Editorial -- Sorry, Folks, Joe Biden’s Too Busy

On Wednesday, Second Harvest just announced that they would make massive cuts in its popular Fresh Mobile Pantry that delivered food to a number of area communities. Reducing poverty and hunger is key in reducing the number of mass shootings in this country. Poverty and gun violence are directly related. Unfortunately, Joe Biden is too busy to care that inflation, rising fuel costs, and the fact that people are cutting back on giving is creating the groundwork for even more gun violence and mass shootings. He’s too busy trying to figure out new ways to stick it to the Russians.

Recently, the City of Maryville announced that due to supply chain issues, work on the road that links up Hy-Vee with 71, South Avenue, had to be postponed from July 5th to July 25th. Supply chain issues were the reason. But don’t ask Joe Biden to care. Again, he’s too busy finding new ways of sticking it to the Russians.

On July 5th, the Maryville Forum published an interview with Sheriff Randy Strong in which he said he was angry that there was no coordinated national effort to address school safety following the mass shooting in Uvalde (TX), like working to provide each school in the country with a dedicated security officer. While it would not stop all shootings (Uvalde had a security officer), it would help.

Mr. Strong said, “And I’m just gonna say what I think a lot of other people are saying too: Shame on our government, in both parties, that have not come together to put somebody in our schools to deal with this. We could put air marshals in aircraft after 9/11, but where are we now? I think that’s an immediate quick response that you could do, that you train people, and you put them in there, and that’s their sole purpose – is to protect the children and our teachers in the schools.”

The Sheriff is doing all he can to protect the schools in Nodaway County, including Northeast Nodaway and North Nodaway, Deputies who are not on call will begin rotating among the six school districts outside of Maryville. But there is a reason why the government won’t come together to stop the madness. Joe Biden is too busy finding ways of sticking it to the Russians to care. 

These are just a few of the many real life consequences of Joe Biden’s obsession with Russia at the expense of the rest of us. I’m sure he would say that these issues are just a few of the many sacrifices that we all have to make so that we can stick it to the Russians. But Mr. Biden completely misses the point.

Back in 1928, American Legion State Commander Nee, speaking at the dedication of the new Grant City Legion building, talked about the sacrifices that 4 million young men made during World War I. This includes 80,000 who laid down their lives. (Editor -- More recent statistics put US war deaths at 116,516. This includes deaths of all causes.) Millions more made similar sacrifices in World War II. Many gave their lives, and many were so scarred that they literally had nothing more to give. What politicians like Mr. Biden don’t understand is that these young men did not make these sorts of sacrifices in a vacuum. They did so in order that their children and grandchildren would never have to fight such wars again. Mr. Biden’s boss, Barack Obama, got it right before the folks at the Military Industrial Complex got hold of him.

Maybe there is one glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. It is estimated that rebuilding costs for Ukraine will be at least $750 billion to $1 trillion after the war. The corporations and billionaires who stand to profit are going to want a piece of the action as well. They need the shooting to stop in order to begin.

Editorial -- Daily Kos a Cesspool of Neocon Activity

It used to be that Daily Kos was a haven for people like myself who were fed up with the war in Iraq. Howard Dean successfully tapped into the sentiment, and Daily Kos seemed like the perfect continuation. Wars were considered to be something to be relegated to the dustbin of history, something to be fought only in self-defense.

Riding the wave of this antiwar momentum, Daily Kos and other sites like it helped contribute to the victory of Barack Obama in 2008. Under him, we were going to have a new era. Nuclear weapons were to be abolished. While he was not a pacifist, he was not going to take us into “dumb wars” anymore. His call for hope and change was so strong, he won a Nobel Peace Prize right off the bat.

But then something funny started to happen. First of all, he escalated the war in Afghanistan, a move which turned that conflict into our longest war in history. That was a topic of epic debate at Daily Kos. Some people charged that Kos and Barack Obama had totally sold out, while some were saying that we had to get behind the President. The unwritten fear was that if the war got too much out of hand, it would spread to Pakistan and we would have a nuclear armed Taliban on our hands.

Then came Libya, in which the US turned one of Africa’s biggest economies into  a failed state and one of the world’s biggest open air slave markets. Gaddafi was a bad person, but this was a case of the ends failing to justify the means. 

Barack Obama’s coalition held together in 2012, in part because Mitt Romney was spoiling for a fight with Russia, and the Democrats were able to portray him as an unhinged warmonger. But Obama continued to start the very sort of dumb wars that he once said he was against. He armed Syrian rebels in an unsuccessful attempt to overthrow Assad. He even sent US troops there, which could have triggered a conflict with Russia. He aided and abetted a coup against Ukraine’s government, which led to the mess that country is in today. He aided and abetted Saudi Arabia’s war of choice against Yemen. Instead of two wars, he got us into nine by the time he left office. So much for hope and change.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton turned out to be even more of a warmonger than George Bush was. She planned to create a no-fly zone in Syria, which could have started World War III. That was one of the most common reasons we heard from people why they were not voting for her. She was one of the chief architects of the war in Libya; her remark, “We came, we saw, he died,” was one of the most chilling and disturbing remarks made, more so than most of Donald Trump’s mean tweets. The only exceptions we can thing of would be his threats to nuke Iran and North Korea. While she did nothing illegal regarding Benghazi, it was inexplicable and inexcusable; there is no excuse ever to be taken by surprise.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos changed right with the Democratic Party. Now, they are no longer an independent voice for the left seeking to hold both parties accountable, which is necessary in a healthy democracy. Instead, they are now little more than a Neocon war site. In their view, it’s OK to start wars as long as a Democrat starts them. It is when the other party is in power when they suddenly break out the Peace and Love slogans from the 1960’s.

