Category: news

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does racism have anything to do with it?

Yesterday, I wrote about what I believe is willful ignorance on the part of some of the loudest and most visible opponents of President Obama and his agenda.  I asked why so many people choose to believe the most terrible things, things which could be disproven by means of a simple internet search.  I wondered why people who have heard the truth explained to them over and over again still refuse to believe it.  Then Jimmy Carter went and offered an explanation: racism.  And the whole country flipped out.

In an interview, former president Carter said,

I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American…And I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people, not just in the south but around the country, that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.

And you know what? I agree with him. Continue reading “does racism have anything to do with it?”

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dunces

A friend posted the following as her Facebook status this morning:

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” – Jonathan Swift

And, while I’m less of a Jonathan Swift fan since studying “A Ladies Dressing Room” in my 18th Century Women Writers class, Swift’s line just got me thinking of something I’ve been mulling over as I watch the people protesting against health care, and, seemingly, Obama’s presidency and entire agenda.  These are the dunces.  And I don’t just mean the people waving signs.  I’m talking all the way up to Joe Wilson, who screamed “you lie!” after a statement which was in fact A FACT, which I pointed out in a previous post.  These people seem, in large part to be afraid of a monster in the closet which isn’t there.  And yet they keep insisting it is, even after “dad”, whether he take the form of Politifact or the president, has opened the door, pushed back the clothes, and shined a flashlight in the corner to assure us that there is really nothing to fear.

And I’m sure some of my readers are already irked that I used the title dunces in reference to protesters.  I’m not saying that ALL people who oppose health care reform are stupid or ignorant or dunces.  I’m not even sure most of them are.  But a large, large number of people seem to be moving into the willful ignorance category.  What else can you call it when people insist on believing scary myths, even when confronted over and over again with the truth?  When the truth is just one Google search away?  When organizations like FactCheck.org and PolitiFact have read the entire health care bill and are handily debunking myths and distortions from BOTH sides (seriously, at the time of writing this, PolitiFact’s front page features statements from Obama and Howard Dean which fall on the wrong end of the truth-o-meter)?  I mention the evenhandedness of PolitiFact for a reason: many love to talk about how the media, all of it, everywhere, with the exception of Fox News, is biased.  Clearly there are sites out there, like PolitiFact, which are taking care to monitor the statements of people on both sides of the political spectrum.  There’s really no excuse for believing or perpetuating easily-disproved lies.

One such example is the “death panels” trope, the idea that “Obama wants to pull the plug on grandma,” when in fact, the section of the bill Sarah Palin and others were attacking were about empowering patients like grandma to make their end-of-life desires known, so that the patient’s wishes would be followed in those times, rather than doctors or family members or anyone else deciding how a patient should die (not to mention when!).  But through the fun-house-mirror of the opposition, empowered patients becomes government bureaucrats telling people what to do.  And despite vigorous debunkings of this myth, it persists! Here’s some photographic evidence of the persistence of this lie, from last Saturday’s Tea Party Protest in Washington DC:

via Flickr

Continue reading “dunces”

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remembrance

8 years ago two towers fell and it seemed the entire world came crashing down.  2,751 innocent people lost their lives, and millions more of us lost our innocence.

I was a junior in high school, sitting in chemistry class, when someone ran into the room and told our teacher, Dr. Cravy, to turn on the tv, because our country was being attacked.  The bell rang and we went to our next class, for me AP US History with Mr. Quattlebaum.  He already had the tv on.  I saw the second tower hit on live tv.  We all sat, stunned.  Dazed, shocked, and saddened, we watched the coverage all day long.  We saw ash raining down on a city, we saw smoke rising into the sky, we saw our nation’s illusions going up in smoke, because we weren’t so safe as we thought we were, things that happened to other people in faraway places, like Israel, were happening to us.  Here.

During my journalism class, just before lunch, there came an announcement over the intercom.  Our school had received a bomb threat and were to report to the football stadium and await further instructions.  A fearful day got even more terrifying as what was happening in New York and Pennsylvania and D.C. became connected to our small town.  We sat in the bleachers, oddly quiet for a group of high school students, because so many of us just didn’t know what to say.  Ironically, construction was underway on a nearby highway, and they were blasting that morning.  When we heard the blast, we were sure our school was being blown up.  We screamed and ducked and covered.  We heard a second blast.  Soon the principal received a call on her cell phone and announced via a bullhorn that the explosions were on the highway, not our campus.  A little later we received the all clear from the bomb squad and returned to our hallways.  Despite the all-clear, it looked like a bomb had gone off.  They had opened and searched all of our lockers, and the doors hung agape, our things scattered onto the floor.  School was dismissed early and I honestly can’t even remember how I got home.

