Why Kentucky Needs Health Care Reform

Page One actually reads the federal report on the status of healch care in this country and finds that Kentucky can't survive without major health care reform.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius released reports on the health care status quo today. What could be considered, uh, scary information on health care cost and quality in all fifty states is included.

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So let’s take a look at Kentucky’s report…

KENTUCKIANS CAN’T AFFORD THE STATUS QUO

Roughly 2.4 million people in Kentucky get health insurance on the job, where family premiums average $11,413, about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.
Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 61 percent in Kentucky.
Household budgets are strained by high costs: 24 percent of middle-income Kentucky families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.

High costs block access to care: 17 percent of people in Kentucky report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.

Kentucky businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $1100 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.

Read the whole thing.

And although the Obama administration's health care reform website does not say in so many words that only single-payer government insurance can save us from the approaching health care apocalypse, that is, in fact, the case.

In other words, if you oppose single-payer, why do you hate Medicare?

New Study: Coal Deaths Exceed Coal Jobs

UPDATE Below

Not that it will come as a surprise to anyone with half a grain of sense and half an hour spent in the coal fields, but coal mining costs coalfield communities more in early deaths than it benefits in jobs.

Appalachia has some of the most impoverished communites in the United States. The entire region is economically depressed as compared to the national average. But coal communities in Appalachia are even worse off than the rest of the region, a fact that runs counter to the idea that coal jobs support local communities. A new study out of the Institute for Health Policy Research at West Virginia University and published in Public Health Reports looked at this discrepency and found that, even using conservative assumptions, the economic costs of coal mining in Appalachian communities far outweighed the benefits from having a coal mine in the community.

The study reached this conclusion by gathering publicly available data from various government databases and then calculating how much economic benefit coal mines produced in Appalachian communities vs. how much the coal mines cost in early deaths. As a result, the study had to prove that there were unusual deaths in coal communities, and they did so using statistical analyses designed to account for the effects of “smokin, race, poveryt, physician supply, education, and other variables.” And even after adjusting for all these variables and removing their effects on early mortality, the study found that there was nearly 3000 excess deaths in coal-heavy Appalachian counties as compared to the rest of the US.

Multiply the number of excess deaths caused by “chronic forms of heart, respiratory, and kidney disease, as well as lung cancer” by the official value of statistical life (VSL, the amount of money that each life is worth for cost-benefit analyses performed by the federal government) and you have a conservative estimate of the costs of coal mining. Similarly, use an old 1997 estimate of the economic benefits to Appalachian communites, adjust for yearly inflation, unemployment since the start of the study period, add tax income and subtract government subsidies, and you get a reasonable estimate for the value of coal in Appalachia.

The result: just over $8 billion in estimated benefits to Appalachian communities, but at cost of $51 billion in lost economic power due just to the early deaths of people living in coal communities.

Put another way, since 1997, Appalachian coal communities have lost $43 billion dollars that they would have kept in their communities had they thrown the coal companies out.

Read that again: $47 billion lost in just the last decade. How much lost since coal mining began in earnest 100 years ago?

And that's $47 billion in the last decade just in the cost of early deaths. That doesn't count the economic cost of roads destroyed by overweight coal trucks, house foundations shattered by blasting, forests of valuable hardwood bulldozed and burned, wells poisoned by mine leaching, irreplaceable sources of fresh water buried under mine waste.

No, no surprise and not rocket science. But yet more proof that anyone - especially a bought-off Lieutenant Governor seeking a Senate seat - who dares to mention coal as anything but an abomination to be eliminated at any cost is a liar who thinks you're stupid.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE, 6:30 a.m A study by a Berea nonprofit finds that the coal industry "the coal industry takes $115 million more from Kentucky’s state government annually in services and programs than it contributes in taxes."

Quote of the Day

Reza Aslan, discussing the U.S. response to the Iranian election protests with Jon Stewart:

"All I can say is, thank God for President Barack Obama."

Pace invisible sky wizards, on behalf of American voters: "You're welcome, Reza."

The Rude One Counsels Patience

There's an old cartoon that was popular in government offices. It showed two vultures sitting on a tree branch watching an animal on the ground below dying slowly. One of the vultures says to the other:

"Patience, hell! I'm going out and kill something."

