The Health Care Wars : Viewing the Battlefield

Posted on February 16, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

From the teabag front: A resident of south Florida holds a sign protesting health care reform. Photo by Carlos Barria / Reuters.

The health care fight goes on:
Teabaggers, downsizing, and the ‘Party of No’

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / February 15, 2010

The AP recently reported that the Democrats are discussing a smaller health care bill. The Massachusetts senatorial election has given our elected representatives an opportunity to reflect and perhaps consider a more concise, more progressive, health care bill — especially considering that many in the House take strongs issue with the Senate’s legislative monstrosity.

Rep. Jackie Spier, D-Calif., describes the Senate bill as “toxic.” It’s a bill that could easily have been written by the Republican Party in deference to their corporate supporters. It was, of course, sponsored and voted for by a group of cowardly Democrats who place their relection above the needs and desires of their constituency.

In the meantime we can step back and view the battlefield. Foremost in the public view at the moment are the teabaggers, who follow their corporate-financed pied pipers at every turn. I have had conversations with several Europeans who are thunderstruck by the antics of these folks. I am asked, “Where but in America would masses of people publicly exhibit such pride in their ignorance?” I have been tempted to answer with the words of Pascal:

Man would fain to be great and sees that he is little; would fain to be happy and sees that he is miserable; would fain to be perfect and sees that he is full of imperfections; would fain be the object of love and esteem of men, and sees that his faults merit only their aversion and contempt. The embarrassment wherein he finds himself produces in him the most unjust and criminal passions imaginable, for he conceives a mortal hatred against that truth which blames him and convinces him of his faults.

Instead, I merely point to the puerile, testosterone driven commercials shown during the Super Bowl Game. The agencies that produce these horrid ads must imagine the average I.Q. of the viewer to be in the low 80s. Sadly, perhaps they are right.

The game goes on with President Obama’s scheduled “open” meeting with the Republicans regarding health care — if they accept his invitation to appear on CSPAN. We only hope that the President will be resolute and open with the “Party of No” rather than once again descending to the absurdity of “bipartisanship” with the demagogues who are out to destroy his presidency.

Hopefully, he and his staff will finally remember that the people elected him to represent their interests and not those of the corporations. And hopefully, Mr. Obama will give unqualified support to the labors of the House of Representatives, and will include a “Medicare for All” option. Looking back in time, it took courage and foresight for the people’s representatives to pass the Social Security and Medicare bills. But then, they did not cower like whipped dogs or pay deference to the blue dog-types. Instead, they followed their moral and ethical beliefs.

Of course, the Republicans would love to do away with these programs in the name of “fiscal responsibility.” The American people did not elect Obama and a progressive Congress to merely defer to every wish of the Liebermans, the Bayhs, and the Lincolns. Yes, we might lose the final vote but it will show the American people who their representatives are and which of our Senators and/or Representatives are in Washington to accept baksheesh from their corporate sponsors.

The Raw Story reported that the Democrats might even be ready to drop the proposed ban on pre-existing conditions, making such a provision only applicable to those under the age of 19. This would further weaken the farcical Senate bill which at least now provides insurance for those with pre-existing conditions — but at three times the cost of those not so judged. Remember, as well, that the Senate Bill provides financing by taxing the middle classes, rather than the wealthy, and that much of the coverage will not take effect for 3-4 years.

Recent polling by Health Care for America Now, as reported by The Huffington Post, showed that 64% oppose a mandate requiring the purchase of PRIVATE insurance, as is included in the Senate bill; however, 60% support a mandate if it allows for the purchase of private OR public insurance. 63% of likely voters supported an option to buy into a government-run Medicare-like program. Even 23% of Republicans approved of such plan.

Once again I must stress that most of the discussion about health care reform has largely excluded the physicians; our political leaders have not listened to those who actually care for the sick, instead paying deference to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries. Some might counter that the AMA was consulted. But I will again point out that the vast majority of physicians are not affiliated with the AMA, which traditionally has represented the interests of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

I recommend that everyone read a letter from Quentin Young of the Physicians for a National Health Program that was distributed by Common Dreams, written from the viewpoint of the physicians. Dr. Young discusses at length the need for Medicare for All. And it is important — as has been emphasized by the American College of Physicians — that any proposed bill, as well as the Medicare budget, provide for adequate fees for primary care physicians, including general practitioners, internists, and pediatricians.

As to the bogus abortion issue, I have followed Physicians for a National Health Program since their founding in 1988. Never in their literature have I seen the word “abortion” mentioned in any context. PNHP has been purely interested in addressing physical and emotional illnesses like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and pneumonia. Any health care bill should be written to provide for the ill and the infirm. Let us consider the contentious issue of abortion in another forum and not allow it to distract from the very real and pressing matters at hand.

On the reform scene, there has been encouraging news and discouraging news. The California and Connecticut legislatures passed bills providing for universal health care within their states; however, in each instance a Republican governor has overturned the public’s will by vetoing the legislation. Pennsylvania appears on the brink of passing a universal health plan — the Democratic State Committee unanimously approved such — and there appears to be support in the state legislature and Governor Rendel has indicated he will sign it.

The fight for real health care reform goes on; there is still have much work to be done.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister, a regular contributor to The Rag Blog, lives in Erie, PA. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform.]

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Dick J. Reavis: ‘Catching Out’ in the Secret World of Day Laborers

Posted on February 15, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from Portland Indymedia.

Researching my new book on the job:
Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers

By Dick J. Reavis / The Rag Blog / February 15, 2010

Author/activist/educator and Rag Blog contributor Dick Reavis will be Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio, Tuesday, February 16, 2-3 p.m. (CST) on KOOP 91.7 FM in Austin. For those outside the listening area, go here to stream the show.

