Newshoggers.com

Losing choke point control

By Fester

The best spot to be in most bidding situations is to be the marginally decisive point. At that point, an individual has a great deal of power because their acceptance or decline of a bid means that the market for action has been set. They are veto players, they are chokepoints of activity, they are rentiers of political space. In the US Senate, the two dominant chokepoints is whomever will be the 50th vote for passage if the bill is a Democraticly favored bill (as Democrats can count on VP Biden to break a tie in their favor) or the 51st vote for a conservatively favored bill, and the 60th vote to break a filibuster or waive certain rules. Until last week the 60th vote was the far more vital chokepoint.

The occupant of that 60th vote varied on each issue, but the membership of the club that controls the 60th vote on Democratic priorities is fairly small. Its frequent members are Senators Nelson of Nebraska, Landrieu of Lousiana, Pryor and Lincoln of Arkansas, Bayh of Indiana, Conrad of North Dakota and for the Republicans the potential pick-offs on some issues are the two Senators from Maine, Snowe and Collins as well as the occassional chance of picking off a few others on idiosyncratic issues.

If Senator Reid follows through on his threat to impose harsh party line discipline on cloture, then the 60th Vote Club is functionally irrelevant and powerless:

So, I suppose it should come as no surprise that, Senate leaders are now asking members of the Democratic caucus to vote party-line on procedural issues, reversing the stance they took on caucus unity just last week.

Reid is actually putting himself on the line. "On procedural votes," he predicted, "we'll keep Democrats together."

Roll Call notes that Reid and his leadership does not anticipate keeping the entire caucus on the final vote, but wants it on the cloture vote:

“They may vote against final passage on a bill. They may vote with Republicans on amendments,” he said. “But on this idea of allowing the filibuster to stop the whole Senate, I think, we have persuaded them more often than not that they shouldn’t let the Republicans control our agenda. We ought to control our own agenda.”

If this actually happens, consistent party unity on cloture votes means that the Group hanging around the 60th vote are almost irrelevant.  They will either be voting for “I Love Puppies and Ice Cream” bills that will run up an 85 to 12 majority or they are on the losing side of a 56 to 43 final count.  In either case their negoatiating leverage goes down massively.  The new, marginally decisive Democrat moves from being Nelson to someone like McCaskill from Missouri who is far closer to the Democratic median and average position that any concessions on most issues to get her vote will be fairly small. 

So I can understand the gang that comprise the 57th to 61st votes throwing a hissy fit as this move would effectively render them powerless and their fundraising pitch perilous.

 

The Price of a 'Decent Outcome'

By Fester

Ahh, a decent interval before America can forget and the idiots in charge can continue to be idiots and in charge.

Via IOZ:

Today in 2009 we’re in a lot of ways back to where we were four years ago—able for American forces to start leaving on a high note, confident that they performed their job with skill, and leaving Iraqi leaders with a handshake.

-Matthew Yglesias

Or you could say that in 2009 a tactically exhausted and strategically impotent American army is beginning a pullback, leaving behind a million or two (it is a mark, a stain, a dishonor, a horror that we frankly have no idea) extra dead and displaced Iraqis under the rule of a gangster president who looks ever more like his predecessor, whose ouster we sought at the cost of those hundreds of thousands of lives. You could say that the "high note" on which we depart, having made the world safe for British Petroleum, consists of a level of daily terror and violence, both on behalf of the extant state and on behalf of the various insurgencies, hold-outs, rebels, extremists, and others, that would fracture and destroy any internally peaceful western society. The "job" performed so admirably by American forces was the unprovoked invasion and occupation of a foreign nation, and the fact that the American military has subsequently managed to mop much of the blood from the gutters does not obviate or abnegate these facts.....

If anything IOZ has understated the case as the best estimate is several hundred thousand dead and 4.7 million refugees, or roughly one sixth to one fifth of the pre-war population dead or displaced. All that for a decent interval before the resource conflicts start up again....

