Health reform will empower families against market constraints

Washington, DC — For decades, Washington has talked about fixing a broken health care system. And for decades Washington failed to act – allowing the special interests to stall reform while the cracks in the system turned into crevices, then craters.

But today, we are closer than ever to the change we need. Key committees in Congress have reached a striking degree of consensus about how to control costs, guarantee coverage, and provide more choices for every American. America’s doctors and nurses have announced their support. And even hospitals, drug and insurance companies have pledged to do their part to control costs.

Change is never easy and recently, some defenders of the status quo have made themselves heard.

One Republican Senator said, “If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” And a leading political strategist urged fellow Republicans to “resist the temptation” to be “constructive or, at least responsible,” and instead work to “kill” health care reform.

These opponents of change may understand how to score political points in Washington, but they don’t seem to understand the stakes for the country. The health care status quo is unacceptable and unsustainable for our families, our businesses, and our nation as a whole.

Today nearly 46 million Americans are uninsured and are one illness or accident away from losing everything. Millions more are under-insured. Since 2004, the number of under-insured families – those who pay for coverage but are unprotected against high costs – rose by 60 percent.

Even Americans with insurance find themselves paying more and getting less. In the past decade, premiums have doubled, rising three times as fast as wages and leaving families scrambling to close the gap. Last year, more than half of Americans skipped their medications or postponed medical because they couldn’t afford it.

Businesses – especially small businesses – aren’t faring much better. Skyrocketing health costs are making it even harder to compete in today’s global economy and forcing business owners to choose between staying afloat and providing health care for their workers.

At the same time, health care spending today consumes 30 percent more of state and local budgets than it did 20 years ago, forcing governments to choose between cutting services and raising taxes. And our national budget faces the same threat, with health care costs representing the single largest contributor to exploding long-term deficits.

America can’t afford to wait any longer for health care reform.

Some opponents of reform will try to scare Americans into thinking they’ll lose what they already have. Millions of Americans are happy with the coverage they have now, so let’s be clear: under any plan the Obama administration will support, if you like your health insurance you can keep your health insurance; if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor.

In fact, the real threat to what works in our system comes from doing nothing. Without action, prices will continue to spiral out of control. More Americans will not be able to afford insurance at all, and those who can will continue to pay more for less.

So what will reform actually look like?

First, to provide Americans with more affordable choices, we’ll set up a marketplace where you can compare plans and pick the one that’s right for you. None of the plans would be allowed to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. And one of the options should be a public plan that would increase competition and keep private insurance companies honest.

Second, we have to align incentives for doctors and hospitals so that they’re rewarded based on the quality of care they provide, not on how many tests or procedures they prescribe.

Third, we need to move from a sickness system to a wellness system. By investing in prevention and emphasizing healthy lifestyles, we can save money while improving health.

Finally, reform must not add to our deficit over the next ten years. To that end, we have already identified hundreds of billions of dollars in savings – savings from money that’s already being spent on health care, but is funding waste and overpayments to insurance companies.

Put together, these changes will make quality, affordable coverage available to every American while bending the cost curve so that we don’t bury our children in debt. Fixing the system has never been so critical, and it has never been more squarely within our reach. Now it’s time to make reform a reality.

Temperatures are moderating back down to the 70s this week--given us all (here in the Northwest) a big break from the heat.

I've been trying--over the weekend--to continue writing, but I couldn't get *anything* down pat.

I kept struggling over this one chapter and not a single thing seemed to make a lick of sense.

I went and got a STAR TREK model for a close penpal of mine and now I'm waiting on the new movie to come out on DVD.

I've pretty much read what I bought in my writers' mags this weekend and came away feeling a little depressed and pissed off as usual.

I can never fully figure out the mindset of an agent or publisher--only to see how they want their novels to be "just like everyone else's"--while completely rejecting anything else which might come down the pike as being 'different' or 'original'.

I did notice that they complained a lot about opening hooks which used the overused 'dream sequence' and the other one using 'character waking up to the sound of an alarm clock'--and they wanted noting but ACTION, ACTION, ACTION, for the hooks.

Something that will engage the reader and not let go.

Opening a novel using dialogue is also a no-no--apparently--but I usually skirt by on that one anyways.

They gave a couple "examples" of good opening hooks from a couple of previously published novels, but the first one was too bland to be even all that noticeable, and the other didn't give enough detail to form a complete picture of the scene inside my head.

(And it left me thinking: "This is what the call a good 'hook'? A two-dimensional piece of fluff that has no dimension whatsoever, no character description, and lacks a certein level of *detail* in the process?")

What had me puzzled is how they first tell the writer: "Put your best writing forward" and then add, "don't pay attention to what's going on in the market wbile you write"--then complain in another article (in another writer's mag) that, "writers aren't paying enough attention to the market and are constantly submitting BLINDLY as a result." (Didn't they just tell us--word for word--that we shouldn't be paying attention to the market while we write?)

I felt a little depressed because some agents were saying that they could sell something between 80,000 to 100,000 words, but anything more than that would be "extremely difficult".

It left me wondering, "Why don't they say they would be open to ideas or compromise--when it comes to larger works? Why haven't any of them mentioned breaking down the novel into an easier-selling series which would benefit both the author and the publisher?"

But nobody *asks* these questions or even bothered to propose them.

I've tried a few times, but all I got back was an empty silence for my efforts and a letter stating that "we don't have time to answer questions from the public in general--due to a busy submission schedule."

