Taking Note

Can the UN Save Afghanistan?

One of the missing elements in the ongoing drama over Obama’s policy review in Afghanistan is the role of the United Nations. The UN, lest we forget, has played a central role in Afghanistan since September 11, 2001.

After all, on September 12, 2001, the UN Security Council authorized American retaliation against the Al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts via a resolution that invoked the UN Charter’s “inherent right of individual or collective self-defense” and permitted “all necessary steps” to strike back at the “perpetrators, organizers and sponsors” of the murderous attacks against the US.

Still later the Council created the International Security Assistance Force composed of NATO troops which was also dispatched to the land. In 2002, the UN designated a UN Special Envoy to help set up Afghanistan’s first post-Taliban provisional government and a two-year transitional administration – all ratified by a loya jirga (Council of Elders). The Special Envoy also helped write a new Afghan constitution, and in October 2004, again under UN guidance, the nation elected its new president, Hamid Karzai.

Public Supports Moving Forward on Climate Change

Health care reform is occupying almost everyone’s attention these days, which is understandable given its level of importance and how close we are to big decisions in Congress. But other critical issues remain on Congress’s agenda and will be taken up once the health care situation is resolved. On the top of that list is climate change. Just-released data from the Pew Research Center suggests the public is ready to move forward in this area.

First, the public rejects the idea that the United States should go alone in addressing climate change. By 56-32, they say that the United States “should join other countries in setting standards to address global climate change” rather than “set its own standards to address global climate change.”

Second, the public gives 50-39 support to “setting limits on carbon dioxide emissions and making companies pay for their emissions, even if it may mean higher energy prices” (emphasis added).

These findings indicate that legislators should not rest on their laurels even if they succeed in passing health care reform. The public appetite for change is clearly broader than that.

Soft Targets and Great Games in Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents have escalated their attacks on "soft" international targets with a pre-dawn attack October 28 that killed six United Nations staffers and three Afghans.  Proclaimed by Taliban spokesmen as a blow against the country's presidential runoff election November 7, it followed lethal attacks on India's embassy that killed seventeen people three weeks earlier, and the surprise attack that killed six Italian peacekeepers and ten Afghan bystanders in September.

The Taliban appear to be drawing from the Iraq playbook, hoping to set off an accelerating exodus of international partners and to leave the floundering Kabul government isolated with just the Americans.  But they show their hand also in targets that hint at a regional Great Game as well. 

Introducing the Chicago News Cooperative

Chicago was the quintessential twentieth-century newspaper town. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's play Front Page, which premiered in 1928, captured the city's zest for breaking news. Tribune Tower, a monument to Colonel Robert McCormick's vision of his daily as the "World's Greatest Newspaper," was also a buttressed symbol of power. In its pre-World War II heyday, the Chicago Daily News had the premiere cadre of foreign correspondents in the country. In later years, New York was the financial and media capital of the nation. Los Angeles had the movie business. Washington had politics and government. Chicago had The Mayor (Richard J. Daley) and the ne plus ultra of big-city columnists, the great Mike Royko.

With both of its surviving metro newspapers in bankruptcy and local network affiliates' running cut-rate news outfits, this decade has been a harsh comedown for newsgathering on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

The Public Option: It’s Not About Politics; It’s About the Economics of Reform

Last week, I argued that the insurance industry had declared war on President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform because industry leaders sensed—or knew-- that support for a federal public insurance option was building. A week earlier,  I told an audience at a San Francisco screening of Money-Driven Medicine that I thought the odds were at least 60/40 in favor of a national public plan. They were surprised that I was so optimistic, and this was a very liberal audience in San Francisco.

At the time, most progressive pundits had declared the public plan moribund. Reading the political tea leaves, listening to “informed Congressional aides,” parsing the administration’s statements, they were convinced that the public plan was, as the Buffalo News put it “the rotting corpse of health care reform.” Why was I still hopeful? Because I continued to believe that, without Medicare E (for everyone) health care reform won’t be affordable.

Last week, I argued that the insurance industry had declared war on President Obama’s plans for healthcare reform because industry leaders sensed—or knew-- that support for a federal public insurance option was building. A week earlier,  I told an audience at a San Francisco screening of Money-Driven Medicine that I thought the odds were at least 60/40 in favor of a national public plan. They were surprised that I was so optimistic, and this was a very liberal audience in San Francisco.

