Tag Archives: politics

Looking for Rage in All the Wrong Places

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We Americans live in a country engaged in the longest war of its entire history — in Afghanistan — which is now in its ninth year with no end in sight. No military or political leader of our country can explain to us why we are fighting this war, how we are going to win it, or what benefit will accrue if and when we do. (Yes, yes, we understand why we started the war, the question is why are we still fighting it?) Continue reading →

Cash and Carry On Government

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Health care reform: stalled. Climate change legislation: on hold. Financial industry regulation: fogeddaboudit. Deficit reduction: gedoudahere. California and New York: gridlocked government. Instead of just being critical of the people who got us here and can’t get us out — how easy is that? — how about taking a moment to identify with them? Would that be too much to ask? Continue reading →

Deforming Health Care: A Banner Year

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Note to business-school grads: if they’ve told you you’re too greedy and cruel to be an investment banker or an oil executive, don’t despair; they’re going to love you in the health-insurance industry.

The country’s five largest health-insurance companies increased their combined profits by $4.4 billion dollars in 2009 — the year everyone else was struggling to stay aflloat in the worst recession in memory — according to a study by the reform advocacy group “Health Care for America Now!” Continue reading →

Dumb and Dumber

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If you’ve ever heard a public-address system screech, you’ve heard a feedback loop in action. The microphone picks up a little noise, the amplifier makes it louder, sends it out through the speaker, whereupon it is picked up by the mike and amplified again until it turns into a primal scream.

Feedback loops are accelerating the impacts of the greenhouse effect on global climate. Increased amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, acting like the glass in a greenhouse, trap solar radiation near the earth’s surface, raising the temperature. As it gets warmer in the northern reaches where the tundra and taiga are permanently frozen, they start to thaw in summer. When they thaw they release large amounts of carbon dioxide, which increase the greenhouse effect. Feedback loop.

Feedback loops, most of them unforeseen, have accelerated the effects of global warming well beyond the worst-case scenarios of just a few years ago. The Paul Revere of global climate change, James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute, describes in the current edition of Newsweek how badly those scenarios — many of which he wrote himself — have been trampled.

Well, stupidity has feedback loops as well. Continue reading →

Deforming Health Care

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Just about a year ago, for the first time in modern American history, voters selected a president who had not been vetted and funded by Big Money. In the euphoria of the celebration, we did not notice for a while that no similar winds of change had blown through the Congress. As a result the drive for health care reform (or was it health care insurance reform? Or both?) by the new president, with the backing of about 70 per cent of the American people, has not only missed the cup, in the parlance of golf, but the green, and cannot be found anywhere on the fairway. They are out among the trees now, looking for its remains. Continue reading →

Burning Words

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Sadly, there is yet one more thing to be said about Congressman Joe Wilson, the latest person to demonstrate that you can become rich and famous; not despite being an idiot, but because of it.
This one more thing needs to be said because, as we contnue to reduce the content of our national discourse while we increase its heat, we are all in danger of becoming idiots, and angry idiots as well, which is not only pointless but dangerous.
This thing that needs to be brought to mind is that this country is by design a republic. The president of a republic is its head of state, in addition to being its chief executive officer. Once sworn in, the president is no longer a candidate, he holds the office, and the office embodies the United States of America. It follows that showing disrespect for the president is as grave an offense against the Republic as, for example, burning its flag.
It would have been good to see President Obama, on being called a liar by Mr. Wilson during a joint session of Congress, say to him what President Truman said after being slighted by General Douglas MacArthur: you can think whatever you like of me personally, sir, but you will respect the office that I hold.
It would have been good to see the sunshine patriots and summer soldiers of the raucous right demonstrate a twinkle of awareness of the real traditions and values of the republic on whose behalf they so lavishly emote. They who get tears in their eyes at the thought that someone somewhere might one day burn a flag are happy to see the surly and vacuous Joe Wilson set fire to the country another, more destructive, way.

Sadly, there is yet one more thing to be said about Congressman Joe Wilson, the latest person to demonstrate that you can become rich and famous, not despite being an idiot, but because of it. This one more thing needs to be said because, as we continue to reduce the content of our national discourse while we increase its heat, we are all in danger of becoming idiots, and angry idiots as well, which is not only pointless but dangerous. Continue reading →