The Stimulus Act Bargain

A point was made a few months ago about the Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (a.k.a. Obama's economic stimulus plan) that really made a lot of sense to me. Most of us probably recall the tragic I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis in 2007. The cause of the bridge was due to a faulty design-- the use of under-sized gusset plates-- and an excessive amount of concrete overloading the bridge. The Federal Highway Administration advised shortly thereafter that there were about 700 other U.S. bridges of similar construction and asked states to inspect them. The Society of Civil Engineers recently gave our U.S. infrastructure an overall "D" grade, indicating that in many cases, our roads, bridges, and other vital infrastructure are in dire need of upgrades. I fear we will have more I-35 bridge scenarios in the future because our current national political dialogue is overly focused on deficits, repealing the health care bill (which will increase the deficit), and other distractions.

In "Infrastructure: the best deal in the economy," Ezra Klein noted how many argue that government should be run more like a business. He then asked rhetorically,

So imagine you are CEO of the government. Your bridges are crumbling. Your schools are falling apart. Your air traffic control system doesn't even use GPS. The Society of Civil Engineers gave your infrastructure a D grade and estimated that you need to make more than $2 trillion in repairs and upgrades... There's good news... Because of the recession, construction materials are cheap. So, too, is the labor. And your borrowing costs? They've never been lower. That means a dollar of investment today will go much further than it would have five years ago -- or is likely to go five years from now. So what do you do? If you're thinking like a CEO, the answer is easy: You invest. You get it done.

Obama's stimulus plan did precisely that, although many economists have argued that the stimulus act's overall size, and its investment in infrastructure did not go far enough. But given the political climate at the time, that was probably the best the administration could do. Klein goes on:

When the feds checked in on the [stimulus act's infrastructure improvement] funds, what they found shocked them. The project costs were coming in at 18 to 20 percent less than estimated. The Transportation Department then looked at the share that went to the Federal Aviation Administration for runway repairs. The money that the FAA had thought would complete 300 projects was going to finish 367 projects -- about 20 percent more than projected.

But what about the debt, you might ask? Well, what about it? Delaying a dollar of needed infrastructure repairs is no different than racking up a dollar of debt. "You run a deficit both when you borrow money and when you defer maintenance that needs to be done," [the chairman of the National Economic Council] said. "Either way, you're imposing a cost on future generations."

When we delay maintenance, infrastructure deteriorates even further, thus increasing future repair costs. It is key to understand here that an improved national infrastructure makes our economy healthier in the long run. Without adequate infrastructure, future economic growth will certainly be stunted. The problem goes beyond crumbling roads and bridges, but also applies to antiquated power grids, limited broadband Internet access, outdated air traffic control systems, and decaying schools. While passing the stimulus act in the middle of a recession may have been unpopular, as I pointed out in an earlier post about recession economics, severe recessions are just about the only time it is in fact advisable for governments to incur large debts.

I'm glad the administration had the courage to do what was right at a time when it was politically unpopular to pass the stimulus plan. However, more investment in our infrastructure is needed and there is no better time to do it than now.

Let's Tone it Down Several Knotches

So far, it appears that the person who targeted Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona for assassination, in Saturday's shooting rampage that left 6 people dead and many others seriously wounded, was not directly inspired by the virulent and violent political rhetoric that has been dominating the public discourse over the past 2 years and beyond. And in this post, I am not trying to assign blame for the shooting rampage to anyone aside from the deranged, homicidal gunman, Jared Lee Loughner. But this national tragedy has provided an opportunity for us to reflect on the type of political conversation we engage in both in public and in private. Last March, I posted about some of the recent violence and violent rhetoric. In the aftermath of the passage of the health care reform bill, many prominent opponents of the bill used inappropriate and irresponsible rhetoric that included implicit violent and hateful messages.

In "Before Shooting, A Campaign Season Rife With Gun Rhetoric," Rachel Slajda points to some other perhaps even more disturbing examples of irresponsible speech used by mostly conservative politicians during the recent campaign season:

Rep. Giffords' own opponent, Republican Jesse Kelly, had a gun-themed fund-raiser in June in which supporters could come and shoot an M-16 rifle with Kelly. It was promoted thusly: Get on Target for Victory in November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office. Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly.

Robert Lowry, a Republican challenger to Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schulz (D-FL), stopped by a local Republican event in October. The event was at a gun range, and Lowry shot at a human-shaped target that had Wasserman Schulz's initials written next to it.

Stephen Broden, a Republican challenger to Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), in late October said that violent revolution is "on the table."

"People are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, my goodness, what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out," said Sharon Angle, the GOP's candidate for Harry Reid's Senate seat.

From 2009: Rep. Gregg Harper (R-MS) told Politico that he hunts Democrats. Asked about the Congressional Sportsmen's Caucus, he said, "We hunt liberal, tree-hugging Democrats, although it does seem like a waste of good ammunition."

New Rep. Allen West (R-FL) almost hired a Florida talk-radio host, Joyce Kaufman, as his chief of staff. But Kaufman withdrew after media coverage of some of her more fiery statements, such as: "I am convinced that the most important thing the Founding Fathers did to ensure me my First Amendment rights was they gave a Second Amendment," she told a tea party crowd last summer. "And if ballots don't work, bullets will."

Slajda has more disturbing examples. I'm not implying here that these politicians intended to promote violence. I do not have any reason to think that is the case. But by using this kind of violent rhetoric, they are playing with fire. Lest you think that such speech is harmless, here is an actual example of where a deranged man shot a politician after receiving encouragement on the radio to "take her out":

Mary Rose Wilcox, a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in Arizona, was shot in 1997, while walking out of a board meeting, by a man who later said he was angry at her support for a baseball stadium tax. The first Hispanic woman elected to the board, Wilcox, a Democrat, had been the target of talk-radio tirades telling Maricopa County residents to "take her out." "I knew at the time that the hate had been caused by a lot of the rhetoric that had gone on," Wilcox said. "At the trial, the man actually said, 'I shot her because the radio said I should take her out.'"

