Rounding The Corner

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

The headlines started early in the week, beginning with examples of Republicans quietly cooperating on bits of legislation. Even more startling, common sense suddenly began to appear in political conversation, suggesting a return to rational discussion. Not that the tribal drums didn’t beat into a frenzy over the exchange of five Taliban prisoners from Gitmo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, captive in Afghanistan since 2009. Bergdahl seems to have been a disenchanted soldier when he was seized, some say a deserter, turning what should have been a happy homecoming into an attack on the sergeant, his family, and the administration that brought him home. More on that later, but suffice to say that the vitriol is growing (think: Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi), and the zealots have another incident to use in their call for impeachment of the president.

Nevertheless, good news seemed to dot the headlines frequently. Independent (and self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist) Bernie Sanders of Vermont, working with GOP hawk John McCain from Arizona, previewed an upcoming bipartisan bill to reform veterans’ health care and hospitals, including building more hospitals, hiring more staff, and issuing vouchers for private physicians to treat vets who wait too long for service. As additional reports of ‘death lists’ surface, there is collective agreement that this situation must be dealt with quickly.

Over on Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that it was close to establishing new “rules targeting high-speed traders, less transparent trading venues and order-routing practices, a move designed to promote fairness for investors, shine more light on the markets and bolster stability.” So there’s hope floating in regard to our veterans, in regard to the privateers, and even for our judicial system: for the first time, a national poll indicated that a majority preferred life sentences rather than the death penalty for murderers. With Holder’s push for sentencing reform, and the public weariness with the failed war on drugs, big changes for the Department of Justice seem to loom.

Good sense continued into mid-week. The NRA actually chided overzealous Open Carry Texas (OTC) members for scaring people senseless by frequenting restaurants draped with assault rifles and bullying those who disagreed with their demonstrations of  “robust gun culture,” saying it hurt their cause. When OTC called the NRA traitors to the Second Amendment and cut up their membership cards, the NRA quickly apologized, of course, because they are basically carrying water for gun manufacturers and must remain sensitive to the needs of their clientele. This initial attempt to encourage rational behavior in its membership failed, but still …

From files marked Old Business, a federal appeals court upheld a lower court decision to hold British Petroleum and Anadarko Petroleum liable for Clean Water Act violations in the Gulf in 2010. The oil companies had attempted to put responsibility for the millions of barrels of oil leaked by the Macondo Well squarely on the shoulders of Transocean, owner of the riser and equipment connecting the well at the surface. Having reconfirmed that the oil companies are responsible for the drilling mishap, the government is now free to go after BP for up to $18 billion in fines, and as much as $4.6 billion from Anadarko. That’s the good news.

BP can certainly afford it, since — and here’s the bad news — they’re no longer banned from contracts in the Gulf, and now run 11 deepwater rigs (with no evidence of improved disaster planning or oversight). The Gulf, of course, is slowly dying, not just from the spilled sludge but also from the use of toxic dispersants to sink it to the bottom. New studies announced this week that an under-reported 600,000 to 800,000 birds died during that debacle, while the oysters, crab and shrimp that blessed this region for centuries have become sparse, and often inedible due to mutation.

Should the government follow up in collecting those fines, most of it had better go back to the scene of the crime, where health issues and job opportunities continue to challenge what was a unique way of life for all creatures that made their home on, and in, those waterways. And, should it happen, file that under New Business, since we surely haven’t done much to help the core problems of this disaster-stricken area in these last underfunded years (while big oil continues to receive its welfare checks, on time and seldom questioned).

In other news, the foot-dragging by so many Red states in building state health-care exchanges has created exactly what the GOP fretted about the most: dominance of the federal exchange, which now counts 36 states tucked under its wing. While the administration spent liberally, no pun intended, to encourage each state to design its own insurance exchange, most of the hold-outs either waited for the GOP to defeat Obamacare or refused to work with the federal money afforded them, much as they’ve done with Medicaid expansion.

That has left the fed to pick up the slack, and Obama’s people have accepted the challenge, enhancing HealthCare.gov to take on the task. In fact, seven states have established exchange partnerships with the federal program, in which they maintain control over some aspects of the markets, but use the national exchange exclusively. This kind of cooperative venture is being referred to as a “blueprint for a national system.” Isn’t that what we wanted all along? The more the foot dragging, the closer to single-payer we get.

Most impressive this week — and surely a cause for celebration among all life forms, no matter their politics (whether they know it or not) — was Obama’s use of executive authority to put a hefty emissions cut for power plants in place, lowering carbon pollution some 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. The new EPA regulations have been designed much like Affordable Care, with deference to each individual state. Different regions create different problems, with the Rust Belt heavily invested in coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, while other areas, like California, have been proactive in dealing with air quality and energy regulation for some time.

