A Very Special Pulitzer Prize

Here's to the old journalism, the newspaper kind, the kind we thought was dead.  Here's to the determined reporter, idealistic and underpaid, slogging through lies and obfuscation, red tape and blue smoke, smelling a good story and not giving up until it's in print.

Here's to Dan Gilbert and the Bristol Herald Courier, winner of American journalism's biggest prize, the Pulitzer for Public Service, for reporting on the mismanagement of natural gas royalties owed to thousands of landowners in Virginia.

There were all of five people in the newsroom today when the word came down that the Herald Courier (circ. 33,000) had won the award. 

The Bristol paper covers the area of southwestern Virginia that is home to clans of Sutherland and Tiller.  My wife, Lois, is part of those clans and still deeply attached to the place they call home.  She's one of innumerable heirs to the mineral rights on a plot of ground with natural gas wells.

When she received a royalty check for 18 cents for her share of the gas production, she took an interest in the Byzantine ways of the Virginia Gas and Oil Board and all of the shenanigans associated with it.  She asked her cousins to alert her to any stories the local paper might publish about the board and its functions while she began her own little long-distance investigation into whether any of her kin were being short-changed in this whole business. 

Last June, Dan Gilbert wrote a story about an attorney general's ruling on the legality of the gas board's practice of "pooling" gas-well mineral rights.  Lois e-mailed a comment on the story to the paper's web site.  "The issue is not whether the forced pooling is legal," she wrote, "the issue is whether it's fair.  What's needed is a true investigation. . . ."

It turned out that Gilbert had already started one.  "It's a story that cries out for sunlight," he wrote back, "but a hard one to get at. The threads are in far-flung rural courthouses, the records are not always accessible or well-kept, and the complexity is often staggering. I am beginning to wrap my mind around it. . ."

When Lois went back to Dickinson County, Va., for her family reunion in July, she met with Gilbert and shared with him the information she had dug up on behalf of her own family. (Her research led to a $23,000 payment of back royalties to an elderly aunt.)

For the next seven months, Lois, who edited several Pulitzer Prize winning stories during her own newspaper career,  encouraged Gilbert's work from afar.  By December she and I were both convinced that his work merited consideration for a Pulitzer.

Dan Gilbert had already won two other major journalism prizes when his Pulitzer was announced. Just four years after graduating with honors from the University of Chicago with a degree in international studies, he was being recognized for doing the kind of enterprise journalism that had almost vanished from American newspapers. Corporate ownership of mass media, putting profit before public service, is bankrupting American newspapers not just financially but morally as well.

How encouraging it is to see a small paper's management commit the time and resources needed to develop Gilbert's series of stories, which included a reader-accessible online data base that land-owners could check to determine if they were owed royalties from the escrow fund.  Yes, the project was  staggeringly complex, and Mr. Gilbert did indeed "wrap his mind around it," explaining it with a clarity and depth that has triggered cries for and official efforts toward reform.  And more than a million dollars in back royalties have been paid out as a result of his reporting.

Here's to that old time journalism, and a young man who's not only committed to it, but does it superbly.

A "Free" People: The Biggest Lie of All

What sort of future looms for a nation whose government and social fabric is woven out of lies, hatred, distrust, distortion, bullying and mass hysteria?

The very fact that these fuel the national engine militates against any hope of massive public awakening, much less significant movement for reform.

Such is the state of these United States.  Our elected leader proposes to deal with these things incrementally, working within the sadly broken framework, through pragmatism and compromise.  This serves only to further empower and embolden the dark forces manufacturing the lies and profiting from public delusion.

In these United States, it does no good to have exposed the lies, to have been right all along.  The damage is done, the last act of the farce is history, the curtain has been drawn on the next, and the next, and the next.

We must make war, we were told, because a bad man has weapons of mass destruction and our national security is at risk.  "Not true," some shouted, and were spat upon, and we went to war.  We are still at war.  It is as senseless, as unjustifiable, as much based on lies and deceit now as it was then.  No matter.  It's a fact of life now. Let the blood flow and the debt accrue; the lies worked.  The truth didn't matter.

We must not enact the laws necessary to assure decent health care for all Americans, we were told, because it would create death panels to kill grandma, government control of our lives and health, and bankrupt the nation.  A few saw these arguments for what they were -- utter, fear-mongering nonsense -- but they carried the day.  The truth didn't matter.

Mistreatment of captives is as old as tribal humanity, as old as conquest, as old as the Inquisition, and as new as Guantanamo, secret rendition, Abu Ghraib and this week's horrifying presidential authorization of the assassination of an American citizen.  A few remind us of these terrible truths and are scorned.  "We do not torture," our government assures us, but the fact is that we do and most of the public condones it, along with the killing of unarmed civilians, even women and children.   The truth doesn't matter.

A former President rebukes us: "When a radical fringe element of demonstrators and others begin to attack the president of the United States as an animal or as a reincarnation of Adolf Hitler or when they wave signs in the air that said we should have buried Obama with Kennedy, those kinds of things are beyond the bounds."  Kill the messenger!, the apostles of hate shriek from their richly-endowed thrones of mass communication.  And the millions titter, and applaud, and the signs and derogations become more racist, more hostile, more outrageous.  The truth doesn't matter.

Anything that rises from the very bottom of such a society to attempt to empower the powerless has to be crushed by the rich and powerful; that's what keeps the system working.  A clumsily edited tape purporting to expose criminality on the part of such an organization, known by the acronym ACORN, succeeded in killing it.  Now that the governor and attorney general of California have revealed the entire, unedited tape,  exposing the lies and deceptions underlying it, nobody cares.  That act is over.  The truth doesn't matter.

