The Obama Legacy

When a young junior senator from Illinois ran for president in 2008, he promised to bring us hope and change. Now eight years later, what is his legacy?

He promised to get us out of the Middle East after his predecessor invaded Iraq based on false information cost us thousands of American lives and trillions of tax dollars. He got us out of Iraq as promised and made plans to get the Afghans to take over protecting their country from radical Muslims called the Taliban. He made it clear that this was not anything against Islam, a religion dedicated to peace. The Afghans are still not able to protect their people against the Taliban and need some of troops to stay to help.

He promised to make healthcare coverage affordable and voluntary. He wanted to have a public option to complement or compete with private carriers. No longer would applicants be denied coverage for preconditions.

We did get a healthcare reform but it was not the one he wanted or promised. Americans without coverage would be forced to get it or face financial penalties. Healthy Americans were needed to offset the cost of unhealthy ones, we were told. There would be no public option. Those who could not pay would be subsidized by the government. This was not what he wanted but was persuaded by the House leadership under Nancy Pelosi that this was the only way.

The Affordable Care Act was neither affordable for the middle class nor did it provide care until the premiums and the deductibles were met. Sometimes this meant that in addition to paying $6,000 a year for the insurance, there was a deductible of as much as $5,000 to $10,000 a year, meaning that this was not coverage but rather insurance for any amount above the combined annual cost. Private insurers were dropping out because they were losing money. They became aware that one unhealthy patient could cost as much as 50 or 100 healthy ones. There would be no way to have the healthy ones make up the difference.

The president, his health secretary and his minority leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, were advised that there was an easy way to fix this deteriorating situation. They could make enrollment voluntary and allow private insurers to reject any applicant for medical or financial reasons. Those rejected would be immediately eligible to the public option, which would be more like Medicare than Medicaid. Those denied for medical reasons would have a share of cost but no deductible and those denied for financial reasons would have little or no share of cost and no deductibles. This then would be affordable health coverage as opposed to unaffordable health insurance.

He and his people rejected all solutions and insisted on pressing on no matter what.

He was facing an economic collapse and took steps to save the banks and two of our car companies, one of which is now owned by the Italian carmaker, Fiat. He helped the private sector create 16 million jobs that were lost during the crisis. The unemployment rate went from more than 10% with 800,000 jobs lost each month to a rate of almost down to 4.5% with more than 200,000 jobs added each month for a record number of months. The stock market went from 6,000 to almost 20,000. But he gave up on getting back any of the manufacturing jobs we lost through outsourcing. His people claimed the low skill manufacturing jobs were lost forever and blamed automation instead of outsourcing.

He advocated raising the federal minimum wage to at least $10.10 per hour from its current $7.25 per hour rate. Since then many cities and states have raised their minimum rates to as high as $15 per hour. Average worker incomes have increased by almost 3% as a result.

He had appointed his former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, to be Secretary of State in 2009. She promised to reset our frosty relationship with Russia and to champion human rights, especially in the Middle East where women and minorities were being subjugated. Encouraged by the fall of Iraq’s strong man and then by the overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, she promoted efforts in Egypt, Yemen and Syria to overthrow their longtime dictators, thus interfering with the internal politics of their countries. What followed was the destabilization of Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and Syria. This chaos gave rise to radical Islamists known as Al Qaeda and later ISIS in this area. Our relationship with Russia has never been worse.

He promised to close Gitmo and did much to reduce the population there but was prevented by congress from moving the remaining prisoners to available American prisons. Those who remain there are costing an estimated $10 million a year each.

He promised to unite us saying that there was not a red America or a blue America, no white America or black America. We would be one nation, indivisible. Eight years later, the country is more divided than ever.

When a young high school football player was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, the president sided with the young man saying that it could have been him as a young man or his son had he had one. It turned out that the young man was killed to stop him from beating the volunteer to death all because the man had asked him what he was doing in the gated community.

When a police officer shot and killed a six foot five inch 300 pound former high school football player, the president again sided with the young man who was killed. It turned out that he too was killed in self defense and did not have his hands up when he was shot. He was trying to kill the officer who stopped him for having committed a strong-arm robbery minutes before. The president did not intervene and the town rioted for more than four months.

Whenever cases like these came up, it seemed that President Obama sided with the assailant rather than the police who risk their lives daily to protect us. It happened again in Staten Island when a six foot five inch 400 pound man with severe heart, kidney and diabetes problems resisted his 30th arrest. He died of a heart attack while police tried to arrest him. 

It happened again in Baltimore when a young drug dealer reacted to his 20th arrest of the year and hit his head accidentally while being transported to jail. The mayor of that city immediately decided that the police were guilty and awarded the young man’s destitute mother $6.5 million before the case went to trial. It turned out that none of the six cops were found guilty. In the next six weeks there were 56 homicides. All but one victim and one killer were black. That year there was a record number of homicides almost all affecting black victims.

His siding with alleged victims of police overreach resulted in a 50% increase in homicides of police officers making some police less motivated to aggressively pursue the criminal element. The result in the president’s own Chicago neighborhood has been a dramatic increase in murders to almost 800 this year with 78% of the victims being black and 17% being Latino.  

But this past year, the president really went off track. He decided to enter the presidential race to promote his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton. Unlike any sitting president before him, he went on the campaign trail for her, along with his wife, Michelle, and his Vice President, Joe Biden,  presumably using taxpayer money for the tremendous expense it entailed. Truman did not campaign for Stevenson. The very popular Ike did not do it for his own vice president, Nixon. Reagan did not do it for his V.P. Bush. Clinton did not campaign for his V.P., Gore. Young Bush did not campaign for Romney.