So while Sarah Palin's infamous "crosshairs" map that targeted Rep. Giffords, and her rhetoric of "reload" and "lock and load," may not have led to Saturday's shooting rampage, they could have. There is a difference between freedom of speech and using responsible speech. We all probably recall the international outcry about the Florida pastor who announced he was going to burn Korans on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Many political leaders from both parties as well as military leaders warned that this man's actions would endanger lives of American soldiers and innocent civilians across the Middle East. While the pastor had the freedom of speech to do so, such an action would have been incredibly reckless and irresponsible. The same goes for the violent rhetoric in contemporary politics. While I know there are examples of this on both sides of the spectrum, it is overwhelmingly a problem of the political right. Freedom of speech does not absolve us of personal responsibility. In addition to moderating our own rhetoric, let's also hold our elected leaders responsible for their speech and not patronize the talk show hosts who employ such divisive and evil language.

In another earlier post, I described how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints recently issued a renewed call for civility in our public discourse. Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles recently stated,

Many in this world are afraid and angry with one another. While we understand these feelings, we need to be civil in our discourse and respectful in our interactions. This is especially true when we disagree. The Savior taught us to love even our enemies. The vast majority of our members heed this counsel. Yet there are some who feel that venting their personal anger or deeply held opinions is more important than conducting themselves as Jesus Christ lived and taught. I invite each one of us individually to recognize that how we disagree is a real measure of who we are and whether we truly follow the Savior. It is appropriate to disagree, but it is not appropriate to be disagreeable. Violence and vandalism are not the answer to our disagreements.

Are We Headed for Single Payer Health Care?

It's been interesting to listen to the debate rage over what will happen to the individual health insurance mandate in President Obama's health care reform bill as the issue moves its way up through federal courts. The mandate was recently ruled unconstitutional by one (Bush-appointed) federal judge in Virginia, but was ruled constitutional by a couple of other federal judges. It seems that most pundits agree that this issue is headed for the Supreme Court.

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post noted that Republicans may be doing some long-term damage to their cause by focusing on the individual mandate, which as my last post explained, was originally a Republican idea. To be certain, the mandate is essential to have a health-care system where everyone has coverage but private insurers dominate (Obama's plan). If the Supreme Court ultimately rules the mandate unconstitutional, the only other options for universal coverage will be the single-payer system, as found in Canada, or the fully nationalized system, as found in the United Kingdom. The mandate, as Klein states, is a very "common device" used in several other industrialized countries (including Switzerland and the Netherlands) that ensure universal coverage while relying on private insurers.

Klein makes a convincing argument when he states, "if Republicans get [the insurance mandate] ruled unconstitutional in America, they'd be wise to ask themselves what other options they have: After all, the constitutionality of Medicare is not in question, and that's really the other model we could eventually trend toward."

Another columnist argues:

By fighting the mandate needed to make private insurance solutions work, and doing nothing to ease the health cost burden on everyday Americans, you'll hasten the day when the public throws up its hands and says, "Just give us single-payer and price controls." Don't think the anti-government wave this fall won't reverse itself on health care if the most private sector-oriented health care system on earth keeps delivering the world's costliest, most inefficient care.

The current unrealistic threats by the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives to repeal the 2010 health care reform bill are good political theater, but will likely backfire. Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of how our federal government works, knows that Republicans do not have the numbers they need to repeal. They don't have a veto-proof majority in the House and are in the minority in the Senate. Additionally, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which typically acts as a referee in the partisan atmosphere of Congress, has indicated that a repeal of the health care bill would increase the national deficit by $230 billion.

What is ironic about the last election, which was supposedly about run-away government deficits, is that Republicans have supported positions that drastically increase the national debt. The extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich have added far more to the long-term debt of our nation than Obama's 2009 stimulus plan. The CBO estimated that the health care reform bill would actually decrease the deficit by $143 billion in its first 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years. In an upcoming post, I'll go into some of the details of the new law, including its cost savings, but the fact of the matter is that repeal would drive us further into debt, notwithstanding doing nothing to improve our antiquated health care system including helping the tens of millions of uninsured working-class Americans and their families.

Isn't it ironic that the new House majority voted against a measure this week that would have required all Representatives to disclose whether they would accept their government-provided health insurance? As Rep Steve Israel (D-N.Y), stated, "every Republican voted to hide their own government health care, while many of them are pledging to repeal health care for everyone else." Don't we think it is relevant for constituents to know whether their representative is accepting government-sponsored health care? Nonetheless, repeal isn't going to happen. The Supreme Court is really the only mechanism by which the Obama heath care reform bill (and Romneycare) can be annulled at this point. And in the remote chance that occurs, it will probably lead us to something that is actually closer to what conservatives label as "socialized medicine."

They Were For It Before They Were Against It

During the early 1990s, when President Bill Clinton tasked First Lady Hillary Clinton to lead the effort to overhaul the nation's health care system, Republicans proposed an alternate idea to Hillary's proposal, which envisioned a larger role for government in health care than what President Obama signed into law last March. That Republican proposal was a health insurance mandate that would require all Americans to have coverage, precisely the same obligation that Republicans have vehemently lambasted in the recent health care reform bill. Polled individually, all of the major elements of Obama's health care overhaul are very popular with the notable exception of the health insurance mandate. You'll be hard-pressed to find a politician or citizen anywhere who thinks it is a bad idea that parents can keep their children covered under their insurance plan until age 26, or that insurance companies can no longer deny children with pre-existing conditions coverage, or that insurance companies cannot cancel someone's plan when they become ill.