We've waited eight years to be rid of Smirky/Darth and all its horrid works, and every minute it takes is a minute too long.

But the Rude Pundit explains why we must continue to wait:

Disagree how you will with Barack Obama on some pretty serious issues (are we really debating whether or not to release a Gitmo detainee held because we mistook the video of him being tortured by al-Qaeda for him being trained as a suicide bomber?). Wonder who the fuck he's pleasing when it comes to some other issues (dude made some pretty explicit damn promises on the campaign trail when it came to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, among other shit). Accuse him of whatever you like, yell at him about whatever you like, call him a dirty smoker. But the man is trying to be a goddamned alchemist in transforming a vat of shit into a gold bathtub.

We're impatient, yes, yes, we are. The deluded who thought they were getting beautiful Barack to ride in on a giant stallion and slay the big, bad Bush machine are impatient. The realists who knew they were getting a really damn smart, slightly left of center guy in Obama and not an avenging liberal, they're impatient, too.

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Or, in even otherer words, it's gonna take a fuck of a lot of work to get us back to zero, to the way things were before George W. Bush came in and pissed on our beds, raped our dogs, tied us up, set the house on fire, and left without calling 911. And then, once it's back to zero, we can talk about how it gets better. Doesn't make any of us less impatient and it doesn't excuse some of the shit Obama's doing (like continuing to argue the Bush administration side on cases left over from it), but we gotta recognize that the circumstances are: "We're fucked - can we be un-fucked?"

We're five months away from the worst presidency in our history, heading in the opposite direction, thank Christ, Allah, whoever, or no one. But objects in the mirror are closer than they appear, motherfuckers. This ain't apologia and it ain't deluded belief. Just like we can yell that Democrats who oppose Obama's policies are forgetting that people who voted for the man knew what they were getting, so can we say to the jittery on the left that, despite the fact that getting fucked over is a very real possibility, we need to remember that we who voted for him also did so on the basis of trusting his judgment.

Read the whole thing.

Big Coal Buys Dr. Dan

When an apparently sentient, sane political candidate publicly promotes the destruction of strip-mining as "good for Eastern Kentucky," you can be pretty sure that candidate is in the pocket of Big Coal.

But you don't often see a smoking gun like an email from the industry bragging about its purchase of a potential U.S. Senator.

Page One catches it:

David Moss, Director of Government Affairs for the Kentucky Coal Association, a registered lobbyist agent with the Kentucky Legislative Ethics Commission, sent out an email blast begging for campaign contributions on behalf of Daniel Mongiardo to the entire Kentucky Coal Association:

From: David Moss <*****@kentuckycoal.com>
Sent: Mon Jun 22 17:39:20 2009
Subject: [KCA MEMBERSHIP] Fundraising Request

Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo is requesting all Coal Industry interests to support his campaign for the Democratic Nomination for the 2010 U.S. Senate Election against Attorney General Jack Conway. Lt Gov Mongiardo has continually fought to keep Kentucky a national leader in coal production regardless of the political retribution received from local papers and environmental extremist groups. He is and will remain a Friend of Coal. He desires to collect a large sum of cash before the 2nd quarter reporting period ends next week (June 30). Please send all checks to his campaign address listed below: Dr. Dan for U.S. Senate P.O. Box 4023 Frankfort, Kentucky 40604
————————–
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Thought you’d like to see that message, dear readers. Especially because all of us “environmental extremists” and those working at local papers are obviously out for “retribution” - we’re not just out for a discussion of the facts in the U.S. Senate race or anything.

Should be noted that “he desires to collect a large sum of cash” is not sufficient as a campaign solicitation in a federal race. When sending emails like this, the FEC requires that there be ‘paid for by’ language and disclose contribution limits.

Media Czech adds:

There was already no question that Dan Mongiardo was in the pocket of King Coal because of his unequivocal support for the travesty that is mountaintop removal mining. Now, Jake brings home the evidence that King Coal is now actively fundraising for Lt. Dan so that he can help do the bidding of mountaintop removers in the US Senate.

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This guy shouldn't even come near the Senate. And Kentucky Democrats and Independents of all stripes need to make sure that this doesn't happen.

Let's get behind the candidate that isn't a shill for King Coal and mountaintop removal, eh?

