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The Next Step for Christian Big Thinkers: Part 2

post from Everyday Citizen on 16 May 2008 02:34:02 PM. © Everyday Citizen

I grew up an atheist, but recently I have fallen in love with a movement that seems to be the most[...]

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Republican Peggy Noonan on Why The GOP is Toast

post from TPMCafe on 16 May 2008 02:31:00 PM. © TPMCafe

I never liked her views but have always loved her prose. Today I love both.

Anyone who doubts that she is one of the truly great writers of our time should read Ronald Reagan's speech at Normandy in 1984. Noonan wrote it, and it is a gem.

This piece is not as poetic, but it explains exactly why the Republicans are facing a wipeout.
Is Noonan for Obama.? Sure sounds like it. And I just read that Julie Nixon Eisenhower and John Eisenhower, Ike's son, are both supporting Obama including financially.

If enough moderate Republicans like them defect, it's going to be a blowout.

PS Wall Street Journal readers must have choked on their breakfasts this morning!

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McCains ever-evolving position on Social Security

post from Crooks and Liars on 16 May 2008 02:30:07 PM. © Crooks and Liars

While there have been plenty of polls suggesting John McCain would enjoy more support from elderly voters than Barack Obama, I?ve taken some solace in the fact that very few voters, in any age group, realize just how wrong McCain is about Social Security. For voters over a certain age, it has the potential to [...]

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Edwards For AG, Not VP

post from Open Left - Front Page on 16 May 2008 02:30:00 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

I think Paul Rosenberg is one of the best writers around, and I respect his views tremendously.[...]

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Medical MJ Sellers Face 20 Year Minimums

post from TalkLeft on 16 May 2008 02:29:00 PM. © TalkLeft

No matter who wins the next presidential election, the heavy hand of justice needs to be lightened considerably when it comes to federal prosecutions of marijuana providers.

Luke Scarmazzo and Ricardo Ruiz Montes ... were convicted of manufacturing marijuana and distributing the drug, as well as operating a continuing criminal enterprise, a felony that carries a mandatory 20-year minimum prison term, with the possibility of life behind bars.

The "continuing criminal enterprise" was the operation of a marijuana dispensary in California. Whether Scarmazzo and Montes complied with the state's medical marijuana law is in dispute, but there should be no dispute that a 20 year mandatory minimum for selling marijuana is outrageous. Just ask the jury.

Jurors deliberated for two days before delivering their verdict. One juror, Craig Will of Tuolumne County, said after the verdict that he expected the two men to get probation or a few months in prison. "I'm really appalled to discover that there's a 20-year mandatory minimum on the continuing criminal enterprise charge," he said.

If the judicial system really trusted juries to act as the democratic institution that the founders intended, juries would be told of the consequences of a conviction before deciding on a verdict. Selling a plant to people who have a medical need for it (or to anyone, for that matter) just isn't conduct that merits a 20 year sentence. The next president should (and if it's a Democrat, probably will) put an end to federal prosecutions that contravene state laws permitting the sale of medical marijuana.

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A Political System Utterly Unresponsive to the
Poor

post from TPMCafe on 16 May 2008 02:29:00 PM. © TPMCafe

Anyone who has been following my posts in the past few days will have surmised that Unequal Democracy is a rather pessimistic book. But I've saved the most pessimistic finding for last. It concerns the ramifications of economic inequality for the workings of our political system. While Americans have a good deal of tolerance for economic inequality, that tolerance is predicated on the "national myth" that we enjoy "full civic equality despite material differences," as Michael Kinsley once put it. Cynics may doubt that "full civic equality" is a reality - but even they should be dismayed by the extent of inequality in the contemporary American political system.

