Romney to Israel "your country right or wrong"

If I were a patriot, in the sense of one who prioritize the value and importance of my own country over all other countries and one who holds the belief that my country had a special status in the world, what Mitt Romney embraces as American exceptionalism, I would be outraged at Romney's recent statements in Israel. He states that he would never publicly criticize Israel. That's great if you're an Israeli patriot, but for an American president to give up the right to publicly critique another country takes a basic diplomatic tool out of America's foreign-policy toolbox. It is a lie when Romney suggests that all options for dealing with Iran should be on the table, when at the same time he is taking options off the table. 

Romney might say that he would criticize Israel but not in public (I don't know if he would say this or not) and while that is fine there are times when speaking critiques of your friends in public has the potential to give you more standing when critiquing your enemies. While this type of “option” does not fit with the bullying, world domination attitude that Romney usually projects, it is an option which he has taken off the table.

The “don't tell American what we can and cannot do” crowd should be incensed. I would be very interested to here of any conservative blog that took issue with Romney for saying he would never publicly critique Israel.

Romney's time in Israel deserves critique for many things, for instance,  his fundraising from foreign millionaires, and his racist comments about the failure of Palestinian development. But the squaring of American exceptionalism with a blanket no public  criticism of Israel policy deserves the concern of American conservatives.

Obamacare, Broccoli, and Health Freedom

With the Supreme Court ruling the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare is back in the public eye. The attention has focused on the individual mandate to buy healthcare insurance, or should we now say the tax on those who choose not to buy health insurance. This of course has been the most controversial, and in many ways the most important element of the act. This brings us closer to the ideal that many of us hold of universal health coverage. I for one don't particularly like the specific mechanism here which is to require individuals to bear the burden of their insurance. I believe that universal coverage is a responsibility of society as a whole. Every society has a responsibility to care, to the best of its ability, for its sick, its  poor, it's old, and it’s young.

Society's responsibility does not negate individual's responsibility for their own health. Society’s responsibility is to give individuals the tools for self-care and access to care. But as the old adage goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Individuals are responsible for drinking. All the time we make decisions with health ramifications. Do we smoke, do we wear a motorcycle helmet when riding, do we drive or walk, do we drink soda pop, eat trans fats or too much meat? Do we eat our vegetable, exercise regularly, have close friends, relax, and do things that have meaning in our lives?

Should buying broccoli be mandatory? Many of those who argue against the individual mandate, we can now call it the uninsured tax, have claimed that if this is legal it would be legal to mandate that people buy broccoli. Of course the absurdity of this claim is that of all the things a government might do, progressive or reactionary, making its citizens buy broccoli would be close to the last thing they would ever do. I am probably one of the few people who think this would be a rather good idea.

Let me explain, I am for individual health choice, I believe strongly that people should be able to decide whether to eat broccoli, or drink high fructose corn syrup out of a liter bottle. I don't believe that individuals should be required to have broccoli in the refrigerator at all times. But I do believe that when individuals are making the choice between broccoli and high fructose corn syrup, incentives matter. Incentives are among the tools society gives individuals for making our choices. We presently incentivize corn, that is to say, farmers are subsidized to grow it. Now I have nothing against a good corn tortilla, or some fresh polenta, but I would gladly pay a bit more for those treats, and a bit less for my broccoli.

Cost is one form of incentive, information is another potentially important form. Most of what we hear about food comes from the food industry itself. Even the information we get from the USDA is heavily influenced by the food industry. I wonder if perhaps there is just a little bias in that information. It's only when we can fully and fairly know and understand the potential health benefits and health risks in our choices that we can make truly free choices.

I would support agricultural subsidies shifting from corn to garden vegetables such as broccoli. This of course raises the risk that industry would find a way to extract sugar from broccoli stems, and feed broccoli to cattle. I think we’re a long way off from that. But more importantly, I believe that there is an important public health responsibility, for more, more accessible and more accurate nutritional information, and for limits to be placed on the corporate promotion of products that are health hazards. I'm not overlooking the difficult challenges in getting solid science around nutritional information. In fact the debate about what is solid scientific information should be a central part of a healthy democracy. Regrettably in the area of democracy like the area of health, we are short on the tools needed for us to take individual responsibility. 