That would be this guy.

Press Conferences for Adults Only

Beltway Villager heads were exploding left and right as President Obama finally ran out of patience with the gooberheads pretending to be reporters.

TPM has the highlight reel:



Full press conference video:



Read the transcript of the full press conference here.

Lesson from Iran: There is No Such Thing as Religious Democracy

It is thrilling to see the Iranian protesters using Islam, particularly the repeated calls of "God is Great," to protect their people's revolution against theocratic dictators. That it also makes U.S. neocons choke on their own bile is a bonus.

But the larger lesson of Iran is that religion of any flavor is inimicable to freedom, liberty, democracy, and the universal values of free speech, free association and freedom from religion.

Americans should know this better than anyone else, having one of the oldest secular governments in the world. But even after eight years of a freakazoid Xian theocracy, we still need a reminder of why the only free government is secular government.

In Salon, Michael Lind explains how "the theocratic repression in Iran is a reminder that there can be no freedom without secular government."

Secular government is the basis of both liberty and democracy. It is important to emphasize this, because of the tendency to portray the struggle in Iran in terms of a global conflict between democracy and dictatorship. Set aside, for a moment, the fact that former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was one of four candidates, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who were approved to run as presidential candidates last May by the clerics of Iran's Guardian Council. It does not take away from the heroism of Mousavi or his followers to point out that if Ahmadinejad stole the election he stole an election that was already rigged.

The larger issue is the question of what comes first: separation of church and state, or democracy. America's Founders had no doubts on that score. Democracy requires citizens who are free from "superstition" and "priestcraft," to use 18th-century language. Americans have usually believed that religion can play a constructive role in a democratic republic by encouraging moral behavior. But in the traditional American view, theocratic democracy is nothing more than majoritarian tyranny, whether the clerics have a formal role in the state or merely tell the voters how to vote. And even secular democracy is not a goal in itself. It is merely a means to an end: the protection of natural rights.

The idea of universal, basic natural human rights is incompatible with theocracy in any form. While Christians and adherents of other religions can believe in natural rights, the theory of natural rights itself, influenced by ancient Greek sophists and Epicureans, is inherently secular. Natural rights by definition are those that ordinary people, using only their reason, can agree upon -- things like life and liberty and property or happiness, meaning access to subsistence. The list of natural rights varies from thinker to thinker, but they all have one thing in common -- they are not revealed by a divine intelligence to a prophet or priests.

The natural rights tradition is radical in another way. Authority flows upward from the individual to the government, not downward from God to the individual via the government. The government is not God's viceroy on earth. It is nothing more than a territorial mutual protection society. In natural rights theory -- though needless to say not always in the practice of liberal regimes -- the governors are the employees and agents of the governed.

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The one thing that we in liberal countries can do, while reformers in Iran fight and sometimes die for their principles, is to understand our own. And the most fundamental principle of all is that ordinary human beings are capable of governing themselves without the guidance of other ordinary human beings who pretend to speak on behalf of God.

Read the whole thing.

D.C. Repug Mucketymucks Ruin Kentucky Landmark

It's bad enough when native Kentuckians use their political power to destroy historic properties for no good reason. When rich D.C. repugs get in on the game, things have gone too far.

Cave Hill, the historic Lexington estate that once served as the state's temporary governor's mansion when John Y. Brown Jr. was in office, is in foreclosure and scheduled to be sold on July 27 at a Fayette County master commissioner sale.

Bruce Fein, a Washington D.C. constitutional lawyer, and his wife, Mattie Fein, own the property. They bought Cave Hill from Brown in July 2006, for $1.9 million.

The 17-acre estate, the site of elegant parties while Brown was governor, has a 7,500-square-foot residence — the original portion was built in 1821 — pool, tennis courts, a three-bedroom guesthouse, putting green and horse barn.

The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

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In the past three years, the fortunes of the stately house and once immaculately groomed grounds have fallen on hard times. It is abandoned, neglected and a judge has ordered it be sold to pay the mortgage that the owners have defaulted on.

The historic mansion has been empty since it was purchased by the Feins, according to Mattie Fein. The couple put it back on the market in December 2006 for $2.45 million.

