#206 "Let's Amend the Constitution"

Speaking of money and politics, the Supreme Court's over-ruling, the Dodd amendment, Common Cause, and cabbages and kings (q.v. last post)--the title above is actually a FaceBook group-page set up by a hot-headed lawyer in South Carolina, of all places. He also happens to be a son of mine. Consider him "team-member" for the day.

His is a grass-roots effort to let the People clean up the hen house. After all, Why leave it to a fox like Sen. Christopher Dodd--who ultra-ironically has his own sullied past vis a vis moneyed interests in the Capitol lobby (AIG-gate)--or any other member of a corrupted Congress that has thus far failed to police itself? The People can do it, constitutionally as all hell, through successful petition of two-thirds of their state legislatures. To quote my son (and How often does this happen on Planet Earth?)--

My concept was to form as broad a group as possible, not to pander to any particular ideology, and maybe, with the power of numbers, leverage some change in the way Washington D.C. does business. I think that Independents, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Greens can all agree that money wields too great an influence on our Congress and I tried to make this group about changing that.

It's really, though, the THREAT that counts. Like me, he believes that an actual Constitutional Convention would be a precarious thing in perilous times. In addition to opening the floor to all species of radical agenda here at home, there's the external danger to worry about. As he reminds us in a private email:

I agree, a Constitutional convention at this time in our history could have unpleasant effects, especially if Al Qaeda strikes in the midst of such a convention ... but if I get enough folks that are voters , it is possible that the pressure and publicity of such a group [and others, I would add] could get some changes done in Washington.

If any BlogManFans out there would like to have more information, to comment, to sign-up, etc., click on the site here. But let me directly quote one clause of the proposed amendment to give you the flavor of the thing:

No lobbyist, corporation, non-profit entity, association, or person acting on behalf of such may provide to a member of congress, or other Federal employee any gift exceeding the cost of a cup of coffee in a single day.

Now, if the cost of the Starbucks Grande keeps escalating, or the cup of coffee has its provenance in the digestive tract of an Indonesian palm-civet--that protocol might itself have to be amended.
************

#169 Hung Up ... on the Cross of Gold

Now here's the proper logo for Blue Cross, Inc.-- rather than the one in last post. Money. Coin of the realm. This is an Italian-Euro commemorative, which more accurately reproduces their countryman's "Vitruvian Man"--Da Vinci's famous anatomical flirtation with Hindu mythology (I must presume). A pretty coin ... silver center with perimeter gold, yet the image is still hauntingly cruciform.

What's stopping Health-Care Reform? To be honest, and to my shame, it's a question that I hadn't thought much until recent political events put it unavoidably on the table. Full disclosure: my kids were raised on Blue Cross (of SC). Employer provided. Never had to think twice about it; everything was covered. But things have changed; consciousness has been raised--especially about the un-covered.

To reduce the thing to its lowest intractable denominator: we must insure the un-insured. And the under-insured. Big-Health won't do it, for axiomatic reasons--they won't make a profit. Not to rehash a whole bunch of posts (but q.v. anyway if you will), short of the ideal, Single-Payer, the only ameliorative strategy at hand is non-profit Public Option, taxpayer supported. We can bail-out the banks and auto companies => we can give succor to the poor and sick ... dammit.

What's stopping Health-Care Reform? A more instrumental question: Why are our representatives in Congress having such difficulty in passing such obviously necessary legislation? Okay, the answer is also obvious at this point. But never has it become so clear just how closely some of our law-makers are tied-up with the "moneyed interests"--to use an old-fashioned term--than in the last few months. Put simply, these people are being PAID-OFF. And they're selling-out for sums tantamount to Graft and Fraud.

Just one example from my July post, "What Shall It Profit a Man ... " (DM #133). At that time the WashPost reported that Max Baucus, Inc., Chairman of the crucial Senate Finance Committee, had since 2003 received over $3 million in cash-money from Big-Med lobbyists--mainly health-care providers and insurance companies, including, of course, Blue Cross, his biggest supporter. They weren't just sending postcards back then. (The ranking Republican, Chuck Grassley, got only $2 million--hey, he's a Republican. An anti-Obama vote is in the bag anyway.) Sure enough and predictably, the Senate Health Care bill was voted out of the Baucus committee WITHOUT the Public Option, four months later.

What shall it profit a man ... ? Indeed.
************

#158 The "Fall" (Or Rise) of Obamacare

It's the Autumnal Equinox, and the beginning of what may be the bloodiest battle in both houses ("a plague upon ... etc.") of Congress since the Clinton affair (or "affairs"--take your pick: Hillary or Monica). Dr. Obama may be able to resuscitate his dead patient--yes, he is a god--but I fear whatever zombie-like creature emerges won't be viable enough to break the amazing stranglehold that Big-Med has on our health-care system in this country, and on so many people-of-power who have sold out. Frankly, the last few months have been positively shocking in this regard, and I'm about ready to give up.

One patient is as dead as Rembrandt's cadaver in the "Anatomy Lesson"--Single Payer. Obama and his minions toyed with this idea some months ago. Pity, because we had English-speaking, tax-payer-funded models across the pond and just north of our border as examples of just how good such a system could be. (Have you noticed, however, that cheap pot-shots at Britain and Canada have pretty much ceased since they have been proven to be so mendaciously off-the-mark?) Or, Wouldn't a sweet, cradle-to-grave, morning Danish be nice right about now? Alas.

