Time to get out

The sentiment here is noble, and a shift from a pure war-footing would be important, but I just don't buy that we're cranking down the volume on the military effort, let alone extricating ourselves from the Afghan quagmire.

We've already boosted the number of troops and have made a commitment to the war, so talking about this shift seems, well, too little, too late.

The key to success, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, is to get out.

Al Franken?

I know this is supposed to be good news, but really -- Al Franken? I guess he was better than the alternative, but he is no Paul Wellstone.

A welcome return: The Feelies are back

It's been a long time since Jersey punkers The Feelies called it quits, leaving a rather large void in the DIY-indie scene. But they are back and, according to this review in The Chicago Sun-Times, just as powerful and juiced as when they split.

So, when does the album come out?

Good news on environmental front

This is no small matter -- and one of the few tangible payoffs of having a Democrat in the White House. From The Washington Independent:

Following through on earlier promises, the Environmental Protection Agency today approved a request by the state of California to fight global warming by reining in auto emissions.

As Mike Lillis points out,

Because 13 other states and the District of Columbia have jumped on California’s waiver proposal, the move effectively creates a new national emissions standard that will force the nation’s automakers to make more fuel efficient vehicles.

This is probably better news than the passage of the climate change legislation, which has been watered down, because it bypasses the moderates in Congress and allows the more populous, environmentally conscious states to drive the bus, so to speak.

Dispatches: Image is everything

Dispatches is up -- on the primacy of the image in our culture and its danger for our democracy (features an interview with Chris Hedges).

Runner's diary, Tuesday

This is a two-day diary, because my brain shut down yesterday after I finished my column and editorial.

In any case, back-to-back three-mile runs. Yippee.

Obama on the brain?

I just cannot believe this. Chia Obama?

Corporate bidding

Chris Bowers is right to castigate the "moderates" for much of the failings of the Democratic agenda, but the Democratic leadership and the president must also come in for a massive share of the blame.

No one should be surprised by any of this, of course. As Chris Hedges told me in an interview on Sunday, the Democrats have become as bankrupt as the Republicans, are as beholden to corporate interests as the GOP and just as unlikely to make real reform happen.

Consider Bill Clinton. He gave us NAFTA -- a trade agreement Hedges called the "greatest betrayal of the working class" that any president has offered -- and welfare reform, the kind of destructive policies usually attributed to Republicans.

Basically, Hedges says, "We live in a copropate state and the corporations have control of both parties" -- and that includes the presidency. Barack Obama, he says, is a brand that

offers an image that appears new and radically individualistic that inoculates us from seeing that the engines of corporate power and the military industrial complex continute to plunder the country.

It is corporations that continue to control our politics. Obama does not threaten the core of the corporate state anymore than Bush did.

It's like the ad campaigns run in the past by Benetton and Calvin Klein, advertising that used the imagery of diversity and progressive politics (Benetton) of sex (CK) to create the illusion of hipness and transgression to sell product. The Obama brand works the same way, he said, making "us feel good about our government even as corporate overlords loot the treasury."

The goal, as with all brands, is to ensure we remain passive consumers and mistake a brand with an experience.

This fits with the rather timid approach he's taken on policy with Congress, leaving the tough lifting to the legislative branch and avoiding any expense of political capital. There have been no lines in the sand.

Rational rebuttal on rationing argument

Terrance Heath, writing on Ourfuture.org (the Campaign for America's Future site), explains why the healthcare reform path we are taking represents "a particularly worrisome turn."

Suddenly we're in a place where passing something kind of like reform may be more important than getting to reform itself. In the name of "compromise" and in interest of getting something passed, we could get a health reform bill that helps fewer people than originally intended, and preserve more of the status quo than almost anyone wants.

And the status quo is something that can no longer be sustained. The issue here is our own misplaced expectations. Arguments against the public option -- let alone a single-payer plan -- always focus on the notion of rationing and choice. The assumption is that a public insurance plan will place medical decisions in the hands of a government bureaucrat. The American public, it is argued, would never stand for that.

The reality is that we already allow bureaucrats to make those decisions -- but instead of being guided by what is best for the patient or the public, those decisions are made with profit in mind. Hence, we end up with a system designed to deny care.

We all know someone who has been in this boat, whose insurance company has denied coverage for what he or she thought was a necessary treatment. And yet, our health care premiums go up and up and up. If this is not rationing, then I don't know what is.

We need to be honest. To get universal coverage, we are going to have to pay more in taxes and we are going to have to ration care. In exchange, we -- or our employers -- would no longer have to pay premiums to insurance companies. To me, that seems a fair tradeoff.

The Friday Five: Remake these, please

Hollywood has made some awful movies over the years, most of which deserve to be forgotten. But what of the films that should have been better, the ones that failed because of poor casting, unimaginative direction or an unwillingness to trust the audience?

In this week's Friday Five, my occasional series, I offer five movies that had potential but failed to meet the mark:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969): Not the worst Bond film, but not because of the man playing Bond. George Lazenby -- with an assist from Telly Salavas as Blofeld -- takes one of the stronger Bond stories and surprisingly nuanced direction (has a Bond film ever been so dark and brooding?) and sucks its life out. Now that the franchise has been revived with Daniel Craig as Bond, this one needs a retooling.

The Natural (1984): Bernard Malamud's faux Greek tragedy is turned into one of those cliche myths that plague the baseball movie genre. I'd like to see this redone as Malamud wrote it, even if the novel was not top-tier Malamud.

Breathless (1983): A great French caper turned into a lifeless American vehicle for Richard Gere in the 1980s. it deserved a lot better and should be updated.

Get Smart (2008): Occasionally funny, but lacking the absurdist wit of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks' original television show. The casting was brilliant -- Steve Carell and Alan Arkin, in particular, were genius choices -- but the story missed the point of the series. Max was Control's top agent on television, an absurdity that was meant to undercut everything that both Control and Chaos engaged in. Turning him into the lovable loser may have gibed with Carrell's movie persona, but it robbed the film of its energy. "Missed it by that much."

A Farewell to Arms (1957): This had a lot of competition -- Daredevil, Howard the Duck, nearly every movie made about Babe Ruth -- but Jennifer Jones does such a poor job running Hemingway's dialogue that I had to put this one at the top. One of its chief failings, of course, is that Ernest Hemingway needs to be translated to the screen; his terse, almost staccato dialogue does not read well aloud and can too easily be turned into melodramatic pap by the wrong actors. That was the case not only with Jones' portrayal of nurse Catherine Barkley, but Rock Hudson's turn as Lt. Frederick Henry.

The trouble with Afghanistan

Today's White House Watch column offers a good example of why the column will be missed after it ends tomorrow. Dan Froomkin, the columnist/blogger who has been writing it for several years, takes on President Barack Obama, the press and the seemingly forgotten war in Afghanistan.

One of my many regrets is that I didn't get around to writing more about Obama's Afghanistan policy, its extraordinarily bloody ramifications, how it threatens to sink the nation in a Vietnam-like quagmire -- and, most significantly, how the president has never really made the case for his decision to increase rather than decrease our troop presence there.

There are plenty of authoritative arguments being publicly made by knowledgeable people that Obama is going about things the wrong way. This is way more the case, say, than before former president George W. Bush took the nation to war in Iraq. And yet Obama has never acknowledged or addressed those arguments -- and the press has not forced him to.

Before a president sends troops (or more troops) into harm's way, it seems to me he should be forced not only to explain why he thinks he's right, but why he thinks his critics are wrong. As I thought we'd learned in Iraq, giving the president a pass on this sort of thing is a very bad idea.

And bad policy on Obama's part.

Knicks and good in the same paragraph? Now, that's something to write home about

The Knicks took a rugged power forward -- 6-10 Jordan Hill from Arizona -- with the eighth pick in today's draft. Here's what ESPN's Chad Ford had to say about it:

The Knicks are relieved. They were praying that Flynn went in the top seven so that they could get either Curry or Hill. They wish that Curry had been there, but they liked Hill a lot, too. Mike D'Antoni compared him to a young Amare Stoudemire. I think that's a little much, but he'll be good in D'Antoni's up-tempo system and he's insurance if David Lee leaves via free agency. If Lee re-signs, Hill can play some center the same way Stoudemire did in Phoenix. Good pick.

