Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the Act
Falls the Shadow
--T.S. Elliot
A hot topic of debate among progressives regarding health care reform is whether the current Senate bill is worth keeping or should be jettisoned and the whole process started over. What a final Senate bill will look like is anybody’s guess, but it seems pretty certain as of this writing that a public option or an earlier Medicare buy-in at age 55 will not be in it. For some on the left this is a deal killer as has been trumpeted by Howard Dean, Keith Olbermann, insurance CEO whistleblower Wendell Potter, popular blogger Markos and other notables with bully bullhorns. Scrap the damn thing and start all over they say. I disagree, though I surely share their outrage and condemnation of Republican obstructionists, insurance company Senate vassals who eviscerated the House bill and the two Democratic Senate weasels who’ve held the bill’s passage hostage, Nelson and Lieberman. I’ll explain my position momentarily.
A cursory review
Obama ran on a health care reform platform that he insisted had to accomplish three fundamental provisions: insuring most or all of the 45 million now uninsured; reducing the ever-increasing runaway costs of health care; and doing away with private insurance companies being able to refuse coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and arbitrary policy cancellations when people get sick. Much to the dismay of progressives he did not advocate a single payer system or a universal health care system as such provided by all the other industrial and advanced nations of the world. But in order to get progressive backing in the House a plan for single payer was concocted, clumsily titled a public option that would compete with private insurance companies and ostensibly lower premium costs. And now that that third pillar of the Obama reform construct has been dismantled what is there to control rising costs? The answer is, nothing. Obama says insurance must be mandatory so a big chunk of the projected $900 billion cost of the reforms bill will be government subsidies to those unable to pay for the cost of private insurance. What a holy mess!
A primer for botching a bill
The attempt to reform the health care system, so desperately needed in this country now for decades, has been so botched, mishandled and ineptly contrived by the Democrats, and yes, by the President, it’s a wonder the thing is still breathing. It was obvious at the outset that Republicans were going to fight it every step of the way no matter how it was designed, what it contained or didn’t, so any thoughts of bipartisan cooperation were a fantasy. Charging Congress to write the thing was stupefying in extremis. Then relinquishing the progressive drive for a popularly supported single payer system before the bargaining and negotiating even began was a bone-headed decision of astounding proportion, even if it had amounted to no more than a chip in the bartering. Can these Obama chosen political operatives really be the sharpest blades in the pack? Any school kid knows you don’t back off before the fight’s even begun. Head-smacking astounding!
And why were deadlines set to get this or that done according to some schedule? That timetable got shot down in the fall. Health care reform has been discussed and debated for 60 years. Why all of a sudden does some plan have to be signed and sealed by the New Year? Where is that written? Why not make Congress wrestle with it until it’s to the President’s satisfaction? Why put arbitrary time frames on oneself? And if the writing was on the wall that he couldn’t get the 60 votes without giving away the store then screw that and use reconciliation as a club or at least the threat of it. Is the Democratic leadership that stupid or weak-kneed not to know how to or have the guts to play the game?
The deal goes down
In answer to that I have a hunch and it goes like this. Shortly after Obama rode into town on his reforming-health-care horse he met with the insurance honchos. This actually happened, remember? Sort of like Cheney’s secret pow-wow with the energy barons except the Dickster was in league with them, working for and with them in screwing America petro-style. But Obama was playing the good sheriff – gonna clean up the town and show them insurance varmints what fer.
So Marshall Barack meets with the bad guys, let’s them know he’s serious about reforming some of their most egregious shenanigans – denying care and dropping coverage – and the townsfolk, AKA the American public are with him. Even the insurance mafia knows most everyone hates their guts. Obama lets them know that he knows that in their unbridled drive for greater profits and fatter CEO rewards they’re breaking the bank, sending millions into bankruptcy, and effectively condemning 40-50 thousand Americans who can’t afford insurance to death every year. And one way or another he’s going to put a stop to it.
Obama know that what these miscreants fear most is competition; not for profit, government operated competition. He doesn’t even have to say single payer or a Medicare-like system; it’s understood. So they cut a deal and it goes like this: Insurance dudes clean up their act – cover everyone, keep it portable, make it somewhat affordable and discontinue its drop-dead policy – and in return, Obama won’t shove a real competitive system down their greedy gullets. Remember, Obama never drew a line in the sand over the public option. He just paid it a little rhetorical lip service, something he thought was a good idea or some such pablum, but not a mandate.
In addition, Obama promised insurance greed-heads gobs of new customers bankrolled by government bucks, so in the long run they stood to gain by playing ball with him. And in return they wouldn’t put up too much of a fight, i.e., bury him with TV commercials as they did the Clintons.
So they agreed because the reform writing was on the wall anyway as they’d fucked over the American public for so long revolt was in the air. And so the deal went down.
Of course the insurance geeks knew they had enough bought and paid for shills in Congress, most importantly their spineless sock-puppets in the Senate, to carry water for them when it came to squawking opposition in the public forum, so they wouldn’t even have to dirty their hands or reach far into their pockets to put up a fight. They had their elected lackeys and the more moronic fringe in the public to do that. And besides and most important of all to remember is even if a reform bill got passed it would have no real competition agency in it.
The real and the ideal
So back to what I said at the outset of this diatribe: that I disagree with Dean, Olbermann et al., who say drop the current bill and start over. I take this position for two reasons: Starting all over again won’t lead to any new outcome because the deal went down a long time ago, and the bill, whatever its final iteration won’t have what progressives and most of us want – real competition. The second reason is this: The Senate bill will extend coverage to more than 30 million now hanging in health care limbo, of which 45,000 die every year. That’s a lot of grief and suffering for too many of our fellow countrymen/women. In addition the bill will have addressed the most abusive practices of the insurance industry, and as pointed out in a recent article by Ruth Marcus for Truthdig.org, it will prevent insurers from refusing to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions, or to charge them more because of poorer health, or cancel their policies once they get sick. “People who lose their jobs, or their insurance, would have a place to turn for coverage through the new insurance exchanges. For the first time, childless adults living in poverty would be guaranteed health care through Medicaid.”
So that’s the deal. Is it a win-win? Hardly, but it’s not a total loss either. Obama is a realist – read his Nobel acceptance speech for proof positive. American politics is the real world; it may stink, but that’s the way it is. If you don’t like it then work to change the system. And that doesn’t mean voting in more Democrats or Republicans at election time. They ARE the system and they’re not about to change it. It means working to change a system run by and for large corporate interests and the military complex that feeds off war and American imperial motivation. It means changing a system where health care is not considered a human right and is managed by companies for profit. It means changing an election system that’s not based on financing from special interests. It means a whole host of things as we claw our way toward a more intelligent evolution.
But for now, see the reality of things as they are, and hope that a health care reform bill gets passed that will at the least right some of the present wrongs.
Editors note: Yesterday, Saturday December 19, Senate majority leader Harry Reid announced he had the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill, and that the final vote would take place in the coming week. If the Senate bill gets passed it will move back to the House for further negotiations.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear Mr. President,
These are hard times for many maybe even most of our fellow countrymen/women. I know that you’re aware of it and I believe that you care about them, but we all need reminders, especially when we’re inundated with other serious, vital concerns.
Any reasonable person knows that you, and by extension the rest of us, inherited a helluva mess comparable in scope and difficulty only to a few other times in our nation’s history: our bloody birth as a country, our Civil War and the fight of our lives, WWII. The presidents who presided at those times also faced unprecedented perils, entrenched political obstacles, and challenges so great they came to define us as the country we are today; good and bad.
You inherited, by choice of course, a deluge of Herculean problems no person, well almost no one, would want to take on: two on-going wars and a Middle East in turmoil; two very dangerous nuclear hot-spots that must be addressed; an economy so destroyed and disabled it harkened to the Great Depression of the 30s; a global climate change crisis that will affect millions, probably billions of lives, and perhaps the life of the planet itself to sustain many of its species, and those are just a few of the top choices from column A. As said it’s a mystery as to why anyone would walk willingly into this fire, but for better or worse you were of the small number that volunteered.
This letter is not to serve as a report card or to praise or condemn how you’ve handled things. I have my opinions on those matters, but it’s not the thrust of what I want to say here.
What I want to bring your attention back to is that your, our, country is hurting. Think a Katrina-like situation that has struck practically every state in the union. This country is drowning in a sea of unemployment, lost homes, healthcare cost bankruptcies, credit interest bankruptcies and legal usury that has so stunned the once burgeoning middle class as to threaten its very existence. What was once the pride of our economic machine is and has been dwindling since the supply-side, free market, deregulation banner waving gurus came on the scene. And because of the Wall Street and banking industry notorious misdeeds the threat to our middle class economic stability is exacerbated and could prove fatal.
This country is hurting, Mr. President, and it’s fearful, angry and confused. Yes it was of paramount importance to immediately address the deadly virus that threatened our and a good part of the world’s economies. It was questionable as to how to go about it, but decisions by your predecessor and you were made, and it seems at least for now that the fiscal patient is out of the ICU and in the recovery room, albeit on life support.
But it’s not enough to stabilize the banks and certain giant investment corporations, because as a result of their failures and immoral activities tens of millions of people are suffering or face imminent economic demise. People are fearful and angry and rightly so. This dire situation has to be addressed and it has to happen now.