In 2006, then-Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed into law a program that is strikingly similar to the Obama plan. Romney's plan included the same health insurance mandate that is present in the 2010 bill. At the time, Romney defended it as "a personal responsibility principle." Like President Obama's plan now, the Romney plan relied solely on private insurers to cover the uninsured. Both also included other health insurance industry regulations to prevent the exclusion or denial of care to sick people and subsidies for low-income individuals. Both are conservative, market-based ideas that don't expand government-run health insurance. Since then, Romney has changed his tune significantly.

Other prominent Republican politicians, including LDS Church members Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Sen. Mike Crapo of Idaho, have also previously co-sponsored health care legislation that included a health insurance mandate. Even Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, whose victorious election last year was trumped by Republicans as a statement against the Democrats' health care reform effort, supported the health insurance mandate in Romney's plan when he was a state-level legislator. "In Massachusetts, it helped us deal with the very real problem of uncompensated care," Brown said. So if Republicans were for it then, why are they against it now? Sen. Brown odiously tried to reconcile his support of the health insurance mandate in Massachusetts with his opposition to President Obama's plan as a states' rights issue.

Romney viciously accused President Obama of "betray[ing] his oath to the nation," after the bill was passed. Romney's attacks on the 2010 health care reform bill have been relegated to hyperbole and focus on minutia. Meanwhile, he has had to defend himself against (accurate) accusations from other Republican contenders that his health care plan hardly differs from Obama's. The bottom line is that Obamacare practically equals Romneycare.

Republican opposition to Obama's health care bill (particularly for those who previously supported the individual mandate) is nothing more than politics at its best. Romney is clearly running for the Republican nomination in 2012 and needs to run as fast and as far away from his middle-of-the-road accomplishments as governor to please the increasingly radical and detached-from-reality base of the Republican Party. We live in an age where the opposition party will do anything to prevent the President from having a "success," even if it is a success with an idea they originally devised. How else do you explain Republicans' attempts to block legislation like the new START treaty with Russia, the 9/11 first responders health care bill, the repeal of DADT? These last three measures had the broad support of the American public and the relevant experts. Yet at the end of the Lame Duck Session of Congress, you had Republicans complaining about Democrats' attempts to push through these bills, which had been on the docket (and blocked by Republicans) for months. We truly live in an era of a sad state of affairs where the public good is regularly set aside for political theater and personal and political agendas.

Kevin Drum of Mother Jones Magazine has summed up some of my feelings of the current political state of affairs quite well:

I can't remember when I've been more demoralized about American governance. I have this overwhelming feeling of barnacles building up relentlessly, untouchable because of interest group pressure on both left and right, and a complete inability and/or unwillingness to address any of it. Democrats have some things they want to do, but in addition to satisfying their own interest groups they have to settle for third or fourth best policies because Republicans have simply decided they don't care about anything except tax cuts for the rich, hating gay people, and bennies for favored industries. In the middle of a massive recession they opposed a stimulus bill. In the aftermath of a financial crisis they opposed a financial reform bill. In the face of skyrocketing healthcare costs they demagogued modest cuts in Medicare spending. They spent months negotiating a spending bill — transparently, openly, via the ordinary committee process — and then killed it just because it would annoy Harry Reid. Global warming is a hoax, gay recruits will destroy the military, and creationism is an appropriate topic for high school biology classes. Our infrastructure is crumbling and our schools are mediocre, but the creeping encrustation of government prevents anything serious from being done about either. We're in hock to Middle Eastern theocracies for our oil, and the laughable answer from the right consists entirely of nukes and a bit of marginal extra drilling around the periphery of America. An arms control treaty that could have been negotiated by Ronald Reagan himself [was] unsure of passage because too many Republican senators deem[ed] it unsafe to risk the wrath of Fox News or their tea party constituencies.

Ill 9/11 First Responders and Broken U.S. Healthcare

The following interview conducted by Jon Stewart of four 9/11 first responders clearly exemplifies the health care crisis that so many working class Americans currently face or are at risk of facing. At about 3:55 in the clip, the panelists discuss the fact that they lost their health insurance coverage after they had to stop working as police officers, fire fighters, etc, due to severe illnesses they contracted as a result of working in the toxic dust at Ground Zero. After leaving the workforce, they had to fight their terminal diseases while fighting to get workman's comp to pay for their expensive medical treatments. Although the clip focuses on the 9/11 First Responders Health Care Bill, the problem is the same for most Americans who lose their jobs after becoming seriously ill. Once the job is lost and the health insurance is dropped, what is severely ill person to do?

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9/11 First Responders React to the Senate Filibuster
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Morality and the Health Care Crisis in America

I've been meaning to do a post about health care ever since the health care reform bill was debated and passed last year. I'll approach health care in two posts, first by discussing American health care (pre-reform) and the immorality of the status quo. In my next post, I'll compare the varying types of universal health care systems and examine the recent health care reform bill.

Health care reform is not just a political issue for me- it's also a moral issue. There is nothing more fundamental to one's well-being than their health. One's ability to obtain an education, to acquire and hold a job, and to sustain a family is entirely dependent on their physical and mental health. If we, as the world's most wealthy country, were happy with the pre-reform status quo, with leaving millions of lower and middle working class Americans either under-insured or uninsured, and were content with a system that bankrupts people when they become sick and lose their jobs as a result, then we've had a significant moral lapse. As I pointed out in a previous post about a "culture of life," can one truly claim to be "pro-life" when they are content to let people become sick and die for lack of treatment in the wealthiest, most powerful country the world has ever known? I've actually had some conservative friends argue as a counterpoint that anyone can be seen in an E.R. (at taxpayer expense), thus there is no need for reform. E.R. access as the sole point of access to health care is woefully inadequate. So, say someone has cancer, do you think they can go to the E.R. for chemotherapy? It doesn't take a health care professional to explain that the E.R. can handle only emergencies, not medium and long-term care for the seriously and chronically ill, not to mention cost-saving and life-enhancing preventative medicine.

