Diplomatic Breakthrough with Iran?

The historic agreement just announced with the Islamic Republic of Iran is a good and necessary first step toward preventing that troublesome nation from acquring a nuclear weapon.  The interim accord also represents perhaps a last chance to do so peacefully.  The accord should be supported, because it preserves the prospect of beginning to restore a modicum of stability to the Middle East.

The six-month deal was announced between Iran and six powers, led by the United States.  The other partners are Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.  Here are some of the most important terms Iran must adhere to: International inspectors will be able to visit Iran's facilities every day for the six months to monitor compliance.  Iran will destroy the 20% enriched uranium it already has.  It will accept limitations on producing more 3.5% enriched uranium.  It will get rid of some of the advanced centrifuges it currently has, and will acquire no more new ones.  It will not open its Arak heavy water reactor, potentially capable of producing plutonium.  It will enter into good-faith negotiations for a permanent treaty during this six-month interim period.  These terms are intended to take away Iran's present stockpile and then prevent it from retaining the ability to produce more fuel enriched to a level that makes the jump to nuclear weapon status feasible.    

In exchange, the powers will relax their sanctions a bit, allowing some more sales of Iranian oil and permitting it to re-enter world markets to specified levels in auto parts, gold, and other precious metals.  The easing of sanctions would net Iran about $7 billion in relief over the next six months.  The sanctions are costing the Islamic Republic about $5 billion a month, so even with the interim agreement, they will still be penalized $23 billion of the $30 billion (over 76%) of the economic losses they faced before agreeing to the bargain.

The usual chorus of neoconservative critics attacked the agreement, claiming it lets Iran off the hook too easily.  Senator Lindsey Graham called for harsher sanctions and no deal except Iran agrees to end all enrichment, even at the 3.5% level of purity which can legitimately be used for electrical power generation.  Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called it a "bad deal."  Senators McCain and Corker apparently are ready to begin bombing Iran any day now.        

The problem with their line of thinking is that this represents a real opportunity to avoid war and begin bringing Iran back into the family of nations.  If it fails or Iran reneges, the military option will still be there.  With daily inspections Iran will not be able to produce a bomb in the next six months.  President Obama has made it clear several times that Iran "Will not be permitted to acquire a nuclear weapon," and that "all options are on the table" to accomplish this.  Iran knows full well what that means, and the sanctions Obama has initiated and gotten the other powers to accept have been extremely effective.

Why on earth shouldn't we try to resolve things peacefully first?  If this works, the President will have gone a long way toward earning that Peace Prize he received early in his presidency.  If not, we are likely headed for another war in the Middle East.  And after what we have been through over the past 12 years, only a fool would prefer that as a first choice.

The Day the President Died

Fifty years ago today, also on a Friday, President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed in Dallas, Texas.  For people around my age, it was our Pearl Harbor, our nine eleven.  I was in school that day at Arbolita Elementary in Mr. Membrez's room.  The principal, Mr. Van Pelt, came into our fourth grade class and told us the news. Some cried; the rest of us sat in stunned silence. That weekend our family watched everything on TV. Particularly etched in my memory are John John's salute, Jackie kissing the casket in the Capitol rotunda, and the riderless horse in the funeral procession. We saw Oswald get shot on live TV. It was a total national nightmare.  We've never really recovered what was lost.  I still sometimes choke up when discussing that day in my History classes. 

Obamacare Is On The Road To Success

A remarkable and rather unheralded development is quietly taking place regarding the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) health overhaul.  Enrollments are surging now, particularly in the 14 states running their own exchanges.  The Buffalo News reports that the Empire State signed up 48,162 last week, about half of whom bought insurance on the exchange while the other half signed up for the expanded Medicaid eligibility.  Connecticut is on track and about 14% of the way to their enrollment goals for the March 31 deadline.

