Uncommon Thought Journal: critical analyses of a struggling world.

A Wall St. Journal article, July 1 entitled, "A bank run teaches the ‘plain people' about the risks of modernity", by Douglas Belkin, reports the challenges the Amish have confronted in the past decade, specifically those having to do with economic collapse. In 1993, Northern Indiana Amish established the Tri-County Land Trust, not unlike lending arrangements set up in many other Amish communities. Not insured by FDIC and based on its own bylaws, the trust now has about $40 million in assets. Until November, 2008, the land trust offered low-interest loans and provided other financial support for Amish homeowners and proprietors of small businesses. However, it suspended lending and has not yet resumed. Add to this the fact that, this past spring, the Land Trust literally had a bank run because the Amish began to experience the same consequences of economic collapse as the rest of the nation did. According to the Wall St. journal story, "...the Amish in northern Indiana edged into the conventional economy, lured by high wages of the recreational vehicle and modular home industries. And they wound up experiencing the same economic whiplash millions of other Americans did."

As almost everyone knows, it is exceedingly challenging to sustain privately-owned family farms. The Amish did it for centuries until the latter part of the twentieth century when they began taking jobs off the farm where they made good money, but many also became seduced by consumerism. They gradually spent more money, allowed themselves some of the conveniences previously shunned in order to live more simply, and found themselves caught up in spending more money and buying things they didn't need-things like bigger weddings, vacation homes in other states, model train and truck hobbies, and even hiring taxis to go on extended shopping trips.

You may wonder if I'm really talking about the Amish. Indeed I am.

This story hits close to home for me because my grandmother was Amish as a young child until her parents left the sect to become Mennonites. I have a number of Amish relatives and had the opportunity to visit a few last summer. In fact, I wrote an article subsequently entitled "North America's Amish Community: Least Likely To Be Devastated By Collapse." What I did not see at the time, certainly not among the families I visited, was the extent to which some members of the community had become seduced by the capitalist economic system.

The Tri-County Land Trust is minutes from where I grew up in Northern Indiana and very close to my home town of Elkhart which earlier this year had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. Unfortunately, that city had based its entire economy on the RV, modular home industry where it employed hundreds of Amish workers, most of whom have since been laid off. Perhaps the most noticeable difference between the Amish who lost jobs and the unemployed of the non-Amish community is that among the Amish, there is much more mutual support and a sense of caring for each other in tough economic times.

The good news in the Northern Indiana Amish community this summer is that a new back-to-basics movement appears to be flourishing. The Amish are increasing and expanding their gardens and eating less in restaurants than previously. Similarly, many Amish men have started new home businesses selling products locally and from home.

Why is any of this important? Simply because of how easy it is to become deluded by and entrapped in the values of empire. Whereas in many cases, it has been essential for Amish men or women to work outside the home in order to survive, in many cases it wasn't-at least not if those families are committed to the values that underpin every aspect of their culture. Thus, if a culture with values of radical simplicity can be seduced by the economics of civilization, how much easier it may be for those of us who purport to deplore those economics to find ourselves repeatedly ensnared by them.

I could not help connect Belkin's Wall St. Journal article with Nicholas Kristof's latest New York Times article "When Our Brains Short-Circuit" which sheds even more light on this issue by noticing the extent to which the human brain "misjudges certain kinds of risks." It appears that evolution has wired us to be alert to immediate survival risks such as snakes and nasty looking people with clubs, "but we aren't well prepared to respond to dangers that require forethought."

I believe that this may be a fundamental reason why we are so pathetically slow as a species to respond to the terrible consequences of Peak Oil and climate change-and, why we are so easily enticed into civilization's consensus trance.

Kristof suggests that even as we acknowledge our "neurological shortcomings", we can compensate by strengthening our rational analysis, that is to say, critical thinking or "the head" in the Transition Town model of head, heart, and hands. In addition, I would argue that a shift in human consciousness (heart) is likely to be one of the most profound results of civilization's collapse, and may, in fact, engender a quantum leap in the evolution of the human brain. Likewise, the challenges of reskilling or learning new/old skills (hands), rather than moving us backward in the evolutionary process, are likely to enhance the development of both reason and consciousness.

Indeed the Amish have a treasure trove of values and skills to teach us, as well as the reality of our common humanity and how an economy based on cheap fossil fuel, rampant technology, debt, speed, consumerism, and so-called "progress" damages and deceives us into betraying our essential nature. Or as one Amish man comments on the need to return to basics: "We were all going way too fast. This has made everybody stop and realize we're just pilgrims here..."

On June 25, Damascus-based leader of the Islamic group's political bureau, Khaled Meshaal reiterated Hamas' rejection of recognizing Israel as a Jewish State, rightfully dubbing such a designation as "racist, no different from Nazis and other calls denounced by the international community." However, he did endorse the idea of a two-state solution, which envisages the creation of an independent Palestinian state on roughly 22 percent of the land of historic Palestine.