Healthcare reform is very important and healthcare must be made affordable for everyone, but even passing a strong bill with a Medicare-like option is not going to put people back to work, and it’s not going to stop home foreclosures. Only jobs and programs that create huge numbers of jobs will alleviate the enormous suffering and get this country back on safe economic ground.
You were left to deal with two wars and you say that one of them is a necessity. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the reality is neither country, Iraq or Afghanistan or for that matter any country in the Middle East poses an imminent threat to this nation’s security. Every dollar spent fighting the war in Afghanistan or maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq is money not spent toward putting people to work. Every dollar spent pursuing so-called U.S. interests in the Middle East is money not going into education. Have you seen the conditions in our schools, Mr. President? Are you aware that district hospitals in rural areas are closing apace because of lack of funding? Are the hundreds of billions being spent on U.S. foreign interests more important than the educations of the nation’s children or the medical centers that serve tens of thousands throughout the country?
There are great, pressing problems before us Mr. President, but I maintain that, except for addressing the healthcare crisis, nothing is more important than turning our energies and resources toward getting vast numbers of people employed, and once that’s done government can start to address a minimum wage that reflects reality and whereby people will be able to afford healthcare, higher education for their kids and decent housing.
The wars can wait. As far as I’m concerned they’re a monstrous waste of money and lives, but that’s only as the writer sees it. But the people without jobs, the people who can’t afford healthcare or to help their kids advance through good schools and higher education, these people can’t wait. First things first, sir.
Turn the economy around by getting people back to work. You don’t offer a hungry person rhetoric or rationales for a better healthcare system – as important as that is it’s not food. Food first. Your nation needs jobs first and help not losing their homes. Put the resources, i.e., money, there. Feed those needs first, Mr. Obama, and the rest will fall into place.
Will Shonbrun, Sonoma, CA
These are hard times for many maybe even most of our fellow countrymen/women. I know that you’re aware of it and I believe that you care about them, but we all need reminders, especially when we’re inundated with other serious, vital concerns.
Any reasonable person knows that you, and by extension the rest of us, inherited a helluva mess comparable in scope and difficulty only to a few other times in our nation’s history: our bloody birth as a country, our Civil War and the fight of our lives, WWII. The presidents who presided at those times also faced unprecedented perils, entrenched political obstacles, and challenges so great they came to define us as the country we are today; good and bad.
You inherited, by choice of course, a deluge of Herculean problems no person, well almost no one, would want to take on: two on-going wars and a Middle East in turmoil; two very dangerous nuclear hot-spots that must be addressed; an economy so destroyed and disabled it harkened to the Great Depression of the 30s; a global climate change crisis that will affect millions, probably billions of lives, and perhaps the life of the planet itself to sustain many of its species, and those are just a few of the top choices from column A. As said it’s a mystery as to why anyone would walk willingly into this fire, but for better or worse you were of the small number that volunteered.
This letter is not to serve as a report card or to praise or condemn how you’ve handled things. I have my opinions on those matters, but it’s not the thrust of what I want to say here.
What I want to bring your attention back to is that your, our, country is hurting. Think a Katrina-like situation that has struck practically every state in the union. This country is drowning in a sea of unemployment, lost homes, healthcare cost bankruptcies, credit interest bankruptcies and legal usury that has so stunned the once burgeoning middle class as to threaten its very existence. What was once the pride of our economic machine is and has been dwindling since the supply-side, free market, deregulation banner waving gurus came on the scene. And because of the Wall Street and banking industry notorious misdeeds the threat to our middle class economic stability is exacerbated and could prove fatal.
This country is hurting, Mr. President, and it’s fearful, angry and confused. Yes it was of paramount importance to immediately address the deadly virus that threatened our and a good part of the world’s economies. It was questionable as to how to go about it, but decisions by your predecessor and you were made, and it seems at least for now that the fiscal patient is out of the ICU and in the recovery room, albeit on life support.
But it’s not enough to stabilize the banks and certain giant investment corporations, because as a result of their failures and immoral activities tens of millions of people are suffering or face imminent economic demise. People are fearful and angry and rightly so. This dire situation has to be addressed and it has to happen now.
Healthcare reform is very important and healthcare must be made affordable for everyone, but even passing a strong bill with a Medicare-like option is not going to put people back to work, and it’s not going to stop home foreclosures. Only jobs and programs that create huge numbers of jobs will alleviate the enormous suffering and get this country back on safe economic ground.
You were left to deal with two wars and you say that one of them is a necessity. Maybe yes, maybe no, but the reality is neither country, Iraq or Afghanistan or for that matter any country in the Middle East poses an imminent threat to this nation’s security. Every dollar spent fighting the war in Afghanistan or maintaining a large troop presence in Iraq is money not spent toward putting people to work. Every dollar spent pursuing so-called U.S. interests in the Middle East is money not going into education. Have you seen the conditions in our schools, Mr. President? Are you aware that district hospitals in rural areas are closing apace because of lack of funding? Are the hundreds of billions being spent on U.S. foreign interests more important than the educations of the nation’s children or the medical centers that serve tens of thousands throughout the country?
There are great, pressing problems before us Mr. President, but I maintain that, except for addressing the healthcare crisis, nothing is more important than turning our energies and resources toward getting vast numbers of people employed, and once that’s done government can start to address a minimum wage that reflects reality and whereby people will be able to afford healthcare, higher education for their kids and decent housing.
The wars can wait. As far as I’m concerned they’re a monstrous waste of money and lives, but that’s only as the writer sees it. But the people without jobs, the people who can’t afford healthcare or to help their kids advance through good schools and higher education, these people can’t wait. First things first, sir.
Turn the economy around by getting people back to work. You don’t offer a hungry person rhetoric or rationales for a better healthcare system – as important as that is it’s not food. Food first. Your nation needs jobs first and help not losing their homes. Put the resources, i.e., money, there. Feed those needs first, Mr. Obama, and the rest will fall into place.
Will Shonbrun, Sonoma, CA
Saturday, September 19, 2009
An American Health Care Plan
We live in a community that cares for others as do so many across our nation. This is as it should be because we recognize that all people are deserving of compassion. At the same time we realize that when we live in communities, large or small, we have a shared responsibility to provide services to all – fire and police protection, public education, hospital ERs, public infrastructure and the like – as we all share in these collective benefits. Caring about one another is more than just simple common sense; it’s what binds us together and makes our communities stronger and safer. Without these social contracts we cannot assure the human dignity that is the right of all people.
We all know that insurance company bureaucracies ration health care, refuse health care and deny legitimate claims. Patient/doctor relationships are governed by insurance companies for profit and not care, and excessive costs are passed onto citizens in order to maximize corporate profits. Everyone knows that’s how it works. Private insurance companies have driven millions of Americans, an estimated 700,000 a year, into bankruptcy in order to pay for health care. This is the only advanced nation in the world where such a cruel and heartless system exists.
Health care systems throughout the world, not all wealthier, industrialized countries either, have recognized health care (e.g. preventing disease, promoting public health, relieving pain and suffering) as a basic human right assuring human dignity. It is no different than the right to vote, the right for justice in a court of law, and the rights afforded all citizens for the civil liberties we have declared. We are a society comprised of communities that have realized we share a common bond and interconnection with one another to safeguard and provide for the welfare of all because each of us is worthy of care. We need, we deserve and we must have an American health care plan that will provide basic services for all our people.
We all know that insurance company bureaucracies ration health care, refuse health care and deny legitimate claims. Patient/doctor relationships are governed by insurance companies for profit and not care, and excessive costs are passed onto citizens in order to maximize corporate profits. Everyone knows that’s how it works. Private insurance companies have driven millions of Americans, an estimated 700,000 a year, into bankruptcy in order to pay for health care. This is the only advanced nation in the world where such a cruel and heartless system exists.
Health care systems throughout the world, not all wealthier, industrialized countries either, have recognized health care (e.g. preventing disease, promoting public health, relieving pain and suffering) as a basic human right assuring human dignity. It is no different than the right to vote, the right for justice in a court of law, and the rights afforded all citizens for the civil liberties we have declared. We are a society comprised of communities that have realized we share a common bond and interconnection with one another to safeguard and provide for the welfare of all because each of us is worthy of care. We need, we deserve and we must have an American health care plan that will provide basic services for all our people.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Random Notes on This & That
Letter to Lynn Woolsey
Dear Congresswoman Woolsey,
I’m writing to you about the two recent public meetings, one in the Sonoma Plaza and the “rowdy” one (as the PD described it) in Petaluma. I attended the former, missed the latter.
As you know the first one went fine, you and the other speakers got your points made, Sonoma was exceedingly polite – probably the union and march/rally leaders’ presence didn’t hurt, and that was that. You vowed to hold the line for a “robust” public option – Medicare-like, and using that existing system to save years of time and money, etc. – and everyone heard that. However I’m a realist and a pessimist so I don’t think that’s going to hold true. I think there will be many more compromises about the public option and other aspects of health-care reform down the line, and as we know, the Republicans don’t compromise much. They’re ballsier that way. I hope I’ll be proved wrong.
