Category Archives: current events

Don’t Torture Yourself

President Obama, a man who can be counted on to deliver an inspirational speech, made an unambiguous admission about the systematic brutality visited on Muslims who fell into American hands after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.   He left no ambiguity about the “enhanced interrogation techniques”.  In one of the most regrettable phrases the great speechmaker ever uttered he made it clear that “we tortured some folks.”  

That was in the summer of 2014, and the remark was prefaced by “after 9/11 we did a lot of good things, but…”  His legal training was on display in the way he buried that terrible admission in the second half of a sentence that began reminding us of all the correct things we did after 9/11.

Great rhetorical speaking often calls for a stirring generality that can unite listeners and make the bitter medicine go down easier.  Obama did not disappoint, making the larger, more abstract and more palatable point that “one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.”  Keep that remark in mind, we’ll get back to it in the punchline.

His high-minded (to give him the benefit of the doubt) decision not to prosecute anyone for these war crimes, American crimes, flagrant violations of international treaties, etc. fails to account for one dependable human tendency.  If you admit what your country did was abhorrent and then vow to look forward, without any accountability for those who ordered the savage, illegal acts committed, it’s not hard to imagine what will happen the next time you and other good people feel pushed into a desperate corner, surrounded by implacable, murderous enemies who hate your freedom.  

This guy we have coming into office loves tough talk and loves the idea of inflicting maximum pain on our enemies.  Waterboarding is not enough for him, he boasted, he’d do really bad shit, much worse than just controlled drowning over and over as you’re strapped to a board upside down, between punches in the face as you vomit and gag for air, at the very edge of cardiac arrest (which is why they always had a doctor by the waterboard– how about that for a post 9-11 turn on the Hippocratic Oath?)

I have whined about all this torture done in our names since I heard the U.S. had secretly “legalized” torture during the Cheney-Addington-Bush years.   I was glad to hear, even as I winced at the grotesque nonchalance of the expression, an American president admit “we tortured some folks”.  It was like hearing Bill Clinton say what no other American president had ever said: slavery was an atrocity and America should apologize for it.  Another great moment of national healing that should have made folks feel much better.

Why am I whinging about this today of all days? Last week there was some debate, way in the background, about the fate of the 6,700 page Senate Torture Report.   Although the Obama Administration has kept the report top secret since its release, it appears that the full scope of the torture program is laid out in its pages, specific atrocities are described in detail, it contains the testimony of the torturers themselves about gaining no useful intel from the torture, details the eventual insistence of the torturers and their bosses that the program be stopped because it did far more harm than good, and so on.  

The full report is apparently a ringing slap in the face to tough talking guys like Dick Cheney, who continue to insist that torture works, that we got plenty of good intel from it, that those we tortured fucking deserved it, and worse, and that countless American lives were saved by torture, even if many of those tortured were wrongfully imprisoned detainees who had no connection to terrorist activities and were eventually released from indefinite detention.

When Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2015, Republican Senator Richard Burr, the new chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the committee responsible for the Senate Torture Report, apparently sought to collect all copies of the report that had been distributed so that the report could be classified and/or destroyed once and for all.  

It seems mad to destroy the report, erase its still classified findings, but, that’s partisan politics, I suppose.   Objection to torture is seen as largely a liberal tic in current American politics. Why that would be the case is hard for me to understand, I am certain that many conservative people also abhor torture, which has long been considered antithetical to American values, but there it is:  torture  is now another snarling partisan issue in our Divided States of America, like abortion, global warming, full rights of citizenship for homosexuals.

Obama took decisive action the other day to preserve the Senate Torture Report.  He’s including a copy in his presidential library.  He has been praised for this action.   He has also classified the report for the maximum twelve years under the Presidential Records Act.   Nobody, including, presumably, the incoming president and his administration, who are unlikely to consult it in any case, will be able to have access to the report until 2029, at the earliest.  

The cliche about the unlearned lessons of history comes to mind.  Along with this stirring epitaph about American Exceptionalism: “one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.”  We can start to do that on the subject of torture in a mere twelve years, maybe.

May I Vent a Bit Here, Mr. Obamacare?

I’m having a stressful day so far, as I wait for President-Elect Fuckhead’s latest publicity stunt to hit the wires.  I can’t keep it to myself.  Poor Sekhnet was bawling uncontrollably just now at my frustration before I could calm her enough to let her off the phone.   I need to vent, so if you’re not up for it, I understand, click away, click very away.

I went to an accountant who made a few minor errors on my taxes.  The first would have cost me almost $300, the second a little less than $500 in tax liability I apparently didn’t have.   I don’t hold this against her, going forward it won’t happen again, and, fortunately, I avoided both of those costs, as far as I know.   She told me to wait for the IRS to bill me on another matter, and I waited, and they billed me.

I paid this bill to the IRS.   Then two weeks later I received two certified letters from the IRS, threatening me with a levy or garnishment to satisfy the debt to them they claimed I hadn’t paid.  Their threatening certified letters were dated 12/12/16.  The payments to them were made on 12/5/16, confirmed on date of posting and the backs of both cancelled checks.   I wonder what their next letter will say.

But that’s nothing to get upset about, it’s easily resolved.  Just print out the images of checks, front and back, put stamps on their fucking IRS mailer and enclose the proof of payment with their certified mailed notice that they will begin collection efforts against me for a debt already paid.  Or better still, just wait for their next letter.

