Education: Where the Bar Ought to Be Bob Herbert, New York Times Deborah Kenny talks a lot about passion "” the passion for teaching, for reading and for learning. She has it. She wants all of her teachers to have it. Above all, she wants her students to have it.Bob Herbert Ms. Kenny has created three phenomenally successful charter schools in Harlem and is in the process of creating more. She's gotten a great deal of national attention. But for all the talk about improving schools in this country, she thinks we tend to miss the point more often than not.There is an overemphasis on "the program elements," she…
Tea Party Movement Will Flame Out Mark Schmitt, American Prospect Michele Bachmann speaks at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference. (Flickr/Gage Skidmore)As the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) overtook Washington this past week, the cheering for Dick Cheney, the sessions promoting "nullification" (the concept that states can opt out of federal laws, last heard from John C. Calhoun in the 1830s), and the angry rants about ACORN and homosexuality were a reminder that the idea that there is a "conservatism" that is measured, responsible, decent, and worthy of the word is a bit of a myth. As the…
Rumbling Over Rahm Emanuel Leslie Gelb, The Daily Beast Enter your email address:Enter the recipients' email addresses, separated by commas:Message: Alex Brandon / AP Photo Leslie H. Gelb's call for White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to be reassigned spurred a circle-the-wagons reaction from pro- (or perhaps even anti-) Rahm forces. Gelb sifts the fallout for clues. When you write that the president of the United States should replace his chief of staff, someone will fire back. So it was that Rahm Emanuel apparently struck back at my piece last week on The Daily Beast …
ACORN Changing Shape? Despite earlier reports that ACORN, the national coalition of community organizations that some conservatives love to hate, is effectively “dissolving as a national structure,” an ACORN spokesperson told The American Prospect that the national network “still exists.” —KA “TAPPED” in The American Prospect “It is not true that ACORN is closed for business all across the country. It still exists. Bertha Lewis is still the CEO,” Kevin Whelan told me. “It is true that we are shutting down operations in New York and there is this new New York Community organization,” he added, referring to New York Communities for Change, the group that has emerged in ACORN’s place. NYCC follows ACORN’s California chapter, which in January reformed as the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). Read more
Despite earlier reports that ACORN, the national coalition of community organizations that some conservatives love to hate, is effectively “dissolving as a national structure,” an ACORN spokesperson told The American Prospect that the national network “still exists.”? —KA
“TAPPED” in The American Prospect
“It is not true that ACORN is closed for business all across the country. It still exists. Bertha Lewis is still the CEO,” Kevin Whelan told me. “It is true that we are shutting down operations in New York and there is this new New York Community organization,” he added, referring to New York Communities for Change, the group that has emerged in ACORN’s place. NYCC follows ACORN’s California chapter, which in January reformed as the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE).
Epidemiologist Sees a Way to Curb Spread of HIV/AIDS Going after HIV with antiretroviral drugs as soon after infection as possible could significantly slow the spread of the virus, according to epidemiologist Brian Williams. One familiar challenge in implementing this strategy, however, lies in getting people to agree to be tested. —KA CNN: The concentration of the virus drops by a factor of 10,000 with antiretroviral treatment, resulting in 25 times the reduction of infectiousness, said Williams, formerly of the World Health Organization and now at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis. That means that if more people with HIV received this therapy early, there would be fewer new cases of the disease, he said Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “We could effectively stop transmission within five years,” Williams said. About 33 million people are living with HIV, according to 2008 estimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. That year, 2 million people died of AIDS and 2.7 became newly infected. Read more
Going after HIV with antiretroviral drugs as soon after infection as possible could significantly slow the spread of the virus, according to epidemiologist Brian Williams. One familiar challenge in implementing this strategy, however, lies in getting people to agree to be tested.? —KA
CNN:
The concentration of the virus drops by a factor of 10,000 with antiretroviral treatment, resulting in 25 times the reduction of infectiousness, said Williams, formerly of the World Health Organization and now at the South African Centre for Epidemiological Modelling and Analysis. That means that if more people with HIV received this therapy early, there would be fewer new cases of the disease, he said Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
“We could effectively stop transmission within five years,” Williams said.
About 33 million people are living with HIV, according to 2008 estimates by the World Health Organization and UNAIDS. That year, 2 million people died of AIDS and 2.7 became newly infected.
