James Wagner

Here it is, “World AIDS Day” and all I can think of posting here is a story about health insurance. Well, unfortunately every day is a day with AIDS in this world, thanks to criminal disregard which began almost 25 years ago and which continues, little abated, today.
And, if posting this bit of information can help even a handful of people, it will have proved to be something other than just another AIDS day.
Barry has the information on his own site about a new ADAP (AIDS Drug Assistance Program) plan which offers to pay for health insurance for New Yorkers (the whole state) who are HIV+ and something less than rich.
It’s a win-win deal.
Spread the word.

[thanks, Karen!]

Raymone J. Pettine, federal judge in Rhode Island from 1966 until 1996, died on November 17.
The NYTimes obituary in today’s editions cites his landmark rulings from the bench supporting humane prison conditions, civil liberties for individuals, equal rights for women and girls, the separation of church and state, free speech and abortion rights.
At least one of his judgments attracted attention all across the country:

In 1980, he ruled that a gay student had the right to take a male escort to the prom. The student had filed suit after the principal denied his request for the date.
“To rule otherwise would completely subvert free speech by granting other students a `heckler’s veto,’ ” Judge Pettine wrote. “The First Amendment does not tolerate mob rule by unruly schoolchildren.”

On this and other issues the jurist was an independent mind, independent above all of his own church.

“He truly was one of the most devout Catholics I have known,” said his daughter, Lydia Gillespie. “But he was able to separate his beliefs from the dictates of the Constitution.”

Judge Raymond J. Pettine (it was always the full name) was a very big man produced by a very small state. Throughout most of the twenty years I lived in the wonderland called “The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” blessed with this good man, his name was regularly broadcast throughout the entire region. To this day, even after almost another two decades away from what were my own Newport and Providence plantings, if I think of the Providence Journal-Bulletin or WPRO the letters or the sound of “Raymond J. Pettine” somehow crowd or shout anything else which might be stored in my memory.
In the early days, his was a voice crying out in the wilderness, just about the only voice. Today Rhode Island is another place, largely because of this man and those he inspired.
One of his colleagues remembers a great jurist with this surprising encomium:

“He was one of the great romantic [my italics] judges,” said Burt Neuborne, a New York University law professor who as an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer brought a series of cases before Judge Pettine in the early 1970’s.
Mr. Neuborne added that Judge Pettine was among the judges who had a “grand conception” of “what the possibilities of American justice were and what their role was in helping achieve individual liberty and equality.”

Pettine was born on America Street on Federal Hill, Providence’s “little Italy” in 1912, and it’s still a healthy Italian neighborhood today. As judge for the federal district, he lived in a comfortable old yankee mansion on Angell Street, very much the other side of town. Now that’s romantic.
Here is more on Pettine’s take on religion and the state, this from the Providence Journal November 18 notice:

In 1993, looking back on his years on the bench, Pettine said: “In all God’s truth I must say, it is an awesome privilege to be a judge.”
But it was a privilege that exacted a price. When Pettine, a practicing Roman Catholic, ruled against the Nativity scene, The Providence Journal-Bulletin printed a full page of letters, overwhelmingly opposing the decision.
“I could never understand why so many Catholic people held the Nativity case against me. And they really did, believe me when I tell you; I got some very, very vicious correspondence. Vicious correspondence.”
Feelings grew so tense that Pettine stopped attending his church, St. Sebastian, and went to Mass at the Franciscan chapel on Weybosset Street.
On a personal level, Pettine said he didn’t see how a Catholic could support the Nativity display in the first place. “You know, the birth of Christ is something that stands alone, and they just trivialized this in the way they wanted to display it.
“Then, as far as the law is concerned,” he said, “I firmly believe this with great conviction: that there has to be a separation between church and state — that one of the saving graces of this country is the fact that we are tolerant of all religions, and even of those who have no religion [my italics]. And if we start breaking that down, we are going to be in an awful lot of trouble.”

