In Praise of Joe Wilson

What's Wrong with Calling Out Liars in Congress?

by Dave Lindorff

Liberals are acting all righteous and offended that a member of the Republican opposition, Rep. "Joe" Wilson of South Carolina, would deign to besmirch the "dignity of the presidency" by calling out "Liar!" in the middle of President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.

But what's wrong with that? Whatever the veracity of Obama's claim that his proposed health care "reform" would not pay for the health care of illegal immigrants residing in the US (and one can only hope that statement was fatuous, because at a minimum we would certainly want the government to pay for the care of an illegal immigrant in childbirth, or of an illegal immigrant who came down with a contagious disease), and even if Rep. Wilson is a racist bozo who wrongly thinks or wants to imply that Obama's plan would be out there enrolling undocumented workers in the millions at taxpayer expense, why shouldn't members of Congress call out a president if they think he's lying to them from the podium?

Democracy and deference

An oldie, but a goody.--Dictynna

By Mark Slouka

I blame my parents, which is trite but traditional. Six years after stepping onto the troubled shore of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s America they had a son and promptly began to fill his head with nonsense. In America, they taught me, talent and hard work were all; allegiance was automatically owed to no one; respect had to be earned. In America, the president worked for us, and knew it, and the house we allowed him to live in for a time—that great white outie of the Republic—was known as The People’s House. Would that I had been suckled by wolves.

Turn on the TV to almost any program with an office in it, and you’ll find a depressingly accurate representation of the “boss culture,” a culture based on an a priori notion of—a devout belief in—inequality. The boss will scowl or humiliate you…because he can, because he’s the boss. And you’ll keep your mouth shut and look contrite, even if you’ve done nothing wrong . . . because, well, because he’s the boss. Because he’s above you. Because he makes more money than you. Because—admit it—he’s more than you.

Wrongheaded and Incomplete on Incomes

The Wall Street Journal, comforting the comfortable with selective data

By David Cay Johnston

This morning’s page-one Wall Street Journal story on incomes in America contains many bungled facts and concepts in a single sentence, giving a false impression about income distribution in America.

The piece follows the curious look at the fortunes of the rich published August 20 by The New York Times, which examined the anomalous case of one man who blew his fortune and, like the Journal, speculated on data that does not yet exist to conclude that “over the last two years, they have become poorer…. Just how much poorer the rich will become remains unclear.”

These reports display a puzzling sympathy for the best-off in America, part of a trend that I believe has helped cost newspapers readers—identifying with the concerns of the comfortable, often without context about the woes of the afflicted.

Atul Gawande: The Road Ahead

Before President Obama’s speech on health care, I wrote out a list of what I thought we needed him to do.

1. Make clear the stakes.
2. Make clear what we get under his reform.
3. Understand our fears.
4. Convey strength in the face of them.
5. Speak to our core beliefs as a nation.

I thought he did this and did it amply. He made clear that our present system is damaging our people and damaging our economy. He made clear that if we accepted the challenge and the struggle, we could have better insurance coverage without preëxisting condition exclusions or sudden disappearance of benefits. Those of us who are self-employed or unable to get coverage through work could have the kinds of insurance choices and discounts that big companies and congressmen can get. Those who don’t have the money for this coverage could get tax credits to offset the costs. The elderly would get a better drug-benefit package.

The Private Option

Employment-based health insurance is in big trouble, but don't blame Obama.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009, at 4:34 PM ET

---

Americans who have health insurance, we are told, are largely satisfied with it and terrified of losing it. Many of them assume that employment-based insurance—for all its flaws—is preferable to any other system. And last night President Obama went out of his way to tell people who get their insurance from employers that they had nothing to fear:

[I]f you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

That's true. But powerful trends in the broader economy will. Even without reform, lots of people with employer-provided insurance are losing it. And those who still have it may find they'll be less satisfied with it in the future.

