The firm plans to raise premiums as much as 20%, sharply less than the 39% maximum it had sought earlier this year but canceled after drawing outrage from consumers, lawmakers and President Obama.

Embattled health insurer Anthem Blue Cross is reviving its plan to raise rates for tens of thousands of California policyholders, some of whom could see their premiums rise as much as 20%.

With the final seconds ticking down on the Congressional clock, President Obama and Senate Democrats emerged from a White House summit with Republican moderates Tuesday still lacking any plan to score a last minute win for clean energy.

Wasted opportunity

Establishing a price (any price) on carbon pollution through a(n increasingly weak) cap and trade system continues to be the the preferred climate and energy approach of environmental advocacy groups and Democratic leadership. This preference holds despite the fact that for at least three years, that plan has consistently failed to uncover any route to securing the sixty votes necessary for passage in the Senate (a similar bill narrowly passed the House last June).

Heading into the Tuesday morning White House summit, Republicans eyed as key swing votes for any clean energy or climate bill telegraphed clear intentions: cap and trade would be a practical non-starter, but they were ready to act with the President on measures to promote zero-carbon electricity, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, and greater energy technology innovation, clean up dirty coal plants, and improve energy efficiency.

The summit offered President Obama a prime opportunity to reset the Senate energy debate by calling a new play: take up the energy provisions Republicans have offered, counter with a more aggressive proposal on similar fronts, and begin earnest negotiations with GOP swing votes to ensure passage of a final bill that could move America towards a clean energy economy before the Congressional clock expires.

Unfortunately, President Obama let this chance to break from the failed and increasingly desperate cap and trade agenda slip by, using the meeting, instead, to reiterate to the assembled Senators - and greens watching from the sidelines - that "he still believes the best way for us to transition to a clean energy economy is ... by putting a price on [carbon] pollution."

In what seemed to be an effort to convince outside audiences that Obama had not given up on cap and trade, rather than a real display of leadership, the President failed to present any clear plan of action or convince new supporters to back the much-diminished ambitions of a utility-only cap and trade bill. Instead, the White House team emerged from the meeting simply noting that, "Not all of the Senators agreed with this [carbon pricing] approach, and the President welcomed other approaches and ideas..."

Senator John Kerry (D-MA), the dogged architect (with Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut) of the increasingly embattled Senate cap and trade strategy, boldly declared that Democrats were willing to make even more concessions in the quest for permanently elusive GOP cap and trade supporters.

"We believe we have compromised significantly, but we're prepared to compromise further," Sen. Kerry told reporters.

This after Democrats had already stacked their "comprehensive" climate and energy bill full of enough offsets and cost containment mechanisms to render the emissions "cap" non-binding on covered sectors--and after recent offers to scale back the cap to cover only electric utilities, a sector responsible for just about one-third of U.S. carbon emissions...

Running out the clock

Thus, it seems that Democrats are now poised to waste what little time remains this year on what could be described either as an increasingly desperate effort to appease Republicans firmly opposed to what they've dubbed "a nationwide energy tax," or as an increasingly transparent attempt to assure green supporters they are 'fighting hard' for cap and trade in preparation for pinning their inevitable failure on 'those dastardly Republican obstructionists.'

Regardless, this strategy is all but certain to leave America empty handed on clean energy reform.

As oil gushes into the Gulf and global temperatures continue to rise, coming away from this Congressional year with nothing would be the greatest tragedy of all. But if Democrats can put aside their insistence on a wholly-compromised, "comprehensive" cap and trade bill, there may yet be hope for a political and substantive victory.

Republicans signal opening

Last week, Republicans invited to the White House summit emerged from a quick planning huddle to tell reporters that they would press Obama to drop cap and trade and work with the GOP to promote several provisions to advance clean electricity, electrification of cars and trucks, and research and development of low-carbon energy technologies.

The GOP has several "clean energy proposals which we are for and he's for too," said Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who as Republican Conference Chair is at the center of GOP leadership.

After Tuesday's inconclusive meeting, key swing Republicans reiterated that there was still an opening to move forward on clean energy--if Democrats would drop cap and trade.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) stated:

"As I have long advocated, working toward energy independence is an imperative for our economic and national security. Which is why today I urged the President to seize control of our own energy destiny and, for the first time, establish clearly defined national timetables for clean energy production, benchmarks for oil consumption reduction, and goals for game-changing research - which no other president has ever done, to ensure we actually attain that independence.

The Maine moderate pointed to bi-partisan measures she had sponsored to promote energy efficiency, renewable electricity generation, and research, meanwhile stating that while she supported a limited carbon-pricing program in principle, "today we are in different and perilous economic times," stating that economy-wide cap and trade was something America "simply cannot afford."

