The Courage of Obama's Convictions

I voted for Barak Obama, because he promised to reform the health insurance, the banking, and the financial services industries. He also vowed to close the prison for terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and eliminate the "don’t-ask-don’t-tell" policy against gay men and women in America’s armed services.

Now, eight months into his presidency, I am disappointed by his ineffective leadership. He has allowed his opponents to define his policies for voters, which effectively turns over the control of the current legislative agenda to the American Conservative movement.

Conservatives have a lot to answer for. Who first advocated and enacted the bailout of banks and Wall Street? George Walker Bush. Yet Conservatives call such bailouts "intrusive big government spending" and blame Obama for the mess. Who created the enormous budget deficits that will burden our grandchildren? George Walker Bush. Yet Conservatives shout into their radio mikes about Liberals and Socialists who seek to destroy this country by spending it to death. Who increased the size of the United States government? George Walker Bush. Yet Conservatives keep up their mantra about Obama’s enlargement of an already oversized bureaucracy that saps Americans’ self-reliance and interferes with citizens’ personal choices.

Conservative aggression has stymied the Obama administration, but Obama has aided and abetted Conservatives by not stating, clearly, the policies that would aid Congress to pass the necessary reform legislation. He has been so busy being bipartisan that he has failed to notice that he has lost the political initiative that had swept him into office. He will likely never regain it.

If he had had the courage of his convictions, he would have advocated, right from the beginning, health insurance reform, rather than health care reform. That would have eliminated the nonsense about "death panels." The insurance reform would have included a government insurance program, like Medicare, that would compete with private insurance companies, thus lowering the costs of premiums charged by private insurers. The government’s program would not have covered elective surgery. Nor abortions, except in cases of incest, rape, or when the life of the mother was in danger. Obama could have stated clearly, at the beginning of his administration, that this program would have been available only to citizens of the United States and resident aliens. Which would have made Representative Wilson’s outburst not just stupid and untrue, but politically ineffective.

He would have stated, clearly and forcibly, that those who had wanted to stay with private insurance companies would have been allowed to. And they would have been protected from the insurance industry’s questionable practices. The reform would have kept health insurance companies from raising premiums or canceling coverage because of a policyholder’s illness. Insurance companies would not have been allowed to deny coverage because of pre-existing conditions, age, job change, or employment termination. Policyholders would have been protected from a reduction of coverage or an increase of deductibles as long as the policyholder had been paying the premium.

This would have given legislators real issues about actual problems to debate. But it would not have prevented Limbaugh, Beck and Company to distort and lie about insurance reform. But if nothing had been accomplished, they would have had, hanging around their necks, the lack of adequate health care for millions of Americans, many of whom were their listeners and readers. And Obama would have reminded them who was responsible.

Obama would have stated that he wanted to separate consumer banking from stock market and international trade. He would have told Congress to re-enact the Glass Steagall Act, regulate the stock market and international trade so that derivatives and the packaging of mortgages to be sold as securities would be illegal.

He would have advocated specific laws and regulations to stop the extravagance of corporate executive compensation. Bonuses would not have exceeded 20% of an executive’s base salary, and would have been subject to withholding taxes before they were disbursed. They would not have been paid unless the corporation posted a profit of no less than 5% after stockholders had received their dividends. All deferred compensation would have been eliminated, as would all corporate tax deductions for all executive perquisites such as club memberships, use of corporate jets for personal use, executive dining rooms, private use of all corporation-owned transportation, first-class and business class airline tickets, except for business travel outside the continent of North America. These perquisites would have been allowed only if these expenses had been listed as compensation for the specific executive who received them. Then the corporation would have withheld taxes from the base pay of the executive who received them, and the executive would have paid federal and state income taxes on the value of perquisites received.

Yes, Limbaugh and Beck would have shouted "Socialism!" into the Conservative echo chamber (which shows that their ideas and rhetoric have limited intellectual substance). Banks would have claimed that they needed the perquisites and bonuses to retain experienced and productive personnel. Hopefully, Obama would have pointed out that those experienced and productive personnel had been the ones that had brought the banking industry to its knees. Obama would have also pointed out that, in the recession caused by their inept and corrupt management, the executives would not have quit their jobs if they had not received those bonuses and perks. New positions, even for executives, would have been very difficult to find.

