McCain trying to block net neutrality

Ahhh, what could have been. Does he even know how to use a computer yet? For someone who was open about being a technophobe, should he really be getting involved in something so far over his head?

McCain's bill, the Internet Freedom Act, seeks to do the opposite of what its name implies by ensuring that broadband and wireless providers can discriminate and throttle certain traffic while giving preferential treatment to other traffic. Basically, those in power or those who pay more will have better access. Apparently we have different definitions of ‘freedom'.

According to the text of the McCain bill, the FCC "shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services." Isn't that what the FCC does? Isn't that sort of like introducing a bill to prohibit the Treasury from printing money, or a bill to prohibit the IRS from collecting taxes?

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Vacation days around the world

Even though we're past the summer holiday season (in the northern hemisphere, at least) it's interesting to see how different countries compare. Like many Americans, I grew up believing in work, work, work and had taken three days of vacation in the previous three years before meeting Joelle over here. Yes, I've gone native but maybe after going through the normal job churn that is now part of working in this era, I look at the subject much differently than when I was getting started. (I do still work seven days a week when I am not on vacation so my inner American hasn't all left me.)

Last week I spent a few days in Copenhagen for business and was quite interested in their work-life balance attitudes. Many arrived at the office earlier than I wake up in the morning but they also were heading out by 3PM or 4PM. When I asked one person who was visiting his corporate headquarters from the UK, he commented how the Danes were very keen to strike a comfortable work-home balance. As a Brit he thought it was favoring the home side more than work. That said, it was also tough to argue against the fact that it was a highly successful company with operations around the world.

As Americans we often scoff at the long holidays in Europe and some even say workers over this way are lazy. (I plead guilty to making the same argument years ago.) Sounds like jealousy to me because despite the work-life balance and despite the long vacations, the work gets done and the companies prosper. People are more productive when they can relax and come back reinvigorated. The countries with more vacation days are not doing much worse than the US during this recession and many cases, doing better. Could more vacation really be so bad? Read the rest of this post...

WaPo: Unexpected revival breathes new life into public option

This is how big of a turnaround we've seen in just the past few weeks. From Dan Balz at the Washington Post, who does a pretty good analysis of how we got where we are:

The resurrection of the public option is the latest and one of the most surprising turns in the long battle over legislation to overhaul the nation's health care system. Under assault for months, declared on life support repeatedly in recent weeks, the provision for a public insurance option is unexpectedly alive as House and Senate leaders prepare to send their bills to the floor.

And for those who say President Obama is truly committed to a public option, I ask you this one simple question: Aside from feel-good speeches to supporters, what has the President actually done to get even one Senator to vote for the public option? Read the rest of this post...

CNN Edits Out Dobbs Criticism From Taped Interview

From ThinkProgress:

[Garcia] who was featured in “Latino in America” and organized an anti-Dobbs protest in Tucson on Wednesday, said that CNN edited her comments about the anchor out of an interview. [...]

She said she called Mr. Arpaio and Mr. Dobbs “the two most dangerous men to our communities,” and said that “because of them, our communities are being terrorized in a real way.” She also asserted that CNN was “promoting lies and hate about our community” by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program. The comments were not included when the interview was shown Wednesday night. “They heavily deleted what I did get to say,” she said.

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Sen. Harkin: “I’ve not been very happy with the White House’s lukewarm support of the public option"

Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) quoted in The Hill this morning:

“I’ve not been very happy with the White House’s lukewarm support of the public option,” [Harkin] said, articulating a gripe liberals have been making for months.

“I would hope the president would speak out more forcefully in favor of the public option,” [Sherrod] Brown said, adding “I expect he will.”

Harkin's quote is interesting because a Democrat is finally on the record saying that the President's support of the public option has been only "lukewarm." I've seen people continue to defend the President, arguing that he's firmly behind the public option. We now have a US Senator, who knows better than anyone the degree to which the President is truly supporting the public option, saying that the President is not. Read the rest of this post...

Good update on Health Care Reform in today's Washington Post

A good read across the board for anyone wanting an update on the issue. These two paragraphs struck me as particularly interesting:

The Democratic leader pitched the opt-out idea to Obama at a White House meeting Thursday night and received a noncommittal response. Several senior Democratic sources said Obama is wary about alienating Snowe -- the only Republican so far to support a Democratic health-care measure -- and had already concluded that her plan for a "trigger" that would create a public option if private insurers don't offer affordable rates represented a satisfactory compromise.

Why is it a satisfactory compromise? The White House is again doing what it has often been accused of - caving in advance on an issue in order to avoid fighting for something better, something achievable. Why is it satisfactory to settle for less than you can get? The entire point of the "incrementalism" argument is that you can't always get a whole loaf, so sometimes it's better to get a quarter of a loaf today, another quarter next week, and so on and so on. I.e., it's better to get something than nothing. But that's not the dynamic here. It may have been months ago, but not now. Now we have the chance to actually get the whole loaf, and President Obama would prefer we take only half. That isn't incrementalism, it's defeatism, and even reeks a bit of fear. Fear of fighting for anything, ever.

