Raw Story has a preview of the hatchet job interview Katie Couric is doing with Valerie Plame on tomorrow night's 60 Minutes. In the interview, Plame confirms that she "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons." Nice work, Scooter. And Karl, and everyone else in the Administration who decided that petty revenge outweighed national security; and Tweety and Matt Cooper and Judith Miller and all the other media lapdogs who insisted on sucking up to this bunch of crooks for the last six years because having cocktail weenies with the president was more important than doing their fucking job and asking the right fucking questions. If I didn't know better, I'd say that the Bush Administration WANTED to foil the work Plame was doing so that they could have an excuse to bomb Iran. But then I'd have to believe that Bush really DID see himself as God's Anointed Architect of Armageddon, and was determined to have as many wars in the Middle East as it takes to bring it about....

Oh, yeah. I do believe that. Here's a preview (from Raw Story):



So, Ms. Pelosi...is impeachment still off the table? Who exactly is playing fast and loose with national security? I'll tell you who -- it's YOU -- as long as you insist on refusing to allow this bunch of lunatics and criminals in the White House to continue to control the reins of this country.

Labels: Iran, Valerie Plame

Somehow Moveon.org doesn't seem quite so out in left field anymore:

Despite hopes that the U.S. military "surge" in Iraq would encourage economic and political headway and sap the strength of the insurgency, very little lasting progress has been achieved, according to a new U.S. report.

The study, based on the assessments of dozens of U.S. military and civilian officials working at local levels across Iraq, runs counter to the optimistic forecasts by the top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It said that with the exception of Anbar province, there has been "little progress" toward political reconciliation, a key U.S. goal in Iraq.

Withdrawal of U.S. troops would produce "open battlegrounds of ethnic cleansing" in some Baghdad neighborhoods and elsewhere in Iraq, the report said.

In high-profile congressional hearings last month, Petraeus and Crocker testified that the addition of 28,000 American troops in Iraq, ordered last winter by President Bush, was reducing violence and providing opportunity for economic projects, government reform and political reconciliation.

The troop "surge" is temporary, with the first of the reinforcement units scheduled to leave Iraq before Christmas.

But instead of charting progress, the new report, by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, warns that Iraq "will require years of steady engagement" before there is significant progress in providing Iraqis with power and clean water, jobs, health resources and government that works.

"Iraq's complex and overlapping sectarian, political, and ethnic conflicts, as well as the difficult security situation, continue to hinder progress in promoting economic development, rule of law, and political reconciliation," the report cautioned.

And all of this could have been predicted before the war. All of this SHOULD have been predicted before the war. If I, no Middle East expert, knew that Sunni and Shi'a were going to be at each other's throats without a strongman keeping the violence at bay, it shouldn't have taken a genius at the Pentagon to see what the consequences would be.

And it shouldn't have been so difficult for Hillary Clinton -- and yes, John Edwards -- to figure out. Edwards has at least admitted he was wrong. Clinton defended her vote until just the last month or so. Now she would have us believe that SHE will end the war the day she takes office.

Fat chance. On both accounts.

Labels: Iraq

Good thing this wasn't revealed until months after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was published:

Harry Potter fans, the rumors are true: Albus Dumbledore, master wizard and Headmaster of Hogwarts, is gay.

J.K. Rowling, author of the mega-selling fantasy series that ended last summer, outed the beloved character Friday night while appearing before a full house at Carnegie Hall. After reading briefly from the final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," she took questions from audience members.

She was asked by one young fan whether Dumbledore finds "true love."

"Dumbledore is gay," the author responded to gasps and applause.

She then explained that Dumbledore was smitten with rival Gellert Grindelwald, whom he defeated long ago in a battle between good and bad wizards. "Falling in love can blind us to an extent," Rowling said of Dumbledore's feelings, adding that Dumbledore was "horribly, terribly let down."

Dumbledore's love, she observed, was his "great tragedy."

[snip]

Rowling told the audience that while working on the planned sixth Potter film, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," she spotted a reference in the script to a girl who once was of interest to Dumbledore. A note was duly passed to director David Yates, revealing the truth about her character.

Rowling, finishing a brief "Open Book Tour" of the United States, her first tour here since 2000, also said that she regarded her Potter books as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority."

Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.

Since there will be film versions of the remaining books, we'll be treated to a new version of the infamous Murphy Brown fracas, in which the Christofascist Zombie Brigade™ will get its collective knickers in a twist over a headmaster who's not only a wizard, but also gay! Oh, the humanity! Think of the CHILDREN!!! Then grab the popcorn. This is going to be fun.

After reading something like this, there's only one place to go: Pam's place, of course, where Ayesha has waded into the Freeper cesspool to see what the closet cases make of all this.

Labels: pop culture

On the day after the day that Bush stood in front of the press corps and threatened world war 3 as if it was a joke; as if it was some sort of sitcom he had just been watching in the oval office, the overwhelming feeling seems to be one of fatigue and disbelief... ho-hum, such nonsense, whatever....He isn't taken seriously and he is treated lately like the crazy uncle chained in the attic; which is something, I guess, after all these years. But in the wake of the SCHIP defeat and the kiddie swiftboating that has been going on, I've been again wringing my hands and wondering what country I'm living in. It seems to me that the real danger here is in not giving Bush enough weight...he talks, chuckles, guffaws, and we ignore him for the most part (is it possible that his eyes have grown closer together? Is Laura really living in a hotel? Is he drunk? What meds could he possibly be on?)

But what is scary here is that he still wields enough power to make himself relevant at the expense, less of little blond children, than of countless inner city communities full of children who are suffering as I type this. You see, Bush is really FOR a program like SCHIP;
in that is he is for the Medicaid side of it if we could make the people poorer, and get rid of the Medicare side altogether.... because we wouldn't want to pass anything that might actually ensure that slightly less than dirt poor Americans might possibly ever lift themselves too far above the poverty line. The swiftboating of the Frosts points to the chilling reality that the middle class are indeed in the cross hairs of this administration.

It wouldn't do to open the door a crack to allowing the struggling middle class who might maybe own a house, to hang onto it if they fall into illness. The outrage over a family that makes 50 grand per year and owns a house that has grown in value to be worth maybe a quarter of a mil...the outrage over them being offered a medical plan that they would have to buy into...the outrage over them not having to lose their house over a medical catastrophe that would crush most families, is insane! When did that part of the American Dream become something that we should be MAD at our fellow citizens about?

This is why I could never be a politician. When the crazy idea comes up that maybe some of the health insurance is going to poor adults, and maybe its wasted somehow in that way, I just think "so?...and the pallets of money in Iraq? How many years would it take a state to waste that amount of money?"
This argument about how poor is poor enough is so crazy because what they are talking about is poor...really poor...and if anyone thinks that a welfare payment of $300 per month for a kid goes far...well, the real world is out there if you just leave your delusion for a while and take a walk....
I may live in one of the most expensive counties in the country, but even the people in the cheapest have to start to realize that 50 grand is just not a whole hell of alot for a family of 4 anywhere, and to allow the tone to be set by mega millionaires who want to squeeze every struggling American out of basic necessities while they wave from their limousines, is like walking off a cliff with the rest of the lemmings. S\See, this is where we are supposed to turn on eachother and argue about how much 50 grand per year is, and if its OK to own a house that is worth a quarter mil and still participate in government programs that might be deemed "socialist" (like our army, by the way and many other services in this country.)
Lets get it straight: 1 million dollars in the bank...cash...invested safely, throws off 40 grand per year. That is probably taxable income...so in order to be "rich" you would have to have investments worth many millions of dollars. In order to even run a mansion or a boat or whatever the lotto dream is today, you would have to have alot of money. The taxes and upkeep alone are more than a million in the bank could support.

A house worth $250,000, doesn't pay the bills unless you rent it out and rent another place for your family to live...and if you need catastrophic care like the Frosts did, its not even a drop in the bucket. The state generally would have a medicaid case spend down their assets until they had something like a few thousand dollars worth of possessions, and then they would kick in. So a family like that would lose everything, and maybe end up homeless or a struggling burden on society. So even in a cold dollars and cents way, it cuts costs to offer programs like SCHIP.

We are in a big bucks economy here, and the kind of money that the people who are running this thing have is massive. So, as you are being manipulated into looking at your neighbor and squabbling over who is a true patriot and who is some sorta commie, get it straight that the highways, police, military, and just about every other public service, could be deemed "socialist," and a certain level of "socialism" is an integral part of any democratic society that is going to function. We have seen a little bit of what deregulation and privatization does, and it clearly doesn't work. So, lets just cut to the quick of this thing and get real about what it means.
There are some necessary services that should be funded by our tax dollars. If you look at the dollars and cents of government run medical services vs. private insurance,there is no comparison. If this were a low bid contract, the government way would win out...but it doesn't seem like the government gets to bid in these matters....