The latest report from the Census Bureau on income, poverty, and health insurance is full of interesting data. (For example, median household family income in 2008, at $50,303, was below where it was in 1998. Heckuva job, Bushie, Greenie, and the whole economic team!) Perhaps the most surprising census data are the significant evidence that, even absent a reform bill, the United States is slowly nationalizing health care. In 2008, enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid rose from a combined 81 million to a combined 85.6 million. Add in military health care, and some 87.4 million Americans in 2008 got health insurance directly from a government source—about 29 percent of the total. Meanwhile, health insurance became less tethered to work. The percentage of people covered by employment-based health insurance fell from 59.3 percent in 2007 to 58.5 percent 2008, and the percentage of those working full-time and part-time who lacked health insurance rose in 2008. The ranks of those getting insurance from employers include a substantial number of public employees—teachers, state workers, etc. (In August, government accounted for about 17 percent of payroll jobs.) Add those folks to the people receiving coverage from Medicare, Medicaid, and the military, and, as Jon Bon Jovi once put it, "we're half way there." Most of the Americans who have insurance may already be getting it through the government, one way or another.

Democrats Seen as the "Undeserving Rich" Face Rejection by Party Voters

"Moral values" are why so many in the white working classes vote Republican

Release Date: September 11, 2009

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- In a recent study, researchers from several universities looked at why white working-class voters voted Republican in recent national elections even when they didn't like Republican policies.

The study, "The Undeserving Rich: 'Moral Values' and the White Working Class," is in the current issue of Sociological Forum, available online at http://tinyurl.com/qyefm9.

It finds that, even when Republican policies are unpopular, they often come bundled with an overarching moral framework that is extremely resonant to this set of voters, a framework marked by what voters considered an "appropriate" attitude toward personal wealth.

Americans are getting poorer, and it's going to get worse

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The early impact of the worst recession since the 1930s pushed median incomes down, forced millions more people into poverty and left more Americans without health care in 2008, according to new annual survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Poor people, working people, blacks, Hispanics and children bore a disproportionate share of the hardship. The new figures, however, likely understate the severity of the economic downturn because a large portion of nation's job losses and unemployment rate increases occurred after the Census survey data was collected in March as part of the annual Current Population Survey.

A Clash of Camelots

Within months of J.F.K.’s death, the president’s widow asked William Manchester to write the authorized account of the assassination. He felt he couldn’t refuse her. Two years later, nearly broken by the task, Manchester found himself fighting a bitter, headline-making battle with Jackie and Bobby Kennedy over the finished book. The author chronicles the toll Manchester’s 1967 best-seller, The Death of a President, exacted—physically, emotionally, and financially—before it all but disappeared.

By Sam Kashner

October 2009

I thought that it would be bound in black and put away on dark library shelves. —Jacqueline Kennedy

It has never gone away, the nightmare of November 22, 1963. Each time one revisits the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th president of the United States, “one hopes for once the story will be different—the car swerves, the bullets miss, and the splendid progress continues. But each time, like a recurrent nightmare, the handsome head is shattered,” as Gore Vidal wrote in his World Journal TribuneThe Death of a President. review of William Manchester’s highly detailed, passionate, and greatly beleaguered account,

15 Must-Read Books That Will Forever Change How You See the World

By Sarah Irani, EcoSalon
Posted on September 10, 2009, Printed on September 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142519/

Some say print books are passé, but I still like curling up on the couch with a mind-expanding read. Here are my top picks for ecological and sustainable reading.

Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough & Michael Braungart. Why settle for a throwaway culture? This book inspires elegant design solutions, stating that every single product must either go back to the earth or back into industry to be made into something else. A revolutionary way of upgrading the Industrial Revolution.

Introduction to Permaculture by Bill Mollison. The classic text on permaculture design (which is not limited to gardens, but can also be used to design homes, communities and societies in general). An excellent introduction for the aspiring student or someone who just wants to know what it’s all about.

This Was the Obama We've Been Waiting for

By Adele M. Stan, AlterNet
Posted on September 10, 2009, Printed on September 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142545/

In a speech before a joint session of Congress on the topic of health care reform, President Barack Obama Wednesday night seemed ready to rumble.

It was the Obama so many have been waiting for in this debate, one that has been more food fight than discourse during the dog days of August.

