Media Matters: Captain Lou and the Birther Brigade
Leave it to Lou Dobbs: If there's a right-wing conspiracy theory out there floating around on the Internets, he'll latch onto it like a pit bull. He may be past his prime, but he just won't let go. It must be tough for CNN to look on while Dobbs discredits "the most trusted name in news," one wild claim at a time. If there's a hook to the conspiracy even tacitly involving the immigration issue, well, you've just made Dobbs' day.
How can we forget his preoccupation with conspiracy theories about purported government plans for a "North American Union" between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada? Or his promotion of the nutty conspiracy that Mexicans plan to reconquer the American Southwest?
Over the past two weeks, however, Dobbs took things even further, pushing one of the most ludicrous conspiracy theories of the right-wing fringe: the notion that the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate is in doubt.
Kicking things off on the July 15 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Dobbs aligned himself with the far-right birther movement, devoting substantial airtime to the issue of Obama's birth certificate, asserting repeatedly that Obama needs to "produce" it. Dobbs said that the birth certificate posted online by FactCheck.org "purporting to validate the president" has "some issues. ... I mean, it's peculiar." He also stated that he wants to see a "long form" birth certificate, which he called "the real deal." That same day on his CNN program, Dobbs brought up the issue again. Referring to the document that FactCheck.org posted, he said, "It is, in fact, the so-called short form, not the original document. It is really a document saying that the state of Hawaii has the real document in its possession."
By contrast, Dobbs' CNN colleagues have repeatedly debunked claims that Obama has yet to produce a valid birth certificate, calling them "total bull" and "a whack-job project," and have characterized those who make these claims as "conspiracy theorists" who wear "tin foil hat[s]."
Two days after his initial rant on the subject, Kitty Pilgrim was filling in for the immigration-obsessed-crusader as guest host of his CNN show. During the broadcast, Pilgrim, a regular correspondent for Lou Dobbs Tonight, debunked claims that Obama does not have a valid birth certificate and is therefore ineligible to be president, noting that CNN "found no basis" for such claims and cited "overwhelming evidence that proves that his birth certificate is real, and that he was born in Honolulu."
You'd think that would put an end to the nonsense. Yet, days after Pilgrim answered it on his very own show, Dobbs was back on the air claiming that the birth certificate "questions won't go away." A day later, still on the birther bandwagon, Dobbs said on his CNN program that "no one" knows "the reality" of Obama's birth certificate.
Dobbs' obsession with this fringe conspiracy did not go unnoticed by his colleagues at CNN or competing networks for that matter. With Dobbs digging in his heels, other outlets began picking up -- and debunking -- various strands of the story.
On the July 21 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews hosted Rep. John Campbell (R-CA), one of nine Republican co-sponsors of what has become known as the "birther bill" -- legislation that would require future presidential candidates to provide their birth certificates. During the nearly 10-minute segment, Matthews grilled the conservative congressman on the "crazy proposal," repeatedly asking, "Do you believe that Barack Obama is a legitimate, native-born American or not?"
The following day, Los Angeles Times media writer James Rainey quoted FactCheck.org director and former CNN employee Brooks Jackson as stating, "CNN should be ashamed of itself for putting some that stuff on the air." In the same report, Rainey noted the assertion of "one CNN employee" who, in an apparent attempt to distance Dobbs from the network, "reminded [him] several times that Dobbs' most pointed assertions were made on his radio program, which is unconnected to CNN."
Perhaps sensing a tidal wave of opposition to his fringe commentary mounting, Dobbs took to his radio show on July 21 to rant about the "national liberal media" debunking birther theories, telling his audience "they are not applying critical judgment."
At least we now know what Dobbs thinks of his CNN colleagues and other members of the media, who have taken to the airwaves since Dobbs' initial rant to debunk the Obama birth certificate theories, often while ridiculing their adherents as "nut jobs" who advance "ludicrous" claims that are "more conspiratorial than factual."
Dobbs doesn't want you to think he isn't fair. You see, according to him, Obama could "make the whole...controversy disappear ... by simply releasing his original birth certificate." Yep, if the president placates a bunch of right-wing lunatics, they'll be sure to leave him alone.
It's not Dobbs who is on the attack; he is the victim of the "liberal media," which is afraid to "upset the Obama White House." It's those "limp-minded, lily-livered lefties ... attacking" Dobbs because he "actually had the temerity to inquire as to where the birth certificate was." Dobbs' words, not mine. You can't make this stuff up.
In the days that followed, Dobbs faced a torrent of criticism spanning the media gambit: NBC Nightly News debunked the Dobbs-driven birther theory; MSNBC's Chris Matthews wondered if the hubbub is about "not documentation, but pigmentation"; Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, noting that Pilgrim had debunked Dobbs on his own show, asked, "Do you even watch CNN?"; MSNBC's Ed Schultz said, "For Lou Dobbs to wonder if President Obama is quote, 'undocumented' ... that's fringe psycho talk"; playing a clip of Dobbs on MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host Willie Geist said birthers are flogging an "imaginary controversy."
The sparks really flew after CNN's Roland Martin took on Dobbs' obsession with the birther conspiracy. Interviewed by Rick Sanchez, Martin made his opinion abundantly clear, describing those who promote the conspiracy as "a small group of nutty people." Referring to the words of a birther yelling at Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) at a recent town hall meeting, "I want my country back," Martin said the birther really meant, "How is this black guy all of the sudden running the country?" Dobbs was none too pleased. On his radio show, he called Martin's rebuttal "a hoot," saying, "I can't believe Roland would say something that stupid -- that it's racist." The next day on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, Martin told Dobbs, "[Obama's] not here to satisfy Lou Dobbs."
So, who are the birthers whose claims Dobbs is advancing? The figures include Andy Martin, who has made anti-Semitic and racially charged comments; 9-11 "Truther" Philip Berg; perennial candidate for public office Alan Keyes, who has reportedly accused Obama of taking the "slaveholder's position" on abortion; a pastor who has prayed for Obama's death; and the discredited right-wing website WorldNetDaily. Remember, in Dobbs' world, it is the "liberal media" who have failed to apply "critical judgment" to this issue.
Late this week, word leaked that CNN President Jon Klein had reportedly emailed information on Thursday to the staff of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight that Klein said shows the "story" about President Obama's birth certificate "is dead." Dobbs noted that evidence -- which was a statement by the Hawaii Health Department that in 2001, paper records were replaced by electronic records -- on air as Klein instructed, but then asked CNN contributor Roland Martin: "When this could be dispelled so quickly, and -- and simply by producing [the birth certificate], why not do it?" We already know that Dobbs apparently doesn't follow the reporting of his own network. I suppose, then, that it isn't surprising to see Dobbs having issues following his own logic.
Less than 24 hours after declaring Dobbs' pet "birther" story "dead" -- and saying anyone who "is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef" -- Klein caved in to Dobbs, reversing himself completely. In a statement to Washington Post Co. blogger Greg Sargent, Klein defended Dobbs and stated, "I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs." Additionally, according to Sargent, "Klein ... took a shot at Dobbs' critics, saying they're politically motivated: 'I understand that people with a partisan point of view from one extreme or anther might get annoyed that certain subjects are aired.' "
This raises the troubling question of who is really calling the shots at CNN. It's hard to see how anyone can believe CNN is the "most trusted name in news" when its own president can't stand by his less-than-day-old word. CNN's "Lou Dobbs problem" just got a whole lot worse.
Other major stories this week:
A banner week for Murdoch's media empire
It was a banner week for Rupert Murdoch, whose media outlets reminded the nation again of their redeeming social and journalistic value. Sigh.
On Monday's edition of The O'Reilly Factor, retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a Fox News military analyst, taught America what it means to support the troops. Three weeks ago, 23-year-old Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl of Hailey, Idaho, was taken hostage by Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The circumstances of his abduction remain unclear, with some reports indicating that he was taken by force, while others indicate that he voluntarily abandoned his post. Either way, the people of Hailey are hoping for his safe return.
But not Peters, who stunningly remarked that if Bergdahl had in fact deserted his unit, then "the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills." No admonishment came from Bill O'Reilly. His words ignited a firestorm of criticism. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reported that Pentagon officials felt Peters' commentary "could endanger" the life of Bergdahl, while on CNN, columnist John Avalon said that the "wingnut" comment had "crossed the line." Before long, a bipartisan group of 23 veterans serving in Congress had demanded an official apology from Roger Ailes, and Rep. Eric Massa, himself a 24-year veteran of the Navy, had called for both O'Reilly and Peters to be fired from Fox. But neither O'Reilly nor Peters apologized. Instead, two days later, they said that they did wish for the soldier's safe return, but also speculated that he might be "crazy." The following day, Peters attacked Bergdahl again, this time on Steve Malzberg's radio show, where he referred to him as a "deserter" and said a reported story about Bergdahl's girlfriend was a "tissue of lies."
At the same time that the Murdoch-led right-wing media machine was savaging the reputation of a U.S. soldier being held captive overseas, it was disseminating surreptitiously taken near-pornographic images of popular ESPN reporter Erin Andrews. The nude pictures had been culled from a video taken of Andrews through a peephole while she was staying at a hotel. O'Reilly chose to air the images in a segment titled "Did You See That?" His goal, he said during a moment of particularly robust logic, was to prove the "criminal intent" of those involved. The Murdoch-owned (or more aptly, Murdoch-destroyed) New York Post also ran with the pictures, a decision that ESPN called "beyond the pale" before it banished Post reporters from its TV and radio networks.
Friday, July 24, 2009
SONIA SOTOMAYOR comment: "I would hope..."
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
HK comment: Why does media not include the first part of her statment?
Because if you do it changes the meaning. "I WOULD HOPE..."
Here's the entire speach:
A Latina judge's voice
Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 address to the 'Raising the Bar' symposium at the UC Berkeley School of Law
Note: Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama on May 26, 2009, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, delivered this talk on Oct. 26, 2001, as the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture. She spoke at a UC Berkeley School of Law symposium titled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation." The symposium was co-hosted by the La Raza Law Journal, the Berkeley La Raza Law Students Association, the Boalt Hall Center for Social Justice, and the Center for Latino Policy Research. The text below is from the archives of the La Raza Law Journal.
Judge Sotomayor grew up in a South Bronx housing project and graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. She was a former prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney in Manhattan and an associate and then partner in the New York law firm of Pavia & Harcourt. She was also a member of the Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund. Nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997, she became the first Latina nominated to sit on a federal appellate court.Judge Reynoso, thank you for that lovely introduction. I am humbled to be speaking behind a man who has contributed so much to the Hispanic community. I am also grateful to have such kind words said about me.
I am delighted to be here. It is nice to escape my hometown for just a little bit. It is also nice to say hello to old friends who are in the audience, to rekindle contact with old acquaintances and to make new friends among those of you in the audience. It is particularly heart warming to me to be attending a conference to which I was invited by a Latina law school friend, Rachel Moran, who is now an accomplished and widely respected legal scholar. I warn Latinos in this room: Latinas are making a lot of progress in the old-boy network.
I am also deeply honored to have been asked to deliver the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos lecture. I am joining a remarkable group of prior speakers who have given this lecture. I hope what I speak about today continues to promote the legacy of that man whose commitment to public service and abiding dedication to promoting equality and justice for all people inspired this memorial lecture and the conference that will follow. I thank Judge Olmos' widow Mary Louise's family, her son and the judge's many friends for hosting me. And for the privilege you have bestowed on me in honoring the memory of a very special person. If I and the many people of this conference can accomplish a fraction of what Judge Olmos did in his short but extraordinary life we and our respective communities will be infinitely better.
I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.
Who am I? I am a "Newyorkrican." For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II.
Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful. The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am. The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions.
For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events. My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, -- pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs' tongue and ears. I bet the Mexican-Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes. Some of us, like me, do. Part of my Latina identity is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy. It is the memory of Saturday afternoon at the movies with my aunt and cousins watching Cantinflas, who is not Puerto Rican, but who was an icon Spanish comedian on par with Abbot and Costello of my generation. My Latina soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother's house with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on Saturday night and us kids playing lotería, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.
Now, does any one of these things make me a Latina? Obviously not because each of our Caribbean and Latin American communities has their own unique food and different traditions at the holidays. I only learned about tacos in college from my Mexican-American roommate. Being a Latina in America also does not mean speaking Spanish. I happen to speak it fairly well. But my brother, only three years younger, like too many of us educated here, barely speaks it. Most of us born and bred here, speak it very poorly.
If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would likely provide you with a very academic description of what being a Latino or Latina means. For example, I could define Latinos as those peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who maintained or adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication. You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla - pig's intestine - to an American born child. It does not provide an adequate explanation of why individuals like us, many of whom are born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with those communities in which our parents were born and raised.
America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" -- a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity - is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action. Many of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences. In this time of great debate we must remember that it is not political struggles that create a Latino or Latina identity. I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puerto Riqueña and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas, and although that struggle did not and does not create a Latina identity, it does inspire how I live my life.
I was born in the year 1954. That year was the fateful year in which Brown v. Board of Education was decided. When I was eight, in 1961, the first Latino, the wonderful Judge Reynaldo Garza, was appointed to the federal bench, an event we are celebrating at this conference. When I finished law school in 1979, there were no women judges on the Supreme Court or on the highest court of my home state, New York. There was then only one Afro-American Supreme Court Justice and then and now no Latino or Latina justices on our highest court. Now in the last twenty plus years of my professional life, I have seen a quantum leap in the representation of women and Latinos in the legal profession and particularly in the judiciary. In addition to the appointment of the first female United States Attorney General, Janet Reno, we have seen the appointment of two female justices to the Supreme Court and two female justices to the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court of my home state. One of those judges is the Chief Judge and the other is a Puerto Riqueña, like I am. As of today, women sit on the highest courts of almost all of the states and of the territories, including Puerto Rico. One Supreme Court, that of Minnesota, had a majority of women justices for a period of time.
