politics – Page 3 – erniebufflo's south & west kitchen

October 19, 2009August 29, 2014

on marriage equality and equal marriages

I just read a really excellent piece on marriage by Melissa Harris-Lacewell over at The Nation. The entire blog entry is wonderful and if you’re interested in marriage, marriage equality, civil rights, and/or feminism, you should read the whole thing. What particularly stood out for me was this section:

Typically advocates of marriage equality try to reassure the voting public the same-sex marriage will not change the institution itself. “Don’t worry,” we say, “allowing gay men and lesbians to marry will not threaten the established norms; it will simply assimilate new groups into old practices.”

This is a pragmatic, political strategy, but I hope it is not true. I hope same-sex marriage changes marriage itself. I hope it changes marriage the way that no-fault divorce changed it. I hope it changes marriage the way that allowing women to own their own property and seek their own credit changed marriage. I hope it changes marriage the way laws against spousal abuse and child neglect changed marriage. I hope marriage equality results more equal marriages. I also hope it offers more opportunities for building meaningful adult lives outside of marriage.I know from personal experience that a bad marriage is enough to rid you of the fear of death. But this experience allows me suspect that a good marriage must be among the most powerful, life-affirming, emotionally fulfilling experiences available to human beings. I support marriage equality not only because it is unfair, in a legal sense, to deny people the privileges of marriage based on their identity; but also because it also seems immoral to forbid some human beings from opting into this emotional experience.

We must do more than simply integrate new groups into an old system. Let’s use this moment to re-imagine marriage and marriage-free options for building families, rearing children, crafting communities, and distributing public goods.

Here I must first confess that I have been one of those people who has said that gay marriage doesn’t change my straight one. That it doesn’t matter to me what my neighbors are doing in their homes, with their families. That two people in love committing to each other has no bearing on my love or my commitment.

But the truth is, it does. And it should. And I want it to. Continue reading “on marriage equality and equal marriages”

October 14, 2009August 12, 2010

common ground on abortion?

President Obama has drawn both praise and criticism for meeting with groups on both sides of the abortion issue and attempting to find “common ground.” One of the things I like about Obama, that I think many people like about him, is that he seems the type to listen to people with whom he both agrees and disagrees, and then try to come to a thoughtful conclusion.

The one problem with all this common ground on abortion stuff?

People who think that making abortion illegal will end or even put a dent in the number of abortions performed annually are wrong.

Yep. A new report from the Guttmacher (I always see this word and think gut-muncher for some reason) Institute found that

While the incidence of abortion is closely related to that of unintended pregnancy, it does not correlate with abortion’s legal status. Indeed, abortion occurs at roughly equal rates in regions where it is broadly legal and in regions where it is highly restricted.

Making abortion illegal does not change the number of abortions. Period. We should look at people who want to overturn Roe v. Wade about the same way as we look at people who supported Prohibition. Continue reading “common ground on abortion?”

September 17, 2009December 14, 2021

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?”

September 16, 2009August 12, 2010

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:

Continue reading “dunces”

August 26, 2009August 12, 2010

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”

August 18, 2009August 12, 2010

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.

August 14, 2009August 12, 2010

mr. whole foods is nearly wholly wrong

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”

August 13, 2009August 12, 2010

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.

August 12, 2009August 12, 2010

MY America

We have overcome much, but we have much yet to overcome. Image from President Obamas Grant Park Victory Rally, via Obama Pics Daily. — We have overcome much, but we have much yet to overcome. Image from President Obama's Grant Park Victory Rally, via Obama Pics Daily.

Hooooooo boy. Lookout. I am in the lather of a righteous rage and ain’t nothin’ gonna stop me now. You’ll have to imagine this entire post in my best Southern drawl, because the accent which is usually barely perceptible really comes out when I’m mad. Heeeere we goooo.

Jezebel.com has a new guest blogger (though she’s contributed before), Latoya Peterson usually of the blog Racialicious. And she had a post this mornin’ that really has me fired up. She started out with the video of an embarrassing woman from Arkansas, even more embarrassing, because that’s my home state. This woman got all weepy at a town hall meeting about health care and said she was “scared” about what “my America” is “being turned into.” YOUR AMERICA???

Then Latoya mentioned the story of a twelve year old who died because of a toothache.

A routine, $80 tooth extraction might have saved him.

If his mother had been insured.

If his family had not lost its Medicaid.

If Medicaid dentists weren’t so hard to find.

If his mother hadn’t been focused on getting a dentist for his brother, who had six rotted teeth.

By the time Deamonte’s own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George’s County boy died.

And this tragedy happened in MY AMERICA.

Let me tell you something about MY America.

It is the land of the free, home of the brave. It is one nation under God, a God who cares for the least and the lost, who sides with the oppressed over the powerful, the poor over the wealthy, the weak over the strong.

It was founded by a religious minority who created a commonwealth. A COMMON-WEALTH. A place where everyone gives up a little so that everyone can be better off. A place where people come together and take care of one another, be that a Little House on the Prairie-style barnraising, or a public health care option where we all share risks and costs so that we all might be healthy.

It is a place that holds certain truths to be self-evident. A place where all are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. A place where, among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What are life and happiness without HEALTH?

It is a place that was founded by We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. Is not the general welfare the general HEALTH CARE?

It is a place with liberty and justice for all. What is justice without social justice?

It is a place that is to be a shining city upon a hill. Right now this light is dimmed by the incredible injustice of our healthcare system.

In my America, children should not go hungry, families should not have to choose between paying for healthcare and food, families should not face losing their homes or delcaring bankruptcy because of the cost of healthcare. In my America, healthcare should not be a luxury available only to those fortunate enough to be wealthy or have employers who provide them with coverage. In my America, paper pushers concerned with profit margins would not be able to deny people who had paid all their premiums the care they need, right when they need it most. It is not a place where some people are “uninsurable.” It is not a place where 47 million people don’t have any health coverage at all. It is not a place where the price of a procedure or a prescription depends on who’s asking.

That’s MY America. And if that America doesn’t look like yours, I’d like to ask you to please open your eyes and look around, and maybe even look inside your own heart. We must do something.

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