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The Operation Succeeded but the Patient Died

2011-06-26T17:56:00.003-04:00

Oops, they did it again.

The Boston Glob e has once again written about the Massachusetts mandatory health insurance plan without ever asking the critical question: "Are people getting the health care they need?"

They ask whether people have insurance coverage. Sure, since they'd be scofflaws if they didn't! But being covered is not the same thing as getting care: not when you can buy insurance that doesn't kick in until after you pay a high deductible. That kind of insurance is a subsidy from the working poor to the health insurance industry: pay for something you can never use.

They ask whether it saves the state money. That's an important question, but only AFTER you answer "Are people getting the health care they need?" Because surely the state could save even more money by letting people die. Cost is not the primary issue, any more than coverage is. The primary issue is health.

They ask how small businesses react. That's a good question. Small businesses are justifiably concerned that they are subsidizing large health insurance companies, hospital chains, and the state. But it really shows the bias of the Globe that they ask about small businesses and not about the people who work in them.

They ask what effect this plan will have or should have on Romney's presidential campaign. Show me a mom working two jobs to support her family who's paying for health insurance and who still can't afford routine doctor's visits for her children who cares about that question. Find me one. Then I'll agree that the Globe cares even one little bit about the working people who need real health insurance--not the plan we've got.

Patience as Leadership

2011-06-22T19:03:00.007-04:00

I have tutored a lot of bar and bat mitzvah students on Parshat Sh'lach Lecha, the portion of the Torah before the wandering in the wilderness when Moses sends twelve spies to scout out the land--but no one has ever talked about it the way Aaron O'Malley did last week at Temple B'nai Brith.

Aaron didn't focus where most people do, on the difference between the ten spies (that evil minyan!) who said it would be impossible to conquer Canaan and the two (Caleb and Joshua) who basically said, "Buck up, people, God told you you could do it." He also didn't tackle the daunting question of why the Torah portrays God as telling the Jews to take the land by force--especially when (according to archeological records) they actually moved in gradually and absorbed the Canaanites as much as they displaced them.

Instead, O'Malley focused on two leaders' reactions to the spies' report. Moses hears his people giving up hope and murmuring about going back to Egypt and slavery, and he falls on his face as if somebody has just died. Joshua, his young assistant, says (in the Etz Hayim translation):

The land that we traversed and scouted is an exceedingly good land. If the Lord is pleased with us, He will bring us into that land, a land that flows with milk and honey, and give it to us; only you must not rebel against the Lord. Have then no fear of the people of the country, for they are our prey [literally, "our bread"--DF]: their protection has departed from them, but the Lord is with us. Have no fear of them!" (Numbers 14: 7-9]

I am not surprised that O'Malley found Joshua's response more admirable. He is the son of a lawyer and an artist/activist, and he prides himself on speaking up. That doesn't take into account how many times before that Moses had overcome his people's resistance and how tired he must have been of apologizing for them to God.

What's more, there's no indication that Joshua's exhortation had any more effect than Moses' public show of shame. In the very next sentence of text we hear:"As the whole community threatened to pelt them with stones, the Presence of the Lord appeared in the Tent of Meeting to all the Israelites." It took an act of God to keep the community from turning on "them": not just Moses, but also Joshua, and even the bar mitzvah boy's namesake, Aaron the priest.

Different styles of leadership fit different historical moments. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do but hang in there. There's a reason "forty years in the wilderness" has become a proverb for a long, hard period that tries one's patience. Here's hoping we who suffered through the Bush years and are now gritting our teeth through the Obama years can live long enough to see the Promised Land.

Six Days Shall You Labor

2011-06-17T17:42:00.003-04:00

It's the end of another work week, and all week I have been carrying with me a thought on last week's Torah portion, B'haalotkha. (I heard it chanted at Ilana Pliner's bat mitzvah.)

1 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 2 Speak to Aaron and say to him, "When you mount the lamps, let the seven lamps give light at the front of the lampstand." 3 Aaron did so; he mounted the lamps at the front of the lampstand, as the Lord had commanded Moses.

The words "Aaron did so" could be translated in different way: "Aaron did YES!" According to the medieval commentator the Vilna Gaon, as cited in Etz Hayim:

Day after day, year after year, Aaron's attitude never changed. His work never became routine or boring. He approached each day with the same sense of reverence he brought to his first day.

What a blessing Aaron had, to feel and act that way! At the end of a week of work, while I welcome a day of rest, I pray to greet next week with the attitude of Aaron.

The Invisible Army

2011-06-15T05:59:00.002-04:00

We treat our active-duty military like tools and our veterans like bums. But there are more contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan than there are military--and we treat some of them like slaves. Please read Sarah Stillman's article "The Invisible Army," from The New Yorker. Then tell me how in good conscience any of us can support fighting foreign wars, when this is the result.

Penny-wise and Patriotism--foolish

2011-06-14T06:43:00.003-04:00

As I have previously pointed out, when the U.S. government sends troops to war, it condemns them to all kinds of health problems, from PTSD to cancer to rape. Now, the Ryan budget favored by so many Republicans in the House of Representatives would end VA healthcare for over 1.3 million veterans (as my friend Mark Alston-Follansbee, a vet himself, quotes The Hill magazine reporting).

By doing so, we would save enough money to keep the troops in Afghanistan for not even thirteen days. This is dumb as well as disloyal, penny-wise and patriotism-foolish. Who is supporting our troops when they come home?

We have to do that ourselves. We have to fight to change the priorities of the country. While we're doing that, however, we can at least on a personal level treat vets as our neighbors and fellow human beings. Please read this article by my friend veteran Bill Shelton for tips on how.

Here Comes the Neighborhood

2011-06-05T20:09:00.003-04:00

I distinctly remember that early in Rona's real estate career, a prospective client told her, "We don't want to live in no multi-cultural neighborhood." She heard the word multi-cultural pronounced with such distaste, she instantly knew it was code for, "We don't want to live with no niggers." Rona invited these buyers to find themselves another agent.

Things have changed. Today, it might be a lot harder to avoid living in a neighborhood where your neighbor has a different race than you do. The Boston Globe published a map showing the diversity of different neighborhoods in the city, and only a few are islands unto themselves. I wish they would have extended the map into Somerville and Cambridge! Still, it tells the story: most of us now choose to live in neighborhoods where there are "enough" people "like me"--but not too many. I think that's a sign of progress.

This Little Light of Mine

2011-06-04T17:09:00.003-04:00

My friend Rabbi Arnie Fertig is especially fond of the priestly blessing. As each student I tutor for bar or bat mitzvah goes up to the Torah on his or her special day, Arnie gives them that three-part blessing, and again at the end of the service, he gives it to the whole congregation:

May God bless you and keep you.

May God make God's face shine upon you and be gracious to you.

May God turn God's face toward you and grant you peace.

You could really examine each detail of this blessing and find it full of meaning. Today, at Nate Serisky's bar mitzvah, it was the beginning of the second line that struck me: "May God make God's face shine upon you." Sometimes when we look at an inspiring leader, we think they glow with an inner light. We make the mistake of thinking that they are uniquely brilliant. We could never be like them, we imagine, and we let ourselves be overshadowed. In dark times, we wait for someone else to show us the light.

When we think like that about leaders, we are making the same mistake people make when they think the moon is shining upon them. As we now know, contrary to centuries of folklore, the moon only reflects the light given to it by the sun. The few people who have stood on the moon and looked at the earth found that it, too, shone in the sky.

In the right circumstances, anyone can catch the divine spark and be a leader, illuminating the way for the rest of us. Any other idea of leadership is the merest moonshine. But so often, I know, I stumble along in the dark. When it happens to be me who lights the path, it does feel like a moment of grace, and a blessing. That's the blessing I wish for Nate, Tia, Brandon, Olivia, and my other students past and future: that for a moment, they bring clarity to us all.

So When IS the Right Time?

2010-12-09T16:16:00.003-05:00

You may have noticed a certain audacious argument coming from elite circles about why we shouldn't be letting the Bush era tax cuts expire. The argument is that in the middle of a recession, it's the wrong time to ask people (even very rich people) to pay more in taxes. They need to have more cash in hand so as to spend more, which means industry will produce more, which means they'll hire more people...a virtuous circle leading to economic recovery.

It's funny how corporations, bankers and politicians who used to think they could control the economy simply by raising or lowering interest rates have rediscovered John Maynard Keynes just when they might have to fork over more in taxes. But the audacity of the argument is that it can be used at any time. If we are in recession, we don't want to raise taxes lest it make things worse. If the economy is improving, that's the wrong time, too: do you want to choke off the recovery before it really takes effect? And if the economy is going great guns, why raise taxes and ruin the great thing you've got going? It's as if the whole purpose of government were to avoid taxing people--not to spend taxes wisely for the public good.

Now we are hearing a similar argument about putting people out of work. It seems it's always a good time to "downsize" and never a good time to make sure more people have jobs. "That's the story at State Street Corp., which recently announced the elimination of 1,400 jobs, including 400 in Massachusetts. Those jobs are gone, even though State Street last reported profits of $427 million, up about 20 percent from a year ago," reports Joan Vennochi in the Boston Globe.

There's a word for this in Yiddish: chutzpah. The old joke said that chutzpah means murdering your parents and asking the court for mercy because you're an orphan. The new joke is the chutzpah of corporate fat cats who justify their huge profits because they "give us jobs"--and then increase their profits by taking those jobs away.

The Limits of Power

2010-11-24T06:21:00.004-05:00

Americans confuse freedom with a never-ending abundance of goods. As the economic power of the U.S. has declined, we have naively relied on military power to keep the goods flowing. But this has cost us our real freedom: freedom from an imperial presidency that keeps spilling the blood of our own citizens (and the citizens of many other nations) in a fruitless attempt to create a permanent American empire. We need to get over our illusions and embrace what's really possible and necessary. Ending the threat of nuclear war, for instance, is achievable in a way that ending terrorism is not.

These are the lessons that Andrew J. Bacevich wants us to learn. His short book The Limits of Power lays them out in clear language, with compelling examples, in a factual manner but with the courage to point out when American policy is stupid, or absurd, or self-destructive. Bacevich has the experience to write this book. He retired from the Army at the rank of lieutenant colonel and now teaches history at Boston University. He also possesses the moral authority. His son, Andrew Jr., followed his father's path into the military and died in Iraq in 2007.

I tremendously respect Bacevich's honesty, intelligence, and well-placed outrage. He is politically conservative and intellectually rooted in Reinhold Niebuhr and the "enlightened realism" school of foreign policy, whereas I am a man of the Left and rooted in Marx and the analysis of imperialism that grew up in the U.S. around the Vietnam War, but we both see the folly of this country's course in foreign affairs.

Where I think Bacevich falls short is that he roots this problem in a moral failing. Using 19th-century language, he accuses Americans of "profligacy," meaning a wasteful addiction to consumption without any regard for the consequences for ourselves or others in the long term. I can't argue with that as a description, but it falls short as an analysis. Why has our culture grown in this direction? Isn't it because corporate capitalism requires an endlessly expanding market of people to buy things they had no idea they needed before they were produced? When people stop spending more than they can afford, this economy falters, meaning people get thrown out of work. Pretty soon, they can afford even less...and so it goes.

It's not a moral failing that makes the pursuit of abundance the goal of U.S. foreign policy. It's a contradiction within our economic system. Bacevich speaks eloquently about the limits of power, but he does not observe the limits of capitalism that have pushed us toward using power willy-nilly as a last resort to avoid economic decline. It will take more than sermons about profligacy to change something that's so fundamental to the way work, investment, consumption, leisure, and political power are all organized in this country.

It may take a catastrophe. I hope not, and if we avoid a catastrophe, it's because people like Bacevich sounded the trumpet for a new way of thinking. Even if he hasn't totally achieved that himself, he deserves thanks--and your reading time. (You can also see an interview with him on Democracy Now!)

The Audacity of Disappointment

2010-10-11T20:06:00.006-04:00

Why are we so disappointed with Barack Obama? A recent piece in the Boston Globe blamed it on our brains. "Research suggests that even when people know that someone has nothing but bad options to choose from, they still blame the decider for a bad outcome." Even worse: as time goes on, we think in more and more glowing terms about "what might have been if different decisions had been made, different policies pursued, or different politicians elected," and therefore feel even more disappointed with what actually happened.

The psychological explanation of "the big letdown" is a conservative explanation. It implies that things never could have been as much better as we think. Hope and change are delusions. As Hegel said, what is, is right--because TINA (There Is No Alternative).

How about a political explanation instead? We are disappointed with Obama because as a candidate, he seemed to get it that radical change in this country is urgently needed, and then as President, he forgot all about that. We are disappointed because he and his advisors said, in so many words, that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste--and then proceed to waste it, by failing to explain to the country what got us into this mess and what it would take to get us out, permanently. We are disappointed because it doesn't matter what options it seemed he had: the reason we elected him was to create new options. We are disappointed even if we knew all along ( as many of us did, and wrote) that Obama was a cautious technocrat by training and inclination. We are disappointed because we need and deserve better--and because not to be disappointed would be to accept the unacceptable state of affairs in which we continue to live.

Extreme Words about Smug Moderates

2010-10-01T17:43:00.003-04:00

I hate smug moderates.

Scott Lehigh of the Boston Globe recently ended a column on taming the deficit by saying, "But even if you’re a left-winger insistent that it all be solved with taxes or a right-winger adamant that spending cuts are the only acceptable remedy, the Pew report is still well worth your while."

Has Lehigh ever met a real left-winger? If he had, he might know that we do want spending cuts: on wars of choice, and military hardware we don't need that mainly fattens the wallets of military contractors. We also want to end tax giveaways, like the ones that let many millionaires and multi-nationals avoid paying a nickel for the common good. If you want those things, maybe you're a left-winger too. Welcome to the club!

We also want taxes, on the right things, for the right purposes. A war surtax on the people with the highest incomes would be reasonable and fair--and it might also prevent future wars. A small wealth tax could go a long way toward closing the deficit that has middle-of-the-roaders so worried.

But the fact of the matter is that when millions of people are out of work, or working part-time, or doing two or three jobs that don't pay enough individually to support a family, this is not the time to be worrying about deficits. Franklin Roosevelt listened to people like that, and it extended the Depression for years after it could have been over. People like that: good, sensible, cautious people who thought they knew what left-wingers stood for and opposed it.

Moderates. Pfui. As a real left-winger, Jim Hightower, says, "There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos."

Time for Less Positive Thinking!

2010-09-22T20:22:00.004-04:00

I understand that people who are out of work have to stay positive, as an article in the Boston Globe reported today. It's a psychological necessity--even if it gets extreme at times.

Steve Kitay, laid off from Fidelity Investments, made a vow to stay upbeat during his job search, even as his wife, Cilla, was diagnosed with breast cancer. “Nobody wants to talk to you if you’re negative,’’ said Kitay.

And he's right, unfortunately. But the rest of us, those who have jobs, should not stay positive. It's our duty to be critical--and even negative.

We should think critically about the claims that people are personally responsible for their unemployment. It took years and years of rapacious profits and mendacious politics to get us to this point. Close to one out of every six people in Massachusetts are not living in poverty because of character flaws. This is a social problem.

We should also think critically about the claims that government has done all it can do and that it's time to worry about deficits. There is no history to back that up, and the economic theory that supports laissez-faire and trickle-down is the same theory that got us into the recession in the first place. Even Alan Greenspan confesses that.

We should be negative. We should say no to tax breaks for the rich, bonuses for the speculators, and war profits for Halliburton and Xe (which is really Blackwater but dares not speak its name). We should say no to wars that waste the lives of people back home as well as those who are killed and maimed in battle. Unemployed people cannot afford to be negative? Then they must depend on us to do it. We cannot afford to be brightsided any longer.

Justice and Lovingkindness

2010-09-20T20:50:00.002-04:00

One of the most haunting melodies of the High Holy Day season is the one that wafts the prayer Avinu Malkeinu up to the rafters at my synagogue, Temple B'nai Brith, every year. The words are equally poignant. Taken literally, they ask God to answer our prayers and show us a grace we don't deserve, because our good deeds are nothing close to what they should be.

This year, I read the prayer against the grain. I know that aseh imanu tzdakah va-chesed means that we ask God to show justice and lovingkindness in God's dealings with us. I choose to read "with us" as meaning "through us." As John Kennedy once said, "Here on earth God's work must truly be our own." When we chanted Avinu Malkeinu, I prayed that we in this community become the agents of justice, and of kind and loving deeds, that we would normally think are too much for us to achieve. This poor world needs so much from us. It is so daunting sometimes. Let us find the strength to go on working for a better world.

You Don't Have to be Jewish..or Even Believe in God

2010-09-11T14:14:00.007-04:00

Last Saturday, the weekly Torah portion pictured God saying about the people who are about to enter the Promised Land, "They will forsake me and break my covenant" (Deuteronomy 31:16). Reading that verse reminded me of a very similar verse in Jeremiah, which states: "[They] have forsaken me and have not kept my Torah." To which the Pesikta D'Rav Kahana, a 5th- to 7th-century midrash, glosses: "If only they had forsaken me--and kept my Torah!"

