How Romney’s Economic Plan Would Gut Infrastructure Investments (Like Levees)

By Pat Garofalo on Aug 31, 2012 at 6:00 pm

Mitt Romney on Friday visited Louisiana in order to tour damage from Hurricane Isaac, one day after delivering his address to the Republican National Convention. The first day of that convention, of course, was dominated by the Republicans’ continued use of a dishonestly edited quote to claim that President Obama thinks small businesses owners had nothing to do with their business. (Taken in context, it’s painfully obvious that Obama was referring to roads, bridges, and the American education system when he said, “you didn’t build that.”)

As Romney tours the storm damage, it’s worth noting that government-funded levees prevented far greater damage from occurring in New Orleans, seven years after the city was battered (and the levees failed) during Hurricane Katrina:

Isaac’s whistling winds lashed this city and the storm dumped nearly a foot of rain on its desolate streets, but the system of levee pumps, walls and gates appeared to withstand one of the stiffest challenges yet…Isaac arrived seven years after Hurricane Katrina and passed slightly to the west of New Orleans, where the city’s fortified levee system easily handled the assault.

Meanwhile, Romney’s economic plan — which would require a nearly 30 percent reduction in all discretionary spending — would make America’s already precarious infrastructure situation worse. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, the U.S. needs $2.2 trillion in investments to bring its infrastructure into adequate shape, including $100 billion to repair levees:

More than 85% of the nation’s estimated 100,000 miles of levees are locally owned and maintained. The reliability of many of these levees is unknown. Many are more than 50 years old and were originally built to protect crops from flooding. With an increase in development behind these levees, the risk to public health and safety from failure has increased. Rough estimates put the cost at more than $100 billion to repair and rehabilitate the nation’s levees. [...]

There is no definitive record of how many levees there are in the U.S., nor is there an assessment of the current condition and performance of those levees…As of February 2009, initial results from USACE’s inventory show that while more than half of all federally inspected levees do not have any deficiencies, 177, or about 9%, are expected to fail in a flood event.

By one estimate, more than half of Americans reside in counties “that contain levees or other kinds of flood control and protection systems.” And if Romney gets his way on the budget, those systems would be starved of funds and left to languish.

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Health

Study: Tax Incentives For Living Organ Donors Don’t Increase Donations

By Amanda Peterson Beadle on Aug 31, 2012 at 5:00 pm

People who donate a kidney, part of their liver, or bone marrow for transplant surgeries can receive tax breaks in 17 states; however, a new study finds that incentives did not increase the number of organ donations. That does not mean states should end the tax breaks, the report’s researchers said. Instead, states should focus on improving them, said Dr. Atheendar Venkataramani, a Massachusetts General Hospital resident who led the study. Increasing the amounts could be one change, according to NPR:

Typically states offer a deduction of up to $10,000 from taxable income. For a typical family that translates to less than $1,000 in reduced taxes. But the financial burden for a living kidney donor can range from $907 to $3,089, according to one study.

The tax incentives are intended to defray the organ donor’s cost in medical care, travel and lost wages. By federal statute, it’s illegal to pay someone for the organ itself.

Authors of the new study suggest increasing the value of the tax deductions or converting them into a tax credit, which would lower the donor’s tax bill on a dollar-for-dollar basis. So far only Iowa offers donors a tax credit.

There’s also reason to think that few people in states with tax credits know about them. Study authors found that even organ donation advocate groups were unaware. So were people being evaluated as living donors, including even the most educated and informed prospective donors.

“These tax incentives cost the states very little, so there is no real reason to do away with them,” Venkataramani said.

With more than 100,000 people on waiting lists, officials consider how to increase the number of donations from living donors. At the same time, rising obesity rates could lead to fewer organ donations. More than 60 percent of Americans support the idea of compensating donors with credits for health care needs, but this new report shows that tax breaks will not immediately lead to more organ transplants.

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NEWS FLASH

LGBT Activists To Protest Chick-fil-A-Sponsored Football Kickoff | This weekend marks the start of the college football season, which is traditionally sponsored in Georgia by anti-gay fast-food chain Chick-fil-A. This year, LGBT activists won’t let that sponsorship go unnoticed as they protest outside the Georgia Dome, informing game attendees about the company’s donations to hate groups and condemnations of same-sex families. They’ll also celebrate other sponsors that have more inclusive policies for LGBT people.

