Building a Better Mousetrap

American Born Killers

2011-10-30T21:28:00.000-07:00

Anwar al-Awlkaki, an American citizen, was killed September 30, 2011, on direct orders of President Obama

"President Barack Hussein Obama should be impeached by the House of Representatives and removed from office by the Senate because he used the power of the Federal Government to murder a United States citizen." Powerful words, and one might think that they were the concoction of a right wing nut job or a Republican Presidential candidate, although, as Mark Twain once famously said, but I repeat myself. No, those words weren't spoken by anyone at all, so far as I know. although Congressman Ron Paul hinted at it several weeks ago. But the accusation against President Obama is unquestionably true, assuming that we still have a viable Constitution of the United States.

The Fifth Amendment states, in part: "No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury..." It also states that "nor shall any person be ... deprived of life... without due process of law."

Sometime in 2010, President Obama ordered the targeted assassination of a United States citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. On September 30, 2011, acting on President Obama's direct order, members of the United States military killed him. Mr. al-Awlaki was not killed on a battlefield. He wasn't collateral damage or a casualty of war. His specific death was ordered and it was carried out. However, Mr. al-Awlaki was never indicted by a grand jury. He was never formally accused of any crime in any United States court. Mr. al-Awlaki was never arrested. He was never given a trial. At the time of his killing he was not engaged in a military attack on any United States citizen or property, and so far as news reports are concerned, he had never engaged in any act of violence towards any citizen of the United States.

This country did not erupt in outrage after he was killed. The United States Code defines Murder as " the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought. " There is no law higher than the Constitution in the United States, and there is one clear requirement before a particular human being may be killed by deliberate government action: a presentment or indictment by a Grand Jury, followed by "due process of law."

This isn't an "after the fact" kind of argument. In 2010 Al-Awlaki's father filed a lawsuit in a United States Federal Court in Washington, D. C. to stop the unlawful killing of his son- but lost:

"What the government is doing is imposing the death penalty without trial," said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which along with the Center for Constitutional Rights took al-Awlaki's case."

The government lawyer's position in response to the lawsuit was strange, to say the least:

"Administration officials have confirmed to The Associated Press that al-Awlaki is on a capture or kill list, although Justice Department attorney Douglas Letter said in court that he would neither confirm nor deny it. But Letter said if al-Awlaki turns himself over to authorities, he's in no danger of the United States using lethal force against him."

Strange because Mr. al-Awlaki was never formally charged with a crime- no arrest warrant had issued for him. Why would a person who is not charged with a crime but who suspects with good cause that he will be held indefinitely without formal charges or a trial turn himself in? And to whom did Mr. Letter expect Mr. al-Awlaki turn himself in- who were the unspecified "authorities" Mr. Letter referenced? The FBI couldn't have arrested him without a warrant. Did Mr. Letter expect Mr. al-Awlaki to drive to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia or hire a boat and sail to the gates of Guantanamo, Cuba?

The Supreme Court has defined Due Process over the last century and a half to include the right of the accused to written notice of the charges leveled against him or her, the right to counsel to assist in his or her defense, the right to confront the witnesses against him or her, the right to secure the attendance of witnesses on his or her behalf, the right to trial by jury where incarceration or death is a possible punishment, the right to an impartial finder of fact, the right to be heard in one's own defense, and the right to equal protection of the law- meaning that we can't create one set of rules for one person or one category of persons. None of those rights are afforded to the human beings who have been detained in Guantanamo for years, and none were afforded to Mr. al-Alwaki before he was murdered on orders of the President of the United States.

There is no question that the killing of a United States citizen by orders of an American President is murder. There is also no question that this would arise to the level of a "high crime" within the definition of impeachable offenses listed in Article II of the Constitution. The only question is why there is no one in Congress other than the inimitable Ron Paul- no one on the left or the right, Democrat or Republican, all of whom swore an oath to uphold and defend that document-- who is willing to speak the truth and initiate impeachment proceedings of the President. And Congressman Paul said only that he is willing to "consider" it.

You will note that I have not mentioned what conduct of Anwar al-Awlaki so offended a President of the United States that his killing was ordered and carried out. I haven't said what religious or ethnic group defined him, or what his political views were. I haven't mentioned those things because under our Constitution, in our Republic "with Liberty and Justice for All," it just doesn't matter.

Remembering September 11, 2001

2011-09-10T22:18:00.000-07:00

Americans like round numbers, and 10 is one of them. We use them to celebrate wedding anniversaries, class reunions, and other important events. In my lifetime, the biggest were the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1976) and anniversary dates marking important World War II events, such as June 6, 1994 (50 years after the D-Day landings on Normandy beaches in France). But September 11, 2011, marks the first national observance of an event that occurred that seems more like current events than history. A lot will be written about the Bush Administration's response to the attacks, but history should not forget what President Bush's response was a month before the attacks were launched, when he received the the August 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US." which contained the following language:

"Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate bin Laden since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Laden implied in U.S. television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America.""

According to Ron Suskind's book, using interviews from form CIA officials, including former CIA Director George Tenet, a month before the 9-11 attacks a CIA staffer went to Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, while Bush was on one of his many vacations. The CIA briefer's visit occurred after a number of reports had surfaced regarding a pending al-Qaeda attack. The briefer made the trip for one reason: to call the president's attention personally to the August 6, 2001, memo.

And what was President Bush's response to the briefer trying to alert him to the threat? "All right. You've covered your ass, now."

That pretty much sums up our 43rd president.

LETTER TO USA TODAY ON VOTER ID LAWS

2011-06-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris helped George W. Bush steal an election when she illegally disqualified thousands of Democratic voters by falsely accusing them of being convicted felons

Dear Editor,

Your editorial "GOP's anti-fraud regulations smack of vote suppression" hit the nail on the head: instead of trying to win over voters with better ideas or more competent governing, in recent years the GOP has a national strategy of using every means possible to suppress voters who are likely to choose a Democratic candidate. In the 2000 election, it was the Florida Republican Secretary of State who helped George W. Bush win a razor thin election when she disqualified thousands of predominantly Democratic voters who were falsely accused of being convicted felons. It is not a coincidence that a number of Republican controlled state legislatures, including ours In Georgia, out of the blue passed voter ID laws even though this had never been a problem. Meanwhile, our State loosened the requirements- and increased the chances of real fraud- for absentee ballots, because those voters are more likely to vote Republican. The spokesperson for the right wing Heritage Foundation, Mr. von Spakovsky, who wrote the "opposing view" to your editorial, had the right argument but the wrong side when he said that the plaintiffs in the Georgia lawsuit challenging the State ID law "couldn't produce anyone who would be unable to vote because of the voter ID requirements." The truth is that the State couldn't produce a single person who had ever cast a fraudulent ballot using a fake identification. But if Mr. Von Spakovsky were honest, he would have to admit that the sudden national Republican passion for ID laws isn't meant to prevent all Democrats from voting- their hope is to discourage enough (like the old poll tax and literacy test) so that Republicans will win close elections. And that stinks.

A GUEST EDITORIAL TO USA TODAY

2011-01-25T23:01:00.000-08:00

Revered Joseph Lowery, seen here speaking at President Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009, had some stinging words in response to the praise heaped on Ronald Reagan

Dear Editor:

Following is a proposed guest editorial in response to the full page of fantasy you printed about Ronald Reagan. I know you won't print it, but I hope this at least gets read by someone responsible for the editorial page, in the interest of truth.

James Finkelstein
Albany, Georgia

Reading your special editorial page with prominent Americans reminiscing about Ronald Reagan was a true lesson about our country's history. The lesson wasn't the one intended by Senator McCain, Speaker Boehner, Sarah Palin, or President Obama- it was the grand American tradition of rewriting our nation's history when the truth is far too embarrassing. Just as Southerners like to claim that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, or American history books tried to avoid mentioning the travesty of American concentration camps in which we interned innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry during World War II, or in more recent times, we swept under the rung the torture regime instituted and presided over by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, we do our best to avoid the truth about Ronald Reagan and what his administration wrought from January 20, 1981, to January 20, 1989. But many Americans were adults during those years, and short of mass lobotomies, no sugar coated encomiums by the likes of Sarah Palin (does she even bother to read the ghost written editorials under her name, one wonders?) can change some of the searing images indelibly imprinted on our brains.

I had the pleasure of attending a lively and humorous speech by Reverend Joseph Lowery at Savannah State College in 2004, shortly after Reagan's funeral, where he wonderingly recounted some of the amazing false praise heaped on the late president. Reverend Lowery told the story of a woman at her husband's funeral, who, after hearing speaker after speaker spin fabulous tales of her husband's supposed kindness and generosity, finally exclaimed, "Open the casket, I want to see who's buried in there, because it sure ain't my husband!"

Here's a few memories of the Reagan era that your editorial page contributors overlooked:

June 7 1981. Israel bombs Iraq's nuclear reactor in Osirik just as Saddam Hussein is about to get a nuclear bomb making facility online. President Reagan is outraged that Israel used American F-16 and F-15 fighter jets on the raid and freezes military aid in the pipeline to Israel.

October 23, 1983. Reagan has put hundreds of U.S. Marines in harm's way near Beirut, Lebanon, with no clear mission or protocols on dealing with attacks. A suicide bomber explodes a truck bomb at the Marine barracks, killing almost 300 Marines. Reagan's response is to pull out the Marines and have a U.S. battleship fire 16 inch shells at an unpopulated mountainside in Lebanon. This retreat is followed shortly thereafter on October 25, 1983, by the unauthorized (by Congress) invasion of the island of Grenada in the Caribbean, accomplished with 19 dead U.S. servicemen, ostensibly to "rescue" American medical students.

December 20, 1983. Reagan sends special envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad, where Rumsfeld has an infamous photo taken while shaking hands with dictator and mass murderer Saddam Hussein. The Reagan Administration pledges to aid Iraq, provides secret satellite photos for battlefield intelligence, and looks the other way when Iraq violates international human rights conventions by using poison gas against Iranian soldiers on the battlefield and to commit mass murders of its own citizens.

1985-1986. members of Reagan's National Security Council, including Oliver North and Admiral John Poindexter, carry out a scheme to sell arms to Iranian government sponsors of Lebanese terrorists to obtain the release of United States citizens held for ransom. The money from the exchange is funneled to Nicaraguan contras at war with a democratically elected government (which later steps down after losing an election) in direct violation of U.S. law. Members of Reagan's team lie under oath to Congress about the fiasco of selling arms for the release of hostages- which they never figure out creates a constant cycle of more hostage taking. Those convicted or about to be prosecuted are later pardoned by Reagan shortly before he leaves office, including Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger. Oliver North gets off on one of those legal "technicalities" so despised by conservatives who claim to be tough on crime. In a televised speech to the nation in 1986, Reagan claims that he knew nothing of the law-breaking but takes responsibility, which marks him either as a liar or grossly incompetent for allowing his minions to fund a lucrative hostage taking industry in Lebanon while providing arms to an Iranian government completely hostile to the United States.

April 15, 1986. Reagan orders air strikes on Libya in an attempt to assassinate Muammar Khaddafi, succeeds only in killing Khaddafi's 15 month old daughter and several other civilians. A little more than two years later, December 21, 1988, Khaddafi takes his revenge, as members of Libya's intelligence agency plan and carry out the bombing of a Pan Am civilian jet, which goes down near Lockerbie, Scotland., killing 259 civilians.

1981. Reagan ushers in the era of "deregulation," claiming, as John Boehner proudly noted in his editorial, "Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem." By 1988, Wall Street shenanigans and fraud are so over the top that the stock market crashes, ultimately costing U.S. taxpayers over $125 billion as the government has to bail out Savings and Loans institutions looted by people like Senator John McCain's political crony and contributor, Charles Keating. Keating, later convicted of fraud, racketeering, and conspiracy, had paid several hundred thousand dollars in "contributions" to five senators-- including John McCain-- who were ultimately rebuked by the Senate ethics committee for trying to get federal investigators to lay off Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan, which collapses.

1981-1989. Reagan ushers in the era of "voodoo economics," as George H. W. Bush famously put it during the 1980 Republican primaries, by claiming that he can cut taxes, increase military spending, and balance the budget. The result: an historic increase in the national debt-- over 300%-- during Reagan's presidency, from $907 billion when Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter, to $2.8 trillion when he left office. Later Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, admits that the Reagan promise to balance the budget with tax cuts was untenable.

One promise was kept by Ronald Reagan, though. When he took office, government may or may not have been the problem. But by the time he left, there was no doubt: his policy of tilting towards Iraq and provoking Iran, including the accidental shooting down of a civilian Iranian jetliner on July 3, 1988 in international waters over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 passengers, including 66 children, cemented Iran as an implacable foe of the United States for decades to come. His support for Saddam Hussein in the 1980's led to the use of poison gas on Iraq's citizens and ultimately to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait under Reagan's successor, George W. Bush, as Hussein mistakenly assumed that Bush would continue Reagan's policy of "hands off" Iraq's aggressive war to take over oil fields in the Persian Gulf.

Reagan put a man in charge of the U.S. Department of the Interior- James Watt- whose goals were to allow as much industrial plunder of American's natural resources as possible, with the least amount of revenue to U.S. taxpayers. Watt openly declared that protecting our nation's natural resources didn't matter, since the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent. Reagan put Ann Gorsuch, the "Ice Queen," in charge of the Environmental Protection Administration. She carried out the official Reagan philosophy of promoting business by dismantling or weakening U.S. laws and EPA regulations which kept our water, air, and soil free of pollutants and toxic chemicals.

In the area of civil rights-- protecting citizens from the abuses of government-- Reagan set his tone during the 1980 campaign for the presidency, which he kicked off with a speech extolling "States' rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the location seared into the nation's consciousness on June 21, 1964, by the brutal murders of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner- a black man and two Jews working on behalf of civil rights of black citizens. Reagan's verbal hostility towards Civil Rights went back to his opposition to the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965, which protected Americans of every race from discrimination in employment, public accommodations, and voting. Once elected, Reagan followed through by appointing judges who had an intense distaste for any laws, including parts of the Constitution, which favored the individual over the government, or which favored government over business. The man he appointed to head the Equal Employment Opportunity Administration was a black man who opposed everything the EEOC stood for and who strongly opposed affirmative action, even though his own admissions to college and law school and every job he obtained were the result of the very policy he opposed. His name was Clarence Thomas.

One other note in the interest of historical accuracy: the military buildup for which Ronald Reagan was later saluted was the continuation of the plan implemented by his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. The Cold War ended in the Fall of 1989, when George H. W. Bush was president, but the man most responsible for ending it was the the last Premier of the Soviet Union before it voluntarily dissolved in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, who steered his nation out of Afghanistan in 1988 and towards the reality that it could no longer afford to waste its resources on useless weapons.

A RESPONSE TO TOM KNIGHTON, ALBANY JOURNAL COLUMNIST

2011-01-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

I like Tom Knighton's columns and typically look at them first on the editorial page of The Albany Journal. Tom disagrees with my post below on right wing rhetoric inciting threats and violence up to and including murder. The usual response of the right wing when caught in some abysmal behavior- usually corruption, but in this case, over the top comments akin to shouting "kill the *?!@##" when standing at the back of a potential lynch mob, is to say "yeah, but the other side does it, too." And the main stream media always buys it, in their heroic efforts to appear "fair and balanced," even when to do so make them wildly unbalanced and extremely unfair.

It's as if a reporter walks up to a man lying in a pool of blood in an alley, almost senseless, with a much larger man standing over him with a baseball bat in one hand and the victim's wallet in other hand, counting the crash and going through the credit cards. The reporter asks the guy on the ground, "so what happened?" They guy says, "he mugged me, dragged me here, then stole my wallet." The mugger turns and says- yeah but he's just as bad." Next day, story runs in paper: "Two men fight in alley."

Congresswoman Giffords and the six dead were victims of far worse than a mugging. Sarah Palin didn't put out a list of Democrats to target for defeat. She sent out a poster with rifle cross hairs over the Congresswoman's district in Arizona, along with 19 others similarly targeted, and she put the Congresswoman's name on the poster. That's a mind set far, far beyond the "we want to defeat our opponents because we disagree with their policy proposals."

The other examples I cited in my column were people who literally committed murder or attempted to commit murder, and who were inspired by a constant right wing attack machine which spews forth lies and hate. For example: the myth that President Obama was going to take away their guns didn't just incite the murders noted in the column; it also spawned an incredible run on guns and ammunition shortly after the 2008 election. Has any of that rhetoric been matched by reality, even in the slightest? Not for a moment. There hasn't been an overt public reaction to the anticipated future acts of a newly elected president to match this since the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

In response to Mr. Knighton's comment that I view events through ideological glasses- I don't. If I did, I would not be aware of and frequently criticize the spectacular shortcomings of the spineless crapweasels that Democrats have managed to elect to and put in charge of Congress and the White House.

But the recent violence inspiring rhetoric has come from particular sources. They are prominent nationally (unlike the obscure groups that Mr. Knighton claims are the left-wing equivalent), they are echoed by the highest national leadership (see the John Boehner quotes below which spawned death threats against a fellow Congressman), and they aren't shy about leaving public footprints- because there are no consequences, even when specific threats and acts of violence are linked to specific incitement. I doubt that Sarah Palin will be hauled on the carpet at FOX News or in the other media forums which publish her opinions (Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today to name three- ironically, she could not name any of those papers- or any others, for that matter- in 2008 when Katie Couric asked her what newspapers were her sources of infomration) to defend her rifle target poster aimed at Congresswoman Giffords.

Mr. Knighton might want to explain why death threats against President Obama are exponentially higher than they were against his predecessor, even with the incredible antipathy inspired by Mr. Bush.

He might want to explain how the acts of murder of human beings (not someone throwing paint somewhere or spiking a tree) can be directly traced in many instances I cited in my column to specific rhetoric by specific nationally prominent Republicans and their right wing media attack machines on LImbaugh and Fox news.

Here's one more example, the Boehner quote and aftermath, not in my original column, quoted from Digby's blog (see end for link):

"Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize." "

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

And the granddaddy of Republican hate speech was ignited by Newt Gingrich, who, in 1994, had his political action committee, GOPAC, issue a memorandum which Mr. Gingrich sent to aspiring Republican candidates. It was titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control."

Here are excerpts from the memo in which he provided sample adjectives that Republicans should utilize in describing their opponents- regardless of reality or truth:

"These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party... destructive... sick... pathetic... lie... betray... threaten... devour... bizarre... cheat... traitors...."

That memo defines the bright line difference between the modern day Republican Party and its origins under Lincoln. The national Republican Party has become the party of hate and divisiveness. Non-Christians, gays, immigrants, Muslims, liberals-- you name the group, and Republicans' campaigns have exploited and incited hatred and fear of them.

And the Democrats are spineless for failing to respond to these attacks.

AND ANOTHER THING.... (from Digby)

2011-01-09T21:22:00.000-08:00

The New Speaker's comments spawned death threats to an Ohio Democratic Congressman

"Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize." "

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/

A HISTORY OF RECENT AMERICAN VIOLENCE-- CAUSE & EFFECT

2011-01-09T10:10:00.000-08:00

2010 Congressional campaign poster from Sarah Palin's PAC. Look at the fourth name down on this Sarah Palin hit list, complete with a rifle target cross hair target hovering directly over Tucson, Arizona, where she listed Democrats to "target" in last year's election campaign. Yes, it is the same Democratic Congresswoman Giffords who was shot in the head in the rampage that killed, among others, a 9 year old child and a federal judge.

Query: if a nationally prominent Democrat had done what Sarah Palin did, and the result was mass murder and political assassination, what do you think the right wing media would be asking for right now? Criminal charges? Or would they be excusing her violence inspiring rhetoric as protected speech under the First Amendment and touting that person as presidential material for 2012?

Here's a brief look at the faces and rhetoric of a few of the instigators and perpetrators of modern American right wing terrorism:

April 19, 1995:

Timothy James McVeigh detonated a truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, killing 168 people and injuring 450. It was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks.

August 26, 2002:

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." Ann Coulter, FOX News contributor and guest opinionator.

April 5, 2005:

"And finally, I – I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. Certainly nothing new, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in -- engage in violence. Certainly without any justification but a concern that I have that I wanted to share."

Texas Senator John Cornyn, after a Florida federal judge ruled against the position favored by Republicans in the Terry Schiavo end of life case.

July 27, 2008:

—Jim Adkisson shoots and kills two people at a progressive church in Knoxville, Tennessee, wounding two. Adkisson calls it “a symbolic killing” because he really “wanted to kill…every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book,” but was unable to gain access to them.

September 22, 2008:

Wayne Lapierre, NRA President

—The National Rifle Association launches its GunBanObama website, which predicts that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, “if elected…would be the most anti-gun president in American history.” The website is part of a $15 million NRA campaign to discredit Obama.

December 9, 2008:

FBI teams investigating the murder of white supremacist James Cumming, 29, a resident of Belfast, Maine, find supplies for a crude radiological dispersal device and other explosives in his home. Cumming's wife, who shot him to death after being abused by him repeatedly, explains, "His intentions were to construct a dirty bomb and take it to Washington to kill President Obama. He was planning to hide it in the undercarriage of our motor home."

April 4, 2009:

Neo-Nazi Richard Poplawski shoots and kills three police officers responding to a 911 call to his home in Pittsburgh. His friend Edward Perkovic tells reporters that Poplawski feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on its way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” Perkovic also commented that Poplawski carried out the shooting because “if anyone tried to take his firearms, he was gonna’ stand by what his forefathers told him to do.”

June 10, 2009:

James W. von Brunn, a convicted felon and a “hardcore Neo-Nazi,” walks into the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and shoots and kills a security guard. Von Brunn believed that Western civilization was going to be replaced with a “ONE WORLD ILLUMINATI GOVERNMENT” that would “confiscate private weapons” in order to accomplish its goals.

July 15, 2009:

Katherine Crabill, a Republican candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates in the state’s 99th District makes headlines by calling on Americans to resist the course President Obama has set for the country. Appearing at a “Tea Party” rally, Crabill quotes a 1775 speech by Patrick Henry and then states, “We have a chance to fight this battle at the ballot box before we have to resort to the bullet box. But that's the beauty of our Second Amendment right. I am glad for all of us who enjoy the use of firearms for hunting. But make no mistake. That was not the intent of the Founding Fathers. Our Second Amendment right was to guard against tyranny.”

2010 Republican/Tea Party Congressional candidate Catherine Crabill's Facebook page says that she likes:

* The Bible
* Being Conservative

Other Facebook comments by Ms. Crabill:

* I Bet Jesus Can Break The Record For Most Fans On Face-book!
* I hate it when I wake up in the morning and Barack Obama is President.

Feb 18, 2010

"A small plane crashed into a seven-story office building in Austin, Texas, and signs are now pointing to a deliberate act. CNN reports that the pilot—identified as Joseph Andrew Stack—set his house on fire, took off in his own plane from a local airport, and crashed it into the building at full throttle. The building houses IRS offices in the area that got hit, notes the Austin American-Statesman. Stack left behind an anti-IRS screed posted online, apparently written to be read after the crash."

****

Funny, when I note the racial and religious characteristics of modern American terrorists, for the first time I'm almost inclined to agree with the right wing commentators who are urging racial, religious, and ethnic profiling to protect Americans from terrorism. Not that I want to see conservative, Republican leaning, nutcase white Christians locked up in Guantanamo or water boarded until they confess. But they shouldn't be allowed to be around firearms or sharp objects.

"ObamaCare" -- NOT A PEJORATIVE TERM

2011-01-01T10:11:00.000-08:00

How the Rabid Right wants the American Public to view health care reform. A better picture would be a snapshot of the current system it is attempting to repair- a child awaiting a critical operation whose life won't be saved unless his parents can raise the cash

To anyone who has bought the big lie technique of labeling health care reform as some horrible curse inflicted on America, look at the actual nuts and bolts of some of the salutary effects of the legislation- i.e., closing the "donut hole" for seniors on Medicare who spend thousands on prescription drugs, allowing children to stay on parents' health insurance through age 26, ending discrimination against applicants with pre-existing conditions, stopping companies from capping life time benefits, forcing policy holders into bankruptcy, and so on. Why the Democratic Party was so stupid as not to campaign on this has confounded rational observers.

Jim

from Washington Monthly:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/

MAJOR HEALTH CARE REFORMS KICK IN TODAY.... When the Affordable Care Act was signed into law last March, there were legitimate concerned that many of its key provisions wouldn't take effect for years. That said, it's wrong to assume major advances aren't already happening.

Almost immediately after the legislation received President Obama's signature, new consumer protections and benefits kicked in -- young adults have been able to stay on their family health care plan through their 26th birthday; children with pre-existing conditions were no longer facing discrimination; and "rescission" practices were curtailed.

But as 2011 gets underway, even more worthwhile changes are taking effect, starting today.

The new year will bring important changes to U.S. health-insurance rules, as new provisions related to last year's massive health-care overhaul take effect.

The new rules are designed to help those caught in Medicare's "doughnut hole," offer seniors more preventative care, and limit how much of their customers' money health-insurance companies can keep for overhead and profit.

They all go into effect on Saturday.

These reforms may not appear especially sexy or high profile, but we're talking about some pretty important provisions. Seniors who've been stuck in prescription-drug "doughnut hole," will, for example, receive a 50% discount on the price of brand-name prescription drugs starting today. On a related note, seniors will also be eligible, starting today, for free "preventive services" screenings, including cancer tests like mammograms, and annual check-ups.

Of particular interest, on a systemic level, is the introduction of the new "medical loss ratio," which sounds more complicated than it is. This new rule forces private insurers to spend 80% to 85% of the money we pay them in premiums on paying for* actual medical care to its customers, rather than everything else (profit, marketing, executive salaries, overhead, etc.). In recent years, some insurance companies were spending as little as 50% of their premium dollars on their customers.

Americans almost certainly won't notice the shift resulting from the new medical loss ratio, but it's expected to make a pretty big difference, and it's one of the provisions that drew the loudest howls from the insurance companies and their congressional lackeys.

Taken together -- the reforms that took effect in 2010, coupled with the measures that kick in today -- we're talking about some major positive changes to the system. All of these reforms, by the way, tend to be pretty popular -- the larger concerns about the ACA notwithstanding -- but are nevertheless being targeted by congressional Republicans, who want to eliminate the benefits entirely.

Good luck with that, GOP.

PALIN WEIGHS IN ON FOREIGN POICY- BUT DOES SHE KNOW WHAT SHE "WROTE?"

2011-01-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

(the following letter was sent- but not published- to USA Today after I was astonished to read a guest op-ed from "Sarah Palin", which I put in quotes because, as I pointed out in my riposte, it was obviously ghost written. She's pictured above with blood and guts from a defenseless animal she killed. I'm posting it here because apparently there are a few stalwarts out there who still check in to see what I've written- thanks Kevin & Brian- and I intend to get back to sending in opinion pieces for publication which I will occasionally post here

Dear Editor:

It was hard to decide whether to be more amused or alarmed at seeing an obviously ghost written guest editorial from Sarah Palin on the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. Amused because USA Today could not have chosen a person more profoundly ignorant of foreign affairs than the former Alaska governor- who, when thrust into the national spotlight as a Vice Presidential candidate, whined about a "gotcha question" when CBS's Katie Couric asked her what newspapers she read. That "gotcha" question, and the total confusion it engendered as Ms. Palin floundered, unable to name a single newspaper, exemplified as nothing else the incredible mistake made by John McCain in selecting her for the Republican national ticket. (Presumably her list of zero has now expanded to include USA Today, but I would not bet money on it). Alarmed because her ignorance is dangerous when it affects public perceptions of Iran, a country that right wing radicals have been urging this country to bomb. It is a shame that USA Today gave Ms. Palin a forum in which to express her misstatements of fact (that Iran has missiles capable of targeting Israel that soon will be able to target the U.S., that it shields Al Qaida leaders) and her lack of consistency (she quotes Saudi officials who urged the U.S. to attack Iran without attributing the source for those quotes- Wikileaks, the same organization whom Ms. Palin and her fellow ideologues want prosecuted for leaking the information). Perhaps the only salutary use for Ms. Palin's article will be to have an interviewer question her to see if she can define any of the words appearing in it-- I look forward to hearing how she defines "Bushehr," the location of Iran's nuclear reactor. My guess is that she thinks it means a follower of George Bush.

Democrats just can't spin those fantasies like the pros do...

2010-09-04T16:41:00.001-07:00

The target audience for Tea Party rallies and Republican candidates.

"We need individuals who think and do what's right for you," he added. "You've got to have people who think, not ideologues. Republicans are utterly impervious to evidence." Bill Clinton, at a political rally for a New York Congressional Democrat

That pretty much hits the nail on the head. Democrats live in the real world- they may not fix it, they may even go along with the mess ups, they just can't muster the ability to spin fantasies out of whole cloth the way the Republicans can do as easily as falling off a chair.

To wit:

death panels

Obama the Muslim, socialist, non-native (take your pick).

Keep your government hands off our Medicare.

Weapons of mass destruction- about to be used imminently against us (!)

You're doing a huckuva job, Brownie.

Cutting capital gains taxes will create: jobs, economic development, etc. But we can't extend unemployment benefits unless we find a way to pay for it. (And it's okay to spend a trillion dollars on war without paying for it)

Rich people shouldn't be taxed on their estates (the "death tax") because that's taxing the same money twice- once when they earned it, again when they die.
But it's ok to tax the money a poor person makes four times (federal, medicare, social security, state tax), then when the shmo buys a house with it, charge him a property tax every year on the money that was taxed four times before.

Marijuana is a gateway drug to (crack, heroin, meth).... but alcohol is just kids acting out and grownups relaxing.

Medical marijuana should be illegal- even for glaucoma and cancer patients who need it- because it will "send the wrong message to our youth" (who may try to get cancer or glaucoma to get a chance to smoke it?) But tobacco- that's legal, it's fine, and it's a "choice" for free adults to make their own decision.