What I’m upset about is the Obama news conference I made the mistake of listening to just now, in the context of my ongoing horrors with his signature program, Obamacare.  

It’s true he’s killing people with drone-launched missiles in at least seven countries, off of a secret kill list.  Many of these people might be terrorists, no doubt, and hopefully few are innocent children and old women, or innocent men, for that matter.  His successor will have the same top-secret kill-lists presented to him for his approval.  

It’s also true that Obama has reserved, for himself and any future president, the right to kill American citizens without the need for any sort of process at all, with or without charges.   Tidying up afterwards is just book-keeping, most Americans are not paying attention, seriously.   Just pose with Kanye West or Kim Kardashian until the news cycle is over, done.    

I have plenty of beefs with Obama, who I voted for twice, but let me just give you the details of one I know better, and more personally, than anybody else I know.  Most people I know are comfortably middle class and work jobs where their health insurance is not at the mercy of the industry-written compromise called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  

You are assigned a level of health insurance based on your income as reported on your tax return.  If you don’t file tax, no Obamacare.  Fine, fair enough– the State Health Insurance Marketplace automatically gets all your proof of income statements anyway.  Submit your income numbers, get the level of insurance coverage your income entitles you to.  Choose any participating company to provide your care, at the assigned level, and start paying your premiums.  

I had a diagnosis of a slightly dilated left atrium over the summer.  The left atrium is one of the four chambers of the heart.  I asked my doctor how serious this was and he pantomimed a strong man pose, the healthy atrium muscle flexing, and then a limp armed pose, the same atrium, only flabby and weak.  He promised to refer me to a cardiologist, one who was joining his practice any day.  That was in August.

In September I began having pains in my chest when I did a strenuous bike ride.   I discontinued riding and kept following up to find out about the cardiology referral.  By November 17th I still had no referral and the doctor, returning my late night call about chest pains, agreed it might be best if I went to the E.R. to rule out a possible heart attack.  

Reclining on a bed in the Emergency Room, I learned the medical jargon meaning of “a good story”.  My EKGs had come back fine, my blood work was clear of markers for recent heart events, but as I was taking medication for hypertension, high cholesterol, and was 60– I had three of the five major risk factors and was, thus, “a good story.”  

I smiled, relieved, ready to go home, until the doctor explained that a “good story” was a bad thing, not a good thing.  I was a good story for possible heart disease and they’d better admit me to the hospital to rule out some deadly event that might soon befall me.

More out of shape than I’ve ever been, since I’d done no aerobic exercise in a few months since the chest pains while biking, I did OK on the stress test and was given a clean bill of heart health, cleared for all activities, though I was also diagnosed with an abnormality in one of my ventricles as well.

After payment for my visit to a neprhologist was denied as out-of-network since I had not pre-submitted the referred doctor’s location-specific NPI number and made sure he was in my plan at that location, I called Empire Blue Crucifix to make sure the next specialist I saw was in network.  

Empire gave me the name of a cardiologist and his office address.   I took pains to read back the site-specific NPI number for the provider and send his office the front and back of my insurance card.   I verified the doctor’s NPI number and was told by Maria at his office that we were good to go.   Ten minutes into my interview with the cardiologist’s assistant she was called away.  It annoyed me that she left the room mid-sentence, cutting me off without saying so much as “excuse me”.  

That annoyance would turn out to be a rather trivial.  Ten minutes later I was called back out of the consult room to the front desk.   The cardiologist himself was sitting at reception, very apologetic. He literally couldn’t have been nicer.  He told me that unfortunately the insurance company had informed his office that he was out-of-network.  We spoke for a few minutes, and I thought this was a person I could be good friends with, if circumstances were different.

I mentioned the importance of restraint as a musician and he raised his eyebrows.  “I should write that down: ‘restraint’…” he said, and we went on to talk about a master of that subtle and indispensable art, George Harrison.   The doctor gave me a print-out of all the materials from the hospital visit, with the intimate details and scientific names for my two or three heart irregularities.  We shook hands.  

My right hand, which has regained much of its strength six months after I injured it in a fall, is still stiff.  The P/T I began in November made it feel immediately better.  When I returned for my second appointment I was told that, unfortunately, I was out of network.  

I got a referral from my insurance company, complete with site-specific NPI provider number, for another P/T provider two blocks from the cardiologist.  I walked over with my referral form after my aborted visit to the cardiologist to set up an appointment to resume P/T.

I was surprised that I’d walked into what looked like an Old Age Home.  I checked the address, I was in the right place.   The receptionist was surprised that I was there for outpatient P/T.  She wasn’t aware they offered that.   The director, over the phone, told me they did offer P/T, but only if I checked into the nursing home as an inpatient.

I walked home 0 for 2 on referrals given to me by my insurance company.  I thought of the third notice of a $1,324 medical bill I’d received the day before for a sonogram I’d had months earlier.  I’d had an x-ray of my hand and two sonograms that day.  The x-ray and one sonogram were both covered, the other was not.  $1,324, please.

 After the second notice demanding $1,324 I straightened things out, on October 19th, with the insurance company and the provider, it took less than an hour.  Daniel at the provider told me I’d been billed in error and actually only owed a $25 co-pay.  I told him I’d pay it when they billed me.  Then, six weeks later, I got the third notice to pay $1,324.    

