tales of copper city

How shall I tell this story?

This is the brief introduction to the Gospel of Luke that I will give to the Christmas Eve service at St. John's Episcopal Church in Bisbee, a service that traditionally attracts people from all over town.

How can, Luke, a physician and a Gentile tell this story?

How can I tell it so that all will have faith and courage?

The Jews were expecting a new David, but Jesus was really a new Adam, a New Spirit for all people, Jews and Gentile alike.

Way to go, Harry Reid!

The Senate passed the health care reform bill, 60-39, and if anyone deserve the lion's share of the credit, it's Senator Harry Reid, the Majority Leader.

President Obama also deserves huge credit for making this his number one priority and Speaker Pelosi for shepherding the House bill past the opposition.

Certainly the legislation has serious defects but the simple fact is that we cannot reform health care unless and until nearly everyone is covered. And this first giant step has been taken.   (See Jonathan Chait's wonderful summary in The New Republic of why this bill is hugely important.)

And now undeniably the footprint of the federal government in health care will overshadow the private health insurance industry, making clear that it will be government and democratic majorities who will have the major say in shaping the future of our health care system.

Way to go!!!

A seriously dysfunctional Senate

Paul Krugman, in his latest post on health care reform, argues that our primary goal in the next Congress should be to reform the filibuster rules in the Senate.  It's required reading.  The crucial point is that a simple majority vote when the Senate organizes should be sufficient to overturn the Senate's filibuster rule, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.  

Hope against hope

The news today about "Joe Lieberman" winning is yet more evidence of how deeply entrenched in our politics is sectionalism and a conservative vision of our democracy.  Conservative democracy remains a force in our democracy in significant part because it can manipulate arcane anti-majoritarian rules in the Senate. 

So many hopes will be frustrated by this setback.  So many moved to Washington to help secure a better America and they must feel betrayed and abandoned by the president and many in their own party.  Some will be tempted to give up hope for the American democracy altogether.

And so I thought it might be time to write about the roots of our hope, about the politics of hope. 

"Evil does exist in the world..."

President Obama is receiving widespread praise for his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.  Here is what I see as the key assertion, made after he praised the moral example of Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: Evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler's armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force may sometimes be necessary is not a call to cynicism -- it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

To equate Al Qaeda's 100 to 300 terrorists and Hitler's armies is simply rhetoric totally out of control. Worse, it is to stretch the doctrine of self-defense beyond recognition, giving the United States permission to invade other countries at will.  

The scary Senate health care reform bill?

Who knows if the outlines of the Senate deal will hold?  The deal, as I understand it, will be to permit individual Americans to enroll in public insurance version of Medicare at age 55, and would also expand Medicaid to 150 percent poverty and would create some version of  a national insurance exchange to enhance competition, the exchange being overseen by either not-for-profits or government.

If the final Senate bill is an expansion of both Medicare (as public insurance, not as entitlement) and Medicaid is signed into the deal, we will have a much higher percentage of health care spending  coming from government sources than have now, perhaps as much as 65 percent.  And that makes the big reform we are going to need---something close to a single payer---much closer to a reality in the next 10 years.

If I were a progressive in the House, and this deal passes the Senate, I would take the deal and send it to the president.

Stupid wars

Barack Obama, while still in the Illinois legislature, said, "I'm not opposed to all war. I'm opposed to stupid wars." 

Well, now we know how wrong he was---about himself.  It turns out President Obama is in favor of stupid wars. 

Within a year many more American troops will be in Afghanistan and many more Americans will die for stupid reasons.  Just as importantly, many, many Afghani citizens,will die, innocent of everything except being in the way of the American war machine.  We even have a term for them: collateral damage.  And we will seldom hear about them except for the work of brave researchers who show us the costs of our inhumanity.

The picture of the President hailing a sea of West Point cadets and smiling from ear to ear nauseates me.  Some in that sea will die for no reason because of this decision made in stupidity.