( – promoted by Sue Prent)

A cute music video about the likely effects of SOPA (and it’s second cousin Protect IP) on the future of the internet:

  Congress is a silly place.

This is a ‘Braveheart’ moment. You, Mr. Speaker, are our William Wallace,” Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.), a member of the Tea Party Caucus, said on the Fox News Channel.

Tuesday night after a lengthy closed door meeting described as “raucous,” some House Republicans likened themselves to the Scots in the movie Braveheart.

Then over take-out chicken sandwiches, [they] promised to knock down the Senate bill.

Thus fortified with chicken sandwiches our stalwart Republican Bravehearts agreed on a convoluted process that bravely avoided an up-or-down vote on the Senate compromise bill. The vote was worded, “do you disagree with the Senate bill?” So a “yes” was a vote against continuing a tax reduction for 160 million American workers and a “no” vote was in favor of the Senate bill and the tax cut.

The Braveheart moment Congressman Gingrey is channeling is from a movie about 13th century William Wallace, a Scotsman who led a revolt against English ruler Edward Longshanks. It starred actor Mel Gibson as Wallace in kilt and blue face paint.

Speaker Boehner blue in the face? Certainly-but in a kilt?

See it is just like Braveheart … but with chicken sandwiches and minus the bravery.  

In the coming election year, we are going to hear more than enough from Republican candidates about “American exceptionalism;” and even Obama has been known more than once to dip into this reliquary when his rhetoric needs just the right patriotic burnish.

I thought I’d get ahead of the rush and have my say about what American EXCEPTionalism means to me.

“Americans get the best healthcare in the world!”



How many times has that one been trotted out in opposition to healthcare reform?  We don’t need any changes to the current system because “it’s the best healthcare in the world.”

EXCEPT when you can’t afford the astronomical cost.

EXCEPTional it is, indeed, if judged soley on the amount of money we annually invest in it.  When outcomes are considered?  Not so much.

It’s true that we have some EXCEPTional physicians and facilities.

EXCEPT that they are not available to anyone who can’t afford the skyrocketing cost of maintaining private health insurance.

The upshot of our EXCEPTional healthcare is that we have one of the highest infant mortality rates and shortest life-expectancies in the Western industrialized world.

And let’s not forget that great American educational system!  

Once again, our math and literacy skills now fall well below those of much of the educated world.  In fact, we are EXCEPTionally mediocre on that score; and with Tea Party hostility to federal spending and an organized effort by players like the Koch Bros. and the Waltons (of Walmart fame) to end public education, we are likely to fall further down that well.

How about our EXCEPTional American-style democracy?  

We have vigorously sought to export it for decades now.  Former president and humanitarian Jimmy Carter has made something of a latter-day career of invigilating democratic elections in other countries.

So, we must still be an EXCEPTional example of democracy in action.

EXCEPT when gerrymandering takes place, as it most famously did recently in Texas.  But nowhere EXCEPT in Texas, right? Nope. The gerrymandering model is playing out in re-districting dramas all over the map.

But our democracy is still EXCEPTional.

EXCEPT when voter suppression takes place, as is currently being attempted in the state of Florida

EXCEPT when the media declare a winner before the polling places are even closed; and that false winner is carried to victory soley by the expectations created through the premature announcement, and even though the final balloting invalidates it. (Bush v. Gore, 2000.)

EXCEPT when you belong to the poorer classes in America.  

Democracy doesn’t work out so well for poor people.  Since Citizens United equated money to free speech, what many had long suspected was the operational reality of American democracy became officially so.

In closing, I’d like to take EXCEPTion to the whole tone of superiority.  

Those EXCEPTional claims are just a bunch of old wheezes that now raise the merest flutter from our blushing national banner…and that flag is probably made in China from Saudi oil products.  

We would do well to learn a little history of bravado.

Claims of British EXCEPTIONalism in the nineteenth century didn’t save her empire from slow decline and dissolution.

Nazi Germany was so convicted of its EXCEPTionalism that it extinguished itself with the sheer fury of insistence.

For better or worse, global fortunes rise and fall more or less in tandem now.  

Believing without question that the “market” will somehow miraculously do the right thing, we’ve privatized everything but the kitchen sink in America; then watched placidly as the profits went overseas and our jobs were out-sourced.

