EDUCATION - From States, National Education Standards

"Many States Adopt National Standards for Their Schools" by TAMAR LEWIN, New York Times 7/21/2010

Excerpt

Less than two months after the nation’s governors and state school chiefs released their final recommendations for national education standards, 27 states have adopted them and about a dozen more are expected to do so in the next two weeks.

Their support has surprised many in education circles, given states’ long tradition of insisting on retaining local control over curriculum.

The quick adoption of common standards for what students should learn in English and math each year from kindergarten through high school is attributable in part to the Obama administration’s Race to the Top competition. States that adopt the standards by Aug. 2 win points in the competition for a share of the $3.4 billion to be awarded in September.

“I’m ecstatic,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education. “This has been the third rail of education, and the fact that you’re now seeing half the nation decide that it’s the right thing to do is a game-changer.”

Even Massachusetts, which many regard as having the nation’s best education system — and where the proposed standards have been a subject of bitter debate — is expected to adopt the standards on Wednesday morning. New York signed up on Monday, joining Connecticut, New Jersey and other states that have adopted the standards, though the timetable for actual implementation is uncertain.

Some supporters of the standards, like Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, worry that the rush of states to sign up — what Ms. Weingarten calls the “Race to Adopt” — could backfire if states do not have the money to put the standards in effect.

“I’m already watching the ravages of the recession cutting the muscle out of efforts to implement standards,” she said. “If states adopt these thoughtful new standards and don’t implement them, teachers won’t know how to meet them, yet they will be the basis on which kids are judged.”

The effort has been helped by financial backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to most of the organizations involved in drafting, evaluating and winning support for the standards. The common core standards, two years in the making and first released in draft form in March, are an effort to replace the current hodgepodge of state policies.

POLITICS - Jobless Aid Update

"Senate Set to End Stalemate and Extend Jobless Aid" by CARL HULSE, New York Times 7/19/2010

Excerpt

Senate Democrats are poised to break a partisan stalemate on Tuesday over extending unemployment benefits for millions of Americans who have been jobless for six months or more, but the fight seems certain to continue playing out as a defining issue in the midterm elections.

One day before a crucial procedural vote to provide added unemployment assistance through November, President Obama appeared in the Rose Garden on Monday with three out-of-work Americans to hammer Republicans for blocking the extension until now by insisting, over Democratic objections, that the $34 billion costs of the benefits not be added to the deficit.

“The same people who didn’t have any problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are now saying we shouldn’t offer relief to middle-class Americans,” Mr. Obama said.

Democrats have been one vote short of pushing the measure through the Senate. But on Tuesday, a new Democratic senator from West Virginia will be sworn in to succeed Robert C. Byrd, who died last month, putting Democrats in position to overcome the Republican blocking tactic and bring the bill to a final vote.

As a political matter, the issue has appeal to both parties, especially in an election year in which each party needs first to motivate its own base.

For Republicans, it provides a concrete vehicle for pushing the argument that the government’s response to the recession has been wasteful and ineffective, that the growing national debt requires deep spending cuts and that Mr. Obama is guilty of ideological overreach.

For Democrats, it is an opportunity to accuse Republicans of being obstructionist and out of touch with the pain caused by an economic downturn that began on the Republicans’ watch.

Mr. Obama’s tough attack on Monday signaled the White House’s confidence that it has the upper hand, legislatively and politically. Recent public opinion polls show that a majority of Americans favor giving the long-term unemployed more financial help even if it adds to the deficit.

HEALTHCARE - Free Preventive Care

"The White House Blog: Free Preventive Care Coming Soon Thanks to the Affordable Care Act" Rightardia 7/19/2010

Starting in September, insurance plans will be required to pay the entire cost of recommended, preventive services. This means there will be no insurance co-pay for preventive care.

That means that, without paying a deductible, co-pay or coinsurance, many Americans will be able to take the preventive steps needed to keep themselves and their families healthy.

To help raise awareness about this important issue,

The First Lady and Dr. Biden recorded this video message.

ECONOMY - Job Training Misconception

"After Training, Still Scrambling for Employment" by PETER S. GOODMAN, New York Times 7/18/2010

Excerpt

In what was beginning to feel like a previous life, Israel Valle had earned $18 an hour as an executive assistant to a designer at a prominent fashion label. Now, he was jobless and struggling to find work. He decided to invest in upgrading his skills.