Chomsky: What America's 'Crisis' Means to the Rest of the World

By Noam Chomsky, Boston Review
Posted on September 10, 2009, Printed on September 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142471/

Perhaps I may begin with a few words about the title. There is too much nuance and variety to make such sharp distinctions as theirs-and-ours, them-and-us. And neither I nor anyone can presume to speak for “us.” But I will pretend it is possible.

There is also a problem with the term “crisis.” Which one? There are numerous very severe crises, interwoven in ways that preclude any clear separation. But again I will pretend otherwise, for simplicity.

POWER WITHOUT CREDIBILITY, Part 1 Bogged down at the Fed

By Henry CK Liu

The announcement during Democrat President Barack Obama's summer vacation that he has reappointed Ben Bernanke, a Republican first appointed as Federal Reserve board chairman by president George W Bush nearly four years ago, to a second term, served to divert attention from unwelcome figures released on August 25 by the White House budget office.

These forecast a cumulative US$9 trillion fiscal deficit from 2010-2019, $2 trillion more than the administration estimated in May. The federal government will spend $2.98 trillion in fiscal 2009, $3.766 trillion in fiscal 2010 and $5.307 trillion in fiscal 2019, all substantially more than projected revenue.

Girl in Iconic Vietnam War Photo Brings Message of Hope

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay Reporter
2 hrs 1 min ago

THURSDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- It's a photo that many credit with helping to end the Vietnam War: A 9-year-old girl, naked and in obvious pain, runs through a street after suffering napalm burns over much of her body.

What the iconic photo -- snapped in 1972 by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut -- doesn't show is the girl's struggle to survive and thrive in the aftermath of that day.

Now 46 years old, Kim Phuc Phan Thai (Kim Phuc to most) spoke recently at a conference of burn survivors and burn care specialists in New York City on the physical and psychological struggle that she went through over the ensuing decades.

Wilson's rallying cry

Glenn Thrush
Thu Sep 10, 12:44 am ET

All eyes were on President Barack Obama entering Wednesday night's address to Congress, but a little-known South Carolina Republican may have done more than the president’s combative speech to unify besieged Democrats around health care reform.

The night's defining moment — which Democrats hope to transform into a turning point — came when Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted "You lie!" as Obama claimed his plan wouldn't offer free care to illegal immigrants.

Wilson's boorishness — for which he quickly apologized — enraged audience members on both sides of the aisle.

Priceless: How The Federal Reserve Bought The Economics Profession

The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession, an investigation by the Huffington Post has found.

This dominance helps explain how, even after the Fed failed to foresee the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression, the central bank has largely escaped criticism from academic economists. In the Fed's thrall, the economists missed it, too.

Rip up this awful column

September 09, 2009 12:10 pm ET by Jamison Foser

An op-ed by serial health care misinformer Betsy McCaughey is, indefensibly, featured in today's New York Post:

When President Obama addresses Congress and the nation tonight, he should pledge to do three things.

First, he should announce that he will discard the 1,018-page health bill drafted in the House of Representatives and replace it with a 20-page bill in plain English. Twenty pages should be sufficient. The framers of the US Constitution established an entire federal government in 18 pages.

This is absolute nonsense.

Economist: U.S. won't tolerate a 'Lost Decade'

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The long-simmering problems that boiled over into a global financial crisis last September require a strong government hand in the workings of the U.S. economy and financial system, according to economist and author James K. Galbraith.

Galbraith, a professor and scholar at the University of Texas at Austin, is the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, whose books in the 1950s influenced how Americans viewed economics and American capitalism.

Small businesses would see lower costs, more comprehensive coverage from health reform

52 percent of people working for small businesses are uninsured or underinsured; small business owners facing high health care costs are increasingly unable to offer health insurance to employees

September 9, 2009, New York, NY—Small business owners and employees are among those who stand to benefit the most from provisions in some of the current health reform proposals under consideration by Congress according to a Commonwealth Fund report released today. Provisions to extend health care coverage to everyone and repair the small group insurance market would alleviate high premium costs, high broker fees, underwriting, and a lack of transparency about benefit packages that small business owners currently face.