Torah literally means teaching, instruction. It is not only the contents of the five books of Moses, or even of the whole Hebrew Bible: it's the tradition that's developed--and still developing, this instant--about how we should live our lives. As the rabbis read it, the God who is a character in the Torah (narrow meaning) says that we don't have to believe in God as a reality in the universe at large. What we have to believe in is Torah (larger meaning): that there is a way to lead a moral life as a person and as a society, and that studying to understand it and to walk in that way is the most important thing we can do.

A God who can say that I don't have to believe in God: that is a God I can believe in! Even if that God doesn't happen to exist (as Stephen Hawking is now arguing, and which would be a most inconvenient truth), that God is still the moral example I can follow and in whom I can put my trust. And my belief that I am in partnership with the moral force of the universe allows me to be partners with you, whether or not you believe in God.

So let's make this world better. We'll find out about the next one if and when we get there.

We Are NOT Out of Iraq

2010-09-06T06:46:00.003-04:00

President Obama's declaration last week that combat operations in Iraq have ended is just as big a lie as President Bush's banner, "Mission Accomplished." Your tax dollars and mine are still paying to defend a government in Baghdad made up of warlords who have the same approach to women that the Taliban does. The money is not going to GI's anymore. It is going to mercenaries.

As Derrick Jackson pointed out in the Boston Globe, as the regular military stood down, the shadow military stood up.

A July report from the Congressional Research Service indicates that the number of private security personnel has risen by 26 percent during the drawdown. The report also says there are 11,600 private security forces in Iraq operating under the Department of Defense, a number corroborated by the federal bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting. So the total US security force level in Iraq — both military and private — is around 64,000.

Regular U.S. troops and spies have treated Iraqis in ways that poisoned the name of the U.S.: remember Abu Ghraib? What do we think will happen when soldiers-for-hire, including the infamous Blackwater under its new name of Xe, are in charge of U.S. interests in the country?

We in the U.S. may want to "turn the page" on Iraq, but our debt to the Iraqi people is still on the books.

Who's Responsible?

2010-09-05T07:13:00.005-04:00

Rosh Hashanah, the head of the Jewish year, begins at sunset this Wednesday night. It's a joyous time, with many beautiful melodies and the sound of the shofar wafting through the synagogue sanctuary, which is filled with friends and neighbors I might not see more than a few times a year. There are folk customs like eating apples dipped in honey and casting the failures of the past year into the river in a ceremony called tashlich. Even Jews who are not religiously inclined tend to get together with family and friends to celebrate the season.

Yet for many thoughtful Jews, the festivity of the new year is overshadowed by Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, that falls ten days later. Many of us don't know what to do with this holiday. It is not that we think we are so perfect. We are acutely aware of our failures to live up to our highest ideals. Judaism also stresses tikkun olam, the repair and perfection of the world, so it is not only our personal shortfalls that weigh on our conscience at this time: we feel responsible for the planet!

With such a highly tuned sense of moral responsibility, some Jews find a whole day when we focus on repenting for our sins of omission and commission unbearable. I have felt this way, some years in my life. If you are struggling to be joyous this new year, knowing that Yom Kippur looms ahead, I have one thing to say to you:

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'I have pardoned them, just like you asked."

Where do we see this line in the liturgy? During the Kol Nidre service, the very first set of prayers at sunset on the eve of Yom Kippur! We spend the next twenty-seven hours searching our souls and praying (mostly as a community) for forgiveness and the power to do better, knowing that we are already forgiven!

This might seem illogical to those who think of God as a divine scorekeeper, counting points in favor and points against each person. To me, it makes the deepest sense. It reflects my understanding that God never forsakes us and always wants to see us do better. On Yom Kippur, one day a year, we stress the aspect of God as judge--but that is within a year-round understanding that God and we are loving partners, engaged in a great work together. God needs us as we need God. We are all going on together after Yom Kippur.

If that is too serious for you, then please take the words of Heinrich Heine to heart instead: "God will pardon me. It's his business."

A good, sweet year to all.

Happy New Year

2010-09-05T06:37:00.004-04:00

Hello again. I haven't been posting very much this past year, and not at all in the last few months. That's partly because it's been the busiest year of my life at work. Because of thre recession and because of economic stimulus funding, we've been able to add new programs and help many more people who were about to lose their homes, or who needed food stamps and fuel assistance to make sure they could both heat and eat...or who took the longer view and enrolled in our job readiness course, believing that sooner or later, jobs would be available again. That's all to the good, of course--but it has meant I have personally been responsible for submitting four times as many reports to Washington as in 2008. I came home each day and felt more like going to bed than like writing a blog.

I have to admit, though, that what really held me back was the sinking feeling that nobody was listening. I am not so vain, or so enamored of the sound of my own voice, as to send my words out to the blogosphere just for my own satisfaction. Making a difference has always been my passion. Feeling as if I made no difference whatever has kept me from trying, and therefore, I failed to make the small impact it is in my power to make. I am sorry for that. I will try to do better.

I feel a little bit like Peter Pan asking this, but if you want to see more writing from me, please clap your hands--I mean, show your support. Comment on what I've written. Repost pieces you think your friends will want to read. Keep the conversation going. As we begin a new school year and a new year on the Jewish calendar, I hope we can write a new chapter in this book of life.

Use Your Powers for Good

2010-05-21T09:02:00.004-04:00

Rand Paul, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, thinks for the President to criticize (much less regulate) BP, which is spewing oil all over the Gulf Coast is putting the government's "boot heel on the throat of BP."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100521/ap_on_bi_ge/us_rand_paul

He also thinks the federal government used too much power when it passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Restaurants, hotels, and such are private businesses, according to the son of former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, and the government shouldn't demand that they serve black people--just politely suggest that it's the civilized thing to do! Same thing with the Americans with Disabilities Act: just another instance of "big government."

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2010/05/21/tea_party_candidate_faces_heat_for_stance/

When you hear people complain about "big government," remember what they really mean is government that stands up to the powerful people in America. Whether those powers are the white supremacist establishment in 1964 or the corporate elite today, government is the only institution with enough countervailing power to call them to account. But we, the people, have to force the government to use its power in our interests--and we won't do that if we get distracted by people like Rand Paul.

Health Insurance Bill is a Ticking Bomb

2010-04-29T06:31:00.004-04:00

I have been showing how the new federal bill that requires people to buy health insurance resembles the system we have here in Massachusetts, which is wrong and unfair. It forces people to buy coverage without actually getting care. It plays Robin Hood in reverse by sending working- and middle-class people's money to rich insurance companies and hospitals. It stigmatizes women who exercise their right to obtain an abortion. People who don't have health insurance yet think the Massachusetts plan doesn't give them what they need, and they resent having to pay for something that doesn't save them any money.

(It may be true, as my friend Larry Lennhoff says, that people will realize the value of health insurance the moment they have a catastrophic illness. For most of us, fortunately, that means never realizing it. It may also not be true. If the public was going to be on the hook for your care before, and now you are paying for insurance yourself, how does that make you happy?)

What I fear most about the new health insurance bill is that it may make people oppose ALL forms of publicly funded health care. Some people think this has happened already. They read the recent election of State Rep. Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate seat as a referendum on health care. I believe this is a whopping big mistake: the Democratic candidate, State Attorney General Martha Coakley, failed to mount any real campaign after she won the Democratic nomination. In effect, she gave the election away. Furthermore, I believe people took their frustrations with the corrupt Democratic monopoly of the Massachusetts legislature out in the Senate race. It doesn't matter that the two have nothing to do with each other.

Still, I do hear people complaining about the Massachusetts bill in casual conversation--in the public library, for instance, checking out books. People are forming the impression that if the government runs it, it's bound to favor the rich and hurt them. They have a lot of reason to think that, and the mandatory health insurance bill just adds one more. To me, that's the biggest reason to oppose it and want to replace it. When you're alienating voters who should be your strongest supporters, you need to think again--before it blows up in your face.

Stigma against Abortion: What's to Oppose in the New Health Care Bill. part IV

2010-04-20T22:04:00.003-04:00

Abortion is a legal right. What's more, it gives women the opportunity to refuse to give their bodies to pregnancies they don't want, or spend years raising children they may not have the money or the will to raise. No man has to make that choice: the least we can do is support women in the choices they make. Yet the new mandatory health insurance bill passed by Democrats in Congress and signed into law by President Obama paints a scarlet letter on women who choose abortion.

Sharon Lerner wrote in The Nation:

When the debate moved to the Senate... another Democrat, Ben Nelson, led the charge to restrict abortion coverage, proposing an amendment requiring any woman who wants insurance to cover the procedure to write a separate check for that premium. The Nelson Amendment also requires health plans to keep funds for abortion separate.

Apparently, there is no problem with funding agencies that bomb civilians and torture prisoners, but health plans that pay for women to exercise their legal rights are so shameful the government of the people, by the people, and for the people cannot be seen to support them. This is a tremendous step backward for women's rights and health, as well as for equality in America.

Uninsured Don't Think the Answer is Forcing Them to Buy

2010-04-15T06:49:00.002-04:00

I've been recapping the Massachusetts experience with mandatory health insurance, asking what it can tell us about the federal plan just passed. Back in 2008, I wrote:

If you believe the papers, the politicians, or the pundits, the Massachusetts plan to make sure everyone has health insurance--by forcing them to buy it for themselves--is a great success. The uninsured don't believe it, however. Neither do low-income people in Somerville, where I live. Neither do I.

According to the Boston Globe, "The number of uninsured adults in Massachusetts fell by almost half last year." Proponents of mandatory health insurance said "that not only are more people getting coverage, but that only a fraction of taxpayers contested the health insurance mandate."

Sounds like great news, right? It does--until you look at who supports mandatory health insurance and who doesn't. People who already have insurance favor the plan by 71%. Not surprising: it doesn't cost them anything out of pocket, and the taxes needed to fund the plan haven't kicked in yet. But a majority of people who don't have health insurance yet--the people the plan is theoretically supposed to benefit--don't support it, according to a study by the Massachusetts Dept. of Revenue.

In Somerville, where I live, we recently [in 2008] surveyed 537 mostly low-income residents or employees. We asked them what should be the top priority of CAAS, the anti-poverty agency where I work. Keeping housing safe and affordable was the $1 priority (not a surprise, given the high cost of housing in our area). English literacy and finding a job, or a better job, were essentially tied at #2. "Access to health insurance" ranked #3. The people who need health insurance the most are telling us that the Massachusetts plan is still a problem and not yet a solution.

You MUST Buy Health Insurance--Corporations Need Your Money!

2010-04-09T06:44:00.002-04:00

I've been sharing the Massachusetts experience with mandatory health insurance with my readers, so you can know what to expect from the federal plan that's modeled on Massachusetts. Expect Robin Hood in reverse: a big subsidy by the working poor and middle to the richest of the health care providers. I originally published this piece last summer.

Massachusetts requires all residents to buy health insurance, even if it means coverage without care. Buying a health plan with a high deductible means paying for nothing, which is what thousands of Massachusetts residents are doing. But it's worse than that.

It turns out that our state government forced struggling young people and families into the insurance business partly so that hospitals didn't have to give them free care any more. "Today, hospitals typically spend about 1 percent of expenses on free medical care, as measured by the attorney general, half of what they spent before reform made insurance available to many more low-income people," according to the Boston Globe.

Meanwhile, nonprofit hospitals are making a profit out of their tax-exempt status--an exemption granted to them largely so that they could offer free care!

The 10 leading hospital companies benefited from an estimated $638 million in federal, state, and local tax breaks as well as state discounts on borrowing in 2007, the latest year for which complete data are available. More than half of that goes to two large and growing companies, Partners and Children's Hospital. Overall, the 10 hospital companies' tax breaks and other benefits were worth $264 million more than the value of the "community benefits" - care for the poor and other charity work - they reported to the state attorney general that year.

It's important to mention the hospitals that ARE offering a lot of free care: "Three companies - Tufts Medical Center, UMass Memorial Health Care (owner of UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester) and Boston Medical Center - reported spending more on community benefits than the value of their tax breaks as estimated by the Globe." But they are the shining exceptions--and Boston Medical Center is having severe financial troubles because of its commitment to serving the poor.

In short, so-called nonprofits like MGH and Children's Hospital are stiffing the poor, and we are giving them a tax break at the same time. This should be the shame of Massachusetts.

Coverage Without Care: What's to Oppose in the New Health Care Bill. part I

2010-04-03T20:16:00.004-04:00

OK, so last week, in all fairness, I pointed out that the health insurance bill does contain some provisions that will help people--especially really poor people or really young adults (26 and under). In general, however, the national health insurance plan follows the path already trod in Massachusetts. Having lived under it, the Massachusetts plan is not one I would recommend.

What's wrong with it? Plenty. Let's start with one issue I have been observing for almost a year now: coverage without care.

I wrote on May 4, 2009, "Across Massachusetts, people are facing a stark choice: pain or poverty. The mandatory health insurance law forces people to buy some kind of coverage, but often, what people can afford won't pay for the care they need. In today's Boston Globe, Judi Campbell of Northampton says she's putting off hip surgery because she already owes the hospital $1,000 for arthritis-related surgeries her insurance wouldn't cover."

"And yet the Globe and many policy makers proclaim the "success" of the Massachusetts health insurance plan. For shame!"

On June 21, I wrote:

"The Globe reports:

People with robust [sic] health insurance are putting off doctors’ appointments and skimping on prescriptions because they can’t afford the increasing costs of copayments and deductibles, according to managers of patient-assistance hot lines in Massachusetts.

"All right, let's give the reporters credit. Never mind the logical impossibility of health insurance plan being "robust" if you can't actually use it. (The operation was successful, but the patient went broke?) Also, forget about the fact that this only becomes news when it affects middle-class people, the kind who thought they were already well insured. "

"Let's be happy that finally, it's front-page news that the Massachusetts individual mandate to buy health insurance is failing to deliver actual health care to a large and growing number of people. The key word here is "failing." This is not a model for national health insurance. It's an object lesson in what happens when the hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors all design a health plan without the slightest thought for its effects on actual patients."

Next installment: how the Massachusetts health insurance plan is Robin Hood in reverse--and the federal government follows suit.

To be continued over matzah

2010-03-28T13:24:00.002-04:00

All right, the preparations for Passover have put my blogging behind schedule. I will get back to analyzing the health care bill next week, after the seders. In the mean time, here's a very narrow but deep problem with the health care system that the bill won't fix: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/03/28/the_high_price_of_pain/.

Also to Like, but Not about Health

2010-03-24T21:51:00.002-04:00

I forgot to mention that the health insurance bill does some good things on an entirely unrelated subject: student loans. It increases the maximum Pell Grant and forgives the debts of more students quicker. It provides money to community colleges for career training. Most interesting: it makes families who want federally backed student loans get them from the federal government, not from banks. It cuts out the middleman and saves a ton of money.

Question: if the federal government can lend money directly, why can't it buy health care directly? If cutting out the middleman is good in education, why not in health care?

What's to Like about the New Health Insurance Bill

2010-03-24T06:55:00.005-04:00

How should we regard the new health insurance bill that President Obama just signed into law? On Monday, I gave an overview. For the next few days, let's go into the details.

Compared with the system we have now, there's plenty to like about the new plan. Based on a summary in the Boston Globe, here are some of the good points:

More money for states to pay for poor people's health insurance. "Massachusetts would receive a $2 billion boost in Medicaid assistance over 10 years to help pay for insurance coverage for low-income residents." Medicaid plans let poor people get decent health care they couldn't afford otherwise.

More money to help moderate-income people pay for their own health insurance. "Tax credits are provided to help pay for insurance, and that aid is available for people with incomes up to four times the federal poverty level, which is $88,2oo for a family of four and $43,32o for an individual."

Fewer denials of coverage. "The measure would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of a preexisting condition," within six months for children and by 2014 for adults. It also lets young adults stay on their parents' plans until they turn 26 (meaning fewer will go without health insurance), and it makes sure Medicare pays for elders' prescription drugs (eliminating the "doughnut hole" in which, if you paid more than $2,700 a year for prescriptions, you were on your own until your expenses mounted to $6,200). People with pre-existing health problems, young people, and seniors make up a large part of the population! They will all be better off because of these provisions.

Coverage for legal immigrants. Currently, the federal government provides no help at all to legal immigrants seeking health insurance. In 2014, under the new bill, the feds would send money to state governments like Massachusetts which choose to subsidize health insurance for low- and moderate- income legal immigrants the same way as they subsidize low- and moderate-income American citizens.

If your question is, "Will anybody be better off under the new bill than they were before?", then the answer is, "Yes, lots of people will." And I agree with columnist Scot Lehigh that Obama and the Democrats need to go on tour to promote it. They should use every mass marketing and social networking trick in the book to spread the word and build support for the bill.

That doesn't mean I think it's a good bill. Why? Come back tomorrow to find out.

The Blessing and the Curse of the Health Insurance Bill

2010-03-22T08:04:00.003-04:00

Democrats will say that the health insurance bill which passed the House of Representatives last night is a historic expansion of the right to health care. Republicans will say that it's full of loopholes and sweetheart deals and that it costs too much.

They're both right.

We in Massachusetts have lived under something a lot like the new federal health insurance system. We are in a privileged position to tell the rest of the nation what to expect. Over the coming days and weeks, I will try to do just that.

