Budget follies short-takes: False premises

Washington Post policy blogger Ezra Klein needs to stop blithely reinforcing false premises. Here's what he just posted about the politics of the latest iteration of the health care reform bill in the House.

Won't it be substantively difficult for many House Democrats to vote no?

If you're a liberal House Democrat, here's what you'd be voting against: Legislation that covers 32 million people. A world in which 95 percent of all non-elderly, legal residents have health-care coverage. An end to insurers rescinding coverage for the sick, or discriminating based on preexisting conditions, or spending 30 cents of each premium dollar on things that aren't medical care. .... [etc.]

If you're a conservative House Democrat, then probably you support many of those policies, too. But you also get the single most ambitious effort the government has ever made to control costs in the health-care sector. ... [etc.]

But hey, wait a minute ... that's not the entire story. Let's try telling this another way.

If you're a liberal House Democrat, you probably are interested in cutting the deficit and avoiding waste -- you just have different ideas than the conventional wisdom about how to do it. You might like to raise the top tax bracket on gazillionaires -- after all, that's where the money is. You might like to hit Wall Street with a transaction tax so that people who insist on treating the nation's business as a betting pit at least have to pay for something useful in some other arena. You might like to cut back on wasteful government procurement of unnecessary weapons systems. You have ideas about how to save taxpayer money -- you are just not taken seriously by the permanent Washington establishment.

If you're a conservative House Democrat, you probably run for office in a district where your constituents are suspicious of government, a district where it takes a lot of money to sell them on the idea that you are a good guy. So you are really grateful that there are interests who will contribute to your campaigns. Of course you listen to the people who give you the dough -- you also try to listen to the other people who don't come in with checks, but there are only so many hours ... Your constituents are scared -- of Commies or terrorists or Washington -- whatever is the bugaboo of the moment. You are scared -- of your constituents. They get mad. The Washington establishment shares your fear of raving populists, so you are treated as a "very serious person."

There are more axises on which these people are playing than Klein's glib dichotomy.

(Since we're in national budget season, I'm not going to to resist offering occasional short comments on budget matters and process under this headline, just as I have done about health care reform. I have strong foundational views on what the U.S. government ought to be doing about and with taxpayers' money that I've laid out in this post.)

Betrayal at NUMMI

I found this dignified statement sad and telling. If we sometimes wonder why there is so much anger and frustration in the land, consider the millions of men and women who have have experienced something like this.

Statement by Sergio Santos
President, UAW Local 2244
This statement on the closing of the Toyota NUMMI auto assembly plant will, by necessity, be my last.

On Wednesday March 17, 2010, the members of UAW Local 2244 will most likely vote to accept a severance pay package offered by Toyota. The offer mandates a gag order that I believe violates our First Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution, and our rights to Freedom of Association under the Labor Rights Conventions of the United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO). Nonetheless, under conditions set by Toyota, after the agreement is ratified, I will no longer be able to comment on the plant closing or its impact on our members.

While we are pleased that Toyota has increased its severance pay offer by millions of dollars, we are far from pleased that Toyota is going ahead and closing the plant where many of us have worked hard and faithfully giving Toyota the best years of our lives. Our skill has helped NUMMI repeatedly win JD Powers awards for quality, and has made Toyota the number-one automobile company in California and America. We are the ones who helped Toyota adapt their production methods to our American culture. We brought them success and now we have been betrayed. ...

With all of the recent bad publicity Toyota has earned, and because of the strong support we have received from newspaper editorial boards and from communities and individuals, Toyota sweetened its severance offer and will provide our members with a slightly better cushion to help us survive the next few months. After that we are on our own.

The tens of thousands who work at the auto parts suppliers and other businesses that support the Toyota NUMMI facility will fare far worse. Toyota has refused to consider any severance benefits for these people, some of whom have worked many years for subcontractors inside of our facility, alongside of us.

Toyota and its surrogate, NUMMI, will issue its own releases boasting of its generosity and philanthropy, its dedication to its workforce and the communities where it operates. But as the tens of thousands of people who made Toyota number one run out of money and unemployment benefits, as we lose our homes , our health benefits, and ultimately our health, the true toll of Toyota’s decision to abandon vehicle production in California will become clear to everyone. ...

