California Free Press

Dems Should Take Tax Issue Away from Pubs: Here's How

The Republicans have been very successful at winning elections by promising to lower taxes. Conversely, the Democrats have been unsuccessful in suggesting that taxes might have to be raised in the interest of fiscal responsibility. Take Fritz Mondale, for example, who promised to raise taxes, and promptly lost the election. At the same time money flowing into Republican coffers has defeated candidates and campaigns that promised to benefit the middle class at the expense of the rich and super rich. Consider the swift boat campaign that brought down John Kerry. Or consider the Willie Horton ad campaign that bought Bush the elder the Presidency or consider the Harold and Louise ad campaign that resulted in the defeat of the Clinton universal health care program in the early 90s.

There were many reasons for the death of comprehensive healthcare reform. Washington pundits have laid blame on many doorsteps: the overcomprehensiveness of the plan, the secret meetings of the healthcare task force, the ineffective advocacy effort by the Democratic National Committee, the contentious paid television advertisements such as the now famous "Harold and Louise" pieces, the lack of bipartisanship, the lack of presidential coordination with Congress, and the multimillion-dollar effort of special interest groups bent on preserving the status quo. At one point, H. Ross Perot offered the Republican Party at least $1 million to produce a televised program to critique President Clinton's healthcare reform plan.

All these ad campaigns were paid for by millions of dollars spent by corporate and individual interests who sought successfully to influence politics in a way favorable to them. And what was favorable to them was to have the Republicans lower their taxes. The real issue is whose taxes are to be lowered and whose are to be raised. The Republicans delivered on their promise to lower taxes for everyone, but the lion's share of the dividends went to the rich and the corporations. The poor and middle class, by comparison, got a mess of pottage and whatever meager social programs they were benefiting from got reduced or eliminated.

The tax issue is a serious problem for American democracy because the rich and super rich have become political power brokers in and of themselves and this threatens democracy itself. CEOs and hedge fund managers have been taking home $100 million and up annually. According to the Washington Post's David Ignatius:

A measure of just how rich the new financiers are is a list compiled annually by Alpha magazine of the top 25 hedge fund managers. Average earnings for these financial titans last year were $570 million, an increase of 57 percent from 2005. "In total, the top 25 earners raked in more than $14 billion, equivalent to the GDP of Jordan or Uruguay," writes Alpha. You read sentences like that and you wonder why there isn't a revolution against a global financial system that produces such disparities. Is Alpha's readership of tycoons embarrassed by these numbers? Apparently not. A June editorial urged greater political activism by the super-rich in Washington to save their tax breaks. "The time is now," the article warned. If current trends continue, "we may wake up one day to find fundamental changes affecting our business." What a happy thought.

With a progressive income tax system such as the US used to have, this wouldn't have been possible. Now $100 million (let alone $570 million) is way more than any rational person could conceivably spend on their lifestyle in a particular year. So where does the rest of the money go? It goes into paying lobbyists to influence public policy in the interests of the rich and super rich. It goes into supporting political candidates who will do their best to support policies and pass laws that favor the rich and super rich, and it goes into campaigns to defeat candidates or policies that the rich and super rich don't think are favorable to them.

The question is why do the majority of people vote for and support programs and political candidates that do not represent their interests? In other words why does the majority of people vote against their own economic interests? Like lemmings, they are influenced by TV ads because they are too lazy to research the issues for themselves and then vote in their own interests. Also rich people have the money to outspend the interests representing the middle class and the poor. They spare no expense and leave no stone unturned in order to insure that the public will be sufficiently swayed to their point of view. So the issue of progressive taxation is not only an issue of who gets to keep how much and whether it is morally right for individuals to possess wealth above and beyond that necessary for any conceivable luxurious lifestyle. The issue is whether certain individuals are allowed to accumulate wealth to the point where it affects democracy itself.