The announcement was hardly earth shattering, for other Hamas leaders have alluded, or straightforwardly agreed to the same notion in the past. But what was in fact altered is the language used by Hamas' leaders to endorse the illusive and increasingly unfeasible possibility of two states. Meshaal's language was largely secular, while past Hamas references to the same principle were engulfed in religious idiom. For example, in past years Hamas agreed to a Palestinian state in all of the occupied territories, conditioned on the removal of Jewish settlements, under the provision of a long-term 'hunda', or truce. The term 'hudna' is loaded with implicit religious inferences, and was used to present Hamas' political views as both pragmatic, but also based on time-honored Islamic political tradition.

Ahmed Yousef, chief advisor to the deposed Hamas government in Gaza alluded to the concept of 'hudna' in various writings and media interviews. But his calls sounded more like an attempt to find common space between the Islamic movement's firm religious beliefs and US-led international pressure aimed at forcing Hamas into the same political camp which discredited rival Fatah. But Ahmed Yousef's variation in rhetoric cannot be understood as synonymous with Meshaal's recent political revelations.

The boycott of the elected Hamas government in 2006, and the orchestrated violence that led to a Hamas takeover, and subsequent isolation and siege of the Gaza Strip, were all meant to force Hamas to 'moderate' its position. Immense collective suffering was endured throughout the Gaza Strip in order for Israel and its backers, including the Palestinian leadership based in the West Bank to force Hamas out of its ideological trenches to join the 'pragmatic' camp, which saw little harm in fruitless political compromises.

Hamas' steadfastness was enough to further demonstrate its revolutionary credence and patriotic credentials to most Palestinians and their supporters around the Middle East and the world. Hamas impressed many, not because of its theological references, but political resilience and refusal to be intimidated. In some way, Hamas achieved the same revolutionary status and recognition as that of Fatah in the 1960's.

It was not until the Israeli war against largely defenseless Gaza starting December 2008, that Hamas seemed politically self-assured, and for good reason. After all, it was a democratically elected movement representing Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Their rivals' failure to accommodate the new political reality, and incessant Israeli attempts at destroying the movement and imprisoning scores of its elected parliamentarians were not enough to de-legitimize it. Then Israel unleashed one of its grizzliest campaigns against Palestinians, aimed largely at civilians and civilian infrastructure in Gaza. The Israeli war was meant to achieve more than the killing of 1,350 (including 437 children) and the wounding of 5,450 others. It was aimed at disturbing the Palestinian psyche that began seeing a world of possibilities beyond the confining and shallow promises of peace infused by the Oslo peace process, which only served to ingrain occupation and entrench illegal settlements.

International solidarity was building up slowly prior to the Israeli attack. As Israeli bombs began raining atop Gaza's mostly civilian infrastructure, international solidarity exploded throughout the world. Israel's brutal folly served to legitimize the very group it was meant to crush. The voices that tirelessly demanded Hamas to live up to fixed conditions, handed down by the so-called Middle East peace quartet, were overshadowed by voices demanding the US and various Western powers to recognize and engage Hamas. A lead voice amongst them is former US President Jimmy Carter, one of the first influential Western personalities to engage Hamas, and to break the news that Hamas "would accept a two-state peace agreement with Israel as long as it was approved by a Palestinian referendum or a newly elected government." (Guardian, April 22, 2008)

Carter's insistence on involving Hamas in any future peace arrangement took him from Damascus, to Cairo to the West Bank, then, to Gaza. His recent visit to the Strip on June 16 was more than that of solidarity, but it was aimed at convincing Hamas to agree to the vision of two states and the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002. The alternative conditions are meant to present a more dignified exit than the belligerent and one-sided demands of the quartet. It's unclear whether Hamas would fully embrace his call. But what is clear is that Hamas is sending various signals, such as its willingness to engage in dialogue with the Obama administration, and, again, acceptance of the two-state solution, which according to any reasonable estimation of the Israeli 'facts on the ground' created in occupied Jerusalem and the West Bank, is now a far-fetched possibility.

Needless to say, Hamas as a political movement, with an elected government with some jurisdiction over nearly one-third of the Palestinian people has the right, and even more, the obligation to politically maneuver, reposition and even re-brand itself. Breaking the siege on Gaza requires steadfastness, true, but political ingenuity as well. That said, Hamas must be wary of the political, and historic price that will be paid if it fails to learn from the experience of the discredited and corrupted Fatah. Palestinian rights are enshrined in international law, and corroborated by the endless sacrifices of the Palestinian people, in Gaza and elsewhere. Therefore, the price of engagement, dialogue and political validation must not happen at the expense of the Palestinian people wherever they are, as stipulated in numerous UN resolutions including 194, pertaining to the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).

Among the various headlines, the one from the BBC reads "Afghan guards held after shootout." It is a headline one could just breeze right by unless one reads a bit further:

Forty-one US-trained Afghan guards have been arrested after a shootout in which Kandahar's provincial police chief was killed, the regional governor says.

