Morality

In America, Selfishness and Lack of Solidarity Know No Bounds

dlindorff — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 11:14:32 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

As the strike by transit workers in Philadelphia enters its fifth
day, it is clear why unions have such a tough time in the United
States, where fewer than one in eight workers is covered by a union
contract.

Although the average pay of transit workers is just $50,000 a year
(that represents take-home pay of less than $35000 take-home after
taxes or about $3000 a month to live on for a typical family of four),
the suburbanites who feel put out because they have to brave huge
traffic jams to get to and from work in the city are grousing that the
transit workers are greedy for holding out for a slightly-less-than 4%
per year pay increase over the three years of their contract.

I just got into a debate at the local YMCA gym with an older guy who
probably makes over $100,000 a year and whose children are already
grown, who was incensed that the "greedy bus and subway drivers" were
asking for a raise at this time "with the economy in such a mess."

But I also noticed, as I drove my son into school this week in the
traffic crush, that these same suburbanites are, for the most part,
continuing to drive to work one to a car. What a lack of creativity!

My wife, who frequently travels to Rome to do research, has on
several occasions landed in that city during one of its frequent
transit strikes. She reports that the people of this ancient city take
these job actions in stride, getting out their bicycles, taking
leisurely walks to school, or simply going on holiday for the duration.
People don't get mad at the workers. In Italy, it's understood that
when one group of workers fights for better pay or working conditions,
everyone benefits in the end.

This fellow I was arguing with about the Philly transit strike,
said, "It's not like this is the 1920s or '30s, when unions were really
needed because people were being exploited."

"Oh really?" I said. "You don't think the workers at Wal-Mart or in
your local supermarket are being exploited?" The truth is that working
conditions for American workers have been getting progressively worse
in recent years, while pay has actually been falling in real dollars,
because union representation has been falling for several decades from
a high of over 35% back in the early 1950s. Those unions, like the
transit workers union in Philadelphia, which are still fighting the
good fight, are really all that stands between ordinary American
workers and a truly nightmarish return to a Dickensian era.

Does anyone believe that the type of manager that we have seen
pillaging the economy on Wall Street, or stealing jobs and already
earned pay from workers at Republic Window & Door in Chicago, is an
exception to the rule? Hell no. American managers are congenitally
ruthless exploiters of human beings constrained only by unions or their
fear of unions, and by the protective legislation, such as minimum wage
laws, occupational safety and health laws, etc., which Congress has
grudgingly passed because of the pressure from unions and their workers.

We should all be cheering the workers of the Transport Workers Union
Local 234 in Philadelphia for their grit and determination in standing
up to the management of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation
Authority. Their fight is our fight. They like us are struggling to pay
rent or mortgage bills, to buy food for their families, and to pay
their medical bills.

Workers all around the Philadelphia area should be organizing
car-pools, getting their bikes out of the garage, and collectively
telling their own bosses to cut them some slack if they're late to work
or have to stay home for the day because of the strike.

We should also all be writing letters condemning the bias of the
local media in Philadelphia, which have as a group focused entirely on
the hardship to commuters caused by the strike, and not at all on the
issues confronted by the transit workers themselves.

Furthermore, it is not the fault of the SEPTA workers in
Philadelphia that bus and subway fares are too high. Nor is it their
responsibility to accept low wages to subsidize lower fares. It is the
responsibility of the state of Pennsylvania to keep those fares
affordable. Mass transit cannot and should not be self-financing. It is
a social good. It helps protect the environment by reducing air
pollution from cars, reduces wear and tear on roadways, and helps
reduce the nation's dependence upon oil imports.

Instead of complaining about the union for calling a strike, we
should all be cheering them on. America needs more labor militancy, not
less.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Failure by Design - The "Public" Option

MichaelCollins — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 03:28:28 -0500

Triumph of the Money Party

Michael Collins

Do you know
what the "public option" does or who it covers? If you've had trouble
finding out, it's not your fault. Reading the corporate media coverage
provides little or no clue. It's hardly ever defined. There's a very
good reason for the lack of clarity and definition. But first, a brief
summary or a public debate that characterizes just about every public
debate we have on critical issues.

If you think
that the current version of the public option will provide a choice for
a government administered health program, you're right. If you think
that this option was designed for the general public, then you're
wrong. It will apply to only the some of the uninsured, possibly as
few as six million citizens. It's a kind of public option.

But, if you
support true choice by the public, then you probably expect this as an
option: a single payer system for health care -- one source of payment
for doctors and others funded and administered by the government for
the public. Medicare is such a program. But we don't get to hear
about single payer proposals except from proponents like Representatives John Conyers (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), and Anthony Weiner (D-NY), who define single payer universal health care very clearly.

President Obama's outline of the public option in his September 9
speech to Congress is essentially unchanged in the current
legislation. The Democratic plan offers "a new insurance exchange" for
"Americans who don't currently have health insurance." This sounds
good so far, but wait. This exchange will be "a new insurance exchange
--a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to
shop." The option will be "available in the insurance exchange" and
"it would only be an option for those who don't have insurance." (See What Obama Actually Said About Health Reform)

It's not really public, it's for a small segment of the population, and it is any where from four to ten years out in full availability. This reflects the Oct. 29 House proposal, H.R. 3962, and some aspects of the latest Senate claims for a public option.. The entire effort, limited as it is, will be compromised from the very start since Congress linked public option provider reimbursement rates to those of the health insurance companies.

