Tag Archives: Republican Party (United States)

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ENVIRONMENT:Future at Risk


The first decade of the twenty-first century ended with the hottest and wettest year in recorded history, which also saw an extraordinary level of climate disasters like the catastrophic heat wave in Russia and the floods in Pakistan. This young year is already continuing the misery. Record-hot seas, warmed by billions of tons of greenhouse pollution from the burning of fossil fuels, are fueling catastrophic floods and storms around the planet. Global food and energy prices are rising as nations overwhelmed by disasters struggle with production, which threatens our economic recovery. In the United States, the blazing summer of 2010 is being followed by a harsh winter of extremes: record snowfalls, disastrous flooding, and record heat waves. Climate scientists first warned policymakers of the harsh consequences of dependence on the unconstrained abuse of coal and oil in the 1950s and 1960s, forecasting a future which is now our generation’s reality. “The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” confirmed the World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “The ten warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.” With unabated pollution, climate disasters are poised to reach unimaginable levels of devastation in the coming years. The political climate in Washington, DC is not any brighter, as polluters have taken over of the halls of Congress. Lobbyists for carbon pollution interests have set up shop in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Republican Party is dominated by politicians who paint global warming as a scientific conspiracy. Some Democrats have joined the Republican assault on President Barack Obama’s efforts to turn back carbon pollution, arguing that the only way to preserve the American dream is to leave the coal and oil industries in control of our nation’s energy destiny.

GLOBAL FLOODS: On Sunday, Pope Benedict XVI offered prayers for the international victims of catastrophic flooding. Australia is facing a “disaster of biblical proportions” after weeks of rain. “The extent of flooding being experienced by Queensland is unprecedented and requires a national and united response,” Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said. “Dozens of towns have been isolated or partially submerged” by Australia’s extraordinary floods, which have killed at least 20 people and are now “flushing toxic, pesticide-laden sediment into the Great Barrier Reef, and could threaten fragile corals and marine life in the world’s largest living organism.” The disaster “is costing Australia at least $3 billion in lost farming and coal exports.” Elsewhere, extraordinary rains “have triggered widespread floods and mudslides” in Sri Lanka, killing 43 people and affecting millions more, prompting the United Nation to make a $51 million appeal for help. With heavy rains across southern Africa, “over 50 people have died in floods in South Africa and neighbouring Mozambique,” and “Zimbabwean authorities have issued flood warnings for points in the south and west of the country.” Continuous rains in the Philippines have killed at least 56 people and left hundreds of thousands of people “reeling.” Extreme rains have caused “the worst natural disaster to hit Brazil in four decades,” where the “death toll from flooding and mudslides near Rio de Janeiro” could approach 1,000 victims. “Heavy snow and rain in the U.S. Midwest” likely means record springtime floods. “Changes in Iowa’s weather patterns, landscape, cities and farms have rendered some of the state’s most trusted flood prevention safeguards outmoded and inadequate,” a review by The Des Moines Register shows. “This is no longer something that’s theory or conjecture or something that comes out of computer models,” Dr. Richard Somerville, the Nobel-winning scientist who led the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the state of climate science in 2007, explained to ABC News. “We’re observing the climate changing. It’s real. It’s happening. It’s scientific fact.”

POLLUTER TAKEOVER: The Republican surge into the halls of Congress during the 2010 elections was bankrolled by millions from right-wing coal and oil polluters like Koch Industries and Tesoro Oil that now expect a return on the investment. Conservatives have announced an ambitious agenda of deregulating the pollution that is killing Americans and threatening the planet. The incoming Republican chairs of crucial committees in the House of Representatives opposed the climate legislation supported by President Barack Obama, and now oppose limits on global warming pollution under the Clean Air Act. Their attack on public health is being led by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), once considered a “moderate on environmental issues,” but who has since worked hard to refashion himself as a hard-right defender of pollution as the incoming chairman of the House energy committee. To run his committee, Upton hired a slew of lobbyists, whose client rolls include fossil fuel interests and environmental criminals. These ex-lobbyists “met in a closed-door session Tuesday with energy industry interests to work on strategy to handcuff the Obama administration’s climate change agenda,” Politico reports. In the Senate, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) “will introduce sweeping legislation later this month to block the Obama administration and states from imposing climate rules.” Also, “[a]t least 56 senators — just four short of the 60 needed to overcome a filibuster — will most likely support measures to hamstring climate rules, and an additional eight votes may be in play this Congress.” Texas oil company Tesoro has launched a new campaign to vilify the Environmental Protection Agency’s pollution rules as a “regulatory blizzard” and an “avalanche of regulations that will wipe out jobs.” This attack on the EPA is being joined by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Farm Bureau, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, and dozens of other right-wing front groups.

