These are the dog days of Summer on the Balcony. Outrages continue on the political front, but the warm weather and long days induce a laziness that makes dealing with all that impossible. The mailman comes around, and the mad dog on the porch barely opens one sleepy eye. Next time, we’ll get him next time. The mail will come again as surely as the Bush Administration will flout the law and defy logic.
Meanwhile, there is baseball. A week ago I was at Dodger Stadium in LA, sitting in the bright sunshine, drinking a $12 beer and munching a $5.50 Dodger dog. How the average working-class fan can afford the ticket price, parking, and the rip-off at the concession stands is beyond me. Perhaps the answer to that riddle rests with the smiling people handing out “pre-approved” applications for LA Dodger Mastercards as you enter the stadium.
My New York Yankees are eight games behind the hated Red Sox in the American League East and five games out of the Wild Card, largely because they were beset by injuries in April and May and dug themselves a monumental hole in the standings. Lately, the Yanks have beaten up the likes of Tampa Bay and Kansas City, improving their record, but until New York can beat the cream of the American League on a consistent basis, it appears they may miss the post-season for the first time in a decade.
Barry Bonds is limping his way toward the history books, poised to eclipse Henry Aaron’s all-time home run record. A lot of sporting people are outraged because of allegations that Bonds used illegal steroids on his way to the record, and even the Commissioner of Baseball can’t summon much enthusiasm to celebrate Bonds’s achievement.
Bonds had his most productive seasons after the age of thirty-five, a time when most players experience an erosion of their skills; he also defied the typical male aging process and packed on nearly forty pounds of solid muscle. Such unnatural growth is suspicious, but there’s no evidence to suggest that steroids can help a human being hit a baseball. Illegal steroids may have made Bonds bigger and stronger than a man his age had a right to be, but his ability to hit a round baseball with a round bat was present long before he allegedly began experimenting with the Cream and the Clear.
Hank Aaron was all class and consistency, even in the face of racial slurs and death threats from southern crackers and white supremacists. By contrast, Bonds is surly with the media and aloof from the public and his teammates. Bonds has as much class as Donald Trump.
Baseball is caught between a cheer and a sneer. The home run record is hallowed and sanctified as long as Henry Aaron holds it; Bonds brings his prickly personality and the suspicion of chemical enhancement to the throne, and when Baseball anoints him as home run king it may find that the crown won’t fit his super-sized cranium.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
ARE YOU "SICKO" YET?
It was only a matter of time before the health insurance industry, using its surrogates in the media, went after Michael Moore and his new film, “Sicko.” After all, if the idea of universal health care ever takes root in this land, the insurance industry stands to lose, big time.
The profits in the health insurance industry are staggering, so it’s no surprise that Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana and the rest are ginning up the PR machine for battle.
Enter CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Larry King and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network’s chief medical correspondent. Michael Moore was present, too, as angry as I have ever seen him for what he called a “piece of crap” segment about his movie.
Fairly or not, Blitzer comes off as an apologist for CNN and the entire mainstream media; Sanjay Gupta was well-spoken but condescending; and Larry King -- well, let’s just say that Larry should stick to celebrity interviews and the Paris Hilton beat.
What annoyed me as a viewer of the initial piece on Blitzer’s Situation Room, and the follow-up on Larry King, was how mired Moore and Dr. Gupta became in minor details. Does the United States spend $6,000 or more like $7,000 per capita per year on health care? Do Canadians wait weeks for medical care? Is our health care better than Cuba’s?
Folks, that the United States ranks in the same vicinity with Cuba in the World Health Organization’s hierarchy is the real tragedy. Cuba, let’s not forget, is a small island nation with limited resources, ruled by an ailing dictator, with an economy stuck in a time warp. That Cuba manages to rank 39th on the WHO list is a remarkable achievement for which Cubans should be proud, and conversely, that the US ranks 37th is a national scandal for which we should hang our heads.
Dr. Gupta took Moore to task over the concept of “free” medical care in France and Britain and Canada. Gupta insisted that the French, British, and Canadians do pay in the form of taxes. This is true. Personal tax rates in those countries are higher than ours, primarily because they have not made “tax relief” and “no new taxes, ever!” the cornerstone of their domestic economic policies; nor have they transferred a trillion dollars to their wealthiest citizens as we’ve done here on the fruited plain.
Moore gets it right when he points out that French citizens receive medical care without stressing over how much that care will cost; every citizen pays into the system, every citizen is covered, end of story. Only the US boasts an estimated 47 million people uninsured, millions more under-insured, and who knows how many soon to be priced out of the health insurance market altogether. If that isn’t enough shame, don’t forget that millions of American children lack health insurance coverage and access to primary care.
Just to stay on the money point a bit longer…Dr. Gupta seemed mighty self-satisfied when he pointed out that France has a multi-billion dollar (franc?) budget deficit. Gee, Doc, when was the last time you looked at the US budget deficit, our trade deficit, our negative savings rate, and the statistics on personal debt, bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures?
Dr. Gupta also spoke proudly of how technologically advanced the US is when it comes to procedures like knee and hip replacements and cataracts. Yes, we do the exotic things quite well, but again, that’s because specialists in those areas make boucoup money for their expertise. Our problem is access to care, not technology. Forget knee replacements! Let’s see what we can do about obesity, diabetes, gout, and heart disease.
Love him or hate him, Michael Moore has made a movie that finally raises the inhumanity of our profit-based health care system to wider consciousness. Even Dr. Gupta admitted that it’s damn annoying for a certified MD to call a clerk in Omaha to get approval for a medical procedure that the MD deems necessary for his patient’s health. The problem with our system is that the clerk in Omaha has the power and authority to say NO.
The profits in the health insurance industry are staggering, so it’s no surprise that Aetna, Blue Cross, Humana and the rest are ginning up the PR machine for battle.
Enter CNN, Wolf Blitzer, Larry King and Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the network’s chief medical correspondent. Michael Moore was present, too, as angry as I have ever seen him for what he called a “piece of crap” segment about his movie.
Fairly or not, Blitzer comes off as an apologist for CNN and the entire mainstream media; Sanjay Gupta was well-spoken but condescending; and Larry King -- well, let’s just say that Larry should stick to celebrity interviews and the Paris Hilton beat.
What annoyed me as a viewer of the initial piece on Blitzer’s Situation Room, and the follow-up on Larry King, was how mired Moore and Dr. Gupta became in minor details. Does the United States spend $6,000 or more like $7,000 per capita per year on health care? Do Canadians wait weeks for medical care? Is our health care better than Cuba’s?
Folks, that the United States ranks in the same vicinity with Cuba in the World Health Organization’s hierarchy is the real tragedy. Cuba, let’s not forget, is a small island nation with limited resources, ruled by an ailing dictator, with an economy stuck in a time warp. That Cuba manages to rank 39th on the WHO list is a remarkable achievement for which Cubans should be proud, and conversely, that the US ranks 37th is a national scandal for which we should hang our heads.
Dr. Gupta took Moore to task over the concept of “free” medical care in France and Britain and Canada. Gupta insisted that the French, British, and Canadians do pay in the form of taxes. This is true. Personal tax rates in those countries are higher than ours, primarily because they have not made “tax relief” and “no new taxes, ever!” the cornerstone of their domestic economic policies; nor have they transferred a trillion dollars to their wealthiest citizens as we’ve done here on the fruited plain.
Moore gets it right when he points out that French citizens receive medical care without stressing over how much that care will cost; every citizen pays into the system, every citizen is covered, end of story. Only the US boasts an estimated 47 million people uninsured, millions more under-insured, and who knows how many soon to be priced out of the health insurance market altogether. If that isn’t enough shame, don’t forget that millions of American children lack health insurance coverage and access to primary care.
Just to stay on the money point a bit longer…Dr. Gupta seemed mighty self-satisfied when he pointed out that France has a multi-billion dollar (franc?) budget deficit. Gee, Doc, when was the last time you looked at the US budget deficit, our trade deficit, our negative savings rate, and the statistics on personal debt, bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures?
