A recent study by Kansas Hospital Association economists indicates that the health care industry provided 290,000 jobs in Kansas in 2006. To put this in some perspective, the Kansas workforce is currently 1.8 million.  Hence, the health care industry is responsible for 16% of Kansas employment.  It stands to reason that universal health care would vastly increase the need for employees in hospitals, clinics, as well as all the other institutions and businesses providing health care services.

Jobs generated from government programs and funding is the only answer to what has become an intractable unemployment problem.  Job losses in manufacturing and the service sector are due to globalization and cheaper foreign labor markets.  Democrats as well as the Republicans refuse to tell the public the truth about the structural nature of the current unemployment problem.

As just one example amongst many, consider IBM, a company founded and grown in the United States into a conglomerate with revenues of $25 billion and 380,000 employees.  Over the past few years, IBM has reduced its U.S. employees to 115,000 and has set aside $400,000,000 in severance benefits for the purpose of further reductions.  Where are IBM jobs going?  Mostly to India.

Having sold its laptop business to China, IBM is out of the hardware business and is building its current business around services and software.  This international conglomerate recently purchased SPSS, a successful, very profitable software company, spun out of an American university.  Having worked with this software from its early days, I am quite familiar with the company and have visited its Chicago headquarters on many occasions.

A large number of highly educated programmers, statisticians, and other technical personnel occupy several floors of a sky scraper on the Miracle Mile.  It is likely that these jobs will be lost to a cheaper labor market.  If that happens, U.S. citizens should be outraged.  The University of Kansas, Kansas State University, and practically every other major U.S.  public university,  each spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on SPSS software each year.  U.S. taxpayers will be subsidizing jobs located in a foreign country.

In spite of all the political rhetoric about tax cuts, bank loans, getting the economy moving again, and bla, bla, bla, the capitalist, free market economy will not pick up the slack in employment.  Jobs are leaving the U.S. and will not be coming back.  Much needed government programs are the answer.

Right wing attacks on health care reform and the inability of Democrats to fight for and sell their legislative proposals constitute a tragedy.  Not only will sick people continue to be denied access to health care, a massive number of jobs will not materialize.

What can we say about the election of a right wing, reactionary Republican in a blue state like Massachusetts?  Well, we can say that the rest of the nation might stop asking “What’s the matter with Kansas?”  We can say that the voters of Massachusetts will find out what it means to be represented by a reactionary Republican senator.  We will know what they think when Brown has to run again in 2014.

Maybe the Democrats will realize that they don’t appear to be tough, committed, and ready to go to the wall for what they believe and , because of that image, they don’t have respect.  Maybe they will realize that it is no use to reach out to “junk yard dog Republicans and tea bag agitators.”  Maybe they will come up with a message about core values, learn how to get it out, and show that they are willing to fight for the people rather than insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

It remains to be seen if Democrats can figure this out.  Senator Jim Webb is already suggesting that Democrats just run for cover.  I wonder if it has ever occurred to the DNC and the mainstream Democrats that they are letting the right wing write the narrative and convince independents and even some Democrats that “Democrat means “government,” means “bad.” 

I hope President Obama takes Ed Koch’s advice and governs like he doesn’t care if he gets reelected.  We will see signs of that when he fires Timothy Geithner, Larry Summers, and Rahm Emanual and sends them back to Wall Street.  We will see signs of it when he sends a public works bill to congress that provides the jobs that private industry can’t or won’t.  We will see signs of it when he fights like hell for consumer protection.  We will see signs of it when he fights for a fair tax code that stops the redistribution of wealth to the wealthiest few.

If he does these things and more, and the Democrats have the chutzpah to support him, this election will just be a blip in the road.  Without some chutzpah, the Democrats will be in real trouble.

Although only .5 percent of voters in Kansas are registered in the Libertarian Party, the current narrative written and controlled by the libertarian, tea bagger movement (with a wholly inadequate response from us liberals and progressives) has gained considerable traction.  The narrative is simply that “Federal government is bad and is intruding on state and individual rights.”  They point to proposed mandates to purchase insurance that would be included in health care reform as one example of trampling on individual rights and a violation of Article 10 of the Constitution.

