Mead50's blog

I am a Republican by birth - everyone on both sides of the family is Republican, so I was brought up to be one as well. One of the things I was taught, and which I happily ascribed to, was that the Republican party was the party of higher fundamental principles.

I was also raised to believe that the Republicans had a keener sense of and interest in making sure means justified ends. With that in mind,: there was a time when I would have accepted the use of torture by our military and operatives as a necessary evil.

One of the things that has come out of the debate over interrogation policies over the past year is that real life isn't like an episode of 24  -  experts believe that torture is ineffective, because it produces bad information. Which means that we compromise our principles but yet achieve nothing by doing so. This has moved me firmly into the "no torture under any circumstances camp".

But while I was pondering efficacy, the discourse coming from the far right zoomed right past me. The Cheney wing of the party is promoting their willingness to torture as postive good - in their eyes, it proves that they are tougher and more zealous.

As summed up by Adam Sewer (h/t to Andrew Sullivan)

The New York Times reports that Liz Cheneys star is rising in the party of torture:

“Mr. President, in a ticking time-bomb scenario, with American lives at stake,” she said, “are you really unwilling to subject a terrorist to enhanced interrogation to get information that would prevent an attack?”

By speech’s end, the crowd was standing, and the former vice president’s daughter was being mobbed for photos and hounded to run for office.

For the GOP, torture is no longer a "necessary evil." It is a rally cry, a "values" issue like same-sex marriage or abortion. They don't "grudgingly" support torture, they applaud it. They celebrate it. Liz Cheney's unequivocal support for torture methods gleaned from communist China has people begging her to run for office.

At this point three-fourths of you have spotted the dreaded words "New York Times" and said "whew, thank god, I don't have to think about this, becasue I can just dismiss it as being liberal rubbish". 

Well, here are some tough words from two men you can't so easily dismiss: Former Marine commandant Charles Krulak and former Marine general Joseph Hoar, who succeeded Schwarzkopf at Central Command. Writing in the Miami Herald they say:

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

We have seen how ill-conceived policies that ignored military law on the treatment of enemy prisoners hindered our ability to defeat al Qaeda. We have seen American troops die at the hands of foreign fighters recruited with stories about tortured Muslim detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. And yet Cheney and others who orchestrated America's disastrous trip to ``the dark side'' continue to assert -- against all evidence -- that torture ``worked'' and that our country is better off for having gone there.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cheney applauded the ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' -- what we used to call ``war crimes'' because they violated the Geneva Conventions, which the United States instigated and has followed for 60 years. Cheney insisted the abusive techniques were ``absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States.'' He claimed they were ``directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States. It was good policy . . . It worked very, very well.''

Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

Torture is as likely to produce lies as the truth. And it did.

What leaders say matters. So when it comes to light, as it did recently, that U.S. interrogators staged mock executions and held a whirling electric drill close to the body of a naked, hooded detainee, and the former vice president winks and nods, it matters.

There is much, much more - please click on the above link and read for yourselves.

This site is supposed to be about rebuilding the right. Well, we have to choose - embrace the Cheney wing of the party, or embrace common sense and morality. Therefore, I propose we endorse the proposal for "moral clarity" on this matter that the two generals endorse:  in the future, the Army interrogation manual should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. government. And, despite what Dick and Liz say, waterboarding is torture.

From The Globe and Mail yesterday:

It is rare for Canada to get noticed in the United States. In fact, it is almost unprecedented for anything Canadian to be the focal point of debate in Washington. Yet we have seen just that in recent months during the congressional wrangling over U.S. President Barack Obama's attempts to reform health insurance.

Canada's medicare system has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight south of the border. It has been pilloried by the Republicans in Congress, the subject of derisive and distorted television advertisements, described variously as a system of medicine by bureaucrat, a statist form of health care afflicted by gross inequities and inefficiencies, one that pales in comparison to the U.S. model. The hysterical tone of the anti-medicare rhetoric among Republicans would make one think Canada is North Korea.

But there is an inconvenient truth that the Republican ideology cannot dispute. Canada's approach to providing citizens with universal health insurance is superior to the U.S. model of private insurance. When we get beyond the anti-medicare ideology and histrionics on Capitol Hill, we can establish this by reference to four basic numbers that give a good sense of our system versus the system in the United States.

Life expectancy is a basic measure of the quality of health care. In the U.S., a citizen will live 77.8 years on average. In Canada, you can expect to live two and a half years longer (80.4 years). Infant mortality is also a vital indicator of health care. In the United States, 6.37 infants die out of every 1,000. In Canada the number is 5.4 out of a 1,000.

But what about the cost differences of the two approaches to health care? Surely our Leviathan-like system, which produces such enviable results, must cost a fortune relative to the U.S. model.

The best measure of health care costs is the percentage a country spends relative to the size of its economy, or its gross domestic product (GDP). Canadians spend about 10 per cent of GDP on health. Americans spend 16 per cent to achieve inferior results on life expectancy and infant mortality.

Finally, it is estimated that there are somewhere around 40 million Americans – about 12 per cent of their population, well in excess of the total population of Canada – who have no medical insurance whatsoever. These unfortunate people are literally on their own in paying for any and all medical treatments they require. That gap in coverage is staggering, making the United States an outlier among all advanced Western nations.

One might ask how many uninsured citizens exist in Canada? The answer is zero – all Canadians are insured. In this country, good-quality, universally accessible medical care is regarded as a basic element of citizenship, kind of like owning a gun is in the U.S.

