Blogs: Isaiah J. Poole

Poisoned Peppers, Poisoned Politics

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:38:39 -0400

I was sitting in an Austin, Texas, restaurant, eating a concoction made with corn chips, chili and cheese, when the federal government announced that tomatoes that had been suspected as the source of an e.coli outbreak were now safe to eat. The jalapenos that topped the plate of food I was eating, however—well, we're not so sure.

Score another one for e.coli conservatism, where a bit of heartburn from too many peppers could be the least of your problems.

We've written much about how the agencies responsible for keeping our food supply safe have been weakened under the Bush administration. But in a session at Netroots Nation, a panel shed some light on how what is left has been co-opted by corporate food interests.

The consequence is that healthy food practices have been put under undue regulatory pressure—by an administration that protests about the burdens government imposes on small business—while large agribusinesses are allowed to engage in practices that have increased our safety risks, says Judith McGreary, the director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance in Austin.

McGreary, who runs her own livestock farm in Austin, is an advocate for small, sustainable farms. "One of our central problems is the centralization of our food supply," she said. When meats, vegetables and fruits travel thousands of miles to large processing plants, where workers are pressured to meet inflexible production quotas, the result is a setup for widespread food contamination problems.

That's just made worse by a political atmosphere in which "Big Ag permeates Washington, D.C.," she said.

How do we fix this? Panelists at the food session agreed that more has to be done to promote smaller, more localized farming operations. Food safety regulations should be tailored with the capacities of smaller farms in mind, but they should be tough. The benefit is that when there are safety lapses, their scope can be contained and the source more easily identified.

There are a host of other reasons why a buy-local movement is building among food advocates, but the safety of our food supply is among the most compelling. The conservatives' practice of allowing corporate agribusiness the untrammeled ability to reshape our food supply chain and the safety rules that govern it has literally made us sick.

Updated to correct the description of McGreary's farm.

School Children Thrown Under the (Private) Bus

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:57:23 -0400

It seems that whenever that old cliche applies, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," the Bush administration finds new ways to respond, "We're breaking it. The fix is in."

One of the things that the Bush administration is breaking now is public transportation for school children. Why? So that private businesses like the owner of Greyhound Bus Lines can open up new lines of business offering more expensive private bus service to school districts.

The Federal Transit Administration last month closed its comment period on a new regulation that will cut off federal funding for bus routes that it believes primarily exist to get children to and from school. Under the new rules, a school system could subsidize a child's bus ride on public transit, but a public bus system could not significantly order its routes or schedules for the convenience of these children.

The regulations are a response to a federal court ruling in January that allowed the regional transportation authority in Rochester, N.Y., to do just that. The authority, at the urging of the school board, had created a network of new bus routes after the board changed the class times for its high schools and after the private bus service that the board had contracted with said it could not provide service during the new times. The FTA's regional administrator, Brigid Hynes-Cherin, said the authority's actions violated regulations governing federal mass transit funding because even though the routes could be used by general public, they weren't primarily for the general public. Plus, she added—and here is where we get to the real nub of the issue—public bus systems can't use federal money to provide services that compete with, or crowd out, private sector bus companies.

The court ruled, however, that Rochester was fully operating within the rules as they had been interpreted over the years by the FTA. Defeated in the courts, the FTA's administrator, James S. Simpson, ordered the rules rewritten.

The rewrite, according to administrators of several large school districts and educational organizations, needlessly disrupts well-functioning and cost-efficient arrangements for getting students to and from school using existing public transportation systems. The Council of the Great City Schools, representing some of the nation's largest urban school districts, said in comments to the FTA that the regulations "would prevent public transit systems from ... adapting transportation routings and timetables to reflect the dynamic changes required to meet the needs of urban demographics, urban education reform, and federal education mandates."

Other serious concerns have been voiced by groups such as Public Advocates, a California-based nonprofit legal organization that works on civil rights issues, which wrote in its comments that the regulations would "eliminate the only transportation option available" to low-income students in districts where "yellow bus service" would not be viable. The Maryland Transit Administration's statement raised concerns about creating a two-tier system in the Baltimore school district, where some students get to ride in private school buses while others don't.