That night, I watched with my family in stunned horror.  The images of people jumping from windows to escape the fires inside reappeared in nightmares for many weeks.  We kept watching every day after, looking for an explanation.  A why.  I’m not sure we’ll ever understand that.  Somehow I managed not to cry until the news came that Daniel Pearl, the American journalist whose story I followed so closely because at the time he held my dream job, foreign correspondent, had been beheaded by his terrorist captors.  As those images flashed upon the screen, I, a 16-year-old, collapsed into my mother’s lap and sobbed into her shoulder as she stroked my hair.  I wept for my country.  I wept for the people who lost their lives in planes and sky scrapers and the Pentagon.  I wept for Daniel Pearl.  And I wept for myself, because I could see that my innocence was over.

I don’t pretend that I have even the slightest understanding of that day 8 years ago.  It was not my city.  It was not my building.  It was not my mother or sister or friend.  But it was my country, and I and it will remain forever changed.

On this day, I pray for those who lost their lives, and for those who loved them.  On this day, I pray for those who, as a result, fought and died on foreign soil, and for all those who loved them.  On this day, I pray for my nation, that we may lead the way for peace in the world.  On this day, I pray for those who are still innocent, who did not see that horrible day, that their lives may never know that kind of tragedy.

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guess his mama didn’t raise him right

Here in the South, there’s not much to brag about, but one thing we generally have a lock on: good manners.  Southern hospitality.  That’s not to say we can’t turn a nasty phrase, but we’ll do it with a smile and a Bless Your Heart.

But last night, bless his heart, Congressman Joe Wilson apparently lost his breedin’.  As President Obama was addressing a joint session of Congress, Congressman Wilson shouted out “You lie!” (for video, go here), heckling the President of the United States on the floor of Congress.  It was an outburst which revealed Congressman Wilson’s lack of respect, decorum, or decency.  It’s perfectly within his *rights* to express himself, but it should be beneath his office to express himself in such a way.  The president gave a speech, the GOP had another Howdy Doody fellow rebut it (why do they keep choosing Louisianans?), and surely the next day members of Congress would be free to issue statements, appear on news programs, write op eds and otherwise express any disagreements they had with things the president said in his address.  All are appropriate ways of participating in political dialog about this often contentious issue.  Yelling in the middle of a speech in what should be one of the most respected houses of government in the world is NOT an appropriate means of expression.

This brings me to what Wilson was responding to.  Was it a lie?  According to Politifact.com, a non-partisan fact-checking organization, Wilson was responding to this statement by President Obama:

“There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants,” Obama said. “This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

According to Politifact, it is WILSON who is the liar, as Obama’s statement, that health care reforms would not apply to illegal immigrants, was true. Politifact writes:

We read all 1,000-plus pages of the health care bill and were struck by the fact that it is largely silent on health care for illegal immigrants. Keep in mind that experts estimated there were 6.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants in the United States in 2007, out of a total of 11.9 million illegal immigrants. Right now, most states have laws on the books that require hospitals to treat severely ill people who arrive at the hospital, regardless of immigration status, and we didn’t see anything that would change those laws, either.

Most illegal immigrants are also now excluded from Medicaid, the government-run health care for the poor. We didn’t see anything that would change that.

One place where the bill does mention immigration status is for “affordability credits.” These are tax credits for people of modest means need to buy health insurance. The credits would help them buy insurance on a national health insurance exchange. The bill specifically says that people in the United States illegally are not eligible for tax credits, on page 132, section 242….

The best argument that we find that health reform would help illegal immigrants is that some might be able to purchase the public option — if it passes, and it might not — on the new health insurance exchange. They would purchase that at full cost. Obama’s said “the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally,” which Wilson said was a “lie.” Actually, Obama can make a pretty thorough case that reform doesn’t apply to those here illegally. We don’t find the public option argument enough to make the case that Obama “lied.” We rate Wilson’s statement False.

Perhaps a Member of Congress could be bothered to do some research before getting so fired up about health reform’s effect on illegal immigrants that he completely loses his mind on the floor of Congress with the entire nation watching.

