Washington Post Promotes Palin?s Denialist Op-Ed By Putting Science In Scare Quotes
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 10th, 2009 5:36 am by HL
Washington Post Promotes Palin?s Denialist Op-Ed By Putting Science In Scare Quotes
As The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes, “Once again, the Washington Post has given Sarah Palin the chance to harness herself to the political story of the hour” by publishing her op-ed today urging President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen climate change conference because of the exaggerated controversy over the “Climategate” hacked e-mails. On its homepage, […]
As The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes, “Once again, the Washington Post has given Sarah Palin the chance to harness herself to the political story of the hour” by publishing her op-ed today urging President Obama to boycott the Copenhagen climate change conference because of the exaggerated controversy over the “Climategate” hacked e-mails. On its homepage, the Post promotes Palin’s op-ed, which is largely a redux of one of her Facebook posts, by putting science in scare quotes.
Palin claims that the e-mails stolen from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia show that “leading climate ‘experts’ deliberately destroyed records” and “manipulated data to ‘hide the decline’ in global temperatures.” Climate Progress’ Joe Romm points out that the e-mails “don’t reveal that” while Tim Limbert notes that a Washington Post story linked in Palin’s op-ed undermines her assertion of “manipulated data.”
Palin’s op-ed, however, does reveal just how deep into climate denialism she has delved. While claiming that she does not “deny the reality of some changes in climate,” Palin casts doubt on the science of global warming:
But while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can’t say with assurance that man’s activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.
Though Palin recently told Rush Limbaugh that changes in the climate were “cyclical” and she didn’t “attribute all the changes to man’s activities,” she told CBS’ News’ Katie Couric during the presidential campaign that she did believe humans contributed to climate change:
Couric: Is it man-made, though in your view?
Palin: You know there are – there are man’s activities that can be contributed to the issues that we’re dealing with now, these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate. Because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen change there. But kind of doesn’t matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it’s real; we need to do something about it.
Indeed, during the vice presidential debate Palin even said she supported capping carbon emissions. But now that she’s unattached to a candidate proposing a cap-and-trade system — from which he has also backtracked — Palin has reverted to her original denialism and the Washington Post has repeatedly given her space to air her falsehood-filled attacks on efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
Beck: We Should ?Just Abolish Medicare?
Yesterday, Senate Democrats working on health care reform reached a compromise on the public option that will create a network of nonprofit insurers and allow Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 to buy into Medicare. The right has hypocritically opposed a government-run public-option while simultaneously defending Medicare. On his radio show today, […]
Yesterday, Senate Democrats working on health care reform reached a compromise on the public option that will create a network of nonprofit insurers and allow Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 to buy into Medicare. The right has hypocritically opposed a government-run public-option while simultaneously defending Medicare. On his radio show today, Fox News host Glenn Beck called Medicare what it is — a “government-run health care plan.”
Beck attacked the new compromise and proposed a simple solution of his own — “abolish Medicare”:
CO-HOST: This is unbelievable, because the whole thing with the public option, is we were saying this is going to be like Medicare, they just want to make a big — make another Medicare program. And then they said no, public option is just competition.
BECK: And, wait wait wait. And I also said why don’t you just abolish Medicare, because it’s so wildly corrupt and out of control. It’s so inefficient, it is so bad and there’s $47 billion in suspected wrong payments, okay, in Medicare. So what are they saying — now remember, what we’re going to do — the compromise is we’re going to expand Medicare. That way there won’t be a public option, we’ll just — which doesn’t make any sense — we’re going to expand Medicare.
Listen:
Medicare is actually more efficient than private health insurance and would be better at controlling costs than weaker public option plans. And while Republicans strongly opposed Medicare when it was created under President Johnson, it has become popular over time. When Rep. Anthony Wiener (D-NY) introduced an amendment to eliminate Medicare in July — urging conservatives to “put-up or shut-up” about their objection to government-run health care. Not a single member of Congress voted in favor.
Moreover, Medicare is hugely successful. Before it came into being, more than one in four seniors lacked health care and a third lived in poverty. Now every American over 65 has access to quality care. A Commonwealth Fund study found that people with Medicare “report fewer problems obtaining medical care, and less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage,” compared to people with employer-provided care. 56 percent of Medicare beneficiaries rate their coverage a 9 or 10 on a scale of 10 while only 40 percent with private insurance do so.