I have measured the responsiveness of U.S. senators to the views of constituents with different incomes - distinguishing people in the bottom, middle, and top thirds of the national income distribution. The results show that senators' roll call votes are moderately strongly related to the views of middle-class constituents, and somewhat more strongly related to the views of affluent constituents. (The relative weight of affluent constituents is noticeably stronger for Republican senators than for Democratic senators.) What is most striking, however, is that there is no evidence of any discernible responsiveness to the preferences of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution. The views of tens of millions of people with nothing in common but their low incomes seem to be utterly ignored by their elected representatives. Insofar as they get what they want with respect to policy, it is only because their views happen to correspond with those of affluent and middle-class people - or, even more importantly, with the partisan and ideological impulses of the senators themselves.

One common reaction to these findings is, "Of course elected officials ignore poor people - they don't vote." However, the fact of the matter is that millions of them do vote, and they still get ignored. My analysis allowed for differences in responsiveness attributable to turnout, general levels of political attentiveness, and contact with elected officials and their staffs. I found that voters' views weigh no more heavily than non-voters views in influencing the choices made by their elected officials. Even after taking account of differences in responsiveness attributable to turnout, attentiveness, and contacting, most of the disparity in responsiveness to affluent and poor constituents remains.

This pattern of unresponsiveness to low-income constituents holds for both Democratic and Republican senators. It holds across the whole range of issues that come before Congress, including salient roll call votes on such issues as the minimum wage, domestic spending, and civil rights. It also holds for a variety of salient votes on abortion - an issue where specifically economic interests might be expected to have little traction.

My pessimistic findings are strikingly supported by the separate findings of my Princeton colleague Martin Gilens, who has analyzed almost 2,000 survey questions measuring Americans' preferences regarding a wide variety of national policy issues. For each issue, Gilens examined whether a policy change supported or opposed by various segments of the public was subsequently adopted. He found a strong statistical relationship between the views of affluent citizens and the subsequent course of public policy, but a much weaker relationship for less affluent citizens. When he limited his analysis to issues on which rich people and poor people had divergent preferences, he found that the well-off were vastly more likely to see their views reflected in subsequent policy changes. Gilens concluded that "influence over actual policy outcomes appears to be reserved almost exclusively for those at the top of the income distribution."

The eminent political scientist Robert Dahl once suggested that "a key characteristic of a democracy is the continued responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals." By that standard, contemporary America hardly seems to qualify. While cynics will not be surprised to hear that poor people are less than equal in our political system, even they should be shocked and disturbed by the strength of the empirical evidence suggesting that the views of millions of poor Americans are utterly ignored by their elected representatives. As Gilens put it, "representational biases of this magnitude call into question the very democratic character of our society."

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Yet Another Reason …

post from American Street on 16 May 2008 02:20:00 PM. © American Street

… to fight for Obama and to make my dream come true of appointing John Edwards as Attorney General … it would drive Jonah Goldberg off the edge.… the suggestion that John Edwards would be even considered for Attorney General is horrifying. I really can’t think of any mainstream political figure more inappropriate for that [...]

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Harry Reid forces Bush's hand on the FEC: Von
Spakovsky withdrew his nomination today

post from AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth on 16 May 2008 02:10:00 PM. © AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth

Earlier this week, at the Maria Leavey Breakfast with Harry Reid, I asked the Majority Leader about the FEC:

JOE SUDBAY (Americablog.com): Hi I'm Joe Sudbay from Americablog, based here in DC. And I'm interested in the issue of presidential nominations particularly the FEC and what will happen with that. We saw last week that Bush withdrew David Mason who was quoted in the Washington Post earlier this year, saying that John McCain was basically breaking the law. So what do you foresee in general with presidential nominations going forward this session and particularly with the FEC.

REID: I've had private discussions with Bolten, Josh Bolten. I've had many things public in nature, in fact most publicly, we've exchanged a number of letters back and forth. Here's where we are now. We have three Democrats that we are happy to have on the Federal Election Commission. They have three Republicans they're happy to have on the Federal Election Commission. We will not let one of them be approved. His name is Von Splotsky or something like that. So they're going to have to make a decision, they're going to have to replace him or there will be no FEC. And they need it worse than we do.

Well, Harry Reid won.