And so on.

DEAR SANFORD....

2010-07-25T12:54:00.000-07:00

Will Rogers understood that given a choice between doing the smart, sensible, and politically advantageous thing, and doing nothing or something stupid, the Democratic Party will go for dumb and stupid almost every time.

Dear Sanford,

I took time before I went to court for a trial now entering its 3rd week to vote for you last Tuesday. However, I believe that you are now facing one of the most serious challenges since you were first elected around 1992. I would much prefer that you win this November. To that end, a few months ago I dropped off at your office and e-mailed you a list of my suggestions for you and other Democrats to hold their seats.

I have to laugh when I tell people the same old quote that Will Rogers famously said: "I am not a member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat."

I write this because the Democratic Party, as usual, is doing everything possible to lose the next election, or, in another sense, failing to do the most simple things that can help win elections while also helping the country.

So, I am going to try to get my point across one last time: if the Democratic Party were to do one thing, and only that thing, it would probably be enough to hold both houses of Congress. The party should introduce legislation in both chambers to dedicate 100% of the proceeds of the estate tax to a worthy cause. Previously I suggested the proceeds go to prescription drug relief for seniors (the donut hole). I think that the recent health care bill took care of that. So I have a better idea: dedicate all of it to benefits and medical care for disabled veterans.

That one piece of legislation, trumpeted publicly and made the centerpiece of every Democrat's re-election campaign, will be enough to make the crucial difference. Because the Republicans are so wedded to eliminating the estate tax, they would have to do a 180 degree turn to understand the political peril of continuing their position on this subject.

If through some miracle the Republican Party is smart enough to get their local candidates to reverse their positions on eliminating the estate tax, then simply move on to the next thing. For instance, take the war in Afghanistan. Vote to end the war and put the money saved in job creation and making public work projects available for any unemployed person who wants a job.

And so on. By dedicating the proceeds of taxes the Republicans want to eliminate, or, by cutting spending on unpopular ventures (like the wars abroad) and dedicating the funds saved to job creation (rather than welfare) the rug is pulled out from under the Republican Party's raison d'etre, which is to cut all taxes while borrowing money to keep all government programs that kill people while eliminating all government programs that help people or save their lives.

Jim Finkelstein

IS ROETHLISBERGER A RAPIST?

2010-04-18T21:02:00.000-07:00

I've been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan since 1972, the year of The Immaculate Reception, when Franco Harris was a rookie running back out of Penn State and Terry Bradshaw was in his third year as a pro after being the first pick in the draft by the historically hapless franchise in 1970. I cheered when they won four Super Bowls in the 1970's, and suffered through the long drought- 26 years- between championships after their last title in 1980 against the (then) L.A. Rams. During every game, win or lose, I call my Dad back home in Western Pa. and celebrate or commiserate as the occasion requires. I have an 8 second delay on my satellite network, and he delights in faking me out by calling out results of plays before the ball has been snapped on my tv set. So I come to this discussion with a bias, a predisposition to believe the best of anyone who suits up to play for the Steel City (where, ironically, they no longer make steel and haven't for years).

There have been some questionable characters who have worn the black and gold over the years, defensive tackle Ernie Holmes of the famed Steel Curtain defense being one who readily comes to mind. But I don't remember any of them being so high profile, so accomplished, and yet so unfailing thuggish and stupid as Ben Roethlisberger. He's the young (just turned 28 last month) quarterback who won his first 15 starts in his rookie season, 2004, when he was the third quarterback picked in that draft, 11th overall. He's already got two Super Bowl rings, 2006 and 2009, the latter of which put him in sportswriters' discussions as to whether he already had Hall of Fame credentials at the tender age of 26, after only his fifth season.

So when the Nevada woman's civil suit accusing Roethlisberger of rape surfaced last year, I could write if off as a woman discarded after a one night stand who decided to make a few bucks off a millionaire superstar athlete.

But when the Georgia escapade hit the headlines last month, two was one too many coincidences to swallow. Coincidences do occur- but not of this type. And unlike the first incident, of which no police report was made, anyone can read (at thesmokinggun.com) the official police reports and handwritten eyewitness statements which recount the sordid details of Roethlisberger and friends (including two Pennsylvania police officers, one a State Trooper) and their pub crawl in Milledgeville during the night and early morning of March 4th and 5th.

There were three different bars involved, the first, Velvet Elvis, then The Brick, and finally the last, and fateful one, a club called Capital City. Capital City conveniently had a curtained off VIP room in which, one of the witnesses stated, Roethlisberger and friends were entertaining numerous young women (many under the legal drinking age of 21, and no males were allowed outside of Ben's entourage) with shots lined up on the bar.

According to Miss Ann Marie Lubatti, one of the girls who had accompanied the victim that evening, "Ben was back there with about 15-20 girls. He was buying everyone shots and just talking and taking pictures with everyone. At this point he was noticeably intoxicated."

The details as recounted by different witnesses, including the 20 year old victim, paint a pathetic picture of Roethlisberger, whose idea of a "date" seemed to be getting young women drunk, then having his "bodyguard" (one of the Pennsylvania police officers, about 700 miles out of his jurisdiction) take the girl to an enclosed area shut off even from the VIP room, setting her down on a stool, and leaving her alone. A few minutes later, Big Ben walked in with his private parts exposed outside of his unzipped pants.

And here is where it is clear that a crime occurred: the girl said "no." Not once, but repeatedly. "I told him 'no, it's not OK, we don't need to do this' and I proceeded to get up and try to leave" is what she wrote in her statement to the Milledgeville police later that morning.

"I went to the first door I saw, which happened to be a bathroom. He followed me into the bathroom & shut the door behind him. I still said 'no, this is not ok,' and he then had sex with me. He said it was ok. He then left without saying anything. I went out of the hallway door to the side where I saw my friends. We left Capital and went to the first police car we saw."

As the girl was being raped by Roethlisberger, two of her female friends tried to get back to the area but were blocked by the "bodyguards." Miss Lubatti wrote that as soon as she saw Roethlisberger go back to the area where the bodyguard had taken her inebriated friend, she immediately went to the bodyguard and told him "'this isn't right. My friend is back there with Ben. She needs to come back right now.' The bodyguard wouldn't look at me. He just said 'I don't know what you are talking about.' That's when Nicole [another friend of the victim] went up to Rocky, the manager at Capital City, and told him to unlock the door because ******'s back there. Nicole told me that Rocky said 'Ben's an NFL quarterback, he won't do anything to ruin his reputation.'"

After the victim came out of the back area, visibly upset, and told her friends what happened, they hurriedly left and flagged down the first police car they saw and reported the crime.

More than a month later, the local District Attorney decided he didn't want to be in the middle of a circus similar to the fiasco following the Kobe Bryant rape charges in Eagle, Colorado in 2003. So- for the moment at least- no criminal prosecution will ensue, although it is clear from the police reports than any ordinary person would most likely be in jail without bond facing a rape trial.

Last August I lit into Michael Vick ("I (don't) wanna be like Mike") because the nature of his conduct was so heinous that no mere apology could suffice, and it was clear to me that his character was more of a sociopath than a common criminal. With Roethlisberger it's different. He's just a thug who can't understand that society's rules actually do apply to him, too. He can probably control his conduct, but he has become warped and tainted by the world of celebrity he has inhabited since he suddenly became a millionaire and a sports hero at 22 after being a relatively unknown football player at a small (Miami of Ohio) school outside of a big time conference. At the moment, he more resembles Mike Tyson, who served a prison term in Indiana for rape under similar circumstances. And like Tyson and Vick, he deserves to serve time in prison.

MESSAGE TO THE ALBANY HERALD

2010-04-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I spend the 50 cents and get a daily paper. Then, just when I'm almost ready to call the subscription department and get a yearly subscription, you run something like this on your editorial page:

"April is Confederate History and Heritage Month and is officially recognized by the state of Georgia and other Southern states. The annual Southwest Georgia Confederate Memorial Service will be held in Albany at the Confederate Memorial Park on Highway 91 (Philema Road) 1/2 mile past Chehaw Park on April 10. The service begins at 9 a.m. with a musical tribute to the Confederate States of America and Confederate heroes, followed by a ceremony at 10 a.m. that includes speakers, re-enactors and a musket salute. The service concludes with the playing of “Taps” at approximately noon.

The event is hosted by the Southwest Georgia camps and chapters of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) and United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC). The keynote speaker will be SCV Commander Russell Ottens of the Sylvester camp. He will speak on “Those Who Gave Their All For States Rights.”

The Confederate States of America and its predecessor, the Old South of the United States of America, was a classical civilization with colleges and universities, art and literature, world-class architecture, a fine military and world-class statesmen. It deserves to be remembered, honored and studied, just as the classical civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome are.

The public is cordially invited to join SCV and UDC for this memorial service and tribute to Southern and Confederate heroes who fought for Southern independence, limited constitutional federal government, states rights, resistance to government tyranny and Christian values and principles. The Confederate States of America and the Confederate flag represent the values and principles of the original U.S. Betsy Ross flag and America’s founding fathers, who were primarily Southern gentlemen from Virginia.

Free assistance in tracing Southern family trees and documentation of Confederate ancestors is available to anyone wishing to join SCV or UDC.

The primary goals are: 1 — To preserve the memory of officers and enlisted men of the CSA armed forces; 2 — To preserve Confederate graves, monuments, memorials, flags and other mementos, and 3 — See that Southern and Confederate history is presented in a fair and impartial manner. American history books since 1865 and continuing to this day are at best “a biased New England perspective” and at worst “New England propaganda.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Bob Logan is a member of Lt. Col. Thomas Nelson Camp 141, Sons of Confederate Veterans."

How about this editor's note instead:

"Bob Logan is someone who is educationally and historically challenged, and who can't abide the truth about American history so he makes it up as he goes along. The Civil War was not fought for any of the causes he listed. It was fought because the Southern States assumed that the institution of slavery would be ended following the election of the first President of a party created for and dedicated to the principle that slavery was an evil to be eradicated. The Republican Party was founded as an anti-slavery party in 1854 in Ripon, Wisconsin. The election of its Presidential candidate, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860, set off the Civil War, which started months prior to Lincoln's inauguration when South Carolina seceded and when its troops fired on Ft. Sumter in Charleston Bay. On December 24, 1860, the South Carolina legislature adopted a "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." The words "rights of states" were used- but in the context of the "rights" of slave owners in the South to their "property." The "Causes" included a complaint about the Northern States' failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and to aid their Southern neighbors in keeping human beings in bondage for life.

The Confederates weren't shy about saying that they fought to preserve the institution of slavery- they had none of the "political correctness" used by modern day bigots and fascists like Mr. Logan who attempt to dress up their racist and violent messages in milder rhetoric.

The Confederacy's president, Jefferson Davis, defended slavery in a speech in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 29, 1861, arguing that Southern slavery “elevated [African slaves] from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers.” He justified the Southern States' decision to secede from the Union as being necessary to insure the continuation of “the labor of African slaves... under the supervision of a superior race” which was “indispensable” to the “wants of civilized man.” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said that slavery was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy.

See, now that's the kind of editor's note that would show that your newspaper was dedicated to the principles of knowledge over ignorance, tolerance over bigotry, and truth over hyperbole, gross exaggeration, and outright lies. Instead, your newspaper reinforces people's prejudices, ignorance, and fears. Shame on you.

LIVING IN A SOCIALIST TYRANNY

2010-03-28T22:17:00.001-07:00

These people lining up for medical care in Los Angeles don't exist in the Republican non-reality based universe.

I have friends who are Republicans and who are also educated and intelligent (some even have advanced degrees). Somehow they manage to get up in the morning, shower, shave, get dressed, eat breakfast, drive a car, go to work, function at their jobs, and raise their families. Yet when it comes to evaluating the rhetoric of the national leaders of their party, they somehow manage to lose all capacity for rational thought or analytical reasoning. If Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh remain skeptical of the science of global warming, that's good enough for them to oppose any meaningful efforts at reducing our carbon footprint. In my reality-based world, I look at a picture of the rapidly shrinking (North) polar ice cap, the ice sheets retreating from Greenland, melting glaciers the world over, and I don't need a scientist to tell me that something is seriously wrong with our planet. Moreover, even if it weren't, there is simply no downside to increasing energy conservation, reducing carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, and fostering the growth of new companies and industries that are "green." That's a rational point of view, and my political viewpoint has nothing to do with wanting to live in a cleaner, healthier environment.

So when the debate on reforming health insurance coverage (I refuse to call it health care reform until Congress actually, you know, decides to pass a law that will reform the care that we receive as opposed to our method of paying for it) devolved into shouts of "death panels" and "socialism" and "putting the government between a patient and his doctor," I wondered to what venue Republicans' reason had fled. Even relatively bright and non-confrontational Meet the Press staples like South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham have made remarks so absurd that I could not leave the television on another instant. On the March 28th edition of MTP he attempted to frighten seniors by falsely claiming that they would "lose their Medicare advantage" when "$574 billion would be taken out of Medicare" (the truth: Medicare benefits won't be cut by a single cent to seniors) and decrying a government plan to "take over the student loan program" (in actuality, billions of tax dollars will be saved by removing the middle man- private loan facilitators who collected fees).

Here's a question for the critics who are crying out about the dangers of "socialism" in the new health insurance reform bill: which is the more "socialist" program: Medicare or the Veterans Administration's hospitals? Answer: of course it's VA hospitals, which are owned by the government and staffed by doctors and nurses employed by the government. Medicare only involves government payment to private physicians and to hospitals (public or private) which are chosen by the patients/consumers. So if "socialism" is the real bugaboo, I would expect Republican leaders to march lockstep down to Fox News and Teabaggers' conventions and fight the good fight to eliminate free government health care for our disabled veterans.

As for the "death panels" or "government getting between a patient and his doctor," what hole have the right wing fruitcakes been living in the last 40 years? Hint: it's not the government which has decreed who will live and who will be denied expensive life saving medical procedures. If you have ever had a family member with a serious illness, you might remember this favorite phrase of an insurance company bureaucrat denying coverage: "experimental procedure." And it wasn't the government that denied people insurance coverage if they had a "pre-existing condition" or had the audacity to get so seriously hurt or ill that they used up their coverage and had to sell their house and file bankruptcy.

The Repubs next attack was on "process," since substance didn't work out for them. They accused Democrats of "ramming the bill down America's throat." Apparently, in Republican fantasy land, it is a form of "tyranny" worthy of the Nazis when the Democrats manage to get 60 votes in the Senate and a majority (218) of the 435 votes in the House of Representatives. So when the House passed the Senate bill last week, that was too much for House Minority leader John Boehner, a Republican Congressman from Ohio. Here's the actual quote from his Congressional website:

"At a time when our nation’s finances are already in dire straits, the decision of Democratic leaders to focus on a job-killing government takeover of health care rather than putting Americans back to work has only accelerated our march to fiscal collapse. While Americans were asking, “where are the jobs,” Democrats arrogantly dragged the nation through a year-long exercise to force the health care plan into law."

To those of us who passed civics in high school, when a bill is passed by a majority vote of both houses in Congress, that's called "democracy."

Mr. Boehner, having no sense of hypocrisy or history, failed to note that the "march to fiscal collapse" occurred on his watch, as the Bush Administration with the aid of a Republican controlled Senate and House managed to turn a $160 billion surplus in the last year of the Clinton Administration into a trillion dollar annual deficit. It seems a century ago in October of 2000 when Al Gore and George W. Bush debated how to spend America's surplus and how fast to pay down the national debt. When President Clinton exited and George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, our total national debt was $5,727,776,738,304.64 and it was going down. When President Bush left office January 20, 2009, it was $10,626,877,048,913.08 (the $5 trillion increase almost doubled the national debt in 8 years). Nor did Mr. Boehner note that the Republicans racked up that debt with only 50 Senate votes plus the tie-breaker. The 2001 massive tax and the2003 prescription drug benefit, which were funded through borrowing, sailed through Congress under the dreaded process of "reconciliation."

There's a lot not to like about the recent health insurance reform bill- most notably, the lack of a single payer plan or a public option insurance plan, either of which would save consumers and the government billions of dollars. Of course, that would require Republican leaders to drop by the reality based universe where saving tax dollars and reducing the deficit could have been accomplished if they had only deigned to participate in the process.

HOW TO THINK LIKE A REPUBLICAN/CONSERVATIVE

2010-03-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

A deep thinker in the Republican Party. The tinfoil keeps out the CIA's mind control rays.

It occurred to me while watching Real Time with Bill Maher, which had exchanges between the panelists on both global warming and on America's viewpoint towards people of different religions (they were talking about the 2008 Republican primary and Mitt Romney's religion- LDS- being a problem with some Republican evangelicals), that:

(1) the people who claim to be skeptics about the existence of global climate change can't believe something without overwhelming proof, and yet, when the overwhelming scientific proof is provided (in my mind, I don't need anything more than the shrinkage of the north polar ice cap and melting glaciers), they still demand more proof and claim that the evidence is not conclusive; BUT

(2) when it comes to their religious beliefs, the same people who are skeptics on climate change have no problem believing- in spite of no proof in their favor and overwhelming evidence to the contrary that:

(a) America is special among all nations and is singularly blessed by a deity;

(b) If they adhere to a particular religious belief, regardless of their personal conduct, they will be "saved" and will go to a really cool place after they die; and

(c) Other People who lead exemplary lives but who don't adhere to their special religion are doomed in the afterlife to suffer eternal torment; and

(d) Their deity pays close attention to the personal conduct and lives of everybody on earth, and everything that happens- for good or evil or indifferent- is part of that deity's plan.

So what is up with that? If they were logically consistent, they'd either demand the same amount of proof in support of their religious beliefs, or they'd be more accepting of the overwhelming evidence of global climate change.

And these are the same people who were screaming that the president failed to protect America when a black man of another faith tried and failed to blow up an airplane landing in Detroit, but who gave faint praise to the mindset of a mentally disturbed white male Christian person who flew a plane into a government building, committing murder (a 68 year old was killed) and suicide and destroying government property:

"AUSTIN, Texas — The family of a longtime Internal Revenue Service employee killed when a pilot harboring an anti-IRS grudge flew his plane into his office remembered the Vietnam veteran Saturday as devoted family man who likely would have tried to save his co-workers from the burning building before escaping himself.

“He was full of life. Probably the best teacher I had in my life,” Ken Hunter said of his father, 68-year-old Vernon Hunter. The elder Hunter had been missing and presumed dead since Thursday, when software engineer Andrew Joseph Stack III slammed his plane into the Austin building where Hunter worked as a manager for the IRS.

The crash caused a large fireball that destroyed much of the hulking glass building where Hunter’s wife, Valerie, also worked as an IRS employee. She was not wounded."

"Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Craziest Republican of the Day: Steve King

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Actually, the Iowa Rep. isn't just a crazy Republican and extremist conservative ideologue, he's a terrorist sympathizer. TPM reports:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to "implode" other IRS offices, according to a witness.

As well, in an interview with Think Progress, King sympathized with the suicide bomber, Joseph Andrew Stack (clip below):

I think if we'd abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn't have a target for his airplane. And I'm still for abolishing the IRS, I've been for it for thirty years and I'm for a national sales tax... It's sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it's an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it's going to be a happy day for America.

It may be "sad," but, to King, it's fully understandable."

"Understandable" King says! Is that what the Republican Party has devolved to? A few years ago, in the wake of an adverse ruling on Terry Schiavo's case (the Florida woman on life support whom the U.S. Congress- wholly Republican controlled at the time- and President Bush intervened to try to overturn the wishes of her spouse in a Florida court), Texas Senator John Cornyn said this:

"More tough talk about pulverizing the judiciary.
By Dahlia LithwickPosted Tuesday, April 5, 2005, at 5:03 PM ET

Yesterday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn took the floor and announced that judges who make politically based decisions may inadvertently bring violence upon themselves. While pounding away at the Supreme Court's recent decision in Roper v. Simmons, he took the time to issue—amid the qualifiers and caveats of Senate-speak—the following threat:

I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country. ... And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in, engage in violence.

He added that "No one, including those judges, including the judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects." Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the new defense against charges of violence against judges: "Your Honor. My client suffered a loss of control due to uncontrollable ideological differences."

"Monday, April 04, 2005
Congressman Conyers rips Senator Cornyn for justifying violence against judges
by John Aravosis (DC) on 4/04/2005 08:12:00 PM

During the protracted coverage and debate of the Schiavo matter, I was struck by the disrespectful and reckless language being used against judges. One by one, my Republican colleagues took the House floor to attack judges as "unconscionable," lacking "human compassion," needing to be held in "contempt," and having "answering to do." I remember thinking that such dehumanizing rhetoric is especially dangerous in these times towards anyone, let alone judges.

Outside the halls of Congress, words flew even more recklessly and the House Majority Leader Tom DeLay called the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube an "act of medical terrorism." The Reverend Pat Robertson called it "judicial murder."

I remember thinking about Judge Rowland Barnes of Georgia, who less than a month ago, was shot to death by an angry litigant in his courtroom, along with two other court employees. I remember thinking that irresponsible words can lead to tragic results. I thought of Judge Joan Lefkow, whose husband and mother are thought to have been murdered by an aggrieved litigant. Since then, I have been trying to think of the most appropriate forum to gently call this to my colleagues' attention, and to remind them that -- no matter how strong our feelings about individual decisions and cases, we need to be cognizant of the influence we may have -- especially on those that may be disturbed, and we always need to know that -- as elected officials -- our words have consequences.

That was to be a subtle message. It is unfortunate that today my message must be less subtle because things are very quickly spinning out of control....

This apparent effort [by Senator Cornyn] to rationalize violence against judges is deplorable. On its face, while it contains doubletalk that simultaneously offers a justification for such violence and then claims not to, the fundamental core of the statement seems to be that judges have somehow brought this violence on themselves. This also carries an implicit threat: that if judges do not do what the far right wants them to do (thus becoming the "judicial activists" the far right claims to deplore), the violence may well continue.

If this is what Senator Cornyn meant to say, it is outrageous, irresponsible and unbecoming of our leaders. To be sure, I have disagreed with many, many court rulings. (For example, Bush v. Gore may well be the single greatest example of judicial activism we have seen in our lifetime.) But there is no excuse, no excuse, for a Member of Congress to take our discourse to this ugly and dangerous extreme.

My message is not subtle today. It is simple. To my Republican colleagues: you are playing with fire, you are playing with lives, and you must stop.

Senator Cornyn and Congressman DeLay should immediately retract these ill considered statements."

THERE WAS NO HONOR IN LEE and JACKSON WAGING WAR TO PRESERVE SLAVERY

2010-02-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Albany Herald guest columnist lauds the South and Generals Jackson and Lee for their wonderful and humane treatment of Negro slaves

This week an Albany Herald guest columnist who is a regular contributor to that eminent epicenter of journalism asserted the nobility of the Southern Cause during the Civil War and contended that it is important to "revere" Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Not content with encouraging "reverence" (a condition ordinarily reserved for holy religious objects and personages), he went on to salute those two fine gentlemen for their many contributions to the civil rights and humane treatment of Negroes prior to and during the Civil War (the "recent unpleasantness," as it was once quaintly referred to in polite conversation; or the "War of Northern Aggression" to unrepentant former slave owners and their progeny). And he vilified President Lincoln and the Northern states in general for their abhorrent treatment of Negro slaves.

As I read this I almost gagged on my breakfast, wondering once again at the incredible hubris of those who wish to re-write history, not content merely to whitewash some of the seamier episodes of their ancestors, but in this case attempting a complete 180 degree backflip with a half twist, turning black into white, and wrong into right. Here's a brief sample from his prose:

"And, according to historians, Jackson treated the few slaves he owned like family. In addition, unlike Abraham Lincoln and U.S. Grant, there is no record of either Lee or Jackson ever speaking disparagingly of the black race. Furthermore, it is well established that Jackson regularly conducted Sunday school class for black children.... As a result, he was dearly loved and appreciated by the children and their parents."

Noticeably absent from his spirited defense of those who raised arms against the United States was any mention of the hundreds of thousands of deaths caused because the South fought to preserve the institution of slavery. The phrase "Northern War of Aggression" which he used is pure fiction. The immediate cause of the war was the Southern reaction to the election of Abraham Lincoln, the first candidate of an anti-slavery party to win the nation's highest office. The Southern States seceded and went to war, but not based on any policies of Lincoln. He was still months away from his inauguration in March of 1861 when the first shots were fired upon the United States flag in South Carolina. Those shots came from South Carolina's militia on January 9, 1861, to prevent the resupply of United States troops in Fort Sumter near Charleston. South Carolina had seceded from the United States on December 24, 1860, when its legislature adopted a "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." The words "rights of states" were used- but in the context of the "rights" of slave owners in the South to their "property." The "Causes" included a complaint about the Northern States' failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act and to aid their Southern neighbors in keeping human beings in bondage for life:

"The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States. The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed.... The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor."

The Confederacy's president, Jefferson Davis, defended slavery in a speech in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 29, 1861, arguing that Southern slavery “elevated [African slaves] from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers.” He justified the Southern States' decision to secede from the Union as being necessary to insure the continuation of “the labor of African slaves... under the supervision of a superior race” which was “indispensable” to the “wants of civilized man.” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said that slavery was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy.

The 1860 census counted 462,198 slaves in Georgia, 44 percent of the total population of 1,057,286. There were almost four million slaves in the Confederacy at the onset of the Civil War. The result of the South losing the war was immediate freedom for those millions of human beings. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which freed slaves in any States still in open rebellion on January 1, 1863. That proclamation, by its very terms, actually freed no slaves (because it only applied to States over which the Union had no power), but it did, for the first time in the nation's history, give African slaves cause for hope that freedom was at hand. And on January 13, 1865, Congress enacted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution and sent it to the States for ratification. That amendment prohibited slavery in the United States and any place under their jurisdiction, and it became part of the United States Constitution after ratification on December 6, 1865.

The Southern States' war to preserve slavery caused the greatest slaughter of American troops (Southern and Northern combined) in history- an estimated 624,000 dead. The next highest totals were from World War II, 405,399 deaths, and World War I, 116,516.

The fact that Lee may or may not have personally owned slaves is irrelevant, because he led the army of those who fought to preserve the institution of slavery as lawful in the United States. Those are the facts, and that is the legacy of the Civil War.

ELIMINATING MEDICAL MALPRACTICE INSURANCE PREMIUMS: THE PROPOSAL YOU NEVER SAW

2010-01-25T21:07:00.000-08:00

Georgia's Second District Congressman Sanford Biship patiently responded to dozens of questions over several hours at a town hall meeting in August of 2009: will Congress' failure to enact meaningful tort reform doom a public option making health insurance affordable for all?

If you are a physician shelling out tens of thousands of dollars annually for malpractice insurance, you should be screaming at your Congressman and senators right now. Why? Because floating around the House of Representatives last Fall was a proposal that would have eliminated all of your premiums- you would have paid $0- had it been incorporated into the health care reform bill. It was never adopted- not even debated- or you would have heard about it before reading this op-ed column.

The proposal was stunning in its simplicity and effectiveness: the current hodgepodge of state tort laws which allow injured patients to sue their physicians, but only if they can prove their doctor has done such a poor job that he or she breached the standard of care, would have been replaced by a single national system that used a workers compensation style no-fault system. Under the no-fault proposal, doctors, hospitals, and drug manufacturers would no longer need any malpractice insurance. The national system would have been funded with a one percent sales tax on all medical goods and services (at $2.3 trillion, the annual contributions would have been $23 billion, far more than is currently paid out annually in malpractice settlements and jury awards). Injured patients would no longer have to prove fault; they wouldn't even need to hire lawyers. Doctors would no longer have to engage in wasteful defensive medicine. And specialists in areas like ob-gyn would stop fleeing their practices because of crushing insurance premiums.

So what happened? Why didn't this proposal get a fair airing in Congress? Beats me. On September 30, 2009, Congressman Sanford Bishop of the 2nd district in Georgia sent a copy of the article outlining the proposal (it had appeared in a Georgia statewide legal newspaper, The Fulton County Daily Report, in 2004) to key legislators and committee chairs in the House of Representatives, including John Conyers, Henry Waxman, and Melvin Watt. He also sent a copy to David Cook, the president of the Medical Association of Georgia. And it was never heard from again.

Had the malpractice reform proposal been brought up before a relevant committee and included in the final bill put out by the House, it would have accomplished several goals of the reformers: it would have cut health care overhead costs by tens of billions, both directly in the form of insurance premiums and indirectly by reducing the billions spent annually in unnecessary tests by physicians practicing defensive medicine. It would have provided a fairer and more efficient system of compensating patients injured from medical procedures, by misdiagnosis, or by side effects from medicine. All injured patients- not the very few who collect under the current system- would receive compensation without having to prove fault or engage in lengthy and expensive lawsuits. And politically it would have given numerous Republicans in the House (even Joe Wilson!) and Senate strong motivation to vote for a health care reform bill that included the tort reform which they have been strenuously demanding. As the current Senate battle has proved, getting even one Republican to vote against a filibuster of the bill would have been enough to secure a single payer system or a public option. It's hard to imagine any Republican representative or senator going back home and explaining to angry physicians, hospital executives, and pharmaceutical company lobbyists why they turned down an opportunity to completely eliminate medical malpractice insurance premiums and the omnipresent fear of being sued.

The proposal also included a better mechanism than the current system for identifying and publicizing bad doctors, scary hospitals and dangerous drugs: all of the awards would be published on the internet, including the injury sustained, the medical providers involved, and the amount of the no-fault award (with one exception: unlike the current system with publicly filed lawsuits, the privacy of the patients would be protected) . Before going to a doctor, entering a hospital, or using a prescribed medicine, the patient/consumer could get that information with a click of a mouse.

Too bad the proposal never got a hearing. Had it ever been put forward and included in the final bill, it would have guaranteed the passage of effective health care reform legislation that would have cut overall costs in the industry while improving care and providing more access to consumers.

