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March 18, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Great Recession has begun to push through to basic public services that affect us all. Education funding has dried up and across the country, cities facing major budget shortfalls are taking the radical step of shutting down schools in order to address the budget crisis.
February 28, 2010 :: Riga Listin :: No Comment Yet
The media are exploding with reports that explicitly declare that “the public opposes the current healthcare reform bills” passed by both houses of Congress. In fact, this is patently false, and any of the major polls on the subject bear this out, if one devotes the time necessary to understand the numbers. It is inaccurate to say “the public opposes”, because there is not one uniform majority of Americans opposing a specific set of initiatives in the pending reforms.
February 28, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Republican House minority whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today on Meet the Press that Republicans want healthcare reform, but they favor a “common-sense, modest, incremental approach”. The statement is sly and problematic: Cantor wants to imply that incremental is responsible, playing on the emotional fetish that brings many to conservative politics, but he is simply fudging the facts and reframing an historically irresponsible approach in order to attack the president. Incremental fixes to the pervasive healthcare crisis have so far failed to reverse the trend toward ever-higher costs and ever-less-competent insurers.
February 27, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party’s Congressional leadership is participating in a bipartisan healthcare reform summit moderated by Pres. Barack Obama, at Blair House near the White House. The “square-table” discussion includes the leading budgetary and health policy partisans from the House and Senate, as well as Pres. Obama, Vice Pres. Biden and Sec. of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius. The president invited Republicans to “show me what you got”, and to lay out constructive alternative ideas for healthcare reform, in the interest of building consensus.
February 20, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The other week, men and women across California opened up their mailboxes to find a letter from Anthem Blue Cross. The news inside was jaw-dropping. Anthem was alerting almost a million of its customers that it would be raising premiums by an average of 25 percent, with about a quarter of folks likely to see their rates go up by anywhere from 35 to 39 percent. … Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.
February 20, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In response to a recent article, explaining that record snowfall in certain places does not equate to a proof that global warming is not happening, but rather, that global warming is an apt explanation for why the record snowfalls would occur there, a number of climate skeptics chose to attack certain points in the piece, using what they take to be established science. In some cases, the evidence cited was simply misrepresented or misinterpreted, according to the wishes of the skeptics themselves.
February 12, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Blue Cross has reportedly announced plans for a massive 39% rate-hike on hundreds of thousands of customers, despite earning record profits of $4.7 billion in 2009. The announcement has spurred outrage among healthcare rights activists and public interest groups and raised the ire of the president and the Congress of the United States. The progressive pressure group MoveOn.org has launched a campaign to demand an immediate reversal of the Blue Cross rate-hike.
February 2, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
There is talk in the House of Representatives that a “reconciliation patch” could allow the US Senate to pass a small amendment to the Senate healthcare bill, in connection with a budget reconciliation measure, could allow the Senate to provide the House with an overall bill that could pass the House of Representatives. If the Senate is able to make those necessary adjustments, there could be a comprehensive healthcare reform package passed and signed into law in the coming weeks.
January 30, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama yesterday attended a first-of-its-kind question and answer session, as part of a Republican Congressional caucus conference in Baltimore. The president took some aggressive questions, classed by media analysts as “grandstanding”, from some Republicans who pushed the party line on the refusal of Democrats to deal with them. Obama adroitly and with a [...]
January 28, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Those of us in public office can respond to this reality by playing it safe and avoid telling hard truths and pointing fingers. We can do what’s necessary to keep our poll numbers high, and get through the next election instead of doing what’s best for the next generation. But I also know this: If people had made that decision 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or 200 years ago, we wouldn’t be here tonight. The only reason we are here is because generations of Americans were unafraid to do what was hard; to do what was needed even when success was uncertain; to do what it took to keep the dream of this nation alive for their children and their grandchildren.
January 28, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A recent NBC/WSJ poll shows rising frustration among voters with the failure to move major reforms through Congress. But while the media have repeatedly pushed the notion that Pres. Obama may be losing favor, the NBC/WSJ poll shows 48% of people say Republicans in Congress are to blame for the nation’s unsolved problems, for their relentless obstruction of Democratic proposals, while 41% blame the Democrats in Congress, and only 27% blame Pres. Obama.
January 27, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama’s first official State of the Union address was an impassioned call to action, and something of a civics lesson. He reprimanded both parties in Congress, admonishing Democrats not to “run for the hills” and reminding Republicans that if they claim a leadership role by obstructing legislation, then they have an obligation to the public to participate in the process. The address artfully positioned Obama’s agenda astride the political center, leaving the Republicans little room in the center from which to attack his policies.
January 26, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Apple tablet should be an intensely user-friendly device that achieves a paradigm shift in the way we deal with information. That sounds big, but Apple is well-equipped to do this, even by just making a few key upgrades to what it has already made possible with its laptops and touch-sensitive handhelds.
