posted often in A Blue View (for instance, here, here and here), it is clear that scientists need to become better, more effective advocates when they are in the public square.

The battle over the science of global warming has long been a street fight between mainstream researchers and skeptics. But never have the scientists received such a deep wound as when, in late November, a large trove of e-mails and documents stolen from the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia were released onto the Web.

In the ensuing "Climategate" scandal, scientists were accused of withholding information, suppressing dissent, manipulating data and more. But while the controversy has receded, it may have done lasting damage to science's reputation: Last month, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 40 percent of Americans distrust what scientists say about the environment, a considerable increase from April 2007. Meanwhile, public belief in the science of global warming is in decline.

The central lesson of Climategate is not that climate science is corrupt. The leaked e-mails do nothing to disprove the scientific consensus on global warming. Instead, the controversy highlights that in a world of blogs, cable news and talk radio, scientists are poorly equipped to communicate their knowledge and, especially, to respond when science comes under attack.

A few scientists answered the Climategate charges almost instantly. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University, whose e-mails were among those made public, made a number of television and radio appearances. A blog to which Mann contributes, RealClimate.org, also launched a quick response showing that the e-mails had been taken out of context. But they were largely alone. "I haven't had all that many other scientists helping in that effort," Mann told me recently.

This isn't a new problem. As far back as the late 1990s, before the news cycle hit such a frenetic pace, some science officials were lamenting that scientists had never been trained in how to talk to the public and were therefore hesitant to face the media.

"For 45 years or so, we didn't suggest that it was very important," Neal Lane, a former Clinton administration science adviser and Rice University physicist, told the authors of a landmark 1997 report on the gap between scientists and journalists. ". . . In fact, we said quite the other thing."

The scientist's job description had long been to conduct research and to teach, Lane noted; conveying findings to the public was largely left to science journalists. Unfortunately, despite a few innovations, that broad reality hasn't changed much in the past decade.

Scientific training continues to turn out researchers who speak in careful nuances and with many caveats, in a language aimed at their peers, not at the media or the public. Many scientists can scarcely contemplate framing a simple media message for maximum impact; the very idea sounds unbecoming. And many of them don't trust the public or the press: According to a recent Pew study, 85 percent of U.S. scientists say it's a "major problem" that the public doesn't know much about science, and 76 percent say the same about what they see as the media's inability to distinguish between well-supported science and less-than-scientific claims. Rather than spurring greater efforts at communication, such mistrust and resignation have further motivated some scientists to avoid talking to reporters and going on television.

They no longer have that luxury. After all, global-warming skeptics suffer no such compunctions. What's more, amid the current upheaval in the media industry, the traditional science journalists who have long sought to bridge the gap between scientists and the public are losing their jobs en masse. As New York Times science writer Natalie Angier recently observed, her profession is "basically going out of existence." If scientists don't take a central communications role, nobody else with the same expertise and credibility will do it for them.

Meanwhile, the task of translating science for the public is ever more difficult: Information sources are multiplying, partisan news outlets are replacing more objective media, and the news cycle is spinning ever faster ...

Passing Of A Year & A Decade (cartoons)

Coming To A Bookstore In The Not Too Distant Future (cartoon)

 

Are America and Europe Really All That Different? Slide 1

Peter Baldwin of TNR has put together a very intriguing slide show that helps debunk the America is from Mars, Europe is from Venus myth by showing that on some very key measures (market regulation, public education, social policy, health care, crime, and the environment) we are very much alike.

Slide 1 (to see the others, copy "Are America and Europe Really All That Different?" and paste it into A Blue View's search box at the top right):

Inequality and poverty. Because of America's reputation for no-holds-barred capitalism, it is often assumed that the country's poverty and inequality problems are worse than in "post-capitalist" Europe. This is only partly correct. America is indeed more economically stratified than most European nations, although some countries, including Switzerland and Sweden, have allowed an equal or larger proportion of wealth to fall into the hands of the richest than is the case in the United States.

Yet inequality and poverty are not the same thing. If we want to have a sense of how many people are actually having a hard time making ends meet, rather than just how many have proportionately less than the affluent within their own country, then we will want to look also at absolute poverty. If we measure poverty as the equivalent--including cash and other benefits--of 60 percent of the median income for the original six nations of the EU in 2000, this is what we get. Many Western European countries have a higher percentage of poor citizens than the United States--not only the Mediterranean countries, but also the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland, and Sweden. These and all other figures are intentionally rendered in comparable terms, usually Purchasing Power Parity, so that cost-of- living differences are factored out.

