A Father's Thoughts

Email to Senators Hatch and Lee

I am on a Republican email list and am getting some atrocious requests. The latest one is asking me to sign a list of those who have voted to repeal Obamacare because Trump “is eager to rip ObamaCare to shreds, but some in the Senate are refusing to even put a simple repeal bill on his desk.” The RNC Chairwoman is compiling a “massive list” of voters who want Obamacare repealed.

This is absurd. The President has repeatedly and clearly told the American public that he wants to replace Obamacare with a better plan that will provide good health care at a lower cost. The CBO has estimated that if the Republicans vote to repeal Obamacare 17 million people will lose health care in 2018 and 32 million will lose health care over 10 years.

Certainly you are aware that current polls by the Kaiser Foundation show that the Affordable Care Act is now supported by a majority of Americans. I urge you to oppose any attempts to replace the ACA with the current Senate proposal and to forcefully oppose any attempt to repeal the ACA outright. I understand that you live in a political world. I am a retired psychotherapist and the patriarch of a large and wonderful family. While I had my practice, I devoted time providing mental health services to those who could not afford the cost of treatment. That experience helped me understand how difficult it is for too many in this the richest nation in the world to access reasonable health care.

I wonder if you can imagine what it would be like for a middle class family to be faced with having to find health care and other services for a family member with early onset Alzheimer’s disease? Monthly cost for an appropriate treatment facility can be $4000 to $6000. Can you imagine what it must be like for a spouse to lose her husband to the disease as his memory fails? That loss is then compounded by the challenge she faces in protecting her own financial future as the years of residential care continue.

I have in the past respected the Republican Party and believe that our government works best when all sides on important issues engage in a robust public debate. But, now that the Republicans have to power to govern you are demonstrating daily that the priority is to relieve the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy without any public debate.

Do you have any sensitivity or awareness of what life is like for those who are not millionaires in our country? It is time to stop this political process that is threatening to so many and focus on improving the ACA.

Warren Buffet interview on heath care tax cuts

Warren Buffet, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, was interviewed this evening on the PBS Newshour. He shared his views on the tax cuts in the House passed American Health Care Act. The interview can be found at:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/part-2-billionaire-warren-buffett-says-gop-health-reform-bills-relief-rich/

He stated that if the AHCA had been in effect this year he would receive a $679,999 tax cut or over 17% of his tax bill. Some of his friends would have saved as much as $10 million and up. The AHCA tax cut is directed at those with an annual income of $250,000 for married couples or $200,000 for those who are single.

His 2016 tax return shows that he earned $19 million last year and his effective tax rate was 16.5%. Now the Republicans want to cut that.

He also observed that most members of Congress earn $174,000 a year and many of them have additional substantial other income. Thus, they are giving themselves a big tax cut.

The full interview is worth watching.

Better Care Reconciliation Act

I am sitting at my computer about to write words that I didn’t think would ever make it from my fingers to the screen. “I agree with President Trump.” Wow, that wasn’t hard after all. But, I am reminded daily of his loud and frequent support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and a more compassionate health care system. I admit that my confidence in the veracity of his statements weakened when he gathered his Republican House of Representative supporters at the White House to congratulate them for passing the American Health Care Act.

However, the president later labeled the House bill “mean” after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Committee exposed the details of the pain the bill would impose on the elderly, the sick, children and others who are the most vulnerable in our nation. At the same time, it was reported that those making $1 million per year will receive a tax cut of $17,000 this year.

Now the CBO has exposed the real impact of the Senate attempt to pass the Better Care Reconciliation Act. Like the House bill, it contains the huge tax cuts for corporations and the most well off while removing 15 million Americans from Medicaid next year and significantly raising health care costs for the elderly.

Hopefully, the president will able to influence the Republican Party to pull back from both of these bills and work for reform that will more closely align with his model of lower cost more comprehensive health care for all.

Health care is very complicated. It is past time for both parties to come together and listen to those directly involved in the medical community about ways to bring our health care system into the twenty-first century.

Have we lost our values?

I find myself becoming more troubled as our country continues on a path that will not end well for many people. The House Republicans passed the American Health Care Act that will, as the Congressional Budget Office reports, remove more than 23 million people from access to health care, reduce Medicaid spending by $800 billion, and reduce taxes significantly for those who benefit the most financially in our country. This is a plan that even the president has labeled as “mean”.

A small group of senators is now working, in deep secrecy, to propose their version of the ACHA which some report will contain even larger cuts to Medicaid. So, the bottom line is; punish and hurt the poor and less well-off to benefit those who live in greater comfort. Those senators who are hard at work are the same who so loudly and proudly proclaim their allegiance to Christian and democratic ideals. Cognitive dissonance.