Toyota has betrayed us and now they have gagged us. We will be silent in the future, but we deserve better. We are accepting the terms of Toyota’s settlement out of necessity, as a means of securing some limited funds for our families....

In closing, let me be clear. Toyota is closing the Toyota NUMMI auto assembly plant, not NUMMI, not GM. Toyota is closing our plant and Toyota could still choose to keep it open.

The NUMMI facility in Fremont, California was heralded as the future of the auto industry in 1984 when it re-opened (after closing as a GM plant) as a joint venture between Toyota and GM. The U.S. automaker would learn quality production from Japanese management that produced U.S.-built content at the factory.

The entire Northern California area will suffer along with the immediately affected workers.

Health care reform shorts: A visual representation of where people need insurance

National Public Radio has put up a nifty web map that enables anyone to create U.S. maps that show roughly what percentage of the people in Congressional districts are currently without health insurance. Here's the map of the whole country; in the darkest districts, more than 20 percent of the population under age 65 is without health insurance.


The Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and Northern California look better covered than the South and Southwest -- that is, these heavily Democratic areas are already places where most folks have insurance.

Now look at the map of the Republican-held districts:

There are some serious pockets where insurance isn't reaching people.

Now let's look at the districts held by Blue Dog Democrats, the Democrats mostly likely to be giving Nancy Pelosi trouble as she tries to round up House votes for health care reform.


It's hard not to draw the conclusion that many of the places that most need the combination of subsidies, new insurance markets in the exchanges, and new rules that are in the current bill are precisely those where Congresscritters are going to vote against reform. Curious.

Harold Pollack, who brought this to my attention, concludes:

Americans who have the most to gain from activist government are often the very people most distrustful of such measures. In the short-run, these perceptions may cause problems come November and even come 2012. In the long-run, I believe this is an opportunity. Once health reform embeds itself within the fabric of American life, I'm betting that millions of Red-State Americans will not wish to see it go.

The original NPR maps enable anyone to see the percentages of lack of insurance by district by mousing over particular Congressional districts.

View out my window: New York morning

Thanks Donald Trump. Can't say you build lovely buildings, but the light makes for a nice view for an early morning minute.

The future of democracy?

In The Future of Faith, Harvard religion scholar Harvey Cox makes the case for this prayer he quotes from a novel by Aldous Huxley:

"Give us this day our daily faith, but deliver us from beliefs."

He's a hopeful exponent of the idea that religious people of all faiths in the present time period show a readiness to move from rigid, incomprehensible creeds that must be affirmed into an experience of something transcendent beyond clerical hierarchies and institutional rigidities.

Well maybe. I can join him in hoping.

But along the way he reports on developments among Brazilian Pentecostals in terms that go to the heart of the concerns of this blog. I'll quote here at length from his fascinating chapter on what the rise of this religious variety means to democracy.

Are Pentecostals contributing to the shift from belief to faith, or are they among those holding out for a belief-defined Christianity? ...The answer is that there are, after all, 500 million of them, and they vary widely in theologies and practices. Some Pentecostals, especially white North Americans, have been heavily influenced by fundamentalism. But in the global South, they are more influenced by an ethic of following Jesus, and vision of the kingdom of God. They have recently become increasingly active in social ministries, but the hostility they sometimes show toward other faiths limits their ability to cooperate. ...

My own experience of the impact of this new Pentecostalism has taken place mainly in Brazil where I have been visiting for three decades. During one of my first trips there twenty-five years ago, I met a young Brazilian sociologist from Sao Paulo who as studying the peasant leagues then springing up in the arid, poverty-stricken northeast. The famers were organizing these leagues so they could buy seed and equipment and market their products cooperatively. During her research this novice investigator, a serious lay Catholic, discovered that indigenous Brazilian Pentecostals, even though they constituted only about 10 percent of the population then (the percentage is higher now), had done the lion's share of the work and provided most of the leadership. Eager to uncover the link between their religious faith and their work with the leagues, she interviewed several Pentecostals and asked what the correlation was. They seemed puzzled by the question, she said, and shrugged their shoulders. This in turn puzzled her, but the more she lived among them, the more she understood the connection.

