Monday, August 31, 2009

Name that Blog


The Kansas Democratic Party is introducing a community blog feature to its website and taking suggestions as to the new blog's name. Take a moment to read the message from the state party below and suggest a name!

Do you have something to say, but no medium to say it? Well that's about to change.

We're excited to announce that as you read this, work is being done on the new website you asked from us last June. One of the signature features of our new website will be a community blog where you can write about your local party, candidates, and partner organizations.

It'll be 100% free and open to all Democrats. All we need to make it official is a new name:


Here's how it will work.

We'll be accepting your suggestions for blog names throughout the first half of this week with the contest closing Wednesday night at 11:59 PM. Thursday morning, we'll select the best five names from across the state and have you vote for the blog name you like the best. Whichever name gets the most votes by Monday, September 7th at 11:59 PM will be the winner!

We strongly encourage you to organize around your favorite name, but we'll talk more about that later. For now, if you've got a good idea for a blog name, submit it on the KSDP website, at the address below:

http://www.ksdp.org/nameourblog

It's an exciting time to be active in Kansas politics, and we can't wait to hear directly from you!

Thanks for all that you do,

Mike Nellis
Online Director -- Kansas Democratic Party

P.S. This blog is about you -- don't forget to make your suggestion before Thursday!

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

True Colors


It all started this morning while I was in the shower. My wife was listening to NPR, as is our habit. Over the sound of the rushing water, she said, "Ted Kennedy has passed away." I stopped there and said a little prayer for a fellow human who had lost a battle with cancer.

NPR was, not surprisingly, very respectful in its coverage, and I had a sense that somehow the Right would let the family mourn before hurling their last insults at the man who came to be known as the Lion of the Senate.

That illusion was shattered when one of my colleagues emailed me before 9:00 this morning irate at a friend's facebook status that wondered what kind of country makes heroes out of "child molesters and drunk-driving murderers." Surely, this was just one person spewing venom, right?

Knowing somehow this facebook user wasn't alone, I checked the some of the right-wing websites to see if she had compatriots out there ready to pounce. Here's some of what's posted by readers of the American Spectator:


Eric Cartman| 8.26.09 @ 5:58AM

Dude,

He should have died trying to save the girl he killed driving drunk. He was and will remain a cowardly, drunken, degenerate slob! Say Hi to Hitler for me, Ted!


Solo| 8.26.09 @ 8:09AM

Well...the "Lying Liberal " is finally burning in hell!

Good riddence, you feckless bastard!!


william| 8.26.09 @ 5:45PM

All you Kennedys seek is Fame and Sex and Greed and Riches. You're all in Hell where you belong you Fair Haired Sons of Bitches!


There is much more of the same out there, but I simply too sickened to reveal more. What's been written and said about the late Senator in the last 12 hours says much more about the writers and speakers of such venom than about the man himself.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Democracy: Bush-Cheney Style


U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to launch an investigation into whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in connection with the torture of terror suspects during the Bush era made news headlines today as former Vice-President Cheney defended what he calls "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

These techniques, whatever euphemism that one attaches to them, are torture plain and simple; and they do not and cannot represent the values of American democracy . . . unless, of course, you think it's appropriate to threaten detainees with mock execution, imply that you are willing to rape their mothers . . . front of them, and make promises to find and kill their children.

The full report is available online at the address below, but one need not read it in it's entirety to know that these methods do not represent the best of America. We must never again allow ourselves to become monsters even as we attempt to combat the monstrous actions of others. Whether is happens at Guantanamo or in Abu Ghraib, wrong is wrong.

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/IG_Report.pdf

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Guns at Town Hall Meetings



It's not exactly news; in fact, the national media has been reporting for a least a couple of weeks that a handful of opponents of health care reform have been attending Obama town-hall meetings armed with handguns, presumably to protect themselves in the event that a death panel appears.

Such events have gotten me thinking about just how much handguns cost our current health care system and our society as a whole.