Are America and Europe Really All That Different? Slide 2

Peter Baldwin of TNR has put together a very intriguing slide show that helps debunk the America is from Mars, Europe is from Venus myth by showing that on some very key measures (market regulation, public education, social policy, health care, crime, and the environment) we are very much alike.

Slide 2 (to see the others, copy "Are America and Europe Really All That Different?" and paste it into A Blue View's search box at the top right):

Automobile use. Despite the perception that America is a hyper-motorized nation, its citizens own fewer passenger cars per head than many Europeans. And even if one includes the figures for all road motor vehicles (to account for American drivers’ use of SUVs and light trucks), the U.S. figures are lower than Portugal's and in the same league as Luxembourg's, Iceland's, and Italy's.

What's more, contrary to what is commonly supposed, the United States has a well-developed rail system. True, Americans do not themselves travel on this extensive rail network. But it does transport the country's freight, and at a rate over three times the highest found in any European country (Sweden). Ecologically speaking, there's no advantage in sending passengers by rail if freight is sent by road, and all European countries send more goods by truck than by rail. The upshot is that the number of trucks per capita is lower in America than anywhere in Europe--one-third, for example, of the Norwegian, French, or Austrian levels--so the European virtue of taking the train is offset by the fact that their dishwashers, turnips, and cornflakes are being driven around on the road.

Are America and Europe Really All That Different? Slide 3

Peter Baldwin of TNR has put together a very intriguing slide show that helps debunk the America is from Mars, Europe is from Venus myth by showing that on some very key measures (market regulation, public education, social policy, health care, crime, and the environment) we are very much alike.

Slide 3 (to see the others, copy "Are America and Europe Really All That Different?" and paste it into A Blue View's search box at the top right):

Social welfare. Everyone has heard that America's welfare state is minimal and paltry compared to those found in Europe. And it is, if the standard is taken to be Sweden or Germany. But compared with the span of social policy within Europe as a whole, by most measures, the United States fits comfortably into the lower half of the European spectrum, alongside Italy, Switzerland, Ireland, and the Netherlands.

Of course, when you tally public social spending by measuring monies channeled through the state, America appears at the low end of the European spectrum. That makes sense, because the United States has no universal system of health insurance, nor does it have family allowances, as Europeans do. But other avenues of redistribution are equally important: voluntary efforts, private but legally mandated benefits, and tax-based social benefits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit. If we take all these together, the American welfare state is more extensive than is often realized. The total social-policy effort made in the United States falls precisely at the center of the European spectrum. The Swedes allot almost twice the fraction of GDP that Americans allocate to social policy, but the actual spending per citizen in the United States is only about 30 percent less than in Sweden.

Are America and Europe Really All That Different? Slide 4

Peter Baldwin of TNR has put together a very intriguing slide show that helps debunk the America is from Mars, Europe is from Venus myth by showing that on some very key measures (market regulation, public education, social policy, health care, crime, and the environment) we are very much alike.

Slide 4 (to see the others, copy "Are America and Europe Really All That Different?" and paste it into A Blue View's search box at the top right):

Crime. It is true that a horrendous number of murders take place in the United States, almost twice the per-capita rate of the nearest European competitors, Switzerland, Finland, and Sweden. It's also true that the United States locks in prison a far higher percentage of its population than any of its peers. But, in most other respects, America is a peaceful and quiet place by European standards.

The percentage of the population victimized by property crime, for example, is lower than in the UK and Italy. For assault, the rate is in the middle of the European pack. Drug use in the United States is also well within the European scale; opiate abuse is at the center of the European spectrum, as is the rate of white-collar crimes such as fraud. When it comes to the fraction of the population victimized by all forms of crime, the United States figures in the bottom half of the European scale. In other words, the contrast across the Atlantic is not as great as one might think.

Are America and Europe Really All That Different? Slide 5

Peter Baldwin of TNR has put together a very intriguing slide show that helps debunk the America is from Mars, Europe is from Venus myth by showing that on some very key measures (market regulation, public education, social policy, health care, crime, and the environment) we are very much alike.