HOW TO ATTAIN PERFECT SAFETY IN AN AGE OF TERRORISM

2010-01-16T10:55:00.000-08:00

Benjamin Franklin once noted, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Someone later added, “And in the end will get neither.”

"Terrorism" is defined as "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes." It is also "the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization."

The goal of terrorists is to invoke a "state of fear" that will cause people to act in a way the terrorists desire.

The USA Patriot Act provides that anyone who gives material aid or comfort to the terrorists is a terrorist and should be treated accordingly.

Charles Krauthammer writes that al Qaida "is a fanatical religious sect dedicated to establishing the most oppressive medieval theocracy and therefore committed to unending war with America ..." and which opposes "individual liberty" and "social equality." He argues that we will be at greater risk of future al Qaida terror attacks if we close the prison camp at Guantanamo or if we afford rights guaranteed by the Constitution to persons accused of terrorism.

Thomas Sowell agrees with Mr. Krauthammer: "Terrorists are not covered by the Geneva convention for the simple reason that they do not abide by the Geneva convention. They are enemy combatants and you do not turn enemy combatants loose to go back to killing Americans while the war is still on-- not if you are being serious."

Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Sowell want Americans to be afraid because of past acts of terrorism. They want Americans to curtail our Constitutional freedoms out of fear of future acts of terrorism. They oppose affording human beings who are accused of furthering the goals of the terrorists public trials on American soil. They oppose due process of law, the right to counsel, impartial juries, and the exclusion of confessions coerced through torture- all basic rights which are essential to a free country.

The only logical conclusion is that Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Sowell are giving aid and comfort to the stated goals of the terrorists, in that both men want Americans to be so afraid that this will no longer be a country "with liberty and justice for all." (For those who are irony impaired, that quote is from the Pledge of Allegiance.)

Therefore, Mr. Krauthammer and Mr. Sowell should be detained at Guantanamo as enemy combatants, interrogated with enhanced interrogation techniques to discover their links to al Qaida, and held without trial or access to counsel until the War on Terror is declared over (which, at the current rate of success, should occur sometime in the 23rd century).

Liberal vs. conservative party? People prefer competence

2010-01-15T20:45:00.000-08:00

"conservative" commentator gasbag Jonah Goldberg taken down a peg in his own newspaper (it runs his column, anyway)

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/01/letters-liberal-vs-conservative-party-people-prefer-competent.html

(This letter appeared in USA Today on January 11, 2010)

Commentary writer Jonah Goldberg makes an error common to professional pundits: He assumes that elections and their aftermath are all part of a big football game, with the American people being the ball. Sometimes we're at the 50 yard line, sometimes to the left of it, sometimes to the right. But to him, it's all just a game, with only two teams: the Reds (Republicans) and the Blues (Democrats). The only winners and losers are the political parties in elections ("For liberalism, it's hangover time," The Forum, Tuesday).

But the people are not a football. We're humans with real lives and real pain. We don't care who "wins" or who "loses" the political games when we have a whopping hospital bill for a sick child that we can't pay that will force us into bankruptcy; when our jobs are in jeopardy; when our families have soldiers on deployment facing death or dismemberment.

We don't want a liberal or a conservative government; we want a competent government. One to rein in out-of-control health care costs and make the care affordable for all. One to oversee a banking system that doesn't jack up fees or self-destruct, requiring hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail it out. We want a president and Congress that don't needlessly expend the lives of American soldiers out of fear of losing the next election.

And we need political analysts who focus more on competence, or lack of it, than on which political party is advancing the football.

James Finkelstein
Albany, Georgia (oui, c'est moi)

This letter inspired at least two people- one from Maryland, one from Florida- to take the time to look up my office phone number and call to compliment me on the ideas expressed.

a South Georgia Author

2010-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Bill the Congressional Candidate in 1992; Bill the hot shooting basketball player circa 1983

Thirty years ago (!) I was running for public office and a young reporter for the Albany Herald interviewed me. That was back in the days before cable television news (CNN was brand new and not available very many places), before the Internet, before newspapers began going the way of the dinosaur.

The reporter- Bill Lightle- was a pleasant surprise. Erudite, well spoken, no deep South Georgia accent. I found out later he was an all around superb athlete at the local high school (Albany High) who excelled at football and basketball.

We ended up becoming friends, and I played basketball with him and his younger brother, Jim, over the years in the early 1980's at the local YMCA.

More than a decade later, in 1992, the tables were turned a bit, as Bill ran for Congress in our newly created/redistricted district. He was a good candidate, put on a hell of a campaign, but in the end, old timey politics won out (perception beats competence almost every time, unless an extraordinary situation like a depression or other disaster strikes) and Bill lost.

Bill became a teacher at Lee County High School, where I coached the mock trial team a couple of years. He was extremely popular with students there, as he was when he moved on to college teaching.

When his first book came out- Made or Broken: Football & Survival in the Georgia Woods, I scarfed it up, read it, and got a terrific appreciation of some of the local history- both sports and politics- of the area before I had moved here.

Here's a review, courtesy of Bill's website:

http://www.blightle.com/

Bill Lightle's first book, Made or Broken: Football & Survival in the Georgia Woods, is set in the racial tension of the Deep South in the 1960s. The story follows a group of young men on their experiences at the notorious Graves Springs football camp. The agony of the grueling practices and the fears of hazing were a legend about to be realized by the team's sophomore players. Lightle vividly decribes how players endured the two weeks of humiliation and abuse in the rich swampland of Southwest Georgia through mutual support and camaraderie. "Players 'fell out' as the expression was used because of the lack of water and what we had to go through during those practices," Lightle said. Made or Broken is a touching story of a young man's experiences of trial, friendship, and the racism in Albany, Georgia.

Bill's got a second book out,now, MILL DADDY, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ROY DAVIS, which recounts the story of a South Georgia mill worker who grew up in the early 20th century, and who employed Bill and his friends four decades ago when teenagers weren't quite so afraid of hard work (no video games, no IPODs, no texting).

If you get a chance, give either of those books a read. You won't regret it.

COMPLEX THINKING... FOR AMERICANS, ANYWAY

2010-01-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a brainstorm from two guys- Noam Chomski and Nir Rosen:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dW0eiPiuUuk&feature=fvsr

If you want Muslims to not want to kill you, then stop killing them.

Wish I'd thought of that.

Oh wait. I did. And so did a few million other sane people.

Here's another thought: for one moment, imagine that someone else was doing to us what we are doing to them. Suppose that a family down your street has a criminal or two in it. Suppose they rob a bank and kill a bank guard. Suppose a predator missile is launched against them, and takes them out, plus your three kids who were playing in the yard of the house next door. How would you respond?

Or suppose you couldn't drive to the bank, the grocery store, the city hall, without going through checkpoints with foreign troops speaking a different language, with a different religion, who occasionally had to shoot and kill members of your community for their (the troops) own safety.

Or suppose those troops occasionally bashed in the door to your home, or your neighbors' home, and carried off a few of the teenagers or young men to a prison where they were held, never charged, not given a hearing of any kind, tortured, kept for months or years, and the country that was holding them refused to even acknowledge their existence or promise them a hearing. Ever.

I guess that might be something that would make you unhappy and would make you want to support any organization, no matter how unpalatable, that was dedicating to killing them or ridding your country of them.

I'm just sayin'.

DEAR CONGRESSMAN ....

2009-10-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

Movie premiere? Nope, just people in Los Angeles who are without health insurance lining up for a medical clinic.

I couldn't help noticing that it's taking a while for a coherent health care reform bill to make it to a vote in Congress. Possibly the problem is the sheer complexity of the thing. Perhaps it would be better for the national legislature to focus on and highlight the essentials of a health care bill, pass it, then let Federal cabinets and agencies fill the spaces in between with any regulations which become necessary. Here is my proposal for a relatively simple and effective piece of legislation to reform the current system of providing coverage:

1. Create a publicly financed National Health insurance to cover all annual expenses for catastrophic illnesses (anything totaling more than $3,600 per family per year, which comes to $300 a month).

2. Use a single payer plan for all other medical expenses, including prescribed medicine, with everything up to $3,600 paid for with a "health care" type credit card.

3. The consumer can repay the monthly credit card bill out of his own pocket, with a private insurance plan, or over time like any other credit card- but with a 5% cap on annual interest.

4. Prohibit all health insurance companies from discriminating on any basis- if they insure one, they must insure all, regardless of pre-existing conditions or prior claims. (Lifetime caps will no longer be an issue because #1 will take care of catastrophic expenses; likewise, #1 will reduce exposure of companies who have to take people with pre-existing conditions). Prohibit any denials of coverage based on type of treatment, proven effectiveness of the treatment, or who the provider is. Require prompt payment of all claims (within 30 days) with severe penalties for delays.

5. Fund the government portion of the program with a relatively low (no more than 1 or 2 percent) national sales tax on all goods and services- so every one who consumes anything will be paying for his or her catastrophic insurance.

This proposal will eliminate all unnecessary administrative costs.

This proposal will eliminate the need for a "public option" or cooperatives or triggers.

This proposal will save medical providers and employers billions in administrative overhead costs, in collections, and in indigent write-offs.

This proposal will reduce stress on employees and their families who have already lost or are afraid of losing their medical coverage. It would also free up Americans to take any jobs they want without fear of losing coverage.

This proposal will put American companies on an equal competitive footing with foreign companies which do not have health care as a portion of their overhead.

And to recap my suggestions for cutting costs while improving services:

1. Eliminate all medical malpractice insurance premiums for doctors, hospitals, drug companies, and all other medical related fields. Substitute a no-fault system based on State Worker's Compensation programs. Fund it with a sales tax of no more than 2% on all medical services and products. Use a panel to pay out awards, with one representative from consumers, one from the medical profession, and a professional administrative judge, to determine whether the injury or illness was caused (without regard to negligence, hence the "no-fault" label) by a medical procedure or product, and, if so, what the extent of the harm was. Awards will be paid out in the same manner as in most Worker's Comp cases, without the need for defense or plaintiff's attorneys or jury trials, and with set amounts paid for set degrees of injury.

2. Identify bad doctors and hospitals by publicly posting on the internet all awards from the no-fault system, with all patient identifiers removed to protect confidentiality, listing only the type of injury or illness (i.e. staph infection), the amount recovered, and the year of the incident.

3. Require all physicians, hospitals, and other medical providers to post all costs, services, and fees on a prominent place at their front entrance, and also on the internet. If the foregoing proposal for paying for medical care is instituted, which will make patients responsible for the first $3,600 spent annually on their medical care, they will do enough price shopping and comparisons to cause providers to compete- and lower costs.

4. Require all physicians, technicians, nurses, and patients to certify each test administered and each procedure performed on each patient. This proposal is intended to reduce the fraud occurring in the current system.

DOING HARM: PHOEBE FACTOIDS REVISITED IN DOCUMENTARY

2009-10-19T21:06:00.001-07:00

"I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant.... I will use those dietary regimens which will benefit my patients according to my greatest ability and judgement, and I will do no harm or injustice to them."

From the Greek Hippocratic Oath, circa 4th century B.C.E.

On October 13th I had the pleasure of attending the Albany premiere of the documentary movie, Do No Harm, the story of Dr. John Bagnato and Charles Rehberg and their excellent adventures in health care reform. For those who are new to Albany or who have been living in a cave the last six years, those gentlemen were the (then) anonymous authors of the famous Phoebe Factoids faxes back in 2003 The documentary recounted, much of it in the words of Bagnato and Rehberg, how they initially discovered that Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital's tax returns and other financial filings could be found at an internet website, www.guidestar.org . During their investigation they found that Phoebe's finances were nothing short of astonishing, as it had managed to amass over two hundred million dollars in cash in offshore banks in the Cayman Islands. In a series of anonymous faxes they sent information embarrassing to Phoebe's bigwigs to numerous local notables, including Congressman Sanford Bishop, and to fax machines in Phoebe itself. [I've never understood why they felt the need to be anonymous, but that's the least of this story.]

For their trouble they were targeted by then District Attorney Ken Hodges, a descendent of the hospital's founders and the recipient of thousands of dollars in campaign donations by top executives at the hospital. Hodges used bogus grand jury subpoenas (there was no grand jury meeting) served on BellSouth to discover who sent the faxes- then he accepted thousands of dollars from Phoebe and turned the faxes over to Phoebe's lawyers. Later the intrepid duo were arrested and booked on false charges (readers should watch the documentary, available on DVD, to get the full story on the prosecution) and each retained renowned criminal defense attorneys featured in the documentary- Bobby Lee Cook of Summerville, Georgia and J. Converse Bright of Valdosta.

At one time Dr. Bagnato was the chief of surgery at Phoebe and Rehberg, a certified public accountant, was the manager of Bagnato's medical practice. Why these two gentlemen, both family men with solid roots in the community, decided to take on the local medical behemoth, is explained succinctly by Rehberg and Bagnato in the film- they refused to stand by and do nothing while those who were supposed to be served by the local (formerly) public hospital were ripped off and shut out at every turn. Georgia Watch's Hospital Accountability Project, which also sponsored the movie premiere, reported that Phoebe was overcharging its patients by hundreds of millions and marking up prices over 200 percent. In 2007 Phoebe charged patients over $700 million ($752,273,508) while their actual costs of services totaled less than half that amount- $357,452,957.

Rehberg and Bagnato discovered that Phoebe's actions were the opposite of its slogan, "The Hospital with a Heart," as it repeatedly sued patients whose illnesses cost them their jobs and their assets they needed to pay for medical care. They also uncovered some unseemly practices, such as business expenses for liquor and cigars from one London trip by its top executives and hundreds of thousands of dollars for corporate jet rentals (Johnny Cochran's jet!) to fly top honchos to the Cayman Islands, presumably to visit the $200 million they had stashed in Cayman banks to make sure their money didn't get lonely. Not to mention hundreds of thousands to hire ex-FBI agents out of Phoenix to harass and intimidate Rehberg, Bagnato, and their wives and children.

As for the absurd criminal prosecutions, after some long and agonizing legal proceedings, in July of 2007 visiting Superior Court Judge Harry Jay Altman dismissed all of the criminal charges prior to trial. Here's an excerpt from an Albany Journal column I wrote in December of 2005:

* The Special Prosecutor, Houston Judicial Circuit District Attorney Kelley R. Burke, responded to Maverick Attorney Ralph Scoccimaro s passionate defense of his client with some inflammatory speech of his own- comparing the Phoebe Factoids to:

"... go[ing] onto someone else s property and burning a cross under the guise of free speech which is tantamount to what these defendants are claiming."

Well, no. Burning a cross on someone s lawn isn t remotely comparable to faxing a document to a Congressman which reveals the sleazy machinations of a public hospital that has managed to stash away over $200 million in cash, much of it from government funded Medicaid and Medicare payments.

* Finally, District Attorney Ken Hodges has some splaining to do, as Ricky used to say to Lucy. Why did he use a 2003 grand jury to subpoena BellSouth's phone records to unearth Bagnato and Rehberg as the source of the faxes? Why did he turn Bagnato and Rehberg s phone records over to Phoebe s lawyer, but not present a criminal case to that grand jury or any of the half dozen grand juries that met after that? Why did he wait over a year and a half to request a special prosecutor? Was his decision to request a special prosecutor affected by the avalanche of bad publicity from the May 9, 2005, Atlanta Journal-Constitution front page expose of his giving grand jury documents to campaign contributors at Phoebe?

After the October 2009 movie premier the director, Rebecca Shanberg, and Dr. Bagnato appeared at a panel discussion. Although this case may now seem almost like ancient history, it is still topical, as Rehberg has a federal lawsuit pending against Ken Hodges, and Hodges, who left Phoebe, excuse me, the DA's office to join the Baudino Law Group (which collects millions annually in legal fees from.... wait for it..... Phoebe Putney!) is running for Attorney General of Georgia.

Taking the Highway

2009-10-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

The current state of affairs in American health care

Imagine for a moment that once a month you needed to drive 100 miles to the City to take your 3 year old daughter to see a medical specialist. There's an excellent interstate connecting your town to the City. It's six lanes wide, limited access, with smooth pavement. Government funds built it with your road taxes. But you're not allowed to use it. Instead, every time you make the trip, you have to take an old dirt road, filled with ruts, sometimes impassable after it rains so that you can't get there at all. Why can't you use it? Because the government decrees that once you are 65 years old, you can use the interstate; until then, you have to find your own way. You can't even pay a toll to use the road you desperately need to take.

Crazy, huh? Well, no crazier than our current debate over providing affordable health care to those under 65. Once Americans reach that magic number, they can ride the smooth road of Medicare, paid for by payroll taxes on wage earners, most of whom are under 65. But until they reach that age, they've got to find their own way- or perhaps not be able to make the trip at all if they are too poor to pay a doctor or to afford decent insurance.

The obvious solution is to allow everyone under 65 to buy into Medicare- to pay a toll to use the service. Congress: are you listening?

CONSERVING WHAT, EXACTLY?

2009-09-23T21:33:00.001-07:00

The land where conservative spokespersons actually make sense...

People who work for large and small news organizations- print and electronic- are lazy. I know that they are lazy because they inexplicably keep using labels that long since have lost all meaning. Take the typical "liberal" versus "conservative" dichotomy which pops up every day in op-ed columns and news pages. So if a commentator or a legislator is a "conservative," what does that mean, exactly? What does that tell us about his or her values and world view? Let's start with a literal definition of the term. My handy dictionary says a conservative is:

"1. disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

2. cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.

3. traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit."

You will note that nowhere in that string of definitions do the words "irrational," "nutjob," or "fat, pompous, gasbag, drug abusing hypocrite" appear. Nor do the terms "hatchetface," "weepy," or "demagogue." Yet note how many of those adjectives apply to the luminaries on the list of "conservatives" of whom the Albany Herald's online poll asked- "Who do you think is America's top conservative spokesman today?" [Presumably the Herald considers Sarah Palin and Ann Coulter "men" for purposes of their poll.]:

Glenn Beck
Rep. John Boehner
Dick Cheney
Ann Coulter
Sean Hannity
Mike Huckabee
Mark Levin
Rush Limbaugh
Sen. Mitch McConnell
Bill O'Reilly
Sarah Palin
Mitt Romney
Thomas Sowell
Michael Steele

Oddly enough, the list appeared next to an article by Herald reporter Pete Skiba about Ray McBerry, a candidate for the Republican gubernatorial primary next year, who spoke to an audience of 20 at Doublegate Country Club the other day. I say "oddly" because McBerry appears to beat the above list of competitors for America's top conservative spokesman hands down. I mean how can you beat this kind of conservatism, as reported by Mr. Skiba:

"Bearing arms is a right residents have, not by the Constitution nor by Georgia law," McBerry said. "It is a God-given right that God gave you."

If the federal government tried to send agents to disarm law-abiding Georgians, McBerry as governor would arrest them and let them sit in jail waiting for someone to bail them out, he said.

McBerry called property and income taxes unconstitutional and "Marxist to the core." He would repeal the taxes in Georgia."

Wow. I've gotta say, I almost feel like voting for this guy for the entertainment value alone. Imagine having a governor going out and trying to arrest federal agents! Film of the tasered governor at 11:00. [Short aside: some decades ago a similarly skewed legendary Baker County Sheriff vowed to arrest any FBI agents who dared cross the county line. He was smart enough never to try to make good on his pledge. And the next two Baker County Sheriffs ended up convicted in Federal Court.] Perhaps a new reality television show will glom onto Mr. McBerry and put him in a house with several other refugees from the looney bin. They could compete to see who can create the most paranoid and violent separate reality.

A quick look back at what self labeled "conservatives" actually did when the reins of power were put in their hands from 1995 to 2009 (Congress was in Republican control from 1995-2007, the presidency from 2001-2009) is very instructive: two wars started, neither finished; deregulation of banks and mortgage companies, followed by gigantic, world shaking failures of banks and mortgage companies, and one whopping recession, the worst since the Great Depression; one city (New Orleans) lost to a hurricane while FEMA was put in the hands of an Arabian Horse Association executive; corruption scandals all over the map, including allowing K-street lobbyists to write legislation; selling earmarks to government contractors (thank you, Congressmen Ney and Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff); C-130 planeloads of cash flown to Iraq and billions of dollars disappeared down the rat hole with no accounting; and, for the fiscal conservative fans out there, a doubling of the national debt to over $10 trillion in just 8 years, with a Clinton term ending surplus of $160 billion turned into record setting $500+ billion annual deficits in nothing flat.

So as the self styled "conservatives" now blather about how the government can't afford to help citizens avoid bankruptcy from out of control medical costs, it would be nice to have just one journalist ask them where they were when Bush managed to wreck the federal budget and spend 5 trillion dollars the country didn't have to fund tax cuts for the superrich, war, and giveaways to the drug companies in the form of Medicare "reform." (Not to mention leaving us to the tender mercy of China and other foreign countries which now hold our debts.) As they rip President Obama for supposedly putting "death panels" between a patient and his doctor, ask them where they were when insurance companies were keeping doctors from treating patients with life threatening illnesses. When they claim to be strong on support for the troops, ask them why they were proposing budget cuts to veterans hospitals even as servicemen's needs skyrocketed from injuries and illnesses caused by a war against an imaginary threat of WMD's in Iraq. And ask them who is paying for two wars seven thousand miles away that have nothing to do with our national security (pssst: Bin Laden is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and despicable as they are, the Taliban didn't attack us on 9-11-01).

And what is a liberal? That's easy. Anyone who believes that facts, logic, and reality trump fantasy. Anyone who avoids finding scapegoats (blacks, immigrants, gay people) to blame society's problems on instead of trying to solve them. Anyone who believes that the proper use of government is for the public good rather than for lining the pockets of the super rich and the well connected.

ACORN- THE GREATEST DANGER TO THE REPUBLIC SINCE.... WELL NOT EXACTLY

2009-09-23T20:11:00.000-07:00

Congress recently passed legislation to protect unsuspecting Americans from this all powerful, pervasive danger

Funny thing. I easily found two or three recent editorials lacerating ACORN in the Herald with an archives search. And Congress is all in a lather over allegations of fraud by ACORN, so much so that they passed an allsweeping law to ban companies convicted of fraud from doing business with the Federal Government. Oops- that law will end up banning the top 10 defense contractors from continuing to do business with the DOD. Funny thing: I found no mention in the Herald of Lockheed, which has previously been convicted of defrauding the federal government and which is currently accused of defrauding the Air Force on the F-22 fighter project:

http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4169849&c=AME&s=AIR

Lockheed Martin Accused of Fraud in F-22 Lawsuit
By SAM LAGRONE
Published: 2 Jul 2009 14:04
Print Print | Print Email

"A whistleblower lawsuit accuses defense giant of defrauding the U.S. Air Force by using defective outer coatings on its F-22 Raptor stealth fighter and lying about meeting contract deadlines.

Darrol Olsen, a stealth engineer, filed the lawsuit two years ago in federal district court in California. The documents were unsealed in May."

And the Herald didn't exactly highlight fraud by Halliburton that killed people in Iraq. I guess if your organization tries to register poor minorities to vote, you will be held to a much higher standard than if you provide shoddy products to the military that cause the deaths of American servicemen and women.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ggIzyaVjgrtoH9EBT4obMw3JIq4Q
US contractor in Iraq accused of electrocution deaths

(AFP) – Jul 11, 2008

"WASHINGTON (AFP) — The biggest US military contractor in Iraq, KBR, was steeped in another scandal Friday as lawmakers, families and experts accused it of recklessly causing the electrocution deaths of US soldiers.

"While I had always been prepared to hear that one of my sons died by way of a firefight or a roadside bomb, I was dumbstruck to hear that my son was electrocuted while taking a shower in his living quarters," said Cheryl Harris, mother of army Staff Sergeant Ryan Maseth, who died in January.

Maseth's "burnt and smoldering" body was found under still-running, electrically charged water by a fellow soldier who kicked down the door of the bathroom at an army base in Baghdad, Harris told a hearing of the Senate Democratic policy committee.

KBR, a former subsidiary of the Halliburton energy firm which was once led by Vice President Dick Cheney, was contracted to maintain facilities at the base and had been informed of electrical problems in the building where Maseth died."

And, to put this all in proper perspective:

"The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day during the war in Iraq."

Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday Sept. 23, 2009 10:24 EDT
Salon Radio: Rep. Alan Grayson on de-funding corrupt defense contractors

"Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) -- my guest on Salon Radio today -- yesterday pointed out that the bill passed by both the Senate and House to de-fund ACORN is written so broadly that it literally compels the de-funding not only of that group, but also the de-funding of, and denial of all government contracts to, any corporation that "has filed a fraudulent form with any Federal or State regulatory agency." By definition, that includes virtually every large defense contractor, which -- unlike ACORN -- has actually been found guilty of fraud. As The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim put it: "the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops."

I spoke with Rep. Grayson this morning regarding the consequences of all of this. He is currently compiling a list of all defense contractors encompassed by this language in order to send to administration officials (and has asked for help from the public in compiling that list, here). The President is required by the Constitution to "faithfully execute" the law, which should mean that no more contracts can be awarded to any companies on that list, which happens to include the ten largest defense contractors in America. Before being elected to Congress, Grayson worked extensively on uncovering and combating defense contractor fraud in Iraq, and I asked him to put into context ACORN's impact on the American taxpayer versus these corrupt defense contractors. His reply: "The amount of money that ACORN has received in the past 20 years altogether is roughly equal to what the taxpayer paid to Halliburton each day during the war in Iraq.""

CONSOLIDATION? YES!

2009-09-20T08:17:00.001-07:00

Google Earth shot of Dougherty County- 80% of the population is in the city limits of Albany.

About a decade or more ago I addressed the City and County Commissions here in Albany and suggested to them that it made eminent good sense to consolidate governments. Of course they listened to me, and that is why we now have a combined city-county government that has saved local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars ever since..... NOT! So why not? Logic compels consolidation- we don't need city and county police forces, public works departments, personnel departments, and administrators. Even if the county had a huge geographic area (like counties in states out west) or a significant population outside the municipal limits- and it doesn't- there's just no excuse for duplicating services. The 2000 census counted 96,065 persons in Dougherty County and 76,939 in the City. Do 20,000 people really need a whole separate government? Do 76,939 people need two governments performing identical services? Obviously not.

Other counties in Georgia have consolidated governments- Augusta/Richmond County and Columbus/Muscogee County to name two. And it's no big deal to them. Once they consolidated their governments, they never looked back. So why hasn't our city and county consolidated? The answer is simple- and it goes to the heart of human nature. Most human beings don't want to give up something they already have- in this instance, political power and constant public exposure. Every city and county commissioner, each police chief, each head of a city and county department, knows that he or she may lose his or her job- or if not their jobs, their primacy, their numero uno, big cheese, status.

And that is why much of what you may read or hear about consolidation which comes from the high muckety mucks is pretty much a smokescreen for their real concerns. It's not about services being lost, or lack of police protection, or the fact that women weren't on the commission studying it. It's especially not about race. Yes, Albany has a black mayor, a black police chief, and a black city administrator, and, wonder of wonders, those positions in the county government are all held by white persons. When consolidation comes, somebody is going to get kicked off his or her lofty perch. On a personal basis, there will be winners and losers.

Just as the national effort to reform health care has gotten bogged down and side tracked by gross distortions and outright lies, there is no doubt that consolidation, a low keyed unemotional issue if ever there was one, will be hijacked by demagogues who see an opportunity to emulate their national brethren who never miss an opportunity to throw a stick into a bicycle spoke. White racists will stir fears that county positions will be taken over by black people. One speaker at a local forum on the subject echoed a phrase which brought back memories of the Old South's violent resistence to segregation in the 50's and 60's: "When it comes to consolidation, it's not no...it's hell no!" Last time I read a quote like that, someone was standing in a schoolhouse door. Or bombing a church.

But fear not, the white racists aren't alone in their prejudices and irrational anxieties. Black opportunists rightly object to losing sinecures and positions they have long held. As another speaker at a forum put it, the push for consolidation is "an underlying plot to strip minorities from leadership positions."

So there you have it: finally, common ground has been found among white bigots and black opportunists. All of them oppose progress that would make local government more efficient and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Whether you are black or white, rural or urban, rich or poor, if that isn't an excellent reason to vote for consolidation- to put them on their heels and publicly rebuke them- I don't know what else would be.

REPLY TO ANDREW SULLIVAN, THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

2009-09-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

Future criminal defendants facing prosecution for war crimes? Or carefree vacationers?

So Andrew Sullivan thinks that the perpetrators of kidnapping, rape, torture, and murder (according to the Department of Defense at least 34 homicides of detainees tortured to death) should be let off scot-free because:

"... it would be too damaging and polarizing to the American polity to launch legal prosecutions against [President Bush], and deeply unfair to solely prosecute those acting on [his] orders or in [his] name?"

[The Atlantic, October 2009, "DEAR PRESIDENT BUSH."]

Call me crazy, but the American polity is already damaged and polarized, just as it was in 1974 when President Richard Nixon committed crimes which pale in comparison to the crimes against humanity authored by President Bush, his Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Attorney General. Somehow we managed to survive- thrive even- in the wake of the 1974 House Judiciary Committee impeachment related investigation of the Watergate burglary and coverup efforts that caused a president to resign while his attorney general, chief of staff, and numerous other high officials were sent to prison. Why was the country able to weather that storm? Because those officials had committed crimes, they got caught, and rather than dragging out the process or trying to foist it all off as politics as usual or a Democratic witch hunt, they ended up, for the most part, resigning and (except for Nixon who was pardoned by President Ford) pleading guilty under threat of criminal trials and stiff sentences. In 1973 and 1974 we had men of courage and integrity heading the prosecutions of Watergate related crimes under the Nixon Administration- first Archibald Cox, then, after the "Saturday Night Massacre," Leon Jaworski, who saw the process through to the end. Unlike Barack Obama and Eric Holder, neither of them appeared to care a whit about the perception of politics- their devotion was to the rule of law.