That being moot, Public Option had better be an option ... or the battle is lost. I marvel at my senior senator from NC, Aaron Burr--er, Richard, though his family claims distant cousin-hood-- a Republican who won the election to replace the can-he-possibly-bring-even-more-opprobrium-upon-himself Democrat John Edwards. Ranked as the 3rd most conservative senator, Burr at least makes no secret about where his particular GRAFT is coming from. In an interview on a local news show he characterized the debate over the public alternative in baldly good-ol'-boy terms:

Well, you know, they [Obamacare supporters] just don't realize whose toes they're steppin' on here. They'd be steppin' on the toes of the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies, the doctors, lawyers, hospitals ... a whole lotta people you don't want to be doin' that to.

I swear. Maybe he thought this arrogant revelation of his true power-base wouldn't do him any harm at the local level. Little wonder that he was #1 across the country in corporate contributions for those 2004 Senate elections. And "lawyers" too? There's a wrinkle that I wish he'd elaborated upon.

At any rate, and no matter the plan submitted by the White House and worked-out with the Democratic leadership, Sen. Burr will vote against it, because it will be submitted by the White House and worked out with the Democratic leadership. He's been paid-off well before the fact. And anything "Obama" is anathema, anyway, for the party of NO.

Have Obama and the Democrats forgotten that they are the politics of "YES, We Can"? And that they are now in control of the elected government of these United States? Temporary amnesia maybe. They need to start remembering, and to stop pandering to the loser/obstructionists. Most important, they daren't forget the 70% of the electorate who are behind them on this. If it comes to a fillibuster, I say get it on. Love to see it on C-SPAN. What a circus it would be for these venal reactionaries to expose themselves for what they are on national TV. I say, bring on the clowns.
************

#147 Health-Care Reform and the Zeitgeist

The time is now. It's been 70 years now for Social Security, 40 years for Medicare (and not so coincidentally the Civil Rights Act), and almost 20 years since the Clintons floated their universal health care plan. But sunk in Congress, alas. I can see some still-living Congressfolk who voted against it having few qualms about boasting to their grandchildren,"We put a stop to socialized medicine!" But can those in Congress today claim the same bragging rights later if some form of health-care-for-all fails to pass now? Not. "Grandchild, I helped keep Big-Med in the money!" No more so than some nonagenarian ex-legislator would brag about voting against the Civil Rights Act. (Wait: forgot about my old senator, Strom Thurmond, who was personally able to vote against every incarnation of civil-rights legislation over his 150 years in Congress. His only "apology" for all that was to father a child with a black woman during his segregationist days!--only posthumously revealed.)

No excuse to drop the ball on health care this time. The Zeitgeist has moved on, and obstructionist Congresspeople must take warning of being on the wrong side of history, not to mention the better angels of our nature. The originally Hegelian idea of the "time-ghost" or Spirit of the Age (zeit is cognate with our "tide"= time) is a useful concept, without buying into the rest of that philosopher's barmy notions. It's a kind of "collective intelligence" or wisdom of the times, relating to moral, social and political issues. Moreover, the concept has taken on an almost palpable existence with the advent of cyberspace. A clear indicator of Zeitgeist, I believe, is SATIRE--whatever is being lampooned and pilloried--to popular acclaim--just ain't in the mainstream consensus. (See my other blog for "musings" on Stewart and Colbert, for example.) And it seems to me that the Bush/Cheney days of War and Waste and Greed--indeed the last decade or two of money-happy, selfish America ... are long past. We're on the cusp of a renewed spirit of moral and social responsibility in this country, I believe.

In other words, mainstream America is ready for health-care reform--70% say so. Half of those want Public Option, and the other half as well, really, but don't know it (remember once again the deluded cracker from S.C.--"Keep your gov't hands off my Medicare"), because they are distracted by the voodoo scare tactics of the far-right and the machinations of Big-Med. This is why it's so very important for our elected representatives--some of whom, I'll admit, have already been bought-off--to rise above the fray and make enlightened choices and unselfish votes. To get in tune with the Zeitgeist, and on the right side of history. To do the right thing.
************

#144 Health-Care Reform and "Social Security"

And I mean that in the broadest sense. But let's first go back to that poor deluded South Carolinian who shouted with perfect naivete'--"Keep your government hands off MY Medicare!" (At one of these ever more contentious Town Hall meetings) His feelings of contentment, complacency, and security about his health-care situation totally negated his ultra-right-wing proclivities. He took for granted the predictable efficiency of this 45-year-old, single-payer public program, caring little whence it came.

Three years ago he may have been one of those around the country shouting--"Hands off my Social Security!" But no, wrong target. Those protests were directed against Bush/Cheney and the Congressional Neo-Cons who were threatening to privatize Social Security. Bad mistake, they admitted after-the-fact. Among voters, that perceived danger to this 70-year-old, single-payer public program--along with The War, which was of more concern in those days than now, alas--helped bring about the Great Republican Downfall of 2006. They lost control of Congress and a lot of other things, inevitably including the White House three years later.

As a result, no politician with any sense of self-preservation at all will dare propose any sort of meddling with these two venerable institutions ever, ever again--in our lifetimes anyway. Yet in their time there was considerable opposition to both. Coming out of FDR's "New Deal," Social Security was declared "welfare-statism" (aka communism). And coming out of LBJ's "Great Society," Medicare was declared "socialized medicine"--as is the Public Option today by retro-wing-nuts.