As of September 1, 2001, the federal judiciary consisting of Supreme, Circuit and District Court Judges was about 22% women. In 1992, nearly ten years ago, when I was first appointed a District Court Judge, the percentage of women in the total federal judiciary was only 13%. Now, the growth of Latino representation is somewhat less favorable. As of today we have, as I noted earlier, no Supreme Court justices, and we have only 10 out of 147 active Circuit Court judges and 30 out of 587 active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our proportion of the population. As recently as 1965, however, the federal bench had only three women serving and only one Latino judge. So changes are happening, although in some areas, very slowly. These figures and appointments are heartwarming. Nevertheless, much still remains to happen.
Let us not forget that between the appointments of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 and Justice Ginsburg in 1992, eleven years passed. Similarly, between Justice Kaye's initial appointment as an Associate Judge to the New York Court of Appeals in 1983, and Justice Ciparick's appointment in 1993, ten years elapsed. Almost nine years later, we are waiting for a third appointment of a woman to both the Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals and of a second minority, male or female, preferably Hispanic, to the Supreme Court. In 1992 when I joined the bench, there were still two out of 13 circuit courts and about 53 out of 92 district courts in which no women sat. At the beginning of September of 2001, there are women sitting in all 13 circuit courts. The First, Fifth, Eighth and Federal Circuits each have only one female judge, however, out of a combined total number of 48 judges. There are still nearly 37 district courts with no women judges at all. For women of color the statistics are more sobering. As of September 20, 1998, of the then 195 circuit court judges only two were African-American women and two Hispanic women. Of the 641 district court judges only twelve were African-American women and eleven Hispanic women. African-American women comprise only 1.56% of the federal judiciary and Hispanic-American women comprise only 1%. No African-American, male or female, sits today on the Fourth or Federal circuits. And no Hispanics, male or female, sit on the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, District of Columbia or Federal Circuits.
Sort of shocking, isn't it? This is the year 2002. We have a long way to go. Unfortunately, there are some very deep storm warnings we must keep in mind. In at least the last five years the majority of nominated judges the Senate delayed more than one year before confirming or never confirming were women or minorities. I need not remind this audience that Judge Paez of your home Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, has had the dubious distinction of having had his confirmation delayed the longest in Senate history. These figures demonstrate that there is a real and continuing need for Latino and Latina organizations and community groups throughout the country to exist and to continue their efforts of promoting women and men of all colors in their pursuit for equality in the judicial system.
This weekend's conference, illustrated by its name, is bound to examine issues that I hope will identify the efforts and solutions that will assist our communities. The focus of my speech tonight, however, is not about the struggle to get us where we are and where we need to go but instead to discuss with you what it all will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench. The statistics I have been talking about provide a base from which to discuss a question which one of my former colleagues on the Southern District bench, Judge Miriam Cederbaum, raised when speaking about women on the federal bench. Her question was: What do the history and statistics mean? In her speech, Judge Cederbaum expressed her belief that the number of women and by direct inference people of color on the bench, was still statistically insignificant and that therefore we could not draw valid scientific conclusions from the acts of so few people over such a short period of time. Yet, we do have women and people of color in more significant numbers on the bench and no one can or should ignore pondering what that will mean or not mean in the development of the law. Now, I cannot and do not claim this issue as personally my own. In recent years there has been an explosion of research and writing in this area. On one of the panels tomorrow, you will hear the Latino perspective in this debate.
For those of you interested in the gender perspective on this issue, I commend to you a wonderful compilation of articles published on the subject in Vol. 77 of the Judicature, the Journal of the American Judicature Society of November-December 1993. It is on Westlaw/Lexis and I assume the students and academics in this room can find it.
Now Judge Cedarbaum expresses concern with any analysis of women and presumably again people of color on the bench, which begins and presumably ends with the conclusion that women or minorities are different from men generally. She sees danger in presuming that judging should be gender or anything else based. She rightly points out that the perception of the differences between men and women is what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively." I am quoting adjectives that were bandied around famously during the suffragettes' movement.
While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought. Thus, as noted by another Yale Law School Professor -- I did graduate from there and I am not really biased except that they seem to be doing a lot of writing in that area -- Professor Judith Resnik says that there is not a single voice of feminism, not a feminist approach but many who are exploring the possible ways of being that are distinct from those structured in a world dominated by the power and words of men. Thus, feminist theories of judging are in the midst of creation and are not and perhaps will never aspire to be as solidified as the established legal doctrines of judging can sometimes appear to be.
That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives -- no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?
Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in organizations that have supported this conference, to think about these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to measure the differences we will and are making.
I am delighted to have been here tonight and extend once again my deepest gratitude to all of you for listening and letting me share my reflections on being a Latina voice on the bench. Thank you.
HK comment: Why does media not include the first part of her statment?
Because if you do it changes the meaning. "I WOULD HOPE..."
Here's the entire speach:
A Latina judge's voice
Judge Sonia Sotomayor's 2001 address to the 'Raising the Bar' symposium at the UC Berkeley School of Law
Note: Federal Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama on May 26, 2009, to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, delivered this talk on Oct. 26, 2001, as the Judge Mario G. Olmos Memorial Lecture. She spoke at a UC Berkeley School of Law symposium titled "Raising the Bar: Latino and Latina Presence in the Judiciary and the Struggle for Representation." The symposium was co-hosted by the La Raza Law Journal, the Berkeley La Raza Law Students Association, the Boalt Hall Center for Social Justice, and the Center for Latino Policy Research. The text below is from the archives of the La Raza Law Journal.
Judge Sotomayor grew up in a South Bronx housing project and graduated from Princeton University and Yale Law School. She was a former prosecutor in the office of the District Attorney in Manhattan and an associate and then partner in the New York law firm of Pavia & Harcourt. She was also a member of the Puerto Rico Legal Defense and Education Fund. Nominated to the Second Circuit in 1997, she became the first Latina nominated to sit on a federal appellate court.Judge Reynoso, thank you for that lovely introduction. I am humbled to be speaking behind a man who has contributed so much to the Hispanic community. I am also grateful to have such kind words said about me.
I am delighted to be here. It is nice to escape my hometown for just a little bit. It is also nice to say hello to old friends who are in the audience, to rekindle contact with old acquaintances and to make new friends among those of you in the audience. It is particularly heart warming to me to be attending a conference to which I was invited by a Latina law school friend, Rachel Moran, who is now an accomplished and widely respected legal scholar. I warn Latinos in this room: Latinas are making a lot of progress in the old-boy network.
I am also deeply honored to have been asked to deliver the annual Judge Mario G. Olmos lecture. I am joining a remarkable group of prior speakers who have given this lecture. I hope what I speak about today continues to promote the legacy of that man whose commitment to public service and abiding dedication to promoting equality and justice for all people inspired this memorial lecture and the conference that will follow. I thank Judge Olmos' widow Mary Louise's family, her son and the judge's many friends for hosting me. And for the privilege you have bestowed on me in honoring the memory of a very special person. If I and the many people of this conference can accomplish a fraction of what Judge Olmos did in his short but extraordinary life we and our respective communities will be infinitely better.
I intend tonight to touch upon the themes that this conference will be discussing this weekend and to talk to you about my Latina identity, where it came from, and the influence I perceive it has on my presence on the bench.
Who am I? I am a "Newyorkrican." For those of you on the West Coast who do not know what that term means: I am a born and bred New Yorker of Puerto Rican-born parents who came to the states during World War II.
Like many other immigrants to this great land, my parents came because of poverty and to attempt to find and secure a better life for themselves and the family that they hoped to have. They largely succeeded. For that, my brother and I are very grateful. The story of that success is what made me and what makes me the Latina that I am. The Latina side of my identity was forged and closely nurtured by my family through our shared experiences and traditions.
For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir - rice, beans and pork - that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events. My Latina identity also includes, because of my particularly adventurous taste buds, morcilla, -- pig intestines, patitas de cerdo con garbanzo -- pigs' feet with beans, and la lengua y orejas de cuchifrito, pigs' tongue and ears. I bet the Mexican-Americans in this room are thinking that Puerto Ricans have unusual food tastes. Some of us, like me, do. Part of my Latina identity is the sound of merengue at all our family parties and the heart wrenching Spanish love songs that we enjoy. It is the memory of Saturday afternoon at the movies with my aunt and cousins watching Cantinflas, who is not Puerto Rican, but who was an icon Spanish comedian on par with Abbot and Costello of my generation. My Latina soul was nourished as I visited and played at my grandmother's house with my cousins and extended family. They were my friends as I grew up. Being a Latina child was watching the adults playing dominos on Saturday night and us kids playing lotería, bingo, with my grandmother calling out the numbers which we marked on our cards with chick peas.
Now, does any one of these things make me a Latina? Obviously not because each of our Caribbean and Latin American communities has their own unique food and different traditions at the holidays. I only learned about tacos in college from my Mexican-American roommate. Being a Latina in America also does not mean speaking Spanish. I happen to speak it fairly well. But my brother, only three years younger, like too many of us educated here, barely speaks it. Most of us born and bred here, speak it very poorly.
If I had pursued my career in my undergraduate history major, I would likely provide you with a very academic description of what being a Latino or Latina means. For example, I could define Latinos as those peoples and cultures populated or colonized by Spain who maintained or adopted Spanish or Spanish Creole as their language of communication. You can tell that I have been very well educated. That antiseptic description however, does not really explain the appeal of morcilla - pig's intestine - to an American born child. It does not provide an adequate explanation of why individuals like us, many of whom are born in this completely different American culture, still identify so strongly with those communities in which our parents were born and raised.
America has a deeply confused image of itself that is in perpetual tension. We are a nation that takes pride in our ethnic diversity, recognizing its importance in shaping our society and in adding richness to its existence. Yet, we simultaneously insist that we can and must function and live in a race and color-blind way that ignore these very differences that in other contexts we laud. That tension between "the melting pot and the salad bowl" -- a recently popular metaphor used to described New York's diversity - is being hotly debated today in national discussions about affirmative action. Many of us struggle with this tension and attempt to maintain and promote our cultural and ethnic identities in a society that is often ambivalent about how to deal with its differences. In this time of great debate we must remember that it is not political struggles that create a Latino or Latina identity. I became a Latina by the way I love and the way I live my life. My family showed me by their example how wonderful and vibrant life is and how wonderful and magical it is to have a Latina soul. They taught me to love being a Puerto Riqueña and to love America and value its lesson that great things could be achieved if one works hard for it. But achieving success here is no easy accomplishment for Latinos or Latinas, and although that struggle did not and does not create a Latina identity, it does inspire how I live my life.
I was born in the year 1954. That year was the fateful year in which Brown v. Board of Education was decided. When I was eight, in 1961, the first Latino, the wonderful Judge Reynaldo Garza, was appointed to the federal bench, an event we are celebrating at this conference. When I finished law school in 1979, there were no women judges on the Supreme Court or on the highest court of my home state, New York. There was then only one Afro-American Supreme Court Justice and then and now no Latino or Latina justices on our highest court. Now in the last twenty plus years of my professional life, I have seen a quantum leap in the representation of women and Latinos in the legal profession and particularly in the judiciary. In addition to the appointment of the first female United States Attorney General, Janet Reno, we have seen the appointment of two female justices to the Supreme Court and two female justices to the New York Court of Appeals, the highest court of my home state. One of those judges is the Chief Judge and the other is a Puerto Riqueña, like I am. As of today, women sit on the highest courts of almost all of the states and of the territories, including Puerto Rico. One Supreme Court, that of Minnesota, had a majority of women justices for a period of time.
As of September 1, 2001, the federal judiciary consisting of Supreme, Circuit and District Court Judges was about 22% women. In 1992, nearly ten years ago, when I was first appointed a District Court Judge, the percentage of women in the total federal judiciary was only 13%. Now, the growth of Latino representation is somewhat less favorable. As of today we have, as I noted earlier, no Supreme Court justices, and we have only 10 out of 147 active Circuit Court judges and 30 out of 587 active district court judges. Those numbers are grossly below our proportion of the population. As recently as 1965, however, the federal bench had only three women serving and only one Latino judge. So changes are happening, although in some areas, very slowly. These figures and appointments are heartwarming. Nevertheless, much still remains to happen.
Let us not forget that between the appointments of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 1981 and Justice Ginsburg in 1992, eleven years passed. Similarly, between Justice Kaye's initial appointment as an Associate Judge to the New York Court of Appeals in 1983, and Justice Ciparick's appointment in 1993, ten years elapsed. Almost nine years later, we are waiting for a third appointment of a woman to both the Supreme Court and the New York Court of Appeals and of a second minority, male or female, preferably Hispanic, to the Supreme Court. In 1992 when I joined the bench, there were still two out of 13 circuit courts and about 53 out of 92 district courts in which no women sat. At the beginning of September of 2001, there are women sitting in all 13 circuit courts. The First, Fifth, Eighth and Federal Circuits each have only one female judge, however, out of a combined total number of 48 judges. There are still nearly 37 district courts with no women judges at all. For women of color the statistics are more sobering. As of September 20, 1998, of the then 195 circuit court judges only two were African-American women and two Hispanic women. Of the 641 district court judges only twelve were African-American women and eleven Hispanic women. African-American women comprise only 1.56% of the federal judiciary and Hispanic-American women comprise only 1%. No African-American, male or female, sits today on the Fourth or Federal circuits. And no Hispanics, male or female, sit on the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, District of Columbia or Federal Circuits.
