disturbing the comfortable

I want to write a few words about a writer I really admire. His name is John Rustywire and he is a Navajo. He writes what might be called Fictionalized Reality about his country and his people.
Rustywire isn’t a polished writer, but he produces story after story after story. Vignettes about life in Dinehtah. He’s about as far from the fancy stories of Tony Hillerman as he can be, even though they probably live within a few hundred miles of each other. For one thing, most of Rustywire’s stories are quite short: a few hundred words. But they convey the essence of life in that hard beautiful country and among those who inhabit it.
For my money (which isn’t much) John Rustywire is one of the three or five or six best writers in the language today. Go to www.Rustywire.com and find out that one I’m saying is true.

Here we go.

This is the aristocracy (such as it is) having their cute parties while people not far away go hungry. Where people farther away die and get maimed.

• Like France, before the Revolution, yeah.

Mitzvahpalooza!!
http://bulldogpolitics.blogspot.com/2005/11/mitzvahpalooza.html
It was General Smedley Butler who once said "War is a Racket."

In light of the Bat Mitvah recently thrown by defense contractor David H. Brooks of DHB Industries for his daughter, it's glaringly obvious that Smedley Butler was RIGHT.

Entitled "Mitzvahpalooza," Mr. Brook's daughter's bat mitvah cost an estimated $10 million dollars. Appearing at "Mitzvahpalooza" were the following performers:

50 Cent
Don Henley and Joe Walsh of The Eagles
Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac
Tom Petty
Kenny G
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith
DJ AM
Ciara

"I'm told that at one point Brooks leapt on the stage with Tyler and Perry, who responded with good grace when their paymaster demanded that his teenage nephew be permitted to sit in on drums. At another point, I'm told, Tyler theatrically wiped sweat off Brooks' forehead - and then dried his hand with a flourish."



While war profiteer David Brooks is throwing a decadent bat mitzvah for his daughter, a war rages on in Iraq. As "150 kids in attendance" were "impressed by their $1,000 gift bags, complete with digital cameras and the latest video iPod," four (4) westerners were kidnapped in Iraq today.

There is an orgy of war profiteering going on in America, from congressmen to defense contractors. Does anybody give a shit?

NOTE: DHB is the "leader in the development, manufacturing and distribution of innovative, technically advanced bullet and projectile resistant garments, bullet resistant and fragmentation vests, bomb projectile blankets, and related ballistic accessories and technologies for the United States Military and Law Enforcement Agencies"

Here we go.

This is the aristocracy (such as it is) having their cute parties while people not far away go hungry. Where people farther away die and get maimed.

Like France, before the Revolution, yeah.

Mitzvahpalooza!!
http://bulldogpolitics.blogspot.com/2005/11/mitzvahpalooza.html
It was General Smedley Butler who once said "War is a Racket."

In light of the Bat Mitvah recently thrown by defense contractor David H. Brooks of DHB Industries for his daughter, it's glaringly obvious that Smedley Butler was RIGHT.

Entitled "Mitzvahpalooza," Mr. Brook's daughter's bat mitvah cost an estimated $10 million dollars. Appearing at "Mitzvahpalooza" were the following performers:

50 Cent
Don Henley and Joe Walsh of The Eagles
Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac
Tom Petty
Kenny G
Steven Tyler and Joe Perry of Aerosmith
DJ AM
Ciara

"I'm told that at one point Brooks leapt on the stage with Tyler and Perry, who responded with good grace when their paymaster demanded that his teenage nephew be permitted to sit in on drums. At another point, I'm told, Tyler theatrically wiped sweat off Brooks' forehead - and then dried his hand with a flourish."



While war profiteer David Brooks is throwing a decadent bat mitzvah for his daughter, a war rages on in Iraq. As "150 kids in attendance" were "impressed by their $1,000 gift bags, complete with digital cameras and the latest video iPod," four (4) westerners were kidnapped in Iraq today.

There is an orgy of war profiteering going on in America, from congressmen to defense contractors. Does anybody give a shit?

NOTE: DHB is the "leader in the development, manufacturing and distribution of innovative, technically advanced bullet and projectile resistant garments, bullet resistant and fragmentation vests, bomb projectile blankets, and related ballistic accessories and technologies for the United States Military and Law Enforcement Agencies"

I've written about this before; no doubt I'll write about it again. What caught my eye in this post off the Smirking Chimp is the quote from my "liberal" senator, Ron Wyden.

I've dealt with Ron before. He goes along to get along. The thing is, he goes along with whatever wind is blowing through Washington and ruffles the hair of various lobbyists—not necessarily the wind that comes from his constituents when they talk to him. I've written to Ron about the increasing powers of the Executive maybe a dozen times since 9/11. He always writes back to assure me he's on top of things. Uh-huh.

I think he finally did decide it might be a good idea for him to pay attention because increasing numbers of voters are thinking about the Bill of Rights and stuff like that...


Mike Whitney: 'Bush's fascist Valhalla'
Date: Tuesday, November 29 @ 09:58:03 EST
Topic: Commander-In-Thief

Mike Whitney

The strategy to militarize the country is moving forward as planned despite apparent setbacks in Iraq. As the Washington Post reported on Nov. 27 the Dept of Defense is expanding its domestic surveillance activity to allow Pentagon spies to track down and "investigate crimes within the United States".

An alarmed Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore) said, "We are deputizing the military to spy on law-abiding Americans in America. This is a huge leap without a congressional hearing".

Is this the first time that the naive Wyden realized that the war on terror is actually directed at the American people?

The expanded powers of the Pentagon were presented in a proposal by a presidential commission headed by Lawrence Silberman and former Senator Charles Robb, two members of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the 9-11 "whitewash" commission. The CFR, a 4,000 member amalgam of elites from the military, industry and media, was the driving force behind the Iraq war, as well as, enthusiastic advocates of the national security state. Their recommendations will allow the military to assume the traditional role of law enforcement and by giving it the authority to "carry out domestic criminal investigations and clandestine operations against potential threats inside the United States."



Oh, yeah; and the Pentagon will be involved in the "apprehension, or detention of individuals suspected" of criminal offenses.

This is a giant step for removing dissidents and political enemies while further militarizing the country.

The Patriot Act is also up for renewal and will remove the last nettlesome parts of the 4th amendment and any conceivable notion of personal privacy. "Lone wolf" provisions in the new bill allow law enforcement to investigate any American citizen, whether he is connected to an "alleged" terrorist organization or not, seizing whatever records they want, without having to show "probable cause". The same is true of the Act's NSS (National Security Letters) which permits government agents to sort through all of one's private records without judicial oversight.

The "due process" provisions of the Bill of Rights has been summarily removed by the 4th Circuit Court in its recent Jose Padilla ruling which allows the president to arbitrarily imprison an American citizen "indefinitely" without charging him with a crime. The long-standing "presumption of innocence", habeas corpus, and inalienable rights were quietly rescinded without as much as a whimper from the American people.

At the same time Bush has put "a broad swath of the FBI" under his direct control by creating the National Security Service (aka; the "New SS")? This is the first time we've had a "secret police" in our 200 year history. It will be run exclusively by the president and beyond the range of congressional oversight.

On October 27, 2005 Bush created the National Clandestine Service, which will be headed by CIA Director Porter Goss and will "expand reporting of information and intelligence value from state, local and tribal law enforcement entities and private sector stakeholders"? This executive order gives the CIA the power to carry out covert operations, spying, propaganda, and "dirty tricks" within the United States and on the American public. ("The New National Intelligence Strategy of the US" by Larry Chin, Global Research)

Also, within 2 years every American license and passport will be made according to federal uniform standards including microchips (with biometric information) that will allow the government to trace every movement of its citizens?

All of these changes in the law have taken place below the radar of public attention and all of them correspond to a "nutcase" conspiracy by the CFR to transform Canada, Mexico and the US into one, integrated "free trade" nation in 5 years time. (I'm not making this up) See: Trilateral Task Force Recommendations.

The only thing that makes this bizarre specter of a "capitalist police state" seem believable is that Bush has already carried out most of the basic recommendations of that other wacky conspiracy theory; The Project for the New American Century. The US has extended its military presence throughout Central Asia and the Middle East, curtailed civil liberties at home, greatly enhanced the power of the president, militarized space, passed legislation for Missile Defense "Star Wars", and reinvigorated the bio-chemical weapons industry. All of these were outlined in the PNAC.

Sometimes "conspiracy theories" come to fruition despite our unwillingness to give them credence.

So, let me make a prediction, however groundless and far-fetched as it may seem.

The 5 years of work that went into creating the Bush National Security State will not be passed on to some anemic Democrat, like Hillary Clinton, according to the normal protocols. The "capitalist police state" represents the concerted efforts of myriad elites from all walks of life; particularly banking, big energy, military and media. The last obstacle to realizing their macabre vision is Congress; the final hurdle to absolute power.