Mr. Sullivan proposes this country resolve the thousands of crimes by the Bush Administration with a sincere "apology" from President Bush. It would seem to me, being a rational person, that Mr. Sullivan lost all credibility with regard to his purported analytical abilities when he admitted he voted for President Bush in 2000 (the majority of the voters were smart enough to avoid that awful mistake, as Gore won the popular vote by 543,000 votes), when he supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003, when he now blames the catastrophic (to both Iraq and the U.S.) invasion on "an intelligence fiasco" (Sullivan still doesn't get what the British already knew in the summer of 2002- that the intelligence was being "fixed" to provide the results that would justify an invasion, as revealed in the "Downing Street Memo"), and when his only problem with the post invasion aftermath appears to be that it was poorly handled, rather than it should never have occurred.

Since Mr. Sullivan was not only wrong, but spectacularly so, at so many critical moments in our recent history, it stands to reason that he is once again badly mistaken in his analysis of how our country should respond to the prospect of criminal prosecutions of Bush Administration officials for murder, kidnapping, rape, and torture. Mr. Sullivan, who admits he is no legal scholar, proposes that we should not adhere to our laws and our treaty obligations which mandate that we prosecute murderers, violators of the Geneva Conventions, and other perpetrators of crimes against humanity. For his edification, here is what we must do under the United States Constitution and our treaty obligation as signers of the 1988 convention against torture, ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994::

"Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law (Article 4) . . . . The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture. . . . An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture."

One has to wonder in what parallel universe Mr. Sullivan lives in which he thinks we should ignore the following crimes in the interest of political comity- and these are just a few examples of the atrocities committed in our name:

"... the death of an Afghan man who was stripped naked, dragged across a concrete floor and chained there by CIA operatives in a secret prison north of Kabul known as the "Salt Pit"; he was left on the floor overnight and froze to death."

"Iraqi Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a 56-year-old who, reportedly uncooperative with interrogators, was stuffed into a sleeping bag and clubbed to death."

"Detainee was found unresponsive restrained in his cell. Death was due to blunt force injuries to lower extremities ... . Contusions and abrasions on forehead, nose, head, behind ear, neck, abdomen, buttock, elbow, thigh, knee, foot, toe, hemorrhage on rib area and leg."

Department of Defense Report of 12/10/2002 murder at Bagram, Afghanistan.

"Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks.... No evidence of defense injuries ... . Manner of death is homicide...."

DOD 003329 Report of homicide of Iraqi in US custody at Whitehorse Detention Facility, Iraq, 6/6/2003.

"... I was handcuffed, blindfolded and severely beaten.... I saw men dressed in black, wearing black ski masks.... . I was put in a diaper, a belt with chains to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. I was thrown into a plane, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the floor.... [and flown] to Afghanistan.

... , I was dragged to the interrogation room, where a feeding tube was forced through my nose into my stomach. I became extremely ill, suffering the worst pain of my life....
I was ... warned that I was never to mention what had happened because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret...."

Statement of man kidnapped and held for five months.

So why should The Atlantic publish my letter (or essay)? You shouldn't. Because unlike Mr. Sullivan, I was right at the crucial moments when he was wrong. Like Mr. Sullivan, I initially had a favorable opinion of then Governor George W. Bush, based on everything I had read about him. That lasted right up to the moment when I first saw him on television. It was his first Republican debate early in 1999, when he was asked to name his favorite philosopher. He tilted his head and said in an obviously insincere attempt at evangelical earnestness, "Jesus." Bush only went downhill from there in subsequent debates and primaries. He hit rock bottom in the South Carolina primary with his attack "push poll" on John McCain which had his callers asking likely Republican primary voters how their vote would be affected by the fact that John McCain had an illegitimate black child (McCain and his wife had adopted a brown skinned orphan from Bangladesh).

In 2001, when we were attacked on September 11th, I knew that we had been attacked by Al Qaida jihadists based in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and I told my son that evening (he was a Marine reservist who was at his barracks across the river from the Pentagon when it was hit) that we would have troops on the ground in Afghanistan in 90 days. Unlike Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush, both of whom on September 12, 2001, were looking for Iraq connections to the terror attacks so they could use them as an excuse to hit Iraq, I knew that the fundamentalists in Al Qaida considered the highly Westernized Iraq (women wore modern dress, alcohol was publicly served, women held positions of authority) anathema. And I knew that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9-11 attacks. I also knew that of all the countries in the world that wanted to harm us, the least likely to be a military threat was Iraq. They had endured sanctions for a decade, had their own air space restricted by "no-fly zones" over northern (Kurdish) and southern (Shia) areas where our warplanes routinely patrolled, had hostile Iran on its eastern border, and had our armies camped on both its southern border in Kuwait and its northern border in Turkey. Here is what Colin Powell had stated publicly and testified to in 2001:

"He [Saddam Hussein] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors."

Secretary of State Colin Powell during a visit to Cairo, Egypt, February 24, 2001

"The sanctions, as they are called, have succeeded over the last 10 years.... The Iraqi regime militarily remains fairly weak. ... It has been contained."

Colin Powell testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, May 15, 2001.

In the Fall of 2002, when Bush & Co. were ginning up a war with Iraq as the midterm elections approached, I knew that there wasn't the slightest chance that either weapons of mass destruction or a purported connection to Al Qaida was a legitimate causus belli. Not because I had access to secret intelligence reports; all I had was a brain in my head, the ability to read a newspaper, and walking around common sense. Seven years later Mr. Sullivan has apparently forgotten the political climate that existed when the war vote was taken just before the 2002 midterm elections. The Senate had gone 51-49 Democratic in 2001 when a swing vote senator (Jim Jeffords) from Vermont got disgusted and left the Republican Party. In the wake of stunning collapses of fraudulent companies like Enron' and Worldcom and other scandals tied directly to Bush (Enron executives such as Ken Lay raised millions and propelled Bush into office, and they wrote his 2001 energy policy in secret meetings with Vice President Cheney) and Bush's failure to get Bin Laden- dead or alive. Bush faced the very real prospect of a Democratic House and Senate in the wake of the 2002 midterm elections. It was no coincidence that the October 11, 2002, vote to authorize war came three weeks before the Congressional elections. The fact that then Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D. South Dakota) allowed that vote to happen when it did- causing several presidential aspirants (Edwards, Kerry, and Clinton) and senators facing re-election (Max Cleland, who lost anyway) to sacrifice their country and their beliefs for their perceived political fortunes should be his greatest shame.

In the Fall of 2002, in my living room, talking to my buddy Glenn- a staunch Republican- we both agreed that stirring up war fever as a political distraction from domestic and foreign policy failures was brilliant political strategy on the part of Bush's advisors. We also agreed that if Bush actually followed through and invaded Iraq, it would be an utter disaster.

Unfortunately for America (and for my family), Bush did follow through, and too many of us had family members who were sent overseas to launch an invasion of Iraq from bases in Kuwait. War is hell- and I feel for every parent and spouse who is now going through what I went through as my son's unit was involved in the March 20, 2003, invasion.

A month after the invasion, here's what I wrote in an email on April 19, 2003-- two weeks before president Bush landed a fighter on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln in front of the infamous "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner -- to another parent of a Marine in my son's unit in Iraq:

"Why the UN should take over is simple. Whether or not they do a better job, the perception among the people in the region will be hugely different regarding a UN sponsored trusteeship of the country. It simply is in our national interest to have a respected international organization take over the rebuilding of Iraq. The sooner American and British soldiers are out of there, the less likely that terrorists or suicide bombers will attack our loved ones there or here. And a quick exit will defeat the absurd arguments that we are a colonialist country seeking to exploit Iraq's oil."

Sadly enough, right again. Of course Andrew Sullivan missed the boat on that one, too, as he was among those who fantasized publicly that we'd be welcomed as liberators and the democratic domino effect would transform the Middle East.

So that puts me on far different ground than Andrew Sullivan. I knew that electing Bush was a terrible mistake in 2000. I knew that Al Qaida, not Iraq, had attacked us in 2001. I knew in 2002 that Iraq was no military threat to us whatsoever- that the very idea of that was laughable. I knew that those who voted to grant war powers authority to Bush in October of 2002 did so for political reasons, not based on any concern for our national security. I knew that the threats of imminent danger ("... we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.", then National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice infamously said) were bogus. I knew that invading Iraq would be a disaster- that winning the "war" would be easy, but that it would only be the beginning of a horrific mistake if we stayed. I knew that we couldn't impose democracy at the point of a gun. I knew that no matter how grateful any Iraqi might have been to be relieved of the brutal dictator, Saddam Hussein, that gratitude would quickly grow to resentment, then hate, and then active guerilla operations, including suicide bombers, if we stayed on and occupied their country.

And today I know that the best course for our country, the surest way to avoid a repeat of the awful damage we have inflicted on innocents and the loss of our national honor, isn't to allow Bush to publicly apologize. It is to prosecute him for murder. And rape. And kidnapping. And torture. He is liable the same way as the head of any criminal enterprise- and that is exactly what his administration was. Joining him in the dock should be Cheney, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft, and Gonzalez. Separately, we should prosecute every American agent and contractor who committed those crimes, who ordered them committed, or who covered them up (by destroying tapes in one well known instance).

Will criminal prosecutions of a former president and his top officials be polarizing? Of course. But no more so than the fantastic and absurd attacks we've suffered through just the first eight months of Obama's presidency: Obama's death panels; Obama's concentration camps, Obama wants to take over banks, the health care industry, and the car industry; Obama is from Kenya; he's a terrorist, Nazi, a socialist, and a community organizer funneling billions to ACORN. And when in our nation's history has anyone ever suggested excusing murderers because prosecuting them would polarize the community? Did we fail to prosecute the murderers of civil rights workers because the local community was adamantly opposed? Was William Calley excused from trial for the My Lai massacre because the country was deeply divided over Vietnam?

The better question is: will prosecuting every criminal, from the highest (Bush) to the lowest interrogator, deter future presidents, top advisers, and low level agents and contractors from repeating those crimes in the future? And the answer that no one denies, is: Yes. Without question. Will prosecuting our own war criminals restore our honor in the eyes of the rest of the world and help return a little bit of our self respect at home? Yes and yes.

LIE TO ME- PLEASE

2009-08-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

Do Americans want Sherlock Holmes showing up in real life?

Off the top of my head I can name four current television shows which focus on a protagonist who can discern the truth where ordinary mortals can't: Law and Order Criminal Intent on USA/NBC; The Mentalist on CBS; Psych (USA); and Lie to Me (Fox). What they all have in common- and what sets them apart from old fashioned traditional TV detective shows (Monk being an example of the old timey show, albeit with the odd factor of an OCD detective who appears at times to be an ineffectual coward)- is the Sherlock Holmes aspect that allows each protagonist to discern whether people are telling the truth.

The lead character in Criminal Intent, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, explicitly based on Sherlock Holmes, explains how people's facial tics and expressions reveal their lies. Psych is a mock detective show which focuses on a self trained observer who discovers that no one will listen to his analysis unless he pretends to be receiving psychic visions. (James Roday's fake psychic character occasionally references The Mentalist during his show- all in good fun, of course.) The most watched of the bunch, The Mentalist, stars Australian Simon Baker as a man who has reinvented himself after a personal tragedy. Once a well heeled charlatan who earned his living by pretending to read minds and commune with the dead, the unsolved murder of his wife and daughter by a notorious serial killer led him to renounce his desire for worldly possessions and dedicate his skills in human observation to crime solving as a consultant with the California Bureau of Investigation.

Then there is the over the top Lie to Me, which is obviously an attempt to piggyback on the commercial success of The Mentalist, even down to using an Englishman (Tim Roth) playing a man who can instantly tell when anyone- seriously, anyone!- is telling the truth or not. After the 55th time Roth and his crackerjack acolytes brace suspects to their faces and accuse them of lying- or telling the truth- the trick gets old. The one penetrating moment in the show came when Roth's ex-wife (played by former Flash Dance star Jennifer Beals) admits that marriage to Roth was less than blissful because he was compelled to constantly inform her of her thoughts and feelings which he, the master interrogator, could read from her expressions. To the rest of us mere mortals, that sounds like a marriage made in Hell.

So why are American television viewers so entranced with shows featuring people who can identify the liars, con men, and other criminals who prey on ordinary folks? What is happening in our society that we feel we need these kinds of heroes- each one played as an extreme eccentric?

Well, for one, we have advertisers. Does anyone believe anything in ads? Will drinking that beer, using that body fragrance, or using that cell phone really cause beautiful women to fawn over us (or Catherine Zeta Jones to arrive on our doorstep)? Doubtful. Of course, Madison Avenue has been crafting lying commercials for decades, so that's nothing new. For gosh sakes, decades ago they used to extol the health benefits of cigarettes!

Then there are politicians. From "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq to Obama's "death panels" that will kill off grandma or Sarah Palin's year old baby, we have been subjected to lying elected officials for the last eight years plus. Problem with that is, other than George Washington, who was as close to a saint as this country ever found in a president, pretty much every administration since 1796 has felt the need to twist the truth- or suppress it- in the name of national security or some other essential without which the republic would surely perish.

Finally we have news casters. The lack of gravitas in current news anchors was highlighted after the death of Walter Cronkite, who, after his retirement in 1981, retrospectively became the most admired newscaster in history (revisionist history- there were excellent, intelligent, and honest news anchors before and during his time, including Edward R. Murrow, David Brinkley, and Eric Sevareid). Instead of being able to rely on television or print news to convey an honest attempt at truth telling or revealing the nefarious wizards behind the many curtains in Washington or on Wall Street, we have slowly come to realize that they have become part of the circus.

The lines have blurred, with General Electric owning NBC, Disney's got ABC, and, worst of all, Rupert Murdoch created and controls Fox. Instead of news, we have infotainment or, in the case of Fox, outright lies. The old saw in local television news was "if it bleeds, it leads," referring to the public fascination with violence and crime. At least the old time crime reporters weren't moonlighting as criminals. That's no longer the case, as the new saw is "shouting heads and confrontation trump accurate analysis." If an issue is important- health care and the Iraq War being two recent examples- then the mainstream media is sure to be hard at work muddying the waters rather than revealing underlying truth. Each "side" (and there have to be sides, no issue can stand alone) is given equal credence, regardless of the relative merit in their positions. We've been treated to former generals on major networks, secretly working for the Pentagon, pretending to be independent analysts during the Iraq War. Former Newsweek Reporter Richard Wolfe was able to appear on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann for several months while secretly (unbeknownst to MSNBC viewers) enjoying a career working for a Washington lobbying firm, "Public Strategies."

The moral of this story is: if the public taste is the determining factor, we only want truth telling and lies revealed in our fictional television, not on our newscasts.

NOTES FROM A TOWN HALL MEETING

2009-08-24T19:49:00.000-07:00

I went to a town hall meeting last Thursday- and democracy broke out. I fully expected to see members of the lunatic fringe attempting to shout down our Congressman or monopolize the microphones. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to note that our local law enforcement was out in force and, while being studiously polite, they enforced ground rules which allowed everybody who walked up to a microphone over the three and one half hour session (it was scheduled to run 4:00 P.M. to 6:00 P.M., but the last speaker finished around 7:30) to have their say.

THE CONGRESSMAN

Our Congressman, Sanford Bishop, Jr. has represented Georgia's Second Congressional District- all of Southwest Georgia- for 16 years. Amazingly, he looked and sounded as fresh at the end of the session- his fourth in two days- as he did at the beginning. He was unflappable yet in control, numerous times shushing the crowd when some members became unruly or rude in response to remarks from a citizen. Nattily attired in a brown suit, yellow tie, and matching pocket patch, he appeared far younger than his 62 years, and he was indefatigable in his presentation of the thousand page bill to a standing room audience in Albany State University's Academics (ACAD) building.

THE AUDIENCE

Belying the media stereotypes, the audience appeared to be made up primarily of local citizens with a genuine interest in having a conversation- or making a point- with or to their representative in Congress. There were no signs permitted in the auditorium. My two minute effort with a Sharpie on posterboard went to naught, as I turned over my poster to a polite policewoman in the lobby who gave me a choice between keeping my sign and picketing outside the building, or leaving it in her care and attending the meeting. The officer wasn't around when I got out hours later, so the world will never see my brightly lettered sign "TELL CONGRE$$ NOT TO $UCCOMB TO IN$URANCE DOLLAR$"

In what I had correctly anticipated was a brilliant stroke of political strategy, the venue at Albany State ensured that the Fox News watching, Rush Limbaugh regurgitating, white Republicans (most of whom haled from outside of Albany- each speaker had to identify himself or herself by name and location), were outnumbered by African American fans of both President Obama and Congressman Bishop. I roughly calculated the breakdown as approximately 30 percent white, middle class, immigrant bashing opponents of any reform, any government spending, any hint of Socialism, and 70 percent who supported reforming the current mess. At times the meeting seemed more like a television talent contest with fans of each side cheering, applauding speakers who vocalized their positions.

The biggest cheer of the night went to a minister who recited phrases from the New Testament which were echoed by Congressman Bishop- versus about Jesus healing the sick- and suddenly it seemed that a political town hall meeting had turned into a religious revival, as the more than half of the crowd rose to their feet in noisy appreciation. The self professed right wing Christians who oppose any help to the less fortunate, including Samaritans, excuse me, Mexican immigrants, never appreciated the irony of their position.

I made a point of introducing myself to those sitting around me- to my left was a slightly OCD white middle aged opponent of health reform who was fiercely against Socialism in any form. He felt that the government could not possibly run a health care system. He had health insurance on his job and seemed satisfied with his current lot. When he railed against Socialism in the medical field, I asked him if he thought that most senior citizens were dissatisfied with Medicare and would prefer to opt out and purchase private insurance. His response- reasonably enough- was that they wouldn't because they didn't have to pay anything for Medicare. At no point did he seem to understand that once we reach 65, we're all Socialists. Nor did he seem aware of the undisputed fact that somehow the government provides Medicare benefits to seniors without totally screwing up the program. In fact the overhead for Medicare is a fraction of what private insurers and HMO's expend for their high priced executives and other administrative costs.

ONE STORY

One woman's story was particularly telling. She mentioned her husband, a Vietnam Veteran, who had been exposed to Agent Orange during his tour there in the early 1970's. Three decades later they had good jobs and were living the American dream- beautiful house, several cars, money saved for retirement. Then, in 2002, he became sick. The Veterans Administration denied benefits and he was ineligible for care at the VA hospital. Although they had insurance, the incredible expense of his illness cost them their house, their cars, their life savings. Five years later, they were so destitute that she had to choose between paying for the medicine to keep him alive a bit longer and the medicine she needed to treat her high blood pressure that might cost her own life. She chose to buy the medicine her husband needed, but in the end, he died. The question she posed- the challenge she posed- to the Congressman and to the anti-reformers in the audience, was: why did she have to choose? Why did anyone have to lose everything and then have to make a life or death choice like that because the money had run out? None of the Socialism hating, immigrant bashing, Fox News misinformation swallowing, white Republicans had an answer.

I (DON'T) WANNA BE LIKE MIKE

2009-08-18T21:10:00.001-07:00

Sometimes a talent comes along that is so breathtaking, so pure, that it leaves you almost speechless. When even the members of an opposing team perk up and pay close attention so that they don't miss that one moment of action, that one amazing "did you see that!" play, then you know you're looking at someone special, a once in a generation comet blazing a trail through the sports firmament. When Michael Jordan laced up his sneakers, stadiums sold out and television ratings soared. You never knew when he'd invent some incredible move on the basketball court that even he didn't realize he was about to pull off.

There have been a few players like that who have made their marks on the football field- Gale Sayers in the open field, Dan Fouts and his corps of receivers in San Diego, Joe Montana in playoff games and Super Bowls. One of them was quarterback Michael Vick, the first round draft pick out of Virginia Tech in 2001 as a sophomore- a draft selection unprecedented in the history of the National Football League.

Playing for the Atlanta Falcons, Vick immediately had success, leading them to the playoffs his second year in the league, and defeating the Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field, Wisconsin, in a snow storm in January of 2003, ending Green Bay's undefeated record there in playoff games. Vick was a good quarterback- although he has a great arm, his numbers and quarterback rating were average at best- but fans got their money's worth when he tucked the ball and took off running when his receivers were covered. The fastest man on the field, he easily outran linemen and linebackers, and even the speed men on the defense had difficulty catching or tackling him. One moment that left opponents shaking their heads occurred during an away game in New Orleans, when Vick ran up the middle on a broken play, streaking so fast that he caused two Saints linebackers to look like members of the Keystone Cops as they collided head on into each other in a futile attempt to tackle Vick, who was already yards past them on his way to the goal line.

In 2006, his last year in the league, he ran for more than a thousand yards, setting the record for most yards rushing by a quarterback, but more importantly to the Falcons, he was a winner- when he wasn't injured- twice leading them to the playoffs, in 2002 and 2004,.

Which is why the world- both inside and outside sports- was so stunned and shocked a little more than two years ago when Michael Vick's life caved in on him after he was caught in the criminal investigation of an interstate dog fighting ring Vick founded and bankrolled.

The words of the federal indictment charging Vick and some of the friends he grew up with in Newport News, Virginia, were prosaic, bland even. Paragraph 10: "In or about early 2002, PEACE, PHILLIPS, TAYLOR and VICK established a dog fighting business enterprise known as 'Bad Newz Kennels.' At one point, the defendants obtained shirts and headbands representing and promoting their affiliation with 'Bad Newz Kennels'."

But the truth was that this "enterprise" was more akin to the depredations of a sociopath who set neighborhood cats on fire than a business enterprise boyhood friends joined into for profit. The descriptions that came out of the investigation were chilling, disgusting. Vick admitted that he was personally involved in the killing of dogs that did not perform well during "testing" sessions at his property. Some of the dogs were killed by hanging them. Others were electrocuted or held under water until they drowned. One dog was slammed into the ground until he broke and died. Vick had family pet dogs put into the ring with killer pit bulls to watch them get torn to bits.

Those acts weren't "mistakes." They weren't "errors in judgment." They weren't "lapses." And they are not the acts of a human being who can be rehabilitated. They are the acts of a predator, a sociopath. Like child molesters, rapists, and serial killers, they may follow society's rules when it is convenient to them, but they have no ability to empathize. They can't feel other's pain. They will never internalize the feelings they may show on the surface to emulate true human beings who would never dream of torturing the family pet or using cruel forms of execution to kill helpless dogs who failed to "perform."

So when you see Michael Vick on the football field for the Philadelphia Eagles this Fall (they play the Falcons later in the season), don't be fooled by any outward signs of contrition, by any press conferences or Sixty Minutes appearances. He may say all the right things; he may look like a decent human being. But underneath, he's Ted Bundy. And nothing can ever change the essential core of a human being who has lost his humanity- or who never had it.

COMMON SENSE IDEAS TO REFORM HEALTH CARE

2009-08-15T06:05:00.000-07:00

People sit outdoors as they wait to receive medical treatment during the Remote Area Medical (RAM) health clinic at the Forum in Inglewood, California August 14, 2009. The Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corp (RAM) is a non-profit organization that provides free health care, dental care and eye care in remote areas of the United States and the world since 1985 and was available in the Los Angeles area from August 11 to 18.

The fascinating fact about the "debate" on health care is that there isn't one- at least not in the one place where debate would be both necessary and useful, which is among the lawmakers who will decide whether or how we will fix our eminently dysfunctional system for providing medical services. A true debate would address four essential objectives:

(1) providing some kind of coverage for the 50 million uninsured;

(2) cutting costs to the government;

(3) cutting costs and unnecessary overhead to medical providers; and

(4) improving the overall health of Americans.

The Remote Area Medical clinic, providing free eye and dental care, set up at the fairgrounds in Wise, Virginia, last July. Republicans (and Glenn Beck) argue that Americans have the best health care in the world and that individuals can choose whether or not to purchase health insurance. In the real world, insurance companies refuse to sell policies to sick people, routinely deny any coverage for "pre-existing conditions," and have caps on benefits which cause people who had what they thought was decent coverage to file for bankruptcy when their lifetime benefits run out.

The one benefit to the lunatic fringe's bogus attacks on reform is that they highlight the fact that Democrats' proposals are so fuzzy and incoherent that no one can explain them, let alone defend them. Someone needs to get the message to our communicator in chief that his party's present tactics aren't working, and that even his supporters can't identify what his proposals are or how they will be funded without further busting a budget with record deficits.

So far, President Obama has not endorsed any bill that would truly provide universal coverage- no plan which would cover every uninsured American will make it to a vote in Congress. As to cutting costs to the government, the President has missed the boat entirely by his refusal to consider any plan that doesn't allow HMO's and private insurers a large piece of the three trillion dollar pie.

Meanwhile, the Republicans offer nothing other than the absurd claim that the present system isn't broken. That certainly explains their failure to propose legislation, let alone pass any, to cover even one of the millions of uninsured during their control of Congress from 1995 to 2007. Nor did they ever attempt to rein in exploding costs, instead passing a Medicare Prescription Drug Bill in 2003 which was a huge boon to the bottom line of the pharmaceutical giants who give millions of dollars to members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. Instead of attacking the deficit and runaway drug expenses for seniors, the law increased the federal deficit and raised the overall costs to consumers by placing obstacles in the way of states or companies with health plans and preventing them from negotiating lower drug prices or shopping in Canada for cheaper generic drugs.

It's not as if there aren't excellent ideas out there- they just haven't made it inside the halls of power in our nation's capital. A single payer government funded universal catastrophic health insurance plan-- for example, a plan that would cover ever American family's expenses over $3,600 annually- $300 a month- would solve the first issue of universal coverage.

Replacing Medicare and Medicaid with a single payer plan would also help resolve the second issue of reducing the federal deficit by immediately shaving hundreds of billions of dollars annually from the federal budget. This would remove the cloud of the projected bankruptcies those programs will face in the next 10 or 20 years.

There are some simple- and cost free (to the government) solutions for immediately putting the brakes on the increase in overall health care costs, which have far outstripped inflation in recent years. One suggestion is to subject hospitals, physicians, and other medical providers to federal anti-trust laws. There is no question that overall costs have been driven up in recent years by anti-competitive practices among hospitals and physicians. The trend has been to keep prices artificially high by creating monopolies, either through the legislative process (the most pernicious being the requirement that a hospital obtain a "certificate of need" in order to buy certain equipment or perform such routine medical procedures as delivering babies) or through economic power (buying up local hospitals and clinics has been a favorite tactic of our local "public" hospital in Albany, Georgia, and many local physicians groups deal with lone competitors simply by bringing them into their large practices).

If you've ever walked a city street where restaurants post their menus and prices next to their entrance, then you would recognize the simplicity- and effectiveness- of another cost free method of keeping prices low while encouraging informed consumer/patient shopping for medical services. Hospitals and physicians should be required to publicly post their fees for all services and products, both next to their front doors and on the internet. Consumers have no problem shopping for the lowest gasoline prices- note how two gas stations across the street from each other, or even just in the same town, allow informed shopping. And the fact that they would be subject to anti-trust laws would eliminate overt price fixing.

The Obama Administration needs to include some sweeteners to make these proposals attractive to the health care providers. Far and away the biggest- also cost free to the government- would be the elimination of all medical malpractice lawsuits and replacing lawsuits requiring proof of negligent acts under the current tort system with a no-fault system similar to the Workers' Compensation programs each state has in place. The pool of funds available to compensate patients and consumers injured, regardless of fault or negligence, would be funded by a modest two percent sales tax on all medical services and products, which are presently untaxed. That two percent would be instantly recouped by the billions in savings in overhead by medical providers no longer paying malpractice insurance premiums or practicing unnecessary defensive medicine to avoid lawsuits.

A check on bad doctors (which the current tort system does not do at all) would be to publicly post all no fault awards for patients on the internet, with privacy protected by removing all identifiers except for the name of the hospital or physician, the procedure performed or product provided, the date, and the amount awarded. Even good doctors and hospitals occasionally have bad outcomes, but currently prospective patients have no way of determining who the truly bad doctors are. A large number of negative outcomes for a physician performing a particular procedure (i.e. hysterectomies) compared to other physicians performing the same procedures would certainly be a red flag to patients while providing a genuine incentive for the medical industry to reform itself.

The biggest fans of a single payer system should be hospitals and doctors, since such a system would cut their administrative overhead by billions while eliminating no pay and slow pay patients and insurers. Currently medical providers have to deal with Medicare, Medicaid, a welter of private insurers, and uncovered patients, with a multi-tiered pricing system that charges wildly disparate fees for routine services and products.

One other advantages of a single payer system is that if it is funded by a national sales tax on all goods and all services, then every person in America, including illegal immigrants. would pay. And just like gasoline taxes that pay for road maintenance and other transportation expenses, we each would pay as much or as little as our pocketbooks would allow. By switching to a single payer, government funded program, cash strapped American employers currently providing some form of medical benefits to employees would be freed from that expense in their overhead. Those billions of dollars could go to paying their current employees more and towards hiring more employees. American companies would also be free to compete on equal footing with foreign companies which have national health insurance and no medical costs included in the price of their products.

There are many ideas currently being floated to achieve issue number 4, improving the overall health of Americans and reduce their need for medical care to treat easily preventable diseases. If we can do that, then it would, not incidentally, also result in cost savings at every phase of the system. One proposal whose cost would easily be recouped in following years is for the government to provide or fund free annual checkups for every American. Catching diseases while they are treatable, or treatable at much lower cost, will result in huge savings both in the pocketbook and in human costs.

Another approach is to attack the products and lifestyles which are killing us- or at least slowing us down. W should heavily tax every toxic product, not just cigarettes and alcohol, which presently burden the system with costs for treating patients their products are slowly killing with cancer, lung diseases, heart disease , and stroke. We need to outlaw all forms of advertising for products which have no value and which are proven links to disease. And we need to strictly enforce the laws against underage consumption of cigarettes and alcohol, which would result in huge long term savings from the damage inflicted on our country by those substances.

