MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: April 16, 2006

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April 21, 2006

San Diego school prohibits student from wearing flag

When Malia Fontana's friend was told that he could not wear an American flag headband at school, she protested by wearing an American flag in her back pocket. Malia was then told to remove her flag, and when she asked the security guard why she had to remove it, she was taken to the principal's office. Though not required to do detention, Malia had an incident report written that will remain in her records until six months after her graduation from Fallbrook Union High School in San Diego.

In 1969, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines School District, established the right of students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam war. Justice Abe Fortas, writing for the majority, said:

In our system, state-operated schools may not be enclaves of totalitarianism. School officials do not possess absolute authority over their students. Students in school as well as out of school are "persons" under our Constitution. They are possessed of fundamental rights which the State must respect, just as they themselves must respect their obligations to the State.

The Tinker decision applies to the situation at Fallbrook Union, and the ACLU has sent a letter to the San Diego County school district comply with the law, apologize to Malia and her mother, and clear Malia's school record.

Taking Global Warming Seriously

Over at TomPaine.com, Chris Mooney argues that the fallout from Hurricane Katrina might well act as the catalyst that gets everyone thinking seriously about how to prevent global warming. Here's hoping he's right. This bit was interesting, though:

Recently the attorneys general of several progressive-leaning states brought a lawsuit against a group of U.S. electric power companies, trying to hold them responsible for the current and future impacts of global warming on their respective states. The lawsuit has stalled, but it's just the opening salvo in what could be a flurry of global warming litigation. And as the impacts of climate change become more pronounced, plaintiffs should have an easier time gaining standing in court. "You can't be contributing to the destruction of the planet's climate with millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions and not be committing some kind of a tort," global warming litigator Matt Pawa told me last year. "It's just impossible."

That reminds me of the story of Tuvalu, a small island nation in the South Pacific that could literally get washed away and disappear completely if melting ice caps continue to raise the sea levels. Steven Milloy, a "CATO analyst," had a good chuckle over this bit of litigation in a Fox column last year. But who is Steven Milloy? Why, as Mooney himself reported for Mother Jones last year, he's a famous global warming "skeptic" who regularly receives money from Exxon for scoffing at the science behind climate change. So this post has come full circle—that's exciting.

What's So Great About STAR*D?

Treatment for depression costs the United States a staggering $83 billion each year. Part of this is due to the fact that the treatments themselves involve so much trial and error; there's very little reliable information out on the effectiveness of various drugs and forms of therapy.

So it's good news that today Slate is reporting on a new study called STAR*D, conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health, that compares and contrasts the twenty options for prescription antidepressants, their dosages, and even the effects of psychotherapy -- something no other study has ever done. For the 19 million Americans who suffer from depression, this is a major step forward. The pharmaceutical industry usually doesn't produce any comparative data on depression, a state of affairs that has previously left most patients and their doctors guessing which treatment will be the best fit.

Comparative, independent trials will also enable doctors to rely less on collected by the pharmaceutical industry. Mark Gibson, deputy director of the Center for Evidence-Based Policy at Oregon Health and Science University, adds that in regards to data provided by drug firms, "it's not unusual for less than 10 percent of studies to meet our standards of quality.” And according to Jerry Avorn, professor of medicine at Harvard, comparative studies could motivate drug companies to develop more advanced versions of current drugs, improving on what we already have.

April 20, 2006

Punishing Whistleblowers

Jason Vest has a profile in Government Executive about Torin Nelson, a military interrogator who was one of the whistleblowers alerting officials to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. And where is he now? Struggling to find contract work with the military. "They're saying there's no blacklisting policy, but there's clearly a blacklist." It sure seems that way. Here's what someone who does the right thing can look forward to these days:

All Nelson did was pass on what little he had heard and had been able to document. And as far as he was concerned, he'd already paid a fair price for doing the right thing. It was bad enough that word of his meeting with investigators leaked almost immediately at Abu Ghraib. The ostracization that followed was far from pleasant. Worse were the thinly veiled death threats that convinced even as formidable a man as Nelson that he had no choice but to flee not just Abu Ghraib, but Iraq.

Comparatively speaking, Nelson hasn't had the worst of it. Darby [the main whistleblower at Abu Ghraib] and his family, for example, had to be taken into protective custody after receiving death threats. After Provance [yet another whistleblower] spoke to the media about Abu Ghraib and the Fay investigation, his superiors ordered him to cease contact with the press, and subsequently suspended his security clearance, reassigned him and demoted him. Through the graces of Provance's home state senator, torture opponent Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Provance did address a congressional subcommittee on whistleblower protection in February.