Backed by the Koch funded Americans for Prosperity, the tea baggers were able to assemble a bunch of followers (about 100 according to the JW) and rally in support Senate Concurrent Resolution 1615, which is a nonsensical piece of legislation stating that the Federal government has only power specifically stated and provided to it in the Constitution.  From the time of the very first Supreme Court case (McCulloch v. Maryland), this interpretation of the 10^th Amendment has been rejected.

I dropped the ball and did not make it to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on this resolution.  According to the JW there were no opponents speaking against the resolution.  State Senator Laura Kelly has told me that a teacher/debate coach, from Wichita Collegiate spoke articulately against the proposed legislation.  If and when it comes up in the House, he should not be alone.  I will be prepared to appear before a House committee and round up as many opponents as possible.  Surely, we can find a cadre of liberal constitutional lawyers to present the argument against this ill conceived piece of legislation.

Liberals/progressives must begin to develop our own narrative.  Legislation plus case law pertaining to Article 1, Section 8 arguments concerning the “general welfare” and “common defense” (“implied powers”) clearly invalidates the tea bagger position on the constitutionality of Federal programs.  Otherwise, there would be no Social Security, Medicare, NLRB, no interstate highway system, and literally thousands of other programs that the Republicans would never have the courage to propose legislating out of existence.

Our narrative should be rather easy to communicate.  The tea baggers and their patronizing legislators such as Lynn Jenkins are against cherished programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and the FDA.   We need to organize and get our bodies to events.  There is no reason we cannot pack hearing rooms.  There is no reason we cannot educate the public about what the framers intended and case law interpreting the constitution.  When I Google Article 10, “implied powers,” “general welfare,” and other matters related to Article 1, Section 8, I find right wing blogs.  Some of them are well written.  Their arguments, although not valid, resonate with a large segment of the public.  If an unanswered message, even a big lie, is incessantly repeated, it will eventually become believable to the uninformed.

Without immediate and massive programs by governments of technologically advanced, affluent, nations, there will be more Haiti type tragedies in the not so distant future.  Although a “government can do” attitude in the United States and American leadership will be essential to the success of staving off the untold disaster and suffering that is surely to occur, there is a growing movement that spreads hatred of government, isolationism, and perverted views of our form of government as set forth by the framers.  This misguided political action is likely to lead to human suffering on a scale that is hard to imagine.  Why do I say this?

The human population is approaching the planet’s carrying capacity.  As I explain to groups to which I speak, paleontologists date the beginning of our species (Homo sapiens) at about 200,000 years ago.  By 1950, the population of the planet had reached approximately 3.5 billion.  By just 2010 – just 60 years later – the World population had doubled to 7 billion.  It took 200,000 years to populate the planet with 3.5 billion Homo sapiens and just a little over a half Century to double that number.  Although many European countries are actually aging and losing population, the poor and economically undeveloped countries – and there are many – have very high birth rates.  To make matters worse, the poorest people of the World are migrating to crowded cities where they become victims of substandard dwellings, famine, and disease.

According to Edward O. Wilson, arguably the greatest biological scientist of our time, the earth’s carrying capacity for our specie will be reached at a population of 9 billion.  We will soon be there.  However, global capitalism as now practiced is further impoverishing poor populations and concentrating wealth and power in fewer and fewer individuals and corporations without regard for environmental consequences.  The following facts will speak to the need for serious reform. 

Although Haiti is said to be the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, its spirit crushing poverty, as bad as it is, is not as bad as many other countries – especially those countries in sub-Saharan Africa.  In countries with the highest quality of life (i.e. European countries), female life expectancy is about 82 to 84 years and about 80 years for males.  The infant mortality rate in these countries is usually around 3 per 1,000 live born babies.

Males in Haiti have an estimated life expectancy of 55 years with females doing slightly better.  The infant mortality rate is 66 per 1000 live born babies.  In Angola, the life expectancy for males is 39 years.  The infant mortality is nearly 200 per 1000.  Afghanistan is practically the same as Angola in terms of the health and well-being of the population.