It was February 2009, and the city work force center in Downtown Brooklyn was jammed with hundreds of people hungry for paychecks. His caseworker urged him to take advantage of classes financed by the federal government, which had increased money for job training. Upgrade your skills, she counseled. Then she could arrange job interviews.

For six weeks, Mr. Valle, 49, absorbed instruction in spreadsheets and word processing. He tinkered with his résumé. But the interviews his caseworker eventually arranged were for low-wage jobs, and they were mobbed by desperate applicants. More than a year later, Mr. Valle remains among the record 6.8 million Americans who have been officially jobless for six months or longer. He recently applied for welfare benefits.

“Training was fruitless,” he said. “I’m not seeing the benefits. Training for what? No one’s hiring.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have enrolled in federally financed training programs in recent years, only to remain out of work. That has intensified skepticism about training as a cure for unemployment.

While I can sympathize with people in this situation, I think they are misconstruing what training (or ANY education) is for in the job market.

Education or training is to IMPROVE your chances of getting a job. Making you more marketable. Making you more hirable than someone who is untrained.

Education or training does NOT guarantee a job.

POLITICS - Conservationism With Conscience

"Obama Gains Evangelical Allies on Immigration" by LAURIE GOODSTEIN, New York Times 7/18/2010

Excerpt

At a time when the prospects for immigration overhaul seem most dim, supporters have unleashed a secret weapon: a group of influential evangelical Christian leaders.

Normally on the opposite side of political issues backed by the Obama White House, these leaders are aligning with the president to support an overhaul that would include some path to legalization for illegal immigrants already here. They are preaching from pulpits, conducting conference calls with pastors and testifying in Washington — as they did last Wednesday.

“I am a Christian and I am a conservative and I am a Republican, in that order,” said Matthew D. Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a conservative religious law firm. “There is very little I agree with regarding President Barack Obama. On the other hand, I’m not going to let politicized rhetoric or party affiliation trump my values, and if he’s right on this issue, I will support him on this issue.”

OIL SPILL - Update, New Potential Problem?

"BP Hopes to Keep Well Closed, but Seep Is Detected" by HENRY FOUNTAIN, New York Times 7/18/2010

Excerpt

After three days of encouraging pressure tests, a senior BP official said Sunday that the company’s recently capped well in the Gulf of Mexico was holding up and that BP now hoped to keep the well closed until it could be permanently plugged. But government officials were more skeptical and cited a new potential problem.

That BP plan differs sharply from the one the company and the federal government had suggested only a day earlier, to eventually allow the flow of oil to resume temporarily, collecting it through pipes to surface ships.

If BP succeeds in keeping the cap atop the well closed until a relief well is finished, that would mean the gusher would effectively be over, three months — and tens of millions of gallons of oil — after it began. It would be a major turnaround after weeks of failure for the oil giant, which had been harshly criticized as being unprepared for such a disaster.

“We’re hopeful,” Doug Suttles, the company’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said in a conference call with reporters Sunday morning.

“Right now we do not have a target to return the well to flow,” he said.

The federal government was more cautious, saying only that the test could be extended 24 hours at a time after scientific reviews.

Late Sunday, the government ordered BP to step up monitoring of the well after “undetermined anomalies” were discovered on the seafloor nearby.

In a letter to the company, Thad W. Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who commands the response to the oil spill, also noted that tests had detected a seep — usually a flow of hydrocarbons from the seafloor — “a distance from the well.”

And while the letter said the federal government would allow the test to continue for now, the discovery of a seep and the unspecified anomalies suggest that the well could be damaged and that it may have to be reopened soon to avoid making the situation worse.

We all need to remember that this situation is, and was always, risky. Also, we humans are prone to make mistakes, which is why we should ALWAYS try to improve.

AMERICA - A Moral Classic for ALL Americans

"To Kill a Mockingbird" (the movie) had a big effect on my life when it came out in 1962, when I was still in high school. It is representative of the precepts which I try to live by.

See the following conversion which contains the video included in this post.

"'To Kill a Mockingbird' Turns 50" PBS Newshour Conversation 7/16/2010

POLITICS - Economic Stimulus Simply

The Ed Show: Alan Grayson Explains the Economic Stimulus Simply

POLITICS - Social Security vs Personal Pension Plans

"Fox News shills for the man about Social Security" Rightardia 7/15/2010

Even though "you may not have enough money to retire on," Stu Varney still believes in privatizing Social Security.

Stuart Varney is a British-American economic journalist, currently working for the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network in the United States.

