The United States today has 7.3 million fewer jobs than it had in 25 months ago. It lost another 85,000 jobs last month. Forty-two percent of the total, over-16 American workforce is jobless.
Those are numbers. Steve J., of Reading, PA, is a person. He lost his job last year. His wife found a minimum wage job. His adult daughter, who is employed, moved back with her parents to help out. They're meeting the mortgage payments -- barely -- but they still owe more than the house is worth. "Christmas?" Steve told a reporter. "We couldn't afford gifts or a tree. We were lucky we could keep the house heated -- sort of, 62 degrees. " It was 18 degrees and snowing on Christmas Eve in Reading. Last night it was 11 degrees. Steve ran out of heating oil and can't afford to buy more. The emergency assistance number is constantly busy. "Maybe they took it off the hook," Steve said.
Matt M. of Tampa, FL, is a person. He was self-employed; ran a business that at its peak employed nine other workers. Did well for seven years. Had cash deposits and signed contracts for enough work to keep the wolf from the door when what he calls "the crash" hit. Or so he thought. One by one, then in clusters, people called to ask out of their contracts. They begged to have their deposits refunded. Legally, he didn't have to refund them. "I was determined to stay in business," he said, "and I didn't want to create ill will by playing Scrooge." He gave them their money back. His wife found a job working from home as a telemarketer, which enables her to continue to care for her cancer-stricken mother. Matt works odd jobs in the underground economy -- "anything people will pay cash for." On the second day of the new year his son's car was struck by a drunk driver running a red light at high speed. He survived the crash but will need long term medical care. The family has no health insurance. The car was the one Matt used to drive to his odd jobs.
Bob H. of Albuquerque, NM did have health insurance, a retirement benefit. After a long bout of breathing problems and other health issues, a specialist finally diagnosed his pulmonary hypertension. It was life-threatening. He ordered Bob to move immediately to a lower elevation -- as near sea level as possible. He prescribed costly, regular medication and told Bob to keep an auxiliary oxygen supply with him at all times. He and his wife sold their house for about 85% of what they had paid for it. After the mortgage was satisfied, they had about $12,000 cash. Between December of 2007 and November of 2009, the modest investments that supplemented their Social Security income went up in smoke. It cost them $4, 000 to move themselves and their belongings to a lower elevation. The small home they're renting costs about half their Social Security income. Most months they have to dip into their tiny cash reserve to cover essential living costs like food and utilities. And when that's gone? "Food stamps?" Bob wondered. "The lottery? I just don't know. I never thought it would come down to this."
Even the employed are squeezed. Small investors have quit investing. The Wall Street journal reports that wages are stagnant and likely to remain so. The huge pool of unemployed workers, the Journal said, "helps employers keep wages from rising even as productivity -- output per hour of work -- soars."
Goldman Sachs, the alma mater of the U.S. treasury secretary and most of the other government financial policy makers, received $12 billion in bailout funds when the crisis hit the economy. This year its pool of cash for executive bonuses is $20 billion.
Kappa Beta Phi, a secret and exclusive Wall Street club, inducted new members the other night at a posh banquet in the St. Regis hotel in Manhattan. They sang song parodies.
One, sung by a fat cat in a nun's costume to the tune of a "Sound of Music" number, was about the Goldman Sachs CEO and top bonus-earner:
"How do you solve a problem like Lloyd Blankfein?
"How do you cap a bonus and keep it down?. . ."
It cracked 'em up at the St. Regis. Steve, Matt and Bob aren't laughing.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Happy Danes Are Here Again
Three different data-based studies that rank nations according to the "happiness" of their people all agree that the two happiest nations in the world are Denmark and Costa Rica.
The studies take into account citizens' responses to poll questions evaluating their own happiness, as well as life expectancy; one study adds a third factor, environmental impact.
Obviously, climate is not a common denominator for these two sets of happy people.
But there are two very clear common denominators. One is universal government managed health care. The other is little or no spending on the military.
Costa Rica, which most often ranks first in the happiness surveys, has no military. Zero. Zilch. Its government made a decision to eliminate its standing army and divert the money it spent on the military to education.
Denmark maintains an army. navy, air force and Home Guard. This entire operation costs Denmark 1.5% of its GDP. The United States, in contrast, spends nearly four times as large a percentage of its vastly greater GDP on its war machine.
In the United States, where tea party loonies and birther crazies prattle about "socialized medicine" as if it were something bad, an allegedly "liberal" President didn't even ask the Congress his party controls to consider a single-payer, universal health care system. What he's willing to settle for is a mish-mash of regulations and wishfulness that guarantees enormously greater profits for the insurance industry and skyrocketing bonuses for its fat-cat executives. The actual quality of medical care will continue to decline, and the actual cost to sick people will continue to rise.
No data are available as to the precise number of Americans who go to Costa Rica each year to avail themselves of one of the best health care systems in the world today. The system is open not just to Ticos, but to any foreign resident or visitor. Doctors and pharmacists there all say they regularly serve a number of American patients. In 1991, a survey by economists from the University of Costa Rica documented that 14.25% of all foreign visitors came for the express purpose of receiving medical care of some type.
You don't need a prescriptions for most medications in Costa Rica, you can take up to a 90-day supply back to the U.S. with you and the cost of the medicine is about 20% of what you (and your for-profit insurer, if you have one) would pay in the United States. Foreigners can join the Costa Rican health care net (CCSS) by paying a small monthly fee, based on their income, or they can buy health insurance from the state monopoly for roughly 1/100th of the cost of comparable coverage in the United States.
In Denmark, anyone can go to a physician for no fee. Danish citizens may choose between two systems of primary health care: medical care provided free of charge by a doctor whom the individual chooses for a year and by those specialists to whom the doctor refers the patient; or complete freedom of choice of any physician or specialist at any time, with state reimbursement of about two-thirds of the cost for medical bills paid directly by the patient. Most Danes opt for the former. All patients receive subsidies on pharmaceuticals and vital drugs. Total health care expenditure is 8.4% of GDP.
Health care costs the United States just over 16% of GDP. A 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 44,800 preventable deaths annually in the United States among Americans lacking health insurance.
Rush Limblow to the contrary notwithstanding, the only large industrialized nations that come close to matching the health care in Denmark and Costa Rica are Japan and France. You know what the right wingnuts say about France!
The studies take into account citizens' responses to poll questions evaluating their own happiness, as well as life expectancy; one study adds a third factor, environmental impact.
Obviously, climate is not a common denominator for these two sets of happy people.
But there are two very clear common denominators. One is universal government managed health care. The other is little or no spending on the military.
Costa Rica, which most often ranks first in the happiness surveys, has no military. Zero. Zilch. Its government made a decision to eliminate its standing army and divert the money it spent on the military to education.
Denmark maintains an army. navy, air force and Home Guard. This entire operation costs Denmark 1.5% of its GDP. The United States, in contrast, spends nearly four times as large a percentage of its vastly greater GDP on its war machine.