Let's briefly examine health care in America, pre-reform. (It's worth noting the central features of the new health care reform bill will not be fully enacted until 2014.) In 2000, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked the world's health care systems based on multiple criteria, including the overall level of population health (i.e. infant mortality rates, rates of preventable disease), health care inequalities within the population, and responsiveness of the health care system. The U.S. was ranked at number 37, just behind Costa Rica and barely ahead of Slovenia and Cuba. It was a dismal, albeit unsurprising showing for the U.S. health care system. Before examining some of the major problems with pre-reform U.S. health care, it is important to point out that the WHO rankings were not a condemnation of U.S. health care professionals, who are among the most highly skilled in the world. When opponents of health care reform claim that the U.S. has the best health care in the world, perhaps what they are referring to is American medical professionals, who are truly among the best. However, the debate about America's health care system is not about the skill set of America's health care professionals- it is primarily a question of access. And when it comes to access, our system performs exceptionally poorly.

The approximately 45 million uninsured Americans predominantly come from households with at least one full-time worker. Most poor already have access to adequate health care through Medicaid, so health care reform was not about creating a new entitlement program for the poor, as some detractors claimed, but was about ensuring access to adequate health care for America's working class. The pre-reform health care system is one in which the working poor and lower middle class disproportionally suffer from lack of access to adequate health care. Those affected by the health care reform bill are people whose employers do not provide health insurance, which is about 40% of America's work force. Factcheck.org offers a great statistical synopsis of the uninsured, setting the record straight for those who falsely assert that most uninsured are illegal aliens. According to a study cited by Factcheck.org, 79% of the uninsured are U.S. citizens. The other 21% are comprised of both legal and illegal immigrants. Twenty percent of the uninsured are children, meaning that millions of American children do not receive the routine pediatric care that is required to ensure that children have a good start a life, including vaccinations and key screenings for illnesses and birth defects. (Again- how can someone say they are "pro-life" when they don't have a problem with this situation?)

Here are a few more facts to consider:

• Prior to the recent recession, the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the U.S. was health care expenses. This is not an efficient way for a modern economy and society to operate; it contributed to the real estate crisis when many people had to sell their homes to pay off major medical bills because they were either uninsured or under-insured.
• The U.S. is the only industrialized country that does not have universal health care access for its citizens.
• The U.S. spends far more money on health care as a percentage of GDP (about 17%) than any other country, yet the overall level of our public health as measured by infant mortality, life expectancy, levels of preventable disease, etc, is significantly less than that of most other industrialized countries. In other words, we get much less bang for our health care bucks than do other modern countries.
• The often criticized National Health Service of the United Kingdom costs British taxpayers only about 7% of GDP compared to the 17% of GDP health care cost burden in the U.S.
• For decades, many health insurance companies in the U.S. have had morally reprehensible practices such as canceling insurance policies of individuals after they became seriously ill, denying coverage to people (including children) with pre-existing conditions, and placing annual and lifetime caps on benefits- an assault to the seriously and chronically ill. There are many documented cases of people actually dying after their insurance canceled their coverage and they had to stop receiving treatment because they couldn't afford to pay the bills (especially since most serious illnesses prevent people from being able to work).
  

My family's health insurance premium in 2010 was over $11,000. Fortunately, much of that was covered by my employer; however, I've subscribed to one of the least expensive health care plans that my employer offers. This doesn't include any dental coverage beyond the annual cleanings and has relatively high co-pays. Now, imagine a lower-working class employee with a family making $30,000 per year, who works for a small business that does not provide health benefits. There is really no way that employee can afford the full premium of my relatively inexpensive plan. If that employee wanted to purchase a plan comparable to mine, they would have to pay significantly more than the $11,000 that my plan cost because they would purchase insurance at the individual rate rather than the discounted group rates available to larger employers. So, in most cases, such a low income family would forgo health insurance.

I think it is frankly immoral for our country, the wealthiest on earth, to allow these types of situations to occur. The working-class breadwinner in this scenario, who is as hard-working as Americans who have health insurance, is forced to live in a situation where his/her family is one serious illness away from personal financial disaster. Because Medicaid will only cover those who have little or no assets (including home equity, retirement accounts, etc.) and practically no income, such a family would have to sell their house and stop working before they qualified for Medicaid. This scenario, which is all too typical in America today, has precisely the wrong incentive structure. The working poor shouldn't need to quit their jobs and sell their homes and other meager assets to qualify for Medicaid when they become ill. This situation is not only bad for those families, it is bad for our economy as a whole because it contributes bankruptcies, home foreclosures, and leads to reliance on government welfare programs.

We need to ask ourselves, why do we spend far more on health care per capita and as a percentage of GDP than the rest of the world, but have far poorer public health than other industrialized countries? Why do we accept a status quo where such a large portion of working Americans and their families cannot afford to purchase health insurance? I believe that the criteria for receiving adequate medial care should be based on the clinical need of the patient, not one's ability to pay for it.

Although the Law of Consecration was abandoned because of the early Saints' inability to adhere to it, the Lord's declarations are still relevant: "But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin," (D&C 49:20). Third Nephi chapter six, which discusses how the Nephites descended into wickedness in the run up to Christ's visit to the Americas, proclaims, "there became a great inequality in all the land," after the people became distinguished in ranks or classes by their riches and chances for learning. In contemporary America, a great inequality exists in the land with respect to the most basic of human needs- good health. And this is primarily due to a lack of access to adequate health care. Although the health care reform bill is imperfect, I'm very grateful that our lawmakers, after nearly a century of efforts to create universal health care in America, have finally acted to redress this great inequality.

