January 24, 2010 Why has Sarah Palin agreed to campaign for McCain? Ann Kane Go figure. Why would Sarah Palin agree to stump for McCain in Arizona? She must have learned through hellfire that loyalty in politics is an oxymoron, yet, she can't let it go. She is the real deal. An honest Sarah bemuses the political elites, but at the same time plays right into their power grabbing hands. Michelle Malkin says in her blog: At least she has an excuse: She's caught between a loyalty rock and a partisan hard place. The conservative base has no such obligations - and it is imperative that they get in the game (as they did in Massachusetts) before it's too late. The movement to restore limited government in Washington has come too far, against all odds, to succumb to McCain Regression Syndrome now. John McCain should just stop the endless treadmill he's been on, and call it quits. Malkin writes: With all due respect to McCain's past noble war service, it's time to head to the pasture. As the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday, he was wrong on the constitutionality of the free-speech-stifling McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulations. He was wrong to side with the junk-science global warming activists in pushing onerous carbon caps on America. He was on the wrong side of every Chicken Little-driven bailout. He was wrong in opposing enhanced CIA interrogation methods that have saved countless American lives and averted jihadi plots. And he was spectacularly wrong in teaming with the open-borders lobby to push a dangerous illegal alien amnesty. If Massachusetts proved anything, it's that a non-partisan conservative movement has swept over this nation, and the grassroots efforts of ordinary citizens will not allow status quo politicians to come on board unless they show a conversion of heart and embrace the new rules of revolution. Sarah better cut the ties that bind her to the old way of thinking, and get on with leading the country away from governmental tyranny.

Science on the Credibility Bubble Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once. I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician). Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project. What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences-physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering-came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences. This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine. The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims-plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish-evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition. For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank. Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence. The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant-with implications for a vast new regulatory regime-used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory. The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ." If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it. Write to henninger@wsj.com About Daniel Henninger. Daniel Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Mr. Henninger joined Dow Jones in 1971 as a staff writer for the National Observer. He became an editorial-page writer for the Journal in 1977, arts editor in 1978 and editorial features editor in 1980. He was appointed assistant editor of the editorial page in 1983 and chief editorial writer and senior assistant editor in October 1986, with daily responsibility for the "Review & Outlook" columns. In November 1989 he became deputy editor of the editorial page. Mr. Henninger was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing in 1987 and 1996, and shared in the Journal's Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for the paper's coverage of the attacks on September 11. In 2004, he won the Eric Breindel Journalism Award for his "Wonder Land" column. He won the Gerald Loeb Award for commentary in 1985. In 1998 he received the Scripps Howard Foundation's Walker Stone Award for editorial writing, for editorials on a range of issues, including the International Monetary Fund, presidential politics and cloning. He won the 1995 American Society of Newspaper Editors' Distinguished Writing Award for editorial writing, and he was a finalist in that award in 1985, 1986 and 1993. A native of Cleveland, Mr. Henninger graduated from Georgetown University with a bachelor's degree from the School of Foreign Service.

