Letter to President Obama on Health Care

Mr President:

I read in the in "The Wall Street Journal"* that the big drug companies are getting most of what they want in the health care bill. This alarms me. I fear that in order to get some kind of a bill, there will be a sellout to the insurance companies, Big Pharma, and other corporate interests and maybe to the Republicans for the sake of bipartisanship.

I know the enemies of reform are rich and powerful, but I hope you and the Democratic Party will do everything possible to fight the lies, distortions, misrepresentations, and all the other scare tactics of the combined forces of Republican and corporate opposition.

Republicans have fought every piece of progressive legislation from Social Security and Medicare right down to the present.
.
It is extremely important that Medicare be authorized to negotiate with drug companies on drug prices. The original bill was essentially written by the drug companies.

We need genuine and substantial reform, not the mere appearance of it.

I have confidence in you. Do not permit a sellout to corporate interests and reactionary ideology.

Thank you very much from an enthusiastic supporter.

Ken Cauthen

*See: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124779006528954995.html

Tempest in a Teapot: Boston Cop-Harvard Professor Drollery

Modern technology--24-7 news channels and the electronic gadgets that facilitate instant messages-- has contributed to the gigantic blowing up of a minor misunderstanding into a national incident of purported major significance.

A little perspective and a sense of humor all around could have had both policeman and professor laughing at a comedy of errors initiated by the good intentions of all involved -- the 9-11 caller, the cop doing his duty, and the professor getting through a recalcitrant door in his own home.

What followed is typical. Framed only by the barest of facts, people everywhere brought to bear interpretive patterns springing from their general world-views regarding race and cops and knew instantly what it all meant. From one side, "racial profiling," from the other defense of police doing their duty, often in the face of danger and amid insults from loud-mouthed offenders. Even our calm, cool, collected President blew off before all the facts blew in and spoke of police "stupidity," necessitating a retraction and a quickly planned beer party to save his own behind and to remedy a situation that threatened to get out of hand.

Of course, we need a serious dialogue about race, and this was perhaps a teachable moment. But what we usually get is two monologues in which each party recites its own preformed narrative non-stop without ever listening to the other and with no inclination to test habitual prejudices. Two monologues do not add up to one dialogue. Thank goodness for the few sane voices, e. g., Colin Powell, who urged us to enter into a willing suspension of preformed interpretive schemes and attend patiently to the all the particular details of this specific situation before drawing any conclusions.

Was "racial profiling" involved here or a conscientious cop doing his duty in response to an emergency call? Was the professor being done an injustice in his own home by a prejudiced policeman, or did he subject the officer to verbal abuse by his words, demeanor, and tone of voice beyond reasonable endurance? Or something simpler or more complex? We all should have keep quiet until all was known in full context with some sense of proportion.

I tentatively conclude at the moment subject to change that it was most likely a farce, a comedy of errors apparently precipitated by initially innocent parties doing what was reasonable under the circumstances, but both by not grasping quickly enough and fully enough exactly what was happening seemingly let it get out of hand, resulting in an unnecessary arrest provoked by perhaps too much gratuitous, incessant, persistent verbal noise from the arrestee and ending with the whole nation subjected to it for days on end without relief or surcease of repetition and with hardly any recognition of the drollery it actually was.

This headline in the August 3 Washington Post illustrates my point well:

"Gates Says He Can Joke about Arrest"

Hey, "Kip." if you and the cop could have had a sense of humor that night, you would not have been arrested. The cop would not have overreacted, and the two of you could have had a beer without Presidential assistance.

PS: My son Paul suggests this alternative title: "Brew-Ha-Ha in a Beer Mug"

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

What I Hate About Commercial TV

I hate TV for:

1. The shameless advertising of nutrition poor, sugar rich cereals like Lucky Charms, Fruit Loops, etc. on kid's programs, while claiming they are sooo good for you.

2, Contributing to the decline of manners and civility by introducing the yell and scream genre of sarcastic family interactions featuring Don Rickles type insults as seen in programs like All in the Family, Roseanne, Married with Children, and many more. Thank you, Norman Lear.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

All You Need to Know About American Public Opinion: The Facts

1. Americans want to expand health coverage for all, but it must not cost them anything or affect their own coverage negatively.

2. They want to reduce the deficit but such fiscal constraint must not reduce any of their cherished benefits or raise their taxes.