One could still assume that among the thousands of local forces being trained by the U.S. military that these are a "rogue element." However, the BBC article offers some tantalizing clues (and little information).

Up to eight other policemen were killed after the guards, who are employed by US security forces, entered the prosecutor's office in Kandahar city.

They were trying to free colleagues held in the building, the BBC was told.

Say what? Here we have a fairly large force of U.S. trained Afghans who are employed by the U.S., who are trying to break someone out of jail.

There is remarkably little information, and most of it is repetitious. However, an article by the AP published in The Guardian gives us a bit more insight.

The US military said it was not involved in shooting, calling it an "Afghan-on-Afghan incident". However, Karzai's statement suggested that the guards sought refuge in a US coalition base after the killings, and he "demanded that coalition forces prevent such incidents, which weaken the government".

According to the article, the man these contractors / employees (?) were trying to break out of the jail at gun point had been arrested for "forging documents." What documents for what purpose? I have no idea at this point.

Among the officials killed were the provincial police chief, Matiullah Qati, and the province's criminal investigations director. Hours later, Karzai released a statement.

"President Hamid Karzai demanded that coalition forces hand over the private security individuals belonging to coalition forces responsible for the killing of Kandahar provincial security officials to the relevant security authorities of the Afghan government," the statement from the president's office said.

Here we have a situation where a man accused of forgery (and presumably also in the employ of the United States), is the center of a shootout by Afghans trained and employed by U.S. forces, who then run back to a U.S. installation for protection from Afghan authorities. Among those killed in this raid are the Police Chief of Kandahar and the head of criminal investigations (coincidence?).

We might write this off as some bizarre incident except that the United States is ratcheting up its use of "contractors" in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to an investigative report by Jeremy Scahill, there are currently almost 250,000 contractors employed by the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq, and

there has been a 23% increase in the number of "Private Security Contractors" working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009 and a 29% increase in Afghanistan

Does this number even include those domestic forces that have been trained and are now employed by the United States? I think that it probably does not.

All this raises questions that need to be answered. Obama is continuing a policy of replacing U.S. military forces with "contractors" - in other words privatizing war. We know from numerous reports on contractors in Iraq that this creates 'gray" areas of mission, accountability, and even national security. It also presents the mirage that the United States is withdrawing forces (and influence) while exactly the opposite is happening - and happening at great expense monetarily and in terms of human life.

It also creates a "gray" area in terms of merging military, counter-terrorism, and covert operations. It all becomes one big tangled mass, and any attempts at oversight or transparency go out the window.

What is being created is a shadow complex of mixed mercenaries intersecting at various levels with U.S. military missions and political activities. Meanwhile they are also intersecting with the interests of whomever else these "forces" may be working for. The potential for "blowback" (bad boomerang consequences from previous actions) grows geometrically. During the Cold War and the proxy conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, we had the CIA create, train, and fund what was to become al Qaeda, followed by the rise of the Taliban to formal power in Afghanistan. What we are doing now is magnitudes of scale larger than that little "operation."

This "incident" needs to be fully, and publicly, investigated. I suspect that it is a case study in how U.S. military policy and intervention are currently being structured - and funded.

The military once provided everything they needed. They were completely self-sufficient. Now they are dependent on a profit-oriented business. NOw how is that supposed to work when we have to move fast?!?!

Hey Gregor! Welcome. Nice surprise to see you here.

I agree with you that one of the problems with outsourcing the military is the question of efficiency. I actually can't think of any good reason to widely outsource military tasks. It isn't as if it is cheaper either. All it does is transfer public dollars to private hands as far as I can tell.

The following video was taken from a presentation by Stuart Brown who founded the National Institute for Play. The pictures are from reknowned nature photographer Norbert Rosing taken on an expedition to Canada's Hudson Bay in 2006.

It is interesting to run into the National Institute for Play, as one of my all time favorite books is Playing by Heart by O. Fred Donaldson. The video from Rosing's pictures epitomizes play in its most natural state.

Thanks to Bill for sharing this with me.

It's a beautiful thing!!!

There is a lot of love in play. It is a "connecting." Fred Donaldson (author of Playing by Heart) argues that it is our (and mammals) most natural state.

Such an order would embrace claims by former President George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president's January 2010 deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt did not directly respond to questions about an executive order but said the administration would address the cases of Guantanamo detainees in a manner "consistent with the national security interests of the United States and the interests of justice."

One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order.

"Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said. Such an order can be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should either be prosecuted or released.

The Justice Department has declined comment on the prospects for a long-term detention system while internal reviews of Guantanamo detainees are underway. The reviews are expected to be completed by July 21.

In a May speech, President Obama broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include congressional and judicial oversight. "We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. They can't be based simply on what I or the Executive Branch decide alone," the president said.

Some of Obama's top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a "national security court" to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

But the three senior government officials said the White House has turned away from that option, at least for now, because legislation establishing a special court would be both difficult to pass and likely to fracture Obama's own party. These officials, as well as others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

On the day Obama took office, 242 men were imprisoned at Guantanamo. In his May speech, the president outlined five strategies the administration would use to deal with them: criminal trials, revamped military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention. (Read our sidebar: "Review of Gitmo Detainees Has Been Slow and Complex.")

