By W. T. Whitney

There is a whole lot of hypocrisy and wrongheaded views in the establishment treatment of the so-called safety net. You touch on many of them. For me, the basic thing is that there is almost never a discussion of what the needs are or who needs support. Instead it’s all about who pays, and turning potential recipients into victims. Interesting to me that the poverty rate for older people did fall a lot to about nine percent. Poverty for children stays at 20 percent or so, for African Am children 40 – 50 percent, Latinos a little lower. No mention that elders’ needs being met a little is due to their having voices for them , many of which – as you point out, and I did realize this – that those with money wanted government to help them out with their elderly parents and they were heard. Why isn’t there more fight back from Blacks, and Latinos for their children? Don’t know except that African Americans are divided in part due to government manipulation to apply affirmative action to the already fairly well off and thus drew them away from solidarity with working class African Americans.

By James Thompson

On January 9, 2014 the bourgeois liberal Princeton faculty economist Paul Krugman, who completed the best US education money can buy at MIT and Yale, wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times entitled “The War over Poverty.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/opinion/krugman-the-war-over-poverty.html?_r=0out  In the piece, Prof. Krugman discusses the fallacious received view in this country and throughout the other capitalist controlled countries that the plight of the poor is due to some vague fault of the poor. Admirably, Prof. Krugman argues against this insane attempt to blame the poor.

He goes on to argue that low income people in the US “are much healthier and better nourished than they were in the 1960s” and ties this to the success of anti-poverty programs initiated 50 years ago. He concludes “the problem of poverty has become part of the broader problem of rising income inequality, of an economy in which all the fruits of growth seem to go to a small elite, leaving everyone else behind.”

The article elucidates the differences between liberals and conservatives on the issue of poverty. He characterizes conservatives as “callous and mean-spirited.” He sums up the conservative position as “government is always the problem, never the solution; they treat every beneficiary of a safety net program as if he or she were ‘a Cadillac driving welfare queen.’ And why not? After all, for decades their position was a political winner, because middle-class Americans saw ‘welfare’ is something that Those People got but they didn’t.”

He characterizes the liberals’ position as “Meanwhile, progressives are on offense. They have decided that inequality is a winning political issue. They see war-on-poverty programs like food stamps, Medicaid, and the earned income tax credit as success stories, initiatives that have helped Americans in need-and should be expanded. And if these programs enroll a growing number of Americans, rather than being narrowly targeted on the poor, so what?”

He draws the conclusion “So guess what: On its 50th birthday, the war on poverty no longer looks like a failure. It looks, instead, like a template for a rising, increasingly confident progressive movement.”

Although some of Prof. Krugman’s arguments are not completely without merit, he still remains a well-paid cheerleader for bourgeois liberal “safety net” programs. We must concede that such programs as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have benefited a great number of people across all economic classes. Even people among the wealthiest classes have benefited from “safety net” programs because they shamelessly shuffle their poorer loved ones off to these programs so they don’t have to pay for their subsistence. The same people hypocritically argue that “safety net” programs should be eliminated. Some doctors even argue that Medicaid and/or Medicare should be eliminated while they bill their patients’ Medicaid and/or Medicare.

What Prof. Krugman and his bourgeois liberal readers fail to recognize is that the US government functions to protect the interests of the capitalists with little or no regard to the interests of the people of this country. He makes a swift tangential reference to the “class war” but fails to recognize that the class war is raging in this country. Even Warren Buffett has warned us that the capitalists are winning the class war with little opposition from the people.

He also fails to recognize that interest among the people in alternative socioeconomic systems such as socialism or communism has grown remarkably recently. Since he does not recognize this reality, he cannot make the connection that income inequality leads to such tendencies.

Although the struggle between liberals and conservatives is real, Prof. Krugman does not seem to recognize that as long as the US government functions to protect the interests of the wealthy, reforms such as the “safety net” programs mentioned above will be under constant attack. And they can be eliminated by the government at any time if it is deemed to be in the interest of the capitalists.

Prof. Krugman also fails to recognize and factor in the fact that the most important interest of the capitalists is to constantly expand profits. Prof. Krugman has also failed to recognize that the necessity for capitalists to constantly expand their profits has led to an era of unending imperialist wars of occupation across the globe. Prof. Krugman fails to recognize that these wars have been conducted for the benefit of the capitalists so that they can continue to expand their profits. He also fails to recognize that the taxpayers have spent far more of their hard-earned money on the wars than the capitalists have made in expanded profits. It should be noted that throughout history capitalist governments have repeatedly spent taxpayer money to protect capitalist profits overseas and the money they spend to protect the profits exceeds the profits themselves.

In short, the Bush and Obama administrations have spent an extraordinary amount of money on killing working people in foreign countries to protect the profits of the capitalists in those countries. Unfortunately, the working man in the US foots the bill. It should be noted that the money expended is nothing compared to the loss of human life as well as permanent physical and mental injuries among the combatants and people in the foreign countries where the imperialist wars are conducted. Of course, the surviving, injured combatants return to the US and their working families must care for them using the pathetic “safety net” programs available. Prof. Krugman fails to note this point as well.

So, a combination of multiple imperialist wars being fought for the benefit of the wealthy at the expense of the poor working people as well as the wholesale exportation of jobs and industry to foreign countries in pursuit of the lowest wages possible have resulted in sustained high unemployment in the US. Meanwhile, the stock market rises and profits continue to expand because capitalists benefit when wages fall. However, there is an end to this process and it is called a crisis of overproduction commonly referred to as an economic depression.

What Prof. Krugman and other bourgeois liberal pundits fail to discuss is that the responsibility for the downward spiral of the economy rests with the capitalist system itself. As long as the system functions to benefit the capitalists, working people will continue to suffer and their suffering will expand proportionally with the expansion of profits.

Another thing that conservatives and liberals are oblivious to is that “safety net” programs tend to perpetuate inequalities between rich and poor. “Safety net” programs are carefully designed to provide a subsistence level for certain segments of the population such as elderly, disabled and to a lesser extent, unemployed pregnant mothers. They allow certain impoverished individuals to survive and such programs are funded by extracting a minimum amount of money from the public wealth created by working people. This enables the wealthy to continue extracting a maximum amount from the public wealth created by working people. In other words, if the public wealth was conceptualized as a pie, “safety net” programs would be a mere sliver. On the other hand, the piece of the pie reserved for the wealthy would be gigantic. The “safety net” programs also serve to reduce the general misery of the public just enough to prevent them from engaging in revolutionary activities. The capitalists must walk a fine line to provide just enough misery relief to prevent revolution and at the same time must limit the misery relief in order to expand their profits. This serves as the basis for the struggle between liberals and conservatives.