I hope he's right. If he is -- and they can resign Lee -- it gives the Knicks an interesting core with the big guns (LeBron James, Dewayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony) coming on the free-agent market next year.

They also grabbed Toney Douglas with the Lakers' 29th pick, a guard that Ford calls "a bit of a poor man's Ben Gordon, a combo guard who can really light it up."

He lets the 3s fly, and unlike Gordon, he's a terrific defender. This is a really good pick for New York this late.

Kudos to the new regime.

'King of Pop' is dead? Long live the king

As I write this, unconfirmed reports that Michael Jackson has died are coming over the radio.

Once you get past the freak that he became over the last decade, you have to acknowledge his musical importance -- as a popsinger, songwriter and producer.

He is an icon of the '70s and '80s, who recorded disco's finest album
(Off the Wall) and the classic Thriller.

More later, after I get home.

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Gun nuts respond

This week's South Brunswick Post includes a follow-up story to a recent item on a local home-invasion/push-in robbery in Monmouth Junction. The June 9 robbery, in which a homeowner and housekeeper were held at gunpoint as burglars ransacked the house, was a scarey event and local police issued a list of basic precautions that residents could take.

It was a straightforward list -- or so I thought: install "quality locks" on entrances and windows; install motion-detector lights outside the home and leave lights on inside and avoid opening the door for strangers and ask for identification. Most important, however,

Police advise homeowners not to resist and to follow commands without offering additional assistance. They suggest being as observant as possible without looking directly at the robber, because doing so may be interpreted as a threat. Try to remember the robber’s physical characteristics and specifics of the car the robber was driving, if possible, police say.

After a robbery, residents are urged to call police immediately, write down anything that can be remembered about the crime and make a list of missing items.

Common sense, as I said. But not everyone agrees. Since the story hit our Web site earlier today, we've been inundated with comments, most following along the lines of this one:

Solid locks? Check,

Lights with motion sensor? Check.

Ask for ID? Check.

12 gauge loaded with 00 buck? Hmm, oddly enough, the police seem to have left that off the list. Citizens, start thinking for yourselves, be prepared, and act when necessary. Don't rely on the police alone. In a situation such as a home invasion, their only role is to clean up the mess.

Huh? Our commenters apparently have been watching too many movies, especially old westerns in which everyone is carrying a loaded gun at all times. But aside from the obvious gun lust, there is a basic flaw in the self-defense argument, one that is more likely to get the homeowner or someone else killed than to stop any home invasion.

Let's follow this logic to what should be its obvious conclusion: You are the homeowner and gun owner. You're sitting in your living room on a Tuesday night watching the Yankees with your son and daughter. Your gun is in the closet. The doorbell rings and your son gets up to answer it. As he opens the door, two masked men packing handguns push into the house and take him hostage.

What do you do? The gun, as I said, is in the closet. Your son has got a gun being pointed at his head and the two men are now ordering you and your daughter onto the couch, where you'll sit, gun pointed at you by one bandit as the other ransacks the house.

They steal some jewelry, your cash-filled wallet, etc., but no one is hurt.

The gun was kind of useless in this case.

What if you went for your gun? You better have been quick, because the two thugs already have theirs in hand, as well as your son.

There are other potential scenarios here -- but few of them that I can think of involve the homeowner getting a shot off before all hell breaks loose. And the ones that do assume a level of paranoia that, frankly, scares the hell out of me (i.e., the homeowner answering the door with his gun out and pointed at the intruder, who could be anything from the aforementioned bandits to a neighborhood Girl Scout selling cookies).

My suggestion? Listen to the police on this one, be careful and don't be foolish.

Death of an icon, whose image lives on

An icon of the 1970s has died.

Farrah Fawcett, whose poster graced the walls of millions of teenaged boys in teh mid-1970s, died this morning after a long battle with cancer.

Farrah was, for most men my age (I'm 46), our first celebrity crush. We had our poster (see on left) on our walls, watched Charlie's Angels religiously and wondered what it would have been like to have been Tom Bosley.

Her post-Angels career was less than stellar, except for her role The Burning Bed, a shockingly well-acted performance as a battered wife. There were some other interesting roles, but her star faded again and she essentially disappeared.

In many ways, her trajectory matched her sex-symbol predecessors, most of whom had less acting talent but whose bombshell looks -- which began as their entree into the limelight -- ended up being the albatross that stalled their careers.

And yet, the bathing suit poster stands alongside the handful of iconic images of the pinup genre, permanently etched into our cultural memories in a way that few other sex-symbol images have been and, perhaps, few ever will be again.

Or, you could call it military socialism

This is a great Barney Frank quote that I read on Paul Krugman's blog, but that originally came from Think Progress. Frank, a Massachussets Democrat, said during a press call hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund that the Republicans were being hypocritical in their opposition to the Democrats' stimulus bill, given the GOP's consistent use of the military budget to prime the pump:

These arguments will come from the very people who denied that the economic recovery plan created any jobs. We have a very odd economic philosophy in Washington: It’s called weaponized Keynesianism. It is the view that the government does not create jobs when it funds the building of bridges or important research or retrains workers, but when it builds airplanes that are never going to be used in combat, that is of course economic salvation.

As with the family values schpiel, the GOP has been shown to have no clothes.

Against tyranny

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I've held off writing about the crisis in Iran because, as an observer following it via TV, newspaper and Internet, it just seems so distant.

But Madeleine Albright said something last night on Rachel Maddow (I heard it today on a podcast) that I think makes some sense to me, helping to structure my own response and sense that we need to support the protesters as fellow "small d" democxrats, but that our own national government's involvement can only inflame the situation.

Maddow asked Albright whether there was "anything that the American people-not our government-but American citizens should do or could do" to help the Iranian dissidents.

Albright, who served as secretary of state under Bill Clinton, said that we are looking at a "two-level thing" and that "the U.S. government has to be very careful not to become the football, as we have been saying, and not to be the story."

On the other hand, dissidents and those who protest around the world are always very encouraged when they know that Americans care. And through all this modern technology, it is so evident that we are always on the side of those who want freedom.

And for me, Rachel, what this shows is democracy is alive and well. You know, people question whether people want to make decisions about their own lives, and what you're seeing out there on the streets is people want to be in control of their own lives. And democracy from below is something that is a very, very powerful movement.

I'm not an Albright fan -- she, like everyone else who has run the State Department, is too beholden to that strain of "realism" that has left us on the wrong side of too many conflicts.

But I think she is right here. The specifics of our relationship with Iran -- the mutual mistrust and our own sense of victimhood in this relationship tied to the hostage crisis and so incredibly ignorant of the history that helped create the conditions that led to the late-'70s revolution in the first place -- make it important that our government stay out of things, that we not give the regime an opportunity to use the United States and a false sense of Iranian patriotism against the reformers. That would take steam away from the protests and likely drive a wedge between the more conservative poorer classes and the urban reformers.

It's something we need to acknowledge -- and then extend to other hot spots in the Middle East. "We are," after all, as Chris Hedges wrote on Truthdig the other day, "the biggest problem in the Middle East."

We have through our cruelty and violence created and legitimized the Mahmoud Ahmadinejads and the Osama bin Ladens. The longer we lurch around the region dropping iron fragmentation bombs and seizing Muslim land the more these monsters, reflections of our own distorted image, will proliferate. The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr wrote, “Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy.” But our hypocrisy no longer fools anyone but ourselves. It will ensure our imperial and economic collapse.

He goes on to say that "We are, and have long been, the primary engine for radicalism in the Middle East."

The greatest favor we can do for democracy activists in Iran, as well as in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Gulf and the dictatorships that dot North Africa, is withdraw our troops from the region and begin to speak to Iranians and the rest of the Muslim world in the civilized language of diplomacy, respect and mutual interests. The longer we cling to the doomed doctrine of permanent war the more we give credibility to the extremists who need, indeed yearn for, an enemy that speaks in their crude slogans of nationalist cant and violence.