3. They want the unvarnished truth, but they do not want to hear any arguments, facts, or reasons that challenge any of their cherished beliefs.

4. They want to understand issues, but they do not want to spend any time seriously investigating all sides of the issues with open minds.

5. They want bipartisanship as long as that means both parties will accept their own preferred doctrines.

6. Congress stinks, but their own representatives are great as long as they bring federal dollars, jobs, public works, and other goodies to their own area.

7. They are against unnecessary military spending unless the obsolete or unneeded weapon or parts of it are made in their own state or district, in which case it is essential to national security.

8. Wasteful spending is bad, but any benefits that accrue to them are necessary for their survival and well-being and justly deserved.

9. They believe that government is bad except when they want something from it.

10. Above all, they want lower taxes and increased benefits.

11. They are against unnecessary medical treatments, improving efficiency, reducing overall costs, but they want unlimited access for themselves.

12. They want a full understanding, but don't bother them will any hints of complexities, ambiguities, trade-offs regarding public policy, but they know full well that their own personal lives are full of complexities, ambiguities, and trade-offs.

Now you know, so forget about all those public opinion polls.

Canonizing Walter Cronkite

Walter Cronkite was a great journalist. Doubtless he deserves all the tributes he has been given. But, just for once, wouldn't you like to hear about an instance in which he blew it, lost his cool, got the facts all wrong, gave misleading information, and just royally screwed up? Enough of hagiography already!

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Unfortunately, You Will Never Hear This on TV

If I were a member of the Obama Administrating being interviewed, here is what I would say:

Before we begin, I understand our roles as follows: You the interviewer will stress the negative, listing objections to Obama policy, roadblocks, difficulties, Republican criticism, likelihood of failure, unfavorable polls, critical assessments from alleged authorities, and so on.

My role is to deflect, refute, and ignore all that, to "accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and not mess with Mr. In Between." Now what is your first question?

Since it is an unwritten rule understood by all parties that sustained substantive discussion with any depth of sophistication and analytical acumen recognizing complexity, ambiguities, and trade-offs will be avoided in favor of cliches, slogans, and nifty or colorful comments with gentle bite, the process can continue without further ado.

Sotomayor Once More and Finally

The Sotomayor hearings were tales told by partisans, full of boredom and trivia, and signifying nothing beyond the determination of the nominee to get confirmed by whatever means necessary, means canonized since the Bork defeat because he dared engage in serious intellectual debate.

The Myth of Unconditioned Rationality: "Wise Latino" Errors

Republicans are trying to make political capital out of Sotomayor's unfortunate "wise Latino" remark. They are creating or implying or giving aid and comfort to the fallacious notion of a pure universal rationality that is uninfluenced by the specifics of individual life history and background. The unconditioned mind so envisioned functions like a computer programmed with sophisticated software that enables the brain to apply strict rules to facts in light of the text of the Constitution and its court-sanctioned interpretation over the years. Thus unbiased conclusions that yield original intent or the real meaning of the historic document are enabled. The underlying assumption appears to be that this capacity is uniquely and superbly present in white Republican males.

The notion of an unconditioned judicial rationality will not bear up under even cursory scrutiny. The perpetrators of this politically-convenient myth know or should know better when not politically motivated to make grandstanding points for their relevant constituencies back home.

The fact is that our mental framework is shaped by numerous factors beginning with genetic endowment, including gender, and continuing with historically contingent specifics of race, class, religion, region, time, place, and culture, plus the details of family and individual life history and experience as interpreted by our available and appropriated conceptual categories, knowledge, moral norms passions, commitments, aims, and--yes-empathy.

To state or imply or assume otherwise is to embrace a notion of ahistorical reason so fatuous and indefensible that only those can deny it who are so invincibly ignorant and blind to what most people instinctively know when it is not convenient to avoid. Can anyone with minimal intelligence and discernment be that impervious to plain truth? Nah!

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Breaking News: Sotomayor Questions Senators

In my vision Judge Sotomayor gets to question Republican Senators on the Judiciary Committee, not about the finer details of Constitutional law or the technicalities of specific cases but about judicial hermeneutics, i. e., principles of Constitutional interpretation.

This would take place after she was given a potion making her the baddest bitch in town.

What a fun day that would be!

On Getting Sick Enough to Vomit: The Discipline of a Good Depression

Sometimes a blog is so timely that it needs to be repeated periodically, especially when it seems equally as relevant today as it was last September.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

We all know that you feel better after you vomit, but nobody wants to get that sick.

