innovative same-old

The problem is, I'll never get a chance to have a one-on-one with the president. So this will have to do.

Bush orders cut in gasoline consumption

Specifics are vague, but rules to be in effect by end of '08
Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Jennifer Loven
ASSOCIATED PRESS

President Bush's announcement yesterday came as the average national price of a gallon of gas hit a record high, $3.07.

WASHINGTON - President Bush, prodded by a Supreme Court ruling, said yesterday that his administration will decide how to regulate pollution from new motor vehicles by the time he leaves office.

That sounds like every promise ever made by someone not wanting to commit to the situation. It sounds like "We must do lunch sometime." Uh-huh.

Bush signed an executive order directing federal agencies to craft regulations that will "cut gasoline consumption and greenhouse-gas emissions from motor vehicles." He ordered the agencies - the departments of Transportation, Agriculture and Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency - to have the rules in place by the end of 2008.

The announcement came as gasoline prices hit a new record. The average national price of a gallon of gas reached $3.07 yesterday, above the previous peak of $3.06 set soon after Hurricane Katrina hit at the end of August 2005.

"When it comes to energy and the environment, the American people expect common sense and they expect action," the president said at a news conference. "We're taking action by taking the first steps toward rules that will make our economy stronger, our environment cleaner and our nation more secure for generations to come."

I'm not sure the American people expect common sense. They allowed you to get into and remain in office despite sufficient suspicion that you got in by sneaking in a craftily cut side door.

And when you say "we're taking action, just who are the "we" you're referring to? I understand "we the people." Somehow I don't get the sense I, as one of the people, am included in your use of the word "we."

You say this will make "our" economy stronger. Who is included in your use of the word "our?" Your people? You? The wealthy and powerful? The economy in my state isn't so hot. Increasingly the food pantries are depleted. Increasingly the working poor don't have affordable health care insurance. Increasingly both parents have to work full-time and find day care for their children simply in order to live in their homes. So. Who's economy are you thinking will become stronger? Will whatever "rules" "your" people dream up bring jobs back to our state? Or will the increasing costs of cleaning up the environment drive the corporations to other countries where the costs of doing business are cheaper?

What those rules would be was unclear.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the president's position opposing mandatory emissions caps has not changed. While recognizing that greenhouse gases are a serious contributor to climate change, Bush has said that anything other than a voluntary approach would unduly harm the nation's economy.

Uh-huh. Voluntary. Every playground bully loves that. The biggest baddest bullies will continue bullying as long as there are people to bully.

"The question is: Do you try to set up a mandatory system or do you try to set up an innovation-based system?" Snow said. "The president prefers innovation."

The president has shown the world he prefers power, oil, profits, and books read in the upside down position.

But the Democratic-controlled Congress is considering a number of bills that would impose a cap on emissions of carbon dioxide, the leading gas linked to global warming, and a carbon trade system.

"It appears that the president wants to run out the clock to the end of his term without addressing our energy needs," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

I'll save my disappointment in the Democratic-controlled Congress for another time…

Last month, the Supreme Court declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and thus can be regulated by the EPA. The court also said that the "laundry list" of reasons the administration has given for declining to do so are insufficient, ruling that the EPA must regulate carbon dioxide if it finds that it endangers public health.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said a draft proposal should be ready by fall, and that it will include a finding on whether carbon dioxide is a health threat. He suggested there could be no regulation if no threat is found, or if the agency determines there is "some other reason and rational explanation for why it was not necessary to regulate."

It seems the EPA hasn't been doing a good job lately of EPing. Is it true funding has been reduced?

Bush said that, in writing any rules, agency officials must take into account the views of the general public, scientific knowledge, available technology, the cost and the effect the rules would have on safety.

Hmmm. Would that be the same innovative thinking used when he decided to invade Iraq?

A report this month from a United Nations network of more than 2,000 scientists estimates that the world must stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within eight years to keep global temperatures from spiking to disastrous levels.

The environmental group Environmental Defense said the effort "will fall far short of fixing the climate problem" without mandatory caps on carbon emissions.

Bush and administration officials said the process will take time because it is so complicated. Johnson indicated that, at the least, the new rules could implement the president's plan for reducing gas consumption by 20 percent over 10 years.