Of course, there are cost concerns. The Washington Examiner reported June 27 that the District of Columbia public school system pays the regional Metro system $5 million a year to give its public school children subsidized rides. Neighboring Arlington County, Va., pays a private company $12 million to ferry a school population half the size of the District's.

One of the chief beneficiaries of the FTA ruling when it goes into effect would be FirstGroup America Inc., the American subsidiary of a British company that bills itself as "the world's leading transport company, with annualised revenues of over £5 billion ($9.8 billion) a year." The company's portfolio includes Greyhound Bus Lines, which it absorbed last year when it purchased Laidlaw International. And indeed, Mike Murray, the CEO and President of Operations for FirstGroup America, suggested in the company's statement to the FTA that the proposed regulations don't go far enough "to protect private school bus operators from federally subsidized public transit operators."

The statement includes disingenuous claims about the cost benefits of using private bus service rather than public transportation, based largely on the significantly cheaper price of a yellow school bus (from $48,000 to $68,000) as compared to a typical public transit bus (starting at $300,000). It is, of course, unfair to compare a school bus to a municipal bus, which are constructed to different standards for different purposes. The more fair comparison would be to compare the cost of utilizing an existing public transportation network and contracting with a private operator to create a parallel school bus network, with its own personnel, equipment and administrative costs. Do this comparison in most urban school districts, as cash-strapped districts would be happy to do, and the private operator would usually lose.

But this is of no import to ideologues who believe in the god of privatization and in bending to the wishes of a private transportation behemoth. The Bush appointees at the Department of Transportation have been obsessed with privatization—from breaking up Amtrak and selling off the lucrative Northeast Corridor to the highest bidder (assuming that a private bidder would want it) to advocating privately-built toll roads as an alternative to a modest increase in the federal gasoline tax to increase funding for publicly maintained highways. (An increase of a nickel a gallon, according to the department's own research, in 2002 would have been sufficient to meet the nation's major road and transit system maintenance needs without resorting to tolls and privatization schemes.)

This skirmish over school bus transportation is just that, a skirmish, in the scheme of things, but it is just another sad case of corporate interest trumping public interest, with children as the potential victims.

This post previously appeared on FireDogLake.

Winning the Oil Drilling Debate

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 08:17:21 -0400

Earlier this week, MoveOn's Tom Matzzie raised the alarm about the success the alliance of conservatives and Big Oil has had in convincing voters that massive amounts of new drilling for oil is essential to solve our energy crisis. And he was right to.

As he pointed out:

In February, Pew asked the public in a poll whether they favor drilling in the Arctic refuge. At that time 42 percent favored and 50 percent opposed. Now, in July, 50 percent favor drilling and only 43 percent oppose. That's a 12-point change since the February survey and a 28-point swing since a March 2002 Gallup poll (where 35 percent favored and 56 percent opposed).

The shift is something to be concerned about — progressives are losing ground with the public on drilling. These are alarming gains in sympathy for the plans of Big Oil.

The facts are on the side of progressives, but conservatives have seized the initiative on framing the issue as one of increasing the supply of American oil to lower prices—even though the government's own data concludes that drilling in places such as the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve would have negligible impact on prices, and we wouldn't see that impact until well past 2020.

The Campaign for America's Future's latest issue alert on oil drilling offers ways to blunt the headway conservatives have made in the oil debate, complete with sources for facts that progressives can use in the debate.

It concludes that there are some short-term measures that the government can take to ease the impact of high oil prices, but perhaps the important point is that investments in energy efficiency and in alternative energy sources would yield far more benefits more quickly than opening environmentally sensitive land to oil drilling—especially when there are 68 million acres already available to oil companies that have yet to be fully used.

NOTE: This alert is the first one published in our redesigned Making Sense web section, where you will find our archive of issue alerts and related resources.

McCain Channels Booker T. Washington

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:18:05 -0400

In a speech before the NAACP on Wednesday that displayed a remarkable but unsurprising detachment from the realities of the African-American community, it was nonetheless telling that Sen. John McCain, in reaching for a historical marker for his speech on equal opportunity, grabbed onto Booker T. Washington’s 1901 visit to President Theodore Roosevelt in the White House.