They do little more now than threat the war in Ukraine as a game. They cheer on every blow from their “team” as though it were a sports contest rather than a matter of life and death that could spiral out of control at any time. 

People who disagree with them are branded as Russians, Russian assets, traitors, monkeys, primates, yellow, surrender monkeys who make one’s skin crawl, and other such epithets. This is the exact same behavior that we saw from Red State (the GOP equivalent of Kos) during the Iraq War, when George Bush was in power. 

Case in point. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a far-right voice in Congress, recently tweeted, “The American people do not want war with Russia, but NATO & our own foolish leaders are dragging us into one.

A war that no one will win.

Escalation over Ukraine, a non-member nation, risking nuclear war is a power play endangering the entire world.

We should pull out of NATO.”

We disagree about the pulling out of NATO part, but agree with everything else she said. When you find yourself to the right of people like Rep. Greene, you need to think long and hard about your positions. The Neocons at Daily Kos have clearly positioned themselves to the right of her and now regard her as a traitor and a Russian asset. 

Even if there wasn’t a danger of nuclear war, there is still the matter of gas prices and food prices being too high, stock prices off to one of their worst starts ever, and rampant inflation. This is being fueled, in part, by the government printing more and more money and feeding the beast that is the Military Industrial Complex. 

Opinion -- God and Country, Not Party

We read some recent stories about the continued decline in membership in most churches throughout the country. And we have long known about the prevalence of voter apathy over the last several election cycles. We submit that the reason is that we have lost sight of the basics in both cases.

Let’s start with the church. The ideal church in the Book of Acts is described as follows: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need.”

So given the fact that there is rising poverty and growing wealth inequality in this country despite the fact that we are a predominately a Christian nation, it is obvious that the church has lost sight of its primary mission – to focus on God and to provide for its members. There are many reasons for the decline of membership in the churches today, but we submit the primary reason is that many people simply don’t see the church as relevant for their lives anymore. And more and more people are having to work 10 or 13 hours a day, 7 days a week just to survive and pay the bills, leaving no time for church or other activities.

Nobody is in the clear in all this. The liberal “social gospel” wing of the church holds the form, but denies the power of God. Many see the resurrection not as something that actually happened, but a mere symbolic metaphor.

Isaiah gave the clearest sign possible of the power of God over the idols made by human hands which represent gods wealth, materialism, lust, and all the other human vices. The difference between God and idols is the ability to foretell the things to come. And Isaiah specifically foretold the captivity of Israel following by the restoration by the Persian King Cyrus, specifically named nearly 200 years before the actual event. Yet the liberal “social gospel” wing chooses to claim, without factual basis, that this part of the Bible was actually written by a “Second Isaiah.” We realize that science and archeology provide a lot more insights on the Bible, but this is mere human conjecture, not science. And this conjecture flies in the face of the evidence, seeing that the Book of Isaiah was intact in its present form as early as 200 BC based on archeological finds.

The fundamental question is this – if this is mere myth on a par with the Greek mythology that is being taught in our schools today, then how is it relevant to peoples’ lives today?

The fundamentalist wing of the church is not in the clear either. The problem is that too many national church leaders confuse following the commandments of God with the platform of the Republican Party. When we go to church, we expect to hear a sermon about how to live a better Christian life. And all of our local pastors are very good about preaching such sermons. Yet when we hear preacher after preacher on national platforms reciting the talking points of the Republican Party, the church has shut out over half the country right off the bat. We expect to hear sermons about getting closer to God, not the latest GOP talking points. If we want to know the latest GOP talking points, all we have to do is look up one of our right-wing friends or turn on KFEQ.

And so when we hear a  preacher on national TV threatening Vice President Joe Biden with hell fire because he is pro-choice and not anti-abortion, then it is obvious why people were put off and voted for Obama for a second term despite the tanking economy. Last time we checked, Jesus told us not to judge.

We get the pro-life position. One of the best presentations we saw regarding the pro-life position was one on EWTN (a national Catholic cable channel) about the pre-born Jesus in Mary’s womb. In a nutshell, in the book of Luke, we are told that Elizabeth’s (Mary’s sister) baby jumped with joy in the womb on hearing Mary. Abortion was practiced in the 1st century like it is today and it was just as hotly debated in Roman and Jewish circles.

And yet Mary never even contemplated having an abortion despite the social stigma of being pregnant outside of marriage. Back in those days, women were considered property, first of their fathers and then of their husbands. A common practice, as we learned in a BBC documentary about the life of Jesus, was for fathers to throw daughters into deep wells if they brought shame and dishonor on the family if they became pregnant out of wedlock – even if they were raped.

But here is the catch – Mary accepted the calling of God to bear Jesus for 9 months willingly, without any compulsion on her part. That is why she is venerated in the Roman Catholic Church today. Take away the free choice on her part and the virgin birth is not nearly as meaningful.

This means that people have to accept the moral teachings and precepts of the church willingly, not out of any compulsion on peoples’ part. That is why we support Roe vs. Wade, for instance. To enlist the government in a wholesale assault on peoples’ privacy by snooping on personal private medical choices is to show the same sort of dependence on government that the Republican Party says that they’re against. The government needs to trust the people of this country to make right moral choices. This applies both ways. Obama should respect the right of business owners and religious organizations to follow their consciences in deciding whether or not to cover abortion or contraception as long as they are up front with their employees about it. The church should present its moral vision of the pro-life ethic clearly, yet trust the people to make the right moral choices for themselves, not depend on the government to do it for them.

Which brings us to the government. Our political system has lost sight of the principles found in the Declaration of Independence when it declares that all people are created equally in God’s eyes, or the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. We have a fundamental right of privacy that is contained in the Constitution. But when we have the government prying into peoples’ medical decisions, then it is only a small step from that to the Patriot Act passed by George Bush to Obama’s enlisting the NSA to pry on our phone conversations and e-mails.

