MLK's sad family legacy

The King children are back in the news, with Martin III and Bernice still struggling to protect their parents' reputation and legacy from the seeming greed and exploitiveness of brother Dexter, who is out in California living a high life style and trying to make money off the legacy. A judge has ordered them (meaning Dexter) to have a meeting of the corporation next week, which the other two have long been demanding.

Once the corporation set up to handle the King legacy had five members: these three plus widow Coretta and sister Yolanda. Now there are only the three. Dexter is the CEO and has apparently been running things on his own. Martin and Bernice say that he has not held a meeting in five years, will not give them financial accounting, and there have been embarrassing public disputes between the two camps over Coretta's papers and now some love letters between the parents. Dexter wants to turn everything into money; the other two seem to want a more dignified handling of the legacy. And they also want their share of the money, which they claim they have not been getting.

It's sad.

It seems clear that if there is a meeting, the other two will outvote Dexter, and there will be some changes. On the other hand, according to the AJC, the charter says a meeting requires 80% of the members of the corporation to be present. When there were five, it meant four of them had to be there. Now it means that all three must be present. So Dexter can avoid a meeting simply by not coming. Unless a judge orders it -- and he has.

So, stay tuned. Unless it's more than you want to know about the sad tarnishing of an iconic family's reputation.

Ralph

Where's the logic?

I have been opposed to capital punishment since I first wrote an essay on the subject as a college freshman, almost 60 years ago.

"Capital punishment." What a euphemism for the State's act of cold-bloodedly and with all due deliberation killing people that are in its custody and who pose no immediate threat to anyone.

Now wait. I am in no way meaning to minimize what horrible crimes these prisoners may have committed. But I do not think a civilized society should pursue "an eye for an eye" policy. Keep them from further crime, sure; protect the public, definitely. But that can be done by life without parole.

This came to my attention today in a news article about the man in Ohio whose execution by lethal injection was botched when they couldn't get a needle into a vein despite repeated attempts. His lawyer says it violates the constitutional protection against "cruel and unusual punishment." A judge has ordered a 10 day stay of execution.

Where is the logic? If you're going to kill someone, what does it matter if it hurts? Why wouldn't you want it to hurt a lot? If you can't find a vein, why not just shoot him or cut off his head, like they used to?

Likewise, we don't execute people who are too mentally retarded to understand why we're killing them, nor do we execute the psychotic until we can make them sane with drugs so they know what's happening. Then we kill them.

My argument is this: if we're going to be brutal (in my opinion) why get fastidious about the details?

My larger argument is not that we should be insensitive but that we should rethink the whole practice of capital punishment. I consider it barbarous. And the heinous behavior of the convicted does not excuse our descending to their level of barbarism as well.

That's what I think.

Ralph

The best commentary on Baucus' plan

Forget the pundits, the policy makers, the passionate supporters of health care reform.

The simplest, cleanest judgment of the Baucus plan happened on Wall Street.

As soon as the plan was released, stock values for health insurance companies and drug makers shot up.

Enough said.

When their money is involved, people cut through the crap and figure out which side of the bread is buttered.

Ralph

Food for thought

Jim Wooten, retired conservative editor of the Atlanta Journal and now writing a column, is someone I disagree with 90% of the time. Today he said something finally that I agree with -- and it's given me something to think about.

Wooten wrote:

"The Joe Wilson flap, taken nuclear by former President Jimmy Carter and others on the left, is a reminder that liberals really do believe that they and their policy positions are morally superior."

Well, yes, come to think of it, I do believe that -- very strongly too.

But am I just biased and deluding myself? Am I infected with the kind of blind certitude that I ascribe to the bushcheneys of the world from the other direction?

So I sat and pondered: what are some of those beliefs cum policy that differentiate us from the conservatives? And I don't just mean the T-party crazies with their guns or the Wall Street greedies with their obese bonuses.