It would not have been lost on the delegates at the NAACP convention that it was Washington who in 1895 gave the infamous “Atlanta Compromise” speech, the one in which he counseled black people to “cast your buckets where you are,” to focus less on agitating to change the racist structures that limited their opportunities and to instead emphasize putting “brains and skill into the common occupations of life.” He cautioned patience and gradualism in eradicating racism, for “the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly.”

Intentionally or not, McCain channeled Washington at the convention in Cincinnati, spending roughly half of his speech talking about public education and virtually none of it talking about the continuing inequities African Americans face, often regardless of education.

When he did talk about public education, it was the in disingenuous school-choice language of conservatives, in which private schools and charter schools are offered as antidotes to what he called the “public school establishment,” the “entrenched bureaucracy” and the “teachers’ union” that is filled with people “who seem more concerned about their own position than about our children.”

McCain’s embrace of the right-wing line on public education is fatally flawed, but what is more insulting is the implication that if only black people were better educated, we wouldn’t be in the mess we're in.

No question, inferior schools have helped lock a significant segment of African Americans in a vicious, intergenerational cycle of poverty, ill-equipped to seize the opportunities opened up by the civil rights revolution.

But while McCain was urging “a willingness to break from conventional thinking” on education, he was criminally negligent in failing to break from conventional conservative thinking on the economic state of the African American community under eight years of President Bush.

The economic gap between African Americans and whites that had persisted for decades was beginning to narrow during the economic boom of the Clinton administration, but that progress came to a halt, and in come ways went backwards, once Bush took office. Since 2000, for example, while average household income for white people increased almost 14 percent between 1999 and 2006, it only increased 8.6 percent among black people. There was a less-than-two-percentage-point gap in the labor force participation rate in 1998 between white people (67.3 percent) and black people (65.6 percent). In 2007, as both black white people began to lose jobs as the economy slowed, the racial gap grew to nearly three percentage points. The unemployment rate among African Americans, 9.2 percent, is nearly twice that of whites (4.9 percent), a trend that stretches back decades.

The statistic that most starkly speaks to the continuing damage of discrimination to the economic fortunes of African Americans is the fact that while median net worth of non-Hispanic white households was $87,055 in 2002, it was only $5,446 among black households.

The audience at the NAACP did not need to hear those statistics from McCain, but they needed to hear a plan to address the racial inequality represented by those statistics. If nothing else, McCain could have spoken to the theme of the plenary session he attended, which was a discussion of home ownership on the 40th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act.

An hour before McCain spoke, Shanna L. Smith of the National Fair Housing Alliance discussed the findings of her organization’s work on housing discrimination in cities such as Detroit; Brooklyn Heights, N.Y.; Westchester County, N.Y. , and Marietta, Ga. In each of those areas, there were clear instances of redlining being practiced by real estate agents. The organization has evidence of agents being instructed by their supervisors not to show homes in white neighborhoods to black applicants, and vice versa. In some cases, notably in Detroit, the redlining meant that whites were marketed homes that were inferior to homes that were available in comparable predominately black communities.

Forty years after the landmark housing bill was signed, forty years after the ubiquitous "equal opportunity housing" signs and logos on real estate ads, “past and ongoing discriminatory practices in the nation’s housing and lending markets have produced extreme levels of residential segregation that result in significant disparities in access to good jobs, quality education, homeownership attainment and asset accumulation between minority and nonminority households,” according to the alliance’s book, “Segregation: The Rising Costs for America.”

The book also notes that as a result of predatory loan practices that were especially prevalent in working-class African American communities that have now come home to roost during the subprime bust, “over the last three years, the decline in homeownership among African Americans has destroyed almost half the gains made in the decade from 1994 to 2004.”

There was nothing about the housing crisis in McCain’s speech, but there was a mention of making the Bush administration tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, as well as giving people tax credits for private health insurance—a plan that deserves a particularly critical look from groups such as the NAACP since roughly one in five African Americans are without health insurance.