Given the condition of the human community, libertarian arguments make no sense.  More importantly, by reducing their argument to the wording of Article 10 of the U.S. Constitution they are engaging in meaningless nonsense.  Article 10 is a one sentence statement:  “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Along with case law pertaining to the power of the National government, I wonder if anyone has ever told the rabid anti-government forces about Article 1, Section 8, which states that “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States….”  I would also have to wonder if the designers and intellectual forces behind libertarian and tea bag movements want their followers to know about the Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Jay, and Madison, which are considered the definitive views of the framers’ intentions.

 For the sake of debunking the anti-government claims of right wing libertarians, I will write more about the Federalist Papers in future blogs, suffice it to say now that the framers were in favor of a strong, effective National government to deal with powerful interests and factions (like the Koch family Kochtopus) and to attend to the what they called the “general welfare,” the “public interest,” and the “public good.”  The general welfare of the United States depends upon how our government proceeds in its relations with the entire World.  We have nothing to gain and so much to lose by neglecting and/or abusing impoverished populations.

Tonight Gwen Ifill moderated one of those “let’s hear both sides of the issue but really say nothing” discussions about what PBS News Hour chooses to call “Cadillac health care plans” that some Democrats and President Obama would like to tax(see the last post below).  Actually, this was a fairly one-sided, shallow justification for imposing this tax on the hard earned benefits of workers.

Supposedly, the union/workers side was represented by a guy named Josh Bivens with the Economic Policy Institute who, believe it or not, thought the tax was a good idea.  Ms. Ifill did mention that he was with an organization that receives union money.  I have never heard a PBS staffer mention the source of income for any of the right-wing organizations that appear on the show.  Nor have I ever heard Jim Lehrer or Ms Ifill or any other person on the show indicate that some of the generals they have as guests receive money from defense contractors.   After watching the performance of the “union side” representative, I would suggest to the unions that they save their money.

The other pro-side representative was Jonathan Gruber, an MIT professor.  He was enthralled with the notion that this tax could result in $250 billion, either through cost reduction or revenue.  Neither side had anything to say about how unfair this proposal would be to the middle class.  Nor did they say that this was John McCain’s idea during the 2008 campaign.  President Obama, on the other hand, promised that he would not raise taxes on the middle class.  Unions that supported him were led to believe he would not tax their health care.

A segment regarding Haiti followed the “Cadillac health care plan” segment.  Apparently, UN peacekeepers have been able to settle things down enough in Haiti to make investment in plant and equipment there attractive to investors.  Why wouldn’t it be attractive to the garment industry?  The minimum wage in Haiti is $3.00 per day.   There is no real health care and education, no unions, no need to worry about pesky government regulation – no “Cadillac health care plan,” that’s for sure.

Former President Bill Clinton was on the segment showing off this wonderful opportunity to potential investors.  One can only imagine what’s in it for him.  His administration, like the two before his and the one after his, was big on providing tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy.  The idea was to encourage investment in plant and equipment; to promote economic growth.  It worked – in China, Honduras, Viet Nam, and any other low wage Mecca with a starving workforce.

Watching the PBS News Hour “pablum” is, for the most part, a waste of time.  For finding out what is happening, I suggest the Huffington Post and other on-line sources such as Firedoglake.com.  It is apparent that we need to develop our own communication network.

ON WEDNESDAY THE 13^TH OF JANUARY, LABOR UNIONS ARE HOLDING A “CALL IN DAY” TO CONGRESSMAN AND SENATORS FOR THE FOLLOWING REASON:

In one of the dumbest political moves ever, Democrats in the Senate and President Obama are pushing a measure to place hefty taxes on “good” health insurance benefits (meaning fairly good coverage and costing more than $21,000 for a family and $8,000 for an individual). These benefits are often won through hard bargaining and strikes.  Even entertaining such a proposal is a “kick in the teeth” to unions and their rank and file without whom President Obama would not be in the White House and Democrats would not be in control of Congress.

Senator Baucus is pushing this politically suicidal idea in the Senate.  He represents Montana, a state populated by barely enough people to form one good sized union.  Let’s talk Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other more industrial states with a substantial and politically powerful labor movement.  Union members who brought these states in for the President are outraged over this proposed cut in their compensation.  As someone who spent many hours at the bargaining table, I understand just how sensitive this issue is to union members.

