The Wonk Room

Recesssion-Inspired Slowdown In Health Spending Bolsters Case For Health Care Reform

Recession 2008A new report from the Center on Medicare and Medicaid Studies (CMS) finds that the economic recession has accomplished what generations of lawmakers have only dreamed of — slowing the growth of national health expenditures. As Americans lose their jobs and employer-sponsored health care coverage, thousands are turning to government-run health care programs like Medicaid or (if they can afford it) the extended COBRA coverage. Others simply forgo needed treatments, prescriptions and doctor visits. “The data show a slowdown in health spending across the board — but at the same time, a shift in the composition of spending, including from private to public access,” the report found:

Amid one of the worst economic recession in recent history, U.S. health spending grew 4.4 percent in 2008, its slowest rate in nearly 50 years. However, overall health spending, which reached $2.3 trillion in 2008 — $7,681 per person — still increased faster than the overall economy…Health spending constituted 16.2 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), increasing from 15.9 percent the year before.

In other words, health care costs are decreasing for all the wrong reasons. After all, this dip in spending did not result from some shrewd new efficiency measures or payment reform mechanisms. Policy makers have not implemented reforms that decreased the utilization of unnecessary (and in many cases harmful) care or reduced fraud and waste from the system. Rather, Americans are spending less on health care because they have less money to spend overall. Health expenditures are still increasing faster than the overall economy and are projected to reach 25% by 2025 — an unsustainable percentage of spending that would leave some 50 million Americans uninsured and millions more underinsured.

The report signifies the importance of adequately funding public programs, offering uninsured Americans more affordable coverage, and improving the efficiency of health care delivery. As Jeanne Lambrew – Director, HHS Office of Health Reform — has pointed out in Congressional testimony, public programs “fill certain cracks in the system.” “Altogether, these programs insure over one-fourth of the population and finance 45 percent of the health system, including the safety net programs that directly pay for services for vulnerable populations.” The Senate bill would strengthen public health, increase coverage, and bring down health care costs by eliminating waste, investing in payment reform, and tackling overtreatment (hopefully offsetting the increases in utilization of the newly insured). It would start to bend the cost curve over the long term by transforming the system, not pricing millions out of coverage.

The most conservative government estimates conclude that the Senate health bill would reduce national health care expenditures by at least 0.3% by 2019. Had the nation adopted comprehensive reform earlier, today’s national expenditures would be even lower. A recent report from the Commonwealth Fund, for instance, points out that “If President Nixon’s health reform plans had been enacted in 1975 and slowed the annual rate of spending by 1.5 percentage points a year, today we would be spending 10.7 percent of GDP on health care….Even if Nixon reforms had slowed spending growth by “only” 1 percentage point a year, health spending as a percent of GDP would have been $1.9 trillion in 2010, or 12.7 percent of GDP—a savings of 5 percent of GDP.” Similarly, “Even if we had acted as late as 1995 under President Clinton, health spending in 2010 would be $2.1 trillion, or 14.2 percent of GDP.”




Right-Wing Devises ‘Grown-Up’ Deficit Commission That Can’t Consider Taxes

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC)

In the last few months, a bunch of self-styled “deficit hawks” — led by Sens. Judd Gregg (R-NH) and Kent Conrad (D-ND) — began pushing for the creation of a bipartisan deficit commission. The commission would, in theory, tackle the country’s budget problems by crafting a package of spending cuts and tax increases that would face an up or down vote in Congress. President Obama is reportedly “seriously considering” support for the creation of such a commission.

As many have aptly noted, far from being the solution to our budgetary problems, the commission merely sets more veto points into an already dysfunctional legislative process. (Just getting past the commission stage would require 14 of the 18 commission members approving the recommendations.)

But some conservatives have seized on the commission idea and crafted an even more ridiculous proposal: the creation of a commission that will attempt to control deficits while being explicitly barred from considering any sort of tax increase. Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) is leading the charge:

We must address unsustainable deficit and entitlement spending, but not at the expense of economic growth,” said Congressman McHenry. “Raising taxes is not the answer. This bill takes a decisive step toward true structural reform to ensure that future generations are not saddled with crippling levels of debt. Thus far, Congress has shown itself incapable of making these hard choices; it’s become clear that an outside commission is necessary.

Anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist has an op-ed in the Washington Times today in which he praised McHenry for having a “grown-up idea – set up a commission that recommends spending reduction – and no tax hikes.”

But how, exactly, does taking taxes off the table from the outset represent a “grown-up” way to make “hard choices”? The whole premise behind a commission is that it will be empowered to make politically unpalatable suggestions (like raise taxes) that Congress wouldn’t normally touch. McHenry’s plan follows the same line of thinking that Rep. Dan Lungren (R-CA) employed when he said that California’s Proposition 13 — which is in large part responsible for that state’s budget misery — should be a “guiding light” for the nation.

Getting deficits under control on the spending side alone is economically impossible. Exempting interest on the debt, Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending (which Republicans never agree to cut), “the rest of the budget needs to be cut by 51 percent to have a balanced budget in 2014.” So the numbers just don’t add up. Of course, from the outline of McHenry’s plan, it’s pretty clear that gutting those entitlement programs is his ultimate goal, as they are the only things that he cites as needing reform.

As Paul Krugman said, “it’s not really hard to give the economic numbers” that would bring deficits in line, but “all of this hinges on being able to actually talk about tax increases, even modest ones, without it being political suicide.” McHenry shows just how unserious — dare I say, child-like — the right’s approach to this issue really is.




The Fight Over The Nuclear Posture Review

b-52The Congressionally mandated Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) will be a crucial test of President Obama’s commitment to reducing nuclear weapons. The NPR will lay out a new US nuclear strategy and should set the stage for future budgetary decisions regarding the nuclear force. In other words, there is a lot of money on the line in this document, which means there will be a ton of resistance to change, especially from inside the Pentagon.

The LA Times lays out the state of play in the on going bureaucratic fight between the White House and the Pentagon:

Officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere have pushed back against Obama administration proposals to cut the number of weapons and narrow their mission, according to U.S. officials and outsiders who have been briefed on the process. In turn, White House officials, unhappy with early Pentagon-led drafts of the blueprint known as the Nuclear Posture Review, have stepped up their involvement in the deliberations and ordered that the document reflect Obama’s preference for sweeping change.

The stakes are high. An NPR that fails to put in place the steps for future reductions in US nuclear forces, will greatly undermine Obama’s credibility and therefore the global nuclear non-proliferation agenda. To put it bluntly, if you can’t even get your own government which you control to follow your lead, you won’t be able to lead globally.

