The same day Pope Benedict XVI resigned from his post, New York’s wealthy Mayor Michael Bloomberg inaugurated a collaboration between Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Pope and Bloomberg’s announcements on February 28 were probably unrelated; nevertheless they underlined a victory of corporate over religious charity. As the Catholic church’s credibility plummeted, the Pope publicly admitted his defeat. Evidently, what the Pope cannot do, the super-rich will try. With the world’s thirteenth richest man Michael Bloomberg on board, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation represents an unprecedented and rapidly growing collaboration of the world’s wealthiest men, including Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Cyrus Poonawalla: all of whom have devoted most of their lives to acquiring their billions. Does this signal late-onset altruism or something else?

To address this question, one would do well to consider the late 19th to early 20th century that endured the coexistence of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and many like them. Economically, present-day United States, where the top one percent controls 40 percent of the wealth — and the top five percent about three quarters of the wealth — most closely resembles the “gilded age.” People spoke more eloquently then and called the rapacious rich in their ostentatious mansions: “the robber barons.” About the legislatures that slavishly subsidized the projects of these rich men, even as they mechanized their factories to put millions of skilled laborers out of work, Mark Twain wrote: “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress.”

Nowadays, the name John D. Rockefeller no longer recalls the ruthless founder of Standard Oil who became the world’s first billionaire despite having started out as the son of an elixir salesman called “Devil Bill” and having had as his only business education a bookkeeping course of less than three months. The record of a pathological accumulation of wealth has been effectively expunged from Rockefeller’s name and replaced by a list of post-retirement philanthropic projects including the Rockefeller University, the University of Chicago, and the eradication of hookworm disease from the southern US. Andrew Carnegie is now also better known for his contributions of libraries, museums, and research institutes to the world than for his frenetic greed as a steel man for weapons production during the US Civil War. The same goes for the rest. Thus it would appear that by undertaking a project of alms giving, these thoroughly sinful men have become virtuous.

Even the most cynical among us would grant that every evildoer has the potential to repent his sins and deserves to be forgiven if this is done in the right spirit. But it would seem instead that the charitable works of these men were motivated, not by altruism but arrogance and a lust for power. To hang on to their wealth, they corrupted those they could and fought the rest. They maneuvered to pay as little tax as possible, the idea being that decisions on how to expend wealth should be up to them but not to a democratic process involving common laborers.

One billion dollars at the turn of the 20th century would be worth about $700 B in 2013, and John D. Rockefeller gave away more than half of his wealth. So the level of today’s philanthropy from the super-wealthy hardly matches that of the robber barons, even if one considers Warren Buffet’s much lauded $31 million gift to the Gates Foundation in 2006. Nevertheless, the lust for power has grown. The collaboration of today’s super rich in their philanthropy is a kind of humanitarian imperialism meant not only to rehabilitate their names but also impose their views on a global scale.

Mr. Bloomberg has recast himself as a do-gooder despite his origin as a cut-throat Wall Street investment banker and partner at Solomon Brothers. Likewise, Mr. Gates has metamorphosed into a saint, although his fortune originates from a corporation (Microsoft) that has been accused of unfair monopoly practices for bundling its operating system together with its own programs for browsers, etc. Such transformations of the wealthy are facilitated by news agencies like National Public Radio (NPR) that enjoy their donations. They enthusiastically promote, for example, the message that the world must urgently eradicate polio. Bill Gates himself has labeled polio the “world’s biggest problem.” But is it? Back in 2001, there were only 496 cases of polio in the entire world and the disease was disappearing on its own from improved nutrition and availability of clean water. In principle, the decline to zero should have been accelerated by a public-health effort. In practice, however, since the start of the Gate Foundation’s more than $8 B eradication project, to which Mr. Bloomberg recently added $100 M, the polio cases have not even been halved. In 2012, India was held up as a great success because its cases of polio dropped to zero from being half the world’s total. The price for this, however, appears to have been over 47,500 cases in 2011 alone of an infectious disease with polio’s symptoms and twice the lethality, but labeled “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” (NPAFP). The incidence of NPAFP  is directly related to the number of oral polio vaccine (OPV) doses a person receives.

In the third world today, OPV is the most popular polio vaccine, although the weakened live virus in it is well known to be able to mutate into a deadly form. Back in the 1970’s, OPV was supplanted in the US by an inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) prepared with a dead virus. Despite the higher cost of IPV, because it must be prepared in special facilities and injected instead of swallowed, it was deemed preferable because an occurrence of about 10 cases per year of flaccid paralysis (vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis, or VAPP) was considered to be unacceptable in vaccinated Americans. Concerns such as these were waived for the citizens of poorer countries, presumably because polio is a grave public-health danger. How real is this danger, with only 291 cases of polio remaining in the world?

Curiously, all of the world’s polio cases are focused in areas associated with radical islam: namely northern Nigeria (70 in 2001, 168 in 2012) and the Pakistan-Afghanistan border (143 in 2001,123 in 2012). The Taliban, which has long accused public-health workers of generating polio and spying on its fighters recently had its case strengthened by the reports of NPAFP in India and the discovery that Dr. Shakil Afridi had collected DNA samples that helped the CIA to track down bin Laden under cover of a polio vaccination campaign. In December, nine health workers were murdered in Pakistan for vaccinating children against polio. Pakistani civilians, generally, are refusing OPV. In India, many individuals have received more than 10 doses of OPV. By contrast, a single “dose of trivalent OPV is administered to all enlisted accessions” of the US Army, which is by far the world’s wealthiest consumer of vaccines.

The Gates Foundation claims that it will wipe out polio; but, as clinicians and ethicists Neetu Vashisht and Jacob Puliyel point out, such an eradication has become quite impossible since 2002, when a group of US scientists manufactured the polio virus’ genetic information from scratch based on its genome sequence (about 7500 nucleotide bases), prepared an infectious version of it in a test tube that could cause flaccid paralysis, and published the genome information and their procedures. With current technologies, the entire process might take as little as one week. Therefore, whether or not every case of polio vanishes from the Earth, Pandora’s box has been opened. The polio virus can be recalled at any time.