These thoughts led me to the work of Philip J. Cook and Jens Ludwig whose book,Gun Violence: The Real Costs(published by Oxford University), concludes that handguns cost America 100 billion dollars a year.

Here's a snippet of the review of the book from the Oxford University Press:

"Until now researchers have assessed the burden imposed by gunshot injuries and deaths in terms of medical costs and lost productivity. Here, economists Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig widen the lens, developing a framework to calculate the full costs borne by Americans in a society where both gun violence and its ever-present threat mandate responses that touch every aspect of our lives.

All of us, no matter where we reside or how we live, share the costs of gun violence. Whether waiting in line to pass through airport security or paying taxes for the protection of public officials; whether buying a transparent book bag for our children to meet their school's post-Columbine regulations or subsidizing an urban trauma center, the steps we take are many and the expenditures enormous."

Perhaps a major facet in the heath care debate has been overlooked: the connection between our obsession with guns and the high price we pay for that obsession.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Lies, Lies, and More Lies

This one really takes the cake. It is so bold, so outrageous that I had to fact-check it myself to see if it could even be true. Surely, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa (a man known as a moderate) didn't really say that Senator Ted Kennedy, who is battling a brain tumor while fighting for health care reform, would go untreated if he were a British citizen?

Yep, he said it. Forget for a moment that Sen. Kennedy is NOT advocating a British or Canadian-style single-payer system. Forget that that none of the plans emerging from either the House or Senate committees includes a single-payer provision. Focus instead on this, the latest of the Republican lies. I can't even write "misrepresentations" anymore.

This lie flies in the face of a simple truth: if Sen. Kennedy were a British citizen, he would receive the same care is receiving here with one major exception. His care would be cost-free, as it would be for ANY Brit who suffered from brain cancer (or any other ailment.)

Shame on you, Chuck Grassley.

Monday, August 17, 2009

So What is a Health Care Cooperative?

House Democrats want a full public option; Senate Dems (at some of them) seem to be leaning toward health care cooperatives. Secretary Sebelius alluded to the Senate option on the weekend talk shows, and Republicans gleefully began predicting a civil war among Democrats that would effectively kill reform. But what exactly are health insurance cooperatives, and are they real alternatives to a full public option? We can't settle for margarine when the recipe calls for butter, but how do we know the implications of such a decision without a full understanding of our options?

Again I defer to the NYT:

August 17, 2009, 4:02 pm
So What’s a Health Insurance Co-op, Anyway?
By Anne Underwood


If a public insurance option were to be abandoned, it could be replaced by an alternative favored by some moderates like Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of North Dakota: the health insurance cooperative. Legislators have not spelled out how these plans might work, but health insurance co-ops do have a history in this country. Anne Underwood, a freelance writer, quizzed Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University who has written extensively on health care policy, including the feasibility of establishing health insurance co-ops.

Q.

What is a nonprofit co-op?

A.

The basic idea is that consumers get together and start a company to produce something that otherwise might not be produced or would be underproduced. Co-ops are a familiar concept in the United States, especially in rural areas. I live in western Virginia, and we belong to an electric co-op that produces our power. Farm co-ops and dairy co-ops are also common.

Q.

So co-ops can be formed to provide health insurance, too?

A.

We had them in the 1930s and 1940s, because the Farm Security Administration sponsored them before we had health insurance. There were 600,000 people in the Midwest who were insured through them. Texas was a big area for them.

Q.

What happened to them?

A.

The Farm Security Administration withdrew support in 1947, and they all collapsed. They had a hard time getting going anyway. Two have survived — Group Health Cooperative of Washington and Health Partners in Minnesota. From everything I’ve read about them, they function reasonably well. But they’ve basically become like other insurance companies with a few little added bells and whistles for their members.