TIA Daily • December 1, 2009 FEATURE ARTICLE No Idea Whether He's Coming or Going Obama's Afghanistan Strategy Is the Bush Surge, But Without Conviction by Robert Tracinski Something immediately struck me as strange, creepy really, about Barack Obama's speech at West Point on his new strategy for Afghanistan. Because I read the speech first, rather than listening to it, my mind immediately filled in a familiar voice to speak these lines-and it wasn't the voice of the current president. Try it for yourself: We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, nineteen men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people. They struck at our military and economic nerve centers. They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station. Were it not for the heroic actions of the passengers on board one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more. As we know, these men belonged to al Qaeda-a group of extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents. Al Qaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan, where they were harbored by the Taliban-a ruthless, repressive, and radical movement that seized control of that country after it was ravaged by years of Soviet occupation and civil war, and after the attention of America and our friends had turned elsewhere…. Under the banner of this domestic unity and international legitimacy-and only after the Taliban refused to turn over Osama bin Laden-we sent our troops into Afghanistan. Within a matter of months, al Qaeda was scattered and many of its operatives were killed. The Taliban was driven from power and pushed back on its heels. A place that had known decades of fear now had reason to hope. And later: I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror. This danger will only grow if the region slides backwards, and al Qaeda can operate with impunity. Obama's speechwriters always like to crib from past presidents. A little JFK here, a little Reagan there. But I really didn't expect the first paragraphs of this speech-and a few passages later on-to read incongruously like a George W. Bush speech. (Except that Bush's speeches were actually better than this. Obama has always been able to use a smooth, measured delivery to elevate his pedestrian material, while Bush's awkward delivery prevented his audience from realizing what good speechwriters he had.) That weird similarity sets the tone for the content of the speech, which is Obama's endorsement of a repeat of the Bush "surge" in Iraq-but without the sense of unwavering personal conviction that Bush brought to his decision. Blaming Bush for all of the challenges he faces is one of Obama's most annoying habits, and he does so in this speech, too-but it only serves as camouflage to cover up the fact that he is basically acting on the Bush legacy. That becomes clear early in the speech with Obama's awkward, indirect admission that we've won the war in Iraq. Or rather, he says that we've "achieved hard-earned milestones in Iraq" which allow us to bring the war "to a responsible end." We will remove our combat brigades from Iraq by the end of next summer, and all of our troops by the end of 2011. That we are doing so is a testament to the character of our men and women in uniform. Thanks to their courage, grit, and perseverance, we have given Iraqis a chance to shape their future, and we are successfully leaving Iraq to its people. Does that mean we've won? Of course it does, but Obama's not a big enough man to come out and say so, because that would mean admitting that he was wrong about the "surge," which he opposed. This is the big context for Obama's speech. By ordering the "surge" in Iraq, Bush demonstrated that America could learn how to fight and win a counterinsurgency war. That was the real answer to the "Vietnam Syndrome." The legacy of Vietnam was not that America couldn't successfully fight a conventional war. It was the fear that foreign insurgencies would always prove to be quagmires and that we were always doomed to lose. In Iraq, Bush provided a model for how to win such a war-and he raised up into positions of command a whole cohort of officers who are experienced at fighting them. One of those officers is Stanley McChrystal. President Obama has basically accepted this achievement without giving credit for it, and so he goes on to apply to Afghanistan the same reasoning and strategy, the same counter-insurgency "surge," that allowed us to achieve all those "milestones" in Iraq. He even goes so far-and I did not expect this-as to explicitly reject the comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam and to reject Vice-President Biden's quixotic notion of fighting the war through isolated air strikes against al-Qaeda hideouts. Even more surprising, given his explicit rejection of this notion in past speeches, Obama caved in on American exceptionalism: "[O]ur country has borne a special burden in global affairs…. We have not always been thanked for these efforts, and we have at times made mistakes. But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades-a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, markets open, billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress, and advancing frontiers of human liberty." Thank you for the acknowledgement, Mr. President. It's about time. And yet there is still one big difference between Obama and Bush. Yes, he backed the Afghan surge, but throughout his speech, Obama conveyed no sense of conviction, of an unshakable personal commitment to victory in this war. Quite the opposite. To begin with, consider the shallowness of his actual explanation of his "new" Afghan counter-insurgency strategy. As far as I can tell, this is all there really is to it: The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010-the fastest pace possible-so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase our ability to train competent Afghan Security Forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight. And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans. This is one of the vaguest descriptions I have ever heard of the military science of counter-insurgency. It glosses over virtually everything. President Bush used to talk in detail about "clear, hold, and build" strategies, and during last year's campaign, John McCain spoke authoritatively about reforming the fractured command structure of international troops in Afghanistan. These are the kind of details that convey a sense that a leader is really engaged with and understands the details of the war policy he is ordering. We should expect as much or more out of President Obama. After all, wasn't his over-prolonged, nearly four-month period of analysis justified by the claim that Obama was thoroughly investigating every detail and considering every possibility? But his speech shows no trace of such an exacting effort. It shows no knowledge of or interest in the details and implementation of the strategy it announces. For example, the president gives General McChrystal almost as many troops as he asked for, but not quite. Why that many troops and not more? What does he know that his commander in the field doesn't? What objective was going to be accomplished with the extra troops that will now have to be abandoned? Obama offers no explanation. Or note the speech's reference to the idea that the added troops will "secure key population centers." This gives us our only clue about the difference between 30,000 extra troops and the 40,000 to 45,000 McChrystal wanted. It implies that some population centers and possibly large swathes of the Afghan countryside will not be secured. But which areas are "key" to victory and which are not? And doesn't this just mean holding the cities while the insurgents control the countryside-the recipe that led to failure for the Soviets? Maybe there's a good answer to these questions, but we sure didn't hear it from the president. It's looking more and more like Obama's exaggerated period of indecision on Afghanistan was intended to demonstrate to the left that he is thorough and deliberate-the opposite of their caricature of Bush as a "gut player" who rushes into war-in order to give cover for his decision to order a surge. And the decision to cut the number of troops was intended to show his skepticism concerning the claims of his generals-again, in contrast to Bush-while not actually changing the overall strategy. But the shallowness of Obama's decision is most clearly demonstrated by the way he talks about having a timetable for US withdrawal: Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground. We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's Security Forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul. But it will be clear to the Afghan government-and, more importantly, to the Afghan people-that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country. Again, is this all we get from the man who spent four months supposedly exploring every angle of the war strategy? He says that this withdrawal timetable will "take into account conditions on the ground"-yet he is predicting it for a specific month, before the Afghan surge has even been implemented and at a point when our position in Afghanistan is still deteriorating. All of this invites the question: what happens if July 2011 arrives and we're not clearly winning yet? Will Obama still insist on a withdrawal? No wonder Obama advisor David Axelrod was reduced to incoherence when he was asked about this timetable. Half of winning a counter-insurgency war is conveying a sense of resolve. You want the enemy to sense that continued resistance is futile because you just won't give up, and you want your allies and potential allies to sense that they can rely on you over the long term. But no one wants to cooperate with the US if they suspect that we're stampeding for the exits in July 2011, and their heads are going to end up on display in the town square the next day. This is the crucial issue of Obama's speech: convincingly demonstrating and explaining the degree of his resolve to achieve victory in Afghanistan. And Obama is disastrously unclear. He announces a surge-while at the same time announcing a withdrawal. Obama doesn't know whether he's coming or going. Or as Der Spiegel put it, "It was a dizzying combination of surge and withdrawal, of marching to and fro." The deeper impression conveyed by Obama's speech is that he doesn't really care that much about Afghanistan. He's just checking a box on one of his expected responsibilities as president, but his heart isn't in it. I suspect this is the real reason for his extended indecision. The passage that is most ominous in this respect begins with the most completely non-stirring quotation I have ever heard in a major presidential speech: "Indeed, I am mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who-in discussing our national security-said, 'Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.'" Obama then cites the more pressing needs of the economy and of his plans for domestic spending: "In the wake of an economic crisis, too many of our friends and neighbors are out of work and struggle to pay the bills, and too many Americans are worried about the future facing our children. Meanwhile, competition within the global economy has grown more fierce. So we simply cannot afford to ignore the price of these wars." To turn Jefferson's famous dictum upside down and inside out, Obama's rule seems to be: trillions for health-care and "stimulus," but billions for defense?-I don't know. We'll have to "balance our priorities." Deep down, Obama is still a dyed-in-the-wool leftist who believes that war is a jingoistic distraction from the task of imposing socialism on the economy-that a bayonet is a weapon with a worker on both ends. That's why we're getting a half-hearted surge. The message of Obama's speech is: I'm surging troops into Afghanistan to show the hawks I'm serious, but I really want to get out as soon as possible because I think other things are more important. The message to the Taliban and al-Qaeda is: wait me out. Sure, the next year is going to be really tough with all of those extra US troops coming after you. But if you can just hang tough until July of 2011, I'll decide America has done all it can afford to do, and we'll leave. That doesn't mean that we are doomed to lose in Afghanistan. We have many more advantages there than we usually realize. And remember that the crucial turning point came in Iraq in early 2007, precisely at the point when the Democratic Congress was attempting to cut off funding for the war. If I had to bet-and all of us are anted up for this game-I would say that an Afghan surge will produce significant results next year, making it a political success that Obama will want to keep rolling. (God knows he'll need one.) And so the withdrawal timetable will suddenly become very flexible. But still, signs of wavering and divided priorities in the commander-in-chief are far more significant than anti-war sentiment in Congress. That's particularly true from the perspective of our enemies, who are accustomed to authoritarianism; they know to ignore the carping of the political flunkies and just size up the head guy giving the orders. And Obama's speech must have made him seem weak and uncommitted. As a result, he significantly and unnecessarily undermined the prospects for the success of his own strategy.

