Traveling Day …

We are on our way to Boulder today, and won’t return here until we have found a place to live down there. Boulder has its own vocabulary. Words like “spacious” and “open” do not mean there what they mean here. We are going to rent for a year and then buy something, and that year of renting will likely put us in a townhouse or condo, squished and compressed.

Something occurred to me as I was trying to answer some very legitimate questions over at Electric City Weblog. I have mentioned before that one of the reasons private insurance seems to work in the workplace is that employers tend to hire healthy people, so that workers are “pre-cherry-picked”, and the insurance companies’ job is done for them.

Then it dawned on me – every injury that might happen in the workplace is covered by Workers Compensation, so that insurance companies have even less exposure than they would otherwise have.

So health insurance companies have two reasons to cover the workplace: 1) pre-cherry-picking, and 2) shared risk.

What a deal!

The Perils of the Yangtze River

The concept of insurance, as a college professor once told us, originated in ancient China. Each year the farmers and craftsmen who lived inland had to load their goods onto boats and take them to markets on the coast via the Yangtze River. Each year some boats were lost, and a few lost everything. They decided among themselves to spread their goods over many boats, so that if one or two were lost, each would lose a little, but none would be devastated.

We had an interesting discussion yesterday over at Gregg’s Electric City Weblog, and I learned quite a bit from a guy calling himself Wolfpack. I observed that the concept of for-profit insurance did not seem to work in health care, and should be run on a non-profit basis. He asked me

Mark T. said, that one thing that other countries have done is to outlaw for-profit insurance, which is colossally counterproductive. Mark- Are you opposed to “for-profit” car and home insurance also?

It’s a good question. Why does for-profit insurance work in some areas but not others? For example, in many rural areas private fire fighters respond when a house catches on fire. But the homeowner has to pay a premium for this service, and if he has not, the fire department will simply watch the house burn. A better solution is to make fire fighting a government service funded by tax dollars. That way everyone has coverage and no one has to watch a house burn while fire fighters sip coffee.

The private protection model does not work well in that mode, but does for fire “insurance” – reimbursement for loss after-the-fact. It also works well for personal liability and for automobiles. There are many companies who provide that kind of insurance, and they compete for our business. They respond to that competition by providing adequate protection and prompt claim settlement (There are exceptions, of course, and insurance companies have to protect us from abusers. They are diligent about claim service when there is suspicious activity surrounding a loss.)

I have driven cars for 43 years, and have never caused an auto accident. Most of us will pass through life without an incident. Only a few of us are so unfortunate. But with health care, sickness is a virtual certainty. As we age, it becomes more so (which is why for-profit insurers refuse to cover old people). It is here that the Chinese boat example works. Among ourselves we can agree to share our risks, each of us absorbing some the cost to protect those who are currently suffering. When our turn comes, others will take care of us.

Because suffering and sickness are universal, we don’t need an insurance company in the middle of the process trying to extract profit by avoiding the sick. We need government to collect taxes and provide the insurance. It’s broad insurance with universal risk and huge costs which will affect all of us in our lifetimes. We don’t need the money people mucking it up. We simply need to manage the system for ourselves, using our government to do so.

It is our right as citizens to boot the for-profit insurers out of the system. By its very nature, for-profit insurance has to avoid sick people and avoid paying claims. It’s not a match.

The problems with our health care system are caused by right wingers and conservatives who are convinced that some people taking more out of the system than they put in is a moral hazard. Not so. Health care should be a right. We can help each other in our mutual suffering by any means we choose, including our government. Screw capitalism.

Bob Garner: ‘Nuff said’

I wrote a piece one time on a backpacking trip I was on, and closed by saying that if I could have good coffee in the morning and [Southern] Comfort at night, I could endure anything in between. A fellow named Bob chimed in that I must be a Janis Joplin fan. I didn’t get it at all. Bob told me that Janis lived each of her adult days with Southern Comfort at hand.

Later I wrote a post about a gal named Anna who was a Hillary Clinton supporter over the Left in the West. Anna was very hard to deal with. I called the post “Anna Montana“, and in it I quoted a long passage written by this same Bob. It was impassioned, thoughtful, historical and moving. Anna’s response was pathetic. I ended Bob’s words with my own … “Nuff said”. It turned out to be one of the most widely read posts here at this blog. It’s fitting that most of the words belong to Bob Garner.