Well, what about the concept of sharing? Being your brother's keeper? Using common resources (i.e. government) to help those who are less fortunate? Treating everyone equally? Trying to level the playing field of opportunity? Putting moral principles ahead of profits? Defining social values in terms of human values rather than sectarian prohibitions? Doing unto others as you would have them do unto you?

WWJD? What would Jesus do? That was quite a fad among the religious right for a while, with their bracelets and all; but in my opinion it perverted the message of one of the greatest moral teachers of all time, regardless of where you stand on the divinity question.

WWJD? I have no doubt that, if he took on any political label at all, Jesus would be a liberal/progressive/socialist. Just read over the Sermon on the Mount and think about it.

So, yes, I still believe that liberal beliefs and policies are superior -- not snooty-superior as in 'I'm better than you' -- but in the sense of being more in keeping with the lessons of our great moral teachers of all time.

Ralph

Rep. Gingrey (R-GA) sneers

Huffington Post headlines it as Georgia's Phil Gingrey laughing at 14,000 Americans losing their health insurance every day. That's stretching it a little bit.

What he does, however, is not pretty. Speaking in the House of Representatives, he sneers laughingly at the Democrats' use of the fact that 14,000 people lose their insurance every day as a reason we have to pass effective reform.

What Doctor Gingrey (one of GA's three doctors in Congress) says: "They don't lose their health insurance because it's too expensive. They lose it because . . they've . . lost . . their . . jobs!" (snicker, snicker -- as though he had stumped the chumps).

And that explains exactly what, Dr. Gingrey?

In fact, it's exactly why we must pass reform, so that people don't lose their insurance when they lose their jobs. It's called portability.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/phil-gingrey-laughs-off-1_n_290814.html

Ralph

Beyond the pale

Just a few happenings today that aroused my outrage to a new level:

1. The latest GOP ploy vis a vis the Joe Wilson outburst against Obama is to claim that "Obama started it" when he said in his speech that even some elected officials had been spreading misinformation and lies about his plan. So, they're justifying Wilson's shout-out "You lie" on the childish "he started it." The facts are: they did lie; Obama did not.

2. Orly Taitz -- the attorney who filed the case claiming that soldiers do not have to obey deployment orders because commander in chief Obama is not a citizen and therefore is not a legitimate president -- seems to me to be certifiably insane. I base this not only on seeing her on an interview show but in her response to the judge who threw the case out of court as frivolous and threatened to sanction her.

Here's what she said:

"somebody should consider trying [the judge] for treason and aiding and abetting this massive fraud known as Barack Hussein Obama. . . . This is so outrageous what this judge did -- it goes in the face of law and order. . . . Not every judge is as corrupt as Judge Land. Some judges believe in the Constitution. And some judges believe in the rule of law. . . . Judge Land is a typical puppet of the regime -- just like in the Soviet Union."

U. S. District Court judge Clay Land was appointed by President George W. Bush. Orly Taitz is a self-proclaimed leader of the birther movement, and she is exploiting service men and women in her cause. She has used forged "birth certificates" from Africa to try to make her point. She has filed numerous lawsuits across the country, none of which has been successful. In the TV appearance I saw, Orly Taitz was unable to carry on a sensible dialogue with the interviewer but wandered wildly and loudly, such that the interviewer finally terminated the interview shaking his head in disbelief.

3. The South Carolina Supreme Court has awarded a $10 million dollar settlement against an insurance company that rescinded the medical insurance policy of a teenager diagnosed as HIV positive when he tried to donate blood -- after his policy became effective. Internal memos showed that the insurance company based its decision on a memo in his record from a nurse who said the diagnosis "might" have been known prior to the policy date, which was false.

Another case (out of thousands) was cited in which a woman's surgery for breast cancer was delayed by the insurance company for five months because there was a record of a doctor having years earlier suggested that a lesion on her face "might be" pre-cancerous. It later turned out to be acne. But even if it had been skin cancer, that would not be a pre-existing condition for beast cancer. In the five months it took to get approval for surgery, her breast mass had doubled in size and greatly reduced her chances for cure. Like thousands of others, this was the result of employees being given bonuses for finding reasons to cancel policies.

