Monthly Archives: February 2010

VA GOP Legislator: Disabled Children Are God’s Punishment

The rhetoric of anti-abortion groups is often a bit incoherent. They believe that children are both blessings and punishment.This statement was particularly vile:

State Delegate Bob Marshall of Manassas says disabled children are God’s punishment to women who have aborted their first pregnancy.

He made that statement Thursday at a press conference to oppose state funding for Planned Parenthood.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

Anti-choice groups have been spreading misinformation about abortion for a long time. Ever hear that abortions increase your chances for cancer – that’s anti-abortion propaganda. How will other anti-abortion groups respond? Will they support Delegate Marshall? What about Sarah Palin – will she engage in a feud?

Monday Open Thread

USA! USA! USA! How about that hockey game? The US men’s hockey team beat Canada for the first time since 1960. This caused a bit of strife in my household, but don’t worry everyone came out o.k. and no one had to sleep on the couch.

Rick Santorum hates gay people more than he loves the military:

“My thoughts are this,” he said, in a morning speech before Conservative Political Action Conference. “The military is there for one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to protect and defend the United States of America.

“We have a volunteer army,” he added. “They can un-volunteer too.”

Addressing how the military leadership, led by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, could now favor a repeal of the law, Santorum raised the specter of brainwashing.

“Political correctness is reigning in the military right now,” he said. “”Some people say: [Do] whatever the generals say [on DADT]. I’m not too sure that we haven’t so indoctrinated the officer corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decision.”

This is going to leave a mark:

Andrea Fay Friedman, the voice actress who played the role of “Ellen” –the character depicted as having Down syndrome on the Valentine’s Day episode of Family Guy, has responded to the criticism of sometime-Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Of special significance, Friedman herself has Down syndrome. Palingates has Friedman’s complete response:

My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the “Extra Large Medium” episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine’s day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in ” Smudge” but I was a blonde in “Life Goes On”. I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line “I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska” was very funny. I think the word is “sarcasm”.

In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

I’ve also noticed that Palin is often pictured carrying Trig in her arms and rarely in a carrier or stroller.

Help Me Understand What This Year’s CPAC Straw Poll Means

I’m really not sure what to make of Ron Paul’s victory in CPAC’s straw poll.  And, make no mistake, it was a pretty big victory.

Nate breaks it down:

But the most revealing result from CPAC 2010, one that didn’t surprise me but ought to wake up national political reporters, is this one: Ron Paul won this year’s CPAC straw poll with 31 percent. Next best was Mitt Romney with 22 percent. Amazingly, Paul’s support was more than that for Sarah Palin (7 percent), Tim Pawlenty (6), Mike Pence (5), Newt Gingrich (4), Mike Huckabee (4), Mitch Daniels (2), and Rick Santorum (2) combined. Yes, that’s right–combined. By compare, just a year ago, Paul tied with Palin for third at 13 percent, with Romney winning and Bobby Jindal (who dat?) second at 14 percent.

I’m kinda wondering if Sarah Palin’s snub of CPAC resulted in her dismal performance.  Of all the results, Mitt Romney’s is the least surprising – that guy is destined to take second place.  Thoughts?

How the Media Gets Suckered by the Media Lobbying Complex

Sebastian Jones writes an excellent piece of investigative journalism — The Media-Lobbying Complex — documenting the various (and many) undisclosed conflicts of interest that seem to power much of the media narrative:

President Obama spent most of December 4 touring Allentown, Pennsylvania, meeting with local workers and discussing the economic crisis. A few hours later, the state’s former governor, Tom Ridge, was on MSNBC’s Hardball With Chris Matthews, offering up his own recovery plan. There were “modest things” the White House might try, like cutting taxes or opening up credit for small businesses, but the real answer was for the president to “take his green agenda and blow it out of the box.” The first step, Ridge explained, was to “create nuclear power plants.” Combined with some waste coal and natural gas extraction, you would have an “innovation setter” that would “create jobs, create exports.”