(h/t to Think Progress for this YouTube)


The criticism against families like this seems to be that they should have planned better. They should've had to go out and find insurance on the open market because otherwise the taxpayer is paying for their insurance and maybe they are stealing from the system. Because the insurance business is best run by the unregulated insurance corporations and not the government, which might demand, at sometime in the far, distant future, some accountability or regulation. Because a country set up to give a leg up to families on the brink or right over the line on their way at a slightly upward angle towards the Dream, might be construed as socialist! Because if things change significantly the insurance and drug companies might not be able to keep or renegotiate their cushy deals.


Part 2.... Its Better Than Nothing:

Well, its not always that easy. I live in a state that offers mandatory children's health care, and I am someone who prices into the maximum premium; which is coincidentally roughly double what I used to pay for private insurance in this town, before one large corporation (Conseco) bought up all of the small insurers and proceeded to shut them down in favor of offering only corporate insurance policies. The state mandates that any insurance company left that carries private insurance must write a policy for us regardless of pre-existing conditions, as long as there is no lapse in coverage, but it does not mandate what they can charge for it. It also does not mandate what type of policies are offered....so, welcome to the world of the most strict and archaic HMO's and PPO's ever designed. Just the coverage books alone are daunting and so difficult to understand that its scary to think of giving up the devil that you know in favor of the unknown in the private, private, sector that is unregulated...and that can and will change regularly....I know because Ive had my insurance switched around at the drop of a hat and Ive also lost it suddenly.

The big question is this: Is it preferable to us as tax payers to have the Frost family have lost their house and ended up on welfare with all sorts of far reaching problems, or is it preferable to offer a little support before the big tragedy...with the full knowledge that not everyone will have a catastrophic accident or disease? Do we want to do preventative work or should we live in the fantasy that everyone should be able to provide somewhat for their families regardless of their background and should also be able to benefit from the system that they pay into.
The one thing that privatized mandatory health care does well is to cover the catastrophic, and ultimately, that saves alot of people from disaster. There is so much more that is necessary, because disaster comes in many forms, but at least we can realize that in the Frost's case, this thing WORKED!! Was it a handout? No! Should they be vilified for telling their story? No!
Do we not fucking want to know from our neighbors what is going on? Are we not supposed to compare notes from state to state to try to find what is best for all of us and to avoid the pitfalls that have ruined the lives of others? It seems like the voices that have screamed the loudest and shown the most venom are again the ones who want to shut down discourse with this "loose lips sink ships" mentality that somehow sends the message that we are not supporting the troops or looking for Bin Laden if we talk about not what we can expect from the system that we pay into..and the system that is really OUR system. It works for US...it belongs to us....right?

We have seen over and over that what we are creating is a permanent underclass that does not want to be where they are, but often not only sees no way out, but knows no other way to exist. The operative function here is fear, and the advertising gurus who toiled for those many years under Karl Rove have worked hard to expand and exploit the fear base. That fear costs more money than any imperfect SCHIP plan, and its shortsighted...unless the government WANTS it that way. Its the devil you know as opposed to the boldness of America and taking a chance on a better life. Its what happens when you are told over and over that you have too much and all that is left is to protect it, because surely any movement will endanger everything you've ever known...the mushroom cloud, WW3...ho hum...but it reverberates in the lower and immigrant classes where not only most of the soldiers come from, but where many, many of the people have actually seen real poverty and death and war.

Pt 3...I Am Guilty...We Are All Guilty...

How does the insurance industry work? Not everyone uses more than they have paid into the system; which makes sense and can be a good model...That is, until the insurance company goes public and suddenly the company's first responsibility is to the stockholders and being able to pay big bucks to the top executives. What follows is the downward spiral of ethics and medicine vs. the bottom line. That is the story of these certain Americans who are way too wealthy to be eligible for SCHIP, right? They are a huge liability going forward for any insurance company, and if they didn't have this service they not only would have lost everything to save their kids, but they would have been uninsurable later on. And I would like to see any of the critics out there try to live on 50 grand per year in that town, much less 80 grand in this town!


Politically speaking, I understand compromise in the bigger sense, and I understand partial victories. I am one of the first to gather in and hang onto any little bit of goodness that wafts off of that DC garbage dump. But the problem for me is that in order to block the struggling lower-middle and middle class Americans out there from getting what is being talked about on the right as if its a handout, the really poor of this country get the shaft totally. Whats the harm in the possibility that a tiny segment of a struggling class might get a little bit more than the absolute minimum that society can offer? Its OK to throw cash at any private enterprise that is fighting our war with private security guards; Pallets of cash....Its OK to destroy and rebuild an entire country and plan war after war...its OK to hand out no-bid contracts left and right and then rebuild the flawed structures built by unregulated business...but its not OK to allow an American family to buy affordable insurance that is overseen somehow by the government, and that might prevent them from struggling quite as hard? Everything should be as hard as possible for those people because...? Why? Both parents should work because...? Why? Because my tax dollars shouldn't go towards someone else's comfort?

How about our tax dollars going towards us , for once, making long term plans and looking at what becomes of our society when a huge portion of it struggles. Do we want to have programs and education or do we want to have chronic illness, chronic poverty, chronic lack of education and skills, and the ongoing problems that come with those things, such as huge prison populations, teen pregnancy, and the feelings of helplessness and hopelessness that comes along with the knowledge that you are never getting out of debt, and your kids are on their own when it comes to college.

We have a generation of kids who have two parents struggling to make ends meet; who own nothing but debt; and who's kids, in the best case scenario, end up wandering in the afternoons. Lessons, and the minivan Mom being around for homework and interaction of the sort that the family values people espouse, are more and more reserved for the rich, as the middle class falls between the cracks. And I would slide right down with them if I did not have family help with medical bills and education and the like. I can only keep thinking, "what do other people do in this situation? What do poor people who cant speak English do?" Because I can say that my experience, in my family and in helping others, is that its a full time job to deal with illness, chronic or catastrophic, to deal with poverty and the walls put up to prevent people from getting services, to deal with getting approvals for the basic things that you need to stay alive, and to try to be a person with some pride in whatever they have scraped together, keep a house and a job that pays nothing, raise kids, and try to unravel the impossible maze of insurance in this country. So many people just don't...and then its too late.

It seems to me that whether or not one supports programs that help the poor or disabled, they are somewhat necessary unless we want to go back to a draconian system of orphanages and people dying in the streets. I would like to know what the alternative plan is on the right? Privatization has not worked, regardless of what the talking points are. The numbers bear it out that privatization has failed. And to talk to those who say stoically that government waste is the big problem...well, I guess that you could accuse this administration of that, but you've got to point out that one program that actually does work well is Medicare, and that even though the rates paid are not as high as some private insurance companies, they do pay the providers pretty easily. Providers actually TAKE Medicare with little problem because of that; getting a payment is half the battle in this thing. It boggles the mind that one of the first big "problems" to fix that the right brought out in this administration was the supposed "failure" of Medicare.

They then bent over backwards to mandate the insane Medicare part D, which began as a failure in its strange design that required phone banks of customer representatives to direct patients to the proper plans...and then plans proceeded to change their rules. The old and infirm had to hold on for a representative for over an hour in those final weeks before "fines" were going to be levied if a plan wasn't chosen....and then the details were so strange and intricate, that the plan would have to be selected according to the drug, (oh, and the prices of the drugs were and are non negotiable, so the government is mandating a program that pays top price for bulk supplies of drugs to big pharma,) and then the cost. The lower priced plans obviously offered less drug availability and more of the downside, such as the insane "donut hole." Who designed this thing? There is no way that anyone could have seriously sat down and designed that as a workable plan for real people. The reality of it is like some sort of pot induced bullshit session about what would be the WORST plan ever for the old and disabled!