This is outrageous.

Ralph

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/17/insurance-company-must-pa_n_289841.html

Dump Baucus' plan

Maybe the three Republican members of Senator Baucus' "Gang of Six" have done us a favor by not going along with a health care bill. Because it would have been even worse than this one that seems to be pleasing nobody --- except . . . those who we shouldn't be trying to please: drug companies and insurance companies.

I'm not bothering to read the fine print on any of these bills, because they're going to change. But just going by the headlines, Baucus' bill is not the answer.

A couple of days ago, there was a headline on Huffington Post quoting a former insurance company spokesman saying that the Baucus bill was a complete give-away to the insurance companies.

Today, the headline from the New York Times is: "Baucus Plan Pleases Drug Makers, But Few Others.

So why have we been waiting for the Senate Finance Committee to write the bill, when the Senate Health Committee turned in a creditable bill months ago, and the House combined three committees' plans and passed a bill months ago?

Who anointed Baucus? Besides the health care industry itself, of course, with their generous campaign contributions.

Ralph

Baucus blows it

We've been waiting around for months while the Senate Finance Committee dithered under Chairman Max Baucus' attempts to draw up a health care reform bill that would have bipartisan support. And he's had this "Gang of Six," three Dems and three Repubs -- all from very small states that in total represent a tiny fraction of the population -- who were going to reach an agreement. Which they haven't, because two of the Republicans have said 'no way,' and the other one is still holding out for more.

And now they're about to come out with something that doesn't satisfy anybody, it seems.

Quoting from George Stephanopolis from ABC online:

Following up on his This Week appearance where he promised to fight on for the public option, Sen. Jay Rockefeller blasted the draft bill produced by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus: “there is no way in its present form that I vote for it unless it changes in the amendment process by vast amounts.”

He’s not alone. Fellow Finance Committee member Ron Wyden is livid too. Expect a rocky mark-up next week. As one top Democrat told me, the fundamental problem is that

Democrats “are being asked to support a bipartisan bill that doesn’t have bipartisan support.”

He goes on to say that Maine's Senator Olympia Snowe, the Republican thought most likely to vote for the bill, has said she's not ready to sign on; and it will be presented to the full committee tomorrow without her endorsement.

So -- let's don't go down this road again, as we did with the stimulus bill, where Obama and the Democrats watered down the bill to get Republican support, and then they didn't vote for it anyway.

No more bipartisan bills that don't get bipartisan support. Why do that? It's crazy. That's giving away the family farm. Don't do it.

Ralph

MDs support public plan

A recent poll by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation found that by a large majority, the nation's physicians support public health care plans.

27% supported a private only insurance system.

63% support a system with both private insurance and a public plan

10% support an entirely public health care system

In summary: a whopping 73% of physicians support some sort of public plan for health care.

That should carry some kind of weight -- but it probably doesn't. At least among those who have the votes in Congress.

It's interesting: of Georgia's 13 members of the House of Representatives, three of them are physicians, all Republicans and all opposed to the Democratic proposed reforms, including the public plan.

I guess what that means is that doctors who run for Congress are, by and large, of a different mind set than those who don't. But at least it should be known that they do not speak for the medical profession.

Ralph

Census report: bad news for Bush

The Atlantic reports that the annual U. S. Census Report on income, poverty, and access to health care, released last Thursday, contains bad news for the Bush legacy.

On every major measurement, the Census Bureau report shows that the country lost ground during Bush's two terms. While Bush was in office, the median household income declined, poverty increased, childhood poverty increased even more, and the number of Americans without health insurance spiked. By contrast, the country's condition improved on each of those measures during Bill Clinton's two terms, often substantially.

This is also bad news for Republicans who are still chanting their tax-cut mantra like a perseverating deranged person who can't help himself -- or doesn't know anything else to do. This report seems to settle that once and for all: tax cuts for the wealthy do not benefit the average citizen. The "trickle down" theory is a lie.

