Ruminations of an Expatriate

August 28th, 2008 12:53 pm

Republican Health Insurance Plan - More Social Darwinism

A Dallas Morning News reports, widely cited across the blogosphere, includes comments of McCain health care adviser John Goodman, who reports that there are no folks in the USA without health insurance. The report entitled “Texas still leads nation in rate of uninsured residents”, includes this

McCain adviser

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”
[I, of course, added the emphasis]

Mr. Goodman’s analysis drew a sharp response from the Center for Public Policy Priorities, an Austin-based think tank focusing on poverty issues. “That is not the same thing as having health insurance,” said Eva Deluna, a budget analyst for the center. People without insurance are less likely to seek care, and when they do, the cost to the health system is greater, she said.

Other republicans, including GDubya, Tommy Thompson, and Tom Delay have made this same argument.

As I know my six readers are aware, treatment in the emergency room is the most expensive manner of providing health care, and the tab is picked up by taxpayers who support public hospitals. Additionally, those who rely on the emergency room for medical services do not receive preventative care, thus when they finally do seek treatment in the emergency room their conditions are often more advanced and, thus, more expensive to treat.

Remember the story of the twelve year old Maryland boy who died from an abscessed tooth, after six weeks in the hospital and treatment, including brain surgery, which cost $250,000.

By the time Deamonte’s own aching tooth got any attention, the bacteria from the abscess had spread to his brain, doctors said. After two operations and more than six weeks of hospital care, the Prince George’s County boy died.

Deamonte’s death and the ultimate cost of his care, which could total more than $250,000, underscore an often-overlooked concern in the debate over universal health coverage: dental care.

Deamonte’s family had Medicaid coverage but was unable to find a dentist who accepts Medicaid covered patients.

So if the constitution of the Supreme Court, and the consequent implications to Roe v Wade, the further expansion of executive power, and the further erosion of civil liberties, is not a good enough reason for folks to not vote for John McCain, his health care plan certainly should be.

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Filed under McCain, Health Care

August 27th, 2008 8:36 pm

The Big Dog

As my readers know I have never been a big fan of Bill Clinton. I caucused for Paul Psongas in 1992. But the Big Dog can give one hell of a speech. The best line, I think, from his great speech tonight was.

“People abroad have always been more impressed with the power of our example, than with the example of our power.”

Folks in the rest of the world understand what most folks in the USA don’t. That is that the heavy hand of USA power has too often been used, whether covertly or overtly, in other nations to suppress popular movements and democratically elected governments to secure and ensure markets for USA business. The results, particularly in Latin America, have been the endurance of rich oligarchs, poverty stricken populations, and the stunting of the economic development.

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Filed under 2008 Presidential Election

August 27th, 2008 7:39 pm

Lest We Forget

This historic day when a person of mixed races has been nominated by democrats to stand for election as president, Mary L. Dudziak, at the excellent blog Balkinization, reminds us of the courageous Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the many heroic people who forty five years ago put their lives in jeopardy just to register to vote.

As Dudziak reports, Hamer testified before the Credentials Committee of the 1964 Democratic Convention against the seating of the all Caucasian Mississippi delegation as African Americans were prevented from registering in the state.

Here’s what Hamer had to say.

Mr. Chairman, and to the Credentials Committee, my name is Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, and I live at 626 East Lafayette Street, Ruleville, Mississippi, Sunflower County, the home of Senator James O. Eastland, and Senator Stennis.

It was the 31st of August in 1962 that eighteen of us traveled twenty-six miles to the county courthouse in Indianola to try to register to become first-class citizens.

We was met in Indianola by policemen, Highway Patrolmen, and they only allowed two of us in to take the literacy test at the time. After we had taken this test and started back to Ruleville, we was held up by the City Police and the State Highway Patrolmen and carried back to Indianola where the bus driver was charged that day with driving a bus the wrong color.

After we paid the fine among us, we continued on to Ruleville, and Reverend Jeff Sunny carried me four miles in the rural area where I had worked as a timekeeper and sharecropper for eighteen years. I was met there by my children, who told me that the plantation owner was angry because I had gone down to try to register.

After they told me, my husband came, and said the plantation owner was raising Cain because I had tried to register. Before he quit talking the plantation owner came and said, “Fannie Lou, do you know - did Pap tell you what I said?”