FIGHTING FOR THE FUTURE: Leadership that serves the American people and addresses climate change has not been abandoned entirely, however. “How many times do we have to be smacked in the face with factual evidence before we address global climate change? Report after report keep confirming it’s getting worse every year,” said Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) last week. The bipartisan presidential oil spill commission rebuked the “compromised” American Petroleum Insitute for being both the industry’s standard-setter and political lobbyist. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA) is combatting the Republican agenda of “taxpayer subsidies for big polluters, less oversight of oil refineries and drilling rigs, and less protections for our health.” Activists across the country are defending their air and water against newly elected Tea Party politicians. Climate scientists are fighting back as well, telling “Republican politicians to stop beating up on science and scientists.” Thanks to the Recovery Act, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced yesterday that more than 300,000 low-income homes have been weatherized. High-quality clean energy technologies, he stressed, are the “road to wealth creation in the United States.” At a joint news conference with Chinese President Hu Jintao, President Barack Obama said the two countries — the world’s largest energy consumers and greenhouse polluters — “have a responsibility to combat climate change … and showing the way to a clean energy future.” Looking forward, Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Daniel Weiss writes that the State of the Union address next week “presents a golden opportunity for the president to contrast conservative opposition with his reaffirmation of the nation’s commitment to a clean energy future.”

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Jon Wants to Talk Facts, Not Tone — Watch Now!


 

 Tonal Recall

Jon thinks the health care bill doesn’t actually kill jobs and

 that calling it a “job killer” is like calling sleep an “awake killer.”

Watch Now!

http://email.comedycentral.com/a/hBNNeEUBAhkQSB8Xd1CNsfnhM.B8U2fbOg/video

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HEALTH CARE: Death By Budget Cut


The Tucson shooting last week shocked the nation. For Arizona citizens, however, the violence lays a fresh wound to a state plagued by recent tragedies. In November, Mark Price, a father of six who had been battling leukemia for a year, died due to complications with his chemotherapy. While a bone marrow transplant could have saved Price’s life, he didn’t receive it in time. The next month, the same fate befell another Arizonan. Now, a plumber in need of a new heart, a high school volleyball coach in need of a new lung, and a father of four in need of a liver remain among the 96 Arizonans who have been facing death since Oct. 1. On that day, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) and the GOP-led legislature decided the state could no longer afford to support organ transplants for Medicaid patients and callously cut the service. Looking at a $1 billion program deficit by July 2011, Brewer dealt “a death sentence” to these Arizonans to recoup only  one-tenth of a percent from the projected shortfall. Adding insult to grave injury, Brewer deemed such “Cadillac” treatment for the dying as “optional” and consistently ignored funding solutions from her own party while championing tax cuts and funding measures that could be easily re-routed to save the transplant program. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) had been among those warning against the danger of solving budget woes “on the backs” of dying Arizonans. But rather than heed that warning, many Republican governors are electing to follow Brewer’s example of slashing vital Medicaid services and refusing federal help provided by the new health care law. By doing so, these governors needlessly endanger vulnerable populations and risk importing Arizona’s tragic consequences.

PAYING THE PRICE:   On top of eliminating dental services and physical exams for low-income residents, Brewer and the GOP-controlled legislature  took a knife to state reimbursement for seven types of transplants, including certain heart, lung, pancreatic, bone marrow, and liver transplants for Medicaid patients. Using inaccurate data, the state argued that the “procedures have poor outcomes and that most patients die after the transplants.” In fact, survival rates are higher than the state says. The drastic cuts have left hospitals bereft of any sustainable way to keep 98 affected patients on transplant lists. According to Arizona’s Medicaid agency, either hospitals have to “fund the transplants of patients  without payers through their charity care dollars” or the patient would have to find “some other donor source.” Without any funding alternative, these gravely ill are slowly succumbing to the inevitable. Since the October cuts, one of the 98 has passed away  each month. And now, denied a liver transplant because the state said funding her treatment wouldn’t be “cost effective,” one of the remaining 96 patients is “going to leave the state to get the surgery she badly needs” to live. Desperate to counteract what they are characterizing as “death by budget cut,” Arizona doctors even proposed cutting other procedures, like tests conducted before surgery, to compensate for the cost of the transplant. “Something needs to be done,” said Dr. Emmanuel Katsanis, a bone marrow transplant expert at the University of Arizona. “There’s no doubt that people aren’t going to make it because of this decision. What do you tell someone? You need a transplant but you have to raise the money?” State Democratic lawmakers who “made it very clear at the time of the vote that this was a death sentence” are so incensed over the GOP’s refusal to fix what one Republican lawmaker admitted was a “mistake” that many are now pointing to the GOP as the source of actual “death panels” under “Brewercare.”