So the ideas are there, and many of them are cost free except for the paper on which to write the laws to enact them. Without question a lot of large insurance companies' oxes would be gored, and they will stop at almost nothing to prevent true reform from being enacted. But under our present circumstances, we have nothing to lose by boldly going forward.

IN OUR NAME...

2009-08-12T21:50:00.000-07:00

There are people- "serious people" who argue that the following should not be prosecuted, because it would set a bad precedent of criminalizing the political decisions of a previous administration, or because we need to "look forward" and "move on" or not prosecute the little people who were "just following orders."

I think that is a crock. Either murder is always a crime, or we should never prosecute any murders in our country, ever. Anarchy versus law. Not a hard choice for me to make.

From Glenn Greenwald's blog (substitute writer, Daphne Eviatar of The Washington Independent).

"They include the death of an Afghan man who was stripped naked, dragged across a concrete floor and chained there by CIA operatives in a secret prison north of Kabul known as the "Salt Pit"; he was left on the floor overnight and froze to death.

Then there's the death of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi insurgent who died just hours after he was captured and beaten by Navy SEALS, who hung him from his wrists, which were tied behind his back, until he was dead.

And there's the killing of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush, a 56-year-old who, reportedly uncooperative with interrogators, was stuffed into a sleeping bag and clubbed to death."

CONSPIRACY THEORY

2009-08-10T21:46:00.001-07:00

Socialist Muslim time travelers determined to destroy America in 2009 traveled back to 1961 to place this announcment in the Honolulu Advertiser.

One of my favorite movies- I watch it almost every time it shows up on television- is the 1997 satirical thriller "Conspiracy Theory," starring Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, and Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard of the Star Trek Next Generation series, but this time playing a shady government bad guy). The movie can be watched as a straight thriller, as an inside joke for the cognoscenti who enjoy poking fun at the conspiracy nuts who have permeated American history since the founding fathers were linked to the secret society of Free Masons, or a little bit of both.

There was one moment in the movie- I remember laughing out loud in the theater- when Mel Gibson is in New York City trying to escape from the net of mysterious agents sent to capture him after he compulsively buys a copy of "Catcher in the Rye" (apparently a book beloved by psychotic American assassins), and black helicopters on "silent mode" hover over the streets as dark clothed commandos rappel down ropes. That scene was ripped straight from the lunatic writings of the radical right wingers who fervently believed that there were coded messages on telephone poles in America intended to guide nefarious United Nations black helicopters filled with foreign troops sent to take over our country.

Conspiracies have been blamed for everything from putting flouride in our drinking water (in the 1950's the John Birchers thought it was a Communist plot to control our minds), to the Kennedy assassination (that one at least has rational people making the arguments, based on evidence), to the 9-11 attacks (take your pick- either the Israeli Mossad planted bombs in the twin towers to turn America against the Muslim Middle East, or the Bush Administration did it to obtain dictatorial powers and gin up the war machine).

So the latest craze- an apt term, considering who's behind it- comes from a group called the "birthers" who deny that President Barack Obama is the legitimate president because he wasn't born in America. They claim he wasn't born in Hawaii, and go into a frenzy when sane humans refer to his Hawaiin birth certificate. Never mind the facts- which are never convenient to any conspiracy nut, and can always be explained away using the "my eyes are closed, I can't see you, so you don't exist" theory of logical analysis. It doesn't matter to them that both daily Honolulu newspapers, the Honolulu Advertiser and the Star Bulletin, ran a birth announcement of Barack Obama's birth on August 4, 1961.

For those conspiracy theorists who posit that the conspiracy started on that date, I assume that they also believe in time travelers who figured out that this particular baby was going to grow up and be president. Presumably the time travelers headed back to 1961 and posted fake birth announcements to give a chance at the nation's highest office that the Kenyan (or Australian, or Indonesian) born infant would have been denied by the literal words of Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution:

"No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States."

So long as the "birthers" don't bring guns to the argument, they are pretty much harmless. And they are valuable for revealing those holding positions public office or well paid pundits (I'm talking about you, Lou Dobbs) whose brains aren't exactly firing on all cylinders, or who are just plain demagogues willing to use lies to build up their own careers. The one disservice the Birthers have performed is that they have distracted from real and legitimate criticism of policies of the Obama Administration, which include continuation of Bush policies in Iraq, ratcheting up the war in Afghanistan, failing to prosecute war criminals as required by both American law and international treaties, and an ineptly constructed and poorly marketed health care reform bill.

But hey, so long as they provide grist for Jon Stewart's Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and Real Time with Bill Maher, I'll enjoy the well deserved mocking their lunacy has earned.

MY COUNTRY, RIGHT OR WRONG...

2009-08-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

U. S. Naval Captain Stephen Decatur, after defeating pirates on the Barbary Coast of northern Africa, returned to American in 1816 and uttered a toast which contained the (in)famous phrase: "our country, right or wrong."

The following was written in response to a letter I sent, which was a response to one of those jingoistic chain e-mails that goes around the world a few times and come back every few years. In my letter I pointed out that I preferred a more nuanced patriotism and that I had no problem with public criticism of our country by anybody- foreign or domestic.

Dear Jim:

"My country, right or wrong. May she always be right; but, right or wrong, aways my country." -- author unknown (to me) (Actually, I think there are several versions of the quote.)

But, DAMN TO HELL ANY S.O.B. who thinks he has some obligation to go all around the world apologizing for our country, which has sacrificed the lives and bodies of more of its own sons and daughters for the rest of the world than any other nation, has provided more food, shelter and medicine for other peoples than any other nation and done more good in the world during the past 100 years than any other nation in world history. AND ALL WITHOUT CLAIMING ANY TERRITORY OF OTHER NATIONS. Au contraire! We have been asked to stay to protect them from further danger! No person and no nation is perfect, but on balance, the good greatly outweighs the bad.

_________________

JIM'S RESPONSE:

Dear ______________

You are right on the original quote, which came from U. S. Naval Captain Stephen Decatur, and was said in a context totally unlike that used in recent decades as a challenge to those who want to criticize our nation or to correct its wrongs. Here's the context of the original quote, lifted from an on-line article by J. R. Dunn:

"Shortly after returning to the U.S., [in 1815, Decatur] again set sail for North Africa, commanding a squadron of nine ships, with the mission of ending Barbary state piracy once and for all. In the Mediterranean he captured the Algerian flagship Mashouda along with an accompanying brig, then leveraged the victory to gain a favorable treaty from the Dey of Algiers. Similar submissions followed from Tripoli and Tunis.

On returning home in April 1816, he was feted as the Conqueror of Araby. It was at one such banquet that he raised his glass and spoke the words,

'Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.'"

Decatur's comment still makes no sense to me, although I confess that at a remove of almost 200 years, I may have missed something in translation. Here's a good comment on Decatur's famous quote, followed by another quote which I think states a true patriot's sentiments better than Decatur did:

" My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying My mother, drunk or sober."
Gilbert K. Chesterton,

"My country right or wrong; when right, to keep her right; when wrong, to put her right."
Carl Schurz

As for your contention that in the course of our nation's history we managed to do all that good without claiming the territory of other nations- please remember, I did major in history. I noticed you qualified it by limiting it to only the last 100 years. Are you ashamed of what we did the first 120? Like invading Mexico and seizing modern day New Mexico, Arizona and California back in 1846-1848? Or the proposals to invade and seize Canada from the British circa 1812? (That one didn't turn out so well). How about the "Spanish American" War trumped up by yellow journalist William Randolph Hearst and ignited (literally and figuratively) by an unfortunate accident involving a boiler explosion on the Maine in Havana Harbor in 1898? We gobbled up Cuba and the Philippines after that mismatch, and we still own Puerto Rico and some islands in the Pacific Ocean to this day.

How about the times we invaded countries in the Caribbean or Central America in the 20th century? For instance, we attacked Cuba in 1961 (the Bay of Pigs disaster) with proxies, and we successfully invaded the Dominican Republic in 1965. President Lyndon Johnson, fearing the creation of "a second Cuba" on America's doorstep, ordered U.S. forces to restore order. Citing as an official reason for the invasion the need to protect the lives of foreigners, none of whom had been killed or wounded, a fleet of 41 vessels was sent to blockade the island, and an invasion was launched by Marines and elements of the United States Army's 82nd Airborne Division. [paraphrased from Wikipedia.]

Of course, that doesn't include our invasions of Grenada (1983) and Panama (1989), Iraq (1990 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001), currently costing us a few hundred billion dollars a year. Just think how much tax money we could save the tea baggers if we stopped invading and occupying other countries but instead supported a world policing body! We could call it "The United Nations."

The upshot is, if we don't realistically confront our country's faults and address them-- if we jump on anyone who criticizes us- we won't get better, and we will keep repeating our mistakes. So which is worse: not being embarrassed by harsh truths, or making our country good enough that we won't have so much to be embarrassed about? I opt for the latter.

Jim

YOU DA MAN!!!

2009-08-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

A brilliant idea to add excitement and additional (sane) fan interest to professional golfing events.

Jim's column this week is reprinted from a letter he wrote ESPN's the Magazine Rick Reilly, whose "Life of Reilly" column spices up the back page of that magazine and which formerly appeared for several years in Sports Illustrated

Dear Mr. Reilly,

It has come to my attention that you have been (self?) anointed as the national gadfly on sports absurdities and oddities and as correcter in chief of some (not all) of that which is wrong in modern sports.

I would greatly appreciate it if you would lend your sharp and satirical wit to one of the banes of modern professional golfing events. I refer to the now ubiquitous "IN THE HOLE!!!" which has now superseded the quaint and archaic (as Alberto Gonzales would say) "YOU DA MAN!!!" which first haunted Augusta National's somewhat less than hallowed grounds. [Sorry, but their profound and lengthy history of first, racism, then gender discrimination, and always, elitism beyond sanity- they close the whole course for the summer, for goodness sakes, ostensibly because of the heat, while every golf course to the south of Augusta (virtually the entire State of Georgia, including my home courses in Albany) and Florida remains open.]

I have a modest proposal to rectify this situation, which has reached such absurd depths that as Tiger Woods has barely reached 10 degrees of arc past the point of striking his soon to be wayward tee shot on a 598 yard par 5, some inebriated idiot desperate for attention (Did you hear me on television dear? That was ME bellowing on the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th tees, until I had to find a port a potty to dispose of all of the beer I had rented and I couldn't find my way back to the golf course again.) screams that the ball should, impossibly, land in the hole a third of a mile away. My suggestion is to arm various course marshals and other volunteers with paint ball guns, loaded with a water soluble paint and relatively low velocity propulsion mechanisms. Any person noticed bellowing any inanity before the golfer has completed his follow through may be shot with impunity, at chest level or lower, but only in the intervening 10 seconds, after which, any persons found to have been squarely shot with various colored paint splatters will be gently escorted from the golf course to a tent where they will be given the option of leaving for the day and being forever barred from the grounds (a dire threat to Masters "badge holders" or "patrons" or whatever other euphemism CBS's unctuous announcers are currently required to use when referring to the unwashed, uncouth masses who attend the tournament, OR, in the alternative, sitting down, taking a breathalyzer test, and if they post less than .08 (the legal limit for DUI in Georgia) they will have to watch a one hour video on golf etiquette before they are allowed to return to the course. But they will return only with a balloon tied around the waist, bobbing at a height of 10 feet, still wearing their paint spattered clothes so as to allow for well deserved embarrassment and so that they may be easily spotted and removed if any further infractions ensue.

Thank you for your time and attention. I hope this has been as inspirational for you to read as it has been cathartic for me to write it.

Sincerely yours,
James Finkelstein
Albany, Georgia

P.S. I have had a career in golf good enough that I played on an ECAC championship team at Penn (1972), played in a U.S. Open Qualifier at Pinehurst #2 (1976- I missed the cut by about a thousand light years), with Allen Doyle in a U.S. Amateur qualifier at Atlanta Athletic Club (circa 1982- again, nowhere near making the cut) and won a couple of club championships spaced 29 years apart, one in Pennsylvania, one in Georgia. And I never take a cart- I always walk, so I am one of the unwashed (and stinky) masses.

WE THE PEOPLE..... ARE TO BLAME

2009-08-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

545 vs. 300,000,000
Republicans & Democrats Alike - No One Is Blameless

EVERY US CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.

Charlie Reese has been a journalist for 49 years. Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

. You and I don't propose a federal budget, the President does.
.. You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations, the House of Representatives does.
. You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.
. You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.
. You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does..

One hundred Senators, 435 Congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country..

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes.

Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly back to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ .
If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to:
. bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish;
. to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject;
. to regulators, to whom they give power to regulate and from whom they can take away this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they took an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.
They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses -- us!

Provided voters have the gumption to manage their own employees, we should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

What you do with this article now that you have read it is entirely up to you, though you have several choices:

1. You can send this to everyone in your address book and hope "they" do something about it.
2. You can agree to "vote against" everyone that is currently in office, knowing that the process will take several years

and ask your representative to vote in TERM LIMITS.
3. You can decide to "run for office" yourself and agree to do the job properly.
4. Lastly, you can sit back and do nothing or re-elect the current bunch of selfish professional politicians.

It is our choice.

JIM'S RESPONSE: Nah. I blame us- we the people. Any time a person running for office has dared to tell the truth- in 1980, when George H. W. Bush derided Ronald Reagan's proposals to increase defense spending and cut taxes, while claiming that the "Laffer curve" would magically cause the budget to balance, he called it "voodoo economics." Reagan beat Bush for the Republican nomination, Bush then got on board (no more cries of "voodoo economics" from him even when he ran for President again and won in 1988), and the deficits went up sharply during the Reagan Administration after relatively low annual deficits (see below) under Carter.

In 1984, when Walter Mondale ran against Reagan and said in a national debate that the only way to balance the budget and end the deficits which had burgeoned under Reagan was to raise taxes-- "he won't tell you this; but I will" is my recollection of what Mondale said-- he lost every state in the country except Minnesota.

In 1992, Bush the elder lost after he had made his infamous "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge, then discovered during actual governing that it would be irresponsible not to raise taxes in the wake of unexpected expenditures on such frivolities as an unnecessary invasion of Panama, the S & L bailout (after Reagan years of deregulation and "go go" banking practices), a Wall Street meltdown as a result ("greed is good" was the mantra of Michael Douglas' character in the movie, "Wall Street" which, like the movie "The China Syndrome" which I attended the night before the Three Mile Island nuclear near disaster, eerily appeared at the same time as the great crisis hit), and an unnecessary war in Kuwait (you have to read the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie's remarks to Saddam Hussein just weeks before Hussein launched his invasion in 1990 under the mistaken belief that the U.S. would do nothing and let him annex Kuwait to Iraq).

In 2000 when George W. Bush said that 1+1+1=2 (those were trillions) and that he could increase defense spending and give away the surplus (back to the taxpayers) and keep the budget balanced (we were running a surplus for the first time in decades at that point and actually contemplated paying off the national debt), he got away with it, voters ignored or applauded Bush's apparent total lack of intellectual capacity to govern responsibly, and he won (well, maybe) the election.

In 2004, Bush promised that by the end of his second term- 2008- he would cut the deficit (not the debt, just the annual amount by which outgo exceeded income) in half. He won the election, and deficits went up to historic levels.

By the end of 2008, this country faced an economic meltdown not seen since the Great Depression, and the powers that be said that deficit spending on a massive scale was the only way to save the country- then instead of pouring the money into jobs programs, mortgage relief, and infrastructure repair, most of it went to banks- who ending up paying out millions in bonuses for almost destroying the country.

Here's a few facts on the budget deficits over the years to put this all in perspective:

WHICH PRESIDENTS HAVE DONE THE WORST JOB IN CONTROLLING DEFICIT SPENDING AND THE NATIONAL DEBT

( as it happened, Ronald Reagan was far and away the worst president at deficit reduction and budget discipline- and he had a Republican Senate his first six years, 1981-1986, so you can't blame a Democratic Congress for the out of control budget deficits and tripling of the national debt. But in sheer numbers, George W. Bush added $5 trillion, mostly through his incompetence, again with a Republican Congress- both houses, his first six years, 2001-2006, except for a brief year- 2001-2002, when the Senate was run by Democrats.)

When discussing the relative impact of Republican and Democratic presidents on spending and deficit and debt reduction (deficit being the amount that spending exceeds income in one year, while the national debt is the total of all amounts owed by the Federal Government at any given moment), it is helpful to have the facts, courtesy of the United States Treasury Department. As the late Senator Patrick Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions- but not their own facts. Here are the facts. You can draw your own conclusions:

When Jimmy Carter came into office January 20, 1977, the national debt was about $620 billion. When he left office and Ronald Reagan took office January 20,1981, the national debt was under one trillion dollars (about $907 billion, an increase of $287 billion, or 46%, which was an 11.5% increase each year in office). When President Reagan left office in 1989 and his vice president, George H. W. Bush succeeded him, the national debt had more than tripled to $2.8 trillion dollars ($2.1 trillion additional debt in 8 years- a 230% increase, or about 29% per year). When George H. W. Bush's term ended and Bill Clinton took office January 20, 1993, our total national debt was $4.2 trillion ( $1.4 trillion more, an increase of 50% in 4 years, 12.5% per year). When President Clinton left office and George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, our total national debt was $5,727,776,738,304.64 (rounded to $5.7 trillion- an increase of 36%, about 4.5% per year). When President Bush left office January 20, 2009, it was $10,626,877,048,913.08 (a $5 trillion increase to $10.7 trillion- an 88% increase, 11% increase per year).

The last four full years of Clinton's presidency, from September 1996 to September of 2000, the national debt increased from $5.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion, a $400 billion increase ($100 billion per year), a less than 10% total increase in the national debt during those years (2.5% per year). In terms of slowing the increase in the national debt, those were the best four years out of the last 32 years.

So, at the end of the day, it's us. We the People. We pretty much get the government we deserve. If our representative votes against common sense and fiscal responsibility but can brag at election time that he got us a few government projects built in the state/district, and he can vow to lock up every criminal forever (regardless of cost) and buy billion dollar boats and planes that the military does not want and does not need- then we have no one to blame but ourselves when we ignore their lack of character, their history in office, and vote them back in (tough on crime! strong national defense! cut all of your taxes!- now that's fiscal responsibility, American style.) It's kind of like every election day the nation gets drunk or stoned and then wakes up the next morning to realize who we brung home last night- and we're stuck with them for two, four, or six years. Then we do it all over again.

Jim

LETTER TO USA TODAY ON REFORMING THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

2009-07-16T22:27:00.000-07:00

Our current system for providing and paying for health care as it looks to a rational outsider (I'm talking to you, Canada!)

Dear Editor:

For the first time I can recall, I agreed with both the USA Today editorial and the opposing view (from the Chamber of Commerce) on a subject- in this case, the health care reform efforts underway in Congress. However, although the editorial board's comment that "no one ever thought [health care reform] bills would be works of elegance or simplicity" is accurate, that doesn't mean that complexity is better in this context. True reform would be a work of simplicity, but it would take courage and leadership, qualities presently lacking in both the White House and the Congress. There are reforms available which would vastly reduce costs to the government, to the consumer, and to the medical industry, but politicians so far have lacked the guts to cut the Gordian knot. Here are three suggestions that would accomplish the goals of a better system for all while reducing costs:

(1) End the multi-tiered system of paying for services, which at present includes government funded Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration, private funded insurance, and no insurance-no pay patients funded by the general public. Replace all of those with a government funded catastrophic insurance which would pay all annual medical expenses for each person which exceed $2,400 a year ($200 a month). In addition, provide free pre-natal care and free pediatric care for all children under 12, and free preventive medicine for all. Fund these programs with a national sales tax that would be less than five percent. Ending Medicare and Medicaid programs and substituting the foregoing will save hundreds of billions of dollars starting on day one. Using a national sales tax will equitably share costs without burdening any businesses, large or small, or unfairly piling the costs onto wage earners or the super rich. Ending employer provided health insurance will reduce overhead and make all American businesses more competitive with foreign companies whose workers have a national health insurance. Providing government funded catastrophic insurance will allow Americans to switch jobs regardless of pre-existing conditions or availability of health insurance, and it would end the sad state of affairs where too many parents of diseased children are literally begging for donations in penny jars put out in retail stores to pay for life saving operations. Having the system paid for in full by a national sales tax (the percentage will be adjusted as the costs are calculated and re-adjusted over the years) will ensure fairness, including the fairness of having foreign residents, the retired rich, and illegal aliens all helping fund the program.

(2) End all medical malpractice insurance costs by replacing the system with a no-fault system similar to worker's compensation programs that do not require lawsuits or lawyers for recovery. Any person injured by any medical product or medical procedure will be entitled to recover set amounts based on the degree of injury, without regard to fault. This provision will save tens of billions of dollars in overhead for all physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies, both directly in the form of insurance premiums and indirectly in reducing the amount of defensive medicine. And a no-fault system will compensate far more injured patients than the current tort system which requires expensive lawsuits available only to the few who have suffered serious injuries or death.

(3) Require all medical providers to publicly post the following information: all costs for all procedures, services, and products. Currently, the average patient never sees a specific cost for anything until long after the service is provided- and sometimes never in the case of patients with good insurance. Also, require all recoveries under the no-fault system to be publicly posted (on the internet and elsewhere) with names and identifiers of patients removed to protect their privacy. This will inform and alert the public to defective products or bad doctors far more effectively than the occasional malpractice lawsuit, many of which result in confidential settlements. These public disclosure requirements will allow price shopping among patients, promote price competition between doctors and between hospitals, while allowing patients to avoid dangerous doctors, dangerous hospitals, and dangerous drugs. This proposal would be an adjunct to FDA regulations and inspections and state licensing agencies for physicians and hospitals which are already in place and already supposed to protect medical consumers.

So the ideas exist. They are elegant, simple, would cut government costs, patient costs, and costs of the medical industry, all while improving services to all. Now who has the courage to see that they are enacted?

PLAYING FOR KEEPS-TO PENN GAZETTE

2009-07-05T19:08:00.000-07:00

Dear Editor:

The essay "Not Just for Kids" by Mark Hyman makes some excellent points about adults abusing children's organized sports. But any organized activity is subject to abuse, and Little League baseball and Pop Warner football aren't intrinsically evil or inevitably devastating to the children who sign up to play. My experiences in 50 years as a player and as a coach in youth sports have taught me that the key in allowing the participants in organized sports to have positive experiences is in having program administrators who understand what's important and who clearly communicate that to coaches and parents.

I first coached an organized team 45 years ago, when I was a 12 year old Little League player (we won the championship that year, and the baseball signed by my teammates after that game still sits on display in my office), and I was asked to coach 10 year olds in a lower division when the league couldn't find a coach for their team (we won that championship, too, so I had a rare double at an early age). But my peers and I also played pick up baseball or whiffle ball every day during the summer when I didn't have a game scheduled, and the experiences were vastly different. There is simply no comparison between the emotional involvement in a pick up game in a neighbor's backyard and pitching in a ball park for a team in uniform with a championship on the line. The pressures that existed came not from our parents, but from ourselves, and the characters that were forged- or, in some cases, revealed- in the crucible of competition could not have been replicated if my only athletic experiences growing up had been unorganized.

As an adult I've coached youth sports on and off for over 24 years, starting when my son was six years old and the local YMCA needed a coach for his soccer team. That was my one and only year coaching soccer- a sport I barely understood- and later on I coached youth sports in baseball and basketball, two sports with which I was much more familiar, one of which (basketball) I still play. At the beginning of every season, at the first team practice, I tell the kids that we have three goals: to have fun, to improve their skills regardless of what ability they had at the start of the season, and to learn to play together with teammates. The YMCA leagues in which I have coached have made it very clear in the rule sheets that participation trumps winning, and coaches must play every player at least half of the game. At the end of every game, the kids line up and shake hands with every member and coach of the opposing team. Parents and spectators are actively discouraged from injecting themselves into the competition, and verbal abuse is not tolerated. As a coach during and after games I've always made it a point never to criticize a child's performance, but instead to focus on giving praise when they do well and mentally noting the areas they need to practice when they falter. And win or lose, I have also made a point of congratulating officials after the game while refraining from complaining about calls in the heat of competition.

Of course there are abuses in organized youth sports, and every week the local paper has an anonymous complaint or three from parents about favoritism in local baseball leagues (basketball, not so much) where parent-coaches favor their sons or their friends' sons. Other abuses have occurred nationally with the rise of travel teams, expensive sports based summer camps, and over the top college recruiting permeating and affecting the lives of impressionable youths down to middle school (a recent news report disclosed a 13 year old who has already committed to University of Tennessee football, where his older brother plays).

But even while unorganized casual pick up games have declined in every sport except basketball, there are now far more opportunities to participate in organized sports than existed when I was growing up in Western Pennsylvania. Soccer leagues didn't exist anywhere I knew of in the '60's, high school girls basketball was still shackled by the old Iowa rules (6 girls, only 2 of whom could roam full court), girls softball didn't exist, and outside of a few church leagues for high schoolers, organized basketball didn't exist outside of interscholastic competition. I agree that taking competition outside the local level- all star teams, Little League World Series on ESPN, travel teams- is a bad idea for children, and the focus instead should be on participation, acquisition of skills, and fun. And I'll never forget the words of wisdom I imparted to my 11 and 12 year olds during a time out with the game tied and 1 minute to play in a YMCA playoff game a few years ago: "Are you having fun yet?" Then I sent them back on the court to enjoy the moment.

James Finkelstein, College 1973

P. S. I earned a letter at Penn on the Golf Team, which won the Eastern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship (ECAC) at Cooperstown, New York in 1972. We beat Harvard by a stroke.

2009-07-04T19:25:00.000-07:00

The real question is: why do so many intelligent Republicans (yes, I know that's pretty much of an oxymoron) slobber over her?

Rich Lowry after watching the VP debate last year:

Via TNR, National Review's Rich Lowry gives Sarah Palin's debate winks a rave review:

I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, "Hey, I think she just winked at me." And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it.

Rich Lowry today:
Friday, July 03, 2009

Palin Today [Rich Lowry]
I think I have pretty well-established credentials when it comes to being charmed by Sarah Palin, but that statement, as a statement, was simply terrible. Rambling and not at all persuasive as an argument for her decision. More Gibson/Couric than GOP convention speech. She shouldn't have said a thing without getting Matt Scully — or some similarly talented speechwriter — on the case first

The annotated Sarah Palin resignation speech:

2009-07-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

2008 photo from video of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, former running mate to John McCain in the 2008 presidential election, giving Thanksgiving speech as live turkeys are slaughtered behind her, epitomizing her cluelessness on a cosmic scale.

Following are excerpts from the July 3, 2009, resignation speech of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who announced in a rambling 20 minute address to reporters that she is resigning, effective in "a few weeks."

PALIN: "... a member of President Abe Lincoln's cabinet, William Seward, providentially saw in this great land, vast riches, beauty, strategic placement on the globe, and opportunity. He boldly looked "North to the Future". But he endured such ridicule and mocking for his vision for Alaska, remember the adversaries scoffed, calling this "Seward's Folly"."

FACT: Lincoln was assassinated April 14, 1865, and was succeeded by his Vice President, Andrew Johnson.

FACT: Seward's most famous achievement as Secretary of State was his successful acquisition of Alaska from Russia. On March 30, 1867, he completed negotiations for the territory, which involved the purchase of 586,412 square miles (1,518,800 km²) of territory (more than twice the size of Texas) for $7,200,000, or approximately 2 cents per acre (equivalent to US$95 million in 2005). The purchase of this frontier land was alternately mocked by the public as "Seward's Folly," "Seward's Icebox," and Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden." Alaska celebrates the purchase on Seward's Day, the last Monday of March.

PALIN: "Let me go back to a comfortable analogy for me – sports… basketball. I use it because you’re naïve if you don’t see the national full-court press picking away right now: A good point guard drives through a full court press, protecting the ball, keeping her eye on the basket… and she knows exactly when to pass the ball so that the team can WIN. And I’m doing that – keeping our eye on the ball that represents sound priorities – smaller government, energy independence, national security, freedom! And I know when it’s time to pass the ball – for victory.

FACT: A point guard in basketball does not leave the floor after passing the ball to a team mate, but continues playing until the coach removes him or her from the game or the game ends.

PALIN: In the words of General MacArthur said, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

FACT: MacArthur never made the statement and the quotation actually uttered by a Marine Corps general (O. P. Smith), has never been mistakenly attributed to him- until now. During the Korean War, in November of 1950, U.S. forces were surrounded by Chinese troops in the area of the Chosin Reservoir in what is now North Korea. When asked if the Marines were retreating, Major General O.P. Smith, commander of the 1st Marine Division and associated forces in the Chosin area explained that their fighting withdrawal through Chinese lines did not constitute a retreat. His explanation was abbreviated into the famous misquote, "Retreat? Hell, we're attacking in a different direction!"

PALIN: "And one chooses how to react to circumstances. You can choose to engage in things that tear down, or build up. I choose to work very hard on a path for fruitfulness and productivity. I choose NOT to tear down and waste precious time; but to build UP this state and our country, and her industrious, generous, patriotic, free people!

Life is too short to compromise time and resources... it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: "Sit down and shut up", but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. And a problem in our country today is apathy. It would be apathetic to just hunker down and “go with the flow”.

Nah, only dead fish "go with the flow".

"I've never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this - to make a difference... to HELP people. So I choose, for my State and my family, more "freedom" to progress, all the way around... so that Alaska may progress... I will not seek re-election as Governor."

FACT: Governor Palin was not just announcing that she would not seek re-election in 2011 (her term ends in two more years), but quitting her job as governor, with her resignation effective this month.

PALIN: "And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn’t run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks… travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade – as so many politicians do. And then I thought – that’s what’s wrong – many just accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and “milk it”. I’m not putting Alaska through that – I promised efficiencies and effectiveness! ? That’s not how I am wired. I am not wired to operate under the same old “politics as usual.” I promised that four years ago – and I meant it.