I got to know Bob after that – after some hemming and hawing, we got together for coffee, and at my urging, he opened his own blog, which he called Waves and Particles. It was not about politics. It was poetry, some prose, and his photography. He didn’t do it for long, He found it too stressful to have to put something fresh up all the time.

We invited Bob out to our house for dinner, and had a fun evening. He was surprised that a curmudgeon like me had a lovely and charming wife. (He was charmed by her – that happens frequently.) We talked on into the evening. Bob often mentioned his friend Christina,who I imagined to be someone his age. Bob was in his seventies.

Later, after we told him we were moving to Colorado, Bob took us out to dinner, and we finally met Christina. Bob first met her when she was a barista at the Leaf and Bean, and took a fatherly interest in this bright and lovely girl. She’s an acupuncturist now here in Bozeman, and she and Bob shared a deep friendship. He was old and gnarly, she young and beautiful. No doubt Bob wanted to be 30 years younger.

Bob and I and another friend were to have lunch tomorrow, but Christina called this morning. Bob fell and hit his head, had some internal bleeding, and passed away.

I was at Bob’s house but one time, and now wish I had stayed longer, but we were on our way to places. His house was exactly what I expected – a small kitchen, a computer on a small desk, and books books books everywhere. I’m not clear on his life or background, and I hope others will fill me in later. I know that he lived in California, where he knew Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Here in Bozeman he ran a motorcycle shop, and I think he was a former biker. (I can picture that.) He was once a press secretary for our Secretary of State. He did not like my frequent criticisms of journalism. He has a son who is flying in from Africa, and a brother who is undergoing brain surgery in Pennsylvania.

Christina said that Bob did not want a memorial service. I wish they would do it anyway. I want to hear people who knew him better talk about him and his life. If anyone who reads this knows him and has a few kind words to say about Bob, please do so. There’s a far deeper and lovelier man there than I ever had time to get to know.

So long, Bob.

The ‘S’ Word

Certain terms get tossed about in discussion, among them liberal, conservative, progressive, right winger, fascist, democratic and the s-word, stupid – no – socialist. I call myself at times a liberal, a progressive, a socialist, and a conservative. Others use another term listed above.

“Conservatism” is appealing to me in this sense: Progress is slow, and achievements, though often stunning in science and engineering, are plodding and slow in politics and social structure. It is not wise to make dramatic or haphazard changes in our institutions due to unintended consequences. We should observe the example of others and respect the wisdom of those who came before us. What appears to be wise in the present may not stand the test of time.

But we have to embrace change. Piecemeal and slow is the way to go.

Conservatives tend to support “free” markets and trade. I am therefore not a conservative, as I don’t support either concept. It is here that people use the ‘s’ word against me. (“Socialist”, dammit, “socialist!”)

I reduce “free” markets to a simple analogy: markets are campfires that keep us warm. Unregulated markets are more like forest fires, destructive of everything in their path.

I am also opposed to “free”, or unregulated trade when the traders are in unequal bargaining positions. Free trade has decimated resource colonies, left Latin and Central America in extreme poverty. They cannot protect their markets or build domestic industry. They find themselves importing food and exporting cash crops from productive land owned by foreigners. It’s absurd. That’s what free trade does to poor countries – it keeps them poor.

But when bargainers each have power, free trade makes sense. Canada and Western Europe and the United States, all strong and wealthy, should trade freely among themselves.

Progressives tend to want to regulate markets, tax wealth at high rates, provide public benefits like welfare, retirement, disability and survivor benefits, education and health care. I like those ideas except that sending support checks to young and healthy individuals each month tends to corrupt them, make them lazy. I support giving them commodity-style food, health care, and education – a fighting chance, without destroying initiative.

So I am somewhat conservative and quite progressive. If you call me a socialist, it would be technically wrong, as I don’t think that government should own or manage basic industries. But in current parlance – supportive of the welfare state – the term is accurate.

So go ahead and use the s-word on me if you wish. (“Socialist”, dammit. “Socialist!”)

One term needs proper defining, as many of them masquerade as conservatives. These are our right wingers. They are not conservative in any sense – they don’t believe in gradual change, they don’t respect the wisdom of others or the past. Given the reins of power, they would throw us all into chaos. In fact, they have.

Most so-called “conservatives” these days are really thoughtless, mindless reactionary right wingers. These people are the ones most deserving of “s” word.

Is he useful?