Does that mean we should ignore what is happening? No. But it is not the government that should act. The Iranian people need our support, need us to speak up and speak out and to do the honorable thing and give the Middle East back to its people, to stop meddling.

More from Hedges:

The fight of the Iranian people is our fight. And, perhaps for the first time, we can match our actions to our ideals. We have no right under post-Nuremberg laws to occupy Iraq or Afghanistan. These occupations are defined by these statutes as criminal “wars of aggression.” They are war crimes. We have no right to use force, including the state-sponsored terrorism we unleash on Iran, to turn the Middle East into a private gas station for our large oil companies. We have no right to empower Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestine, a flagrant violation of international law. The resistance you see in Iran will not end until Iranians, and all those burdened with repression in the Middle East, free themselves from the tyranny that comes from within and without. Let us, for once, be on the side of those who share our democratic ideals.

An epidemic of hypocrisy

Gov. Mark Sanford joins U.S. Sen. John Ensign in the deep waters of hypocrisy, admitting today that he, too, has been having an affair. None of this would matter to me were it not for them both proclaiming themselves to be "family values" conservatives.

Sanford was considered a major player for the Republican nomination for president for 2012 (part of the absurd Washington parlor game that tried to line up candidates before the incumbent has even had time to unpack his socks) and Ensign allegedly was considering his own run. I'm assuming, at this point, that the likelihood of either seeking the White House is pretty slim, though admitting an affair didn't hurt Bill Clinton. The Democrats, however, have not hammered their opponents with family values -- that has been the GOP's bag and is likely to be a weight around both of their necks, sinking their chances.

So who's left? Newt Gingrich? Fred Thompson? Rush Limbaugh? Sarah Palin? Yeah, right. Tim Pawlenty appears the go-to guy at the moment, but then it's way too early to speculate.

Dispatches: We're all a-Twitter

This week's Dispatches is about our use of Twitter and the changing newscape.

Runner's diary, Tuesday

Two days in a row -- a victory of sorts. Yes, I got my fat tuchus out the door and on the road, doing the standard three-mile loop down Ridge, onto Perrine and then Schalks Crossing. I won't pretend it was easy. But I pulled it off and then did some light lifting. I'm taking this one day at a time with the goal being to slowly add the mileage until I can get back to where I was more than a year ago.

iPod: Bill Moyers' Journal

Monmouth holds out on MOM -- foolishly

The Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders (don't you love the absurdly arcane name) is now doing what officials there have accused folks in Middlesex County of doing for years: Obstructing progress.

The freeholders unanimously passed the resolution affirming "support for the Monmouth Junction alternative and opposition to the Manchester to Red Bank line" on June 11. The vote came two weeks after a NJ Transit spokesman claimed the agency had won the backing of Freeholder John D'Amico and other county representatives for the Red Bank line.

D'Amico said that his support had been conditional because the rail agency had deemed "better alternatives" as too expensive to meet federal requirements.

"Better alternatives," of course, is just a code-phrase for "not in my backyard." Better, in this case, would mean first sending a line meant to take people north to New York west through southern Middlesex County, adding operating costs and travel time to an already too-expensive to build project.

In any case, this is just a last-ditch attempt to change NJ Transit's mind -- something that is unlikely to happen at this point, when you consider how the players have realigned themselves. Ocean County is on board with the new route and, while Monmouth is officially opposed, I'm not at all convinced that the people in Western Monmouth are all that upset about how this thing is playing out.

And then there is The Asbury Park Press, the state's second-largest paper and the voice of Monmouth and Ocean counties. The paper had been a staunch supporter of the Middlesex alternative (which would have run through Jamesburg, Monroe and South Brunswick); it has since changed its thinking, calling the freeholder vote "a short-sighted, cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face decision."

If the freeholders refuse to come around and recognize the value the Red Bank line would have for Ocean and Monmouth counties — and the futility of holding out for an even scaled-back Monmouth Junction alternative — NJ Transit should proceed with the project anyway.

I couldn't agree more.

Bruised, battered and broken

A quiz: How many of the Mets' opening day starters have spent time on the disabled list? Well, as of tonight, it's five -- add Carlos Beltran to the list. Only Luis Castillo, Daniel Murphy and David Wright have stayed healthy -- and Murphy lost his leftfield job because he proved to be an awful outfielder.


Three important pitchers -- starters Oliver Perez and John Maine and setup man JJ Putz -- also are out of commission.


In addition to starting shortstop Jose Reyes, second-stringer Alex Cora and third-string shortstop Ramon Martinez have been on the shelf.


They're still above .500, but if they don't get healthy they won't be for long.

Runner's diary, Monday

It was a morning on the treadmill (it didn't rain but it seemed like it would), three miles in 26:59 all the while choking and grunting and feeling it deep in the calves. Plus, the iPod Nano had no charge and doesn't appear to be holding on anymore. But I did get the run in.

Morning quote: David Sirota on the Obama administration

David Sirota, writing on the In These Times Web site on the Obama administration's reform plans, compares the actual details of his vision to some of the major American visionaries of the past (the Founding Fathers, Edison, FDR):

All of these inventors envisaged machines, theories and societies that never before existed. And that’s why for all the positive, even admirable steps Obama’s America seems poised to take, the aspirations still seem too small, too unimaginative, too confined by old parameters and old conceptions of how things have always worked.

Hurdles to participation

This move by the Mt. Olive school district, if approved tonight, presages a dangerous trend in public education.

Mount Olive High School students who play sports and some who join clubs will be forced to pay a participation fee next year to make up for budget shortfalls.

The Board of Education must come up with $91,000 in revenue from the fees, and preliminarily announced the fees will be $125 for a student to play an unlimited number of sports and $25 to join nonacademic, nonservice clubs, school board President Mark Werner said at a recent board meeting.

Thus, a student who plays multiple sports and is in multiple clubs would pay $150, the same as a student who plays one sport and is in one club.

"That's what we're looking at right now," Werner said. "However we slice it, we have to come up with $91,000. That's our mission — $91,000."

On first blush, this might seem an innovative way to plug a hole in the school district's budget. And it is difficult to criticize the district for exploring this avenue.

But seeking fees from students raises questions about access to programs, about the openness of participation in public school activities and whether such fees might pose, if not an impediment, then a disincentive to joining clubs or playing sports.

Granted, these activities are extras, but they have become a central part of the high school experience -- and they are an important part of the college applicaton process. Colleges not only seek students with solid grades and high test scores, but those who participate in the school culture -- in clubs and sports -- because they want kids who are well rounded and interested in more than just books.

The fees, therefore, become not only a financial hurdle to high school participation but potentially create a drag on the ability of low- or moderate-income students to get into college.

Health care naysayers

Republicans were out in force, trying to kill the kind of healthcare reform that Americans -- if opinion polling is any indication -- desire and expect. All are claiming to support reform, but none seem to be listening to the majority, which repeatedly says it wants a public plan as an alternative to the current system -- and that it trusts the government to manage health care coverage better than the insurance companies.

Amnesty and fiscal prudence

The state's tax amnesty program appears to have worked beyond anyone's expectations, with more than a half billion dollars in past-due taxes making their way back into state coffers.

The money, according top top Democrats, will allow the state to restore property tax rebates that had been slashed as part of the various budget revisions offered by Gov. Jon Corzine to deal with flagging revenues caused by the failing economy and to deal with a structural deficit in the budget built up over the last two years.

Bringing back the rebates makes sense as a short-term measure, even if Republican candidate Chris Christie accuses Corzine of using the money for political gain. The rebates are desperately needed in this property-tax heavy state, especially with so many New Jerseyans facing economic uncertainty.

Is the amnesty program a one-shot gimmick? Maybe, but so was the rebate cut. And the program gives the state some time to find replacement revenue for next year's budget.

Ultimately, as I've written, the rebates -- like so many other attempts to rein in property taxes without changing the system's fundamental structure -- are just a patch. Eventually, the entire system will blow like an aging tire and a new one will be installed. That's the only real hope.

In the meantime, the rebates will have to do.

Timing is everything when it comes to the deficit

Truth Dig, in its Ear to the Ground feature, remarks on some recent polls that show Americans concerned about the deficit and questioning whether Barack Obama has it in him to control spending. The danger is that polls like this could create a sort of backward momentum at a time when government intervention in the economy -- specifically, government money priming hte pump -- is needed and reform of health care and programs to address climate change need to move forward.