In the United States, where tea party loonies and birther crazies prattle about "socialized medicine" as if it were something bad, an allegedly "liberal" President didn't even ask the Congress his party controls to consider a single-payer, universal health care system. What he's willing to settle for is a mish-mash of regulations and wishfulness that guarantees enormously greater profits for the insurance industry and skyrocketing bonuses for its fat-cat executives. The actual quality of medical care will continue to decline, and the actual cost to sick people will continue to rise.
No data are available as to the precise number of Americans who go to Costa Rica each year to avail themselves of one of the best health care systems in the world today. The system is open not just to Ticos, but to any foreign resident or visitor. Doctors and pharmacists there all say they regularly serve a number of American patients. In 1991, a survey by economists from the University of Costa Rica documented that 14.25% of all foreign visitors came for the express purpose of receiving medical care of some type.
You don't need a prescriptions for most medications in Costa Rica, you can take up to a 90-day supply back to the U.S. with you and the cost of the medicine is about 20% of what you (and your for-profit insurer, if you have one) would pay in the United States. Foreigners can join the Costa Rican health care net (CCSS) by paying a small monthly fee, based on their income, or they can buy health insurance from the state monopoly for roughly 1/100th of the cost of comparable coverage in the United States.
In Denmark, anyone can go to a physician for no fee. Danish citizens may choose between two systems of primary health care: medical care provided free of charge by a doctor whom the individual chooses for a year and by those specialists to whom the doctor refers the patient; or complete freedom of choice of any physician or specialist at any time, with state reimbursement of about two-thirds of the cost for medical bills paid directly by the patient. Most Danes opt for the former. All patients receive subsidies on pharmaceuticals and vital drugs. Total health care expenditure is 8.4% of GDP.
Health care costs the United States just over 16% of GDP. A 2009 Harvard study published in the American Journal of Public Health found more than 44,800 preventable deaths annually in the United States among Americans lacking health insurance.
Rush Limblow to the contrary notwithstanding, the only large industrialized nations that come close to matching the health care in Denmark and Costa Rica are Japan and France. You know what the right wingnuts say about France!
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
What's in Those "Tea Bags?"
There is one explanation for what happened last week at Alamogordo, NM: by every method of ranking education or "smartness," New Mexico is in the bottom five among the 50 states.
What did happen last week in Alamogordo? Walt Rubel, managing editor of the Las Cruces Sun News, wrote that a bunch of folks gathered there to "rail against all things Obama and revel in all things ballistic."
Rubel wrote:
"The Alamogordo Second Amendment Task Force joined with the Otero Tea Party Patriots, and, as a twist, invited folks to brings their guns, along with those clever signs portraying Obama with a Hitler mustache.
"'We want to put a positive light on gun ownership," said Dan Woodruff, founder of Alamogordo's Second Amendment Task Force.
"Yeah, that'll work. For those who have an intrinsic fear of guns and a deep-seated belief that tighter laws are needed to reduce gun violence, nothing will 'put a positive light on gun ownership' quite like inviting every yahoo with a weapon in southern New Mexico to gather at the busiest intersection in Alamogordo and wave their firearms at the passing traffic.
"And, just to keep things in a 'positive light,' organizers decided to hold the rally diagonally from the Tea Party protest, with all the positivity it engendered. And, just for good measure, they invited a bunch of bikers - the Sons of Liberty Riders - to join in the fun. Nothing puts peoples' minds at ease quite like well-armed bikers.
"Woodruff wants us to understand that his group isn't taking its responsibility lightly.'We are going to keep an eye on people at the protest to make sure they're not playing with their guns or anything like that,' he said.
"See? Now don't you feel reassured?"
David Brooks of the New York Times chimes in with sneering references to "the educated class" being out of touch with the feelings of real people such as the tea party nutcases.
"The tea party movement," he writes, with no discernible tongue in cheek, "is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.
"The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent."
The Rasmussen poll to which Brooks refers is based on a telephone survey of 1,000 people -- too small a sample to warrant his sweeping "is now more popular" assertion. Besides, the same poll, using the same methods one week earlier, came up with this breakdown: Democrat 36 percent, mythical Tea Party 23 percent, Republican 18 percent.
What to make of all this? Only that there are enough ignoramuses in the good old U.S. to work up a crowd toting guns and crazy signs, not just in under-educated New Mexico, but anywhere.
You don't have to be intelligent to be protected by the First Amendment.
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity -- and I'm not sure about the universe. -- Albert Einstein.
What did happen last week in Alamogordo? Walt Rubel, managing editor of the Las Cruces Sun News, wrote that a bunch of folks gathered there to "rail against all things Obama and revel in all things ballistic."
Rubel wrote:
"The Alamogordo Second Amendment Task Force joined with the Otero Tea Party Patriots, and, as a twist, invited folks to brings their guns, along with those clever signs portraying Obama with a Hitler mustache.
"'We want to put a positive light on gun ownership," said Dan Woodruff, founder of Alamogordo's Second Amendment Task Force.
"Yeah, that'll work. For those who have an intrinsic fear of guns and a deep-seated belief that tighter laws are needed to reduce gun violence, nothing will 'put a positive light on gun ownership' quite like inviting every yahoo with a weapon in southern New Mexico to gather at the busiest intersection in Alamogordo and wave their firearms at the passing traffic.
"And, just to keep things in a 'positive light,' organizers decided to hold the rally diagonally from the Tea Party protest, with all the positivity it engendered. And, just for good measure, they invited a bunch of bikers - the Sons of Liberty Riders - to join in the fun. Nothing puts peoples' minds at ease quite like well-armed bikers.
"Woodruff wants us to understand that his group isn't taking its responsibility lightly.'We are going to keep an eye on people at the protest to make sure they're not playing with their guns or anything like that,' he said.
"See? Now don't you feel reassured?"
David Brooks of the New York Times chimes in with sneering references to "the educated class" being out of touch with the feelings of real people such as the tea party nutcases.
"The tea party movement," he writes, with no discernible tongue in cheek, "is now more popular than either major party. According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 41 percent of Americans have a positive view of the tea party movement. Only 35 percent of Americans have a positive view of the Democrats and only 28 percent have a positive view of the Republican Party.
"The movement is especially popular among independents. The Rasmussen organization asked independent voters whom they would support in a generic election between a Democrat, a Republican and a tea party candidate. The tea party candidate won, with 33 percent of independents. Undecided came in second with 30 percent. The Democrats came in third with 25 percent and the Republicans fourth with 12 percent."
The Rasmussen poll to which Brooks refers is based on a telephone survey of 1,000 people -- too small a sample to warrant his sweeping "is now more popular" assertion. Besides, the same poll, using the same methods one week earlier, came up with this breakdown: Democrat 36 percent, mythical Tea Party 23 percent, Republican 18 percent.
What to make of all this? Only that there are enough ignoramuses in the good old U.S. to work up a crowd toting guns and crazy signs, not just in under-educated New Mexico, but anywhere.
