The Militant Moderate

In the recent past we have been an outspoken advocate of health care reform. We agree that the present situation is abominable – overly expensive, insufficiently accessible to all citizens, and full of greed and corruption. We agree with most of the ideas of the president for remediation of these intolerable conditions.

However, we are NOT in agreement with all the ideas being proposed by those in Congress, particularly the Senate. When Senator Baucus came out with his “plan,” it made the Militant Moderate shout: “Stop the train! Let me off!” Where are those town hall meetings, I want to object loudly.

Please don’t try to do this reform in such a way that it will not offend the insurance companies. Giving them more clients and increasing the profits which they gouge from their premium payers is not our goal. The Baucus ideas are a “bird’s nest on the ground” for predatory insurance companies.

If we can’t do something right, then for gosh sakes let us NOT do something else wrong in health care.

The prescription drug plan, passed under the last administration was a give-away to pharmaceutical companies. Yes, it did help seniors, but it helped the drug companies more -- at the expense of Medicare. Nobody with business sense would deliberately leave out mass bargaining by the government for drug prices and encapsulate in law a prohibition from re-importation of American drugs cheaper abroad.

This was plainly and simply a sell-out to the pharmaceuticals. Now, under the Baucus plan, we would create a new group of captive new clients for the insurance companies to harvest at taxpayers’ expense.

The private option, called Medicare Advantage, passed under the last administration under which insurance companies are paid extra to recruit Medicare enrollees and sign them up for similar benefits administered by the insurance companies is another rip-off for the Medicare system. It costs the Medicare fund 13% more for every senior who is enrolled in the private insurance plan. This comes out of the trust fund provided by Medicare taxes and Medicare premiums paid by other seniors.

This is a dumb thing for the government to be doing, and it is obviously a rip-off from Medicare and taxpayers -- just handed to the insurance companies. But “privatization” was the big theme song of the Republicans. They tried to privatize Social Security also. Remember?

It would indeed be good to cover another 45 million Americans with health insurance coverage of some kind, but to just hand these over for insurance companies’ profits with Uncle Sam covering the tab is ridiculous.

That Baucus plan would do nothing to reduce the exorbitant costs of health care, to introduce efficiencies, nor to set a bargaining floor for premiums and provider payments that a public plan alternative would do. Insurance companies would just have it all handed to them. They would have no incentive to bargain with providers on behalf of their consumer clients as long as they make their profit anyway. Premiums would continue a fast rise.

There are many who suggest that the millions in campaign donations funneled to Republican leaders, and to some Democrats like Mr. Baucus, influence their proposals for “reform.” The facts are there. Make a guess.

Wouldn’t a free choice plan including one called something like Medicare II, separately accounted and funded but with similar coverage and discounts, really make a lot more sense? This would be true especially for people over 50, who would be paying insurance company premiums 5 times the 30 year age group under the Baucus plan?

Mr. Baucus, if you are now the engineer of the train, and if you are determining the direction it will go --- then, “Stop This Train! I want off! I want to catch a train going another route.”

Mr. Obama, give us a free choice plan throughout, so that we can choose a public, Medicare-like plan if we prefer that to private insurance company offerings and rates.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard – AKA The Militant Moderate

“I want my country back.” This plaintive outburst of a woman at one of those rowdy town hall meetings in August still concerns this writer. She seemed quite emotional. It was puzzling.

The logic of this woman’s self-proclaimed misery may be difficult to discern. From time to time one is prone to ponder this woman’s dilemma, and to wonder what inner turmoil could lie behind that woman’s words. The video clip showed her in the midst of those shouters and rude haranguers. She sounded off in a loud, assertive, emotional manner in the meeting. Since then we have noticed those words on signs carried by protestors.

What is missing that makes this not her country any longer? Who has stolen her country? If this is an outcry against change, as it seems to be, then what change? What change makes one so emotional – political, economic, social, religious, or what?

For some time we have heard outcries from religious fundamentalists that “they” have taken their country away. Their complaint is not having officially sponsored prayers in classes or at formally scheduled school events. Of course, they don’t phrase or think of it that way. It is just, “They took prayer out of our schools.” These same people think that Christianity is guaranteed by the Constitution, while “freedom of religion” actually guarantees that there will no official compunction to worship in any prescribed way. Sometimes, simple is not simple enough for simpletons.