The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation also seems determined to control cholera, malaria, and other presumed scourges with vaccines of questionable efficacy. It hardly matters that clean water and other simple measures might work better than vaccines. When one is rich and powerful enough to control all the discourse about a vaccine project and smooth its path from the laboratory to publication, to approval by WHO and purchase by UNICEF and heads of state, one is always right. Vaccines aside, the world’s billionaires have challenged the Pope into a battle by developing a keen interest in women’s reproductive rates. On one hand, the Pope had continued to push, according to Catholic tradition, for all women to reproduce without control. On the other, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with Mrs Gates as its advocate, has initiated a campaign of birth-control education and promotion of contraceptives for African women, while paying scant attention to the reproduction rates of western people, despite their vastly greater consumption of the world’s resources. One might well ask if a desire to dictate on a global scale — instead of any altruistic need for service — guides our new gilded age’s philanthropic projects.  Their participants, from the top executives to the scientists, to the NGO members, revere money and hold democratic decision making in contempt. Thus the truth is suppressed and wealth, paradoxically, subverts its own ends.

Editor’s Note: Photograph one by Elyce Feliz. Photographs four and eight by Keso, five by Rick Warden, and six and seven by TEDxTalks.

Michael Diamond was a general practice lawyer in Union County, New Jersey, before a brief career change in 1981 when the newly-created Division of Water Resources in the  New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) was looking for an Enforcement Administrator and Chief Regulatory Officer. Diamond accepted the position and was effective at applying his legal skills to create new enforcement techniques for the department. Having received no formal training from the DEP or its overseers at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Diamond realized that he was surrounded by other lawyers and engineers but no scientists or health officials. He began to ask why there were no microbiologists, botanists and professional health people there to study the connection between environmental exposure and illness. After a year, Diamond was cycled out of the position and returned to his law practice. This time, he applied what he had learned at the NJDEP to his law studies and began looking for a remedy that would bring Americans back to health and sustainability to the Earth. On study of the Constitution of the United States, he realized that the wording of The Domestic Violence Clause, in Article IV, Section 4, could apply to environmental issues. Diamond has written several essays and a book titled If You Can Keep It: A Constitutional Roadmap to Environmental Security on the topic of this overlooked constitutional clause. I had the privilege of meeting Michael Diamond last year and learned about his crusade firsthand. We recently sat down together for an interview.

Andrea Egizi: Why do you think the EPA and DEP did not hire health professionals to research the effects of the environment on the very people they were trying to protect? How could they have made decisions about risks, let’s say concerning pollutants in potable water from a well?

Michael Diamond: Exactly. The closest they came to assessing risk was to search the published literature and determine whether any of the contaminants caused cancer.

A.E. And you found that disquieting because…?

M.D. Because there are an array of illnesses caused by exposures that don’t lead to cancer but are nevertheless damaging. And to make matters worse, the engineers were unable to assess the amount of exposure that might be harmful to children.

A.E. So, it’s fair to say that they were flying blind?

M.D. Without question. But don’t get me wrong, the engineers were wonderful, hard working people. It was just that the system had been set up to overlook the real health effects of exposures in the country. And the system wasn’t just wrong, it was Kafkaesque. The engineers would say that certain chemicals were okay to be in the drinking water because they were not carcinogenic; they were only mutagenic.

A.E. Stop me if I’m wrong, but if a chemical is mutagenic, doesn’t that mean that it’s dangerous in that it creates mutations that can be harmful?

M.D. Absolutely. Exposures to a mutagenic chemical can create birth defects, damage DNA, and end up causing cancer. But there’s something even more troubling about reliance being principally on published scientific journals to determine whether a particular exposure caused cancer or not. The scientific journals themselves were and remain biased in favor of the producers and users of chemicals. You see, scientific research, to the delight of the corporations, requires that each contaminant be shown, by itself, to cause cancer. And environmental laws in the United States have codified that requirement. In effect, chemicals have been treated as though they are individuals presumed to be innocent unless and until proven guilty by rigorous scientific research.

A.E. Now, that doesn’t accord with reality because…?

M.D. Chemicals are never experienced by people individually. There are multitudes of them within all of us. We’ve been inundated by exposures since the mid 1940s. In fact, chemicals interact with one another, and that interaction can and does augment the harms that they do to us. In addition, each of us is unique. What may be insignificant to one person can be a tipping point into disease for another. To treat chemicals as innocent until proven guilty, as if they were individuals with due process rights is wrong and dangerous. And the worst part is that children are so very vulnerable. If there had been even one microbiologist present, he or she certainly would have been able to express the truth that exposures during critical developmental times, even though slight, should have been considered harmful and dangerous. A minute exposure in utero, for example, could easily cripple a developing immune system. And a similar minute exposure at a critical juncture in the development of a young growing brain could readily condemn a child to difficulties in learning and impulse control.

A.E. But certainly, in the 30 years that have passed, hasn’t the environmental regulatory system caught up to the reality of current environmental threats?

M.D. In a word: No. Researchers, for example, in a futile effort to find the alleged single cause of autism, remain stuck in the stupid maze created by our environmental laws. They’re not likely to find one single cause for the disease because the causes are multiple, interacting, and may be occurring in a flash of tiny exposures during a particularly susceptible span of moments in a child’s early development. Autism used to occur once in some ten thousand births. Now, in some states, it’s occurring once in less than every forty births.

A.E. And other diseases?

M.D. Cancer used to be rare in adults and even rarer in children. Now, it’s showing up in roughly half of the American population. And cancer in children is now so common that there are pediatric oncology units in major hospitals. Babies, eighteen months of age, are being diagnosed with brain tumors. But cancer and autism are not the only rising diseases. Asthma is showing exponential growth, and food allergies are threatening children’s lives in a manner that has never happened before. At present, schools have to be prepared to administer a life-saving antidote when an allergic child is exposed to peanut butter.

A.E. Talking about children, I can’t help thinking about whether we’re leaving to them a world that will not be sustainable.

M.D. Yes, I’m with you there. Global climate changes are real and observable. Acidification is undermining food chains in the oceans, and that’s occurring as we speak. Unless we get to changing things fast, this planet will begin a cycle downward toward being uninhabitable. Wars for declining resources have already begun and are destabilizing large populations.

A.E. So tell me, what solution do you think will work?

M.D. When I left the state environmental department, I began searching for a remedy that would bring Americans back to health and bring sustainability to the Earth. One of the documents that I studied was the Constitution of the United States. I studied the Constitution in law school, but that clause was never mentioned. Most lawyers never heard of it. There hasn’t been a major legal case on that provision for over a hundred years. So, it doesn’t make its way into case-oriented legal textbooks. But when I started to look at that provision, I realized that it was the ideal remedy for us because the Supreme Court has repeatedly held it to be a people’s clause. All this meaning that if and when we ever get to the point where we are harming ourselves and each other in significant ways that are beyond the police powers of the states to handle, then it’s the responsibility of the federal government to step in.

A.E. How is it that American industry was allowed to conduct a massive chemical assault upon us and our children with outrageous consequences?

