Will the Right agrees that Elections matter, is that true if the Left wins the election? The GOP far right always state “elections matter” whenever the GOP win and someone objects to the far right judges being nominated. But one wonders if “elections matter” is true when a Socialist that rejects austerity with no growth spending (don’t ask how doing one does not contradict the other) is elected in France, and when the Austerity but with new modifications Greek folks get only 149 seats, needing 151 to govern?

The Greek Interior ministry has released the final estimates of how the 250 seats/300 hundred seats awarded by the election that will be distributed on the basis of proportional representation – the seats won by each party are:

1. Center-right (but to the left of US Democrats) New Democracy got the most votes with 18.8% of the votes and will get 108 seats (includes the 50 seats given the folks that form a government).

2. The Center-left PASOK, after 38 years of receiving percentages over 40%, fell to third place with 13.3% of the votes and and will get 41 seats – a bit of a drop from the 2009 election giving them 161 seats.

And that is it for those willing to do at least most of the German Austerity Plan because the two small other parties that were into the German plan, albeit also with modifications, failed to get the minimum 3% of the votes.

3. The coalition of the left called the SYRIZA party is now the second largest party, getting 16.6% of the votes and will get 51 seats. Alexis Tsipras who heads it is totally against the current austerity measures and the lending agreements and has completely ruled out any cooperation with New Democracy and PASOK, saying that if New Democracy is unable to form a government and he is then asked to do so and does, he will try to annul the lending agreements signed by the previous governments.

4. The forth party with 10.5% of the votes and 33 seats is the “Independent Greeks” led by center-right former member of New Democracy Mr. Kamenos who was tossed by New Democracy after loudly disagreeing with the party’s decision to support the second bailout package and who has said he will not cooperate with New Democracy or PASOK.

5. Coming in fifth with 8.5% and 26 seats is the Communist KKE whose leader, Aleka Paparega, stated he will not cooperate with any other party, whether left, center or right.

6. Coming in sixth and breaking the 3% threshold for seats for the first time was the ultra-nationalist, close the borders, imprison immigrants, Greece for the Greeks, “Golden Dawn” party and with 7% of the vote they will be getting 22 seats. No other party is into corporate control of government so Golden Dawn’s fascist approach excludes it from any negotiations.

7. So it is the seventh and final party who will be the King Maker in all this – the center-left “Democratic Left” which got 6.1% of the votes and 19 seats. Its leader Fotis Kouvelis is against the austerity package but wants to stay in the Euro as long as there is a “growth plan” and fiscal tightening is relaxed a little.

8. The last 50 seats are awarded in Greece to the party that can form a government (in this list assumed to be New Democracy).

So Center-right New Democracy will now have 3 days to form a new government with 151 or more votes in favor or that government. If it fails the SYRIZA party will be asked to form a government

Meanwhile markets are down around the world after the rejection in both France and Greece of those that want German Austerity in the face of recession by withdrawing from the the corporation preferred German plan.

Oh I know Obama is again letting White House leaks do the talking as he says he is into saving (what does that word mean to Obama?) Social Security and Medicare – and Joe Biden on today’s Sunday talk says they will let the Clinton rates return for everyone if they do not get their tax increase on millionaires (an increase to levels lower than paid under the Clinton rates). But then we get the Simpson-Bowles push during the week and it shows up on Sunday Talk what is one to think?.

Well, after 4 more years of either Obama or Romney, I’m betting on the wholesale reinstatement of debtor’s prisons and poor houses. http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/03/17/on-the-rise-of-debtors-prison-the-scariest-thing-that-ever-happened-to-me/ More than a third of U.S. states allow borrowers to be jailed for non payment of debts. Judges have signed off on more than 5,000 such warrants since the start of 2010 in nine counties – but that is for another day – back to this weeks endorsements of Simpson-Bowles as the Democratic Plan post election to avoid the Clinton Tax rates returning..

To be fair our modern reporters must repeat the Corporate/GOP/Obama lies in order to keep their jobs, so when they fail to mention that both Simpson-Bowles plan and the Ryan budget plan do not cut the deficit and are only out there to screw Social Security and Medicare, and they fail to mention that all those two plans do is say they will close unnamed tax loopholes and stop healthcare cost from rising but without saying how “cut” does not mean cutting Medicare benefits, and when indeed the reporters do not say that both plans do nothing but cut taxes for the rich and cut spending for the poor with no reduction in the debt, I forgive them – they need the job.