Unfortunately, there are those out there on the right wing fringe who encourage paranoia about the banning of religion. They say “God” and Christians are being persecuted. They circulate false rumors and e-mails about taking “in God we trust” off coins, “under God” out of the pledge of allegiance, and other similarly weird ideas – wrongs they attribute to Democrats. They do not always appreciate being corrected.

That is one issue that has brought out a lot of emotion. The abortion issue is another. The rhetoric about “baby killing” has worked many religious souls into an emotional lather. Some take guns and murder doctors.

Somehow the inherent freedom of women from government enforced pregnancy, child-bearing, and child rearing seems to have been lost somewhere. Too bad. Weren’t we appalled not so long ago by Serbian soldiers raping Croatian women to force them have “Serb” children?

How about taxes? For most of us taxes are just an onerous part of life, about which we complain and occasionally say a few bad words. Normally we do not cry or become emotional about paying our taxes.

There are some nowadays who seem bent on trying to make us feel persecuted by taxes. This is confined primarily to Republicans who object to paying taxes during Democrat administrations.

While they did not object to deficits of $1.6 trillion resulting from tax-cuts for the wealthy, nor the $1.2 trillion spent on an unnecessary war, somehow they now object to a lesser deficit putting money out to consumers, cities, and states for priming the pump to start up an economy left on the brink of disaster by the last administration. Some of these people come from the group that has health insurance, and they oppose health care reform because they are afraid they might have to pay a tax on theirs in order for the uninsured to have similar health security.

The “tea party” extremists believe that government is an enemy, and they get people all worked up emotionally. That group has become seditious and unpatriotic in its rhetoric. Mix this with a few gun-toting nuts and you have an armed insurrection. Do we not understand this?

Q. Who is paying the freight to promote “tea parties?” A. Wealthy persons and corporations who are enjoying lower tax rates while middle class and lower class burdens increase. Latest stats show that in Oklahoma, the wealthier are paying a much lower percentage of their income for state and local taxes than the middle and lower groups. (The primary reason is high sales taxes and low income taxes.) Oklahoma ranks 42nd in tax burden as a percent of income, yet we have all those weird people out protesting. Our tax-cutting legislature is killing public services in Oklahoma.

Although the notion is repugnant to most of us, some may feel their country has been taken away because a person of color is president. We overhear remarks of that nature, and about the number of black or Hispanic people now in government positions. Some have questioned whether a Congressman from South Carolina would ever have yelled insulting accusations at a white president appearing before a session of Congress.

President Carter has joined others in saying openly that the intensity level of the health care and anti-government activists has a racial basis. Sadly, these observations appear to be correct.

Indeed our country is changing. It is always changing. Some changes are progressive in nature, but nevertheless difficult for some people to take. Most people in our nation wanted change, and Mr. Obama promised change. We elected him. Why should we be tolerant of the false and character impugning attacks being made on him and on the agenda of change that he promised? We wanted our country back from those who drove us to ruin.

This country needed change. Most people want change.

Some people do not want change. Those with vested interests in the status quo do not want change. Some of those have no ethics and no morals. Some have very little love for their country if it is not run to serve and to please them. Some want to exploit the rest of us for profit. Those most prosperous among us too often have little concern for the less fortunate. Many of them consider government an ally in doing business their way, and they pay for that help by campaign donations and through lobbyists. These consider the government an enemy if it regulates their activities, takes back tax subsidies, or threatens their corporate or personal favors.

Those who do not like government prey upon consumers, who are dependent upon government for protection. Sometimes they fool ordinary people into becoming their allies. Without these deluded ones they might lose power.

Many of us would indeed like to have our country back – one that is free of lies, distortions, and nutty conspiracy theories. We’d like a country ruled by a process of civil democracy. We would like our democracy uncorrupted by money and corporate powers.

Yes, we too would like to have our country back.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

This writer was never a fan of Viet Nam era war movies. Perhaps that is because he was never a fan of the Viet Nam war. That whole period seems to have been a sordid, ugly time in our lives and in the life of our nation. Young men were dying without really ever having a cause for which we could unite and believe.