Here  in a nutshell is what the Dems should do: campaign on a pledge of lowering taxes on the middle class while raising them on the rich, the super-rich and corporations. For individuals to be taking home $100 million and up is not only unfair, but it results over a period of time in these individuals having complete control of the political process. This could not happen if individuals' take home pay was put to use for what I would call legitimate purposes: lifestyle (even a luxurious lifestyle) and retirement. People taking home $100 million annually are not exactly living paycheck to paycheck! For instance, the Forbes Fortune 400, the 400 richest Americans, are all billionaires! We have to distinguish between an individual's net worth in terms of assets and a person's annual earnings. If you have assets of $1 billion and put it in a secure money market account earning the going rate of 5% interest, you would have an annual income from your assets alone of $50 million. This so-called "unearned income" (the Republicans haven't been able to change the pejorative terminology - yet) is what's called a return to capital. The normal middle class financial assumptions involving money do not apply here. For the middle class, most money earned by working goes into current consumption whereas capitalism is all about capital accumulation and the return to capital that results from capital accumulation in the form of stock dividends, interest on bonds, rents from real estate, stock options and other financial derivatives and manipulations. Middle class asumptions that, if they work hard and play by the rules, they will be rewarded, are entirely bogus. Rewarded by whom? The government? Private corporations? God? No, it's starkly clear that the middle class has been hoodwinked by the Republican Party which represents corporations, the rich and the super rich. Middle class folk have to be in the business of pursuing their own interests just as tenaciously as the rich have pursued their interests. And it has nothing to do with working hard and playing by the rules. It has everything to do with capital accumulation and living off the return to capital. However, most people can live quite comfortably on a return from a $5 million capital accumulation, for example. There is no need for a society to allow individuals to accumulate money in the billions because that spills over into controlling the political process itself.

In a society where most money is earned from a return to capital and not from actual work ("earned income"), there is a danger of that society becoming a corporatocracy or plutocracy, i.e., a society controlled by the rich, super-rich and corporations. The financial realities of the wealthy stand middle class assumptions on their head. Only part of their annual earnings (both "earned" and "unearned") go to support lifestyle, (even a luxurious lifestyle) while the rest are available to make campaign contributions to candidates and ad campaigns and lobbyists who support their interests for making even more money. When the rich control the political process in this way, the only thing left to the middle class is the voting booth itself. Voting is the last refuge of the middle class because here they can actually elect candidates who represent their interests and not the interests of those running the slickest and most numerous TV ads. Since monied interests have been able to control the government, politicians who have accepted their donations have passed legislation favoring their interests. In return the politicians can look forward, upon leaving government "service", of being offered a lucrative job as a lobbyist or on a corporate board. They only need to bring their Rolodex. It becomes a positively self-reinforcing circular process.

So what the Dems need to do (although since they accept money from the same super rich and corporate interests as the Pubs, they are less likely to do it!) is to raise taxes progressively on the rich and super rich and corporations and reduce them on the middle class. There is no need to even deal with the  issue of tax relief for the poor as they don't really figure in the political process. The middle class does. Much as the poor need and deserve to be helped in a compassionate and even Christian society, they are written off in the US where "money talks and shit walks." The Republicans don't even mention them and the Democrats shouldn't either. It just detracts from their appeal to the middle class. Maybe some day the poor will be treated as Jesus suggested treating "the least of these my brethren" but, until then, the Dems should court the middle class and disabuse them from Republican propaganda and from voting against their own economic interests. That's what makes John Edwards "poverty tour" so ridiculous. The poor, unfortunately, don't vote in great enough numbers to influence the political process and there are not enough altruists out there who espouse the causes of the poor to matter. So it's better to represent those people who actually have a chance to politically affect the outcome of an election, the people who have been targeted for political destruction ever since Ronald Reagan, namely, the middle class.

So when I say the Dems should raise taxes on the rich, where do we draw the line. First of all, doctors and lawyers making $200,000. to $400,000. a year are no longer upper class when some people (CEOs and hedge fund managers)  are making $570 million, several orders of magnitude more! $400,000 and less is middle class, but assets have to be factored into the equation and they can be readily since they are producing "unearned income" under the return to capital principle. So a CEO could be taking home $100 million for his salary, have income producing assets of $50 million and stock options worth another $100 million. For the purposes of taxation all of this has to be figured in and not just his so-called "earned income." Ideally, in a democratic society even the individuals with the greatest incomes should not make more than they could conceivably spend on their lifestyles, in other words, on consumption. Else they have money that is inevitably going to find its way into influencing the political process.

So the Dems should pledge to raise taxes on those making more than $400,000 annually in a progressive fashion going up to a 90 % tax rate while keeping taxes constant for those in the $100,000 - $400,000 range and lowering taxes for those making less than $100,000. In other words lower taxes on the middle class! Also since corporations have the rights of persons, they should bear the same responsibilities and not get any tax breaks just because they're corporations. If they produce American jobs and for a limited variety of other good deeds, maybe they should get a tax break. If the Democratic nominee for President ran on this plank of a platform, they would get a majority of the votes on this issue alone. They would have to take the chance of alienating the super rich and the corporations and they would have to counter vicious TV ad campaign propaganda, but, if they could overcome those two hurdles, we might be able to go back to a democracy. If not, it will be full steam ahead to plutocracy and corporatocracy.

