Don't Kid Yourself. It's Still a Corporate Court. Here Are 10 Lessons From CEO Roberts

Posted: 06/28/2012 7:01 pm

Was today's ruling a victory for justice over corporate power? Did Chief Justice John Roberts rise above partisan differences a because that's where an honest reading of the law took him?

Nah. The majority on this Supreme Court is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America. Call it SCOTUS™ Inc., and it's brought to you by the same fine folks that gave you Citizens United and Bush v. Gore. John Roberts is its CEO, not its Chief Justice.

The point isn't to reinforce anybody's cynicism. The point is to act more effectively on behalf of our ideals, by seeing things as they really are. 

Roberts Rules

It was a shrewd move. Remember, as CEO of SCOTUS™ Inc., John Roberts is running the subsidiary of a large conglomerate. I've had that job myself, and trust me: you've got to please the parent or you're out of business. 

By casting the decisive vote (who knows whether it really was the deciding vote, or whether the right-wing majority made it look that way) Roberts acted in the best interests of corporate conservatism, for-profit healthcare companies, and - most importantly of all - of the far-right political force which is today's Republican Party.

He had three options: Strike down a signature piece of Democratic legislation in its entirety, which would look highly partisan; strike down the individual mandate, which would look even worse since it was a conservative Republican idea; or uphold the law in a way that's designed to do maximum political damage to the Democrats and protect the Court's current corporate status.

Weighing the Options

Striking down the law would have cost the Court immeasurably in what corporate accountants call "good will."It would have widened and deepened the common (and accurate) perception that this Court's majority acts in a partisan, ideological, and pro-corporate manner, regardless of the law. It would have polluted the Court's brand even further.

It also would have given new momentum to the single-payer movement, galvanized Democrats, alienated independents, and strengthened the argument against electing a Republican President who would provide more Justices in favor of Bush v. Gore type decisions.

What about striking down the individual mandate alone? The mandate has provided great rhetorical fodder for the right (we were among the few to predict it would, or to accurately predict the political impact of this law), so why deprive them of such a good political tool? It was never in the GOP's partisan interests to do that. It would have left the bill's most popular provisions intact, giving the Democrats a stronger bill to run on and weakening the GOP's case against it. 

Besides, it's a great boon for health insurers. I never believed the court would strike down the mandate and leave the law's other provisions standing. That would be an actuarial nightmare for the insurance industry. They'd never tolerate a move like that.

The Decision

By defending the law, Roberts made the right decision for Corporate America. He was also able to severely limit the Federal government's ability to regulate commerce, which I believe is a major setback in a number of legal areas that's likely to provide a lot of benefit to corporations in the years to come. Since I'm not an attorney, I'll leave that analysis to others. But I'm surprised that aspect of the ruling hasn't received more attention.

Stock prices in the for-profit hospital industry soared, rising 7 percent in heavy trading immediately after the Court ruling. Stocks for the nation's largest health insurers barely moved, despite what must have been some heavy pre-Court betting that the conservative majority would overturn the entire law. 

That tells us something important: Roberts' decision to side with the liberals and moderates didn't exactly create a revolution in our health care economy. 

Like the head of any subsidiary, Roberts made the choice that was best for his parent. Sure, he's taking some heat from the Right. Like any good executive, he's willing to take one for the team.

He may not be much of a Chief Justice, but John Roberts is a very good CEO.

Red Meat

By joining with the liberals, Roberts was able to write the ruling himself. He did it in a way which the other four disagreed with, but which was designed to provide talking points for Republicans and the Right. He labeled the mandate's penalty a "tax" (which it is; so is the so-called "Cadillac tax" on higher-cost health plans, which Obama campaigned against and then personally inserted into the bill).

That was red meat, and it was immediately gobbled up by the likes of Sarah Palin. "It is a tax," said Palin. "Obama lies; freedom dies." But Palin also "thanked God" for the ruling because she said it would fire up her base. "We did not want this tax," she said. "We can't afford this tax."

Democrats, take heed: That's the battle cry, and the battle plan, for November.

Roberts also used the occasion to savage Medicaid's expansion, by limiting the Federal government's ability to withhold funds for states which do not cooperate. This was apparently the result of some horse trading among the justices, but Roberts seized the opportunity for more incendiary conservative language. He called that kind of withdrawal "economic dragooning" on the part of the Federal government, which is more red-meat rhetoric for Republican campaigns to use in November. In the real world, this decision has precisely the opposite effect: It allows states to "dragoon" Federal funds without provide the full range of coverage for which those funds are intended. (Will that happen? George Zornick has more.)

In case the political nature of Roberts' language was not clear, he added: "It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices."

Who wants to argue that those words don't come from a partisan Court?

10 Lessons for the Battles to Come

There's a corporate war against the middle class and its financial security, with many battles yet to come. Will the left stop waging them from a defensive position? There are ten lessons to be learned from this ruling:

1. Declare victory where victory is real: Democrats should declare victory for the popular provisions of the law: no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, coverage for those who can't afford it, the extension of coverage for children to age 26. Wendell Potter offers a great example of how to "sell" this law to the American people. 

2. Don't BS the public: But Democrats would be foolish to oversell this law. In response to the ruling, the President said today that the Court has "reaffirmed a fundamental principle that here in America -- in the wealthiest nation on Earth - no illness or accident should lead to any family's financial ruin." That's the wrong approach for a number of reasons, one of which is that people still feel that they can't afford health care - and they're right.

