Obsidian Wings

OSHA: Nevada is a Good Place to be a Bad Boss

By Lindsay Beyerstein

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) last week issued a scathing indictment of Nevada's OSHA program. Nevada has a well-deserved reputation for being a dangerous place to work. Last year, a spate of construction deaths on the Las Vegas Strip prompted a congressional hearing. The Las Vegas Sun won this year's public service Pulitzer for exposing the carnage. Nevada inspectors told federal investigators that their superiors pressured them not to write up employers for willful violations of safety laws. Willful violations are the most serious category of infraction. Federal investigators found that NOSHA only issued one willful violation in the course of 23 fatality probes--even though at least one of the employers (Boyd Gaming Corp.) had previously been cited for the same hazards on other sites in the state, which legally should have made Boyd a willful violator by definition.

The House Education Labor and Pensions Committee is holding a hearing on the report on Thursday. I hope the committee asks some tough questions about why these problems exist. The failures are so grave and systematic that I have to wonder whether corruption is afoot. Many of the worst offenders are powerful casino interests, a contingency known to donate lavishly to both Democrats and Republicans.

Dancing In The Dark

Guest post by Gary Farber.  Gary's home blog is Amygdala, and he invites you to read him there.

[Eric Martin: My friend Gary is going to be pitching in for a couple of days as I adjust to the enhanced parenting techniques that my son is submitting me too.  And yes, sleep deprivation is torture.]

On December 31, 2009, three provisions of "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001," aka the "PATRIOT Act,"  sunset and expire.

Bills to reauthorize or amend these three provisions have been moving through the Congressional Judiciary Committees in the past two months.

The three sections are:  

SEC. 206. ROVING SURVEILLANCE AUTHORITY UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT OF 1978. Section 105(c)(2)(B) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(2)(B)) is amended by inserting 'or in circumstances where the Court finds that the actions of the target of the application may have the effect of thwarting the identification of a specified person, such other persons,' after 'specified person'.

This is also known as "the John Doe" provision.

SEC. 215. ACCESS TO RECORDS AND OTHER ITEMS UNDER THE FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SURVEILLANCE ACT.

Also known as the section dealing with "national security letters," by which:

The Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a designee of the Director (whose rank shall be no lower than Assistant Special Agent in Charge) may make an application for an order requiring the production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items) for an investigation to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities [....]

The third is:

SEC. 805. MATERIAL SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM.

What are these about, and why should we care?, you ask. As the ACLU explains:

Pelosi Goes "All In" On Public Option

By Lindsay Beyerstein

Nancy Pelosi is going all in to support a public option that would hold down costs by setting reimbursement rates at Medicare plus 5%. The CBO's latest cost estimates for various House health care reform options have galvanized Pelosi in favor of a Med+5 public option, Brian Beutler reports. 

Pelosi has always favored some kind of public competition for private health insurers, but she has previously been non-committal about how hard a line a public plan could take to hold down costs.

The House Democrats are in negotiations to combine the various bills that passed their respective committees this summer. Chris Bowers has a good discussion of how Pelosi is using the CBO numbers and the Med+5 proposal to outmaneuver Blue Dog Democrats in the House and Senate. Basically, the stronger the public option the House bill proposes, the bigger the cost savings it will project. Fiscal conservatives will be hard-pressed to vote against a public option that's projected to cost less than the alternatives.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, told Bloomberg that the caucus is gravitating towards the Med+5 plan, as opposed to a weaker proposal that would have the government negotiate rates with providers.

It's cheaper for the public to negotiate reimbursement rates for the entire plan because the massive bargaining power of the federal government drives down prices. Whereas, the public invariably gets a worse deal when rates are negotiated piecemeal. There's really no reason not to negotiate in one fell swoop, except as a gimme to vested interests.

Naturally, drug companies and health care providers want piecemeal negotiations. However, Obama has said he won't sign a bill that adds to the deficit and the House is looking for ways to save money. Letting the government drive a hard bargain is an attractive way to cut the costs of health care reform. Piecemeal negotiations would hobble one of the most powerful cost-control features of a public plan.

Hey, Joe, Where You Going With That Gun In Your Hand? Pt. II

Guest post by Gary Farber.  Gary's home blog is Amygdala, and he invites you to read him there.

[Eric Martin: My friend Gary is going to be pitching in for a couple of days as I adjust to the enhanced parenting techniques that my son is submitting me too.  And yes, sleep deprivation is torture.]

Part I of this two-part post is here.