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release. Two officials involved in a Justice Department review of possible prosecutions said the administration is strongly considering criminal charges in federal court for Khaled Sheik Mohammed and three other detainees accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The other half, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted either in federal court or military commissions. In many cases, the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services, or has been tainted by the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Attorney General Eric Holder agreed with an assessment offered during congressional testimony this month that fewer than 25 percent of the detainees would be charged in criminal courts and that 50 others have been approved for transfer or release. One official said the administration is still hoping that as many as 70 Yemeni citizens will be moved, in stages, into a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia.

Three months into the Justice Department's reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees can not be charged or released.

The White House has spent months meeting with key congressional leaders in the hopes of reaching agreement on long-term detention, even as public support for such a plan has wavered as lawmakers have sought to prevent detainees from being transferred to their home states.

Lawyers for the administration are now in negotiations with Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., over separate legislation that would revamp military commissions. A senior Republican staff member said that senators have yet to see "a comprehensive, detailed policy" on long-term detention from the administration.

"They can do it without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns," the staff member said, adding that "Congress could cut off funding" for any detention system established in the United States.

Concerns are growing among Obama's advisers that Congress may try to assert too much control over the process. Earlier this week, Obama signed an appropriations bill that forces the administration to report to Congress before moving any detainee out of Guantanamo and prevents the White House from using available funds to move detainees onto U.S. soil.

"Legislation could kill Obama's plans," said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at this juncture.

Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil, but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system. (Last month, ProPublica explored the key issues around preventive detention.)

Such detainees -- those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future -- would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars. Anyone detained under this order would have a right to challenge his detention before a judge.

Officials argue that the plan would give detainees more rights and allow them a better chance to one day end their indefinite incarceration than they have now at Guantanamo.

But some senior Democrats see long-term detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. "I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world," Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told Holder.

One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaida operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities, or returned to their home country.

"Going forward, unless it's an extraordinary case, you will not see new transfers to the U.S. for indefinite detention," the official said.

Instituting long-term detention through an executive order would leave Obama vulnerable to charges that he is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did. Bush's detention policies suffered successive defeats in the courts in part because they lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.

"There is no statute prohibiting the president from doing this through executive order and so far courts have not ruled in ways that would bar him from doing so," said Matthew Waxman, who worked on detainee issues at the Defense Department during Bush's first term. But Waxman, who waged an internal battle inside the Bush administration for more congressional cooperation, said the "courts are more likely to defer to the president and legislative branch when they speak with one voice on these issues."

Walid bin Attash, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and who was held at a secret CIA prison, could be among those subject to long-term detention, according to one senior official.

Little information on bin Attash's case has been made public, but officials who have reviewed his file said the Justice Department has concluded that none of the three witnesses against him can be brought to testify in court. One witness, who was jailed in Yemen, escaped several years ago. A second witness remains incarcerated, but the government of Yemen will not allow him to testify.

Administration officials believe that testimony from the only witness in U.S. custody, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, may be inadmissible because he was subjected to harsh interrogation while in CIA custody.

"These issues haven't morphed simply because the administration changed," said Juan Zarate, who served as Bush's deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"The challenge for the new administration is how to solve these legal question of preventive detention in a way that is consistent with the Constitution, legitimate in the eyes of the world and doesn't create security loopholes that causes Congress to worry," Zarate said.

We have gone from a discussion of UNIVERSAL healthcare, to single-payer health care, to no "public option." This shift is not just ominous - it is wrong. Further, the discussion of the "costs" of providing public healthcare has become a major debating point. It is a point I do not understand.

Theoretically, a universal, single payer system should be considerably LESS expensive - even if nothing else changed. Why? Because in insurance terms, the larger the "pool," the less the "risk" and therefore the less the "cost." This makes certain "conservative" plans non-starters for dealing with the issues with our healthcare system. Why? because they shrink or constrain the "pool."

An apparent compromise position is to establish health insurance "cooperatives." This, at best, would create multiple pools with fewer insured and therefore have limited effect at decreasing costs.

Another compromise is to do a "public option" that extends Medicare/Medicaid to part of the uninsured population - the SCHIP program for children (for example).

If one creates a plan where a significant portion of the population can totally opt-out of, then you undermine pool, increase cost, and decrease income.

There is no good compromise position that I can see if we are going to address both access and cost issues. We either have a universal system that everyone pays into (including employers), or we fill the pockets of private insurers while increasing the public costs of healthcare.

The second part of the problem is that healthcare provision is private. We have virtually no public healthcare system. Therefore, if we do not start the creation of a public healthcare system, and place controls on private healthcare (and pharmaceuticals), then even if we have a public insurance system, it will potentially bankrupt us on the provision end. This was the problem with the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan which barred any efforts to negotiate drug costs.