Sort of shocking, isn't it? This is the year 2002. We have a long way to go. Unfortunately, there are some very deep storm warnings we must keep in mind. In at least the last five years the majority of nominated judges the Senate delayed more than one year before confirming or never confirming were women or minorities. I need not remind this audience that Judge Paez of your home Circuit, the Ninth Circuit, has had the dubious distinction of having had his confirmation delayed the longest in Senate history. These figures demonstrate that there is a real and continuing need for Latino and Latina organizations and community groups throughout the country to exist and to continue their efforts of promoting women and men of all colors in their pursuit for equality in the judicial system.
This weekend's conference, illustrated by its name, is bound to examine issues that I hope will identify the efforts and solutions that will assist our communities. The focus of my speech tonight, however, is not about the struggle to get us where we are and where we need to go but instead to discuss with you what it all will mean to have more women and people of color on the bench. The statistics I have been talking about provide a base from which to discuss a question which one of my former colleagues on the Southern District bench, Judge Miriam Cederbaum, raised when speaking about women on the federal bench. Her question was: What do the history and statistics mean? In her speech, Judge Cederbaum expressed her belief that the number of women and by direct inference people of color on the bench, was still statistically insignificant and that therefore we could not draw valid scientific conclusions from the acts of so few people over such a short period of time. Yet, we do have women and people of color in more significant numbers on the bench and no one can or should ignore pondering what that will mean or not mean in the development of the law. Now, I cannot and do not claim this issue as personally my own. In recent years there has been an explosion of research and writing in this area. On one of the panels tomorrow, you will hear the Latino perspective in this debate.
For those of you interested in the gender perspective on this issue, I commend to you a wonderful compilation of articles published on the subject in Vol. 77 of the Judicature, the Journal of the American Judicature Society of November-December 1993. It is on Westlaw/Lexis and I assume the students and academics in this room can find it.
Now Judge Cedarbaum expresses concern with any analysis of women and presumably again people of color on the bench, which begins and presumably ends with the conclusion that women or minorities are different from men generally. She sees danger in presuming that judging should be gender or anything else based. She rightly points out that the perception of the differences between men and women is what led to many paternalistic laws and to the denial to women of the right to vote because we were described then "as not capable of reasoning or thinking logically" but instead of "acting intuitively." I am quoting adjectives that were bandied around famously during the suffragettes' movement.
While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases. And I wonder whether by ignoring our differences as women or men of color we do a disservice both to the law and society. Whatever the reasons why we may have different perspectives, either as some theorists suggest because of our cultural experiences or as others postulate because we have basic differences in logic and reasoning, are in many respects a small part of a larger practical question we as women and minority judges in society in general must address. I accept the thesis of a law school classmate, Professor Steven Carter of Yale Law School, in his affirmative action book that in any group of human beings there is a diversity of opinion because there is both a diversity of experiences and of thought. Thus, as noted by another Yale Law School Professor -- I did graduate from there and I am not really biased except that they seem to be doing a lot of writing in that area -- Professor Judith Resnik says that there is not a single voice of feminism, not a feminist approach but many who are exploring the possible ways of being that are distinct from those structured in a world dominated by the power and words of men. Thus, feminist theories of judging are in the midst of creation and are not and perhaps will never aspire to be as solidified as the established legal doctrines of judging can sometimes appear to be.
That same point can be made with respect to people of color. No one person, judge or nominee will speak in a female or people of color voice. I need not remind you that Justice Clarence Thomas represents a part but not the whole of African-American thought on many subjects. Yet, because I accept the proposition that, as Judge Resnik describes it, "to judge is an exercise of power" and because as, another former law school classmate, Professor Martha Minnow of Harvard Law School, states "there is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives -- no neutrality, no escape from choice in judging," I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions. The aspiration to impartiality is just that -- it's an aspiration because it denies the fact that we are by our experiences making different choices than others. Not all women or people of color, in all or some circumstances or indeed in any particular case or circumstance but enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging. The Minnesota Supreme Court has given an example of this. As reported by Judge Patricia Wald formerly of the D.C. Circuit Court, three women on the Minnesota Court with two men dissenting agreed to grant a protective order against a father's visitation rights when the father abused his child. The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases. As recognized by legal scholars, whatever the reason, not one woman or person of color in any one position but as a group we will have an effect on the development of the law and on judging.
In our private conversations, Judge Cedarbaum has pointed out to me that seminal decisions in race and sex discrimination cases have come from Supreme Courts composed exclusively of white males. I agree that this is significant but I also choose to emphasize that the people who argued those cases before the Supreme Court which changed the legal landscape ultimately were largely people of color and women. I recall that Justice Thurgood Marshall, Judge Connie Baker Motley, the first black woman appointed to the federal bench, and others of the NAACP argued Brown v. Board of Education. Similarly, Justice Ginsburg, with other women attorneys, was instrumental in advocating and convincing the Court that equality of work required equality in terms and conditions of employment.
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
Let us not forget that wise men like Oliver Wendell Holmes and Justice Cardozo voted on cases which upheld both sex and race discrimination in our society. Until 1972, no Supreme Court case ever upheld the claim of a woman in a gender discrimination case. I, like Professor Carter, believe that we should not be so myopic as to believe that others of different experiences or backgrounds are incapable of understanding the values and needs of people from a different group. Many are so capable. As Judge Cedarbaum pointed out to me, nine white men on the Supreme Court in the past have done so on many occasions and on many issues including Brown.
However, to understand takes time and effort, something that not all people are willing to give. For others, their experiences limit their ability to understand the experiences of others. Other simply do not care. Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
I also hope that by raising the question today of what difference having more Latinos and Latinas on the bench will make will start your own evaluation. For people of color and women lawyers, what does and should being an ethnic minority mean in your lawyering? For men lawyers, what areas in your experiences and attitudes do you need to work on to make you capable of reaching those great moments of enlightenment which other men in different circumstances have been able to reach. For all of us, how do change the facts that in every task force study of gender and race bias in the courts, women and people of color, lawyers and judges alike, report in significantly higher percentages than white men that their gender and race has shaped their careers, from hiring, retention to promotion and that a statistically significant number of women and minority lawyers and judges, both alike, have experienced bias in the courtroom?
Each day on the bench I learn something new about the judicial process and about being a professional Latina woman in a world that sometimes looks at me with suspicion. I am reminded each day that I render decisions that affect people concretely and that I owe them constant and complete vigilance in checking my assumptions, presumptions and perspectives and ensuring that to the extent that my limited abilities and capabilities permit me, that I reevaluate them and change as circumstances and cases before me requires. I can and do aspire to be greater than the sum total of my experiences but I accept my limitations. I willingly accept that we who judge must not deny the differences resulting from experience and heritage but attempt, as the Supreme Court suggests, continuously to judge when those opinions, sympathies and prejudices are appropriate.
There is always a danger embedded in relative morality, but since judging is a series of choices that we must make, that I am forced to make, I hope that I can make them by informing myself on the questions I must not avoid asking and continuously pondering. We, I mean all of us in this room, must continue individually and in voices united in organizations that have supported this conference, to think about these questions and to figure out how we go about creating the opportunity for there to be more women and people of color on the bench so we can finally have statistically significant numbers to measure the differences we will and are making.
I am delighted to have been here tonight and extend once again my deepest gratitude to all of you for listening and letting me share my reflections on being a Latina voice on the bench. Thank you.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
OBAMA on Health Care last night.
KEY QUOTES:
--'I understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in the game of politics, to turn every issue into a running tally of who's up and who's down. I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that, even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to go for the kill, another Republican senator, that defeating health reform is about breaking me.
'So let me be clear: This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day and the stories I hear at town hall meetings. This is about the woman in Colorado who paid $700 a month to her insurance company only to find out that they wouldn't pay a dime for her cancer treatment, who had to use up her retirement funds to save her own life.'
--'This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they can't afford to wait any longer for reform. They're counting on us to get this done. They're looking to us for leadership. And we can't let them down. We will pass reform that lowers cost, promotes choice and provides coverage that every American can count on, and we will do it this year.'
--'I'm rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, Can you help? So I've got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, 'Our daughter just found out she's got leukemia and, if I don't do something soon, we just either are going to go bankrupt or we're not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs.' And in a country like ours, that's not right.'
--'[I]f you don't set deadlines in this town, things don't happen. The default position is inertia, because doing something always creates some people who are unhappy. There's always going to be some interest out there that decides; you know what, the status quo is working for me a little bit better.'
--[T]he fact that we have made so much progress, where we've got doctors, nurses, hospitals, even the pharmaceutical industry, AARP saying that this makes sense to do, I think, means that the stars are aligned and we need to take advantage of that. Now, I do think it's important to get this right. And if, at the end of the day, I do not yet see that we have it right, then I'm not going to sign a bill that, for example, adds to our deficit. I won't sign a bill that doesn't reduce health care inflation so that families as well as government are saving money. I'm not going to sign a bill that I don't think will work.'
--'[T]o raise a broader issue that I think has colored how we look at health care reform, let me just talk about deficit and debt, because part of what's been happening in this debate is the American people are understandably queasy about the huge deficits and debt that we're facing right now.'
--'I understand how easy it is for this town to become consumed in the game of politics, to turn every issue into a running tally of who's up and who's down. I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that, even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to go for the kill, another Republican senator, that defeating health reform is about breaking me.
'So let me be clear: This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day and the stories I hear at town hall meetings. This is about the woman in Colorado who paid $700 a month to her insurance company only to find out that they wouldn't pay a dime for her cancer treatment, who had to use up her retirement funds to save her own life.'
--'This debate is not a game for these Americans, and they can't afford to wait any longer for reform. They're counting on us to get this done. They're looking to us for leadership. And we can't let them down. We will pass reform that lowers cost, promotes choice and provides coverage that every American can count on, and we will do it this year.'
--'I'm rushed because I get letters every day from families that are being clobbered by health care costs. And they ask me, Can you help? So I've got a middle-aged couple that will write me and they say, 'Our daughter just found out she's got leukemia and, if I don't do something soon, we just either are going to go bankrupt or we're not going to be able to provide our daughter with the care that she needs.' And in a country like ours, that's not right.'
--'[I]f you don't set deadlines in this town, things don't happen. The default position is inertia, because doing something always creates some people who are unhappy. There's always going to be some interest out there that decides; you know what, the status quo is working for me a little bit better.'
--[T]he fact that we have made so much progress, where we've got doctors, nurses, hospitals, even the pharmaceutical industry, AARP saying that this makes sense to do, I think, means that the stars are aligned and we need to take advantage of that. Now, I do think it's important to get this right. And if, at the end of the day, I do not yet see that we have it right, then I'm not going to sign a bill that, for example, adds to our deficit. I won't sign a bill that doesn't reduce health care inflation so that families as well as government are saving money. I'm not going to sign a bill that I don't think will work.'
--'[T]o raise a broader issue that I think has colored how we look at health care reform, let me just talk about deficit and debt, because part of what's been happening in this debate is the American people are understandably queasy about the huge deficits and debt that we're facing right now.'
MAUREEN DOWD Whirling Dervish Drivers
NY Times:
One night several years ago, my mom slipped and broke a bone in her neck. I stayed late at the hospital with her. Driving home on a mostly deserted road, I checked my cellphone messages.
I didn’t notice either the red light coming up or the car stopped at the light. I banged into the back of it, and even though the damage was minor, it was a scary moment.
I admitted that I was upset and distracted, took the blame and swore to myself I’d never use a cellphone in a car again. But, of course, I did. D.C. police will pull you over if they see you using a cellphone that you’re holding up to your ear, but not if you’re hands-free.
Ominously, research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — suppressed for years and released on Tuesday after petitions were filed by advocacy groups — shows that there are “negligible differences” in accident risk whether you’re holding the phone or not. Hands-free devices may even enhance the danger by lulling you into complacency.
It is the conversation that pulls focus. My greatest fear is that I’m going to be in a taxi when the driver gets a call from his wife to tell him that she’s run off with his sexy cousin.
In a March New Yorker profile, Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter of “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity,” told the nightmare tale of being in a New York taxi when the cell-chatting driver ran a red light and hit another car.
“So they’re lifting the other guy out of the car, and I’m thinking, I’m lucky,” he said, adding: “Then I see them come at my cab with those things, the Jaws of Life.” He’d fractured his rib and hip.
Studies show that drivers who talk on cellphones are four times more likely to be in a crash and drive just as erratically as people with an 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level.
In one study cited by the highway safety agency, “drivers found it easier to drive drunk than to drive while using a phone, even when it was hands-free.”
The agency buried its head in the sand, keeping the research to itself for years and ignoring the fact that soon nearly all Americans would own cellphones and that the phones are always getting smarter and more demanding, putting a multimedia empire at your fingertips while you’re piloting a potentially lethal piece of artillery.
Americans are so addicted to techno-surfing that they’ve gotten hubristic about how many machines they can juggle simultaneously. One reporter I know recently filed a story from his laptop while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway.