This time, I was told by the insurance company, that I was responsible to have read all of the fine print in my contract and that it was clearly spelled out which body parts were not eligible for coverage.  She was not able to explain the reason for this, but assured me it was the law, all described clearly in the contract.  She then called the provider and confirmed that I owed the entire $1,324.  Daniel had no recollection of having spoken to me, on October 19th or any other day, she said.  

It was a purely futile conversation and there was no supervisor available for me to whine to.  Empire’s position was that it was my responsibility to familiarize myself with the arbitrary and random bodily exclusions from coverage under the specific policy I had under the newly-created Essential Plan.

Tired of making Sekhnet cry, I thought outside the box just now and had a very pleasant twenty-five minute chat with a thoughtful and intelligent man named David at 311, the NYC information hotline.  

David had only one number for complaints about medical insurance, the New York State Department of Financial Services, naturally.   You can reach them Monday to Friday from nine to five at 212-480-6400.   He doesn’t know if they investigate medical insurance fraud, or oversee any agency responsible for assigning and administering health care in New York State, but it was the only thing he could find, though he searched long and hard.   He recommended I contact a local politician for help, they usually know how to do these kinds of things.

He agreed that the new norm of corporate opacity in government is very troubling.  I told him how the New York State Health Marketplace would not divulge contact information for its director, when I was erroneously denied health insurance for two months earlier this year and called many times trying to get the error corrected and have my health insurance reinstated.  

“Sir, we are not required to provide you that information,” one of the New York State of Health representatives told me from their call center in Albany.  

“Why is that?  Are you a private corporation?” I asked.  

She admitted that they are a public agency, but reiterated that  a member of the public is not entitled to know the identity of the director. They have specific instructions not to provide their boss’s contact information.  Their supervisor will not provide that information either, nobody will.   As for an ombudsperson, or someone available to help distressed customers, they are not required to have one under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  

They have an appeals process for all disputes.  I initiated an appeal and was told I’d hear within two weeks.  I heard nothing, nobody could give me an explanation for the delay.  Two months later my health insurance was back in effect and I began paying my premiums.

Two months after that I had a call from an appeals ‘hearing officer’.  He asked me if I was ready for my appeal over the phone.  I asked him why I’d received no notice of the hearing.  He told me a notice had been sent to me thirty days earlier. He directed me to where I could find it on line.  

There was no notice there.  He saw it on his end, he told me.  I pointed out that if the person who is entitled to notice doesn’t receive any notice it really doesn’t matter if a form was prepared or not.  

He was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and had a shit job, no doubt,  but he was on point, I’ll say that for him.  No matter what I said he returned to his single question: are you prepared to go forward with your appeal or do you wish to abandon your appeal?

I explained, in vain, as it turned out, that since I had been appealing a denial of benefits for January and February, and it was now May, that we would need a time machine in order to have a meaningful appeal of the wrong I had appealed.  

“Do you want to abandon your appeal or go forward, you have to tell me one thing or the other, sir,” he said.  

I went out on a limb and used a word many people mis-correct as “mute”.  I told him it was academic, since the controversy was now moot — the harm was done and could not be corrected any more due to the passage of time.  He asked his single question again.   I explained the concept of mootness to him.  I might have been explaining it to my own sonogram-exempt body part.

Obama was surrounded by organized, determined, ruthless enemies, no doubt.  He had very wealthy donors in the industry that, in fairness, he had to consider as well as the public his law was designed to protect.   However you slice it, Barack Obama is the Obama of Obamacare, and I hope he will not be too offended if I point out again that he’s a sell-out and a bit of a dick.

Commie Bastard

“Basically, you’re a commie bastard, Elie,” said the skeleton of my father, with very little judgment.  “You know, you’re animated by that ancient, hard to extinguish Jewish spark of longing for Justice.  A CEO in Japan makes 11 times what the average Japanese worker does, in Britain and Canada it’s 20 times.  Here in the ‘USA! USA!’, as you call it, the average CEO makes 435 times more than the average worker, because, fair is fair.  You know, you’ve always had a rage against this kind of logic.”  

Well, in fairness to the CEO class, I had the same reaction when Cheney and Dubya started torturing people in my name, when Obama, years later admitted that “we tortured some folks” and, historically, when my family was lined up by that ravine in Vishnevitz, or simply disappeared without a trace two hundred miles north.  

“You don’t really expect those who live on a million dollars a week to suddenly have to make due with only a few hundred thousand, do you?” said the skeleton, his facial expression matched perfectly with his words.

“The super wealthy are not like you, Elie.  They go to bed dreaming about wealth and they wake up thinking about it.  You are a… how to put this in a way that won’t hurt your feelings?… a fucking idiot swimming against the prevailing tide of your time.  Is any of this confusing to you?  America is run by wealthy people and the lucrative interests they own.

“Much of history is interpretation, as we’ve discussed, but certain lines can be drawn between events– causes and effects shown with reasonable reliability.  A doddering, beleaguered, probably senile Ronald Reagan, oversaw the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.  Why allow opposing views to be presented to the public when the free market can best decide what views the masses of Americans will see?  

“So you have, in short order, the rise of Rush Limbaugh, FOX TV and the rest of the well-oiled Right Wing echo chamber.  If they are laughable nuts to some, they are also the voice of America to wide swaths of our population who get all their information from these avowedly fair and balanced sources.   Whose interests does the end of the Fairness Doctrine serve in the end?  It doesn’t take a PhD in the History of the Fairness Doctrine to figure that one out.