Pentecostals, she explained, are practiced list makers. they are used to compiling records of people they intend to invite to church meetings. They knock on doors, then check off who was not at home, who responded favorably, and who slammed the door. Then they return, sometimes again and again. If the door was opened, they learned to get their message across quickly and clearly. ...

The essential qualities of a religious faith can be discerned most clearly in the shape of it gives to the institutions it spawns. Pentecostals give birth to voluntary associations, which are vital to any healthy society and the lifeblood of any genuine democracy. They mediate between ordinary people and the larger structures of economy, government, education and press. They provide alternative patterns of organization and unofficial networks. They school people in the indispensable skills needed to make democracy work.

Despite the misapprehensions of many North Americans, the Pentecostals of Brazil have neither remained aloof from politics nor have they imitated the American Religious Right. Careful analyses of their political behavior indicate their voting patterns tend to the "center left." In the recent Brazilian presidential elections, for example, a large majority voted for Lula and the Workers' Party. ...

Historically, Latin America has not been a continent richly endowed with voluntary associations. In general one belonged to whatever one was born into. Be it state or nation or tribe or church, you find yourself in a collectivity. You do not join it. But to be a crente you have to join something. To borrow a famous distinction from William James, most Latin American collectivities are made up of the "once born." Virtually the only exceptions to this rule have been labor unions, sports teams, base communities, and Pentecostal or evangelical religious congregations, which are constituted by the "twice born," people who have made a conscious choice to join something. All this means that the stunning growth of Pentecostals is a critical key to the democratization of the whole region, especially since they are beginning to participate in political life in an active way, hold public office, and seek to formulate a "social theology" of their own. But the continued growth of Pentecostals and their contribution to democracy are in no way guaranteed. They are often fragile, vulnerable to pressures from without and threats from within. How much they will strengthen democracy is still an open question.

...Until recently the contribution of Pentecostals to democracy has been an indirect one. Their role calls to mind the observation of historian Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) in the early nineteenth century that is was American religion that provided the indispensable fertile soil for democracy. Without the myriad congregations and other voluntary associations he found in America, he wrote, there would not be the "habits of the heart" democracy requires. In the religious congregations he visited, Tocquevillle observed, people learned to discuss issues, make corporate decisions, compromise when necessary, link moral principles to current events, and, finally, to accept the results these procedural strategies produced. ...

There is a difference between becoming a Pentecostal in Latin America today and joining a religious congregation in the United States that Tocqueville visited in the early nineteenth century. In Latin America choosing to become a Pentecostal can exact a high price, evoking the scorn of one's neighbors and family and, until recently, legal persecution. For Latin Americans this initial choice requires more courage. It is risky. But it instills a "habit of choosing" and hence a feeling of not being trapped forever in one's station. ... To borrow a phrase from North American black culture, they can say, "I am ... somebody." ...

One clear and present inner threat to Pentecostals' capacity to nurture democracy is a tendency to curtail it in their own congregations. Their emphasis on charismatic gifts came make their leadership arbitrary: "If God has put me in this position of power, why should you question my decisions?" Further, dynastic leadership is not unusual. ...

But Pentecostals also face threats from without. Ruling regimes in authoritarian countries do not worry so much about the theology of evangelical or Pentecostal congregations. But they do worry about "list makers" who know how to get people together, regionally, nationally, and even internationally. ...

Perhaps the clearest threat to the future of Pentecostals in Latin America is a combination of within and without ... the consumerist style is not just the wolf at the door; it is also a rather large camel's nose rather far inside the Pentecostal tent. It finds expression in the "gospel of prosperity," sometimes called the "name it and claim it" theology, derived in large measure from North American sources....

What comes next? ...No one knows, of course, But two core crente beliefs will play a decisive role: conversion ("you must be born again") and holiness ("be not conformed to this world.") In political and cultural terms conversion means that people can change and that therefore fatalism -- either personal or societal -- is not acceptable. Holiness means that you need not buy into the latest mind-numbing fads of the commodity lifestyle. You can be "in but not of this world."