I saw the highly acclaimed film “Apocalypse Now,” back during its early release time. I was not impressed. In fact, most of the film seemed to be very much a jumble of confusion and mixed messages. It was neither a patriotic war movie nor an exciting adventure film. It was a drab, confused array of scenes and mumbled conversations that defied comprehension.

I have often wondered just what the point of that movie was supposed to be. I know what it meant to me. It carried the message that war is a dark, dismal experience, full of pain and gore, and that often it has little meaning for those in the middle of it. In which case, those fighting often come up with their own sense of meaning, which begins with staying alive and surviving.

I have often wondered if the movie had an intended “moral” to it, other than its depiction of war as an ordeal in receiving and inflicting terror. I have my own notion as to the moral of the film. It hit when the renegade American colonel character played by Marlon Brando came into the drama.

He was the leader of a renegade army of his own, answering to no higher brass and not playing by any civilized rules of war. The Vietnamese feared him. He was cruel beyond imagination, stopping at nothing in fighting, capturing, torturing, and killing the Vietnamese – soldiers or civilians.

There was a conversation between the Colonel and the young American officer, still struggling with his conscience and the activities of war. The Colonel’s brief lecture was Machiavellian in nature, as “the end justifies the means.” That is, in war all actions taken to win are justified. There are no rules. (It is similar to the same justifications now offered by Mr. Cheney for torturing prisoners.)

The Colonel pressed his point that in order to win against a cruel enemy, one must become even more cruel. The enemy must fear you. The young officer then raised a question, “But if we become more cruel than our enemy, then who has won?”

The Democrats face such a dilemma in this country today as they face foes who show little sense of decency, civility, or morality in the conduct of politics.

Democrats have endured bullying by angry, shouting, gun-toting mobs, They are accused of being Nazis. Their proposals to help with health care are used to ignite all kinds of lies and suspicions. The president’s pep talk to school students has brought out unbelievable accusations of indoctrination of children with socialism (or even homosexuality and abortion by some). Programs to rehabilitate the economy have met with some success, but are loudly condemned. Democrats have as yet passed no taxes, but rather a reduction for average payers, and yet they are accused by angry, seditionist “tea party” crowds of raising taxes and running up outrageous deficits. Preachers are shouting, “I hate Obama!” and publicly praying for him to die.

Republican leaders declared that if they could defeat Obama’s health bill, they could ruin his presidency. They have joined powerful lobbyists and rich corporations in this effort. It matters not that the people need it.

Sometimes it would be easy to understand if Democrats started shouting back, if they went out in force and pushed those unruly mobs out, and if they carried guns and brought things to a fight or a “Mexican stand-off.” What if Democrats started shouting back at loud-mouths dominating the conversations on TV talk shows? It would be easy to understand if there was a huge effort to coordinate a boycott of all sponsors of Limbaugh’s program and such programs on Fox News. It would be easy to understand if Democrats formed pickets and demonstrations outside radio stations carrying Limbaugh, and outside the Fox studios and program sponsors.

It would be easy to understand if Democrats started calling lies what they are, if they started calling those who believe them “dummies” and “crazies,” and if they started called the tellers of falsehoods “liars and hypocrites.”

But then the question arises if Democrats fight back in these ways, have they sunk to the same low life behavior of pond scum, such as practiced by actors in the opposition? Are we in a new apocalyptic age, with no compass of “right” and “wrong?”

The answer is “No, not necessarily, but close.” If democrats use unacceptable, inappropriate, dishonest, or unethical methods, then they become similarly culpable. If they simply and plainly counter and rebut what is said and done, if they “call out” the perpetrators of lies and unethical conduct, and if they forcefully advocate their own ideas and programs -- they are engaged in appropriate tactics. If they tell the truth as best they discern it, they are okay.

During the President’s speech before joint houses of Congress, one Republican, in a breach of ethics and conduct, rudely disrupted with a shout, “You lie.” Such conduct is bad enough from an ignorant lout, but from a Congressman it is despicable. Worse than that, this lout was stupidly wrong in his assertion. Ignorant and stupid people should keep their mouths shut, and should never be elected to Congress.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate

Recently a very nice column appeared in the Enid News, written by a talented staff columnist. It recognized the passing of Senator Kennedy in a warm, yet analytical fashion, remarking about the civility of the Senate in which those from opposing parties had historically functioned in the conduct of national business.

