Politics

Hostages and Health Care

/ Peter Bell / Leave a comment

Today’s (Friday, Oct. 18) N.Y. Times reported in a front-page article on the “despair, anger and disillusionment” felt by ‘conservatives’ over Congress’ bipartisan vote this past Wednesday to reopen the federal government without defunding the three-year-old health care reform law, popularly termed “Obamacare.’

The talk radio and blogosphere homes frequented by the Tea Party faithful were apparently filled with condemnation for those ‘spineless’ Republicans who abjectly surrendered, rather than proceed with the drastic measures needed to prevent the reforms of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 from taking root in American society much the way pernicious health reforms like Medicare and Medicaid have.

Essentially, what we have seen from the most conservative members of the Republican Party, most of them in the House of Representatives, is the sort of principled “no matter what the consequences” cause-based stands long asssociated with the political left: the to-the-barricades French youth celebrated in “Les Miserables;” the Freedom Riders of the Civil Rights movement, recently celebrated in the film “The Butler;” the environmentalists of the ’70s and ’80s who would chain themselves to redwoods to or lie down in front of bulldozers to block loggers or developers from despoiling what they thought was a vital environment; or the protestors who try to block access to military bases or pound on missiles, in order to stop drone use or prevent funding for nefarious military training provided to right-wing para-militaries in Central America.

The difference this time was that none of the Tea Party conservatives lay down in front of bulldozers, braved Klan members, or risked imprisonment for their cause.   Instead, they decided to take hostages to advance their ‘noble’ cause.  And the hostages were the American people.

Not all the American people, of course.  Just those who wanted to visit a national park or memorial, or those families seeking a military burial for a life sacrificed in service, or anyone who depends on the government for some key piece of his or her daily life.  Or, to boot, those who might benefit from the healthier economy that might exist in the absence of uncretainty and jitters about America’s default on its debts.

But, it was just a temporary hostage-taking — one which would end as soon as the President of the United States capitulated to their demands that he and other Democrats agree not to implement the key pieces of the health reform legislation that was enacted by Congress and the President three years ago.  Legislation which is THE signature reform of the Obama Administration.

“Defund Obamacare, and we will let the government function again,” said the conservatives — the same people who on more than 35 occasions in the past two years have attempted legislatively to repeal the law, without a bit of success.  That is why they had to take us all as hostages.

All in a good cause, right.  As the late, great Sen. Barry Goldwater — the darling of the conservative wing of the Republican party in the 1960s said: “Extremism in the defense of virtue is no vice.”

Well, not exactly.  The great cause for which we were all — to greater or lesser degree — held hostage in order to force concessions from the government was the termination of a law (the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. ‘Obamacare’) that aims to do the following:

1. Reduce the number of Americans who do not have health insurance by about 30 million persons.

2. Provide much more affordable health insurance to millions more, through the establishment of free markets in health insurance, markets in which consumers will have a real chance of being able to compare the costs of insurance plans that provide adequate coverage.  This massive reduction in health insurance costs will be driven by competition — a distinctly Republican concept.

3. Provide incentives for innovation in both the ways health care is provided in America and the establishment of criteria to help health care providers determine what is effective care and what is ineffective care.

4. Provide incentives for both hospitals and healthcare providers to take steps which lead both themselves and their patients towards greater health at a lower cost, i.e., provide and take preventive measures which reduce sickness before it arrives.

5. Create an expert body which will step in to reform Medicare when Congress cannot itself come up with reform legislation that would slow significantly the rapid growth of health care costs that threatens the future stability of the program which assures health care to all Americans over the age of 65.  The reforms adopted or suggested by that expert body will percolate down to help control the costs of ALL healthcare provided in this country.

All these “aims” are to be achieved by a package of measures in the Affordable Care Act which were created and legislated by both Democrats and Republicans working together in 2010 in the House and Senate.  The Democrats and the President gave up a lot of what they most wanted in order to get Republican — and national — support for the legislation.  That legislation aimed to fix what Presidents and Congresses since the time of Harry Truman and Richard Nixon had recognized was a terribly flawed system for the provision of and payment for health care — a system which left 17 per cent of the population without health insurance and an even larger percentage without adequate health insurance in the event of a medical emergency.