Mises Daily: Wednesday, December 02, 2009 by Floy Lilley Floy Lilley is an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute. She was formerly with the University of Texas at Austin's Chair of Free Enterprise, and an attorney-at-law in Texas and Florida. There are three things everybody knows when we talk trash: 1.We know we're running out of landfill space; 2.we know we're saving resources and protecting the environment by recycling; and 3.we know no one would recycle if they weren't forced to. Let's look at these three things we think we know. Are they real or are they rubbish? 1. Are We Running Out of Landfill Space? Two events created the perfect garbage storm in the late 1980s. One barge and one bureaucrat created this overhyped myth. The garbage barge was the Mobro 4000. The bureaucrat was J. Winston Porter. The Mobro 4000 gained celebrity status by spending two months and 6,000 miles seeming to scour the Atlantic coastline and the Gulf of Mexico looking for a home for its load, as if no landfills existed. The physical availability of landfill space was not the issue, but you would not have guessed that from the hysteria the media whipped up. J. Winston Porter became a star that season at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by writing a report entitled The Solid Waste Dilemma: Agenda for Action, in which Porter proclaimed that recycling is absolutely vital because America is running out of landfill space. What Porter thought he knew was simply not so. The EPA had noticed that the number of landfills was dropping. They failed to notice that the size of landfills was getting much bigger much faster. Total landfill capacity was actually rising. The EPA also underestimated the prospects for creating additional capacity. Obviously, and as usual, the real landfill problem is not a landfill problem at all but a political problem. "Fears about the effects of landfills on the local environment have led to the rise of the not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) syndrome, which has made permitting facilities difficult. Actual landfill capacity is not running out." Today, 1,654 landfills in 48 states take care of 54 percent of all the solid waste in the country. One-third of them are privately owned. The largest landfill, in Las Vegas, received 3.8 million tons during 2007 at fees within the national range of $24 to $70 per ton. Landfills are no longer a threat to the environment or public health. State-of-the-art landfills, with redundant clay, plastic liners, and leachate collection systems, have now replaced all of our previously unsafe dumps. "We are not running out of landfill space."More and more landfills are producing pipeline-quality natural gas. Waste Management plans to turn 60 of their waste sites into energy facilities by 2012. The new plants will capture methane gas from decomposing landfill waste, generating more than 700 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 700,000 homes. Holding all of America's garbage for the next one hundred years would require a space only 255 feet high or deep and 10 miles on a side. Landfills welcome the business. Forty percent of what we recycle ends up there anyway. We are not running out of landfill space. 2. Are We Saving Resources and Protecting the Environment by Recycling? What are the costs in energy and material resources to recycling as opposed to landfill disposal, which we've just looked at? Which method of handling solid waste uses the least amount of resources as valued by the market? As government budgets tighten and the cost of being "green" rubs against the reality of rising taxes, recycling coordinators like Auburn University's Leigh Jacobson will increasingly be under pressure to justify their programs as cost-effective alternatives to waste-disposal methods like landfills. I don't think she will be able to do it. But it should be easier for Leigh at the university than it will be for her counterpart in the City of Auburn, or in any city that funds curbside recycling. Curbside recycling is substantially more costly - that is, it uses far more resources - than a program in which disposal is combined with a voluntary drop-off/buy-back option. Overall, curbside recycling's costs run between 35 percent and 55 percent more than other recycling methods, because it uses huge amounts of capital and labor per pound of material recycled. Recycling itself uses three times more resources than does depositing waste in landfills. The largest US organization dedicated to recycling just found out how difficult this chosen path can be. The final death knell for the National Recycling Coalition (NRC) appeared to ring earlier this year when the organization announced it would be filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The NRC ceased operations and terminated all staff members at the close of business on September 4, shortly after an attempt to merge with Keep America Beautiful failed. NRC is now trying to avoid bankruptcy by reorganization. Even though they are a half-million dollars in debt, NRC may legally continue to exist if they can raise funds, negotiate with their creditors and develop a business plan. What seems to be their business plan? They are counting on the Kerry-Boxer Bill on clean energy to include recycling language. In other words, they are counting on being bailed out and subsidized. The market knows this is a losing proposition, so these players are trying to get taxpayers to fund their enterprises. "Wherever private-property rights to forests are well-defined and enforced, forests are either stable or growing."The Solid Waste Association of North America found that, of the six communities involved in a particular study, all but one of the curbside recycling programs, and all the composting operations and waste-to-energy incinerators, increased the cost of waste disposal. Indeed, the price for recycling tends to soar far higher than the combined costs of manufacturing raw materials from virgin sources and dumping rubbish into landfills. Recycled newspapers must be deinked, often with chemicals, creating sludge. Even if the sludge is harmless, it too must be disposed of. Second, recycling more newspapers will not necessarily preserve trees, because many trees are grown specifically to be made into paper. The amount of new growth that occurs each year in forests exceeds by a factor of 20 the amount of wood and paper that is consumed by the world each year. Wherever private-property rights to forests are well-defined and enforced, forests are either stable or growing. Glass is made from silica dioxide - that's common beach sand - the most abundant mineral in the crust of the earth. Plastic is derived from petroleum byproducts after fuel is harvested from the raw material. Recycling paper, glass, or plastic is usually not justified compared to the virgin prices of these materials. The best way to measure the scarcity of natural resources, such as trees, sand, or oil, is to use the market prices of those resources. If the price of a resource is going up over time (and it's not just inflation pushing those prices higher) the resource is getting scarcer. If the price is going down, it is becoming more plentiful. Indeed, since 1845, the average price of raw materials has fallen roughly 80 percent after adjusting for inflation. This paradox of our having more by using more is explained by the use of the most important resource - man's mind. Human ingenuity makes natural resources increasingly available through prices, innovation, and substitution. Bureaucrats, however, appear to occupy a place at the opposite end from human ingenuity. Their interferences in markets do damage. Just two examples will illustrate what I mean by that. One is about a light that has a dark side. The other example requires that you either clean your plate or become a composter. In 2007, Congress banned incandescent bulbs - not exactly a market action. The phasing out of incandescent light is to begin with the 100-watt bulb in 2012 and end with the 40-watt bulb in 2014. By 2020, bulbs must be 70 percent more