“When Obama became the first presidential candidate in decades to opt out of public election financing he was able to outspend John McCain two to one.   He was charismatic, a great campaigner, McCain had to run on the dismal record of his party during eight terrible years, etc. but the 2:1 spending didn’t hurt either.

 “All of those twenty dollar internet contributions Obama had quickly multiplied when the big money started pouring in from the financial services, fossil fuel, health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

“Then, you know, when crafting the Affordable Care Act, fair is fair, take the only effective solution—the public option—off the table from the start and let the private health insurance industry write the law. 

“In the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as you’re fond of calling it, the mandate is all one-sided, the consumer is forced to pay for health insurance, in exchange for CEOs holding the line at their seven and eight digit annual compensation packets and giving the insurance companies the option to opt out at any time if their profits are adversely affected by the new law.  

“The pernicious myth of the ‘free market’ is so pervasive that the alternative to any profit-driven enterprise is unthinkable, downright un-American. That said, your critique of this rogue form of bare knuckles capitalism makes you, and let’s be honest about this, Elie, a fucking commie.”

In praise of a dead dictator

A Castro supporter on the radio just now spoke of free medical care and higher education for all Cubans.  Typical.

Any free market American Exceptionalist will plainly see these things for what they are: shameless Communist apologist propaganda.   In a free market things like health insurance and  higher education are best left to free enterprise.  

Literacy, another of the dead dictator’s alleged legacies to the people of Cuba, also, highly overrated in the age of smart phones.

Worst from an American Exceptionalist perspective: in Castro’s Cuba, nobody born entitled to makes a dime on health care or education.   SAD.

One reason Trump is President-elect, why most Americans hate their government, and why they hate others, as well

I voted for Barack Obama twice, holding my nose the second time. “All presidents disappoint”, Bill Moyers reminded his viewers during the euphoria (for many) when Obama was elected the first time.  Moyers’ reminder was one of the most sobering, and prophetic, I can recall.  Obama, smooth, thoughtful, droll, sensitive, has disappointed more than any other president in my lifetime.  

For but one example of my disappointment, let’s have a peek at his signature achievement, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the program the president-elect has vowed to repeal as soon as he’s inaugurated.  

I am the only person I know who is directly affected by the outgoing president’s masterful compromise with the massive health care corporations who need to remain as lucrative as ever.    I speak of the workings of the PPACA with bitter personal familiarity unmixed with statistical satisfaction of any kind about things like the possible long-term altering of medical care cost vectors.  

The law was a hasty compromise with what was sorely needed to prevent tens of thousands of preventable American deaths every year.  It was written, by industry insiders, to ensure, above all else, that the private insurance and drug industries would remain as healthily profitable as possible.  

Written by wealthy health industry lifer Elizabeth Fowler (check out the great five minute Bill Moyers clip at the bottom of the link) who worked, during a brief sabbatical in ‘public service’, for the most handsomely paid (by the Health Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries) man in government, Montana Senator Max Fucking Baucus.  

Baucus apparently admitted never having read the bill, stating that it would have been a “waste of time” to do so, because only an expert could understand its 2,700 pages (NOTE: the author of the linked Washington Post article, no friend of Mr. Obama’s, is a professor at the ‘Antonin Scalia Law School’ whatever the devil that infernal place is).   A somewhat less biased account of Baucus, with a passing note on his ambivalent role in the crafting and passage of the PPACA, is here.

One learns from the Grey Lady article that Baucus is the scion of a “prominent and mostly Republican” Montana ranching dynasty who always “marched to his own drummer” as he did, one assumes, when accepting Obama’s appointment as ambassador to China rather than face sure defeat in a re-election bid as Montana Senator after three and half decades on the job.  

Baucus took over the lead role shepherding through the PPACA when Ted Kennedy died.  Baucus is known (albeit not well) for these right-wing, business-pleasing votes, as well as for taking millions in campaign contributions from concerned health industry lobbyists:

In 2001 Mr. Baucus defied Tom Daschle, then the Senate Democratic leader, by co-writing President George W. Bush’s tax cuts, setting off screaming matches between the two Democrats. In 2003, Mr. Baucus broke ranks to support a Medicare prescription drug benefit that Democrats viewed as a giveaway to drug companies.  (source)

You can google either of these characters, Baucus or Fowler, to read their sordid bios.  One can admire the way Ms. Fowler danced through the revolving doors, and made millions while serving her fellow health industry executives, without applauding, or even cracking a smile about, the sickening health care law she lovingly crafted for Mr. Obama’s signature.

Anyway, I’m just worked up because I got “an important notice” from the New York State of Health in the wee hours of the morning. It arrived at 3 a.m., certainly the most effective hour to send such crucial health insurance-related news that likely impacts a patient’s immediate health insurance coverage.  It read: 

A notice has been sent to your inbox in your account. This notice tells you important information you need to know about your health coverage for you and/or your family.

You must log into your account on the NY State of Health website to read the notice.

The careless motherfuckers at New York’s Obamacare “marketplace”, The New York State of Health, contacted me last year, with an almost Josef Goebbels-like sense of mischief, on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to inform me I would be ineligible for health insurance until March 1, 2016, at the earliest, and gave me seven (7) days to provide all tax forms and a full, written explanation of why I should be given health insurance at all.

 

Almost lost in my inbox, I took a moment just now to log into the accursed site and read this:

Screen shot 2016-12-04 at 3.04.34 PM.png

IMPORTANT NOTICE:   Today is December 4th, please come back AFTER December 15th to keep your insurance up-to-date and in place for 2017.  On, or just after, December 15th you will then have up to 24 hours — provided our servers, often overloaded just before our short, arbitrary registration deadlines, do not crash– to provide all required updates within that short window in those leisurely days before Christmas, or lose your insurance coverage until, the earliest, March 1, 2017.  

Or maybe not.  Nobody you speak to at New York State of Health, after a wait of no more than 25 minutes, will have the definitive word on what’s what.  The only thing you can rely on regarding the New York State of Health is not getting reliable information.  Take heed, though, and take that to the bank, bitch.

I’ll be eagerly following Barack Obama’s career as a private sector public speaker.  I am confident that my man will break all existing earning records for corporate speaking.  He’s that good.

Quiet Headline of a Forgotten Story: US gov’t pays Jessen and Mitchell $81M for torture techniques

Our country, long-time opponent of torture, began torturing suspects after 9/11/01.  Obama said it plainly not long ago, and I wince to quote him, “we tortured some folks.”

The torture did not necessarily make us any safer.  There are people, like Dick Cheney, who argue that torture got us actionable intelligence and saved American lives.  There are also people who can almost carry a tune with their farts.

Two enterprising psychologists, Dr. John “Bruce” Jessen and Dr. James Mitchell formed a company that got a $18o,000,000 plus contract to design a torture program for the “enhanced interrogation” of “enemy combatants”.   The two were originally hired on $1,000 a day retainers for these important services.

They were paid only $81,000,000 on that contract before their services were terminated in 2009 by the Obama Administration.   Unsung American heroes they do not deserve to be forgotten.

 

Man who kills his 14 year-old not guilty

I watched Hillary Clinton give a speech in North Carolina this afternoon, it was broadcast live on MSNBC.   She did pretty well and then gave way to the Campaigner-in-Chief, one of the great campaigners in American history, President Barack Obama.  As Mr. Obama hit it out of the park over and over, smiling, loose, feeling good, interacting smoothly with the audience, there was a constant loop of texts crawling over the bottom of the screen.

This constant flashing of unrelated text and images on the screen during other programming is a relatively new thing that has quickly become ubiquitous.  Advertisers and sales executives realized there was valuable real estate at the bottom of the TV screen going completely to waste.  Now, during many shows, ads for other shows will pop up, little characters cavort, ads and other messages scroll continually.  The modern American attention span is not fractured enough, I suppose, so why not put another 60 penny nail through its nervous system?

As the president spoke there was a scrolling caption about South American authorities looking for a former Guantanamo detainee, out finally and apparently mad as hell and hating somebody’s freedom.  Then this bit that caught my eye:

Father who accidentally shot his 14-year old son at a shooting range will not be charged, witnesses and surveillance video confirm the shooting was an accident.  The boy, apparently an asshole– the father, no intention of shooting the contumacious little bastard in the face and killing him, the kid is dead and so be it.  A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State, and so on and so forth, witnesses say the kid was shot by accident, so does the video footage.  Video footage does not lie, neither do witnesses.  Case closed.  Stay tuned for details of this purely accidental tragedy at eleven.

I could not help but make the immediate connection to Trayvon Martin, the black kid shot by an armed white man who’d taken it on himself to patrol the neighborhood and confront the kid with deadly force to find out what a black kid was doing in his neighborhood with a bag of Skittles and a cell phone.  The boy was shot after a possible struggle and Skittles were found near the dead boy.  

The boy, we learned, was four inches taller than the man with the gun and, at 17,  was fit, while the young man with the gun, at 5’7″ and 204 pounds, was ‘clinically obese’.  The boy’s blood tested positive for recent marijuana use, and so there’s that.   He is alleged to have used the f-word and not shown this armed civilian the least bit of respect when the white man got out of his truck to confront the boy and “stand his ground” with a handgun, as he was permitted to do under a Florida law underwritten by the Koch Brothers and their ilk, operating under the name of ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council, you can visit these dangerous, sharp-toothed cocksuckers here; a less self-serving version is here and here with Bill Moyers).  The killer also claimed the kid viciously attacked him and that, in fear for his life, he shot and killed the boy in self-defense.

The killer’s father was a local judge and there was a long period, perhaps a month or more, before charges were brought against the judge’s son for the killing of the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.  Martin, in addition to marijuana in his bloodstream, also had been in a fight at school and, additionally, was wearing a hooded sweatshirt, a “hoodie”.  Pictures of him in the hoodie were shown on TV, he did present a slightly menacing aspect in those pictures.  There was an outcry when the man with the gun was not being charged with anything in connection to the boy’s death which had come directly from the barrel of the man’s gun.  The man with the gun was named George Zimmerman.  

The president went on TV during the rising tensions over whether the killer was going to be charged with a crime.  He gave his first speech about race in America, after several years in office.  It was an eloquent speech, as all of his speeches are.  He identified with Trayvon Martin and his family, said he could have been Trayvon Martin, or his son, if he’d had one, could have been Trayvon.  He told everybody to be cool, to wait and see what American justice had to say about the events leading up to the killing of the unarmed boy.

So we stayed cool, we waited and we saw what American justice had to say about the apparently completely justifiable killing of an unarmed boy with a bag of Skittles and, apparently, a big chip on his shoulder.  Zimmerman was acquitted of all charges.