Now, the Affordable Care Act may not end up achieving all its aims.  In many states, governors have refused to expand insurance to cover more poor people, even though the Affordable Care Act assures that the federal government will pay for all the costs associated with that expansion for the near future.  Many states have refused to set up the marketplaces in which their citizens could make better informed decisions that should lead to more affordable, adequate health insurance.

In short, the Affordable Care Act may not be implemented as successfully as the Republicans and Democrats who created and enacted the Act had intended.  Nevertheless, its aims for an America in which citizens did not have to live in fear that illness or injury would crush them financially, as well as physically, are noble.  Its aims to make the cost of health care in this country — which spends more per person BY FAR on such care than any country in the world — more affordable are sound management — efficient.

Neither description can be applied to those Republicans who this October so willingly put the American-People hostages in harm’s way to stop a bulldozer that seeks only to build a safer, fairer, more efficient health care system in America.

Tom Hanks, when you finish with those pirates in the film “Captain Phillips,” there are some others whom you should take on.

 

Iran Meets with the P5+1 Regarding Iranian Nuclear Development

/ David Kailer / Leave a comment

This article broke news concerning international talks held in Geneva between the United States, Great Britain, France, China, Russia, Germany, and Iran. The talks centered around Iran’s desire to develop nuclear capacity as a nation, despite historical resistance from the international community.

Iran has received sanctions by the international community because of the fear that Iran is using nuclear development as a guise under which the nation could develop a nuclear bomb. This fear is perhaps supported by the fact that Iran develops and pursues possession of enriched uranium, a vital component of for nuclear weapons.

Iran is a signatory of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and has forcefully argued that as a state, it has the right to develop nuclear capacity to pursue peaceful, civilian applications.

As press on these talks in Geneva has spread, Israel has issued statements arguing against the lifting of sanctions currently in force on Iran. As a critical ally of the United States, Israel’s perspective on these developments will likely have respectable influence.

The proliferation of nuclear capacity, for peaceful or military applications, consistently causes a stir in the international community. When a company has civilian nuclear capacity, there is a continued risk that the nuclear-capable state will pursue weaponization to increase its military capabilities.

As a disclaimer, it is probably obvious that support for Iran’s actions will disappear if it comes to pass that Iran pursues nuclear weapons. If Iran is acting in good faith and does not develop nuclear weapons, their approach might set a good precedent. There is a tension around the world between the nuclear states and the non-nuclear states. Those states who do not possess nuclear weapons might feel like second-rate global citizens, and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons commands non-nuclear states to cease or avoid developing nuclear capacities, putting them at a strategic disadvantage in global conflicts.

Nuclear capability is something of a Pandora’s Box, the knowledge and capability is not going to disappear. The P5+1 should adopt an approach to deal with and/or assist nations who wish to develop nuclear capability, without increasing the risk of nuclear weapon proliferation.

Should the P5, or perhaps U.N. Security Council, be the gatekeeper of nuclear capability? Does every state have an inherent right to nuclear development? What are the risks of a worldwide community with nuclear capabilities, even if developed for peaceful goals?

Obama Interrogates Terror Suspects on Boats, Not at Guantanamo: Does It Matter?

/ David Kailer / Leave a comment

Obama Administration Questioning Suspected Terrorists On Ships Rather Than CIA ‘Black’ Sites

This article discusses the Obama Administration’s emerging trend of detaining and questioning suspected terrorists aboard United States vessels at sea. This approach is the current administration’s response to George W. Bush’s reliance on Guantanamo and other “black sites” as locations for prolonged detention.

Bush’s policy engendered a great deal of controversy on political, legal and moral grounds, as United States citizens dealt with the reality that the federal government was detaining individuals far outside the reach of constitutional due process and typical criminal law procedures.

As part of his campaign platform, Obama insisted that Guantanamo Bay would be closed down, and that his administration was committed to prosecuting suspected terrorists within the currently established boundaries of criminal law and procedure.