House Votes: No Permanent Bases or Iraqi Oil

It is refreshing that the House has finally voted that the US will have no permanent bases in Iraq (after the Bush Administration has wasted billions building them) and has no designs on Iraqi oil (after the Bush Administration went to war to get it). The neocons must be furious that their little mideast adventure is coming to a close. Bush is just trying to ride it out to the end so he can say he "stayed the course" whereas all he's really done is bankrupt the US in a fruitless adventure.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday voted overwhelmingly to bar permanent US military bases in Iraq, in the latest bid by Democrats to trim White House options on the war. Democratic congresswoman Barbara Lee, who wrote the bill, said it made clear the United States did not intend to keep an "open-ended" presence in Iraq and had no designs on the war-torn nation's oil riches. "Putting Congress on record with this clear statement helps take the targets off our troops' backs and it support our goals of handing over responsibility for security and public safety to Iraqi forces," she said. "We may disagree on many things about Iraq, but I hope we can agree that an endless occupation is not the answer," Lee said. Democrats saw the bill as an attempt to ensure that the administration cannot keep a decades-long troop garrison in Iraq, similar to the tens of thousands of US troops stationed in South Korea since the Korean war. The bill passed by 399 votes to 24 as most Republicans also backed it, despite many Bush supporters deriding the vote as purely symbolic.

Senator Joe Biden ws responsible for the amendment regarding the oi. According to ThinkProgress:

Yesterday, the Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the Iraq supplemental spending bill proposed by Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) that would require the Bush administration not to use any appropriated funds for the construction of permanent bases in Iraq. The amendment also called for the U.S. not exercise control over Iraqi oil. Biden’s amendment reads as follows: To provide that no funds made available by title I of this Act may be made available to establish permanent United States military bases in Iraq or to exercise control by the United States over the oil infrastructure or oil resources of Iraq. Earlier this year, the House passed an amendment offered by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) that similarly stated no funds should be used for permanent base construction. Congress has now spoken with a clear and unambiguous voice a time when there are troubling signs that the administration wants to make the U.S. presence permanent in Iraq. For example, the administration is currently constructing a $592 million U.S. embassy in Baghdad that spans the size of 80 football fields. Will this be yet another law that the administration chooses to ignore

Seeing that the goals of the Bush Administration and the neocons were to make Iraq a base of operations for the US in the mideast and through Production Sharing Agreements give lucrative contracts for Iraqi oil to western oil companies, this bill goes to the heart of the Bushies' and neocons' plans. Since they don't have the votes to actually get the troops out of Iraq at this time, this is an excellent bill since it brings to light the real reasons the US is in Iraq. Now they need to reduce the size of that ridiculous, humungous US Embassy in Iraq (really Occupation HQ) to normal proportions.

The Washington Post said:

House Bill Bars Permanent Bases in Iraq

Thursday, July 26, 2007; Page A14

The House overwhelmingly approved legislation yesterday that would bar the establishment of permanent military bases in Iraq and the use of federal dollars to exercise control over Iraqi oil resources.

The measure, passed 399 to 24, was part of a barrage of Iraq bills scheduled for this month and designed to raise pressure on Republicans to break with President Bush on the war.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.), who chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said that next week he will offer an amendment to the annual defense spending bill demanding that troop withdrawals begin this fall. The amendment would not set a final date for the withdrawal of troops, a change from past Democratic efforts that Murtha predicted will attract Republicans.

"The Democratic Congress will go on record -- every day, if necessary -- to register a judgment in opposition to the course of action that the president is taking in Iraq," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) decried the bases bill as a "meaningless stunt" before he and 171 other Republicans voted for it. No Democrats opposed the measure.

-- Jonathan Weisman

Dentistry in San Diego and Tijuana

 A few years ago I broke off a front tooth eating an English muffin that was as hard as a rock. When I took it out of the freezer, I defrosted it in the microwave too long. That's how it got that way. I made one for myself and one for my girlfriend. I ate mine, but she said, "This is too hard for me." "Here," I said, "I'll eat it" and I promptly broke off my tooth. The dentist removed the part of the tooth that was hanging by a thread which was most of the tooth down to the gum line and gave me a flipper. I think the flipper cost $300. This was a while back and I don't remember what alternatives the dentist gave me, but I'm sure they were all expensive so I decided to keep the flipper as a permanent solution. This lasted a few years; then the flipper broke. I had it repaired; then it broke again. Finally, I gave up on the flipper and decided to seek a permanent solution.

