Democrats need a Hillary alternative

I have generally posted on matters about which I believe I can claim some knowledge and some expertise — health care, the Amarillo City Council and downtown development. I shy away from some of the national news and stories. But occasionally something resonates strongly with me and Thomas Farragher’s article did just that.

I’ve wanted to go “all in” about Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations and, in 2008, was inclined to back her until Barack Obama came along with a more populist message. Now, however, I see both of them as different sides of the same coin — corporate captives who have long abandoned the middle class and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe I don’t understand national politics and the concessions politicians must make to move incrementally to a goal.

What Farragher’s column demonstrates to me is that the Clinton campaign will be a marketing/sales blitz to paint her as “the people’s” candidate. I won’t be buying it. As Farragher points out, using the word “inauthenticity,” Clinton neither can, wants to nor will listen to or understand anyone but those in the plutocrat class. More’s the pity, because I see a backlash against her that would open the door to a Republican presidency — and at this point in the United States’ history — that would be a disaster.

If those in our country want a clear choice, and if the Democratic Party wants to give us a clear choice, we need a ticket like Warren-Sanders or the equivalent thereof. It ain’t gonna happen, but I can hope.

Democrats need a Hillary alternative

I have generally posted on matters about which I believe I can claim some knowledge and some expertise — health care, the Amarillo City Council and downtown development. I shy away from some of the national news and stories. But occasionally something resonates strongly with me and Thomas Farragher’s article did just that.

What's the Cure for a Self-Serving Congress?

My good friend, Bill, sent me a link to a long and very interesting storyfrom Esquire. My friend is not only well-read but also smart and discerning. When he sends me a something to look at, it behooves me to do so. I say this because, with so much noise in cyberspace, getting to the signal is hard but extremely important. So it is with this story.

The extensive interviews with members of Congress give insight to why that institution has become so dysfunctional. It’s also an attempt to explain why Congress can’t fix itself, although I find that part of this story perplexing.

Why? Because for all the discussion Mark Warren, the author, drew out from the members, nowhere was it clear why these members thought it was important to stay in Congress. Not one articulated why they should be citizen legislators instead of be career politicians. Nor did the people interviewed discuss how they could cure the reasons for their lamentations wrought on them by big-money politics and the Citizens United ruling. After all, they have the power to do so. I have to conclude they don’t want to; that they love the perks and the power and the money. So, how can I not conclude that the people interviewed were hypocrites and Mark Warren was sucker-punched.

And for those of us in the reddest part of the Red State, it is sadly instructive that many interviewed for this article held Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert is such low regard. If the goal for some of these people in Congress is to truly and sincerely help the country, how well is Texas served by representatives who are held in such disdain? If you argue they accurately reflect and represent their districts, what does that say about us?

Congress has, in part, the power to fix itself; and we have the power to fix Congress if it won’t do so on its own. The lingering question is: Why can’t we?

The answer, again, comes down to big money and propaganda, because it is the big money that buys the spreading of propaganda. Anyone who knows about Edward Bernays would understand how the American public is now ruled by advertising, public relations and — also sad to say — the calculated dumbing down of the population by those who wish to scotch the critical thinking that would overthrow the status quo.

It’s a good read. And a sad one.

When will the Globe-News stop lying to readers?

Sometime in 2005, I don’t remember exactly when, I decided that I could no longer work at the Amarillo Globe-News. It wasn’t because I disagreed with the paper’s political stances on the editorial and op-ed pages. It was because it committed what I feel is the worst of ethical breaches — publishing a story in which known facts are excluded so as to change the story itself or (in the same vein) refusing to publish a story to suppress facts. It is now clear to me that slanting the news and spreading falsehoods on the editorial and op-ed pages are part of a concerted propaganda effort. Here is the story in the New York Times.

An example of the first that I experienced firsthand was a story about a disagreement between orthopedic surgeons and Baptist St. Anthony's Health System over how the doctors should be paid for emergency room coverage. I had gathered information that made the case that clinical factors should determine who and when a doctor would be called into the hospital off-hours, typically the middle of the night. None of the information got into the published version of the story, which portrayed poor little ole BSA as the victim of doctors’ greed. It’s as if the article’s author was BSA itself.