A majority of those who declare bankruptcy due to medical expenses already have health insurance, and the protections in this law aren't enough to prevent that from happening. Premiums and out-of-pocket costs continue to rise for insured Americans. Health insurance costs rose more last year than they had in six years, to more than $15,000 for a family of four, and they've risen by 50 percent since 2003. Democrats should acknowledge these problems, discuss ways this law will help and, most importantly, promise to do more in the next term.

3. Pledge to strengthen the law: That means Democrats should promise to improve this law, not attempt to suggest it provides more than it does. They should frame the November elections as choice between "helping us do even more for the American people" or "Republicans gutting your health care today, while you're young, and tomorrow when you reach age 65."

4. Strike back at the "tax" message: Democrats have to forcefully explain that the law's penalties will only apply to a very small number of people before that the right's "we can't afford this tax" mantra takes hold in the public mind. It wouldn't hurt if they reminded people that the penalties are almost unenforceable, too.

5. Keep the pressure on: Independent progressives should press Democrats in Washington for better cost controls, and less corporate power over life-and-death decisions. There are some mild limits on profit-driven healthcare in this bill, but they're not enough. (As a former health insurance insider, I can also tell you that many of them are easily gamed.) 

Progressives inside and outside the Democratic Party should keep up the fight to protect health care from rapacious profit-seeking at the expense of the nation's physical and economic well-being.

6. Defend Medicare: The independent left should fight for Medicare - to protect it from the depredations of the Ryan/Romney voucher plan, and to demand that the President and his party defend its benefits without equivocation, waffling, or "deficit" talk. Protecting Medicare means going after the for-profit hospitals and other players in the system who are driving its costs sky-high.

That means that Democrats from Obama to Pelosi need to stop talking the austerity language of "Simpson Bowles," a plan which would cut both Social Security and Medicare, and stake a position as unequivocal fighters for the middle class and lower-income Americans.

7. Expand Medicare: The left should move toward Medicare-For-All, a position I was originally reluctant to take because I thought it was politically unfeasible. This process has made it clear that our system makes anything but Medicare-For-All, or at the minimum a public option plan, politically unfeasible.

That would mean a trillion-dollar change to our economy, so it won't be easy. But that needs to be the next goal. I'm with Bernie Sanders and John Nichols on this one. It'll take a while, but it's the right star to steer our ship by.

8. Medicaid is a core part of our values. Our decency, integrity, and stability as a society depends on our ability to ensure that no one dies, is disabled, or suffers needlessly because of economic hardship. Roberts' assault on Medicaid is a warning sign that this program is in danger.

Republicans want to gut Medicaid. Will Democrats stand up for it?

9. SCOTUS™ matters. Whatever disappointments you may have with Barack Obama - and I've had plenty of them - the next President could very well pick several more members of the Court. President Romney would choose judges who are willing to bend the law into a pretzel over and oner, just as Scalia, Thomas, and the others on the right have done, to serve the interests of the corporate class.

10. Don't forget about nutrition. Don't let them gut food programs that are essential to the health of our children. They need a balanced diet to make sure they become strong, healthy, productive adults.

And yes, a balanced diet includes broccoli.

Obama's Abortion Funding Plan

by Staff
March 19, 2012 

WASHINGTON, (christiansunite.com) -- This week while the House of Representatives was out of session, the Obama Administration confirmed its insidious plan for public funding for abortion coverage in Obamacare (PL 111-148) when it issued rules for Obamacare exchanges, complete with an abortion surcharge and a secrecy clause.

"The mass deception of the Obama 2010 Executive Order has finally been exposed," said Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), Co-chair of the Congressional Pro-life Caucus. "The Executive Order implemented the same accounting gimmick, abortion surcharge and secrecy clause that was in the original text of the bill.

"We knew it at the time, and the final exchange rule confirms once again that the President was suggesting one thing while doing precisely the opposite," said Smith.

This week's Obama abortion funding rule confirms that publically funded insurance plans WILL include abortion on demand. Using an accounting gimmick, the premium payers will pay the President's abortion surcharge of at least one dollar per month. This separate charge will go directly into an abortion fund.

"Requiring the segregation of funds into allocation accounts -- a mere bookkeeping exercise is a cheap political trick designed to circumvent longstanding prohibitions on taxpayer funding of abortion," said Smith. "This is an unprecedented break with longstanding federal policy on funding for abortion."

The rule also contains a secrecy clause specifying that the abortion surcharge cannot be itemized in marketing materials, and may "only" be disclosed "as a part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment."

"This secrecy clause requires insurance companies to bury the abortion surcharge in the summary of benefits so Americans shopping for an insurance plan on the exchange won't know about the abortion surcharge until they sign up for coverage -- and even then they could easily miss the fine print," said Smith. "Undoubtedly many enrollees will be shocked when they get a bill for the Obama abortion surcharge. Once enrolled, even pro-life Americans will be forced to pay for other people's abortions.

"There is NO abortion surcharge and there is NO secrecy clause in the Hyde amendment or in legislation I authored in 1983 (the Smith amendment) to prohibit abortion funding in the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program," said Smith. "Both of these longstanding policies explicitly prohibit coverage for abortion in the federal programs they cover, but President Obama refused to apply the same policy to Obamacare.

