Winter of Our Discontent, The Rising Inequality of 2 Americas

November 26, 2007
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Op-Ed Columnist , NY Times

“Americans’ Economic Pessimism Reaches Record High.” That’s the headline on a recent Gallup report, which shows a nation deeply unhappy with the state of the economy. Right now, “27% of Americans rate current economic conditions as either ‘excellent’ or ‘good,’ while 44% say they are ‘only fair’ and 28% say they are poor.” Moreover, “an extraordinary 78% of Americans now say the economy is getting worse, while a scant 13% say it is getting better.”

What’s really remarkable about this dismal outlook is that the economy isn’t (yet?) in recession, and consumers haven’t yet felt the full effects of $98 oil (wait until they see this winter’s heating bills) or the plunging dollar, which will raise the prices of imported goods.

The response of those who support the Bush administration’s economic policies is to complain about the unfairness of it all. They rattle off statistics that supposedly show how wonderful the economy really is. Many of these statistics are misleading or irrelevant, but it’s true that the official unemployment rate is fairly low by historical standards. So why are people so unhappy?

The answer from Bush supporters — who are, on this and other matters, a strikingly whiny bunch — is to blame the “liberal media” for failing to report the good news. But the real explanation for the public’s pessimism is that whatever good economic news there is hasn’t translated into gains for most working Americans.

One way to drive this point home is to compare the situation for workers today with that in the late 1990s, when the country’s economic optimism was almost as remarkable as its pessimism today. For example, in the fall of 1998 almost two-thirds of Americans thought the economy was excellent or good.

The unemployment rate in 1998 was only slightly lower than the unemployment rate today. But for working Americans, everything else was different. Wages were rising, yet inflation was low, so the purchasing power of workers’ take-home pay was steadily improving. So, too, were job benefits, including the availability of health insurance. And homeownership was rising steadily.

It was, in other words, a time when Americans felt they were sharing in the country’s prosperity.

Today, by contrast, wage gains for most workers are being swallowed by inflation. In fact, the reality for lower- and middle-income workers may be worse than the official statistics say, because the prices of necessities like food, transportation and medical care are rising considerably faster than the Consumer Price Index as a whole. One striking statistic: the cost of a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner was 11 percent higher this year than last year.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans receiving health insurance from their employers, which began to decline in 2001, is continuing its downward trend. And homeownership, after rising for several years on a tide of subprime mortgages — well, you know how that’s going.

In short, working Americans have very good reason to feel unhappy about the state of the economy. But what will it take to make their situation better?

The leading Republican candidates for president don’t even seem to realize that there’s a problem. A few months ago Rudy Giuliani, denouncing Hillary Clinton’s economic proposals, declared that “she wants to go back to the 1990s” — as if that would be a bad thing.

In fact, memories of how much better the economy was under Bill Clinton will be a potent political advantage for the Democrats next year.

But simply putting another Clinton, or any Democrat, in the White House won’t ensure that the good times will roll again. President Clinton was a good economic manager, but much of the good news during the 1990s reflected events that won’t be repeated, including low oil prices and the great medical cost pause — the temporary leveling off of health care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. that took place in the 1990s despite his failure to pass health care reform.

And there are good reasons to think that the negative effects of globalization on the wages of some Americans are larger than they were in the ’90s. That’s a hugely contentious issue within the progressive movement, with no easy resolution. I’ll write more about it in the months ahead.

Despite these caveats, Democrats have every right to make a political issue out of the failure of the Bush economy to deliver gains to working Americans — especially because conservatives continue to insist that tax cuts for the affluent are the answer to all problems.

But Democrats shouldn’t kid themselves into believing that this will be easy. The next president won’t be able to deliver another era of good times unless he or she manages to tackle the longer-term trends that underlie today’s economic disappointment: a collapsing health care system and inexorably rising inequality.