I was surprised by Cox's optimism about the democratic potential of this form of Christian belief in Latin America. The little bit I know about Central American religious groups has not made me nearly so hopeful. I wonder whether any "free," non-established, religious community in a developing country and economy might not play a similar role in developing socially useful skills and character traits. But he opens a window here on a world of faith that might otherwise be invisible in the North American heart of empire. Interesting book.

Health care reform shorts: guys in black shirts are at it again

It's sad, though not really surprising, to see the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church lined up with Republicans in the "Just Die" faction on health care reform.

The Senate bill that will be the basis for the reconciled overall bill doesn't make it quite hard enough for poor women to get abortions for the bishops' taste. No taxpayer money will go to abortions -- that was never going to happen. But private companies that choose to sell policies in the new exchange insurance market will be allowed to include riders for abortion coverage -- so long as the insured women pay for that coverage themselves.

Get over yourselves gentlemen. You have the wrong plumbing to be trying to dictate on this.***
UPDATE: T. R. Reid in the Washington Post relates an anecdote from a Bishop who didn't have to be authoritarian about reducing abortion. Reid was trying to understand why all developed countries have a lower incidence of abortion than the United States.

One key reason seems to be that all those countries provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. That has a profound effect on women contemplating what to do about an unwanted pregnancy.

The connection was explained to me by a wise and holy man, Cardinal Basil Hume. He was the senior Roman Catholic prelate of England and Wales when I lived in London; as a reporter and a Catholic, I got to know him.

In Britain, only 8 percent of the population is Catholic (compared with 25 percent in the United States). Abortion there is legal. Abortion is free. And yet British women have fewer abortions than Americans do. I asked Cardinal Hume why that is.

The cardinal said that there were several reasons but that one important explanation was Britain's universal health-care system. "If that frightened, unemployed 19-year-old knows that she and her child will have access to medical care whenever it's needed," Hume explained, "she's more likely to carry the baby to term. Isn't it obvious?"

There's a Bishop who gets it.

Who cares about the people?

On the long flight eastward the other day, I got around to watching the February Frontline show "Behind Taliban Lines." Journalist Najibullah Quraishi managed to embed with a small northern Taliban unit that was trying to blow up U.S. supply trucks on the route from Tajikistan to Kabul. Quraishi's accomplishment (and daring) in getting to film these guys is admirable; the resulting film is pretty prosaic -- lots of "hurry up and wait" punctuated by bad luck and recriminations, just like real life.

This particular Taliban unit is loyal to an enduring northern warlord, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who the U.S. once funded against the Russians; they certainly consider themselves allied and indebted to "Arabs" and al Qaeda. (Other Taliban groups in the south of the country not may be so in sync with "the Arabs" according to Pakistani sources.)

Quraishi explained in a PBS interview:

They would keep saying, "We will join in the Afghan government if the foreign forces leave Afghanistan." This was their message. All of them were saying the same. And I asked why. They said, "When Russia was in Afghanistan, all Afghan people jihad against Russia." There was at that time only one non-believer country [Russia]. "Now," they were saying, "there are 42 non-believer countries with hundred thousands of soldiers. So this is now our duty to fight against it."

In the same interview Quraishi reports:

One thing which I saw with them, they never, ever harm local people.

One day I asked one of the elders from a village, I said, "Why you guys supporting them?" They said, "Because they really care about civilians, about local people. And NATO, government and American, they don't care. They just put a bomb on civilians, they don't care and they just killing everyone." And I think this is the point [behind] the people's support for them. Even their operation, they didn't remove the bomb, because of civilians. So I think that's why local people support them.

***This much hyped Frontline segment came along with an add-on I had not expected: a warning about the dreadful failures of public Pakistani education. The U.S. journalist David Montero has reported from Pakistan for several years. I was surprised by his slant: he indicts the Pakistani education ministry with failing that nation's children using criticism from upper middle class Westernized Pakistanis and implying corruption and apathy from officials. None of that was too surprising.

But Montero also interviewed at least one leader from the religious madrassa school sector which is flourishing among the poor while the secular government schools collapse. This mullah has a simplistic explanation for why people prefer to send their children to the religious schools.




