All four members of Maine's Congressional Delegation are asking President Barack Obama to conduct and in-debth examination of China's alleged subsidization of its domestic paper industry.
Senator Olympia Snowe, who led the letter with Ron Wyden (D-OR) in the Senate, and Congressman Michaud, who led the letter with Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) in the House, were joined by over 100 lawmakers from 30 states.
The letter sent to President Obama strongly urges the administration to examine the practices of the Chinese government and to take action to remedy the situation.
A press release from the Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) contends that "both labor and management agree that domestic paper jobs will remain in jeopardy because of illegal subsidies given to Chinese paper producers. From 2002 through the end of 2009, overall employment in the U.S. paper and paper products sector dropped 29 percent, from roughly 557,000 workers to 398,000." Should the subsidies continue, the AAM predicts that more jobs in the US will be lost.
The actual letter can be found below:
Dear Mr. President:
We write to bring to your attention the damage caused to American manufacturing by the subsidies that China's paper industry receive, which are significant and market-distorting.
A recently released study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) documents the known subsidies that China's government provides its paper industry and the ensuing exponential growth of production and export sales of Chinese paper. These events correspond to an increasing U.S. trade deficit with China in paper. The EPI study shows that paper production in China tripled over the last ten years, despite global overcapacity, saturated markets, and no inherent advantage in the marketplace. It is clear to us that the rise of China's paper industry is less related to market forces than to a decision by China's government to implement an industrial policy that promotes domestic paper production.
America's paper industry is the most efficient in the world and is part of a supply chain that promotes sustainable forestry practices and good-paying jobs. This industry should not be asked to continue to compete on the unlevel playing field that China has constructed through heavy subsidization of domestic production. This is a critical period of time for the U.S. paper industry. Production in the U.S. has declined while China's surged. From 2002 through the end of 2009, U.S. employment in the paper and paper products sector dropped 29 percent, from roughly 557,000 workers to 398,000. In each of our states and districts, hardworking Americans still rely on the paper industry - both directly and indirectly - for their livelihoods and the chance for a decent, middle-class wage.
To that end, we urge you to carefully examine the practices employed by the Chinese government to provide its paper industry an artificial and unfair advantage in the U.S. market, and determine the extent to which these practices cause or threaten to cause harm to American producers. Such an analysis should be conducted to identify China's unfair trade practices in the paper industry and apply all appropriate and necessary remedies to combat those identified.
Thank you for your attention to this important issue.
Sincerely,
Sen. Olympia Snowe
Sen. Susan Collins
Rep. Mike Michaud
Rep. Chellie Pingree
and 104 other Members of Congress
Sen. Susan Collins, with the help of a very compliant media, has been quite successful at portraying herself as a moderate Republican. This, despite a long record of votes that have negatively impacted the very people she represents - most recently, in delaying Extenders bill that forced about 10,000 Mainers to go without unemployment benefits for more than two months.
If the news media, both nationally and here in Maine, needed any further proof of the exact spot on the political spectrum she rests, today's announcement in the KJ that Collins endorses Paul LePage for governor should put all doubts to rest (h/t Sudbay):
"I stopped here to show I support Paul for governor," Collins said. "I'm going to do all I can for him."
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Before she departed the meeting with LePage to tour Backyard Farms in Madison, Collins said she considers LePage a "very strong candidate" who has the "right message for the people of Maine."
Collins cited LePage's pledge to create jobs, make the state more "business-friendly," and reduce government spending.
"Those are exactly the right priorities," Collins said. "People are eager to have a strong leader at a critical time for the state of Maine. Paul's the leader who can get us back on track."
Mind, this is the same woman that refused to endorse a candidate in the Republican primary, despite that her long time former chief of staff, Steve Abbott, was running - as a moderate.
But I have few doubts that the media will continue to push the myth that Collins has so carefully crafted about herself, that she is a moderate.
In the aftermath of the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which allowed corporations, unions, and other groups to spend without limits on political campaigns, the DISCLOSE Act (H.R. 5175) was introduced Rep. Christopher Van Hollen (D-MD). The bill would force groups to disclose who has financed these campaigns, so that the public can know who is behind them.