Likewise, Senator George Voinovich (R-OH) characterized the White House meeting as "a clear signal to the president, Senator Kerry and Senator Lieberman that the chances of passing their cap and trade legislation are quite slim."

The senator went on to note:

"On the other hand, there seemed to be consensus that Senator Bingaman's energy bill may be a viable path forward in the Senate. While in need of improvement, it has bipartisan support and presents a variety of policy tools to expand domestic clean energy resources and reduce emissions.

Republicans have thus put a clean energy offer on the table constituting a clear path to bipartisan energy progress - focus on measures to boost clean electricity generation, oil reduction, energy innovation, and efficiency.

Scoring the last minute clean energy win

Herein lies the last opportunity for Democrats to score a win for energy reform. To date, Republicans have backed a number of key Senate proposals that collectively offer the foundations for a bipartisan clean energy bill that could achieve actual progress, despite the limited time to act in the crowded Congressional calendar [1 - see notes at end for more detail]:

Clean electricity generation: Republicans have backed both a (modest but first-ever) requirement that utilities nationwide purchase a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources [2], as well as a more aggressive clean electricity requirement that would make nuclear power and carbon capture and storage at fossil fuels plants eligible alongside renewables [3]. Democrats have an opportunity to counter-offer with a slightly more expansive proposal, calling, say, for 25% of all U.S. electricity to come from new, zero-carbon electricity sources by 2020 and 35% by 2030, then negotiate from there. The end result would be a mandate to transform the U.S. electricity sector, putting American utilities on a path to a low-carbon future.

Similarly, Republicans have consistently championed financial incentives to deploy zero-carbon electricity sources. They, of course prefer nuclear power, but this offer still provides an opportunity for Democrats to counter. Instead of $10 billion to back loan guarantees for just nuclear power plants [4], Democrats could propose a similar (or even greater) amount of funding to capitalize a Clean Energy Deployment Administration capable of using a variety of flexible credit enhancement and financing mechanisms to spur the deployment of numerous innovative zero-carbon energy sources, including nuclear power, but also a suite of other cutting edge clean technologies [5].

Vehicle electrification and advanced biofuels: Senator Alexander has joined with Democrats Byron Dorgan (ND) and Jeff Merkley (OR) to propose a bill aiming to put the U.S. on track to electrify half of all vehicles on the road by 2030 [6]. A perfect bipartisan response to the unfolding Gulf oil crisis, the proposal represents a major multi-billion-dollar push to roll out charging infrastructure, incentivize the purchase of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles and trucks, and invent and manufacture advanced batteries here in the United States that would do more to reduce U.S. oil consumption than any 10 or 20 cent increase in gasoline prices imposed by a cap and trade bill.

This electrification push could be coupled with financial incentives to spur advanced non-grain biofuels and escalating requirements to produce flexible-fuel vehicles that can run on gasoline biofuels (another Republican-backed proposal [7]). Combine these two measures to promote flexible-fuel, plug-in hybrids that can run on electricity as well and you've got essentially the very same plan proposed by the cogent David Sandalow (now an Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Obama Administration) to win America's "Freedom from Oil."

Clean energy research and innovation: Investment in energy technology innovation has consistently enjoyed bipartisan support, both from policymakers and the public, which routinely rank greater clean technology investment as their top policy response to energy and climate concerns. A doubling of DOE energy research [8], the scale-up of the newly established Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), and the creation of a new nationwide network of clean energy innovation centers [9] or clusters [10] would each be critical components of a robust U.S. energy innovation system capable of driving both the incremental and transformational innovation needed to make clean energy cheap and ensure the next generation of clean technologies are invented and commercialized in America.

Cleaning up the dirtiest coal plants: Financial incentives to accelerate the shut down of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants in America and new air pollution regulations to clean up remaining plants could deliver huge public health gains and probably even greater emissions reductions than any weakened, utility-only cap and trade bill. Both provisions have enjoyed bipartisan support [11].

A "cash for coal clunkers" program could provide such financial incentives to close the old high-polluting coal plants (many of them pre-dating, and thus exempt from, Clean Air Act regulations) and replace them with cleaner power plants (with one level of incentive to replace the coal plant with a state-of-the-art natural gas plant, and progressively larger incentives for zero-carbon alternatives like renewables and nuclear power). Old, dirty coal plants provide just a small share of U.S. electricity but make up a disproportionately large share of U.S. power-sector greenhouse gas emissions and pollutants (with associated health impacts and economic costs).

Similarly, updated requirements to clean up conventional air pollutants - including toxic mercury as well as the smog and acid rain-forming sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide pollution - would both incentivize the worst culprits to shut down rather than install expensive new pollution controls, while requiring the remainder of the coal fleet to clean up its air pollution resulting in widespread public health benefits for everyone.

