Republicans pick up the other, closer governor’s race. As I said earlier the outcome obviously has important policy implications for the state of New Jersey but even if Corzine had managed to hang on he would have been hanging on despite his unpopularity.
I think you can see from the unexpected closeness in the NYC mayor’s race that an economic catastrophe is not a good time to be an incumbent elected official.
Our guest bloggers are Sarah K. Dreier, a graduate student at the University of Washington and a former researcher at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and David Sullivan, Research Associate at the ENOUGH project.
From the satellite mapping of atrocities and data-driven prosecution of war criminals to the use of social networking to mobilize against repressive regimes, advances in science and technology hold unprecedented potential to make human rights a reality across the world.
A new report from the Center for American Progress, “New Tools for Old Traumas,” calls on President Obama — recently dubbed “Scientist in Chief” for his unprecedented commitment to research and development — to lead efforts to use these new tools to bring human rights perpetrators to justice; halt ongoing atrocities; and empower victims to fight against injustice. Cell phone companies have crucial roles to play as well because part of the complexity of this issue is ensuring that these tools do not foster human rights atrocities as well as stop them.
Today, the mobile phone that an activist uses to mobilize protesters in Tehran is made with tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold, whose mining in eastern Congo has fueled the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II.
All electronic devises — from satellites to smart phones — require these specialized metals. Tin is used to affix components to circuit boards. Tantalum is a vital element of capacitors that store electrical charge. And tungsten is a key ingredient in vibrate alert functions and LCD displays.
Unfortunately, the mines in eastern Congo that produce these mineral ores fuel and support armed groups on all sides of the conflict. These groups — including the Rwandan Hutu rebels who helped commit the 1994 genocide and Congo’s ill-disciplined and predatory armed forces — exploit impoverished miners and extort exorbitant ‘taxes’ from this trade. They use the profits to finance some of the worst human rights abuses in the world, including an epidemic of sexual violence that makes eastern Congo the most dangerous on the globe to be a woman or a girl.
Eastern Congo is the sight of the worst abuses in the supply chain for electronics products, but it is by no means the only one. From extraction in mining to unsafe and exploitative conditions in manufacturing facilities in Asia, the intricate supply chains that produce these products are opaque and electronics companies have yet to fully assume responsibility for the behavior of their suppliers or their suppliers’ suppliers.
As expected. He was cruising to victory this whole time and never really got pushed on the fact that his campaign agenda doesn’t really make sense. For example, here’s his “plan” to balance the state budget while cutting taxes and spending more on education and transportation:
It’s time to conduct a thorough audit of how your tax dollars are spent. The Virginia budget has doubled over the last 10 years, growing 30% faster than the rate of growth in population and inflation. We need select independent audits of major state agencies, and a greater level of budget transparency throughout state government. The state budget is nearly 80 billion dollars and you need to know exactly what you are getting for that. I will work to make life simpler for Virginians by making government more efficient and user-friendly.
Not just an audit, a thorough audit. And not just one! “Select independent audits of major state agencies.” Good luck with that.
ABC’s Good Morning America host Diane Sawyer sandbagged Vice President Al Gore this morning with an attack by Glenn Beck. Gore was appearing on the show to discuss his new book, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis. Smiling, Sawyer introduced a mocking clip from the Fox News pundit. “Here’s Glenn Beck,” she said, “giving you a challenge about cows and methane”:
BECK: I’m siding with PETA on this one. Once again asking Al Gore if you really want to save the planet, Al, why don’t you put down the cheeseburger and pick up the veggie burger? Time for, maybe, soy milk and tofurkey?
Watch it:
Sawyer somehow failed to note that Beck denies the science of climate change and has claimed efforts to build a green economy are “fascism.”
Of course, Our Choice addresses the question. Chapter Ten of Our Choice, “Soil,” discusses the complex range of challenges and opportunities related to food production and consumption, noting in particular the costs of industrial agriculture. The chapter concludes with a series of recommendations, including practical ones for American consumers, like supporting farmers’ markets and eating less meat. And Gore follows his own advice:
There is a serious issue about the connection between the growing meat intensity of diets around the world and damage to the environment. And like a lot of people, I eat less meat now than I used to. I’m not a vegetarian, don’t plan to become one, but it’s a healthy choice to eat more vegetables and fruits. So it’s not a laughable issue.
Sawyer laughably replied, “So, tofurkey for you.”