Overall, I was quite pissed at the lack of details concerning new authors and new submission guidelines. That always seems to be conveniently "missing" from everything written thus far.

One magazine had a breakdown of the publishing process--which sounded pretty Greek to me--but didn't offer much more than that.

I realized that the publishing process is exceptionally difficult and complex, but it just didn't seem to me that people in this business actually knew what they were saying or *doing*.

I kept getting the initial impression I was dealing with a bunch of retards in the publishing main phase and not much else.

People telling the writer one thing, only to contradict themselves on another.

Where's the truth in this whole thing? Where are *we* going to be able to get a clear PICTURE of what these people want--if all they keep feeding us is packaged misinformation and lies?

What Are the Birthers Really After?

Creators Syndicate – On Aug. 4, President Barack Obama celebrated the anniversary of his birth, an event that occurred 48 years ago in the state of Hawaii. This is an indisputable fact, as sane critics on the right, such as the editors of the National Review and the veteran pundit Patrick Buchanan, acknowledge. And yet there is a significant minority, especially within the Republican Party, that fervently insists otherwise.

Why this obsession over Obama's birthplace persists is a question that evokes disturbing answers.

It was probably inevitable that the election of the first African-American president, a man of mixed racial heritage whose father was Kenyan and whose middle name is Hussein, would stir resentments among the farthest right-wing fringe of American society. There are still people, often clustered in groups that falsely claim to be "conservative" and "patriotic," who have never accepted the social advances that we have made in the years since Obama's birth — which occurred in an era when the marriage of his white mother and black father remained illegal in some states.

But if the Obama presidency provokes a certain kind of old bigot, it is also true that the spinning of conspiracy theories, outlandish myths and paranoid fantasies is nothing new in presidential politics. Not long after the Clintons entered the White House in 1993, they became the targets of a stream of poisonous lies, emanating from many of the same sources that are defaming the Obamas today.

The same "news sites," notably Newsmax.com and WorldNetDaily, and the same right-wing radio personalities, from Rush Limbaugh downward, sought to convince the public that the Clintons were serial killers, drug kingpins, traitors and communists, bent on dissolving American sovereignty into a socialist world government. Those wild accusations were part of a broader right-wing strategy to discredit and curtail Bill Clinton's presidency.

If not a "vast right-wing conspiracy," as Hillary Clinton famously called it, the network behind this effort was indeed very large and extremely determined, and seems to have inflicted permanent damage on our political discourse as well as the mental health of the conservative movement.

Consider the flight from reality of the so-called birthers, who claim that Mr. Obama was actually born in Kenya. To believe that canard, they must also believe that Mr. Obama's mother and grandparents conspired to publish notices of his birth in not one but two Honolulu newspapers in August 1961; that the current Republican governor of Hawaii, Linda Lingle, a dedicated partisan and strong supporter of her party's nominee, John McCain, conspired last year and is conspiring now to conceal the truth about Mr. Obama's birth certificate, along with a host of Hawaii state officials; and that one of several obviously forged "Kenyan" documents is the true Obama birth certificate.

Even Buchanan, who has spent a lifetime agitating white fear, admits that's nutty. But the mealy-mouthed spokesmen for the Republican Party, on Capitol Hill and in states across the country, dare not say so. They cower before the talk jocks and kooks who have seized the leadership of the right. Much of this madness is just cynical posturing, designed to increase ratings and hits, to sell silly books and fleece the rubes of their money. To understand the phoniness behind the hysteria, recall that anti-Obama propagandists Christopher Ruddy and Richard Mellon Scaife, the owners of Newsmax, used to traffic in all of the Clinton conspiracy nonsense — until they sought a reconciliation with the Clintons over the past few years and admitted that their old accusations were utterly wrong. Why would anyone trust their accusations against the president now?

Most Americans never will. But the clear purpose of birther propaganda is not to win a majority by democratic means, but to drive a minority of a minority into turmoil and even violence — as indicated by their behavior at this month's Congressional town hall meetings. Should we experience another tragedy like the Oklahoma City bombing, the blood and the ruin will be on their conscience.

SHOUTING AND STOMPING WON'T OBSCURE THE NEED FOR REFORM

WASHINGTON -- Why are the so-called tea-baggers so angry and frightened by the prospect of health care reform? Why would any ordinary citizen be upset by proposals to modernize and rationalize what we generously call a "health care system"? For most health care consumers, little is more frightening than the "health care system" that currently exists.

Let's leave aside, for a moment, the estimated 47 million or so Americans who have no health insurance. It's easy to understand their predicament. A young, healthy construction worker falls off a ladder and ends up with hundreds of thousands in bills he cannot pay. Or a middle-aged diabetic is laid off and finds herself skimping on doctor's visits because she can no longer afford to go. We hear stories like that often enough to enable us to empathize with the plight of the uninsured.

Yet, it shouldn't take much of an imagination (or much of a memory) to understand the dilemmas faced by many consumers who do have a health insurance policy. While opponents of reform have frightened consumers with warnings of "rationing" if President Obama's proposals are enacted, anyone with health insurance knows that medical care is rationed right now. You only get as much as you -- or your insurance company -- will pay for.

It doesn't matter what you may need. If your insurer won't cover it and you can't afford to pay out of pocket, you don't get the medical care. (The exception, of course, is emergency room treatment, which hospitals are obligated to provide.)

The for-profit health insurance industry is in the business of maximizing profits for their shareholders, and the only way they can do that is to hold down the payments they make for medical care. That means they spend a lot of their time (and a lot of their money) figuring out ways to deny claims.

