By now you have probably heard that a crowd of people desperate to get into a Long Island Wal-Mart at 5 am on Friday trampeled a worker to death:

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43.

“They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.

“They took me down, too … I didn’t know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back,” Overby said.

Damour, a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens, was gasping for air as shoppers continued to surge into the store after its 5 a.m. opening, witnesses said.

Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.

I have nothing profound to say about this tragedy. It is a disgrace to our country that buying things has become such an obsession during the holiday season that a crowd of people will step on someone to get in on a “Black Friday” sale at the crack of dawn, and even step on the people trying to help him.

Clearly stores are going to have to stop offering special deals on the day after Thanksgiving that are only good for the first X number of customers, or only good until a certain early hour of the morning. Doing away with first-come, first-served “general admission” seating at rock concerts prevented a recurrence of the stampede that killed 11 people trying to see The Who in Cincinnati in 1979.

I wonder if the media will reduce the hype about post-Thanksgiving shopping next year as well.

Tyson Foods has been claiming to sell “chicken raised without antibiotics” since the summer of 2007, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture does not consider that label to be “truthful and accurate”:

After Tyson began labeling its chicken antibiotic-free, the USDA warned the company that such labels were not truthful, because Tyson regularly treats its birds’ feed with bacteria-killing ionophores. Tyson argued that ionophores are antimicrobials rather than antibiotics, but the USDA reiterated its policy that “ionophores are antibiotics.”

Because ionophores are not used to treat human disease, however, the poultry company suggested a compromise, accepted by the USDA in December, whereby Tyson would use a label reading “raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans.”

Tyson’s competitors Perdue Farms Inc., Sanderson Farms Inc. and Foster Farms sued, under the banner of the Truthful Labeling Coalition. In May 2008, a federal judge ruled in their favor and told Tyson to stop using the label.

Not long after, on June 3, USDA inspectors discovered that in addition to using ionophores, Tyson was regularly injecting its chicken eggs with gentamicin, an antibiotic that has been used for more than 30 years in the United States to treat urinary tract and blood infections. The drug is also stockpiled by the federal government as a treatment for biological agents such as plague.

“In contrast to information presented by Tyson Foods Inc., [inspectors] found that they routinely used the antibiotic gentamicin to prevent illness and death in chicks, which raises public health concerns,” said USDA Undersecretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond.

The main public health concern is the growth of drug-resistant bacteria, which is thought to be related to the widespread use of antibiotics in conventional agriculture.

Tyson Foods is suing the USDA, “claiming that the agency had improperly changed the definition of ‘raised without antibiotics’ to include the treatment of eggs.”

However the lawsuit is resolved, I consider this controversy another reason to avoid buying Tyson chicken. You might want to bring this issue to your school’s administrators or parent-teacher association if they encourage you to buy Tyson products as part of the Tyson Project A+ label collection program.

  Last week I received a very concerned call from South Dakota farmer and agronomist Bryan Lutter.  “Neal, we’re out of propane!”  I figured this was personal distress – he and his family farm over three square miles of land and I know this has been a tough year for many people. He promptly corrected my misconception when I tried to console him. “No, everybody is out, all three grain elevators, we can’t get fuel for the bins, and we’re coming in real wet this year.”

  There are equally dramatic issues due to the bankruptcy of Verasun and the apparent insolvency of the nation’s largest private crop insurance program. Payments that would have come in June or July of a normal year are still not dispersed at the end of November and this has grim implications for next year’s crop.

  I started digging into the details and unless I’m badly mistaken people are going to be starving in 2009 over causes and conditions being set down right now. It’s a complex, interlocking issue, and I hope I’ve done a good job explaining it below the fold …

(I just submitted my personal story and a vision for the nation at change.gov – you can see my vision for this problem here.)

I don’t expect to get everything I want from Democratic politicians in power. Probably liberals like me will have plenty of disappointments in the coming years. But if Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress only follow through on one big campaign promise, I hope it’s health care.

The many injustices of our current health care system have been thoroughly documented by nyceve, among others, but I want to add my two cents.

The 46 million Americans lacking health insurance represent one very large part of problem. Some can’t afford insurance, and others can’t find a private insurer who will sell them a policy for any price. You could spend all day listing the ways uninsured Americans get a raw deal on health care. They can’t afford preventive care and routine diagnostics, so they are more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage, incurable cancer. They are less likely to receive care for any number of chronic illnesses. They live with terrible, crippling pain. Few Americans without health insurance coverage are able to receive organ transplants, though many become organ donors after dying prematurely.