The main point of this letter regards the Petaluma meeting where by all accounts things did not go swimmingly. We’re all familiar now with how organized, purposefully intimidating and uncaringly insulting these meetings have become, and you got a personal taste of that. It was bold and gutsy of you to take that on whatever the outcome, but more important is that there’s a lesson here for the Democratic Party and us in the liberal/progressive camp.
As I see it the lesson is this: These kinds of town hall meetings have to be conducted under the same rules governing representatives and members of the public meetings, i.e., city councils, board of supervisors or state committee hearings, now and in the future, regardless of the issue at hand. There’s a conduct of behavior that has to be followed; if not there’s chaos, anarchy – the biggest, loudest voice will win. If people are continually obstreperous or even personally insulting they are escorted and kept out of the proceedings. They’ve lost their right to speak because they’re preventing others from that right, or their behavior is beyond the pale and they have to leave. Period. I’ve been to countless local government meetings and that’s the way business is conducted. Why are these same time-honored methods of decorum not being followed in every town hall meeting in every state? The behavior, the actions of people at these meetings, whether orchestrated by the right or not, would not be tolerated by any city council or board of supervisors anywhere.
So my conclusion, and that of friends who were at the Petaluma meeting, is that the Democratic Party had better learn to deal with an organized right-wing mob that knows exactly what it is doing, and that has a self-righteous (I’d say deluded) rationale as to the why. I don’t think they’re going away. I think in this issue, health-care, and every one succeeding they’re going to be a presence. And you know as well as I that the media love this stuff. You’re not going to come out of it looking good.
Unless you get tough. The Democratic Party has to stand for something. You know this, you’re one of the stalwarts. But somehow you’ve got to let the Party know. They have to have clear goals and convictions, and the cahones to fight for them. I think that’s the lesson to be learned here. How you’re going to get that across to your compatriots in Congress I don’t know. But if not you, then who?
In closing a brief note. Three good friends of mine attended the Petaluma meeting. One is a long-time union organizer, one a cynical environmental activist and the other, a newer acquaintance who tells me she’s been to many political rallies. All three people reported that the hatred, venom and vicious insensibility they heard in the room that night was shocking, startling. Now these are not naïve or politically inexperienced people. If their report is accurate, and I believe it is, then progressives, the Democratic Party, and anyone who favors logic and reason and knowledge of the issues over blind, hate-filled emotions is in for a hell of a time.
It’s time we learned how to deal with this.
Respectfully,
Will Shonbrun, Sonoma
Dear Congresswoman Woolsey,
I’m writing to you about the two recent public meetings, one in the Sonoma Plaza and the “rowdy” one (as the PD described it) in Petaluma. I attended the former, missed the latter.
As you know the first one went fine, you and the other speakers got your points made, Sonoma was exceedingly polite – probably the union and march/rally leaders’ presence didn’t hurt, and that was that. You vowed to hold the line for a “robust” public option – Medicare-like, and using that existing system to save years of time and money, etc. – and everyone heard that. However I’m a realist and a pessimist so I don’t think that’s going to hold true. I think there will be many more compromises about the public option and other aspects of health-care reform down the line, and as we know, the Republicans don’t compromise much. They’re ballsier that way. I hope I’ll be proved wrong.
The main point of this letter regards the Petaluma meeting where by all accounts things did not go swimmingly. We’re all familiar now with how organized, purposefully intimidating and uncaringly insulting these meetings have become, and you got a personal taste of that. It was bold and gutsy of you to take that on whatever the outcome, but more important is that there’s a lesson here for the Democratic Party and us in the liberal/progressive camp.
As I see it the lesson is this: These kinds of town hall meetings have to be conducted under the same rules governing representatives and members of the public meetings, i.e., city councils, board of supervisors or state committee hearings, now and in the future, regardless of the issue at hand. There’s a conduct of behavior that has to be followed; if not there’s chaos, anarchy – the biggest, loudest voice will win. If people are continually obstreperous or even personally insulting they are escorted and kept out of the proceedings. They’ve lost their right to speak because they’re preventing others from that right, or their behavior is beyond the pale and they have to leave. Period. I’ve been to countless local government meetings and that’s the way business is conducted. Why are these same time-honored methods of decorum not being followed in every town hall meeting in every state? The behavior, the actions of people at these meetings, whether orchestrated by the right or not, would not be tolerated by any city council or board of supervisors anywhere.
So my conclusion, and that of friends who were at the Petaluma meeting, is that the Democratic Party had better learn to deal with an organized right-wing mob that knows exactly what it is doing, and that has a self-righteous (I’d say deluded) rationale as to the why. I don’t think they’re going away. I think in this issue, health-care, and every one succeeding they’re going to be a presence. And you know as well as I that the media love this stuff. You’re not going to come out of it looking good.
Unless you get tough. The Democratic Party has to stand for something. You know this, you’re one of the stalwarts. But somehow you’ve got to let the Party know. They have to have clear goals and convictions, and the cahones to fight for them. I think that’s the lesson to be learned here. How you’re going to get that across to your compatriots in Congress I don’t know. But if not you, then who?
In closing a brief note. Three good friends of mine attended the Petaluma meeting. One is a long-time union organizer, one a cynical environmental activist and the other, a newer acquaintance who tells me she’s been to many political rallies. All three people reported that the hatred, venom and vicious insensibility they heard in the room that night was shocking, startling. Now these are not naïve or politically inexperienced people. If their report is accurate, and I believe it is, then progressives, the Democratic Party, and anyone who favors logic and reason and knowledge of the issues over blind, hate-filled emotions is in for a hell of a time.
It’s time we learned how to deal with this.
Respectfully,
Will Shonbrun, Sonoma
Random Notes on This and That
I know what I know,
I’ll sing what I said,
We come and we go,
It’s a thing that I keep
In the back of my head
--Paul Simon
The kind of man that lived his own life.
We first met John Ross, Suzanne and I, when we bought our house in Sonoma in 1985, and John was one of a small group of contractors that worked on the place with us. It was an older house, probably a summer bungalow when it was built around 1945, so there was a lot of remodeling, basically a make-over, and over time everyone who worked on it got to know each other fairly well. It was at this time we were introduced to John’s sense of humor: quick, erudite, far ranging and hilarious. There were always laughs when I was with John, no matter how serious the conversation got. And they got pretty serious, about serious matters, as we are (or were) both very political and very opinionated.
Suzanne’s favorite John Ross story is when we were all working on the house one time and my friend, Coop, another contractor asked if we, John, Suzanne and I were going to watch the “big game” that night. I can’t remember if it was a football or baseball game. And John said without skipping a beat, “No, I think I’ll just drop acid and listen to it on the radio.” That was my official introduction to the mind of John Ross.
So we’ve known John for 24,25 years now, my family and I. He was a friend when my daughter was born and adopted, and when she graduated high school and went to college. We’ve been friends since our country started wars and started killing people in the Middle East, and locally we fought battles to keep developers from sticking resorts on our immediate hillsides. We’ve gossiped about people we know and what they’re up to and traded some pretty juicy stories. John was a great storyteller and a treasure trove of classified information, all heavily redacted.
There’s no way to sum up a man’s life, especially a man as complex and in-depth as John: a master gardener and grower of exquisite tasting vegetables in the patch adjacent to his house; an accomplished musician and music collector; an extraordinarily well read person and book collector; electrician; builder and community minded man. And as another friend recently pointed out – a gentle soul.
I knew John in times of adversity – a break-up with a long-time girlfriend, the death of his dog, Tommy, his aborted trip to Romania and a violent encounter and illness there, and the dark night of American politics after 9/11. I felt privileged to share his grief over these things and I did my fair bit of unloading on him when I came apart at the seams.
The happiest times with John were when he, Ken Brown and I got together at his place, ate the always excellent dinner he’d prepare, drink the wines we brought, smoked the best grass we’d gotten a hold of and talked and laughed into the night. I don’t know how I drove down Ghericke Road those nights, bagged and toasted to the gills, but completely in control of things. I knew what I was doing and what I’m capable of or not. Ask Ken. We did this maybe 3 or 4 times a year for a bunch of years. I’ll miss those times until the day I die.
Even though I didn’t see or hang out with John all that often he was one of those handful of friends I could count on in a pinch, as I had to do once. Some years back I had an operation and afterward it didn’t go so well, and because Suzanne was out of town I needed to call on a few friends over a few nights to stay the night in case I started bleeding and needed to get to the ER. Turned out I didn’t, but John was one of the people I could count on. That meant more to me than I can ever say. I hope I told him that. I think I did.
It’s funny how we rarely get to really say good-bye to people when they’re alive; we wind up doing it after they’ve died. Death should have taught us that every time we’re with people we like, and especially people we love; we might hold the thought that we might never see that person. I thought I’d learned that lesson, but I haven’t. I usually end my conversations with, “See ya” and take that for granted. But it ain’t so. Every moment with someone who really means something to you one should hold the thought, somewhere, this might be the last time I’ll ‘see ya.’ It needn’t be said, and then maybe these last good-byes wouldn’t be necessary. It would have been conveyed in life.
So I’ll say good-bye to my friend John Ross, who honored me with his friendship. If there’s a life after this one, I’ll see ya pal.
I’ll sing what I said,
We come and we go,
It’s a thing that I keep
In the back of my head
--Paul Simon
The kind of man that lived his own life.
