Politics Today

Put The “Public” Back Into Public Health

Tue, 19 May 2009 22:27:45 -0500

In a White House meeting last Tuesday, representatives of the insurance industry promised President Obama that they'll cut health care cost inflation by 1.5% a year.

Whoopee. Heath care costs are actually rising by more than 6% a year, and the industry is only promising voluntary efforts to trim that, hoping against hope that they're not held to that legislatively.

This is just the latest attempt by the health insurance industry - remember the "Harry and Louise" advertisements of 1993, paid for by the Health Insurance Association of America? - to derail the health care reform we need.

The only way to real reform for patients and premium payers is to allow the option of a public insurance plan. Such an option will compel the insurance industry to find the savings they've promised, and will give Americans something besides private insurers should private insurers fail to cut costs in a meaningful way.

In testimony before a house committee on health care reform, Princeton economics professor Uwe Reinhardt cut to the chase: "At one end of the ideological spectrum, many Americans appear to believe that health care ought to be treated as a private consumer good that should be distributed on the basis of market principles....At the other end of the ideological spectrum, just as many other Americans...believe that our health care system should be viewed as a social good."

The social good voters won the last two national elections, and believe that the option of a public insurance plan will help to promote that social good. I agree with them.

Those who cry "socialized medicine!" overlook both the Veterans Administration's health care system and Medicare/Medicaid, both of which are public plans, and which have provided better care cheaper than the private insurance industry for the last fifty years.

Congress and the President should not listen to the insurance companies; they should listen to voters. They must pass health care reform this year that gives us the option of a public plan.

The Natural Course of Capitalist Economics

Fri, 8 May 2009 21:59:48 -0500

When Tim Geithner was confirmed as Secretary of the Treasury, the victory of Corporate Socialism over Social Capitalism was also confirmed - at least for the time being.

Geithner, formerly president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and the Group of 30, both bastions of corporate protectionism, insofar as their viewpoint is so broad that macroeconomics is the only economics of which they appear to be aware.

In such a view, local economies are inconsequential; or at least, small rural communities and the local economies on which they are traditionally based are invisible, and of value only to the degree that they can be commandeered by global corporate interests, their cultural, human, and natural riches simply resources to be exploited. These corporate socialist’s vision is so “broad” that they can’t see the trees for the forest, and really don’t care to.

It is unfortunate that Wall Streeters and Fed Presidents still are given positions of prominence within the Department of the Treasury. Most of what the Department has done - more during the Clinton & Bush years, but continuing today - is to protect the natural concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. This concentration of wealth is the natural course of purely Capitalist economics, and has been since Adam Smith. Keeping this natural concentration of wealth in check is the primary reason why democratic governments have been instituted among people.

The role of the US government is to forestall, arrest, and reverse this concentration in ways that, as the preamble to the US Constitution says, help to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

Allowing corporate interests to assume a greater importance than citizens makes the government a partner in the forced and enforced servitude of the governed to those corporations whom the government now determines to be “too big to fail.” This is not the “Blessing of Liberty,” it is the curse of tyranny.

From Shame and Sham to Hope and Hard Work

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:02:04 -0500

My last post to this blog took place in January of 2007, and it’s now March of 2009. In the interim, I’ve moved back across country to Indiana, opened a bindery in my home, taken a job at a public library as a reference librarian, and pretty much ignored all of my personal blogs.

I feel it’s time to begin paying attention again. Much has changed - George Bush has left the White House and the Presidency in shame and humiliation, widely regarded as the worst president in recent history, if not the sum of US history. Barack Obama has made the history everyone has already blogged about, and is now trying to address the multitude of systemic weaknesses left by Bush’s combination of tax breaks for the wealthy, deregulation, dual occupations in the Middle East, and environmental degradation and non-enforcement.

The latest political pissing contest appears to be to see who can appear the most outraged about the bonuses paid to AGI employees who actually helped to run the company into the ground. The bonuses amount to less that half of one percent of the taxpayer money they received; no one thus far has asked for an accounting of the other 99.5 percent.

The last two years, politically, have unfolded much as I had half hope and half expected after the mid-term elections. What I said in November of 2006 is a large part of what propelled Obama to the White House: “What’s important now is that citizens -- those of us who caused this sea-change -- keep involved, and not let one extreme or the other grab the agenda.”

It remains important - extremely so - for the grassroots to remain as active in making sure the Change we voted for becomes legislatively enacted. Obama has made a great start; stay involved.