Slide 5 (to see the others, copy "Are America and Europe Really All That Different?" and paste it into A Blue View's search box at the top right):

Reading and thinking. Simone de Beauvoir was convinced that "in America … no one needs to read because no one thinks." Thinking, of course, is hard to quantify--and there's no accounting for some parts of New Jersey--but Americans certainly do read. The percentage of illiterate Americans is average by European standards. There are more newspapers per head in the United States than anywhere in Europe outside Scandinavia, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Due to the longstanding tradition of well-funded public libraries in this country, the average American reader is better supplied with library books than her European peers, everywhere outside of Scandinavia and a few other small nations. Americans also make better use of this reading material: The average U.S. citizen borrowed more library books in 2001 than most of her European peers. What's more, Americans write--or at least publish--more books per capita than most Europeans, and they buy more books per head than any Europeans for whom we have numbers.

"The Must-Have Hi-Tech Gift of the Future" (cartoon)

 

22% Of Americans Are Not Christian: An All-Time High

Gallup:

This Christmas season, 78% of Americans identify with some form of Christian religion, a proportion that has been declining in recent decades. The major reason for this decline has been an increase in the percentage of Americans claiming no religious identity, now at 13% of all adults.

The trend results are based on annual averages of Gallup's religious identity data in America that stretch back over 60 years. One of the most significant trends documented during this period is the substantial increase in the percentage of American adults who don't identify with any specific religion. In 1948, only 2% of Americans did not identify with a religion. That percentage began to rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Eleven years ago, in 1998, 6% of Americans did not identify with a religion, a number that rose to 10% by 2002. This year's average of 13% of Americans who claim no religious identity is the highest in Gallup records.

The percentage of Americans who identify as Catholic, Protestant, or some other non-Catholic Christian faith has been concomitantly decreasing over the years. This suggests that one of the major patterns of religious transition in America in recent decades has been the shift from identification as Christian to the status of having no specific religious identification.

In 1948, 91% of Americans identified with a Christian faith. Twenty years ago, in 1989, 82% of Americans identified as Christian. Ten years ago, it was 84%. This year, as noted, 78% of all American adults identify with a Christian faith.

There has also been a slight increase in the percentage of Americans who identify with a religion that is not specifically classified as Christian. Sixty years ago, for example, 4% of Americans identified with a non-Christian religion. By 1989, 9% of Americans were in this non-Christian religion category, the same percentage as today.

Does the decrease in religious identity signify that religion is losing its importance for Americans? There was a substantial drop in the percentage of Americans who said religion was "very important" in their lives between the 1960s and the 1970s -- from 70% in 1965 to 52% by 1978 -- but in recent decades, this "very important" percentage has remained relatively steady. The overall figure today -- 56% -- is slightly higher than it was 31 years ago.

There has been a slight tendency over the years for Americans to shift from a "fairly important" category to the "not very important" category in answer to this religious importance question. The percentage saying religion is not very important in their lives was routinely in the 12% to 15% range from 1978 through the early years of this decade. In more recent years, this percentage has drifted slightly upward, and is at 19% this year ...

Although a little more than one out of five Americans do not identify with a Christian faith, the Christmas season has ramifications for a broader segment of society. A Gallup survey conducted last year showed that 93% of all American adults said they celebrated Christmas.

Airports Tigten Security (cartoon)

 

The Unemployment Line After Xmas (cartoon)

 

American Muslims React To 5 Youths Arrested In Pakistan

Wash Post:

Five college-age Northern Virginia men were arrested in Pakistan this month after allegedly being recruited over the Internet to join al-Qaeda, and many Washington area Muslims are questioning whether condemnation is enough ...

Since Sept. 11, 2001, as American Muslims have seen repeated arrests of young European Muslims on terrorism charges, many in this country came to believe that the stronger integration of young American Muslims in the United States would help immunize them against the disaffection that leads to extremism. Magid said he has met in recent years with other Muslim leaders to talk about social networking to counter radicalism in Europe, "but we never thought about it for here."

Now, Magid said, "I have to be a virtual imam," meaning that Muslim groups need a larger and more effective online presence. Referring to extremists, he said: "Twenty-four hours, they're available. I want to be able to respond to that."