And yet, Wilson has STILL not done his research, because, while he apologized for the outburst, he still says he disagrees with the president over the issue of illegal immigrants and health reform.  So he clearly still misunderstands the bill.  I would also note that Wilson apologized to the president, but I feel he should also apologize to the people of South Carolina for embarrassing us in this way on the national stage.  He should also apologize to the other members of Congress for dishonoring the office.

I have a feeling this outburst is going to hurt Congressman Wilson quite a bit, and in the 12ish hours since his eruption, his 2010 Democratic challenger, a former US Marine named Rob Miller, has raised over $100k from more than 3,000 donors, and of course, suddenly most of the state, not to mention the nation, knows his name.

And as for health reform, Obama’s speech seems to have won over many independents and undecideds, whereas Wilson’s heckling decidedly turned them off.  The only people who liked his shouting are the kind of folks who were already doing the same kind of thing at town hall meetings.  Final verdict: JOEWILSONFAIL.

As for me, I’m hoping someone in say, Mississippi can do something lame and take the focus off South Carolina for a while.  I’ve had enough of the embarrassments for a while.

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a lion has roared his last

My party and my nation have lost a legend.  Senator Ted Kennedy has passed away after a battle with brain cancer.

I am too young to know too much about the Kennedys.  I know they don’t mean to me what they do to so many Americans who loved their family and felt attached to them in ways I can only imagine are like my attachment to Barack Obama, the first politician to make me take the step from mere voter to activist.  And yet I know enough to know that this is a great loss.

They call him the Liberal Lion of the Senate, and his list of accomplishments is long and worthy of admiration.  Though given a name that gave him everything, he gave up nearly everyone he held dear in service to his country.  Though born to privilege, he dedicated his life to the causes of those without.  Though weighed down by a heavy and sad legacy, and sometimes faltering under its weight, he managed to always stand for social justice.  Though caricatured as some kind of left-wing extremist, he, more than self-described “maverick” John McCain, was known for working with the other side in order to accomplish his goals. Continue reading “a lion has roared his last”

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co-operation makes it happen?

I probably don’t need to tell you that I’m deeply interested in the health reform debate.  And lately I’ve noticed that the new buzz is all about “co-ops.”  Before I jump in, this is what *I* think of every time I hear the word co-op:

Now that you’ve got that stuck in your head for the rest of the day, on to health care co-ops, which somehow seem way less fun than a community garden filled with puppets.  The co-op plan has been presented as some sort of alternative to a public health insurance plan.  The thing is, as Ezra Klein has pointed out, co-ops solve a POLITICAL problem, but not our actual health care problems.  Ezra writes:

To put it bluntly, the co-op does not solve a policy problem so much as it solves a political problem. That political problem was, “How do you finesse a compromise on the public option?”

You could imagine a co-op proposal that actually offered a meaningful alternative to private insurers. Some months ago, Conrad, alongside public plan supporter Chuck Schumer, seemed to be edging in that direction. But I haven’t heard anything similarly encouraging since then. The co-op is now a favored alternative for Republicans who don’t agree that the profit motive is a problem in health insurance and who don’t agree that single-payer or Medicare-for-All represents an appealing alternative to the current situation. Given that constituency, it’s not likely to satisfy people who have the opposite perspective on all of those questions.

I wish I could spend this post enumerating the problems with the co-op proposal, except that, as the New York Times points out,

the co-op idea is so ill defined that no one knows exactly what it would look like or how effectively it would compete with commercial insurers.

As far as I can tell, every one agrees that not enough people are covered by our current health care system, costs are too high for the level of care received, and insurers are ill-inclined to listen to their policy-holders’ concerns or actually cover their care because they care only about profit and face very little to no competition for their market share. Solving this problem means creating an alternative, and it seems the co-op idea is about creating pools of people, much like the workforces of large companies which provide group insurance plans, to purchase group care from private insurers. This sounds like a half-assed, complicated, and expensive way to achieve exactly what a public insurance plan would achieve, but a public plan would achieve it with much lower costs (Kent Conrad, who proposed the co-op, says it is not a plan that would lower costs), with the added benefit of creating COMPETITION for private insurers, rather than just handing them more individuals paying premiums that add to their bottom line.

And would the co-op plan really solve the political problem with the public option, namely that Republicans and “Blue Dogs” say they won’t support it?  Not likely.  Steve Benen of The Washington Monthly‘s Political Animal blog notes that Republicans are already rebuffing the co-op plan as well, not to mention, “Republicans don’t support health care reform. Weakening the bill and scuttling good ideas to garner their support doesn’t make sense, since they fully intend to vote against literally any bill.”

