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(As always, China looks at things a teensy bit differently than we do)

I've been working on getting a world overview of the Healthcare situation. Earlier this week I ran a debate over Health Care in Australia, hearing about issues we only hear rumors about. I kept wondering if in fact, the U.S. was the only country in the civilized (or even semi-civilized) world that didn't have some form of National Health, even as an option to private insurance. Hard to believe, but it's true - we are completely backwards in our relationships to health and healthcare.

Thanks to the BBC, I was able to locate a documentary done in 2008 which asked that very question - and did some exploring in Britain, the U.S. and China and came back with some interesting and very informative answers.

John McDonough (Director: Health Care For All): “All of the incentives, right now in our system reward Health Care providers for the volume of services they provide. So you get more money by doing more and more and more at a higher technological level. And we know the real secret comes from doing the lower complexity level of care much better than what’s being now. So all the rewards come from more procedures. And the more talking you do, the more time you waste and the less money you make. The incentives are completely upside down”.

The one thing I have noticed that's most disturbing about the current Health Care debate is the total lack of knowledge of what the issues and what the alternatives are. Clearly, ignorance is far from bliss and finding out how the vast majority of people on this planet handle things like doctor visits and emergencies is absolutely imperative if we're going to make crucial choices. Having ignorant people dangle the fear card in front of you doesn't do you or anyone else any good. Useful, factual information and knowledge of something your life and peace of mind depends on may save your ass in the long run.

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From the Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 5, 2009. Rachel reiterates this report from TPMDC--The GOP's New Foreign Policy: Undermine American Diplomacy:

An interesting pattern has been emerging in the Republican Party's handling of foreign policy: Individual GOP officials are now making a regular point of not only formulating an alternative foreign policy, to be presented to the American people and debated in Congress -- they're acting on it too, and undermining the official White House policies at multiple turns.

• Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) is visiting Honduras in order to support the recent military coup against a leftist president, which has been opposed by the Obama administration and all the surrounding countries in the region. (Late Update: DeMint's office says he is not taking sides during his visit to the current Honduran leadership, denying the New York Times reports that this was his intention.)

• Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) will be going to the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen, bringing a "Truth Squad" to tell foreign officials there that the American government will not take any action: "Now, I want to make sure that those attending the Copenhagen conference know what is really happening in the United States Senate."

• House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) traveled to Israel, where he spoke out against President Obama's opposition to expanded settlements. He also defended Israel on the eviction of two Arab families from a house in east Jerusalem, which had been criticized by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

• Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL) boasted in June that he told Chinese officials not to trust America's budget numbers. "One of the messages I had -- because we need to build trust and confidence in our number one creditor," said Kirk, "is that the budget numbers that the US government had put forward should not be believed." Since then, he has declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

Anyone remember this statement by Trent Lott when some Democratic Congressmen dared to visit Iraq prior to the U.S. invasion?

Lott raps U.S. congressman in Iraq:

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, who is one of three House members visiting Iraq to urge Iraqi officials to avert war by allowing U.N. weapons inspectors back in, has acted irresponsibly, Lott said.

"For him to be in Baghdad, the center of one of the most dangerous dictators in the world, with all kinds of weapons of mass destruction, to be questioning the veracity of our own American president, is the height of irresponsible," said Lott, R-Mississippi. "He needs to come home and keep his mouth shut."

Or these attacks on Nancy Pelosi for going to Syria? Pelosi's Syria Trip: Media Advancing Right-Wing Spin.

As always, IOKIYAR.

Update. Transcript below the fold.

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(In a word, Mao would shit)

With the G-20 Summit going full blast, I ran across this great documentary produced by ABC Radio National Australia as part of their Background Briefing series from February 2006. It's a reminder that, as much as we complain of being flooded by goods from overseas, we're doing our level best to heap gobs of shameless consumerism all over the world as well.

We joke about MacDonalds' on the Champs-Elysees in Paris - but all the Wal-Marts popping up all over China are something else.

Stan Curry - Radio Australia Reporter: “Lined up in all their red uniforms, Wal-Mart workers begin their day with an ode to Wal-Mart. Ludwig Beethoven is probably turning in his grave. And Chairman Mao too, must be a little astonished at how his legacy is being spun.”