Fortunately, as my spirits were sinking I received my regular email from Maria Popova “brainpickings”:

http://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/einstein-on-our-mightiest-counterforce-against-injustice-rollo-may-on-love-apathy-and-our-human-task-in-times-of-radical-transition-and-more?e=f4b6693f78

She shares the writings and thoughts of Albert Einstein including “We must mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable again in a world so obviously unjust, give happiness a meaning once more.”

In a segment that has relevance for today Einstein writes: “In politics not only are leaders lacking, but the independence of spirit and sense of justice of the citizen have to a great extent declined.”

There is obviously much more that, in contrast to the output of much of our media today, is thought provoking and redolent of some fundamental human values suppressed today by our toxic political environment.

Refreshing.

Fifty years later, civil rights still and issue

 This month we are commemorating the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The recent Public Broadcasting System American Experience Program “Freedom Summer” vividly conveyed how the residents of Mississippi, supported by a group of about 700 college students from around the country, challenged the state’s segregationist structure.

The television images and testimonies of those who lived the struggle clearly records how the forces of ugliness, brutality, courage, bravery, sacrifice, and nobleness played out in the messiness and complexity of the democratic process during the summer of 1964. Inspired by democratic idealism and values and the desire for dignity and freedom, the African American leaders of the movement prevailed and civil rights progress became a reality.

But progress was not achieved without great sacrifice. Many of those threatened by the possibility of blacks gaining greater voting rights used their economic power to punish the advocates for change by denying them jobs and worse. Three young men, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner were brutally murdered. The anguish and grief of their colleagues was palpable. But rather than being discouraged, the activists faced fear head on with rededication and resolve.

 In the midst of that summer Congress passed and President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Now, fifty years later, the significance of that achievement is clear. In August of 1965 the Voting Rights Act abolished the much abused literacy test and placed voting processes in seven Southern states under federal supervision. Fewer than 10 percent of African Americans in Mississippi were registered to vote prior to the Voting Rights Act. One year later more than 60 percent were on the rolls.

“Freedom Summer” concluded with a note that today Mississippi has more African American officials than any other state in the country. In the recent Republican open primary runoff Chris McDaniel lost to the incumbent Thad Cochran in part because Cochran appealed to black Democrats. As I write McDaniel has refused to concede.

The struggle continues unevenly. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and LBJ biographer Robert Caro recently expressed his dismay because “parts of this country are trying to go back to what things were like before the Voting Rights Act.”

Last year the Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act in the Shelby County v. Holder decision. But the American Civil Liberties Union (www.aclu.org/voting-rights) is legally challenging state efforts to limit voters’ rights. It is active in the courts and on the legislative front.

Ironically the party of Abraham Lincoln is at the forefront of efforts to make voting more difficult and restrictive in over a dozen states. Voter suppression is often the goal of voter ID laws, early voting limitations, same day registration denial and other tactics.

These efforts, in the absence of evidence of voter fraud, are striking at the very heart of our democracy and are antithetical to the democratic values of our nation. 

Political blaming leads nowhere

It is ironic that while we live in the “information age” with 24/7 cable “news” programs, access to online college courses, and multiple books on current events, we are woefully uninformed as a democratic electorate. A case in point is the lack of understanding we have about events leading up to and following the 2007-2009 economic collapse.

Princeton economic professor and author Alan Blinder attempts to remedy that in his recent book “After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, The Response, and The Work Ahead.” In clear prose, accessible to a general audience, Blinder details the efforts during the latter days of the Bush and early days of the Obama administrations to respond to the bank crisis and developing recession.

Blinder argues that the banking crisis was the consequence of many extremely complex private market decisions leading to a market failure that necessitated government intervention to prevent a depression rivaling the economic collapse of the nineteen thirties.

He clearly conveys the sense of intense pressure and almost panic that pervaded Washington in 2008 as Paulson, Geithner, and Bernanke struggled to keep our economic ship afloat. The critical event that triggered the panic was the failure of Lehman Brothers on September 15 following the decision not to rescue Lehman as it had done when JP Morgan Chase acquired Bear Stearns in March.

For Blinder the much maligned 700 billion dollar Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) was a tremendous success that allowed us to avoid a depression. Contrary to public perceptions, total dispersals under TARP never exceeded $430 billion including the money allocated by the Bush administration to save the auto industry. The net cost to the taxpayers was just $32 billion as of March 2012, a small price for avoiding an economic catastrophe.

While TARP passed during the Bush administration it signaled the end of any semblance of bipartisanship as the country continued its economic decline. From October 2008 through January 2009, while the Obama transition team was organizing the new administration, we lost 2.8 million jobs. During the transition the Obama team developed a plan to reverse the job losses. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) passed without a single Republican vote eight days after the inauguration. 