Nelson, by the way, is now running for congress in Utah.

Shifting of Chairs in Iraq

I guess it's good news that Ibrahim al-Jaaferi is withdrawing his candidacy for another term as prime minister of Iraq. The Sunnis, Kurds, and the Bush administration all wanted him gone, and on the surface this seems like a) it will mollify some of the minorities in Iraq and hopefully be a step on the path to national reconciliation or whatever people are hoping for, and b) it points to the idea that the United States and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad still have leverage over Iraq and can put pressure on various parties for the better.

That's the surface view. On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that this solves much of anything in Iraq. The Kurds, reportedly, don't like Jaafari because they want a Shiite leader more committed to the breakup of the country into autonomous provinces—something that could create a lot of chaos down the road. The Sunnis presumably don't like Jaafari because he backs Shiite death squads, but his preferred replacement, Abdel Mahdi, is a member of SCIRI, the party running the death squads.

So it's hard to imagine that a change of face will alter any of the fundamental dynamics driving the ongoing civil war in Iraq, or that the U.S. can prevent a crack-up by engineering the ouster of this or that individual. Saleh al-Mutlak, a Sunni politician, recently said of the various Shiite candidates for prime minister, "All of them are the same. They are not qualified to run the country. But nobody listens to us." That's not a good sign.

Should the Sierra Club Endorse Chaffee?

Kos is pissed off at the Sierra Club for endorsing Lincoln Chaffee's re-election in Rhode Island, despite the Republican senator's "20 percent" environmental rating in 2004. (Presumably it was the local chapter, and not the national organization, that's endorsing him.) So here we go again; a rehash of the old NARAL-endorses-Chaffee debates. Should liberal interest groups support Republicans who are good for their causes, even at the expense of the Democratic party?

Let's just point out, first off, that I have no idea where that 20 percent rating that Kos cites comes from: the League of Conservation Voters gave Chaffee a 90 percent score in 2005 and a 72 percent score in 2004. He's quite good on environmental issues. More to the point, he's used his perch on the environmental committee to single-handedly hold up the Bush administration's Orwellian-titled Clear Skies Act, and has helped slow Rep. Richard Pombo's attacks on the Endangered Species Act. It's not necessarily an exaggeration to say that thanks to his rather unique position, Lincoln Chaffee has been able to do more for the environment than most Democrats.

Now granted, granted, the best thing for the environment—okay, at least marginally better than the status quo—would be for the Senate to go blue. And one way to do that is to unseat Lincoln Chaffee and replace him with a Democrat. If Sierra Club was thinking long-term, the argument goes, it would ignore Chaffee's record and endorse his opponent, no questions asked.

But here's the thing: The Sierra Club has no assurances whatsoever that the Senate will revert to Democratic control this fall. Many people doubt it will happen. And if the Senate does stay in Republican hands, then Chaffee becomes very, very important from an environmental standpoint—he can do more to stop the Bush administration's assault on green trees, happy fish, and breathable air than any freshman Democratic replacement ever could. That's undeniable. Bush and Pombo and the rest of the crew want to do some very bad things to Mother Nature; presumably the Sierra Club feels like this is no time to screw around and risk losing a key strategic ally in the Senate.

At any rate, given that in the future Republicans, evangelicals, and conservatives out West are likely to look more favorably on environmental issues, it also probably behooves the Sierra Club to start building cross-party ties—just as the NRA has done. Despite the fact that Republican control of Congress is obviously better for gun rights, the NRA still supports gun-toting Democrats; partly as a result, it's one of the most powerful interest groups out there. Perhaps there are counterarguments, but the Sierra Club (or it's local chapter, if that's who's making this call) isn't necessarily "moronic" to support Chaffee.

Business leaders join civil rights groups in lawsuit to stop wiretaps

A group of business leaders and civil rights organizations have joined together to support a lawsuit filed against George W. Bush to stop the Natonal Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping of citizens, according to Raw Story. The suit, filed in U.S. District court in the Eastern District of Michigan, seeks a declaration that the wiretapping is illegal, and seeks a permanent halt to the wiretapping program.

