The Truth About Canadian Healthcare?

In the universal health care debate, Canada is once again getting dragged into the fracas, shoved around by both sides as either an exemplar or a warning — and, along the way, getting coated with the obfuscating dust of so many willful misconceptions that the actual facts about How Canada Does It are completely obscured in the melee. As a health-care-card-carrying Canadian resident and an uninsured American citizen who regularly sees doctors on both sides of the border, I'm in a unique position to address the pros and cons of both systems first-hand.

2008 is shaping up to be the election year that we finally get to have the Great American Healthcare Debate again. Harry and Louise are back with a vengeance. Conservatives are rumbling around the talk show circuit bellowing about the socialist threat to the (literal) American body politic. And, as usual, Canada is once again getting dragged into the fracas, shoved around by both sides as either an exemplar or a warning -- and, along the way, getting coated with the obfuscating dust of so many willful misconceptions that the actual facts about How Canada Does It are completely lost in the melee.

I'm both a health-care-card-carrying Canadian resident and an uninsured American citizen who regularly sees doctors on both sides of the border. As such, I'm in a unique position to address the pros and cons of both systems first-hand. If we're going to have this conversation, it would be great if we could start out (for once) with actual facts, instead of ideological posturing, wishful thinking, hearsay, and random guessing about how things get done up here.

To that end, here's the first of a two-part series aimed at busting the common myths Americans routinely tell each other about Canadian health care. When the right-wing hysterics drag out these hoary old bogeymen, this time, we need to be armed and ready to blast them into straw. Because, mostly, straw is all they're made of.

1. Canada's health care system is "socialized medicine."
False. In socialized medical systems, the doctors work directly for the state. In Canada (and many other countries with universal care), doctors run their own private practices, just like they do in the US. The only difference is that every doctor deals with one insurer, instead of 150. And that insurer is the provincial government, which is accountable to the legislature and the voters if the quality of coverage is allowed to slide.

The proper term for this is "single-payer insurance." In talking to Americans about it, the better phrase is "Medicare for all."

2. Doctors are hurt financially by single-payer health care.
True and False. Doctors in Canada do make less than their US counterparts. But they also have lower overhead, and usually much better working conditions. A few reasons for this:

First, as noted, they don't have to charge higher fees to cover the salary of a full-time staffer to deal with over a hundred different insurers, all of whom are bent on denying care whenever possible. In fact, most Canadian doctors get by quite nicely with just one assistant, who cheerfully handles the phones, mail, scheduling, patient reception, stocking, filing, and billing all by herself in the course of a standard workday.

Second, they don't have to spend several hours every day on the phone cajoling insurance company bean counters into doing the right thing by their patients. My doctor in California worked a 70-hour week: 35 hours seeing patients, and another 35 hours on the phone arguing with insurance companies. My Canadian doctor, on the other hand, works a 35-hour week, period. She files her invoices online, and the vast majority are simply paid -- quietly, quickly, and without hassle. There is no runaround. There are no fights. Appointments aren't interrupted by vexing phone calls. Care is seldom denied (because everybody knows the rules). She gets her checks on time, sees her patients on schedule, takes Thursdays off, and gets home in time for dinner.

One unsurprising side effect of all this is that the doctors I see here are, to a person, more focused, more relaxed, more generous with their time, more up-to-date in their specialties, and overall much less distracted from the real work of doctoring. You don't realize how much stress the American doctor-insurer fights put on the day-to-day quality of care until you see doctors who don't operate under that stress, because they never have to fight those battles at all. Amazingly: they seem to enjoy their jobs.

Third: The average American medical student graduates $140,000 in hock. The average Canadian doctor's debt is roughly half that.

Finally, Canadian doctors pay lower malpractice insurance fees. When paying for health care constitutes a one of a family's major expenses, expectations tend to run very high. A doctor's mistake not only damages the body; it may very well throw a middle-class family permanently into the ranks of the working poor, and render the victim uninsurable for life. With so much at stake, it's no wonder people are quick to rush to court for redress.

Canadians are far less likely to sue in the first place, since they're not having to absorb devastating financial losses in addition to any physical losses when something goes awry. The cost of the damaging treatment will be covered. So will the cost of fixing it. And, no matter what happens, the victim will remain insured for life. When lawsuits do occur, the awards don't have to include coverage for future medical costs, which reduces the insurance company's liability.

3. Wait times in Canada are horrendous.
True and False again -- it depends on which province you live in, and what's wrong with you. Canada's health care system runs on federal guidelines that ensure uniform standards of care, but each territory and province administers its own program. Some provinces don't plan their facilities well enough; in those, you can have waits. Some do better. As a general rule, the farther north you live, the harder it is to get to care, simply because the doctors and hospitals are concentrated in the south. But that's just as true in any rural county in the U.S.

You can hear the bitching about it no matter where you live, though. The percentage of Canadians who'd consider giving up their beloved system consistently languishes in the single digits. A few years ago, a TV show asked Canadians to name the Greatest Canadian in history; and in a broad national consensus, they gave the honor to Tommy Douglas, the Saskatchewan premier who is considered the father of the country's health care system. (And no, it had nothing to do with the fact that he was also Kiefer Sutherland's grandfather.). In spite of that, though, grousing about health care is still unofficially Canada's third national sport after curling and hockey.

And for the country's newspapers, it's a prime watchdogging opportunity. Any little thing goes sideways at the local hospital, and it's on the front pages the next day. Those kinds of stories sell papers, because everyone is invested in that system and has a personal stake in how well it functions. The American system might benefit from this kind of constant scrutiny, because it's certainly one of the things that keeps the quality high. But it also makes people think it's far worse than it is.

Critics should be reminded that the American system is not exactly instant-on, either. When I lived in California, I had excellent insurance, and got my care through one of the best university-based systems in the nation. Yet I routinely had to wait anywhere from six to twelve weeks to get in to see a specialist. Non-emergency surgical waits could be anywhere from four weeks to four months. After two years in the BC system, I'm finding the experience to be pretty much comparable, and often better. The notable exception is MRIs, which were easy in California, but can take many months to get here. (It's the number one thing people go over the border for.) Other than that, urban Canadians get care about as fast as urban Americans do.

4. You have to wait forever to get a family doctor.
False for the vast majority of Canadians, but True for a few. Again, it all depends on where you live. I live in suburban Vancouver, and there are any number of first-rate GPs in my neighborhood who are taking new patients. If you don't have a working relationship with one, but need to see a doctor now, there are 24-hour urgent care clinics in most neighborhoods that will usually get you in and out on the minor stuff in under an hour.

It is, absolutely, harder to get to a doctor if you live out in a small town, or up in the territories. But that's just as true in the U.S. -- and in America, the government won't cover the airfare for rural folk to come down to the city for needed treatment, which all the provincial plans do.

5. You don't get to choose your own doctor.
Scurrilously False. Somebody, somewhere, is getting paid a lot of money to make this kind of stuff up. The cons love to scare the kids with stories about the government picking your doctor for you, and you don't get a choice. Be afraid! Be very afraid!

For the record: Canadians pick their own doctors, just like Americans do. And not only that: since it all pays the same, poor Canadians have exactly the same access to the country's top specialists that rich ones do.

6. Canada's care plan only covers the basics. You're still on your own for any extras, including prescription drugs. And you still have to pay for it.
True -- but not as big an issue as you might think. The province does charge a small monthly premium (ours is $108/month for a family of four) for the basic coverage. However, most people never even have to write that check: almost all employers pick up the tab for their employees' premiums as part of the standard benefits package; and the province covers it for people on public assistance or disability.

"The basics" covered by this plan include 100% of all doctor's fees, ambulance fares, tests, and everything that happens in a hospital -- in other words, the really big-ticket items that routinely drive American families into bankruptcy. In BC, it doesn't include "extras" like medical equipment, prescriptions, physical therapy or chiropractic care, dental, vision, and so on; and if you want a private or semi-private room with TV and phone, that costs extra (about what you'd pay for a room in a middling hotel). That other stuff does add up; but it's far easier to afford if you're not having to cover the big expenses, too. Furthermore: you can deduct any out-of-pocket health expenses you do have to pay off your income taxes. And, as every American knows by now, drugs aren't nearly as expensive here, either.

Filling the gap between the basics and the extras is the job of the country's remaining private health insurers. Since they're off the hook for the ruinously expensive big-ticket items that can put their own profits at risk, the insurance companies make a tidy business out of offering inexpensive policies that cover all those smaller, more predictable expenses. Top-quality add-on policies typically run in the ballpark of $75 per person in a family per month -- about $300 for a family of four -- if you're stuck buying an individual plan. Group plans are cheap enough that even small employers can afford to offer them as a routine benefit. An average working Canadian with employer-paid basic care and supplemental insurance gets free coverage equal to the best policies now only offered at a few of America's largest corporations. And that employer is probably only paying a couple hundred dollars a month to provide that benefit.

7. Canadian drugs are not the same.
More preposterious bogosity. They are exactly the same drugs, made by the same pharmaceutical companies, often in the same factories. The Canadian drug distribution system, however, has much tighter oversight; and pharmacies and pharmacists are more closely regulated. If there is a difference in Canadian drugs at all, they're actually likely to be safer.

Also: pharmacists here dispense what the doctors tell them to dispense, the first time, without moralizing. I know. It's amazing.

8. Publicly-funded programs will inevitably lead to rationed health care, particularly for the elderly.
False. And bogglingly so. The papers would have a field day if there was the barest hint that this might be true.

One of the things that constantly amazes me here is how well-cared-for the elderly and disabled you see on the streets here are. No, these people are not being thrown out on the curb. In fact, they live longer, healthier, and more productive lives because they're getting a constant level of care that ensures small things get treated before they become big problems.

The health care system also makes it easier on their caregiving adult children, who have more time to look in on Mom and take her on outings because they aren't working 60-hour weeks trying to hold onto a job that gives them insurance.

9. People won't be responsible for their own health if they're not being forced to pay for the consequences.
False. The philosophical basis of America's privatized health care system might best be characterized as medical Calvinism. It's fascinating to watch well-educated secularists who recoil at the Protestant obsession with personal virtue, prosperity as a cardinal sign of election by God, and total responsibility for one's own salvation turn into fire-eyed, moralizing True Believers when it comes to the subject of Taking Responsibility For One's Own Health.

They'll insist that health, like salvation, is entirely in our own hands. If you just have the character and self-discipline to stick to an abstemious regime of careful diet, clean living, and frequent sweat offerings to the Great Treadmill God, you'll never get sick. (Like all good theologies, there's even an unspoken promise of immortality: f you do it really really right, they imply, you might even live forever.) The virtuous Elect can be discerned by their svelte figures and low cholesterol numbers. From here, it's a short leap to the conviction that those who suffer from chronic conditions are victims of their own weaknesses, and simply getting what they deserve. Part of their punishment is being forced to pay for the expensive, heavily marketed pharmaceuticals needed to alleviate these avoidable illnesses. They can't complain. It was their own damned fault; and it's not our responsibility to pay for their sins. In fact, it's recently been suggested that they be shunned, lest they lead the virtuous into sin [1].