The dentist I was going to in San Diego suggested a bridge cap as a more reasonable alternative to an implant. (Actually, I had gone to two dentists before that including the one who gave me the flipper and neither of them had proposed a reasonable solution.) What they would do for the bridge cap is grind down the two adjacent teeth, cap them and then those caps would support a third cap over my missing tooth. First they would extract what remained of my missing tooth below the gum line. This solution would cost $995. per cap or $2985. plus the extraction. I forget how much that was. And this was with my Secure Horizon high option dental insurance! So two front teeth would be destroyed, and one wouldn't be rooted in anything. And the dentist said she didn't know how long it would last.

After considerable thought and seeing some ads in the Reader which said that implants in Tijuana could be had for $1500., I decided to look for a dentist in Tijuana. I had been thinking about this for some time as a more economically feasible alternative to US dentistry which had been costing me more and more as time went on, and I was getting less and less satisfied with the quality and the way they treated patients as well as all the subterfuges surrounding how they dealt with insurance. Dental insurance was pretty much of a joke anyway as the dentists always seemed to find a way around it either by shorting the service or charging you for additional items the insurance didn't pay for.

As was my wont, I googled "dentistry in Tijuana" and checked out somewhat thoroughly what was available which was a lot. In fact I devoted an afternoon to it.  A lot of dentists had websites, and a ton of information was available. I had several criteria: qualifications and background of the dentist; quality of the website; location and appearance of the dental office. Some of these criteria are somewhat superficial, I admit, but I wanted a dentist with a nice office in a good neighborhood, not somebody who worked out of his house in a bad neighborhood. I finally settled on Baja Oral Center. I was impresssed with the qualifications of Dr. Martinez who did the dental implants. I called a local San Diego number (they have an 800 number too) and set up an appointment with Dr. Martinez to see about a dental implant. Everyone in the office speaks fluent English including the office manager and phone answerer, Berniece. They cover all the bases at Baja Oral Center. The general dentist there is Dr. Garcia. I was impressed with his credentials too. Their equipment is the latest and most modern. And their offices and waiting rooms are immaculate.

The day of my appointment at 11 AM, I  took the San Diego trolley from downtown. I allowed an hour and a half to get down there. My plan was to take the trolley to San Ysidro, walk across the border, then get a taxi to Jose Orosco St. where the offices are located in the Plaza Pacifico building, a relatively recently constructed high rise. It actually took me an hour and fifteen minutes including a fifteen minute walk to the trolley station from my apartment.  The taxi ride cost "cinco" dollars and took less than five minutes. The offices are located in the Zona Rio section of Tijuana, near Paseo de los Heroes and a huge modern shopping mall. There's a large statue of Abraham Lincoln (among others) nearby on Paseo de los Heroes.

I went up the elevator to the fourth floor and found the Baja Oral Center office. It seemed like the whole building was devoted to doctors and dentists. I met with Dr. Garcia who checked me out first, had a panoramic Xray which cost $27.00, and then Berniece escorted me up to Dr. Martinez' office in the penthouse. Dr. Martinez' office is truly stunning with fantastic views.  Everything about this building and the offices I've  seen is first class. Much nicer than most US dental offices that I've been in with much better "wall-of-glass" views. By the way Dr. Garcia, Dr. Martinez and Berniece all speak perfect English.

I told Dr. Martinez I was interested in an implant. As he examined me, he pulled and tugged on what was left of my front tooth. I couldn't figure out what he was doing. Finally, he  said, "I could give you an implant if you want it, but a better and less costly solution would be to put a post on your tooth since you still have part of one there and then a crown." Dr. Martinez pointed out that I had already had a root canal in that tooth so there should be no pain or complications. Why waste a perfectly good root canal? He would do some minor gum surgery first in order to expose more of the tooth and Dr. Garcia would do the rest. The total cost would be $850 including the gum surgery and a gold crown (gold on the inside, regular looking tooth on the outside). It would be a better solution than the bridge cap or the implant and would cost me $2135. less! We set up an appointment for the following week.

I wondered why no US dentist had proposed this solution. Was it because it was more labor intensive and less lucrative than the solutions they proposed? As it happened, I had an appointment the next day with my San Diego dentist for scaling and root planing, otherwise known as deep cleaning, for two quadrants of my mouth. My former, former dentist had told me I needed this 4 times a year. Then when I changed from Blue Cross to Secure Horizons (when I went on Medicare) the dentist told me I didn't need it at all. Blue Cross didn't cover this procedure at all but Secure Horizons did with a $50.00 copay. Seemed strange to me that one dentist would recommend it so often when it wasn't covered by insurance, and then the next one would not recommend it when it was covered by insurance. But they told me they would perform it if I wanted to pay the full freight! I guess he was fulfilling his role as gatekeeper for Secure Horizons! That's why I changed dentists again. This time they were pleased to do the deep cleaning under the insurance.