As John Ratey, the Harvard professor of psychiatry who specializes in the science of attention, told The Times’s Matt Richtel for his chilling series, “Driven to Distraction,” using digital devices gives you “a dopamine squirt.”
That explains the Pavlovian impulse of people who are out with friends or dates to ignore them and check their BlackBerrys and cellphones, even if 99 out of 100 messages are uninteresting. They’re truffle-hunting for that scintillating one.
Americans woke up one day to find that they were don’t-miss-a-moment addicts who feel compelled to respond to all messages immediately.
The tech industry is our drug dealer, feeding the intense social and economic pressure to stay constantly in touch with employers, colleagues, friends and family.
It also explains why Christopher Hill, a 21-year-old from Oklahoma who killed a woman last September when he ran a red light while on his cellphone and rammed into her S.U.V., tried to keep dialing and driving with a headset his mother gave him two months after the accident.
He “found his mind wandering into his phone call so much that ‘I nearly missed a light,’ ” he told Richtel. Now he says he rarely uses the phone.
Hollywood offered a cautionary story with the depressing “Seven Pounds,” which begins with Will Smith spoiling his perfect life when he BlackBerrys while driving in his fancy car with his gorgeous new fiancée. He crashes into another car, killing six strangers and his girlfriend. The movie ends with a poisonous jellyfish in an icy bathtub. Don’t ask.
Left, literally, to our own devices, we spiral out of control. States should outlaw drivers from talking on phones — except in an emergency — and using digital devices that cause you to drift and swerve; or at least mandate a $10,000 fine for getting in an accident while phoning or Twittering.
Auto companies are busy creating new crack hits for our self-destructive cravings. Ford is developing a system that would let drivers use phones and music players and surf the Internet with voice commands and audible responses.
Sounds like a computerized death machine. But, as our dealers know, we’ll never disconnect.
One night several years ago, my mom slipped and broke a bone in her neck. I stayed late at the hospital with her. Driving home on a mostly deserted road, I checked my cellphone messages.
I didn’t notice either the red light coming up or the car stopped at the light. I banged into the back of it, and even though the damage was minor, it was a scary moment.
I admitted that I was upset and distracted, took the blame and swore to myself I’d never use a cellphone in a car again. But, of course, I did. D.C. police will pull you over if they see you using a cellphone that you’re holding up to your ear, but not if you’re hands-free.
Ominously, research by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — suppressed for years and released on Tuesday after petitions were filed by advocacy groups — shows that there are “negligible differences” in accident risk whether you’re holding the phone or not. Hands-free devices may even enhance the danger by lulling you into complacency.
It is the conversation that pulls focus. My greatest fear is that I’m going to be in a taxi when the driver gets a call from his wife to tell him that she’s run off with his sexy cousin.
In a March New Yorker profile, Tony Gilroy, the screenwriter of “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity,” told the nightmare tale of being in a New York taxi when the cell-chatting driver ran a red light and hit another car.
“So they’re lifting the other guy out of the car, and I’m thinking, I’m lucky,” he said, adding: “Then I see them come at my cab with those things, the Jaws of Life.” He’d fractured his rib and hip.
Studies show that drivers who talk on cellphones are four times more likely to be in a crash and drive just as erratically as people with an 0.08 percent blood-alcohol level.
In one study cited by the highway safety agency, “drivers found it easier to drive drunk than to drive while using a phone, even when it was hands-free.”
The agency buried its head in the sand, keeping the research to itself for years and ignoring the fact that soon nearly all Americans would own cellphones and that the phones are always getting smarter and more demanding, putting a multimedia empire at your fingertips while you’re piloting a potentially lethal piece of artillery.
Americans are so addicted to techno-surfing that they’ve gotten hubristic about how many machines they can juggle simultaneously. One reporter I know recently filed a story from his laptop while driving on the Pacific Coast Highway.
As John Ratey, the Harvard professor of psychiatry who specializes in the science of attention, told The Times’s Matt Richtel for his chilling series, “Driven to Distraction,” using digital devices gives you “a dopamine squirt.”
That explains the Pavlovian impulse of people who are out with friends or dates to ignore them and check their BlackBerrys and cellphones, even if 99 out of 100 messages are uninteresting. They’re truffle-hunting for that scintillating one.
Americans woke up one day to find that they were don’t-miss-a-moment addicts who feel compelled to respond to all messages immediately.
The tech industry is our drug dealer, feeding the intense social and economic pressure to stay constantly in touch with employers, colleagues, friends and family.
It also explains why Christopher Hill, a 21-year-old from Oklahoma who killed a woman last September when he ran a red light while on his cellphone and rammed into her S.U.V., tried to keep dialing and driving with a headset his mother gave him two months after the accident.
He “found his mind wandering into his phone call so much that ‘I nearly missed a light,’ ” he told Richtel. Now he says he rarely uses the phone.
Hollywood offered a cautionary story with the depressing “Seven Pounds,” which begins with Will Smith spoiling his perfect life when he BlackBerrys while driving in his fancy car with his gorgeous new fiancée. He crashes into another car, killing six strangers and his girlfriend. The movie ends with a poisonous jellyfish in an icy bathtub. Don’t ask.
Left, literally, to our own devices, we spiral out of control. States should outlaw drivers from talking on phones — except in an emergency — and using digital devices that cause you to drift and swerve; or at least mandate a $10,000 fine for getting in an accident while phoning or Twittering.
Auto companies are busy creating new crack hits for our self-destructive cravings. Ford is developing a system that would let drivers use phones and music players and surf the Internet with voice commands and audible responses.
Sounds like a computerized death machine. But, as our dealers know, we’ll never disconnect.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
POLITICO's 10 questions for Obama
By: Jonathan Martin and Josh Gerstein
For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama is using a prime-time news conference Wednesday night to play catch-up.
With the public souring on both his handling of health-care reform and the economy, Obama is stepping to the podium for the fourth time in six months in hopes of convincing the public he’s got a plan, to get the economy back on track and a health overhaul that will expand care to all without busting the budget.
With Democrats fractured on health-care and the GOP sensing a major political opportunity, Obama is engaged in an inside-outside strategy, cajoling members of Congress in private White House sessions while using his bully pulpit to rally public support for his plan.
So it’s health care where we start with our 10 Questions for President Obama.
1) Is it still realistic that both chambers of Congress will pass health care bills before their summer recess in August? And how worried are you that missing the deadline could endanger your hopes of getting a bill this year?
A former senator himself, Obama knows Congress works best under a deadline – and he called on both houses to pass a health bill before heading off on summer vacation. So far anyway, it’s not working. Obama suggested Monday that he was willing to bend his oft-stated deadline, saying it would be OK if the legislation is “going to spill over by a few days or a week.”
But even that may not be realistic. Senators of both parties have publicly warned against rushing through the process, and rank-and-file members in both chambers have raised concerns over everything from the high costs to whether a government-run insurance option is the best way to go, as Obama has sought.
Neither the House nor the Senate has scheduled floor votes and key committees in both have yet to even approve a bill – meaning it might be see you in September time for the president’s health-care goals.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) seemed to defy Obama, saying: “If we get consensus, we'll move on it. If we don't get consensus, I don't think staying in session is necessarily necessary.”
2) Who are you referring to when you cite, as you did in your radio address last week, those “special interests” in health care who “make the same old arguments, and use the same scare tactics?” And what’s the difference between honest objections to a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, and what you consider obstructionism?
Obama has actually worked assiduously, and successfully, to court many of the stakeholders with a financial interest in healthcare – drug-makers, insurance companies and others who could strike a serious blow at his plan if they came out strongly against it.
He has hosted a variety of them at the White House, trumpeted the financial agreements struck with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and used some of their endorsements in recent days to underline the support behind getting a bill passed.
Just on Tuesday, Obama touted such groups and others — he actually singled out the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association — to highlight “the consensus” for legislation. So who are the bad guys that are trying to scuttle reform? Perhaps Obama will name names tonight.
3) You have sought to focus attention on Sen. Jim DeMint’s comments alluding to the political benefit for the GOP in blocking healthcare reform, but it’s mostly Democratic members of Congress that your own political apparatus is targeting in TV ads now on the air. Why haven’t you been more successful in convincing members of your own party on this issue so far, and how does DeMint figure into your effort to lobby Democrats?
Obama and his allies have been harping on DeMint’s reference to health care as Obama’s potential “Waterloo,” but the South Carolina senator is one of just 40 GOP senators.
It’s not the conservative DeMint but rather moderate Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House who ultimately will decide health care’s fate. And right now, they’re not happy – particularly the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs who fear a deficit explosion if Obama gets his way.
It’s these members who have been brought down to the White House for meetings with the president.
So why is it DeMint who the White House is singling out? Clearly it’s part of the “Party of No” mantra the White House likes to use against Republicans. But perhaps it’s also to send a reminder to those recalcitrant members of Obma’s own party that failure on health care is what the opposition is pulling for – and that such failure would have grave political consequences for all Democrats.
4) You said during the campaign that you would negotiate the health care bill on C-SPAN. But now you won't even release the names of health care executives who visit the White House for what are closed door discussions. How do you reconcile what you said during the campaign with your approach now?
As part of his stump speech, Obama would often describe his vision for the process behind health care reform.
At a campaign stop in Virginia last summer, he said: "We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
Now, though, none of the White House negotiations are open for public consumption. And the Obama administration has rejected a request from a watchdog group to disclose the health care industry executives who have come to the White House to discuss the issue. The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, is poised to sue Obama’s administration to obtain the records.
5) On Monday you said that “folks on Wall Street don’t feel any remorse for taking all these risks; you don’t get a sense that there’s been a change of culture and behavior as a consequence of what has happened." What do you think Wall Street needs to do to show remorse and to change its culture? And isn’t the problem with the economy right now not some Wall Streeters getting bonuses, but the fact that recession is much tougher and deeper than even your administration projected?
While nothing like the AIG bonuses that fueled so much populist resentment this spring, news of Goldman Sachs’ monster second-quarter profits and subsequent billions worth of bonuses has again focused attention on Wall Street excesses.
According to a New York Times estimate, Goldman workers could earn an average of $770,000 this year, about the same as they did during the go-go boom years. Goldman paid back the $10 billion in federal bailout money they received, freeing them of compensation restrictions.
Republicans have scored points recently by pointing out that Congress approved nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending, and yet the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent and rising. Look for Obama to ask for patience from the public that his administration is focused every day on turning around the economy.
6) Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate alleged abuses of detainees during the Bush era. When the White House was asked about this, officials repeated your mantra that the country should look forward, not back. What’s your view about when it’s appropriate for the White House to send signals to the Justice Department about what action it should take in regarding a criminal investigation?
Holder is wrestling with the issue of whether to appoint an independent prosecutor to determine whether crimes were committed as part of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”—or outside of them. While the White House has stressed Holder’s independence, it hasn’t been bashful about putting a little English on the ball. “My best guidance for you and others on this would be to look back at what the President has said over the course of the past many weeks…that our efforts are better focused looking forward than looking back,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week when asked about Holder’s dilemma.
7) In announcing the delay of up to six months in the report on detainee policy, White House officials said the issues were “hard” and “complicated” and that you wanted them to “get this right.” Weren’t they hard and complicated when you set the deadline earlier this year? What has changed? And are you still committed to closing Guantanamo Bay prison by January?
On his second full day in office, Obama held an Oval Office ceremony to sign executive orders setting a one-year deadline for closing Guantanamo and six-month deadlines for government task forces revamping detainee and interrogation policies. This week, the administration blew past the task force deadlines, even as it claims to be on track to close Gitmo.
“These are hard, complicated and consequential decisions. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves,” a senior administration official said at a White House briefing Monday. “We wanted to get this right,” another official said. However, the officials had no real explanation for how or why the issues turned out to be more complicated than they thought in January. They also insisted, though somewhat less than forcefully, that they are still working towards Obama’s goal of closing the controversial facility in January, even though an uproar in Congress has complicated his ability to bring prisoners to the U.S.
8) Your Secretary of State recently compared the North Korean regime attention-craving adolescents. Do you agree with that assessment, and either way, how do plan to proceed toward reining in North Korea’s missile program?
In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a colorful description of Pyongyang: "What we've seen is this constant demand for attention, and maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention.”
Continuing, she said: "Don't give it to them. They don't deserve it. They are acting out in a way to send a message that is not a message we're interested in receiving."
9) Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was recently arrested by Cambridge police at his own home. Now the African-American scholar said he plans to use the experience to focus attention on racial profiling and the black experience in the criminal justice system. Do you think Gates was justified in accusing the police of being harassed for being “a black man in America?”
Obama has avoided intervening in such racially charged incidents in the past – even drawing criticism for not speaking up more about such controversies as Jena, Louisiana in two years ago – but given Gates’ prominence (and ties to Obama’s alma mater) and his intent to draw attention to the matter, it may be tough for the president to avoid weighing in on what happened in Cambridge and larger issues relating to African-Americans and law enforcement.
10) Do you still plan on joining a Washington-area church and attending services?
Six months into his presidency, Obama has attended Sunday services just once in Washington, D.C. – at St. Johns Episcopal across from Lafayette Square on Easter.
The White House knocked down a report that the president would make the non-denominational chapel at Camp David his church home, saying that the president continues to look for a congregation. Aides say the president is concerned about disrupting the worship experience of others.
For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama is using a prime-time news conference Wednesday night to play catch-up.