It is no surprise that initial drafts out of the Pentagon were anything but ambitious and that the White House is having to get directly involved in pushing back. The Pentagon’s bureaucracy instinctively opposes anything that would force it to change and a far reaching NPR could require significant modifications in force structure, such as to the Air Force’s nuclear bomber force. In the opening of his piece on the NPR, Bryan Bender of the Boston Globe colorfully captured how stuck in its ways the Pentagon remains, despite tectonic shifts in the global landscape.

After an hour-long ride down a nearly deserted highway covered in ice and snow, the two young officers arrive for their shift at this highly secure outpost deep in the northern Rockies. Air Force Captain Chris Ferrer and Lieutenant Moses George, carrying a bulky orange briefcase of secret codes, descend some 75 feet underground to a capsule protected by a 4-foot-thick door of steel and concrete. They will spend the next 24 hours ready to receive a presidential command to launch dozens of nuclear missiles from silos buried across north-central Montana. It is a routine that is virtually unchanged from the 1960s. The targets, most of them in Russia, also remain largely unchanged from the Cold War.

What a gigantic waste of time and money. Nearly 20 years after the end of the Cold War, we spend billions of dollars and divert the energies of numerous military personnel to the task of preparing for a nuclear war against an adversary that no longer exists. Yet no matter how asinine and outdated the Pentagon’s approach is, getting them to move beyond the Cold War and into the 21st century is the first big hurdle Obama will confront in his efforts to combat nuclear proliferation.




REPORT: Attorney Generals Challenging Constitutionality Of Health Reform Awash In Cash From Health Industry

Campaign ContributionsSince Democrats secured 60 votes to pass health care reform legislation — and passage became inevitable — prominent conservatives relaunched an under-the-radar campaign to invalidate reform through the legal system. On the eve of the final health care vote in the Senate, Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and John Ensign (R-NV) invoked a “constitutional point of order” to allow the Senate to rule by majority vote on whether the “Democrat health care takeover bill” is unconstitutional.” Legislatures in approximately 14 states — organized by the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], a “business-friendly conservative group that coordinates activity among statehouses — have also introduced initiatives to ratify constitutional amendments that would repeal all or parts of the pending health care reform legislation and Attorney Generals in at least 13 states are challenging a deal secured by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) to fund Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion for perpetuity.

Yesterday, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), (along with two co-authors from the Family Research Council and the American Civil Union) penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal explaining “Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional.” “The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional,” they wrote, and went on to challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate, the so-called sweet heart deal for Nebraska, and the requirements for states to establish health insurance exchanges and insurance regulations.

The effort may prove a strong political recruitment tool for conservative activists, but the legal reasoning has little support beyond the right edge of the Republican party — and the health care industry. Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported that “The states where the [constitutional] amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions.” The industry has also contributed heavily to the campaigns of at least 7 of the 13 attorney generals threatening to sue the federal government over the Nebraska provision. (Campaign finance data was not readily accessible for the other 6 attorneys generals.)

An analysis conducted by the Wonk Room of available campaign finance disclosures for AGs from South Carolina, Washington, Michigan, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Utah and Idaho reveals that the health industry contributed heavily to their campaigns:

South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster ~ $15,000
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina: $3,500
- Columbia Clinic: $3,500
- SC Healthcare PAC: $3,500
- Commander Health: $2,500
- Medco Health Solutions: $1,000
- Skylyn Medical Associates PAC: $1,000
- Bayer: $500

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna ~ $24,645
- GlaxoSmithCline: $3,200
- Johnson & Johnson: $3,095
- Bristol-Myers Squibb: $3,000
- Premera Blue Cross: $2,800
- Eli Lilly: $2,400
- Amgen: $1,600
- Regence Blue Shield: $1,600
- Wyeth: $1,600
- Pfizer: $1,250
- PHRMA: $1,100
- Astrazeneca: $1,500
- MedcoHealth Solutions: $1,000
- Bayer: $500

Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox ~ $12,600
- Pfizer Michigan PAC: $6,100
- Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan: $3,000
- Aetna PAC: $2,500
- United Health Group Inc PAC: $1,000

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem ~ $20,700
- Pfizer PAC: $10,000
- GlaxoSmithKline PAC: $4,000
- Purdue Pharmacy Pac: $2,650
- Medco Health PAC: $1,750
- Eli Lilly PAC: $1,000
- Merck PAC: $1,000
- Johnson & Johnson PAC: $300

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett ~ $24,300
- Pfizer PAC: $10,300
- Eli Lilly and Company PAC: $5,000
- Aetna Inc. PAC: $3,500
- United Health Group Inc: $2,500
- Blue Cross Voice PAC: $2,000
- Merck PAC: $500
- Cigna Corporation PAC: $500

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff ~ $9,500
- Selecthealth: $5,000
- Pfizer PAC: $2,500
- Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah: $2,000

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden ~ $10,100
- PHRMA: $4,500
- Idaho Life and Health Industry: $3,250
- Caremark RX: $1000
- Regence Blue Shield: $500
- Pfizer: $450
- Blue Cross of Idaho: $400




The WonkLine: January 5, 2010

Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.

AP090318022051

 

Immigration

The Census Bureau plans on counting indigenous immigrants from Latin America for the first time by tabulating handwritten entries specifying that the respondent belongs to a Latin American indigenous group such Maya, Nahua, Mixtec, or Purepecha.

White House strategists told the Los Angeles Times that if Obama shows “relentless attention to jobs” during the beginning of the year, “he’ll gain maneuvering room to address an immigration overhaul and other issues.”

Chicken producer Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. agreed to pay the government agreed to pay $4.5 million and “improve how it screens prospective employees” in order to avoid a federal immigration probe and probable prosecution.

Health Care

A new government report finds that “U.S. health spending grew 4.4 percent in 2008, its slowest rate in nearly 50 years.” Overall health spending, which reached $2.3 trillion in 2008 — $7,681 per person — still increased faster than the overall economy.

“The four relevant House chairmen will meet with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team at 1 o’clock in the speaker’s Capitol office to start setting the parameters” for negotiating the final health care bill with the Senate. “Then, Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) will head to the White House for an early-evening meeting with President Obama to discuss the final bill, according to Democratic officials.”

The House has released a list of key conference priorities.


Climate Change

“Australia has sweltered through its hottest decade on record, officials said Tuesday, linking a rise in heatwaves, drought, dust storms and extreme wildfires with global warming.”