The New York Times on Wednesday published a poll that showed a continuing wide gulf in the perceptions between white and black people of the realities of race in America. While some of that gulf is prejudice, much of it is ignorance, fostered in a country in which the races are still largely segregated behind translucent walls. McCain brought congeniality and kind words to the NAACP, but as for substance, he offered nothing to close the gulf. He might as well have told the audience, “Cast your buckets where you are, for the agitation of for real social and economic equality is the extremist folly.”

You Sent A Message to Fox News

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:52:48 -0400

We asked you to send messages of progressive patriotism to Fox News Channel, and you did—194 pages worth, from war veterans, educators, grandmothers and grandchildren—all making the point that Fox News cannot continue its attacks on patriotic Americans.

And, as promised, we made sure Fox News heard you.

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Campaign for America’s Future staff members gathered your messages and pins, individually attaching each message to a genuine Made-in-the-U.S.A. flag lapel pin. They piled the messages and pins into boxes, stashed them into backpacks and late last week took the messages to the Fox News Channel Washington Bureau on Capitol Hill.

Fox News did not respond to a request to meet with one of its executives, so staffers instead joined the weekly tour of the Fox newsroom, where bureau chief Brit Hum, who last month was named BuzzFlash's "putz of the week" for being "chief D.C. propagandist for Rupert Murdoch and the Republicans" and Sunday talk show host Chris Wallace hold court. Once inside the newsroom, they presented the 650 messages you sent, each with a flag pin attached, to a Fox staffer, and explained the purpose and message of the pins.

It’s a small step, to be sure, but a necessary one. As one of the participants in the drive, from Little Neck, N.Y., wrote, “Patriotism does NOT belong to one party or ideology and I urge you to cease your incessant attacks. Please accept our 4th of July gift in hopes we can all come together & recognize that we are all true patriots under the same grand flag and constitution that celebrates our unity even among diversity.“

A Car Mechanic's Plea For A Health Care Fix

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 16:53:11 -0400

For David White, a small business owner in Bar Harbor, Maine, the health care crisis is doubly personal.

For one thing, he was proud of being able to cover the full cost of health insurance premiums for his employees at MDI Imported car repair service. But in 2002—a year in which his company experienced a record profit and in which he considered giving his employees a generous raise—he instead had to lay off one of his employees for six months, reduce the amount of coverage he offered and increase costs. That was because the company’s health insurance premiums that year doubled, more than eating up the increased profits of his business.

“I was literally in tears laying this out to my men, and I am not fond of crying in front of my men” he said in a news conference Tuesday, where he was telling his story at the announcement of the Health Care for America Now! Coalition.

After that news conference, he revealed that his parents, both over 70, until recently held jobs — his father driving a school bus until a stroke left him unable to do so — just so they could have health coverage. His mother finally retired earlier this year, now that she is eligible for coverage as a retiree under the school system’s health plan. “I know many people in that same situation,” he added.

White’s personal experience galvanized him to action, which is why he was in Washington to appear at the Health Care for America Now! event at the National Press Club alongside representatives from labor and citizen activist groups.

Richard Kirsch, the director of the coalition, said that so far about 116 organizations have signed up in solidarity with the coalition’s principles, which include coverage for the nation’s 47 million uninsured, the ability to choose between well-regulated private plans and a public plan, equity in access and effective cost controls.

The central mission of the coalition is to build the kind of mass movement Kirsch said did not exist when then-first lady Hillary Clinton tackled health care reform in 1993, only to see the effort shot down in a fusillade of advertising and lobbying from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Leaders of the coalition are vowing that that won’t allow that to happen this time, and they have pledged a $40 million effort over the coming months to set the stage for a reform effort in Congress and the White House in 2009.

“The people in this coalition represent the deepest single-issue coalition in modern American history,” said Jeff Blum, the executive director of USAction, who went on to call the health care reform movement “the human rights movement of our time, a movement that transcends race, class and geography.”

“Today we’ve got a message for our elected officials,” said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “If you put profits ahead of patients, get out of the way. Don’t tell us about reforms that lack a guarantee of coverage. Don’t tell us about taxing the health care benefit employees receive on the job. Don’t tell us that insurance company practices don’t need to be regulated. Don’t tell us that $10,000 deductibles are OK.”