Patients Without Borders

Note from Greetings: It's a sad statement when our country is in need of 3rd world services due to the inactions of this country

November 18, 2007

By SARA CORBETT, NY Times

Long before the dentists and the doctors got there, before the nurses, the hygienists and X-ray techs came, before anyone had flicked on the portable mammography unit or sterilized the day’s first set of surgical instruments, the people who needed them showed up to wait. It was 3 a.m. at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Virginia — Friday, July 20, 2007 — the start of a rainy Appalachian morning. Outside the gates, people lay in their trucks or in tents pitched along the grassy parking lot, waiting for their chance to have their medical needs treated at no charge — part of an annual three-day “expedition” led by a volunteer medical relief corps called Remote Area Medical.

The group, most often referred to as RAM, has sent health expeditions to countries like Guyana, India, Tanzania and Haiti, but increasingly its work is in the United States, where 47 million people — more than 15 percent of the population — live without health insurance. Residents of remote rural areas are less likely than their urban and suburban counterparts to have health insurance and more likely to be in fair or poor health.

According to the Department of Health and Human Services, nearly half of all adults in rural America are living with at least one chronic condition. Other research has found that in these areas, where hospitals and primary-care providers are in short supply, rates of arthritis, hypertension, heart ailments, diabetes and major depression are higher than in urban areas.

And so each summer, shortly after the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair and Horse Show wraps up at the fairgrounds, members of Virginia Lions Clubs start bleaching the premises, readying them for RAM’s volunteers, who, working in animal stalls and beneath makeshift tents, provide everything from teeth cleaning and free eyeglasses to radiology and minor surgery. The problem, says RAM’s founder, Stan Brock, is always in the numbers, with the patients’ needs far outstripping what his team can supply. In Wise County, when the sun rose and the fairground gates opened at 5:30 on Friday morning, more than 800 people already were waiting in line. Over the next three days, some 2,500 patients would receive care, but at least several hundred, Brock estimates, would be turned away. He adds: “There comes a point where the doctors say: ‘Hey, I gotta go. It’s Sunday evening, and I have to go to work tomorrow.’ ”

It’s Not Just the Uninsured

I see this all too often, firsthand. (Note from Greetings)

By BOB HERBERT, NY Times OpEd, November 17, 2007

Sandra Hightower never thought of herself as particularly political. She worked, and much of her free time revolved around her daughter, Brittney, a fiercely outgoing teenager with a passion for cheerleading at her high school in Nacogdoches, Tex.

But “after getting slapped in the face with reality,” Ms. Hightower said she’s ready to go to Washington herself if that would help get Congress to do something about the health insurance crisis that is responsible for so much unnecessary suffering and death in the U.S.

The tedious, hair-splitting debates over health care that we’re getting from the presidential candidates — those who talk about health care at all — seem out of sync with the enormity of the problem. For families without the protection of health insurance, the devastating combination of serious illness and imminent financial ruin can be absolutely mind-numbing, stunning in its tragic intensity.

For Sandra Hightower, the nightmare began in the summer of 2005 when Brittney had to have a cyst on an ovary removed. More cysts developed and in early 2006 doctors found that Brittney had cancer. She underwent surgery in Houston and the prognosis, according to Ms. Hightower, was good. “Everything was fine,” she said. “All results came back clear.”

Ms. Hightower did not think at the time that she would take too much of a financial hit because she had health insurance at her job, and the policy covered Brittney.

“All I had on my mind was Brittney,” she said.

The cancer recurred three or four months later and more surgery was required, followed by chemotherapy. The 15-year-old who loved to dance, and who wasn’t sure whether she wanted to be a model or a pediatric nurse, was now having to battle for her life like a warrior in combat.

The next round of bad news came in a double dose. One night, after coming home from school, Brittney suddenly found that she couldn’t walk. The cancer had attacked her spinal cord. As the doctors geared up to treat this new disaster, Ms. Hightower received word that her insurance policy had maxed out. The company would not pay for any further treatment.

Ms. Hightower was aghast: “I said, ‘What do you mean? It was supposed to be a $3 million policy.’ ”

She hadn’t understood that there was an annual limit of $75,000 on benefits. “It was just devastating when they told me that,” she said.

Most of the debate about access to health care has centered on people without insurance. But there are cases like this one all over the country in which individuals are working and paying for coverage that, perversely, kicks out when a devastating illness kicks in.