We are not worried about the kinds of choices that our friends and neighbors make regarding their personal lives. I may not agree with your personal choices or lifestyle, but I’ll defend your right to live it. We are much more worried about the police state that is emerging and continuing to grow. And the best way to combat the police state starts with respect – respect of other people to make their own choices. Whether it be immigrants who come to this country to live a better life, someone wrestling with major medical and financial decisions regarding their pregnancy, someone choosing their lifestyle, or someone choosing to use a gun to defend themselves, we can’t depend on the government to make those sorts of choices for people.

The government says that we need the NSA to snoop and pry on your personal life in the name of stopping terrorism. I submit that when we trust on God to protect us, we have much more security. When the Israelites depended on God to protect them, they were safe. But when they trusted in their own strength, as even their good kings did sometimes, then they were not.

Obama Budget would Allow Postal Service to Eliminate Saturday Delivery

The new budget sent by President Obama to Congress would allow the US Postal Service to eliminate Saturday mail deliveries, the website GovExec reports. The President, in his budget message, says that the Postal Service needs more flexibility in order to adapt to what he says is a changing marketplace.

The proposal is part of a larger overall plan to reform the Postal Service which the President says would create $30 billion in cash relief, savings, and revenue by 2016 while saving the Federal Government $23 billion over the next 11 years.

It would allow the Board of Governors to institute one-time rate increases for standard and first-class mail and lower payments that it must make to prefund its retiree fund. It would also return $11.5 billion in surplus out of that fund.

Opinion -- What’s Ahead in Congress This Year

By Lee H. Hamilton

 

Earlier this year, it seemed there might be some hope for Capitol Hill when Congress dealt easily with raising the debt ceiling. But don’t let that single episode fool you. As President Obama and House Republicans circle each other over the forthcoming budget cuts known as the “sequester,” it’s a reminder that Congress and the White House have a complicated legislative agenda ahead — and that none of the items on it will come easily.

 

We’ll get to the specifics in a moment, but two things need to be said up front. The first is that despite President Obama’s exhortations in his State of the Union speech, major policy changes will be difficult to make. The Democrats may have increased their margin in the Senate, but the Republicans still control the House. The ideological polarization and apparently incompatible views that marked dealings between the two bodies show no sign of abating. Significant policy initiatives are not impossible, but it’s safest to have subdued expectations.

 

Second, although rank-and-file members seem more willing than in the recent past to part with their caucuses on high-profile votes, power will continue to rest with the leadership. Over the year ahead, the dynamic to watch will involve the caucus leaders in both houses — ordinary members may have some impact on the margins, but they won’t be the center of the action.

 

The big issue, of course, will continue to be the budget and fiscal affairs. The major questions are: Can we get our fiscal house in order? Can we revive economic growth and make the investments we need in human and physical capital? And can we figure out a reasonable way to pay for the government we require — one that doesn’t need the 73,000 pages of rules and regulations that burden our current tax code?

 

However Congress and the White House proceed, it’s unlikely there will be any “grand bargain.” Instead, they are likely to make piecemeal progress on the core issues: increasing tax revenues and cutting spending on entitlements. Confrontations over these matters will make it harder to tackle other economic issues that need addressing, such as how to address the regulation of the biggest banks and how to finance the infrastructure that our economic growth desperately needs.

 

Congress will also turn to health care. As long as President Obama is in office, his signature health plan will not be repealed, but there will almost certainly be fights over its implementation and funding. The big issue — how to control health-care costs — will remain a centerpiece of the debate, but it is unclear how it will get addressed.

 

On the other hand, there is unambiguous movement on immigration reform. While Democrats have coalesced around a comprehensive approach to the issue — which would include ways of easing the stay of highly skilled workers, a guest-worker program, and a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country — Republicans have generally preferred tackling specific issues separately.

 

The two sides can find common ground, especially on high-skilled workers. Possible citizenship, on the other hand, will be much knottier to resolve. So while the gridlock may be easing, comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system is not assured.

 

You can also look for piece-by-piece initiatives on gun control. While the White House and some members of Congress are looking for wide-ranging legislation banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, others are focused on specific proposals that can gain bipartisan support. Some members with widely different views, for instance, are coalescing around an effort to expand requirements for background checks on gun sales.

 

Climate change, which gained national force last year with Hurricane Sandy, is less likely to see congressional action. Despite the certain threat of rising seas and storm surges, Congress seems unprepared to get serious about it. Instead, as he promised in the State of the Union, if Congress cannot act the President will take whatever steps he can by executive order, as he just did with cyber-security.

 

There are drawbacks to this approach, but it is a reminder that when Congress is able to act it remains a player, and when it can’t, it deals itself out of the policy picture.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Editorial -- President, Politicians Golfing as Sequester Looms

While a sequester that would create devastating cuts looms, there is no urgency in Washington whatsoever to address the problem. President Obama was on vacation golfing with oil industry lobbyists while Congress is currently on vacation as well. This means one of two things -- either the problem is not as serious as we are being led to believe, or our politicians have decided that they just don't care anymore.

The problem starts in the mirror. Poll after poll shows that around 75% of Americans think that Congress does not reflect their values. Yet here is the kicker -- they think that their Congressman is not part of the problem. Hence, for instance, Sam Graves gets reelected handily, getting 72% and 65% in the last two elections. And for all the visceral Obama hate out there, we reelected him as well. The point is that we should not reelect Congressman Graves or President Obama automatically; we should reelect them because they accurately reflect our interests.

The next problem is with the media. The corporate media acts like gatekeepers and decides who is important and who is not. Since Ross Perot threw a scare into the two-party establishment in the 1990's, certain gatekeepers have set up rules that stack the deck in favor of the two party system. We, on the other hand, feel that everyone has a right to be heard and plan our coverage accordingly. 