As Ridge counseled the administration to “put that package together,” he sure seemed like an objective commentator. But what viewers weren’t told was that since 2005, Ridge has pocketed $530,659 in executive compensation for serving on the board of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear power company. As of March 2009, he also held an estimated $248,299 in Exelon stock, according to SEC filings.

And the lack of disclosure is bipartisan:

Likewise, Tom Daschle dropped by MSNBC on May 12 and July 2, 2009, and NBC’s Meet the Press on August 16, 2009. At each appearance he discussed healthcare reform with no mention of his work on behalf of lobbying firm Alston & Bird, which advises insurer UnitedHealth Group. Only during a December 8 appearance on MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy was Daschle finally confronted, albeit with kid gloves, about how his simultaneous work for lobbying firms on behalf of health insurers and meetings with administration officials on healthcare reform appeared to be at odds. “I certainly want to be appreciative of perception, so we’re going to take great care in how we go forward,” Daschle promised. A month later, on January 11, the former Senate majority leader returned to MSNBC to discuss healthcare with Andrea Mitchell. In the nearly ten-minute interview, his insurance work went unmentioned.

As of this writing, healthcare and financial reform legislation have largely stalled. And although it would be foolish to argue that Daschle’s TV appearances sank the public option or that Dana Perino’s punditry fatally wounded a proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, there can be no doubt that there is a cumulative effect from hundreds of appearances by dozens of unidentified lobbyists and influence peddlers that helps to drive press coverage and public opinion.

I fail to see how interviewing people who are paid to push a client’s POV on subjects that are crucial to said clients gets anywhere near this vaunted “objectivity” that media so prizes. It isn’t as though you are talking to Tom Ridge about Homeland Security issues or Pennsylvania politics — he was specifically sourced to speak about a subject near and dear to the people who paid him. And Ridge isn’t the only one. There is a train of argument in this article that more disclosure of the potential conflicts of interest are in order. But I want to know (as does Jay Rosen here) why these people are even a source of information? They are, after all, PAID to have a POV and paid to get that POV into the discussion. How do paid POV’s become real news or analysis of real news? Locally, we have the shills at the Cesar Rodney Institute cranking out paper and opinions that suit the people who fund them — and really, that is the biggest reason for having these guys disclose their funders. You’ll never have any confidence in what they publish or what they say on TV just isn’t a paid for POV. And the local media who pick these guys up ought to be alot more scrupulous in vetting their potential conflicts of interest.

But as the media is less and less trusted, it is clear that they are complicit — again — in their own difficulties. Just stop using people who are paid to have an opinion from opining or acting as a “subject matter expert” and do the work to find people who can give you more objective information.

Bayh-partisanship: Reform Congress

Evan Bayh may be a mediocre legislator but since he’s announced his retirement from the Senate, he’s been a strong voice for Senate reform. He wrote an op-ed that appeared yesterday in the NYT on the subject. He correctly diagnoses the problem with money in politics and the “permanent campaign:”

Perhaps from this starting point, we can move onto more intractable problems, like the current campaign finance system that has such a corrosive effect on Congress. In the Senate, raising in small increments the $10 million to $20 million a competitive race requires takes huge amounts of time that could otherwise be spent talking with constituents, legislating or becoming well-versed on public policy. In my father’s time there was a saying: “A senator legislates for four years and campaigns for two.” Because of the incessant need to raise campaign cash, we now have perpetual campaigns. If fund-raising is constantly on members’ minds, it’s difficult for policy compromise to trump political calculation.

The recent Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, allowing corporations and unions to spend freely on ads explicitly supporting or opposing political candidates, will worsen matters. The threat of unlimited amounts of negative advertising from special interest groups will only make members more beholden to their natural constituencies and more afraid of violating party orthodoxies.

We’re entering election season for the first time since the Citizens United ruling, and I don’t know how this will affect this campaign. Now corporations will be able to run unlimited ads for or against specific candidates up to election day. If you think there’s too many commercials already, just wait. And since there’s no limit now, will we see candidates on TV shows and scripts written just for certain candidates?