Getting back to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it strikes me that it suffers from very little in the way of tools for health self care responsibility. Nonetheless, one way in which the act allows for insurance companies to incentivize self responsibility, is excluding tobacco use from its list of pre-existing conditions. What this means is that an insurance company can charge more to a smoker than a non-smoker. Of course if you're concerned about mandatory broccoli, and if requiring people to pay more for insurance if they smoke is legal, why not require people to pay more for insurance if they don't eat broccoli. Ironically, financial incentives are more likely to be successful among those who have money than among those who don't. Smoking is ironically more common among those who don't have more money.

Another step that Obamacare takes towards improving health care choices is its research initiative. This initiative provides funds for what is called patient centered outcome research, and is basically an attempt to look at health outcomes of various clinical interventions.  This research has the potential to be translated into tools to help patients choose among a variety of health care options. If it does this that would be phenomenal. Unfortunately it is only a potential. It could lead to mandate certain standards of care. While standards are useful, I don't believe that one standard applied to all individuals health needs, and standards that prevent experimentation and exploration have the potential to do more harm than good.

The political joke in the opposition to Obamacare is that many things in the program were borrowed from Republican policymakers, only to be later oppose those same policymakers. Individual mandates? Great idea, thanks Mittens. Well I'm going to do it again, I'm going to borrow couple ideas put forth by my good friend  Newt Gingrich. Cut straight from the cloth of his “plan to save lives and save money”:

• Reward health and wellness by giving health plans, employers, Medicare, and Medicaid more latitude to design benefits to encourage, incentivize, and reward healthy behaviors.
• Invest in research for health solutions that are urgent national priorities. Medical breakthroughs–ones that prevent or cure disease rather than treating its symptoms–are a critical part of the solution to long-term budget challenges. More brain science research, for example, could lead to Alzheimer’s Disease cures and treatments that could save the federal government over $20 trillion over the next forty years

When it comes to cost, Obamacare is at best a Band-Aid on a hemorrhage. If we could really implement these two ideas from Mr. Gingrich we might be able to make a real dent the cost of health. The other cost care challenges are to remove the profiteering of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and to move away from a fee for service system.

Recalls, corporate money, and the future

All the votes are not accounted, but things are far along that I feel safe in expressing my disappointment. The union busting governor of Wisconsin seems to have weathered the recall.there are a handful of things I want to say:

First I want to extolled the virtue of the right to recall. Without a doubt many will have voted against the recall only because they feel once someone is elected they should have the right to a full term. I would agree that people deserve a fair chance. But a fair chance is not necessarily a full-term. If our system deserves to be called representative, when fundamental issues are at stake, and elected officials do not represent, the principle of recall is essential for democracy. my view is that there are not enough efforts to recall politicians. and I thank our friends in Wisconsin for stretching that democratic muscle, even if it was not strong enough.

The second thing I want to say is that corporate money in elections is really scary. It is not so much that votes can be bought, but that vast amounts of public airways can be dominated. We are just at the beginning of the effects of the Citizens United case. We the people may lose all semblance of any real say in elections.but in spite of this I have at least a modicum of optimism. I believe it is possible for campaigns to overspend.I believe it is possible for people to get smart enough to see past the ads. Hegemony is not easy to break and a highly monied hegemony in a mass media culture is even harder to break. But I continue to have faith, something will continue to shine through.

I do think that things are fairly gloomy for people, and the planet, and I believe that right-wing ideology makes it that much more difficult for things to improve. Even the so-called left, in the hands of moderate Democrats continue to cut into civil liberties, and basic rights. I don't know how to get past the dominant political hegemony that we are facing.

I believe that to do so we will have to think creatively. We may have to come up with new political tools, and we may need to reach beyond that, to new economic tools, new sociocultural forms. This may require tremendous flexibility of thinking in order to invent something new that has the potential of making the difference. But being inventive raises the risk of coming up with false solutions, things that don't work. I believe that's the risk will have to take.

What I recieved on Memorial Day.

I received a Memorial Day e-mail message from my Senator. her message shown here in italics is mixed with my comments in normal type.

honoring their sacrifice:
On this Memorial Day, I want to extend a most heartfelt thanks to the brave men and women who have served, and continue to serve, in our Armed Forces.
If you want to thank them then do all you can to bring them home. You would not thank someone by pushing them under a bus, nor would you thank them by sending them off to war.

When they chose to step forward and answer the call of duty and protect our nation,
If it is to protect our nation, what are they doing on the other side of the planet stirring up antagonisms against our nation?

 they and their families sacrificed everything. We should all be thankful for what they do and what they have done.
Why should we be thankful for those who act to destroy countless lives of poor people in countries on the other side of the planet. I don't buy the lies about nation building. If nations are built in a way that benefits their people, this happened in spite of not because of the soldiers we send.