efficient than they are today. While a standard, 100-watt bulb costs $1.24, the spiral compact fluorescent light (CFL) 100-watt sells for $4.97. Advocates argue, however, that the CFL lasts longer and uses less energy. The packaging claims that after six years I will have saved $74 in energy. Thereby, in the year 2007 alone, under this edict, some 397 million compact fluorescent light bulbs were placed on the market. Their debut is counted as a success. "Recycling would seem to be the philosophy that everything is worth saving except your own time and money."However, the recycling of spent household CFLs has been an abject failure. Despite CFL-disposal bans in states like Maine, despite continuing statewide education efforts, and despite a free CFL-recycling program there, households throw the used bulbs into the trash that ends up in the landfills. What's the problem with that? Landfills, as we've learned, have the space and the appetite for our waste. Well, the problem is the potential public and environmental health effects of the collective release of the small amount of mercury in each discarded CFL. For example, using the mean amount of 5 milligrams per CFL, the total amount of mercury contained in the 2007 shipments of CFLs alone is a large amount. There is no mention on GE's packaging of the bulb's mercury component or any special precautions you must take when this bulb breaks. Notice that "mercury free" is already a selling point for the producers of new LED technology Accent bulbs. "Accent" means you can't actually get enough light from them to read by. But, you can tell the packager has obviously experienced how ugly the CFL-produced light is, because the buyer is assured a warm, white light, which is something you do not get with a CFL. In June of this year, Maine adopted the nation's first law that requires CFL bulb manufacturers to share the costs and responsibility for recycling mercury-containing CFLs through a producer-financed collection and recycling program, which must include an education component. This mandate will drive the CFLs' cost even higher. Additional specialized equipment will have to be created for handling light bulbs that will be seen to be hazardous waste. How can any savings ever result from such a boondoggle? Then, bringing new depth and meaning to the word "boondoggle," San Francisco's newest mandatory-recycling ordinance took effect last month. All residences, all restaurants and all commercial buildings must participate in the city's recycling and composting programs. A recent study had unearthed the fact that 36 percent of the city's landfilled waste is compostable. That happens to be the ingredient that makes the landfill valuable as an energy source. Collecting your food scraps, plant trimmings, soiled paper, and other compostables is considered necessary by San Franciscans to fight global warming. Residents get both a green cart and a green report titled "Stop Trashing the Planet." Residents face $100 fines if they fail to separate their food scraps from their papers or cans. Businesses face fines of $500. Really bad actors could be fined $1,000. The stated goal is to get to zero waste, meaning no garbage at all going into landfills, by the year 2020. Obviously, San Francisco believes we have run out of landfill space. Obviously, they do not have the vision to see the energy plants that landfills can become when waste is actually put in them. In light of these facts, how can San Franciscans and others think recycling conserves resources? First, many states and local communities subsidize recycling programs, either out of tax receipts or out of fees collected for trash disposal. That's the case with Auburn University's recycling grant. Thus the bookkeeping costs reported for such programs are far less than their true resource costs to society. Also, observers sometimes erroneously compare relatively high-cost, twice a week garbage pickup with relatively low-cost, once or twice a month recycling pickups, which makes recycling appear more attractive. "Mandated recycling exists mainly because there is plenty of money to be made by labeling products as "green" or "recycled" to get municipal and federal grants."Why do these same people think that recycling is protecting the environment by not polluting? Recycling is a manufacturing process, and therefore it too has environmental impact. The US Office of Technology Assessment says that it is "usually not clear whether secondary manufacturing such as recycling produces less pollution per ton of material processed than primary manufacturing processes." Increased pollution by recycling is particularly apparent in the case of curbside recycling. Los Angeles has estimated that its fleet of trucks is twice as large as it otherwise would be - 800 versus 400 trucks. This means more iron ore and coal mining, more steel and rubber manufacturing, more petroleum extracted and refined for fuel - and of course all that extra air pollution in the Los Angeles basin as the 400 added trucks cruise the curbs. Manufacturing paper, glass, and plastic from recycled materials uses appreciably more energy and water, and produces as much or more air pollution, as manufacturing from raw materials does. Resources are not saved and the environment is not protected. 3. Do People Recycle Only When They Are Forced To? If all we knew about recycling was what we heard from environmentalist groups, recycling would seem to be the philosophy that everything is worth saving except your own time and money. Costs of recycling are mostly hidden. If we add in the weekly costs of sorting out items, it makes more sense to place everything in landfills. But private recycling is the world's second oldest, if not the oldest, profession. Recyclers were just called scavengers. Everything of value has always been recycled. You will automatically know that something is of value when someone offers to buy it from you, or you see people picking through your waste or diving into dumpsters. Aluminum packaging has never been more than a small fraction of solid waste, because metals have value. Ragpickers separating out cloth from waste may not be in season now, but cardboard, wood, and metals have always been in some demand. Scrapyards recycle iron and steel because making steel from virgin iron and coal is more expensive. Members of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries recycle 60 million tons of ferrous metals, 7 million tons of nonferrous metals, and 30 million tons of waste paper, glass, and plastic each year - an amount that dwarfs that of all government (city, county, and state) recycling programs. Recycling is a long-practiced, productive, indeed essential, element of the market system. Informed, voluntary recycling conserves resources and raises our wealth, enabling us to achieve valued ends that would otherwise be impossible. So yes, people do recycle even when they are not forced to do so. Henry Hazlitt and Ludwig von Mises speak to our recycling topic. However, forcing people to recycle makes society worse off. Mandated recycling exists mainly because there is plenty of money to be made by labeling products as "green" or "recycled" to get municipal and federal grants. In Economics in One Lesson, Hazlitt teaches us that mandatory recycling considers only-short term benefits to a few groups - politicians, public-relations consultants, environmental organizations, and waste-handling corporations - instead of looking at the longer-term effects of the policy for all groups. The negative consequence will be the squandering of human resources. In conclusion, Mises also teaches us what to expect. Mises, in his great work Human Action, does not say that recycling is a bad belief. He shows by example that mandatory recycling is an inappropriate means of caring about the environment. Waste is inescapable. Austrian economics leaves it to every person to decide whether his or her belief in recycling is more important than the avoidance of the inevitable consequences of forced recycling policies: wasted natural resources and wasted human resources.