In 2008, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) spent $1.9 million in its successful effort to overturn Maine's law that would have allowed same-sex couples to marry. NOM is now attempting to block the Maine Commission on Ethics demand that it release its list of donors.
The tax cuts that greatly favored extremely wealthy Americans are set to sunset at the end of this year, and of course many Republicans want to see them extended. They do this with the claim that they "pay for themselves," but as Pat Garofalo makes clear, that claim is utter bullshit.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sen. John Kyl, Senate hopefuls Mark Rubio and Carly Fiorina, have all stated that "tax cuts pay for themselves."
Since neither of Maine's senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, talk to me, perhaps someone in the Maine media will ask them what their position on renewing the Bush tax cuts is (both senators voted for the measure in May 2001.
Americans United for Change and AFSCME have prodcued a new ad targeting Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, calling them out for their vote against the Extenders bill:
From a press release, the leaders of the two groups had these statements:
AFSCME President Gerald McEntee: "If Senators Snowe and Collins were truly concerned about the deficit, then they would have supported this jobs bill. It's very simple -- more jobs now mean less debt later. But instead, their reckless filibuster and obstructionist actions will force devastating cuts in public services and major job losses in both the public and private sectors. Increased unemployment will lead to larger deficits. Make no mistake: Senate Republicans, who stood shoulder-to-shoulder against even allowing a vote on the bill, will be to blame when workers lose their jobs and our economy lapses back into a recession."
Tom McMahon, Executive Director, Americans United for Change: "It just doesn't add up. Senators Collins and Snowe had no problem giving Wall Street banks a $700 bailout or putting the Iraq war on the nation's credit card. Yet, when it comes to a bill that that will preserve the jobs of hundreds in not thousands of cops, nurses, firefighters, and teachers in Maine, they say we can't afford it? Back in reality, it's the state government that can't afford to do without the additional Medicaid assistance this bill provides and it's struggling, out-of-work Mainers who won't be able to afford groceries and bills after getting cut off from unemployment benefits. By saying No to the jobs bill, they said Yes to bigger deficit problems down the road because more Americans out of work means less tax revenue and more people seeking out public assistance. Senators Snowe and Collins need to get their priorities straight, and they can start by helping pass a robust jobs bill that meets Maine's urgent needs."
Update: Both Sens. Snowe and Collins voted against cloture for the Extenders bill (Roll Call 194). The motion to move the bill forward failed 56-40, with 4 abstentions - 60 votes were required to end debate.
A Republican filibuster appears increasingly likely to kill long-sought legislation extending jobless benefits and a host of other spending and tax measures, despite a new round of cuts to the measure Wednesday that reduced its deficit impact even further.
A senior Senate Democratic aide said Wednesday evening that several days' worth of negotiations with a handful of moderate Republicans had failed and that a vote later this week to break the filibuster was likely to fail as well. Democrats would then abandon the measure. The aide required anonymity to speak frankly about internal party deliberations.
Failure to pass the bill would mean about 200,000 jobless people a week would lose benefits that average more than $300 a week because they would be unable to reapply for additional tiers of benefits enacted since 2008. Governors denied help with their budget woes are likely to lay off tens of thousands of state workers.
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Senate Majority Leader Reid, D-Nev., had been courting Maine Republicans Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe to provide the critical votes needed to defeat a GOP filibuster, and the two senators were pressing for additional cuts to the measure.
The pared-back measure would add about $36 billion to the deficit over the upcoming decade, according to preliminary estimates, which is the cost of extending unemployment for the long-term jobless. When the debate started three weeks ago, Reid pressed a version that would have added almost $80 billion to the deficit.
But Snowe and Collins were withholding support, however.
"It's clear that a great deal of progress has been made and I'm pleased with that," Collins told reporters.
"They're responding to some of the issues. We just haven't finalized anything," Snowe said.