Of course, this is bad theology whether you're applying it to the state of one's soul or one's arteries. The fact is that bad genes, bad luck, and the ravages of age eventually take their toll on all of us -- even the most careful of us. The economics of the Canadian system reflect this very different philosophy: it's built on the belief that maintaining health is not an individual responsibility, but a collective one. Since none of us controls fate, the least we can do is be there for each other as our numbers come up.

This difference is expressed in a few different ways. First: Canadians tend to think of tending to one's health as one of your duties as a citizen. You do what's right because you don't want to take up space in the system, or put that burden on your fellow taxpayers. Second, "taking care of yourself" has a slightly expanded definition here, which includes a greater emphasis on public health. Canadians are serious about not coming to work if you're contagious, and seeing a doctor ASAP if you need to. Staying healthy includes not only diet and exercise; but also taking care to keep your germs to yourself, avoiding stress, and getting things treated while they're still small and cheap to fix.

Third, there's a somewhat larger awareness that stress leads to big-ticket illnesses -- and a somewhat lower cultural tolerance for employers who put people in high-stress situations. Nobody wants to pick up the tab for their greed. And finally, there's a generally greater acceptance on the part of both the elderly and their families that end-of-life heroics may be drawing resources away from people who might put them to better use. You can have them if you want them; but reasonable and compassionate people should be able to take the larger view.

The bottom line: When it comes to getting people to make healthy choices, appealing to their sense of the common good seems to work at least as well as Calvinist moralizing.

10. This all sounds great -- but the taxes to cover it are just unaffordable. And besides, isn't the system in bad financial shape?
False. On one hand, our annual Canadian tax bite runs about 10% higher than our U.S. taxes did. On the other, we're not paying out the equivalent of two new car payments every month to keep the family insured here. When you balance out the difference, we're actually money ahead. When you factor in the greatly increased social stability that follows when everybody's getting their necessary health care, the impact on our quality of life becomes even more signficant.

And True -- but only because this is a universal truth that we need to make our peace with. Yes, the provincial plans are always struggling. So is every single publicly-funded health care system in the world, including the VA and Medicare. There's always tension between what the users of the system want, and what the taxpayers are willing to pay. The balance of power ebbs and flows between them; but no matter where it lies at any given moment, at least one of the pair is always going to be at least somewhat unhappy.

But, as many of us know all too well, there's also constant tension between what patients want and what private insurers are willing to pay. At least when it's in government hands, we can demand some accountability. And my experience in Canada has convinced me that this accountability is what makes all the difference between the two systems.

It is true that Canada's system is not the same as the U.S. system. It's designed to deliver a somewhat different product, to a population that has somewhat different expectations. But the end result is that the vast majority of Canadians get the vast majority of what they need the vast majority of the time. It'll be a good day when when Americans can hold their heads high and proudly make that same declaration.Link.

Part II

Government-run health care is inherently less efficient -- because governments themselves are inherently less efficient.
If anything could finally put the lie to this old conservative canard, the disaster that is our health care system is Exhibit A.

America spends about 15% of its GDP on health care. Most other industrialized countries (all of whom have some form of universal care, either single-payer or entirely government-run) spend about 11-12%. Canada spends about 8-9% -- and most of the problems within their system come out of the fact that it's chronically underfunded compared to those other nations. If they spent what the UK or Germany do, those problems would mostly vanish.

Any system that has people spending more and getting less is, by definition, not efficient. And these efficiency leaks are, almost entirely, due to private greed. There is no logical way that a private system can pay eight-figure CEO compensation packages, turn a handsome a profit for shareholders, and still be "efficient." In fact, in order to deliver those profits and salaries, the American system has built up a vast, Kafkaesque administrative machinery of approval, denial, and fraud management, which inflates the US system's administrative costs to well over double that seen in other countries -- or even in our own public systems, including Medicare and the VA system.

Not incidentally: one of the benefits of single-payer health care is that it largely eliminates the entire issue of "fraud." You can only "cheat" a system that already views its primary business as rationing and withholding care. In Canada, where the system is set up to deliver health care instead of profits, and medical access is considered a right, this whole oversight machinery is far cheaper and more compact. In general, the system trusts doctors and patients to make the right choices the first time. As a result, people generally don't have to lie, cheat, and grovel to get the system to deliver the care they need. They just go and get it -- and walk out without a moment's dread about the bills.

Shareholder profit, inflated CEO salaries, and top-heavy administration -- all of which serve to work against the delivery of care, not facilitate it -- are anti-efficiencies that siphon off 20-25% of America's total health care spending. These are huge sums; yet it's mostly money down a gold-plated rathole. In the end, it doesn't provide a single bed, pay a single nurse or doctor, or treat a single patient.

We'll have rationed care
Don't look now: but America does ration care. And it does it in the most capricious, draconian, and often dishonest way possible.

Mostly, the US system rations care by simply eliminating large numbers of people from the system due to an inability to pay. Last year, one-quarter of all Americans didn't go to a doctor when they needed one because they couldn't afford it. Nearly that many skipped getting a test, treatment, prescription, or follow-up appointment recommended by a doctor. In Canada, those same numbers are in the 4-5% range; in the UK, 2-3%. Also: nearly 20% of all Americans had a hard time paying a medical bill last year; and these stresses now trigger over half of all personal bankruptcies in the country.

Furthermore, nominally having health insurance is no guarantee against financial ruin, as Sicko amply illustrated. Being cut off or denied by your insurance company is rationing, too. And there are vast numbers of fairly well-off Americans -- many of them middle-aged, and too young for Medicare -- who have pre-existing conditions that render them uninsurable at any price. They're one heart attack, one diabetic event, or one bad turn away from financial disaster. Please don't insult these people by telling them that the American system doesn't ration care.

Another persistent (and ridiculously mendacious) rationing myth about the Canadian system is that old people are cut off from treatment and left to die. I've never heard about a single case of this in Canada; but it happens routinely to Americans on Medicare and many private policies, which have strict limits on how long you can stay in the hospital with an acute illness. When the benefits run out, ready or not, they send you home. If you die, you die. The Canadian plan has no such limits: you stay for as long as you need to. But in the US, these limits fit the very definition of "rationed care."

Effectively shutting one-quarter of the population out of the medical system entirely, and putting many of the rest on short rations, certainly does make things so much nicer for those happy few who are still in it. In fact, Americans have these missing millions to thank for their system's impressively short wait times. Only 4% of American have to wait more than six months for non-elective surgeries, while 14-15% of Canadian and Britons do. (Don't blame this on government care, though: in Germany and the Netherlands, the number is closer to 2%.) When conservatives start bellowing about Canada's terrifying wait times (which, by the way, are carefully triaged: it's rare for people to die waiting, though it happens), we need to remind them that there are 75 million Americans who have been wait-listed forever. If my friend's Aunt Millie gets her emergency hip surgery today because I'm willing to hobble along for an extra couple months before getting my knee surgery -- well, for any morally serious person, that choice should be a complete no-brainer.

You can't have medical innovation without the incentives provided by the free market.
As in the US, Canada's government funds major medical research that has led to a continuous stream of new medical breakthroughs [1]. (And as this link shows, the rate of innovation didn't slow down in the least when Canada moved to single-payer in the 1960s.) All of the country's medical schools are located within public research universities. The university that houses my local medical school, the University of British Columbia, ranked ninth in North America last year -- in league with UC, Stanford, and other powerhouses -- in total public and private research grants received by its labs. Among other things, it leads the way in genetics (David Suzuki is emeritus faculty), and stem-cell research (having attracted a handsome roster of American scientists whose research was thwarted by the political situation at home).

Because the Canadian health care system is driven by delivering care instead of profits, the focus of research is sometimes different -- and often wider-ranging. While there's plenty of pursuit of patents and innovations, there's also considerable research put into questioning whether new treatments are really more effective than older ones; and in pursuing possible treatments that may not be patentable by anyone. The system is focused first on what works; and after that, on what might make someone some money.

Single-payer health care will make America less competitive.
I can't believe people still have the gall to argue this point, but apparently, they do. There are several reasons this is flat-out wrong:

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs -- It's no secret that public health care is making Canada a more attractive business environment for large manufacturers, who typically have very high insurance overhead. Toyota and GM have both moved plants to Canada in recent years, in large part to avoid the spiraling costs of insuring American workers. (Toyota also cited Canada's better-educated workers, but that's another issue for another day.) As long as $900 of every car GM makes is going to supply health care to the people who make it, the US's current system of employer-based health care is going to continue to drive skilled jobs out of the country.

A Smarter, More Entreprenurial Workforce -- Being relieved of insurance worries also makes individual citizens more competitive. How would your life choices change if you didn't have to worry about health care? Would you go back to school and get your PhD in lepidoptery? Start a blog -- or a small business? Work part-time and travel? Tell your boss where he can stick it? Spend a few years at home with your kids?

Countries with universal coverage free up their citizens to take advantage of personal development opportunities that, in the long run, stimulate the economy and create a more skilled, traveled, educated, and fulfilled workforce. Americans, on the other hand, routinely stay chained to jobs they hate -- and are forced to pass up on chances to expand their horizons and their fortunes -- because they can't afford to jeopardize their health care coverage. Our health care mess has reached a point where it jeopardizes not only our lives, but also our liberty and our ability to pursue happiness -- as well as the long-term strength of the economy as a whole.

Increased Financial and Social Capital -- When families are bankrupted by medical bills, or are thrown into poverty when a working member is disabled because they can't afford proper care, or simply break down and fall apart under the stress of debt and illness, it's not long before the country's entire social fabric begins to show the wear and tear -- along with the sense of optimism and the common good required for a democracy to function.

Part of what makes a country competitive is its own commitment to the common good. I've often been impressed by the very tangible sense of civic pride and shared effort my Canadian neighbors have in the fact that they're taking the best possible care of their own, regardless of status, age, or ethnicity. Every encounter with the medical system reminds them that they're all in this together. A medical system that routinely drives families into bankruptcy or divorce court is actively destroying, rather than adding to, the essential social capital that makes the whole society function.

No Deferred Maintenance -- Decades of foregone medical care are starting to catch up with Americans. We're seeing serious declines on many fronts: infant mortality, lifespan, cancer rates, heart disease rates, and increased diabetes. On most of the major markers of public health, America is nowhere near the top tier anymore. In some areas, there are a few small former Communist countries doing better than we are.

Business relies on healthy workers who aren't distracted by their own illness or that of a family member. America's uninsured, increasingly unhealthy workforce is in no position to compete on equal terms with the strong, healthy workers of other countries who are getting the care they deserve.

We have more important matters to tend to -- like national security and the war.
Getting everyone insured is, unequivocally, a clear matter of national security.

Our every-man-for-himself attitude toward health care is a security threat on a par with unsecured ports. In Canada, people go see the doctor if they're sick for more than a day or two. It was this easy access to early treatment, along with the much tighter public health matrix that enables doctors to share information quickly, that allowed the country's health care system to detect the 2003 SARS epidemics in Toronto and Vancouver while they were still very localized, act within hours to stop them before the disease spread any further, and track down and treat exposed people before they got too sick to be helped. In both cases, the system worked flawlessly. The epidemic was stopped within days and quashed entirely in under a month, potentially saving of millions of lives.