With mounting pressure at home and abroad to cut the budget, Obama’s ambitious health care plans could be headed for the rocks. Too bad we already blew a few trillion on wars and banks. We could have used that money for something useful, as it turns out.

Which brings me to an important point: Deficits are not necessarily bad, so long as the deficits and debt are used for productive purposes (schools, health care, mass transit improvements) and not for wars and tax cuts to people who do not need tax cuts. What I'm getting at is that the obsession with deficits that has cropped up now is misplaced and raises a question: Where was this obsession during the Bush years, when the Republican warmonger racked up record deficits?

Reining in Wall Street (well, maybe not)

The business community seems OK with the Obama administration's proposed revamping of the financial regulatory structure -- which should give anyone looking to rein in the so-called "Masters of the Universe" pause.

As Steve Pearlstein writes in The Washington Post,

the current system of financial regulation has been thoroughly captured by the companies it was meant to restrain -- and that the only way to put things right is to bring in new rules, a new structure and tough new regulators. Anything short of that, and you can almost guarantee that the inmates will be back in charge of the asylum by the time the next bubble starts to develop.

Judged by that standard, the proposals the Obama administration put forward this week to reform the regulatory apparatus were a bit of a disappointment.

He blames the shortcomings on efforts by the president to move quickly and appease too many people. Reform, he says,

should have been grounded, first and foremost, in a thorough and independent analysis of how the crisis was allowed to develop and what regulators did and didn't do to prevent it, drawn from interviews under oath and internal records and made available to the public. That should have been followed by a detailed set of recommendations from a panel of seasoned regulators and independent experts on how the regulatory system should be reformed to prevent similar crises in the future.

If Congress decided to deviate from those recommendations, of course, nobody would be surprised. But at least it would have given the public a marker for reform that was free of industry influence. It would have also provided political cover for the president and members of Congress, a politically acceptable default position that they could have used to turn aside the entreaties of local bankers and campaign contributors when they came knocking.

Instead, the Obama team, hoping to ride the wave of public outrage before
it crested, determined to fashion a reform proposal even before a thorough
analysis could be completed. And by deciding to contort and trim their proposal
to accommodate the objections from powerful interest groups and key members of
Congress, members of the Obama team have now made it politically acceptable for
everyone to treat this as just another special-interest free-for-all of the sort
that helped cause the crisis in the first place.

Pearlstein's right. We need a full-blown investigation of what happened so that we can craft tough rules and rebuild our regulatory system to prevent future meltdowns. The economy is not supposed to be a casino that spits out winnings. It's about producing goods and services that people need -- and believe me, I've never met anyone who needed a collateralized debt obligation.

If two became one

When things become bad enough, towns will consolidate. That, I think, is the lesson that we should be taking from the recent police and courts merger down in Gloucester County.

As the Packet Group paper, the Windsor-Hights Herald, reports, the borough of Swedesboro has disbanded its Police Department and signed a shared-services agreement with Woolwich to take over patrols and court services. The agreement is expected to save Swedesboro taxpayers about $400 annually and Woolwich taxpayers $68 a year.

The consolidation of law-enforcement functions likely wouldn't have happened, however, were it not for the squeeze put on smaller towns by the Corzine administration, which wants to see local governments streamline, eliminate duplicated services and share services whenever possible,

Consider:

”There had been talk (about sharing a police department with Woolwich) in Swedesboro for as long as I have been mayor, which is about six years,” Swedesboro Mayor Thomas Fromm said Tuesday.

”But when Gov. Corzine announced his municipal aid cuts at budget time last year, that’s when we realized what we had to do. We knew we needed to do something real, and something bold, for our taxpayers, and we began in earnest at that time,” he said.

In 2008, about one-third of Swedesboro’s $2.2 million municipal budget was used for police- related expenditures, according to Mayor Fromm.

Hightstown and East Windsor have been talking for nearly a year, while the two Princetons have gone back and forth for years, slowly merging many smaller services but failing to share police services or go all the way to full consolidation.

As for Jamesburg and Monroe, officials in the two towns treat consolidation like a particularly nasty strain of swine flu.

Consolidation -- whether full-bore or incremental -- makes fiscal sense for Hightstown and Jamesburg, at least on the surface. Both towns have faced difficult fiscal choices in recent years, with stagnant ratable bases and increasing costs forcing the towns to cut services and increase taxes. Jamesburg even considered closing its public library to give it some budgetary room last year.

East Windsor and Monroe, however, have not felt the same level of pain -- but the state's own fiscal emergency may change that. It is going to get more and more difficult for the state to justify giving cash to towns like Monroe and East Windsor that completely surround their poorer neighbors when it doesn't have enough money to pay its debts and provide basic services.

Who'll watch the White House now?

This is bad news and typical of the way the journalism business works these days. I really have little to add and just want to wish Dan Froomkin well -- he will end up on his feet somewhere.

I'll just add this comment from Glenn Greenwald, which sums up my feeling:

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama. Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians "from the Left" (and it's hardly a coincidence that it was MSNBC's decision to give Maddow her own show -- rather than the endless array of right-wing talk show hosts plaguing television for years -- which prompted a tidal wave of "concern" over whether cable news was becoming "too partisan"). In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.

An unhealthy compromise

It is time for President Barack Obama to make a stand.

His speech earlier this week clearly outlined the need for a public plan as part of healthcare reform, but if he doesn't step up and play hardball with Congress his words will come back to haunt him.

The latest on healthcare reform is that the man originally tapped to lead the president's reform effort, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, wants the public plan scrapped in an effort to move legislation forward:

Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said on Wednesday that the Obama White House would likely have to scrap a public option for health insurance coverage
if it wanted to get the votes needed to pass systematic change.

"We've come too far and gained too much momentum for our efforts to fail over disagreement on one single issue," the Senator and one-time HHS Secretary nominee said, according to ABC News.

The remarks came after Dashcle, along with former Senate Majority Leaders Bob Dole and Howard Baker introduced his own proposal for health care reform that. That plan actually included a pseudo-version of a government-run option. The Daschle proposal calls for (among other things) public insurance pools to be administered by state government, not the feds.

In coming out against a public plan, Daschle adds kindling to an already roaring debate on health care reform. On Thursday morning, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean repeated the mantra that you cannot have effective legislation if it does not include a public option. At the White House on Wednesday, several state legislators who had met with current HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius argued the same point.

Certainly, the public seems to be weighed in Dean's favor. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted on Wednesday night showed that 76 percent of respondents wanted a choice between a public option for insurance coverage and private providers.

The public, of course, understands this issue far better than the politicians, most of whom are beholden to the quartet of special interests who control this debate -- the insurance industry, drug companies, doctors and hospitals. While I'd like to believe that at least some of them -- doctors and hospitals, in particular -- have patients' and consumer's best interests at heart, the reality is that a public plan could cut deeply into their profits. And that's what this is all about.

The reality is that a single-payer plan would be the most efficient and effective way to fix health care in the United States, but a host of myths and political considerations stand in the way. In the meantime, Ezra Klein offers some interesting thoughts on the next steps toward reform and some stronger alternatives than the perpetually cautious men on Capitol Hill seem ready to embrace.

Those options, for the most part, have been excluded from the debate, as he notes. The public plan, however, remains on the table, though it is under seige. People like Gov. Dean, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are making it clear that, without it, any reform legislation would be a sham.

Time to step up Mr. President and spend some of that political capital you've been storing.

Dispatches: Budget gimmicks galore

Politics, as it always does, poisons discussion of state finances. Read Dispatches.

Runner's diary, Wednesday

A nice outdoor run this morning, the sun up, sky cloudless and a strong pace despite sore legs.

iPod; an interview with Chris Hedges.

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Sent from my Verizon Wireless LGVX9900 device.

Doggie diary: The story of Rosie and Sophie Spoiled rotten and loving it

There are few things as enjoyable as watching kids and dogs play together. Last night, Annie and I took the pups to Cold Stone Creamery on Route 27 to meet my brother and two of his kids. We bought Rosie and Sophie kid-size sweet cream ice cream and let Dan and Joss feed it to the dogs, which was fun to watch. They -- meaning both kids and both dogs -- get so excited.