Glass in the back door has been broken out and trespassers jimmied the lock to get inside, said George, who has seen the mansion. Wood floors are warped from water damage. The recent ice storm left the lawn littered with broken limbs and downed trees, which have not been cleaned up.

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Bruce Fein, an assistant attorney general under President Ronald Reagan, writes a weekly column for the Washington Times and Slate, an online political magazine. He and his wife own Lichfield Group, which produces political shows for television and does celebrity public relations.

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The Browns entertained frequently, using Cave Hill to sell Kentucky, the former governor said. "It was part of our Kentucky presentation. It was a special place and people wanted to be invited to visit," he said.

The Browns threw elaborate post-Derby Day parties on the lawn. Guests included actor Gregory Peck, TV host Barbara Walters, singer Kenny Rogers, Miami Vice star Don Johnson, developer Donald Trump, artist Andy Warhol and boxing great Muhammad Ali. Bill and Hillary Clinton visited while he was governor of Arkansas.

The original section of Cave Hill was built in 1821, making it one of the oldest structures in the Bluegrass.

Read the whole thing.

Cap and Trade Lies Exposed

Here in Kentucky we haven't heard too much of the scare-mongering from the dirty power industry on cap-and-trade legislation. That's probably because the coal industry has this state's politicians so completely bought off and its residents so bamboozled it doesn't have to say anything.

The proposed bill, Waxman-Markey, doesn't come within a light-year of doing what it needs to do to create an energy industry that grows the economy and slows global warming. But it's a huge step forward, as opposed to the accelerating suicidal spiral into destruction the coal industry demands.

Kevin Drum finds the CBO report that explodes just one of the dirty energy industry myths:

Republicans have been screaming blue for months about the cost of the cap-and-trade provision of the Waxman-Markey climate change bill. It's going to cost us $1,600 each! No, that's wrong: it's going to cost us $3,100 each! Head for the hills!

So Rep. Dave Camp, the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means committee, asked the Congressional Budget Office for a verdict. And guess what? The net cost turned out to be — at most — $175 per household by the year 2020. That's less than $70 per person:

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the net annual economywide cost of the cap-and-trade program in 2020 would be $22 billion — or about $175 per household. That figure [...] does not include the economic benefits and other benefits of the reduction in GHG emissions and the associated slowing of climate change....Overall net costs would average 0.2 percent of households’ after-tax income.

Low income households would fare even better.

Coal is the buggy whip of energy. The industry's insistence that until alternative energy is providing 100 percent of our energy we must mine more coal, burn more coal and build more coal-burning plants is like buggy-whip manufacturers in 1895 demanding that the federal government mandate monthly household purchases of buggy whips until "horseless carriages" make horses extinct.

Next time you hear somebody - like, say, a certain lying Lt. Governor - talk about "clean coal," just think "magic buggy whips."

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Iran Protesters Lose the High Ground

They're still right, they're still fighting on the side of democracy and majority rule, but by responding to violence with violence, the anti-government protesters in Iran have lost the high ground.

I don't blame them. The hardest thing in the world, harder than enduring torture and far harder than hitting back at someone who hits you, is to stand still and not defend yourself against attack.

But that extreme difficulty is why it works. When a powerful government uses lethal weapons on unarmed protesters who refuse to fight back, the protesters win. But when the government gets to claim self-defense, the protesters lose credibility, sympathy and support.

I had high hopes that the Iranian protesters would emulate Gandhi and King's tactics and thus achieve Gandhi's and King's victories over repressive governments far more powerful than Tehran.

Those hopes died last night.

It's still possible for the protesters to prevail in the short term - their victory in the long term is assured. For while the long arc of history does, indeed, bend toward justice, its arc in Iran just got longer.

Before the Battle

Say what you will about Andrew Sullivan, and I could say plenty, his coverage of Iran this past week has been unbelievable. Others have done more original reporting, or in more detail, but no one - no one - has brought to the story the passion, persistence and hope of Andrew Sullivan.

Today, he posts yet another message from a protester in Tehran to bring you to tears.

“I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! There are a few great movie scenes that I also have to see. I should drop by the library, too. It’s worth to read the poems of Forough and Shamloo again. All family pictures have to be reviewed, too. I have to call my friends as well to say goodbye. All I have are two bookshelves which I told my family who should receive them. I’m two units away from getting my bachelors degree but who cares about that. My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…” - an Iranian blogger, with more courage than most of us will ever know.