The second story also involved BSA, this time one documenting a failure to meet legal charity care requirements under Texas law in place in 2005. The executive editor at the time wanted to run the story but the publisher, who is still at the paper, wouldn’t let it run without a personal review of the information. The publisher never could find time for a meeting, so thanks to passive-aggressive avoidance, the story never made it into the Globe-News.

I concluded that Amarilloneeded honest journalism, which is why I established The Amarillo Independent. Amarillo still needs honesty from its paper of record and, while editorials express opinions, editorial writers have a moral and ethical obligation to use facts to back up the opinions. On Oct. 1, the Globe-News ran an editorialthat flat-out lied by repeating a Tea Party talking point about the Affordable Care Act. I called out the paper and the editorial page editor, Dave Henry, on it.

So, here we are Oct. 6 and the Globe-Newscontinues — as it always will — to paint a false picture of a situation. It would be forgivable were these falsehoods done from ignorance. But they aren’t. As I said, they are part of a concerted propaganda effort and, in this case, it’s to be an apologist for the boorish behavior of a Tea Party Republican.

“This isn’t some damn game.”

This was a quote from U.S. House Speaker John Boehner this past Friday — and the speaker is correct.

Unfortunately, the shutdown of the federal government is a game to some in Washington, D.C. — and the nation’s veterans, primarily those of The Greatest Generation, should not be used as pawns.

If that’s the case, then the entire government shut down shouldn’t be a pawn for trying to derail the Affordable Care Act. Accept it’s the law and work through legitimate channels to modify it.

West Texas lawmaker Randy Neugebauer, R-Lubbock, took some heat this past week for confronting a National Park Service employee when barricades were erected at the World War II Memorial in Washington — preventing access for members of The Greatest Generation, at least temporarily.

Does Neugebauer deserve to get dinged? To a degree (a federal employee was the wrong target), but those who think the congressman from Lubbock is the only one deserving of such treatment need more than a partisan perspective.

Neugebauer is exempt from approbation to a degree? He was a hypocritical, boorish and arrogant piece of political offal, and so far the only one to vent his vomit-like spleen on a helpless employee. There is no “partisan perspective” for common courtesy and decency.

The closure of the WWII Memorial, even temporarily to veterans, was an act of gamesmanship — pure and simple.

And shutting down the federal government by refusing to pass a clean continuing resolution isn’t? You can’t have it both ways and the GOP and the Globe-News are making pawns out of the visitors to the WWII Memorial.

The big picture:

■ As syndicated columnists Charles Krauthammer and Diana West pointed out (AGN Media ran their columns Saturday), the $182 million memorial was paid for with $197 million in private funds, with the extra money in a memorial fund.

And then turned it over to the National Park Service to run. Sort of like the center for performing arts was turned over to the city of Amarilloand is now run by the city’s rules.

■ Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives approved three bills for national parks funding, but Democrats balked.

Of course they balked. So did the GOP on the ACA. Good for goose, good for gander.

■ For crying out loud, the WWII Memorial is open-air, how much of a presence is really required by the National Park Service to staff this facility? And how much taxpayer money was used to trot out those ridiculous, if not offensive, barricades?

See above.

■ It also interesting that the federal government found the money to send U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and Secretary of State John Kerry to Japan this past Thursday to “pay their respects” (according to The Associated Press) at a national cemetery in Tokyo for Japanese soldiers who died in World War II.

This was part of a bigger picture which the Amarillo Globe-News conveniently but not surprisingly leaves out.

The federal government — if not the White House — can write a check for whatever it wants, and in this case, the WWII Memorial, if not the nation’s veterans, was used to score political points.

Again, we’re not letting Congressman Neugebauer off the hook. His scorn was directed at yet another pawn in this political power play (a federal employee), and he should have known better.

However, those who want to pile all the blame for the shutdown of the federal government on the congressman are just as misdirected.