Schwarzenegger: GOP Health Care Stance Is ‘Bogus Talk’ While Republican leaders in Washington are urging President Barack Obama to start from scratch on a health care bill, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday…
Linking to a Newsweek.com blog post which stated that in his health care reform proposal, President Obama “went with the abortion language that the Senate had adopted,” The Fox Nation used the headline “Obama Keeps Abortion Funding in His Health Care Bill,” falsely suggesting that Obama’s plan exceeded what is currently allowed under the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of life endangerment, rape or incest.
From The Fox Nation, accessed February 22:
The Fox Nation headline linked to a February 22 Newsweek.com blog post which reported that “In his plan, Obama went with the abortion language that the Senate had adopted, which is less restrictive than the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.”
FACT: Senate bill prohibits health insurers from using federal subsidies “for the purposes of paying for” abortion services restricted by Hyde.
The Senate health care reform bill as passed states that if a “qualified health plan” offered under the health insurance exchange provides coverage of abortion services for which public funding is banned, “the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable” to the subsidies created under the bill “for purposes of paying for such services.” From Section 1303(b)(2)A):
”(2) PROHIBITION ON THE USE OF FEDERAL FUNDS.-
”(A) IN GENERAL.-If a qualified health plan provides coverage of services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i), the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to any of the following for purposes of paying for such services:
”(i) The credit under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 (and the amount (if any) of the advance payment of the credit under section 1412 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).
”(ii) Any cost-sharing reduction under section 1402 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (and the amount (if any) of the advance payment of the reduction under section 1412 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act).
FACT: Senate bill establishes a separate premium to segregate funds used to pay for abortions from federal funds
The Senate bill as passed further requires issuers to “collect from each enrollee” in plans that cover abortions “separate payment” for “an amount equal to the actuarial value of the coverage of” abortion services. This value must be at least $1 per enrollee, per month. All such funds are deposited into a separate account used by the issuer to pay for abortion services; federal funds and the remaining premium payments are used to pay for all other services.
FACT: Current law allows coverage for abortions restricted by Hyde under Medicaid through similar fund segregation
Seventeen states use state funds to cover abortions for Medicaid recipients in circumstances beyond Hyde. According to a November 1, 2009, study by the Guttmacher Institute, 17 states provide coverage under Medicaid for “all or most medically necessary abortions,” not just abortions in cases of life endangerment, rape, and incest. Those states “us[e] their own funds” — not federal funds — “to pay” for the procedures. Therefore, in 17 states, Medicaid, a federally subsidized health care program, covers abortions in circumstances in which federal money is prohibited from being spent on abortion.
Suspected Austin Pilot’s Past Racked By Tax Problems The California Franchise Tax Board suspended the licenses of two businesses owned by Joe Stack because of unpaid taxes or failure to submit returns, KCRA in Sacramento reports.
Infomercial King Sentenced To Jail For E-mail Bombing Judge The man dubbed the “infomercial king” by Chicago media, who has been in a cat-and-mouse game with the FTC for years — for allegedly making bogus claims about everything from weight loss to cures for debt, cancer, and heroin addiction — may be headed to jail after asking supporters to bombard a federal judge with e-mails.
The Tattlesnake – In Defense of Tiger Woods (Sort of) Edition The Abridged Tiger Woods Apology Speech, After a Quick Spray with the Truth Ray TIGER WOODS: “Hello to you all. I am here to publicly apologize for cheating on my wife Elin with other women. (Why am I apologizing to the public? I didn’t cheat on them. Oh, right, kids look up to me as […]
Strickland Retakes Lead in Ohio A new Quinnipiac poll finds Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D) now leads challenger John Kasich (R) in the his re-election race, 44% to 39%. In November, the race race deadlocked at 40%.
Said pollster Peter Brown: “John Kasich remains unknown to most voters. The campaign will be a race by the candidates to define Kasich for the 62 percent of voters who don’t know enough about him to have an opinion. Given that, the race’s closeness may say much about Strickland. While the Governor’s horserace numbers are good, he has a long way to go and what is keeping him ahead is his support among women.”
Steele Spending Spree Under Fire RNC Chairman Michael Steele “is spending twice as much as his recent predecessors on private planes and paying more for limousines, catering and flowers — expenses that are infuriating the party’s major donors who say Republicans need every penny they can get for the fight to win back Congress,” Politico reports.