They will discuss Dick’s new book, Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers, and his earlier book — Ashes of Waco: An Investigation — about the assault on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. They will also talk about Dick’s experiences in the Sixties when he was active in the civil rights movement and with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and wrote for Austin’s undergound newspaper, The Rag.

On a blazing and humid day about 18 months ago I was working on a day labor crew. Five of us from the day labor hall and two guys from a landscaper’s regular crew were digging up dead yellow sod and putting down new green sod in the expansive backyard of a million-dollar home.

We were thirsty. One of us, a young black man whom I’ll call Maceo, asked the boss man to bring a water cooler.

“But where will I get it?” the landscaper asked.

“At Lowe’s!” Maceo exclaimed!

The boss man complied, after a fashion. He left and came back in about an hour with a cooler. It was filled with lukewarm water. We were thirsty. All of us gathered around.

Maceo took a taste and demanded ice.

The boss man reached for his cell phone, called the labor hall and said that he was firing Maceo.

That didn’t seem fair to me. The kid was only demanding what every outdoor worker needs in the broiling sun: cool, clear water.

I looked at my peers. No hierarchy existed among us, but one of our number, who we called “Real Deal,” stood out as our leader. He could out-booze and outwork all of us, and he had been “catching out” at the labor hall for 11 years — longer than anyone, even its managers. I knew that if Real Deal threw down his shovel, we’d all join in. If also knew that if I — the only white on the crew and a worker with frailties so notorious that I’d been nick-named “Pops” — did it, I’d be alone.

Real Deal had led a spontaneous rebellion on a construction site about a month before, and I knew he could do it again.

But for reasons I couldn’t discern, he didn’t throw down his shovel that morning. Maybe it was because the owner of the house had given him some Ibuprofen. Strong as he was, Real Deal’s back hurt, too.

The water cooler tale is one of the day-on-the-job stories — not exactly about class struggle! — that I tell in my book, Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers, which goes on sale Tuesday, February 16. Every page is about the daily life of the some two to three million men and women who go to labor halls — with names like Able Body and Labor Nation — each morning, hoping to “catch out,” or be dispatched to a job. Sometimes the jobs are good for six months, but more often, they last only a day or two.

I am a former reporter, now turned professor. I started my day labor career at 62, mainly because it looked to me like when I retire — if ever that day comes! — I’ll be a few dollars short. I’d done day labor when I was younger and I had enjoyed it because dispatchers had sent me onto sites and into shops and trades that I’d otherwise have never known. I’d have been ignorant about how blue-collar workers live, and as Marx said (though I can think of a few exceptions), “ignorance never helped anybody.”

By the time I finished two summers on my day labor crew, I knew that the notes I’d taken would make a book, and I believed it should be written. We as a nation waste millions of words a year on celebrities, sports stars, and lying politicians, but nobody had ever written a book about the lives of Americans like the honest, if sometimes unmanageable, men and women with whom I had spent working days.

I am now 64 and I think it’s prudent to presume that this will be my last book. It certainly will be the only one I write about day labor. Most manual workers develop either back or knee troubles, or both, in their 50s, and the result is that by 60, they hurt too much for strenuous tasks. I was able to join them thanks only to my relatively benign white-collar past. When my former labor peers turn 55 and 60, unless they can qualify for disability payments — only 40 percent of applicants do — they’ll will have to wait longer than me to retire, even to a precarious old age.

This is life in the United States, a country in which most people believe that manual labor is boring, repetitive, and unskilled, undeserving of handsome pay and company-sponsored old age programs. My book tells a lot of stories which I think are interesting in themselves, but if it has a message, it is only this: all of that stuff that people believe about blue-collar workers ain’t true.

[A native Texan, Dick J. Reavis teaches journalism at North Carolina State University. An award-winning journalist, educator and author, Reavis was active with SDS and the New Left in the Sixties. He wrote for Austin’s underground newspaper, The Rag, and later was a senior editor at Texas Monthly magazine. His book, The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation, about the siege and burning of the Branch Davidian compound, was published by Simon and Schuster and may be the definitive work on the subject. His latest book is Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers.

Dick will read from and sign copies of Catching Out at MonkeyWrench Books in Austin at 7 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 27, and at Sedition Books in Houston at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 28.]

Catching Out: The Secret World of Day Laborers by Dick J. Reavis; Simon & Schuster, $23.99; 352 pp.

Though a writer and English professor by trade, [Dick] Reavis found himself taking on the role of a day laborer to help supplement his retirement and savings. Appearing at the local labor hall to “catch out,” that is, get picked for a job, Reavis, who wrote about illegal immigrants in his first book, Without Documents, becomes one of the millions of Americans who work all manner of manual labor gigs and are, economically and socially, “living on the edge,” as he lugs boxes, digs ditches, and hauls debris with fellow workers.

Despite each of the jobs being unrelated, the book is held together by Reavis’s central focus on the plight of a working class that has no health insurance, for the most part must rely on others for transportation, and, in many cases, may not even have a home to return to at the end of a long day. Also to his benefit, Reavis allows his colleagues — hard drinkers like Real Deal, shirkers like Tommy, softies like Office Skills, and hard workers like Sung — to take center stage in his tales, which run the gamut from humorous to heartrending.

This ability to bring the small successes, daily struggles, and measured dreams of these “down-at-heels” working stiffs makes the book’s final chapter, in which Reavis outlines the legal and economic reforms needed to help day laborers get fair wages and treatment, overwhelmingly persuasive.

— Publisher’s Weekly / November 30, 2009

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Messina Earthquake of 1909 : The U.S. and the ‘Great White Fleet’

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

“The Great White Fleet” Comes to the rescue in Italy, 1909.