At the time, most progressive pundits had declared the public plan moribund. Reading the political tea leaves, listening to “informed Congressional aides,” parsing the administration’s statements, they were convinced that the public plan was, as the Buffalo News put it “the rotting corpse of health care reform.” Why was I still hopeful? Because I continued to believe that, without Medicare E (for everyone) health care reform won’t be affordable.

Why is Health Care So Expensive in Rural Louisiana?

Most discussions of regional variations in healthcare focus on the nation’s cities. Below, a first-of-its-kind map from a post on the Daily Yonder titled “The Uneven Cost of Rural Health Care.”

Daily Yonder/Dartmouth Health Atlas

This map shows the difference in per capita Medicare costs among 1,845 rural hospital service areas. Green areas have costs below the national average. Brown areas are above the national average. For a larger version of the map, click here.

The map and the post are based on data collected by researchers at the Dartmouth Medical School. Doctors and economists there take a sample of Medicare costs from some 1,843  hospital service areas where a majority of the  people are  living in rural or exurban zip codes.

Public Wants Action on Health Care, Backs Public Option

We are into the endgame on health care with the passage (finally) of a health care reform bill by the Senate Finance Committee. Conservatives are hoping the public will rise up against a successful conclusion of this process, spurred by conservatives’ unrelenting attacks on any and all health care efforts. But the public is unlikely to do so. In fact, they say, by 61-29, that they will be disappointed if health care reform isn’t passed by the end of this year.

A big part of the health care endgame will be whether and in what form a public option is included in a final bill sent to President Barack Obama. Conservatives of course have tried to convince the public that such an option would ruin the American health care system. But the same CBS News poll shows that the public backs, by 62-31, inclusion of a public option in health care reform. This result is consistent with several other recent polls showing support for a public option.

Encore! Encore! And Journalism.

Journalism's Great Depression has meant the loss of many thousands of jobs: 16,000 in 2008 alone, according to estimates cited by the Columbia Journalism Review. These departures are characterized and paid for on a scale that goes from lucrative buy-outs to firings with virtually no severance. Overwhelmingly, the cuts represent a break from expected career patterns with resulting personal and family upheaval. Not surprisingly, a fin de siècle gloom tends to hang over newsrooms these days, especially in the once-proud metropolitan dailies and in many magazines.

But there is another emerging strand to this narrative. It certainly does not off-set the magnitude of contraction, yet is well worth noting. Newsroom refugees are reinventing themselves in a variety of ways as entrepreneurs, authors, free-lancers, teachers, public relations and communications specialists, and presumably, craftsmen and women of various kinds.

Last week, the Columbia Journalism Review (where I am vice-chairman) announced the first CJR Encore Fellows, four eminent journalists who will write for the magazine and cjr.org over the next nine months. They are Lisa Anderson, who was the New York bureau chief and a national correspondent for the Chicago Tribune; Jill Drew, who was an associate editor at the Washington Post; Terry McDermott, most recently at the Los Angeles Times; and Don Terry, who was on a team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times and now contributes a column to the Chicago Sun-Times. The group will also spend time at The Poynter Institute and at Columbia University at what are intended to be sessions about how to take advantage of their transition from high-profile jobs to the next phase of their careers.

Why are Health Insurers Launching an 11th Hour Attack on Health Care Reform?

They are running scared. And why are they so scared?

Because they know that the public sector option is still alive. And here I’m not talking about the possibility that some states will offer public plans: Most state plans would be too puny to challenge the strongmen of the health care industry. I’m talking about a federal public plan--Medicare E (Medicare for everyone) a public option for patients under 65, run by the federal government. The scent of real competition is what has insurers on the run.

Should The Swine-Flu Vaccine Be Mandated For Health Care Workers?

Mandatory vaccination programs are seldom without controversy. Since the early 1900’s when public health workers went door-to-door inoculating people against smallpox and authorities blocked unvaccinated children from attending school, these widespread campaigns have been met with court challenges and public opposition. The underlying issue has always been that mandates threaten medical liberty—the freedom for individuals to choose which medical interventions they want and which they don’t want. But when it comes to vaccines and infectious disease, in the eyes of the law, protecting public health often trumps individual choice.

It was predictable then, that these same tensions would surface when New York State and some large hospital systems in other areas made H1N1 vaccines mandatory for health care workers. In New York, health care workers like nurses, aides, emergency room clerks, food service workers, etc. are all required to get both the seasonal and the swine flu vaccines by Nov. 30, or risk losing their jobs. The idea is that without being vaccinated, these workers pose a threat of infection to vulnerable patients, and also, in the event of a widespread outbreak, they are more likely to get sick and be unable to work when needed most.