Medicare D is constantly adjusting in that the insurance companies participating in that big kickback have been allowed to change their terms, which drugs they cover , and what their premiums are. I personally know of one Medicare D insurance company, Humana, that was sold as a premium company which charged more in order to guarantee its subscribers that they would not have a "donut hole." Well, at the end of the first year of the program, Humana informed its subscribers that they had made a mistake in that they need the donut hole in order to be...er...profitable or to break even...?... and going forward there would be a donut hole. Not only that, but the premiums were going up and also the drugs covered would be changing...ha!
But what if there was a loss in the beginning of this thing and the companies that took the chance had to just eat it as part of an investment in the future of making the thing work? Isn't that the way things used to be done in new ventures? You get a chance to be one of the few companies allowed to provide this special insurance, but maybe you lose or break even in the first year or two in advance of profits...right? Why is it that in the face of a program that is a failure from the start, the failure part of it is shifted to the people it supposedly serves as opposed to the huge corporations, which could write the failure off anyway or the government that mandated it. Medicare D is also only a part of what the company does. So how is the "failure" figured anyway? Is there any regulation on any level of this thing? Is there anyone to even look at it?

The donut hole causes seniors and the disabled to suddenly find that their regular prescriptions cost as much as a couple of grand a month. One week they go into the pharmacy and the bill is HUGE...and it remains huge until another amount of out of pocket expense has been met. My friends at the local pharmacy have told me of people paying thousands for necessary drugs....which might get them out of the donut hole faster, but it might also make them not eat for that month! I know of people who have gone without medication lately because they were surviving on doctor's samples and ran out. I know people who have missed work because of illness caused by not taking their medicine. And I know of people who have ended up in the hospital on the state's dime...that's you and me....because of no preventative care and not enough money for medications for things like blood pressure.

Extrapolate that situation out to children who have become orphaned because of this...children who lose their home and end up wandering the system...the overburdened system that cant possibly handle everyone, and especially not the ones who are doing seemingly OK. Extrapolate that out to teen pregnancy and prison time. I could cite studies, but I'm tired of the war of studies. I know how these things are done, and what they control for. And I know what first hand experience and logic shows, along with the literature. If you don't spend some money in preventative care on every level, socialist or not, the cost to the society is going to be much larger than any privatized bullshit program could have imagined. And the real rub here is that the private companies can easily go out of business...but the government can't.


[Pete Stark on SCHIP]

Pt 4. What Does This Mean in the Real World?

This is mostly the middle class and senior side of these things and that is almost necessary to understand what goes on for the really poor folks in this country. Ive been lucky enough to have a muted view into what really goes on and what its like for the people who have been, as Liza says at Culture Kitchen, thrown under the bus this time round, and I have to constantly apply that to "real" inner cities like they have in NYC and LA; our inner city here is so much better than what I grew up around.


The people who have to wait during the big government argument about how to help the people who are just scraping by, are the people who are not scraping by, and who have no way out.
First, as some sort of background, I should say that as a white, articulate, writer, I have been able to wage an ongoing fight against the system here in Connecticut, which is one of the few states to supposedly cover all of its children with health insurance.

This is, after all, the state helmed by the likes of Joementum Lieberman, (late of the CT For LIEberman Party, newly again a Democrat,) and Chris Shays, (with his nose still brown and stinky from climbing up the ass of the Blackwater witnesses, not to mention his ongoing support of the war, except for in the weeks before an election, and his many, many trips to Iraq with his good friend Joe...way to go Chris...oh, and bye bye next cycle boys!) who never hesitate to pat themselves on the back and blow their own horns in their wonderful foresight in covering all kids...etc, etc, etc.....Beyond that I'd really like to know what Senator Dodd thinks about this. Shays just denies that it is possible that this information is correct...but it is my personal experience, and he is going to have a much harder time dismissing me than he does dismissing people with no voice. This is what Shays does: He treats every complaint or argument as a very strange and interesting atypical situation, in his experience. He then, in his quiet voice, earnestly says to call (insert woman's name here) at his office, and turns to one of his aides and says "give then the private line" and then the complaint is GONE. This is a good way to derail dissent in a townhall meeting situation, but it doesn't address the systemic flaws that abound in his shiny, shiny ornament of a kid's health plan. I have no doubt that individual problems can be solved with a call from Shay's office, but I also think that its not happening very often. His town halls tend to be in places where the inner city folks cant reach because of bus service...or its in the government center during work hours. This is just what Ive noticed...who knows if its planned...but when I stand up in a meeting and I see only older white faces, its hard to address problems with the state's kid's health care plan.

CT's Husky plan is one that directs all business to 3 or 4 private insurance companies, run by the likes of Healthnet and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of CT. Yeah, its a huge kickback in no uncertain terms because the state pays for anyone making less than something like $24,000 per year (which in southern CT is the extremely low 200% of poverty or whatever their rule of thumb is, and then the rest of us are charged according to our incomes with a maximum of $221 per month, per kid.

After being forced onto the Husky program, my son almost got kicked out of his long time pediatric practice because they, like just about all other southern CT practices, had closed their boards to the Husky kids. Fortunately, Will had gone to nursery school with the kid of the senior doctor there, and we still see each other at social events and have common friends, so he had a partner's meeting and they allowed us to join the boards retroactively. This is the practice that we had been with for his whole life!! I was first told by the doctor to go and get a job with health insurance... to which I answered : Ha Ha!! I don't even know if the hospital jobs in this town offer health coverage anymore, but that must be some kinda joke. What would that sort of a statement sound like to an immigrant who is trying to get by and doesn't want to make waves?

They have passed a law in CT saying that as long as your insurance hasn't lapsed that insurance companies cant turn you down for insurance. But that doesn't mean that they cant sell you the worst HMO plan with the highest premium. I think that the last time I looked it was going to be something like a grand a month to cover us both. Will has a hereditary joint problem which caused his tendons to remain short after he began toddling, and over the years it became clear that he needed an operation to lengthen them. For some reason the physiatrist at the clinic , who we were compelled to see for this rather than an orthopedic specialist, kept him in PT and leg braces for a couple of years with little result. I questioned and questioned, as I had done since he was just past toddler stage and his heels hadn't gone down to the floor. Finally, the physical therapist told me that I had to take him to a surgeon and gave me a name.

The Husky program has NO orthepedic surgeons in southern CT who participate, (not even in the clinic,) nor do they have any in Manhattan, which is very close to us. So we went to a surgeon at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital who is very well known and was also very kind and flexible with us upon learning that we were paying cash for the consult, due to the fact that I was tired of waiting six months to get an approval. ( We had just lived through the hell of waiting for a dermatologist approval that caused a plantar wart on his foot to grow into a real problem.) The doctor was willing to personally take whatever his office could negotiate for the operation and his office would take care of the hospital approval and the rest.

Thus began 1.5 years of craziness in trying to get the negotiations and approvals done. Neither the doctor's insurance office nor the hospital's insurance office were up to the task of getting an approval from this arm of Blue Cross and Blue Shield. I dealt with them extensively and I let them know that it was clear to me from my past and current dealings with Blue Cross and Blue Shield's other plans, that this was a set up. I know that they are not that inept, and some decision has been made to force their policy holders to jump through hoops to get anything.

Besides the surgery being canceled on the night before it was scheduled, because the hospital still hadn't gotten a confirmation number from the Blue Care people, and then reinstated in a few days, after the surgeon agreed to come in especially to operate on Will on a Friday that he was scheduled to go away...and finally, having finished the surgery, the doctor told me that Will was the oldest patient that he had ever done this surgery on. That it was supposed to be done years earlier and that he was glad that we didn't have to wait longer. Will had no calluses on his hells and his heels were half the width that they were supposed to be for his size. His tendons were so short that they were in danger of snapping if he had any sort of sports injury...and Will had gotten not only a black belt in Shaolin Kempo on his toes, but he had played LaCrosse that year for the first time on the school team...on his toes.

The doctor then sent us off with Will in double casts, which he had to wear for the summer. When they came off he was so weak that he had to go to physical therapy every day in order to walk properly. What was not lost on me was that if he had done this during the window that it is supposed ot be done, I would have had a much easier time in lifting him and caring for him...it was not easy; he is a very big kid...bigger than me already now at 13 years old and expected to be 6'4" by the time this growing thing is over.

It might sound like I was joking if I said that the hospital was still billing me for the use of the operating room 18 months later, but apparently it would have been OK to do the surgery on the kitchen table as far as the insurance company was concerned. They never properly approved the hospital room.

The point of all of telling stories is one of relativity of situations. I can talk and reason about this thing from my point of view without fear of retribution from the insurance company in any way...and as busy as I am, I know my rights. I already passed on suing them because I was caring for a big boy in double casts and immediately was also dealing with an elderly grandfather, and the rest of the craziness of life. It wasn't worth the time to engage in something so flawed....and its law...would I even have a case if I sued because bureaucracy caused my son not to get treatment until it was almost too late?