Conservatives have courted business owners like White with promises of low taxation and deregulation, but health care is an area where progressives and the small business community can forge common ground. Leaving the insurance industry to its own devices certainly hasn't worked for small business; deregulation has actually saddled small business owners who want to provide good benefits for their employees with costs that they cannot reasonably bear.

When entrepreneurs and their workers look at the policies now being presented to them during the election season, they are seeing that the choice is between a practical plan for affordable, universal health care and a plan that conservatives call “choice” but is really individuals sweating it out on their own in a hostile private insurance market, with nothing but a meager tax credit that will cover only a fraction of their premiums.

One thing that the movement will need is more people like White to tell their stories—from business owners to seniors who work well past retirement age just so they can have adequate health insurance coverage. “There’s a role for government in this that only we—the backbone of America— can hold it to,” White said. “I’m here to say that we can’t afford not to.”

Hundreds Tell Fox: "Stop The Attacks"

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 10:52:26 -0400

"Dear FOX News, Here's a Fourth of July gift for you, from an Obama supporter and patriotic American," begins a note from Anthony in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. "This year my son and I plan to use window paints to fill our big picture window with the American flag. Please remember that all kinds of Americans, not just Republican Americans, love their country!"

We received notes like this from more than 600 of you in the first 48 hours of our call to tell Fox News to stop branding progressives as unpatriotic, and instead contribute to a respectful debate about the future direction of the country. Each of these people is sending the personnel at Fox News a flag pin that they can wear to remind them that millions of progressive Americans love and stand up for America.

Here's a sample of the messages you're sending with those pins:

"Dear Fox News, You might believe that you are the only Americans who see the value in freedoms, but you would be wrong. The patriots who founded this Nation came from a variety of backgrounds and held a variety of beliefs. Some were progressives, just like me. My grandfathers who fought in the War of 1812, and the Civil War, and my father who served in the Navy in WWII, all believed that they were patriots, and defended our Nation to allow the liberties you criticize, and in fact abuse! I love my country, and I honor our flag, not just this week, but every week. You do not own patriotism. It seems you do not even know what it is! End your criticism of those who disagree with you as being 'unpatriotic'. Dissent is at the very heart of our First Amendment. None of us can pick and choose which liberties we would like to honor!"
—David D., Berwyn, Pa.

"My father flew 55 missions over the European theater in World War II and in 1949 died flying for the Air National Guard. My daughter is a Lt. Commander in the Navy Reserve. I love this country and would not want to live anywhere else. I fly the flag as often as I can. I am against our intervention in Iraq. I am for hunting down Al Qaida. I am also for caring for our infrastructure (roads, etc.), providing the best educational system in the world, making health care available to every one and finding and supporting alternative energy. Please don't call me unpatriotic because I am a liberal. I love this country and want it to be better in every way."
—Ann S., Fredericksburg, Texas.

"America right or wrong does not make a patriot. Patriotism is related to protecting our country by upholding the rights of the Constitution and above all being honest in all our endeavors."
—Maria, Randolph, Vt.

"Dear Fox News, I am the most patriotic of patriotic Americans. I actually became a citizen for the sole reason of being able to vote, in my opinion, one of the highest expressions of patriotism. I understand the true meaning of patriotism which is supporting your country by loving her enough to cheer her on when she is right and letting her know when she is on the wrong track so that it can be corrected. I support our troops without question and would put my life on the line for this country I have adopted. Finally, I love my country. I love my flag. I'm a patriotic progressive American. Please accept this 4th of July gift, and end the attacks on patriotic Americans!"
—Wendy M., San Rafael Calif.

"How dare you say that I am not patriotic just because my political and social beliefs are different from your own! How dare you tell me that I am not patriotic when I know, sing and revere our national anthem; when I proudly display our flag, year around; when I say what I think, even though others may disagree or may not want to hear it. This is a DEMOCRACY and to denigrate others who are forthright in their disagreement is to denigrate ALL OF US!! Shame on you!"
—Marjorie C., Sebastopol, Calif.