We need to get these people covered and get away from our broken employer-based health care system. Every day Americans who thought they had good benefits are joining the ranks of the uninsured–like my friend whose husband got laid off in October, right before his employer (a small manufacturer) went under. It turned out the boss had secretly stopped paying the health insurance premiums some time before. Or the retirees who worked at Maytag or at John Deere for many years and are now losing some of the health benefits they were promised.

Employer-based health care is also a huge drag on large corporations and our national economy, as clammyc pointed out in this recent diary.

In an ideal world, I’m for a Canadian-style single-payer system (also known as HR 676 or “Medicare for all”), but as a political compromise I would settle for something like what John Edwards and Hillary Clinton proposed during the primaries: mandatory health insurance, which would be portable with no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, and the option for any American to buy into a public insurance plan. Momentum is building in Congress for this kind of reform.

But getting Americans health insurance will solve only part of the problem. It’s shocking how many Americans with “good” insurance go without needed medical care. Only occasionally does a case makes national news, as when the teenager Nataline Sarkisyan was unable to get a liver transplant last year. A recent study found many Americans with chronic illnesses forgo medical care for cost reasons, even if they have insurance.

Then there are the “lucky” people who get the care they need for a medical emergency, but later face financieal ruin when their insurance company denies coverage. Medical bills are implicated in about half of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S.

When I had a medical emergency last winter, I got to the doctor relatively early, I received good care in the hospital, no lasting damage was done to my body, and my insurance company covered almost all of the costs (once we had exhausted our deductible). I remember our relief when the biggest bill arrived in the mail, for about $18,000, and our required payment was only $600. (I recognize that $600 would be a hardship for many families, but we are fortunate to be able to pay that without cutting back on any essentials.)

Yesterday I was reminded again of how things could have turned out very differently for my family. If you are a regular at Daily Kos, you may recognize the handle AdmiralNaismith. Among other things, he wrote a series of diaries about the political scene in all 50 states between April and October. The links to all of those pieces are here, and he wrote an interesting post-election wrap-up diary here.

AdmiralNaismith doesn’t write many personal diaries, but he recently discussed his own family’s “medical horror story”: Drowning in medical bills, despite insurance (another link is here).

He describes the sequence of events, including his wife’s life-threatening embolism, which left his family owing thousands of dollars for medical care–more unpaid bills than AdmiralNaismith earns in three months. He asked fellow bloggers to help pay down the three largest bills, which will otherwise be sent to collection agencies within 30 days. (He’s not asking anyone to send him money directly but provides contact details for the insurer, with name and account number.) A few hundred people paying $10 or $20 each would help enormously.

I will be calling to make a payment on Monday, and I encourage anyone who’s ever benefited from reading AdmiralNaismith’s informative diaries to do the same.

But equally important, I ask the community of Democratic activists, who did so much to elect Obama, to hold his feet to the fire next year on delivering the comprehensive health care reform he promised.

I haven’t been thrilled with Obama’s cabinet appointments so far. My number one hope for the new government is that Ezra Klein is right about what Tom Daschle as secretary of Health and Human Services means:

This is huge news, and the clearest evidence yet that Obama means to pursue comprehensive health reform. You don’t tap the former Senate Majority Leader to run your health care bureaucracy. That’s not his skill set. You tap him to get your health care plan through Congress. You tap him because he understands the parliamentary tricks and has a deep knowledge of the ideologies and incentives of the relevant players. You tap him because you understand that health care reform runs through the Senate. And he accepts because he has been assured that you mean to attempt health care reform.

Please share your thoughts or health care horror stories in the comments.

Salon author James Glave was looking for a way to persuade a neighbor not to leave bright floodlights on all night, every night. He hosted a neighborhood gathering to brainstorm for ideas on reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

With everyone suitably sated, I kicked off the discussion by introducing a special guest. Fellow islander Paul Welsh runs a public-relations firm and helped launch the City of Vancouver’s climate change public-engagement program. The OneDay campaign is about small moves to change your routine for the better — such as cycling to work, if that is realistic — for just one day out of the week, or even one day out of the month. It stresses the easy stuff: Turn off that idling car, dial down the thermostat a degree or two, adjust the pressure in your tires. And, critically, turn off unnecessary lights.

“The OneDay program builds off one of the key tenets of social marketing theory,” said Welsh. “And that is, if you can make a behavioral ‘ask’ of people that is easy, obtainable, and simple in its beginning, you can build momentum and make the ‘ask’ bigger a bit at a time. Make it small from the start, make it easy, and get emboldened by success early. Then you can ask for more.”

OneDay is a clever, broad-ranging program. Anyone in any city or district anywhere in the world can download, for free, a OneDay start-up package that contains everything needed — from logo typefaces to strategic brand advice — to localize the scheme and roll it out in his or her town. The legwork has all been done; Welsh and others have engineered OneDay for self-replication. It is a virus of change looking for receptive hosts.

