George Lakoff of the Rockridge Institute explains the difference between the conservative, progressive and neo-liberal approach to healthcare reform. Progressives should read and heed.

The Logic of the Health Care Debate

Senator Dodd has put a hold on the foreign intelligence surveillance bill that would retroactively immunize the telecoms for cooperating with the Bush administration in illegally wiretapping Americans' communications. If the hold is disregarded by the Democratic leadership, he is willing to filibuster the bill.

That's impressive, a Democrat that not only cares about the U.S. Constitution, but is willing to fight to preserve it. Clinton, Obama and others: Where are you? Here's a presidential candidate that is taking some real action, not just talking.

Via Daily Kos, the Houston Chronicle featured a story on October 2 recounting numerous accidents that have occurred in biological laboratories around the nation involving exposure by employes to extremely dangerous viruses and bacteria as well as the accidental release of dangerous organisms into the environment. As one would expect, the Bush administration has suppressed information about some of the most serious of the accidents on grounds of national security. According to the Chronicle:

American laboratories handling the world's deadliest germs and toxins have experienced more than 100 accidents and missing shipments since 2003, and the number is increasing as more labs do the work.

No one died, and regulators said the public was never at risk during these incidents. But the documented cases reflect poorly on procedures and oversight at high-security labs, some of which work with organisms and poisons that can cause illnesses with no cure. In some cases, labs have failed to report accidents as required by law.

The mishaps include workers bitten or scratched by infected animals, skin cuts, needle sticks and more, according to an Associated Press review of confidential reports submitted to federal regulators. They describe accidents involving anthrax, bird flu virus, monkeypox and plague-causing bacteria at 44 labs in 24 states. More than two dozen incidents were still under investigation.

The Federal Government is now deciding whether or not to relocate the biological facility on Plum Island to a site near Flora, and state officials are trampling each other in a lemming-like rush to convince the Department of Homeland Security to put it here.

According to the Government Accountability Office publication, High-Containment Biosafety Laboratories: Preliminary Observations on the Oversight of the Proliferation of BSL-3 and BSL-4 Laboratories in the United States, the risks created by such labs are significant:

According to the experts, there is a baseline risk associated with any high- containment. With expansion, the aggregate risks will increase. However, the associated safety and security risks will be greater for new labs with less experience. In addition, high-containment labs have health risks for individual lab workers as well as the surrounding community. According to a CDC official, the risks due to accidental exposure or release can never be completely eliminated, and even labs within sophisticated biological research programs—including those most extensively regulated—have had and will continue to have safety failures. In addition, while some of the most dangerous agents are regulated under the CDC-USDA’s Select Agent Program, many high-containment labs work with agents not covered under this program. Labs outside the Select Agent Program also pose risks, given that many unregulated agents can cause severe illness or even death (see appendix IV for a list of some agents, but not select agents, recommended to be worked on in high-containment labs). These labs also have associated risks because of their potential as targets for terrorism or theft from either external or internal sources. Even labs outside the Select Agent Program can pose security risks in that such labs represent a capability that can be paired with the necessary agents to become a threat. While the United States has regulations governing select agents, many nations do not have any regulations governing the transfer or possession of dangerous biological agents.

Putting the facility in Flora is a bad idea. We don't need dangerous microorganisms cultured and kept here. One nasty accident (and human beings and institutions are prone to accidents by their very nature) and we could be faced with a Katrina-sized health disaster. And we know by experience how much help Mississippi will be getting from the Bush administration (or any other Republican administration) if that disaster comes about. The facility should be located on an island away from the mainland U.S.

Houston Chronicle: Accidents rise at labs handling deadliest germs

Previous posts in the JPBlog:

What is a "National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility"?

Update: "National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility"?

Children can't vote. That's the beginning and end of it. Quit listening to what Republicans say and watch what they do.

Bush, Barbour, Cochran, and Lott can count the votes. That's all that matters to them.

Update 10/18/2007 20:02: The House of Representatives failed to override Bush's veto of the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act.

Rep. Bennie Thompson did the right thing and voted to override the veto.

Robo-republicans Wicker and Pickering predictably voted to sustain the veto, but amazingly Gene Taylor, a Democrat, also voted to sustain. How representatives from the poorest state in the U.S. can square their consciences voting for gigantic tax cuts for the rich and an illegal and costly war but not for the health of Mississippi's children is a mystery.

But children can't vote. That's all that matters to them. They apparently have no consciences to square.