Americans with inadequate health coverage — the underinsured — are a major component of the national health care crisis. Like the uninsured, they can be denied desperately needed treatment for financial reasons; they often suffer financial ruin; and in many cases they die unnecessarily.

“This is a very significant problem,” said Daniel Smith, president of the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Action Network. “We want to help educate Americans more broadly about the idea that while they think they might be insured, when they’re diagnosed with something as devastating as cancer their policies may not give them the coverage they need.”

Sandra Hightower became almost frantic with the combined tasks of caring for her daughter and trying to figure out how to pay for the increasingly expensive treatments.

“Her back surgery, with the reconstruction and all that, was over three hundred and some thousand dollars,” she said. “I had to start doing fund-raisers, bake sales. And the community kicked in, my community here in Nacogdoches. Definitely the high school. And people donated to a benefit fund at the bank.”

After several months, Brittney was declared eligible for federal disability benefits, which enabled her to qualify for Medicaid. “But we still owed for everything before that,” said Ms. Hightower.

Brittney fought like crazy to survive, her mother said. But in the end, she didn’t make it. She died, at age 16, on June 5.

“I see her everywhere,” said Ms. Hightower, who still owes thousands of dollars in medical bills. “When I go to the grocery store, I see her favorite food. I go shopping, and I see the perfect little outfit that she would love.

“I’m so lost right now. And I feel like I failed my baby because I couldn’t bring in all the help she needed.”

Quasi-Censorship of an Artist in Philadelphia? You Decide

An artist's work is rejected. Is he just an obnoxious paranoid or is this a case of quasi censorship? I recommend checking out all of the "Rusty Scupperton" videos...and can artists who censor another artist still think of themselves as artists? hmmmm...Seriously, though... I'm hoping that the film is a spoof... tell me it is?...

Update, 11/17/07/. This video was pulled from "Rusty's" website. I assume the faculty exercised their next step in censorship. I'm waiting to hear whether or not this is true. The video consisted of the artist/professor going to the other faculty with a video camera to ask why his work was not part of the show. His work was a religious piece. When they acquiesced, they put up one piece... behind the drink table. It also consisted of video of a well-known Philadelphia artist and a well-known gallery owner, opining that his work was indeed first class. I won't name the institution, but I will try to get more information.

John Edwards - Will The People Take Repsonsiblity?

Can You Look Your Children In the Eye?

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Colbert Files for Presidential Primary

Thu Nov 1, 2:04 PM EDT

Stephen Colbert's fanciful White House bid took a real step Thursday. It's up to South Carolina Democrats to decide whether to take him seriously.

Colbert, who poses as a conservative talk-show host on the Comedy Central cable network, filed to get on the ballot as a Democratic candidate in his native South Carolina. His campaign paid a $2,500 filing fee just before the noon deadline, said state Democratic Party Chairwoman Carol Fowler.

Whether he'll appear on the ballot will be decided by party officials later Thursday.

The host of "The Colbert Report" doesn't appear to meet the party's viable candidate qualification. And it's unclear if he would meet the requirement that candidates actively campaign in the state.

Colbert did appear Sunday at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, telling several hundred fans he would, if elected, "crush the state of Georgia." He also received a key to the capital city and the mayor declared him South Carolina's "favorite son."

When Colbert announced his candidacy on his show last month, he said he would run only in this key primary state. He said then he planned to run as a Democrat and a Republican _ so he could lose twice.

The GOP filing fee is $35,000; the deadline was Thursday afternoon. (Democratic filing fee, $2500)

Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons - What is a Terrorist?

Note from Greetings: This is a WONDERFUL OpEd from the NY Times. As you read about what lead up to (and followed) the French Revolution, below, does any of it sound a bit too familiar?

October 28, 2007 From the NY Times
By FRANÇOIS FURSTENBERG Op-Ed Contributor

Montreal

MUCH as George W. Bush’s presidency was ineluctably shaped by Sept. 11, 2001, so the outbreak of the French Revolution was symbolized by the events of one fateful day, July 14, 1789. And though 18th-century France may seem impossibly distant to contemporary Americans, future historians examining Mr. Bush’s presidency within the longer sweep of political and intellectual history may find the French Revolution useful in understanding his curious brand of 21st- century conservatism.