It is horrible to think about it, and I feel guilty for even letting the idea surface. But I will proceed anyway. Would a serious economic depression be good for us in the long run? It might.

Could a good depression revive the prudence, discipline, and caution that the Great Depression reinforced in the generation represented by my parents and grandparents.? If so, America might be the better for it.

In recent decades we have developed some toxic cultural habits--runaway consumerism, an unrestrained self-indulgent hedonism promoted by corporate advertising, disdain for delayed gratification, greed for bigger houses, cars, and the latest gadgets, a pattern of living beyond our means, a careless attitude toward debt aided and abetted by the easy availability of credit and credit cards, failure to consider the consequences of our reckless extravagance, and the like.

To revive an old phrase, the "Protestant ethic" has died. Even many of the churches that are growing rapidly are preaching a gospel of prosperity that a shocked Calvin would have abhorred. Paradoxically, it was the disciplined style of life that valued work and thrift as a divinely-approved virtues that helped generate the widespread prosperity subsequent generations enjoyed. In capitalism individual self-interest was supposed to produce universal welfare. Sadly we find in the current generation a bastardized form of culture that lacks the self-restraint and prudence of the stringent ethic of the past and retains only the desire and expectation of the unlimited possession of material goods in a life of self-indulgent gratification.

No, I don't wish another Great Depression on myself, my children, and grandchildren along with the whole lot of us. I just wish that we could recover the ethic strengthened by it for a generation badly in need of repentance and newness of life.

But sometimes we need to get very sick before we can vomit and feel better.

Posted by Kenneth Cauthen at 10:28 AM

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Difference between Obama and the Pope?

The Pope is infallible only when he speaks ex cathedra.

PS. Obama apparently also has the power to pass his ad judicium perfectum on to others, e. g., Timothy Geithner also seems to possess it when he is sitting down, i. e., in the chair (cathedra).

Why We Can't Have a Really Good Democracy

Monarchy is the best form of government,
if you can find a good King. Aristotle

The capacity of justice makes democracy
possible, the tendency toward injustice,
makes it necessary. Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy is the worst form of government
except for all those others that have been tried.
Winston Churchhill

It is impossible to have a good democracy in the United States, i. e., one that is prosperous, well-ordered with liberty, equality, and justice for all, fully protective of minority rights, and that serves all appropriately.

The country is too large, too diverse racially, religiously, ethnically, regionally, economically, and ideologically to be a melting pot in which an informed moral commitment to the most noble values determines policy by way of a political process appropriately organized to achieve them.

It might be sufficient simply to quote Churchill, "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." But I will proceed.

The worst corruption of democracy is that intensely focused parochial interests are able to distort the process to achieve narrow ends offensive to justice and the welfare of all, especially the poor and powerless. They may be regional (agricultural subsidies), ideological (reactionary religion), topical (NRA), or economic (well-funded corporate lobbyists). Since Congressional politicians are elected regionally, their views are frequently shaped by interests and perspectives peculiar to that constituency rather than the welfare of the whole.

Consider, for example, how the narrow interests represented by the gun lobby (NRA) are fanatically devoted to a specific issue, whose operatives watch every political move in detail searching of even the slightest deviation from their absolutist dogma. They are armed sufficiently with money and backed by enough members and regional ideological preferences to enable them to influence legislation in disproportionate fashion. Pharmaceutical and drug companies, the Chamber of Commerce, the Israeli lobby, the military-industrial-university complex, and others illustrate the principle that intensely focused restricted interests with money and organization can be victorious over much larger constituencies whose concerns are broadly distributed but lacking concentrated focus on these specific ones, especially when this is joined with general apathy and ignorance of issues and political processes in general that do not concern them directly.

At this moment Congressional factions are threatening to defy recommendations of the military, the Secretary of Defense, and the President that the F22 fighter is not needed and should not be funded. Why? Because the defense industries have seen to it that the manufacturers and suppliers are scattered around the country, enabling regional interests to supercede national interest. The same folks will condemn deficit spending and a bloated federal budget. Alas, alas! Hooray for American democracy.