Montero treats this religious and nationalist assertion as if it were self-evident nonsense. But what if the mullah's perspective is simply ordinary common sense among Pakistanis who aren't Westernized? I imagine it is.

U.S. allies among the Pakistani elite are not going to combat the influence of this kind of thinking so long as ordinary people have experiential reason to think the West treats Pakistani life as cheap (drone attacks) and their country of 166 million people as just a staging area for its war on Afghanistan.

It's time to get the U.S. out of the Middle World.

Health care reform shorts: Pelosi time

This will be the week that my Congresscritter shows her stuff. If we get the much weakened, but probably ground breaking, version of insurance reform Democrats have muddled their way to, Nancy Pelosi will be the closest thing to a hero in the story. The President and White House political operation have been pathetic; their part of the job was to set the table, making it nearly impossible for Congress not to want to be part of the banquet. Instead they've been pretty much AWOL til the last month ... and vacillated when they showed up. The Senate has meanwhile demonstrated a level of institutional dysfunction that begs for reform or maybe just abolition -- what do most of us need with this egocentric, anti-majoritarian clunker anyway?

Though it all, Pelosi has been the only steadfast voice saying that elected Democrats must get done the job we elected them to do. She's not the most felicitous explainer, but here's what she said in a press conference last week.

I have supported -- when I say support, signs in the street, advocacy in legislatures -- I have supported single payer for longer than many of you have been -- since you've been born, than you've lived on the face of the earth. ...

...So I believe we have a very strong bill that will increase competition, will lower cost for the American people and accomplish some of the same goals. It doesn't produce the same savings, and that's why, you know, we were fighting for it. ...What we will have in reconciliation will be something that is agreed upon, House and Senate, that we can pass and they can pass.

Swampland

This week, health care reform is on her turf, the turf she sometimes seems to value above all else, the land of the legislative intricacies of U.S. Congress. And in that arcane arena, she's the master, prodding, pushing, herding small egos, greedy mediocrities and quaking violets to assemble momentary majorities. I wouldn't bet against Nancy if she says she can push something through the House.

The very virtue that sets her apart in Washington makes her a less than perfect representative for her constituents. Her base is her House caucus members -- that's who she must attend to. We in San Francisco elect her, but where she lands on issues has almost nothing to do with our wants; she does what she needs to do to hold together her fractious cats. Most of her geographical constituents are happy and proud to have elected this first woman Speaker of the House. Some of us wish more of her energies went into our issues, for example, ending Obama's Afghanistan adventure.

But this week, on health care reform, I expect to see my Congresscritter at her best.

Weather delay

We blew into New York City/Newark Airport in the middle of the night after delayed cross country flights. Oblivious Californians that we are, we didn't realize we were flying into a major storm.

Utility crews pushed through fallen trees and windblown debris to reach downed power lines Sunday, working to restore electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses as strong winds and heavy rain that wreaked havoc in parts of the Northeast pushed on into New England.

The storm, which battered parts of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut on Saturday with gusts of up to 70 mph, struck about two weeks after heavy snow and hurricane-force winds left more than a million customers in the Northeast in the dark. More than a half-million customers in the region lost electricity at the peak of Saturday's storm, and roughly 500,000 were waiting for power to be restored Sunday morning.

In Manhattan, Broadway's sidewalks and trash cans were littered with hundreds of shattered umbrellas.

AP

I can testify to that.

Having got to bed only briefly at 6am New York time today, regular blogging will have to wait until I get more sleep. Until tomorrow ...

Saturday scenes and scenery: Faces of our future

The young people on the street last week at the education funding march are the future of California.


Sure, they can be cute.


But there is also an earnestness in some of their expressions ...


a seriousness of purpose that belies their youth.


Some of them are going to be accomplished rabble rousers. That's good -- we need them.


Bang that drum!


Determination will carry many of them far.

Friday critter blogging: Climbing the walls

It's raining. I'm wrestling unhappily with a writing project. Outside on the wall alongside the front steps, these guys are slowly escaping the puddles.




Back to work, human!