Here's a hint at what you're likely to hear from me. I work in an anti-poverty agency, and the way that both the Massachusetts and the federal bill expand high-quality care to the poorest of the poor is something I can applaud. Plus, everyone can be happy that insurance companies will have to cover people regardless of pre-existing conditions--and that they have to cease and desist dropping people's coverage once they get sick. These are real gains.

For people who are not among the poorest, this bill is bait and switch. It promises health care, but only delivers on health insurance, mostly at our own expense. The kinds of health insurance that many working poor and even middle-income people will be forced to buy won't help them with the things they need most: doctor visits, preventive care, prescription drugs. Instead, they'll be required to send their hard-earned money to fatten insurance company profits for policies that only kick in when they have medical emergencies. By delivering new customers to already-wealthy insurance companies while not paying attention to the daily needs of the working and middle classes, Obama and the Democrats are creating a constituency that will blame them, think of them as out of touch, and be open to manipulators like Scott Brown.

The country would be better off if our rulers had passed the Medicare-for-all type system that most people want. It would include everybody, meet all their basic needs, and cost much less. But it was never seriously discussed. That's why we're left picking out crumbs of good news on a day when we should have been able to feast on victory.

The Real Economy is People

2010-03-04T18:42:00.002-05:00

Note: This entry first appeared as a column in the Somerville Journal.

They say the economy is improving. But you can’t tell it by Anne.

Anne is a graphic designer in her mid-50s. She has made her own living all her life, either in her chosen field or in general office work. She hasn’t been able to find a steady job for the past year. Anne came to the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS), the anti-poverty agency where I work, to apply for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or what most of us still call “food stamps.” She was denied. Having a little bit of savings for her retirement meant Anne was poor, but not poor enough for benefits.

They say the economy is improving. But you can’t tell it by Matt.

Matt is one year out of college with a degree in mathematics. He is working in a corporate mailroom, as a temp. Matt has the skills to do a lot more. His first temp job had him troubleshooting a web site designed to let middle school students study math at their own pace. He had hoped a few months’ temp work would put him in line to use his skills in a permanent entry-level job. No one was hiring. For now, he is sorting the mail.

They say the economy is improving. But you can’t tell it by the Blanco family.
Antonio and Maria Blanco have lived in Somerville since 1988. They have gone to church here and raised their three children here. They both commute into Boston where he works as a janitor and she as a nurse’s aide. Two full-time jobs are not enough to support a family in Somerville. So, four nights a week, Antonio comes home for dinner and a quick hello to his children. Then he heads out again to his second job as a night watchman in an office building. With two-and-a-half full-time jobs, the Blancos are still living at the poverty level.

For whom is the economy improving? Not for tenants living in buildings where the owner can’t pay his mortgage and the bank is taking over and evicting the tenants. Not for disabled people, who have a harder time finding work than average even when the economy is sound. Not for most of the people we call our neighbors. A few are fortunate to work in high-income jobs. Most are struggling to get by.

At CAAS, we are on the side of the struggling. We can help people narrow the gap between what they have and what they need, with services like job readiness training, housing and benefits advocacy, and early childhood education and daycare through our Head Start program. But human service agencies cannot do it alone. If life is really going to improve, all of us, in Somerville and across the country, have to change the way we think about “the economy.”

The real economy is not corporations, nor the stock market, nor the price of real estate. The real economy is people. How many people have jobs that pay a living wage? How many families can pay for the necessities of food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, transportation and childcare without working all day and all night? Who has a sense that they really belong, as a respected member of this community? Who can look forward to a better future?

These are the questions we must ask ourselves. These are the goals we should set for our city and our country. We will know we live in a better economy when the answer to each question is, “We are all doing better, together.”

Don't Get Fooled Again

2009-11-03T09:44:00.006-05:00

Part of my schoolwork in the late 1960s was to make myself immune from media bias. I distinctly remember doing a report about the various ways to slant a news story. I turned the assignment into a set of "Wanted" posters, with descriptions of each technique for manipulating minds. The teacher thought it was very creative, but looking back, I believe I was simply reflecting the attitude of the time. People much older than me were reading Marshall McLuhan and Vance Packard and worrying about "the hidden persuaders." Our minds were under attack, and the enemies were in the advertising industry.

Soon, government got caught spinning the news as well. Instead of a "missile gap" between the U.S. and the Soviet Union (itself a storyline that fit the interests of the Kennedy campaign and the military industries but essentially propaganda), we were talking about a "credibility gap" between what the Johnson administration was saying about the Vietnam War and what the cameras were showing on the evening news. A few years later, the Nixon election campaign concerted its advertising in a way that would be immortalized in The Selling of the President 1968, and then the Nixon administration revealed its own mendacity with the press secretary having to tell reporters, "This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative."

I wonder how the schools I attended knew I would need the skills of media criticism--how democracy would need those skills to be shared broadly among the voting public. A recent article by In These Times senior editor David Sirota says those educators had witnessed a revolution in advertising epitomized by the current TV hit Mad Men, and, he implies, they decided to fight back. But Sirota says we are now in the midst of a new assault. The technique is not the advertising jingle, the purveyance of half-truths, or even the hip use of irony. Now, we are being manipulated by what he calls "outraged denial."

No, of course universal health care is not a viable option. You say different? Socialist!

No, of course Iraq was not a distraction and a terrible waste of money. You say different? Traitor!

No, of course the U.S. never tortures people. Pay no attention to that man beneath the curtain, getting electric shocks to his genitals. It was "enhanced interrogation," not torture, and it saved lives--never mind where or how, that is secret.

The idea is that if people just lie and deny, it will take us the public aback. Surely, we will say, they couldn’t be that cynical. They could never put on those faces of injured innocence and lie to our faces.

Except they have. They still do.

No, of course, the withdrawal of the opposition candidate doesn’t mean that the Karzai government in Afghanistan (which committed fraud in the first round of the election and was poised to do so again) lacks all legitimacy. You say differently? Don't you believe in hope, and change?

Don't get fooled again!

Where's the Outrage--and Where Should It Be?

2009-10-20T07:10:00.004-04:00

Money is not the issue. Power is.

A year after causing the biggest economic meltdown since the Great Depression, corporate chieftains are paying themselves big bonuses again. Many of them get more in bonuses than you or I earn in salary or wages all year. The Obama administration is mildly chiding them. Some columnists (like the Boston Globe's Derrick Jackson) are calling it an outrage. But what they are looking at is just the symptom, not the disease.

Why do corporate CEO's, top managers, and boards get to decide what to pay one another, in an orgy of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"? Why does the finance industry get to accept billions in bailout money from you and me, then refuse to lend to people with good credit, including the small business around the corner? Why, when the U.S. government just saved corporate capitalism from a complete breakdown, does the government still defer to the corporate capitalists who steered us into the ditch to begin with?

Corporations in this country are more powerful than the people we elect to represent our interests. Until we squarely face that problem, shouting about exorbitant bonuses is just a way of letting off steam.

A Yom Kippur Story

2009-09-26T04:23:00.004-04:00

Yom Kippur begins on Sunday night. This story happened, not on Yom Kippur Eve, but instead it happened late one Yom Kippur afternoon in the synagogue of Berdichev. The famous Rabbi Levi Yitzhak, who was known for his great love and compassion, fell asleep on the pulpit just as he was about beginning the day's concluding service.

Actually, he didn't really fall asleep. Those who knew, well realized that this great Rabbi would never really go to sleep in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. Rather, Rabbi Levi Yitzhak did what every wonder-working Rabbi does on Yom Kippur. He ascended to the highest heaven to stand before the throne of judgment in order to find out what the destiny of his beloved community would be for the coming year.

Levi Yitzhak stood in the presence of the great judge sitting on a grand throne -- with the scales of judgment before the Creator of All. The Rabbi eagerly searched the scales of his little town of Berdichev. When he finally did find it, he was shaken. He was terrified. The side of the scale with good deeds was high up in the air with a few pitiful items on it, while the side of the scale with the sins was so full, so heavily weighted that it was as low as it could go, strained to the breaking point.

In desperation, Levi Yitzhak turned to the good Lord and with panic and fear welling up inside he said to God, Master of the Universe, I know that the record of my people in Berdichev is dismal, but what do you expect,dear Lord? If you would have put us into a Garden of Eden, you could expect us to act like angels, but, dear Lord, You placed us into a harsh and difficult setting. What alternative do my poor downtrodden, miserable people have? Sometimes, we must take extreme measures, just to survive.

Levi Yitzhak was overjoyed to find the good Lord in a very receptive mood. With a benign, parental smile, God said to him, "Levi Yitzhak, you have a point. I haven't been fair. I promise that the Jews of Berdichev are going to have a fine year." As a matter of fact, Levi Yitzhak found God in such good humor that he suspected that this might be the moment to convince God to save not only the Jews of Berdichev, but to save all of humankind -- to send the messiah, the redeemer, to save the world.

And so, Levi Yitzhak turned to the good Lord and said: "Master of the Universe, Merciful Parent, how long? Haven Your poor children suffered long enough? They're drowning dear God. They're on the very edge of desperation. Before it is too late, show us Your grace and mercy and send us Your redeemer."

Slowly and behold, God was willing to discuss the matter with Levi Yitzhak. He said to him: "Levi Yitzhak, you put forth a very cogent argument. There is much meritin it. Please sit down. Convince me."

And so Levi Yitzhak was about to sit down to convince the Lord to save the world. When, out of the corner of his eye, he glanced down at his little town of Berdichev, and he noticed that Hayyim, the laundry man, (Hayyim) who was as old as time and as ugly as sin, to whom no one paid any attention -- neglected, isolated, lonely Hayyim -- [Hayyim] had fainted.

Hayyim had been fasting from the previous day; it was getting very late; he could not hold out any long and so he fainted. Levi Yitzhak knew well that he had to rush down to his synagogue and conclude the service so that Hayyim would eat -- otherwise Hayyim would die.

So, here was his dilemma: Whom shall he save? Shall he convince the good Lord to save the world, or shall he save the life of Hayyim, the laundry man?

Actually, the choice was an easy one... Levi Yitzhak turned to God and said, "I would love to sit here dear Merciful Father and convince You to save the world, -- but where is it written that the price of saving the world is the life of Hayyim the laundry man?" And with that, he turned to rush down and conclude the service.

(And) as he was descending from the heights, rushing to save the life of Hayyim, the story concluded, he heard a chorus of angels calling after him: "Levi Yitzhak, you are saving the world!"

Labor Day and Day of Rest

2009-09-13T06:25:00.008-04:00

At the alternative service at Temple B’nai Brith yesterday, my friend Marya Axner led in us a reflection on the rhythm of labor and rest in Jewish life. When we are being true to ourselves and true to God, we don’t work until we fall down exhausted and rest only to work again. Six days we labor, trying to make the world better. On the seventh we rest, thinking about things that matter. When we return to work, that sense of what matters is the mission statement that keeps us on track and helps us do what’s important, let go of what’s inconsequential, and be able to avoid burnout and keep on making a difference for the long haul.

It takes a lot of work to be able to rest.

Practically speaking, to make Shabbat, we have to prepare meals, buy or bake fresh challah, keep candles and wine at hand, sometimes invite guests. To put the week aside with a clear conscience, we have to organize our work in the workplace and our work to take care of our homes, our causes, and our communities so that everything gets done when it needs to and no one is left in the lurch. Even if we have done this, it’s not easy to cast off the uniform one’s mind and soul wear all week and don the splendid robes of the kings and queens we are supposed to become on Shabbat. It’s impossible to do if you work down to the last minute. It takes time, to leave those cares behind and put oneself in the frame of mind to receive a beloved guest, the Sabbath, which the tradition also pictures as a Queen who deserves all the honor we can give her.

I speak about this from personal experience. I am always true to the Sabbath, in my fashion (as the song says)…but it is not easy, only beautiful and right. Here is a poem I wrote about it nearly twenty-five years ago:

A Song of Songs, by Dennis Fischman

I have been a lover to the Queen before.

For me, she set her tender feet

to walking the long road stretching

from yesterday to tomorrow

and I met her halfway

as evening drew a woven shawl around

the bare shoulders of an innocent world

at the fork in the road I stood, singing

“Come, my friend, to meet the bride”

and our twinned flames spurted into falling night.

But now, though she seeks me, I sit

Amongst my books and papers, murmuring

“Not yet: I’m not ready yet,”

Muttering and fidgeting, as if my word

Could hold back the stars.

I have bought no wine, no braided bread—

and here she comes,

laughing, giving voice to song,

“Return us, and we shall return”

and I know

once again, I’ll cajole her with sweet incense

to stay one hour more

and she’ll slip away, whispering

“observe” and “remember” in the same short breath.

Election Distraction

2009-09-09T19:12:00.003-04:00

Should we end the war in Afghanistan as quick as we can, or possibly send in more troops? Can we provide health care (not just insurance!) to everyone who needs it, and will that mean putting private health insurers out of business? Is the recession slowing down, and for whom: is it good news if unemployment is still in double digits in certain regions? How do we stop nuclear proliferation, and global warming? Is it really a sign of progress when a woman in Iran stands up for the right to wear pants without being flogged for it, but women in many parts of the U.S. have to travel for hours to get the reproductive services (including both contraception and abortion) that the Constitution protects? How can the states pay for vital services and schools without going bankrupt?

All these questions, and many more, are serious and should be at the top of the agenda. But in Massachusetts, we're arguing about whether the governor should be able to appoint an interim U.S. Senator to take Ted Kennedy's seat or whether we have to wait five months to elect somebody. Huh?

OK, I know these questions are related. I have a Ph.D. in political science: no need to rehearse the arguments with me. The point is that whether it's an appointment, an election, or a coronation, it's also a distraction. Whoever we elect will only do as good a job as we force him or her to do. We should be focusing on the issues, not the candidates.

...and Beyond?

2009-09-08T07:25:00.000-04:00

It would be much easier to dismiss Tisha B'Av from duty on the Jewish calendar and stop mourning the destruction of the Temple if history had come to an end. So comforting it would be to believe that the Judaism we have is the ultimate goal of a long dialectical process and that what is, is permanent.

We know that history goes on, however. Some years ago, I read an article which predicted that Judaism would continue in America for generations--but that it may not look anything like what we've been used to up to now. It made me wonder. What will go the way of the burnt-offering and the red heifer, into the realm of historical curiosities? Will Jews meet in chat rooms instead of synagogues? (In restaurants, more likely!) Will we study the collected works of Marge Piercy instead of the prophets? Will we all be involved in giving circles and social action and only let rabbis and cantors do the praying? Or, contrariwise, will an ever-tinier group keep the traditions of the synagogue alive while other people start saying, "I'm part Jewish" the way other people now confide, "I'm part Cherokee"?

On Tisha B'Av, and throughout the season of reflection that ends with the High Holy Days and begins again each year, it would be well for us to mourn--in preparation for turning the past into the future. The rabbis of 2000 years ago mourned the Temple even while they made the synagogue the hub of Jewish community. We must be ready to be as strong and creative as they.

From Temple to Synagogue...and Beyond? (part II)

2009-09-07T06:00:00.000-04:00

Is Tisha B'Av a day of grief for us, 2000 years after the Roman Empire turned the Temple into a battered, solitary wall? As I started to say yesterday, my answer is "Yes--and no."

Yes. The destruction of the Temple was more than a symbolic blow, more even than the bitterness of actual conquest. With the Temple lost (as I discussed in my 1991 book Political Discourse in Exile), the Jews could not carry out many of the commandments of the Torah, by which they had lived. Their purpose, their identity, their culture were all in jeopardy. Tisha B'Av can stand for all the time (personal, like when my first wife left me, or social, like when the towers fell in New York and the Pentagon broke open to the sky eight years ago this week) when the world and all meaning seem to crumble.

But no! We do not need to mourn the daily ritual of animal sacrifice. We have not missed the hereditary priesthood and levitical caste living on the labors of the rest of the population. We have found other ways to express our gratitude and our ongoing relationship with the power of the universe, the source of life and justice. Practically everything that we now know as Judaism came about after the Temple was destroyed...because the Temple was destroyed. The rabbis who built the day of mourning into the calendar also build institutions like prayer, study, and fellowship that define Jewish identity today. In the moment after the Temple fell, of course they mourned. But today? Shouldn't we be rejoicing on Tisha B'Av? Shouldn't we be dancing?

And yet.... (see tomorrow's post for concluding thoughts)

From Temple to Synagogue...and Beyond?

2009-09-06T11:56:00.002-04:00

The summer months in America are typically a time for vacation and relaxation. Few Jews and hardly any non-Jews realize that on the Jewish calendar, we are in the middle of a season of reflection. This time of reflection began on Tisha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av, which fell on July 30 this year.

Tisha B'Av marks the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Before there were synagogues, the Temple was the center of religious and cultural life for the entire Jewish nation. The rabbis (textual scholars and teachers) who created the observance of Tisha B'Av clearly wanted it to be the most mournful day of the year. They found ways to believe that not just Solomon's temple was destroyed on that date by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E., but the second temple, too, by the Romans, in 70 C.E., on the very same date. Many other historical tragedies were linked to the ninth day of Av. On the ninth day of Av, we read the book of Lamentations, in a haunting melody whose paradoxical sweetness tears the soul. The rabbis set up a series of special haftarot (prophetic readings chanted in the synagogue) leading up to Tisha B'Av--prophecies of rebuke--and a longer series from Tisha B'Av into the month of Elul--prophecies of consolation. Anyone who follows this whole progression must sense the enormity of the disaster that Tisha B'Av signified to the rabbinic tradition.