In the U.S., that same epidemic might easily have gone unnoticed for critical days and weeks. If the first people to get sick were among those 75 million without adequate insurance, they probably would have toughed it out a few extra days before finally dragging their half-dead carcasses into an ER somewhere. Not only would they be much farther along in the course of the disease -- and thus at greater risk of death themselves -- every one of them could have infected dozens or even hundreds of other people in the meantime, accelerating the spread of the epidemic.

Worse: America's underfunded public health system might have taken several days to piece together the whole picture of an epidemic; and perhaps another week or two might have passed before the E. Coli conservatives in charge (having thrown out the science-based management plans thoughtfully developed by the bureaucracy) cooked up some kind of half-assed ideology-driven decision about how to proceed. (It would, of course, involve spectacular amounts of lying to the public.) By that point, tens of millions could have been infected, leading to a death toll that would make 9/11 and Katrina look like minor statistical blips.

Think about superbugs and the ongoing waves of immunological imports from the world's swamps and jungles. Think about terrorists with bioweapons. And then think again about the undeniable fact that every single underinsured American is a gaping hole in the safety net that protects us all from a catastrophic epidemic. This really is one of those cases in which none of us are safe as long as even one of us is left at risk. And from a purely economic standpoint: would you want to invest in a country where there was a significant risk that an epidemic or a bio-attack, managed by incompetent officials, might force you to shut down your business at a moment's notice?

As for the war: Bush's Folly will generate upwards of half a million veterans, many of whom will require some kind of sustaining care for the rest of their lives. VA funding ebbs and flows with the national political will, and veterans often fall behind other priorities. But if they can enter the same health care system every other American depends on, then we can only forget their interests by forgetting our own as well.

I feel a lot better knowing my taxes are taking care of my fellow Canadians rather than buying bombs to drop on Iraqi towns, supporting a fully-equipped CIA gulag, or funding Baghdad pizza deliveries via Halliburton. It's hard to become a worldwide empire when you're putting half your tax revenue into hospitals and doctors, as Canada does. But, on the other hand, it's hard to insure your citizens when half your tax revenue is going to feed your war machine.

In a very real sense, America has chosen to secure its oil supply at the cost of its own citizens' health. The more we spend on the former, the less we have for the latter. And our own relative health -- both physical and economic -- is starting to show the consequences of that choice. Ultimately, all these things are connected: by making ourselves energy independent, we might not only make ourselves more secure, we'll also finally be able to invest in the kind of health care that will make us truly competitive in the world community.

The Bottom Line
In America, a lucky employee with gold-plated employer-based coverage may well get access to A-level care (though that level of coverage becoming rarer by the month, even among the professional classes). On the other hand, about 50 million under-insured Americans are barely scraping by with C or D-level care; and the nearly 50 million with no insurance at all get next to no care whatsoever. Worst of all: 18,000 Americans die every year due to lack of access to healthcare. That's one every 30 minutes, around the clock, every day of the year -- the equivalent death toll of six 9/11s every single year that passes.

In Canada, everybody gets at least B-level care, pretty consistently across the board -- and, on occasion, quite a bit better than that. You might not like those odds if you're one of the shrinking handful of Americans who's used to A-level care; but if that's not you, you'd be getting a much better deal in Canada.

The private sector has had 20 years to prove that it could deliver low-cost, quality care using those vaunted business-style efficiencies; and it has failed us utterly and completely. This fact should be the ultimate nail in the coffin of the old conservative canard that "the free market always does it better." If that was true, privatizing health care would have been the shining example that proved it once and for all. Instead, all we got was a colossally expensive national disaster that's denying full coverage to a third of the country --- and putting our health, competitiveness, financial and social capital, and national security at risk in the process. It's also devastating the aspirations of our entire middle class, which is being hollowed out by our current health policies.

A famous Hebrew prophet once advised his followers to take the log out of their own eyes before trying to remove the splinter from someone else's. As much as it hurts American pride to admit it, Canada and the rest of the industrialized world has us roundly beat on this one. Those who are so quick to criticize the Canadian system might be better off holding their fire until they've shown us they can do better. America, and the world, is waiting.

Link.

Our Security (And The World's!) Rests On Our Allies

Oops!

Two employees of Pakistan's atomic energy agency have been abducted in the country's restive north-western region abutting the Afghan border, police say.
The technicians went missing on the same day as Pakistan's ambassador to Afghanistan, Tariq Azizuddin, was reportedly abducted in the same region.

Mr Azizuddin had been going overland from the city of Peshawar to Kabul.

Pakistan's north-west has witnessed fierce fighting between Islamist militants and government troops.

The pro-Taleban guerrillas declared a unilateral ceasefire last week after months of clashes with troops garrisoned there.

The workers from Pakistan's Atomic Energy Commission were on a mission to map mineral deposits in the mountains when they were kidnapped, police say.

"The technicians were going for some geological survey in the area when they were kidnapped at gunpoint along with their driver," Romail Akram, a senior police official, told Reuters news agency.

Their vehicle was intercepted by masked gunmen in the Dera Ismail Khan district, a stronghold of local militants.

"We don't know if the abductors were militants or members of some criminal gang," a local police chief, Akbar Nasir, told the AFP news agency.

He said efforts to locate the missing men had yet to yield any results.

Karzai concerned

Efforts are also continuing to locate the missing Pakistani envoy, Tariq Azizuddin.

Mr Azizuddin went missing on Monday as he was travelling overland from the Pakistani city of Peshawar to the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said he was certain the envoy had been abducted, adding: "I hope he is safe and I hope he will be released soon."

The Khyber region has long been a base for bandits and smugglers but has seen little of the unrest linked to an uprising by Islamist militants in adjoining areas.

Pro-Taleban militants recently kidnapped more than 200 Pakistani troops in the South Waziristan region.

The soldiers were reportedly released in a prisoner exchange with Pakistani authorities.

'Protected road'

Pakistan's government has refused to confirm Mr Azizuddin has been kidnapped, saying only that he was missing.

The Pakistani embassy in Kabul said contact was lost with Mr Azizuddin at around 1045 local time (0645 GMT) on Monday.

There were reports on Pakistani television of his car going through a checkpoint without stopping.

An official of the Khyber agency tribal administration told the BBC that the ambassador went through the Khyber agency without taking a security escort that was waiting for him at the start of the tribal territory.

Correspondents say that such escorts are routinely sent with dignitaries and officials when they travel through tribal areas.

But some travellers dispense with them because they think it makes their movements more noticeable.

Mr Azizuddin is said to have previously travelled to Kabul by road, often without the tribal security escort.

The route through the agency is believed to be the shortest and quickest way between Peshawar and Kabul.

Being the main trade route, the Khyber agency road is busy in daylight hours, supplying reinforcements and to the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan.

It is also one of the most protected of all the tribal roads, with a contingent of tribal police posted every 100m. The paramilitary Frontier Corps have a fort along the road.

Link.

Music Video Of The Day

I've Been Linked!

Look, look, look!

The Real McCain: Straight-Talking Flip-Flopper

Video of the Day

Rock On For Sure

<a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?b1yhi1x9nzd">http://www.mediafire.com/?b1yhi1x9nzd</a>

Steve Gerber

One of the very best comic book writers -- a great writer -- Steve Gerber, died the other day. Details at http://www.stevegerber.com/sgblog/.

It's synchronicitic (which might've tickled Gerber): I had been thinking of death and dying the last day or so (not in a suicidal way), more particularly meditating on a good way to go.

Gerber, I would think, expensively sickly, did not go particularly well: as I said, expensively sickly with a pretty much untreatable illness, working far less than he should; around sixty or so and still eking out a living.

I hope he was surrounded by love at the end; will try and find out.

But there's so much sadness nonetheless in his dying....

Our Leaders' Love For Their Troops

Seriously, why does crap like this happen??

A Fort Carson soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team.

The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and "some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies," according to e-mails obtained by a Denver newspaper.

The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and because he will seek employment when he leaves the Army, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol. He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10, but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave.

"I was pulled out to deploy," said the soldier, who has three years in the Army and has served a tour in Iraq.

Soldiers from Fort Carson and across the country have complained they were sent to combat zones despite medical conditions that should have prevented their deployment.

Late last year, Fort Carson said it sent 79 soldiers who were considered medical "no-gos" overseas. Officials said the soldiers were placed in light-duty jobs and are receiving treatment there. So far, at least six soldiers have been returned.

An e-mail sent Jan. 3 by Capt. Scot Tebo, the brigade surgeon, says the 3rd Brigade Combat Team had "been having issues reaching deployable strength" and that some "borderline" soldiers were sent overseas.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, was outraged.

"If he's an inpatient in a hospital, they should have never taken him out. The chain of command needs to be held accountable for this. Washington needs to get involved at the Pentagon to make sure this doesn't happen again.

"First, we had the planeload of wounded, injured and ill being forced back to the war zone. And now we have soldiers forcibly removed from mental hospitals. The level of outrage is off the Richter scale."

The soldier said that on Nov. 29, he was called to the office at Cedar Springs. His squad leader, his platoon leader, his Army Substance Abuse Program counselor and two counselors from Cedar Springs "came and ambushed me."

He said an Army alcohol counselor told him alcoholism and anxiety could not stop him from being deployed.

"They said, 'You know what? Tough it out. All of us like to drink.'"

In the December e-mail, Tebo tells brigade leaders: "Evidently, while at Cedar Springs, he was started on psychiatric medications that should have made him non-deployable, but somehow no one was notified. He may have been pending a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, but that information was not passed on at discharge. He deployed with his unit and has not been doing well here."

In Kuwait, the soldier isolated himself. He said he had "racing thoughts" and couldn't keep still.

"I was ... burning my fingertips with cigarettes, just anything to keep my mind off of things," the soldier said. "I had homicidal thoughts. I don't know at the time if I intended on doing anything. But at the time, it was there, I had homicidal and suicidal thoughts."

Since his return, he has been in treatment. He said his medical record contains a permanent profile for bipolar disorder, an illness that makes him unfit for military service. He is undergoing the process to be medically discharged from the Army.

Link.

News You Knew: Our Leaders Lied To Us About Iraq Planning

A reminder:

The Army is accustomed to protecting classified information. But when it comes to the planning for the Iraq war, even an unclassified assessment can acquire the status of a state secret.

That is what happened to a detailed study of the planning for postwar Iraq prepared for the Army by the RAND Corporation, a federally financed center that conducts research for the military.

After 18 months of research, RAND submitted a report in the summer of 2005 called “Rebuilding Iraq.” RAND researchers provided an unclassified version of the report along with a secret one, hoping that its publication would contribute to the public debate on how to prepare for future conflicts.

But the study’s wide-ranging critique of the White House, the Defense Department and other government agencies was a concern for Army generals, and the Army has sought to keep the report under lock and key.

A review of the lengthy report — a draft of which was obtained by The New York Times — shows that it identified problems with nearly every organization that had a role in planning the war. That assessment parallels the verdicts of numerous former officials and independent analysts.

The study chided President Bush — and by implication Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who served as national security adviser when the war was planned — as having failed to resolve differences among rival agencies. “Throughout the planning process, tensions between the Defense Department and the State Department were never mediated by the president or his staff,” it said.