There is plenty of other blame to go around. The church is supposed to be salt and light to the world. Yet too many church organizations and leaders have become propaganda outlets for one party or the other instead of being willing to show independence. After all, God is supposed to be much more important than some political party or system. And organizations create objective sounding names and purport to be think tanks, yet all of their "conclusions" conveniently reflect the propaganda of the party that they are serving.

Ultimately, we have brought this mess on ourselves. Unless something happens between now and March 1st, we will start to pay the consequences.

Jack Remembers -- Sensible Gun Ownership

Every time I turn on the news I hear “gun control”. I decided to check my guns and asked my wife Laura what happened to my Bolt action .22 I bought when I was eleven years old for $12.00. She answered, “Your son John came and got it years ago to add to his gun collection.” I asked if my mom’s old single shot 410 shotgun with no shells was the only gun we owned, and she said, “Yes, and that’s the way I like it”.
When I went through advanced infantry training, we were required to shoot and be proficient with every light weapon the Army had, including mortars, carbines, anti-tank bazookas, pistols, and .30 and .60 caliber machine guns. One of my favorites was the not-so-accurate grease gun that could shoot 500 .45 caliber bullets a minute. After basic training we were then issued a .30 caliber M-1rifle we carried everywhere we went for the rest of our time in the service.
I suddenly realized I may not have shot a gun since I got out of the service 60 years ago. I decided to take a poll of my Army buddies to see if they owned guns. I called Bob Lundy in Burden, Kansas, who was our .60 caliber mortar man. He said he has never owned a gun since he got out of the Army. I called Dick Stephenson who used to run a tire shop and filling station in Albany, MO and reads my article in the Sheridan News. He said he did not own a gun now, but owned guns when he used to go duck hunting. He retired, had a sale, and sold them. My best friend Gary Reagin from Oak Grove who wound up in Houston, Texas, told me years ago he had never owned a gun. Ralph Chrisler, Gorham, Kansas, said he owned a single shot .22 rifle, a single shot .12 gauge shot gun, and when he was younger liked to squirrel hunt. He most recently bought and registered a .22 pistol for target shooting.
If President Obama wants sensible gun ownership, my suggestion is he should draft everyone when they turn 18 into the Infantry and make them carry a gun for two years.
Jack can be reached at PO Box 40, Oak Grove, MO 64075 or jackremembers@aol.com. Visit www.jackremembers.com

Opinion: A Debate We Can Never Resolve

by Lee Hamilton

A few weeks ago, in his second inaugural speech, President Obama waded into the longest-running argument our history offers. “Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time,” he said, “but it does require us to act in our time.”

 

He had just laid out a rationale for government action on infrastructure, protecting the security and dignity of people, climate change, inequality, the strength of arms and the rule of law. Even though he also spoke about limiting government’s reach, replacing outmoded programs, and reforming its shortcomings, liberals saw the speech as a call to arms, while conservatives cringed.

 

However you responded, though, there’s one point I suspect we could all agree on: this is not a question we’ll ever settle. After more than two centuries of discord over the proper role of government, the only consensus we’ve been able to arrive at as a nation is a consensus not to have a consensus.

 

That’s okay, because the issue is never going to go away. Changing circumstances, new challenges facing the country, and shifting national moods will always demand that we rethink what we want out of government. But that is not the same as saying that we can’t approach the question more thoughtfully.

 

If you bring up the issue before an audience, someone invariably quotes Henry David Thoreau’s phrase, “That government is best which governs least.” Everyone usually nods in agreement.

 

But Thoreau was writing more than 150 years ago. As appealing as small government might be to the rugged-individualist, market-oriented strain in the American character, talk about it is misleading. The growing number of Americans on Social Security and Medicare; the interest on the national debt; the social safety net; the public demand for regulations that promote safety and well-being, protect the environment, and keep rapacious firms in check; the sums we spend on defense and taking a robust leadership role in the world; the government’s interest in promoting economic activity, in part by funding infrastructure — all guarantee that the federal government won’t be shrinking anytime soon.

 

This is not to say that government can’t be restrained, however. Talking about “limited government,” I think, is far more useful these days than about “small government.” An energetic government that nonetheless knows how to restrain spending, ensures that regulations are fair, calibrates the tax code so that it promotes economic growth and provides what government needs without stifling initiative, and rigorously oversees its own actions to correct slip-ups quickly and ensure they don’t happen again — how to create that is worth debating.

 

Most Americans are uncomfortable with an aggressive, expansive government. They want it to provide the resources for people to solve the problems that confront us, they want it to lay the groundwork for opportunity, they want it to protect liberty, individual freedom and federalism, they want it to keep us secure, and they want government leaders to do the best they can — given how limited their control over the economy actually is — to promote economic growth. But they don’t want it to take over.

 

Still, I am concerned by our failure as a country to deal with issues that demand government action: income inequality, poverty, hunger, the lack of access for too many Americans to high-quality education, and the sluggish economy. Government can’t solve these alone, but we can’t solve them without government.

 

The public sector does a lot of things wrong. It fixates on short-term benefits and ignores long-term costs. It remains slow to act when action is needed. It is reluctant to spend now — as on infrastructure — even when it knows that the longer it delays the higher costs will rise. It often spends too much and too inefficiently. It fails to reckon early enough with the consequences of its activities.