When
citizens see "Open to the public," they don't take that to mean only
some of the public. When land is set aside for "public use," does that
mean only 5% or 6 % of the public? All of this makes no sense unless
you accept the deliberately confusing definitions and assumptions of The Money Party.

Why would any member of the public think that they were excluded from a public option?

Why would those controlling the debate want us to think that?

Here's why. The findings in this poll strikes terror into the heart of The Money Party.

Link

The poll
shows a clear majority in favor of a single payer, universal health
care program as an option for all citizens. This poll is consistent with other polls
despite the confusion from Washington. In a fair debate, the health
insurance companies would get their clock cleaned and be out of
business within a year or two. But we're not allowed an open and fair
debate because the risk of vanishing corporations is never in The Money
Party's game plan. Their political bouncers just tossed us under the
bus.

The "Long Con" - How Things Work

"A
’short con’ is an opportunistic scam designed to instantly fleece the
victim of all the money they have with them at that time. On the other
hand, a long con takes much longer to execute and requires meticulous
planning in order to scam the victim out of much larger amounts of
money." Scam Types dot Com

The Money Party runs both short and long cons. When they weren't able to sell the Iraq invasion, the short con was: Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He's ready to use them … on you! Get on board now or else! That short con operated within the long con of perpetual threats and endless war.

The current
health reform debate is a classic long con. The debate is limited to
only those positions that will work for the status quo. If reform
fails, there's no change from the extortion perpetrated against
citizens in need of affordable health care. If reform is
adopted, the insurance companies are enshrined at the center of the
program. The fight is then over the size of the rake off. That's
called bending the curve of health care costs. Bend, don't break. It's a win-win proposition for The Money Party.

What do
legislators do when their patrons demand that an irrational and deadly
system remains in place? Confuse the dialog with weasel words and
highly deceptive terms. Keep the public thinking that they're really
going to benefit from a program and, better yet, that the opposition is
trying to prevent that benefit. Get party loyalists whipped up to
fight for your program even though it's a sham.

The current kind of public
option is essential to The Money Party's long con on health reform. It
allows people to think that there's a real debate going on. Someone is fighting for our option to choose decent and affordable health care.

It's all
part of the long con that limits critical debate to unacceptable
options advanced by allegedly differing parties. These debates always
end the same way -- the perpetuation of the major corporate interests,
the retention of those in power, and oligarchy; the triumph of The
Money Party:

"The Money Party
is a small group of enterprises and individuals who have most of the
money in this country. They use that money to make more money.
Controlling who gets elected to public office is the key to more money for them and less for us.

"In
every campaign for major office, the party passes out money and buys
candidates from both parties. Thanks to the candidates who get elected,
this pay to play system remains perfectly legal … even though it looks like bribery.

'In return for contributions, the election winners
come through by fixing the laws so that The Money Party cleans up. …
Cost is no object, because in the end it’s all paid for with our tax
dollars." Michael Collins: The Money Party, Sept. 30, 2007.

END

See: Special Health Reform Series: The Money Party and the sickness unto death

This article may be reproduced in whole or in part with attribution of authorship and a link to this web site.

Outrageous Thought of the Day: Nuclear Hypocrisy

dlindorff — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:47:22 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

How absurd is it that we have the government on the one hand
pulling back from using a hollowed out mountain in Nevada to store
nuclear waste because of a fear (legitimate I grant) that hundreds or
thousands of years hence, some earthquake or other catastrophe could
cause the stored waste to leak into the water table, while on the other
hand we have this same government deliberately taking some of the most
dangerous waste--the actual uranium from the used fuel rods--and
putting it into bombs, shells and bullets to be splattered and burned
all across the landscape?

And I should note that it's not just remote places like Iraq and
Kuwait and Afghanistan that are being covered in super toxic and
radioactive uranium dust--and I'm not just talking about the stuff that
gets picked up in the wind and carried around the globe, or the stuff
that gets inhaled by our troops and carried home internally, bad enough
as that is.

The truth is that depleted uranium weapons are being exploded and
burned right here in the USA in training operations. The center of
Hawaii's Big Island, for example, which is a military zone, is heavily
contaminated by DU ammunition fired by tanks there. The same is true of
Vieques Island, long a favored target for the Navy, which for years has
fired DU shells from its ships at the populated island, and also
launched DU-tipped missiles and dropped DU-loaded "bunker-buster" bombs
at it.

While I don't have direct knowledge, I'd say it's a safe bet that
there are a number of sites on the Mainland US where DU munitions have
also been widely used--maybe White Sands Proving Ground the Marine
training area near Joshua Tree National Monument in Southern
California, or other such training and testing areas.

The simple truth is that our own government, besides committing an
ongoing atrocity in the Middle East, is also poisoning our own country
with uranium oxide.

Our Nobel Peace Prize president should take note. President John F.
Kennedy reportedly moved to halt open air testing of nuclear weapons
after looking at the rain falling outside the window of the Oval Office
and asking a science advisor whether it was delivering nuclear fallout
to his front lawn (he was told that it was). Maybe President Obama
should consider that the rain today is delivering uranium dust to his
wife's and daughters' garden in the back yard of the White House. At
least he should take a look at pictures of the horribly deformed babies
being born to mothers in Iraq (and of the lucky babies that are
stillborn), thanks to the radioactive warfare that the US military has
been employing against both that country and Afghanistan--his
"necessary" war.