Netroots Nation Caves to the Freakazoids

In eight years, the liberal blogosphere grew from literally nothing to one of the most powerful political forces on the planet on the strength of one thing: passionate opposition to the warmongering theocracy of the Smirky/Darth administration.

Every time Bush used "god's will" to justify unprovoked war, torture, shredding the Constitution, shitting on treaties, burning the planet to a crisp, drowning New Orleans and sentencing anyone not filthy rich to disease, poverty and death, it spawned a million blog posts.

If not for fighting the good fight defending constitutional separation of church and state against theocratic totalitarianism, the liberal blogosphere would not exist.

Yet now, in the year of its greatest victory, the supposed "leaders" of the liberal blogosphere have decided to suck freakazoid cock.

Netroots Nation, the big lefty political/blogging meeting, is organizing sessions for their conference in August. Unfortunately, they seem have given up on the idea of a secular nation, because this one session on A New Progressive Vision for Church and State has a bizarre description.

The old liberal vision of a total separation of religion from politics has been discredited. Despite growing secularization, a secular progressive majority is still impossible, and a new two-part approach is needed--one that first admits that there is no political wall of separation. Voters must be allowed, without criticism, to propose policies based on religious belief. But, when government speaks and acts, messages must be universal. The burden is on religious believers, therefore, to explain public references like "under God" in universal terms. For example, the word "God" can refer to the ceaseless creativity of the universe and the objective validity of human rights. Promoting and accepting religious images as universal will help heal culture-war divisions and promote the formation of a broad-based progressive coalition.

That makes no sense at all. Separation of church and state certainly isn't discredited — if anything, the experience of the last few years makes it more important than ever. Voters can already propose policies based on religion, and they do, unfortunately…but whoever wrote this thinks there should be no criticism? That's insane. This is a progressive organization that is proposing that we shouldn't even criticize religious intrusion into government.

And then look what they do: they redefine "god" into a waffling, meaningless placeholder for anything anyone wants!

I'd like to know who came up with this garbage — it reeks of the Jim Wallis/Amy Sullivan camp of liberal theocrats, although neither is actually on the panel.

Oh, I can pretty much guarantee that the people who think compromising with the godwallopers is just the coolest idea ever are exactly the same people writing fiery posts about how stupid it is for the Senate Democrats to compromise with republicans on health care reform.

Get a clue, guys. You think repugs are dense obstructionists impervious to reason, facts, logic and reality? Compared to the godbots, James Inhofe is Russ Feingold.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic..

Kentucky Unemployment Highest in 26 Years

You're not imagining things; the descent of Kentucky's economy into the sewer is accelerating.

Kentucky’s seasonally adjusted preliminary unemployment rate for May 2009 jumped to 10.6 percent from a revised 9.9 percent in April 2009, according to the Office of Employment and Training (OET), an agency of the Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.

May 2009’s jobless rate is 4.4 percentage points higher than the 6.2 percent rate recorded in May 2008 and it matches the 10.6 percent reported in October 1983.

The U.S. seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose from 8.9 percent in April 2009 to 9.4 percent in May 2009, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Did you catch that? Kentucky's unemployment rate jumped almost three-quarters of a percent in one month. If it maintains that rate, by next May the unemployment rate will be 8.4 percentage points higher, or 19 percent.

That's unlikely, of course, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially if our elected "leaders" keep gambling on casinos to save us.

“Kentucky’s unemployment rate today is 10.6 percent – the highest rate since 1983." Governor Steve Beshear said in a statement. "That sobering fact should dramatically underscore the need for all of us – in the Governor’s office and in the legislature – to find every way possible to save jobs and create new ones. We need to act -- and act now -- on the measures under consideration in this special session. We need to lead -- and lead now -- on these measures.

"Our economic incentives bill will create jobs and stimulate hundreds of millions in investment for our Commonwealth. Our budget proposal continues funding for education and key areas of health care and public safety. The bridges’ bill would help projects worth billions of dollars move forward. And the proposal before the legislature on limited gaming at racetracks would help save 100,000 jobs, $4 billion in investment, while investing in Kentucky’s future: our children. We have the information we need. We have the authority. The question is: do we have the will?"