Clay Chandler (Fortune Magazine reporter): “ When you actually go see how they run their employees at their stores, what I was struck with was the similarities between the Chinese Communist Party Organizational pattern. They get these people together in groups, they organize them in very small cells, everybody is very aware of what everybody else is doing within their cell, and encouraged to kind of talk about each other. They sing songs together. They do little drills to create workers solidarity. They run around in red shirts. And they do Wal-Mart Company cheers. They look like nothing so much as the old Red Guard of the Cultural Revolution.”

It's interesting to see how increasingly Gordian our entanglements are becoming with the rest of the world on economic terms. We can't just assume the isolationists stance because it no longer is realistic and hasn't been for many years. Therefore, solutions to our economic situations are more complex than they ever were. Snap answers and judgments no longer need apply.

And then there's that issue of Immigration . . .

(I would urge you to check out ABC Radio Nationals website as well as streaming audio - they are one of the best and as I have said before, they offer information about our own country not generally available here. So in addition to the CBC and the BBC, add this one to your daily dial hopping for useful information).

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I agree with Leo Gerard. This is at least a step in the right direction with our trade laws.

SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW. Tomorrow, President Obama will head to Pittsburgh to speak to union leaders at the annual AFL-CIO conference. Labor is fired up. I was there last night, had a radio town hall meeting. They‘re expecting a lot from President Obama.

The union‘s got a big victory from the Obama White House over the weekend, when the president agreed to impose temporary tariffs on tires imported from China. Union leaders say cheap Chinese tires have cost American jobs and shut down plants, and putting an import tax on them will level the playing field for American workers.

Joining me now is Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers International. Mr. Gerard, good to have you with us tonight. How bold a move was this by President Obama to go ahead and uphold the U.S. International Trade Commission‘s ruling on this? This is something the Bush administration did not do. How bold is this in your opinion?

LEO GERARD, UNITED STEELWORKERS INTERNATIONAL PRESIDENT: I think it was a very important step, very important move. In fact, this is the first time a president has brought meaning for sanctions against a foreign—a foreign country since Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan did it twice. So I‘m pleased that President Obama stepped in.

We believe that this is a rule-base country. We went to the International Trade Commission and said, China‘s breaking the rules. They agreed. Now President Obama‘s agreed. I‘m very pleased.

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From Campaign for America's Future, this stunning news. Notice how union workers are the only ones paying attention to safety issues?

In recent years, multinational corporations have become accustomed to saving money by exporting production to China without concern for labor issues, environmental standards, or product safety. In fact, China typically violates world trade laws through dumping, subsidies, and illegal currency manipulation in order to gain a cost benefit over U.S manufacturers. Unfortunately, this mercantilistic approach too often proves harmful to U.S. workers and consumers in the long-run.

One potentially alarming example of cost savings by following the “China price” is being reported by utility workers in Illinois.

Pat Dillon, an employee at People’s Energy of Illinois and a member of the Gas workers Local 18007/Utility Workers of America, says he has concerns about the gas meter bars he regularly installs as part of his job as a Senior Service specialist #1. People’s Energy recently switched from using American-made Model 6722 high-pressure gas inlet valves (which are manufactured in Iowa) to McDonald 6762 inlet valves made in China.

Click here for photos of both valves-- the American-made model #6722 and the Chinese-made model #6762.

Dillon says that the Chinese models, though similar in price to American models, lack critical O-ring washers. Based on his 30 years of experience with gas meter bars in People’s Energy’s service department, he also believes that the Chinese versions are inferior because the connection cones are not made of brass. He said, “The previous American made bars had brass cones. Anything less is not going to be as safe.”

Dillon reports that he became concerned when People’s Energy was bought by Wisconsin Power Services, which later evolved into a company called Integrys Energy Group. Shortly thereafter, People’s Energy switched to the Chinese-made valve bars, which caused concern among his co-workers.

Dillon said, “We all started to wonder why they’d switch to something that seemed less sturdy, less safe. Then I looked on the box and noticed that they were made in China. I realized that the company was probably trying to save a few pennies.”

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North Korea found two U.S. journalists it has held since March guilty of illegal entry and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor, its official KCNA news agency said on Monday.

The journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, of U.S. media outlet Current TV, were arrested while working on a story near the border between North Korea and China. Their trial opened on Thursday.

"The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor," KCNA said in a brief dispatch.

There just aren't words to express my anger and frustration for Lee and Ling. Al Gore, whose CurrentTV has remained curiously silent on Lee and Ling's plight, may go to Pyongyang to negotiate for their release:

The United States might send former US vice president Al Gore to Pyongyang in order to negotiate the release of two American journalists on trial in North Korea for illegal entry.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly did not rule out such a possibility when asked if it would make sense to send Gore, who is chairman of the California station Current TV, which employs the two journalists.

"It's a very, very sensitive issue, I'm not going to go into it," Kelly told reporters who pressed him on the matter.

"This is such a sensitive issue, I'm just not going to go into those kinds of discussions that we may or may not have had," he added when asked whether Gore himself had raised the matter with the State Department.

"The bottom line is that these two young women should be released but I'm not going to go into any kind of details on what we will or won't do," Kelly said when asked again if it would help to send Gore.

The Petition Site has a petition you can sign (and a Facebook group you can join) to ask the State Department to bring Lee and Ling home.

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( . . and then the screens went dark.)

The final few days of the Democracy movement in Tiananamen Square. After seven weeks, it ended quickly with a death toll still disputed but varying from 300 to 20,000. The crackdown came, the organizers and sympathizers were located, rounded up and imprisoned or executed and China tried desperately to pretend it never happened and hoped everyone would forget.

Twenty years later, they're still trying.

A postscript: Right after publishing this entry I got a note from John Amato pointing me in the direction of a Chinese-American guest blogger who covered for her students after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. I urge you to check it out. G.S.

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The America's Future Now gathering in D.C. just wrapped up today. I haven't been able to post a lot about the panels and talks that went on over the past three days, but probably the most interesting speech I heard came from Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon, talking about the energy bill working its way through Congress.

Adam Siegel at GetEnergySmartNow has a good post up about with excerpts:

If I’d been here a year ago, I would have talked to you about three things: The need to transform energy economy, create jobs, and tackle global warming. ... About the third, during the campaign, I spoke it about every single night. People asked me why, as it was 21st on people’s concerns. I responded: it should be first on everyone’s agenda and the only way it will be is if we talk about it.

... If I am going to simplify the issue, we have to quit taking geologic carbon and turning it into atmospheric carbon.

... In the past, people have described the Senate as the place where a good House bill goes to die. ... We need to change that. We need to reestablish the Senate as a place where an okay bill goes to get vastly improved.

... There is the possibility that we will end up with a framework that is ineffective, that has offsets, that doesn’t have a firm cap. ... Or, we could end up with something that could really transform our use of energy. Obviously, we’re going to have to work real hard to get from the former to the latter.

The whole session was fascinating -- including the speech by Sierra Club president Carl Pope, who talked at length about how the federal government's fickle ways on energy have been killing our ability to create green jobs. (You can watch it all here.) The classic case of this involves the reality that even though wind turbine transformers require elements mined from American soil, China is the world's leading manufacturer of them.

And if you don't believe that "green energy" is going to be the key to restoring America's position as the world's leading economy, check out this report about the fact that investment in that sector is rising at a sharp rate:

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(It seemed like a great idea at the time)

Twenty years ago this month, hot on the heels of Glasnost and Perestroika within the Soviet Union, Chinese students tried for the same thing - a reform of government, an idealogical shift from hardline Mao-styled Communism to a more democratic approach, a relaxing of rigid policies and a free exchange of ideas and enterprise.

It was a little like a movement in the former Czechoslovakia twenty years before that. Prague Spring in 1968 and the liberal experiment of Alexander Dubcek. The climate in the Soviet Union was different that time, and the movement was quickly extinguished.

But it was thought since the mood had changed so much in the Soviet Union in those twenty years, why couldn't the mood change in China as well?

Lofty expectation but sadly, no. Or not in 1989 anyway.

Here are some clips from May 13-15 1989. As the confrontation wears on into June, I will add those to give some sort of timeline sense to the events that took place.

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Looks like another GOP moderate may be out of the running as a potential Presidential candidate in 2012.

President Barack Obama reached across the political divide Saturday and named Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, a potential Republican presidential contender in 2012, to the sensitive diplomatic post of U.S. ambassador to China.

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese from his days as a Mormon missionary in Taiwan, the 49-year-old Huntsman is a popular two-term governor who served in both Bush administrations. He has made a name for himself advocating a moderate agenda in one of the nation's most conservative states.

Huntsman made headlines recently for encouraging the Republican Party to swing in a more moderate direction if it wanted to bounce back from the 2008 elections, angering some conservatives.

Obama's 2008 campaign manager, David Plouffe, said Huntsman is a Republican who "seems to understand the party has to adjust — not stubbornly believe that everything is OK and it is the country that has to change." Huntsman's positions have led some to consider him a potential contender for president in 2012. But Obama's decision to name him ambassador probably rules out the possibility he would run in 2012, writes NBC's First Read. As Politico notes, it's the equivalent of George W. Bush hiring John Edwards or Hillary Clinton in 2001-2002.

I can't be the only one who's avoiding just about anything made in China:

At the height of the U.S. housing boom, when building materials were in short supply, American construction companies used millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap.

Now that decision is haunting hundreds of homeowners and apartment dwellers who are concerned that the wallboard gives off fumes that can corrode copper pipes, blacken jewelry and silverware, and possibly sicken people.

Shipping records reviewed by The Associated Press indicate that imports of potentially tainted Chinese building materials exceeded 500 million pounds during a four-year period of soaring home prices. The drywall may have been used in more than 100,000 homes, according to some estimates, including houses rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina.

“This is a traumatic problem of extraordinary proportions,” said U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat who introduced a bill in the House calling for a temporary ban on the Chinese-made imports until more is known about their chemical makeup. Similar legislation has been proposed in the Senate.

One of the ingredients they used was fly ash. You remember fly ash, don't you?

Neither the authority nor the E.P.A. has released the results of tests of soil or the ash itself. Authority officials have said that the ash is not harmful, and the authority has not warned residents of potential dangers, though federal studies show that coal ash can contain dangerous levels of heavy metals and carcinogens.

“You’re not going to be endangered by touching the ash material,” said Barbara Martocci, a spokeswoman for the T.V.A. “You’d have to eat it. You have to get it in your body.”

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation also released a statement saying there was no indication of risk unless the ash was ingested.

Personally, I think breathing in particulate matter counts as ingested. But that's just me! Oh, and look out for leather furniture, too.

March 09, 2009 CNN

Krugman cites a 2005 speech Ben Bernanke made as the best explanation for the global economic crisis. In his speech, Bernake said in the mid-1990s, the emerging economies of Asia were major importers of capital, borrowing from other countries to finance their development. After their own financial crisis in 1997-98, Asian countries began protecting themselves by acquiring foreign assets, "in effect exporting capital to the rest of the world."

The result was a world awash in cheap money, looking for somewhere to go.

Most of that money went to the United States — hence our giant trade deficit, because a trade deficit is the flip side of capital inflows. But as Mr. Bernanke correctly pointed out, money surged into other nations as well. In particular, a number of smaller European economies experienced capital inflows that, while much smaller in dollar terms than the flows into the United States, were much larger compared with the size of their economies.

Still, much of the global saving glut did end up in America. Why?

Mr. Bernanke cited “the depth and sophistication of the country’s financial markets (which, among other things, have allowed households easy access to housing wealth).” Depth, yes. But sophistication? Well, you could say that American bankers, empowered by a quarter-century of deregulatory zeal, led the world in finding sophisticated ways to enrich themselves by hiding risk and fooling investors.

And wide-open, loosely regulated financial systems characterized many of the other recipients of large capital inflows. This may explain the almost eerie correlation between conservative praise two or three years ago and economic disaster today. “Reforms have made Iceland a Nordic tiger,” declared a paper from the Cato Institute. “How Ireland Became the Celtic Tiger” was the title of one Heritage Foundation article; “The Estonian Economic Miracle” was the title of another. All three nations are in deep crisis now.

For a while, the inrush of capital created the illusion of wealth in these countries, just as it did for American homeowners: asset prices were rising, currencies were strong, and everything looked fine. But bubbles always burst sooner or later, and yesterday’s miracle economies have become today’s basket cases, nations whose assets have evaporated but whose debts remain all too real. And these debts are an especially heavy burden because most of the loans were denominated in other countries’ currencies.

Nor is the damage confined to the original borrowers. In America, the housing bubble mainly took place along the coasts, but when the bubble burst, demand for manufactured goods, especially cars, collapsed — and that has taken a terrible toll on the industrial heartland. Similarly, Europe’s bubbles were mainly around the continent’s periphery, yet industrial production in Germany — which never had a financial bubble but is Europe’s manufacturing core — is falling rapidly, thanks to a plunge in exports.

If you want to know where the global crisis came from, then, think of it this way: we’re looking at the revenge of the glut.

And the saving glut is still out there. In fact, it’s bigger than ever, now that suddenly impoverished consumers have rediscovered the virtues of thrift and the worldwide property boom, which provided an outlet for all those excess savings, has turned into a worldwide bust.

One way to look at the international situation right now is that we’re suffering from a global paradox of thrift: around the world, desired saving exceeds the amount businesses are willing to invest. And the result is a global slump that leaves everyone worse off.

So that’s how we got into this mess. And we’re still looking for the way out.

February 12, 2009 C-SPAN

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On Hardball while discussing the aid for family planning included in the stimulus package, Chris Matthews says that government support for family planning "sounds like China" to him. Robert Wexler attempts to reason with him and explains that proper funding and education in this area actually increases people's choices and ultimately reduces medical costs. Rough transcript:

Gingrey:...I mean we're throwing away, gosh I think that there's two hundred million dollars in there for family planning and contraceptives. Now indeed that may stimulate something but I don't think it's going to stimulate the economy.

Matthews: Well Congressman Wexler why isn't it just, why isn't it just what we thought it was going to be...infrastructure, roads, bridges, stuff that everybody agrees on needs to be fixed and creates real jobs for real people that pay decent salaries. Why don't we spend all the money on that stuff that people can see rather than all these odds and ends and cats and dogs? I mean the bill has so much in it you think it's just a shopping list of the Democratic party. That's what it looks like.

Wexler: No. No.

Matthews: Everybody that wants something has something in here.

Wexler: No what the Obama administration is arguing, and I believe they're correct is that three quarters of the money spent in this stimulus package will be out into the economy in eighteen months and I realize it's easy to find one item or this item but even, let's talk about that family planning. Family planning saves if done correctly an enormous sum of money down the road in the health care system. But back to your original point. Most of the money goes to building roads, bridges, infrastructure projects like my friend Mr. Gingrey said. As the states will have designed them and local governments as well will have designated them.

Also in terms of building schools. We desperately need to upgrade our education systems. We have enormous amount of resources devoted towards construction projects and public education as we do in terms of alternative energy sources. We are going to invest enormous sums of money in creating green jobs which have the benefit of employment increases as well as leaving our dependence on foreign oil. This is exactly what the country needs combined with three hundred billion dollars plus of tax cuts which affect ninety five percent positively of the American family base.

Matthews: I don't know. It sounds a little like China. I, Congressman Gingrey I think everybody should have family planning. Everybody believes in birth control as a right. I'm for abortion as a right and all that. It's all right. But why should the federal government have a policy of reducing the number of births? I don't know why the federal government has an interest in that. They have an interest in freedom and people making choices but I just heard a case made by Congressman Wexler that it was in the national interest to have fewer kids. I don't understand that. (crosstalk) What did you mean by that? What did you mean by that? Why is it an economic stimulus...why are we talking about family planning as an economic stimulus program...(crosstalk).

[...]

Wexler: Chris you are right family planning is a personal choice and in order to make personal choices people need to have both education and resources. And when they lack an education or know how or resources in effect then they're choice is negated. And in terms from an economic analysis to give people choices that in some instances based on personal choice will reduce health care costs in the future, that of course then reduces the burden on federal tax payers. This is not a new concept. This is what we run the government on. If we can reduce Medicaid expenditures by giving people more knowledge and choice and resources I think most people regardless of their ideology would say that's a good economic decision.