Dr. Gupta also spoke proudly of how technologically advanced the US is when it comes to procedures like knee and hip replacements and cataracts. Yes, we do the exotic things quite well, but again, that’s because specialists in those areas make boucoup money for their expertise. Our problem is access to care, not technology. Forget knee replacements! Let’s see what we can do about obesity, diabetes, gout, and heart disease.
Love him or hate him, Michael Moore has made a movie that finally raises the inhumanity of our profit-based health care system to wider consciousness. Even Dr. Gupta admitted that it’s damn annoying for a certified MD to call a clerk in Omaha to get approval for a medical procedure that the MD deems necessary for his patient’s health. The problem with our system is that the clerk in Omaha has the power and authority to say NO.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
GOT MANIFESTO?
“Yet, as every business executive knows, few elements of American society today have as little influence in government as the American businessman, the corporation, or even the millions of corporate stockholders.”
So wrote Lewis F. Powell to the Chairman of the United States Chamber of Commerce Education Committee in August, 1971, when Powell was still a corporate attorney.
A bright colleague of mine who is well-versed in American history, and particularly the history of the American Labor Movement, mentioned the Powell Memo during a conversation, and while I knew Lewis F. Powell as a Supreme Court Justice, I was not familiar with the Powell Memo or its role as an ideological linchpin of the “Conservative” revolution.
Revolution is a charged word, but when you consider the corporate dominance of our nation in 2007, the word fits better than any other.
Thirty-six years ago, Lewis Powell, along with many others in the American “establishment,” believed the United States was in imminent danger of being taken over by Leftist, Communist, or Marxist revolutionaries. The country was mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the young questioned institutions and values, banks burned and the Weathermen plotted. To people like Lewis Powell, it seemed that armed revolutionaries would soon fill the streets of Washington D.C. Powell also believed that the government, media, and universities were bursting with people hell bent on the destruction of the American free enterprise system and every principle that Powell and people like him held sacred. If you weren’t alive then, or old enough to clearly remember the social turmoil of the mid-to-late sixties, the “Law & Order” rhetoric used by Richard Nixon, the very idea that the American “system” was in any jeopardy at all seems ludicrous.
Here’s another quote that seems risible now: “One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the ‘forgotten man.’”
Today, it is average, working-class American citizens who are forgotten. Corporate lobbyists purchase the services of politicians of both major political parties and craft much of the legislation that eventually becomes law of the land; corporations own all the significant American media and corporate viewpoints dominate the airwaves (for instance, almost every news broadcast includes a report on the stock market, even though the information is totally irrelevant to the majority of Americans. By reporting stock market migrations, the media legitimizes the stock market as an important indicator of our national economic health); through relentless advertising and PR flim-flam, corporate influence penetrates every nook and cranny of our lives; the steady drumbeat is so effective that empirical evidence is ignored. For example, we accept as unassailable fact the myth that the private sector always delivers services better than the public sector, and that the “free market” is the only answer to every major problem we face.
How did this total reversal of fortunes happen? If Lewis Powell were alive today, what might he think of the revolution he is given credit for helping shape? Would he look at Wal-Mart and pronounce its business practices good? What would he say about the deliberate fraud that triggered the Enron and Worldcom scandals? Would he applaud or condemn the regulatory laxity, legislative chicanery, and judicial ideology that has squeezed the middle-class into near extinction and widened the gulf between the wealthy and everybody else? Would he be pleased to see states turn to legalized gambling for needed revenue rather than increase taxes? And finally, would Powell approve of the corporate chieftains who have outsourced America’s manufacturing base to China -- along with thousands of jobs -- in return for record profits and staggering increases in CEO compensation?
I wonder. Lewis Powell was intelligent enough to peer into a darkening sky and recognize a gathering storm. America stands at the crossroads where great powers become has-beens; the days of American dominance are coming to a close, and how we deal with that grim reality is a critical question for the future. We are adept at moving money around the globe, swapping credit, trading debt instruments, but when it comes to producing tangible products the world’s consumers might want to buy, we are a shell of our former selves. As Kevin Phillips notes in his sobering book, American Theocracy, nations that forego manufacturing in favor of “financialization” soon find themselves on the down slope of prosperity, influence and power. If you don’t agree that our decline as a manufacturing power has serious long-term consequences, look at wages and our unsustainable trade imbalance. America is drowning in debt, overextended militarily in Iraq, and dangerously dependent on Asian creditors. If you sense unease in the land, you’re in good company. Economic anxiety weighs heavy as we cope -- mainly by plunging deeper into debt -- with stagnant or falling wages and the rising costs of housing, college tuition, health insurance, fuel, and food.