With all this talk I do about Baucus and the Democrats and their many failings, there is this: Obama, unlike most of the aristocrats who run for national public office, has had personal experience with health insurance companies. While his grandmother was dying, insurance companies were trying to deny her care.

The president is not all-powerful – there is concentrated wealth in this country than can bring him down – him or anyone that gets out of line. But there is this – that he is a man of common origins, and he has experienced the health insurance that all of us ordinary people have to deal with. If he is the leader that his PR people projected on us in the last election, we may have hope of getting something positive our of the health care debate.

It depends on that, it depends on organizing, it depends on dealing some pain on Democrats who jump ship. But Obama might be able to deal on them a bit. He might be useful.

Ettu Tester?

Senator Jon Tester just rolled out the latest version a wilderness bill, the Forests Jobs and Recreation Act of 2009. It’s 83 pages long, 24 lines per page, and so will be easy reading. I will do so tomorrow morning, but I’m not too good at spotting devil-in-details stuff, and there’s a lot of room between the lines of triple-spaced writing.

So I’ll just toss in a note of cynicism at this point.

For years now our congressional delegation has been attempting to come up with a final solution for our final six million acres of roadless land. Ideally, they wanted the timber industry to have the timber, and environmentalists the rocks and ice. That was always Senator Max Baucus’s objective, and “Rocks and Ice” became his nickname. Later in the game came the off-road activists – the motorized vehicle crowd, and since they represent a moneyed constituency, they quickly grew in political strength.

Prior to reading this legislation and reactions to it by the usual suspects, I’m going to postulate that Tester’s bill will give a boatload of timber to the timber industry, open up wilderness to motorized users, and offer some rocks and ice to environmentalists.

I’ll be thrilled to be wrong.

American politics is a top-down system shrouded in the illusion of inclusiveness. Successful politicians walk among us commoners while fulfilling objectives handed down from on high. Republicans politicians are deceitful in that they knowingly work for the interests of the moneyed set while diddling their constituents with so-called “wedges” like abortion and gay marriage.

The job handed Democrats is a little more complicated – they have to appear to represent loyal opposition. They must foster the illusion of inclusiveness while at the same time achieving elite objectives. Democratic deceit is more sophisticated than that of Republicans. They often posture as weak and accommodating – they are nothing of the sort. They are strong, self-assured and resolute. They are simply posturing as weak to avoid having to fight hard for progressive and environmental goals. As enemies go, Democrats are far more dangerous than Republicans.

I add in haste before being reminded so that there are good Democrats, and if we were allowed three parties, those Democrats would constitute the third one. As it is, they are Democrats by necessity, and as such, have been gelded.

Ettu Tester? The old good-cop bad cop routine had Conrad Burns playing the heavy and Max Baucus the softy. Baucus was always the one who stopped wilderness legislation in its tracks, and yet many wilderness activists actually saw him as an ally. I tend to think of Baucus as clumsy and ham-handed, but he actually pulled that off, so kudos. Burns … merely postured. He had an easy job, and was well-suited for it.

Now that we have two Democrats in the senate, the roles are convoluted. Baucus, while still a looming presence, has seemingly exited, and Tester has apparently been given the job of carrying timber industry/motorized legislation. It’s going to require sophistication on his part, and malleability on the part of his followers. It has started already.

I offer up a prayer:

Please, dear God, give us the courage to fight for the things we believe in and to oppose those who oppose us, and the wisdom to know who is friend, who is enemy.

Jon Tester has a higher likability quotient than Max Baucus. He might pull this off. This is a dangerous time for Montana’s remaining roadless lands.

P.S. Excellent piece at Counterpunch (Why Does Jon Tester Want to Log Wild Montana?) (h/t ladybug) by Paul Richards, who, like myself (ta da-da-da!) is a recipient of Montana Wilderness Association Brass Lantern Award. The organization, before being coopted by Pew, had some balls.

Anyway, here’s what Candidate Jon Tester said on May 30, 2006 in the presence of his wife, son, and two other witnesses:

“If elected, Jon Tester will work to protect all of Montana’s remaining roadless areas.”

Turns out not to be true. Joke’s on us!