FBI is looking into the possibility that a school district violated federal laws by remotely activating webcams on student computers while the computers were at home.
We need to think differently — to plan for victories that we may not live to see. And we need somebody to buy us a television network — and a commercial publishing house.
Some cities have been shortening yellow lights to nab drivers with a ticket. But studies show that they're raking in the bucks at the expense of public safety.
Woman With Breast Cancer Turns To Pasta Fundraisers To Finance Chemo After Insurers Deny Her Coverage One of the worst abuses of the private insurance industry is its practice of excluding people with certain pre-existing conditions from coverage, effectively denying them the right to get adequate health care coverage because covering them is not profitable enough. Iowan grandmother Deb Robben knows what life is like with a pre-existing condition. Four years ago, […]
One of the worst abuses of the private insurance industry is its practice of excluding people with certain pre-existing conditions from coverage, effectively denying them the right to get adequate health care coverage because covering them is not profitable enough.
Iowan grandmother Deb Robben knows what life is like with a pre-existing condition. Four years ago, she shopped the insurance market, looking for a company that would cover her. Unfortunately, after a lengthy search, she was unable to find a single insurer that was willing to offer her coverage; the companies denied her coverage because they considered the benign cysts in her breasts to be a pre-existing condition.
Last December, Robben was diagnosed with colon cancer. Because she has been unable to obtain insurance, she has had to pay the costs for treatment out-of-pocket. For chemotherapy treatment alone, Robben expects to pay almost $2,000 a month. “She’s only two months into chemo and already she’s at $50,000. Oh my, what is another four months going to bring,” says Melissa Gradischnig Nelson, a friend of Robben.
In desperation, Robben’s friends and family have turned to local fundraisers to try to pay for her treatment. Over the weekend, they held a $5-a-plate pasta dinner in the hope of putting “a dent” in Robben’s massive health care bills.
Local news station WHO-TV recently interviewed Robben, who told them, “It’s kind of hard when you can’t get insurance. To say, lady you’re going to die or figure out how to come up with the money. It’s not right.” Watch it:
As Think Progress has reported previously, women face especially high barriers to being approved for coverage by health insurers. The insurance industry has in the past refused to cover maternity care, disqualified women from coverage who’ve had a Caesarean-section pregnancy, and considered domestic abuse a pre-existing condition.
It is worth noting that the United States is the only developed country without a universal, cradle-to-the-grave health care system. Nowhere else in the industrialized world would a woman have to turn to holding pasta fundraisers to get the money to pay for her chemotherapy.
Congressional Black Caucus frustrated with jobs legislation As Congress focused almost exclusively on health care late last year, the Congressional Black Caucus loudly complained that rising unemployment among African Americans was not getting enough attention. To express that frustration, one bloc in the 43-member group briefly withheld its votes for a k…
Senate advances job-creation bill with GOP help Aided by a handful of Republicans, Senate Democratic leaders on Monday kept alive a $15 billion job-creation measure and are poised to pass the measure later this week.
Behind the Numbers: The public’s take on Obama’s health proposal Determined to push ahead on major reform of the country’s health-care system, the White House today stitched together a series of proposals that have broad, but often malleable, public support. Of course, many of these ideas were in the House and Senate packages that have divided Americans since …
Obama stays on offense with health-care proposal There had been rampant speculation that the White House would narrow its ambitions for health-care legislation after the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority last month. Instead, the president’s proposal is striking for the extent to which it hews to the basic scale and framework…
Najibullah Zazi pleads guilty in New York subway bomb plot An airport shuttle bus driver who plotted to detonate potent explosives in New York’s subway system pleaded guilty Monday for his role in a “martyrdom operation” that authorities called one of the most serious terrorism plots on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
Has the Golden State Gone Bust? Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle Leaders and would-be leaders from both major parties have raised the b-word in the past weeks, and the Golden State is frequently labeled as bankrupt by people nationwide.Federal law prohibits states from declaring bankruptcy and without a legal framework, assertions about California's solvency are left to interpretation. But persistent multibillion-dollar budget deficits, cash crises, tens of billions of dollars in debt and other obligations have blurred the legal distinction.”California is deeply in debt. You could say that it's bankrupt,” Attorney General – and…
Dutch to Leave Afghanistan One day after the Dutch Cabinet collapsed, the country’s prime minister has announced that he expects the Netherlands to pull out all its troops from Afghanistan in August. The Dutch parliament had voted for the August pullout last October. One Afghan official told the BBC that a withdrawal would leave a “big vacuum” in training, construction and security operations that the Dutch are involved in. —JCL The BBC: A day after his cabinet collapsed, the Dutch prime minister says he expects Dutch troops to end their mission in Afghanistan in August as expected. “If nothing else will take its place, then it ends,” Jan Peter Balkenende told Dutch television. The cabinet fell after the two largest parties failed to agree on a Nato request to extend the tour of the almost 2,000-strong Dutch contingent. A Nato spokesman said it would provide support to Afghans whatever happened. Read more
One day after the Dutch Cabinet collapsed, the country’s prime minister has announced that he expects the Netherlands to pull out all its troops from Afghanistan in August. The Dutch parliament had voted for the August pullout last October.