Earlier this morning, I spoke to an aide in Harry Reid's office who confirmed this story to me. Here is the state of play:
1. The bill is two votes short, as it faces united opposition from Republicans and assistance from Ben Nelson.
2. Republicans are offering a one-month extension, and Democrats are rejecting that offer. While it is not impossible that a deal would be struck before the vote today, it is unlikely.
3. If the cloture vote fails, then the Senate will not take up the bill again. Procedural delays have created a quagmire where many other pieces of legislation, including the Wall Street reform bill and others which can create jobs rather than just protecting them, need to be dealt with. A 30-day extension would just back up the process even further, as it means there would be another fight before the august recess.
Come Friday, 1.2 million people will lose access to the extended unemployment benefits, a number that will grow by several hundred thousand every week after that. Fifty million Medicare claims from June are currently in process at the reduced rate, which the AARP says has already caused some of its members to have trouble finding a doctor. And the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that dropping the $24 billion in aid to states will lead to cuts in services and thousands of layoffs, and that spending cuts to close states' aggregate budget shortfall absent new federal funds in 2011 would lead to 900,000 public- and private-sector layoffs.
Over 20,000 Mainers have lost unemployment benefits, elederly Mainers are beginning to find it difficult to find health care, and the State faces a $69 million hole in its budget unless the Senate takes action.
But evidently, Snowe and Collins are more concerned with other things than their constituents.
Sen. Joe Lieberman has introduced the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010 (PCNAA, S. 3480); Sens. Susan Collins and Tom Carper (D-DE) are the bills two cosponsors, which would create the Office of Cyberspace Policy, with authority to mandate measures if a president should declare a "national cyber emergency."
A new US Senate Bill would grant the President far-reaching emergency powers to seize control of, or even shut down, portions of the internet.
The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects "shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed" by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined.
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The idea of an internet "kill switch" that the President could flip is not new. A draft Senate proposal that ZDNet Australia's sister site CNET obtained in August allowed the White House to "declare a cybersecurity emergency", and another from Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) would have explicitly given the government the power to "order the disconnection" of certain networks or websites.
Just the definitions are enough to raise one's eyebrows. First, the bill cites the USA Patriot Act, and then defines what constitutes a threat in such broad terms as to make it easy to label nearly anything such:
Sec. 3.(7) INCIDENT- The term 'incident' means an occurrence that--
(A) actually or potentially jeopardizes--
(i) the information security of information infrastructure; or
(ii) the information that information infrastructure processes, stores, receives, or transmits; or
(B) constitutes a violation or threat of violation of security policies, security procedures, or acceptable use policies applicable to information infrastructure.
And:
(18) RISK- The term 'risk' means the potential for an unwanted outcome resulting from an incident, as determined by the likelihood of the occurrence of the incident and the associated consequences, including potential for an adverse outcome assessed as a function of threats, vulnerabilities, and consequences associated with an incident.
In describing the bill, Lieberman said:
For all of its 'user-friendly' allure, the internet can also be a dangerous place with electronic pipelines that run directly into everything from our personal bank accounts to key infrastructure to government and industrial secrets. Our economic security, national security and public safety are now all at risk from new kinds of enemies - cyber-warriors, cyber-spies, cyber-terrorists and cyber-criminals.
That his bill would give the president that same control over the internet - and distribution of information - that leaders in abuse, doesn't seem to bother Lieberman. This, despite that he cosponsored the Victims of Iranian Censorship (VOICE) Act last year, which would "help the Iranian people stay one step ahead of their regime, in getting access to information and safely exercising freedom of speech, assembly and expression online."
For her part, Collins, who also cosponsored the VOICE Act), continued to use the language of fear as a reason to support the PNCAA:
...we cannot afford to wait for a cyber 9/11 before our government realises the importance of protecting our cyber resources.
Cross posted with permission from Joan McCarter of Daily Kos
After yesterday's failure to get enough votes to move forward on emergency spending to help the unemployed and get critical funding to states, Baucus has scaled down the bill. Maybe now it's just a minor emergency.
The spending reductions - estimated near $20 billion - are accompanied by tax changes tailored to the small-business concerns of Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) as well as venture capital and real estate interests with influence in both parties.