The president insisted that Hillary was the best prepared to be president, more than anyone ever was. He forgot that Bush Sr. had been Vice President for eight years, head of the CIA, a congressman and a war hero. He forgot that Nixon had been a V.P. for eight years, a congressman and naval officer. How well did they do?

The president promised that Mr. Trump would never be president. He then had to eat his words. When a minority of Americans tried to undo the results of the election, he did not step up and tell them that what they were doing was un-American and was an assault on our democratic system. As a result, some Americans felt encouraged to do whatever they could to overthrow the results.

He had tried to reduce the number of immigrants who came to the country illegally until a few years ago when those on the left decried it. He then allowed and encouraged hundreds of thousands of interlopers from Central America to enter the country unimpeded and to disperse into the American countryside with hopes of future citizenship.

And just this past month, he gave Israel, our country’s greatest ally and the homeland for the world’s most besieged people, a knife in the back by instructing his U.N. representative to not veto a resolution that every other administration had. I
The president’s legacy is both great and unfortunate. He overcame great obstacles but put others in his way. Many of us voted for him and believed in him. He has left us with a mixed legacy.

       


 

Why a Lifelong Voter for Democrats No Longer Is One

I was born to European immigrants who always voted Democrat.

My parents always voted Democrat, because of FDR, who defeated Hitler and granted my mother and her first husband a special visa to enter this country.

I have always voted Democrat. I voted for Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton twice and believed that Clinton completely reflected my beliefs. When stories came out about his infidelities, I blamed his behavior on his difficult childhood - never knowing who his father really was and having to deal with an alcoholic step father. I easily forgave him his trespasses.

When George Bush succeeded him, I hoped that he would do well because our country depended on it. I was terribly disappointed. I couldn’t believe that we had invaded Iraq and feared his tax cuts for the rich would cripple our economy. My worst fears were realized.

I was so relieved to see a young senator from Illinois become our next president. He seemed very pragmatic and centrist. I disregarded claims that he was against white Americans or that he had some hidden agenda.

He promised to get us out of the Middle East and to bring about healthcare reform. He promised to make healthcare coverage affordable and voluntary. He wanted to have a public option to complement or compete with private carriers who would no longer reject applicants for preconditions. He promised to unite us saying that there was not a red America or a blue one. We would be one nation, indivisible.

We did get a healthcare reform but it was not the one he wanted or promised. Americans without coverage would be forced to get it or face financial penalties. Healthy Americans were needed to offset the cost of unhealthy ones, we were told. Those who could not pay would be subsidized by the government. This was not what he wanted but was persuaded by the House leadership under Nancy Pelosi that this was the only way.

He was facing an economic collapse and took steps to save the banks and two of our car companies. He helped the private sector create jobs that were lost during the crisis.

He got us out of Iraq as promised and made plans to get the Afghans to take over protecting their country from radical Muslims called the Taliban. He made it clear that this was not anything against Islam, a religion dedicated to peace.

He had appointed his former Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, a former First Lady, to be Secretary of State in 2009. She promised to reset our frosty relationship with Russia and to champion human rights, especially in the Middle East where women and minorities were being subjugated. Encouraged by the fall of Iraq’s strongman and then by the overthrow of Tunisia’s dictator, she promoted efforts in Egypt, Yemen and Syria to overthrow their longtime dictators. What followed was the destabilization of Iraq, Yemen, Egypt and Syria. This chaos gave rise to radical Islamists known as Al Qaeda and later ISIS in this area.

The president declined to call this an Islamic-based radicalism not wanting anyone to think that there was any relationship between the religion and violence.

He promised to close Gitmo and did much to reduce the population there but was prevented from moving the remaining prisoners to available American prisons. Those who remain there are costing an estimated $10 million a year each.

The Affordable Care Act was neither affordable for the middle class nor did it provide care until the premiums and the deductibles were met. Sometimes this meant that in addition to paying $6,000 a year for the insurance, there was a deductible of as much as $5,000 to $10,000 a year, meaning that this was not coverage but rather insurance for any cost above the combined annual cost. Private insurers were dropping out because they were losing money. They became aware that one unhealthy patient could cost as much as 50 or 100 healthy ones. There would be no way to have the healthy ones make up the difference.

The president, his health secretary and his minority leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, were advised that there was an easy way to fix this deteriorating situation. They could make enrollment voluntary and allow private insurers to reject any applicant for medical or financial reasons. Those rejected would be immediately eligible to the public option which would be 100% federally funded. Those denied for medical reasons would have a share of cost but no deductible and those denied for financial reasons would have no share of cost and no deductibles. This then would be affordable health coverage as opposed to unaffordable health insurance.

He and his people rejected all solutions and insisted on pressing on no matter what.

The president failed to unite the nation when he repeatedly took the side of black Americans. When a Harvard professor was seemingly mistreated by a Cambridge, Mass. police sergeant, Mr. Obama sided with the professor before knowing the whole story. When a young high school football player was killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, the president sided with the young man saying that it could have been him as a young man or his son had he had one. It turned out that the young man was killed to stop him from beating the volunteer to death because the man had asked him what he was doing in the gated community. A jury that included six mothers found the accused innocent because he killed in self defense. The Attorney General promised a full investigation and found that from day one it was obviously a case of self defense. The shooter, though innocent, is still considered a pariah by the unthinking public.

