He's right: Strong Public Option or nothing

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Jack Lohman of Wisconsin

60 Votes????

Now they have them, and the Dems are in a more awkward position than ever. They don't want the power. They can pass meaningful healthcare reform if they want, but that's exactly what their funders don't want. So passing it makes them the enemy and not the R's.

We are in a difficult position. IF reform passes we want it to have a strong public option. But all indications are that it will have a mandate, a gigantic transfer of wealth from the lower- and middle-income people to the insurance industry.

Without the Public Option we should strive for nothing at all. Let's restart and protect the 15% that are uninsured and unemployed, and then move to a single payer system.

Remember that even when we get single payer, the battle is not over. The insurance companies are continuing to undermine the Canadian and UK systems, and they'll chip away at single payer even when installed here.

That's the way our corrupt political system works.

If the Dems were smart, they'd realize that they'd no longer need campaign cash if they just voted for the best interests of the country. Good health care and campaign reform would lock them in for decades.

Word: Bill Maher nails it

Image by jamestraceur via Flickr

Update the Second: Oh. My. God. This must be like Totally Righteous Anger day. Awesome.

Update: The always-excellent "Reality Based Community" has a modest recommendation for the USDA: For Christ's sake, do your goddamn job for once instead of sucking up to Big Meat, you gutless sacks of offal (paraphrasing a little).

Bill Maher, on fire:

New Rule: If America can't get its act together, it must lose the bald eagle as our symbol and replace it with the YouTube video of the puppy that can't get up. As long as we're pathetic, we might as well act like it's cute. I don't care about the president's birth certificate, I do want to know what happened to "Yes we can." Can we get out of Iraq? No. Afghanistan? No. Fix health care? No. Close Gitmo? No. Cap-and-trade carbon emissions? No. The Obamas have been in Washington for ten months and it seems like the only thing they've gotten is a dog.

Well, I hate to be a nudge, but why has America become a nation that can't make anything bad end, like wars, farm subsidies, our oil addiction, the drug war, useless weapons programs - oh, and there's still 60,000 troops in Germany - and can't make anything good start, like health care reform, immigration reform, rebuilding infrastructure. Even when we address something, the plan can never start until years down the road. Congress's climate change bill mandates a 17% cut in greenhouse gas emissions... by 2020! Fellas, slow down, where's the fire? Oh yeah, it's where I live, engulfing the entire western part of the United States!

We might pass new mileage standards, but even if we do, they wouldn't start until 2016. In that year, our cars of the future will glide along at a breathtaking 35 miles-per-gallon. My goodness, is that even humanly possible? Cars that get 35 miles-per-gallon in just six years? Get your head out of the clouds, you socialist dreamer! "What do we want!? A small improvement! When do we want it!? 2016!"

When it's something for us personally, like a laxative, it has to start working now. My TV remote has a button on it now called "On Demand". You get your ass on my TV screen right now, Jon Cryer, and make me laugh. Now! But when it's something for the survival of the species as a whole, we phase that in slowly.

Folks, we don't need more efficient cars. We need something to replace cars. That's what's wrong with these piddly, too-little-too-late half-measures that pass for "reform" these days. They're not reform, they're just putting off actually solving anything to a later day, when we might by some miracle have, a) leaders with balls, and b) a general populace who can think again. Barack Obama has said, "If we were starting from scratch, then a single-payer system would probably make sense." So let's start from scratch.

Even if they pass the shitty Max Baucus health care bill, it doesn't kick in for 4 years, during which time 175,000 people will die because they're not covered, and about three million will go bankrupt from hospital bills. We have a pretty good idea of the Republican plan for the next three years: Don't let Obama do anything. What kills me is that that's the Democrats' plan, too. . . . .

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/new-rule-if-america-cant_b_299383.html

Dept. of Inadvertant Admissions

Image by road_less_trvled via Flickr

Washington Post headline writer appears to understand the new reality better than most:

Prolonging Home Buyer Tax Credit Will Prolong Recovery

What does it mean when something that is supposedly the "American Dream" and that is already subsidized up the wazoo has to grab even more subsidies from the public purse at a time when that purse is full of nothing but IOUs?

What America needs is to do less fixating on increasing "home ownership" and a lot more thinking about how to stop subsidizing sprawl and how to improve the quality and habitability of rental units, starting with giving renters rights to make and recover their investments in conservation and efficiency improvements. As a society we treat renters like shiftless drifters and then we bemoan renters who are "not like us" and who won't invest in their neighborhoods.