Until now, many Muslim leaders have focused on what they considered external threats to young people, such as Islamophobia or the temptations of modern, secular life. Now they say it is time to look inward, to provide a counterweight to those who misinterpret Koranic verses to promote violence -- and to learn what rhetoric and methods appeal to young people.

Radicals "seem to understand our youth better than we do," said Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. "They use hip-hop elements for some who relate to that." Bray said "seductive videos" gradually lure young people, building outrage over atrocities committed against Muslims. Extremist videos "play to what we call in the Muslim youth community 'jihad cool' -- a kind of machismo that this is the hip thing to do."

For some, a new approach cannot come too soon. Zaki Barzinji, 20, a Sterling native and former president of Muslim Youth of North America, said mosques are "sort of in the Stone Age when it comes to outreach. Their youth programs are not attractive, not engaging . . . . They're shooting in the dark because it's always adults who are planning this outreach."

Nor is the threat limited to the Internet, Barzinji said, adding that groups of "traveling Muslim proselytizers" sometimes appear at Virginia Tech, where he is a senior, often attracting foreign students, who tend to be more socially isolated.

The Most Important Benefits Of Health Care Reform: Coverage For 31 Million, Peace Of Mind For 160 Million

The Wash Post offers a broad, graphic look at the likely final result:

While the important headline news in both bills are the 31 million Americans who will finally get health insurance, the NY Times focuses in on changes for the 160 million Americans who are already covered through their employers.

For these 160 million, the primary advantage turns out to be peace of mind. Which, after all, is the reason most people buy insurance: to know you're covered if something unlikely occurs (e.g., your house burns down, you lose your job (& therefore your health insurance) or you get sick and need millions of dollars of health care).

For many people, the result of the long, angry health care debate in Washington may be little more than more of the same.

As President Obama once promised, “If you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan.”

That may be true even if you don’t like your health plan. And no one seems to agree on whether the legislation will do much to reduce workers’ continually rising out-of-pocket costs.

True, there is an important advantage for the working insured: more peace of mind for people who are worried about being laid off or would like to change jobs.

There are still many gaps to bridge between the House and Senate bills. But even before the House-Senate negotiations begin in January, both bills offer this assurance: If you lose your job or move to one that does not provide benefits, there should be better alternatives when shopping for your own coverage.

And both the House and Senate bills share the same basic goal of placing new rules on insurers so that even someone with a pre-existing medical condition, or a few years to go before qualifying for Medicare, should have a much easier time finding a relatively affordable policy.

The legislation should give most working people “the guarantee of security if their circumstances change,” said Karen Davis, the president of the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group that has studied the House and Senate bills.

Of course, with more security will come more obligation. Congress seems likely to impose an individual mandate that will require people to be insured or face a financial penalty.

The other proposed changes for employer-provided coverage seem aimed mainly at workers whose benefits are either very generous or exceedingly skimpy.

On the generous end, about a fifth of employers now offer health plans that could be affected by a new 40 percent excise tax in the Senate bill on so-called Cadillac policies, according to an estimate by Mercer, a benefits consulting firm. That tax, to be imposed on annual premiums that exceeded $23,000 for family coverage, would go into effect in 2013. For example, if an insurer, or a self-insured employer, offers a plan costing $25,000, it must pay a 40 percent tax on the $2,000 that is above the threshold, or $800 ...

Congress also seems intent on establishing some minimum insurance standards so people with coverage could not end up with large piles of unpaid medical bills anyway. Both the House and Senate bills contain measures meant to eliminate lifetime maximum limits on coverage, for example.

But that might end up affecting relatively few people. Many plans limit how much they will pay out over a lifetime, but the ceilings are generally so high that the vast majority of people never hit them, according to a new study that used existing coverage for workers in California to compare the House and Senate proposals.

The “impact of this change will be minimal on most employers, but would be quite meaningful for the small number of employees who meet the limits,” according to the study, conducted by policy analysts from the University of California, Berkeley, the benefits consultant Watson Wyatt Worldwide and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Congress is also considering annual limits on out-of-pocket medical costs. The House seems to think $5,000 is as much as somebody should pay in medical bills, while the Senate has picked a figure closer to $6,000.

Under the Senate proposal, the new limits would not apply to self-insured employers — big companies that provide their own insurance and have enough employees to effectively spread the risk of paying any large claims.