M.D. The year 1945 should have been the beginning of a better life for everyone on this Earth. Instead, on the death of Roosevelt, his then Vice President was Harry Truman. Truman, instead of respecting the Russian war effort that was the prime reason for the military defeat of Hitler’s Germany, declared America’s undying opposition to communism and demanded its defeat whenever and wherever it surfaced in the world. Thus began the Cold War in which Truman tapped the American business community to be our avatars in the fight to bring goods and services to a world in need. Our manufacturing know how and technical competency were to bring an end to poverty and ignorance. And by doing that, Truman believed, we would bring an end to what he described as Godless and evil communism, forever. Now, relating this to the environment, neither Truman, nor the presidents to follow him had a mindset to regulate industry. Industry was our newly knighted warrior. Manufacturing was going to enrich, not bring harm, to the world. And that was the mindset that kept the American government from doing what governments were supposed to do: protect the people from harms, both internal and external.

A.E. Corporate power at this time must, in fact, be confronted in order to assure survival. Is that what you are saying?

M.D. Exactly, and the person who said it best a long time ago was Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis. In a 1933 case, Liggett v. Lee, he said that it had been a mistake to give corporations the rights of citizens. They were anything but citizens. Their sole purpose was to bring financial returns to shareholders. In the process of accomplishing that, they would limit freedoms and diminish human happiness. Brandeis called them “Frankenstein monsters.”

A.E. How could the domestic violence clause limit corporate power?

M.D. The domestic violence clause contains war powers. Let me repeat. That provision contains war powers to be used in peacetime to assure our survival. War powers can be used to revoke and revise corporate rights and prerogatives. The domestic violence clause, because it entails war powers, can require that corporations abide by strict requirements that are necessary in an emergency.

A.E. An example?

M.D. Certainly. It didn’t matter if you were the biggest automobile company in the world in 1944. The American government at war directed you to make trucks and tanks, and that’s what you did. Every corporation in the United States was commandeered. Indeed, the entire economy was commandeered by the federal government under emergency war making powers in the Constitution until there was victory. The domestic violence clause entails the same powers.

A.E. Alright, so what could the federal government do now, using the powers of the domestic violence clause, to safeguard people?

M.D. All of the things that must be done to assure our survival. Expenditures for war must end. All of our resources must be used to heal the sick and stop the exposures. Agriculture has to be made organic, with crops coming from family farms again, instead of from feedlots and corporate monocultures. Our healthcare system would be commandeered to change the focus to preventive actions and intensive work with those of us who have been affected by exposures. Insurance companies will need to be taken out of healthcare and their personnel be trained and put to work elsewhere in a new health-delivery system. The stranglehold that pharmaceutical companies now have on health choices will be stopped and broken. Enormous efforts will need to be put into education so that our children are no longer burdened by the consequences of exposures and can get back to performance levels preceding the 1970s. That’s just a small glimpse of what can be done.

A.E. So how could this clause be put into action?

M.D. We create a movement and a new political party, if necessary, by telling Americans who are suffering from diseases and disabilities as never before that their plight and the plight of their children and grandchildren is not a matter of bad luck, bad genes, or God’s will. Our ill health is the result of harms we have brought down upon ourselves, beginning with the chemical age that we created at the end of the Second World War.

E.A. And Americans will listen to this message?

M.D. As never before. That’s the one benefit to experiencing a total defeat. Corporate America has overplayed its hand. Not satisfied with efforts to own all seeds through genetic engineering, they are now producing genetically modified fish. People are beginning to think of that nasty experiment as Frankenfish, a product conceived and made by Justice Brandeis’s Frankenstein monsters. In short, Americans are health conscious and are ready to hear that we’ve been duped. Americans understand now, as never before, that all of our institution, from financial, through business and manufacturing, need to be reconfigured to serve the needs of the people and not just those whose purpose in life is to engorge themselves with power and money.

E.A. So a political effort begins how?

M.D. By contacting our state government representatives, members of the fifty state legislatures. Families suffering from cancer, asthma, autism, and the host of learning and attention deficits need to contact those representatives and do it regularly. The state legislators should be asked to tell the federal government that a condition of domestic violence exists in all of our states and it requires the federal government to bring us back to health and assure our survival.

E.A. And, as I understand your essays, you have a special job for our elders, do you not?

M.D. Yes. Those of us who were born before 1940 remember a time when cancer was rare and no one knew anyone who suffered from autism. Learning was easier then, and civility was the rule. I think we ought to call upon those of us who were born back then to testify as witnesses that the modern diseases and disabilities were brought about as a result of trading health for corporate profits.

A.E. Well, I get the sense that what you’re saying can happen.

M.D. I’d say it’s worth a try? Andrea, thanks so very much for listening to all of this. I so very much appreciate your attitude of respect for new ideas.

Editor’s Note: All composite photographs  by Mark Rain.

With the 2013 flu season peaking from now until April, a question at the top of the debate pile is whether or not to receive a flu shot. Some argue that by not getting yourself vaccinated, you are putting another at risk of exposure to the disease. Others argue that if vaccinations work, then why worry over if others around you have had their flu shot or not? The media and Internet are abuzz with information about the flu, how you catch the flu, what to do to prevent the flu, what you can take to help treat the flu, but you have to dig deeper to find a list of the ingredients in the actual flu shot.

So what’s the big deal with the components that make up the flu shot if it helps to prevent the aches, pains and overall discomfort of the disease? According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control), here is the generalized short-list of ingredients and their purpose for being in a flu shot:

The controversial ingredient that most anti-vaccine advocates fight against is the use of Thiomersal — commonly called Thimerosal in the United States — which is a heavy-metal (mercury) based preservative that is believed by some in the medical field to bring the onset of Autism in otherwise healthy children. Thimerosal is highly toxic if inhaled, ingested or in contact with the skin and is extremely detrimental in aquatic environments and causes long term effects in aquatic organisms. The CDC states “Today, except for some flu vaccines, none of the childhood vaccines used routinely in the United States contain mercury (thimerosal) as a preservative. Although no evidence suggests that there are safety concerns with Thimerosal, vaccine manufacturers stopped using it as a precautionary measure. Now it is contained in very tiny amounts only in multi-dose vials of flu vaccine. Thimerosal is necessary in vaccines that come in multi-dose vials because they require that each individual vaccine dose be drawn from the vial with a new needle and syringe. With each needle inserted, there is the potential for introducing microbes into the vial.”

But what the CDC is not reporting is that each pharmaceutical company uses a different chemical cocktail, so unless the consumer knows exactly what manufacturer prepared the administered vaccine shot, one cannot be guaranteed to be receiving a Thimerosal-free vaccine. And even if one did know the exact details of the origin of the vaccine, the other preservatives might not be mercury but still be toxic to the body nonetheless.