"That's why the House has passed THREE bills to overturn this attack on longstanding policies," Smith said. The three bills are as follows:

On January 19, 2011, the House passed H.R. 2, to repeal Obamacare by a bipartisan vote of 245-189. The President threatened a veto and the Senate defeated a similar provision by a partisan vote of 47-53.

On May 4, 2011, the House passed Smith's bill, H.R. 3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" by a bipartisan vote of 251-175. The President threatened a veto and the Senate has taken no action.

On October 13, 2011, the House passed H.R. 358, the "Protect Life Act" by a bipartisan vote of 251-172. The President threatened a veto and the Senate has taken no action.
"Recognizing the gravity of the accounting gimmicks, abortion surcharge and secrecy clause, 15 states have already passed laws to prohibit elective abortion coverage on their exchange," said Smith. The 15 states are: Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia.

"Abortion isn't health care," said Smith. "We live in an age of ultrasound imaging -- the ultimate window to the womb. We are in the midst of a fetal health care revolution, an explosion of benign innovative interventions designed to diagnose, treat and cure disease or illness any unborn child may be suffering. Obamacare should do them no harm. Tragically, it does the worst harm of all. It kills children and makes others complicit in abortion.

Will global warming melt Mitt's chances?

Ironically, Romney's lack of belief in global warming did not stop it from spurring the US economy in favour of Obama. Last Modified: 01 Jul 2012 17:21

Without a worsening economy, what will Mitt Romney use to elevate himself above Obama? [Reuters]

Washington, DC - On a hot summer day in DC it's hard to avoid such thoughts as global warming. Actually, the story is not that tens of millions of people across the country will suddenly realise that the rising temperature of the planet is real and reject a candidate who says that he will ignore it. The story is a bit more complicated. Governor Romney has made it clear that he intends to focus his campaign on the economy. He will point to the weakness of the economy and place the blame on President Obama. He argues that his background in business makes him better able to manage the economy. "Unfortunately, this pace did not reflect the underlying strength of the economy... it was driven in large part by unusually good weather in these months." Romney is betting that the economy will appear weak as election day rolls around, lending support to his argument. Several recent economic reports seem to support this view, most notably the weak job numbers for April and May. If the five remaining job reports are equally weak, President Obama will have a hard time making the case that the economy is on a sound path. This is where global warming comes in. One reason that Obama and the Democrats had been optimistic about their election prospects were a number of relatively strong economic reports for the winter months. The economy generated more than 250,000 jobs a month in the period from November through February. While even this rate is not much cause for celebration in an economy that is down ten million jobs, it was the best three-month performance since the recovery began. In-depth coverage of the US presidential election Unfortunately, this pace did not reflect the underlying strength of the economy. It was driven in large part by unusually good weather in these months. Ordinarily, snow and cold weather in the Midwest and Northeast would shut construction sites and prevent projects from getting started until spring. That didn't happen this winter, since there were major snowstorms and no stretches of sub-zero weather. Bad weather also discourages people from looking for houses and cars and doing other types of shopping. As a result, house and car sales were stronger than would have been the case in a normal winter. Also, stores and restaurants saw more business in the winter months than would ordinarily be the case, leading them to hire more workers. Global warming vs Romney But the boost to the economy from the weather in the winter goes the opposite way in the spring. If construction projects were able to operate through the winter, then they will not be hiring people in the spring. Similarly, if people bought houses and cars in the relatively warm winter months, then they will not go out and buy another house or car in the spring. In effect, the spring data will look weak because the winter data were strong. That is largely what we are seeing in the weak reports that the government has issued in the past couple of months. In effect, the stronger than trend growth in the winter was borrowed from the spring, making its growth weaker than trend. "There would be some real poetic justice in this story insofar as Romney's error stemmed from a failure to recognise the economic impact of a winter that was artifiially heated by global warming." What does this mean as we get to the summer and autumn? Well, the growth path will return to its trend. That's not a great story, but rather than seeing job growth along the lines of a 73,000 average boost for the past two months, we are more likely to see job growth at close to its 170,000 average increase of the past six months. Some of the most recent data are consistent with this sort of job growth. For example, the weekly pace of jobless claims has been around 380,000. This is up from the rate of 360,000 in the winter, but still lower than at any prior point in the recovery. This increase in jobless claims is certainly consistent with a drop in the pace of employment growth from 250,000 to 170,000. The recent housing data has also been consistent with a modest improvement in the economy in the months ahead. The May data on existing home sales (which reflect contracts signed on houses in March and April) was 9.5 per cent above its year-ago levels. Building permits for single family homes in May were at their highest level since an uptick at the start of 2010, due to the first-time homebuyers' tax credit. Prices also appear to be on the rise. There are enough other blips of data to suggest that the economy will likely be bouncing back from its spring slowdown. It won't be earth-shaking growth, but it won't be quite the limping economy that the April and May data implied. This means that if Romney is banking his election on being able to point to Obama's weak economy, he is likely to be out of luck. There would be some real poetic justice in this story insofar as Romney's error stemmed from a failure to recognise the economic impact of a winter that was artificially heated by global warming. Dean Baker is co-director of the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, based in Washington, DC. He is the author of several books, including Plunder & Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer, The United States Since 1980 and The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Congress’ Tortured Math
June 29, 2012

pdf version

The just-passed MAP-21 (transportation omnibus) is paid for! It reduces the debt over 10 years!