So the summary page on the economic experience of average Americans under the past two presidents would look like this:

Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.

Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.

Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 percent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 percent.

Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.

Nor was this the result of economic collapse in 2008, which didn't really kick in until the last few months of Bush's term. All of these measures were already essentially the same before that.

The article concludes:

But at the least, the wretched two-term record compiled by the younger Bush on income, poverty and access to health care should compel Republicans to answer a straightforward question: if tax cuts are truly the best means to stimulate broadly shared prosperity, why did the Bush years yield such disastrous results for American families on these core measures of economic well being?

Ralph

Does anit-Obamaism = racism?

Maureen Dowd, whom I don't hold in the highest regard as a columnist because of her snide and too-cutesy metaphors, wrote a more serious piece in yesterday's New York Times about Joe Wilson's disrespect during President Obama's speech to Congress.

She said had formerly disagreed that racism is at the bottom of the anti-Obama sentiments because other reform-minded presidents have always had their shrill detractors: FDR had Father Coughlin, Truman had McCarthy, and JFK the John Birchers.

But Dowd said that Joe Wilson's shocking disrespect for the office of the president convinced her that "Some people just can't believe a black man is president and will never accept it." She quoted African-American Congressman Jim Clyburn (D-SC) as saying that these outbursts have to do with delegitimizing Obama as president.

You can imagine this angry white Southerner sitting there being lectured to by a black man standing before Congress in his rightful role as president of the United States, and it was just more than he could take. In his shouted "You lie," there is an implied extra word: "You lie, boy."

Dowd made a cogent observation: "For two centuries, the South has feared a takeover by blacks or the feds. In Obama, they have both."

Worth pondering, but that's not the complete answer. The anti-Obama cult is not just in the South. I think it's a more generic fear among those who feel their way of life is being threatened, and it focuses on different things. For some it's the illegal immigrants; for others, it's their guns or jobs. Others it's a more abstract and paranoid "government control" or fear of the Other or whatever hot button issue their preachers have fulminated against: abortion, gays, taxes, Muslims.

Fear and ignorance are dangerous motivators. Combine fear and ignorance with power -- and guns -- and we have a serious problem.

Ralph

Let's change the subject

I actually do have other interests besides the idiotic antics and the mendacity of our elected officials.

Like serious theater. So, as I was reading the announcements for the new theater season, a few upcoming star turns caught my eye.

There will be a number of celebrity actors starring in serious theater works this season. Maybe with the bad economic situation, they're hoping the names will draw crowds. Most will probably also be worth seeing for the quality of their work.

Helen Mirren will star in Racine's great tragedy Phaedra at the National Theater in Washington. She should handle that quite well, after solving all those crimes and then playing both Queens, Elizabeth I and II.

Cate Blanchett (another former QE I) will do Streetcar Named Desire, directed by Liv Ullman. It opens in Sydney but will come to Washington and Brooklyn Academy of Music. If she can be a believable Bob Dylan in that film about him, perhaps she can also embody the vaporous Blanche; but I worry about the accent, having to go from Australian to Southern faux gentility. But Cate has done some amazing acting. Hmm. A Swedish actress directing an Australian actress in this quintessentially American play.

Jude Law will bring his Hamlet to Broadway for a limited run. I would have been skeptical, but reviews from the London run have been great; and a recent New York Times interview with him suggests a real immersion and understanding of the role. I saw Ralph Fienes' Hamlet from the front row of a small New York theater -- so close that I found myself ducking during the duel scene. He emphasized the brimming rage of Hamlet more than the indecision.

Philip Seymour Hoffman will play the villainous Iago in Othello at the NY Public Theater. Now that should be great. Much better than his miscast (in my opinion) priest role in the film of Doubt. I saw his early career performance in the Broadway production of Long Day's Journey Into Night, as the alcoholic son to Vanessa Redgrave's extraordinary drug-addled, neurotic mother. This was many years ago, and I still remember the way she conveyed her mood and the level of her drugged state with her hands: your attention became riveted on those nervous finger movements and the subtle shifts from agitated fidgets to somnolent repose.

Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig open a new play in NY, A Steady Rain, about two cops who handle a domestic disturbance that changes them forever. Star power, grade A; acting quality, remains to be seen.

And this one made me scratch my head and wonder what they were thinking -- or is there something I don't know about her? Annette Benning as Euripides' Medea -- about as heavy a role as there is: a mother who wreaks revenge on her philandering husband by murdering their children. If she has it in her, then this should be a breakthrough role for her. If not . . . let's hope it at least introduces the LA crowds to a great play. I saw it on Broadway with the marvelous Irish actress, Fiona Shaw, and cringed in abject horror as she staggered onstage carrying the inert, bloodied bodies of those two children. But as an acting tour de force, it was near the top. . . . Mrs. Warren Beatty has quite a challenge to meet.

A side note: while caught up in that scene as a dramatic play, I couldn't help wondering about the reality for those live child actors. What did they think this was about? And what kind of trauma might that have been for them, to even contemplate at that tender age that a mother could murder her children? I guess they could have been told -- look, we're going to put some red paint on you and pretend it's Halloween, and this nice lady is going to carry you on stage and you have to pretend to be asleep. But kids know more than we think about what's going on.

Ralph

Military brass speaks . . . now, finally.

The Miami Herald has an op-ed piece written by two retired generals. Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. Some excerpts:

In the fear that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Americans were told that defeating Al Qaeda would require us to ``take off the gloves.'' As a former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps and a retired commander-in-chief of U.S. Central Command, we knew that was a recipe for disaster.

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics. . . .

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. . . .

The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality. Moral equivocation about abuse at the top of the chain of command travels through the ranks at warp speed.

On Aug. 24, the United States took an important step toward moral clarity and the rule of law when a special task force recommended that in the future, the Army interrogation manual should be the single standard for all agencies of the U.S. government.

The unanimous decision represents an unusual consensus among the defense, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security agencies. Members of the task force had access to every scrap of intelligence, yet they drew the opposite conclusion from Cheney's. They concluded that far from making us safer, cruelty betrays American values and harms U.S. national security.

And the 09-24-09 issue of the New York Review of Books has a hard-hitting book review essay on the recently published book by General Richard Myers, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 2001 to 2005. The review is titled "The Complicit General." In it Phillipe Sands is harshly critical of Myers for failing to include in his book a discussion of the dissent from the military leaders, as well as the State Department, as the decisions about torture were made and carried out.

Instead, Myers writes that "most everybody involved in the decisions" shared the view that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaida. That may be technically true, since Secretary of State Colin Powell and the top military leaders' opinions were deliberately shut out of the decision-making process and therefore were not "involved in the decisions." But the very statement itself is highly deceptive and covers up what appears to be Myers' own cover-up -- that there was in fact serious dissent within the military command.

Sands also reports from an interview he conducted with Myers in 2002 that Myers mistakenly thought that the enhanced interrogation techniques in question were all in the Army Field Manual. When Sands informed him that none of them are, Myers was surprised and, according to Sands, "inadvertently reveals the full extent to which he has fallen into a fog."

That was in 2002, and yet, in his new book, Myers does not address this question and still vehemently maintains that he did not believe himself to have signed off on torture.

Myers was the military man who should have stood up to Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Yet obviously he did not. It seems questionable now that he even passed on to them the objections of the military leaders who reported to him and were charged with giving their assessments.

Not that it would have mattered to dick and rummy.

What irony. We put civilian government officials in charge of making the major decisions about war in order to put restraints on those whose job it is to fight. Yet in this situation, it was the military leaders (including Colin Powell, though he was then part of the civilian force) who warned against torture, and civilians -- without military any service time among them -- who insisted on it.

Ralph