Furthermore, over the past thirty years, labor has endured stagnant wages and an increasing proportion of the tax burden while less and less of a burden has been placed on capital.  With a lowly 15% tax on capital gains and myriad loop holes, shelters, and gimmicks cooked up by high powered tax lawyers, government is now disproportionately funded on the backs of average, ordinary, salaried and hourly employees.

So, instead of a tax on the top income/wealth class, which has for three decades escaped more and more of its tax burden, the Wall Street gang in the Obama Administration (e.g., Summers, Geithner, Emanual, etc.) will try to see to it that low and middle income earners take the hit.

ON WEDNESDAY CALL YOUR DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN AND/OR SENATOR AND TELL THEM TAXING HEALTH CARE PLANS IS A VERY BAD IDEA.  DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME WITH REPUBLICANS; THEY COULD CARE LESS ABOUT UNION MEMBERS.

During the health care reform debate, it is common to encounter the “unplugging granny” metaphor.  This rich mental picture causes one to envision hospitals full of older Americans kept alive on ventilators.  It also feeds the caricature of the most elderly population as decrepit, of no use, and a burden on the rest of society.  Ageism is, of course, characterized by negative stereotypes that subsequently lead to discriminatory actions such as reduction in medical services.

Not only is the “plugging in the elderly” discussion insulting, it has no relation to reality.  In accordance with the International Code of Diagnoses and Procedures, “plugging in” refers to “intubation and ventilation.”  Having access to the latest database of hospital admissions and discharges in the U.S. (approximately eight million or 20% random sample of 2007 cases), I have looked at this procedure by ten-year age categories.  The following findings are surprising to practically everyone with whom I share them:

• The largest proportion of patients on ventilators in 2007 was in the 0 thru 9 age category (18%).
• Only 3% of patients on ventilators were 90+.
• The 80 thru 89 age group was responsible for 12.4% of patients on ventilators.
• A smaller proportion of patients on ventilators was in the 80 thru 89 and 90+ age categories than the 50 thru 59 (13.7%), 60 thru 69 (16.4%), and the 70 thru 79 (17.5%).
• Disaggregation of the really expensive ventilator charges ($126,000+) by ten-year age categories indicates that 29% are in the under 10 age category while only 2.1% are in the 90+, and 10.3% are in the 80 thru 89 age category.

The point of this post is not to shift blame from an older to a younger age group.  The point is to stop blaming patients in any age category for health care costs.  Babies bear no more responsibility for health care costs than the elderly.  Patients at any age should receive the care they need – nothing more, nothing less.

The decency of health care access for all Americans is about more than health care. It is about the direction this Country will take in the decades ahead. Will the Republican Party’s proto-fascist-white male-Southern-rural philosophy of a society of, by, and for the wealthy classes and oppression of the rest of the population prevail? Or will the philosophy envisioned by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in the Federalist Papers, by Thomas Paine in The Rights of Man, and by other founding philosophers prevail?

Although the disingenuous right wing has managed to manipulate scared and angry citizens into mob activity, i.e. the “tea baggers,” by such techniques as reducing Thomas Paine’s extensive and complex essays to a sound bite, the political philosophy of the ultra-right, billionaire funded movement against government is a perverse conglomeration of libertarianism, Christian theocracy, and plutocracy. These belief systems are not only contradictory but mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, this philosophical nonsense is foisted upon unsuspecting individuals by a coalition of self-interested industry groups (the health insurance industry), inheritors of mega-wealth (for instance, the Kochs and Mellons), and nouveau riche billionaires (e.g., Mackey of Whole Foods).

If you think this is merely abstract political theorizing, consider the recent religious-right wingers’ Koch funded bus trip across Kansas for the purpose of selling a state constitutional amendment that would prevent Kansans from receiving benefits of health care reform. What, might I ask, do theocrats such as Brenda Landwehr and Debbie Pilcher-Cook (both state legislators) have in common with self-appointed libertarian leaders like the Kochs? As Laura Bennetts has suggested in her comments to my last post in December, we progressives and liberals must recognize that the political process in January will be critical, as it will be well into the future. This blog will keep readers tuned in to the political process. Organization for action will be communicated under a separate communication mechanism. Watch for it!