That's why so many patients find their claims denied after they have spent years paying premiums. You may have faced this yourself: You're at home recovering from an illness, only to start receiving bills for expenses the insurance company has refused to pay. Sometimes, the reasons for denying coverage are in the very fine print that came with your policy. Sometimes, the insurer is just behaving unfairly, hoping you are too sick to fight back.

At recent townhall-style forums held by members of Congress or administration officials, some belligerent tea-baggers have held up signs saying, "What's wrong with profit?" The answer is this: It has no place in the health insurance industry. It distorts and disrupts the provisions of health care, adding costs without adding quality of care.

The health care market doesn't function like the market for automobiles or artichokes or flat-screen TVs. If you don't like the price, you just don't buy. But you walk away from expensive health insurance at your own risk.

There is no real competition among insurance companies, as recent research has shown. In 94 percent of metropolitan areas across the country, the market is dominated by no more than two insurance companies, according to the American Medical Association. Republicans claim that the answer is to provide more competition, but they had years to accomplish that, and they didn't. The GOP knows perfectly well that health insurers fight real competition tooth and nail -- as they are fighting the proposal for a public insurance option.

Some of the tea-baggers may have little recent experience with private health insurance because, from the looks of them, many are covered by Medicare. Why would they object to allowing government to get more involved in health insurance for the rest of us, since they already enjoy the largess of a government program? (Oddly, after decades of conservative government-bashing, many people simply don't understand that Medicare is a government-run, taxpayer-supported program. Or "socialism," as some would have it.)

The tea-baggers aside, most health care consumers know perfectly well that the system isn't working and needs to be fixed. Bring on reform.

It's so sad that the GOP has to stoop so LOW as to insinuate that senior citizens are *slated* to be euthanized under Obama's health care plan.

What's worse, is that their attacks don't seem to CARE about how much *damage* their own negative outbursts are doing--by *resisting* such a change in our broken-down health care system. (Which is ranked 37th in the world.)

If they manage to succeed in curtailing this reform, all it's going to do is hurt the rest of us whom are *itching* for change.

Our health care costs have already gone up, the quality of health care has gone down, and people aren't getting what they need, nor are they getting *access* to affordable health care.

So why all the scare tactics?

Because the GOP doesn't *want* change one iota. Change for them means the end to obscene profits and abuse, corruption, and bribes.

And it also means that the health care and insurance industries can't deny us care, or jack up our already *costly* premiums.

The Real Death Panels

Creators Syndicate – When Republican politicians and right-wing talking heads bemoan the fictitious "death panels" that they claim would arise from health-care reform, they are concealing a sinister reality from their followers. The ugly fact is that every year we fail to reform the existing system, that failure condemns tens of thousands of people to die — either because they have no insurance or because their insurance companies deny coverage or benefits when they become ill.

The best estimate of the annual death toll among Americans of working age due to lack of insurance or under-insurance is at least 20,000, according to studies conducted over the past decade by medical researchers, and is almost certainly rising as more and more people lose their coverage as costs continue to go up.

They die primarily because they didn't have the coverage or the money to pay doctors and thus delayed seeking treatment until it was too late. They don't get checkups, screenings and other preventive care. That is why uninsured adults are far more likely to be diagnosed with a disease, such as cancer or heart disease, at an advanced stage, which severely reduces their chances of survival.

This isn't news. Seven years ago, the Institute of Medicine found that approximately 18,000 Americans had died in 2000 because they had no insurance. Using the same methodology combined with Census Bureau estimates of health coverage, the Urban Institute concluded that the incidence of death among the uninsured was enormous. Between 2000 and 2006, the last year of that study, the total number of dead was estimated to have reached 137,000 — a body count more than double the number of casualties in the Vietnam War.

The Institute of Medicine also found that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than adults with private health insurance, and other studies have warned that uninsured adults between the ages of 55 and 64 are even more prone to die prematurely. A lack of health insurance is the third-leading cause of death for that age cohort, following heart disease and cancer.

All those appalling figures, which are real rather than mythical, do not include the casualties of insurance company profiteering — namely, all the people, including small children, who perish because of the anonymous "death panels" that deny or delay coverage to consumers.

Perhaps the most notorious case in recent years was that of Nataline Sarkisyan, the 17-year-old leukemia patient whose liver transplant was held up by insurance giant Cigna HealthCare. She died for no reason except to protect Cigna's profit margin, but her unnecessary and cruel demise was hardly unique.

Research by the American Medical Association found that the nation's largest insurance companies deny somewhere between 2 percent and 5 percent of all the claims submitted by doctors. That rough estimate is the best available because private insurers are not required to reveal such statistics (although they certainly maintain them), and the government does not collect them.

But in June, a House Energy and Commerce Committee investigation found that three major insurance companies — Golden Rule, Assurant and WellPoint — rescinded the coverage of at least 20,000 people between 2003 and 2007 for minor errors, including typos, on their paperwork; a pre-existing condition; or a family member's medical history.

"They try to find something — anything — so they can say that this individual was not truthful," said Rep. Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who oversaw the committee probe. He warned that insurance companies launch these nitpicking inquisitions whenever a policyholder becomes ill with a certain kind of condition — usually a costly and deadly one, such as ovarian cancer or leukemia. The result is denial and loss of coverage — and we now know that means increased mortality for innocent people.

So, who are the members of the death panels?

You can find them among the corporate bureaucrats who concoct excuses to deny coverage and throw the sick off their rolls. You can find them among the politicians and lobbyists who have stalled reform for years while people died. You can find them among the morons who show up to shout slogans at town halls rather than seek solutions. And you can find them among the cable and radio blabbers, who invent scary stories about reform to conceal the sickening truth.

