Dazzled and Distracted – Guest Blog
December 19, 2009 by joanking · 1 Comment
When my invitation to the Dec. 1, White House holiday party came on Nov. 19, I was thrilled! After opening the envelope addressed to Ms. Joan King, with the engraved return address: The White House, Washington D.C., there it was–a beautiful red invitation with gold lettering and the White House seal at the top. It read: “Mrs. Michelle Obama requests the pleasure of your company at a Holiday Open House to be held at The White House on Tuesday, December 1, 2009 at six o’clock.” My hope was that Barack, himself, would drop by. And then, the news reports began stating that President Obama would be announcing his decision on Afghanistan troop deployment (and, yes, there would be around 30,000 more troops going!). And, it looked like the only night available for his speech was DEC. 1! My first thoughts (after realizing Barack would not be dropping by the party) were: should I boycott this holiday party? Should I wear an anti-war pin, at least? In truth, I did neither. After all, it was an invitation to THE WHITE HOUSE by Michelle, for campaign volunteers and volunteers in the White House Correspondence office, where I answer phones two days a week.
So, there I stood, in line with a couple of hundred people on Dec. l, as President Obama left the White House in his helicopter about 5:45 p.m. to fly to West Point to give his long awaited speech. I felt helpless and somewhat chagrined, which lasted only until I entered the White House (after, of course, three checkpoints, and the metal detector) a little after 6 p.m. A string trio played as each person was “welcome (ed) to the White House.” Wreaths of red painted magnolia leaves adorned the East Colonnade, which we walked down. Each room was absolutely beautiful, with holiday decorations, sparkling decorated trees and lit fire places in every room. The gigantic 18 ½ feet tree in the Blue room was adorned with 800 ornaments from previous administrations. Red taffeta ribbons and cranberries festooned the two trees in the Red room. An unbelievably beautiful white orchid plant was prominently displayed in the women’s rest room.
I began my evening with maybe the most delicious eggnog I have ever had; it was laced with rum, and ladled out of a crystal punchbowl. But that was just the beginning. In the East room, tables were laden with vegetables, fruit, oysters, shrimp, smoked salmon, roast beef, cheeses, and fruit. Wine and other drinks were plentiful. After this smorgasbord of delight, I went to the State Dining Room where we sampled the most scrumptious desserts, and admired the miniature gingerbread White House covered with white chocolate panels..
But it wasn’t only the stunning decorations, the beautiful music, the bountiful and delicious food. It was the feeling of warmth and good will that emanated from every area, and the graciousness and hospitality expressed by Michelle when she thanked all of us for volunteering. As she shook hands and gave hugs to those volunteers she knew from the campaign, I thrust my hand out and she took it in both of her hands. I was happy; I had made brief physical contact with Michelle Obama, an amazing first lady who exemplifies beauty and grace, elegance and naturalness. As I walked out of the White House at 8 p.m., the bushes glimmered with white lights, a full moon hung over Pennsylvania Ave., and I realized for a little while I had not thought about war, and Afghanistan. If only everyone could have those two magical hours in the White House.
Joan
GUEST BLOG: The Greatest Health Care System??
June 29, 2009 by Ed · 4 Comments
The other day, Senator Richard Shelby (R. Ala.), in a widely publicized statement, expressed concern that in attempting to reform our health care system, the Obama administration is running the risk of wrecking,
“the greatest health care system that the world has ever known.” With all due respect, Senator Shelby has either been blinded by patriotism, has never seriously thought about our health care system, or is intentionally trying to mislead us. There is no standard (except perhaps cosmetic surgery) by which the current United States system of health
care could be considered the best system in the world today, let alone over the rest of history. http://dll.umaine.edu/ble/U.S.%20HCweb.pdf
The primary problem with our system is its enormous cost. In March, 2009, Fox News reported that a study by the Business Roundtable (BR) had declared our current health care system “disproportionately expensive.”
