The Geometry Of Hatred

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

The Council on Foreign Relations hosted a conversation between Former National Security Adviser of Middle East Affairs Elliott Abrams, and senior fellow of the Middle Eastern Studies Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs Editor Jim Hoge to discuss the meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Wednesday.

Abrams believes the stakes are higher for Netanyahu than for Obama because the U.S. is such a crucial ally, and because Obama seems not to emphasize interpersonal rapport in his decision-making as much as Bush has.

Hoge concurred, “As I recall from the campaign, he did make a point that foreign policy should not be to personally oriented, that it has to be based on interests and strategies that one is following. One comment he made when he met Netanyahu the first time is, ‘You’re coming from the right, I’m coming from the left, but we’re both pragmatists.’”

“Bibi (Netanyahu) has chosen to make the Iran nuclear program an almost all or nothing issue,” Hoge said. For Barack, “getting the peace process started and making some progress is the centerpiece of his whole strategy,” he finished.

“I think they’re going to have to agree to disagree,” Abrams said. He believes that Israel won’t cede any control or territory so long as they feel that Iran might take advantage of such concessions. Abrams doesn’t believe Israel will try to impede any negotiations with Iran, because time is on the side of Iranian nuclear development. Instead, Israel will want what they believe to be a futile process to play out as quickly as possible, so that the U.S. and other nations will move toward sanctions, he predicts.

Hoge said that Netanyahu is temporizing about a two-state solution, and Abrams agreed, saying Palestine won’t be ready until it can unify it’s factions and control acts of terrorism.

Abrams cited a frank commitment to a two-state solution by former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Netanyahu could use to justify his own support, should he choose to give it.

If Iran elects a new president, Israel may have to wait while other nations give the new leader the benefit of doubt, but Obama has said that if negotiations fail, he is prepared to move to “crippling sanctions,” according to Abrams.

Hoge mentioned an explicit threat by Israel to strike nuclear facilities within Iran and Abrams said that threat should be taken seriously. Israel, he pointed out, “is a one-bomb country” which Iran has already called “a cancerous tumor.”

“Can our attitude make a difference in Iran?” Hoge asked.

Maybe, Abrams replies, “The regime is not that popular, 70 percent of the population is under the age of 30. They seem to want blue jeans more than the denunciation of the U.S. But hatred of the U.S. and of Israel and the oppression of women are the three pillars of this regime.” So it can’t afford to lose one by warming toward America.

No Single Payer System For Healthcare

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News


In what Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee Max Baucus (D-Mont.) called "an historic moment," the full Committee hearing on Comprehensive Health Care Reform held the first of several planned meetings Tuesday. Their task will be to figure out how to pay for universal access.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) wanted the Employer Exclusion of Contributions for Medical Insurance Premiums and Medical Care from employee income taxes on the table.

James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, described it the Exclusion as progressive and too complex to tamper with.

Jonathan Gruber, professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., described the Exclusion as unequivocally regressive, amenable to modification, and a key revenue point.

John Sheils, senior vice president of the The Lewin Group, Falls Church, Va., believes that the Exclusion should be modified, but only after protections are put into place to prevent discrimination against the elderly and those with pre-existing conditions.

All of the panelists agreed that there was an enormous amount of potential revenue there. The Urban Institute calls it "the single largest tax expenditure in the federal budget ... worth $112 Billion.”
Gerald Shea, assistant to the president for governmental affairs at the AFL-CIO said, "That would be a radical change. If you're going to go that far, you might as well go to a single payer system. I'm flabbergasted that you would even consider it."

Baucus was clear that "We're not going to repeal the Employer Exclusion or go to universal single payer healthcare. We have to work with what we have. We can't turn on a dime. It's the devil you know vs the devil you don't know."

After Baucus finished speaking, protesters stood up and recited in favor of the single payer system. As each protestor was escorted out by Capitol Police,another stood including at least one physician.
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.) was concerned about a proposal to partially fund healthcare reform by raising taxes on alcohol. He said that thousands of jobs had been lost in the hospitality industry already, and that the last such hike had been followed by a drop in revenue. He asked whether lifestyle taxes couldn't be considered regressive.

Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities responded that all industries have lost jobs, losses in the hospitality industry are not attributable to alcohol taxes, and
whether the tax put more money into healthcare, or resulted in diminished alcohol consumption, it would be a win-win strategy.
Other lifestyle taxes discussed included sugary soft drinks, tobacco and trans-fats.

Stuart Altman, professor of national health policy at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University, Waltham, Mass., held that end-of-life care was a significant driver of cost in America vs. peer nations.

Gail Wilensky, Senior Fellow for Project HOPE, Bethesda, said that such costs have held at about 28 percent of lifetime healthcare expenses for 30 years.

Altman said, yes, but that's 28 percent for a growing demographic, as Americans age, and of a much larger absolute cost, as Healthcare costs have inflated much faster than the general economy.

Baucus concluded by saying, "I have a feeling this is not the last discussion on this we're all going to have on this."