I was prepared to pay the $100.00 copay for half my mouth, and then there would be a follow-on appointment for the other half. The dentist jabbed me, and I mean jabbed, several times with novacaine, no topical anesthetic first (as a contrast Dr. Martinez applied a topical and I never even felt the novacaine needle), then proceeded to work on the two quadrants for less than an hour. This is something else I had noticed with US dentistry. When it was an insurance prodcedure, it always took far less time than when you were paying out of your pocket. I guess this is how they made up for the lesser payment from the insurance company.    When I got out to the desk they told me the bill was $430! This included my $100.00 copay which I expected and then two charges of $55.00 each for an "unspecified perio procedure." There were also five $44.00 charges for arestin which is something they stick down below the gum line which is supposed to heal infection. I had agreed to the arestin, but they had not told me it was $44.00 a shot! It just took her seconds to put each one in so I felt the cost was ridiculous but I had agreed to it. Fool me once... but what really bothered me was the two $55.00 charges for an "unspecified procedure." I guess they are so brazen they just blow off the expected copay and charge you whatever they want. Right there I decided that I was going to have all my dentistry needs taken care of in Tijuana and not just the big items. I had contemplated having my routine work still done under my insurance in San Diego, but I came to the conclusion that dental insurance is a joke, and dentists would do whatever they had to do to work around it and still charge you exhorbitant prices or give you less than the standard service in terms of their time.

I called and canceled my second $400. plus dental appointment with my San Diego dentist, and after three visits to Dr. Garcia I had my front tooth back again with which I'm very happy. I guess I had gone toothless for about three months, but I'm happy with the final result and what I paid for it. By the way Dr. Garcia worked on me for about two hours putting in the post and the temporary tooth. Before that Dr. Martinez did some minor gum surgery to expose the tooth more. No separate appointments necessary for the two procedures! And I never had any pain during or after the procedure. Maybe the time it took for this procedure is why no San Diego dentist recommended it although I do believe it's preferable to either the bridge cap or the implant and far less costly, but it was labor intensive and US dentists want you in and out of the chair as quickly as possible. I credit Dr. Martinez' honesty for the less expensive diagnosis when he could have given me an implant and charged me a lot more, and Dr. Garcia's and Dr. Martinez' hard work for a very reasonable charge compared to the time they put in. Finally, they did all this for over $2000.00 less than what the San Diego dentist had proposed!

 Subsequently, I took my daughter and two granddaughters to see Dr. Garcia. My granddaughters were worked on by Dr. Lizeth Fajardo, who specializes in pediatric dentistry, and Dr. Garcia saw my daughter. My daughter needed to see another specialist to get braces even though she's 36. She has some serious problems, but will save some serious money by not going to a San Diego dentist for her dentistry needs. Dr. Lizeth did a great job with the granddaughters. I found that all the dentists and assistants in Dr. Garcia's office were polite and kind and seemed to really care about our welfare as opposed to the arrogant and uncaring attitudes I found with some dentists and some office staff in San Diego. In fact some of the office staff I dealt with in San Diego were downright rude.

Today my daughter is taking her husband to see Dr. Garcia. He's a really nice guy, and I've been recommending him to everyone. If you require a specialist one is ususally available in the same building and will see you at the same time with no need for a separate appointment and two trips to Tijuana. A lot of people, including me, have given up completely on the exhorbitant prices and less than caring attitudes found in US dentistry, and some travel great distances to have their dental work done in Mexico. They are in fact "dental tourists." You hear a lot about the high cost of medical care in the US while the high cost of US dentistry slips under the radar. It's a scandal as big as US health care, I  think.

I found that the Tijuana dentists I dealt with were very professional and highly competent and used the latest equipment and techniques. More importantly, they seemed to really care about their patients as opposed to a lot of US dentists who, when you open your mouth, only see dollar signs.

Calling Michael Moore...

Rich Guys Running Out of Excuses for Not Paying Taxes? Nooooo.