If some unforeseen tragedy befalls congress, like another anthrax attack, what should we expect from the Bush administration?

Well, we have a pretty good idea, since the American Enterprise Institute, to which the Bush team is closely aligned, has already "issued proposals for the operation of Congress following a catastrophic terrorist attack". They advocate the "APPOINTING" of individuals to the House of Representatives "to fill the seats of dead or incapacitated members, a first in American history"... "The Continuity of Government Commission is 'self-commissioned', its members being neither elected nor appointed by any government body...and mostly made up of professional lobbyists". (Read the whole article http://www.conservativeusa.org/cog-ronpaul.htm)

So, lobbyists and industry representatives will replace duly-elected congressman?

This gives us some idea of the seething contempt that right-wing elites have for democracy and how they plan to dismantle Congress when given half a chance.

Presently, Bush's fortunes are inextricably tied to an "unwinnable" war in Iraq. As his popularity has dwindled, Congress has become more reluctant to promote his far-right agenda and make further cuts to popular social programs. This situation will only get worse as we approach the 2006 mid-term elections.

Could it be time to "look the other way" while terrorists enter the country?

According to Sean Hannity, right-wing shiatsu for the FOX News channel, terrorists have already snuck in through our "porous borders".

A preemptive strike on congress would lift the battered Bush from the political ash-heap and put the finishing touches on the imperial presidency.

It may be time for another galvanizing "Pearl Harbor-type event"; one that will strike at the legislative nerve-center of American democracy. With Congress out of the picture, the path is clear for one man rule and Bush's fascist Valhalla.



This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=23822

I've been away from this for too long. Holidays are not easy times for me: my inner curmudgeon comes out; there's also a by product of age—several people I've been close to have passed on and there are some holes in my world. Paths that used to be familiar have been rerouted around the holes left by these people. I fall in those holes, still, and it takes a while to get out of them.

I haven't been asked, but I want to set straight my part of the record: I realized some months ago that Val worked for the CIA. But I didn't tell Bob Woodward about her. In fact, I didn't even tell him about the nasty rumors that he liked to show up in the Oval Office with his fly open.

Unquestionably, someone leaked something from somewhere about somebody. But I know nothing about that.

On the local front, the Oregon Christians are still behaving badly. The theological storm troopers are fighting to inject religion into state-sponsored schools. In this case, a “Christian fellowship” is attempting to influence public policy. Just like Kansas, yeah. Just like that judge in the feudal south who wanted the Ten Commandments plastered on every courthouse wall.

While religious groups claim they are not trying to bring religion into secular institutions, the evidence is otherwise. They want to control what people learn and ultimately what people think. Once they do that, it’s only a quick step to controlling how people behave—whether or not they belong to that religious sect.

“Creationism” is one thing; education about reality—in this case, sex—is something else. Totalitarianism is always a goal of the religious mind-set.

And just as a gossipy aside, it was only a few years ago that a pastor from this particular church decided he was better off with the wife of a member of the congregation rather than his own spouse. The harder they protest, the farther they fall.

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-13/113224405397470.xml&storylist=orlocal
Pastor may urge public school withdrawal over sex ed
11/17/2005, 8:07 a.m. PT
The Associated Press

MEDFORD, Ore. (AP) — The leader of a Southern Oregon mega-church is threatening to remove his two young daughters from the public school system, and urge his congregation to follow suit, if Medford school board members agree to a new middle and high school curriculum that includes information on contraception.

Peter-John Courson, senior pastor at the approximately 5,000-member Applegate Christian Fellowship, has two daughters in preschool.

"I cringe at the thought of my little girls being told about contraception and condoms outside of my presence," he told The Mail-Tribune of Medford. "If (the proposed curriculum) goes forward this way, I will pull my kids and use the pulpit to ask my congregation to pull their kids out of public school."

The Medford School Board is considering an update of the health courses it teaches students in grades seven through 12.

Health teachers have spent 18 months evaluating teaching materials that meet state standards and laws requiring comprehensive sex education that includes information about contraceptives and AIDS/HIV. Classes also must cover making healthy decisions regarding alcohol, drug and tobacco use, and information on disease control and prevention, nutrition and physical activity, and injury, violence and suicide prevention.

The law also requires districts to let parents review sex education materials and remove their children from that portion of a health class if they object to the materials.

The proposed curriculum introduces contraception in eighth grade, two years earlier than it is introduced now. Teachers still will discourage middle school students from having sex, but research has shown kids need classroom information two years before they face real-life decisions for prevention to work, said McLoughlin Middle School Principal Amy Tiger.

The Rev. Bill McDonald of Medford's First United Methodist Church said he had contacted board member Mike Moran to express support for a comprehensive health program.

"I have the philosophy that we need to help our kids see the whole of health issues, including sexuality and contraception," said McDonald, whose daughter attends Hedrick Middle School. "Our schools need to be educating people for life."

___

Information from: Mail Tribune, http://www.mailtribune.com/

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Back in the Nineteenth Century, we had the “Age of the Robber Barons.” That was when the railroad, timber, and mining industries bought and sold members of congress like cattle at an auction. It was almost a national joke: you want a piece of legislation? Go buy some politicians. For a while, it seemed like we got away from that. Not quite, but pretty much. The western states have always been a little questionable when it comes to buying votes in congress, but it hasn’t been a truly national trend. Except for defense....yeah, I take it back: our congress has been a hotbed of whores for years.

The last few years, though, it’s got worse, more blatant. “Our” elected representatives have decided to give away everything they can: land, resources, contracts, name it, it’s for sale to the highest briber.

Since the majority of citizens can’t afford to buy politicians, this means that legislation benefits the richest donors. The poor get spending cuts: the rich get what they want. We’re living in what we used to call a Banana Republic. Utterly corrupt.

US House Passes $49.9 Billion in Spending Cuts
By Richard Cowan
Reuters

Friday 18 November 2005

Washington - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday narrowly voted to trim social programs for the poor along with farm subsidies, student loans and other federal benefits as part of a $49.9-billion package of spending cuts.

The "deficit-reduction" plan passed the House by a cliff-hanger vote of 217-215, with all Democrats and 14 Republicans voting against the Republican-authored bill.

The vote came after House leaders worked for weeks to convince rank-and-file Republican members to support the measure. Many had balked at cutting social programs while their leaders also pursued tax cuts that would benefit the rich. As a result, Republicans shaved about $4 billion from their spending-cut goal.

When the U.S. sent Negroponte to Iraq, we wondered if he was being posted there to set up militias and death squads in the manner of those in El Salvador and Honduras back when “communism” was a dirty word in Washington. During Negroponte’s stay in Central America, thousands of people were tortured and murdered by U.S. backed and trained regimes. Many believe that he was a prime mover in settling up these paramilitaries. The same thing happened in Columbia of course, Guatemala, Mexico, and other countries under the protective arms of U.S. military advisors.

Looks like it. Shia militia—gangs—Kurdish paramkilitaries, as well as Sunni groups are all operating in Iraq. There are private security outfits, now called “contractors,” who do security and anti-insurgent work. The following article remarks that last year the U.S. spent $3 billion dollars in training these gangsters. Why? To fight the insurgents, of course. The enemy of my enemy is thus my friend. Just like the Taliban used to be...

Now that Negroponte is helping out with our own homeland security state, I wonder what we'll see next....


Independent.co.uk Online Edition: Home
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article327331.ece

16 November 2005 09:04


Raid on torture dungeon exposes Iraq's secret war
By Kim Sengupta in Baghdad
Published: 16 November 2005

The raid was at a building in central Baghdad. Men armed with automatic rifles burst in and made their way to a set of underground cells where they found 175 people huddled together. They had been captured by paramilitaries and tortured. The terrified, mainly Sunni, captives had been held in an office of the Iraqi interior ministry, and the rescue party were Iraqi police and American soldiers.

Yesterday, 24 hours later, the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, promised an investigation after the shocking demonstration of how paramilitary units working for the government, and death squads allegedly linked to it, are waging a savage war in the shadows.

People are arrested and disappear for months. Bodies appear every week of men, and sometimes women, executed with their hands tied behind their backs. Some have been grotesquely mutilated with knives and electric drills before their deaths.

The paramilitaries are not held responsible for all the deaths - some are the work of insurgents murdering supposed informers or government officials, or killing for purely sectarian motives.

You very seldom see American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad now. The Iraqi police are in evidence outside, but so are increasing numbers of militias running their own checkpoints - men in balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, with leather mittens and an array of weapons. An American official acknowledged: "It is getting more and more like Mogadishu every day."

Travelling through the Iraqi capital you meet Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army; fellow Shias from the Badr Brigade; the Kurdish peshmerga; as well as Western and Iraqi security guards. Then there are Iraqi soldiers and policemen, government paramilitaries, special police commandos and a group which prides itself on being the most feared, the Wolf Brigade of the interior ministry.

Many of the allegations from Sunni leaders of abuse are against the 2,000-strong Wolf Brigade, which was formed in October 2004 after training with US forces and first saw action during the widespread disturbances in Mosul last year.

The raid on the interior ministry bunker took place after Iraqi police called in US help when their search for a missing 15-year-old boy took them to the ministry dungeons at Jadriyah, one of many unofficial prisons throughout the country.

Brigadier General Karl Horst of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who was involved in the operation, said the prisoners were "in need of medical care".

The Iraqi police were more forthcoming. "These men were in a very bad way. They have obviously been tortured, some had been there a long time and they were very frightened," said an officer calling himself Yasin. He would not give any other name: "I don't want to end up in one of these rooms myself."

Although the US forces had ridden to the rescue on this occasion, many of these units have been created, trained and armed by the Americans. According to reports, $3bn (£1.7bn) out of an $87bn Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked for the creation of paramilitary units to fight the insurgency. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, said: "They set up little teams of [Navy] Seals and special forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were in senior intelligence under the Saddam regime."

Iraqi politicians in the new regime have repeatedly accused the CIA of refusing to hand over control of the recreated Iraqi intelligence service to the Iraqi government, and the paramilitaries are run by Adnan Thabit, allegedly a former CIA "asset".

The raid was at a building in central Baghdad. Men armed with automatic rifles burst in and made their way to a set of underground cells where they found 175 people huddled together. They had been captured by paramilitaries and tortured. The terrified, mainly Sunni, captives had been held in an office of the Iraqi interior ministry, and the rescue party were Iraqi police and American soldiers.

Yesterday, 24 hours later, the Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, promised an investigation after the shocking demonstration of how paramilitary units working for the government, and death squads allegedly linked to it, are waging a savage war in the shadows.

People are arrested and disappear for months. Bodies appear every week of men, and sometimes women, executed with their hands tied behind their backs. Some have been grotesquely mutilated with knives and electric drills before their deaths.

The paramilitaries are not held responsible for all the deaths - some are the work of insurgents murdering supposed informers or government officials, or killing for purely sectarian motives.

You very seldom see American soldiers on the streets of Baghdad now. The Iraqi police are in evidence outside, but so are increasing numbers of militias running their own checkpoints - men in balaclavas or wrap-around sunglasses and headbands, with leather mittens and an array of weapons. An American official acknowledged: "It is getting more and more like Mogadishu every day."

Travelling through the Iraqi capital you meet Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army; fellow Shias from the Badr Brigade; the Kurdish peshmerga; as well as Western and Iraqi security guards. Then there are Iraqi soldiers and policemen, government paramilitaries, special police commandos and a group which prides itself on being the most feared, the Wolf Brigade of the interior ministry.

Many of the allegations from Sunni leaders of abuse are against the 2,000-strong Wolf Brigade, which was formed in October 2004 after training with US forces and first saw action during the widespread disturbances in Mosul last year.

The raid on the interior ministry bunker took place after Iraqi police called in US help when their search for a missing 15-year-old boy took them to the ministry dungeons at Jadriyah, one of many unofficial prisons throughout the country.

Brigadier General Karl Horst of the US 3rd Infantry Division, who was involved in the operation, said the prisoners were "in need of medical care".

The Iraqi police were more forthcoming. "These men were in a very bad way. They have obviously been tortured, some had been there a long time and they were very frightened," said an officer calling himself Yasin. He would not give any other name: "I don't want to end up in one of these rooms myself."

Although the US forces had ridden to the rescue on this occasion, many of these units have been created, trained and armed by the Americans. According to reports, $3bn (£1.7bn) out of an $87bn Iraq appropriation that Congress approved last year was earmarked for the creation of paramilitary units to fight the insurgency. Vincent Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-terrorism, said: "They set up little teams of [Navy] Seals and special forces with teams of Iraqis, working with people who were in senior intelligence under the Saddam regime."

Iraqi politicians in the new regime have repeatedly accused the CIA of refusing to hand over control of the recreated Iraqi intelligence service to the Iraqi government, and the paramilitaries are run by Adnan Thabit, allegedly a former CIA "asset".


© 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd.

As the insurance companies, the medical professions and the drug manufacturers continue to fight against national health care—although “bribe” is more descriptive than “fight”—the Medicare and Medicaid mess gets worse and worse. Forty to fifty million Americans without health insurance; citizens on fixed incomes forced to choose between food and prescription drugs; government plans to shrink what medical care is available... It’s disgraceful, sure. Our politicians are disgraceful for listening to their big donors rather than attempting to really find out what people really need and want.

I’m one of the lucky folks: the HMO I’m enrolled in offers their own prescription plan and if I want another one, I have to disenroll from the HMO. Hot doggies! The choice isn’t mine to make! For another twenty dollars a month on top of my HMO, I can get drugs at somewhat of a discount—after the initial $250 out of my own pocket. Then, when I reach about $2500 dollars, I can pay full price again. I don’t know how to celebrate.

There are a lot of people getting screwed by this plan. Millions find the competing plans confusing; millions of other people just can’t figure things out because the intricacies are beyond their capabilities. It’s hard to know if the the new Medicare regulations were deliberately written in order to do that. My senators voted for this new system, but I can’t get them to explain it to me.

People are standing up and fighting back. We’ll see how effective that is.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005 - 12:00 AM

Groups sue over Medicare drug benefit
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=2002624285&zsection_id=2002107549&slug=medicare15&date=20051115

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Eight advocacy groups asked a federal judge Monday to ensure that no elderly or disabled Americans lose access to their prescription drugs as they enroll in the new Medicare drug plan.

The groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of about 6.4 million people who qualify for Medicare as well as Medicaid because of their incomes. Their earnings are usually well below the poverty level. Nearly 40 percent have dementia or other impairments.

Medicaid, a state-federal partnership, now covers most of their prescription-drug costs. But beginning Jan. 1, Medicare will undertake that role.

The advocacy groups are concerned that some of the "dual eligibles" no longer will be able to obtain drugs, either because they weren't enrolled in a drug plan or could not understand communications about their new coverage. Even temporary glitches could be fatal for the beneficiaries, the groups contended in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"If the government transitions 99 percent of these men and women flawlessly, there will still be 64,000 people without their medicine come January," said Robert Hayes, president of the Medicare Rights Centers, which is based in New York.

The suit, which names Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt as the defendant, seeks a system under which existing coverage would be continued until these beneficiaries are enrolled in a plan that meets all their prescription needs.

Under the current program, these people can choose any drug plan they believe meets their needs. If they don't choose a plan, they will be automatically enrolled Jan. 1. Last month, Medicare sent letters to dual eligibles letting them know what plan they would be in if they didn't join one before Dec. 31.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

Just as celebrity-hood saturates TV, journalists have increasingly become media performers. As performers they draw staggering salaries and get to hob-nob with the rich and fatuous. They get to fly with the president, play golf at exclusive clubs where they can see other famous people, and maybe even schmooze with them on camera. The very lucky, the Judith Millers, Babara Walters, Diane Sawyers—may even get “exclusive” interviews with political heavies. In order to get these perks, though, they have to be friendly. No critics need apply. You either kiss the prez’s ass or you might as well go kiss a toad for all the good it’s going to do.

The networks love this, because the bigger the star or politician being interviewed, the better the ratings. The better the ratings, the more advertising they can attrack. The interviews and stories aren’t there to inform the people of much of anything—maybe what the latest White House propaganda line happens to be: they’re there to hustle more advertising. It’s the presence of the media star, not not the content, that matters.

Used to be this star-worship just happened in gossip columns and movie magazines. Now it’s fucking everywhere. It’s only a matter of time before Barbara Bush starts hosting a TV show. There’s a chilling thought.

As long as this ass-kissing goes on, we’ll never see serious news in the big media. And unfortunately, the more cut-throat the quest for ratings becomes, the more asses will be publically and loudly kissed.




Ted Rall: 'It's the skepticism, stupid'
Date: Wednesday, November 16 @ 09:43:10 EST
Topic: Media

How the Media Can Restore Credibility


NEW YORK--Judith Miller, the mousy Bush Administration propaganda mouthpiece forced to retire from The New York Times last week, is hardly an anomaly. American journalism is contaminated by widespread institutional corruption. Yet coming on the heels of the same paper's humiliation by phony reporter Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass' reign of error at The New Republic, the Miller mess' further contribution to the media's ever-diminishing credibility--the Gallup poll finds that 49 percent of Americans consider the news mostly or completely unreliable--has prompted industry insiders to propose cures so toothless that they only expose the cluelessness of those proposing them.

Miller, who cut-and-pasted the White House's Saddam-has-WMDs press releases into the Times to help build support for the invasion of Iraq, is being characterized as a rogue reporter by the same editors who encouraged and published her tripe. And the punditocracy is going along. She "should be promptly dismissed for crimes against journalism, and her own newspaper," Greg Mitchell wrote in the industry trade journal Editor & Publisher. "And Bill Keller, executive editor, who let her get away with it, owes readers, at the minimum, an apology." Slate.com media critic Jack Shafer, on the other hand, would settle for a mere "explanation."

The sad fact is that Miller and Blair, rather than rare exceptions, reflect the endemic vices of elitism, unaccountability and star worship that afflict our journalistic institutions beginning with top management. It will take more than another pro forma mea culpa to rebuild their eroded credibility. Systemic changes are essential:



Journalists shouldn't get cozy with government officials. Shafer wrote in 2003: "[Judith] Miller grew incredibly close to numerous Iraqi sources, both named and anonymous, who gave her detailed interviews about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction." A reporter's job is to discover and tell the truth. A politician's job is to lie. Like giant squid and sperm whales, politicians and reporters are natural enemies. With the exception of talking to whistleblowers, editors and producers ought to ban reporters from associating with high-ranking government and corporate officials outside the confines of a press conference or a formal interview situation. Press conferences produce lies, not news. What comes out of them should be treated as news only after it has been independently verified.

They should be accessible. "Isolation impairs accountability," says Philip Seib, author of a book on reporting in the cyber era. An Ivory Tower mentality keeps news away. It's easier to track down Dick Cheney in his undisclosed location than to get your local news anchorperson on the phone. Too few newspapers and almost no broadcast outlets make it easy for their readers, listeners and viewers to contact their employees, whether to correct an error or suggest a story idea. Some newspaper websites don't even list their main phone number! Every newspaper by-line should carry its writer's direct phone number and email address, and they should be required to return their messages.

Reveal biases, even in feature pieces. The New York Times Book Review frequently assigns reviews to writers with a personal, philosophical and political axe to grind against a the review's subject. Movie and music reviewers are similarly afflicted. Readers feel betrayed when they discover these biases elsewhere. If media outlets host a grudge match, they ought to own up to it at the top of the piece so readers can take the relevant history into account. Better still, don't assign pieces where there's a conflict of interest.

Stop hiring out of J-School. Only 10 percent of working print journalists hold a graduate degree in journalism but this expensive diploma makes it easier for them to land a job at influential outfits like the Times. Journalism school graduates are likelier to come from wealthy families, have less work experience in other fields and identify with powerful elites. J-Schools contribute to the lack of racial and class diversity in newsrooms, which remain 86 percent white--further separating them from their communities.

Ban patriotism. While I was covering the war in Afghanistan in 2001, a colleague from a major U.S. paper informed me: "We've captured Kunduz!" We? Never mind editorial independence--she identified with the Northern Alliance because they were backed by the United States. CNN mimicked Fox News' perpetually waving stars-and-stripes logo and TV anchors from Maine to Hawaii sported flag lapel pins--a prop on state television in dictatorships. Even when the U.S. is at war, reporters should remain neutral. Skeptics make better journalists than patriots.

Embedded reporters are whores. If Judy Miller got too close to Ahmed Chalabi, she had nothing on the hundreds of ersatz journalists who rode into Iraq in American tanks and armored personnel carriers. "When the only safety for a reporter is being embedded with the U.S. military, the reported stories tend to have a positive spin," Steve Weissman dryly observed. Reporters under military control invariably become subject to the Stockholm Syndrome. Reporters playing soldier sacrifice the popular goodwill that comes from being perceived as unbiased and thus increase the risk of attacks--such as beheadings in Iraq--against their peers. When I couldn't find a media outlet willing to send me to the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an independent, I refused to go. Correspondents who participate in a story--a war, say--deserve to be fired.

Be suspicious of showboats. Lucky and well-connected reporters should always raise red flags. Stephen Glass' editors loved him because he always turned in amazing stories--about a Wall Street shrine to Alan Greenspan, for example, or orgies of Young Republicans. Jayson Blair always seemed to be at the right place at the right time when he was actually hanging out at his apartment; Judith Miller ingratiated herself to her bosses with her high-level contacts (liars) in the White House. In the real world, lucky breaks and reliable sources are few and far between. As one of my first editors told my disconsolate self when I returned empty-handed from an assignment, "Write the truth. They refused to talk to you. So what? That's a story too."

Source: Yahoo
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ucru/20051116/cm_ucru/itstheskepticismstupid


The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=23640

Mr Carter, I’m afraid this is the real America: the America of 2005, rolling toward the end of the fifth year of the Bush-Cheney Junta. About twenty-five months to go, assuming the country is still around by then. Or we are.

There are ideals and there are realities. “Do as I say, not as I do.” What America says and what it does are two entirely different things. I’m afraid it’s been this way for a long time. Our Constitution proclaimed and structure a country based on freedom and law. Freedom for some folks, it turned out. Law: for some folks, as we’ve seen. What we do very often shows that what we say is a pack of lies.


latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-carter14nov14,0,7164514.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
This isn't the real America
By Jimmy Carter
JIMMY CARTER was the 39th president of the United States. His newest book is "Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis," published this month by Simon & Schuster.

November 14, 2005

IN RECENT YEARS, I have become increasingly concerned by a host of radical government policies that now threaten many basic principles espoused by all previous administrations, Democratic and Republican.

These include the rudimentary American commitment to peace, economic and social justice, civil liberties, our environment and human rights.

Also endangered are our historic commitments to providing citizens with truthful information, treating dissenting voices and beliefs with respect, state and local autonomy and fiscal responsibility.

At the same time, our political leaders have declared independence from the restraints of international organizations and have disavowed long-standing global agreements — including agreements on nuclear arms, control of biological weapons and the international system of justice.

Instead of our tradition of espousing peace as a national priority unless our security is directly threatened, we have proclaimed a policy of "preemptive war," an unabridged right to attack other nations unilaterally to change an unsavory regime or for other purposes. When there are serious differences with other nations, we brand them as international pariahs and refuse to permit direct discussions to resolve disputes.

Regardless of the costs, there are determined efforts by top U.S. leaders to exert American imperial dominance throughout the world.

These revolutionary policies have been orchestrated by those who believe that our nation's tremendous power and influence should not be internationally constrained. Even with our troops involved in combat and America facing the threat of additional terrorist attacks, our declaration of "You are either with us or against us!" has replaced the forming of alliances based on a clear comprehension of mutual interests, including the threat of terrorism.

Another disturbing realization is that, unlike during other times of national crisis, the burden of conflict is now concentrated exclusively on the few heroic men and women sent back repeatedly to fight in the quagmire of Iraq. The rest of our nation has not been asked to make any sacrifice, and every effort has been made to conceal or minimize public awareness of casualties.

Instead of cherishing our role as the great champion of human rights, we now find civil liberties and personal privacy grossly violated under some extreme provisions of the Patriot Act.

Of even greater concern is that the U.S. has repudiated the Geneva accords and espoused the use of torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, and secretly through proxy regimes elsewhere with the so-called extraordinary rendition program. It is embarrassing to see the president and vice president insisting that the CIA should be free to perpetrate "cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment" on people in U.S. custody.

Instead of reducing America's reliance on nuclear weapons and their further proliferation, we have insisted on our right (and that of others) to retain our arsenals, expand them, and therefore abrogate or derogate almost all nuclear arms control agreements negotiated during the last 50 years. We have now become a prime culprit in global nuclear proliferation. America also has abandoned the prohibition of "first use" of nuclear weapons against nonnuclear nations, and is contemplating the previously condemned deployment of weapons in space.

Protection of the environment has fallen by the wayside because of government subservience to political pressure from the oil industry and other powerful lobbying groups. The last five years have brought continued lowering of pollution standards at home and almost universal condemnation of our nation's global environmental policies.

Our government has abandoned fiscal responsibility by unprecedented favors to the rich, while neglecting America's working families. Members of Congress have increased their own pay by $30,000 per year since freezing the minimum wage at $5.15 per hour (the lowest among industrialized nations).

I am extremely concerned by a fundamentalist shift in many houses of worship and in government, as church and state have become increasingly intertwined in ways previously thought unimaginable.

As the world's only superpower, America should be seen as the unswerving champion of peace, freedom and human rights. Our country should be the focal point around which other nations can gather to combat threats to international security and to enhance the quality of our common environment. We should be in the forefront of providing human assistance to people in need.

It is time for the deep and disturbing political divisions within our country to be substantially healed, with Americans united in a common commitment to revive and nourish the historic political and moral values that we have espoused during the last 230 year


Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times |

I’m embarrassed to say that it’s only recently I began reading Thom Hartman. He’s clear and to the point: his sentences make sense (!), and he has a good perspective on history.

Right now, in case you’ve been busy watching football or “Desperate Housewives,” there’s a constitutional crisis in Washington. It’s a crisis because it has to do with an 800 year-old tradition in English and American law. The government wants to suspend the right of habeas corpus for certain select individuals. Right now they are identified as terrorists or terrorist suspects. The Supreme Court said they are entitled to the same rights as anybody else; the Junta and it’s cohorts say they aren’t, that this is special and besides, who cares what the Supreme Court says—and besides, the president should have the right to determine who goes to jail.

What bullshit. What utter totalitarian and UnAmerican bullshit.

The current status

Thom Hartmann:
'Losing Habeas Corpus — 'A more dangerous engine of arbitrary government''
Date: Tuesday, November 15 @ 09:45:32 EST
Topic: Laws, the Courts and the Legal System

Thom Hartmann, Common Dreams

About a year ago, an op-ed article on Al Jazeerah's website by Fawaz Turki titled "For Bush, A Hot Line To Churchill" opened by noting that Tony Blair had given George W. Bush a bust of Winston Churchill, which sits in Bush's Oval Office. Turki then quotes Churchill:

"The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

The oldest human right defined in the history of English-speaking civilization is the right to challenge that "power of the executive" through the use of habeas corpus laws. Habeas corpus is roughly Latin for "hold the body," and is used in law to mean that a government must either charge a person with a crime or let them go free.

And last week, U.S. Senate Republicans (with the help of five Senate Democrats) passed a bill that would begin to take down that right.



Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, in proposing the legislation, said, "It is clear to me from Abu Ghraib backward, forward, and other things we know about, that at times we have lost our way in fighting this war." Few would disagree. "What we are trying to do in a series of amendments," Graham added, "is recapture the moral high ground and provide guidance to our troops."

But destroying habeas corpus will not "recapture the moral high ground" or "provide guidance for our troops." It may, however, throw our troops (and citizens) into a living hell if they're captured by other governments that have chosen to follow our example.

This attack on eight centuries of English law is no small thing. While their intent was to deny Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camp detainees the right to see a judge or jury, it could just as easily extend to you and me. (Already two American citizens have been arbitrarily stripped of their habeas corpus rights by the Bush administration - Jose Padilla is still languishing in prison incommunicado and Yasser Hamdi was deported to the police state of Saudi Arabia where every Friday they conduct public floggings and executions.)

Section 9, Clause 2, of Article I of the United States Constitution says: "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

Abraham Lincoln was the first president (on March 3, 1863) to suspend habeas corpus so he could imprison those he considered a threat until the war was over. Congress invoked this power again during Reconstruction when President Grant requested The Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871 to put down a rebellion in South Carolina. Those are the only two fully legal suspensions of habeas corpus in the history of the United States (and Lincoln's is still being debated).

The United States hasn't suffered a "Rebellion" or an "Invasion" Lincoln's and Grant's administrations. There are no foreign armies on our soil, seizing our cities. No states or municipalities are seriously talking about secession. Yet the U.S. Senate wants to tinker with habeas corpus.

The modern institution of civil and human rights, and particularly the writ of habeas corpus, began in June of 1215 when King John was forced by the feudal lords to sign the Magna Carta at Runnymede. Although that document mostly protected "freemen" - what were then known as feudal lords or barons, and today known as CEOs and millionaires - rather than the average person, it initiated a series of events that echo to this day.

Two of the most critical parts of the Magna Carta were articles 38 and 39, which established the foundation for what is now known as "habeas corpus" laws, as well as the Fourth through Eighth Amendments of our Constitution and hundreds of other federal and state due process provisions.

Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta said:

"38 In future no official shall place a man on trial upon his own unsupported statement, without producing credible witnesses to the truth of it.

"39 No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land."

This was radical stuff, and over the next four hundred years average people increasingly wanted for themselves these same protections from the abuse of the power of government or great wealth. But from 1215 to 1628, outside of the privileges enjoyed by the feudal lords, the average person could be arrested and imprisoned at the whim of the king with no recourse to the courts.

Then, in 1627, King Charles I overstepped, and the people snapped. Charles I threw into jail five knights in a tax disagreement, and the knights sued the King, asserting their habeas corpus right to be free or on bail unless convicted of a crime.

King Charles I, in response, invoked his right to simply imprison anybody he wanted (other than the rich), anytime he wanted, as he said, "per speciale Mandatum Domini Regis."

This is essentially the same argument that George W. Bush makes today for why he has the right to detain both citizens and non-citizens solely on his own say-so: because he's in charge. And it's an argument now supported by Senate Republicans and five Democrats.

But just as George's decree is meeting resistance, Charles' decree wasn't well received. The result of his overt assault on the rights of citizens led to a sort of revolt in the British Parliament, producing the 1628 "Petition of Right" law, an early version of our Fourth through Eighth Amendments, which restated Articles 38 and 39 of the Magna Carta and added that "writs of habeas corpus, [are] there to undergo and receive [only] as the court should order." It was later strengthened with the "Habeas Corpus Act of 1640" and a second "Habeas Corpus Act of 1679."

Thus, the right to suspend habeas corpus no longer was held by the King. It was exercised solely by the people's (elected and hereditary) representatives in the Parliament.

The third George to govern the United Kingdom confronted this in 1815 when he came into possession of Napoleon Bonaparte. British laws were so explicit that everybody was entitled to habeas corpus - even people who were not British citizens - that when Napoleon surrendered on the deck of the British flagship Bellerophon after the battle of Waterloo in 1815, the British Parliament had to pass a law ("An Act For The More Effectually Detaining In Custody Napoleon Bonaparte") to suspend habeas corpus so King George III could legally continue to hold him prisoner (and then legally exile him to a British fortification on a distant island).

Now, Congress is moving to similarly detain people or exile them to camps on a distant island. Except these people are not Napoleon Bonapartes. As The New York Times noted in a November 12, 2005 editorial, "according to government and military officials, an overwhelming majority [of the Guantanamo concentration camp detainees] should not have been taken prisoner in the first place."

It may well be that the only reason these Republicans are so determined to keep our Guantanamo prisoners incarcerated is to avoid the embarrassment and negative political fallout that would ensue if they were released and told the world's media their stories of false arrest, torture, illegal imprisonment, and hunger strikes.

The Founders must be turning in their graves. As Alexander Hamilton - arguably the most conservative of the Founders - wrote in Federalist 84:

"The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus ... are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it [the Constitution] contains. ...[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious [British 18th century legal scholar] Blackstone, in reference to the latter, are well worthy of recital:

"'To bereave a man of life,' says he, 'or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore A MORE DANGEROUS ENGINE of arbitrary government.''' [Capitals all Hamilton's from the original.]

The question, ultimately, is whether our nation will continue to stand for the values upon which it was founded.

Early American conservatives suggested that democracy was so ultimately weak it couldn't withstand the assault of newspaper editors and citizens who spoke out against it, or terrorists from the Islamic Barbary Coast, leading John Adams to pass America's first PATRIOT Act-like laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. President Thomas Jefferson rebuked those who wanted America ruled by an iron-handed presidency that could - as Adams had - throw people in jail for "crimes" such as speaking political opinion, or without constitutional due process.

"I know, indeed," Jefferson said in his first inaugural address on March 4, 1801, "that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough.

But, Jefferson said, our nation was "the world's best hope," and because of our strong commitment to democracy, "the strongest government on earth."

The sum of this, Jefferson said, was found in "freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

"The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

When I was working in Russia some years ago, a friend in Kaliningrad told me a perhaps apocryphal story about Nikita Khrushchev, who, following Stalin's death, gave a speech to the Politburo denouncing Stalin's policies. A few minutes into Khrushchev's diatribe, somebody shouted out, "Why didn't you challenge him then, the way you are now?"

The room fell silent, as Khrushchev angrily swept the audience with his glare. "Who said that?" he asked in a reasoned voice. Silence.

"Who said that?" Khrushchev demanded, leaning forward. Silence.

Pounding his fist on the podium to accent each word, he screamed, "Who - said - that?" Still no answer.

Finally, after a long and strained silence, the elected politicians in the room fearful to even cough, a corner of Khrushchev's mouth lifted into a smile.

"Now you know," he said with a chuckle, "why I did not speak up against Stalin when I sat where you now sit."

The question for our day is who will speak up against Stalinist policies in America? Who will speak against the man who punishes reporters and news organizations by cutting off their access; who punishes politicians by targeting them in their home districts; who punishes truth-tellers in the Executive branch by character assassination that even extends to destroying their spouse's careers? And why is our press doing such a pathetic job that in all probability 95 percent of Americans don't even know that the U.S. Senate voted last week to begin the process of suspending habeas corpus?

As Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist Number 8:

"The violent destruction of life and property incident to war; the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty, to resort for repose and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political rights. To be more safe, they, at length, become willing to run the risk of being less free."

We must not make the mistake that Jefferson and Hamilton warned us against. Contact your U.S. Senators (the Capitol's phone number is 202 225-3121) and tell them to stop this assault on eight hundred years of legal precedent by leaving our habeas corpus laws intact and quickly moving to ensure that the captives in our Guantanamo Bay Concentration Camps (and other, overseas, secret prisons) have the fundamental human rights of habeas corpus our Supreme Court has already ruled they should be accorded.

Thom Hartmann is a Project Censored Award-winning best-selling author and host of a nationally syndicated daily progressive talk show carried on the Air America Radio network. www.thomhartmann.com His most recent books include

"What Would Jefferson Do?" and "Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK" co-authored by Lamar Waldron.

Source: Common Dreams
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1114-22.htm



This article comes from The Smirking Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/article.php?sid=23624

Yes, universal health care is one of my priorities. I spent too many years without health insurance; my family spent too many years without it; my son died owing thousands of dollars for health care he’d needed. Too many of my friends have gone without it.

There’s no solid reason not to guarantee health care to every single citizen in this country. It would be far cheaper than the current system. However, the insurance companies and the medical professions would not make as much money as they do now. Profits are more important than people.

Health Economics 101
by Paul Krugman
The New York Times
November 14, 2005

Several readers have asked me a good question: we rely on free markets to deliver most goods and services, so why shouldn't we do the same thing for health care? Some correspondents were belligerent, others honestly curious. Either way, they deserve an answer.

It comes down to three things: risk, selection and social justice.

First, about risk: in any given year, a small fraction of the population accounts for the bulk of medical expenses. In 2002 a mere 5 percent of Americans incurred almost half of U.S. medical costs. If you find yourself one of the unlucky 5 percent, your medical expenses will be crushing, unless you're very wealthy - or you have good insurance.

But good insurance is hard to come by, because private markets for health insurance suffer from a severe case of the economic problem known as "adverse selection," in which bad risks drive out good.

To understand adverse selection, imagine what would happen if there were only one health insurance company, and everyone was required to buy the same insurance policy. In that case, the insurance company could charge a price reflecting the medical costs of the average American, plus a small extra charge for administrative expenses.

But in the real insurance market, a company that offered such a policy to anyone who wanted it would lose money hand over fist. Healthy people, who don't expect to face high medical bills, would go elsewhere, or go without insurance. Meanwhile, those who bought the policy would be a self-selected group of people likely to have high medical costs. And if the company responded to this selection bias by charging a higher price for insurance, it would drive away even more healthy people.

That's why insurance companies don't offer a standard health insurance policy, available to anyone willing to buy it. Instead, they devote a lot of effort and money to screening applicants, selling insurance only to those considered unlikely to have high costs, while rejecting those with pre-existing conditions or other indicators of high future expenses.

This screening process is the main reason private health insurers spend a much higher share of their revenue on administrative costs than do government insurance programs like Medicare, which doesn't try to screen anyone out. That is, private insurance companies spend large sums not on providing medical care, but on denying insurance to those who need it most.

What happens to those denied coverage? Citizens of advanced countries - the United States included - don't believe that their fellow citizens should be denied essential health care because they can't afford it. And this belief in social justice gets translated into action, however imperfectly. Some of those unable to get private health insurance are covered by Medicaid. Others receive "uncompensated" treatment, which ends up being paid for either by the government or by higher medical bills for the insured. So we have a huge private health care bureaucracy whose main purpose is, in effect, to pass the buck to taxpayers.

At this point some readers may object that I'm painting too dark a picture. After all, most Americans too young to receive Medicare do have private health insurance. So does the free market work better than I've suggested? No: to the extent that we do have a working system of private health insurance, it's the result of huge though hidden subsidies.

Private health insurance in America comes almost entirely in the form of employment-based coverage: insurance provided by corporations as part of their pay packages. The key to this coverage is the fact that compensation in the form of health benefits, as opposed to wages, isn't taxed. One recent study suggests that this tax subsidy may be as large as $190 billion per year. And even with this subsidy, employment-based coverage is in rapid decline.

I'm not an opponent of markets. On the contrary, I've spent a lot of my career defending their virtues. But the fact is that the free market doesn't work for health insurance, and never did. All we ever had was a patchwork, semiprivate system supported by large government subsidies.

That system is now failing. And a rigid belief that markets are always superior to government programs - a belief that ignores basic economics as well as experience - stands in the way of rational thinking about what should replace it.

Back before the American Counter-Reformation began, fifteen years ago, a lot of people began looking at their personal histories. Many of these were people who had run into trouble with alcohol and drugs and got themselves straightened out. Even so, they still had major problems with their lives and relationships. Just not doing drugs, not drinking, wasn’t enough. That was when they began looking at their early years.

Cops and counselors for years have known that the three favorite hang-outs of child molesters are school athletic programs, YMCA-like programs, and church youth activites.

Now that the conservative Evangelicals have arisen to power, the whole business is being white-washed, again. And the sexual abuse of children continues.

What’s the deal? Well, it has to do with shame. People in conservative churches are expected to live very circumscribed lives: no pre-marital sex, not too much marital sex, clean thinking, clean everything. It can’t be done. The standards are too high. The more sex is proscribed, the greater it’s fascination. It isn’t just children: many many pastors become sexually involved with members of their adult congregation. I’ve known more than one Evangelical church that went through shake-ups when their pastors ran off with spouses who weren’t their’s...


OpEdNews.com

Original Article at http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_rob_kall_051111_bush_supporting_evan.htm

November 11, 2005

Bush-Supporting Evangelicals; Abuse Victims?

Sexual abusers usually start with a con job. They offer to sit and talk, to rub a shoulder, to comfort... and then they get brutally abusive, often overpowering and subduing the victim.

We know a few things about people who have been abused as children-- they tend to become abusers themselves and, if sexually abused, they tend to become sexualized. This means they tend to become the seducers, with the parent or relative who started the sexual abuse and with others. It's a defense mechanism-- a way to take control of an otherwise horrible situation.

Research has shown that religious fundamentalists are more likely to come from families where sexual abuse has occurred. We know about the widespread abuse by Catholic priests.

I want to be clear that I have no problem with Jesus, his teachings or the Christian faith. I have problems with the monsters in the church who abuse the teachings of Jesus and people's faith in Jesus to abuse and take advantage of their congregants. What did Jesus say about them?

David McDonald reports, on his website,"

"In 2001, I heard the Evangelical radio show "Focus on the Family", hosted by psychologist and author Dr. James Dobson, discuss a crisis among Pastors of non-Catholic churches. They reported that 21% of Evangelical/Protestant pastors had had inappropriate sexual contact with members of their congregations. Sixty percent (60%) of Evangelical pastors, most of whom are married, have a problem with pornography. In a 1984 study, 76% of pastors knew of another Evangelical pastor who had sexual intercourse with a parishioner.


Now, the latest polls show that evangelicals and southerners are among the 40 some percent of the population who still believe Bush is highly trustworthy. In other words, 57% of the population have finally figured out that Bush and his extremist right wing Republican cronies have been screwing America and Americans, abusing the trust they were given, taking advantage of their belief that he was a good man they could live with.

We know that people who are abused go into denial. Their families go into denial and they allow the abuse to continue for years, even decades and generations.


Contact, published as the health and community development magazine of the World Council of Churches, comments, "Rape is much more than forced vaginal penetration; it includes insult, humiliation and aggression. It is violence expressed in its maximum form."

Is it rape, to force a woman to do something she does not want to do? Is it abuse to force a women to live a life in which she is controlled by others? Is the very core of the right wing fundamentalist belief in opposing the right of a woman to control her own body an abusive, anti-woman, rape of the woman's sense of self control?

Recovery from sexual abuse takes a lot of time. Often, adults "wake up" to realize they were sexually abused, only to discover that statutes of limitations have run out and they cannot pursue justice. Not surprisingly, Evangelical and Catholic churches have led the way in blocking the elimination of statutes of limitations in the case of sexual abuse.

Another problem within the Evangelical churches is they have tried to block laws requiring the reporting of sexual abuse cases, according to an article by Marci Hamilton, in Findlaw. She writes

"The evangelicals' argument, however, is that if a pastor must report known child abuse, then members won't confide in him. In other words, let the children suffer so the pedophile can speak to his pastor worry-free.

If we knew a lot less about childhood sexual abuse than we do now, this concern might carry some weight. But the truth is that religious groups have been horrendous at addressing child abuse when they learn about it. The balance between making sure ministers hear everything their members want to say and rescuing the children enduring child abuse is a no-brainer. The Catholic Church's infamous see-no-evil transfer-the-pedophile-elsewhere police is perhaps the most blatant example, but it is far from the only example, as new victims emerge on a regular basis.

There was a time when each religious institution stood for its individual beliefs in the public square, and fought what it believed was morally wrong - even if the moral wrong came from another religious institution. It seems that time is gone. One waits in vain for the religious institution that will stand up to either the Catholics or the evangelicals in these battles over much-needed changes to childhood sexual abuse laws. Their silence is deafening.


Blind Denial, Resistance to Fixing the Problem= Generations of Shame
With such high percentages of the leaders of the Evangelical movement guilty of sexually abusing those they minister to or guilty of problems with pornography, hence problems in relationships with women, it is no surprise that they have led their flocks along this primrose path-- into an abusive, destructive relationship with a political party that has raped them in so many ways. The blue collar, non-college educated people who make up the majority of the Evangelicals continually vote against their better interests in supporting right wing extremists who have sold their souls to corporations.

These evangelicals who worsen their lives to support their church leaders' politics are embracing the abuse and taking control of it, becoming political activists, just as sexually abused children become the seductresses so they can take control of their depraved situations. They have been abused into a perverted form of activism that they embrace to feel in control of their lives.

But gradually, the sexually abused DO wake up and remember and realize what they have been subjected to. And when they do, the rage and anger is strong. When they do, they seek justice and vindication.

Psychologists know that When abuse victims "wake up" it often occurs when a person plays a con game with them similar to the one used to initially abuse them. Sometimes it happens at work, or in a new situation.

Victims of abuse wake up when they have become strong enough to face the reality of their abuse, strong enough to face their abusers and strong enough to let go of their old seductive ways of dealing with their loss of power and innocence.

Keep in mind that abuse victims come in different varieties. They are not all victims of sexual advances, assaults or rape. Some are victims of violence and physical abuse. Some are victims of mental and emotional abuse. George Lakoff has described the typical family of a right winger as being run with a "strict parent" approach. A loving, strict parent upbringing can be a wonderful thing. But when strict parenting becomes abusive, in all the ways described above, who knows what the risk is that abused children will become abused adults, in a codependent relationship with the ultimate abusers-- right wing extremist Republicans.

The right wing extremists who have used honest Christian faith to con their victims are in for their come-uppance. We can help the victims of their abuse by finding ways to help them feel strong enough to find new lives that do not depend upon the abuse-maintaining ministers who are profitting by keeping the Evangelicals supporting a corrupt, dishonest evil, right wing Republican group in power. Therapists help adults who were abused as children by helping them to become strong enough to face their pain, face their past and strong enough to face, confront and often bring charges against their abusers.

A reader dropped me this comment:

I was a counselor in the military some years ago, and found back then that the need for security, boundaries, safety, among right wingers drove their attempts to control everyone else around them. Virtually all were victims of some form of abuse in their lives, and fell to religion in order to give themselves the external support they felt their lives required to be safe and to not pass on the abuse. They do not trust or do not generate internal safeguards, but rather must have someone else police their lives as long as they deem it to be 'safe' in nature for them.



And another reader comments:

The evangelicals are not poor abused preachers, they head up "churches" supported by FAITH BASED CONTRIBUTIONS from the administration's scheme to fund their churches through tax monies in exchange for sheparding the congregants (who are too poor to even support their own churches) to the polls. THAT'S WHY the fundamentalists support Bush and his cabal. You characterize them as "abused," I think NOT. Follow the money.

When it comes to abuse, one fundamentalist Baptist church here in Austin landed in the headlines when two "teachers" in their bible study program beat up one youngster so badly for not learning his "bible lessons" that he ended up in Brackenridge Hospital. Faith based, indeed, it's about quid pro quo. There's nothing sexy about it--it's for votes. The abused are the congregants.

Frances Morey

America has official historians: Doris Kerns Goodwin and David McCullogh come to mind. Boorstein, Schlesinger—interpeters of the status quo; this is the way it is and the way it’s supposed to be and it just keeps on keeping on. Getting better, even! There are assumptions, givens, about the way it’s all worked out. All is for the best and we really are the best country in the world. Ho-hum.

Except...America really doesn’t work all that well. For the last fifty years the country has been teeter-tottering on the brink of catastrophe. At the end of World War Two, America slipped into a state of perpetual undeclared war. That lasted until the turn of the century under the name of the Cold War. Now it’s the War on Terror. It’s a permanent war footing. The Fifty Year War against...them. Whoever it is that is out-to-destroy-us. That stance is what maintains our economy and thus our government. The military industrial complex keeps us going.

This is not the way the framers of the Constitution wanted it to go. Tom Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, or even Hamilton would be appalled to see their dream country turned into an empire. That’s a safe assumption.

Since these were all well-off, mostly, white guys, they certainly didn’t foresee a pluralistic society; in their minds the only immigrants would be people pretty much like themselves with the same language, values, and ambitions. It sure hasn’t worked out that way.

What’s so frustrating to me is the assumption that the way it is now is the only way it can or could be. Basically, the big-time historians assume the country is on track.

Howard Zinn doesn’t make that assumption. That’s one reason why I like him so much. Try this essay:

From: moderator@portside.org
Subject: Zinn: Our rights aren't up to the Supreme Court
Date: November 11, 2005 9:46:50 PM PST
To: portside@lists.portside.org
Reply-To: portside@portside.org

It's not up to the Court

By Howard Zinn
November 2005 Issue
http://progressive.org/mag_zinn1105

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as
the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with
enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak
mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after
the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently
doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel
Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a
certain consternation among people we affectionately
term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to
pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to
induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the
obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans,
these are all members of the same exclusive club.
Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor,
his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not
an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork
or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?)
were clearly more important than his views on equality,
justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the
President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times
reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had
been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the
little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on
the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings"
bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the
little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in
court before me. But if the Constitution says that the
big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to
win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice
should abide by its provision in Article VI that not
only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the Authority of the United
States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." This
includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United
States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war
must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees
held in Guantanamo for years without trial were
protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due
process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of
Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious
veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law."
The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible
and is used to serve the political needs of the moment.
When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in
the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the
anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme
Court was willing to stretch to infinity the
constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate
commerce. It decided that the national government,
desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a
family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is
ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during
Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go,
claiming that there had been no declaration of war by
Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers
could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to
even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress
ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech by
passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war,
the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld
unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two
presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell
Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to
defend the rights of poor people, women, people of
color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come
alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate,
strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to
uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by
all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who
solemnly invoke as their highest concern "the rule of
law." The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not
deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine
right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no
right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to
a living wage, no right to safe working conditions.
Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the
courts, the police, create a great movement which won
the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that
Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and
Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come
from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this
is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all,
it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited
in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was
the initiative of brave families in the South--along
with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold
War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored
people all over the world--that brought a sudden
enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth
Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions-hotels,
restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the
sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the
South in the early Sixties, the right to public
accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction
in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate
commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since
1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could
be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited
from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it
takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops
in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on
the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won
before that decision, all over the country, by
grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the
right. If the American people, who by a great majority
favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme
Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people
have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the
other branches of the political system, the courts have
recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged
in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for
themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or
the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one
person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in
the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose,
can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion
of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood
around the vestibule of a military recruiting center
near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in
state court with criminal mischief and trespassing
(charges well suited to the American invaders of a
certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick's Four
spoke their hearts to the jury. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam
veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns
explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N.
Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare
Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian.
Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them
that women and children were the chief victims of war,
and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of
the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge
declared a hung jury. (When the federal government
retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in
September acquitted them of those and convicted them on
lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial
system of this country, its inherent bias against the
poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we
cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our
political leadership. Our culture--the media, the
educational system--tries to crowd out of our political
consciousness everything except who will be elected
President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if
these are the most important decisions we make. They are
not. They deflect us from the most important job
citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by
organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil
disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy
Sheehan's dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to
1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving
100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of
American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice
Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick's Four need to be supported
and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to
Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal
from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on
September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control
of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only
moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed
by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the
Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have
always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the
war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country,
or establish free medical care for every human being.
Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of
the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused
citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration
of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled.

_______________________________________________________

portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.

For answers to frequently asked questions:
http://www.portside.org/faq

To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings:
http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside

To submit material, paste into an email and send to:
moderator@portside.org (postings are moderated)


To search the portside archive:
https://lists.mayfirst.org/search/swish.cgi?list_name=portside

America has official historians: Doris Kerns Goodwin and David McCullogh come to mind. Boorstein, Schlesinger—interpeters of the status quo; this is the way it is and the way it’s supposed to be and it just keeps on keeping on. Getting better, even! There are assumptions, givens, about the way it’s all worked out. All is for the best and we really are the best country in the world. Ho-hum.

Except...America really doesn’t work all that well. For the last fifty years the country has been teeter-tottering on the brink of catastrophe. At the end of World War Two, America slipped into a state of perpetual undeclared war. That lasted until the turn of the century under the name of the Cold War. Now it’s the War on Terror. It’s a permanent war footing. The Fifty Year War against...them. Whoever it is that is out-to-destroy-us. That stance is what maintains our economy and thus our government. The military industrial complex keeps us going.

This is not the way the framers of the Constitution wanted it to go. Tom Paine, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, or even Hamilton would be appalled to see their dream country turned into an empire. That’s a safe assumption.