Today, for Jews of the 21st century, can we still feel the same way? Is Tisha B'Av a day of grief for us? I would answer, "Yes--and no." For why I would answer that way, please check in tomorrow.

Obama Living Up to Expectations (which is not saying much)

2009-08-17T20:52:00.002-04:00

I am getting tired of hearing how disappointed my liberal friends are with Obama. I am not disappointed, for two reasons. He is precisely the kind of cautious, technocratic middle-of-the-roader he has been all along. And: electing a President is not the same thing as changing the system.

If you want real health care (not some bogus "reform"), you're going to have to agitate, organize, mobilize, stomp, shout, lobby, and in general do all those activist things that have gone out of fashion. Facebook Causes are no substitute for the real thing!

Argentina, and Chile, Cry for the U.S.!

2009-07-15T06:11:00.003-04:00

When a democratically elected government replaced the brutal military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, it took years for the full truth about the former regime's tortures and murders of political opponents to see the light of day. The restoration of democracy was too fragile, and the country was too divided, to withstand an investigation immediately.

Do we live in Chile? President Obama has refused to set up an independent truth commission to find out exactly how much blood is on our hands because of the Bush/Cheney programs of "enhanced interrogation" (torture) and "rendition" (torture by other nations as subcontractors to the U.S.). He has resisted Congressional efforts to get to the bottom of it. It's true that he released more documents about waterboarding than we had ever seen before, and he has said he will not stand in the way if the Justice Department decides there are criminal cases to pursue. But his insistence on looking forward, not back, runs the risk of making him an accomplice after the fact.

How terrible are the crimes of the CIA under the last administration, anyway? According to Jane Mayer in The New Yorker:

The C.I.A. has apparently done nothing to penalize the officer who oversaw one of the most notorious renditions—that of a German car salesman named Khaled el-Masri. He was abducted while on a holiday in Macedonia, and flown by the agency to Afghanistan, where he was detained in a dungeon for five months without charges, before being released. From the start, the rendition team suspected that his case was one of mistaken identity. But the C.I.A. officer in charge at Langley—the agency asked that the officer’s name be withheld—insisted that Masri be further interrogated. “She just looked in her crystal ball and it said that he was bad,” a colleague recalls. Masri says that he was chained in a freezing cell with no bed, and given water so putrid that he could smell it across the room. He was threatened and stripped, and could hear other detainees crying all around him. After several weeks, the C.I.A. officer in charge learned that Masri’s German passport was not a forgery, as was originally suspected, and that he was not the terror suspect the agency thought he was. (The names were similar.) Even so, the officer in charge refused to release him. Eventually, Masri went on a hunger strike, losing sixty pounds. Skeptics in the agency went directly over the officer’s head to Tenet, who realized that his agency had been brutalizing an innocent man. Masri was released after a hundred and forty-nine days. But the officer in charge was not disciplined; in fact, a former colleague says, “she’s been promoted—twice.” Masri, meanwhile, has been unable to sue the U.S. government for either an apology or damages, because the courts consider the very existence of rendition a state secret—a position that the Obama Justice Department has so far supported.

If Obama believes he has no choice but to do this, cry for the United States and its victims!

Further Away from Universal Health Insurance in Massachusetts

2009-06-25T11:20:00.003-04:00

"We don't really care whether everybody gets insurance."

The Massachusetts Health Connector might as well emblazon that message on a banner and hang it the middle of Boston Common. It's what they're saying anyway by cutting the plan back 12%.

Already, as I have noted, many people in Massachusetts had coverage without care, because they couldn't afford to pay for the plan AND the deductible. Instead of paying the doctors, they paid the health insurers for plans that didn't give them anything.

Tuesday, the board of the Commonwealth Health Connector, which runs the mandatory insurance plan, dropped the last vestige of a pretense that everyone would even get insurance (useable or not). Are you a low-income resident, entitled by law to a full subsidy, but you forgot to sign up? Too late now. You and 18,000 people like you are out of luck. Even if you did what you were supposed to and enrolled, the Connector just snapped its collective fingers and took away your dental care. Or were you born in Ireland, or Greece, or Haiti, or El Salvador, and came to this country with full legal status? Tough. The feds aren't going to pay their share to insure you, so Massachusetts has decided you're just too expensive.

What makes it worse is that groups like Health Care for All, who should be marching in the streets, are busy making excuses for Massachusetts instead.

But the group said state officials appear to have made the best of a bad situation. “There’s no other place to go for money,’’ said Lindsey Tucker, the organization’s healthcare reform manager. “. . . My concern is people will not get the care that they need.’

Damn straight they won't! And it is not a health advocate's place to take the state off the hook. There are plenty of places to go for money. We just need politicians with backbones, and voters with consciences. We won't get either by dumping low-income and immigrant residents over the side of the leaky health insurance plan to lighten the load for the rich and powerful in this state.

Finally, They Ask Who's GETTING Health Care

2009-06-21T17:26:00.002-04:00

The Globe reports:

People with robust [sic] health insurance are putting off doctors’ appointments and skimping on prescriptions because they can’t afford the increasing costs of copayments and deductibles, according to managers of patient-assistance hot lines in Massachusetts.

All right, let's give the reporters credit. Never mind the logical impossibility of health insurance plan being "robust" if you can't actually use it. (The operation was successful, but the patient went broke?) Also, forget about the fact that this only becomes news when it affects middle-class people, the kind who thought they were already well insured.

Let's be happy that finally, it's front-page news that the Massachusetts individual mandate to buy health insurance is failing to deliver actual health care to a large and growing number of people. The key word here is "failing." This is not a model for national health insurance. It's an object lesson in what happens when the hospitals, insurance companies, and doctors all design a health plan without the slightest thought for its effects on actual patients.

Morphing into "Bush Light" on Security Issues

2009-06-18T06:33:00.005-04:00

There's more than the proverbial dime's worth of difference between Obama and Bush on domestic policy. In fact, for the anti-poverty agency where I work, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars of difference! But on the questions of intervention abroad and secrecy at home, Obama is rapidly acquiring the taste for an imperial presidency that characterized the previous administration.

Item: wars of choice. Bush famously sent American men and women into the line of fire in Iraq on a fool's errand. There were no weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden had no alliance and very little in common, and Iraq did not threaten the U.S. But the new administration is getting ready for an expanded war in Afghanistan, where U.S. intervention thus far has shifted control from one set of warlords (the Taliban) to another (the Northern Alliance) without making any permanent improvement in the lives of Afghanis and where civil war as soon as the U.S. pulls out seems inevitable.

Obama is also sending money to Pakistan, which more than any other country has offered aid and comfort to al-Qaeda. If Obama has good reasons to believe that the Pakistani military and secret police have changed tunes and now regard al-Qaeda as more of a threat to them than India, he hasn't shared those reasons with the public.

Item: Guantanamo. (Not "Gitmo," an ugly name invented by people who have no respect for the country of Cuba, part of which the U.S. has occupied for decades--imagine if the Cubans had a military base in Baja California!) Obama has pledged to close the prison camp there, site for torture and war crimes that should make all Americans ashamed. Yet he is letting NIMBY opposition keep him from transferring prisoners to U.S. soil to stand trial, and threatening to hold those trials in military commissions that Bush created, not in U.S. courts where a fair trial could be guaranteed. He is also ignoring the well-documented phenomenon of people being held in Guantanamo (and other secret prisons) for no damn reason whatever--just because some local U.S. ally whom they had offended put the "terrorist" label on their heads.

Item: secrecy and assertions of executive privilege. The Obama administration refuses to release logs of visitors to the White House. Dick Cheney took the same stand when he cut deals with the energy industry in secret meetings. The Obama administration also refuses to publish photos of U.S. soldiers, mercenaries, and spies torturing Iraqis or to prosecute torturers. And Obama wants to reserve the right to wiretap people and then try them on the basis of secret evidence. According to the Chronicle of Philanthropy:

President Obama’s administration has told a federal judge in San Francisco that it does not have to release top-secret documents connected to a wiretapping case in which a branch of an Islamic charity in Oregon is suing the government, reports the Associated Press.

The judge told the government in May he would punish it if it did not devise a plan for how the suit could go forward without the release of the documents, the news agency reports. However, the prosecution already had possession of the documents for a short time, when the Treasury Department inadvertently released them. The government has since taken them back.

The al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, whose Oregon chapter is now closed, was designated as an organization that supports terrorism by the federal government in 2004. The documents are a phone log documenting wiretapping of members of the charity, the news agency reports. It says the government did not obtain permission from a judge to place the wiretaps.

Feeling Ill about Health Care Debate

2009-06-17T06:08:00.004-04:00

Following the health care debate is enough to make you sick.

Here in Massachusetts, supporters of the state's mandatory health insurance plan talk about how many people now have insurance and how much money that's going to save the hospitals and the state treasury. Critics mostly talk about the cost of the plan and how, soon, paying for those who can't pay for themselves will drive the state to the poorhouse. Some point out that businesses are providing their employees with health insurance plans that don't meet the minimum standards set out in state law, and daring the state to catch them.

All this is beside the point. The goal should not be to provide people with health insurance but to ensure their right to health care. Plans that cost low- to middle-income households a lot of money up front--plans with a high deductible, to use the industry's bland euphemism--insure coverage without care. And that leaves people just as sick as they were before, just a little poorer.

At the federal level, besides using Massachusetts as a model (!), Obama is doing the usual liberal dance: offering something that makes him feel good but doesn't do the job.

"President Obama will sign a presidential memorandum today to extend benefits to same-sex partners of federal employees, administration officials said last night, but he will stop short of pledging full health insurance benefits," reports the Boston Globe.
"A key Senate committee voted yesterday to expand a children's health insurance program to cover an additional 4 million uninsured children," but that still leaves many uninsured, and it says nothing about what happens to children when their parents fall ill.
The current debate is over whether the federal plan should include a "public option." Proponents say that a public plan would give people more choices--which is only meaningful if the choices are any good, and if they differ in significant ways. They also say competition from a public plan would force private insurers to find ways to cut costs. Critics say the public plan could get a public subsidy and put private insurers out of business.

"In response, Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, has proposed setting ground rules for a public plan that would force it to compete on a level playing field with private insurers." In other words, get rid of the main reason for having a public plan in the first place, its ability to serve huge numbers of people at low cost!

Schumer is no different from the leader of his party in this respect. President Obama has done all but take a blood oath that his plan is not a "Trojan horse" leading the way for a single-payer system. That's exactly what's wrong with it! Single-payer means everybody gets health insurance as a right, the same as the right to vote or the right to a public education. The fact that the Democrats are falling all over themselves to rule out a single-payer solution is what's so sickening about what passes for a health care debate.

You Probably Think This Report is about You

2009-06-06T14:25:00.002-04:00

Are they so vain? Or are "conservatives" like Michelle Malkin decrying the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Rightwing Extremism Report because, despite the fact that it doesn't once use the word "conservative," the report hits too close to home?

According to The Nation (June 8):

The nine-page report was a routine threat assessment issued to law enforcement and counterterrorism officalis that warned of the potential for a raise in homegrown terrorism. It concluded that the combination of an economic downturn and the election of the first African-American president [sic] could cultivate a right-wing "resurgence in radicalization and recruitment," including among disgruntled veterans.

Specifically, as summarized by ThinkProgress:

Anti-immigration: “Rightwing extremist groups’ frustration over a perceived lack of government action on illegal immigration has the potential to incite individuals or small groups toward violence. If such violence were to occur, it likely would be isolated, small-scale, and directed at specific immigration-related targets.”

Recruiting returning vets: “Rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat.”

Gun-related violence: “Heightened interest in legislation for tighter firearms...may be invigorating rightwing extremist activity, specifically the white supremacist and militia movements.”

This is specific and (to anyone who remembers the Oklahoma City bombing) highly credible information. It does not bear the stigmata of ideological bias: "DHS had released a similar report on left-wing extremists a few months earlier." Anyway, who ever accused DHS of being a nest of leftists? Some attention to reality here, please!

It makes me wonder what conservative commentators are thinking when they hear "rightwing extremist" and think it applies to themselves. If they are identifying with the white nationalists and the militia movements, what does that say about so-called mainstream conservatives?

How Fortunate!

2009-06-02T06:16:00.002-04:00

We have been seeing how every clause of the first sentence of Bamidbar can be read as a testimony to God's love for the Jews.

"On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt"-- by specifying the date, the rabbis said, the Torah makes it clear that the census was a joyous occasion. (They actually go on to compare it to a wedding, and the census is the marriage contract or ketubah!)

"In the wilderness of Sinai"--in the desolate places, where human beings often leave their bones, God feeds, waters, shelters, and teaches the Jewish people God's ways for forty years.

"Take a census"--literally, "lift up the head." They will no longer hold their heads down like slaves.

For a coda, let me simply quote what the Midrash Rabbah says about "the Lord spoke to Moses":

How fortunate was Moses! Six hundred thousand people were present, and the priests, and the Levites and the elders, all were present, yet out of these [God] spoke only with Moses!

With midrash, the creative interpretation practiced by the rabbis, there are no boring parts of Torah. It is up to us to be equally creative.

You Must Buy Health Insurance--MGH Needs Your Money

2009-06-01T19:43:00.002-04:00

I will get back to the delights of midrash in a bit--but first, the latest outrage from the Massachusetts health care system.

Massachusetts requires all residents to buy health insurance, even if it means coverage without care. Buying a health plan with a high deductible means paying for nothing, which is what thousands of Masschusetts residents are doing. But it's worse than that.

It turns out that our state government forced struggling young people and families into the insurance business partly so that hospitals didn't have to give them free care any more. "Today, hospitals typically spend about 1 percent of expenses on free medical care, as measured by the attorney general, half of what they spent before reform made insurance available to many more low-income people," according to Sunday's Boston Globe.

Meanwhile, nonprofit hospitals are making a profit out of their tax-exempt status--an exemption granted to them largely so that they could offer free care!

The 10 leading hospital companies benefited from an estimated $638 million in federal, state, and local tax breaks as well as state discounts on borrowing in 2007, the latest year for which complete data are available. More than half of that goes to two large and growing companies, Partners and Children's Hospital. Overall, the 10 hospital companies' tax breaks and other benefits were worth $264 million more than the value of the "community benefits" - care for the poor and other charity work - they reported to the state attorney general that year.

Honeymoon in the Wilderness

2009-05-31T19:44:00.004-04:00

In my last post, I showed how the rabbinical commentary turns the date that Moses took the census of the Jews in the wilderness into an expression of God's love for the Jewish people. If you thought that was an amazing piece of interpretation, look at this: just the fact that God was providing for them in the wilderness was another love token.

"In the ordinary course of events," the commentators say, "when a mortal king goes forth into the wilderness":

Does he provide the same comfort to his courtiers that they would enjoy back in the palace? No. But God gave the Jews comfortable resting places even in the desert!

Does he provide tutors to their children? No. But God gave the Jews three teachers, Moses, Aaron, and Miriam. (Yes the text mentions all three!)

Does he pay the salaries of these officials? No: usually the people have to provide, through taxes. But in this case, it was the other way around. Moses provided manna for the people; Aaron brought the pillars of cloud that shielded them from the desert sun; and Miriam brought a well of water that traveled with the Jews wherever they went!

In the rabbinic mind, the forty years in the wilderness were the honeymoon trip for the marriage of God and the Jewish people. They picture God fondly recalling to the Jews lechtech acharai ba-midbar beeretz lo zeruah, "you followed Me in the desert, in a land that was not sown." They pass over the hardships, the constant whining and complaining, and what they remember is the great love God showed in helping the Jews survive for a whole generation before they entered the Promised Land.

So, just the fact that the census took place in the wilderness becomes the occasion for this romantic nostalgia. Boring parts of Torah? Hardly!

A Day to Remember

2009-05-25T16:24:00.005-04:00

On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt, the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: Take a census of the whole Israelite community.... (Numbers 1:2, Etz Hayim translation)

The midrash on the Torah portion Bamidbar takes each clause of this exceedingly formal sentence and turns it into a passionate declaration of the love of God for the people Israel--starting with the date!

Look how carefully the date of the census is spelled out at the beginning of the Torah portion. According to the Soncino edition of the Midrash Rabbah, this shows that the census was a special recognition by God toward the Jews, a kind of divine thumbs-up.

How does it show that? By contrast. When God announced to the prophet Ezekiel that the Temple would be destroyed, God made the date of the disaster obscure. Ezekiel (according to one interpretation) thought the destruction would occur on the 20th of Av or (according to another interpretation) on the 1st, but the rabbis say it actually took place on the 9th of Av. This confusion, they say, was a punishment in itself: a further proof that Israel's sinfulness deserved the catastrophe that was about to befall.

It is not surprising that the midrash-makers would connect these two apparently disconnected events. The destruction of the Temple and the subsequent exile was much more recent than the census. The 9th of Av weighed heavily on the authors of the midrash than the second of Nisan at the time they were interpreting this text about the census.