January 26, 2010 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
This video is a talk given by Dr. Eugene McCarraher, at Villanova University, on the subject of corporate personhood. He explores the many problems related to the development of the legal principle that corporations can be granted the actual rights that law assigns only to persons. He reveals the stunning historical roots of corporate personhood in the “legal fiction” of the “metaphysical body” of medieval kings.
January 24, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The credit crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession, which began in December 2007 and may or may not still be operational, were both set in motion by a series of risky misrepresentations of value and earning potential that led the world’s wealthiest banks into shoddy investments. By October 2008, George W. Bush’s own “Red October”, the financial system was paralyzed, and only massive government investment would save Wall Street’s most powerful institutions from collapse. The big banks were said to be “too big to fail” (TBTF).
January 22, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The ONLY way to make any argument of the kind that alleges the economic difficulties of 2009 are Obama’s fault is to operate absolutely and without exception on the premise that George W. Bush left Obama with a perfectly healthy, well-oiled functioning economy and zero debt. In fact, not only is that rosy picture not the case; the polar opposite is true: Barack Obama took office while the United States was experiencing its worst economic decline since the Great Depression, including near total paralysis of the banking system, unprecedented government debt, and an ethically deficient backlog of hidden borrowing that would cause deficits to escalate by as much as 1,000% in just one decade.
January 11, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Despite the widespread debate in the US, China and other heavily coal-burning countries, about the degree to which “clean coal” can be a solution to the daunting challenge of how to reduce carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and climate destabilization, the technology does not yet exist. There are no clean coal plants in the US.
January 8, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
After decades of environmental scientists seeking to raise awareness about the detrimental impacts of burning ever more carbon-based fuels, the Copenhagen Accord shows a global willingness to recognize the gravity of the issue and to take concrete —if as yet unnamed— policy actions to address the challenges of coming decades.
January 7, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
In a year when political and economic reporting has focused on ideology, obstruction, recession and unemployment, the administration of Pres. Barack Obama has been hard at work on major reforms that are designed to not only speed recovery but to secure the economy against future threats. One of the most vital areas of policy reform, as noted by Obama himself just yesterday, is the focus on promoting and expanding opportunity in education. The president’s proposal to reform the system for organizing and distributing student loans may be one of the most significant pro-education policy reforms in a generation.
January 7, 2010 :: staff :: One Comment
Our future is on the line. The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow. To continue to cede our leadership in education is to cede our position in the world. That’s not acceptable to me and I know it’s not acceptable to any of you. And that’s why my administration has set a clear goal: to move from the middle to the top of the pack in science and math education over the next decade. To reach this goal, we’ve paid particular attention to how we can better prepare and support, reward and retain, good teachers. So the Recovery Act included the largest investment in education by the federal government in history while preventing more than 300,000 teachers and school workers from being fired because of state budget shortfalls.
January 5, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
At the end of Barack Obama’s first year in office, there is controversy over the nature and extent of his accomplishments, and even some allies and supporters appear to have forgotten the atmosphere of multidirectional crisis in which Obama took office. What’s more, the steady decline in Obama’s approval ratings appears to follow very closely a shift in media reporting away from reporting facts and back to the hyper-commentary style of the run-up to the Iraq war, an atmosphere in which conservative political propaganda fares better than the facts of deliberative action.
January 3, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Continuing our series on the evolutions that can be expected over the coming decade, we look at new directions in particle physics, media technologies that are enabling not only greater freedom, but a new communicative paradigm which will, in part, help steer us to the great discoveries of this moment in history, and a vital new understanding of global economic patterns, which will revolutionize the way governments around the world plan for domestic spending and trade policy.
January 1, 2010 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
As we enter the second decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves part of a global human civilization undergoing major change at an unprecedented rate, and how we adjust to those changes will determine what quality of life and how much real democracy there is, even who lives and who dies, across the global village. For decades, postmodern philosophical theory has examined the problem of atomization of the fabric of human society, but new trends suggest there is concurrent with spreading individualism a swell of interdependence among individuals, communities and nation-states.
December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
That too many people, including policy-makers and media figures “are out of their intellectual depth and easily manipulated” by the bewildering complexity of the financial-political feedback-loop is almost irrefutable, and I agree with comments in this debate it’s “a symptom of the limitations of our neural architecture”. But I don’t know if we should take the question of neural architecture in the biological sense. There’s a cultural and practical response that needs to be considered at least as strongly.
December 31, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The elections of 2010 will not be about the specter of “socialism”, nor about terrorism, taxation, or gay rights: they will be about which party can present the most far-reaching, most credible pragmatic approach to solving the actual problems the nation is facing. They will be about whether or not Pres. Obama deserves support in his historic efforts to bring the nation out of a range of crises he was elected to resolve, or better put: whether or not the nation could benefit from his having that support.