The American Civil Liberties Union is joined by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, United for Peace and Justice, and the Japanese Americans Citizens League in an amicus brief filed with the court.

In a separate brief, members of the business community accused the NSA of engaging in wholesale data mining and obstructing economic growth by damaging trust in democratic values. This group includes Michael Kieschnick, President, COO, and a co-founder of Working Assets Funding Service, Inc., Mal Warwick, founder and Chairman of Mal Warwick & Associates, Ronald Algrant, Senior Vice President of HarperCollins Publishers, Adam Kanzer of Domini Social Investments, Peter Strugatz, President of Strugatz Ventures, Inc., Joe Sibilia, President and CEO of Meadowbrook Lane Capital.

April 19, 2006

Rape Victims Denied Abortions in Mexico

Human Rights Watch has issued a new report, The Second Assault, outlining the harsh realities facing rape victims in Mexico. And they take place well after the actual rape. Despite the fact that abortions are technically legal in the case of rape in Mexico, women face a myriad of obstacles that usually thwart any attempt at a legal and safe abortion. According to Human Rights Watch:

A number of agencies in various Mexican states – particularly the state attorney general’s office, public hospitals and family services – employ aggressive tactics to discourage and delay rape victims’ access to legal abortion. A social worker in Jalisco, for example, showed scientifically inaccurate anti-abortion videos to a 13-year-old girl who had been raped and impregnated by a family member. Some public prosecutors threatened rape victims with jail for procuring a legal abortion, and many doctors told women and girls, without cause, that an abortion would kill them. As a result, many rape victims seek to resolve their situation by resorting to back-alley abortions that endanger their lives and health. Underage girls raped by their fathers or other family members often find themselves with no other alternative than to carry the imposed pregnancy to term.

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, adds "state laws on domestic and sexual violence fall significantly short of Mexico’s international human rights obligations. The definition of incest as voluntary sex is an insult to the thousands of girls who suffer abuse daily. No one, and least of all girls raped and impregnated by their fathers or brothers, should be forced to carry a pregnancy to term."

It’s estimated that approximately one million women are raped in Mexico each year. And it wasn’t until November, 2005, that the Mexican Supreme Court overturned a law that stated that rape in a married union was legal (so long as reproduction was the goal). Human Rights Watch couldn’t be more accurate in declaring that these victims are being assaulted twice—once by the rapist, and then by the public officials who deny them adequate rights.

Welcome to Rumsfeld's fantasyland

Last week, Donald Rumsfeld brushed off questions about Iran war-planning by saying that it's "just not useful to get into fantasyland." But as I note in this column for MotherJones.com, it's Rumsfeld who dwells in a fantasyland, based on what happened in the war on terror in Afghanistan and Iraq. Here's how he likely imagined the New York Times would write up his successes by now:

RUMSFELD'S TRIUMPH

Three years later, Iraq's success confounds critics, wins praise.
Stable, prosperous Iraq affirms new DOD strategy.

By Michael Gordon
News Analysis

WASHINGTON, April 19, 2006 - A little more than three years after the invasion of Iraq, which went forward amid a chorus of criticism, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is riding a new wave of respect and praise from both inside and outside the Pentagon. As the retired Mideast commander, Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the United States Central Command, said on Meet the Press recently, "You've got to admire him for sticking to his guns. Rumsfeld ignored the nay-sayers who said it couldn't be done his way, and he turned out to be right."

In Baghdad, Prime Minister Ahmed Chalabi presides over a national unity government where the once-fractious Sunni, Shia and Kurdish religious groups are working together in a prosperous post-Saddam Iraq, with oil production soaring more than 300% over pre-war levels. In fact, the war and reconstruction effort, which the then-White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsay famously speculated might cost as much as an astounding $200 billion, has largely been self-financed through Iraqi oil revenues since the bulk of U.S troops left in September, 2003. "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money," Mr. Rumsfeld's then-deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the World Bank president who won last year's Nobel Peace Prize for his work promoting democracy in the Mideast, presciently told Congress in 2003. And to the surprise of some Congressional critics who direly forecasted a Vietnam-style "quagmire," under Mr. Rumsfeld's direction the departing U.S. military left behind only a token force to offer support and technical assistance to a well-regarded 400,000-man Iraqi Army.