If we need public insurance to create price competition with private insurance, then we also need public healthcare to compete with private healthcare. This is not to mention that the efforts of private medicine are already heavily subsidised by public dollars (drug, therapy, and treatment research) which is turned over gratis to the for-profit sector.

One bogus argument on the provision side is that medical malpractice suits drive the cost of healthcare provision. This is patently not true. To the best of my knowledge, there have been no positive impact on costs of either insurance or care provision in those states that have enacted malpractice limits. Further, this is a public check on healthcare facilities and providers. Does this mean that there are not bogus or misdirected suits? No, it does not. However, it provides accountability in an arena where the individual is the underdog - not the providers or insurers.

What has successfully been allowed to happen in the United States is to make healthcare a commodity which is kept artificially short. This combination grows higher and higher costs. To fix the problem, we must make healthcare a right - not a commodity - and decrease the scarcity.

One place to start the prototypes of public healthcare provision would be in rural America. For all the access problems in urban areas, rural areas have a growing crisis. Public facilities with publicly paid practitioners could be easily instituted in rural areas. If the model works there, it can (and should) be expanded to urban areas.

The short version of all of this is that healthcare reform should dramatically reduce healthcare costs and SAVE us money - not cost us more. If the projection is that a plan will cost us more money, then we can rest assured that private industry is getting its pockets lined at public expense, and that the system created is not truly serving the needs of the people.

I couldn't agree more ! I have been involved in the health care industry for the past 19 years. Unless and until we go to single payer it will stay a "reformed mess".

Listed below is an interesting analysis:

Max Baucus is an excellent example why
we have this problem.
Special Interest Money Means Longer Odds for Public Option
by Nate Silver @ 5:45 AM
Share This Content
As I lamented yesterday, health care is one of those areas where both popular opinion and sound public policy seem to take a backseat to protecting those stakeholders who benefit from the status quo. But can we actually see -- statistically -- the impact of lobbying by the insurance industry on the prospects for health care reform? I believe that the answer is yes.

Some 37 senators are listed by Howard Dean's website as supporting the public option so far: 36 Democrats plus Olympia Snowe. To Dean's list I add Arlen Specter as a 'yes' vote, based on a recent public statement.

I decided to build a model to explain and predict whether a particular senator supports the public option. The variables in the model are as follows:

-- The senator's ideology, as measured by his DW-NOMINATE score;
-- Per capita health care spending in the senator's home state;
-- Lobbying contributions received by the senator from health insurance PACs since 2004.
Below the jump, I explain each of these in a bit more detail.

Ideology. DW-NOMINATE scores measure a senator's ideology on a scale that generally runs from -1 (extremely liberal) to +1 (extremely conservative), although scores slightly less than -1 or slightly greater than +1 are possible under unusual circumstances. These days, the average Democratic senator has a score of -.44, and the average Republican senator a score of +.48.

DW-NOMINATE data has not yet been published for the 111th (current) Congress, so I use data from the 110th Congress instead. For freshman senators, I extrapolate DW-NOMINATE scores by translating (via regression analysis) Progressive Punch scores. Extrapolated scores for freshmen members of the Senate are as follows:
Merkley -.495
Burris -.494
Kaufman -.494
Gillibrand -.483
Udall, T -.472
Udall, M -.420
Warner -.398
Begich -.390
Bennet -.384
Hagan -.353
Johanns +.532
Risch +.534
In addition, a special score is required for Arlen Specter, who recently switched parties. Specter's score is extrapolated based on a recent analysis we did of his voting behavior since becoming a Democrat. Specter's score according to this analysis is -.255. This makes Specter the fifth most conservative Democrat, slightly to the left of Evan Bayh and slightly to the right of Tom Carper.

Per Capita Health Care Spending. As estimated by the Department of Health and Human Services. We use data from 2004, which is the most recent available. Health care spending varied in 2004 from $3,972 per head in Utah to $6,683 per head in Massachusetts.

PAC Contributions. Based on data downloaded from OpenSecrets.org, a.k.a. the Center for Responsive Politics. Contributions were tallied from two industry codes: F3200 (Accident & Health Insurance) and H3700 (HMO's). Data covers the 2004, 2006 and 2008 and 2010 campaign cycles. The fundraising data is adjusted based on the number of cycles that the senator has participated in as a Congressman (including time spent in the House of Representatives) or as a candidate, where 2010 is treated as 1/8th of a cycle since one quarterly report has so far been filed from the two-year period. So, for example, a senator that ran for and won office in 2006 is treated as participating in 2 1/8th out of a possible 3 1/8th cycles: 2006 as a candidate, and then 2008 and the fractional cycle in 2010 as a senator.