Justice

GOP Platform Endorses High-Capacity Clips Used In Aurora and Tuscon Mass Shootings

By Ian Millhiser on Aug 31, 2012 at 4:30 pm

Last month, James Eagan Holmes allegedly stood up in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and opened fire on the audience, killing 12 people and wounding 58 others. A year and a half earlier, a different gunman opened fire in a Safeway parking lot in Tuscon, Arizona, wounding then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), killing federal Judge John Roll, and wounding or killing sixteen others. Both shooters used high-capacity magazines to maximize their ability to kill as many people in as short of a time as possible.

In the wake of these two high-profile mass killings, the Republican Party nonetheless decided to include a line in their party platform demanding that access to high-capacity magazines be protected:

Gun ownership is responsible citizenship, enabling Americans to defend their homes and communities. We condemn frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers and oppose federal licensing or registration of law-abiding gun owners. We oppose legislation that is intended to restrict our Second Amendment rights by limiting the capacity of clips or magazines or otherwise restoring the ill-considered Clinton gun ban.

The GOP’s interpretation of the Second Amendment is questionable at best. Even Justice Scalia acknowledged in DC v. Heller that bans on “dangerous and unusual weapons” are permissible, and high-capacity magazines almost certainly qualify as such. Unlike regular capacity handguns, which can be used for personal self-defense in the home, massive magazines like the 100 round drum used in the Aurora shooting serve little purpose other than to rain bullets on many, many victims. As one gun show attendee told ThinkProgress, “If ten rounds of ammunition can’t do the job you probably shouldn’t own a gun. I don’t want to live next to that guy.”

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Climate Progress

For Peat’s Sake: Record Temperatures And Wildfires In Eastern Russia Drive Amplifying Carbon-Cycle Feedback

By Climate Guest Blogger on Aug 31, 2012 at 4:05 pm

Warming-driven peatland fires are an amplifying climate feedback. Credit: NASA

News story via NASA

Forests and bog land in far eastern Russia have been burning since the beginning of June 2012. Contributing to the record fires have been the record temperatures of this past summer. This summer in Siberia has been one of hottest on record. The average temperature ranged around 93 degrees Fahrenheit and there doesn’t seem to be any break in the weather coming anytime soon.

The fires in eastern Russia have affected the districts of Krasnoyarsk, Tuva, Irkutsk, Kurgan, and the Republic of Khakassia. Especially hard hit is the city of Tomsk. According to official figures, over 24,000 acres of land had been burnt in Tomsk by early August. The city has been covered by heavy smog for weeks and the airport has been out of operation since the beginning of July.

On August 23rd, the Russian Information and News Agency (RIA Novosti) reported that “firefighters extinguished all six forest fires over the past 24 hours that remained raging in Russia’s Siberia this summer, the regional forestry department said in a statement on Thursday. There are no more registered fires in the region, but the emergencies situation still remain in force in three areas of the Tomsk region due to the high risk of new wildfires outbreak,” the statement added. However, it also reported that “more than 200,000 hectares [494.210 acres] of forest already burned down in Siberia and the Russian Far East, where fires are still raging, since the start of the summer.” On August 28, RIA Novosti reported that: “The majority of wildfires triggered by the summer heat wave in Russia have been put out, but 11 wildfires with a total area of 838 hectares [over 2000 acres] are still raging in Khabarovsk Territory.” These are the fires that still burn in the image taken today by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite.

Of course wildfires are devastating to any area, but ecologically this is catastrophic for this region with many rare animals living in Siberia’s unique ecosystem.

So too the fires burning in Russia will have worldwide effects as the torched peat bogs whose layers consist of dead plant materials will end up releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the air accelerating the greenhouse effect and making the air nearly unbreathable. Record numbers of fires in the summer of 2010 drew attention to this damaging situation (see NY Times article cited below).

In the early 1900′s Soviet engineers drained swamps to supply peat for electrical power stations. It was eventually stopped in the 1950′s but the bogs were never reflooded. Unfortunately, that approach is currently causing some of the wildfire problems and air quality issues that Russia is dealing with today.

Officials and residents are hoping that the upcoming expected harvest rains will help extinguish the wildfires and bring a much needed natural remedy to the affected regions.

NASA/Goddard, Lynn Jenner with information from The New York Times and RIA Novosti (en.rian.ru)

Stunning Peatlands Amplifying Feedback: Drying Wetlands and Intensifying Wildfires Boost Carbon Release Ninefold

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Security

Will The Obama Administration Fulfill Its Commitment To Human Rights In Bahrain?