This is a complete crock and Varney has to know what happened in the UK when Maggie Thatcher privatized the UK social Security system.

In addition to the inappropriate advice offered by pension providers and the personal pension plans' complicated fee structure, other concerns have been raised about the U.K. pension system.

First, the complex system requires workers to choose among SERPS (state earnings-related pension scheme), personal pensions, or occupational pensions, which can be difficult.

Moreover, the best choice depends on each worker's characteristics such as how often he or she switches jobs or participates in the workforce. Second, choosing to invest in a personal pension rather than SERPS is particularly advantageous for younger workers.

The highest percentage of people with personal pension coverage is among full-time workers ages 25 to 34 (37 percent of males and 26 percent of females).

Because younger workers enter and leave the workforce more often than older workers, their contributions to personal pension plans tend to be more erratic and smaller.

Only half of those people with personal pensions in fiscal year 1992-1993 had positive wages in fiscal years 1990 through 1993.

In addition, only about 50 percent of participants in private pension plans made contributions beyond the government rebate to their accounts, raising some concerns about the adequacy of retirement savings.

Third, people with low earnings do not find personal pensions attractive because those pensions charge proportionately higher amounts for workers with low and unstable contributions.

As a result, the highest percentage of workers without an occupational or personal pension is among low-income workers: 65 percent of full-time workers earning more than the lower earnings limit of £64 but less than £100 a week had neither a personal pension plan nor an occupational pension plan.

The reduction of future SERPS benefits affects those workers the most; those workers could become a fiscal risk if their future retirement income must be supplemented by welfare benefits.

The bottom line is that the UK private pension system was a failure and most of the banks involved in the privatization scheme told their clients to go back to the government pension.

The UK system did not defer the risk away from the government. Many UK senior citizens may have to go on welfare to make ends meet they they retire.

Many people who retired after the new private pension system was put into law, lost half of their UK social security holdings.

Social Security FICA payroll tax is a forced savings plan. This tax has little in common with income Tax.

Republicans know that as this tax is reformed or the $108,500 caps raised, the tax will have more impact on affluent Americans.

Republicans don't want taxes to be raised on their base of 'have mores.'

POLITICS - The Obama Paradox

"Obama Pushes Through Agenda Despite Political Risks" by SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, New York Times 7/15/2010

Excerpt

If passage of the financial regulatory overhaul on Thursday proves anything about President Obama, it is this: He knows how to push big bills through a balky Congress.

But Mr. Obama’s legislative success poses a paradox: while he may be winning on Capitol Hill, he is losing with voters at a time of economic distress, and soon may be forced to scale back his ambitions.

The financial regulatory bill is the final piece of a legislative hat trick that also included the stimulus bill and the landmark new health care law. Over the last 18 months, Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have made considerable inroads in passing what could be the most ambitious agenda in decades.

Mr. Obama has done what he promised when he ran for office in 2008: he has used government as an instrument to try to narrow the gaps between the haves and the have-nots. He has injected $787 billion in tax dollars into the economy, provided health coverage to 32 million uninsured and now, reordered the relationship among Washington, Wall Street, investors and consumers.

But as he has done so, the political context has changed around him. Today, with unemployment remaining persistently near double digits despite the scale of the stimulus program and the BP oil spill having raised questions about his administration’s competence, Mr. Obama’s signature legislation is providing ammunition to conservatives who argue that government is the problem, not the solution.

What Mr. Obama and his allies portray as progressive, activist government has been framed by his opponents as overreaching and profligate when it comes to the economy.

So, lets see. According to conservative-think the American people having improved access to healthcare (being able to better afford), better (although not perfect) financial regulation to help protect against another meltdown, are examples of government overreaching?

Typical money first and no regulation thinking. Let the Robber Barons do whatever they can get away with to the American people and our economy. That's just business as it should be.

Well, from this American citizen to conservatives and GOP..... UP YOURS!

POLITICS - Financial Reform Bill Passes

"Financial Reform Clears Senate After More Than Year of Wrangling" PBS Newshour Transcript 7/15/2010

Excerpts

JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): Banking Committee Chair Christopher Dodd helped shepherd the bill through the Senate. He acknowledged, it's not perfect.

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD, D-Conn.: I can't legislate integrity. I can't legislate wisdom. I can't legislate passion or competency. What we can do is create the tools and the architecture that allow good people to do a good job on behalf of the American public. And that's what a bill like this is designed to do.

I regret it can't give you your job back, restore that foreclosed home, put retirement moneys back in your account. What I can do is to see to it that we never, ever again have to go through what this nation has been through.