Herein lies the difference between bourgeois liberals and Marxist-Leninists. Social democratic bourgeois liberals fight for reforms that they justify on the basis of charity and maintain it is the right thing to do. They characterize their detractors as “callous and mean-spirited.” Marxist-Leninists agree that reforms that benefit working people and the poor are for the good. However, we recognize that such reforms are not sufficient and can easily be overturned and/or manipulated by the capitalists when socioeconomic conditions permit. Marxist-Leninists maintain that only by advancing from capitalism to socialism can humanity build a system which benefits all working people. In a socialist system, workers would achieve political dominance and would form a government that would function to protect the interests of workers.

Perhaps such ideas were not taught to Prof. Krugman and his classmates at MIT and Yale. Such ideas would probably not be received very well at Princeton either.

PHill1917@comcast.net

Cuba: 55 Years of Ideas and Truth

http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/10/cuba-55-years-of-ideas-and-truth/

On January 1, Cubans 2014 marked the 55th anniversary of their revolution’s victory. Fidel Castro’s words spoken May 1, 2000 cropped up in President Raul Castro’s speech in Santiago de Cuba. Revolution, they said, is “to believe deeply there’s no force in the world capable of crushing the force of truth and ideas.”
Commentator Ángel Guerra Cabrera recalls one idea: “To understand the conflict between Cuba and the United States it’s necessary to study Latin American history. It shows the superpower has never tolerated our countries developing internal or external politics separate from its dictates.”

Raul Castro articulated another: “[N]ew generations of leaders … never will be able to forget that this is the socialist Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble. This is the essential premise and effective antidote for not falling for the siren songs of the enemy.”

Political talkers sometimes label ideas as utopian, among them that of ending the anti-Cuban U.S. blockade now. “Cuba [however] is still embracing utopia in year 55 of the triumph of its revolution,” affirms Guerra Cabrera.

U. S. defenders of Cuban independence could do with truth and ideas, or at least new ones. On their watch, “Cuba has suffered under the longest blockade in history.” Objective realities in the two countries may vary enough for Cuba’s U. S. friends to accept what they see as truth as allowing for small gains only, and waiting. By contrast, Cubans seem to take the realities they live with as encouragement for keeping on. Indeed, there are “55 reasons for a new anniversary,” says one observer. They would fit within Fidel Castro’s notion of the “truth.” A listing follows:

Cuba’s infant mortality rate is at a new low: 4.2 babies died during 2013 out of every 1000 births. Average rates for the region remain at around 30. Maternal mortality has dropped, and life expectancy at 77.9 years matches that of industrialized nations. Physician density in Cuba is one physician for 197 persons, one of the world’s top rates. That doesn’t include 40,000 Cuban physicians serving abroad in 70 countries.

Universal education and health care are intact; 1,993,300 students from preschool through university level will be enrolled in 2014, and eighty million physician consultations are anticipated, plus 22 million visits to dentists and 1.140.000 hospital admissions.

The United Nations Program in Human Development ranked Cuba 59th overall out of 187 countries. UNESCO’s 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report had Cuba as 14th in the world. Health care expenses consumed 22 percent of Cuba’s 2013 state budget, education 27 percent. Cuba’s 54 percent current budgetary allowance for social services is among the world’s highest. Only 30 countries share Cuba’s below-five percent unemployment rate.

Cuba maintains its outsized role in international solidarity. Two thousand teachers work abroad. Cuba’s “Yo sí puedo” literacy program has benefited eight million learners in 29 countries. “Operation Miracle” has restored sight for two million people worldwide. By 2011, the Latin American School of Medicine had graduated 9,960 new doctors from 58 countries. Tens of thousands of other medical students and graduate physicians study in Cuba.

Economic readjustment is proceeding. A new Labor Code became law following discussions among almost three million workers. State businesses, newly autonomous, are on track to increase exports and reduce imports. Mariel is the site of a new “Special Development Zone” directed at promoting foreign investment, exports, jobs, and fostering modern business technologies. New patterns of land use and agricultural marketing prevail.

Some 400,000 Cubans are recently self-employed without loss of social services. Over 250 new cooperatives are functioning. Cuba’s economy maintains a three percent rate of growth. Russia recently agreed to forgive 90 percent of Cuba’s $29 billion debt incurred during the Soviet era. Provision of electricity has improved through the use of new generator facilities.

Cuban diplomats joined the United Nations Council on Human Rights in 2013. Cuba that year served as president pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that includes all Western Hemisphere nations save Canada and the United States. During 2013, Cuba hosted peace talks between the Colombian government and the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

These facts – these truths – suggest Cuba’s revolution is established and continuing. In Santiago, President Raul Castro once more called for “respectful dialogue” with the United States. “We don’t claim the United States has to change its political and social system, [but] we have to learn mutual respect for our differences, only that. [Otherwise] we are disposed to endure another 55 years in the same situation.”

Cuba’s real experiences and achievements demonstrate that big, utopian ideas can materialize. New realities add substance and serve to motivate. Fidel Castro’s must have presumed listeners on May 1, 2000 were ready “to challenge powerful forces dominating inside and outside boundaries of society and the nation … defend values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice.”

That kind of commitment exercised within U.S. society could help convert utopian longings into existing facts. One would be the unrealized dream of U.S. acceptance of Cuba as a regular nation. Actually to fight to change existing U. S. realities would move that dream along, and others too.

Agrarian-based oligarchy controls post-coup Paraguay

http://www.peoplesworld.org/agrarian-based-oligarchy-exerts-control-over-post-coup-paraguay/

January 7, 2014

The so-called “legal” coup that removed progressive President Fernando Lugo from power on June 25, 2012 set the stage for large agricultural corporations, particularly soybean producers, to establish control over Paraguay’s government. The wealthy Horacio Cartes’ election to the presidency in April 2013 restored dictator Alfredo Stroessner’s Colorado party to power. Yet opposition forces remain active.

In a radio address on December 30 labor leader Bernardo Rojas declared that 2013 was a “hard, difficult” year because of persecution and austerity policies. He condemned “criminalization of social struggle” and announced a general strike set for March 26, 2014. Hundreds had rallied in front of the National Congress in Asuncion to mark four months of the Cartes presidency which began on August 1. The demonstration’s theme was “100 days that shouldn’t have been, of militarization and surrender, militarization and accusations.” In November, street demonstrations continued in San Pedro department a day after the police shoot and wounded two of some 200 activists protesting displacement of small farmers from land lost to private interests.

Crisis in Paraguay began on June 15, 2012 when 300 police forcibly removed 50 would-be occupiers from land without clear title in Curuguaty district. President Lugo’s political opponents exploited the violent fallout – 17 were killed and 20 wounded including police – to accuse the Lugo government of incompetence and engineer Lugo’s removal through parliamentary action. Plotters raised the specter of terrorism by identifying the Paraguayan People’s Army, leftist insurgents, as backing small farmer agitation. The Lugo government may have forced the hand of coup perpetrators by seeking to block agribusiness plans to import genetically modified seed corn.

Post – coup governments first headed by former Vice President Frederico Franco and Cartes later on went to work. The executive branch gained new powers under a modified Law 1337/99 to deploy the military and police for internal security purposes. Expanded police and military capabilities are being “financed by the landholding class and foreign capitalists,” one observer claimed. Agrarian rights activists confront security forces equipped with high- technology weapons and tools and advised by Israeli and US operatives.