Mediaite notes that Beck mentioned Sawyer’s question three times on his Fox News show this afternoon and is clearly “enjoying his moment in the MSM spotlight.”
When the House released its 1,990 health care bill, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) criticized the legislation for including “the mandatory world ‘shall’ in the bill 3,425 times.” Today, the Hill obtained the Republicans’ 230 page alternative, which the House leadership plans to offer as an amendment during floor debate.
The bill includes the word ‘shall’ 378 times, but does very little to expand access or lower health care costs. In fact, while the House bill incorporated numerous Republican ideas and provisions, the Republican legislation is a message amendment that translates Republican rhetoric against the Democratic proposal into legislative language. “The purpose of this Act is to take meaningful steps to lower health care costs and increase access to health insurance coverage,” the bill states, “without (1) raising taxes; (2) cutting Medicare benefits for seniors; (3) adding to the national deficit; (4) intervening in the doctor-patient relationship; or (5) instituting a government takeover of health care.”
Below is a summary of the Republican plan. In short, the amendment shifts the costs and risks of insurance onto individuals and divides the market into low-cost plans for the healthy and high-cost insurance for the sick:
Access to coverage:
- Establishes high risk pools for sicker individuals: State are required to establish high risk pools for Americans who cannot purchase insurance in the individual market due to pre-existing conditions, but nothing in the legislation prohibits the state pools from excluding coverage for the very condition that makes an individual eligible in the first place (as they do today.) The bill abolishes waiting lists and specifies that the pools must provide at least two coverage options, one of which must be a high deductible plan with HSA. Premiums can be set at no higher than 150% of (state) average. The federal government will provide $15 billion in funding.
- Healthier Americans can purchase coverage on the individual market: For Americans moving from group to individual coverage, the legislation eliminates the HIPAA requirement of having creditable coverage in the past 18 months to receive individual insurance market insurance. Annual or life time spending caps are also eliminated. However, the bill will allow insures to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions and charge very different rates based on gender and age.
- Health insurers can sell policies across state lines: The insurer only has to follow the rules of the state it declares to be its “primary” state, not of secondary states in which it can also sell policies. As a result, all policies will have a ‘buyer beware’ label warning consumers that the plan is “not subject to all of the consumer protection laws or restrictions on rate changes of the state.”
- Businesses can form association health care plans: The legislation creates rules for governing association health plans, which will allow small businesses to come together, by industry or trade, and form health plan through which they can purchase coverage for their employees. Association health care plans have sole discretion in selecting specific items and services that can be included as benefits (i.e. no minimum guaranteed benefit package, or minimum costs etc). The plans are to be operated by Board of Trustees who appoint the actuary to determine financial status and viability.
- Young adults can stay on their parents’ coverage: Dependent adults can stay on their parents’ plan until they are at least 25, although the language would allow a plan to increase that age.
Lowering health care costs:
- Offers bonuses for states that lower premiums, number of uninsured: Establishes state innovation program grants to reward states for lowering the cost of their premiums. Includes bonus for reducing the number of uninsured.
- Establishes a plan finder website: States contract with private entities to create a health “plan finder” website which do not directly enroll individuals in insurance plans.
- Malpractice reform: Specifies that claims must be filed within three years, and caps non-economic damages at $250,000.
Miscellaneous:
- Enhances Health Savings Accounts: Enrollees can build their credit by contributing to their HSA and can use HSAs to pay for high deductible plan premiums. The bill extends the definition of a qualified medical expense.
- Employer wellness programs: Allows group and individual health plans to vary premiums and cost-sharing by up to 50% of value of benefits based on participation or lack of participation in a standards-based wellness program.
- Federal dollars can’t touch plans that offer abortion coverage: The bill does not allow federal funds to go to any insurance plan that offers abortion coverage. This means that a woman who wants to purchase a comprehensive health insurance plan would have to pay for the entire cost of the policy, even if she qualifies for subsidies and uses private premiums to pay for her abortion.
Last month, Louisiana justice of the peace Keith Bardwell stirred controversy when he refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple because he believes that such marriages don’t usually last very long. “I don’t do interracial marriages because I don’t want to put children in a situation they didn’t bring on themselves,” Bardwell said. Now, the Louisiana secretary of state’s office says that Bardwell has resigned:
A Louisiana justice of the peace who drew criticism for refusing to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple has resigned, the secretary of state’s office said Tuesday.
Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace for Tangipahoa Parish’s 8th Ward, was widely criticized after he refused to grant a marriage license to Beth McKay and Terence McKay, an interracial couple who ultimately got a marriage license from another justice of the peace in the same parish.