We first met John Ross, Suzanne and I, when we bought our house in Sonoma in 1985, and John was one of a small group of contractors that worked on the place with us. It was an older house, probably a summer bungalow when it was built around 1945, so there was a lot of remodeling, basically a make-over, and over time everyone who worked on it got to know each other fairly well. It was at this time we were introduced to John’s sense of humor: quick, erudite, far ranging and hilarious. There were always laughs when I was with John, no matter how serious the conversation got. And they got pretty serious, about serious matters, as we are (or were) both very political and very opinionated.
Suzanne’s favorite John Ross story is when we were all working on the house one time and my friend, Coop, another contractor asked if we, John, Suzanne and I were going to watch the “big game” that night. I can’t remember if it was a football or baseball game. And John said without skipping a beat, “No, I think I’ll just drop acid and listen to it on the radio.” That was my official introduction to the mind of John Ross.
So we’ve known John for 24,25 years now, my family and I. He was a friend when my daughter was born and adopted, and when she graduated high school and went to college. We’ve been friends since our country started wars and started killing people in the Middle East, and locally we fought battles to keep developers from sticking resorts on our immediate hillsides. We’ve gossiped about people we know and what they’re up to and traded some pretty juicy stories. John was a great storyteller and a treasure trove of classified information, all heavily redacted.
There’s no way to sum up a man’s life, especially a man as complex and in-depth as John: a master gardener and grower of exquisite tasting vegetables in the patch adjacent to his house; an accomplished musician and music collector; an extraordinarily well read person and book collector; electrician; builder and community minded man. And as another friend recently pointed out – a gentle soul.
I knew John in times of adversity – a break-up with a long-time girlfriend, the death of his dog, Tommy, his aborted trip to Romania and a violent encounter and illness there, and the dark night of American politics after 9/11. I felt privileged to share his grief over these things and I did my fair bit of unloading on him when I came apart at the seams.
The happiest times with John were when he, Ken Brown and I got together at his place, ate the always excellent dinner he’d prepare, drink the wines we brought, smoked the best grass we’d gotten a hold of and talked and laughed into the night. I don’t know how I drove down Ghericke Road those nights, bagged and toasted to the gills, but completely in control of things. I knew what I was doing and what I’m capable of or not. Ask Ken. We did this maybe 3 or 4 times a year for a bunch of years. I’ll miss those times until the day I die.
Even though I didn’t see or hang out with John all that often he was one of those handful of friends I could count on in a pinch, as I had to do once. Some years back I had an operation and afterward it didn’t go so well, and because Suzanne was out of town I needed to call on a few friends over a few nights to stay the night in case I started bleeding and needed to get to the ER. Turned out I didn’t, but John was one of the people I could count on. That meant more to me than I can ever say. I hope I told him that. I think I did.
It’s funny how we rarely get to really say good-bye to people when they’re alive; we wind up doing it after they’ve died. Death should have taught us that every time we’re with people we like, and especially people we love; we might hold the thought that we might never see that person. I thought I’d learned that lesson, but I haven’t. I usually end my conversations with, “See ya” and take that for granted. But it ain’t so. Every moment with someone who really means something to you one should hold the thought, somewhere, this might be the last time I’ll ‘see ya.’ It needn’t be said, and then maybe these last good-byes wouldn’t be necessary. It would have been conveyed in life.
So I’ll say good-bye to my friend John Ross, who honored me with his friendship. If there’s a life after this one, I’ll see ya pal.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
You Gotta Wonder or WTF
I’m no bloody genius, I’m not even particularly smart, but when I hear or read what some of these people in Congress say I can’t believe how stupid they are in comparison with most of the people I know. Take the so-called Republican leadership – Boehner, McConnell, Sessions, Kyle and Cantor – please. These are either some of the dumbest people in America, or they’ve become addled by their years in politics, or their motives for acting moronic and irrational serve some arcane, hidden purpose unbeknown to the rest of us.
Before the new President took over, these stalwarts went along with just about every utterance out of the Bush Administration. Bush and Cheney and the rest of that hapless crew were so wrong about so many things – I’ll leave out the litany – and yet the putative Republican leadership, almost all the Republicans in Congress and a good many Democrats went along with all of it, and ballyhooed it in the process. And now this same Republican crew can’t offer any viable solutions to the myriad problems they and Bush Co. created and are directly responsible for. Yeah, there are fewer Democrats in their sing-a-long chorus now because of a change in election fortune, but there are still plenty of them – the aptly named Blue Dogs – who stand with the current moronic minority. As Olbermann says, “WTF!”
Stephen Colbert has a running segment on his show called, “Get to know a Congressman/woman,” that easily proves the case that these people are no smarter than your average amoeba. They say things that are just so dumb, so uninformed, so jaw-dropping moronic that you’ve got to wonder how they got anyone besides their immediate family (probably using bribery) to vote for them. It’s world-class idiocy. How can anyone beyond a fifth-grade education give an ounce of credence to one word that comes out of their collective mouths? How did these people get to sit in the halls of Congress?
Now I know I’m supposed to back up all these allegations with examples of what I’m talking about, but that would take volumes and far too much time to compile. And yes, I’m not talking about all those in Congress, House and Senate, in which there are some fine and learned minds, and strong and independent spirits. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there are many, far too many, dolts in both houses that do not display the ordinary, basic intelligence needed in almost any line of work. In this august grouping I include 95% of Republicans, who are now 90% hard-rock, far-right leaning conservatives, and a whole slew of Democrats who don’t seem to have the basic brain package handed out at birth. If there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about this behold the last eight years of Republican leadership and Democratic pathetic acquiescence.
It just leaves one going around muttering WTF almost all the time. For instance: Americans accrue far too much debt in proportion to what they earn or will probably even be able to pay back. They do this with the eager encouragement and ceaseless proselytizing of banks and other lenders because conning and usury are more popular and widespread than they’ve ever been. But still Americans fall for it big time, just like naïve adolescents and screw themselves royally. And what has our genius government done about it? We know the answer – virtually nothing. Pass a couple of weak-kneed bills that don’t even address the heart of the problem, spout a little high-sounding lip service about controlling the debtor industry, and move on to the next toothless, worthless solution.
Healthcare? A vast majority of Americans want some kind of a single-payer plan because that’s what every advanced industrial society on the planet has, and because the healthcare insurance industry has cheated and robbed and bankrupted tens of millions of us. The greedy, immoral pharmaceutical industry is right up there with the insurance mobsters, and everyone, all of us, know this to be true. What has or will our government done about this? The answer is as plain as graffiti on a wall – bold and ugly – nothing. What will be done about this after Congress gets through talking and picking the issue to death? Take a guess.
All the evidence shows, and has shown for years now, that insurance-run healthcare is bankrupting the nation. This is so plainly evident by any conceivable measurement as to defy credible argument. So what does Congress do to avert this fiscal and human-suffering disaster? It refuses to even consider, consider, a single-payer solution. Doctors, nurses, healthcare experts go to Congress to talk about what single-payer is and why it’s the best viable answer, in great detail, and they’re told to get lost. They’re not allowed a seat at the table or a voice in the debates. WTF!
The eminent genius of the Congressional Committee holding hearings about supposed healthcare reform is its Chair, Max Baucus of Montana. It was good ‘ol Maxie that stuck his fingers in his ears and made loud guttural noises so as not to hear anything these professional healthcare people had to say. “We need more police,” (to get these people out of here) was Max’s response to a proven system of healthcare effective in nineteen nations.
This is more than stupidity. This is more than being too dumb to see the floor beneath your feet. This is so blatantly foolish as to be suspect. And what do we find looking into where the healthcare insurance companies and their drug industry counterparts drop its seed money to gain a little clout? Why right in the campaign pockets of Senators Baucus, Dodd, Rockefeller, Harkin, Coburn, Kyle, Hatch, Gregg et al. But Baucus is the big winner in the insurance sweepstakes when it comes to greasing the skids.
Now I’m not saying that Max the Chair was unduly influenced by insurance company gifting – after all, can we impinge on some of the richest companies of the world’s rights to free speech – but you gotta wonder.
The examples of utter head-slapping, mind-twisting, breath-taking idiotic doings in Congress are legion. Senseless wars, elimination of civil rights and habeas corpus, legally trying to justify torture, tax cuts for the wealthiest during periods of crisis, economic near-bankruptcy due to canning regulations and lax oversight, “defense” spending that gobbles 1/3 to ½ of every tax dollar (depending on how it’s calculated), and on and on. Our national infrastructure is falling apart before our eyes, our public education system has been so starved of funding – purposely – that underpaid teachers have to buy classroom materials out of pocket, and every month hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs.
And what is Congress doing? Finding more and more ways to screw you. At that they’re most proficient. Do we deserve the government we get, as it’s been often suggested? Maybe. We’re certainly at least partly at fault for putting up with a political/electoral system that’s controlled by money – vast sums of it. And who has the larder that feeds the piggies that run the farm? If you don’t know the answer to this you should not have the right to procreate.
