Orcinus: Thom Hartmann: Three Great American Myths

Saturday, June 23, 2007

-- by Sara

The first thing that strikes you about Thom Hartmann in person is that he looks about 20 years younger than he actually is. The second is that he's got an energy level that's unbelievable.

"I got off the plane from DC at 3:15 this morning," he admits, apologizing for getting a name wrong in a story he was telling. "And I had to be on the air at six, so I'm running on very little sleep." It's now getting on toward two in the afternoon, and he's been speaking for 45 minutes, bouncing around the platform with energy and a recall of names, people, places, dates -- hundreds of years of American and English history -- that dazzles. If this is what he's like when he's been up all night, he must be hell on wheels when he's well-rested.

SiCKO Is Michael Moore's Best and Most Powerful Documentary

By David Corn, TheNation.com
Posted on June 23, 2007, Printed on June 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55049/

In 1971, Edgar Kaiser, the son of the founder of Kaiser Permanente, one of the first big HMOs, went to see John Ehrlichman, a top aide to President Nixon, to lobby the Nixon White House to pass legislation that would expand the market for health maintenance organizations (HMOs). Ehrlichman reported this conversation to Nixon on February 17, 1971. The discussion, which was taped, went like this:

Ehrlichman: I had Edgar Kaiser come in...talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.

President Nixon: Fine.

The next day, Nixon publicly announced he would be pushing legislation that would provide Americans "the finest health care in the world."

U.S. Officials Have Absolutely No Clue about Iraq's Oil Law

By Ben Lando, UPI
Posted on June 23, 2007, Printed on June 23, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54997/

A military leader fresh from Iraq is the latest U.S. government official to push a common but false claim that the controversial draft oil law will lead to a just division of the proceeds from oil sales and pave the way for reconciliation in the war-torn nation.

Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, former commander of the Multinational Security Transition Command-Iraq, forwarded claims made by the Bush administration and Congress that if Iraq passes an oil law, the fighting factions there will come together because revenue from oil sales will be distributed to all.

Rules 'hiding' trillions in debt

Liability $516,348 per U.S. household
By Dennis Cauchon, USA TODAY

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion loss last year -- far more than the official $248 billion deficit -- when corporate-style accounting standards are used, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

The loss reflects a continued deterioration in the finances of Social Security and government retirement programs for civil servants and military personnel. The loss -- equal to $11,434 per household -- is more than Americans paid in income taxes in 2006.

Northern forests less effective than tropical forests in reducing global warming

Scientists close in on missing carbon sink

Forests in the United States and other northern mid- and upper-latitude regions are playing a smaller role in offsetting global warming than previously thought, according to a study appearing in this week's issue of Science.

The study, which sheds light on the so-called missing carbon sink, concludes that intact tropical forests are removing an unexpectedly high proportion of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, thereby partially offsetting carbon entering the air through industrial emissions and deforestation.

The Science paper was written by a team of scientists led by Britton Stephens of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

DIY anti-satellite system

Military and civilian satellites need protection

Satellite tracking software freely available on the Internet and some textbook physics could be used by any organization that can get hold of an intermediate range rocket to mount an unsophisticated attack on military or civilian satellites. Such an attack would require modest engineering capability and only a limited budget. That is according to researchers writing in Inderscience Publishers' International Journal of Critical Infrastructures.

A terrorist organization or rogue state could threaten essential satellite systems, according to Adrian Gheorghe of Old Dominion University Norfolk, in Virginia, USA and Dan Vamanu of "Horia Hulubei" National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, in Bucharest, Romania. Military satellites, global positioning systems, weather satellites and even satellite TV systems could all become victims of such an attack.

Voucher Students Show Few Gains in First Year

D.C. Results Typical, Federal Study Says

By Amit R. Paley and Theola Labbé

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 22, 2007; Page B01

Students in the D.C. school voucher program, the first federal initiative to spend taxpayer dollars on private school tuition, generally performed no better on reading and math tests after one year in the program than their peers in public schools, the U.S. Education Department said yesterday.

The department's report, which researchers said is an early snapshot, found only a few exceptions to the conclusion that the program has not yet had a significant impact on achievement: Students who moved from higher-performing public schools to private schools and those who scored well on tests before entering the program performed better in math than their peers who stayed in public school.

Sen. Levin's False History & Logic

By Robert Parry
June 21, 2007

If you’re wondering why the Iraq War is likely to continue indefinitely despite mounting public outrage and a failed military strategy, part of the answer can be found in two words: Carl Levin.

