Tea Party to the Rescue.....

I sometimes wonder if the Tea Party is more dangerous for the naive ignorance its supporters and candidates or the wholesale buying of elections that is currently underway by Corporate America under the guise of a grassroots movement. In either case it is abundantly clear that the Tea Party itself is actually a multi-headed organization that is being used as a tool to get out the vote for conservative ideas while at the same time disguising itself as a movement of the people. I am quite sure there are many people who are ardent supporters at the grass roots level but these people don’t even seem to realize who is pulling the strings and providing the money at the top. It is almost the perfect storm for political conservatives with the recent unfathomable ruling by the Supreme Court that corporations can take money from their operating coffers and put as much as they want into political campaigns aligning with this phantom movement that has no real leadership. I think we will see the results in the upcoming election in the form of even more corporate control of government policy which is after all the real goal to begin with.

While all of this is disturbing and somewhat depressing it isn’t exactly surprising. The recent economic collapse hurt a lot of mainstream Americans where they can feel it the most; in their pocketbook. It isn’t surprising that they would react with anger at the establishment that brought this about but it is a little surprising that these same people could be so naïve as to throw their support behind the party that caused it to happen in the first place through de-regulation of the banking industry and support of fiscal Ponzi schemes. Propaganda has always been a powerful tool and since Americans lost what was implicitly their ownership of the airwaves where most Americans get their news under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 without even noticing a takeover was in process it has become a reality in this country. No one should be surprised that the “Free Market” that news media outlets were clamoring for has turned into a monopoly since government regulations about who owns such outlets were abandoned. If you own all the media outlets you have a great deal of control over what kind of news they broadcast so there is little wonder that such a takeover was attempted but it is a little surprising that such an attempt was successful and it is even more surprising that more people don’t see the problems it is presently causing.

If that isn’t bad enough we now have evidence that TARP money that was given to financial concerns in this country is now being used to leverage political campaigns by these concerns. This would be comedic if it wasn’t so tragic. In other words, companies that CAUSED the economic collapse and were bailed out by taxpayers are now using taxpayer money to try to buy elections. I wonder how long after the elections it will be before they attack the recent regulations put in place to keep this from happening again. It doesn’t matter that the regulations themselves were toothless and didn’t go far enough to change the policies that caused the collapse; they are an irritant to the people who were stealing all the money and they will be done away with as soon as possible. Expect to see them high on the agenda of incoming Republicans.

In recent days as campaigns wind to a close we are seeing the effects of aligning ideals with fringe groups; groups that under normal circumstances are distanced from the central arena of political discourse. The Tea Party movement in its efforts to show numbers of supporters has done two things that are relatively dangerous in any political movement. They have heated up the rhetoric to a fever pitch while at the same time invoking imagery aimed at stirring up people’s anger at targets of their choosing. As a citizen of Alabama I am not a stranger to asinine and illogical fundamentalist religious rhetoric and its usage by corporate entities to support their real agenda but we are seeing it across the country this election and it is just as ugly there as it has always been here.

A candidate for the Senatorial seat in Alaska closely aligned with the Tea Party reacts to questions that bring into doubt his integrity by having para-military type private security forces handcuff a reporter and physically remove him from the event. It sounds strange but in reality it is even stranger than it sounds. The private security firm he hired, Drop Zone, is closely aligned with the Alaskan Militia which was founded by the Michigan Militia leader who was forced out of that state for his alignment with Timothy McVeigh of Oklahoma City fame. Miller, the candidate who hired Drop Zone, asserts that he was forced to hire private security because the function was on public property. Never mind that this excuse is complete and utter nonsense according to local officials, the hiring of Drop Zone actually corresponds with Miller’s decision that he is not going to answer any more personal questions for the remainder of the campaign. With his lead slipping in the polls and more and more evidence from his past coming to light that he is indeed nothing like he campaigns to be he decided that he just wasn’t going to answer such questions. It is his prerogative to decide what questions he will or will not answer but it is not his prerogative to decide to put people in handcuffs and physically remove them if they decide to ask them anyway. This is the same candidate who earlier responded to questions as to the veracity of the effectiveness of building a fence at the Mexican Border by responding that it worked pretty well in Berlin.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand the difference between keeping oppressed people in a country and keeping economically oppressed people out. In any case, he leaves out the fact that the wall itself didn’t keep people in Berlin, it was the machine guns and guards on top of it that were effective deterrents.

Mr. Miller's official response to the handcuffing incident was that the Drop Zone security people didn’t realize the man they handcuffed and restrained was a reporter. This leads one to believe that Mr. Miller believes such tactics would be acceptable if he was just a private citizen asking questions the candidate didn’t want to answer. While this would be perfectly acceptable behavior in East Germany where the wall Mr. Miller seems to have admired so much existed it isn’t acceptable in this country; at least not presently. That could all change after the Tea Party gets in power, especially if they continue to seek the support and muscle of groups like the Alaskan Militia.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky previous to a scheduled debate pitting the Tea Party candidate for Senate, Rand Paul, against his opponent there is a scuffle between a political activist from the Move on.org group and some of Mr. Paul’s supporters. It turns out that the activist was intent upon handing Mr. Paul a mock award for his achievement of vast economic support from corporate entities as he got out of his car at the event. Paul’s supporters, sensing something was up with the woman attempted to get the police to remove her from the scene. Unfortunately, the police officers happened to understand that the right to free speech trumps the innate sense of future embarrassment that Paul’s supporters seemed to possess so they declined to intervene. Maybe Paul’s supporters should have actually read one of those copies of the Constitution they are so proud of carrying in their back pockets before deciding to attack someone who might embarrass their candidate but that would assume they would take the time to read anything instead of letting Rush Limbaugh and Shaun Hannity pour half truths straight into their heads through their self anointed halos for many hours each day.

In any case, two of the more heroic Rand supporters ripped her wig off, forcibly tackled her and pinned her to the asphalt against the curb. Just to make sure she couldn’t utter something to embarass Mr. Paul while she was crammed into a fetal position with one man on top of her another man proceeded to put his foot on her neck and roughly stomp down on her. It was a perfect metaphor, the angry Tea Party advocate with his foot on the neck of someone with differing views. Unfortunately for Mr. Paul and his Tea Party supporters there happened to be a camera rolling at the time.

This is just the latest example of how Mr. Paul’s association with radical fringe elements has come around to embarrass him as there have been several others already. It is worth noting that the man who literally stomped on the woman to protect him from possible embarrassment is not exactly that much of a fringe element as far as Mr. Paul is concerned. He was in fact the head of Mr. Paul’s organizing committee in that part of Kentucky and a man Mr. Paul had proudly brandished the endorsement of previously. As it turns out, both he and the man who tackled the woman were senior officials in the Tea Party movement Mr. Paul is so proud to receive support from.

The man who infamously stomped the woman’s head into the concrete curb had several excuses for his actions. The first one was that he had tried to get the police to remove her before it “came to that.” Maybe he should have hired Drop Zone for security instead of trying to depend on the police who are actually familiar with the Constitution his party claims to be protecting. His second excuse was that it wasn’t as bad as it looked on camera and had a lot to do with the fact that he has a bad back. Presumably, if he hadn’t had a bad back he could have bent over far enough to punch her in the face or physically apply a gag in her mouth instead of having to rely on just stomping her head into the curb to keep her quiet.

Tribalism

I was recently visiting in Chicago and had occasion to spend several days in the city seeing the sites and enjoying the wide array of locally prepared ethnic foods. Chicago is an interesting place; a true melting pot of different ethnicities that still manages to retain a certain amount of personal hospitality. I have always found that the crowded conditions of larger cities tend to change people’s attitudes about their fellow human beings. One would be tempted to think that such constant up close interactions would lead to greater understanding and more empathy but that doesn’t always seem to be the case. As a matter of fact, it seems that in most cases the exact opposite happens and humans begin to take on the importance and status of inanimate objects, a kind of flowing scenery devoid of personal feeling of any kind. I have always been a little curious why this should be so.

What is it about our nature that makes us prone to dehumanizing each other? Perhaps we are like locusts, the continual contact and rubbing against each other maddening us and sending us into some kind of uncontrollable frenzy behavior. This may explain some of the violence historically associated with large crowds that turn into angry mobs but it hardly explains the paralyzing apathy that seems to manifest itself in big city dwellers. As we rode the public transportation system of buses and elevated trains I noticed something new in this scenario; the proliferations of electronic devices that allow people to create their own small environment separate from everyone else. It seems that everyone was either on their phone, texting, or listening to I-pods with earpieces. It is like imaginary walls erected quite purposefully. I am an avid people watcher but it is something that I have never put together until this recent trip; the dependence on electronic devices to separate us emotionally from our physical environment. Thinking back, I see the same things on airlines and in terminals. I always equated it to the rush and stress of airports and the inherent uncertainties of airline travel but maybe it is more basic to our nature; a need for isolation from the great mass of humanity we see all around us.

