"It's not a right, it's a racket"

The comedians seem to be stepping up to replace the sadly lacking state of journalism. I guess that's really an old thing, going back to Shakespeare, at least, when it was only the court jester who could speak truth to power.

Now add Bill Maher to the list that's headed by Jon Stewart. Today on Huffington Post Maher has an essay titled, "New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit."

He begins by talking about the stigma that once was attached to "war profiteers." Instead, now we have practically turned our military over to the corporate world -- not only as in the highly lucrative weapons manufacture but simply in running the war. Contracts for daily needs of our troops like food and laundry are privatized with lucrative contracts to companies designed just to provide those services -- and rake in the cash.

Maher goes on to decry the privatization of prisons. But his real topic is health care.

And finally, there's health care. . . .[L]ike everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. . . . [T]he Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. . . .

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

How right you are, Bill, in addition to being funny. Who came closest to telling the truth about our health care system? Michael Moore in his film, "Sicko." Yes, he probably was a bit selective in choosing examples to dramatize, and his method is ridicule -- but isn't that exactly what the Republicans do in denouncing health care reform?

Are we going to let the Michele Bachmanns and the Jim DeMints defeat health care reform -- out of purely selfish or political motives, demonstrating that their concern is not for the American people but for maintaining their own position of privilege and greed?

Ralph

Bachmann does it again

I should just accept the fact that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is both silly and dangerous (if people really took her seriously) -- and let it go.

But something about her crazy, logic-free rants and her self-centered cluelessness sets off my counter-rant buttons. This time, however, I believe she told the truth -- and it is pretty ugly.

Her latest objection to health care reform? If you offer health insurance to more people, it will make her have to wait longer when she needs to take her children to the doctor, and it will generally increase the "hassal factor" for her.

That's what she said at a press conference. I'm speechless.

Probably a whole lot of Republicans in Congress feel the same way. Another Congresswoman at the same press conference likened it to going to a fast food restaurant with your kids and finding 50 people buying food for their soccer teams in line ahead of you.

What better proof do we need of the priorities of the Republicans? It's all about protecting their privileges and their profits.

Ralph

Guns could lead to gay marriage

Funny thing how some times one has to choose between two cherished "rights."

Yesterday, the Senate defeated the amendment to the appropriations bill that would have allowed people with a permit to carry a concealed weapon in one state to carry them over state lines into a state whose laws do not allow it.

This really pitted guns against states' rights, and it seemed that the gun addicts were willing to give up the old shibboleth of the anti-civil-rights crowd who screamed "States' Rights" as a response to federal civil rights laws.

What gives this an even bigger touch of wry is that -- had the gun law passed, thus trashing states' rights -- it could have set a precedent that would have made it difficult to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act that supports, among other things, the right of individual states not to recognize marriages of same-sex couples performed in other states where it is legal.

See the parallel: your right to carry your gun would supersede the laws of the state you visit; so why wouldn't your legal marriage also supersede the laws of the state you visit or move to?

Be careful what you wish for. Guns could lead to gay marriage.

Ralph

Sotomayor's "racism"

GOP opponents tried to make the case against Sonia Sotomayor based on the reversal of her decision in the New Haven firefighters suit about reverse discrimination. See, the white guys got denied their promotions because the city decided, after the test was taken, that it was unfair to minorities because too few of them passed.

So they said she was prejudiced against whites and favored minorities. And they offered as proof that the Supreme Court had reversed the decision. Never mind that it was a 5-4 decision, and only one vote shift would have upheld her decision.

The argument in favor of her decision was the choice the city faced: if they used the test results, they would be vulnerable to a lawsuit from minority candidates for discrimination. So they threw out the test and got sued by the white candidates.

Sotomayor's decision was in keeping with legal precedent-- to avoid discrimination in public hiring. What the Supreme Court did was reverse that precedent and set a new policy -- so they, not Sotomayor, were the "activist judges," if you want to make that argument.

Now, further fuel to the fire of argument. In today's AJC, this item:

A federal judge is considering remedies after ruling Wednesday that the predominately white Fire Department of New York used recruitment exams that discriminate against blacks and hispanics. U.S. District judge Nicholas Garaufis found the discrimination occured in writen exams given to firefighter candidates from 1999 to 2007. Of the roughtly 11,000 firefighters in New York City, about 3 percent are black and 4.5 percent are Hispanic.

So, you see, New Haven was justifiably concerned that they would be sued for discrimination if they used the test results. The fact that a conservative Supreme Court reversed the decision by as narrow a margin as possible is no reflection on Sotomayor's reasoning or her fairness.