By $16.3 billion, if CBO is to be believed.

Let’s look at the tortured math…

First, the $16.3 billion includes $11.2 billion in increased premiums from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation – which is itself $26 billion in debt!

But for arguments sake, let’s leave that aside for a second.

This bill reduces the debt by $16.3 billion only if you don’t include the $18.8 billion transfer from the Treasury to the Highway Trust Fund! Or the transfer of $2.4 billion from the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Fund to the Highway Trust Fund!

So, here’s how the Senate math works:

1. Add up the revenue (from things like changes to pensions) and subtract out the expenses (for things like Secure Rural Schools and Payment in Lieu of Taxes) = $16.3 billion in deficit reduction
   
   
2. Ignore the $18.8 billion transfer from the Treasury (because, in Congressional parlance that nobody in the real world could possible understand, it would not increase “direct spending”, duh!, so it doesn’t count) and the $2.4 billion transfer from LUST. In fact, you can see how the Senate treats both provisions (“This provision does not have a budgetary effect.”) in the Senate Finance summary.
   
   
3. Result? $16.3 billion in debt reduction!!!!! (see how easy that was?)

The House math is a little different, because their budget rules treat the HTF differently:

1. Add up the revenue (from things like changes to pensions) and subtract out the expenses (for things like Secure Rural Schools and Payment in Lieu of Taxes) = $16.3 billion in deficit reduction
   
   
2. Unlike the Senate, the House rules don’t let them ignore the $18.8 billion transfer from Treasury (but they are still allowed to ignore the LUST transfer).
   
   
3. Result? $2.5 billion in deficit spending. Well, that’s no good, what shall we do?
   
   
4. Count the $2.7 billion in revenue increases from the National Flood Insurance Program, despite that CBO itself concluded: “However, because many policies would continue to be subsidized and the program would continue to face significant interest costs from its prior and future borrowing, CBO expects that additional receipts collected under this legislation would be spent to cover future program shortfalls, resulting in no net effect on the budget over the 11-year period.”
    
5. Result? $200 million in debt reduction (see how easy that was?)

This is the same bad math that would sink any small business, bankrupt any taxpayer, and that got us into the fiscal mess we currently find ourselves. But Congress was unashamed passing this bill and claiming it would reduce the deficit.

Let’s do the math as we see it:

1. Start with the $16.3 billion in deficit reduction the CBO found. Looking good so far!
   
   
2. But we need to subtract the $11.2 billion increase in pension premiums, right? Since the PBGC is $26 billion in debt and any premium increase should go toward that. Result = $5.1 billion in deficit reduction. Not great, but still in the black!
   
   
3. But don’t forget the $18.8 billion transfer! For our purposes, we’ll count that as real spending, because it is. Result = $13.7 billion in deficit spending. Uh oh.
   
   
4. But what about the money from the flood insurance reforms? Yeah, we won’t be counting that. We’ll leave that to settle the debt the National Flood Insurance Program owes the Treasury. Result = still $13.7 billion in deficit spending. D’oh.
   
   
5. Should we add the $2.4 billion LUST Transfer, which would only make the deficit spending figure even worse? Some would, some wouldn’t. But either way, it doesn’t really matter.
   
6. The simple facts are that: Result: MAP-21 is a terrible bill for taxpayers.

Quick Version of Congress' Tortured Math
	Senate Math	House Math	Real Math	Explanation
CBO Number	$16.30	$16.30	$16.30	CBO Calculated net Treasury revenue
PBGC Premiums			($11.20)	Increased revenue, but should be applied to PBGCs $26B debt
Total, New net revenues	$16.30	$16.30	$5.10
Treasury Xfer to HTF	nope	($18.80)	($18.80)	Straight transfer, Senate rules don't count it as deficit spending
Total, revenues after xfer	$16.30	($2.50)	($13.70)
Flood Insurance	$0.00	$2.70	nope	Bill increases premiums, but should be applied to the flood insurance program's debt
Total, alleged deficit reduction/spending	$16.30	$0.20	($13.70)

Hr4348conference Cbo Report

The following is a written statement of Ms. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, on H.R. 4348, the transportation reauthorization conference report
(aka Transportation Omnibus)

pdf version

Washington, DC - We are deeply disappointed that Congress has chosen the easy way out in funding transportation reauthorization. By initiating another massive Treasury bailout of the transportation program, Congress fails to face head-on the acute funding challenges the nation’s transportation program faces. Congress relies on a transfer of nearly $19 billion from the Treasury to pay for increased transportation spending, on the heels of $34.5 billion in transfers since 2008. Stealing from Peter to pay Paul is irresponsibility at its very worst, especially when Peter – the Treasury – is already broke.

To offset the costs of the Treasury larceny, lawmakers rely on a variety of budgetary smoke and mirrors.

For example, this bill contains two major changes to private and federal pension systems: an increase in premiums to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and so-called “pension smoothing.” Increased premiums for the PBGC are welcome to protect taxpayers from the prospect of a future federal bailout. Ironically, however, the pension smoothing provisions – which will reduce private corporate pension contributions in the near term – will have just the opposite effect, exposing the PBGC to potentially greater future liabilities, and therefore exposing taxpayers to greater risk. In addition, using increased revenues for the PBGC – which is itself $26 billion in debt – as justification for increased spending in transportation is ludicrous at best.