Here’s a link to the OneDay program Welsh developed. It does look easy to replicate. After the holiday weekend I’m going to get in touch with the Windsor Heights city council members and Mayor Jerry Sullivan.

Anyone else want to try to get this going in your community?

There are plenty of carbon footprint calculators out there to show you in broad terms your current impact and how various aspects of your lifestyle contribute to the greenhouse gases your activity generates. Here’s a relatively simple one, or google “carbon footprint calculator” to find others.

On a related subject, if you’re looking for potential community leaders or candidates for local offices, try following the advice of Bleeding Heartland commenter Keith Nichols, who has been a Democratic Party precinct committeeman for about 30 years:

We used to always check write in candidates.  If Jim Smith got a few write in votes and was a democrat we would approach him or her about running for a county office.  Most of the time it didn’t work but a few times we could find a local candidate that way.

It makes sense that someone who inspires a handful of people to write in his or her name (without even campaigning for the office) has the potential to become a leader. Might be worth meeting that person to see if he or she would be inclined to get involved in any community activism.

This is an open thread for any useful ideas on social networking or grassroots organizing.  

What are you thankful for today?

What do you like and dislike about this holiday?

What are you eating for dinner today?

Meteor Blades posts this diary every year: How I Learned to Savor Thanksgiving

Normally, I like to “celebrate” Buy Nothing Day on the day after Thanksgiving, because I loathe the shopping frenzy and the media hype that goes along with it. However, this year I’ll be buying Chanukah presents for my kids while they’re at home with Mr. desmoinesdem.

UPDATE: Todd Beeton is thankful for Sarah Palin, “for driving my never voted for a Democrat in her life Mom to cast her ballot for Barack Obama this year.”

Flamewars are sprouting up all over the blogosphere between those who are disappointed by Barack Obama’s appointments so far and those who feel we should give Obama the benefit of the doubt.

TomP made an excellent contribution to this argument at Daily Kos today: Whatever Obama does is okay? This is the netroots?

His starting point is Obama’s decision to keep Robert Gates as secretary of defense, even though highlighting Obama’s opposition to the war was a central point of his campaign strategy during the primaries.

He also discusses frustration in labor circles that Obama did not introduce his secretary of labor as part of the government’s economics team:

It’s a mindset, folks.  Economics is business, and labor is not included.  Like physical resources (oil, steel), workers are human resources.  Inputs.  Taking workers seriously is a big deal.  I look at EFCA.  That is the litmus test for me.  Barack Obama’s Labor Day message:

Here’s a key part:

It’s time we had a President who will stand up for working men and women by building an economy that rewards not just wealth, but work and the workers who create it.

snip

It’s time you had a President who honors organized labor – who’s walked on picket lines; who doesn’t choke on the word “union”; who lets our unions do what they do best and organize our workers; and who will finally make the Employee Free Choice Act the law of the land.

I think he will.  But if he wavers, I’ll criticize.  EFCA is the road to growing unions and a strong progressive movement. It will take an epic battle to succeed.  

Obama is going to do a big stimulus to save capitalism.  He’s right on that and even conservative economists agree.  That’s all good, but that’s an emergency measure, not fundmental change.  It may have good things in it.  Time will tell.  Green jobs is a good way to go and so is building infrastructure.  These are necessary investments to save capitalism.  We face the possibility of a Great Depression and they will be doing all they can to prevent that. Good.

But my point is not the substantive criticism of Obama’s appointments.  Those people may constrain Obama’s policy choices by restricting the agenda or they may not.  We haven’t seen the policies, so there is no reason to panic.  Indeed, some appointments may reflect Obama’s policies, i.e. he’s more centrist then some people here think.  Time will tell.

My point is that if the so-called “progressive netroots” is to be anything, it must critically analyze both its opponents in the Republican Party and its favorites in the Democratic Party.  Criticizing an Obama decision, with civility and on the merits, is the highest form of support for Obama.  Do you think he really expects or wants abject, unthinking support and deference? I don’t. He seems committed to empirical testing and criticism of assumptions. I agree with Obama sometimes and disagree with him other times. That’s to be expected.  

To fall into line with any decision by Obama is to betray ourselves, to betray Barack Obama, and to make a mockery of everything the so-called “reality-based community” in the netroots stands for.

I think it’s helpful for the netroots to raise hell if they are not happy with Obama’s early choices. I believe bloggers helped steer Obama away from picking Evan Bayh as a running mate, and some people think science bloggers derailed the rumored appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency.

What do you think, Bleeding Heartland readers? Should those who voted for Obama (and in many cases donated and volunteered for him) wait to see what policies he will implement before criticizing him?

According to ABC, Barack Obama will roll out his national security team soon after this weekend.  

All indications suggest that Hillary Clinton will become secretary of state.

ABC says keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates on for at least a year is "a done deal." Others likely to be appointed include  

Marine Gen. Jim Jones (Ret.) as National Security Adviser; Admiral Dennis Blair (Ret.) as Director of National Intelligence; and Dr. Susan Rice as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

 Todd Beeton goes over the pros and cons of keeping Gates in place.

 A lot of Obama supporters seem comfortable with this decision. If the new president keeps his promise to withdraw most of our troops from Iraq safely within 16 months, there’s an argument for sticking with someone at Defense who’s already familiar with the situation on the ground. My main concern is that Gates will strenuously argue that we need to keep a large contingent in Iraq and give Obama cover to break his campaign promise.

Looks like no one who opposed the Iraq war from the start will be in Obama’s inner circle on foreign policy.

In the unambiguously good news column, John Brennan withdrew his name from consideration to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Glenn Greenwald (among others) made the case against Brennan last week.

UPDATE: Jon Soltz, co-founder of VoteVets, argues that “the Gates pick works.”

I know, that sounds like hyperbole, but it would be hard to top the argument Grover Norquist made yesterday on CNBC. David Sirota, who was also on the program, fills us in:

Grover Norquist is regularly billed as one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative movement – and I think you will agree that the arguments he made in a debate with me over taxes this morning on CNBC highlight not merely the shocking intellectual bankruptcy of the movement he leads, but just how out of touch Republicans in Washington really are.

The debate revolved around President-elect Obama’s potential plans to put off raising taxes on the very wealthy. Norquist begins the debate with the claim – I kid you not – that “the economy is in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006 you knew those tax increases were going to come in 2010.” He insisted that, “The stock market began to collapse as soon as you recognize that those old tax rates were coming back.” Yes, because under “those old tax rates” – ie. Clinton-era tax rates – the economy was so much worse than it is today.

As you’ll see, the CNBC reporters start laughing at Norquist, having trouble taking him seriously. And I must say, I really wasn’t sure he was being serious – but, of course, he was. I went on to make the point that I’ve often made in the past – the point that conservatives simply want everyone to forget: Namely, that President Clinton faced down a recession in 1993 by raising taxes on the wealthy in order to finance an economic stimulus package, and the economy subsequently boomed.

Click here to watch the You Tube. Yes, Norquist would have us believe that the U.S. economy is tanking in late 2008 because when the Democrats took over Congress two years ago, people began to expect that taxes on the wealthy would go up in 2010.

If you’ve heard a more illogical assertion from a Republican talking head lately, I want to hear about it in the comments.

While we’re talking about taxes, who thinks Obama should keep his promise to ask Congress to roll back George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent?

Who thinks Obama should just let those tax cuts expire on schedule in 2010, rather than spend political capital to get Congress to rescind them one year early?

“They’re Coming to Your Town,” a new DVD produced by the American Family Association, looks and sounds like a spoof created by The Onion. Click the link to watch the trailer and read the transcript. Here’s an excerpt:

It could happen to your town.

Man: They’ve come out of the closet.

AFA presents a look at how a handful of homosexual activists infiltrated the Eureka Springs, Arkansas government and changed the very moral fiber of the city. […]

Learn the strategies used by gay activists and don’t let this happen to your city. This DVD is a must-teaching tool – watch, and learn how to fight a well-organized gay agenda to take over the cities of America, one city at a time.

Man 3: If it hasn’t happened in your town, get ready, because it is going to happen.

Oh no! Gays are coming to my town to take over the government! Mr. desmoinesdem said this trailer reminded him of the anti-Communist films they made during the 1950s.

Speaking of satire, here’s a piece from the latest Onion: I’m Not One of Those ‘Love Thy Neighbor’ Christians. Excerpt:

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That’s all. Just the core beliefs. You won’t see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden. […]

We’re not all “Jesus Freaks” who run around screaming about how everyone should “Judge not lest ye be judged,” whine “Blessed are the meek” all the time, or drone on and on about how we’re all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God’s love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She’s way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program-you name it!

But believe me, we’re not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions-Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

The progressive blog Down With Tyanny! is quoting a Congress Daily rundown of the 2010 senate races that suggests that Chuck Grassley’s free rides may be about to end.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller was an early supporter of Barack Obama, leading to speculation that he may receive a federal appointment in the Obama administration. Miller confirmed this week that he has had “some discussions” with the president-elect’s transition team, but says he is leaning toward staying in Iowa. He specifically mentioned that he is not interested in being named a federal judge or chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.

Cityview’s political gossip columnist, Civic Skinny, recently speculated that Iowa Democratic Party chairman Scott Brennan would have the inside track for the attorney general’s position if Miller left the job he has held for 26 of the past 30 years.

If you live in Iowa’s first or second Congressional districts, and you would like a chance to get tickets to Barack Obama’s inauguration, this post is for you.

Braley’s office put out this release yesterday:

Washington, DC – Today, Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) announced additional details on how his office will be distributing tickets to President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration on January 20th, 2009.  The deadline for requesting tickets is Wednesday, December 3, 2008.

Requesting Tickets:

Residents of the First Congressional District can request tickets by emailing Rep. Braley’s office.

Visit www.braley.house.gov and use the “contact” form at the upper right-hand corner of the page, indicating how many tickets you are requesting.  Constituents are asked to provide their address, phone number and email address when requesting inauguration tickets.  

The deadline for requesting tickets is 5pm Central on Wednesday, December 3rd.

While we would like to honor all requests for tickets, constituents will be limited to two (2) tickets per family to ensure as wide a distribution as possible.

Awarding Tickets:

An extremely limited number of tickets are available.  Braley’s office will be using a lottery system to award inauguration tickets, with a limit of two (2) tickets awarded per family.  

The lottery drawing will take place on Thursday, December 4th, in Braley’s Washington office.  Constituents receiving tickets will be contacted by December 5th.

If individuals have questions about obtaining inauguration tickets, please contact our Washington ,  D.C. office at (202) 225-2911.

Loebsack’s office put out this release today:

Washington, DC – Congressman Dave Loebsack announced today his office will provide tickets to President-elect Barack Obama’s swearing in ceremony through a lottery system during the month of December.  Residents of Iowa ‘s Second Congressional District who are interested in attending the historic event must contact the Congressman’s office at 202.225.6576 by 5:00 pm CT on Thursday, December 4, 2008 to submit their names for consideration in the lottery.  Each resident awarded a ticket will be responsible for their own travel arrangements.

The lottery drawing will take place on Friday, December 5th, in Congressman Loebsack’s Washington office, and constituents receiving tickets will be contacted by Monday, December 8th.  At that time, constituents will be required to provide additional information before they can secure their ticket allotment.

Inauguration Day is Tuesday, January 20th, 2009.   It is expected there will be a variety of events that will not require tickets, including a public viewing area of the Inaugural ceremony on the National Mall and the public Inauguration parade. Iowans unable to attain tickets through Congressman Loebsack’s office are encouraged to monitor the Inauguration Planning Committee website, http://inaugural.senate.gov/in… for further details on non-ticketed events.

Please be aware that there are a few organizations trying to sell fake tickets to people.  Tickets are only being provided free of charge from official government offices, and tickets must be picked up in person from the office the day before Inauguration. Any group that suggests differently is providing incorrect information.

If you live in one of Iowa’s other Congressional districts, you can contact the office of your member of Congress to ask how they will distribute the tickets. I only receive press releases from Braley and Loebsack.

Apologies for not getting this thread posted yesterday, when President-elect Barack Obama unveiled his economic team.

On the plus side, there are no incompetent hacks in this group. I’ve heard particularly good things about Peter Orszag’s work at the Congressional Budget Office, and he will produce reliable numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

People I respect speak quite highly of Melody Barnes, who will run Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.

Also, it’s encouraging that Obama is committed to a major stimulus bill that will focus on infrastructure investments. I’ll reserve further judgment until we see more specifics about Obama’s plans, because spending $350 billion on stuff worth doing is a lot better than spending $350 billion on boondoggles.

I also agree with Matthew Yglesias that if you’re going to throw tens of billions of dollars at the economy, high-speed rail in the Midwest would be an excellent place to start. (UPDATE: Senator John Kerry has introduced a major bill that would promote high-speed rail development across the country.)

On the down side, since I opposed the series of Wall Street bailouts we’ve been seeing this fall, I’m not thrilled to see Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and Larry Summers as chief of the National Economic Council. During Bill Clinton’s presidency, I wanted economic policy to be more in the direction that Labor Secretary Robert Reich was proposing, but Clinton and now Obama are clearly favoring the approach of Clinton’s Treasury Secreatry, Robert Rubin. Almost everyone on Obama economic team has close ties to Rubin.

I think Bill Richardson will do fine at the Commerce Department, but I would have preferred to see him in a different cabinet position.

If you were one of those Obama supporters who claimed during the primaries that he would govern in a much more progressive way than Hillary Clinton, now would be a good time to rethink your views.

Meanwhile, George W. Bush’s team is taking care of one troubled financial firm after another. The latest bailout plan, for Citigroup, is a particularly bad deal for taxpayers, according to Paul Krugman (who reluctantly supported the $700 billion bailout package approved before the election).

What do you think about the team Obama is assembling to handle the economy?

UPDATE: The members of the New York Times editorial board are not wild about putting Geithner and Summers in charge:

As treasury secretary in 2000, Mr. Summers championed the law that deregulated derivatives, the financial instruments – a k a toxic assets – that have spread the financial losses from reckless lending around the globe. He refused to heed the critics who warned of dangers to come.

That law, still on the books, reinforced the false belief that markets would self-regulate. And it gave the Bush administration cover to ignore the ever-spiraling risks posed by derivatives and inadequate supervision.

Mr. Summers now will advise a president who has promised to impose rational and essential regulations on chaotic financial markets. What has he learned?

At the New York Fed, Mr. Geithner has been one of the ringmasters of this year’s serial bailouts. His involvement includes the as-yet-unexplained flip-flop in September when a read-my-lips, no-new-bailouts policy allowed Lehman Brothers to go under – only to be followed less than two days later by the even costlier bailout of the American International Group and last weekend by the bailout of Citigroup.

It is still unclear what Mr. Geithner and other policy makers knew or did not know – or what they thought they knew but didn’t – in arriving at those decisions, including who exactly is on the receiving end of the billions of dollars of taxpayer money now flooding the system.

Confidence in the system will not be restored as long as top officials fail or refuse to fully explain their actions.

The Daily Kos community is so huge, with more than a hundred thousand active users and hundreds of diaries posted every day, that many communities have formed within it. In those groups, diarists and commenters can get to know each other over time.

The “Edwards Evening News Roundup” was that kind of community for most of 2007. People came looking for those diaries so they could catch up on the news of the day and with other Edwards supporters they had “gotten to know” online. After John Edwards dropped out of the race, many of the active diarists in this group formed the EENR blog, which is now Progressive Blue.

Daily Kos has generated other communities that have nothing to do with politics. Frankenoid posts a Saturday morning garden thread every weekend, for instance.

On Monday nights a group of people take turns writing diaries about bereavement in “The Grieving Room” series. If you have ever experienced this kind of loss, I recommend that you read these posts.

Last night’s edition by Papachach, a widower with three young children, was quite moving.

On a related note, if you or anyone you care about has experienced depression for whatever reason, I recommend reading this piece, which made the top of the Daily Kos recommended list yesterday: I hope this message reaches the right person.

UPDATE: On the subject of bereavement, I recommend reading this interview with Elizabeth Edwards from last year, in which she shares how the sudden death of her son Wade changed her life and her faith.

Republicans are saying the Big Three are going under because they have to add nearly $2,000 per car to pay for union negotiated health care benefits. They are saying this extra cost puts US automakers at a disadvantage compared to foreign automakers who don't have to pay for health care benefits.

Our companies will be at a competitive disadvantage until we have universal health care.

A recount resolved the last Iowa Senate race to be called. In Senate district 10, Democratic incumbent Jeff Danielson defeated Walt Rogers by 22 votes. This was one of the surprisingly close races on election night, as Danielson was not considered a top-tier target of Republicans.

Iowa Democrats will have the largest advantage they have ever enjoyed in the Iowa Senate: 32-18.

One Iowa House race is still unresolved. Democratic incumbent Art Staed asked for a recount in House district 37, where the certified vote count showed him trailing Carolyn Renee Shulte by 14 votes. Staed was targeted not only by the Republican Party of Iowa but also by conservative interest groups such as the corporate-backed Iowa Leadership Council and the American Future Fund.

Depending on the outcome of the recount, the Democratic advantage in the Iowa House will be either 56-44 or 57-43.

Jed L brought something remarkable to my attention over the weekend.

Michael Cannon of the conservative CATO Institute wrote a piece called Blocking Obama’s Health Plan Is Key to the GOP’s Survival. The idea is that if Obama gets universal health care passed, he will bring “reluctant voters” into the Democratic coalition. The Republicans must at all costs provent that from happening.

David Sirota and TomP both pointed out that conservative pundit William Kristol made the same case to Congressional Republicans during Bill Clinton’s first term. At first, some were afraid to be seen as obstructing the president’s health care reform efforts. But in December 1993,

Leading conservative operative William Kristol privately circulates a strategy document to Republicans in Congress. Kristol writes that congressional Republicans should work to “kill” — not amend — the Clinton plan because it presents a real danger to the Republican future: Its passage will give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote and revive the reputation of the party. Nearly a full year before Republicans will unite behind the “Contract With America,” Kristol has provided the rationale and the steel for them to achieve their aims of winning control of Congress and becoming America’s majority party. Killing health care will serve both ends. The timing of the memo dovetails with a growing private consensus among Republicans that all-out opposition to the Clinton plan is in their best political interest. Until the memo surfaces, most opponents prefer behind-the-scenes warfare largely shielded from public view. The boldness of Kristol’s strategy signals a new turn in the battle. Not only is it politically acceptable to criticize the Clinton plan on policy grounds, it is also politically advantageous. By the end of 1993, blocking reform poses little risk as the public becomes increasingly fearful of what it has heard about the Clinton plan.

Getting back to Cannon’s recent piece for CATO, I am struck by how conservatives don’t even believe their own propaganda about the horrors of “socialized medicine.” Yes, I know that Obama isn’t proposing socialized medicine (which would work like the Veterans Administration, where the government employs the doctors and runs the hospitals), or even single-payer health care (as in Medicare, where patients choose the doctor but the government pays the bill). But for the moment, let’s accept CATO’s frame on this issue, which is that Obama’s health plan would turn into socialized medicine.

Obama’s plan would presumably allow Americans to buy into a state-run health insurance plan as an alternative to private health insurance, and would prohibit insurers from excluding people with pre-existing conditions. These measures would force the insurance companies to compete for customers by offering better coverage, as opposed to the current system, in which they try to maximize profits by denying care whenever possible, and sometimes refusing to insure people for any price.

I have a friend with a thyroid condition. At one point her husband was between jobs and they looked into buying their own health insurance. They could not find any company that would take their family. It wasn’t a matter of excluding coverage for anything related to my friend’s thyroid condition. They simply declined to sell insurance to this family at any cost. Fortunately, my friend’s husband got a job with good benefits. Otherwise, they would be uninsured to this day.

The benefit of giving families like my friend’s the option of buying into state-run insurance program is obvious. But let’s assume that conservatives are right, and that any state-run insurance scheme is bound to be expensive and inefficient. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it fail in the marketplace?

Obama’s health care plan could evolve in the direction of single-payer health care only if the government insurance plan provided superior coverage to consumers at a lower cost. CATO shouldn’t be worried about this, right?

Let’s go a step further. Conservative pundits are trying to tell us that Democratic health care proposals would be disastrous for the country and wreck the economy. If that’s true, then why is a CATO analyst worried that enacting Obama’s health care plan would cause a political realignment in the Democrats’ favor?

Cannon’s argument is also shocking on a moral level. He appears to believe that Obama’s health care plan would improve so many Americans’ lives that the GOP’s survival would be threatened. So, he urges Republicans to put their own political interests ahead of the interests of Americans currently lacking adequate health care.

Jed L thinks

Cannon has everything backwards: the GOP’s survival depends on Republicans being part of the solution instead of being part of the problem.

I have to admit that here I agree more with Cannon. Republicans would not get much credit for helping to pass Obama’s universal health care plan. Everyone would know it was a Democratic president with a Democratic Congress who delivered on that promise.

Obstruction with the goal of making Obama look like an ineffective leader in tough economic times is probably the Republicans’ best hope of making political gains.

I am cautiously optimistic that Congress will be more open to adopting Obama’s agenda than the Democratic-controlled Congress was for Bill Clinton in 1993 and 1994. We’ve got at least two things going for us: Obama’s Health and Human Services secretary will be Tom Daschle, who knows the inner workings of Congress, and Henry Waxman (not John Dingell) will be running the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack told Thomas Beaumont of the Des Moines Register on Sunday that

he had never been contacted by aides to President-elect Barack Obama about [the Secretary of Agriculture] position or any other.

“I would have to speculate that I was in fact in the running and further speculate as to why I was no longer. I do not think it prudent or appropriate to speculate about either,” Vilsack said.

Vilsack had been linked repeatedly to the Agriculture Department position in news reports. The Washington Post at one point called him a “near shoo-in” for the job. Obama’s staff had never confirmed that he was being considered.

Obama “has many interests he has to consider, and we have an abundance of talent in both parties from which to satisfy those interests,” Vilsack said today.

I am surprised to hear Vilsack say no one from Obama’s team had contacted him. In that case I wonder why there was so much speculation about Vilsack being considered to head the US Department of Agriculture. I still think Vilsack would be an outstanding secretary of education.

At MyDD Natasha Chart has a good piece up on why agriculture policy is so important for the environment and the economy.

Two months from now, Barack Obama will be inaugurated, having promised to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months:

Immediately upon taking office, Obama will give his Secretary of Defense and military commanders a new mission in Iraq: ending the war. The removal of our troops will be responsible and phased, directed by military commanders on the ground and done in consultation with the Iraqi government. Military experts believe we can safely redeploy combat brigades from Iraq at a pace of 1 to 2 brigades a month that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 – more than 7 years after the war began.

Under the Obama-Biden plan, a residual force will remain in Iraq and in the region to conduct targeted counter-terrorism missions against al Qaeda in Iraq and to protect American diplomatic and civilian personnel. They will not build permanent bases in Iraq, but will continue efforts to train and support the Iraqi security forces as long as Iraqi leaders move toward political reconciliation and away from sectarianism.

I’ve been skeptical about whether Obama would follow through on this promise ever since I learned in April that Colin Kahl, the man Obama put in charge of his working group on Iraq, was secretly recommending that the U.S. leave 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq at least through the end of 2010.

As of June, Kahl was still Obama’s leading adviser on Iraq, and he co-authored a report advocating that “a large contingent of American forces [remain] in Iraq for several years”.

Now Obama is leaning toward leaving Robert Gates in charge of the Department of Defense for some time. In the best-case scenario, Gates would oversee the phased withdrawal of troops over a 16-month period, and then Obama would put someone else in charge of the DOD. On the other hand, it seems plausible that someone George W. Bush trusted to enact his Iraq policy might strongly advise the new president to back off from his planned timetable.

Consider Obama’s reported choice of General Jim Jones as national security adviser. Does it seem likely that this man, who backed John McCain for president, would encourage Obama to get us out of Iraq as quickly as we could safely do so?

The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, reported over the weekend,

There is growing concern among a new generation of anti-war foreign policy analysts in Washington, many of whom stuck their necks out to support Mr Obama early in the White House race, that they will be frozen out of his administration.

Mrs Clinton is expected to appoint her own top team at the State Department, drawn from more conservative thinkers.

A Democratic foreign policy expert told one Washington website: “They were the ones courageous enough to stand up early against Iraq, which is why many supported Obama in the first place.” Their fear, he added, is that they will not now secure the mid-level posts which will enable them to reach the top of the Washington career ladder in future.

Although I never thought Obama and Clinton were very different on Iraq or other policy matters, I feel sorry for the policy wonks who supported Obama because they thought he would be better on Iraq.

As Al Giordano recently reminded us, these people took a big risk for Obama:

Way back in ancient times – I’m talking about 2007 – the most difficult place to be a supporter of then-Senator Barack Obama’s presidential bid was inside the Washington DC beltway. […]

If you were a Democrat in or around DC and backed Obama for president you were a pariah, shunned, no longer invited to the cocktail parties or policy panels. And no small number of Clinton bandwagoneers would take every chance to remind you that, once the White House had been reconquered, you would be screwed to the wall, and viciously so.

I have no contacts in DC, but this account has the ring of truth for me. I remember one particularly obnoxious Clinton supporter who used to comment at MyDD regularly during 2007. When Hillary’s nomination seemed inevitable, he would brag about his Washington connections and how after she wrapped things up on Super Tuesday, hellfire would rain down on certain people who had supported Obama for president.

I am not opposed to Clinton as secretary of state, but I think Obama owes something to the people who were there for him early on because (they thought) he was a strong opponent of the Iraq War.

For me, the most shocking part of the Telegraph story was this:

Suspicion of Mr Obama’s moves has been compounded, for some liberals, by the revelation that Mr Obama has for several months been taking advice from Brent Scowcroft, the national security adviser to the first President Bush.

Scowcroft? I know a lot of Democrats would be happy to see Obama serve out Bill Clinton’s third term, but I’m pretty sure none of them voted for Obama so that he could serve out Poppy Bush’s second term.

The Wall Street Journal confirms the connections between Obama and Scowcroft:

Many of the Republicans emerging as potential members of the Obama administration have professional and ideological ties to Brent Scowcroft, a former national-security adviser turned public critic of the Bush White House.

Mr. Scowcroft spoke by phone with President-elect Barack Obama last week, the latest in a months-long series of conversations between the two men about defense and foreign-policy issues, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The relationship between the president-elect and the Republican heavyweight suggests that Mr. Scowcroft’s views, which place a premium on an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord, might hold sway in the Obama White House.

Don’t get me wrong, I would like to see Obama pick up the Israeli-Palesstinian peace process, and I am aware that Scowcroft has criticized George W. Bush’s conduct of the war in Iraq.

Still, it seems unjust for Obama to get elected on the promise of big change and then turn around an appoint a bunch of Scowcroft’s buddies to his foreign policy shop–especially if the foreign policy experts who were there for Obama early on are left out in the cold.

I would love to be proved wrong, but I am finding it hard to believe that the American military presence in Iraq will be down to a small residual force 18 months from now.

Your thoughts and rebuttals are welcome in the comments.