You don't have to be intelligent to be protected by the First Amendment.
* * *
Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity -- and I'm not sure about the universe. -- Albert Einstein.
Monday, January 4, 2010
America the Beautiful
Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain. . ."
About six million Americans receiving food stamps have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. . .
Food stamp use is at a record high in the United states and surging by the day. In the western states alone, nearly 3 million families are receiving food stamps. That's a 37 percent increase since August of 2008. In more than 30 counties in Colorado, Idaho and Utah, food stamp use has increased by more than 70 percent since 2007. The average monthly benefit per person is $101.52. Food prices have risen about 2.5% since 2008. A greater increase is projected for this year.
America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
The number of Americans dependent upon food stamps as their only income began to rise with the massive reduction in welfare programs. According to the Times, the number has soared by 50 percent or more in the last two years. One in 50 Americans now lives in a household with an income that consists of nothing but food stamps.
Isabel Bermudez, a Florida mother of two who lost her job months ago and has no cash income, told the Times: "It's the one thing I can count on every month -- I know that the children are going to have food."
The Times reports: "The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.
And crown they good with brotherhood. . .
President Obama threw a fund raiser for the Wall Street crowd late last year. Its chairman was Daniel Fass, a rich, rich New York Lawyer whose firm specializes in debt collection. He told the crowd of fat cats -- and the President and his top financial advisors:
"The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."
From sea to shining sea!
About six million Americans receiving food stamps have no other income, according to an analysis of state data collected by The New York Times. In declarations that states verify and the federal government audits, they described themselves as unemployed and receiving no cash aid — no welfare, no unemployment insurance, and no pensions, child support or disability pay.
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain. . .
Food stamp use is at a record high in the United states and surging by the day. In the western states alone, nearly 3 million families are receiving food stamps. That's a 37 percent increase since August of 2008. In more than 30 counties in Colorado, Idaho and Utah, food stamp use has increased by more than 70 percent since 2007. The average monthly benefit per person is $101.52. Food prices have risen about 2.5% since 2008. A greater increase is projected for this year.
America, America, God shed his grace on thee.
The number of Americans dependent upon food stamps as their only income began to rise with the massive reduction in welfare programs. According to the Times, the number has soared by 50 percent or more in the last two years. One in 50 Americans now lives in a household with an income that consists of nothing but food stamps.
Isabel Bermudez, a Florida mother of two who lost her job months ago and has no cash income, told the Times: "It's the one thing I can count on every month -- I know that the children are going to have food."
The Times reports: "The surge in this precarious way of life has been so swift that few policy makers have noticed. But it attests to the growing role of food stamps within the safety net. One in eight Americans now receives food stamps, including one in four children.
And crown they good with brotherhood. . .
President Obama threw a fund raiser for the Wall Street crowd late last year. Its chairman was Daniel Fass, a rich, rich New York Lawyer whose firm specializes in debt collection. He told the crowd of fat cats -- and the President and his top financial advisors:
"The investment community feels very put-upon. They feel there is no reason why they shouldn't earn $1 million to $200 million a year, and they don't want to be held responsible for the global financial meltdown."
From sea to shining sea!
Friday, January 1, 2010
Jack v. Bible
Atheist Jack's battle with public school officials in Newton, MA, reminded me of my paternal grandfather, the wisest man I ever knew.
Pa -- his given name was Albert but everyone called him "Pa" -- always said that after Shakespeare's entire canon, the King James Bible contained some of the greatest literature in the English language. Pa knew his Shakespeare: he could quote from memory long passages of favorite works, adjusting the timbre of his voice for each character. He seldom quoted from the Bible; religion (he professed none) was to him a private matter and best left that way.
In a tenth-grade English class in Newton, the teacher instructed the students to read a passage from the Bible as literature, prepare for a quiz on the material, and write a paper about it -- as literature. Jack Summers, a professed atheist, refused the assignment, standing on his First Amendment rights. The flap that ensued made the front page of the local paper, which prompted many letters to the editor, including one from Jack's mother which oddly argued that it would be OK for Jack to read a summary of the contested passage -- a sort of Cliff Note version -- but not the actual text. Supreme Court decisions were invoked. Clergymen, historians and scholars were called upon to testify about degrees of separation of church and state. At length the school officials exempted Jack from the assignment. This of course triggered a whole new round of debate.
I had mixed emotions after reading accounts of Jack's Battle of the Bible in Newton. On the one hand, I could not question Pa's wisdom in deeming the King James Bible worthy of recognition as great literature, and thus worthy of serious study as such. (I don't know which version of the Bible Jack's class was required to read; perhaps it was one whose literary value would not meet Pa's high standards.) On the other hand, I stand with Jack on the First Amendment when it comes to requiring public school pupils to read religious tracts -- especially religious tracts that are held to be the very Word of God - even if they are presented not as religion but as "literature." A wiser path for that English teacher would have been to offer a non-religious alternative to this particular assignment.
Critics of the school's "cave-in" to Atheist Jack assert that the Bible's use of language and imagery, rhythm, poetic construction, character description, narrative power – the attributes of literature -- justify the assignment as literary study. I wonder how Pa would come down on this. His own deep scholarship into the King James Bible as literature was voluntary, a choice made in relative maturity.
Bear in mind that religionists have already forced the Biblical creation myth into some public school classes as "science." If you can also require kids to read the Bible as literature, what's wrong with requiring them to read it as , say, history, as well?
What's wrong is requiring them. The Wall of Separation took a terrible battering during the Bush II presidency. Forcing kids to read the Bible in public schools -- for any reason -- is no way to rebuild it.
Pa -- his given name was Albert but everyone called him "Pa" -- always said that after Shakespeare's entire canon, the King James Bible contained some of the greatest literature in the English language. Pa knew his Shakespeare: he could quote from memory long passages of favorite works, adjusting the timbre of his voice for each character. He seldom quoted from the Bible; religion (he professed none) was to him a private matter and best left that way.
In a tenth-grade English class in Newton, the teacher instructed the students to read a passage from the Bible as literature, prepare for a quiz on the material, and write a paper about it -- as literature. Jack Summers, a professed atheist, refused the assignment, standing on his First Amendment rights. The flap that ensued made the front page of the local paper, which prompted many letters to the editor, including one from Jack's mother which oddly argued that it would be OK for Jack to read a summary of the contested passage -- a sort of Cliff Note version -- but not the actual text. Supreme Court decisions were invoked. Clergymen, historians and scholars were called upon to testify about degrees of separation of church and state. At length the school officials exempted Jack from the assignment. This of course triggered a whole new round of debate.
I had mixed emotions after reading accounts of Jack's Battle of the Bible in Newton. On the one hand, I could not question Pa's wisdom in deeming the King James Bible worthy of recognition as great literature, and thus worthy of serious study as such. (I don't know which version of the Bible Jack's class was required to read; perhaps it was one whose literary value would not meet Pa's high standards.) On the other hand, I stand with Jack on the First Amendment when it comes to requiring public school pupils to read religious tracts -- especially religious tracts that are held to be the very Word of God - even if they are presented not as religion but as "literature." A wiser path for that English teacher would have been to offer a non-religious alternative to this particular assignment.