Robert McNamara's Memo To The Bush/Obama Hawks

By Steve Hynd

Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam conflict, has died aged 93. Over at Hullabaloo, D-Day reminds us of McNamara's cautionary message for future U.S. leaders, comprising eleven causes and lessons he listed coming out of Vietnam.

We misjudged then — and we have since — the geopolitical intentions of our adversaries … and we exaggerated the dangers to the United States of their actions.

We viewed the people and leaders of South Vietnam in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for – and a determination to fight for — freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

We underestimated the power of nationalism to motivate a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values….

Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected our profound ignorance of the history, culture, and politics of the people in the area, and the personalities and habits of their leaders….No Southeast Asian [experts] existed for senior officials to consult when making decisions on Vietnam.

We failed then — and have since — to recognize the limitations of modern, high-technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people’s movements. We failed as well to adapt our military tactics to …winning the hearts and minds of people from a totally different culture.

We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement … before we initiated the action.

After the action got under way and unanticipated events forced us off our planned course … we did not fully explain what was happening and why we were doing what we did….We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced…confront[ing] uncharted seas and an alien environment. A nation’s deepest strength lies not in its military prowess, bur rather in the unity of its people. We failed to maintain it.

We did not recognize that neither our people nor our leaders are omniscient. Our judgment of what is in another people’s or country’s best interest should be put to the test of open discussion in international forums. We do not have the God-given right to shape every nation in our image or as we choose.

We did not hold to the principle that U.S. military action — other than in response to direct threats to our own national security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces supported fully (and not merely cosmetically) by the international community.

We failed to recognize that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems for which there are no immediate solutions … At times, we may have to live with an imperfect, untidy world.

…We thus failed to analyze and debate our actions in Southeast Asia - our objectives, the risks and costs of alternative ways of dealing with them, and the necessity of changing course when failure was clear….

D-Day writes:

If this isn't an accusatory note toward the practitioners of American foreign policy during the entire post-war period up through today, I don't know what is... I find these cautions from McNamara to be crucially important, but even in my most optimistic moments I don't believe America is even wired to live up to them.

Certainly in the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan - and in their determination to pursue "strategic ambiguity" in the region over Iran - modern U.S. leaders seem hell-bent upon ignoring McNamara's hard-won wisdom.

Back in 2004, Douglas Saunders interviewed McNamara and asked him for his views on the Iraq invasion. The former SecDef was sure it was yet another massive mistake ignoring those 11 cautionary lessons.

"We're misusing our influence," he said in a staccato voice that had lost none of its rapid-fire engagement. "It's just wrong what we're doing. It's morally wrong, it's politically wrong, it's economically wrong."

While he did not want to talk on the record about specific military decisions made Mr. Rumsfeld, he said the United States is fighting a war that he believes is totally unnecessary and has managed to destroy important relationships with potential allies. "There have been times in the last year when I was just utterly disgusted by our position, the United States' position vis-à-vis the other nations of the world."

On Monday night, we heard the United States at its very worst with George W. Bush's caustic State of the Union address, in which he declared, over and over, that America is serving God's will directly and does not need "a permission slip" from other nations since "the cause we serve is right, because it is the cause of all mankind."

Obama's people are too busy reading Ricks, Nagl and Kilcullen to read Revelations, but the unshakeable certainty that America has the right and duty - the White Man's Burden by either divine mandate or through simple technocratic superiority - to re-shape other nations is still omnipresent.

Congress has few philospher kings

By Fester:

I like to live in the real world. It is messy, it is confusing, it often produces non-optimal outcomes (depending on the relevant constraints) but it is tangible. I can also live in a normative world where everything is neat, clean, organized and optimized towards the relevant constraints. However that world seldom exists. I often look for satisficing improvements instead of optimal solutions because the improvements are achievable.