In the course of his treatise, he cited the election of 2000 when the Supreme Court decided the presidential election, and he dwelt on the point of the acceptance and smooth changeover of government under highly emotional circumstances. This was indeed a remarkable thing, considering the skullduggery which had transpired leading up to that point.

Proving a point I always made when teaching educational psychology -- namely that people do not necessarily learn what they hear or read, but do learn that which the stimulation causes them to think – this writer could not help but think about what it might have been like if that presidential shoe had been put on the other’s foot.

What if the Supreme Court had been made up of five Democrats and 4 Republicans? What if Al Gore’s brother had been the governor of the state of Florida? What if Kathleen Harris, the director of elections in Florida, had been an active partisan Democrat? During the hanging chad malfunction and the manual recount of votes in Miami-Dade, what if information on the raucous protests, shouting and disorder in the hallways showed the hallways filled with identifiable staff persons of Democratic congressmen and Democratic Party employees? What if this shouting and disorder in the halls had ostensibly caused officials to stop the recount -- keeping those votes from going Republican?

What if a democratically controlled Supreme Court took away the legal jurisdiction from a Republican majority Florida Supreme Court before the votes had been properly counted? Out of such a situation, what if Al Gore had been named president by that Supreme Court?

After the actual Supreme Court decision, flawed as it was, Mr. Gore quickly conceded the election. He went public immediately asking all his supporters to respect the court’s verdict. Mr. Gore seemed quite concerned with the preservation of the Union, and that no precedent of disorder or any challenge outside the legal system even remotely be considered.

Again, what if Mr. Gore had won in that bizarre scenario? Could we have expected the same gracious manner and actions from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their crowd of advisers and supporters? Think about that!

Would Republicans accept losing under such conditions with only a smattering of outcries about a stolen election?

While Democrats considered Mr. Bush’s first term as an illegitimate presidency, the anti-war demonstrations and cries for impeachment came in his legitimate second term for offenses in office. Nobody was leading “tea parties” against taxes, although a burden had been shifted off the wealthy to the rest of us. No one called for rebellion or secession from the union because the deficit was run up by an unnecessary war and those selective tax cuts. Nobody wore guns to protest with Nazi hate signs.

Noting such Republican tendencies and their penchant for conspiracy theories, their belief in ideas about the mysterious birth place of Mr. Obama, suspicions of him as Muslim, accusing Obama of plotting to kill off old people -- then might one not expect quite a different response from Republicans? The current paranoid Republican flap, led again by right wing talk shows, about Obama giving a motivational talk to school kids tells us: “Yes.”

Comedian Argus Hamilton’s recent column noted that while Democrats tend to look at the glass as “half-full,” Republicans say, “Somebody drank half my glass!” Republicans have also been known to circulate the rumor that: “Somebody pushed Humpty Dumpty off that wall. Then Obama’s health care plan rejected Humpty because he was too old.”

And, what mental process makes people so motivated to support predatory insurance companies? What have they been told? What are they thinking? Without a public option, who will be the big winner in all this battle? And the answer is --- the gouging, cold-blooded insurance companies. They will have bought and paid for the right to gouge us through their donations to interest advertising groups and from their lobbyists to congress people from both parties.

We have witnessed disorderly and threatening behavior, the “tea parties” against taxes not yet levied (actually lower), the hate speech and gun-toting, and the touting of insurrection and secession, all by Republicans or organized, supported, and defended by them. This has happened in six months of a new administration overwhelmingly elected with a known platform.

How could we ever believe the Republicans would have accepted the controversial 2000 election in the same gracious manner as Al Gore and his followers? No, they do not accept election of an overwhelmingly popular candidate. Through their use of money and media, they have managed to convince large numbers of Americans that the agenda they voted for is somehow bad, socialistic, and downright un-American.

Of course, much of this is due to enactment of necessary solutions to actual economic problems inherited from the last administration. There is also the matter of accumulated deficits from tax cuts and lavish war spending. Given a clean slate with no huge inherited problems, most of the Obama agenda might have already been passed. The diversion of the economy has taken time, attention, and energy away from proposals to change the future of the country and its citizens.

Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate