What Happened To Journalism?

Posted on 23. May 2011 by admin

No recent event has better exemplified the utter collapse of journalism in the U.S. than coverage of President Obama’s speech on the Middle East. The headlines following the speech all reported the “outrage” of Republicans, the Jewish community, etc. as the result of the President’s statement that a return to the pre-1967 borders is a condition for peace.

There was only problem with those news stories. The President’s statement wasn’t news. The U.S. position on peace talks has always been based on the pre-1967 borders!

Now you may ask, how could the media be so wrong? In a word, laziness. A few minutes searching for the truth would have yielded information that would have led to a more accurate interpretation. But none of the media seem concerned with reporting the truth. They seem much more interested in reporting controversy and reactions from the President’s political opponents. In other words, they’re willing to sacrifice the truth for a bunch of irrelevant “facts.”

However, one news source did report the story correctly – Real Time with Bill Maher.

So this is what journalism has come to? A comedian provided a more accurate report on a major policy speech than established news organizations! Small wonder that some surveys have listed another comedian, Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, as America’s most trusted newsman.

One man’s solution for Medicare and the health care crisis.

Posted on 16. May 2011 by admin

Now that House Republicans have voted to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know them, I believe it’s time to look at the real problems with the system. In addition to Medicare fraud, many of the problems are structural. Not with Medicare. But with the health care industry itself.

Unless the skyrocketing costs of health care are controlled, we will not be able to fix our social insurance programs such as Medicare. Moreover, we will not be able to control our deficits. That is precisely why President Obama and the Democratic Congress chose to focus on health care reform in 2009. Unfortunately, the resulting bill was a compromise with Republicans hell-bent on protecting the insane profits of the health insurance industry and PhRMA (Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America).

Therefore, I humbly offer the following suggestions for consideration:

1 – Create a medical triage system with the entry point being Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioners, rather than MDs. These people are Registered Nurses with additional education and training. They are more than capable of identifying and treating the majority of illnesses and symptoms, as well as writing prescriptions, and they can refer patients to a physician or specialist as needed. However, they are billed at a lower rate than physicians. Implemented nationally, this system could save millions, if not billions, of dollars.

2 – Encourage patients to call medical professionals more often. Ignoring symptoms usually doesn’t make them go away. Patients of all ages tend to avoid talking to medical professionals until they absolutely have to. This often results in illnesses being allowed to advance which, in turn, makes them more difficult (and expensive) to treat. All patients should be encouraged to call or visit with Nurse Practitioners whenever they notice a change in their bodies or a symptom of concern.

3 – Eliminate unnecessary tests and treatments. Currently, (some) doctors order a battery of lab tests and treatments in order to maximize their profits. They also claim to do this as a defensive measure against potential malpractice suits. I believe it’s time to recognize that everyone makes mistakes (including health care professionals). We should try to limit the number of malpractice suits and the size of the awards. At the same time, the medical profession needs to more aggressively weed out those who are responsible for the most egregious errors.

4 – Regulate the cost of pharmaceuticals. Currently, Big PhRMA is able to charge whatever it wants for its products. In some cases, the mark-up on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. An inhaler used by millions of Americans costs $38-$40 in the US. But in other countries, its price is as little as 5 cents!

5 – Create incentives for family practice physicians. Too many of our medical students focus on specialties that offer the greatest return on the investment of their medical education. They reason that, since they will be faced with the daunting task of paying off tens of thousands of dollars in loans, they should choose the specialty that pays the most and faces the least probability of legal issues. As a result, the percentage of family practice physicians and OB/GYN physicians is dwindling. This could be fixed by offering more government scholarship awards and tax benefits to those who choose the traditionally lower paying specialties.

6 – Eliminate the need for the poor and uninsured to use Emergency Rooms for primary care. We’ve all heard stories of people who call an ambulance in order to be transported to the ER to be treated for a common cold. Of course, since many of these people can’t afford to pay for their care, the costs are absorbed by the hospital and passed on to other patients.

Recognizing that many of the stories are likely exaggerated, it is true that people go to the ER when a simple visit to a doctor’s office would suffice at a fraction of the cost. But rather than complain about the phenomenon, we should look at the cause. Often it’s simply because these people don’t have ready access to any other form of care. By creating more and better access such as clinics staffed into the night by Nurse Practitioners, people would be encouraged to seek care through more appropriate means.

7 – Demand that health care providers publish outcomes for the most serious ailments and treatments, and encourage patients to seek out the most successful providers. It is a well-accepted fact that it is less expensive to seek treatment from the most successful providers, even if that means traveling out of state. There are fewer complications and patients tend to recover faster.

8 – Last, and most important, take the profit out of the health care industry for those who aren’t directly involved in providing care. In other words, contrary to Republican beliefs, eliminate the middle men (insurance companies) and allow the government to finance care through taxes and/or withholding. I’d much rather have the government determine the accessibility of medical care than large corporations whose primary goal is to limit care in order to maximize profits.

The growing hole in our economy.

Posted on 12. May 2011 by admin

For the past two years, the Obama administration has been trying to reduce unemployment. And, given the challenges, it has been remarkably successful.

Following the Bush/Cheney administration, President Obama faced an economy that had jettisoned nearly 8 million jobs. Despite Republican opposition, the Obama administration has managed to turn things around. Certainly it has not happened as fast as most people would like, and the unemployment numbers are not as good as we would like to see, but the stock markets have recovered and the economy has added 854,000 private sector jobs in 2011 alone.

At the same time, state and local governments have cut 86,000 jobs this year alone.

As a result of the reduced revenue created by the Great Recession, the Bush tax cuts, and the out-of-control costs of health care for government workers, the loss of government jobs threatens to throw our economy back into the abyss. And the Teapublicans, who were elected in 2010 with the stated purpose of creating jobs, are doing everything in their power to push the economy over the cliff.

You see, instead of focusing on job creation, Teapublicans have focused, instead, on social issues such as gay marriage, abortion and collective bargaining. They are determined to eliminate funding for NPR, Public TV, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Dept. of Education, the EPA and Planned Parenthood. They want to end or dramatically change “entitlements” such as Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security. And they want to cut government spending by the trillions.

If successful, they will push tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands more people into unemployment, eliminating government jobs at a rate faster than the private sector can create them. And who will receive the blame for their actions? Certainly not Teapublicans themselves. No, the conservative media will focus the blame on President Obama. You know, the foreign-born black Muslim who was only able to gain office thanks to voter fraud and “lame stream” media.

Does that mean I’m accusing Teapublicans of sabotaging our economy for political purposes? In a word, yes. Republicans have done it before, why should we expect a different approach this time?

Social Security Is Not An Entitlement. It’s A Safety Net.

Posted on 7. May 2011 by admin

Shamed by scenes of the elderly living in abject poverty following the Great Depression, Congress passed the Social Security Act which was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt on August 14, 1935. At the time, poverty rates among senior citizens exceeded 50 percent.

Since that time, millions of Americans confronted by old age, poverty, disability and unemployment have benefited from the act.

Although Republicans, and more recently, the media have labeled Social Security with the perjorative term entitlement it is simply a form of insurance defined by actuaries as a government-sponsored insurance program funded by premiums paid by or on behalf of participants. Indeed, the FICA withholding you see on your paycheck stands for Federal Insurance Contributions Act. These contributions represent less than six percent of an individuals annual income up to $106,000 per year. Any income above $106,000 is exempt from withdrawals.

Fact is, Republicans have been opposed to Social Security from the beginning, claiming that it would cause a loss of jobs. Obviously it didnt. And the new deficit crisis has provided Republicans with arguments to dramatically change or end the program now. Many want to replace it with individual investment accounts, feeling that they could better ensure their retirement by investing their FICA withdrawals themselves. First, the benefit payments from an insurance program like Social Security should never be compared to the returns on investment accounts. Moreover, replacing Social Security with individual investment accounts could be disastrous for many seniors in the event of another economic depression or a repeat of the Great Recession of 2008. If the stock markets plummeted, the retirement incomes of most seniors would crash with them.

So how about the solvency of Social Security? Currently, the program has a $2.5 trillion surplus. Remarkably, administrative costs of the program account for less than one percent of its total. However, due to the impending retirement of Baby Boomers, it is estimated that the program will not be able to make full benefit payments in 25 or 30 years. But the program is not broke. Indeed, it can be fixed with relatively minor tweaking. One option is to raise the cap on income as the Reagan Administration did in the 1980s. Removing the cap altogether would definitely solve the problem as would limiting benefits to only those who actually need them those retirees with annual household incomes of less than $50,000, for example.

Contrary to those who want to end the entitlements, the facts show that dramatically changing Social Security or ending the program entirely could be devastating for our nation. The majority of beneficiaries have little significant income from other sources since options such as employer-provided pension plans are virtually non-existant today. Additionally, the benefits from our Social Security program already lag behind most other advanced countries. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) ranks the U.S. 26^th out of 30 OECD nations. On average, OECD nations replace 61 percent of a retirees earnings with pension plans. In the U.S., the number is roughly 40 percent.

Limited Government Redefined.

Posted on 23. April 2011 by admin

For years, Republicans have been campaigning on lower taxes and limited government. They do seem sincere about cutting taxes at least for corporations and the very wealthy. But when it comes to limited government, I guess it depends on which government youre limiting.

When Republicans last controlled the White House, the US House of Representatives and the Senate, they limited the Environmental Protection Agency, the Dept. of Education, the Dept. of Energy and the FDA as well as limiting the regulation of the oil and gas industry, the insurance industry, the financial industry, commodities, and Medicare.

At the same time, Republicans created the gargantuan agency of Homeland Security. They also determined that it was the governments role to police the interaction between a woman and her doctor, to invade the privacy of our citizens, to limit who could marry, and to suspend the laws of habeus corpus so it could detain citizens indefinitely without right to trial.

Now Republicans are pushing their limited government ideas at the state level as never before. In Arizona, they’re trying their best to destroy public schools, take health care away from the poor and force everyone to carry guns. In Wisconsin, theyre limiting the voices and bargaining rights of government workers. In Vermont, the governor limited the images of laborers in the Labor Dept. And in Michigan, the GOP-led state government has literally usurped the governance of Benton Harbor in order to give a city park to a corporate developer so the developer can turn it into a golf course for the very wealthy.

It appears that Republicans really want a government limited to enforcing their narrow-minded values and increasing benefits for corporations and the very wealthy.

Senator Kyl’s Legacy

Posted on 19. April 2011 by admin

This year, Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona announced that he would not run for his seat in the Senate in 2012. Following his announcement, the Arizona media was filled with people (Republicans, teabaggers and other conservatives) extolling Senator Kyl’s mostly forgettable accomplishments.

As the conservative mouthpiece in the Senate, Kyl was given lots of attention by the media. And he was very good at capitalizing on it. During the Bush administration, he became one of the administration’s most visible apologists. And during the Obama administration, he has railed against virtually every administration initiative.

But those actions won’t serve as his lasting legacy. Instead, he’ll be remembered for two events that took place on the Senate floor. The first was his objections to approximately 80 appointments by President Obama. As Senate Democrats called the names of individuals who had been appointed as judges, Kyl stood at the microphone and repeated the words “I object” for each and every one.

More recently, in arguing against the funding of Planned Parenthood, Kyl stated that abortion is “more than 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.” Of course, he was wrong. The actual percentage of abortions provided by Planned Parenthood represents less than 3 percent of its budget. When confronted with this discrepency, Kyl’s office announced that his statement “wasn’t intended to be factual!” Of course, that came as no surprise to those of us who have been following Senator Kyl for some time. He has seldom told the truth about anything regarding Democratic proposals or Democratic-supported initiatives.

Thanks to public ridicule led by Stephen Colbert and other comedians, Senator Kyl has since amended the Congressional Record to remove the inaccurate percentage. The Record has been changed to read, “… you go to Planned Parenthood for abortions because that’s what Planned Parenthood does.”