But one thing that it’s important to get straight from the beginning is the difference between insurance co-ops and health insurance purchasing co-ops. There was a real movement in the 1990s to purchase insurance through co-ops. Those are similar to the exchanges that are being proposed. A few of them got going. They were not remarkably successfully, either. The idea was that consumers bargain with insurance companies to buy insurance. They’re not insurance providers themselves.

Q.

So what we’re talking about are insurance co-ops that would function as insurers themselves.

A.

The argument I make is that it’s really hard to start an insurance company. You don’t just get a bunch of people together and say, “We’re going to start an insurance co-op.” The biggest problem is coming up with a network. You have to find doctors and hospitals and negotiate contracts. Most are already locked up by the dominant insurers. They’re not going to give you — a tiny co-op — a better deal. That’s assuming they’ll deal with you at all. The alternative would be to rent a network, but you’re basically buying your product from your competitor. There’s no way you’ll get a good deal there, either.

Q.

What are some of other challenges in setting up a co-op?

A.

You need to establish a brand identity, figure out how to handle claims, develop actuarial expertise, establish reserves, meet state licensing requirements and solvency requirements.

Q.

Does it improve competition in any way?

A.

What you have in the United States now . . . is concentration of insurance markets. You hear this stuff about 1,300 insurers in the United States and all this competition. But just try to get more than one of them to bid on your contract for a health plan in the Shenandoah, where I am. One insurer controls 87 percent of the market in Harrisonburg, Va. That’s true in many places. The idea that there are 1,300 insurers and that we have access to all of them is like saying there are 10,000 produce stands in U.S. If there’s only one within 10 miles of where you live, that’s the one you have access to.

Health insurance is very local. It’s very hard to break into an insurance market. The thought that you’ll have a few businessmen get together and set up a co-op that will compete with Aetna or Cigna is just dreaming. It’s not going to happen.

Q.

So how would a public plan be superior?

A.

If you had a public plan that could use Medicare rates, the infrastructure would already be there. It could use the Medicare network. Providers could always opt out, as they do today. Some doctors won’t take Medicare patients. The Energy and Commerce bill with Blue Dog amendments allows the secretary of health and human services to negotiate rates. Any provider who didn’t want to be in the public plan could opt out.

The United States government already has brand identity. It could compete. Maybe it would be a lousy competitor and fail, or maybe it would be a great competitor and force private insurers to compete and come up with a product that was more affordable than what they’re selling now. I don’t see a problem with trying it.

The idea that the public plan will dominate the market, I don’t see that. As the president said, we have a post office, Federal Express and U.P.S. I use all three. The idea [of relying solely on private insurers] is like saying we’ll abolish the post office and give people vouchers to send letters with Federal Express. That’s what we’re doing if we don’t have a public plan.

Who knows? Maybe some consumers might put together a co-op that would survive. But the idea that co-ops will provide competition in the private market that would have effect on cost is an illusion. We’re talking about using taxpayer money to pay money to private insurers without any competition. How crazy is that?

Q.

So what’s the appeal?

A.

It’s a co-op, a consumer-run business — not the government taking over health care. Second, the idea of a co-op is familiar in the upper Midwest. They have dairy co-ops and electrical co-ops. It’s an idea familiar to constituents, and those co-ops work reasonably well for producing certain kinds of goods in certain markets. The problem is, they don’t make sense for health insurance.

The argument that we’re headed toward government-run, socialized medicine plays pretty well in a lot of conservative parts of the United States. This is an alternative. The problem is, it’s an alternative that wouldn’t work.

Q.

Would nonprofit co-ops at least help to control costs?

A.

I don’t see how it does anything to control costs. I don’t see much in the legislation outside of Medicare reforms that will control costs, except for the public plan.

I also see it as a strategy to get a bill through the Senate Finance Committee. The final bill that comes out of conference may look different. I hope so.

The other thing is, nobody has seen the co-op proposal yet.

Q.

Might health care co-ops be structured in different ways?

A.

