Followups to earlier posts

Jan. 6--on Lou Barletta.  My letter on health care has not received a reply.  Maybe his staff is not up to speed.

Jan. 11--on the Sudan.  The voting is over, but the violence continues.  The army is having a difficult time splitting into northern and southern portions.

Jan. 19--on the filibuster.  It was not reformed, but the Senate Dems are permitting Reep amendments, like the one the Reeps added to the Aviation Bill to kill the Health Care bill.  The amendment, of course, did not pass.  In return, the Reeps are not stalling.  So far the Senate is acting like a real legislative body.  Keep your fingers crossed.

Feb. 2--on the politicizing of the federal courts.  Senator Hatch has urged Justice Kagan to recuse herself on the Health Care decision.  This after Scalia addressed a Tea Party event and Thomas's wife organized a right-wing advocacy group.

Feb. 5--on the USDA permitting "Roundup-safe" alfalfa to be planted anywhere.  Now the agency has added Roundup-safe sugar beets to the alfalfa.  Monsanto wins again, and the environment again loses.

But remember:  knocked down four times, rise up five.

The Centennial

It’s been 100 years since President Reagan’s birth, and this is a big deal for some people. Why?  

This is the man who presided over the largest upward transfer of wealth in our history.  He took credit for the changes in the U.S.S.R. without evidence that he had a thing to do with them.  He compared Central American fascists to our Founding Fathers.  He ran up a bigger deficit than the cumulative total from Washington to his presidency.   He spent at least the last two years of his presidency in a mental fog.  He governed by slogan and anecdote. More than twenty years after his presidency we still have not fully recovered from his economic policies. We’re supposed to celebrate this? 

Roundup Ready

Earlier this week the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave its stamp of approval to the unrestricted planting of genetically modified alfalfa.  This isn’t alfalfa modified for better taste or more nutrients--it is specifically modified (and patented) by Monsanto to survive the herbicide Roundup.  

This means a grower can plant this alfalfa next to an organic farmer, even though there is a very good chance that honeybees will move between the two farms and cross-pollinate the organic alfalfa.  

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack said this decision was made so that farmers would have a right to choose.  I don’t see that.  How does the organic farmer have a right to choose not to have his or her alfalfa contaminated?  It seems to me that this decision was to benefit the Monsanto corporation.

By the way, Roundup is one of the most toxic of herbicides, and it is sold in hardware stores  for garden use.  Find an alternative.

Wal-Mart in New York City

Actually, the title is misleading.  There is no Wal-Mart in New York City.  The City Council held a hearing yesterday to discuss Wal-Mart, taking comments from small business owners who argued that Wal-Mart would eliminate them and from labor union representatives who brought up Wal-Mart’s anti-union activities.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when asked for his opinion about Wal-Mart, said this: “You should let the marketplace decide.  Anybody who has tried to manage the market place, it has not turned out very well.  I think the Soviet Union is as good an example as you’d ever need of that.”  (New York Times, Feb. 4, 2011).

Interesting.  Comparing opposition to Wal-Mart to the Soviet Union. Wal-Mart is the company with the largest number of employees in the U.S.  The company that goes out of its way to fight unions.  The company with the lousy health insurance.  The company that bullies its suppliers.  The company that has wrecked small town shopping districts across the country.  This is free market?  Give me a break.

Voting Systems

One of the workshops at the Progressive Summit I attended in Pittsburgh dealt with the methods by which we vote.  A representative of the reform group Vote PA (<www.VotePA.us>) led the workshop, and she explained that Pennsylvania allows each county to pick its own system.  As a result, the state actually has six different methods of voting.

Carbon County uses the Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touchscreen system.  Vote PA has major problems with the system, advocating an Optical Scan system instead.  I used Optical Scan when I was a poll worker in California.  The voter is handed a paper ballot with small ovals next to the candidates’ names.  He or she takes the ballot to a voting station and fills in the ovals next to the candidates selected.  The voter then takes the ballot to a scanner and feeds it in.  The votes are automatically recorded.  The ballot drops into a secure plastic bin behind the machine.  If there is a problem a paper backup is available.

If the voter makes an error, such as voting for both Sestak and Toomey, the scanner kicks back the ballot with an explanation.  The voter is handed a new ballot and revotes.

Here are the advantages of an Optical Scan system:

Fewer machines are needed.  You can have ten voters bubbling in their ballots at the same time.  The scanning process takes seconds, so you only need one scanner per polling place.

Optical Scan systems break less often than DREs.  And even if the machine breaks down, voters can still mark their ovals on the paper ballot.  The ballots can be scanned later.

People understand the system.  At your polling place, watch the hesitation of some of the elderly voters at the touch screen.  I know more than one citizen who will not vote with our machines.  Everyone knows how to fill in the ovals.

Disabled people have an easier time with the ballots.  Optical Scan systems have audio ballots available for the visually impaired and “sip and puff” for voters who do not have the use of their hands.

The secret ballot is preserved.  DRE printouts can be matched to the signup book to discover how people voted.

You can’t hack the ballots in the Optical Scan system.  If the DRE system malfunctions, those votes are gone forever.

When it is time for Carbon County to update its system, the best alternative is clearly the Optical Scan.

Unconstitutional?

Federal District Court Judge Roger Vinson issued a ruling on Monday declaring the Health Care bill unconstitutional.  In his opinion he compared the requirement for insurance coverage to colonists being forced to pay a tax on tea.   A District Court judge does not live in a vacuum, and I don’t believe in coincidence.  The judge, a Reagan appointee, is acting as a Congress of one, overruling the real Congress and the President to advance what is obviously a Tea Party political agenda. 

The judge not only overruled the requirement for insurance, but he also threw out the rest of the bill.  His reasoning was that the insurance requirement was so intertwined with other provisions that the whole thing had to go.

How is the insurance requirement related to parents’ insurance covering their kids until age 26?  How is it related to preconditions?  How is it related to enhanced arbitration procedures, or the donut hole for prescriptions? 

Judge Vinson acknowledged that he based much of his opinion on an amicus curiae brief from the Family Research Council, a right-wing Christian advocacy group.  

Republicans, who in the past have railed against “judge-made law,” are elated.

Subsidizing oil

When President Obama unveils his budget proposal later this month, he will recommend the elimination of approximately $4 billion ($4,000,000,000) in subsidies for the oil industry.  

Because of their concern about the deficit, the Republicans will fall all over themselves to support this.

Won’t they?