Chart of the Day: Republicans and the Filibuster | Mother Jones:
This isn't a big surprise or anything, but now you have the color-coded data to show to all your friends and relatives. Republicans are the party of obstruction, and they have been for more than four decades now.Just wanted a bookmark for this great graphic...
The downward path of upward mobility - The Washington Post:
This is only a surprise to those on the right, whose favorite policies all favor driving down wages in one way or another because they think it "works."
In fact, over the past decade, growing evidence shows pretty conclusively that social mobility has stalled in this country. Last week, Time magazine’s cover asked, “Can You Still Move Up in America?” The answer, citing a series of academic studies was, no; not as much as you could in the past and — most devastatingly — not as much as you can in Europe.
The most comprehensive comparative study, done last year by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, found that “upward mobility from the bottom” — Daniels’s definition — was significantly lower in the United States than in most major European countries, including Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Denmark. Another study, by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Germany in 2006, uses other metrics and concludes that “the U.S. appears to be exceptional in having less rather than more upward mobility.”
A 2010 Economic Mobility Project study found that in almost every respect, the United States has a more rigid socioeconomic class structure than Canada. More than a quarter of U.S. sons of top-earning fathers remain in the top tenth of earners as adults, compared to 18 percent of similarly situated Canadian sons. U.S. sons of fathers in the bottom tenth of earners are more likely to remain in the bottom tenth of earners as adults than are Canadian sons (22 percent vs. 16 percent). And U.S. sons of fathers in the bottom third of earnings distribution are less likely to make it into the top half as adults than are sons of low-earning Canadian fathers.
Surveying all the evidence, Scott Winship, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, concludes in this week’s National Review: “What is clear is that in at least one regard American mobility is exceptional. . . . [W]here we stand out is our limited upward mobility from the bottom.”
Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
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Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer, Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to tell them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.
Rand said, “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible....The choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” For many young people, hearing that it is “moral” to care only about oneself can be intoxicating, and some get addicted to this idea for life.Explains most of the Conservative "thought" on economics, doesn't it? Rand Paul, Paul Ryan, I'm looking at you.
» "Independent" Study: ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchanges Get a Grade of ‘F’ - :
The independent Mercatus Center at George Mason University has given a grade of “F” to the ObamaCare Health Insurance Exchanges regulation. The center studies the anticipated results and economic effects of proposed regulations. In other words, their researchers evaluate whether regulations are likely to accomplish what their supporters say they will.I guess we shouldn't be surprised at what BS will be passed off as legitimate work, given enough money swirling around, but "independent?!?!" In this case, the "Mercatus Center" is a subsidiary of the Koch brothers war on rational discourse. But apparently they are, per the Wall Street Journal, “the most important think tank you’ve never heard of.”
"Doubt is our product," a cigarette executive once observed, "since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the minds of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy."Just bookmarking this for future reference...
In this eye-opening exposé, David Michaels reveals how the tobacco industry's duplicitous tactics spawned a multimillion dollar industry that is dismantling public health safeguards. Product defense consultants, he argues, have increasingly skewed the scientific literature, manufactured and magnified scientific uncertainty, and influenced policy decisions to the advantage of polluters and the manufacturers of dangerous products. To keep the public confused about the hazards posed by global warming, second-hand smoke, asbestos, lead, plastics, and many other toxic materials, industry executives have hired unscrupulous scientists and lobbyists to dispute scientific evidence about health risks. In doing so, they have not only delayed action on specific hazards, but they have constructed barriers to make it harder for lawmakers, government agencies, and courts to respond to future threats.
To Fix Health Care, Help the Poor - NYTimes.com:
IT’S common knowledge that the United States spends more than any other country on health care but still ranks in the bottom half of industrialized countries in outcomes like life expectancy and infant mortality. Why are these other countries beating us if we spend so much more? The truth is that we may not be spending more — it all depends on what you count.
In our comparative study of 30 industrialized countries, published earlier this year in the journal BMJ Quality and Safety, we broadened the scope of traditional health care industry analyses to include spending on social services, like rent subsidies, employment-training programs, unemployment benefits, old-age pensions, family support and other services that can extend and improve life.
We studied 10 years’ worth of data and found that if you counted the combined investment in health care and social services, the United States no longer spent the most money — far from it. In 2005, for example, the United States devoted only 29 percent of gross domestic product to health and social services combined, while countries like Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark dedicated 33 percent to 38 percent of their G.D.P. to the combination. We came in 10th.
What’s more, America is one of only three industrialized countries to spend the majority of its health and social services budget on health care itself. For every dollar we spend on health care, we spend an additional 90 cents on social services. In our peer countries, for every dollar spent on health care, an additional $2 is spent on social services. So not only are we spending less, we’re allocating our resources disproportionately on health care.
Our study found that countries with high health care spending relative to social spending had lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than countries that favored social spending. While the stagnating life expectancy in the United States remains at 78 years, in many European countries it has leapt to well over 80 years, and several countries boast infant mortality rates approximately half of ours. In a national survey conducted by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, four out of five physicians agreed that unmet social needs led directly to worse health.
The few, the proud, the very rich « The Berkeley Blog:
"Upon closer inspection, the Forbes list reveals that six Waltons—all children (one daughter-in-law) of Sam or James “Bud” Walton the founders of Wal-Mart—were on the list. The combined worth of the Walton six was $69.7 billion in 2007—which equated to the total wealth of the entire bottom thirty percent!"
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George Lakoff: Words That Don't Work:
Unfortunately, Luntz is still ahead of most progressives responding to him. Progressives need to learn how framing works. Bashing Luntz, bashing Fox News, bashing the right-wing pundits and leaders using their frames and arguing against their positions just keeps their frames in play.