 

Yet it is also indispensable. So it is high time, I believe, to set aside the black-and-white argument about “big vs. small” government and to adopt a more thoughtful, less ideological approach to the role of government. For those things we want government to do, we should be talking about how a limited government can do them better.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

New Influenza Vaccine Manufactured with Novel Technology

(Health and Human Services) -- Our nation has reached a landmark in influenza vaccine history with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a new seasonal flu vaccine, called Flublok, made with novel technology. This method uses recombinant DNA and a modified baculovirus (a virus that infects insects) to produce a safe and effective human flu vaccine. The approval yesterday of the new vaccine produced with this modern technology stands as one of the most significant improvements in flu vaccine technology in the past 50 years. I am honored that such a remarkable advancement came through a public-private partnership between ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and Protein Sciences Corporation.
Since its inception in 2006, BARDA has worked steadily with private industry to advance influenza vaccine technology and develop flu vaccines with these modern technologies that are FDA approved, ultimately providing more domestic pandemic vaccine capacity. As part of these national pandemic preparedness efforts, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases supported early stage development of this vaccine and in 2009, when the vaccine reached an advanced development stage, BARDA began a partnership with Protein Sciences Corporation to reach the results we are seeing today: a new flu vaccine made with modern technology.
Demand for influenza vaccine can increase with little warning in a pandemic and in years when the flu is especially widespread. The method used to manufacture Flublok may help meet the increased demand for flu vaccine quickly because it has the potential for faster start-up of the manufacturing process than traditional egg-based vaccine methods. The process is nimble enough to be used for seasonal as well as potentially for pandemic flu vaccine because the technology does not depend on an egg supply or on the availability of modified influenza virus for production like traditional egg-based vaccine manufacturing does.
This new way of making flu vaccine is an example of the Obama administration partnering with industry to move innovative technology forward to the market. Our goal in ASPR is to drive innovative development of effective and cost-efficient vaccines, drugs, diagnostics, and medical equipment to protect public health during emergencies. Many of these innovations also hold potential day-to-day uses, as is often the case with seasonal and pandemic flu technology.
BARDA also worked with its partners to achieve FDA approval for the first flu vaccine manufactured using a cell-based technology and, through a public-private partnership, opened the first cell-based flu vaccine manufacturing plant in the United States. This past year, BARDA engaged private partners around the country in a new way through three Centers for Innovation in Advanced Development and Manufacturing that will support pandemic as well as biodefense readiness.
This HHS record of progress shows the power of public-private partnership. By working together – industry, non-government organizations and all levels of government – we can help save lives, improve public health preparedness and potentially increase health security for our nation. FDA approval of Flublok is an important step toward that goal.

Editorial -- The Time for Partisan Ideology is Over.

The American people have spoken -- Barack Obama will be the President for the next four years. The American people don't completely buy into his ideas, given that they reelected a Republican Congress. But based on the election results, they feel he is still the best person for the job. Now that he's reelected, we need to let him be President. I would have said the same thing had Mitt Romney been e

lected.

Now is not the time for ideology or stonewalling. President Obama is not a socialist and most people who supported Romney are not racist. The President and Congress were elected to work together, not engage in partisan grandstanding. We need to get a budget passed and we need to decide what direction we wish to go. The way our political system is set up, nobody is going to get their way all the time; sometimes, we have to give up some of what we want so that our system of government can continue to function. To do otherwise will mean that billions of dollars of farm subsidies, upon which a lot of us live off of, will be in jeopardy along with funding for roads, bridges, and schools.

 

The time for partisan ideology and grandstanding is over. Today, we were driving over Route F, which had been cobbled together by the Highway Department a few times since 2006. It is getting into bad shape. We have driven along Route C from Allendale to Albany, which had always been a good alternative to 169, which was getting into bad shape. Now, that is no longer possible; there are places along C which are not passable at speeds greater than 30 miles per hour. Just as an example, for Congress not to act and reach a deal with President Obama would risk turning all of our roads into similar shape, not just our lettered roads. There would no longer be adequate funding for our roads and bridges should the massive automatic spending cuts be triggered in January of next year.

The Pew Research Center has done research into the attitudes of the American people towards deficit reduction and the great majority of the American people have spoken -- most people want compromise and not confrontation. 67% of Americans want Republicans to work with Obama while 72% of Americans want Obama to work with the Republicans.

There is another broad area of agreement as well -- most Americans (56%) want a smaller government providing fewer services instead of a bigger government providing more services. And (same link), most Americans want a combination of higher taxes and reduced services (69%), not one or the other. There are two common sense ways of reducing the size of government that will not threaten basic programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security -- one was put forward by a CEO on NPR's Morning Edition on Wednesday, November 21st, who pointed out that by simply eliminating duplication of tests in Medicaid and Medicare, we could save $750 billion annually. The same CEO was willing to pay more taxes in order to get rid of the deficit and pointed out that most of his fellow upper-income friends were willing to do the same thing. Another hundreds of billions can be saved by identifying and eliminating defense programs that have been passed by politicians engaging in pork barrel politics, but which the Department of Defense identifies as a want instead of a need.

 

 The problem comes when identifying specific programs to cut. Many people want to reduce the size and scope of government, but don't want their pet projects cut. So what we should do is focus on cuts that most of us agree on and have a debate over others in which there is a partisan split. Ideas which are opposed across the board should be off the table.

With that in mind, here is what the Pew polling finds general agreement on:

--Reduce Medicare income for higher income seniors;

--Limit tax deductions for large corporations;

--Raise tax on high income earners;

--Freeze salaries of federal workers;

--Raise Social Security cap for affluent earners.

Those areas in which there is a partisan split are as follows:

--Raise income taxes on income over $250,000 -- Will this take a substantial chunk out of the deficit, or will the government be taking money that would have otherwise been invested in the economy?

--Reduce military defense spending -- Now that we are leaving Afghanistan in 2014, what are our biggest national security concerns and how do we pay to address them?

--Raise taxes on investment income -- See the question on income taxes over $250,000.

