Death Comes to Pooh Corner

Friday — The voice of Tigger dies.

Saturday — The voice of Piglet dies.

I think that if I were the voice of any animated Winnie the Pooh character, I would stay at home and not answer the door.

A Step Back

The latest GOP plan to "save" Social Security comes from the Republican House leadership. The idea is to fund small private accounts with the current trust fund surplus. Only problem is, this plan won't do anything to improve the solvency of the system.

Still, Republicans hope the new proposal will shift the debate away from future benefit cuts, as Bush envisions, to ending what they call the "raid" on the current Social Security surplus. But the plan, unlike Bush's, would do nothing to remedy the New Deal-era program's long-term fiscal problems.

An aide to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called the bill "a great start," and House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) called it "an excellent first step." Aides said leadership will gauge reaction over the July 4 break.

OK, not the only problem. What happens when the trust fund surplus runs out in a decade or so? What do you do with all those other federal programs that are currently being funded from the surplus? Yet, despite all these drawbacks, the GOP is still calling this an "excellent first step". OK, then, if the long-term health of the program isn't the goal, what is?

There are two obvious answers to this question. First, it sets up the exit strategy rather nicely. The Republican's don't want the last idea on the table to be Bush's benefit cuts. Instead, they want the voters think about their "free money" plan and how the Democrats wouldn't pass it.

But, if the GOP leadership is actually able to get the votes to pass this bill, it's the foot in the door for privatizing the whole system. When the surplus runs out, it will be mighty hard to end the free money give-away, so the Republicans will push again to fund those private accounts with payroll taxes and benefit cuts.

The Republicans want to put political pressure on the Democrats with this show of "movement", but Democrats should hold the line against negotiating as long as private accounts of any kind are still on the table. This latest proposal isn't a step forward — just the opposite, in fact.

Friday Cat Blogging

Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the flowers.

The Moral of Durbin's Story

Senator Durbin of Illinois created a little bit of controversy this week with his unfortunate choice of words.

In a Senate floor speech Tuesday, Durbin cited an FBI report describing Guantanamo Bay prisoners chained to the floor in the fetal position without food or water and sometimes in extreme temperatures.

"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings."

By yesterday, Durbin found himself under attack from leading Republicans and their conservative allies. White House press secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the statement, responded by saying: "I think the senator's remarks are reprehensible. It's a real disservice to our men and women in uniform who adhere to high standards and uphold our values and our laws."

McClellan, as he so often does, turns this issue on its head. What does a real disservice to our military personnel who "adhere to high standards" are those military personnel and members of the civilian leadership who do not. Here's the quote from the FBI report that Durbin read on the Senate floor:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. … On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.

Pretty high standards, no?

But you would think by now that anyone who has a serious point to make would know to avoid any and all comparisons to Hitler or the Nazis. As soon as a link to the Nazis is made, that link becomes the issue, and the original argument gets lost in the outrage. Thus in the multitude of angry stories and posts in the right-wing press and blogosphere I looked at this morning, I could not find one that included the quote from the FBI report. Sure, they all quoted Durbin dropping the N-bomb, but not the description of abuse that prompted the use of that word in the first place. All of which feeds that essential wingnut distortion that it's not the facts that matter, but rather how one talks about those facts.

But for those people for whom the facts do matter, Durbin's central point is a good one, and it bears repeating:

To win the war on terrorism, we must remain true to the principles upon which our country was founded. This administration's detention and interrogation policies are placing our troops at risk and making it harder to combat terrorism.

That's the true moral of this sad story.

Exit Strategy

You have to admit it — Bush has been a real trooper on Social Security. He has criss-crossed the country for months, doing the same show in front of look-alike audiences and sound-alike guests, all to push an ill-defined and ill-conceived "plan" to phase out Social Security. Frankly, I've wondered how long he could keep going.

The question arises because, to be honest, his road trips aren't doing anything but increasingly turn public opinion against a phase-out. And while Bush is a stubborn sort, he has the luxury of not having to stand before the voters again. Meanwhile, there are a couple hundred Republicans in Congress that aren't quite as anxious to go along for a ride that seems to be headed off the edge of a cliff.