Having been raised in a rather rural environment, I am well aware of the negatives that isolation can tend to enforce. It is the contact with other people, other ideas, that stimulates our growth as human beings. In isolation our views tend to molder. Without the injection of different perspectives and the variety of different viewpoints we never really evolve at all but become petrified or fossilized in partial truths that are supported with the narcotics of religion and tribal laws of inclusion. Small communities bond into tribal type factions where belonging is both a necessity and an impediment to free thought. The relative value of this inclusion is inversely proportional to the amount of isolation the community enforces. It isn’t really a matter of deciding who belongs as much as it is a matter of deciding who does not. The power to exclude is both the source of comfort that sanctions malaise and mental laziness and the article of faith that isolated communities have been built upon since the first civilizations came into being.

The opposite of this form of civilization has always been the large city; a place where ideas and cultures are endlessly varied and vibrant. The melting pots where different nationalities, people from varied backgrounds and cultures come to co-exist and live beside each other as they go through their daily lives. Chicago is an interesting example of this type of melting pot. Small communities based upon ethnic origin have gradually evolved into mixing pots for all cultures. Each area is marked with both its ethnic origin and the unmistakable imprint many other cultures at the same time. It is more a group of small communities stacked upon top of each other than a large cosmopolitan city. I was surprised the first time I visited at the amount of hospitality evidenced by the people one meets on the street, in the local businesses and restaurants.

Unfortunately, the human tendency towards tribal behavior is very strong and even in large cities one will find examples of group identification that overrides all other factors. Gangs are probably that most perfect example of this phenomenon but there are many others less starkly evidenced but still existent. It is manifested in varying degrees all the way from corporate levels to the homeless; the reality that there is both the safety of inclusion and the power of exclusion for each that lead to all sorts of assumptions that shape our lives. I am curious how and more precisely why people who live so closely with each other still choose to isolate themselves by race, religion, or ethnicity. On the one hand there is more diversity and a wider range of influences that in rural areas yet on the other there is still this tendency to isolate ourselves and identify with a small subset of the larger group and exclude everyone else as less important; less human.

While in Chicago we were taking a train back to my daughter’s apartment after an agreeable dinner at a nice Italian restaurant downtown. It was around 8:30 or 9:00 when we got on the train so it wasn’t very crowded with our small party of three women and a man and maybe six or seven other people who were mostly involved in isolating themselves. As we got on the train I noticed most of the people were concentrating very hard on ignoring their surroundings and all seemed intent on maintaining their own self imposed electronic isolation. Then I noticed a guy sitting across from us who was drinking from a bottle in a brown paper bag. The train was rather noisy at the time so I couldn’t exactly hear what he was saying but he appeared to be singing out loud and very drunk at the same time. He looked to be Hispanic and was wearing nice dress slacks and a white chef’s shirt. He had a very short crew cut and several gang tattoos on display. He was generally trying to give the appearance of being a very rough person and succeeding admirably if that was his intent. He was also very drunk. As the train passed through a quieter section of tracks I could hear him ranting rather aimlessly, talking about God and how he knew what we were all doing and appearing to lecture everyone on the train about what God had in mind for them, slipping back and forth between English and Spanish and generally making an ass out of himself. It was an uncomfortable situation for everyone on the train except for him, who was rather oblivious to the fact that he was disturbing everyone else.

I noticed everyone else on the train doing their level best to ignore him completely; not a bad methodology in dealing with drunks who usually have a pretty short attention span to start with. My experience with alcohol and how it affects people is that they almost always become more and more self-centered the more they drink. It is a kind of tunnel vision wherein you not only don’t notice other people or their actions, they eventually become inconsequential in the increasingly primary theme of your own importance. I could tell he was close to this stage of becoming omnipotent in his own mind with no regard for anyone else. It was rather interesting to watch the other people on the train and their reactions to this one guy. It was kind of a group experiment in alternate reality where everyone is determined that if they don’t notice him, he really doesn’t exist. We had several stops to go through before we got to our stop so I settled in to the idea that we would just ignore him until we got off the train and watched the scenery out the windows as we rushed across the city.

At some point he took notice of our little group and alternately made comments that seemed rude or just curious but there were no overt actions taken and I continued to ignore him for the most part but my sense of caution was alerted and I was starting to get angry. It was the indignant kind of anger bred from disgust with the idea that a medium sized group of people were having their evening disturbed by one person’s drunken rudeness; the kind that grows with time. It wasn’t long before he was serenading a woman sitting on the front part of the car with what I assumed were some rather explicit lyrics in Spanish based upon the gestures that went with the lyrics in his performance. Preaching God’s terrible justice one minute and making lewd animalistic gestures the next is not a big leap for a drunk; it wasn’t the first time I had seen such mental gymnastics but it only added to my disgust with him and the situation in general.

My daughter’s friend got off at the next stop and as I hugged her and told her goodbye I could tell his focus was narrowing again as he eyed the empty seat next to my daughter. Sure enough as the train started again, he lurched across the aisle and leaned over to say something to her that I was quite sure none of us wanted to hear. By this time I had reached the limits of my patience. I grabbed his arm and told him he needed to get back on the other side of the train and he needed to do it NOW. I was trying to be calm but as the anger started to come out I could feel it swelling and growing in force and the “NOW” came out very loudly. I have struggled with a very bad temper for most of my life and I could feel it starting to gain control at that moment. It wasn’t a conscious decision but I immediately went from trying to articulate to wanting to explode, the way a tiny hole in a pressurized vessel will unleash explosive forces that instantaneously destroy everything in its path. I could feel it happening in slow motion and I no longer wanted to be rational, I wanted to feel his nose smash underneath my fist and I was going to enjoy it while it happened.

He was surprised. I could see it in his eyes which mine were locked onto now and there would be no more looking away.

“NOW” he asked? As if he couldn’t believe either the demand or the tone with which it was delivered but he saw it then. He saw the look in my eyes and suddenly he wasn’t the only thing the mattered in the world anymore. He was still drunk but he suddenly remembered there were other people in his world; he wasn’t the only one.
The whole incident died down after that. He didn’t exactly apologize but looked at me and said “God bless you” several times. I was still seething and not sure what would happen next but we got off the train without incident. Thinking back on it later, I don’t think he was afraid but suddenly saw me as part of his group, his species, and another viable human being who didn’t deserve to be treated with disrespect.

I wonder if we will ever get past our tribalism; the idea that OUR little group are to be treated differently from others. It seems to be so inherent in our species that we don’t even realize how much it affects everything we do. We enforce our separatism with all sorts of isolation techniques; religion, ethnicity, social status, geography, language, and even politics. As a species we seem to be extraordinarily and unhealthily focused on group dynamics and the power struggles that spring from separatism. Are we any closer to solving these problems with all out technological advancement or is technology in fact being utilized to widen and enforce separatism?

Can you hear that whistle?

I live in what is quite literally the edge of the Bible belt. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, the community where I live is dominantly conservative, protestant, and for lack of a better term; narrow minded. I often think of it as a literal belt cinched tightly around the general public’s windpipe to make sure that they don’t get any strange ideas about freedom of thought. Don’t get me wrong, I love living here and will always think of this as home. The climate, the mountains, the rivers and lakes, and the red clay itself are deeply attached to my very core. I have breathed this air and pulled nourishment from the earth itself since I was very small and it is so ingrained in me that I miss it when I am gone for very long. I feel it when I dig in the earth and smell it in the vegetables in my garden. There is a connection… deep, innate, and unbreakable. I love the generosity of the people, the kindness to strangers, and the general feeling of hospitality that is so much a part of people’s character here in the south. Unfortunately, all of this is offset by a dogmatic attachment to fundamental religion and cultural bias that is stark and ignorant at the same time. It takes a while to see it if you live here; it isn’t necessarily obvious or easy to detect. It is just below the surface and carefully out of sight, like an ugly wart carefully disguised or a rumor of a crazy brother that the family keeps hidden in the root cellar to avoid embarrassment.

I stumble on it every so often in conversations with locals who recognize me as an insider, a local product of this environment. There isn’t a secret handshake or any concrete methodology for this recognition. It is more of a nuance of dialect that the practiced ear can hear or a recognition of phrasing configured in just such a way in normal conversation but we locals usually recognize each other after a few moments of conversation. I dread those moments at times because the flash of open honesty that it often inspires uncovers the ugly ignorance that is at bottom of what I detest most about religion; the idea that there are unspoken truths in the world that we can never get past.