David Bromwich.Professor of Literature at Yale Posted: December 2, 2009 01:23 PM An unusually reflective lawyer once advised a purchaser of a house that a contract should not be signed or money paid before the seller made all the final repairs and improvements. "Do it straight and plain -- you don't want the tail in the door." Something about President Obama's West Point Speech on Afghanistan brought to mind that suspicious proverb. To take a country farther into a questionable war ought to be harder than opening a parenthesis and saying you know where you will close it. Yet Obama's decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan had all the composed clarity of a logical proposition. Throughout the speech -- which sought to justify the most important act of his presidency -- Obama was poised and moderate-sounding. His idea of what his escalation would do seemed moderate, too, and definite: self-contained and self-terminating. The 30,000 troops will go into Afghanistan quickly, he said, so that the last arrive within six months. They will commence their departure a year later, in July 2011. It was a gratifying picture and an orderly one; and yet it raised a question. Can you turn up the violence of a war and then turn it down? Will it stop, like that, when you tell it to? President Obama justified the intensification of his commitment in Afghanistan by the fact that we are still fighting Al Qaeda. It was Al Qaeda that attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, he said, and the organization now operates in the border-region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. We therefore have a double reason for scouring the country of the remnants of the fanatical sect. For Pakistan has nuclear weapons, Al Qaeda wants to obtain such a weapon, and if it had one it would use it against the United States. Yet here occurred the first of several noticeable omissions. According to the president's national security adviser, James Jones, Al Qaeda's members now number as few as 100. The president also asserted -- on what evidence he did not say -- that Al Qaeda is locked in a stable alliance with the Taliban forces. Yet James Jones in the same remarks concluded that he does not "foresee the return of the Taliban" to power. Obama, then, was playing up the links between Al Qaeda and the Taliban in much the way his predecessor played up the supposed links between Al Qaeda and the Baath Party of Iraq; but, with Afghanistan today, as with Iraq in 2004, it is easy to put oneself in possession of facts that refute the claim. We know now that the effect of the American bombings and invasion was initially to put to rout and scatter the group and then, with the stimulant of the Iraq war, to multiply it into a score of sects and cells in whose names we barely know -- in North Africa, Indonesia, and elsewhere. Yet the president spoke as if Al Qaeda were the name of a distinct, finite, searchable entity that can be subdued by an intensification (lasting exactly 18 months) of American fighting in the country that was once its camp. As for the Taliban, whatever else they may be, they are native to Afghanistan. This cannot be said of Al Qaeda, but it cannot be said, either, of the soldiers, trainers, advisers, and contractors sent by the United States. There is a curious air of exactness in the idea of a renewed and extended war that closes at 18 months because that "benchmark" was settled in advance. How can anyone be sure that the scale of so entangling a mission, with so many pitfalls, will fit neatly into the shape of a year and a half? From another point of view, the case for the urgency of the mission -- that the protection of American lives in the U.S. depends on it -- really proves too much. If the enemy is so potent and has so long and sure a reach -- if the surviving 100 members of Al Qaeda are among the greatest dangers the U.S. faces in the world -- we should be willing to stay and fight for fifty years or a hundred, and to colonize the country if need be, with a million settlers acting as our sentinels. The truth is that half of the president's logic believes in the urgency of this mission and half perceives no urgency at all. Since people who fear for their lives tend to err on the side of self-protection, we may infer that something other than the imperative of national self-preservation drove the West Point speech and is driving the new policy. Several possibilities are obvious and have been much discussed: President Obama's cautious relationship to the military; his wariness of the ambitious general, David Petraeus, and the commander of forces in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, who is an emanation of Petraeus. By leaking the high-end figure for the numbers of troops he would have liked, McChrystal threatened to outflank the president, and that threat has been quelled only for the moment. Meanwhile, Obama's fear of being called weak on defense by Republicans, and thus seeing his stature in foreign affairs diminished for the rest of his term, was doubtless a motive as well. A president needs a war, or so they say. Having a war did not protect Lyndon Johnson from an insurgent movement in his own party's primaries that denied him a second term, nor did it save Richard Nixon from being driven out of office in disgrace, but the superstition remains: it never harms a president to have a war in his pocket. President Obama's assurance about the neatness of the solution extends beyond the violence of the war to the resolution of Afghanistan into a better political society under American guidance. He told his West Point audience that the Karzai government may have proved itself corrupt, but we expect the new money being sent to be placed in the hands of the uncorrupt, and we will expect all the corrupt to be "held accountable." But how? By what species of oversight, given the scarcity of competent civilians and Americans on the ground who even speak the language? At this point, one is struck, not for the first time, by a psychological oddity in Obama's makeup. He is almost convinced of the omnipotence of words. When once he has persuaded himself of a thing -- that it is true, or that it is plausible and might become true -- the words that embody his conviction have for him the quality of deeds already done. It did not work so happily with his spoken wish for a freeze of Israeli settlements; and he has seen the word falter on the brink of the deed, once more, in the wish for a comprehensive health care bill before the summer or before Thanksgiving. Still, his sense of the omnipotence of words was at work in his declared belief regarding the utility of an 18-month extension of the war. Obama dealt with the Vietnam analogy in passing, in an attempt to dispel the fears that a similar entanglement is on the brink of recurring. Yet he argued the point in a way that could only remind his older listeners that the president was very young during the Vietnam War. His study of it has been abstract and conventional. He said the analogy did not hold because in Vietnam we had no allies. In fact, Australia and Canada both gave limited but real assistance in the form of ground forces, and other allies of the time gave less direct assistance. The number of troops supplied by our European allies in Afghanistan has been similarly small thus far, despite the ostensibly greater danger to them by the proximity of Al Qaeda to Europe. The president also noted that Vietnam had never attacked the United States, whereas Al Qaeda did attack us. But that contrast loses its force under two legitimate questions: who exactly are Al Qaeda now, and where are they located? In many ways the Vietnam War, though of an atrociousness that Afghanistan War has not yet approached, was pursued by the U.S. obedient to a much sounder theory than any offered for the present war. The theory was that World Communism was all one thing and its spread to a single country would lead inevitably to its spread to a continent. The theory turned out to be false; and its falseness was perceived as early as 1964 by critics of the war such as Hans J. Morgenthau. But what are we doing in Afghanistan but following an inferior and less persuasive version of a similar theory: namely that World Terrorism is all one thing, that its heart is in Afghanistan (because that is where we found it), and that if we don't "defeat" it soon by "completing the mission," the terror will stay and spread. Omitted is the fact that Afghanistan is not our country. Admittedly, this is a truth that comes hard to Americans. "The very idea of the fabrication of a new government," wrote Edmund Burke, "is enough to fill us with disgust and horror." But David Brooks disagrees: "aside from killing bad guys," he wrote in the spring, American troops are "also trying to figure out how to reweave Afghan society." By what right do we engage in the reweaving and refabrication of a society that has thrown out conquerors for thousands of years? The effect of the self-conceit can only be to unite the society in hostility against us. For America to look on the native resistance to an occupying army as proof of terrorism will surely increase the obduracy of the resistance itself, and serve to recruit more terrorists. Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in front of a screen in Las Vegas, and fires when he has a certain shot. To a primitive mind (but not only to a primitive mind), this experiment on a country not our own has the trappings a video game played in hell. But the procedure was here embraced by the president in the antiseptic idiom of a practiced technocrat. He gave no sign of the effects of such killings by a foreign power out of reach in the sky. To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders. What comes of the reputation of policemen in a crime-ridden neighborhood when they conduct themselves like that? And what makes anyone suppose the reaction will be less extreme when the policeman comes from another country? And yet, from the president's West Point speech, one would not guess that he has reflected what our mere presence in West Asia does to increase the enchantment of violent resistance and to heat the anger that turns into terrorists people who have lost parents, children, cousins, clansmen, and friends to the Americans. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power. President Obama closed his speech by offering his large American audience a warm bath of self-love about the American way of life. The rest of the world will want to "access opportunity" and resemble us as soon as they learn what we are really like, he said. This long peroration was ordinary and at the same time reminiscent of the war speeches of George W. Bush. By contrast Obama did not talk about the abstract issue that would have taken some courage to broach: the danger that war is becoming an integrated part of the American way of life. George W. Casey, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, has spoken in several recent speeches about the present as "an era of persistent conflict." So deeply has the Cheney Axiom of Endless War has taken hold of the minds of officials and policy-makers. Yet nowhere in his speech did the president address the risk of this view for democracy, or separate himself from the doctrine itself. Indeed, he has gone some way to embrace it and join the pattern of "persistence" -- with the reservation that he thinks by setting limits he can remove its sting. Hans Morgenthau, in one of the articles he published against the escalation in Vietnam, paraphrased the lines of Goethe's Faust on the fatality of every choice: take a first step and you are a free man, take the second and you become the slave of your choice. For Obama, giving the command of Afghanistan to General McChrystal was the first step, and a step he must have taken knowingly. Then came the leaked memo from the ambassador in Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, urging Obama to send no more troops -- and with that letter, an almost miraculous chance of a reprieve. Nobody could have said those words with more effect, since Eikenberry is a military man, and one whom both Petraeus and McChrystal had looked up to. He was throwing Obama a lifeline; but the miracle was unorthodox, and Obama has the caution of the orthodox. He acted as if the memo had never been received. The new shipment of troops to Afghanistan is his second step. Barack Obama is the most convincing person he knows. He can convince himself of a proposition, "A," and a second proposition, "Not A," and come to believe that the two may be combined. At West Point, he seemed to want to declare a policy and take it back in a single breath. But there are circles that can't be squared; and it is with war as with other fatal commitments: the way in is not the way out.