It shouldn't be so hard for us to get care...And now, we pay cash for Will's psychological care and just about everything outside of prescriptions and basic pediatric care. He has pneumonia currently so I've had an office visit and a prescription refill for $11, in a month that actually cost us $221 for our premium, plus $600 for therapy, plus $500 for Psychiatry, plus the additional prescriptions, and besides the antibiotics today...and I don't think I can even go into the other medical bills this month that were not covered... The thing is that I know people who would not even get the kind of care that we have fought for, nor would they try. And an inner city child with this problem could easily end up crippled. If it had not been for the saintly PT who became my friend along the way and talked ot me at great length about all sorts of things; if it had not been for her goign outside of the lines and recommending against what the clinic Drs were saying, he would still be on his toes or in painful leg braces, trying to stretch out tendons that were long past stretching.

The same system that serves poor kids in the public school, served William during most of his leg problems, and the therapists there were unable to help him unless the problem got in the way of his school work. In other words, if it had been his hands, and if he had not been able to write, he would have had OT and PT for that. If the school had stairs they would have addressed his legs a bit more. For the most part their hands were/are tied.

No specialists or regular doctors outside of clinics take this insurance, and many more are jumping off the rolls. Our current pediatrician runs the largest pediatrics practice in the area with 8 or 9 other doctors and alot of patients. They participate in the hospital clinic on a rotating basis like everyone, and they have done their part for the community. I guess that it was the amount of work to get the compensation and the levels of compensation they get that caused them recently to cease to accept the insurance altogether, even from those who had been grandfathered onto the boards previously. Apparently around 5-10 patients were kept as personal friends of the practice and one of those was US. The secretary, (who I know because she used to work at my vet's office,) told me in a whisper, that patients left in droves. I didn't even know this had gone on.

Why not use the clinics? Well, in a system that touts being able to choose your own doctor it is a little disconcerting to sit on line for an hour or two with spitty babies to get to see a doctor not of my choosing...I have seen many doctors in my life and they are not all good or even passable, and when you are dealing with surgery and the psychological and physical well-being of your child, you would like to know who you are seeing. I have heard stories of the city clinic in this town making mistakes with tests....important tests...enough said...
The few private doctors that are taking Husky and serving the immigrant community...well, lets say that the one who's office I have frequented most recently keeps a pretty dirty place, and is so busy with the overflow of kids who have been thrown out of the other private practices lately, that he doesn't seem to have the help to even put water in the fish tank or have the waiting room cleaned. This doctor is fine for school physicals but when I questioned him about Lyme disease which is at an all time high around here, he knew little about the basic testing procedure and its flaws. I find him to be basically intelligent and he was open about the high false negatives of the Elisa test, but I would definitely want a second opinion on anything important. He is definitely someone who has to put off important issues and concerns because of parent's financial considerations. He can list off what is covered by Husky and which private plan is the best to be on through Husky. He is pretty good at picking what is the most pressing, but why should he have to? He prescribes from their formulary and chooses the tests that they suggest. I dont think that is good, and I've never met a doctor who operates that way.

This area has a cost of living that approaches Palm Beach, and yet the Husky program won't adjust the customary rates for doctors who are paying much more for rent and malpractice insurance. Nor will they adjust their purposeful bureaucracy, which a child could see is created to make the patient give up trying to get care or trying to get reimbursement. The few who take it are overrun by kids, have long lines, are burned out, and cant possibly process all the paperwork that is necessary to keep accepting this plan. And yet they do, because someone has to serve these children besides the emergency room.

So how does this situation effect an immigrant family?
Well, let me add also that the forms are so complicated in order to get and remain ON the Husky program, that they send a step by step instruction manual. I have a college degree, I research and write on politics regularly, and I was previously a film coordinator and producer, and even I have to use the instructions and sometimes call the 800 number to fill out this crap because it is written so poorly and is so daunting. In fact, the social workers at all of the cities agencies have to take a CLASS in how to fill in the forms for this program....

I pay the maximum premium, and I still have to prove, and then prove again, my qualifications to pay that maximum...OK...apparently that is in case I ever make less and want to try to pay less...huh? Remember, no child can be turned down...but if money were no object, one would surely buy really good insurance that their doctors actually take and that doesn't take up all of their time. Why would anyone with money or good insurance choose this? The government would have to offer a plan so sterling, so wonderful, that people would give up what they have in favor of it, and short of offering all Americans what is offered to congress and the senate...and/or Medicare...I cant imagine that there is something coming down the pike that would budge busy Americans from where they are.

The idiots who say that if there were more insurance and good health care available it would be used more, are dead wrong. Rather, I've found that people are working so hard that they hardly have time for the well visits required to put their children into daycare or school. I see people putting off basic care all the time because of lack of time. The only people who I see going to the doctor regularly are the very old or the disabled....and those populations should go to the dr. all the time...on Medicare!

Here is an example from right now, today: I filled out the daunting forms to help a non English speaking single mom get the Husky program. They claim to have sent her a letter requesting further documentation. In Huskyland that means that they want the original of your child's birth certificate, your marriage or divorce decree, proof of your earnings, and your green card or citizenship papers; The originals...brought in person to social services. The letter was lost somewhere in the children messing the house up and the mother working all the time and she was very confused about what they wanted and if they were going to TAKE HER PAPERS AWAY. So, rather than deal with it, the Mom let it slide. I urged her over and over to call and ask for what information they needed, assuring her that I could bring the items to them and then bring them right back.

Finally, after I gave her a carefully written step by step note on what to say, she called from work. She then called me and said that she has been unable to reach the Husky people all day and that when she did, and asked for an interpreter as I had instructed her, the interpreter just referred her to a social services office, but didn't explain why. The number they gave had no answer or voice mail. She called and called and finally got through...at which point, or shortly thereafter, I got a call from a nasty, exasperated social services worker, who was telling me that the application no longer exists because the woman had not responded within the two week time frame, and that she had called and left messages....as I explained that the woman is working all the time and has to take time off to make all of these calls. She was very nasty and said that the woman would have to refill out an application and start again. I said that I had a copy...oh, a copy?? Well, then I just have to get her to sign and date it again.

I asked her to list for me again the things that need to be brought to social services. To which, she sighed a long sign and said, in a totally exasperated voice, birth certificate for the child, original...proof of income through original paystub or letter from employer (and when I said that there was no paystub but that she was being paid by check, the nasty said,"oh, so she is working illegally??"...NO, of course not! But if you said that to any one who was already nervous about their life and having to prove who they are over and over...well...)....divorce decree and information on the father...But he is out of the country and has no telephone; it doesn't matter...(I know this story...then you have to get a notarized affidavit stating that fact, which sounds more scary than the little letter that you get notarized at the bank is.) They need to know who the father is regardless of if he is on the moon or if they can collect any sort of support from him.

And does she have to bring the items personally? No. And who should I ask for? Well, this snotty girls is actually changing jobs so she wont be there anymore...actually she has missed many of the Mom's calls because she was in training for the new position. uh-huh.

As an aside, I knew that the snotty girl had left something out, but I just let it go. See, the first time she said green card or citizenship papers, original; she said it all really fast...but the time I was supposedly writing it down and going over it, she left it out.
So the Mom would normally take the morning off of work and go to the bank, where she has been unsuccessful in getting a bank account because her green card and her DMV ID dont match, because she is using the name of one of the other father's of her kids...whatever...and they need more ID to take her money and make an account. So, going to the bank to notarize the affidavit letter that I will instruct her to write is probably out of the question, because you have to have an account with the bank to get things notarized for free. So she will have to go to the check cashing place and pay a premium. Then she will have to go to the social services with her papers...but she will find that the snotty girl on the phone didn't tell her to bring the citizenship papers, so she will not be able to complete this mission. It will be a week until she can try again.

That is why I am going to copy the forms, have her re-sign and re-date them, gather the pieces of her existence, and bring them over for her. Because the snotty girls who mess with me have another thing coming, even though Ive found more and more that there is a feeling, even in social services, that they have all the power and that the security of the country is in their hands...which gives them a real attitude problem. Truthfully, there is some bad blood between different groups of African Americans and also within their groups, who is a church goer and who is not, and the bloods vs. some Haitian gang, and the Spanish speaking population from anywhere, (who have quickly become the majority of the minority.) And then the hateful attitude encouraged at the desks by bad management, mixes in a bad way with the prying into of the lives and the original copies of these American's documents, be they permanent residents or full citizens, and the tension between the different groups of neighbors there, to create a situation where many people just walk away. They are waiting for a long time to get basic care and aid...most of them work and pay taxes...and they are struggling. I guess that they can still get emergency room care on an anonymous basis. The ones who walk away might be ignoring serious medical problems. And even the cruelest of conservatives can see that people who don't take their medication or see a doctor, stand a risk of costing the economy much, much more in the long run.