These are the truths of the inherited chosen people, the indelible imprint of an undeserved superiority complex based upon race, or sexual preference, and a dogmatic belief in a set of books written by a nomadic tribe thousands of years ago. These books tell us how it will all turn out in the end and how we are supposed to get from here to there. They are necessarily biased and based upon the ignorance of their authors so many years ago no matter how we try to dress them up and explain this away with convoluted justifications. They were the chosen people. Chosen by the greatest God as his favorites and the inheritors of his bounty provided they follow the rules he set down. We are their progeny, the rightful heirs to this same bounty and we KNOW this is true because the Bible tells us so. This is the ugly truth at bottom of our belief system here in the Bible belt. We don’t spread it around like cordial candy; it isn’t fit consumption for everyone else and will only cause discontent and problems. However, amongst the chosen people, comfortably ensconced with our own kind, it flows effortlessly and freely amongst us. Don’t throw pearls before the swine…. they will only get indigestion from trying to eat them. It is always there, always in the background guiding our path like a dog whistle that only we can hear or a light beam in a frequency spectrum that only we can see.

I can’t begin to describe how disgusting this point of view is to me. In point of fact it is only preserved by keeping it hidden. It can’t stand the light of open scrutiny or logical conversation so we keep it buried in the basement of our silence; a crippling mental deformity that we convince ourselves is a badge of honor. Our belief in it is inversely related to our understanding of the world around us; the less we know the tighter we hold to its tenets. The more we read and understand about the world around us the weaker its hold upon us. It has been this way since the first religion’s inception in human society and it will remain this way until we throw the idea behind it out like the rotting cancer that it is. Religion is a mortal enemy of human knowledge and understanding because its power over us is based upon and rooted in our own ignorance.

Suppose we woke up tomorrow and realized we are all one people, that there are no “chosen” ones. Suppose we understood we are not meant to all be the same; that it might be a good thing that we are all different. Suppose we understood there is no Armageddon coming; that the forces of “good” and “evil” are simply different aspects of our own personalities. Would the world be on the same path it is today? Is it possible that we could get past this exceedingly silly and simple minded notion that there is a God somewhere ready to destroy the earth over who lives in Jerusalem? Could we begin to understand that we are all the same? Occasionally, I have these thoughts. I think we might actually be able to overcome the biased ignorant notions of a wandering tribe thousands of years ago and then I wake up to reality and remember I am in Alabama.

I recently heard a campaign commercial for one of our gubernatorial candidates wherein he was ridiculing the fact that the other candidate might have suggested that “there are parts of the Bible that aren’t true”. Imagine that if you will. It was a carefully targeted and accurate slam against the reasonableness of such a statement. Inherent in this commercial was the same knowing smile, the same flash of recognition that I was describing earlier. Obviously, anyone that could make such a statement can’t be “one of us” and can’t be fit to represent us in office. Some people don’t understand that this is a state wherein people born outside of the county they live in are considered foreigners. The ad was effective enough to draw a rebuttal from the candidate accused of making the statement. He recognized he was in danger of being cast out as a member and nothing is quite so important to the members as the ability to decide who doesn’t belong.

Redistribution of Wealth Part II

One of the unintended or unforeseen circumstances of lowering the tax rates so drastically on the upper income levels was the astronomical increase in compensation that CEO’s of large corporations set aside for themselves. In 1980 the average CEO made some 1.4 million dollars a year. In 2008 that number was up some 743% to 11.8 million. Much of this increase was in the form of stock dividends that were not taxable so between that and the lower income tax rates virtually none of this increase showed up in governmental tax coffers. During this same time period the average worker’s income increased less than 5% and if adjusted for inflation it fell dramatically. Throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s the ratio between CEO and average median income of worker was some 44-1. In other words if the average worker made ten dollars an hour the average CEO made 440 dollars an hour or $17,600 a week. It is of course questionable if there is a 44-1 ratio in effectiveness as far as profit is concerned but we will leave that be for the time being. In 2001 the ratio was 525-1. Using the same math if the average worker makes 10 dollars an hour that means the average CEO makes 5250 dollars an hour or $210,000 a week. This is a difference of some $209,600 a week between what the average worker makes and what the CEO of the company makes. I would defy anyone to explain how this is cost effective. Judging from the number of corporate collapses we see all around the country today we might be better off to put the median average employee in charge of the corporations and triple his pay. We could immediately cut a huge amount of overhead while probably losing little in the way of expertise.

One of the reasons the rich are getting richer is our government’s overweening concern with the stock market and financial institutions. The recent bailout of the whole financial system with taxpayer and Federal Reserve money is a case in point. Many Americans are now invested in the stocks and bond markets through their 401 K policies which are most Americans sole source of savings outside of the equity in their homes. Therefore it seems reasonable that the government should be concerned with such problems as it affects a large number of citizens when collapses occur. It is worth looking at the actual numbers here in order to see if this is truly a widespread problem or not. The top 1% of wealthiest Americans own 46% of all the stocks and mutual funds in this country. The next 9% of wealthiest Americans own the next 33% of all the stocks and mutual funds in this country. In other words the top 10% of the wealthiest Americans own 79% of the stocks and mutual funds traded in this country. Think about that the next time we have a financial collapse that threatens our economy. Who is actually getting bailed out with massive injections of taxpayer money and unending Federal Reserve loans made with dollars created out of thin air?

Where are most American’s savings? Most Americans have the vast majority of their savings invested in their homes. 66% of Americans have virtually all of their savings in their principal residence. The top 1% wealthiest Americans have some 7% of their savings in their principal residence while the rest of the top 10% wealthiest Americans have around 17% of their savings in this same principal residence. This means that when housing prices drop some 20% as most have done in the last two years most Americans see 20% of their savings disappear while the richest Americans see theirs fall only about 1.4%. Bearing this in mind it is a little hard to explain why the government is bailing out financial institutions and letting homeowners not only eat the loss of equity but pay for the bailouts with their tax money. Most middle class Americans are caught in this squeeze and don’t even recognize its source. A recent study estimated that the total debt in this country is overwhelmingly absorbed in the middle class. The top 10% of wealthiest Americans owe some 29% of the total debt while the lower 90% owe 71% of it. If we break this down even further we see that the lower 35% of earners actually owe very little of this debt so what it really amounts to is that the middle 45% of earners in this country owe 70% of the debt. We have become a nation owned and controlled by bankers and corporations. It isn’t hard to see how they have managed to buy control of the government but it is amazing to me who they have managed to do it with the support of much of the same working class that is bearing the brunt of the loss of income and buying power. The same middle class that is losing their ability to exist and turning to higher ratios of debt to survive is the base of the Republican Party that has orchestrated this whole fiasco with their deregulation of financial institutions and worship of the almighty corporation.

In my recent reading of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations I found an interesting section concerning the relative interests of classes of people and how they correspond to government. We must remember that Smith’s book is the bible of free traders. It is often quoted and used extensively in support of the free market philosophy that Reagan supposedly espoused. Unfortunately, free markets in this country disappeared a long time ago and have been replaced with monopolies that pull the strings that run everything; but that is a discussion for a later post. Let me get back to what Smith wrote. At the end of Book I Smith is discussing the three basic classes of people who make up civilized societies. He breaks them down as follows; those who own land and make their money from rent, those who make their living off of wages, and those who make their money off of profit from investment. Smith goes on to explain that both of the first two classes interests are always tied directly to the interest of society as a whole; that what is good for these two classes of people is always good for society at large. He explains that laborers prosper most when demand for their labor is highest as in the economy is growing such that there is more demand than there is labor. He further explains that renters prosper most when there is demand for their property; as in the economy is growing and there is more demand than there is property. It is basic common sense really but both of these two classes of people have their interest intertwined with the common well being of the community at large. One can carry this analogy a little further and suggest that these two classes of people would make the best elected leaders as their interests are aligned with the interests of society at large. Looking back one can see that these two classes of people were always the source of our best leaders since the founding of this country, no doubt in large part because their personal interests were seldom divergent from the interest of the people at large.

