On the Contrary

As of yesterday both the House and the Senate have passed bills that will allow the FDA to regulate tobacco which kills over 400,000 each year.  Wow! Only 50 years to do the obvious.  I wonder how long it will take to really reform health care or give gays and lesbians the rights they deserve?  No wonder we are starting to lag other nations.  Gives conservatism a whole new meaning,

President Obama has made some great strides since taking office and it has been quite a change from the Bush years.  He has had some unparalleled challenges and he does seem to be changing the direction of the country.  Having said that, there are some real changes that he is ignoring or failing to address, and these failures could eventually undermine his administration.  They will undermine his administration because if he is seen as just another politician who fails to tackle the tough issues by limiting his actions to what is politically expedient instead of what is right, our faith in government will be further undermined.

I believe his heart is in the right place on most of these issues, but he is getting infected with the “bubble” logic of Washington which loses sight of what’s right in the cloud of what seems politically possible.  Sometimes what is politically possible is not any better than doing nothing if it will not bring about real change.  So here is my list and challenges to the President and I am not pulling any punches.  From my point if he doesn’t soon sort these issues out, he will have failed at real change which is standing firm on our American ideals:

• Gay and Lesbian Rights – You promised to end don’t ask, don’t tell and have done nothing while good, loyal, and heroic Americans are being run out of the service.  Even Dick Cheney can see gay marriage has merit.  Yet you still can’t see that until this is a national right, there is no equal protection under the Constitution.  For a professor of Constitutional law, you deeply disappoints me especially when you confuses your religious beliefs with our Constitution.  Allowing these injustices to continue while you fail to exercise the political courage to do something about them is unconscionable.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Abortion Rights – It is clear that the killing at the clinic in Kansas was terrorism, plain and simple.  It is also clear that the anti-abortion people have fomented this hate campaign and their tactics are clearly blatant intimidation the Bush administration allowed to fester.  They are being successful because they are depriving women of a legal procedure that they have a right to.  So where is your outrage?  Where is your political courage to stand up and call this terrorism and to protect the legal rights of women seeking abortions? Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Single Payer Health Care – There is only one real change to our health care system that has any hope of working and that is a single payer system.  Some fall back government system if the private system fails is just kicking the can down the road one more time and setting us up for failure.  When do you stand up and look us in the eye and tell us what has to be done instead of pining for some bipartisanship in the sky that is destined to fail?  It is time you came out swinging for what will work, not what may play into the Republican’s hands. Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Reforming the Banking System – There hasn’t been any.  We have bailed them out and not made the boards or their executives pay the price for their bad decisions.  The reform for derivatives to make them transparent has a hole in it big enough to drive a truck through.  I understand the need to save the banks, but now they must pay.  We own them.  Let’s break them up so they are never too big to fail again.  And by the way Mr. President, where the hell were you when the bill to allow judges to adjust mortgages in a bankruptcy proceeding went down to banking lobby?  Do they own you too?  This was the one thing that could have really helped homeowners.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Torture and Detainees – Once again you are starting to look like George Bush lite.  First, get on with releasing and declassifying everything.  If you don’t, Republican obfuscation about its effectiveness will never be put to rest.  It is not behind us and it never will be if you continue on this path.  There must be an investigation and responsible parties held accountable.  There is no other way in a nation of laws.  There can be no indefinite detention or our right to habeas corpus and due process is no longer a right.  If there is an exception, then the right no longer exists.  It is only a right if you don’t make it an exception.  You of all people ought to know this.  Hiding behind some judicial process is not the intent of our Constitution.  Detainees must be tried or released and we must have the courage to live with the consequences.  Otherwise our whole system of government has no meaning.  Where is your leadership Mr. President?  Where is your courage?
• Terrorist Surveillance Program, Military Commissions Act, and the Patriot Act – These are all abominations enacted by President Bush and a frightened Congress who sold out our Constitution when they were threatened with fear for their safety.  It was the greatest example of the lack of moral and political courage this country has shown since the internment of the Japanese since World War II.  Instead of overturning many of these abominations, your attorneys have been upholding them in the courts making the same arguments about national security overriding Constitutional rights that the Bush administration did.  When are we going to restore our dignity and demonstrate the courage of our convictions by stopping this travesty Mr. President?  Have you succumb to the argument that to be safe we must jettison our most cherished beliefs?  Where is your leadership Mr. President?
• Energy and Climate Change – Have we stalled in mid-stream?  Since gas prices have fallen, where is the energy plan that will not only get us off oil, but save our planet?  We are coasting and I see no focused plan.  Are we drifting along until the next crisis?  We need an aggressive 10-year plan.  Okay then, how about an aggressive 20-year plan, but the point is where is it?  Are we even moving toward it?  I fear we are losing momentum Mr. President.  Where is your leadership?
• Secrecy and Abuse Photos – Here is where I really feel you have lost touch with your roots.  Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman have a bill to make the pictures of detainee abuse an exception to the freedom of information act.  Any bill from these two ought to be suspect just for starters.  Their point, which apparently you and Secretary Clinton seem to agree with, is that by releasing these, you may put some of our people in jeopardy, therefore they must be suppressed from public release.  THINK ABOUT THIS! The precedent you are setting is that if our government does some horrible or embarrassing thing that might, if known, put Americans at risk, it should never be released.  This is the same logic that Dick Cheney uses to justify torture.  If it will save American lives, it is justified.  I was an American fighting man and I did not fight so you could suppress the truth because it’s painful.  I fought so that our government will be transparent, that we know what the government does in our name and we can take action at the polls if we don’t agree.  THIS IS A VIOLATION OF EVERYTHING WE BELIEVE IN.  IT TARNISHES WHAT MAKES FIGHTING FOR THIS COUNTRY WORTHWHILE. You are trading safety for our right to know.  If, because you think not signing this bill you will putting some American lives at risk, you sign it, you will be denigrating everything I and many others fought for.  We will take the risk.  It comes with the territory.  If you don’t understand this, then we elected the wrong guy.
• Finally the Deficit – A recent study showed that our out of control deficit is only 7% due to your stimulus package and 3% from your agenda on health care, education, energy, and other issues.  Most of the deficit comes from the tax cuts of the Bush years (33%) and from Bush policies like the war in Iraq.  37% is from the business cycle and the increased spending for the safety net.  About 20% of the deficit comes from your extension of Bush policies like the war in Iraq and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 and the bailout of wall street.  The Republicans are using this deficit as a fear card, yet they have no plan to curb it since they want even more tax cuts.  The author of the study had a simple conclusion:  “The solution, though, is no mystery.  It will involve some combination of tax increases and spending cuts (for everyone).”  Unlike California, which is about to commit suicide by not raising taxes to invest in their future, when are you going to look the American people in the eye and tell them they have to pay their way?  Where is the leadership Mr. President?