There is another irony here too. The US is expressing concern about
Iran enriching uranium, and possibly creating a nuclear bomb, which in
the unlikely event that it were ever used, might spread some
radioactivity around parts of the Middle east, yet it is the US which
already has spread 2000 or more tons of uranium dust all over Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 18 years--far more than any small Iranian bomb could release.

________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book is
"The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Depleted Uranium Weapons: The Dead Babies in Iraq and Afghanistan Are No Joke

dlindorff — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:08:18 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The horrors of the US Agent Orange defoliation campaign in Vietnam, about which I wrote on Oct. 15,
could ultimately be dwarfed by the horrors caused by the depleted
uranium weapons which the US began using in the 1991 Gulf War (300
tons), and which it has used much more extensively--and in more urban,
populated areas--in the Iraq War and the now intensifying Afghanistan
War.

Depleted uranium, despite its rather benign-sounding name, is not
depleted of radioactivity or toxicity. The term “depleted” refers only
to its being depleted of the U-235 isotope needed for fission reactions
in nuclear reactors. The nuclear waste material from nuclear power
plants, DU as it is known, is what is removed from the power plants’
spent fuel rods and is essentially composed of the uranium isotope
U-238 as well as U-236 (a product of nuclear reactor fission, not found
in nature), as well as other trace radioactive elements. Once simply a
nuisance for the industry, that still has no permanent way to dispose
of the dangerous stuff, it turns out to be an ideal metal for a number
of weapons uses, and has been capitalized on by the Pentagon. 1.7 times
heavier than lead, and much harder than steel, and with the added
property of burning at a super-hot temperature, DU has proven to be an
ideal penetrator for warheads that need to pierce thick armor or dense
concrete bunkers made of reinforced concrete and steel. Once through
the defenses, it burns at a temperature that incinerates anyone inside
(which is why we see the carbonized bodies of bodies in the wreckage of
Iraqi tanks hit by US fire). Accordingly it has found its way into 30
mm machine gun ammunition, especially that used by the A-10 Warthog
ground-attack fighter planes used extensively in Iraq and Afghanistan
(as well as Kosovo). It is also the warhead of choice for Abrams tanks
and is also reportedly used in GBU-28 and the later GBU-37 bunker
buster bombs, each of which can have 1-2 tons of the stuff in its
warhead. DU is also used as ballast in cruise missiles, and this burns
up when a missile detonates its conventional explosive. Some cruise
missiles are also designed to hit hardened targets and reportedly
feature DU warheads, as does the AGM-130 air-to-ground missile, which
carries a one-ton penetrating warhead. In addition, depleted uranium is
used in large quantities in the armor of tanks and other equipment.
This material becomes a toxic source of CU pollution when these
vehicles are attacked and burned.

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific
evidence, that there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops
in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these
weapons have been used—destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers,
etc.—and to wear masks if they do have to approach. Many torched
vehicles have been brought back to the US, where they have been buried
in special sites reserved for dangerously contaminated nuclear
materials. (Thousands of tons of DU-contaminated sand from Kuwait,
polluted with DU during the US destruction of Iraq’s tank forces in the
1991 war, were removed and shipped to a waste site in Idaho last year
with little fanfare.) Suspiciously, international health officials have
been prevented or obstructed from doing medical studies of DU sites in
Iraq and Afghanistan. But an excellent series of articles several years
ago by the Christian Science Monitor
described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites in
Iraq with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely “hot” with
radioactivity.

The big danger with DU is not as a pure metal, but after it has
exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are
just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or ingested.
Even the smallest particle of uranium in the body is both deadly
poisonous as a chemical, and over time can cause cancer—particularly in
the lungs, but also the kidneys, testes and ovaries.

There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of
deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons
were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US
Marines. The British TV station SKY UK, in a report last month that has
received no mention in any mainstream American news organization, found
a marked increase in birth defects at local hospitals. Birth defects
have also been high for years in the Basra area in the south of Iraq,
where DU was used not just during America’s 2003 “shock and awe” attack
on Iraq, but also in the 1991 Gulf War.

Further, a report sent to the UN General Assembly by Dr Nawal
Majeed Al-Sammarai, Iraq’s Minister of Women’s Affairs since 2006,
stated that in September 2009, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 babies
born, 24% of which died within their first week of life. Worse yet,
fully 75% of the babies born that month were deformed. This compares to
August 2002, six months before the US invasion, when 530 live births
were reported with only six dying in the first week, and only one
deformity. Clearly something terrible is happening in Fallujah, and
many doctors suspect it’s the depleted uranium dust that is permeating
the city.

But the real impact of the first heavy use of depleted uranium
weaponry in populous urban environments (DU was used widely especially
in 2003 in Baghdad, Samara, Mosul and other big Iraqi cities), will
come over the years, as the toxic legacy of this latest American war
crime begins to show up in rising numbers of cancers, birth defects and
other genetic disorders in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, as in the case of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the toxic
effects of this latest battlefield use of toxic materials by the US
military will also be felt for years to come by the men and women who
were sent over to fight America’s latest wars. As with Agent Orange,
the Pentagon and the Veterans Affairs Department have been assiduously
denying the problem, and have been just as assiduously denying claims
by veterans of the Gulf War and the two current wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan who claim their cancers and other diseases have anything to
do with their exposure to DU.