The preceding just scratches the surface of the information in this book. There is a detailed narrative of the complex events of the last five years including the passage of and ongoing struggle to implement the Dodd-Frank Act and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I find the ineffectiveness of the efforts to help homeowners with mortgages in default after the housing bubble collapse troubling. It seems to me that there was a double standard between the criteria for helping the banks and the helping financially stressed homeowners.

The final chapter includes specific recommendations about future policies that may help us recover more quickly and avoid similar debacles in the future.

Understanding and respectful dialogue can lead to constructive solutions.

Fruitless political blaming leads nowhere.

Listen to and respect different views

This is my Spectrum column published on 1/22/13:

We live in time of great opportunities. Never in my lifetime have I had access at my fingertips to the abundance of information and educational opportunities as I do today. Recently I completed an online college level course in poetry that was a massive open online course (MOOC) originating at the University of Pennsylvania. Colleges and universities are making more courses available online. The Khan Academy contains a library of over 3800 videos on a variety of subjects. A Google search almost instantly provides a huge number of information sources.

Recent developments in the energy field promise greater production domestically in the coming decades. The economic indicators for 2013 look promising.

Regrettably reasons for optimism in our political system are harder to find. Our polarization is causing the wheels of government to grind to a halt. The looming debt ceiling crisis is just the latest self-inflicted blow to continuing economic advancement.

We blame and rail at Congress on the one hand but then in 2012 we returned 91 percent of the incumbents up for election to Washington.

Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist, studies the roots of our morality and is concerned about our political dysfunction. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion he explores in detail how our moral vision “binds and blinds” us. We become loyal to our team while unable to see the correctness in the other team. We engage in a good versus evil struggle. He argues that if we can gain a better understanding of the roots of our hyper partisan divisions then there is hope that we can begin to talk to each other more civilly.

In addition to his books, he is a frequent participant in TED Talks. TED is a nonprofit organization that brings together people from Technology, Entertainment, and Design to share ideas in talks of 18 minutes or less. Currently there are more than 1400 individual TED Talks available online.

Professor Haidt’s most recent talk is: How common threats can make common (political) ground. He identifies specific reforms to address structural issues in Congress and four specific threats that he likens to asteroids headed at our planet and threatening a catastrophe in the next fifty years. They are global warming, the rising national debt, rising income and wealth inequality, and rising non-marital birth rates.

He argues that while liberals and conservatives are frequently on opposite sides of these issues there is room for civil debate leading to constructive solutions if each side can acknowledge the seriousness of the threat posed by these challenges and be motivated to seek solutions before it is too late.

There are some hopeful signs of change emerging. Just this month Republican Jon Huntsman and Democrat Joe Manchin are assuming leadership roles in the “No Labels” Movement (www.nolabels.org) promoting the need for problem solving.

We have an opportunity to manage our future if we can listen to and respect our disparate views. 

Will we finally act on gun violence?

This is my column published in the Spectrum on 12/24/12:

“As I look at the photos of those who died, I wonder how many more must die before we come to our senses and begin to converse with each other while searching together for a way to reduce gun deaths in our nation?”

I concluded an earlier column in August after the Aurora Colorado tragedy with those words. Sadly the conversation never happened.

Now here I am again with horrific images floating through my mind of a Connecticut grade school and the unimaginable carnage that leaves the families and friends of twenty innocent 6 and 7-year-old children in unbearable pain and grief. In the midst of the chaos the loving dedicated professionals, who went to work on that Friday committed to doing their job of enriching the minds of these precious children, acted heroically, six at the cost of their own lives.

Many of the first responders rushed onto the scene to help and were confronted with overwhelming horror and helplessness. 

My thoughts return to my own experience with guns. I lived in the Northeast for nearly half of my life where gun ownership was not encouraged. My family included adopted children some of whom came from deeply troubled early childhood experiences. At no time did I consider it desirable to have guns in the home.

Then I moved to the South and the culture was more accepting of guns. With my children gone I purchased two revolvers. Trying to develop and maintain a reasonable level of proficiency I visited a local shooting range periodically and did some target shooting at the bulls eye type targets.

One day in the stall next to me there was a young man with some type of a weapon that was larger than a pistol but smaller than an assault weapon. His cardboard target was the silhouette of a person. As he fired rapidly he was becoming more excited verging on what at the time I thought to be ecstasy. I left the range feeling stunned, went home and locked up my guns and eventually sold them.

“Guns don’t kill, people do” has become a cliché. It is an expression intended to limit thought. But is it true?

What is the attraction of semiautomatic instruments of death? As you approach Las Vegas on I-15 there is a large billboard with the photo of a military style weapon, large clip and all, along with an invitation to visit the gun store and to shoot it. With all of the pleasures available in Las Vegas, what is the visceral feeling evoked by shooting an instrument of death?

Do mentally disturbed killers who engage in these senseless slaughters find power in the gun, power that is promised by our advertising, films, and other violent cultural symbols? Is it the availability of guns that empowers the powerless with tragic consequences?

