Healthcare on Frontline

Tomorrow's Frontline on PBS will have a dissection of the role of the healthcare industry in diluting the provisions of the recently-passed healthcare bill. It should be interesting. Click here for a link to PBS about the show.

For more, look at GoozNews as well.

The WPBC competition

OK, let's make it official: readers of the blog are invited to submit their nominees for the "What Part of Beneath Contempt don't you understand?" competition -- which I'll mercifully abbreviate WPBC. Every now and then, or when I get good entries, I'll present the best of them on the blog, with at at least the initials of the submitter (full name if you specifically allow).

Just a reminder: the whole point of WPBC is that you don't get worked up and submit long diatribes and analyses. That's what "beneath contempt" is all about. I mean, does one have to actually explain why a Catholic Church spokesman equating the investigation of pedophile priests with the persecution and murder of Jews during the Holocaust is beneath contempt? Even italics seems like shooting fish in a barrel...

So keep those letters and calls coming!

Republicans surge back in Beneath Contempt competition

With the announcement that Justice John Paul Stevens of the Supreme Court will retire sometime this summer, conjectures about his replacement are beginning to surface. Senator Orrin Hatch (R. Utah) announced that Obama would face a "whale of a fight" if he nominated an "activist" judge. The usual cast of PTR mouthpieces seconded his opinion e.g. Mitch McConnell.

Who could be more activist than Chief Justice Roberts who decided, out of whole cloth, that corporations are like individuals, and enjoy the benefit of the Bill of Rights. Hardly a position that Madison and Jefferson and Franklin had in mind. In fact, Roberts went out of his way to set up the decision -- 5 - 4, hardly ringing -- by soliciting opinions when there was really no case that couldn't have been decided in a less radical way.

So the Republicans have retaken the lead from the Catholic hierarchy in the "What part of beneath contempt don't you understand" competition.

New element

The Times reports the discovery of a new element. This would be number 117, so it has been temporarily named "Ununseptium" (Latin for 117).

Clearly the name should eventually be Unobtainium. Write your local congressperson or scientist!

How easy it is to kill

Wikileaks, a website I had never heard of before, released an actual military video of the killing of at least 8 people by a helicopter crew in Iraq in 2007. You can hear the crew members request permission to fire on the individuals they spot walking in the street, some of whom are carrying objects that the crew identifies as Rocket Propelled Grenade launchers, and AK47s. This permission is very quickly granted, even though the individual authorizing the action has nothing but the word of the crew that the people spotted need to be killed. The crew immediately begins firing, eventually killing (it seems) all 8 people. Later, a van drives up and tries to remove some of the bodies in a stretcher. The helicopter gun crew again gets permission to fire, and pretty much blows up the van.

The only problem is, the original individuals were not "militants" but a well-known war photographer and his crew. The RPGs and AK47s were in fact just cameras, and the van that drove up was a passing "good samaritan" with his friends and his two young children. A lot of innocent people died in the encounter.

The point of this, it seems to me, is not that accidents happen during the "fog of war." What is telling is the certainty with which the crew identifies the individuals as combatants and the quickness with which they pronounce the death sentence. All this from hundreds, maybe thousands of feet up in the air. Never a moment's hesitation or questioning or second thoughts. We wonder about jihadists who are so confident that they are right that they are willing to kill many in the name of their cause, and are certain that earthly and heavenly rewards await them. It seems quite clear that the helicopter crew also felt the same assurance that their cause was so just and clear as to preclude any sort of introspection or caution. Is this what military training is all about?

The story gets even worse when the military higher-ups, who must have realized the tragic mistake within hours, first stonewalled, then white-washed the incident. Even after the Reuters news agency sued to get information about the death of its correspondant, the military refused to release the video. Only after the wiki site posted a copy for all to see did the brass and their newsbenders relent and acknowledge the clip as authentic.

Whether one is a pacifist or not -- and I acknowledge that I am pleased when I hear about actual terrorists getting iced -- it's best to remember that the line between humane and inhumane action is much fuzzier than we would hope it to be. And this is not an issue of politics or right versus left...

Winner of this year's Miller Analogies Contest

From today's NY Times:

"Benedict sat looking downward when the Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, who holds the office of preacher of the papal household, delivered his remarks in the traditional prayer service in St. Peter’s Basilica. Wearing the brown cassock of a Franciscan, Father Cantalamessa took note that Easter and Passover were falling during the same week this year, saying he was led to think of the Jews."

“They know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms,” he said.

Quoting from a letter he claimed was written by a Jew, he continues: "I am following the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world ... The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism"

Yeah, the "violent" persecution of the Catholic Church over the widely acknowledged sexual abuse of young children over generations by priests, and the coverup by the Church hierarchy, is really a lot like the persecution of the Jews. The jails where some pedophile priests have been placed are a lot like the Camps. Let's all shed a tear and say Kaddish for Bernard Law and other innocent victims of this terrible stereotyping. It sure does remind you of the holocaust, doesn't it?

I guess this also wins this week's "What part of beneath contempt don't you understand?" award -- usually reserved for the Republicans.

How we made out on CitiCorp bailout

Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, has an interesting piece in today's HuffPo on whether the taxpayers made any money on the various parts of the bailout of the nearly moribund CitiCorp -- you know, one of the banks that charges upward of 30% on your credit card debt, yet borrows money from the Fed at next to nothing. They also take this money they borrow almost free from the Fed (us) and make a profit by lending it back to us in the form of Treasury Bonds; i.e., they borrow from the Feds at very favorable rates (next to nothing) and sell the money back to the Feds -- risk free -- at higher rates of return than they paid -- close to 3.7 %. As Baker says, "Nice work if you can get it."

Baker's reasoning is not so much that we didn't recoup the principle on the loans, or that we (the taxpayers) didn't get some interest payments. Rather, he compares what the government (us) would have made by placing this money elsewhere, or demanding a more realistic payback from CitiCorp that reflects the actual worth of the money and guaranties that were given to Citi.