As you may have heard, last week, an Army National Guard unit from Michigan, the 1-126 Calvary of Dowagiac, was hit with two roadside bombs while on patrol in Afghanistan. Ten soldiers were injured, one severely, but thanks to the unit’s courage and selfless heroism, no one was killed.
I have sympathies for anyone wounded in violence, even those who provoke it with their own violence. How many of these 10 were just out of high school?  How were they conned into that racket you call war? And how does becoming fodder for a roadside bomb constitute selfless heroism?

 We have many other Michigan service members who are recovering from the wounds they received while fighting for our country, and my thoughts and prayers go out to them and their families.
I would pray also for their victims.

This is the first Memorial Day in almost a decade that we have not had troops in Iraq.
You have other names for them, advisers and security contractors.

As we continue to bring our soldiers home from Afghanistan, it’s absolutely essential that we honor our commitment to provide them with the very best care and support available.
I have worked in homeless shelters and I know what this country does with its soldiers when it's done with them.

They’ve fought for us, and we need to keep fighting for them
They don't fight for me, I only give them the respect that any human deserves. That includes enough respect to tell them honestly that they are wasting their lives destroying other people lives

For those of you fortunate enough to spend this holiday with your family, I hope you’ll find a quiet moment to remember the troops who've made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our way of life.
What is this “way of life” you wish to protect? Certainly it is not our democracy this war and the tendency towards total war only erodes our democracy. Perhaps it's our addiction to oil. Why would we wish to protect a way of life that is destroying the planet? By “way of life” do you mean that urged to have power and dominate others? Are you perhaps talking about the “way of life” of the power elite and the super-rich?

To our men and women in harm’s way, our prayers are with you. Come home soon, and come home safely.
Asking them nicely will not work to bring them home, you know that. You at least could make a reasonable request to the commander-in-chief, but asking him nicely it's not likely to work either.

Sincerely,

Debbie Stabenow
United States Senator 
Sincerely, we should be outraged at the work of the US military.  "Yankees go home"

A bad immunization decision

Dr Shakeel Afridi  made a very bad immunization decision. Although his decision involved hepatitis vaccination it has implications for polio.

Eradication of polio would be a great human achievement. Only once before have human beings work together successfully to eliminate the disease from our planet. In many ways we are making progress in the efforts to eliminate polio. In January of this year India past the one-year mark for being polio free. So far this year there have only been 60 confirmed cases mostly in the three remaining endemic countries Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. Last year at this time there had been 165 cases. 

The original plan was to eliminate polio by the year 2000. A couple of years later the war in Afghanistan made the efforts to eliminate polio all that much more difficult. Successes are often followed by failures.  In 2010 devastating flooding in Pakistan led to major outbreaks.  Many places that have been polio free become reinfected from time to time. Most of the polio cases in Pakistan and Afghanistan are in the border regions between the two countries where infections in the knocked back and forth like a volleyball. 

Although we may be closer than we have ever been to the goal of eliminating polio this last bit may prove to be exceedingly hard. There is a problem of donor fatigue. The budget for the next few years stands at just over $2 billion, nearly $1 billion still need to be raised. The 2012 world polio eradication budget is $270 million short. Even the unfunded $2 billion budget is lacking resources for funding ongoing polio immunization in areas that are vulnerable to reinfection.

Beyond the financial struggle there is the very real challenge of conducting an immunization campaign in a war zone. At times the polio eradication campaign has been seen by some communities as a Western conspiracy. One of the stumbling blocks in Nigeria has been acceptance from some local Islamic leaders. Similarly the Taliban has an uneasy relationship with immunization efforts. Some Taliban have believed that immunization efforts were really a conspiracy to sterilize Muslim populations. Even though both the Taliban and local Islamic leaders in Nigeria have more recently supported immunization campaigns, “immunization efforts” are not always innocent and free of conspiracy.

Dr Shakeel Afridi was recently convicted of espionage by the Pakistani government. Afridi was involved in CIA efforts to look at DNA samples that were acquired from immunization needles in Abbottabad. The target of that search was DNA of children of Osama bin Laden. When the CIA identified that his children were in the area that helped in confirming their belief that they had found the compound where he was dwelling.  Although this DNA search apparently involved giving real hepatitis vaccinations Dr. Afridi acted in a way that violated multiple principles of medical ethics. One might try to justify many of these violations on the grounds of stopping Osama bin Laden. Patient privacy, for instance, is broken for much smaller police investigations. 