But, hey, politicians -- and I honestly believe that this is about 10 times as true of Republicans as Democrats -- don't argue based on reason or truth but on what they think will sway people to their objective of the moment. Just one more example of that.

Ralph

Will the real journalist please stand?

In an online poll conducted by Time magazine, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart was rated America's Most Trusted newscaster.

In a comparison with network newscasters, Stewart received 44%, Brian Williams 29%, Charlie Gibson 19%, and Katie Curic 7%.

Maybe it's because, even though it's billed as comedy, Jon Stewart has been the most hard-hitting in cutting through crap and getting at the truth. And the people know it.

Ralph

Two for two !! !!

What's got into the U.S. Senate?

Yesterday, they handed the military-industrial complex a defeat, when they voted down funding for extra F-22s that the military says it doesn't need.

Today, they defeated an NRA gun bill that would allow a person with a concealed-weapon permit in one state to carry that gun across state lines, even if the other state has tougher laws. It's sponsored by South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune.

Something's stirring Could it be backbone? Could it be a harbinger of health care reform?

Ralph

GOP opposes public plan because it's cheaper

I started to put this as a comment to my post from yesterday on health care.

But this deserves one of its own.

Two Repubicans today are making the nonsence argument that they are opposed to the public plan in health care because it is cheaper.

What they mean is that, because it's cheaper, it will be unfair to the private insurance plans and will tend to drive them out of business. I understand that. But is it really defensible? I don't think so.

Here's Rep. John Kline:

"but our fear is that if you actually get in there looking at the legislation that it’s set up in a way that employers would increasingly opt to letting their employees move over to the public, to the public option. And because it is cheaper, it’s designed to save money, the government-run program has some very clear advantages."

And in the context of what went before, he means that that's why he opposes it.

And then there's my favorite Republican clown, Michele Bachmann, speaking on the House floor:

Approximately 114 million Americans are expected to leave private health insurance. Why? Their employers will drop the insurance because the taxpayer-subsidized plan will be 30 to 40 percent cheaper. This action will collapse the private health insurance market, and then the Federal Government will own the health provider game.

I want to sit these folks down, make them look me in the eye and admit that they would prefer to save the private insurance industry than to provide health care to the American people.

But here's the important point:

They are admitting that the public plan will save money.

They're unknowingly making our point for us. Now if the jerks who pretend to be journalists would just take that and run with it.

Ralph

One small step for reform

Hooray !!!! There was a bitter fight in the Senate over F-22 fighter planes. The military and Secretary of Defense Gates and President Obama all say we have more than enough. But some senators with ties to the military-industrial complex insisted that we buy more, and they got it stuck into the military appropriations budget. Obama threatened to veto the whole bill if it had that in it.

So it was a showdown and a proxy vote on breaking the power of the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address.

Senators Carl Levin and John McCain sponsored an amendment to strip the F-22 funding, and it passed by 58-42.

It was an important win for Obama, who threw his whole weight into defeating it. Perhaps it will be the beginning of some sanity in the DoD budget. It's big enough without selfish senators sticking in their pet projects.

Now if he call only pull off a good health care reform bill the same way.

Ralph

Straight talk about health care reform

There is no greater indictment of our money-talks system of government than the difficulty of achieving effective health care reform. Even Obama seemed to want to keep advocates of a single-payer plan out of the negotiations and hearings.

Why? Simply because of the lobbying power of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies. It's true, a single-payer system would decimate the health insurance industry and greatly reduce profits for big pharma.

THE HEALTH NEEDS OF THE PEOPLE MUST ALWAYS BE SACRIFICED FOR THE HEALTH OF CAPITALISM.

Now, in the 11th hour of the debate -- on a comedy show !!! -- the public is going to hear about the single-payer plan. Dr. Aaron Carroll, of the Indiana University School of Medicine, who published a study last year showing 59 percent of U.S. physicians now support national health insurance, will be on The Colbert Report tonight (Tuesday) at 11:30pm.

Dr. Carroll has written:

“There are now more uninsured people in the United States than at any time since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in the mid-1960s. … These numbers represent extraordinary suffering, unnecessary disability and premature deaths — at least 18,000 deaths per year, according to the Institute of Medicine. …

“There is one sure-fire way to make these numbers come down. It worked for seniors in the 1960s and it still works for them today. You may hear politicians demonizing government-run health insurance, but you will hear none run on a platform of eradicating Medicare; nor will any turn it down for themselves when they turn 65. Call it whatever you want: National health insurance, Medicare-for-all, ‘single payer’ or socialized health insurance; it doesn’t matter. Research shows that Medicare-for-all could save enough on administrative waste (over $350 billion) to cover all the 47 million uninsured and improve coverage for everyone else. A single-payer national health insurance system is the only way to drop the number of people lacking health insurance to zero.”