I guess my major thought is, if you agree that insurers are a major part of the problem, if you agree that not enough people are covered, if you agree that we need to create some sort of alternative way to give people health coverage, wouldn’t you want to support the means of doing so that is most efficient, covers the most people, and cuts costs the most?  That method is the public insurance option.

UPDATED TO ADD: This post can now also be tagged “Annals of South Carolinian Ridiculousness” because of good ole Sen. Jim DeMint(ed).  DeMint apparently can’t tell the difference between a co-op and a public insurance plan:

Whatever they call it Neil, this is a government takeover. They may try to call it a co-op. They can call it a public option, but you know they’re all on record saying they want a single payer government system, so any Republican now that helps them pass a bill is helping them pass a government takeover of health care.

All the more reason to scrap this stupid co-op idea and go with REAL reform which includes a public option. I guess this means that DeMint won’t be taking to heart the letter I wrote to him last night expressing my wish for a public option.

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mr. whole foods is nearly wholly wrong

Via Flickr user gezellig-girl.com
Via Flickr user gezellig-girl.com

I am the kind of person who reads The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  The kind of person who watches “King Corn” and “Food, Inc.”  The type of person who pays $5 for a carton of eggs because I can buy them within walking distance and they were raised locally and humanely.  The type of person who gets excited about a baby eggplant in the garden.  The type of person who shops at farmers’ markets and Whole Foods and Earth Fare.  The type who carries around a stainless steel water bottle and uses her own bags at the store and even has a reusable wrapper for the sandwiches she packs for lunch.

I’m also the kind of person for whom health care was a major issue in the last election.  The kind of person who worked very hard to elect Barack Obama precisely because I liked his health care proposals.  The kind of person who cried on election night with joy and pride.  The kind of person who cried on inauguration day with joy and pride.  The kind of person who really doesn’t understand how so many people can act like health reform is such a surprise when it was so clearly laid out before the election, and American VOTED FOR THE GUY who proposed it.

Apparently the CEO of Whole Foods doesn’t understand that the majority of his customers are people like me.

So he wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal opposing most of President Obama’s health care plan.  And he pissed off a lot of Progressives, who are now overwhelming Whole Foods’ website with complaints.

But I knew that we (being those of us in favor of health care reform and of the mind that America supported this idea when it elected Barack Obama) might have trouble when my husband mentioned that he had read the editorial and thought the guy made some good points.  So.  I’m taking it upon myself to refute some of those points, because I don’t want to see this gaining any traction.  The quoted portions are John Mackey, and the rest is my response. Continue reading “mr. whole foods is nearly wholly wrong”

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paranoia strikes deep

A friend shared this image via Facebok. LOVE the guy in the striped t-shirt and his sign. So much of this could be cleared up if these folks would just get some info from someone other than Rush or Glenn or Lou or Sean. I mean, lady, we HAVE term limits. And sir, yes, we the people are the government. We the people just had an election. You lost. That doesn't mean that democracy somehow died, it just means your side lost. Try again next time.
A friend shared this image via Facebook. LOVE the guy in the striped t-shirt and his sign. So much of this could be cleared up if these folks would just get some info from someone other than Rush or Glenn or Lou or Sean. I mean, lady, we HAVE term limits. And sir, yes, we the people are the government. We the people just had an election. You lost. That doesn't mean that democracy somehow died, it just means your side lost. Try again next time.

All the protests over health care reform reminded me of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”:

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear

There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware (in this case, it’s the protesters with the guns)

I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down…

What a field-day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly say, hooray for our side…

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you’re always afraid

It strikes me as deeply ironic that all the hoo-ra, gun toting, macho men of the right are the ones who are just so SCARED right now. What they are afraid of, I’m not really sure, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t actually have anything to do with health care.  And the fears they CLAIM are related to health care are related to things that aren’t even being proposed.  No one has proposed: socialized medicine, single-payer health care, death panels, taking away your health coverage if you like what you have now, government takeover of health care, rationing of health care, deepening the federal deficit.  Basically, this reform will only affect you if you are unhappy with your current insurance or currently uninsured.

It will do things like: keep your insurer from denying you care based on what they call a “preexisting condition,” keep your insurer from kicking you out of your insurance policy when you finally need real care, cut down on the amount of paperwork and haggling between you and your insurer and your health care provider, provide subsidies to people who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but too little to secure their own private insurance, encourage more employers to provide health coverage to their workers, and raise the income standards so more people can qualify for Medicaid.