Currently, 39 million Americans work for small businesses (defined as those with fewer than 50 employees) and only 25 percent of them have health insurance through their employer, the report, Out of Options: Why So Many Workers in Small Businesses Lack Affordable Health Insurance and How Health Care Reform Can Help, finds.

Thomas Frank: The Red Scare Returns

The right dredges up a familiar bogeyman.

By THOMAS FRANK

What is peculiar about this particular right-wing rebirth is the speed with which it is happening. We had the crash last year, as in 1929. The financial gods were duly dethroned, the banks started to fail, and the mighty were humbled, as per the time-honored script. A market-worshiping Republican Party went down in an avalanche of obloquy. A scary new populism made the cover of Newsweek back in March.

But then we skipped a step. Some new version of the Bonus Army never marched on Washington. No Huey Long materialized to haunt the wealthy and we have endured no wave of sit-down strikes.

Instead, we proceeded straight to the backlash, raging against a leftist upsurge that maybe should have happened but that didn't.

Paul Krugman: Hoping for audacity

President Obama will give his big health-care speech tomorrow. Let’s hope he does it right.

What does that mean? It means not playing professor; it means not having the speech read as if it were written by a committee (like that woefully weak op-ed in the Times a couple of weeks back); it means showing real passion about health care, which has been sadly lacking so far.

I, for one, won’t be obsessing about exactly which pieces of proposed reform he emphasizes — because that’s not what’s driving the politics. Americans haven’t become skeptical about Obamacare because they’d rather shave an extra $30 billion a year off the cost; they have not, contrary to “centrist” fantasies, been turned off by the details of the stimulus plan or cap-and-trade. What has been missing is a vision. And this is probably the last chance to supply that vision.

What Exactly Did the Fed Do with $2 Trillion?

by Dean Baker

To combat the financial crisis set off by the collapse of the housing bubble, the Federal Reserve Board [1] has lent out more than $2tn through various special lending facilities. While the Fed discloses aggregate information on the loans made through each of the facilities, it will not disclose how much money it lent to specific banks or under what terms. By contrast, the Treasury puts this information about its $700bn TARP bailout [2] up on its website [3].

Partly in response to this huge increase in the Fed's power (its secret lending is equal to two-thirds of the federal budget), more than 270 representatives in Congress have co-sponsored a bill that would have the Government Accountability Office audit the Fed. In principle, this audit would examine the Fed's loans and report back to the relevant congressional committees, which could decide to make this information public.

Most people might consider it perfectly reasonable to have Congress's auditing arm review what the Fed has done with $2tn of the taxpayers' money to ensure that everything is proper. After all, we wouldn't let other government agencies spend one millionth of this amount ($2m) without some sort of record that could be verified.

What Happened to Mohamed al-Hanashi?

by Naomi Wolf

NEW YORK – Mohammed al-Hanashi was a 31-year-old Yemeni citizen who was held at Guantánamo Bay without charge for seven years. On June 3, while I was visiting Guantánamo with other journalists, the press office there issued a terse announcement that al-Hanashi had had been found dead in his cell – an “apparent suicide.”

Because my commercial flight was canceled, I got a ride back to the United States on a military transport. I happened to be seated next to a military physician who had been flown in to do the autopsy on al-Hanashi. When would there be an investigation of the death, I asked him? “That was the investigation,” he replied. The military had investigated the military.

Glenn Greenwald: Meet the Press's Idea of a 'Debate'

by Glenn Greenwald

On Sunday, Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion to debate two primary issues: (1) foreign policy -- specifically, the war in Afghanistan, and (2) health care. The panel: Rudy Giuliani, Tom Friedman, Harold Ford, Jr., and Tom Brokaw (as Jay Rosen often notes, Meet the Press is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its pledge to present "fresh voices" in its discussions).