With the public souring on both his handling of health-care reform and the economy, Obama is stepping to the podium for the fourth time in six months in hopes of convincing the public he’s got a plan, to get the economy back on track and a health overhaul that will expand care to all without busting the budget.
With Democrats fractured on health-care and the GOP sensing a major political opportunity, Obama is engaged in an inside-outside strategy, cajoling members of Congress in private White House sessions while using his bully pulpit to rally public support for his plan.
So it’s health care where we start with our 10 Questions for President Obama.
1) Is it still realistic that both chambers of Congress will pass health care bills before their summer recess in August? And how worried are you that missing the deadline could endanger your hopes of getting a bill this year?
A former senator himself, Obama knows Congress works best under a deadline – and he called on both houses to pass a health bill before heading off on summer vacation. So far anyway, it’s not working. Obama suggested Monday that he was willing to bend his oft-stated deadline, saying it would be OK if the legislation is “going to spill over by a few days or a week.”
But even that may not be realistic. Senators of both parties have publicly warned against rushing through the process, and rank-and-file members in both chambers have raised concerns over everything from the high costs to whether a government-run insurance option is the best way to go, as Obama has sought.
Neither the House nor the Senate has scheduled floor votes and key committees in both have yet to even approve a bill – meaning it might be see you in September time for the president’s health-care goals.
On Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) seemed to defy Obama, saying: “If we get consensus, we'll move on it. If we don't get consensus, I don't think staying in session is necessarily necessary.”
2) Who are you referring to when you cite, as you did in your radio address last week, those “special interests” in health care who “make the same old arguments, and use the same scare tactics?” And what’s the difference between honest objections to a massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system, and what you consider obstructionism?
Obama has actually worked assiduously, and successfully, to court many of the stakeholders with a financial interest in healthcare – drug-makers, insurance companies and others who could strike a serious blow at his plan if they came out strongly against it.
He has hosted a variety of them at the White House, trumpeted the financial agreements struck with pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and used some of their endorsements in recent days to underline the support behind getting a bill passed.
Just on Tuesday, Obama touted such groups and others — he actually singled out the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association — to highlight “the consensus” for legislation. So who are the bad guys that are trying to scuttle reform? Perhaps Obama will name names tonight.
3) You have sought to focus attention on Sen. Jim DeMint’s comments alluding to the political benefit for the GOP in blocking healthcare reform, but it’s mostly Democratic members of Congress that your own political apparatus is targeting in TV ads now on the air. Why haven’t you been more successful in convincing members of your own party on this issue so far, and how does DeMint figure into your effort to lobby Democrats?
Obama and his allies have been harping on DeMint’s reference to health care as Obama’s potential “Waterloo,” but the South Carolina senator is one of just 40 GOP senators.
It’s not the conservative DeMint but rather moderate Democrats and Republicans in the Senate and the conservative Blue Dog Democrats in the House who ultimately will decide health care’s fate. And right now, they’re not happy – particularly the fiscally conservative Blue Dogs who fear a deficit explosion if Obama gets his way.
It’s these members who have been brought down to the White House for meetings with the president.
So why is it DeMint who the White House is singling out? Clearly it’s part of the “Party of No” mantra the White House likes to use against Republicans. But perhaps it’s also to send a reminder to those recalcitrant members of Obma’s own party that failure on health care is what the opposition is pulling for – and that such failure would have grave political consequences for all Democrats.
4) You said during the campaign that you would negotiate the health care bill on C-SPAN. But now you won't even release the names of health care executives who visit the White House for what are closed door discussions. How do you reconcile what you said during the campaign with your approach now?
As part of his stump speech, Obama would often describe his vision for the process behind health care reform.
At a campaign stop in Virginia last summer, he said: "We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies -- they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”
Now, though, none of the White House negotiations are open for public consumption. And the Obama administration has rejected a request from a watchdog group to disclose the health care industry executives who have come to the White House to discuss the issue. The group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, is poised to sue Obama’s administration to obtain the records.
5) On Monday you said that “folks on Wall Street don’t feel any remorse for taking all these risks; you don’t get a sense that there’s been a change of culture and behavior as a consequence of what has happened." What do you think Wall Street needs to do to show remorse and to change its culture? And isn’t the problem with the economy right now not some Wall Streeters getting bonuses, but the fact that recession is much tougher and deeper than even your administration projected?
While nothing like the AIG bonuses that fueled so much populist resentment this spring, news of Goldman Sachs’ monster second-quarter profits and subsequent billions worth of bonuses has again focused attention on Wall Street excesses.
According to a New York Times estimate, Goldman workers could earn an average of $770,000 this year, about the same as they did during the go-go boom years. Goldman paid back the $10 billion in federal bailout money they received, freeing them of compensation restrictions.
Republicans have scored points recently by pointing out that Congress approved nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending, and yet the unemployment rate is 9.5 percent and rising. Look for Obama to ask for patience from the public that his administration is focused every day on turning around the economy.
6) Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate alleged abuses of detainees during the Bush era. When the White House was asked about this, officials repeated your mantra that the country should look forward, not back. What’s your view about when it’s appropriate for the White House to send signals to the Justice Department about what action it should take in regarding a criminal investigation?
Holder is wrestling with the issue of whether to appoint an independent prosecutor to determine whether crimes were committed as part of the Bush administration’s “enhanced interrogation techniques”—or outside of them. While the White House has stressed Holder’s independence, it hasn’t been bashful about putting a little English on the ball. “My best guidance for you and others on this would be to look back at what the President has said over the course of the past many weeks…that our efforts are better focused looking forward than looking back,” Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said last week when asked about Holder’s dilemma.
7) In announcing the delay of up to six months in the report on detainee policy, White House officials said the issues were “hard” and “complicated” and that you wanted them to “get this right.” Weren’t they hard and complicated when you set the deadline earlier this year? What has changed? And are you still committed to closing Guantanamo Bay prison by January?
On his second full day in office, Obama held an Oval Office ceremony to sign executive orders setting a one-year deadline for closing Guantanamo and six-month deadlines for government task forces revamping detainee and interrogation policies. This week, the administration blew past the task force deadlines, even as it claims to be on track to close Gitmo.
“These are hard, complicated and consequential decisions. I mean, let’s not kid ourselves,” a senior administration official said at a White House briefing Monday. “We wanted to get this right,” another official said. However, the officials had no real explanation for how or why the issues turned out to be more complicated than they thought in January. They also insisted, though somewhat less than forcefully, that they are still working towards Obama’s goal of closing the controversial facility in January, even though an uproar in Congress has complicated his ability to bring prisoners to the U.S.
8) Your Secretary of State recently compared the North Korean regime attention-craving adolescents. Do you agree with that assessment, and either way, how do plan to proceed toward reining in North Korea’s missile program?
In an interview with ABC News earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a colorful description of Pyongyang: "What we've seen is this constant demand for attention, and maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention.”
Continuing, she said: "Don't give it to them. They don't deserve it. They are acting out in a way to send a message that is not a message we're interested in receiving."
9) Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was recently arrested by Cambridge police at his own home. Now the African-American scholar said he plans to use the experience to focus attention on racial profiling and the black experience in the criminal justice system. Do you think Gates was justified in accusing the police of being harassed for being “a black man in America?”
Obama has avoided intervening in such racially charged incidents in the past – even drawing criticism for not speaking up more about such controversies as Jena, Louisiana in two years ago – but given Gates’ prominence (and ties to Obama’s alma mater) and his intent to draw attention to the matter, it may be tough for the president to avoid weighing in on what happened in Cambridge and larger issues relating to African-Americans and law enforcement.
10) Do you still plan on joining a Washington-area church and attending services?
Six months into his presidency, Obama has attended Sunday services just once in Washington, D.C. – at St. Johns Episcopal across from Lafayette Square on Easter.
The White House knocked down a report that the president would make the non-denominational chapel at Camp David his church home, saying that the president continues to look for a congregation. Aides say the president is concerned about disrupting the worship experience of others.
Comments on CANADA vs USA HealthCare from CNN
July 6th, 2009 11:54 am ET
Just a quick note. I’m a 32 year old Canadian with hypothyroidism and rheumatoid Arthritis if I lived in the states I would be homeless not being able to afford the doctors visits or medication. Our is not perfect but it’s works for all people not just those with money.
Patti July 6th, 2009 12:13 pm ET
No system will ever be perfect, and there are always exceptions to the rule. Canada is constantly working to improve its health care system, just as the US is…but I think we have much less work to do. Dana Bash’s report seemed to only give lip service to the positive side of Canadian health care.
Yes, we sometimes have long wait periods for treatment in Canada. But everyone in this country has equal access to quality health care, and if we’re seriously ill, we get bumped to the top of the list…as it should be.
We don’t avoid the doctor as long as possible, hoping symptoms will go away because we can’t afford the bills. As a consequence, many more major illnesses are caught early, in their more treatable stages. This has got to translate into lower health care costs per capita. People shouldn’t have to lose their homes or go bankrupt because they got sick, and that’s what’s happening in the US because of your faulty healthcare “system.”
Marissa July 6th, 2009 12:20 pm ET
My 79 year old aunt is going for a Dr. requested colonoscopy but could not afford the $75.00 for the prescription needed to cleans her colon. Because her SSI benefits were reduced drastically on a technicality she’s unable to go for the necessary procedure. If we lived in Canada she would not have to worry about a $75 expense versus affording food for the month.
What option is Mitch McConnell and the Republicans offering, oh yeah non. Their option is only to criticize the Obama administration instead of helping Americans.
Jason July 6th, 2009 12:43 pm ET
Canadians may wait in the waiting room for a half hour to forty five minute. While most in the USA wait six or seven months to save up money it will cost in order to get a check up.
Blaine Norum July 6th, 2009 12:45 pm ET
I was very disturbed by this morning’s biased report on the Canadian health system. It was observed that some Canadians had to wait a long time for elective procedures. But, how does their wait compare to the lifelong wait of the 47 MILLION Americans without health insurance? You also failed to mention that the cost of the Canadian system is about 1/2 to 2/3 or ours per capita. If they spent as much per capita as we did waits would be nonexistent. You cited the fact that Canadian taxes are higher than ours but when you compare the sum of our taxes AND our health insurance premiums to their taxes then you get the real, and much different, picture. And the bottom line is this: the life expectancy in Canada is a full 2 years greater than in the US, even after you factor in variables such as murder rate, auto death rate, smoking rate, and our significantly greater propensity towards obesity.
Having lived in both countries and used the health care systems of both countries I personally prefer the Canadian system. However, I recognize that Canadians and Americans are different peoples, with different histories, priorities, and world views. Hence, I would not argue strongly that we should adopt the Canadian system outright. I just wish we could have a factual discussion of its merits and drawbacks without distortions, without focusing on non-representative isolated cases, and without meaningless ideological labels.
Rob Redfearn July 6th, 2009 2:22 pm ET
I am originally from Canada (moved here in 96)
I grew up in a doctor’s family and I also was married to one for 20 years.
I am also a business owner AND a consumer of medical care. I have a perspective from both inside and outside the the system, on both sides of the border.
I just had 2 disks removed from my neck and had the vertebrae fused. The total bill (”list price”) was $107,000 and I was in the hospital for 26 hours TOTAL.
I got the surgery quickly (under 4 weeks from diagnosis)… and had great care. My insurance covered all but the $1000 deductible. I pay $500/month for the insurance (blue cross).
In Canada I would have waited a LONG time for the surgery (not to mention getting the MRIs Xrays, etc required before hand). It may have cost me “nothing” out of pocket … but the care DOES cost.. its just paid in taxes. It would cost the same $500/month in insurance there as here.. its just coming out of tax dollars (which, make NO mistake, is STILL coming out of your pocket)
The reason Canada’s per capita cost is LESS than the US is because the average person does not get the average level of care available here in the US. … and socialized medicine is ALL ABOUT THE AVERAGE!!! And, on average, I was NOT happy with the standard of care there, nor were my father or ex-wife happy with the standard of care dictated TO them by the government bureaucrats who were making the decisions as to whom got what level of treatment.
As a business owner I am very wary of a plan imposed by government to ensure adequate care. However, I also recognize that my recent $100k surgery is one of the reasons healthcare costs (including the cost of insurance) is SO high!!!
The solution is a hybrid of private and public and TWO levels of care is going to be inevitable. As always, we are gonna get what we pay for!!!
Ed Keppel July 6th, 2009 2:24 pm ET
You talked about health care in Canada, your report made it sound like it was for free. It is not for free, they offer this free service thru higher taxes. The higher tax is not just on the wealthy, everyone in Canada is paying higher taxes because of the free health care.
The cost of living in Canada is much higher than in the U.S.
Larry July 6th, 2009 2:56 pm ET
So what is McConnell’s solution? Oh yeah, he’s Republican. He doesn’t have any solutions. Just criticism of people trying hard to fix what the Republicans have destroyed over the past eight years.
Give it up McConnell. Your connections with special interests in Washington are about to be severed.
RON TACKET July 6th, 2009 6:23 pm ET
You have to wonder at the hypocracy of congress. Each of them is covered by a Government run health care system at no cost to them. Yet Mcconnell and others oppose a similar program for the masses.
Purple Spider July 6th, 2009 6:49 pm ET
I said this once, I will say it again….Obama’s Health Care Plan could be beneficial to those who have no coverage. Obama’s Health Care Plan will not be beneficial to those who are covered and have their private doctor and have it taken away from them.