Paul Farmer calls for "pragmatic solidarity"

Haitians can rebuild their country -- we can help. [2:16]

Yet another reason to have it in for Blanche Lincoln

The Democratic Senator from Arkansas is at it again. On labor issues, she represents Walmart better than workers; she has also been a nasty roadblock on the way to health care reform. But a new Lincoln move is truly incomprehensible: she has hooked up with five other Dems to try to kill the administration's effort to cut banks out of the federal student loan program.

Since the government guarantees the loans, bank involvement amounts to a giveaway:

Banks have been making government-guaranteed college loans under the Federal Family Education Loan program for decades. These lenders deal directly with borrowers and collect the interest, but if the loan defaults, the government eats 97 percent of the loss.

Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle

Nice work if you can get it. The Obama administration wants to make the loans through the government directly and use the money now paid to banks to increase student aid grants.

At present six Dem Senators are balking at the shift, Thomas R. Carper (DE), Blanche Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE), Bill Nelson (FL), Mark Warner (VA) and Jim Webb (VA). Most of them are swimming in campaign funds from the institutions that make the loans. But Chris Kromm at Facing South is puzzled by Lincoln's participation in the blockage.

The more puzzling case is Sen. Lincoln of Arkansas. Her position on the Senate Finance Committee has made her a magnet for banking and finance campaign dollars ($246,700 for the 2010 cycle). But a search of her campaign contributions show no special ties to the student lending industry.

Maybe she's just being a rotten legislator.

Lincoln is likely to be history in November; her approval is way underwater among her Arkansas constituents. But progressives are taking the opportunity to demonstrate that there are consequences for Democrats who block the party agenda in office. Netroots activists including MoveOn have contributed well over $1 million to Democratic primary challenger Bill Halter. Unions and conservation organizations are also on the project of replacing Lincoln. You can join the effort here. I'm sure the guy isn't perfect, but lawmakers like Lincoln need to learn that the people aren't entirely passive.

UPDATE: Latest word is that the Senate Democratic leadership may attach the student loan clawback legislation to the health care bill in reconciliation. Well maybe. Nobody ever went broke betting the Senate can't get something done ... but just maybe someone up there is taking student needs seriously.

Just let him lie ...

Seen in a doorway yesterday, taking advantage of a weak spring sun.

I read the news yesterday; it didn't improve my good humor

One of my secrets is that I don't read newspapers every day. Enough news flies by at various blogs and other sites that I frequent that I don't feel I miss much. But yesterday I delved into the New York Times; I probably shouldn't have. There were some scary items from the far reaches of empire.

Iraq
The paper's editorial writers waxed lyrical about Iraqis voting on Sunday.

Iraq’s citizens once again showed tremendous courage and determination, defying bombs and a flawed pre-election process to cast their ballots.

Okay -- we know by now that the U.S. likes it when nations we impose ourselves on hold elections. And maybe the elections really are a good thing, though they always get reported as some kind of triumph for the U.S., less so for the electors..

But elsewhere in the paper, one Michael Slackman marvels to discover Region Unimpressed by Balloting in Iraq. Oh my, oh my ...

the mere act of voting was not seen as a step toward democracy. That perception, combined with Election Day violence, American occupation and Iranian influence, left few analysts and commentators in the Middle East declaring the elections a success and Iraq on the road to stability.

“Iraq is a failure and a big mess,” said Hussein al-Shobokshy, a columnist for the Saudi Arabian owned pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Alawsat.

Well what did you expect? When you invade a country amid a fog of lies, turn 20 percent of its people into refugees, kill some 300,000 to a million people, and set off a civil war, it really shouldn't be a surprise that neighbors don't think a little voting shows that everything is now hunky-dory. Get a grip, reporters!

Oh -- and I probably should add that the NYT gave oped space to someone with the unlikely name of Bartle Breese Bull to spin out cheerful but substance-free journalistic nostalgia from election sites. Bleech!

Iran
I can only conclude that we're being primed for an attack on Iran from reading this NYT offering: "For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier." Topped by a picture of Ahmadinejad playing the politician's role of "interested President inspecting a scientific facility which he doesn't comprehend," the article warns that, because of how the enrichment process works, Iran could make bomb-grade uranium with a lot less centrifuges that it now has making low grade uranium.