Pt. II:

First we have to distinguish between the Taliban and al Qaeda. Then we have to analyze what threat either actually presents. And then we have to do a cost-benefit analysis of what's the best course of action. The essential war with al Qaeda, both insofar as al Qaeda remains any kind of organization, and, more importantly, insofar as it remains an inspiration to jihadists, is an ideological war, not a military war. The Taliban now have tried a YouTube channel for propaganda. The best way to fight al Qaeda is to fight their ideology, and we're doing okay at that. From 2008:

[...] These new critics, in concert with mainstream Muslim leaders, have created a powerful coalition countering Al Qaeda's ideology. According to Pew polls, support for Al Qaeda has been dropping around the Muslim world in recent years. The numbers supporting suicide bombings in Indonesia, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, for instance, have dropped by half or more in the last five years. In Saudi Arabia, only 10 percent now have a favorable view of Al Qaeda, according to a December poll by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based think tank. Following a wave of suicide attacks in Pakistan in the past year, support for suicide operations amongst Pakistanis has dropped to 9 percent (it was 33 percent five years ago), while favorable views of bin Laden in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, around where he is believed to be hiding, have plummeted to 4 percent from 70 percent since August 2007.

We can continue presenting an alternative. Many play up contemporary al Qaeda-Taliban ties, but that's highly questionable, as Gareth Porter writes:

Hey, Joe, where you going with that gun in your hand? Pt. I.

Guest post by Gary Farber (thanks to Eric Martin, who understandably is busy!  And double congrats to Eric for all that family-makin' stuff he's been doin'!)

Gary's home blog is Amygdala, and he invites you to read him there.

[Eric Martin: My friend Gary is going to be pitching in for a couple of days as I adjust to the enhanced parenting techniques that my son is submitting me too.  And yes, sleep deprivation is torture.]

A post in two parts.  Part I:

On Friday night's PBS Newshour, Tom Bearden gave the following report from Fort Carson: 

 (Audio-only, if you have bandwidth issues.  Click the above link for a transcript.)

I was struck cold.

I've been to that chapel.

I've seen the upended rifle with the soldier's own helmet atop it, and boots beside it.

I've been there for the chilling sound and sight of the honor guards' rifle-shot salute.

I've listened to the bagpipes, and seen the faces of the family and friends, just as we see and hear in this video.

Then it was one soldier's boots and rifle. 

On Friday, it was six at once.

This is the cost of our Long War in Afghanistan.

This is the price our families, and sons and daughters, and parents, are paying.

It's been eight years and a week since American forces began combat in Afghanistan.

Live from the UN Summit on Climate Change

By Lindsay Beyerstein

I'm posting from the UN Summit on Climate Change at UN HQ in New York. I'm wearing one of those special plastic translation earpieces.

World leaders are here to talk face-to-face before the big climate negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December. President Obama is scheduled to address this morning's opening session.

The meeting is supposed to be an opportunity for all nations, from the richest emitters to the most vulnerable developing nations, to meet on neutral turf to discuss solutions to the climate crisis.

The one-day summit consists of public opening and closing sessions, separated by closed roundtable discussions among nearly 100 heads of state in attendance.

I'll be tweeting the proceedings. Follow me @beyerstein.

The Demonstrably Racist Rush Limbaugh

by publius

Let me echo Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher and Conor Friedersdorf in condemning the utterly shameful and race-baiting exploitation of yesterday's school bus incident.  I'm not big on writing posts that start "Rush Limbaugh did outrageous thing X today...", but this is an exception.

And it's not just Limbaugh.  It's also Malkin, and Gateway Pundit, and Drudge, and Tom Maguire.  Though Limbaugh takes the cake:

It’s Obama’s America, is it not? Obama’s America, white kids getting beat up on school buses now. You put your kids on a school bus, you expect safety but in Obama’s America the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering[.]

So here's the basic dilemma.  On the one hand, there's nothing ambiguous about this.  It's straight-up George Wallace-style race-baiting.  It's an intentional attempt to stir racial prejudices.

Limbaugh & Friends took a random fight and immediately tried to pin it on Obama (some less directly than others).  And after the police quickly backed off claims that it was racially motivated, the corrections either didn't come or were merely one-liner updates inappropriate to the gravity of the previous charges.

But even if it was racially motivated, what on earth does Obama have to do with it?  The answer is nothing other race.  The only goal here was to stir up racial resentment and then pin it on Obama.  I'm sorry, but this is infuriating.  We shouldn't be putting up with this in 2009.

But here's the thing -- there's no way to win.  If you ignore it, they get to race-bait.  If you cause a big stink about it, it will have the effect of putting racial tensions in the news.  And that's exactly what they want, because it hurts Obama. 

Obama's numbers, recall, went down with white voters after the Gates incident.  The reason, I think, is simply that racial animosities remain very much with us, despite our enormous progress.  One reason Obama won was that he managed to persuade certain types of voters to ignore race.  That's why Jeremiah Wright was so potentially threatening -- it put race front and center, which is precisely the opposite of where the Obama campaign put it.  These resentments emerged again in the aftermath of Gates.

So that's the dilemma -- Limbaugh wins if you say nothing, and Limbaugh wins if you criticize.  It's maddening. 

But I don't care -- I'm still going to criticize.  This incident is not a run-of-the-mill "Limbaugh said something ridiculous today" story.  This is a big deal.  Limbaugh was unambiguously racist, and he had an awfully big chorus in the Malkin-o'-sphere today.  