And I said, “Yes, sir.”

He said, “Well I mean that.” He said, “If you don’t go down and withdraw your registration, you will have to leave.” Said, “Then if you go down and withdraw,” said, “you still might have to go because we are not ready for that in Mississippi.”

And I addressed him and told him and said, “I didn’t try to register for you. I tried to register for myself.”

I had to leave that same night.

On the 10th of September 1962, sixteen bullets was fired into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Tucker for me. That same night two girls were shot in Ruleville, Mississippi. Also Mr. Joe McDonald’s house was shot in.

And June the 9th, 1963, I had attended a voter registration workshop; was returning back to Mississippi. Ten of us was traveling by the Continental Trailway bus. When we got to Winona, Mississippi, which is Montgomery County, four of the people got off to use the washroom, and two of the people - to use the restaurant - two of the people wanted to use the washroom.

The four people that had gone in to use the restaurant was ordered out. During this time I was on the bus. But when I looked through the window and saw they had rushed out I got off of the bus to see what had happened. And one of the ladies said, “It was a State Highway Patrolman and a Chief of Police ordered us out.”…

I was carried to the county jail and put in the booking room. They left some of the people in the booking room and began to place us in cells. I was placed in a cell with a young woman called Miss Ivesta Simpson. After I was placed in the cell I began to hear sounds of licks and screams, I could hear the sounds of licks and horrible screams. And I could hear somebody say, “Can you say, ‘yes, sir,’ nigger? Can you say ‘yes, sir’?”

And they would say other horrible names.

She would say, “Yes, I can say ‘yes, sir.’”

“So, well, say it.”

She said, “I don’t know you well enough.”

They beat her, I don’t know how long. And after a while she began to pray, and asked God to have mercy on those people.

And it wasn’t too long before three white men came to my cell. One of these men was a State Highway Patrolman and he asked me where I was from. I told him Ruleville and he said, “We are going to check this.”

They left my cell and it wasn’t too long before they came back. He said, “You are from Ruleville all right,” and he used a curse word. And he said, “We are going to make you wish you was dead.”

I was carried out of that cell into another cell where they had two Negro prisoners. The State Highway Patrolmen ordered the first Negro to take the blackjack.

The first Negro prisoner ordered me, by orders from the State Highway Patrolman, for me to lay down on a bunk bed on my face.

I laid on my face and the first Negro began to beat. I was beat by the first Negro until he was exhausted. I was holding my hands behind me at that time on my left side, because I suffered from polio when I was six years old.

After the first Negro had beat until he was exhausted, the State Highway Patrolman ordered the second Negro to take the blackjack.

The second Negro began to beat and I began to work my feet, and the State Highway Patrolman ordered the first Negro who had beat me to sit on my feet - to keep me from working my feet. I began to scream and one white man got up and began to beat me in my head and tell me to hush.

One white man - my dress had worked up high - he walked over and pulled my dress - I pulled my dress down and he pulled my dress back up.

I was in jail when Medgar Evers was murdered.

All of this is on account of we want to register, to become first-class citizens. And if the Freedom Democratic Party is not seated now, I question America. Is this America, the land of the free and the home of the brave, where we have to sleep with our telephones off the hooks because our lives be threatened daily, because we want to live as decent human beings, in America?

Thank you.

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Filed under Civil Rights, Fannie Lou Hamer, 2008 Presidential Election

August 27th, 2008 5:34 pm

Media Self-Parody

The vacuous talking hairdos of CBS and CNN have both employed the services of “body language experts” too inform us as to what Senator Clinton was really saying during her wonderful speech last night to the Democratic National Convention. They did so as to further propagate the largely media contrived Obama/Clinton feud, which both the Clinton and Obama camapaigns have repeatedly debunked.

Both networks report that their future reports will feature clairvoyants to inform us as to what future convention speakers are really thinking.

Meanwhile, playing the media for suckers, the McCain campaign has sending press releases to media outlets debuting campaign TV ads, which the TV media outlets dutifully repeatedly play, free of charge as part of the “news” reports and the McCain camp never buys time for broadcasting the ads.

The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers.
Thomas Jefferson to G. K. van HogendorpOct. 13, 1785. (*) ME 5:181, Papers 8:632

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.
Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823. ME 15:491

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