Commentator Jose Carlos Lezcano points also to new “fiscal responsibility” legislation; Law 5.098/13 prescribes budgetary cuts and structural adjustment policies. A novel “law of public-private alliance” authorizes privatization of “strategic resources,” including state – owned enterprises.

The police assassinated eight agrarian rights leaders, supposedly for the purpose of “decapitating” opposition leadership. The fear-laden atmosphere and Colorado Party control of electoral processes resulted in the victorious Cartes gaining 45 percent of the presidential votes cast in April. The candidate of the left-leaning Guasú Front coalition took a mere 3.5 percent of the votes. Now, says Lezcano, power brokers have “surrendered the country to transnational gangsters.”

That would be Monsanto, Dow, Agrotec, and Syngent corporations. Within months of the coup, the Agricultural Ministry approved their use of transgenic corn blocked under the Lugo government. Lezcano claims Paraguay has suffered a “major loss of sovereignty and effective loss of civil rights,” along with diminishing state-sponsored social services.

The stage is thus set for Paraguay, the world’s sixth largest soybean producer, to maintain its role, along with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, as a soy juggernaut providing industrialized societies with the prime raw material for bio-diesel fuel and animal feeds. Current political arrangements, a legacy of the 35– year long Stroessner dictatorship, favor skewed land-owning patterns. Currently 2% of owners control 85% of Paraguayan farmland there; four percent of soybean growers control 60 percent of soy growing land. Foreigners, often Brazilians, own almost 20 percent of such land. .

Foreign sales of soybeans and beef yield sales worth $10 billion, yet producers and processors pay only two percent of the government’s revenue requirements.

Excluded from regular participation in governmental processes, agrarian rights activists point to harm done to natural and human environments. Accounts surface for example, of poisoned rivers, soil, and human beings through the extravagant use of pesticides and herbicides. Conversion of land for large scale agricultural use has led to tens of thousands of small-farmer families being displaced. They often end up living precariously on the edges of cities.

Deforestation in Paraguay is extreme. During the last half of the 20th century, 75 percent of the original forest cover disappeared. The trend has accentuated: In 2010 in western Paraguay forests of 580,000 acres were cut down. During the following year, the total mounted to 618,000 acres.

And irony of all ironies: despite annual soy exports amounting to 300,000 tones and meat products, to 200,000 tons, one fourth of Paraguayans are hungry, according to the United Nations Food Program. Some 20 percent of rural inhabitants live in extreme poverty.

Political prisoners, killings mount in Colombia – peace momentum slows

Jan 12, 2014

2014 had barely begun. Already assassins had killed activist rapper Gerson Martínez, community leader Giovanny Leiton, the latter’s life partner, and unionist Ever Luis Marin Rolong. A police projectile thrown at Sintraelecol union president Óscar Arturo Orozco gravely injured his left eye. He had been speaking at a union rally in Manizales, Caldas,

On January 4 in Cucuta, the Catatumbo epicenter of agrarian revolt in June, 2013, authorities detained academician Francisco Toloza. Leiton and Toloza are leaders of the two-year old Patriotic March grouping of social movements. Patriotic March is spearheading revived agitation for agrarian rights.

War in Colombia has long reflected opposed views of control and use of land. Land use was the first agenda item in peace talks underway in Cuba between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Killers of 25 Patriotic March activists murdered in 2013 are still at large. Assassins that year took the lives of 26 unionists associated with the CUT labor federation. Over 90 percent of those targeted were union leaders, The National Labor School reports that paramilitary groups accounted for 92 percent of the violations, the police or military, 19 percent.

News of deadly assaults against advocates for change is not new. Over the course of decades, tens of thousands of poor farmers, marginalized city dwellers, teachers, unionists, and political activists were murdered. The toll of murdered unionists since 1984 is estimated at 3000.

What may be new is the turn to filling jails with political adversaries, especially with leaders like Francisco Toloza. Jail time for him and detained counterparts may be advantageous for those in charge. They gain credit for using courts rather than killing. And hoopla surrounding such cases bolsters the image of the FARC as enemy and of opposition figures as loyal to the FARC.

The state alleges Toloza and many others belong to the FARC and are guilty of “aggravated rebellion.” Supposed evidence comes from computers retrieved, as the story goes, from sites ravaged by bombs that killed FARC leaders.

Toloza is a sociology professor and investigator at Colombia’s National University who, encouraged by peace negotiators in Havana, organized national forums allowing citizens to discuss issues covered in the talks. Olga Quintero, collaborator of Toloza in agrarian organizing in Catatumbo, describes the prisoner as “more than a leader, he has great intellectual capabilities and is committed to contributing to the social process and change the country requires.”

Fellow Patriotic March leader Lilia Solano explained that, “the persecution of dissident thought is not only a problem for Patriotic March, but is also one for thousands of Colombians who don’t accept the politics of hate and plunder they have imposed.

Toloza’s persecution follows the imprisonment earlier of similarly charged Huber Bellesteros, another Patriotic March member. The CUT unionist and vice president of the Fensuagro agricultural workers’ union was spokesperson for the MIA collective that in August 2013 organized a nationwide strike for agrarian rights and against Colombia’s “free trade” agreement with the United States. Authorities jailed Bellesteros at the strike’s onset.

After almost three years of incarceration, Fensuagro human rights director Liliany Obando is at conditional liberty as she awaits a Supreme Judicial Court ruling on her appeal. Convicted of rebellion, she was sentenced to house arrest for five years and fined the equivalent of $368,347 USD.

Political prisoner David Ravelo is serving an 18 year prison term because he publicized ex President Alvaro Uribe’s close ties with paramilitary chieftains who then and now were terrorizing Ravelo’s native Barrancabermeja. Their false accusation that Ravelo helped out with a 1991 murder led to his conviction in December 2012. Ravelo is a Communist Party leader, an educator, a union organizer, and an award – winning human rights human rights activist.

Such prisoners join 9500 other Colombians incarcerated for politics of resistance. The political prisoner population is rising along with a 70.4 per cent increase in the overall prison population between 1998 and 2009. Prisons are overfilled: 17.2 percent over capacity in 2007; 25.5 percent, in 2008; 35.8 percent, in 2009; and 41.7 percent in 2010.

Jailing of the two Patriotic March leaders has evoked outpourings of support and condemnation of governmental repression. Left political parties worldwide, unions, and human rights groups have come to Toloza’s defense. “We demand immediate freedom for Francisco Tolozo and end of persecution of Patriotic March,” wrote Carlos Lozano, editor of Colombia’s Voz weekly newspaper. “Huber Ballesteros and now Francisco Toloza: those are not gestures of peace.”