So no surprise, then, to see this story in today's Washington Post:

With the Senate Finance Committee at an impasse on Social Security and House leaders anxious about moving forward, Republican congressional leaders have told the White House in recent days that it is time to look for an escape route.

Senate GOP leaders, in discussions with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and political officials, have made it clear they are stuck in a deep rut and suggested it is time for an exit strategy, according to a senior Senate Republican official and Finance Committee aides.

Will Bush listen to his Congressional leaders? From the standpoint of preserving Social Security, I'm not sure it really matters. From the start, Bush has laid responsibility for coming up with a plan at the feet of Congress, and now they're getting ready to walk away. And if Bush gets into a dust-up with the GOP House and Senate leadership over his signature issue, all the better.

Addicted to Success

Almost two years ago, Rumseld stated that the US was going to bring the same kind of success to Iraq that it had brought to Afghanistan. Larger comparisons aside, it now appears he was dead-on when it comes to drug trafficking.

Hamid Ghodse, president of the United Nations' International Narcotics Control Board, said that since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Iraq has become a transit point in the flow of hashish and heroin from Iran and Afghanistan, the world's largest producer of opium poppies, to Persian Gulf countries and Europe.

Under Hussein's authoritarian rule, alcoholism and addiction to medications such as Valium were prevalent, health officials here say. The use of illegal drugs, a subject not discussed publicly, was thought to be rare. But since the invasion, the same porous borders that U.S. and Iraqi officials describe as conduits for foreign insurgents have become well-traveled smuggling routes for drug traffickers, according to U.N. and government officials. As a result, the Health Ministry says, addiction rates are climbing steadily.

Of course, drug addiction in Iraq is also on the rise, and due to the stigma associated with narcotics abuse, there is very little infrastructure to deal with the problem. And if you want to see the problems that drug trafficking can cause for a fragile national government, you need look no further than Rumsfeld's model for success, Afghanistan.

Zapatistas

What's up with this?

The U.S. military is investigating whether Marines were justified late last month when they detained a convoy of security contractors working for a Charlotte-based company in Iraq, officials said Wednesday.

The military jailed 16 employees of Zapata Engineering and three interpreters for three days after the contractors were accused of firing shots at U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians.

The contractors deny the allegations, and several say they were abused and humiliated while in custody at a site in Fallujah, company officials say.

…

Several Zapata workers say they were physically abused and humiliated while being detained.

They were stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and roughhoused by Marines, said Mark Schopper, a Nevada attorney who said he represents two of the Zapata employees detained in Iraq.

"Marines put their knees on the backs of their necks and ripped off religious medallions," Schopper said.

"They asked for attorneys, they asked for Amnesty International, they asked for the American Red Cross. All three requests were denied."

Do the Marines hate America? Were these American defense contractors trained to disassemble? I sure hope someone gets to the bottom of this.

The Right's Homosexual Agenda

The New York Times has an interesting article today about the right's war on homosexuality in the public schools. From attacking sex education curriculum to fighting against gay-strait alliance clubs to censoring gay-friendly content in student newspapers, conservatives are winning victories and liberals are left to ask, "what's going on here?"

There are two kinds of answers to that question. One kind is put out by PR flaks anxious to paint these efforts as the result of loving concern and civic engagement. The other comes from the wingnuts who are proud to say what they really believe — homosexuality is evil and needs to be rooted out. To its credit, the Times includes examples of both kinds of answers in its story.

From the "moderate" camp, we get the story of average folks just fighting for their rights in an increasingly hostile cultural mileau:

"The intensity of the culture wars has heated up over the last few years," said J. Michael Johnson, a lawyer with the Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative group that specializes in issues involving religion. "People are becoming more aware that they have rights, and they're feeling more emboldened to defend them. Across the country, people are saying enough is enough."

From the "wingnut" side, we get what is perhaps a more honest assessment of the movement's key motivation:

Mathew D. Staver, president and general counsel of another conservative group, Liberty Counsel, said: "We're concerned about the effort to capture youth through indoctrination into the homosexual lifestyle. Students are a captive audience, and they are being targeted by groups with that as an agenda."

And:

Two members of the Southern Baptist Convention have prepared a "resolution on homosexuality in public schools," to be introduced at the denomination's annual gathering this month. The resolution implores Baptist churches to determine whether schools in their area have "homosexual clubs or curricula or programs" and, if so, to encourage parents to remove their children from the schools.

