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I have thought a good bit about President Obama’s comments on the situation with Henry Louis Gates and Cambridge Police. Being white, I must preface my remarks by saying I am woefully unqualified to address the plight of black America and justice. I have never been the victim of unfair treatment by someone with a gun and a badge because of the color of my skin. Since President Obama has indeed been a victim of unfair racial stereotyping, I guess he deserves the opportunity to speak against such injustice when it occurs. Some in the black community might even say he is obligated to address injustices. During the press conference on Healthcare this week the first black President indulged himself by commenting on the Cambridge situation.
The case can be made President Obama’s indulgence did a disservice to the black community.
While the President answered questions on the Cambridge situation for the next week, I wonder how many in the black community lost their healthcare coverage. I wonder how many were deciding whether to buy insulin or groceries. I wonder how many had to pay their periodic extortion payment to petro-dictators. I wonder how many lost their jobs. I wonder how many young black men were shot in the streets. I wonder how many young black people dropped out of school. I wonder if the President’s time would have been better spent addressing the desperate needs of the black community. Finally, I wonder if the President regretted his indulgence when so many other things need to be done for the black community and the other people he serves too.
I’m not naïve. I live in a state rife with racism. We have a huge Confederate Battle Flag which flies between Montgomery and Birmingham on Interstate-65. You can see it for miles along the interstate. They tell us it flies for the sake of heritage and not hate. I wonder if the irony of the flag’s placement between the two epicenters of the struggle for racial equality even dawns on the caretakers of the flag. A few weeks ago, I overheard someone who said he had elected Senator Jeff Sessions to keep the “N” word and liberals off the Supreme Court. If Sessions didn’t, he said, he would vote for someone who would. The person didn’t even get his bigotry right if he was referring to Judge Sotomayor. He was obviously too ignorant to tell the difference between a Hispanic and an African American.
However improved, racism still exists. President Obama’s election tells us we have gone a long way but, we still struggle. President Obama, however, can serve his community better by not providing the collateral motivation for right wingers to kill legislation which the black community and all Americans so desperately need. He is the President now. The President of the United States is the most influential person in the world. Every word he utters will be dissected and rehashed ad-nauseam. He makes a decision every time he speaks about the whole world’s conversation. Regretfully, we have a finite amount of energy for discussion. Maybe next time, the President will be a little more hesitant to change the subject.
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When the Senator from South Carolina, Jim DeMint, told the group Conservatives for Patients Rights,
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him,”
most pundits and others passed the comment off as pure politics. I wish it were just politics. When I look at DeMint’s top twenty donors I begin to believe DeMint is using politics to take care of his campaign donors. If you look at his top twenty according to www.opensecrets.org you might begin to get another picture also.
The donor picture begins with the Club for Growth at 70 thousand. This is a right-wing bunch who believes in “freedom” among other things. DeMint and the Club for Growth using the word “freedom” is a little like yelling ice cream at a day care. I guess the implication is to disembowel the rest of us of our fondness for tyranny. The Scana Corporation, a utility, comes in second with 53 thousand. I don’t think we need to guess where he stands on climate change. Third on the list at 32 thousand is Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, LLP. On their website they say:
Our attorneys guide healthcare providers, healthcare service companies, and investors through the sensitive hurdles and strict scrutiny of governmental and societal factors faced by the industry
I guess one way for healthcare profiteers to negotiate government’s strict scrutiny is to donate to a senator. Fourth on the list at 27 thousand is AT&T. I wonder how he voted on the keeping the phone companies from getting sued for wiretapping. Fifth on the list is Edens & Avant at 19 thousand. They own 130 shopping centers on the east coast. At sixth, eighth, ninth and twelfth were Cancer Centers of the Carolinas, US Oncology, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and United Health Group, respectively, for around 63 thousand dollars. Since they are second only to the right-wingers, I think I would be safe to say the healthcare industry helped DeMint get elected. I guess he feels like he owes them something. Maybe if he uses words like “freedom” to tell conservatives they can politically finish the President, he can motivate conservatives to kill health reform. Maybe if he delivers, he will have settled his debt.
To be sure, I may have been a little hard on Senator DeMint. Campaign finance is just too tempting. As a disclaimer, I must refer you to a previous article and tell you there are left wing DeMints too. All of them are in the pockets of those who would prefer to continue to profit from our literal misery. The forces aligned against healthcare reform are very good at the money game. They have one win under their belt and are pretty cocky. Since they only have to create enough doubt about a plan to maintain the status quo, I guess I would be pretty cocky too.
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Today a very good friend of mine invited me to Washington for a protest against healthcare reform among other things organized by Tea Party people. I told my friend I did not like runaway spending but, I felt something had to be done about healthcare. My friend is a very intelligent person who is always open to intelligent debate. Last week I would have told him the cost cutting in healthcare reform would decidedly reduce government expenditures in the long run.