You can read more here, but Rumsfeld's failures are, surprisingly, still not given the full scrutiny they deserve as he and his retired military supporters go on the counter-attack against the six retired generals calling for his resignation. Unfortunately, the pro-Rumsfeld claqe is still promoting the myth, often unchallenged, that Rumsfeld treated military leaders fairly and heard their concerns in an open-minded way. Here's the claim made this past week-end by the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Meyers on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos program:

Myers bristled at the suggestion that top military leaders were not given an opportunity to express their opinion prior to the invasion, asserting, "We gave [Rumsfeld] our best military advice. ... If we don't do that, we should be shot." He added:
Myers repeatedly contested the recollections of the six generals who have spoken out against Rumsfeld. In press accounts, Newbold maintained that his pre-war criticism made Myers and others "uncomfortable." But on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," Myers rebutted, "That's not my memory of it; I never felt uncomfortable about anything Gen. [Gregory] Newbold said."

Adding that those in power were given ample opportunity to speak out, Myers challenged those still in uniform who have disagreements with potential policy to speak before the decision is final.

"If there are people ... who have not spoken out," Myers said, "shame on them."

When asked by Stephanopoulos whether such dissention in the ranks would likely lead to dismissal, Myers scoffed, "No, no. ... The senior military officers are not in it for promotion. They're in it to serve."

But Stephanopolus didn't press him on the numerous reports that Rumsfeld fought against recommendations for higher troop levels and barely laid a glove on him regarding Rumsfeld's dismissive treatment of Gen. Eric Shinseki for saying we needed "several hundred thousand" troops to occupy Iraq. Here's one exchange:

GENERAL RICHARD MEYERS:... But in the plan going in there, the best military judgment, the judgment we got from academia, from anybody that wanted to make inputs to include the National Security Council was that we had the right number of troops. And so you can always look back and say, should we had something different? I personally don't believe - we didn't want to turn Iraq into a police state. There's always this issue between liberation and occupation. And it's a very serious issue in that country and if you listen to General Abizaid even today he'll talk very seriously about that that issue. But this - let me just go back to General Shinseki for a minute. People - have misplayed his comments over and over. And it's just absolutely incorrect in context. He was forced to - say a number. He said a number. He was inappropriately criticized I believe for speaking out. But then he never in our meetings...
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS (ABC NEWS): [Off-camera] "So you don't think he still believes it would've taken several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq?"

GENERAL RICHARD MYERS (FORMER CHAIRMAN JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF): "I don't know - I don't know what he believes today."

What we do know is that on so many fronts, Rumsfeld ignored sound advice, an issue that a compliant media has permitted to go virtually unchallenged until very recently, while Rumsfeld allowed his fantasyland vision of the war to bring Iraq, the lives of our troops and any hopes for a stable Mideast to ruin.

Cross-posted at The Huffinton Post.

Colonel Accused of Corruption in Iraq

The Los Angeles Times has a story today about Kimberly D. Olson, an Air Force colonel now accused of using her high position in the Coalitional Provisional Authority in Iraq for financial gain (she's the highest-ranking officer to be accused of wrongdoing in connection with reconstruction):

One of the first female pilots in the Air Force, she was a hard-charger with an unblemished reputation for honesty, a high profile in the Pentagon and a commitment to the U.S. goal of creating a democracy in the Middle East.

Today, Olson is at the center of accusations of audacious impropriety in the corruption-plagued reconstruction of Iraq….

Pentagon investigators allege that while on active duty as one of the most powerful figures in Iraq, Olson established a U.S. branch of a South African security firm after helping it win more than $3 million in contracts to provide protection for senior U.S. and British officials, as well as for KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton Co.

Disgusting, I guess, although you sort of have to strain to find any meaningful difference between what Olson did and what passed for "business of usual" throughout the reconstruction. Basically, an American-run administration was installed in Iraq and tasked with privatizing the country's industries and handing off reconstruction contracts to whoever had the slickest and best-connected lobbyists. In early 2005, government watchdogs reported that $9 billion worth of reconstruction funds had somehow up and vanished. Without excusing Olson, the invasion created the perfect atmosphere for looting and corruption; stories like these are the inevitable result.

The Tax Credit Trap

Tax fraud by the poor amounts to some $9 billion a year. Corporations and the very wealthy, meanwhile, manage to avoid taxes to the tune of some $340 billion a year.