I don't understand the critique of Waxman-Markley that Andrew Samwick and others are advancing in that it is a satisficaing improvement but non-optimal on several grounds:

Much as you may like the idea, this is another 1300 pages of complexity and loopholes. Buried in there, I'll wager, are more than enough ways for large organizations (the ones who hire lobbyists) to get all the exemption and evasion they'll need. Consider the alternative of a carbon tax calibrated to achieve the same emission reductions, and applied to all sectors including vehicle fuel consumption. I'm no expert on translating ideas into pages of a bill, but that can't be much. And given that it allows us to do away with the CAFE standards, I figure we've done a great service of dramatically simplifying the whole regulatory process for carbon emissions.

Economically, a clean carbon tax and a clean cap and trade bill will do the same thing. They will both internalize the currently externalize cost of carbon dioxide emissions. There are two big differences. The first is that a a carbon tax is a price certain option while the cap and trade system is a quantity certain feature.  Secondly, cap and trade is economically more efficient as it allows for market discovery of prices of a scarce good instead of hoping that Congress can hit the right number at any given time for optimal economic efficiency for a given amount of emissions.  

 

His argument is that a carbon tax would be neater and less messy.  Lobbyists would not be able to claw out special interest exemptions and transfers and the legislation would be only several pages long.  He is arguing a straw man here in my opinion.  A properly designed cap and trade system could also be written in a fairly short and concise manner as well.

 

He is bitching and moaning about basic political incentives here.  A complex bill with exemptions, curlicues and who knows what else in it for concentrated interests is far more profitable to the relevant players than a simple, clean sheet proposal with no exemptions.  Dr. Samwick is implicitly arguing that a carbon tax would be less susceptible to this type of manipulation than a cap and trade regime.  I have severe doubts about that.  We have plenty of evidence that tax bills, even comparatively simple tax bills that are mere modifications of existing tax laws can and will be massively abused with exemptions, exceptions, partially refundable credits, donut hole deductions and anything else that concentrated interests can muster to improve their interests against the counterfactual of a clean bill.  The classic example is the agricultural bill where there are significant subsidies for sugar, mohair, honey and other products because there is a strong lobby for those interests while the public purpose of food security, public health and reasonably low prices for a wide selection of goods is often ignored. 

 

I have yet to see a good political reason why the concessions that the Democrats on the Agricultural Committee wanted and received to weaken the bill and make the bill more complex for cap and trade would not also be granted in a carbon tax system.  I think it is very reasonable to assume that Agricultural Committee Democrats would want land use carbon emissions to be exempted from the carbon tax or at least counted under a friendly system.  Those are the concessions that they basically got in cap and trade, and those would be the concessions they would have wanted from a carbon tax regime.  Otherwise they most likely and there would be nothing. 

 

Now if Dr. Samwick wants to argue that doing nothing now is a superior option as the costs of action and inaction escalate the pressure to pass a much cleaner bill that is more to his liking at some uncertain point in the future, that is a defensible argument.  However that is not the argument he is making.  He is whining that Congress is acting like politicians engaged in politics with attendant incentives instead of philosopher king technocrats who will agree with his preferred solutions.  Me, I’m happy for an improvement with the hope that institutional inertia will lead to a good process and outcome over time. 

 

 

Disappointment Doesn't Cover It

Commentary By Ron Beasley

To say I'm disappointed in Barack Obama is an understatement.  I'm beginning to think he has no ideology at all only a lust for political power.  He has chosen to not prosecute or even investigate the criminal wrong doings of the Bush/Cheney cabal and in fact in too many cases continued down the same path.  As we have reported here over and over his AF/Pak policy would make Bush and Cheney proud.  He had the opportunity to take on Wall Street and the over inflated financial industry and failed to do so.  He is making one mistake that George W. Bush never made - he's deferring to Congress and the US Congress can't really be trusted to do anything right.