I wish I'd said, "We're all born with a pre-existing condition: mortality," but Hendrik Hertzberg already did in the Aug. 3rd NewYorker. Great line--ironically excoriating the insurance industry's favorite scam. However, We the people of the United States, good tax-payers all, have established two time-tested single-payer ways, so far, of ameliorating the effects of human mortality. Social Security covers old age, and Medicare covers, um ... old age. Wait a minute. Isn't that discriminatory "age-ism"? I wish I were younger--I'd protest.
************

#142 Health-Care Reform, the Post Office, and Me

The Blogman must take umbrage--nay, extreme umbrage--at the aspersions cast upon our U.S. Postal Service by GOPers, Blue Doggers, Tea-Baggers, and other rump-fed runnions* bent on denying Americans proper health care. Aroint thee, fat-rump baggage--health care is one thing, but "hands-off" MY U.S. mail bag. That would be my picket sign. For I was a "mail-bagger" once. During one Christmas season long, long ago.

And it was by far the hardest and honestest job I ever had. And the biggest hourly-rate of pay, up to that time. It was Christmas break from my 1962-63 sophomore year at Kalamazoo College. Having taken the civil-service exam in the fall, I became an auxiliary mail-carrier assigned to several routes in our Chicago suburb of Lombard for the three-week rush and volume, mailwise, in and around the big Dec. 25th holiday. And we were true mail-CARRIERS back then--big leather pouch and all--none of those cute little putt-putt Good Humor vans in those days (only for parcel-post). Delivering overflow cards and letters, us temps trudged our appointed rounds faithfully, despite the drifting snow (neither rain nor sleet ...), and got the mail through. It really was a White Christmas the whole time--not unusual for the "lake-effect" Chicago area. Satisfying work, and nobody "went postal"... as far as I know.

So I take these indirect slurs on our postal service personally. Gimme just 5 minutes with John Boehner, please. (*Shakespeare's runnion is a "boner"= male-member, by the way.) The Senate Minority Leader and his minions have slandered the good name of our USPS by way of false analogy and invidious comparison. Asks Boehner: "Would you want our health-care system run by the Post Office, or the DMV?"--thinking it a rhetorical question. As to the former ... hell yes, and I'll get to that in a minute. (Notice though , as mentioned in last post, these folk don't dare point to the V.A., where we have an actual government-run, indeed "socialized," health-care program at work, and working.) As for the DMV whipping-boy, they know this is dishonest ... a TV sit-com cliche'. DMV's are state-run, not federal. Some states are efficient, some not. Inevitably, though, it works--you will always walk out with a license plate, or get a renewal sticker in--you guessed it--THE MAIL.

It's self-defeating, I hope, for those rump-fed, graft-bloated politicians (DM #133) to compare the workings of our postal service to what might happen in a government-run health-care program--e.g. the Public Option. For most thinking people unthinkingly take for granted that their cards and letters are going to get where they send them. Some of us may experience inconvenient clogs at holiday-times, like Christmas, but otherwise, generations of Americans have counted on the non-profit institution as a model of inexpensive efficiency. Put a 37-cent U.S. stamp on your birthday card to Grandma, slip it in the mailbox, and it arrives at her house the very next day. Two days at the most, anywhere in the country. If she lives in Hong Kong, plan on 6-10 days for only 98 cents (I looked it up). Still ... a marvel. And I don't even have to mention the wonderful world of Netflix.

Our government gets a goodly number of good things right, and everything doesn't have make a profit to be good. A very few things are too important to be left to the vagaries of private enterprise. Health care is one of them.
************

#138 Health-Care Reform and the Public Option

This summer season of political madness can't help but remind one of the frantic months of last year's Presidential campaigns. The almost hour-by-hour tension in Washington and westward all over the place--here in Raleigh last week--is about as high. No, it's not about the "election" of Judge Sotomayor, where you've got about as good an example of "playing politics" as you'll ever get. Senate Republicans unreservedly endorsed Bush's nominee, Sam Alito, despite his ethnic-Italian background and his proud admission of how it would indeed influence his judicial decision-making. I won't quote, but he and the proud Latina could be paraphrased identically on the matter. She will pass, yet with only a handful of Republican votes.

No, it's Health Care, of course. Same Realpolitik, though, from the reich--sorry, right-wing. Lotta LIES bruited about--just yesterday one of our congressman repeated a common one about "socialized medicine" abroad. "Hasn't worked in Britain; hasn't worked in Canada. Won't work here"--conveniently forgetting about our "Social" Security, Medicare, etc. Are we supposed to envisage an abattoir of dead Brits littering the streets waiting for Eric Idle's meat-wagon?--"Bring-out yer dead!" The British single-payer system dates from just after WWII, forcryingoutloud. It "hasn't worked" for over 60 years. So higglety-pigglety they must be getting something right. It certainly worked for my father some 40 years ago (DM #119). And Canada?--why, some Americans brave the cold and repatriate just for Great White North health care. It "hasn't worked" for over 40 years.