You are letting Neugebauer off the hook. Not only are you making excuses for him, but you’re throwing out a red herring. No one is “piling all the blame for the shutdown” on this lackluster back-bencher. The condemnation is for his boorish behavior and being a hypocrite for attempting to blame a lowly employee for something the Lubbock-based political hack supported.

Analysis of shutdown requires looking at the big picture

On Friday, I bloggedthat my day started a little differently — veering toward a place of peace. I tried to stay away from politics until late in the day. Then, a thread on Facebook became active. I thought the comment I posted to the threadwas more peaceful and neutral than an advocacy position I would normally hold.

Then, a former employee of the Amarillo Globe-News chimed in and did exactly what I said was unproductive. He claimed I was strategizing on how to hurt Americans and blame it on the Republicans. You can read the comment at the end of the thread.

My main point yesterday was this, “This government shutdown is a battle for the hearts and minds of Americans. It is a crude attempt to get at this question: What should be the role of the federal government in American lives?”

The rise of the Tea Party since 2008 has triggered this crude battle in our country. It seems the Tea Party activists and libertarians want government’s role to be so minimal as to almost destroy government itself. The role of the government would reflect in the starkest possible terms the invisible hand of an amoral free market, even if the very structure of a market segment doesn’t accommodate the free market-capitalist paradigm. If one looks carefully at the right wing conservative positions on what should and shouldn’t be part of the federal government’s role, the positions amount to two major directions: Remove government from regulating large corporate interests; and, continue to feed the military-industrial complex, which would flow money back through the corporate ruling structure.

Even in his latest essay, the esteemed Bill Moyers in his Friday musings, missed somewhat the overarching role of the corporatist takeover of the United States government. Moyers didn’t totally miss the point. He recognized that one of the goals of the Koch-inspired (if not led and financed) Tea Party is to destroy the Environmental Protection Agency. It’s no wonder that the right-winger conservatives, who perseverate the inability to think critically, overlook that their populist view of the Tea Party movement is sadly misplaced. How ironic.

And the evidence to buttress my position about the lack of critical thinking and intellectual dishonesty, the trigger for the Republican-led shutdown is the futile attempt to kill off the Affordable Care Act (who can honestly dispute that as the proximate cause of the shutdown?). While much of the resistance to the act is based on disinformation (or should I say outright lies?), the final version of the law has something for every big-money corporate health care interest. The pharmaceutical industry won price protection. The medical equipment industry (and the hospitals and hospital administrators with edifice complexes) on a national level continue spend capital dollars even if the new toys and buildings are not needed. And the biggest winner, the insurance lobby, gets to be the conduit for coverage even when the more efficient Medicare system could be the more efficient system for insuring Americans.

I can’t gainsay what another Facebook poster noted, although he seems to have pulled his posts since making the statement that both parties are complicit. And so are the voters. I’ve long and often said we get the government we deserve.

Still, what is more important to me at this point is seeing the big picture. Being mentally anchored in the Texas Panhandle gives a skewed view of that picture. The view of the role of government in this reddest and more religiously conservative part of red-state Americais far different than other parts of our vast nation. I won’t condemn people for having and adhering to their beliefs, but I will condemn them for not recognizing others have different beliefs. And more, I condemn the Republican-Tea Party politicians for their slanted view leading to this shutdown.

Congressional Turds

Last night’s midnight deadline came and went without Congress agreeing on the budget and the debt

ceiling. Try as I might, I can’t think of a civil thing to say to the 435 United States House members who have allows this to happen.

Thanks, however, to the New York Daily News, I am aided in my communication to the right wingers who have visited this upon our nation and on the taxpayers. What is gratifying to me about the Daily News’ front page today is that it says (perhaps a bit more gently than I wish) what I feel and perhaps what many others feel today too. But because it’s the Daily News, it will be hard for those inhabiting the Beltway Bubble to avoid seeing the disdain we the people have for them. At this level of exposure, I suspect it’s difficult, if not impossible, for the members of Congress to miss this message.


Whether these bought-and-paid-for folks care is another matter altogether. Most are smug in their cocoons, protected from the wrath of their lowly constituents. First, unless you pay to play by making big contributions, these parasites don’t give a damn about your position. Second, they really never see the negative communications they get from constituents. Those are handled by staffers who vomit form letters that duck the issues and ignore the lowly concerns.