Saving BIG on electricity co$t$: chest refrigerators

When is a fridge cooler than a freezer? When it helps prove the chest fridge concept! Image by libraryrachel via Flickr

Yup, that's "refrigerator," not freezer . . . . If I were making a list of way under-appreciated luxuries, in-home food refrigeration would probably be the top of my list. As a contributor to both higher life satisfaction (via improved enjoyment of food) and greatly, greatly improved public health (via improved food safety and enhanced nutrition through reduced food spoilage), there's probably no other device that compares to the home fridge for value.

Alas, as with everything, there's simply no free lunch. Refrigerators are energy pigs. Even the super-high efficiency (and super-high cost) ones sold for "off-the-grid" homes are pigs, because they are vertical --- all the cold air dumps out whenever you open the door.

That means that the big white box in the kitchen is helping to propel climate change, meaning that it helps exterminate countless species and helps ensure future generations will curse us for our thoughtlessness.

Been thinking about this conundrum for quite some time. Don't want to even think about giving up the fridge. Don't want to contribute more to climate chaos than we absolutely have to. So I keep coming back to the idea of chest refrigerators. LOVESalem HQ is well-suited for one, having one entire wall with no cabinetry, and thus being blessed with a kitchen where there's no space that would only work with a vertical fridge.

Been trying to figure out how to modify a chest freezer's thermostat to make it work and, just tonight, while redoing a search for "chest refrigerator" information, found a site that I had previously missed ---- and of course it's the one that has an elegant, simple and (in retrospect) obvious solution: don't mess with the freezer's own thermostat, just override it with one suitable for refrigeration! (I'm quite red-faced to admit that something so obvious eluded me for so long . . . just another reason I should never have given up drinking beer after leaving Wisconsin!)

So, with one of these, applied to something like this, I should be able to use one of these to measure what I hope will be nearly a 90% reduction in energy consumption by our single biggest electricity hog, our fridge. It's pretty much our "base load" here, given that LOVESalem HQ has few, if any incandescent bulbs, no air-conditioning, and an old-style, low-energy TV plugged into a wireless-remote-operated power-strip that we click off whenever we're not actually watching it.

So, if you have a chest freezer in good to excellent condition and working order, width 59" or less, and want to help us test the chest fridge concept, check this ad and drop us a line.

Well worth it

I hate recommending a theater other than our own lovely Salem Cinema, but if you see movies in theaters rather than waiting for DVDs, then you'll find that Michael Moore's latest, "Capitalism, A Love Story" is well worth your time and money. As Wikipedia says:

Capitalism: A Love Story is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Michael Moore. The film centers on the financial crisis of 2007–2009 and the recovery stimulus, while putting forward an indictment of the current economic order in the United States and capitalism in general. Topics covered include everything from Wall Street's "casino mentality," for-profit prisons, Goldman Sachs' influence in Washington, DC, the poverty-level of many airline pilots, the large wave of home foreclosures, and the consequences of "runaway greed."<sup>[1]


UPDATE: Simon Johnson's website, Baselinescenario.com. Check it out. All the details Michael Moore can't fit into a two-hour movie.</sup>

Hopeful sign: work bikes on the rise

Image by Cheryl & Rich via Flickr

Nice.

"Clearly it wasn't going to be profitable if we were continuing to drive around town," . . . . [T]he company credits the bike fleet with keeping its operating costs down and helping to attract clients who support environmentally friendly business practices. They also help find workers.

"Janitorial work is not very glamorous, but the letters I get from interested applicants, it makes you feel like people are applying for Nike or something like that," said Hannah Sandmeyer, Q19's manager. . . .

Large distributors that don't like taking their big trucks into the center of the city for a number of small drop-offs contract with B-Line to do their deliveries in the urban core.

"Trucks are often double parked where someone is wheeling five or six cases of something into a cafe, so the size of the vehicle is completely mismatched to the job," said Kathryn Racine-Jones, co-owner with her husband, Franklin, of B-Line.

The company's largest client is Organically Grown, a produce distributor. Since March, B-Line has hauled 100,000 pounds of produce, Racine-Jones said, and they have contracted to have a third delivery bike built locally.

League of Women Voters meeting on health care issues for action, 10/8

All-Member Meeting: Health Care Issues for Action

What should a health care system in the U.S. look like? In the national debate there has been much misinformation, so the League of Women Voters of Marion and Polk Counties (LWVMPC) Health Care interest group has put together a public meeting on the topic to be held on Thursday, October 8, at 7 p.m. in the First Congregational Church, 700 Marion St. NE.

