News Aug. 12

August 12, 2009

Senator Sanders

Health Care - Obama President Obama tried Tuesday to defuse fears about his plan to overhaul the nation's health care system, telling a friendly audience in New Hampshire that a lot of misinformation is being spread. The New York Times called the tone of the national debate increasingly emotional, even bitter, and quoted Sen. Sanders saying that "the Republicans are the party of do-nothingism." Sanders added in an MSNBC interview, according to the Times, that "frankly, the Democrats have not handled this as clearly and effectively as they might have." LINK

Health Care - Town Meetings The Republican Party and its allies in the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries "are enabling and supporting a concerted attack on town hall style meetings on health care," according to an op-ed by Richard Davis in the Brattleboro Reformer. He noted that Sen. Sanders plans to hold health care meetings around the state this month. "I want to believe these anti-American maniacs will not show up in Vermont, but ..[i]f we do encounter these disrupters I hope the police are able to escort them out of the meetings." LINK

Health Care - Coburn Democrats have promoted a government-run insurance option as an important part of comprehensive health-care reform. So Republican Sen. Tom Coburn asked his colleagues on the Senate health committee to demonstrate their confidence in the option by pledging to enroll in it. Sen. Sanders and most Democrats on the committee declined, The Burlington Free Press reported. LINK

Economy Gov. Douglas is seeking $30 million in federal funds for a newly formed commission created to revitalize the battered economy in the northern regions of four Northeast states. In a letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy and Bernard Sanders, Douglas and other governors called on federal officials to support the economic development initiative. Rep. Peter Welch said the governors' advocacy will help focus attention on the issue, the Vermont Press Bureau reported. LINK

Middle East Seventy-one senators signed an AIPAC-backed letter to President Obama supporting his effort to encourage Arab states to normalize relations with Israel. Just six of the 13 Jewish senators signed the missive. Among those not signing the letter were Russ Feingold, Dianne Feinstein, Al Franken, Herb Kohl, Frank Lautenberg, Carl Levin and Sanders, according to JTA and Arutz Sheva. LINK and LINK

Media Matters Sanders wrote on Huffington Post that "alternative weekly newspapers...have been bought by a monopoly franchise and made a predictable shift to the right." While some have been acquired by chains, to label any of them a monopoly is "wildly off-the-mark," according to the Association of Alternative Newspapers. The association leaders also asserted that "there isn't a single member of our organization that has made a predictable shift to the right," noting that of 57 out of 57 alternative newspaper endorsements in the 2008 presidential contest went to Barack Obama. LINK

Sanders Unfiltered The number of viewers of the first "Senator Sanders Unfiltered" jumped to almost 34,000 in the two days since it was posted. VIDEO

International

Afghanistan The United States will not meet its goals in Afghanistan without a major increase in planned spending on development and civilian reconstruction next year, the U.S. ambassador in Kabul has told the State Department. In a cable sent to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry said an additional $2.5 billion in nonmilitary spending will be needed for 2010, about 60 percent more than the amount President Obama has requested from Congress, The Washington Post reported. LINK

National

Town Halls Jeers and taunts drowned out Democrats calling for a health care overhaul at town halls Tuesday. "You'll be gone, by God the bureaucrats will still be here," one man told Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. "If they don't let us vent our frustrations, they will have a revolution," Mary Ann Fieser told Sen. Claire McCaskill, who admonished a rowdy crowd of some 1,500. "I don't understand this rudeness." In Georgia, Rep. David Scott's staff arrived at his office outside Atlanta on Tuesday morning to find a large, black swastika spray-painted on a sign bearing his name. LINK

Slow Recovery The pile of economic data indicating that the worst of the recession is over keeps growing. Businesses last month shed the smallest number of jobs in nearly a year. The savings rate held steady, and from April to June, productivity surged to a six-year high. But the benefits are unlikely to materialize in the form of higher wages or tax receipts or more jobs. "It's going to be a recovery only a statistician can love," Wells Fargo senior economist Mark Vitner told The Washington Post. LINK

Prosecutor Purge Thousands of pages of internal e-mail and once-secret Congressional testimony showed Tuesday that Karl Rove and other senior aides in the Bush White House played an earlier and more active role than was previously known in the 2006 firings of a number of United States attorneys, The New York Times reported. LINK

Bernanke and Recession Economists are nearly unanimous that Ben Bernanke should be reappointed to another term as Federal Reserve chairman, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, the majority of the economists the Journal surveyed said the recession that began in December 2007 is now over. "The article never once mentions Bernanke's error in allowing the housing bubble to grow to a size where its collapse would inevitably produce a disastrous downturn," Dean Baker commented on The American Prospect.  LINK and LINK

Vermont

Gas Prices Americans are still far too dependent on foreign oil, and states aren't doing enough to change that, according to a study by an environmental group ranking states on an "oil vulnerability" scale. The annual index compiled by the National Resources Defense Council measures the effect of oil and gas price increases on people's incomes, CNN reported. In Vermont, the average consumer last year spent $1,810 on gasoline, or 4.7 percent of income. LINK

Trade Mission Gov. Douglas will lead a delegation of Vermont businesses to Asia this fall to try to drum up investments. The group will stop in South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Douglas says Vermont's economy has benefited tremendously from foreign investments, The Associated Press reported. LINK  

Solar Parks Vermont state parks are going solar. Gov. Douglas is expected to announce on Wednesday a plan to install solar hot water systems at bathrooms and bathhouses at state park campgrounds around Vermont. The Department of Forest Parks and Recreation has designated $600,000 for the conversions, AP reported. LINK