Moreover, the congressman and his venal ilk (they've been bought-off) conveniently commit a lie of omission when they direct us overseas to make a point. The British system is 100% tax-payer funded (Canada about 95%)--yes,"socialized." Grist for the commie-witch-hunters' mill. Their problem: it works. Their other problem: Obama isn't asking for a single-payer plan (sad to say). Rather, he wants a public/private mix--an "exchange" where one can choose the Public Option, or not. Now, Why is it that we hear only about Britain's miserable sixty-year "failure" with socialized medicine, and not about some other European welfare state? Answer: because, guess what, ALL of them have a public/private mix--an "exchange" where one can choose the Public Option, or not. (See DM #120.) Poor maligned Britain--"We're awright, Jack"--but the congressman DARE NOT point a derogating finger at France, Germany, or Switzerland, not to mention the Scandinavian countries. Every man-Jack and woman too ... is covered. Notice, too, that the commie-baiting is always in the abstract: "Washington is trying to make us into a European-style democracy!" As for their approach to health care ... cut me a specific slice of that!
************

#135 Obamacare Update--Sell-Outs in the Senate and Raleigh NC

• Last Friday's post (#133) "What shall it profit ... ?" wasn't meant as a prophecy, but it might as well have been. Sure enough, yesterday's headlines pictured the partners in Big-Med graft, Baucus and Grassley, side-by-side, congratulating themselves on dumping the Public Option from Finance Committee consideration. Recall that these two most powerful members, Chairman and ranking Republican, were also the most heavily endowed by the Pharmaceutical and Insurance industries Not only are these folk on the wrong side of history, they're almost on the wrong side of the law. Doesn't the Senate have an Ethics Committee?

• Meanwhile, as mentioned, President Obama will visit Raleigh's Broughton High School to a "sell-out" crowd tomorrow (it's free, but ticketed in advance) to hold a "Town Hall" forum on Health Care Reform. I just learned why, presumably, he chose this unlikely site. Not so unlikely after all. It is a collegiate looking place, within view of the state capitol, and has hosted Edwards, Gore, Powell, even Helms. But before and because was Martin Luther King's historic 1958 speech on segregation, presented at Broughton to a mixed white/black audience. Appropriate enough, but in that speech he delivered this famous health-based metaphor on the evils of segregation: "It is a cancer on the body politic, and until it is removed our democratic health cannot be realized." A wonderful coincidence, and I wonder if Obama will take some advantage of it. I'll be listening.
  

************

#134 Health-Care and the Economy

With a nod to last post ... No, not everything in this country need conform to the profit motive. But, okay, if you want to believe in the basic free-enterprise profitability of the US Economy, which I do, and can believe in our President and the consensus of expert economists (including a Nobelist or two), which I do, then we must perforce DUMP private health care as we know and love it. A totally free market hasn't been able to control what I call the "50% equation"--wherewith collectively we pay 50% more for health care than any other First World country ... and get 50% less health care. Or as Obama put it in his press conference last week, "We spend much more on health care than any other nation, but aren't getting any healthier for it." All true, and all a colossal drain on our resources, let alone our sense of security and general well-being. He continues (with some addenda of my own):

That is why I've said that even as we rescue this economy from a full-blown crisis, we must rebuild it stronger than before. And health insurance reform is central to the effort.

This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance [or 25 million more who are UNDER-insured]. Reform is about every American who has ever feared that they may lose their coverage if they become too sick ["recision"], or lose their job [and face the exorbitant and only temporary COBRA], or change their job [and face a potentially dangerous waiting-period or, worse, no employer-provided insurance at all]. It's about every small business that has been forced to lay off employees or cut back on their coverage because it became too expensive. And it's about the fact that the biggest driving force behind our federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost of Medicare and Medicaid [caused by Big-Med].

So let me be clear: if we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit [a good ol' Republican hobby-horse]. If we do not reform health care, your premiums and out-of-pocket costs will continue to skyrocket [the Big-Med monopoly]. If we do not act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day. These are the consequences of inaction. [Bad business practices, even from a free-market standpoint.] These are the stakes of the debate we're having right now.

Alas, the President disappointed the Blogman in this respect: He did not mention Public Option by name. His handlers may have thought it too "volatile" at this point. I don't know. I know that's what he wants, and it may lurk later in the speech beneath this: "If you don't have health insurance, or are a small business looking to cover your employees, you'll be able to choose a quality, affordable health plan through a health insurance exchange [?]--a marketplace that promotes choice and competition." I just wish he had spoken more plainly. For--short of Single-Payer--the Public Option is the only way we can even start to break the stranglehold of the Big-Med monopoly. Which is tantamount to Fraud in my Libertarian book.
************

#123 Independence Day--Iraq?

Happy Fourth for us, and Happy "National Sovereignty Day," in Iraq--as June 30th was declared as American combat troops "withdrew" from the major cities. The Yankees are going! The Yankees are going! What a colossal FRAUD. I'm tempted to go unpatriotic here, and brand both holidays as shams--ours because this July 4th as in 1776 we find ourselves very UN-independently entangled with, and even tyrannized by foreign powers in the Middle East (this includes Israel). But I won't. As for their so-called step toward Iraqi independence? Odoriferous Bullshit! All of this foofoorah reminds me of Dubya's several semantic feints at "withdrawals" that never were. We ended up "surging" (Orwell-speak), instead. Hauntingly, all of this reminds me, too, of LBJ's and Nixon's dilatory "pacification" and "Vietnamization" policies that never ended that miserable military epoch but with a sputtering "cut and run" under Ford.

