Health

Pentagon Dirty Bombers: Depleted Uranium in the USA

dlindorff — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:27:12 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The Nuclear Regulator Commission will be holding hearings tomorrow
and Wednesday in Hawaii on an application by the US Army for a permit
to have depleted uranium at its Pohakuloa Training Area, a vast stretch
of flat land in what’s called the “saddle” between the sacred mountains
of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on Hawaii’s Big Island, and at the Schofield
Barracks on the island of Oahu. In fact, what the Army is asking for is
a permit to leave in place the DU left over from years of test firing
of M101 mortar “spotting rounds,” that each contained close to half a
pound of depleted uranium (DU). The Army, which originally denied that
any DU weapons had been used at either location, now says that as many
as 2000 rounds of M101 DU mortars might have been fired at Pohakuloa
alone.

But that’s only a small part of the story.

The Army is actually seeking a master permit from the NRC to cover
all the sites where it has fired DU weapons, including penetrator
shells that, unlike the M101, are designed to hit targets and burn on
impact, turning the DU in the warhead into a fine dust of uranium oxide.

Depleted-uranium tipped M101 "spotting round" for Davy Crockett mortar

Uranium particles, whether pure uranium or in an oxidized form, are
alpha emitters, and can be highly carcinogenic and mutagenic if
ingested or inhaled, since they can lodge in one part of the body—the
kidney or lung or gonad, for example—and then irradiate surrounding
cells with large, destructive alpha particles (actually helium atoms),
until some gene is compromised and a cell become malignant.

Among the sites identified by the NRC as being contaminated with DU are:

Ft. Hood, TX
Ft. Benning, GA
Ft. Campbell, KY
Ft. Knox, KY
Ft. Lewis, WA
Ft. Riley, KS
Aberdeen Proving Grounds, MD
Ft. Dix, NJ
Makua Military Reservation, HI

Other locations identified as having DU weapons contamination are:

China Lake Air Warfare Center, CA
Eglin AFB, Florida,
Nellis AFB, NV
Davis-Monthan AFB
Kirkland AFB, NM
White Sands Missile Range, NM
Ethan Allen Firing Range, VT
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

An application for a 99-year permit to test DU weapons at the NM
Inst. Of Mining and Technology claimed that that site’s test area was
“so contaminated with DU…as to preclude any other use”!

DU weapons have also been used by the Navy at Vieques Island off Puerto Rico (the Navy claimed it was a “mistake.”

The Pentagon continues a long history of claiming that DU is not
dangerous, although this official stance is belied by the warnings it
has given to its troops (though not to civilians in battle zones), to
stay well clear of tanks and other equipment destroyed by US tanks,
which used DU weapons as the ordnance of choice in both the Gulf War
and the current Iraq War. During both wars, DU ammunition was used by
Army and Marine tanks, by the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the A-10 ground
support jet, the Marine Harrier jet, and specially equipped F16 fighter
jets. The Navy also switched from DU ammunition to tungsten ammunition
in its Phalanx anti-missile ship defense system because of health and
environmental concerns with the DU ammo.

The Pentagon denies that it uses depleted uranium in bombs, missiles
and cruise missile warheads, but military personnel have reported their
use in all three delivery systems, and reports exist of DU
bunker-buster bombs, DU-tipped penetrator warheads on Tomahawk cruise
missiles and on some air-to-ground missiles.

It’s a good bet that all US munitions containing DU have been widely tested at various US military bases and testing grounds.

The bottom line is that at the same time that US government is
continuing to warn about the danger of terrorists acquiring the
materials to make a “dirty” bomb that could spread radioactive material
in the US, the US military has for years been doing exactly that, and
continues to do so, with no intention to clean up its messes, many of
which are allowing depleted uranium to percolate into ground water or
flow down streams to more populated areas.

Of course, it could have been worse. The M101 mortar that litters
Pohakuloa was actually designed as a range-finder for the Davy Crocket
mortar, which back in the late 1950s and the 1960s was designed to
allow infantry troops to fire a small “tactical” nuclear mortar shell
at targets just five miles distant. Some 700 of these “little nukes”,
that had a power of “just” several kilotons or less, were made and
actually made their way into the arsenals of troops in Europe and
elsewhere during the Cold War. Fortunately there are no reports of any
of them having been fired off at any of the military’s firing ranges.