Okay tough language.  We know he has made great strides in many areas and are we just asking for too much too soon?  My answer is no.  These are fundamental values that must be stood up for.  Otherwise we will make changes at the margins, but we may loose what is unique to being American.

I have been trying to understand the Republican objections to government run health care (single payer system).  They run something like this:  “Don’t let the government get between you and your doctor; all government systems in other countries are a disaster; competition between the government and the private sector is not really competition; government run anything is a train wreck.”  The bottom line here is that anything government will be a disaster.    Of course the only insurance available to any of them that are over 65 is Medicare and I don’t see them turning it down.

I have a personal story here.  I have a friend (and a conservative) who is a principal in his law firm who has just turned 60 and his plan was to work till 65, retire and then get Medicare since an earlier bout of cancer made him uninsurable in this wonderful free enterprise system we have.  But shit happens and his cancer has returned with vengeance.    His firm, like many businesses, will not cover his medical care if he retires so he must work 30 hours a week to keep his medical coverage.  He will keep that up until he can’t drag himself in anymore and only has a few weeks to live.  It is the only way he can keep his coverage and not bankrupt his family.  Isn’t this the greatest system on earth?  This is the best free enterprise can offer?

Now looking back at the Republican objections to a government payer system let’s see how it would affect my friend Mike.  First, there is no government between him and his doctor, just an insurance executive that would rather maximize profits for his company than let my friend Mike have some peace and some time with his family before he is no longer with us.  If he were in any other system in the industrialized world, he would get the same care and not lose his coverage when he retired to live out his last few months in peace with his family.  Just as an aside:  Note that the first face transplant took place in France.  Their facilities and doctors are quite capable.  If he could have the option of selecting a government system, then he would now be fully covered even if he did retire.  And what part of the government run Medicaid which has administration costs running 20-30% less than the insurance companies don’t you understand Mr. Republican?  Same doctors and hospitals, just a government payer.

Of course none of these objections make any sense.  What does make sense is that Republicans and conservatives really believe that government run anything is a disaster.  I listened to them lament a government run GM and Chrysler.   Here would be my question:  What is your alternative?  Private enterprise has run the banking system, auto industry, and our health care system in the ground while their executives have made off with a bundle of money.  It is the government that keeps them honest.  So what is wrong with government competition?  Why isn’t that real competition?  Why are jobs created by government spending not real jobs?  Why is government run anything a disaster?  Does it have to be?