"I appreciate our multicultural past. I support real benefits and help for our returning soldiers. I am against Halliburton's money gouging tactics taking real money from our troops. I will display my American flag proudly and boldly this Fourth."
—Robert M., Columbus, Ohio

"Americans are currently engaged in a national debate on how to forge a new direction for our nation after eight years of bitter divisiveness and the unending list of failed policies of the Bush administration. Sadly, Fox News is not a part of that debate, but instead is bent on defending the status quo and making rabid-dog attacks on patriotic Americans and their hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow. Your brand of journalism (Ha!) is better suited to China or Russia, where honest and open debate is not tolerated, and espousing the party line is the only news tolerated."
—Bill W., Palm Bay, Fla.

"As a veteran of World War II—in the combat engineers in Germany—I resent slurs about the patriotism of people who disagree with you."
— Harry F., Roslyn Heights N.Y.

"As a Vietnam era Army veteran, I want you all to know that patriotic Americans do not all believe as you all do. Lapel pins and bumper stickers and your noise on TV do not define patriotism; working toward a better future for all Americans in a tolerant and inclusive society and respecting the Constitution do define patriotism."
— Matthew K., Tempe, Ariz.

"As an Army Reserve veteran, I find your remarks unpatriotic because they intend to divide the country for partisan purposes."
—Jerry S., Washington, D.C.

"One does not have to hate those one disagrees with; one does not have to lie about them either. And certainly, people who love their country and believe in its principles cannot betray it by indulging in cheap, hateful and lying innuendoes. I am a loyal American who is appalled by some of the tactics you all engage in. This flag is an emblem of the country we share; it is not an idol, but it should be respected by the best we are, not the shoddiest."
—Betty L., St. Paul, Minn.

"As an immigrant to this country, I was appalled at the Swift Boat attacks against John Kerry in the last election. I do not believe these are the actions of patriotic people. Patriotism to me is love of country and respect for its citizens."
—Rosemary G., Foster City, Calif.

"Criticism of the Bush administration is an act of love of this country and its constitution, and not a sign of unpatriotism. In contrast to Fox News, I love this country and rejoice in the First Amendment."
—Millie Fortier, San Francisco, Calif.

"Dear fellow Americans, Do you ever scold your kids when they do something wrong? THAT'S what REAL Americans do when America does something wrong, WE try to make America better! Progressive Americans are America's hope for a better tomorrow and a better America. Conservatives want to go back to the 1950s when only white males had power and opportunity. STOP the attacks on patriotic Americans!"
— David P., Austin Texas

Dear Fox "News" - I respect and love the American dream, the Constitution of the United States, the members of the Armed Forces and all those who care about people different from themselves. The American way is compassionate, informed, and in the public interest. Enjoy this symbol of patriotism from a progressive American!"
—Virginia W., Lincoln, Neb.

"Democracy is messy by definition and it appears you use this to misrepresent political views that differ with your own as being unpatriotic. None of the parties have a monopoly on patriotism and to claim that progressives don't love this great, but imperfect country is laughably absurd."
—Terry B., Oceanside, Calif.

"Dear Fox News, Please join me in celebrating the American principle that people of differing political viewpoints can respect each other as fellow patriots. I hold "liberal" viewpoints and am also patriotic. I support policies that make our country strong and secure. I differ from your commentators in how we can best achieve that goal. Please stop impugning my patriotism simply because I disagree with you."
—Andrew S., Jamaica Plain, Mass.

"Patriotism does NOT belong to one party or ideology and I urge you to cease your incessant attacks. Please accept our 4th of July gift in hopes we can all come together & recognize that we are all true patriots under the same grand flag & constitution that celebrates our unity even among diversity. God bless America!"
—Patricia D., Little Neck, N.Y.

"My family came to this country in 1683 and have been part of building it and defending it ever since. We came for religious and political freedom—we were progressives then and we are now. I love my flag and the nation its stands for and I respect your right to your views, with this gift I ask you to respect mine and those of people like me. That is what patriotism is all about in this country. Stop attacking the patriotism of your fellow Americans; it's un-American."
—Mark L., East Rockaway, N.Y.