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Exploding a healthcare myth 1

Opponents of healthcare reform like to pretend that the system we have right now is full of choice, that we can get in to see doctors whenever we want, that we have access to every and any treatment under the sun.

Patients, however, know better.

David Leonhardt, in The New York Times, pretty much explodes the open-access myth in this important analysis story. Rationing, he says, exists in a big way -- in "three main ways":

The first is the most counterintuitive, because it doesn’t involve denying medical care. It involves denying just about everything else.

The rapid rise in medical costs has put many employers in a tough spot. They have had to pay much higher insurance premiums, which have increased their labor costs. To make up for these increases, many have given meager pay raises.

This tradeoff is often explicit during contract negotiations between a company and a labor union. For nonunionized workers, the tradeoff tends to be invisible. It happens behind closed doors in the human resources department. But it still happens.

He continues:

The second kind of rationing involves the uninsured. The high cost of care means that some employers can’t afford to offer health insurance and still pay a competitive wage. Those high costs mean that individuals can’t buy insurance on their own.

The uninsured still receive some health care, obviously. But they get less care, and worse care, than they need. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that 18,000 people died in 2000 because they lacked insurance. By 2006, the number had risen to 22,000, according to the Urban Institute.

The final form of rationing is the one I described near the beginning of this column: the failure to provide certain types of care, even to people with health insurance. Doctors are generally not paid to do the blocking and tackling of medicine: collaboration, probing conversations with patients, small steps that avoid medical errors. Many doctors still do such things, out of professional pride. But the full medical system doesn’t do nearly enough.

That’s rationing — and it has real consequences.

So, please, enough about the long lines and rationed care elsewhere. That is the reality we face right here in America right now.

Tilting at windmills?

This paragraph from this morning's New York Times story on proposed financial-sector regulations is becoming all too common in the early days of the Obama administration:

Although it would strikingly reorganize the regulatory architecture, the president’s plan results from many compromises with industry executives and lawmakers, and is not as bold as some had hoped.

It is as if the folks surrounding the president -- and the president himself -- forgot Rahm Emanuel's pre-inauguration comment, essentially the raison d'etre for the Obama administration:

“Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” Mr. Emanuel said in an interview on Sunday. “They are opportunities to do big things.”

I said early on -- more than a year ago, back in the early days of the primary campaign -- that Barack Obama was a politician at war with himself: It was obvious that his instincts were liberal/progressive, coming from his background as a community organizer; that he was cautious to a fault and too wed to the notion of bipartisanship (the basic thesis of his book, The Audacity of Hope).

For voters, however, he represented their hopes and aspirations -- often competing hopes -- his persona being a political Rohrschach test. Many on the left viewed him as a potential progressive ally, someone likely to revive the tradition of an aggressively activist government in the mode of FDR and LBJ (on domestic issues), ignoring his ties to the coal and financial industries, his vote on bankruptcy reform and forgiving his backpedaling during the campaign on telecom immunity and other progressive issues.

The reality is that Obama is, in many ways, a better version of Bill Clinton, less divisive and nominally more progressive, but just as pragmatic and just as committed to that vague third way that too often seeks to split the difference to keep dissent at a minimum. So far, the president has spent far more time trying to appease the more conservative elements of his own party and attract the few remaining moderates left in the GOP than using his strength among his party's progressive base to push his agenda through.

The stimulus, Guantanamo, gay rights, climate change, health care, financial regulation -- on nearly every policy goal -- he has been willing to jettisone the more progressive elements of his policies to keep moderates on the reservation.

Obama doesn't deny this kind of calculus. A quotation of his from the Times story:

“Did, you know, any considerations of sort of politics play into it? We want to get this thing passed, and, you know, we think that speed is important. We want to do it right. We want to do it carefully. But we don’t want to tilt at windmills.”

Progressives are not asking him to "tilt at windmills"; they're asking him to craft tough policy. If they -- we -- want him to be more aggressive, then progressives need to become more aggressive and make sure that the president knows that he can't keep selling the left out.

It's getting hot

I know that the weather hasn't been particularly summer-like so far, but only someone with his head in the sand or with a political ax to grind would take it as evidence that climate change is a myth. (I actually saw Dennis Miller make this case on one of the late-night shows a couple of years ago, that a couple of degrees increase in average planetary temperature would hardly be felt. What a sad coda to what was such a promising career.)

Most of the critics take a different tack -- either talking about the science as just projections (see the comment from the American Farm Bureau at the end of this story on a new climate change report).

But the Earth is warming, and it may be happening more quickly and with more damaging consequences than we've thought, according to United States Global Change Research Program.

Here are the report's key findings:

1. Global warming is unequivocal and primarily human-induced.
Global temperature has increased over the past 50 years. This observed increase is due primarily to human-induced emissions of heat-trapping gases. (p. 13)

2. Climate changes are underway in the United States and are projected to grow.
Climate-related changes are already observed in the United States and its coastal waters. These include increases in heavy downpours, rising temperature and sea level, rapidly retreating glaciers, thawing permafrost, lengthening growing seasons, lengthening ice-free seasons in the ocean and on lakes and rivers, earlier snowmelt, and alterations in river flows. These changes are projected to grow. (p. 27)

3. Widespread climate-related impacts are occurring now and are expected to increase.
Climate changes are already affecting water, energy, transportation, agriculture, ecosystems, and health. These impacts are different from region to region and will grow under projected climate change. (p. 41-106, 107-152)

4. Climate change will stress water resources.
Water is an issue in every region, but the nature of the potential impacts varies. Drought, related to reduced precipitation, increased evaporation, and increased water loss from plants, is an important issue in many regions, especially in the West. Floods and water quality problems are likely to be amplified by climate change in most regions. Declines in mountain snowpack are important in the West and Alaska where snowpack provides vital natural water storage. (p. 41, 129, 135, 139)

5. Crop and livestock production will be increasingly challenged.
Agriculture is considered one of the sectors most adaptable to changes in climate. However, increased heat, pests, water stress, diseases, and weather extremes will pose adaptation challenges for crop and livestock production. (p. 71)

6. Coastal areas are at increasing risk from sea-level rise and storm surge.
Sea-level rise and storm surge place many U.S. coastal areas at increasing risk of erosion and flooding, especially along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts, Pacific Islands, and parts of Alaska. Energy and transportation infrastructure and other property in coastal areas are very likely to be adversely affected. (p. 111, 139, 145, 149)

7. Threats to human health will increase.
Health impacts of climate change are related to heat stress, waterborne diseases, poor air quality, extreme weather events, and diseases transmitted by insects and rodents. Robust public health infrastructure can reduce the potential for negative impacts. (p. 89)

8. Climate change will interact with many social and environmental stresses.
Climate change will combine with pollution, population growth, overuse of resources, urbanization, and other social, economic, and environmental stresses to create larger impacts than from any of these factors alone. (p. 99)

9. Thresholds will be crossed, leading to large changes in climate and ecosystems.
There are a variety of thresholds in the climate system and ecosystems. These thresholds determine, for example, the presence of sea ice and permafrost, and the survival of species, from fish to insect pests, with implications for society. With further climate change, the crossing of additional thresholds is expected. (p. 76, 82, 115, 137, 142)

10. Future climate change and its impacts depend on choices made today.
The amount and rate of future climate change depend primarily on current and future human-caused emissions of heat-trapping gases and airborne particles. Responses involve reducing emissions to limit future warming, and adapting to the changes that are unavoidable. (p. 25, 29)

The disbelievers have already written their response to this report; it is the same one they've been offering for years. But they are such a small minority -- the science is against them.

Maybe the report can be the impetus needed to get Congress to act.

Steroids, Sammy Sosa and Casablanca

What was it that Capt. Renault said in Casablanca as he closed Rick's? "I'm shocked," he says, "shocked to find that gambling is going on in here," as the croupier hands him a pile of cash.

I think the news that broke today on Sammy Sosa -- that he was "among the players who tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug in 2003," according to The New York Times -- is one of those Capt. Renault moments.