Enhanced efficiency: New efforts to boost the efficiency of American vehicles, buildings, appliances, lighting, and manufacturing have routinely enjoyed bipartisan support. Greater energy efficiency will help the U.S. economy get more economic bang out of our energy usage. Increasing economic productivity is a goal Republicans and Democrats can clearly come together to secure, and they have; wide-ranging efficiency measures have featured prominently in several bills currently backed by key Republicans [12].

Advancing the production of zero-carbon electricity, electrifying the American transportation fleet, catalyzing clean energy research and innovation, cleaning up the coal fleet, and boosting the efficiency and productivity of the U.S. energy system: these measures represent a nearly full list of the key levers needed to drive down emissions and U.S. dependence on coal and oil, all while building stronger domestic clean energy industries. What's more, these five areas are now ripe for bipartisanship and with Republican support, these clean energy measures presents a key opportunity for Democrats to drive America forward this year towards a clean energy economy.

What will the last play call be?

Obama and Senate Democrats now face a clear choice between two options...

They can waste precious time assuring green supporters they haven't abandoned cap and trade and meanwhile, come up empty handed by squandering the political opportunity presented by the oil catastrophe in the Gulf, appearing weak and inept before a public demanding energy reform, and handing another political victory to a GOP all too eager to enter the midterms having denied Obama and the Democrats one of their key policy priorities. More to the point, Americans will wind up without any substantive energy progress this year.

OR

Democrats can come out of the huddle prepared to build off of Republican proposals already on the table by offering more substantial counter-offers on each front: clean electricity, electrifying transportation, clean energy innovation, energy efficiency and even accelerated coal plant retirement. These energy-focused measures attached to a bill responding to the oil disaster in the Gulf would command strong public support, putting Democrats in a position to finally bargain from the high ground, secure stronger provisions, and score a real win on clean energy before the end of year.

Will it be a "comprehensive energy and climate bill?" No. And that's fine!

The inexorably-weakening "cap" and trade bills Senate Democrats seem willing to swallow are far from comprehensive already--and still unlikely to secure any passage this year.

Faced with ending up empty-handed and beaten, it is time for Democrats to bank these real wins now while making it abundantly clear to the public that this bill does not "check the box" on energy and climate for good.

If Democrats do that, they will have led America on the path to energy reform, and can tell the public that they will continue to lead a bipartisan effort to end America's dependence on dirty fossil fuels next year, if voters will back them in the November midterms.

If instead, Democrats insist on wasting these last few seconds on the obviously failing and increasingly desperate cap and trade agenda, Americans are likely to wind up without any substantive energy progress this year, and Democrats are likely to fare even worse at the polls. The ball is in their court.

Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute

Notes:

[1] With just weeks remaining for floor votes in the Senate before the midterms hit, there's still a Supreme Court justice and a new Afghanistan commander to confirm, Financial Reform bills to conference, a budget to perhaps pass (prospects there don't look great), and on top of that, the White House just announced President Obama would give a big speech on Immigration Reform later this week, touching off yet another hot button domestic policy issue.

[2] The "American Clean Energy Leadership Act" (S.1462, or ACELA) passed the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last June with bipartisan support from four Republican committee-members: Sens. Lisa Murkowski (AK), Sam Brownback (KS), Jeff Sessions (AL), and Bob Corker (TN). That bill would establish a (modest but first-of-its-kind) requirement that utilities nationwide purchase a portion of their electricity from renewable energy sources (15% by 2020). In addition to this requirement, known as a "Renewable Electricity Standard" (RES) or "Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), the ENR Committee bill would: establish a new federal agency to provide low-cost financing to spur the deployment of new clean technologies (the Clean Energy Deployment Administration); ramp up funding for Department of Energy R&D; establish new efficiency standards for buildings, lighting, appliances, industry and manufacturing.

[3] This is consistent with the "Diverse Energy Standard" included in the "Practical Energy and Climate Plan" (S.3464). Introduced by Senator Richard "Dick" Lugar (R-IN) and co-sponsored by Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK and Ranking Member of the Energy Committee), and Lindsay Graham (R-SC, who backed the bill after walking away from the climate plan he drafted with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman in April), the bill has arguably surfaced as the GOP's preferred energy platform. In addition to the "diverse" clean energy standard that includes stronger requirements than the Energy Committee bill above (15% by 2015, 20% by 2020, 25% by 2025 ... 50% by 2050) but allows nuclear power and carbon capture and storage at coal plants to qualify for the utility requirement, the GOP-backed bill would: ramp up vehicle fuel efficiency standards and set the first ever standards for medium- and heavy-duty trucks; establish financial incentives for advanced biofuel production (from non-grain sources) and require new vehicles to be flexible fuel (capable of running on biofuels and gasoline); establish stronger building, appliance, and industrial efficiency standards; ; expand loan guarantees for zero-carbon nuclear power plants; and provide incentives for the retirement of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants in the country.