The BR report noted that health care costs account for some 16% of our gross domestic product (GDP), while health care makes up only 6 to 10% of GDP in other advanced countries.
This disparity in costs between the United States and the rest of the world continues to grow. For 2009, the United States Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects health spending to increase 5.5 percent while GDP is expected to decrease 0.2 percent (the first decrease in GDP since 1949), resulting in the largest one-year increase in the health share of GDP in history (from 16.6 percent in 2008 to 17.6 percent in
2009).
Measured by health care costs per person, ours still is the most costly in the world. During 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available, health care here annually costs $6,096 per person. By contrast, the national system of our next door neighbor, Canada, provides health care for less than half our cost, $3,037 per person. Similarly, the per capita costs of those other dreaded national health care systems in the UK ($2,899) and in Western Europe [(e.g., Germany - $3,523; France - $3464; and Italy ($2,579)] are far lower than ours. Health care in Australia ($3,123), Japan ($2,831), and New Zealand ($2,039) also is far less expensive than here.
As the BR report noted, “Higher U.S. spending funnels away resources that could be invested elsewhere in the economy….” This nation’s current gross domestic product is approximately $14 trillion per year. If this nation’s expenditures for health care could be reduced from 16% -18% to 10% of our GDP we would each year have the remaining 6%, more than $700 billion, available for other purposes, or to reduce our deficit.
Americans also pay heavy costs at a personal level. High medical costs are the primary cause of bankruptcy in this country.
http://www.emaxhealth.com/1020/72/31551/despite-health-insurance-medical-costs-lead-bankruptcy.html
It is especially startling that 78 percent of those declaring bankruptcy because of health costs actually have health insurance. This is so because many health insurance policies provide far less than full protection to the “insureds.” Many have high deductibles and co-payment requirements, and leave some procedures uncovered.
Among people declaring bankruptcy, 77.9 percent had health insurance, and middle-class incomes. Catastrophic illness, such as multiple sclerosis, complicated diabetes, and neurological disorders accounted for high medical costs for hospitalization and pharmacy bills in half and 18.6 percent of all families declaring bankruptcy due to medical bills respectively.
Of course, if the additional expenditures gave us better health care, most of us presumably would agree that the results are worth the high price, at least to those of us who can afford the high cost. Unfortunately, however, this is not the case. Fox News quoted an author of the Business Roundtable report was reported by as saying, “Spending more would not be a problem if our health scores were proportionately higher, but what this study shows is that the U.S. is not getting higher levels of health and quality of care.” The report put it this way: “Other countries spend less on health care and their workers are relatively healthier.”
This indeed is so when we look at life expectancy and infant mortality rates. For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles. True, Americans are living longer than ever. A baby born in the United States in 2004 is projected to live an average of 77.9 years. Even so, the US now ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
The story on infant mortality is the same. The National Council of Health Statistics recently noted that the United States health care system ranks 29th in infant mortality, tied with Poland and Slovakia.
All those countries referred to above as having lower health care costs have far better figures than do we concerning life expectancy and infant mortality. Plainly, our system is not working efficiently and is not producing acceptable results. As Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, said in response to the infant mortality statistics, “Something is wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries.”
Finally, realize that we have not even yet mentioned one of the most shocking and distinctive realities of our national health care system: some 47 million people in this country have no health insurance of any kind. This disgraceful fact is a byproduct of the priority we have given to having profit-making entities provide health care in this country. The other nations to which we compare ourselves provide national coverage and cover all their citizens. We who place such great value on individualism are willing to disregard 47 million of our brothers and sisters when it comes to health care.
Our system, most expensive in the world, produces the 42nd best life expectancy and the 29th lowest infant mortality rates in the world. It is the primary cause of bankruptcy in the nation and leaves 47 million without coverage. Against this background, the World Health Organisation recently concluded that ours is the 37th greatest in the world.
http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html Tell that to Senator Shelby and others who wring their hands about the importance of keeping our system as it is.