Immediately after assuming the position of Commander-in-Chief, Obama would have ordered the closure of the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. He would have also closed all the "black sights" maintained around the world. He would have transferred the inmates and internees to the federal facility at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Kansans would have protested loudly, but their protest would have put them in the awkward position of wanting the money that the Federal facility would have brought into their state, but, at the same time, casting doubt on the ability of the military to hold its prisoners. Hardly a way to support the troops. However, they would have benefited from the thanks of their fellow Americans who would have spent millions in Kansas for expanded facilities. They would have also received the thanks for all those fiscal conservatives for helping to eliminate the expense of maintaining all those secret holding sites around the world.

Obama would have put accused terrorists on trial in civil courts immediately and ordered that all evidence against them be revealed. He would have let the evidence reveal whatever it did, including the sources of intelligence and the US government officials that approved the imprisonment and torture of the accused. He would have ordered that the innocent be returned to the countries where they were first detained, thus returning the United States of America to the status of Nation of Laws.

Of course, the Swift Boaters, various retired generals, and probably Senator John McCain, would have gotten on Larry King and Fox News to call for the impeachment of President Obama for treason and putting Americans at risk. Limbaugh would probably have called Obama an "Arab-loving thug" and demanded another investigation into Obama’s birthplace. Again, Obama would have forcibly reminded Conservatives that we were a Nation of Laws, not Lies, and that our military could hold prisoners effectively. He would have reminded them that fair and open trials had been something that terrorists wanted to destroy. He also would have announced that we needed to recruit translators of languages that are spoken in the Middle East, and that he would rehire those foreign-born and gay Americans that had been fired because they were foreign born and gay.

After that, he would have told Congress to reverse the law formulating the "Don’t ask, don’t tell" policy against gays in the military. While Congress debated the issue, he, as Commander in Chief, would have ordered that gays in the military be allowed to serve openly and without prejudice to their expectation of promotion. Thus joining the armed services of such countries as Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. I leave the Conservatives’ probable response to your imagination.

President Obama wasn’t elected to be popular. He was elected to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States of America and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. He was also elected to fulfill his campaign promises. That he has not done.

Hate Speech Leads to Violence and Death

Please read "Where Did ‘We’ Go?", by Thomas Friedman, The New York Times, September 30, 2009. It's posted on their website.

The Ministry of Truth of the United States of America

President Obama revealed his educational agenda by telling children to stay in school and study hard. He also told them that hard work leads to good things. The very thing that President George Herbert Walker Bush told schoolchildren in 1991.

At that time, the Democratic Party wrongly complained about Bush’s agenda and even investigated the money that was spent to broadcast the speech. Yes, wrongly, since nothing illegal was done. The whole incident made the Democrats look silly. Yet during the last few days, the Republicans, instead of learning from the silliness of the Democrats, blustered about Obama’s lust to preach the doctrines of socialism to schoolchildren, his desire to set up a personality cult, and his abuse of presidential power.

Before Obama gave his speech, a forthright conservative parent worried that Obama would turn public schools over to some socialist agenda. A guest on Rush Limbaugh’s radio program compared Barak Obama to Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-Il. Another radio pundit, fearful for his child’s safety, said, "I wouldn’t let my next-door neighbor talk to my kid alone; I’m sure as hell not letting Barak Obama talk to my kid alone." These assessments of Obama’s speech appeared in The New York Times on Friday, September 4, 2009, four days before Obama spoke, and three days before the text of the speech was released.

I would think that these concerned citizens might be embarrassed now that Obama’s speech has been delivered. Some others might even expect these good people to admit they were wrong and support Obama’s statements to American schoolchildren. But they cannot and they will not. Without realizing it, these folks have themselves become indoctrinated by the American version of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel, 1984.

The Ministry of Truth was run by the Party, which was divided into the Inner Party and the Outer Party. The Inner Party was in complete control of all economic and political activity. It also broadcast news of glorious military victories and increased manufacturing production. The data was repeated again and again. And again.

The Outer Party’s members, who obeyed all rules promulgated by the Inner Party, had to listen to the news everywhere, in the street, in restaurants, in train stations. Even in their homes, where television sets, installed by the Ministry of Truth, could not be turned off. The uninterrupted news distracted them from the rusty plumbing in their flats, their utter dependence on the Inner Party for employment, and the ever-diminishing vocabulary that they were allowed to use. Their world was a vast echo chamber of ideals preached by the Inner Party.
Members of the Outer Party never thought of examining the data they were told; to do so would have been a thought crime, punishable by public humiliation, torture and maybe death. So, they repeated the data to each other in conversations that became ever more restricted in subject matter. There were no discussions of sex, politics and religion, only the repetition of data and the three principles of the Inner Party: War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Repetition and more repetition taught them the truth, and they believed it because their fellow members of the Outer Party believed it. As a matter of fact, it comforted them and, as Winston Smith the protagonist did, they overcame their individuality and learned to love Big Brother.
In his afterword to the novel, Erich Fromm wrote in 1961: "It is one of the most characteristic and destructive developments of our own society that man, becoming more and more of an instrument, transforms reality into something relative to his own interests and functions. Truth is proven by the consensus of millions: to the slogan ‘how can millions be wrong’ is added ‘and how can a minority be right.’ Orwell shows quite clearly that in a system in which the concept of truth as an objective judgement concerning reality is abolished, anyone who is a minority of one must be convinced that he is insane."

The American Ministry of Truth is a creature of radio, television, and the Internet, which can be used to inform, persuade and entertain. They are also used by the majority to repeat ideas that ruin careers, distort government policy, and hide destructive activities.

Think of the times in which the majority was wrong. Until Joseph Welch revealed Joseph McCarthy’s lies and distortions, the majority thought that Communists had taken over the government. Until Alexander Butterfield revealed that the Nixon White House had tapes of conversations held in the oval office, the majority of Americans believed that Richard Nixon had not been involved in the Watergate break-ins. Until the US invaded Iraq, the majority of Americans knew that Saddam Hussein had developed weapons of mass destruction, and until September, 2006, the majority of Americans knew that Hussein and Osama bin-Laden had plotted the attack on the World Trade Center. In all these cases, the truth was what the majority said, and the minority was shouted down and vilified as being unpatriotic.

Despite the number of times the majority is proven wrong, we Americans continue to seek out popular public figures who express popular opinions that mirror our own prejudices and ignorance. We revel in radio and TV talk shows that feature shouting opinionizers who are retired military officers, political activists, think-tank scholars, government officials, and columnists who role-play as liberals and conservatives. The George Will and Sam Donaldson Act is a favorite among the majority of Americans who prefer vaudeville to journalism.

The information we receive from each of them is biased toward the views that we already hold, because we avoid programs that do otherwise. We find comfort in the "fair and balanced" doctrine, which simply means that a liberal and a conservative sit in front of a microphone and camera to shout at each other for our benefit. When our favorite scores a point, we cheer; when the other guy does, we boo. We are entertained, but are neither persuaded nor informed.

Celebrities know what their audiences want to hear. Thus Rush Limbaugh tells his audience: "Remember, now, the Alinsky rule: ‘You speak within the realm of your audience's experience.’ The American people want to hear children motivated to be good, to do the best they can, to work hard. Okay, so go out and use the language and use the philosophy that makes your audience comfortable with you when your objective is the exact opposite of what you say. Barack Obama wants as many of these kids in school to grow up needing government services as he can."

Limbaugh uses the Alinsky rule, and then tells his followers that Obama said something that he didn’t. I do not believe that Obama wants kids in school to grow up needing government services. Nor have I seen any evidence of actions taken by his administration that demonstrate Limbaugh’s assertion.

However, if I were to get all my political and economic information from no one but Limbaugh, I would whoop with delight every time he insulted a government official in the Obama administration. I would repeat the latest Rushism to my fellow believers in conversation or via e-mail and ask them to send it on to their friends. Thus I would become an instrument of the American Ministry of Truth.

I have to give Limbaugh credit; he uses language very well, and he is in Don Rickles’s league when it comes to insults and put downs. The difference between them is vast. Rickles is an entertainer; Limbaugh is a thrice-divorced, recovering drug addict posing as an advocate for American family values. And pretending to be a Christian-American’s Minister of Truth.

The Ministry of Truth also uses e-mail to repeat untruths. (Look up my blog of December 27, 2008, which examined the lies spread by someone posing as a historian.) A recent e-mail, which has been making the rounds, uses a good cause to assert a religious prejudice. It uses all capital letters to show its indignation and heart break. I have left it in its "flaming" format for full effect.

"RECENTLY THIS WEEK, UK REMOVED THE HOLOCAUST FROM ITS SCHOOL CURRICULUM BECAUSE IT ‘OFFENDED’ THE MOSLEM POPULATION WHICH CLAIMS IT NEVER OCCURRED. THIS IS A FRIGHTENING PORTENT OF THE FEAR THAT IS GRIPPING THE WORLD AND HOW EASILY EACH COUNTRY IS GIVING INTO IT. IT IS NOW MORE THAN 60 YEARS AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN EUROPE ENDED. THIS E-MAIL IS BEING SENT AS A MEMORIAL CHAIN, IN MEMORY OF THE SIX MILLION JEWS, 20 MILLION RUSSIANS, 10 MILLION CHRISTIANS, GYPSIES AND 1,900 CATHOLIC PRIESTS WHO WERE MURDERED, MASSACRED RAPED, BURNED, STARVED AND HUMILIATED WITH THE GERMAN AND RUSSIAN PEOPLES LOOKING THE OTHER WAY! NOW, MORE THAN EVER, WITH IRAN, AMONG OTHERS, CLAIMING THE HOLOCAUST TO BE "A MYTH," IT IS IMPERATIVE TO MAKE SURE THE WORLD NEVER FORGETS. THIS E-MAIL IS INTENDED TO REACH 40 MILLION PEOPLE WORLDWIDE!"

There are indeed people who deny the occurrence of the Holocaust, the President of Iran being one, and Roman Catholic Bishop William Richardson of the UK being another. However, this e-mail seeks to inflame hatred of Islamic people by claiming that Muslims forced the British Education Ministry to remove the Holocaust from its curriculum. Which is not true.

There was a controversy in a town in Northern England (both BBC and The Guardian have stories about this on their websites), where Muslims wanted a local council to remove the Holocaust from the curriculum. But it wasn’t removed by the local council; nor, I repeat, was it removed by UK’s Ministry of Education.

Another similar e-mail said the same thing about the Kentucky public schools, but it wasn’t true either. Both are being circulated by that party of Americans who believe that Islam is evil. However, what they believe, in this instance, is a lie.

The Ministry of Truth of the United States of America gets its ideas from prejudices—that shadow world of narrow minds and mean spirits who transform reality into something relative to their own interests and functions.. They have made themselves instruments of circulation and repitition, because that is the only way the flimsiness of their reasoning can appear solid. After all, if a million people believe it, how can it be wrong?

Our Health Care Brawl

"What we have here is a failure to communicate!"
Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke

In the current health care brawl we are not listening to our political opponents. At our town meetings, we are shouting down our elected representatives, and we are threatening our opponents with violence and death. We scream epithets at politicians, and brand them liars, socialists, communists or fascists. We admire those of us with the loudest voices that interrupt our opponents with satiric rejoinders rather than relevant information. We all have become members of a political WWF, and we smack down our political opponents with animal roars and vulgar gestures that we should have left on the elementary school playground. Some of us even carry pistols to town meetings and rallies, in the belief that the Second Amendment means it’s okay to intimidate people with weapons. On television every night, we are presented with the alarming spectacle of our feeding on our own emotions.

We can’t communicate because we are afraid. Many of us agree with the voter who screamed, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Yes, it was an amusing slip, but the man is not stupid. He is genuinely afraid. Afraid that, even though Medicare is a government program, we will not receive proper medical attention if we adopt national health services such as those in England and Canada. Some of us shrink from a government bureaucracy that we have been told will stand between Americans and their physicians. Others of us shudder at the reports of federal death camps for our ailing elderly who cannot pay for medical care. We fear, and we will literally fight to the death those that are advocating evil policies. Even if our fears are based on lies or our own ignorance.

Ignorance is the bane of political discourse, and we can’t communicate because we simply don’t know what we are talking about when we discuss the national health services of England and Canada. They aren’t perfect, but those of us who claim government provided health care is wicked do not understand those programs. In England and Canada surgery, births, end-of-life counselling, vaccinations, medications, physical exams are all provided free, and without permission from a bureaucrat or insurance claims adjustor.

The ultimate in ignorance was an editorial in Investor's Business Daily, which claimed, "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." However Professor Hawking denied the assertion. "I wouldn’t be here today if it were not for the NHS," he told The Guardian. "I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." I hope that the IBD’s editorial board expressed their views out of ignorance of Professor Hawking’s nationality (he is British, not American), not out of a wish to deceive their readers. Investors Business Daily later corrected their editorial blunder.

We are divided into camps that justify lies, exaggerations, and intimidation of our opposition. And we get away with it, because no one has explained what health care reform will do. However, health care is not the problem. The US has excellent health care. The problem is getting to it. We do not need health care reform, we need health insurance reform.
We are debating the wrong issue. We need to directly address the federal regulation of the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry, and the industry that manufactures medical devices and implements.

Federal regulations will not destroy capitalism, privacy and family values. We need regulations to protect consumers of health insurance that pays for the drugs, pace makers, urine analyses, liver transplants, spinal taps, and the machines, tubes, meters, monitors and all the other gadgets and materials that are attached to or inserted into our bodies.

Consumer protection is the issue we should be debating. How do we protect consumers from being denied medical care by corporate bureaucrats and insurance clerks with no medical training? How do we protect consumers from unjustifiable cancellation of medical insurance? How do we protect consumers from unnecessary and fraudulent medical tests and procedures? From losing insurance coverage when our employers go out of business? From emergency rooms overcrowded with ill and injured people with no insurance at all. From fees on our medical bills that pay for the medical treatment of others who are uninsured?

President Obama, Vice President Biden, the United States Senate, and the US House of Representatives have not dealt with these problems. Instead they have kept the debate about health care, a topic so broad that it can be easily manipulated. Obama has not presented a plan that says, specifically, what it will do to protect health insurance consumers. Senators and members of Congress haven’t either.

They can’t, because they are in the pockets of the very industries that need regulation. As long as their re-election campaigns are financed by these corporations and their lobbying groups, consumers will continue to suffer. When Congress re-convenes in the fall, nothing will happen. Health insurance reform will not happen. The number of us with no health insurance will increase, but government workers, including The President, his cabinet and aides, members of the Senate and House of Representatives, will be covered. To them, and to executives and employees of the health insurance industry, "God’s in His Heaven, and all’s right with the world."

As long as they keep us ill-informed and deaf to one another’s reasonable words.

White Male Victims and Judicial Activists

During the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, no one learned much about Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s judicial philosophy, but there was enough drama to fill a reality TV show. Over four days, seven white, conservative Republican Senators sought to portray themselves as victims of Sotomayer’s ethnic prejudice and judicial activism. They became, in effect, the White Senators Council of the Judiciary Committee. And they were very upset by a statement Judge Sotomayor had made to a group of Hispanic law students at the University of California, Berkeley.

And this is what Judge Sotomayor said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experience, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Judge Sotomayor’s statement asserts that a Latina woman’s experience is richer than that of a white man who has not had to raise families in drug-ridden neighborhoods with poorly equipped schools, a white man who has not had to endure jokes about wetbacks and funny accents, a white man who has not had to prove that he was an American citizen when applying for a job. These experiences, which are commonplace in the Latino community, are sources of wisdom for Latina women who succeed in spite of them.

Sensible Americans understood the judge’s meaning, but the members of the White Senators Council were really hurt. To the quick. After all, they as white men had every right to be expected to reach conclusions that were at least as good as those of a wise Latina woman. They were Senators. Some of their best friends were Latinos.

They drew themselves up in righteous indignation and attacked Judge Sotomayor for being prejudiced against white people. They so eagerly took on the role of victim that I expected them to bring charges against the judge under the Civil Rights Act. One injured member of the White Senators Council, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, felt constrained to say in his own defense, "If I ever said something remotely like that, my career would have been over."

Senator Graham spoke in code, White Speak Code. Translated, the message was: "White people, despite a three-hundred-year history of racial and ethnic bias, slave trading, miscegenation, and murder, are really nice folks whom non-whites must love, respect, and never say anything negative about."

White Speak Code used to be difficult to decipher, but it is now so prevalent that it is easy to translate. We all have heard the complaint, "I don’t want my tax money spent on people who are too lazy to work and too lazy to learn English." Believe it or not, conservatives think that such statements are assertions of good American virtues. They also believe that only conservative white voters can decode the message. "You-know-who" are lazy, jobless people who refuse to learn English.

In the old days, members of the White Senators Council were more honest about their beliefs. I remember another South Carolinian, the late Strom Thurmond, who yelled "Segregation NOW! Segregation FOREVER!" He also fathered a black girl out of wedlock.

Suppose Senator Graham had said, "I would hope that a wise white man, with the richness of his experience, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a Latina woman who hasn’t lived his life." Would his career have been over? I doubt it. There is still an elite who believes that the lives of white people are richer than and superior to those of all other ethnic groups. They believe that a white man’s wisdom is gained from telling jokes about the way "illegals" speak, attending schools in all white, drug-free neighborhoods, and making sure their tax money does not go to people who are too lazy to work or learn English. These folks would continue to vote for Lindsey Graham. And for the time being, they will be able to re-elect Graham and all the other members of the White Senators Council.

But not for long. And this is why Graham and his colleagues on the White Senators Council act like victims. They are frightened.

The world is no longer of the white, by the white and for the white. The world contains a growing Latino and African-American population that no longer asks for help but demands its rights, a population that votes and no longer depends entirely on white men for employment. This world contains Junot Diaz and Toni Morrison, Edward James Olmos and Denzel Washington, Ricardo Sanchez and Colin Powell, Mario Molina and Mark Dean. Not to mention Sonia Sotomayor and Eric Holder.

The White Senators Council simply does not understand what is happening in the world. They do not understand that they can no longer order Latinos and African Americans around. Nor can they patronize them. They have to cooperate with them.

And they don’t know how. Frank Rich in his column for The New York Times (July 19, 2009) describes what to me was the most embarrassing moment in the Sotomayor hearings.
"…When Tom Coburn of Oklahoma merrily joked to Sotomayor that ‘You’ll have lots of ’splainin’ to do,’ it clearly didn’t occur to him that such mindless condescension helps explain why the fastest-growing demographic group in the nation is bolting his party.

"Coburn wouldn’t know that behind the fictional caricature Ricky Ricardo was the innovative and brilliant Cuban-American show-business mogul Desi Arnaz. As Lucie Arnaz, his and Lucille Ball’s daughter, told me last week, it always seemed unfair to her that those laughing at her father’s English usually lacked his fluency in two languages. Then again, Coburn was so unfamiliar with Jews he didn’t have a clear fix on what happened in the Holocaust until 1997, when he was 48. Party elders like Bill Bennett had to school him after he angrily berated NBC for subjecting children and 'decent-minded individuals everywhere' to the violence, 'full-frontal nudity and irresponsible sexual activity of Schindler’s List."

Senator Coburn’s wisdom is the true White Man’s burden: ignorance through complacency. What the White Senators Council doesn’t know is not important to them, because it doesn't touch them personally. And here we arrive at what I have observed about conservatives. Conservatives believe that if something hasn’t happened to them, it hasn’t happened. If it has happened to other people, it is unimportant.

Maybe they will acknowledge problems in the Latino and African American communities when those votes push them out of office.

The White Senators Council also assumed the role of Constitutional Scholar-Philosophers when they accused Judge Sotomayor of being "a liberal judicial activist." As explained by the White Senators Council, judicial activism is the unConsitutional assumption of legislative powers by any part of the judiciary, but especially the Supreme Court. However, the term "liberal judicial activist" is really White- Speak Code for any judges whose decisions they disagree with.

Truth to tell, all judges serving in Federal courts—conservative, moderate, or liberal—are judicial activists. They write opinions explaining their decisions of the court, and the decisions and opinions, even the dissents, become a part of the law. The interpretation of the law becomes a part of the law by explaining how the law may or may not be applied, how and why the processes of the courts may or may not be correct, or even whether a Federal or State law is Constitutional. Even whether a past Supreme Court decision is still in effect.

Historians, journalists, and professors have pointed this out. James MacGregor Burns (Packing the Court: The Rise of Judicial Power and the Coming Crisis of the Supreme Court, Penguin Press, 2009) gives us a history of the conflict between the Supreme Court and the President, between the Congress and the Supreme Court, and shows us that judicial activism began with John Marshall’s opinion in Marbury v. Madison (1803). Marshall wrote: "It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is." Marshall went on to say that this judicial power "extended to all cases arising under the constitution." Burns tells us, "With these words, Marshall laid the basis for a power of judicial review of acts of Congress—indeed over the acts of all branches of national and state governments—so absolute and sweeping that it would eventually create supremacy of the Supreme Court over American government (emphasis Burns’s)."

Thus began partisanship in the process of the appointment of judges by the President and the confirmation by the Senate. Presidents want judges to decide cases so that their political party’s goals will be supported. So do Senators. Sotomayor is a judicial activist, and so are John Paul Stevens, Antonin Gregory Scalia, Anthony Mcleod Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Gerald Breyer, John Glover Roberts, Jr., and Samuel Anthony Alito.