Smith then goes on to warn against the influence of the third class of people; those who make their money from profit. Smith defines these people as Merchants and Master Manufacturers. In his day these were a very narrow and small class but extremely wealthy. I cannot imagine what he would think of their progeny in our world today. Corporate leaders who control the vast majority of income and wealth in this country and now control the government as well. However, let me get back to what Smith wrote about this class in his time:

Merchants and master manufacturers are, in this order, the two classes of people who commonly employ the largest capitals, and who by their wealth draw to themselves the greatest share of public consideration. As during their whole lives they are engaged in plans and projects, they have frequently more acuteness of understanding than the greater part of country gentlemen. As their thoughts, however, are commonly exercised rather about the interest of their own particular branch of business, than about that of society, their judgment, even when given the greatest candor (which it has not been upon every occasion) is much more to be depended upon with regard to the former of those two objects than with regard to the latter. Their superiority over the country gentlemen is not so much in the knowledge of the public interest, as in their better knowledge of their own interest than he has of his. It is by superior knowledge of their own interest that they have frequently imposed upon his generosity, and persuaded him to give up both his own interest of that of the public, from a very simple but honest conviction that their interest, and not his, was the interest of the public. The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition is always the interest of the dealers. To widen the market may frequently be agreeable enough to the interest of the public; but to narrow the competition must always be against it, and can serve only to enable the dealers, by raising their profits above what they naturally would be, to levy, for their own benefit, an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow citizens. The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Amazingly prescient was Mr. Smith. Of the three classes of people that make up civilized society there is one that has interests opposed to those of the public according to Mr. Smith. He warns that we should be exceedingly careful in dealing with this class of people for this very reason. I would suggest that he is exactly right. I would also suggest that we have ignored this advice to our peril. We now elect them to office and expect them to rule according to the interest of the public without recognizing it is against their very nature to do so. There is an old saying that you should never put a fox in charge of a henhouse. I would suggest that you also should not put anyone who works for a fox in charge of a henhouse. The next time you hear some Republican or conservative foaming at the mouth and warning against the dangers of the redistribution of wealth I hope you will remember that it has already happened in a clear cut and concise way. The best we can hope for now is a recognition of the fact and a slow, grinding effort to get back to equilibrium. Until that happens we will continue to see the destruction of our economy and the disappearance of the middle class while the class Mr. Smith warned us against continues to accumulate all the wealth and power in this country at our expense.

Redistribution of Wealth Part 1

As a somewhat reluctant follower of the talk radio I have noticed this phrase getting a lot more usage in the last couple of years. It is usually tied to some sort of diabolical socialist plot to take money out of the working man’s pocket and give it to a lazy, shiftless group of people who do not work. Supposedly, there is a vast group of people in this country standing around with their hands out waiting on the Democratic Party to send them a check. I suppose this can be traced all the way back to Reagan’s fanciful “welfare queen” that he created from whole cloth as a sort of symbol of encroaching ruin for the country. Even though the people that Reagan spun parables about did not actually exist, they were a caricature that he was able to make stick. Reagan, like all demagogic types, understood that people didn’t want to hear about real problems that might be associated with their own actions. People understood there was a problem. They could see it all around them in unemployment, high interest rates, and a stagnant general economy and Reagan simply gave them a straw man to blame it on. Big government was robbing them to pay people who didn’t want to work. Reagan suggested that cutting taxes would allow people to reinvest their own money in the economy rather than give it to the government who would inevitably waste it. Reaganomics was an idea born of the idea that the American public is basically ignorant of economics in general. Since it was such a successful propaganda tool for Reagan it has since come to be the mantra of the right wing conservatives everywhere in one form or the other. Maybe we should take time to look at how it actually worked out now that we have about 30 years of experience with this philosophy.

The basic philosophy of Reaganomics is that a rising tide floats all boats. In other words, the investment dollars of the rich go directly into creating jobs instead of going to the federal government in the form of taxes. This is underlined with the oft repeated “proofs” that the government will just waste your money anyway; usually with the insinuation that this waste will be in the form of giveaways to people who are basically too lazy to work. Reagan made an art form out of this description and repeated it so often and so persuasively that people began to believe it. It is now accepted fact in almost all right wing conservative movements; the basic core that most of their system is built around. In Reaganomics the cutting of taxes for the rich allows them to invest in the economy and create jobs. As more jobs are created everyone benefits; hence the rising tide analogy. It sounds like basic common sense which is exactly why it is so widely believed.

When Reagan ran for President in 1980 against Jimmy Carter there could hardly have been a wider divergence in their relative beliefs about the American system. Carter was suggesting that Americans should tighten their belts, cut down their thermostats, and be responsible for helping the country pull itself out of the recession that we were all in together. Reagan suggested that the recession and most of our other problems were the direct result of big government. In other words, it wasn’t our fault so why should we suffer for it? He needed a scapegoat of course and he found it in the “welfare queens” who were draining all of our hard earned tax money out of the economy. Everyone could see there was a problem with such systems wherein several generations of families were living off the government dole but Reagan took it to new heights. It was a fitting symbol of the disaster that was the government according to Ronald Reagan. His solution was to cut government spending while at the same time cutting taxes to increase investment.

Reagan won the election and immediately set about implementing his program. The interesting thing about Reagan was that he was a pragmatist first, a conservative second. In other words, he had no problem saying one thing and doing another, it had been his mode of operations for as long as he had been in politics. He did initially cut taxes but raised them numerous times afterwards. The first tax cuts were not very successful at stimulating the economy as unemployment went up after they were enacted. What did stimulate the economy was a massive increase in federal spending through the military and the industrial complex that Eisenhower has warned the country about as he left office. In other words, Reagan’s “miraculous” economic recovery was simply a matter of pouring federal money into defense programs; money that we didn’t have to spend. The national debt when Reagan took office was a little less than 2 trillion dollars. It had been at roughly this same rate since 1945 when adjusted for inflation. By the time Reagan left office in 1988 it was a little over 4 trillion. Reagan more than doubled the national debt in 8 years when it had remained virtually the same for the previous 35 years. The massive buildup for World War II cost a little over a trillion dollars to our national debt yet Reagan and his economic plan cost 2 trillion and we were not fighting a war. Reagan coined the phrase that “government is not the solution; government is the problem” during his run for governor of California in the last sixties. He sold Americans on the idea that he would cut the government but he actually more than doubled the cost of government in just 8 years.

Unfortunately, Reagan proved to politicians everywhere that the truth doesn’t matter; what really matters is how you spin it and what you make people believe. He started a massive upward spiral in government spending that hasn’t stopped yet. In the ensuing 17 years after he left office the federal deficit grew to an astonishing 9 trillion dollars as politicians spent like drunken sailors while espousing the same principals. The key to getting elected it seems is to guarantee the economy is booming and politicians from Bush Sr. to Bush Jr. learned this lesson well. There was a brief downturn in federal spending under Clinton but it was quickly curtailed when the economy started to droop again. Vice President Cheney in a moment of rare clarity pointed out that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter” when questioned about it during Bush Junior‘s last term in office. It is a little ironic that the man who was elected on the promise of reducing government actually started a trend in government spending that led directly to a five-fold increase in government deficits over the next 25 years and led directly to the economic collapse the we are experiencing today but I will go into that in a later post. For the moment I would like to concentrate on what the other result of Reaganomics wound up being; the drastic redistribution of wealth in this country from the middle class to the very wealthiest amongst Americans.

Reagan’s basic premise was that by reducing taxes on the wealthy they would invest that money in the economy which would lead to more jobs; thus the infamous “trickle down” theory that one still hears bandied about by those with no understanding of economics. By cutting taxes on the very rich Reagan did two things; he increased the deficit by cutting the amount of money the government took in and he increased the wealth of the wealthiest Americans drastically. You might ask yourself how this happened but it was really a very simple two pronged approach. First, cutting taxes on the wealthy was not simply a matter of cutting income tax it included Estate taxes, and all manner of taxes on accumulated wealth. All the tax cuts since the 1980’s have favored the wealthiest American’s and corporations. Second, the massive federal spending into military and defense corporations wound up stimulating the stock market into frenzy and as I will show a little later, it is overwhelmingly the richest Americans who own stocks and bonds.

Let’s start with income taxes on the richest Americans. Reaganomics says that dropping these taxes increases economic activity. The truth is that in a period from 1940 to 1970 during which the United States saw the greatest increase in economic power ever seen on this planet the income tax rate on the top earners in the United States stayed steady at 70%. During a period of unprecedented growth and economic prosperity that has not been equaled before or since, a period that saw massive growth of infrastructure, schools, electrical grids, highway systems, and nearly every other indices of governmental performance the income tax rate for the highest earners was always above 70%. This was also a period during which dividends from stocks and bonds were taxed at the same rate as all other income, unlike today when it is not taxed in many cases, yet we saw continuous and massive economic growth. In the period since Reagan taxes on the highest income brackets have fell to less than 30% and there are numerous loopholes that allow dividends to be ignored in this accounting. Most estimates of the actual income tax rate that winds up being paid into the system by the wealthiest Americans are now around 17%. Warren Buffet pointed this out in an interview with Tom Brokaw in 2007 when he admitted that he paid tax on only some $97,000 of his 66 million dollar income. Buffet contrasted this with the average member of his staff how paid some 39% of their total income on combined taxes that same year. If Reagan was right we should be in the midst of the greatest economic boom in history. Unfortunately, what we are actually seeing is a wasting away of the infrastructure that was built in this country from 1940- 1970. Electrical grids, schools, roads, and almost every system that the government supports are in a state of collapse these days. The only government sponsored activity that seems to be doing well is the military industrial complex but I guess a 6 trillion dollar increase in the deficit would be nearly impossible to blow without having something to show for it.

