I never met Paul Wellstone, and never had the privilege to vote for him, but I admired him a great deal. He was a constant fighter for what he believed in, a tireless champion for those of us who could not fight for ourselves, and an inspiration. He literally restored my faith in elections in this country. Imagine, a liberal Democrat unseating a Republican in the middle of the Gulf War build up - and doing it from the back of a van. Voters still mattered, after all. For that, more than anything, I am grateful for his service.
People like Wellstone do not come along very often, and we are all poorer for his passing.
October 25th, 2002
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CNN.com - Senator, family killed in Minnesota plane crash - Oct. 25, 2002
God d*mn it, this is not fair:
Minnesota (CNN) — Democratic Sen. Paul Wellstone, his wife and a daughter died Friday in a small plane crash near Eveleth, Minnesota, Democratic sources said.
The sources said three staff members and two crew members also died in the crash.
Why the h*ll do we always lose the best amongst us when we need them the most?
My condolonces to the Wellstone family, and the familes and friends of the crew members who died.
October 25th, 2002
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There are no guarantees that studies paid for by drug compnaies are honest, accurate, or will even see the light of day:
•Researchers rarely were allowed a say in the design of the clinical trials, with only 10 percent of contracts covering how data is collected and monitored and only 5 percent covering how data is analyzed and interpreted.
•Less than 1 percent of contracts guaranteed that results would be published and that an independent committee would have control over that. But 40 percent of contracts addressed editorial control of manuscripts.
•Only 1 percent of contracts required an independent board to monitor patient safety. Such boards can stop a study early if the treatment is found to be harming participants.
This underlines the dangers of getting our health information from companies whose financial health depends on that information. Without oversight, without guarantees that the trials are going to be conducted properly, we have no guarantee that the information we see is accurate, or that we will get all the information to begin with.
At the very least, the FDA should insist on standards that correct the problems found in this report, and refuse to accept studies that do not follow them.
October 25th, 2002
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Daily Kos: Bush endorses McBride
Bill McBride, the Democratic nominee for governor, has bagged the biggest endorsement of his campaign: Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.
“He really is one of the great Floridians of our time,” Bush says of McBride — the same opponent the governor has been attacking as a “reckless corporate lawyer” in ads for months.
Bush’s high praise, videotaped for an awards ceremony at McBride’s former law firm in 1999, begins airing today statewide. The McBride campaign has made Bush’s remarks the centerpiece of a new TV ad challenging the governor for running attack ads against McBride.
“Does Jeb Bush believe his own negative ads? ” the McBride spot asks. “You be the judge.”
Whoever is running McBride’s campaign is very good. These ads are potentially devastating. It makes Bush’s campaign look like either a lie, or forces him to explain why McBride has changed so much in the last three years. Combined with the “devious” remarks, they go a long way to painting Bush as untrustworthy.
October 25th, 2002
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Tim form Road to Surfdom reminds us who the important names (stupid permalinks are down. Look for the post entitled “Shootings -Day its over) from the sniper case really are:
The second point I wanted to make was simply to remind us of those who were killed:
Go read the entire list, and the snippets about their lives Tim has collected.
Those are the people we should be remembering, not the killers.
October 25th, 2002
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After announcing that the war will begin in eight weeks, Hoagland goes on to say that Bush needs to make the case in clear terms. Since Hoagland likes Bush, he figured he would be nice and try and do it for him.
The article is pretty mush the same arguments that we have failed to be convinced by before, but I want to address something, briefly:
The removal of the Baathist regime should therefore be an act of humanitarian intervention, similar to military actions in Kosovo, Bosnia, East Timor and to some extent Afghanistan a year ago. Freeing a nation of hostages in this uniquely savage case is a realistic war aim. Achieving nirvana in Baghdad is not.
Aside from the fact that he seems to be implying its will be fine if we replace Saddam with a nicer dictator, there is the germ of a justification here - but only a germ. What Hoagland and everyone else who has suddenly discovered humanitarianism for Iraq (but not North Korea, see, because the potential death at the hands of Saddams secret police is much worse than the almost certain death by starvation combined with the potential death by North Korean secret police. Apparently, since you are probably going to starve to death in North Korea, the uncertainty is reduced, making your situation bearable. Or something. Look! Saddam is eating a puppy!) neglects to mention is an Invasions effect on the region.
The Kurds already have an autonomous state, and they are building themselves a free and open society. If we invade, what happens to them? Will their society be allowed to continue, or will it be surpressed? If it is supressed, how violently? How much suffering do we bring upon their heads? If we invade Iraq, and their is a backlash, how much worse does the inevitable suppresed make the lives of the people in Saudi Arabia? If American troops are tied down in Iraq, how can we prevent the countryside of Afghanistan from slipping into the control of warlords or the Taliban? If there is a coup in Pakistan or Qatar, how much worse have we made those lives?