I did a memo on how you might structure one to work, if you established a national cooperative. If the federal government set up a co-op itself, the co-op could then be set up regionally and funded adequately to get things going. You might be able to come up with a co-op that would in fact work.

But I still think it is a poor alternative to the vigorous public plan.

Q.

Should we be worried that the public plan will fare so well that we end up without private alternatives?

A.

In Germany and Australia, they have competition of public plans and private plans. In fact, what has happened is that the market stabilizes, the public plan provides things some people want, and private plans provide things other people want. What you end up with eventually is a market in which people get what they want.

The Congressional Budget Office predicted in its analysis of the House bill that about two-thirds of people who had the option would go for private market and one-third for public. The vast majority — about 160 million — would stay in employer-covered plans, because the exchange wouldn’t be available to them. Probably some people will go with the public option because it’s cheaper. Others may think private insurance will offer more care or broader coverage.

The market will sort itself out, just as the market for automobiles sorts itself out. We don’t have to all buy top-end cars. In Germany, 50 percent of people go public, and 50 percent private. I think it’s unlikely the the public plan would drive private insurers out of business.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Obama Pens NYT Op-ed on Health Care Reform

If you haven't had a chance to read Obama's well written piece in the NYT, here it is. I continue to be amazed that the well reasoned and logical arguments that are being put forth by the President and Democrats in Congress are being drowned out by a discussion of conspiracy theories involving death panels and health care for undocumented workers. Of course, if your major source of news is Rush (who once imitated Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms to make the case that the actor was exaggerating the effects of his debilitating disease to make a political point)then there's really no hope for negotiation. But enough from me, here are the words of a President who actually writes his own books.

August 16, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Why We Need Health Care Reform
By BARACK OBAMA


OUR nation is now engaged in a great debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for them.

These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.

I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as important for Americans who do have health insurance.

There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.

First, if you don’t have health insurance, you will have a choice of high-quality, affordable coverage for yourself and your family — coverage that will stay with you whether you move, change your job or lose your job.

Second, reform will finally bring skyrocketing health care costs under control, which will mean real savings for families, businesses and our government. We’ll cut hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency in federal health programs like Medicare and Medicaid and in unwarranted subsidies to insurance companies that do nothing to improve care and everything to improve their profits.

Third, by making Medicare more efficient, we’ll be able to ensure that more tax dollars go directly to caring for seniors instead of enriching insurance companies. This will not only help provide today’s seniors with the benefits they’ve been promised; it will also ensure the long-term health of Medicare for tomorrow’s seniors. And our reforms will also reduce the amount our seniors pay for their prescription drugs.

Lastly, reform will provide every American with some basic consumer protections that will finally hold insurance companies accountable. A 2007 national survey actually shows that insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million Americans in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition. The companies either refused to cover the person, refused to cover a specific illness or condition or charged a higher premium.

We will put an end to these practices. Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick.

Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies. There’s no reason that we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. It makes sense, it saves lives and it can also save money.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

The long and vigorous debate about health care that’s been taking place over the past few months is a good thing. It’s what America’s all about.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

Despite what we’ve seen on television, I believe that serious debate is taking place at kitchen tables all across America. In the past few years, I’ve received countless letters and questions about health care. Some people are in favor of reform, and others have concerns. But almost everyone understands that something must be done. Almost everyone knows that we must start holding insurance companies accountable and give Americans a greater sense of stability and security when it comes to their health care.

I am confident that when all is said and done, we can forge the consensus we need to achieve this goal. We are already closer to achieving health-insurance reform than we have ever been. We have the American Nurses Association and the American Medical Association on board, because our nation’s nurses and doctors know firsthand how badly we need reform. We have broad agreement in Congress on about 80 percent of what we’re trying to do. And we have an agreement from the drug companies to make prescription drugs more affordable for seniors. The AARP supports this policy, and agrees with us that reform must happen this year.