Levin, a low-key Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, has wedded himself to a line of thinking that is both historically wrong and logically unsound. Yet, his faulty reasoning, if maintained, virtually guarantees that George W. Bush will keep winning every war-funding round with Congress through the end of his presidency.

On June 21, Levin spelled out his thinking in a Washington Post op-ed entitled “Lincoln’s Example for Iraq.” Levin asserted that he is modeling his Iraq War position on Abraham Lincoln’s stance on the Mexican War, launched by President James Polk in 1846 after a declaration of war by Congress.

Breaking: Senate Judiciary Committee Authorizes Subpoenas For NSA Domestic Spying Documents

The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted 13-3 to authorize chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to issue subpoenas for documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program. Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) voted with the Democrats on the committee to authorize the subpoenas for any legal opinions and advice the Bush administration has received regarding the NSA program.

Mortgage loss threatens US banks

The US housing downturn may have major financial repercussions, experts have warned, as Wall Street faces up to the crisis in the sub-prime lending market.

Bear Stearns, a leading US finance firm, is trying to prevent the collapse of two hedge funds with major exposure to the high-risk mortgage sector.

Should it sell off investments cheaply, it is feared similar funds will follow suit, causing a crisis in confidence.

Michael Moore Attacks the Grotesque Profit Motive of the US Health Care System

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on June 22, 2007, Printed on June 22, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54639/

Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore sat down with Amy Goodman ahead of the release of his new film SiCKO. The film is a seething indictment of the US healthcare system. It focuses not on the more than 40 million people who don't have healthcare but on the 250 million who do - many of whom are abandoned by the very health insurance industry they paid into for decades. "They are getting away with murder," Moore said of the health insurance companies. "They charge whatever they want. There is no government control, and frankly we will not fix our system until we remove these private insurance companies."

Re-Open Investigation of Abu Ghraib

By Joseph L. Galloway
McClatchy Newspapers
Wednesday 20 June 2007

We were reminded again this week that in this administration, no good deed goes unpunished, and that no scandal is so great that it can't be hidden until it's forgotten.

The sad spectacle that transpired inside the crumbling walls of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came roaring back to life with Seymour Hersh's on-target article in The New Yorker magazine telling the story of an honest general who investigated and reported on events that shocked the world.

Replacing teachers who quit jobs in U.S. is a costly business

S.F. district spends $12 million per year to maintain staffing

Jill Tucker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, June 21, 2007

About 500,000 teachers across the country flee their jobs every year -- a persistent churn and burn that costs public schools an estimated $7.3 billion annually, according to a national report released Wednesday.

"Schools are able to hire enough teachers, but they just can't keep them in the classroom," said Tom Carroll, president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, which conducted the study, released Wednesday.

A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America

By Michael Parks, AlterNet
Posted on June 21, 2007, Printed on June 22, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/54214/

Ninety years ago, the U.S. government used the Espionage Act to jail hundreds of Americans for speaking out against World War I. Shortly after the war, during America's first Red Scare, U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer authorized arrests of thousands of citizens, primarily immigrants, suspected of being Communists. These First Amendment abuses led to the foundation of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and set the stage for what has been a nearly century-long struggle for the realization of every American's right to freedom of speech.

In his book From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America, Christopher A. Finan chronicles how far we have come since World War I and how far we have yet to go. As the chair of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the president of the American Booksellers' Foundation for Free Expression, which has played an active role in lobbying against the USA Patriot Act since 9/11, Finan has over two decades of personal experience with his subject.

Words in a Time of War

By Mark Danner
May 31, 2007

[originally published by tomdispatch.com]

[Note: This commencement address was given to graduates of the Department of Rhetoric at Zellerbach Hall, University of California, Berkeley, on May 10, 2007]

When my assistant greeted me, a number of weeks ago, with the news that I had been invited to deliver the commencement address to the Department of Rhetoric, I thought it was a bad joke. There is a sense, I'm afraid, that being invited to deliver The Speech to students of Rhetoric is akin to being asked out for a romantic evening by a porn star: Whatever prospect you might have of pleasure is inevitably dampened by performance anxiety — the suspicion that your efforts, however enthusiastic, will inevitably be judged according to stern professional standards. A daunting prospect.

The only course, in both cases, is surely to plunge boldly ahead. And that means, first of all, saluting the family members gathered here, and in particular you, the parents.

Giant magnetocaloric materials could have large impact on the environment

Materials that change temperature in magnetic fields could lead to new refrigeration technologies that reduce the use of greenhouse gases, thanks to new research at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Ames National Laboratory.