Don't Let Anyone Question Your Patriotism

Isaiah J. Poole — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:38:53 -0400

It is a shame that Sen. Barack Obama's speech on patriotism Monday in Independence, Mo., was overshadowed by yet another false controversy, this time over the appropriateness of comments by retired general Wesley Clark about Sen. John McCain's qualifications for the presidency. (For the record: When Clark says, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president,'' he's right. There. I said it.)

But, perhaps in a perverse way, it underscores the importance of one of the points that Obama made: Our political disagreements over the direction of the country and who is best qualified to lead it in the right direction should never be used as a weapon to question our love for this country. In fact, the willingness to be intensely engaged in the struggle to being this nation closer to its ideals is the very mark of a patriot.

That's why a campaign we're launching today at the Campaign for America's Future is so important. We're focusing on Fox News Channel, which has a long record of mocking progressives as being less patriotic than conservatives, and telling them: You don't have a monopoly on patriotism, and it's time to stop attacking patriotic Americans simply because you don't agree with them.

We're also asking you to tell Fox News, and us, what it means to be a patriot. There is space for a short message on the petition form, or you can click the comment link at the end of this post and write a longer reflection. We'll be highlighting these comments during the Fourth of July holiday.

To the extent that Obama's speech got television news press attention, it was because of his statement that "I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine." But the context around that statement is important:

it is worth considering the meaning of patriotism because the question of who is – or is not – a patriot all too often poisons our political debates, in ways that divide us rather than bringing us together. ... [T]hroughout our history, men and women of far greater stature and significance than me have had their patriotism questioned in the midst of momentous debates. Thomas Jefferson was accused by the Federalists of selling out to the French. The anti-Federalists were just as convinced that John Adams was in cahoots with the British and intent on restoring monarchal rule. Likewise, even our wisest Presidents have sought to justify questionable policies on the basis of patriotism. Adams’ Alien and Sedition Act, Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt’s internment of Japanese Americans – all were defended as expressions of patriotism, and those who disagreed with their policies were sometimes labeled as unpatriotic.

In other words, the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic.

Obama later turned to the use and abuse of patriotic language in the post-9/11 era:

Beyond a loyalty to America’s ideals, beyond a willingness to dissent on behalf of those ideals, I also believe that patriotism must, if it is to mean anything, involve the willingness to sacrifice – to give up something we value on behalf of a larger cause. For those who have fought under the flag of this nation – for the young veterans I meet when I visit Walter Reed; for those like John McCain who have endured physical torment in service to our country – no further proof of such sacrifice is necessary. ... For the rest of us – for those of us not in uniform or without loved ones in the military – the call to sacrifice for the country’s greater good remains an imperative of citizenship. Sadly, in recent years, in the midst of war on two fronts, this call to service never came. After 9/11, we were asked to shop. The wealthiest among us saw their tax obligations decline, even as the costs of war continued to mount. Rather than work together to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and thereby lessen our vulnerability to a volatile region, our energy policy remained unchanged, and our oil dependence only grew.

When someone makes a comment like the one Michelle Obama made some weeks ago that evoked heated criticism from the right—"For the first time in my life, I am really proud of my country"—it is tragic that the first impulse was not to consider the emotional journey she has traveled as an African-American woman that would lead her to make a statement so mixed with pain and joy, or to consider the journey of the millions of Americans who identified with that comment, but it was to question her, and their, love for this country.

I cannot honestly say, as Cindy McCain said in response to Michelle Obama's remark, that "I have always been proud of my country." But I have always loved it. And I don't think anyone who has been disappointed with the gap between the American ideal and the American reality, and who has fought to close that gap, should have their love for their country belittled. To quote from Obama's speech Monday, "patriotism involves not only defending this country against external threat, but also working constantly to make America a better place for future generations."

The need to resolve how we best do that, and how we unite as a country, has never been more urgent.

Let's tell Fox News and the radical right that from now on, you can disagree with our positions, but you can't question our love and passion for this country and its core values.

The Rogues In Robes

Isaiah J. Poole — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:49:15 -0400

You may differ on the merits with the supporters of the District of Columbia's gun ban, who were handed a major defeat by the Supreme Court on Thursday. But progressives can't deny this: The conservative bloc on the court is a rogue band of ideological thugs who care less about strict constructionism and all of the other conservative legal buzzwords they use, but are all about furthering a conservative political agenda.