In the coming weeks, the cynics and the naysayers will continue to exploit fear and concerns for political gain. But for all the scare tactics out there, what’s truly scary — truly risky — is the prospect of doing nothing. If we maintain the status quo, we will continue to see 14,000 Americans lose their health insurance every day. Premiums will continue to skyrocket. Our deficit will continue to grow. And insurance companies will continue to profit by discriminating against sick people.

That is not a future I want for my children, or for yours. And that is not a future I want for the United States of America.

In the end, this isn’t about politics. This is about people’s lives and livelihoods. This is about people’s businesses. This is about America’s future, and whether we will be able to look back years from now and say that this was the moment when we made the changes we needed, and gave our children a better life. I believe we can, and I believe we will.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Palin's Facebook Status Claims Obama Death Panel Could Decide Fate of Her Child

The Huffington Post, along with several other media outlets, reported this weekend that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is at it again making "extraordinary, unsupported and incendiary claims [including one] that [asserts]President Obama's health care plan will result in a 'death panel' that is fundamentally 'evil'."

In a recent Facebook posting, Palin lashed out at a scenario "in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

This, of course, is beyond wrong. It's just plain (Palin) stupid. But, worse than just being idiotic, such language actually works AGAINST children with special needs. I could write much more about this, but I found an excellent response on MOMocrats (yet another website I recommend). Here it is:


Sarah Palin, you are not my advocate. You do not speak for me. You do not speak for my child.

You do not speak for the many good friends of mine who have children with chronic medical issues far more severe than my own son's neurological disorder, Sensory Processing Disorder. You do not speak for all parents of children with Down Syndrome. You do not speak for the member of my extended family who has Down Syndrome.

What you said on your Facebook page, about mythical Obama "death panels"?

If enough people believe it — if enough people are scared by it into opposing any kind of health insurance reform — that politically motivated statement deliberately promoting a dangerous rumor that has been proven to be patently false could cause tens of thousands of children with special needs in the United States to continue to suffer without adequate health care for years to come.

In the United States, children with chronic health issues are often denied coverage by private health insurance companies that consider their health concerns to be a pre-existing condition. Some of those children denied coverage under private health insurance are, thankfully, able to qualify for public health insurance through Medicaid or SCHIP — two of our country's existing socialized medical insurance programs — but some are not. And those children who do have private insurance coverage are often forced to pay high co-pays for routine procedures, and are frequently denied authorization for recommended medical care.

Every day in the United States, children with autism or cerebral palsy are denied occupational therapy. Children with juvenile diabetes are denied insulin pumps. Children with asthma are denied inhalers. American parents of children with chronic health conditions must fight a tangled bureaucratic health insurance system constantly to make sure that their kids can get access to the care recommended by their doctors.

And that's why the National Down Syndrome Congress supports health insurance reform. That's why the Autism Society of America supports health insurance reform. That's why Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, the American Diabetes Association, and the March of Dimes all support health care insurance reform. Because all of these organizations are advocates for children with special needs.

That's why I support health reform. Because I am a parent of a child with special needs. Because I've spent hours and hours of my life tangled up in the red tape that stands between my son and his needed health care, desperately fighting against enormous for-profit corporations who see my beautiful, beloved child not as a person who needs help but as a profit loss.

I support health insurance reform because I want exceptional children like my son — children like your son, Trig — to get the best of care. And under our current broken health care system, far too many do not.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Vocab Word of the Day: Astroturfing

Here's the word in context courtesy of politicsdaily.com

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office sent out a fact sheet to reporters Tuesday afternoon, calling recent demonstrations at congressional town hall events 'Astroturf,' the Washington euphemism for a corporate public relations campaign disguised to look like a grass roots citizen movement.

Pelosi said that while Democrats are putting forth proposals to reform health care, 'those not interested in health insurance reform are disrupting public meetings and not allowing concerned constituents to ask questions and express their views. Many of these opponents who are shutting down civil discussion are organized by out-of-district, extremist political groups, and industry-supported lobbying firms.'
The statement, citing numerous media reports, linked disruptions of congressional meetings to the insurance industry and conservative organizations like FreedomWorks, which is run by former House Republican leader Dick Armey."