By Guest Blogger on Aug 31, 2012 at 3:39 pm

Our guest blogger is Sarah Margon, Deputy Washington Director at Human Rights Watch

Nabeel Rajab (Photo: Reuters)

In May 2011, President Obama spoke publicly about the importance of supporting reform — and individual reformers — across the Middle East. He noted “the chance to show that America values the dignity of the street vendor in Tunisia more than the raw power of the dictator” and that the United States “supports a set of universal rights…[including] free speech, the freedom of peaceful assembly, the freedom of religion, equality for men and women under the rule of law, and the right to choose your own leaders.”

But in Bahrain, where massive nonviolent protests against the current regime began in early 2011, critical underlying issues have yet to be resolved and the U.S.’s support for such reform has been halfhearted.

Nabeel Rajab, president of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, is in many ways a victim of the administration’s feeble push for greater reform. Nabeel recently spent three months in jail for a “tweet” calling on the Bahraini prime minister to resign. An appeals court overturned this conviction, but by that time Nabeel had been handed an additional three-year sentence for “illegal gatherings.” So he has been in jail since July 9, first for speaking out and now for exercising his right to peaceful assembly.

While the State Department appears committed to the fervent wish that Bahrain will actually reform, an August 1 hearing on Bahrain before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission illustrated that at least some Members of Congress are less sanguine. Co-chairman Jim McGovern (D-MA) brought up Nabeel’s case a few times, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). In both cases, Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner refused to call for his release.

The U.S.-Bahraini partnership is one of great strategic importance for both countries, due in part to Bahrain’s concern for its more powerful neighbors and its willingness to provide a key base for the U.S. Navy. But as recent political changes throughout the region have shown — and as President Obama himself has stated — such an alliance should not be at the expense of our commitment to universal human rights norms and principles.

The Al-Khalifa ruling family in Bahrain remains fundamentally averse to genuine reform — a position tacitly endorsed by the administration’s downplaying of ongoing abuses, its renewal of arms sales to Bahrain, and echoing of hollow reassurances that abuses have ended and reforms instituted — when it knows very well this is not the case. The U.S. response to Nabeel’s detention is only the latest in a string of insufficient responses from the Obama administration. And it is not likely to be the last.

When it comes to Bahrain, it is long past time for the administration to stop undermining its own commitment to genuine reform throughout the Middle East. By using its leverage to encourage implementation of changes to which the government says it has committed, the administration could help reverse what is a steadily worsening situation. If it doesn’t, the opportunity for peaceful reform in Bahrain may be lost.

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NEWS FLASH

CHART: Republican Presidents’ Depressing Record On Wage Growth | Wage growth has failed to keep up with record-setting corporate profits, and wages as a percent of gross domestic product reached an all-time low after the Great Recession, as BusinessInsider’s Henry Blodget noted today. Wages as a percentage of the economy have fallen precipitously since their peak in the 1960s, when the minimum wage reached its maximum buying power and the middle class was strongest. Interestingly, Republican presidents, whose failed supply-side policies have led to given them significantly weaker job creation records than their Democratic counterparts, have presided over the three steep declines in wages as a percentage of the economy, as this chart from ThinkProgress’ Adam Peck shows:

LGBT

Minnesota Archbishop Urges Vote Against Equality For Those With Same-Sex ‘Romantic Preferences’

By Zack Ford on Aug 31, 2012 at 3:15 pm

Archbishop John Nienstedt

Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt has penned a verbose letter calling on Catholics to support the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which many priests read to their parishes last week. Nienstedt claims that he opposes discrimination against “brothers and sisters living with same-sex attraction,” yet admits that the entire reason to support the amendment is to keep gays and lesbians from marrying:

First, some ask, “Why is a constitutional amendment necessary?” Well, the fact of the matter is that politicians and activists are working right now in Minnesota to redefine the institution of marriage from one that bonds a man and a woman to any children born from their sexual union into another that licenses the romantic preferences of same-sex adults. [...]

We know that some who are seeking to redefine marriage experience same-sex attractions. Our brothers and sisters living with same-sex attraction are beloved children of God who must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.

Every sign of unjust discrimination in this regard must be avoided. People with same-sex attractions, like others in society, are productive citizens, community servants, good friends and our beloved family members.