[4] The "Clean Energy Act" (S.2776) sponsored by Republicans Lamar Alexander (TN) and Mike Crapo (ID) and Democrats Jim Webb (VA) and Mark Warner (VA), would encourage the build-out of new nuclear plants with a major expansion of loan guarantees, providing $10 billion in appropriations to be leveraged into roughly $100 billion in loan guarantees. In addition, the bill would provide $750 million in funding to establish new "mini-Manhattan projects" to advance clean energy research.

[5] The Clean Energy Deployment Administration is included in the bipartisan ACELA bill, see note [2] above. A similar provision passed the House in the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act.

[6] The Electric Vehicle Deployment Act (S.3442), sponsored by Democrats Byron Dorgon (ND) and Jeff Merkley (OR) and Republican Lamar Alexander (TN), aims to put the US on track to electrify half of all vehicles on the road by 2030. The $7-10 billion bill would: launch pilot communities across country to spur adoption of electric and plug in hybrid vehicles (funded at $2 billion per year); subsidize the nationwide build-out of charging infrastructure and purchase of electric and plug-in vehicles, including new credits for medium- and heavy-duty hybrid purchases; provide $1.5 billion for advanced battery research and $250 million for related workforce development and education efforts.

[7] Incentives for advanced biofuels production and flexible fuel vehicles are included in the Lugar energy bill, see note [3] above.

[8] The Energy Committee bill, see note [2] above, would authorizing a doubling of applied research programs at DOE, and basic research programs at DOE and elsewhere are on track to double under the America COMPETES Act originally passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Bush in 2007.

[9] These innovation centers would be consistent to the "mini-Manhattan projects" proposed by the Webb-Alexander-Warner-Crapo bill, see note [5] above.

[10] Clean energy cluster programs would extend multi-sector, collaborative research efforts to enhance the strength of regional economic clusters and could be a natural and effective extension of the research programs supported by Republicans. See "Strengthening Clean Energy Competitiveness: Opportunities for America COMPETES Reauthorization"

[11] A "cash for coal clunkers" style program offering $11 billion in financial incentives to accelerate the closure of the oldest, dirtiest coal plants comprising 16% (49 GW) of the coal fleet but representing a disproportionate amount of U.S. pollution of both the carbon and conventional varieties appeared in draft legislation sponsored by Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN). The final version introduced as S.3464 (see note [3] above) included a narrower incentive program for coal plant retirement. Republicans Lamar Alexander (TN) and Susan Collins (ME) and Democrats Tom Carper (DE) and Amy Klobuchar (MT) have sponsored the "Clean Air Act Amendments of 2010" (S.2995) which would impose new 'three-pollutant' air pollution requirements on mercury, SO2 and NOx emissions at power plants.

[12] A wide range of efficiency programs are included in both the bipartisan Energy Committee bill, see note [2], and the Lugar bill, see note [3], as well as numerous other bills co-sponsored or introduced by Republican Senators.

More on Barack Obama

According to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan "punished the military and demeaned our soldiers as they were courageously fighting two wars overseas" when, as Dean of Harvard Law School, she declined to provide military recruiters the same access to campus resources that other employers enjoyed.

The Republican line of attack is surprising because conservatives have, for years, pretended that the debate over military recruiting was about whether or not the military would be able to hire the best lawyers. In 2006, when the Supreme Court voted unanimously to uphold the law which withholds federal funding from universities whose law schools treat military recruiters unequally, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that recruiting "would be achieved less effectively if the military were forced to recruit on less favorable terms than other employers."

But the decade-long struggle over the issue never has been about hiring. Sessions's emphasis on whether or not Kagan demeaned U.S. troops illustrates that the real question always has been whether civilian institutions which dare to question the military are showing disrespect, and, if so, whether such disrespect should be punished.

Several years ago, I undertook a research project to assess Pentagon lawyers' claims that law schools were harming military recruiting. At the time, many law schools, including Harvard, were engaged in what was known as "minimal compliance" with the law. They provided military recruiters with access to their campuses, but took symbolic steps, such as relegating Pentagon representatives to inconvenient rooms, to express opposition to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy which prevents gays and lesbians from serving openly in uniform.

The evidence I collected showed that, contrary to the military's assertions, unequal treatment of recruiters did not impair efforts to attract the best law students into the JAG corps. One Navy JAG recruiting officer, for instance, told me in December 2003 that recruiting had become quite competitive over the previous seven years, that the Navy was able to recruit from the best law schools including Harvard and Yale, that the Air Force was nearly as competitive, and that the number of applications to the Army and Marine Corps exceeded "by far" the available slots each year.

It is therefore not surprising that when the Pentagon was pressed to present evidence to substantiate its claims about recruiting hardships in the JAG corps, military lawyers responded that, "the government is not obligated...to assemble and present a factual record that merely confirms the dictates of common sense."