I no longer have the luxury of the cost cutting debating point in light of last week’s Congressional Budget Office Report.
Today President Obama blamed the lack of Senate healthcare reform legislation on politics by people like Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). I doubt DeMint’s motivation is primarily politics and there will be more on that in another article. I however, believe President Obama needs a little soul searching and possibly a new game plan on healthcare reform. So far, the President has put House Committee Chairmen in charge of writing healthcare legislation. The Chairmen include Henry Waxman (D-CA), Charles Rangel (D-NY) and George Miller (D-CA). Waxman has received more than 66 thousand and his committee has received more than 1.3 million dollars in campaign contributions from insurance and health interest groups. Rangel comes in at 70 thousand and his committee at 1.8 millon. The list is similar for both the Senate and House Committees who are drafting the legislation. Republicans seem to have the edge but, democrats too have received boatloads of cash from groups who would really like healthcare reform to go away.
That’s why the President needs to go away and rethink his approach to this issue he says he cares so much about. Instead of allowing legislators who have monetary motives to craft healthcare reform legislation which does not reform, he should do it himself. He should publicly propose amendments which may actually shift some of the obscene profits of the healthcare industry to covering all Americans. He should use his bully pulpit and notorious arm twister, Rahm Emanuel, to shame the legislative industry stooges into actually reducing potentially catastrophic spiraling healthcare costs.
Reducing the cost of healthcare, believe me, is the key to winning the argument with well-informed and well-meaning moderates and independents. These citizens legitimately want to know why adding another trillion dollars to our deficit is a good idea. The only answer to the question is saving money later.
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You might have heard. The 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong being the first man on the moon is coming up in a few days. Living so close to Huntsville, Alabama, I have seen a good bit of hype about the anniversary in the local press. I saw an article in the magazine section of my paper and I am sure there will be a few national news stories on the actual anniversary date. The story in the USA TODAY Sunday magazine insert caught my eye.
The story caught my eye because several people including Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sally Ride and John McCain were asked how the event impacted their lives. Tyson, the college professor turned PBS Nova Science Now host, seemed to have an experience similar to mine. I remember watching the landing on a small 19-inch black and white TV with my father, mother and infant sister in Nashville, Tennessee. I remember how awed my father was when NASA actually pulled off the feat. My dad should not have been surprised because he worked, for a time, for a space contractor, doing computer test simulations for the Saturn V launch vehicle. Perhaps his excitement rubbed off on me because adults had trouble making out the fuzzy image on the small TV. I am sure my six year-old mind did not comprehend what actually happened that day.
What happened that day was repeated six times in my young impressionable life and I am sure I probably said more than once I wanted to be an astronaut. I was never to slip the surly bonds of earth, except for a few flight lessons and a few commercial flights but, I did become an engineer.
What’s your point Joe?
If you feel technology is the way out of our economic mess. If you feel having more scientists and engineers are the way to get there. Then, you should understand the value of a manned space program. Let’s call it the Air Force method of recruiting.
Have you ever seen airmen greasing fittings on the tractor which pulls airplanes on a recruiting commercial? Have you ever seen an airman cleaning out the porta-potties on transport planes in a recruiting commercial? Well, of course they don’t show any of those critical tasks being performed on an Air Force recruiting commercial. What do they show a young 18 year-old when they want him to join the Air Force? They show the sexiest part of the mission. They show pilots breaking formation in F-22 Raptors. They show pilots flying simulators which make a kid’s X-Box at home look like Pong. How many Raptor pilots do you think are recruited each year as a percentage? I would bet it is a very small percentage.
For a large percentage of us, calculus is not really fun. I personally learned the math so I could do the fun stuff like science. My dad taught math and I still hated it. I did however, see the thrill in his eyes when he explained where Neil Armstrong happened to be on that hot July day in 1969. He and Neil inspired a love of science that would only be reinforced later by my high school science teacher. At the end of the day, like most kids, I would have never learned math for math’s sake. Like the Air Force, I was shown the Raptor and not the hard work required to make the Raptor fly.
My point in this article flies in the face of what another celebrated spokesman scientist, Doctor Carl Sagan, preached. He and many other scientists called the manned space program a waste of money. They would tell us a thousand robots like the famed rovers spirit and opportunity could be launched for the cost of one Shuttle mission. However true it may be, most kid’s eyes glaze over when they see a little six-wheeled rover digging in red dirt. You need a real person hopping in a big tall rocket and blasting into space to capture the mind of a twelve year-old. You may think twelve is a little early but, in today’s education system, twelve is when a kid begins to decide which math to take. To be able to take calculus in high school you have to take algebra in the seventh or eighth grade.