Carefully edited and filtered versions of purloined e-mails circulated among scientists engaged in the ongoing study of the planetary climate roared out of the lie machine and created what its handmaidens in media dubbed "climategate."  Voices of serious science sought to expose the deceit but went largely unheard.  Efforts to curb the human activity that is altering the envelope of life around the planet have been blunted.  In England, where the theft occurred, a parliamentary commission has vindicated both climate science and the climate scientists -- but nobody cares.  That act is over; the lies succeeded.  The truth doesn't matter.

The Supreme Court has endowed corporations and their spin-offs with personhood and free speech. All of our subsequent elections will be controlled by the United States Chamber of Commerce and a handful of enormously profitable corporations.  Already the Chamber has amassed a war chest of more than $150 million for lobbying, influence buying and creation of a new lie machine to control the outcome of the next elections in 22 states.  The truth doesn't matter.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has  ruled that the Federal Communications Commission lacks the authority to require broadband providers to give equal treatment to all internet traffic flowing over their networks. It is not a coincidence that the ruling came just as the FCC was attempting to make broadband more accessible and affordable for rural communities and other under-served populations.  Now, if Comcast doesn't like what I write, it can refuse to allow this blog to move over its broadband.  Truth doesn't matter.

A new Wisconsin law requires schools to teach students age appropriate and medically accurate information on  birth control, the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases, signs of abuse and how the use of alcohol can affect decision-making. Juneau County District Attorney Scott Southworth issued a letter to the five school districts within his jurisdiction threatening to bring criminal charges against any teacher who complies with this new state law. He said it promotes the sexual assault of minors and that he will file charges against teachers who comply with the law. Sentences on conviction would range from nine months in jail to six years of prison time.  If the law doesn't matter, truth doesn't matter.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns a global lie factory of immense wealth, reach and power, insists that his sewers spew only facts; it's everyone else who's biased.  Truth doesn't matter.

We are a people indifferent to the suffering of our fellow citizens, hateful of otherness, fearful of myths and driven to frenzy by falsehoods.  And we call ourselves "free."

Truth doesn't matter.

Parrots Flying Out of the Cuckoo's Nest

The billion dollar climate change denial industry, funded by some of the richest corporations and individuals in the world, has a remarkably efficient network of parrots and enablers.

Here's an example:

The author, educator and environmentalist, Bill McKibben, spoke recently about climate change at New Mexico State University.  In a trice, one of the parrots had posted a Letter to the Editor in the local newspaper, the Las Cruces Sun News, whose author purported to"rebut" McKibben's key points.

The letter writer asserted, for example, that a single "plot" on the website of the International Arctic Research Center showed "today's Arctic sea ice to be more than any other year except 2003."  We were expected to infer that this not only rebutted McKibben's statement that Arctic ice was melting, but also that the IARC was on the side of the climate change deniers.

Nothing, of course, could be farther from the truth.  First of all the "plot" -- actually a graph supplied by the National Snow and Ice Data Center --  shows that the Arctic Sea Ice Extent for the period Dec. 2009-Feb. 2010 was significantly below the 1979-2000 average.  Moreover, the IARC site also contains reports entitled, "Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Faster than Expected," and "Arctic Meltdown Is a Threat to Humanity."  More recently the IARC has focused on studies of the release into the atmosphere of methane, a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent that carbon dioxide.  "The permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane, is perforated and is leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere," according to one such study. "Release of even a fraction of the methane stored in the shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming."

The letter-writer disputes McKibben's statement that "the age of easily-extracted fossil fuels is over"  by quoting Ambrose Evans-Pritchard's claim that gas reserves are "rising fast."  Evans-Pritchard is a business journalist in the U.K. where he's known as a vocal opponent of the European Union and evangelist of conspiracy theories, particularly the old right-wing myth that Vince Foster was murdered in a byzantine Clinton Administration intrigue, and that the Oklahoma City bombing was the result of an FBI plot.

The letter writer asserted: "McKibben cited alarm that sea level is rising fast with the Maldives at risk. Sea level is rising merely 7 inches per century.  Swedish scientist Nils Axel Morner made Maldives sea level measurements showing no appreciable sea level rise."

The fact is that sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 3/4 inch per year for the last century.  New, more accurate satellite measurements show a faster rate of rise in recent decades.  Even under the more conservative estimate, the Maldives -- whose highest point  is less than eight feet above present sea level --  would be inundated by an ocean level almost 20 inches higher in the next 25 years.  

As for the Swede, Morner, his opinions are disdained by the science mainstream.  He is a retired professor with ties to industry lobby groups and he endorses  non-scientific beliefs like dowsing.

The letter writer disputes McKIbben's statement that global warming induced by human activity can cause droughts.  He writes that "catastrophic droughts" have occurred in the past -- which of course is true -- but chooses as his authority on drought Dr. Robert  Balling of Arizona State University.  Dr. Balling is part of the billion dollar anti-climate change industry.  He has received $408,000 in research funding from the fossil fuel industry. He also works with the infamous Heartland Institute, funded by the biggest climate science fraud in the world, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, as well as the far right-wing Scaife Foundation.

Typically, funding from the denial industry supports "research" that begins with a conclusion and asks the scientist to find data to support it.  Rich funding for this conclusion-first, research-later pseudoscience became available when the obscenely profitable extraction industry realized it had to attempt to discredit the climate science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change after it issued its first global climate assessment in 1990.