If the fault is in the system of politics, and it is, and we (the people) don’t act to fundamentally change that system – public financing of elections; NO private or corporate funding; IRV (instant run-off voting); national and state candidate debates open to all who provably qualify; electronic voting machines that produce paper records and whose programming can be monitored, and equally and limited doled out time on the PUBLIC’S airwaves to candidates to pimp their platforms, then we are getting what we deserve. If we don’t take the vast sums of money out of the election equation – and please no crap about money equaling free speech – then nothing changes. We just continue to go around muttering and sputtering about how the system sucks, unable to figure out why we wound up with the lowest caliber of politicians from the gene pool, and wondering why things never really change. Is anything in this pathetic scenario likely to change? I got $500 here that says “no.” Any takers?
Before the new President took over, these stalwarts went along with just about every utterance out of the Bush Administration. Bush and Cheney and the rest of that hapless crew were so wrong about so many things – I’ll leave out the litany – and yet the putative Republican leadership, almost all the Republicans in Congress and a good many Democrats went along with all of it, and ballyhooed it in the process. And now this same Republican crew can’t offer any viable solutions to the myriad problems they and Bush Co. created and are directly responsible for. Yeah, there are fewer Democrats in their sing-a-long chorus now because of a change in election fortune, but there are still plenty of them – the aptly named Blue Dogs – who stand with the current moronic minority. As Olbermann says, “WTF!”
Stephen Colbert has a running segment on his show called, “Get to know a Congressman/woman,” that easily proves the case that these people are no smarter than your average amoeba. They say things that are just so dumb, so uninformed, so jaw-dropping moronic that you’ve got to wonder how they got anyone besides their immediate family (probably using bribery) to vote for them. It’s world-class idiocy. How can anyone beyond a fifth-grade education give an ounce of credence to one word that comes out of their collective mouths? How did these people get to sit in the halls of Congress?
Now I know I’m supposed to back up all these allegations with examples of what I’m talking about, but that would take volumes and far too much time to compile. And yes, I’m not talking about all those in Congress, House and Senate, in which there are some fine and learned minds, and strong and independent spirits. But that doesn’t negate the fact that there are many, far too many, dolts in both houses that do not display the ordinary, basic intelligence needed in almost any line of work. In this august grouping I include 95% of Republicans, who are now 90% hard-rock, far-right leaning conservatives, and a whole slew of Democrats who don’t seem to have the basic brain package handed out at birth. If there’s any doubt in anyone’s mind about this behold the last eight years of Republican leadership and Democratic pathetic acquiescence.
It just leaves one going around muttering WTF almost all the time. For instance: Americans accrue far too much debt in proportion to what they earn or will probably even be able to pay back. They do this with the eager encouragement and ceaseless proselytizing of banks and other lenders because conning and usury are more popular and widespread than they’ve ever been. But still Americans fall for it big time, just like naïve adolescents and screw themselves royally. And what has our genius government done about it? We know the answer – virtually nothing. Pass a couple of weak-kneed bills that don’t even address the heart of the problem, spout a little high-sounding lip service about controlling the debtor industry, and move on to the next toothless, worthless solution.
Healthcare? A vast majority of Americans want some kind of a single-payer plan because that’s what every advanced industrial society on the planet has, and because the healthcare insurance industry has cheated and robbed and bankrupted tens of millions of us. The greedy, immoral pharmaceutical industry is right up there with the insurance mobsters, and everyone, all of us, know this to be true. What has or will our government done about this? The answer is as plain as graffiti on a wall – bold and ugly – nothing. What will be done about this after Congress gets through talking and picking the issue to death? Take a guess.
All the evidence shows, and has shown for years now, that insurance-run healthcare is bankrupting the nation. This is so plainly evident by any conceivable measurement as to defy credible argument. So what does Congress do to avert this fiscal and human-suffering disaster? It refuses to even consider, consider, a single-payer solution. Doctors, nurses, healthcare experts go to Congress to talk about what single-payer is and why it’s the best viable answer, in great detail, and they’re told to get lost. They’re not allowed a seat at the table or a voice in the debates. WTF!
The eminent genius of the Congressional Committee holding hearings about supposed healthcare reform is its Chair, Max Baucus of Montana. It was good ‘ol Maxie that stuck his fingers in his ears and made loud guttural noises so as not to hear anything these professional healthcare people had to say. “We need more police,” (to get these people out of here) was Max’s response to a proven system of healthcare effective in nineteen nations.
This is more than stupidity. This is more than being too dumb to see the floor beneath your feet. This is so blatantly foolish as to be suspect. And what do we find looking into where the healthcare insurance companies and their drug industry counterparts drop its seed money to gain a little clout? Why right in the campaign pockets of Senators Baucus, Dodd, Rockefeller, Harkin, Coburn, Kyle, Hatch, Gregg et al. But Baucus is the big winner in the insurance sweepstakes when it comes to greasing the skids.
Now I’m not saying that Max the Chair was unduly influenced by insurance company gifting – after all, can we impinge on some of the richest companies of the world’s rights to free speech – but you gotta wonder.
The examples of utter head-slapping, mind-twisting, breath-taking idiotic doings in Congress are legion. Senseless wars, elimination of civil rights and habeas corpus, legally trying to justify torture, tax cuts for the wealthiest during periods of crisis, economic near-bankruptcy due to canning regulations and lax oversight, “defense” spending that gobbles 1/3 to ½ of every tax dollar (depending on how it’s calculated), and on and on. Our national infrastructure is falling apart before our eyes, our public education system has been so starved of funding – purposely – that underpaid teachers have to buy classroom materials out of pocket, and every month hundreds of thousands of people are losing jobs.
And what is Congress doing? Finding more and more ways to screw you. At that they’re most proficient. Do we deserve the government we get, as it’s been often suggested? Maybe. We’re certainly at least partly at fault for putting up with a political/electoral system that’s controlled by money – vast sums of it. And who has the larder that feeds the piggies that run the farm? If you don’t know the answer to this you should not have the right to procreate.
If the fault is in the system of politics, and it is, and we (the people) don’t act to fundamentally change that system – public financing of elections; NO private or corporate funding; IRV (instant run-off voting); national and state candidate debates open to all who provably qualify; electronic voting machines that produce paper records and whose programming can be monitored, and equally and limited doled out time on the PUBLIC’S airwaves to candidates to pimp their platforms, then we are getting what we deserve. If we don’t take the vast sums of money out of the election equation – and please no crap about money equaling free speech – then nothing changes. We just continue to go around muttering and sputtering about how the system sucks, unable to figure out why we wound up with the lowest caliber of politicians from the gene pool, and wondering why things never really change. Is anything in this pathetic scenario likely to change? I got $500 here that says “no.” Any takers?
Thursday, June 18, 2009
California legislature: tyranny of the minority
By Will Shonbrun
The only way to fix California’s economic/fiscal mess is to change the structure of the legislature that requires a two-thirds vote in both houses to both pass a budget and to raise taxes. Whether this is feasible is an open question, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that this inequitable requirement is the stumbling block that has ground government to a halt. It has obstructed and deadlocked California government and in the view of some is grossly undemocratic.
While there are some other states that require more than a simple majority to raise taxes in certain circumstances, such as spending exceeding a cap or funding one-time projects, California’s legislative restriction puts it in the rarified company of only two other states, Rhode Island and Arkansas, in requiring more than a simple majority to pass budget or appropriation bills. This bizarre state of affairs has enabled a small minority of Republicans to hold the legislature, and by extension millions of Californians, hostage to their whims. This is the elephant in the room – hell, it’s the room itself, and it begs the question: Can anything be done about it?
Proposition 13 rode in on good intentions, in part, but established an uneven and virtually insurmountable hurdle for the legislature to govern an economy larger than most of the world’s nations. People can argue about what’s good or bad or maybe both about Prop. 13, but few can disagree that it fundamentally changed the shape of California government and its social structures. Depending on one’s point of view it has been the greatest thing since tax rebates or a disaster that has seriously under funded public education, critically impacted health care services and tied government in Gordian Knots. Some see it as a mixed bag that’s been of benefit for many, but has perhaps inadvertently harmed many others. However it’s viewed its greatest effect has been to render state government subject to the demands of a small minority – a blatantly undemocratic dictum that all but changes the meaning of democratic majority rule.
While it’s true that there are different types of majorities governing elections or how legislative choices are made, the question remains has the two-thirds rule in the California legislature served the many or the few? Because a minority-rule legislature and an uncooperative governor will not permit alternative revenue sources to even be considered, the only recourse to avoid bankruptcy is to drastically cut funding for public education, and health care services and a social safety net for those most in need. While this may fit a conservative philosophy that would just as soon see government devoid of all such programs is this the kind of state in which we want to live? The legislature commandeers tax monies from the counties and cities thereby effectively devastating their schools, health services and programs that serve local communities. Are these the kind of communities in which we want to live?
This is so short sighted as to be astoundingly irrational. A more educated populace, especially at the higher educational levels, will result in higher paying jobs in valued industries, and a more vigorous entrepreneurial impetus that creates more jobs and greater revenue for the state. Reducing or eliminating health care for tens of millions of Californians results in much higher medical costs for ER services at already fiscally overburdened hospitals.