Bill Moyers: Tell Your Story

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 18:40:01 -0600

“In our brief sojourn here we are on a great journey. For those who came before us and for those who follow, our moral, political and religious duty is to make sure that this nation, which was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that we are all created equal, is in good hands on our watch.”

Those word by Bill Moyers are taken from an article entitled For America’s Sake, published in the January 22nd issue of The Nation. Please take the time to read the entire thing. If you agree with Moyers that “More and more people agree that growing inequality is bad for the country, that corporations have too much power, that money in politics is corrupting democracy and that working families and poor communities need and deserve help when the market system fails to generate shared prosperity,” then you might want to check out Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, by George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute. This book is a short, pithy guide to progressives for finding your voice and using it to change the direction of politics in America, which is all about what Moyers is talking about. Thinking Points is on sale at most bookstores for $10.00, but you can also download the entire thing off the web - one chapter at a time - for free, at the link I put there at the title.

Incidentally, if you want to watch Moyers deliver a portion of his article as a speech sponsored by The Nation, Demos, The Brennan Center for Justice, and the New Democracy Project, here it is:

Two Deaths: Happy New Year

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 01:20:50 -0600

Our ostensibly pro-life administration is caught up this weekend in the spinning of two deaths. One, we are told we should celebrate as justice finally served; the other, we are told we should mourn, and in fact, we are officially mourning as a nation, with state funerals, flags at half-staff: the whole nine yards.

Federal offices have even decided to put off the “official” day of mourning until Tuesday, and cynics will be justified in thinking that this conveniently prolongs the New Year holiday.

Saddam was a beast, and whether or not one believes that his trial was fair, the sentence was commensurate with the charges on which he was convicted.

Gerald Ford, being a former president, is being given a pass he simply does not deserve. As the only un-elected President of the United States (and Vice-President, too, due to the at-that-time unprecedented corruption of the Nixon/Agnew administration) he needs to be held to a much higher standard, and he fails even the moderate standard test.

His pardon of Nixon prior to criminal proceedings is being painted in the media as a “healing” gesture that helped the country recover from the “long national nightmare” - Ford’s words - of Watergate.

I disagree. I think that, as Saddam’s execution is considered “justice,” that Nixon’s prosecution would’ve been the same, and would’ve done more to heal the country than letting a plainly criminal President off scott free. In fact, I believe that the pardon of Nixon cheapened the moral standard to which the Presidency is held to such a degree that the off-the-shelf, extra-Constitutional behavior of the Reagan cabinet (Poindexter, North, and company) in the Iran/Contra affair -- which was a much more blatant and egregious violation of the trust of the office of the Presidency than Watergate -- was greeted by the public with an “oh well, they’re all corrupt anyway” mentality.

The corruption of the current Bush is even more brazen: Detention without charge, wiretapping citizens without subpoena, outing CIA operatives, preemptive war... Do I really need to list them all again?

People asking “where’s the outrage?” should be reminded that a good deal of righteous outrage was snuffed by Gerald Ford when he issued that chicken-shit pardon. A Nixon spending his last years behind bars would’ve been a constant reminder to the people of their true power, and a constant reminder to those in power about the depths to which one could truly fall in grubbing for power that rightly belongs to the people.

If you think that sounds Socialist, it’s not; it’s American. Once again, for everyone’s edification, here is the Ninth Article of the Bill of Rights: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

Bill O’Reilly Was Wrong: It’s A “Holiday Tree”

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:02:00 -0600

By now, the entire US has heard about the recent round of Grinchiness at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (Sea-Tac), where an over-reaction by Port of Seattle authorities to a lawsuit threatened by local Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky because the Port wouldn’t put up a Menorah led to the removal of all “Christmas Trees” from the entrances to Sea-Tac

When faced with a huge public outcry by people of many - and of no particular - faiths, the Rabbi made clear it was never his intention to file a lawsuit, and Sea-Tac quickly reinstalled the renamed “Holiday Trees.”

Which is as it should be. No one will find any reference to a “Christmas Tree” in any of the New Testament accounts of Christ’s nativity, because trees have nothing to do with it. The tree has roots (no pun intended) in European Pagan traditions surrounding the Winter Solstice (December 22nd) when Evergreen trees, because they remained green when all other plant life had died, were seen to have a special power over death.