Edited by author 08-13-2009 05:24 PM
Weather's a bit cooler lately--which is *odd* for the month of August.

But it has also been RAINING too--which even ODDER still...!

I can't remember the times when their was such rain, but I guess that--with my memory going--things are changing all over.

In terms of weather.

Next Monday and Tuesday, we're supposed to be hitting the 90s and then--by the end of next week--we'll be right back in the low 60s to upper 70s.

Perfect weather--if you can find it.

My writing's been coming and going in spurts. I'm just taking it easy and not rushing things a bit.

I doubt anyone would hold it against me. But it's been a slow and lazy week for some strange reason. :0)

AMERICANS ARE STARTING TO SEE A LESS-PROSPEROUS FUTURE

Those chaotic town-hall meetings make for dramatic TV reports, but they don't say much about the mood of the country. Most Americans are not angry.

We're worried. While polls can't quite capture it, the dog days of August have drained many of us of enthusiasm for "change," energy for civic activism and even hope for the future.

Obama spent much of the past fall and early winter reminding constituents that the economy had fallen into a savage recession "years in the making," and even enacting his policies wouldn't create instant nirvana. Polls taken at the time suggested that Americans were aware that the "Great Recession" was the worst economic crisis since the 1930s and wouldn't be cured quickly.

But intellectual understanding -- conveyed in the answers we give pollsters -- and emotional, gut-level awareness are two different things. Now that the official unemployment numbers are trending toward 10 percent, foreclosures are continuing apace and credit is still very tight, patience is wearing thin.

Those of us who still have jobs, and the vast majority of us do, know someone who was laid off, bought out or eased into early retirement. We're cutting back, saving those tax cuts instead of going to the mall. And we're just a little irritated by those economists who insist that the recession is probably over. Jobs, we're told, are "lagging indicators." Your banker isn't interested in a lagging mortgage payment.

Many of the conservative town-hall protestors -- those who sympathize with the man who held up the "Obamadinejad" sign comparing Obama to the president of Iran -- are angry about cultural changes that have remade the country in a relatively short period of time. They represent a graying minority who wouldn't be happy if Obama could grow money trees and hand everybody $200,000 checks.

But most of us are anxious about another sort of cultural change that hasn't gotten nearly as much attention: a decline that suggests the economy of the future will not yield the broad prosperity we've come to expect, even when jobs return. A new normal that will not allow each generation to grow more affluent than the last. The rise of competing powers such as China and India and even Brazil, which portends an America struggling for good-paying jobs.

Obama is aware of the changes on the horizon. That's why he's spoken of creating whole new industries -- "green" jobs in alternative energy and climate-change-related sectors yet untapped. He has talked about ending the "boom-and-bust" cycles of the last several decades, most recently demonstrated by the housing bubble and the deafening pop that followed.

But my own despair lies in my uneasy feeling that, as a nation, we're not capable of preparing for a future that will be dramatically different from what we've known. If we can't agree to adopt health care reform -- though almost every American adult knows the system we have isn't working -- how can we possibly agree on the changes required for a future we can hardly envision?

The Chinese, it seems, have passed a huge stimulus package that is working quite well. The authoritarian state, still officially Communist, doesn't have to contend with competing political parties or listen to irate citizens or pretend to care about polls. They decide on a policy. They enact same. Done.

Democracy is a vastly superior system, of course, but our particular brand of democracy is a bit dysfunctional at the moment. The opposition party is committed only to the failure of the president, even if that means the country fails, too. And the majority party is still beholden to lobbyists, special interests and money, despite Obama's promises to clean up Washington. (The Blue Dog Democrats, as just one example, sold out to UnitedHealth Group, which doesn't want a public insurance option.)

Perhaps September, when Congress returns, will present a brighter picture of hardworking representives honestly wrestling with the tough issues and trying to come up with solutions. I can dream, can't I?

Bush National Security Leaders Silent While Junior Spies Could Face Torture Charges

The Los Angeles Times reported last Sunday that Attorney General Holder will soon appoint a special prosecutor to investigate individuals alleged to have participated in the worst excesses of CIA torture, but not the policy makers and senior intelligence officials responsible for torture and detention policies. Holder's strategy appears to have little support, either from torture apologists or opponents. Meanwhile, the architects of Bush-era torture and detention policy are not rushing to defend low-level intelligence officers who could be facing costly legal jeopardy.

When this story first surfaced in mid-July, sources varied as to whether such a special prosecutor would undertake a wide-ranging investigation that could call the architects of torture policy into account, or would focus on a few individuals--bad apples--who violated the Bush administration's torture rules.

According to the LA Times story, Holder is now all but certain to appoint a special prosecutor who will focus the investigation on low-level intelligence officers and contractors who exceeded the Department of Justice and internal CIA policy guidelines on acceptable torture techniques. Presumably, he special prosecutor would not delve into the legality of overall torture and extrajudicial detention policy, or the secret legal rulings and authorizations behind the policy.

The story goes on to report that serving CIA officials are digging in, with a few putting off retirement in order to put themselves in the best position to mount a legal defense.

Bracing for the worst, a small number of CIA officials have put off plans to retire or leave the agency so that they can maintain their access to classified files and be in a better position to defend against a Justice investigation.


"Once you're out, it gets a lot harder," said a retired CIA official who said he had spoken recently with former colleagues. The inquiry would probably also target private contractors who worked for the CIA during the interrogations.