Why did the military, courts and conservatives in Congress work so hard to make the case appear to be about military recruiting when there was no factual basis behind the argument? The answer can be found in the military's brief to the Supreme Court. Law schools' symbolic protest, the brief claimed, "sends the message that employment in the Armed Forces...is less honorable or desirable than employment with...other organizations." Although conservatives insist that schools are free to oppose military policy, their underlying goal was to show that questioning the military is disrespectful, and that such disrespect should be punished. Emphasizing this motive, however, would have been legally indefensible.

When seen in this light, the questioning of Elena Kagan reveals a failure on the part of our political institutions to exercise civilian control of the military. Whether or not one agrees with law schools who tried to enforce their own non-discrimination policies, the Pentagon played fast and loose with the facts and disguised a concern for disrespect and obedience with an argument about military recruiting, to say nothing of bullying university administrators and using personnel policy to express bigotry.

Rather than standing up to such affronts, Congress and the courts have been enablers, as we saw this week in the Sessions line of questioning. Congress's original passage of the Solomon amendment, conservatives' insincere claim that protest undermined recruiting, and the Supreme Court's willingness to allow the military to make unsubstantiated claims all suggest that some of our most powerful civilian leaders have failed to exercise civilian control of the armed forces.

Respect for the military can play a valuable role in public discourse, and Elena Kagan has demonstrated such respect throughout her career. But respect does not mean that one must abandon key principles just because the military says so. Maintaining civilian control requires civilians and political leaders to exercise reasoned judgment based on healthy skepticism. Respect can be dangerous if it becomes blind faith.

More on Elena Kagan

There will soon be a 10% tax increase at indoor tanning salons, an idea to help pay for health care reform. As Michelle Miller reports, it may slow down the growth of skin cancer in America.

With the proposed increased tax, a pack of cigarettes in New York City will be as high as $12.00. For the pack a day smoker, the monthly cost of 336.00 could be adversely life changing. Yet I believe that most adults, even those in financial distress will continue to support their habit. Some companies will not hire smokers and will fire anyone who does smoke because of the additional costs to their health care. In this economy, jobs are hard to come by yet I believe most smokers will risk their jobs to keep smoking.

According to the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, over $96 billion is spent on public and private health care combined and each American household spends $630 a year in federal and state taxes due to smoking.

The FDA will not make smoking illegal until the continuous contributions by the multi-billion dollar tobacco corporations are prohibited from sponsoring the many senators and representatives. Money talks and health does not! The nearly useless actions by the FDA do not affect the ongoing addictive response by the determined smokers. They will continue to buy the new colored packs without the words.

Nicotine is a highly addictive substance -- in the same category as opiate drugs such as codeine and heroin. Smokers are not free to give up their pernicious habit. For that reason, the additional expense is unlikely to deter anyone from continuing his or her reliance on cigarettes. Making cigarettes difficult to obtain or changing the color of the packs -- which is followed by many manufacturers since the federal government has forbidden the use of terms as "mild" or "moderate" -- will not help people stop smoking.

The necessary attention to full-blown treatments for these nicotine addicts is ignored. The one-on-one medical treatment approach is the effective way to reduce the number of hundreds of thousand needless deaths annually from smoking. Asking smokers to regulate their nicotine intake on their own with the use of a patch or gum is ineffective. They need a medical assessment of their nicotine intake and the psychology behind their habit.

If the FDA spent more time and money on effective, medical techniques for smoking cessation, it would certainly benefit the smoker and there would more money for quality health care across the board. Additionally, it would relieve some of the tax burden for non-smokers.

It would be interesting to know exactly where the money from a cigarette tax increase actually goes.

More on Health

1. Work: Take the trouble to understand how co-workers contribute to getting the job done and acknowledge their contribution.
If you are a boss, it's not enough to avoid treating your employees in a rankist manner (though the example you set will reverberate through the entire organization); you are also responsible for making sure that your subordinates treat their subordinates with dignity. Dignitarian companies are not only happier workplaces, they are also healthier, more creative and more productive ones.

2. Education: Create "Indignity Free Zones."
Teachers are increasingly sensitive to the harm done to students by indignity. If you're an educator, you can bring this awareness into the open and communicate it to those students whose bullying and humiliation of peers unconsciously mirrors that of adult society. A threat to a student's dignity is more than a discourtesy. It is an attack on one's status in the "tribe," and carries an implicit threat of ostracism and exclusion. Status has historically been a matter of life and death and remains a determinant of whether we prosper or decline, so an attack on status is experienced as a threat to survival. Rankism poisons the learning environment.