In the bargaining now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, up for reelection in cash-strapped Nevada, is still holding onto a $24 billion, six-month extension of federal Medicaid assistance from January to June next year.
The money is vital to the finances of states like Reid's, hit hard by the economic downturn, and he has the support of President Barack Obama. But the cost of the Medicaid funding makes the program an easy target, and the dollars may still have to be scaled back to win the swing vote of Snowe's fellow Maine Republican, Sen. Susan Collins.
The word coming out of D.C. now is that Snowe and Collins are demanding massive cut to that state aid, known as FMAP, in return for their cloture votes. As many as 900,000 jobs are on the line in the states. Maine isn't going to be immune from those cuts, where the "shortfall in the budget that begins July 1 would be at least $85 million."
While Snowe and Collins are holding out their votes on cloture--just like they did in order to get state aid stripped out of the original stimulus package--Snowe along with others are fighting to protect the tax loopholes that hedge fund managers and S corporation executives have enjoyed for years.
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) said he remained worried by the cost of the package and failure to do more about long-term deficits. But in the process, he also won concessions for his state related to disaster low-income-housing tax credits. And Bayh was also party to a deal with Baucus engineered by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) that will further soften House-backed tax reforms targeted at investment-fund managers who now shelter their income at lower capital-gain tax rates....
In the case of Snowe, her greatest tax concern has been a second reform meant to end a similar abuse under which small-business S corporations are used to shelter income as dividends - exempt from payroll taxes. This abuse has become a greater cost to the Treasury as the Medicare tax rate has gone up for the wealthy, but Snowe has wanted more refinement so the reforms don't create problems in themselves and unfairly impose new charges on small-business owners.
Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, along with those "moderate" deficit peacocks, are putting more hurt on the people who are already hurting and even trying to increase their ranks so that they can lessen the burden on hedge-fund managers. If 900,000 more Americans lose their jobs, you can point the finger at the Maine twins.
Olympia Snowe's office: (202) 224-5344
Susan Collins' office: (202) 224-2523
Luckily, that resolution has been defeated, but not before Senator Collins (R-McConnell's back pocket) claimed on the Senate floor that
It is Congress's job, not the EPA, to decide how best to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Wrong, Senator. Not only wrong, but either dishonest or incredibly stupid. The EPA is a regulatory agency. That's what it is there for.
Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe stand shoulder to shoulder with climate change deniers, oil companies and major corporations in opposing even the most basic efforts to reduce our production of carbon dioxide. On this issue, they are no different than James Inhofe, Lisa Murkowski, or Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP.
They should be ashamed, but I doubt they are. Just another day at the office...
I think that most people understand that Sen. Susan Collins is not an uninterested party in the campaign of her protégé, Steve Abbott. But this conspiracy theory posted by Roger Ek over to As Maine Goes, is so over the top that is worth this special mention here.
Imagine the surprise of conservatives when Bill Beardsley belatedly announced a run for governor. He could peel some votes away from Paul LePage the Republican front runner in most polls. When one considers why votes ought to be peeled away from the conservative front runner you must remember that Susan Collins was given a job at Husson following an unsuccessful political run. Who could benefit from a split among conservatives? Collins' long time staffer. Stop and think folks. Don't let this succeed. Keep the grass roots campaign growing. Make sure your friends get out and vote for Paul LePage in two weeks, rain or shine.
As the primary voting day draws near, the long knives are coming out amongst Maine Republicans, and it isn't pretty. LePage supporters were in large part responsible for the adoption of the radical platform at their party's convention, and from what I've read, behind the incident at the King Middle School. Bruce Poliquin is all over Les Otten. The more divisive things become, the less likely Maine Republicans will rally behind their nominee, whomever it turns out to be.
And that will benefit whomever Democrats nominate.
The Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs and Homeland Security (GA&HS) held a hearing yesterday, the result of the Times Square car bomb. NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg and others testified that those on the FBI terrorism watch list should not be able to purchase firearms, in much the same way that they cannot board a plane.
