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"Everybody in, nobody out!" Video of Kershner's arrest at single payer protest

"Everybody in, nobody out" is the chanted slogan of the single payer movement.

Opponents of single payer have turned that around to mean everybody (if they're single payer advocates) out of the town hall meeting with Blumenauer and Howard Dean.

But maybe they mean everybody in jail.

Charter schools, merit pay, and the "three stooges"

"Stooges" is how Jim Horn of School Matters described the three "unlikely comrades" featured in The Nation's excellent article, "The Selling of School Reform." 

Who are the three stooges?  Two Republicans --New York's Mike Bloomberg and Newt Gingrich --and Al Sharpton.  What the three have in common is that all are failed presidential candidates.  And this:

"The three are spokesmen for the Education Equality Project (EEP), an advocacy group that has attracted widespread media attention since its June 2008 launch, in large part because of its bipartisan call for policies like merit pay and the expansion of the charter school sector."

Other prominent members of EEP include up and coming young Democrats Corey Booker and Adrian Fenty (of Michelle Rhee infamy) who believe in applying free market principles to education and call themselves "reformers."  I call them what they really are --neoliberals, just like Bill Gates and Eli Broad, who, whatever political party they affiliate with, are nonetheless rich and not at all shy about using their wealth to force market-based reforms on the nation's public schools.

That means accountability, merit pay, and charter schools.

That brings us back to the EEP, the Education Equality Project, which is all about the "achievement gap."  Just what is the "achievement gap?"  It's the difference --or gap-- in scores on standardized achievement tests between the rich and the poor, the white and the non-white. 

That, too, is what accountability is all about --test scores.  Good schools get good test scores.  Lousy schools don't.  (That's where charters come in, but more on that later.)  Test scores also factor into merit pay.  How do you know who the good teachers are?  They're the ones with high scoring students.

Never mind ample evidence showing that an overemphasis on testing for accountability narrows school curricula.  What's taught is what can be tested.  Music?  Art?  Foreign languages?  PE?  They take back seat to the obsession with literacy and numeracy.

That's especially true in poor, high minority enrollment schools and school districts.

Real reformers --not the neoliberals-- take a decidedly different view.  From The Nation article:

"They [let's call them 'progressive reformers'] believe teachers and schools will not be able to eradicate the achievement gap between middle-class white children and everyone else until a wide array of social services are available to poor families. They envision schools as community centers, offering families healthcare, meals and counseling."

In other words, as I wrote sometime back, the schools alone cannot be held responsible for every social  ill.  If we want to close the achievement gap in this country, we better close the income gap. 

The free market "reformers" have adopted the mantra "no excuses," which in effect discounts poverty as a factor in the lower achievement of poor students.  Low expectations and lousy teaching, say the "reformers", are the culprits, not poverty.  Of course, they're wrong --dead wrong.  Research, and even 'hard science', provides abundant evidence that poverty plays a huge, and mostly negative, role in a child's education.

So what about charter schools?  Suffice it for now to say that although, as Scott Lehigh writes on Boston.com in praise of a recommendation to remove the "caps" on charter schools in Massachusetts, "some Boston charter schools" have improved the achievement of low income students, many --probably most-- have not.  In fact, most research indicates that charters do no better than traditional public schools in closing the  achievement gap.

There are other problems with the charter model as well.  More on that in subsequent posts.

The latest on single payer

The founders of Physicians for a National Health Program published a study in the August, 2003 edition of the  New England Journal of Medicine contrasting the administrative costs of health care in the United States and Canada.

The results?  Total administrative costs covering six categories --for example, insurance overhead, hospital administration, practitioner administrative costs-- for the United States:

$1059 per capita.

For Canada:

$307 per capita

Conclusion?

"...the difference in the costs of health care administration between the United States and Canada is clearly large and growing.  Is $294.3 billion annually for U.S. health care administration money well spent?"

Hmmmm.  Is the answer .... NO?

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Recently Tim Carpenter of Progressive Democrats of America took on Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelley over the issue of single payer health care.  Here's the video:

Fox News, as you would expect, is anti-single payer. Kelly spouts the usual right-wing "talkng points" about long waits in Canada for vital surgeries.  Are they true?

Warren Pease responds to the notion that single payer would "result in long waiting lists for even the most mundane procedures:"

"But, as usual, corporate mass media is lying through its bleached teeth. If that vision of health care hell were true, all other Western democracies would exhibit shorter average life spans, higher rates of cancer and heart disease, higher infant mortality rates, lower birth weights, fewer average healthy years, failing mental health programs and far more serious epidemiological incidents than does the US. Since the opposite is true in all cases, it seems fair to conclude that single-payer, universal-access works, this cobbled together disaster we call a health care system is not getting the job done and that we're being ill served by US media yet again."

Under the for-profit "disaster" that passes for health care in this country, people, even the ones with health insurance like Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year old girl who was denied* a liver transplant by Cigna HealthCare in order "to maximize its profits," actually do die.

*(Cigna did eventually relent, but just hours before young Nataline expired.  Good PR for Cigna.  Not so good for its client.)

'Tough love' for Obama

I consider my frequent critiques of some of President Obama's policies --the misguided ones-- a form of "tough love." After all, I voted for him. And he wants to hear from his supporters, right?

Here's the Progressive Congressional Caucus' Donna Edwards urging progressives to "find their voices."

Here's the line I like:

"As progressives we haven't quite found our voice in terms of offering the appropriate critique of this administration.  And you know what?  He needs us to do it.  And the reason he needs us is because it will make him  a stronger and better President.  It will make him more progressive.  It will make him less likely to have to always bow to the conservative wings not just of the Republican Party but of the Democratic Party. 

Paul Karsh is one progressive who has raised his voice "to let [Obama] know where we need to hear his voice" with this open letter. It reads in part:

"I need your voice to stand up against torture and stand for the rule of law. ...

"I need your voice to do something about service people who have served our country with honor and distinction, and who have skills that our services desperately need, being discharged for being openly gay. ...

"I need your voice to allow the option of single-payer to be part of the discussion of health care reform."

Lots of Dems, little progress

From Chuck Sheketoff's op-ed in today's Oregonian recommending the suspension of Measure 57 to help solve Oregon's budget problem:

"Oregon already tops all states in terms of the share of general fund dollars devoted to putting people behind bars, and it spends more on prisons than on higher education -- one of only four states in the nation to do so."

Meanwhile Steve Duin writes that Democrats in the Oregon legislature are offering little more than a "tepid response" to the budget crisis.  They've done nothing about the "kicker", failed to raise beer taxes, and have only talked about the possibility of raising much-needed revenue from corporations and wealthy individuals.

And prisons?  Legislators are

"...planning to cut Healthy Start of Oregon by more than twice as much (on a percentage basis) as they're cutting the Department of Corrections... ."

Sheketoff warns cuts to education and the social safety net may backfire:

"One of the bitterest ironies of Measure 57 is that, if implemented, it may end up making Oregonians less safe over the long run."

Let's see.  Oregon has a Democratic Governor and Democratic majorities in both the state House and Senate.  Haven't we been told --repeatedly-- that if we liberals only elect more Democrats to public office, our problems will be solved?

That brings me to Barack Obama and health care.  As a state legislator he pronounced:

"I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care plan.

"We may not get there immediately, because first we've got to take back the White House, and we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."

"We" means Democrats.  Well, the President is a Democrat, and both the House and the Senate have been "taken back", overwhelmingly, by the Dems.  Just like in Oregon.

So what's standing in the way of implementing a single payer system of national health care?  The Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus, along with scores of other Congressional Dems in thrall to the private health care industry

There's a lesson to be learned there by all partisan Democrats. 

The Constitutional sins of Barack Obama

Charles Krauthammer has it right:

"If hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue, then the flip-flops on previously denounced anti-terror measures are the homage that Barack Obama pays to George Bush. Within 125 days, Obama has adopted with only minor modifications huge swaths of the entire, allegedly lawless Bush program. ...

"As in his rhetorically brilliant national-security speech yesterday claiming to have undone Bush's moral travesties, the military commissions flip-flop is accompanied by the usual Obama three-step: (a) excoriate the Bush policy, (b) ostentatiously unveil cosmetic changes, (c) adopt the Bush policy."

The right-wing Krauthammer undoubtedly approves.

Those on the left, however, were "stunned" by Obama's embrace of military commissions --or tribunals-- and even more shocked at his announcement that he would develop a "legal framework" to justify preventive --or prolonged-- detention.

Constitutionally speaking, how is that any different than the Bush administration soliciting legal opinions to justify torture, which Obama seems disinclined to investigate, let alone prosecute, even though torture is clearly a crime both domestically and internationally?

Here's the Center for Constitutional Rights' Michael Ratner:

"The president wrapped himself in the Constitution and then proceeded to violate it by announcing he would send people before irredeemably flawed military commissions and seek to create a preventive detention scheme that only serves to move Guantanamo to a new location and give it a new name."

And the Center's Shayana Kadidal:

"Preventive detention goes against every principle our nation was founded on. ... The new president is looking a lot like the old."

Speaking of torture, The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild writes

"Barack Obama is fast becoming an accessory after the fact to the war crimes that the Bush Administration has committed."

That's true on a number of levels.  But you only hear it from the left.  Or from those well-versed in law, especially Constitutional law.  And therein lies the ultimate irony.

Barack Obama taught Constitutional law.  He knows what passes Constitutional muster and what doesn't.  Yet the "new" tools he says we need to combat the threat of terrorism all apparently involve the undermining of Constitutional rights.  

In short, as the anti-left Wall Street Journal concluded last February, Obama is "...erring on the side of keeping the country safe rather than appeasing the political left." 

"Appeasing the left" is right-wing speak for taking steps to protect Constitutional guarantees of fundamental civil liberties. 

The sins of Barack Obama: Health care

Criticism of Barack Obama's backsliding on "change" has come mainly from the left, particularly from the alternative media and the blogs.

Here's one example which pretty well sums up Obama's ambivalence toward single payer national health care.  Health care is one of the many pressing issues Obama has failed to address in any substantive manner.

Jerry Policoff, a Pennsylvania advocate for single payer, looks closely at Obama's response to a question about single payer at a town hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.  He then deconstructs Obama's rationale, point by point, for excluding single payer from the discussion.

• Single payer would be "too disruptive" to the system.

The system means "employer-based" health care, which Policoff calls a "total failure."  Obama knows this.  He knows that "18% of our workforce" is uninsured.  And that the cost of providing health benefits places a huge burden on American business.  He knows that employers would gladly forgo their roll in paying for employee health care. 

Obama further knows that one reason Americans stay in jobs they hate is the fear of losing their health care insurance

That's hardly a system worth protecting from "disruption."

• American health care is too big a piece of the economy to "tamper" with.

Indeed, health care as currently delivered IS a big part of the economy.  But Policoff says that's all the more reason to switch to single payer:

"...transitioning to a single-payer model would almost certainly radically reduce the currently bloated cost of healthcare in the United States both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP.

"What possible justification could there be to  preserve a system that costs so much and leaves tens of millions of people without health coverage and tens of millions more underinsured?"

The answer to that is self-evident.  The private health care industry pours hundreds of millions of dollars into political campaigns in order to protect its profits.  In short, they literally buy off the legislators in charge of health care reform.

• It would be unfair to deprive people of their current health care if they are satisfied with it.

Policoff calls that "pure disinformation and fear-mongering," a  parroting of the PR "talking points" of private health care interests.   Policoff says,

"The only problem with this seemingly common sense approach is that most people are happy with their current coverage because they have never been in a situation that tested it. ...

"How are we doing people a favor by letting them keep the coverage they are 'happy' with, if down the road that decision may lead to them losing their homes or being forced into bankruptcy when their insurance fails to cover the cost of catastrophic illness that befalls them or their loved ones?"

(The number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is catastrophic illness.)

Policoff maintains that with his high approval ratings, Obama could force Congress to enact true universal health care reform.  Yes, he "could."  But will he?  All indications are that no, he won't. 

And that calls into question Obama's commitment to real health care reform.

UPDATE:  Apparently the health care industry has reneged on its pledge to take steps to drastically reduce the cost of medical care.  And Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina has produced ads attacking Obama's health care plan.

What excuses now remain for Obama's defense of the existing system?  We shall see.

Ed Schultz steps up for single payer

Many consider Big Eddie a rube from the hinterlands, but in this segment at least, he outdoes either of his progressive MSNBC stablemates--Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow-- by demanding of the President,

"President Obama: Do you support excluding people from the [health care] discussion?"

Here's the video:

The object of Ed Schultz' ire, Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus, has taken plenty of money from the health care industry. Here's the breakdown:

From the insurance industry: $1,170,313;
health professionals: $1,016,276;
pharmaceuticals/health-products industry: $734,605
hospitals/nursing homes: $541,891;
health services/HMOs: $439,700.

SEIU sells out to private health insurers

Andy Stern of Service Employees International Union calls the much ballyhooed plan to "lower" health care costs a "game changer."  And why not?  His organization brought together the various for-profit health care groups that came up with the plan.

If Stern and SEIU, a union representing mainly low wage workers, buy into Big Health and Big Pharma's PR blitz, they're clearly being duped.   As Robert Pear writes for the New York Times News Service

"If history is a guide, their commitments may not produce the promised savings. ... None of the proposals are enforceable, and none of the savings are guaranteed."

In other words, the savings initiative "secure[s] a seat at the table" for the health care industry without any guarantees that it will bear results.  What it will do, however, is give insurers the leverage to oppose any "public" option in health care reform.

What a deal.

James Ridgeway calls the whole thing a "scam":

"Do you see a pattern here? None of these changes would make a dent in the industry’s bottom line--and what’s more, they could even enhance profits, by encouraging government-funded programs to help private companies streamline their bloated bureaucracy (much of which would instantly become superfluous under a public, single-payer system)."

And he's right.  The only guaranteed way to  lower the costs of health care AND to cover everyone is with a single payer system.  If profit isn't taken out of health care, basic health services will never be affordable for everyone.

Some will argue that a system like Medicare-for-all will drive a stake through a huge part of the American economy.  Not true.  The pharmaceutical giants will still be in business.  And so will the private insurers, who can offer enhanced coverage for those willing and able to pay more. That's the way it works in many countries with true universal health care, where private companies are forbidden to profit from basic, and essential, services.

Private American insurers don't like that.  And neither do many of our legislative "leaders", especially those who take massive amounts of money from the health care industry.  Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, is a good example.

Despite the fact that a majority of Americans want a single payer system because, in the words of Ralph Nader, they "...like the free choice of doctors and hospitals that many are now denied by the HMOs", Baucus refused to schedule testimony in health care hearings from any supporter of single payer.

Here's what happened when eight audience members, "most of them physicians and lawyers," stood in protest:

That's American representative democracy in action.

Obama is wrong in his opposition to the prosecution of those responsible for torture

You know where I stand, but here are the latest voices urging Obama to confront the crimes committed by those linked to torture.

First, (via Glenn Greenwald) there's Ronald Reagan:

"The core provisions of the Convention [against torture] establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called "universal jurisdiction." Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."

Then there's former Reagan official Bruce Fein speaking on Bill Moyers Journal Friday:

"How he [Obama] can justify not moving forward with an investigation when we have a former President and Vice President openly acknowledging they authorized water boarding, what he has described as torture, is a crime.

"Or in the alternative, if he thinks that there are mitigating circumstances, and there's body language suggests that, then he should pardon them like Ford did Richard Nixon."

A pardon implies an admission of guilt.  Failing to act, whether to investigate and prosecute, or to pardon those guilty of acknowledged war crimes, is not an option for the leader of a country which signed on to the convention against torture.

So says Fein.

Finally,  Gary Kamiya argues it's time for America to face its "day of reckoning"--its "necessary dark night of the soul":

"Those opposed to reopening the book on the Bush years argue that doing so would tear the country apart. They're right -- but they forget that the country is already torn apart. ...

"This may be our great teachable moment, our one chance, Democrats and Republicans alike, to look clearly at our country and what it became under Bush. Already, people's attention is wandering, ennui is setting in, and a banal mood of easy acceptance is taking hold. If we don't act now, the chance may be lost. And then, the next time there is a terrorist attack, a cunning ideologue could once again lead America down the same primrose path."