What is particularly objectionable, is that this fraudulent campaign has the potential to undermine polio eradication efforts. There has already been some suggestion of fear of immunization by people in tribal regions of Pakistan. The concern these people have is that the immunization campaign may be a front for an effort to track down Taliban leaders. Even a small amount of nonparticipation in the polio eradication campaign could allow the virus to harbor, and later breakout. We need to be vigilant against the possibility of even a small number of cases spreading to other countries and then like dominoes spreading beyond. At this point, such an outbreak could put back the eradication efforts by years, if not even leading to the collapse of the efforts altogether. Political enemies come and go, wars do not eliminate them. On the other hand, if eradicated, polio will not come back. 

Let's do a cost comparison. According to the website “cost of war” the cost of the Afghanistan war is now over 500 billion, so the ratio between the amount spent on this useless war and the amount still needed to eliminate polio, is greater than 500:1. Let's look at it another way, the Center for Defense Information estimates the cost of a team of four drones to be about $120 million (they typically fly in teams of4) a little more than two teams would cover the unmet polio eradication budget needs for 2012.

The CIA's program that used immunization to engage the DNA of children in tracking down and killing their father may have unforeseen ramifications regarding the effort to eliminate polio. The American war machine is not much on apologies, or paying for their mistakes, but in relationship to the Pentagon budget a couple hundred million dollars is hardly anything.

A Couple of Outrageous Proposals Regarding Facebook

With radio news time monopolized by Facebook “going public”a radical idea came to me. I want to raise the question who should own Facebook. We know that “going public” is a euphemism for being up for sale to the general public. But the general public won't be buying Facebook, only those with the resources and inclination will purchase any of the stock, and only those of the 1%, or some fraction of a percent will own any significant amount of the company.

The way I look at it, Facebook has, for better or worse, become the global village. Perhaps this overstates it a bit. Maybe it is the Internet as a whole that deserves to be called the global village, in that case Facebook has at least become the social gathering place at the center of the town, the Zocalo, the Piazza, the Agoura. In referring to the Agoura, that place in ancient Athens that is often translated as “the marketplace” I am referring not to that buying and selling side of the Agoura, but that place for popular assembly and political discussion that was quite important to early Greek democracy.

By its very nature Facebook has to be a monopoly. Sure there are cracks, twitter and Google chrome plus. But Facebook holds the center, and to function well as a digital Agoura a single center is appropriate. As a public service monopoly public ownership is appropriate. To quote Tom Johnson the mayor of Cleveland from 1901 to 1909 

“I believe in the ownership of all public service monopolies for the same reason that I believe in municpal ownership of waterworks, of parks, of schools. I believe in the municipal ownership of these monopolies because if you do not own them, they in turn will own you. They will rule your politics, corrupt your institutions and finally destroy your liberties”

To the extent that Facebook is part of a global village, that village is the municipality that should own Facebook, not its rich and it's investing aristocrats.

So let me suggest two proposals:

One proposal is out right expropriation. Since Facebook is based in the United States this would have to be in action of the United States, or perhaps the state of California. Were I to look for case law I would turn to the laws of eminent domain. If the space is needed for a purpose of greater public good eminent domain allows the state to take control of that space. My argument is that global democratic and full of Facebook is a far greater public good than whatever will come from its private ownership.

Once expropriated, Facebook in this scenario should be turned over to its participating members on a one-person one-vote basis. I imagine that there may be a need for a careful and lengthy constitution writing process. My readers will no doubt have a number of questions and concerns about this proposal. We could spend quite some time on these issues, but for the moment I will concede that the biggest hindrance is that neither the United States legislature nor any legislative body within its boundaries is likely to take such action in any foreseeable future, and even if this were in some way possible we still have a conservative court to contend with.

There is a second path so let me move on to that. Gandhi often spoke of trusteeship. His notion was that wealthy owners should treat their wealth not as private gain, but as something held in trust for the people. Here we can imagine a split between the concepts of ownership and control. At the moment this is already the structure of the company as it moves forward with its IPO. My understanding is that while he will no longer hold the majority shares in Facebook, Mark Zuckerman will retain a majority of the decision-making power for the organization. On the surface this may seem less democratic. But it leaves an opening for a more democratic option. Mr. Zuckerman could give away his power to all the participants of Facebook. This would not necessarily mean, giving away stock he and the other investors could be "trustees". Again great effort would be needed to come up with a fair and truly democratic constitution. I think we are capable of this effort.