The military is the largest government bureaucracy there is and yet most of us turn to them when things break down to re-establish order (think Katrina).  There are tons and tons of successful government programs.   Most of us take them for granted.  Airplanes don’t crash (FAA), highways are reliable, we all get a free high school education, criminals aren’t roaming the streets, our drugs and food are relatively safe, your air and water are clean, and most workplaces are safe.  You could think of hundreds more so where does this irrational hate of government run programs come from?  Another aside:  Most farmers are Republicans and you don’t see them complaining about their subsidy.

I know where this irrational belief comes from.  Many have some bad experience with government where the government has a rule or regulation that impacts them and seems mindless.  Actually many are mindless because the same people who hate government made it mindless.  In order to make rules fair we pass or make comprehensive rules that someone abuses, and then instead of punishing the abuser, we demand more regulations to further limit the flexibility that led to the abuse.  But in pushing for these tighter and tighter rules, we are tying the hands of the administrator of these rules so that the outcome is no longer rational.  He no longer has the discretion to apply the rule where it makes sense.

Look at mandatory sentencing.  The injustices that followed are astounding.  The unintentional consequences of this desire to punish the few, end up punishing all of us.  Yes governments do stupid things sometimes, but we can change that.  Private enterprise doesn’t do stupid things, just things that only reflect their bottom line which in many cases is for their best interest, not ours.  Note that whenever these business fail us, we always want to know why government let them do it.  Well in things like health care or regulation, the profit motive should never be part of the equation.

So the debate becomes more and more irrational because conservatives really have no alternative but to return to the status quo.  I heard a commentator the other day state that the best tactic for an opposition party was to criticize the party in power, but don’t take the risk of offering your own alternative.  I think the Republicans are following his advice, but they have badly misread the nation.  The nation knows the status quo got us into this mess and the new guy is trying new things.  If you haven’t got an alternative, we may not be totally in love with the new guy’s ideas, but we know letting you return us to the status quo will be a disaster.  Better start offering some alternatives besides your old solutions that didn’t work.

I have written before that our economic crisis has yet to hit bottom, but who the hell am I to know better than the President and his brilliant economic advisors.  Well, I am that little lower level bureaucratic pissant who was involved in trying to change the way the Corps of Engineers did business in my little office.  And in this role I learned a lot about experts and change.  Neither are what they are cranked up to be.  Experts are people who know what ought to happen, but many times they are co-opted by access to power, and change is always the victim of inertia and self interest.  So President Obama has some of the world’s top minds on the economy advising him and little has changed.

But you don’t have to take my word for it.  On Fareed Zakaria’s GPS Sunday, he had Michael Lewis of Liars Poker fame making the same point I have been trying to make:  Nothing has structurally changed in the banking system and there is still massive debt out there.

“I think that we are in for another day of reckoning down the road. I just don’t know when it is.  I think that they haven’t even properly evaluated the institutions. They haven’t been honest about what these institutions have on their books. They’ve had phony stress tests.  So, we’re in a kind of, I think, right now, in a period where there’s a false sense that it’s over, that the crisis is passed. I don’t think the crisis is passed.”

In another dissenting view of the bottoming out of the economic crisis, Sandy B. Lewis and William D. Cohan wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times (The Economy is Still at the Brink) which basically said the same thing.  But they went on to point out that the team of advisers really didn’t have any people who did real work in the financial system and really understood how business gets done.

“We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, absorbing its ethic and mores. We’re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We’re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over — and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow’s swings are a fool’s game.”

They both make my point that the systemic problems have not been addressed and we are simply patching a deteriorating tire so we can get a few more miles out of it before it finally completely comes apart.  So why am I so smart and the experts are missing it?  Because they are being seduced by access to power and more importantly, they have not been some lower level lackey who has actually had to make the system work.  They don’t really get how things really work so they are easily compromised by power and the status quo.  Remember Star Trek’s Captain James T. Kirk?  He had his Scotty who understood the nuts and bolts and with that knowledge made things happen.  We don’t have any Scotties in these pools of experts and that is why in the case of Michael Lewis, Sandy Lewis, and William Cohan, you are starting to hear warnings about our economy.