In an article entitled "A Tax Break for Billionaires?," by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, Thursday, July 19, 2007, Ignatius quotes a Wall Street billionaire as saying: "The private equity guys I know admit they do not have an argument that holds water [for paying taxes at a lower rate than working people.]" Following is the entire article:

For mysterious reasons, people can suddenly become indignant about government policies they have accepted for years as a matter of course. That sudden seismic shift seems to be happening now in public attitudes toward taxation of America's super-rich financiers. The three leading Democratic candidates - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards - all announced recently that they support higher taxes on what's known as "carried interest," the form of compensation received by financial moguls that has created some of the biggest new fortunes on Wall Street. We may be seeing a political bubble bursting: For decades, the capitalists who ran private equity, venture and hedge funds managed to convince Congress that the 20 percent carried interest profit share they took on deals wasn't ordinary income (taxed at up to 35 percent) but a capital gain (taxed at 15 percent), even though they typically were risking almost none of their own capital. This gross inequity was taken as a financial fact of nature. Even the wealthy - at least those with a social conscience - seem to share the new concern about restoring fairness to the tax system. The most prominent critic is mega-billionaire Warren Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway and a director of The Washington Post Co. He famously admonished his fellow moguls a month ago that they were paying a lower tax rate than the people who cleaned their offices - and offered them $1 million if they could prove otherwise. Buffett is hardly alone in his discomfort with a system that has led to an ever-wider disparity in the distribution of income. That's what gives this movement traction: Some of the people who know Wall Street best understand how unfair the current tax system is. A good example is Robert Rubin, a former treasury secretary and, more to the point, a former head of Goldman Sachs. He recently joined those arguing that carried interest amounted to a fee paid to the money managers, and should thus be taxed as ordinary income. A billionaire who runs one of the leading hedge funds wrote me in an e-mail last week: "Amusing what is going on in the tax charades of the money managers. How in the world anyone can uphold those egregious amounts of money paying low or no taxes is really becoming laughable ... . The private equity guys I know admit they do not have an argument that holds water." This financier described watching a production of "Animal Farm" and realizing that "the vastness of the inequity that is escalating geometrically is just, well, Orwellian." Another financier who heads a private equity fund with more than $5 billion in investments offers a similar scorching indictment of the current system. The argument that the 20 percent he automatically takes away from profitable deals should be taxed as a capital gain is "completely ridiculous" he says. Most firms put only a tiny amount of their own capital at risk - often as little as two-tenths of 1 percent, or $2 million on a $1 billion deal. (Private equity refers to funds that use a mix of debt and private capital to buy up companies; typically they pay back the loans by cutting costs.) The giant private equity funds are nervous enough about the pressure building for tax changes that a few months ago they created their own Washington trade group, the Private Equity Council, which is already producing studies to justify the existing tax breaks. Their Web site explains that although fund managers may be putting up little of their capital, they deserve special tax breaks because they are contributing "sweat equity." Try telling that to the guy on the shop floor who's actually sweating - and paying taxes at a far higher rate. A measure of just how rich the new financiers are is a list compiled annually by Alpha magazine of the top 25 hedge fund managers. The average earnings for these financial titans last year were $570 million, which was an increase of 57 percent over the 2005 average. "In total, the top 25 earners raked in more than $14 billion, equivalent to the GDP of ]ordan or Uruguay," writes Alpha. You read sentences like that and you wonder why there isn't a revolution against a global financial system that produces such disparities. Is Alpha's readership of tycoons embarrassed by these numbers? Apparently not. A June 2007 editorial urges greater political activism by the super-rich in Washington to save their tax breaks. "The time is now," the article warns. If current trends continue, "we may wake up one day to find fundamental changes affecting our business." What a happy thought.

People earning this kind of money on a yearly basis are simply going to crush people making $40 -$50 thousand a year. This changes the fundamental nature of democracy and makes capitalism, not democracy, the essential nature of society. How can this lop-sided system survive when the majority of the world's people make less than a dollar a day? And there is no end to human greed as demonstrated by these people who continue to justify why they should be given special privileges so that they can earn even more!

Waiting Times in US for Cancer Treatment Exceed Canadian Waiting Times for Elective Surgery

See here.

Business Week, no great fan of a national healthcare system, reported in late June that "as several surveys and numerous anecdotes show, waiting times in the U.S. are often as bad or worse as those in other industrialized nations -- despite the fact that the U.S. spends considerably more per capita on health care than any other country." A Commonwealth Fund study of six highly industrialized countries, the U.S., and five nations with national health systems, Britain, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, found waiting times were worse in the U.S. than in all the other countries except Canada. ... Statistics Canada's latest figures show that median wait times for elective surgery in Canada is now three weeks -- that's less time than Aetna's chief medical officer says Americans typically wait after being diagnosed with cancer. Canada also has no waits for emergency surgeries. It also doesn't have 44 million people who are uninsured because everyone has a national healthcare card guaranteeing health care from any doctor or hospital they choose. And it doesn't burden those with insurance with rising deductibles or co-pays.