The White Senators Council wants justices to be umpires, but the analogy is ridiculous. Imagine in a baseball game a close play at third base. Now imagine the runner who was called out appealing to the chief of the crew of umpires on the field. Imagine the manager of the opposing team presenting his arguments in support of the call. Imagine the crew chief stopping the game, listening to the arguments that are presented in a calm, deliberate manner. Imagine, the umpires in a closed meeting presided over the crew chief. Imagine the crew chief getting a vote of all the umpires that were on the field at the time of the play, then assigning a particular umpire to write an opinion that will have to be researched and footnoted by an umpire’s clerk, then submitting the written opinion to the full crew for review, and finally publishing, and maybe, reading the opinion to the fans along with dissents from other disagreeing umpires.
Supreme Court Justices are no more baseball umpires than talkshow pundits are US Senators.

Unfortunately for the citizens of our republic, the White Senators Council behave like talkshow pundits instead of members of what was once known as the world's greatest deliberative body.

Promoting the General Welfare

Medical care is a human need.

Medical care should not be a commodity to be sold for profit the same way that supermarkets sell canned tomatoes and toilet paper. But it is.

Medical care should not be a privilege acquired by family wealth and connections, nor a perquisite bestowed by corporate committees. But it is.

Insurance for medical care should not be paid for by employers who resent the expense, nor by employees who lose their medical insurance coverage when their employers go bankrupt or leave town. Employees who become ill should not lose their coverage, when they change jobs, because of "pre-existing conditions." But all this is true.

Those who need medical care should get it immediately. No one else but physicians and their patients should determine what treatments should be provided. Then physicians and medical technicians should provide it. All without obtaining permission from insurance clerks untaught in science and medicine.

We the citizens of the United States of America should receive, at the very least, the same health care that our elected officials (correctly called "the hired help" by Will Rogers) give themselves. After all, we pay to the Federal and state governments income, excise, property, sales, airline ticket, and gasoline taxes, and we the employers should control the benefits that our hired help receive.

The best way to assure all Americans the excellent medical care that they need is a government-sponsored, single-payer plan that is financed by a flat tax on all gross personal and corporate income, regardless of its source. It would be collected by the Department of Health and Human Services, through the Internal Revenue Service. The money would be deducted from paychecks, stock and bond distributions of all kinds, including those that are currently "tax free." Those reporting their income quarterly would pay when submitting their quarterly returns. This plan would increase revenue because medical expenses would no longer be deductible on income tax returns. Most important, this plan would eliminate the need for Medicare and Medicaid.

All medical expenses, approved by the patient and physician, would be paid by HHS directly to the doctors, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies and medical laboratories involved in the treatment.
Would some doctors, clinics, hospitals, pharmacies, medical laboratories and patients take advantage of this plan and cheat the government out of billions of dollars? Possibly. Do some of them cheat the government now? Yes. No law has ever prevented fraud, any more than a stop sign has kept speeders from racing through intersections. We do not pass legislation to keep crime from occurring. We pass laws to give victims of crime a just system of redress. We also pass them to benefit citizens that obey the law. And we pass them to fulfil the mandate of the Constitution’s Preamble: to form a more perfect Union and to promote the general welfare. A single payer system will do just that.

Unfortunately, this won’t happen, because insurance companies won’t allow it. They have more influence over lawmakers than we voters do.

Why did American insurance companies and their clients, the employers of American workers, become the gatekeepers to American health care? Because we American citizens gave them the keys to clinics and hospitals during the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties. Our human need for medical care became an integral part of our employment compensation, as important as salary.

At first, medical insurance was considered something of a gift from a benevolent employer. The company would take care of you as long as you worked hard and were a productive employee.
However, employee productivity rose, but company benefits shrunk. The employee share of group medical insurance premiums increased, and in some cases the employees paid 100%.
Some companies dropped group medical insurance altogether.

Others offered a so-called "medical savings account," which allowed the employer to deduct money from the employee’s paycheck and send it to medical insurers. The money accumulated in these accounts was then used by the employee to help pay medical bills.

Help pay medical bills, but not completely pay. Most normal medical procedures, e.g. appendectomies, childbirth, cost tens of thousands of dollars, and few people could afford to save that amount of money. Employees might have thought that, after three or four years, their medical savings would grow to an amount that allows them to pay their medical bills. But most medical savings plans paid no interest, and any savings that the employee did not spend in one calendar year went to the insurer.

Insurance companies profit at the expense of human need, and we Americans have surrendered our human values to money. Why should insurance companies and their clients continue to control this human need? Because American culture values money above all else.

As do our elected officials. They cannot be re-elected without campaign contributions from the health care industry. Until our election campaign laws are changed, insurance companies will buy the votes of elected representatives. Consequently, very little will change in our municipal, state and federal governments.

To see how much your elected representatives accept from insurance companies, go to www.MAPLight.org.

The Clown from Georgia's 6th

Newt Gingrich is a public man with a public record. He lives in a glass house, but he revels in throwing stones. His most recent target has been Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. To ABC radios’ Robert Marcus Wilson, he said her recent press conference on the CIA’s use of torture was "the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I've seen in my lifetime. … She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, and she dishonors the Congress by her behavior." I am no fan of Speaker Pelosi, as I wrote in my blog October 9, 2008, but Newt Gingrich is in no position to throw stones at Nancy Pelosi. Despicable? Dishonest? Vicious? Gingrich, as aggressive, nasty, and hypocritical as Rush Limbaugh, lives in a glass house. A quick look at his record as a human being and as Speaker of the House reveals narrowness of mind, sexual hypocrisy, and unethical behavior.

Gingrich’s viciousness is clear to all in one of his more famous statementsd to Republican Party members: "I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around a campfire but lousy in politics." He wants Republicans to be nasty, and he encourages his fellow party members to avoid neatness, obedience, loyalty, and faithfulness.

As for viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes, Gingrich is a star Republican who virtually shut down the government in 1995. He is also the victim of his own compulsive logorrhea. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, he refused to submit a revised Federal budget allowing previously approved appropriations to expire on schedule, thus causing parts of the Federal government to shut down for lack of funds. He claimed the Republicans only wanted to slow the rate of increase in government spending. However, his motor mouth led him to reveal that his adamantine budget position was in part due to his being insulted by President Clinton, who made Gingrich sit in the rear of Air Force One on the return trip from Yizhak Rabin’s funeral in Israel. You can’t get any narrower than Newt Gingrich.

As for dishonesty, Gingrich should remember his own sins before casting the first stone at Nancy Pelosi. But he has a very short memory, or he must believe that no one else remembers the ethics investigations of his actions while Speaker of the House. Gingrich claimed tax-exempt status for a college course that he had run for obviously political purposes. During the investigation, he was forced to admit to providing inaccurate statements about the college course. He agreed to pay $300,000 for the cost of the investigation, despite denying the charges over misuse of tax-exempt funds. The House Ethics Committee concluded that inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules. For more about Gingrich’s dishonesty, begin your internet search with Wilkipedia.

Let us also remember the dishonor he brought on himself and his family when it was revealed that he was having an extramarital affair during the height of the congressional investigation of President Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky. Let us also remember that he has married three times, and that he told his first wife of his plans to divorce her as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from cancer. Let us also remember that the thrice-married Newt Gingrich (reminds me of Rudy Giuliani) has just joined that bedrock of family values and sanctity of marriage, the Roman Catholic Church.

Gingrich writes the same way he speaks. Aggressively, nastily, and often inaccurately. He wrote about Nancy Pelosi in the conservative newsletter, Human Events, "The person who is No. 2 in line to be commander in chief can't have contempt for the men and women who protect our nation. America can't afford it." What makes the statement aggressive and nasty is the inaccuracy. Nancy Pelosi does not have contempt for the men and women who protect our nation. She supported the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. To my chagrin, she even refused to allow an impeachment process to begin in the House of Representatives. Bush and Cheney, by their own words, admitted to having committed war crimes, and should have been impeached. But New Gingrich forgot Pelosi’s positions and shot his mouth off for the narrowest of political purposes. He loves the media spotlight.

And there he stands, center stage, and not just on Fox News or MSNBC. The ABC network loves the man; he is great for ratings. So, since we are stuck with this windbag, I suggest that the only thing we can to do is laugh at him. Laugh at him just as we do at clowns. Laugh at him just as we do self-important dottores and pantalones from the commedia dell’arte. Laugh at him, just as Mel Brooks, in The Producers, laughs at Adolf Hitler