While this is clearly a laudable goal from a civil liberties perspective, Obama’s administration has run into difficulty because their civil liberties approach is not the most efficient method of waging the War on Terror and protecting national security interests.

The United States population is generally familiar with the concept of Miranda Rights: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney, if you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you…” and so on. The reality of the situation is that a suspected terrorist who is “Mirandized” is less likely to talk in order to minimize the government’s criminal case. Inevitably, this lack of information hurts the operators in the national security arena because they must protect national interests with less intelligence than if suspected terrorists were forced or encouraged to give up their information.

The administration’s solution to resolving the tension between these two objectives has been to detain suspects on at-sea vessels, classifying them as enemy combatants under the laws of war and the Laws of Armed Conflict while subjecting them to interrogation for valuable intelligence. Once this phase is completed, these suspected terrorists are re-questioned in accordance with constitutional criminal procedure so that the government can build a case against them for civil prosecution; any information given by the suspect before being read their rights is inadmissible in a court of law.

While the Obama Administration’s position is understandable, their solution is not all that distinguishable from the Bush Administration’s approach. Under both approaches, individuals suspected of terrorist activities are detained in an adversarial location and subjected to various “interview” techniques in the hope of gathering national security information.

It is easy to consider that the Obama approach might be more about satisfying the popular conscience than providing meaningful civil liberty protection.

Does the Obama Administration’s approach do a meaningful job of protecting the civil liberties of individuals suspected of terrorist activity? Is the population concerned with the civil rights of non-American citizens accused of suspected terrorist activity? Is there are more effective or efficient way of resolving the tensions between civil rights and the need for the best intelligence for the national security establishment?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/08/obama-terrorists-ships_n_4063003.html?ir=World&ref=topbar

Representing the LGBT Community

/ Eric van der Vort / Leave a comment

Towleroad has a round-up of recent discussions that have centered around members of Congress (MCs) who are members of the LGBT community, yet have voted against generally liberal or progressive positions (most recently voting with the GOP majority in the House to ‘shut down’ the government).  This has led to a good deal of debate about the disconnect between LGBT elected officials and the putatively progressive community they are part of.  Michaelangelo Signorile describes the voting behavior in question:

Since taking office, Sinema has voted with the GOP against economic justice issues that progressives, including LGBT activists, view as crucial. Both she and U.S. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), an openly gay former Clinton aide, also elected for the first time in 2012, have voted with big banks and Wall Street time and again. Right out of the gate, Maloney, who took a lot of Wall Street money, voted with the GOP on the debt ceiling early this year, and actually co-sponsored a bill that would roll back reforms of the very Wall Street practices that led to the economic collapse. He even voted with the GOP to take authority over the Keystone XL project from the president. Like Sinema, he also voted to jeopardize Obamacare or shut down the government. And he too was supported in his election campaign by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, the Human Rights Campaign, and other gay and progressive groups, touted as a progressive.

The assumptions behind the idea that Sinema and Mahoney should vote in accord with liberal or progressive values are, I would argue, fairly faulty.  At the core of this argument is an assertion that there is a connection between liberal or progressive values, on the one hand, and LGBT identity on the other.  While it is true that there is a tendency in the LGBT community to vote for Democrats and Democratic candidates, this is hardly a universal trait and, more critically, is a poor measure for the whole panoply of political attitudes.  Party ID is a useful but blunt measure for policy preferences.  For example, some measures show that in the most recent presidential election, LGBT voters favored President Obama 3 to 1. However, polling done prior to the election indicates that much of this may have more to do with Obama’s favorable stances toward LGBT issues rather than universal approbation of Obama’s or Democratic policies more generally.  As just a few examples: 60% of respondents in the Logo TV poll report supporting the Affordable Care Act while approval ratings among LGBT voters are higher than the general population, but, aside from gay rights issues, the approval ratings for Obama’s handling of health care, general economic issues and unemployment/jobs each hovers around the 60% mark.  These results indicate that perhaps 2/3 of LGBT voters are support or are in agreement with Obama and the Democrats on important issues of the day.