“Climate change scepticism is likely to surge in 2010 and could exacerbate ‘hardship’ for the planet’s poorest people,” according to Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The New York Times reports that “the nation’s top scientists and spies are collaborating on an effort to use the federal government’s intelligence assets — including spy satellites and other classified sensors — to assess the hidden complexities of environmental change.”

Economy

According to the National Bankruptcy Research Center, 1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy last year, up 32 percent from 2008, “a surge largely driven by foreclosures and job losses.”

The chairman of New Jersey’s pension fund estimates that the US public pension system faces a shortfall of more than $2 trillion “that will increase pressure on many states’ strained finances and crimp economic growth.”

The New York Times examines how Visa dominates the debit card market by increasing fees on merchants. “And higher fees mean higher profits for banks, even if it means that merchants shift the cost to consumers.”


National Security

The New York Times reports, “the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and a Jordanian spy last week was a double agent who was taken onto the base in Afghanistan because the Americans hoped he might be able to deliver top members of Al Qaeda’s network.”

While the US is pushing for targeted sanctions on Iran, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that the door remains open for further dialogue.

“The U.S. Embassy in Yemen reopened Tuesday, after a two-day closure, citing successful counterterrorism operations conducted by the government of Yemen the day before.”




Business Lobbyists Yearn For The Days When Elaine Chao Ran The Labor Department

AP080129010155With the calendar turning to 2010, the Associated Press took a look back at the first year of Labor Secretary Hilda Solis’ tenure, pointing out that “her aggressive moves to boost enforcement and crack down on businesses that violate workplace safety rules have sent employers scrambling to make sure they are following the rules.”

In many ways, Solis has completely reversed the course of the Labor Department that was set by her predecessor, Elaine Chao. And Solis’ crackdown has business lobbyists yearning for the days when Chao ran the show:

“Our members are concerned that the department is shifting its focus from compliance assistance back to more of the ‘gotcha’ or aggressive enforcement first approach,” said Karen Harned, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business’ small business legal center…Chao has claimed that success was the result of cooperating with businesses to help them understand the myriad regulations. Keith Smith, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, said his members “want to build upon [Chao's] progress and recognize what’s working.”

Of course, what worked for big business didn’t work at all for workers, as Chao’s Labor Department spent eight years “walking away from its regulatory function across a range of issues, including wage and hour law and workplace safety.”

Consider some of Chao’s legacy. The Government Accountability Office found that her Department “did an inadequate job of investigating complaints by low-wage workers who alleged that their employers were stiffing them for overtime, or failing to pay the minimum wage.” In one survey, 68 percent of low-income workers reported a pay violation in the previous week alone.

The Department’s own inspector general blamed “a lack of management emphasis on worker safety” for unsafe conditions at mines leading to a jump in worker deaths, while fines for workplace safety violations fell so low that employers began “factoring them in as part of their cost of doing business rather than complying with labor laws.” In all, “workers lose $19 billion in wages and benefits through illegal practices, nearly 6,000 American workers die on the job, and at least 50,000 workers die due to occupational disease” each year.

Solis, meanwhile, “slapped the largest fine in [Department] history on oil giant BP PLC for failing to fix safety problems after a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery.” She is hiring 250 additional wage-theft inspectors, and “started a new program that scrutinizes business records to make sure worker injury and illness reports are accurate.”

Labor Department staffers were so disgruntled under Chao that they threw a “good-riddance party” to cheer her departure. But for big business, Chao’s tenure meant acting with impunity and facing puny fines on the rare occasions that that were caught, and they’d like to go back.




Arpaio Admits To Not Reading His Own Book, Blames ‘Reconquista’ References On Co-Author

During a recent seven hour deposition as part of a racial profiling lawsuit against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, attorney David Bodney grilled the Sheriff over specific references to the “reconquista” conspiracy theory in his 2008 book, “Joe’s Law: America’s Toughest Sheriff Takes on Illegal Immigration, Drugs and Everything Else That Threatens America.”

Bodney points out that, in his book, Arpaio repeatedly referenced a “growing movement” among Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans that contends “that massive immigration over the border will speed and guarantee the reconquista of these lands, returning them to Mexico.” Arpaio also wrote that his parents’ migration from Italy “never constituted a reconquest” of the U.S. because they didn’t “regard any inch of American soil as somehow belonging to Italy.” When probed, Arpaio plead ignorance and pinned the blame on his book’s co-author, Len Sherman:

BODNEY: You were at least, according to the cover, listed as the lead author?

ARPAIO: Yes.

BODNEY: Does the book reflect yours views?

ARPAIO: Uhhh…I’m not sure to the best of my knowledge. I haven’t reviewed the book recently. In fact, I haven’t even read the book. [...]

BODNEY: In Joe’s Law you refer to the illegal immigration problem and about the Mexicans who want to take back Arizona and parts of the United States. A “reconquista.” Do you remember that?

ARPAIO: Once again, I’m going to say my co-author did a lot of research and many parts of the book was attributed to him…this is something injected by the co-author and I’m not familiar with that whole situation.

Watch it:

Arpaio also indicated that he doesn’t agree with subtitle of his own book and doesn’t remember telling GQ magazine, “You know what it is? It’s this civil rights, all that crap” or stating that his Sheriff’s office was “becoming a full-fledged anti-immigration agency.” Arpaio is currently being investigated by both the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

(HT: Feathered Bastard)




Kristol And Hume: Failed Al Qaeda Christmas Attack Was A ‘Success’

hume kristolWhat’s more pathetic than Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) claiming “credit” for the failed Christmas Day attack? Conservative commentators hailing that attack as a “success.”

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol argued that, even though Nigerian extremist Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab only managed to set fire to his own groin, subsequent security measures undertaken by the Obama administration ulltimately represented a success for the Saudi/Yemeni Al Qaeda franchise:

KRISTOL: Closing the embassy in Yemen last night — I mean, I don’t — you know, no one wants State Department officials to be put at risk and all that, but that is a sign of weakness.

Closing the embassy? We can’t protect our own embassy in Yemen, a place we have Special Operations forces, a place we say we’re working with the government on the front lines of the war on terror, and there’s a terror threat and we close the embassy? That’s a victory for Al Qaida. This last week has been a victory for Al Qaida in that region, I’m afraid. [...]

Britt Hume agreed:

HUME: I might say, you know, we keep talking about this failed attack, this failed attempt. I mean, it surely didn’t succeed on the scale on which it was intended, but look at the consequences.