Ancient Germanic peoples tied fruit and attached candles to evergreen tree branches, in honor of their god Woden, the deity after which Wednesday is named, and who, incidentally, was hung from the tree called Yggdrasill while pierced by his own spear, an interesting parallel to another, later crucifixion.

Trees were viewed as symbolizing eternal life. The trees joined holly, mistletoe, the wassail bowl and the Yule log as symbols of the season. All predated Christianity.

Many religions, great and small, celebrate a “Festival of Lights,” and all are held to celebrate the beginning of the end of the season of darkness. They include the Jewish Hanukkah (celebrated for 8 days in the Hebrew month of Kislev, usually in mid-to-late December), the Hindu Diwali (date varies but is celebrated on the lunar new year), and the Pagan Imbolic (Brigit’s/Bride’s Day in Ireland, and Christianized into Candlemas, celebrated on February 2nd), to name but a few of the most well-known.

The lighted holiday tree invokes them all. It should be obvious then, that taking them down because they promote a particular religious viewpoint is very shortsighted.

In point of fact, if Sea-Tac were to set up a Menorah, it will only be a matter of time before devotees of particular faiths would be clamoring to erect Crescents & Stars, Inverted Pentagrams, Earthen Lanterns, and - no doubt - Crosses.

So no: we don’t celebrate one holy day, we recognize that this is the time of year when people all over the planet celebrate many holy days. We recognize this through the secular and syncretic symbol of the Tree of Light and Life.

Happy Holidays!

What A Difference A Day Makes!

Fri, 10 Nov 2006 01:00:12 -0600

Just three days ago I made a pleading post urging everyone to vote, and making a case for both the need to vote, and the need to conduct mass protests if the vote appeared seriously compromised.

November 7th came and went, and with it went all claims to legitimacy that President Bush had. Don Rumsfeld was his sacrificial lamb, but any indication that this was in the plan was certainly not apparent in an Associated Press interview on November 1:

Q: Assuming their health holds up, do you want Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld to be with you until the end?

Bush: Both those men are doing fantastic jobs. And I strongly support them.

Q: Up until the end - you see them staying with you until the end?

Bush: I do.

Q: So you're expecting Rumsfeld - Secretary Rumsfeld to stay on the rest of your time here?

Bush: Yes, I am.

So let’s make it clear: if the Democrats hadn’t ridden roughshod over the Republicans,earlier in the week, we’d still be stuck with Rumsfeld, still be listening to idiots without a plan debate the semantic differences between “staying the course” and “cutting and running,” still have to listen to Bush blather on about “Defeatocrats” and other such horse manure.

It really was wonderful listening to Bush make excuses for Republican losses, but my favorite - being as I’m a librarian - was Bush’s excuse that Karl Rove had spent too much time reading books. Yes, that has to be it. What person in their right mind can win steal an election when their chief campaign advisor has their nose in a book?
I’d better start learning now

Ironically, another factor that may have contributed to the large victory for the Democrats was the strength of the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. It turns out that a large number of moderate Republicans switched sides to vote Democratic; a point that Democrats have to remember, lest they be tempted to swing too far back to the left.

What’s important now is that citizens -- those of us who caused this sea-change -- keep involved, and not let one extreme or the other grab the agenda. It’s the bread-and-butter issues, like good insurance, inexpensive medicines for grandma and grandpa, increasing the minimum wage and generally pulling up the forgotten and struggling lower and lower-middle class, that will keep winning elections. If Democrats can do this, while rebuilding our credibility internationally, and repealing a few of the more egregious and debt-producing tax cuts, they’ll have a very clear shot at the presidency in a couple of years.

But not by running John Kerry. But that’ll have to wait until the next post.

Now Is The Time - VOTE! But Get Ready to Lose

Mon, 6 Nov 2006 20:37:23 -0600

Misleading a nation into war, Bin Laden still at large, habeas corpus thrown out the window, New Orleans, Terri Schiavo, outing an undercover CIA operative, Abu Ghraib, smearing a Vietnam veteran Senator who lost his limbs in combat, no bid contracts, Swiftboating, cronyism, “extraordinary rendition,” using and duping good people of good faith, releasing nuclear secrets online, Jack Abramoff... The list just goes on and on, to the point where citizens who love what this country stands for must stand up and say ENOUGH! Surely no one who voted for President Bush or Republican leadership voted for this litany of sorrow, lies, waste, and incompetence.