Then again, the Pentagon doesn’t exactly have a sterling record
about telling the truth where nuclear weapons and DU weapons are
concerned.

Nor is the NRC to be relied on to protect the American public. As an
administrative judge wrote in a ruling on a case involving DU
contamination at Jefferson Proving Ground in Indiana, the NRC exhibited
a “more than casual attitude with regard to decommissioning of sites on
which radioactive materials remain as a potential threat to public
health and safety and to the environment.”

In another case, involving cleanup of the ShieldAlloy Metallurgical
Corp.’s site in Newfield, NJ, where DU weapons were made, a judge said,
“at the very least, the (NRC) staff has countenanced…a situation that
will leave the citizens in the area surrounding the activity site in
doubt for close to two decades regarding what measures will ultimately
be taken for their protection.”
_________________

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

A Safe Substitute for Alcohol

davidswanson — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:44:08 -0400

By David Swanson

The U.S. Department of Justice says that alcohol plays a pivotal role in two-thirds of all cases of violence against an intimate (a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend), and blames alcohol for contributing to 100,000 sexual assaults against young people every year. That's right, alcohol hurts more people than al Qaeda.

Of course, alcohol does not always lead every consumer of it to violence. Most people who drink alcohol don't hurt anyone. But a large percentage of those who do get violent have been drinking alcohol. Should we ban it? We tried that once with miserable results, and we've banned other substances with equally bad outcomes.

We could stop promoting alcohol so heavily, but the impact of doing so would probably not be large. What to do? Well, what if there were a substitute for alcohol that didn't make anyone violent? What if this substitute were far less dangerous than alcohol to the health of the person using it, as well as to those around him or her? What if this alternative substance even had health benefits and medicinal properties and potentials? What if this substance satisfied the desire for intoxication without actually containing anything toxic, and you woke up the next morning without a hangover? What if this magical substitute for alcohol could boost the economy, free prisoners, reduce prison budgets, free up police to address serious crimes, and subtly improve our culture if only we could discover what it was?

The common name for this life-saving drug is marijuana, and in "Marijuana Is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?" the authors Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert argue for legalizing marijuana as a regulated substitute to reduce the societal damage done by alcohol. In the book's foreword, Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department, writes:

"I've been asking police officers throughout the U.S. (and Canada) two questions. First: 'When's the last time you had to fight someone under the influence of marijuana?' (And by this I mean marijuana only, not pot plus a six-pack or fifth of tequila.) My colleagues pause; they reflect. Their eyes widen as they realize that in their five or fifteen or thirty years on the job they have never had to fight a marijuana user. I then ask, 'When's the last time you had to fight a drunk?' They look at their watches. It's telling that the booze question is answered in terms of hours, not days or weeks."

The case for making pot more available to those who might choose it over alcohol seems straightforward. Unless, of course, you've heard any of the pervasive myths that have been spread about it in this country for nearly a century. In 1927, lacking any Iraqi aluminum tubes to peddle yet, the New York Times published this fantasy:

"Mexican Family Go Insane
"Five Said to Have Been Stricken By Eating Marihuana
"A widow and her four children have been driven insane by eating the Marihuana plant, according to doctors, who say there is no hope of saving the children's lives and that the mother will be insane for the rest of her life…."

This is not terribly different from the stories promoted by our government today, and much of the book is devoted to debunking myths. While television networks are not required to give back even a smidgen of our airwaves for political campaigns or information, they have been required to air anti-pot propaganda, or to incorporate it into the plots of shows (such as "ER" and "Beverly Hills 90210"). In 2005, the Government Accountability Office determined that the government's anti-pot campaign had violated the law against covert propaganda by producing video news releases that news programs aired as if they had been created completely independently of the government.

When Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps was shown in a photograph using marijuana, both USA Swimming and the US Olympic Committee came down hard on him, just as the NFL does to its players. These are all organizations that live off massive funding from the makers of alcohol. So, incidentally, do members of Congress. It's a good thing THEY are never influenced by money.