It set in motion all kinds of security procedures which — for several days which made absolutely no sense, by the way, at U.S. airports. Certainly, we would not be closing the embassy in Yemen in the absence of these events. Yemen is — was — a month ago was a hotbed. It’s a hotbed today.

You know, if I were the Al Qaida people, I think Bill’s right. They could look at this as a success. This was — this was an attack that didn’t succeed on the scale it was expected to but did succeed.

It is true that one of the goals of terrorism is to elicit a wild over-reaction from the target government, resulting in greater publicity and a larger pool of potential recruits for the terrorists’ cause, and so any response has to be balanced against that. For a great example of how not to react, we can look to the Bush administration’s “war on terror”: The promulgation of an existential struggle, preventive war, the adoption of secret detention and torture, all of which have proved to be disastrous for U.S. security and a propaganda and a recruiting bonanza for Al Qaeda and affiliated extremists. As committed supporters of the “war on terror” approach, Hume and Kristol have little choice but to ignore those consequences, which makes their little freak-out over some flaming underpants and a temporarily closed embassy all the more ridiculous. You really couldn’t ask for a clearer example of the cynicism that underlies Kristol’s and Hume’s “analysis,” though. So committed are they to scoring political points that they’re willing to represent failed attack as a success simply because it resulted in some tighter security measures.

On a related note, I think most people have come to understand that the “war on terror” is not a useful frame for understanding the threat of Islamic extremism or the policies required to deal with it. It is, however, a useful frame for Republicans winning elections. Which is why, despite the concept having been discredited among national security analysts and policymakers, Fox News and conservative activists continue to push it. But in doing so, they’re functioning as some of Al Qaeda’s best publicists.




Thirteen Attorney Generals Question Constitutionality Of Nelson’s ‘Nebraska Deal’

Conservative lawmakers have tried to dismantle health care reform by questioning the constitutionality of the requirement to purchase health insurance, but now attorney generals in at least 13 states are challenging the so-called Nebraska sweet heart deal secured by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) to fund Nebraska’s Medicaid expansion for perpetuity.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), the attorneys generals from South Carolina, Washington, Michigan, Texas, Colorado, Alabama, North Dakota, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Utah, Florida, Idaho and South Dakota “wrote that they consider the [Nebraska] provision ‘constitutionally flawed‘ and demanded that it be stricken from the final bill”:

The current iteration of the bill contains a provision that affords special treatment to the state of Nebraska under the federal Medicaid program. We believe this provision is constitutionally flawed…in addition to violating the most basic and universally held notions of what is fair and just, we also believe this provision of H.R. 3590 is consistent with protections afforded by the United States Constitution against arbitrary legislation…the fundamental unfairness of H.R. 3590 may also give rise to claims under the due process, equal protection privileges and immunities clauses and other provisions of the Constitution…We ask that Congress delete the Nebraska provision from the pending legislation, as we prefer to avoid litigation.

But constitutional scholars argue that the ‘Nebraska compromise’ challenge is as specious as the organized conservative effort to constitutionally invalidate the individual mandate. ThinkProgress’ Ian Milllhiser explains that “the requirement that laws not be ‘arbitrary and capricious’ or that conditional grants be related ‘to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs’ are largely paper tigers. In recent decades, the Supreme Court has only struck down laws as arbitrary and capricious in utterly egregious cases that in no way resemble the health bill–such as when Colorado enacted an anti-gay state constitutional amendment in the mid-1990s that served no purpose other than to display the state’s animus towards gay people.”

“The limit on conditional grants has literally never been invoked in the Supreme Court’s entire history to strike down a law, and besides, funding Medicaid–even in just one state–is obviously connected to the federal interest is providing health care to those who can’t afford it,” Millhiser says. Mark Tushnet, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, tells TPMmuckraker that an ‘equal protection’ argument “could be defeated in court by satisfying a so-called ‘rational basis’ standard for favoring Nebraska.” For example, the government could use Nelson’s defense of the provision and argue that “the Senate’s ultimate goal was for every state’s Medicaid costs to be covered in full, and that the Senate was just starting with Nebraska.”

Whatever the wisdom of Nelson’s provision, “Congress has the power to determine that people in a certain state or geographic region are particularly in need of targeted aid, and may constitutional pass a bill giving such aid to them. If the arguments advanced by this letter were ever adopted by the Supreme Court, it’s not clear that Congress could ever enact a bill whose impact was targeted at the residents of a particular state or region. Because Katrina only destroyed New Orleans, for example, residents of Chicago could challenge a law providing targeted aid to Katrina victims on the theory that it discriminates against them by not also providing aid to people in Chicago,” Milllhiser says.

The AG’s letter does not directly challenge the constitutionality of the individual mandate, but it is part of a broader industry-sponsored effort to invalidate health care reform in the court room. Spurred by Senators Jim DeMint (R-SC), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and John Ensign (R-NV) and the health insurance industry, attorney generals in at least two states have also announced plans to conduct constitutional reviews of the individual mandate provision.

“Quite obviously, this issue raises very serious concerns about equity, tax fairness as well as the constitutionality of having federal tax levies and mandates that treat one state differently from all the others,” South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster said. Florida attorney general Bill McCollum , who is running for Governor, also recently announced “grave concerns about the constitutionality of this mandate.” “Such a ‘living tax’ is worrisome because it would be levied on a person who does nothing, a person who simply wishes not to be forced to buy health insurance coverage.”

McCollum has also sent a letter to other AGs asking them to “consider joining with me in conducting a constitutional analysis of the individual mandate.”




Big Banks ‘Making A Killing’ Thanks To Geithner’s Investment Program

AP091202016753Early last year, I highlighted a couple of reports that banks were aiming to exploit the Public-Private Investment Fund (PPIP), which Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner set up to purge financial institutions of their toxic assets. At the time, the banks which were supposed to be getting rid of their toxic waste — particularly Bank of America and Citigroup — were instead using TARP money to scoop up more financial garbage, in anticipation that once the PPIP was up and running, they could offload it and make a tidy profit.

And indeed, that seems to be exactly what’s happening. Bloomberg reported today that “the banks that received the biggest taxpayer bailouts are seeking to reap trading profits from securities rescued by the government,” as the program “designed to purge debts of no immediate discernable value from the balance sheets of troubled banks has helped transform the frozen debt into a money-maker.” And look which firms have been purchasing bundles of it:

Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., who received 22 percent of the $418.7 billion American taxpayers loaned to troubled financial institutions, boosted holdings on their trading books of home- loan bonds that lack government guarantees while investors were raising cash for the program, according to Federal Reserve data. Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America along with Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., all based in New York, added a combined $2.74 billion of the debt, for which there were few buyers as recently as March, to their short-term trading assets during the third quarter, up 13 percent from the second quarter.