Real climate science, by contrast, began a long time ago. As early as 1912, Antarctic explorers recorded observations of unusual veil-type clouds in the polar stratosphere. In 1956, the British Antarctic Survey set up the Halley Bay Observatory on Antarctica in preparation for the International Geophysical Year (IGY) of 1957. In that year, ozone measurements using a Dobson Spectrophotometer began. These measurements provided the first hint of trouble in the ozone layer.  In 1985, a group of scientists observed springtime losses of ozone over Antarctica. In 1986, NASA scientists demonstrated that the ozone hole is a regional-scale Antarctic phenomenon.

Soon, scientists all over the world were examining these phenomena, and modern climate science was born  It asks questions and seeks answers through experiment, technology and logic.  We ignore their answers at our peril.

Gessing's Game: Same Old Right-Wing Rap

The New Mexico stepchild of the far right-wing Cato Institute has come thundering into the discussion about the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan and related efforts to protect internet neutrality.

Predictably it's on the side of the telecoms. 

Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, which is generously funded by Cato,  has sent op-eds to New Mexico newspapers, including the one in my home town, resurrecting that evergreen right wing bromide: "you can't have it both ways."

You can't have environmental protection and economic growth.

You can't have regulation of big banks and a healthy stock market.

You can't have a country safe from terrorists and abide by every little jot and tittle of the Bill of Rights.

Or, as Gessing puts it, "We cannot expect companies . . .(which "companies?" Why, your altruistic friends, the telecoms.  AT&T.  Comcast.) . . .We cannot expect companies locked in regulatory prisons to be free-market pioneers."

"Regulatory prisons?"  He's talking about the internet neutrality bill. 

The FCC broadband plan wants to set goals for faster, cheaper internet service in the United States -- goals which, if met, would enable the U.S. to catch up with the rest of the world.  The United States is now 15th, behind France, Sweden, Canada and a dozen other countries in broadband penetration.  It ranks 19th in average download speeds. And it pays more for its slower service.

Mr. Gessing's litte piece of right-wing propaganda purports to be "all for increasing broadband usage and speed" -- sort of.  The telecoms, poor souls, can't possibly make improvements if they're subject to "onerous regulation."

And what, pray, is this "onerous regulation,"  also known as internet neutrality?  It means that internet service providers -- your pals at AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable -- would be prohibited from discriminating against different kinds of content and applications on line.  It protects the consumer's right to use any equipment, content, application or service without interference from the network provider. With Net Neutrality, the network's only job is to move data -- not to choose which data to reward with higher quality service,  and which to deny.

This is the way the 'net operated from its very inception until 2005, when George Bush's FCC tried to rewrite the rules on behalf of the big ISPs.  They want to put up tollbooths for access to the internet,  deciding which web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all, and charging them a toll to deliver their data. Of course they want to be able to favor their own search engines, internet phone services and streaming video, and to slow down or block services offered by their competitors.

Now the telecoms are spending millions to lobby against restoring internet neutrality through congressional action, and Mr. Gessing is happy to oblige them.

Why, look, he says, at what wonderful things the ISPs are doing for you!  "Right now, wireline broadband is avilable to 95 percent of the American population, and when you add 3G wireless, that number goes to 98 percent. Internet speeds of one megabyte per second are available through satellite providers who charge about $70 a month.  All of this happened without any Big Plan from the federal government."

Er, Paul, good buddy, if I lived in Japan I'd get broadband at  30 megabytes per second!  I'd get 10 Mps in Taiwan; 50 Mps in 95% of South Korea; 50 Mps in 75% of Germany; and universal coverage at speeds from four to 100 times faster than the U.S. in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the U.K.

Free market?  Competition? You've got to be kidding, Paul. In the U.S., 96 percent of households have access only to two or fewer wired broadband services providers. The situation will only grow worse as demand for higher speeds grows. By 2012,  only 15 percent of households will have a choice of even two providers offering world-class broadband service.

As Gessing himself acknowledges, it can cost you up to $70 a month in the U.S. to get one megabyte per second service.  To get a world-class 50 Mps, you'll pay about $145 per month.  The same 50 Mps costs $28 per month in South Korea.  In the U .K. it's even cheaper: $26 per month for 50 Mps. 

And nobody's manning toll booths over there to decide who gets to ride on the internet, or what fee they'll pay.

Trolling for Baloneyfish in American Waters

Ah, Spring!  A cloudless, sunbright day: a perfect day for baloneyfish.

They're easy to catch.  Just cast a line into the waters of the American press, national or local.

See here, I've got a strike already. Big one, from the Wall Street Journal, whose waters usually teem with baloney fish.  This is from a guy who used to be, under Dubyuh, "deputy assistant secretary of defense for combatting weapons of mass destruction."  I am not making this up.  That's what Jack David was.  Now he's with the Hudson Institute and  his baloneyfish surfaced in today's WSJ under the headline: "The dangerous fantasy of a nuclear-free world."  He says nuclear zero is simply impossible in "the world as it exists."

I'm looking forward to subsequent articles about "dangerous fantasies," such as, say, a cancer-free world, a pollution-free world, a bunion-free world.  Think about this.  Imagine a world without bunions.  What would Dr. Scholl do for a living?  How would we survive without gelled toe spacers? Metatarsal surgeons would be lined up outside McDonald's begging for jobs flipping burgers -- and, frankly, who would want to eat a Big Mac flipped by a metatarsal surgeon?