Manufactured dissent and heckling brought to you by the Far Right.

Eloquence Personified

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Rachel Maddow on Health Scare

Reagan on Health Care

It was 1961 when Ronald Reagan warned his fellow Americans of a new government program that would literally spell the end of American freedom should it pass. Here are the late President's words:

“Write those letters now. Call your friends, and tell them to write them. If you don’t, this program I promise you will pass just as surely as the sun will come up tomorrow. And behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day…we will awake to find that we have socialism. And if you don’t do this, and if I don’t do it, one of these days, you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children, and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

What monstrous socialist experiment was Reagan warning against? Medicare, the single most popular government program of all time. Medicare was the big “threat to our freedom” that Reagan was referencing. In the words of a fellow blogger on plunderbund.com, "Have you told your children and your children’s children yet that we are no longer free?"

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Refuting the Birthers

While you're not busy convincing the elderly that health care reform doesn't equal euthanasia, read up on this excerpted post from salon.com on how to refute the conspiracy theorists who steadfastly maintain(in spite of all the evidence to the contrary) that President Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and cannot, therefore, legally serve as President.

Myth 1: Obama wasn't born in the U.S.

This is the big one. It may also be the most easily refuted. First of all, during the presidential campaign, Obama released a certification of live birth, which is the official document you get if you ask Hawaii for a copy of your birth certificate. There are allegations that what Obama released is a forgery, but state officials have repeatedly affirmed its authenticity and said they've checked it against the original record and that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii.

If that wasn't enough, two Hawaiian newspapers carried announcements of Obama's birth in August 1961. (Read the Honolulu Advertiser's item from Aug. 13, 1961, nine days after Obama's birth, here.) The traditional joke that Birther debunkers make is that his grandparents must have placed those announcements because they knew that he'd want to run for president nearly five decades later. The truth, though, is that the notices are even stronger pieces of evidence than that. Obama's family didn't place them -- Hawaii did, as it does for all births. The announcements were based on official records sent to the papers by the state's Department of Health.

Myth 2: Obama can't be president because his father was a British citizen

Some of the Birthers -- like de facto leader Orly Taitz -- believe that Obama wouldn't be eligible for the presidency even if he were born in the U.S. That's because, in their infinite wisdom, the Founding Fathers included in the Constitution a fair amount of phrases they never really bothered to define. One of those is this explanation of who can be president: "No person except a natural born citizen."

The Supreme Court has never ruled directly on the question of what "natural born citizen" means. So the Birthers have simply settled on their own definition -- someone born to two citizen parents -- and found a source,"The Law of Nations," a 1758 book by the Swiss philosopher Emerich de Vattel, to back them up.

There are a couple of problems with this. Most important, Obama isn't the first president with a non-citizen parent: Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president, was. His father was from Ireland and apparently did not become a U.S. citizen until more than 10 years after the future president's birth.

Plus, even if the Founding Fathers did rely on Vattel as much as the Birthers say -- always a dubious proposition -- Swiss philosophy books aren't legal precedent in the United States. British common law is. And in 1898, in the case of U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court looked into the meaning of "natural born" in the common law and concluded that a non-citizen's mere presence in the U.S. is enough to make their child, if born here, a natural-born citizen.

Myth 3: A Kenyan birth certificate for Obama, showing he was born in Mombasa, has been discovered

It's a hoax. Once Taitz released the document, purportedly a certified copy of a Kenyan birth certificate, it took less than two days for Internet sleuths to prove that it had been forged.
Quantcast

The first signs were a couple of small but revealing errors: The certification is dated Feb. 17, 1964, when newly independent Kenya was known as the Dominion of Kenya. It wouldn't start calling itself the Republic of Kenya until December of that year -- but the document refers to the republic. Additionally, the document's header refers to "Coast Province," but as two British professors who are experts in Kenyan history pointed out to Salon, at the time the certificate was supposedly produced, the country's provinces were referred to as regions.

For the final nail in this myth's coffin, one particularly enterprising man, Steve Eddy, located the original Australian document on which the Kenyan certificate was apparently based. The two documents share several identical numbers, including the page and the book of records in which they can be found, and minor changes were made to the names of the registrars responsible for the Australian copy. Taitz claims the Australian certificate "was created to try to discredit my efforts" but it was in fact available on the Internet as far back as 2007.


Myth 4: Obama's grandmother said he was born in Kenya


There's a kernel of truth to this one. In an interview with a street preacher named Ron McRae, Sarah Obama, the second wife of the president's grandfather, did say she was there, in Kenya, for her grandson's birth.

Unfortunately for the Birthers, it was the result of a miscommunication -- or perhaps a mistranslation -- and as soon as McRae started pressing the issue, Obama's family realized what had happened and corrected him. Most Birthers simply ignore the corrections, excising them from audio and transcripts of the conversation posted online. McRae just believes it's part of the conspiracy and that Obama's younger relatives were coached to hide the truth.

The full audio can be downloaded here. What follows is a transcript of the relevant portion of the interview:

MCRAE: Could I ask her about his actual birthplace? I would like to see his birthplace when I come to Kenya in December. Was she present when he was born in Kenya?

TRANSLATOR: Yes. She says, yes, she was, she was present when Obama was born.

MCRAE: When I come in December. I would like to come by the place, the hospital, where he was born. Could you tell me where he was born? Was he born in Mombasa?

TRANSLATOR: No, Obama was not born in Mombasa. He was born in America.

MCRAE: Whereabouts was he born? I thought he was born in Kenya.

TRANSLATOR: No, he was born in America, not in Mombasa.

MCRAE: Do you know where he was born? I thought he was born in Kenya. I was going to go by and see where he was born.

TRANSLATOR: Hawaii. Hawaii. Sir, she says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father was also learning, there. The state of Hawaii.

Myth 5: Hawaii allows parents to get birth certificates for their foreign-born children

This one is actually true -- just not in the way the Birthers think. Here's their position, as outlined by World Net Daily, a conservative news site that's become the unofficial Birther Web headquarters: "The 'Certification of Live Birth' posted online and widely touted as 'Obama's birth certificate' does not in any way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same 'short-form' document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii."

Children not born in Hawaii can get a birth document from the state. But it won't say they were born in Hawaii, as Obama's does.

"If you were born in Bali, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali," Janice Okubo, the director of communications for the state Department of Health, told the Washington Independent's David Weigel recently. "You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate."

Latest Tactic to Block Health Care Reform? Scare Senior Citizens

Here's an article worth reading if you are need of a response to someone who maintains that the Obama plan for universal health care includes a euthanasia provision for senior citizens.

Michael Goforth: AARP rebuts claims of health care reform impact on seniors

If I were a senior citizen and believed some of the claims being made concerning the potential impact of health care reform on seniors, I’d be fighting against changes.

In recent weeks, particular concerns have been raised by Betsy McCaughey, a former New York lieutenant governor and self-proclaimed patient advocate. In a column and on talk shows, she has claimed that a provision in the health reform package includes a requirement that seniors on Medicare be given “end of life” counseling, essentially telling seniors how to end their lives sooner as a means of cost savings.

Some lawmakers have contended that amounts to government endorsement of euthanasia.

That would be a despicable and deplorable mandate and should anger seniors and their families if it were true.

On Saturday, the AARP, the nation’s largest advocacy organization for senior citizens, challenged McCaughey’s claim as a “gross, and even cruel, distortion.”