REFUSING RESPONSIBILITY:   Democratic lawmakers, physicians, and transplant patients gathered at a news conference last month to  plead with Brewer to call a special legislative session so lawmakers could restore the $1.4 million transplant program. But such pleas fell on deaf ears as Brewer repeatedly refused to budge on her  draconian budget. Believing “Arizona has provided Cadillac insurance for Medicaid,” Brewer insisted that “the state only has so much money” to provide dying patients with “so many optional kinds of care” and rejected to hold a special session until she “receives a funding proposal for either the reinstatement of the transplant program or the $1 billion shortfall for Medicaid.” Of course, Brewer has been ignoring such proposals since December. Moved by the 98 patients’ plight, Illinois State GOP Central Committeeman Steven Daglas developed  26 funding solutions tailored to Arizona that would allow the state to fully fund transplants for all the remaining patients without raising any new revenue. One such proposal included using $2 million from an AIG settlement for the program. However, after multiple attempts to reach out, Daglas has yet to receive a response from the governor. Brewer, it seems, is busy holding tax breaks for the wealthy as a higher priority. In response to an Arizona State University study implicating past tax cuts — not transplants — as “a major cause of the state’s underlying budget troubles,” Brewer  insisted that “tax cuts are never a mistake” and proposed a  100 percent tax break for manufacturing companies over patient welfare as the new year’s first order of business. Other programs Brewer has found more worthy of funding include  algae research, a coliseum roof renovation, and “bridges for endangered squirrels.” “I refuse to believe that any person or state will spend $1.25 million to save 5 squirrels a year, but not 98 human beings. It can’t be true,” said Daglas. “That just  doesn’t make any sense.”

THE BAD BELLWETHER:   When asked “how many people would have to die” before she’d reverse her decision, Brewer offered a   curious response: “If people are so worried about the transplant patients then they should ask the federal government in Washington to send us more money.” This is a confusing reaction considering she openly vilifies the Affordable Care Act that would provide her with  100 percent of the funding to cover the health care law’s Medicaid expansion. Now, 32 more Republican governors have joined Brewer. In a letter to the White House last week, all the GOP governors lambasted the ACA’s rule requiring states to maintain Medicaid eligibility levels for federal funding as “unconscionable” and requested leeway to cut Medicaid enrollment, effectively “chopping millions of poor people when the weak economy makes Medicaid coverage critical.” Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) even flirted with opting out of Medicaid entirely, which would not only force states to scale back health care benefits and reimbursements to providers but would  leave “large numbers of low-income children, pregnant women, parents, people with disabilities, and seniors” without insurance. Indeed, only when Perry learned that he’d lose $15 billion in federal funding and leave  2.6 million Texans uninsured did he drop the delusional idea.

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Add YOUR Voice to the Anti-Right Chorus in 2011


Your Voice Against The Right
Please renew now!
As we prepare for 2011, People For the American Way needs your continued support to face the major challenges before us.

Give your early membership renewal gift by December 31st to help us gear up to face a new year full of peril for our freedoms and our nation.

In January, a new Congress will convene, with a Tea Party/Republican-ruled House of Representatives and a strengthened GOP contingent in the U.S. Senate.

In just a few weeks, we will be facing the most radically right-wing congressional delegation in modern times. And with it, we will also face an avalanche of legislation with the goal of reversing decades of progress. We must be prepared to face assaults against … civil rights … free speech … the federal courts … education … gay and lesbian equality … women’s rights … and so much more.

And with your renewed membership contribution, People For the American Way will be YOUR voice against the Right.

Our nation has never needed PFAW more than it does today. And now, more than ever, we need you to make sure we are strong enough to stand up to the Tea Partiers in Congress, and their brand of corporate subservience married to right-wing cultural extremism.

Make sure PFAW has the tools necessary to successfully fight the incoming right-wing Congress … by making your year-end membership gift right away … before December 31st.