Simplifying our individual lifestyles isn't complicated, and eventually that's what it comes down to. What's complicated is for the big boys and girls to figure out how to maintain their stranglehold on our country and its economy…legally. Morally.

As announced in Bush's State of the Union address in January, this plan envisions increasing the country's use of alternative fuels to 35 billion gallons by 2017. It also would give the administration the ability to rewrite mileage rules for passenger cars.

Ohio's clean air fight

Air pollution
Smog
Asthma
…and so on.

Welcome to Ohio, I guess, which is not quite as bad as "Welcome to Texas," according to a dirty air chart printed in The Columbus Dispatch. We are ranked fourth in the nation overall, and second in the nation based on coal-powered emissions. Texas is ranked #1, as worst in both categories. Not that I need to talk about Texas, but given our political preferences, it doesn't hurt to bring up certain connections.

As I read the article and add it to the bookshelf in my brain of all the other articles I've read, it leaves me with more questions than answers.

"…heavy industry,…warns that new carbon limits could batter a state economy that never recovered from the 2001 recession."

As I understand things, heavy industry is "conservative", and the conservative money making policies have driven jobs out of our state and into other countries without it having anything to do with clean air.

So. Why can't we cut back on manufacturing? Have you seen all the crap that's sold in all the stores? Crap that nobody wants or needs but gets bought and given as birthday and Christmas presents, if nothing else? Crap that gets tossed out sooner rather than later? Plastic crap? How much of this stuff do we need?

Clothing. Granted most of it is made overseas, but just how many clothes do we need at one time, anyway? And why do we buy clothes and throw them out or give them away after only a couple of seasons? And why do we care what "they" are wearing in the first place?

What if we just lived simpler lives? What if we just stopped the consumer addiction? Can we both clean up the manufacturing process and just not manufacture so much stuff in the first place?

Steven Crisp, guest columnist

WTFO?


People who know me understand that Big Pharma is not on my Christmas list. I am not the type of person that gets too worked up (these days) about the various dramas going on out there in the real world, and that I believe tend to be over-sensationalized by our media (the OTHER group that's not getting a card from me).

But when I read this NY Times article this morning, I was taken aback.

The thrust of the story is that there is a legal rebate program, where drug companies pay doctors to use their products. But that wasn't the point of the story. The point was that in so doing, they might be using excessive dosages that are proving to be unsafe.

But wait a minute here. Can we back up the truck? Why is there a legal rebate program in the first place?

Federal laws bar drug companies from paying doctors to prescribe medicines that are given in pill form and purchased by patients from pharmacies. But companies can rebate part of the price that doctors pay for drugs, like the anemia medicines, which they dispense in their offices as part of treatment. The anemia drugs are injected or given intravenously in physicians’ offices or dialysis centers. Doctors receive the rebates after they buy the drugs from the companies. But they also receive reimbursement from Medicare or private insurers for the drugs, often at a markup over the doctors’ purchase price.

Medicare has changed its payment structure since 2003 to reduce the markup, but private insurers still often pay more. Combined with those insurance reimbursements, the rebates enable many doctors to profit substantially on the medicines they buy and then give to patients.

The rebates are related to the amount of drugs that doctors buy, and physicians that agree to use one company’s drugs exclusively typically receive higher rebates.

Does this make any sense? So apparently, we have the same thing going on in our hospitals and with Big Pharma, that we have in fast food restaurants and soda machines around the country -- negotiated prices for exclusive use of a specific brand (e.g., Coke vs Pepsi), and increased payments with larger usage patterns.

I don't know about you, but my hope/expectation was always to get the minimum amount of drugs pumped into me, and to have the selected drug reflect the best thinking of the medical community, and not be profit motivated or corporately incentivised.

Now I'm not that naive, and I have also always had some aversion to Western medicine in general for being too prescription-happy, and not holistic enough in concept. But to imagine there is a legal program that lets rebates be paid to doctors that provide financial incentive to select one drug brand over another, and to use more rather than less medication, strikes me as something of an outrage. Am I missing something here?