The Defense Department led by Donald H. Rumsfeld was given the lead in overseeing the postwar period in Iraq despite its “lack of capacity for civilian reconstruction planning and execution.”

The State Department led by Colin L. Powell produced a voluminous study on the future of Iraq that identified important issues but was of “uneven quality” and “did not constitute an actionable plan.”

Gen. Tommy R. Franks, whose Central Command oversaw the military operation in Iraq, had a “fundamental misunderstanding” of what the military needed to do to secure postwar Iraq, the study said.

The regulations that govern the Army’s relations with the Arroyo Center, the division of RAND that does research for the Army, stipulate that Army officials are to review reports in a timely fashion to ensure that classified information is not released. But the rules also note that the officials are not to “censor” analysis or prevent the dissemination of material critical of the Army.

The report on rebuilding Iraq was part of a seven-volume series by RAND on the lessons learned from the war. Asked why the report has not been published, Timothy Muchmore, a civilian Army official, said it had ventured too far from issues that directly involve the Army.

“After carefully reviewing the findings and recommendations of the thorough RAND assessment, the Army determined that the analysts had in some cases taken a broader perspective on the early planning and operational phases of Operation Iraqi Freedom than desired or chartered by the Army,” Mr. Muchmore said in a statement. “Some of the RAND findings and recommendations were determined to be outside the purview of the Army and therefore of limited value in informing Army policies, programs and priorities.”

Warren Robak, a RAND spokesman, declined to talk about the contents of the study but said the organization favored publication as a matter of general policy.

“RAND always endeavors to publish as much of our research as possible, in either unclassified form or in classified form for those with the proper security clearances,” Mr. Robak said in a statement. "The multivolume series on lessons learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom is no exception. We also, however, have a longstanding practice of not discussing work that has not yet been published."

When RAND researchers began their work, nobody expected it to become a bone of contention with the Army. The idea was to review the lessons learned from the war, as RAND had done with previous conflicts.

The research was formally sponsored by Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, who was then the chief operations officer for the Army and now oversees Army forces in the Middle East, and Lt. Gen. David Melcher, who had responsibility for the Army’s development and works now on budget issues.

A team of RAND researchers led by Nora Bensahel interviewed more than 50 civilian and military officials. As it became clear that decisions made by civilian officials had contributed to the Army’s difficulties in Iraq, researchers delved into those policies as well.

The report was submitted at a time when the Bush administration was trying to rebut building criticism of the war in Iraq by stressing the progress Mr. Bush said was being made. The approach culminated in his announcement in November 2005 of his “National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.”

One serious problem the study described was the Bush administration’s assumption that the reconstruction requirements would be minimal. There was also little incentive to challenge that assumption, the report said.

“Building public support for any pre-emptive or preventative war is inherently challenging, since by definition, action is being taken before the threat has fully manifested itself,” it said. “Any serious discussion of the costs and challenges of reconstruction might undermine efforts to build that support.”

Another problem described was a general lack of coordination. “There was never an attempt to develop a single national plan that integrated humanitarian assistance, reconstruction, governance, infrastructure development and postwar security,” the study said.

One result was that “the U.S. government did not provide strategic policy guidance for postwar Iraq until shortly before major combat operations commenced.” The study said that problem was compounded by General Franks, saying he took a narrow view of the military’s responsibilities after Saddam Hussein was ousted and assumed that American civilian agencies would do much to rebuild the country.

General Franks’s command, the study asserted, also assumed that Iraq’s police and civil bureaucracy would stay on the job and had no fallback option in case that expectation proved wrong. When Baghdad fell, the study said, American forces there “were largely mechanized or armored forces, well suited to waging major battles but not to restoring civil order. That task would have been better carried out, ideally, by military police or, acceptably, by light infantry trained in urban combat.”

A “shortfall” in American troops was exacerbated when General Franks and Mr. Rumsfeld decided to stop the deployment of the Army’s First Cavalry Division when other American forces entered Baghdad, the study said, a move that reflected their assessment that the war had been won. Problems persisted during the occupation. In the months that followed, the report said, there were “significant tensions, most commonly between the civilian and military arms of the occupation.”

The poor planning had “the inadvertent effort of strengthening the insurgency,” as Iraqis experienced a lack of security and essential services and focused on “negative effects of the U.S. security presence.” The American military’s inability to seal Iraq’s borders, a task the 2005 report warned was still not a priority, enabled foreign support for the insurgents to flow into Iraq.

In its recommendations, the study advocated an “inverted planning process” in which military planners would begin by deciding what resources were needed to maintain security after an adversary was defeated on the battlefield instead of treating the postwar phase as virtually an afterthought. More broadly, it suggested that there was a need to change the military’s mind-set, which has long treated preparations to fight a major war as the top priority. The Army has recently moved to address this by drafting a new operations manual which casts the mission of stabilizing war-torn nations as equal in importance to winning a conventional war.

As the RAND study went through drafts, a chapter was written to emphasize the implications for the Army. An unclassified version was produced with numerous references to newspaper articles and books, an approach that was intended to facilitate publication.

Senior Army officials were not happy with the results, and questioned whether all of the information in the study was truly unclassified and its use of newspaper reports. RAND researchers sent a rebuttal. That failed to persuade the Army to allow publication of the unclassified report, and the classified version was not widely disseminated throughout the Pentagon.

Neither General Lovelace nor General Melcher agreed to be interviewed for this article, but General Lovelace provided a statement through a spokesman at his headquarters in Kuwait.

“The RAND study simply did not deliver a product that could have assisted the Army in paving a clear way ahead; it lacked the perspective needed for future planning by the U.S. Army,” he said.

A Pentagon official who is familiar with the episode offered a different interpretation: Army officials were concerned that the report would strain relations with a powerful defense secretary and become caught up in the political debate over the war. “The Army leaders who were involved did not want to take the chance of increasing the friction with Secretary Rumsfeld,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he did not want to alienate senior military officials.

The Army has asked that the entire RAND series be resubmitted and has said it will decide on its status thereafter.

Is McCain A Done Deal??

The results on Super Tuesday removed all doubt about who would win the Republican presidential nomination -- John McCain's lead was insurmountable. Senators who hate him began endorsing him, Mitt Romney was forced from the race, and the Arizona senator was suddenly free to shift his emphasis to a general-election strategy. It was a done deal.

Realistically, it probably still is, but it's worth considering just how embarrassing yesterday's GOP results were for the presumptive nominee. It was as if Republican voters in three states -- one in the South, one in the West, and one in the Plains -- collectively got together to smack McCain in the face.

Louisiana-- Huckabee 43%, McCain 42%, Romney 6%, Paul 5%

Kansas -- Huckabee 60%, McCain 24%, Paul 11%, Romney 3%

Washington (with 87% of the precincts reporting) -- McCain 26%, Huckabee 24%, Paul 21%, Romney 17%

Sure, McCain wasn't exactly campaigning aggressively in these states -- neither was Huckabee or Paul -- but the obvious frontrunner for the nomination probably expected to have at least a little more support from the party faithful. In Kansas, McCain had Sam Brownback touting his campaign, but that didn't prevent a 36-point drubbing.

For that matter, Washington was supposed to be an easy one for McCain; Huckabee had few built-in advantages here. And yet, McCain apparently won a squeaker. (In what is, in effect, a two-person race, the frontrunner barely won a quarter of the vote. Ouch.)

In response to the poor showing, a campaign spokesperson said last night, "John McCain is the presumptive nominee in this race and our path forward is unchanged by today's results."

That's probably right, but is still has to sting.

It's a reminder of just how much work McCain still has to do. Over the past several days, the Republican establishment has, for the most part, reluctantly come to accept the realities of the political landscape. It was time, they decided, to close ranks.

But rank-and-file conservative Republicans apparently didn't get the memo. This isn't to say McCain will falter before claiming the nomination, but if yesterday proved anything, it's that he's going to have to work for it.

Jonathan Martin added:

Mike Huckabee blew him away in the Kansas caucuses and edged him out in the Louisiana primary. In Washington, which held caucuses, McCain bested Huckabee by two percent. And in a symbolic straw poll vote at CPAC, McCain was narrowly topped by Romney.

None of these results will have significant practical bearing on McCain's seizing the nomination. But the Kansas and, to a much lesser degree, CPAC results underscore the maverick's challenges with conservative activists. And Huckabee's success in Louisiana demonstrate his continued appeal among evangelicals in the South and offer a reminder of why McCain didn't enjoy a clean sweep on Super Tuesday.... [E]ven taking such symbolic hits after a week of questions about McCain's ability to heal old wounds on the right flank is not the way they wanted to start the path to November.
It's also a reminder of a point I've tried to emphasize all week -- McCain is now going to have to move to the right, when he wants to move to the center.

As for Huckabee, he scored another two wins, without even trying very hard (he lacks the resources to mount serious campaigns in any state).

Asked last night why he's still in the race, Huckabee said, "I have nothing else to do." I guess that means he'll be sticking around for a while longer.

Link.

Possibly All You Need To Know About The Mortgage Crisis And How It Came To Be

Or not. You read, you decide. Link.

Music For Obama

This is entertainment, not meant as any sort of endorsement of anything other than free entertainment on the web and is for enjoyment only (or not).

It Isn't Just Subprime Borrowers. How About That?

It took two reporters to finally figure this one out: When you live on home equity and your equity suddenly vanishes and therefore cannot be accessed, badness occurs -- and in a consumer-based economy, that cannot be a good thing, can it now?

The credit crisis is no longer just a subprime mortgage problem.

As home prices fall and banks tighten lending standards, people with good, or prime, credit histories are falling behind on their payments for home loans, auto loans and credit cards at a quickening pace, according to industry data and economists.

The rise in prime delinquencies, while less severe than the one in the subprime market, nonetheless poses a threat to the battered housing market and weakening economy, which some specialists say is in a recession or headed for one.

Until recently, people with good credit, who tend to pay their bills on time and manage their finances well, were viewed as a bulwark against the economic strains posed by rising defaults among borrowers with blemished, or subprime, credit.

“This collapse in housing value is sucking in all borrowers,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com.

Like subprime mortgages, many prime loans made in recent years allowed borrowers to pay less initially and face higher adjustable payments a few years later. As long as home prices were rising, these borrowers could refinance their loans or sell their properties to pay off their mortgages. But now, with prices falling and lenders clamping down, homeowners with solid credit are starting to come under the same financial stress as those with subprime credit.

“Subprime was a symptom of the problem,” said James F. Keegan, a bond portfolio manager at American Century Investments, a mutual fund company. “The problem was we had a debt or credit bubble.”

The bursting of that bubble has led to steep losses across the financial industry. American International Group said on Monday that auditors found it may have understated losses on complex financial instruments linked to mortgages and corporate loans.

The running turmoil is also stirring fears that some hedge funds may run into trouble. At the end of September, nearly 4 percent of prime mortgages were past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

That was the highest rate since the group started tracking prime and subprime mortgages separately in 1998. The delinquency and foreclosure rate for all mortgages, 7.3 percent, is higher than at any time since the group started tracking that data in 1979, largely as a result of the surge in subprime lending during the last few years.