American ships, sailors and soldiers:
A history of sea power and disaster relief

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / February 14, 2010

America’s leading role in emergency assistance following last month’s devastating earthquake in Haiti and the huge numbers of U.S. Navy ships, sailors, and soldiers sent to help has been lauded worldwide.

But there is always one critical jackass who gets it all wrong and tries to take the good guys to task.

The jackass in this case is a well known Italian politician, Guido Bertolaso. He is Italy’s national civil defense director and their special envoy to Haiti. A few days after the Haiti quake Mr. Bertolaso made a quick visit and immediately issued scathing criticism of the effectiveness of the entire relief effort to the international press before his superiors could call him quickly back home.

He particularly singled out the U.S.-led efforts calling them a “pathetic” failure. His blistering remarks included an observation that America, “… when confronted by a situation of chaos, tends to confuse military intervention with what should be an emergency operation, which cannot be entrusted to the armed forces.”

You bet Guido. You seem to know even less about your own country’s history than many politicians your age here in America know about ours. The irony is that you must have missed reading about the big historic commemoration in Italy in 2009 recognizing relief efforts for a terrible Italian earthquake in 1909.

The huge celebration singled out America and its military for our help and generosity in Messina 100 years ago. You know, Messina, Guido, down in Southern Italy? Coverage of the celebration was in all the Italian newspapers.

So, here’s a quick history lesson for everyone about the effectiveness of the American military in earthquakes. I found a scholarly article by Prof. Jeff Matthews, an expat scholar, historian and teacher who has lived with his wife in Naples, Italy for decades. His English language, web based, “Around Naples Encyclopedia,” has a worldwide following.

His latest article, reprinted below, spurred me to report on this historic connection between today’s American military help in Haiti and our much earlier help in Italy.

Mr. Bertolaso’s own government has loudly denounced his wrong-headed criticisms of the USA. Perhaps they can get him to bone up on things like the history below. . . before he heads out again as their international envoy, civil defense expert and spokesperson.

American relief troops in Messina, Italy, 1908.

The Great White Fleet and the Messina earthquake

On July 27, 1909, the New York Times reported that “The first baby born in a new house in Messina was named Theodore Roosevelt Lloyd Belknap Palmieri!” This was Mr. & Mrs. Palmieri’s tribute to those American politicians and diplomats who had organized the relief effort in aid of the city of Messina, Italy, devastated by a powerful earthquake on the morning of December 28, 1908.

The quake killed about 60,000 people and destroyed much of the city. (Some estimates of the number of dead are as high as 200,000.) In the months following the quake, U.S. aid was considerable and — to explain the “new house” in the above quote — included the building of 1,500 frame houses. The rest of the name: Teddy Roosevelt was U.S. president at the time of the quake; Lloyd C. Griscom was the U.S. ambassador to Italy; and Reginald Rowan Belknap was the US Naval Attaché in Italy. [See American House Building In Messina And Reggio: An Account Of The American Naval And Red Cross Combined Expedition (1910) by Reginald Rowen Belknap, pub. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York and London.]

One of 1,500 sturdy wooden frame homes built in Messina with U.S. aid.

The early aid was immediate and direct. It came in the form of ships from the U.S. Great White Fleet, which was circumnavigating the globe and, at the time of the quake, found itself in the “home stretch,” as it were, of a cruise of 43,000 miles — 16 modern warships, employing 15,000 men — in a brash display of young U.S. sea power.

The cruise lasted from December 1907 through February 1909 and was under the command of Admiral Charles S. Sperry. The Great White Fleet went from Hampton Roads, Virgina, around South America and up to San Francisco; then, across the Pacific to Australia, the Philippines and Japan, and then across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, west across the Mediterranean, through the Straits of Gibraltar and back home across the Atlantic.

The fleet was in Egypt when it received news of the Messina earthquake. The flagship, Connecticut, with support vessels, arrived in Messina on January 9, 1909, with thousands of pounds of food, medicine and temporary shelters for survivors. About 17,000 persons were pulled from the rubble, their lives saved by the heroic efforts of the combined search and rescue crews of the U.S. ships and of vessels of other nations that were near Messina at the time of the quake.

The U.S. ships docked at the port of Naples during operations, and their presence is noted in the January issues of il Mattino, the Naples daily newspaper. The fleet stayed until late January and then left for home. In January, 2009, 100 years after the fact, ceremonies were held in Messina to commemorate the international effort that helped the city through the tragedy. I really do wonder what happened to Theodore Roosevelt Lloyd Belknap Palmieri. I hope he had a fine life.

— Jeff Matthews / Around Naples Encyclopedia

[Retired journalist Larry Ray is a Texas native and former Austin television news anchor. He also posts at The iHandbill.]

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Marc Estrin: Hearts and Minds : A Valentine’s Day Love Offensive

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Israeli school children are shown writing messages on shells meant for targets in Lebanon. The incident took place July 17, 2006, near the northern Israeli border. The messages reportedly included hearts, a star of David, and the words “From Israel with Love.” Photo from AFP.

Hearts and flowers, hearts and minds:
Valentine’s Day love offensive

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / February 14, 2010

Today is February 14th, so let me wish you a happy Firebombing of Dresden Day… whoops, no, I meant to say Valentine’s Day, and I hope you all have sent your sweeties messages that will win over their hearts and minds.

That’s what this lovely young Israeli girl is doing for her Lebanese friends. “From Israel with love,” she is writing. That’s what Gen. Stanley McChrystal is currently doing in Marjah as you read. His 15,000 troops have blocked off all roads so that no messages will get lost, and pre-valentines have been dropped instructing the population not to try leaving.