What is sad about this, is that Washington does not take time to work out details that will help everyone – THEY JUST SHOVE EVERYTHING THROUGH AND DOWN ALL AMERICANS “THROATS”! That is not a democracy and that is not America! THAT IS BEING UNDER A DICTATORSHIP!
Mark Coan July 6th, 2009 7:06 pm ET
Wolf, et al., It is not reasonable to asses and compare the Canadian Health System, or the US system, or any other, based upon anecdotal stories even if one from “each side” is revealed. And, descriptions of wait-times at a hospital are valueless, too, really. These are complex issues, immense businesses that have been studied from many perspectives analytically, and we are faced with a needed compromise, a decision which will be painful one way or t’other (and require constant adjustment / innovation)!! The present system doesn’t work, not for the patient, the physician, or the hospital.
Jacqueline July 6th, 2009 7:28 pm ET
I’m so tired of hearing biased reports on the Canadian healthcare system, that use scare tactics to frighten unknowing Americans against universal healthcare. As a Canadian RN who has lived in Florida for 17 years, I’ve seen cancer patients, who at diagnosis were at Stage IV, because they couldn’t afford to see a Dr. until their symptoms brought them to an ER. Had they had access to healthcare, they would have been diagnosed at a much earlier stage and had a shot at survival. I’ve seen the elderly make decisions about food vs. medicine, I’ve seen families financially ruined because Mom or Dad had cancer, or a devastating car accident. I’ve seen people stay in jobs they loathe, because they couldn’t afford to let their health insurance lapse. When are we going to wake up? We spend 2-3 times as much on healthcare than other industrialized nations, yet our infant mortality and overall survival numbers are lower. We have access to the best Dr’s, medicines and machinery, but outcomes aren’t any better. Wake up people, pay a little more in taxes, have cradle to grave coverage and live a happier, healthier life.
Two years ago, Canadians voted Tommy Douglas, the politician who ushered in universal healthcare, greatest Canadian of all time. What does that tell you? That despite it’s flaws, Canadians are proud of their healthcare system.
sharon July 6th, 2009 7:43 pm ET
I am a Canadian. Americans, you should consider a couple of very important points regarding the interview with Hugh Segal.
1. Our senators are not elected–they are appointed until the age of 75 and are NOT accountable to any Canadian voter.
2. Our health care system is also unaccountable to any Canadian citizen who uses it. Yes, we have universal health care but we have no idea how much a medical procedure costs –it is paid through taxes–very HIGH taxes. Nationwide, 1/2 of our total provincial budgets are health care costs.
3. We DO have long waiting lists and long emergency room line-ups-3-4 hours in Calgary Alberta seems to be the average wait time. Depending upon the time of week and year, it can be a day’s wait. We cannot see a specialist without a referral from a GP and the wait time to see a specialist is months, if not a year for some specialties.
4. Procedures ARE limited–for example, cataract surgery. You can wait for up to a year to have this surgery done. A colonoscopy has a wait list from 2-5 years!! I know this from having been on the list for 2 years. I cannot book any procedure myself, nor can I pay to have it done. I am at the mercy of the centralized system.
Don’t believe everything you read or hear about the Canadian system. Do some independent research and discover the truth.
Tina July 7th, 2009 12:43 am ET
I think that we should have a Canadian type healthcare system. It is quite obvious that our system sucks now. It is solely run by greed. Greed of insurance companies, a lot of hospitals and doctors. I am sorry, they cannot justify the high cost of premiums, medications and treatments. The same prescriptions bought in another country is 50 to 75% less than what we pay. HOW IS THAT SO? It is called GREED. So call me a socialist. If a government run insurance is cheaper and better for us then let it be so! I am so tired of these politicians claiming that it will cost millions. WELL HELLO. What do you think it is costing us now. Wake up and smell the roses. Our country is ready for big change. Do you know that our country is the only country that does not have a government run healthcare and we are also the most expensive. Wake up people. A government run medical plan will not ruin lives, it will not deminish quality of care and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper. I am so tired of hearing about insurance companies dropping people for no reason or for a reason that is ludicrus. They run our lives and for what? So the hospitals, doctors and insurance companies can live in their McMansions and take trips to other countries two or three times a year. Give me a break. I want a government runned healthcare system. Let the private sector stay, but I will guarentee that they will loose money in droves once people realize that they will get the exact same care as private.
Jason July 7th, 2009 5:04 pm ET
I hear all this talk about “oh government run health care do you want a burocrat dictating wether or not you get the procedure you need” I live in Canada and have had many medical problems and never had a politician tell me I can’t have a procedure. That is pure nonsense do not listen to those who speak such rubish.
daniel July 8th, 2009 6:59 am ET
Lets keep it simple. Let every US citizen log in to the same web site that
senators do and buy health care at the same cost they do now or when they leave office. This won’t require a new government agency. If it is good enough for them it is good enough for me.
Marc B July 12th, 2009 11:09 am ET
Being a Canadian living in the USA, I experienced both systems.
The coverage is a major problem that everybody is discussing but we have to talk about the Cost of Health Care in the US. If we increase the coverage to all Americans and the productivity is not improved, we have in front of us a big disaster.
1. We have to reduce the cost, reduce the # of medical staff that we see in a single visit.
2. Reduce the cost to educate new doctors, otherwise, we will have a shortage and foreign doctors will increase
3. Create Government insurance for doctor malpractice
4. Reduction of law suit in health care
5. Creation of a national medication insurance exactly like Quebec did few years ago where you can have the private program and if you don’t have one, you are forced to join the government one.
One element that we don’t discuss is the fact that HealthCare in Canada is a State (province) jurisdiction therefore; the Federal is not managing Healthcare but help funding the expenses. We have to ask the question if the US Federal Government is the appropriate organization to run Healthcare insurance.
Just a quick note. I’m a 32 year old Canadian with hypothyroidism and rheumatoid Arthritis if I lived in the states I would be homeless not being able to afford the doctors visits or medication. Our is not perfect but it’s works for all people not just those with money.
Patti July 6th, 2009 12:13 pm ET
No system will ever be perfect, and there are always exceptions to the rule. Canada is constantly working to improve its health care system, just as the US is…but I think we have much less work to do. Dana Bash’s report seemed to only give lip service to the positive side of Canadian health care.
Yes, we sometimes have long wait periods for treatment in Canada. But everyone in this country has equal access to quality health care, and if we’re seriously ill, we get bumped to the top of the list…as it should be.
We don’t avoid the doctor as long as possible, hoping symptoms will go away because we can’t afford the bills. As a consequence, many more major illnesses are caught early, in their more treatable stages. This has got to translate into lower health care costs per capita. People shouldn’t have to lose their homes or go bankrupt because they got sick, and that’s what’s happening in the US because of your faulty healthcare “system.”
Marissa July 6th, 2009 12:20 pm ET
My 79 year old aunt is going for a Dr. requested colonoscopy but could not afford the $75.00 for the prescription needed to cleans her colon. Because her SSI benefits were reduced drastically on a technicality she’s unable to go for the necessary procedure. If we lived in Canada she would not have to worry about a $75 expense versus affording food for the month.
What option is Mitch McConnell and the Republicans offering, oh yeah non. Their option is only to criticize the Obama administration instead of helping Americans.
Jason July 6th, 2009 12:43 pm ET
Canadians may wait in the waiting room for a half hour to forty five minute. While most in the USA wait six or seven months to save up money it will cost in order to get a check up.
Blaine Norum July 6th, 2009 12:45 pm ET
I was very disturbed by this morning’s biased report on the Canadian health system. It was observed that some Canadians had to wait a long time for elective procedures. But, how does their wait compare to the lifelong wait of the 47 MILLION Americans without health insurance? You also failed to mention that the cost of the Canadian system is about 1/2 to 2/3 or ours per capita. If they spent as much per capita as we did waits would be nonexistent. You cited the fact that Canadian taxes are higher than ours but when you compare the sum of our taxes AND our health insurance premiums to their taxes then you get the real, and much different, picture. And the bottom line is this: the life expectancy in Canada is a full 2 years greater than in the US, even after you factor in variables such as murder rate, auto death rate, smoking rate, and our significantly greater propensity towards obesity.
Having lived in both countries and used the health care systems of both countries I personally prefer the Canadian system. However, I recognize that Canadians and Americans are different peoples, with different histories, priorities, and world views. Hence, I would not argue strongly that we should adopt the Canadian system outright. I just wish we could have a factual discussion of its merits and drawbacks without distortions, without focusing on non-representative isolated cases, and without meaningless ideological labels.
Rob Redfearn July 6th, 2009 2:22 pm ET
I am originally from Canada (moved here in 96)
I grew up in a doctor’s family and I also was married to one for 20 years.
I am also a business owner AND a consumer of medical care. I have a perspective from both inside and outside the the system, on both sides of the border.
I just had 2 disks removed from my neck and had the vertebrae fused. The total bill (”list price”) was $107,000 and I was in the hospital for 26 hours TOTAL.
I got the surgery quickly (under 4 weeks from diagnosis)… and had great care. My insurance covered all but the $1000 deductible. I pay $500/month for the insurance (blue cross).
In Canada I would have waited a LONG time for the surgery (not to mention getting the MRIs Xrays, etc required before hand). It may have cost me “nothing” out of pocket … but the care DOES cost.. its just paid in taxes. It would cost the same $500/month in insurance there as here.. its just coming out of tax dollars (which, make NO mistake, is STILL coming out of your pocket)
The reason Canada’s per capita cost is LESS than the US is because the average person does not get the average level of care available here in the US. … and socialized medicine is ALL ABOUT THE AVERAGE!!! And, on average, I was NOT happy with the standard of care there, nor were my father or ex-wife happy with the standard of care dictated TO them by the government bureaucrats who were making the decisions as to whom got what level of treatment.
As a business owner I am very wary of a plan imposed by government to ensure adequate care. However, I also recognize that my recent $100k surgery is one of the reasons healthcare costs (including the cost of insurance) is SO high!!!
The solution is a hybrid of private and public and TWO levels of care is going to be inevitable. As always, we are gonna get what we pay for!!!
Ed Keppel July 6th, 2009 2:24 pm ET
You talked about health care in Canada, your report made it sound like it was for free. It is not for free, they offer this free service thru higher taxes. The higher tax is not just on the wealthy, everyone in Canada is paying higher taxes because of the free health care.
The cost of living in Canada is much higher than in the U.S.
Larry July 6th, 2009 2:56 pm ET
So what is McConnell’s solution? Oh yeah, he’s Republican. He doesn’t have any solutions. Just criticism of people trying hard to fix what the Republicans have destroyed over the past eight years.
Give it up McConnell. Your connections with special interests in Washington are about to be severed.
RON TACKET July 6th, 2009 6:23 pm ET
You have to wonder at the hypocracy of congress. Each of them is covered by a Government run health care system at no cost to them. Yet Mcconnell and others oppose a similar program for the masses.
Purple Spider July 6th, 2009 6:49 pm ET
I said this once, I will say it again….Obama’s Health Care Plan could be beneficial to those who have no coverage. Obama’s Health Care Plan will not be beneficial to those who are covered and have their private doctor and have it taken away from them.
What is sad about this, is that Washington does not take time to work out details that will help everyone – THEY JUST SHOVE EVERYTHING THROUGH AND DOWN ALL AMERICANS “THROATS”! That is not a democracy and that is not America! THAT IS BEING UNDER A DICTATORSHIP!
Mark Coan July 6th, 2009 7:06 pm ET
Wolf, et al., It is not reasonable to asses and compare the Canadian Health System, or the US system, or any other, based upon anecdotal stories even if one from “each side” is revealed. And, descriptions of wait-times at a hospital are valueless, too, really. These are complex issues, immense businesses that have been studied from many perspectives analytically, and we are faced with a needed compromise, a decision which will be painful one way or t’other (and require constant adjustment / innovation)!! The present system doesn’t work, not for the patient, the physician, or the hospital.
Jacqueline July 6th, 2009 7:28 pm ET
I’m so tired of hearing biased reports on the Canadian healthcare system, that use scare tactics to frighten unknowing Americans against universal healthcare. As a Canadian RN who has lived in Florida for 17 years, I’ve seen cancer patients, who at diagnosis were at Stage IV, because they couldn’t afford to see a Dr. until their symptoms brought them to an ER. Had they had access to healthcare, they would have been diagnosed at a much earlier stage and had a shot at survival. I’ve seen the elderly make decisions about food vs. medicine, I’ve seen families financially ruined because Mom or Dad had cancer, or a devastating car accident. I’ve seen people stay in jobs they loathe, because they couldn’t afford to let their health insurance lapse. When are we going to wake up? We spend 2-3 times as much on healthcare than other industrialized nations, yet our infant mortality and overall survival numbers are lower. We have access to the best Dr’s, medicines and machinery, but outcomes aren’t any better. Wake up people, pay a little more in taxes, have cradle to grave coverage and live a happier, healthier life.
Two years ago, Canadians voted Tommy Douglas, the politician who ushered in universal healthcare, greatest Canadian of all time. What does that tell you? That despite it’s flaws, Canadians are proud of their healthcare system.
sharon July 6th, 2009 7:43 pm ET
I am a Canadian. Americans, you should consider a couple of very important points regarding the interview with Hugh Segal.
1. Our senators are not elected–they are appointed until the age of 75 and are NOT accountable to any Canadian voter.
2. Our health care system is also unaccountable to any Canadian citizen who uses it. Yes, we have universal health care but we have no idea how much a medical procedure costs –it is paid through taxes–very HIGH taxes. Nationwide, 1/2 of our total provincial budgets are health care costs.