Bayh also identifies filibuster abuse as a problem with the functioning of the Senate:

Filibusters have proliferated because under current rules just one or two determined senators can stop the Senate from functioning. Today, the mere threat of a filibuster is enough to stop a vote; senators are rarely asked to pull all-nighters like Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”

For this reason, filibusters should require 35 senators to sign a public petition and make a commitment to continually debate an issue in reality, not just in theory. Those who obstruct the Senate should pay a price in public notoriety and physical exhaustion. That would lead to a significant decline in frivolous filibusters.

Filibusters should also be limited to no more than one for any piece of legislation. Currently, the decision to begin debate on a bill can be filibustered, followed by another filibuster on each amendment, followed by yet another filibuster before a final vote. This leads to multiple legislative delays and effectively grinds the Senate to a halt.

The system wasn’t intended so that each Senator gets a veto. I understand the hesitancy to abolish the filibuster altogether since it is a way for the minority to influence legislation. (I shudder to think what would have happened to Social Security in 2005 without filibuster power). Right now, though, the Senate is unable to do any business at all because Republicans filibuster everything, even bills they support. There were more cloture votes in 2009 (39) than in the Senate between 1949-1970 (30).

The filibuster worked when there were two governing parties. However, Republicans have decided that they will gain politically by blocking all business of the and blaming Democrats for not getting things done. Too few people actually understand what’s happening and are frustrated by the lack of progress.

I’m getting the feeling now that Republicans might have overplayed their hand. It started with Republicans voting against the bipartisan debt reduction committee, with 8 Republicans who supposedly supported it voting against cloture. Now Evan Bayh’s departure is shining a light on the dysfunction of the Senate. So, thank you Evan Bayh for explaining this to everyone in a way they understand. You may have done the country a great service.

Healthcare NOW!

On Friday, I was able to leave work a little early and visit a healthcare rally held in Newark. The event was a stop on an 8 day march from Philadelphia to Washington.  The march is called The March for Melanie in honor of an activist from Philadelphia, Melanie Shouse, that recently lost her battle with breast cancer.

Melanie’s death certificate certainly said that the cause of death was breast Cancer, but it was just as much caused by a lack of healthcare.  President Obama had this to say about Melanie, who was a volunteer on his campaign:

She was fighting that whole time not just to get me elected, not even to get herself health insurance, but because she understood that there were others coming behind her who were going to find themselves in the same situation and she didn’t want somebody else going through that same thing.

Melanie’s fellow activists decided to dedicate this march to her memory, braving cold weather, huge snow piles, uncleared sidewalks and likely rain tomorrow.  Remarkably, when I saw them on Friday, they looked ready for anything and they were undeterred by the elements.

Each marcher has a story to tell about how their lives have been affected by the flawed health system that we have in this country, either through poor health that cannot be properly treated or from financial hardships originating from healthcare expenses.  They are a group that puts a face and a story on the issue that we all to often discuss in technical terms.

John Kowalko was on hand to point out that we have some strong allies in the health insurance companies, since their recent jacking up of rates is just another egregious act by an industry that sees their monopoly slipping away.

Their final destination is a rally in Washington DC on Wednesday, February 24 at 2PM.  If you can make it, meet at Union Station at 12:30 to walk the last mile of the walk to the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Innovating to Zero

This is a talk by Bill Gates at the TED conference discussing the need and the challenges of getting enough renewable energy to power not only those who are energy rich now, but those who need to be energy rich. He does a nice job here, I think, in contextualizing the problem, then spends a good deal of time talking about Terrapower. He does note that he is an investor in this company, so it would be fair to note that Gates may be doing his own T. Boone Pickens turn here. But there is something important happening here — a man who made a fortune capitalizing on technologies that transformed the way many of us work and how we connect to the world, and who is using that fortune to try to reduce poverty has decided that the most important thing he can do is to help get the planet to zero net CO2 emissions. And since Gates isn’t in the business of just giving away his money for this venture, it I wonder if this signals clean energy technology and R&D and the next PC or internet:

For abit more info on how these reactors work, you can watch the video on the IntellectualVentures site.

Weekend Open Thread

Happy weekend everyone! I hope you’re enjoying your relatively snow-free weekend. Are you ready for an open thread? Let’s roll!