Even worse, it will take 10 years of increased revenues from these changes to the pension system to pay for just 26 months of transportation spending. That bears repeating: 10 years of revenues will pay for just two years of transportation.

We are deeply concerned that continuing current funding levels under the 9-time extended SAFETEA-LU transportation legislation is pushing the Highway Trust Fund toward insolvency. However, the reauthorization Congress is considering takes the country to the same place the current path would: a taxpayer bailout of the Highway Trust Fund. Congress has not cut spending nor increased user-based revenues to pay for this bill or ensured the sustainability of the transportation program. Congress has simply increased spending and used budget gimmicks to convince itself this spending is ‘paid for.’ When this bill expires in 2014, the transportation program will be in even worse condition. The highway and mass transit trust funds within the HTF will be nearly broke, and the pay-fors that ‘funded’ this bill will not be available for the next bill.

In addition to the funding challenges this bill faces, Congress has also made a Christmas tree out of this legislation by attaching to it a flood insurance reform bill, student loan rate reduction, and other unrelated provisions.

While Taxpayers for Common Sense has fought for flood insurance reforms for several years and actually supports the package included in the transportation omnibus, the legislation should be debated on its own merits. Flood insurance reform hasn’t even been considered by the full Senate. If it had, leadership might not have had to jettison a key reform requiring purchase of flood insurance in areas that, while behind a levee, still retain significant flood risk for property owners. This provision would have lowered rates for many policyholders and provided protection for taxpayers and millions of Americans in harm’s way. Instead, shortsighted parochial politics and members’ desires to get home for the July 4^th holiday won out.

Finally, whether it is unemployment insurance extensions, payroll tax holiday, or in this case, student loan rate reduction, the scattered stop-gap economic measures have to come to a final resolution. Continued extension of short-term fixes eventually creates an expectation of permanence. We urge Congress and the Administration to come up with final agreements on how to deal with these “temporary” issues instead of waiting for the crush of expiration and making the decision with a finger in the political winds.

For all of these reasons, Taxpayers for Common Sense opposes the transportation omnibus in its current form. The different legislation crammed into the omnibus merit independent consideration. Furthermore, Congress must face head on the challenge of appropriately funding the nation’s transportation program, and must do so in a manner that preserves the user-pays principle. It has been obvious for many years that the current gasoline tax is not enough to meet the desire of Congress to spend on transportation. But this bill takes the easy way out, and fails to take the difficult steps that would help put our transportation program on sound fiscal footing into the future.

Millions Swelter Without Power

Violent Wind Phenomenon Strafes 600-Mile Stretch of Mid-Atlantic Region; Outages May Last for Days

Updated July 1, 2012, 11:29 p.m. ET

By DOUGLAS BELKIN, DANIEL LIPPMAN and JESSICA HOLZER

 
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

A crew clears a downed tree in Washington, DC., on Sunday.

SPRINGFIELD, Va.—Utility crews from around the country scrambled to the mid-Atlantic region Sunday to clear debris and help restore power in the aftermath of severe windstorms that swept in from the Midwest, leaving millions of customers without electricity as record-setting temperatures baked the nation.
Officials across the 600-mile swath of storm destruction estimate the cleanup may take days, and said full power probably won't be returned to some customers before the end of the week, making for a sweaty July 4th holiday for those without air conditioning.
On Friday, a small cluster of thunderstorms in northern Indiana sparked a violent weather phenomenon called a "derecho" that escalated to become a 300-mile band that tracked quickly all the way to Washington, D.C., and then out to the Atlantic.
The system, sometimes called a ring of fire for its destructive capacity, was fed by the difference in air temperatures on either side of a weather seam. It generated winds as high as 90 miles per hour over some of the most populated areas in the country, felling trees that snapped power lines and damaged cars and homes.
At least 14 people were killed from Ohio to Maryland and 3.6 million customers were left without power. By Sunday afternoon, power had been restored to one-third of those customers.

The lack of air conditioning came as much of the nation continued to swelter under extreme heat and drought. Since June 24, 1,587 communities have reported record temperatures, including 105 degrees in Denver, 111 degrees in Dodge City, Kansas and 109 degrees in Athens, Ga., said Dan Porter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.
The heat is expected to continue across much of the Midwest and East Coast with 106-degree temperatures expected in St. Louis on Monday.
Meanwhile, sporadic and violent thunderstorms continued to wreak havoc. On Sunday, one such storm darkened skies in Chicago, churning up 90 mph winds, blowing rain sideways and leaving 200,000 customers without power.

Photos

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On Saturday, President Barack Obama issued emergency declarations for West Virginia and Ohio in response to requests from the governors of those states. He also directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to work with Indiana, Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia. National Guard troops were ordered out to deliver fuel for generators and water for emergency responders in New Jersey, Ohio and Virginia.
West Virginia was among the worst hit. An Amtrak train—the Cardinal, carrying 232 people from New York to Chicago—was held at the station in Prince, near the center of the state, after trees fell across the tracks, an Amtrak spokesman said.
"The storms moved through very fast, and they had massive amounts of wind," said Terrance Lively, spokesman for West Virginia Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The 75 mph gusts "brought down a lot of trees on power lines."
The state had 460,000 people without electricity as of Sunday night, according to the Associated Press.
In Maryland, about 545,000 people were without power by Sunday night, according to the AP. Officials were hoping to decrease that number to 400,000 by Monday. Gov. Martin O'Malley told CNN the storm sucker-punched his state.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

A worker cut up a fallen tree in Huntington, Md.

