Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Bush budget proposes a $45 billion cut in Medicaid over the next ten years. Administration official Josh Bolten says the cuts will “squeeze the anomalies out of the system.” Never mind that those “anomalies” are flesh and blood, old people and babies, people earning far too little to pay for medical care or $1000 monthly insurance premiums.

Not to be left behind, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty also insists on cuts in Minnesota’s health care coverage. Severe cuts were made last year. The Minnesota Children’s Defense Fund documents many of the cuts.

“The Smith family of Scott County and their 17-month-old son, Kalem, recently felt the effects of changes made to Minnesota’s MA Program. At
12 months old Kalem became uninsured due to reductions in the eligibility guidelines for newborns. Kalem’s father is an employee of a two-person technology company that does not offer health insurance for dependents. Kalem’s mother, Heather, stays home to care for him. … The toddler automatically received MA under the “auto newborn” at the time of birth, but lost his coverage after his first birthday because his family’s income exceeded the income limit by less than $20…”

Anna* is a 9-year-old girl in Minneapolis who has substantial hearing loss. Hearing aids allow her to function normally and develop appropriate social, behavioral, and academic skills. Due to the cuts made to GAMC, Anna is no longer able to access health care coverage, which helped her family pay for the hearing aids and supporting services she requires.”

Joanne* has three sons under the age of 14 who are without health insurance for the first time. Joanne is a full-time county employee and earns slightly more than $2,600 a month. By the time she pays for her family’s basic needs of rent, utilities, food, and car, she has $356 left each month for all other expenses. Paying her share of the monthly premium offered by her employer to cover dependents would leave her with $31 each month. This is not an option.” Last year the Minnesota legislature reduced eligibility for the Minnesota Care program — Joanne’s children are no longer eligible for coverage.

For more information on the gaping holes in Minnesota’s health care safety net, go to the Children’s Defense Fund. Write to your legislator. Write to Pawlenty. Tell them you want all Minnesotans to have access to health care — but that you especially want all children covered by Minnesota Care. Make your voice heard.

Elections in Iraq were a great success — ask any Republican. Never
mind that polling places were kept secret from would-be voters until the last
minute. Never mind that candidates’ names were also secret, or that some people
listed on ballots denied that they were candidates. Never mind that more
than half the people voting thought they were voting for president when, in
fact, they were voting for an assembly to craft a constitution. Never mind the
people killed on election day, or those assassinated during the pre-election
period.

Elections were a great success because, amid the bombs and bullets, people
voted. That is all you need for democracy. People voting — whether
or not they know who or what they are voting for, whether or not their vote
has any chance of actually influencing the policies of their leaders —
voting equals democracy. Ask any Republican.

Those who voted showed
immense courage. Many felt that voting was the only thing they could do
to show that they wanted change — whether that change meant getting rid of
the old government or getting rid of the occupying army.

In 1967, the U.S. government lauded the brave people of [South] Viet Nam for
voting, and predicted that the election turnouts meant the success of democracy
and an imminent end to war. They were wrong. War continued until the "insurgents"
finally drove U.S. forces out of the country and imposed their own dictatorship.

In 1984, the U.S. government lauded the conduct of elections in El Salvador,
hailing the triumph of democracy. They were wrong. War and murder dragged on.
As soldiers of the dictatorship killed Archbishop Romero in 1980, soldiers of
the democratic government murdered the Jesuit priests and their housekeeper
and her daughter in 1989.

So, brave as the Iraqi voters were, we should not forget the lessons of history.
Elections
alone provide neither democracy nor peace.

New York Times, September 3, 1967

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose

Washington, Sept. 3 – United States officials were surprised and heartened
today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam’s presidential election despite
a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered
voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened
by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the
election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of
the national election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

Pending more detailed reports, neither the State Department nor the Wite House
would comment on the balloting or the victory of the military candidates, Liet.
Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu, who was running for president, and Premier Nguyen Cao
Ky, the candidate for vice president.

A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson’s
policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.
The election was the culmination of a constitutional development that began
in January, 1966, to which President Johnson gave his personal commitment when
he met Premier Ky and General Thieu, the chief of state, in Honolulu in February.

The purpose of the voting was to give legitimacy to the Saigon Government, which
has been founded only on coups and power plays since November, 1963, when President
Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown by a military junta.

Few members of that junta are still around, most having been ousted or exiled
in subsequent shifts of power.

Significance Not Diminished
The fact that the backing of the electorate has gone to the generals who have
been ruling South Vietnam for the last two years does not, in the Administration’s
view, diminish the significance of the constitutional step that has been taken.

The hope here is that the new government will be able to maneuver with a confidence
and legitimacy long lacking in South Vietnamese politics. That hope could have
been dashed either by a small turnout, indicating widespread scorn or a lack
of interest in constitutional development, or by the Vietcong’s disruption
of the balloting.

American officials had hoped for an 80 per cent turnout. That was the figure
in September for the Constituent Assembly. Seventy-eight per cent of the registered
voters went to the polls in elections for local officials last spring.

Before the results of the presidential election started to come in, the American
officials warned that the turnout might be less than 80 per cent because the
polling places would be open for two or three hours less than in the election
a year ago. The turnout of 83 per cent was a welcome surprise. The turnout in
the 1964 United States Presidential election was 62 per cent.

Captured documents and interrogations indicated in the last week a serious concern
among Vietcong leaders that a major effort would be required to render the election
meaningless. This effort has not succeeded, judging from the reports from Saigon.

Last week the New York Times weighed in with a lengthy article on Chile’s privatization
program. Like the one that Bush proposes, Chile’s privatization, begun 25 years
ago, lets workers choose private investment accounts instead of the government-run
safety net system. Bush has cited the Chilean plan as a model for his plans
to privatize Social Security. (Of course, he does not say "privatize"
— as Molly Ivins explains, that’s a word the Bush PR people avoid at all costs.)

Chileans have found that the private pension system doesn’t work. Here’s one
example:

"Dagoberto Sáez, for example, is a 66-year-old laboratory technician
here who plans, because of a recent heart attack, to retire in March. He earns
just under $950 a month; his pension fund has told him that his nearly 24 years
of contributions will finance a 20-year annuity paying only $315 a month.

"Colleagues and friends with the same pay grade who stayed in the old
system, people who work right alongside me," he said, "are retiring
with pensions of almost $700 a month – good until they die. I have a salary
that allows me to live with dignity, and all of a sudden I am going to be plunged
into poverty, all because I made the mistake of believing the promises they
made to us back in 1981."

Part of the reason, according to the Times, is the exorbitant fees charged
by the pension funds, which earn large profits for their services in managing
the workers’ money.

The article, "Chile’s Retirees Find Shortfall in Private Plan"
by Larry Rohter was published January 27. It is well worth reading in full.
And thanks to Rhona for reminding me that Paul
Krugman’s analysis is also informative and understandable.

January 28

Time to step back from the overheated rhetoric and take a look at what Social
Security is and is not.

Social Security is

– a program originally
designed to provide some minimal income for old people who otherwise would
be completely destitute
– a program that has, in fact, provided that guarantee of minimal income to
retired and disabled people (and their dependents) for about 70 years and
is still going strong.

Social Security is NOT

– bankrupt or anywhere near it

– a pension plan (it’s a safety net– see above)
– an investment

– equally funded by everyone.

[Want a more sophisticated economic explanation? Go to Lies
About Social Security by economist MarkWeisbrot.)

Rich people get a big break. They don’t pay a dime of Social Security tax
on interest, dividends, capital gains OR earned income over $87,900 per year.
That’s right, folks. Every dime of earned income after dollar 87,901 is FREE
of Social Security taxes. That means that if I earn $30,000 per year, I am paying
6.2 percent of my income for Social Security every year (and an additional 1.45
percent for Medicare.) But if Carl CEO earns $175,800 per year, he pays only
3.1 percent of his income for Social Security. If Max Millionaire makes $351,600
per year, he pays only 1.55 percent in Social Security. If Betty Billionaire
stays home and lives off the interest from her investments, she doesn’t pay
any Social Security tax.

Privatizing Social Security, even in part, would yield huge profits for financial
institutions while injecting a big chunk of money into the stock market. Nothing
wrong with investing in the stock market–but that’s for money you can afford
to risk, not with the rock-bottom safety net.

I woke this morning to the news of James Forman’s death. He was one of those
heroes of my youth, one of the leaders of the March on Washington in 1963 and
the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the Freedom Rides and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. Forman composed the Black Manifesto in 1969, demanding
[still long over-due and unpaid] reparations for slavery. He endured beatings
and jail and ridicule, and kept on going.

On Democracy Now this morning, Bob
Moses and John
Lewis, two still-living heroes of that time, two colleagues of Forman, spoke
about him. John Lewis is now a Congressman,
and always a leader. Bob Moses, from a far less prominent position, does no
less good work heading up the Algebra
Project, demanding and providing the educational tools that young black
men an dwomen need to succeed.

Cornel West’s eloquent essay on hope makes a fitting meditation for this day
of loss and remembering. Here’s one paragraph from Prisoners
of Hope.