When a police officer shot and killed a former high school football player, the president again sided with the young man who was killed. It turned out that he too was killed in self defense and did not have his hands up when he was shot. He was trying to kill the officer who stopped him for having committed a strong-arm robbery minutes before. The president did not intervene and the town rioted for more than four months.

Whenever cases like these came up, it seemed that President Obama sided with the assailant rather than the police who risk their lives daily to protect us. It happened again in Staten Island when a six foot five inch 400 pound man with severe heart, kidney and diabetes problems resisted his 30th arrest. He died of a heart attack while police tried to arrest him. When the mayor of New York came out against the grand jury findings that the police were not at fault, the president sided with the mayor.  Days later a person killed two New York police officers feeling justified because even the mayor was against the police.

It happened again in Baltimore when a young drug dealer reacted to his 20th arrest of the year and hit his head accidentally while being transported to jail. The mayor of that city immediately decided that the police were guilty and awarded the young man’s destitute mother $6.5 million before the case went to trial. It turned out that none of the six cops were found guilty. The rioters broke into pharmacies and stole drugs that could be sold on the street. In the next six weeks there were 56 homicides. All but one victim and one killer were black. That year there was a record number of homicides almost all affecting black victims.

But this past year, the president really went off track. He decided to enter the presidential race to promote his chosen successor, Hillary Clinton, his former opponent turned secretary of state. Unlike any president before him, along with his wife, Michelle, and his Vice President, Joe Biden, he went on the campaign trail for her, presumably using taxpayer money for the tremendous expense it entailed. No other sitting president in memory campaigned for his successor. Truman did not campaign for Stevenson. The very popular Ike did not do it for his own vice president, Nixon. Reagan did not do it for his V.P. Bush. Clinton did not campaign for his V.P., Gore. Young Bush did not campaign for Romney.

The president insisted that Hillary was the best prepared to be president, more than anyone ever was. He forgot that Bush Sr. had been Vice President for eight years, head of the CIA, a congressman and a war hero. He forgot that Nixon had been a V.P. for eight years, a congressman and naval officer. How well did they do?

The president promised that Mr. Trump would never be president. He then had to eat his words. When a minority of Americans tried to undo the results of the election, he did not step up and tell them that what they were doing was un-American and was an assault on our democratic system. As a result, some Americans felt encouraged to do whatever they could to overthrow the results.

The president told us that our country was created and made great by diversity. He perhaps forgot that the founding fathers, every president before him except one, and almost every legislator was a white Protestant. This is clearly a white Protestant nation.  Diversity is fine but it did not make this country what it is today, for better or worse.  He neglected to consider this obvious fact because it appears that he wanted to change our culture to make it less white and less Christian. He refrained from wishing us Merry Christmas for fear offending the few who might take offense by it.

He had tried to reduce the number of immigrants who came to the country illegally until a few years ago when those on the left decried it. He then allowed and encouraged hundreds of thousands of interlopers from Central America to enter the country unimpeded and to disperse into the American countryside with hopes of future citizenship.

And just this past week, he gave Israel, our country’s greatest ally and the homeland for the world’s most besieged people, a knife in the back by instructing his U.N. representative to not veto a resolution that every other president had. It gave false legitimacy to the Paletine region by declaring that its sovereignty had been violated by Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The residents of this region had never had self rule or national status. They had been part of Jordan until the Arab states invaded Israel in 1967 in an attempt to destroy the new nation that was established by the U.N. Israel was victorious humiliating the many Arab states and took back the Sinai, Gaza and the West Bank for security reasons.

In an effort to promote peace in the region, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt and later deserted its settlements in Gaza giving its residents autonomy. The people of Gaza reacted by putting in power Hamas, a terrorist organizations that vowed to drive Israel into the sea. The terrorists sent 20,000 rockets into Israel as a thank you note. Knowing this, President Obama still seemed to side with the Arabs against Israel.

The President now has one last choice to make. He can fully endorse his successor, encourage his fellow Americans to do likewise and show his solidarity by attending the inauguration on January 20th.

He would be well to realize that people remember the end more than the beginning. He should do whatever he can in his last few weeks in office to help us remember him well. He owes it to all us who believed in him and wished him great success. He owes it to simple decency.

I hope he does the right thing in the end.       

Why She Lost

After 18 months of primaries and the election, the mainstream media and the Democratic Party were stunned to learn that their heir apparent, Hillary Clinton, lost to a political novice who seemed to be able to annoy everyone while drawing record crowds. Hillary had everyone rooting for her and doing whatever they could to secure the presidency for her. Even much of his own party was against its candidate, Trump.

The president actually campaigned for Hillary as did his wife, Michelle and his vice president, Joe Biden. I can recall no sitting president campaigning for his successor. Truman did not campaign for Stevenson; Ike did not campaign for Nixon, his vice president; Reagan did not campaign for his V.P Bush; Clinton didn’t do it for Gore and young Bush did not hit the circuit for McCain. The president told us that no one has ever been better prepared to be president than Hillary was.  He forgot about George, Sr. having been V.P. for eight years, head of the CIA, an ambassador, a congressman and a decorated naval officer. He forgot about Nixon who also was a V.P. for eight years and a congressman before that. How well did they do?

As we found out a few months ago, thanks to Wikileaks, Hillary had the DNC and CNN doing whatever they could to make Hillary the successful candidate. So how did she lose?