An example of the spreading credit crisis is seen in Don Doyle, a computer engineer at Lockheed Martin who makes a six-figure income and had a stellar credit score in 2004, when he refinanced his home in Northern California to take cash out to pay for his daughter’s college tuition.

Mr. Doyle, 52, is now worried that he will have to file for bankruptcy, because he cannot afford to make the higher variable payments on his mortgage, and he cannot sell his home for more than his $740,000 mortgage.

“The whole plan was to get out” before his rate reset, he said. “Now I am caught. I can’t sell my house. I’m having a hard time refinancing. I’ve avoided bankruptcy for months trying to pull this out of my savings.”

The default rate for prime mortgages is still far lower than for subprime loans, about 24 percent of which are delinquent or in foreclosure. Some economists note that slightly more than a third of American homeowners have paid off their mortgages completely. This group is generally more affluent and contributes more to consumer spending and the economy relative to its size.

Unlike subprime borrowers, who tend to have lower incomes and fewer assets, prime borrowers have greater means to restructure their debt if they lose jobs or encounter other financial challenges. The recent reductions in short term interest rates by the Federal Reserve should also help by reducing the reset rate for adjustable loans.

Still, economists say the rate cuts and the $168 billion fiscal stimulus package are unlikely to make a significant dent in the large debts weighing on many Americans, because banks have tightened lending standards and expected rebates from the government will not cover most house payments.

The problems are most acute in areas that experienced a big boom in housing — California, the Southwest, Florida and other coastal markets — and in the Midwest, which is suffering from job losses in the manufacturing sector.

And it is not just first-mortgage default rates that are rising. About 5.7 percent of home equity lines of credit were delinquent or in default at the end of last year, up from 4.5 percent a year earlier, according to Moody’s Economy.com and Equifax, the credit bureau.

About 7.1 percent of auto loans were in trouble, up from 6.1 percent. Personal bankruptcy filings, which fell significantly after a 2005 federal law made it harder to wipe out debts in bankruptcy, are starting to inch up.

On Monday, Fitch Ratings, the debt rating firm, reported that credit card companies wrote off 5.4 percent of their prime card balances in January, up from 4.3 percent a year ago. The so-called charge-off rate is still lower than before the 2005 law went into effect.

Banks are responding to the rise in delinquencies by capping home equity lines of credit in areas with falling real estate prices. A few credit card companies have also moved to reduce the credit limits of customers they deem more risky.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide Financial, JPMorgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo are expected to announce on Tuesday at the Treasury Department that they will offer both prime and subprime borrowers who are more than three months behind a chance to halt foreclosure proceedings for 30 days and work out new loan terms.

In a conference call with analysts in December, Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, said more borrowers appear to be giving up on their homes as prices fall, noting a “change in social attitudes toward default.”

“You don’t mind making a $2,000 payment when the house is going up” in value, said Steve Walsh, a mortgage broker in Scottsdale, Arizona, who has seen several clients walk away from their homes because they couldn’t refinance or sell. “When it’s going down, it becomes a weight around your neck, it becomes an anchor.”

Home prices in the North Las Vegas neighborhood of Brenda Harris, a technology analyst at a casino company, have fallen 20 percent to 30 percent. The builder who sold her a new three-bedroom home on Pink Flamingos Place for about $392,000 in 2006 is now listing similar properties for $314,000. A larger house a block down from Ms. Harris was recently listed online for $310,000.

But Ms. Harris does not want to leave her home. She estimates that she has spent close to $40,000 on her property, about half for a down payment and much of the rest on a deck and landscaping.

“I’m not behind in my payments, but I’m trying to prevent getting behind,” Ms. Harris said. “I don’t want to ruin my credit.”

In addition to the declining value of her home, Ms. Harris, 53, will soon be hit with a sharply higher house payment. She has an option adjustable-rate mortgage, a loan that allows borrowers to pay less than the interest and principal due every month. The unpaid interest gets added to the principal balance. She is making the minimum monthly payments due on her loan, about $2,400.

But she knows she will not be able to pay the $3,400 needed to cover her interest and principal, which she will be required to pay once her loan balance reaches 115 percent of her starting balance. And under the terms of her loan, which was made by Countrywide Financial, she would have to pay a prepayment penalty of about $40,000 if she chose to refinance or sell her home before May 2009.

She said that she now wishes she had taken a traditional fixed-rate loan when she bought the home. At the time, she asked for a loan that could be refinanced after one year without penalty. She said her broker had told her a week before the closing that the penalty would extend until May 2009 and that she reluctantly agreed because she had already started moving.

A nonprofit community group, Acorn Housing, is trying to broker a modification of Ms. Harris’s loan. In a statement Friday, Countrywide said the company had been in touch with Ms. Harris and would work with her.

Credit counselors say many borrowers like Ms. Harris were cajoled or pushed into risky mortgages that they never had the ability to repay.

Others disregarded warnings about complex loans because they wanted to be a part of the housing boom, which like the technology stock bubble lured people in with seemingly instant and risk-free profits, said Mory Brenner, vice president of Financial Firebird Corporation, a company based in Pittsfield, Mass., that publishes consumer debt information and refers borrowers to credit counselors.

“I’d say, Let me tell you something, this is crazy,” Mr. Brenner said. “You cannot afford this house, even if nothing happens and rates stay as low as they are today. And the response would be: I don’t care.”

Lenders extended credit to people without verifying their incomes and allowing them to make little or no down payments.

But borrowers like Mr. Doyle, the engineer in Northern California, say they are victims of their circumstances — housing prices collapsed and lending standards tightened just as they needed to sell or refinance.

In refinancing their home in 2004, Mr. Doyle and his wife were doing what millions of other homeowners did in the last decade — tapping into the rising value of their homes for home improvements, paying off credit card debt, college tuition and for other spending.

The Doyles took advantage of the housing boom by refinancing their home nearly every year since they bought it in 1995 for $275,000. Until their most recent loan they never had a problem making their payments. They invested much of the money in shares of companies that subsequently went bankrupt.

Still, Mr. Doyle does not regret refinancing in 2004. “My goal was clear: I wanted to help my daughter go through college,” he said. “It wasn’t like it was for us.”

Link.

That's Entertainment! (A Break From News Of The Collapse Of Western Civilization!)

Kids Against Racism And Discrimination

Protesting Scientology

Someone claiming to be acting on behalf of the copyright-holder (or other responsible person) asked to have the copy of their post deleted. I thought newsworthiness and the limited circulation of this blog would entitle me to a pass; this person apparently is so protective that he doesn't care: I'm abusing their material, 'nuff said, importance of their post notwithstanding.

However, I am graciously allowed to post the link.

Viddie Tribute To Johnny Mac!

Victory On The March!

Members of U.S.-allied citizen brigades, which are credited with helping to tamp down violence in many parts of Iraq, went on strike Friday in Diyala province, alleging that the provincial police chief there is running a death squad.

A leader of the group said that brigade members, most of them Sunni Muslims, wouldn't resume working with U.S. and Iraqi government forces until the Shiite police chief resigns or is indicted.

A curfew was imposed, and police throughout the province ended their patrols early to avoid clashes with the U.S.-funded concerned local citizens, or "popular committees" as they're known in Diyala, who staged demonstrations against the police chief. No casualties were reported.

The strike highlights the tenuous relationship between U.S.-allied Sunni-dominated citizen militias and the Shiite-dominated, U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces.

Abu Mina, one of the leaders of the citizens groups in Diyala, northeast of Baghdad, said his group demanded the resignation of Gen. Ghanim al Quraishi three days ago and had given authorities evidence that Quraishi was involved in death-squad activities. Mina also accused seven police officers of kidnapping, raping and killing two women in a village north of Diyala earlier this week.

The police chief couldn't be reached for comment. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad acknowledged the strike, but had no further comment.

The citizens groups also are demanding that the heavily Shiite police force be remade into one that reflects the composition of the mixed Sunni-Shiite province, that detained people not convicted of crimes be released and that Sunnis who return to Shiite-dominated areas from which they've been displaced be protected.

The commander of security operations in Diyala said he's trying to arrange a meeting among the police, popular committee leaders, provincial officials and U.S. forces to mediate.

Gen. Abdulkareem al Rubaiye called the situation "strained" and said the curfew would remain in effect until further notice.

"If the popular committees were to withdraw their support, it will certainly be a big setback in the security situation in Diyala," he said.

Meanwhile, the court-martial got under way in Baghdad for a U.S. Army sniper who's accused of killing an Iraqi man and planting an AK-47 on him after he stumbled onto a sniper hideout. Sgt. Evan Vela is accused of murder and making false statements. Two other soldiers already have been convicted on charges of planting evidence, but they were acquitted of the murder charges.

Link.

How Our Leaders Screwed Up

John Dean, the last honest conservative:

Our country's best and brightest economists have, for over a decade now, been traveling the land to warn of the coming economic crisis. Championing this cause are a number of former government officials, both Republicans and Democrats, who have gathered at the Concord Coalition. Former senators Sam Nunn and Warren Rudman, former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, former Secretary of the Treasury (during the Clinton Administration) Bob Rubin, and former Secretary of Commerce (during the Nixon Administration) Peter Peterson together constitute the bipartisan coalition.

Peterson, a founding partner in the Blackstone Group, which manages some $80 billion dollars for investors, started the Concord Coalition in 1992. He knows his way around the economy, and since the Reagan and Bush I years, he has been expressing his concern about the way Republicans have handled it.

Peterson's most recent book, Running On Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It (2005), along with the reports that are regularly issued by the Concord Coalition, give the distinct impression that the Republicans have not been good for our economy. While this material tries to be evenhanded in its critique, there is no escaping the fact that the Republicans have become fiscally irresponsible.

Peterson's Running On Empty

Peterson's book is a good read, if you want to learn the bad news. Like many savvy businesspeople and economists, he worries particularly about the excessive debt and deficits Republicans have created. (His principal criticism of Democrats, in contrast, is their refusal to end entitlements -- not that Republicans have done so, either.) As a Republican, he was proud of the long tradition of fiscal responsibility, for they once had no hesitation to cut spending or hike taxes, since the party abhorred deficits that burdened future generations.

Fiscal responsibility, however, is no longer the guiding conviction of Republican leaders. For the last quarter century, since Ronald Reagan arrived in the White House, Peterson writes, Republican leaders have been oblivious to the devastation that deficits bring. "Deficits have become like aspirin," he explains of their thinking, "a sort of fiscal wonder drug. We should take them regularly just to stay healthy and take lots of them whenever we're feeling out of sorts." (Peterson doesn't say it, but while aspirin is not lethal, it can be deadly when you are bleeding badly, as is our economy.)

Peterson devotes a chapter to explaining "How the Republicans Got Us Much Deeper [With Democratic Help]" - with their tax-cutting mania and undisciplined spending. And he finds George W. Bush's performance "breathtaking" in his ability to turn what was a projected federal surplus of $5.6 trillion, when he arrived, upside down and into an even greater deficit. It is not easy to dispose of over $10 trillion. As Peterson also notes, hard accounting numbers would show that, in fact, the deficit is even greater than Bush projects, and the problems created by excessive government debt are exacerbated by the failure of Americans generally to save, rather to opt for personal debt.