Tiger Woods has started his apology tour. One blogger put together a handy flowchart to determine if that apology is intended for you.

My answer was “no.”

Remember the miraculous story of the man who had been misdiagnosed in a vegetative state but thanks to science can now communicate? Not so much:

It seemed to be a medical miracle: the car crash victim assumed for 23 years to be in a coma who was suddenly found to be conscious and able to communicate by tapping on a computer.

The sceptics said it was impossible – and it was. The story of Rom Houben of Belgium, which made headlines worldwide last November when he was shown to be “talking”, was today revealed to have been nothing of the sort.

…

Laureys, leader of the coma science group and department of neurology at Liege University hospital, said a study he had done of three speech therapists working with minimally-conscious patients showed that in two cases, including Houben’s, facilitated communication failed. “From the start, I did not prescribe this technique. But it is important not to make judgments. His family and care givers acted out of love and compassion,” he said.

The turnaround vindicates those doctors who had doubted Houben’s apparent ability. “It’s like using an Ouija board,” said Arthur Caplan, a professor of bio ethics at the University of Pennsylvania. “It was too good to be true, and we shouldn’t have believed it.”

Do you think this retraction will be as widely reported as the supposed breakthrough? I doubt it.

UPDATED: Schools + Student Issued Laptops + Webcams = Spying At School and At Home

UPDATE 02/20/10:

This isn’t looking good for the school district.

District spokesman Doug Young acknowledged yesterday that officials had remotely activated computer webcams 42 times, but only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students. He said families had not been notified about the possibility that the cameras on the 2,300 laptops could be activated in their homes without their permission.

So… they did it and they didn’t let families know it could be done.  And the “only in an attempt to recover missing or stolen laptops, and never to spy on students” excuse stinks to high heaven since the reason this was uncovered was due to their disciplining a student for “improper behavior.”

Looks like somebody’s in big trouble.

[Previous post below]

If these charges are true, somebody better end up in jail.

(Major h/t to MJ.  Thanks!)

According to the filings in Blake J Robbins v Lower Merion School District (PA) et al, the laptops issued to high-school students in the well-heeled Philly suburb have webcams that can be covertly activated by the schools’ administrators, who have used this facility to spy on students and even their families. The issue came to light when the Robbins’s child was disciplined for “improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence. The suit is a class action, brought on behalf of all students issued with these machines.

Improper behavior in his home?  His home? And the Vice Principal produced evidence?  Bet that evidence ends up being used against the Vice Principal.

If true, these allegations are about as creepy as they come. I don’t know about you, but I often have the laptop in the room while I’m getting dressed, having private discussions with my family, and so on.

So do I, and so do my children.  Again, if true, does this school district now have child pornography on their files?  We already know that certain districts are okay with strip searching, so maybe this isn’t that big of leap.  These allegations make my blood run cold.

Liar Liar Pants On Fire

Mike Castle has been on the defensive lately. He’s become the posterboy for Republican hypocrisy, especially the “trash and grab” strategy of trashing the stimulus while showing up to take credit for projects created by the stimulus. He comes off as quite defensive in this WHYY interview:

Castle also defended himself against accusations that, while voting against the stimulus, he’s shown up at events touting stimulus spending in Delaware.

“I certainly did not vote for it, and I’ve said that at every single appearance I’ve made.” Rep. Castle explained, “Having said that, I’ve said also, once that stimulus bill passed and the money was appropriated, I wasn’t about to let it all go to another state if I could get something for Delaware. I consider that to be the absolute correct way to proceed.”

The Delaware Democratic party dug up this video of Mike Castle at the Fisker event. The Fisker deal was funded with stimulus money, and Mike Castle even thanks Obama and Biden in the speech (about 1:30 in the video).

I didn’t hear anything in that speech about how he opposed the stimulus, did you? Oops! Nice try, Mike Castle but Castling isn’t quite working for you anymore is it?

Ed. note – There is a dispute about how much the Fisker deal was funded by stimulus funds. Most funding came from a 2007 law, but Biden states that stimulus funds were used as well. More info on this topic would be appreciated.