Surely commentator Sara Leukos’ concerns are widely shared: “Inside Colombia the peace talks express one reality and [President] Juan Manuel Santos’ constitutional powers establish another. Are they different languages?” She adds: “Incarceration of Professor Francisco Javier Toloza, just like the assassinations, political prisoners, persecution, and threats … generate open debate over the importance of real, structural changes required of the Colombian state. The people have called for popular rebellion, and necessarily so.”

http://my.firedoglake.com/kaytillow/2014/01/06/discretionary-deeming-how-libby-montana-got-improved-medicare-with-free-drugs/

Buried deep in the health reform law is Section 10323. It amends the
Social Security Act to extend Medicare coverage to individuals exposed to
environmental health hazards in the region defined by the Emergency
Declaration of June 17, 2009. That declaration limits this benefit to the
area around Libby, Montana.

Section 10323 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) calls it “deeming of
Individuals as eligible for Medicare benefits.” People do not have to be
age 65, or wait two years following disability, or to have paid into the
Medicare system. The victims of asbestos in Libby were simply “deemed” to
be eligible for Medicare. It was described as “discretionary deeming.”

Senator Max Baucus, Chair of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, who
hired insurance executive Liz Fowler to write the health reform act,
slipped Section 10323 into the law assuring that all those with
asbestos-related conditions in the community around Libby, Montana get
into Medicare, our single payer program for all those over 65. Further,
for this designated group of Montanans, Baucus arranged additional special
benefits not normally available to Medicare patients.

It’s true. Senator Baucus “deemed” single payer off the table during the
2009 health care debate. He had physicians and others arrested for
insisting that single payer be included in the nation’s discussion.
Baucus effectively locked out any consideration of such a plan. But he
gave our country’s single payer program, Medicare, to the people of Libby.
And they got free drugs, too.

The victims of asbestos exposure in Libby, regardless of age, are eligible
for traditional Medicare, plus, under an additional program that Baucus
included in the ACA, the government also pays for services not included
under Medicare, such as home care, medical equipment, counseling, help
with travel, and medications not covered by Medicare prescription plans.

Coverage of drugs can be crucial. Outrageous drug prices continue to
threaten all who depend on costly medications. While the ACA bars health
insurance plans from refusing to cover those who are sick, insurance
companies have found ways to keep patients with cancer, Multiple
Sclerosis, AIDS, and other conditions out of their plans. Some insurance
companies have made the co-pays on the drugs needed by such patients as
high as $1,000 to $6,000 a month, effectively excluding those with
pre-existing conditions.

Goodness knows the people of Libby deserve to have Medicare—with free
drugs and home care and medical equipment and help with travel and much
more. After all, the W. R. Grace company whose vermiculite mine poisoned
their entire region left thousands, not just the miners, suffering and
dying.

But the senator who helped Libby also made certain that all the rest of us
would be left out—that the nation could not even consider the merits of HR
676, the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, that would free our
country from the health insurance companies that continue to hold us
hostage.

As health reform rolls into a new stage where some who have been left out
find help but millions more, both insured and uninsured, find the costs of
care still beyond their means, let us look to the Libby solution,
publicly-funded single payer, for the answer.

Medicare spends more than 98 cents of every dollar on actual health care,
while insurance companies spend only 80 to 85 cents on health care. Under
the ACA insurance companies still victimize all of us as their narrow
networks deny us access to the doctors and hospitals we need. The
insurance companies retain their power to deny tests, procedures, and
treatment making life miserable for both patients and doctors.

The United States spends about twice as much per person on health care as
the rest of the industrialized world. Yet our life expectancy, infant
mortality and other health outcomes lag far behind. As the policy experts
of Dartmouth and MIT search in vain for ways to cut health care costs
while retaining the profit makers, let us keep in mind that unless we
remove the private for-profit insurance companies from our health care,
any cut in costs means a cut in care.

To expand care while cutting costs, we have to go to a single payer
plan—like HR 676, Expanded and Improved Medicare for All, a bill
introduced into every congress since 2003 by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D
MI). With HR 676, we could save over $500 billion a year while expanding
coverage to everyone and improving care to assure dental and eyeglasses
and hearing aids and drugs and long term care and all the things we need
that are not normally covered. And this coverage would remove all co-pays
and all deductibles.

Health care would be paid for publicly and in advance with no payment at
the point of care. Patients will choose their doctors and hospitals.
When we seek care, the question will not be “How will you pay?” but “Where
does it hurt?”

This simple legislation would fix our damaged health care. Medicare was
rolled out in six months with only index cards in the time before
computers. No need to ask how much you make—it is available to all.
That’s what we need–not the twisted double-dealing that wins something
special for a few, but, instead, a magnanimous, simple, bold, inclusive
plan that finally will allow all of our people to enjoy the life-giving
benefits that a wealthy and compassionate nation can offer.

Let us dedicate this new year to building the single payer movement that
will make this plan possible.

Links to sources below.

Issued by:
All Unions Committee for Single Payer Health Care–HR 676
c/o Nurses Professional Organization (NPO)
1169 Eastern Parkway, Suite 2218
Louisville, KY 40217
(502) 636 1551

Email: nursenpo@aol.com
http://unionsforsinglepayer.org
01/06/14

1.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/health/policy/21healthcare.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3&hp
2.
http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2009/jun/17/epa-declares-health-emergency-libby/
3.
http://beta.congress.gov/bill/111th/house-bill/3590/text?q={%22search%22:[%22Patient%20Protection%20and%20Affordable%20Care%20Act%202010%22]}
4.
http://my.firedoglake.com/kaytillow/2011/06/15/how-libby-montana-got-medicare-for-all/

5.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2009/05/08/why-we-risked-arrest-for-single-payer-health-care/

6.
http://missoulian.com/news/state-and-regional/article_f46c85e6-eddc-11de-a34f-001cc4c002e0.html
7. http://www.ssa.gov/libby/
8.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/baucus-meets-with-libby-asbestosis-patients-physicians/article_7d5d0a7e-1e4f-11e2-a916-0019bb2963f4.html

9.
http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/december/insurers-using-high-drug-cost-sharing-to-scare-away-patients-with-expensive-chron
10.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2013/02/19/important-what-are-medicares-true-administrative-costs/
11.
http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/questions-for-dr-marcia-angell/
12.
http://pnhp.org/blog/2013/07/31/friedman-analysis-of-hr-676-medicare-for-all-would-save-billions/

– from Zoltan Zigedy is available at:
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

By 2008, the US electorate was fed up with George Bush. In fact, the US ruling class was fed up, too. Internationally, US prestige was at a low point, thanks to the Bush administration’s brazen and failed military aggressions. Domestically, the bottom had fallen out of the US economy. It was time for him to go. His failings cast a shadow over the system’s legitimacy.

Anyone with even a passing understanding of US history understood that “regime change” was in the cards. That is, it was the moment for the two-party juggernaut to spit out a fresh face untainted by the previous administration, vigorous, and promising a new direction. It was essential that new leadership appear different, self-confident, and representative of policies contrasting with the old regime.

We saw this before.

