Heroes

May the lives sacrificed by those who courageously assisted and protected others on September 11, 2001 be remembered always, and may the lives of those rescuers who survived be forever blessed. Our nation owes a great debt to them all.

Heroes

Wilson lied. Period.

In case you missed it, non-partisan, Pulitzer Prize-winning website PolitiFact has weighed in on Representative Joe Wilson's commentary. You can click here to read it - http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/sep/09/joe-wilson/joe-wilson-south-carolina-said-obama-lied-he-didnt/ - or you can scan the bottom line right here:

The Truth-O-Meter Says:

"You lie!" (in response to President Obama saying health reform would not insure illegal immigrants.)

Joe Wilson on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 in the audience at a joint session of Congress

Joe Wilson of South Carolina said Obama lied, but he didn't

....so who's the liar now? Please, let's all recognize that there's no other way to spin this: Representative Wilson may have been impassioned and emotional, but he got the facts wrong and he chose the wrong avenue to lodge his complaint. Many people have written to political sites today to support Wilson, because they say he "spoke truth to power".  Well, if it WAS truth he was speaking, then we might take that into consideration. But his anger was based on his personal interpretation of language in the bill, and from all objective accounts, there is no intent on either side to provide government-funded health care coverage to illegal immigrants. If the language in the bill is still ambivalent on that point, then Representative Wilson and others who share his concern can hammer those details out before the final measure is written, and they can vote against any bill which they feel they cannot support. That's how to solve the problem - not shouting out in the middle of a speech.

More importantly, his intentions do not excuse his actions. We cannot, and should not, throw civilized discussion out the window because we believe that the end justifies the means. Why should Representative Wilson get a pass for being out of order during a joint session of Congress? He's there to do a job, and the halls of Congress are his workplace. Just like any other workplace, Congress has certain guidelines for conduct. If you break the stated rules regarding conduct at any job, you get a warning, at the very least. Representative Wilson should be no different and anyone who wants to excuse his error is just inviting a huge, unruly mess. If spontaneous, disrespectful outburts are OK for him, then it needs to be OK for everyone else to do the same. His supporters have to tell America, straight out, that there is no longer any room for rules, manners, decorum, tradition, order or common courtesy in American government. It's a free-for-all, and everyone who is angry enough about something can just yell at everyone else until the cows come home.

That's great, but just remember, it's not just conservatives or republicans that get angry. Liberals were angry when we organized in support of Barack Obama's campaign. We were angry when we pulled in a record number of young voters, Hispanic voters, and other voters who had not traditionally chosen to vote (or to vote for Democrats) in previous elections.  We were angry when we raised record sums of money for the campaign. We were angry when we rose up as a majority and asked the Republican party to get out of the White House before they started any more wars based on false information, ran up any more foreign debt, burned bridges with any more of our former allies and took away any more of our civil liberties. We were angry - and we won. We won BIG. Not by trying to shout down the opposition, but by outworking them, and by addressing people's concerns instead of stoking people's baser instincts. It was a good strategy then and it's a good strategy now, but if those on the right simply cannot keep their rage in check long enough to do the work that's needed for their side, as we did last year, they will not be able to connect with the majority of Americans.

So if conservatives are changing the rules of the game, and declaring that it's all about who can shout the loudest from now on, they should remember that they are not the only ones with something to shout about.

Wilson lied. Period.

An open letter to Representative Joe Wilson

During this evening's Presidential address to the joint session of Congress, South Carolina made a real contribution. Representative Joe Wilson called out "You lie!" to President Obama in response to a point about insurance coverage for illegal immigrants.
This is a perfect crystallization of the ugliness that has infiltrated and poisoned our nation in recent months. All the crazy juice that people have been drinking, from town hall meetings to tea bag protests to birther rallies - it all came into focus in this one, nationally-televised WTF moment.

When those elected to represent us publicly embrace the angry mob mentality, in the hallowed halls of Congress no less, we all have to realize that the lunatics have truly taken over the asylum.

And so I am posting the content of an email I sent earlier this evening to Representative Wilson, and I encourage all of you who found his actions inexcusable to do the same. His address is http://www.house.gov/formwilson/IMA/issue.htm. While you're at it, let the Speaker of the House know that you support official Congressional censure for the "gentleman" from South Carolina: http://www.speaker.gov/contact.
 
AN OPEN LETTER TO REPRESENTATIVE JOE WILSON

Representative Wilson - I realize that, because I am not a member of your constituency, my opinion may be irrelevant to you. However, I am first and foremost an American citizen, and my allegiance to this great nation and the principles on which it was founded mean far more to me than my place of residence or my party affiliation. I would have expected that, as an elected member of Congress, you would share my "Country First" attitude, but your deplorable actions during the President's address before the joint session of Congress have proven otherwise.