Not so fast says Sen. Susan Collins; what about the 2nd Amendment? While I agree that the terrorism watchlist is hardly infallible, there are provisions in it for those to remove their names and so be allowed to board commercial airliners.
Is it really difficult to think that such provisions can be employed for the purchase of firearms?
And further, unlike someone trying to board a plane that is about to take off, there is no such expediency required for the purchase of a firearm.
The hearing was held in part to review the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2009 (S. 2159), introduced by Sen. Frank Lautenberg. Below are the last part of Sen. Collins' opening remarks (watch it here beginning at 40:50).
During the past eight years, significant resources have been devoted to the prevention of a terrorist attack using a biological, chemical, or nuclear weapon. But as recent attacks have shown, the improvised explosive device - or IED - remains the weapon of choice for terrorists. In 2009 alone, there were more than 3,700 terrorist incidents involving an IED worldwide.
The materials used to construct IEDs are ubiquitous. Gas cans and propane tanks, available at any home improvement store, allegedly formed the core of the Times Square bomb. When terrorists can turn items that can be found in a family's garage into an instrument of death and destruction, it underscores the need for intelligence collection to identify threats as well as the need for vigilance by state and local authorities, business owners, and all citizens to learn the warning signs that distinguish legitimate activity from the precursors to a terrorist attack.
Of course, terrorists can also choose to use firearms, and that is the issue that brings us here today.
For many Americans, including many Maine families, the right to own guns is part of their heritage and way of life. This right is protected by the Second Amendment.
And so this Committee confronts a difficult issue today: how do we protect the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms, while preventing terrorists from using guns to carry out their murderous plans?
Senator Susan Collins mustered up a bit of indignation and acted a bit chagrined at the Goldman Sachs hearing yesterday saying at one point, "I cannot help but get the feeling that the strategy of the witnesses is to try to burn through the time of each questioner." Without doubt, that was the official hearing strategy of Goldman Sachs. Delaying and obstructing to obscure reality seemed to work for the company.
One would think Senator Collins, instead of feinting exasperation would be more aggressive at uncovering Goldman Sachs wrongdoing to expose the firm's corrupt practices, ethically challenged sidestepping, influence peddling, and shake down of the US economy over just getting a sound bite or two to express indignation to the economically disadvantaged back here in Maine. But perhaps too much grilling is not a good idea when the 10th largest source of Senator Collins' donations in her last campaign came from...drum roll please...Goldman Sachs' sources and connections to the tune of just shy of $24,000.
But that's the past and we have the tendency to let bygones be bygones. The redeeming opportunity is always in the future when one takes to heart the vivid evidence of Goldman Sachs wrongdoing and when one has the power as a United States Senator to correct matters, set the record strait, and prevent future recurrences of the corrupt behavior by legislatively addressing the matter on behalf of her Maine constituents. So what did Senator Collins do after that frustrating hearing? She went to the Senate floor and voted to block debate on a bill that would increase regulation of the financial system.
The memory of all last summer and fall still hurts. We usually hang on our side of town in our blue bugs and that other gang cruises in their big red convertibles all over the place but we've been trying to be real nice to those kids.
Somehow my eye fell on and I kept falling for one of their girls, 'Lympia. She was a real tease. Said I was bad and in need of reform. Hey, all of us were trying to do the right thing and we all listened to 'Lympia; she flirted with all of us. Man, I wanted to take her to the big dance, "HRC" was playing and it was going to be really cool. I tried to clean up my act for her and made a lot of changes; I kept thinking that 'Lympia would pull the trigger and come to the dance with me. Hey, she could come with all us in our blue bugs; I wasn't trying to be possessive.
Sen. Susan Collins has been an outspoken critic of efforts to reform the health insurance system, and upon passage of the bill posted long screed about it Monday (link). Much like her statement regarding the Christmas Day Bomber, Collins twists the facts to gin up fear about how insurance reform will impact small businesses in Maine.