The McKays hired an attorney and protested the justice’s actions.
Despite a national uproar and a call by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for him to lose his license, Bardwell, 56, said in October that he had no regrets. “It’s kind of hard to apologize for something that you really and truly feel down in your heart you haven’t done wrong,” he told CNN affiliate WAFB.
Civil rights organizations had called for Bardwell to resign while Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) had called for him to be dismissed. Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), on the other hand, would only go so far as to say that Bardwell “should follow the law as written.”
Arianna Huffington posted “Obama One Year Later: The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing. HuffPost asked for replies. Mine is here and below. I welcome your thoughts. My bottom line: On climate and clean energy policy, he has been anything but timid!
Future historians will inevitably judge all 21st-century presidents on just two issues: global warming and the clean energy transition. If the world doesn’t stop catastrophic climate change “” Hell and High Water “” then all Presidents, indeed, all of us, will be seen as failures and rightfully so.
In that sense, what team Obama has accomplished in the year since he was elected is nothing less than an unprecedented reversal of decades of unsustainable national policy forced down the throat of the American public by conservatives. Three game-changing accomplishments stand out:
So we’ll scratch it all down into the clay:
— Sam Stein on NIAC, J Street, and their enemies.
— When do people resist occupation?
— The suburban slums of tomorrow.
— Manu Ginobili swats a bat, needs rabies shots.
— These kind of results make me feel sorry for Chris Paul — 32 points, 18 shots, 12 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 turnovers, 1 steal and the Hornets lose to a crappy Knicks team.
— Michael Goldfarb eases comfortably back into his typical posture of deliberate obtuseness and dishonesty.
Because I’m a nerd, here’s “The Mesopotamians” by They Might Be Giants of 2007′s The Else.
On Sunday, U.S. media outlets reported that for the first time in 27 years, an American had won the New York City Marathon. Meb Keflezighi was born in Eritrea, “growing up in a hut with no electricity.” He and his family moved to Italy when he was 10 years old, and came to the United States two years later. Keflezighi “began running in junior high in San Diego, then went on to star at UCLA.” He said he it was with “big honor and pride” that he wore the USA jersey while running in the marathon. Watch a post-marathon interview with Keflezighi here:
However, CNBC Sports Business Reporter Darren Rovell doesn’t think Keflezighi deserves all this praise because when his mother gave birth to him, she wasn’t in the U.S. Rovell wrote a column yesterday saying that Keflezighi’s victory wasn’t “as good as it sounds” because Keflezighi is an immigrant, and this fact “takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies”:
Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.
Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.
Around noon today, Rovell posted a “convoluted sort-of apology” clarifying yesterday’s piece, writing, “Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong.” He now granted Keflezighi’s win legitimacy only because the runner was “brought up through the American system”:
I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American. [...]
It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.
How long does someone have to be in the U.S. and go through the American “system” to be counted as legitimate? In today’s New York Times, academics who study race and sports note that there are still “undercurrents of nationalism and racism that are not often voiced” in sports. “There is this notion about innate physiological gifts that certain races presumably possess. Quite frankly, I think it feeds into deep-seated stereotypes,” said David Wiggins, a professor at George Mason University.
Yesterday, Keflezighi responded to the criticisms, saying, “I’ve had to deal with it. But, hey, I’ve been here 22 years. And the U.S.A. is a land of immigrants. A lot of people have come from different places.”
(HT: bustacap at DailyKos)
I expressed frustration about this via Twitter, but I may as well take to the blog to point out that by far the most ridiculous thing about the impulse to point toward VA/NJ/NY-23 as indicators of the national mood is not so much the historical unreliability of these indicators, it’s the fact that we have statistically valid surveys of national public opinion available for our perusal.
For example, how do people feel about Barack Obama? Well:
And what are people’s intentions with regard to congressional voting? Well:
By the same token, you don’t actually need to know the outcome of the NJ gubernatorial election to know what New Jersey residents think—the polls are very clear that most people don’t like Corzine and most people don’t like Christie. The question of who wins the election in the end (which will come down to turnout issues, tactical voting, and second-choice preferences) is very important to the future of public policy in New Jersey but it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know about underlying sentiments.
Also worth noting, Obama job approval:
Of course this is national data. But again if we want to know whether Obama has become unpopular in Virginia, the way to do that would be to do a poll of Virginia and ask questions about Obama.
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