Covered California has signed up 59,000 for the private exchanges and added 72,000 to Medicaid.  The Golden State is adding another 2,000 people a day to its rolls.  Covered Oregon "cut its uninsured population by 10 percent in the first six weeks of enrollment."  The Los Angeles Times  reports rapidly accelerating momentum.  "California — which enrolled about 31,000 people in health plans last month — nearly doubled that in the first two weeks of this month."  "What we are seeing is incredible momentum," said Peter Lee, director of Covered California.

The effects of state cooperation have been important.  To give you an idea, Kentucky is the only southern venue in which the state government has supported the program.  5,586 Kentuckians have signed up for insurance there.  Meanwhile, 2,921, about half as many, have signed up in Texas, even though Texas has six times Kentucky's population. 

Nationwide,about 400,000 people have been added to Medicaid and about half that many have secured private insurance coverage through ACA.  Despite the rocky federal website roll out, as things continue to improve the country is rapidly reaching a tipping point.  Before long there will be a million people directly helped by Obamacare.  As the detractors have feared all along, once that happens they will never be able to get rid of it.  It will prove as politically impossible for them to repeal the program and take coverage away from people as it has been for them to repeal Social Security or Medicare.

Fracking Questions

Hydraulic fracturing is a technique to get more oil or natural gas from rock formations deep underground.  It involves injecting water and a stew of dissolved volatile chemicals into a well under high pressure.  The process fractures rock, freeing hard-to-get-at oil and gas deposits and increasing the production of wells.  It’s being used in new fields such as North Dakota and Wyoming with geological strata that have been hard to drill up to now, and in old fields such as Pennsylvania to squeeze more hydrocarbons out of formations that had previously been tapped but left a lot of fossil fuel underground that couldn’t be recovered using older technologies.  California is another state that has large reserves from older fields that will likely become prime industry targets due to fracking.  These are primarily in the massive Monterey Shale formation which rests beneath much of the central portion of the state, including the San Joaquin Valley.

People like me who are concerned about the environment are highly suspicious of fracking for a number of reasons.  First, we want to put more emphasis on clean, renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and tidal.  Fossil fuels are what’s putting poison into our breathing air and raising global temperatures through the greenhouse effect of gasses like carbon dioxide and methane.  On the whole, we and the earth would be a lot better off phasing out fossil fuels in favor of their clean alternatives rather than finding new ways to produce more of them.  Second, we are alarmed about the possibility of toxic chemicals such as solvents being injected into the ground and contaminating the water table we use for irrigation and drinking water.  Third, fracking has been associated with earthquake activity in Pennsylvania.  To what extent will breaking up subterranean rock formations act to destabilize the crust and set off subsidence and quakes?  Is that something we really want to mess with?  There needs to see a lot more research and provisions for serious safeguards before we should be the least bit enthusiastic about opening up this Pandora’s box.

Congressional Climate Denial

Global temperatures have been warmer than average for 341 consecutive months.   97% of climate scientists agree the earth's temperature is warming and that human activities are the primary cause.  Even so, an  article in Think Progress finds that 57% of Republicans in congress have made a public statement either denying that climate change is happening or that humans have anything to do with it.


What's more,  the denial pays.  Think Progress figures show that climate deniers in the House receive an average of $241,000 in contributions from dirty energy companies while non-deniers get $69,000 from them.  That's better than a three-and-a-half-to-one spread.  The disparity is even more pronounced, over four-to-one in the Senate, where climate deniers average $699,000 from dirty energy contributions and non-deniers get $171,000. 

The Sierra Club Magazine produced a graphic to display the political landscape reported on in Think Progress.   I've included it below.

 

As you can see, the House of Representatives has 200 Democrats, and every last one of them accepts the findings of climate science.  Of the 233 Republicans in the House, 128 (55%) are known climate deniers.  The Senate is even worse.  The 52 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with them (Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine) are all climate realists.  But 30 of the 46 Senate Republicans (65%) are deniers.  And when it comes to the GOP congressional leadership, the opacity is nearly absolute.  Think Progress reports 90% of them are on the denial bandwagon.