George Washington's Thanksgiving Proclamation [New York, 3 October 1789] By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation. Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor - and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be- That we may then all unitein rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks-for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation-for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war-for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed-for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted-for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us. And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions- to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually-to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed-to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord-To promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us-and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best. Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Posted: November 18, 2009
1:00 am Eastern

© 2009

Obama's safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, founded the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, a homosexual activist group that now has thousands of chapters at high schools across the nation.

GLSEN chapters and materials have promoted sex between young teens and adults and sponsored "field trips" to gay-pride parades. Jennings was the keynote speaker at a notorious GLSEN conference at Tufts University in 2000 at which HIV-AIDS coordinators discussed in detail, before an audience including area high-school students, how to perform various homosexual acts.

Obama's science czar wrote in a college textbook that compulsory "green abortions" are an acceptable way to control population growth. We assume that what makes an abortion green is when the motive for the killing is population control to serve environmentalist dogma.

Affirmative action is in vogue in Obama's administration: His diversity czar has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities. Obama's first appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court is a woman who said that a "Latina woman" would make better judicial decisions than "a white male."

Obama's top lawyer at the State Department, Harold Hongju Koh, calls himself a transnationalist. That means wanting U.S. courts to "domesticate" foreign and international law - i.e., integrate it into U.S. domestic law binding on U.S. citizens.

Koh is eager to put us under a global legal system that would diminish our "distinctive rights culture" such as due process, trial by jury and our First Amendment "protections for speech and religion" that give "far greater emphasis and judicial protection in America than in Europe or Asia." Under global governance, the United States will be forbidden to allow more freedom and constitutional rights than other countries.