The record on Agent Orange should lead us to be suspicious of the government’s claims.

The deformed and dead babies in Iraq should make us demand a
cleanup of Iraq and Afghanistan, medical aid for the victims, and a ban
on all depleted uranium weapons.
________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
work is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work
is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Anger Management

thomasblack — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:40:17 -0400

Lets push congress to require all far wingers to enroll in anger management. Never has so much hate surfaced in such a short time. I am seriously concerned for the well being of both the president and many in the congress as well. I do not believe anyone has the right to incite people to do harm to anyone because of their political beliefs. Lets try to stop the hate before it overcomes us all.

'My Fellow Americans...': The Speech President Obama Should Give to Congress Next Week

dlindorff — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:20:48 -0400

As imagined by Dave Lindorff

My Fellow Americans.

I stand before you a chastened president. I made a mistake. Two mistakes really. (wild applause from Republican side)

I thought that Congress could do its job and through the
deliberative process, produce a health care reform plan that would win
broad support across the aisle and among all of you. But I’m afraid
that I was wrong. Health care is an enormous industry—maybe the biggest
and most powerful industry in the country—and it has far too much power
in Washington. Literally thousands of lobbyists, carrying tens of
billions of dollars in campaign contributions—have invaded these halls (and my house!) (relieved laughter)
and distorted the process, and in the end have stymied reform. (some hissing)

Meanwhile, I have realized that the answer has been staring us in the face all along.

And that was my second mistake. I told the American Medical
Association that while single-payer medical plans, where the government
is the insurer, might work well in other countries, the idea of
government running health care was not part of our American tradition.
In fact, it is, and has been since 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson
signed into law the Medicare program. Medicare is a single-payer
program, and polls and surveys show it is enormously popular with older
and disabled Americans. Medicare has relieved our parents and
grandparents from the fear that they will not get medical care when
they stop working, and it has lifted the enormous burden and worry off
of younger Americans over how to pay for the care of their elders, and
it has done this with enormous efficiency, all while allowing
recipients to choose their own doctors and hospitals. (applause)

So we really don’t need to re-invent the wheel here. There is no
point in members of Congress having to hold endless hearings, and to
sit and listen to the pitches of lobbyists from the medical
establishment. We can just expand Medicare to cover everyone. (applause)

How much would that cost? Well, we know that 10% of the elderly—the
oldest and sickest among us--account for 50% of total Medicare costs,
so that means the other 90% only cost some $200 billion a year. Even if
we assumed that the rest of the population’s medical bills were as high
as those 90% or older Americans, it would mean that expanding Medicare
to cover them would cost less than $1 trillion a year, and probably
closer to $750 billion. So roughly speaking, we’re talking about adding
$750 billion a year to the cost of Medicare.

Now that’s a big number, and I know that some of you—a lot of
you—worry about higher taxes. But let me assure you, expanding Medicare
to cover everyone is going to save you money—virtually
everyone. Let’s look at why that is, and why you cannot just look at
the federal tax when you consider those savings.

Today, the United States spends nearly 20 percent of GDP on health
care. That is more than double what any other country in the world
spends on health care. And you know what? We don’t get our moneys’
worth for all that dough. Canadians, who spend half that percentage of
their GDP on health care, and who have what amounts to Medicare for all
with their single-payer system (they call it Medicare too), have longer
lifespans and better infant mortality statistics than we do. In fact,
Cuba and Mexico have better child health statistics than we do!

By the way, I want to introduce, in the gallery, Shirley Jean
Douglass, whose father, Tommy Douglass, was the founder of Canada’s
Medicare program. We will be consulting closely with experts and
administrators of Canada’s Medicare program as we move forward with our
own reform. (applause)

Now I've been accused of lecturing (laughs and applause),
and I don’t want to sound like a college professor here, but let me
just highlight a few reasons why simply expanding Medicare to cover all
of us makes not just moral, but also economic sense. If we were to make
that change, we could immediately eliminate the Medicaid program, which
as you know is funded by the states, and costs them (and you) about
$400 billion a year, mostly to cover low-income families and
individuals. Now that money would not be totally eliminated, because
Medicare currently doesn’t cover all health care costs—just 80%. And
Medicaid covers the remaining 20% for those elderly and disabled people
who cannot afford to pay for Medi-Gap private plans--something the government would continue to do with an expanded plan. Even so,
eliminating Medicaid for the poor, who would be switched to Medicare,
would save at least $300 billion. We could also eliminate the Veterans
Administration—which incidentally is an excellent example of true
government healthcare, with publicly owned hospitals and doctors on
salary, and it runs very well and very efficiently.

Something those folks at last month’s town meetings who were saying government can’t do anything right should think about. (wild applause from Democratic side)

Sorry. I just had to say that. (more applause)

Anyhow, eliminating the VA would save another $100 billion so we’ve
already saved more than half the amount that was added to the cost of
Medicare in order to cover everyone. (applause)

But there are far more savings.