I saw a crawl a couple of years later claiming that Zimmerman had been involved in a second domestic violence incident, allegedly throwing a wine bottle at his then girlfriend and possibly threatening her with a gun, as he had another ex, who declined to press charges.  Zimmerman, in his own home, had every right to stand his ground, though he did seem to lose some of the moral high ground after that alleged beat-down of a third unarmed woman (his estranged wife was in there too).  You can read some sordid details about the piece of garbage here.  Or just wait for the next crawl.

Or just read this, from USA Today:

In September 2013, his estranged wife, Shellie, called 911 claiming he had punched her father and was threatening her with a gun. She did not press charges. Two months later, Zimmerman was arrested and accused of domestic violence by girlfriend Samantha Scheibe.  Scheibe dropped the charges.

(rest of the sordid story)

 

 

Guns, Genetically Modified Organisms and Federalism

Should states or the federal government decide whether Americans have the right to own assault weapons and high capacity clips of ammunition?   Should the states or the feds have the final say over whether genetically engineered herbicide resistant crops may be planted anywhere, without limitation?  These are questions of federalism.

Our federal republic is an electoral democracy that balances national and local interests.   There has always been political friction over issues of federalism; does the federal or state and local government get the final say over the laws we live by? Some things are in our clear national interest, others are best decided by the local community.  Everything else we argue about.

The Civil War was fought over questions of national and regional sovereignty compelling enough to fight a war over.  States’ rights and federal government advocates clashed over every compromise in our intricately drawn U.S. Constitution.   In the end, certain fundamental issues must be resolved on a national level.

The newly granted legal rights of slaves freed after the Civil War, for example, were protected by constitutional amendments and federal laws to enforce them.   The Supreme Court soon limited the scope of these federal protections and states were allowed to pass their own laws governing the treatment of former slaves.  It was not until a hundred years later, after a lot of activism, that new federal laws against certain forms of discrimination were promulgated and protection of civil rights became a national priority.  The states are sovereign in many things, but they may not violate a federal law over that same subject matter. 

Federal preemption is the legal term for when federal law trumps state law.  The power of states and localities to act in such cases is preempted by federal law.  Our federal system is based on a case by case balancing of federal and local interests.

After a particularly horrible mass gun slaughter of kindergarten children, a large majority of Americans across the country called for federal gun restrictions. Most Americans wanted, at the very least, restoration of the ban on assault-style weapons, the guns of choice for mass shooters, a ban that was allowed to expire in 2004. This call for national action resounded again recently when a gay nightclub was strafed by a maniac wielding a legally-obtained assault rifle designed to spray dozens of bullets in seconds.

Defenders of the right to bear arms insist that gun control is a States’ Rights issue.  The NRA is a stickler on this point.  State sovereignty supporters decry federal “over-reach” every time federal gun legislation is proposed.

Monsanto corporation, makers of powerful herbicides (they were the makers of Agent Orange) herbicide-resistant genetically modified organisms, and other powerful environmental agents, is currently in federal court arguing that federal preemption should allow Monsanto’s customers to disseminate GMOs without limitation, everywhere in the United States.  

Giant international corporations like Monsanto increasingly argue that their U.S. business interests should be protected by federal immunity from state regulation and are deserving of a federal shield against liability for injuries resulting from use of their products.   Regarding their desire to be shielded from liability, they are like the gun makers, except that where the gun lobby wants states to decide, these chemical makers argue for federal preemption of all other laws.

In most things taking place within their borders, states have broad decision-making powers.   States make their own criminal, business and family laws, levy taxes, regulate most health, safety and environmental matters.  The right of the states to retain all powers not reserved to the federal government is a well-established principle in our Bill of Rights.  The Ninth Amendment reads:  The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.  

Last week three judges for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard a case involving federal statutes Monsanto argues preempt the laws and wishes of every local community in every one of the fifty states. Monsanto argues that state and local government is powerless to protect small farmers and delicate and unique ecosystems from the harms that  genetically engineered crops can cause.

The facts of this case are pretty stark.  Farmers and environmentalists in Hawaii argue that GMO cultivation contaminates their environment.  Many GMOs are engineered to be immune to herbicides, they are cultivated in conjunction with powerful herbicides and pesticides.   Chemicals used with these GMOs contaminate the habitat, soil and water of Hawaii and threaten neighboring farmers’ livelihoods.  The cultivation of these genetically engineered plants introduces toxic chemicals into schools, homes and gardens that, in Hawaii, are often close to farm land.  

 The crops the counties in Hawaii attempted to regulate, with laws Monsanto sued for relief from, are created to be herbicide-resistant, designed to allow growers to spray (Monsanto’s) Roundup and other weed killers (like 2,4-D, a component of Monsanto’s Agent Orange) on the whole field without killing the crop.  Other Monsanto crops are engineered to exude their own pesticides.  The Hawaii laws were also intended to limit transgenic contamination, the spread of the DNA of the genetically engineered plants themselves.

Under traditional American federalism the local community would, barring some overriding national interest, usually have the final say on local health, safety, and environmental matters.  The flora and fauna of the Hawaiian islands are part of a unique and delicate ecosystem and the state of Hawaii is thousands of miles from the shores of the mainland United States. It is hard to think of a better case for States’ Rights than Hawaii seeking autonomy over matters directly affecting its own ecology.

Monsanto argues that the federal Plant Protection Act and other federal statutes prevent the State of Hawaii, or any county or local government, from restricting the use of Monsanto’s genetically modified organisms anywhere in the Hawaiian islands, or anywhere else in the country.