Obviously, the cuts in taxes should be stimulating the economy and increasing productivity if Reagan was right. This should have “trickled down” to all of us by now but it seems there is a flaw in the plan. The rich are definitely getting richer but for some reason it doesn’t seem to be trickling down. Between 1947 and 1973 both worker productivity and worker median income doubled. From 1980 to 2005 worker productivity increased some 70% while worker median income increased 19%. This seems impossible until one finds that during this same period from 1980 to 2005 the top 1% of wealthiest Americans increased their percentage of the total income produced in this country from 8.2% to 17.4%. Favorable tax rates on both income and wealth and the massive fluctuations in the stock markets are the simplest explanations. The top 1% of wealthiest Americans owned some 23% of the total wealth in this country in 1979. Today they own around 43% of the total wealth in the country. This isn’t the whole story unfortunately. Not only have income taxes for the very rich dropped but estate taxes and capital gains taxes have fallen drastically as well. As a matter of fact the federal tax burden has shifted dramatically since 1980 with the percentage of tax revenues actually being collected shifting dramatically towards payroll taxes. Since 1980 the payroll tax burden has risen 25% as a share of total tax income. During this same period the percentage of tax revenue generated by capital gains tax on investments has fallen 31% and the percentage of tax revenue generated by estate taxes has fallen 46%. There has been a massive redistribution of wealth in the last 30 years but it isn’t going from tax payers to the indigent; it is going from taxpayers to the wealthiest Americans. Instead of “trickle down” economics what we actually have is “sucking up” economics. It is as if there is a giant vacuum at the top pulling everything that way.

The truth of the matter is that Reagan as president was the same thing he had been before; an unemployed actor who worked as a shill for corporate America. According to studies by the World Institute for Development Economics Research what we have actually seen in the last 30 years is a massive concentration of wealth and earning power in large corporations. Over 40% of the GNP of the United States comes from 500 largest conglomerates in the country. According to studies recently released by this group these companies control over two thirds of total American business sources, employ two thirds of the industrial workers in this country, account for 60% of total sales and collect over 70% of total profits. In 1955 corporate tax income paid some 33% of the total taxes taken in by the Federal Government. In 2007 this number had decreased to 14%. In other words, entities that gobble up 70% of the total profits made in this country pay in 14% of the taxes. No wonder corporate America deifies Ronald Reagan. One can hardly imagine a more favorable climate for corporate growth than such a system yet we are still on the verge of economic collapse in this country.

Mosque at the Twin Towers

Recently, there has been quite a bit of discussion in the news media about the possibility of building an Islamic activities center in New York near the site of the 9-11 world trade center disaster. Unsurprisingly, there is quite a bit of controversy surrounding this issue for several different reasons, not the least of which was that their faith in Islam is what inspired the people who flew two planes into the Twin Towers to destroy their own lives and the lives of so many innocent citizens.

Most Americans have a hard time with this concept; the idea that someone’s faith in God could inspire them to such senseless violence. Unfortunately, this is a concept that is neither new nor restricted to the followers of Islam. Christianity itself has a long and sordid history of violence against the non-believers, one that eclipses that of Islam in scope for the simple reason that it is more widespread and has been around a lot longer. Christianity springs from Judaism which has an even older and more violent history if one puts any faith in the accuracy of the Old Testament. Monotheistic religion is by definition intolerant to one degree or another. After all, the concept is based upon the idea that an all-knowing omniscient being passed on to man the proper path that his life should take. This does not leave room for the possibility that there may be other ways that are equally correct. Interestingly, all three of the major monotheistic religions have a common source, the Old Testament.

Judaism springs from this collection of books written by members of a nomadic tribe. In point of fact, the Old Testament is quite distinctly the history of this tribe of people and their belief in their God. Some of the earliest writings explaining how Jews interpreted this history and what it meant point out the fact that the early Jews did not believe that Yahweh was the only God, only that he was the God of their people. This point is also supported in some of the books of the Old Testament itself. For example, the first commandment which is widely believed to be this God’s written rule for his people says, “thou shalt have no other Gods before me”. Remember, this is God’s word given to Moses as his most important guidelines that these people were to live by and this is the first rule. It does not say that there are no other Gods; it says that the Jews shall have no other Gods before Yahweh. If one reads some of the writings of Jewish scholars and priests from the time of Jesus it becomes obvious that this was the understanding most Jews held at the time. They did not believe Yahweh was the only God, only the one that protected them and necessarily, the greatest God. This eventually evolved into the idea that he was the one true God but it was not the original understanding. At any rate, this God was a jealous and angry God and often visited great pain and suffering on the Jews for transgressions against him. This was nothing compared to the slaughter that he ordered the Jews to visit upon their enemies however. The Old Testament contains several instances where this God was actually angry at the Jews for not following his directions to wipe out whole tribes of people and sparing some through the weakness of human mercy. All one has to do is read the Old Testament to understand that violence, genocide, murder, and all manner of what we would today consider to be heinous slaughter were regularly carried out on this God’s orders. I would suggest that this God was not the kind of fellow any of us would particularly want for a neighbor.

Christians believe they have a monopoly on what the truth is as God passed it to them through what they believed to be the incarnate son of God. Interestingly, this son of God was actually a rather fundamentalist Jew. This God amongst men supposedly told them that he was the way to everlasting life and salvation. The New Testament collection of books is supposed to compromise a new covenant with God who has by this time evolved into the one true God. This is not a message open to a lot of dissent and Christianity is necessarily a very narrow and intolerant faith accordingly. It is impossible to believe that you know the only true way to salvation and still actually be tolerant of other people that believe you are wrong. After all, if God has spoken; who is man to disagree? There is a lot of talk about tolerance of other religions in most Christian faiths today but the fact remains that for much of the last two centuries Christians have regularly slaughtered dissenters and non-believers in the name of their faith. Even today as Christianity has undoubtedly evolved into a less violent faith there is no room for anything but a sort of mild forbearance of other religions. Christians may believe that other people have a right to worship as they please but they also believe these other people are undeniably wrong or misinformed in that choice. The Bible they so fervently believe in tells them that there is a great Apocalypse coming. This climactic battle will only have two sides; the forces of good and the forces of evil and every man must at that time choose. This type of faith is not a vehicle for compromise or world peace, it is by its very nature a recipe for continuing conflict.

Islam, which is the latest of the three major monotheistic faiths, sprang from this same source. Islam in Arabic means simply “I submit” and the faith is all about submission to God’s will. Mohammed, who was the prophet of God, is believed by Muslims to be the last of the great prophets. Interestingly, Muslims believe that Mohammed is not the only prophet of the one true God, just the latest and therefore most correct. Muslims believe Jesus was one of the prophets and the secondary prophet to Mohammed. A common thread through all three religions is the belief that men often misunderstand God’s true meaning, which is why prophets are necessary to begin with; to get men back on the right track. I find this a little bit of a logical fallacy in that it seems to me that an all knowing and omniscient being should have no problem communicating with men who he created in his own image but then again I never could understand the logic behind the Easter bunny either. The Koran or Q’ran is God’s word as passed on to Mohammed through the angel Gabriel who supposedly spoke directly to Mohammed throughout his later life. I won’t pretend that the possibility of an angel speaking God’s word directly to a chosen prophet is any more unlikely than a burning bush talking or God somehow procreating with a virgin. I will say that none of these things seem to be what we would today consider likely possibilities, yet much of the world is daily filled with violence, anger, and turmoil based largely upon which of these three ancient stories is most correct.

For my money all organized religions are a detriment to our ability to live together as human beings. I have no greater disdain for Islam than I do for Christianity or Judaism and rate all three as little better than ancient superstitions propagated by professional classes of charlatans and snake oil salesmen in order to maintain political and economic control of the population. The real problem is that these charlatans and the superstitions they espouse continue to serve to cause dissension, violence, and widespread suffering across the face of the globe.

This gets back to the point of this post to begin with; the Islamic center that is being proposed to be built in New York near the site of the collapsed twin towers. For the basic reason that I believe anything that furthers the cause of organized religion is basically a net negative as far as human understanding is concerned I am against it. Beyond that, I believe that Islam is presently the most dangerous of the three major monotheistic religions and I will explain why. Islam has two basic tenets which make it so dangerous. They can be summed up in the statement that Mohammed was perfect in word and deed. What this means is that his messages that came directly from God were perfect, unassailable by human logic because they came from the one true omniscient being. This also means that Mohammed’s actions, supposedly carried out with the direct urging of this same omniscient being are also beyond the ability of human beings to question.