The Church Supports Common Sense Principles of Immigration Reform

Unfortunately, I'm still mired in a ridiculous amount of school work, so this will be a short post. I wanted to highlight the following press release from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which demonstrates the Church's support for principles of reasonable immigration reform in the "Utah Compact." As you will notice, the Church's position is clearly divergent from the knee-jerk "deport them all" and "place landmines on the border" viewpoints of too many of our extremely conservative fellow citizens (ironically including many Latter-Day Saints). To me, the content of the Utah Compact is an adherence to the LDS principle of "moderation in all things." Extreme positions on immigration from both the far left and far right are unacceptable. One of the very few policy positions of our former president, George W. Bush, that I actually supported was his failed attempt at reforming our country's immigration system, which would have balanced the need for better enforcement while recognizing the reality on the ground, which is that millions of illegal or undocumented immigrants have truly assimilated into our society and are productive and valuable members thereof. Without further pontification on my part, here is the Church's press release and here is the official text of the Utah Compact.

Go Cougars!

According to a recent Wall Street Journal post, BYU ranked 11th in the eyes of recruiters, even ahead of prestigious schools like Cornell, MIT, and UCLA. (Harvard and Yale were not even on the top 25!) I've always felt that BYU was underrated in the U.S. News and World Report rankings, in part because of a higher drop out rate (due to a lot of women getting married, having babies, and quitting school). Go Cougars! BYU was also rated as America's most popular university, with popular being defined as the percentage of accepted students who actually enroll.

The September 23rd Health Care Milestone

September 23rd marked six months since President Barack Obama signed the new health care reform bill into law. The new law contains a plethora of measures that aim to reform and improve the overall quality and availability of health care in America. However, most of the law's measures did not go into effect immediately upon the bill's passage. The first major milestone occurred yesterday, on September 23rd, when several key measures were implemented, some affecting almost everyone, others only initially affecting those with new and heavily revised insurance plans (with similar changes affecting all plans a little further in the future). Here are some of the ones I believe are most important:

* The lifetime limit or cap on what an insurance company will pay to cover an individual's medical costs is being eliminated for plans issued or renewed on or after September 23rd. So if you get very sick and require extensive, lengthy, and costly treatment, you no longer have to worry about your insurance "capping out" when you need it the most.

* Free preventative care for those with plans issued or renewed on or after September 23rd.

* Annual limits can no longer be lower than $750,000 for plans issued or renewed on or after September 23rd. By 2014 annual limits will be entirely eliminated.

* Insurers can no longer deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions.

* Parents can keep their adult children on their health plans until age 26.

* Insurers can no longer cancel policies retroactively when a person becomes ill.

An Associated Press article has more details about these and other changes. Perhaps most significantly to some, health insurance benefit consulting companies have estimated that the cost impact of the new benefits from the health care law on insurance premiums will be relatively small. Some of the worst practices of health insurance companies, that have ruined the lives of many Americans, are coming to an end with these changes.

Seven Percent of Republicans Are Not Completely Out of Their Minds

A recent nationwide survey found that a majority of Republicans believe that Obama "sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world."

According to the poll, 14 percent of Republicans said that from what they knew of Obama, they thought such allegations were "definitely true"; 38 percent thought the allegations were "probably true." Meanwhile, 33 percent of Republicans thought they were "probably not true" and 7 percent thought they were "definitely not true."

Never mind the legitimate ideological differences over economic, education, immigration, and health care policy between conservatives and liberals. This polling, along with the whole right-wing narrative of President Barack Obama being a closet Islamic extremist (who wasn't born in the U.S.), who wants to destroy the U.S. from the inside out, goes a long way in showing that in much of today's electorate, there really is no basis for rational debate of the current issues. How can you hold a calm, rational, fact-based discussion about Obama's policies with someone who believes that Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists (and for many Republicans, this term is synonymous with al-Qaeda)? The answer is you can't.

And the crazed theories do not stop with Islamic extremism. A few minutes of FOX News will often teach you that Obama is a blood-thirsty communist-socialist whose policies are equal to those of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. No one on FOX News has been more diligent in making those comparisons to Obama than Glenn Beck. (Anyone who has studied political science and understands the actual definition of socialism realizes the vast differences between Obama's policies and socialism. That's a long story and perhaps will be the subject of another post. Nonetheless, in making these socialism comparisons, I love how the most brutal dictators of the last century are invoked. FOX News pundits would not arouse the conservative base if they compared Obama to say, Chancellor Merkel, Former Prime Minister Brown, or President Berlusconi, whose countries' policies are much closer to the true definition of socialism (but still not that close) than the U.S.)

The 93 percent of Republicans who believe that it is "definitely true," "probably true," or even "probably not true" (meaning there is still a chance) that President Obama sympathizes with Muslim extremists who want to impose Shari'a law globally, need to find a way to connect with reality, or they are guilty of some severe intellectual dishonesty.

It is one thing to question the President's policies based on one's political ideals. We all should be encouraged to develop our own informed view of our President's policies. And contrary to what I was told by many conservatives during the Bush years, there is nothing wrong with disagreeing with our President (they always invoked "Commander-in-Chief" in explaining why it was inappropriate to disagree with Bush). It is an entirely different thing to question his loyalty to and love of our country. There is absolutely no basis for these kinds of crazed theories being attached to President Obama. In many cases, it is nothing more than veiled bigotry or racism.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently stated that the best way to understand President Obama, as the president “is so outside our comprehension” that you can only understand him “if you understand Kenyan, anticolonial behavior.” Gingrich was commenting on an article written by right-wing extremist Dinesh D’Souza, who compared Obama to his Kenyan father in an article in Forbes Magazine, stating, “incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anticolonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.” Never mind that Obama never really knew his father as his father left him and his mother when Obama was age two. Gingrich and D'Souza have descended into baseless, deceitful, fear-mongering.