One of the biggest would be the elimination of about $300 billion
that is spent each year by hospitals and doctors to provide care to
people with no insurance who end up in hospital emergency rooms. The
cost of this “charity care” is factored into higher hospital and
physician bills, and ultimately into higher insurance premiums paid by
the rest of us. Since all those people would now be covered by
Medicare, that expense would vanish.

American companies currently pay about $25 billion a year in workers
compensation insurance—money that ultimately comes out of workers’
paychecks. That would no longer be necessary, because people injured on
the job would be covered by Medicare. (smattering of applause, mostly from Republican side)

Car insurance rates would be dramatically lower, because car
insurance would no longer have to pay for medical costs following an
accident. The same is true for homeowners insurance, which would no
longer have to cover the costs of someone being injured on your
property. (applause from Pennsylvania delegation, with among highest car insurance rates in the nation)

And of course, the biggest savings of all—about $3000 per person or
$12,000 per family every year—namely the cost of private insurance
premiums paid by you and/or your employer, would be gone. Think about
that a minute: no more co-pays, no more annual deductibles, no more
employee share of insurance premiums for yourself or your family. And
for businesses that provide health care coverage, a huge savings that
will make them more competitive in the global marketplace, and that
will also allow them to pay higher wages to their employees. (prolonged applause)

Oh, and there is one other huge, if unquantifiable savings to
consider. If everyone has Medicare, the total cost of health care will
go down dramatically, because everyone will be getting timely
treatment, instead of having to put of exams and early treatment of
illness or injury. And no one will suffer the terrible anxiety or
worrying about whether they can pay for health care for themselves and
their families.

So yes, your Medicare withholding will be perhaps 25% higher if we
expand Medicare to cover everyone. That tax is currently set at 2.9%
for you and 2.9% for your employer, so it would go up to about 0.75% of
your paycheck. For someone earning $600 a week, that would represent an
increased deduction of about $4.50 a week. For someone earning $1200 a
week, it would be an increased deduction of $9. That is a pretty good
deal for not having to pay for insurance coverage any more, wouldn’t
you agree? (applause, plus some boos from largely silent Republican side)

Now for you folks already receiving Medicare, there have been a lot
of scare stories out there, some of them being promoted by some
irresponsible people right in this chamber (pause for applause and nervous laughter), suggesting that if we expand health care coverage, it will come off of your benefits. Don’t you believe it! (applause)

We live in a democracy, and when a lot of people want something, or
benefit from something, they collectively defend that particular thing.
In the case of Medicare, if everyone is receiving it, and receiving it
in the same manner as everyone else, that creates a huge voting bloc in
favor of defending that benefit, so by expanding Medicare to all, we
would be creating a powerful political force that will defend Medicare
from attack, just as the universality of Social Security has made that
program bullet-proof (something my predecessor learned when he tried to
promote the idea of privatizing it). (wild applause from Democratic side)

So here’s the deal.

I’m admitting it was the wrong move to try to lay it on your poor
folks in Congress come up with some completely new, complicated reform
our existing health care system—if you can even call it that. My good
friend and former colleague in this building, Chairman John Conyers,
had it right all along: We have a great system that we just need to
expand to cover everyone.

So to get it started, I’m going to send Congress a couple of bills.
One would immediately shift everyone eligible for Medicaid over to
Medicare. I’m calling this the States' Medical Cost Relief and Medicare
Expansion Act. It will not only begin the process of expanding
Medicare, but will provide badly needed financial relief to states that
are suffering from declining tax revenues and rising health care costs
because of the recession. (applause)

I will also send Congress a bill that will expand Medicare coverage to all Americans and to legal residents. (applause, some boos from Republicans)

I am sure that as financially sound as this change is, there will
be opposition from the medical industry, so let me add that this is,
for me, a moral imperative too. For too long, this great country has
allowed health care to be a matter of whether or not you had a job with
health benefits, or enough money to pay for insurance yourself. That is
unacceptable. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and just as we
believe that every child needs an education, we believe that everyone
deserves to have access to quality medical care. (loud applause)

So let me add this: If Congress does not pass these two bills by
the end of the current session, in time for the holiday recess in
December, I will declare a national emergency because of the recession
and the huge rise in the uninsured that it has caused, and will issue
executive orders implementing both these measures. It’s not the way I
would prefer to see things done, but if Congress cannot act, I promise
you and the American people, I will. (applause and boos)

Let me also say that this program is a priority for me and for all
Americans, and anyone—Republican or Democrat—who gets in the way can
expect to hear from me, and from the American people, in this coming
election year. (applause)

Thank you and good night. (applause)
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is not a speechwriter for the president. He is,
however, the author of “Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the
For-Profit Hospital Chains” (Bantam Books, 1992). His work is available
at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Obama's Narrowing Window of Opportunity

dlindorff — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:23:38 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The way I see it, President Obama has a couple of months to turn his failing administration around.

The war in Afghanistan is going south, and within a couple of weeks,
his General William Westmoreland, Gen. Stanley McCrystal, will be
coming to him asking for more troops. Things are getting hairier in
Iraq too.

His signature health care initiative is foundering, with Republicans working in lockstep to see to it that it fails.

Pressure is mounting for an honest probe into the criminality of the
prior administration in its authorization and promotion of torture
against captives--most of them innocent--in the Bush/Cheney "war" on
terror.