JEFFREY BROWN: The bill is sweeping in its scope, running to some 2,300 pages. Among key provisions, it would give federal regulators authority to wind down troubled companies, in a bid to solve the problem of too big to fail. It would also create a 10-member oversight council to watch for threats to the broader financial system.

For the first time, there would be federal oversight of derivatives, those bets made on the future price of securities. And a consumer protection agency would be established within the Federal Reserve to regulate mortgages, credit cards and other products. All but three Republicans voted against the measure.
----
JEFFREY BROWN: Now, Chrystia Freeland, of course a key question was what this does to change the behavior of Wall Street.

And what do you see in terms of imposing change, and where might it fall short? What do you see?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND, Reuters: Well, I agree with Roben that those are some of the key points.

The other points that I would really single out are, as your report mentioned, I think the derivatives rulings are really, really important, the fact that derivatives, now most of them have to be exchange-traded and they have to be centrally cleared.

This was the part of the market that really blew up. And what was so scary about it, with hindsight, was, people really didn't know what was going on there. That is what we refer to when we talk about the shadow banking industry.

So, it's really important that most of these derivatives now have to be centrally cleared -- that means we will all know about it -- and exchange-traded.

In terms of where the bill falls short, I would say they should have gone further on the derivatives. You can still -- if are you a non-financial party, if you are, say, an oil company, you can still trade in derivatives not on the central exchange. I think that that's a mistake. I think it would be better to move them all on to the exchanges.

JEFFREY BROWN: Roben, bring us to Main Street now. What is the impact on average people, on consumers, specifically through this new consumer protection agency?

ROBEN FARZAD, senior writer, "Bloomberg BusinessWeek": Well, there is a rather massive codification of very specific consumer protections here.

I mean, everywhere from credit card customers to investors, you're now specifying that the SEC can come out and say that brokers have to espouse a fiduciary interest, where they put the -- the clients' interests ahead of theirs. Amazingly, I mean, a lot of us don't realize that that actually wasn't law before. That's an option that broker-dealers have.

And then, in terms of specificity a lot of things now, the devil is in the details in terms of what mortgage companies, loan companies, credit card companies can and can't do in terms of nickel-and-diming you, the warning they have to give, the impossibility now of issuing some of the liar loans that took down the entire mortgage system.

So, really, regulators used this opportunity to kind of roll up their sleeves, and not just kind of rein in Wall Street and cordon off systemic risk there, but go after a lot of the practices that affect bread-and-butter Americans.
----
JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, Chrystia, some of the bankers involved here, they -- they argue that the new regulations could impact mortgages. They could curtail lending. What do we know about what will happen?

(CROSSTALK)

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Well, if they work, then they should curtail lending.

JEFFREY BROWN: That's part of the issue, right?

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Part -- yes, that's part of the issue.

And I do think that people, the American public has to be honest about this. Part of the purpose of this financial regulation is, if you want to use a traffic metaphor, what we have discovered in hindsight is that capital was moving too fast. The speed limits were too high, and there weren't enough air bags, and there weren't enough seat belts in the system.

The goal, broadly speaking, of this legislation is to lower the speed limit of financial capital and to require all of us to wear seat belts. Now, the good news is, I think the legislation succeeds in doing that, maybe not 100 percent, but to some extent. And that should mean that car crashes, you know, 100 car crashes are a little bit less likely in the future.

But what it also means is that capital is going to move a little more slowly. That is the inevitable cost. And for Main Street, that means, yes, it will be harder to get a mortgage than it was in the go-go years of 2006, 2007.

Inevitably, we are going to be writing stories, you are going to be do reports about poor American homeowners who are no longer able to get a mortgage. Well, guess what? That's the price of having a safer financial system.
----
JEFFREY BROWN: Well, so, Chrystia, in terms of who watches, going forward, to make sure that those kind of things don't happen or untoward things don't happen, what does the bill bring in terms of regulatory changes. The Fed still has -- actually, the Fed maintains a lot of power. And Roben referred to that new council, the oversight council.

CHRYSTIA FREELAND: Yes, exactly.

I mean, that is a new thing. And it is really important that there now is a council that has overall authority. I think the issues there are, first of all, it is still a very feudal, a very Byzantine regulatory system. If you were being radical, you could have really shaken up this very fractured, you know, very multigroup group of regulators and said we want to have more unity. We want to have a single regulator. We want to make it easier to oversee the system and harder for these banks to engage in regulatory arbitrage.