Since these were all well-off, mostly, white guys, they certainly didn’t foresee a pluralistic society; in their minds the only immigrants would be people pretty much like themselves with the same language, values, and ambitions. It sure hasn’t worked out that way.

What’s so frustrating to me is the assumption that the way it is now is the only way it can or could be. Basically, the big-time historians assume the country is on track.

Howard Zinn doesn’t make that assumption. That’s one reason why I like him so much. Try this essay:

From: moderator@portside.org
Subject: Zinn: Our rights aren't up to the Supreme Court
Date: November 11, 2005 9:46:50 PM PST
To: portside@lists.portside.org
Reply-To: portside@portside.org

It's not up to the Court

By Howard Zinn
November 2005 Issue
http://progressive.org/mag_zinn1105

John Roberts sailed through his confirmation hearings as
the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, with
enthusiastic Republican support, and a few weak
mutterings of opposition by the Democrats. Then, after
the far right deemed Harriet Miers insufficiently
doctrinaire, Bush nominated arch conservative Samuel
Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor. This has caused a
certain consternation among people we affectionately
term "the left."

I can understand that sinking feeling. Even listening to
pieces of Roberts's confirmation hearings was enough to
induce despair: the joking with the candidate, the
obvious signs that, whether Democrats or Republicans,
these are all members of the same exclusive club.
Roberts's proper "credentials," his "nice guy" demeanor,
his insistence to the Judiciary Committee that he is not
an "ideologue" (can you imagine anyone, even Robert Bork
or Dick Cheney, admitting that he is an "ideologue"?)
were clearly more important than his views on equality,
justice, the rights of defendants, the war powers of the
President.

At one point in the hearings, The New York Times
reported, Roberts "summed up his philosophy." He had
been asked, "Are you going to be on the side of the
little guy?" (Would any candidate admit that he was on
the side of "the big guy"? Presumably serious "hearings"
bring out idiot questions.)

Roberts replied: "If the Constitution says that the
little guy should win, the little guy's going to win in
court before me. But if the Constitution says that the
big guy should win, well, then the big guy's going to
win, because my obligation is to the Constitution."

If the Constitution is the holy test, then a justice
should abide by its provision in Article VI that not
only the Constitution itself but "all Treaties made, or
which shall be made, under the Authority of the United
States, shall be the Supreme Law of the Land." This
includes the Geneva Convention of 1949, which the United
States signed, and which insists that prisoners of war
must be granted the rights of due process.

A district court judge in 2004 ruled that the detainees
held in Guantanamo for years without trial were
protected by the Geneva Convention and deserved due
process. Roberts and two colleagues on the Court of
Appeals overruled this.

There is enormous hypocrisy surrounding the pious
veneration of the Constitution and "the rule of law."
The Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible
and is used to serve the political needs of the moment.
When the country was in economic crisis and turmoil in
the Thirties and capitalism needed to be saved from the
anger of the poor and hungry and unemployed, the Supreme
Court was willing to stretch to infinity the
constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate
commerce. It decided that the national government,
desperate to regulate farm production, could tell a
family farmer what to grow on his tiny piece of land.

When the Constitution gets in the way of a war, it is
ignored. When the Supreme Court was faced, during
Vietnam, with a suit by soldiers refusing to go,
claiming that there had been no declaration of war by
Congress, as the Constitution required, the soldiers
could not get four Supreme Court justices to agree to
even hear the case. When, during World War I, Congress
ignored the First Amendment's right to free speech by
passing legislation to prohibit criticism of the war,
the imprisonment of dissenters under this law was upheld
unanimously by the Supreme Court, which included two
presumably liberal and learned justices: Oliver Wendell
Holmes and Louis Brandeis.

It would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to
defend the rights of poor people, women, people of
color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come
alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate,
strike, boycott, rebel, and violate the law in order to
uphold justice.

The distinction between law and justice is ignored by
all those Senators--Democrats and Republicans--who
solemnly invoke as their highest concern "the rule of
law." The law can be just; it can be unjust. It does not
deserve to inherit the ultimate authority of the divine
right of the king.

The Constitution gave no rights to working people: no
right to work less than twelve hours a day, no right to
a living wage, no right to safe working conditions.
Workers had to organize, go on strike, defy the law, the
courts, the police, create a great movement which won
the eight-hour day, and caused such commotion that
Congress was forced to pass a minimum wage law, and
Social Security, and unemployment insurance.

The Brown decision on school desegregation did not come
from a sudden realization of the Supreme Court that this
is what the Fourteenth Amendment called for. After all,
it was the same Fourteenth Amendment that had been cited
in the Plessy case upholding racial segregation. It was
the initiative of brave families in the South--along
with the fear by the government, obsessed with the Cold
War, that it was losing the hearts and minds of colored
people all over the world--that brought a sudden
enlightenment to the Court.

The Supreme Court in 1883 had interpreted the Fourteenth
Amendment so that nongovernmental institutions-hotels,
restaurants, etc.-could bar black people. But after the
sit-ins and arrests of thousands of black people in the
South in the early Sixties, the right to public
accommodations was quietly given constitutional sanction
in 1964 by the Court. It now interpreted the interstate
commerce clause, whose wording had not changed since
1787, to mean that places of public accommodation could
be regulated by Congressional action and be prohibited
from discriminating.

Soon this would include barbershops, and I suggest it
takes an ingenious interpretation to include barbershops
in interstate commerce.

The right of a woman to an abortion did not depend on
the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. It was won
before that decision, all over the country, by
grassroots agitation that forced states to recognize the
right. If the American people, who by a great majority
favor that right, insist on it, act on it, no Supreme
Court decision can take it away.

The rights of working people, of women, of black people
have not depended on decisions of the courts. Like the
other branches of the political system, the courts have
recognized these rights only after citizens have engaged
in direct action powerful enough to win these rights for
themselves.

This is not to say that we should ignore the courts or
the electoral campaigns. It can be useful to get one
person rather than another on the Supreme Court, or in
the Presidency, or in Congress. The courts, win or lose,
can be used to dramatize issues.

On St. Patrick's Day, 2003, on the eve of the invasion
of Iraq, four anti-war activists poured their own blood
around the vestibule of a military recruiting center
near Ithaca, New York, and were arrested. Charged in
state court with criminal mischief and trespassing
(charges well suited to the American invaders of a
certain Mideastern country), the St. Patrick's Four
spoke their hearts to the jury. Peter DeMott, a Vietnam
veteran, described the brutality of war. Danny Burns
explained why invading Iraq would violate the U.N.
Charter, a treaty signed by the United States. Clare
Grady spoke of her moral obligations as a Christian.
Teresa Grady spoke to the jury as a mother, telling them
that women and children were the chief victims of war,
and that she cared about the children of Iraq. Nine of
the twelve jurors voted to acquit them, and the judge
declared a hung jury. (When the federal government
retried them on felony conspiracy charges, a jury in
September acquitted them of those and convicted them on
lesser charges.)

Still, knowing the nature of the political and judicial
system of this country, its inherent bias against the
poor, against people of color, against dissidents, we
cannot become dependent on the courts, or on our
political leadership. Our culture--the media, the
educational system--tries to crowd out of our political
consciousness everything except who will be elected
President and who will be on the Supreme Court, as if
these are the most important decisions we make. They are
not. They deflect us from the most important job
citizens have, which is to bring democracy alive by
organizing, protesting, engaging in acts of civil
disobedience that shake up the system. That is why Cindy
Sheehan's dramatic stand in Crawford, Texas, leading to
1,600 anti-war vigils around the country, involving
100,000 people, is more crucial to the future of
American democracy than the mock hearings on Justice
Roberts or the ones to come on Judge Alito.

That is why the St. Patrick's Four need to be supported
and emulated. That is why the GIs refusing to return to
Iraq, the families of soldiers calling for withdrawal
from the war, are so important.

That is why the huge peace march in Washington on
September 24 bodes well.

Let us not be disconsolate over the increasing control
of the court system by the right wing.

The courts have never been on the side of justice, only
moving a few degrees one way or the other, unless pushed
by the people. Those words engraved in the marble of the
Supreme Court, "Equal Justice Before the Law," have
always been a sham.

No Supreme Court, liberal or conservative, will stop the
war in Iraq, or redistribute the wealth of this country,
or establish free medical care for every human being.
Such fundamental change will depend, the experience of
the past suggests, on the actions of an aroused
citizenry, demanding that the promise of the Declaration
of Independence--an equal right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness--be fulfilled.

_______________________________________________________

portside (the left side in nautical parlance) is a news,
discussion and debate service of the Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. It aims to
provide varied material of interest to people on the
left.

For answers to frequently asked questions:
http://www.portside.org/faq

To subscribe, unsubscribe or change settings:
http://lists.portside.org/mailman/listinfo/portside

To submit material, paste into an email and send to:
moderator@portside.org (postings are moderated)


To search the portside archive:
https://lists.mayfirst.org/search/swish.cgi?list_name=portside