With regard to Afghanistan, there is a major debate currently taking place about whether we should stay in that country. A majority of Americans now opposes the war. But there was not a single participant there who shares that view. All of them believe that it is imperative we remain, and put on their little General hats to exchange deeply Serious analyses of how we need to adjust our strategy and tactics for greater mission success. Of course, all of three of those whose views were known about Iraq -- Friedman, Ford and Giuliani -- were vehement supporters of the invasion.

Afghanistan by the Numbers: Measuring a War Gone to Hell

by Tom Engelhardt

Here may be the single strangest fact of our American world: that at least three administrations -- Ronald Reagan's, George W. Bush's, and now Barack Obama's -- drew the U.S. "defense" perimeter at the Hindu Kush; that is, in the rugged, mountainous lands of Afghanistan. Put another way, while Americans argue feverishly and angrily over what kind of money, if any, to put into health care, or decaying infrastructure, or other key places of need, until recently just about no one in the mainstream raised a peep about the fact that, for nearly eight years (not to say much of the last three decades), we've been pouring billions of dollars, American military know-how, and American lives into a black hole in Afghanistan that is, at least in significant part, of our own creation.

Enduring Freedom until 2050

By Pepe Escobar

And it's one, two, three
what are we fighting for?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn
next stop is Vietnam
- Country Joe and the Fish, 1969

After eight long years, now more than ever, the United States invasion and (partial) occupation of Afghanistan is on a roll, courtesy of US President Barack Obama's "new strategy".

This - which Pentagon supremo Robert Gates insists is "working" - includes US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) staging mini-Guernicas, al la the bombing of Guernica, Spain, by German and Italian warplanes in 1937, as painted by Pablo Picasso.

UPDATED: Myths and falsehoods about health care reform

11 hours and 43 minutes ago

Media Matters for America identifies and debunks four more myths and falsehoods surrounding the health care reform debate, bringing the total to 18.

MYTH 1: VHA "death book" pushes vets to prematurely end their lives

MYTH 2: Using reconciliation to pass major legislation is the "nuclear option" and is unprecedented

MYTH 3: Kennedy's absence -- rather than GOP obstructionism -- is to blame for partisan health care fight

Fed: consumers cut debt by record $21.6B in July

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
Tue Sep 8, 4:27 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Consumers slashed their borrowing in July by the largest amount on record as job losses and uncertainty about the economic recovery prompted Americans to rein in their debt.

Economists expect consumers will continue to spend less, save more and trim debt to get household finances decimated by the recession into better shape. However, such action is a recipe for a lethargic revival, as consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of economic activity.

The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumers ratcheted back their credit by a larger-than-anticipated $21.6 billion from June, the most on records dating to 1943. Economists expected credit to drop by $4 billion.

Good Finance Gone Bad

As the Lehman anniversary approaches, defenders of the financial sector struggle into position – partly in response to your comments (also here). They offer three main points:

1. We need finance to make the economy work.
2. Financial innovation delivers value, although it’s not perfect (but what is?)
3. Don’t kill the goose that laid the golden egg.

Point #1 is correct, but this does not necessarily mean we need finance as currently organized. The financial sector worked fine in the past, with regard to supporting innovation and sustaining growth. Show me the evidence that changes in our financial structure over the past 30 years have helped anyone outside the financial sector.

Katha Pollitt: Julie & Julia: Women Excelling at Work

By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
Posted on September 7, 2009, Printed on September 7, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142411/

There were many things I loved about Nora Ephron's clever and affectionate Julie & Julia, the feel-good hit of the summer for foodies and nonfoodies alike. Meryl Streep radiated warmth, excitement and cheer as Julia Child, learning to cook and writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1950s Paris. Amy Adams was vulnerable and endearing as Julie Powell, the drifting secretary-hipster who finds a purpose in life (and fame and fortune) when she spends a year cooking all 524 recipes from The Book and blogging about it. I loved that the most violent moment was the boning of a duck, that the only technological gizmos were pots and pans and kitchen knives and that the proper slicing of a sackful of onions served as a hilarious plot point. I enjoyed the American-in-Paris hokeyness of the Julia episodes: Ephron's Paris is a Francophile fantasy, all high-ceilinged nineteenth-century apartments, lovable shopkeepers and one fantastic meal after another. You would never know that only four years before Julia and Paul Child arrived in France, World War II was in full swing, Nazi occupation, roundups of Jews and all. I enjoyed, although somewhat less, Julie's up-to-date New York, in which she swings between her crummy apartment over a pizzeria, her job answering phones at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and chic Cobb salads with sleek, successful, obnoxious former classmates.