One can argue that many Christian fundamentalist believe in the same things as far as Jesus is concerned and I will concede that this is true. I would also point out that these people are what we term fundamentalist Christians. They are defined by their belief that the Bible is inerrant in every statement that it contains. While most people with even a hint of scientific understanding understand that the Bible is literally chock full of factually inaccurate statements there are those that believe it is completely and inalterably accurate. Anyone who takes this position must also find a way to support the violence and devastation that the Bible contains within it which is why most people understand that the relative danger to society that any Christian group offers is proportional to how fundamentalist their group is on the scale of such things.

Muslims have for several years now been trying to separate themselves from Islamic fundamentalist movements such as the one espoused by the people that crashed into the Twin Towers. These efforts have met with varying amounts of success as far as most Americans are concerned. It is a natural reaction to the senseless slaughter of innocents. This reaction manifests itself in the abhorrence of Americans to Islam as well as the efforts of mainstream Muslims to distance themselves from such actions. This is where the basic tenet that Mohammed was perfect in word and deed comes into play. By ascribing to this belief all Muslims put themselves on a par with any reasonable definition of fundamentalist Christians in that they believe the Koran is inerrant. Much like the Bible the Koran is open to a large degree of interpretation so different sects of Islam much like different sects of Christianity interpret it differently. However, the accepted standard by how the Koran is interpreted is contained within the tenet that Mohammed was perfect in deed.

Mohammed lived in Saudi Arabia during his lifetime in what was a very backwards and violent society. He was, like all men, largely a product of the environment he sprang from. During his lifetime Mohammed married multiple wives including young children, ordered the slaughter of prisoners and the enslavement of their wives and female children, assassinated political enemies, and ordered violent Jihad to be carried out against his enemies whom he classified as infidels or non believers. The accepted methodology for interpreting the Koran is to tie its verses to Hadiths or direct sayings and actions of Mohammed himself. These saying and actions are carefully cataloged by Islamic scholars and are the basis for deciding what the Koran means. There are different Hadiths valued by different sects of Islam but all sects of Islam believe that Mohammed’s actions along with his sayings comprise the best understanding of God’s will. This makes it impossible for Muslims to condemn such violence because the founder of the faith not only did not condemn violence; he ordered and carried it out by his own hand throughout his lifetime. His actions, taken together with his words in the Koran overwhelmingly support such activities against the enemies of Islam.

It is true that Mohammed preached against the slaughter of innocents but it is also true that he was the sole arbiter of defining who was innocent and who was an enemy of Islam. After Mohammed died there was a protracted struggle for control of the religion which eventually wound up causing the division of the faith between two basic groups, Shia and Sunni. Although both groups have their own set of Hadiths which they believe is the more accurate record of what Mohammed actually said and did, there is not disagreement with the basic fact that he condoned violence against the enemies of Islam.

This leaves those who argue that Islam is a peaceful religion without a leg to stand upon which is why you will not see such adherents condemn Islamic violence in general. They might condemn violence against innocents but they cannot condemn violence against the enemies of Islam because Mohammed most definitely condoned such violence. The internal struggle we see within Islam today is a struggle to decide who its enemies are; it is not a struggle to condemn violence. It is a struggle not to end violence but to decide who it is to be levied against. In point of fact since Mohammed’s death it has been the duty of Islamic leaders in the faith to make such distinctions. What we are seeing today is inevitable result of such thinking and it is a dilemma for which Islam has no answer.

Islam is a faith that does not believe in separation of church and state. The followers of Islam believe that their God is the only true source of rightful government or indeed correct decision making of any kind. God is at the source of every correct decision in a believer’s life and the written record of Gods will to the faithful was left by a violent, egomaniacal misogynist. This is a formula for continuing escalating violence and the truth of the matter is that Islam has no way out of this cycle because it is based upon the belief that Mohammed himself was perfect in word and deed. The best that we can hope for from Islam is a respite from violence because violence itself is inherent in the faith. Islamic leaders do not debate whether the violence is correct only who it is correct to carry it out against. This is a distinction that is little understood in this country and actually has very little use as far as the possibility of peaceful coexistence of Islam with the rest of the world. The only methodology that allows peaceful co-existence with Islam is contained within its name; submission. Until the whole world is ready to submit to their interpretation of God’s will there can be no peace with Islam.

Part 3 of the AMA... the great communicator

The introduction of the King-Anderson bill in Congress in 1961 began a five year campaign by the AMA and other opponents of the bill to fight its passage. The King-Anderson bill was viewed by many as a necessary compromise for the continuing health care of a growing number of elderly in the United States. As medical procedures increased in efficiency and effectiveness they necessarily increased the life span of Americans. With the increased effectiveness also came increased cost and most American retirees were simply not prepared for the rapid increase in health cost that accompanied these two effects.

Several demographics changed in the early sixties to give impetus to those fighting the AMA and large insurance carriers in their attempt to push a health care initiative for seniors and the indigent. Between 1950 and 1963 the elderly population in the US increased from 12 million to 17.5 million, to about 9.5% of the population. For the first time the AMA and large insurance carriers found some organized opposition pushing for a national health care initiative. Organized labor began to actively push for health care reform because they saw the spiraling health care costs destroying their ability to provide health care for their members that were part of collective bargaining agreements. Ironically, it were these spiraling costs for retired union workers that were later to be one of the main forces that drove Chevrolet and Chrysler into bankruptcy early in the next century. The unions saw it coming as early as 1960 as costs steadily outstripped their ability to provide health care benefits for their members.

While most Americans understood there was a problem, there was no universal agreement as to how to mitigate the problem. Most favored some sort of governmental involvement but the AMA and other private medical groups concerned with profit margins for doctors and hospitals were plainly nervous about what such plans would do to doctor’s standards of living. With the introduction of the King-Anderson bill, the line was drawn in the sand and both sides began an all-out campaign to get their message before the people.

A few days after his inauguration, President Kennedy sent a special message to Congress on health. This was immediately followed by the King/Anderson bill which was later modified to become the Medicare plan. Even though Kennedy had campaigned on National Health Care reform and now had a more organized group of backers pushing for reform, he did not have the votes in Congress to push the bill through. The election of 1960 saw Democrats lose some 20 seats in the house although they increased in the Senate. Kennedy shrewdly saw that it was necessary to postpone pushing for this reform until after the 1962 election when he hoped to gain more seats in the House. Kennedy soon saw his support drop even more after the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba and a crisis with the overbearing Soviet Premier ,Krushchev, over the Berlin wall.

Aside from the normal congressional buttonholing lobbying efforts the AMA utilized by its wealthy members who held some percentage of the all important purse strings that party officials utilized for running campaigns, the AMA immediately instituted several expensive and widespread efforts and convincing the public that the King-Anderson was a bad idea. The AMA bought radio and television ads painting supporters as “socialist” or “communist” agents bent on the destruction of the American system of free enterprise. This was a tried and true methodology that the AMA had already employed several times with great success in the first part of the 20th century and there was no reason to believe it wouldn’t work again. Ads claimed that jack booted federal bureaucrats would violate the sanctity of the operating room and the doctor patient relationship by deciding what doctors could and could not do, whether their patients agreed or not. It has always seemed interesting to me that such arguments can hold up the sanctity of the American free enterprise system by insinuating that our own federal government is somehow bent on making us into socialists or communists. Yet these same proponents of our system insist that all our government’s actions in the way of military involvements in other countries around the world are done in the name of protecting us from these same socialist or communist interests. It seems that our government is the paragon of virtue militarily while at the same time an agent of these same sinister socialist forces it is protecting us from when it attempts to implement domestic policy improvements that might actually help Americans who need help.

The AMA produced and reprinted a vast library of speeches, policy writings, and public information statements that it found ways to get into public media and magazine articles preaching against the “red tactics” that were sure to ruin medical care if the bill passed. The AMA produced high school debate kits that it handed out to local doctors in the hopes that they could use their influence in the community to get this information broadcast as widely as possible. Most of these actions were based upon the idea that any sort of public health care policy would ruin the medical system of free enterprise and necessarily be the first step to a socialist, communist takeover of the country itself.

The AMA organized a large women’s auxiliary effort of doctor’s wives across the country into a grass roots political movement. This organization was the core group that formed WHAM, Women Help American Medicine. The group’s reason for existence was spelled out in a public statement: “This campaign is aimed at the defeat of the King-Anderson bill of the 87th Congress, a bill which would provide a system of socialized medicine for our senior citizens and seriously curtail the quality of medical care in the United States.” It is a little bit of a stretch for me to see how a watered down version of what later became Medicare could seriously curtail the quality of medical care in the country but maybe that is hindsight; or possibly common sense devoid of the hysteria about communism/socialism that existed in early 1960.