From her statement:
The new bill nearly triples the penalty - from $750 to $2,000 per employee - on businesses that cannot afford to provide health coverage to their employees and applies the penalty to part-time as well as full-time workers. Worse, the penalty hits small businesses with 50 or more employees very hard - these businesses could face penalties of more than $40,000 if they add a single uncovered worker. This will not only discourage small businesses from hiring employees, but possibly encourage them to eliminate jobs. Even small businesses that provide coverage have to pay the $3000 penalty for each worker who declines coverage and purchases insurance through the exchange. This simply does not make sense. Here in Maine, more than 97 percent of employers are small businesses, and nearly 120,000 Mainers work for firms with fewer than 20 employees.
What should immediately jumps out is how Collins defines what a small business is, as she first describes them as having "50 or more employees" while later stating they are "firms with fewer than 20 employees." The reality is that 50 employees to differentiate between how certain provisions in the new law affect businesses.
For example, firms with 50 or more employees will be required to provide health insurance coverage to them beginning in 2014. This might seem like an onerous burden, until one looks at the makeup of businesses in Maine: of the nearly 1,800 with 50 or more employees, 99.6% currently offer health insurance (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation).
In equating full- and part-time workers, Collins creates another falsehood, one assumes in order to strike fear in the hearts of seasonal businesses, which are very common in Maine. The fact is that seasonal employees, those that work for four months or less, are not counted as part of the businesses permanent work force. So, that hotel or restaurant that hires 30 people over the summer to help their 25 year-round staff would still be defined as a business with less than 50 employees. Year-round part-time employees (those that work less than 30 hours a week) are counted as full time employees as an aggregate; two people that work 16 hours a week would be the equivalent of one full-time employee.
The $40,000 penalty that Collins mentions is another red herring. Should a firm with 50 or more employees hire take on a new hire without offering insurance, then a fine of $2,000 for every employee above 30 would be levied. But in reality, what company is going to pay 5 or 6 times more in fine than premiums to cover the new hire?
Again, only businesses with 50 or more employees will be required to offer health insurance to their workers. But many businesses with less than 50 do offer such coverage. In Maine, there are approximately 44,000 businesses with fewer than 50 employees, and of those, 37,000 will qualify for a tax credit if they offer health insurance. Under the new law, employees can decline the offered insurance if they think they can get a better coverage at the new Insurance Exchange because they earn less than 400% of the Federal poverty level, and so qualify for a personal subsidy. At that point the business would be fined $3,000; but of course, it would simply be less expensive to provide better coverage.
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I invite Sen. Collins to refute my analysis of her claims, and also to explain why she is again resorting to fear instead facts.
Update: Both Sens. Snowe and Collins joined the Democratic majority and voted against this amendment (Roll Call No. 89); it failed. Curiously, newly minted senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts voted for the amendment.
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The Senate is debating the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act (H.R.4872), which has already been passed by the House. As part of the process, the senators can offer amendments to the bill, and they are.
One such amendment, S.Amd. 3568, has been put forth by Sen. Bob Bennett (R-Utah), which would repeal the law that allows same-sex couples in Washington, D.C., to marry (full text below the fold).
It is likely to come up for a vote later today.
If you support equal marriage for lesbian and gay couples, then I urge you to contact Sens. Snowe and Collins and ask them to vote against the Bennett amendment. Contact:
Olympia Snowe: 202.224.5344
Susan Collins: 202.224.2523
Last night, in a historic vote, the House passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), and it also passed H.R. 4872, the Reconciliation act of 2010. By passing H.R. 4872, the House has essentially agreed in advance to accept whatever changes to health insurance reform that the Senate would care to make, albeit ones that only can be shown to affect the Federal budget.
So while the reform bills that have passed the House do not include a public option, the Senate has yet to act - it can amend the bill and include one.
My question to you is, should it?
Do you want to see a public option in the reform law? You will have to carry some sort of health insurance by 2014, and currently the only options are from a for profit insurer (providing that you are not already insured by Medicare, Medicaid, the VA or Indian Affairs). A public option provides you an alternative to the usual suspects, one which should be less expensive since it doesn't need to make a profit.