Progressives have a basic morality, which is largely unspoken. It has to be spoken, over and over, in every corner of our country. Progressives need to be both thinking and talking about their view of a moral democracy, about how a robust pubic is necessary for private success, about all that the public gives us, about the benefits of health, about a Market for All not a Greed Market, about regulation as protection, about revenue and investment, about corporations that keep wages low when profits are high, about how most of the rich earn a lot of their money without making anything or serving anyone, about how corporations govern your life for their profit not yours, about real food, about corporate and military waste, about the moral and social role of unions, about how global warming causes the increasingly monstrous effects of weather disasters, about how to save and preserve nature.
Progressives have magnificent stories of their own to tell. They need to be telling them nonstop.
Let's lure the right into using OUR frames in public discourse.
The Bomb Buried In Obamacare Explodes Today-Hallelujah! - Forbes:
This is the true ‘bomb’ contained in Obamacare and the one item that will have more impact on the future of how medical care is paid for in this country than anything we’ve seen in quite some time. Indeed, it is this aspect of the law that represents the true ‘death panel’ found in Obamacare—but not one that is going to lead to the death of American consumers. Rather, the medical loss ratio will, ultimately, lead to the death of large parts of the private, for-profit health insurance industry.
Why? Because there is absolutely no way for-profit health insurers are going to be able to learn how to get by and still make a profit while being forced to spend at least 80 percent of their receipts providing their customers with the coverage for which they paid. If they could, we likely would never have seen the extraordinary efforts made by these companies to avoid paying benefits to their customers at the very moment they need it the most.
Today, that bomb goes off.
Today, the Department of Health & Human Services issues the rules of what insurer expenditures will—and will not—qualify as a medical expense for purposes of meeting the requirement.
As it turns out, HHS isn’t screwing around. They actually mean to see to it that the insurance companies spend what they should taking care of their customers.
Parting Shot at ‘Waste’ By Key Obama Health Official - NYTimes.com: Republicans called him evasive. For political reasons, the administration did not want him to defend past statements in which he had extolled the virtues of the British health care system and had suggested a need to cap total health spending and limit the supply of costly high-technology medical care in the United States.
Dr. Berwick said most of the criticism by Republicans, who warn of a government takeover of health care, was “purely political, a world of sound bites.” In the interview, he lashed out at Republicans who depict him as an advocate of rationing health care.
In 2009, he told a biotechnology journal, “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”
Dr. Berwick said Republicans had “completed distorted” his meaning. “My point,” he said, “is that someone, like your health insurance company, is going to limit what you can get. That’s the way it’s set up. The government, unlike many private health insurance plans, is working in the daylight. That’s a strength.”
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School Lunches and the Food Industry - NYTimes.com: An increasingly cozy alliance between companies that manufacture processed foods and companies that serve the meals is making students — a captive market — fat and sick while pulling in hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. At a time of fiscal austerity, these companies are seducing school administrators with promises to cut costs through privatization. Parents who want healthier meals, meanwhile, are outgunned.
Each day, 32 million children in the United States get lunch at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, which uses agricultural surplus to feed children. About 21 million of these students eat free or reduced-price meals, a number that has surged since the recession. The program, which also provides breakfast, costs $13.3 billion a year.
Sadly, it is being mismanaged and exploited. About a quarter of the school nutrition program has been privatized, much of it outsourced to food service management giants like Aramark, based in Philadelphia; Sodexo, based in France; and the Chartwells division of the Compass Group, based in Britain. They work in tandem with food manufacturers like the chicken producers Tyson and Pilgrim’s, all of which profit when good food is turned to bad.
Here’s one way it works. The Agriculture Department pays about $1 billion a year for commodities like fresh apples and sweet potatoes, chickens and turkeys. Schools get the food free; some cook it on site, but more and more pay processors to turn these healthy ingredients into fried chicken nuggets, fruit pastries, pizza and the like. Some $445 million worth of commodities are sent for processing each year, a nearly 50 percent increase since 2006.
The Agriculture Department doesn’t track spending to process the food, but school authorities do. The Michigan Department of Education, for example, gets free raw chicken worth $11.40 a case and sends it for processing into nuggets at $33.45 a case. The schools in San Bernardino, Calif., spend $14.75 to make French fries out of $5.95 worth of potatoes.
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Eagle Forum Contradicts Thomas Jefferson On Constitution's "Christianized" Roots | Right Wing Watch:
In fact, Jefferson skewers those in England who tried to implement biblical law, much like many on the Religious Right attempt to do today, arguing that the gospel was “intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in foro concientiae” (obligations of conscience, not law), and that the Ten Commandments were never incorporated into common law:
In truth, the alliance between Church and State in England has ever made their judges accomplices in the frauds of the clergy; and even bolder than they are. For instead of being contented with these four surreptitious chapters of Exodus, they have taken the whole leap, and declared at once that the whole Bible and Testament in a lump, make a part of the common law; ante 873: the first judicial declaration of which was by this same Sir Matthew Hale. And thus they incorporate into the English code laws made for the Jews alone, and the precepts of the gospel, intended by their benevolent author as obligatory only in foro concientiae; and they arm the whole with the coercions of municipal law. In doing this, too, they have not even used the Connecticut caution of declaring, as is done in their blue laws, that the laws of God shall be the laws of their land, except where their own contradict them; but they swallow the yea and nay together. Finally, in answer to Fortescue Aland’s question why the ten commandments should not now be a part of the common law of England? we may say they are not because they never were made so by legislative authority, the document which has imposed that doubt on him being a manifest forgery.