Franklin Roosevelt was such a figure. He came forward as a clean, untainted alternative to the failed Hoover administration. Disgust with Hoover was so great, that merely by avoiding large, looming issues, FDR was able to capture the Presidency with a virtual carte blanche to rescue the sinking capitalist economy. Yet he was, as a leading commentator of the time, Walter Lippmann, observed before Roosevelt’s election, “… an amiable man with many philanthropic impulses, but he is not the dangerous enemy of anything. He is too eager to please…. Franklin D. Roosevelt is no crusader. He is no tribune of the people. He is no enemy of entrenched privilege. He is a pleasant man who, without any important qualifications for the office, would very much like to be President.” All historians agree that Roosevelt was, first and foremost, practical. If policies worked or were popular, he supported them.

Over time, a myth arose that Roosevelt was a savior, a messianic figure who arose and smote the rich and powerful. Those who organized the bonus marches, the unemployment councils, the general strikes, the tenant and share cropper actions of the Depression era, like those who built the industrial unions that made up the powerful CIO, were swept under the historical rug. Acknowledging that they were the source or driving force for New Deal reforms was an inconvenient truth. That said, Roosevelt’s pragmatism, his respect for new ideas in desperate times, marked him as an uncommon political leader.

The New Deal myth sustained the Democratic Party for decades, even though Party leaders began a retreat from the New Deal upon Roosevelt’s death. After 1944, the “New Deal” label fell into disuse as both political Parties rallied around anti-Communism and a relatively benign social compact. Political leaders willingly conceded a modest social contract with labor for cooperation in the anti-Communist campaign and business unionism.

Anti-Communist excesses (so-called “McCarthyism”), overt and institutional racism (segregation), setbacks in foreign policy (Cuba, the U-2) tarnished the US reputation internationally and stirred discontent at home by the end of the 1950s.

Once again, a new face, representing religious diversity, youth, cosmopolitan life style, and change, emerged as an alternative. John Kennedy, like FDR, injected vigor into a two-party landscape driven by the now dominant medium of television. Again regime change was in order and the appearance of regime change was achieved. Despite the mythology of the Kennedy Camelot– and sealed by his assassination– Kennedy’s administration was ruled by the continuation of the Cold War and lip-service to domestic discontent. While some opportunistic adjustments were forced on his administration, Kennedy largely sought to construct a more compassionate, tolerant face to US capitalism; his assassination obviously shows that this was not acceptable to many important, powerful members of the old club.

Months after the Kennedy assassination, left pundit I.F. Stone captured Kennedy’s role: “ …Kennedy, when the tinsel was stripped away, was a conventional leader, no more than an enlightened conservative, cautious as an old man for all his youth, with a basic distrust of the people and an astringent view of the evangelical as a tool of leadership.”

Less than a decade later, with the criminal implosion of the Nixon administration, the credibility of the US political system was undermined. Resignations, criminal charges and Impeachment bred an unprecedented cynicism and challenge to two-party legitimacy.

A fresh face entered from the wings: Jimmy Carter, neither a Senator nor a corporate attorney, but an obscure Southern Governor and a peanut farmer. Like Roosevelt, Carter brought a fresh, unstained image to the political game, a much-needed contrast to the sleaze of his predecessors.

I wrote in 2008 of the 1976 election: “Most citizens looked to the then forthcoming elections with a profound desire for a new course. The Democrats chose a political outsider, Governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Carter promised to make the government ‘as good as the people.’ Pundits hailed Carter as a departure from the old politics and a fresh, honest voice for change (e.g. The Miracle of Jimmy Carter, Howard Norton and Bob Slosser, 1976).”

I went on to note that Carter proved to be a prophet of false hope and absent change. He quickly turned his back on the most progressive Democratic platform since the New Deal and ushered in economic policies that were soon to be dubbed “Reaganomics.”

It was this historical backdrop that prompted me to suggest that candidate Barack Obama might well be another postured savior at a moment of crisis in the two-Party system, a carefully crafted, groomed alternative to a bumbling, embarrassing regime.

There are some striking and illuminating parallels between this election season and the Presidential election campaign of 1976… Like the eight years of the Bush administration, the eight years of Nixon/Ford produced an unparalleled collapse of support for the Republican Party. The Watergate scandal coupled with the failure of the US military in Vietnam and an economic crisis left the Republican Party wounded and regrouping.

Similar to 1976 Presidential candidate J. Carter, his presumptive 2008 counterpart, Barack Obama, is viewed as a Washington “outsider”. He has campaigned as a candidate of change. Pundits hail him as a fresh voice untainted by the vices of the establishment.

Obama must contend with similar issues: a brutal military adventure, collapsing mass living standards, and an economy exhibiting more and more of the symptoms of “stagflation.” Like Carter, his campaign is geared to appealing to the mass base of the Democratic Party: the working class, liberals, and African-Americans. His campaign strategists will likely recommend – as Carter’s advisors did – that the candidate tack to the right to garner center-right and independent votes going into the general election. Every Democratic Party Presidential candidate since has employed a similar strategy. Despite this maneuver, Carter managed to lose his huge lead in the polls and eke out a narrow victory in the November election. Nonetheless, this failed approach continues to seduce Democratic Party tacticians. (ZZ, 2008: A Reprise of 1976? Fall, 2008)

Obama represented a constant of modern US politics: political crisis or threat to legitimacy spawning a face-lift, cosmetic changes, and a re-kindling of “hope” and “change” in the form of a vigorous, youthful, well-spoken Democrat. And Obama, as an African American, had the special appeal of breaking through racial barriers and perhaps sharing some common sensibilities with diverse peoples outside of the US.

While contemporary history taught that appearance generally belied actual change, liberals and most of the US Left succumbed to the allure, putting aside their picket signs, marching shoes, and petitions to open their pocketbooks and enthusiasm to the Obama campaign.

With the November, 2008 victory under his belt, Obama’s unprecedented campaign contributions from the financial sector, his lame, discredited cabinet appointees, and his blatant, shameless, scandalizing of his home-town pastor, Reverend Wright, left the adoring Left unfazed.

By fitting Obama with the mantle of progressive change, the leadership of the broad left – much of the peace movement, liberals, environmental social justice activists, etc. – surrendered their critical judgment, independence, and influence to a blind trust in a fictitious movement for change. In the history of social change in the US, every real advance was spurred by independent organization and struggle, unhampered by the niceties of bourgeois politics. From the Abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights movement, from the Populist movement to the Great Society, from the Anti-imperialist League to the Anti-Vietnam War movement, the initiative for change sprung from committed, independent activists who defied the caution and inertia of elected officials. Why have these lessons been ignored? (ZZ, Let Obama be Obama? December 29, 2008)

Yet everyone from the Hollywood liberal set to the Communist Party USA hailed Obama as the Second-coming of FDR, if not Lincoln.

Over the top, but representative of the self-delusional moment, one hopped-up “progressive” wrote in a widely disseminated 19-page homage to the election of Barack Obama: “…hundreds of millions-Black, Latino, Asian, Native-American and white, men and women, young and old, literally danced in the streets and wept with joy, celebrating an achievement of a dramatic milestone in a 400-year struggle, and anticipating a new period of hope and possibility.”