The sad facticity is that these troops are simply deploying from the cities to the suburbs, and like a county sheriff, they will remain on call to rush in with six-guns blazing. And they'll have to. Here's a bit of anecdotal "inverse proof" that this just ain't gonna work: the mother of a North Carolina soldier (a Nat'l. Guardsman) rejoiced in a local TV interview yesterday that her son may have a chance to come home. But at the same time, against her own self-interest, she was stunningly skeptical. "They aren't ready. I'd hate to go through him coming home and then have to go back again." Most all the experts would agree with her indirect, from-the-heart assessment of the situation. She just wouldn't have used the word "bullshit."

Not only are these troops not REALLY leaving the cities, other military personnel are NOT really leaving the cities. According to the NY Times, unknown numbers of "contractors" (mercenaries) and advisers will stay. Who's gonna notice, after all?--the Status of Forces Agreement (SoFA) signed by the Iraqis allows the US to occupy the country indefinitely, and to intervene when any external or internal threat arises. C'mon ... it's still full-scale WAR. Cut it any way you like, we've still got 130,000 soldiers over there killing Muslims and Kurds, women and children, and, on occasion ... themselves.

The "festivities" celebrating the non-event were just as bogus. Again, according to the Times, the Iraqi "people" being sovereign-ated weren't even there. Within Baghdad's restricted Green Zone, the only party-goers in sight were cops, military, dignitaries of whatever ilk (I'm paraphrasing), and reporters. Big whoop ... in other words. In fact it borders on the macabre. Rather it might as well have been a festival on the order of the Latin American "Day of the Dead"--a "celebration " of the hundreds of thousands killed, maimed, tortured, and refugeed as a result of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The only good way to "withdraw" from a Vietnam or an Iraq is to have already done it. To that end, I'll invoke the old mantra that is forever relevant: BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!
***********

#121 (Equivocal) Wisdom of the Week

• The AARP putting pressure on the Senate Health, Education, etc. Committee, the one responsible for getting a Reform proposal to the floor, to put pressure on Big Pharma to loosen up on generic drug availability and cost. Speaking for 40 million strong (I'm one), the AARP should be able to make their voice heard. This is a step forward, BUT ... rather narrow and self-serving. Their private, non-profit (but money-making) health insurance wing would be a direct beneficiary of such cost reduction. Speaking for 40 million strong, the AARP should put pressure on the whole of Congress to COMPREHENSIVELY get us out of this mess ... and closer to the goal of affordable health care (if not single-payer) for all.
  

• US House of Representatives passing The American [who else?] Clean Energy an Security Act ... barely. Again, a step forward, BUT ... it passed by a slim margin. What's wrong with these people? Big Oil is still pulling some strings, evidently, even among Democrats. The opportunity-window to control global warming is closing ever more quickly. And the bill, for all it's lack of consensus, is pretty weak. It allows major polluters (e.g. Big Coal) off the hook by allowing them to buy federal permits that allow them to continue to pollute! LOL. Called "cap and trade," the moneys so generated would go for development of clean-energy resources, while the polluters supposedly clean up their act in the meantime. Mazel tov.

• S.C. Gov. Mark Sanders planning NOT to resign. Whoop-tee-doo, he's got a sordid family life, (Libertarian alert) but that's his private business, and not the State's. Worse, of course, he's an execrable hypocrite of the lowest Republican ilk (like Gingrich and Vitter, he was all over Clinton), not only touting their medieval brand of "family values," but forever trying to impose and legislate it upon others--Defense Of Marriage Act and all that--even as they are exposed for the rascals they are (fill in the the latest holier-than-thou Republican scandal or two). Sanders even used the Bible to justify adulterous politicians staying in office: King David! Typical. Odious. No reason to resign, however, from his publicly elected office. South Carolina deserves what it got. Let his constituents vote him out. BUT ... if he knows that his "legitimate trade mission" to Argentina was actually contrived and not properly sanctioned; and if tax-payer's money was used for diddling his mistress, then he should resign, and save his fellow citizens the cost of impeachment proceedings. Enough tabloid politics!

************

#118 Wisdom of the Week

• Rep. Ron Paul voting against the House resolution to support protesters in Iran ...

• Pres. Obama's careful circumspection about the situation--"the World is watching" ...
  

• Right-winger George Will criticizing chicken-hawk (my words) Republicans criticizing Obama's semi-neutral stance ...

• The Iranian people protesting a crooked election. A step forward, but they're kidding themselves--Democracy is antithetical to Theocracy. Wrong target ...

• The American people favoring by a three-to-one margin (in the polls) a Public Option in the health care reform package ...

• House Democratic leadership preparing to stand firm, so they say, on the Public Option ...

• Obama pushing for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Too long have the foxes been in charge of guarding the henhouse ...

• Judge Sotomayor resigning from her all-girl club. Though it was started-up as a legitimate protest against exclusive good-old-boy counterparts, she really had no choice ...

************

#108 Jefferson and Confucius and Obama

What higher cardinal virtue than Honesty?--

The whole of government consists in the art of being honest. (Letter to John Adams)

So far so good, for Obama. On the other, blood-stained hand, How many THOUSANDS and thousands of lives have been lost in Iraq because of the outright lies of the Bush/Cheney administration? The new President may want to look into war-crimes prosecution. But for sure keep to your timetable, Barack: you have a mandate from all corners of the earth now.
***********

All is still not at full-functioning capacity at Daily Mosteller headquarters (see #105) ... but soon.
***********

#107 Obama's Confucian Imperative

Can the President-Elect do it?--

Good government consists in winning the loyalty of the PEOPLE NEARBY and attracting the PEOPLE FAR AWAY. [emphasis mine] (Analects 500 B.C.)