Where is all this going? Peterson's title makes it clear that unless business as usual is changed, our nation will ultimately become bankrupt. He offers solutions and suggestions, but he reports, "I have spoken with a large number of senior leaders, both public and private. And I'm alarmed by the number who tell me, 'Pete, I really believe it will take a palpable crisis to get us to act.'" To avoid that alarming potential, Peterson and others are trying to warn us all.

Column continues below ↓
Warnings from the Concord Coalition about Fixing the Problems

No one knows if, or when, such a crisis might occur. As the Concord Coalition looked at the 2008 presidential election, in a publication titled "America's Economy: Headed for Crisis," it noted that "[n]o one can say when all this might end up in a crisis, nor what that crisis would look like. Indeed, there might be no crisis at all - just a long, slow erosion in our nation's standard of living. In either case, it's a dismal future, and doing nothing now to avoid it would be an act of fiscal and generational irresponsibility."

The next president, not to mention the current aspirants, must address this situation head-on. "The problem [in addressing and solving the situation] is not that the public cannot handle the truth," the Concord study notes, but rather, "the problem is the poisonous political environment in Washington and a process for nominating candidates that rewards the most obstinate forms of partisanship."

Strikingly, this report points to the very problem that Republicans, in particular, are facing, as Senator John McCain emerges as the likely party nominee, and Democrats are facing to a lesser extent in the contest between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. "The very idea of bipartisan cooperation seems highly offensive to ideological purists of both left and right," the Concord group warns, for nothing in Washington can really be resolved without bipartisanship.

John McCain is being hammered by people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter for his cooperation with Democrats. Hillary Clinton's judgment, if not sanity, is being questioned by Democratic anti-war ideologues for her joining Republicans on the use-of-force resolution in Iraq (notwithstanding her desire to end the war). None of this bodes well for solving the problems facing the economy, which will require compromise on both sides.

It is no longer a question of who caused the problems that have weakened our economy - problems that are going to get much worse before they get better. Rather, it is a matter of who can best fix the mess. That, too, is pretty clear.

Republicans and Democrats Have Changed Places on Fiscal Responsibility, with Democrats Now Better Suited to Repair the Damaged Economy

Harvard Kennedy School Professor Jeffrey Frankel, an MIT-trained economist, has examined and documented the ironic but now conspicuous change in the economic philosophies of presidents of the contemporary Democratic and Republican Parties. Comparing the records of Presidents Carter and Clinton with that of Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II provides the evidence at which voters should look in 2008.

Professor Frankel's fascinating study points out that the turnaround extends far beyond the Republican presidents creating deficits and Democrats creating surpluses, or in Carter's case, holding down the deficit. He notes that while Republicans claim to be inflation fighters, "in practice, Presidents Reagan and the first Bush pressured the Fed to ease up on monetary policy - sufficiently so that Paul Volcker decided the chairmanship was no longer worth having in 1987" and threatened to leave. In comparison, President Clinton "deliberately and unprecedentedly" allowed Alan Greenspan do his job without pushing him.

"Republicans are supposed to support small government," Frankel noted, "but federal employment rose under Presidents Reagan and Bush, and shrank under Clinton. Republican presidents have been big on free trade rhetoric. But their actions have in fact been protectionist, judged not just by some politics-free ideal, but as compared to the record of Clinton." Frankel cites as examples "George W. Bush's tariffs on steel and lumber and Ronald Reagan's voluntary export restraints on autos."

Republicans claim that they are the ones to take government off the back of business, yet Frankel found that the trend toward deregulation of many industries -- airlines, trucking, natural gas, and banking - began in the Carter Administration. "Reagan at best continued the trend," the professor pointed out.

This is not the view from the left, claiming credit for the right. To the contrary, Frankel reported that his "characterizations are shared by economists from across the political spectrum," as is clear from studies by other economists. Not only are the Democrats better for business, they are more likely to be able to start the heavy lifting of repairing the damage done by too many years of Republican rule.

A Little Bit About The Scum From Which Beloved Leader Is Descended

Editor’s Note: When Americans wonder how the arrogant and corrupt Bush family managed to seize so much power for so long, part of the answer is that the electorate lost control of its history during the long Cold War and into a new era of secrecy called "the war on terror."

Cold War secrecy gave the rich and powerful extraordinary abilities to hide information from the American people, including the unsavory history of the Bush family, as journalist/historian Morgan Strong observes in this guest essay:

To fully understand the present manifestation of the Bush family and its excesses, one must consider its history over several generations, a difficult and painful undertaking since it reveals so much about the self-destructive apathy of the American people.

James Madison wrote passionately in the Federalist Papers that in order for a democracy to function and not descend into a tyranny of the wealthy and the well-connected, the citizenry must stay well informed. In Madison’s view, a democratic society was wholly dependent on an informed citizenry.

Much of the responsibility to inform was placed on the press and the educational system. Indeed, the Founders gave the press the unchallenged right to seek out and publish information under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

In recent years, however, the U.S. press has failed in that responsibility dreadfully. Education in this country also has been a dismal failure. But in the end, it is the citizens who bear the principal duty to make themselves informed.

Below, in a bleak and foreboding history, is what occurs when the citizenry is deprived of meaningful information and then fails in its obligation to find out the facts and exercise the critical judgment required for self governance.

The Bushes

In the late 19th Century, Samuel Bush moved to Ohio from Orange, New Jersey, where he had attended the nearby Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken. He made the first big move in his manufacturing career as an engineer with Buckeye Steel Castings Company, which produced gun barrels and railroad parts.

Samuel Bush became a confidante of the company’s president, Frank Rockefeller, a brother of the enormously wealthy and powerful John D. Rockefeller, who owned Standard Oil. Another participant in Buckeye Steel was railroad baron E.H. Harriman.

The Rockefeller-Harriman connection was to remain important through the lives and careers of several generations of the Bush family.

Samuel Bush took over from Frank Rockefeller as president of the company in 1908, and held that job for the next 20 years. Through his Rockefeller-Harriman connections, he was made chief of the Ordnance, Small Arms and Ammunition Section of the War Industries Board in the Wilson administration during World War I.

Percy Rockefeller, John D. Rockefeller’s first cousin who had acquired Remington Arms in 1914, built a new plant just in time to enjoy enormous profit from the sale of weapons in World War I. Percy benefited from no-bid contracts to manufacture arms and supply ammunition to the U.S. military, arranged by Samuel Bush.

Samuel Bush’s Buckeye Steel made the gun barrels for Remington, which also outfitted the Czar’s forces in Russia after contracting to supply a million rifles to Russia in 1916. During World War I, Remington supplied 67 percent of all the weapons and ammunition used by the Allied forces.

Samuel’s son, Prescott Bush, served as an artillery liaison officer with the French forces during the war and wrote back home about his heroic exploits in letters that were published. But the exploits proved to be fabricated, forcing Prescott to apologize. But that didn’t deter him – or dim his career prospects.

Prescott was a Yale College graduate and a member of the influential Skull and Bones Society along with Averell Harriman, the son of his father’s associate, railroad magnate E.H. Harriman. Prescott also married well, wooing the favorite daughter of financier George Herbert Walker, who brought Prescott into the Wall Street firm of Harriman & Co., which later became Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

During the 1930s, Prescott Bush was a fanatical opponent of Franklin D. Roosevelt. There were even rumors that Bush tried to encourage a military coup against Roosevelt after his election as President in 1933. But the evidence – while intriguing – has never been conclusive.

Similar secrecy and uncertainty surrounded the intricate web of ownership and control of Harriman’s Union Banking Corp., which Prescott Bush administered in collaboration with backers of Germany’s Nazi Party.

As a rising star at the Harriman firm, Prescott Bush became a director (effectively in charge) of Harriman’s UBC, which had a financial relationship with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, an early supporter of Adolf Hitler.

Brown Brothers Harriman supplied Thyssen with financing and other banking services that allowed the Nazis to build up their war machine. After Thyssen broke with Hitler in 1939, Thyssen’s banking empire came under control of the Nazi government, with Prescott Bush continuing as a behind-the-scenes force in the relationship.

One of these Bush-connected companies, Consolidated Silesian Steel, made use of Nazi slave labor from concentration camps, including Auschwitz. After Germany declared war on the United States, the U.S. government investigated these relationships and seized Harriman’s UBC in 1943 under the Trading with the Enemy Act.

However, following the war, rather than face the ignominy of profiting off his dealings with the Nazis, Bush was compensated for the seizure of the bank, receiving a $1.5 million settlement from the U.S. government, an astonishing amount of money in 1945.

It was remarkable that despite Prescott Bush’s lying about his heroics in World War I and his assistance to the Nazis in World War II, he was nonetheless elected to the U.S. Senate as a Republican from Connecticut in 1952 and served there until 1963.

While in the Senate, Prescott Bush continued to serve the interests of his financial benefactors, the Harrimans and Rockefellers, especially by aiding the oil industry. Short of those services, his legislative accomplishments amounted to little.

But Prescott Bush’s business and personal connections were to have a profound impact on the course of American history. Many of his wealthy friends bankrolled his son, George Herbert Walker Bush, in launching his first oil business in Texas – and then a political career that would take the Bush family to the White House.

Link.

Our Perfect Economy Tanks A Little Bit More

Fox Bidness Journal:

A widening array of financial-market problems threatens to trigger a new phase in the global credit crunch, extending it beyond the risky mortgages that have cost banks and investors more than $100 billion in losses and helped push the U.S. economy toward recession.

In the past few days, low-rated corporate loans -- the kind that fueled the buyout boom of recent years -- have plummeted in value. As a result, banks are expected to try to unload some of those loans this week at fire-sale prices.

Nervous buyers also have retreated in recent days from the market for securities backed by student loans and municipal bonds, roiling some corners of the short-term money markets. Similarly, investors have recoiled from debt backed by commercial real estate, such as office buildings.


Over the weekend, the world's top banking authorities warned that the U.S.-led economic slowdown and continued uncertainty about securities could lead banks to further reduce their lending, and choke off economic activity. (Please see related article.1)

One sign of investors' anxiety: Standard & Poor's said its index of the prices on high-risk corporate loans fell to a record low of 86.28 cents on the dollar at the end of last week.

Few market participants expect defaults on any of this debt to match the elevated levels seen in last year's rout in the market for risky, or subprime, mortgages. But collectively, they threaten to deepen the financial system's wounds and create a growing pileup of shaky assets on the books of banks.

Behind the latest problems are some common themes: Investors bought some of these debt securities with borrowed money, or leverage. As prices have declined, lenders have forced the sale of some of these securities. The cash being pulled out of the market by these sales has magnified the losses from rising defaults.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve's interest-rate cuts, which were designed to reinvigorate the slowing U.S. economy, may be having unintended consequences in some quarters: sending investors fleeing from investments that do poorly when interest rates fall.

After years in which banks and investors have lent money on especially easy terms, "You've had the biggest credit bubble -- probably the biggest credit bubble we have ever had," says Jim Reid, credit strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in London. Part of the bubble has already been unwound, he says. The problem is, "nobody quite knows where that ends."