So when we talk about seventh and eighth graders making poor math scores on achievement tests, I submit the best way to fix the problem is to inspire them. Inspire a new generation of Joes, Neils and Sallys. It’s easy to talk about a manned program and hard to fund it in an ongoing meaningful way. It is especially hard when we consider manned space flight a luxury. If you think about space flight in terms of a recruiting tool to help our country regain it’s technical edge, it begins to look more like a necessity.
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There a moments from time to time when you wonder if people are, as my high school civics teacher would say, “using there head for something besides a hat rack.” When a group of lawmakers who I believe to be mostly Democrats decided to reverse the reduction in GM and Chrysler dealerships, I found myself wondering what the crap they were thinking.
For about two seconds the idea sounded reasonable. We do have an economy which is hemorrhaging jobs. Automotive dealers do provide jobs. The government does own a controlling stake in these companies by virtue of the bailouts. I guess the legislature is a sort of voting member of the board. Ok, that’s where the logic begins to break down.
Break downs in management, as any basic management course will tell you, almost always occur when there is an unclear chain of command. Trying to make two bosses happy almost never works. In case the lawmakers haven’t noticed, the man at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is trying to manage the problem. The Obama Administration, an army of bankruptcy lawyers and boat load of stakeholders have spent months trying to save the two car companies. The bankruptcy of the car companies has been painful for everyone. Workers, management, bond holders and stockholders all got punched in the financial nose. Some dealers got hit too.
So why would a few members of Congress decide to pick winners and losers after months of negotiation have been mercifully concluded? Why are dealership jobs more important than assembly line jobs or bond holder losses? I’m no economist or automotive expert but, in my town I see a two to one ratio of domestic to foreign dealers. Having too many dealers has to be counter productive.
I haven’t looked but, I’ll bet, as usual, Congress’ interest is probably about the money. Dealer groups have donated the right amount to the right Congressional campaigns. Obviously, they gave more than the other interested groups I mentioned. I wonder if we will ever be tired of people with the most money getting the best representation in our capitols.
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If you listen to National Public Radio’s (NPR) All Things Considered (ATC) in the afternoons, I am sure you have heard the voice of Melissa Block. She and Robert Siegel host the weekday shows. NPR, in general, and Block in particular go out of their way to be polite to interviewees. Sometimes, when she interviews a particularly mean person, I even get a little nauseous because she is almost too polite.
So when Block interviewed the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, this afternoon you can be assured Block’s tone and delivery shouldn’t have made Pelosi answer with the venom she chose.
Pelosi’s venom was apparently directed at Block over a line of questions regarding today’s tiff between the House Intelligence Oversight Committee and the CIA over alleged lies told to the Committee by the CIA. Questioning Pelosi was fair game because she had made similar allegations earlier in the year over water boarding. Moreover she is the leader of the U. S. House of Representatives. It is beyond belief that Pelosi, at a minimum, was not aware of the committee’s interactions with the CIA. Block began by asking what the CIA was alleged to have concealed from the Committee. Pelosi responded by saying it was classified. The interview went downhill from there. Persistent but kind, Block tried to get any indication from Pelosi regarding how she felt about the Committee’s activities. “…I don’t know how many times I have to tell you…I only have a few more minutes… If that is how you want to spend your time,” was Pelosi’s tenor throughout the interview.
I get it. Pelosi is dealing with classified material. If however, negotiating national security and answering questions which were sure to come was too tall an order, she could have simply declined the interview. Now, Pelosi has never been accused of having the best delivery but, being down right ugly to Melissa Block might lead someone to think Pelosi isn’t up to the job.
In doing her job, Pelosi has not seemed to be the happy warrior. I get the impression she and a few other Democrats are a little nostalgic for the days of a right wing Republican in the White House. Both left wing Democrats and the CIA ironically have a lot in common these days. They have both traded a clear cut enemy for one who is more elusive. In their respective new worlds, old friends disagree and it is sometimes hard to tell who is on your side. Today, Pelosi sounded like she could be withering under the pressure of the new political world in Washington.
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I know it will surprise you but, Democrats want credit for healthcare reform. While I give you a few minutes to collect yourself I will drop another bomb. They feel any reform which does not contain a Public Medicare style plan will not give the Democratic Party proper credit. Additionally, they would like to make the left wingers happy by providing a Medicare style plan which could be converted into Single Payer, although it will never be.
While you are digesting all of the new information, I would like to suggest what might work better. Give the Republicans their health insurance cooperatives.