The waters of my local rag are rich with baloneyfish, too.  Here's one I caught in today's paper: "Obamacare and his other fiscal posturing shall plunge us into the black pit of financial GNP turbulence.  This portends the end of our society, as we know it, and a moaning of our forefathers and our children's children."

Got that?  A moaning of our forefathers and our children's children.  Is that worse than the black pit of financial GNP turbulence?  What makes that pit black?  The turbulence?  The GNP?  And what sort of depravity induces one to engage in fiscal posturing?  Whatever, it sounds grave.

But the baloneyfish Catch of the Day, as most often happens, came from the Wall Street Journal op-eds.  Our old wingnut pal, Norman Podhoretz, jumping into the deepest end he could find, wrote:

"I would rather be ruled by the Tea Party than the Democratic Party, and I would rather have Sarah Palin sitting in the Oval Office than Barack Obama."

Baloneyfish, as is well-known, are very ordinary-looking.  But when they swim into a hole, they excrete so much baloney that they die of baloney fever.

Just a word to the wise, Norman.

Noonan to Democrats: Drop Dead!

Is there any commodity in the United States more abundant than Republican cheek? Today, for example, Peggy Noonan sent out a call for -- get this! -- bipartisanship to curb violent political reactions.  She used that very word: "bipartisanship."

As the great Art Buchwald used to say, "You couldn't make this stuff up."  The recent violence over the passage of legislation to assure Americans of adequate health care, according to Ms. Noonan, is "bipartisan," and so must be the solution.  Democrats!  Stop making your office windows so inviting to brick tossers.  Stop walking in  range of Republican gunsights. Stop voting for things we don't like.  That oughtta clear up the violence thing.

Times change.

I remember when my Dad put up the only Willkie for President sign on either side of the entire length of Herbert Avenue.  Hardly an eyebrow was raised by the FDR majority.  Kids on the baseball lot still let me use "chicken claws" just as they could.  The other Moms still exchanged gossip, recipes and home-grown vegetables (it was wartime, after all) with my Mom.  Pops Hemberger, who lived across the street, did chuckle once about how he and the other pinochle players "liked to get Doc talking politics, because then he didn't pay too good of attention to his cards, and we could maybe win a little bit more."

These days, you're risking your life if you support the first improvement in our national health care system since Medicare.  People bring guns to political rallies.  A wrongful bumper sticker could make you a victim of road rage.  My wife once sent out a neighborhood mailing on political issues: just issues, no names of candidates, no mention of parties.  She received three civil replies by mail, disagreeing with her arguments and questioning her tactic.  She received four threats of violence -- all anonymous.  If she did the same thing today we'd have to hire Wackenhuts.

If you're the type who likes an occasional friendly wager, here's a good one: next time you take a road trip with a Republican, bet that every pickup truck you spot with a "Protected by Smith & Wesson" bumper sticker will also have a pro-Republican issue or candidate sticker.  You'll win big. Guns are central to the violent Republican crowd. Pistol-packin' Mommas, if you read a recent poll, comprise more than half the Tea Party membership.

In her plea for -- honest!  she wrote this! in today's Wall Street Journal! -- bipartisanship, Ms. Noonan warned us that these are dangerous times.  But then, she said, politics in the United States has always been a rough game.

As that great American, Joe McCarthy once said, "If you've got a guy down, kick him in the groin."

Life, Art and Catch 22: Brethren, Let Us Hate

Life, we're often told, imitates art. 

Lt. Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller's villainous parody of capitalism in "Catch 22," has transmogrified into today's real-life Republican Party.

In the novel, when Yossarian and a young crewman in the back of the plane desperately need morphine, it turns out that Milo has snatched all of the morphine in the medical kits and sold it.  Think of Yossarian and the kid in the back of the plane as 40 million Americans without health care, 40,000 of whom die every year of treatable ailments.  Think of the Catch 22 morphine as the health care bill for which not a single Republican voted.  Or take war itself:  Minderbinder strikes a deal with the Germans to bomb his own squadron, but ultimately is forgiven because . . . the doublecross turned a healthy profit.  Now we are engaged in endless war because . . . it turns an enormous profit.

Not even Heller would have thought, however, of a Supreme Court granting personhood to Milo's criminal M & M syndicate. 

But Milo was a callous, amoral product of the Engine Charlie Wilson school of thought: What's good for General Motors is good for the country.  He wasn't a hater.  Hence he was able to strike deals with the Germans and his own side and profit both ways. 

Look at the most avid followers of today's Republican party and the Catch 22 parallel no longer applies. True, they prattle a great deal about "American free enterprise," the real life version of Minderbinder's syndicate.  But what really motivates them is hatred.

Remember the disruptions of the town hall meetings during the Congressional recess?  Those people weren't merely angry; they seethed with hatred.  Go back further.  Remember the Palin rallies in the 2008 election?  Hatred.  Fast forward to today.  Congress passed a health care bill despite a Republican campaign of lies, distortions and . . . yes, hatred.  And Republicans responded by throwing bricks through the office windows of members of Congress in their home districts, criminally cutting off utilities to their homes, and shouting "nigger" and"faggot" and "babykiller" at elected officials trying to do the jobs they were sent to Washington to do. They're even threatening to kill those who supported the bill.

Barack Obama's election, despite the pipe dreams of the optimists, did not herald a new post-racial era in America.  Rather it brought to the surface the long simmering racial hatreds that millions of Americans still harbor.