David Swanson is the author of the new book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

How do we fix Social Security/Medicare and the lack of Health Care for the general public?

jtbutler — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:35:52 -0400

September 12th, 2009

Everyone wants to fix the Social Security system, the Medicare system and provide Health Care for the general public. Hello, everyone is going at these issues from the wrong angle. What needs to be introduces is:

1. A law that stops the Senate and House of Reps from drawing such large salaries from the taxes us common folk pay. Yes they should be paid, but come one everyone, Social Security folk will not be getting their normal Cost of Living Increase for the next 2 or so years because the system is failing. But yet members of the Senate and House of Reps will still draw their huge salaries.

2. A law that says that once a Senator or House of Rep retires, the gravy train is done. Right now these people collect their pay for the rest of their lives with not exception. This is not right when we have millions of people that are living in poverty because there are no jobs. This is an issue of no money because the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer.

3. A law that says Senators and House of Reps has to pay into the Social Security System and collect the same amount as the rest of us common folk. After all right now they draw their full salary after leaving the job and never were made to pay into the system... How freaking backwards is this?

Well gee wiz, if Senators and House of Reps were forced to pay into the Social Security System and collect from it after they leave their jobs I would think that the Social Security System would be fixed in no time.

As far as Health Care for the General Public goes. I think the major issue is that when you pay for insurance you are covered for your health care. The insurance companies only pay a portion of the bill that is incurred. If you are an uninsured person you pay 100% of the cost of your health care. So dollar for dollar the poor person is getting hit with a full bill. I think that people that are paying cash/from their pocket should be getting the same deal that insurance companies make with Health Care Providers and Doctors. Then at least the poorer folk that are paying 100% would me more able to pay for their health care because they do not have to pay 100% of the bill.

My opinion is that if Elected Officials had to pay into the Social Security System like everyone else (and not be allowed to vote themselves a raise whenever they feel like it) and collect from it for their retirement instead of getting their full salary without ever paying into the system, the Social Security System would be fixed really quickly. Also, if uninsured people were given the same break that Insurance Companies get they would be able to afford Medical Care.

One other point I would like to make. We have lent millions upon millions of dollars to many countries that have never even attempted to pay us back. Why are we still helping these countries and giving to them when they already owe us? If I over borrow from the bank they will not allow me to borrow anymore until I pay it off... So why are we giving money to people whom on the most part do not even like the American People???

Thank you for reading my statements, it would be nice if the American people woke up and started telling the Government what to do instead of them doing whatever they feel like and totally ignoring the issues that face the general population of our great country.

Sincerely,

Joseph Butler

San Antonio, Tx

'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

A Few More Thoughts About Single-Payer and Medicare

dlindorff — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:31:57 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Some critics have written, in response to my article
calling for extension of the single-payer plan called Medicare to all
Americans, that actually Medicare is a badly flawed program that leaves
America's elderly without coverage for many important health services,
and which requires them to pay for supplemental insurance, or to go on
Medicaid, too.

These critics are correct. Medicare is great as far as it goes. It
is simple for people to use, allows them to go to the doctors of their
choice, covers 80 percent of their care, and is liked by nearly all who
use it. But it doesn't pay for needed tests, only lets seniors buy
mediocre medical devices like hearing aids, and most importantly, it
has been requiring more and more contributions by the elderly year
after year. Today, Americans over 65 and the permanently disabled pay a
greater percentage of their income for medical care than they did in
1964 before Medicare was established!

But having said that, I have to say that it has nothing to do with
whether or not it makes sense to expand Medicare to all Americans as a
way to solve our health care crisis--as Rep. John Conyers' bill, HR
676, would do.

The reason Medicare is inadequate is because the Republicans and the
conservative Democrats--the very "Blue Dog" vermin who, engorged on
health insurance, hospital and pharmacy bribes and campaign donations,
are undermining and destroying the already lousy health care "reform"
plan of President Barack Obama--have been underfunding it, and
performing a slow "privatization" of the program, chipping away at its
benefits, adding increased self-pay requirements, and raising the
Medicare tax on all workers.

They get away with this treachery because their actions only affect the minority of Americans served by Medicare.

If Medicare were expanded to include all Americans, suddenly this
kind of political backsliding would be opposed by everyone who was in
the program. It simply couldn't happen. Rather, the public would, as
one, demand better coverage, fewer self-pay requirements, and an end to
supplemental insurance.