Critics of the school's "cave-in" to Atheist Jack assert that the Bible's use of language and imagery, rhythm, poetic construction, character description, narrative power – the attributes of literature -- justify the assignment as literary study. I wonder how Pa would come down on this. His own deep scholarship into the King James Bible as literature was voluntary, a choice made in relative maturity.
Bear in mind that religionists have already forced the Biblical creation myth into some public school classes as "science." If you can also require kids to read the Bible as literature, what's wrong with requiring them to read it as , say, history, as well?
What's wrong is requiring them. The Wall of Separation took a terrible battering during the Bush II presidency. Forcing kids to read the Bible in public schools -- for any reason -- is no way to rebuild it.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
December Infamy
December has given us more than one "day which will live in infamy."
Here's a random sampling: After three years of unconstitutional incarceration, Japanese-American citizens are finally released from detention camps (1944); United States and Russia conduct nuclear test explosions on the same day (1970) spewing particles of radiation contaminants over three quarters of the earth; Rosa Parks arrested in Alabama for refusing to move to the back of the bus (1955); Jerry Lee Lewis marries his 13-year-old cousin while still married to Jane Mitcham (1957).
And in 1981, on Dec. 12, President Ronnie Reagan authorized the CIA to begin spying on Americans -- the start of the United States government assault on the Bill of Rights that reached its apex when Bush II buffaloed a compliant Congress into passing what's come to be known as the Patriot Act. (The name is an acronym, probably created by Mrs. Malaprop.)
Now add to the days of infamy Dec. 16, 2009. With only 34 nays, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $636 billion defense spending bill -- (that's not the bad part) -- into which was tucked (here's the infamy):
* Extension of the Patriot act.
* 1,080 so-called earmarks totaling $2.7 billion, most of it for companies or lobby groups that had contributed substantially to the campaigns of the representatives who inserted the earmarks into the bill. Jim Moran (D-Va.) put in 45 earmarks to firms, mainly in the defense industry, in his home district that gave him a total of $201,000 in campaign contributions. Jack Murtha (D-PA) put in earmarks to reward firms that gave him $199,050. The earmark infamy was bipartisan. C.W. "Bill" Young of Florida (R) took in $122,000 from beneficiaries of his earmarks.
The pork is business as usual in Washington Ho-hum. It's only taxpayer money. We can't afford to pay for health care for every American. But we can earmark billions for graft.
And we continue to live under the thick black cloud of legislation that savages the Bill of Rights. The Patriot Act -- its entire title is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- literally repealed great sections of the Bill of Rights without bothering to follow the constitutional process for repeal.
In a fell swoop, Congress:
* Decimated the First Amendment with unconstitutional restrictions on free speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
* Virtually repealed the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.
* Canceled the Sixth Amendment's right to prompt and public trial.
* Wiped out the Eighth Amendment's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
With a ho and a hum and a dum dum dum, these abominations against our citizenship have just been extended, rather than being permitted to expire en bloc, as they would and should have at the end of December.
In the intensely emotional aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the legislation was handed to Congress late at night -- 402 pages of language cleverly designed to mask the real effect of the bill and play rather upon the emotions of the Congress for immediate passage. It is probable that whoever came up with the acronymable title spent more time creating it than our legislators spent actually studying the text of the legislation.
It contains nearly 30 amendments to the United States Code or to legislation previously passed by the Congress following study and debate. Each of these changes in our laws is constructed in language comparable to the following actual excerpt from the act:
In their emotional state so soon after the towers fell, most of those who voted for the act probably had to read no further than this paragraph on the very first page: "To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes."
The devil indeed was in the details, in those "other purposes." And so we torture or hand over our prisoners to nefarious regimes to do the torturing for us; every American citizen lives under the specter of his government's probing into his most personal records and acts, and possibly suffering dire consequences for innocent transactions; for every one of us there is the awful possibility of being incarcerated without bail, without charge, without trial simply for being politically active.
Ho, hum and a dum dum dum. Merry Christmas.
Here's a random sampling: After three years of unconstitutional incarceration, Japanese-American citizens are finally released from detention camps (1944); United States and Russia conduct nuclear test explosions on the same day (1970) spewing particles of radiation contaminants over three quarters of the earth; Rosa Parks arrested in Alabama for refusing to move to the back of the bus (1955); Jerry Lee Lewis marries his 13-year-old cousin while still married to Jane Mitcham (1957).
And in 1981, on Dec. 12, President Ronnie Reagan authorized the CIA to begin spying on Americans -- the start of the United States government assault on the Bill of Rights that reached its apex when Bush II buffaloed a compliant Congress into passing what's come to be known as the Patriot Act. (The name is an acronym, probably created by Mrs. Malaprop.)
Now add to the days of infamy Dec. 16, 2009. With only 34 nays, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $636 billion defense spending bill -- (that's not the bad part) -- into which was tucked (here's the infamy):
* Extension of the Patriot act.
* 1,080 so-called earmarks totaling $2.7 billion, most of it for companies or lobby groups that had contributed substantially to the campaigns of the representatives who inserted the earmarks into the bill. Jim Moran (D-Va.) put in 45 earmarks to firms, mainly in the defense industry, in his home district that gave him a total of $201,000 in campaign contributions. Jack Murtha (D-PA) put in earmarks to reward firms that gave him $199,050. The earmark infamy was bipartisan. C.W. "Bill" Young of Florida (R) took in $122,000 from beneficiaries of his earmarks.
The pork is business as usual in Washington Ho-hum. It's only taxpayer money. We can't afford to pay for health care for every American. But we can earmark billions for graft.
And we continue to live under the thick black cloud of legislation that savages the Bill of Rights. The Patriot Act -- its entire title is "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001" -- literally repealed great sections of the Bill of Rights without bothering to follow the constitutional process for repeal.
In a fell swoop, Congress:
* Decimated the First Amendment with unconstitutional restrictions on free speech and the right to peaceably assemble.
* Virtually repealed the Fourth Amendment requirements of probable cause and prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure.
* Canceled the Sixth Amendment's right to prompt and public trial.
* Wiped out the Eighth Amendment's protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
With a ho and a hum and a dum dum dum, these abominations against our citizenship have just been extended, rather than being permitted to expire en bloc, as they would and should have at the end of December.
In the intensely emotional aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the legislation was handed to Congress late at night -- 402 pages of language cleverly designed to mask the real effect of the bill and play rather upon the emotions of the Congress for immediate passage. It is probable that whoever came up with the acronymable title spent more time creating it than our legislators spent actually studying the text of the legislation.