By contrast, however, in Bamidbar we read in detail,"On the first day of the second month, in the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt...." Instead of hiding or confusing the date of the census, the text specifies it and insists upon it. It is as if God were saying, "Pay attention to this date. The day when every one of you counted, when the people were unified and whole and headed toward their homeland--not into exile--the day when I lifted up your heads." (For lift up the head is a Hebrew expression that can mean "take a head count," but also, "make you proud and whole again.")

By remembering the census this way, the midrash-makers reminded themselves of the pride God took in the Jewish people back in the days of the wilderness, centuries ago. By remembering it this way, they gave themselves the hope that those happy days of being God's pride and joy would return.

What a romantic longing, that find signs of the lover's favor in the mere mention of a date! But I know I smile every time Rona mentions that we are about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary on June 25th--and we see each other every day. How much more the Jews pined for God after years of Babylonian exile. How much more it must have meant to them to have a date that reminded them that they all counted in the eyes of God!

The Boring Parts of Torah

2009-05-24T07:13:00.006-04:00

My synagogue, Temple B'nai Brith of Somerville, once had a Sunday morning discussion on "The Difficult Parts of Torah." Stories about rape, war and conquest, and God blasting people for violating ritual commandments that (gulp!) we completely ignore most of the time--what do we make of those, and how do we tell the kids?

Not just that once but every year, as summer approaches, our weekly readings during Saturday morning services bring us around to what you might call the boring parts of Torah. Those can be even more challenging. No juicy stories about family feuds, no moments of divine revelation. Instead, over the last month we've been reading regulations for priests--and Jews have not had priests for 2000 years. Yesterday, in Bamidbar (the first portion of what is called in English the book of Numbers), we spent most of the Torah service looking at the census of the Israelites wandering in the desert, broken down by tribe and family. Not exactly summer blockbuster material. What's wonderful is that the Jewish tradition of interpreting the text can make even the census into a love story between God and the Jewish people.

Midrash (as I once wrote in my book Political Discourse in Exile) "means the creative style of textual interpretation developed by the rabbis of Palestine and Babylonia in the third to sixth centuries C.E. At least, that is one of its meanings." It can also mean the body of interpretations about a biblical book. As we have reached the point in the year when we read Bamidbar/ Numbers over the past few years, I have reached for Bamidbar Rabbah, the anthology of midrash about that book--and what I have found is amazing. Just from the first sentence of the Torah portion alone, the performance artists we call "rabbis" have piled on one demonstration after another that the period in the wilderness was the young, heated, passionate period of the Jewish love affair with God.

I'll explain about this in the next few posts.

A Bad Week for Liberal Idealists

2009-05-16T10:23:00.003-04:00

I feel bad for my liberal friends today, especially for those people (young and old) who thought electing Barack Obama as President would make the U.S. a different country.

Item: "President Obama's decision to overhaul and restart the Bush administration's military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay terrorism detainees won support from congressional Republicans yesterday, but deepened his estrangement from the liberal activists who helped sweep him into office."

Item: "KABUL - Human Rights Watch accused the US military of not doing enough to reduce civilian casualties during battles in Afghanistan and called yesterday for changes to prevent civilian deaths like those earlier this month."

Item: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi either knew about the torture of prisoners by waterboarding and said nothing at the time, or else she let the CIA fob off a bunch of misleading statements and significant omissions on as an official report. Either way, she made the Democrats complicit with the Bush administration in committing war crimes.

It's gotten to the point where political cartoonist Rob Rogers shows Obama reading all-too-familiar phrases from the Bush teleprompter!

Is this all a big surprise? It shouldn't be. As far back as June 2006, Obama revealed himself to be cautious in temperament, conservative in morality, non-confrontational, willing to test the limits of the possible but ready to retreat at the first sign that he'd gone too far. If we sit back and let the right wing exert all the pressure, Obama will do what's expedient and not what's really needed. As for the Democrats in Congress, they have always been more concerned about getting back their majority than about repairing the damage to the country that first the Clinton, then the Bush administrations created.

Liberals, this is your chance to give up wishful thinking. If you want progressive policies, you need to build a progressive movement. Putting new faces into office simply means hearing new voices try to explain why the U.S. has to keep pursuing failed and immoral policies. The officeholders are the ones who have to start hearing from us for a change!

I am shocked, shocked that there was gambling in our pension insurance system

2009-05-15T15:22:00.003-04:00

It sounds like a Washington-based thriller, but it's today's news.

The former head of the nation's pension insurance agency, who last year pushed through a high-risk strategy that shifted the insurance fund heavily into stocks just before the market crash, committed a "clear violation" of agency rules by contacting Wall Street firms that were bidding to oversee the new policy, while also seeking the help of one firm in gaining employment, according to a government report.

All it would need is a murder and an investigator trying to salvage his tattered reputation to sell for $16.95 in paperback!

Seriously, folks, although what Charles E.F. Millard (and I am not making that name up) is alleged to have done is disgusting, he is not the problem. We have a system that makes this kind of thing possible, and close to inevitable. We saw the same kind of malfeasance and self-dealing 20+ years ago, in the Savings & Loan scandal. As I wrote on March 31: "We cannot rely on capitalism to save us from the shortfalls of capitalism. It takes serious government policy, made by grown-ups, to do that. "

The Boneyard

2009-05-14T12:41:00.005-04:00

Annals of military spending:

Some stylish people--fewer, since the recession stated--trade in their used cars every year or two for the very latest model. The U.S. Air Force engages in even more conspicuous consumption. The third largest air force in the world is sitting on the ground in Tucson, Arizona. More than 4,400 aircraft and 13 aerospace vehicles sit idle at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Center (AMARG), also known as the "Boneyard."

The Boneyard is not only a resting place for planes. I look at each of these airborne behemoths and I realize that it is an unwitting memorial to lives we could have saved.

This country had the choice to fund the war on poverty--to end cancer, or AIDS--to make sure every adult and child had top-quality health care from before birth to the final rest. Instead, we spent billions of dollars producing the aircraft that have ended up baking in the Arizona sun, just another tourist attraction.

Insuring pain--or poverty

2009-05-04T06:54:00.002-04:00

Across Massachusetts, people are facing a stark choice: pain or poverty. The mandatory health insurance law forces people to buy some kind of coverage, but often, what people can afford won't pay for the care they need. In today's Boston Globe, Judi Campbell of Northampton says she's putting off hip surgery because she already owes the hospital $1,000 for arthritis-related surgeries her insurance wouldn't cover.

And yet the Globe and many policy makers proclaim the "success" of the Massachusetts health insurance plan. For shame!

A Tiger Set Loose

2009-05-01T05:48:00.005-04:00

There was a young lady of Niger
Who smiled as she rode on a tiger;
They returned from the ride
With the lady inside,
And the smile on the face of the tiger.

It's clear that some powerful forces in Pakistan have for thirty years supported Islamic radicals in Afghanistan. Primarily, they've backed the Taliban, but they've at least tolerated and at most cooperated with al-Qaeda as well. Pakistan is not dominated by jihadists, and they didn't get involved in Afghanistan for religious or ideological reasons. They supported the Taliban for political reasons: first to cause trouble for the Soviet Union when it controlled Afghanistan, then to train Islamic guerrillas who would tie down Pakistan's traditional adversary, India, in the territory of Kashmir, which India and Pakistan both claim.

It's not clear to me whether Pakistani policy was made by the government, the military, or the ISI, Pakistan's equivalent of the CIA. Without being sure, it is hard to tell whether Pakistan's current military campaign against Taliban forces inside its borders is for real. If it is real, it makes me wonder if whoever calls the shots in Islamabad has realized that the smile is on the face of the tiger. They thought they were using the Taliban, but the Taliban was using them even more.

The fighting is going on 60 miles from the capital city--as close to Islamabad as Worcester is to Boston. The Taliban is that close to taking control of a country that possesses nuclear weapons. God help us all if they do.

If they don't, if we are spared that, our country should learn from the experience. The U.S. actually encouraged Pakistan to support these people against the Soviets, sending money through Pakistan to the warlords who run Afghanistan now and the jihadists who want to run it, both. Our meddling has come back to haunt us. We should make covert wars a thing of the past. They have always hurt us in the long run.

The Reality Obama Can't Face

2009-04-26T19:28:00.002-04:00

I am a man of the Left, not a liberal, because liberals hold on too tight to their illusions. They think the problem with U.S. power is that the wrong people are wielding it. After Vietnam, after David Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest, they still think that.

I have more in common with a humane conservative like Andrew Bacevich. He writes in the Boston Globe, "But however much Obama may differ from Bush on particulars, he appears intent on sustaining the essentials on which the Bush policies were grounded...the Sacred Trinity of global power projection, global military presence, and global activism." It is far too late for that. Read Bacevich to find out why.

Impunity

2009-04-20T09:28:00.004-04:00

I am not surprised that Obama is not going to prosecute the people who told George W. Bush what he wanted to hear: that it was legal to strip people naked and leave them in freezing cold interrogation rooms, or pour water down their throats until they nearly died from drowning. The right thing to do would be to prosecute Bush, Cheney, the Office of Legal Counsel who advised them, and the CIA and military people who carried out the torture, for conspiracy to violate human rights. It will not happen. I am not surprised, but I am dismayed, disheartened, and a bit more afraid of this government even than before. Tell me again that they are there to protect us.

Ghost Wars, conclusion: The Limits of Hard Power

2009-04-05T16:30:00.003-04:00

The U.S. does not have the power to defend itself against terrorist attacks, and it is not doing the things it would take to build that power. That's the most important lesson I derive from reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars : The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

I want to make it clear: Steve Coll doesn't say that. He probably wouldn't agree. A lot of his book points out how the U.S. missed chances to stop al-Qaeda in its tracks by misunderstanding what was going on, or not sharing the information available in different branches of government. Some of the time, he even makes it sound like better use of futuristic technology would have let the CIA assassinate bin Laden and prevent the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in 2001.

Coll's own book argues against those conclusions, however. He is too good a journalist not to report that the U.S. could not know for sure where bin Laden was at any given moment--and that the consequences of missing him, and killing innocent people, would have been dire. We have also many, many reasons to believe that killing one man would not have stopped this movement--even if it were moral to do so.

The thing is: where are we today? The U.S. military is wounded from Iraq. Even if it were at full strength, it could not fight a successful counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan--no foreign power in history has been able to do that. The CIA still has very few spies who speak Dari or Pashto or any of the languages most common in Afghanistan, and almost none who could pass for Afghanis themselves. Secret war will not be any more successful than overt war.

This is not a counsel of despair, however. The U.S. has relied single-mindedly on hard power, when what is needed is soft power. According to the inventor of the term, Joseph Nye, soft power means

the ability to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than using the carrots and sticks of payment or coercion. As I describe in my new book The Powers to Lead, in individuals soft power rests on the skills of emotional intelligence, vision, and communication that Obama possesses in abundance. In nations, it rests upon culture (where it is attractive to others), values (when they are applied without hypocrisy), and policies (when they are inclusive and seen as legitimate in the eyes of others.)

I agree with Nye when he says, "American soft power has declined quite dramatically in much of the world over the past eight years." Just by being elected, Obama has halted the decline. He has not gained ground, however, and he will not make America a more attractive model to the world by sending more troops to Afghanistan or sending more prisoners to Bagram, the Iraqi Guantanamo. He will not gain a reputation for wisdom by pretending that the Karzai government in Kabul, the Maliki government in Baghdad, or the Zardari government in Islamabad is a reliable friend. The Bush administration has left us very little time to come to grips with reality. It is time to retrench and rebuild.

Yes, Mr. President, There is a Habeas Corpus

2009-04-03T18:01:00.003-04:00

You can't call someone a terror suspect, lock him up, and throw away the key, whether the prison is in Guantanamo, Cuba or Bagram, Afghanistan.

Duh!

It's alarming that the Obama administration agreed with the Bush administration "that the Bagram prisoners were not entitled to question their detention in civil courts," according to an article in today's Boston Globe. Didn't Obama say we should elect him because of his good judgment? What kind of judgment does it demonstrate when he asserts the same kind of dictatorial powers that we have fought against for the last eight years?

A Life Sentence for Vets

2009-04-03T14:15:00.003-04:00

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, was blunt about psychological and family problems of vets returning from Iraq and Afghanistan--including high rates of homelessness.

"This is not a 10-year problem. It is a 50- or 60- or 70-year problem."

Think about that. The decision to go to war means condemning a certain number of the men and women in uniform to a lifetime of suffering. We call them heroes, but we punish them with a life sentence--them, their spouses, their children, and everyone who loves them and is forced to watch them struggle with horrors most of us will never see.

Think about it again, hard, whenever you imagine the U.S. using military force again. President Obama, think about that when you calculate your troop increases in Afghanistan. Know that when we go to war, we make our own soldiers the enemy. What is there in the world that could justify doing that to our friends, neighbors, and countrymen and women? How dare we?

It's Still the Same Sad Story

2009-03-31T20:24:00.004-04:00

This is really big news--except that it's not new at all.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation may go bankrupt, and if it does, a lot of people--up to 44 million people--who are expecting to collect pensions after they retire may be pinching pennies instead.

Unlike 401k's, pensions are supposed to deliver a fixed amount of money that people can count on in retirement. And just like the FDIC insures your bank account against bank failure, the PBGC is supposed to insure your pension against a corporate pension fund running dry. You would think the very first priority of an insurer like that would be to take care of its own money. But according to the Boston Globe, "Just months before the start of last year's stock market collapse...the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation decided to pour billions of dollars into speculative investments such as stocks in emerging foreign markets, real estate, and private equity funds." Well, we know what has happened to the value of those investments!

This is really big news because so many older Americans will never get the chance to make up for those losses. If they are to be saved, it may cost the taxpayers "several hundred billion dollars"--on top of the money we are already spending to bail out the banks.

But it is also an old story. The name of the story is "double or nothing." During the Bush administration, the director of the PBGC realized that it was falling behind on its obligations. According to the Globe again, he said that "the prior strategy of relying mostly on bonds would never garner enough money to eliminate the agency's deficit." His answer? Gamble!

This was the same reasoning that led the Savings & Loans banks to make risky investments in the 1980's. Before that, they had been resolutely local, conventional, and conservative. Then, they tried to make up shortfalls by buying and flipping real estate for a profit and by investing in all kinds of high-risk ventures, foreign and domestic. We the taxpayers ended up on the hook then too.

We cannot rely on capitalism to save us from the shortfalls of capitalism. It takes serious government policy, made by grown-ups, to do that.

Ghost Wars, part II

2009-03-29T17:37:00.003-04:00

The enemy of my enemy is NOT my friend. That's a second lesson I've learned by reading Steve Coll's history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan before 9/11/2001. I hope Obama has learned it too.

From 1979 straight through the CIA's secret war against the Soviet Union, then the Soviet-backed government, and then al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, the U.S. largely relied on two nations with assets in country that the U.S. could not rival. Those two countries were Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. But Saudi Arabia could not go after bin Laden seriously for domestic political reasons, and they convinced themselves that the Taliban would gradually become more conservative, as the Saudis had done before them: more concerned with maintaining themselves in power than in spreading Islamic revolution. Saudi Arabia carried messages to both sides, but it never used its influence effectively to change the Taliban's stance toward the U.S., or to convince them to give up bin Laden.

Pakistan, meanwhile, had every reason to cooperate with bin Laden. He was training Islamic guerrillas that were tying down major parts of the Indian army in Kashmir, keeping India at bay without exposing Pakistan to direct confrontation. The ISI, Pakistan's intelligence agency, found ways of accepting U.S. money and using it to build its own influence in Afghanistan without serving U.S. interests.

Besides these two state actors, there was the Northern Alliance, headed by Ahmed Shah Massoud. Coll clearly has a soft spot for Massoud, "the Lion of Panjshir," but his book portrays him as another repressive thug, motivated by religion and nationalism, who cared about taking Afghanistan over from the Taliban but didn't see bin Laden as any particular threat. He would have been willing to kill him if he could, but he was in northern territories and bin Laden was mostly in the south and east. As long as U.S. policy was neutral between the Northern Alliance and the Taliban (which it was for years), it only made sense that Massoud would not stick his neck out to help the U.S. either.

We have to learn that other people and nations have interests and strategies of their own. They are not good guys because they do what Washington wants them to do, nor are they bad guys because they do something different. They are in business for themselves. If we want to do business with them, that's the first thing to recognize.

Ghost Wars, part I

2009-03-24T06:44:00.004-04:00

Payback is a poor excuse for a foreign policy. That's one of the lessons I derive from reading Steve Coll's Ghost Wars : The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

I'm only 2/3 of the way through this very detailed history, but some things are already clear. One is that in 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to ensure it would have a friendly government in a strategically located country, the U.S. was still licking its wounds from Vietnam. Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's national security advisor, was still viewing the Soviets as the people who invaded Eastern Europe. The Carter administration felt betrayed by the Soviet move, and they took it personally. They saw Afghanistan not as a country of its own, with a people whose destiny mattered, but as a place where they could get back at the U.S.S.R. and humiliate them as the U.S. had been humiliated earlier in the decade.

The U.S. armed violent Islamic fundamentalists to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. With what result? Some of those became the warlords who carved up Afghanistan in the 1980's and early 1990's, after Gorbachev decided the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable: Hekmatyar, Massoud, etc. Some became the jihadists who replaced those warlords. We know them as the Taliban.