The right knows this, and the health care industry knows this, and
that is why they are all bitterly opposing the expansion of
Medicare--and yet it is so obvious that Medicare is the answer to
America's health crisis--and it's staring us all in the face. It works,
it's cheap, and it could be implemented immediately.

We are being betrayed by President Obama and by the Democratic leadership in Congress, who will not talk about single-payer.

Not one of the committees working on the health reform bill in
Congress allowed any discussion of Rep. Conyers' HR 676. Under pressure
from the public, and groups like Physicians for a National Health
Program (PNHP.org) and Progressive Democrats of America (PDA), House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has agreed to allow a floor vote next month on
Conyers' bill, but that is a sop. Floor votes are heavily manipulated
by the leadership and never go anywhere unless a committee has already
held hearings and voted to approve a bill, which was not allowed to
happen in the case of HR 676.

The so-called "reform" bill that is going to emerge from the current
process is going to be the legislative equivalent of road kill, barely
recognizeable either as health care or as a "reform." It will be a
Christmas present for the insurance industry, the hospital industry and
the phramaceutical industry, all three of which struck secret deals
behind closed doors with the White House.

It will set back health reform in America a generation, will require
everyone to buy inadequate and overpriced insurance, overpriced drugs
and to go to overpriced hospitals. And the cost of healthcare to
individuals, businesses, and the nation as a whole (already the highest
in the modern industrial world), will continue to soar.

This is not a case where the right thing to do is push for any bill,
and then try to move on. This is a case where Obama and the Democrats
have whored themselves out to the greedy industry that is causing all
the problems, and are pushing a plan that is worse than nothing.

We should all be working to kill this whole thing and start over, with HR 676.

If Congress won't do it, we need to start working for a new Congress in 2010 that will.

No Democrat running for House or Senate in 2010 who isn't solidly for expanding Medicare to all should get a single vote.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of
“Marketplace Medicine” (Bantam Books, 1992) and more recently, “The
Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available
at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Progressives Should be Shutting Down These So-Called 'Town Meetings' Too!

dlindorff — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:09:13 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Many progressives are getting all bent out of shape over the "brown
shirt" rabble organized by health industry PR firms to disrupt the
so-called "town meetings" being organized all over the country by
Democratic members of Congress.

What they are conveniently forgetting is that these are not really
"town meetings" at all, at least in the sense of the town meetings I
grew up with, and started out covering as a young journalist in
Connecticut--that is, meetings called and run democratically, with
leaders elected from the floor, open to all residents of a community.

These "town meetings" are really nothing but propaganda sessions run
by members of Congress who are trying to burnish their fraudulent
credentials as public servants, and trying to perpetrate a huge fraud
of a health care bill that purports to be a progressive "reform" of the
US health care system, but that actually further entrenches the control
of that system by the insurance industry, and to a lesser extent, the
hospital and drug industry.

ObamaCare is to health reform what bank bailouts are to financial
system reform, which is to say it is the opposite of what its name
implies.

The right-wing nuts who cry that ObamaCare is introducing euthanasia
for the elderly and infirm, or that it is socialism, are ignorant
wackos, to be sure, but they are right about one thing: Americans are
about to be royally screwed on health care reform by the president and
the Democratic Congress, just as they've been screwed by them on
financial system "reform."

The appropriate response to this screw-job is the one the right has
adopted: shut these sham "town meetings" down, and run the sell-out
politicians out of town on a rail, preferably coated in tar and
feathers they way the snake-oil salesmen of old used to be handled!

This is not about civil discourse. This is about propaganda. The
Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership have
sold out health care reform for the tainted coin of the
medical-industrial industry, and are holding, or trying to hold, these
meetings around the country to promote legislation that has essentially
been written for them by that industry--legislation that will force
everyone to pay for insurance as offered, and priced, by the private
insurance industry. What a deal for those companies--a captive market
of 300 million people! There will be little or no effort to control
prices, and the higher costs will be financed through higher taxes, and
through cuts in Medicare benefits.

This isn't "reform." It's corruption, pure and simple.

Any mention of a system that works--single payer--the system we
already have in the form of Medicare for the elderly and disabled, and
the system that has proved successful for almost four decades in
Canada-- has been systematically blocked and censored out of the
discussion. Every effort has been made to bury an excellent bill, HR
676, offered up by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which would cover every
American by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

The only proper response at this point is obstruction, and the more militant and boisterous that obstruction, the better.

Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events,
progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of
calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing
them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own
both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation
currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it
and start over. At these "town meeting" staged events, Obama and the
Democrats need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that we don't want no
stinkin' ObamaCare. We want Medicare for all.
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of
“Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains”
(Bantam Books, 1992), and more recently of “The Case for Impeachment”
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Stop Complaining About Right-Wing Protests! The Left Should Be (Re)Learning How It's Done

dlindorff — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:50:54 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

OMG! Those protesters showing up at Democratic “town meetings” to
promote the president’s health care “reform” program are being bused in
from out of town?

Scandal! Que horrible! (Gasp)

But wait! That’s exactly what we on the left always did when we
held demonstrations—at least if we could. Who in the trade union
movement hasn’t called on fellow workers in other unions to join them
in rallies during struggles with an employer, or asked them to join
sparse picket-lines? Who hasn’t pulled out the stops trying to get
people from other cities to attend a local protest?

Okay, if it were shown that the Republicans were hiring
fake protesters to go to those Democratic pep rallies to mess them up,
as was done during the 2000 Florida vote recount, there’d be a good
investigative story, but from the righteous if ignorant anger that is
being expressed by the tea-baggers and anti-government types that I’ve
seen in news reports, these seem like legitimate right-wing cranks, who
are willing to be rallied to the cause of opposing what they see as a
socialist plot. Never mind that you’ve got ignorant numbskulls
demanding that Democrats in Congress “Keep your government hands off my
Medicare!” or that you’ve got right-wing protesters in their 70’s who
are all on Medicare irrationally shouting “Keep government out of
health care!” The point is that confused and ignorant or not, these
people are willing to make the effort to travel fair distances to make
their voices heard, and they’re willing to stand up, shout, and even
scuffle for the chance to make their point.

It’s not as if Democrats haven’t gone to great length to fill those same halls with earnest supporters.

The real question is why is the left in the US so goddamned polite
and domesticated that these Right Wing cranks look positively rowdy.

Back in the late 1950s and the 1960s, the Civil Rights movement
wasn’t polite and domesticated. It brought activists to events in the
Deep South all the way from New York and Boston. Its members rallied in
the thousands to shut down segregated public and even private
institutions. Its activists occupied buildings on university campuses,
boldly confronting police and police dogs and armed men in white robes.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, anti-war protesters in turn shut
down recruiting and induction centers, destroyed draft board records,
tried to close down Washington, DC, got arrested in the hundreds,
incited soldiers to desert and then helped hide them from the law,
exposed the 1968 Democratic Convention as a farce, and faced down armed
police and soldiers repeatedly, at one point in 1970 closing down the
nation’s campuses in a national student strike when soldiers shot and
killed four unarmed students at Kent State University.

Years earlier, when workers were being abused, they occupied
factories, forcibly shutting them down with sit-down strikes, battled
Pinkerton detectives and armed National Guard forces, and set up tent
cities in Washington to make themselves heard.

And they won great victories.

Where is that passion today? For the most part, the left, in all its
various guises—environmentalists, labor unions, civil rights advocates,
health care reform advocates, anti-war activists—have become neutered
office-chair potatoes, sending canned emails to their elected
representatives or to the White House, occasionally marching politely
inside of pre-approved, permitted and police-prescribed routes, and
attending sponsored events like the current round of town meetings,
perhaps to raise polite objections to aspects of a proposed piece of
legislation.

The agenda of the left in today’s America is being written not by
uncompromising radicals in the street as in earlier decades of
struggle, but by the bought-and-paid Democrats in Washington. The left,
such as it is, has become simply a reactive force, trying to make
discrete little improvements in the truly horrible legislation—health
care “reform,” cap-and-trade, the Employee Not-So-Free Choice Act,
continued Iraq and Afghanistan War funding bills--that is being offered
by a wholly corrupt Washington in thrall to corporate lobbyists.

We all need to take a lesson from the Right, and from those lusty,
cantankerous folks who are raising hell at those pathetic “town
meetings.”