It contains nearly 30 amendments to the United States Code or to legislation previously passed by the Congress following study and debate. Each of these changes in our laws is constructed in language comparable to the following actual excerpt from the act:
Chapter 10 of title 18, United States Code, is amended—
(1) in section 175—
(A) in subsection (b)—
(i) by striking ‘‘does not include’’ and inserting
‘‘includes’’;
(ii) by inserting ‘‘other than’’ after ‘‘system for’’;
and
(iii) by inserting ‘‘bona fide research’’ after ‘‘protective’’;
(B) by redesignating subsection (b) as subsection (c);
(2) in subparagraph (E), by striking the period at the
end and inserting ‘‘; and’’; and
(3) by adding at the end the following:
‘‘(F) does not discriminate against victims because they
disagree with the way the State is prosecuting the criminal
case.’
In their emotional state so soon after the towers fell, most of those who voted for the act probably had to read no further than this paragraph on the very first page: "To deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes."
The devil indeed was in the details, in those "other purposes." And so we torture or hand over our prisoners to nefarious regimes to do the torturing for us; every American citizen lives under the specter of his government's probing into his most personal records and acts, and possibly suffering dire consequences for innocent transactions; for every one of us there is the awful possibility of being incarcerated without bail, without charge, without trial simply for being politically active.
Ho, hum and a dum dum dum. Merry Christmas.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
*#!$@**&%!!#
F**k the conventional wisdom.
The conventional wisdom today: So it isn't perfect. But the Senate health care bill would prevent insurance companies from refusing coverage to people who are already sick. It will, um. . . .it will extend coverage to 30 million people who aren't covered now. Tell them we won't pass the bill because it isn't perfect.
F**k the conventional wisdom.
C'mon, the conventional wisdom says, be practical. With the little compromises we've made, we can get the backing we need to pass a bill. Think of it! A health care law, after all these years of contention. An actual bill we can get to the President's desk to be signed into law.
F**k the conventional wisdom. Why?
1. The bill won't really cover 30 million more Americans. It simply mandates that every single American buy health insurance or break the law and face penalties and fines. So, rather than "covering" 30 million more Americans, the bill makes them criminals if they don't buy insurance from the same companies that corrupted our health care system in the first place.
2. A real public option -- which in itself is a compromise from true reform, which would have given us a single-payer system -- is a tool that would drive down costs and improve coverage by offering an affordable alternative to private insurance. Your gutless, spineless Democratic "leadership" in the Senate has bargained that away to get "a bill that can pass."
3. It is loaded with little sops to "key" senators to buy their votes. Sops that sock the rest of us, like the stealth cap on coverage for long-term illnesses, or this little gem: $50 million for abstinence-only sex education. That's not education; that's not health care; that's religion. "Congress shall pass no law. . ."
F**k the conventional wisdom.
"Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Vermont Public Radio. "The Senate has somehow managed to turn the House's silk purse into a sow's ear," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus. "Without a public option and no hope of expanding Medicare coverage, this bill is not worth supporting," said Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Without a public option, this bill is almost a trillion dollar taxpayer giveaway to insurance companies," said Jim Dean, a spokesman for a liberal Democratic action group.
The Senate bill is a tribute to the corruption of Joe Lieberman, the man without a soul, who is owned, lock, stock, barrel and bullshit, by the insurance industry and the Israeli hawk lobby.
"I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," Soulless Joe said recently."The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote."
F**k Joe Lieberman.
The conventional wisdom today: So it isn't perfect. But the Senate health care bill would prevent insurance companies from refusing coverage to people who are already sick. It will, um. . . .it will extend coverage to 30 million people who aren't covered now. Tell them we won't pass the bill because it isn't perfect.
F**k the conventional wisdom.
C'mon, the conventional wisdom says, be practical. With the little compromises we've made, we can get the backing we need to pass a bill. Think of it! A health care law, after all these years of contention. An actual bill we can get to the President's desk to be signed into law.
F**k the conventional wisdom. Why?
1. The bill won't really cover 30 million more Americans. It simply mandates that every single American buy health insurance or break the law and face penalties and fines. So, rather than "covering" 30 million more Americans, the bill makes them criminals if they don't buy insurance from the same companies that corrupted our health care system in the first place.
2. A real public option -- which in itself is a compromise from true reform, which would have given us a single-payer system -- is a tool that would drive down costs and improve coverage by offering an affordable alternative to private insurance. Your gutless, spineless Democratic "leadership" in the Senate has bargained that away to get "a bill that can pass."
3. It is loaded with little sops to "key" senators to buy their votes. Sops that sock the rest of us, like the stealth cap on coverage for long-term illnesses, or this little gem: $50 million for abstinence-only sex education. That's not education; that's not health care; that's religion. "Congress shall pass no law. . ."
F**k the conventional wisdom.
"Honestly, the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean told Vermont Public Radio. "The Senate has somehow managed to turn the House's silk purse into a sow's ear," said Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., co-chairman of the House Progressive Caucus. "Without a public option and no hope of expanding Medicare coverage, this bill is not worth supporting," said Stephanie Taylor, the co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. "Without a public option, this bill is almost a trillion dollar taxpayer giveaway to insurance companies," said Jim Dean, a spokesman for a liberal Democratic action group.
The Senate bill is a tribute to the corruption of Joe Lieberman, the man without a soul, who is owned, lock, stock, barrel and bullshit, by the insurance industry and the Israeli hawk lobby.
"I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," Soulless Joe said recently."The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote."
F**k Joe Lieberman.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
A Camel in the Room?
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, what is a health care plan designed by the 111th Congress?
Nothing you'd want to ride into the mid-term elections. Committee mark-ups dictated by health industry lobbyists, secret deals whose makers regularly renege, sell-outs, cop-outs and downright sleaze have turned the idea of reform into something possibly worse than the godawful mess we have now.
We can't be certain until we know specifically what little surprises have been, and continue to be, slipped into the bill, like the stealthy cap on insurance payments for the seriously ill. (See previous post, "How Things Work.") But when the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are calling the shots, you can bet the farm on two general points: (1) It'll be bad for sick people and (2) it'll fatten the coffers of insurance companies and their top executives.
For example, the insurance company surrogates have already twisted the bill to virtually assure that, absent a public option to compete with the private insurers, your health care premiums will increase by an average of $1,000 a year. There's nothing to prevent providers from continuing to raise their fees; not one word. Medicare won't be allowed to use its economy of scale to bargain down your drug prices. Since insurance companies will continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, they won't even have to compete with one another. New biologic drugs will be protected forever from competition from generics. All of this has been done more or less out in the open.
Now consider that the first draft of a House effort at health care reform ran to 1,000 pages, much of it written in legispeak gobbledygook that militated against genuine reform. The last unverified report I saw speculated that the thing kicking around the Senate was up to 2,000 pages and growing. Can you imagine the number of Catches 22 the lobbyists, lawyers and legislators can cram into 2,000-plus pages behind closed doors?