Nevertheless, the IRS spends a disproportionate amount of time and resources hunting down the former set of taxpayers—partly because they don't have high-priced lawyers to argue their case, and partly because it's just easier to determine fraud for the former group. A person claiming undue credits under the EITC isn't going to be resorting to fancy loopholes or ultra-complex financial schemes. In fact, the agency was recently found freezing tax refunds for hundreds of thousands of poor Americans deemed "fraudulent"—most of whom were owed all of the money they claimed.

But here's the thing. Part of the problem with low-income tax credits is that they're unreasonably complex, as Dorothy Brown pointed out in the New York Times yesterday. The EITC's instruction book runs to 50 pages, and even seasoned tax preparers often make mistakes calculating it. Nevertheless, low-income families are supposed to have this stuff down cold—and if they don't, they risk being labeled "fraudulent" and persecution by the IRS. (Another problem, Brown might've noted, is that a whopping 40 percent of low-income taxpayers have never even heard of the EITC.)

As Brown says, the entire system is perverse, and instead of wasting money prosecuting low-income workers, Congress could simplify the tax credit and spend its time going after the corporations robbing the country of $340 billion a year—an amount, keep in mind, that could essentially close the federal budget deficit. Not that the Republicans in Congress are planning anything of the sort, but still.

Donald Rumsfeld: Genius or Hero?

New at Mother Jones:

Art Levine tries to imagine what Donald Rumsfeld might have hoped Iraq would look like, three years after the invasion. Call it a personal fantasyland.

Michael Klare sees the Bush administration putting China in its strategic sights, and argues that containment of the country is "govern[ing] key decisions regarding the allocation of long-term resources."

And Rami G. Khouri wants to know how long the old, failed ways of thinking will persist in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

"All options are on the table."

Bush at his press conference yesterday:

Q Sir, when you talk about Iran, and you talk about how you have diplomatic efforts, you also say all options are on the table. Does that include the possibility of a nuclear strike? Is that something that your administration will plan for?

THE PRESIDENT: All options are on the table.

As Belle Waring observes, the déja vu surrounding this latest pounding of the war drums is utterly surreal; we already have the Weekly Standard ready to lock and load all the way to Tehran, the New Republic doing the spadework to support a potential attack, a requisite Mark Steyn column, and "moderate liberals" on TV saying that no options should be off the table. (And of course, there's Joe Lieberman.) It's absurd, it's ludicrous, and it's almost tempting to laugh—surely no one would take these people seriously again, would they?—but Bush sounds quite serious. In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq he stressed that he "had no war plans on [his] desk," despite the fact that this was a lie, and, as we now know, he had war on his mind all along. It would be a grave mistake not to think the worst this time around. Nothing is too ridiculous anymore.

Fred Kaplan has a good column today asking "Why not negotiate with Iran?," something we've been saying over and over. Not clear that there are clearer heads listening to this sort of thing, though (when Bush says "all options are on the table," that may include a potential nuclear strike, but it almost certainly doesn't include face-to-face negotiations with Iran); read Billmon on this.

McCain a Pro-Choicer? Please.

Scott Lemieux rips apart the conceit that John McCain is somehow a closet abortion rights activist who only plays a pro-lifer on TV. See, for instance, Jacob Weisberg in Slate, or Jon Chait in the New Republic. Among other things, McCain's liberal defenders want us to believe that despite a lifetime record in the Senate of voting against abortion rights—including a zero rating from NARAL in 2004—the "maverick" would somehow pull away the mask and reveal his liberal colors if he ever made it to the White House.

That's all very quaint, but come on. Look: In 2008 this country will elect a new president. Presumably sometime shortly thereafter the 86-year-old John Paul Stevens will retire from the Supreme Court. Replacing Stevens with a pro-life judge would provide the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Do we really think that as president John McCain, a man who voted without hesitation to confirm Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito despite serving in a pro-choice state—and a man who, as president, would be under unimaginable pressure from conservative interest groups and would need to satisfy "the base" to win re-election—would really nominate a pro-choice justice?

No, he wouldn't. Whatever McCain's "private" views might be, he will never be a pro-choicer when it counts. I can't even see the theoretical case for thinking otherwise.

April 18, 2006

U.S. Ignored Militia Warnings

Every now and again it's tempting to become "reasonable" and imagine that the Bush administration isn't quite so insular and close-minded and impervious to common sense as it's usually portrayed to be. But then comes along an article like this telling us that, no, it's all true:

U.S. officials were warned for more than two years that Shiite Muslim militias were infiltrating Iraq's security forces and taking control of neighborhoods, but they failed to take action to counteract it, Iraqi and American officials said….