3. Healthcare: Enlist your patients as partners.
If you are a healthcare provider, you can help your clients make the awkward transition from patients to partners. Ridding healthcare of its legacy of dehumanization and infantilization is good medical practice. You can also insist on respect throughout the organization in which you work. If you are a patient, have compassion for doctors, too. It's not easy to give up one's "deity status," and many physicians are doing so with remarkable grace. Moreover, remember that they're victims of rankism themselves at the hands of HMOs that often treat them less like the professionals they are and more like pieceworkers on an assembly line.

4. Sports: Have respect for the other team.
If you're a coach, you can forbid trash talk, on and off the court, among your players and to your opponents. Show your team that they are capable of more--not by humiliating them but by teaching and inspiring them. Rent the 1973 film Bang the Drum Slowly and show it to your athletes. Its punch line--"I rag on nobody"--puts it in the dignitarian hall of fame.

5. Religion: Exemplify rather than exhort.
If you're a religious leader, you can refrain from pulling spiritual rank. You can do more for your flock by listening and providing them with a personal example worthy of emulation than you can by invoking higher authority, which is often little more than a claim that God shares your politics.

6. Guardian professions (policing): Bring dignity to law enforcement.
If you're a policeman or woman, protect citizens' dignity as you already protect their lives. Any kind of profiling is rankism.

7. Military: One part of a strong defense is not giving offense in the first place.
Indignity is the source of indignation, so to avoid escalation or revenge, take care to spare your foes gratuitous indignities.

8. Politics: Restore civility to politics
If you're in electoral politics you can point the way to a dignitarian society, even if your colleagues aren't yet ready to embrace your ideas. Treat your opponents with dignity. Don't sneer, mock, or condescend. Avoid patronizing or posturing. When politicians lay claim to moral superiority, they extend rankism's lease. Since rankism is an attack on both liberty and dignity, denounce it along with the other "isms." Explain to your constituents why you're against it--in all its forms--and then go after them one by one. Be the leader you wanted to be when you first imagined running for office. Be willing to lose an election for your dignitarian convictions. If you do lose, run for office a few years later, and win! To paraphrase Victor Hugo, dignity is an idea whose time has come.

9. Other professions: Show the world dignity through your profession.
If you're an artist, expose rankism; put dignity on exhibit. If you're a philosopher, define and deconstruct dignity. If you're a psychologist, demonstrate the consequences of malrecogntion. If you're a comedian, make us laugh at the double standards that apply to somebodies and nobodies. If you're a filmmaker, give us heroes who overcome rankism without resorting to rankism. If you're a songwriter, write an anthem for the dignity movement. If you're a TV producer, stop exploiting humiliation and celebrating rankism. Sooner than you think, the staple of TV entertainment--humiliation--is going to feel as off-key as racism, sexism and homophobia do today.

10. Be a Susan B. Anthony of the Dignity Movement.
In the 19th century, Susan B. Anthony traveled a million miles by train and gave 20,000 speeches advocating the enfranchisement of women. Sadly, she did not live to see the success of the suffragette movement she spearheaded (but her image is on the dollar coin). If you're an organizer, create a chapter of the dignitarian movement in your area. Coordinate with other chapters and make them a national force under the slogan "no rankism" and the banner "dignity for all." Programs to help the poor or end poverty will continue to fall short until those trapped in the underclass have found their voice and together insist on respect and equity. Do what Susan B. Anthony did for women and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. did for African-Americans: help the victims of chronic indignity find an effective way to give voice to their plight and change the status quo.

More on Careers

We can trace back our current economic mess to many roots - unscrupulous bankers, risky speculators, uninformed consumers, lax regulators, distracted politicians.

But there's one factor that gets far too little notice: the broken and ineffective way we constructed many of our communities, isolating low-income people and people of color from opportunity.

The post-WWII "white flight" suburban sprawl took a new twist during the exurban rush of the 1990s and 2000s. Low- and middle-income families, enticed by "cheap" home loans, drove further and further from job centers in search of an affordable home. That created a short-term boom in housing sales while giving millions of Americans formerly locked out of home-ownership a false sense of finally attaining the American Dream.

Then, the bill came due.

Families stuck out in the exurbs suddenly had to drive dozens of miles to get anywhere - school, church, work, the doctor, or the supermarket. This was not only an enormous time-waster, but a costly one, too. In exurban Atlanta, for instance, families spend an average of 61 percent of their income on transportation! The problem is especially bad in high-foreclosure communities, where jobs recede ever-further away as local economies tank. Look at Stockton, California, where the average commute is 46 miles - EACH WAY.

Meanwhile, the urban communities of color many of these exurbanites came from were left behind - aging and under-invested. Neither the left-behind urban residents, nor the far-flung exurban residents were any closer to the economic and social opportunities they needed to thrive.

