Aftermath of tragedy in Japan

Usually after a catastrophe like what occurred in Japan there are a lot of human interest stories of people mourning lost loved ones, frantically search for the missing, selfless heroism and generosity, with the occasional good news of someone surviving in the wreckage and being rescued after being given up for lost.

In this case, although we had a double catastrophe of an earthquake followed by a tsunami, the focus on the fate of the nuclear reactors has eclipsed almost everything else. While this is understandable, there are some stories that I feel should have received wider coverage. One is the absence of widespread looting, or any looting at all, in the wake of the disaster. The other is the absence of price gouging by merchants. In fact, many merchants are reducing prices in order to help out the survivors. The third is the orderly and neighborly way that people are behaving to ensure that resources are shared amongst everyone.

All these things reflect well on the capacity of human beings to think of others and the greater good even in times of dire stress and on the Japanese people and culture in particular, and are deserving of greater recognition.

Update on the status of single payer health plans

Despite the sabotaging of the single payer and the public option by president Obama and the Democratic Party during the health care reform debate, it is not yet dead.

In an interview with OpEdNews, Dr. Margaret Flowers of that excellent group PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) talks about the moves currently underway in the various states. Vermont seems the most promising state to be the first to implement a single payer system.

Medicare and Medicaid are not the causes of our national deficit, they are the victims of a broken health system. As our overall health care costs rise, so do the costs of Medicare and Medicaid. The most effective way to control our health care costs would be to expand and improve Medicare and put everybody in the country on Medicare instead of using hundreds of different health insurances as we do now.

The administrative savings alone of a single payer national health program would be around $400 billion. There are other ways that single payer/Medicare for All controls health care costs such as giving hospitals and other medical institutions a global budget and negotiating for the prices of pharmaceuticals, medical devices and services.
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There is a lot happening at the state level when it comes to single payer. Currently, twenty states have single payer health bills in some phase of the legislative process.

As you may know, California has passed a state single payer bill twice in 2006 and 2008. I just returned from a large health professional student-led march, rally and lobby day at the state capital in Sacramento. The California single payer coalition is continuing to move forward to pass single payer and have it signed by the new Governor. California faces such a serious budget crisis that I was told the legislature will be basing their cuts on what will result in the least number of lives lost.

We are particularly enthusiastic this year about Vermont. They are poised to pass a single payer health bill this legislative session. The state hired Dr. William Hsaio from Harvard to design their health system. He has designed health systems for five countries, the most recent being the single payer system in Taiwan. The new governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin, ran on a strong single payer platform. And, of course, Vermont has Senator Sanders, who has been a long time proponent of single payer.

Even with all of the stars seeming to be aligned, it is going to be a difficult process to get single payer passed in Vermont. The forces who oppose this, primarily the corporations who profit from the status quo, will be putting tremendous resources into that state to stop single payer. For that reason, many of the organizations that support single payer are working to assist the state single payer movement. Single payer advocates from across the nation are volunteering or helping to raise funds for Vermont.

I encourage your readers to visit www.vermontforsinglepayer.org to learn more about the efforts there and to support them.

Legislation will also be introduced at the national level again in both the House and Senate this year. It is important to work at both the state and national levels because we cannot predict where we will be successful first. Of course, the ultimate goal is a national single payer health program so that all people living in our country will have access to care and so that we can control our health care costs at the national level. Health care costs are a significant cause of our national debt.

Ohio’s push for single payer is being driven by SPAN Ohio (Single Payer Action Network Ohio).

Obama’s political expediency

It looks like Obama has stopped paying even lipservice to his ringing promise during his election campaign to close down Guantanamo. Glenn Greenwald points out that his excuse (repeated by many of his supporters) that the Congress forced him to back down is the kind of political sleight-of-hand that Obama is becoming increasingly good at.