Rep. John Conyers Jr. has introduced a bill in the House, H.R. 676, that would implement a single-payer system; the bill now has 85 co-sponsors. Recently Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a single-payer bill in the U.S. Senate, S. 703.

Makes sense. I support it. Why can't we do something that works, for a change. We'll spend a trillion dollars on a cobbled together plan, trying to please everyone, and it will only marginally improve our expensive, stupid health care system.

Ralph

Rethinking gay marriage lawsuit

David Boies, who represented Al Gore before the Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore, is teaming up with Ted Olson, his opponent who represented George W. Bush.

This time, they're hoping to go to the Supreme Court together in a suit to overturn California's Proposition 8. A few weeks ago, when this was first announced, I thought the timing was premature, that it would likely fail and then set back the cause by some years.

Now, however, Boies has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that's making me reconsider. It suddenly seems more likely that it could be overturned by their arguments. I'm assuming that Olson concurs with his reasoning, since they're a team in this case.

As we heard in Sonia Sotomayor's testimony last week, it's all about precedent. So here's Boies' appeal to precedent:

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it. In 1978 the Court (8 to 1, Zablocki v. Redhail) overturned as unconstitutional a Wisconsin law preventing child-support scofflaws from getting married. The Court emphasized, "decisions of this Court confirm that the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals." In 1987 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a Missouri law preventing imprisoned felons from marrying.

Then he asserts that the arguments (1) that gay marriage threatens the institution of marriage and (2) that depriving gays of basic rights will cause them to change their orientation are simply not upheld by discussion or by scientific evidence. he further points to the experience of several countries and to Massachusetts, where gay marriage has been in effect for a while, with no apparent damage to anyone or to the institution. And he concludes with these important points:

But basic constitutional rights cannot depend on the willingness of the electorate in any given state to end discrimination. If we were prepared to consign minority rights to a majority vote, there would be no need for a constitution. The ban on same-sex marriages written into the California Constitution by a 52% vote in favor of Proposition 8 is the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing. California allows same-sex domestic partnerships that, as interpreted by the California Supreme Court, provide virtually all of the economic rights of marriage. So the ban on permitting gay and lesbian couples to actually marry is simply an attempt by the state to stigmatize a segment of its population that commits no offense other than falling in love with a disapproved partner, and asks no more of the state than to be treated equally with all other citizens. . . .

The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper stickers.

I didn't need convincing of the rightness of these arguments. Now I'm almost convinced of the rightness of the timing. If all nine justices vote according to the law -- as the Republican senators kept insisting that Judge Sotomayor must do -- then I believe it will be overturned. But I'm not sure we can count on that.

The only other strategy quesion is: do we really want a 5-4 decision? Wouldn't that just increase the rancor? Would it be better to wait until there's a likelihood of at least a 6-3 decision? If we could only know the outcome before having to commit to the trial . . .

Ralph

The giants of yesteryear

The death of Walter Cronkite has predictability evoked an outpouring of praise and remembering this giant of a journalist.

Glenn Greenwald takes the occasion to point out that the journalistic world is celebrating one of its own -- in words of praise -- but that they do not honor him by emulation. The comparison with the journalistic giants of yesteryear, Cronkite being one of the best, should shame today's news-readers whose job seems to begin and end with finding opposing quotes so as to present both sides of a story.

Whatever happened to the idea that the journalist's job is to ferret out the truth, to call out those who are distorting it or misusing their public offices and betraying the public trust?

I would go so far as to say that we hardly have a functioning fourth estate now, at least if you look at print and tv news. The internet is the hope of the future, I think, because -- although there is a lot of junk and misinformation -- there are also some really sharp investigative reportors who dig out the facts and present them without being beholden to moneyed or powered interests.

Greenwald contrasts these two quotes to show what he means:

"For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. . . . To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past" -- Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.

"I think there are a lot of critics who think that [in the run-up to the Iraq War] . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you're a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn't do our job. I respectfully disagree. It's not our role" -- David Gregory, MSNBC, May 28, 2008.

Greenwald says that

perhaps Cronkite's most celebrated and significant moment was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn't trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false.

There you have it. A democracy cannot function without an informed public. These days one has to work hard to be informed, and those less diligent will be filled with the misinformation that is tailored to sell advertising space and curry favor with those in power.

Ralph