"The American politicians couldn't understand the deepness and complications of the region," said Falah al-Nakib, the interior minister from June 2004 to April 2005, who said he raised the militia problem and the growing Iranian influence in Iraq with U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. "They didn't take us seriously."...

Senior officials dismissed the reports as "nay-saying" and "hand-wringing," said two former senior officials in Washington who were responsible for Iraq policy through most or all of that period and one top official who remains in government.

Any complaints that went against the steady drumbeat of triumphalism were waved aside. Sound familiar? (Maybe they figured the "biased" media was inflating the strength of the Badr Corps.) Granted, stopping the infiltration of Shiite militias was a difficult task in any case, but stories about senior officials ignoring steady streams of dire warnings about this or that have also become much too common to be chalked up to mere coincidence.

April 17, 2006

Will Nuclear Power Save Us?

Patrick Moore writes in the Washington Post over the weekend that the U.S. needs to start ramping up production of nuclear power plants if we ever want to reduce carbon emissions. And he's certainly not going to let a bunch of tree-hugging Naderites get in the way:

When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear.

….Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric. Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

Well, that's nice. But I want numbers first. How many power plants are we talking about? In 2004, Stephen Pascala and Robert Socolow argued in a much-discussed Science article that the world's carbon output will rise from about 7 billion tons today to 14 billion tons in 2054. In order to keep carbon concentrations under 500 ppm by mid-century, and avoid bad global warming scenarios, the world should be emitting only 7 billion tons of carbon by 2050.

Now in order to replace one billion tons of those emissions with nuclear energy, Pascala and Socolow estimate that the world would have to add an additional 700 GW in nuclear capacity, double what's produced at present by 440 reactors. So that means 880 new reactors, unless technology makes our plants much more efficient and the like. Since the United States is responsible for roughly a fourth of all carbon output, we'll say that the U.S. would need to build around 220 new nuclear reactors by 2050. Just to cut future emissions by a seventh.

(Keep in mind, too, that Pascala and Socolow are using only one set estimates of the carbon impact of nuclear power. That's totally valid, but opinions do differ. The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management in Britain, for instance, estimates that the total carbon footprint of nuclear power, once you factor in extraction, decommissioning, and waste storage, could be much greater than once believed. There's also a question of whether there's enough uranium around to power all those new plants; granted, that problem could be solved by building fast-breeder reactors, but those still have serious proliferation issues.)

How much would all those new reactors cost? A nuclear power plant currently being proposed in Calvert County, near Washington D.C., is estimated to cost $2.6 billion—and that's likely a low estimate (this new plant in South Carolina will cost "$4 to $6 billion"). The Department of Energy is chipping in $300 million for licensing costs, but critics already fear that the federal government will be forced to pick up cost overruns down the road. During debates over the energy bill, pro-nuclear Senators like Pete Domenici were proposing subsidies to pay for half of all nuclear construction costs, since private investors shy away from building reactors. A rough guess is that helping to fund 220 reactors would cost taxpayers $300-500 billion or more, at minimum. And that's not counting security and the like.

Now fine, if that's what it takes to avert global warming, that's what it takes. But there's also a question of opportunity costs. Every dollar spent building nuclear reactors is a dollar not spent funding other renewable energy sources. And that might be a poor trade-off. I'll quote British journalist Hannah Bullock:

The [British] government has done its sums and reckons that, by 2020 – the earliest time a new nuclear programme could come on stream – it’ll be cheaper to cut a tonne of carbon dioxide emissions through wind or combined heat and power (CHP) technologies – or simply through energy efficiency. These greener options could even have a negative net cost, the Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) worked out. But if an expensive new nuclear build programme draws investment away from the development of clean technologies like these, we could see higher, rather than lower, emissions in the medium term.

I don't know exactly what study Bullock's talking about here, but it's something to consider. The choice isn't just between building new nuclear reactors or keeping all our carbon-spewing coal plants in place, which is what David Roberts is getting at here.

At any rate, I wouldn't rule out nuclear power completely, but everything I've seen indicates that it could only ever be a very small yet fairly expensive part of a larger plan to reduce carbon emissions, and that the opportunity costs may be quite high. And that's without diving into the very real concerns about nuclear safety and disposal of radioactive materials—all areas that need real improvements, as this paper by Matthew Bunn of the Belfer Center summarizes in a non-shrill fashion.