Take for instance the Begrivac Influenza vaccine (split virion, inactivated) from Wyeth that comes with this fact sheet. It is recommended for children 6 months and older, one i.m. injection, size of dose smaller for 6-36 months, booster dose recommended for children who have not previously been vaccinated. The listed ingredients include chemicals that are harmless such as sucrose, potassium dihydrogen phosphate, sodium phosphate dehydrate, and magnesium chloride hexahydrate; chemicals that are harmful in high concentrations but harmless in low levels, such as low concentrations of potassium chloride and traces of diethylether and formaldehyde; and the chemicals/proteins below that, even in low amounts, can potentially cause adverse reactions from some of the people inoculated:

Polymyxin B. “Polymyxin B is a mixture of polymyxins B1 and B2, obtained from Bacillus polymyxa strains. They are basic polypeptides of about eight amino acids and have cationic detergent action on cell membranes. Polymyxin B is used for infections with gram-negative organisms, but may be neurotoxic and nephrotoxic.”

Polysorbate 80. “Polysorbate 80 is a skin or sense organ toxicant and has been known to cause cancer in animals.”

Egg protein. In many cases, eggs are used in vaccine production. “At 5-6 days of incubation, the microorganism is inoculated into the yolk sac of the embryonated eggs, which are harvested after death of the embryo at 12-15 days. Egg-related allergy is common, particularly in children with asthma or general allergies, and may be as high as 40% in children with moderate to severe atopic dermatitis. The risk of egg-related allergy after vaccination depends on the presence of egg protein in the final product. For example, influenza vaccine is manufactured using the extra-embryonic fluids of chick embryos and contains measurable quantities of egg proteins.”

Virus: Influenza virus antigens. Proteins from the influenza virus.

The above influenza vaccine is just one of many pharmaceutical CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccines for children. True, it contains no Thimerosal, but it does contain potentially unsafe compounds even though it is ruled to be safe. And what about the doses for adults and the elderly?

In the cases of vaccines that contain aluminum or mercury compounds, it is important to keep in mind that such heavy metals can lead to future health problems, especially if you receive the flu shot annually. According to FAQ Heavy Metal Detox, some effects of exposure to heavy metals are:

“The Brain – calcium levels in the brain affect cognitive development.”

“The Central Nervous System – neurotransmitters are chemicals released by neurons for communication within the CNS. Impaired release of calcium-dependent neurotransmitters result in depressed levels of hormones norepinephrine, serotonin, and acetylcholine. The release of neurotransmitters is related to: mood, sexuality, emotion, motivation, digestion, and muscle control. There is a correlation between calcium levels and degenerative CNS diseases.”

“The Skeletal System – Skeletal Osteodystery due to disruption of calcium levels in bones.”

“The Cellular System – Impaired cellular nutrition and energy production as related to the disruption of cellular calcium-sodium ATP pump processes.”

“The Endocrine System – The thyroid, hypothalamus, and the pituary glands are organs that can be negatively impacted by mercury and other heavy metals. Developmental delays, behavioural and learning disabilities, decreased IQ and attention span, mental retardation, and autism can be the results.”

So choose wisely when deciding how to prepare for the flu season ahead. Research shows that the shots are only up to 65 percent effective and could be the wrong strain for your area. Some great alternatives to injecting a flu shot would be to boost up your or your child’s immune system ahead of time with probiotics, organic teas and spices and foods rich with anti-oxidants.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one and six by Eneas de Troya.

Some of our readers might remember that, about six months ago, I took a bit more than two months of forced hiatus. On February 21 I had a massive heart attack following an aorta dissection. It happened at around midnight while I was working on a piece for News Junkie Post. The pain was unreal. It felt  like my chest was going to explode while a dagger was stabbing me relentlessly in the back. I started spitting blood, and knew that something was drastically wrong. I called 911. While I was waiting for an ambulance to eventually show up, I picked up what I knew was going to be, one way or another, my last cigarette. When the medics showed up, I was still puffing on my last smoke while coughing blood and I told them to please let me finish my cigarette almost as if I was expressing the last wish of a prisoner on death row right before the execution..

At the first hospital I went to the emergency team were slow at making a diagnostic solely based on the ECG. It was only when they finally did a cat scan that they realized how serious my condition was. Unfortunately, I had to be moved to another hospital because the first hospital I was taken to did not have a cardiovascular surgeon able to handle such difficult surgical procedure. Precious hours were wasted in the process, while my most vital organs such as brain, kidneys, lungs and liver were not receiving a proper amount of blood. My first surgery lasted six hours, in which, I was split opened like a chicken between my solar plexus and the very top of my sternum. I was in a coma for a few days, while the medical team was expressing to my family and closest friends that the chances I had to make it alive were small- about 9 percent-, and that I would likely have some organ damages including likely neurological and brain damage. So, here I was between life and death, in this zone of limbo feeling no pain, but not seeing any strange lights or powerful “force” calling me to the “other side”.

Instead what I saw- almost as if it was projected into my brain- was all my life in the visual form of flip-books. The million images, offered to me, didn’t follow any sort of chronological order, and most  of the visual memories were buried so deep into my unconscious that I thought they were mostly forever forgotten. Some of the flip-books were as small as postage stamps, others were huge coffee table size. Looking at my life unfolding like this made me realized the incredible power of the human brain in what appeared to be perfect everlasting memory. I am still wondering if I was doing all this to stay alive or if my brain wanted to give me a last show before pulling down the final curtain of life. But against all odds, I made it out of the coma. For several days, I thought I was brain dead. I couldn’t come up with any words either in English or in French as if  all languages were gone. I had become mute. When I was trying to find words, I kept seeing an outdoor closing line with little colorful  handkerchiefs  floating in the summer wind. I was convinced that each little pieces of fabric represented  individual words, and that if I could decrypt them I would be able to speak again.

Eventually I did, and then I started to feel the horrendous pain. Life is among other things pain. The tubes and needles invading my body, the constant probing of my shattered veins by medical personals who seemed to show up before sun rise or after night fall in such a way that I started calling them vampires.  Until May, I had the impression that the surgeon who saved my life and his team had pushed my organs in a hurry to access my heart and replace more than 12 inches of my aorta with a vein. For two months it certainly felt -and it was a lot more than a figurative “gut feeling”- that everything in my chest and abdomen was struggling to find its right place again. If my heart and aorta literally exploded in late February, the destructive process really started by a romantic heartbreak. Surviving the type of ordeal I went through often change people’s perspective on life. Once you understand that life is so precarious, you are likely to go to the essential, and start enjoying it , without any fears, as if there is no tomorrow. The conscience of life’s precariousness makes it all more precious. Some people live like they are dying a little one day at a time. But if you have stared at death in the eyes and conquered your fear, it is unlikely that you will live life like it is death on an installment plan.

As I write, we are waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care, better known, often with disdain, as Obamacare. The decision should come this week. Whatever the outcome and many are betting the court in a typical conservative political move, will strike down at least part of the law – the mandate portion – if not everything in it. What then? Stories abound that though most people are against the law because of ignorance and a hard sell against it by those on the right, health insurance companies are already thinking of ways to implement portions of the law because they make good sense. However, I doubt the companies that on their own enact portions of the law or adjust what they do to a new reality in health care will endear themselves to diehard conservatives. Let me offer a mocking view.

I understand that some in the Republican Party are more willing to eat their young than see that all Americans have access to decent health care. Raising taxes is in a virtual tie with the fear that many uninsured people might actually be able to afford decent health care. When a population is healthy, the chances are it will be more vocal in its desire for equality. If part of the population is weak because its health is poor, it will not be troublesome for those who rule. Providing good health insurance for those who do not have insurance is expensive. Conservatives do not want to spend money on those who cannot afford health insurance so they have a chance to be healthy. The Republican Party knows that many of those people usually do not vote anyway. The majority of people who oppose the White House plan are perhaps among the most shortsighted people in America. I have little hope that their vision will improve any time soon.

To help you with your thinking, if you want to listen, I have a suggestion how we in America might solve what we do about all those many mouths to insure. Many centuries  ago, a famous satirist advocated a similar solution to a similar, though distinct major problem of his time. With that in mind, I turn with reverence to Jonathan Swift when I am at a loss for how to tackle a subject that needs a goose. I will use an essay of his that I have used in the past. You know the one in which he advocates that the rich and powerful in the early 1700s in England resort to eating children to help alleviate famine in Ireland.

The essay, a Modest Proposal written in 1729 is Swift at his satirical best. In it, he suggests that the poor Irish could best help themselves by selling their children to the rich. He says, “A young healthy child well nursed is at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled . . . “

We do not have a famine problem in America, though there are millions of children who go to bed hungry every night. Because there are far too few people in high places that care about their fellow man, given a chance, I would wager there are Republicans who would consider Swift’s suggestion as a way to solve the problem of hunger, the poor and the disenfranchised. We have the Republican Party and its recent nefarious outgrowths that seem to care more about budgets, deficits, no taxes, defeat President Obama at any cost, forget the thirty or so million who have no health insurance and let the country and many of its people be damned. Sadly, the Republican publicity machine with powerful PAC money behind it has convinced a majority of voters that the government health care plan will ruin the life of every person. To these ignorant people, legalizing the mandate that makes a person purchase insurance is somehow an intrusion of how they live, thus a fate worse then death. Eating children probably comes in a close second.

When done reading this, apply what I said to immigration, student loans, the attempt to end collective bargaining by government unions and everything else about people as people that the conservatives in our midst oppose. Apologists for those who are proud to be Republican will disagree, as they should, as I hope they will. The presidential election in November is coming fast. Our eyes should be wide open when we contemplate a possible outcome that sees a Republican in the White House. If a Republican lands in the White House, woe to those in our society who lack the ability to stand and fight for their rights.

Oh, and this just in. Late last week the New York State legislature passed a bill to make it mandatory – a variation of that word again – for all 5-year old in New York City to attend kindergarten. By all measures a good thing that even the Republicans in the State Senate overwhelming approved. I can only assume the bill passed, the legislators knowing that there would not be a lobby of 5-year old fighting to maintain their independence or a PAC in support of so-called freedom with children standing up against something that everyone believes is a valuable tool. All expect Governor Cuomo to sign the bill into law. Mandatory. A lovely word.

Editor’s Note: All photographs by LaDawna Howard.

By Ron Steinman

Everyone knows the population in the United States is growing. Because of advances in medicine there are more people over sixty-five alive today than at any time in our history. But there is more to this than most realize. Be aware, change is fast coming to the geriatric population, and thus to every one of us.

You may wonder what is going on, take a breath and allow me a minute to tell you. Some think that the Census Bureau only amasses numbers when it counts everything it can about American society. Instead of letting those statistic lie fallow, when done, experts turn them into useful numbers on which to understand our present and to help us see into the future. One of those reports by the Census Bureau called  90 plus in the United States  2006-2008 will surely make life for many of our legislators and politicians, whether nationally or at the state level, very difficult over the next forty years.  The number of people 90 and over tripled over the last 3 decades, reaching almost 2 million. Today, those 90 and over comprise 4.7 percent of those 65 and older.

Eight-eight percent are white. Eighty percent of the women are widows. Forty percent are married men. Over the next four decades, this part of the population might more than quadruple. By 2050, the 90 plus age group could be as high as 10 percent of America’s older population, meaning those older than 65 years. That is a significant number. With many of the women widows, more women than men will be alive. Strikingly, many more of the men and women in that age group will be living in poverty than the general population. In no surprise, the oldest men and women will have higher disabilities. That is inevitable as people age. These people will live in nursing homes or alone. Some may be fortunate to live out their days with family. Interestingly, today 99.5 percent of the 90 and over population have health insurance. Under Republicans, I fear that percentage will surely decrease dramatically. The concern is that in time people who are that old may overwhelm us with their growing numbers. Be warned. 

Where will the needed money come from to support this population? Right-wing fiscal forces are mounting attacks against all government supported health care as the federal government and the states wrestle with how they might best handle what many call entitlements, but what people who have been paying into the system all their lives only expect. They are not entitlements. They are due bills. It is worth repeating that Republicans in general and those Republicans specifically running for president all want to change Social Security, some by creating personal accounts through private insurance or even with accounts tied to the stock market. Imagine where those schemes would have left people today if they ever had become law. Many Republicans also want to revamp Medicaid by giving what they call block grants to the states. The question is who will monitor those grants to make sure the states use the money properly. All this brings me to more about the growing 90-plus generation.

Those on the far right such as the Tea Party and the libertarians, and worse, the centrist so-called compassionate conservatives, know they will have to devise ways either to curtail the growth in numbers of those 90 and over now, or stop in their tracks those on the verge of becoming 90. Whatever those on the right choose to do will have serious consequences for everyone, not only the aged. The Republican mantra is that every man, and woman, must fend for him or herself. If people cannot, the consequences will be dire. Most of the time when people reach beyond the traditional retirement age of say, 65, only a few are fortunate to have the means to take care of themselves without help from the federal government, especially today with state and private pensions often reduced or dropped. If people cannot have Social Security, and that includes most of American society, they face a very dark future. The odds are that their final years will be tragic. And the tragedy will manifest itself not only to the elderly, but family members who care for them and professional caretakers as well.