Soon after the storming of the Bastille, pro-Revolutionary elements came together to form an association that would become known as the Jacobin Club, an umbrella group of politicians, journalists and citizens dedicated to advancing the principles of the Revolution.

The Jacobins shared a defining ideological feature. They divided the world between pro- and anti-Revolutionaries — the defenders of liberty versus its enemies. The French Revolution, as they understood it, was the great event that would determine whether liberty was to prevail on the planet or whether the world would fall back into tyranny and despotism.

The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.

By 1792, France was confronting the hostility of neighboring countries, debating how to react. The Jacobins were divided. On one side stood the journalist and political leader Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, who argued for war.

Brissot understood the war as preventive — “une guerre offensive,” he called it — to defeat the despotic powers of Europe before they could organize their counter-Revolutionary strike. It would not be a war of conquest, as Brissot saw it, but a war “between liberty and tyranny.”

Pro-war Jacobins believed theirs was a mission not for a single nation or even for a single continent. It was, in Brissot’s words, “a crusade for universal liberty.”

Brissot’s opponents were skeptical. “No one likes armed missionaries,” declared Robespierre, with words as apt then as they remain today. Not long after the invasion of Austria, the military tide turned quickly against France.

The United States, France’s “sister republic,” refused to enter the war on France’s side. It was an infuriating show of ingratitude, as the French saw it, coming from a fledgling nation they had magnanimously saved from foreign occupation in a previous war.

Confronted by a monarchical Europe united in opposition to revolutionary France — old Europe, they might have called it — the Jacobins rooted out domestic political dissent. It was the beginning of the period that would become infamous as the Terror.

Among the Jacobins’ greatest triumphs was their ability to appropriate the rhetoric of patriotism — Le Patriote Français was the title of Brissot’s newspaper — and to promote their political program through a tightly coordinated network of newspapers, political hacks, pamphleteers and political clubs.

Even the Jacobins’ dress distinguished “true patriots”: those who wore badges of patriotism like the liberty cap on their heads, or the cocarde tricolore (a red, white and blue rosette) on their hats or even on their lapels.

Insisting that their partisan views were identical to the national will, believing that only they could save France from apocalyptic destruction, Jacobins could not conceive of legitimate dissent. Political opponents were treasonous, stabbing France and the Revolution in the back.

To defend the nation from its enemies, Jacobins expanded the government’s police powers at the expense of civil liberties, endowing the state with the power to detain, interrogate and imprison suspects without due process. Policies like the mass warrantless searches undertaken in 1792 — “domicilary visits,” they were called — were justified, according to Georges Danton, the Jacobin leader, “when the homeland is in danger.”

Robespierre — now firmly committed to the most militant brand of Jacobinism — condemned the “treacherous insinuations” cast by those who questioned “the excessive severity of measures prescribed by the public interest.” He warned his political opponents, “This severity is alarming only for the conspirators, only for the enemies of liberty.” Such measures, then as now, were undertaken to protect the nation — indeed, to protect liberty itself.

If the French Terror had a slogan, it was that attributed to the great orator Louis de Saint-Just: “No liberty for the enemies of liberty.” Saint-Just’s pithy phrase (like President Bush’s variant, “We must not let foreign enemies use the forums of liberty to destroy liberty itself”) could serve as the very antithesis of the Western liberal tradition.

On this principle, the Terror demonized its political opponents, imprisoned suspected enemies without trial and eventually sent thousands to the guillotine. All of these actions emerged from the Jacobin worldview that the enemies of liberty deserved no rights.

Though it has been a topic of much attention in recent years, the origin of the term “terrorist” has gone largely unnoticed by politicians and pundits alike. The word was an invention of the French Revolution, and it referred not to those who hate freedom, nor to non-state actors, nor of course to “Islamofascism.”

A terroriste was, in its original meaning, a Jacobin leader who ruled France during la Terreur.

François Furstenberg, a professor of history at the University of Montreal, is the author of "In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery and the Making of a Nation."Op-Ed Contributor