Hard Hit

Especially hard hit: the market for loans to big U.S. companies with low credit ratings. Problems in this market have been percolating for months. These loans, known as leveraged loans, were a popular way to finance the multibillion-dollar private-equity buyouts of recent years that have wound down amid the credit crunch, like the takeovers of Freescale Semiconductor Inc. in 2006 and TXU Corp. last year. Investors started to shun buyout loans last summer, causing a buildup of the debt on bank's balance sheets.

During the past two weeks, prices on many of these loans have fallen to levels that in a normal environment would indicate that the market expected the corporate borrower to restructure or seek bankruptcy protection. But, though they are creeping up from record lows in 2007, the default rate on leveraged loans is still very low, at around 1% in January, out of the more than half-trillion dollars of these loans outstanding.

Investors are also fleeing leveraged loans because the payments they make to investors are tied to short-term interest rates. With short-term rates falling, thanks to the Fed's rate cuts, those payments are shrinking.

"The yields are just not all that attractive especially if you fear that [interest rates are] going to fall further," says Christian Stracke of debt-research firm CreditSights in London. "That just means that the yield you are going to be receiving is going to fall further."

The loans to Freescale and TXU are trading at around 80 and 90 cents on the dollar, respectively, after being issued at about face value -- large declines for these kinds of instruments.

Many types of investors have left the market for such loans, including individuals. According to AMG Data Services, investors pulled their money out of bank-loan mutual funds for the 18th straight week as of last Wednesday, an exodus that has withdrawn $4.26 billion from the market.

This, in turn, has created problems for securities called collateralized loan obligations, which are pools of bank loans bundled together and sold to investors in pieces. Like the mortgage market's collateralized debt obligations, these instruments were assigned high credit ratings and were touted as spreading the risk of default on the underlying debt.

This week, UBS Securities and Wachovia Securities will be trying to sell portfolios of loans that may be held by a class of collateralized loan obligations called market-value CLOs. Both investment firms were lenders to these CLOs, which depend heavily on borrowed money. Now, with the market value of the loans behind these securities falling, the firms are liquidating a total face value of more than $700 million of them.

Fitch Ratings last week cut the credit rating on pieces of 24 CLOs, putting several of them deeply into junk territory, with ratings in the triple-C or double-C range. Fitch also says it is reviewing its methodologies for rating market-value CLOs. These investments have triggers in place that force banks to liquidate loans being used as collateral when their prices fall by a certain amount.

Added Burden

Having to liquidate portfolios of collateral is an added burden for banks, which already had $152 billion of loans they were trying to sell from buyouts of recent years. As the values of the loans they are holding decline, they could need to take additional write-offs. Market-value CLOs account for about 10% of the estimated $300 billion market for CLOs, according to research by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Related investments called total return swaps have also been hurt. These instruments are set up by banks for hedge-fund clients or other investors to buy loans with borrowed money. The loans serve as collateral, and when the values of the loans decline, the banks' clients can be driven into forced sales.

Citigroup Inc. is one of several banks affected by the upheaval. The bank structured nine of the 24 CLOs Fitch downgraded, amounting to about $4.5 billion of loans, according to a person familiar with the matter. Citigroup issued a statement Thursday saying the bank hasn't liquidated any loan collateral associated with its total return swap program.

Debt Fears

Problems are cropping up elsewhere in credit markets. Money-market investors in the past have been large buyers of short-term instruments backed by tax-free municipal bonds and student loans. But they have been shunning these instruments -- known by such names as auction-rate securities and tender-option bonds -- because they fear the debt used to back the instruments will default or get downgraded by rating services.

Thursday and Friday, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. held auctions of hundreds of millions of dollars in securities backed by student loans, all of which failed to drum up enough demand at their asking prices.

More than half of the nation's $2.6 trillion of municipal debt, meanwhile, is guaranteed by bond insurers like Ambac Financial Group Inc., MBIA Inc., and Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. Because these insurers are also on the hook for billions of dollars in troubled subprime-mortgage-related bonds, their guarantees are no longer worth as much. Concerns about the credit ratings of the bond insurers are filtering into muni markets.

Several sales of auction-rate securities have failed to draw sufficient interest from investors in the past two weeks. These include auctions held by Georgetown University and Sierra Pacific Resources Inc. The failures leave investors paying a premium to lenders who would rather let go of the debt.

Big banks are now working to pour new money into the bond insurers, which could help relieve some stress in the financial system. But the spreading turmoil suggests that might not be enough to benefit banks and investors.

Commercial real estate is another segment of the market that is showing cracks. There were no new offerings of commercial mortgage-backed securities in January, and the cost of protection against default on such securities issued in 2005 and early 2006 has more than tripled, according to Market Group's CMBX index. Goldman Sachs estimates banks could write down $23 billion from CMBS losses this year.

The Modern Big Media Journalist

Greenwald:

Chris Wallace interviewed George Bush today on Fox News and, after asking Bush about his views on waterboarding, this was the "question" which Wallace -- sitting next to Bush in front of a cozy fireplace (after a borderline-romantic stroll with him down a picturesque, snow-covered Camp David trail) -- asked of him:

WALLACE: I want to follow up on that. Whether it is interrogation of terror prisoners or the intercepting of surveillance among al Qaeda members, are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?

Wallace's obsequious framing was too brazenly propagandistic even for Bush to accept:

BUSH: That is an interesting way to put it. I wouldn't necessarily define some of the critics of my policy that way. I would say that they want to be very careful that we don't overstep our bounds from protecting the civil liberties of Americans.

If the subject of a political interview finds the questions from the "journalist" too favorably slanted to embrace (basically: "I think you're being unfairly harsh to my political opponents"), isn't that a fairly compelling sign that there is something profoundly corrupt with the journalist?
In Chris Wallace's Fox News World, concern over America's use of torture techniques and warrantless spying on Americans (applied against people who have been convicted of absolutely nothing) is still about nothing more than "protecting of rights of people who want to kill us" -- just like those weak-willed Founders stuck all of those irritating rights in the Constitution to protect criminal defendants -- all the leftist garbage about due process and prohibitions on excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishment and checks and balances and rights to confront one's accusers -- because they were so weirdly concerned "about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us."
Fox is obviously entitled to broadcast whatever propaganda it wants, but there are plenty of people who still insist that people like Chris Wallace and Brit Hume are real journalists, somehow distinguishable from the likes of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. Shouldn't this question from Wallace, by itself, preclude that assessment? Is Wallace's embarrassingly deferential inquiry really any different than the defining question asked of the Commander-in-Chief which exposed Jeff Gannon:

Senate Democratic leaders have painted a very bleak picture of the U.S. economy. Harry Reid was talking about soup lines. And Hillary Clinton was talking about the economy being on the verge of collapse. Yet in the same breath they say that Social Security is rock solid and there's no crisis there. How are you going to work -- you've said you are going to reach out to these people -- how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?

Both Wallace and Gannon -- with the opportunity to question the U.S. President -- basically asked: "Mr. President, how do you handle so well the fact that your political opponents are so crazy, malicious and anti-American"? Just compare Gannon's mentality ("how are you going to work with people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality?") with Wallace's ("are you ever puzzled by all of the concern in this country about protecting of rights of people who want to kill us?"). Brezhnev-era Pravda would have been too ashamed to ask such blatantly subservient questions of political leaders. But Chris Wallace is a Very Serious Journalist and Fox is a real news network.

Of course, Greenwald's right generally about the inherent dishonesty of what you could call Faux journalists. But I think they're worse in degree, not in what they do.

But I also wonder whether the point of the question, in a way, is worse than Greenwald says. He sees simple sucking up to a lame (almost said "dick") duck.

I see it maybe as an opportunity to allow Beloved Leader to appear more conciliatory and less radical than he and his administration actually are. My God, has Beloved Leader ever said anything so moderate before?

An American Tragedy

The thing to keep in mind about the Jena 6 is that they aren't innocents. The tragedy, as it were, is a limited one: They were "over-charged" (so to speak) because of only factor in what they did: they were black. But falsely accused or anything? Nah. Just the victim of good ole Southern racism.

And now there's this:

One of the "Jena Six" defendants was arrested yesterday for allegedly assaulting a fellow student at a Texas high school. Bryant Purvis, 19, was busted on the misdemeanor charge following an 8:30 AM altercation at Hebron High School in Carrollton, where his family relocated from Louisiana. According to the below arrest warrant affidavit, Purvis assaulted a male student he apparently suspected of vandalizing his auto. Along with choking the 18-year-old victim, the 6' 6" Purvis allegedly slammed the teenager's head on a table. Purvis, pictured in the mug shot at right, was briefly jailed before being released on $1000 bond. Purvis and five codefendants were originally charged with attempted murder in connection with the December 2006 beating of a white high school student in Jena, Louisiana. The case, which triggered protests over the severity of charges brought against the so-called Jena Six, remains pending, with Purvis scheduled for a March trial on reduced charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy. If convicted of those felonies, Purvis could face a maximum of more than 20 years in prison.

Just In Case There's Any Doubt That The Rightists Are Nuts

You must see this.

This Time, It's Not Different; This Is A Real Disaster That Cutting Rates Won't Patch Except Maybe To Create A New Bubble

It's not a subprime disaster but a far broader adjustable rate disaster and more good news is here.

Why I'm A Marxist

Strictly as an analysis of why things happen.

Iraq, as all things radically rightist, is about fattening wallets. Today's proof:

Here and here.

Or Maybe McCain's Election Is Not Assured After All....

Chris Matthews is actually making a pretty solid point. And one that's going to be difficult one for McCain to deal with. That is, the states McCain is winning are ones Republican seldom win in general elections. So far our tally has Delaware, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey and New York. Basically he's taking the Democratic base.

Link.

But he'll always have Big Media at his back....

An analysis of the straight-talking (not!) maverick (not!):

"Senator McCain has proven that he will say anything to win this election," Romney told reporters. "He has taken on a very aggressive, bold strategy of misrepresentation, and it works in politics to a degree." Romney then listed several issues on which, he says, McCain has flip-flopped, including the Bush tax cuts: McCain once opposed them but has more recently voiced his support for the policy. It was a departure for Romney, who just a couple of days ago would have likely declined to be drawn into a tit-for-tat about an opponent's strategy.

A more lucid analysis:

Josh, people are scratching their heads about Limbaugh preferring to lose in November than win with McCain. And even if he comes around publicly (as I suspect he will eventually), privately he and guys like Richard Viguerie understand that over the long term the real battle is about the "post-mortem." Winning the post-mortem is the key to their continued power going forward past 2008. Think about it: if McCain wins then there will be a real sense that these former power bastions such as talk radio are becoming less relevant to a new wired citizenry, etc. For Rush and Viguerie and Land and the Family Research Council, this is big business and they don't want to give up even some of their power, perceived or otherwise. On the other hand, if the primary voters choose McCain (with the aid of the hated lib media) and McCain goes on to lose in November, then they can argue that they were right all along - this outcome allows them to win the post-mortem against voices such as David Brooks and Ryan Sager who seek to break the mold once and for all. This is high stakes for all of these people. I'm not surprised by Rush on this at all.