The idea of using the wives of doctors as one of the sources for the campaign was an interesting one. As members of the community that we well respected it seemed common sense to use the maternalistic instincts of Americans in general to gain their attention. The idea was that doctor’s wives would organize community get-togethers to discuss the issue. At these get-togethers there were detailed packages supplied by the AMA that included suggestions for how to get the people participating to write letters to their congressmen in opposition to the plan. It was thought that having private citizens instead of doctors write the letters would be more effective and would also necessarily involve a larger number of people and therefore a larger number of letters in congressmen’s inbox. The behind the scenes muscle of campaign contributions was to be enhanced by the public show of disdain for the plan. It was thought that a widespread “motherly” opposition to health care reform would necessarily be a stronger tool than the reality of a bunch of doctor’s wives who were afraid of a loss of income. It must be remembered that the AMA had long been the monopolizing agent of medical care in the United States and had vehemently opposed every attempt at applying free market principles to the medical community since its inception.

The AMA paid for and produced a long play LP record that was to be the convincing argument against the King-Anderson Bill and hopefully would be the nail in the coffin of all future such bills that threatened the autonomy of doctors. The AMA needed a smooth talker; a storyteller and master speaker to encompass its arguments in a homespun narrative that would convince listeners of the danger of a government program that would provide affordable health care for the elderly. It takes quite a salesman to convince people that free health care for the elderly is an evil idea but the AMA found their man in a B-list actor who no longer could find work in the movie industry. In point of fact he had spent the immediately previous years working as a paid shill of General Electric travelling the country making speeches to its employees extolling the virtues of working for low wages while at the same time spelling out the evil dangers of socialist/communist tendencies such as unions. This man’s name was Ronald Reagan and he was to make a career out of saying one thing while simultaneously doing the opposite. As a measure of his ability to preach one thing and do another, he was in fact the president of the actor’s guild while simultaneously working for General Electric in this capacity. How he managed to pull this off without being called on his hypocrisy is remarkable, but he was later to prove even more of a magician in his ability to preach virtue while indulging corruption on a vastly larger scale but that is a subject for a later post.

The LP vinyl record was called “Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine”. It featured an 18 minute speech by the actor and further comments by an unnamed narrator. The idea was that the Women’s Auxiliary members would call informal get-togethers with members of their neighborhood and play the record for the participants. After the record was played they would follow the form letter recommendations as to how to get the participants to mail in letters of dissent to their congressman. The LP came with written instructions and a kit that included the following:

• A cover letter, informing the attendees that “the chips are down, in the next months Americans will decide whether or not this nation wants socialized medicine;”

• A list of members of Congress;

• A ten-point check-list on how to write effective letters to Congress;

• A set of instructions to hosts in what Operation Coffeecup was and how it was to be carried out, including “Provide guests with stationery, pens and stamped envelopes. Don’t accept an ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ reply—urge each woman to write her letters while she’s in your house—and in the mood!”;

• A report form listing the number of attendees, the number of times the accompanying record was played, and the number of letters written.

The plan was known as “Operation Coffeecup” and was to be used as one tool amongst many the AMA was using to lobby Congress to defeat the bill. There were even detailed plans as to how to carry out the gatherings in an impromptu manner. The organizers were urged to downplay the reason for the get together and simply invite their neighbors for coffee. The kit urged that the letters produced from these gatherings “not have the appearance” of being a part of an organized campaign as this would necessarily reduce their influence with Congressmen who were used to receiving such mail.

Reagan’s remarks on the LP were carefully polished stagecraft, aimed at seeming a neighborly conversation in the beginning but rising to a crescendo of red, white, and blue patriotic duty. The AMA never formally announced the existence of “Operation Coffeecup” or publicized the Reagan LP. As a matter of fact, recipients of the LP were warned that they were not to permit the commercial broadcast of the recording. The LP was to be used only in the controlled informal “Coffeecup” neighborhood meetings.

The LP started as follows:

My name is Ronald Reagan. I have been asked to talk on the several subjects that have to do with the problems of the day. . . .
Now back in 1927 an American socialist, Norman Thomas, six times candidate for president on the Socialist Party ticket, said the American people would never vote for socialism. But he said under the name of liberalism the American people would adopt every fragment of the socialist program. . . .
But at the moment I'd like to talk about another way because this threat is with us and at the moment is more imminent. One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine. It's very easy to disguise a medical program as a humanitarian project. . . . Now, the American people, if you put it to them about socialized medicine and gave them a chance to choose, would unhesitatingly vote against it. We have an example of this. Under the Truman administration it was proposed that we have a compulsory health insurance program for all people in the United States, and, of course, the American people unhesitatingly rejected this.

The socialist bogeyman strikes again. Reagan starts out by pointing out that medical services for people who need it is the proverbial foot in the door of socialism/communism that leads to worse things. Never mind that people need health care and cannot afford it; that is a side issue. The truly important thing to remember is that it is the first step to takeover by godless communist if the government starts providing health care for the elderly. The LP then goes on to explain what this “imminent” threat that Reagan wants to warn people against:

Congressman Forand introduced the Forand Bill. This was the idea that all people of Social Security age should be brought under a program of compulsory health insurance. Now, this would not only be our senior citizens, this would be the de¬pendents and those who are disabled, this would be young peo¬ple if they are dependents of someone eligible for Social Security. . . .

There we have it… the Forand Bill which was actually defeated two years earlier is brought to the forefront as being synonymous with the current bill under consideration but the crux of the matter is simply that a health insurance plan for the elderly would be paid for by the government. By necessity that AMA had by this time conceded that there was a problem although they differed considerably with the common perception of the size of the problem. The AMA’s primary interest was at the time and still is today the protection of fees that doctors charged their customers. The formation of a government entity that might tend to set prices was anathema to them and that was the fear that was at the bottom of their campaign against any sort of national health care system and still is today. Reluctantly, the AMA had agreed to passage of the Kerr-Mills bill that implemented a plan for care of the indigent elderly on a voluntary basis. The AMA had no interest in protecting the elderly on fixed incomes who simply couldn’t afford higher health care costs without losing everything they had saved over a lifetime. Reagan goes on to claim that the Kerr-Mills bill takes care of the problem even though by this time it had been effect for some time and obviously did not take care of the issue. The point that Reagan carefully skips over is that the Kerr-Mills bill itself is a socialist bill in that is the government’s attempt to take care of the indigent. While it does nothing to help the problem of seniors on fixed incomes going bankrupt trying to afford needed health care and virtually guarantees that they would either be forced to lose their life savings or do without needed health care, it is at heart a socialist bill which is in reality a continuing part of our system in this country; a blending of pure capitalism with socialism. This has been the case since governments of the people were formed in ancient Greece and it will continue to be the case in the future. A government of the people will always lean towards socialist institutions as long as it is a free government; it is the balance that is important. The idea that the any free government is a purely capitalist or free market society is a willing twisting of the facts. Reagan goes on to greater exaggerations of the facts on the LP as he describes the fictitious slide towards communism:

The doctor begins to lose freedom. . . . First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then doctors aren’t equally di¬vided geographically. So a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him, you can't live in that town. They already have enough doctors. You have to go someplace else. And from here it's only a short step to dictating where he will go. . . . All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it's a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay. And pretty soon your son won't decide, when he's in school, where he will go or what he will do for a living. He will wait for the government to tell him where he will go to work and what he will do.

One can only wonder where this line of reasoning comes from. There was nothing in the bill under consideration that insinuated that the government would do anything of the kind. The truth of the matter is that doctors work where doctors can have enough customers to pay their bills. Having an insurance provider pay the bills is exactly what was in place at the time and is exactly what is in place today, whether it is a private insurance provider or the government in the form of Medicaid but this is exactly the kind of half baked logic that Reagan would use to prey on fears in a long political career later on. In truth neither the King-Anderson bill nor Medicare, which eventually was the bill that passed, ever intended to regulate the medical industry. It was simply a plan for putting in place the ability of the government to pay for health care for the elderly through private institutions. Medicare does no more to control the industry and in fact does much less than private health carriers. If you should doubt this try to dictate to your health care insurance provider what procedures you want your doctor to perform and see how successful you are in that endeavor. Reagan finished his pitch with a flourish and the kind of look at the future contemplative scare tactics he was to perfect in later years:

What can we do about this? . . . We can write to our congressmen and to our senators. . . . And at the moment the key issue is: We do not want socialized medicine. . . . In Washington today 40,000 letters, less than 100 per congressman, are evi¬dence of a trend in public thinking. . . . Representative Halleck of Indiana has said, “When the American people want something from Congress . . . if they make their wants known, Congress does what the people want.” So write. . . . that you demand the continuation of our traditional free enterprise system.
You and I can do this. The only way we can do it is by writing to our congressman even if we believe he’s on our side to begin with. Write to strengthen his hand. Give him the ability to stand before his colleagues in Congress and say, I heard from my constituents and this is what they want. And if you don't do this and if I don't do it, one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free.