The Ninth Circuit has previously ruled that once USDA allows a GMO plant to be sold commercially, the federal government has no authority to restrict it in any manner, so if the court accepts Monsanto’s latest argument, this would put those crops beyond the reach of any government regulation.

How do we reconcile the case of using federal law to force herbicide-resistant plants and toxic chemicals into every American community, on the one hand, and using a states’ rights argument to block federal action to control America’s unique plague of frequent mass murders by gun, on the other?  A moment then, for the compelling arguments for federal preemption of state and local law in each case.

In the case of guns, the factual argument is immediately easy to grasp.  Guns easily travel from states with permissive laws into states with restrictive ones, and regularly kill people in states with the most stringent controls.  Without federal laws, the regular mass shootings that are a unique and gruesome feature of present-day America will never stop, no matter what heroic steps individual states may try to take to prevent them. 

There is a strong case for why federal regulations are needed to stop these massacres. Only a nationwide law can have any effect on controlling access to highly portable weapons like “America’s gun”, the AR-15, the mass killers’ gun of choice.  These semi-automatic weapons shoot dozens of rounds in seconds, they were designed to allow special forces to shoot their way out of military confrontations with multiple deadly enemies.

What is the compelling national interest that justifies Monsanto seeking federal preemption of the reasonable wishes of citizens of every state, even of an island state with a unique and delicate ecosystem over 2,000 miles from the mainland U.S.?  That is now up to three federal judges, appointed for life, to decide.

The Sometime Impossibility of Restraint

“Look, I realize I’m dead and it’s only through you that I have any voice at the moment, and it’s really not my place, or even plausible, for me to get worked up about things that happen more than a decade after my death, but goddamn it,” said the skeleton, as worked up as I’d seen him in a while.  

Far be it from me, dad, to deprive you of your posthumous right to speak.

“All right, then, put the words in my mouth,” said the skeleton grimly.  

“Another maniac legally buys a powerful assault weapon and enough bullets to kill hundreds of people, if all goes well for the sick fuck.  American exceptionalism, it’s every fucking enraged, murderous, suicidal American coward’s right, unless he has a felony conviction or a clear and convincing history of mental health issues that will allow a given state to make it hard for him to get an assault rifle, to have as many assault weapons and clips of deadly ammo as he can afford.

“You know the Second Amendment, that speaks of the federal government not infringing on the right of the States to have well-regulated militias, has been interpreted by unappealable right-wing geniuses to mean every individual American can have any weaponry their sick little hearts desire, with no regulation by the government that gives them that right.

“Let’s go to the text, you play the right wing Supreme Court justice and interpret the plain language of the Second Amendment:  A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed. [1]

“I had to laugh, but it was not a pleasant laugh, when I heard the FBI director talk about the need for a deep, transparent inquiry into the motivations of this sick piece of shit– I’m sure it will be as transparent as it will be deep.  No investigation is necessary, and it burns me in my grave to listen to the same dumb show, the same mindless theatrics, the same mind rotting falsely complicated bullshit, dancing around the only point worth making, the one that’s shooting American people directly in the face every day, literally.  

“Why did this maniac go into a gay club and kill as many people as he could before his suicide by police?  What possible motive could a man who insists he is not a homosexual have for going into a place where homosexuals gather and murdering as many as he can?  It is certainly a perplexing question, eh, mass media?  Eh, pundits and politicians?   Why, oh why, would an, admittedly, angry but otherwise perfectly normal American guy with no criminal record or history of mental illness go into a gay club and start spraying death in every direction?  A real head scratcher.

“Let’s look at his ideology for clues to his possible motivation and what the larger meaning of this could be for all of us, shall we? It’s imponderably mysterious, after all.  Hmmmm, Muslim name, could be a terrorist, we are at war with Terror, after all.  Look, right before he left home to kill he signed up to friend ISIS on facebook.  Aha!!!!  

“No.  You don’t need any investigation whatsoever.  What you need to do is what Australia did after a particular gun massacre that was the last straw.  What we should have done immediately after that sick fuck in Connecticut shot his mother in the face, ‘thanks for the gun, mom, love you!‘ and trotted off dressed like Sylvester Stallone as Rambo to murder as many five year-olds as he could with his new toy.  That mass shooting was probably five or six hundred mass shootings ago.   When is it enough carnage?  Do what any country that is not homicidally insane does:  take away the fucking guns, make it hard for the average terrified law-abiding moron to buy all the murder weapons he feels he needs.  You want to hunt deer, go right ahead, buy any hunting rifle you want, you get a few shots, one at a time, and kill all the deer you want, if that’s your sick pleasure.  

“‘Guns don’t kill people,’ the NRA keeps insisting, ‘the wrong people with guns kill people.  It’s not the guns themselves.  The guns are fine, the guns are moral, peaceful, wonderful.  It’s bad people with guns, you see, which is why we need every good person to purchase and strap on as much weaponry as their cowardly little bodies can carry, and bandoliers of ammo, to make sure heroic good people are armed to the teeth to kill the bad people before they can misuse their wonderful new morally neutral guns.  If every kindergarten teacher in the country had top notch guns, and wore them fully loaded at all times, far fewer of their infinitely precious little charges would be slaughtered by bad people misusing their guns every year,’

 “No, Elie, what we need to do is line up the CEOs of the NRA and their entire army of well-paid lobbyists, put them in front of a high wall, with a firing squad of freedom loving gun nuts armed to the teeth with assault rifles, full clips of hollow point cop killer bullets, with guns to their heads to force them to shoot, and make a red and black Jackson Pollock on the wall behind those fucking death-profiteering monsters, paint Guernica in their inhuman fucking blood…”

 Look, dad, obviously I share your horror, your outrage, but don’t get worked up like that.