--Reduce funding to help lower-income Americans -- Is it necessary to help people get back on their feet, or is it an incentive for people not to find work?

--Reduce aid to the world's needy -- Do we have a moral obligation to give to the world's needy, and if so, how do we keep it from going into the wrong hands?

These are areas in which we should not necessarily include as part of the package, but that we should have a constructive debate over.

Areas which voters have expressed disapproval of and which should be off the table include:

--Limit home mortgage interest deduction;

--Gradually raise the Social Security retirement age;

--Raise peoples' Medicare health care contributions;

--Reduce funding for college student loans;

--Reduce funding for scientific research;

--Reduce federal funding for education;

--National sales tax;

--Raise Medicare contributions;

--Reduce federal funding to states;

--Raise the gas tax;

--Tax employer-provided health insurance. 

Any agreement that comes out of the present talks between the Obama administration and House Republicans must respect the wishes of the American people. It must protect everything that our people have identified as needs and not wants. To do otherwise would undermine the foundations of our democracy and make a mockery of our political system even more than it is now. Politicians of both parties will suffer at the polls come 2014 and 2016.

Gary Munyon Charged Under New Synthetic Cannabinoid Law

Gary Munyon was charged in Worth County Associate Circuit Court with Possession of a Synthetic Cannabinoid. Missouri State Highway Patrol Trooper Robert Dudick signed a probable cause statement alleging that on March 25th, 2012 on Route YY west of 169 near Grant City, Dudick stopped Munyon for a lane violation. During what Dudick said was a consent search, he found Mr. Marley incense, cigarette papers, a container of Fusion incense, and two containers of Quick Fix Plus. There are many products that are marketed as incense but which produce highs similar to marijuana and which are labeled as not for human consumption. Quick Fix Plus is a synthetic urine that is designed to defeat drug tests.

The probable cause statement by Dudick states that the incense in question was sent to the Highway Patrol crime lab and that it tested positive for controlled substances. The statement said that the defendant admitted that he smoked it to get high, but that he did not think it was illegal to have incense.

In 2011, the Missouri Legislature passed and Governor Jay Nixon signed a law making the sale, distribution, or possession of synthetic cannabinoids and synthetic cocaine illegal. This law also includes K2, certain bath salts, and other substances. Opponents, especially in the Ozarks, said that the new law amounted to an infringement on peoples' rights, saying that it was no more harmful than beer. Others, however, describe violent and abusive behavior and hallucinations that have lasting effects for days. Greene County, MO had people treated at emergency rooms after K2 was smoked. Supporters argue that passage of the law was necessary because it rose to the level of a public health issue.

This year, in 2012, President Obama signed a bill banning synthetic marijuana and other synthetic drugs at the federal level. It costs around $20 per gram and people spend as much as $100-$200 per week on these products.

But the battle on these substances has just begun. There is no specific list of brands available which constitute K2 in Missouri and there is therefore much confusion over what is legal and illegal. And vendors, especially in the south part of the state, are already turning to K2 alternatives which they say are legal. And a basic question for lawmakers is, how far can the government reasonably expect to go? People can get high sniffing common substances such as glue, paint, lighter fluid, fingernail polish, permanent markets, Whiteout, and deodorants. Yet no reasonable person is arguing that we should ban the sale or possession of such substances.

Opinion -- Washington Needs to Lead. Now.

By Lee H. Hamilton

 

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a group of prominent business leaders that I’m still mulling over. We were talking about the intersection between business and government, and they were pretty unhappy. The chief target of their displeasure wasn’t any of the usual suspects, though.

 

Instead of lambasting taxes or regulations, they were most worried about uncertainty in Washington. Their business prospects, they argued, are being hurt by the inability of the political class — and in particular Congress and the White House — to come to terms on pretty much anything: from the year-end package of tax hikes and spending cuts known as the “fiscal cliff” to fixing the health care system to resolving our disagreements over immigration.

 

Now, uncertainty is baked into our political system. As soon as a law passes, hundreds of lobbyists head for Capitol Hill to try to change it, and scores more descend on executive-branch agencies to see if they can nudge the rules implementing the law as they’re written. Legislation that seems buried for good in Congress can abruptly rise from the dead and pass both houses, while laws that passed easily a few years ago suddenly find themselves imperiled.

 

“Nothing ever gets settled in this town,” George Shultz once told the House committee on which I sat when he was secretary of state. “It’s a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up.” Given the nature of our representative democracy, certainty and finality are simply not achievable.

 

Yet the businessmen I met with had an important and valid point. The range of really crucial issues on which Congress has been unable to find common ground is immense. It has yet to decide what to do about tax cuts that are about to lapse. It has a budget in place only until March and has not come to terms with the threat of deep cuts to spending that were part of the debt ceiling deal of 2011. It’s left issues like the future of estate taxes, a new agriculture bill, ensuring the security of our information infrastructure, and a rickety postal service on the table. And it hasn’t given a clue as to how it might want to address issues that are key to our economic competitiveness in coming decades: education, infrastructure, taxes, immigration and the like.

 

As we near the end of the year, anyone trying to plan ahead has to confront the fact that government policy for both the near and long terms is wildly unforeseeable. And no one expects the upcoming election to clarify much of anything.

 

This interminable gridlock in Washington produces a signal lack of leadership. Unable to formulate policy, let alone think strategically about the future, Congress punts. Which is terrible for the country. As The New York Times noted a few months ago, “A rising number of manufacturers are canceling new investments and putting off new hires because they fear paralysis in Washington will...undermine economic growth in the coming months. Executives at companies making everything from electrical components and power systems to automotive parts say the fiscal stalemate is prompting them to pull back now, rather than wait for a possible resolution to the deadlock on Capitol Hill.”