Mike Boyles

A lightning strike Friday night snapped a large pine in half, sending it through the roof of a garage in Fairfax, Va.

"Unlike a polite hurricane that gives you three days of warning, this storm gave us all of the impact of a hurricane without any of the warning of a hurricane," Mr. O'Malley said.
A 90-year old woman, asleep in her bed when a tree fell into her home, was among at least seven killed in Virginia. Two young cousins who were camping in New Jersey were killed when a tree fell on their tent. Other storm fatalities included two killed in Maryland, one in Ohio, one in Kentucky and one in Washington, D.C., according to the AP.
Many more were counting their blessings. In Springfield, Va., a middle-class community off the Washington Beltway where two people died as a result of the storm, Edith Wright and her son Tim Intriago surveyed the damage. They had witnessed the ferocity of the storm at 11 p.m. Friday, when high winds tore down a 120-foot oak tree by their home.
Mr. Intriago, 42, said the crash sounded like a freight train.
In Fairfax, Va., Maddie Boyles, 17, was home alone when lightning struck a tree near the family's garage. The teenager had taken refuge in the basement with the family's two dogs and called her parents, who were at a wedding in New Jersey.
She thought a rustling sound was being made by an intruder, but it turned out the noise was from wind rushing through a gash in the garage roof made by two fallen trunks from a single, large tree.
"What can you do? My daughter is safe. It could have fallen the other direction and taken out our bedroom," said her father, Mike Boyles.
Write to Douglas Belkin at doug.belkin@wsj.com and Jessica Holzer at jessica.holzer@dowjones.com

Is it Time to

Transcend the

'Urban-Suburban' Divide?

Source: Mark Strozier

The "S-Word"

In a recent piece for The Atlantic Cities, Emily Badger contemplates whether the place where she lives, Alexandria, Va., really counts as a suburb. Her concern, she writes, stems from lifelong aversion to the “s-word” — once “the most vicious epithet I could imagine hurling at anyone.”

For Badger, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago:

The city was innately virtuous because it had different kinds of people and more museums and a Chinatown. And if you were not willing to go through the occasional weapons inspection to win access to all of that, then clearly your priorities were wrong... I was sure the suburbs could permanently mar the very personality and character of everyone who lived there.

Given this deep-seated prejudice, it’s not surprising that she found herself going to great lengths to argue that Alexandria — an archetypal suburb — could not possibly be one.

She offers various reasons for this assessment: It’s too old (older than Washington, D.C., itself), it has metro access, it doesn’t have an Applebees. But when she gets down to it, none of these answers quite seems to clear up the confusion. “I realize I don’t know exactly what defines a ‘suburb’ as such,” she writes. “Is it a matter of geography? Authenticity? History? Density? Diversity? Housing stock? Land-use patterns? Auto dependence?”

She concludes that “to live in the city is to take a kind of risk, while to live in suburbia is to avoid it.” Sadly, this is an unsatisfying answer to a very important question. After all, the shape and definition of our urban fabric has implications that go far beyond 24-hour availability of Thai takeout, or even what one’s neighbors look like. Where and how we live strikes at the heart of the most pressing crises that face the world — from resource depletion and sustainability, to the nature and shape of our economy, to our physical and emotional health. If we can’t even figure out what defines a city, how can we hope to address these challenges?

In many ways I relate to Badger’s feelings, and to her dilemma, but from a different perspective. I grew up not in a risky, gritty but culturally edifying urban setting, but in Littleton, Colo. This was a generic suburban "notown" that blended into those around it, until a murderous rampage at Columbine High School put it on the map. By the time Columbine happened, I was already living far from that place, in the most anti-Littleton you could imagine: New York City. The events at my old high school only reinforced my own biases; I swore I would never go back to that "s-word."


Tarrytown Music Hall. Source: Dougtone

Suburbia, On a Human Scale

Eleven years, one wife and three children later, however, I found my life bursting through seams of a first-floor, 950 square-foot apartment in Washington Heights — and I realized it was time for a change.

My wife and I both worried about moving to the suburbs, but we did it anyway. Today we live in a nice house on a quiet street in Tarrytown, N.Y. — a place that is, instructively, entirely unlike either Littleton or New York City.

In her oft-quoted 1961 classic, "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," Jane Jacobs famously slammed the urban planning trends that she believed were sucking the soul and health out of cities. Since then, the book has become a bible for anti-suburban crusaders. A great many of the pernicious trends Jacobs observed are today defining characteristics of what we think of as suburban: monolithic, single-use zoning, the favoring of cars over pedestrians or transit, the elimination and devolution of public space.

Jacobs, however, was primarily concerned with cities, not suburbia, and was equally appalled by quintessentially urban trends of the 20th century, such as the massive public housing projects and highway plans that butchered vital neighborhoods.