Michael Moore takes on Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

And more MIchael Moore with Wolf Blitzer:

Movie Review: Sicko

Michael Moore is one of the few filmmakers making movies of any value in today's world. He's a truth teller. Diogenes went around with his lamp looking for one honest man. A modern day Diogenes could say "mission accomplished" after finding Michael Moore. He takes us on a tour of the health care systems in Canada, Britain, France and Cuba, all of which are superior to the US. Americans have been totally brainwashed by health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies who have millions to spend on mind numbing TV ads. The insularity and self-referencing of the US population has made it easy for the corporate system to be successful in insuring that the US system remains very profitable for those corporations who run it. The Medicare drug benefit program was a total giveaway to the health care corporations and the legislation was in fact written by their lobbyists.

Most of the movie isn't even subject to debate since Moore uses actual footage of such things as a doctor confessing before Congress that her job was to deny care to needy people, and in return she was rewarded with bonuses. The more care she as the gatekeeper denied, the larger were her bonuses. 18,000 people die each year as a direct result of their not even having health insurance. Moore points out that having health insurance doesn't guarantee that you'll be taken care of either. Insurance companies employ people whose job it is to search through a person's records to find a reason, any reason, to deny him or her the more expensive kinds of medical care when they really need it. Even people with health insurance go bankrupt just paying the deductibles and copays. Michael assembles a group of 9/11 volunteers with severe health problems who were unable to receive care and takes them on an odyssey to Guantanamo Bay (where the detainees receive excellent health care) and then Cuba where they finally receive care for their medical problems neglected in the US.

The contrast between the throwaway people with health problems that go untreated in the US and the well and humanely treated people in a third world country like Cuba where there is a doctor in every neighborhood is stark. Cuba even trains and exports doctors to other third world countries. Some US citizens are now training in Cuba to become doctors. Universal health care in other industrialized first world countries like France, Britain and Canada leads citizens of those countries to totally take it for granted. They never have to worry about paying a bill, not even a deductible or a copay, and they never have to worry about not receiving excellent treatment. It's just one thing they they never have to think about; hence they pretty much take it for granted.

Universal health care comes in basically two flavors: socialized medicine and single payer. Socialized medicine is when the government owns the hospitals and health care facilities and the doctors are paid directly by the government. This is what they have in Britain. Moore interviews a British doctor expecting him to be ill paid and unhappy with his loss of independence. What he finds instead is someone driving a luxury car, living in luxury housing, making $200,000. a year and not at all disgruntled. In fact he's very loyal to the British system and wouldn't want to work anywhere else - especially in America. A single payer system is one in which the government replaces the insurance companies but the hospitals and medical practices are privately owned. We already have that in the US; it's called Medicare. In fact some of the proposals to fix the US system simply call for an expansion of Medicare, if not to all citizens, at least to children and the poor. The Veterans' Administration in the US is similar to socialized medicine in that the government owns the hospitals and facilities, and the doctors work directly for the government. So the US has both kinds of systems on limited bases.

The question is why don't US citizens demand the same quality of health care that other advanced countries are getting. We have 47 million uninsured; we're 38th on a list of quality of health care compared to other countries of the world. We wait in waiting rooms longer to see a doctor (that always used to be an argument they used to prove US health care was better); we pay more for prescription medicines. In general American citizens are getting screwed and go along with their own screwing. Why? Why do they vote against their own interests? Why do they participate in a system that is stacked against them? The answer is advertising. The US citizenry are lemmings who can be swayed by the millions of dollars that go into advertising either to vote for a particular candidate, buy a particular product or to be against universal health care. They're basically hook, line and sinker in the pocket of Big Brother and corporate interests. They don't get out in the streets and protest as the French do. They have little regard for their fellow man as the British and Canadians do. They're willing to sacrifice a sizable minority (47 million) if the majority are satisfied, and, let's face it, the majority of people never have to face the extreme health problems as did some of the people in Michael Moore's movie. That's what the health insurance companies and the government are counting on - a passive population willing to go along with any pablum they're fed. And the media is afraid to offend their corporate advertisers and owners. Here's a Michael Moore fact check after a recent CNN interview with Wolf Blitzer.

Michael Moore deserves the Congressional Medal of Freedom, but he'll never get it. Instead they'll politicize, demonize, denigrate, cast aspersions on and castigate him for speaking truth to power, a truth that should be obvious to every moderately intelligent and caring American. The problem is that they're a diminishing breed. Michael Moore manages to deal with important and serious subjects with a considerable amount of wit and grace. His movies are always entertaining and uplifting. Contrast this with the gazillions spent on conventional movies whose goal is nothing more than to offer you the ultimate car chase and/or killing machine, a series of mindless titillations. I guess that's the mentality of the average American. Maybe they are getting what they deserve in terms of health care.

