Category Archives: Obama 44

As Borja has noted, I have recently been quiet on the health care front. In part this is due to suffering from kidney stones this past month and consequently focusing more on Spain’s health care system than the joke of a debate going on back in the States. Needless to say (as I have already written countless times before), I am in favor of a public option – not that I would necessarily contract the public option myself, but a public option would without a doubt drive down costs and make the private alternatives – as is the case in Spain – more affordable and accessible.

For non-Americans the entire notion that somehow Americans could be against universal, affordable health care is mind-boggling. Yet, it is true. Many Americans have this perverse – albeit factually inaccurate – idea that any government sponsored program amounts to communism. Americans tend to ignore the fact that many activities so representative of Americana, that set us apart from the rest of the world, are in fact government-run or publicly sponsored.

A few months ago I had conversations with various friends who had grown up in the United States but were now raising children in Europe, some were Americans others were Spanish. They all mentioned access to public sports as what their children would most miss out on by growing up outside of the U.S. That’s right, good old fashioned American little league baseball, recreational soccer, and the local basketball courts are all public.

Does that mean that our kids are commies because they take the yellow bus to their public elementary school? Are our local high school cheerleaders socialists because their uniforms are paid for by the tax payer? When they put lights up at the public high school’s football stadium are we turning into Communist China?

Ironically, many conservatives argue that the solution is to be found in … you guessed it, government regulation (what they euphemistically call “Tort Reform”). Let’s leave this topic for a separate post, but suffice it to say that the costs associated with malpractice lawsuits only represent about two percent of the total cost of health care and have been stable since the 1980s.

Besides the silly ideological battle from the right, the pharmaceutical and health insurance lobbies have the guys on the left in their pockets, insuring that there will be no real or meaningful reform. This translates once again into the difference between Obama’s bold words and his subsequent blandness. The result will most likely be a public mandate and not a public option. In other words, health care will be like auto-insurance; everyone will be required to buy insurance from … you guessed it, the big winners, the insurance companies.

For the time being, though, I will defer to New York Times columnist Nicolas D. Kristof’s two recent articles on the subject. The first one debunks that myth, popular in the U.S., that we have the best health care system in the world:

The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.

. . . Opponents of reform assert that the wretched statistics in the United States are simply a consequence of unhealthy lifestyles and a diverse population with pockets of poverty. It’s true that America suffers more from obesity than other countries. But McKinsey found that over all, the disease burden in Europe is higher than in the United States, probably because Americans smoke less and because the American population is younger.

Moreover, there is one American health statistic that is strikingly above average: life expectancy for Americans who have already reached the age of 65. At that point, they can expect to live longer than the average in industrialized countries. That’s because Americans above age 65 actually have universal health care coverage: Medicare. Suddenly, a diverse population with pockets of poverty is no longer such a drawback.

The second addresses whether it is better to be spending on health care or Afghanistan:

President Obama and Congress will soon make defining choices about health care and troops for Afghanistan.

These two choices have something in common — each has a bill of around $100 billion per year. So one question is whether we’re better off spending that money blowing up things in Helmand Province or building up things in America.

With a war that has almost no effect whatsoever on keeping us safe at home, I would rather have a normal first world health care system.

Regardless of what many of us think and the vision of our beloved Founding Fathers, it took the United States over a century to become a stable democracy. According to Rory Stewart, in the best of scenarios, Afghanistan can aspire to have the democracy of Pakistan in thirty years. In eight years, American tax payers have already shelled out $220 billion. Only 92 years to go.

In the recent web-exclusive of the Bill Moyers Journal, Glenn Greenwald describes how the U.S. can be defined as a warrior nation, a country that has been at perpetual war for decades now. Presidents, and Obama is now no exception to the rule, become almost obliged to continue the tradition of invasion.

Putting our “There Will Be Blood” war-lust into perspective, Greenwald says,

I think the central problem is a lack of empathy. And my biggest wish is that if Americans– that every American in sort of a national collective exercise would spend just ten minutes thinking about the following question, which is:

Suppose there was a Muslim country that invaded the United States with 150,000 troops, and proceeded to occupy our country for the next eight years: dropped bombs on wedding parties, slaughtered men, women, and children who were innocent. Created prisons in our country, where they arrested American citizens and put us for years without charges. Created an overseas island prison where they shipped some of us to without any recourse whatsoever. And at the same time, were threatening to do that to several other Western countries. How much rage and anger and a desire for vengeance and violence would we feel towards that country that was doing that to us?

I mean, just look at what the singular one-day attack of 9/11, the kind of anger and rage it unleashed. And I think if Americans were to think about how we would react towards other countries, and what we would want to do to them, if they were doing to us what we are now doing to them, I think a lot of light would be shined on what it is that we’re really achieving in terms of our national security.