The White House’s record on LGBT rights in general has been strong.  It is equally indisputable that, over time, the Democratic party has grown more friendly to the LGBT community than the Republican party.  The connection that Signorile and others bemoan between liberal or progressive values and LGBT voters, citizens and representatives is not created by attitudes on economic issues, foreign policy and so on.  Rather, as political scientist Kenneth Sherrill has argued, what may be driving much of this partisan loyalty is a sense of shared fate (a sense of group identity or shared consciousness that can lead to perceptions of common interest) — many LGBT voters may default to the Democratic option because of their positons on LGBT issues.  To infer from this that the majority of LGBT individuals share a liberal or progressive outlook is faulty inference.  Normative desires for LGBT representatives who are also ideologically “pure” members of the Democratic coalition are fine, but to turn these into operative assumptions that LGBT voters are primarily or predominantly liberal is a step too far.

Following Windsor, Lawsuits Take Aim At Pennsylvania Same-Sex Marriage Ban.

/ Matthew McKeon / Leave a comment

Like many other states, Pennsylvania bars same-sex marriage by statute.  23 Pa. Cons. Stat. §§ 1102 and 1704 (1996).  Unlike other states, Pennsylvania’s ban is currently being challenged at all levels of government.  This drive is even visible at the local level: Reuters reported that the county clerk of Montgomery County issued more than 170 marriage licenses to same-sex couples between late July and mid-September, when a state court ordered him to stop.  In the state legislature, two representatives in the lower house plan to introduce a bill on October 6 that would override the existing ban and permit same-sex marriages.

While acts of civil disobedience and bold legislative proposals may inspire marriage equality advocates, the Republican governor and the Republican majorities in both houses of the state legislature are unlikely to be so moved.  In the end, the most significant threat to the state ban is a pair of lawsuits filed in two different federal district courts.  Both suits are the direct result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013).  In Windsor, the Court struck down Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which permitted the federal government to withhold federal recognition for same-sex marriages entered into in states and jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal.  Although Justice Anthony Kennedy based the Court’s holding in part on the traditional supremacy of states in regulating marriage, other parts of his reasoning paradoxically provided fertile ground for federal challenges to state same-sex marriage bans.        

The first challenge, Whitewood v. Corbett, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania just days after the Supreme Court handed down its opinion in Windsor.  In their complaint, the plaintiffs challenge Pennsylvania’s ban on same-sex marriage on the grounds that denying same-sex couples the right to marry in Pennsylvania violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause and Equal Protection Clause.

Quoting Kennedy, the plaintiff’s complaint alleges that the state ban “‘tells [same-sex] couples and all the world- that their relationships are unworthy’ of recognition.”  The complaint also references the part of Kennedy’s reasoning which addressed a significant group of people affected by  government’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriage: the children of same-sex couples.  The plaintiffs claim that the state ban “‘humiliates the…children now being raised by same-sex couples’ and ‘makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.’” Governor Tom Corbett—himself the primary defendant in Whitewood–has moved to dismiss the case.

The second challenge, Palladino v. Corbett, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania in late September.  Although a record of their complaint was not available at the time of this article’s posting, Alfred Lubrano of the Philadelphia Inquirer reports that the plaintiffs in Palladino are challenging the state ban on the grounds that it violates Full Faith and Credit.  The plaintiffs, two women who were lawfully married in Massachusetts, assert that it is unconstitutional for Pennsylvania to not recognize their marriage.  While it remains unclear if the plaintiff’s will reference Kennedy’s reasoning in Windsor, they echoed Kennedy’s consideration for children of same-sex couples at a recent press conference, stating that their young son “doesn’t know he’s a second-class citizen in Pennsylvania, where we’re not considered married.”

On top of the suits themselves, a high-profile schism in Pennsylvania’s executive branch may complicate the state’s defense of the law.  Despite being named as a defendant in both Whitewood and Palladino, Pennsylvania’s Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, has publically denounced the state ban as unconstitutional and has stated that she will not defend it in federal court.  Kane’s position puts her at odds with Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican who supports the state ban and – perhaps at the suggestion of Rick Santorum – recently compared same-sex marriage to incest.  With developments in both cases on a weekly basis, Pennsylvania remains at the center of the nation’s debate over same-sex marriage.