So imagine that you work crushing hours for less than minimum wage and you barely scrape by with kids to care for and a household to keep. Imagine that you apply and apply for help and your applications go unanswered, either because you're too damned busy to cover everything or because the snotty girl sets the stage for failure. Imagine that you come home on the weekend and have a room full of laundry to do, and a house to clean, and marketing to do...kids to nurture, paperwork to fill out, and bills to pay. Imagine that one or more kids are in trouble at school and that you're expected for a school event or to see the principal because someone is in trouble, someone is sick, and you can just never get ahead. Then, here comes the neocons who are literally trying to kill you because you're poor and you use the system, which should not exist or should be private...and look how well the privitized system works; especially in conjunction with the government systems that are trying to prove who people are and if they are here legally.

What will you do? When do you get a break? What about your poor family back in the old country who are begging for money all the time? What about these people who say they want to help but keep asking for your papers?

I was told recently by a social worker that a certain client was not as dumb as he appeared. That he had been working the system for his whole life and that its important to be able to recognize that. This wasn't a welfare king, or even someone doing partially well. It was someone who seemed inept, trying to raise a family and navigate a system that is complicated to say the least. If in the last 20 or 30 years we have not created some sort of a savvy generation of poor in this country, then what have we created? My point is that we certainly can't hate the poor if they know the system that they live in. The system is what they do to survive, and its not designed to elevate anyone up and out of that spot.

So, the grand idea to reform welfare is just a failed theory...and let me say that as far as I can see on the ground in this microcosm of the country, it never worked. We have to decide what we want in this country. Not everyone is going to rise up from the ghetto to own a home and put their children through college. The opportunity should be there, but trying to force everyone out into the workplace creates empty homes and aimless children...and an army of fast food workers who can't afford anything more than they could when they were on the dole.
The reality of any large country could be that there are bound to be non-retired people who are permanently on the social services rolls. Maybe if we got real about that fact, we could move on to create programs for the kids to enable them to get out and have a chance. It could be that immigrating to a country, raising a family above poverty, and all upwards movement in a democratic society does not necessisarily apply only to the generation that we are faced with, but with multiple generations and a gradula progress. Blaming and limiting the entire family because the parent is unable to move with the speed that we have applied to the study of immigrants and poor people, does no good.

I am surrounded by people who want to work. But there are few jobs that make it worth upsetting the apple cart of Husky, housing, taxes, and childcare for. I also know people who fear letting their children out of their sight because of real dangers in the city, like shootings and muggings, not to mention the influence of other kids that they might not even know because they work all the time..

So, watch the societal costs roll out of these neighborhoods and watch the anger roll in from the middle class, who should be directing their anger upwards to the top earners who have tax breaks and every accounting trick onboard in the first place...The upper classes are only where they are thanks to this system, that allowed their parents and then them to stand on the shoulders of others in the hierarchy...and also to use the resources created by the pool formed by our tax dollars...So, should they pay back in according to how well they've done? Hell yes!! It is purely egotistical to claim to have made it to the top with no help....say what you will, but unless you fly, you have walked these streets, gone to these schools, for better or worse, and if you breathe this air, you have a part in this society...so do your part...more if you can.

The nature of what social services has become, in the rush to reform it, is to put a band aid on the problem and then to falsely try to help people move upwards towards the dream. The truth is that very few of the people living there now will be able to get out. If their children can, it will only be because of almost impossible diligence or finding a strong mentor to help them every step of the way. The truth is that the American Dream for many immigrants is not that they will rise from poverty, but that their children will have a shot.

If we were realistic and if the powers that be in this farce really wanted to do away with poverty, we would accept people as they are, and try to help those who we are able to help. But that takes money and manpower and programs and the kind of society that we don't have anymore...and I expect that we won't have it again unless and until we suffer another huge disaster like the great Depression that leaves Americans on the side of the road. Its a crime that we need to see dead children before we take action...and who knows if that even works anymore, because the dead Iraqi children on every newspaper don't seem to make a dent.

We are all Americans, all colors, all languages, in this melting pot of insanity...How is it supposed to work out in the end? How did the framers foresee it? Its an ongoing experiment...but its painfully clear from where I stand, that the cards are stacked against certain portions of the population...and we can debate endlessly about the new underclass to be: the middle class, and by what bar they should be measured for services, but we've got to keep in mind that every time we table a bill that could help with programs and systems for kids who don't even have the pain in the ass of having to live through the bureaucracy and kickback laden crap that any health care coming out of this government is going to be, we stop the really poor kids from getting any care at all, besides emergency care, which costs us all alot more than we ever would bargain for in dollars and cents but costs the most in the loss of our very identity as human beings and as Americans.

WW3..?...It seems to me that the real WW3 is the class war being waged on normal Americans, and the devastating changes happening through out the world due to our aggressive form of globalism , looking for an ever cheaper workforce and then pulling up stakes and moving on.
The reasons to be afraid of the Bush Administration have more to do with the looting of the entire global social infrastructure for the gain of big business and cronyism ...and for the denial of basic services and the rights of every person to the basic necessities of health care, housing and food....WW3 is less about a mushroom cloud than about the war on people.


[Olbermann on Stark and Frosts and SCHIP]



[Bush warns of WW3]



Crossposted from RIPCoco

Labels: health care, insurance industry, World War III, You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you

I haven't really followed the whole Ellen DeGeneres/dog story. I try to make a habit of avoiding tabloid stories whenever possible because it only encourages them. I have a loose policy of "No tabloid figures" on this blog, because the attention given to whether Britney gets custody, or whether Amy Winehouse is on drugs again, unless they can be tied to some larger current issue, are better left to the TMZs and the Perez Hiltons of the world, and besides, they are much better at it than I am.

But since I've been on both sides of the pet adoption issue, and after reading Heather Havrilesky's self-justifying critique of animal rescue groups, I thought I'd weigh in on what the real issue is: the responsibility of pet adopters and the responsibility of the rescue groups.

In the 1980's, I volunteered every Saturday at the Bergen County Animal Shelter through its associated volunteer arm. Every weekend we'd see families with crying kids as the parents led in terrified dogs, giving them up because "he dirties up in the house" or "he barks" or "the landlord won't let us keep him" or "we're going to have a baby" or "we don't have time for him." I always wondered what these crying children thought about their busy parents taking their beloved dog to the pound because they take too much time, and whether they wondered when they too would be shuffled off.

Sometimes the animal control guys would bring in a dog that had been found wandering on Route 17 -- dropped off on a highway by people who thought it was more humane to abandon a dog by the side of the road than to take it to a shelter where it might be euthanized -- or because they could delude themselves that some nice person would pick the dog up and give him a good home.

We'd also see people returning pets they'd adopted: "He's too scared." "My husband doesn't like him." "The kids are allergic." When we went through the few minutes of training required at the time, we were told that a family looking for a dog where the parent said to the kids, "Now remember, he's YOUR responsibility" was a giant red flag.

Because animal shelter volunteers are exposed to the irresponsibility, cruelty, and just plain stupidity of people every day, they do, after a while, start to assume that everyone is an idiot and no home is good enough. When you're a volunteer and you reach that point, it's time to take a break. I have a friend who after her second miscarriage years ago decided she wanted to adopt a dog. She went to the shelter and filled out the application. She had a full-time job, but her husband worked locally and came home for lunch every day. But because there wasn't someone at home all day, her adoption was denied. Although I no longer worked at the shelter, I knew the volunteer who denied her adoption, and yes, she was LONG past the point at which it's time to step away. The postscript to the story is that my friend ended up going to a pet shop and buying a puppy. I never knew if the three-year-old dog she'd been trying to adopt ever found a home. I didn't want to know.

I've been lucky with pet adoptions. It helps that we adopt cats, where housebreaking is not an issue. It also helps that I have shelter experience as well as a track record of pet ownership. I know that when you adopt a pet, or even if you buy one from a reputable breeder, the agreement always states that if for some reason you cannot keep the animal, you must return it. I think this is a reasonable policy. It protects both those who care about shelter pets and those who adopt. It gives the adopter an escape clause in case for some very good reason the adoption just doesn't work out. Shelter volunteers may be overzealous at times, but all they want is to see the animals in their care go to good homes. And when an adopter gives the pet to someone else, the shelter can't live up to its screening responsibility.