We are in our own civil war in the United States. It’s a war being fought for the hearts and minds of voters using the most sophisticated propaganda techniques known to man. In fact, I am going to start using a term that I’ve only recently learned: “false balance.” Also known as the balance fallacy, false balance gives equal weight to both sides of an argument, implying either that the truth is somewhere in the middle or that both arguments have equal weight.

We know, at least in journalism, or news media terms, false balance occurs far too often. It’s our job as journalists to fact-check and in doing so, we eliminate false balance. But if you’re either lazy or part of the propaganda machine, like the corporatist news media is, people aren’t going to see the false balance.

Which brings me back to the picture. As much as House Speaker John Boehner is to blame, it’s false balance to not include all the Tea Party members of the House and most of the Republicans. And some blue dog Democrats, too. Still, the part that’s right is calling them, all too gently, “turds.”

Understand the health care act before slamming it

As Oct. 1 brings the nation to the first major step in implementing the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, all manner of media are reporting, analyzing and generally trying to bring clarity to a murky and difficult topic. The difficulty of this topic arises from the unique nature of health economics and the egregiously wrong application of general economic and free market principles to the discussion of health care.



While much of the rock-ribbed conservatives are railing against the ACA, the nation as a whole supports health care reform and much of the country is willing to give the reform act a chance. I spent 25 years in all aspects of the health care industry, with my early years witnessing the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid. As a journalist for some18 years, I always had health care as a beat. I have only seen a handful of reporters who “get it” and can explain how the system works. Nevertheless, I would offer these observations:

• First, I heard all the same arguments in 1967 with the passage and implementation of Medicare and Medicaid — and those programs turned out to be a boon for the hospital and health industry. And physicians no longer had to trade services for chickens.

• Second, most of the people posting about and complaining about the ACA are ill-informed and don’t understand anything about health economics, including the concept that the “free market” doesn’t work for health care. It never has and never will. If you want to make intelligent remarks about the ACA, learn about health economics and health insurance. Or get a master’s degree in health care like I did and then come back and make a fact-based argument about these issues.

• Third, the entire underwriting concept of the ACA working is community ratings, which deals with the issue of pre-existing conditions and other matters. It means that we’re trying to spread the risk over the widest population base possible. This will, in the long term, lower costs and accommodate the pre-existing conditions. It will also accommodate, from an underwriting standpoint, the more robust benefits the act imposes on insurers.

• Fourth, one of the reasons the ACA passed was the private insurance companies, BigPharma, hospitals, the organized physician community and the medical equipment industry “got theirs” as part of the bill. The negotiations with them saved the legislation. And, by the way, don’t believe the lies that the GOP tells abut not being part of the process: Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Sarah Palin being two of the biggest liars claiming the GOP was cut out of the legislative process. The GOP was invited and didn’t play. It’s a typical bush league tactic.

• Fifth, saying government can’t run anything efficiently and it will make the act unworkable isn’t accurate, as popular as bashing government may be. Claiming government can’t run anything well isn’t accurate when focused on health care. Medicare has the lowest retention rate of all the insurers, which is a good thing and reflects the program’s efficiency. In short, it’s run better than all the private insurers could ever hope for.

• Sixth, the ACA has a long-range implementation period and, like Medicare and Medicaid, will need amendments, adjustments and other tweaking. Perhaps, as part of the tweaking, a certificate of need program like the one we had in the 1970s (before Ronald Reagan’s administration ruined it by buying into the “free market” health care idea ruined it) would stem some of the costly competition in capital expenditures. Perhaps a return to regional  comprehensive health planning would make sense.

Seventh, the law is constitutional. Those who argue otherwise reject the rule of law. You can't cherry-pick Supreme Court rulings for their legitimacy.

Eighth, objections without constructive discussion is useless.

Finally, for those citing individual cases, you're too narrow. This is a systems problem requiring a systems overview.

Somehow the vitriol and disinformation about public policy decisions has to stop for us to solve our problems — but that’s another topic.