Only when Justice Anthony Kennedy swings in the opposite direction, as he did when the court rebuked the Bush administration's stance on habeas corpus rights for terrorist suspects, is there a remote chance that the march of right-wing and corporatist ideology gets thrown off-stride. The graphic at right, from People for the American Way's SaveTheCourt.org, brings that point home.

Note what E.J. Dionne pointed out in his latest column about the nature of the gun ban ruling:

Conservative justices claim that they defer to local authority. Not in this case. They insist that political questions should be decided by elected officials. Not in this case. They argue that they pay careful attention to the precise words of the Constitution. Not in this case.

His column concludes with that hope that "this decision opens people's eyes to the fact that judicial activism is now a habit of the right, not the left, and that "originalism" is too often a sophisticated cover for ideological decision-making by conservative judges."

It is more proof that elections have serious consequences. The right understands the importance of a compliant judiciary in consolidating their political power, and they have made populating the judiciary with like-minded justices a cornerstone of their agenda. As a result, not only are conservatives on the precipice of having a decades-long hammerlock on the Supreme Court, but they have institutionalized a conservative tilt throughout the federal judiciary, as the chart below prepared by SaveTheCourt.org shows:

Review the top 10 reasons that saving the court in November matters at SaveTheCourt.org and remember that this is part of what's at stake in the coming election.

Obstruction Boosts Insurance Fat Cats

Isaiah J. Poole — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:31:28 -0400

Senate conservatives went into their customary obstruction mode again late Thursday, choosing to protect the interests of insurance companies while shortchanging the health care needs of older Americans and ignoring the will of the majority.

Thirty-nine conservatives supported a filibuster of a bill, passed overwhelmingly by the House, that would prevent a 10.6 percent cut in the reimbursement rate for doctors accepting Medicare patients starting July 1. To offset the cut, the bill would have trimmed taxpayer subsidies to insurance companies participating in the Medicare Advantage program. A bipartisan majority in the Senate supported the bill, but the usual coterie of block-and-blame conservatives played their "Dr. No" role as they have since the beginning of the term.

Medicare Advantage, instituted at the behest of conservatives who want to ultimately privatize Medicare, cost taxpayers $7.1 billion more in 2006 than it would have cost of its participants were in the traditional fee-for-service Medicare program, The Government Accountability Office found in a February report. One reason, the GAO says, is that on average only 87 cents of every dollar spent on Medicare Advantage actually go to health care; the rest goes for administrative and marketing costs—and, of course, insurance company profit.

The bill, HR 6331, would have shifted $14 billion over five years from the insurance companies in Medicare Advantage so that Medicate fee-for-service doctors would be properly reimbursed for their costs. Without that shift, no doubt thousands of the 600,000 doctors now participating in the Medicare program would simply stop accepting Medicare patients. The Bush administration issued a veto threat, and the block-and-blame conservatives in the Senate lined up behind it.

The Medicare Advantage program was sold as an alternative to the what conservatives considered unnecessarily high costs in fee-for-service Medicare, but as The New York Times reported in May, Medicare Advantage has quickly developed its own, predictable trail of waste and inefficiency:

... Generous federal payments to private Medicare Advantage plans — set by law — have created a “tremendous incentive” for insurers to maximize sales by aggressive marketing. ... The report says insurers often encourage agents to sell these products by paying larger commissions and bonuses than agents would receive for selling other health insurance products.

The resulting mish-mash of confusing plans, oversold at times by zealous marketers, is a bad deal for taxpayers. Keeping the program as it is will cost an additional $54 billion through 2012, the GAO said, and while some of that money does help pay for some services that are not covered under traditional Medicare, it's right to ask why taxpayers should be subsidizing insurance companies when it is demonstrably more cost-effective for traditional Medicare to provide those same services.

But this is what we get with blind ideology. The next time a conservative inveighs against government waste, ask them about Medicare Advantage and that $54 billion, and ask why Senate conservatives are so determined to keep that particular bit of waste on the books.