Blindness
October 26, 2008 by Ed · Leave a Comment
By Edward C. King
A man in a car at a stoplight suddenly is stricken blind. Another man drives the blind man to his home, but then steals his car. The doctor who examines the blind man becomes blind the next day. The “good Samaritan” who stole the car also goes blind. It appears the blindness is spreading, possibly from a virus. The authorities decree that those who have become blind must be isolated from society, lest they infect those who still have sight. The original blind man, the doctor, the doctor’s wife, the car thief, and many others are taken to a former prison and left. Guards are stationed outside the prison to prevent escape, but no one is stationed inside the prison and the occupants are not examined or treated in any way to avoid exposure. The guards periodically deliver food to the gate of the prison, but otherwise leave the afflicted to fend for themselves.
Blindness continues to spread. Blinded guards become prisoners. The guard ranks thin; and before long, the food stops coming. Within the prison, the most aggressive people gain control and extract gross actions from the others in exchange for small shares of food.
Eventually, those imprisoned find their way to the outside and learn that everyone is blind. There has been a complete societal breakdown. Businesses have been abandoned, as have hospitals and all social service systems. There are no cars or transportation systems, no sign of government. Sewage systems do not work. People find food by scavenging. Many are homeless because they are unable to find their homes, or have been ousted from them. Some die in the streets. When they do, dogs preserve themselves by devouring human remains.
This is Blindness, a novel written in 1995 by Jose Saramago, the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. While reading the story, one questions whether the scenario is realistic – until grasping that Saramago is describing not literal blindness, but a failure of leadership. In Saramago’s tale, there is no measured national dialog. The afflicted are immediately treated as outcasts with no regard for the fact that blind people are capable of playing useful roles, even exercising leadership, in society. Nor is there due process. The doctor and his wife are picked up and taken away without prior notice and without choice or the opportunity to be heard. The people themselves are so swept up by events and fear that reflection seems impossible. There is prompt and resolute governmental action, but it is born merely of impulse. There is no reflection, no sophistication, no search for alternatives, no governmental vision.
I read Blindness several years ago. It is a powerful and profound book. Yet, I did not recommend it to my wife, to my kindred spirit adult daughters, to my thoughtful and highly literate older grandchildren, or to friends. This in part was because the descriptions of what happened to people are as horrific, disturbing, and disgusting as anything I have ever read. I also felt the book’s importance was somewhat diminished by what then seemed to me its unrealistic premises. At that time, I doubted that such a catastrophe would or could occur in any society, and I was unwilling to consider carefully whether it would be possible for a body of people to abandon civilized institutions, values, and actions so quickly and heedlessly. On the basis of those rationalizations, I decided I could not justify putting my loved ones through the experience of Blindness.
Yet, in recent years, we have all seen several instances of unthinkable, catastrophic events, followed by governmental blindness. First, there was 911. The tragedy of that day was unthinkable. The aftermath, though, was in many ways even more disturbing. Instead of carefully considering alternatives and working with the many friendly and empathetic nations who wanted to cooperate in a united response, our government worked in isolation to fashion its own response, then insisted that other nations join the approach or stand aside. We attacked Iraq, although that country played absolutely no role in causing the 911 attack on this country.
Also–even more shocking to me as a lawyer, former judge and teacher of law–we chose not to tailor our response to our own country’s proudest historic possession, our constitutional safeguards, or to the international protocols we and other nations had agreed to in the Geneva Convention. Instead, we sought to minimize and avoid those bulwarks against inhumanity so that we could torture and hold prisoners indeterminately without counsel or an opportunity to be heard.
Then Katrina. We knew a hurricane was coming, but government showed no vision and failed to prepare. Many with disabilities or without cars were unable to leave New Orleans and were simply abandoned. The televised scenes were eerily reminiscent of Blindness: desperate people waving from roofs; bodies floating in the water; looters raping households and people; all with no effective governmental response. Congratulatory statements such as, “Great job, Brownie,” confirmed that our highest officials were blind even to their own failures.