The hawks do not address those questions. You cannot justify an invasion of Iraq on humanitarian grounds until you look at the humanitarian effects such an invasion would have on its neighbors. Until the hawks start doing that, I am afraid that I will have no choice but to believe their sudden concern for the people of Iraq is nothing but a cheap ploy to justify the unjustified.
October 25th, 2002
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This is not true:
One of the proudest achievements of the Clinton administration was the Agreed Framework with North Korea. Clinton assured us that it froze the North Korean nuclear program. North Korea gave us a piece of paper promising to freeze; we gave North Korea 500,000 tons of free oil every year and set about building — also for free — two huge $2 billion nuclear power plants that supposedly could be used only to produce electricity. Japan and South Korea were induced to give tons of foreign aid as well, Clinton being the committed multilateralist, even in extortion.
The promise, of course, was backed by inspections - inspections that George W. Bush waived! Clinton did not take the North Korean word, he “trust[ed], but verif[ied]”. Except, of course, that Bush decided not to verify. Now, we are reaping the rewards of that curious, and curiously un-remarked upon, act of appeasement by Bush.
Krauthammer knows this, of course, but why let the truth get in the way of a good screed?
Krauthammer’s point, such as it is, is that “power” is the only way to achieve anything in the international arena. Nonsense. With inspectors, it is very likely that North Korea would not have been able to get away with building its weapons, for example. The peace in Northern Ireland was brought about by diplomacy. Even if it is faltering, it has not collapsed, and the level of violence is drastically reduced. Krauthammer neglects to mention that while the talks were ongoing, Palestinian terrorism was greatly reduced. Krauthammer also forgets to mention that the Bush campaign was telling the Israelis not to ‘be prepared to walk out’ of negotiations, as it was not guaranteed to support a deal if it won.
Wars are almost always failures. There is almost always some other route that can lead to success. Not always, but almost always. Krauthammer ignores that reality, and instead wants to rush headlong into confrontation after confrontation, regardless of the situation, regardless of the cost. He wants to be tough, to project power. Reading this column is like reading the diary of a man with a giant inferiority complex. To rush to war, to kill innocents when there could be a better way, just to prove how tough you are is an act of supreme immorality.
There is no wisdom in Krauthammer’s piece. Just the same old, tired, repetitive nonsense that blood and death is the preferred first option.
October 25th, 2002
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Denver Post.com - Allard request raises eyebrows
This is why we need publicly financed campaigns. Even if Allard did nothing wrong, the situation certainly looks suspicious:
U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard pushed for a delay in accounting reform days after accepting campaign money from the three big accounting firms that fiercely opposed the new rules, federal records show.
In July 2000, more than two years before his re-election bid, the Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee took $3,000 in contributions from Arthur Andersen, KPMG and Deloitte & Touche. At the time, those companies were leading the fight to block proposed Securities and Exchange Commission rules restricting accounting firms from consulting for the same corporations they audit.
Such suspicions create impression of corruption, and in a democracy, the appearance of corruption and actual corruption are functionally the same. More, it is very hard to catch someone taking a bribe. It is almost always possible to have a reasonable explanation for a particular action. How can you tell when someone is being bribed, and when they are being rewarded for like minded actions?
Our electoral system is broken, and it needs radical surgery. Clean Campaign laws free candidates from pandering to special interests, from spending twenty hours out of twenty-four fundraising, broadens the pool of available candidates, and eliminate the appearance of corruption that Allard now demonstrates.
October 25th, 2002
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Not that this is a surprise, but a consultant for the EPA says that the new pollution rules Bush favors would add pollution:
Air pollution from oil refineries and factories would increase under new rules the Bush administration is preparing, according to two new studies by a consultant used by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The studies were released on the eve of a deadline today for the EPA to deliver to a Senate committee documents detailing the Bush administration’s proposed relaxation of former President Clinton’s controls for emissions.
The EPA, officially, disputes the findings, but cannot come up with any of its own (and why are they disputing the work of someone they hired?):
EPA spokesman Joe Martyak said the new studies are “too speculative and full of variables” to be conclusive. Bush administration and EPA officials have said there is no analysis showing how the new rules would affect emissions, yet they wouldn’t increase air pollution.
Notice that Bush’s contention that the new rules would not affect air pollution is backed by , umm, well, nothing. Unless campaign contributions count.
See, the last time I checked, though, campaign contributions were not considered science.
October 25th, 2002
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