Power generation accounts for about 40 percent of all this nation’s carbon emissions, and farsighted energy providers are already dabbling in alternatives. That pragmatism is lost to entrenched conservatives, to whom regulation sounds like the snip-snip-snip of tyranny’s scissors, running for the throat of capitalism and free markets. The hysteria over the possibility of rising costs and job loss has been amping on the right, driven by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association, and of course, the GOP. Our EPA Director — Gina McCarthy, a plain-speaking Bostonian who comes across as someone for whom you’d happily buy a beer — thinks not, however. The question, “Will it hurt the economy?” was answered as follows in a Grist article detailing the proposal:

“No. As McCarthy noted in her remarks Monday, even the upper bound of projected cost increases for an average household’s utility bill will equal the price of a gallon of milk every month. Such a minor rate of increase is unlikely to cause many factories to pull up stakes and move to Mexico. Job losses in the coal industry will be offset by hiring in the construction and clean energy sectors. Lower rates of respiratory illness will save money on health care and improve productivity. EPA estimates that lower particle pollution from coal burning will reduce annual heart attacks, asthma attacks, premature deaths, hospital admissions, and lost days of work and school by the thousands. The economic value of these savings could outweigh increased costs by up to a factor of 10.”

Environmentalists are celebrating this move by Obama, despite their concern that it isn’t nearly enough. There’s also a downside in that this will promote the use of natural gas without methane limitations, and few limits on the controversial use of fracking. But we have to start somewhere, get past the blow-back, and prove the nay-sayers wrong before we can go farther in this political climate. There will be a public comment period of 120 days before the rule is implemented, next year around this time. Naturally, the Republicans are planning to win in both November and 2016, turning back both Obamacare and this ‘egregious use of presidential overreach,’ although it would be difficult to reverse completely considering the Supreme Court’s ruling that the EPA is obligated to regulate CO² under the Clean Air Act.

For the moment, though, the GOP is focused on the Bergdahl issue, with FOX pundit, supposed intellectual-successor to the late Bill Buckley (and Dr. Strangelove look-alike) Charles Krauthammer, declaring that Obama was ‘out of touch’ with American thought when he decided to swap Bergdahl for five Taliban leaders held at Guantanamo Bay. But Charles has been wrong before — quite often, actually — especially in determining what the majority of the American public thinks.

Those miffed that Obama broke the law by not notifying Congress thirty days in advance of a change in prisoner status (at Gitmo) didn’t take his signing statement into account, the one that provided him power to act in emergency circumstances, which the president determined this exchange to be. This is the other side of executive authority, in all its glory. The political wrangle went viral when video of Bergdahl seemed to indicate the soldier’s health was failing, and news was released that the Taliban threatened to kill him should negotiations be made public. The conservatives insist the Prez broke the rule about negotiating with terrorists, but Bergdahl was not a hostage, he was a prisoner of war.

Prisoner exchange has long precedent, and as for releasing Gitmo prisoners, Bush himself released some 500 or so during his tenure, assuming we’d kill them all later. Clearly, if we still had a Republican president, it would be enough that the military is standing behind the ‘no man left behind’ rule, and that the American public, by and large, are just glad he’s been released, but at this writing, the GOP scandal machine is pumping smoke full time.

It’s evident that the public needs an in-service regarding the continuing War On Terror and our shameful warehouse for detainees, some still waiting to be charged, on the far Cuban shore. Since the war in Afghanistan has all but ended, we will be required to let Taliban detainees go within the next couple of years. That’s what we do with prisoners of war when war is over. They are not al Qaeda, not international terrorists, per se.

We need to look at this prisoner situation anew, at war’s end. The good news is that this prisoner exchange has escalated calls for the closing of Gitmo, a plan Obama seems to back although he has not been able to break through the congressional stonewall. Still, he asserts that he has the ability, as Commander-in-Chief, to make the kinds of transfers we saw this week, and if so — argues Glenn Greenwald — then he has the ability to release others of the uncharged detainees, transfer the remainder, and close Camp Delta entirely. Look for this conversation to continue to heat up.

Meanwhile, the viciousness with which the GOP is prosecuting allegations against the entire Bergdahl family doesn’t work to the party’s benefit, any more than do the AK-47’s slung over the shoulders of people attempting to dine at Chilies. It’s become obvious — and tiresome — when someone is not just looking for an enemy, but manufacturing one. And it’s shameful, to me at any rate, that those on the far-right can find no compassion for a man emotionally torn by the wholesale killing his country required of him, while refusing to fund the services he would require as a veteran should he survive the ordeal.

It’s been quite a week, all in all, some of it clumsy and flat-footed, progress made in fits and starts, but progress, still. Let’s watch the headlines in the coming days to see if we’ve really broken through the wall of density that’s blocked us for so long. Seems to me that this reflects a growing, collective awareness that has found its feet. Maybe we aren’t pushing the political boulder up the hill these days, so much as bringing it into position to round the corner into a more productive future.

Perhaps the more rocks we turn over and bring into the sunlight — personally, socially, politically — the easier and more open the path ahead. It’s felt like we’ve been turning over those rocks for a long time, hasn’t it? I’m ready for an easier climb and a bit of sunshine; a reward for the hard work done and the steep incline navigated. And, as luck would have it, here comes a Merc retrograde in water to slow things down and allow us to take some time processing our feelings. Just one more sign, seems to me, that we’re right where we need to be.