The answer is not to cut the vitally needed social programs that make a state human. The answer is to create more revenue. Here is a (very) short list of revenue ideas compiled by the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee, the Progressive Democrats Sonoma County et al.*
· Restore the vehicle license fee rates that we had under Republican Governors
· Increase taxes on alcoholic beverages
· Increase taxes on tobacco
· Increase taxes on gasoline
· Impose an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state
· Close the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase
· Prohibit corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe
And most important, because everything hinges on it, get rid of the 2/3 vote to approve the budget. This must be done by a ballot initiative in 2010, spearheaded by the Democratic leadership and supported and promoted by a vast grassroots groundswell. Will we pull ourselves up and out of this legislative morass or will we sink into annual bankruptcy orchestrated by a selfish, uncaring minority that does not believe that a key function of government is “to promote the general welfare” of its people? The answer is up to us – we, the people who wield the ballot.
* Editor’s note: For a more complete list of revenue suggestions email: willshonbrun@vom.com
The only way to fix California’s economic/fiscal mess is to change the structure of the legislature that requires a two-thirds vote in both houses to both pass a budget and to raise taxes. Whether this is feasible is an open question, but I don’t think there can be any doubt that this inequitable requirement is the stumbling block that has ground government to a halt. It has obstructed and deadlocked California government and in the view of some is grossly undemocratic.
While there are some other states that require more than a simple majority to raise taxes in certain circumstances, such as spending exceeding a cap or funding one-time projects, California’s legislative restriction puts it in the rarified company of only two other states, Rhode Island and Arkansas, in requiring more than a simple majority to pass budget or appropriation bills. This bizarre state of affairs has enabled a small minority of Republicans to hold the legislature, and by extension millions of Californians, hostage to their whims. This is the elephant in the room – hell, it’s the room itself, and it begs the question: Can anything be done about it?
Proposition 13 rode in on good intentions, in part, but established an uneven and virtually insurmountable hurdle for the legislature to govern an economy larger than most of the world’s nations. People can argue about what’s good or bad or maybe both about Prop. 13, but few can disagree that it fundamentally changed the shape of California government and its social structures. Depending on one’s point of view it has been the greatest thing since tax rebates or a disaster that has seriously under funded public education, critically impacted health care services and tied government in Gordian Knots. Some see it as a mixed bag that’s been of benefit for many, but has perhaps inadvertently harmed many others. However it’s viewed its greatest effect has been to render state government subject to the demands of a small minority – a blatantly undemocratic dictum that all but changes the meaning of democratic majority rule.
While it’s true that there are different types of majorities governing elections or how legislative choices are made, the question remains has the two-thirds rule in the California legislature served the many or the few? Because a minority-rule legislature and an uncooperative governor will not permit alternative revenue sources to even be considered, the only recourse to avoid bankruptcy is to drastically cut funding for public education, and health care services and a social safety net for those most in need. While this may fit a conservative philosophy that would just as soon see government devoid of all such programs is this the kind of state in which we want to live? The legislature commandeers tax monies from the counties and cities thereby effectively devastating their schools, health services and programs that serve local communities. Are these the kind of communities in which we want to live?
This is so short sighted as to be astoundingly irrational. A more educated populace, especially at the higher educational levels, will result in higher paying jobs in valued industries, and a more vigorous entrepreneurial impetus that creates more jobs and greater revenue for the state. Reducing or eliminating health care for tens of millions of Californians results in much higher medical costs for ER services at already fiscally overburdened hospitals.
The answer is not to cut the vitally needed social programs that make a state human. The answer is to create more revenue. Here is a (very) short list of revenue ideas compiled by the Sonoma County Democratic Central Committee, the Progressive Democrats Sonoma County et al.*
· Restore the vehicle license fee rates that we had under Republican Governors
· Increase taxes on alcoholic beverages
· Increase taxes on tobacco
· Increase taxes on gasoline
· Impose an oil extraction tax on oil companies just like every other oil producing state
· Close the loophole that allows corporations to avoid reassessment of the value of new property they purchase
· Prohibit corporations from using tax credits to offset more than fifty percent of the taxes they owe
And most important, because everything hinges on it, get rid of the 2/3 vote to approve the budget. This must be done by a ballot initiative in 2010, spearheaded by the Democratic leadership and supported and promoted by a vast grassroots groundswell. Will we pull ourselves up and out of this legislative morass or will we sink into annual bankruptcy orchestrated by a selfish, uncaring minority that does not believe that a key function of government is “to promote the general welfare” of its people? The answer is up to us – we, the people who wield the ballot.
* Editor’s note: For a more complete list of revenue suggestions email: willshonbrun@vom.com
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
There is no justification for torture
By Will Shonbrun
The President leaned forward on the podium and stared into the TV camera’s eye, then deliberately and emphatically said to the country and the rest of the world, “The United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.” He stated unequivocally, “We do not torture.” This was in 2005. It was an out and out lie then as it is now.
It’s possible that the former President lied so convincingly because he’d tasked his Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and attorneys in the Office of Legal Council including John Yoo, Jay Bybee and David Addington, among others, to change the legal definition of torture and to set “legal” parameters of so-called “enhanced methods” regarding the treatment and interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees labeled broadly as “enemy combatants.” At the same time these attorneys were charged with creating a legal framework for the Bush Administration to bypass the legal restrictions pertaining to the treatment of prisoners-of-war as defined by Geneva III articles (Geneva Conventions of 1949), the U.S. signed Convention Against Torture and other laws defining and prohibiting torture. So when Bush looked into the eyes of his fellow countrymen and the other nations of the world he might have convinced himself at that and later such televised appearances that he was telling the truth. Of course what Bush overlooked was the fact that the enhanced interrogation program was put into operation as early as 2002, before there was even the attempt to make it justifiably legal. It’s not possible to know what was true or not in this man’s mind, but in any event it’s totally irrelevant. Actions of despicable cruelty, sadistic brutality and torture, some instances resulting in the death of detainees, were conducted because the President, the Vice-President and some of the other higher-ups in his administration ordered it and set it in motion.
In researching this issue I’ve read dozens of accounts, news stories, opinion pieces and sections of the infamous released government memos including multi-page, minutely detailed timelines exhaustively cataloguing how we got to here from there – meaning to a government that condoned torture. The news and information about this issue is added to daily with new revelations constantly cropping up. In short we are a long way from the end of this sad and sickening chapter in our nation’s history, with no final destination or denouement in sight.
The picturse flashing on the screen, the newspaper accounts, the interviews with political principles and lesser players, and the roiling sea of verbiage from a punditocracy of all stripes is our daily fare; a steady diet of the government initiated, justified and systematically implemented program of torture.
As for the use of the term ‘torture’ I think it is absolutely necessary to call this aberration, this twisted perversion, by its real name. The (then) government agencies that crafted these dehumanizing policies – Bush and his cabinet, the Justice Department and the Office of Legal Council, and the CIA and some fellow miscreants in the military – devised euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation methods,” or the “softening up” (of detainees) or the like to mask the reality, the truth about what they were doing. But it was torture, plain and simple, whatever one wants to call it: physical, psychological and emotional anguish visited upon human beings for a variety of reasons. So let us call it by its rightful name – torture – and say that our government, under its leadership and highest judicial branch took this country to where it had never been before: It implemented and sanctioned torture.
The arguments
The use of torture is justified by former Vice President Cheney and those who agree with him because, they claim, it worked. They maintain that water-boarding – suffocation by drowning – and other extreme methods were necessary in order to get information from certain high-profile detainees deemed to be al-Qaida terrorists. They have claimed that the information ascertained by the use of these methods saved lives by foiling terrorist plots. In addition they state that there was no other way to elicit this kind of information in short order.
These claims have been resoundingly characterized as false and misleading by myriad highly credible individuals in government, security agencies, including current and former CIA operatives and interrogation experts, the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, and even National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair. In one by now famously quoted instance Blair stated “high-value information came from interrogation in which these methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaida organization that was attacking the country.” On the heels of this seeming endorsement Blair followed with this statement: “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means [emphasis added]. Blair added, “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweigh whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to out national security.”
In fact the preponderance of opinions as to the ineffectiveness, unreliability and counter-productiveness (hardened resistance and false or worthless information) of harsh methods of interrogation far outweigh claims to the otherwise. The few examples cited by Cheney as proof of plots thwarted or vital information extracted to protect national security have been roundly refuted and dispelled. The so-called evidentiary proof to substantiate Cheney’s claims about torture’s effectiveness in the as yet unreleased memos remains unverifiable. By the same token claims could be made about these memos that counter Cheney’s arguments and show them to be totally false. Anyone can claim anything until the facts show otherwise.
One of the most damning allegations recently leveled against Cheney’s proffered rationale for using torture to gain vital, life-saving information comes from Colonel Laurence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff. Wilkerson accuses Cheney of ordering torture methods on certain detainees in 2002 – before the establishing of any contrived legal justifications – not to uncover possible terrorist attacks on the U.S., but to reveal (supposed) links between Iraq and al-Qaida in the lead up to war in 2003. Claims of such links, along with claims about WMDs and an Iraqi nuclear weapons program constituted the basis on which the Bush/Cheney government took us to war, and even to this day when these claims have been proven patently false, Cheney still maintains that al-Qaida/Iraq links did exist. Why any credence is given to Mr. Cheney’s utterances about anything defies reason.