From the prosecution and investigatory perspective, torture prosecutions appear fraught from the beginning. A former Department of Justice official told the Times, "I don't blame them for wanting to look into it . . . But if they appoint a special prosecutor, it would ultimately be unsuccessful, and it would go on forever and cause enormous collateral damage on the way to getting that unsuccessful result."

Some observers, such as Daphne Eviatar, legal correspondent at The Washington Independent, hold out hope that Holder's special prosecutor can and will go beyond low-level intelligence operatives who may have been involved in torture. "It's not clear where such an inquiry would logically end," writes Eviatar. "Investigating CIA functionaries low on the totem pole -- which would involve re-opening cases previously dismissed by the Bush administration -- would ultimately require looking into the orders they received from their superiors."

Others in the know don't share Eviatar's hope for justice. Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told the Times, "An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all."

Indeed, the prosecution of low-level intelligence officers and contractors for torture has been called "the worst of both worlds" by the Balloon Juice blog. Taking off on this theme, civil liberties blogger Glenn Greenwald termed Holder's 'bad apples' strategy "Abu Ghraib redux," a reference to the infamous Abu Ghraib court martial that singled out extremely junior National Guard troops for atrocities against Iraqi prisoners, while letting the officers and policy makers who enabled their crimes completely off the hook.

Atlantic Online's Andrew Sullivan warned that the Obama administration would lose moral authority with Holder's anticipated move: "The Obama administration, however well-intentioned it may be, risks essentially legitimizing the torture it does not prosecute."

Already, Congress has taken note of the problems in Holder's 'bad apples' strategy. Jerrold Nadler (D-NV), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee's Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties subcommittee, told Holder last week, "There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation," according to The Public Record.

Tellingly, those torture authorizers have not taken up the cause of lowly intelligence officers who might get caught up in the justice system.

John Yoo, the loudest and most prolific apologist for torture policy, did not rush to comment on the plight of CIA officers and contractors who might face prosecution for carrying out illegal policies that he helped formulate. Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who earlier had been vociferously critical of Obama national security policy and then suddenly became quiet in the past month or so, hasn't used his good offices to defend low-level intelligence officers or even raise money for their legal defenses. George Tenet, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Steven Bradbury, and others who presumably were micromanaging torture from Washington also have been conspicuously silent.

Maybe they are lobbying behind the scenes for the Obama administration to look to the future, instead back at the past.

Democracy in Afghanistan is wishful thinking

Monterey, Calif.; and Washington – As the world watches today's presidential election in Afghanistan, Americans would do well to ponder the lessons of Vietnam.

The similarities are striking. The Republic of South Vietnam also held elections during the US intervention there, despite an ongoing counterinsurgency. Before American troops got involved, both countries had won upset victories over European powers after a decade of fighting, only to slide into another decade of largely north-south civil war.

As historian Eric Bergerud has noted, the United States lost in Vietnam ultimately not because of its deeply flawed approach to counterinsurgency, as damaging as that was, but because South Vietnam never established a government seen as legitimate by a majority of its people. Experts agree that a government that 85 to 90 percent of the population perceives as legitimate is the sine qua non of counterinsurgency success. South Vietnam never came close to achieving such legitimacy, and neither, unfortunately, has post-2001 Afghanistan. In terms of incompetence and endemic corruption, Kabul is Saigon déjà vu.

That's why we shouldn't read too much into today's election. Even if it were to yield a high voter turnout, have relatively few irregularities, and produce a strong majority for the winner, it won't give the new government legitimacy.

The father of modern sociology, Max Weber, pointed out that governments draw their legitimacy from three basic sources: traditional, religious, and legal. The first two are self-explanatory; by "legal," Weber meant Western-style democracies based on popular representation and the rule of law. And in this sense, political failure in Afghanistan was baked into the cake in the 2001 Bonn Process.

In its rush to stand up an overnight democratic success story, the Bush administration overlooked Afghan history. Indeed, it was willfully ahistorical. That's tragic, because Afghan history demonstrates conclusively and beyond dispute that legitimacy of governance there is derived exclusively from Weber's first two sources: traditional (in the form of the monarchy and tribal patriarchies) and religious. Either there has been a king, or religious leadership, or a leader validated by the caliphate (or afterwards by indigenous religious polities).

Often in Afghan history, legitimacy thus derived has been reinforced by other means, usually coercive and often brutal. For example, the rule of Amir Abdur Rahman, "The Iron Amir," (1880-1901) and that of the Taliban (1996-2001) were predicated on accepted sources of legitimacy of governance (dynastic and religious, respectively), but reinforced by totalitarian methods. These two examples make the point that legitimacy should not be conflated with popularity: having the authority to rule is quite distinct from being a popular ruler. American presidents, for example, are always legitimate leaders but not always popular ones.

This historical reality poses a major problem for the US. Democracy is not a coat of paint. A feudal society in which women are still largely treated as property and literacy hovers below 10 percent in rural areas does not magically shortcut 400 years of political development and morph into a democracy in a decade. The current government of Afghanistan's claim to legitimacy is based entirely on a legal source – winning an election. Yet this has no historical basis for legitimizing Afghan rule. The winner of today's election will largely be seen as illegitimate because he is elected.

The tragic mistake, which we warned against, was in eliminating the Afghan monarchy from a ceremonial role in the new Afghan Constitution. Nearly two thirds of the delegates to the loya jirga in 2002 signed a petition to make the aging King Zaher Shah the interim head of state, and only massive US interference behind the scenes in the form of bribes, secret deals, and arm twisting got the US-backed candidate for the job, Hamid Karzai, installed instead.

The same US and UN policymakers then rode shotgun over a constitutional process that eliminated the monarchy entirely. This was the Afghan equivalent of the 1964 Diem Coup in Vietnam: afterward, there was no possibility of creating a stable secular government. While an Afghan king could have conferred legitimacy on an elected leader in Afghanistan, without one, an elected president is on a one-legged stool.

An American cannot declare himself king and be seen as legitimate: monarchy is not a source of legitimacy of governance in America. Similarly, a man cannot be voted president in Afghanistan and be perceived as legitimate. Systems of government normally grow from existing traditions, as they did in the US after the Revolutionary War, for example. In Afghanistan, they were imposed externally. Representative democracy is simply not a source of legitimacy in Afghanistan at this point in its development. This explains in no small measure why a religious source of legitimacy in the form of the hated Taliban is making such a powerful comeback.

As was the case in Vietnam after the Diem Coup, there is little likelihood today of establishing a strong central government in Kabul which is genuinely seen as legitimate in the eyes of the Afghan people and which has significant public support across the country's ethno-sectarian divides. As a revision of the Afghan Constitution to restore a ceremonial monarchy is now highly unlikely, the only remaining option is to move away from counterproductive efforts to "extend the reach of the central government," which further undermine traditional sources of local legitimacy and resistance to the Taliban, and work instead to re-empower legitimate local authorities in a more decentralized state.

Tables turned on US tax cheats

Wealthy tax cheats prize the privacy of the offshore bank that hides their identity – and their money. But in a landmark deal announced this week, the US and Swiss governments are using that same tool of secrecy to flush out suspected American tax dodgers. The irony towers like the Alps.

When both governments explained their agreement on Aug. 19, they withheld enough details to keep US tax evaders guessing: Am I one of the 4,450 account holders at Swiss banking giant UBS whose identities will be turned over to US authorities?

That unknown will hopefully push US tax evaders to voluntarily fess up and pay up before a Sept. 23 deadline in a general leniency program. Such self-reporting may hurt their bottom line, but it will spare them jail time and a lifetime of guilt.

At one point in this case, the US had sought the names of 52,000 UBS clients, indicating a large field of potential cheats. The IRS has spoken only broadly about the criteria for settling on the smaller number of accounts, describing them as ones where the IRS believes people haven't paid their taxes.

Meanwhile, the Swiss government has agreed to review and process American accounts at other Swiss banks that fit the pattern of the UBS suspects. Which banks might those be? The IRS cleverly didn't say, but tax cheats are now on notice that the hole blown in this bastion of international bank secrecy is going to get bigger and may very well swallow them.

Cunningly, the UBS names will not be released all at once, but rolled out over months. That will perpetuate the uncertainty for any cheaters among them. If the IRS prosecutes, the identities of well-known personalities are bound to be disclosed, embarrassing them and serving as a lesson to other cheats.

Kudos to the US government for its dogged pursuit of tax dodgers in a banking system that has heretofore been largely unassailable. And praise to the Swiss government for broadening its definition of fraud and living up to a treaty with the US that allowed this case to be resolved.

But one also has to admire the construction of this agreement and the resulting pressure it will put on tax cheaters to come clean. It uses the same principle that the IRS applies to Joe and Jane taxpayer – keeping them honest by keeping them guessing about an audit.

You never know. And that's the point.

Law, Not Torture, Protects National Security

Creators Syndicate – Predictably as always, the Republicans in Congress and in the conservative media are berating Attorney General Eric Holder for deciding to investigate the CIA's use of abusive interrogation methods on terror suspects.

They warn that probing this sensitive history will compromise intelligence operations and endanger the nation. They insist that these techniques have, in the words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, saved thousands and perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives. They suggest that the attorney general should simply ignore the evidence of illegal conduct and "investigate the terrorists instead," as if the Justice Department cannot do both.

But as those politicians and pundits ought to understand by now, the American system of justice was always meant to do both — that is, to apprehend and prosecute criminals, and to ensure that those who apprehend them do not violate the law in doing so. That system routinely investigates law enforcement officials who use excessive force because we recognize that the credibility and authority of the law depends on universal accountability.

Voices on the right have often protested prosecutions of police officers and sheriffs because, they claim, such accountability will lead to higher crime. Yet in fact, the declining crime rates of the past three decades have coincided with stronger efforts to ensure that the police observe the rights of suspects and avoid the use of undue violence.

By the same principle, any nation that professes to live under constitutional governance must be able to ensure that its intelligence professionals observe relevant laws, including the international treaties that ban torture and abuse of prisoners. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution, even the president's wartime authority, that permits the chief executive and his minions to assume dictatorial power. So the attorney general must investigate abuses committed in their name.

According to Cheney, however, preserving the rule of law will expose the nation to devastating terror attacks. He has repeatedly claimed that waterboarding as well as other abusive methods are all that stand between us and a repetition of 9-11 or much worse. But during his years in office, and especially during the prelude to the invasion of Iraq, he became notorious for exaggerating and fabricating scary "intelligence" that was designed to ram through his political agenda.

Evidence that has emerged in recent days, through the release of the 2004 CIA inspector general's report on the agency's use of "enhanced interrogation," provides little support for the former vice president's bluster. As Spencer Ackerman notes in The Washington Independent, the uncensored portions of the IG report honestly concede that the effectiveness of those techniques is open to doubt.