One Afghan official told the BBC that a withdrawal would leave a “big vacuum” in training, construction and security operations that the Dutch are involved in. —JCL
The BBC:
A day after his cabinet collapsed, the Dutch prime minister says he expects Dutch troops to end their mission in Afghanistan in August as expected.
“If nothing else will take its place, then it ends,” Jan Peter Balkenende told Dutch television.
The cabinet fell after the two largest parties failed to agree on a Nato request to extend the tour of the almost 2,000-strong Dutch contingent.
A Nato spokesman said it would provide support to Afghans whatever happened.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace allowed Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to criticize legislative reconciliation as arrogant without noting that McConnell has repeatedly supported the use of reconciliation in the past. McConnell voted in favor of the Bush tax cuts in 2003 and 2005 using reconciliation and supported reconciliation to pass legislation that would have allowed oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Wallace lets McConnell criticize reconciliation without noting his pro-reconciliation record
From the February 21 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: Let me ask you about another thing, because it certainly doesn’t seem to be headed that way because the White House and congressional Democrats are talking about using reconciliation. We should point out, it’s a parliamentary budget maneuver that has been used by other presidents, including George W. Bush, but it would be a way to get health care reform through the Senate with just 51 votes without using a filibuster. Your colleague, or your counterpart, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, talked about it. Here it is.
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV) : Reconciliation can be used for different purposes. We can write a whole new bill, OK? Or we can use reconciliation to pass the bill we’ve already passed.
WALLACE: What if they try that?
McCONNELL: Well, look, you know we’ve witnessed the Cornhusker kickback, the Louisiana purchase, the Gator aid — the special deal for Florida. Now they’re suggesting they might use a device which has never been used for this kind of major, systemic reform. We know it would be — the only thing bipartisan about would be the opposition to it, because a number of Democrats have said don’t do this, this is not the way to go. I think they’re having a hard time getting the message here. The American people do not want this bill to pass, and it strikes me as rather arrogant to say, “Well, we’re going to give it to you anyway. And we’ll use whatever device is available to achieve that end.”
FACT: McConnell supported Republican use of reconciliation to pass Bush tax cuts, oil drilling in ANWR
McConnell supported passage of 2003 tax cuts through reconciliation. While Wallace noted that reconciliation “has been used by other presidents, including George W. Bush,” in 2003, McConnell himself voted for the Senate version of the fiscal 2004 budget resolution that called for additional tax cuts to be considered under reconciliation and for the final version of the 2004 budget resolution. He also voted against an amendment to the Senate version of the budget resolution, proposed by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), that would have stripped reconciliation instructions from the resolution. He subsequently voted for the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003 itself. CBO estimated that the bill, as cleared by Congress, “would increase budget deficits … by $349.7 billion over the 2003-2013 period.”
McConnell supported passage of 2005 tax cuts through reconciliation. In 2005, McConnell voted for the final version of the fiscal 2005 budget resolution, which also called for tax cuts through reconciliation. He subsequently voted for the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 itself. CBO estimated that the bill, as cleared by Congress and signed by the president, would “reduce federal revenues … by $69.1 billion over the 2006-2015 period.”
McConnell supported use of reconciliation to pass measure that would have allowed oil drilling in ANWR. McConnell was one of 51 senators who voted against striking language allowing the reconciliation process to be used to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the 2006 budget resolution and voted for a reconciliation bill that, as originally introduced in and passed by the Senate, included a provision to open up the refuge to drilling. (The bill as enacted did not contain such a provision.)