Leaving aside the hyperbole (less than 130 million people voted for BOTH candidates and 400 years takes us back to well-before there was a USA), this screed correctly captured the unjustified euphoria that swept through the Left.

Seemingly, every generation of the Left surrenders to the false hope of the Democratic Party; every generation repeats the same mistake.

Tragedy? Farce?

Today, the Obama administration owns the betrayal of the EFCA promise to labor, an untenable healthcare system borrowed from Mitt Romney, 800 hundred deaths a month in the failed state of Iraq, an Afghani nation that may kick the US military out before it plans to leave, the destabilization of Libya and Syria, a broken promise on Guantanamo, widening income and wealth gaps, crumbling infrastructures, a host of unfulfilled promises, a legacy of corporate coddling, and cowardly and illegal (drone) murders. The shattering of a racial barrier– the election of the first African American President– has shamefully served to cover the criminal neglect and decline of the well-being of African Americans.

And everyone knows it. In 2013 alone, Obama’s approval rating dropped nine points to 43%; the percentage believing that Obama is honest and straightforward has dropped ten points to 37%.

And this is the candidate embraced by the broad Left in 2008?

With three years left– two years before the 2016 Presidential campaign begins in earnest– Democratic Party influentials are pressing Obama to establish some kind of legacy to energize the base, to charge up the “respectable” Left and labor for future elections. As a lame-duck, he will likely make numerous gestures towards the social, life-style issues valued by the upper-middle strata– the petty-bourgeoisie. There may even be a highly publicized, but feeble attempt to raise the minimum wage. But expect no serious changes in ruling class foreign or economic policy. Liberals have demonstrated that they will not hold elected Democrats to any promises on these questions.

Will this herd the sheep-like liberals and soft-Left back into the fold? Will they repeat again the slavish loyalty of the past? Will they drink the Kool-aid?

Or will people finally recognize the Democratic Party trap and begin to construct a movement towards independent politics, perhaps rallying around Jill Stein and the Green Party? Will there be a long overdue departure from bankrupt ideology and shameless opportunism? Will the idea of people power and the companion notion of socialism take root?

We have a new year to find out…

Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

By Zoltan Zigedy
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2013/11/looking-back-50-years-after-jfk.html

They are derisively called “conspiracy theorists”. They carry the torch for the beliefs that sixty to eighty percent of their fellow citizens share since the assassination of President John Kennedy. From October 17 to October 19, several hundred gathered in Pittsburgh for the “Passing the Torch” symposium, a forum devoted to many of the leading investigators discussing alternate visions to the US government’s official version of the murder of Kennedy.

For three days, a group of ordinary-looking, very well-spoken, collegial people discussed and debated the plausibility of conflicting explanations of the Kennedy assassination. Those who have been misled by the corporately-compromised media would be disappointed with the participants: there were no ominous references to the Holy Grail, Area 51, or Roswell, except in jest. Rather, the atmosphere of the gathering was more akin to a convention of neurosurgeons without the glamor of a glitzy destination. The few cranks– anti-Federal Reserve exponents and religious zealots– saw their comments politely dismissed.

Questions and Answers

Broadly speaking, there are two research methodologies that engage assassination investigators. One group of researchers develop, examine, analyze, and debate the physical evidence. The objects of their study are the familiar artifacts: the Zapruder film, the so-called “pristine bullet,” the rifle associated with Oswald, autopsy photos, etc. Of course not all physical evidence is either direct or clearly relevant. Photos, personal accounts, audio tapes, documents, etc. may be merely suggestive and open to broad interpretation. While physical evidence may count as “hard” data, it virtually never fills all of the narrative space between the premeditation to murder and the completion of the act. The judicial system recognizes this oft-occurring opening by placing the “hard” evidence before a jury with the hope that they will have the collective judgment to satisfactorily fill the gaps and arrive at a well-considered conclusion.

But it would be naive to press the idealized courtroom analogy too hard. The court of public opinion, like the real judicial system, allows of differential resources, bias, and clandestine influence. But where honest people recognize that the courts are “overly” fair to the rich, and that the poor suffer a surfeit of fairness, the court of public opinion dispenses entirely with the notion of fairness. With the Kennedy assassination, the government and its agencies have invested overwhelmingly in the Warren Commission/Oswald-did-it-alone version. The US government has resisted, at every step, revealing relevant evidence that might shed new light on the case; it has even denied access to evidence developed to support the conventional view; and it has actively interfered with independent investigations of the assassination. Now-public documents show that the security agencies spied on and interacted with the Garrison investigation in New Orleans. Recent revelations demonstrate that the CIA established their former (1963) chief of covert operations in Miami as their liaison with the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations… without revealing this relevant fact (the Joannides affair). This revelation has belatedly driven the formerly compliant final head of that investigation, G. Robert Blakey, into uncharacteristic fits of indignation:

I am no longer confident that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the committee…. I was not told of Joannides’ background with the DRE [Revolutionary Student Directorate], a focal point of the investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE. That the Agency would put a ‘material witness’ in as a ‘filter’ between the committee and its quests for documents was a flat out breach of the understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would co-operate with the investigation.

Given that researchers face a hostile government and its lap-dog media, it is truly amazing that researchers have advanced the study as far as they have. Of course hostile intelligence agencies and a media with blinders only reinforce the suspicions that the truth remains to be uncovered.

Blending into the physical evidence and further filling the evidentiary gaps are the circumstances and personal ties of the key players in the murder– so-called “circumstantial evidence.” For example, the bizarre trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald’s brief adult life is breathtaking and complex. He crosses paths with a wide variety of diverse and contradictory characters while taking on equally contradictory personae.

Apologists for the Warren Commission want us to believe that these oddities reflect an isolated, but unstable personality. But the narrative fails the “credible-movie-script” test: No one would believe this tale if it were a movie.

Further, Oswald’s Mexico trip the month before the assassination is a surreal saga fraught with confusion, misidentification, and mystery.

Beyond Circumstances

Is there anything that a Marxist could add to nearly fifty years of skepticism over the Warren Commission and the account of the assassination defended by the security agencies, US elites, and the corporate media?

Certainly a strong case could be made for the account offered by the former head of Cuban counterintelligence, Fabian Escalante. His book, JFK: The Cuba Files, based on his careful review of Cuban evidence, presents many new elements of the days, events, and personalities leading up to the assassination, though no citation of his work arose during the three-day symposium in Pittsburgh. In fact, I inquired of a lobby bookseller with a trove of assassination and associated books why he failed to offer Escalante’s book in his extensive collection. He muttered something about how youthful Escalante looks in his pictures despite his retirement– clear recognition of Escalante’s work, but an evasion of its absence.