So, it is a tough game for the regulator. And the second really important point, which your report highlighted, is so much of this is going to be about the judgment of the regulators. And I think, when we look back at the financial crisis of 2008, one of the conclusions we're going to draw is, regulators forgot that their job was to be policemen. And they started to see themselves as farmers, if you were, of Wall Street.

They started to think that their job was to help financial services to grow. Now, that might be the job of other parts of government, but, surely, the job of regulators is to make sure these guys are not doing things which are too risky.

And what will really determine whether we have another big financial crisis in the next five years or 10 years is going to be what attitude the regulators take.

Blue highlight mine

ECONOMY - Chicken or the Egg Question

"Companies pile up cash but remain hesitant to add jobs" by Jia Lynn Yang, Washington Post 7/15/2010

Excerpt

Corporate America is hoarding a massive pile of cash. It just doesn't want to spend it hiring anyone.

Nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion in cash, roughly one-quarter more than at the beginning of the recession. And as several major firms report impressive earnings this week, the money continues to flow into firms' coffers.

Yet all the good news from big business hasn't translated into much promise for jobless Americans, leading many to wonder: If corporations are sitting on so much money, why aren't they hiring more workers?

The answer to that question has become a political flash point between the White House and big business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which held a jobs summit Wednesday and accused the Obama administration of dumping onerous regulations on businesses. That has created an environment of "uncertainty," which is causing firms to hold back on hiring as the unemployment rate has hovered near 10 percent, the Chamber said.

The White House countered that companies are wary of hiring not because of new regulations but because they're still waiting for consumer demand to return. The administration also claimed credit for 3.5 million jobs created by the stimulus bill from last year.

A question for companies, how can consumer demand return if people don't have jobs (an income) to buy more goods and services?

Also, in the real-world the future is ALWAYS uncertain, and if you "hide under the bed" nothing gets done.

POLITICS - GOP Fantasy-World Double Standard

"Deficit Fraud Jon Kyl: ‘You Should Never Have To Offset’ Tax Cuts" by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress 7/11/2010

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has been one of President Obama’s most vocal critics on the budget deficit (most of which is actually attributable to the President’s predecessor). “The Obama administration is spending trillions of dollars we do not have on things we do not need,” Kyl has said.

But today on Fox News Sunday, Kyl threw his concerns about the deficit out the window when discussing tax cuts. Kyl said Congress should not allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, but when host Chris Wallace asked, “How are you going to pay the $678 billion to keep Bush tax cuts for the wealthy?” Kyl wouldn’t answer. And in fact, he went so far as to say tax cuts should never have to be paid for:

WALLACE: We’re running out of time, so how are you going to pay $678 billion just on the tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year?

KYL: You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes. Surely congress has the authority and it would be right, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending. And that’s what republicans object to. But you should never have to offset cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.

Kyl is not only a deficit peacock, but he’s also a deficit fraud. On the one hand, he attacks Obama for rising deficits but at the same time says that multibillion dollar tax cuts “never” have to be offset.

Earlier this year, Kyl defended Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) for blocking a measure to extend unemployment benefits. “All Senator Bunning was saying quite correctly is it ought to be paid for,” Kyl said. So while Kyl advocates on behalf of the wealthy, he has no problem reverting back to being a deficit hawk at the expense of the less well-off.

I just realized that the GOP's definition of "small business" includes individuals earning $200k/yr or above. Well, in my part of the country a "small business" is the mom-and-pop taco or pizza shop with total earnings UNDER $200k/yr with one or no employees.

Note that Individual Income Tax is NOT same as a Business Tax.

POLITICS - ....of GOP Know-Nothingism

"THE POLITICAL CONSEQUENCES OF ECONOMIC KNOW-NOTHINGISM" by Steve Bene, Washington Monthly 7/14/2010

Excerpt

This week, the Senate Republican leadership made one of the single dumbest policy arguments imaginable: policymakers shouldn't even try to pay for massive tax cuts for the wealthy, because they pay for themselves. GOP officials see the overwhelming evidence that Bush's tax policies helped produce a massive deficit, but they reject it, preferring to believe a ridiculous fantasy.