I feel compelled to write to you because, even though you were not elected to represent me or the place where I live specifically, you were elected to serve the country and to advance the best interests of its people. This is something you failed to do tonight, and I must protest in the strongest possible terms the way you have contributed to the backwards momentum of public debate in this country. I have watched political events on television for decades and have never witnessed such an utter lack of respect for the President. In addition, the tactic you used devalued your own office as well. You should be ashamed, sir, and I would not be surprised if many of your constituents were ashamed of you as well.
 
Unfortunately, I realize that in this partisan world in which we live, you may also have many constituents who applaud you for having the "courage" to yell at the President during his address. Make no mistake, those who do are part of the problem, just as you have become tonight. Your outburst served no purpose other than to underline the sorry state of American political discourse. You and those who may support or Heaven forbid, emulate you, will have much to answer for when the process of open discussion and debate in this country finally buckles under the weight of the unchecked anger, fear and self-righteousness of those who respect no boundaries, or even the Golden Rule, in their efforts to drown out the words of others with whom they do not agree.

You have already issued an apology - I am in no position to say how sincere it is, or whether it was merely another act of political self-interest. I do know that many Americans share my disgust and will be letting you and the rest of the political world know how we feel, whether it matters to you or not. Frankly, what I and others think shouldn't even enter into it. You should already know yourself that what you did was uncalled for and unacceptable - we the people should not need to tell you that, but since we have been forced to do so by your lack of self-awareness, I do hope you will listen.

An open letter to Representative Joe Wilson

The GOP's amnesia epidemic

Wow - this GOP furor over the president's upcoming speech to school kids is making me realize that we have some reeeally short memory spans here in the US. And it seems as if the problem is growing at an alarming rate.  Strangely, this amnesia epidemic seems to be limited to those in the ultra-conservative wing of the Republican party.

As a public service to those unfortunate folks, I'd like to spend a little time refreshing their memories. So gather round the monitor, my GOP pals, and come back with me in time....

We'll begin our journey in 1787, at a time when our founding fathers were struggling to create a suitable governmental framework for the United States of America. They had a strong desire to prevent the type of tyranny and oppression which the original colonists had endured under the monarchy of Great Britain. The Constitution was drafted with this goal in mind, and in the hopes of convincing the individual states to ratify it, a series of essays known as the Federalist Papers were published.

Eighty-five such essays were published in the year following the drafting of the Constitution. One of the most important was Federalist No. 10, written by James Madison, who went on to become our 4th president and the man generally credited as the "Father of the Constitution". In this essay, Madison lays out the case for a government based on the needs and wishes of a majority, instead of on the desires of smaller groups.  Madison acknowledges that it is human nature to divide into groups rather than to unite, and points out how differences among groups can blind people to the common good:

A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.

Hmmm...sound familiar? Madison goes on to state that, though these conflicts will always remain, the governmental model proposed in the Constitution will prevent a minority of citizens, however outspoken they may become, from imposing their will on the majority:

If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote. It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of the Constitution...To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.

You still with me, conservatives? That means, in a nutshell, that even when you decide to wage war against the other party, and even when you do it in your loudest voices and with your most militant attitudes, you cannot overrule the majority. When an election takes place, you have the opportunity to send your chosen party into power. But if that election ends in a majority win for the other guys, you are obligated to accept it and to wait until the next election. In the meantime, your attempts to obstruct the the democratically-elected president from doing things you personally don't agree with are EXACTLY what the framers of the Constitution were trying to prevent, for the good of the nation. You have become the tyrannical faction against which the American majority must defend itself.

Alright, our next stop in time is 1988, where we find then-President Ronald Reagan addressing a group of middle-school students. Let me repeat that: a sitting president is giving a speech to schoolkids!  How outrageous! And yet, nobody was making any unholy stink about this at the time. I'm sure it didn't sit well with everyone, but it never became a subject of public outcry.

Chances are, people who didn't agree with Reagan's agenda could have been grinding their teeth when they heard his comments; much of it sounded like an ad for his administration, and for the GOP. The topics addressed included taxes, gun control and the deficit - all highly politically-charged topics, and all being discussed solely from a Republican viewpoint. To read the complete transcript of Reagan's speech, click on this link: 

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/111488c.htm

So, conservatives, was Ronnie's little talk an attempt at "indoctrination" of our nation's youth? Was his sinister agenda really to brainwash our children into adopting the GOP party line? And if you don't think it was, then why is President Obama's desire to address schoolchildren making you all froth at the mouth so much? Yeah, he did ask for the speech to be televised...but Reagan's speech was also carried nationally on C-Span and the Instructional Television Network. It was available for any educator who wanted to share it with the class, just as Obama's will be. The key word here is "available". No mandate exists from the White House, and everyone is free to do as they please with regard to watching or not watching the speech.