So before the program to offload the securities began, the big banks ran around purchasing lots of them, and if the prices of these securities go up, these few banks stand to reap a large share of the benefits. But due to the program’s design, if the price of the securities go down, taxpayers are left holding the bag. Joshua Rosner, who advises regulators and institutional investors, said that “it’s a trade that will likely work out, but it’s still a speculative trade, which is not what a taxpayer should want from firms that have only recently come out of critical care.”

Michael Schlachter, managing director of the investment consulting firm Wilshire Associates, was even stronger in denouncing the banks, saying it’s “absolutely ridiculous” that they may claim outsized profits from the program. “Some of them created this mess, and they are making a killing undoing it,” he added.

With banks inching their way back to profitability and financial stocks driving the 2009 market rally, PPIP and the weakness of bank portfolios largely faded from view, swallowed by concerns over unemployment, Wall Street bonuses, and housing. But are the banks really healthy? The coming year may be when we find out how much of their return to strength is real and how much is due to government support and accounting gimmickry.




The WonkLine: January 4, 2010

By Think Progress on Jan 4th, 2010 at 10:00 am

The WonkLine: January 4, 2010

Welcome to The WonkLine, a daily 10 a.m. roundup of the latest news about health care, the economy, national security, immigration and climate policy. This is what we’re reading. Tell us what you found in the comments section below. You can also follow The Wonk Room on Twitter.

AP091029032009

 

Immigration

A new report by the Pew Hispanic Center shows that “the gap in Internet use has shrunk considerably,” as internet usage among Latino adults rose 10 percent from 2006 to 2008.

Steve Levy, a conservative Suffolk County Democrat, whose opposition to undocumented immigrants has been the subject of national criticism, announced that he is weighing a primary challenge to Gov. David Paterson (D-NY).

The Los Angeles Times highlights new research that rebuts the notion that “Mexican immigrants and their offspring” are following a “trajectory of downward mobility into a permanent underclass” and points to a strong Latino middle-class.

National Security

BBC reports that “four US soldiers and one UK serviceman have been killed in two separate bomb blasts in southern Afghanistan.”

The United States and British Embassies in the capital of Yemen “remained closed for a second day Monday because of continuing threats from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the terrorist group linked to the attempt to bring down an international flight into Detroit on Christmas.”

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas “gave no indication on Monday of any resumption soon of peace talks with Israel, despite optimism of progress voiced by officials on both sides.”


Health Care

Jonathan Cohn is reporting that “according to a pair of senior Capitol Hill staffers, one from each chamber, House and Senate Democrats are “almost certain” to negotiate informally rather than convene a formal conference committee.”

The Senate health care bill contains a provision that would encourage more construction businesses to provide health insurance to their workers, the New York Times reports. “Construction companies with five or more workers would generally have to provide health insurance or pay a penalty — an excise tax of $750 per employee.”

Suzy Khimm asks, “Are Corporate Insurers Defrauding the Public?”

Economy

A panel of economists at the American Economic Association’s yearly conference said yesterday that “a dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming decade.”

The Washington Post notes that trade disputes between the U.S. and China are multiplying “and further damaging the already tense relationship between the two economic powers.”

Clive Crook worries that “in 2010, if the [economic] crisis continues to ease, the danger is that politicians will relax and minds will wander from the need for new financial rules.”


Climate Change

“Of the 84,000 chemicals in commercial use in the United States — from flame retardants in furniture to household cleaners — nearly 20 percent are secret, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, their names and physical properties guarded from consumers and virtually all public officials under a little-known federal provision.”

Chinese officials said today that “a diesel spill has contaminated a stretch of the Yellow River…despite frantic efforts to contain its spread into China’s second largest waterway that provides drinking water to tens of millions of northern residents.”

Is Whole Foods’ CEO John Mackey a climate change skeptic? Seems so.




Rep. Linder: Food Stamps Create ‘An Entire Class Of People’ Who Are ‘Living Off The Government’

Rep. John Linder (R-GA)

Rep. John Linder (R-GA)

In 2008, the use of food stamps jumped 13 percent, to 9.8 million households, many of which were relying on food assistance for the first time. Still, nearly 50 million Americans went hungry at some point in 2008, including almost one in four children.

According to an analysis by the New York Times, there are now 6 million Americans who are relying on food stamps as their only source of income because of the recession. But to Rep. John Linder (R-GA) these numbers simply reveal the “craziness” of the food stamp program, which Linder said is creating a class of people who are “just comfortable getting by living off the government“:

“This is craziness,” said Representative John Linder, a Georgia Republican who is the ranking minority member of a House panel on welfare policy. “We’re at risk of creating an entire class of people, a subset of people, just comfortable getting by living off the government.” Mr. Linder added: “You don’t improve the economy by paying people to sit around and not work. You improve the economy by lowering taxes” so small businesses will create more jobs.

For six million people — including more than one million children — food stamps are the only thing standing between them and absolute hunger. But Linder still finds it appropriate to rail against the program, while advocating tax cuts that don’t do anything for someone without a job and without food.

Contrary to Linder, the Times’ data actually shows just how inadequate and out-of-date many aspects of the country’s social safety net are. As the Times put it, food stamps have become “the safety net of last resort” during the recession, because other programs have fallen woefully short. For instance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) “has scarcely expanded during the recession; the rolls are still down about 75 percent from their 1990s peak.” Unemployment insurance, meanwhile, “has rapidly grown, but still omits nearly half the unemployed.”

As the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Half in Ten project has pointed out, expanding unemployment insurance, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Child Tax Credit, along with creating living-wage jobs, will help to end hunger and boost the economy. But in the meantime, food stamps are providing a vital lifeline to those who, through no fault of their own, have found themselves out of work and without food.




Krauthammer’s Al Qaeda Smear

By Max Bergmann on Jan 2nd, 2010 at 5:00 pm

Krauthammer’s Al Qaeda Smear

krauthammerIn an effort to politicize the failed Christmas day attack, neocon Charles Krauthammer accused President Obama of not caring about fighting Al Qaeda because the Administration has dropped the ludicrous phrase “war on terror.” Krauthammer put forth the smear yesterday in the National Review:

Obama banishes the term “war on terror.” It’s over — that is, if it ever existed. Obama may have declared the war over. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has not. Which gives new meaning to the term “asymmetric warfare.”