Don't look at us, Steve, you're the one who's been bowing and scraping before the almighty Williams for a year and a half. The question is, do you have the balls?

WaPo Finally Admits: We're More Wingnut Stupid Than Fox

As suicidally incompetent as the repugs are proving themselves lately, in the one case of "media bias," the wingnut freakazoids are actually playing - and winning - a long game.

It started more than 40 years ago, when Nixon fought against objective and factual accounts of his campaign tactics by labeling all objective media "biased liberal."

Nonstop repetition of this lie wore objective outlets like the Post and the NYTimes down to the point they started believing it themselves, or at least thought they could relieve the weight of the accusation by becoming biased conservative.

The more they leaned wingnut while claiming an objectivity they lost sometime in the '80s, the easier it was for wingnut freakazoid Fox to claim the objectivity mantle for itself.

So the only genuinely objective dead-tree news source today is The Nation, which has proudly claimed the motto "that liberal media bias you can't find anywhere else."

Why do I say this now? Because today the Washington Post fired Dan Froomkin.

Glenn Greenwald:

One of the rarest commodities in the establishment media is someone who was a vehement critic of George Bush and who now, applying their principles consistently, has become a regular critic of Barack Obama -- i.e., someone who criticizes Obama from what is perceived as "the Left" rather than for being a Terrorist-Loving Socialist Muslim. It just got a lot rarer, as The Washington Post -- at least according to Politico's Michael Calderone -- just fired WashingtonPost.com columnist, long-time Bush critic and Obama watchdog (i.e., a real journalist) Dan Froomkin.

What makes this firing so bizarre and worthy of inquiry is that, as Calderone notes, Froomkin was easily one of the most linked-to and cited Post columnists. At a time when newspapers are relying more and more on online traffic, the Post just fired the person who, in 2007, wrote 2 out of the top 10 most-trafficked columns. In publishing that data, Media Bistro used this headline: "The Post's Most Popular Opinions (Read: Froomkin)." Isn't that an odd person to choose to get rid of?

SNIP

All of this underscores a critical and oft-overlooked point: what one finds virtually nowhere in the establishment press are those who criticize Obama not in order to advance their tawdry right-wing agenda but because the principles that led them to criticize Bush compel similar criticism of Obama. Rachel Maddow is one of the few prominent media figures who will interview and criticize Democratic politicians "from the Left" (and it's hardly a coincidence that it MSNBC's decision to give Maddow her own show -- rather than the endless array of right-wing talking hosts plaguging the television for years -- which prompted a tidal wave of "concern" over whether cable news was becoming "too partisan"). In general, however, those who opine from the Maddow/Froomkin perspective are a very endangered species, and it just became more endangered as the Post fires one if its most popular, talented, principled and substantive columnists.

Read the whole thing.

As for the dead-but-don't-know-it-yet Post and the Times:

sic semper culum vertere

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Non-Gratuitous Violence

Totalitarian repression may be keeping the television networks from covering the protests in Iran, but the revolution there is being videotaped, in all its gory, gut-wrenching horror.

If we had seen honest video of what was happening in Iraq in 2003, how quickly might we have withdrawn troops in response to public disgust? How many lives might we have saved?

Nico Pitney at his invaluable Iran liveblog:

12:10 AM ET -- YouTube gets it.

YouTube said it had relaxed its usual restrictions on violent videos to allow the images from Iran to reach the rest of the world.

"In general, we do not allow graphic or gratuitous violence on YouTube," the company said in a statement. "However, we make exceptions for videos that have educational, documentary, or scientific value. The limitations being placed on mainstream media reporting from within Iran make it even more important that citizens in Iran be able to use YouTube to capture their experiences for the world to see."

YouTube is one of the last broadcasters standing in Iran. The Iranian government knows it (the censors have been able to cut YouTube traffic in Iran by 90 percent) -- and so do the folks at YouTube. Just check out their Citizen Tube site, overseen by Steve Groves, which is chock full of Iran videos.

Watch them, forward them, talk about them.

Private Health Insurers Admit Depravity

For those of you who thought I was exaggerating about the utter depravity of private health insurers, yesterday the bastards stood before Congress and admitted they will continue to let people die rather than spend a dime to save them.