As a substantive matter, this is insane. But what about the politics? Ezra Klein had a smart take on this earlier:

In recent weeks, Republicans have gained a lot of traction -- and hung a lot of tough votes -- on their concerns for deficits. Now they're stuck between two untenable positions: That tax cuts needn't be offset as a matter of principle, or that they needn't be offset as a matter of policy. The first suggests they don't really care about deficits. The second suggests they don't understand deficits. Meanwhile, they're filibustering an extension in unemployment insurance based on concerns about deficits. Democrats are ecstatic: Tax cuts for the wealthy versus insurance for the unemployed is, for them, the first hint of solid ground in some time.

This isn't a slam dunk for Democrats. Tax cuts remain popular, and not paying for them has been, in the past, a popular position. But where Democrats were on the defensive on deficits last week, Republicans are going to spend the next week trying to sync positions that will radically increase the deficit with a political message that emphasizes the need for deficit reduction.

Republicans are a creative bunch, especially when it comes to selling garbage, but I'm not sure how even the GOP can spin this: "We really care about the deficit, so we have to reject popular aid to jobless Americans. But we don't really care about the deficit, so we demand massive tax breaks for the wealthy."

Even the increasingly-conservative Washington Post editorial board isn't buying the GOP line, calling it "nonsense."

Yesterday, in a story about public opinion, the Post noted the concerns of a New Jersey man named Dwight Michael Frazee, who's struggling badly in this economy. He was barely getting by on unemployment benefits, before a Republican filibuster left him with nothing.

"My life has been total stress. I sleep maybe four hours a night, worrying about money," he said. "I understood the president and Congress had to stabilize the banks, get Wall Street going. I figured something would be done for middle-class Americans, that they couldn't abandon us. But I was wrong."

The story wasn't explicit about Frazee's politics, but the implication was that he blamed Obama and congressional Democrats for failing to help him. It's a reminder of what Dems need to tell voters: Republicans blocked unemployment aid, but keep demanding hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts for millionaires, regardless of what it does to the deficit.

One party wants to fight for those struggling; one wants to, in Frazee's word, "abandon" them. This is the stuff campaigns are made of.

HEALTHCARE - U.S. Preventive Services Task Force

"Health lobbyists focus on a once-obscure group" by Christopher Weaver, Washington Post 7/15/2010

Excerpt

For years, an obscure federal task force sifted through medical literature on colonoscopies, prostate-cancer screening and fluoride treatments, ferreting out the best evidence for doctors to use in caring for their patients. But now its recommendations have financial implications, raising the stakes for patients, doctors and others in the health-care industry.

Under the new health-care overhaul law, health insurers will be required to pay fully for services that get an A or B recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a volunteer group made up of primary care and public health experts.

That's good news for patients, who will no longer face cost sharing for these services, but it puts the group in the cross hairs of lobbyists and disease advocates eager to see their top priorities -- routine screening for Alzheimer's disease, diabetes or HIV, for example -- become covered services.

"It's a wide-open door for lobbying," says Robert Laszewski, a health insurance industry consultant.

On Wednesday, first lady Michelle Obama; Jill Biden, the wife of Vice President Biden; and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius discussed the importance of preventive care at a news conference to unveil regulations for implementing the provisions, which include coverage of immunizations and additional services for women and children.

"Too many Americans don't get the preventive care they need to stay healthy and keep health-care costs down for all of us," Sebelius said. "Our challenge is to remove the barriers."

The preventive-services task force will guide that effort. Founded in 1984, it has 16 members -- many of whom are doctors. The group meets three times a year and is staffed by officials at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Under the new law, the task force could become a political lightning rod. If it doesn't recommend a service, insurers might not pay for it, and advocates might argue the decision is a barrier to care. If the panel does back a service, it might increase patients' access, as well as create new business opportunities.

The requirement applies only to plans created after Sept. 23."

Bold emphasis mine

So, what's the problem? I don't see one.

Needless to say the Healthcare Industry, who put their profits ABOVE individual people's health, will object.

AFGHANISTAN - Local Defense Forces, Good Idea or Not?

"Afghans to Form Local Forces to Fight Taliban" by ALISSA J. RUBIN, New York Times 7/14/2010

Excerpt

After intensive negotiations with NATO military commanders, the Afghan government on Wednesday approved a program to establish local defense forces that American military officials hope will help remote areas of the country thwart attacks by Taliban insurgents.

Details of the plan are sketchy, but Americans had been promoting the force as a crucial stopgap to combat rising violence here and frustration with the slow pace of training permanent professional security forces — the bottom-line condition for the American military to begin pulling back from an increasingly unpopular war. Many parts of Afghanistan have no soldiers or police officers on the ground.