American EXCEPTionalism?  It’s time to get over ourselves.

NRC Chairman Jaczko and four of his commissioners have been in an extended wrangle over among other things the speed with which the NRC should act on the post Fukushima disaster safety recommendations made by the Near Term Task Force. Obama appointee Jaczko favored an expedited (by NRC standards) implementation and four of his five commissioners balked, favoring more stakeholder input and a different time frame (aka snails’ pace?). This disagreement and other ongoing spats, which Senator Bernie Sanders recently described as an attempted coup against the chairman went high profile this past week in Republican Darryl Issa’s congressional hearings when Jaczko and the NRC commissioners testified.  

So when all the dust particles settle, at what speed will the recommendations be moving?

According to the NRC's blog the Near Term Task Force’s recommendations have been handed off to a new group.

[…] The group is called the Japan Lessons-Learned Project Directorate. The directorate will support a steering committee consisting of senior agency managers to coordinate and implement the task force recommendations per with our Commission’s direction, including its goal of striving to implement the recommendations within five years.

An important aspect of our path forward is stakeholder engagement with members of the public. We will seek input through public meetings to help us determine whether changes may be required to improve safety at U.S. nuclear power plants.[added emphasis}

In 2008 candidate Obama called the NRC “a moribund agency…captive of the industry that it regulates.” It still sounds plausible enough three plus years later.

The Huffington Post reports that vocal Jaczko critic NRC Commissioner Bill Magwood did consulting work for the Fukushima plant’s owner Tepco when he was in the private sector. Not that there is anything wrong with that as the information was provided for his NRC confirmation process.

According to Ryan Grim at Huffington:

Magwood, a Democratic appointee, would be the leading candidate to take Jaczko's gavel if the coup succeeds, according to people familiar with the internal workings of the commission (as well as through a simple process of elimination: the other Democratic panel member is not considered a serious candidate for the other Democratic panel member is not considered a serious candidate for the chairmanship).  

Remember how things looked to the Iraq War supporters back in the “Mission Accomplished” days? You know, back when Bush got to put on his little pilot outfit and prance around on the deck of that aircraft carrier?

I sure do, and one of the things I remember is the fact that they were so sure of winning that they got Congress to allocate $20 million of the Pentagon appropriation back in fiscal 2007 for the celebration.

 Under the language, the president could “designate a day of celebration” to honor troops serving in the two wars. The president also could call on the nation “to observe that day with appropriate ceremonies and activities” and issue awards to troops who have served honorably.

The Pentagon could spend up to $20 million of its $532 billion budget in 2007 for the commemoration, minus any private contributions it might receive for such an event.

Senator Leahy is not getting much love these days on GMD, thanks to his puzzling support for the Protect IP Act; but a spoonful of sugar truly does make the medicine go down.  So I think he deserves applause for the extremely well-crafted statement he has released urging President Obama not to yield to Republican gamesmanship around Keystone XL.

The statement is focussed on two key issues that should resonate with even the most conservative readers.

Addressing the jobs argument he says:

Unable to sell the pipeline as necessary to meet the country’s energy needs, which it is not, or to refute charges that tar sands strip mining and the refining and burning of high carbon oil cause egregious harm to the environment and health, which it does, the Canadian energy company, TransCanada, has flooded the media with dire warnings about the American jobs that will be lost if the pipeline is rejected

…What they don’t tell you is that the 5,000 or 6,000 temporary construction jobs will disappear once the pipeline is built.  Only a few hundred permanent jobs are needed to operate and maintain the pipeline.

And on the topic of our “need” for this fuel source:

We cannot lessen our reliance on fossil fuels by continually ignoring it.

Fossil fuels are finite, inefficient, and dirty.  The cost we pay at the gas pump bears no resemblance to the long-term environmental and health costs borne by society as a whole.

Well said, Senator. Let’s hope President Obama heeds your sage advice; and, in the same vein, let’s hope our discussion here will get you to look with new perspective at Protect IP.

It was pretty much literally impossible to agree with everything Christopher Hitchens said.

