I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
As I write, China’s army and police have quelled three days of deadly violence in its largest province. I wish I could say I knew the Uighurs would rebel against their Chinese masters but I didn’t.
Let us cheer poor Gov. Mark Sanford’s discovery that his frailty is “human.” As for knowing that the Lord wants him to remain governor, well, Sanford would seem at least one blue corn tortilla short of a combo plate. So let’s give him time to reorder.
The Albuquerque Journal routinely shapes national news to fit its editorial stance. On a range of issues, too. I could write a book thereon. Bias exists, of course. But the sin is in the cloaking.
There comes a time, as one ages, where you (meaning, me) realize how little you really know. And you (meaning, me) hear the clock ticking.
So, you read up a storm, ingest books (bless you, Albuquerque Public Library), magazines, blogs and other Web wisdom. And you take classes. Like Fred Nathan’s fascinating presentation a few days ago at OASIS, the adult education program.
Nathan is executive director of Think New Mexico, the “results-oriented think tank” that pushed our state to sever some Gordian knots by focusing public attention, banging the drums of good government and taking the Legislature in hand to enact relief.
Think New Mexico’s triumphs include full-day kindergarten, removal of most food taxes, competition in title insurance rates and more lottery dollars funneled to scholarships.
But until hearing Nathan recount a war story or two, I hadn’t realized how much he (and his board of pragmatic Democrats and Republicans) did hand-to-hand combat with lobbyists.
This reminded me that I’m reading a lot about the intricacies of national health care reform but little about the lobbying and almost nothing about the role of the mother’s milk of politics — money.
In fact, the health industry — a term that should make us tremble — maintains a permanent drip of cash at Washington bedsides. And after taking the electorate’s temperature, Big Medicine began to share its largesse with the other party before the 2006 mid-term elections, continuing through the presidential primaries last year.
“Health Sector Puts Its Money on Democrats” was the headline on an October 29, 2007 report in the New York Times.
Today, however, as committees actually write legislation, corporate medicine is allocating significant sums of fresh, new legal tender aimed primarily at killing the public option.
As reported, the American Medical Association opposes that option. If this is news, it’s the “dog-bites-man” kind, since the doctors’ union has an impeccable record of fighting efforts, including Medicare and Medicaid, to make health care accessible and affordable.
What you may not have read is how generously the AMA funds its priorities. It gave $9.8 million to congressional candidates since 2000, according to Robert Reich, the liberal economist, in a June 15 Alternet.com post.
And health industry expenditures on lobbying soared in the first quarter of this year compared to 2008. America’s Health Insurance Plans, the trade group for the largest private insurers, spent $6.4 million, United Health Group spent $1.5 million, Aetna spent $809,793 and Pfizer, the world’s biggest drug-maker, spent more than $6.1 million.
Killing the public option makes good business sense, of course; it protects private insurers (and Big Pharma) against price competition.
But health insurance reform isn’t just about health.
For the last 25 years, American incomes have grown so unequal they evoke the Roaring Twenties. The top 300,000 Americans enjoyed almost as much income as the bottom 150 million Americans, per IRS data from 2006. Individually, they received 440 times as much as the average Joe in the bottom half, nearly doubling the gap back in 1980.
So making health care affordable for the great majority of Americans might just begin to redress the balance, narrow the gap, bring the class warriors perched atop the hierarchy into view from below.
Sadly, it won‘t happen, not this year.
Oh, President Obama may get a bill that tidies the mess, but nothing more. While the cliché says money “talks,” it really shouts in our democracy, buys public office, enacts laws or aborts them.
We’ll never get money out of politics, but we can turn down the volume. If and when we do, we may get real health care reform. Not before.
As the Obama administration and the Congress approach consensus on a health care reform, they must agree on how to pay for it. Of course, the political right, protective of the status quo rages against taxes. And many liberals, afraid to rile the electorate, won’t defend them.
As Heath Haussamen reported here May 29, Alan Woodruff, a Libertarian candidate for Congress, has filed a federal lawsuit aimed at erasing New Mexico regulations that make it difficult for minor parties to get on the ballot. And the Greens were party to the challenge. Good for them.
“The spirit of liberty,” said Judge Learned Hand (1872 – 1961), “is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the minds of other men and women.” What put me in mind of his wisdom is the instant feedback afforded by Web publications, including the New Mexico Independent.
The Albuquerque Journal’s headlines regularly carry a political slant; it’s as if management keeps a righty curve-baller warm in the bullpen.
What the White House means by health care “reform” is murky but seems to exclude government insurance for all. Like the Richardson regime in New Mexico, the Obama administration hears the insurance industry loud and clear, but arguments for single-payer, faintly.
It is reassuring to read political commentary with which I agree and watch cable TV pundits whose biases I share. Reassurance, however, can be a tender trap; conversely, challenges educate.
Ex-New Mexico Gov. Dave Cargo, a Republican, knew what I was calling about before I uttered a word. His party had lost another Northeastern Senator — Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. “I used to go to Lincoln Day dinners,” Cargo told me. “Hell, now I think I’m at Jefferson Davis dinners.”
Situated between Old Town and the new “railroad” city that spawned our first fortunes, the Albuquerque Country Club is old money. Perhaps because there’s less of it now, club members last week invited one of their own — uniquely qualified in business, finance and government — to explore the financial crisis over lunch.
What’s the country for? Forgive me for pulling age, but the America I knew as a kid was not dedicated to the pursuit of individual wealth. It is today.
The political right should nominate Bernie Madoff, the crook, for sainthood. Moral stories take our eyes off systems. Speaking of morality (and with New Mexico’s own Manny Aragon in mind), it narrows us. That’s because it’s either-or. You are good or bad, with me or against me, loyal or traitorous, free marketer or socialist. Thus, morality makes cogitating and compassion unnecessary.
Instead of stories piercing the veil, we get sports results — Dow off 70, NASDAQ Composite down 53. There’s little context so when Thornburg Mortgage of Santa Fe goes bankrupt we may not understand why. Very often the language lends Wall Street a dignity that — as we’ve recently learned — defies reality.
As his appointment of numerous Wall Streeters signaled and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s remedies confirm, President Obama is no radical. Far from warring on corporate America, he’s co-opting it to pull us back from the precipice.
So why this sudden, “populist” outrage at the AIG bonuses? Perhaps some Americans have just realized the nature of Wall Street, but I suspect the loudest protestations come from folks who brought us disaster and prefer we forget their great achievements.
Reading Thomas Ricks’ new book about the surge made me feel ignorant at the start, but I was elated by the time I’d finished it — The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq – 2006-2008. Permit me to explain.
My parents, raised on horrific stories of the Old Country, never complained about paying taxes — small price for the privilege of having their kids grow up American. Of course, they assumed the progressive tax structure was fair; I doubt they knew the rich routinely cheat or that (as Leona Helmsley so perfectly explained) “only the little people pay taxes.”
Give Bobby Jindal credit for temerity; with Dick Cheney only weeks out of power, the Louisiana governor called for “ethical and transparent” government. Here not even Molly Ivins can make me smile.