A statement from John Rother, the organization’s executive vice president, was posted on its Web site:

“Ms. McCaughey’s criticism misinterprets legislation that would actually help empower individuals and doctors to make their own choices on end-of-life care. This measure would allow Medicare to pay doctors for taking the time to talk with individuals about difficult end-of-life decisions ...

“Facing a terminal disease or debilitating accident, some people will choose to take every possible lifesaving measure in the hopes that treatment or even a cure will allow them more time with their families. Others will decide that additional treatment would impose too great a burden — emotional, physical and otherwise — on themselves and their families, declining extraordinary measures and instead choosing care to manage their discomfort. Either way, it should be their choice.”

In addition, the bill provides that doctors and patients be able to compare different types of treatments to find out which may work best for the patient.

“The main opponents of this research are those groups with a vested interest in a health are system that wastes billions of dollars each year on ineffective or unnecessary drugs, treatments or tests,” Rother said. “Given Ms. McCaughey’s position as a director of a medical device producer, I would hope that any potential conflict of interest has not influenced her commentary.”

There was more:

“AARP is committed to improving the quality, effectiveness and affordability of health are for our 40 million members and their families. We will fight any measure that would prevent individuals and their doctors from making their own health care decisions. We will also fight the campaign of misinformation that vested interests are using to try to scare older Americans in order to protect the status quo. Profits should never be allowed to come before people in this debate.”

This debate over what should or should not be included in a health care reform package is intense and will continue to be. And, as there are numerous complexities in trying to change such a massive system, there are certain to be differing perspectives on its aspects. And, there is some degree of misinformation being publicized by all parties involved.

Key to understanding and making personal decisions for or against reform measures is to treat each ”expert opinion” with a healthy dose of skepticism, to consider the potential motives, political or financial, that the source may have, and to weigh the levels of trust or distrust one may have in the messenger.

As we have learned too often in recent partisan debates, if misinformation spreads far enough and loudly enough, it becomes “fact.” And, when that happens, people can take positions directly opposite of their own best interests and end up losing when they think they may be winning.

michael.goforth@scripps.com

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Is National Health Care on Its Deathbed?

The August recess in upon us, and the right wing war machine has health care reform in the cross-hairs. Their strategy? Intelligent debate focused on our nation's need find a solution to rising health care costs . . . not quite.

How about attending town hall meetings and heckling speakers? That's more like it! Salon.com reports that, in fact, a "leaked from a volunteer with conservative group FreedomWorks entitled 'Rocking the Town Halls -- Best Practices' advises exactly this sort of behavior. (The man listed as author, Frank MacGuffie, denies having written the memo on behalf of FreedomWorks.) The memo tells protesters to spread out to appear more numerous than they are and maximize disruption, reminding them, 'Try To 'Rattle Him,' Not Have An Intelligent Debate'."

Such protesters have gone as far as hanging those members of Congress (like Rep. Frank Kratovil, D-Md.) in effigy. Others speakers have been greeted by their own images with devil horns drawn on their heads. Then there is the (dare I say it) liberal use of the Nazi swastika to degrade and deride those support reform at such meetings.

The truly tragic part of such actions is that they make headlines and may, in fact, do what the right does best: frighten people into believing that the status quo is far less frightening than change. Without significant reform, the status quo is not comforting in the least. It will, instead, give way to a stark reality. Millions of Americans can't afford their health care now; in a few more years, the cost of health care will be impossibly high.

According to www.healthcareforamericansnow.com,
the full cost of employer-sponsored insurance in Kansas currently equals 25 percent of the median family income. Without meaningful health reform, that number will grow to 48 percent in 2016. Spending half of your income to insure your family simply will not work, but that's where we'll be without meaningful reform.

Those shouting down Kathleen Sebelius and Arlen Specter (among others) have blinded themselves to the fact that the current system is not sustainable. They question Obama's citizenship with such vehemence that they fail to see the 14,000 Americans who lose their health insurance every day. It's time to stop shouting and start thinking.