What we saw intensify during the 2000s was a massive and unsustainable mismatch between where we live and where we work. The costs - in economic terms, but also for the environment, our health, and our oil-dependence - were too much to bear. A region cannot be prosperous if it allows its low-income people to be simply shunted off to the uneven fringes or isolated corners.

But our metro regions are now facing an interesting stretch ahead. Already, Americans are voting with their feet, as cities from coast to coast (and in between) bulge with new residents fresh from the exurbs and suburbs. New developments are popping up around public transit lines. Once-forgotten neighborhoods are seeing new shops and restaurants open for the first time in years.

On one hand, it's exciting to see cities again bustling and becoming hubs for regional innovation. But for the poor families who have been struggling in these disinvested urban areas for decades, this new excitement brings with it great anxiety - the worry that as wealthier residents move in alongside the nicer amenities, longtime residents will inevitably be priced out.

That's why the Obama Administration's new $175 million Sustainable Communities initiative is so exciting. This joint effort by HUD, EPA, and the Department of Transportation is another effort by the White House to reshape the broken and counterproductive way we've built our communities. These federal planning grants will help regional consortia - comprising state and local governments, metropolitan planning organizations, educational institutions, non-profit groups, and philanthropic organizations - lay out a smarter, more sustainable, and more inclusive future for their region.

Rather than fuel greater sprawl and surrender to the fractured status quo of government oversight, the Sustainable Communities initiative tries to think about a community in all of the ways we really live our lives. We aren't just homeowners or renters. We're not just drivers or public transit users. We're not just consumers or sellers. We're all of those things - and our communities should reflect that.

But the Sustainable Communities initiative goes beyond just trying to fix one neighborhood or one city. It aims to fix and integrate an entire region - because, as HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said at The Atlantic's Future of the City conference last week, "America's ability to compete and create jobs in the 21st Century depends on our metro regions."

As we rethink our regions, we have to plan for success. The Sustainable Communities grants promise to prioritize building communities of opportunity for people of color and high poverty areas. Local leaders and residents must be at the forefront of these planning efforts.

Sustainable regions are only possible if all people have the opportunity to achieve their full potential. Reimagining our regions as interconnected, interdependent, inclusive places to both live and work is crucial to making a nation that can innovate and thrive. Areas that embrace this "regional equity" focus will be on the fast-track to economic stability and growth.

A new $175 million federal program is a good start. But, of course, it can't do it on its own. Regions across America must learn the lessons of this Sustainable Communities program to break down the isolated silos of their own and unite all aspects of regional living. If we can do that, we can unleash a torrent of ignored and underutilized potential, especially in poor communities and communities of color.

Sustainable communities make successful communities.

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As some of the deadlines approach for the implementation of the Health Care Reform Bill, many are still up in arms about the government "mandating" them to carry health insurance (a requirement that does not take full effect until 2014). For those that believe this is a violation of the Constitution and an affront to your rights, I have a suggestion. Stop seeking medical treatment.

The real affront to rights comes from the people who refuse to carry insurance, but yet, continue to seek medical treatment that they cannot pay for on their own. This is a violation of my rights and the rights of all Americans who carry medical insurance. I pay for you, and I have been paying for you for years. I pay for you because the cost of your medical treatment - treatment that you can't pay for - is rolled into my bills at hospitals and doctor's offices. They do not just write you off. Life isn't like the episode of Seinfeld when Kramer told Jerry that the U. S. Postal Service just writes things off. When the larger bill gets to my insurance company, they pass the higher cost on to me with increases in my premium.

So the best way to make sure that everyone is being treated fairly is for you to stop going to the doctor and hospital since you do not have insurance and for me to continue to use my insurance free from the burden of your carry over costs. God forbid we would not want anyone paying for someone else to live a long, healthy, productive life.

Now, I can hear you screaming. I have the right to go to the doctor and hospital. Ok! Well, if you follow your logic to its end regarding the requirement of health insurance being unconstitutional and paying for other people's health insurance being unfair, then you do not have the right to do these things because you cannot pay for them. If you cannot pay for medical treatment, then you cannot have it.

The one thing that is being forgotten is that very few of us can walk into the hospital with cash in hand and pay our bill. This is the reason we have health insurance. The whole idea behind the requirement to carry health insurance is as much about protecting me from having to shoulder the burden of your lack of health insurance as it is about protecting your access to health care, so maybe it is time to rethink this inflamed and misinformed reaction and realize that for many people this reform, and its requirements, will give access to affordable health insurance coverage so you are paying your fair share for your long, healthy, and productive life.

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L.A. Unified expects to serve nearly 5 million meals this summer, nearly 10 times the number of last year, for children who rely on subsidized meals when school is in session.

When María Elena García rushes off to work at a Mexican restaurant, she takes comfort in knowing that her two children, ages 12 and 16, will get a healthy lunch at school.