It’s not what is best for Alaska."

FACT: There is no requirement that Alaska's governor must stop doing her job, must "milk it" while drawing a paycheck, and must start making travel junkets at State expense rather than performing her official duties.

PALIN: I have given my reasons candidly and truthfully..."

FACT: Here are the reasons, in quotes, she gave for quitting now instead of serving out her term:

"... nothing's more important to me than our beloved Alaska. Serving her people is the greatest honor I could imagine."

"Political operatives descended on Alaska last August, digging for dirt. The ethics law I championed became their weapon of choice. Over the past nine months I've been accused of all sorts of frivolous ethics violations – such as holding a fish in a photograph, wearing a jacket with a logo on it, and answering reporters’ questions.

Every one – all 15 of the ethics complaints have been dismissed. We’ve won! But it hasn't been cheap - the State has wasted THOUSANDS of hours of YOUR time and shelled out some two million of YOUR dollars to respond to “opposition research” – that’s money NOT going to fund teachers or troopers – or safer roads. And this political absurdity, the “politics of personal destruction” … Todd and I are looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime so they’re not going to stop draining public resources – spending other peoples’ money in their game.

It’s pretty insane – my staff and I spend most of our day dealing with THIS instead of progressing our state now. I know I promised no more “politics as usual,” but THIS isn’t what anyone had in mind for ALASKA. "

FACT: Governor Palin was found by an official investigation to have violated State ethical rules when she and her husband pressured the head of Alaska's Department of Public Safety to fire a state trooper who was Governor Palin's former brother-in-law and who had been embroiled in a bitter child custody dispute with the governor's sister.

Palin dismissed Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan on July 11, 2008, citing performance-related issues, such as not being "a team player on budgeting issues." Monegan said that he had resisted persistent pressure from the Governor, her husband, and her staff, including State Attorney General Talis Colberg, to fire Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, state trooper Mike Wooten; Wooten was involved in a child custody battle with Palin’s sister that included an alleged death threat against Palin's father. Monegan stated that he learned an internal investigation had found all but two of the allegations to be unsubstantiated, and Wooten had been disciplined for the others—an illegal moose killing and the tasering of an 11-year-old. He told the Palins that there was nothing he could do because the matter was closed. When contacted by the press for comment, Monegan first acknowledged pressure to fire Wooten but said that he could not be certain that his own firing was connected to that issue. He later asserted that the dispute over Wooten was a major reason for his firing. Palin stated on July 17 that Monegan was not pressured to fire Wooten, nor dismissed for not doing so

On October 10, 2008, the Alaska Legislative Council unanimously voted to release the Branchflower Report, in which investigator Stephen Branchflower found that firing Monegan "was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority," but that Palin abused her power as governor and violated the state's Executive Branch Ethics Act when her office pressured Monegan to fire Wooten . The report stated that "Governor Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired." The report also said that Palin "permitted Todd Palin to use the Governor's office [...] to continue to contact subordinate state employees in an effort to find some way to get Trooper Wooten fired.

PALIN: "My choice is to take a stand and effect change"

"In fact, this decision comes after much consideration, and finally polling the most important people in my life - my children, where the count was unanimous... well, in response to asking: "Want me to make a positive difference and fight for ALL our children's future from OUTSIDE the Governor's office?" It was four "yes's" and one "hell yeah!" The "hell yeah" sealed it - and someday I'll talk about the details of that... I think much of it had to do with the kids seeing their baby brother Trig mocked by some pretty mean-spirited adults recently."

FACT: Many of wounds on the Palin family were self inflicted. The media focus on the Palin family resulted from their injection of family members, including her then pregnant 17 year old daughter Bristol, Levi Johnson, the father of Bristol's baby, and, later on, the baby (Tripp), into the national spotlight during and after the 2008 presidential campaign.

FACT: In 2008 the governor posted a statement at her official website saying, ""The road ahead for this young couple will not be easy, but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. .. When Bristol and Levi first told us the shocking news that she was pregnant, to be honest, we all at first looked at the situation with some fear and a bit of despair. Isn't it just like God to turn those circumstances into such an amazing, joyful blessing when you ask Him to help you through?"

FACT: On January 2, 2009, media reports surfaced that Governor Palin had called numerous national news organizations to complain about coverage of her daughter and the daughter's former boyfriend/fiance:

"Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has gone on the attack to defend her daughter Bristol against charges of being a high school dropout.

CBS reports that Palin has "personally contacted People Magazine, the Associated Press, and the Anchorage Daily News" to complain that they are publishing "erroneous information" about her daughter and Bristol's boyfriend Levi Johnson.

Palin even left a personal phone message with People on New Year's Eve, stating, "You need to know that both Levi and Bristol are working their butts off to parent and going to school and working at the same time. They are certainly not high school dropouts.""

FACT: from an April 05, 2009, news story titled "Palin camp responds to Levi Johnston"

Bristol Palin's ex boyfriend and father of her baby, Tripp, went on the Tyra Banks show this week and spilled secrets, including that he thinks Sarah Palin knew the two were together in the biblical sense. This, obviously, did not go over well with the Palin camp who released the following:

"Bristol did not even know Levi was going on the show. We're disappointed that Levi and his family, in a quest for fame, attention, and fortune, are engaging in flat-out lies, gross exaggeration, and even distortion of their relationship," says the statement from the Palin family rep, Meghan Stapleton.

"Bristol's focus will remain on raising Tripp, completing her education, and advocating abstinence," the statement continues. "It is unfortunate that Levi finds it more appealing to exploit his previous relationship with Bristol than to contribute to the well being of the child."

The statement ends, saying, "Bristol realizes now that she made a mistake in her relationship and is the one taking responsibility for their actions."

FACT: from an interview with Levi Johnson followed by related news stories:

When asked by Rodriguez what the biggest misconception about his family is, Levi replied with,

"Probably that my family's white trash."

Both Bristol Palin and Levi Johnson made national news on the issue of abstinence from sex for teenagers, with Bristol Palin endorsing it and Johnson dismissing it as

On the Palins' 'snobbery' regarding Bristol Palin's child with Levi: "I mean, look what they're doing. They're lying, trying to save theirselves. And they're the one that asked for it. They brought [Tripp] to the campaign. They should have known what was coming. They can't, you know, turn around and try to take it back now."

And what about Sarah Palin's denial that Levi ever lived with the family?

Says the father of Tripp: "They said I didn't live there. I stayed there. I was like, OK, well, whatever you want to call it. I had my stuff there. So, if you want to call it staying there, that's fine, but…"

"He was living there. I didn't see him for two months. He lived there. They can't say, oh, no, he just stayed. That's an absolute lie," Johnston's sister added.

While Bristol Palin has recently paired with young Hollywood’s Hayden Pannettiere to promote abstinence, Johnston calls the “just-say-no” approach to birth control “unrealistic” in the article. And he also has some harsh words for his ex-girlfriend’s family.

“I know that her parents didn’t want us together. I really don’t think they did,” Johnston told the magazine. “So they probably put a little pressure on her.” He even revealed that Todd Palin offered to buy his daughter a new car if she’d dump Johnston--numerous times.

At this point, Johnston says he doesn’t think he’ll ever get back together with his son’s mother, adding that visiting the Palins’ house “makes me pretty damn uncomfortable.”

DUH!

2009-05-29T21:24:00.000-07:00

One of the above was not a conservative and thought for himself, both in the areas of science and politics. The other is a fan of the Rush Limbaugh radio program. Can you tell them apart?

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Finkelstein
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:10 AM
Subject: well, duh!

It's kind of hard to read this with a straight face. I've always told my friend Glenn that the phrase "intelligent Republican" is an oxymoron (Glenn is, in fact, both intelligent and a Republican). But if the shoe fits.... check out THIS

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Here We Go Again... [Jonah Goldberg]

The calipers are out and, lo and behold, conservatives are stupid according to the latest scientific research. Study here, skeptical commentary here.

Conservatism and cognitive ability HERE

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Lazar Stankova,
National Institute of Education (NIE), 1 Nanyang Walk, Singapore

Received 17 July 2008;
revised 7 December 2008;
accepted 8 December 2008.
Available online 3 February 2009.

Abstract

Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States' universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.

Keywords: Conservatism; Intelligence; Multi-level

Wayne S. replied:

That doesn't bother me . I am a registered "Independent". I was a Democrat years ago.
I, a conservative, am not gullible enough to accept this "study" at face value. Good try though , Jim.

Jim's riposte to Wayne S.:

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSERVATIVES AND NON-CONSERVATIVES

There are essential differences between conservatives (the modern American equivalent, not the Barry Goldwater or Dwight Eisenhower examples) and non-conservatives. I won't use the word "liberals" because that word has become a pejorative term and a false comparison used by conservatives. Non conservatives are all of the people who don't label themselves as a conservative. They include- but are not limited to- people who consider themselves libertarians, independents, or Colin Powell Republicans.

Here is where the key difference lies between conservatives and non-conservatives: means and ends. In most cases, conservatives and non-conservatives have the same goals (ends). For instance, in the case of crime, conservatives and the rest of us can have the same goal, which is to reduce crime and reduce illegal drug use. Conservatives have one means- strict enforcement of the law (except for crimes which typically involve people like them, which is why no indictments have issued yet for bankers and financiers who crashed the American economy by engaging in massive fraud))- coupled with harsh punishment (except for people who look like them). If that doesn't work over, say a 40 year period, they will never change the means- only ratchet them up. Conservatives decry "technicalities" that get criminals off- unless the technicality is a Fifth Amendment violation and the criminal is Oliver North, who got his criminal conviction overturned. Criminals rail against the dangers of drug use and against judges who coddle criminals, unless their name is Rush Limbaugh, the drug is Oxycontin, and all charges are dropped for serious felonies because he completed a pretrial diversion program.

A non-conservative would look at the crime problem and see what works. If rehabilitation and job training of prisoners with smaller and less restrictive detention facilities reduces recidivism, then great, we'll try that. If increasing recreational opportunities and job programs in the community reduces overall crime, then put money in that direction. If legalizing drugs works in Switzerland and Portugal and greatly reduces violent drug related crime, then a non-conservative is willing to try it here. If it works, great. If not, then try something else. It's not an ideological issue, because if it doesn't work, then be willing to acknowledge reality (which a conservative won't or can't do) and try something else.

A conservative answer for a good economy is to cut taxes. For a bad economy it is to cut taxes. If terrorists attack, the answer is to cut taxes. In other words, the answer is always to cut taxes- most importantly, taxes which affect only the super rich- such as estate taxes, which at present only hit estates greater than $7 million. Their only means of fixing any economic problem is to cut taxes. At the same time, conservatives want to increase military spending even when the spending could not possibly be related to current or foreseeable national security threats (i.e. F-22 Raptor fighters and Seawolf nuclear attack submarines, both designed to go to war against a country which has not existed for 20 years- the Soviet Union). And yet conservatives claim to want a balanced budget. Their brains are apparently incapable of or unwilling to comprehend the inherent incompatibility of cutting taxes, increasing defense spending, and balancing budgets. They wax nostalgic for a return to the disastrous deficit spending which occurred during President Reagan's time in office, as he tried to do all three.

Or take reforming the health care industry to provide more access. Every so called "conservative" solution involves either unfettered, unregulated competition in the marketplace (except where monopolies are granted to large corporations- i.e. a "certificate of need" requirement that kept one local hospital from delivering babies while the other hospital jacked up fees which were among the highest in the state) or "medical savings accounts" which are available to the poor as well as the rich. Of course, the poor can't take advantage of them, because to actually create a medical savings account, the citizen must have a relatively large amount of discretionary income and have a high enough tax bracket to profit from the attractive tax breaks. A non-conservative looks at other countries which use single payer plans and national health insurance programs that expend pennies compared to our dollars for far better health services than what Americans have. If it works, great. And by "works" I mean lowering total health care costs in the country while affording coverage to more than the current population covered by private health insurance.

These are just a few examples, but it goes right on down the line. Conservatives may or may not be stupider than the rest of us.. But without question, they are more closed minded and intolerant. Their politics is the politics of fear, not of hope. They are united primarily to demonize groups which are perceived as "others:" Arab Muslims, Mexican immigrants, gay people, any non-English speaking people. When is the last time a conservative railed against all of the Canadians and Australians- white, English speaking, Anglo-Saxons- who are taking jobs away from hard working Americans? Never.

Finally, a key difference is that non conservatives don't unquestioningly accept assertions by their leaders. In fact, many non-conservatives prefer to do their thinking for themselves and routinely question and challenge their so called leaders. Witness the firestorm of criticism which has landed on Barack Obama for reneging on campaign promises to close Gitmo and to end the use of military commissions and preventive detention. In comparison, conservatives will accept and blindly repeat talking points handed down to them. In fact, many of them will proudly call themselves "dittoheads" when calling in to their favorite radio show, a term which in any context defines a person incapable or unwilling to think for himself, even when the talking points are blatantly false or incompatible with observable reality.

Now prove me wrong.

Jim Finkelstein

TOUGH CHOICES (OR NOT) AT THE POLLS

2009-05-17T10:24:00.001-07:00

Usually the photos I pick are a wry or pertinent insight into the point of the article. That may also be true this week, but I picked this one mainly because I get a kick out of seeing the words "Sean Hannity" and "douchebag" in the same caption

Next time you go to the polls, ask yourself which political party most closely reflects your views and should get your vote, PARTY 1, or PARTY 2. Here's a quick summary of their positions:

1. CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:

PARTY 1 is for punishment- severe punishment up to and including the death penalty- because there is no reason to coddle criminals or to show mercy to scumbags who didn't show any mercy to their victims. In fact, public executions would be a salutary way of deterring other persons from committing those crimes. Accused criminals should have to prove their innocence, and no petty technical details should get in the way of punishing the guilty. There should not be a privilege against self incrimination, no suspects should be warned that they have a right to remain silent, and evidence illegally seized should not be thrown out of a trial. Hearsay evidence, if it comes from the government, should be allowed in trials. Military commissions should be used to try enemies of the State.

PARTY 2: let the punishment fit the crime, and in some instances, the accused. Be rational, reasonable, and show respect to the accused and to his or her rights under the law. Those rights include Due Process of law, including the rights to counsel, to confront witnesses, to subpoena witnesses, to proof beyond a reasonable doubt, and to trial by jury in all cases- even those involving foreign terrorists. The death penalty is inhumane and can never be administered fairly, so it should be abolished, along with all other cruel and unusual punishments, including anything approaching torture.

2. RIGHT TO CHOOSE:

PARTY 1: the government, not the woman or her doctor, makes decisions concerning a woman's reproductive choices. Abortion is a crime, and the woman who engages in it should be criminally prosecuted.

PARTY 2: a woman's body is hers and she should make decisions concerning her health and whether she wants to bear a child or take a pregnancy to term.

3. PUBLIC INDECENCY:

PARTY 1: the government can and should regulate public morals, including prostitution, pornography, indecent dress by women and men, indecent music lyrics, and other forms of expression which are sexually deviant. Homosexuality should be illegal and criminally prosecuted.

PARTY 2: people have the right to make their own choices as to which adults they have sex with, what they want to watch, what they wear, and what music they listen to, and it's none of the government's business.

4. DRUGS:

PARTY 1: The government should prohibit all private consumption of mind altering drugs, even those drugs such as marijuana which may be prescribed by a physician for chemotherapy or glaucoma patients.

PARTY 2: So long as a person does not injure another human being, what an adult ingests is his or her own business and the government should not be involved.

5. RELIGION IN GOVERNMENT:

PARTY 1: The country was founded on the basis of the majority religion of the country, and that religion should be recognized in official government places and in the morality of all government decision making, including judicial decisions.

PARTY 2: Religious choices- including the choice to have no religion or believe in no god- are the private decisions of individual citizens. The government should be completely religion free and strictly neutral in all its aspects, never favoring one religion in any decision.

6. FOREIGN POLICY:

PARTY 1. War is a necessary component of foreign policy. Maintaining a nuclear arsenal is an essential element of that policy, and those who want to dismantle nukes or who want to renounce the use of nuclear weapons should shut up- they are unpatriotic. During war collateral damage of persons who are a different religion and a different culture is not as significant as saving the lives of our citizens. Sometimes nasty actions on foreign soil have to be carried out to preserve our homeland security and our sacred way of life.

PARTY 2: War is a choice of the last resort, and should never be engaged in casually. All human beings are equally significant, and there is no such thing as "collateral damage," a euphemism for killing innocent civilians, which should be avoided at all costs. We should reduce our nuclear arsenal and etch in stone a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons.

7. PURITY OF THE PARTY:

PARTY 1: There is no room for dissent in the party. Either you are completely with the program, or you are out and should expect no sympathy or support from leaders of the party.

PARTY 2: There is plenty of room for dissenting opinions and no one will ever be drummed out for not being ideologically pure.

*****

So, have you made your decision yet? Do you plan on voting for PARTY 1 in the next election because PARTY 1 most closely reflects your views, and their candidates are most like you? Congratulations! You have just chosen the party platform of the Taliban-- and also of the ruling Iranian Religious Party. Oh, you thought that you were voting Republican? That's OK, that's their platform, too. Don't believe it? Just go back and compare the public positions of the Taliban and the Iranian Government with those of the Republican Party on the above 7 issues. If you can find any significant differences between what I wrote and their positions, let me know and I'll buy you lunch if you can back it up. But don't count on it, and if you are a diehard Dick Cheney/Rush Limbaugh Republican, please don't let your head explode from the cognitive dissonance.

This Week's Albany Journal POINT-COUNTERPOINT: Should we prosecute war criminals from the Bush Administration?

2009-04-27T20:30:00.001-07:00

Hatred. Obsessive hatred. The issue of torture of terrorists is based on the liberal left obsessive hatred of George W. Bush, apparently is a genetic defect they cannot control.

MARVIN W. MIXON'S VIEW:

Making an issue of a few incidences of torture that occurred during the Bush administration is their attempt to harass and degrade the success of Bush in protecting our country from the terroristic attacks that began as far back as 1973.

Understand that I do not in any way defend abuse; but, on the other hand, I have no problem with torture so long as it is not abusive. Examples of putting underwear on a prisoner's head, striping him of his clothing, depriving him of sleep or putting an insect near him as being abusive torture are ridiculous. Psychological and physical torture (short of permanent damage or injury) are proven successful methods for getting intelligence.

TRUTH BE KNOWN, leftist do not give a rat's behind about people being tortured or killed. Anyone hear any liberal outcry over South Vietnamese tortured and killed by communists, or the one to three million Cambodians, Laotians and South Vietnamese killed in the 1970's after we were pulled out of Vietnam? Or over the Kurds killed by Saddam Hussein? Or over even all the Americans kidnaped and killed by terrorists over the past 35 years? Has there been a single article written or protest sponsored by a liberal over all the beheadings, some of which were broadcasted over internet?

A typical liberal argument is that our treatment of captured terrorists makes them hate us more. Well, kiss my grits!! How much more hatred can you stand? They are already sworn to kill any heathen, which includes all American men, women and children. I'd say that is pretty complete.

Weakness invites contempt. And to treat the sworn-to-kill-us terrorists as common criminals is definitely a sign of weakness in their perspective. If they are treated to three meals a day, provided with television, nice clean beds and a long American criminal proceeding in air conditioned courtrooms, rather than as the prisoners of war they really are, they will be flocking to the U.S. because that is better treatment than they get in their own semi-civilized world.

And how many attacks in our own country, how may tens of thousands of dead Americans, will it take for the liberals to change their weak minds about the true nature of terrorists?

For 30 years, our embassies were being bombed, Americans were being kidnaped, tortured and killed around the world. Remember the World Trade Center was bombed by terrorists the first time nine years before September 11, 2001. The Clinton administration chose to treat that as criminal acts. Even when the USS Cole - a warship of the U.S. Navy, for goodness sake! - was attacked, Clinton's reaction was simply to send a few FBI agents! After all, the perpetrators only mere criminals.
Then came 9/11 in 2001, and we had a new President that recognized war when he saw it. We began fighting back against the world-wide terrorism that had been allowed to fester since the days of Carter (our first president to kow-tow to dictators). And we began to fight fire with fire.

And don't give me the sorry, lame complaint of "racism"!

There may be, unfortunately, a few isolated incidences of abuse of prisoners; but have there been any incidences of prisoners under our care being beheaded? Any cases of dead, naked bodies of terrorists hung on bridges for display? Any cases of us dragging naked prisoners down the street for public viewing? Any cases of us using women and children to kill and main innocent citizens?

On the other hand, has the Brooklyn Bridge been blown up yet? Has the Holland Tunnel in New York been destroyed? Any more U.S. embassies bombed?

The terrorists of the world have declared to destroy Western (i. e., non-Islamic) Civilization and America and Americans in particular. Of course, the Obama administration has declared there are no terrorists and the war against terrorism is over. (The "we ain't got no ganzes" approach.) I am sure that is going to make them love us all the more.

You can call a jackass whatever you wish, but it is still a jackass and will have to be handled like a jackass. To paraphrase the late Lester Maddox, if you want an easier, cleaner war against terrorism, we will have to find a better class of terrorists.

JIM'S VIEWPOINT

WAR CRIMES: WHY WE SHOULD PROSECUTE THE CRIMINALS

1. IT WASN'T JUST TORTURE: The crimes of the Bush Administration included kidnapping, rape, and murder. There were over 100 deaths of detainees, at least 34 homicides:

"Detainee was found unresponsive restrained in his cell. Death was due to blunt force injuries to lower extremities ... . Contusions and abrasions on forehead, nose, head, behind ear, neck, abdomen, buttock, elbow, thigh, knee, foot, toe, hemorrhage on rib area and leg."

Department of Defense Report of 12/10/2002 murder at Bagram, Afghanistan.

"Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks.... No evidence of defense injuries ... . Manner of death is homicide...."

DOD 003329 Report of homicide of Iraqi in US custody at Whitehorse Detention Facility, Iraq, 6/6/2003.

"... I was handcuffed, blindfolded and severely beaten.... I saw men dressed in black, wearing black ski masks.... . I was put in a diaper, a belt with chains to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. I was thrown into a plane, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the floor.... [and flown] to Afghanistan.

... , I was dragged to the interrogation room, where a feeding tube was forced through my nose into my stomach. I became extremely ill, suffering the worst pain of my life....
I was ... warned that I was never to mention what had happened because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret...."

Statement of man kidnapped and held for five months.

2. ALL CRIMES ARE IN THE PAST: It's suggested that we "look forward" and not hold torturers accountable. No one in their right mind argues that a criminal who committed murder or rape should be set free because we shouldn't look backward. In criminal law, backward is the only direction we look. We must prosecute everybody from President Bush- who authorized crimes- to the interrogators who tortured and killed detainees, so that future order givers and takers will know that they will be held to account.

3. THERE IS NO "GOOD FAITH DEFENSE" TO MURDER, KIDNAPPING, RAPE AND TORTURE: President Obama is wrong when he states that CIA agents should not be held to account if they were relying in "good faith" on memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Nazi war criminals got nowhere at the Nuremberg trials with the "just following orders" defense. Persons who commit horrific crimes should not be let off the hook because their superiors are also criminals. Our country has always required a higher standard-- we prosecuted soldiers who committed rape and murder in Iraq. When CIA agents abused detainees, FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered his agents to leave the room and not to participate in the crimes.

4. IT'S NOT HOW EFFECTIVE TORTURE IS; IT'S ABOUT WHO WE ARE: Intelligence professionals say that effective interrogation techniques are lawful and completely different from the criminal acts committed under the Bush regime. They also contend that torture doesn't produce accurate information- the victims will say anything to get the torture to stop. Dick Cheney contends that torture was effective in providing valuable intelligence. If he is right- if the ends justify the means- then interrogators could torture, maim and kill the infant children of detainees in their presence until they talk. But that's not who we are. In 1791 "cruel and unusual punishments" were prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. After World War II, America tried Nazis for crimes against humanity and we executed Japanese war criminals who used waterboarding. Our nation has adopted Geneva Conventions prohibiting abuse of prisoners. Our laws prohibit rape, kidnaping, torture, and murder. In 1995 we didn't torture Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols to find out if others were involved after they blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, killing 168 men, women and children They were afforded fair trials with all of the rights of American Due Process..

5. TORTURE STRENGTHENS OUR ENEMIES: Abusing detainees has strengthened our enemies by giving them valuable recruiting tools By putting torturers and murderers on trial, we can show the world that we are a nation under the rule of law- that the phrase "with liberty and justice for all" is more than just words. Al Qaida's worst nightmare isn't a predator drone- it's an America which treats Muslim prisoners with dignity and affords them due process of law- the same rights given to white Christian Americans like Timothy McVeigh.

TORTURE: I'M FOR PROSECUTING THE CRIMINALS

2009-04-22T22:01:00.000-07:00

Will we ever see them in prison jumpsuits?

Here are five reasons why we should criminally prosecute everybody involved in the crimes of the Bush Administration:

1. IT WASN'T JUST ABOUT TORTURE. Their crimes included kidnapping, rape, and murder. Here's a Department of Defense report on one of several murders of detainees in U.S. custody:

"Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral buttocks. Contusions, back of legs and knees; abrasions on knees, left fingers and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations and superficial cuts, right 4th and 5th fingers. Also, blunt force injuries, predominantly recent contusions (bruises) on the torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left wrist are consistent with use of restraints. No evidence of defense injuries or natural disease. Manner of death is homicide. DOD 003329 refers to this case as "strangulation, found outside isolation unit."

Report of homicide of Iraqi in United States custody at Whitehorse Detention Facility, Al Nasiriyah, Iraq, June 6, 2003.

Here is the report of an innocent victim kidnapped by U.S. Agents and later set free without an apology:

"On Dec. 31, 2003, I took a bus from Germany to Macedonia. When we arrived, my nightmare began. Macedonian agents confiscated my passport and detained me for 23 days. I was not allowed to contact anyone, including my wife.

At the end of that time, I was forced to record a video saying I had been treated well. Then I was handcuffed, blindfolded and taken to a building where I was severely beaten. My clothes were sliced from my body with a knife or scissors, and my underwear was forcibly removed. I was thrown to the floor, my hands pulled behind me, a boot placed on my back. I was humiliated.

Eventually my blindfold was removed, and I saw men dressed in black, wearing black ski masks. I did not know their nationality. I was put in a diaper, a belt with chains to my wrists and ankles, earmuffs, eye pads, a blindfold and a hood. I was thrown into a plane, and my legs and arms were spread-eagled and secured to the floor. I felt two injections and became nearly unconscious. I felt the plane take off, land and take off. I learned later that I had been taken to Afghanistan.

After 37 days without food, I was dragged to the interrogation room, where a feeding tube was forced through my nose into my stomach. I became extremely ill, suffering the worst pain of my life.

After three months, I was taken to meet an American who said he had traveled from Washington, D.C., and who promised I would soon be released. I was also visited by a German-speaking man who explained that I would be allowed to return home but warned that I was never to mention what had happened because the Americans were determined to keep the affair a secret.

On May 28, 2004, almost five months after I was first kidnapped, I was blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to an airplane seat. I was told we would land in a country other than Germany, because the Americans did not want to leave traces of their involvement, but that I would eventually get to Germany."

2. DETERRENCE OF FUTURE CRIMES IS IN OUR NATIONAL INTEREST: We have to prosecute both the highest- including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld- and the lowest, including every American agent or contractor who committed the acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, and torture. That will accomplish two goals in our national interest: (1) deter future wrongdoers, both those giving the orders, and those following them; and (2) it will show the world and the American people that we are a nation of laws, not men, and that the phrase "with liberty and justice for all" is more than just words.

3. THERE IS NO "GOOD FAITH DEFENSE" TO MURDER, KIDNAPPING, RAPE AND TORTURE: There is no such defense as "relying in good faith on Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos" that advised American agents that their conduct was authorized under law. American law enforcement agents and uniformed military are all trained in understanding what orders are legal and which are not, including orders which would violate American criminal law or the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise, we would not have criminally prosecuted the individual Marines who murdered helpless civilians to cover up their rape of an Iraqi girl, even though a superior ordered the killings. During some of the worst excesses by CIA agents at detention facilities, FBI Director Robert Mueller ordered his agents to leave the room and not to participate in what he knew was unlawful conduct. Numerous persons, even in the Bush Administration, such as Philip Zelikow, who was Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice's representative on the National Security Council, officially opposed the torture regime and other crimes of the Bush Administration. After the OLC torture memos were declassified, Mr. Zelikow came forward and informed the American people of his opposition, and he further stated that the Bush Administration had systematically destroyed every copy of his memo to avoid leaving behind evidence that they had been warned about the criminality of their conduct.

4. IT ISN'T ABOUT HOW BAD THE ENEMY IS, OR HOW EFFECTIVE TORTURE IS, IT'S ABOUT WHO WE ARE: Numerous arguments have been made, most prominently by former Vice President Dick Cheney, that the torture was effective in providing valuable intelligence against really bad people- only a few "bad actors," as they put it. Mr. Cheney misses the point: Of course it may be possible to extract information from a suspect by violating the law and by perpetrating horrors on human beings. It would probably be even more effective to torture a family member of the detainee- such as his two year old daughter- in the detainee's presence. If Mr. Cheney's argument is that success is the only measure of the acts committed under his direction, then he should be in favor of torturing innocent family members of suspects. However, the crucial policy decision- that the ends do not justify the means- was made 218 years ago, when "cruel and unusual punishments" were prohibited by the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, and again after World War II, when America participated in the Nuremberg trials of Nazis for their crimes against humanity, and again by the President and Senate in signing and ratifying the Geneva Conventions against human rights violations of prisoners, and by Congress in numerous laws criminalizing unlawful imprisonment, rape, kidnapping, torture, and murder. We didn't torture Timothy McVeigh or Terry Nichols after they committed the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history in 1995 by blowing up the Oklahoma City Federal Building, killing innocent women and children among their victims. There were others out there with like minded views who may have been plotting similar attacks- but where were Cheney, Bybee, Rumsfeld and Addington? Not calling for the feds to torture the suspects, who were afforded every aspect of American due process before their trials and afterward.