The next time you hear someone argue that their freedom demands the elimination of freedom for others, be mindful of the kind of hate that position entails.

Where's the Accountability?

Reading the papers this morning, I found four different stories that all shared the same theme. See if you can spot it.

First, there was the story of the big wet kiss the administration gave to the tobacco industry. In closing arguments in a 6-year civil racketeering lawsuit, the DoJ unexpected asked for only $10 billion in damages, instead of the $130 billion that its own witness had said was necessary. The Justice Department refused comment on the change of heart.

Second, we learn about a Pentagon report on the ill-conceived Boeing tanker deal. Not only weren't Rumsfeld or Wolfowitz interviewed for the report, but 45 references to White House involvement were redacted from the version given to the Senate Armed Services committee. Asked about the deletions, McClellan responded that nothing more needed to be said about the matter.

Next is an update on the Bolton nomination, currently stalled in the Senate because the White House refuses to release full copies of the intelligence documents requested by Bolton at State. Democrats want to know the identities of the people Bolton requested information on and whether that constituted a misuse of intelligence. The White House says the Senate doesn't need to know that.

Finally there's the story of a White House official (and former oil-industry point man in the fight against greenhouse gas regulations) who has been editing government scientific reports to downplay the links between greenhouse gasses and global warming. The White House refused comment.

See the pattern? This is a White House that does what it wants and answers to no one. It's just as Senator Clinton said two days ago: "There has never been an administration, I don't believe in our history, more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda." The evidence is overwhelming — all we have to do is open our eyes and give a damn.

Off the Agenda?

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is clearly smarting after setbacks that prevented him from going nuclear over the judicial filibuster and getting a quick vote for John Bolton. Add to those failures his previous missteps on the Schiavo case and his ill-fated appearance on "Justice Sunday", and you might say his tone is a bit defensive here:

"The short-term evaluations, I believe, will prove to be shortsighted and wrong after we get judge after judge after judge after judge through, plus at least one Supreme Court nominee and an energy bill," Dr. Frist said after a lecture at Harvard, where he received his own medical education. "And we will get Bolton."

We will soon see if Frist can deliver on these promises, but there is one interesting thing to note about this laundry list of future accomplishments — passing legislation to overhaul Social Security isn't on it.

Now, this may be an oversight on his part, but if I were Frist right now, I'd focus on things that might be doable. I wouldn't blame him a bit for quietly dropping Social Security from his agenda — Bush's "plan" is a loser for sure.

Caledonia for State Cat

There are some political issues that cut across so many deeply-held beliefs that you address them only at great risk. No, I'm not talking about the Republican's assault on Social Security — I'm talking about the effort to name a state cat here in North Carolina.

Should it be the endangered cougar? How about the panther to appeal to NFL fans, or the bobcat for those folks who prefer the NBA? Since all efforts at compromise and inclusion have failed, let me offer those brave state lawmakers another option: my cat Caledonia. She's cute, lovable, alternatively frisky and sleepy, and best of all, she's a local.

So there you have it. I'm happy I could help out. Send me the plaque when it's ready.

Self-Made Mess

Via Kevin Drum comes this new study on the growth of physician malpractice payments. Doctors and the insurance industry would like you to believe that large jury verdicts have caused the recent spike in malpractice premiums, but this study reaches another conclusion. As Drum puts it:

The basic numbers are pretty simple: the number of total judgments per physician has gone gradually down, while the total value of payouts has gone gradually up. However, the increase has been small, and matches the overall growth in medical costs.

You can argue about whether malpractice costs should grow at the same rate as overall medical costs or not, but it's a tiny argument, not an excuse for crisis mongering. In fact, what's most striking about the numbers is that growth in payouts has been steady and slow. There haven't been any spikes, and certainly no excuse for sudden 100% increases in insurance premiums.

So what is responsible for the dramatic increase in the cost of malpractice insurance? I've said here before that the insurance industry itself seems to be in a mess of its own making, and this study tentatively supports the conclusion that premium increases are due to decreases in investment income. Many states allow insurance companies to structure premiums based on expected investment returns, not simply expected payouts, which seems to be a rather up-front regulatory acknowledgment of the real problem here.