I’m really hoping we get a public option, though it’s looking less likely, but even if we did, it’s an option, a government run insurance program exactly like something we already have now: the health insurance the government provides to federal employees.  Far from destroying the free market, this might actually help CREATE a free market, by injecting some competition into an industry that is increasingly made up of monopolies.  And it would be OPTIONAL.

When you lay the actual proposals bare, there’s very little room for paranoia and fear.  But like the song goes, paranoia strikes deep.

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You go, Claire McCaskill!

So the town hall “let’s go get yelled at by crazies” gauntlet continues for members of congress.  Sen. Claire McCaskill had one yesterday, and this is her take: Picture 1 Really, Sen. McCaskill?  Because I think you sounded juuuuussst right:

When a crowd is acting like a bunch of unruly elementary schoolers, the correct approach is to talk to them like they’re one count-to-three away from losing recess.  I remember in elementary school, they had a system for dealing with us when we got too loud in the cafeteria.  They had the letters R-A-M-S (our mascot) hanging on the wall.  If we got too loud, one of the monitors would go remove a letter.  If we lost all the letters in one lunch period, we weren’t allowed to talk the rest of the lunch period.  This happened VERY rarely.  But then again, maybe we elementary schoolers were better behaved than the teabagging health care reform opponents who only want to shut down debate, because they have no actual ideas to contribute to the discussion.

Anyway, don’t feel bad, Sen. McCaskill.   You struck exactly the right tone.  You go on with your bad self.

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I just wrote my senator

I just wrote an email to my senator, Lindsey Graham.  If you want health care reform, I urge you to be doing the same.  We have to speak up to our representatives, not in the form of mob behavior, as health care reform opponets are doing, but through respectful civic engagement.  I’m posting what I wrote to Senator Graham here in hopes that it will inspire others to write.

Dear Sen. Graham,

First of all I want to thank you for voting to confirm Sonya Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Only 9 members of your party did so, and this shows that you have the courage to vote to confirm a competent justice rather than use the Supreme Court to play party politics. I really appreciate it.

The real reason for me writing this letter is to encourage you to continue to show your courage by supporting real health care reform which includes a public option. Please don’t listen to the loud voices of mobs, but to the quiet voices of citizens who really need reform. My husband is a pediatrician. We both believe that a public option is the only way to get real reform. This is why:

Insurance only “works” by creating really really large pools of risk. The larger the pool, the lower the costs, and the lower the premiums. For this reason, the insurance industry tends toward consolidation. Mergers lead to lower administrative costs and higher profits. They also have every incentive NOT to pay for actual healthcare at every possible opportunity. This is where we get ridiculous concepts like recision, which should absolutely be illegal, and the general run of the mill having to BEG your insurer to actually cover anything at all. I do not pretend that my insurer would actually pay for anything I didn’t fight tooth and nail for.

Because of the tendency toward consolidation, there is little to no competition in the industry in some 97% of markets. I have Blue Cross Blue Shield through my employer, but were I to actually go out on the private market and attempt to secure my own insurance, I’d probably also end up with BCBS, as it’s all there is here. And it’s not like a new startup could just come to SC and compete. They’d never be able to scrape together a large enough pool on the spot to compete premium wise with BCBS. The only entity big enough to create a large enough pool to be a viable alternative and inject some competition into the health insurance market is the federal government, period. To pretend that somehow the free market will produce competition in this area is laughable.

Not to mention that by some magic an alternative were available, it basically takes a law degree to understand the forms. I have an entire BOOK from BCBS explaining to me in legalese all the myriad ways they’d love to screw me over. Not to mention, it’s not like hospitals have a menu, so you can compare say, MRI prices from one to another. There is just very little way to be a smart consumer in the free market in this area, which is why some sort of federal base line standards and prices would do a world of good.

Finally, as someone who recently experienced unemployment, I truly believe that we have to get away from tying insurance coverage to employment. I lost my health insurance right at the time I was most financially vulnerable. 50% of bankruptcies are related to health care costs, and I can see why. I could not have afforded COBRA on my unemployment benefits. It would have taken my entire allotment and then some. I am fortunate that my husband is a state employee and I could get on his insurance, because many people do not have that luxury. What if my entire family had depended on my employer-provided coverage? With unemployment on the rise, now is the time to make this change. 14,000 people lose their insurance each month. I was one of them. Insurance should be portable!

Again, thank you for your courage in confirming Sonia Sotomayor. Please keep up the good work and support real health reform in the form of a public option.

Sincerely,
[Ernie Bufflo]