For example, I was 100% in agreement with his position that Henry Kissinger should be prosecuted, tried, and imprisoned for his myriad crimes against humanity. As he said in The Atlantic:

Many if not most of Kissinger's partners in politics, from Greece to Chile to Argentina to Indonesia, are now in jail or awaiting trial. His own lonely impunity is rank; it smells to heaven. If it is allowed to persist then we shall shamefully vindicate the ancient philosopher Anacharsis, who maintained that laws were like cobwebs-strong enough to detain only the weak and too weak to hold the strong. In the name of innumerable victims known and unknown, it is time for justice to take a hand.

On the other hand, if you agreed with him on Kissinger and Vietnam it was almost certain that you would disagree with him on Bush's invasion of Iraq, which he not only supported, but called “a war to be proud of”.

You could agree with his positions on atheism and religions but wish he would be a little more polite and tolerant of the sensitivities of religious people, or at least that he would refrain from criticizing that beloved icon, Mother Theresa:

“[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.”

Or you could take pleasure in his obvious enjoyment of language and learning, but just wish that he would be a little less sure of himself.

Hitchens was one of the greatest public intellectuals of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, A man whose English breeding and education were evident with every word he spoke, but who became an American and embraced that identity.

“Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the 'transcendent' and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others. Don't be afraid to be thought arrogant or selfish. Picture all experts as if they were mammals. Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. Seek out argument and disputation for their own sake; the grave will supply plenty of time for silence. Suspect your own motives, and all excuses. Do not live for others any more than you would expect others to live for you.”

Hitch died yesterday of esophageal cancer at the age of sixty-two. It is a great loss for all of us.

The Iraq War formally ended yesterday today (whoops… was thinking this was Friday. Confused).

Of course it’s probably not that simple (it never is), but it is a moment and an announcement that needs commemorating.

At the peak, there were 177,000 US troops in Iraq based out of 505 military bases. According to reports, there are 4,000 left, and they will coming home soon.



(An image of soldiers at a ceremony for the end of the Iraq War, by way of gothamist.com)

 Well hard times come no more. According to the GuardianUK CEO pay survey it just got a little shinier for some in that city on the hill. While austerity and stagnation is the order of the day for the majority of Americans some of the country’s top bosses got pay increases of between 27 and 40% last year.

America's highest paid executive took home more than $145.2m, and as stock prices recovered across the board, the median value of bosses' profits on stock options rose 70% in 2010, from $950,400 to $1.3m

The top of the top came from the health care industry. The head of the world’s largest healthcare firm McKesson’s, John Hammergren, made over $145million in 2010, the majority from stock options.

Just for laughs here is some local perspective on how much money Hammergren’s $145 million is in a human scale. In Vermont, Federal spending cuts to LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program funding to low-income households) might ultimately result in funding to the state going from $27.5 million in 2011 to approximately $11.6 Million for 2012.    

One counter-intuitive, gravity defying feature of high-end pay packages is that stock prices may go down, yet compensation continues to head up for some departing and retiring executives. Notice three out of these four highest paid departing or retiring CEOs were leaving companies where shareholder stock prices had declined during their tenure.

Ronald Williams, former head of Aetna, a health insurer, exercised 2.4m options for a profit of $50.4m. Aetna's stock price declined by 70% from when Williams assumed the role of CEO in February 2006 until his retirement. At pharmacy chain CVS, Thomas Ryan made a $28m profit on his options. During Ryan's 13-year tenure as CEO, CVS Caremark's stock price decreased almost 54%.

Omnicare's Joel Gemunder retired last August and received cash severance of $16m, part of a final-year pay package worth $98.28m. Adam Metz, the former boss of General Growth Properties, a real estate company that specialises in shopping malls, walked away with a $46m cash bonus in 2010. GGP executives received nearly $115m in bonuses from the firm as it emerged from bankruptcy.

It may always to be good at the top. However for many Americans maybe “all they can do is stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers” (to lift a line from part of a well known speech).

Uh-oh, we had a little oopsie yesterday in Montpelier…

Gov. Peter Shumlin announced on Tuesday that his administration plans to replace the Vermont State Hospital in Waterbury with a decentralized, “community-based” plan with 40 inpatient beds in four locations around the state. …

The unveiling of Shumlin’s proposal came on the same day a top mental health psychiatrist called for almost the exact opposite of what the governor proposed. Dr. Jay Batra, medical director of the state hospital since 2009 and a professor at UVM, told lawmakers at a hearing on Tuesday that the state should have one central mental health facility serving 48 to 50 patients in order to provide the best clinical treatment and best staffing model. 