For over two decades, to spite the Soviet Union, the U.S. condemned Afghanistan to civil war and chaos. President Obama today is making tough choices (and I believe, wrong choices) about sending troops to Afghanistan partly because of the problems the U.S. made.

We did not create those problems all by ourselves, however. That's the subject of a future post.

It's the System, Stupid

2009-03-22T17:39:00.002-04:00

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/cartoons/20090309inktank?pg=2

Socialism, Reagan-style

2009-03-13T18:19:00.004-04:00

It helps to have a historical memory! Republicans are calling Obama's recovery plan "socialist" in part because it raises taxes on the rich. But it doesn't raise them anywhere near as high as they were under Republican presidents Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon. They don't make Republicans like they used to! Or socialists, for that matter!

Nobody Knows All the Torture We Haven't Seen

2009-03-12T19:13:00.002-04:00

Italian prosecutors say the CIA abducted a radical Egyptian cleric, Abu Omar, from a Milan street on Feb. 17, 2003, in an "extraordinary rendition" operation. It may have been a falling out among thieves. Back in 2005, the Chicago Tribune revealed that Abu Omar was once the CIA's most productive source of information within the tightly knit group of Islamic fundamentalists living in exile in Albania. The CIA may have kidnapped him to get him to become an informer again.

The Italian government protested the abduction and mounted a trial of Americans allegedly involved in it. Today, however, the AP reports,

Prosecutors say Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was then transferred to US bases in Italy and Germany before being moved to Egypt, where he was imprisoned for four years. Nasr, who has been released, said he was tortured.

Did it happen that way? We might never know. Italy's Constitutional Court said some of the key evidence in the case was classified information. It could not be admitted in court. The case against 26 Americans may collapse because of that.

It is too much to expect that the Berlusconi government would declassify the information and let the trial proceed. But is it too much change to hope for that the Obama administration would conduct its own investigation into state-run kidnapping and torture, and bring the responsible parties to trial?

You Can't be Sick, There's a War to Fight!

2009-03-09T07:19:00.004-04:00

My greatest respect to former Marine captain and rifle company commander Tyler E. Boudreau. In today's Globe, he reveals the dilemma he faced when the Iraq war began to drive his soldiers crazy:

In the spring of 2008, RAND released its well-known report in which it estimated that one in five service members returning from war will contend with symptoms of post-traumatic stress or depression. In a typical rifle company, those estimates would represent a loss of at least 30 men. I knew I couldn't afford that.

What good are soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder in the field? Yet what good is a company forced to fight at 80% of its strength? Boudreau states with stunning clarity, "A commander cannot serve in earnest both the mission and the psychologically wounded." The mission will come first, and people will be--have been--forced to fight when they should be receiving mental health care at home. Is there no Geneva Convention to keep us from torturing our own people?

Recession-proof but Not Bullet-Proof

2009-03-03T06:00:00.003-05:00

In a recession, there are certain things people do to get by. They pinch pennies. They leave the work force and take the time to get more education. They go into the military.

One of these things is not like the others.

When you cut back on spending, it slows the economy down even further. Eventually, though, the economy recovers and you have more savings (or less debt).

Similarly, going to grad school during a recession takes you out of the work force at a time when there's less demand for workers. When demand picks up again, you have more knowledge and better credentials. You might be able to get a better job.

When people went into the military for the war in Iraq, as previously pointed out in this blog:

Young Americans came home with grave mental health problems.

The military tried its best to deny them medical coverage.

Many had problems adjusting to nonviolent civilian life.

Vets came home with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They will be at greater risk for heart attack than the rest of us as they grow older.

The military also tried to cheat returning veterans out of their costly GI benefits, or "bait and switch," giving vets much less than they were promised when they joined.

Women in the military were sexually harassed and, too often, raped by their fellow soldiers.

KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary, exposed soldiers to sodium dichromate, "one of the most potent carcinogens" known to man while they guarded a water treatment plant in Iraq that the company was repairing.

Military contractors suffered the same mental and physical wounds as soldiers.

"Typically a bad economy has worked to the benefit of the military," retired Navy Rear Admiral John D. Hutson told the Boston Globe. But it's worked to the injury of the people who joined the military.

Working Hard and Hardly Blogging

2009-02-13T06:39:00.002-05:00

Since our new Executive Director came on board at CAAS, I have been helping her get oriented, then trying to address years of deferred maintenance in the fundraising department. I haven't had the brain cells left over to blog with. I hope that will change by March.

Natural Born Killers--Not

2009-02-02T20:22:00.003-05:00

We are not meant to fight and kill. It takes a terrible toll on us when we do it. According to the Boston Globe of January 30:

WASHINGTON - Suicides among US soldiers rose last year to the highest level in decades, the Army announced yesterday.
At least 128 soldiers killed themselves in 2008. But the final count is likely to be considerably higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated and could also turn out to be self-inflicted, the Army said.

Along with the many other reasons for thinking twice and ten times before sending our young men and women to war which I have been listing on this blog, let's add that we don't want to see them kill themselves.

It Takes My Breath Away

2009-01-28T04:47:00.006-05:00

^{What is the distance between a charismatic leader and his followers? What does it take to close the gap between them? These are questions that come up when we read the Torah portion Va'era, as Jews all over the world did last Saturday.}

⁶ Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. ⁷ And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. ⁸ I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the Lord." ⁹ But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.

My friend Phil Weiss, the darshan at Temple B'nai Brith in Somerville, calls our attention to the last line of this passage. Moses has one experience. He grows up in Pharaoh's court, a pampered prince, dimly aware of his Israelite heritage. Even when he has to flee the country, he marries the daughter of a local religious leader and chieftain in Midian. Moses sometimes doubts his own abilities--he has a temper, and he stutters--but once he gets his prophetic mission, he never doubts that God is behind him. How can he? He heard a divine voice speaking from a bush that burned and burned and was not consumed. What a tremendous privilege, to know for sure that your cause is just!

Contrast this with the condition of the people Moses returns to liberate. They came to Egypt hundreds of years ago, escaping a famine. Initially welcomed, they were later enslaved. Their rulers tried gradually to wipe them out, commanding that every Israelite boy baby be thrown into the Nile (a command that two clever midwives figured out how to circumvent). They survived, but they did backbreaking manual labor for hundreds of years, building whole cities at Pharaoh's behest. This is "cruel bondage," or as the Hebrew says more literally, "hard work" indeed. And the expression for "their spirits crushed," b'kotzer ruach, can refer to the narrowing and truncating of their outlook on life--or it can mean "shortness of breath." What a definition of oppression: working so hard you don't have room to breathe, much less hope for the future.

Is it any wonder that it took someone from a different class entirely to hear God's project of liberation? Is it any wonder that the enslaved people have trouble believing that things can ever be better than they are?

I've been rehearsing Phil's interpretation in my own words, and it is not putting words in his mouth to say that we can look at the new American president in the same light. He is quite literally the son of a stranger in the land. He is in some senses an outsider to the African American community. He has enough distance from both white and black and all other shades of America to get a perspective on what we need to liberate this country from the "shortness of breath" we have experienced at least for the last eight years. But how will he be received? Will we (as I have suggested in previous posts) welcome him and push him to be a more transformational leader than even he knows he can be? Or will we refuse to listen to the word of liberation that comes, not from Obama, but through him, from beyond him?

All Moses' life, I said to Phil, he had trouble making people listen to him--and trouble listening to them, too. Let's hope that a community organizer has better skills in this area than a prophet!

Interpreting the Dream Today: Joseph in Egypt and Obama in the White House

2009-01-16T05:56:00.006-05:00

The leader of a great and powerful nation looks ahead and sees economic disaster looming. He searches for an adviser who can help him create sweeping change and provide hope to the land. The qualifications of the person he elects are 1) that he has shown good judgment before in interpreting visions of life and death, and 2) that he comes from a group that was previously denigrated and despised in his country--to the point that the majority would not even sit down and eat with them at the same table.

This is the story of Joseph in Egypt, too.

In Parshat Miketz, which we read in synagogue a few weeks ago, the Pharaoh (or king) has a dream that seven fat cows are feeding by the great river of Egypt--and seven lean, emaciated cows come and swallow them up. He has the same dream again, only with ears of corn instead of cattle. The only one who can make sense of his dreams is Joseph, the enslaved Hebrew being held prisoner in Pharaoh's dungeon. Pharaoh's butler had met Joseph in prison, when he had been sent there in political disgrace, and Joseph had correctly predicted his return to a position of influence.

On the butler's recommendation, Pharaoh listened to Joseph's dream interpretation: that seven years of prosperity would be swallowed up by seven years of famine, and that it was time to begin preparing now. Pharaoh makes Joseph his famine czar: "Thou shalt be over my house, and according unto thy word shall all my people be ruled; only in the throne will I be greater than thou."

Barack Hussein Obama is the Joseph who has become the Pharaoh. After the eight relatively fat years of the Clinton administration, we have seen eight lean years, all of which were recession years for the poor of this country (and disasters for our rights and liberties). Obama famously showed good judgment in denouncing the Iraq war. Since his father was from Kenya and his wife's family includes the descendants of slaves, he is also associated with African Americans, who have not had such influence in Washington since the days of Reconstruction. Joseph (for good and for ill) centralized control at the national level. Obama promises to move in that direction too.

As an American Pharaoh who has been treated as a god by many of his followers to date, will Obama choose his own advisers as well as the Egyptian Pharaoh did? His appointments do not look promising. On foreign policy, many of them are the same people who helped George W. Bush get us into Iraq in the first place. On economic policy, they are the same people who helped Bill Clinton fritter away America's "social contract with its citizens," leading us to the awful state we're in.

The best we can hope for is that Obama will challenge his inner butler. He must remember where he came from--a community organizer who spent time with average people in the prison of poverty--and listen to the voices that tell him, "Make mention of me unto Pharaoh, and bring me out of this house."

The best we can do is to organize, pressure him, and make it so. Pharaoh cannot be Moses, and Obama cannot be a movement leader from the White House. We need to lead from here.

Fair Trade Chanukah

2008-12-29T16:56:00.002-05:00

Now that the holiday is over, I find this fascinating piece over on Change.org:

http://fairtrade.change.org/blog/view/eight_fair_trade_nights

Something to remember for next year! (In the mean time, let's change the U.S. government's relations with El Salvador, not just our buying practices.)

Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, his memory a blessing

2008-12-25T10:01:00.003-05:00

I was Arnie Wolf's student and Hillel congregant at Yale from 1976 to 1980. As a teacher, he was intellectually beyond me: one of the first people to appreciate the French Jewish ethical thinker Emmanuel Levinas, for example. As a spiritual leader and political activist, he was fearless and funny at the same time, a wonderful example for us all.

Following his example, when we reach the last paragraph of the Amidah, to this day I say out loud, le-takein olam b'malchut shaddai, "to repair and perfect the world with God as our Guide."

I also like to tell A.J. Wolf stories.

The year he began a High Holy Day sermon, "Karl Marx once wrote that the main thing Jews care about is money. And I think he was right." He went on to explain that because Jews take the power of money seriously, we take economic justice seriously: a true Marxian insight, but delivered in the provocative Rabbi Wolf style!

His insistence that teshuvah (repentance and return) really wipes away sin from our constitution. I remember objecting that when we have the habit of doing something wrong, it's in our brain cells and body chemistry and not so easily wished away. "I believe," he said, "that teshuvah wipes sin out of the brain." A neuroscientist before his time!

The time that the Yale Political Union wanted to arrange a debate on the Middle East. One of the organizers said, "We can invite Rabbi Wolf for one side, but then who will speak for the Jews?" When Arnie heard this, he roared with laughter. Back then, the two-state solution he advocated was a radical's dream. Now, it is everybody's pious hope. The times have changed, and he helped change them.

Don't Forget the Motor City

2008-12-15T12:26:00.002-05:00

I don't usually post things that are floating around the internet, especially if they've been out there for a year and a half. This is an exception. I'm posting this bit of satire (sent to me by Beth M) because when auto makers and right-wing pundits are trying to blame labor for the woes of Detroit, it's good to remember where the decisions are made.

A Modern Parable.

A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford Motors) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River . Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and 2 people rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to 'equal the competition' and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale-boosting programs and teamwork posters.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses.

The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India .

Sadly, the End.

Here's something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US . The last quarter's results:

TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.

Ford folks are still scratching their heads, and collecting bonuses...

IF THIS WEREN'T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY

The New Agent Orange? (part II)

2008-12-09T19:16:00.003-05:00

Yet another reason not to join the military: death by cancer. According to the Boston Globe:

Sixteen Indiana national guardsmen filed a lawsuit yesterday accusing KBR, the Houston-based US defense contractor, of knowingly exposing them to "one of the most potent carcinogens" known to man while they guarded a water treatment plant in Iraq that the company was repairing.

Back on June 30, I asked whether sodium dichromate (the chemical in question) would turn out to be the new Agent Orange. The scariest thing is that it may take a generation to know the answer. Dr. Craig Hyams, chief consultant for environmental health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. said that three decades after U.S. troops bailed out of Vietnam, "Veterans Affairs is still analyzing the effects of Agent Orange."

Marching Orders for Organizers

2008-12-06T15:00:00.002-05:00

Decades ago, Saul Alinsky wrote Rules for Radicals, explaining to a new generation how to organize--and keep organizing--to change America. Obama campaigners, are you listening? Michael Perschuk's article "Election's Over--Time to Begin" in the 12/15 issue of The Nation explains how Young Democrats in Maryland have updated Alinsky. If, like my friend Kate McCulley, you're in election withdrawal, here's the antidote. Let's get out there!

If This Were Reform, It Would Have Different Friends

2008-12-03T21:01:00.003-05:00

I've written before that the main problem with the Massachusetts mandatory health insurance plan is that it mandates coverage--but not care. Are we about to see that problem made larger on the national level?

"Lobbies backing health reforms," today's Boston Globe headline screams. "Insurers change their tune from 1993-94 debate." But the article makes it clear that insurance companies are getting involved only so they can protect their own interests, not those of the patients who need the care. It quotes Karen Ignagni, the president of "the nation's largest health insurance lobbying group":

"Strategically, industries have choices if they're at the epicenter of the discussion about a certain part of the economy," she said. "They can sit and wait for others to develop proposals or take the bull by the horns and look at what are the issues that are troubling the country, what are the issues that need to be resolved to help improve the productivity of the country. . . . It's not an altruistic strategy, it's a realistic leadership strategy."

And the insurance companies certainly do have a dog in this fight.

The insurance industry, meanwhile, could gain or lose depending on which reforms are adopted: Offering tax credits or subsidies to help pay for private coverage for the uninsured could bring insurers millions of new customers; but if a reform law also lets people choose a public Medicare-style plan, private insurers could lose business.

As they should! Here is an early warning signal that the Obama administration may become the third term of the Clinton era. To stop this backsliding in its tracks, check out Health Care for America Now. For the solution we really need, see your doctor: Physicians for a National Health Program.

"Cautious is the New Risky"

2008-12-01T06:15:00.002-05:00

A final thought about changing Obama, for now:

The editor of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, has written, "I think that we progressives need to be as clear-eyed, tough and pragmatic about Obama as he is about us." She recommends "that progressives must avoid falling into either of two extremes--reflexively defensive or reflexively critical." Please see her cogent strategic advice at The Nation website.

No Honeymoon

2008-11-25T05:59:00.003-05:00

I've been reviewing some of the reasons Obama will need to be pushed if he is going to be a progressive President, and some of the major areas in which we need to push him. The key thing is, we can't wait.

Already, Obama is selecting Cabinet members and advisors who put the counsels of caution and the interests of corporations over the needs of the poor, the unemployed and under-employed, immigrants, people of color, youth, women, gays, and even the middle class--in short, ahead of everybody who helped Obama get elected.

Already, Obama is signaling that left to himself, he will use the economic crisis as an excuse not to do some of the things that would solve the economic crisis more speedily--let alone create more economic justice in the future.

It's traditional to give new Presidents a grace period, a time to wait and see what they will do. We can't afford that now. We just threw big business, the war hawks, and the religious right an eight-year wedding party. We can't afford to give Obama a honeymoon.

We need to follow the advice of another Democratic President during times of economic crisis, Franklin Roosevelt. "FDR was, of course, a consummate political leader. In one situation, a group came to him urging specific actions in support of a cause in which they deeply believed. He replied: I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."

We can make the administration do what we deeply belive it must do. It's not too late, but it's not a moment too soon. As Dennis Kucinich said, "Wake up, America!"

What if Moveon were on the air today with videos calling the new administration to keep its campaign promises? What if all the $1o contributors to the campaign were now sending $10 a month to advocates and community organizers? What if people who went door-to-door for Obama and for a Democratic majority in Congress were out there today, signing people up for massive demonstrations one month after Election Day?

What would the next four years look like then? Let's find out, shall we?

Where We Need to Change Obama

2008-11-21T06:52:00.004-05:00

I don't agree with his accusatory tone--I think most people voted for Obama with their eyes open--but Sam Smith has "listed nearly three dozen things that Obama supports or
opposes with which no good liberal or progressive would agree." Most prominent among them to my perspective:

Ending the occupation of Iraq only to send more troops into Afghanistan.
Trying to provide health insurance to people by mandating they buy it, instead of providing health care to people and cutting out the insurance industry completely.
Recognizing loving relationships between men and men or women and women through civil unions, and denying them the equal rights that the word marriage confers.
Double the funding for charter schools instead of working to make public schools into places of education for all.