Powerful Interest Groups Complicate Swift Action on Energy in Congress

June 19, 2007 — By H. Josef Hebert, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- Three powerful lobbying forces -- automakers, electric utilities and the coal industry -- are confounding Democrats' efforts to forge a less-polluting energy policy.

Disputes over automobile fuel economy, use of coal as a motor fuel, and requirements for utilities to use more wind or biomass to generate electricity have threatened to stall energy legislation in both the Senate and House.

America's Left, no longer left for dead

Published: Tuesday June 19, 2007

For years in the United States, liberalism was the political persuasion that dared not speak its name, but now the Left is buzzing with hope and proclaiming the death of "the conservative era."

Republicans, from the 1980s onward, demonized even the term "liberal" as the left took a pounding. More recently, President George W. Bush's political guru Karl Rove was among those talking of a permanent conservative majority.

Republicans get ready to threaten Valerie Plame Wilson with subpoena

06/18/2007 @ 11:45 am
Filed by Michael Roston

As Democrats in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform plow ahead with their investigation of the intelligence used by the Bush administration to build the case for the Iraq War, their Republican colleagues are attempting to up the ante. Last week, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA), the ranking minority member of the committee, alleged that former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson had given false testimony and prepared to threaten her with a subpoena.

The media's assault on reason

by Eric Boehlert

How hard is it to figure out if a book has footnotes? When it comes to Al Gore's new, national bestseller, The Assault on Reason (Penguin Press, May 2007), it's trickier than you think for some disdainful members of the Beltway press corps.

On June 10, The Washington Post published an opinion column by Andrew Ferguson about Gore's new book. Personally, I give The Assault on Reason high marks as a spot-on, truth-telling critique of the Bush administration, as well as for the insightful concern Gore expresses about the fragile state of American democracy. Or, "what passes for a national conversation," as Gore puts it.

The Earth today stands in imminent peril

...and nothing short of a planetary rescue will save it from the environmental cataclysm of dangerous climate change. Those are not the words of eco-warriors but the considered opinion of a group of eminent scientists writing in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 19 June 2007

Six scientists from some of the leading scientific institutions in the United States have issued what amounts to an unambiguous warning to the world: civilisation itself is threatened by global warming.

They also implicitly criticise the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for underestimating the scale of sea-level rises this century as a result of melting glaciers and polar ice sheets.

Investigation Uncovers ‘Extensive Destruction’ Of RNC Emails, Violations Of Records Act

House investigators have learned that the Bush administration’s use of Republican National Committee email accounts is far greater than previously disclosed — 140,216 emails sent or received by Karl Rove alone — and that the RNC has overseen “extensive destruction” of many of the emails, including all email records for 51 White House officials.

Revealed: Bush's Presidential Signing Statements Have Been Used to Nullify Laws

By Brian Beutler, Media Consortium. Posted June 18, 2007.

A Government Accountability Office report confirms that Bush's use of presidential signing statements have the effect of nullifying the law in question in about 30 percent of cases.

Well, it's official: President Bush doesn't much respect the laws Congress passes. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) report -- commissioned by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) and released today -- confirms that Bush's use of presidential signing statements are, in fact, utterly without precedent.

Though they've been used by American presidents for about 200 years, signing statements -- edicts issued by the president to declare his intent to construe a provision within a law differently than Congress does -- are Constitutionally questionable. But George W. Bush's use of them far exceeds his predecessors', both in number and in severity, and he has consistently used them to flout the will of the legislative branch.

How Big Pharma Learned To Seduce You

By Alicia Rebensdorf, AlterNet. Posted June 19, 2007.

As recent legislation shows, drug companies and their direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns need diligent monitoring -- especially when it looks like they need it the least.

Ten years after the FDA first approved pharmaceutical direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, the Senate has finally resolved to step up DTC regulation. Sponsored by the bi-partisan coalition of Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), the bill passed by a resounding 93-1. The House has a similar bill on its calendar and a full vote is expected in July.

Problem is, although the legislation has been touted as a victory over the big, bad drug companies, the success is actually Big Pharma's.

Newly empowered Democrats draw wrath of voters

By Thomas Ferraro
Mon Jun 18, 8:38 AM ET

The new Democratic-led Congress is drawing the ire of voters upset with its failure to quickly deliver on a promise to end the Iraq war.

This is reflected in polls that show Congress -- plagued by partisan bickering mostly about the war -- at one of its lowest approval ratings in a decade. Surveys find only about one in four Americans approves of it.