But don't take my word for it, here's Dreher:

But good grief, Limbaugh is up to something wicked. He's plainly trying to rally white conservatives into thinking that now that we have a black president, blacks are rising up to attack white kids! . . .

[I]f the Limbaughs of the world are going to . . . blame, with no logical grounds whatsoever, a black president for black-on-white violence, and if they're going to do this in an increasingly hysterical atmosphere of protest against that black president, I don't want to talk about these things at all. Now is not the time. With this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, they are quite simply tearing the country apart.

And Conor:

This isn’t merely a lie — it is a lie that, if credulously received by its audience, is going to heighten racial tensions and mistrust in the United States.  . . .  Mr. Limbaugh accuses others of exacerbating racial tensions and obsessing about race. Sometimes he is right to do so. Yet here he is obsessing about race and ratcheting up racial tensions. It is difficult to think of hypocrisy more abhorrent.

Tea bagger bus company sued over blaze that killed 23 seniors

By Lindsay Beyerstein

One of the featured corporate sponsors of the Tea Party Express had to pay millions of dollars to settle lawsuits for its role in a bus fire that killed 23 elderly nursing home residents fleeing Hurricane Rita in 2005.

The BusBank, a Chicago-based charter company, a "Tour Partner" of the Tea Party Express, a rolling protest sponsored by the Our Country Deserves Better PAC under the supervision of former Republican state legislator Howard Kaloogian, now a PR exec for the GOP-linked firm Russo, Marsh & Rogers.

BusBank is also arranging to ferry Tea Baggers to their 9/12 march on Washington to voice their demands for unfettered capitalism. (Update: A Majikthise commenter asked if there's a Dick Armey connection here. There is. Dick Armey's FreedomWorks Foundation is the premiere sponsor of the 9/12 march; and Kaloogian's OCDB PAC is a "Gold Co-Sponsor.")

In 2005, a bus carrying seniors fleeing Hurricane Rita burst into flame outside of Dallas, immolating 23 nursing home residents. Investigators later found that the bus was: driven by an undocumented migrant without a valid U.S. driver's license, lacking adequate fire extinguishers, and not licensed to operate in Texas. When the bus had mechanical problems before the crash, the driver took it to an unqualified mechanic who failed to notice the critical fault--an unlubricated axle that eventually melted and burst into flame.

Read the News Today, Oh Boy

by publius

Pew released a new poll outlining a gap between scientists and the general public on various issues.  There's a lot to chew on, but these numbers in particular stood out:

First thought -- isn't 87% a bit low for scientists' belief in natural selection?  I would hope that number is close to 100%.  But regardless, it's nothing compared to the general public's depressing numbers.  Apparently only 32% believe in natural selection.  I mean, really?  In 2009?  32%?  Good lord.

And then we have the global warming numbers.  Roughly half the public disagrees with the overwhelming scientific consensus that humans are contributing to global warming. 

It's all very depressing.  And it just goes to show that sustained, systematic efforts of fraud and lying can indeed pay dividends.  It also shows the harm the media inflicts when it doesn't expose and push back on demonstrably false statements, which includes virtually everything that Senator Inhofe says.

My One and Only Sanford Post

by publius

Poor Mark Sanford – the skeletons keep spilling out of his closet.  And I suspect he’s not long for the Governor’s office.

I can’t help but feel bad for him.  And I suppose this is inappropriate – but from a purely voyeuristic perspective, there’s something tragically beautiful about the whole thing in an ancient Greek/Shakespearian sense. 

To me, the essence of Shakespearian tragedies is that they feature our most basic human animal emotions playing out at the very highest levels of political power.  Enormous public consequences result from individuals acting on their most primitive of emotions.  Acts of rage and lust and jealousy, for instance, cause entire kingdoms to rise and fall.

And that’s what’s tragic about Sanford.  Here’s a governor who was a rising star and a very credible presidential candidate.  He had the affection of ideological conservatives.  In short, he had everything going for him.  But then lust – basic human lust – brought the whole thing crashing down.  I can’t really speak to the morality of it, but it’s good theater from an aesthetic perspective.

The other tragic dimension here – one shared by people like Clinton and Edwards – is that the basic human emotions that brought Sanford down are, ironically, the very same traits that fueled his rise to power.  The yin comes with the yang.

This is armchair psychology to be sure – but successful politicians have a lot of common traits.  They are passionate, ambitious, determined – and they have a real thirst for winning, and for conquest.  If you don’t have this primal ambition driving you, it’s hard to go very far in politics.  Kerry had it.  Bush had it.  Clinton had it.  Carcetti had it.  I think Obama has it too – he’s just better at masking it.

And while these traits have their benefits, they have their costs too.  They can make you reckless – they can make you jump into battles better left alone.  And I can see Sanford in that light.  He was one of the most ideological Republicans in the country – and that helped fuel his rise to power.  It doesn’t shock me, then, that he would be willing to lose himself in ideological love for a mistress abroad.  It all sort of fits.