If the Democrats are really interested in making our healthcare system better, should they care what the plan is called? In general, I would say a plan, let’s call it the I’m Tired of Getting Screwed by the Healthcare Establishment Cooperative (or ITGSHEC for short) should have four functions:
1. To reduce healthcare costs
2. To stop rationing for profit
3. To change the healthcare fee structure so it rewards health instead of sickness
4. To allow citizens economic independence from the current healthcare system
If the entity could perform the above functions, who cares what it is called. Democrats should take the power given to them in the last election and actually fix the broken system. The electorate is pretty smart. We can figure out who is really on our side. We can go to the websites and find out which politician is in the pocket of the Healthcare establishment. If you check your favorite Democrat on the linked site, you might find the Democrats are not always on the best side of the healthcare debate. Perhaps the Medicare style public plan is a way to get real reform killed.
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Yup, many Republicans feel a handout to the insurance industry will fix our problems. These are the same companies whose profits have grown by 43 percent over the last five years. This plan is funny because Republicans usually feel more tax money is not the answer. Right wing Republicans don’t even want to offer a government option. They justify this denial by saying the insurance companies will go out of business if they have to compete with a non-profit government sponsored version. They tell us semantics are important and insurance cooperatives would not doom our current system. Most of the co-ops I have seen are non profit too. Semantics don’t seem that important unless they plan to water down any bargaining power a co-op would have thereby killing any cost reduction.
While they kill any hope of cost reduction, they don’t tell us the insurance companies will get the mother of all windfalls when healthy young people are forced to buy insurance from them. This is because covering the 47 million uninsured will begin with forcing these rainmakers to buy insurance. Republicans will do this while they give government premium subsidies for people who might actually get sick. Instead of spreading the risk, which insurance was designed to do, healthy people will only add to health care insurance company profits while sick people are covered by the government. Somehow, as usual, the Republican Party has been taken over by the right-wingers. They want so bad to have a plan which seems to be a free market approach, they are willing to provide enough government intervention to make someone unfairly rich. They seem to want to continue to redistribute as much wealth as possible to the insurance companies.
The other unintended consequence of insurance co-ops will be cross state regulation. Since Republicans want people to organize across state lines in cooperatives they have cut out the existing system of state insurance regulators. You can bet Democratic control of the House, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and control of the White House will not let that happen. Regulation is coming and it will be the kind of big brother federal regulation from Washington which conservatives say they hate. Again, Republicans gone around the mountain to placate the right-wing fringe of the party. Republicans will get us more government for their trouble.
LEFTY LEANINGS NEXT
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This article will be reminiscent of an AA meeting. If you read the previous article and admit we have a problem with healthcare, then you might be looking for solutions or a way to make amends. It seems like solutions are organizing neatly into two camps. The engineer in me always makes me cynical when people try to fix complex problems with easy solutions. I however, think a discussion on this point in the healthcare debate deserves some scrutiny. It deserves scrutiny because the arguments seem sort of like the last debate. Labels are being affixed, slippery slopes are being greased and politicians can’t wait to tell us what lurks in the minds of their opponents.
If one listens closely, one might think the debate was more about party than actually fixing healthcare.
Some even feel the very existence of our political party system may be at stake. So says the Cato Institute’s Michael F. Cannon. He tells us blocking President Obama’s healthcare plan is the “key to the GOP’s survival.” As important as I believe reform is, Cannon might be a little melodramatic even for me.
The stakes however, are obviously pretty high.
The Huffington Post tells us health insurance companies spent over 35 million in the first quarter of 2009 which is already 10 more than last year. They must feel the extra insurance, pardon the pun, is necessary to get friendly legislation. Left wingers are ready to derail the Obama Presidency over single payer. Many hold opinions similar to the left wing blog CounterPunch.
The time to win single-payer has never been better. We are going to keep fighting like hell to destroy the corporate killers, not create a faux option that allows them to live another day.
So what is all the fuss about? Why are liberals ready to disown a President who many feel brought the party back from the wilderness? Why is the health care industry spending so much money on politicians they have already bought and paid for?
Well, there are two facts driving the debate. The first fact is Americans have begun to understand double digit increases in healthcare insurance premiums is unsustainable. The second fact is the healthcare industry makes a hell of a lot of money. There are plenty of other side issues like 50% of bankruptcies being healthcare related and healthcare being one of the few job creators in a rotten economy. Add all issues surrounding healthcare reform together and the war is on.
Someone once said, in war, truth is the first casualty. The war over healthcare reform is no different. The arguments, which have a “Tarzan good, Jane bad” feel, seem dumber than the usual left-right shouting match. On the left, lawmakers are so bent on a single payer system which would resemble Medicare for all citizens they forget as much as 85 percent of us are pretty happy with our healthcare. The same percent however, is worried about the rising cost of their healthcare premium. On the right, free market worshiping politicians are preparing to give an insurance industry an obscene new kind of corporate welfare.
THE TWO SIDES NEXT