When something finally reaches the floor, how many Senators will actually have read and understood every word of this document by the time they cast their votes? Will they finally be so weary of the whole torturesome business, so eager to send something, anything, to the President, so desperate to crow about "making history," that they'll rush this worse-than-a-camel to passage unread, the way they did the horrible USA Patriot Act?
And after that comes the process of reconciliation in conference, where the same health industry puppets who created the messes will attempt to merge the House and Senate versions of health care "reform" into a final bill. The conferees will, of course, continue to be guided by their muses, the lobbyists, even as they prattle, outside the chamber doors where the TV cameras lurk, about public options and public debts and Joe Lieberman's wife, a former insurance industry shill who now -- Say it ain't so, Joe! -- actually gets money for promoting donations to a breast cancer charity.
Try to sell this plot as a comedy for the Broadway stage and they wouldn't even let you in the side door at Sardi's.
But there it is, our government in action, our leaders doing their duty to the people who elected them.
May the Angels of Mercy save us! The health care bill sure as hell won't.
Nothing you'd want to ride into the mid-term elections. Committee mark-ups dictated by health industry lobbyists, secret deals whose makers regularly renege, sell-outs, cop-outs and downright sleaze have turned the idea of reform into something possibly worse than the godawful mess we have now.
We can't be certain until we know specifically what little surprises have been, and continue to be, slipped into the bill, like the stealthy cap on insurance payments for the seriously ill. (See previous post, "How Things Work.") But when the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are calling the shots, you can bet the farm on two general points: (1) It'll be bad for sick people and (2) it'll fatten the coffers of insurance companies and their top executives.
For example, the insurance company surrogates have already twisted the bill to virtually assure that, absent a public option to compete with the private insurers, your health care premiums will increase by an average of $1,000 a year. There's nothing to prevent providers from continuing to raise their fees; not one word. Medicare won't be allowed to use its economy of scale to bargain down your drug prices. Since insurance companies will continue to be exempt from anti-trust laws, they won't even have to compete with one another. New biologic drugs will be protected forever from competition from generics. All of this has been done more or less out in the open.
Now consider that the first draft of a House effort at health care reform ran to 1,000 pages, much of it written in legispeak gobbledygook that militated against genuine reform. The last unverified report I saw speculated that the thing kicking around the Senate was up to 2,000 pages and growing. Can you imagine the number of Catches 22 the lobbyists, lawyers and legislators can cram into 2,000-plus pages behind closed doors?
When something finally reaches the floor, how many Senators will actually have read and understood every word of this document by the time they cast their votes? Will they finally be so weary of the whole torturesome business, so eager to send something, anything, to the President, so desperate to crow about "making history," that they'll rush this worse-than-a-camel to passage unread, the way they did the horrible USA Patriot Act?
And after that comes the process of reconciliation in conference, where the same health industry puppets who created the messes will attempt to merge the House and Senate versions of health care "reform" into a final bill. The conferees will, of course, continue to be guided by their muses, the lobbyists, even as they prattle, outside the chamber doors where the TV cameras lurk, about public options and public debts and Joe Lieberman's wife, a former insurance industry shill who now -- Say it ain't so, Joe! -- actually gets money for promoting donations to a breast cancer charity.
Try to sell this plot as a comedy for the Broadway stage and they wouldn't even let you in the side door at Sardi's.
But there it is, our government in action, our leaders doing their duty to the people who elected them.
May the Angels of Mercy save us! The health care bill sure as hell won't.
Monday, December 14, 2009
The Nobel Speech
Your Pianist hit a sour note, which he realized only after reading Andrew Sullivan's excellent piece (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/12/the-tragedy-of-hope.html) about President Obama's Nobel acceptance speech.
That's why I deleted my blog, "Audacity sans Hope." In it I wrote that the speech "did not lend itself to quick, facile analysis," whereupon my own attempt at analysis proved my point.
I have not reversed my opinion of the speech as oratory: it is a sublime example of the oratorical powers of our most eloquent President since Lincoln. It was, as Sullivan wrote, "written and spoken in such a way to reach anyone of any faith or none. . . . It was an expression of tragic hope."
I have reversed my opinion that his defense of war while accepting a prize for peace was an act of monumental hypocrisy. Rereading the speech, for perhaps the fifth time, I have come to see it as an act of absolute candor, an honest acknowledgment of his own "difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other."
The key to understanding the speech is to understand this paragraph:
"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified... For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
Even as an apostle of hope, in his pre-campaign writings, Mr. Obama was ever the pragmatist. Sometimes progressives such as your Pianist found themselves so uplifted by his rhetoric of hope -- especially during the last abysmal days of Bush -- that they did not hear his simultaneous warning about what's possible.
Sullivan writes, "Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice. As much a choice as faith and love."
Mr. Obama did not start these wars. "Our actions matter," he said in Oslo, "and can bend history." The wars launched by another President have bent the history with which he must deal, a history that hands him a terrible paradox. On the one hand, no nation can be truly safe as long as there exist those who not only hate it with a suicidal passion, but also possess the wealth and the means to do it the kind of harm that the United States suffered on Sept. 11, 2001. And so he must pursue Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and to do so he must also fight the Taliban. In the context of the history he inherited, he can do no other. Yet the very process of pursuing those goals, of eliminating those threats, builds new animosity toward America in the muslim world, gives birth to new terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, complicates his already labyrinthine task, and can make his acceptance of a peace prize while justifying war seem like hypocrisy.
It is not, for, as Sullivan wrote: "(Obama) sees that the profound flaws in human nature affect 'us' as well as 'them'; that we "face the world as it is," not as we would like it to be; that the decision to go to war is a moral and a pragmatic one; that ends have to be balanced by a shrewd and sometimes cold-eyed assessment of means."
Obama's cold-eyed assessment of means has led to policies, or the continuation of old policies, that I still find abhorrent. "All nations," he said in Oslo, "must adhere to standards that govern the use of force." There is call in his own use of force for not just assessment, but reform, to meet those governing standards.
Yet, all things considered, as an editorialist in Canada observed, the Nobel acceptance was "the right speech at the right time."
That's why I deleted my blog, "Audacity sans Hope." In it I wrote that the speech "did not lend itself to quick, facile analysis," whereupon my own attempt at analysis proved my point.
I have not reversed my opinion of the speech as oratory: it is a sublime example of the oratorical powers of our most eloquent President since Lincoln. It was, as Sullivan wrote, "written and spoken in such a way to reach anyone of any faith or none. . . . It was an expression of tragic hope."
I have reversed my opinion that his defense of war while accepting a prize for peace was an act of monumental hypocrisy. Rereading the speech, for perhaps the fifth time, I have come to see it as an act of absolute candor, an honest acknowledgment of his own "difficult questions about the relationship between war and peace, and our effort to replace one with the other."
The key to understanding the speech is to understand this paragraph:
"We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations -- acting individually or in concert -- will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified... For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."