I don’t think Powell was advocating for these excesses or for the complete abdication of public responsibility on the part of American corporations; nor do I think Powell was arguing for a society that champions greed as its dominant value; nor do I think he would consider the wholesale buying of political favors healthy for our democracy.
In fact, I can easily imagine Lewis Powell standing before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the lavish ballroom of a beautiful hotel, and saying, “Gentlemen, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind in 1971. You’ve gone overboard.”
Powell believed that free enterprise and personal freedom were joined at the hip. Near the end of his memo he wrote: “But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private property, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.”
Had Powell been bent on total corporate hegemony, labor unions and collective bargaining would not have made his list of essential freedoms. Ronald Reagan and the conservative think tanks that advised the GOP obviously skipped over that part of the manifesto. Since 1971, American corporations, aided and abetted by money-grubbing politicians and impotent regulatory agencies, have engaged in rabid union busting. Wal-Mart stands as the most notable example, but there are hundreds more companies who squash organizing drives by violating the legal rights of workers. And the companies get away with it. Every year, thousands of American workers are intimidated, harassed, or fired for union organizing activities. As a result of this imbalance of power between Capital and Labor, workers are consigned to the last row of seats on the bus – the seats with torn fabric and exposed coil springs.
If he were alive today, Lewis Powell might very well worry that capitalism’s excesses pose a greater threat to the enterprise system than a million campus socialists. Clearly, those excesses pervert and undermine the values Powell held sacred. Why should Americans believe in free enterprise when that system renders their lives difficult, demeaning, and debt-ridden? For three decades the national conversation has been dominated by the notion that corporations must be free to do whatever they feel necessary to compete and profit. The flip side of the conversation, the need of citizens to be free from economic insecurity and material want, is rarely given voice.
We need a new manifesto, one that restores balance between corporate privilege and public responsibility, between Capital and Labor, and between the glory of individual wealth and the perils of social poverty. But we had better hurry because our long neglect of domestic industries and human capital allow us only the slimmest margin for error.
So wrote Lewis F. Powell to the Chairman of the United States Chamber of Commerce Education Committee in August, 1971, when Powell was still a corporate attorney.
A bright colleague of mine who is well-versed in American history, and particularly the history of the American Labor Movement, mentioned the Powell Memo during a conversation, and while I knew Lewis F. Powell as a Supreme Court Justice, I was not familiar with the Powell Memo or its role as an ideological linchpin of the “Conservative” revolution.
Revolution is a charged word, but when you consider the corporate dominance of our nation in 2007, the word fits better than any other.
Thirty-six years ago, Lewis Powell, along with many others in the American “establishment,” believed the United States was in imminent danger of being taken over by Leftist, Communist, or Marxist revolutionaries. The country was mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the young questioned institutions and values, banks burned and the Weathermen plotted. To people like Lewis Powell, it seemed that armed revolutionaries would soon fill the streets of Washington D.C. Powell also believed that the government, media, and universities were bursting with people hell bent on the destruction of the American free enterprise system and every principle that Powell and people like him held sacred. If you weren’t alive then, or old enough to clearly remember the social turmoil of the mid-to-late sixties, the “Law & Order” rhetoric used by Richard Nixon, the very idea that the American “system” was in any jeopardy at all seems ludicrous.
Here’s another quote that seems risible now: “One does not exaggerate to say that, in terms of political influence with respect to the course of legislation and government action, the American business executive is truly the ‘forgotten man.’”