It is true that Congress — with the overwhelming support of both parties — has enacted several measures making it much more difficult, indeed impossible, to transfer Guantanamo detainees into the U.S. But long before that ever happened, Obama made clear that he wanted to continue the twin defining pillars of the Bush detention regime: namely, (1) indefinite, charge-free detention and (2) military commissions (for those lucky enough to be charged with something). Obama never had a plan for “closing Guantanamo” in any meaningful sense; the most he sought to do was to move it a few thousand miles north to Illinois, where its defining injustices would endure.

The Daily Show points out the obvious.

Cartoonist Ted Rall envisages Obama’s kinder-gentler Guantanamo, while Tom Tomorrow captures Obama’s political expediency.

CFI talk on Why Atheism is Winning

The talk I gave at to the CWRU chapter of the Center for Inquiry on Why Atheism is Winning produced a lively discussion. The talk lasted for about an hour and was followed by a Q&A that lasted for almost 90 minutes with most people sticking around for the full period.

Both the talk and the Q&A will be posted soon for viewing.

UPDATE: The hour-long talk is now up on YouTube.

I will upload later the lively Q&A that followed the talk.

Why atheism is winning-11: Some concluding thoughts

(For previous posts in this series, see here.)

The last hope of religion is the fear of death. Fear of death is what religion thinks of as its trump card. In any discussion with believers, they will invariably get around to talking about how you (as an atheist) are risking your immortal soul and ask whether you are not fearful of what will happen in the afterlife. I know that this is coming and tell people who raise this that when I die, nothing spectacular will happen and that I will simply cease to be, with my body returning to the basic elements. I am quite comfortable with the idea. This clearly disconcerts the people who raise it since they are so obviously scared of death and see god as some kind of ‘get out of death’ card. It is important that we develop an acceptance of death as an inevitable fact of life and I am preparing a series of posts on atheist views of death that will appear some time in the future, unless I die first, of course!
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The feckless John Kerry

Congressman Dennis Kucinich sent a letter to the Defense Department in response to their stalling for over a month on his request to visit Manning.

My request to visit with Pfc. Manning must not be delayed further. Today we have new reports that Manning was stripped naked and left in his cell for seven hours. While refusing to explain the justification for the treatment, a marine spokesman confirmed the actions but claimed they were ‘not punitive.’

Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib? Officials have confirmed the ‘non-punitive’ stripping of an American soldier who has not been found guilty of any crime. This ‘non-punitive’ action would be considered a violation of the Army Field Manual if used in an interrogation overseas. The justification for and purpose of this action certainly raises questions of ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ and could constitute a potential violation of international law.

Dennis Kucinich has the decency to protest the treatment of Manning. Contrast this with the weasely behavior of John Kerry and his feeble attempt to find excuses for the appalling treatment of Bradley Manning.

This US senator from Massachusetts, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, is rapidly proving himself to be a totally vapid politician, notorious for sonorously going on and on during Senate hearings, who seems to be more fond of hearing his own voice than of standing up for anything. Here is Kerry during Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings when his introductory comments went on for so long that she looked like she would fall asleep.

Then there was the time when it was discovered that multimillionaire Kerry, married to an heiress, owned a $7 million yacht but avoided paying Massachusetts taxes by keeping it in a neighboring state.

But a far worse example was in 2007 he continued to blather on, and even attempt to joke, while Andrew Meyer, a University of Florida student who questioned him at a public meeting, was wrestled to the ground by campus security offices and tasered even though he had done nothing to merit such harsh treatment. (This was the famous ‘Don’t tase me, bro!” incident.) Kerry did not do anything even as the student’s screams of pain reverberated through the auditorium. You can see the horrifying video.

To some extent I can understand politicians acting cynically, and even criminally, for personal gain, even if I do not excuse them for doing so. What I truly despise are those politicians like Kerry for whom it would cost nothing to do the right thing (like ask for decent treatment of Andrew Meyer and Bradley Manning) but do not have the common decency to do so.