 “Or what? I’m going to bust a blood vessel? You may have noticed, I’m a fucking skeleton. What’s going to happen to me beyond this?   I can finally speak my mind, thanks to that ingenious apology to my son as I was dying. Heh, I knew I’d get some long-lasting benefit from that apology,”   the skeleton laughed, coughed once, and then went into a coughing fit.

 Look, obviously, I agree.   We need to literally kill those who insist they’ll shoot you in the fucking face if you try to take the billions upon billions of dollars they make every year from selling fear and death.  Being shot in the face with a gun is the only language they understand.

 “No, truly, literally. I know we employ a certain amount of hyperbole in our family, but what you are saying is literally true. What did that rabid, smirking Charlton Heston say about his right to his guns?   ‘You’ll pry this gun out of my cold dead hand’.   Fine, fair enough, let’s do it.  Done, that was easy.   Next!

 “I used to love that intro to Gunsmoke, Pop’s favorite show. ‘There is just one way to handle the killers and spoilers, and that’s with the U.S. Marshal… and Gunsmoke!’

“Your fierce Sekhnet is not against torture as long as it’s used only on deserving torturees.  Our list would have guys like Dick Cheney, that chuckling, criminally insane Rumsfeld, John Yoo.  I’m not against a good massacre either, as long as you’re killing the killers and the spoilers,” said the skeleton.

Got that out of your system, dad?  

“No,” said the skeleton, “but it helped a tiny bit.  Jesus, I wish I had a fucking gun right now, I’m telling you….”

 

[1] In Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Supreme Court reiterated its earlier rulings that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding” and that its protection is not limited to “only those weapons useful in warfare”.[15]

The 1974 NYC Human Rights Commission Report

I was struck, reading that fascinating 1974 report, how dramatically attitudes have changed, and how little facts on the ground have changed for the permanent underclass of this wealthy nation, particularly for the descendants of those kept as chattels by the supremely entitled one percent of their day.  

I need to put more of that shock into the narrative, since it tracks exactly Irv’s exasperation with the whole ongoing betrayal of decent principle that has shaped the world in the last forty years or so.  The report lays out everything in a principled way that seems quaint now in our age of Fuck You In Your Fucking Face you Fucking Piece of Fucking Shit! politics.  The intelligently written, analytic report is a vivid snapshot of what once was the cherished hope, and, in showing the brief struggle to make things better, how that hope turned to dust in the mouths of those who once worked so hard to make it more than a hope.  

“Do you know where that bending the moral arc of history quote often attributed to Martin Luther King comes from?” asked the skeleton wryly, knowing his biographer had just looked it up on the internet.  

That would be abolitionist theologian Theodore Parker, father, who defended the right of slaves to kill their masters and died on the eve of the Civil War:  

“I do not pretend to understand the moral universe; the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways; I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. And from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.”  

King, of course, put it more directly:  “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

In 1974 government agencies and people of good will were actually looking for remedies for deeply entrenched historic problems of injustice, within a few years they were privatizing prisons, unleashing the so-called Free Market, and ruthlessly enforcing punitive drug laws, based on the federal Controlled Substance Act of 1970, that hard-drinking, paranoid Nixon had signed into law to criminalize the hobbies of his enemies.  

“Well, I have to be honest, I was Nixon’s enemy, whether I made the list or not.  I was always a teetotaler and I never really understood why people took drugs, but even I could see, although I always gave you tremendous shit about it, that marijuana was not nearly as dangerous as the alcohol that Nixon was sucking down every night.  It certainly does not belong on Schedule One with the most dangerous and addictive drugs known to man, drugs with no redeeming medical use.”  

“You have the transcript of that bit of the secretly recorded tape where Nixon is telling Haldeman how important it is to put crushing sanctions on pot smokers.   He says ‘you know, Bob, they are mostly Jews, and most Jews are psychiatrists and deviants, aren’t they?  You know, homosexuality, pederasty, Communist tendencies and all the rest, good Christ, we need a law that lets us throw away the key, am I right, Bob?'” the skeleton chuckled after channeling the mad former president.  

“That motherfucker really drew a line in the sand, didn’t he?  Then Reagan came in, his revolution being to smilingly turn the hands of the social clock back to the good old days when local whites knew best how to handle their niggras, yes suh.”

OK, dad, calm down, man, calm down.  

“Nothing for me to worry about now, Elie, I’m not going to bust a blood vessel.  Look at me.  Do you see any blood vessels?  On the other hand, and I know you’re a little hopped up today, but you do realize that there’s hardly a whiff here of the 1974 report on the riots at James Madison HS, don’t know?”

Yes, I do, dad.  But as you astutely noted, I am a little bit hopped up today, and I have to start getting ready to get out of here.  I’ll pull out some of that heartbreakingly clear language from the report tomorrow or the next day.  Dinner plans have been made for me and I must not be late.  

“OK.  Bone appetit, then,” said the skeleton, inflecting the French to make sure the ‘e’ was at the end of the word “bone”.