I keep asking the same question and I get no answer and yet I think it is fundamental to fixing our economy.  Our economic ship ran aground because of the housing bubble.  But that was only a symptom of the larger problem that our financial markets were making all the money in our economy by packaging and selling debt.  The goods and services side of the market was dwarfed by this financial services sector where all the profit was.  But if we can’t package and sell debt anymore and the fundamental problem was this imbalance between financial services and the making of real products, just exactly what is going to be the engine of our economy in the future?

To me this is the root issue.  If we just restore banks so they can lend again, then ask yourself lend for what?  If we are going to have a vibrant economy again then we must start making something the rest of the world wants to buy.  That is the root question no one is addressing.  The assumption is that the market place will somehow guide us and we need to just follow its lead.  The last time we did this the big profits were in the financial sector and look where it got us.

The banks are the problem and nothing has been done to change the way they do business.  If you doubt this, just follow the money.  People who blame Freddie and Fannie, or the irresponsible borrowers have missed the whole point.  Who needed more debt to package to make tremendous profits?  When everything collapsed who walked away basically unscathed?  If we don’t tackle the banks soon, our window of opportunity will close and we will be setting ourselves up for even a bigger fall. Unless we change the system in a fundamental way so that smart people can’t still game it to take out gigantic profits thinking they deserve it because they are so smart, nothing will change.

Here are a few of the tidbits of news that shed some light on where we have been and where we are going:

• “Many Republicans are already angry over the emphasis Mr. Obama placed on the public plan (health care) in last weeks letter.  Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, said Friday that ‘the key to a bipartisan bill is not to have a government plan in the bill’ (New York Times).”  Said another way, the Republican idea of bipartisanship is their way or the highway.  We have already had enough of their failures haven’t we?  I wish they would just get the hell out of the way.  The real issue here is do you want something bipartisan or something that works.
• Here is another thought on health care:  The big question is how to pay for it and one of the suggestions is to tax health care benefits.  Another is to tax sugar in soft drinks. I find this whole discussion to be an indicator of how troubled our whole tax system is.  It also indicates how entrenched are the forces to prevent any change in our tax system when the suggestions are just to pile on more obscure taxes instead of reforming the whole system.  One way or another you already pay for health care so why not just get rid of all those hidden costs and include it as part of our income tax.
• Watching the banks maneuver is always entertaining, if not somewhat appalling.  Most of us understand that derivatives got us into the financial mess we are in because they were unregulated and basically invisible to the investor to understand their makeup and risk.  The Obama administration has proposed regulating them, but left a loophole for “customized” derivatives which would leave them, let’s just say, less than transparent.  Most agree that the best way to not allow speculation to get out of control again is to be able to evaluate the risk in each investment through the transparency of trading them on an open market.  So why are we opening ourselves up to “customized” derivatives?  So the banks can once again make fabulous amounts of money by hiding their risks and preventing open competition.  Isn’t it amazing that the boys who tout competition are the first ones who try to undermine it if it impacts their goose who is laying their golden eggs?
• President Obama has told Israel no more settlements.  This apparently broke an agreement by the Bush administration (verbal) that we would continue to say that, but normal growth is okay.  I think this is the pivotal “no duh” moment.  The Israelis have a problem here because much as we have our radicalized Republicans who want no government unless it prevents a woman’s choice or two consenting adults from marrying, they have their fruit loop religious radicals that think God made them special and they can take what they want (very similar to Republicans).  Until Israel decides on an equitable swap of land, there will never be peace there.  That means marginalizing their religious nuts.  So when the Republican Party can marginalize their nuts, maybe the Israelis can marginalize thiers and there may be hope for the future.  I am not holding my breath.
• It appears the administration is considering whether they can accept guilty pleas from some of the detainees for the 9/11 murders, skip the trial, and go directly to execution.  It solves so many problems like the law explicitly prohibits accepting the plea, and the fact that much of the evidence was gathered using torture which makes it problematic.  Note I am not saying abusive interrogation techniques.  Let’s just call it what it is.  Sometimes in our rush for retribution we forget what justice is about.  Yes a trial would be messy, but it would be honest.  And it would take what everyone knows is the PR approach to what a wonderful country we are off the package and expose our ugly underside.  But it would be what the world and we American citizens are really yearning for, honesty.  It would reemphasize that we are about, justice not efficacy, and it would help to expose what animals these people are.  Oh and on the execution thing, make it life without parole.  Execution just plays into their hands and makes them martyrs.   When will we ever learn that the hard road is the only road that will get us to where we want to go?
• Liz Cheney is still making a fool of herself along with most of the media.  She is still operating under the impression that saying it is so makes it so.  The media is also helping that impression by unquestioningly repeating whatever she or her dad say.  Ah, but the problem is video of what really happened and what they really said.  Liz is claiming that there was no attempt to link the 9/11 attack with Saddam Hussein.  Roll the video.  The only thing that worries me about all this is that the press seems to have learned nothing from their failures during the run up to war in Iraq.  But we still have The Daily Show, Colbert, and MSNBC.  The rest of them just sit there like idiots and accept this garbage or repeat it endlessly like it were true.  That’s entertainment folks!
• One last thought.  A friend of mine was trying to convince me that the whole economic mess was caused by Fannie and Freddie (government) and irresponsible home buyers.  That is like blaming your kids for their bad behavior without looking at how you set up an environment in which they could act out their worst impluses.  The banks were making a fortune repackaging debt and selling it to the rest of the world.  All the rest follows from this.  It is the root cause.  Why can’t we ever remember the simple rule, “follow the money.”