The stock market, which by climbing back 50% from its collapse and
the bottom it hit on March 9, gave the president a breather, is showing
signs of exhaustion, and is likely to start sinking again, as investors
realize that there is no end in sight for the recession in the real
economy.

If all this continues into December, which is after all only a
couple of months away, Congress will go into recess, and when it
returns, it will be an election year, with all House seats up for
grabs, and a third of the Senate also facing re-election. Republicans
will be in an all-out campaign to reduce the Democratic majorities in
both houses, with history on their side (in almost every off-year
election, the party of new presidents lose support both houses of
Congress).

So, what's the president got to do?

First, he needs to announce a bold peace initiative in Afghanistan.
He should reject the call for more troops, and instead call for a
regional peace conference--one that would include all the neighborhing
countries around Afghanistan, and most significantly, the Taliban. At
such a conference, he should arrange for a new government of national
unity that includes the Taliban, and then get the hell out of the
country. Obama can declare victory if he wants, but the main thing is
to get out. Ditto for Iraq, where the US is still viewed as an occupier
and is going to be forced out eventually. There is no reason to stay
another day.

Second, he should declare the disfunctional and industry-polluted
health reform plans in Congress dead and simply announce that by
executive order, he is lowering the age for Medicare to 55, and is
switching all Medicaid patients in the country over to Medicare (with
the intention of lowering that age by five years ever year until all
are covered), and shutting down the Medicaid program. He should then
submit a bill to Congress establishing a government-owned insurance
company, open to all, with no restrictions on its ability to set
pricing and reimbursement rates or to negotiate discounts from
hospitals, doctors and pharmacy companies. Or alternatively, the bill
could enable anyone to simply buy into Medicare. He should tell
Democrats and Republicans alike that any member of Congress who votes
against that bill will not see any bill with her or his name on it get
his signature in his remaining years in office. The government company
would be phased out once Medicare covered everyone.

Finally, the president needs to announce that he is sickened by the
information he has received about the prior administration's torture
program, and that he is encouraging his attorney general to fully
investigate it, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law anyone,
no matter how high up in the military or in government, who authorized
torture or who covered it up.

Congress could be expected to howl at the use of an executive order
to expand Medicare, but the president could declare a national health
emergency as justification, saying the recession had thrown too many
people off of health insurance, and that as well, states were in dire
fiscal shape and laying off workers because of the increased Medicaid
burden.

Removing older workers from employers' health insurance plans would
be a huge shot in the arm for struggling companies, as they are the
biggest users of health care. Lifting the $400 billion cost of Medicare
from state governments would free up money to prevent the layoff of
state and local employees, which is threatening to stifle economic
recovery.

Republicans can be expected to denounce the president for going
after the Bush/Cheney administration on torture, but most Americans at
this point are becoming aware of the damage that the policy has caused
to the country's international reputation, and to the soldiers in the
field.

Many people would also howl about bringing the troops home from
Afghanistan, and Iraq, but the truth is that the vast majority of
Americans are sick of both wars and would welcome an end to them.

The key to all these moves, however, is that Obama needs to explain
them not in terms of saving money, but as being the right thing to do.
Health care reform has to be presented as a moral imperative, not as a
money saver (even though covering everyone with Medicare would be a
huge net savings for everyone in the country). Ending America's foreign
wars would be a huge savings, but the real reason to do it is that the
US has no business being a global cop and imperialist occupier. And
prosecuting torture is essential if the US is to be a nation of laws.
You wouldn't know it to listen to the jaded pundits in the corporate
media, but in my experience, most Americans are basically decent
people, and would like to be citizens of a country that did decent
things, not just things that could be justified as making "economic
sense."

I'm not expecting any of this to happen, of course. This president
has shown repeatedly and convincingly that he is a creature of the
Establishment, not given to any bold initiatives or to challenges to
the status quo. I'm just saying that these are steps that could salvage
his presidency--a presidency that is seeming increasingly doomed. The
corollary is that if he doesn't do these things, he will find himself
with a diminished majority in November, 2010, a reinvigorated
Republican opposition, a tanked economy, an angry electorate (including
a lot of pissed off former supporters), and, basically, nothing to show
for his whole presidency come 2012.

And to top it off, for failing to prosecute Bush/Cheney torture, he
could well find himself subject to arrest abroad should he decide to
travel a bit once he is ousted from office in January 2013.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book
is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

American Justice Is Not Blind, It's Sick

dlindorff — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 13:45:32 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Federal District Court
Judge Fernando Gaitan of the Missouri Western District Court have at
least two things in common: they are both appointees of President
Ronald Reagan, and they both think it’s just fine for the US to execute
innocent people. The same can be said for Judge C. Arlen Beam of the
8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a recent dissent in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling ordering a habeas
hearing in federal court for South Carolina death row inmate Troy
Anthony Davis, a man slated to die after being convicted for the murder
of an off-duty Savannah police officer, Scalia wrote, “This court has
never held that the constitution forbids the execution of a convicted
defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to
convince a habeas court that he is `actually’ innocent.”