Shocking news? Not when the list of players linked to steroids includes some of the era's top sluggers -- and when Sosa transformed himself from a skinny speedster to a massive power hitter in just a few years.

Inflating the fear index

Matthew Yglesias, in this post, says what I've been thinking for a while:

I continue to be baffled that with all the problems facing the economy and all the genuinely debatable policy issues in play, some people continue to be spending most of their time warning us of the dangers of inflation. Consider:

So-called core producer prices, which exclude food and energy costs, fell 0.1 percent, indicating broad pressure on prices because of lower demand across the economy.

I think the inflation rate should at least be above zero before we start worrying that it’s gotten out of control. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Runner's diary, Monday

My legs are still sore from Friday's heavy workout -- plus I hauled 40-pound bags of top soil and some heavy, 16-inch-square pavers in my back yard yesterday -- so pushing through my three-mile run on the treadmill (I was expecting it to rain) was tough. I did it, then stretched, but it wasn't all that fun.

iPod: Bill Moyers' Journal -- interview with Robert Reich and on Thomas Paine.

A line in the sand?

Has President Barack Obama finally drawn the line in the sand on health care?

In a speech today to the American Medical Association, the president -- in the words of The Washington Post "offered a forceful defense of creating a controversial new government-sponsored health insurance program as part of a broad overhaul of the nation's system."

"Insurance companies have expressed support for the idea of covering the uninsured -- and I welcome their willingness to engage constructively in the reform debate, I'm glad they're at the table," he told nearly 2,000 AMA members. "But what I refuse to do is simply create a system where insurance companies suddenly have a whole bunch more customers on Uncle Sam's dime, but still fail to meet their responsibilities."

He described the outlines of the public plan this way (from text of speech as prepared, on Daily Kos):

If you don’t like your health coverage or don’t have any insurance, you will have a chance to take part in what we’re calling a Health Insurance Exchange. This Exchange will allow you to one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose a plan that’s best for you and your family – just as federal employees can do, from a postal worker to a Member of Congress. You will have your choice of a number of plans that offer a few different packages, but every plan would offer an affordable, basic package. And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.

This is the strongest language he has used since the election in support of the public option. The question is whether it addresses the question raised by Robert Reich on Friday on Bill Moyers' Journal.

BILL MOYERS: (Y)ou said on your blog this week that the real question for you is the extent to which Barack Obama will push back against these lobbies. What's your answer to your own question?

ROBERT REICH: I don't know, Bill. This is the first test where there is huge organized opposition. And it's coming from very, very powerful lobbies who have prevailed-- not just for ten or 15 years. You've prevailed for decades on this issue. So this is the truth time in terms of how able and willing the President and the White House is to really set boundaries and push members of Congress.

So it's at this point-- and I'm talking about the next two or three or four weeks. I mean, we're talking about crunch time right now-- that the President has got to step in and be forceful and be specific. And I don't know whether he will be. I hope he is.

BILL MOYERS: What will you be looking for?

ROBERT REICH: I'll be looking for whether he can say to Max Baucus, for example, of Senate finance, "Look, this is what I want. And if you're not going to go along with this, I want to know why. And if you're not going to go along with this, then would something else you want down the line you're not going to get." In other words, he's got to really create very, very specific conditions, threats, promises. This is the stuff of politics.

Reich is correct. While he spoke several days before today's speech, the basic point remains valid: He needs to spend his political capital to create a public option (especially with the public being in his corner on the issue), backing Ted Kennedy and the public-option advocates publicly and loudly and making it clear through the standard political channels that there would be consequences to those Democratic senators who jump ship.

Before anyone accuses me of calling for Obama to do something I critized Bush for doing, stop. I am not advocating the president usurp the power of the legislative branch via some kooky theory of the unitary executive. Rather, I am calling for Obama to play hardball politics, to put his popularity on the line for one of his signature policy goals.

Today's speech is a good sign, but we won't know for several weeks if it predicts a new tack for Obama, whose instincts are more toward compromise than confrontation.

So we'll see. Let's hope he's begun drawing his line in the sand on health care.

Grassroots: Where's the change?

My latest Progressive Populist column on Obama's faultering commitment to change in the foreign poicy arena is available online.

Doggie diaries: The story of Rosie and Sophie Bored dogs are bad for shoes

This picture speaks for itself, though I think a little background on how these Skechers became scrap is useful.

The dogs woke me at 6 this morning, partly because they wanted to go out and partly because it was hot and stuffy in our room.

So after letting them outside, I lied down on the couch in the den where we had the ceiling fan running. I figured they'd rather hang in there than in a tuffy room.

I dozed on and off. The dogs, however, were in beast mode. They stole a roll of paper towels, toilet paper, ransacked the garbage and basically made it difficult to sleep.

That's when I found them tearing up the shoes.

The moral of this story is never trust puppies. They use their cuteness as a cover for their mischievious intent.

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If you don't see a sign do you have to follow it?

I have to wonder who placed the "No turn on red" sign on New Road at Route 27. It's not visible unless you're the third car or farther back,

We were sitting at the light tonight and the car in front of us made a right, despite what the sign says though most likely because the driver didn't see it.

Someone probably should consider moving it back.

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Dragging their feet, like everyone else

There are a lot of reasons more towns do not consolidate in New Jersey -- debt, tax inequities, an unnecessary sense of singularity -- but I'm wondering if the biggest reason might not be foot-dragging that kills discussions before they can start.

Consider the case of Hightstown and East Windsor. An independent group in the borough conducted a study calling for a full-blown study to be done. The Hightstown council was split but agreed to at least explore the issue. East Windsor said it was open to the discussion, but only were it clear that substantial benefits would accrue to the township.

That was three months ago. Informal discussions are set to begin this week, which means that real discussions of a real study are likely still months away.

My guess is that consolidation is unlikely, unless the state does what it should have done following the 2006 legislative joint session and empower a panel to push the process forward. As things stand now, the vague assistance the state can offer is just not enough to get anyone to the table, whether it be East Windsor and Hightstown, Jamesburg and Monroe, the Princetons or the many other doughnut and hole communities and small towns in the state.

Runner's diary, Friday

I made it two days in a row on the treadmill -- it was raining again, what a surprise -- after some heavy leg work with weights, followed after by more leg and ab work. I'm still a slug, but I'm feeling a little less sluggy.

Rivarly, part 3

Raul Ibanez hits a three-run homer off of a pitcher who probably shouldn't be with the big club. Great. I really hate the Phillies.

Rivalry, part 2

Phillies came back -- of course -- and now it's up to the rookie Fernando Martinez to keep this game from going to extra innings. Two outs, no one on -- nothing put in play.

Now let's see what all the hype was about.

Greening climate legislation -- with oodles of cash

It is difficult to understand how, with huge Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, with a Democratic president who says he is committed to reversing climate change and a majority of the American public saying they're concerned about the environment, the legislation that is winding its way through Congress has become a shell of what it should be.

Or, maybe it's not that difficult at all.

As with the health care fight, there has been plenty of money flowing through this debate.

Money rules

They need to get a version of this passed, ASAP. There needs to be rules governing the lieutenent governor's fundraising abilities, the stronger the better.

A one-sided rivalry

This Mets-Phillies rivalry can be painful -- as a Mets fan, anyway. So far, it is the Phils who have gotten the best of it. Even when the Mets win, the Phillies can point to a World Series and a playoff berth. The Mets over the last two years have two ugly collapses to their credit.

Watching the game tonight -- David Wright was tossed out at second on a fly ball to left by Raul Ibanez, one of three strong-armed Phillie outfielders. It can be depressing -- especially when Fernando Tatis smacks one through the right side.

But the Mets have a lead -- which rarely seems to matter against this team.

Unhealthy budget options

Health care costs for the public sector are going to keep rising and it likely will mean service cuts, tax increases, layoffs and labor disagreements at both the local and state levels of government. The micro read on this is that the various government entities have been too generous -- which is way too simple an analysis. The reality is that we should be discussing this as part of the national health care debate and not focusing so narrowly on public employees and turnining to the rhetoric of resentment (i.e., "I work in the private sector and get shafted on health care, so public employees should get shafted, too). Fix health care and health insurance and this should take care of itself.