Congress is also considering other minimum standards for insurance, like setting a baseline level of coverage for plans.

Christmas At ... (cartoons)

Michael Steele's house:

 

Tiger Woods' house:

 

Every American's house:

Merry Christmas vs. Happy Holidays (cartoon)

 

Senate Bill "most significant piece of social legislation since the 1960s." A "massive, progressive income transfer to the working poor."

Joe Klein:

As regular readers know, I'm deeply skeptical about the polling of complicated issues like health care...but it is interesting to note that, according to CNN [see related: CNN Poll: Support Jumps For Obama & Health Care Bill], support for health care reform is up, especially among Democrats. This may or may not have something to say about the impact of left-wing bloggers and Deaniacs trying to scuttle the bill--i.e., their impact is minimal. Oh, they can raise some money, and eyebrows, but when they call themselves the Democratic party's "base," they're being excessively optimistic. They are, if anything, the wing not the base.

And given the reactionary arguments against a bill that is a massive transfer of wealth--via subsidies--toward the working poor, I'd be reluctant to call these people "progressives" as well--progressivity, strictly defined, being the notion that rich should pay a higher tax rate than the poor.

ps--Obama is up six points in the poll as well, from his previous low of 48% approval to 54%. This is an excellent showing for a President taking on some of the hardest, most controversial issues in American life.

Netroots, meet your allies: For Pete Wehner, master of short-term, right-wing conventional wisdom, the sky is always falling.

And furthermore: Over at Huffpost, Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago, has this on the massive, progressive income transfer to the working poor that this bill represents:

Fully implemented, the bill would provide about $200 billion per year down the income scale in subsidies to poor, near-poor, and working Americans.

$200 billion is a big number. It exceeds the combined total of federal spending on Food Stamps and all nutrition assistance programs, the Earned Income Tax Credit, Head Start, TANF cash payments to single mothers and their children, the Department of Housing and Urban Development*, and the National Institutes of Health.

More than that, this bill codifies the responsibility of the federal government to ensure decent and affordable health coverage is available to every American. The Senate bill does not yet live up to this responsibility in every particular. Still, by almost any measure this is a historic expansion in the humanity and the ambition of American government. Paul Krugman, Jonathan Cohn, Jacob Hacker, Ezra Klein, and Paul Starr disagree about many things. Not about this. Almost everyone I know with expertise in health policy, public health, and the politics of health care believes as I do: we just have to pass this bill.

And while the bill would also provide the insurance companies 30 million new customers, it would saddle them with a strict regulatory regime: they would have to provide coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions and within prescribed community-rating bands (which would fiercely limit their ability to overcharge the middle-aged)--and that is why the insurance companies have been spending tens of millions of dollars in advertising to kill it.

This is not perfect, but it is progress...it is, in fact, the most significant piece of social legislation since the 1960s. Those who oppose it from the left are measuring it against unattainable fantasies; or they are making false charges, claiming that the working poor would be offered "junk" insurance. I find their opposition mind-boggling and myopic; it empowers the Wehners, Boehners and Coburns of the world.

Life in N.Y.C. (cartoon)

 

Spending Time Together Over The Holidays, 2009

 

A Perfect Way To Kill Your Kids When They Sneak Into Your Bedroom At Night

New NBC Poll: Tea Party Tops Democrats And Republicans

The same poll posted about in "For Democrats, the red flags are flying at full mast", also found this (as reported by the Wall St Journal):

The loosely organized group made of up mostly conservative activists and independent voters that’s come to be known as the Tea Party movement currently boasts higher favorability ratings than either the Democratic or Republican Parties, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll coming out later today.

More than four in 10, 41%, of respondents said they had a very or somewhat favorable view of the Tea Party movement, while 24% said they had a somewhat or very negative view of the group. The Tea Party movement gained notoriety over the summer following a series of protests in Washington, D.C. and other cities over government spending and other U.S. economic policies.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party, which controls both the White House and Congress, has a 35% positive rating compared with a 45% negative rating.

The Republican Party identifies closest to the Tea Party movement’s ideology, but the group has also caused splits within the GOP. Republicans currently hold a 28% favorability rating compared with a 43% negative one.

Banker Rage (cartoon)