Some Greatest Generation

This really upsets me. By a large margin, those over 65 dislike national health care. they've got theirs so screw everybody else.

The Despicable is Working

The retirement of Congressman David Obey, and his reasons for it, discourage me tremendously. The nihilistic, obstructionist strategy and behavior of the Republicans this term is working. The "throw the bums out" temper of the electorate favors the minority party. The more destructively the Republicans behave, the better for them at the polls it seems, at least so far. I hold out hope that as the elections come closer and as the voters pay more attention to what is going on, light will shine on what has been happening and why the government is so gridlocked. Needless to say, I am not holding my breath.

So Much for Libertarianism

This is a great take-down of a bankrupt set of beliefs. It all boils down to "I'm keeping more than I need or can use and screw you." This is just the start of a devastating litany:

Ah, the 1880s. I can hear people getting wistful from here.

A golden age in which people kept all that they earned. Of course, what they earned in the absence of those debilitating minimum wage laws could be nothing more than worthless tokens from the company store. What they earned from twelve hours of work seven days a week could be actually be a bigger debt to the company that sent you into a mine or factory and made you pay for the wear on your tools, the water you drank, the fuel for your lamp, even the blasting powder you used.

Another Way to Argue for Global Climate Change

When you look at it this way, it makes the deniers look even sillier. It is worth relisting here:

The following groups say the danger of human-caused climate change is a ... FACT:

U.S. Agency for International Development
United States Department of Agriculture
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration
National Institute of Standards and Technology
United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Energy
National Institutes of Health
United States Department of State
United States Department of Transportation
U.S. Geological Survey
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
National Center for Atmospheric Research
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
National Science Foundation
Smithsonian Institution
International Arctic Science Committee
Arctic Council
African Academy of Sciences
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Academia Brasileira de Ciéncias
Cameroon Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of Canada
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Académie des Sciences, France
Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina of Germany
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Accademia nazionale delle scienze of Italy
Indian National Science Academy
Science Council of Japan
Kenya National Academy of Sciences
Madagascar’s National Academy of Arts, Letters and Sciences
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academia Mexicana de Ciencias
Nigerian Academy of Sciences
Royal Society of New Zealand
Polish Academy of Sciences
Russian Academy of Sciences
l’Académie des Sciences et Techniques du Sénégal
Academy of Science of South Africa
Sudan Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Tanzania Academy of Sciences
Turkish Academy of Sciences
Uganda National Academy of Sciences
The Royal Society of the United Kingdom
National Academy of Sciences, United States
Zambia Academy of Sciences
Zimbabwe Academy of Science
American Academy of Pediatrics
American Association for the Advancement of Science
American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
American Astronomical Society
American Chemical Society
American College of Preventive Medicine
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Medical Association
American Meteorological Society
American Physical Society
American Public Health Association
American Quaternary Association
American Institute of Biological Sciences
American Society of Agronomy
American Society for Microbiology
American Society of Plant Biologists
American Statistical Association
Association of Ecosystem Research Centers
Botanical Society of America
Crop Science Society of America
Ecological Society of America
Federation of American Scientists
Geological Society of America
National Association of Geoscience Teachers
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Society of American Foresters
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics
Society of Systematic Biologists
Soil Science Society of America
Australian Coral Reef Society
Australian Medical Association
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Engineers Australia
Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies
Geological Society of Australia
British Antarctic Survey
Institute of Biology, UK
Royal Meteorological Society, UK
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
European Federation of Geologists
European Geosciences Union
European Physical Society
European Science Foundation
International Association for Great Lakes Research
International Union for Quaternary Research
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
World Federation of Public Health Associations
World Health Organization
World Meteorological Organization

The following groups say the danger of human-caused climate change is a ... FRAUD:

American Petroleum Institute
US Chamber of Commerce
National Association of Manufacturers
Competitive Enterprise Institute
Industrial Minerals Association
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association
Great Northern Project Development
Rosebud Mining
Massey Energy
Alpha Natural Resources
Southeastern Legal Foundation
Georgia Agribusiness Council
Georgia Motor Trucking Association
Corn Refiners Association
National Association of Home Builders
National Oilseed Processors Association
National Petrochemical and Refiners Association
Western States Petroleum Association

^{["FACT" organizations come from "Is There a Scientific Consensus on Global Warming?" at SkepticalScience.com. "FRAUD" organizations are petitioners v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.]}
Something liberals, especially non-scientists among us, often ask for is a place to visit to learn how to respond succinctly to the ever-changing claims of the climate-change deniers, particularly when those deniers are neighbors or somebody encountered at a party. One good spot is Skeptical Science.