Inside Cheney's Office

As Dick Cheney's approval ratings plummet to a mere 18%, the American Prospect investigates what makes the man who is only "a heartbeat away from the presidency" tick. But that's easier said than done when the VP and his staff are so secretive that they don't even maintain an employee directory. According to the Prospect, until the Valerie Plame leak, "outside the Washington cognoscenti, it's a safe bet that not one in a hundred Americans could name a single Cheney aide."

[Cheney's] press people seem shocked that a reporter would even ask for an interview with the staff. The blanket answer is no -- nobody is available. Amazingly, the vice president's office flatly refuses to even disclose who works there, or what their titles are. "We just don't give out that kind of information," says Jennifer Mayfield, another of Cheney's "angels." She won't say who is on staff, or what they do? No, she insists. "It's just not something we talk about."

Col. Larry Wilkerson, a former top aide to Colin Powell, portrays the vice president's office as the source of a zealous, almost messianic, approach to foreign affairs. "There were several remarkable things about the vice president's staff," he says.

One was how empowered they were, and one was how in sync they were. In fact, we used to say about both [Rumsfeld's office] and the vice president's office that they were going to win nine out of ten battles, because they are ruthless, because they have a strategy, and because they never, ever deviate from that strategy ... They make a decision, and they make it in secret, and they make in a different way than the rest of the bureaucracy makes it, and then suddenly foist it on the government -- and the rest of the government is all confused."

As the Bush administration considers an attack on Iran, Cheney's secretive office is likely again to be at the forefront of internal policy debates.

Boeing Story Hits the Post

The Washington Post reports today that a couple of whistle-blowers are making some rather serious allegations against Boeing:

The three whistle-blowers… contend that Boeing officials knew from their own audits about thousands of parts [for their planes] that did not meet specifications, allowed them to be installed and retaliated against people who raised questions. They say the parts, manufactured from 1994 to 2002, fit the Federal Aviation Administration's definition of "unapproved" because they lack documentation proving that they are airworthy. Moreover, they say, forcing a part into place could shorten its lifespan…

One reason the FAA chose not to pursue the whistle-blowers' claims, officials said, was that its engineers believed the parts in question would not present a safety risk even if they failed in flight. There has never been a crash caused by such a failure, the agency said.

But on a number of occasions, the agency has expressed concern about similar parts, albeit on the previous generation of 737s, which Boeing began phasing out in 1996. Last year, prompted by reports from some carriers of cracks, the FAA formally alerted U.S. air carriers that fly the older version of the 737 to inspect for possible fatigue cracks around such parts. Cracks in these areas, the FAA said, "could result in reduced structural integrity of the frames, possible loss of a cargo door, possible rapid decompression of the fuselage."

Got that? Boeing's outfitting its jets with unsafe parts, knows the parts are unsafe, and the FAA has expressed concern that planes with these parts could damage the airplanes. Except that no planes have ever crashed because of these faulty parts—yet, that is—so no one's too worried.

By the way, Mother Jones' own Sheila Kaplan broke much of this story half a year ago. See her October article, "Are Boeing's Big Jets Safe?", along with these two follow-ups.

New Abstinence-Only Guidelines

The Department of Health and Human Services has put forward new guidelines concerning grants for abstinence-only education programs. The guidelines specify that programs receiving funds must define abstinence as "voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage." Marriage, is also strictly defined as "a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife." Both statments send a very clear message that homosexuals should never engage in sex. Period. Because everyone should be abstinent until marriage and conveniently, the definition of marriage does not include gays.

Planned Parenthood says these new restrictions emerge "not from logic or evidence, but from extreme right-wing ideology."

Abstinence-only programs have been allocated $1 billion in federal funds since 1996. None of those dollars go towards providing any information about safe sex or birth-control methods, other than discussing their likelihood of failure. In 2004 Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), conducted a study examining the accuracy of abstinence-only school curriculums, and found that more than two-thirds of government-funded programs misinform students. Government-funded programs teach young people that a 43-day-old fetus is a "thinking person" and "in heterosexual sex, condoms fail to prevent HIV approximately 31 percent of the time."

According to Planned Parenthood, "sexually active teens have the highest rates for many STIs and the highest unintended pregnancy rates, and are estimated to account for nearly half of new HIV infections." Abstinence-only education does nothing to put these numbers in check.