Kevin Drum explains:

Yesterday the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations decided to investigate the practice of recission. This is when you pay your premiums for years to a healthcare insurer, then get sick, and then have your insurance cancelled. The insurance industry executives at the hearing did not exactly cover themselves with glory:

A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.

The sister of an Illinois man who died of lymphoma said his policy was rescinded for the failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstones that his physician noted in his chart but did not discuss with him.

....Late in the hearing, [Bart] Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show "intentional fraud."

The answer from all three executives: "No."

Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) said that a public insurance plan should be a part of any overhaul because it would force private companies to treat consumers fairly or risk losing them. "This is precisely why we need a public option," Dingell said.

Even the Republicans on the committee couldn't defend the insurance company position. A few more hearings like this and getting a public option into healthcare reform is suddenly going to look like a real possibility. Nice going, guys.

So spread the word: private health insurers not only admit that they will never pay for life-saving medical procedures, but they bragged about it, and responded to concern from the people's representatives in Congress with a giant, group "FUCK YOU."

Fuck us? No, fuck YOU!

Tell Congress, tell the president: No public option, no "fair competition," no quarter. Outlaw the private insurers and seize their assets to pay for single-payer for everybody.

Books on Teen Sex - Eeeeeek!

Buy these books immediately. A bunch of bitter tight-asses in Wisconsin is suing for the right to burn the public library's copies of books on teen sexuality, so you need to run out and buy many copies of them right now.

There is a little dustup going on in the town of West Bend, Wisconsin. The local bluenoses noticed that there are books that discuss human sexuality in the library — and some of them are even written for teenagers! Teenagers, of course, never think about sex and have no interest in the subject unless some vile prurient publication stirs them up, so the crusaders for purity are stridently demanding that these books be removed from view.

One particular target of their fury is a book by Francesca Lia Block, Baby Be-Bop, which commits the sin of writing positively about young gay men and negatively about gay bashing. A group called the Christian Civil Liberties Union filed suit over the book, since it exists at the library, and they don't like it.

The plaintiffs, all of whom are elderly, say their mental and emotional well-being were damaged by the book at the Library, the claim states.

That must be one powerful book. It sits on a shelf balefully, emanating damaging gay-rays that permeate the whole town, and disrupting the sexual health of its inhabitants.

SNIP

The prudes have created a blog, and it's clear that it isn't just gay sexuality that terrifies them, it's any sexuality. They link to a couple of pages from books that horrify them: they don't like sex ed with illustrations kids can understand, fiction that talks about high school kids' experiences with sex and drugs, or books about female sexuality.

It's pathetic and sad. I shouldn't laugh at Wisconsin too much, though, since this really is the work of a timid minority — the city had a referendum on whether the library should censor these books, and the majority said no. That has just inflamed them, though, and now the puritans are suing for the right to burn books.

It always gets down to that with the knuckle-draggers, doesn't it?

I offer them a compromise. They already have the right to burn books: all they have to do is buy a copy, take it home, and toss it into the fireplace. That's not at all illegal! Unfortunately, what they want is the right to burn other people's books, and I'm sorry, that would be uncivilized.

Max H comments:

“As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself."

- John Milton

Read the comments for a great discussion on the purpose of public libraries.

Iranian Election: It's Not Over Yet

No tanks in the streets yet, but at least a dozen dead protesters later, the opposition rally still far outnumbered the pro-government rally. Foreign reporters confined indoors and virtually all communication shut down, but the stories and the pictures still get out, somehow. Claims that Iranian police and soldiers are holding back from attacking their countrymen appear to be true, as several Revolutionary Guard members have been arrested and foreign mercenaries seem to be doing most of the beating and killing.

This video, via huffpo's Iranian protest liveblog, sums up two days of protests.



At his liveblog, Andrew Sullivan has heart-rending and gut-wrenching video of protesters dying in the streets.

The NYT's The Lede has great ongoing coverage.

They all recommend Laura Secor's analysis in the New Yorker.