Here are some possible reasons:

Maybe it was in part because some people learned about Hillary’s first jobs out of law school. She defended a middle-aged man accused of raping a 12 year-old girl. The evidence was overwhelming. Hillary argued that the 12 year old was in part to blame because she might have been into older men.

She went on to be an attorney for the Watergate hearings but was fired because her boss thought she was dishonest.

Maybe some people knew about the way Hillary treated women who accused her husband of sexual misconduct. She scorned Gennifer Flowers, who claimed to be Bill’s longtime mistress. She ridiculed Paula Jones and called the 22 year old intern, who claimed having sex with Bill in the Oval Office, a bimbo. Bill denied all the allegations. He ended up confessing to his affair with Flowers, paid Paula Jones $850,000 for trying to put something much larger than a tongue down her throat and he confessed to having sex with Monica after she produced a stained blue dress. He was impeached for lying about it.

During the campaign Hillary announced that if a woman claims to have been raped or otherwise violated, you must believe her. But even that was wrong. Remember the rape claims by Tawana Brawley who claimed to have been raped by five white, NYC police officers? It turned out to be false but made her defender, Al Sharpton, rich and famous enough to owe $4.5 million in back taxes. Remember the stripper who claimed that some Duke lacrosse players raped her? That too was a lie. Recently, the U. of Virginia coed lied about being raped by fraternity boys, ruining the career of a college dean and a campus fraternity as well as the “Rolling Stone” magazine that published the falsehood.

Maybe some people remembered her time in the White House when Bill was president. They might still recall Travelgate when she tried to fire the entire travel office staff to give jobs to friends. Maybe they recall the mysterious death of Vincent Foster, Bill’s friend since the first grade and Hillary’s friend from the Rose Law Firm. He was being called to testify against her. Or it could have been her failure to produce a viable health care reform plan without inviting sufficient input. She felt that she didn’t need any help. Or it could have been the fact that she and Bill were trying to remove $200,000 worth of furnishings and gifts when leaving the White House. They were blocked and forced to return their loot.

Maybe people are more concerned with more recent problems. When she lost her bid in 2008 against an inexperienced young senator, she was given a chance to redeem herself as Secretary of State. She failed to “reset” relations with Russia and only made them much worse. She turned on longtime leaders of Middle East countries like Yemen, Syria, Egypt and Libya. The leaders had always been brutal but they kept their countries together. When they were overthrown, with U.S. support, the countries fell into chaos and a “J.V. terrorist team” called ISIS was born to fill the gaps. She and the president would not call them Islamic terrorists because they didn’t want us to think that Islam, a religion of peace, had anything to do with ISIS - the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

It could have been in part because of Benghazi and all the bad judgement and dishonesty involved in even having an embassy there to begin with, then not providing sufficient security, then delaying a response by as much as 14 hours, and then lying to their families about the cause of the disaster that killed four Americans stationed there.

Perhaps it was her email server and the missing 33,000 emails. We heard her swear that there was no classified information transmitted but the FBI found that there were as many as 100 secret or classified emails on her private server. Some people don’t approve of lying to the public, Congress and the FBI.

When leaving her state Department office she again tried to steal the furniture to use in her home. She was caught again and forced to return the stolen items. Some people don’t like thieves, especially rich ones who don’t need to steal.

Maybe it was the fact that when she left office she got huge speaker’s fees, more than $250,000 each, from Wall Street firms.  They weren’t paying for her investment advice but to gain influence and access should she become president as it seemed likely she would. She refused to release the content of these lucrative speeches when called to do so by her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, who was campaigning against Wall Street and its excesses, like paying huge fees to potential presidential candidates. When the content was revealed by Wikileaks, more people might have been angered. She said that she was for open borders which would mean mass migration to the States and a loss of our national value system becoming a modern Tower of Babble.

Maybe some were unhappy with her promise to all here illegally that they would all become American citizens. Illegal immigration surged on the prospect.

Maybe it got even worse when she vowed to take in 55,000 refugees from the Middle East and Africa in her first year. Some in Detroit might have been angered to hear her husband Bill declare that the 10,000 vacant houses in Detroit could be fixed up and given to Syrian refugees instead of Detroit residents.

Maybe it was her terrible campaign style. She yelled and barked instead of using normal speech and spent more time and energy denigrating her opponent than coming out with innovative ideas for improving our conditions. Maybe that was because she had no real ideas or plans other than being elected.

Her idea for fixing a failing Affordable Care Act, also known as Pelosicare, was to get applicants five free doctor’s visits per year. That’s it. Her idea for fixing the tax code was to promise not to raise taxes on the middle class and to eliminate a few obvious loopholes that help the rich, like her.

Maybe it was the realization that she and her friends in the DNC were stacking the deck on her only party opponent by giving HRC a 500 super-delegate lead before Bernie even entered the race. Super-delegates usually wait until the end of the primary to make their judgement so it doesn’t appear like a pre-judgement. It got worse when we learned that a CNN contributor who was also the DNC chair, Donna Brazile, fed Hillary some of the questions that she might be asked in the upcoming debate and offered to get her more as they become available.

Maybe some people didn’t like her pandering. She was for NAFTA until Bernie and others said it hurt American workers. She called the new Pan Pacific Free Trade Agreement, still waiting to be approved, the gold standard until Bernie said it would hurt U.S. workers. Then she was against it. When Bernie promised free public university tuition for everyone, she agreed to make it free to all low income families. Her definition of "low income" was families who make as little as $125,000 a year or about 90% of American households.