Today, it is average, working-class American citizens who are forgotten. Corporate lobbyists purchase the services of politicians of both major political parties and craft much of the legislation that eventually becomes law of the land; corporations own all the significant American media and corporate viewpoints dominate the airwaves (for instance, almost every news broadcast includes a report on the stock market, even though the information is totally irrelevant to the majority of Americans. By reporting stock market migrations, the media legitimizes the stock market as an important indicator of our national economic health); through relentless advertising and PR flim-flam, corporate influence penetrates every nook and cranny of our lives; the steady drumbeat is so effective that empirical evidence is ignored. For example, we accept as unassailable fact the myth that the private sector always delivers services better than the public sector, and that the “free market” is the only answer to every major problem we face.
How did this total reversal of fortunes happen? If Lewis Powell were alive today, what might he think of the revolution he is given credit for helping shape? Would he look at Wal-Mart and pronounce its business practices good? What would he say about the deliberate fraud that triggered the Enron and Worldcom scandals? Would he applaud or condemn the regulatory laxity, legislative chicanery, and judicial ideology that has squeezed the middle-class into near extinction and widened the gulf between the wealthy and everybody else? Would he be pleased to see states turn to legalized gambling for needed revenue rather than increase taxes? And finally, would Powell approve of the corporate chieftains who have outsourced America’s manufacturing base to China -- along with thousands of jobs -- in return for record profits and staggering increases in CEO compensation?
I wonder. Lewis Powell was intelligent enough to peer into a darkening sky and recognize a gathering storm. America stands at the crossroads where great powers become has-beens; the days of American dominance are coming to a close, and how we deal with that grim reality is a critical question for the future. We are adept at moving money around the globe, swapping credit, trading debt instruments, but when it comes to producing tangible products the world’s consumers might want to buy, we are a shell of our former selves. As Kevin Phillips notes in his sobering book, American Theocracy, nations that forego manufacturing in favor of “financialization” soon find themselves on the down slope of prosperity, influence and power. If you don’t agree that our decline as a manufacturing power has serious long-term consequences, look at wages and our unsustainable trade imbalance. America is drowning in debt, overextended militarily in Iraq, and dangerously dependent on Asian creditors. If you sense unease in the land, you’re in good company. Economic anxiety weighs heavy as we cope -- mainly by plunging deeper into debt -- with stagnant or falling wages and the rising costs of housing, college tuition, health insurance, fuel, and food.
I don’t think Powell was advocating for these excesses or for the complete abdication of public responsibility on the part of American corporations; nor do I think Powell was arguing for a society that champions greed as its dominant value; nor do I think he would consider the wholesale buying of political favors healthy for our democracy.
In fact, I can easily imagine Lewis Powell standing before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in the lavish ballroom of a beautiful hotel, and saying, “Gentlemen, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind in 1971. You’ve gone overboard.”
Powell believed that free enterprise and personal freedom were joined at the hip. Near the end of his memo he wrote: “But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private property, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer.”
Had Powell been bent on total corporate hegemony, labor unions and collective bargaining would not have made his list of essential freedoms. Ronald Reagan and the conservative think tanks that advised the GOP obviously skipped over that part of the manifesto. Since 1971, American corporations, aided and abetted by money-grubbing politicians and impotent regulatory agencies, have engaged in rabid union busting. Wal-Mart stands as the most notable example, but there are hundreds more companies who squash organizing drives by violating the legal rights of workers. And the companies get away with it. Every year, thousands of American workers are intimidated, harassed, or fired for union organizing activities. As a result of this imbalance of power between Capital and Labor, workers are consigned to the last row of seats on the bus – the seats with torn fabric and exposed coil springs.
If he were alive today, Lewis Powell might very well worry that capitalism’s excesses pose a greater threat to the enterprise system than a million campus socialists. Clearly, those excesses pervert and undermine the values Powell held sacred. Why should Americans believe in free enterprise when that system renders their lives difficult, demeaning, and debt-ridden? For three decades the national conversation has been dominated by the notion that corporations must be free to do whatever they feel necessary to compete and profit. The flip side of the conversation, the need of citizens to be free from economic insecurity and material want, is rarely given voice.
We need a new manifesto, one that restores balance between corporate privilege and public responsibility, between Capital and Labor, and between the glory of individual wealth and the perils of social poverty. But we had better hurry because our long neglect of domestic industries and human capital allow us only the slimmest margin for error.
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