In the coming weeks we will learn more details about why these precious people lost their lives in Newtown.

Will we do anything this time? 

The Missing Link Between Anger and Blame

This is my Column published in the Spectrum on 11/27/12:

Many years ago my wife and I were sitting with friends in an ice cream parlor. I recall expressing anger about a letter to the editor in the local paper. My friend, a psychotherapist, asked me a simple question: “George, what is the source of your anger?” I responded with a superficial explanation, but the question lingered in my mind. Obviously the content of the troubling letter didn’t justify the intensity of my emotions.

Anger is an essential ingredient of our being. From an evolutionary perspective it along with fear is important for our survival, helping marshal biological resources in the face of threats or danger.

When expressed appropriately anger can be an effective communication tool. On the other hand out of control or misdirected anger can be harmful or worse brutally destructive.

A classic example of misdirected anger is being unable to argue with an employer because of the risks to one’s livelihood; then getting home from work and kicking the dog or picking a fight with your spouse.

Honoring, understanding, and accepting responsibility for our feelings is essential for personal growth and development.

When we channel feelings and emotions into blame we concede control to others or to external events. We omit an essential step of introspection. Our thinking shuts down and is not available to evaluate or modulate our feelings. In relationships rather than constructively expressing our anger, we attack the other thus provoking defensiveness and a dynamic that is potentially injurious and nonproductive.

A current example of the negative consequences of merging anger and blaming is the response of Mr. Romney to his election defeat. Reportedly he is angry about the loss. That is understandable given the commitment he and others made to his campaign and the deep disappointment he must feel. But he also seems to be in denial about the reasons for his loss.

The LA Times reported that during a recent conference call to high-level donors he attributed his loss to, among other events, the following:

“The Obama campaign was following the old playbook of giving a lot of stuff to groups that they hoped they could get to vote for them and be motivated to go to the polls, specifically the African American community, the Hispanic community and young people,” (LA Times 11/15/12). Mr. Romney characterized extended health insurance benefits to young people as “a big gift”.

This demeaning attitude and these divisive post-election remarks reinforced my belief that this man lacks empathy or sensitivity for the real life experiences of those he previously characterized as the 47 percent or the “takers” in our society.

Thanks to the collective wisdom of the American people, we now have hope that, among other moves forward, those earning $20,000 to $35,000 may gain access to reasonable health care just as have the many young people already covered by the Affordable Care Act.

I readily admit that Mr. Romney’s recent remarks provoked my own anger.

And so I write. 

Risks of inequality

One of the reasons I am a fan of Jon Stewart’s Daily Show is the quality of his interviews with serious people. Recently J. K. Rowling the British novelist and creator of the Harry Potter fantasy series was a guest. Before she became wealthy and famous, she acknowledges she struggled financially and for a short period of time received benefits from the government. Now she has the ability to live anywhere in the world but has decided to stay in England and pay her taxes because she feels grateful for the support she received earlier in her life.

What a refreshing attitude. Gratitude.

Contrast that with what we too often hear in this country. Some members of the upper one percent of the income earners and wealth holders are feeling besieged. They criticize the president because his antiwealth “rhetoric is so poisonous.” We are told the real problem is not inequality but that “40 or 50 percent of the of the country are on the dole and support him [Obama].” A hedge fund executive was offended by the president’s proposal to reform a provision of the tax code and treat carried interest as ordinary income instead of a capital gain. He likened it to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” How to understand their plight when, for example, they received ninety-three per cent of the gains during the 2009-10 recovery?

In her recent book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else Chrystia Freeland explores the issue of growing income and wealth inequality in our nation and the world. Freeland acknowledges the sensitivity of the subject. Any serious discussion triggers defensiveness and is squelched by labeling it “class warfare.” However, we should not ignore the evidence. One can be concerned about the future of our economy and political system, not out of envy of the affluent, but of concern about economic and political stability. We celebrate success in our nation, but when a small number of people are accruing increasing power while opportunities for upward mobility are shrinking the future is troubling.

We can look back to the thirty years following World War II and long for days of shared prosperity during which time “the gap between the one percent and everyone else shrank; the income share of the top one percent fell from nearly 16 percent... to under 7 percent...” During this period average annual economic growth was 3.7 percent. This was during a time of a growing middle class and relatively high taxes. Average CEO pay in the eighties was forty-two times that of the average worker a ratio that increased to 380 in 2012.

Freeland intelligently examines this very complex and controversial issue recognizing that the economic forces unleashed by globalization and technological innovation are driving the growing inequality. She helps us understand the world of the elite without demonizing or explicitly identifying good guys and bad guys. Her goal is to inform and educate.

The slogan “a rising tide lifts all boats” has not been true for decades.