And yet the hatred that motivates millions of Americans is not merely racial.  These citizens of the United States thrive on hatred of "other."  Immigrants, legal or otherwise, are "other."  Barack Obama is "other;" whence, for example,  the so-called "birther movement."   Non-Christians, non-theists, or Christians who believe that women have the right to control their own bodies, including the termination of unwanted pregnancies, are "other."  Otherness fuels a hatred so blind that doctors whose humanitarian instincts impel them to provide needed services to such women are considered fair game for murderers.  They're not killers; they're saving "unborn children." If Muslim civilians, women and children are killed by our drones, don't bother counting them as victims.  They're just . . ."other." In these United States, otherness embraces the espousal of progressive or liberal views of the Constitution, civil liberties, human rights and ethical behavior.  And  only in America have the haters managed to make the terms "liberal" and "progressive" into derogations.  Indeed, hatred has captured and turned upside down entire sections of the American vocabulary.  Once perfectly honorable words like "patriot"  have been made into code for the actions, attitudes and objects of hate. They are "pro-life" but they would kill doctors and congressmen who don't agree with their extreme beliefs.

Only Joseph Heller knows for sure, but I suspect that even Milo Minderbinder might be appalled by some of this.

Last Word on Health Care, from a Great American

By: Dennis Kucinich

(As told to Mark Warren, Sunday, March 21, 2010. From Esquire.com - March 22, 2010, 2:35 pm)

The meeting that took place on Air Force One was the fourth in a series of meetings that I had attended with the president in the last few months. There was a meeting on March 4 where the president called nine members to the Roosevelt Room at the White House, and eight of the members had voted for the bill when it passed the House last fall. I was the only one who voted against the bill. I thanked the president for inviting me even though I was a "no" vote. And in the more than hour-long meeting, the president covered a lot of territory about what he thought was important to consider. I sat quietly and listened carefully and took some notes. And at the end of the meeting, you know, we thanked each other, and I left.

When I arrived home that evening - March 4 - I still had this deep sense of compassion for the president for what he was struggling with in trying to pass the bill. And it was very clear to me that there was a lot on the line here - that he didn't say. I was just thinking about the scope of American history, and here's a president who's trying to do something, even if I don't agree with him. I told my wife, "You know I kinda feel bad about the situation he's in here. This is really a tough situation - his presidency is on the line." And I had a sense of sadness about what I saw him grappling with. I still maintained my position, still went forward in debates, arguing in meetings, arguing against the bill because it didn't have a public option, didn't have an opening for the states to pursue single-payer in a free manner. But at the same time I kinda remember the feeling that I had about watching him as he was dealing with this and, you know, trying to do what he felt was best for the nation.

Now keep something in mind about my relationship with President Obama: He and I campaigned together. A meeting with the president is always important - he and I have met dozens of times, during the campaign and since he became president - but we've met on many occasions. Four or five times about health care. So the relationship I have with him is a little bit different than other members who weren't on the campaign trail with him and who hadn't developed a relationship with him apart from the relationship that members of Congress ordinarily have with the president.

So I was really looking at Barack Obama the man, and thinking about his presidency. I've had differences of opinion with him on a number of issues. But I understand how this is a pivotal moment in America, and in his presidency. It's also a pivotal moment in American history. Of course, I carried that awareness with me into the next meeting, which took place on Air Force One on the fifteenth of March. Last Monday. So much has happened in just one week, but during that time, there had been a lot of speculation. I had done many interviews attacking the bill for its well-publicized shortcomings and I was not relenting. After we met on Air Force One, I didn't tell the president that "Look, I'm changing my position - you got me." We didn't have that discussion.

My decision came last Tuesday morning. There's a place where I go in the Capitol, just to kind of reflect - before I have to make very important decisions. It's in the rotunda - right next to Lincoln's statue. It's just a bench. And I went over there early Tuesday morning, about seven in the morning when the sun was just coming up, and no one else was around - there wasn't a sound in the Capitol at that moment in the morning. And I just sat down there in a quiet place and thought about this decision. And that's literally where I made up my mind that, notwithstanding how much there was in the bill that I didn't like, that I had a higher responsibility to my constituents, to the nation, to my president and his presidency, to step forward and say, "We must pass this bill. And we must use this bill as an opening toward a renewed effort for a more comprehensive approach to health care reform."

The Speaker and I also had many discussions about the bill. And I talked to her briefly on Monday night and told her that I was giving some thought to the appeals that she had made to me. And she said, "Oh, Dennis, you know, I just hope that you'll be with us on this. This is so important." And I said, "Well I'm giving some thought to what your concerns have been, Madame Speaker." And on Monday night, I talked to my wife, Elizabeth - at home, it was late.

Elizabeth asked how the day went. And I told her. I said, "You know I'm giving this a lot of thought." I asked, "What would you think if I decided to support this?" And she said, "Look, I'll support - whatever decision you make, I'll stand behind you." And it was important for me to talk to her because, you know, spouses live with the decisions that members of Congress make. I mean, I have had occasion to ask Elizabeth's opinion, and if she feels very strongly about something, I'm open to being persuaded. That's just what happens when you have a partnership. So I asked what she thought, and then I got up in the morning and headed right over to the Capitol just to meditate on all the discussions that I'd had - with the president, with Speaker Pelosi, with my wife, and with my constituents.

And then after being in the rotunda for about fifteen minutes, I left and went over to my office. That afternoon, I had a meeting with my staff, and I told them that I was going to come out in favor of the bill. But I had no discussions with anyone. And I did not notify the White House - the White House found out about it when I announced it from the press gallery. Because I just felt that this had to be a decision that I made on my own, without any coaxing one way or another. I wanted even people in the White House to know that this decision came ultimately from my own willingness to pay careful attention to the concerns that the president, the Speaker, and others had expressed to me.