Top recipients of PAC money from these industries since 2004 are as follows:
Senator Cycles PAC $
Baucus (D-MT) 3.125 $141,250
McConnell (R-KY) 3.125 $110,750
Nelson (D-NE) 3.125 $106,123
Kyl (R-AZ) 3.125 $106,000
Gregg (R-NH) 3.125 $103,500
Grassley (R-IA) 3.125 $95,000
Lincoln (D-AR) 3.125 $91,000
Enzi (R-WY) 3.125 $87,000
Chambliss (R-GA) 3.125 $86,750
Ensign (R-NV) 3.125 $85,750
======================================
AVERAGE SENATOR $37,267
The model employed is a standard logistic regression with these three variables: ideology, lobbying and health care costs. Ideology is statistically significant at the 99th percent level, PAC contributions at the 95th percent level, and health care costs -- senators in states with more health care spending are more likely to support the public option -- at the 90th percent level. The R-squared for the model is .61, which means that these three variables alone give us 61 percent of the information that we need to predict a senator's position on the public option. The model guessed the senator's position correctly in 87 out of 99 instances.

There are several neat things we can do with this. One is to evaluate the impact of insurance industry money on a senator's likelihood of supporting the public option, holding ideology and health care spending in the senator's home state constant. The chart below presents these estimates for a liberal (DW-NOMINATE score of -.6), mainline (-.4) and centrist (-.2) Democrat, as well as for a centrist (+.2) Republican:

Lobbying contributions appear to have the largest marginal impact on middle-of-the-road Democrats. Liberal Democrats are likely to hold firm to the public option unless they receive a lot of remuneration from health care PACs. Conservative Democrats may not support the public option in the first place for ideological reasons, although money can certainly push them more firmly against it. But the impact on mainline Democrats appears to be quite large: if a mainline Democrat has received $60,000 from insurance PACs over the past six years, his likelihood of supporting the public option is cut roughly in half from 80 percent to 40 percent.

(One caution: It's possible that we're confusing cause and effect: perhaps senators receive a lot of money from the insurance industry because they hold conservative positions on health care, rather than the other way around. Although I believe that accounting for ideology should correct for most of this, I'm open to suggestions on an alternative model design that would better be able to disentangle these effects.)

Note that PAC money spent on Republicans is completely wasted insofar as the public option goes. Someone like Jim DeMint is almost certainly not going to support the public option to begin with; you don't need to give him any further incentive to oppose it! Of course, the insurance industry may get its money's worth in other ways, such as by generating more vigorous opposition from these Republicans to more "bipartisan" versions of health care reform.

What happens if we set the lobbying variable to zero for all senators? That is, suppose that the health care insurance industry were prohibited from making political contributions? In that case, the model predicts, 47 senators would currently support the public option, as opposed to the 38 who actually do. In other words, the insurance industry's influence appears to swing about 9 votes against the public option. Whatever number of senators wind up supporting the public option, add 9 to it, and you'll have a decent ballpark estimate for what the level of support might be if not for insurance industry contributions. Note, however, that we haven't attempted to model the impact of contributions from other interest groups, including both pro-health reform organizations such as labor unions or other stakeholders like pharmaceutical companies.

We can also estimate which particular senators are most likely to have been influenced by lobbying money. The following chart presents the model's estimates of the net decrease in a senator's probability of supporting the public option based on the quantity of insurance PAC money that he has received:

The single senator who's position on the public option is most likely to have been changed by lobbying money is Mark Warner of Virginia, who has already raised $69,000 from insurance industry PACs in spite of having been in the Senate for less than six months. Absent industry money, the model estimates about a two-thirds likelihood that Warner would support the public option; with it, the model thinks the chances are very low. Indeed Warner has been mum on the public option to date.

Ranking next on the list is Harry Reid, who has taken some $78,800 from insurance industry PACs and who has also yet to articulate a position on the public option in spite of his status as Majority Leader. If the model is right, Reid's noncommittal stance on the issue might be better conceived of as tacit, if somewhat soft, opposition. Following Reid is Kent Conrad of North Dakota, who has floated a compromise bill that would replace the public option with a co-op system, a version of which the Senate Finance Committee appears likely to adopt.

Some traditional progressive villains, on the other hand, do not rank as highly on the list as you might think. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, for instance, has taken a lot of money from insurance industry PACs, but as a very moderate Democrat from a state with low health care costs, he was not terribly likely to support the public option to begin with. Max Baucus, who leads all current senators in money accepted from the insurance industry, was also somewhat unlikely to support the public option in the first place, but he almost certainly won't be an advocate for it given the money he's received. Taken in this context, one wonders whether Baucus was ever a sincere supporter of the public option, or rather, whether he used the poor CBO score that the Senate Finance Committee's draft bill received (a draft that did not include a public option!) as an excuse not to have to bother with it.

There are 21 senators, all Democrats, who are currently on the fence on the public option; Mary Landrieu, according to Dr. Dean's website, is the only Democrat who has come out more or less officially against it. (Dean's website also lists many Republicans as "undecided", but since all Republicans except Olympia Snowe sent a letter to President Obama stating their opposition to the public option, it is safe to assume they are against it). We can rank these senators according to their modeled likelihood of supporting the public option, in order to give us some sense for who the most likely converts might be.