Are we getting anywhere yet?

Vine: Final week of thinning, which some call suckering, that is really the removal of unwanted growth.  The vision that comes in most people’s minds is removing unwanted leafing on a tomato plant.  Hardly.  In many cases you are removing major growth and strong shoots with flower clusters and in your wake you leave a path of discarded foliage.  It takes me about an hour a row to thin, but once you have completed it on the head trained grapes (Mourvedre and Grenache) there is very little to do the rest of the summer other than manage canopy.  Managing canopy is to simply remove thick leaf growth around the grapes to allow more light into the interior of the plant.  For the Syrah, even though you have thinned, you still have to go back about 2-3 times to push the shoots up through the wires (trellis system).  The Mourvedre is complete and now I need to spray the entire vineyard which I will start on Sunday.  I have been getting up at first light and working till about 11 am (about 5 hours) trying to get all this done before the plants get too far ahead of me.  So I am taking a well deserved rest in San Francisco.  More about that in Wine.  In the picture above, if you are sharp you can detect the Grenache on the left, and the Mourvedre on the right and some Counoise in the foreground.

The other major chore completed this week with some help from my helper and his son (Aldaberto Santana) was mowing the vineyard (me) and weed eating all the weeds down in the growing area (about 3 acres).  The place is starting to look like a manicured vineyard again.  Another week of spraying, pushing syrah up through the wires, and some weed control in the vineyard and things will finally be under control.  Note that under control means that you get up in the morning and instead of being in the vineyard by 5:30 am, you have your coffee and biscotti on the patio, read the paper, and note the beauty in the vineyard.  It only takes about six weeks of work to get there.  Can’t wait to be a vineyard owner?

NPR (National Public Radio) has had a series on small family farms which I listened to while I thinned.  They followed five different families through their year.  What you found is that they scrape by, but there is no money in it.  One grandmother said it best, where else can you really live and work with your whole family.  What was interesting is that many of the kids left the farm, only to come back later.  Apparently quality of life and feeling connected to the land is more important for some that have a window office, maybe, in 30 years.  I could relate.  There is no money in what I do and I barely break even and that only pays my expenses and the hired help I sometimes use, but not my own time.  To make any money, one would need at least 30-60 acres and only then if you make and sell your own wine.  I love my plants and the wine they can produce, otherwise this would not be a labor of choice.  But I do fear for other small farmers.  Until we start paying the real cost of damage to the environment of industrial farming and the real cost of transporting food across the globe, the small local farmer may be priced out of the market.  Note that in the picture above you are looking down two rows of Syrah (trellis trained) with roses coming into full bloom.  On the far right is a row of Mourvedre (head trained)

Wine: I mentioned earlier that I was enjoying a rest in San Francisco.  We decided to explore a couple of neighborhoods we really don’t know and the first was Japan Town.  Now I am a public transit junkie and San Francisco has a wonderful transit system.  So after checking into our hotel (hotwire special:  Hilton Financial District), we hiked up to Union Square and then took a bus up Sutter Street to Japan Town and then just wandered around and shopped in the Japanese markets at the Japan Center.  I am looking for a really good tea pot to reduce my dependence on coffee.  Then we walked over to Filmore (just a block or two) and caught another bus down to Union Street in the Marina District.  Our real destination was Nettie’s Crab Shack for a very late lunch/early dinner.