So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.

The New England Journal of Medicine reports the results of a survey of 2,000 doctors. The headline results:

• Support public option only = 9.6%
• Support public and private options = 62.9%
• Support private option only = 27.3%

That means 73.5% support the public option in one form or another.

Overall, a majority of physicians (62.9%) supported public and private option. Only 27.3% supported offering private options only. Respondents — across all demographic subgroups, specialties, practice locations, and practice types — showed majority support (>57.4%) for the inclusion of a public option. Primary care providers were the most likely to support a public option (65.2%); among the other specialty groups, the “other” physicians — those in fields that generally have less regular direct contact with patients, such as radiology, anesthesiology, and nuclear medicine — were the least likely to support a public option, though 57.4% did so. Physicians in every census region showed majority support for a public option, with percentages in favor ranging from 58.9% in the South to 69.7% in the Northeast. Practice owners were less likely than nonowners to support a public option (59.7% vs. 67.1%, P<0.001), but a majority still supported it. Finally, there was also majority support for a public option among AMA members (62.2%).

SC Gov Mark Sanford has publicly opposed the stimulus bill as the wrong solution. However, other Republican Govs want it to pass. The AP reports that Palin, Crist and Douglas (VT) are asking their delegations to vote for it. And Pawlenty, Jindal, and Barbour won't come out and support the bill but will clearly be happy to take the money.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a former member of the House, said he would accept the stimulus money but would have voted against the bill if he were still in Congress. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he wasn't sure whether he would accept the approximately $3 billion his state would be in line for.

"Yes, we need some help and we appreciate the help," Barbour said in an interview. "But I don't know about the details and the strings attached to tell you if I'll take all of it or not."

The most outspoken critic has been South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has warned for months of a steep spike in inflation and a severely weakened dollar if Obama's plan passed. His state is on track to receive $2.1 billion of the stimulus money; Sanford has not yet said whether he would accept it.

"It's incumbent on me as one of the nation's governors to speak out against what I believe is ultimately incredibly harmful to the economy, to taxpayers and to the worth of the U.S. dollar," Sanford said in an interview. "This plan is a huge mistake and is going to prolong and deepen this recession."

Sanford outlined his concerns in December when the then-president-elect met with governors in Philadelphia to discuss the stimulus proposal. Sanford said he had heard nothing from the White House since then.

Associates say Sanford, who recently was elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has been disappointed in how few of his GOP colleagues have joined him in speaking out against the size and scope of Obama's plan.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who is widely viewed as a potential presidential contender in 2012, said governors have little choice but to accept the relief being offered. "States have to balance their budgets," he said. "So if we're going to go down this path, we are entitled to ask for our share of the money."

But Pawlenty expressed reservations about the cost of the plan and its impact on the federal deficit, which has already grown to over $1 trillion.

"I'm quite concerned about the federal government spending money it doesn't have," Pawlenty said. "We're on an unsustainable path of deficit spending and borrowing."

I came to The Next Right becasue I am consumed with the question of what is the right thing to do vis a vis the economy, In my previous post I discussed a Republican economist who is in favor of the bill on the grounds that spending is more stimulative than tax cuts, and he has published his "with" and "without" stimulus scenarios to back up his claims. In otherwords, totally sticking his neck out. I haven't seen anything from the "tax cuts are always the solution" crowd to sway my opinion. Todays news pushes me further in that direction.

The default position of many on this site is that tax cuts are the answer - to every question. I don't agree - I think as Republicans we should be interested in fiscal responsability, in doing the right thing.

Mark Zandi has impeccable credentials. He is the Chief Economist and co-founder of Moody's Economy.com, an independent subsidiary of Moody's that provides economic research and consulting services to businesses, governments and other institutions. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.He is a republican, was an economic advisor to John McCain (link to his RNC page) and was a   maxed out contributor to McCain's presidential campaign.

He has written an 18 page document (warning: pdf) supporting the stimulus plan. I think we need to look at what he is saying.

Here is the part that really caught my eye: he is saying that in this situation, tax cuts are not the right answer.

Increased income support has been part of the federal response to most recessions, and for good reason: It is the most efficient way to prime the economy's pump. Simulations of the Moody’s Economy.com macroeconomic model show that every dollar spent on UI benefits generates an estimated $1.63 in near-term GDP.x Boosting food stamp payments by $1 increases GDP by $1.73 (see Table 2). People who receive these benefits are hard pressed and will spend any financial aid they receive very quickly.

This data is taken from his Table Two on page 9.

Bang for the Buck

Bang for the Buck = estimated one year $ change in GDP for a given $ reduction in federal tax revenue or increase in spending. 

Tax Cuts

• Non-refundable lump sum tax rebate     1.01
• Refundable lump sum tax rebate           1.22 

Temporary tax cuts

• Payroll tax holiday                                       1.28
• Across the board tax cut                           1.03
• Accelerated depreciation                        0.25

Permanent tax cuts

• End alternative minimum tax patch                                   0.49
• Make Bush income tax cuts permanent                           0.31
• Make dividend and capital gains tax cuts permanent    0.38
• Cut corporate tax rate                                                           0.30

Spending Increases

• Extending unemployment insurance benefits                1.63
• Temporary increase in food stamps                                1.73
• General aid to state governments                                     1.38
• Increased infrastructure spending                                    1.59