The preceding account from Vermont Digger, which has a long and detailed report on Shumlin's new plan and the mixed reaction it has received. Now, Tonstant Weaders* already know where I come down on this issue. I believe there is a need for a central state hospital to treat the extremely tiny number of Vermonters who are truly severely mentally ill. Some of them violently so. And I'm aware that this issue splits the GMD community. I invite your comments, but in the meantime hear me out.

*Obscure Harlan Ellison reference. Now who's the biggest nerd on GMD?

It was certainly embarrassing to have VSH's medical director unknowingly contradict the Governor on the day of his big policy announcement. But, aside from the entertainment value, it points to a serious flaw in Shumlin's decision-making process. It seems obvious that Dr. Jay Batra was not a key player in the process. And that's just stupid and shameful.

If Batra had been fully involved, wouldn't Shumlin have wanted him on hand to share the spotlight and answer questions? Of course. The fact that he was absent suggests that his opinion was not valued.

A doctor friend of mine, who supported Shumlin in the 2010 Dem primary and in the general election and is now somewhat disillusioned, told me, “Shumlin doesn't think doctors and nurses have anything to contribute to this discussion.” A believable assertion, given how Jay Batra spent his Tuesday. And given the kinds of folks who did share the spotlight with the Gov:

The governor made the announcement at an unusually crowded press conference on the Fifth Floor, with several dozen advocates, lawmakers and hospital administrators in attendance 

Advocates, lawmakers, and administrators. I'm glad the advocates had a foot in the door. But no VSH doctors, nurses, or social workers?. Possibly an oversight by Vermont Digger, but I only know what I read.

Now, as for the merits of the Shumlin plan…

Community-based care is the preferred option for those who can benefit from it. But there is a tiny minority of people who need the best possible care. Replace mental illness with, say, asthma and see what you think: “Governor Shumlin calls for the replacement of Fletcher Allen's pulmonary department with community-based treatment facilities in different parts of the state.”

Or, let's say the good folks at Dartmouth decided that they don't really need the Norris Cotton Cancer Center anymore; they think they can deliver better care by splitting their resources among four widely-scattered clinics.

Stupid, no? If you're dealing with a severe, obscure, devastating illness, don't you seek out the greatest expertise? Go to the Mayo Clinic if you can? Well, the same applies to the most serious cases of mental illness. The Vermont State Hospital was sometimes depicted as a warehouse at best, and a Cuckoo's Nest house of horrors at worst. Maybe it was that way once upon a time, but not in recent years. And new and better facilities are clearly needed. But there's a tremendous amount of experience and expertise in the staff. Sending them here and there across the state will dilute the quality of care, not improve it.

In return for decentralizing hospital services, Shumlin dangles the carrot of an improved community-based system. As Floyd Nease of the Vermont Association for Mental Health and Addiction Recovery said, the plan has the potential to work if it is “executed well.” But look at Vermont's track record: has mental health ever gotten the resources it needs? This is a state that allowed its hospital to decay and decline to the point where the feds raised hell. Do you think the situation will improve now, given a struggling economy, the expenses of post-Irene recovery, and Shumlin's opposition to any tax increases? (And given another news story from Tuesday: the filing of a lawsuit over the state's huge backlog of uninvestigated cases of elder abuse?)

And above all, given Shumlin's emphasis that the new system will be “more affordable”? I think State Rep. Anne Donahue (corrected my mistake, sorry Morgan) hit the nail on the head:

“I think now we've shifted to expediency: What can we do with FEMA and insurance money instead of paying attention to what quality care means.”

Shumlin talked of a new system that would “deliver the best quality care of any state in the country.” Well, his system would certainly be different. Even before the closing of VSH, Vermont was near the bottom among the 50 states in mental health care hospital beds per capita. No state has developed an alternative to hospitalization for the most severely mentally ill. Somehow, I doubt that Shumlin and his “advocates, lawmakers and hospital administrators” have come up with a revolutionary new, better, cheaper system without consulting those with the most expertise and the greatest commitment to care: the mental health professionals.