The program will combine education with action, beginning with education.

• Since the League already has a position in support of health care availability to all U.S. citizens, the program will begin with excerpts of that position from the LWV of the U.S. (LWVUS) Impact on Issues. Hand-out materials will be provided.

• Two films will offer information about the current way that Americans receive health care: a video of Wendell Potter interviewed by Bill Moyers about why he left Cigna Corporation and Sicko, a documentary by Michael Moore about the variable availability of health care in the U.S. Dr. Andy Harris will answer questions.

The evening will end with action--an explanation of what LWVMPC is doing locally, including plans for a Guest Opinion in the Statesman Journal and possible future forums. This action is based on the LWVUS position in support of a national health care system. Attendees will be encouraged to do individual action, such as contacting their members of Congress and writing personal letters to the editor (letters that do not mention the League, since only the president or her designate can speak for the League).

The Health Care interest group is composed of Anita Owen, Jan Markee, Sandra Gangle, Cindy Burgess, Roz Shirack, Jean Sherbeck, Diana Bodtker, Kathy Pugh, and Rose Lewis.

Speaking of urban hens

Weren't we? Anyway, Sharon Astyk has a great post on a great idea: "Right to Urban Farming" laws. Excerpt:

Now obviously, in city centers, standard right to farm laws can’t be applied wholesale. First of all, most of the farms have been removed - that is, we’re not talking about protecting existing farmers, but enabling new ones so the “sniff before you move” test can’t be applied here. Second of all, I think we can all reasonably agree that some kinds of agricultural and livestock production are probably not appropriate in urban environments, and that living in cities requires a high degree of accomodation of others.

That said, however, 5 of the 6 largest US cities permit chickens in backyards. Many have minimal or no restrictions on urban livestock - there are goats in LA and pigs in Brooklyn, and chickens nearly everywhere, and people manage to get along quite well. A friend of mine has 5 acres in an affluent suburb of Boston (it wasn’t affluent when she bought them), and has horses, goats, a pig, chickens, turkeys and geese. I know another person with three cows inside the city limits of Evanston.

But there are also cities that permit no livestock, not even poultry - as Gene Logsdon has put it, “you can have a barking, crapping dog the size of a pony, but not three quiet hens.” In other cities, there may be elaborate and excessive laws that benefit neither residents nor the city that has to enforce them - for example, in Beverly, MA, where my mother and step-mother keep 4 hens, they were required to get permission from every single one of their abutters, to have their property inspected, and have a yearly inspection by the town vet. Any increase in flock size requires more queries, more permissions, more visits. Meanwhile, the next town over has a “six chickens per household” flat policy - no inspections. Given the cost in time and effort to her city, as well as the barrier having to approach your neighbors offers, this process really ought to be streamlined.

Straining at gnats while ignoring the black monster devouring Oregon's future

This is troubling -- it's apparently much easier to rally people against proposed LNG pipelines in Western Oregon than it is to get them to even realize that death-dealing, radioisotope and mercury-emitting, climate destabilizing coal burned in Eastern Oregon is the PRIMARY source of their electricity (coal is the single largest fuel source for PGE's electricity).

In other words, people will get all outraged at the possibility of "foreign LNG" while relying extensively on "foreign coal" (100% of Boardman's coal is from the Powder River Basin).

The good people at the Salem Progressive Film Series should be sure to make their panelists explain why they're more exercised about LNG than they are about coal, the enemy of the human race.

One of these panelists, Bill Bradbury, is running for the Democratic nomination for Governor of Oregon. He should definitely be made to explain how he squares his work on climate with his tacit support for continuing to burn coal.

Pulp Fiction: Costly makework project for consultants

The projects that transportation planners should be working on are how to use the rail and the river to make autos unnecessary, not how to promote more driving. Image via Wikipedia

As the forecasts for Oregon under a destabilized climate become ever more dire -- and still manage to underestimate the rate of change being observed -- the Boondoggle on the Willamette known as the "Salem River Crossing" project plods on, busily drafting a monumental fictional opus about a project unlikely to ever be funded (thank God).

This particular opus, known as the "Draft Environmental Impact Statement" is intentionally omitting any analysis of peak oil and, even worse, climate change. In other words, the "environmental" analysis is going to ignore the most crucial environmental question of the millennium, as it relies on travel demand models that assume a future like the past and boundless cheap gasoline available for all. Your tax dollars, hardly at work.