When Obama's appointee for the 7th Circuit

Court of Appeals, David Hamilton, was a district court judge, he prohibited the Indiana State Legislature from giving an invocation that mentioned Jesus, while mention of Allah was allowed. Hamilton worked for ACORN and the ACLU, and even the liberal American Bar Association rated him "not qualified."

And we thought the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was an embarrassment to Barack Obama when he was running for president! We never dreamed Obama would actually appoint such a collection of weirdos.

Phyllis Schlaflyis a lawyer, conservative political analyst and the author of the newly revised and expanded "Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It." Schlafly also is founder and president of Eagle Forum.

This and 5 Other Complaints About the Recently Passed House Health Bill
By John Nichols, The Nation
Posted on November 9, 2009, Printed on November 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143842/

The Affordable Health Care for America Act was approved by the U.S. House Saturday night with overwhelming support from progressive Democrats who serve in the chamber and from a president who was nominated and elected with the enthusiastic support of progressive voters.

But that does not mean that informed and engaged progressives are entirely enthusiastic about the measure.

In fact, some are openly and explicitly opposed to it -- among them former Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and CPC member Eric Massa, D-New York, both of whom broke with the majority of their fellow Democrats to vote "no" when the House approved the measure by a narrow 220-215 vote Saturday.

How can this be?

Isn't this a fight between Democrats and Republicans? Between reforming liberals and tea-party conservatives?

How can there possible be any subtlety or nuance to this debate?

Well, of course, the debate over this 1,900-page behemoth of a bill is more complicated than the easy spin of political insiders -- and media cheering sections -- would have Americans believe.

Key interest groups, such as the National Organization for Women, and key congressmen who have been long-term supporters of reform, such as single-payer backers Massa and Kucinich, argue that the bill is not the cure for what ails the U.S. health care system.

Indeed, they suggest, the bill as it is currently constructed could make a bad situation worse.

Many sincere progressives in the House, and outside of it, chose to back the bill as the best that could be gotten. Others supported it on the theory that flaws could be fixed in the Senate and in the reconciliation of the House and Senate bills.

But those repairs will only be made if activists are conscious of what ails this bill.

For that reason, even supporters of the House legislation would be wise to consider the criticisms of it by groups that advocate for the rights of women, patient advocates, unions and some of the most progressive members of the House.

Here are six smart progressive complaints about the House bill:

1. FROM CONGRESSMAN ERIC MASSA: "This Bill Will Enshrine in Law the Monopolistic Powers of the Private Health Insurance Industry"

At the highest level, this bill will enshrine in law the monopolistic powers of the private health insurance industry, period. There's really no other way to look at it. I believe the private health insurance industry is part of the problem.

This bill also, I believe, fails to address the fundamental question before the American people, and that is how do we control the costs of health care. It does not address interstate portability, as Medicare does. It does not address real medical malpractice insurance reform. It does not address the incredible waste and fraud that are currently in the system.

2. FROM THE CALIFORNIA NURSES ASSOCIATION: This Bill Fails to Control Costs

While the current bills will provide limited assistance for some, the inconvenient truth is they fall far short in effective controls on skyrocketing insurance, pharmaceutical and hospital costs, do little to stop insurance companies from denying needed medical care recommended by doctors, and provide little relief for Americans with employer-sponsored insurance worried about health security for themselves and their families.

3. FROM THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR WOMEN: "This Bill Obliterates Women's Fundamental Right to Choose"

The House of Representatives has dealt the worst blow to women's fundamental right to self-determination in order to buy a few votes for reform of the profit-driven health insurance industry. We must protect the rights we fought for in Roe v. Wade. We cannot and will not support a health care bill that strips millions of women of their existing access to abortion.

Birth control and abortion are integral aspects of women's health care needs. Health care reform should not be a vehicle to obliterate a woman's fundamental right to choose.

The Stupak Amendment (to the House bill, which was approved and attached on Saturday) goes far beyond the abusive Hyde Amendment, which has denied federal funding of abortion since 1976. The Stupak Amendment, if incorporated into the final version of health insurance reform legislation, will:

• Prevent women receiving tax subsidies from using their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;

• Prevent women participating in the public health insurance exchange, administered by private insurance companies, from using 100 percent of their own money to purchase private insurance that covers abortion;

• Prevent low-income women from accessing abortion entirely, in many cases.

NOW calls on the Senate to pass a health care bill that respects women's constitutionally protected right to abortion and calls on President Obama to refuse to sign any health care bill that restricts women's access to affordable, quality reproductive health care.

4. FROM PLANNED PARENTHOOD'S CECILE RICHARDS: This Bill Embraces Religious-Right Extremes

It is extremely unfortunate that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and anti-choice opponents were able to hijack the health care reform bill in their dedicated attempt to ban all legal abortion In the United States.

Most telling is the fact that the vast majority of members of the House who supported the Stupak/Pitts amendment in today's vote do not support HR 3962, revealing their true motive, which is to kill the health care reform bill.

These single-issue advocates simply used health care reform to advance their extreme, ideological agenda at the expense of tens of millions of women.

5. FROM CONGRESSMAN DENNIS KUCINICH,: This Bill Worries About the Health of Wall Street, Not America

We have been led to believe that we must make our health care choices only within the current structure of a predatory, for-profit insurance system which makes money not providing health care. We cannot fault the insurance companies for being what they are. But we can fault legislation in which the government incentivizes the perpetuation, indeed the strengthening, of the for-profit health insurance industry, the very source of the problem. When health insurance companies deny care or raise premiums, co-pays and deductibles they are simply trying to make a profit. That is our system.

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000 percent. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies - a bailout under a blue cross.

By incurring only a new requirement to cover pre-existing conditions, a weakened public option, and a few other important but limited concessions, the health insurance companies are getting quite a deal. The Center for American Progress' blog, Think Progress, states, 'since the President signaled that he is backing away from the public option, health insurance stocks have been on the rise.' Similarly, healthcare stocks rallied when Senator Max Baucus introduced a bill without a public option. Bloomberg reports that Curtis Lane, a prominent health industry investor, predicted a few weeks ago that 'money will start flowing in again' to health insurance stocks after passage of the legislation. Investors.com last month reported that pharmacy benefit managers share prices are hitting all-time highs, with the only industry worry that the Administration would reverse its decision not to negotiate Medicare Part D drug prices, leaving in place a Bush Administration policy.