How can it be that 10 percent of American workers don’t have a job,
and that the government is expecting that number to keep rising for
another year or more, or that another 7 percent have either given up
even trying to find a job, or have taken part-time work in desperation,
and yet we have not had one mass protest in Washington demanding public
jobs for the jobless!

How can it be that the country has been mired in two wars now for
eight years, and we haven’t had a million people storming the Pentagon
to shut it down (or at least levitate it)!

How can it be that we have 49 million Americans who can’t even
afford to see a doctor when they’re sick, and we’re talking about a
health care “reform” plan that not only won’t fix the problem, but will
actually end up costing us all $600 billion over 10 years without
solving it! And we just write letters to Congress! Why aren’t we
liberating hospitals and opening them up to the uninsured?

How can it be that the ice cap at the North Pole is actually
disappearing, and the whole arctic tundra across Canada, Alaska and
Siberia is starting to boil with the release of prehistoric methane
trapped under now-melting permafrost, threatening the very lives of our
grandchildren, and we’re calmly watching as even the Obama
administration’s pathetic “cap-and-trade” legislation gets stalled by
coal-state Democrats! Why aren’t we on the left lying down on the
tracks to block the coal trains, or tearing up those tracks!

Where is the passion and commitment we once had?

It all seems to be on the Right these days.
__________________

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

Health Care Reform Sell-Out: Why Obama and the Democrats are Either Shysters or Idiots

dlindorff — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:30:36 -0400

By Dave LIndorff

As I wrote months ago in an article titled America’s Stupid Health Care Debate: Keeping Some Ideas Off the Table and several subsequent pieces on my website,
President Obama and the Democrats who currently run Congress have been
hoist on their own collective petard by their craven and gutless
refusal to consider adopting a Canadian-style single-payer system to
finance health care in the US, or simply to expand Medicare, which is a
successful single- payer program, to cover everyone, instead of just
people over 65 and the disabled.

Instead, because they are the recipients of hundreds of millions of
dollars in legal (and probably plenty of illegal) bribes from the
health care industry, they have cobbled together a “reform” in name
only, which preserves not just the central role of the vampire-like
health insurance industry, but also ensures the continued rapacious
profitability of the other segments of the medical-industrial
complex—the hospitals, the pharmaceutical industry, and the specialist
doctors.

Now, like Hillary and Bill Clinton before them, these weasels and
slimeballs who pose as the people’s advocates are left with nothing but
a Potemkin Health Plan that looks on the outside lie a reform, but that
changes little or nothing, leaves vast numbers of Americans uninsured,
forces tens of millions to buy crappy plans from private companies, and
that will end up doing nothing to halt the continuing rise in health
care costs that is bankrupting the people, employers and the country.

Nice going guys!

Let’s for a moment consider what could have happened.

Medicare, which is wildly popular among seniors and the disabled
according to every poll I’ve seen, currently covers 45 million of the
highest-cost segment of this country’s 300 million people—its elderly
and its permanently disabled. It does this at a cost of $484 billion.

Now that’s a heck of a lot of money—about 13% of the federal
budget—but it’s money well spent. We’re talking about our parents and
grandparents here, and because they’re all covered by a government
single-payer plan that pays virtually all of their doctors’ and
hospital bills, we don’t have to pay those bills for them out of our
own pockets. Okay, there are problems—the drug industry managed during
the Bush/Cheney dark ages to get a prescription drug law passed that
bars Medicare from negotiating group discounts for drugs, and that has
added enormous rip-off costs to the program, but that’s just another
example of corporate scamming of the system that needs to be fixed. The
important point that needs to be made is that according to Medicare
analysts, 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries account for fully two
–thirds of the total annual cost of Medicare.

What that tells you is that the cost of treating that 10% of the
elderly is $320 billion, while the healthier 90% of the elderly—roughly
40 billion people--only cost $160 billion a year to care for.

Now, given that the rest of the population under 65—about 255
million people—need on average far less care than the 90% of seniors
who are in that lower-cost group, extending care to them all would
clearly cost less than $1 trillion. Add in the cost of the 10% of
high-cost elderly, and you’ve got a total bill of $1.34 trillion to
care for everyone in America.