In this particular case, the smart thing would have been for the shelter to vet the family to whom the dog was given before simply yanking the dog away from them. But because everyone handled it badly is no reason to either drive people to pet stores where money talks and no questions are asked rather than go through the Spanish Inquisition in order to adopt a pet, or to call a well-meaning shelter with death threats. I also think it's incumbent on shelters to recognize when their volunteers are starting to go off the deep end and behaving in a manner that is not conducive to what the shelter's mission should be, which is placing animals on good homes -- and ask them to remove themselves for a while until they regain some perspective.

Labels: pets, tabloid journalism

Look at him at this Radio and Television Correspondents' Dinner from 2004:



"Those weapons of mass destruction have to be around here somewhere!"

Yup. That sure is a knee-slapper.

So perhaps the GOP out to get off its collective fainting couch about Pete Stark.

Labels: hypocrisy, Republicans

I love Tata when she's funny, but lately, like so many of us, Teh Rage is taking over. Go read what she has to say, here and here and here.

I've been talking with some other people lately about how we're all reaching outrage fatigue and wondering how much longer we can go on. As our Designated B@B Comedic Zen Master Marc Maron says, if you aren't angry you aren't paying attention. I'll keep on keeping on because I don't know how to do anything else. But when Tata, who can see Teh Funny in just about anything, does three straight posts of outrage, we are in SERIOUS trouble, folks.

Labels: bloggers, just another outrage

During the Clinton years, the wingnuts speculated that Bill Clinton would declare martial law and stay on past the 2000 election -- despite the fact that Bill Clinton had never once articulated any dictatorial ambitions -- unlike George W. Bush, who has repeatedly said he'd like to be a dictator.

Lost in the brouhaha surrounding Bush's Tuesday press conference, in which he invoked World War III, was this little tidbit:

Q Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment. He said recently that next year when he has to step down, according to the constitution, as President, he may become Prime Minister, in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there. Senator McCain --

THE PRESIDENT: I've been planning that myself. (Laughter.)

When a president repeatedly makes "jokes" about being a dictator, and about staying on when his term is over, isn't there a point at which it stops being laughworthy and becomes a statement of what he would really like to do?

Labels: dictatorship, George W. Bush

...and its name is Chris Dodd.

In a sea of Jay Rockefellera and Dianne Feinstein -- hacks who've forgotten for whom they work -- emerges the silver-haired lion, finding his roar to make a last, valiant stand for the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Telling Harry Reid to go suck an egg, Dodd has put a hold on the FISA bill.

Of course Reid, showing himself to be in the pockets of the telecommunications industry, promptly fought back for the interests of his true bosses:

Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate's surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That's despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure -- something first reported by Election Central's Greg Sargent.

The Senate intelligence committee is still marking up the bill behind closed doors, according to staffers. A joint statement from committee leaders Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Kit Bond (R-MO) will follow when the mark-up concludes, but that may not occur today.

For this we elected a Democratic Congress? Harry Reid just went around one of his own guys to make sure that the telecommunications companies get immunity for turning our telephone records over to George Bush and Dick Cheney without even questioning the requests' legality -- and to make sure that George Bush and Dick Cheney can continue mass spying on Americans for no good reason at all, without warrants, all in the name of "fighting terrorism."

The scariest part isn't even that Harry Reid has revealed that he's for sale; that's no surprise to me. The scariest part were the callers to Randi Rhodes yesterday invoking the "If you haven't done anything wrong you shouldn't mind the government having this information" meme. It was one thing when we were fresh off the horrors of 9/11, when most of us had never even conceived of an attack of this magnitude on the U.S. (even though the World Trade Center had been hit before without this kind of hysteria, because after all, that was just some bad shit that happened in Godless Communist Heathen Liberal Homosexual New York). But it's no small irony that the very people with the "Land of the free, Home of the Brave" ribbon magnets on their pickup trucks are still defecating in their pants in fear. Back in August, Sara Robinson had some insights into the dynamic of what draws people into conservative Christianity, but it applies equally to an conservative movement that professes to be the real adults, but in reality are five-year-olds looking for an authoritarian Daddy to keep them safe:

They join up because they feel overwhelmed by the complexity and nuance in the world. There's just too much to keep up with, too much responsibility, too much chaos. Often, they've been caught in the gears of the machinery of modernity, and have had large parts of their lives chewed up by the works. It all feels out of control. (Chris Hedges, in his new book American Fascism, describes how Christianist proselytizers are taught to seek out people going through hard times-- they're the hottest conversion prospects.)

Unfortunately, seeking this regression means giving up on quite a few of the most important attributes of adulthood. First, there's the intellectual sacrifice. There's a huge cognitive leap that occurs around the age of seven (it usually comes in right alongside reading fluency) that enables a far greater level of abstraction -- typically, at the expense of magical thinking, which drops off dramatically once kids learn to read. At this age, kids give up fantasy play and Santa Claus in favor of a more empirical approach to life, and more serious pursuits leading to the mastery of adult-world skills. Developmental psychologists call this leap "the age of reason."

Right-wing authoritarian (RWA) followers have little use for reason; but are very invested in their fantasy lives. They take myth and metaphor absolutely literally, because interpreting them requires a level of abstraction they aren't comfortable with. In other words: they are voluntarily choosing to operate at the intellectual processing level of a first-grader.

They also have to give up on adult-level emotional functioning (which, as I mentioned, may be welcomed as something of a relief after adult life has blown up under you a few times). Authoritarian followers crave someone who will keep things ordered and safe, someone who will provide and protect and set firm rules and boundaries; someone all-powerful and all-knowing who can teach you right from wrong and keep the harsh parts of the world at bay. Someone, in short, who looks like Daddy looked when you were about five years old.

The Constitution is there for a reason, and it is the fundamental basis of this country -- something Harry Reid doesn't seem to understand, blinded as he is by fear of being called bad names and in thrall to telecommunications cash.

Last night I sent money to Chris Dodd's campaign, because I think guts like this deserves to be rewarded, even if you're supporting other candidates. Obviously Barack Obama's people were concerned about Dodd roaring his way into the top tier, because Obama has now raised his hand and said "Me too." Predictably, the Kossacks who support Obama are elevating his following along once Dodd took the lead and put himself into a position to take the first metaphorical bullets, as some kind of Profile in Courage. But it's yet another example of Barack Obama's refusal to take a leadership role in anything that's controversial. He'll tag along when someone else makes it safe, but he's never at the forefront -- and that's why I'm not supporting his candidacy. Note also the silence of Hillary Clinton on this matter.

What Chris Dodd has done here is even more remarkable when you realize that this is a fourth-term Senator. He's been in Washington for twenty-four years and ought to be as big a hack as Reid has turned out to be. and yet he isn't. And in what he did yesterday he put every other Democrat in the Senate to shame.

Labels: Chris Dodd, Democrats with balls, leadership

I'm always a bit wary of making a list of Heroes in the fight against increasing the numbers of H-1B visas and Green Cards being issued. One must always contend with the possibility of Today's Hero becoming Tomorrow's Sellout.

One name that always keeps popping up in the "Heroes" category is Dino Perrotti from ComputerWorld. Yesterday, he came through again with his excellent article, "IEEE Betrays American Engineers and its Members".

Here's a brief synopsis of the issue. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) has consistently been working on behalf of its members to lower the number of visas issued to foreign technology workers. Last March, IEEE-USA (the political action arm of the organization) came up with this seemingly generous compromise, guaranteed to make people from both sides of the issue hold hands and skip down the path, smiling happily ever after. Instead of dealing with that pesky issue of H-1B visas, where low-wage workers are here today and gone tomorrow, why not issue more EB-4 and F-4 immigration visas, which would allow workers to start on the path towards U.S. citizenship, and therefore somehow level out the playing field for American workers?

As I read this March 20, 2007 article earlier today, (written by, of all people, Dino Perrotti), I rolled my eyes and thought "How could these people be so gullible?" I've been getting a steady diet of these "You don't like H-1B's? Let's issue Green Cards and keep the jobs in the US so they don't get offshored" articles for the last several months. I've interpreted each of these articles as exceedingly clumsy attempts to try to fool people into thinking that this path will magically lead to more jobs for American workers. However, a lot has happened since March. Who knows? If I was somehow transported by a time machine to seven months in the past, maybe I'd think it was a good idea.

Fast forward to October 11, 2007, when the IEEE-USA and the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) issued a joint letter to Congress that not only asked for higher limits for EB and F-4 visas, but also recommended that all graduates in the STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) be able to get their Green Cards as quickly as possible, without having to wait the usual 5-10 years! Excuse me, but, how is this supposed to help the American worker? Since American industry will not hire American engineers, they'll hire foreign workers instead, and their taxes will help pay for displaced American engineers to start their own landscaping businesses?