In a different interview, this one on Fresh Air, Jane Mayer discusses her recent article in the New Yorker on the use of unmanned drones to fight our wars, and points out one of the obvious moral problems with fighting high tech wars far away from home:

You know, right now, I think Congress is really infatuated with this technology. And you can see why, I mean it is a marvel. But the place where people are asking questions are in the human rights community, the international lawyers, the U.N.,. There are a number of sort of political philosophers asking questions, such as, you know, if there’s no – if we can’t feel the impact of the people that we’re killing and we can’t see them, and none of our own people at risk, does this somehow make it easier to just be in a perpetual state of war because there’s no seeming cost to us? These are the kinds of questions that people are asking.

Not to mention, as Mayer writes in her New Yorker piece that

The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military’s version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets enemies of U.S. troops stationed there. As such, it is an extension of conventional warfare. The C.I.A.’s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in countries where U.S. troops are not based. It was initiated by the Bush Administration and, according to Juan Zarate, a counterterrorism adviser in the Bush White House, Obama has left in place virtually all the key personnel. The program is classified as covert, and the intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed.

The CIA program is not only secret (and arguably committing illegal extrajudicial assassinations) but it is being outsourced to private military contractors and some of the attacks are on targets requested by the Pakistani government. In any event, I definitely recommend Mayer’s article as it attempts to present all of the facts without passing judgment.

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There is a lot of talk these days about government run health care, government run banks, government run industries. But if you take even a simple cursory look at all of the evidence and our priorities – of who is being “helped” to succeed and who is being allowed to fail in our society – it is clear that the corporations run the government not the other way around. The banks are too big to fail and the rest of us are too small to succeed.

Our thirst for war, our lust for banking deregulation, and our pathological aversion to a public option all have a green paper trail leading from lobbyists to Washington. Were it just the Republicans taking the money, we could argue at least that there was some ideological nexus. But even key Democrats and pseudo liberals are on the payroll, as the New York Times reports here and the Washington Post reports here and here. According to the Post,

Nearly half the members of a powerful House subcommittee in control of Pentagon spending are under scrutiny by ethics investigators in Congress, who have trained their lens on the relationships between seven panel members and an influential lobbying firm founded by a former Capitol Hill aide.

In the above video (beginning at minute five), Glenn Greenwald describes the direct financial interests behind the positions that the liberals Joe Lieberman and Evan Byah hold on health care, regardless of the clear mandate of their respective electorates.

A few weeks ago in a debate on whether to increase troop levels in Afghanistan on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, three out of four guests, including influential war-loving Democrat Diane Feinstein, were all unquestionably and unapologetically pro-escalation. The only panellist against escalation, Rep Jim McGovern, was given considerably less time than the others. What kind of debate is that, Mr. Stephanopoulos? The highlight of the program was Feinstein, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, saying that all she knew about troop levels was what she read in the newspapers. In other words, we send troops to war based on what key members of congress read in the papers. It’s rare that we now need to look to George Will — a lone conservative who is in favor of pulling troops from both Afghanistan and Iraq – for a little ideological honesty.

Then we have the more likable, tempered and soft-spoken conservative David Brooks — who regardless of being wrong on every aspect of the build up to Iraq is still permitted to opine on Afghanistan – questioning President Obama’s resolve as a war president (as if the only option available to a “war president” is more guns), making the factually inaccurate, unsubstantiated and blatantly false claim that “like most people who have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, believe this war is winnable.” Almost everything from the ground in Afghanistan points to the fact that we should get out ASAP (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

With a unanimous political and press corps in favor of the same corporate interests, it’s not too difficult to figure out who is receiving all of the entitlements and who is is running the show.

Just when I thought I was getting away from politics, when I thought I had exhausted the topic of torture and Guantanamo, I see the embarrassingly disgusting and partisan reactions to the DOJ Ethics Panel request for preliminary investigations into detainee abuse. Just like with Michael in Godfather III, right when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.

To avoid repeating myself too much, where I have already made my argument, I will only add the following:

• Of course it is obvious why Just-Trust-Me-Dick is against investigations.  All roads lead to Dick. It is almost impossible to argue with a straight face that the legal memos giving cover to the enhanced interrogation program were provided in good faith. In that sense, the Dick Cheney’s should be investigated, not the CIA. But as Kitapsiz has frequently commented, “What difference would it make in any event, he already shot a man in the face while under the influence and escaped the law …” As a result, just like with Abu Ghraib, the small fish pay the price.
• If credible claims of criminal activities exist or, in the alternative, if Dick Cheney is so sure that the CIA did nothing wrong, then why wouldn’t an investigation be a good thing? It would both reinforce the rule of law and set Mr. Cheney free.
• It is ironic that Mr. Cheney and the CIA defenders are calling this investigation partisan. This investigation would not have happened but for Mr. Cheney’s call for the enhanced interrogation program in the first place, a radical change in policy that, as detailed in the IG Report, even the CIA operatives recognized would eventually led them to be investigated. So although Cheney is now crying “foul play”, an eventual investigation was both foreseeable and anticipated. In that sense, the CIA was set up by Cheney. Furthermore, why is Cheney so worried about the CIA’s feelings? Does he think they are little children that need constant coddling?
• Most of Cheney’s fear-mongering about Obama making the U.S. less safe is directed at policy changes that took place during Bush’s second term and that Obama is simply continuing. Remember even Obama the sell-out is against Holder’s independent investigation.
• The Bush Administration did everything in its power to fabricate evidence and conceal information regarding the War in Iraq and has even recently admitted to manipulating terror alerts for political gain. The political and media class have had absolutely no accountability whatsoever for the key roles they’ve played in the massive propaganda campaign that has caused immeasurable death and destruction. The issue of torture only highlights the pathetic state of our establishment media and the farce that is congressional oversight. As Glenn Greenwald has written, Congress and the establishment media have played absolutely no role in demanding transparency here. The only reason any of this information is being disclosed at all is because of lawsuits by human rights groups. This represents a major failure in how our systems of checks and balance and free press are supposed to protect us from government abuse.
• We were led to believe that only the worst of the worst, the most hardened of terrorists were subjected to enhanced interrogation. We now know that to be false. We also know that numerous Guantanamo detainees who were tortured and kept in cages for years were later declared innocent, not by bleeding-heart left-wing socialists but by seasoned military judges.
• The press has largely ignored the fact that some one hundred detainees died under the enhanced conditions and apparently others “just got lost”.
• According to our treaty obligations and therefore as required by law (in conformance with the U.S. Constitution), the U.S. is obliged to investigate credible allegations of torture. Failure to do so may subject U.S. officials to criminal prosecution abroad. Once again, it was Cheney’s program that has set our guys up to become international pariahs.
• Since when was Jack Nicholson’s Cheney-esque “You can’t handle the truth” character from A Few Good Men supposed to be the hero or Daniel Day Lewis’ from In the Name of the Father (tortured until he confessed to a terrorist bombing he didn’t commit) the villain?

Back in 1998 during my last semester in law school, I worked on a project for the Academy on Human Rights and Humanitarian Law where I spent most of my time reading and compiling the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, including all of the gruesome details of torture from the worst years of Cuba, Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. For those of you who think that the IG Report is not so damning, it reads like it was right out of a Latin American dictatorship.

It’s interesting that we are supposed to be world leaders, beacons of light, yet the entire Republican Party and many Democrats, with an enabling press, are passionately against transparency and upholding the rule of law. As Juan Cole writes in reference to the CIA operatives who expressed concern about foreign prosecution,

But why weren’t they afraid of prosecution in U.S. courts? When did the U.S. go from having, in the Bill of Rights, among the most advanced human rights laws in the world to being a gulag backwater where it is only a trip to Holland that American torturers fear?

What is happening to us? Suddenly we are afraid of the rule of law. We refuse to innovate or even recognize, as in the case of health care, that other countries have models we can follow. Even in technology and infrastructure, we are falling behind (we are number 28 in the world in Internet connectivity speed). What is left of those infamous American values?

Barack Obama is “extraordinarily relieved” after former president Bill Clinton negotiated the release of two American journalists who had illegally entered North Korea after just five months detention. We are also supposed to express outrage at the Iranian government for detaining three Americans who illegally entered the border into Iran. But while North Korea is a filthy dictatorship and we are an apathetic democracy, it is hard to ignore the fact that we continue to cage people for seven years counting without evidence, trial, and in some cases without violations of American Law. If you want to keep score, it took our government six years to release a foreign journalist illegally detained without trial at Guantanamo.

The extraordinarily relieved Obama Administration would even like the authority to detain anyone it wants indefinitely without any recourse whatsoever. Meanwhile, these journalists must be extraordinarily relieved that they were detained in North Korea and not in Guantanamo or Bagram.

Every time I hear another bewilderingly silly argument against any move towards real health care reform, I think about that huddled, entrenched and entitled health care industry pouring millions of dollars into politicians’ pockets, yearning to maintain their status quo.

For each and every cry of the end of the world that the Armageddonists predict, there is a lobbyist bankrolling a politician (Go Blue Dogs!) to protect their industry’s turf. As a matter of fact, none of their arguments hold any weight whatsoever, most which are actually more damning of private insurance than any possible government mandated coverage. For example, under private care, your insurance company decides, based on costs alone, whether you can see the doctor of your choice and which kind of treatment, if any, you can receive. And your insurance company only makes money when you are denied treatment, not when you are granted it. In other words, their business is to deny you health care. When you go to the doctor, your insurance company loses.