At the same time, however, it is important to know that the effort to ensure that the definition of marriage remains as between one man and one woman does not take away anyone’s existing rights or legal protections. As Catholics, we believe that all people should be able to visit loved ones in the hospital, pass on their property to whomever they choose, and have access to employment, housing and the basic necessities of life. Saying “yes” to God’s plan for marriage will not change any of this.

Nienstedt’s letter is an exemplar of cultural abuse, simultaneously feigning compassion while advocating discrimination. It may, in fact, have had the opposite effect, as Catholics for Equality reported an uptick in lawn sign requests, with many reporting they walked out of their churches during the letter’s reading. According to the Facebook group, “I am Catholic. I am voting NO!”, many churches did not even read the letter. Nevertheless, the Minnesota Catholic Conference remains one of the largest donors to the amendment campaign, an alliance between the conference, Minnesota Family Council, and National Organization for Marriage.

Washington Bishop Blase Cupich similarly wrote to parishioners earlier this month, urging them to oppose marriage equality so that opposite-sex couples continue to get “special support and recognition.”

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Health

Doctors, Patients Rally In Support Of Obamacare In Tampa On The Last Day Of The RNC

By Adam Peck and Scott Keyes on Aug 31, 2012 at 2:45 pm

Tampa, Florida — As Republicans gathered for the final day of their national convention here in Tampa, a small but vocal group of doctors, medical students and patients marched in the heat to deliver thousands of petitions in support of the Affordable Care Act.

One of the marchers, Kenya Wheeler, was a grad student last year when he was diagnosed with CNS lymphoma, a form of blood cancer in his brain. Despite being covered through his university’s insurance plan, Wheeler quickly hit the lifetime cap on his coverage. On Thursday, he marched as a representative for thousands of other patients who stand to benefit when the lifetime cap provision of Obamacare goes into effect in 2014.

Another marcher, Dr. Donald Nguyen, is a pediatric urologist in Dayton, Ohio. For much of the march, he helped carry a banner reading “Patients Over Politics”, a mantra shouted out by the participants and plastered on signs, stickers, brochures and disposable paper fans handed out to combat the withering heat.

“I am sincerely sick and tired of the political fighting over patients’ health,” he said. “The Affordable Care Act passed in Congress. It was upheld by the Supreme Court. Now it’s time to focus on making sure patients receive proper care.”

Check out some photos from the rally:

Dr. Robert Luedecke, an anesthesiologist from San Antonio, Texas, spoke at the end of the parade. His 23-year-old son is not eligible for insurance at his current job, but thanks to provisions in Obamacare, he will be able to remain on his father’s plan for three more years.

Luedecke himself stands to benefit from Obamacare, too. A pre-existing condition (a problem with his neck) makes obtaining health insurance incredibly difficult for him. Even though he’s a doctor, he’s had to enroll in his wife’s plan.

“Do you really want to take these benefits away?” he asked. “It’s detestable.”

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LGBT

Scott Brown Loses Endorsement From ‘The Fighter’ Micky Ward Over Anti-LGBT and Anti-Labor Views

By Josh Israel on Aug 31, 2012 at 2:15 pm

Boxing legend Micky Ward

A day after taunting his opponent with the endorsement he was scheduled to receive from a Massachusetts boxing legend, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) had to KO the event.

Micky Ward, the subject of the 2010 biopic The Fighter, was all set to endorse Brown until he learned that that the freshman Republican opposes LGBT rights and labor unions. Mark Wahlberg played Ward in the multiple-Academy-Award-winning film.

The Lowell Sun reported Friday that Ward initially told the paper day that he was set to endorse Scott Brown’s re-election, but changed his mind shortly after:

Roughly a half-hour after Ward confirmed he was backing Brown, ‘The Fighter’ called back. He said he had given his endorsement a little more thought. “I can’t support Scott Brown,” Ward said. “I just can’t do it.”

Within 30 minutes, Ward either did some Googling or someone close to him reminded him about where Brown stood on some hot-button political topics. “I found out Scott (Brown) is anti-union and I’m a Teamster guy,” said Ward. “I found out he’s also against gay marriage and I say if you love someone you should have the same rights no matter who you are.”

Brown has consistently opposed marriage equality and has a lengthy history of working against the LGBT community. He voted against the AFL-CIO’s positions 79 percent of the time in 2011.

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