December 28, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Sandia National Laboratories have achieved a landmark breakthrough in solar-voltaic power-generation technology. The snowflake-like “solar glitter” uses 100 times less material to produce the same amount of electricity as today’s standard 6-inch square solar cells. This achievement of ultra-miniaturization now has the potential to move solar-voltaic power generation to the forefront of the clean energy revolution, and help speed the transition away from carbon-based combustible fuels.
December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China has outraged political and diplomatic leaders around the world by aggressively blocking agreement on hard targets for binding emissions cuts, refusing even to agree to any accord that would include mention of other nations’ specific cuts. One observer told the BBC that he observed China, India and Saudi Arabia as the key powers working to prevent binding targets from being adopted, but China was the most immovable opponent to a binding agreement.
December 24, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The United States Senate scheduled what might be the most important vote on domestic issues for 2009 for a special late legislative session on Christmas Eve. Republicans say Democrats are trying to manipulate the process and punish them for opposing the measure, while Democrats say obstructionist Republicans made it necessary to extend the legislative session in order to hold the vote this year. This morning, the bill passed by a vote of 60 to 39, along party lines.
December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Barack Obama took office in the midst of the worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s, with two wars in Asia and skyrocketing unemployment, record numbers of bankruptcies, a financial services industry in a state of near total paralysis and/or collapse, and declining federal revenues with which to alleviate the fast-rising federal budget deficit. Not one of those aspects of life in 2009 America was caused by anything Barack Obama did before or after assuming the presidency. Yet the new game in Washington, DC, is blaming Obama for everything everyone else failed to do, both before and after he assumed the presidency.
December 24, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
The pulitzer prize-winning news service PolitiFact.com, a fact-checking operation of the St. Petersburg Times, has awarded Sarah Palin its first ever “Lie of the Year” award, for her patently false claim that healthcare reform legislation would create “death panels”. Properly told, the lie of the year is the “death panels” claim itself, for which Palin is only partly responsible. She appears to have been responsible for the most high profile and most fundamentally false telling of the lie, though other Republican opponents of healthcare reform had falsely asserted that reimbursement for doctors who provide end of life counseling would be devoted to a campaign of euthanasia designed to eliminate the elderly and infirm.
December 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The Republican party is now taking a political position radically opposed to their entire philosophical and strategic posture during the healthcare debate. Upset to learn that Sen. Ben Nelson may have won special funding guarantees to help his state provide funding for Medicaid in an economic climate where the state is facing record budget shortfalls and may have to cut funding, Sen. Lindsey Graham is now demanding full federal funding for his state’s Medicaid program. Republicans have jumped on the bandwagon and are now demanding that Medicaid funding for their states be expanded as well.
December 21, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
(1) [W]e shall, recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature should be below 2 degrees Celsius, on the basis ofequity and in the context of sustainable development, enhance our long-term cooperative action to combat climate change. … (2) We agree that deep cuts in global emissions are required according to science, and as documented by the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report with a view to reduce global emissions so as to hold the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees Celsius … (10) We decide that the Copenhagen Green Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programme, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer….
December 21, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States Senate has been grappling all this year with a record number of threatened filibusters of key legislation, a problem which has held up work on issues of vital national interest and slowed economic reforms designed to help speed recovery and prevent future abuses. The healthcare reform process is now synonymous with the worst effects of the filibuster, famously used by the late Sen. Strom Thurmond to block civil rights reforms that would bring the law in line with the US Constitution.
December 20, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Democratic leadership has scheduled an historic vote on healthcare reform legislation for 1:01 am Monday morning. All 100 senators are expected to participate in the vote for cloture, which would end debate and clear the way for a straight up-or-down vote on passage of the comprehensive health insurance reform package, later this week. The bill has been the subject of intense negotiation, fierce criticism and major compromise, though all of the compromise was within the ideologically diverse 60-member Democratic caucus.
December 19, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The last time a Patient’s Bill of Rights was within reach was roughly a decade ago, and it was supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, from Ted Kennedy to John McCain. It included the right to an appeals process so you could challenge an unfair decision by an insurance company before a third party. It included the right to choose your own doctor. It included the right to access information about what your health insurance plan means for you. And it called for a new level of transparency so that patients would know if their doctors had a conflict of interest when providing services.
December 19, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
After nearly a full year of partisan wrangling and internecine disputes between liberal and conservative Democrats, the sponsors of healthcare reform have reportedly secured their 60th vote in the Senate, the vote needed to break a filibuster, end debate and bring the bill to a vote for passage. Once the public option for low-cost healthcare and an expansion of Medicare were stripped from the bill, Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) signed on; progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) then threatened to withhold support, but agreed to support the measure once $10 billion were set aside for community health clinics, and now, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), the last holdout, has reportedly voiced his support for the reforms.
December 19, 2009 :: Eva Scherson :: One Comment
After two weeks of intense and sometimes bitter negotiations, US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen to marshal all his diplomatic skills in brokering the beginnings of a viable framework for global carbon emissions reductions. Late Friday, it was announced that five nations —the United States, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa— had carved out a deal that would, for the first time, bring all the world’s major economies into the same camp on efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
When US president Barack Obama arrived in Copenhagen, there was no global agreement on how to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, and talks were described as being “in a state of chaos”. His morning schedule of face to face meetings was reorganized so he could attend an emergency conference of key leaders. Talks were scheduled to continue through the weekend, and yet before midnight, agreement had been reached.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Gordon Brown plans “plan b” 2nd round of talks if Copenhagen conference fails to achieve global pact. The plan would call for a smaller number of nations to meet to agree to concrete steps to curb emissions and move their contribution to the world economy toward a green energy future.
December 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
With the US promising to commit $100 billion over ten years to help fund mitigation efforts against the impacts of climate destabilization and China all but refusing outright to agree to any pact that requires international verification of emissions reductions and/or how international funds are spent, the technological solution remains a key priority.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Good morning. It’s an honor to for me to join this distinguished group of leaders from nations around the world. We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you —like me— were convinced that this danger is real. This is not fiction, this is science. Unchecked, climate change will pose unacceptable risks to our security, our economies, and our planet. That much we know.
December 18, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The furious negotiations of the final days of the Copenhagen conference on climate change has produced another draft of a potential Copenhagen Accord, which would drop the 2010 deadline for establishing a binding global treaty, but would keep the absolute upper limit of an eventual 2ºC global average temperature rise above pre-industrial levels.
December 18, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: One Comment
The United States is pledging to “take the lead” on a global fund of $100 billion over ten years, designed to help developing nations transition to a zero-combustion energy economy and fend off the already mounting ravages of climate destabilization. The offer was announced yesterday by Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was intended in part to put added pressure on China to agree to a binding climate deal with emissions reduction verification processes built in.
December 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Copenhagen climate conference is intended to round out two weeks of global negotiations with an agreement of some sort aimed at securing major progress on carbon emissions limits. It remains uncertain whether an agreement will be reached, so Pres. Obama’s trip is being treated as a “high-stakes gamble” in the US media. In fact, Obama will be one of 115 heads of government in attendance, and the White House’s statement that while his attendance cannot guarantee agreement, a decision not to could scuttle negotiations, seems the most level-headed.
December 17, 2009 :: staff :: 2 Comments
A bipartisan bill, proposed by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), proposes restoring the provision of the Glass-Steagall Act, which prohibited banks from merging certain types of activities which present inherent fiscal conflicts of interest. The Cantwell-McCain bill would force the break up of major Wall Street firms that many believe have grown beyond the size where low-level commercial lending is seen as profitable.
December 17, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Devoting valuable grain crops to fuel production has had an immediate negative impact on the global food supply, reducing supply and pushing prices higher, even as one billion people suffer from chronic hunger. In the United States, high prices and economic crisis mean on in eight are now insufficiently able to access adequate food supplies. But a new generation of crop-based biofuels will be more efficient and need not interfere with the food supply.
December 16, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), a fiercely progressive independent and a strong leader in the Democratic caucus, today introduced an amendment to extend the Medicare program to all Americans, creating a universal, single-payer healthcare plan that would be able to pay for any bills across the entire privately-administered health services sector. The Republicans demanded that the amendment be read word by word, out loud, into the record.
December 16, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The dispute over whether or not wealthy industrialized nations like the US can agree with fast-developing nations, still in the process of industrialization, like China and India, on how best to formulate global emissions policies to combat climate change has been explained backwards. It is commonly said that China and India want the right to continue burning ever-increasing amounts of carbon-based fuels until they catch up to the US and the industrialized nations in per-capita emissions levels. But the problem is more a matter of what cuts the industrial nations are willing to undertake.
December 14, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
This video from Congress.org uses animation to illustrate the way “cap and trade” proposals to limit greenhouse gas emissions —and slow or reverse climate change— would work. The video is a simplified explanation of the very complex array of regulatory reforms that will need to be implemented in order to achieve the goals laid out, but it is accurate in its description of the logic of cap and trade.
December 13, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: No Comment Yet
Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) is fond of calling the entire global field of climate science “a hoax”, and not only advocates inaction to curb the unraveling of climate systems, but devoutly champions the expansion of the very activities that are driving the planet to crisis. Had he been in office during the catastrophic 1930s “Dust Bowl” and had he had any success in convincing government and farmers to apply such an approach, Oklahoma could have been turned into a permanent desert with the characteristics of a failed state in perpetual need of food aid and expensive imports.
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