"We Are Eating The Seed Corn"

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

“We are eating the seed-corn of the investments we made in the 1960’s” in roads and other components of distribution infrastructure, says Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.).

Funding is the big issue, and it doesn’t help that congress traditionally divides the distribution into sector into pieces: rail, road, waterways, air, etc, as well as geographic divisions. What’s needed, he said, is greater “multimodal integration.”

All of the speakers at The Council on Competitiveness Seminar on "Is America's Transportation Infrastructure Ready for Global Trade?" echoed that point over the course of their talks.

Four of America’s five major economic sectors depend on the fifth, transportation and distribution, which provides 11 million jobs. Domestic, internal, transport accounts for 85 percent of all commercial transport in the U.S. This “logistic structure” is valued at 10 percent of GDP, according to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, and that’s the lowest in the world, meaning one of the most efficient.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said the U.S. moves 50 million tons of goods per day, and our supply lines have helped America to remain competitive for 250 years, but now urban congestion and neglected infrastructure are compromising supply line efficiency.

“It’s about more than asphalt,” Warner said. “Supply is about moving goods, but it’s also about moving ideas.” Warner, whose business is telecommunication, advocates including broadband conduits into all new roads in order to extend the broadband infrastructure as inclusively and proactively as possible. “We’re still 15th in the world in terms of broadband environment,” he finished.

Council on Competitiveness President Deborah Wince-Smith extended the topic back to a global scale. “Sales from foreign affiliates of U.S. companies are three times total domestic sales,” she said, and therefore supply line efficiency is important to international competitiveness.

Douglas Oberhelman, Group President, Caterpillar, Said he sometimes can get shipments from Hong Kong faster than he can get them from an American port to their final destination within the U.S.

Overall the diverse group of speakers highlighted that global competitiveness requires:
1. Renovation and expansion of the infrastructure of roads and highways.
2. Smart distribution systems, in the form of information technology and associated technologies like RFID and sensors.
3. A return to education, science, and engineering as national values.
4. integrated, consistent, standardized, stable policies across modalities, regions, tax policy, energy policy and broadband information technology.

It Looked Like A Good Idea At The Time

Coffee Brown, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News


As an investment, it could have paid off. As a bailout, it’s likely to be the expensive consequence of a hasty yet necessary response, according to Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who helped frame the $700 billion TARP bill and spoke about it today at the Brookings Institution.

Corker pointed that the $85 billion AIG funds were from the Federal Reserve, not the Treasury. He said that TARP, as designed, would have turned presently toxic investments into longer term equity, and taxpayers could have gotten their money back.

But since not enough requirements were included, and financial capital was used to shore up failing institutions, rather than buying assets, he thinks much of that money is never going to be recovered. If General Motors, for example, were to go Chapter Seven Bankruptcy, taxpayers would get nothing.

Corker said that financial principles are being made up on the fly, partly because the situation doesn’t lend itself to precedent. For example, the GM pensioners gave up about $12 billion in equity for a 2.5 percent stockholder share, while the UAW gave up about $10 billion in equity for a 39 percent share, and declined to accept a requirement to become competitive within 2009, he said.

Rather than regulate the past, “let’s move past this and figure out the right regulatory regime” which, he said, needs to work here and now, for the rest of the world and in unforeseen circumstances. “We have to come up with cause neutral regulations.”

Looking to the future, he said that the parties are just beginning to work together on Social Security and Medicaid which, if not addressed are heading into $86 trillion in obligations.

Congress Protects Pork

Coffee Brown, MD, University of New Mexico, Talk Radio News

Please don’t call it “swine flu” anymore.

That was the main message at the Senate Appropriations Committee Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing on the 2009 H1N1 virus.

Witnesses, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, acting Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, answered
questions from Sens. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Robert Bennett (R-Utah) and Mark Pryor (D-Ariz.) about the commercially regrettable naming of the 2009 H1N1 virus and about vaccines.


Vilsack said the USDA has been aggressively campaigning with trading partners to protect pork’s image as a safe food, but China and Russia
have suspended purchases of American pork. Prices have fallen about 20 percent, he said, versus about 45 percent during the 1976 swine flu
scare.

Brownback asked whether there should be more surveillance of animals, since several recent infections have been zoonotic, or transmitted from
animals to humans. Vilsack said that such surveillance is ongoing but that funding has been flat. He stressed that while the last round of bird flu was from birds to humans, this flu has so far only gone from humans to animals. “We should really be calling this the human flu,” he said.

Kohl wanted to know if vaccines would be ready for a possible reoccurrence of the current atypical flu in the fall, and mentioned previous estimates at similar hearings of four to six months to prepare such a vaccine. Sharfstein responded by emphasizing the uncertainties: time to develop the vaccine, time to test it, and the final decision whether full production was merited. He said that full production would not significantly reduce production of the usual seasonal vaccine, as that version will have almost finished the year’s order by the time a decision has to be made.

Kohl asked Sharfstein whether this strain would prove to be dangerous, and Sharfstein replied that it doesn’t look bad now, but viruses mutate, so he couldn’t make predictions about future behavior.