The idea behind this largest love-offensive in a decade is to win the hearts and minds of the local Afghanis, so that the Taliban can be replaced with democratic leaders sent in from Kabul. Even Hallmark couldn’t match that.

And speaking of Dresden, I’m sure many of you have read Kurt Vonnegut’s masterpiece, Slaughterhouse Five. If not, grab a copy right away. You won’t forget it. It’s a riot.

But even Kurt — who was there — didn’t really understand why all those people were getting burned and suffocated to death. An excellent article backgrounding the affair appeared recently on the Global Research website.

It seems there was almost no military necessity for this enormous operation by February, 1945. Rather, the barbarous wiping out of the population was directed at our allies, the Soviets, to warn them not to get too uppity with their post-war victor claims. The Russkis needed to witness the application of this kind of air-strike by the US and Britain which could just as easily be turned on them.

Six months later, the US alone would put on a similar show at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cover story would be the same — we need to do this to end the war — like the massive final blasting at our own fireworks displays. But the real story (victims aside) was to intimidate our Soviet friends with our love-power and solidarity.

Hearts and flowers, hearts and minds. May our beloveds beware.

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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VERSE / Larry Piltz : You Asked Us To Believe

Posted on February 14, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

“Library” by Bernard Zackheim, 1933. Detail from a mural at the Coit Tower in San Francisco. It was part of a series of murals produced under the auspices of the New Deal’s Public Works Art Project. The massive effort stirred up controversy due to the inclusion by some of the 26 participating artists of what were interpreted as leftist images.

You Asked Us To Believe
(Oh Yes You Can)

Fear Wins read the headlines
on the papers on the windows
as the sun rose on the anger
of a nation at the headlines

Where’s the savior who’s in favor
of the humans and the being
and the freeing of the nation
from the bread lines and their danger

There’s a moment in the waiting
in the hoping amid the wondering
when time turns into motion
into the surge of a mighty ocean

Hear me now
you asked us to believe
in something more
than what we thought we could achieve
so we carried you
right through that open door
into the sun
now please don’t make us grieve
that open door
we can do more
you asked us to believe
we can do more
so hear me now
oh yes you can
oh yes we can
we can do more

It’s been an eon in the making
and we’re tired of fear and quaking
when time stops but for its moment
to observe just what will foment
what will you do for the people
you of the people
you by the people
will you mount up
or preach a sermon
when the people
are called vermin
cause they’re hungry
and they’re desperate
will your peace
be one that’s separate

There’s a champion in the headlines
in the bread lines in the life lines
with a deadline and a dateline
but whose dream will be the byline
will Love Wins read the headlines
in the sunshine will it be mine
and the nation’s claim to glory
when history writes its story

So hear us now
you made the world believe
in something more
that it’s dreamt it can achieve
we’ll carry you
push right on through that door
it can be done
so help us celebrate
that open door
we can do more
oh yes you can
oh yes we can
you’ve helped us to believe
we can do more
Oh yes you can
Oh yes we can
right through that open door
we can do more
Oh yes we can

Larry Piltz / The Rag Blog

Indian Cove
Austin, Texas
February 13, 2010

[Note: This poem is a song.
Anyone capable of helping
get it produced and recorded
please speak up in the comments.
Thanks. – L.P.]

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The Christian Right : Our Founding Fathers Would be Appalled

Posted on February 13, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

George Washington, the Father of our Country, is memorialized in marble — totally ready to toga — on the U.S. Capitol grounds (circa 1899). The statue is now in the Smithsonian. Photo from the Library of Congress / Boston College Magazine.

Today’s Christian fundamentalists would have
Despised Washington, Franklin, and crew

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / February 13, 2010

“God made the idiot for practice, and then He made the school board.” —Mark Twain

Tomorrow’s New York Times Sunday Magazine highlights yet another mob of extremists using the Texas school board to baptize our children’s textbooks.

This endless, ever-angry escalating assault on our Constitution by crusading theocrats could be obliterated with the effective incantation of two names: Benjamin Franklin, and Deganawidah.

But first, let’s do some history:

  1. Actual Founder-Presidents #2 through #6 — John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe and John Quincy Adams — were all freethinking Deists and Unitarians; what Christian precepts they embraced were moderate, tolerant, and open-minded.

  2. Actual Founder-President #1, George Washington, became an Anglican as required for original military service under the British, and occasionally quoted scripture. But he vehemently opposed any church-state union. In a 1790 letter to the Jews of Truro, he wrote: The “Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistances, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.” A 1796 treaty he signed says “the government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” Washington rarely went to church and by some accounts refused last religious rites.

  3. Washington was also the nation’s leading brewer, and since most Americans drank much beer (water could be lethal in the cities) they regularly trembled before the keg, not the altar. Like Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, virtually all American farmers raised hemp and its variations.

  4. Jefferson produced a personal Bible from which he edited out all reference to the “miraculous” from the life of Jesus, whom he considered both an activist and a mortal.

  5. Tom Paine’s Common Sense sparked the Revolution with nary a mention of Jesus or Christianity. His Deist Creator established the laws of Nature, endowed humans with Free Will, then left.

  6. The Constitution never mentions the words “Christian” or “Jesus” or “Christ.”

  7. Revolutionary America was filled with Christians whose commitment to toleration and diversity was completely adverse to the violent, racist, misogynist, anti-sex theocratic Puritans whose “City on the Hill” meant a totalitarian state. Inspirational preachers like Rhode Island’s Roger Williams and religious groups like the Quakers envisioned a nation built on tolerance and love for all.

  8. The U.S. was founded less on Judeo-Christian beliefs than on the Greco-Roman love for dialog and reason. There are no contemporary portraits of any Founder wearing a crucifix or church garb. But Washington was famously painted half-naked in the buff toga of the Roman Republic, which continues to inspire much of our official architecture.

  9. The great guerrilla fighter (and furniture maker) Ethan Allen was an aggressive atheist; his beliefs were common among the farmers, sailors, and artisans who were the backbone of Revolutionary America.

  10. America’s most influential statesman, thinker, writer, agitator, publisher, citizen-scientist and proud liberal libertine was — and remains — Benjamin Franklin. He was at the heart of the Declaration, Constitution, and Treaty of Paris ending the Revolution. The ultimate Enlightenment icon, Franklin’s Deism embraced a pragmatic love of diversity. As early America’s dominant publisher he, Paine, and Jefferson printed the intellectual soul of the new nation.

  11. Franklin deeply admired the Ho-de-no-sau-nee (Iroquois) Confederacy of what’s now upstate New York. Inspired by the legendary peacemaker Deganawidah, this democratic congress of five tribes had worked “better than the British Parliament” for more than two centuries. It gave us the model for our federal structure and the images of freedom and equality that inspired both the French and American Revolutions.

It’s no accident today’s fundamentalist crusaders and media bloviators (Rev. Limbaugh, St. Beck) seek to purge our children’s texts of all native images except as they are being forceably converted or killed.

Today’s fundamentalists would have DESPISED the actual Founders. Franklin’s joyous, amply reciprocated love of women would evoke their limitless rage. Jefferson’s paternities with his slave mistress Sally Hemings, Paine’s attacks on the priesthood, Hamilton’s bastardly philandering, the grassroots scorn for organized religion — all would draw howls of righteous right-wing rage.

Which may be why theocratic fundamentalists are so desperate to sanitize and fictionalize what’s real about our history.

God forbid our children should know of American Christians who embraced the Sermon on the Mount and renounced the Book of Revelations… or natives who established democracy on American soil long before they saw the first European… or actual Founders who got drunk, high, and laid on their way to writing the Constitution.

Faith-based tyranny is anti-American. So are dishonest textbooks. It’s time to fight them both.

[Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with Passions of the Potsmoking Patriots by “Thomas Paine.” This article is written in honor of the spirit of Howard Zinn.]

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Report : Skyrocketing Profits for Big Insurance Companies

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Photo by Tanya J. Harding from stock.xchng.

Report: Big insurance companies out of control

The top five insurers made $12 billion in profits last year, while dropping coverage for 2.7 million people.

By Chris Frates / February 12, 2010

With health reform floundering, Democrats have renewed their attacks on the insurance industry and they hope that a new report out yesterday will bolster their case that insurance company practices need to be reigned in. The report finds that the top five largest for-profit insurance companies increased their profits by $12.2 billion last year while dropping coverage for 2.7 million Americans.

As a group, WellPoint, Aetna, UnitedHealth Group, Humana, and Cigna saw their profits jump 56 percent in 2009, up $4.4 billion over the previous year, according to the report. Four out of five companies saw profits increase while insuring fewer people. Cigna increased earnings by 346 percent while UnitedHealth shed 1.7 million beneficiaries. Aetna, which increased its membership and percentage of premiums spent on medical care, was the only company to see less income in 2009 than 2008.

“Increasing your profits, dropping people is a specific corporate strategy,” said Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now, the progressive coalition that prepared the report. “What the big health insurance companies do to please Wall Street denies affordable health insurance to millions of Americans, millions more Americans every year.”

The report comes as the Obama administration and House Democratic leadership have seized on Anthem Blue Cross’ decision to raise rates by up to 39 percent in California. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius wrote a letter to Anthem this week asking them to justify their rate hike and House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman announced that his committee will hold a hearing on increases this month.

Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the industry trade group, America’s Health Insurance Plans, said that for every dollar spent on health care, less than a penny goes to health insurers’ profits, which are below other health care industries.

“According to new government data, in 2009 the portion of premiums that went towards administrative costs declined for the second year in a row, while spending on hospitals, physicians, and prescription drugs continued to soar. The real focus needs to be on the increase in the underlying cost of medical care, which is putting health care coverage out of reach for many families and small businesses,” he said.

But Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) isn’t buying that explanation.

“They’re going to try to hide behind the actuaries to tell us the increases are justified, but you have to remember these are the same insurers that for months have been manufacturing reports claiming that health insurance reform will cause them to raise premiums,” she said. “The fact is they can’t have it both ways.”

Source / Politico

Thanks to S.M. Wilhelm / The Rag Blog

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BOOKS / ‘The New Class Society : Goodbye American Dream?’

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer


New Class Society:
Making class analysis relevant

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / February 12, 2010

I am using a text by Robert Perrucci and Earl Wysong called New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream? (Rowman and Littlefield, 2008) in a course called “The Politics of Capital and Labor.” The authors review and synthesize a variety of definitions of class from political theory and sociology.

Their answer to the question of what is class draws upon Marxian notions of relations of production, Max Weber’s ideas about persons in various organizational positions, and the more conventional view of class as relating to the distribution of income, wealth, and power.

Using data reflecting their synthetic definition of class, the authors conclude that the portrait of a U.S. class system consisting of a small ruling class, a large “middle class,” and a small percentage of economically and politically marginalized people is no longer an accurate way to describe society. The class system of the days of relative prosperity from the 1940s until the late 1960s, which looked like a diamond with a broad middle, has become like a class system looking like a “double diamond.”

In this new class society, the first diamond, the top one, consists of the “privileged class” composed of a “super-class,” “credentialed class managers,” and “professionals.” All together these representatives of privilege constitute about 20 percent of the population. All the others constitute a “new working class,” some living in relative comfort but most engaged in wage labor, modest self-employment, or part-time work. This is the second diamond representing 80 percent of the population.

Students in my course have been debating some of the formulations but certain elements of the text have been uniformly accepted by them. First, everyone seems to accept the double-diamond metaphor as a way of conceptualizing the distribution of wealth, income, and power.

Those in the top diamond representing privilege are relatively assured that their sources of income and wealth are permanent. Their sustenance and family stability are assured while the other 80 percent, the model suggests, live economically marginal existences and in conditions of precariousness.

My students raise no objections about what Perrucci and Wysong regard as broadly accepted features of this new class system.

First, since the 1970s, there has been increasing class polarization. Gaps in distributions of wealth and income have grown. Real wages of workers have stagnated since the 1970s. In addition, workplace benefits have declined, including pensions. Permanent jobs have been replaced by contingent labor. The percentage of unionization of the work force has declined by two-thirds.

The authors cite a recent study that estimates that only one-fourth of jobs today are “good jobs,” paying at least $16 an hour. And, on the other hand, the share of income and wealth accumulated by the top one percent or 10 percent or 20 percent, the entire privileged class, has risen. The rich have gotten richer while the poor poorer.

Second, since the 1980s, workers and their families have experienced downward mobility, that is their social and economic position has declined. This has occurred because stable, well paying jobs have disappeared due to outsourcing, capital flight, and deindustrialization. By any number of measures, the “American Dream” of helping one’s children to move up the status ladder has been reversed.

Third, the increasing accumulation of wealth and power through tax cuts, deregulation of financialization, and declining government support for public services have encouraged the privileged to embark on class secession.

Increasingly, the authors suggest, the privileged class withdraws its support for public institutions as it funds its own private schools, libraries, recreational facilities, and additional social services. The rich build gated communities, electrify their fences, hire private guards to protect themselves, and create private institutions to replace public ones.

The authors refer to Robert Reich’s “secession of the successful” which they say “combines traditional forms of physical and social separation and increasing numbers of privately provided services with the ideology of neoliberalism, an idea system of free market fundamentalism that encourages and legitimates hostility to public institutions.” They conclude that “class secession today involves both a separatist social identity and a conscious secessionistic mentality.”

The findings reported in The New Class Society about class in America are profound. Long-term trends in the United States since the 1970s have led to growing wealth and power at one pole and increasing immiseration at the other pole. The idea of a broad middle class is further away from reality than ever.

For the vast majority of Americans economic security is declining. And, most important, the privileged class, which has built its wealth and power on the growing immiseration of the new working class, is physically, financially, and ideologically seceding from the system that historically claimed to provide at least some institutional support for enrichment of the citizenry at large.

The authors also present data to show how the brutality of the new class society particularly impacts on people of color, women, immigrants, and other traditionally marginalized people.

While the task of my course is to study the underlying fundamental features of American society, particularly those bearing on political economy, the implications of this analysis for practical political work seem obvious.

First, progressives need to “make class analysis relevant to our organizing.” This includes educating ourselves and those we work with about the ways in which society is divided into classes based upon how people are related to the workplace, the status and power of workers in different organizational positions, the distribution of wealth and income in society and the history of class in America.

Our educational work must show how class relates to race, gender and the environment. In the end we must construct a compelling vision for the abolition of our class divided society.

Second, progressives must articulate in every political setting those experiences of class that vast majorities of the people share.

Years ago Harry Braverman, in Labor and Monopoly Capital demonstrated that work was being transformed by the capitalist system; that patterns of control of the minds and actions of workers were being increasingly controlled by a deepening division of labor, and that the work process, whether white collar or blue collar, service or manufacturing, was being homogenized. He and others called this process of work transformation, “proletarianization.”

This historic development argues for a political strategy that prioritizes education about the growing commonality of work experience of those in the bottom 80 percent of the work force.

Third, progressives must articulate programs of education and action that seek to deepen understanding of barriers to solidarity resulting from race, gender, and even political ideology. Progressives must be more mindful of the different experiences of class in America, such as the historic role of slavery and immigrant labor, super-exploitation of African Americans and women, and ethnic discrimination.

The articulation of the different experiences of class through race and gender should be used to broaden understanding of how those differences were used to increase class exploitation of all those in the majority.

Fourth, progressives should began to analyze the ways in which many of the new right wing “tea party” activists share a common experience of class. Education and advocacy must more clearly be based upon an understanding of the common interests privileged class Republicans and Democrats share and the reality of interests shared by the new working class majority.

In the end there is no substitute for building what activists used to call “class consciousness.” The realities of class exploitation, as Perrucci and Wysong suggest, seem more obvious than ever. They just need to become a central element of our political discourse.

[Harry Tarq is a professor in American Studies who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical.]

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Texas State University : Escalate the Peace!

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Bobby Whittenberg, Iraq Vet, at Escalate the Peace! rally, Texas State University in San Marcos, Wednesday, February 10. Photo by Alice Embree / The Rag Blog.

Escalate the Peace!
San Marcos demonstrators rally in the sleet

By Alice Embree / The Rag Blog / February 12, 2010

Neither sleet nor drizzle deterred a scheduled antiwar rally on the Texas State University (TSU) Campus in San Marcos on Wednesday, February 10. In the courtyard of the LBJ Amphitheatre, speakers used bullhorns to talk about Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Palestine under a banner that read, “Escalate the Peace!”

The rally was organized by two TSU student organizations, the Campus Antiwar Movement to End the Occupations (CAMEO) and the Progressive Bobcats Union (PBU).