And now we are seeing all of this at work in health care reform.  Katrina Vanden Heuvel:

God I hope David Broder is wrong. "The President has told visitors," the Washington Post columnist wrote last week, "that he would rather have 70 votes in the Senate for a bill that gives him 85 percent of what he wants rather than a 100 percent satisfactory bill that passes 52-48."

There is a reason the United States has two political parties, they have different ideologies.  This is not new - it's the same ideological conflict that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were having over 200 years ago but as times changed it became even more pronounced.  I think that both Adams and Jefferson opposed an American royalty/oligarchy.  But oligarchs we have had and when they came to power the results have consistently been catastrophic.  The oligarchs are driven by greed for both power and money.  They gained control of the country in the early 20th century and the result was the Great Depression.  It took an FDR to set things straight and things went pretty well until 1981 when Ronald Reagan and the oligarchs once again took charge.  Once again the result was a massive failure of the economy.  The oligarchs and their political allies the Republicans suffered massive losses in 2006 and 2008.  Unfortunately Barack Obama is no FDR. 

The Republicans claim that the health insurance industry won't be able to compete with a public plan.  That's probably true since as Fester pointed out here  they have no competition in most markets now and as Josh Marshall explains this little fact gets little attention.  Seventy two percent of Americans support a public plan and that includes fifty percent of the Republicans.  But what do we get from the Obama administration?  This:

In an emailed statement to Bloomberg News, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said she’s open to the idea of dropping a public health insurance option in favor of a medical-insurance cooperative. “You could theoretically design a co-op plan that had the same attributes as a public plan,” Sebelius said.

The leading co-op proposal in the Senate, offered by Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), does not share the attributes of a public plan. Instead, Conrad’s proposal would create multiple state or regional non-profits as a competitor to the private insurance market. As Howard Dean has said of this plan: “The co-ops are too small to compete with the big, private insurance companies. They will kill the co-ops completely by undercutting them, using their financial clout to do it.”

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Sebelius, “[If] you’re willing to compromise on your notion of a public plan…what’s non-negotiable?” Sebelius responded that the final bill has to “have a comprehensive approach that lowers costs.

Change?  Not so much - the oligarchs are still in charge.

Write your member of congress and tell them to vote no on any health care reform bill that doesn't include a  strong public plan.  Make it clear to Obama that we demand real change not bipartisan window dressing.

Health Care and Rationing

Commentary by Ron Beasley

The New York Times reports, correctly, that there is little hope for "bipartisan" health care reform.  There may be a few who oppose a public plan for ideological reasons but the reality is the Republicans don't want to give the Democrats a victory on this because they know it will be popular.  In spite of the ads they may run they know that public health care is popular in Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain and everywhere else.  It is the third rail of politics in Canada and Europe and even the conservatives in those countries know not to touch it.  We saw what happened when George W. Bush tried to mess with Social Security, the third rail of American politics. 

We hear that a government run health plan will result in health care rationing. That's true but what they fail to mention is that we have that now. The reason the that the anti government plan marketing is not having any impact is that both those that have health insurance and those who don't know that we already have rationing. I have had two friends and one relative who have probably died before they should have because of rationing. Yes, they all had insurance but physician requests for diagnostic tests were rejected by private insurance companies until it was too late.

And there is another form of rationing – the preexisting condition of being between 55 and 65 years old. I will return to this later.

And then we have Medicare. Medicare will approve about anything and health care providers know that. See what a Texas town can teach us about health care in the New Yorker. To make matters worse these procedures are often not even in the best interest of the patient. I will give you a personal example.

My 86 year old mother is in really good health but had started to be short of breath. They ran some diagnostic tests and discovered she had a bad heart valve. She was referred to a cardiologist who was ready to split her chest open and replace the valve. I asked him several questions:

1. She is in relatively good health now – following the surgery will she ever recover to be as good as she was before? The answer was probably not!

2. I told the doctor that I heard that being on a heart lung machine can have a negative impact on memory and asked him if that was true. The answer was yes, especially in older people.

