Healthcare reform turned into health insurance reform as liberals acquired a new enemy

Posted on December 18th, 2009 in Culture,Health,Politics by Robert Miller

It was always a tight vote. Keeping 60 Senators in line to avoid a filibuster, with some very conservative Democrats needed to keep the coalition viable, meant that anyone wondering off the reservation of consensus could ruin the fragile alignment for passing healthcare reform. Now the Senate bill is without a public option and its replacement–allowing citizens to buy into Medicare at age 55-64 has also been tossed into the trash can. In the process, the deal breaker, Senator Joe Lieberman, has become the pariah of the failed legislation because, after months of supporting the idea of age 55 buy-in for Medicare, he turned against it just over the last weekend and killed the compromised healthcare bill in the Senate, at least that version of it. We still have the delicate issue of abortion coverage and the restrictive language that Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska wants to put into the bill, despite the fact that abortion is a legal, sanctioned medical procedure in this country.

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The torture we stopped using 80 years ago!

Posted on December 16th, 2009 in Culture by Robert Miller

History repeats itself by cyclical behavior alternating with a sandwich of amnesia in between: our use of torture has followed this pattern. In 1929, President Herbert Hoover established the Wickersham Commission to address a major social problem of criminal activity that had accelerated during the prohibition era and seemed to be responsible for the perception of many, that American society was unraveling, fed by a rising tide of criminal behavior in our cities, and promoted by the unlimited resources acquired through  the then illegal sale and distribution of alcohol. Chair George Wickersham assembled a panel of experts to carry out a scientific study, whose purpose was to examine the roots of crime and address the new cultural challenges that law enforcement faced during the prohibition era. While many expected and hoped that the Commission would recommend repeal of the Volstead act (which initiated prohibition of alcohol), the Commission’s recommendations were just the opposite: they favored new legislation and additional resources to make prohibition more effective and more rigorously enforced. Although these recommendations  have long been forgotten, wiped out by the demands of the Great Depression and the elimination of prohibition in 1933, one feature of the commission had a lasting impact on our culture until the events of 9/11. It was eighty years ago that the Wickersham Commission confronted and helped to do away with the torture techniques that were revived and applied anew in the post 9/11 era. The similarity between then and now is quite surprising in both scope and detail.

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A Nobel Peace Prize speech for the military-industrial complex

Posted on December 11th, 2009 in Culture,War by Robert Miller

Juan Cole has a short, thoughtful summary of Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Obama clearly delivered an eloquent, powerful speech, perhaps the most forceful speech ever given in support of the American military-industrial complex. It was a speech also aimed at the NATO countries, whom he is asking to pony up with additional troops to send to Afghanistan and join him in his uncertain war of escalation. Right now, everyone of those countries is asking themselves if NATO might not have outlived its usefulness.

If it was a speech about peace that the Nobel Committee was hoping for, they got instead a speech about war, that included the idea that the United States  could not be held accountable for its actions in Iraq–no one will be prosecuted for crimes against humanity related to that war, even though our invasion of that country was illegal, as clearly defined by our own constitution and the Geneva Conventions to which we are a signatory. According to Obama, in the conduct of its foreign affairs, the United States has always been motivated by the best intentions for America and the other members of the international community. What’s more, the fragmented remains of al-Qaeda will be the subject of actions by the Pentagon, not the domain of Interpol: they are a military threat, not a criminal one. Besides, that’s the only way we know how to go after those who attack us, especially when they are evil.

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