Day two of the Elena Kagan Supreme Court confirmation hearing saw an act of political soap-boxing by Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, who dedicated the brunt of his time to the left's griping over January's Citizens United decision. Some of his frustration is likely deserved -- a few responses to the ruling may have gone above and beyond the call of shrillness (further elucidation on that here). But nor was the content of Hatch's tirade without its flaws. His claim that the decision is widely supported does not reflect polls taken in its aftermath. And as Constitutional Accountability Center founder Doug Kendall notes, the Utah Republican conveniently avoided a central argument of the case: whether corporations should enjoy the same equal rights as individuals to vote, run for office, and participate in electioneering.

Just as revealing as these outstanding blemishes though is what Hatch had to say about Utah small businesses and S Chapter corporations (small chartered, incorporated entities that can have as few as one shareholder), which by his conjecture would lose free speech rights if corporate political speech were to be managed. On some issues it is expected that the business community will unite homogeneously around a common cause, such as on taxation. But bundling in small businesses and S Chapters with multinational corporations that comprise forceful "special interests*" largely ignores the way influence peddling works in American politics. When one looks to the most destructive and inane policies operative today, or to lobbying and electioneering efforts that effectively "drown out" the voice of the people, rarely is it disparate laundromat owners or lawn services that raise eyebrows.

Though Wall Street and health insurers have stolen the show this year, these are merely the latest installments in a long saga whereby the general public ultimately suffers from a concentrated industry's bloated gains. More often than not, the story is eventually told of how that industry made its own bed through policy-oriented efforts to avoid oversight and costly regulations, or to garner the largess of contracts and extravagant subsidies. For the past decade a famously egregious but hardly exceptional example of waste stemming from special interest influence is the U.S. sugar program, which pointlessly subsidizes the largest sugar producers at an estimated cost of $2 billion annually to American households. Equally concerning is the massive waste of taxpayer dollars due to an unseemly favoritism for wildly expensive defense contractors and foreign aid distributors prosecuting American adventures abroad. In fact, another salient example could be some public labor unions, which Hatch conveniently groups in with corporations as fellow influence peddlers (the implication being that equal opportunity institutional corruption is unproblematic).

Single-cause special interests in politics more resemble business cartels like OPEC than innocuous collections of freethinking but like-minded individuals. The distortive power of such highly concentrated funds on specific legislative causes cannot be overstated, and it is influence individual citizens and small business owners cannot match. In 1998, the year the sugar program began, it's estimated that the industry enjoyed a net gain of over $1 billion at a campaigning cost of only $2.8 million because its vast reserves of potential electioneering funds were leveraged into powerful campaign threats. Donating to a pliable candidate with the threat of funding his next opponent tenfold is common practice, and it turns $2,000 spent into $12,000 worth of influence gained. What's more, the ruling in Citizens United furnishes special interests with far more threat credibility than they previously had at their disposal.

This influence equally pervades all parties and campaigns, and it has a knack for building up those who are most susceptible. Very rarely do the policy victories attained partly or wholly through such means benefit anyone else. The sugar program has done nothing but reward a few large producers at the expense of billions of dollars to consumers. The regulatory breakdown in the financial sector and that sector's subsequent growth over the past two decades has resulted in a crash that leaves millions of homes underwater or in foreclosure and middle class incomes stagnant, to say nothing of the national debt to GDP ratio leaping up 30 percent. The influence of nationwide health insurers first ushered in significantly higher costs for care over time, and has now resulted in a reform bill that profoundly expands those very insurers' customer bases without challenging their status as legal monopolies.

Scenarios of this nature that benefit genuine small businesses and striving midsized S Corporations are simply nowhere to be found. Nor does the situation arise abruptly. Each is the foreseeable product of years of influence that is eternally trickling into the system widely unbeknown to the rest of us -- American workers and business owners who are busy holding a job, raising a family, pursuing an education, or just trying to stay out of the red (or wondering why sugar is always costing more and more). When politicians from both sides of the spectrum -- including Senator Hatch -- condemn waste, fraud and abuse in government, these are the types of surreally counterproductive policy scenarios of which they speak. So, it doesn't take much to see the irony in a politician simultaneously condemning waste in government while championing measures that further enable special interest participation in policy making.

* The definition I am using for "special interests" in this post is that used by the IMF's Marcos Chamon and Stockholm University's Ethan Kaplan. It states that: "Special interest groups care only about a particular policy, and do not care inherently about which candidate wins the election as long as their special interest policy is supported by the winner."

Related Readings:

Financial Reform Won't Alter Capitalism's Icarus Trajectory

The Capitalist Hagiography Has Little Room for Saints

Citizens United, the Roberts Court, and the Future of American Electioneering

Obama's State of the Union Falls Short on Correcting Citizens United

American Plutocracy: Corruption Is In the Eyes of the Beholder

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