Walter Cronkite, RIP

When Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam died, media stars everywhere commemorated his death as though he were one of them — as though they do what he did — even though he had nothing but bottomless, intense disdain for everything they do. As he put it in a 2005 speech to students at the Columbia School of Journalism: “the better you do your job, often going against conventional mores, the less popular you are likely to be . . . . By and large, the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you are.”
Glenn Greenwald

“Over the past 10 years, almost nightly, Americans have witnessed the war in Vietnam, on television. Never before in history has a nation allowed its citizens to view uncensored scenes of combat, destruction and atrocities in their living rooms, in living color. Since television has become the principal-and most believed-source of news for most Americans, it is generally assumed that the constant exposure of this war on television was instrumental in shaping public opinion. It has become almost a truism, and the standard rhetoric of television executives, to say that television, showing the terrible truth of the war, caused the disillusionment of Americans with the war. This had also been the dominant view of those governing the nation during the war years. Depending on whether the appraisal has come from hawk or dove, television has thus been either blamed or applauded for the disillusionment of the American public with the war.” (85)

There have been several studies of the matter, suggesting a rather different picture. We will return to some of these issues in discussing the coverage of the Tet offensive, but we should observe that there are some rather serious questions about the standard formulations. Suppose that some Soviet investigators were to conduct an inquiry into coverage of the war in Afghanistan to determine whether Pravda should be blamed or applauded for the disillusionment of the Soviet public with the war. Would we consider such an inquiry to be meaningful without consideration of both the costs and the justice of the venture?

Epstein notes an obvious “logical problem” with the standard view: for the first six years of television coverage, from 1962 and increasingly through 1967, “the American public did approve of the war in Vietnam” according to polls. Furthermore, in a 1967 Harris poll for Newsweek, “64 percent of the nationwide sample said that television’s coverage made them more supportive of the American effort, and only 26 percent said that it had intensified their opposition,” leading the journal to conclude that “TV has encouraged a decisive majority of viewers to support the war.”

Epstein’s review of his and other surveys of television newscasts and commentary during this period explains why this should have been the case. “Up until 1965, the network anchormen seemed unanimous in support of American objectives in Vietnam,” and most described themselves as “hawks” until the end, while the most notable “dove”, Walter Cronkite, applauded “the courageous decision that Communism’s advance must be stopped in Asia” in 1965 and later endorsed the initial US commitment “to stop Communist aggression wherever it raises its head.” In fact, at no time during the war or since has there been any detectable departure from unqualified acceptance of the US government propaganda framework; as in the print media, controversy was limited to tactical questions and the problem of costs, almost exclusively the cost to the US.

The network anchormen not only accepted the framework of interpretation formulated by the state authorities, but also were optimistic about the successes achieved in the US war of defense against Vietnamese aggression in Vietnam. Epstein cites work by George Baily, who concludes: “The resultes in this study demonstrate the combat reports and the government statements generally gave the imporession that the Americans were in control, on the offense and holding the initiative, at least until Tet of 1968,” a picture accepted by the network anchormen. Television “focused on the progress” of the American ground forces, supporting this picture with “film, supplied by the pentagon, that showed the bombing of the North and suggesting that the Americans were also rebuilding South Vietnam”–while they were systematically destroying it, as could be deduced inferentially from scattered evidence for which no context or interpretation was provided. NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report” described “the American forces in Vietnam as builders rather than destroyers,” a “central truth that needs underscoring.”

What made this especially deceptive and hypocritical was the fact, noted earlier, that the most advanced and cruel forms of devastation and killing–such as the free use of napalm, defoliants, and Rome plows–were used with few constraints in the South, because its population was voiceless, in contrast with the North, where international publicity and political complications threatened, so that at least visible areas around the major urban centers were spared.(86)

As for news coverage, “all threee networks had definite policies about showing graphic film of wounded American soldiers or suffereing Vietnamese civilians,” Epstein observes. “Producers of the NBC and ABC evening-news programs said that they ordered editors to delete excessively grisly or detailed shots,” and CBS had similar policies, which, according to former CBS news president Fred Friendly, “helped shield the audience from the true horror of the war.” “The relative bloodlessness of the war depicted on television helps to explain why only a minority in the Lou Harris-Newsweek poll said that television increased their dissatisfaciotn with the war”; such coverage yielded an impression, Epstein adds, of “a clean, effective technological war, which was rudely shaken at Tet in 1968.” As noted earlier, NBC withdrew television clips showing harsh treatment of Viet Cong prisoners at the request of the Kennedy administration.

Throughout this period, furthermore, “television coverage focused almost exclusively on the American effort.” There were few interviews with GVN military or civilian leaders,, “and the Vietcong and North Vietnamese were almost nonexistent on American television newscasts.”
Chomsky/Herman, Manufacturing Consent