3. The next question was what will happen if the valve is not replaced? The answer was the shortness of breath may gradually get worse.

4. I asked him if it were his mother would he suggest the surgery? The answer was NO!

The bottom line is they were going to perform a procedure that would cost 50 thousand plus dollars that would have left my mother worse off after the surgery because Medicare would pay for it.

At 63 years of age I cannot get health insurance at any price. I am denied procedures that could keep me alive for another 20 or 30 years while Medicare pays for procedures that add little or even have negative impacts on the health of the patient. That's rationing and foolish.

There is health care rationing now and there will be rationing in any new system. Society simply can't afford to give everyone the care they might desire. So what is required is intelligent rationing. Will it be perfect?  The answer is no but it needs to be better than what we have now. That means that any government health plan needs to do a better job of of deciding which procedures are truly worth while. I would still feel better about a plan where profit was the major driving force even though it might not be perfect.

Some Health Care Reform Light

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Is it possible that the Democrats may be listening to the American People?

Democrats May Unite On Public Health Plan

 Emboldened by polls that show public backing for a government health insurance plan, Democrats are moving to make it a politically defining issue in the debate over the future of medical care.

Behind-the-scenes attempts to get a deal with Republicans on nonprofit co-ops as an alternative to a public plan have led only to frustration, complains a key Democrat. He and his colleagues may have to go it alone, said Sen. Chuck Schumer.

The co-ops were seen as perhaps the last hope for compromise on a contentious issue that threatens any remaining prospects of bipartisan support for President Obama's sweeping plan to remake the health care system.

"I don't think I could say with a straight face that this (co-op proposal) is at all close to a nationwide public option," Schumer, D-N.Y., told The Associated Press on Sunday. "Right now, this co-op idea doesn't come close to satisfying anyone who wants a public plan."

This is perhaps the first hopeful sign we have seen for several weeks.  Are we beyond the quixotic foolishness of bipartisanship?  The American people voted for change and the Republicans won't move beyond the same old failed policies.  The health care oligarchs and their friends in congress and the media can't even come up with new arguments and for the most part their old arguments are the same ones that people experience with the for profit insurance companies.  Do you want government bureaucrats making your health care decisions?  It's better than insurance company bureaucrats who make money when the deny care. 

Fungibilility and non-inteference

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By Fester:

The United States and the West have very little leverage in Iran. Global trade is falling fast, global credit is far less available now than it was three years ago, and oil prices are going up again in dollar terms past Iran's break even point. The US military is tied down in two wars, the rest of NATO either can not or will not deploy additional forces to Afghanistan to act as fungible units to free up US forces. There are not too many obvious and effective leverage points avaialble to nation states that want to lend support to the protesters or to harm the current regime.

The only plausible leverage point is economic. A complete embargo on the oil as a means of pressuring the ruling elite is being proposed. We know that sanctions have worked wonders on quickly overthrowing the Castro regime in Cuba.... instead of allowing the elites to blame outside actors for their own failings.
Raymond Lears at the Huffington Post proposes this idea without thinking through the consequences.

Though the United States does not currently import Iranian crude, the fungiblity of oil is such that our government espousing such a boycott would carry a meaningful impact. The cutoff of Iranian oil shipments through a buyer's boycott is entirely feasible in the structure of today's oil market. Inventories throughout the world are filled to overflowing, supertankers are loaded with 100's of millions barrels oil, lying at anchor at sea waiting for customers or storage on shore....Without the income from oil, Iran's dictatorship will be increasingly vulnerable.

There are several significant practical road blocks to this.

First is the political-economic one of domestic political support in Europe or Japan --- all of those economies are under as much or more pressure than the US economy with consumers retrenching, concerns about jobs and concerns about debt levels --- where is the political support for individuals to pay another ten to fifteen percent per gallon/liter if the boycott was 100% effective? That to me seems like the quickest way for a government to lose its mandate as they would be effectively be placing a regressive tax that would mainly be a transfer from oil consumers to non-Iranian oil producers.