So now Kyl’s statement in the Congressional Record implies that abortion is the only service provided by Planned Parenthood. Apparently Kyl really doesn’t intend for his statements to be factual. Even when he has an opportunity to correct them.

The Deficit Scam.

Posted on 29. March 2011 by admin

In a Tea Party-based stupor, Republicans are locked in a battle with President Obama and Senate Democrats over cuts to the sizeable deficit. Of course, rather than look at the real causes of the deficit, they continue to attack Democratic-supported institutions such as labor unions, Public Broadcasting, the Department of Education, Planned Parenthood, the health care reform bill and the so-called “entitlements” of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And, of course, they place most of the blame for the deficit on President Obama.Once again, the Republicans are dead wrong.

According to a report by the non-partisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “…the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years.”

Even the costs of the stimulus bill and financial rescues have had relatively little impact on the deficit. Again, according to the CBPP, “those costs pale next to other policies enacted since 2001 that have swollen the defict.” The CBPP report continues, “Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration – tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits … through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs.”

The truth is that the current Republican initiatives to cut the deficit are a ruse. They are merely driven by ideology in an attempt to strengthen their hold on public office. There are only three ways to cut the deficit without harming the middle class and the most vulnerable people in our society: Cut our bloated defense budget designed, not just to protect us, but to force our will on the rest of the world. End corporate welfare such as the obscene subsidies for Big Oil. And raise taxes on those who can most afford it, such as the 400 Americans who control 50 percent of the nation’s wealth.

If you’d like to read the entire CBPP report for yourself, follow this link: http://www.cbpp.org/files/12-16-09bud.pdf

Homeless in the good ol’ USA.

Posted on 18. March 2011 by admin

A couple of weeks ago, CBS’ 60 Minutes ran an incredibly touching segment on homeless families. Scott Pelley assembled a diverse group of homeless children and asked them a series of questions about their circumstances. They responded by talking about going to bed hungry, the effects of homelessness and hunger on their studies, the shame of feeling different than “normal” kids and their sense of guilt from feeling as though they are a hardship on their parents.

The impact of the segment was both heart-wrenching and utterly maddening. Despite our current economic problems, we are the richest nation on Earth. Yet we not only seem to accept the reality that a large segment of our population is struggling to get through each day without proper food, health care or a home. Some of our right-wing politicians and media pundits even seem determined to blame them for their problems.

They’ve blamed homebuyers for being tricked into unaffordable home loans. They’ve tried to block unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. They have called the unemployed lazy. And they’re trying to repeal (or at least de-fund) the health care bill that will make affordable health care accessible to all Americans.

If these politicians can watch a few of the 16 million impoverished children in America talk about their struggles and still continue to attack programs that could make the lives of these kids better, it’s time for these politicians to go.

Yesterday couldn’t be soon enough.

The Radicalization of Christianity in America.

Posted on 9. March 2011 by admin

This Thursday, Rep. Peter King will convene a Congressional committee to examine the radicalization of Islam in America. But why stop there? If Republicans insist on holding hearings on the radicalization of religions in America, shouldn’t they also look into those who attend churches and synagogues as well as mosques?

Shouldn’t we investigate the church that Timothy McVeigh attended? How about the Columbine shooters? Maybe we should look into their family churches. Or how about the fundamentalist televangilists who actually prayed for the deaths of Supreme Court Justices so that they could be replaced by Justices who would overturn Roe V. Wade?

Shouldn’t we form a Congressional committee to look into the Westboro Baptist Church, the Kansas-based organization that so plainly demonstrates hatred toward gays and our military? Does that not qualify as a radical group? What about the “Christian” white supremicist groups and the “Christian” organizations that actively promote the murders of abortion providers? Are they not just as responsible for violence and terrorism as radical Muslims?

And don’t forget the Catholic Church, of which Congressman King is presumably a member. The Vatican was responsible for the Inquisition and the slaughter of untold thousands of alleged “heretics.” If it happened once, could it happen again?

As the old saying goes, people in glass houses (or churches) shouldn’t throw stones.

LaMaster's Corner

Politics and opinions

Category Archives: Politics