On each of these points, we will have to use the movement tactics that Obama has mastered to bring pressure against him.

Did Somebody Mention Corporate Power?

2008-11-15T15:53:00.003-05:00

How do we know that the Obama administration will be under pressure to cave to corporations? I couldn't say it any better than Derrick Jackson did the Globe:

For the first time since 1994, the defense and healthcare industries gave a majority of campaign contributions to the Democrats - albeit bare majorities. They will expect to be first in line for loopholes from Obama. Resistance to modernization is likely from energy companies and the transportation industry, which gave about two-thirds of their funds to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
For all the chaos this nation was thrown into by the $700 billion bank bailout, the Washington Post reported this week that $290 billion of it has been committed without anyone yet being hired to oversee it. It also happens that the banking industry was another sector that gave Democrats a bare majority of campaign contributions for the first time since the early 1990s. How much oversight will Obama truly insist upon?

Obama Silent on Corporate Power

2008-11-14T06:14:00.004-05:00

Progressives in Somerville, as elsewhere, have invested a lot of hope in an Obama presidency. After the Bush administration's systematic attack on rights, liberties, and the common good, Obama can hardly help doing better! Yet on some of the most basic issues, Obama has been silent.

Issue #1: Corporate power. It's refreshing that the Obama-Biden campaign pledged to protect consumers. On issues like mortgage fraud, predatory credit card lending, and bankruptcy laws, the new administration has taken positions we should support, and there are plenty of other examples. We have to ask, though: why have Democrats not addressed these issues already? It's not because they just discovered the issues. It's because any attempt to help the majority of us runs into the buzzsaw of corporate power.

Corporate leaders directly intervene in elections by supporting some candidates over others. Obama may be less indebted to corporate funds than most candidates because of his ability to collect small donations in large numbers--but he has to work with Congress, most of which is already bought and paid for.

Corporate lobbyists have tight relationships of long standing with the Congressional committees that write laws and the bureaucracies that create and enforce policies in that corporation's line of work. These "iron triangles" are part of the reason the country is in the mortgage/foreclosure/banking crisis we are in right now. Out of sight, they worked in corporate interests and against the public interest.

Corporate capital often gets what it wants without bribes or explicit threats. They just say that a given policy would not be good for "the economy." (When I hear "the economy" these days, I think of men in $2,000 suits getting $2,000,000 bonuses for crashing their companies.) Or they say that if a certain policy were passed, it would "cost jobs." This is a threat in disguise. Jobs don't just disappear. Corporate leaders slash positions when they are not making the profits they want--which are much higher now than corporate profits have ever been!

The whole liberal idea is to use government power to rein in corporate power. Unfortunately, and especially in the era of globalization, corporate power has been stronger. Barack Obama shows no signs of recognizing this problem, let alone using people power as the solution. So, it's up to us.

If The People Lead The Leaders Will Follow

Not Far Enough on the Rule of Law

2008-11-11T07:06:00.003-05:00

Last week, I started to make the case: even if you have been the most fervent supporter of Obama all year, it's time to start pushing and prodding him to do better. I listed areas in which Obama promised changes we should support and explained why he'll be forced to abandon those promises unless we keep after him. I pointed out some areas where Obama's campaign promises move in the right direction, but not far enough, and we're going to have to hold his feet to the fire to get the change we need.

Another one of those "not far enough" positions is where Obama stands on constitutional civil liberties. In the Obama-Biden campaign platform, they pledge to work for the civil rights of women,people of color, and gay and lesbian people as well as people with disabilities. This is important, although transgendered people are not mentioned at all. But the Constitution is more than just a pact against discrimination. What about the right not to be thrown into prison at whim and kept there at the pleasure of the president? What about the right to a fair trial?

There are reports that Obama is considering closing Guantanamo, letting some people who were arrested for the wrong reasons (or no reasons) free, and bringing the rest back to the U.S. to stand trial. This is a move in the right direction. It is encouraging. But when a friend wrote, "Wow. I am so happy I want to cry, now. The restoration of rule of law is imminent," I thought, "Don't get fooled again!" If you read the article carefully, you see they are not going to the normal courts, but some kind of hybrid civilian/military court that would try them but not reveal state secrets in the process.

Says the article,

"I think that creating a new alternative court system in response to the abject failure of Guantanamo would be a profound mistake," Jonathan Hafetz, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents detainees, said Monday. "We do not need a new court system. The last eight years are a testament to the problems of trying to create new systems."

The system created at Guantanamo and through the secret prisons and military commissions is so flawed, it may not be possible ever to give these people a fair trial! Obama should try people in the regular criminal courts or let them go. Then, he should address the serious task: ending warrantless wiretaps and other crimes against the American people while ensuring real security--something the bellicose Bush Administration has failed to do for going on eight years.

All Over this Land

2008-11-10T07:02:00.004-05:00

When I said I was content with the results of the presidential election, I was not thinking about--had not even heard about--the passage of Proposition 8 in California. The voters narrowly voted to repeal marriage equality in California. It's the first time since slavery days that a state has taken rights away from a whole class of people. It is a tragedy, and living in Massachusetts (where I can look my gay and lesbian friends in the eye, since they have the same rights and privileges I have) doesn't take anything away from that tragedy. However...

I remember when a liberal Democratic governor of Massachusetts made a new rule that kept same-sex couples from being foster parents. I remember when it changed. I remember when two lesbian friends announced at shul that one of them had legally adopted the biological child of the other, and we all cheered. I remember when the marriage equality decision was the ONLY cheerful political news in the state of Massachusetts that year. I am going to live long enough to remember when marriage equality is the law of the land.

Obama's Promises Fall Short

2008-11-10T06:26:00.003-05:00

On key issues, Obama either doesn't go far enough, or he hasn't said anything at all.

Not far enough:

Jobs. "Obama and Biden will invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs." So what? That's about $100 per person for the 10.1 million peopl e who are out of work now--and with a recession upon us, there are going to be a lot more unemployed soon! What's really needed is a massive employment program. Repair roads and bridges, redo government computer systems so they are as good as corporate systems, provide childcare and after-school tutoring to everyone who needs it...there are jobs needing to be done everywhere.

Making Work Pay. "Raise the Minimum Wage to $9.50 an Hour by 2011," says the Obama platform. This is pitiful. For a full-time worker, $9.50/hour comes to not quite $20,000/year. This is enough for a single person in Alabama, where the cost of living is low. It is not enough for a parent in any of the 50 states. In Massachusetts, a two-parent, two-children family would need to work three full-time jobs at $9.50/hour to make ends meet. And that's right now, not in 2011! Raise the minimum wage to $12/hour immediately, and push high-cost states to set their standards higher.

Saving the Environment. "Ensure 10 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2012, and 25 percent by 2025." Way too slow! By comparison, the European Union is aiming at a 20% cut by 2020. With recent evidence of how fast the climate is changing, even that is too modest.

I could go on and on, but you probably have an example of your own. What issues are most important to you, and how does Obama address them but fall short?

Along with pressing the new administration to keep its promises, we have to make them exceed them. WE have to. They won't do it on their own.

Get Up, Stand Up After the Election

2008-11-06T04:38:00.004-05:00

To keep the promises made by the Obama campaign, the Obama Administration will need all the help it can get.

Here is a very partial and incomplete list of campaign promises that I think Obama should keep:

Economy: Create a new "Making Work Pay" tax credit of up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family. Eliminate all capital gains taxes on start-ups and small businesses. Use trade agreements to spread good labor and environmental standards around the world. Ensure the freedom to unionize. Raise the minimum wage, index it to inflation and increase the Earned Income Tax Credit. Expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to cover businesses with 25 or more employees (instead of the 50+ employee businesses it currently covers).

Health Care: Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. Require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings, and increase state and local preparedness for terrorist attacks and natural disasters. Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.

Foreign Policy: Secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years. End the war in Iraq and remove U.S. troops through a phased withdrawal. Emphasize diplomacy over military intervention. Focus America's attention on the challenges facing Africa. Cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

Immigration: Increase the number of legal immigrants. Promote economic development in Mexico to decrease illegal immigration.

Poverty: Invest $1 billion over five years in transitional jobs and career pathway programs. Increase benefits for working parents, raise the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour by 2011, and provide tax relief to low- and middle-income workers. Create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Fully fund the Community Development Block Grant to aid cities, and invest in rural jobs, schools, and green industries.

Civil rights: Pass the Fair Pay Act to ensure that women receive equal pay for equal work and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Pass the Matthew Shepard Act and strengthen federal hate crimes legislation. Enforce the laws we have.

Other women's issues (besides poverty, civil rights, etc.): Support research into women's health, help prevent unintended pregnancy (surely a men's issue too!), reduce domestic violence, preserve women's right to reproductive choice under Roe v. Wade.

Give Real Authority to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board: Created by Congress and recommended by the 9/11 Commission, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board needs to be substantially reformed and empowered to safeguard against an erosion in American civil liberties.

Reading this list after eight years of the Bush Administration is like taking a deep breath after eight years of chronic pneumonia! Still, just seeing the words is not enough. We must see action--and the President cannot do it by himself.

Lots of these initiatives cost money. Obama will have Robert Rubin and other voices of Clintonomics whispering into his ear that we can't afford these big plans, that we should settle for small victories. It would be easy for him to listen, to cop out, saying he didn't realize how bad the economy would be. We need to stand instead with Representative Rangel. When they ask him where he'll get the money for social programs, he says, "The same place Paulson gets it for the bailout." The more people tell Obama that, the more room he'll have to carry out his plans.

Some of Obama's promises will face corporate opposition. Raising the minimum wage and regulating the insurance industry are two proposals that every Chamber of Commerce across the country will scream about. We need to scream louder.

Some of them will be derided as "favoring special interests." But the groups being advanced--women, people of color, gays, immigrants--are the majority in America! What's more, they are being advanced by measures that promote justice. We need to make it clear that there is a large, vocal, and persistent body of people who will hold the Administration's feet to the fire on this, to protect them from knee-jerk reactions by people who feel their own privileges are being taken away.

I hope it is clear that we cannot sit back and let Barack do it. Just to make his own promises into policy, he will need us to stand up.

Time for a Change--but We Must Make It Happen

2008-11-05T06:27:00.005-05:00

The results of last night's election are about as good as I could have wished. Obama-Biden won by a large enough margin that no amount of cheating could affect the outcome. Democrats widened their lead in Congress, and progressives held onto their seats. There's still a chance that Al Franken could become the next Senator from Minnesota. Most important to me personally, Massachusetts voted 2-1 against eliminating the state income tax.

It' s still important that every vote be counted--and that attempts to suppress the vote be identified and punished. Whoever tried to use text messages and Facebook to convince college students the election date had been moved should go to jail!

So, I hope everyone enjoyed last night. It's time to get back to work. The campaign isn't over. If we really want change, we're going to have to make it happen.

What? Am I really saying we can't leave everything in Obama's hands? Yes, I am. For one thing, that's not democracy: that's electing a king. For another, Obama has never called for the changes I believe in. He's a 21st-century liberal who wants to tinker around the edges of government, not revolutionize it. Even to get done what he says he wants to do, however, he will need us to give him visible, vocal support, to overwhelm the opposition he will face and to stiffen his own political backbone.

So, over the next few days, I'm going to be exploring these kinds of change:

the ones Obama has pledged to make
the ones he hasn't addressed which we vitally need
the wrongheaded policies Obama has proposed, where we will need to change him--or defeat him.

What would you put on the list? Write me and let me know.

Our Work Begins on Wednesday

2008-11-04T05:51:00.003-05:00

In the progressive circles in which I travel, it's almost a cliche already: "The election is Tuesday, but our work really begins on Wednesday." What does this mean?

With any luck, all this week, I'll be exploring what people who care about justice and peace should be doing to push their agenda during an Obama administration. First, though, what if the election is stolen?

This is not a paranoid question. There is some reason to believe that both the 2000 and 2004 elections would have ended differently if many voters hadn't been removed from the rolls before the balloting began (let alone if all the votes had been counted or if the Supreme Court hadn't pulled a coup). Investigative reporter Greg Palast and voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. have found that the laws passed to make voting cleaner since then have actually made things worse.

How do we steal the election back? According to Palast and Kennedy:

Today, DO NOT ACCEPT A "PROVISIONAL" BALLOT. Chances are good it will never be counted. If someone tells you you're not entitled to vote, call a voter's rights hotline like 1-866-OUR-VOTE. Insist that your claim be adjudicated on the spot. Don't worry about slowing down the voting process: it's your right!

Report any voting rights violations you are aware of: http://www.nomorestolenelections.org/addreport.

Tomorrow, if you have been prevented from voting, pursue legal action. If it's good enough for the Obama campaign, it's good enough for you!

PLAN TO ASSEMBLE ON WEDNESDAY - Go to the No More Stolen Elections website and look for a Voter Assembly in or near your community. If you don't see one, organize one. Go to: http://www.NoMoreStolenElections.org/va.

Play It Cool, Boy

2008-10-23T08:10:00.004-04:00

It's not one of my usual blog topics, but in fact, I am fascinated with the way the brain works. This week, research came out that showed how people resist temptation--and it reminded me fondly of my dad! I have to take a moment to share it with you.

The question is about delaying gratification. Political economists have been interested in this for centuries: for instance, Max Weber thought that the capacity to work hard and wait for your reward was what made capitalism possible. Today, according to a Boston Globe article, Columbia University psychologist Walter Mitschel's research says the ability to delay gratification is linked to "everything from SAT scores to social skills to academic achievement."

So how do you wait for your pleasure, or even give up certain things indefinitely? Part of it is "the ability to imagine a future event clearly," according to Yale professor Jeremy Gray. As a planner, I do that all the time. I resist opening every email that comes across my desk right away, focusing on what I need to do to reach my deadlines.

But another part may be the ability to "cool the hot stimulus."

...the trick is to shift activity from "hot," more primitive areas deep in the brain to "cool," more rational areas mainly in the higher centers of the brain.

My dad, Mel Fischman, was a master at cooling the hot stimulus. I always remember the story he told me about how he quit smoking, long before I was born. "I knew smoking was bad for me, and I wanted to stop, but I was having trouble," he told me. "So I sat down and thought about what exactly I was doing when I smoked. I was burning a bunch of tobacco leaves and inhaling the smoke into my lungs. Now, would I stand in my backyard burning leaves, take a deep breath, and say "Mmm, that's good'? Of course not! So why should I say that when the leaves were in a little tube instead?"

When I first heard this story, I thought it was just too clear, too rational. It couldn't have happened like that. I am still convinced that my dad relied on social support more than he let on. But the research (and my own experience with breaking old habits and adopting others, like controlling what I eat and walking daily) shows me that what my dad said was probably mostly true. Thanks to his skill at shifting to a different part of his brain, I grew up in a non-smoking household. I am so grateful!

Organizing to End Poverty, 21st-Century Style

2008-10-19T06:56:00.006-04:00

Wednesday was National Blog Action Day on poverty. Since I work at an anti-poverty agency, I had a lot to say about the topic, and I've been writing about how to end poverty all week. Here's the conclusion: It's necessary. It's possible. But it will take more than my agency can do, and more than politicians will do on their own.

Strategy 3: A New Social Movement

Even well-meaning liberal politicians consistently put other issues over poverty. Just a week ago, we saw the majority of Congress vote to give $700 billion to banks--with hardly a thought about the new wave of homeless people that are about to created, as banks evict people from houses on which the mortgages have been foreclosed.

Poor people and their allies don't have the money to buy politicians' attention. What we do have is numbers. Especially in an election year, elected officials run scared when they hear a large number of people all clamoring for the same thing. This election is almost over--but your Representative in Congress and most of your state and local officials face elections again in 2010. For them, the election never stops. That gives us an opportunity.

We have a long history of social movements for change in this country. In my lifetime alone, we have the Civil Rights Movement and antiwar movement , the women's and gay liberation movements, the antinuclear movement, movements to abolish nuclear weapons and to support people's movements in Central America, and the movement against global corporatism and for global democracy. We can learn lessons from them about how to get large numbers of people organized: not just for a rally or demonstration, but for the long haul.

We can combine those lessons with 21st century techniques. Meetups, viral messaging, DIY video, databases, Facebook pages, other online social networks, and yes, blogging: we can take advantage all of these techniques to get people to act as one. Technology does not replace face-to-face organizing: it empowers organizers. MoveOn does it. The Obama campaign has done it. We need to learn how to do it, too, but not to get candidates elected and then to forget about them. We get them elected, and then we hold their feet to the fire of public outrage.

It's not only the politicians who need to feel the heat. Banks that evict good tenants just because the owner of the house where they rent is in foreclosure need crowds on their doorsteps, at their stockholder meetings, writing Wikipedia articles about them, doing Michael Moore-style exposes...you name it. Employers that keep wages down and squash unions, media that spend endless inches of print or minutes of air time on the lifestyles of the rich and famous but haven't a moment to spare all week for the poor...the possibilities are endless.

There's a lot of work to be done. If you want to join in but you don't know where to start, write me for suggestions. As a rabbinic saying states, "It is not incumbent on you to finish the task, but neither are you free to abstain from it."