One would suppose that Reagan might consider that other people were spending their sunset years attempting to get health care they couldn't possibly afford or simply dying for the lack of it but perhaps that didn't happen in the imaginary shining city on the hill where he seemed to spend most of his time. In any case, Reagan might have been a good actor and was definitely a good public speaker but his skill at forecasting the future proved to be one that left something to be desired.

Meanwhile, the AMA and a large group of insurance carriers steeled themselves for more confrontation over the issue of allowing the federal government to begin instituting what they saw as price controls. Even though everyone understood that skyrocketing medical costs were the problem, the AMA and insurance carriers were determined to protect profit margins above all else. Just after Kennedy’s election, Dr. Ernest B. Howard, executive vice president of the AMA and chief strategist charged with fighting the passage of a federal health care plan, declared there would be no compromise on the issue. “The surest way to total defeat is to say, we are now going to sit across the negotiating table and see what you will give us. I think no one should underestimate the tremendous strength of medicine; that’s the way we won last time.”

A few weeks later the AMA announced an “all-out effort” against “the most deadly challenge ever faced by the medical profession.” This program included a team of 70 speakers travelling the nation speaking to local chambers of commerce and civic organization against the evils of “socialized” medicine and a whole spate of new radio and TV ads against the bill.

They were joined in their efforts by commercial health care providers and the nonprofit Blue Cross Association. Most of their efforts were aimed at issuing official looking reports suggesting that the cost of such a plan would bankrupt the country. If this sounds familiar now, it is second only to the eternal “socialist bogeyman” in the unending effort by those enriching themselves the most from healthcare for profit in being utilized to fight any and all efforts to bring down costs in this area. While spiraling costs were then and are now the real danger in our system, they continue to suggest that we “can’t afford” a better system while ignoring the fact that every other industrialized nation in the world provides better healthcare at a fraction of the cost of ours.

As time went on, the supporters of reform efforts began to get better organized as well. Efforts of the Democratic National Committee aimed at organizing support in the home districts of the member of the House Ways and Means Committee that continued to hold the bill hostage in the House of Representatives. The head of the Ways and Means committee was a Democrat from Arkansas; Wilbur Mills for sixteen years and was widely known as the most powerful man in Washington to insiders. At the time, the Ways and Means Committee was the originator of fiscal bills in the US Congress. Mills served as the leader of this committee longer than any person in US history. Mills was the son of a school superintendent. His father oversaw the first school district in the state of Arkansas to integrate. Mills studied constitutional law at Harvard under Felix Frankfurter who was later nominated and confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice. Frankfurter was what would be viewed as an odd mix ideologically in today’s world. He was one of the founders of the American Civil Liberties Union yet became the voice for judicial restraint on the Supreme Court for 23 years. He was a life-long supporter of labor rights yet refused to sit in judgments of state courts. Mills, as one of his better students, fit the same mold. He was well respected in Washington yet was hard to predict as far as how he would swing on issues. Previous to his service in Congress, Mills served as a County Judge in White County, Arkansas. There he organized a county-funded program with a public fund to pay medical bills for people who could not afford them. Through this program, prescription drugs were sold at costs and doctor’s fees paid for the indigent. Patients were qualified for the program through the Justice of the Peace while Mills himself made the final approvals.

A grass roots campaign to organize seniors in need of help with rising costs culminated in the million members National Council of Senior Citizens for Health Care. This group became a spokesman for seniors across the nation as well as maintaining strong efforts to stimulate local political action through its various member organizations. The “Physicians’ Committee for Health Care through Social Security” was also formed in opposition to the AMA. The commission included Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn who had been the personal physician to Eleanor Roosevelt. Esselstyn later formed a private clinic for treatment of heart problems that has achieved phenomenal results by controlling diet and eating habits as opposed to invasive surgery. You can read about Esselstyn and his work in “The China Study” or by watching the popular film “Forks Over Knives”. Esselstyn was joined on this committee by several other prominent physicians including two Nobel Prize winners; Dr. Arthur Kornberg and Dr. Dickinson Richards. This group lobbied for what they saw as a desperate need for health care subsidies for a growing population of seniors unable to afford needed health care.

As the 1962 elections approached both sides worked hard to slant the field in their favor. Medicare supporters worked to lobby senior voters away from the Republican party while the AMA and Insurance Companies used the same scare tactics that they had used so effectively in the fifties to defeat government reform of the system. Socialism and communism fears were stoked mightily while business interests beat the drum about runaway costs.

By this time runaway costs were hurting everyone involved. Even insurance carriers, especially the smaller ones, began to feel the pinch as increased costs led them to increase premiums dramatically. Senior on fixed income couldn’t afford the increase and often dropped out of the program completely leading to even more downward spirals for health care providers saddled with more and more non-paying customers unable to afford needed healthcare. These costs were then passed on to other customers in the form of even higher premiums as the pool narrowed. Health care providers’ attempts to pass these costs on to paying customers raised the cost of health care for everyone and the vicious cycle continued. A study that year by a Senate committee determined that only one half of senior had sufficient insurance coverage to cover 75% of their health care bills. Only 25% of seniors had adequate hospital coverage.

What actually swung the election in the Democrats favor was the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. President Kennedy gained much support for his actions in staring down Krushchev and the Democrats held their own in the House. They gained extra support in the Senate but probably the most important outcome of the election was two Democratic vacancies opened up on the powerful Ways and Means Committee which had been holding the bill hostage.

Even though Kennedy had pledged to push Medicare through the next session it took a back seat after the election to the unfolding Civil Rights issues and a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union. By this time, the Democrats had once again lost steam in their push to pass Medicare and their opponents within the AMA and Insurance Companies had been busy lobbying extensively within Congress.

The House Ways and Means Committee was still deadlocked on the issue but Mills, as head of the committee had earlier announced, "I want to make it clear that I have always thought there was great appeal in the argument that wage earners, during their working lifetime, should make payments into a fund to guard against the risk of financial disaster due to heavy medical costs. . . . I am acutely aware of the fact that there is a problem here which must be met." While this led many to believe that the hurdle in the house was cleared it was by no means a certainty and the Senate was also showing signs of changing its support in favor of more assurances for private insurers.

It was against this backdrop that another unforeseen incident changed the balance for Kennedy’s legislative programs. On November 22, 1963 Kennedy was fatally shot in Dallas, Texas. Lyndon Johnson, the vice president was sworn in and vowed to carry out Kennedy’s programs. Effective public support for opposition to the Medicare bill died with Kennedy that day in Dallas or at least with Johnson’s speech in support of his programs. This did not keep the AMA and Insurance companies from continuing the fight but their continued intransigent opposition did little to derail the bill after the overwhelming landslide election of Johnson the next year.

In July of that year, amidst growing public concern with Viet Nam, the Medicare bill passed through Congress. President Johnson signed Medicare into law after agreements had been reached with the AMA that guaranteed their continued control of prices which was all they were really interested in to start with. In the first four years that Medicare was in operation it paid for $17.9 billion of medical care for seniors. This money paid some $24.6 million in hospital bills and some 96.8 million doctor’s bills for covered seniors. It is hard to quantify the amount of suffering that went on in the four years that Reagan and the AMA managed to delay the passage of the bill, especially considering that 50% of seniors at the time both had no medical coverage and had less than $1000 in savings to pay for medical expenses.

The AMA pretended that the problem didn’t exist as long as they perceived it to be a threat to the income of the doctors that made up its membership. Reagan, for his part, not only pretended the problem didn’t exist at the time he later pretended that he didn’t campaign against Medicaid at all. In a televised debate with President Carter during the 1980 campaign, Carter accused him of campaigning against Medicare. Reagan denied he had done so by claiming he was simply in favor of the passage of another bill instead even though the record and Reagan’s LP speak plainly to the fact that Reagan was very much against Medicaid. In fact Reagan, as a paid shill of the AME, was in the forefront of the political battle to defeat it by working for the AMA in producing the LP.

There used to be a prominent commercial on TV that featured a spokesman proclaiming that he was not a doctor but he played one on TV. Much to our detriment as a nation Reagan later carried this charade to monumental proportions. He was not an economic expert but he played one in the White House. He was not a leader but he played one in the White House. He was really never much of anything beyond what he was when he worked for General Electric, a shill for big business who told stories that made people feel good while the corporate interests took over our economy.