Even as an apostle of hope, in his pre-campaign writings, Mr. Obama was ever the pragmatist. Sometimes progressives such as your Pianist found themselves so uplifted by his rhetoric of hope -- especially during the last abysmal days of Bush -- that they did not hear his simultaneous warning about what's possible.
Sullivan writes, "Hope is not optimism. We have little reason for optimism given the first decade of the twenty-first century. Hope is a choice. As much a choice as faith and love."
Mr. Obama did not start these wars. "Our actions matter," he said in Oslo, "and can bend history." The wars launched by another President have bent the history with which he must deal, a history that hands him a terrible paradox. On the one hand, no nation can be truly safe as long as there exist those who not only hate it with a suicidal passion, but also possess the wealth and the means to do it the kind of harm that the United States suffered on Sept. 11, 2001. And so he must pursue Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and to do so he must also fight the Taliban. In the context of the history he inherited, he can do no other. Yet the very process of pursuing those goals, of eliminating those threats, builds new animosity toward America in the muslim world, gives birth to new terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, complicates his already labyrinthine task, and can make his acceptance of a peace prize while justifying war seem like hypocrisy.
It is not, for, as Sullivan wrote: "(Obama) sees that the profound flaws in human nature affect 'us' as well as 'them'; that we "face the world as it is," not as we would like it to be; that the decision to go to war is a moral and a pragmatic one; that ends have to be balanced by a shrewd and sometimes cold-eyed assessment of means."
Obama's cold-eyed assessment of means has led to policies, or the continuation of old policies, that I still find abhorrent. "All nations," he said in Oslo, "must adhere to standards that govern the use of force." There is call in his own use of force for not just assessment, but reform, to meet those governing standards.
Yet, all things considered, as an editorialist in Canada observed, the Nobel acceptance was "the right speech at the right time."
Friday, December 11, 2009
How Things Work
Ah, Democracy!
Why was Joe Lieberman, Aetna's $3-million man, the only Senator smiling as they emerged from the closed-door meeting that "compromised" the health care public option for the third or fourth time? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Hartford, which calls itself "the insurance capital of the world," has almost as many insurance company headquarters as Florida has oranges? Nah, that's cynical.
Left on the cutting room floor after that meeting were the last shreds of "reform" in the Senate version of health care reform legislation.
Among them is one that particularly infuriates me because I am a cancer survivor. Its loss represents literally a death blow to fellow survivors who, unlike me, require costly, long-term treatment. A case in point is my friend Garry, one of the most courageous people I know, an athlete who, in the Lance Armstrong mold, continues to push himself to the limit even as medicine and chemistry keep him alive.
He'd have had to start paying all of his treatment costs if the new Senate health care "reform" bill had been in effect. It would have wiped him out, leaving him a pauper. (A dead pauper, most likely.) That's because the bill would place dollar limits on insurance coverage for costly illnesses like Garry's.
The Associated Press reports today: The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.
The AP quotes an American Cancer Society official as saying, "We don't know who put it in, or why it was put in."
But we can guess, can't we? As investigative reporters used to be told, back when journalism was practiced and there were investigative reporters, "Follow the money."
What began as a noble ideal called health care reform has died aborning.
The best kind of reform, a government single payer plan, was taken off the table before the drafting of the first proposed legislation had even begun.
Follow the money.
When the first weakened draft of health care reform became public, a vast and highly successful campaign of lies and misinformation ("death panels," "forced enrollment in a government plan," etc.) turned the public against it.
Follow the money.
When Max Baucus (an insurance company million-dollar man) and his finance committee went behind closed doors to craft a Senate version of the bill, the media assured us that "the public option is dead."
Follow the money.
Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Rolland Burris, and Sherrod Brown revived the public option. The $80 million insurance industry puppets Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu took Joe Lieberman's Sword of Hartford and carved out another "compromise."
Ah, Democracy! Follow the money.
Why was Joe Lieberman, Aetna's $3-million man, the only Senator smiling as they emerged from the closed-door meeting that "compromised" the health care public option for the third or fourth time? Could it have anything to do with the fact that Hartford, which calls itself "the insurance capital of the world," has almost as many insurance company headquarters as Florida has oranges? Nah, that's cynical.
Left on the cutting room floor after that meeting were the last shreds of "reform" in the Senate version of health care reform legislation.
Among them is one that particularly infuriates me because I am a cancer survivor. Its loss represents literally a death blow to fellow survivors who, unlike me, require costly, long-term treatment. A case in point is my friend Garry, one of the most courageous people I know, an athlete who, in the Lance Armstrong mold, continues to push himself to the limit even as medicine and chemistry keep him alive.
He'd have had to start paying all of his treatment costs if the new Senate health care "reform" bill had been in effect. It would have wiped him out, leaving him a pauper. (A dead pauper, most likely.) That's because the bill would place dollar limits on insurance coverage for costly illnesses like Garry's.
The Associated Press reports today: The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.
The AP quotes an American Cancer Society official as saying, "We don't know who put it in, or why it was put in."
But we can guess, can't we? As investigative reporters used to be told, back when journalism was practiced and there were investigative reporters, "Follow the money."
What began as a noble ideal called health care reform has died aborning.
The best kind of reform, a government single payer plan, was taken off the table before the drafting of the first proposed legislation had even begun.
Follow the money.
When the first weakened draft of health care reform became public, a vast and highly successful campaign of lies and misinformation ("death panels," "forced enrollment in a government plan," etc.) turned the public against it.
Follow the money.
When Max Baucus (an insurance company million-dollar man) and his finance committee went behind closed doors to craft a Senate version of the bill, the media assured us that "the public option is dead."
Follow the money.
Senators Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Rolland Burris, and Sherrod Brown revived the public option. The $80 million insurance industry puppets Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu took Joe Lieberman's Sword of Hartford and carved out another "compromise."
Ah, Democracy! Follow the money.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Climate Memos
A very bright fellow who worked for me at one of my newspapering stops eventually left The Business to become an information officer for the Argonne national research laboratory in Chicago.
After a few months on the job he e-mailed me that he was "learning" scientists' humor, which, he assured me, was unlike any other. He sent me a few samples. That was 15 years ago and I still don't get the jokes.
Lately, in an effort to make chicken salad out of something less palatable, I have been slogging through the entire text of the purloined e-mails of the climate scientists during a sedentary period inflicted upon me by spinal problems. I do not recommend this for pleasure-seekers -- neither the spinal problems nor the e-mail reading.
I still don't get most of the jokes, but it's obvious to me that the climate change deniers, ever vigilant for easy-on, easy-off propagandizing, don't "get" any of it. Like Bushites plucking squibs of intelligence and spinning them into causes for war, the climate deniers have picked out a dozen or so of the memos and made them sound like a vast left wing conspiracy. Much has been made, for example, about one memo in which a climate scientist acknowledges having used a "trick."
Having lived a good deal of my life with a chemist father whose hobbies included astronomy and archeology, and an older brother with a doctorate in chemical engineering whose hobbies ranged from biology to zoology, I became well acquainted with scientists' fondness for the word "trick."