It is true that the Obama administration has dropped “war on terror,” a phrase that is so broad and ill-defined that even Donald Rumsfeld sought to abandon it. Instead of declaring war against a tactic, the President has actually sought to define the enemy – repeatedly saying that the US was specifically “at war” with Al Qaeda. In fact, just today Obama said in his weekly address:

our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.

Moreover, Obama has consistently said this. In May, Obama stated in a major speech at the National Archives:

Now let me be clear: we are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates.

In his speech at West Point, Obama justified the Afghan troop increase to help bolster the war against Al Qaeda:

We must keep the pressure on al Qaeda, and to do that, we must increase the stability and capacity of our partners in the region…This is not just America’s war.




Fed And Treasury Put ‘Intense Pressure’ On Feinberg To Make Exceptions For Big AIG Bonuses

Special Master for Compensation Kenneth Feinberg

Special Master for Compensation Kenneth Feinberg

With 2009 coming to a close and the stock market having rebounded from its March low, “Wall Street is ready to pat itself on the back for its huge gains with big bonuses.” Despite the brouhaha caused by bonuses in the last year — and the role that perverse pay incentives played in bringing about Wall Street’s collapse — large financial institutions have been setting aside billions for bonus payments, and in 2009 may eclipse the record compensation levels of 2007.

This makes Steven Brill’s upcoming New York Times Magazine article (already available online), which examines Special Master for Compensation Kenneth Feinberg’s quest to craft pay packages for firms receiving extraordinary government help, particularly timely. Brill focuses especially on AIG, and Feinberg’s struggle to not only assuage public anger over the AIG bonus pool, but to keep at bay a variety of government players intent on influencing his final decision.

Feinberg wanted to ensure that AIG’s compensation correlated to the long-term strength of the firm by tying it to the company’s stock performance. However, Brill wrote that “Feinberg’s push for long-term accountability was met with what Feinberg calls ‘intense pressure’ from officials at the Treasury Department and from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York”:

Officials at Treasury weighed in on A.I.G.’s side, according to Feinberg. Herbert M. Allison, the assistant secretary for financial stability, and the official to whom Feinberg reported day to day, confirms pressing Feinberg to consider, he recalls, “the fact that we were dealing with a highly volatile stock that seemed to the employees to have a less than reliable value”…Those at the Fed were even more insistent that Feinberg make exceptions for A.I.G.

Feinberg subsequently allowed some employees at AIG to receive up to $1.5 million in cash bonuses.

Of course, both AIG and its government allies argued that huge pay packages are necessary for AIG to rebound to profitability and pay back the government. However, a new study highlighted by the Huffington Post’s Grace Kiser refutes that very notion. In fact, Raghavendra Rau and Huseyin Gulen of Purdue University and Michael Cooper of the University of Utah found that, between 1994 and 2006, “the 10 percent of companies with the most highly paid CEOs earned unusually low returns in both the near- and long-term.”

“Overall, our results show a strong negative relation between pay and future returns,” the researchers wrote, adding that highly-compensated CEOs tend to become overconfident, engaging in “wasteful capital expenditures and empire building.” So it would appear that Treasury and the Fed’s pressure was based on an entirely faulty premise, but some AIG executives will still end the year with a huge payday because of it.




Climate Activists Jailed For Saying ‘Coal’s Killing West Virginia’s Communities’

Yes, Coal's Killing West Virginia CommunitiesFour climate activists are being held in a West Virginia jail for protesting how coal mining is killing the people and land of their state. On Tuesday, December 29, four activists with Climate Ground Zero — a grassroots campaign of non-violent civil disobedience in southern West Virginia to address mountaintop removal coal mining — were arrested for trespass at their homes in Rock Creek, West Virginia:

Mat Louis-Rosenberg, Jacqueline Quimby, Kimberly Ellis and James McGuinness were taken to the Kanawha County Courthouse by State Police by West Virginia State Trooper Lt. Bowers. The charges stem from a October 10 demonstration at Walker CAT’s headquarters, which challenged Walker’s misleading pro-coal advertising campaign at which Gabe Schwartzman, 19, and David German, 18, were arrested by City of Belle Police and cited for trespassing on a structure or conveyance. The two had unfurled a banner which read, “Yes, Coal is Killing West Virginia’s Communities.”

According to Climate Ground Zero, the four activists remain in police custody in the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, WV. They have yet to see a magistrate and have not been informed of their charges, other than trespassing, which, if proven, would result in a maximum one-hundred-dollar fine.

“This is outrageous behavior on the part of the Kanawha County prosecutors.” said Climate Ground Zero campaign director Mike Roselle.

“These four people are guilty of nothing. They were simply present during a
demonstration last October and none of them were ever informed at any time that they were trespassing. Usually in this type of case they simply write you a ticket or mail you a summons. To drag them out of their homes and refuse to allow any bail violates their most basic constitutional right to due process.”

Climate Ground Zero is part of a growing international movement using nonviolent civil disobedience to protest the ravages of fossil fuel extraction and the global damages of climate change.




The Right Advocates Offering Lifeline To Iranian Regime

iran-us-flags1 In response to the Iranian regime’s violence, the Green Movement protests have grown bolder. The regime now seems stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle, in which almost every action it takes in response to the protests seems to only further erode its standing among Iranians and strengthen the opposition.

And this is at the heart of what the protesters are seeking to do – delegitimize the regime until it simply can’t stand. In an attempt to break out of this trap, the regime today ginned up counterrevolutionary protests – ordering people to attend and offering free metro transit. In a similar vein, the regime has sought to paint the protests as a Western-inspired plot. So what we are seeing is a struggle for legitimacy – for the hearts and minds of the average Iranian.

Yet as Iran erupts, the far-right in the US wants to lend the regime a lifeline. John Bolton said yesterday:

I would say that mere rhetorical support for the demonstrators, for the opposition is not enough. …If we’re going to support them, we should support them tangibly, with financial support, communications, perhaps other support, as wellWill some of the guns go to the side of the demonstrators? If they do, there’s a chance the regime could fall. If they don’t, I think the disparity in power between the government and the opposition is simple too great, and so the most likely outcome is Ahmadinejad and the regime stay in power.