Clever, those Chinese ... but, Oh, how woefully far away we have strayed from that ancient ideal over the last eight years.

For everyone called to the government of nations and empires [that's us], there are nine cardinal directions to be attended to... (Ibid.)

The first and most important cardinal direction, not surprisingly for Confucius, was cardinal virtue:

Cultivating his personal conduct. (Ibid.)

So far, of ALL the potential leaders of this American Empire, Barack Obama has done it best. Kung Fu Tzu would have voted for him.
***********

#104 Sunday Sundries

In no particular order...

• Dumb and dumber. I didn't think it was possible, but the Mad Hatter's Beauty Queen of Hearts has outdone herself. I mean, this latest really smacks of the topsy-turvy, where-everything-means-what-it-doesn't world of Alice's Wonderland. A couple of weeks ago she was asked about the duties of the Vice President. With an arrogance bred of ignorance she said that the VP was "in charge of the Senate"--seriously ... IN CHARGE, "so that we can really get in there and do some real changin' as to what's wrong with this country [or some such]." Of course she was ruthlessly taken to task on this egregious Constitutional solecism. So what did she do about it? Made it worse last week by exposing even more of her ignorance: The Press was abridging HER First Amendment free-speech rights by attacking her ill-informed opinions. (Face it: despite her obvious political savvy, her six-venue, second-rate college career has left a third-rate brain woefully uneducated.) No need to tell you Myriads that she's got it perfectly ass-backwards. SHE'S the one treading on the First Amendment's guarantee of a Free Press--most especially in a case like this where the government (or its wannnabes) is claiming some sort of immunity from criticism. This is actually dangerous stuff. Stuff that leads to such things as Sedition Acts and Wiretaps. Our Founding Fathers were sooo wise.

• But grudging kudos to her running mate for his desperation appearance on SatNiteLive. Here was a little of the "old" McCain--not the OLD cranky and crass and craven and cynical political beast he's turned into. He played his former persona expertly: charming, witty, self-assured--even in the midst of self-satire. Too late. I read the book; I admired the man; I've lost all respect.

• In sharp contrast: How about them Obama volunteers?! Haven't seen such enthusiasm since the Sixties. We've been visited THREE separate times over the past few days by a cross-sectional panoply of poll-workers of all ages and colors and costumes--and I don't mean Halloweeners. Well, it's almost time to take them up on it ... by taking that yellow-brick road down to the Emerald City voting booth ... and electing that Man behind the curtains.
  

***********

#103 Barack Obama In the Land of Oz

Whereas McCain's political landscape has shrunk away almost to the Nothingness of the Wicked Witch in Frank L. Baum's story--somebody should have been throwing cold water on the hyper-thermic Republican at every opportunity--Obama's campaign (partisan alert) has seemed only to get BIGGER in the home stretch. Well, he simply has bigger and better ideas. As opposed to really none at all. Because of that, primarily, his team has been able to avoid the petty and petulant (and lately feculent) insignifica that the McCain gang must needs fling at their rivals.

I was cued into the Lewis Carroll story (last post) by way of the persistent drumbeat of the ridiculous but insinuation-freighted "Who is the REAL Barack Obama" over and over. It reminded me immediately of the Caterpillar and the poor shrunkedity-down Alice trying repeatedly to explain herself, in vain. Wait a minute, I thought, McCain is trying to lead us all Down the Rabbit Hole (the book's original title) into a world of cramped and crabbed nonsense, filled with Mad Hatters and Red-Queen divas. And Alice's adventures essentially end underground, out of the light of day, until she wakes up confused and unenlightened, but amused. Whatever fun we can glean from the nightmarish McCain campaign, let it rest in peace, under the ground forever.

On the other hand, The Wizard of Oz (think movie version here) is a "horse of a different color," as the wizard himself points out. Recall how wonderfully BIG this story is--the landscapes broadening out scene by scene from windswept Kansas through the stratosphere to endless forests and poppy-fields leading to the Emerald City and ultimately back home to wide-awake reality. Yes, the Obama/Democratic campaign has manifested that arc of expansiveness, figuratively, growing bigger and bigger as McCain's steadily shrunk (for the latter's last NC rally, I hear, 2000 school kids had to bussed-in, just to speak of numbers). Why?--because we're concerned here with the larger, POSITIVE humanitarian issues of peace, economic well-being, non-discrimination (pro-choice, gay rights, etc.), and so on. Compare that to the smallness of negative issues desperately being raised by McCain and company ... just to win.

To belabor the comparison, Obama is the Wizard here, exemplifying those virtues given out as medallions at the end of the story to Dorothy and her companions: intelligence, love, and courage--which they were possessed of, anyway ... as are we all. The McCain cabal has been pandering to the tiny-minded and mean-spirited among us. Obama and friends are appealing to the better angels of our nature. And that should bring us safely home to Auntie Em.
***********

#102 John McCain in Wonderland

I mean the Alice and Lewis Carroll one, spilling over a bit into the Looking Glass, too. As the campaign sputtered out for McCain over the last few weeks, I got to thinking about shrinking--how the whole McCain/Palin mis en scene seemed to be getting smaller and smaller before my very eyes. Shrinking, fading from sight like a grinning Cheshire (Mc)Cat. It doesn't help matters that McCain is a short little man--you get perspective when he's on stage with almost anybody else, including his running mate--who (perhaps as a result of his war injuries, I don't know) comports/contorts his body in a shoulder-hunching, scrunched-up sort of way, as if protecting his privates. (Yes, I think I want you to think of another analogy while we're at it--the infamous Shrinkage! There's always SHRINKAGE when you get out of a pool! scene from Seinfeld when George is caught dripping-naked by Jerry's girlfriend, and constrained to defend the dimensionality of certain naughty bits.) The whole McCain thing has gotten somehow oppressively, chokingly claustrophobic and SMALL.