Well, tomorrow’s your opportunity. Please, please, please, if you do nothing else tomorrow: Vote. The tide is set in favor of a turnover of at least one, and very possibly both Chambers of the national legislature. But don’t take it from me; listen to a respected Republican prognosticator. It appears that fear of terror isn’t going to be a major selling point in this election, as a recently released CNN poll indicates that 25% of Americans felt safer before 9/11.

But brace yourself for taking to the streets - Orange Revolution-style - when the Republicans steal the election again. Again? Yes, as Mark Crispin Miller said in a recent Washington Spectator column, “That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt.”

The Spectator column is a must read for those complacent about small-d democracy in this country. This extended quote ought to be chilling enough:

We must delve into the recent past, not to quibble over ancient numbers but to find out where we really are today. For what happened in some states four years ago, and in most states two years ago, is still happening now, and in more states than ever: a vast, complex and incremental process of mass disenfranchisement—which is, in fact, the only way the Bush Republicans could ever get "elected," as their program is not conservative but radical, irrational, apocalyptic: i.e., unacceptable to most Americans, liberals and true conservatives alike.

That gives us another reason to vote: the greater we can make the turnout, the more massive - and therefore apparent - the fraud has to be in order to elect these crooks. VOTE! Get your neighbor to vote! Tell your friends to vote!

Where Do You Get Your News?

Sat, 26 Aug 2006 22:34:11 -0500

On Thursday, August 17th, US District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor (above, left) ruled that the Bush Administration’s domestic surveillance program conducted by the NSA was unconstitutional. The ruling was a scathing indictment of the program, and of this administration’s consistent arrogance. She said, in part, that “There are no hereditary kings in American and no powers not created by the Constitution.” You can read the entire opinion here.

But if you get your news from the mainstream television media, you may not have heard this story, or, if you did, you may have come away with a dramatically distorted view of its importance. This is because on the same day, law enforcement agents in Thailand announced the arrest of John Mark Carr, and named him as a primary suspect in the murder of child “beauty” queen JonBenet Ramsey (above, right).

On the Thursday evening news, according to Democracy Now, ABC, NBC, and CBS all led their evening news broadcasts with the story of Carr’s arrest. Moreover, ABC devoted twice as much time to Ramsey as it did the NSA story. CBS, no doubt paving the way for Katie’s arrival, devoted 7 times more time to Ramsey than it did the NSA story. Not to be outdone, NBC news devoted 15 times more airtime to the Ramsey story than it did the NSA domestic surveillance story.

It’s very sad that we’re led to believe that threats to our constitutional rights are somehow less important that six-year-old “beauty” queens.

Bush immediately ordered the Justice Department to appeal this ruling - your tax dollars at work. Most legal experts anticipate Judge Taylor’s ruling will be upheld upon appeal.

“First There Is A Mountain...”

Tue, 22 Aug 2006 23:23:13 -0500

I’m a really lucky guy in a lot of respects. For instance, the above picture is taken off of my back porch. The one mountain that I can see from my back porch is Mt. Rainier, considered a symbol of the state in Washington, even making an appearance on our state quarter this year. It’s the second-highest mountain in the lower 48 states, although it stands 1500 feet higher than its surrounding plain than Mt. Whitney - the highest - does down in California. Hell, you can walk to the top of Mt. Whitney with a pair of tennis shoes and a little GORP. Try that on Mt. Rainier and you’re very likely to die.

But that’s not what I want to talk about. What I want to talk about is how I’ve come to understand since moving out to Washington State late last year what songwriter Donovan was talking about when he wrote, all those years ago:

First there is a mountain
Then there is no mountain
Then there is.

I used to think the song was metaphorical, but realize that it’s not. The realization has helped me to understand why and how native people considered the mountains to be Gods, or at the very least, sacred spaces. Consider:
Sometimes the mountain is very clear, even from where I live, over 80 miles away from the mountain in a straight line, but sometimes it’s not visible at all, even on days when there is no apparent cloud in the sky.
Sometimes, even when it’s visible on a clear day (see the above picture and look closely for the mountain; do you see it?) it appears faint and wispy, like nothing more than a few trails of cloud.
Sometimes it appears to detach itself from the earth altogether, and float in the sky, present but out of reach (see the photo below).

A person could begin walking towards it from where I live, and walk all day without appearing to get any closer.
It’s been there, looking like that, since before humans first wandered onto this continent, and it’ll be here, largely unchanged, long after anything that I write about it has been forgotten.
It doesn’t really care whether we live or die.

What else but a God could it possibly be?