A recent article in the New York Times, which explored conservatives' ongoing efforts to create and define Obama's "otherness," pointed out that, per these efforts, "Mr. Obama’s alleged sympathy for so-called Muslim extremists who would desecrate the World Trade Center site, his socialist African ancestry and his early years in Indonesia — all of this creates a shadowy archetype that every conservative enclave, fiscal, foreign policy and religious, can find a reason to fear."

So in considering all of this, it is no wonder why only 7% of Republicans believe it is definitely not true that Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law throughout the world. This kind narrative of President Obama's "otherness" is being supported by some of the most prominent conservatives politicians and has the backing of many conservative special interest groups. From the accusations that Obama was not born in the U.S., and the assertions that he is (or was) secretly a Muslim, to Gingrich's latest pontification about Obama's "Kenyan anticolonial behavior," conservatives are doing anything but focusing on the issues that matter most to Americans. So if you are part of that 7%, I urge you to help ground the other 93% in some semblance of reality when it comes to these attacks. Teach them the difference between attacking the dignity of our President through the spread of these rumors (which is an unpatriotic thing to do) verses critiquing his policies.

An Act with a Vision for the Future

Even prior to its enactment, there has been much heated opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a.k.a. President Obama's economic stimulus plan. Opponents have tried to smear it as a bill laden with earmarks (which is not true) that wasted money on pointless projects. Opponents have also (correctly) pointed out that it is mostly paid with borrowed money (I'll come to that later). However, the Recovery Act has gone further than any prior piece of legislation in the past half century in revolutionizing antiquated areas of our economy. And it truly has kept the economy from the brink of depression.

Perhaps the keystone effort of the stimulus plan was its investment in a variety of projects that will make America more energy efficient and less dependent on carbon fuels (and the despotic regimes that supply us with them.) One of my key concerns in the 2008 Presidential Election was selecting a candidate who would make energy independence their priority. This act was a big step in the right direction for a green energy economy and the investments it makes in new technologies has the potential to create tens of millions of jobs.

The notion that private corporations are primarily interested in the short term (to satisfy shareholders) and do not invest nearly enough in research and development that would primarily provide benefits in the long run is a well-established economic idea. Some of the most important inventions of the past 100 years, that are the backbone of today's economy, have been supported by government-funded research. The cellular phone, computers, the Internet, and GPS are but a few of the most important inventions that have come about in large part due to research performed by U.S. taxpayer-funded scientists and engineers. Corporate America's fiercest foreign competition significantly benefits from foreign government-sponsored research and development. A good example of this is Airbus, which is a consortium of French, British, German, and Spanish aerospace companies, that have received very heavy investment from their respective governments. As a result of all of the R&D and other investment European taxpayers made into Airbus, that company has now surpassed Boeing as the world's largest supplier of commercial airliners and has provided an incredible amount of high tech jobs to those countries. Perhaps the most important idea I learned in studying economics is the fact that more than anything else, new technology drives economic growth. Many if not most of the jobs lost during the Great Recession are not coming back. The way to get America back on its feet is to develop the technologies that will be the backbone of the future economy. We have plenty of tough competition. Europe, China, and India all invest a significant amount of money in research and development in support of their key industries. If America wants to lead in and reap the benefits of the future global economy, we must ensure we invest money into today's research that will be tomorrow's must-have technology. I cannot think of a better use of my tax dollars.

So in returning to the Recovery Act, a recent TIME Magazine article gave an impressive summary of what types of energy investments the Recovery Act is making.

The investments extend all along the food chain. A brave new world of electric cars powered by coal plants could be dirtier than the oil-soaked status quo, so the stimulus includes an unheard-of $3.4 billion for clean-coal projects aiming to sequester or reuse carbon. There are also lucrative loan guarantees for constructing the first American nuclear plants in three decades. And after the credit crunch froze financing for green energy, stimulus cash has fueled a comeback, putting the U.S. on track to exceed Obama's goal of doubling renewable power by 2012. The wind industry added a record 10,000 megawatts in 2009. The stimulus is also supporting the nation's largest photovoltaic solar plant, in Florida, and what will be the world's two largest solar thermal plants, in Arizona and California, plus thousands of solar installations on homes and buildings.

The stimulus is helping scores of manufacturers of wind turbines and solar products expand as well, but today's grid can only handle so much wind and solar. A key problem is connecting remote wind farms to population centers, so there are billions of dollars for new transmission lines. Then there is the need to find storage capacity for when it isn't windy or sunny outside. The current grid is like a phone system without voice mail, a just-in-time network where power is wasted if it doesn't reach a user the moment it's generated. That's why the Recovery Act is funding dozens of smart-grid approaches.

The Recovery Act's clean-energy push is designed not only to reduce our old economy dependence on fossil fuels that broil the planet, blacken the Gulf and strengthen foreign petro-thugs but also to avoid replacing it with a new economy that is just as dependent on foreign countries for technology and manufacturing. Last year, exactly two U.S. factories made advanced batteries for electric vehicles. The stimulus will create 30 new ones, expanding U.S. production capacity from 1% of the global market to 20%, supporting half a million plug-ins and hybrids. The idea is as old as land-grant colleges: to use tax dollars as an engine of innovation.