The countervailing effect is that the boycott would not be effective as Iran would still be able to export several million barrels of oil per day to a different customer set.

We know that China has two primary current foreign policy concerns. The first is to maintain its supply lines for crucial raw materials. This is fueling the expansion of Chinese trade with Brazil and Australia as well as backing the Chinese influence push into Africa. Iran already has decent to good ties with China and as a customer of last resort, those ties would strengthen. The second major foreign policy concern for China is a concerted effort to push for a precedent of international non-interference in the internal affairs of nation states. China and its oil buyers will not be a part of a buyers' embargo.

The end result is public diplomacy masturbation as the embargo would be toothless while giving the current hardliners a validation of their story that they and the rest of the Iranian people are being pressured by foreign, colonialist influences. That is not a good solution

Hypocritical Outrage

Commentary By Ron Beasley

The headline reads:

Under Pressure, Obama Calls on Iran to End Violence,

'Unjust' Actions In a statement that appeared to answer his critics who wanted him to speak out more forcefully, President Obama called on Iran to stop the violence and unjust actions against its people.

The outrage is from those who aren't old enough to remember or refuse to remember the not so distant history of the United States.  In the comments section of Steve's post below avedis says:

I do not see the Iranian government's reaction to the protesters as being - in and of itself - evidence of any unique oppressiveness. Had people in the US taken to the streets in the same manner after the Bush election and the Florida decision, believe me, there would have been an equal number of protesters beaten and killed. It's happened here before, you know.....that is what governments do when faced with determined unruly mass civil unrest.

For example how many remember Kent State:

On Monday, May 4, a protest was scheduled to be held at noon, as had been planned three days earlier. University officials attempted to ban the gathering, handing out 12,000 leaflets stating that the event was canceled. Despite this, an estimated 2,000 people gathered[16] on the university's Commons, near Taylor Hall. The protest began with the ringing of the campus's iron Victory Bell (which had historically been used to signal victories in football games) to mark the beginning of the rally, and the first protester began to speak.

Fearing that the situation might escalate into another violent protest, Companies A and C, 1/145th Infantry and Troop G of the 2/107th Armored Cavalry, Ohio ARNG, the units on the campus grounds, attempted to disperse the students. The legality of the dispersal was later debated at a subsequent wrongful death and injury trial. On appeal, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that authorities did indeed have the right to disperse the crowd.

The dispersal process began late in the morning with campus patrolman Harold Rice, riding in a Guard Jeep, approaching the students to read them an order to disperse or face arrest. The protesters responded by throwing rocks, forcing the Jeep to retreat.

Just before noon, the Guard returned and again ordered the crowd to disperse. When most of the crowd refused, the Guard used tear gas. Because of wind, the tear gas had little effect in dispersing the crowd, and some began a second rock attack with chants of "Pigs off campus!" The students lobbed the tear gas canisters back at the National Guardsmen; however, they had put on gas masks upon first throwing tear gas at the students.

When it was obvious the crowd was not going to disperse, a group of 77 National Guard troops from A Company and Troop G, with bayonets fixed on their weapons, began to advance upon the hundreds of protesters. As the guardsmen advanced, the protesters retreated up and over Blanket Hill, heading out of The Commons area. Once over the hill, the students, in a loose group, moved northeast along the front of Taylor Hall, with some continuing toward a parking lot in front of Prentice Hall (slightly northeast of and perpendicular to Taylor Hall). The guardsmen pursued the protesters over the hill, but rather than veering left as the protesters had, they continued straight, heading down toward an athletic practice field enclosed by a chain link fence. Here they remained for about ten minutes, unsure of how to get out of the area short of retracing their entrance path (an action some guardsmen considered might be viewed as a retreat). During this time, the bulk of the students congregated off to the left and front of the guardsmen, approximately 150ft,(50m) to 225ft,(75m) away, on the veranda of Taylor Hall. Others were scattered between Taylor Hall and the Prentice Hall parking lot, while still others, perhaps 35 or 40, were standing in the parking lot, or dispersing through the lot as they had been previously ordered.