The best way to undermine the movement is to do exactly what Bolton is advocating. It is true that no matter what the regime will claim the protests are part of a western plot – the regime is already doing this – but this claim while perhaps persuading a few, doesn’t appear to be all that persuasive given the breadth of the protests. Yet if Obama were to read a speech from the John Bolton playbook, the regime’s claims all of a sudden become a lot more persuasive. While the regime is not going to loop on state-television a clip of Obama saying the crackdown is brutal, it sure would loop a statement of Obama saying the US is going to work to forcefully support the Green Movement. Such a statement would be music to the regime’s ears and would allow them to regain the nationalist mantel that is slipping out of their grasp.

But Bolton’s statement at its core also exposes a totally ignorant view of power and democratic change. To Bolton, and his colleagues like John McCain on the right, legitimacy is all about military force. The protests are therefore doomed because they don’t have the guns. In this simplistic view, the only thing that the US can do to support the doomed Green Movement is to somehow get guns in the hands of the protesters or to take the regime out by force before they take out the protesters.

But this completely ignores how most democratic transitions have occurred in the last half-century. What we see right now in Iran looks a lot like democratic movements that swept in democratic governments throughout much of the world. Importantly, most of these movements replaced authoritarian regimes – often brutal military dictatorships that were desperate to hold onto power – through inexhaustible mass protests that eroded any support of the sitting government and eventually forced the regime to cave. This was the case with Franco’s regime in Spain, Argentina’s military junta, the Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe, among many others. Violence often took place during these transitions, but the primary factors that brought on the collapse was not a military rebellion led by an insurgent force that suddenly storms the capital, but as result of gradual erosion of support by mass movements. This is why the regime is so paranoid about losing legitimacy, they have seen how this movie ends in countless other countries.

No one knows how or when things are going to end in Iran. In transitions to democracy, there is no magic formula, no set timeframe, and no assurance that a regime will ever capitulate even if its legitimacy is completely lost. But what we are witnessing is a regime in a tailspin, where every action it takes in reaction to a broad popular movement only further erodes its standing and strengthens that movement. Instead, of getting in the way of this vicious cycle and shifting the focus away from the regime and toward the United States we should simply get out of the way. As even Pat Buchanan argued last summer:

When your adversary is making a fool of himself, get out of the way… U.S. fulminations will change nothing in Tehran. But they would enable the regime to divert attention to U.S. meddling in Iran’s affairs.




NYC Court Official Slams Lenders For Failing To Modify Mortgages: ‘What’s The Holdup?’

ap070814048602Recently, the Obama administration has increased its verbal assault on banks and mortgage lenders that are failing to get troubled borrowers into sustainable modified mortgages. The banks have been firing back that borrowers themselves are to blame for the lack of progress, with the favorite claim being that borrowers aren’t doing their part in getting the appropriate documents together.

New York City is one of a handful of states and cities that force lenders to come to court and meet with borrowers before finalizing a foreclosure. And according to one court official helping to oversee the program, it’s not the borrowers who come to the mediation sessions lacking sufficient documentation, but the lenders:

Leonard N. Florio, a court-appointed referee, oversees such sessions in that dusty room in Queens. He is a chatty man and punctilious about not taking sides. But as he watched Mr. Ali, the Ozone Park homeowner, load his piles of bills and receipts back into his shopping bags, he could not help noting a pattern. “I have yet to see an attorney for a servicer cut a deal,” he said. “Update this, update that. I mean, what’s the holdup?”

This fits with a new study from The Center for New York City Neighborhoods (CNYCN), which found that lenders, not borrowers, routinely show up for mediation sessions woefully unprepared. In fact, “in spite of the law’s explicit obligation that attorneys for the lenders attend conferences with appropriate documentation and authorization to negotiate, lenders frequently send attorneys who know little about the case, have little or no documentation pertaining to its history or status, and lack authority to reach a deal on the lender’s behalf.” Here are some of CNYCN’s findings regarding the lenders’ efforts:

- Only 3% of the time was a copy of an offer already made by the homeowner actually in the attorney’s file;

- The attorney knew the status of an offer with the lender a mere 6% of the time;

-In only 13% of the conferences did the attorney have a phone number to call to reach a person with actual authority to settle.

And of course, “court orders to penalize lack of compliance with the law are scarce.”

As with many foreclosure prevention efforts, this one is suffering from a lack of real consequences for a bank that violates the law, and there’s no mechanism for holding lenders accountable for their inaction. Mediation programs like the one with which New York City is experimenting have been successful elsewhere, but only when the lenders take them seriously. Lenders in New York seem to be blowing off the program, and with foreclosures piling up, a stick with which to prod them needs to be created, sooner rather than later.




Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister: The West Bank Isn’t Occupied

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon takes to the Wall Street Journal op-ed page to argue that the West Bank, where numerous aspects of Palestinian life continue to be proscribed by Israeli military law, as they have been for over forty years, is not really occupied. Ayalon complains that “little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the ‘occupied territories’ but what really are ‘disputed territories.’”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. [...]

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, [U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Eugene V.] Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.” There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it.

On it’s face, this is a laughably tendentious argument, the sort that one would find in the pages of Commentary but that’s not taken particularly seriously by actual legal scholars or historians. Unfortunately, given that the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel has taken it up, it has to be taken seriously, at least in as much as it indicates the extreme irredentist views of the current Israeli government.

Leaving aside the appeals to the authority of the British Mandate — the right of European colonial powers to carve up and give away their subjects’ land in the first place is, let’s just say, not uncontroversial — Ayalon’s quoting of Rostow is very selective. Rostow recognized in no uncertain terms (in the very same piece that Ayalon references, in fact) that the West Bank was occupied territory.

As did former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, decidedly not a Palestinian nationalist, who admirably cut through the bull in 2003 and acknowledged the bare fact: “You cannot like the word, but what is happening is an occupation — to hold 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation. I believe that is a terrible thing for Israel and for the Palestinians.” Sharon’s successor, Ehud Olmert, also affirmed this view, noting in reference to the resentment and hatred created by Israel’s military control of over 3 million Palestinians that “We see the occupation as problematic.”

As to the notion that the previous status of the territories as Jordanian-administered somehow absolved Israel from its commitments under the Geneva Conventions, this argument was actually made and rejected by the Israeli foreign ministry’s own legal counsel before the first settlement brick was even laid. As recounted by Israeli journalist and historian Gershom Gorenberg — whose history of the settlements “The Accidental Empire” is well worth reading — “the legal counsel of the Foreign Ministry, Theodor Meron, was asked whether international law allowed settlement in the newly conquered land.”

In a memo marked “Top Secret,” Mr. Meron wrote unequivocally, “My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes the explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

In the detailed opinion that accompanied that note, Mr. Meron explained that the Convention — to which Israel was a signatory — forbade an occupying power from moving part of its population to occupied territory. [...]