For his part, Judge Gaitan, in Missouri, had two shots at
considering the case of Joseph Amrine, a death-row inmate slated to die
for the killing of a fellow prisoner in a Missouri state prison. Amrine
(see my article Dead Man Walking Home
in Salon, May 1, 2003) had been convicted of the knife slaying on the
basis of the testimony of three alleged eyewitnesses—all of them fellow
prisoners. When two of those witnesses later recanted (suggesting that
it was the third witness who had actually been the killer), Judge
Gaitan rejected the habeas appeal, arguing that the two recantations
couldn’t be believed, because the third witness had not changed his
testimony. Later, when the third witness also recanted, Amrine’s
attorney brought the case back to Judge Gaitan, but this time, the
Judge again rejected the appeal, claiming that none of the witnesses
was credible “because they are all criminals.” (Which of course begs
the question of why Amrine should have been convicted in the first
place based upon the testimony of the same three witnesses.).

Amrine didn’t get any help from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals,
which is also apparently packed with Scalia-like vampires. A
three-judge panel on that court, which included Reagan-appointee Judge
Beam, as well as Clinton appointee Diane E Murphy and George H. W. Bush
appointee Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold, unanimously upheld Judge Gaitan
declaring that even if the three recantations might suggest Amrine was
innocent, he could not get a new hearing or trial because his attorneys
should have been able to discover the evidence earlier through “due
diligence.” The judges, in rejecting Amrine’s appeal, wrote that, “even
though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact, it
would have weighed the evidence differently,” an appellate court had to
defer to the determination regarding credibility of recanting witnesses
made by a lower court judge.

That is, procedural issues and rules trump facts, even in a death penalty case.

Happily for Troy Davis, a frighteningly narrow majority on the US
Supreme Court disagreed with Justice Scalia’s view of the Constitution.
Happily for Amrine, who is now a free man, the Missouri State Supreme
Court disagreed with both Judge Gaitan and the 8th Circuit Court of
Appeals panel, concluding that "a showing of actual innocence acts as a
'gateway' that entitles the prisoner to review on the merits of the
prisoner's otherwise defaulted constitutional claim."

Justice Scalia’s pinched view of the Constitution is that if it
ain’t written down in the document, it doesn’t exist. So even though
there is a clear outlawing in the Constitution against “cruel and
unusual” punishment, he purports to be unable to see how that could be
construed to include being executed for a crime you did not commit.

It should sicken every American that our judicial system could
condone execution of people that even the judges themselves concede are
likely or even certainly innocent, because of procedural rules and
politically imposed deadlines and appeals limitations, such as those
imposed by former President Bill Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism and Effective
Death Penalty Act, passed in 1995 in the hysteria following the
Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building.

I once had the grisly experience, back in 1995, of watching several
doomed men being carted off by armed police in the back of a flat-bed
truck for a date with a bullet to the back of the head on the execution
in Xian China. I remember thinking at the time what a monstrous and
uncivilized act this was. The trials in China are in name only, with
the verdict pre-ordained, and any appeals, if they happen, perfunctory.

Yet how different are things here in the US? There is the same
bloodthirsty slathering for public execution by the ghouls on the
right, the same quiescence among the broader population. There is,
perhaps one difference, and that is the political pandering to the
death-obsessed by politicians who should know better. Those
Reagan-appointed judges—Scalia, Gaitan and Beam—and the many like them
on federal and state benches across the country, were appointed
precisely because they wanted to grease the skids to the execution
chamber, and President Reagan, like Nixon before him and the Bushes
after him, have made advocacy of state-sanctioned execution a lynch-pin
of their campaign efforts. But President Clinton was no different. He
cut short his campaign for president so he could rush home to Arkansas
to sign the execution warrant for a mentally impaired man, and later,
pushed through the EDP Act to make appeals of death-row inmates much
more difficult.

President Obama is not much better. While he has not yet signed on
to any efforts to make executions easier, neither has he acted, as
president, to correct the current abysmal situation, which has seen
many people spend years or even decades on death rows, often coming
within days or hours or even minutes of execution before finally being
found innocent, and which has surely led to many executions of innocent
people over the years. Disturbingly, Obama has use the argument of
“public vengeance” to justify the death penalty, writing in his memoir,
that while he believes the death penalty "does little to deter crime,"
he nonetheless supports it for crimes "so heinous, so beyond the pale,
that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its
outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment."

Surely Obama is smart enough to recognize that when a community is
so enraged, that is precisely when the fairness of a trial becomes
hardest to assure, and thus, when the chance of a wrongful conviction
becomes the most likely. And yet he finds it safer to politically
pander to those base instincts for vengeance.

At times like these, I am sorry I’m an atheist. It would be nice to
think that there would be some special grim level of hell in store for
the likes of Justice Scalia, Judge Gaitan, and Judges Beam, Arnold and
Murphy—perhaps a row of cells from which they would be marched every
few days to be strapped onto gurneys and administered an intravenous
death potion, or into electric chairs through which a surge of high
voltage would be sent, only to return to their cells for another round
of waiting. Also for the likes of Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, the Bushes
and, yes, Obama, who would be case before howling mobs of the wrongly
executed, who would call for their execution, after which they could be
marched off to the same fate over and over.

Unfortunately, there is no such divine justice. Only the hope that
one day, a more civilized and compassionate public will demand better
of itself, its political leaders, and its judges.