But it's Robert Farley at Lawyers, Guns and Money who nails it. I disagree that Iran 2009 is a replay of Tiananmen 1987, except in the sense of who is the truly dangerous character in the drama:

Tank Man was not the first person to stand up to the coercive power of the state. People defying other people holding guns has a long and distinguished history, from Napoleon forward. The survival of Tank Man and of every other such protester depends on a decision made by the state employee carrying the gun. What distinguishes the few moments near Tiananmen from the Odessa Steps, thus, is not the heroism of the protester, but rather the decision by the tank commander not to run Tank Man down, or to shoot him. The video has always been more compelling to me than the shot; the tank commander actively tries to carry out his job without running over tank man, and eventually decides to hold up an entire tank column while Tank Man clambers on to his vehicle.

I feel that I can understand why Tank Man risked his life to stand in front of the tank column. I have less of a sense of why the tank commander decided to stop. For all I know, Tank Man may have been Tank Commander's brother. Tank Commander may have been afraid that his superiors would have been pissed if he ran over a guy while cameras might be watching. He may not have wanted innocent blood on his hands, or on the treads of his tank. He may have sympathized with the demonstrators; perhaps his father or mother had been a victim of the Cultural Revolution. Or perhaps he identified the Tiananmen demonstrators with the Cultural Revolution, and sympathized with them. I really have no idea.

The thing is, Tank Commander is far more dangerous than Tank Man. Tank Man can simply be shot; most seem to believe that Tank Man was later executed, far out of sight of the international media. The regime survives if Tank Man dies, even if the death of Tank Man isn't the optimal outcome. The regime dies, however, if Tank Commander refuses to run over Tank Man. Eisenstein used the Odessa Steps to demonstrate the corruption of the Czarist regime, but the regime didn't die until the soldiers refused to shoot the demonstrators. The successor regime didn't die until Boris Yeltsin climbed on a tank in August 1991. While there's some mystery as to the fate of Tank Man, I don't doubt that the CCP found Tank Commander and put a bullet in the back of his head at the first opportunity.

Read the whole thing.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....

Kentucky Senate Race Weirdness

The Bad News: State Senate president David Williams, (R-obstructionist) will not run for Jim Bunning's U.S. Senate seat next year, thus depriving us of some entertaining repug primary fratricide.

The Good News: Williams spat in the face of both Bunning and presumptive repug primary front-runner Trey Grayson by semi-endorsing Louisville philanthropist Cathy Bailey.

Williams, R-Burkesville, said he thinks Republican incumbent Jim Bunning will stay in the race.

Asked if he will be endorsing anyone in next May’s GOP primary election, Williams said, “The most qualified challenger that has appeared at this particular juncture and someone I would be very excited about seeing in the United States Senate is Cathy Bailey.”

She is a former ambassador to Latvia and is a Louisville-based philanthropist, fund-raiser and charity organizer.

Williams said it would be interesting to have a qualified woman in the United States Senate from Kentucky, “someone who has the international experience that she has, and she presents herself very well.”

But Williams added that he was not endorsing any particular candidate.

“I’m not going to get too involved in primaries,” he said.

No, not too involved.

Manila 1986, Berlin 1989, Tehran 2009?

There is still an excellent chance that in a few hours, when the sun rises over Tehran, it will illuminate tanks in the street rather than green-scarf-waving protesters.

But for tonight, at least, I want to believe that the protests in Tehran won't be a repeat of Tiananmen Square, but rather the People Power that ousted Ferdinand Marcos and the wave of Democracy that brought down the Berlin Wall.

Since Saturday, the coverage of the Iranian election and the ensuing protests has veered, dizzingly, from disappointment to outrage to excitement to horror to hope.

The photos of hundreds of thousands - possibly as many as two million - Mousavi supporters defying a ban from the Ayatollah to fill the streets of Tehran in support of their probably cheated candidate are moving beyond words.

The Iranian "revolution" of 1978-79, which ousted the tyrant and American puppet Reza Pahlavi, had nothing to do with democratic elections and everything to do with ending 26 years of American imperalism in Persia.

The Green Protests in Tehran are entirely internal, without a single "America the Great Satan" or "Death to America" to be seen. And for once, we have a president who knows when to keep his mouth shut and his military as far away from events as possible.

It's 4 a.m. in Tehran, where it's quiet but probably few people are asleep. A Green Revolution or tanks rolling over the bodies of protesters? All we can do is wait.