James Wagner

We’re long overdue. There is simply no rational explanation for our continuing to treat health care as a commodity like, oh, say, a new car or a flat-screen tv. Marcia Angell’s Op-Ed piece in the NYTimes neatly flattens every argument against a single-payer system.
She insists that even in our market-based society, universal health care belongs in the category of “essential services like education, clean water and air and protection from crime, all of which we already acknowledge are public responsibilities.”
But we’re marching off to war now, or at least the pretense of war, so nothing will be done. Sane arguments have been blown off the face of the planet.

Look at what happens to the health-care dollar as it wends its way from employers to the doctors and hospitals that provide medical services. Private insurers regularly skim off the top 10 percent to 25 percent of premiums for administrative costs, marketing and profits. The remainder is passed along a gantlet of satellite businesses — insurance brokers, disease-management and utilization-review companies, lawyers, consultants, billing agencies, information management firms and so on. Their function is often to limit services in one way or another. They, too, take a cut, including enough for their own administrative costs, marketing and profits. As much as half the health-care dollar never reaches doctors and hospitals — who themselves face high overhead costs in dealing with multiple insurers.
….
Many people believe a single-payer system is a good idea, but that we can’t afford it. The truth is that we can no longer afford not to have such a system. We now spend more than $5,000 a year on health care for each American — more than twice the average of other advanced countries.
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It is sometimes argued that innovative technologies would be scarce in a national single-payer system, so we would have long waiting lists. This misconception is based on the fact that there are indeed waits for elective procedures in some countries with national health systems like Great Britain and Canada. But that’s because they spend far less on health care than we do. If they were to put the same amount of money as we do into their systems, there would be no waits.

Two prizes were awarded today. Bush won the booby prize. Carter won the the real one.
If there is an award the opposite of the Nobel Peace Prize it would be that handed to George W. Bush, his entire administration, the Supreme Court, and every member of the two houses of Congress who voted for war in the last twenty-four hours.
If there is an award for stupidity, greed, selfish careerism and evil, both intended and consequent, it was announced by the Nobel Committee today.
A simple statement honoring a man of peace is usually made in Oslo on these occasions. This time there was also a condemnation of those who make work for the peacemakers.
As an American, I hang my head in shame this morning, but the extraordinary timing of this honor for Jimmy Carter gives me some hope for the world as a whole. If we survive as a nation, or even if only the idea of America survives, it will be because of people like the good man from Georgia.

So asks the public interest site, TomPaine.com.

Saddam Hussein is an imminent threat OR he’s just a convenient political distraction wielded by the White House.
Whichever way you see it, you must agree: The attack-Iraq tempest has eclipsed most other issues.
With mid-term elections just weeks away, the lack of substantive debate and coverage of domestic issues poses more of a threat to the nation’s security than Saddam. But anyone who says so has trouble getting a microphone.
Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, is trying. He’s asking a question made famous in 1980 by California Republican Ronald Reagan: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
“An analysis of current indicators of the nation’s social and economic well-being shows that many are again declining,” Waxman writes. He cites a dozen examples, including rising unemployment, record-high numbers of bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures, and the return of the federal budget deficit. The number of Americans living in poverty and the number of people without health insurance are both at their highest level in years, and prescription drug costs are soaring.
Look past Iraq and a broad picture of an uneasy nation emerges. A New York Times/ CBS News poll found that 70 percent of people would like to hear candidates talk about the economy rather than the war. Most voters (57 percent) say they will cast their ballots based more on economic issues than on foreign policy.
Yet it still seems like the upcoming elections will be more about Saddam’s fate than the future of Social Security. Preemptive war will get more attention than prescription drug prices. We’ll talk more about high-flying F-16s than crashing 401(k)s.
Americans must be wondering: When did Iraq become more important than America?

This is an excerpt, from an online excerpt, from Chapter 13 of The Iron Heel by Jack London (1908).

The general strike was the one great victory we American socialists won. On 4 December the American minister was withdrawn from the German capital. That night a German fleet made a dash on Honolulu, sinking three American cruisers and a revenue cutter, and bombarding the city. Next day both Germany and the United States declared war, and within an hour the socialists called the general strike in both countries.
For the first time the German war-lord faced the men of his empire who made his empire go. Without them he could not run his empire. The novelty of the situation lay in that their revolt was passive. They did not fight. They did nothing. And by doing nothing they tied their war-lord’s hands. He would have asked for nothing better than an opportunity to loose his war-dogs on his rebellious proletariat. But this was denied him. He could not loose his war-dogs. Neither could he mobilize his army to go forth to war, nor could he punish his recalcitrant subjects. Not a wheel moved in his empire. Not a train ran, not a telegraphic message went over the wires, for the telegraphers and railroad men had ceased work along with the rest of the population.
And as it was in Germany, so it was in the United States. At last organized labor had learned its lesson. Beaten decisively on its own chosen field, it had abandoned that field and come over to the political field of the socialists; for the general strike was a political strike. Besides, organized labor had been so badly beaten that it did not care. It joined in the general strike out of sheer desperation. The workers threw down their tools and left their tasks by the millions. Especially notable were the machinists. Their heads were bloody, their organization had apparently been destroyed, yet out they came, along with their allies in the metal-working trades.
Even the common laborers and all unorganized labor ceased work. The strike had tied everything up so that nobody could work. Besides, the women proved to be the strongest promoters of the strike. They set their faces against the war. They did not want their men to go forth to die. Then, also, the idea of the general strike caught the mood of the people. It struck their sense of humor. The idea was infectious. The children struck in all the schools, and such teachers as came, went home again from deserted class rooms. The general strike took the form of a great national picnic. And the idea of the solidarity of labor, so evidenced, appealed to the imagination of all. And, finally, there was no danger to be incurred by the colossal frolic. When everybody was guilty, how was anybody to be punished?

It is, of course, entirely fiction, but there is no reason why the concept of The General Strike must remain fiction.
Besides, if just by raising the spectre of war the White House can so easily distract the entire world from it’s real problems, perhaps just by raising the spectre of a massive, even universal work stoppage, we can accomplish a similar wonder.

For the life of me (and for the lives of so many who died needlessly in Southeast Asia on both sides), I’ll never understand how the media can describe the Democrats’ “lesson of Vietnam” as the resolve to appear forevermore at least as hawkish as the noble Republicans. I see such discussions regularly lately, apparently in the attempt to account for the timidity, easy acquiescence, or even zealous enthusiasm of the official “opposition party” for the Administration’s military adventurism in the Middle East.
Among the most important of the Democratic supporters of this nonsense is Senator Evan Bayh, Democrat of Indiana. In an amazing statement published in monday’s NYTimes, he claims to be reflecting public opinion on the war:

“The majority of the American people tend to trust the Republican Party more on issues involving national security and defense than they do the Democratic Party,” he said. “We need to work to improve our image on that score by taking a more aggressive [the italics are my ironic comment] posture with regard to Iraq, empowering the president.”

Democrats as aggressive passivists [sic].
Let me get this straight. The Democrats hope to prove how strong and aggressive they are by passively going along with those sexy macho Republicans who have apparently persuaded the entire country to think that the Democrats lost the Viet Nam war with their wimpy ways and we can never let that happen again. Yikes!