Over 12 days of talks, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new NATO commander, overcame the objections of President Hamid Karzai, who had worried that the forces could harden into militias that his weak government could not control. In the end, the two sides agreed that the forces would be under the supervision of the Afghan Interior Ministry, which will also be their paymaster.

Given the history of Afghan tribalism, could Karzai's objections be legitimate? Could these local defense forces come under the control of local warlords NOT loyal to the central government?

ON THE LITE SIDE - Bush Morph

Bush Morphs to Alfred

POLITICS - Opinion, Bush-Style Fascism

"An Examination of Fascism" Rightardia 7/13/2010

Dino Louis: The Nature of Fascism and its precursors
Excerpted from the book: The 15% Solution: A Political History of American Fascism, 2001-2022

1. There may or may not be a single charismatic leader in charge of the government, i.e., a "dictator".

2. Government establishes and enforces the rules of "right" thinking, "right" action, and "right" religious devotion.

3. There is no constitution recognized by all political forces as having an authority beyond that stated by the government in power, to which that government is subject. The rule of men, not law, is supreme.

4. Official or unofficial force, internal terror, and routine torture of captured opponents are major means of government control.

5.The fascist takeover of the government of a major power always leads to foreign war, sooner or later.

6. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, and national chauvinism are major factors in national politics and policy-making.

7. All communications media are government-owned or otherwise government-controlled.

8. Built as it on terror, repression, and an ultimately fictional/delusional representation of historical, political, and economic reality, fascism is inherently unstable and always carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. To date, such seeds have always sprouted in a relatively short period of time.

9. There are few or no employee rights or protections, including the right of workers to bargain collectively. Only government approved labor unions or associations are permitted to exist, and that approval may be removed at any time, without prior notice.

10. The economy is based on capitalism, with a tight central control of the distribution of resources among the producers, and strict limitations on the free market for labor.

11. All entertainment, music, art, and organized sport is controlled by the government.

12. There is no recognition of inherent personal rights. Only the government can grant "rights". Any "rights" granted by the government may be diminished or removed by it from any individual or group at any time without prior notice, explanation, or judicial review. Thus, there is no presumed freedom of speech, press, religion, or even belief, automatically accompanying citizenship. There are no inherent or presumed protections against any violations of personal liberty committed by law-enforcement or other government agencies.

13. There is complete executive branch control of government policy and action. There is no independent judicial or legislative branch of government.

14. There is only one political party, and no mass organizations of any kind other than those approved by the government are permitted.

Ten or eleven of these precursors were recognizable during the Bush administration.

HEALTH - Alzheimer's Update

"Rules Seek to Expand Diagnosis of Alzheimer’s" by GINA KOLATA, New York Times 7/13/2010

Excerpt

For the first time in 25 years, medical experts are proposing a major change in the criteria for Alzheimer’s disease, part of a new movement to diagnose and, eventually, treat the disease earlier.

The new diagnostic guidelines, presented Tuesday at an international Alzheimer’s meeting in Hawaii, would mean that new technology like brain scans would be used to detect the disease even before there are evident memory problems or other symptoms.

If the guidelines are adopted in the fall, as expected, some experts predict a two- to threefold increase in the number of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Many more people would be told they probably are on their way to getting it. The Alzheimer’s Association says 5.3 million Americans now have the disease.

The changes could also help drug companies that are, for the first time, developing new drugs to try to attack the disease earlier. So far, there are no drugs that alter the course of the disease.

Development of the guidelines, by panels of experts convened by the National Institute on Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, began a year ago because, with a new understanding of the disease and new ways of detection, it was becoming clear that the old method of diagnosing Alzheimer’s was sorely outdated.

The current formal criteria for diagnosing Alzheimer’s require steadily progressing dementia — memory loss and an inability to carry out day-to-day activities, like dressing or bathing — along with a pathologist’s report of plaque and another abnormality, known as tangles, in the brain after death.

But researchers are now convinced that the disease is present a decade or more before dementia.

POLITICS - GOP = Snake Oil Salesmen

"Carnival barkers, pied pipers, snake oil salesmen [and] bile and paranoid fantasies" by P.M. Carpenter, BuzzFlash 7/12/2010

The one thing Democrats have going for them is the electorate's enduring wariness of the GOP. The midterms, now predicated on the economy's absence of dramatic improvement, should be trending unmistakably Republican. But it isn't.