It pains me to see highly educated economists shilling for industry when they know better. Case in point: Dr. William F. Shughart II, who holds the F.A.P. Barnard Distinguished Professor chair of Economics at the University of Mississippi, wrote a guest editorial in the October 1, 2007 Clarion- Ledger entitled "New taxes would cut oil production, harm small stockholders," wherein he wrote the following propositions:

1. Imposing additional taxes on the U.S. oil and gas industry undermines the goal of providing stable and cost-effective supplies of energy for consumers and discourages the enormous capital investments needed to meet the nation's growing energy demands. The House energy bill would reduce incentives to develop domestic energy resources and would discourage investment in new refinery capacity–thereby increasing our dependence on foreign suppliers.

2. We haven't built a new refinery since 1976, in part because of "not-in-my-backyard" attitudes and costly environmental regulations. As a result, U.S. oil refining capacity is nearly 4 million barrels a day below current consumer demand, a shortfall that must be met by importing petroleum products.

3. The absurd windfall profits tax on oil companies imposed during the Carter administration reduced U.S. oil production, cost thousands of jobs and let to an increase in imports.

The very heart of the argument for Capitalism is that the system rewards those who create wealth, as opposed to systems that merely siphon off wealth from the many for the benefit of the few. There is no other moral argument that justifies the enormous concentration of wealth and power that characterizes the modern capitalistic system.

The record profits reaped by Exxon, BP and the other major oil producers, however, have not come about through their own efforts (other than perhaps backing George W. Bush and his Iraq invasion), but through the increase in the price of oil. Speculative profits amount to a transfer of wealth from someone—in this case, the purchaser of petroleum products—to the speculator, who has created no wealth in return. Translated into simple terms, we pay more at the pump and Exxon makes higher profits without lifting a corporate finger. No capital investments are necessary, no sacrifice required. Just rake in the dough and contribute to friendly politicians who will let you keep that dough.

Keeping this in mind, we first examine points 1 and 3. I happened to work for a small independent oil company during the time that the windfall profits tax was in effect. The tax was an effort to recoup some of the windfall profits of oil producers when OPEC raised the price of oil in the late 1970s. The statute made a distinction between existing production (old oil) and production from newly-drilled wells (new oil). Only the old oil was subject to the windfall profits tax.

The result was an explosion of oil exploration in the U.S.A. During the early '80s the most valuable piece of property you could possibly own was an oil rig, because the demand for oil rigs was astronomical. The oil companies were spending money like drunken sailors and the wealth seemed inexhaustible.

Then it all went away.

Shughart indirectly blames the WFT for the collapse of the domestic oil industry in the early '80s, but that signal honor must go to Ronald Reagan, who cut a deal with the Saudis to increase production and lower the price of oil close to $10/bbl. All the independent oil producers went out of business in short order, including the company I worked for. It was good for the economy overall, but it made domestic exploration unprofitable. Thousands of producing wells were plugged and abandoned in the '80s. Oil at $10/bbl rendered the WFT irrelevant and inoperative. It expired by its own terms shortly thereafter. It had no effect whatever on exploration.

With respect to point 2, the investment argument, stark reality refutes Dr. Schughart. If it had been profitable to construct refineries, then the major oil companies would have been building them all along. They have never lacked the resources to do whatever they needed in that respect. The fact that they have not been building, are not now building, nor are they planning to build new refineries any time soon is a dramatic demonstration that they are satisfied with their capacity as it now stands. The environmental regulations that prevent them from operating unsafe and unhealthy workplaces and poisoning the groundwater and air are neither onerous nor unreasonable. In planning and operating new refineries they would merely have to pay costs that were formerly paid by their employes, their neighbors and the environment.

Most likely, the petroleum industry has not constructed new refineries because world oil production has either peaked or will soon peak, and thus additional refining capacity will never be needed. Considering the 5-10 years it takes to bring a refinery on-line from the planning stage, it would be insane to begin the process now, no matter how much money is available to invest.

Dr. Shugart's curriculum vitae reveals that he is an apologist for powerful corporations, with ties to the right-wing Heartland Institute, George Mason University, and a number of other pro-corporate organizations. The ideological threads that run through all these institutions are the sanctity of private property, corporate profits and the highly-managed and controlled industrial/financial system whose plutocratic nature is concealed by the term "market economy."

Always beware of economists that seek to justify the powerful acquiring more power and the wealthy acquiring more wealth.