It is unfortunate that investigators ignore his book because he untangles much of the Mexico City puzzle. And his profiles of likely suspects add much to the existing biographies. But one senses a hesitance to accept a contribution from a Cuban official, a remnant of Cold War distrust. Moreover, the investigators, with only a few exceptions, own a rather conventional, naive politics. At the end of the symposium, a panelist posed what proved to be an embarrassing, but revealing question: How many here would welcome a Kennedy Presidency today?

The participants and audience demonstrated resounding approval with an enthusiasm betraying frenzied devotion to a fallen martyr rather than mere respect for a murdered President.

Perhaps it is here that a Marxist can make a modest contribution to our understanding of the Kennedy assassination by adding an element of political realism and historical context.

Regard Oswald’s strange course from his adolescence in the mid 1950s through his death in November of 1963. Many point to the incredible twists and turns taken by him through this period. They argue that other forces must be at play: Oswald must have been a puppet. Opponents dismiss this as only indicative of his instability.

But these arguments miss the point.

The real conundrum is in reconciling that bizarre path with the known, demonstrable behavior of the US security services. It was in that period that their covert and overt surveillance reached unparalleled heights. And it was in that time frame that their suppression and prosecution of the left was at its pinnacle. It is simply impossible for Oswald, posturing as a Communist or Marxist militant, to have escaped their constant attention and, indeed, harassment, if anyone in the higher echelons of the many bureaus and agencies believed that posture. Consequently, it would be beyond comprehension that Oswald would have been where he was alleged to be at the moment of the assassination without those many security offices discounting his “leftist” credentials.

Reflect on the following:

● Oswald was allegedly a self-proclaimed Communist in his adolescence before his Marine Corps enlistment and remained so during his 35 months in the Corps (Oct. 1956-September 1959), often sharing his politics with fellow Marines. Despite his openness, he was given at least a “confidential” security clearance and assigned to a secret U-2 base in Japan. He was trained in sophisticated radar tracking and had access to much sensitive information.

At the same time, hundreds of Communists and thousands of liberals were under surveillance, lost their jobs, or were in jail. Communist leader Claude Lightfoot was sent to jail in 1956 when Oswald joined the Marines. A year earlier, copywriter Melvin Barnet was fired from his job at the New York Times for his political views. The infamous FBI COINTELPRO, a program of active measures against Communists and other leftists, began in 1956. Leaders of the ACLU were informing to the FBI in that period. A Professor at the University of Michigan, Chandler Davis, went to jail for his views in 1959, at a time Oswald was espousing Communism to his fellow Marines.

Is Oswald’s story credible? Did he escape the net that captured liberals who were victimized by snitches and liars? What accounts for his immunity?

● Upon discharge, Oswald set off within 10 days on his voyage to the Soviet Union and defection. Investigators quibble over the formalities of the defection, but no one questions that Oswald made the strongest political statement by surrendering his passport and taking residence in the USSR from late 1959 until June of 1962. After stating his misgivings about the USSR, he was smoothly integrated into a nest of anti-Bolshevik Russians living in arguably one of the most rabidly reactionary, anti-Communist cities in the US, Dallas, Texas (the other candidate being Miami, Florida). Oswald and his young wife quickly find friends who would, by inclination, stand off from his politics, social status, and manners. At no time does this produce a backlash commensurate with the tenor of the times.

It wasn’t until late 1962 that Junius Scales, a district functionary of the Communist Party in North Carolina, was released from prison for merely being a Communist. The Smith Act, The Internal Security Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Communist Control Act remained in full force in this period, all aimed at suppressing and repressing Communists. Spanish Civil War vet and Communist Archie Brown was arrested in 1961 under the Communist Control Act. In 1962 and 1963, Jack O’Dell was forced out of his leading role in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Kennedy administration for his alleged Communist affiliation. The US government pressed again to revoke Paul Robeson’s passport in 1962. The Berlin Crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the October Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought anti-Communism in the US to a boil.

It was in the midst of this atmosphere that Oswald brought his crackpot leftist ideas to Dallas and into the arms of anti-Communist fanatics. While working at an enterprise engaged in classified military work, Oswald contacted both the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party– he had maintained subscriptions to their respective newspapers since his return to the US. Unlike thousands of people who were denied employment, experienced harassment, or found their names on watch lists, Oswald enjoyed a charmed life within a cesspool of right-wing intrigue and anti-Red hysteria.

●The spring of 1963 brought Oswald to New Orleans where he mounted a one-man campaign to establish left credentials while blatantly drawing attention to his activities, a bizarre goal for an authentic leftist in a hostile environment and with no allies. Warren Commission apologists like Gerald Posner answer that these actions only prove that Oswald was unbalanced and unpredictable.

But that evades the pertinent question.

Where were the security services that were systematically hunting, harassing, and persecuting everyone in the US with even a pinkish tint? How does Oswald escape their net? Did anyone in the US leave such a trail of provocative left-wing foot prints as did Oswald?

Before, during, and after Oswald’s pro-Cuban adventure in the deep South, critics were threatened, beaten, and even killed for opposing segregation. And yet Oswald’s television notoriety earned by defending revolutionary Cuba brought a violent reaction only when Oswald provoked one. Lee Harvey Oswald was perhaps the only self-proclaimed leftist in the US who traveled, lived, and acted with impunity during this repressive era.

● Immediately before leaving for Mexico in September of 1963, Oswald telephoned the head of the Texas Socialist Labor Party to mention that he wanted to meet before he left for Mexico City, a conversation that was surely overheard by authorities. What would be the likelihood that the correspondence between two public Marxists would not be the subject of interest in these repressive times and in the paranoid South?

Border crossings were, as they are today, designed to filter those worthy of scrutiny or detention. Yet Oswald went on his merry way to Mexico City with his passport and visa intact. For years, Mexico had been a haven for political expatriates and fleeing victims of the blacklist. All were under constant attention from US and Mexican authorities. Like Portugal and Spain in World War II, Mexico was to the Cold War a hot bed of spying and intrigue where all the antagonists maintained robust stations. Enter Lee Harvey Oswald. Flashing his leftist credentials, Oswald visited and revisited the Cuban and Soviet embassies loudly touting his desires to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Without doubt, these plans were exposed to US authorities, who, uncharacteristically, did virtually nothing. Should his plans have been actuated, he could have been the US’s first double-defector! No one seemed too alarmed in the higher echelons of the CIA and FBI.

This tortured history could easily be dismissed as the expression of an unstable, twisted mind. But that dismissal would only strengthen the oddness of the lack of action on the part of the US security services that would have had to curiously dismiss Oswald’s vocal leftism and uncommonly audacious expression of that postured leftism.

Viewed from the Marxist left, Oswald’s showy exhibition with a gun in one hand and a copy of The Worker and The Militant in the other smells of a provocation. Even a newcomer to the culture of the left knows that Trotskyists and Communists are water and oil. Thus, for a “veteran” of the left like Oswald to go to some lengths to make such a display is only intelligible if he were seeding evidence for some unrevealed purpose. Was the carefully posed picture meant to impress the left? Of course not. Was it meant to make a different impression?

Oswald was likely the only “leftist” in the US to never make first-hand, direct contact with other leftists, to never attend a meeting, to never join an organized demonstration or vigil in 6-8 years of off-and-on “activism.” He was well known as a “leftist” to non-left acquaintances and co-workers as well as much of the general public. But the broad left only knew him through correspondences.

In the end, it is impossible to reconcile Oswald the “leftist” with the unlikely indifference of the US intelligence and police establishment. At the same time, it is impossible to accept the authenticity of that leftism.

But if Oswald was not genuine, if he was only posing as a leftist, what was he really?

Since the intelligence and police agencies ignored Oswald as though they knew he were not a leftist, since he slipped easily through the net that captured thousands of the faintly pink, who did they think he was? He certainly did plenty to deserve their attention, attention that they seemed determined not to give.

Until we know who Oswald really was, we will never solve Kennedy’s assassination.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com

Saturday, November 23, 2013

How “Gotcha” Journalism Mutes the Truth

By Zoltan Zigedy
http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-gotcha-journalism-mutes-truth.html

A few months ago a Pittsburgh labor attorney and human rights activist, Dan Kovalik, penned an op-ed piece for a Western Pennsylvania daily, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Kovalik took up the case of an elderly adjunct professor at a local private university who died virtually penniless, with insecure shelter, and with tenuous health care. In the several hundred words allowed him, Kovalik brought forward Margaret Mary Vojtko’s struggle to eke out a living from the meager salaries offered by adjunct university and college teaching employment. Kovalik made no effort to disguise his own solution: he noted that he met Vojtko in the midst of a union organizing campaign, a campaign which promised some relief from the poverty level wages and absent benefits provided by the well-endowed university.

To probably everyone’s surprise, Kovalik’s account sparked an enormous burst of commentary and interest in the cause of highly educated, but poorly paid university teachers. Other adjuncts realized that their plight was not uncommon, but shared by thousands working in academic institutions throughout the US. The story of Margaret Mary’s tragic demise lifted spirits and provoked anger.

Predictably, the Pittsburgh institution that employed Vojtko, Duquesne University, mounted a feeble, but loud defense. Nonetheless, Kovalik’s article pressed school administrators to bargain with the union and imparted meaning to a senseless tragedy. In the hard-hitting and noble tradition of muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair, Lincoln Stephens, and Ida B. Wells, Kovalik offered Vojtko’s story as a case study in the plight of thousands of underpaid and exploited college and university level teachers.

Unfortunately, the valuable muck-raking tradition, like whistle blowing, is considered bad sport in the age of stifling corporate journalism and rampant toadyism. Extremely rare socially relevant journalism is either accidental journalism or revelation wrapped in scandal, smut, or corruption. Today’s young journalist with an eye to a career understands that entertainment metrics trump shaking a fist to power, that “reality” voyeurism titillates the passive reader, and that ferreting out injustice doesn’t pay.

In that vein, Slate magazine, a journal that appeals to middle-class social liberalism, unleashed an assistant editor, L. V. Anderson, to doggedly dig up the real story of Margaret Mary Vojtko (Death of a Professor, 11-17-2013). Undoubtedly Slate’s founder, Michael Kinsley, an old Cold Warrior transformed into a leading spokesperson for post-Reagan liberalism, could smell a radical message in the Kovalik article. The subversive Kovalik was actually suggesting that institutions owed a decent living to their employees! He had the audacity to imply that some employees– those without trust funds– actually depend upon their employers for their survival! Such a view offends the sensibilities of our betters who are confident of the many charities and helping hands that are always there for the asking.

Dutiful to her assignment, Anderson visited Pittsburgh on a mission:

Kovalik’s not-so-subtle implication was that if Duquesne had negotiated, Vojtko might not have died the way she did…

But was that true? Who was Margaret Mary—the person, not the symbol of victimhood?

Through a journey of several thousand words, Anderson familiarized us with personal details of Vojtko’s life– a veritable made-for-TV reality exposé– cobbled together from interviews with people who have no fear of contradiction or explanation from the dead. She shares with the reader idiosyncrasies, hardships, and foibles that are embedded in every life, but only deemed relevant in our era of embarrassing mass titillation.

We learn that an eighty-three-year-old woman is untidy, forgetful, rigid in her views, mistrustful, and doggedly independent. How these personal attributes bear on her treatment by Duquesne University is left unexplained; how many of us share these personal “flaws” is never addressed. But the not-too-subtle point is that Vojtko could have fared better if she would only have shed her stubbornness and accepted the help that many claim was there.

Undoubtedly that view is held by those who obstinately refuse to accept any responsibility for the behavior of institutions that dominate our lives. Their indifference to the casualties wrought by banks, corporations, insurance companies, universities, military, and government agencies leave millions of Margaret Mary Vojtkos to the not-so-tender mercies of these institutions.

After six thousand tedious words of the minutia and trivia of Vojtko’s life, one may be convinced by Anderson that a human life is indeed complex:

The story I uncovered was more complicated than the story that went viral. The reasons Vojtko’s life ended in misery had much less to do with her status as an adjunct professor than tweeters… might believe.

To be fair to the university, though, better benefits and job security would not have altered many of the personal factors that precipitated Vojtko’s crisis. Her hoarding and her deep-seated stubbornness—not her finances—were behind her refusal to get her furnace fixed, or to move to a facility better suited to her medical condition.

To be fair?

To be fair, Anderson would have interviewed any of the thousands of working class retirees living in Western Pennsylvania who would have told her that Vojtko’s “stubbornness” was pride– a pride born of the belief that when a man or woman works hard all of his or her life, he or she should have a measure of benefits and security without begging or accepting charity. Anderson would understand that motives, like lives, are complex even for those on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder. As do many other workers, Votjko valued her dignity, privacy, and independence. They were not easily surrendered to accept charity or even well-meant help. Those with a finely honed sense of justice are not quick to trade it for the work house or the charity ward, even in its modern incarnations.

It’s a pity that those values are neither understood nor shared by Anderson. When a hundred years ago Upton Sinclair wrote of the workers exploited by the meat packing industry, he undoubtedly knew that many were flawed in character or values. But presenting them in all of their “multidimensional” character, revealing their weaknesses, or pandering to gossip was of little interest to him. Instead, he wrote of the horrific working conditions, brutality, and misery brought on by the industry. He chose to take the side of the weak over the strong.

Today, inequality has reached the extremes of Sinclair’s time, yet most of our media chroniclers deliberately ignore the damaged lives, shattered hopes, and even premature deaths spawned by inequality. Turning away from these ugly facts, they– like L. V. Anderson– offer casual, flippant bromides: pick up the phone and call for help! As our political leaders work diligently to disassemble the social securities protecting the poor and needy, more and more of our neighbors face the choice of relying on goodwill or accepting a shattered life.

We should be grateful that there are writers like Dan Kovalik who speak out against these outrages.

Zoltan Zigedy

zoltanzigedy@gmail.com