This was a particularly hard decision because the private insurance model is something that I don't support. As I've said before, I don't take back any of the criticisms I've made of the bill. This is reform within the context of a for-profit system. And the for-profit system has been quite predatory - it makes money for not providing health care. Now, the reforms in this bill may provide some relief from that impulse. But, nevertheless, I have my work cut out for me now in continuing the effort toward a much broader approach to health care reform, which would include attention to diet, nutrition, complementary alternative medicine, and empowering states to move forward with single-payer.

When it comes to analyzing the law we've just passed, it's hard to use terms like good or bad. Because ultimately what was decisive for me was not the bill, but rather the potential to create an opening for a more comprehensive approach toward health care reform. If the bill were to go down, this whole discussion about anything we might hope to do in health care in the future is not going to happen in this generation. We had to wait sixteen years after the demise of the Clinton plan to come to this moment. And the angst that members are feeling about this bill - the temperature that's been raised in the body politic over this bill, the characterizations of the bill in a debate that's been quite distorted - all of those things argue against bringing up another health care bill in the near future if this bill were to go down.

Well I had to consider that. Because I have to take responsibility for that.

Someone in the media said that I was prepared to be the Ralph Nader of health care reform. If by the Ralph Nader of health care reform someone means someone who holds crooked corporations accountable, then that's a compliment. If they were referring to the 2000 presidential race, I think those who were closest in the Gore campaign realize that that campaign was death by a thousand cuts. And to try to put it all on Ralph Nader is, you know, historically glib.

But the synthesis of that argument was this: People were telling me, "Dennis, you are helping to gather momentum in the direction toward the defeat of the bill." That's what people were telling me. That's what the message was. And: "Is this something you really want to do?" And of course I have to consider, when the vote is close, and however the final tally turns, but whether the bill passes by one vote or five votes or more, the question of momentum was something everyone was concerned about at that point. And people were concerned that if I continued to maintain my position of hammering away at the defects of the bill that I may cause its defeat. That's a legitimate criticism. It's something that I had to take into account in terms of my personal responsibility for the position that I held, and the impact that it would have on my constituents. We always have to be open to people who may hold a view that may be different than yours. Because you might learn something.

And so as we came closer, and it appeared that I would be in a pivotal position, I realized that the moment required me to look at this in the broadest terms possible. To look at this in terms of the long-term impact on my constituents, of the moment in history in which we now stand, of the impact on the country, of the impact on the Obama presidency, on the impact on the president personally. I had to think about all of this. I couldn't just say, "Well here's my position: I'm for single-payer, and this isn't single-payer, so I'm going to defeat the bill."

Last year, seventy-seven members of Congress agreed that if the bill didn't have a public option, they were going to vote against it. And there were only two members who had kept that pledge when it was voted on the first time in the House. And I was one of them. And the other one's no longer in Congress. So I basically was the last man standing here. So I'm aware of the debate that took place in favor of the bill. My concern was that this bill was hermetically sealed to admit no opening toward a not-for-profit system, no competition from the public sector with the private insurers. Which makes the claims of a government takeover such a joke. You know, those who claim that this is socialism probably don't know anything about socialism - or capitalism.

Those claims are just part of an effort to destroy the Obama presidency. And, of course, to produce gridlock - so that nothing can happen. Because if this bill goes down, which figured into my calculus - the bill goes down, we'll be gridlocked. We will be unlikely to pass any meaningful legislation about anything. The presidency will be weakened, the Congress will be in a place where the leadership will be undermined.

But let's go deeper than that. We're at a pivotal moment in American history, and in contrast to a crippled presidency, I have to believe that this effort, however imperfect, will now have a broad positive effect on American society, and make possible many things that might not have otherwise been possible. Once this bill is signed into law, more Americans are going to be aware of this as they ask, What's in it for me? And as they become more familiar with the new law, more people will be accepting this bill. The president will have a stronger hand in domestic and international affairs, and that will be good for the country. The Democrats will be emboldened to pass an economic agenda, which has been waiting for this bill to pass. Wrong or right, as far as a strategy, the White House invested so much in this health care bill that everything else was waiting. Now, I think there's a chance that the party will regain some momentum. And if it does, then the American people will finally have a chance to see something done about creating jobs, about keeping people in their homes, about helping small businesses get access to credit, which is a huge problem right now.

And so I think that the pivot here could be toward a very exciting time where the Obama presidency gets a chance to hit the reset button. This is my hope, at least.

All of this went through my mind as I sat in the quiet Capitol rotunda last Tuesday morning. I thought about what could happen if I was willing to show some flexibility, and to compromise for the sake of a broader progress. That was all part of my thinking as I got the point where I stepped to the podium in the Capitol to announce my decision. And right after I finished what I had to say and left the room, the president called. I understood the importance of the call, and he understood the importance of the decision that I made. There was gravity in the moment. There is a lot at stake here.

I took it all into account - everything that I hoped would happen if this were to pass, everything that I hope will happen. And if those things come to pass because of the small role I may have played in switching the momentum, then my service in Congress has been worth it.

The Jabberwock Bill: The End of Ugly?

At last, my fellow Americans, we have . . . something.   Something called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed the House last night and will be signed into law by the President, probably on Tuesday.

I am not throwing confetti or tossing around the term "historic." I concede that Obama-Pelosi is the first president-speaker team ever to enact any legislation to change the entire American health care system.

Whether these changes will be for better or for worse remains to be seen. 