Here my readers are likely to think I've clearly gone mad, why would Zuckerman ever give away his power. I myself have often misquoted Frederick Douglass, “power concedes nothing without struggle” but what Douglas said was “power concedes nothing without demand.”  According to Frederick Douglass “it never did and it never will” but that's not exactly true. If we go back to the ancient Greeks, there is a man who freely conceded power and in so doing launched the Athenian democracy. Solon was the king of Athens. A true philosopher King, he decided that the state would be best served by democracy so he turned Athens over to its people and set off to travel around the world. In so doing Solon gave not just Athens, but the world a model of democracy that has shaped all future political this course.

If Mark Zuckerman with or without his new investors could turn over the whole organization to the people who use it he would be doing something of comparable greatness to the act of King Solon. Facebook users now number so many that if it became a democracy it would be the second largest democracy in the world, behind only India. At its present rate of growth, it won't be long until it's participants number more than the population of India. Facebook could emerge as one element of a truly democratic world. Mark Zuckerman, you can be that bold.

Unemployment and a shorter work week.

Economists often talk about unemployment and job growth rates. As we have things set up presently unemployment is a big issue. People's lives get devastated when they lose a job, suicide rates go up, domestic violence increases, unemployment is stressful and from that comes worse physical and mental health. But is this how we have to have things set up?

Let's look at what a job is. Jobs bring with them both positive and negative elements. Some people get to work, they have a dream job, it's what they want to do every day. Other people have to work, some people have to take any job there offered, others persist for years in a job they don't like. I could go on for quite a bit about the negative aspects of work, the alienation, the stress, the drudgery, the exploitation and oppression that can be found in the workplace. That's not the focus of what I'm writing about at the moment.

There are basically three positive aspects of a job. For the individual a job brings income, and meaning. For society or at least the employer, jobs are about productivity, making something or providing a service. For the economist the focus on jobs is about productivity and income. The importance of income may be predicated on the importance of productivity. I will start by discussing productivity and then employment, work as a source of meaning is a very important issue, perhaps the most important issue that we face regarding jobs, but the economists framework should be laid out first. I will take up meaning in a future posts.

Productivity refers to how much one person can get done.  As the productivity of workers goes up this is seen as good for the economy, the economy is more competitive. And all things being equal businesses can make more money. Increased production is how we measure the wealth of the society, and it generally equates increased profits for the business. 

 Unemployment is seen in a negative light because without a job one has less income to spend, and spending is also seen as good for the economy because when you spend you are consuming something that has to be produced. We can add the point that unwanted unemployment is bad for the individual who is unemployed, but this really doesn't seem to be the concern of economists. There are exceptions and for some economists caring about human beings appears to be their central concern. 

Productivity has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. As productivity continues to go up any one person can make more or provide more services than a similar person could have any time in the past. It looks to me like there is an obvious problem here. If society needs a certain amount of something and half the workers are needed to produce that that were needed 50 years ago then the other half would be unemployed. We have solutions to this problem of course, new products and increased consumption. 

At first that doesn't sound so bad. For economists this is how we measure the success of our society, but let's look at it more closely. Once you are well fed more food amounts to obesity and the many health problems that go with it. The increased productivity in everything from housing to cars to consumer goods may make these things readily available but in the process may be helping to destroy the earth.

I'm not saying there's nothing we should be producing more of, I'm all in favor of windmills and solar panels and experiments in algae diesel. Nonetheless in spite of exponential growth in these green areas of the economy the only dip we have seen in carbon emissions since the Kyoto protocol has been due to the global recession in 2008. 

The point is that generally speaking productivity is exceeding our needs. Any economist can tell you that excess production eventually leads to a downturn in the economy. The standard way of downturn takes shape is that people are laid off until inventories are lower.

There is another way that excess productivity could be dealt with. All of us could work less. I'm in favor of the six-hour workday, or the four day work week and as productivity continues to climb our time spent working should be shortened even further. The eight hour work day had become a general standard by the mid-1930s. With productivity more than doubling why can't we work less?

A shorter work week doesn't have to amount to less pay. A strong union movement would be able to win equal pay for less hours. Since we don't have a strong union movement it could come through federal legislation or funding. Since we don't have a worker friendly political system I suppose this isn't likely either. But as they say, power concedes nothing without a struggle, if you don't ask for it you're never going to get it.