Added to this is the dismal state of political dialogue in this country-aided and abetted by talk-show radio, mass instant electronic communication, and 24-hour news channels--that reduces debate to simplistic talking points that have emotional attractiveness for the unwary or analytically unskilled. These appeals are carefully designed with professional public relations assistance, sometimes spiced with deliberate lies or distortions crafted to exploit ignorance and bias. All this is made possible by the fact that multitudes people are too apathetic, too lazy, understandably so bogged down in immediate personal struggles, or so easily duped by their own uncritical, never questioned, base of inherited misinformation, bias, or subtle perfidy.

Let us not forget that in the Electoral College and the Senate, small states have power all out of proportion to the citizens represented in an increasingly urban population. In the Senate, e. g., at the moment this is bad news for health care reform since some of the most powerful Senators are from small states with interests different from where the vast majority of people live. For example, "The 21 smallest states together hold fewer people than California's 36.7 million -- which means there are 42 senators who together represent fewer constituents than Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein." For details see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/07/AR2009080702045.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Pervading all this is a persisting individualism shaped by the early history of the country with its expanding frontier and the necessity of self-reliance, partially explaining why socialism never came to America -- that old standard question.

Countervailing trends are created by changes in cultural consciousness, e. g., on civil rights or gay rights, as well as by crises which do concentrate the attention of large constituencies. Such situations when skillfully organized can potentially exploit kairotic moments ripe and ready for transformative change when sufficiently informed by liberating visions that excite enthusiasm enabled by political mobilization and charismatic leaders and geared to achieve more ideal ends.

Of course, if we all loved justice, freedom, equality, prosperity, and well being for all as much as we loved ourselves, we might be inspired to try and smart enough to succeed in creating the institutions and processes that would produce an ideal democracy. Darn that original sin!

To spell all this out would require a book. My aim has been to make some initial suggestions hinting at why an ideal democracy is impossible under current conditions.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Folly of Republicans

The reasoning of most Republicans these days on matters of politics and policy is as limp as an overcooked noodle without Viagra.

What really bothers Republicans about Sotomayor's "wise Latino" remark is the suggestion that anyone could be as wise as a white Republican male whose judgment is fully rational and not at all influenced by family history or social context.

Republicans think that interpreting the Constitution is like looking at Mt. Rushmore on a clear day and deciding which is Washington and which is Jefferson.

Never mind how many 5-4 decisions with each faction consisting of the same cluster of Justices, Republicans think Constitutional interpretation can be free of the background and outlook of the interpreters. So shockingly naive is such a view that only a politician or a fundamentalist theologian or a citizen oblivious to the obvious would admit to having it.

Republicans are distrustful of government to do anything right except when it is acting in secret or funneling money to their preferred beneficiaries.

Originalists, including many Republicans, assume there is one settled meaning of the Constitution built in from the beginning, whereas historians know that the Founding Fathers intended to begin an argument which must continue, they being well aware of disagreements among themselves and the many ambiguities, complexities, trade-offs, and the like generated in the concrete realities of life and history.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

The Ignorance of Jeb Bush

Jeb Bush: 'I don't know' if Obama is a socialist. CNN headline.

Jeb's ignorance, however vast, should not take precedence over the knowledge of others, however small.

Demented American Values and Illegal Drugs

How many times does it have to be said? The fundamental drug problem is not marijuana or heroin or cocaine, as troublesome and damaging as they are.

The far more harmful drugs are 1. tobacco and 2. alcohol. Tobacco kills at least 400,000 every year in this country. Alcohol kills at least 100,000. Add to this the health and other costs, and you will see that the usual suspects are minor in comparison. We have spent billions of dollars and incarcerated thousands, especially poor African Americans and have barely made a dent in the devastation wrought by illegal drugs.

The difference is that tobacco and alcohol are socially acceptable drugs, while marijuana, heroin, and cocaine are not. I do not mean to trivialize the harm done to people and the costs incurred to the nation by the illegal drugs, but we need a sense of proportion.

The illegal drugs are perils with no good solution, but the best approach is to take the profit--the money gain--out of them and deal with them as a public health concern, i. e., prevention and treatment, and not as a criminal justice matter.

Would there be major tribulations associated with the decriminalization of the the currently illegal drugs? Certainly, but I defy anyone to make a convincing case that the situation would be worse than it is now.

The root problem is the distorted, puzzling set of values we have in this country. We are astonishingly tolerant of guns and violence and still both puritanical and obsessed in regard to sex, and totally irrational when it comes to the drugs now classified as illegal.