As reported at HuffPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/jamie-dimon-simpson-bowles-plan_n_1478484.html, Banker Jamie Dimon supported the Simpson Bowles Plan in his speech at the Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester, saying “the U.S. is the opposite of Europe, we know the way [to solve our crises], it’s called Bowles-Simpson.” So the pretend Grand Bargain to prevent going over the “cliff” of “the Clinton rates returning and new tax cuts that actually favor the middle-class being passed” is Obama job one, as we expect to hear post election of $4 trillion in savings over the next 10 years via cuts to Social Security by raising the retirement age and less than cost of living adjustments, with health cost cuts in some magic way (raising the age from 65?) as it lowers tax rates for individual and corporate to 29%. I did like Banker CEO Jamie Dimon saying Occupy Wall Street movement had “legitimate complaints” but tax increases on the 1% only was unfair “discrimination.”

I also “liked” the report http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/04/27/18712215.php and HufPo http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/25/nancy-pelosi-social-security-medicare_n_1453323.html?ref=tw that Nancy Pelosi says she would back the Simpson-Bowles cuts to Social Security and Medicare, repeating the support she gave the plan the day after a tougher version of the Simpson-Bowles plan was given a vote on the House floor and lost 382-38, with Pelosi and most Democrats voting against it. She just wants to vote for a bill that more closely uses the wording of the Simpson-Bowles original. Of course Pelosi said during the debt limit pretend that she’d agree to cuts much greater than Simpson-Bowles was going for (reported by the Washington Post), when Obama, after he failed to get GOP support for the “Grand Bargain”, asked Reid and Pelosi for support for the same Grand Bargain attack on Social Security/Medicare in the future. CREDO http://www.credoaction.com/ says it is “deeply troubled to hear that she has not clarified her comments in support of dangerous cuts to Medicare and Medicaid benefits (in addition to Social Security)” and has a bit of activist push back at their site.

Now we can pretend this is just politics – a chance to rub the GOP nose in the ground with a plan – Simpson-Bowles – that, being less evil that the GOP variation voted down in the House, stands no chance of being put on the floor in this year of the Ryan/Tea Party “no compromise” with any bill that has even pretend “tax increases.”

But as Obama has said over the last over the last 3 years, he is a “blue-dog” and when he says something conservative it can not and should not be ignored.

So once again, why should we believe left sounding sound bites from the Democrats/Obama when other Democrats/Obama sound bites make clear the plan under Obama is not that much different from the plan under Romney.

With our corporate controlled/Wall street directed government’s fear of regulation lest the rich not get rich enough, the FDR three legs of the retirement stool has been reduced to one for most people as personal savings invested in safe bank stocks are have reduced lifetime savings by 80% for many (the average 401k for those about to retire in their 60′s is only $160,000 – before future bad investments – and only enough for an inflation protected to 3% max $5k a year insurance company annuity or a no inflation protection 8k a year), and the destruction of unions has allowed the corporate world to kill defined pensions in business and many areas of government (the pre-Reagan 38% covered by defined benefit plans is now only 20%), replacing them with payroll deduction savings accounts (401k), if that.

So the screams of the deficit Hawks to cut Social Security are wrong headed for two reasons – one, Social Security by law can never add to the deficit – it currently runs a $69 billion annual surplus, and if and when the projections are found to be true that the Trust fund is reduced to zero, those same projections say 75% of currently promised benefits (the promised benefits being much larger than today’s benefits) will be paid forever, the reduction to 75% avoiding any increase to the deficit, and two Social Security, the third leg, needs to be made larger.

Indeed the AFL-CIO is calling for increasing benefits across the board, changing the cost-of-living formula to an index geared to the real costs faced by seniors, and scrapping the cap on wage income subject to payroll taxes, which has been set for this year at $110,100, so as to pay for the above and indeed to prevent the reduction to 75% of promised benefit levels 22 years from now. And we have a bill in the Senate from Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) in his Rebuild America Act, where there is a tax increase phased in over a decade that finances an across-the-board monthly benefit raise of $65 after 10 years, plus sets the CPI – the tool Obama wants to use to reduce Social Security benefits by changing to the eat dog food to replace meat and there is no inflation “chained CPI” – to the current retiree cost-of-living CPI called CPI-E, an inflation index that properly weights goods and services that consume a lot of elderly people’s budgets, such as medical care. The CPI-E rises at about 0.2 percentage points a year faster than the regular CPI – and over time is important – at least until someone gives us single payer national health with budget/price control.

Liberals have joined with the National Organization for Women (NOW) to fix the problem of lower female benefits cause by non-recognition of being a caregiver (Ann Romney – are you listening – you are the spokesperson for stay at home Moms, right?). SS benefit calculations use 35 years in the calculation, inputting “zero” for those years (on average 8 such years are in the calculation of most women’s benefits) the stay at home Mom was not working. The proposal is to deem a wage for such stay at home Moms called a caregiver credit, the amount deemed being 50% of the median wage that year (this has a lesser impact when one considers the 50% of Husbands benefit that stay at home Moms already get, but it fills the financial problem of the unmarried caregivers).