 

The problem is that politicians in Washington get so wrapped up in their own world that they seem unable to recognize the consequences of their inaction and last-minute antics. The bad habits they’ve developed in recent years — an inability to enact a budget or address taxes, the omnibus bills that concentrate power in the hands of just a few people, the lack of transparency and overabundance of partisanship — all have brought us to a point where people who depend on government to create a stable policy environment can no longer do so.

 

Yes, uncertainty may be built into our representative democracy, but so is the assumption that our elected leaders will take responsibility for bringing solidity to the policies that affect our society and economy. Politicians of both parties simply must step up their game, or they’ll create chaos.

 

Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for 34 years.

Obama administration issues new rules to cut red tape for doctors and hospitals, saving up to $9 billion

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced today the release of a new rule that will cut red tape for doctors, hospitals, and health plans. In combination with a previously issued regulation, the rule will save up to $9 billion over the next ten years. The regulation adopts operating rules for making health care claim payments electronically and describing adjustments to claim payments.
“These new rules will cut red tape, save money and ensure doctors spend more time seeing patients and less time filling out forms,” said Secretary Sebelius.
Studies have found that the average physician spends three weeks a year on billing and insurance related tasks, and, in a physician’s office, two-thirds of a full-time employee per physician is necessary to conduct these tasks. Many physician practices and hospitals receive and deposit paper checks, and manually post and reconcile the health care claim payments in their accounting systems. By receiving payments electronically and automating the posting of the payments, a physician practice and hospital’s administrative time and costs can be decreased.
The operating rules build upon industry-wide health care electronic fund transfer (EFT) standards that HHS adopted in January of this year. Together, the previously issued EFT standards and the EFT and electronic remittance advice (ERA) operating rules announced today are projected to save between $2.7 billion and more than $9 billion in administrative costs over ten years by reducing inefficient manual administrative processes for physician practices, hospitals, and health plans.
Operating rules include best business practices on how electronic transactions are transmitted and often target obstacles that physician practices and health insurers have with using electronic transactions. For instance, the rule announced today requires insurers to offer a standardized, online enrollment for EFT and ERA so that physicians and hospitals can more easily enroll with multiple health plans to receive those transactions electronically.  The rule also requires health plans to send the EFT within a certain amount of days of the ERA, which helps providers reconcile their accounts more quickly.
Today’s rule, Administrative Simplification:  Adoption of Operating Rules for Health Care Electronic Funds Transfers (EFT) and Remittance Advice Transactions were developed through extensive discussions with industry stakeholders. The rule adopts the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare's Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CAQH CORE) Phase III EFT & ERA Operating Rule Set, including the CORE v5010 Master Companion Guide Template, with the exception of Requirement 4.2 of the Phase III CORE 350 Health Care Claim Payment/Advice (835) Infrastructure Rule.   Collectively, these rules are referred to as the EFT & ERA Operating Rule Set.
The regulation announced today may be viewed at www.ofr.gov/inspection.aspx and will be effective upon its publication in the Federal Register on Aug. 10, 2012.  The comment period closes on Oct. 9, 2012.
The compliance date for operating rules for the health care electronic funds transfers and remittance advice transaction is Jan. 1, 2014.
A fact sheet with technical information on the rule is found at http://www.cms.gov/apps/media/fact_sheets.asp.

Virgil Goode -- No Amnesty for Illegal Immigrants

Virgil Goode charges Obama and Romney with wanting to maintain the status quo, which he says would encourage more illegal immigration. Mitt Romney, on his website, opposes amnesty but would attract more legal immigrants, saying that it would help create more jobs. Obama is pushing the DREAM Act, which would address the status of immigrant children brought here at a young age. Goode would oppose any amnesty, repeal the 16th Amendment and require proof of citizenship before enrolling in public schools.

Fact Check -- Gary Johnson on Obamacare

Gary Johnson's latest video attacking Obamacare is here:
Johnson claims that Obamacare will hire 16,000 IRS agents to enforce his bill, but not one doctor. But this repeats a claim on right-wing talk radio that is not true. *** The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the IRS would need $5 to $10 billion over ten years for administrative costs. This money is not for enforcement and hiring agents to break down peoples' doors like Johnson's ad implies, but for giving subsidies for qualifying small businesses and individuals money to buy health insurance. *** As this article by Ezra Klein notes, the 16,000 is just an extrapolation from the CBO figures. *** It is true that people who do not get health insurance starting in 2014 will be subject to a tax. But IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified before Congress under oath that the IRS will not be auditing individuals to make sure that they have gotten insurance. *** Also, on page 131, the Affordable Healthcare Act specifically prohibits the IRS from using liens and levies that they typically use to collect money owed by delinquent taxpayers. There will be no criminal prosecutions of persons who do not pay. *** As for proof, when you get or have health insurance, the entity providing the insurance will file a report with the IRS proving that you have health insurance under this act (Page 132). *** We have a copy of the Affordable Healthcare Act downloaded and the Sheridan Express will email copies of the bill free on request. Send requests to express@grm.net. It is 906 PDF pages long. *** If you have any questions about the act itself, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will try and get answers.