If the Democrats are operating in a 50-vote environment on health care (which is debatable) then they need to find 12 additional votes for the public option. The easiest pickup, not listed here, is Al Franken, who will almost certainly support the public option and who will probably be seated by the time the Senate votes on health care. The next 11 easiest converts are, in order, Senators Begich, Byrd, Cantwell, Dorgan, Tester, Wyden, (Bill) Nelson, Hagan, Lieberman, (Mark) Udall, and Carper. One also imagines that if a bill with a public option wins the race to the floor, Senator Reid will at some point have grit his teeth and signed off on it.

The other senators on the bottom half of this list are liable to be tough gets. Keep in mind, however, that these probabilities reflect the chances of a senator having come out for the public option already and not necessarily the probability that he will do so in the future. There are a couple of potential game-changers that could shift the momentum on the issue, one of which would be successful intervention by the President and the other of which would be a favorable CBO score on the House's version of the health care bill, which does include a public option.

To repeat myself slightly, given the following three contingencies...

1. A good CBO score for the House (public option) bill;
2. Successful intervention on behalf of the public option by Obama;
3. The willingness and/or ability to proceed in a 50-vote environment, a.k.a. reconciliation

...I believe Democrats need at least two of these three things to occur to make the public option a realistic possibility, and perhaps all three to make it a likelihood.

If none or one of these things occur, progressives are probably better off devoting their energies to deciding whether they prefer Wyden-Bennett or some other "outside-the-box" alternative to the sausage that the Finance Committee winds up making.

To be clear, not all of the opposition to the public option is the result of special interest money. Most Republicans probably oppose it on general principle, and there are a couple of Democrats, like Maria Cantwell of Washington, who have yet to come around to it even though they've taken almost nothing (in Cantwell's case, literally nothing) from the insurance industry. But the money is why, even with 59-60 votes in the Senate and a President with high approval ratings, Democrats are facing an uphill battle on the issue.

Thanks for sharing this Bill. It is a very interesting analysis.

One could also question the US government's own moral legitimacy; classifying the world into watch lists, congratulating some and reprimanding and sanctioning others, while the US itself has thus far (and for nine consecutive reports starting 2000) been immune to self-criticism.

Undoubtedly, the political hubris and self- righteous underpinnings of the report are disturbing, but that hardly represents an end to the argument. The fact remains that the report's rating of over 170 countries is thorough and largely consistent with facts as observed, reported by the media and examined in other comprehensive reports on the same issue. Indeed, the UN's own Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, launched by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in February 2009, affirms much of the State Departments' findings regarding patterns of abuse reported around the world, most notably in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region.

The report examined governmental responses to the exploitation of people, including children, for the purposes of forced labour, sex and stolen organs. At least 12.3 million adults and children are used to sustain the thriving business of modern-day slavery, though the real number is probably much higher given that human traffickers have little interest in divulging exact data.

The global financial crisis has fuelled the demand for cheap labour, making the exploitation of the most vulnerable people part and parcel of the economic recovery plans of many companies, and even countries. Under these circumstances, there should be little doubt that the UN's once promising campaign to eradicate much of the world's hunger by 2015 is already a pipedream.

One of the testimonies cited in the State Department's report was that of Mohamed Selim Khan, who "woke up in a strange house and felt an excruciating pain in his abdomen. Unsure of where he was, Khan asked a man wearing a surgical mask what had happened. 'We have taken your kidney,' the stranger said. 'If you tell anyone, we'll kill you.'"

Khan's experience epitomizes the nightmare of millions of people around the world, as they struggle to provide for hungry families. Their plight is no secret. It can be seen on the streets of many cities around the world, from Europe to Asia and Central America to the Gulf, where worn out, haggard looking men in dirty uniforms are working long hours for little pay, trapped between pressing needs at home and the merciless demands of their "recruitment agencies".

But cheap or forced labor is not the only form of human trafficking. According to the UN's Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, based on data collected in 155 countries, "the most common form of human trafficking [79 per cent] is sexual exploitation".

IRIN News, affiliated with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, reported on 18 June that "women from the former Soviet Union and China are still being trafficked across the border with Egypt into Israel for forced prostitution by organized criminal groups". Israel has been identified as a "prime destination for trafficking by both the State Department and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime". One Israeli gang alone, according to the report, has trafficked over 2,000 women into Israel and Cyprus in the last six years.

One has to wonder the wisdom of international conferences and global efforts aimed at cracking down on Gazans smuggling food and medicine across the same Egyptian border to survive the Israeli siege when almost no efforts have been dedicated to ending the stark exploitation and abuse of thousands of women enriching Israel's sex industry.

Dare I say that while human trafficking is itself an apolitical issue, recognizing and combating, or failing to combat, the problem is very much political. Think of the banking crisis, which fuelled a global recession, and the way astronomical amounts of money have been dedicated to solving it, trillions of dollars in global bailouts ultimately rewarding those who caused the crisis in the first place. Compare these efforts to the pathetic attempts at halting the disgraceful commercialization of humans, their organs, their sexuality, their very humanity.

The problem is now compounded. UN food officials declared on 19 June that hunger around the world has passed the unprecedented threshold of one billion, that is one in six people. The alarming increase of 100 million hungry children, women and men from last year's estimates is blamed on the economic recession. While international institutions are efficient at recognizing such problems, proposed solutions often lack sincerity, or any sense of urgency.

"A hungry world is a dangerous world," said Josette Sheeran of the World Food Programme. "Without food, people have only three options: they riot, they emigrate or they die." They also become products in markets ready to exploit those whose very survival is at stake.

When Julia, from the Balkans, was eight years old, she was taken along with her sisters to a neighboring country, where she was sold to beg. She was beaten every time she failed to return with her fixed quota of money. Once she became a teenager she was forced into prostitution. After escaping she was placed in a government orphanage from which she also escaped, returning to the streets. According to the State Department report, eventually "Julia was arrested on narcotics charges".

Can this injustice be any more obvious?

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London).

If you need solid information to believe this view, then consider these facts.

On the cost side, what is the problem? The current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated, and bureaucratic in the world. Its main function is not to provide quality health care for all people but to make huge profits for companies. Private health insurance companies spend an incredible 30 percent of each health care dollar on administration and billing. Thirty cents of every dollar is not going to doctors, nurses, medicine, medical personnel; it is going to bureaucracy and administration plus exorbitant CEO compensation packages, advertising, lobbying, and campaign contributions. More efficient public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA are administered for far less money, less than 10 percent.

From 2003 to 2007, the combined profits of the nation's major health insurance companies increased by 170 percent. William McGuire, the former head of United Health, several years ago, accumulated stock options worth an estimated $1.6 billion; CIGNA CEO Edward Hanway made more than $120 million in the last 5 years. CEO compensation for the top seven health insurance companies now averages $14.2 million. Over the last three decades, the number of insurance administrative personnel has grown by 25 times the number of physicians.

The double whammy is that we get so little for so much spending. The US spends far more per capita on health care than any other nation, and health care costs continue to soar unsustainably, now at $2.4 trillion and 18 percent of our GDP. Our per capita spending is 40 percent more than the second most costly national system. The insanity is that we get poor value for what we spend. According to the World Health Organization, the US ranks 37th in terms of health system performance; we are far behind many other countries in terms of such important indices as infant mortality, life expectancy, and preventable deaths. Even the latest federal National Health Quality Report concluded: "health care quality in America is suboptimal...the health care system is not achieving the more substantial strides needed to close the gap or 'quality chasm' that persists."

If Congress and the Obama administration believed in true, necessary health reform, then they should favor a government run single payer system. But they do not because they are corrupted by the money from the private health insurance industry. If the public was not delusional and brainwashed, then they would be screaming for a single payer system, but the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll posed this question to respondents: What if having the government create a new health insurance plan made many private health insurers go out of business because they could not compete? In that case would you support or oppose creating a government-run health insurance plan? Remarkably, 33 percent were opposed and 25 percent were opposed if private health insurers could not compete. Only 37 percent support the government run option regardless of any impact on the private insurers.

Considering the predominantly negative experiences most Americans have had with their private health insurance companies, these results are depressing. The only rational explanation is that Americans have been successfully brainwashed by years of propaganda and disinformation from the health insurance industry. As I and other Medicare users can attest to, a government run plan has provided me total freedom in choosing any physician and hospital I want to use. There is no sound reason to believe that a larger version of Medicare offered to all Americans would in any way reduce the quality of health care received.

The simple fact is that a huge amount of money can be saved by shifting from private to government health insurance, $4 trillion over ten years, more than enough to pay for universal health care coverage for absolutely all Americans.

What we are now witnessing in Congress and the White House is a total, ugly capitulation to the money and power of the private health insurance industry. If the private health insurance industry maintains its stranglehold on the national system, then taxpayers will pay even more money for the worst national health care system in the world, if Congress makes that costly insurance available to more Americans by using government money.

There were some other recent poll results. The New York Times/CBS News poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector. In fact, 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, nearly 60 percent said they would be willing to pay higher taxes to make sure that all were insured, and 72 percent supported a government-administered insurance plan -- something like Medicare for those under 65 -- that would compete for customers with private insurers, versus 20 percent that said they were opposed.

Part of the disinformation campaign is that people are being manipulated to think that a government insurance plan equates to government run health care itself, which is shear nonsense. Medicare users access exactly the same private health care system as those with private health insurance. Of course, private health insurers charge so much money that they pay physicians and hospitals more money than Medicare, which is primarily a tactic to keep much of those parts of the health care system supportive of maintaining the private insurance system.

Dr. David Himmelstein is a founder and spokesperson for Physicians for a National Health Program. He believes President Obama is caving to the insurance industry: "The President once acknowledged that single payer reform was the best option, but now he's caving in to corporate healthcare interests and completely shutting out advocates of single payer reform."

[Contact Joel S. Hirschhorn through Delusional Democracy]