The Rag Blog

The Individual Mandate : Unconstitutional, and an Alarming Precedent

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Health insurance: The individual mandate. Illustration from Slate.
Going too far?
Health care reform and the individual mandate

If Congress gets away with this, there is no stopping point and Big Business will have succeeded in making Americans into involuntary consumers whenever it so chooses.

By Sheldon H. Laskin / December 21, 2009

It is generally agreed, by both proponents and opponents of the administration’s health reform bill, that the linchpin of the legislation is the individual mandate requiring uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance, or pay a penalty on their tax return for failing to do so.

Without the mandate, even the Administration’s wildly exaggerated cost savings estimates simply cannot work. The whole plan is predicated on enlarging the risk pool by bringing in younger, healthier people who currently lack the means or the incentive — or both — to purchase health insurance.

Given the centrality of the mandate, it is somewhat surprising that little attention has been paid to the critical legal question of whether Congress has the constitutional authority to require Americans to purchase a commodity from a private, for-profit corporation.

Other than some limited commentary on the Right — George Will and Orrin Hatch both had columns on this topic in the Washington Post and the Heritage Foundation recently published a detailed legal analysis of the question — there has been almost no critical discussion of the issue. The silence on this issue is even more amazing in view of the fact that the Congressional Budget Office raised a red flag on the question during the Clinton Administration’s abortive effort at health care reform:

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.

(Congressional Budget Office, The Budgetary Treatment of an Individual Mandate to Buy Health Insurance,1994.)

Unlike the states, Congress cannot enact any law even if doing so would foster public safety and health. Under our federal system of government, Congress can only enact laws that are of a type authorized by a provision of Article I of the Constitution, which sets forth the powers of Congress. Proponents of the individual mandate typically cite the Commerce Clause of the Constitution as granting Congress the authority to require individual Americans to purchase health insurance.

Article I, Clause 8, Section 3 of the Constitution grants Congress the power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” Therefore, in order for Congress to have the authority to require Americans to purchase health insurance, the purchase of health insurance must constitute “commerce” within the meaning of the Commerce Clause. It does not.

In 1982, the Supreme Court declared that, in order for a commodity to be considered an article in commerce, it must be capable of being sold. Sporhase v. Nebraska, 458 U.S. 941 at 949 — 950 (1982). While there is no doubt that the sale of health insurance by an insurer constitutes commerce, it does not follow that the purchase — or more precisely, the failure to purchase — health insurance by a consumer also constitutes commerce. Health insurance, once purchased by a consumer, is not capable of being further sold in commerce because there is no market for it; who would purchase a health insurance policy naming someone else as the insured?

In order to understand the point better, it might be helpful to contrast health insurance with life insurance. Because paid-up life insurance has a cash value, an industry has developed in purchasing life insurance benefits from terminally ill patients. Known as viatical settlement companies, they will pay a percentage of the value of an insurance policy to a terminally ill patient if the corporation is named as the beneficiary of the policy. The patient gets the cash up front, to pay medical bills or to support his family, and the corporation makes a profit on its investment when the insured dies.

Because there is a market for life insurance benefits, the purchase of those benefits may be regulated under the Commerce Clause to make sure that the patient is not coerced by the Tony Soprano Benevolent Society to name it as beneficiary. But there is no market for health insurance benefits once the policy is issued. No one would buy my health insurance, because no one other than I can derive any benefit from it.

Since there is no market, health insurance is not an article of commerce once issued. If it is not an article of Commerce, Congress lacks authority under the Commerce Clause to require me to purchase it.

There are two Supreme Court cases that proponents of the individual mandate often cite in support of their position that Congress may require individuals to purchase health insurance. The first case involved government regulation of the amount of acreage used by farmers to grow wheat. A farmer who was fined for exceeding his acreage allotment challenged the fine, asserting that since he was using the excess acreage for personal consumption (he used it either to feed his chickens or to make bread for his family), Congress lacked authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate that excess acreage.

The Court rejected this argument, pointing out that even wheat grown for personal consumption is marketable and that therefore the farmer’s excess acreage affected the supply and demand for wheat in interstate commerce. Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 at 137 (1942).

Using similar reasoning, the Supreme Court recently affirmed congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to regulate the production and use of marijuana as applied to individuals who personally use marijuana for medicinal purposes under state laws that legalize such use. Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1 (2005). Again, Congress had commerce clause authority to regulate personal consumption in this context because marijuana for home consumption is “a fungible commodity for which there is an established, albeit illegal, interstate market.” 545 U.S. at 18.

Unlike wheat or marijuana, health insurance is not a fungible commodity and is therefore not marketable. Again, no one would purchase my health insurance — it is personal to me and cannot be sold for any price.

Finally, proponents of the mandate often cite the fact that states require drivers to purchase auto insurance as justifying a federal individual mandate for health insurance. This is a facile comparison that ignores the constitutional differences between federal and state authority to regulate.

As noted above, Congress can only legislate when there is a specific provision of Article I of the Constitution that authorizes it to enact that type of law. Conversely, the states have virtually unlimited legislative authority to pass laws that foster the public welfare, health and safety.

Driving is a privilege, and the states are free to impose any reasonable condition on the exercise of that privilege that they choose. In any event, the states have limited the auto insurance requirement to the purchase of liability insurance to cover injuries sustained by third parties. No state requires drivers to purchase insurance to cover their own injuries.

For single-payer advocates, a very powerful argument is that, while the individual mandate to purchase private health insurance is unconstitutional, Congress can lawfully tax to support a government financed health insurance program. Article I empowers Congress to use its taxing powers in support of government programs that foster the public welfare; this is the constitutional authority for Social Security and Medicare. But to extend that authority to requiring Americans to purchase a private commodity raises profound civil liberties issues.

If Congress can compel the purchase of insurance from a for profit insurance company, it can compel the purchase of any commodity if there is an arguable public policy to support it. The auto industry is collapsing? Forget Cash for Clunkers, just order Americans to buy cars or tax them if they don’t. Obesity crisis? Order Americans to join health clubs, or tax them if they don’t. If Congress gets away with this, there is no stopping point and Big Business will have succeeded in making Americans into involuntary consumers whenever it so chooses.

[Sheldon H. Laskin is an attorney who has appeared before the United States Supreme Court. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Tax Program at the University of Baltimore Law School. Mr. Laskin specializes in state tax cases under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.]

Source / AfterDowningStreet

Thanks to David Swanson / The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Big Business, Congress, Constitutional Law, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Individual Mandate | 5 Comments

Legalized Loan Sharks : Usury With Fangs

Posted on December 21, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

“Shark Attack,” pen and ink illustration by Tom Grady / Pulse.
The spoils of credit card ‘reform’:
Unregulated interest rates skyrocket

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 21, 2009

According to the Oxford American Desk Dictionary, the definition of a “loan shark” is a person who lends money at exorbitant rates of interest. Earlier in our history, most loan sharks were underworld figures making illegal loans. If you weren’t able to pay the loan back, you ran the risk of some broken bones. It was a very lucrative business for the mob.

But that was before the financial institutions realized just how much money they were missing out on by not engaging in loan sharking. Today, the mob has been replaced by so-called “legal” financial institutions.

For many years, this was kept somewhat in check by state laws that limited yearly interest rates to 35-42%. That still sounds like loan sharking to me, but at least there was a limit. However, in 1980 the United States Congress proved their fealty to corporate financial interests by passing the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act.

This law exempted federally chartered savings banks, installment plan sellers and chartered loan companies from having to obey state usury laws and limits. And since there is no federal usury limit, that meant there was no longer a limit on what interest rates could be charged.

Since then then interest rates have steadily crept up. This is especially true of the credit card companies (many of whom are also based in states that have eliminated interest rate limits). I guess it was only a matter of time before one or more of them began to throw caution to the wind and go above their normal 30-40% interest rates. Now one of them has done it, and I’m sure more will follow.

First Premier Bank has been offering credit cards with a credit line of $250. Of course that offer comes with first year fees of $256. That is an obvious rip-off to get a credit card where the entire credit limit is taken up with fees owed to the issuer. Congress tried to fix this kind of problem by passing a new law regarding credit card fairness. The new law caps fees like this at 25% of the credit limit.

Well, that should keep First Premier Bank from ripping off its customers, shouldn’t it? Wrong! Congress only half did the job of trying to rein in the credit card companies. They refused to put any limit on the amount of interest a card company can charge.

First Premier Bank was quick to take advantage of the loophole left by Congress. They upped their credit limit to $300 and lowered their fees to $75 (the maximum 25%). Then they took the rather shocking move of raising the annual interest rate for the card to 79.9%.

They try to justify the outrageous new interest rate by saying the cards are offered to people who have credit problems. To me, that excuse just doesn’t fly. To take people who are already having money problems in the middle of a recession and slap an 80% interest rate on them is not just wrong — it’s immoral, unethical and should be illegal.

This is nothing more than legal loan sharking. While these companies may not break any limbs for failure to pay on time, they can certainly ruin the credit rating of a person struggling to repair his/her credit and keep their head above water — and that might be worse. With rates like this, how is a person supposed to get ahead?

Now that First Premier Bank has set an 80% interest rate, how long will it be before other credit card companies follow suit? Most may not instantly go to 80%, but I could see them raising a rate even for good customers to 50% or 60% and continue to creep toward that 80%. Why wouldn’t they? They have already shown they care little for consumers by past actions. If First Premier Bank can get away with it, why shouldn’t the others follow suit?

I wish we could count on Congress to protect consumers, but it doesn’t look like we can. They have “reformed” both credit cards and health care, and consumers are worse off than ever. I don’t think we can afford any more help from our pathetic corporate-owned Congress.

Each year our economy moves closer to exclusive use of electronic funds and credit and away from cash. How much time is left before we are all credit-slaves to the corporations?

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

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Banking, Congress, Consumer Protection, Credit, Deregulation, Economy, Finance, Loan Sharks, Ted McLaughlin | Leave a comment

Senate Health Care Diagnosis : Bad Medicine

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon from The Political Carnival.
The Senate health care bill:
Time to put it out of it’s misery?

By Dr. Stephen R. Keister / The Rag Blog / December 20, 2009

According to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights,

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”

The Human Development Index is a comparative measure of life expectancy, literacy, education, and standards of living for 177 countries worldwide. It is a standard means of measuring well being and especially child welfare. It is intended to distinguish whether the country is a developed, a developing, or an underdeveloped country, and also to measure the impact of economic policies on quality of life.

The latest update to the Human Development Index was released on December 18, 2008. The United States rated fifteenth, following Iceland, Norway, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Netherlands. Sweden, Japan, Luxembourg, Switzerland, France, Finland, Denmark, and Austria. There is some solace in the fact that we’re ahead of the United Kingdom, Poland, Mexico, Cuba and Panama. The nations listed ahead of the United States all have universal quality health care and are largely secular societies with very active social democratic parties. Of course, it may just be coincidence…!

I write this Rag Blog column in an extreme state of dejection. I tend to agree with Dr. Howard Dean, whom I have followed since his presidential bid in 2000. Dr. Dean has announced his position that the Senate should abandon its effort to pass health care legislation since the remaining, battered, deceitful legislation is nothing better than a taxpayer giveaway to the health insurance industry. However, in view of Saturday’s release of the full legislation, of which I have read only a summary, it is probably wise to reserve final judgment until the debate is complete, the behind the scenes deals revealed, and a vote taken.

The Senate has proven itself corrupt, disingenuous, without honor, and below contempt, save for a handful of progressive idealists who somehow became party to this den of thieves. I imagine myself at a rural Mississippi dog fighting pit, with the locals still cheering, and looking down on a pit bull at the end of the contest — pathetic, lacerated and bleeding.

It would appear to be time to put the poor animal out of its misery. However, we should await final developments before making a final decision about this legislation. It is clear, though, that what was supposed to correct the health care crisis in our nation instead has evolved into a giveaway of taxpayer money to the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries — similar to what was done in 2003 when Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage were created to underwrite the private insurance and pharmaceutical industrues, under the aegis of the Bush administration, with taxpayer funds.

We have had absolutely no positive leadership from the president in the health care debate. Yes, he mouths platitudes and provides photo ops; however, from the beginning he has kept the true health reformers, especially the doctors, nurses, and other health professionals, at a distance, and has chosen to give his attention to, and receive favors from, the health cartel executives, the PhARMA lobbyists, and such true believers as senators Leiberman, Snow, Nelson, Baucus, and their ilk.

There has been little evidence of the Obama of the presidential campaign: no visionary, no man of the people, but merely an individual who has simpered in front of the corporate masters of our country.

Throughout the ongoing discussion of health care reform, the physician’s voice has been largely absent. For some 20 years the 17,000 members of Physicians for A National Health Program have engaged in an in-depth study of national health care. These dedicated folks feel that once again, after years of domination by non-professional agencies, that our citizens deserve compassionate, informed health care, free of the dictates of a for-profit insurance company. No more rationing of care on the basis of one’s ability to pay.

As the legislation stands now there is no vehicle to provide care for the uninsured and the underinsured. There is no antitrust legislation to control the price manipulations of the health insurance industry. The adherents rationalize that it will cover the folks with pre-existing conditions, but omit the fact that, in such instances, the cost to the individual may be three times the normal charges. There are no hard and fast regulations to control the yearly payments for care of a cancer patient, for example, with the insurer having the option to set a yearly limit on medical payments.

Further, it isn’t even clear in the Senate legislation what percentage of the premium collected will actually be paid out for medical care, and how much can be set aside for executive salaries, stockholder dividends, lobbying, and advertising. Currently only 81% of subscriber premiums actually go to health care costs. If the insurers spent 90% or 95% of the subscribers’ money on health care they could give their customers between $54 and $94 billion in rebates on premiums, according to Jason Rosenbaum, writing in The Seminal.

The legislation requires by fiat that everyone buy health insurance — whether the individual can afford to do so or not. Buy insurance or be fined! What a boon to the insurance industry at the expense of those who cannot afford it. The legislation does not make the insurance affordable. It merely provides the insurance industry a taxpayer subsidy.

As I have previously noted, the constitutionality of such a law is questionable; however, it could take years to get a challenge through the court system and in the meantime poor folks will be required to spend approximately 12% of their income, amounting to a considerable wage cut, on Washington mandated health insurance. And the policies these folks receive will come at a cost they can’t afford — policies with very high deductibles and high co-insurance. I must agree with Keith Olbermann who suggests that such a bill — written for the benefit of the insurance cartel — could result in widespead individual civil disobedience.

The other very sad development is the Senate’s refusal to set aside the current legislation that forbids the individual to import prescription pharmaceuticals. It’s amazing that senators thought of as progressives voted to refuse the public this right. Of course, we cannot say exactly why they voted in this manner; however, there is no reason to assume that the financial corruption that is inherent in this august body should not reach certain of its progressive members.

And then there is the old ploy: tell the public that imported medications are not safe. Yet, the current pharmaceutical manufacturers are multinational corporations who produce their brand name drugs throughout the world, but package them in the United States and the uninformed public thinks that they are buying a made-in-the-USA product.

Humbug! Prescriptions cost 3-4 times more in the United States than they do in Canada or Europe. Other nations have prescription price control; hence, the manufacturers love to do business in the USA. The Canadian pharmaceutical oversight is probably much stricter than that inherent in the Bush era FDA. I know about this personally because I previously obtained medication for my prostate cancer through a Canadian pharmacy. Happily the product is now generic and can be purchased relatively reasonably in this country.

An excellent review of the sell out of health reform appears in SocialistWorker in an article by Andy Coates, M.D, a member, like myself, of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Meanwhile, even if some legislative miracle were to occur and a version of the House bill became law, a Harvard Medical School Study, as cited in the The Raw Story, indicates that during the time before legislation incorporating the public option would take effect, an estimated 135,000 citizens and over 6,600 U.S. veterans would die. Further, with the House bill, even after uninsured Americans begin to receive health care, there would still be another 18 million not covered. We must remember even the House legislation would not come into effect until 2013 or 2014.

In the meantime PNHP reports that the stocks of WellPoint, Cigna, and United Health have surged to a 52 week high. This is their reward for $53 million invested in lobbying in the first three quarters of 2009. The Raw Story points out that the White House has met early and often with these lobbyists. The author cites a plethora of CEOs and lobbyists of Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Health Plans, and heads of PhARMA , The American Hospital Association, and pharmaceutical companies SanofiPasteur, Takeda Pharmaceuticals America, Pfizer, and Amgen.

In the meantime we in the progressive community are seeking some purpose, some common ground. Yet I am haunted by Eric Hoffer’s long ago observation: “Men of thought seldom work well together, whereas between men of action there is usually an easy camaraderie. Teamwork is rare in intellectual or artistic undertakings, but common and almost indispensable among men of action.”

A worry, yes, but also a fear. A recent poll shows some 40% of Americans either consider themselves “tea-baggers” or are sympathetic towards the tea-baggers — those folks unwittingly following the pied piper of big business. We progressives may smile and make sport of these people, but l remember that some years ago a more cultured, better educated society than ours, at a time of financial and societal turmoil, led and misled by corporate interests, followed a wall paper hanger into the abyss.

[Dr. Stephen R. Keister lives in Erie, Pennsylvania. He is a retired physician who is active in health care reform. His writing appears regularly on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Congress, Dr. Stephen R. Keister, Health Care Reform, Howard Dean, Progressive Democrats, U.S. Senate | 7 Comments

Supremes : ‘Suspected Enemy Combatant’ no Longer a ‘Person’

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Portrait of a non-person. Image from girloftomorrow.
Dred Scott redux:
Enemy combatants denied legal standing

…once again, 144 years after the Civil War, we have established as the law of the land and the policy of the United States government that whole classes of people can be declared ‘non-persons’ and have their liberty stripped away…

By Chris Floyd / December 19, 2009

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here’s how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.”

They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving “process stories” that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people “unpersons” was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn’t fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat — and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

But William Fisher noticed, and gave this report at Antiwar.com:

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that “torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use.”
[….]
Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” — did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that “torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants.”

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of “national emergency.” And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

And yet this is what Barack Obama — who, we are told incessantly, is a super-brilliant Constitutional lawyer — has been arguing in case after case since becoming president: Torturers are immune from prosecution; those who ordered torture are immune from prosecution. They can’t even be sued for, in the specific case under review, subjecting uncharged, indefinitely detained captives to “beatings, sleep deprivation, forced nakedness, extreme hot and cold temperatures, death threats, interrogations at gunpoint, and threatened with unmuzzled dogs.”

Again, let’s be absolutely clear: Barack Obama has taken the freely chosen, public, formal stand — in court — that there is nothing wrong with any of these activities. Nothing to answer for, nothing meriting punishment or even civil penalties. What’s more, in championing the lower court ruling, Barack Obama is now on record as believing — insisting — that torture is an ordinary, “foreseeable consequence” of military detention of all those who are arbitrarily declared “suspected enemy combatants.”

And still further: Barack Obama has now declared, openly, of his own free will, that he does not consider these captives to be “persons.” They are, literally, sub-humans. And what makes them sub-humans? The fact that someone in the U.S. government has declared them to be “suspected enemy combatants.” (And note: even the mere suspicion of being an “enemy combatant” can strip you of your personhood.)

This is what President Barack Obama believes — believes so strongly that he has put the full weight of the government behind a relentless series of court actions to preserve, protect and defend these arbitrary powers. (For a glimpse at just a sliver of such cases, go here.)

One co-counsel on the case, Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, zeroed in on the noxious quintessence of the position taken by the Court, and by our first African-American president: its chilling resemblance to the notorious Dred Scott ruling of 1857, which upheld the principle of slavery. As Fisher notes:

“Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow,” he added.

The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants — whether or not they were slaves — were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States.

And now, once again, 144 years after the Civil War, we have established as the law of the land and the policy of the United States government that whole classes of people can be declared “non-persons” and have their liberty stripped away — and their torturers and tormentors protected and coddled by authority — at a moment’s notice, with no charges, no defense, no redress, on nothing more than the suspicion that they might be an “enemy combatant,” according to the arbitrary definition of the state.

Barack Obama has had the audacity to declare himself the heir and embodiment of the lifework of Martin Luther King. Can this declaration of a whole new principle of universal slavery really be what King was dreaming of? Is this the vision he saw on the other side of the mountain? Or is not the nightmarish inversion of the ideal of a better, more just, more humane world that so many have died for, in so many places, down through the centuries?

Source / Empire Burlesque

Thanks to S.M. Willhelm / The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Guantanamo, Human Rights, Justice Department, Obama Administration, Slavery, Supreme Court, Torture, War on Terror | 19 Comments

Harry Targ : Season for Hope, Season for Struggle

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

‘I swear it’s not too late’
Turn! Turn! Turn!

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / December 19, 2009

Turn, Turn, Turn

(chorus)

To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

(repeat chorus)

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

(repeat chorus)

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

(repeat chorus)

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late

Words from Ecclesiastes; text adapted and music by Pete Seeger

We received a wonderful Chanukah present the other day, a children’s book called Turn! Turn! Turn! It is an illustrated adaptation by designer Wendy Anderson Halperin, of words from the Old Testament and music by Pete Seeger.

This present rekindled for me emotions, as I am sure it does for others, as I remembered things past; youth, family, naïve images of peace and tranquility. There is poignancy for us now too as we move towards the holidays at the same time that we struggle over the range of issues that will shape the destiny of humankind: peace, saving the environment, jobs, and health care reform.

This season progressives are debating whether we have been betrayed by Barack Obama; who is the biggest scoundrel — Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe; how to revitalize the peace movement; and whether to finally break with the Democrats.

But then “Turn, Turn, Turn” reminds us that “to everything there is a season.” The song suggests that the ebbs and flows of history are not bound by calendars, dates and times, and heroes and villains. A “season” is defined by its historic projects.

And these historic projects, the words suggest, include “a time to reap,” “a time to build,” “a time to break down,” “a time to cast away stones,” and “a time to gather stones together.”

Our projects, our seasons, entail defeats and victories, tears and laughter, but the seasons go on and encompass “a time to love” and “a time to hate.” And in the end the song declares, “I swear it’s not too late.”

So if we are inspired by the song, as we were in the 1960s, we remember that the struggles for peace and justice are not about individuals, political parties, and calendar deadlines but about the continued commitments which we have made to create peace, save the planet, put people back to work, and provide secure health care for all.

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

Find Turn! Turn! Turn! on Amazon.com

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Books, Chanukah, Folk Music, Harry Targ, Lyrics, Peace Movement, Scripture, Social Change | Leave a comment

Honduras : Anti-Coup Gay Activist Assassinated

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

LGBT activist Walter Tróchez was murdered this week.
He documented homophobic violence:
Honduran gay activist Walter Tróchez murdered

By Doug Ireland / December 18, 2009

Walter Tróchez, 25 years old, a well-known LGBT activist in Honduras who was an active member of the National Resistance Front against the coup d’etat there, was assassinated on the evening of December 13, shot dead by drive-by killers.

Tróchez, who had already been arrested and beaten for his sexual orientation after participating in a march against the coup, had been very active recently in documenting and publicizing homophobic killings and crimes committed by the forces behind the coup, which is believed to have been the motive for his murder. He had been trailed for weeks before his murder by thugs believed to be members of the state security forces.

In an open letter documenting this wave of political assassinations of Honduran queers he’d written last month entitled “Increase in hate crimes and homophobia towards LGTB as a result of the civic-religious-military coup in Honduras,” Trochez had written that “Once again we say it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that in these past 4 months, during such a short period, 9 transexual and gay friends were violently killed, 6 in San Pedro Sula and 3 in Tegucigalpa.”

At the end of this open letter, Tróchez declared that “As a revolutionary, I will always defend my people, even if it takes my life.” Sadly, that’s what happened.

American University Assistant Professor of Anthropology Adrienne Pine has translated into English on her blog a statement about the Tróchez murder by the Centro de Investigación y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CIPRODEH — the Center for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights in Honduras), which you can find here.

In a moving statement about the Tróchez murder, the influential Honduran youth organization Los Necios said:

We met Walter fighting; we quickly saw within him an indisputable leader in the defense of human rights. As a member of the gay, lesbian, trans, and bisexual community he converted himself into a reference of this struggle in which the Honduran youth has developed with dedication from the breast of the Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado (resistance against the coup d’etat).

Recently he felt the direct threat of the fury of the irrationality, the reaction and the stupidity of the obsolete structural power that sadly today exists in Honduras. The repressive forces that serve the businessmen and kill Hondurans kidnapped him and warned him that he should silence himself, Walter, as was to be expected, said no.

It was a relief to know that he bravely escaped from the grip of the beast and it was heartwarming to see him again in the streets this past Friday 11 of December when the force of the La Resistencia was felt in the streets, of course the compañero Tróchez headed the march of the pueblo (nation). Walter Tróchez was shot in betrayal this past December 13; such is the method of cowards…”

(Full text in English of this statement is here.)

Adrienne e-mailed me that “Walter has been one of the most important figures in the LGBT community in Honduras for years. Unfortunately, most of what’s written about him is in Spanish. A volunteer is translating one of his last open letters to the resistance condemning the large number of targeted political assassinations of members of the LGBT community since the coup, which I am pasting below (in case you read Spanish). That letter will be available in English on my website…[here].”

Amnesty International has issued a statement calling for an investigation of the murder, which you can read website here.

Radio Mundo’s web site has a good article, in English, on the murder here .

Walter Tróchez’s November 16 e-mail describing assassinations of Honduran LGBTers since the coup, in Spanish, is here.

[Doug Ireland is a veteran political journalist. His blog is here.]

Source / CommonDreams

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Coups d'etat, Gay Movement, Homophobia, Honduras, Latin America, LGBT, Resistance Movements | 2 Comments

Righteous Cause Dept. : Raising Big Bucks to Neuter Joe Lieberman

Posted on December 18, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Graphic by Larry Ray / The Rag Blog.
For ad campaign aimed at Connecticut voters:
MoveOn raising big bucks to stop Lord Lieberman

By Larry Ray / The Rag Blog / December 18, 2009

MoveOn.org, one of the largest political action committees in the country is, as I post this, just about $75,000 short of raising one million dollars for a campaign to neuter Senator Joe Lieberman’s single-handed attempt to stall or kill historic health care reform.

Their appeal for 10 bucks is unambiguous: “First, we’re going to launch a huge ad campaign to make sure every last Connecticut voter knows that Senator Lieberman is blocking strong reforms. Then, we’ll push Senate leaders to strip him of his chairmanship and seniority. Finally, we’ll work to defeat him in his next election. We can do this.”

MoveOn’s appeal starts with a quick review of Lieberman’s mad shenanigans,

First, Joe Lieberman helped President Bush invade Iraq, and the Democrats in Washington forgave him. Then, he endorsed John McCain, and they forgave him again. Then, he personally attacked Barack Obama at the Republican National Convention, and still the Democrats forgave him. Now, Joe Lieberman is single handedly gutting health care reform. The time for forgiveness is over. It’s time to hold Senator Lieberman accountable.

This has resonated with enough people to make them pitch in almost one million bucks to slow down this supposedly independent Senator who lost his Democratic bid in 2006 and now seems to be representing only his mercurial petty whims instead of the state of Connecticut… which is a solidly blue state. It went 60% for Obama in 2008. Polls in Connecticut show Lieberman is already in trouble. Thirty percent of Lieberman voters in 2006 later said they would not vote for him again, and, in another poll, he trailed one possible Democratic opponent by a whopping 44 points.

Whether it is big buck political donations from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries that has has caused his total flip flop on health care reform, or a bruised ego, is not clear. His steadily building Little Caesar rage from feeling he has been snubbed by his caucus seems to many to be driving his decisions.

While holding Democrats hostage for his crucial 60th vote he seems oblivious to his pariah status and seems willing to possibly kill health care reform before it can finish the long hammering-out process ahead. What a legacy that would be for proud, independent Joe. But he gets his gold plated Congressional health insurance plus a fat annual retirement no matter what. He and his colossal ego could ride off into the sunset with no health care worries and plenty of walking around money, happy to say to hell with America.

It has to be more than inflated chutzpah. Maybe, in his delusional state, he also sees his reelection as a sure thing because he is so right and so loved.

Or maybe he has been watching too many WWII Kamikaze movies.

If you have had enough of Loony Lieberman and want to donate a couple of bucks to the MoveOn campaign, here’s the link:

DUMP LIEBERMAN CAMPAIGN

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

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Congress, Democratic Party, Health Care Reform, Joe Lieberman, Larry Ray, MoveOn.org | Leave a comment

Listen Up, Senate : Health Care Bill Needs Costs Reduction Amendment

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Cartoon from the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
How to save the health care bill:
Add a medical costs reduction amendment

By Sherman DeBrosse / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2009

Dr. Howard Dean, a true progressive and advocate of health care reform has given up on the bill now wending its way through the Senate. He thinks it should be scrapped. It makes too many concessions to the insurance industry, does too little to reduce costs, and will force many to buy health insurance they cannot afford.

However, if the Democrats scuttle the bill, they admit failure and their inability to govern. The election results in 2010 would probably be worse than the perfect storm of 1994.

By passing something now, they establish the principle that all citizens have a right to good health coverage. It has taken seven decades to get most Americans to agree to that basic proposition. Whatever is passed now can be amended later when rising costs force Congress to revisit it.

However, progressive Democratic Senators need to make one concerted effort to pass an amendment they might call the Medical Costs Reduction Amendment. If it does not pass, it could be reconsidered as part of the budget reconciliation process because its parts deal with spending and collecting money.

1. At its core would be a provision requiring that a health insurance company’s “medical loss ratio” cannot go below 90%. That means they must spend 90% on actual health care expenses. Anything above that would be subjected to a healthcare excise profits tax. A similar tax would be applied to salaries of everyone in the health care industry.

2. People purchasing insurance in the new insurance exchanges will be able to buy insurance from providers across state lines.

3. Mechanisms will be established for small businesses to combine bargaining power for the purpose of purchasing health care insurance.

4. Operations in the Justice Department devoted to finding Medicare fraud will be vastly expanded with hundreds of millions being set aside to hire, train, and support new fraud hunters. Thomas Reuters has found that there is about $200 billion of fraud every year in the Medicare system. He found similar fraud in the general medical insurance arena. These fraud hunters would search for fraud throughout both system and be assisted by a robust bounty system for whistleblowers.

5. All medical insurance and medical equipment and service accounting must be absolutely transparent. The Health and Human Services Department must be given several thousand new accountants and agents to dig out waste, inaccurate accounting, and dishonesty. What they learn can eventually be used to regulate insurance rates. We have failed to move toward single-payer insurance, so the only other choice is to follow Germany and Switzerland in working through very tightly regulated insurance providers.

6. Eliminate incentives for doctors and hospitals to overtreat by making lump payments for treatments of illnesses, rather than fees for each procedure.

7. Simplify and streamline billing procedures.

There are many other provisions that should be added, but we have already seen that the tolerance of Senate Democrats for real reform and cost cutting is fairly low. Recently, many of them even voted to kill Kent Conrad’s effort to help people get drugs at lower prices. In this they were upholding a tawdry deal President Obama and Rahm Emmanuel entered into with Big Pharm.

The months-long slog toward some sort of health bill has revealed how strategically inept the Democrats are. They are not good at defending themselves, and it took them forever to begin to sort out differences among themselves. They have also sacrificed opportunities to do something about carbon emissions and restoring some of the rights intended for labor under the Wagner Act. Above all, this sad debate demonstrated how center-right this country really is and how even the Congressional Democrats are in the hip pockets of the big interests.

Thirty years ago, scholars were still writing about the differences between Congressional Republicans and Presidential Republicans, etc. These were intricate discussions about how some people had powerful institutional memories and biases and others had deep commitments to governing well.

All that began to change when Newt Gingrich forced his party to put obstruction ahead of governing. Then Bob Dole, who once had contempt for Gingrich, hit on the tactic of using the threatened filibuster for every important matter before the Senate. When a Black community organizer got into the White House, total obstruction became the order of the day and almost no Republican put governance ahead of partisanship.

Governance at any cost is more of a habit for the Democrats, and this commitment also made them look weak when they were out of power. Some of us saw this tendency in people like Lee Hamilton, but now it seems to characterize the Obama administration.

When one observes all the concessions the administration has made to the big banks and the defense establishment, it is difficult to see progressive principles at work. The Justice Department’s inclination to function like the old Bush injustice operation is also deplorable. On the other hand, the situation would be so much worse if Republicans ran Congress and the White House.

If the Democrats want to go into the 2010 elections as the champions of both health care and health care cost cutting, they had better get some backbone and insist on a Medical Costs Reduction Amendment. They need to put the GOP on the record as fighting tooth and nail to prevent true cost cuts. They might also consider a 50% tax on compensation in excess of $500,000 in the financial services industry. The amendment and the tax might enable them to get back in touch with their natural constituency — ordinary Ameericans.

[Sherman DeBrosse is a retired history teacher. Sherm spent seven years writing an analytical chronicle of what the Republicans have been up to since the 1970s. The New Republican Coalition : Its Rise and Impact, The Seventies to Present (Publish America) can be acquired by calling 301-695-1707. On line, go here.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Congress, Democratic Party, Health Care Reform, Health Insurance, Sherman DeBrosse, U.S. Senate | 2 Comments

Barack Obama : The Audacity of Imperial Hubris

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Famed graffiti artist Banksy’s statement on war and peace. Protest poster in Parliament Square, London.
Imperial hubris:
Barack Obama and Nobel’s preemptive strike

Obama might have used the Nobel stage to mark a break from [the] geopolitical approach to U.S. hegemony through militarism… This was clearly the intention of the Nobel Committee…

By Billy Wharton / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2009

Princeton University Philosopher Cornel West brings such an infectious optimism to his social analysis that it is difficult to avoid discovering a sense of hopefulness in even the most mediocre of news.

Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to an American president managing two active wars and commanding a military force spread throughout the globe seemed to offer little opportunity for a progressive spin. Yet, West quickly discovered a potentially positive edge. “It’s gonna be hard,” he offered during a lecture at a public library in Los Angeles, “to be a war president with a peace prize. Gonna be difficult. Very, very difficult.” The award it seemed could be a “pre-emptive strike for peace.”

West had captured a certain consensus that developed about the award nomination. U.S. President Barack Obama would be so overcome with the honor of receiving the prestigious award that it would trigger an immediate crisis of conscience that would call the country’s military adventures in the Middle East into question and perhaps even hasten a quick retreat.

Obama was certainly aware that he would walk in the footsteps of previous recipients such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mother Theresa. Panelists on the Nobel nomination committee were likely motivated by this neat equation when they arrived at their decision.

Unfortunately for West and others, the one person not in on the scheme was Obama. Instead of imbibing the spirit of peace, he delivered two bombshells. The first came prior to the Nobel ceremonies when he announced that the U.S. would send another 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, in an attempt to establish control of the AfPak border region. Larger than this, his speech at West Point Military Academy bought into large parts of the Bush war rationale.

The Afghanistan invasion, he argued, was forced upon the U.S. A natural response to the terrorist bombings of September 11, 2001. Nervous cadets in the crowd stood blank-faced as they realized that there are many more years of active combat to come. Though Obama made a vague reference to an 18 month time-frame for withdrawal, Secretary of Defense William Gates made the rounds with the media the following day to clarify that it would take years, at least two or three, before an exit from the war-torn country could be considered.

Put aside the escalation speech for a moment. The second bombshell, Obama’s much anticipated Nobel Prize acceptance speech, proves not only that there is almost no chance that the Democratic Party will bring an end to the wars, but that Obama himself has accepted the imperial mantle passed down through generations of American presidents.

Among the first casualties of a speech that can only be described as an expression of American chauvinism, were King and a non-Nobel recipient Mahatma Gandhi. Obama dispensed with them as naïve idealists. “As a head of state,” he argued, “I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world.”

Obama went on to endorse the use of force as being based upon, “a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason” not “a call to cynicism.”

Two objections are obvious — one elucidated upon later in his speech, the other quickly tossed aside. First, the notion that war is curative to evil in general and that the U.S., in particular, is an acceptable dispenser of such a cure should raise a skeptical eye.

Obama went further by making the Orwellian claim that “the instruments of war do have a role to play in preserving the peace” and, in a language endorsed by every imperial president, “the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” History offers different lessons.

Far from a neutral operator interested only in the preservation of global peace, the U.S. has engaged in acts of military aggression that substantially contributed to the lessening of peaceful relations amongst nations. Sometimes, as in Iraq, there were direct material motivations. In other cases, political motives or the simple desire to express military superiority fueled the act of aggression.

The military invasions of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan so obviously violate the notion of the U.S. as peacemaker that little comment is needed. Even more insidious are the indirect military conflagrations underwritten by the U.S. government. The annals of Latin American history are littered with them — Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, Guatemala, El Salvador and Operation Condor throughout the region.

Obama might have used the Nobel stage to mark a break from this geopolitical approach to U.S. hegemony through militarism. He could have announced the closure of at least a few of the more than 700 U.S. military bases worldwide. Perhaps Oslo was an ideal site to announce a 50% reduction in the more than 5,000 nuclear missiles the country has.

This was clearly the intention of the Nobel Committee and the hope of Cornell West — to create enough moral pressure to move the president a few steps away from the imperial mantle. No such luck. To have done so, would have necessarily required the help of King and Gandhi, who Obama had dismissed early on.

To say that his role as “a head of state” precludes him from employing the lessons of King and Gandhi is to deny some basic facts of history. Neither King nor Gandhi were intellectuals isolated from social policy or geo-political decision making. The two were not sequestered off from society, like cloistered monks, happy enough to invent a few intellectually engaging, but practically useless, ideas.

They were, instead, historical actors, able to craft new political realities through practical implementation of theories of non-violence. The consequences of which, in terms of both specific policies and broader political inspiration, had global reverberations that are still being felt.

The catch that now separates them from Obama is that both recognized the idea that it is people, mostly regular people, who make history and who often do so against the will of governments both foreign and domestic. India’s anti-imperialist campaign, carried out under Gandhi’s leadership, provides a stinging rebuke to the notion of military occupation. Equally, King’s brave opposition to the U.S. war in Vietnam sharply contradicts Obama’s claim that the U.S. has spent six decades underwriting global security.

Both men offer a notion of social solidarity through peaceful association that works from the local level up into national and international relations. Such lessons might have allowed the U.S. to avoid the military aggressions of the past and to play a significant role in supporting the creation of the kind of peaceful global economic development that both King and Gandhi championed.

Perhaps, in the end, West offers a useful concept, but the wrong social actor. It may eventually be difficult for Obama to manage two wars with a peace prize hanging from his neck. But Obama won’t be the one to determine that. He has left a significant opportunity to offer an alternative to the typical American imperial hubris at the podium in Oslo.

Now it is up to us regular folks, the ones who were so important to King and Gandhi’s movements in the past, to turn the Nobel Prize into a burden. A revitalized anti-war movement in the U.S. that reads deep into the inspirational wells of non-violent movements of the past could be next year’s nominee for the coveted prize. What a righteous replacement that would be for a president committed to war and occupation, arrogant enough to attempt to play this off as a part of global security.

[Billy Wharton is the national co-chair of the Socialist Party USA and editor of The Socialist and the Socialist WebZine.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American History, Barack Obama, Billy Wharton, Foreign Policy, Imperialism, Militarism, Nobel Peace Prize, Nonviolence, Peace Movement | Leave a comment

Liam Clancy : Putting the Irish in Folk

Posted on December 17, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Above, Liam Clancey. Below, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem:
Irish music and the American folk scene

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / December 17, 2009

In the beginning it was William Clancy, Liam being still too Celtic and “Irish” for Ireland in the early 1950s.

His older brothers, big burly lads, had already gone to America and eventually to New York City to find jobs as Irishmen in various stage productions. William longed to go as well but the chance didn’t come until he met New York City based ethno-musicologist Dianne Hamilton Guggenheim, a protégé of Alan Lomax.

In his autobiography, Liam Clancy tries to deal with his relationship with Ms. Hamilton, an older woman. Whatever personal struggles he might have had with his patroness, the fact remained that she got him to New York City and even tried to set him up as a folksinger. Although Clancy landed a few acting jobs as a stock Irishman, he didn’t really see the future until he met Josh White.

Josh White in the early 1950s was a towering figure in the miniscule folk music scene. Unique among his black blues contemporaries, Josh had found a way to present field hand music in a posh night club setting, more akin to Billie Holiday than to, say, Leadbelly. As Liam marveled in his autobiography, The Mountain of the Women, Josh White was the consummate professional. He would pick up his guitar, throw it into tune and be on stage in minutes with the audience eating out of his hand. Liam wondered how he could ever achieve that level of taste, talent and sophistication.

Singing with his big bruiser brothers he knew the act still lacked something. What would it take to transform them from your average Irish singing family to say, something like Josh White? His mind turned to someone who had also been “discovered” by Dianne Hamilton on her Irish trip. Young Tommy Makem, the son of Ireland’s well known folksinger Sarah Makem.

Sure enough, Tommy had already come to America, was living in New Hampshire, and was ready to sing with the Clancy’s. The model for the modern Irish folksinging unit was now set. With Tommy Makem in the lead singing role, the “Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem” were now an entertainment reality. Although Tommy forever chaffed against being most of the group’s talent, but restricted to a set of virtual parentheses, Tommy Makem’s and Liam Clancy’s fates were now sealed.

The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem did indeed remake the entire image of an Irish folksinging group. Although they did do Irish sentimental favorites, they were no “cry in your beer sad memories of the past” comiseraters. They also did some Irish Republican anthems from the days of the struggles, but were not overly consumed by that passion. What they presented was a broad spectrum of Irish songs, new and old, with something for all types and ages. Not unlike Josh White.

When they did have a politically oriented hit, it was, interestingly, with the bitter “Patriot Game,” which equivocated in its support for armed struggle while still championing the cause. A very sophisticated song which Bob Dylan, who hung around the Clancy’s all he could in his salad days, transformed into “With God On Our Side.”

Liam Clancey at the 2005 Milwaukee Irish Fest. Photo by Stacina / Flickr.
That was the wonderful thing about this ancient Irish music. Like the tunes, the themes have been around forever. Irish music made the big time on the Ed Sullivan Show and other top American venues thanks to the Clancy’s and Tommy Makem. But mostly they hung around the White Horse Tavern, a well known watering hole on the West Side of New York’s Greenwich Village. In this setting they would bend their elbows with anyone.

Their solid proletarian comradeship was not necessarily political, it was just Irish and it was infectious. Much of the good energy (and a lot of the good tunes) that later enchanted the USA Folk scene in the 1960s came out of the family atmosphere created by the Clancys and Tommy Makem. If this was folk music, these guys from Ireland were surely the folk. Lift your glass to friendship, mates, the music from the distant blessed archaic past is once again being played by young men of charm and influence. All is not lost.

So Liam Clancy wasn’t necessarily the big talent in the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. Although, unlike his brothers who just sang in the ensemble, he did sing lead on some songs, his soft voice could never carry the group the way Tommy Makem could. Tommy also wrote songs and played the tin whistle. But it was Liam Clancy who set the whole thing up, who’d had the vision and got to see his creation become a big success.

Many decades and albums later it was easy to look back on how Irish music came back to life in the 1950s. Once considered, like black music in the days of the minstrels, a kind of ethnic joke, no one would ever think to disparage this rich heritage again. You can thank the Clancy’s and Tommy Makem for that, especially Liam. One of the reasons young people were able to be so successful as a force for cultural transformation in the 1960s was that they had the historical precedents rightly in place. Black blues, jazz, ragtime, and also Irish music, were finally being understood for what they really were, not just stupid stereotypes.

If we had to pick one song to represent the Clancy Brothers and with Tommy Makem, it would probably be impossible. But one that comes to mind is actually a tune off an album Liam Clancy made with Tommy Makem after the Clancy’s had disbanded. Recorded in 1976, the song by Alan Bell, celebrates the history of wind power in Europe. It seems particularly appropriate to present this song as a sample, especially after having spent some time bemoaning the lack of spiritual energy in the USA regarding alternative energy. Here is that supposedly missing sacred prayer:

Windmills

In days gone by, when the world was much younger
Men harnessed the wind to work for mankind
Seamen built tall ships to sail on the ocean
While landsmen built wheels the corn for to grind

And around and around and around went the big sail
Turning the shaft and the great wooden wheel
Creaking and groaning, the millstones kept turning
Grinding to flour the good corn from the field

In Flanders and Spain and the lowlands of Holland
And the kingdoms of England and Scotland and Wales
Windmills sprang up all along the wild coastline
Ships of the land with their high canvas sails

In Lancashire, lads work hard at the good earth
Ploughing and sowing as the seasons declare
Waiting to reap all the rich, golden harvest
While the miller is idle, his mill to repair

Windmills of wood all blackened by weather
Windmills of stone, glaring white in the sun
Windmills like giants all ready for tilting
Windmills that died in the gales and the sun

Liam Clancy passed away Friday, December 4. Thanks for bringing us The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, a group that changed the course of modern folk music. And thanks also for staying such a simple honest man. That’s actually not an easy act to pull off.

[Carl R. Hultberg’s grandfather, Rudi Blesh, was a noted jazz critic and music historian, and Carl was raised in that tradition. After spending many years as a music archivist and social activist in New York’s Greenwich Village, he now lives in an old abandoned foundry in Danbury, New Hampshire, where he runs the Ragtime Society.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Bob Dylan, Carl R. Hultberg, Culture, Deaths, Folk Music, Irish Music, Irish Republican Army, Music, Music History, Musicians | 4 Comments

Colombia : Official Corruption and Mr. Big

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Colombian President Álvaro Uribe.
A history of official corruption:
Colombia and the Uribe family

By Marion Delgado / The Rag Blog / December 16, 2009

See ‘A Stroll down Paramilitary Lane,’ below.

…the sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the [Colombian] military… [Whose] cold-blooded, premeditated murder of innocent civilians for profit, stand out as one of the most serious abusive practices by state agents we have documented in Latin America in recent years.” — UN Special Rapporteur.

Cocaine smugglers have infiltrated senior levels of the Colombian army… While other cases of infiltration have been discovered in the past, officials suggested that those cases often were not investigated properly.” — Juan Santos, Minister ofDefense

CARTAGENA DE INDIES, Colombia — Cocaine, corruption, mass murder, right-wing gangs operating with impunity, chainsaw massacres, not just once in a while, but wholesale violations of the Colombian people by well-armed and funded criminals have occurred by the hundreds and thousands for years and years, right up to this very moment.

On March 1, 2008, Colombian armed forces crossed into Ecuador to kill 24 leftist Colombian guerrillas, including a senior commander, Raul Reyes, aka “Sure Shot.” The attack touched off a confrontation pitting Colombia against Ecuador and Venezuela, the latter condemning the violation of Ecuador’s sovereignty and noting that Reyes was a key figure in negotiations over prisoner releases and a possible reduction in political tensions.

Under George W. Bush, the U.S. defended Colombia’s right to attack “terrorists” even if it required crossing a border, a position echoed by last year’s presidential candidates, and this year’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. President Barack Obama.

Despite the corruption disclosures — and Colombian President Álvaro Uribe’s failure to stem Colombian cocaine smuggling to the United States — the Bush administration showered Uribe’s government with trade incentives and billions of dollars in military and development aid.

Obama continues this trend, with more billions of your dollars, first with a military pact to create seven new U.S. military bases, and very soon a new free trade agreement that will send more American jobs to South America, if there are any jobs left to send.

Ironically, the latest evidence against Uribe’s government emerged from a U.S.-backed peace process that offered leniency to right-wing paramilitary death squads and their financial backers in exchange for giving up their guns and disclosing past crimes.

The right-wing paramilitaries and their cocaine-trafficking benefactors testified that elements of the Colombian government collaborated in a decade-long scorched-earth campaign, killing almost 10,000 civilians under the guise of dislodging the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo, (FARC or FARC-EP; Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – Peoples Army), a leftist guerrilla army.

How deeply is the government involved? Let’s look at who the government is and how he got there. It was all prearranged in 2001, according to paramilitary and drug lord accounts. If Uribe won the presidency, paramilitary leaders would be offered generous sentence reductions and could serve their time outside prison walls if they demobilized and confessed. Go and sin no more; chu hoi; Allie, Allie infree.

The Uribe family

Recent disclosures of official corruption have brought back to public attention the Uribe family’s long history of ties to drug lords and paramilitaries. Colombia’s Supreme Court said in July it was investigating Senator Mario Uribe, the president’s cousin and his point man in the Congress, for alleged links to the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, (AUC; United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia). Several paramilitary leaders have said Mario Uribe was their ally and an intermediary with the government. He has denied any wrongdoing.

The purported family link to drug lords dates back several decades. As a young man and an aspiring politician, Álvaro Uribe lost his position as mayor of Medellín — after only five months on the job — because the country’s then-president, Belisario Betancur, ousted him over his family’s suspected connections to traffickers, according to media reports at the time. Betancur’s daughter was running for President when she was kidnapped by the FARC; she was rescued in 2008 after several years in captivity.

The president’s father, Alberto Uribe, a wealthy landowner, reportedly was a close associate of the Medellín cartel and its kingpins Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa brothers were his personal friends. Besides the three Ochoas and Pablito, another elite member of the Medellin cartel, Carlos Lederer, was sentenced to hundreds of years in a U.S. federal prison and admitted to dozens of murders. He was released after testilying against Manuel Noriega and now resides in England where he is the owner of… wait for it… wait… an insurance company.

In 1983 El Presidente’s father, reportedly wanted by the U.S. government for drug trafficking, was killed in a kidnapping attempt by FARC. According to media accounts, his body was airlifted back to his family by one of Pablo Escobar’s helicopters.

In the early 1990s, Álvaro Uribe’s brother, Santiago, was investigated for allegedly organizing and leading a paramilitary outfit headquartered at the Uribe family hacienda. He was never charged, due to a lack of evidence. Santiago was photographed alongside Fabio Ochoa Vasco at a party even after the government declared Ochoa one of the most notorious traffickers of the Medellín cartel. This happened during Álvaro Uribe’s eight years in the Senate, where he opposed extradition of drug suspects. His critics accused him of working for the Medellín drug lords; can you imagine?

The relationship between right-wing narco-financed paramilitaries and the Colombian government has been long and complex, with alliances shifting by the self-interest of the moment.

Alienation from Washington widened in 1994, and the flood of U.S. dollars slowed temporarily, when President Ernesto Samper came to power amid disclosures that his campaign had received generous donations from cartels. The Colombian Army (COLAR) lost ground against the FARC and coca growers. In turn, the Samper government pushed what was known as the Convivir project. It armed, trained and organized local defense cooperatives to provide “special private security and vigilance services” alongside the military, another cover for right-wing paramilitary forces.

The rise of Uribe

Álvaro Uribe’s political rise was tied to the success of Convivir. In 1995, Uribe became the governor of Antioquia, a northwestern Departmento with Medellín as the capital.

He became the country’s most vocal supporter of the defense cooperatives, authorizing almost 20 run by paramilitary leaders including AUC’s then-top commander, Salvatore Mancuso.

Carlos Castaño, originator of AUC’s predecessor, the United Self-Defense Forces of Córdoba and Urabá (ACCU), has been quoted as saying Uribe was the presidential candidate of AUC’s social support base. “Deep down, he’s the closest man to our philosophy,” Castaño said, adding that Uribe’s support for Convivir was based on the same principle that gave rise to paramilitarism in Colombia, the right to self-defense against “guerrillas.”

Confronted with accusations of complicity between Convivir and drug-connected paramilitaries, Uribe said that at the time, nobody knew who the right-wing leaders and coke traffickers were.

After an international outcry, however, the government phased out Convivir. When it was outlawed in 1998, over 200 defense cooperatives, consisting of thousands of men, defied the order to demobilize and joined Castaño’s revived paramilitary alliance, now AUC.

While running for the presidency in 2002, Uribe cited the perceived success of the Convivir program in damaging FARC’s infrastructure in Antioquia as a key reason why Colombians should vote for him. Despite the drug suspicions — and the links to paramilitary death squads — Uribe benefited from public disenchantment with a sputtering peace process that had failed to end the civil war and emerged as the winner with 53% of the vote.

After his election, several drug barons claimed they had financed his campaign. Indicted drug trafficker Fabio Ochoa Vasco said he contributed $150,000 of his own money at AUC’s request.

Ochoa also said he witnessed a conversation between AUC’s leaders and supposed representatives of Uribe’s campaign before the election. “They talked about the peace process,” Fabio Ochoa stated. “They said anyone with problems with the U.S. could get involved. In another meeting, there were businessmen, landowners, and drug traffickers who [the AUC] thought could also be included, so they told them to get ready for the peace process.”

All the paramilitary leaders who negotiated peace agreements “know the truth. They know that to be there, they invested more than 10 million dollars [in the political process, including Uribe’s campaign],” he added.

Government negotiations with the AUC began four months after Uribe took office. Castaño repositioned himself as an opponent of the drug corruption that, by then, clearly pervaded the organization. He resigned as AUC’s military leader. In April, 2004, Castaño was ambushed by 20 elite paramilitaries on orders from AUC’s top leaders. He was shot almost two dozen times in the face, chopped into pieces, and burned.

Presidents Uribe and Bush: Partners in crime?
Uribe-Bush alliance

Among opinion makers of Washington, there has been almost no criticism of Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, although his inner circle has long been linked to both right-wing terrorism and cocaine trafficking.

Uribe lined up solidly behind George W. Bush, the only South American leader to endorse the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Uribe in turn sought more U.S. military aid, defining civil war against the leftist FARC as part of the “global war on terror.”

The backbone of U.S. policy in Colombia during the Bush years was Plan Colombia, a mostly military aid program to fight both drug production and irregular armies, most notably the FARC and AUC. Since 2001, Washington has sent over $5 billion to Bogotá.

Nonetheless, Plan Colombia put little dent in cocaine production. The coca acreage in 2006 was slightly up from 2001, after some reductions in 2003 and 2004.

But Uribe’s success in curbing political violence boosted his popularity at home. He vigorously pressed the war against the FARC, forcing the guerrillas into tactical retreat. Overall, Uribe reduced murders, kidnappings and massacres by about one-third.

The Uribe-controlled Congress also passed the Justice and Peace Law, launching a peace process with the right-wing paramilitaries that demobilized 30,000 men and women. The law was written by Sen. Mario Uribe, the cousin now being investigated for his AUC ties. Even the Bush administration criticized its terms for amnesty as overly lenient.

Popularity soaring, Uribe got congressional allies to change the Constitution to permit a second presidential term. He was swept to reelection in 2006, with 62% of the vote.

He is trying to change the Constitution again, to allow himself an unprecedented third term in 2010. Not a peep is heard from the Washington administration or the U.S Congress that went berserk with shouts of “Dictator!” when the same thing was done by President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Still, accusations of corruption and unpunished human rights violations, dog Uribe. Several investigations, especially those led by Colombia’s Supreme Court, have amassed evidence against former and current government officials and prominent members of the country’s elite. Those allegedly working for drug cartels include dozens of current and former members of Congress; high-ranking military officers, including the current chief of staff; entire army battalions; prominent businessmen; and some of Uribe’s closest allies, including the father and brother of Colombia’s former Foreign Minister, Maria Consuelo Araújo.

In December 2006, embarrassed by ongoing criminality in the AUC’s Santa Fe Ralito safe haven, the government put some paramilitary leaders in prison. There, they continued to live the high life and to keep on top of their criminal operations. The local press published last May transcripts of police wiretaps revealing AUC leaders ordering killings and directing drug trafficking from prison, while enjoying dance parties, sex orgies, and alcohol. They hosted “Mexican friends” and had unrestricted access to cell phones and the Internet.

Infuriated by the wiretap disclosures, Uribe fired the top 12 police generals, but said little about evidence of AUC criminality beyond promising yet another investigation.

AUC leaders then threatened to break off the peace process, accusing the government of changing the terms. They felt betrayed, they said, and threatened to incriminate all their elite allies, including politicians, businessmen, and multinationals. Talks finally did break off in July, 2009, leaving some of AUC’s regional blocs (see sidebar below) intact and others free to reorganize.

Regional trouble

The Organization of American States, which has overseen the peace process with the AUC, has been critical of the results. The OAS warns that paramilitaries are rearming and reorganizing under different names, with stronger ties to drug traffickers, led by some of the same leaders who supposedly have surrendered.

Despite Colombia’s corruption, its shaky internal peace process, and ineffective anti-drug program, Bush unstintingly supported Uribe. Calling Uribe a true democrat and strong leader, Dubya visited Colombia twice — once in 2008 — and met with Uribe several times in Washington. “I’m proud to call [Uribe] a friend and strategic ally,” Bush said, during one of Uribe’s visits. In Bogotá, he said: “I appreciate the [Colombian] president’s determination to bring human rights violators to justice… I believe that, given a fair chance, President Uribe can make the case.”

While not as publicly vocal as Bush about Uribe, Obama has continued U.S. financial and military support of the Colombian President.

Bush asked the U.S. Congress to increase financial support for Plan Colombia, but Democrats cut military aid from 80% to 65% of the total allocation, while increasing economic and humanitarian aid. Moreover, the Democrats attached strict conditions on the total $530 million increase. Democrats also more recently conditioned ratification of a free-trade agreement with Colombia on Uribe improving his human rights record and prosecuting paramilitary leaders.

In South America, Uribe has slowly backed himself into a corner by siding with the U.S. While most South American countries have grown more critical of U.S. foreign policy and the “Free Trade Agreement of the Americas,” Colombia staunchly supports the yanquis.

Brazil and Ecuador have closer relations with Venezuela, as do most countries in the region, in stark contrast to the situation a decade ago. Colombia has been left out of South America’s MERCOSUR regional trade union, including a meeting held just this last week. Venezuela was admitted in 2008.

Uribe also has lost some regional backing in his fight against FARC. Ecuador has resisted labeling the FARC a terrorist organization, but criticized Plan Colombia, and sought reparations for collateral damage inflicted by Colombian forces on Ecuador’s border population.

Meanwhile, the drug and corruption scandal keeps growing. Though Uribe has denied most of the accusations, drug lord Fabio Ochoa Vasco said he is willing to negotiate his surrender to the DEA along with proof to support his charges. Fabio did surrender, and it’s widely believed he gave information, because he received a mere five year jail sentence.

Fabio also said some previously defiant AUC leaders and drug traffickers are now willing to surrender to U.S. law-enforcement agencies to avoid being murdered in Colombia, as powerful forces seek desperately to silence them and end the “Para-scandal.”

Whatever is ultimately proven the outpouring of evidence linking Uribe to Colombia’s vast cocaine industry and long history of political murders is bad news for President Obama, if he counts on Uribe to be a model for South America’s future and a bulwark against Chavez and his crazy social programs for the poor.

Right now, Uribe is Colombia’s “Mr. Big,” the man in whom all the monied interests find their best bet. But behind Mr. Big is his northern ally, the much-heralded “change” of U.S. presidents has not changed a damn thing about who is pulling the puppet strings.

This, then, is the Colombian government, and the Colombian military that our servicemen are meeting right now, these are the people they will be working with and fighting for, and this is what the Colombia you are sending your tax dollars to by the billions looks like.

For more about why, look for the next installment of “Build-up in Colombia” in the Rag Blog!

Así es en Colombia.

United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC), detail from the Afro-Colombian mural on U Street, NW, in Washington, DC. Image from Ronnie R / Flickr.

A Stroll down Paramilitary Lane

This week, instead of a visit to one of our new U.S. military bases, let’s saunter through the AUC (United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia), bloc by bloc. Amid peace talks with Álvaro Uribe’s government, which began in December 2002, the AUC agreed to a process of bloc-by-bloc demobilization, to culminate in August 2006. While many of the “paracos” claim to have demobilized, along with non-AUC units, each formerly included thousands of foot soldiers and commanded huge sums from narcotraffickers and landowners seeking protection.

Not all Colombian paramilitary blocs demobilized or even participated in the peace talks. In the Meta Department, for example, groups reorganized under mid-level commanders continue to battle over drug trafficking lanes, under the influence of leaders like Vicente Castaño and Hernán Hernandez.

There is certainly no shortage of paramilitaries today. In some areas, new groups step into the void. In urban barrios, paramilitaries made up of “former gangsters,” such as the “Guapo Rincon,” say they are keeping out mal elementos. The AUC name is unlikely to be used again.

The Northern Bloc

Run by AUC military leader Salvatore Mancuso, the Northern Bloc incorporated Fidel and Carlos Castaño’s original ACCU, controlling municipalities from the Panamanian border to the Venezuelan. Authorities believe Mancuso’s deputy on the Caribbean coast, Rodrigo Továr “Jorge 40” Pupo, controlled Colombia’s Caribbean drug routes. Vicente Castaño, Carlos’ and Fidel’s brother, is a third powerful player, widely thought to have played a role in Carlos’ death. The Northern Bloc demobilized in March of 2006. Vicente Castaño is a fugitive from justice.

The “Élmer Cárdenas Bloc”

Led by José Alfredo “El Aleman” Berrío, the Elmer Cárdenas Bloc was originally part of the ACCU that, through brutality and massacres, controlled the strategic Urabá region near the Colombian-Panamanian border in the 1990s. Substantial evidence suggests that Berrío and the Élmer Cárdenas Bloc are very big in coke. This bloc barely participated in peace talks and was one of the last to claim to demobilize.

The Catatumbo Bloc

This unit, an offshoot of the Northern Bloc, operated in the conflicted, drug-producing region of Catatumbo, in Norte de Santander department, near the Venezuelan border. It was commanded by Salvatore Mancuso (at one point AUC’s military commander, see article above), who dominated paramilitary activity in Departmento Córdoba and elsewhere in northwestern Colombia. It demobilized in late 2004.

The Magdalena Medio Bloc

Led by Ramón “El Viejo” Isaza on the west side of the Magdalena River, one of the most veteran paramilitaries, and Victor Triana “Botalón” Arias on the east side, the Magdalena Medio Bloc demobilized in Feb., 2006.

The Central Bolivar Bloc

Deeply involved in the drug trade the BCB rivaled (and perhaps exceeded) the Northern Bloc in size and wealth. Led by Ivan Roberto “Ernesto Baez” Duque and Carlos Mario “Macaco” Jimenez, the BCB controlled much of the greater Magdalena Medio region and significant southern Colombia’s coca-growing regions. The BCB, along with the Northern Bloc, was one of the first to enter negotiations with the government. It officially demobilized in Jan., 2006.

The Mineros Bloc

Though it controlled only a small area in northeast Antioquia, the Mineros Bloc was quite wealthy, largely from narcotrafficking. Led by Ramiro “Cuco” Vanoy, wanted by the U.S. for his participation in the North Valle drug cartel, the Mineros Bloc demobilized in Jan., 2006.

The Calima Bloc

Working in and around Cali and down the Pacific coast to northern Cauca, and led by Hernán Hernandez, this bloc formed in 1999 after the Ejercito de Liberacion Nacional, (ELN; the National Liberation Army, another guerrilla force) pulled a kidnapping at a church in a wealthy Cali neighborhood. Heavily dependent on drug traffickers’ support, they demobilized in Dec., 2004.

The Avengers of Arauca Bloc

Commanded, at least on paper, by Pablo “El Mellizo” Mejia, a Northern Valle cartel figure wanted by the U.S., the Avengers operated in an oil-producing region that has been a principal destination of your military assistance. It demobilized in Dec., 2005.

The Libertadores del Sur Bloc

This outfit operated in the coca-growing zones of Nariño and Putumayo, led by Guillermo Perez “Pablo Sevillano” Alzate, a noted narcotrafficker wanted by U.S. authorities. They demobilized in July, 2005.

The Centauros Bloc

In oil-rich Casanare, Meta, Cundinamarca, and in Bogotá’s slums, this bloc really started disintegrating when its leader, Miguel Arroyave, died at the hands of his own men in Sept., 2004. The Centauros fought a bloody campaign against the Llanos Bloc in Casanare. They demobilized in Sept., 2005.

The Llanos Bloc

Headed by “Martin Llanos” in Casanare, this bloc has been decimated by repeated attacks from the rest of the AUC (especially the Centauros) and COLAR. However, it never participated in peace talks, and remnants still operate.

— Marion Delgado

For previous reports from Colombia by Marion Delgado, go here.

.The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Álvaro Uribe, AUC, Cocaine, Colombia, FARC, George W. Bush, Imperialism, Latin America, Marion Delgado, Narcoguerra, Organization of American States, Political Corruption | 3 Comments

Health Care ‘Reform’ : Just Say No to Traitor Joe!

Posted on December 16, 2009 by Thorne Dreyer

Don’t Surrender to Senator Joe
Vote “No” on the health care joke

By Ted McLaughlin / The Rag Blog / December 16, 2009

It looks like the United States Senate is going to cave in and surrender to Joe Lieberman. They first dumped the most important part of health care reform — the public option. This was the part of the reform bill that would offer inexpensive and decent health care insurance to Americans, and would force the private insurance companies to lower their prices to compete. But Traitor Joe didn’t like it, so it’s gone.

But that wasn’t enough. The Senate then tossed out a compromise idea — the creation of a private non-profit insurance program that would be overseen by a federal government agency. Although not as good as a true public option, this would have also caused some downward pressure on insurance premiums and saved consumers a ton of money. But Traitor Joe didn’t like it, so it’s gone.

Still, that wasn’t enough. Now the Senate is willing to toss out an expansion of Medicare to those between 55 and 64. At age 55, people are entering the years where they are much more prone to medical problems than younger Americans. This would have guaranteed they would be covered by a government insurance program that has been proven to work efficiently and effectively (just ask someone over 65 if they would give up their Medicare). But Traitor Joe didn’t like it, so it’s gone.

I’m beginning to think if Lieberman wanted Senate Democrats to kiss his scrawny ass, most of them would line up, get on their knees and pucker up. Are there any real Democrats left? Do any of them have even a remnant of a spine? Where are the progressives who promised us real health care reform?

All we are left with now is a bill that would force ordinary Americans to give the large private insurance companies a gigantic payday. And they would be forced to do it without getting lower costs or better health care. This bill would still leave medical decisions in the hands of insurance companies rather than doctors. Personally, I am appalled.

I think any Senate progressive with a functioning brain and a fully-developed conscience should vote against this travesty of a bill that is empty of any real health care reform. And it looks like Howard Dean agrees with me. He told Vermont Public Radio the following:

This is essentially the collapse of health care reform in the United States Senate. Honestly the best thing to do right now is kill the Senate bill, go back to the House, start the reconciliation process where you only need 51 votes and it would be a much simpler bill.

I urge any remaining progressive senators — don’t check your conscience at the door to the Senate chamber. Vote against this bill. Kill it, then start over and do it right.

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

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Congress, Health Care Reform, Joe Lieberman, Medicare, Progressive Democrats, Public Option, Ted McLaughlin, U.S. Senate | 4 Comments

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Health Care ‘Reform’ : Just Say No to Traitor Joe!

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