Speakers included Rev. Jim Rigby from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin and Bobby Whittenberg, an antiwar activist who was deployed to Iraq as a Marine. Courtney Glenn, one of the rally organizers, read a poem about returning soldiers. Caitlin Eaves spoke about Yemen. Liz Welch read a passage from Howard Zinn about why we should never lose hope.

I spoke about the Vietnam-era antiwar movement and about the current GI coffeehouse, Under the Hood Café, in Killeen, Texas. These lines from Courtney Glenn’s poem stayed with me:

We are the disorder
with our mislabeled freedom,
our cannon songs,
our flags of blood.

You are the fodder
for rhetoric
and I will exchange
gratitude for
apology

Today’s antiwar movement is often compared with the Vietnam era. But, the comparison usually conjures up 1968 images. On Wednesday, I watched the sleet bounce off the coat of a speaker and remembered what it felt like in 1964 to be among 20 students demanding a negotiated peace in Vietnam.

I was proud to be there with this small and dedicated group, protesting the wars that seem to morph without end, proud that women were speakers and organizers in ways that were uncommon in 1964, proud to see the familiar faces of veterans I know from the Killeen coffeehouse.

In the words of Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

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Sarah Palin : Popularity Dropping Like a Rock

Posted on February 12, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer


She may still be a good story
But Palin’s poll numbers keep going south

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / February 12, 2010

The teabaggers, Republican right-wingers, political pundits, and media talking heads seemed determined to keep Sarah Palin relevant, and an important figure on the American political scene. For the media talking heads, she is a good story since few people are noncommittal about Palin — you either like her or hate her.

Three TV networks even carried her speech to the sham teabagger convention a few days ago (although I doubt that many Americans watched). The media seems to think that Palin actually makes politics interesting, and they don’t want her to go away because then they would be reduced to covering only boring real politicians — whom the American public really won’t take much interest in for another couple of years.

The political pundits basically have the same interest as the media talking heads. They know a column about Palin will get readers — even those who hate her will read the column. Whereas, a column about Mitt Romney or some other semi-competent politician will not get nearly the readership. Therefore, they go out of their way to try and convince readers that Palin is popular and actually has a chance to be elected to something again.

As for the teabaggers and right-wing Republicans, they are just trying to remain relevant themselves. They have to appeal to the Palin-bots, because they make up a large part of the base for both groups and without them they would wither into insignificance. The teabaggers have little connection to reality, but I think most Republicans know Palin is not a real possibility as a candidate — they just can’t say that out loud without angering a large part of their base.

But regardless of how hard the teabaggers, Republicans, pundits and media personalities try to keep Palin relevant to the national political scene, the American people aren’t buying it. With each month that goes by, fewer people have a favorable opinion of Sarah Palin. As the chart above shows, Palin’s popularity is dropping like a rock(and has been dropping since September of 2008).

According to Washington Post/ABC News polls, back in September 2008 Palin had a favorability rating of nearly 60%. At that time, she was new on the national political scene and the public knew very little about her. But as the public learned more, her favorability rating has dropped in every poll taken since then.

According to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll, taken after her nationally televised speech, her popularity is still declining. Currently, 37% of Americans view her favorably (the lowest of any poll so far) and 55% of Americans view her unfavorably (a clear majority, even considering the 3% margin of error).

But it gets even worse for Palin. That’s because about 30% of those who view her favorably don’t think she is qualified to be president. Only 26% of Americans believe she is qualified, while a full 71% say she is not qualified. These numbers are also going in the wrong direction for Palin (back in November 2009 38% said she was qualified and 60% said she wasn’t).

The powers that be may still be touting the viability of a Palin candidacy, but the American people are simply not buying it.

[Rag Blog contributor Ted McLaughlin also posts at jobsanger.]

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Marc Estrin : Happy Birthday, Bertolt Brecht

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Bertolt Brecht, 1948. Photo from Deutsches Bundesarchiv / Wikimedia Commons.

Of Poor B.B.:
Bertolt Brecht speaks from the grave

By Marc Estrin / The Rag Blog / February 11, 2010

[German playwright, poet, and theatrical director Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898, and died August 14, 1956.]

Bertolt Brecht lies in his grave. The alarm goes off and off. Time to get up again. Evil-doing comes like falling rain. Get up. We need you.

In the grey light before morning the pine trees piss
And their vermin, the birds, raise their twitter and cheep.
At that hour in the city I drain my glass, then throw
My cigar butt away and worriedly go to sleep.

No, up. Not sleep. Get up. It’s time. Fifteen days the rain is falling. The birds have stopped their cheeping. Cheep, BB, cheep at least. Twitter. Piss. Someone will hear. Someone will understand. Here’s my crust of bread. Eat, BB, eat, then speak. Get up and speak.

Like one whose blood flows from a wound and who awaits the doctor: his blood goes on flowing. So do we come forward and report that evil has been done.

Yes! Good. Come forward. Report. Report on the good times that starve the millions and poison the world.

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out ‘stop!’

Stop! (My voice is small.) Stop!

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.

And rain also in winter. And the tree limbs snap, and the wires break, and people huddle under what blankets they have, and the circus band blares out its tunes, and some there cackle and others smirk. I am discouraged, BB. What will become of us?

Of those cities will remain what passed through them, the wind!

And then? When it all comes crashing to the ground, what then? What shall we do?

— Remember:
Hatred, even of baseness
Contorts the features.
Anger, even against injustice
Makes the voice hoarse. Even we,
Who wanted to prepare the ground for friendliness
Could not ourselves be friendly.

Bertolt Brecht wrote poems and essays and plays. He spoke up for the poor. He said, “First, people have to be able to feed their faces — then they can think about morality.” He was number one on Hitler’s hit list. We need his voice today.