Mr. Meron took note of Israel’s diplomatic argument that the West Bank was not “normal” occupied territory, because the land’s status was uncertain. The prewar border with Jordan had been a mere armistice line, and Jordan had annexed the West Bank unilaterally.

But he rejected that argument for two reasons. The first was diplomatic: the international community would not accept it and would regard settlement as showing “intent to annex the West Bank to Israel.” The second was legal, he wrote: “In truth, certain Israeli actions are inconsistent with the claim that the West Bank is not occupied territory.” For instance, he noted, a military decree issued on the third day of the war in June said that military courts must apply the Geneva Conventions in the West Bank.

Unfortunately, the Israeli government ignored Meron’s legal advice, and developed a series of shifting legal rationales to justify the annexation and colonization of the occupied land, which has helped to create the exceedingly difficult and volatile situation we have today.

Attempts at arriving at an internationally recognized legal dispensation for the land of Israel-Palestine have been based on the understanding that the land is legitimately claimed by two peoples, and that neither of those two peoples are going to get all of what they want. Mr. Ayalon’s argument turns this understanding on its head. Israel currently controls around 75% of what was Palestine — land on which Israel recognizes no Palestinian claim, and indeed which the current Israeli government insists the Palestinians must relinquish any claim even before negotiations.

At the same time, the current Israeli government now also insists that Israel’s own claims on the remaining 25% must be taken into account. Yet, in rejecting this frame-up, we’re apparently supposed to believe that it’s the Palestinians who aren’t being reasonable.




Governor Of Katrina-Ravaged Louisiana Tries To Block Regulation Of Global Warming Pollution

Bobby JindalEven as the Senate argues whether to pass clean-energy legislation, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is finally moving to regulate global warming pollution. One of the leading opponents to the EPA’s proposed regulations, slated to go into effect in March, 2010, is Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal (R-LA). On Monday, Jindal “and the secretaries of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources and Louisiana Economic Development filed objections with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson,” claiming the Supreme-Court-mandated standards “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts“:

There is no doubt this change will certainly have profound negative economic impacts on the state of Louisiana, as well as the entire country.

In reality, regulations to limit greenhouse gases would reward business investment in labor instead of pollution, in new technology and development instead of reliance on 19th-century fuel sources. An analysis by the Center for American Progress and the Political Economy Research Institute found that strong regulation and standards would create billions in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs:

Louisiana could see a net increase of about $2.2 billion in investment revenue and 29,000 jobs based on its share of a total of $150 billion in clean-energy investments annually across the country. This is even after assuming a reduction in fossil fuel spending equivalent to the increase in clean-energy investments.

Whereas regulation of pollution will likely benefit Louisiana’s economy, there is actually “no doubt” that unmitigated climate change “will certainly have profound negative economic impacts” on the state of Louisiana. “The letters say nothing about the cost of inaction,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune notes, “as Louisiana’s coastline is ravaged by rising sea levels, jeopardizing business investment in the state’s most populated areas”:

In 2005, the global-warming-fueled Hurricane Katrina devastated Jindal’s state, costing this nation $80 billion, killing thousands, and displacing a million people. Katrina and Rita caused $1.6 billion in agriculture damage in Louisiana alone.

In 2008, Hurricane Gustav “was the largest agricultural disaster in Louisiana history,” according to Jindal, as he announced the distribution of $54.8 million in federal taxpayer aid this month.

In 2009, this summer’s “record-setting heat wave and simultaneous dry spell,” followed by extreme “late-season rains,” buckled roads and further damaged crops, driving even more farmers into bankruptcy.

According to a recent analysis published in Nature, “an additional 2 degrees of global warming could commit the planet to 6 to 9 meters (20 to 30 feet) of long-term sea level rise,” which would “permanently submerge New Orleans and other parts of southern Louisiana.”




Health Care Industry Coordinating Effort To Opt States Out Of Health Care Reform

As Congress prepares to pass the final health care reform legislation early next year, health care lobbyists are mobilizing legislatures in approximately 14 states to ratify constitutional amendments that would repeal all or parts of the new measure. “The states where the amendment has been introduced are also places where the health care industry has spent heavily on political contributions,” the New York Times notes:

Over the last six years, health care interests have spent $394 million on contributions in states around the country; about $73 million of that went to those 14 states. Of that, health insurance companies spent $18.2 million.

Overall, at least 21 states have indicated a desire to opt out of federal health care reform or block fundamental features of the reform bill, including mandatory health coverage. While Arizona, is the only state legislature to place an opt-out measure on the 2010 ballot, a significant number of gubernatorial and state legislature candidates across the country have also said that they are strongly “leaning towards” opting out of reform.

Lawmakers in Wyoming, New Mexico, Montana, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Arizona, Alabama, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, West Virginia, Louisiana, Alaska, Minnesota, North Dakota, Georgia Illinois and Florida have introduced ballot measures to protect their states from reform legislation or promised to spearhead such efforts if reform is enacted.

While it’s unlikely that conservatives and their health care industry allies could repeal health care reform, (they are more likely to water-down certain elements of reform), a successful challenge would devastate the populations suffering from the most pronounced health care crisis. A back-of-the envelope analysis conducted by ThinkProgress suggests that on average, the repealing states have experienced very substantial premium increases, high rates of uninsurance and annual percent growth in health care expenditures and higher insurance market concentration:

- 42% (9 of 21): have an uninsurance rate higher than the national average of 15.4%.

- 62% (13 of 21):
have an average annual percent growth in health care expenditures that his higher than the national average of 6.7%.

- 62% (13 of 21): experienced premium increases of more than 75% between 2000 and 2007.

- 90% (19 of 21): are dominated by two insurers that control more than 50% of the health insurance market.

The effort to repeal health care reform “began at the conservative Goldwater Institute in Arizona” and was latter “picked up by the American Legislative Exchange Council [ALEC], a business-friendly conservative group that coordinates activity among statehouses.” As the New York Times points out, “five of the 24 members of its ‘free enterprise board’ are executives of drug companies and its health care ‘task force’ is overseen in part by a four-member panel composed of government-relations officials for the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association of insurers, the medical company Johnson & Johnson and the drug makers Bayer and Hoffmann-La Roche.”

Earlier this month, Lee Fang reported that Joan Gardner, executive director of state services with the BCBS Association’s Office of Policy and Representation and a member of ALEC’s ‘task force’ “played a pivotal role in crafting this anti-health reform states’ rights initiative.”




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