Bill Moyers: Mr. President, We Need a Fighter to Take on the Deranged Right-Wing

By Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal
Posted on September 7, 2009, Printed on September 7, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/142461/

The editors of The Economist magazine say America's health care debate has become a touch delirious, with people accusing each other of being evil-mongers, dealers in death, and un-American.

Well, that's charitable.

I would say it's more deranged than delirious, and definitely not un-American.

Keynes: the return of the Master

Andrew Gamble
Published 03 September 2009

J M Keynes understood better than most that the self-regulating market economy is a dangerous fiction. Has the crash of 2008 vindicated him?

Prophet warning

The crash of 2008 shattered intellectual assumptions as well as financial institutions. Rational expectations theory and some of its spin-offs - such as the efficient markets hypothesis, which suggests that markets are able to calculate and price all risks - did not fare well. The financial meltdown did not belong to its universe. The crash brought a reminder of the volatility and fragility of capitalist economies, and an end to hopes that booms no longer culminated in busts. For a few days in September 2008, the financial authorities faced the possibility of a complete breakdown of the banking system and the onset of a new Great Depression. This was averted, but only narrowly, and with consequences whose full effects will unfold over the next few years. The economic situation has been stabilised and growth has begun to revive, but the economic outlook remains uncertain, and full recovery is likely to be long and painful.

This sudden eruption of economic and political uncertainty has made Keynes popular once more. We are all Keynesians again, it seems. He may no longer be taught on economics courses, and many economics students may not even know who he is, but in the wider political culture he is still a potent memory. He has been credited with rescuing capitalism once before, so it is not surprising that he should be back on the front page of Time, and spoken of approvingly even in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. Keynes developed his economic theories in response to the 1930s slump and was not short of ideas about what governments should do. A barbed comment at the time was that if there were five economists in a room, there would be six conflicting opinions, and two of them would be held by Keynes. But at least he had opinions. There has been much unfavourable comment on how little the contemporary economics profession has had to say about this new crisis. The events of the real economy have long since ceased to interest most economists. There are some exceptions, such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, but most of the perceptive writing on the crisis has come from financial journalists and historians.

Finance: Before the Next Meltdown

by Simon Johnson and James Kwak

If innovation must be good, then financial innovation should be good, too. If finance is the lifeblood of our economy, then figuring out new ways to pump blood through the economy should foster investment, entrepreneurialism, and progress. Right? This, in any case, has been the mantra throughout three decades of deregulation and expansion of the financial sector.

And yet today, financial innovation stands accused of being complicit in the financial crisis that has created the first global recession in decades. The very innovations that were celebrated by former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan—negative-amortization mortgages, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and synthetic CDOs, and credit default swaps, among countless others—either amplified or caused the crisis, depending on your viewpoint. The journalist Michael Lewis recently argued that the credit default swaps sold by A.I.G. brought down the entire global financial system—and found that the A.I.G. traders he talked to completely agreed.

Report: Global Warming's Six Americas 2009

Executive Summary

One of the first rules of effective communication is to “know thy audience.” Climate change public communication and engagement efforts must start with the fundamental recognition that people are different and have different psychological, cultural, and political reasons for acting – or not acting – to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This report identifies Global Warming’s Six Americas: six unique audiences within the American public that each responds to the issue in their own distinct way.

The six audiences were identified using a large nationally representative survey of American adults conducted in the fall of 2008. The survey questionnaire included extensive, in-depth measures of the public’s climate change beliefs, attitudes, risk perceptions, motivations, values, policy preferences, behaviors, and underlying barriers to action. The Six Americas are distinguishable on all these dimensions, and display very different levels of engagement with the issue. They also vary in
size – ranging from as small as 7 percent to as large as 33 percent of the adult population.