But…
But to argue that the use of torture and interrogation methods that induce severe physical pain or psychological torment and humiliation is acceptable because it works, i.e., the ends justify the means, is legally untenable. The methods used and admitted to are legal violations of U.S. law, Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions. For a summary of these laws prohibiting torture and explicating the accepted treatment of detainees see: Human Rights Watch:
Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-Treatment of Persons in Custody.
Besides being prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity the use of torture on detainees violates basically accepted norms or morality. Whatever degree of moral standing the U.S. had among the world’s nations prior to its actions from 2002 until approximately 2006 has now been undermined; shown to be devoid of any such pretenses. As cogently stated by author Deepak Chopra, “A country that resorts to torture has lost the battle to begin with.” In the eyes of many we are the nation that tortures prisoners or kidnaps and outsources for the purpose of torture those we suspect intend to harm us. We have also become the nation that holds suspects for indefinite detentions without charges.
The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report investigating the agency’s use of torture against “high-value” detainees concluded that the program violated some of the provisions of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The report revealed that there were (at least) three detainee deaths in American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and eight criminal cases of alleged homicide. These are just cases of which we are aware. It’s little wonder that Cheney did everything in his power to squelch Inspector General Helgerson’s report.
We don’t know and probably never will what these detainees’ alleged crimes were, just as we don’t know the alleged crimes of some of the prisoners in Guantanamo. Because the aforementioned principals in the Bush government ordered and embarked on a program of “enhanced interrogation” techniques that violated all known laws, domestic and otherwise, some of these detainees may not be able to be brought to trial; at least not under our current judicial system. An unintended consequence of the program? Perhaps.
There are so many twists and turns to this dark tale and they are changing and expanding every day. It’s impossible to encompass all the evidence and the events to date starting in 2001-2 and say conclusively –this is what happened, and these were the primary players responsible for its results. There are two books currently receiving a lot of acclaim for the depth and breadth of investigation and analysis of the events and players who changed the rules about handling people in detention: Philippe Sands’ “Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values,” and Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.” In light of disclosure, I’ve not read either book, but have heard the authors interviewed on radio a number of times, and have read excerpts of Mayer’s book in the New Yorker magazine.
No Justification for Torture
There is no justification for torture, as its legal definition has stood for decades, be it for the purposes of national security or some kind of misguided patriotism. Every dictator or authoritarian government has used the it’s-got-to-be-done-for-the-good-of-the-country excuse as a rationale for torture. Most of the nations of the world came together after WWII and decided and declared that there are things we cannot do for any reason, compelling or not, because it’s immoral, degrading to the mores of civilized behavior, diminishing to the souls of the perpetrators as well as the victims and, finally because it constitutes crimes against humanity.
When these precepts are violated it must be brought to light, not in the pursuit of revenge or for the purpose of moralizing, but because it’s important, I’d say vital, that we, the people of this country know what was done in our name. The reasons and justifications for taking the country in a dark direction are now being laid before us with an insistence on need and necessity, but it is up to the people to decide what kind of a country they want.
If we say we abhor what was done, but don’t want to revisit or wallow in it and would rather get on with more pressing things, then we turn our backs on what are supposed to be our standards of behavior; our legal system. Pulitzer Prize journalist Eugene Robinson reminds us that, “The rule of law is one of this nation’s founding principles. It’s not optional.” These laws were meant, ostensibly, to serve justice. Is justice served by being ignored or dismissed because the violations were so unpleasant? This kind of rationale does not apply to any judicial system to which this country ascribes.
There is no justification for torture. Attempts are being made by the former Vice-President to justify the course that was taken because it was necessary to safeguard the nation in a time of peril, and that using torture saved American lives. Every single claim that Cheney has made in this regard has been refuted by highly credible sources. But in a sense it’s almost beside the point. Effectiveness is not a legal argument. If it were, consider this: Where can a line be drawn as to what you can’t do to someone in trying to get information out of them? If ‘effectiveness”, i.e., it works, is the criterion then any means of torture is permissible to achieve that end. Is this the country we want?
The country has survived two world wars that claimed millions of lives, and the latter threatened our survival as a nation. This country survived a 30-year cold war with an enemy capable of annihilating us and the rest of the world without resorting to using torture. Mr. Cheney and some in Congress and other branches of government would have us believe we must use torture to assure our continued survival. This flies in the face of history, disgusts our sensibilities and challenges the system of Constitutional laws by which we abide. He would have us throw that aside, cower in fear and resort to tactics that reduce us to the base actions of our terrorist adversaries. He would reduce us to the level of people who have lost their humanity and any sense of morality.
It should not be up to the current President or Cheney to decide the right course of action regarding the past use of torture. This is a legal matter. Either laws were broken or they were not. Either a crime or crimes were committed or they were not. It is up to our government’s legal offices to initiate independent and unbiased investigations about what took place and who were those involved. It must be conducted as would any criminal investigation to get to the truth of the matter and confer guilt or innocence as is dictated by law. If we are a nation of laws to which ALL must adhere or face the consequences then we must let that course be taken. If we don’t then we violate and undermine our own system and we live hypocrisy, not a democracy. We also set a precedent for all that has happened to happen again at some time down the line. This is not the kind of country I want, nor do I believe it’s what most of us want.
There is no justification for using torture or any tactics that could be construed as such. Let the disinfecting light of the sun into this darkness and let the legal chips fall where they may. We will be the stronger for it.
…
Sources:
Nick Mottern, truthout.org., On Prosecuting War Crimes
Human Rights Watch: Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-treatment of Persons in Custody
Matt Apuzzo, Unresolved debate in DOJ memo: Does torture work? Associated Press
Jason Leopold, Panetta’s Defense of CIA Interrogators Undercut by New DoJ Disclosures, The Public Record
Jennifer Loven, Obama Open to Prosecution, Probe of Interrogations, Associated Press
Eugene Robinson, Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution, Washington Post Writers Group
Andrew Lalloch, General Taguba: Accountability for Torture Does Not Stop at White House Door, Harvard Law Review
Jason Leopold, The Bush Administration’s Stunning Geneva Hypocrisy, The Public Record
Steve Weissman, How Torture Worked to Sell the Iraq War,
Truthout.org
Scott Horton, Investigating Bush’s Crimes, The Nation, March 2009
Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel, CIA Official: No Proof Harsh Techniques Stopped Terror Attacks, McClatchy Newspapers]
Glenn Greenwald, author, Glenn Greenwald.com
Deepak Chopra, The Toxic Residue of Torture, San Francisco Chronicle
Elizabeth de la Vega, Prosecuting Torture: Is Time Really Running Out?, TruthOut.org
Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices From the Black Sites, The New York Review of Books
Spencer Ackerman, FBI Agent’s Account of Interrogations Conflicts with Report, The Washington Independent
The President leaned forward on the podium and stared into the TV camera’s eye, then deliberately and emphatically said to the country and the rest of the world, “The United States does not torture. It's against our laws and it's against our values. I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.” He stated unequivocally, “We do not torture.” This was in 2005. It was an out and out lie then as it is now.
It’s possible that the former President lied so convincingly because he’d tasked his Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, and attorneys in the Office of Legal Council including John Yoo, Jay Bybee and David Addington, among others, to change the legal definition of torture and to set “legal” parameters of so-called “enhanced methods” regarding the treatment and interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees labeled broadly as “enemy combatants.” At the same time these attorneys were charged with creating a legal framework for the Bush Administration to bypass the legal restrictions pertaining to the treatment of prisoners-of-war as defined by Geneva III articles (Geneva Conventions of 1949), the U.S. signed Convention Against Torture and other laws defining and prohibiting torture. So when Bush looked into the eyes of his fellow countrymen and the other nations of the world he might have convinced himself at that and later such televised appearances that he was telling the truth. Of course what Bush overlooked was the fact that the enhanced interrogation program was put into operation as early as 2002, before there was even the attempt to make it justifiably legal. It’s not possible to know what was true or not in this man’s mind, but in any event it’s totally irrelevant. Actions of despicable cruelty, sadistic brutality and torture, some instances resulting in the death of detainees, were conducted because the President, the Vice-President and some of the other higher-ups in his administration ordered it and set it in motion.
In researching this issue I’ve read dozens of accounts, news stories, opinion pieces and sections of the infamous released government memos including multi-page, minutely detailed timelines exhaustively cataloguing how we got to here from there – meaning to a government that condoned torture. The news and information about this issue is added to daily with new revelations constantly cropping up. In short we are a long way from the end of this sad and sickening chapter in our nation’s history, with no final destination or denouement in sight.
The picturse flashing on the screen, the newspaper accounts, the interviews with political principles and lesser players, and the roiling sea of verbiage from a punditocracy of all stripes is our daily fare; a steady diet of the government initiated, justified and systematically implemented program of torture.
As for the use of the term ‘torture’ I think it is absolutely necessary to call this aberration, this twisted perversion, by its real name. The (then) government agencies that crafted these dehumanizing policies – Bush and his cabinet, the Justice Department and the Office of Legal Council, and the CIA and some fellow miscreants in the military – devised euphemisms like “enhanced interrogation methods,” or the “softening up” (of detainees) or the like to mask the reality, the truth about what they were doing. But it was torture, plain and simple, whatever one wants to call it: physical, psychological and emotional anguish visited upon human beings for a variety of reasons. So let us call it by its rightful name – torture – and say that our government, under its leadership and highest judicial branch took this country to where it had never been before: It implemented and sanctioned torture.