In addition, you folks don't even know what the president intends to discuss. He plans to make the content of his speech available before he goes in front of the cameras. Wouldn't it make some sense to check that out and find out what he's actually going to say before you pop off in public about how this is all about "indoctrination"? At the very least, realize that this is not the first time a president has spoken directly to young people in this country, and that it has never been an issue before, so you may want to tone down the moral indignation just a notch or two, to avoid looking like total wingnuts.

Our third stop is earlier this year - January of 2009, to be precise. In the week just before George W. Bush was due to leave office, the Gallup organization analyzed his favorability ratings over the course of his presidency. They had his approval rating as 31% at that time, and they posted his 2nd-term average as being 36.5% over the last 4 years of his presidency.

Now, I'm not a math whiz, but it seems to me that all those people who were unhappy with Bush couldn't just be Democrats or liberals. Statistically speaking, there had to be a large number of Republicans and conservatives who disliked the way he was running the country. So I tend to get a bit confused when I see all the noise in the press from the right-wingers of this nation. Are we supposed to believe that they really feel we'd be better off keeping things the way they were under Bush? That the attempts Obama is making to steer things in a different direction are worse than how things were going when the GOP had the run of the place? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Our last stop in the time machine is a vague period in the past...it's hard to tell when it began or when it ended. All we know is that it is, most definitely, a time gone by. It was a time when Americans were Americans, even more than they were Republicans or Democrats. It was a time when civil discourse was actually civil, and where opposing views could be heard and debated without the threat of bullying, violence, or rabid anger. It was a time when we wanted things for the betterment of our nation as a whole, and found ways to work together in order to make those things happen. It was a time before TV and radio personalities told us what to think, say and do, and when we were proud to think for ourselves instead of being part of a mob mentality. We were reasonable people once, with a great spirit and a real sense of shared purpose. It's a shame we've left that behind in the name of win-at-all-costs political partisanship. But maybe you conservatives can remember that time from the past, and recognize your better selves in those memories. Don't you think you owe it to your country to be that better self once again?

The GOP's amnesia epidemic

Senator Ted Kennedy and his health care dream

As y’all know, I’ve been out of the blog loop for ages. I just have too much else to do to bother with it in general. But today, I do find myself wanting to post something on the passing of Senator Ted Kennedy, and on the continuing fight over health care reform. 

The man wasn’t a saint; he was a Kennedy, after all, and a politician. Still, Senator Kennedy was an amazing force of nature in his legislative life, and a man who actually had the fortitude to stick to his guns on any issue that was important to him. In the face of resistance and anger from many of his colleagues in Washington – often including those in his own party – Kennedy never wavered when he believed that he was doing the right thing. And as the reviews of his career as a lawmaker have been reminding us over the past 36 hours, he was doing the right thing more often than not. A man born to privilege, without any need to concern himself with those of a lower economic station, became the champion of the poor, the victimized, the desperate. He genuinely wanted to help people with the work he did as a member of Congress, and that is not something that can be said with a straight face or a clear conscience about almost any other politician in our nation today. 

In today’s New York Times, there are many articles, reports and rememberances regarding Senator Kennedy. As I read through the paper this morning, one sentence jumped out at me from all the newsprint. In an editorial about Kennedy, the Times wrote that the senator always held fast to the conviction “that politics be grasped and administered throught the prism of human needs”. This struck me like a lightning bolt from the blue. It is a crystal clear reminder of what the American government should be about, and a reminder of how far those in power have strayed from that noble ideal.

 In the current debate about health care reform, Kennedy’s passion and main focus for decades, we have seen our elected officials at their worst. We have witnessed lies, distortions and scare tactics on one side, developed and propagated for no other reason than to mislead the public and block any reasonable discussion of the facts. On the other side, we have seen proponents of reform failing to respond strongly or quickly enough, and we have seen many taking the path of least resistance, giving up on important points of reform (like the public option) in order to move things along more smoothly and just get something – ANYTHING – passed. In all of this, we have been let down in a huge way by those who have been sent to Washington to do their best on our behalf.

 What about “the prism of human needs”? Many in Washington (and in the voting public) have been brainwashed into believing that the fundamental obligation of our government should be to protect capitalism. Nothing could be further from the truth, or from the intentions of this country’s founding fathers. This was always intended to be a nation of betters – better freedoms, better opportunities, better ways of life. Our elected officials have a duty to make sure that these things are available to every American citizen. Why should we stand back and accept the nonsense that is currently being spouted by those politicians whose only concern is to protect the market? Businesses should not be the priority here – people should. There is a gaping hole and a staggering inequity within our current health care system, and any politician who refuses to address this in a meaningful way, out of concern for the health of the free market, doesn’t deserve to represent the citizens of this nation.

Let there be no doubt, no distortion, about this fundamental truth: the American government DOES NOT exist for the purpose of protecting capitalism. It must allow it, and it must provide space for it to flourish, but it must not aid and abet capitalism at the expense of the struggling among us. It must not be so beholden to industry that it fails to provide for those citizens who cannot find the help they need within the current system. It must not favor business out of a sense of obligation to the biggest donors, the loudest lobbyists, or the most powerful political action groups.

 This reform movement has been framed by many opponents as a choice between a complete government takeover of the health care industry and a healthy free market. This rhetoric serves as a powerful tool for influencing peoples’ opinions, but it is not grounded in reality. What this reform bil is actually about is a choice between the rights of citizens and the rights of companies. The main objection that the anti-reform people have is that a public option would make it more difficult for private insurance companies to thrive.

 Let’s examine that concern for a moment: the insurance industry, which has prospered for decades by offering as little coverage or compensation as legally possible to millions of Americans who are in need, might not be able to make the kind of money it’s used to making if the low-cost, universally-available government insurance program becomes a reality. This, according to the opponents of reform, is akin to socialism. If I may paraphrase Barney Frank, on what planet do these people spend most of their time?

 If the town hall warriors and their leaders would give the bill an honest reading, they’d know that creating and providing a government-run health care program, ALONGSIDE private insurance, is the real goal here. Nobody wants to dismantle private insurers, or remove the option of private insurance from those who wish to pay for it. It is certainly true that a government-run program would make a huge dent in the bottom-line profits of private insurance companies. But why is this socialism? The government has no responsibility to ensure that businesses are always successful, or that companies may exist without competition from any other source. And as many calmer and more rational experts on the subject have pointed out, the US Postal Sevice never put FedEx or UPS out of business. There has been room for all of them to co-exist and grow. If the Postal Service didn’t exist, then FedEx and UPS executives would be a whole lot richer, without a doubt. But that does not mean that the government-run Postal Service is a socialist entity. It means that the commercial services like FedEx and UPS need to be more competitive in order to attract and keep customers, and there’s nothing wrong with making a company work for its money.

 

It is precisely this point that makes this such a clear-cut situation. The insurance and health care industries haven’t got any competition to force them into being more reasonable in their treatment of customers. They have been allowed to reign unchallenged, and it has made them all-powerful. Anyone who has ever experienced the frustration of arguing with a representative over their coverage, or who has been dropped or denied coverage based on a pre-existing condition, knows how dangerous that sort of unchecked power can be to the average American. Unchecked power over health or illness, over life or death, in the hands of corporations whose only motive is profit-based, should not be protected by the government and should not be considered the American ideal.

Opponents of reform also like to make dire predictions about how bad it would be for the government to control any part of the health care system. The scary talk about how medical services will be rationed by the government? Pure rubbish. Nothing in the bill calls for any form of rationing. Moreover, access to doctors, medications and procedures are most definitely rationed in America right at this moment – except that it is the insurance and medical industries who are doing the rationing.  Only the fortunate ones receive coverage, and out of those who are covered, only a fraction receive top-notch, complete coverage. Is this OK with everyone who opposes reform? Is it really more acceptable to allow companies to pick and choose a handful of people to insure while the majority of Americans are left without protection, simply because it would be far too financially damaging to the company to actually insure sick people?

 The bottom line is that without a public option, any reform bill will be inefficient to truly bring about the changes that are so desperately needed in our health care system. There may be honest arguments had about how to make it happen, and the details will require a lot of work to figure out. But blocking it from happening should not be the goal of any politician or citizen who wants the best for their country and their countrymen. America is one of the last prosperous industrialized nations in the world to consider or implement some form of government-run health insurance. That fact ought to be the scariest one of all to anyone who is paying attention.

And those politicians who are trying to stay in the good graces of the insurance and medical industries by distorting facts and lying to us ought to be ashamed of themselves. Particularly today, when the world is looking back and remembering the singular efforts of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. Most legislators could never come close to the type of tireless effort he put into his work over his lifetime. But maybe they could at least try. Maybe they could take just a moment to clear ther heads of the rabid partisanship and take a clearer look at what it is they were really elected to accomplish, and who they were really elected to represent. Senator Kennedy never forgot why he was in Washington, and maybe his passing will remind some of his colleagues to use “the prism of human needs” to gain a better perspective on how to best meet the challenges ahead.

Senator Ted Kennedy and his health care dream