"I understand their disappointment," said Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (news, bio, voting record) of Nevada. "We raised the bar too high."

The Twin Debacles

How the housing collapse is like the Iraq war.
By Daniel Gross
Posted Friday, June 15, 2007, at 5:48 PM ET

What do Iraq and the U.S. housing market have in common? At first blush, not much. Iraq, which has taken the lives of thousands and ruined America's reputation abroad, is far more disastrous than the housing collapse, which has been merely financially devastating.

Nonetheless, the twin debacles, which are defining the foreign policy and domestic economy of the second Bush term, have significant similarities, especially in the way that their public- and private-sector architects and promoters have behaved. Iraq and the housing market offer a case study in how two phenomena can go from being extremely popular to deeply unpopular in a matter of months. And with Iraq having turned into a disaster about two years before housing did, the way Iraq is playing out in the culture may predict what will happen in housing.

Surgeon General to be...or not to be?

Dr. James Holsinger's nomination to be surgeon general colored by questionable deaths at a VA hospital where he was Chief Medical Officer, along with his record of homophobia and involvement in a questionable Kentucky land deal

While the George W. Bush administration didn't invent cronyism -- handing over administration jobs to friends, funders and longtime supporters -- it certainly has put its own unique stamp on the concept. When the history of the Bush Administration is written, "cronyism" will be writ large with Bush's paean to former FEMA chief Michael Brown, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," leading the way. The hiring -- and ultimate firing -- of "Brownie," however, is only one example of how the uninformed, the unprepared, the prejudiced, and the unqualified have made their way to administration posts.

Senate Weighs Workers' Rights

The Senate is preparing to take up the Employee Free Choice Act today with a possible vote on Thursday.

Sixty years ago this month, US labor law was dramatically altered in the interests of capital when the Republican-led 80th Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act over intense opposition from organized labor. The legislation survived a veto by President Harry Truman, who described the act as a "slave-labor bill", arguing that it would "conflict with important principles of our democratic society."

Frank Rich: Scooter’s Sopranos Go to the Mattresses

As a weary nation awaited the fade-out of "The Sopranos" last Sunday, the widow of the actual Mafia don John Gotti visited his tomb in Queens to observe the fifth anniversary of his death. Victoria Gotti was not pleased to find reporters lying in wait.

"It's disgusting that people are still obsessed with Gotti and the mob," she told The Daily News. "They should be obsessed with that mob in Washington. They have 3,000 deaths on their hands." She demanded to know if the president and vice president have relatives on the front lines. "Every time I watch the news and I hear of another death," she said, "it sickens me."

Judge Orders FBI to Turn Over Thousands of Patriot Act Abuse Documents

By Ryan Singel June 15, 2007 | 3:52:04 PM

Just one day after a news that an internal audit found that FBI agents abused a Patriot Act power more than 1,000 times, a federal judge ordered the agency Friday to begin turning over thousands of pages of documents related to the agency's use of a powerful, but extremely secretive investigative tool that can pry into telephone and internet records.

The order for monthly document releases commencing July 5 came in response to a government sunshine request by a civil liberties group, which sued in April over the FBI's foot-dragging on its broad request.

The General’s Report

How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.

by Seymour M. Hersh June 25, 2007

On the afternoon of May 6, 2004, Army Major General Antonio M. Taguba was summoned to meet, for the first time, with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in his Pentagon conference room. Rumsfeld and his senior staff were to testify the next day, in televised hearings before the Senate and the House Armed Services Committees, about abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. The previous week, revelations about Abu Ghraib, including photographs showing prisoners stripped, abused, and sexually humiliated, had appeared on CBS and in The New Yorker. In response, Administration officials had insisted that only a few low-ranking soldiers were involved and that America did not torture prisoners. They emphasized that the Army itself had uncovered the scandal.

If there was a redeeming aspect to the affair, it was in the thoroughness and the passion of the Army’s initial investigation. The inquiry had begun in January, and was led by General Taguba, who was stationed in Kuwait at the time. Taguba filed his report in March.

Iraq on verge of genocidal war, warns ex-US official

Patrick Wintour
Monday June 18, 2007
The Guardian

The man who led the initial American effort to reconstruct Iraq after the war believes the country is on the brink of a genocidal civil war and its government will fall apart unless the US changes course and allows a three-way federal structure. He has also urged talks with Iran and other regional players.

Jay Garner, the former US general appointed two months before the invasion to head reconstruction in Iraq, admitted that before the 2003 war coordination between the various US departments and military had been disjointed.