Maybe it was her calling one half of all of her opponents supporters “a basket of deplorables” being sexist, xenophobic, racist, misogynistic and homophobic. She also attributed the same characteristics to her opponent.

Maybe some were concerned about her health. She testified before the FBI and Congress that because of a recent brain injury she couldn’t recall the answers to about 30 questions regarding her previous actions. These concerns grew when she collapsed at a ceremony and was rushed to her 35 year old daughter’s $11 million Manhattan apartment that included a medical facility for just such occasions.

Maybe she was hurt by the fact that at one point 88% of voters said they didn’t trust her.

Maybe her pick of a running mate reduced her chances. He admitted to being boring and that turned out to be the truest and most exciting thing he said from then on. Maybe it was his slovenly appearance that made him look like he was still hungover. It also could not have helped hearing him patronize his audiences of Americans of Latino backgrounds by speaking to them in Spanish as though they could not quite master English, the language of their chosen nation. And his only debate performance showed that he wasn’t even a nice guy, the only positive thing anyone ever said about him.

Maybe it was the fact that when it came right down to it, the only reasons to vote for her were that she was a woman, a Democrat, was not the Donald and /or that was going to maintain the status quo.

This while her opponent offered to end illegal immigration that hurts young minority job seekers more than anyone else. He promised to bring manufacturing back providing not only jobs but self reliance. America has gone from producing 90% of its needed goods and services in the 1960s to 2% today. He promised to put Americans first in our trade agreements and spending priorities. He vowed to stop our attempts at nation building and funding the lion’s share to protect Europe against a Soviet Union that no longer exists.

Now she blames her loss on James Comey who announced that he would not prosecute her, the media which was totally against Trump, She blames the Russians and the fact that she had to compete against a well known entertainer. She also blames it on misogyny, even though her main appeal was that she was a woman. She blames everyone but herself for her failure to win the election when in fact it was all her fault.

Even her slogan, “I’m with her” now appears to have come to her while she was looking at herself in the mirror.

Maybe the fact of the matter is that she did it to herself by being who she was and doing what she did. Her donors blew more than $1.5 billion on a candidate destined to fail while her opponent spent less than a tenth as much and won overwhelmingly. It turns out you just can’t buy elections anymore.

The minority party that has lost the White House, the Senate and the House since 2010 must realize that they have to move back to the center and put America first. The lesson for Nancy Pelosi and her followers is as old as the Greeks: Arrogance leads to blindness. Be humble and open your eyes wide.






 

Fixing The Affordable Care Act

Now that we are about to have a new President and administration, changes in the Affordable care Act (ACA) are inevitable, but what should they be? What are the problems that beg solution?

Private insurers who are covering about ten million Americans under the ACA are losing money even though all people without health coverage through their employer, on their own or through the federal government are required to sign up for coverage. The idea was that there would be enough healthy applicants to offset the cost of covering people with serious medical preconditions like heart disease and cancer. But there aren’t and there probably never could be enough. If one unhealthy patient needs life saving treatment like a heart transplant or extensive cancer treatment, it could cost millions of dollars. One healthy patient might pay $2,000 a year. It would take 500 healthy patients to pay for each unhealthy one like this.

But the ACA wanted to end the use of preconditions in evaluating coverage and so they thought that making everyone get it would offset their cost. In order to enforce  signups, those who did not sign up were to be charged penalties. They are now up to 2% of annual income.

Now that private insurers are withdrawing from the markets, one in five applicants will have only one private insurer to choose from, which is no choice at all. And the plans include high deductibles making it unlikely that the insured will ever get any benefit unless there is a catastrophic injury or illness. 

The majority of Americans do not like the ACA and want the new President to fix it. I have a suggestion for a way to make coverage voluntary, less expensive, and without deductibles.

First let all private insurers reject any applicant for medical reasons. Those rejected would immediately be eligible to the “public option” which will be a government-run program similar to Medicare and Medicaid. There will be a share of cost and there will be no deductibles. Those with low incomes who would be eligible to Medicaid, had their states expended the coverage under the ACA, would also receive the public option but with no share of cost.

Private insurers would lose some customers because they would not have to sign up. But the low income people who are not now able to get Medicaid in their state would make up for the lost enrollment by getting the public option.

Private insurers would have to compete for the healthy applicants who are no longer a captive audience. Insurers would have to offer competitive rates mindful that they could not use deductibles to avoid the first $5,000 of medical costs, more than most healthy members use.

Since getting coverage would no longer be mandatory, there would be no fines for non compliance as there are now.

And, yes, the taxpayer would have to pay the cost of these high risk patients, but we do anyway. The government has been reimbursing/ subsidizing both the rate payers and the insurers. Currently 5% of the population uses 50% of our healthcare dollars. The government needs to find ways to reduce these costs with changes in diets, exercise regimes, early interventions, drug and surgical treatments and in end -of-life decisions. In a sense, these high cost individuals are society’s responsibility since most have suffered poverty and its associated problems.

The result should make everyone happy. People with preconditions will always have coverage. People who cannot afford coverage and live in states that did not expand Medicaid, will have coverage. Those who do not want coverage do not have to get any. There will be no penalties for non-compliance.

Private insurers would provide more coverage for less and still make a profit.

The progressives will be happy to see a public option that could grow over time, not to compete with private companies but to complement them.

Conservatives will be happy because coverage will not be mandatory and the private option will be maintained, will not be threatened by single payer universal coverage, also known as socialized medicine.

Problem solved!

No Truth in Labeling

One of the most interesting and disturbing aspects of this year’s coverage of the campaign for President was the way the media and people quoted in it found it easy to label people based on remarks or actions. Labeling allows us to quickly react emotionally without having to think much about it. Labeling also allows us to discredit everything the discredited says or does to dramatically limit free speech with which we disagree.

The two greatest Russian metaphysicians, George Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky, theorized that emotions are much faster than thoughts and that many of us have been conditioned to react emotionally to certain images formed by labels making most of us more like machines whose reactions are pre-programmed.

During this election cycle we have heard many people label others based on something that person had allegedly said or done. And worse yet, we saw people labeled by extending their past actions to extremes. The examples abound.

The main, but not only, focus was Donald Trump. He said that he wanted to build a wall on our southern border to stop illegal immigration from that direction. He said some illegals were bringing drugs, crime and even rape. This was translated as him saying that all Latinos are drug dealers and criminals. It was morphed into him being against all immigrants and that he was afraid of other cultures. He was labeled anti-immigrant, xenophobic and racist. When actually he was against illegal immigration. He married two immigrants, hired thousands and started businesses in countries all over the world. How is that being anti immigrant, racist or xenophobic?

He insulted several people. We don’t like people doing that and for good reason. He insulted a famous personality known for not mincing words. She insulted him and he insulted her. For insulting a woman he was labeled a sexist and possible misogynist. When we heard a tape of him talking like a teenager to a entertainment T.V. host with the mic still on, we were convinced. It was vulgar and immature. But it confirmed our label that he was a misogynist especially after a few women came out claiming to have experienced unwanted advances, which were then labeled sexual assaults. Misogynists hate women. That is exactly what the name means. How does what he said or did equal hatred of women? It shows the opposite - an immature attraction to women. People who hate women are very dangerous. They could kill them, hurt them, or just make their lives miserable. They do not have long loving relationships with wives and daughters.

Trump called for a delay in accepting Muslims from dangerous countries until we can be sure that they will not be a threat to Americans. He was labeled as hating all 1.3 billion Muslims. This concern about radicalized migrants also was seen as proof that he was xenophobic and racist.

He said he was against intervening in conflicts that do not have anything to do with us. Examples are Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Yemen. He said that the U.S. is paying too much while other NATO countries are paying too little for their defense. He was labeled a treaty breaker and unwilling to aid other countries. He was labeled isolationist.

He reprinted a poster showing that his opponent was in with Wall Street. The poster had a star with some writing on it. The star was six pointed, the same as a Jewish star and the star worn by many law enforcement officers. But the star associated with money labeled him an anti-Semite. He has a daughter and two sons who are married to Jews. His eleven grandchildren are Jewish. His daughter became Jewish. The Prime Minister of Israel supported him. And Trump is anti-Semitic?

The people hear these labels and respond with anger and fear. They take their frustrations to the streets feeling justified to respond violently to someone labeled sexist, racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and isolationist. The crowds become angry mobs spewing anger, hatred, vulgarity, and destruction while feeling self righteous and licensed to any level of abuse.

The lack of truth in labeling has brought out the worst in some of our people. It gave greater strength to the belief that the mainstream media is terribly biased. 

Political leaders and journalists have to be aware that they reach a wide audience and that the words they write or speak affect different parts of the population differently. Some take in the reports and balance them with other sources of information. But others with serious issues to deal with take this misinformation and overreact to it.

Now we hear that immigrants are worried and live in fear of immediate deportation from the Promised Land. Even though he said he would close the border and end illegal immigration, it does not mean that he will immediately deport 11 million people. He has said that he wants those who are involved in criminal activity to be identified and sent packing first. Then those who have arrived recently could be repatriated. But those who have been here and established roots will probably be safe. Still, we hear that even those not subject to removal are living in fear.

We hear reports that women are rushing to get birth control before Trump ends the Affordable Care Act as though that would happen immediately. If they would think rather than feel, they would realize that it would take at least a year or two to make any real changes to the ACA and even with them, they will still be able to get birth control. They are frightened without reason and it is not helpful.

Muslims living in this country are saying that they don’t feel safe now. This concern even though the issue has been accepting future refugees from countries having radical activity until they are fully vetted. It is not against all Muslims or all immigrants.   
We are seeing that there is a great cost to sensational, superficial and subjective reporting. This latest wave of examples is the most exaggerated form of it.

If we are at the beginning of a revolution against the status quo, let this status be no longer quo. Let us begin to insist on fair, honest, in depth reporting free of political bias, editorializing, and sensationalizing. Enough is enough! 

Whom Do You Trust?

When I was going to school on the west side of Manhattan in the mid 1950s, I used to get free tickets to see a new quiz show broadcast just down the block. The name of the show was “Who Do You Trust?” and was hosted by a young man from the Midwest named Johnny Carson.  He later replaced a future Westchester village neighbor of mine named Jack Paar on another show called “ The Tonight Show.”

I don’t remember what the quiz show was like anymore but do remember the incorrect grammar of it, “Who” instead of “Whom.”

But now the question arises in my mind on a more frequent basis.  Whom or who do I trust?  Whom should I trust?

We always trusted our priests. Now we know that there have been many abuses of young parishioners by Catholic priests and realize that though the mass media has never mentioned this, this practice has probably been going on for centuries.  And what made matters worse was that those on top of the church hierarchy covered up the crimes making more people subject to abuse.  Our evangelical leaders faired no better, not able to resist the sexual relations they preached against. And let us not forget the mullahs who preach hatred and violence to foster their campaign of the subjugation of women, their apparent raison d’etre and remain silent while their dictators slaughter their own people and their extremists torture innocents. Should or can we trust our religious leaders?

What about our bankers and financiers?  Can we trust them?  If you had money in Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo or Barclay’s, you have probably realized that you cannot trust them to put your welfare above or on a par with their own interests.  They actually admitted it to a congressional committee trying to find out what caused the financial crash of ’08. Companies like Goldman Sachs knowingly bundled bad loans and sold them to their own clients while actually betting against them at the same time. Why would anyone continue to do business with such companies, companies they can no longer trust?

But surely we can trust our doctors. Now we learn that there are at least 100,000 deaths a year due to hospital error. Every night on the national news we learn that the doctors were wrong about something else and that we should stop doing what they told us to do.  The drugs they offered women to prevent problems with their bones, only work for five years after which they actually cause bones to break.  Aspirin was recommended for everyone to avoid stroke, heart attacks and even cancer, now has been found to present too many other health risks and should be used only by people with known heart problems. Then there are mammograms, MRIs, x-rays all thought mainly beneficial now found to cause to potentially life threatening problems if overdone. We spend more on medicine than any other developed country and yet have some of the worst results.  Can we trust our physicians?

But what about our free press, blessed by our very first amendment to the Constitution, surely we can trust the media to give the information we need, or can we? Not only has our mass media been characterized as sensationalist and shallow or just inaccurate, it can also be biased.  We have seen them show their bias in cases involving racial violence, seeming to want to fan the flames of violence and destruction in their superficial and sensational reporting. There was the alleged “stand your ground” murder of an unarmed high school football player that turned out to be a clear case of self defense. There was the case of the unarmed former high school football player who allegedly was shot in the back while having his hands up. A grand jury and then the U.S. Justice Department found that he was attacking a police officer and his hands were not up. There was the case of the young drug dealer reacting to his 20th arrest of the year by thrashing around in a police van. He accidentally hit his head and died a few days later. The media blamed the six officers. The result of these misperceptions caused by biased, superficial and sensationalist reporting lead to riots which destroyed property and threatened lives.The riots in Baltimore based on misinformation resulted in 56 homicides in six weeks - a record even for Baltimore, once the murder capital of America. What the media did not report was that 55 of the victims were black as were their assailants.

But the media has outdone itself during this election cycle. The mainstream media has not tried to conceal its choice for our next president and has done whatever it could to make their hope a reality. If it weren’t so serious, it would be funny.  We talk about the billionaires stealing this election, when it is the media which has left its fingerprints all over the crime scene. Talk about being superficial, sensational and subjective. It should be their slogan. The Times should change theirs to be “All the news that we see fit to print.” The result of this terrible reporting is mobs expressing fear and hatred while protesting against them. Tolerant people feeling they have license to be intolerant of those labeled intolerant and to hate those labeled as bigoted. They don’t see the irony in and hypocrisy of their misguided position.  

But at least we have our elected officials. At the core of our great nation’s democracy is representative government through free and open elections. American citizens can vote for and elect the person whom they feel best represents their interests. We have 535 people in Congress representing our best interests. Or are they?  Currently only nine percent of our people trust the Congress. You can only wonder who these nine percent are. 

It has also come to light that many of these legislators were also on the take. Some bought or sold stocks based on inside legislative information. Others accepted favors from corporations like free golf trips to Scotland on private corporate jets in exchange for favorable legislation. Still others allowed lobbyists to actually write legislation favorable to their efforts. The only word that comes to mind to describe such people is a five letter unmentionable name which begins with the letter “W” and is usually attributed to pliers of the second oldest profession. Using this term for legislators is an insult to their namesakes. Not even congress people trust congress people and they should know.

So who or whom does that leave? We can hopefully trust our family and friends, much of the time except when too much money is at stake. We can trust our instincts if they are conjoined with clear thinking and honest observation.

We can trust the exceptions to all these groups. There are some wonderful religious leaders in every religion with great faith and wisdom. There are even some honest bankers and financiers who put their clients first, give generously to charity and want to make this a better country. Banks are at the heart of our economy enabling families to borrow and save money to buy homes and pay for college tuition and helping businesses to develop and grow.

Our doctors have saved countless lives with skilled and innovative surgery and/or the prescription of appropriate medication. They are on the front lines fighting cancer, heart disease and the other medical causes of our suffering.  This very column would not exist if not for excellent surgeons who have performed numerous life-saving operations on behalf of its author.

There have also been courageous reporters like Morrow and Wallace but also Russert, Chronkite, Brinkley, Lehr, McNeil, and even Anderson Cooper on a good day. There were the great humorous news sources like Jon Stewart of the Daily Show, Stephen Colbert and we still have Bill Maher of Real Time.  I find that PBS can usually be relied upon for accurate and in depth reporting.

When it comes to our Congress, it seems hard to trust those on the right who are clearly in the wrong on some social and fiscal issues and those on the left who are moving us too far off center creating a culture of ubiquitous victimhood to expand their underdog base. Surely, there are congress people who truly love their country and try to work cooperatively to improve the lives of our people. However, no name comes to mind.