Another hole in the system is the level of support since 1939 for dependents or survivors of disabled or deceased workers who want to go to school/college – after the age of 19 they currently get nothing. Oh, we tried to give benefits in 1965 to those in school or college through age 21, but the Sainted Ronald Reagan took them away in 1981 as part of a Reagan administration cost-cutting move. Given the higher wages earned, and higher SS tax paid by college grads this pays for itself.

“Are you with us, or are you against us — that’s the question.” As Romney tries to take the “hope and change you can believe in” high ground from Obama, can either answer the question with “I am with you” – I mean, saying it believably?

According to news sources http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57414582-503544/reports-romney-reveals-potential-tax-deduction-and-spending-cuts-at-fundraiser/, Romney wants to make substantial cuts at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and to make the Department of Education a “heck of a lot smaller,” but not eliminate the department completely since he wants it to push back against teachers’ unions.

So how is Obama using the Dept of Ed to HELP teacher’s unions?

Romney also reportedly said he would probably eliminate the second-home mortgage deduction for high-income earners – now there is a lot of pain and a lot of new taxes from the 7 figure income crowd – but then it might actually get passed compared to any “I refused to allow the Clinton rates to return for all” Obama proposal.

And Romney wants to make funding education more painful by cutting the deduction for real estate taxes, as well as hurt those states that are progressive and have a state income tax by eliminating its use as a deduction.

But of course these are just ideas until focused groups approve, and don’t represent any official policy proposals.

Compared to the Obama refusal to allow the Clinton tax rates to return for all – with new laws to reduce taxes from those levels for the middle class – and his war on progressives – on Americans – with his pretend forced agreement on grand compromises that screw Social Security and Medicare and protect health insurance companies against single payer with budget controls. the Romney war on progressives is pretty weak. And Romney would not offer elected Democrats the political cover of supporting a Democratic president as they did the bidding of the rich and corporate.

So just why should we not vote 3rd party – can anyone think of a single likely Supreme Court decision that will go the progressive way if Obama gets a few more appointments – or of any rich and corporate idea that will not be approved by our Courts post 4 more years of Obama?

Accountable Care – financial incentives for physicians, hospitals, and other healthcare providers to better coordinate care and improve the health of Medicare beneficiaries while lowering their costs – has failed in Massachusetts due to most care providers not signing up in the areas where it was being tested and cost savings not being found. Despite this the Governor of Mass is pushing for its statewide adoption via a new law, and the Mass pilot program at the Jordan Community ACO, a Plymouth, Mass.-based not-for-profit organization of 100 physicians from Plymouth Bay Medical Associates, Jordan Physician Associates, and specialty physicians from Jordan Hospital, is expanding into the Medicare program and will have more than 6,000 Medicare beneficiaries.

At the Federal level Medicare Accountable Care pilot projects previously authorized were studied by the Congressional Budget Office, resulting in a January CBO report on 10 such major care coordination and disease management initiatives that found insufficient savings to offset their cost.

But the idea is still moving ahead with the CMS designating 27 healthcare entities in 18 states (http://www.modernhealthcare.com/assets/pdf/CH79063410.PDF) with more than 10,000 physicians, 10 hospitals, and 13 smaller physician-led entities and serving an estimated 375,000 beneficiaries, as the first Medicare Shared Savings Program accountable care organizations, which are the in lieu of single payer with budget and cost control Obama solution sold to us in th ACA health insurance reform law
– and are I assume ACA’s most anticipated payment and delivery reform at the White House. /s

The announcement of the new 27 follows the January launch of the modified Pioneer Model ACOs with 32 healthcare groups and six Physician Group Practice Transition Demonstration organizations. CMS seems especially proud of the fact that just over half of the new 27 are physician-led, as this is said to mean that not only Hospitals will agree to be in the program. As to the CBO report that said they were not a cost savings but actually added to the cost of the system, CMS feels they have a new Accountable Care design that negates the CBO analysis of the prior Accountable Care effort. Five of the 27 ACOs will participate in the advance-payment ACO model, which provides upfront funding equal to the expected shared savings for rural and physician-based ACOs in the Shared Savings Program that need startup resources.

So with the new 27 organization in Medicare Accountable Care, the total number of Medicare beneficiaries participating in various shared-savings initiatives rises 1.1 million who will benefit from the 33 quality measures for care coordination and patient safety, appropriate use of preventive health services, improved care for at-risk populations, and the patient and caregiver experience of care (http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-02/pdf/2011-27461.pdf).