During the debate, when the interests of insurance companies would have been effectively challenged, that challenge was turned back. The 'robust public option' which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks' hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy - in which most Americans live - the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

This health care bill continues the redistribution of wealth to Wall Street at the expense of America's manufacturing and service economies which suffer from costs other countries do not have to bear, especially the cost of health care. America continues to stand out among all industrialized nations for its privatized health care system. As a result, we are less competitive in steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping while other countries subsidize their exports in these areas through socializing the cost of health care.

Notwithstanding the fate of H.R. 3962, America will someday come to recognize the broad social and economic benefits of a not-for-profit, single-payer health care system, which is good for the American people and good for America's businesses, with of course the notable exceptions being insurance and pharmaceuticals.

6. FROM "SICKO'S" DONNA SMITH: The Bill Does Not Cure What Ails Us

Passing a healthcare reform bill that does not provide me with better access to care or protection from bankruptcy and financial ruin is not what I asked you all to do. Stripping away all reference to a progressively financed, single standard of high quality healthcare for all - also known as single-payer -- is done only to more deeply ensconce the deep pocketed interests in healthcare: the private, for-profit insurance giants, the big pharmaceuticals, the medical equipment companies, the hospital corporations and all the other making huge profits as thousands die needless deaths.

Healthcare is a basic human right. Granting that right is not something to be calculated differently in swing Congressional districts, off-year election strategy or second-Presidential term planning. It is your (members of Congress') duty to me, to my fellow citizens and to your nation.

And (members of Congress) are marching away from reality when you think all the hard-working people who counted on you to make this a better healthcare system will not notice when you deliver insurance purchase mandates and a corporate bail-out that will dwarf the Wall Street trillions you've already justified.

Watch Smith's video: "American Sickos: Will the Current Bills Help? No"

Follow Smith's organizing for real reform at the website of Progressive Democrats of America. She is the national co-chair of PDA's Healthcare NOT Warfare campaign.

John Nichols is The Nation's Washington correspondent.

© 2009 The Nation All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/143842/

'Intellect loses its virtue when it ceases to seek truth and turns to the pursuit of political ends.' - Robert H. Bork

In a 'Big' way, Andrew Breitbart has injected into our modern cultural/media zeitgeist a foundational reminder of why it is so intellectually critical, even fun, to inspire and embrace the notion that 'there's nothing better than having convivial relations with people with whom you disagree.'

To that end, may I humbly share my own ideological apostasy and second thoughts that began in 1989.

In that year, my oldest child was born and I found myself - as do many Los Angeles parents - driving around the city to various 'play-dates', supermarket excursions, pediatrician visits, and the 12-miles-distant playground of the 'progressive' pre-school where my wife and I intended to enroll our children. (I also began more closely scrutinizing and fearing the withholding taxes from my paycheck increasing the governmental intrusion into my young family).

It was during those hours of drive time that I would engage our little ones with music from a Raffi jingle or the Beatles on my car's now obsolete cassette player (yay, iPods!). When they'd invariably be serenaded to sleep - in their child-safety seats with the Bert & Ernie steering wheel attachment - I'd tune in the Howard Stern Show on 97.1 KLSX FM radio.

I'd been enjoying Mr. Stern & Co. for years, and found his provocative, often hilarious and creative show reminiscent of the crude, in-your-face counter-cultural style to which I'd grown so attached in my teen years during the '70s. A style (with all due and biased respect to Mr. Stern) innovated by his broadcast predecessor, Chicagoland's iconic Steve Dahl.

'Shock Jock' radio's inherent vulgarities aside, for me its main troubles are the inevitable programming lulls. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate and admire the challenge of sustaining a three-hour comedy and variety show in any medium - let alone without visuals - and the herculean team effort that goes into such undertakings on a daily basis. Bravo!

However, as any objective listener and talent might do, during those lulls I tended to channel-surf.

It was during those car radio surfing safaris, in particular the nine-to-noon slot, that my fingers led me to KFI-AM 640 Radio. I began listening to what I first thought was just another loudmouth Shock Jock. Except this guy was different. He played little if any music beyond his bumper rotation. His material was intellectually-based, creatively entertaining, and unabashedly biased in ideological terms.

As a young & liberal parent, I'd discovered Rush Limbaugh. I've been a dedicated listener ever since.

Rush's countless words and twenty years of wisdom, provocations and humor is an inspiration to me and his tens of millions of listeners to read and investigate further controversial issues, current events, history, and philosophy.

Most beneficial have been the corroborating authors and resources he admires and/or recommends to this day: from Jesus to Blaise Pascal, John Adams to Ronald Reagan, the American Thinker to IBD, John Locke to Mark R. Levin, Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Sowell.

As Mr. Limbaugh distilled it so beautifully:

'I love being a conservative. We conservatives are proud of our philosophy. Unlike our liberal friends, who are constantly looking for new words to conceal their true beliefs and are in a perpetual state of reinvention, we conservatives are unapologetic about our ideals. We are confident in our principles and energetic about openly advancing them. We believe in individual liberty, limited government, capitalism, the rule of law, faith, a color-blind society and national security. We support school choice, enterprise zones, tax cuts, welfare reform, faith-based initiatives, political speech, homeowner rights and the war on terrorism. And at our core we embrace and celebrate the most magnificent governing document ever ratified by any nation-the U.S. Constitution. Along with the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes our God-given natural right to be free, it is the foundation on which our government is built and has enabled us to flourish as a people.'

How can reasonable Americans 'convivially' argue against that?

The modern media ('Algore's Internet') has, Moses-like, led us to the promised land of instantaneous access to the widest diversity of information and accountability that mankind has ever known. There is no better example I know of human freedom.

So, how should people take advantage of that, and what does all of this have to do with the Anguish of the Apostate?

Hi, my name is Adam, and I am an apostate to the faith of Modern Liberalism whose 'anguish' has been relieved.

Anyone with second thoughts out there care to join in that relief?