Because a government-run plan would be dedicated to holding down costs and would lack a profit motive, congressional budget analysts predict that it could reduce the cost of expanding coverage to people who don't have it by as much as $100 billion over the next decade.

It's a bit mind-boggling that President Obama wants us to spend $100bn more than we have to over the next ten years on health care reform. Is Olympia Snowe's one vote, when we don't need it, really worth $100bn? Is $100bn so insignificant to this administration that they're willing to just throw it away in order to achieve some PR stunt, which is exactly what trying to get Olympia Snowe's one vote is.

Remember, this is the White House that wasted 40% of the stimulus bill - hundreds of billions of dollars - on near-useless tax cuts in order to get 3 Republican votes, yet today everyone thinks of the stimulus as a Democratic bill, not a bipartisan one. It does Democrats no benefit to blithely reinforce negative stereotypes about how we spend the people's money like drunken sailors. And more importantly, $100bn is a lot of money. The fact that this doesn't even seem to be entering into the administration's calculus on this issue is troubling. They seem rather determined to spend more on something less effective, President Snowe's magic "trigger." Wasting the public's money is not smart leadership, nor smart politics. Read the rest of this post...

Obama declares H1N1 a "national emergency"

Just out from the White House via emailed press release:

In keeping with the administration’s proactive approach to H1N1 Flu, President Obama last night signed a proclamation declaring 2009-H1N1 Influenza a national emergency. The proclamation enhances the ability of our Nation’s medical treatment facilities to handle a surge in H1N1 patients by allowing, as needed, the waiver of certain standard federal requirements on a case-by-case basis.

The White House set up a website, Flu.gov, to provide "the most up-to-date news on H1N1, preparedness, and vaccine distribution."

I just hope he cleared this with Olympia Snowe. Read the rest of this post...

Bank failures reach 106 for the year - highest since 1992

Another indictment of the Republican economic model. Last weekend we had friends from Canada visiting and the banking crisis was one topic of discussion. Our friends told us how Canadian banks were more highly regulated and had higher cash requirements. Following the global banking collapse, Canada then decided to require even more cash from the banks despite them not being hit as hard as their US counterparts.

I don't have the chance to follow their system as much so I'd be interested in hearing more from any of our Canadian readers. Sounds interesting and it could be something to look at. Many times answers to our problems are right there but all too often, countries fail to look at how others have handled the same problem. I credit Obama with starting to look beyond the US border for some issues including transportation. All to often, the US dismisses real world solutions and it's not only a problem of the right. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning.

It's not often we have sports-related posts on AMERICAblog, but this is one, kinda. Tomorrow, I'm running the Marine Corps Marathon. This is my sixth marathon and I think I'm ready. Also, I'm a little obsessed at this point, but not too bad compared to past years.

Yesterday, the NY Times had a bitchy article on marathon runners. Seems the elite, fast runners are disdainful of the slower runners. This country has a real problem with many people being overweight and out of shape. I was there myself ten years ago. If people use marathon training to get into shape, more power to them. We should celebrate and encourage that. The elite runners who don't like the slow runners need to get lives. Although, I do think that people who stop "for lunch along the course" aren't really in it for the fitness. That actually happened in our training program when I did my first race in 2002. Several people in the slowest pace group stopped for lunch on the Georgetown waterfront during one of the longer runs. Then, they were upset when that the staff had gone home by the time they got back to the starting point. It made for a few laughs.

Let's start threading... Read the rest of this post...

Bill Withers

There's certainly no sunshine here this morning. Gray and drizzle. Yuch. Read the rest of this post...

Wealthy Germans want to pay more taxes to help recovery

Let's just say you don't see petitions like this ever day. They are taking their petition which has been signed by a few dozen wealthy Germans and will deliver it to Chancellor Angela Merkel. Whether you agree or disagree, it's a rare example of unity of a nation to pull through a tough situation. You really have to read the whole story because it's really amazing. BBC:

The group say the financial crisis is leading to an increase in unemployment, poverty and social inequality.

Simply donating money to deal with the problems is not enough, they want a change in the whole approach.

"The path out of the crisis must be paved with massive investment in ecology, education and social justice," they say in the petition.

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Wall Street's flashy numbers may finally have gone too far

The latest gaudy numbers (including bonus pool numbers) may have been too much of a thumb in the eye for Washington. It may have finally resonated with politicians that maybe, just maybe Wall Street is not to be trusted after a comfortable bailout. Yes, most sane people still believe the banking bailout was required to avoid an even worse situation. Unfortunately with the Wall Street types have no idea how to show appreciation for a generous offer to save their jobs and posh lifestyle. They may start to get it now that Obama and Congress are feeling the heat from voters.

Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and a chief architect of the financial regulation overhaul, declined Friday to give details on the administration's new bill, which would give the government the power to dismantle large financial companies that get into crises.

The new draft bill is expected to take a tougher stance toward troubled financial firms than the administration's original plan, and may take out some language that would allow for temporary bailouts.

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Limbaugh and FOX promote bogus story about Obama's college thesis

As usual, all fake. And as usual, Media Matters caught them in their lie. Read the rest of this post...