See a more lengthy treatment of all this at:
http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/drugs.htm

Quasi-Acerbic Reflections: Pundits

The punditry should be abolished. Were it not for the all-news channels their population would be less of a menace, but given the necessity to fill 24 hours a day by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, and Fox, daily they egregiously violate Occam's razor -- do not multiply entities beyond necessity-- ad nauseam. The worst are the Democratic and Republican political strategists, whose vacuity and predictability are astounding and who never increase understanding of anything.

While sometimes a pundit may shed light on an issue, generally they are a superfluity. Anyone who reads a couple of good newspapers and a serious journal of current events will know as much as 93.34% of the experts whose breezy interjections could provide electricity for a small town if harnessed to wind generators.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

If You Are Over 60, You Don't Exist in the Media

Or you might as well not exist for the attention you get. The CNN web site asked, "How are you honoring Michael Jackson?" Not do you plan to honor MJ, if so, how? I am sorry he died so young, but honor him?

His music and dancing were boring to me. The few seconds of Thriller I saw were not thrilling. He was two generations too late for me. Elvis Presley was only one behind me, but with few exceptions, his performances were not entertaining either in my book. But the general assumption in the media is that your musical and other tastes were formed after I was already married and a father.

Now there are some minor exceptions -- some PBS programs, C-Span, and and a few others recognize that some people are in or are approaching Medicare. The national evening network news broadcasts perhaps recognize us most clearly. Advertisements are the evidence -- constipation, upset stomach, leaky bladder, ED, dementia, pain, and other typical later in life ailments are subjects of interests and revenue for them.

But we know we exist. Nat King Cole or the Mills Brothers anyone?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Michael Jackson and American Excess

Too much has already been said about Michael Jackson, the woman man, white black, child adult -- he of odd, bizarre behavior, that sad, tragic idol who always wanted the approval of his abusing father, who thought if ever he were ordinary, people would not love him, who in the midst of the adulation of crowds was lonely, in whom there lived a kind, gentle child who never had a childhood, and who required tranquilizing drugs to relieve his pain.

But that is not my text today. I wonder if the attention worthy of a President given him in death bespeaks of a celebrity-intoxicated culture whose excesses approach pathology. He offered, say some, moments of transcendence and good will that united followers with humanity, but in my view was exhibitive of a quasi-religion whose "yoke is easy, whose burden is light," that makes no moral demands, judges no behavior, and whose exalted moments are shallow and ephemeral.

That is my text for today.

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Hooray for American Support of Democracy

Republicans in Congress are getting more and more irksome, tiresome, and downright repugnant.

They condemn Obama for not taking a stronger stand against the Iranian regime. We have always stood for democracy, they say. You mean like in Iran when Republican President Eisenhower approved the engineering of the overthrow in 1953 of Mohammed Mossaddeq, the democratically elected leader of Iran who had nationalized the oil companies. We restored the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlev, who allowed the British and American oil companies to get their lips back on the nipples of the pipelines so oil wealth could flow Westward? In passing we might observe that Democrat Harry Truman had refused to approve the coup. By the way, the Shah was overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution, whose current Supreme Leader is shooting protesters in Tehran. Hooray for the American support of democracy in 1953.

Then there were those decades when American policy toward Latin America was designed to suit the interests of the United Fruit Company without regard to whether the favored regimes were democracies or not.

Wasn't that all in the past? Not quite considering that we have been in bed with Saudi Arabia for a long time. They don't have democracy, but they have lots of oil.

Republicans constantly raise the specter of government bureaucrats making decisions about health care for citizens. Apparently, they prefer bureaucrats in big corporations to make those decisions, corporations motivated by increasing profits by limiting medical care to subscribers. There is no sustainable system that will allow any and every form of medical care to everybody.

Is there any good reason why Republicans should exist at all?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~kenc/index.shtml

Middle East: New Beginnings Needed

The best thing I have seen on the Palestinian-Israeli problem is Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, "Obama and the Middle East" (The New York Review of Books, June 11, 2009).

In brief, they say the old slogans and terms -- two-state solution, land for peace -- are impotent and should be abandoned. In the past both parties have felt they were provided solutions from third parties and asked to accept or negotiate them.

A new beginning should be made by a process that elicits anew what the essential interests of the relevant parties are--the Palestinians, including both Fatah and Hamas, and the Israelis, including the settlers. This might leads toward a two-state solution, or it might not get anywhere. What is clear, they think, is that merely polishing up the old terms, proposals, and solutions will not work.

I found it provocative and maybe even correct. See:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22731