Conyers Slams Authors Of Torture Memos, Announces Hearings In a statement this afternoon, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) says that the Justice Department torture memo report released today makes “plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear.”
Time for Another Party? Former Sen. Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), now running for governor in Rhode Island as an independent, writes in the New York Times that the country is ready for a third political party of centrists.
“It has happened before. In 1856, my former party ran a credible presidential campaign just two years after its founding. Four years later, Abraham Lincoln won the White House under that new Republican banner. If my friend Evan Bayh can walk away from the United States Senate and not look back, more power to him. But my guess is, he has a modern-day reprise of the Lincoln victory in mind.”
Wake Up, Progressives: The Right Is Ready to Rumble (Our Side, Not So Much) It’s easy to miss the threat of someone who’s misinformed, paranoid and more than a little crazy. But when that someone has oodles and oodles of dollars, organizing prowess, and private ownership of a significant book-publishing company and a television network, you’d better watch out. The fodder for ridicule provided by the weekend’s Conservative Political Action […]
A Thought On Evan Bayh And Partisan America digg_url = ‘http://digg.com/political_opinion/Robert_Reich_A_Thought_On_Evan_Bayh_And_Partisan_America_2′; Not long ago I was debating someone on television. I thought the discussion was going well until the commercial break when a producer said into my earpiece “be angrier.” “Why should I be angrier?” I asked…
Where the Power Elite Gets Its Power I’ve seen columnists obsessed; I’ve seen them rage or swoon over the objects of their obsessions. But nothing compares with New York Times columnist David Brooks’ love-hate fixation on Washington’s Ivy Leaguers. This morning, he wrings his hands over the…
Future Shock: Did Rahm Emanuel Create the Tea Partiers? Given current trends in the country, I can easily imagine “conspiracy theorists” (not me) in the future looking back in history at the Tea Party movement as having been a Rahm Emanuel creation. That would have been, in retrospect, sheer…
McConnell Tries To Insist The GOP Isn?t Obstructionist: ?It Is Simply Not True? Today on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to insist that his party has not been obstructionist. To prove his point, he quoted recent remarks by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV): McCONNELL: Look, in terms of whether or not we’re at a gridlock, I would like to […]
Today on Fox News Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) tried to insist that his party has not been obstructionist. To prove his point, he quoted recent remarks by President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV):
McCONNELL: Look, in terms of whether or not we’re at a gridlock, I would like to quote the President of the United States himself, who said just a couple of months ago, “If we stop today” — this is the President — “If we stop today, this legislative session would have been one of the most productive in a generation.”
My counterpart, the Democratic leader, just last month in the first half of the 111th Congress: “We made significant progress. It is a long list of accomplishments.” […]
MCCONNELL: [T]hey’re trying to spin the notion that we are stymieing everything they’re doing. It is simply not true based on the president’s own words.
He then insisted that all Republicans oppose are Democrats’ “partisan agenda to take over” health care and energy. However, when host Chris Wallace asked McConnell whether he personally believes that this Congress has truly been productive, McConnell dodged the question and bashed his Democratic counterparts:
WALLACE: [C]an you really say on the issues facing the country — the economy, health care, energy problems — that this Congress has been productive?
MCCONNELL: The president believes it has been.
WALLACE: I’m asking you, sir.
MCCONNELL: Well, look. I think they — on the — on some of the big issues they’ve tried to go in the wrong direction. And we’re not going to sign on to efforts to turn America into a western European country, which I think is the net result of something like the energy tax cap and trade bill and the health care bill.
Any progress Congress has made has been in spite of most Republican lawmakers, not because of them. Republicans in the Senate, led by McConnell, have “threatened to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation this session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented,” aggressively trying to block more than just major legislation on health care and energy. They have tried to hold up Obama’s well-qualified nominees for political reasons, voted against pay-as-you-go rules (despite Republican support for the measure in the past and the GOP’s supposed interest in fiscal responsibility), flip-flopped on support for a deficit commission, and whined when Reid scrapped a jobs bill that the GOP said would “not create one job.”
Of course, one of the most significant pieces of legislation was the Recovery Act. As Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise has written, “Any Congress that passed all these items separately would be considered enormously productive. Instead, this Congress did it in one bill.” But this legislation passed without any Republican support in the House and with just three Republicans in the Senate.