Nonetheless, Jacobs clearly had a pro-city bias, at least for the kind of “urban ballet” she favored. Suburbs, she said, simply lack enough people to support the kind of diversity that make cities vibrant: the “Viennese bakeries, foreign groceries, art movies, and so on, all of which can be found co-existing, the standard with the strange, the large with the small.”

To those of us who love cities, this assessment makes intuitive sense. But is it the whole story? In his scathing critique of Jacobs' book, her would-be mentor-turned-critic Lewis Mumford accused her of muddling up the real nature of what is urban and what she loves about it.

According to Mumford, the very things that Jacobs most praises about Greenwich Village — face-to-face contact, a sense of belonging — rest not “on a metropolitan dynamism, but on continuity and stability, the special virtues of the village.” In other words, if these special places exist in cities, it’s not because of the urban forces that surround them, but in spite of them.

Unlike Jacobs, Mumford had a deep ambivalence about urban life, and a particular hatred for the 20th century gigantism that was turning “metropolis” into “necropolis.” But if there was one thing Mumford hated more than cities, it was the dehumanizing sprawl that he saw rapidly rising around them. In his prescient 1958 essay, “The Highway and the City,” he attacked the recently created Interstate Highway System, predicting that it would lead to “a tomb of concrete roads and ramps covering the dead corpse of a city.” Needless to say, if he could see many of the cities Americans now live in, he would not be surprised.

Like Alexandria, Tarrytown has history on its side. Although it doesn’t predate the first settlements of New York, it’s old enough to have already been historic when its most famous resident, Washington Irving, described it in the opening of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Like Alexandria, Tarrytown is “no post 1950s auto-oriented subdivision.” It has charm and good restaurants, the vast majority of which are locally owned (no Applebees). For most of us who live within the village, the daily needs of life (and the Metro North train station) are in easy walking distance.

Yet, we are suburbanites. No one would confuse this place with New York City.

The one thing that Tarrytown and a place like Greenwich Village share is a respect for the human scale. It’s not just that you can walk here — it’s that you want to. Neither of these places could be further away from a big-box land filled with strip malls and burdened with parking lots, or from the chokingly sterile concrete plazas and climate-controlled glass skyscrapers of a place like Houston. And neither place is comparable to the increasingly distressed, distant exurbs that have fallen victim to the housing bubble and collapse.

The Post-Suburban World

There are other reasons to question America’s old ideas about the suburban-urban divide. Today’s suburbia is far more ethnically and racially diverse than in the past. At the same time, in contrast to old stereotypes contrasting urban poverty to suburban affluence, more American suburbanites now live in poverty than urban or rural residents, according to a 2011 Brookings study. The image of suburbia as the sole province of single-family homes is no longer true, either. Since 1970, suburban multifamily housing has been the fastest growing real estate market in the country, accounting for more than one in four housing units today, according to the Journal of Architecture and Planning Research.

Call it the post-suburban world.

In reality, both Jacobs and Mumford were right. They illustrated how superficial distinctions between city and suburb are facile at best and dangerously misleading at worst. Most of Jacobs’s prescriptions for what ails modern urban life apply as well to the suburbs, as the New Urbanists and others have pointed out. But Mumford’s central point holds true as well: One cannot address the problems of the city without understanding the larger economic, socio-political and technological forces that create the conditions for both suburban sprawl and urban decay.

In other words, most of the diagnoses and prescriptions that Mumford and Jacobs describe apply equally to urban and suburban places.

Maybe it’s time to stop worrying so much about the symbolic meaning of general urban categories and to start looking more closely at the specific characteristics of particular places, how they function, and what makes them work the way they do — applying both a finer-grained and wider-angled analysis to understand how we got here and how to move forward.

Lakis Polycarpou is a journalist and ecological designer who is deeply engaged with the paradox of sustainable urban living. He is a partner in two ecological design collectives, Emergent Designs and Real Returns.
Posted by Lakis Polycarpou at 2:40 PM

Cities Outpace Suburbs in Growth

Updated June 28, 2012, 2:57 a.m. ET

By CONOR DOUGHERTY And ROBBIE WHELAN

Many U.S. cities are growing faster than their suburbs for the first time in decades, reflecting shifting attitudes about urban living as well as the effect of a housing bust that has put a damper on moving.
According to Census data released Thursday, in 27 of the nation's 51 largest metropolitan areas, city centers grew faster than suburbs between July 2010 and July 2011. By contrast, from 2000 to 2010 only five metro areas saw their cores grow faster than the surrounding suburbs.

Boomtowns

Sortable table: Which cities are growing faster than their suburbs

Viewed as a whole, U.S. suburbs have grown faster than city centers in every decade since the 1920s, when rising automobile ownership inspired Americans to begin fleeing cramped city quarters for leafy suburbs, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution. Urban population growth accelerated markedly at the end of the last decade, he added.
One reason for the shift back to urban areas may be improvements in quality-of-life factors, such as safety, that traditionally drove residents to the suburbs. In the past decade, cities have become considerably more livable. Crime rates have fallen in some urban centers; downtown areas that once were dotted with closed businesses now feature new cultural amenities such as museums and baseball stadiums.