An Anti-Poverty Platform

2008-10-16T17:27:00.004-04:00

Strategy 2: An Anti-Poverty Platform

Yesterday, I explained why all the work that agencies like the one I work for aren't enough to get everyone out of poverty and to a state of self-sufficiency. There just aren't enough well-paying jobs to go around, even with a whole lot of public benefits to reduce a family's need for cash. At minimum wage, a family would have to work 3-1/2 full-time jobs to reach self-sufficiency in Somerville. That's hard to do, with one or two adults.

People like me do our best at the family and city levels. What we need, though, are social and national changes. My boss, Jack Hamilton, has written that three policies would go a long way toward ending poverty:

1. A comprehensive, single-payer, universal plan for health coverage for all Americans;

2. A progressive reform of the tax system; and

3. An increase in the minimum wage, and the indexing of it to inflation.

Of course McCain is not in favor of any of the three policies. But neither is Obama. Yet. And he won't be, unless we can mobilize enough people to say long enough, loud enough, often enough, "Pass these policies or else!" In other words, we need more than self-sufficiency AND we need more than policy change. To achieve either of them, we need a social movement.

More about that tomorrow.

Up from Poverty?

2008-10-15T06:58:00.003-04:00

When Lyndon Johnson called for a War on Poverty, what he really meant was an all-out effort to eliminate it. But poverty is not an enemy. It's more like a neighborhood. You can't demolish it through head-on assault. You end up destroying the people who live there in the process.

For the next three days, we will discuss three strategies for rebuilding America so poverty isn't a part of the architecture any more.

Strategy 1: Family Economic Self-Sufficiency.

The amount of money that it takes to "escape poverty" according to the federal definition of poverty is so small, you wonder why so many are poor. The feds say that a family of three (typically a mother and her two children) are out of poverty if she earns more than $17,600 (roughly $8.75/hour for a full-time worker). Surely that's possible?

Possible, but unlikely. Consider. The federal minimum wage is $6.55/hour. The Massachusetts minimum wage, which is essentially tied for the highest in the country, is $8/hour. Neither one of these is as high as the poverty threshold. A minimum-wage worker can work full-time all year round and still not make nearly enough to get her family out of poverty. (And of course, many people work seasonally, or part-time. They have to try to survive on even less.)

Before we get people out of poverty, we need to get them up to poverty!

But is the poverty threshold really enough to live on? Actually, no. Family economic self-sufficiency (FESS) means earning a lot more than the federal poverty level, depending on the ages and needs of your family members and the cost of living where you are. The Crittenton Women's Union in Boston has provided us with an online "self-sufficiency calculator" so we can figure out the FESS level for any city in Massachusetts. For my home city of Somerville, for instance, what would it cost that three-person family to live?

Just for housing, child care, food, transportation, and health care expenses, plus a small amount of miscellaneous necessities, a Somerville resident with two children has to earn somewhere between $36,761 (if both her children are teens) to $95,284 (if both children are infants). That's at least $17.41/hour, and as much as $45.12/hour.

Go and look through the want ads. Ask around at Human Resource offices. How many job openings are there for jobs that pay that much? There aren't enough to raise the one out of eight families that live in poverty up to the self-sufficiency level. And that level is bare bones. It doesn't allow savings for college, or even for a rainy day.

That's why:

We need to help people get the education and training to qualify for the high-paying jobs that exist.
We need to make sure people get all the public benefits they're entitled to, from food stamps to subsidized housing, so their need for income drops.
Even if we do all that, it will not be enough. Family economic self-sufficiency is a strategy for building up one family at a time. We need a strategy for developing a society without poverty.

Support the Troops in the War on Poverty!

2008-10-14T05:18:00.005-04:00

I wrote yesterday that we have never fought a "war on poverty. " When the U.S. goes to war, it spends whatever is necessary to sustain the effort. It even spends more than is necessary, to boost the profits of the private companies that take part in fighting the war. Just look at the budget for the "global war on terror," and the way we have pumped money into Halliburton and Blackwater!

By contrast, the federal government barely funds the nation's anti-poverty efforts. It attempts to defund some of the major programs, and it carelessly lets the funding lapse when it's in the middle of a budget battle. Here's one story.

Community action agencies are the anti-poverty organizations in communities across America. There are about 2000 nationwide, including the Community Action Agency of Somerville (CAAS), where I have worked since 2003. At birth in the 1960's, these anti-poverty groups had their own specific appropriation in the federal budget.

By the Reagan administration, however, the very existence of these groups was threatened. Reagan successfully cutthe line item for them right out of the budget. They would have died on the operating table--except that our lobbyist deftly got Congress to restore funding in the form of a block grant. Money for anti-poverty work went from Washington to state capitals to disperse as they pleased. In Massachusetts, the state keeps 5% to pay its costs for administering the program and another 5% for special projects of its own choosing. The rest does flow to two dozen agencies across the state. Happy ending? Well, not quite.

Jump forward to 2005. Congress and the President cannot agree on a budget, and Congress passes a continuing resolution to keep the government running while they work out their differences. Nothing unusual about that: it happens all the time. What was unusual was the rules Congress set for spending during the continuing resolution. They said that any program that received federal funding could continue spending either at last year's level, or at the level proposed for next year by the House, or the level proposed by the Senate, whichever was least. And the House was proposing to cut the anti-poverty block grant by 50%!

The House (which was under Republican control at the time) knew that in the end, it was not going to succeed in halving the anti-poverty budget. It did succeed, however, from October 1, 2005 through right before Christmas. During that whole time, our agency had only half its normal block grant funds to spend. We left one Housing Advocate position unfilled, so Spanish-speaking people facing eviction in Somerville were out of luck. Everybody else worked four days a week. We don't pay people enough to live on 4/5 of their normal salary! The Portuguese-speaking Advocate was forced to find another job.

Even though funding was restored in the end, it took most of 2006 to hire new people, train them, get them working together as a team, and get back to the level of service we'd provided before October 2005.

Imagine the reaction if Congress decided, "Oh, we're going to cut funds for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan in half for the next few months." Contrast that with the resounding silence when Congress did just that to anti-poverty efforts. If we were serious about ending poverty, billions of dollars would not be going to Baghdad and Kabul and Kandahar. They'd be going to Boston and Kalamazoo and Kansas City instead.

We Can Still Win the War on Poverty

2008-10-13T07:41:00.006-04:00

Ronald Reagan once said, "We fought a war on poverty and poverty won." Ronald Reagan lied.

Poverty did not win. From 1963, when Lyndon Johnson took office, to 1968, poverty declined dramatically. The number of people in poverty stayed at that reduced level until 1980. All that changed when Reagan was elected. "The average number of people living under the poverty line during the eight years of the Reagan administration was 33.1 million, 25 percent more than the 26.2 million living in poverty during the previous administration."
Reagan fought on the other side. It's not just that he propagandized against poor people. Reagan actively cut programs that helped families and individuals get out of poverty. Let's take just one example: housing. Reagan cut the federal investment in housing from $74 billion to $19 billion in constant dollars. Reagan's cuts almost single-handedly created the homeless problem as we know it today; then he said on Good Morning America that people sleeping on the streets "are homeless, you might say, by choice." If there really were a war on poverty, Reagan was a deserter and a traitor. But...
There never was an all-out war on poverty--"rather a collection of small projects aimed to improve education and community development, such as Head Start and the Job Corps," as Peter Edelman points out. "A complete war on poverty would involve much more: ensuring a quality education for every child, the guarantee of good jobs, universal health coverage, quality child care, adequate housing assistance and a safety net for those not in a position to work. In other words, a jobs and income strategy."

The so-called war on poverty remains to be fought--and it can be won.

Putting the Credit Where It Belongs

2008-10-08T09:11:00.003-04:00

I wrote last week that the main reason the Wall Street bailout might be a necessary evil was to keep credit flowing. It's not the big guys who are most affected when there's a credit crunch. It's students who can't get college loans, buyers with good income and down payments in the bank who still can't get mortgages, and small businesses, who depend on short-term loans (often from one day to the next) to pay their suppliers and issue checks to their employees.

Since then, two things have happened. The Federal Reserve has stepped in for the banks. It's become the lender of last resort. When businesses need to take out short-term loans (or "issue commercial paper," in the jargon that business people use), the Fed will lend them the money directly.

The other thing is that the bailout has failed. The stock market continues to drop, the home mortgage crisis is threatening to become a worldwide recession, and more banks are running into trouble, including Citizens, which is huge where I live.

So I wonder: If all along, the Fed could intervene to help people continue to get loans, and if the bailout didn't calm the investors anyway, then why didn't the Fed just help with credit in the first place and let the banks suffer for their actions?

In Praise of Small and Mid-size Nonprofits - On the Side Streets of America

2008-10-07T10:18:00.000-04:00

I am grateful for the cooperation that my anti-poverty agency gets from large nonprofits like Tufts University and the Cambridge Health Alliance. They are no substitute, however, for the dozens of community-based organizations that serve Somerville in the ways that Somerville needs most. Here's a great article on why closer to the grassroots is better.

Don Griesmann's Nonprofit Blog: In Praise of Small and Mid-size Nonprofits - On the Side Streets of America

Money for Nothing?

2008-10-05T19:34:00.004-04:00

What just happened in Congress this week? Was the bailout of Wall Street investment firms a necessary evil--or just evil?

1. In this corner, arguing that it needed to happen, are almost all the "experts" in mainstream economics and "leaders" in Washington. (There's a revolving door between the two, so it's hard to tell them apart sometimes.) Bush, Clinton, McCain, Obama, Pelosi, Paulson, and Barney Frank all come down in favor, and the Boston Globe editorialized, "Pass this dreadful bailout"--because they fear the alternative is worse.

It's not a question of which businesses are too big to fail. If it were, I would simply reply as Bernie Sanders does: "If it is too big to fail, it is too big to exist." The horrible possibility that makes all these people (and half of me) support the bailout is that if we do nothing, the loans will simply stop. No new mortgages, school loans, personal loans, no short-term working capital that enables small businesses to tide things over from a bad day to a good one. Many economists think that doing nothing would lead to a deep, long-lasting recession or a replay of the Great Depression.

That's scary. But a part of me wonders whether these "experts" and "leaders" are crying wolf. Some of them are the same people who panicked America into a Global War on Terror ( instead of targeting al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and increaseing commonsense security at home) and into war in Iraq (completely optional, and it has turned out to be a disaster). Others are new voices speaking the same message: be afraid, be very afraid--and give us more power. Why did Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson originally ask for absolute power to buy and manage failing banks? Is it the same reason that Bush and Cheney have claimed more and more unreviewable power for the executive branch?

2. Over here, in this corner, are economists like Paul Krugman and James Galbraith. They thought the original Paulson plan was garbage but reluctantly support the compromise that passed on Friday. They are not convinced about the Depression scenario, but they believe government must act, and the bailout is only the first step. Robert Reich argues against them that the Democratic bill is not really any better than the Paulson bill, so they are selling their souls by supporting either one.

3. Sometimes these guys slip over into the third corner of the room, where economist Joseph Stiglitz is standing. Stiglitz reminds us that the basic problem isn't banking: it's housing. Banks made terrible loans because they had to find somewhere to invest the global pool of money. They were looking for payback that's just not sustainable over the long run. Stiglitz sees a need to restore the banks to solvency, but he doesn't want us to get stuck with the bill--and he does want us to control the banks more in the future, through regulation. That makes sense to me, I admit. (But isn't there a crisis that forces us to do something? See David Sirota for reasons to disbelieve.)

4. Over in the fourth corner of the room are people like Chuck Collins of United for a Fair Economy. He agrees with Stiglitz that the rich should pay for their miscalculations and greed, and he offers a practical plan on how to raise the money without soaking the taxpayers. But this is the smaller part of our problems. The bigger part is how to reverse the massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich that's been going on for the last 30 years.

In other words, there's been a crisis in this country for a long time, especially for poor people and those who have become homeless. It's just now that the rich are noticing it, the government is being called to act. Now that the bailout bill has actually passed, the question of whether or not to act is moot. Our job is to make sure they don't act in a way that makes things worth for most of us--and to put pressure on to make things better. If we're going to spend $700 billion, it had better not be money for nothing.

Hurricane Relief for Haiti

2008-09-23T15:01:00.002-04:00

Over one million are affected in Haiti by the recent hurricanes: Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike. The actual death toll rose to more than 800. Cities and towns, including Gonaives, Jacmel, Cabaret and Mirebalais, are flooded, causing more than 1/8 of the population to become homeless, the loss of thousands of livestock, and the destruction of infrastructure (roads, bridges, and schools) and agricultural plantations. “I have never seen anything as painful”, said Dr. Paul Farmer.

The New England Haiti Relief Effort announces two initiatives:

• A Radiothon on Saturday, September 20th from 12 to 6PM, on Radio Concorde 1580 AM, Boston, and several other media outlets)

• A Megathon on Sunday, September 21st from 2PM to 6PM – at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, 1350 Tremont St, Boston

Please make monetary contributions at:
• Citizens Bank, Account # 1313181878. Please make checks payable to “New England Haiti Hurricane Relief Fund."

Partial list of Supporting Organizations:

Association of Haitian Women (AFAB), Center for Community Health Education and Research (CCHER), Coalition des Roche-à-Batelais pour l’Expansion Locale (CORABEL), Foundation for the Technological and
Economic Advancement of Mirebalais (FATEM), Gonaives en Marche, Haitian Multi-Service Center/ Catholic Charities, Haitian American Public Health Initiatives (HAPHI), Haitian-Americans United (HAU), Home Town
Association Resource Group, Mass. Community Health Services in Brockton, The Road to Development, YOFES, EDEM Foundation, etc…

Female Bonding Isn't Feminism

2008-09-22T16:22:00.004-04:00

Ellen Goodman wrote last week that some conservatives are calling liberal women out because they won't support Sarah Palin for Vice President. Aside from the fact that you can't do that without voting for McCain as President, the charges of hypocrisy ring all hollow.

Feminism is not, and never was, an attempt to replace the Good Old Boys with the Good Old Girls. Feminism is an analysis of how power works and how to end oppression.

From the 1960's to now, step by step, feminists have pointed out:

*Prejudice: the mental image of women as inferior.

*Discrimination: actions that keep women in an inferior position (whether the acts are based on prejudice, or on male self-interest, or inertia, or just plain obliviousness).

*Woman-hatred, as expressed in degrading images of women and degrading language about women.

*Rape and sexual violence.

*Institutionalized discrimination: where seemingly neutral standards, like long hours and no provision of child care for men or women, actually hurt women more.

Who would do more to oppose these strategies of domination? Good Old Girl Sarah Palin, who doesn't even recognize they exist? John McCain, who verbally abuses his wife in public? Or Michelle Obama's husband?

Lipstick Traces

2008-09-11T08:15:00.013-04:00

Last week, Barack Obama said:

"John McCain says he’s about change too, and so I guess his whole angle is, ‘Watch out George Bush — except for economic policy, health care policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy and Karl Rove-style politics — we’re really going to shake things up in Washington,'” he said.

“That’s not change. That’s just calling something the same thing something different. You know you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig. You know you can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after eight years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

This week's news: The McCain campaign accused Obama of slyly denigrating Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin. Former Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift (R) says the comment is clearly about Palin. “There’s only one woman in the race.’”By that logic, Obama was calling Palin a pig.

Tomorrow's news: The Cosmetics Industry Association (CIA) denounced Obama for his association of lipstick with animals. "It's an insult to our tens of millions of customers to put the words 'lipstick' and 'pig' in the same sentence," said Bella Schweinhundt, CIA spokesperson. She called lipstick "a perfectly legal product" and threatened to stop Senator Obama at airports until informed that power belonged to the other CIA.

Weekend news: People for Ethical Verbiage about Animals (PEVA) called on Obama to stop associating animals with lipstick. "In real life, cosmetics testing harms countless cute, adorable animals every year. By talking about putting lipstick on pigs, Obama is condoning this form of exploitation, which is tantamount to torture," claimed PEVA spokesperson Lotta Katz. She then explained that "tantamount" is not a breed of horse, so no animals were harmed in the making of her statement, according to Katz.

Monday's news: Jews And Muslims Together Over Dietary Allusions, Yuck! (JAM TODAY) asked the Obama campaign to retract any statements that referred in any way to pork, shellfish, cheeseburgers, or alcohol. The Obama campaign welcomed the JAM TODAY statement. "See, I told you Obama was not a Muslim," campaign spokesperson Christian Nazarene said.

Nest week's news: it is revealed that John McCain used the expression "lipstick on a pig" long before Barack Obama did. (True!) The candidate shrugged off the comparison. "I've changed my position on immigration, on the Religious Right, and even on torture, and nobody cared. Why should they start paying attention now?"

Battered and neglected

2008-09-08T14:32:00.002-04:00

Why is it that as soon as one storm leaves Haiti broken and bleeding, all the reporters leave too? Why do we open our hearts and our pocketbooks to victims of earthquakes and tsunamis but not to victims of floods and mudslides that bury houses? Haiti's revolution happened at about the same time as the American Revolution. Thousands of Haitian parents have named their boys Franklin, Jackson, Washington, Jefferson. Why is it so hard for people in the U.S. to care about Haiti?