We have found that is the best time to eat since the restaurants are not crowded and you can engage the staff if you so desire.  Nettie’s did not disappoint. First it is a bright and open little place with an outside seating area so you can watch the action on Union Street.  I was on an oyster quest so I had six on the half shell and then an oyster poorboy.  Everything was wonderful.  The poorboy was served with homemade potato chips and a slaw with a red wine vinegar, olive oil, lime, and whole grain mustard dressing that was wonderful.  For the oysters I tried a Grenache rose which was splendid.  Sorry, but for the poorboy it was an Amstel Light.  I cannot recommend this place more.  It is clean, airy, and the seafood is the freshest I have had.  As I noted I was on an oyster quest as I have been reading about oysters lately so I wanted to try a variety and see if I could detect the different subtle flavors.  I will just say I now know why Kumomotos are $4 a piece.  I also had Effingham (eastern oysters but grown near Vancouver Island), and Pearl Points (Pacific Oyster originally from Japan) grown in Oregon.  A great book to learn about oysters is:  The Hog Island Oyster Lover’s Cookbook: A Guide to Choosing and Savoring Oysters, with 40 Recipes.

We finished the day with a nap, and then a trip to our favorite wine bar on Front Street for some cheese and wine tasting (Embarcadero 2).  As always cheap wines are cheap and you get what you pay for.  It was just a nice evening and our waitress was studying to be a sommelier, so I tested her describing a wine experience that I was looking for and she brought over a Cab that was perfect.  That’s when I decided I should introduce her to my son.  If only he were there.  What a perfect daughter-in-law.  Ah Well.  Carpe Diem.

Did you ever wonder what it would be like if healthcare was not a concern in your life?  That is the way it works for most of the rest of the industrialized world.  They pay a lot less than we do and they have better outcomes and this is from just about any study you look at.  Medical expenses are the leading cause for personal bankruptcies.  So comes the push for revamping healthcare and universal care.  But the first thing you hear is we can’t afford universal care.  Oh really?  We have universal care by default and we end up treating people who can’t afford treatment when it is the most expensive time to treat them, at end of life.  In other words we already pay for it and by delaying payment until these people are truly sick, it is many times more expensive than it has to be.

It has been estimated by most studies that the United States pays about 25%-35% more than most other countries and this cost is the result of administration costs of private insurers.  This number compares favorably with the lower costs of Medicare which, like these other country’s systems, is a single payer system.  So with all this data, why don’t we move to a single payer system?

Well there are three reinforcing factors.  First is the mantra of most Republicans that most of us unthinkingly accept and that is that anything government does, they do poorly.  Said another way, be afraid, socialized medicine.  We have seen this attitude in the GM bankruptcy.  The government has now a 60% ownership share of GM, yet the President disavows any government intervention in running GM.  This is a funny attitude considering that it was under private stockholder ownership and CEO leadership that ran this company into the ground.  Republicans have a new talking point about healthcare that says you don’t want the government between you and your doctor, a reflection of this fear the government attitude.  But right now the person you have between you and your doctor is a high six-figure health insurance company executive who needs to maximize profits for his company.  Which one do you think has your best interests at heart?

The second factor is the idea that in a single payer system we lose the key attribute of competition to keep prices down and service up.  But where this single payer system is most effective they have both by allowing their governments to fund the system through taxes, and the providers to be private firms/doctors vying for both your business and the government’s funding (Public funding/Private providers).  Think about a really well run HMO like Kaiser Permanente of Northern California.  You contract with them for a fixed price and they provide care. Administration costs are minimal because they don’t itemize your billing (count number of tissues you sneezed into) and they don’t spend administrative dollars to deny care (except in experimental medicine and that is going to be a problem where ever you turn).  You get aggregated with every one else and you pay a flat rate.  They then have a motivation to reduce their costs by keeping you healthy through preventative care and reducing their cost of providing services through streamlining care. If you don’t like your doctor or the care/service you were given, you are free to find another provider.  Nothing changes except who pays the bills and that really doesn’t change (you still do) except that you took the middle man (insurance companies) out of the process.  It could be argued that the present system of providing healthcare incentivizes high costs because the more a doctor does, the more he is paid by the insurance companies.  In the world of lawyering this is called billable hours.  The more billable hours you have, the more you make.  Our present system (outside of HMO’s) incentivizes doing too many procedures.

So why is this so hard?  Because in the final analysis, the third factor preventing reform is that there is a lot of money at stake.  Health insurance companies make very nice profits and they have bought and paid for our Congress.  Try to remember that all this money flowing around controlling our future could more than cover the costs of a single payer system.  We all pay for this, but somehow since it is hidden in taxes we pay the government, insurance premiums to insurance companies, and the increased cost of our goods and services because we load these costs on our employers, we don’t really understand the high cost we are paying.

The system we are looking for is one in which the motivation is based on excellent service, lowest cost, and preventative medicine available to all our citizens.  The reality is that the system we have now is just the opposite.  We don’t practice preventative medicine for those who are only minimally covered or have no coverage at all.  This saves money for the insurance companies, but hits both our own insurance costs and taxes when these people become seriously sick and must be treated and these costs are passed along to us.

I guess the final argument for the single payer system is that Republicans are adamantly opposed to it because if it is included in any health care plan that comes out of the administration, they feel it will be grossly unfair to the insurance companies.  I find this argument counter intuitive from the folks who think competition is the ultimate goal.  Being afraid that insurance companies cannot compete with a single payer system should tell you all you want to know about insurance companies.

So get rid of the private insurers, move to a single payer system, put the incentives in place to provide quality care, preventative medicine, and more efficient billing and medical record systems.  It is the only way we are going to get a handle on these growing costs.  If you are concerned about the cost, then implement some basic form of health care covered by the government with private insurance to cover any add-ons like dental or eye care.  We could start out cheap and then later catch up with the rest of the world later as we lose our fear of this system.

The Republicans and their mouthpieces have anointed Judge Sotomayor a racist because of the following statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences,” she elaborated, “our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging…. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.”

Therefore these experts on racism, having been so adroit at exploiting it for years to attract and hold on to their base, claimed this was reverse discrimination where she would be biased in discrimination cases.  One of the faithful of the noise machine said, “How would you feel if you heard a white person say they would be a better judge because of his/her experience as a white person?  Wouldn’t you consider that racism?”

These guys are clever because their failures in logic are subtle.  Now I have no opinion one way or the other on Judge Sotomayor as yet, but I do see a smear campaign so typical of the Republican’s and their usual convoluted hidden racism.  For my part I would be quite happy with a justice who would be firm on a woman’s right to choose (there are inherent rights in the Constitution not necessarily innumerated), gay and lesbian rights (a real enforcement of the Equal Protection Clause), limiting executive power, and someone who would throw out the State Secrets defense.  But I am a progressive through and through and this defense of Judge Sotomayor has nothing to do with any of that. I don’t know where she stands on any of those issues to be quite frank.  But I believe in debating the facts based upon their merits, not submarining her in a cloaked racial attack.

First let’s take the obvious.  Judge Sotomayor says that her being a minority (Puerto Rican) raised in the projects gives her unique ability to understand underlying issues.  Republicans claim that this says she will be biased toward minorities in any issue that comes before the court.  If you follow this logic, what it says is that anyone who has experiences outside the mainstream of white America would be biased and therefore not qualified for the court.  Other minorities unless they have been lobotomized like Clarence Thomas, need not apply.  In other words and quite simply, if you don’t think like us, you need not apply.  The underlying subtext to their base is that their favored status may be at risk and we will protect your position in handing out rights.

The second failure in logic is to assume the law is not about justice.  They want someone on the court who will “follow the law”.  Now this is code for strict interpretation of the Constitution and activist judges need not apply.  As an example, strict interpretation of the Constitution means there is no implied right of a woman’s right to choose (it is not enumerated) and so kiss Roe versus Wade goodbye.  Activist judge means anyone who does not agree with their position.  There was probably no more an activist ruling than in Gore versus Bush back in 2000 when they made up law, but these fine Republicans had no problem with that one.  In other words the term is totally subjective in their minds.  For most of us the test is whether the ruling is based on sound legal reasoning.  But as always that is in the eye of the beholder.

More importantly, what most of us want are carefully crafted legal decisions that do not have unintended consequences that expand injustice.  Unlike the Republican’s claim that everything in the law is black and white, most laws require interpretation specific to a situation.  If your life experiences give you no insight into the consequences of your actions, how can you tell if your ruling is consistent with the law you are trying to interpret?  What we want in our Supreme Court is a wide spectrum of American experience so that the discussions and debate around a ruling are not performed in a vacuum of whites only experience.  We want rulings based upon the law applied to the real world.

But to really see the hypocrisy of the Republican attacks on Sonia Sotomayor is to realize that almost everything she has said has been uttered in one form or another by the Republican’s favored candidates from Clarence Thomas to Judge Alito.  But since it was said by someone who thinks like they do, it was not a cause for alarm.  If you ever wanted to have a full demonstration of a bankrupt morality all you have to do is watch these guys in action.  But the final glaring hypocrisy is that even though they detest the idea of Judge Sotomayor on the bench, their craven desire for power without principle will prevent them from filibustering her because they want to curry favor with Latinos.  They are a delightful bunch aren’t they?