It can mean a shortcut past an otherwise complicated process; a promising new theory; a happenstance; or a scientific joke that involves false clues that aren't revealed until you confess bafflement and the joker explains the correct result.
In the total context, the "trick" in the purloined memos is simply a shortcut.
Other "suspect" e-mails read very much like the Argonne jokes. Since the climate deniers don't understand basic science, it's little wonder they cannot "get" the esoteric chit-chat of scientists at work.
After a few months on the job he e-mailed me that he was "learning" scientists' humor, which, he assured me, was unlike any other. He sent me a few samples. That was 15 years ago and I still don't get the jokes.
Lately, in an effort to make chicken salad out of something less palatable, I have been slogging through the entire text of the purloined e-mails of the climate scientists during a sedentary period inflicted upon me by spinal problems. I do not recommend this for pleasure-seekers -- neither the spinal problems nor the e-mail reading.
I still don't get most of the jokes, but it's obvious to me that the climate change deniers, ever vigilant for easy-on, easy-off propagandizing, don't "get" any of it. Like Bushites plucking squibs of intelligence and spinning them into causes for war, the climate deniers have picked out a dozen or so of the memos and made them sound like a vast left wing conspiracy. Much has been made, for example, about one memo in which a climate scientist acknowledges having used a "trick."
Having lived a good deal of my life with a chemist father whose hobbies included astronomy and archeology, and an older brother with a doctorate in chemical engineering whose hobbies ranged from biology to zoology, I became well acquainted with scientists' fondness for the word "trick."
It can mean a shortcut past an otherwise complicated process; a promising new theory; a happenstance; or a scientific joke that involves false clues that aren't revealed until you confess bafflement and the joker explains the correct result.
In the total context, the "trick" in the purloined memos is simply a shortcut.
Other "suspect" e-mails read very much like the Argonne jokes. Since the climate deniers don't understand basic science, it's little wonder they cannot "get" the esoteric chit-chat of scientists at work.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
The Obfuspeakers
In the mid-80s, several of our favorite Blue Ridge mountain hiking trails were cluttered with obstructions: diseased trees had fallen across them and Reaganomics left the public lands agencies lacking funds to clear them away.
Forestry experts said the villain was acid rain; it was literally decimating the forests under their care. Drawing on a 1960s paper by a University of Wisconsin graduate student, federal lawmakers came up with a plan to curb the SO2 emissions that were killing the trees and wrote it into Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act. By 2007 acid rain levels had dropped nearly 70% and the forests were healthier.
The allowance market method that won this critical environmental battle came to be called "cap and trade."
Today, thanks to the Republicans' mastery of the art of obfuspeak, cap and trade has been transmogrified into something nasty, like "liberal" and "welfare." In the op-ed columns of the Wall Street Urinal and most of the right-wing corporate media outlets that pose as "mainstream," the term has mobilized wild-eyed opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2007.
Ignoring the two-thirds of the proposed legislation that would create jobs by promoting renewable sources of energy and create more efficient energy across all sectors of the economy, the obfuspeakers have made "cap and trade" a bogey man symbol for the entire bill.
Title III of the bill addresses global warming and proposes an allowance market system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most proponents of government action to curb global warming favor a straight-out "carbon tax" on bad emissions. But in yet another of the concessions to bipartisanship that have come to exemplify the Dr. Kidglove approach to everything, the bill's authors accepted the recommendations of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of electric utilities, oil companies, chemical companies, automobile manufacturers and other foxes who like to "guard" our henhouses. These concessions to Republican big business interests are the Title III "cap and trade" provisions that Republicans now revile.
Go figure.
Even Thomas Crocker, the graduate student whose paper gave us the allowance market method, has been widely quoted as saying that cap-and-trade is not the best way to cope with today's global warming emissions.
Cap and trade, he said, is better suited to dealing with discrete, regional problems like acid rain. "It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally," Mr. Crocker, now 73, said recently. "There are no institutions right now that have that power." He favors persuading nations to impose straight-out taxes on their own carbon polluting industries.
If Republicans really cared about solutions, rather than obstructionism, they would join a bipartisan effort to replace Title III of the new Clean Energy Act with a carefully crafted carbon tax provision.
But they don't really want that, nor do their big buck campaign contributors in the energy and extraction industries.
They'd rather continue their witless sloganeering against the bogeyman of cap and trade.
FOOTNOTE
"Obfuspeak" is a neologism manufactured from "obfuscate" and "speak" to denote the manner in which Republicans have changed the meanings of words to dominate the vocabulary of political debate in the United States.
Forestry experts said the villain was acid rain; it was literally decimating the forests under their care. Drawing on a 1960s paper by a University of Wisconsin graduate student, federal lawmakers came up with a plan to curb the SO2 emissions that were killing the trees and wrote it into Title IV of the 1990 Clean Air Act. By 2007 acid rain levels had dropped nearly 70% and the forests were healthier.
The allowance market method that won this critical environmental battle came to be called "cap and trade."
Today, thanks to the Republicans' mastery of the art of obfuspeak, cap and trade has been transmogrified into something nasty, like "liberal" and "welfare." In the op-ed columns of the Wall Street Urinal and most of the right-wing corporate media outlets that pose as "mainstream," the term has mobilized wild-eyed opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2007.
Ignoring the two-thirds of the proposed legislation that would create jobs by promoting renewable sources of energy and create more efficient energy across all sectors of the economy, the obfuspeakers have made "cap and trade" a bogey man symbol for the entire bill.
Title III of the bill addresses global warming and proposes an allowance market system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Most proponents of government action to curb global warming favor a straight-out "carbon tax" on bad emissions. But in yet another of the concessions to bipartisanship that have come to exemplify the Dr. Kidglove approach to everything, the bill's authors accepted the recommendations of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of electric utilities, oil companies, chemical companies, automobile manufacturers and other foxes who like to "guard" our henhouses. These concessions to Republican big business interests are the Title III "cap and trade" provisions that Republicans now revile.
Go figure.
Even Thomas Crocker, the graduate student whose paper gave us the allowance market method, has been widely quoted as saying that cap-and-trade is not the best way to cope with today's global warming emissions.
Cap and trade, he said, is better suited to dealing with discrete, regional problems like acid rain. "It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally," Mr. Crocker, now 73, said recently. "There are no institutions right now that have that power." He favors persuading nations to impose straight-out taxes on their own carbon polluting industries.
If Republicans really cared about solutions, rather than obstructionism, they would join a bipartisan effort to replace Title III of the new Clean Energy Act with a carefully crafted carbon tax provision.
But they don't really want that, nor do their big buck campaign contributors in the energy and extraction industries.
They'd rather continue their witless sloganeering against the bogeyman of cap and trade.
FOOTNOTE
"Obfuspeak" is a neologism manufactured from "obfuscate" and "speak" to denote the manner in which Republicans have changed the meanings of words to dominate the vocabulary of political debate in the United States.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)