5. TORTURE STRENGTHENS OUR ENEMIES My least favorite argument is that torture doesn't work- because then the bad guys would only have to try to prove that it did work to justify their conduct. However, virtually every intelligence professional trained in interrogation techniques, including one Army interrogator assigned to interrogations in Iraq in 2003, has said that the purposes of the torture techniques authorized by President Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, were borrowed from the Korean War experiences of Americans held by Communist Chinese, when those technique were used to coerce false confessions for propaganda purposes. Professionals say that effective interrogation techniques designed to elicit useful intelligence are completely different- and lawful- from the criminal acts committed by the Bush Administration. Worse yet, the acts of the Bush Administration have strengthened Al Qaida's hand by giving them a valuable recruiting tool and reinforcing their views of America as an evil, Satanic country against whom they are justified in waging a holy war. If Al Qaida had given a playbook to the Bush Administration and asked Bush, Cheney, et al. to follow it, it would look exactly like how they have acted since the 9-11 attacks. Short of literally handing a nuclear weapon to Al Qaida- and we may yet accomplish that if a nuclear armed Pakistan is radicalized to the point that they give Al Qaida a nuke- Bush, Cheney and the other criminals could not have done a better recruiting and arming job for Al Qaida during the last 8 years.

Hayden and Mukasey Pollute the Wall Street Journal-JIM RESPONDS

2009-04-18T20:59:00.000-07:00

The Bush legacy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993446103128041.html

Deconstructing and responding (in italicized boldface) to Hayden and Mukasey's absurd arguments in favor of torture: Bloviators!

Too bad the Journal would never print a response from anyone (and there are a lot out there, including Glenn Greenwald, Jonathan Turley, and John Dean- who certainly knows a good bit about official lawbreakers who deserve to be in prison) who actually understands history, logic, and the law, to this guest editorial which was full of straw men arguments and lacking in any historical or legal perspective or understanding. Note: the phrase "Nuremberg trials" didn't get mentioned even once! Pretty cool for two guys who should, in a perfect world, be serving lengthy prison sentences.

Jim Finkelstein
Albany, Georgia

By MICHAEL HAYDEN and MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Jim Responds: Spoken by persons who are anti-democratic (with a small "d"). In their eyes, the People (as in "We the People") can't be trusted. Only those blessed with security clearances and an unblemished record of patriotism (my country, right or wrong) can be trusted with the information which has long since been made freely available to anyone with a computer or a New York Times subscription.

Proponents of the release have argued that the techniques have been abandoned and thus there is no point in keeping them secret any longer; that they were in any event ineffective; that their disclosure was somehow legally compelled; and that they cost us more in the coin of world opinion than they were worth. None of these claims survives scrutiny.

In fact, all of those claims survive scrutiny except that part that their disclosure was "legally compelled." Except that if the President orders them disclosed, then I guess that makes the disclosure legally compelled. And there is no question that the use of torture and the illegal detentions at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere have cost us dearly- in world public opinion, and as a recruiting tool for Islamic jihadists.

Soon after he was sworn in, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that suspended use of these techniques and confined not only the military but all U.S. agencies -- including the CIA -- to the interrogation limits set in the Army Field Manual. This suspension was accompanied by a commitment to further study the interrogation program, and government personnel were cautioned that they could no longer rely on earlier opinions of the OLC.

Although evidence shows that the Army Field Manual, which is available online, is already used by al Qaeda for training purposes, it was certainly the president's right to suspend use of any technique. However, public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus of the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques as they have the ones in the Army Field Manual.

Jim calls "bullshit." Think for a moment about the logic of this assertion: if we have any- and I mean any limits on what we will do to captives, then somehow we have lost. So using their logic, our government should be free to capture family members- even infants- and torture and kill them in the presence of detainees to get them to talk. All acts of torture and violations of human rights- even cutting off limbs and such, or blinding them, or bringing a cohort into the room and shooting him in the head to let the detainee know we mean business- all are permissible. Because otherwise, the bad guys will now be aware of "the absolute limit" of what we can do to extract information from them.

In other words: throw out the Constitution (the Eighth Amendment prohibits "Cruel and Unusual Punishments"), throw out U. S. law, which prohibits torture, throw out our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Bullshit.

Moreover, disclosure of the details of the program pre-empts the study of the president's task force and assures that the suspension imposed by the president's executive order is effectively permanent. There would be little point in the president authorizing measures whose nature and precise limits have already been disclosed in detail to those whose resolve we hope to overcome.

And Mukasey was a lawyer and a Federal Judge!! Amazing. Apparently it never occurred to him that police are restricted by law from beating the hell out of suspects, waterboarding them, stringing them up by their thumbs, and so forth, to extract confessions or important information about future crimes of their colleagues. And every arrested criminal is read his Miranda rights before being interrogated! That must really chap Mukasey. Good thing he never became the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of the United States, a/k/a "Attorney General." Oops!

This conflicts with the sworn promise of the current director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, who testified in aid of securing Senate confirmation that if he thought he needed additional authority to conduct interrogation to get necessary information, he would seek it from the president. By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack.

Do these turkeys not understand the chain of command? Panetta is Obama's subordinate- not vice versa. It doesn't matter what Panetta "promised" to do if he thought he needed "additional authority" (i.e. authorization to break the law and torture human beings)- he is subject to the commands of his boss, the President. So how does Obama doing this somehow "conflict with the sworn promise" of Panetta? Sounds like they are implying Panetta committed perjury. Which is absurd- he has to follow orders.

Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption.

Au contraire. The "outrage" is not "faux." It's real. Outrage that our government, our Constitution, our moral standing in the world, were hijacked by turkeys like these two jerkwads.

It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies. Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg and Daniel Pearl, and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the U.S. will no longer interrupt the sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens.

Jim calls "bullshit" again. Since when do we make our laws based on the lowest common denominator of the rest of the world? Of course there are bad guys out there. So where is it written that we are losers because we know better than to torture or kill our captives? And talk about a "straw man" argument? When did anyone ever argue that by adhering to our own laws we were going to "shame" the bad guys into giving up violence? Again, Mukasey is supposedly a lawyer and a former judge!! How the hell did he graduate law school and pass the bar with that kind of reasoning? So if any American citizen is arrested in the United States who may have information- such as the location of a kidnapped person- then Mukasey says throw the law out the window. Do whatever, because torturing, beating, and maiming "could save the lives" of an American!!

Which brings us to the next of the justifications for disclosing and thus abandoning these measures: that they don't work anyway, and that those who are subjected to them will simply make up information in order to end their ordeal. This ignorant view of how interrogations are conducted is belied by both experience and common sense. If coercive interrogation had been administered to obtain confessions, one might understand the argument. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who organized the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, among others, and who has boasted of having beheaded Daniel Pearl, could eventually have felt pressed to provide a false confession. But confessions aren't the point. Intelligence is. Interrogation is conducted by using such obvious approaches as asking questions whose correct answers are already known and only when truthful information is provided proceeding to what may not be known. Moreover, intelligence can be verified, correlated and used to get information from other detainees, and has been; none of this information is used in isolation.

Wow. Sounds like one of these guys actually has read a spy novel. So that's how interrogations are done, huh? By asking questions to which one already knows the answers!

And since when is the efficacy of torture a proper argument? People who are civilized, who believe in the Constitution, in the rule of law, already know that a perfect crime fighting model would be to arrest every suspicious person on sight, jail them indefinitely without a hearing or access to a lawyer, and torture them mercilessly until they give up everything they know. By the way- that's not a theoretical model. It was already accomplished at least twice in the 20th century, once under Stalin in the Soviet Union, and again under Hitler in Germany. Boy, these turkeys aspire to put the United States in some hallowed company!

The terrorist Abu Zubaydah (sometimes derided as a low-level operative of questionable reliability, but who was in fact close to KSM and other senior al Qaeda leaders) disclosed some information voluntarily. But he was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11, who in turn disclosed information which -- when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydah -- helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists, and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the U.S. Details of these successes, and the methods used to obtain them, were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning in September 2006. Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense.

Hmmm. So Mukasey and Hayden are now letting their real poker hands show- their aces in the hole are the facts that a lot of Congressmen and Senators already knew the dirty secrets years ago. And again, they are arguing that if something works- no matter how illegal or morally reprehensible, that's all that matters. Which brings me back to: kidnap their families- torture their wives, their daughters, and their infant children before their eyes. Hey, if it works, then what unpatriotic American could possibly complain?

The techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in these opinions. As already disclosed by Director Hayden, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations.

So if Timothy McVeigh had only killed one or two children in the day care center of Oklahoma City, that would have been OK? Because morality is only a matter of numbers? And again, the "ends justifies the means" is the continuing theme of these jerks and their argument. So how about locking up every American who ever thought of committing a crime- forever! That would be the perfect crime fighting model, right? And as to foreign policy, let's use those nukes! We could wipe out Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and any other country which is harboring any of them there terrorists. Cause the ends justify the means, and boy, wouldn't that really show them we mean business? Those that haven't been turned into a glowing cinder, that is.

Nor was there any legal reason compelling such disclosure. To be sure, the American Civil Liberties Union has sued under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain copies of these and other memoranda, but the government until now has successfully resisted such lawsuits.

Boy, aren't you proud of that accomplishment. You "successfully resisted" lawsuits which would have allowed the American people to find out how low you have sunk and what crimes were committed in their names.

Even when the government disclosed that three members of al Qaeda had been subjected to waterboarding but that the technique was no longer part of the CIA interrogation program, the court sustained the government's argument that the precise details of how it was done, including limits and safeguards, could remain classified against the possibility that some future president may authorize its use. Therefore, notwithstanding the suggestion that disclosure was somehow legally compelled, there was no legal impediment to the Justice Department making the same argument even with respect to any techniques that remained in the CIA program until last January.

You really, really, don't trust the people do you? The rest of us who aren't in the know should just go shopping, goto church, praise Jesus on Sundays, while you superspooks do all the dirty work in our names. How kind of you to take on our sins like that- and to go the extra mile and keep us from being discomfited by finding out how you have dragged our names in the mud.

There is something of the self-fulfilling prophecy in the claim that our interrogation of some unlawful combatants beyond the limits set in the Army Field Manual has disgraced us before the world.

No, it wasn't "self fulfilling." You guys fulfilled it. Don't try to duck your responsibility now, boys. Stand up and be proud about the dishonor you have brought to your country (and by Mukasey: to the legal profession, the Justice Department, and the judiciary.)

Such a claim often conflates interrogation with the sadism engaged in by some soldiers at Abu Ghraib, an incident that had nothing whatever to do with intelligence gathering.

Right. And murdering suspects in those prisons after they were interrogated by the CIA, or "rendering them" to disgusting foreign countries that had fewer qualms about torturing them- that had everything to do with intelligence gathering, right?

The limits of the Army Field Manual are entirely appropriate for young soldiers, for the conditions in which they operate, for the detainees they routinely question, and for the kinds of tactically relevant information they pursue. Those limits are not appropriate, however, for more experienced people in controlled circumstances with high-value detainees. Indeed, the Army Field Manual was created with awareness that there was an alternative protocol for high-value detainees.

Wow. So the Army field manual only applies to corporals or lower. If you're a Major, a Colonel, or a General- or any case officer of the CIA fresh from a stint at Yale, then the Federalist Society or American Enterprise Institute, bombs away! Anything goes! Get out those nail pullers and thumbscrews and electric wires connected to genitalia! What wowsers.

In addition, there were those who believed that the U.S. deserved what it got on Sept. 11, 2001. Such people, and many who purport to speak for world opinion, were resourceful both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks in crafting reasons to resent America's role as a superpower. Recall also that the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, the attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the punctiliously correct trials of defendants in connection with those incidents, and the bombing of the USS Cole took place long before the advent of CIA interrogations, the invasion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or the many other purported grievances asserted over the past eight years.

Your point, gentlemen? That we somehow managed not to throw away the rule of law, even after Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal Building? And how did you guys miss including that one? Oh yeah, a white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian, American, ex GI committed that atrocity- kind of makes it difficult when you are trying to demonize people before you torture and kill them, so just ignore white American Christians like McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Or are you guys suffering from "Rudy Guliani-itis" by saying "9-11" and "terrorist" as much as you can, since your arguments don't hold a thimble of water?

The effect of this disclosure on the morale and effectiveness of many in the intelligence community is not hard to predict. Those charged with the responsibility of gathering potentially lifesaving information from unwilling captives are now told essentially that any legal opinion they get as to the lawfulness of their activity is only as durable as political fashion permits.

Right. And Hitler's minions were "just following orders." Or did you guys forget that illegal orders (and Hitler had his lawyers, too, don't forget) wasn't a defense at Nuremberg?

Even with a seemingly binding opinion in hand, which future CIA operations personnel would take the risk? There would be no wink, no nod, no handshake that would convince them that legal guidance is durable. Any president who wants to apply such techniques without such a binding and durable legal opinion had better be prepared to apply them himself.

Works for me. Let them get their hands dirty. And let them be the ones to go to prison for life.

Beyond that, anyone in government who seeks an opinion from the OLC as to the propriety of any action, or who authors an opinion for the OLC, is on notice henceforth that such a request for advice, and the advice itself, is now more likely than before to be subject after the fact to public and partisan criticism. It is hard to see how that will promote candor either from those who should be encouraged to ask for advice before they act, or from those who must give it.

Did you guys not get the memo? The OLC was just as corrupt as the Justice Department under Alberto Gonzalez and Michael Mukasey. Oh yeah- one of you is Michael Mukasey. Sucks to be you, doesn't it?

In his book "The Terror Presidency," Jack Goldsmith describes the phenomenon we are now experiencing, and its inevitable effect, referring to what he calls "cycles of timidity and aggression" that have weakened intelligence gathering in the past. Politicians pressure the intelligence community to push to the legal limit, and then cast accusations when aggressiveness goes out of style, thereby encouraging risk aversion, and then, as occurred in the wake of 9/11, criticizing the intelligence community for feckless timidity. He calls these cycles "a terrible problem for our national security." Indeed they are, and the precipitous release of these OLC opinions simply makes the problem worse.

The rest of us sane people call episodes like Nixon and Watergate and Bush and his whole eight years "criminals breaking the law" and the period following "a restoration of the rule of law" after they are gone. Timidity indeed! So that's what the former Attorney General of the United States, a former federal judge, thinks of people who respect the Constitution and the laws and treaties of the United States.

Gen. Hayden was director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006 to 2009. Mr. Mukasey was attorney general of the United States from 2007 to 2009.

Sad, isn't it? We couldn't do better than those two chuckleheads?

WANT TO END DRUG RELATED CRIMES? THEN DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

2009-03-29T07:32:00.001-07:00

(Almost three years ago, I ran this photo with the following news story. Decriminalization of drugs is once again in the news, as President Obama gave an unqualified "no" to the town hall questioner who asked if he would consider decriminalizing marijuana- the #1 question on the online poll of questions to ask the President.)

“There’s nothing good about drug use. We know it. It destroys individuals. It destroys families. Drug use destroys societies. Drug use, some might say, is destroying this country. And we have laws against selling drugs, pushing drugs, using drugs, importing drugs. And the laws are good because we know what happens to people in societies and neighborhoods which become consumed by them. And so if people are violating the law by doing drugs, they ought to be accused and they ought to be convicted and they ought to be sent up. What this says to me is that too many whites are getting away with drug use. Too many whites are getting away with drug sales. Too many whites are getting away with trafficking in this stuff. The answer to this disparity is not to start letting people out of jail because we’re not putting others in jail who are breaking the law. The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.”

- Rush Limbaugh, speaking on his syndicated radio talk show, Oct. 5, 1995.

“MIAMI, -- Talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh surrendered to authorities Friday on a charge of committing fraud to obtain prescription drugs, concluding an investigation that for more than two years has hovered over the law-and-order conservative.

The charge will be dropped in 18 months, said his attorney, Roy Black, provided that Limbaugh continues treatment for drug addiction, as he has for 2 ½ years. According to an agreement with the Palm Beach County state's attorney's office, Limbaugh also must pay $30,000 to defray the costs of the investigation, as well as $30 a month for his supervision.”

Washington Post, April 28, 2006.

Annual Causes of Death in the United States:

Tobacco 435,000
Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity 365,000
Alcohol 85,000
Microbial Agents 75,000
Toxic Agents 55,000
Motor Vehicle Crashes 26,347
Adverse Reactions to Prescription Drugs 32,000
Suicide 30,622
Incidents Involving Firearms 29,000
Homicide 20,308
Sexual Behaviors 20,000
All Illicit Drug Use, Direct and Indirect 17,000
Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs Such As Aspirin 7,600

Marijuana 0

*******

If you want to provoke a conversation at a gathering, suggest that the best way to deal with the drug problem in America is to legalize drugs-- and give away the most addictive drugs for free. You’ll get a stunned gasp, an awkward silence, then a huge negative visceral reaction as if you have just suggested putting a drug dealer in every third grader’s classroom.

The sad truth is that we already have drug dealers in school classrooms. And on street corners. And in suburban homes. And in office buildings. And so forth.

Why? Because government has created the incentive- a huge incentive in most cases- to capitalist entrepreneurs willing to risk a few decades in the slammer for the privilege of selling a product for which the government has granted them a near monopoly status.

We have addicts who are prostituting themselves to get the money to buy crack or heroin. Addicts who will steal from their parents or other relatives, pawn the items, and use the few bucks to buy crack. Addicts who will burglarize homes or stores, shoplift, or mug pedestrians to get the money for drugs.

We have drug wars between gangs in inner cities. We have cartels and huge drug dealing criminal enterprises in the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, in the plateaus of South America. Resurging Taliban in Afghanistan, previously wholly opposed to the poppy trade which put heroin in the veins of American addicts, are now financing their terrorist operations from the drug trade in that war torn country.

We have hundreds of thousand of American citizens locked up in our prisons, costing them their freedom and sometimes their lives, whose only crime is to fall prey to the inner demons of the chemical imbalances of their brains. We have AIDS and hepatitis being spread by shared needles of heroin users.

My solution? One that will destroy the drug cartels, end official corruption, free addicts from jail, free the rest of us from being victims of crimes ranging from check forgery to convenience store robbery, and save countless lives and tens of billions of tax dollars.

Legalize drugs. All of them. And give the addictive drugs away for free.

Yes, give away addictive drugs for free. But not in the way you might think at first blush.

Build a structure near the local hospital. The building will have a “Door A” and a “Door B.” Door A is the door an addict knocks on to get any addictive drug he or she desires. As much of it as he or she desires. But the drug has to be administered there (with clean needles and safe product) and used there, and the addict can’t leave while high. While high, he or she will have a room to sit or lie in, with movies or videos to watch. Or Music. Brownies. Whatever. And they can have all the dope they want- can overdose to death if they want. Because we can’t save addicts. Only they can try to save themselves.

Which is where Door B comes in. Door B is treatment. Rehab. Support groups. Al Anon and Narcotics Anonymous. The latest in techniques and technology to wean addicts away from addictive drugs like Crack and Heroin.

The money currently being wasted on locking up addicts, on police, on border security, on international military efforts in a futile effort to roll the rock back up the mountain- all of that will be redirected to buying up the poppies, the coca leaves, the prime cash crops in countries from Afghanistan) to Peru.

The result will be the end of the spread of diseases from illegal drug use and from prostitutes selling themselves to get drugs. The end of victimless crimes crowding our prisons and bankrupting our taxpayers. The end of drive by shootings by gangs to establish who has the right to wheel and deal drugs on city blocks. The end of hypocrisy as nicotine and alcohol abusing politicians bark about cracking down on drug related crime by ratcheting up punishments.

It’s a trip all right- a trip towards sanity.

And the non-addictive drugs? Ecstasy? Marijuana? We decriminalize them, tax them, sell them.

Oh yes. You’ve got to be 18 to be a drug user- same as with cigarettes. And I won’t be complaining if the age limit for all such toxic substances is raised to 21.

My proposal isn’t far fetched. It will work. And it will happen- guaranteed. Not this year, next year, or ten years from now. But 20, 50, 100, 500 years? At some point, sanity will prevail. No doubt about it. How much are we willing to pay until then?

*********

(Following are two e-mails I received- names removed to protect their privacy- after a shorter version of the above ran in my hometown newspaper, Johnstown, Pa.'s Tribune-Democrat)

Dear Attorney Finkelstein,

Your op-ed piece in today's Tribune-Democrat is extremely well written and will hopefully prove enlightening to many readers. I share your views on legalizing drugs.

I would add one additional point to your argument. The Department of Defense's United States Southern Command (www.southcom.mil), which is based in Miami, is a regional combatant command engaged in counter-drug operations on a 24/7 basis. Our country has thousands of military men and women tied up in a losing battle, the so-called "War on Drugs." This war has yet to yield positive results, despite having squandered millions of precious man-hours and billions upon billions of dollars on the problem.

Keep up the fight!

Best Regards,

****
Lieutenant Colonel (Ret), U.S. Army
Johnstown, PA

Dear Mr. Finkelstein,

I read the article that you wrote, that was published in The Tribune-Democrat on April 2, and I wanted to take a moment to applaud you for making such a bold suggestion. For years, it has been my contention that the government could not only save a great deal of money, but possibly make a great deal of money, by decriminalizing drugs. Let's face, after spending billions, of tax payers dollars, on their war on drugs, there is still a major drug problem in this country. The government needs to wake up and realize that as long as there is a demand for illegal drugs, there are going to be people who are going to be willing to risk life and limb, and, as you noted, jail time, to fill that demand. What the government needs to stop and think about is: if they approached this situation correctly, they could make probably make a great deal of money for the sale of legalized drugs.

Hopefully, some of the politicians in Washington, and elsewhere, had the opportunity to read your article and will take heed of the advise that you offered. Personally, I think it's a damn good solution.

Sincerely,
*****

REFORMING HEALTH CARE: IT'S TIME TO CUT THE GORDIAN KNOT

2009-03-06T05:27:00.000-08:00

It's time to save the wasted billions of dollars while providing better health care- and here's how to start...

As the old joke goes, a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Unfortunately, if President Barack Obama intends to reform the nation's health system by that method, the odds are against him. Unlike budget compromises where it is possible to find a middle ground, health care reform requires an Alexander willing to cut the Gordian Knot without wasting countless months trying to unentangle it. If he is serious about improving services while cutting costs, there are a few simple- but bold- moves that President Obama can and should initiate as soon as possible without waiting for compromise from those fighting to maintain the status quo.

First and foremost, we need a national health insurance that will cover catastrophic illnesses. Pick an arbitrary figure- say $5,000- and every family's annual medical bills that exceed that amount will be paid in full by the government. In one stroke this will free Americans from the fear that an illness or accident will swallow a lifetime of savings, cause them to lose their homes, and ultimately bankrupt the breadwinner(s). It will also free employees and persons with pre-existing illnesses from the fear of losing employer provided group health insurance at the same time that it tremendously reduces the overhead for businesses which are paying billions for it. To pay for the system, a national sales tax as low as one or two percent would ensure that all Americans (we all consume goods) are paying into the system without the political baggage of the ugly sounding "mandated coverage" that predominated the debates between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during the primaries.

Second, we need to institute a single payer system that will ensure that doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers are paid promptly, in full, and from one source. There is simply no excuse for having a health care payment system which is so complicated that doctors offices and hospitals have to hire numerous clerical employees just to negotiate the current overlap of Byzantine insurance plans and government benefit programs. Every American citizen will be issued a health payment card to use for all medical services, including prescription medicine, and the government will be the middle man making the payment to the provider. Medicare and Medicaid will be eliminated. If any person doesn't have insurance, then he or she will be responsible for paying the bill in full, in one payment or over time, with low interest rates. Any unpaid bills would be recouped from the following year's tax refunds and by replacing the current medicare tax in payroll withholding with payments on the card. This would be similar to an ordinary credit card system-- except that the government won't be summarily jacking up interest rates or flooding your mailbox with more credit card applications.

Third (and this is coming from a plaintiffs' trial lawyer), we need to eliminate all medical malpractice lawsuits and replace the current tort system-- which requires proof of negligence which caused harm to the patient-- with a no-fault system that will not require lawyers or lawsuits. The system will be similar to Workers Compensation insurance, which pays workers injured on the job preset amounts for certain injuries regardless of fault. All medical malpractice and liability insurance for doctors, hospitals, and drug companies will be eliminated, freeing doctors to practice in any specialty, including ob-gyn, without the crushing overhead of insurance premiums which have far outstripped settlements and awards paid by insurance companies. The no-fault system will be financed by a one percent tax on all medical services and goods, most of which are currently untaxed. The analogy is to the old flight insurance where a passenger paid $1.00 for $100,000 in flight insurance. If the plane went down and the passenger died, his heirs got $100,000 without having to prove fault of the airline or airplane manufacturer. Instituting a national no fault system would result in tremendous savings from the tens of billions of dollars currently spent on insurance costs and unnecessary defensive medicine.

These are three simple, yet effective ideas with virtually no downside. To the naysayers who shout "Socialism" (much like Marty Feldman invoked the name of Frau Blucher in the movie Young Frankenstein): we already have socialized medicine in this country in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, and hospital emergency rooms which have to treat all injured or ill who show up. These ideas, if implemented, would still leave people free to choose their doctor, their medical provider, and the course of treatment they deem best, without having to be overseen by avaricious HMO's or insurers which restrict access to certain physicians, hospitals, or life saving courses of treatment.

IN A PERFECT WORLD (IF I WERE KING)

2009-03-01T17:35:00.000-08:00

NO BRAINERS:

It beats me how the national discourse on the direction of our country continually misses the obvious. The following list of proposals, some using "outside the box" thinking, is my effort to steer the conversation-- and, if we're lucky, the attentions of our Congresspersons-- away from angry chimpanzees and towards issues that matter in the real world:

1. Food stamp programs henceforth will provide only healthy foods. All food stamp eligible products will be computer coded and available for purchase with a food stamp card with the user's photo. No more buying expensive ribeyes, sugar laden sodas, or junk with food stamps- but users will get fruits, vegetables, whole grain foods, and rice-- and generic (the least expensive) brands of foods.

2. Normalize relations with Cuba. There is no downside.

3. Sunset all federal agencies and programs (including all military contracts and weapons systems) and all federal employees except constitutional officers every 10 years. Every program/agency will have to be re-authorized by new legislation no sooner than 5 years and no later than 10 years after the last re-authorization.

4. Give Congressmen and Senators $1 million each every year for every $100 billion they reduce the budget deficit in that year. The taxpayers will save $100 billion for each $535 million spent- a good return on that investment.

5. Eliminate all bribes- a/k/a campaign contributions. No candidate can ask for them, no lobbyist or private contributor can offer a candidate anything of monetary value- not a ride on a jet, a drink at a club, a round of golf, or a $1,000 a plate dinner. Publicly finance all federal elections and require all TV and radio stations to provide a fixed amount of free ad time within 90 days of elections to each qualified candidate with voters in that viewing area. Preview all TV and radio ads to any candidate attacked in them, and give him/her a free, twice as long time to run a response ad which will air immediately following the attack ad- but the candidate can be the only person appearing and speaking in the response ad. This will effectively end all of the toxic campaign attack ads polluting the airwaves every four years. Charge a reverse poll tax: $100 per year on every person who does not vote at least once that year. Put the money into the fund for public financing of all federal elections. Provide the rest of the public funding with an advertising sales tax for all tv and radio ads, with a minimum 10% federal sales tax on all ads for alcohol and cigarettes in any medium, print or electronic.

6. Every adult American citizen who wants to work will be provided a public works/public service job. There will be no involuntary unemployment. See the 1993 Kevin Kline movie "Dave" for more on this.

7. Change to publicly financed National Health insurance to cover all annual expenses for catastrophic illnesses (anything totaling more than $3,000 per family per year). Use a single payer plan for all other medical expenses, including medicine, with everything up to $3,000 paid for with a "health care" type credit card. The consumer can repay the monthly credit card bill out of his own pocket, with an insurance plan, or over time like any other credit card- but with a 5% cap on annual interest. Fund the government portion of the program with a national sales tax on all goods and services- so every one who consumes anything will be paying for his or her catastrophic insurance. This will eliminate all unnecessary administrative costs and all issues of employees needing or companies paying for job related health insurance, which will save medical providers and employers billions. It would also reduce stress on employees and their families who have now lost or are afraid of losing their medical coverage.

8. Eliminate all medical malpractice lawsuits from the tort system and replace them with a no-fault system without lawyers, based on the model of the worker's compensation program, funded by a 1 or 2 percent sales tax on all medical services and products (1% provides about $23 billion a year for the fund- more than is paid out right now in the entire country in malpractice awards). This will keep doctors from leaving any specialty because of malpractice insurance. It will eliminate unnecessary defensive medicine and will save billions in overhead for physicians, hospitals, and drug companies.

9. Post all awards from the no fault fund on the internet, organized by doctor, hospital, kind of injury suffered, and dollar amount of payout from the no-fault fund, but confidential as to patient. This will inform patients of problem doctors and problem hospitals far better than the current tort system, which frequently uses confidential settlements with no admission of wrongdoing even in egregious cases of malpractice.

10. Legalize all drugs for adults. Prohibit the private importation and sale of formerly illegal drugs, but have the U.S. Government buy up the coca crops in Latin America and the heroin/poppy crops in Southeast Asia, and eliminate all of the middlemen. Tax marijuana like cigarettes, but all addictive drugs will be given away for free. Users must use them only in a controlled environment-- a plain cinderblock building next to the hospital which has a door A- get high- and a door B- drug rehab. The addict has to stay in the building until he/she is no longer high, but can come as often as he/she wants. Because the drugs are free, this will eliminate 99.9% of all drug related crime, including drug cartels, killings over drugs by gangs in the U.S. or Mexico. There will be no addicts robbing stores, burglarizing homes or shoplifting to pay for their habit.