It's not Obama's Deficit

Nothing like some facts and a chart to blast away all the BS arguments that pin the exploding budget deficit on Obama and the Democrats.

The events and policies that have pushed deficits to these high levels in the near term, however, were largely outside the new Administration’s control. If not for the tax cuts enacted during the presidency of George W. Bush that Congress did not pay for, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during that period, and the effects of the worst economic slump since the Great Depression (including the cost of steps necessary to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term.
While President Obama inherited a dismal fiscal legacy, that does not diminish his responsibility to propose policies to address our fiscal imbalance and put the weight of his office behind them. Although policymakers should not tighten fiscal policy in the near term while the economy remains fragile, they and the nation at large must come to grips with the nation’s long-term deficit problem. But we should not mistake the causes of our predicament.

 

Bad Idea: Selling Health Insurance across State Lines

Ezra Klein explains very patiently the consequences of  the Republican idea to bring down health-care costs by letting families and businesses buy health insurance across state lines. What a rip it would be. Can't the Repubs ever have a genuinely positive idea that would benefit all or most citizens?

Insurance is currently regulated by states. California, for instance, says all insurers have to cover treatments for lead poisoning, while other states let insurers decide whether to cover lead poisoning, and leaves lead poisoning coverage -- or its absence -- as a surprise for customers who find that they have lead poisoning. Here's a list (pdf) of which states mandate which treatments.
The result of this is that an Alabama plan can't be sold in, say, Oregon, because the Alabama plan doesn't conform to Oregon's regulations. A lot of liberals want that to change: It makes more sense, they say, for insurance to be regulated by the federal government. That way the product is standard across all the states.
Conservatives want the opposite: They want insurers to be able to cluster in one state, follow that state's regulations and sell the product to everyone in the country. In practice, that means we will have a single national insurance standard. But that standard will be decided by South Dakota. Or, if South Dakota doesn't give the insurers the freedom they want, it'll be decided by Wyoming. Or whoever.
This is exactly what happened in the credit card industry, which is regulated in accordance with conservative wishes. In 1980, Bill Janklow, the governor of South Dakota, made a deal with Citibank: If Citibank would move its credit card business to South Dakota, the governor would literally let Citibank write South Dakota's credit card regulations.

Climate Change Links

A commenter to a Bad Science posting pulled together these overpowering links on climate change. Good to have them all in one spot:

1. NASA http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_wa ... dbook.html http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Featur ... mingQandA/ http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif (The graph)
2. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html
3. World Meteorological Organization (WMO) http://www.wmo.ch/pages/about/wmo50/e/w ... ing_e.html
4. American Meteorological Society http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html
5. National Center for Atmospheric Research “How do we know Earth is warming now?” http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php
6. Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division “Climate Forcing” http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/climate.html
7. University Corporation for Atmospheric Research http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp
8. Jet Propulsion Laboratory - California Institute of Technology “Global Climate Change” “How do we know?” http://climate.jpl.nasa.gov/evidence/
9. American Geophysical Union (world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists) “Human Impacts on Climate” http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/clima ... ition.html
10. American Association for the Advancement of Science “The scientific evidence is clear: global climate change caused by human activities is occurring now” http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/cli ... tement.pdf http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/climate_change/
11. The United States Energy Information Administration “Greenhouse Gases, Climate Change, and Energy” http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochu ... apter1.htm
12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Report: Human activity fuels global warming” http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/climate.html
13. California Institute of Technology “How We Know Global Warming is Real” “The science behind human-induced climate change” http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/paper ... c_2008.pdf
14. Atmospheric Sciences - University of Illinois - Champaign “Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.” http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/research/01climate.html
15. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “Global Warming” http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457
16. The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centre “Climate change - the big picture” http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/p ... index.html http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/
17. The UK’s Royal Society “Climate change controversies: a simple guide” http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229
18. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland) “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report” http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-repor ... yr_spm.pdf
19. Japan Meteorological Agency “Global Warming Projection Vol.7” http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/produc ... dex-e.html
20. The Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society “Our climate has changed substantially.” “Global climate change and global warming are real and observable.” http://www.amos.org.au/publications/cid ... blications
21. Royal Society of New Zealand “The globe is warming because of increasing greenhouse gas emissions.” http://www.royalsociety.org.nz/Site/new ... m0708.aspx
22. National Geographic Magazine http://environment.nationalgeographic.c ... l-warming/
23. Scientific American Magazine http://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=globa ... ate-change