 A housing development in Diamond, Illinois, southwest of Chicago

At the same time, a decades-long migration of factories to the suburbs and rural America has rid cities of the heavy industry that used to make them smoky, loud and smelly. Take New York: In the 1940s, freight traffic ran on an elevated rail line on the city's west side. Today, that line is now the High Line, an elevated public park.
Among those favoring cities over suburbs are Sarah Talbot, a 35-year-old in Washington who works at a nonprofit. Ms. Talbot and her husband bought their Capitol Hill-area home in November 2009 and today have an eight-month-old daughter. They can walk to public transportation, grocery stores and parks, all while avoiding suburban gridlock. Ms. Talbot says they plan to stay at least several years as their daughter moves into elementary school, but will continue to reassess based on the quality of the school system.
"We're just going to have to do more research into the schools as she gets older," she said.



The change in living patterns could in part reflect evolving preferences for cities over the space and privacy of suburbs. In the short term, however, most of this is a legacy of the recession and housing bust, said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. Skittish about buying in the suburbs or unable to get a loan for a home there, city-dwelling renters may be staying put instead of moving. Mr. Johnson said some of those city dwellers are likely to head to thesuburbs as the economy and housing market continue to mend. He points to Chicago as an example. That city grew by 8,800 residents, or about 0.3%, from July 2010 to July 2011, compared with an average annual loss of 20,000 people between 2000 and 2010. "I suspect the modest growth of the urban cores is a short-term phenomenon," Mr. Johnson said.
Home builders are betting that there is a longer-term shift under way. Many builders that previously worked entirely on single-family homes in the suburbs have refocused to keep up with what they say is a change in demand. Three of the largest publicly traded U.S. home-building companies—Toll Brothers Inc., TOL -0.02% Lennar Corp. LEN -0.36% and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. HOV -2.76% —have in recent years built mid-rise and high-rise condominium towers in urban areas such as New York City, Northern New Jersey, Philadelphia and Irvine, Calif., looking to capitalize on consumers' rising distaste for long commute times and interest in housing that is closer to cities' cultural and job centers.
Toll Brothers has been particularly bullish on cities. In New York City, where the company has finished seven projects since 2003, Toll has nearly completed construction on the Touraine,a 22-unit luxury condominium building. The company has begun constructing an 80-unit building as well as 99 condominiums atop a rental tower to be built with rental-apartment landlord Equity Residential EQR -0.13% .To be sure, most of Toll's business is still in single-family homes in the suburbs. But Toll's City Living brand has grown in some recent quarters to represent as much as 20% of the company's revenue.
Few places have seen a more drastic shift than the nation's capital, which is in the midst of an apartment boom while suburb development has fallen below pre-recession levels. In 2011 building permits were issued for 4,285 units in Washington, more than one and a half times the total in any year during the real estate boom.From July 2010 to July 2011 Washington's population grew 2.4%, while its suburbs grew 1.5%.
Stanley Sloter, president of Paradigm Development Co., has built thousands of rental apartments in Washington's suburbs but today is focused on developing in the city and nearby Arlington, Va. He says young, affluent renters are fed up with suburban traffic and are drawn to revitalizing downtowns. His company recently finished a 390-unit apartment building one mile north of the National Mall and later this year plans to start on another nearby.
"There's just a constant level of demand," he said of the city.
—Eliot Brown
contributed to this article.

Gov. Scott says Florida will not implement with 'Obamacare'

 I am so lucky, I moved to Pennsylvania, and I get the best medical care available. In Fl I waited, waited, visited doctors who told me I was fine, did not need anything major done. Even though I was constantly in pain, could not move, was taking care of both of my parents until 2008. I have been up here fore roughly 3 1/2 yrs.  I had my gall bladder removed, both knees replaced, because they were terrible, my doctor asked my daughter 'how in the hell was she walking'ow birds, with a lot of dignity.  And now Gov. Scott is going to make matters worse in Fl by not implementing the ACA or taking advantage of Medicaid. With the high number of elders living in Fl., that includes the snow birds, he is taking a political suicide pill.  I pray he reconsiders, the big part of the healthcare bill does not go into effect until 2014. WOW!!!!!!!!!

 

Posted by Tia Mitchell at 11:57 AM on Saturday, Jun. 30

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/06/gov-scott-says-florida-will-not-comply-with-obamacare.html#storylink=cpy

Florida Gov. Rick Scott said that he will not support implementing federal health care reform in Florida, making up his mind roughly 36 hours after the Supreme Court ruling to uphold to law.

"We're not going to implement Obamacare in Florida," Scott told Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren late Friday night. "We're not going to expand Medicaid because we're going to do the right thing. We're not going to do the exchange."

As late as Friday afternoon, Scott was telling Florida media that he had not yet made up his mind about whether or not to implement the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But he continued to pan the law, which he opposed even before he was elected. And he said the Medicaid program as it exists now is already too costly.

Because the Legislature sets the budget, it will ultimately decide whether or not to allocate money to implement provisions of the law. So far, leaders of the Republican-controlled House and Senate have not said whether or not they agree with Scott.

Read more here: http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2012/06/gov-scott-says-florida-will-not-comply-with-obamacare.html#storylink=cpy

We're Still at War: Photo of the Day for July 2, 2012

Mon Jul. 2, 2012 7:24 AM PDT

Michigan Army National Guard infantry soldiers and Reserve Officer Corps Training cadets of the 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry, Rear Detachment conduct an air assault mission using UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters and foot patrols at Camp Grayling, Mich. Photo by the US Army.