The San Diego Free Press circa 1969

I used to work for the San Diego Free Press. It flourished for about two years from about 1968 to 1970. I guess there is a current version but it has nothing in common with the 1968-70 version except the name. It was an "underground" newspaper meaning that it was devoted to radical politics, alternative lifestyles, the counterculture in general. But mainly it was a political newspaper. I used to sell papers at the San Diego Zoo among other spots, one of the few people who actually went out and sold them on the street. Most of the staff just liked to put out the paper, do the art work, write the articles etc. I also wrote for the paper, took photos and was a reporter.

We all lived in a commune at Second and Thorn in Hillcrest. How we were able to rent this house I don't know because it's a really nice house. It's been totally refurbished and is in private hands. I wonder if the present owner knows the history of the house, how it housed a bunch of 60s era radicals. In a later homeless period I used to park my van and sleep just a block away from my old home at Second and Thorn.

There I had my own room on the second floor. Across from me was Jan Diepersloot the guy as much in charge as anyone. He wrote most of the editorials. In the masthead it says he's the policy coordinator. I don't even remember some of the people who worked on the paper, and some of the people who lived at the house didn't even really work on the paper. I remember Richard Blackburn, "Black Dick" they called him. I remember Herman Rumper. Most of these people were present or former UCSD students. Larry Gottlieb was a Physics major. I was a Computer Science major. We were the only two from the science and engineering type schools. All the rest were liberal arts majors, mainly Philosophy students. Matie Belle lived with us but I don't think she worked on the paper.

We also had a "retreat" out in Ramona where we could go to get away from it all. It was an old abandoned ranch with a little shack and a run down barn. One couple lived out there and grew marijuana. They got caught and hauled into court, but I don't remember whatever happened to them. Once their dog had about 16 cute little pups. They were country people and didn't like the city. Since I had a private pilot's license, they wanted me to fly marijuana over the border, but I chickened out. I remember two of our girls drove across with some. Luckily, they made it but they were shitting bricks and never did it again to my knowledge. That's how we paid our rent, I think. Anyway no one ever asked me to pay rent.

One time we ripped off a load of plywood from a building site at UCSD. We used it to floor in our attic so some people could sleep up there. The only problem was people were always stepping off the floored in area onto the lath and plaster and then they would fall through the ceiling directly over my bed. This happened two or three times. The UCSD operation was pretty sophisticated. We had look-outs with walkie-talkies. We used a converted schoolbus that belonged to this guy who stopped in from time to time and stayed with us for awhile. I think he was a friend of Jan's. He was wanted for arson up in northern California since the police had kicked him off some land he was homesteading and in retaliation he had burned down the police station. I don't think they ever caught him.

I had saved all the Free Presses and had them at the little duplex in Del Mar where I lived later after I'd gone my separate way. One day I threw them away which I later regretted. Some years later I searched for the San Diego Free Press and found them on microfiche at the UCSD library. I printed out some pages, mainly the ones on which I had written articles. I used to do a series on San Diego history. And then I did book reviews and a muckraking article on General Dynamics, a company with which I was still employed although on leave of abscence attending school although I was also on a leave of absence from school as well while I pursued revolutionary activities. Our main goal was to create a new society which would require a revolution. We never quite reached that goal. In fact we never even came close.

Following is an excerpt from a book review I did of "Who Rules America?" by G. William Domhoff, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

This book contains a lot of well documented facts about the nature of the American political, economic and social power structure, referred to in some quarters as the Establishment. Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of Californla at Santa Cruz, draws heavily on the works of C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite), Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy (Monopoly Capital), AND E. Digby Baltzell (The Protestant Establishment). He shows conclusively that an American social upper class does exist and that this class owns a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and makes a disproportionate number of America’s decisions; in short, that the American social upper class is the American governing class. His criteria for determining membership in the upper class are the following: 1) listed in the Social Register, 2) attendance at an exclusive private school such as Groton, Hotchkiss or St. Marks, 3) member of a very exclusive gentlemen’s club such as the Knickerbocker (New York), the Pacific Union (San Francisco), or the California (Los Angeles), 4) father was a millonaire entrepreneur or $100,000 corporation executive or corporatlon lawyer and either a) went to exclusive private school or b) belongs to an exclusive club, 5) marries a person under 1) - 4), 6) member of family chronicled by Amory in Who Killed Society! or The Proper Bostonians. Domhoff sets very stiff criteria for upper class membership so that the errors are on the side of exclusion rather than inclusion. Consequently, the statistics he gathers are always conservative.