One last comment:  In answer to the question, “How would you feel if you heard a white person say they would be a better judge because of her experience as a white person?  Wouldn’t you consider that racism?” Yes, I would because I would know that that experience is most likely born out of a favored position in our society.  But when a person, whether white or other hues of the rainbow, states the experiences that give them a special perspective on the problems of life, that is not racism.  It is wisdom born by experience.  They are two entirely different things.

There are three things (other than torture, See Securely in the Bubble) that I think President Obama must wade into if he really wants to set a new moral and ethical tone for this nation.  President Obama has set out goals for change in America, but he has been hesitant to take a stand on the specifics of these programs.  A case in point is the Stimulus Package where he would say that out of political necessity, he let Congress fill in the details.  Sadly allowing Congress to shape this plan watered it down with way too many tax cuts instead of real spending on infrastructure and he ended up with zero Republican votes.  One could argue that this is the only way you can make things happen in Washington, but if political expediency gets you a watered down version of change, is it really change?

Sooner or later President Obama has to draw a line in the sand and we are all waiting eagerly for him to do it.  It is sad to say, but true, that he could take a lesson from his predecessor, President Bush.  President Bush was not afraid to say exactly what he wanted done and then he got Congress through his bullying to go along.  Sadly on most of this stuff he was wrong, but the lesson on getting things done should be evident.  There are three issues on President Obama’s plate that if he does not take a stand, he will fail us morally and ethically.  They are health care, equal rights for gays and lesbians, and government administration of student loans.  Each is a no-brainer yet each is adrift in Congress in a sea of special interests.

First let’s take health care.  Can anyone believe that we are discussing a revamping of health care and no one who supports a single payer system has been allowed at the table to present that option?  This is morally and ethically depraved.  I will not rehash why the only way forward is a single payer system (See Health Care Wars and Scare Tactics and Reinventing the Wheel – Universal Health Care)), but to allow a Congress that is bought and paid for by the health insurance companies to stymie real change is only another futile game of kick the can down the road.  So where is your moral courage Mr. President?  Where is your demand that whatever comes to your desk will have a single payer option in it?  Sixty percent of our citizens, doctors, nurses, and other health care providers want to see a single payer option so where is your outrage?  If Congress is left to their own means, health care insurers will be protected and history will look back on this as another failed attempt to get serious about change.

Then there are the gay and lesbian issues.  Say what you want Mr. President, this issue boils down to equal rights for all our citizens.  Good, brave Americans are being kicked out of the military because of the misguided Clinton compromise of don’t ask-don’t tell.  Lives are being seriously disrupted and damaged and you could prevent this, and yet you do nothing even though you promised to protect these people.  Is it not time you looked the military in the eye and said grow up?  On the marriage issue, we have this idea that states should decide who can marry whom.  We had this same problem in the civil-rights era and finally the federal government had to standup for the rights of our black citizens when states used the “states rights” argument to deprive many of our citizens of their rights.  When are you finally going to stand up for the rights of our gay and lesbian citizens?  While you dither with what is the most politically expedient thing to do and pacify the generals, real people are being seriously hurt.  People have a right to their religious beliefs, but these beliefs cannot be used to deny others their rights.  It is time you took a stand.  You could issue an executive oder delaying any further actions against gays in the military until you can get the appropriate Congressional action.  All it takes is a little courage.  You don’t have to be reasonable.  Simply look the nation in the eye and say this is wrong and I am ending it.

Finally there is the issue of student loans that have been administered by the private sector (banks) where the government guarantees the loans, buys the loans back, takes all the risk, and the banks have been raking in a fortune in fees.  These fees, in the billions of dollars, could have been turned into thousands of additional aid for students to go to college.  Talk about corporate welfare.  So this no-brainer screams for the government to deal out the loans directly, save the money in fees and put thousands of deserving kids into college instead of corporate welfare for the banks.  President Obama has taken a sort-of stand on this one, but the banking lobby is once again doing its work in Congress and this may also be stymied.  So Mr. President why don’t you stand up and shame the banks?  Point out that they are stealing from our kids and their future?  Is it inconvenient during saving the banks with massive bail outs to force a little tough love?  Most of us would welcome it.

Bottom line Mr. President is that we elected someone to lead.  We know Congress is bought and paid for and they need adult supervision.  So when is it you are finally going to give us some instead of some halfway measure that gets us nowhere?  It is time to take the reins.  It is time to be the leader we voted for.