While on the practice field, the guardsmen generally faced the parking lot which was about 100 yards away. At one point, some of the guardsmen knelt and aimed their weapons toward the parking lot, then stood up again. For a few moments, several guardsmen formed a loose huddle and appeared to be talking to one another. The guardsmen appeared to be unclear as to what to do next. They had cleared the protesters from the Commons area, and many students had left, but many stayed and were still angrily confronting the soldiers, some throwing rocks and tear gas canisters. At the end of about ten minutes, the guardsmen began to retrace their steps back up the hill toward the Commons area. Some of the students on the Taylor Hall veranda began to move slowly toward the soldiers as the latter passed over the top of the hill and headed back down into the Commons.

At this point, at 12:22 PM, a number of guardsmen at the top of the hill abruptly turned and fired their M1 Garand rifles at the students. The guardsmen directed their fire not at the closest students, who were on the Taylor Hall veranda, but at those on the grass area and concrete walkway below the veranda, at those on the service road between the veranda and the parking lot, and at those in the parking lot. Bullets were not sprayed in all directions; instead, they were confined to a fairly limited line of fire leading from the top of the hill to the parking lot. Not all the soldiers who fired their weapons directed their fire into the students. Some soldiers fired into the ground, while a few fired into the air. In all, 29 of the 77 guardsmen claimed to have fired their weapons, using a final total of 67 bullets. The shooting was determined to have lasted only 13 seconds, although a New York Times reporter stated that "it appeared to go on, as a solid volley, for perhaps a full minute or a little longer." The question of why the shots were fired remains widely debated.

The shootings killed four students and wounded nine. Two of the four students killed, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, had participated in the protest, and the other two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, had been walking from one class to the next at the time of their deaths. Schroeder was also a member of the campus ROTC chapter. Of those wounded, none was closer than 71 feet to the guardsmen. Of those killed, the nearest (Miller) was 265 feet away, and their average distance from the guardsmen was 345 feet.

 And who does this sound like?

During a press conference, Governor Rhodes called the protesters un-American and referred to the protesters as revolutionaries set on destroying higher education in Ohio. "They're worse than the brown shirts and the communist element and also the night riders and the vigilantes," Rhodes said. "They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

From 1969 - 1972 I was in Germany and remember the reactions of the Europeans to the brutality in the United States.  Yes indeed - the Iranians are doing what governments do when faced with determined unruly mass civil unrest even here in the "land of the free."

The Oligarchs Are Winning

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Health Care reform is threatened and if we don't see major health care reform the Obama presidency will be a failure.  Robert Reich has some advice:

Momentum for universal health care is slowing dramatically on Capitol Hill. Moderates are worried, Republicans are digging in, and the medical-industrial complex is firing up its lobbying and propaganda machine.

[.....]

If you want to save universal health care, you must do several things, and soon:

And what does he need to do?

1. Go to the nation

2. Be LBJ. So far, Lyndon Johnson has been the only president to defeat American Medical Association and the rest of the medical-industrial complex.

3.  Forget the Republicans. Forget bipartisanship.

4.  Insist on a real public option. It's the lynchpin of universal health care.

5. Demand that taxes be raised on the wealthy to ensure that all Americans get affordable health care.

6.  Put everything else on hold. As important as they are, your other agenda items -- financial reform, home mortgage mitigation, cap-and-trade legislation -- pale in significance relative to universal health care.

 

 And Ezra Klein also had some good advice - Listen to the polls.

 

The public option is considered important by 76% of Americans.  Without a public option any plan will be a failure and Obama and the Democrats will pay the price and the Oligarchs will win.