CMS in June will admit a new round of ACO groups into the program (there are 150 applications for recognition of Accountable care status by CMS, with 50 applications to enter the ACO program in June, now pending).

I regularly attend quite a few religious events and due to a mixed background and even more mixed relatives and children, those events occur in different faith settings where there are different views on the relationship of gay and God. So, having many gay friends, I was pondering how the view of Gays varies from my Episcopal Church, where we have gay Bishops, to my Greek Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church where parishioners accept gay members but the church authorities have major problems with homosexual behavior, to my relatives Reform Judaism where gays are accepted, to the Orthodox Judaism where homosexual behavior is not accepted, to a relative’s Unitarian Church that has changed over the last 50 years into a place where all beliefs – and non-belief – and all behaviors -are accepted. With computers it is not hard to pull together a few things from the Bible on this, so below are some things I noticed as I looked into this.

Paul is the one most often quoted for his rules on the role of women (best viewed in my opinion by noting that he prefaces those rules by saying one should not do behavior outside the cultural norm lest the message of Jesus is lost in discussions of your behavior) and for his lists of “don’ts” that include Homosexual acts. From Paul’s letter to the Romans – Romans 1:18-32 NIV “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.” It is a bit of a stretch, but in my opinion not an unreasonable one, to see in Romans 1 Paul not condemning those born homosexual, but only condemning those that leave their natural state, both gay and straight. Indeed while Paul has his list of things one must not do, Paul is not Jesus and can not tell us who “shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven” despite his list in 1 Co. 6:9-11.

Of more interest perhaps is how Jesus refused to issue a blanket condemnation but wrote into the law groups that need not obey the law – such as eunuchs and perhaps those born gay. Matthew 19:3-12 (King James Version) states: “4And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female,5And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. 9And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery. 10His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. 11But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 12For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.”

While I am an algae advocate and indeed algae based bio-fuel production is a few years ahead of other methods on the road to a scale-up of the process for commercial use, as methods are worked out to get the cost down to compete with gasoline, there are still other ideas being developed that have great potential. One of those ideas is a “bio-reactor” that stores electricity as liquid fuel via using a genetically engineered microbe and carbon dioxide, which seems a more efficient way to turn sunlight into fuel for our cars and homes than using plants and mining or drilling for the remnants of those ancient plants or growing new plants that are converted into biofuel.

So it seems one can just get electricity from a solar panel and send the current to an electrode in the bio-reactor, which is full of water, CO2, and a modified microbe called Ralstonia eutropha, a microbe that normally uses hydrogen as an energy source to build CO2 for its personal growth http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/alternative-fuel/biofuels/bacterial-biofuels-microbes-turn-co2-to-fuel-7698431?click=pm_latest. With a few tweaks the microbe can currently be used in industry to turn out plastic, and now a tweak allows it can be tweaked to produce various butanols. The electric current flows into an electrode in the bio-reactor, which is full of water, CO2 and a shielded from electrical shock via a “porous ceramic cup” R. eutropha, the CO2 becomes carbon dioxide with a hydrogen atom attached which is an energy source for the microbe, and the microbe produces butanols with more CO2 as a waste product that is recycled back to the start of the process. Except of course chemical engineer James Liao of the University of California has only been able to produce 140 milligrams per liter of butanol fuel over 80 hours, before the system stopped working.

But this is neat as it provides a direct way to energy-dense liquid fuels and doing so in a limited area – with no plants needed! Plants and photosynthesis only deliver corn ethanol fuel energy that is less than 0.2 percent of the original energy in the sunlight on the corn. This takes the solar cell’s photovoltaic conversion of 15 percent of incoming photons into electricity, and STORES it in a liquid fuel and does not require many square miles of farm land to obtain that fuel!

So we have a proof of principle — but one that breaks at 80 hours perhaps due to R. eutropha’s genetic instability, or some previously unknown susceptibility to butanol poisoning.

But does it scale up better/cost less than other methods for “liquid fuel without plants”, such as using electricity to knit CO2 and hydrogen into methanol, or the attempt to create the complete plant food making process being done by chemist Nate Lewis at the DOE’s Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis in Pasadena, Calif.? As we find out it would seem to be an exciting time for research!

Now will Congress really cut the DOE’s funding of these research projects? The Ryan GOP budget cuts Science and technology R&D investment per capita by 24% http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/03/budget_disinvestment.html, and even the so-called continuing resolution, which provides funding for the federal government for the rest of the 2011 fiscal year, is cutting DOE’s Office of Science by 18%. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/331/6020/997.summary?sid=45e6baec-b858-4edd-87c4-490695e86bcf .

What are Obama and the Democrats going to do to preserve the funds for this research? Will the oil companies be able to shut down this research?