That’s a big number, but now you need to subtract out the total
cost of Medicaid—the crappy program that, primarily funded by the
states through income and sales taxes—pays for the crappy care of the
poor. That would be about $400 billion in 2009. So now we’re down to
$944 billion to care for all Americans. But from that we need to
subtract the cost of Veterans health care—another successful
single-payer program that already cares for veterans (or at least some
of them—it’s grossly underfunded). If we had a single-payer system for
all, we could just fold the Veterans Hospital system into the national
program. That would mean eliminating another $100 billion that would be
saved (because remember, we calculated that original expanded Medicare
budget for covering all 300 million of us. So now we’re down to an
annual budget of $844 billion for a single-payer program to cover all
Americans. Finally there is uncompensated care provided by hospitals to
those 47 million Americans who have no health insurance but who don’t
qualify for Medicaid. This care is funded in two ways—one by state and
county revenues, which come out of state income and sales taxes and
also out of local property taxes, and the other is in the form of
higher hospital charges and insurance premiums and Medicare costs for
the rest of us. Uncompensated care is estimated to cost about $200
billion, all of which would be eliminated if we had a single-payer plan
for all.

Okay, so now we’re down to a total net cost for a national
single-payer program of just $644 billion. Now remember, we’re talking
about expanding a single-payer program that we already have in place,
that doctors and hospitals are already familiar with, and that the
people who use it already like. And expanding it to cover everybody,
instead of just the old and disabled would only cost an added $160
billion, or just 33% more than it costs now to cover only the old and
disabled. In these days of trillion-dollar Wall Street bailouts, $160
billion is almost chump change—heck, it’s less than the cost of a year
of war in Afghanistan.

Sure it would still mean a modest tax increase for everyone (to
figure out how much, just look at your check stub, find the Medicare
tax deduction, and multiply it by 1.33. Then double that to account for
the employer share of the added funds). But wait, all you tax freaks!
Before you start freaking out at a tax hike and waving those little
teabags Fox TV got for you, there are more savings we haven’t
considered.

If everyone is covered by Medicare, that means no more out of
pocket payments by you for doctor bills. No more co-pays. No more
deductibles that you have to pay out of pocket before your health
insurance kicks in. No more employee contributions to health insurance
premiums, which these days more and more employers are forcing us to
pay. That’s a lot of money. For many families, it adds up to thousands
of dollars a year. But there’s more. Your employer, if the company is
one of the one in three that still provides and pays at least something
towards health benefits for its workers, would be off the hook. That
would free up a lot of money that could go to higher wages and salaries
for workers (especially if you have or get yourself a union to make
sure that the managers pass the savings on to you and don’t just pocket
it or pass it along to shareholders). We’re talking about big savings
here.

So while yes, your taxes would go up a bit to expand Medicare to
all, it wouldn’t be by much, and on the plus side, you would be saving
an enormous amount of money, making the added tax bite easy to swallow
(and remember, your state and local taxes could be reduced).

Why didn’t Obama and the Democrats tell you all this? Why does
Obama continue to diss single-payer, as he did to the American Medical
Association, and as he continues to do, claiming it is not in the
American addition, as though he never heard about Medicare?

Well, as a matter of fact, some people in Congress, notably Reps.
John Conyers (D-MI), Dennis Kucinich (D-Oh), Anthony Wiener )D-NY) and
83 other members of the House are pushing a bill, HR 676, which would
do exactly what I’m suggesting—expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

It is being opposed by the Congressional leadership to the point
that advocates at one House committee hearing were ejected and arrested
for even mentioning the term single-payer. With the blessing of the
White House.

Clearly, Obama and the Democrat Party and Congressional leadership are in bed with the health care profiteers.

There is no other excuse for failure to do the obvious, and have
America adopt some version of the kind of health care system that has
been proven to be more effective and far, far cheaper than our own in
every other developed nation in the world—and in many less developed
nations, too.

My question: How long are we going to stand for this crap?
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is the
author of “Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital
Chains” (Bantam, 1992) and more recently of “The Case for Impeachment”
(St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Of Blue Dogs and Pink Jellyfish

dlindorff — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 11:51:45 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

What’s the difference between a Blue Dog Democrat and a progressive
Democrat? One is a vertebrate with a spine and a willingness to bite.
The other is a jellyfish with no spine and no teeth.

This difference has been glaringly apparent in the current fight over health care reform.

The Blue Dogs in House and Senate have been giving the progressive
Democrats an object lesson in how a small group in Congress can get its
way. They have threatened to withhold their support for the Obama
Administration’s key policy objective of a health reform package, and
have managed, with just a handful of votes between them, to remove
almost all progressive content from that legislation by threatening to
walk if they don’t get their way.

Compare that to the progressives—a much larger faction within the
Democratic Party majority in both houses. There are plenty of articles
currently circulating in the media talking about progressive rage and
dissatisfaction, both among progressives at large, and among
progressives in Congress, over the bills that are emerging in
committees in both the House and Senate—bills that are gutting any
reference to a genuine so-called “public option” government insurance
plan that would actually compete with and challenge private insurance
companies, and that have studiously avoided having anything to do with
a single-payer approach, bills that call for actually cutting back on
Medicare, the wildly successful single-payer program that since 1965
has been providing health care for the elderly and the disabled. But
none of the dissatisfied progressive Democrats in Congress, and only a
few of the progressive political organizations operating outside of
Congress, have threatened to bolt and oppose the sell-out legislation
that is being produced in Congress, or to stop supporting those
Democrats in Congress who are caving in to the pressure from the health
industry lobbies. And certainly none of those progressive groups have
told the president that he will no longer have their support if he
doesn’t insist on a much bolder and progressive health reform bill.

Given the power that the small Blue Dog Democratic Caucus has
demonstrated by threatening to rebel and vote against a health reform
bill, just imagine the power that Progressive Caucus would have if it
were to collectively threaten a “No” vote. Just imagine the different
path that health reform legislation would be taking in Congress today
if progressive organizations like trade unions, netroots organizations,
and others were to tell President Obama that they would withhold their
backing in 2010 from any member of Congress who didn’t vote for a
single-payer plan, or that he could no longer count on their support in
2012 if he failed to push for single-payer today.

This is the lesson of the current disaster of health reform in
Congress, and it is just the latest chapter in the failed history of
progressive Democratic politics.

It’s fine to work to elect progressives to Congress, and to send a
Democrat, progressive or not, to the White House, given that there is
no chance for progressive change while Republicans are in charge, and
given the institutional obstacles and the fratricidal internal
conflicts that prevent the rise of a viable Third Party alternative,
but progressive voters and progressive organizations have forgotten the
lesson of the Civil Rights and Anti-Indochina War movements. That
lesson is that elections are only a small first step, and that only
mass movements operating outside of Washington and outside of electoral
politics—mass movements that threaten the Democrats who are currently
in power—can produce progressive change.

The power of the Blue Dogs in Congress is derived from the fact
that despite their small number, they are numerous enough that, if they
stick together, they can derail a progressive reform bill.

But imagine how much more powerful the progressive caucus in House and Senate would be if it took the same tack.

Progressives in Congress, if they developed spines and teeth and
ceased being jellyfish, could threaten to vote against every bill
offered by those same Blue Dogs, unless they supported real health
reform—that is, a single-payer plan such as the one being put forward
today by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). If they were backed up by
progressive grass roots organizations that let it be known that support
would end for any Democrat not backing single-payer reform, we could
have that reform.

Instead, we have jellyfish on the left, and both the president and
the Democrats in Congress, know that they can ignore the left, because
it will support them no matter what they do.

That is not to say that allthe Democrats in Congress are jellyfish--just most of them. Conyers, who showed jellyfish-like characteristics on the impeachment issue during the Bush/Cheney era, has been outspoken in his criticism of the Obama administration, and has offered a real single-payer alternative. And last week, at a gathering of Progressive Democrats of America in Washington, Conyers warned that Obama risks being a one-term president, saying to him, "Buddy, you are wrong on healthcare and it's going to cost you big time."

Still for the most part, progressives in Congress and at large across the country were quiet as Obama slimed single-payer and moved the debate to the right, only taking a stand at all on the already minimalist issue of whether there will be any kind of "public option" in the resulting legislation, however weak. And even there, few progressive members of Congress have actually vowed to vote down such a lame measure if there's no public option, or just a weak one.

Note: Today is the day that Congress will vote on Rep. Conyers’ single-payer bill (HR 676). For information on how to join in the fight for Single Payer, go to AfterDowningStreet.org or PNHP.org
_____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist. His latest
book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2009). 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