Then there are the blatantly fabricated and misleading tales of the blunders in foreign hospitals. In Canada this or in England that, as if American hospitals were free from error or negligence. There wouldn’t be a medical malpractice industry without malpractice. That’s Free Market 101. Of course, the Republicans blame the free market of trial lawyers and want to regulate the legal practice.

The most absurd argument of all, though, is about how universal health care will somehow turn the United States into a Soviet style communist nation of lazy people milking the system. Wouldn’t that mean that our single payer public education system is also a form of Soviet style communism endangering our land, and that anyone who has ever studied in or sent their children to a public school is just another lazy-ass freeloader? Should we turn the schools over to the health care industry?

As things stand, we look more like one of those heavily indebted third world dictatorships where the majority of government spending is on the military and almost nothing is invested in the basic necessities of the citizens, like schools, health care, roads, or infrastructure. Even our airports, as one airline expert recently told me, are already light years behind their European counterparts. That’s right, we have the most expensive socialized national defense in the history of the world (though after eight years, longer than World War II, we cannot even defeat cave dwellers), we pay for our wars and trillion dollar tax cuts by borrowing the money from communist China. Yet any heath care reform whatsoever that puts us on par with other industrialized nations would place us at risk of socialism.

Of the G8, we are the only one which does not offer universal health care. With every other highly industrialized democracy in the world providing for the health care of their citizens, maybe we do need such a strong military to protects us against these uppity free market socialists.

I don’t know what’s worse anymore: the ludicrous, baseless fear mongering, the American public’s pathological fear of antiquated socialism by its pro-corporate welfare government, or the Obama Administration’s inability to sell what is seen as a basic public service — like access to water, roads, and education — in every other normal, modern democracy in the world.

In today’s Washington Post, CIA Director Leon Panetta essentially immunizes the CIA from compliance with the law. The “it’s time to move on” argument, favoring practicality over principle, places political expediency above the rule of law and ultimately sets a standard for future agency impunity.

According to Panetta we “must find a balance between appropriate oversight and a recognition that the security of the United States depends on a CIA that is totally focused on the job of defending America” (emphasis added). Normally that balance would be found in the application of the rule of law, but if Panetta has already liberated the CIA from having to concern itself with or be confined by the law, then what are we left with to balance?

We are supposed to believe that that balance is to be found in the political process, and because the “last election made clear that the public wanted to move in a new direction”, we have thus moved on. Under a new president, the “CIA no longer operates black sites and no longer employs ‘enhanced’ interrogation techniques.” This all comes from an administration whose transparency policy demands the total secrecy and immunity for all past and ongoing activities relating to intelligence gathering and national defense. Yesterday, there were mass public demonstrations in Kuala Lumpur against the Malaysian government’s decade old law permitting detention without trial. Meanwhile, the Obama White House continues to back indefinite detention without trial for anyone who it believes may pose a national security threat, not just those enemy combatants we cannot try in court because the Bush Administration screwed up. Because no one is protesting in the streets, does that mean we’ve moved on?

Then there is the president’s additional “I am going to need you more than ever” argument. In other words, we should not investigate credible claims of crimes because doing so may hurt agency morale. The military regularly investigates its soldiers and officers, so why can’t the CIA? Imagine applying this unique “agency morale” standard to the military, police, government, schools or other institutions; for example not investigating claims of sexual abuse by teachers because doing so may hurt teacher morale? Or by priests because it may damage the reputation of the Church?

In this vein, Panetta does not want the application of the law to the CIA to “taint those public servants who did their duty pursuant to the legal guidance provided.” But that does not mean that we exculpate the Bush Cheney White House who searched for lone, middle level attorneys to rubber stamp, in bad faith, what was clearly contrary to well settled law. There is no reason why, as Panetta fears, that we must follow the age old Washington tradition and scapegoat the “Bad Apples” as the Defense Department did with Abu Ghraib.

Of course, Panetta fails to mention that by refusing to investigate claims of torture, the U.S. is violating International Law and its treaty obligations, and is therefore potentially subjecting CIA operatives and officials to criminal prosecution abroad, restricting their international travel and inevitably tainting their reputations.

Finally, the ultimate problem with this Reconciliation Without the Truth or the Commission approach to the rule of law is that it creates a standard whereby it is almost impossible to foresee a scenario in which the CIA would ever be subject to the law. So, Mr. Panetta, what can the CIA not get away with?

It’s not about the past, it’s about the future.