The arguments
The use of torture is justified by former Vice President Cheney and those who agree with him because, they claim, it worked. They maintain that water-boarding – suffocation by drowning – and other extreme methods were necessary in order to get information from certain high-profile detainees deemed to be al-Qaida terrorists. They have claimed that the information ascertained by the use of these methods saved lives by foiling terrorist plots. In addition they state that there was no other way to elicit this kind of information in short order.
These claims have been resoundingly characterized as false and misleading by myriad highly credible individuals in government, security agencies, including current and former CIA operatives and interrogation experts, the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, and even National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair. In one by now famously quoted instance Blair stated “high-value information came from interrogation in which these methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al-Qaida organization that was attacking the country.” On the heels of this seeming endorsement Blair followed with this statement: “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means [emphasis added]. Blair added, “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweigh whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to out national security.”
In fact the preponderance of opinions as to the ineffectiveness, unreliability and counter-productiveness (hardened resistance and false or worthless information) of harsh methods of interrogation far outweigh claims to the otherwise. The few examples cited by Cheney as proof of plots thwarted or vital information extracted to protect national security have been roundly refuted and dispelled. The so-called evidentiary proof to substantiate Cheney’s claims about torture’s effectiveness in the as yet unreleased memos remains unverifiable. By the same token claims could be made about these memos that counter Cheney’s arguments and show them to be totally false. Anyone can claim anything until the facts show otherwise.
One of the most damning allegations recently leveled against Cheney’s proffered rationale for using torture to gain vital, life-saving information comes from Colonel Laurence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff. Wilkerson accuses Cheney of ordering torture methods on certain detainees in 2002 – before the establishing of any contrived legal justifications – not to uncover possible terrorist attacks on the U.S., but to reveal (supposed) links between Iraq and al-Qaida in the lead up to war in 2003. Claims of such links, along with claims about WMDs and an Iraqi nuclear weapons program constituted the basis on which the Bush/Cheney government took us to war, and even to this day when these claims have been proven patently false, Cheney still maintains that al-Qaida/Iraq links did exist. Why any credence is given to Mr. Cheney’s utterances about anything defies reason.
But…
But to argue that the use of torture and interrogation methods that induce severe physical pain or psychological torment and humiliation is acceptable because it works, i.e., the ends justify the means, is legally untenable. The methods used and admitted to are legal violations of U.S. law, Human Rights Law and International Humanitarian Law and the Geneva Conventions. For a summary of these laws prohibiting torture and explicating the accepted treatment of detainees see: Human Rights Watch:
Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-Treatment of Persons in Custody.
Besides being prosecutable war crimes and crimes against humanity the use of torture on detainees violates basically accepted norms or morality. Whatever degree of moral standing the U.S. had among the world’s nations prior to its actions from 2002 until approximately 2006 has now been undermined; shown to be devoid of any such pretenses. As cogently stated by author Deepak Chopra, “A country that resorts to torture has lost the battle to begin with.” In the eyes of many we are the nation that tortures prisoners or kidnaps and outsources for the purpose of torture those we suspect intend to harm us. We have also become the nation that holds suspects for indefinite detentions without charges.
The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report investigating the agency’s use of torture against “high-value” detainees concluded that the program violated some of the provisions of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The report revealed that there were (at least) three detainee deaths in American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, and eight criminal cases of alleged homicide. These are just cases of which we are aware. It’s little wonder that Cheney did everything in his power to squelch Inspector General Helgerson’s report.
We don’t know and probably never will what these detainees’ alleged crimes were, just as we don’t know the alleged crimes of some of the prisoners in Guantanamo. Because the aforementioned principals in the Bush government ordered and embarked on a program of “enhanced interrogation” techniques that violated all known laws, domestic and otherwise, some of these detainees may not be able to be brought to trial; at least not under our current judicial system. An unintended consequence of the program? Perhaps.
There are so many twists and turns to this dark tale and they are changing and expanding every day. It’s impossible to encompass all the evidence and the events to date starting in 2001-2 and say conclusively –this is what happened, and these were the primary players responsible for its results. There are two books currently receiving a lot of acclaim for the depth and breadth of investigation and analysis of the events and players who changed the rules about handling people in detention: Philippe Sands’ “Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values,” and Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.” In light of disclosure, I’ve not read either book, but have heard the authors interviewed on radio a number of times, and have read excerpts of Mayer’s book in the New Yorker magazine.
No Justification for Torture
There is no justification for torture, as its legal definition has stood for decades, be it for the purposes of national security or some kind of misguided patriotism. Every dictator or authoritarian government has used the it’s-got-to-be-done-for-the-good-of-the-country excuse as a rationale for torture. Most of the nations of the world came together after WWII and decided and declared that there are things we cannot do for any reason, compelling or not, because it’s immoral, degrading to the mores of civilized behavior, diminishing to the souls of the perpetrators as well as the victims and, finally because it constitutes crimes against humanity.
When these precepts are violated it must be brought to light, not in the pursuit of revenge or for the purpose of moralizing, but because it’s important, I’d say vital, that we, the people of this country know what was done in our name. The reasons and justifications for taking the country in a dark direction are now being laid before us with an insistence on need and necessity, but it is up to the people to decide what kind of a country they want.
If we say we abhor what was done, but don’t want to revisit or wallow in it and would rather get on with more pressing things, then we turn our backs on what are supposed to be our standards of behavior; our legal system. Pulitzer Prize journalist Eugene Robinson reminds us that, “The rule of law is one of this nation’s founding principles. It’s not optional.” These laws were meant, ostensibly, to serve justice. Is justice served by being ignored or dismissed because the violations were so unpleasant? This kind of rationale does not apply to any judicial system to which this country ascribes.
There is no justification for torture. Attempts are being made by the former Vice-President to justify the course that was taken because it was necessary to safeguard the nation in a time of peril, and that using torture saved American lives. Every single claim that Cheney has made in this regard has been refuted by highly credible sources. But in a sense it’s almost beside the point. Effectiveness is not a legal argument. If it were, consider this: Where can a line be drawn as to what you can’t do to someone in trying to get information out of them? If ‘effectiveness”, i.e., it works, is the criterion then any means of torture is permissible to achieve that end. Is this the country we want?
The country has survived two world wars that claimed millions of lives, and the latter threatened our survival as a nation. This country survived a 30-year cold war with an enemy capable of annihilating us and the rest of the world without resorting to using torture. Mr. Cheney and some in Congress and other branches of government would have us believe we must use torture to assure our continued survival. This flies in the face of history, disgusts our sensibilities and challenges the system of Constitutional laws by which we abide. He would have us throw that aside, cower in fear and resort to tactics that reduce us to the base actions of our terrorist adversaries. He would reduce us to the level of people who have lost their humanity and any sense of morality.
It should not be up to the current President or Cheney to decide the right course of action regarding the past use of torture. This is a legal matter. Either laws were broken or they were not. Either a crime or crimes were committed or they were not. It is up to our government’s legal offices to initiate independent and unbiased investigations about what took place and who were those involved. It must be conducted as would any criminal investigation to get to the truth of the matter and confer guilt or innocence as is dictated by law. If we are a nation of laws to which ALL must adhere or face the consequences then we must let that course be taken. If we don’t then we violate and undermine our own system and we live hypocrisy, not a democracy. We also set a precedent for all that has happened to happen again at some time down the line. This is not the kind of country I want, nor do I believe it’s what most of us want.
There is no justification for using torture or any tactics that could be construed as such. Let the disinfecting light of the sun into this darkness and let the legal chips fall where they may. We will be the stronger for it.
…
Sources:
Nick Mottern, truthout.org., On Prosecuting War Crimes
Human Rights Watch: Summary of International and U.S. Law Prohibiting Torture and Other Ill-treatment of Persons in Custody
Matt Apuzzo, Unresolved debate in DOJ memo: Does torture work? Associated Press
Jason Leopold, Panetta’s Defense of CIA Interrogators Undercut by New DoJ Disclosures, The Public Record
Jennifer Loven, Obama Open to Prosecution, Probe of Interrogations, Associated Press
Eugene Robinson, Torture Is a Crime, and Crimes Demand Prosecution, Washington Post Writers Group
Andrew Lalloch, General Taguba: Accountability for Torture Does Not Stop at White House Door, Harvard Law Review
Jason Leopold, The Bush Administration’s Stunning Geneva Hypocrisy, The Public Record
Steve Weissman, How Torture Worked to Sell the Iraq War,
Truthout.org
Scott Horton, Investigating Bush’s Crimes, The Nation, March 2009
Mark Seibel and Warren P. Strobel, CIA Official: No Proof Harsh Techniques Stopped Terror Attacks, McClatchy Newspapers]
Glenn Greenwald, author, Glenn Greenwald.com
Deepak Chopra, The Toxic Residue of Torture, San Francisco Chronicle
Elizabeth de la Vega, Prosecuting Torture: Is Time Really Running Out?, TruthOut.org
Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices From the Black Sites, The New York Review of Books
Spencer Ackerman, FBI Agent’s Account of Interrogations Conflicts with Report, The Washington Independent
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