Scare tactics on health care

I hope Nicholas D. Kristof is right about this, that we are wiser about the failings of our own health system and won't be scared off by the kind of "swiftboating" that targeted John Kerry and that helped doom the Clinton-era health reforms.

In a fine column discussing the Canadian-style single-payer plan, he demonstrates that most of the arguments against single-payer are, well, hogwash. Focusing on the story of an American attorney living in Vancouver, BC, and paying "the equivalent of just $49 a month for health care," he knocks the legs out from under the arguments against the Canadian plan.

Diane Tucker, 59, the subject of his column, suffered a stroke at work and was transported to an emergency room where she was met by a doctor who immediately took her for a CT scan. She was released after a week in a hospital in which "conditions weren’t as opulent as at some American hospitals."

Then again, the price was right. “They never spoke to me about money,” she said. “Not when I checked in, and not when I left.”

Scheduling an appointment with a specialist after her hospital stay wasn't exactly easy, but she did get an appointment and "underwent three months of rehabilitation, including physical therapy several times a week."

Again there was no charge, no co-payment.

See a pattern?

Let's consider her American experience -- which occurred last year while on a visit to San Francisco. She had fainted and was rushed to a hospital, where "the person meeting her at the emergency room door wasn’t a doctor."

“The first person I saw was a lady with a computer,” she said, “asking me how I intended to pay the bill.” Ms. Tucker did, in fact, have insurance, but she was told she would have to pay herself and seek reimbursement.

Nothing was seriously wrong, and the hospital discharged her after five hours. The bill came to $8,789.29.

The two experiences, Kristof writes, have settled it for Tucker:

Ms. Tucker has since lost her job in the recession, but she says she’s stuck in Canada — because if she goes back to the United States, she will pay a fortune for private health insurance because of her history of a stroke. “I’m trying to find another job here,” she said. “I want to stay here because of medical insurance.”

Of course, single-payer is not on the table at the moment -- a travesty. Rather, we are arguing over the merits of creating a public insurance option that would compete with the private insurers, with lawmakers fearful that private insurers would not be competitive with the public plan. You read that correctly: Lawmakers are more concerned with inefficient private insurance companies than with providing lower-cost insurance and expanding coverage.

Given the way this debate is playing out, I doubt anyone would be surprised to learn that the health and insurance industries have given in excess of $3 million to Congressional candidates during the 2010 election cycle -- which started in January.

Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, one of the committees reviewing health care legislation, is a major recipient of health care and insurance money, as are many members of the relevant committees.on

The reality is that this is a fight about money -- providing access to health care to everyone in the United States will cost the insurance industry, the HMOs and many in the health care industry money. That's why they're spending money to control what reform ultimately will look like.

As much as this is a discussion about health care, it also is evidence of the need for a clean elections program -- voluntary public financing of campaigns -- at the federal level. Take the private money out of the system and we stand a fighting chance to make the kind of changes we need.

Runner's diary, Thursday

I am a slug, a big, fat slug who has gotten lazy and should be ashamed of himself. Why, you ask, would I use such harsh language to describe myself? Well, I've been a lazy slug who has managed to get the running shoes on only sporadically.

For instance, today is Thursday. I ran three miles on the treadmill and lifted. but I haven't run since last Thursday, meaning I went six days without running.

See what I mean? I'm a slug.

Enough about bipartisanship -- Give us healthcare reform

Chris Bowers at OpenLeft reminds us that bipartisanship is not about doing what's right, but about doing what makes sense politically:

Actually, the goal of health care legislation is to reduce the cost of health care and increase access to health care. By contrast, the goal of bipartisanship is to get Democrats and Republicans to agree with each other. Those are different goals with no inherent connections.

Given the numbers -- i.e., that the Democrats have significant majorities in both houses -- you'd think they could dispense with this false comity. Nope. Their commitment to it has political purpose:

The purpose of bipartisanship is so that, in the event that you pass legislation that is unpopular and / or does not end up working, then it is impossible to take all of the blame for it.

In some ways, this makes the Republicans seem more principled (they aren't, by any stretch of the imagination) -- they had no interest in bipartisanship for bipartisanship's sake.

Don't ask: Obama's Bill Clinton moment

President Barack Obama has called himself a "fierce advocate" for gays and lesbians, but he has done little to advocate for gay rights since taking office in January. In fact, his choice of the Rev. Rick Warren, the evangelical and anti-gay pastor, to offer the invocation at his inauguration can be seen as a slap in the face to the gay community.

On two of the most publicized issues -- gay marriage and gays in teh military -- he has remained remarkably silent. His promise to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the Clinton-era compromise that The New York Times says has "caused its own kind of damage to military readiness."

Thousands of service members have been discharged from duty at a time when the military is stretched by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The loss of highly skilled interpreters and intelligence analysts has been especially damaging.

He has gone so far as to have his adminstration argue on behalf of a policy he has publicly denounced -- a manuever that would make Bill Clinton blush.

The best hope for overturning the policy, therefore, is Congress, where there is legislation pending.

Here is Rush Holt, D-NJ, the Congressman who represents much of Central Jersey and is cosponsoring the bill, on Rachel Maddow the other night, talking about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell":

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Holt can be cautious and I think he held his tongue some in this interview, but he also made it clear that we can no longer wait. It's 2009, after all, and the fact that there are public institutions off-limits to gays and lesbians is morally indefensible.

Voodoo economics, the deficit and why Republicans should stop talking

The New York Times today offers an analysis of the budget deficit and growing debt that should shut up Congressional Republicans, but won't.

The story of today’s deficits starts in January 2001, as President Bill Clinton was leaving office. The Congressional Budget Office estimated then that the government would run an average annual surplus of more than $800 billion a year from 2009 to 2012. Today, the government is expected to run a $1.2 trillion annual deficit in those years.

You can think of that roughly $2 trillion swing as coming from four broad categories: the business cycle, President George W. Bush’s policies, policies from the Bush years that are scheduled to expire but that Mr. Obama has chosen to extend, and new policies proposed by Mr. Obama.

The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing. It’s a reflection of the fact that both the 2001 recession and the current one reduced tax revenue, required more spending on safety-net programs and changed economists’ assumptions about how much in taxes the government would collect in future years.

About 33 percent of the swing stems from new legislation signed by Mr. Bush. That legislation, like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.

Mr. Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies — together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama — account for 20 percent of the swing.

About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.

If the analysis is extended further into the future, well beyond 2012, the Obama agenda accounts for only a slightly higher share of the projected deficits.

The analysis talks about the impact the debt could have down the road:

“Things will get worse gradually,” Mr. Auerbach predicts, “unless they get worse quickly.” Either a solution will be put off, or foreign lenders, spooked by the rising debt, will send interest rates higher and create a crisis.

The solution, though, is no mystery. It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts. And it won’t be limited to pay-as-you-go rules, tax increases on somebody else, or a crackdown on waste, fraud and abuse. Your taxes will probably go up, and some government programs you favor will become less generous.

One economist quoted in the analysis -- Alan Auerbach, at the University of California, Berkeley,

describes the situation like so: “Bush behaved incredibly irresponsibly for eight years. On the one hand, it might seem unfair for people to blame Obama for not fixing it. On the other hand, he’s not fixing it.”

“And,” he added, “not fixing it is, in a sense, making it worse.”

That seems harsh, especially when focusing on the deficit could be the worst thing to do at the present time. Focusing on deficit reduction -- by cutting federal spending and increasing taxes -- will deepen the recession, which will further deplete revenues (remember, 37 percent of the debt generated since 2001 is tied to the business cycle); not doing so could leave the government with a time bomb down the road.

I think it's clear -- as many, if not most, economists have said -- that we must continue to run deficits to get ourselves out of our economic mess. But we need to keep in mind that there is a difference between deficits of the sort we have seen under Bush and productive deficits. The Bush tax cuts reduced revenue without anything to show for it, while the Obama spending plans are designed to pump money into the economy.

I'd like our national budget to be balanced at some point, but let's get ourselves out of what promises to be a long and painful recession first.