And when all else fails, you can trust this column to bring you ideas whose author truly believes will be of benefit to the you.  Trust me that I am someone whom you can trust.

Standing Up for Our Imperfect Country

A few weeks ago a highly paid football quarterback refused to stand with his team for the National Anthem because he felt that he could no longer stand in support of a country which allows several unarmed minority members to be shot to death by police. This courageous young athlete could not support an imperfect country.

Some intelligent, well meaning people came out in support of this brave display of America’s First Amendment right: freedom of speech. “You may not agree with him but we must respect his right to express himself,” we are told. “Americans gave their lives fighting in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq to preserve our First Amendment rights,” we are reminded. “It has begun a conversation about this important issue,” we are asked to believe and to therefore forget all the conversation of the past two years.

Some intelligent and well meaning Americans have come out against this behavior calling it unpatriotic, ungrateful and not helpful, only adding fuel to the fire.

Some team fans are burning jerseys with the quarterback’s name and number. Sales are way up with the profits going to the cause. Many promise to stop watching the team which, though once great, appears to be headed for a losing season. Some are suggesting that the player be left seated throughout not only the anthem but the entire game until he is released from the roster. He has been seated lately but still earns more than $1 million a game or more than we pay the President of the United States in annual salary and benefits to work 24/7/365 to do the hardest, most important job in the world. And we hear that CEOs are overpaid.

This young rebel is protesting the fact that there have been several cases of apparent police use of unnecessary force resulting in the deaths of suspects and that this seems disproportionately to affect black men. In the past few years we have been made aware of videos showing police officers overreacting, often to people resisting arrest. While in several of the most publicized cases it was found by local juries and federal investigations that the officers were not at fault, there were several which seemed like definite cases of deadly overreaction.

Surely no American of sound mind thinks that the use of unnecessary force by police is ever acceptable. It is clear that some officers have the wrong attitude about their work and the public they serve and that they need to be either retrained or dismissed. Surely any American with a heart can empathize with grieving parents who lost their grown children for any reason, especially if by those sworn to serve and protect.

Understanding all this, I still feel that the young man’s decision to show disrespect for flag and country was very wrong and should not be encouraged or rationalized. 

Countries, like people, are never perfect - without fault. America is no exception even though it is considered exceptional. America is the richest and most powerful nation on earth. Americans believe in freedom and fairness but we don’t always practice it.

From our very beginning there have been cases of unfair lack of freedom. We were not fair to our hosts, the American Indians. We fought them, took their land, broke our treaties and then cheated them out of their royalties from oil found on their exiled land.

We were not very fair to slaves we brought from Africa. They were not considered to be equal to people of European ancestry. When slavery was ended after a few hundred years, blacks were mistreated under Jim Crow policies that kept them separate and unequal.

We were not very fair to Americans of Japanese heritage in the 1940s. Their freedom was denied them, without due process, when they were removed from their homes and sent to resettlement centers for fear that they might help the Japanese invade America. This overreaction was ordered by F.D.R., America’s most liberal leader.

Today, 33 million Americans, ten percent of our population, live in poverty. While America’s safety nets help reduce the suffering, the suffering still exists in this land of such great wealth and generosity. This does not seem fair and its victims do not seem very free.

Blacks make up 13% of the U.S. population for a total of 40 million people. One out of four black Americans is considered poor. That means 10 million people or one out of every three Americans living in poverty is black. Poverty is the leading cause of crime and violence.

While several people each year die unnecessarily in police hands, with even one being too many, each year almost 7,000 murder victims in America are black as are - 93% of their assailants.

America, while great, is not perfect. We are not perfect. The world is not perfect. Life is not perfect.

But I don’t think that the right response is to show disrespect, to withdraw one’s allegiance because work needs be done. I don’t think that protest marches and demonstrations sure to bring out the violent fringe are the answer. I don’t think that blocking streets or bridges is acceptable. This athlete did not open our eyes to a flaw in America that we were not painfully aware of. We have been hearing about it for years - again and again.

So what would work? What could these well paid professional athletes do to make a difference - to make lives better for Americans and to make America a better country for it?

They can do what our billionaires are doing - they can promise to give most of their overly generous earnings to organizations that can help ameliorate social problems causing and caused by poverty. They could donate tens of millions to their city’s or state’s schools to pay teachers more, build more schools and have smaller class sizes so teachers can know their students and their needs. They could donate millions to help released prisoners in their state to find their way back to the mainstream avoiding future crime and violence. They could donate money for drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers and mental health facilities.

It’s easy to charge the field with hands up (before finding out that there were actually no hands up during the referenced police encounter) or to sit down during the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance. It takes more character to sacrifice ourselves to help ease the suffering. Surely, this quarterback could afford to pledge $10 million a year to help relieve the causes of suffering in his community and he can urge all his fellow athletes to also make a pledge of financial support.

And instead of staging protest marches that lead to violence, looting and destruction, groups that want lives to matter can do their share by going into the most dangerous parts of their communities and standing as a peace barrier between rival gangs and factions in order to end the bloodshed. They can go to schools and tell students to stay in school, study hard and not use drugs or alcohol. They could caution girls about the risks involved in a certain intimate romantic activity that leads to unintentional parenthood.

We all can work hard to make America a better place for all of its citizens. We can stand up and pledge our undying allegiance to our beloved, though still imperfect, homeland.