Transcript:
McCONNELL: Look, in terms of whether or not we’re at a gridlock, I would like to quote the President of the United States himself, who said just a couple of months ago, “If we stop today” — this is the President — “If we stop today, this legislative session would have been one of the most productive in a generation.”
My counterpart, the Democratic leader, just last month in the first half of the 111th Congress: “We made significant progress. It is a long list of accomplishments.”
They are trying to –
WALLACE: But you’re not suggesting –
MCCONNELL: No, look. Look, Chris –
WALLACE: — that people should be satisfied –
MCCONNELL: — they’re trying to spin the notion that we are stymieing everything they’re doing. It is simply not true based on the president’s own words.
Let me tell you what we do oppose. We oppose the government taking over one — the health care system, one-sixth of our economy. And we oppose a national energy tax commonly referred to around here as cap and trade. We think those are terrible ideas.
But my members were not sent here to do nothing, and the president knows that, and he has said it. We have accomplished much for the American people. It’s just that we are unwilling to approve their partisan agenda to take over health care and raise energy. […]
MCCONNELL: That’s just not true. I read the comment from the president about how productive this Congress has been. Senator Reid believes the Congress has been productive.
What we are not willing to cooperate in doing is passing this massive overhaul of health care and passing this massive energy tax.
Beyond that, there’s been a high level of cooperation, by the president’s own words and by Senator Reid’s own words, and we’ll continue to cooperate on those things that we think are in the best interests of the American people.
WALLACE: But, Senator — and I understand the point of quoting their words. I mean, can you really say — and I’m not saying you should take or sign up for the Democratic ideas, but can you really say on the issues facing the country — the economy, health care, energy problems — that this Congress has been productive?
MCCONNELL: The president believes it has been.
WALLACE: I’m asking you, sir.
MCCONNELL: Well, look. I think they — on the — on some of the big issues they’ve tried to go in the wrong direction. And we’re not going to sign on to efforts to turn America into a western European country, which I think is the net result of something like the energy tax cap and trade bill and the health care bill.
Pawlenty completes global warming flip-flop, calls cap and trade a ?disaster.? Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a potential candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, completed the reversal of his stance on global warming today on Meet the Press. When asked by NBC’s David Gregory if climate change is real, the former champion of strong climate action questioned “how much of it is man-made,” charging climate […]
Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a potential candidate for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, completed the reversal of his stance on global warming today on Meet the Press. When asked by NBC’s David Gregory if climate change is real, the former champion of strong climate action questioned “how much of it is man-made,” charging climate scientists with “data manipulation and controversy.” He then said a cap-and-trade system of market-based limits on global warming pollution would be a “disaster“:
The climate is obviously changing, David. The more interesting question is how much of it is man-made and how much is as a result of natural causes and patterns. Of course, we have seen data manipulation and controversy, or at least debate within the scientific community. . . . And the way you address it is we should all be in favor of reducing pollution. We need to do it in ways that don’t burden the economy. Cap and trade, I think, would be a disaster in that regard.
Watch it:
Pawlenty’s charge of “data manipulation” is based on the libelous claims of fossil-fueled conspiracy theorists. Like Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Pawlenty was one of the nation’s chief Republican champions of cap and trade until recently, but now is mimicking Sarah Palin instead. In 2007, Pawlenty supported a cap-and-trade system to reduce Minnesota’s global warming pollution by 80 percent by the year 2050. “Maybe we can lead them,” Pawlenty then said about Congress passing cap and trade, “or even shame them into action. It’ll become de facto national policy.”
Transcript:
GREGORY: Is climate change real?
PAWLENTY: The climate is obviously changing, David. The more interesting question is how much of it is man-made and how much is as a result of natural causes and patterns. Of course, we have seen data manipulation and controversy, or at least debate within the scientific community.
GREGORY: Three years ago you said anyone who questions it is not right.
PAWLENTY: There is no question the climate is changing. The more interesting question is how much of that is man-made versus natural causes. And the way you address it is we should all be in favor of reducing pollution. We need to do it in ways that don’t burden the economy. Cap and trade, I think, would be a disaster in that regard. The real breakthrough here is transformative technologies, moving forward with nuclear, moving forward with the technologies that will give us batteries to move forward with fuel cell technology or hybrid technology for battery-powered cars. We also need to have an appreciation for clean coal.
One of the worst abuses of the private insurance industry is its practice of excluding people with certain 