The report does not conclude that Abu Zubaydah or Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the two ranking al-Qaida operatives captured after 9-11, revealed critical intelligence information because they were waterboarded dozens of times. Instead, the report indicates that most if not all vital information about the jihadi terror network was obtained through normal investigative work and questioning.

What Cheney and his supporters have tried to do, by grabbing brief quotations out of context, is to confuse interrogation per se with the abusive techniques. And what they purposely omit is the inspector general's damning conclusions about the contradiction between official U.S. human rights policy, especially our condemnation of torture by other states, and the lawless brutality approved by the Bush-Cheney administration.

As for the argument that we cannot protect our security while upholding the law, that is an old canard that reappears — usually, but not always, in the mouths of Republicans — whenever intelligence abuses require investigation and possible prosecution. Many of the same people, including Cheney, uttered the same warnings back in the '70s and '80s, when Congress and federal prosecutors probed lawbreaking by the CIA.

But those landmark investigations were followed not by a diminishment of American security and power, but by the fall of the Soviet Union. It is the past eight years, when the Cheney outlook prevailed, that have seen a ruinous reduction in our prestige and influence — and perhaps our future security, as well.

It's been a quiet couple of weeks--in case anyone's wondering. :0)

I've been pounding on the keyboard recently--scoring up a book on my experiences with poverty as a child growing up. And as an adult as well--living on fixed income.

So I'm going to see how that's going to turn out--since it was a suggestion from my wife's therapist.

Flags are flying at half-staff all around Everett--in honor of the late Senator Kennedy.

My GAU was approved for another year--which surprised me; considering that DSHS does it on a three-month interval.

I guess--when you live with the problems I've had to deal with all my life--?

Nothing--if anything--really *changes* over the years.

It's not too surprising to see someone like Darth Cheney DISPUTE the attorney general's decision to look into the CIA's long-running abuse of power and torture tactics conducted while under the Bush administration.

The man always believed that the executive branch should be the MOST POWERFUL to a point that it shouldn't have to answer to anyone.

He was solidly against the CIA being investigated for abuses of power in the 1980s--saying: "It would only diminish our national security in the face of the Russians."

Over the week, he stressed that, "looking into what the CIA did with terror suspects will only make us more *vulnerable* to terrorists while damaging our capability to stop future attacks on our country."

Personally, I would like the evil weasel to be subjected to his own brand of torture.

Do you think he would complain after being sleep-deprived for 7.5 days? (That's 180 hours.)

Or being slammed into walls and being forced to stand naked in either cold or hot temperature extremes?

Or having electric shocks being delivered to his wrinkled nutsack? Or being turned upside down and WATERBOARDED 163 consecutive times?

Or about being threatened with mock executions? Or having a power drill pressed against his head?

Things like this is only DESTROYING our country's ability to deal with real-time threats. It's just showing the world how depraved our nation's agencies and government officials have gotten over the years.

Having been hit on 9/11 has brought out the WORST in ourselves and we should be ashamed and guilty of participating in such acts.

Why is--NOW--that some in our government are *afraid* to be exposed to the horrifying truth about what the CIA and other government agencies did while Bush and Cheney were in office?

If we keep doing these things, then history will only repeat itself time and again--and we'll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Edited by author 09-08-2009 06:04 PM
Spent five hours yesterday compacting more of our things in storage. Thirty boxes, but it left me and April extremely sore and tired.

(I also had some stuff fall on me--as USUAL.)

It's sad when the American public can be so BRAINWASHED and taken over by *fear* these days.

For example? Obama's health care plan. IT'S NOT CONFUSING AT ALL.

The only thing which is *driving* so many people to the extremes is the GOP's successful attack on Obama's platform, ideas, and *message*.

They don't want to see Obama succeed at ALL--in giving people affordable health care or *any* option which may present itself to the average consumer.

The Party of No! would rather *destroy* any HOPE of health care change than see Obama triumph over such difficult odds.

The Republicans don't WANT health care reform of any kind. Which is why they've been filling the airwaves with distortions, lies, and ridiculous claims that people whom are Republican will *not* get any kind of health care under a Democratic Congress.

But they never complained when they passed a $1.08T dollar health care package under Bush--which benefited the insurance and drug companies the MOST.

It isn't REFORM they are scared of, but the *idea* that they now have to be more open and HONEST about what plans are being considered, less scamming of the American public, and putting many of the insurance and drug companies on notice that they no longer have free reign when it comes to *denying* people the coverage they desperately need--because of a pre-existing condition.

Nor can they jack up their clients' premiums to unheard of levels--which is why they have such obscene profits to begin with.

So to say, "It's the Democrats' fault that my premiums are so high"--is a grandiose disrortion that beats the band hands down.

IT'S THE INSURANCE COMPANIES WHICH ARE **SCREWING** YOU PEOPLE LEFT AND RIGHT!!!

AND THEY'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR YEARS ON END!

What Obama offers is CHANGE from the status quo. Better competition amongst private insurance companies and better coverage.

No private carrier is going to be THREATENED with extinction--like the GOP claims it will--if the public option becomes law, okay?

All the President is doing is leveling the playing field so that EVERYONE can get a fair shake at affordable coverage.

It's a monopoly that has been DENIED to the average American consumer for the past 40 years.

The second thing which pisses me off is people's TWISTED perceptions of Obama's speech to our kids tonight.

Folks? THE PRESIDENT ISN'T TRYING TO BRAINWASH YOUR CHILDREN--as some of his harshest critics have claimed.