To Dino's credit, he is fighting mad! He doesn't sugarcoat anything in his article. Here's some interesting background on how all of this started:

Once all the engineers sat down for a pre-lobby meeting [in 2006], the chief lobbyist began explaining that what engineers should ask their representatives for is EB and F-4 visas instead of H-1B visas. EB and F-4 visas are a form of legal immigration for high-tech workers. Most engineers became upset and started to argue why they should ask for more green cards instead of asking for less H-1B guest workers. They argued that in both cases, American engineers are getting undercut by foreign labor.

Then the IEEE-USA lobbyist explained that legal immigration is better for American engineers because it takes "much longer" to process [emphasis is mine]. So this would put the potential H-1B engineers on the slow track of legal immigration, which will give IEEE-USA time to lobby in favor of American engineers. He said that it is safer for America because legal immigrants must go through a rigorous background check for ties to terrorism. He argued that it is better for the foreign nationals and it is better for Americans.

Most of the engineers were confused but believed that IEEE-USA was looking out for their best interests. After all, nobody else seems to even care about American engineering careers. So off they went to speak with congressional representatives or their staffers about this new EB and F-4 agenda, hoping that it will bring some relief to their career problems.

Some activists warned that IEEE was using the engineers as pawns to push legal immigration for engineers in addition to guest worker programs. At the time, it was hard for most to believe that such a conspiracy existed [emphasis is mine]. Now, almost a year later it is revealed that the chief proponent of H-1B visas, the SIA (Semiconductor Industry Association) has joined with IEEE-USA to support more green cards for foreign nationals with the caveat that they are fast-tracked. In other words, any foregn [sic] national who has a job offer at the time of graduation, gets an instant greencard. [Emphasis is mine.) American engineers felt betrayed. Is it possible that IEEE used these engineers as pawns as part of a grander scheme?

Why the sudden about face by IEEE-USA?

After, the article titled "IEEE-USA vs. Bill Gates" was printed; a delegation of top Microsoft representatives went to IEEE. They told IEEE that they contribute financially to many IEEE programs and asked why IEEE-USA is fighting Microsoft on the H-1B issue. At the time, IEEE-USA representatives told Microsoft representatives that the H-1B issue was what engineers indicated was their most important issue. At the time, IEEE-USA leaders told this author that they stood up to Microsoft to defend its members.

What happened since then? Well, you can probably guess, but you can read the rest of Perrotti article for the rest of the story. As part of the coup de grace, Perrotti gives us this gem:

Is it possible that there is no country called America, that the world is truly flat? Is it possible that there is just an agglomeration of super-wealthy international corporations who claim to be American companies but are actually countries without borders? Do these corporations care about America or the American people? Do they control America?

Then Perrotti reminds us:

This is no longer a battle for the H-1B visa cap. The H-1B visa cap is now moot because there are so many other fast-track proposals to bring in foreign engineers, computer scientists and other high-tech professionals. Other professions are next. Nurses, doctors, accountants and every other profession are also being targeted. This is now a fight for the heart and soul of America and what it stands for.

This is precisely why this battle does not just affect tech industry workers. If corporate America can turn their backs on Americans who possess skills that are supposedly in such high demand, what does it mean for the rest of us?

(Cross-posted at Carrie's Nation.)

Labels: employment, H-1Bs, immigration

You'd think, wouldn't you? But you'd be wrong.

We are so completely utterly fucked. Imagine what this lunatic can do with another fifteen months:

Labels: George W. Bush, insanity

Labels: 2008 election, Stephen Colbert

And you thought it was just about 9/11 and terrorism:

The words 'feminism' and 'Middle East' are not often used in the same sentence. But, increasingly, women in the Arab world are beginning to demand greater authority for themselves in their societies. Interestingly, it's not secular or liberal groups that are effectively leading the way in pushing forward on women's rights issues; instead, it is Muslim women, involved in conservative Islamist organizations like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are starting to raise their voices and question their status in society.

The failure of secular groups to take the lead in pushing for women's rights has to do, in large part, with the popular perception that they espouse elitist and condescending views. Wafa Sultan, for instance, one of the most prominent Arab secularists, is a darling of West, but is poorly received in the Arab world. A feminist and an atheist, Sultan blames Islam -- and not just isolated extremists -- for terrorism, a view that undoubtedly doesn't sit well with her largely-Muslim audience.

So, rather than being propelled by secular and liberal groups, this new interest in feminism is actually occurring within more conservative circles; namely, Islamist groups. There's a reason for this: as Islamist organizations like Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood have been given a greater role in democratic politics over the past few decades, they've had to pitch to a broader constituency. The result has been that more women have been given leadership roles in these organizations in order that they might reach out to other female voters, provide input on political strategy, and even run for office themselves. Imbued with newfound authority, many Muslim women have begun to raise broader questions about their role in society. (For more on this, check out my earlier post or, for a much more in-depth look at this phenomenon, take a look at this Carnegie report.)

I've written about this subject before, so I wasn't planning on just re-writing my earlier post, but a recent Al Ahram article caught my attention. Omayma Abdel-Latif, the author, discusses an interesting case of Muslim female empowerment: that of Ghazwa Farahat, a Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese woman who won a position in the Al-Ghobeiry municipality in southern Beirut.

She was the first female candidate the Islamic resistance movement nominated on its electoral list. Indeed, the party fought hard to convince Farahat's family of her nomination. "My family was divided," said Farahat at her office in Al-Ghobeiry. "They asked Hizbullah officials why they wanted to nominate a woman when there were men in the family," she explained.

If anything, Farahat's story reflects how the Islamic movement has frequently proven more progressive in its stand on the role of women in society than the society it operates within.

I'm not sure why increased roles for women often come from the conservative side of the fence. Mr. Brilliant's mother was prominent in NJ Republican circles back when Stokley Carmichael was saying that "the only position for women in SNCC is prone" and NOW didn't even exist yet. It's to the Republican Party's eternal shame that it allowed the religious right become so prominent and hypocrisy to become its watchword, with women like Phyllis Schlafly and her heirs in their business suits and Ann Coulter in her cocktail dresses flying around the country preaching the virtues of kinder, küche, kirche for OTHER women.

The Bush Administration made much fuss over Afghan women tossing their burqas in the aftermath of the 2001 invasion of that country, after years of U.S. policy that didn't give a rat's ass about the plight of Afghan women. And as far as the Administration is concerned, the rights of Iraqi women are a reasonable sacrifice to make in their efforts to gain control of the oil in that country, now that they've turned it from a secular state into an Islamic one. Given the plight of women in these countries, it's all the more notable that in these groups the U.S. has branded as terrorist, women are taking an increasing role.

Perhaps that's what scares them the most.

Labels: Islamism, Middle East

With more than three out of four Americans disapproving of George W. Bush, you'd think Congress would finally realize it's safe to start blocking his relentless march towards a police state. You'd think that a 24% approval rating would be low enough that Congress would stop running scared. After all, not even the media are calling him a "popular president" anymore -- a moniker they gave him until his descent towards the Mendoza line made it impossible.

But you'd be wrong. The dimwits in Congress must think their own 11% approval rating means they aren't kissing President Twenty-Four Percent's behind enough, because they're about to cave on FISA, giving their corporate masters in Big Telecom partial immunity for breaking the law and providing the government with your phone records:

Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government's domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.

Disclosure of the deal followed a decision by House Democratic leaders to pull a competing version of the measure from the floor because they lacked the votes to prevail over Republican opponents and GOP parliamentary maneuvers.

It's getting depressingly familiar, isn't it, this refrain of "We don't have the votes"? If the end result is going to be the same, why not at least go down fighting for what you believe in, rather than be active participants in the president's lawlessness?

The collapse marked the first time since Democrats took control of the chamber that a major bill was withdrawn from consideration before a scheduled vote. It was a victory for President Bush, whose aides lobbied heavily against the Democrats' bill, and an embarrassment for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had pushed for the measure's passage.

The draft Senate bill has the support of the intelligence committee's chairman, John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), and Bush's director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. It will include full immunity for those companies that can demonstrate to a court that they acted pursuant to a legal directive in helping the government with surveillance in the United States.

Such a demonstration, which the bill says could be made in secret, would wipe out a series of pending lawsuits alleging violations of privacy rights by telecommunications companies that provided telephone records, summaries of e-mail traffic and other information to the government after Sept. 11, 2001, without receiving court warrants. Bush had repeatedly threatened to veto any legislation that lacked this provision.

Senate Democrats successfully pressed for a requirement that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court review the government's procedures for deciding who is to be the subject of warrantless surveillance. They also insisted that the legislation be renewed in six years, Democratic congressional officials said. The Bush administration had sought less stringent oversight by the court and wanted the law to be permanent.

The domestic surveillance issue has been awkward for Democrats since the administration's secret program of warrantless counterterrorism surveillance became public in late 2005. In August, a coalition of Republicans and dissident Democrats passed a measure backed by the White House that put that program on firm legal ground by expressly permitting the government to wiretap foreign targets without a court order, including, under certain circumstances, when those targets are communicating with people in the United States.

But Democratic leaders insisted that the law expire in February, so they could try again to impose more restrictions on the administration's ability to spy domestically. Most Democratic lawmakers and party members -- backed by civil libertarians and even some conservatives -- wanted the new legislation to ensure for example that future domestic surveillance in foreign-intelligence-related investigations would be overseen by the foreign surveillance court. The court was created in response to CIA and FBI domestic spying abuses unmasked in the mid-1970s.

But conservative Democrats worried about Republicans' charges that the Democratic bill extended too many rights to suspected terrorists. "There is absolutely no reason our intelligence officials should have to consult government lawyers before listening in to terrorist communications with the likes of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda and other foreign terror groups," said House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

Is anyone still buying this notion that millions of Americans are on the phone with Osama bin Laden every day? And besides, the existing FISA law allows the government to obtain warrants within 72 hours AFTER listening in on such communications. It just doesn't allow sweeping, dragnet-type surveillance of the type we're seeing from this Administration.

Note the Democrat named in the above-cited Washington Post article: John D. Rockefeller IV. Aren't you glad that Rockefeller repays his corporate donors so handsomely, by supporting legislation that allows them to break the law as long as the president says it's OK? As Glenn Greenwald notes,

AT&T was the fifth largest contributor to Rockefeller's last campaign, followed by the National Cable and Telecommunications Association in Sixth place, Bell South in Ninth Place, and Verizon was in the top 20.

Just in case you thought the Democrats weren't just as bought and paid for by corporations as the Republicans.

Labels: corporatism, Democrats

Since Rudy Giuliani is now positioning himself as not just the president who can defend us from terrorists, but also from space aliens, I thought perhaps this film from The Firesign Theatre (part of the appropriately named Everything You Know Is Wrong album) might also be helpful to him in preparing for just such an eventuality:



Who says I can't recognize parody?

Labels: Rudy Giuliani, snark

...or as the business community calls it, "non-voluntary labor."

I saw this at Shakesville, and my jaw is still on the floor:

Labels: employment, slavery

Yesterday Amanda wrote about how the new meme that characterizes the new "child swiftboating" -- that the parents of Brittany Wilkerson should not have had their child because they didn't have health insurance -- is inconsistent with the equally right-wing agenda that all pregnancies should be carried to term and that doctors and pharmacists opposed to contraceptives need not prescribe and fill prescriptions for them.

Fresh on the heels of the right having yet another working family to kick around, one with a child not old enough to talk back yet, comes Captain Codpiece to try to keep the world safe from fucking:

The Department of Health and Human Services appointed Susan Orr — who has spoken out against contraception — to a post responsible for U.S. contraception programs.

Orr, who will be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs, has been directing child welfare programs in another branch of HHS. Prior to joining the Bush administration, Orr was senior director for marriage and family at the Family Research Council, a conservative group that favors abstinence-only education and opposes federal money for contraception.

In 2001, she was quoted in the Washington Post favoring a Bush administration plan to drop a requirement that health insurance plans for federal employees cover a broad range of birth control.

“We’re quite pleased because fertility is not a disease,” she said at the time. “It’s not a medical necessity that you have it.”

So let me see if I have this straight....you shouldn't have access to contraception if you work for the government because contraception isn't a medical necessity and you should produce lots of babies. But if you don't work for the government; say, for an employer that doesn't provide insurance, then you should let your baby die.

Or is it that fucking, like health insurance, is only for the wealthy too?

Labels: contraception, hypocrisy, SCHIP, wingnuttia

I can almost taste the sweetness already. In mid-September, the baseball playoff picture looked as if it could contain another Boston/Yankees grudge match, a Subway Series, a bicoastal matchup of the Angels and Mets or Angels and Phillies; or Boston and the Diamondbacks, or any other combination a lot more exciting than what it looks like they're going to get: Cleveland vs. Colorado.

I can't say I'd be unhappy about this World Series matchup, which is one Cleveland win away from becoming reality after last night's 7-3 win over Boston. There's something to be said for the scrappy little teams ("little" being a relative term in baseball these days) beating out the Big Contract Juggernauts. Imagine a World Series without Alex Rodriguez, whose Big Brass Agent Scott Boras has the nerve to be demanding a 12-year, $400 million contract for a 32-year-old infielder. A World Series in which Lefty McDreamy's $126 million deal didn't even figure. A World Series in which Daisuke Matsuzaka isn't the pitching staff savior that the Red Sox thought they were getting when they paid $52 million for him.

As if this most magical postseason for the Colorado Rockies, golden-hued as it is with the "Win one for the Gipper" factor of potential World Series cash going to the pregnant widow of one of their minor league coaches who was killed by a line drive this season, didn't have enough movie-ready poignancy, there's also this:

At the top of the Rockies' lineup card, manager Clint Hurdle discreetly scrawls a tiny "64," circles the magic number and carries it near his heart night after miraculous night, as his team plays winning baseball that defies history and logic.

How to explain why the mysterious 64 means everything to a team doing what Babe Ruth or Sandy Koufax never dreamed?

It's a tale of wonder that must begin with a brave, dead boy.

"His name is Kyle," said Hurdle, elbows propped on the dugout railing, his face so heavy with emotion it pushes the manager's stare to the floor. "He's a hero to me."

Kyle Blakeman was a 15-year-old sophomore from ThunderRidge High School, a suburban kid who loved baseball and mac 'n' cheese. Late in summer, when the Rockies had swung big yet appeared on the verge of missing the playoffs for a 12th straight season, Blakeman died from a puzzling, rare cancer at 7:45 on the final Tuesday evening of August.

[snip]

"This is a story of a kid you want the world to hear," said Joanna Blakeman, whose late son proves it's possible to find a hero on any street in America.

[snip]

Faith can touch you anywhere, even the grocery store, where a tap on the shoulder by a stranger introduced Hurdle to a sick teenager two years ago. Genuine friendship blossomed.

Which is why Hurdle and Blakeman found themselves staring at each other across a hospital

bed on Aug. 24, knowing it could be the last of at least 20 conversations between two baseball lovers. "Give me something here to take the team some luck. You got a little?" Hurdle recalled asking Blakeman, after a loss to Pittsburgh had incited an ugly press conference with badgering questions about the debilitating loss.

"Luck? Oh, yeah," Blakeman told the manager. The kid possessed quiet courage and unbreakable toughness to the nth degree. A hospice bed, however, seemed a weird place for a slumping 66-64 ballclub with fading postseason dreams to search for good fortune.

"He looked at me like I was full of it," Hurdle recalled.

Blakeman, ever game, played along when the manager asked: "Got a favorite number?"

The kid said he had always worn No. 64 on the football field.

Perfect.

So Hurdle scribbled "64" on the top of the lineup card he filled out for the very next game at Coors Field, against Washington.

And no Hollywood screenwriter could dream what happened. In the bottom of the ninth inning, with the Rockies trailing by four runs, slugger Matt Holliday smacked a home run to spark a rally. Colorado won 6-5.

"I walked back in the hospital that night with this look on my face, and the nurses and family members are laughing at me, saying: 'What? You didn't think it would work?"' said Hurdle, who arrived past 11 p.m. to deliver the lineup card to his young buddy.

Within five days, the boy succumbed to renal medullary carcinoma, which attacks the kidneys first. Never heard of the disease? Only 100 cases have been confirmed worldwide. Doctors don't understand much about this cancer, except it strikes victims born with the sickle cell trait and usually kills within weeks.

And that is why baseball is more than a sport....it's a kind of bucolic magic in an urbanized world.

Of course there's still another game for Cleveland to win, but the Rockies have eight days till they have to play again. Of course a hot team can cool off a lot in eight days, but the way the Rockies have been going, you could probably ask them what our way out of Iraq is and they'd come up with the answer.

Labels: Baseball