Tag Archives: Cheney

Political Rants

Issues and non-answers.

A little more off the top of my head. One of these weeks I’m going to take some pains over this posting, but… not this time.

Don’t worry, Kyoto. Canada’s pulling out of the Kyoto Protocol (can you say “tar sands”?) and Durban was a bust. What’s it going to take, people? We had massive tornadic storms this past year. We don’t have the luxury of another decade of inaction and ignorance.  

See you in health. One of the issues that comes up in our perennial presidential campaign is that of health insurance, mostly in the context of so-called “Obama Care”. What doesn’t get discussed so much is, well, the only possible positive solution to the current situation, which is bankrupting individuals, bleeding businesses dry, and threatening to drown the government in red ink. The only constituency the current health insurance system benefits is private health insurers. Seems like we, as a nation, sacrifice a great deal to preserve their profitability. That has got to end. We need a national health insurance system – basically universal Medicare with some enhancements – that covers everybody.

When GOP strategist Ed Gillespie was on the Daily Show the other day, he seemed to suggest that he didn’t have a problem with the notion of insurance exchanges or the idea that veterans, for instance, should have government coverage because they deserve the best. And yet his – and I think most Republicans’ – solution to the ongoing health crisis is to throw everyone into the private market. I can tell you from experience – that is not a good place to be unless you’re very young, very healthy, and can afford very steep premiums. And the employer based system isn’t working either, partly because it’s based on the pool of employees covered by the plan. If there are a lot of illnesses in a given year, that sends the premiums through the roof. The only way to control costs is to a) get everyone in the freaking country into the same pool, and b) cut the profit out of it entirely so that, as with Medicare, practically all of the money goes to patient care. 

Private, employer-based health insurance is an anachronism that should go the way of the typewriter. It was designed for an age of close to full employment, when companies needed to incentivize people to come to work for them. If the GOP wants to reduce “uncertainty” for their friends in business, they might consider making it possible for them to get out of the health insurance business altogether. The only reasonable way to do that is through a national health plan administered by the federal government.

War’s end. The Iraq war is coming to a close, at least with respect to American troops (though many contractors remain). Of course, there are those amongst us who consider withdrawal a mistake, such as Cheney, McCain, and nearly all of the GOP presidential candidates. I know – who cares what Cheney thinks, right? Has a man ever been more consistently wrong (or despised) than he? Still, I don’t think we should be too dismissive of their views. If Cheney, McCain, Lindsey Graham, Michelle Bachman, and other foreign policy super-geniuses want us to stay in Iraq, we should ship them over there. Good place for them. And they can stay as long as they want.

Of course, we could never really allow that to happen. I mean, haven’t the Iraqi people have suffered enough?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Peace train.

My brother Matt was complaining about NPR today. I guess they were talking to one of the fifty generals they have on tap; a guy named General Mills. (“What the hell, does he command Cap’n Crunch?” said Matt.) We groused about this a bit for the podcast. NPR and PBS have always been heavily freighted with retired generals, like the commercial networks and cable channels. But because they have been erroneously described as “leftist” or somehow associated with an elusive liberal elite, they go overboard to disabuse people of that notion. They fired Soundprint’s Lisa Simeone for her association with Occupy DC, apparently fearing that her defense of the 99% would cloud her journalistic objectivity about opera, which is mostly what she covers. Call them National Paranoid Radio.

I’m thinking about NPR particularly because of the president’s declaration that the Iraq war will be drawn to a close at the end of this year, despite the administration’s efforts to keep it rolling for an indefinite period of deployment. NPR was completely on board with the Iraq war back in 2002-03; they dropped the ball on anything like investigative journalism at a time when it might have mattered to get the truth out. People tend to forget that the alternative press, plus outlets like the London Independent, blew holes in the Bush Administration’s case for war well before the shooting began. Counterpunch, for instance, knocked down Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation point by point within days of its delivery. Much of what they reported is common knowledge now. NPR – like other mainstream news sources – were nowhere on this.

Now that people are beginning to think of the Iraq war as a done deal, we would do well to remind ourselves that no one – absolutely no one – has been held accountable for this major bloodletting. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice have all barnstormed the country, hawking their memoirs, bragging on their participation in committing the crime of international aggression – the worst of all crimes, per the U.N. charter, since so many smaller crimes are precipitated by it. On the hook with them are some of the nation’s most august news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and, yes, NPR.

All I’m saying is, with respect to accountability for this historic crime we call the Iraq war, it’s not over until it’s over.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Occupayback.

Can’t call me a cynic quite yet. The Occupy Wall Street movement seems a very positive development to my jaundiced eye. Hell, there were reportedly 400 people at the rally in Utica. When we brought out more than 200 for the big demo on the eve of the Iraq war, that seemed amazing for a place like this. 400 is practically unheard of. There is a strong undercurrent of resentment about the financial crisis and the fact that virtually none of the large institutions that caused the meltdown have been held to account, just as no executive in any of those firms has faced the threat of prosecution. Nay, they have continued to receive obscene bonuses, showboating their excess as if to flaunt their immunity from the restrictions of either the law or the marketplace. Like Dick Cheney bragging about his support for torture, they seem to be daring us to do something – anything – about their transgressions. You can’t touch me, they laugh.

Well…. maybe we can. There seems to be an overwhelming desire to do so. Not surprising. We’ve seen the result of not holding people accountable. Cheney’s a good example – still on the loose, influencing policy in some fashion. Karl Rove is another one, out raising millions for another crop of right-wing nut jobs. If course, no one has been held to account for the Iraq War, a needless conflict that tore a swath of destruction through an entire nation as well as the military families in America, draining our treasury and putting us at greater risk of attack. Ask any conservative – if you fail to adequately punish lawbreakers, you encourage others to break the law. We have certainly emboldened future presidents to march into any country they care to invade. In fact, Obama already has, without much fanfare or protest.

Some have complained that the Occupy Wall Street movement is too diffuse and disjointed. In a sense, though, that is its strength. There is a general thrust that society is divided between the stark minority with all of the money and the vast majority with financial problems. Within that lies many topics relating to economics, war and peace, freedom of speech, tax justice, etc. Flat, leaderless movements have a kind of strength that the traditional top-down model lacks: it’s easy to corrupt a handful of top dogs. But if the entire nation of Bolivia or Argentina or Greece is out in the street, banging on pots, clogging up the works, it won’t be easily co-opted.

Like the tea party, they’ve gotten their agenda in front of the people. Let’s see if they can keep it there.

luv u,

jp