3. We DO have long waiting lists and long emergency room line-ups-3-4 hours in Calgary Alberta seems to be the average wait time. Depending upon the time of week and year, it can be a day’s wait. We cannot see a specialist without a referral from a GP and the wait time to see a specialist is months, if not a year for some specialties.
4. Procedures ARE limited–for example, cataract surgery. You can wait for up to a year to have this surgery done. A colonoscopy has a wait list from 2-5 years!! I know this from having been on the list for 2 years. I cannot book any procedure myself, nor can I pay to have it done. I am at the mercy of the centralized system.
Don’t believe everything you read or hear about the Canadian system. Do some independent research and discover the truth.
Tina July 7th, 2009 12:43 am ET
I think that we should have a Canadian type healthcare system. It is quite obvious that our system sucks now. It is solely run by greed. Greed of insurance companies, a lot of hospitals and doctors. I am sorry, they cannot justify the high cost of premiums, medications and treatments. The same prescriptions bought in another country is 50 to 75% less than what we pay. HOW IS THAT SO? It is called GREED. So call me a socialist. If a government run insurance is cheaper and better for us then let it be so! I am so tired of these politicians claiming that it will cost millions. WELL HELLO. What do you think it is costing us now. Wake up and smell the roses. Our country is ready for big change. Do you know that our country is the only country that does not have a government run healthcare and we are also the most expensive. Wake up people. A government run medical plan will not ruin lives, it will not deminish quality of care and it would be a hell of a lot cheaper. I am so tired of hearing about insurance companies dropping people for no reason or for a reason that is ludicrus. They run our lives and for what? So the hospitals, doctors and insurance companies can live in their McMansions and take trips to other countries two or three times a year. Give me a break. I want a government runned healthcare system. Let the private sector stay, but I will guarentee that they will loose money in droves once people realize that they will get the exact same care as private.
Jason July 7th, 2009 5:04 pm ET
I hear all this talk about “oh government run health care do you want a burocrat dictating wether or not you get the procedure you need” I live in Canada and have had many medical problems and never had a politician tell me I can’t have a procedure. That is pure nonsense do not listen to those who speak such rubish.
daniel July 8th, 2009 6:59 am ET
Lets keep it simple. Let every US citizen log in to the same web site that
senators do and buy health care at the same cost they do now or when they leave office. This won’t require a new government agency. If it is good enough for them it is good enough for me.
Marc B July 12th, 2009 11:09 am ET
Being a Canadian living in the USA, I experienced both systems.
The coverage is a major problem that everybody is discussing but we have to talk about the Cost of Health Care in the US. If we increase the coverage to all Americans and the productivity is not improved, we have in front of us a big disaster.
1. We have to reduce the cost, reduce the # of medical staff that we see in a single visit.
2. Reduce the cost to educate new doctors, otherwise, we will have a shortage and foreign doctors will increase
3. Create Government insurance for doctor malpractice
4. Reduction of law suit in health care
5. Creation of a national medication insurance exactly like Quebec did few years ago where you can have the private program and if you don’t have one, you are forced to join the government one.
One element that we don’t discuss is the fact that HealthCare in Canada is a State (province) jurisdiction therefore; the Federal is not managing Healthcare but help funding the expenses. We have to ask the question if the US Federal Government is the appropriate organization to run Healthcare insurance.
Imperfect Health Reform Still Beats the Status Quo
Washington Post By Steven Pearlstein
Among the range of options for health-care reform, there's one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.
That's the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.
So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee's coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that's compared with what?
In recent days, the rumors of the death of health-care reform have been greatly exaggerated. While each of the various proposals snaking their way through the legislative maze has its flaws, the outlines of a good reform plan are there -- universal coverage, insurance market reform, cost controls, computerized medical records, emphasis on effectiveness research and quality improvements. You might have to squint a bit, but they're all there.
The bigger problem now is that, in trying to build public support for reform, President Obama has made promises that will make it even more difficult to bring all the pieces together into an effective and viable reform plan.
Let's start with the promise, repeated often by the president and written explicitly into both House and Senate proposals, that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. But if we're aiming to fundamentally restructure the system, is it really credible to say that we can have all the good parts of the old one with none of the bad parts?
We know, for example, that people like to decide for themselves what medical care they will consume and send the bill off to their insurer. And doctors and hospitals like being paid for whatever they do, no matter whether it is needed or is the most cost-effective treatment. We also know, however, that moving away from "fee-for-service medicine," as it is called, is the key to taming runaway health spending and improving health outcomes. That will be a better system, but it will be a different one, and it won't come unless it is pushed and prodded into being by the government.
The president and legislative leaders have also put themselves in a box by promising that any health reform will not add a dime to the federal deficit, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office. The right way to think about health reform is to consider its impact on the whole economy, not just on the government.
Providing affordable health insurance to all Americans is a pretty expensive proposition, but the mechanisms set up to achieve that goal should also produce tens of billions of dollars in savings each year to workers and businesses who already buy insurance. Just looking at the government impact without also considering those private-sector savings gives an incomplete and distorted picture of the economic impact of health reform. It's not just about the deficit. One way to pay for universal coverage, of course, would be to tax those who are likely to benefit most from slowing the growth of health insurance premiums, such as workers who already get their health insurance tax-free. But Obama has also boxed himself in on that issue by reiterating his promise never to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. Having a little flexibility on that issue would go a long way to putting together a final package.
The promise of deficit "neutrality" also runs up against the natural conservatism of the CBO's budget analysts, particularly when it comes to the long-term cost savings that might come from restructuring the way doctors and hospitals are paid or moving patients from solo practitioners to clinics that make better use of nurses and coordinate care among a variety of specialists. There is a general consensus among health-care experts that these are the reforms that will finally "bend the curve" of ever-increasing health-care spending, and CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf made headlines the other day by telling Congress that lawmakers had not been aggressive enough in embracing these reforms.
Ironically, even if Congress had been more aggressive, Elmendorf and his CBO colleagues would probably not have given them very much weight in their deficit calculations. The reason: There isn't enough knowledge to say with any precision how much would be saved and when the savings would materialize. By lashing himself to the mast of CBO-certified "deficit neutrality," Capt. Obama has made it even more difficult to steer health reform through the rough political seas that lie ahead.
Among the range of options for health-care reform, there's one that is sure to raise your taxes, increase your out-of-pocket medical expenses, swell the federal deficit, leave more Americans without insurance and guarantee that wages will remain stagnant.
That's the option of doing nothing, letting things continue to drift as they have for the past two decades as we continue to search in vain for the perfect plan that would let everyone have everything they want and preserve everything they already have while getting someone else to pay for it.
So the next time you hear someone throwing a hissy fit because health reform might raise taxes on some people, or steer people into managed care, or require small businesses to contribute $2 a day for each employee's coverage, just remember to ask yourself: And that's compared with what?
In recent days, the rumors of the death of health-care reform have been greatly exaggerated. While each of the various proposals snaking their way through the legislative maze has its flaws, the outlines of a good reform plan are there -- universal coverage, insurance market reform, cost controls, computerized medical records, emphasis on effectiveness research and quality improvements. You might have to squint a bit, but they're all there.
The bigger problem now is that, in trying to build public support for reform, President Obama has made promises that will make it even more difficult to bring all the pieces together into an effective and viable reform plan.
Let's start with the promise, repeated often by the president and written explicitly into both House and Senate proposals, that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. But if we're aiming to fundamentally restructure the system, is it really credible to say that we can have all the good parts of the old one with none of the bad parts?
We know, for example, that people like to decide for themselves what medical care they will consume and send the bill off to their insurer. And doctors and hospitals like being paid for whatever they do, no matter whether it is needed or is the most cost-effective treatment. We also know, however, that moving away from "fee-for-service medicine," as it is called, is the key to taming runaway health spending and improving health outcomes. That will be a better system, but it will be a different one, and it won't come unless it is pushed and prodded into being by the government.
The president and legislative leaders have also put themselves in a box by promising that any health reform will not add a dime to the federal deficit, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office. The right way to think about health reform is to consider its impact on the whole economy, not just on the government.
Providing affordable health insurance to all Americans is a pretty expensive proposition, but the mechanisms set up to achieve that goal should also produce tens of billions of dollars in savings each year to workers and businesses who already buy insurance. Just looking at the government impact without also considering those private-sector savings gives an incomplete and distorted picture of the economic impact of health reform. It's not just about the deficit. One way to pay for universal coverage, of course, would be to tax those who are likely to benefit most from slowing the growth of health insurance premiums, such as workers who already get their health insurance tax-free. But Obama has also boxed himself in on that issue by reiterating his promise never to raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year. Having a little flexibility on that issue would go a long way to putting together a final package.
The promise of deficit "neutrality" also runs up against the natural conservatism of the CBO's budget analysts, particularly when it comes to the long-term cost savings that might come from restructuring the way doctors and hospitals are paid or moving patients from solo practitioners to clinics that make better use of nurses and coordinate care among a variety of specialists. There is a general consensus among health-care experts that these are the reforms that will finally "bend the curve" of ever-increasing health-care spending, and CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf made headlines the other day by telling Congress that lawmakers had not been aggressive enough in embracing these reforms.
Ironically, even if Congress had been more aggressive, Elmendorf and his CBO colleagues would probably not have given them very much weight in their deficit calculations. The reason: There isn't enough knowledge to say with any precision how much would be saved and when the savings would materialize. By lashing himself to the mast of CBO-certified "deficit neutrality," Capt. Obama has made it even more difficult to steer health reform through the rough political seas that lie ahead.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
HELP BO pass real health care reform!
Last week, Republican Senator Jim DeMint made it pretty clear why the opponents of health care reform are fighting so hard. As he told a special interest attack group, "If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
Here's how the President responded:
Think about that. This isn't about me. This isn't about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America's families, breaking America's businesses and breaking America's economy. And we can't afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.
With Congress only days away from finalizing their plans for reform, it's time to stand up with the President and fight back against this disastrous brand of old-style politics. So we need as many people as possible to publicly support the President's principles for health care reform and call on Congress to act.
Before the first full votes in Congress, we'll publish the signatures in newspaper ads across the nation, to make sure your voice is heard.
Watch President Obama's full response, then add your name in support of reform. Or if you've already signed, please forward this message to every one of your friends and neighbors so they can join you.
The President is more dedicated than ever to passing health care reform that satisfies the three requirements he's been talking about for months: Health care reform must reduce costs, guarantee choice -- including the choice of a strong public insurance option -- and ensure all Americans have quality, affordable health care.
If we do not reform our broken health care system this year, we will only shackle future generations with spiraling costs and deteriorating care. The cost of inaction is simply more than this country can afford.
But the special interests who profit from the status quo won't go down without a fight. The ads, the smears, and the attacks -- targeting both President Obama and members of Congress who support reform -- will only get worse. So it's crucial that we show huge backing before Congress finalizes their plans this month.
Stand with President Obama on health care reform:
http://my.barackobama.com/hcdeclare
Here's how the President responded:
Think about that. This isn't about me. This isn't about politics. This is about a health care system that is breaking America's families, breaking America's businesses and breaking America's economy. And we can't afford the politics of delay and defeat when it comes to health care. Not this time, not now. There are too many lives and livelihoods at stake.
With Congress only days away from finalizing their plans for reform, it's time to stand up with the President and fight back against this disastrous brand of old-style politics. So we need as many people as possible to publicly support the President's principles for health care reform and call on Congress to act.
Before the first full votes in Congress, we'll publish the signatures in newspaper ads across the nation, to make sure your voice is heard.
Watch President Obama's full response, then add your name in support of reform. Or if you've already signed, please forward this message to every one of your friends and neighbors so they can join you.
The President is more dedicated than ever to passing health care reform that satisfies the three requirements he's been talking about for months: Health care reform must reduce costs, guarantee choice -- including the choice of a strong public insurance option -- and ensure all Americans have quality, affordable health care.
If we do not reform our broken health care system this year, we will only shackle future generations with spiraling costs and deteriorating care. The cost of inaction is simply more than this country can afford.
But the special interests who profit from the status quo won't go down without a fight. The ads, the smears, and the attacks -- targeting both President Obama and members of Congress who support reform -- will only get worse. So it's crucial that we show huge backing before Congress finalizes their plans this month.
Stand with President Obama on health care reform:
http://my.barackobama.com/hcdeclare
Thank You NRA! Just the 'American Way of Life!' Aren't you PROUD?
SLAIN AS HE SAVES HIS BRO
July 21, 2009
A beloved and "brilliant" Bronx businessman was shot dead trying to protect his older brother from an armed mugger, police and witnesses said yesterday.
The tragedy unfolded Sunday night after Eric Baxter, 53, parked his car in front of the three-story brick home he shared with his brother, Sydney, 51, in Williamsbridge and was confronted by a thug demanding money, witnesses said.
Eric ran into the house, "screaming out, 'Call the police! Call the police!' " said pal and tenant Jacob Adams, 71.
Eric was still trying to close the door when Sydney rushed past him, Adams said.
"Sydney pushed his brother aside" to safety, Adams said. "Eric fell, and Sydney jumped over him and confronted the man. That's when the shots came."
The gunman shot Sydney three times in the chest. He died minutes later at Jacobi Hospital.
"What a soul," Adams said of Sydney. "He was a spark. He was a brilliant mind."
Adams said Eric -- "the softer one of the two" -- was beside himself with grief.