"This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the
spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to
get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies
of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown,
and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively
struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth
inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision,
courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite
to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is
to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word."

Grim political day, with House and Senate confirming Bush’s "victory,"
and the Judiciary Committee beginning the Gonzales hearings. At least one senator,
California’s Senator Barbara Boxer, stood up this year to join Rep. John Conyers
and 30 other representatives in opposing
the election charade. Because one Senator joined the House members, both
Senate and House were forced to discuss and to vote on whether to declare Bush
president. The saga
of miscounted votes, lost votes, computer tampering, voters refused the right
to vote joins the shameful history of Florida in 2000.

In the Judiciary Committee, Senators Hatch, Specter and Leahy followed the
elaborate rules of Senatorial courtesy in applauding one another’s long and
distinguished service and agreeing to call the nominee "Judge" Gonzales,
since he served as a judge in Texas. The full
transcript of the first day’s hearings repeats his Horatio Alger success
story and his assertion that, "This administration does not engage in torture
and will not condone torture," and his pledge that, as Attorney General,
he would respect the Geneva Conventions that he last year deemed "quaint"
and "obsolete." But he also said that "I think the decision not
to apply Geneva in our conflict with Al Qaeda was absolutely the right decision,"
and that, hypothetically of course, the President has the legal right to ignore
any Congressional ban on torture.

The Star Tribune got it right:
Alberto Gonzales has blood on his hands. Reports of prison torture continue
to come in, and not just of long-past occurences but of a
continuing nightmare with no end in sight.

Molly Ivins,
as always, sums it up well:

"Just to show you that such forms of accountability as are left in our
slightly tattered system of checks and balances are worth keeping, the upcoming
hearing on Al Gonzales for attorney general has already borne fruit. Voila!
The Justice Department has come out with a new memo on torture saying it is
not necessarily limited to "excruciating and agonizing pain." Say,
what a triumph for human rights.

"Further, the memo says, "Torture is abhorrent to both American law
and values, and to international norms." So there. In other words, we have
repealed the infamous Gonzales memo, just in time for his hearing.

"Now, I’m not going to conclude that Fascism Is Upon Us just because we
have an administration that not only can’t find the Constitution but apparently
doesn’t know there is one. Too early in the year for that. Long way to go. Got
to save your indignation. But it is unpleasantly reminiscent of Watergate, isn’t
it? That’s what we’re looking at here, folks — not just constitutional deafness,
but moral turp as well. All we need is one bag job and an alert night security
man. "

"My greatest political asset, which professional politicians fear,
is my mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one shouldn’t always
discuss for reasons of political expediency."

Shirley Chisholm made her own way, remaining, as her book title proudly
asserts, "unbought and unbossed" throughout her political
life. The first black woman elected to Congress (1968), she was a founding
member of the Black Congressional Caucus and also ran for president
in 1972, a symbolic move that she hoped would pave the way for "a
black, a woman or a Jew" to be taken seriously as future presidential
candidates. During 14 years in Congress, she opposed the Vietnam War,
supported the War on Poverty and remained an activist and a fighter
against racism and sexism.

Some Shirley Chisholm quotes:

"When morality comes up against profit, it is seldom profit that
loses."

"The United States was said not to be ready to elect a Catholic
to the Presidency when Al Smith ran in the 1920’s. But Smith’s nomination
may have helped pave the way for the successful campaign John F. Kennedy
waged in 1960. Who can tell? What I hope most is that now there will
be others who will feel themselves as capable of running for high political
office as any wealthy, good-looking white male."

"In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination
are equivalent to the same thing – antihumanism."

"Congress seems drugged and inert most of the time… its idea
of meeting a problem is to hold hearings or, in extreme cases, to appoint
a commission"

Have a new year
because
180,000 people in Aceh, Indonesia, India, Thailand will not have
a new year
because
uncounted Iraqi children starved to death in the old year of liberation and
will never see
a new year
because
more than a thousand U.S. soldiers died in the desert without
a new year,
because eleven-year-old Karly Johana Suárez Torres was accidentally shot
to death by Colombian soldiers and Guatemalan union leader Julio Rolando Raquec
was assassinated on purpose and nameless, numberless Haitian prisoners were
killed by rioting guards, all in December, all of whom will never see
a new year.

Because you can,
have a new year.

Have the new year they cannot —
seize this year, bite it, chew it, swallow it, make it part of you
grab onto this new year and ride it, cowgirl,
squeeze this new year with both hands and mold it into something for yourself,
something steel as girders of a new building,
something fiery as molten sun at end of ocean day,
something soft as cat fur and with claws to climb
out of the depth of despair.
Have this new year.