Here — from the grave — is what he says:

Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the COURAGE to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the KEENNESS to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the SKILL to manipulate it as a weapon; the JUDGMENT to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the CUNNING to spread the truth among such persons.” – Bertolt Brecht, Five Difficulties in Writing the Truth

[Marc Estrin is a writer and activist, living in Burlington, Vermont. His novels, Insect Dreams, The Half Life of Gregor Samsa, The Education of Arnold Hitler, Golem Song, and The Lamentations of Julius Marantz have won critical acclaim. His memoir, Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread & Puppet Theater (with Ron Simon, photographer) won a 2004 theater book of the year award. He is currently working on a novel about the dead Tchaikovsky.]

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Harvey Wasserman : Vermont’s Radioactive Nightmare

Posted on February 11, 2010 by Thorne Dreyer

Image from This Week in Nuclear.

Radioactive fallout:
Vermont Yankee one of 27 U.S. reactors
Known to leak carcinogenic tritium

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / February 11, 2010

Like a decayed flotilla of rickety steamers, at least 27 of America’s 104 aging atomic reactors are known to be leaking radioactive tritium, which is linked to cancer if inhaled or ingested through the throat or skin.

The fallout has been fiercest at Vermont Yankee, where a flood of cover-ups has infuriated and terrified near neighbors who say the reactor was never meant to operate more than 30 years, and must now shut.

In 2007 one of Yankee’s 22 cooling towers simply collapsed due to rot.

Now the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has confirmed tritium levels in a monitoring well at Vernon to be 3.5 times the federal safety standard. The leaks apparently came from underground pipes whose very existence was recently denied by VY officials in under-oath testimony at a public hearing. Vermont’s pro-nuclear Republican Governor Jim Douglas has termed the event “a breach of trust that cannot be tolerated.”

Yankee is owned by Entergy, a Mississippi-based consortium that also owns New York’s Indian Point reactor, which suffered an internal gusher of radioactive water in May, 2009. Another leak has just been found at Oconee in South Carolina. Illinois’ Braidwood leaked so many millions of gallons of tritium-laced water that its owner, Exelon, was forced to buy a new municipal water system for a nearby town.

Entergy says none of Yankee’s tritium has been found in local drinking water or in the Connecticut River, which supplies the plant’s cooling water. Vernon sits near Vermont’s southeast border with Massachusetts, across the river from New Hampshire. “The existence of tritium in such low levels does not present a risk to public health or safety whatsoever,” says the company’s Robert Williams.

But VY is just the latest of more than two dozen U.S. nuclear plants — many built in the 1960s and ’70s — to be found with leaking tritium.

Last year at New Jersey’s Oyster Creek, tritium was reported leaking a second time shortly after Exelon got it a 20-year license extension. Entergy’s Pilgrim reactor, at Plymouth, Massachusetts, has recently leaked tritium into the ground.

The NRC’s Neil Sheehan has confirmed leaks involving 27 of 104 licensed U.S. reactors, and says that probably doesn’t account for all of them. At Yankee, Oyster Creek and elsewhere, rotting pipes are the likeliest culprit, but no one is 100% certain.

The epidemic has escalated public dismay. Vermont state Representative Tony Klein, chair of House Natural Resources and Energy Committee, says that “when you have public officials that the public depends on for their health and welfare making casual statements that a radioactive substance is not harmful to you, I think that’s ludicrous.”

For decades the Encylopedia Britannica, National Academy of Sciences and other primary scientific bodies have confirmed that no dose of radiation, no matter how small, can ever be deemed perfectly safe. “There is no threshold of exposure below which low levels of ionizing radiation can be demonstrated to be harmless or beneficial,” says Richard R. Monson, associate dean for professional education and professor of epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Thus far the NRC has granted a series of license renewals to aging reactors. But by virtue of a long-standing agreement with Entergy, the Vermont Legislature can deny Yankee’s request for a 20-year extension. In the 1990s local groups like the Citizen’s Awareness Network helped force down the Yankee Rowe plant on the Deerfield River in Massachusetts, about 25 miles southwest of Vernon. The root cause was concern over embrittlement of the elderly reactor’s core, a key to the future of all other aging nukes.

In Vermont, angry debate has also arisen over Entergy’s dwindling decommissioning fund, which has been slashed by a declining stock market. Entergy has proposed spinning off plant ownership to a shell corporation whose assets may be even more dubious. But area residents also fear Entergy may be pushing Yankee operations in an attempt to find the source of its leaks.

With VY operating under duress, Katz and others report an increasing wave of concern among local citizens starting to think seriously about how they might evacuate if Entergy keeps pushing. “This plant appears to be leaking from its reactor piping, but they don’t really know where,” she says. “They don’t want to shut down because they’re afraid they’ll never get back up. Entergy is choosing to protect its bottom line rather than the health and safety of our community.”

Indeed, a desperate national industry now pushing for massive federal subsidies to build new reactors may not survive a flood of elderly clunkers being forced to close by the weight of their own contamination. “This is an industry trying to build a new fleet of Titanics while the old ones are sinking,” says Katz.

Amidst the gusher of tritium leaks, Governor Douglas wants to postpone the legislature’s vote on VY’s license extension. But his term expires in November, and all five Democratic gubernatorial candidates are pledged to a Yankee shutdown.

What happens next will be defined by fierce grassroots activism crashing into a flood of corporate money in support of a rickety old reactor being operated with increasing recklessness.

The highly hyped “reactor renaissance” — and much more — may hang in the balance. Stay tuned.

[Harvey Wasserman is Senior Advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, and Senior Editor of www.freepress.org, where this article also appears. His Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth is at www.harveywasserman.com.]

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