"He said to me, 'Rather than going out, if only my brother had helped me push the door so that the man wouldn't come in,' " Adams said.
The brothers, who owned the house at Lavonia Avenue and East 216th Street, were born in Jamaica and grew up in London before coming to The Bronx.
They ran a used-car dealership.
Sydney, who went to college in Wales, got a master's degree in business administration from Baruch College.
He worshipped at the First Ghana Seventh Day Adventist Church and became assistant treasurer of the Northeast Conference of the Seventh Day Adventists.
Adams said Sydney had raised up to $10 million for the church.
"He was a very hardworking person, very intelligent," the tenant said. "He was well-liked, very honored."
Sydney was the youngest of five brothers. Two of his brothers live in London, and a third lives in Maryland.
Neighbor Edna Sterling, 65, said she was asleep when she heard the shots.
"I heard a 'Boom! Boom!' when I was in my bedroom, and I thought it was firecrackers," she said.
She said she last saw Sydney Saturday morning.
"He was dressed for church," she said. " 'What a beautiful day,' he said. "That was the last time I saw him."
July 21, 2009
A beloved and "brilliant" Bronx businessman was shot dead trying to protect his older brother from an armed mugger, police and witnesses said yesterday.
The tragedy unfolded Sunday night after Eric Baxter, 53, parked his car in front of the three-story brick home he shared with his brother, Sydney, 51, in Williamsbridge and was confronted by a thug demanding money, witnesses said.
Eric ran into the house, "screaming out, 'Call the police! Call the police!' " said pal and tenant Jacob Adams, 71.
Eric was still trying to close the door when Sydney rushed past him, Adams said.
"Sydney pushed his brother aside" to safety, Adams said. "Eric fell, and Sydney jumped over him and confronted the man. That's when the shots came."
The gunman shot Sydney three times in the chest. He died minutes later at Jacobi Hospital.
"What a soul," Adams said of Sydney. "He was a spark. He was a brilliant mind."
Adams said Eric -- "the softer one of the two" -- was beside himself with grief.
"He said to me, 'Rather than going out, if only my brother had helped me push the door so that the man wouldn't come in,' " Adams said.
The brothers, who owned the house at Lavonia Avenue and East 216th Street, were born in Jamaica and grew up in London before coming to The Bronx.
They ran a used-car dealership.
Sydney, who went to college in Wales, got a master's degree in business administration from Baruch College.
He worshipped at the First Ghana Seventh Day Adventist Church and became assistant treasurer of the Northeast Conference of the Seventh Day Adventists.
Adams said Sydney had raised up to $10 million for the church.
"He was a very hardworking person, very intelligent," the tenant said. "He was well-liked, very honored."
Sydney was the youngest of five brothers. Two of his brothers live in London, and a third lives in Maryland.
Neighbor Edna Sterling, 65, said she was asleep when she heard the shots.
"I heard a 'Boom! Boom!' when I was in my bedroom, and I thought it was firecrackers," she said.
She said she last saw Sydney Saturday morning.
"He was dressed for church," she said. " 'What a beautiful day,' he said. "That was the last time I saw him."
Industry Cash Flowed To Drafters of Reform
Key Senator Baucus Is a Leading Recipient
Dan Eggen Washington Post
As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.
At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.
"Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it," said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. "Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside."
As his committee has taken center stage in the battle over health-care reform, Chairman Baucus (D-Mont.) has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.
Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities.
To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show.
Baucus declined requests to comment for this article. Spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said the senator "is only driven by one thing: what is right for Montana and the country. And he will continue his open process of working together with the president, his colleagues in Congress, and groups and individuals from across the nation to get this legislation passed."
Baucus's fundraising prowess underscores the enduring political strength of the health-care lobby, which led all other sectors in donations to federal candidates during the last election cycle and has shifted its giving to Democrats as the party has tightened its control of Congress.
The sector gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. The shift in parties was even more pronounced during the first three months of this year, when Democrats collected 60 percent of the $5.4 million donated by health-care companies and their employees, the data show.
Many of these contributions have been focused on Baucus, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators in the moderate camps of their respective parties, whose votes could prove crucial in a final health-care reform deal, as well as the leaders of five key committees leading the debate. Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, received more than $2 million from the health and insurance sectors since 2003. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) took in $1.6 million from the health sector and its employees over the past two years; ranking Republican Dave Camp (Mich.) received nearly $1 million.
But Baucus, a senator from a sparsely populated and conservative Western state who is serving his sixth term, stands out for the rising tide of health-care contributions to his campaign committee, Friends of Max Baucus, and his political-action committee, Glacier PAC. Baucus collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, data show. Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana.
Top out-of-state corporate contributors included Schering-Plough, New York Life Insurance, Amgen, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield; individual executives such as Richard T. Clark, chief executive and president of drugmaker Merck, have also made regular donations. Most of these companies, particularly major insurers, strongly oppose a public insurance option, which is favored by President Obama and top House Democrats but has not received support from Baucus's committee.
Baucus is a longtime centrist in the Democratic caucus, and his committee chairmanship has made him a key broker in the health-reform debate. Many former Baucus staff members, including two chiefs of staff, lobby on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and other health-care players and have been closely involved in negotiations on the legislation.
John Jonas, a Patton Boggs health-care lobbyist who has attended a Baucus fly-fishing event and other fundraisers, said the Montana senator is "key to getting anything done" when it comes to health-care legislation.
"This is not an overwhelmingly liberal Congress, and it's certainly not a liberal Senate," said Jonas, whose clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Northwestern Mutual. "I think Max is uniquely situated to try to accomplish that, because he's more of a centrist and moderate Democrat than others are."
But Jerry Flanagan, a health-care analyst with Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group, said the tide of campaign contributions amounts to "a huge down payment" by companies that expect favorable policies in return. "That is the cold reality of big-money politics," he said.
Baucus won easy reelection in the fall, but he has continued to hold fundraisers since then. In addition to the fly-fishing event, he held his "Eighth Annual Ski and Snowmobile Weekend" in Big Sky in February and celebrated the start of his sixth term with a $10,000-a-table dinner at the Washington Court Hotel later that month. Aides say another fundraiser scheduled for July 7 at Bistro Bis in Capitol Hill was scrapped.
Baucus's office declined to provide attendance and donation details about his fundraising events, and federal records laws do not require such disclosures. Starting in June, aides say, Baucus adopted an internal office policy to refuse contributions from health-care PACs and to continue doing so until after Congress passes reform legislation.
But new Federal Election Commission documents filed last week show that individual lobbyists and others with health-care connections continued to make contributions to Baucus committees throughout June. Examples from Baucus's Glacier PAC include $5,000 from the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and $2,500 from lobbyists with U.S. Strategies, which represents numerous health-care firms. Overall, half of the $110,000 in donations to the PAC from April to June came from health-care firms and lobbyists, including Schering-Plough, Medtronic and New York Life.
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the Public Citizen advocacy group, said the continued fundraising by Baucus during the health-care debate is "very troubling."
"He's doing all this fundraising right in the middle of this effort to mark up a bill," Holman said. "When you put these events close to matters concerning these lobbyists, clearly it's a signal. You are expected to show up with a check."
Baucus and his aides strongly dispute any assertion that campaign contributions have an impact on the senator's policy views and proposals. Aides say he has frequently backed policies opposed by health-care companies, including support for greater availability of generic drugs, allowing drug imports from Canada and cutting payments to the Medicare Advantage plan.
During an interview earlier this year with the Missoulian newspaper, Baucus said that "no one gets special treatment." He added: "Your word is your bond back there."
Dan Eggen Washington Post
As liberal protesters marched outside, Sen. Max Baucus sat down inside a San Francisco mansion for a dinner of chicken cordon bleu and a discussion of landmark health-care legislation under consideration by his Senate Finance Committee.
At the table on May 26 were about 20 donors willing to fork over $10,000 or more to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, including executives of major insurance companies, hospitals and other health-care firms.
"Most people there had an agenda; they wanted the ear of a senator, and they got it," said Aaron Roland, a San Francisco health-care activist who paid half price to attend the gathering. "Money gets you in the door. The only thing the other side can do is march around and protest outside."
As his committee has taken center stage in the battle over health-care reform, Chairman Baucus (D-Mont.) has emerged as a leading recipient of Senate campaign contributions from the hospitals, insurers and other medical interest groups hoping to shape the legislation to their advantage. Health-related companies and their employees gave Baucus's political committees nearly $1.5 million in 2007 and 2008, when he began holding hearings and making preparations for this year's reform debate.
Top health executives and lobbyists have continued to flock to the senator's often extravagant fundraising events in recent months. During a Senate break in late June, for example, Baucus held his 10th annual fly-fishing and golfing weekend in Big Sky, Mont., for a minimum donation of $2,500. Later this month comes "Camp Baucus," a "trip for the whole family" that adds horseback riding and hiking to the list of activities.
To avoid any appearance of favoritism, his aides say, Baucus quietly began refusing contributions from health-care political action committees after June 1. But the policy does not apply to lobbyists or corporate executives, who continued to make donations, disclosure records show.
Baucus declined requests to comment for this article. Spokesman Tyler Matsdorf said the senator "is only driven by one thing: what is right for Montana and the country. And he will continue his open process of working together with the president, his colleagues in Congress, and groups and individuals from across the nation to get this legislation passed."
Baucus's fundraising prowess underscores the enduring political strength of the health-care lobby, which led all other sectors in donations to federal candidates during the last election cycle and has shifted its giving to Democrats as the party has tightened its control of Congress.
The sector gave nearly $170 million to federal lawmakers in 2007 and 2008, with 54 percent going to Democrats, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. The shift in parties was even more pronounced during the first three months of this year, when Democrats collected 60 percent of the $5.4 million donated by health-care companies and their employees, the data show.
Many of these contributions have been focused on Baucus, Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and other senators in the moderate camps of their respective parties, whose votes could prove crucial in a final health-care reform deal, as well as the leaders of five key committees leading the debate. Grassley, the Finance Committee's ranking Republican, received more than $2 million from the health and insurance sectors since 2003. House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) took in $1.6 million from the health sector and its employees over the past two years; ranking Republican Dave Camp (Mich.) received nearly $1 million.
But Baucus, a senator from a sparsely populated and conservative Western state who is serving his sixth term, stands out for the rising tide of health-care contributions to his campaign committee, Friends of Max Baucus, and his political-action committee, Glacier PAC. Baucus collected $3 million from the health and insurance sectors from 2003 to 2008, about 20 percent of the total, data show. Less than 10 percent of the money came from Montana.
Top out-of-state corporate contributors included Schering-Plough, New York Life Insurance, Amgen, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield; individual executives such as Richard T. Clark, chief executive and president of drugmaker Merck, have also made regular donations. Most of these companies, particularly major insurers, strongly oppose a public insurance option, which is favored by President Obama and top House Democrats but has not received support from Baucus's committee.
Baucus is a longtime centrist in the Democratic caucus, and his committee chairmanship has made him a key broker in the health-reform debate. Many former Baucus staff members, including two chiefs of staff, lobby on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry and other health-care players and have been closely involved in negotiations on the legislation.
John Jonas, a Patton Boggs health-care lobbyist who has attended a Baucus fly-fishing event and other fundraisers, said the Montana senator is "key to getting anything done" when it comes to health-care legislation.
"This is not an overwhelmingly liberal Congress, and it's certainly not a liberal Senate," said Jonas, whose clients include Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Northwestern Mutual. "I think Max is uniquely situated to try to accomplish that, because he's more of a centrist and moderate Democrat than others are."
But Jerry Flanagan, a health-care analyst with Consumer Watchdog, a California-based advocacy group, said the tide of campaign contributions amounts to "a huge down payment" by companies that expect favorable policies in return. "That is the cold reality of big-money politics," he said.
Baucus won easy reelection in the fall, but he has continued to hold fundraisers since then. In addition to the fly-fishing event, he held his "Eighth Annual Ski and Snowmobile Weekend" in Big Sky in February and celebrated the start of his sixth term with a $10,000-a-table dinner at the Washington Court Hotel later that month. Aides say another fundraiser scheduled for July 7 at Bistro Bis in Capitol Hill was scrapped.
Baucus's office declined to provide attendance and donation details about his fundraising events, and federal records laws do not require such disclosures. Starting in June, aides say, Baucus adopted an internal office policy to refuse contributions from health-care PACs and to continue doing so until after Congress passes reform legislation.
But new Federal Election Commission documents filed last week show that individual lobbyists and others with health-care connections continued to make contributions to Baucus committees throughout June. Examples from Baucus's Glacier PAC include $5,000 from the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America and $2,500 from lobbyists with U.S. Strategies, which represents numerous health-care firms. Overall, half of the $110,000 in donations to the PAC from April to June came from health-care firms and lobbyists, including Schering-Plough, Medtronic and New York Life.
Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the Public Citizen advocacy group, said the continued fundraising by Baucus during the health-care debate is "very troubling."
"He's doing all this fundraising right in the middle of this effort to mark up a bill," Holman said. "When you put these events close to matters concerning these lobbyists, clearly it's a signal. You are expected to show up with a check."
Baucus and his aides strongly dispute any assertion that campaign contributions have an impact on the senator's policy views and proposals. Aides say he has frequently backed policies opposed by health-care companies, including support for greater availability of generic drugs, allowing drug imports from Canada and cutting payments to the Medicare Advantage plan.
During an interview earlier this year with the Missoulian newspaper, Baucus said that "no one gets special treatment." He added: "Your word is your bond back there."
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