Today, Hans Von Spakovsky withdrew his nomination.

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and-on-fec-von.html

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NEWZ U CANT UZE.

To much of the media criticism from this cycle has gotten caught up in partisanship and questions of candidates. Given that most every example of bad reporting will include someone in particular being treated unfairly, it's hard to step out of that trap.[...]

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=newz_u_cant_uze

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Obama Calls for Investigation of VA Cost-Cutting
PTSD Diagnoses

Yesterday, CREW and VoteVets.org released an email from a FOIA request that showed an employee in the Veterans Administration "suggesting" that staff ought to "refrain from giving a diagnosis of [Post Traumatic Stress Disorder] straight out" to "compensation seeking veterans" and that VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD."

The Washington Post identified the official in a story this morning as Norma Perez, a psychologist who helps lead the PTSD program at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Texas. The VA responded that it was simple Perez's bad idea:

Veterans Affairs Secretary James B. Peake said in a statement that Perez's e-mail was "inappropriate" and does not reflect VA policy. It has been "repudiated at the highest level of our health care organization," he said.
"VA's leadership will strongly remind all medical staff that trust, accuracy and transparency is paramount to maintaining our relationships with our veteran patients," Peake said.
Peake said Perez has been "counseled" and is "extremely apologetic." Aikele said Perez remains in her job.

But Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) picking up the torch, is not reassured. And in a letter to Peake today, he calls for an investigation of the email, whether Perez's suggestion was followed, and a look at the numbers of PTSD diagnoses to see whether it really was so isolated of an occurrence. The letter is below.

Dear Secretary Peake:

I am writing to express my serious concerns about reports that a psychologist at a Texas Veterans Affairs (VA) facility told staff members to refrain from diagnosing veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

According to today's Washington Post, Norma Perez, a psychologist at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans' Center in Temple, Texas, sent an email to other staffers saying: "Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I'd like to suggest that you refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out." She then suggested the alternative diagnosis of "Adjustment Disorder," adding that VA staff members "really don't . . . have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD."

Simply put, Ms. Perez's email is outrageous. As you well know, PTSD is the most prevalent mental disorder afflicting our returning Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) veterans. In order to receive their deserved benefits, these brave men and women must endure a long and arduous process. To hear that a VA official is promoting misdiagnoses of soldiers to save money is unacceptable and is tantamount to fraud.

You have said that Ms. Perez's email is "inappropriate," but more must be done. I call on the Department to open an investigation into the following:

1) Whether Ms. Perez was advised to send this e-mail or give this instruction at the urging of her superiors at the Teague Center.

2) Whether staff members at the Teague Center followed Ms. Perez's advice, and if so, how many veterans were affected by incorrect diagnoses.

3) Whether officials at other veterans centers have given some similar admonitions to staff members charged with diagnosing PTSD.

4) Whether this is an incident or a trend. I understand that the VA keeps detailed information on the number of diagnoses of PTSD and adjustment disorder. Your investigation must look at changes in the number of both diagnoses over time, both system-wide and on a facility-by-facility basis.

5) What is being done to ensure that any veterans affected by this instruction do not fall through the cracks. All veterans given an incorrect diagnosis should be given redress both in their diagnoses and their subsequent disability benefits.

6) Whether there are any trends among veterans who have committed suicide recently to determine whether any were wrongly diagnosed with adjustment disorder. Your investigation should include a survey of root cause analyses of recent veteran suicides.

7) Whether there are other instances across the VA bureaucracy of veterans with legitimate cases of PTSD being swept under the rug for budgetary reasons or for expediency. Why, for instance is the number of approved benefits claims for PTSD at the Veterans Benefits Administration decreasing at a time when diagnoses for PTSD at the Veterans Health Administration are increasing?

Too many veterans see the VA as a bureaucracy with the singular goal of denying services and benefits to veterans. This recent incident merely serves to promote that impression. I request that you advise me by no later than Friday, May 23, 2008, as to whether you will open such investigation.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator