In his State of the Union Address, Bush is going to lay out his new health care proposals. Of special interest are his Health Savings Plans, which are most attractive to young healthy people. Read all about Bush’s HSA’s in Kevin Drum’s Washington Monthly piece.
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Josh Marshall at TPM turned me on to this piece in the Washington Post. Telephone companies like AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon appear to be moving toward charging internet content providers like Yahoo and Google increased fees in exchange for premium service. In other words, if Yahoo pays more to the provider, Yahoo gets more air time on BellSouth’s network.
Advocacy groups, including Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and Free Press have lobbied Congress for the past year for legislation securing "network neutrality." To read more about their efforts check out PC World’s piece. Telecommunications companies also are lobbying Congress looking for new ways to pay for the expense of improving their networks.
How does this translate for consumers? If Verizon charges Apple more each time you download a song from Itunes, Apple’s cost will trickle down to you the consumer and you’ll start paying more per download.
The complexity of the problem grows deeper when you take into account that internet companies like Google are using more and more bandwidth without paying extra for it. Internet content providers pay a fee to connect their servers to the internet but currently they do not pay higher fees when they utilitize more network space.
If sites that pay higher fees to carriers enjoy greater access to networks, the information available to consumers may change drastically. Suddenly your search terms may not be the only factor in the equation.
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Trent Lott announced he is running for re-election this year. He left open the question as to whether he would campaign for his old leadership position in the Senate. I predicted in an earlier post that Lott will resume his post as Senate Majority Leader. There is also speculation that he’ll run for Senate Whip if Santorum loses his re-election bid this year. Stay tuned …
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The Washington Post reported that Karl Rove in his remarks to the RNC unveiled the party’s strategy for the midterm election campaign. What is the focus for Republicans? You guessed it … 9/11. Rove criticized Democrats for failing to understand the national security threats facing the US. He said,
At the core, we are dealing with two parties that have fundamentally different views on national security. Republicans have a post-9/11 worldview and many Democrats have a pre-9/11 worldview. That doesn’t make them unpatriotic — not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong.
Is this the best the Party can do. Voters must be tired of the 9/11 rhetoric by now. Do the Republicans have anything else up their sleeves? Rove went on to explain that Democrats have lost their political will.
[I]t is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant party — in this case the Democrat Party — when its thinking becomes ossified, when its energy begins to drain, when an entitlement mentality takes over, and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a means to achieve the common good.
It sounds to me like transference. He blames the Democrats for losing inspiration while he puts forth the same tired campaign speech we have heard from Republicans for the past four years.
Rove claims the Democrats share a sense of entitlement. Meanwhile, the President’s inner circle sets the political climate by sabotaging critics of their foreign policy and later lying about it.
Republicans are trying to defuse a political time bomb aimed at their party by preempting Democrats’ allegations of corruption and poor leadership. It is too late. The Republicans are going to have to make a better showing. With the President’s approval rating below 50%, corruption allegations plaguing GOP Congressional leaders and indictments in the White House, midterm election success will take more than 9/11 rhetoric and empty accusations against the Democrats.
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The Center for Reproductive Rights in a 2004 report claimed 30 states were at risk of prohibiting abortion if Roe was overturned. Many of the states still have on the books obsolete statutes banning abortion.
The 21 states at highest risk, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights were: Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
We know states like Texas, Alabama, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia would criminalize abortion but what about the remaining states? The religious conservative voter base has shown itself to be a formidable opponent for liberal voters and Democrats. I think they are not to be underestimated. I believe fewer than thirty states will actuate criminalizing abortion, but I suspect you will be surprised when a good number of states ban abortion in one way or another.
Read the full story from the AP at SFGate.
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The Times reported today that several leading nations in Europe joined with the United States to declare a temporary suspension of negotiations with Iran over dismantling its suspected nuclear weapons program and to demand that Iran be referred to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions.
These nations favor the diplomatic measures and pressure position. One that I took as well. Sometimes, it is not until one votes that you catch the flaw. Diplomatic "measures" and diplomatic "pressure" are not the same thing. I believe in diplomatic measures, not pressure. Pressuring the Iranian government, as the US and European proposal to the UN Security Council does, halts negotiations with Iran. Negotiations are vital pieces of diplomacy and yet pieces politicians rarely master. Meanwhile any negotiations that do occur are clouded by self-motivated interests that can be counterproductive.
It may be that the Security Council waves its finger at Iran and warns about next time but either way, US relations with Iran are getting closer to bubbling over. I would not be surprised if this topic was at the top of Condoleezza Rice’s recent trip overseas.
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