But the seeming physical shrinkage is only symptomatic of the tiny, petty small-mindedness coming out of the McCain campaign of late. One feels like Alice after quaffing too much of the "Drink Me" potion and finding herself Down the Rabbit Hole and in the twee surreal world of the mercury-tainted Mad Hatter yelling "No room, no room" and pushing his tea-partiers around the table in crazed confusion. (Think back to McCain scuttling about distractedly in the Town Hall debate.) And all the while uttering perfect nonsense, like John McCain. Yes, he's the diminutive and demented Mad Hatter, and Sarah Palin can play the part of either the oblivious Duchess character (with her "deformed" baby [sorry] that she she doesn't know is really a pig), OR the insane Queen of Hearts, whose simplistic "off-with-their-heads" mentality fits Palin's hatchet-"man" role perfectly. Take your pick.

And then there's the Caterpillar, who asks Alice over and over, "Who ARE you?" even as she continues to provide the most transparent information about herself. But it's never enough, like the McCain team's empty insinuations about Obama's somehow sinister back story that he's hiding from us. Or Humpty Dumpty (skipping this once to the later Through the Looking Glass), who famously plays fast and loose with the meaning of words: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean..." How about the glib and irresponsible bandying about of "socialist" "leftist" "Marxist" "radical" and worse, by the McCain camp? Humpty Dumpty-ish, eh? But we all know who "takes a great fall" in the end.

Alice ends of course with the protagonist waking up from her fun-filled nightmare no better off than she began. That's the point. It all ends in a babble of nonsense, but it was a nightmare nonetheless. Likewise. the McCain/Palin rallies are getting well-nigh frightening of late, what with the red-neck rabble shouting imprecations tantamount to "off-with-his-head" Red-Queen insanity. Not the harmless fun of the Mad Hatter's tea party. We'll all wake up on Tuesday, I hope. How about Obama in the Land of Oz? Later.
***********

#98 "Spread the Wealth," John McCain, Your Own Self

I'm tickled. Ha, Ha--you say: in these troubled times? But that's the point. If he weren't so apoplectically serious, I'd swear John McCain wuz jokifyin' ... hilariatin' on us. Can this be the magic slogan to hook and pull the "undecideds" or even the wavering Obamites to his side? "Beware Barack Obama! When he gets into office he's apt to Spread The Wealth around!" Well, order me up a BIG SLICE OF THAT!

Yes, Obama did say something to that effect (with a bunch of taxation rationale and context around it), but did the McCain team really think that the "socialism" tag would send Great Waffling Hoards screaming to his tent? That works about as well these days as the old bugaboo, "socialized medicine"--what with the gub'mint already knee-deep in the healthcare business (Medi-Care-Caid, etc.), and fornicating twixt the sheets with Big Pharm and Big Med and Big Insurance in a tawdry menage a' quatre. Sure, it's a desperation cry in the dark for McCain & Co., but the idiots in charge should have more carefully considered the following ...

• McCain voted for the infamous BAILOUT, goshdarnit. Everybody knows that--he even cancelled Letterman to do it. And it's a prima facie redistribution of wealth--mainly to the wealthy, in this case. But he even went a further "socialist" mile in proposing the buying up of homeowners' bad mortgages.

• He should talk. McCain's as rich as Croesus. What he didn't get from his beer-heiress wife, people are thinking, he got from his membership in the Keating 5 Gang, the very ilk that got us in such trouble today. He doesn't even know how many homes he owns.

• And we wouldn't mind if some of these greedy folk paid a little indemnity on those ill-gotten gains. I'm talking about the outrageous salaries and severance packages (see #82) that these crooked CEO's are getting right and left, for essentially failing at their jobs and bringing this crisis upon us. Let's at least spread THEIR wealth.

• Doesn't Team McCain rather risibly misread human nature, here, as well? Are we above taking a hand-out? How many turned down this year's tax rebate on some free-market principle or other? None, I would guess, and even fewer would today.

You can think of some more reasons, I'm sure, why the "scare-tactic" of rampant-socialism-at-our-gates just isn't very scary at all to most people right now. A semantic quibble, to be relegated to the economics classroom. Maybe Obama was being a bit demagogic in his little rant about spreading the wealth, but I have no doubt that it fell on receptive ears. Bread and Circuses will work every time.
***********

#97 Sunday Sundries

In no particular order...

• Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. They couldn't even get this one right. The rumor is that she even asked to be on the show. Which took some guts. Twee kudos for that. But, although it's probably too late now to save the flagging ticket, the McCain/Palin people could have collaborated with the SNL people to get the girl to DO SOMETHING on the show last night. She has been, after all, a beauty queen, a sports reporter, a campaigner for high office--she's got proven stage-presence and can read a script and do sound bites--why not get her into the act? She could have scored a few points for self-mockery to off-set the raving banshee persona she's been stuck with for the last few weeks. Instead, she got mocked again, bystandingly. She did well enough in the funny opening bit, being mistaken for her doppelganger Tina Fey by some cast members, but she had only a reactive line or two. In the only other sketch, much later in the show, she was forced to sit and bob her head to an elaborately-costumed, singing/dancing, hip-hop production number lampooning all her well-known deficiencies. Or so it was staged--with this truly lamo set-up: "Would you like to play yourself [or Amy Poehler's words to that effect] in this bit?" ... "No, it's too far over the edge," responds Sarah. Not funny, and most of the satirical lyrics were unintelligible, at least for me. It did nobody no good at all.

• Here's another thing that does Sarah Palin no good, and it bothers me as a parent and grandparent. It's a matter of personal/historical/family legacy. Of honor. I just couldn't help thinking whenever she was "on" over the last couple of weeks: What are her kids and grandkids to think--if they have an ounce of ethical intelligence--of their mother's low-ball posturing for the sake of mere political gain? Hey, it's on tape. Forever retrievable and regrettable. She's lying half the time now, and her progeny will be able to play back the infamy at will. The McCarthyite, witch-hunting, insinuation-laden "Who is the real Barack Obama?" Or the best/worst example: "Obama thinks this country is so imperfect that he was pallin' around with terrorists [with the cutesy g-droppin']." As an everso evangelical Christianist, shouldn't she know that this is literally bearing-false-witness, ten-commandment-breaking behavior? We know--as any halfway inquisitive offspring would know too--the difference between the accepted meaning of "palling around," and that of sitting on some board with someone. "You did a lot of fear-mongerin' and racial-hatred-panderin' and truth-suckin' in that VP campaign of long ago, didn't you, Grandma?" Uhh...

• But if the breathtakingly irresponsible act of picking poor Sarah Palin (I really am beginning to feel sorry for her) as his running-mate didn't deep-six John McCain's bid for the Presidency, as I predicted, Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama today surely will. Whoa, here's a fellow-soldier, erstwhile friend, white-house collaborator, former Bush-loving guy slapping John McCain right in the jowls. I don't suspect for a moment that McCain broke down crying for a moment of his years of brutal captivity--he's not that kind of guy--but this thunderstroke event would bring even the stoutest-hearted to tears.
  

***********

#95 The Bailout--pt. 3: "What, Me Worry?"

The Mad Magazine motto worked itself out pretty nicely over the last couple of days, with record gains on the NYSE from the jumping-out-of-windows mark to the coming-in-off-the-ledge levels of moderate loss. It simply WAS to be that way, and hence forward for the next couple of years--no, no ... not soon enough, ye gods forfend, to infect the upcoming election day with any kind of McCain/Palin/Republican resurgency and turn the tide for them--as the Economy stabilizes. As it will, if only because echoing in the back of everybody's mind is the refrain, "the Democrats are coming ... the Democrats are coming." They'll fix IT, just like F.D.R. and Bill Clinton did. It's a 99% placebo effect, I'm convinced. Because nobody really knows for sure how to get a grip on this Protean/Procrustean monster.

Except Alfred E. Newman, and his school (see #92). Print lots of money; lend it to almost anybody. Treas. Sec. Paulson's now even shipping it overseas. And, as I predicted, it's working. (But please don't BUY anything, Henry. Way too far from free-market principles for me. Usury, OK. Outright purchase, no-no. Let the banks use the loan-money to buy back bad assets from themselves, if need be. They need the practice.) Of course this exaggerates 20th C. liberal economics, which was the the other side of my liberal education in the field. Sherill Cleland (see last post) in his Econ 101 class at K-College was the purveyor (indeed actor, in a minute) of the Pump-up-the-economy-when-necessary-with-federal-funds Theory. He had the aid of still-one-of-my-favorite books, Heilbruner's The Worldly Philosophers, still-in-classroom-use in later editions, I'm sure, across the known world. The text, as I recall, took us through the preliminaries and up to classical Adam Smith and Parson Malthus (Darwin's and Aldous Huxley's favorite), then ultimately to Marx and J.M. Keynes and the economic activists. In fact, there seemed to be a kind of Darwinian agenda to the book, as if really all that went on before was leading inevitably to Keynesian Economics (I don't know about later editions, where Friedman and his conservative ilk might come into play). And I was sold, just as I been on the tee-total free-marketers in H.S. Civics.

These were the Kennedy-Johnson years, after all, where the Keynsian J.K. Galbraith held sway at almost cabinet level, and where Dr. Cleland his-very-self was called upon by the that administration to help pump some good-will American money into several Latin American countries on the edge of what we're facing now. (He took a leave of absence as a kind of financial ambassador for several years shortly after I luckily had my class with him, and didn't return until after I graduated.) But that's basically the theory: modulate and moderate and even preempt the ups and downs of the economy with a "liberal" flow of funds from the government treasury.

What the heck: I swing back and forth in a bi-fiduciary kind of way, man. Let the ghosts of Adam Smith and Fred Hayek hover over a REGULATED (some of what's been going on smacks of simple fraud) Free Market most of the time. But when it's in extremis, as it is now, boogie down with a dose of Marx and Galbraith, and let the Monopoly money flow. Alfred E. Newman would approve.
***********