The results of Gallup's Daily tracking poll from early July -- titled "Democrats, Republicans Still Tied on 2010 Generic Ballot" -- show that "Republicans maintain their competitive position on the generic congressional ballot, with 46% of U.S. registered voters preferring the Republican candidate in their district and 44% the Democratic candidate." Competitive, but hardly a lock.

What's more, while the Democrats' percentage has dropped a disturbing six points since last summer, the percentage increase for Republicans is statistically insignificant (it was 44).

As true as it is troubling, Gallup further reports that "historical trends suggest that a slight Republican lead on the generic ballot among registered voters ... would translate into sizable Republican seat gains in Congress on Election Day, given their typical advantage in voter turnout." But of course it's also true that history has nearly always favored the out-of-power party in midterms, a kind of punishing, internal correction exercised -- wisely or blindly -- by the electorate every four years between presidential elections.

This year, however, doubts about GOP governance persist among the key voting bloc of independents. The hopeful ambivalence to be noted is that while independents may be wandering away from Democrats, they are decidedly not peddling into the GOP camp.

Why? A twofold answer comes echoing back with resounding clarity: One, the GOP is unforgettably incompetent; and two, the GOP has become inexhaustibly crazy.

The first fact requires no elaboration; we all, all of us, independents included, have just survived (maybe) nearly a decade of immense Republican incompetence -- indeed, an incompetence by design, since bumpy is the road of managing a government one hates -- and even Americans' famous short-term memory hangs tight to the GOP's darkest of bumbling deeds.

The second factor -- that of bughouse unlimited -- has, I think, for most voters been less of a sudden epiphany than a bubbling realization now coming to a boil. Systematically have the whackos, the wingnuts, the crazies and crackpots removed moderate -- these days, one is tempted to even say thoughtful -- Republicans from power, and the latter are beginning to strike back, or at least lash out.

Case in point, soon-to-be former congressman Bob Inglis, of South Carolina, who, as Politico reported, recently "lost his primary in part because he was openly critical of Glenn Beck and told his conservative constituents not to believe everything they hear on Fox.... Pointing a finger at Beck, Sarah Palin and such conservative figures, Inglis told AP:

"There were no death panels in the [healthcare] bill … and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It’s not leadership. It’s demagoguery."

Yet the equally intriguing part of the Politico story were some of the reader comments that followed -- those, that is, from the very Beck-Palin followers whom Inglis had warned. A sampling:

"Inglis knows that the only way for a Republican to get written up by the Beltway media is to attack other Republicans. Which is why Republicans don't take this article, or Inglis, seriously." Classic denial, mixed with the old "this guy is so beneath comment I must comment on it" routine.

And there was this: "Beck did not pull a lever in the booth nor did Palin. The people did" -- my emphasis, that being Exhibit A in the displayed folly of political activists who mistake their fellow crackpots for a mass "movement."

Or, there was this: "This is only newsworthy to a liberal rag like Politico that traffics in all things negative towards conservatives. Typical." Rather, what's typical is the Agnewesque habit of attacking the reporting source, even when the source omits independent comment, which Politico did.

Now I ask you: Are such delusional, seething "activists" likely to convert many independents?

There also, however, was another conservative comment that I just can't let pass, in that it reflected the essential mainstream of yesteryear's Republicanism. It was literate, though, so perhaps a plant; but in the absence of any contrary evidence let's take it at face value:

"Pretty darn ridiculous. Inglis has a perfect '0' score from organizations like NARAL, and perfect 100 scores from every right to life group. He gets a 90 from the Chamber of Commerce. He gets a 95 from FreedomWorks, a 92 from the American Conservative Union.... So why'd he get tossed? Because he wasn't crazy enough. Because he wasn't calling on people to drink the blood of liberals. I wish you nutjobs would get the hell out of my party. You make a mockery of honest conservatives. You follow your stupid carnival barkers, pied pipers, and snake oil salesmen who sell you non-stop outrage. Conservatism isn't about hating the guts of the other guy -- it's about good policy. You've turned it into a joke. You're ruining my party and you'll ruin America. You contribute nothing but bile and paranoid fantasies. You have nothing positive to offer -- only fevered nightmares. Mark my words -- you're not saving the nation or the Republican party -- you're injecting it with a deadly poison.... Grow up or go away."

Doubtless, they won't be going away anytime soon -- and in the coming midterms they and their "nutjob" brethren will almost certainly deprive the nation of many a Congressional district's marginal sanity. But they do perform an invaluable service: They're also driving thoughtful independents away from the increasingly infantile Republican Party.