11. Take all politics away from the tax code- except for tax rates. No more treating unearned income differently from earned income. No more deductions, no more tax credits, which are both ways of spending government money but which give political cover to the politicians, especially when they are giving government money to millionaires and oil companies. When you give a mortgage deduction on income taxes, you are rewarding owners of million dollar mansions, who may shave thousands of dollars off their taxes, while middle class people save a few hundred dollars and blue collar working people who rent save nothing. If it's worth spending money on, do it out in the open by writing a check. If we want a billionaire to get $2,000 for having two children, write him a check from the U.S. Treasury. If we want to reward rich people for getting their money from dividends and capital gains by taxing them less than people who work hard eight hours a day, then do so by writing them a check for the difference rather than excluding their income from taxes or taxing them at lower rates. Obviously, no sane member of Congress would vote to give money directly to those people for those reasons- so we'd all save, and the tax code would be so simple that a 1040 would have only 3 lines on it, including the signature line.

WHICH PRESIDENTS HAVE DONE THE WORST JOB IN CONTROLLING DEFICIT SPENDING AND THE NATIONAL DEBT

2009-02-27T04:57:00.001-08:00

(Sent to the Albany Herald in response to numerous uninformed comments published in both news and reader comments- as it happened, Ronald Reagan was far and away the worst president at deficit reduction and budget discipline- and he had a Republican Senate his first six years, 1981-1986, so you can't blame a Democratic Congress for the out of control budget deficits and tripling of the national debt. But in sheer numbers, George W. Bush added $5 trillion, mostly through his incompetence, again with a Republican Congress- both houses, his first six years, 2001-2006, except for a brief year- 2001-2002, when the Senate was run by Democrats.)

When discussing the relative impact of Republican and Democratic presidents on spending and deficit and debt reduction (deficit being the amount that spending exceeds income in one year, while the national debt is the total of all amounts owed by the Federal Government at any given moment), it is helpful to have the facts, courtesy of the United States Treasury Department. As the late Senator Patrick Moynihan famously said, everyone is entitled to their own opinions- but not their own facts. Here are the facts. You can draw your own conclusions:

When Jimmy Carter came into office January 20, 1977, the national debt was about $620 billion. When he left office and Ronald Reagan took office January 20,1981, the national debt was under one trillion dollars (about $907 billion, an increase of $287 billion, or 46%, which was an 11.5% increase each year in office). When President Reagan left office in 1989 and his vice president, George H. W. Bush succeeded him, the national debt had more than tripled to $2.8 trillion dollars ($2.1 trillion additional debt in 8 years- a 230% increase, or about 29% per year). When George H. W. Bush's term ended and Bill Clinton took office January 20, 1993, our total national debt was $4.2 trillion ( $1.4 trillion more, an increase of 50% in 4 years, 12.5% per year). When President Clinton left office and George W. Bush took office on January 20, 2001, our total national debt was $5,727,776,738,304.64 (rounded to $5.7 trillion- an increase of 36%, about 4.5% per year). When President Bush left office January 20, 2009, it was $10,626,877,048,913.08 (a $5 trillion increase to $10.7 trillion- an 88% increase, 11% increase per year).

The last four full years of Clinton's presidency, from September 1996 to September of 2000, the national debt increased from $5.3 trillion to $5.7 trillion, a $400 billion increase ($100 billion per year), a less than 10% total increase in the national debt during those years (2.5% per year). In terms of slowing the increase in the national debt, those were the best four years out of the last 32 years.

Now you have the facts.

MURDER, KIDNAPPING, RAPE & TORTURE: WHY PROSECUTION IS ESSENTIAL TO THE RULE OF LAW

2009-02-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

How is prosecuting those responsible for murder, kidnapping, rape, and torture, a "political decision?"

Multiple blunt force injuries. Abrasion in upper right forehead. Abrasion on right lower forehead above eyebrow. Multiple contusions on right cheek and lower nose, left upper forehead, back of head. Abrasions on chest, lower costal margin. Contusions on arm, elbow, forearm, wrist, upper inner arm, groin, inner thigh, right back of knee and calf, left calf, left lower leg. Cause of death was pulmonary embolism due to blunt force injuries.

From autopsy report of detainee killed by United States uniformed armed forces and/or CIA agents while in custody in Bagram, Afghanistan, December 3, 2002.

Detainee was found unresponsive restrained in his cell. Death was due to blunt force injuries to lower extremities complicating coronary artery disease.Contusions and abrasions on forehead, nose, head, behind ear, neck, abdomen, buttock, elbow, thigh, knee, foot, toe, hemorrhage on rib area and leg. Detainee died of blunt force injuries to lower extremities, complicating underlying coronary artery disease. The blunt force injuries to the legs resulted in extensive muscle damage, muscle necrosis and rhabomyolysis. Electrolyte disturbances primarily hyperkalemia (elevated blood potassium level) and metabolic acidosis can occur within hours of muscle damage. Massive sodium and water shifts occur, resulting in hypovolemic shock and casodilatation and later, acute renal failure. The decedent's underlying coronary artery disease would compromise his ability to tolerate the electrolyte and fluid abnormalities, and his underlying malnutrition and likely dehydration would further exacerbate the effects of the muscle damage. The manner of death is homicide.

Autopsy report of second detainee killed by United States uniformed armed forces and/or CIA agents while in custody in Bagram, Afghanistan, December 10, 2002.

Died as a result of asphyxia (lack of oxygen to the brain) due to strangulation as evidenced by the recently fractured hyoid bone in the neck and soft tissue hemorrhage extending downward to the level of the right thyroid cartilage. Autopsy revealed bone fracture, rib fractures, contusions in mid abdomen, back and buttocks extending to the left flank, abrasions, lateral buttocks. Contusions, back of legs and knees; abrasions on knees, left fingers and encircling to left wrist. Lacerations and superficial cuts, right 4th and 5th fingers. Also, blunt force injuries, predominatnly recent contusions (bruises) on the torso and lower extremities. Abrasions on left wrist are consistent with use of restraints. No evidence of defense injuries or natural disease. Manner of death is homicide. DOD 003329 refers to this case as "strangulation, found outside isolation unit."

Report of homicide of Iraqi in United States custody at Whitehorse Detention Facility, Al Nasiriyah, Iraq, June 6, 2003.

Two Iraqi male detainees in U.S custody were killed (one by a shotgun wound to the head, the other by shotgun wound to the chest). The shots were delivered by coalition force guards. DOD 003290 -3292.

Report of two homicides of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, August 18, 2004.

"Mohamed al-Kahtani, one of sixteen people accused of being a "20th hijacker", has recanted his confessions that he had ties to Al Qaeda, had been sent to serve as a hijacker, and that he recognized thirty other captives as bodyguards of Osama bin Laden. He has stated that he was tortured and his family was threatened - in order to force his confessions. A copy of his interrogation log documented that he had been subjected to almost two months of continuous sleep deprivation, with three shifts of interrogators working around the clock to keep him disoriented. His interrogation log documents that he was bound to chairs and force-fed, and administered enemas and IVs, in order to keep his body functioning during his extended sessions."

****

"Military prosecutors at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp announced charges on Monday [February 11, 2008] against six captives they claim were involved in the planning of the September 11 attacks. The men, each facing the death penalty, will be tried in a single group.

The move could cause legal problems, since the Bush Administration has admitted that some of the confessions were given under torture. In 2006, a source in the Pentagon referred to several of the captives now facing prosecution as "unprosecutable" due to "the techniques" used to secure their confessions."

*****

On December 12, 2007, the ACLU filed a motion asking a federal judge to hold the CIA in contempt, charging that the agency flouted a court order when it destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the torture ("harsh interrogation") of prisoners in its custody.

*****

If these crimes had been committed on American soil, against white, Christian Americans, by agents of the United States government acting under orders from the President, the Vice President, and the heads of the Department of Defense and the CIA, is there any doubt that these crimes would be prosecuted, and that no commentators-- right wing or otherwise-- would dream of suggesting that these were hard political decisions made in a time of war or crisis which should be overlooked as we "move forward"?

These were not political decisions which a subsequent administration is attempting to criminalize for political gain. These acts included murders, kidnappings, torture, rapes, and wrongful imprisonment over a period of years. They occurred with the authorization and knowledge of the President and Vice President of the United States and the highest appointed officials.

Prosecuting those criminals along with the persons who actually carried out the acts which constituted war crimes, violations of international law, crimes against humanity, and violations of U.S. law, will deter those in the highest and the lowest positions of authority from committing such crimes s in the future. Prosecuting them will also send a message to all Americans and to the rest of the world that no one-- high or low--is above the law.

USA TODAY EDITORIAL EXCORIATES THOSE WHO WANT TO PROSECUTE ADMITTED WAR CRIMINALS

2009-01-27T22:54:00.000-08:00

Right wing apologists want a double standard when it comes to their party committing murders and other felonies- would they argue that war criminals from Serbia or Rwanda should have had their crimes swept under the rug? Not hardly.

I'm writing to respond to the Ross Baker editorial "Those targeting Bush should let their hate 'die away.'" There might be cogent political reasons for not prosecuting members of a previous administration for policy decisions that may border on criminality. None of those reasons apply to an administration whose highest members have admitted committing war crimes which violated both international law and American laws prohibiting murder, kidnapping, torture, sexual battery, and false imprisonment. Every crime against humanity ordered or condoned by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and every such crime committed by members of the CIA and the Department of Defense (FBI agents reportedly refused to engage in criminal acts) should be investigated, then prosecuted.

It is not a "vitriolic chorus of the blogosphere" or "television talking heads" (Mr. Baker's words) who suggest that prosecutions must occur. It is eminent law professors and experts on international law who have explained, with specific citations to U.S. treaty obligations and U.S. laws, that American prosecutors do not have the discretion to refuse to prosecute known war criminals located on our soil

It was no defense at Nuremberg that high ranking Nazis were making political decisions or that lower ranking members were merely "following orders." Prosecuting American war criminals, as we prosecuted Nazis 63 years ago, will send a message both to the rest of the world and to future presidents that some acts will not be overlooked and some lines can not be crossed with impunity.

COMMENT ON WASHINGTON POST ARTICLE ON NEW AMENDMENT TO EQUAL PAY LAW

2009-01-27T19:42:00.000-08:00

(this was my letter to comment on the Washington Post Article which reported that Congress had just passed and sent to President Obama's desk an amendment which reverses a Supreme Court decision in the Lilly Ledbetter case two years ago which ruled that if an employer could keep secret the fact that an employee's pay was less than other employees of a different gender or race for a 180 day period, then the employer was home free- it could continue discriminating against that employee and pay her less money for equal work forever. LEDBETTER v. GOODYEAR TIRE & RUBBER CO., 05-1074 127 S.Ct. 2162 (U.S. 5-29-2007)

Your article should have included a statement that the Democratic majority was returning the law to what the Supreme Court- and Congress when it enacted Title VII in 1964- had originally intended, which was that any act of discrimination, even if it was repeated, was a new cause of action. In 1986 the Supreme Court ruled in a case called Bazemore v. Friday, 478 U.S. 385 (1986) at pages 395-396:

"Each week's paycheck that delivers less to a black than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable under Title VII, regardless of the fact that this pattern was begun prior to the effective date of Title VII."

This was a very obvious and common sense rule. No employer should have been immunized from suit simply by keeping employees' pay a secret, which many companies routinely do- they sometimes have express policies prohibiting employees from discussing their pay with each other. It takes a truly devious mind to presume that Congress intended that companies would possess a "get out of jail free" card if they could successfully hide a discriminatory pay structure for the first 6 months it was put into place.

This longstanding (43 years) rule was only overturned when five "conservative" members of the Court decided that stare decisis (prior precedential rulings that should have been binding on the Court) were not as important as their ideological opposition to Title VII and their fealty to their perception of the financial interests of large corporations.

Any law professor or Title VII litigation expert (I'm both) can explain this further if you need it. But it's a fallacy to say that a "liberal" Congress or a "liberal" president is "changing" the law. It is more correct to say that the correct application of pay discrimination law was restored by a conservative Congress and conservative president (with small "c's") who respect the law-- both as to its plain meaning, and as to its long held interpretation.

IMPENDING DEATH OF A LOCAL INSTITUTION

2009-01-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

Ads like this have disappeared over the years- and so have the nation's daily newspapers...

Monday morning, when my Golden Retriever, Max, trotted up the front steps with The Albany Herald gently gripped in her mouth, I was amazed at what she brought me. Only one section- 14 pages total. Two pages of sports. No letters to the editor (and none on most days anymore). Classified? Three pages. As for news- the justification for the name "newspaper?" Only about two and a half pages, if you discounted the ads and fluff like celebrity gossip and astrology scattered among the Associated Press stories. In a year, maybe two, this paper will be dust- a distant memory, as its advertisers and readers have fled en masse in recent years, and as they continue to dwindle.

I like newspapers. And if you are reading this, then the odds are great that you like them, too. I started reading them as a kid, although I probably spent more time on the funnies than anything else. Once upon a time I had to wait for the morning paper to find out who won or lost a game the day before and to keep current on local, state, and national news. That is one of the beauties of newspapers- they have something for everyone. Sports, comics, Dear Abby, bridge, editorials, even a nugget or two of news that didn't show up on television or the internet.

When I travel around the United States, I always make it a point to pick up a local paper. One can absorb the flavor of a community by reading local letters to the editor, finding out what subjects are ticking them off, and how eloquently (or not) they express their opinions.

But those days are ever more swiftly receding, just as sail was replaced by steam, the horse and buggy by the newfangled automobile, vinyl by CD, then I-Pod, and dialup by high speed. Daily newspapers are dying off, don't you know. In the last 50 years, most big and medium sized cities have gone from having competition among several newspapers, with cities having both morning and afternoon papers, some with several editions, down to two or even one. And soon there will be none in many cities.

Philadelphia had the Bulletin and the Inquirer. Only the Inquirer has survived. Atlanta had the morning Constitution and the afternoon Journal. It's one paper now. A couple of years ago the Atlanta Journal-Constitution stopped home delivery and rack sales south and east of Macon. Notable high profile papers like the Los Angeles Times, The Detroit Free Press, The Rocky Mountain News, The Chicago Tribune, and yes, even the New York Times have fallen on hard financial times, and there's some question as to which of them will fold or radically downsize (the Free Press is going to only a few paper editions a week with the rest of the days being found only online).

Although papers have tried to survive by evolving, to become hipper, to add on-line editions, they've also become radically downsized, literally, with fewer pages, smaller pages, and less ink on the pages. Major advertisers have pulled or greatly reduced their ads. Classified sections are shrinking as more people use on-line classifieds that cost little or nothing.

Reporters are a dying breed, and many local papers are doing something similar to what local stations did by replacing live dj's with satellite radio. They're laying off human beings and simply printing what comes off the AP wire- and it isn't even a "wire" anymore, it's delivered instantly via computer. Unfortunately for papers, these days any Tom, Dick or Harriet can get the same thing at home by touching a key on the computer or on the move with their Blackberry.

So what have we lost- and what will we lose when most Americans don't have a local daily paper? A sense of community, for one thing. A cogent analysis of local stories and events for another. Comprehensive coverage of local government, which is essential for representative democracy. Years ago the People's Forum was a vibrant daily compendium of numerous contentious letters, some from various regular contributors carrying on debates that lasted for weeks or months. Where will that concourse of ideas and exchange of opinions occur, read by thousands in the same community, if not in a local newspaper?

I've had bones to pick with the Herald over the years. I've complained about occasional shoddy reporting. I used to characterize their news reports of cases I tried as the three blind men describing an elephant. I became more than tired of their dismal right wing editorials, many of which contained tripe from fabricators and fabulists. But I'll miss it when it's gone, and I think most of you will, too.

BUSH KEPT AMERICANS "SAFE?" ON WHAT PLANET?

2009-01-18T14:50:00.000-08:00

When it comes to the Bush Administration, claims of success bear no relation to reality

Mr. Peter Wehner, a former assistant to President Bush, contends in a White House sponsored USA Today editorial (January 16, 2009) that Mr. Bush's presidency was successful because he met his responsibility "to keep Americans safe" after the 9-11-01 terrorist attacks. I don't know on what planet Mr. Wehner has lived during the last eight years, but on mine President Bush took office on January 20, 2001, not on September 12, 2001. In January of 2001, Mr. Bush's National Security Advisor Condaleeza Rice was warned by her immediate predecessor, outgoing Clinton advisor Sandy Berger, that a critical threat to America's security was Islamic terrorism. This was a reasonable conclusion based on the fact that Islamic terrorists had blown up a truck bomb in New York City on February 26, 1993, in an unsuccessful attempt to bring down a World Trade Center tower, killing six and injuring over 1,000; they had blown up an American military barracks in Khobar, Saudi Arabia on June 25, 1996, killing 19 American servicemen; on August 7, 1998, they had blown up two American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 223 and wounding over 4,000; and they had attacked the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen, just months earlier, on October 12, 2000, killing 17 American sailors.

Ms. Rice and President Bush did exactly nothing with that information or with the warning from Mr. Berger. They failed to convene the anti-terrorism subcommittee of the National Security Council (NSC) during the next eight months while Al Qaida was finalizing its plans for the September 11, 2001, attacks.

On August 6, 2001, President Bush received from the CIA a Presidential Daily Brief headlined "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." Mr. Bush ignored that warning and went on a month long vacation to Crawford, Texas.

On September 12, 2001, the day after the attacks, President Bush suggested to NSC anti-terrorism expert Richard Clarke that Iraq was connected to the attacks and asked him to find evidence to justify a military strike against Iraq. In spite of the fact that the subsequent investigation by Clarke produced a memo signed off by the CIA and FBI which concluded Iraq was not connected to the 9-11 attacks, President Bush spent the next year inciting a false sense of imminent danger from Iraq with gross exaggerations and outright lies (that Iraq was on the verge of deploying nuclear weapons), and in March of 2003 he ordered an invasion of the wrong country, causing the unnecessary deaths, to date, of 4,228 American servicemen, with 43,993 wounded.

That's the planet I live on, and President Bush was an utter failure at "keeping Americans safe" if you count 3,000 Americans, including innocent passengers on four airplanes, in the World Trade Center Towers, and in the Pentagon, on 9-11-01, and if you count those who were sent to fight the wrong war in the wrong country from March of 2003 to the present.

And one final thought: on December 14, 2001, President Bush vowed to get Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive." How has that worked out so far, Mr. Wehner?

OBAMA WON'T BE THE "CHANGE PRESIDENT" UNLESS HE FIRST ENACTS MEANINGFUL ELECTION REFORM

2009-01-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

"Change" won't come to American until we first change our system for bribing policitians- the only money going to them should be public money, and the only "special interest" to which they should respond is Americans'.

President-elect Barack Obama is coming into office facing the greatest crises since the days of Franklin Roosevelt, who dealt with both the Great Depression and World War II during his tenure. By the same token, Mr. Obama has the same rare opportunity that President Roosevelt did to effect real, positive, lasting changes in the American government, economy, and foreign policy- but his window of opportunity will be a short one, only a matter of months after he is sworn in. If Mr. Obama acts quickly and decisively, he can take steps which will end the costly and counterproductive "war on drugs," insure every American against the expenses of a catastrophic illness while providing preventive care that will greatly reduce the trillion dollar outlay for medical expenses, cut our defense budget by hundreds of billions of dollars without sacrificing one iota of national security, restore the freedoms provided by the Bill of Rights to the Constitution, provide the nation with an uncluttered, more efficient, and vastly less costly tax system, and put the nation on the road to energy independence.

None of that will happen-- unless Mr. Obama does one essential thing first: take advantage of his unique opportunity provided by the rout of the Republicans in the last election coupled with his incredible fund raising ability that allowed him to forego public funds and outspend John McCain by hundreds of millions of dollars. If Mr. Obama proposes a total ban on private campaign contributions, replacing them with full public financing of all federal elections, then all other things become possible. Meaningful, comprehensive campaign finance reform will free candidates for federal office from the continuous campaign cycle of raising money for the next election before the winners of the last election have even taken their oaths of office. Changing the ground rules for television and radio advertising will mean that legislators will be able to vote on controversial proposals to decriminalize drugs or cut defense spending without having to worry about the 30 second attack ad in the next election that will distort reality and hammer them with accusations of supporting drug dealers or leaving the nation open to a new terrorist attack.

During the last election voters in Georgia were treated to a Senate campaign in which one of the candidates- Democrat Jim Martin, a soft spoken, decent and honorable man, a Vietnam veteran with a long history of selfless government service- was falsely accused by Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss of being fired from his job as head of the Georgia Department of Human Resources because two foster children died. During the presidential election, John McCain ran an ad which falsely claimed that Barack Obama's "one accomplishment" as a state senator was "legislation to teach ‘comprehensive sex education' to kindergarteners." A Chambliss ad accused Mr. Martin of opposing legislation cracking down on child molesters. A mildly amusing but nonsensical McCain ad conjoined photos of Mr. Obama with two attractive white blondes, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, in a thinly veiled attempt to provoke a racist reaction plagiarized from the movie Blazing Saddles-- the black man is coming and he wants your white women! During Mr. Chambliss' 2002 bid to unseat Georgia Senator Max Cleland, he ran an infamous television ad which linked Senator Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and accused Mr. Cleland of selling out the nation's security. Last Fall Elizabeth Dole, the Republican Senator from North Carolina, ran a desperate 30 second ad in her unsuccessful bid to retain her Senate seat which falsely implied that her opponent, Kay Hagan, was an atheist, repeatedly linking her to "godless Americans."

Candidates for federal office have had to raise vast sums of money to propound these absurd attack ads- or respond to them when aired by their opponents. Senate races now cost tens of millions of dollars, and even races for the House of Representatives routinely cost millions. Mr. Obama can and should end this vicious cycle of office holders selling their souls (and sometimes their seats) by using most of their productive hours raising money or responding to the needs of their contributors. The fatal defects in our current election finance system explain why health care reform failed in the Clinton administration. They explain why every rational office holder who knows that the war on drugs is a failure and a sham will never vote to follow Switzerland's model to decriminalize and regulate drugs, even though the "drug war" has increased drug use and violent crime in America while providing billions of dollars to Afghan warlords, the Taliban, and South American drug cartels which have devastated and terrorized Mexico and other Latin American countries.

Effective campaign reform can be accomplished without doing any damage to the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech while being politically palatable to both major political parties. Simply put: declare every private contribution to any candidate for federal office as a bribe and every request for funds, goods, or services from a candidate as a solicitation of a bribe. After all, a massive bribe is exactly what occurs when a trade group hosts a thousand dollar a plate fund raising event for a Senator or a Congressman. When a president can rent out the Lincoln bedroom for hundreds of thousand in campaign contributions, that's not democracy at work- it's bribe-ocracy. Public financing can and must replace every private contribution, freeing up those elected to do the public's business to actually do the public's business without fear of losing millions with a vote that might offend special interests like big oil, hospital corporations, banks, or insurance companies.

As for toxic television attack ads- the First Amendment won't let us curtail them, but we can make them virtually useless to those who have paid for them by delaying their airing until public interest groups and the opposing candidate have had a chance to preview them, and allowing the attackee to tape a response that will be twice as long, free of charge, which will run immediately following the first ad. Doing this does no damage to the First Amendment; it simply means that a vicious lie like the attack ad on Mr. Cleland could be immediately followed by an outraged response by a Vietnam Veterans group and Mr. Cleland which would reveal that Mr. Chambliss ducked military service in Vietnam, claiming a knee injury, while showing Mr. Chambliss during his morning jog along the Potomac. Devastating responses like that would quickly end the baseless attacks and allow elections to be decided on real issues like how best to insure 40 million uninsured Americans or what programs to cut to reduce trillion dollar deficits.

THERE WAS NO HONOR IN ROBERT E. LEE'S WAGING WAR TO PRESERVE SLAVERY

2009-01-12T17:48:00.000-08:00

When a Herald guest columnist asserts the nobility of the Southern Cause during the Civil War and contends that it is important to honor those who raised arms against the United States, then he should have to address the fact that hundreds of thousands of deaths were caused because the South fought to preserve the institution of slavery. The final event leading to the Civil War was the November 6, 1860, election of the first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln. Southern states seceded before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, because they feared the anti-slavery platform of the Republican Party, founded in Jackson, Michigan in 1854 by persons opposing the expansion of slavery into Kansas.

The first shots of the Civil War were fired by South Carolina's militia on January 9, 1861, to prevent the resupply of United States troops in Fort Sumter near Charleston. South Carolina had seceded from the United States on December 24, 1860, when its legislature adopted a "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union." The words "rights of states" were used- but in the context of arguing the rights of slave owners in the South to their "property." The "Causes" included a complaint about the Northern States' failure to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act:

"The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States. The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed.... The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor."

The Confederacy's president, Jefferson Davis, defended slavery in a speech in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 29, 1861, arguing that Southern slavery “elevated [African slaves] from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers.” He justified the Southern States' decision to secede from the Union as being necessary to insure the continuation of “the labor of African slaves... under the supervision of a superior race” which was “indispensable” to the “wants of civilized man.” Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens said that slavery was the "cornerstone" of the Confederacy.

The 1860 census counted 462,198 slaves in Georgia, 44 percent of the total population of 1,057,286. There were almost four million slaves in the Confederacy at the onset of the Civil War. The result of the South losing the war was freedom for those millions of human beings. Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on September 22, 1862, which freed slaves in any States still in open rebellion on January 1, 1863. On January 13, 1865, Congress enacted the Thirteenth Amendment, which prohibited slavery in the United States and any place under their jurisdiction. It became part of the United States Constitution after ratification on December 6, 1865.

The Southern States' war to preserve slavery caused the greatest slaughter of American troops (Southern and Northern combined) in history- an estimated 624,000 dead. The next highest totals were from World War II, 405,399 deaths, and World War I, 116,516.

MATT TOWERY TRIES TO WHITEWASH THE REPUBLICAN FAILURES

2009-01-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out why Republicans lost the last two elections...

I met Matt Towery four years ago after a political debate in Savannah, and he seems like a bright and personable guy. But his grasp on reality when it comes to recent history of the Republican Party is tenuous to non-existent. In his January 3rd Op-Ed he contends that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich "gathered Republicans together not with torches and pitchforks, but rather a 'simple contract' they promised to make with the American Public if elected." Mr. Towery conveniently forgot the GOPAC memorandum Mr. Gingrich sent to aspiring Republican candidates entitled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control."

Here are excerpts from the memo in which he provided sample adjectives that Republicans should utilize in describing their opponents- regardless of reality or truth: "These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party... destructive... sick... pathetic... lie... betray... threaten... devour... bizarre... cheat... traitors...."

That memo defines the bright line difference between the modern day Republican Party and its origins under Lincoln. The national Republican Party has become the party of hate and divisiveness. Non-Christians, gays, immigrants, liberals-- you name the group, and Republicans' campaigns have exploited and incited hatred and fear of them. Until finally, after years of war and economic collapse, American voters realized that we could no longer afford the luxury of irrational and unproductive hatred and distrust when that path put clueless incompetents in charge of our military, our economy, and our country.

LETTER TO USA TODAY ON MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

2008-12-29T21:23:00.001-08:00

Your headline, "Lawyers bills pile high, driving up health care costs," could not have been more wrong. A simple check of total U.S. health care costs- over $2.3 trillion in 2007 (that's 2,300 billion dollars)- compared to the costs of all medical negligence lawsuits- less than $7 billion nationwide- reveals the truth behind your misleading headline. "Lawyers' bills" contribute less than $1 for every $300 spent on health care costs.

The real issue in health care costs isn't reducing the impact lawyers have, it's how to eliminate insurance costs and reduce skyrocketing expenses for hospital stays, doctors' bills, and prescription drugs. One way to eliminate all malpractice insurance costs, which are billions more than litigation costs, would be to end all medical malpractice lawsuits and change from a a fault based tort system that relies on adversarial litigation to prove negligence and switch to a no-fault system which would reduce physicians' and hospitals' premiums to zero. Fund it with a half percent (.5%) sales tax on all medical services, which would add only 50 cents to each $100 bill, and allocate the money to a fund available to all persons injured during medical procedures without regard to fault. A useful analogy is the old flight insurance which could be purchased for a dollar in airports- if the passenger died in a crash, his beneficiaries got $100,000 without having to prove the airline was negligent.

No lawyers or insurance premiums would be necessary, doctors wouldn't have to practice defensive medicine, and no physician would have to exit a specialty like ob-gyn because of insurance costs. All awards would be public information and no confidential settlements would be permitted, thus doing a better job than the current system in informing and protecting the public from bad doctors

WILLIAM KRISTOL, ERSATZ EXPERT

2008-12-27T21:46:00.000-08:00

William Kristol, seen here with his researchers combing the trash for ideas for his column...

When running William Kristol's columns- the latest of which praised Vice President Dick Cheney for cursing ("F _ _ _ you") a Senator who greeted him on the Senate floor - the Albany Herald editors ought to consider a biographical note to enlighten readers who might otherwise assume that Kristol has any intellectual or analytical abilities. For instance, on September 18, 2002 (6 months before President Bush gave the March 19, 2003, order to invade), Kristol predicted that conquering Iraq "could have terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East." On September 19, 2002, he claimed that Saddam Hussein was "past the finish line" in developing nuclear weapons. On February 20, 2003, Kristol foresaw that "... if we free the people of Iraq we will be respected in the Arab world." On March 1, 2003, he said: "very few wars in American history were prepared better or more thoroughly than this one by this president." Shortly after the invasion, Kristol said this about the possibility of post war violence in Iraq: "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."

All of which begs the question: how does someone who has been so profoundly wrong on so many occasions get paid for his punditry? And why would any self-respecting newspaper run his columns?