Now we face one more stunning, unanticipated and potentially catastrophic event — a financial crisis.
This time governmental blindness–failure to regulate–has played a role in creating the crisis. And governmental insistence on immediate action has exacerbated it. Secretary of Treasury Paulsen put forward a $700 billion rescue package but he and President Bush insisted that it must be enacted immediately. Although neither was able to articulate what the government would do with that vast amount of money, both resisted efforts within Congress to consider alternatives and permit a modicum of reflection and fine tuning. The resulting massive governmental action does not seem to represent any vision. The market is un-assured, and the economy remains at risk.
In the midst of this financial crisis, with New Orleans still unrecovered, and with the nation still struggling with the effects of our unilateral and misguided decisions in response to 911, we have the opportunity to choose new leadership. Plainly, we should attempt to choose vision, not blindness.
Senator John McCain, a war hero in the sense that he persevered through five years of harsh imprisonment at the hands of the enemy during the Vietnam War, surely is an honorable man. But has he shown any signs of genuine vision? Senator McCain is a member of the party in power during all
the events described above, and has supported the government in its response to those events. A recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic gives us a clue as to why this has happened. The article, Why War Is His Answer, describes McCain and his father, Admiral John S. McCain, Jr., as true believers in the Vietnam War and in the notion that America’s failure to do what was necessary to win that war was at great cost to our national honor. The article concludes that Senator McCain’s approach to the war in Iraq also is driven by his concern for national honor.
Honor, a laudable and perhaps even necessary quality, is not sufficient. An effective president must have vision. A decision-making process based on honor can be short sighted and lead to disastrous results. Throughout history, millions of soldiers and civilians have killed and been killed in the name of national or personal honor.
Evaluating the outcome of the Vietnam War exclusively on the basis of national honor is a form of blindness. When one looks at Vietnam as that country exists today and recognizes how fundamentally erroneous was the domino theory that impelled our nation during the Vietnam War, it is difficult to imagine that anybody could mourn The United States’ refusal to add additional deaths to our efforts to win that war. Indeed, one can more reasonably think that to fight on in Vietnam to save face would have led to more needless deaths and would have been the ultimate dishonorable act.
More to the point now, if a President McCain were to become fixated on “honor” and “victory” in Iraq, this would lead to many more deaths and cause us to lose sight of numerous other important considerations, such as Afghanistan and the need to develop cooperative approaches with other nations.
Similarly, Senator McCain’s opposition through the years to more efficient automobile fuel standards, and his calls now to, “Drill, baby, drill!,” suggest that a President McCain would not be a man of vision, looking for alternatives and new ways, but instead would be rigid, clinging to old ways without regard to the peril.
The alternative is Barack Obama. Although many politicians, including Senator McCain in the past year, have pronounced themselves to be candidates of change, Senator Obama has been calling for change since he first appeared on the national stage. With his mixed racial heritage, his years in Hawaii and Indonesia, and work with the poor as a community organizer, followed by his exceptional achievement in becoming president of the Harvard Law Review, his ten years as a scholar and teacher of constitutional law, then his service in the Illinois legislature and the US Senate, Obama himself is a symbol of change and openness for America. He has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to draw to him the wisest advisors, like financier Warren Buffett and law scholar Laurence Tribe, to help him identify and analyze key issues and determine the best course of action.
I see now that I erred in failing to bring Blindness to the attention of my family and friends. I now understand that the book’s premise was realistic, that civilized society is fragile and must be nurtured and protected, and that in a time of emergency or crisis, lack of governmental vision can be fatal.
We now have before us two candidates. One represents vision, change, and a search for new ways. The other, a supporter of the policies that have put us where we are, holds himself out as a man of experience and honor. What would Saramago say?