Sincerely,

Michael B. Keegan signature
Michael Keegan

President

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NATIONAL SECURITY: Time For A Vote On New START

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Last week, Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta explained that the New START treaty was a test for Republicans to see if they were ready to govern. It now appears as if the GOP is prepared to fail that test. In a sign that nothing is above partisan politics, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), the number two Republican in the Senate shocked the White House this week when he abruptly blew up months of negotiations and dismissed the prospects of a vote during the lame duck period. Republicans are stalling, either hoping to kill the treaty quietly to avoid giving President Obama a perceived victory, or to extort so much pork for the nuclear weapons-industrial complex that it makes further progress in this area impossible. Still, the vast majority of Republicans, including Kyl, refuse to say they actually oppose the treaty. The White House therefore is not backing down, as the New York Times writes today, “Mr. Obama on Thursday escalated ratification of the agreement, the so-called New Start treaty, into a public showdown.” After seven months of consideration in the Senate and more than 20 hearings on the treaty, Senate Republicans have had more than enough time to review the treaty. While back room talks with Kyl appear to be continuing, it is now up to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to force Republicans to stop their equivocating by holding a vote on the Senate floor.

ENDANGERING NATIONAL SECURITY: By delaying the treaty, Senate Republicans put U.S. national security at risk. The original treaty expired last December, and it has now been 349 days since Americans have been on the ground in Russia monitoring and inspecting the country’s nuclear facilities — a vital provision that has helped maintain post-Cold War nuclear stability. As Vice President Biden said today, “We’re blind now.” The stakes are high, which is why the treaty has the unanimous support of the U.S. military and of a wide array of Republican foreign policy officials. Delaying a vote into the next senate would require that the treaty ratification process start from scratch. This promises to upset the “reset” with Russia, potentially destroying the careful coalition against Iran, which has seen Russia back sanctions and stop the sale of an anti-aircraft missile to Iran. U.S. troops in Afghanistan are also dependent on sensitive supply routes through Russia, which would also be at risk. More broadly, the delay and presumed defeat of the treaty would weaken Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, who pushed the treaty, and strengthen Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Perhaps even worse is the impact on stopping states from acquiring nuclear weapons. Ambassador Richard Burt, who negotiated the original START treaty on behalf of President Reagan, said on PBS this week, “There are only two governments in the world that wouldn’t like to see this treaty ratified, the government in Tehran and the government in North Korea.”

PARTY ABOVE COUNTRY:  Editorial pages in newspapers throughout the U.S. erupted in anger at news of Kyl’s stunt. He was described as “narrow-minded,” politically “craven,” and as putting forth “lame excuses.” West Virginia’s Charleston Gazzette noted, “What a galling situation. Kyl cares more about playing politics than about protecting America.” The New York Times editorialized, “The world’s nuclear wannabes, starting with Iran, should send a thank you note to Senator Jon Kyl. … [T]he objections from Mr. Kyl — and apparently the whole Republican leadership — are so absurd that the only explanation is their limitless desire to deny President Obama any legislative success.” The San Jose Mercury News summed it up, “If you doubted that Republicans could be so craven as to put their own political interests above national security, the proof was delivered Tuesday: Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl announced he will block New START.” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), the leading nuclear expert in the Senate and treaty backer, unloaded on his Republican colleagues for their dithering this week: “The Republican caucus is tied up in a situation where people don’t want to make choices. … Every senator has an obligation in the national security interest to take a stand, to do his or her duty. Maybe people would prefer not to do his or her duty right now. … There are still thousands of missiles out there. You better get that through your heads.”

FORCE A VOTE: Despite much of the press reporting, Kyl doesn’t run the Senate. Majority Leader Reid does. It is now up to Reid to find the time on the Senate floor to overcome Kyl’s inevitable obstructionism, which will draw out the process taking up considerable senate floor time. Importantly, the vast majority of Republicans, including Kyl, have not said they oppose the treaty. It is time to force them to make a decision. As Podesta explained in Politico yesterday, Reid and the White House have nothing to lose by forcing a vote: “Even if Republicans are actually willing to vote against New START in the lame duck session, why would anyone think they would more cooperative next year? Delay would simply reinforce partisan stalling tactics.” Lugar sent a clear message to Reid and the White House: “I’m advising that the treaty should come on the floor so people will have to vote aye or nay [even if there’s no deal with Kyl]. … I think when it finally comes down to it, we have sufficient number or senators who do have a sense of our national security. This is the time, this is the priority. Do it.” Given that 73 percent of Americans support the New START treaty, according to a just released CNN poll, the stance of Kyl and Senate Republicans is proving incredibly unpopular, and the time to have a vote is now.