I'm not sure I agree with every jot and tittle here. But he's quite right about the stakes. If McCain can win with Rush and Coulter and the rest of them openly and volubly against them, it will mean that they're paper tigers. And their juice in GOP circles will be greatly diminished. Not that people won't still listen to Rush's show and he won't make money selling racist songs on his subscription only website, but GOP pols will feel much freer to ignore him. The fact that he's on track to win the nomination is bad enough. They can only recover if he loses the general. Then they'll argue that it was because he bucked the Movement conservatives.

Meanwhile, there's another angle to this -- one that David Keene of CPAC was refreshingly candid about in the article about conservatives and McCain in the Times about why a lot of the insider activists are sidling up to McCain so rapidly...

Meanwhile, conservatives are growing increasingly “resigned” to the idea of a McCain nomination, said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, adding that among Washington activists, many of whom, like him, double as lobbyists, self-interest may also be a factor.

“There are people who don’t like the idea of a being off a campaign or being on the bad list if the guy gets into the White House,” Mr. Keene said. “This is a town in which 90 percent of the people balance their access and income on the one hand versus their principles on the other.”

Like I said, refreshing candor. And I don't mean that facetiously. But Keene's right. A lot of these DC conservative power-brokers make their very substantial livings as lobbyists. And trying to sink McCain does not pay.

Another problem driving the wingnuts loco: He maybe not be electable on legal grounds because he wasn't born in America (which would be a problem if we were a nation under the rule of law).

But he is a stand-up guy.

The Final Farewell To Mitt

Link to the above.

A good question to which I await an answer:

Since Romney's justification for his sons' seeming lack of enthusiasm for military service was the fact that they were "serving their country" by helping him get elected, and since him getting elected just isn't in the cards, will the Romney boys be on their way to the recruiting office?

The obsoleted answer:



Mitt makes his sacrifice for global peace and victory in the Total War Against Terror:

"If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror."

Something I Love About The Rightists: That They Forget That This Is A Nation Of Immigrants

Too messy to reformat; apologies.

Actually, the modern wingnuts are against everything that made America what it has been and is meant to or should be.

FLOR CRISOSTOMO is 28 years old. She is not a citizen of the United States, though she is trying to live her own tiny dream here. Which involves being alive, working very hard, living on extremely modest means (I can earn in an hour or so what this person does in a ten-hour a day work-week), wearing clothes, sending money to her three children, and sharing a two-bedroom apartment with four other women. Flor was dropped off in the desert after she paid a smuggler to take her away from México and up to El Norte, where she knew (as all know down below) that she could feed herself and her kids.

Crisostomo, who spoke through a translator, said she left Iguala Guerrero, Mexico, after she was unable to find a job that would allow her to buy enough food for her two boys and one girl, ages 9 to 14.

In July 2000 she paid a smuggler to take her across the border and spent three days lost in desert-like conditions before making it to Los Angeles, she said. A month later she arrived in Chicago, where she worked 10 hours a day, six days a week in an IFCO Systems site that made packing materials.

By last year, she earned about $360 a week, sending $300 to her children for food, clothes and school books, she said. To keep her own costs down, she lived with four other women in a two-bedroom Chicago apartment.

'My children's lives improve a lot as a result,' she said. 'It wasn't luxury. But it meant they could survive.'

Immigration authorities raided more than 40 IFCO sites in the U.S. in 2006 and arrested Crisostomo, along with more than 1,100 other people. The Board of Immigration Appeals last year denied Crisostomo's appeal and told her to leave the United States by Monday.

—Church harbors woman facing deportation


THIS is the ILLEGUL you speak of, Dobbs. Buchanan. Tancredo, Romney. (And many, many other less-visible US Citizens, as evidenced by far too many threads online and Letters to the Editor in print.) Even while you and I benefit from millions who live in similar poverty, fear, and persecution. This is the type of person you choose to feel NOTHING for. Because of an invisible border, and I mean the one that chokes off your own sense of proportion, reason and humanity; the mental fence that squeezes a heart until it can only stream cess, poisoning the system with septic propagandic, misanthropic, greed-fueled thought. Yes, I would indict all those who do not sympathize or empathize with her plight. Yes, I think it is a moral issue, and YES, if the American Dream doesn't include her, then I want no part of it!

For now, Flor has taken refuge in a church, a church in a land where even a "man of god" feels the need to bow to the pressure of the current deportation-only zeitgeist of the USA, the current selective-human-rights approach; actually making excuses for sheltering her.

It's unfortunate we have to do this. This church has other priorities, like helping the poor in this neighborhood,' the Rev. Walter Coleman said. 'But God didn't give us a choice. When God says do this, we say, 'Yes, sir!'"

—Church harbors woman facing deportation


It is unfortunate? I am tempted to ask why? Because you have sought a calling that recognizes not countries, but souls? Or because, as you imply, a Man of God is but Yes-Man in the end? Is there a finite amount of love to be disseminated to the locals? Okay, food and resources. But why not appeal to the locals? Use your calling and your heart to remind them of our obligation to the human being? Why must God's dictums be in conflict with the Church's priorities?

And Other Priorities, like helping the poor in this neighborhood. But where does our humanity end? Is it at the county line? Or does the soul only stretch to the borders of the block? We cannot rest our reasoning here. We must take accountability for our fellow humans. She is our neighborhood. She is our business. She is the poor.

México is our neighborhood too. Just as Iraq is our neighborhood. Especially now. USA! You do not visit war and economic hardship on humans, steal their resources, and then get to wash your hands! That is the Devil's work if I ever heard of such a thing. Esta planeta is our neighborhood. Anywhere human hearts beat is our neighborhood. Anywhere children are in fear, or need food is our neighborhood.

But let me back up. I don't mean to focus my anger and feelings of frustration on one man, one person who actually is helping. And perhaps he means it is unfortunate that the government is placing people in this position. (Or at least we can choose to read it that way.) It is important to remember that a reporter quotes selectively for various reasons. Here's a different quote from the same man, found in a different place.

"She wanted to continue the struggle,” the Rev. Walter Coleman said of Crisostomo. ”That’s what the church is for, to provide space where the truth can be told."

—Nuestra Voice


Additionally, the first quote just happens to reflect a sad reality here in the USA. Just as the title of the article does. "Church Harbors Woman Facing Deportation." Sounds accurate, eh? But how is the word "harbor" normally used when talking about law? Right. "Harboring a fugitive." So here we subtly stain the church's deed. And put pressure on them to stop helping people in need. And that is exactly the reason why you have a Man of God saying it is "unfortunate" that he actually does humane work!

Let me rewrite that title. How about "Church Provides Humane Respite From Aggressive Indiscriminate Law." Or "Church Stands Strong in the Face of Legal Persecution"? See? Accurate, too.

No, it is not the reverend's fault that he is surrounded by the pressures and amorality he is, by the incongruity of our national attitudes...or should I say hypocrisy?

We will all now, for the next week or so, be pouring our hearts out for those whose homes and families were wrecked by the storms and who are suffering. And those people do deserve our money and our hearts and our help. And a visit from the President. And our national attention and concern.

But the millions living here in situations like Flors...don't? We use the goods they make. We eat the food they sow and reap. We live on the taxes they pay. We keep neat green yards with their sweat. And we look the other way as home after home is raided, family after family is wrecked, as big voices in media and politics speak of mass deportations, we ignore the ongoing massive accumulation of pain and sorrow that this imbalance breeds and I say what sort of nation is this? What sort of selective empathy and human rights do we practice in the Land of Opportunity? What sort of humanity excuses itself from appearing with a muttered excuse about a "law"? The reasoning and functioning is foreign to me. Especially when our law allows us to cross any border we want and take or give any amount of pain or resources we desire.

Law, in and of itself, is not Just. Law, all by itself, is not truth. Current law only represents humans' intentions to manifest a just truth at a certain point in the past. And this same law often needs humans, later, to correct it and bring it in line with truth, and what is just in the present moment.

One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.


I stand with the desert flower. I stand with all others who stand with her. She represents, to me, humanity. I stand with her because I am an American, and I believe in dreams, struggle, opportunity, and Justice. For all.

And mostly, I stand with Flor because turning my back would mean losing myself and all that is important in my own soul and nature.

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Today's Funnies

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Q: How Does A Flip-Flopping Panderer Become A Maverick?

A: The rightist media says he's one. You don't need more proof than that do you??

Conservativism: Always Behind The Curve

Endorse Romney about twelve seconds before he quits and dis the nominee-apparent:

Another One Bites The Dust: Farewell To Mitt

His sacrificial quitting of his race will save us from the terrorists:

A Slightly Belated Prediction

Your next Leader: McCain. Neither Hillary nor, I'm sure to say so and deflate his hubris, Obama, can beat him.

Good for me: This blog is fuel on visceral feelings and the dumbass flip-flopper gets my juices going way more than either Dem. So God willing, you'd have me for four more years.

And do remember you heard it here first :)

Near-Amusing New Yorker Cover

You know the drill, more or less: click on image, save, enlarge to actual size, print out, glue or place to bathroom wall. (Or, I suppose, buy the issue). Speaking of the parenthetic aside, anyone find it strange that the anniversary issue of a weekly is biweekly?

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Boy, This Is Clear: Ron Paul Speaks -- All Mealy-Mouthed

Whoa! What a year this has been. And what achievements we have had. If I may quote Trotsky of all people, this Revolution is permanent. It will not end at the Republican convention. It will not end in November. It will not end until we have won the great battle on which we have embarked. Not because of me, but because of you. Millions of Americans -- and friends in many other countries -- have dedicated themselves to the principles of liberty: to free enterprise, limited government, sound money, no income tax, and peace. We will not falter so long as there is one restriction on our persons, our property, our civil liberties. How much I owe you. I can never possibly repay your generous donations, hard work, whole-hearted dedication and love of freedom. How blessed I am to be associated with you. Carol, of course, sends her love as well.

Let me tell you my thoughts. With Romney gone, the chances of a brokered convention are nearly zero. But that does not affect my determination to fight on, in every caucus and primary remaining, and at the convention for our ideas, with just as many delegates as I can get. But with so many primaries and caucuses now over, we do not now need so big a national campaign staff, and so I am making it leaner and tighter. Of course, I am committed to fighting for our ideas within the Republican party, so there will be no third party run. I do not denigrate third parties -- just the opposite, and I have long worked to remove the ballot-access restrictions on them. But I am a Republican, and I will remain a Republican.

I also have another priority. I have constituents in my home district that I must serve. I cannot and will not let them down. And I have another battle I must face here as well. If I were to lose the primary for my congressional seat, all our opponents would react with glee, and pretend it was a rejection of our ideas. I cannot and will not let that happen.

In the presidential race and the congressional race, I need your support, as always. And I have plans to continue fighting for our ideas in politics and education that I will share with you when I can, for I will need you at my side. In the meantime, onward and upward! The neocons, the warmongers, the socialists, the advocates of inflation will be hearing much from you and me.

A translation is here.

The Issue With Alternative Fuels No One Talks About

In a way, it's so symbolic of Our Leaders' era: The manufacture of an "alternative fuel" vehicle does more harm than a conventional vehicle's but at least it uses less foreign fuel and is thus therefore good. And biofuels have the added advantage of transferring gobs of cash to Big Agro.

Almost all biofuels used today cause more greenhouse-gas emissions than conventional fuels if the full emissions costs of producing these "green" fuels are taken into account, two studies published Thursday have concluded.