Maine's two senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, have already expressed their opposition to the current bill, and to the public option. But that doesn't mean that they cannot be swayed, and with enough pressure it will be difficult for them not to yield to the will of their constituents.
So, do you want a public option? Are you willing to spend some time in the next few days to drum up support for one? Please leave a response in the comments below.
Together, we can make it happen. Not trying, we won't.
Update: Sen. Mike Bennett (D-CO) is under growing pressure to submit an amendment - as he promised to do - on the Reconciliation Act of 2010 for a public option. FOX 31 in Denver has this coverage with video (h/t Sirota):
Democrats gathered on the snowy sidewalk outside Sen. Michael Bennet's office here Wednesday morning -- not to express their appreciation for his help in passing health care reform, but to demand that he keep a promise he made to use the reconciliation process to put a "public option" back into the final bill.
The pressure from the left is mounting on Bennet, who argues that doing so now could stall or even derail the reconciliation bill being debate in the Senate; after, one month ago, authoring a letter that advocated using reconciliation, which requires just 51 votes in the Senate, to pass an amendment that would create a government-run insurance provider to compete with private insurers.
Why can't we pressure Maine's two senators the same way?
Three investigations reveal that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has ignored mistakes it made as part of the reconstruction efforts in Iraq, and is repeating them in Afghanistan.
A $300 million power plant in Afghanistan paid for with U.S. tax dollars was an ill-conceived and mismanaged project that the Afghan government can't afford to switch on now that it's almost finished, a watchdog agency has found.
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Even when the plant is completed in March, however, the Afghan government is unlikely to be able to pay the millions of dollars for diesel fuel that's needed to power the plant and maintain it, the auditors concluded. The U.S. Agency for International Development has agreed to pay for the fuel temporarily.
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The special inspector general's office questioned the wisdom of building a diesel and heavy fuel plant that has a "technically sophisticated fueling operation that they (the Afghans) may not have the capacity to sustain."
The audit is the latest to find fault with the USAID's oversight of projects by two U.S.-based contractors, Louis Berger and Black & Veatch.
Last week, the special inspector general's office found while the U.S. has spent more than $732 million to improve Afghanistan's electrical grid since 2002, delays and rising costs have plagued many of the two companies' projects, in part because of a lack of scrutiny by the American government.
In November, another watchdog, the USAID's inspector general, found similar problems with the Kabul project and a plant in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan.
A diesel-fueled power plant, nearing completion just outside Kabul, demonstrates that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and its contractors have failed to learn lessons from identical mistakes in Iraq, despite clearly signposted advice from oversight agencies.
Conclusions gleaned from three independent investigations into U.S.-financed reconstruction of the Afghan electricity sector, as well as IPS interviews with Afghan government officials and contractors, suggest that the power plant - which will cost taxpayers almost three times as much as comparable projects - may never be used.
First the U.S. planners chose to ignore other ongoing reconstruction projects that were cheaper and more likely to succeed, or to pay attention to alternative recommendations from Afghan government officials.
Second, the planners picked expensive technologies that the city of Kabul could not afford to maintain or utilise.
Finally, USAID asked for the plant to be built in record time - by a complex system of multiple contractors - causing costs to soar.
The construction schedule for the plant outside of Kabul was moved forward so that it would be online before the elections in Afghanistan, and provide a symbol of success in the country to which the Bush administration could point before it left office.
With the myriad of wasted, fraud, and malfeasance that have come to define the reconstruction effort in Iraq, it is difficult to understand why Congressional committees charged with oversight have not done their jobs - again.
Glenn Greenwald unpacks the opinion piece by former AG Michael Mukasey that appeared in today's WaPo - it isn't pretty for Mukasey, nor the rest of the GOP fear mongerers: Michael Mukasey: then and now.
I'll note that there is no such thing as a Miranda Right; police and other authorities read a suspect a Miranda warning, which explains to the suspect that they have certain rights guaranteed to them by our Constitution.
Or, more simply, any person in the U.S. is protected by our Constitution whether they are read a Miranda warning or not.
DIRIGO BLUE is available as an