I applaud the passage of the bill in the hope that it will bring, sooner rather than later, an end to a magna cum ugly period of our national history.

The citizenry has endured:

+ Republican sophistry, hate-talk, racism, lies, deception, expletives, middle-fingering and hypocrisy in opposition to any effort to improve the health care system, ignoring the thousands of American deaths each year from treatable ailments for which the victims couldn't afford care.  This is somewhat equivalent to (but worse than) not just rooting against Tiny Tim, but hoping he'll break his crutch and die already.

+Misleading statements, back-room deals, sell-outs and double-talk by the president, congresspeople and senators we elected with a mandate for quality health care for everyone.  This ideally would mean, as Obama himself acknowledged, a single-payer, government-run plan like Medicare for all.  He didn't even suggest it, however.  Instead he publicly appeared to favor a paliative called public option while in secret promising the health insurance industry that it would be struck from the final bill.  Even before work on the bill had begun in Congress, he sold out to the insurance industry, promising to eliminate any provisions that would protect consumers just a little bit from price-gouging.  Finally, for all the starry-eyed women who swooned over his oratory and gave him their vote, he bargained away their right to total gynecological health care.

+ Utter exclusion from the process of those elected representatives of the people like Dennis Kucinich and Russ Feingold who actually believed that affordable health care for all meant .  . . affordable health care for all!  Ultimately even they fell in line behind the . . . something . .  that finally passed.  Only they know why.

So here's to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Oh frabjous day, calloo callay!
I fear we're screwed in every way.
Beware the Jabberwock, my son,
With jaws that snatch and cries that ring,
For oft it comes disguised as . . . something.

Whose Soiree Now?

Assume that the government estimate of 32 million presently uninsured citizens buy health care insurance as required under the new law. Assume that the premiums they are charged will be roughly comparable to the premiums now paid by Medicare beneficiaries (regardless of what portion is paid by the consumer or by the government).  Then, the additional income for health care insurers will be approximately $5.76 trillion per year.

And so:

NEW YORK (AP) - Health stocks lifted the market Monday following House approval of the bill that would extend insurance to millions.

The Dow-Jones Industrial Average rose about 45 points in afternoon trading. Broader indexes also climbed.

Investors had expected the health care bill would pass the House, but the approval late Sunday removed uncertainty about the rules that would govern the industry. A companion bill now goes back to the Senate. The changes could have far-reaching effects on health companies.

Hospital operators Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Health Management Associates Inc. each rose more than 8 percent.

Ugly's Last Stand?

And so in Arizona and New York and Ohio  and perhaps elsewhere, rocks were thrown through the windows of Democrats congressional offices apparently at the behest of an overweight troglodyte in Alabama.

Republican state attorneys general are filing suit to have the health care bill declared unconstitutional, and the Roberts Supreme Court is salivating blood in eager anticipation of doing just that.

Somewhere someone in a tea party T shirt is kicking Tiny Tim's crutch out from under him and clubbing him to death like a baby seal with it.

Ugly dies hard in these United States.

Who Do We Turn to When You Turn Away, Dennis?

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during those four -- count 'em, four -- arm-twisting sessions President Obama had with Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

Whatever transpired, it must have been galling today for Kucinich to stand before the microphones and surrender his demand for true health care reform, with Medicare for all or some other strong public option to mitigate the greed of the insurance companies.

 Kucinich said Wednesday that the bill coming before the House represents the best chance to expand coverage to the uninsured, even if it does not include a public plan. "You do have to be very careful that the potential of President Obama's presidency not be destroyed by this debate," said Kucinich.

Destroyed by this debate?  Obama's presidency was destroyed when he put the Wall Street foxes in charge of guarding the nation's crumbling financial hen-house.  It was destroyed when he expanded rather than ended Bush's unjustifiable wars.  It was destroyed when he turned his back on millions of jobless Americans.  It was destroyed when he refused to investigate the war crimes, treason and high misdemeanors of the highest-ranking members of the administration he succeeded.  It was destroyed when he continued the very spying on Americans, the very unconstitutional executive secrecy, and the very policies of torture he was elected to end.  It was destroyed when he arbitrarily took single-payer off the health care bargaining table before bargaining had even begun.  It was destroyed when he sold his soul and allowed the drug industry to write half of the health care legislation.  It was destroyed before Dennis Kucinich had four meetings with him in and above Ohio earlier this week.

Today the Congressman said:  "Even though I have many differences with (Obama)  on policy, there's something much bigger at stake here for America."

What could be bigger than affordable health care for all Americans?  What could be bigger than working for peace rather than extending war?  What could be bigger than restoring the entire Bill of Rights for all Americans?  What could be bigger than putting 12 million jobless Americans back to work?  What could be bigger than ending the human practices that are destroying the entire biosphere of our planet?  Why is it so important to let politics overrule conscience in a vain effort to save a failed presidency?

For his entire political life, Kucinich has bravely stood alone against political tides, powerful special interests and mass hysteria among the electorate. What arguments, even from a President, could have broken his will?  What threats could have turned him?

He wasn't waterboarded.  But then, there are other, more subtle forms of torture, aren't there?

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall.

Great American Novels to Come!

There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why... I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? -- Robert. F. Kennedy.

* * *
Come, brethren, let us dream together.  Let us put lipstick on this pig that is public education in Texas and call it Pegasus.  Let us enroll in the new Texas home economics class and learn to make chicken salad out of chicken excrement.  Let us see the good that might come of the new policies of that bastion of reason and acuity, the Texas Board of Education.