Judge Raymond J. Pettine was a liberal, a breed which, if not quite extinct, lives pretty closeted in the new America.

Day for night


To control the crowd


No buses tonight

Jay-Z “disappeared” in Madison Square Garden late Tuesday night, but New York City police thought that afterward he and/or his friends and fans were making an appearance in a club on West 23rd Street. The sweet night doorman in our own buildiing, which is roughly across the street, told me it’s called ZeZa. [I can’t confirm the name, especially as there’s no lettering on the canopy which stretches to the curb, and I’ve seen the space undergo more than a few reincarnations over the years.]
Commissioner Kelly’s forces totally shut down to traffic the entire block from 7th to 8th Avenues, brought in high-powered illumination spots and set them up outside the doors of the club. They also parked two large, ominous police wagons within easy reach, and that was the extraordinary sight which awaited Barry and I as we rounded our corner on the way home from a late supper at Florent.
We knew nothing about the reason for the police action, but I was more than curious, expecting somebody was up to no good, so I walked up to a few onlookers [whether party-goers or passers-by, I couldn’t tell] already installed on the sidewalk to see if they might enlighten me. I got cold shoulders, nothing, and only then did I try asking a couple of guys in uniform who didn’t look particulary busy at the moment. I was told “Some rap star closed his big show uptown and moved his people down to this club.” No one would supply a name, but later I heard about Jay-Z’s retirement party and the final concert which had been staged at Madison Square Garden that night.
Why were the police interested in Jay-Z or this particular party? One of the blue uniforms told me that he and his colleagues were there on 23rd Street “for crowd control.” Uh huh.
There was absolutely nothing going on and, aside from the police presence, from the time I had arrived there was never above a couple of dozen people on the entire length of the block, so I headed home, more than a little disturbed by what I had seen and heard.
As I walked into my lobby I passed a neighbor and explained the little I had learned about the fantastic sight of a ghostly 23rd Street. His response? It’s a good thing that they’re on top of things.” I wish I could be so easily reassured.
No, actually I don’t.

Satirical cartoon from the Democratic weekly, The Verdict, 1890’s

There’s a revealing photo on page A20 of the NYTimes print edition this morning showing Tommy Thompson, Bush’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, being congratulated by Arthur Lifson, President of the insurance giant, CIGNA. The occasion was the Senate’s passage of the Republicrats’ corporation-friendly Medicare bill on Saturday. The location was the “lobby” of the Senate.
Where’s William Novelli, the AARP‘s chief executive? Probably next in line, if he had not in fact cut in front of Lifson.
The picture doesn’t appear anywhere on line, so far as I can determine right now, but Barry and I are both shocked that photographers were allowed to record the encounter in the first place. I guess nobody really cares about observing the proprieties any more. The [more and more only theoretical] voters sure don’t seem to mind.
Actually the Times article which seems to accompany the image of Lifson and Thompson thanking our Senate for its toadiness doesn’t refer to either man, but is instead a short discussion of the budget implications of the bill.
For a useful commentary, see Paul Vitello in Newsday, although he admits that like everyone else, except for 17 very privileged people in Congress, he doesn’t understand the 90-page bill so hastily passed yesterday but not to be put into effect until three years from now:

It is a Gordian knot of promises that seem designed to entice and befuddle and send millions rummaging in the junk drawer for the calculator – while Congress rushes to adopt the thing in time for Thanksgiving.
Go figure your way through this plan, then. It makes few unconditional promises except one – and that is to the drug companies. They are promised no price controls; no limits on how much they can charge or how much they can keep spending on television advertising for those remedies they make to combat all of life’s ills except old age and poverty.
Viagra, Nexium, Lipitor, Celebrex, Zoloft, constipation, reflux and depression will remain your companions in TV-viewing for the foreseeable future, rest assured.

In his conclusion, Vitello shows us the bottom line: “. . . by the time people figure out whether this is more good than bad, the Republican presidential re-election campaign – complete with a prescription drug benefit – will be over.”

[image from Ohio State University, Department of History]