Mitt Romney -- Obama Failed to Meet Promises

Barack Obama -- Rural America will Lead Economic Recovery

Obama Accused of Morphing Into Cheney

Michael Klare in Tom's Dispatch compares Obama to Bush in his appetite for military action. He quotes foreign policy people as calling him "George Bush on Steroids."
***
Obama protested the Bush involvement in Iraq, saying he was not against all wars, but against "dumb wars." In his view, Bush expended thousands of American lives when he could have used technology -- drones, targeted strikes, assassinations, covert operations -- to accomplish the same objectives.
***
Obama's rationale is clear -- he rationalizes that he is saving lives through these methods by using technology and black ops that would have required a multiple-front war in previous times. Or Vietnam on a worldwide scale.
***
As for energy policy, Cheney believed that oil was so fundamental to the world's economy that it was sometimes necessary for the US to go to war to prevent someone else from controlling the world's oil supplies. He was one of the pushers for war against Saddam both times.
***
This sort of thinking has led to out of control deficits; after all, the ends justified the means in Cheney's view.
***
The unemployment problem could be solved tomorrow if we wanted to solve it. Simply take all the money that is being waged on all these covert wars and use it to rehire every teacher, policeman, and firefighter laid off since Bush/Cheney took office in 2001 and the unemployment rate would drop below 7.
***
Obama is now mimicking Cheney's geopolitical oil games in many respects, such as his boasting about more and more offshore drilling. In fact, we have opened more than 75% of our potential offshore oil and gas resources for drilling under Obama, as he himself said this year in his State of the Union Address.
***
The article goes on to talk about Obama's plan of expanding our network of bases and alliances surrounding China. It is ironic that Vietnam is included in this network, given that we fought a war against them just one generation ago.
***
This is dangerous brinksmanship on Obama's part, given the fact that the UN was formed by the five major powers after World War II -- the US, UK, France, USSR, and China. It was formed to prevent a third world war and was set up in a way that requires the Big Five to cooperate in order to get things done. While we can and should take a stand against human rights abuses in China and everywhere, we must also engage in a cooperative relationship with our other four partners.
***
Klaire concludes:

But as history suggests, engaging in aggressive global geopolitical confrontations with other determined, well-armed players usually leads to friction, crisis, war, and disaster.
In this regard, Cheney’s geopolitical maneuvering led us into two costly Middle Eastern wars while heightening tensions with both China and Russia.  President Obama claims he seeks to build a more peaceful world, but copying the Cheney energy blueprint is bound to produce the exact opposite.
***
Brinksmanship over cooperation and reliance on oil over developing new forms of energy means less and less money domestically to build roads and bridges, maintain adequate funding for our schools, and preserving our national infrastructure, and hiring more teachers, firefighters, and police. But that has been the Washington Way since 1945 even as it fundamentally undermines our way of life.

Letter to the Editor -- Five Trillion Dollars!

Dear Editor,
Five Trillion Dollars! That is the amount the national debt Obama has increased (so far) since he was immaculated in January 2009. This is in addition to the tax revenue we taxpayers paid. To be fair to Obama, he needed the Congress to vote for the national debt increase prior to his insane spending spree.
Many Republicans joined with Democrats in Congress to raise the debt limit. Unfortunately, our Sixth Congressional District Representative, Sam Graves, was one of those Republicans who crossed the aisle joining the Democrats to vote for a humongous two trillion dollar debt limit increase last summer. Two Missouri Congresspersons voted "NO" on this huge Obama debt limit increase. Praise to Congressman Todd Akin, now a candidate for the US Senate, and Congresswoman Vicki Hartzler for their conservative stance to stop our country’s runaway spending.
Fortunately, Republican Bob Gough is opposing Sam Graves in the August 7th Primary election. I urge Republicans to vote for Bob Gough for the Sixth District Congressman.
Bob Holliger
Independence, Mo

Word on the Street – Middle America, not the Middle East

If anybody wants to know why Sheridan is not getting money to fix their water system or why Worth County School has to make hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of budget cuts after already having made a bunch of cuts or why our lettered roads are not in good shape anymore, look at the Middle East.
***
When Bill Clinton was President, his mantra was “It’s the Economy, Stupid!” We had eight years of economic growth under his rule. Surpluses were the rule of the day at the end of his term, not deficits.
***
But now, it seems that our politicians on both sides of the aisle are obsessed with the Middle East instead of Middle America. And now, our roads are crumbling, our schools are having to make more and more cuts, and our towns are struggling to keep up water systems in the face of burdensome government regulations.
***
George Bush had a personal vendetta against Saddam while Dick Cheney had personal interests in occupying Iraq.
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And now Obama is going to continue his drone attacks far into the future even though Bin Laden is dead and we have not been attacked since 9/11.
***
The question is, when is enough enough? The more that Obama continues his drone attacks, the more that we plant the seeds for the next 9/11, just like our building of permanent bases in Saudi Arabia planted the seeds for the 9/11 attacks.
***
We’re not excusing anybody’s actions. But we’re suggesting that there is a much better way of bankrupting the terrorists than the extrajudicial kidnappings and imprisonments of the Bush Administration or the Obama drone attacks – getting off of foreign oil and getting electric cars, wind farms and solar plants built in every city in the US.
***
Actions speak louder than words. Most of us agree that we should have a strong national defense. But when certain politicians cry the blues about our escalating deficits and then turn around and spend trillions of dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan while making plans to cut 90% of federal funding from our schools over the next 10 years, we know that these politicians care more about the Middle East than they do about Middle America.
***
And actions can have unintended consequences, no matter how heroic they might seem. The corporate media reports all of the good consequences about the raid that killed Bin Laden, but ignores the bad – such as the fact that Pakistan is running for cover from Polio immunization campaigns after it turned out that a US agent, Dr. Shakil Afridi, set up a phony public health immunization campaign in an effort to get Bin Laden’s DNA.
***
Polio, for those of us who didn’t grow up in the 1950’s, was the biggest scare in the US following the fear of nuclear war during those days.
***
But we eradicated Polio by making it a national priority. And we can bankrupt the terrorists by doing the same thing with energy.
***
None of us have all the answers. Therefore, the best role for government is not to stick their heads in the sand under the guise of “All of the Above” or to dictate to small towns and small businesses and farmers how to run their operations. The best role for the government is to facilitate, providing resources and expertise to towns and cities and help them develop a vision of a country free of dependence on high gas prices and free from the fear of terrorism.