Dr. Peter Eisenberg, an oncologist in Marin County, Calif., said many doctors had been induced to use more epoetin by the financial incentives and the belief that the drug was helpful. “The deal was so good,” he said. “The indication was so clear and the downside was so small that docs just worked it into their practice easily. “Now it’s much scarier than that,” he said. “We could really be doing harm.”
Frankly, I'm saddened that the only way this is a reportable "story" is that there are harmful effects now being detected. The fundamental practice itself is just rife with conflict of interest. So where shall I place my blame for this -- FDA or Congress? Somewhere else? Let me know what you think.

(Oh, and the picture? Yes, that is a giant spider sculpture in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo, Japan, and yes, it is carrying "eggs", and yes, that is just about what I think of when I think of Big Pharma ;-)

Edward Pickersgill, guest columnist

That Far, Far Better Thing

by Edward Pickersgill, 9 May 2007

The old Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times" does appear to have been visited on us. It is uncanny how many of us seem to be sitting spellbound at the horror and the uncertainty -- almost afraid to open our mouths in case we do not make sense -- apparently awaiting an historic hero to step out of the woods to lead us to a profound victory of peace, justice and the enlightened way.

Charles Dickens wrote an eloquent version of that Chinese curse in the opening paragraph of his Tale of Two Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way."

It seems to me we are in one of those cusp moments.

Out in the shadows I'm sure there are some who believe a Fidel or a Mao or a George Washington will appear from the mountains or the far plains leading the way to an internal national regime change of a deeply systemic nature and the Good Ship America will be bathed in a soft glow as if caught in a Frank Capra closing scene. Out past the shadows in other countries there is not so much of the passive-aggressive audience approach to change.

In France there was an 86% turn out of the electorate and a right wing Hungarian is now President of that Republic. Sometimes the bizarre cross breeds with the surreal and we can see from whence an Edvard Munch might envision a Scream. If the 50% turn out in America's elections produces a President Bush what would an 86% turn out produce. Those electoral activists who work like Trojans to engage more people in the process may in fact be horrified that indeed it could be worse.

Surely the litmus test for each of is not what might happen when others speak or write or act. Surely the litmus test is whether we speak or write at all in the midst of these interesting times. How do we answer our children and their children when they ask what we said in the midst of those interesting times. What do we do when they ask to see copies of our statements or the positions we took in the midst of the madness.

Will we answer, "well youngster I joined a group and sort of stayed quiet in case someone noticed me and I lost my job and was unable to feed you." Or will we be able to say that we fell into the habit of being grateful somebody was willing to be Cindy Sheehan. Or will we lie as tens of millions have and boast that we were among the hundreds of thousands who were at Woodstock in 1969....

Reports are now on the record that the Nixon regime ordered National Guardsmen to fire live bullets into crowds of demonstrators at Kent State in 1970. Is the Bush regime capable of less deadly force than the Nixon regime? Is that what we're afraid of?

If we are afraid to speak up, to take positions, to argue our political case on behalf of future generations then there will never be any need for another Kent State. At least there will not be such a need inside America. "It was the best of time, it was the worst of times...." those words are impossible to read without getting a sense of one's personal adrenalin pump starting to hum. And what do we remember of the time when Dickens was writing those serialized novels?

I remember hearing that massive crowds of readers flocked to the New York harbour when the ship would arrive carrying the latest issue of the newspaper in which the next chapter could be found. What do we have today to rival that kind of cultural excitement. In our passive-aggressive culture we're more likely to be pinned to CNN breaking news as reporters speculate on whether the shadow in the doorway is Charles Dickens emerging with an envelope which will be taken on horseback to the publisher. And there would be widespread speculation on what he was wearing and whether he would just this once glance over at the cameras.

America, for better or for worse, is a nation that was formed by the energy of citizen activists. That season of activism may have been brief but it did occur. The spirit of that revolution may have been buried and ossified in the machinations of constitutional obfuscators but it did burn bright and hot long enough to cause a change. But what of now? What of our time?

When Charles Dickens (or Chuck as he'd be called by America's current President) drew his tale of two cities to a close he gave us another set of memorable words.... "It is a far, far better thing I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known." In the balance of competitive powers today -- between brutal regime, on one hand, and the people on the other -- the brutes count on people being unwilling to stake it all on waging active opposition.

What I suggest is that in this moment we will each be placing our words and our actions into a virtual time capsule which our grandchildren and their children will open in the hope we, their ancestors, were women and men of courage and determination -- who chose to do our own far, far better thing.