It is not until the second half of the article that we learn such important tidbits as these:

In the desert, at the Natanz complex, Iran presented atomic inspectors with evidence that it had succeeded in enriching some of its 4 percent uranium to 20 percent, the United Nations agency said in a Feb. 18 report. But American and European officials said the amounts were small so far.

Originally, Iran enriched its uranium to 4 percent with thousands of centrifuges in two cavernous underground halls roughly half the size of the Pentagon. The center of its new effort, according to the atomic agency, is a facility at Natanz known as the pilot plant, where Iran currently has 164 centrifuges spinning. Even with the aid of nonlinearity, that number is insufficient to enrich much uranium quickly.

In interviews and briefings, officials in Washington and diplomats in Europe said the pilot plant could make perhaps three kilograms, or about seven pounds, of 20 percent fuel per month. At that rate, they added, making enough to power the research reactor in Tehran would take five to seven years. But the reactor has only months to go before it could run out of fuel, they estimated. ...

Not much there, when you get into it. Hey -- haven't we been extras in this movie before, in 2002 and 2003?

Also notable in the ominous war drums category is an ad from Vote Vets currently turning up on progressive blogs. Ostensibly calling for energy security, it recycles discredited Pentagon claims that IEDs exploded in Iraq came across the border from Iran. As if Iraqis weren't capable of blowing up occupation troops and each other without a devilish sponsor. Good discussion of this war-mongering effort in this post.

Afghanistan
While I'm surveying imperial battlegrounds, I shouldn't neglect the current shooting war. Seems the U.S. has successfully overcome immediate opposition in an Afghan place named Marja. But nobody quite knows what it is. Here's Joshua Foust who blogs regularly at Registan.net: All Central Asia, All the Time writing in the Times last week:

Unfortunately, Western leadership is undecided about the nature of the place itself. Depending on which official is speaking, Marja is either a teeming “population center” of 85,000 residents or an isolated farming town of about 50,000 or a district with about 125,000 people. But if Marja is a district, it is unrecognized by the Afghan Interior Ministry. And if Marja is a town, then it needs to hold a constitutionally mandated election to choose a mayor, and not face a governor forced upon it by Kabul.

Regardless of Marja’s status, the choice of new “district governor,” Haji Abdul Zahir, does not make sense. Mr. Zahir has lived in Germany for the last 15 years and had never set foot in Marja until two weeks ago.

This week, it came out that Zahir served prison time in his German exile for stabbing his stepson. Smooth choice for your war marketing campaign, guys.

Meanwhile, Afghan civilians die [1:54]:


No -- reading the news has not improved my mood.

Budget follies short-takes: Fund the parks!

Given the number of things I find myself advocating for (and against), I find it almost embarrassing to be posting this. But the cliché is true: the National Parks are one of this country's best ideas.

One of the pleasures of some of my travels has been to enjoy other country's parks, notably in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. Everywhere the maintenance of areas reserved for public enjoyment is a rare instance of the public good overriding private selfishness. Let's keep it that way. ***Meanwhile in California, a large coalition of conservation organizations is working to protect and fund the 278 state parks through a ballot initiative slated for November 2010. The measure

... would provide a stable, reliable and adequate source of funding for the state park system, for wildlife conservation and for increased and equitable access to those resources for all Californians. The initiative would give California vehicles free admission to the state parks in exchange for a new $18 vehicle license fee, which would be specifically dedicated to state parks and wildlife conservation.

Like any other sensible Californian, I know that budgeting by way of initiative measures is an idiotic way to run a state. But, but, but -- with the likes of Meg Whitman on the horizon and Republicans blocking all taxes in the legislature, I have to support this one. Parks are part of what makes this state special. They are well used by all sorts of people. And once we lose the staff and even the lands themselves, we'll never get them back.

(Since we're in national budget season, I'm not going to to resist offering occasional short comments on budget matters and process under this headline, just as I have done about health care reform. I have strong foundational views on what the U.S. government ought to be doing about and with taxpayers' money that I've laid out in this post.)