The information in the Census report will test the humanity of all conservatives. As you can see, I am less worried about the humanity of Democrats and liberals. Traditionally, they have bigger hearts. How each acts and how each proposes to handle the needs of the elderly in the future will reveal how those politicians feel about an increasingly aging population growing bigger all the time, and that is not going away.  Unless attitudes change and we learn to treat this coming crisis of old age, I fear the worse will happen to our sisters and brothers as they inextricably advance into the unknown years of 90 plus. There is no doubt that caring for the elderly will put a strain on how the federal and state governments function. Money to govern will always be in short supply. We really have no choice but to do what is right for those who manage to live long in our society.

There was a time a few years ago, when people who could not care for the elderly in their families, took their wheel-chair bound relatives and quietly deposited them at malls or on the sides of highways where they might die out of sight and out of mind, at best dumping them on society in general in the hopes that someone else would care for them. The tactic failed. But the scandal lives on. If we do not properly care for those who have long life, will that type of tactic again rear its ugly head? Only time will tell. 

Editor’s Note: All photographs by Neil Moralee.  Ron Steinman is executive editor and a columnist for online magazines, The Digital Journalist and The Digital Filmmaker. An award-winning producer for NBC News and NBC’s Today Show, he served as bureau chief in Saigon during the Vietnam War, and later as bureau chief in Hong Kong and London. At ABC News Productions, he produced documentaries for A&E, TLC, The History Channel, and Discovery. He is currently an independent documentary producer, director and writer through his company, Douglas/Steinman Productions. He is the author of seven books, including “Inside Television’s First War: A Saigon Journal,” that details how NBC News covered the war in Vietnam.

On the advice of many Derrick Jensen’s “Endgame” has been on the ‘should read’ list for years, but somehow I have never gotten around to it. More recently a youtube clip of him reading an excerpt was brought to my attention, so I watched that, and then checked out sections of the books that are available online.

The clip in question is a reading of the apparently infamous “The enviromentalist version of Star Wars” analogy (text from book here). Many apparently feel that this is a wonderful encapsulation of all that is wrong with “mainstream environmentalism.” Actually it’s a pretty good encapsulation of all that is wrong with Derrick Jensen’s arguments.

The short version (if you want to save 9 min of your life) is that Jensen uses a Star Wars analogy to mock nonviolent activists. eg:

“In a surprise move that will rivet viewers to the edges of their seats, other groups of rebels file lawsuits against the Empire, attempting to show that the Environmental Impact Statement Darth Vader was required to file failed to adequately support its …“

Straw Man Fail

Not surprisingly the case for nonviolence is NOT best articulated by a random collection of “standard lines thrown out by pacifists“, which is what Jensen uses to (mis)represent the nonviolent argument. A fair critique of nonviolent action would discuss and attempt to refute people like Gene Sharp, Bill Moyer or George Lakey, none of whom are even mentioned on the site.

Excuse me? you are pretending to critique a political strategy and you don’t mention any of the important current writers and thinkers? much less discuss their work and ideas? What am I supposed to believe? That:

1. Jensen’s grasp of the subject is so lame that he doesn’t even know about the core writing and thinking on it, and couldn’t be bothered to find out?;
2. Jensen knew about them, but has such a limited grasp of political struggle that he didn’t understand them, and hence left them out?;
3. Jensen knew about them, but since he had no intelligent response he instead chose to ignore them and substitute cartoons instead?

Strangely, none of the above explanations give me any confidence that Jensen is worth taking seriously as any sort of authority on political struggle; I’m funny that way.

Regardless, the fact remains that Jensen has not even talked about the case for nonviolent resistance, much less refuted it.

Even though he restricts his arguments to refuting cartoons, his arguments are still frequently weak or outright false:

It has always seemed clear to me that violent and nonviolent approaches to social change are complementary.  Jensen

It may have “seemed” that way to Jensen, but we know from history that when violent resistance occurs at the same time as nonviolent, it strengthens the oppressor.

From An interview with Lierre Keith

“Derrick Jensen always asks in his lectures for a show of hands on who thinks this culture is going to willingly make the transition to a sustainable way of life. No one raises a hand. So if we all know that a mass movement isn’t going to happen in time to save the planet, why are we bothering to consider nonviolence? Nonviolence only works en mass.“

Except:

1. A Derrick Jensen audience is largely made up of people who have self-selected as not believing nonviolent action can succeed. This “survey” is like asking a Church Congregation “who believes Jesus is our Saviour?”
2. Since when are “nonviolent struggle” and “willingly make the transition” synonyms? They aren’t (more like opposites actually), and conflating them shows either basic confusion or dishonesty.
3. “Nonviolence only works en mass” Red herring. What percentage of the population actually took part in nonviolent resistance during the civil rights struggles? the Indian Independance struggles? what percentage is needed to successfully wage (ie win) violent resistance? How different are those numbers?
4. Ask the same audience how many of them are willing to risk everything to wage violent struggle, then ask them to give up their cell phones, ipads and mp3 players right now “for the revolution”; then ponder the amazing contradictions and self-deceptions people are capable of.

Loaded Words Fail

Jensen never uses the proper term “nonviolent activist” presumably because that sounds too much like they actually do things and one of his memes to trivialize his opponents is to claim that they never do anything.

Instead he prefers the more archaic and inaccurate term “pacifist” since it is suggests (wrongly) that they are passive. That’s not quite enough though, so it is often “dogmatic pacifist” rather than simply “pacifist.”

Apparently he wants to convince us that nonviolent activists are unreasonable, nonthinking do-nothings, but without actually having to intelligently demonstrate it with facts and evidence. Since that isn’t possible I can understand why he didn’t do it, but he should just acknowledge that rather than waste our time with propaganda tricks.

Appeal to Ridicule Fail

Instead of intelligent arguments Jensen uses ridicule that plays on the stereotypes and ignorance of his audience to trivialize nonviolent action. In this way he affirms their ignorance while pretending to have critiqued the opponents position. Well Jensen, ridicule away if you must, but don’t pretend that you have said anything that refutes nonviolence.

Even so, are there not some truths in his version? Sure, but mostly truths about the audiences’ cartoon understanding of political struggle. Some truths about equally ignorant cartoon understanding by some advocates of nonviolence. No truths that I saw about actual nonviolent theory and practice.

One could write an equally valid “Black Bloc version of Star Wars” eg: “So then they tied bandanas around their faces, spray painted anti-imperialist slogans on the Death Star and threw rocks at the Imperial Storm Troopers.“ [Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha]

Yup, as a critique of Insurrectionary anarchism that sure is lame, vacuous, irrelevant, and juvenile … just like Jensen’s version as a critique of nonviolent action.

False analogy fail

The use of the Star Wars analogy is interesting though, because it appeals to a basic narrative that the violence advocates generally hold, and which Jensen himself explicitly rejects.

Simplistically, the fairy tale narrative is that “what is wrong” is due to a central power figure and his immediate circle of power holders. All “the hero(s)” needs to do is kill/defeat the “supreme bad guy” and then the unicorns will come back etc.

The appeal of this narrative is:

• the solution is simple; not necessarily “easy”, but simple to understand and relatively simple to implement;
• the solution will be accomplished by the Hero; the individual activist is free to cultivate a duality of feeling important by identifying/aligning with the Hero while rationalizing not doing a lot because it is really up to the Hero;
• It ends. When the Death Star explodes, or the Emperor dies “it” is all over and we can go back to being happy forest folk;
• “they” are bad, “we” are good. Any act committed against them is ok because they are bad. Any act committed by us is justified because we are good.

The analogy is false because:

“The solution” is not simple; there is no Supreme Bad Guy who is forcing the destruction of the world and causing all of the injustice. There is no Death Star, the destruction of which will make everything alright.

Of course there are some not nice people in positions of power who will fight to maintain the status quo, but “the problem” (as Jensen himself acknowledges) is our collective participation in a consumerist, exploitative culture.

“The solution” depends on each and every one of us taking action. “The Hero” is not going to save us (another argument that Jensen also makes). We each have to do things that could be described as making sacrifices.

We may well lose our lives, or at least as we understand them to be, and we probably will not get the prince(ss) at the end either.

There will be no end. The forces and factors that created this system will not magically go away by killing certain people (also acknowledged by Jensen). They will be with us always, and hence the need for struggle will also always exist. There may be pauses, but no rolling credits, no ultimate resolution.

We are not inherently good, nor are “they” inherently bad. Some of what we may do is just as bad as their actions, and may well result in worse consequences. Our motives do not justify anything and everything, and it is necessary to do the difficult, sometimes painful work of being introspective, self aware, and honest.

Derrick ‘Glenn Beck’ Jensen

Has no one else noticed that the self-proclaimed radicals use the same tactics and modes of nonthinking to discredit progressives as the radical right (eg teabaggers) do? ie ridicule, straw men and misrepresentations, loaded terms, false analogies, fairy tale narratives and simplistic solutions? Sure sounds like Glenn Beck, doesn’t it?

I know for a fact that both the teabaggers and self-proclaimed radicals refer to me as a ‘libural’, and in both cases it is used as a substitute for an intelligent response to what I have to say.

Here’s a piece of advice for Jensen and company: anytime you find yourself sounding just like a cheap Glenn Beck clone, you’re not necessarily wrong, but it’s definitely time to do a reality check.

If there is a cogent, intelligent argument for violent struggle I would love to see it. One that honestly engages the real case for nonviolence and does not build its’ argument on logical fallacies, misrepresentations and cheap rhetorical tricks. If any know of such, please let me know.

I am skeptical that it exists though, since every advocate I meet cites one or more of Ward Churchill’s ‘Pacifism as Pathology‘, Gelderloos’ ‘How Nonviolence Protects the State‘, and now Jensen’s “Endgame” as the “must reads” for a convincing case.

Convincing? yes! Since all three rely on the same straw man arguments and cheap rhetorical tricks I am becoming very convinced that there is no intelligent case for violence.

Struggle is not trivial

The most instructive thing about Jensen etc is what it tells us about the resistance movement as a whole. That arguments this intellectually lame and transparently false have broad appeal and are considered by many to be the creme de la creme of resistance thinking tells us that we are in deep, deep shit. If this is our best …

For there to be any hope we need many more within the movement to understand and be able to articulate the politics of nonviolence. At the very least to have read and know George Lakey’s “Nonviolent Action as the Sword that Heals.” Even better would be Bill Moyer’s “Doing Democracy“, better still Gene Sharp’s writings (or these,) or any works of equal substance.

Only when arguments like Jensen’s Star Wars version are laughed at because the audience sees them for the idiocy that they are rather than thinking they are credible will we begin to mature as a movement.

Image Credits:

Star Wars Series by Wyckthöor

Star Wars Pullips By kelvin255

Star Wars Republic Commando – Vode An, Brothers All by Thorsten Becker

Star Wars wedding cake- Han & Leia by SomeRandomNerd

My Star Wars helmet collection by superrune

Star Wars – The Exhibition by Andres Rueda

UPDATE: The House passed health care reform. The legislative body took two votes. The first was on the already passed Senate bill. It will now go to the Presidents desk to be signed into law. The second vote was on the reconciliation bill, which is a bill of “fixes” that alters aspects of the Senate bill.  It passed 220 – 211.

Democrats hail the victory as historic while Republicans say this vote will cause a loss of Democratic seats in the November midterm elections.

Thirty-three Democrats joined all Republicans in opposition. But it wasn’t enough for defeat.  The Democratic leadership appeared to have the votes secured after an agreement was reached between antiabortion Democrats and the White House.

The measure is expected to save $130 billion over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It will create 50 different exchanges, or marketplaces, for the uninsured to purchase one of four insurance plans ranging in cost and quality.

For what the bill does read directly below. To read more about politics, skip to the previous post further down.

- Families of four that make up to $88,000 would receive a combination of subsidies and tax credits to purchase insurance and health care services.

- An expansion of Medicaid the program that covers children, called SCHIP, and the program that covers the poor, Medicaid, would cover up to 40% of the newly insured.

- Individuals would be fined $700 and employers with 50 or more employees would be fined $2000 per employee for not buying insurance.

- The bill would close the infamous doughnut hole for prescription drugs for seniors. The government will pay for 75% of the cost of generic drugs and 25% for brand names.

- The bill would set up a commission to ensure that health insurance companies’ rates are reasonable to the market.

- Outlaws discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.

- It prohibits undocumented immigrants from buying private health insurance. It also makes lawful immigrants wait five years before applying for Medicaid.

- It spends $11 billion for new community health centers.

- The bill is paid for by raising the Medicare tax on incomes over $250,000. It also taxes high-cost insurance plans – plans costing $27,500 a year for a family of four.

- Youth can stay on their parents insurance until they are 26.

PREVIOUS POST:  The President agreed to sign an Executive Order that clarifies that no federal funds would be used for abortion. A group of antiabortion Democrats had been holding out their support until assurance was given.

Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) said “an agreement has been reached.”  After meeting late into the night with the White House and Democratic leadership. He said he will vote for the Senate health care reform bill and the reconciliation bill of “fixes” to the Senate bill.

The Catholic bishops had come out in opposition to health care reform because of the abortion provision. The bishops are also upset with the immigration provisions that prohibit undocumented immigrants from purchasing private health insurance, and lawful immigrants would continue to be denied access to Medicaid for five years.

With the group of antiabortion Democrats on board, it appears the Democrats have the votes to pass the legislation. Stupak said Democrats are “well past 216.” He is referring to the magic number representing a majority.

But not all Democrats are on board. Representative Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) said the bill does not do enough to reform the health care system.  “We’re paying the ransom, but leaving the hostages in the hands of the health insurance companies. It’s not real reform,” Lynch said.

Meanwhile, Republicans plan to use procedural tactics to stall the floor’s proceedings. The Democrats have the votes to overcome the procedural playhouse, but the Republicans can successfully slow down and drag out the vote.

Fireworks erupted on the floor of the House. A protester in the House gallery began chanting in opposition while some Republicans cheered him on. It is illegal for spectators to protest in the House gallery. Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) told reporters he had never seen lawmakers endorse such behavior. “These clowns are out there encouraging [them], in violation of the law,” Frank said.

Tea Party Propaganda/ Photo Montage by Maksim Maksimovich

Tea Party protesters called Rep. Frank a “faggot” Saturday as he was walking from the House office buildings to the Capitol. They also called Representatives John Lewis and Emanuel Cleaver, II “nigger” as they chanted “kill the bill.”

Sunday, a couple hundred protesters have surrounded the House side of the Capitol. From the outside balcony off the House floor, dozens of Republican lawmakers took turns leading chants and holding up signs that read “kill the bill.”

The House is expected to vote on the Senate health care reform bill and then the reconciliation bill, which includes all the fixes, sometime after 8 pm Eastern Sunday.

Follow Leigh Ann Caldwell’s health care updates on Twitter.

This afternoon the House Budget Committee reported The Reconciliation Act of 2010 to the House of Representatives by a vote of 21 yays to 16 nays.  Included in the release is a Public Health Insurance Option on page 116.

The Public Option appears to have made it into the last incarnation of a reconciliation bill in the US House.  There has been immense pressure for 10 months over this component to health care reform, with those on the right comparing to socialized medicine and those on the left considering their fall back position, their line in the sand.

On page 116 of the document, released in pdf form and available for everyone to read on the budget.house.gov website, it reads:

Subtitle B- Public Health Insurance Option

Section 221. Establishment and Administration of a Public Health Insurance Option as an Exchange-Qualified Health Benefits Plan.

(a) Establishment – For years beginning with Y1, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall provide for the offering of an Exchange-participating health benefits plan that ensures choice, competition, and stability of affordable, high quality coverage throughout the United States in accordance with this subtitle.  In designing the option, the Secretary’s primary responsibility is to create a low cost plan without compromising quality of access to care.

(b) Offering as an Exchange-Participating Health Benefits Plan.

1. The public health insurance option shall only be made available through the Health Insurance Exchange.
2. The Public Option shall ensure a level playing field.
3. The public Option shall offer basic, enhanced, and premium plans.

Soon after, it continues:

Section 222. Premiums and Financing
(a) (1) The Secretary shall establish geographically-adjusted premium rates for the public option.

If this is correct, that would translate into a version of the Public Option where prices would not be dictated by the very health insurance corporations who have jacked up prices over and over over the last decade.  Premiums have shot up 90% since Bush was elected in 2000.  Last year, the profits of the top 5 giants (Wellpoint, UnitedHealth, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana) rose by 56%.  The cost of health insurance is projected to nearly double again by 2020 with the lack of real reform.  To protect their scheme, these corporations have fought hard to preserve their hold on highly consolidated markets, and keep any version of a Public Option out of the plan.

Whether or not there are the necessary votes to pass the reconciliation bill are a matter of some debate.  Never the less, the inclusion of a Public Health Insurance Option certainly seems to be a big win for reformers.

Last year today was probably one of the best day in President Obama’s life, but today could not be more different. As if  it isn’t  enough to have to deal with the major humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of Haiti’s catastrophic earthquake,but  President Obama and the Democrats have now to cope with the political seismic shock of Scott Brown’s victory for  the seat of Ted Kennedy. If the “Lion of the Senate” was still alive today, he would very likely be even more upset than the President. Ted Kennedy died for a second time last night, not literally of course, but in spirit. What some of Massachusetts’ voters did, by electing Scott Brown, could kill the Senator’s political life work & legacy.

The Obama administration has now the major headache of trying to get bills voted in the Senate without their previous super majority. The Congress was already barely functioning, but with the magical 60 votes gone, the legislative process could become completely gridlocked. The first target will be of course the health care reform bill, which will be bounced around between the House and the Senate to become an empty shell of its original intention.

It is likely that the “political instinct” of the Obama administration and most Democrats will be to retreat & compromise even more with the GOP, just for the sake of passing some sort of health care bill. On the issue of a finance reform bill and an immigration bill, Americans should keep their expectations very low unless the Obama administration and the Democrats change their tactics in dealing with the systematic obstructionism from the Republicans. However, they are unlikely to do so, if nothing else it seems that the White House would rather use the “sharp elbows” of chief of staff Rahm Emanuel against the left rather than the right of the party.What has even more global consequences than a lack of action on finance & immigration reforms will be for Republicans to make sure that no significant bill is passed on tackling climate change.

After Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory in 1980, Ted Kennedy made the following statement, which strangely apply to  the Democrats’ current political predicament: “If the Democrats run for cover, if we become pale carbon copies of the opposition, we will lose and deserve to lose. The last thing this country needs is two Republican parties.”

Instead of sending the usual spin doctors to minimized yesterday’s fiasco, President Obama should meditate on the wise words of Ted Kennedy. It is not the left that has deserted the Democrats in their support yesterday, it is the other way around. President Obama’s political agenda is not “too ambitious” like some say, it is too tentative. The “audacity of hope” is long forgotten and has been replaced by the grind of pragmatism. The enthusiasm which carried Barack Obama to the White House last year is fading fast, it has been replaced by a populist raw anger which the GOP managed to ride to victory last night.

General De Gaulle made the following statement half a century ago:“You may be sure that the Americans will commit all the stupidity they can think of, plus some that are beyond imagination.” This is exactly what a majority of voters did yesterday in Massachusetts, and by doing so they made the task of governing extremely challenging for the Obama administration.