Recovery Act money was also used as follows:

- Tax cuts for 95% of working Americans (Federal taxes now are at the lowest rates they've been in over 50 years for middle class Americans, so please remind me what Tea Partiers are complaining about again?)
- Bailed out most state governments to avoid laying off hundreds of thousands of school teachers, police officers, fire fighters, and other state and local officials.
- Provided record amounts of unemployment benefits to record numbers of unemployed workers.
- Funded upgrades to roads, bridges (recall the Minneapolis I-35 bridge collapse), schools, airports (ever flown through JFK?), military bases (recall reports about the decrepit Fort Bragg barracks, among others).
- Computerized paper health care records system (to reduce redundant tests and errors caused by doctors with bad handwriting).
- Invested in public transportation, including high speed rails.

This act provided for a smart balance of near-term projects to help prevent the economy from suffering a complete and utter collapse while assisting those most vulnerable in the Great Recession (the unemployed) along with long-term investment that would lay the groundwork for our future economy. As Kristin Mayes, the Republican chair of Arizona's utility commission stated, "It will leverage a very different energy future... it really moves us toward a tipping point." As an older post pointed out, there are key economic indicators that indicate we have stepped back from the brink and are moving in the right direction.

Despite all of the carping by the Tea Party types about the federal deficit and its contribution from the Recovery Act, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has indicated that the Bush tax cuts are the single biggest contributor to the structural deficit. (Extending the Bush tax cuts would add $2.3 trillion to the 2018 debt. I really hate the term "Bush tax cut" because they really were not tax cuts, but tax deferrals as they were paid for with credit. Congress and former President Bush essentially extended America a loan that would need to be paid for by our children.) The next biggest contributor to the long-term deficit are the two current wars. While the Bush Administration initially estimated that the Iraq War's cost would be less than $100 billion, latest estimates are that it will be over $3 trillion. Has the Recovery Act contributed to the deficit? Of course it has. However, a concept that was taught to me by multiple economics professors at the not-at-all-liberal Brigham Young University was that truly the only time deficit spending by a government is warranted is in the case of a severe economic recession (which we were in), in order to stimulate the economy. These not-at-all-liberal BYU economics professors also supported a volume of economic data and research that indicates such stimulus spending helped the economy recover during the Great Depression.

So the next time a FOX News pundit laments how your tax dollars were completely wasted in the "stimulus act" and that it had no net affect, you'll know their argument is hogwash.

"Ground Zero" Mosque

The Eleventh Article of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints states, "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may." [emphasis added]

It is frankly shocking and disappointing that about 70 percent of Americans apparently oppose the building of an Islamic center that will include a mosque in Lower Manhattan, according to a new poll. This opposition is rooted in bigotry and in ignorance. First a few facts - the proposed Islamic center is to be build on private property located a few blocks away from the World Trade Center site. It is not going to be built on the World Trade Center site. There are two other mosques located in Lower Manhattan very close to the WTC site. They have been there for decades and have not caused any controversy.

Prominent conservatives such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have publicly opposed the mosque. They argue that it is "insensitive" to families of 9/11 victims. Palin called it an "unnecessary provocation." Some conservatives have gone so far as to call it a "9/11 victory mosque." It is as if the opponents of this mosque believe that the individuals who would like to construct it had something to do with 9/11, an incredibly ridiculous and blatantly false notion. Though some 9/11 families have publicly opposed the construction of the mosque, other 9/11 families have supported it. I find it rather despicable when politicians use 9/11 as a political football. Palin and her ilk have selectively chosen to highlight the opinion of only some 9/11 families, while ignoring other 9/11 families to support their own intolerant beliefs.

Opposing the construction of this mosque because of its proximity to Ground Zero would be akin to opposing the construction of an LDS chapel in Enterprise, Utah because of its proximity to Mountain Meadow, where the 1857 massacre occurred. Enterprise is the closest town to the massacre site. The point is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints holds just as much responsibility for the Mountain Meadow Massacre as does the religion of Islam for 9/11 - that is to say, none. In both cases, members of those particular religions committed heinous crimes in the name of their religion, even while their acts were not sanctioned by their religion. Americans need to stop thinking myopically that all Muslims are terrorists. There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. Only a nano-fraction of them are involved with terrorist groups.

Latter-Day Saints are particularly familiar with this type of discrimination as we have encountered bigoted opposition to the construction of our temples all over the country, including in New York. The plan to construct a temple in White Plains, NY was eventually abandoned after opposition stopped progress at the zoning laws phase. The temple in Boston was nearly prevented from including a spire with the Angel Moroni statue on top due to local opposition, even though another church across the street has a comparably tall spire with a cross on top.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was absolutely right when he said that government has no place in saying where a house of worship should be located. Yesterday, President Barack Obama threw his support behind the construction of the mosque. At a White House dinner honoring the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, a function that has been held since Thomas Jefferson was in the White House, President Obama stated:

This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are... Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam — it is a gross distortion of Islam. In fact, Al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion, and that list includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.

Muslims serve honorably in all parts of our government - in the military, in Congress, in our intelligence services, in police departments, etc. Why would we show such disrespect and intolerance for individuals who are just as much citizens of this country as anyone else? The Eleventh Article of Faith summarizes this issue better than anything else. We should truly allow our fellow citizens the right to worship "how, where, or what they may." Those who are trying to prevent the new Lower Manhattan mosque's construction are abandoning the principles of liberty and freedom upon which our country was founded.

Climate Change is Happening

Last February, I experienced "snowmageddon" on the East Coast. I recall during that time reading a news article about some conservative politicians' gleeful mocking of former Vice President Al Gore and the concept of global warming; they claimed that the blizzards and record snowfalls were evidence that global warming does not exist. Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma and his family built an igloo on the Washington Mall and placed in front of it a cardboard sign that read, "Al Gore's new home," and "honk if you [heart] global warming." Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina tweeted that day, "it's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle.'" However, ignorance must truly be bliss for these senators. As Think Progress pointed out, "scientists have been warning for decades that global warming would increase the severity of winter storms." These Republican senators' actions further demonstrate their myopia in their focus on a single weather event (or 2 weather events) and slightly colder than normal temperatures over a short period for a very small geographic area (compared to the entire planet).

The bottom line is that no single weather event, including a hot spell or a cold spell are evidence supporting or contradicting the theory of global warming. Global warming adherents would be making a similarly flawed argument if they indicated that the recent heat wave in the East Coast, by itself, was evidence of the existence of global warming.

However, scientists have just reported that the first six months of 2010 have been the warmest on record, and that 2010 is on track to become the hottest year since global average temperature records were kept. In seeking evidence for or against global warming, scientists look at trends, not single data points. They examine global temperatures, not just the weather in the U.S. (as ethnocentrists Inhofe and DeMint apparently enjoy doing). The science of greenhouse gases is very well established, especially with respect to carbon dioxide. There is no significant dissent within the relevant scientific community of carbon dioxide's property as a heat-trapping gas.

Since I am not a climate scientist, or any type of scientist, I kindly refer you to the official statements and consensus opinions of the most distinguished and relevant scientific bodies in America:

Most US climate scientists belong to the American Geophysical Union. Their statement indicates that "the Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and warming..." and that the warming is "best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."

The American Meteorological Society's statement also affirms that global warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity.

The US National Academy of Science, which was established by Congress to provide scientific advice to Congress and is comprised of the most distinguished scientists in the country, also published a statement affirming the existence of climate change. It concludes that "emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate," and that "emissions reductions larger than about 80 [percent]... are required to approximately stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations for a century or so."

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has issued a number of statements, including this one, which indicates that,

The concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide-- derived mostly from the human activities of fossil-fuel burning and deforestation... is higher than it has been for at least the past 650,000 years... Thousands of respected scientists at an array of institutions worldwide agree that major health and economic impacts are likely unless we act now to slow greenhouse gas emissions.

Finally, and perhaps most significantly, a joint statement of 18 different American scientific societies, whose scientists are involved in research relevant to climate change and its effects, produced this consensus statement, that "observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver."

Virtually every relevant authoritative scientific organization in the country has demonstrated its consensus with the global climate science community that global warming is occurring, that it is due to human activity, and that if we do not curtail our greenhouse gas emissions, we will probably experience drastic changes in our environment with adverse impacts on human health and prosperity. The mainstream media, which generally seeks to capitalize on any controversy by inflating it in order to increase their ratings, gives climate skeptics ample opportunity to confuse the public by allowing them to make statements unsubstantiated by climate scientists. The result has been a confounded and divided public on the issue, with politicians using it as a political football rather than focusing on the facts.

For those who are interested in seeing some of the data with their own eyes, the following are links to measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide and global temperature:

Carbon Dioxide Measurements (the ice core records are particularly interesting)

Global Temperature Data

FAQ on Global Warming by the National Climate Data Center

Illegals Offer Their Jobs Back to Real Americans

I'm sure we've all heard conservatives lament about how illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs. Well here is an incredible opportunity for real Americans to take back the jobs illegals have taken from us. According to United Farm Workers, a labor union for agricultural laborers, over 50% of farm laborers in the US are undocumented (a.k.a. illegal) immigrants. The UFA has created a website devoted to helping legal Americans find work in the agriculture sector as laborers. So please tell all of your unemployed family members and friends to visit this website so they can take back an American job from an illegal immigrant.

The website is not a joke. Here is the UFA's statement on the issue:

There are two issues facing our nation--high unemployment and undocumented people in the workforce--that many Americans believe are related.

Missing from the debate on both issues is an honest recognition that the food we all eat - at home, in restaurants and workplace cafeterias (including those in the Capitol) - comes to us from the labor of undocumented farm workers.

Agriculture in the United States is dependent on an immigrant workforce. Three-quarters of all crop workers working in American agriculture were born outside the United States. According to government statistics, since the late 1990s, at least 50% of the crop workers have not been authorized to work legally in the United States.

We are a nation in denial about our food supply. As a result the UFW has initiated the "Take Our Jobs" campaign.

Farm workers are ready to welcome citizens and legal residents who wish to replace them in the field. We will use our knowledge and staff to help connect the unemployed with farm employers. Just fill out the form to the right and continue on to the request for job application.

Pregnant Rape Victims Should Turn Lemons into Lemonade- Sharron Angle

Tea Party extraordinaire and Nevada Republican candidate for US Senate Sharron Angle recently told a reporter that she thinks teenage rape victims should make "a lemon situation into lemonade" by carrying their pregnancies to term. This radical does not think that there should be a legal abortion exception for rape or incest. Instead, she thinks these situations should be left solely to Divine Providence.

Questioner: What do you say then to a young girl... when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby?

Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.

Her interview with radio talk show host Bill Manders goes even further:



I can respect someone's view when they feel that the government should prevent elective abortions (though I may not agree with it- as I stated in my Culture of Life posts, I am neither Pro-Choice, nor Pro-Life as I have not completely decided my view of the government's role in regulating elective abortion). But to say that a girl who has been raped by her father cannot have the option to an abortion, that the government and society will compel that girl to carry her pregnancy to term, is truly cruel and unusual punishment. (Of course a pregnancy resulting from a rape should not automatically result in an abortion. The point is that especially in such a scenario, the decision should lie with the victim, not with the government.) Sharon Angle is nut to espouse such a view. But I'm grateful she's being honest about what she believes. A simple examination of some of her public statements shows she is absolutely a far right-wing radical. She's in favor of abolishing Social Security. She recently said that the unemployed were "spoiled," and that as senator, she would do nothing to help with unemployment.



The good news is that Sen. Harry Reid is now leading in the polls, because of a recent focus on Angle's extreme policy positions.