There is no greater crime than the killing by the state of an
innocent person, and yet, in America, such atrocities are not just
happening, they are condoned by judges in the highest court of the land.
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of
“Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia
Abu-Jamal,” (Common Courage Press, 2003) and more recently of “The Case
for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Agent Orange Causes Media Blindness

dlindorff — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 14:35:34 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Agent Orange, the herbicide used as a weapon by US military forces
in Vietnam for nearly a decade to defoliate vast stretches of inhabited
forest and jungle in an effort to deprive the Viet Cong and North
Vietnamese forces of both cover and a supportive populace, has long
been known to have caused a large number of serious and debilitating
diseases, many of them passed on to children of those exposed. But now
it also appears to cause a peculiar blindness among American
journalists.

This is demonstrably the case at the New York Times, where a report in Saturday’s edition on new Agent Orange links
being found to Parkinson’s Disease and ischemic heart disease noted
that it could lead to many more Vietnam War Era veterans being eligible
for disability benefits and treatment, but completely failed to mention
the significance of the discovery for the millions of Vietnamese who
were also exposed to the chemical—and for their descendants.

The new link was announced in a report by a 14-member committee of
the Institute of Medicine, which had been asked to determine what
conditions might be traced to exposure to the chemical that had been
“used to clear stretches of the jungle” in Vietnam. As the article
noted, since 1994, the Institute of Medicine has to date found 17
medical conditions that can be traced to exposure to Agent Orange, “13
of which qualify veterans for service-connected disability benefits.”

There’s a lot wrong with this article, as written by Times
reporter Janie Lorber (though admittedly we can’t know what is her
responsibility and what is the handiwork of the newspaper’s editors)...

For the rest of this story, please go to: www.thiscantbehappening.net

____________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book
is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

On Torture and War, Obama Sounds Increasingly, and Disturbingly, Like Bush

dlindorff — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:46:31 -0400

by Dave Lindorff

In reversing himself and declaring that the US government will not release further photos in its possession of torture being practiced on captives held by the US military and the CIA, President Obama is sounding increasingly like the Bush/Cheney administration before him.

It may well be that, as Obama says, release of those photos could lead to anger in the Islamic world and perhaps to recruitment gains among groups like Al Qaeda that are attacking American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, but this is only true because at the same time, the Obama administration is opposing taking any legal action against the people who authorized and promoted that torture.

If the Obama administration were to open a full-scale legal investigation into torture, with an independent prosecutor assigned to go after anyone who violated the Geneva Conventions and the US Criminal Code outlawing torture and the authorization, condoning or covering-up of torture, quite the opposite would happen: people in the Islamic world would see that this nation was coming to terms with those who abused the law.

As things stand, we have a only few people at the very bottom of the chain of command who are doing jail time or suffering administrative punishments for committing acts of torture and abuse which they believed had been ordered and authorized by leaders in the military, the Secretary of Defense's office, and the White House, but not one of those in authority who set the torture of captives in motion has been called to justice. Obama has endorsed that situation by again referring to the torture as just the actions of "a few people."

It was hardly that, however, and he knows it. Torture was a major part of the Bush/Cheney so-called "War" on Terror, and was being conducted on an industrial scale, with White House lawyers providing legal cover, the Secretary of Defense sending memos urging every more aggressive techniques, and government doctors and psychologists working assiduously to make them more "effective."

The illogic of Obama's position on these photos is stunning. Since we know the photos exist, the refusal to make them public can only feed a sense that they must be worse than the horrific photos of torture at Abu Ghraib Prison which were already released. Nobody is going to assume that the photos in the White House's possession are less offensive than what has already been discovered and made public--for why would the administration be worried about that?

The truth is always better than a cover-up, and what we now have the president advocating is a cover-up of American torture.

But that's only part of the president's slide into Cheneyism. We have the president now calling for the possible indefinite detention of terror suspects--an idea that only insures that there will always be an incentive for recruiting more terrorists (to avenge those in captivity)--and that makes a joke of our own Constitution, which guarantees everyone--not just citizens--the right to a trial, the right to a presumption of innocence, and protection from "cruel and unusual punishment," which indefinite detention certainly is.

The war in Afghanistan, which now must be called Obama's War, thanks to his policy of escalation, is also becoming Cheneyesque, with the firing of Gen. David McKiernan, and his replacement as head of the Afghanistan War by Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Gen. McChrystal hails from the Special Forces, and played a role in the torture that was integral to the US war and occupation in Iraq. Far from being put in charge of operations in Afghanistan, where public backing for the US military is virtually non-existent at this point, McChrystal should be facing investigation and possible prosecution here at home for his role in torture of captives.

It has never made sense to initiate a war in Afghanistan in order to go after a band of criminal terrorists hidiing out in the mountains. Bush and Cheney turned what should have been a focused hunt for Al Qaeda terrorists into a war on the Taliban government and ultimately the people of Afghanistan. Obama has continued that error, and now blithely hyphenates the terms Al Qaeda and Taliban in defining the "enemy" of American forces in that country.

Such a war can never be won, and can only lead to tragedy, not just for the people of Afghanistan, for whom it is already that, but for American troops and ultimately for America itself.

It is a war that never should have been fought, and which now should be ended as rapidly as possible.

Obama at this point, by covering up for official torture, and by signing on to and expanding the war in Afghanistan, is dooming his presidency, further staining the reputation of the United States, and ultimately furthering the decline of the country that was set in motion by his predecessors.

____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net