Mark ye this and mark it well: From plains of ignorance, borne on winds of folly, breathing the fire of an angry God and seething  at at the sins of those who would separate religion from governance,  the next generation of major American fiction writers will emerge.  They will give us not just one Great American Novel but an entire series of them.

Why not?

How better to create a great generation of fiction writers than to require children to write fiction in school?  Not just in English class; in every class!  Sociology.  American history.  Civics and government.  Science.

In American history, Texas children will be required to write essays about "great Americans" like Newt Gingrich and William F. Buckley Jr. ("When Newt Gingrich decided to ditch the bitch to marry his doxie, he broke the news gently because his wife was dying of cancer.  This sort of compassion is not unusual among great Americans because it is, well, the American Way. . . . .")

Our science fiction literature can only be deeply enriched by a generation whose science textbooks contain no mention of Thomas Alva Edison or Albert Einstein;  whose classes on meteorology teach that a hurricane devastated New Orleans because of Madalyn Murray O'Hair's atheism, and an earthquake devastated Haiti because someone made "a pact with the devil."

What wondrous fiction might we expect from a generation schooled to believe that the Moral Majority -- led by the likes of Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker -- enriched our national ethic by joining with that other great American, Phyllis Schlafly, to "create the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s."

Thomas Jefferson has no place in the historical novels to come because he was a Deist who did not accept Christ as "divine," and he held that our Constitution erects a "wall of separation between church and state."

What fine fairy tales we might expect from grown-up children who learned that not only did Joshua cause walls to tumble down simply by blowing a horn, but also that Ronald Reagan did so simply by blowing smoke.

This will be happy fiction.  There will be no Trail of Tears in these great American novels; no tragedy at Wounded Knee; no massacre at  Little Big Horn;  no cutting off of Puebloans' feet.  These events did not happen in the history books of Texas.  The new wave of great American fiction will deal with the American Indian only as an obstruction to progress, to Great White American Achievements like Las Vegas, Lake Powell, Phoenix, Palm Springs, and, most especially, Dallas, Houston and Waco.

Our new American novelists will know a great deal about  Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association, but absolutely nothing about Cesar Estrada Chavez and the United Farm Workers.  They will write their fiction from a firm foundation of Glenn Beck, the "Contract with America" and the Heritage Foundation.  But they won't have the foggiest idea of the contributions to our culture and history by Anatonia Novella, Mel Martinez, Antonio Villaraigosa, Bill Richardson, Anthony Romero, Jorge Perez, Jose Gomez, Mari Carmen Ramirez, Sonia Sotomayor, Edwin M. Figueroa, Jose Marti, or Mari Carmen Ramirez.

But let us rejoice in what could be!  Even if you don't read the books, you'll be able to watch the movies.

Brother Against Brother to the Very End

Coming out of the coffee shop this morning, we were approached by an earnest young lady urging us to attend a "final march" for health care reform this coming Sunday.

Let the bloodletting begin.  Not, unfortunately, between proponents of improved health care for all Americans and their opponents,  who have yet to find a lie too onerous to use against it.  No.  Bloodletting among ourselves.

"I cannot bring myself to rally for the Senate bill to pass the House," I said.  "It's the best we can get," said Lois, "and if it doesn't pass, the Democrats are dead meat for a long time to come."

"It's not the best we can get," I replied.  "It's the best the insurance companies can get.  Big difference."

And so it went. 

Paul Krugman tells us it's not perfect, but it is responsible and should pass.  He deflates three of the current most-repeated lies about the legislation.  "Government control of one-sixth of the economy,"  is the hot one, and Krugman wastes little time exposing its falsehood.  But he doesn't dwell on the main point:

Without a strong public option, the insurance companies are free to put consumers in an impossible vise: they will be required to buy insurance, but there is no restraint on the premiums the insurers can charge.

This is the heart of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's continuing opposition to the legislation as it stands.  All 77 members of the Progressive Caucus signed a pledge not to vote for a health care bill without a public option; Kucinich is the only one who has not reneged.

"We need to keep the discussion going about alternatives," he told the progressive blogger Rob Kall, "because every discussion about alternatives puts the pressure in the direction of trying to come up with a better bill. And even at this late date, it would be a huge mistake to just look at the bill and call it a day. No, no no. We have to fight for the best bill we can get all the way down the line and if despite our best efforts, it still can not meet the test of providing care for people instead of profits for insurance companies, then we have to reserve the right to oppose it."

This stance impelled Markos Moulitsas, founder and owner of the liberal  Dailykos,  to descend to Republican depths of invective. He wrote:  "Dennis Kucinich has always been a little prick, and that hasn't changed."

What next, Dick Cheney telling us to "go f--k ourselves?"

The progressive  talk radio host (yes, there are some) Thom Hartmann  said, "Progressives attacking Dennis Kucinich is the circular firing squad on steroids." Spineless centrist Democrats denigrating Kucinich is old hat.  But when the so-called liberal wing of the so-called party denounces him for standing alone against a bad health care bill, it's cowardice.

A public option amendment can be submitted on the floor. Courageous representatives would vote for it because it's the right thing to do; even Krugman acknowledges that the bill would be better if it had one.  States' options to enact single payer if they chose could also be submitted as a floor amendment.  It, too, would improve the bill.

These things can still be done.  Dennis Kucinich bravely stands alone for them, even as he bravely stood alone against an immoral and unjustifiable war that has bled our treasury and our military. 

I stand with him.  If the local marchers next Sunday were to stand against rapacious corporations and for the American people in this fight, I'd stand with them, too.