Maybe traffic jams aren't that bad, after all

Rarely will you hear anyone say anything good about traffic in the region, especially on Route 18 through East Brunswick where I sometimes think there are more cars than there are brain cells.

But maybe we need to reconsider our distaste for the traffic jam in light of this story:

Minutes after a Metuchen bank opened yesterday, a bandit struck, fleeing with cash and driving away. But everything after that went wrong for the man and right for police, who captured the suspected robber about 30 minutes later.

Jermaine Dawkins, 37, of Staten Island was arrested after an Edison police officer saw him on Route 1 driving a silver SUV that matched the description of the get-away vehicle, authorities said. The officer started a pursuit that ended when Dawkins got stuck in traffic on frequently congested Route 18 in East Brunswick.

Like that old James Taylor song, "Traffic Jam":

Well I left my job about 5 o'clock
It took fifteen minutes to go three blocks
Just in time to stand in line
With a freeway looking like a parking lot

Or, perhaps, a police holding cell.

More polling evidence: The governor is unpopular

For Gov. Jon Corzine, there is little positive that can be found in today's Quinnipiac Poll, one that has Republican Chris Christie leading 50-40 against the incumbent. Consider:

Gov. Corzine leads 73 - 19 percent among Democratic likely voters, while Christie leads 88 - 7 percent among Republicans and 56 - 32 percent among independent voters. Men back Christie 55 - 38 percent, while women give the Republican a 46 - 43 percent edge.

All New Jersey registered voters disapprove 56 - 36 percent of the job Corzine is doing, his lowest grade ever and down from a 53 - 38 percent disapproval rating May 20.

Voters say 55 - 37 percent that Corzine does not deserve to be reelected. Democrats say four more years 66 - 25 percent, while he gets an 84 - 9 percent thumbs down from Republicans and a 64 - 28 percent boot from independent voters.

Things have gotten worse in New Jersey since Corzine became Governor, 52 percent of voters say, the highest measure for this grim outlook.

None of this is good news for the governor, though I suspect it isn't fatal for him -- there is about five months to go before voters actually have to touch their screens in the voting booth and there are aspects of the poll that Christie should take as showing some level of his own vulnerability:

• Two-thirds of New Jerseyans are dissaitisfied with the state of the state, but 40 percent still back Corzine and 10 percent have not made up their mind.
• About 40 percent of respondents could not judge Christie's leadership qualities or his honest and trustworthiness (in fact, the 42 percent who view him as "honest and trustworthy" is the same number as view Corzine the same way, though Corzine's negatives on this -- 44 percent -- are more than double Christie's -- 20 percent).
• Christie is given a higher mark on budgetary matters than Corzine -- 45-36 -- but nearly half of the state's voters still know little about him and he has yet to offer a plan. The question is what will happen to the numbers if/when he does so (Remember Byrne-Batemen 1977).

If I were a betting man, I would still put my money on Christie winning (this is not an endorsement), but I wouldn't give odds or points. And I'd keep the bet small -- don't want to lose your house on a bet that is as far from a sure thing as anything can be.

Owning up to our sins

Craig Crawford at the Congressional Quarterly offers the most compelling reason to release the so-called torture photos -- which President Barack Obama has decided to keep hidden:

If the point is to learn the lessons of the past by not concealing or denying the past, perhaps it is best to face the horrors of what was done.

The argument that releasing torture photos puts us at risk by encouraging more terrorism seems phony to me. It's just an excuse to pretend it didn't happen.

Transparency brings honor in this case, despite the short-term embarrassment.

Pollsters find support for immigrants

I came across this story after posting this week's Dispatches, so the numbers do not figure in the piece. But they also don't surprise me.

While immigrants are scapegoated by vocal xenophonbes -- no one is fooled by their professed support for "legal" immigrants; if the issue of illegaility were removed, they'd find some other reason to hate -- the reality is that most Americans are ready to accept that the people who do the dirty work deserve a chance at improvement.

A recent survey by Benson Strategy Group--a group who conducts polling for President Obama and Fortune 100 Companies--found that 71% of likely voters think undocumented immigrants should take steps to become legal taxpayers. Similarly, Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners said recent polling data suggests that voters want undocumented immigrants out of the shadows and on the books

Grassroots: Fee for service

My Grassroots column -- on campaign finance reform -- is available at The Progressive Populist.

Dispatches:

The final piece of my five-part Dispatches series on immigration reform is up.

Ready, Art Brut?

Eddie Argos wants to be a famous rock star. Or maybe he doesn't. It is difficult to tell from the lyrics he writes. But there is no denying the band he fronts, Art Brut, deserves a lot more attention than they are getting.

The band played Johnny Brenda's in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia on Saturday, a rollicking show filled with the kind of snide irony that makes Art Brut one of the funniest group's in rock 'n' roll. The band is tight -- drummer Mikey Breyer banged and banged, driving the post-punk forward along with the heavy bottom provided by bassist Freddy Feedback, the two guitar ripping and snorting.

Any singer would be grateful to front such a crack outfit, but Argos is more than a standard front man. He's got the lounge-singer shtick down perfectly -- that is, assuming the lounge singer is Johnny Rotten but thinks he's Bryan Ferry.

Basically, Art Brut is all about attitude -- as anyone who has heard their latest release, Art Brut vs. Satan, can attest. Argos railed about record stores -- yes, record stores -- that sell DVDs, slammed the Kings of Leon, ordered audience members to form a band, got into the audience and commanded that everyone dance.

It was hard not to, though the crowded dance floor below me -- I was up above the band with a perfect view of the stage -- had little room for full-out foot work.

The band ran through 18 songs in about an hour and a half -- after a tight, but derivative set from Cymbals Eat Guitars -- picking from each of its three albums and leaving everyone, the audience, the band members, even the bartenders, sweat-soaked and satisfied.

The set list, according to Music Snobbery:

1. "Alcoholics Unanimous"
2. "Bang Bang Rock and Roll"
3. "The Passenger"
4. "Pump Up the Volume"
5. "Summer Job"
6. "Bad Weekend"
7. "Demons Out"
8. "Emily Kane"
9. "Nag Nag Nag Nag"
10. "Love to L.A."
11. "DC Comics and Chocolate Milkshakes"
12. "Modern Art"
13. "Direct Hit"
14. "My Little Brother"
15. "Slap Dash to No Cash"
16. ENCORE: "Formed a Band"
17. "Twist and Shout"
18. "Post Soothing Out"

Earle goes to Townes in Princeton

Steve Earle is not exactly shy. The singer-songwriter, who now makes his home in New York, wears his politics openly in a way most other musicians are afraid to do.

On Thursday, at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton, a night that one might have expected him to put the political discourse aside, when he was focusing most of his energy on his new 15-song tribute to close friend and mentor Townes Van Zandt, Earle still found time to state rather plainly what he thinks about the state of the nation.

He is hopeful, he says, about an Obama administration, but expects to be disappointed. He admitted to being to Obama's left and said it was up to us -- the people -- to keep the government honest.

And he played some amazing music. For nearly two hours, he talked about Van Zandt and played his music -- managing to avoid the kind of romantic memorializing that would have been a disservice to Van Zandt. He made no bones about Van Zandt's alcoholism and his inability, ultimately, to live up to his talent or reputation, also acknowledging his own addictions and the impact they've had.

Plus, Earle offered a handful of his own songs -- "City of Immigrants," "Jerusalem," "Copperhead Road" -- finger-picking his way through the entire night. What was striking -- and confirmed for me when I finally watched Earle's appearance on Tavis Smiley's show on my DVR over the weekend -- was how the songs sounded of a piece, how the Townes Van Zandt material and Earle's songs fit so well together, as if they could have been written by the same person.

Part of the reason is, as Earle told Smiley, their guitar style is similar. I'd go farther, though, and say that Van Zandt and Earle shared a sensibility that was apparent last week and is apparent on Townes.

Conflicts of interest and the court

You might think it a no brainer to require elected judges to recuse themselves in cases regarding people or firms who may have contributed to their election campaigns, but then you wouldn't be part of the conservative block on the U.S. Supreme Court -- a block that has yet to go against the corporate powers.