All he's doing is reminding our children how IMPORTANT education is, and how CRITICAL it is to *stay* in school.

Our country faces the HIGHEST dropout rate worldwide--amongst the leading nations to date.

More kids these days are dropping out--than ever before. It's much WORSE in the South, where 1 in 3 are cashing out before they turn 18.

On top of that, kids these days are having a much harder time in school--with higher class sizes, less teachers per capita, and more stringent school requirements than kids of my age--when *I* went to school 30 years ago.

So why the uproar over Obama's message? No one COMPLAINED when Reagan or Bush I addressed our nation's children.

They complained pretty bad when Clinton had a go at it--claiming that the President was trying to pass a "socialist's agenda".

PUL-LLEAZE!!!

*This* reaction is the REASON why we don't have a competative educational system...WHY we are *37th* in the world--for affordable health care--and WHY our children are facing the spectre of being a high-school "drop out" than ever before!

I'm particularly mad at the parents whom think that Obama is pushing some political agenda on our nation's kids--PARTICULARLY when their kids are facing the same numerous hurdles that I just outlined.

One parent in particular said that he didn't want his kids to grow up to be "community organizers".

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THAT?!?

Being a community organizer is NOTHING to be ashamed about! It helps that person develop strong leadership and organizing skills and it gives that person the CHANCE to make a difference in his or her community--BY BRINGING TO LIGHT ALL THE ILLS AND PROBLEMS WHICH STILL AFFLICT OUR COUNTRY!!!

In the South and other affected areas of our country, such leadership and organizing skills are a badly NEEDED commodity in our nation!

We *need* people to start giving others hope for a better future! That's what Obama is TRYING to impress on the nation as a whole!

BUT THE GOP AND ITS SUPPORTERS DON'T WANT THAT! THEY WANT THINGS TO REMAIN THE SAME--DIVIDED, HOPELESS, AND A WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE PISSED OFF AND EASY TO MANIPULATE!

Again...that's WHY our country is falling apart at the seams. Obama was given a job that is a helluva lot harder than usual--because of the *mess* he inherited from Bush himself--and the critics and those suddenly against him on a number of issues aren't *allowing* him the chance to correct things and make our lives just a little bit BETTER.

It isn't socialism when you're trying to give people some hope for a better future, at health care, education, or whatnot.

But it pisses me off to watch the news every night and see just how STUPID people are when they are being interviewed on a particular cause, issue, or *problem*.

They don't THINK before they speak. THEY JUST ACT OUT OF FEAR, COWARDICE, OR RACIAL INDIFFERENCE.

A Perfect Storm of Idiocy

Creators Syndicate – The wild furor over President Obama's speech to the nation's schoolchildren raises many questions, but there is only one that really matters. How did America surrender its political discourse — not to mention the news cycle — to the most unreasonable and unstable elements of the far right?

Not so many years ago, nobody would have imagined that a bland presidential address to young students, urging them to remain in school, study hard and nurture their aspirations for success, could engender a raging national controversy. Nobody would have believed that such an ordinary event could excite suspicions among a significant part of the population that the chief executive is "indoctrinating" their children into a "socialist ideology," or that the fate of the republic depended on parents keeping their innocents away from the classrooms, lest they hear his words. And nobody would have believed that the resulting wave of paranoia, supercharged by talk radio and cable television, could actually grip the attention of the public when real issues demand action.

When the nation's first African-American president proposes to urge children, and in particular those children who regard him as a role model, to behave wisely and avoid self-destructive behavior, liberals and conservatives alike ought to be expected to applaud him. Indeed, conservatives especially should be clapping loudly, since they have so often bemoaned the cultural barriers to advancement faced by poor and minority students.

So why have the idols of the right, notably Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, instead seized this moment to stir anger and fear among Republican parents by claiming that the president intends harm to their kids? Why did many Republican leaders, notably the party chairman of Florida, echo the craziness? (And why would any parent take advice from Beck, a college dropout and recovering alcoholic?)

While many Obama critics advertise themselves as "libertarians" who distrust any message from Big Brother in Washington, that healthy skepticism cannot be the reason for the current outcry — because two of the past three Republican presidents spoke directly to the nation's schoolchildren without provoking any significant reaction at all.

In the fall of 1991, President George Herbert Walker Bush delivered a speech in a classroom that was broadcast live nationwide by the Pubic Broadcasting System, Mutual Broadcasting and NBC Radio Network. The blanket media coverage was arranged by the Education Department (which gave rise to a few grumpy remarks by Democrats in Congress that were duly noted but mostly ignored by the press).

"Thanks for allowing me to visit your classroom to talk to you and all these students," he said politely to the teacher who was hosting him, "and millions more in classrooms all across the country." He went on to tell his audience: "Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn. Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart. I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid."

His predecessor, Ronald Reagan, addressed students directly on at least two occasions — once in a broadcast speech in 1988 and once in a session with high-school students at the White House in 1986. Both times, the Gipper seized the chance to promote his own policies, with particular attention to cutting taxes and his "vision of economic freedom." In fact, Reagan's remarks were entirely political, if not partisan. He did precisely what the right has wrongly attacked Obama for doing — but that was a message that conservatives like to hear, so they didn't object to the "indoctrination" of students at the public's expense.

The irony of this tempest of idiocy is that the same blowhards who constantly slander and slur President Obama were telling us, not too long ago, that criticizing the commander in chief during wartime was tantamount to treason. But of course, they are patriots of political convenience — with no allegiance to anything except their own power and their extreme ideology.