In what has to be the biggest political shocker not only in New York, but the rest of the country it seems the Governor of New York Eliot Spitzer or better known as client 9 to his call-girl friends has been involved in a high class prostitution ring. Mr. Spitzer was suppose to be an up and coming star in the Democratic Party despite recent setbacks in New York in his first term as Governor. How can this be I ask myself? How often have we been treated to the tawdry details of these sexual misconduct cases from politicians? You would think that the word would have gotten out about these types of activities from the many other similar cases that have come to light. I have come to the conclusion that for these people it is not about sex whether it is Eliot Spitzer or Larry Craig, no my friends it is about the adrenalin rush of getting away with something. Sex for these people is just the means to an end, to get that rush is the endgame.
How else can you explain how despite the many careers that have been ruined and images tarnished by these cases they continue to happen. Are we to assume that politicians don’t read the papers or watch the news and see their contemporaries doing the perp-walk? Are we to assume that they are so sex-starved that they can’t control themselves. No this isn’t about sex, it is about something deeper and more hideous. It is not like I am some kind of prude, but I do take marriage as a sacred bond and so it bothers me to see it violated. That to me is not the scariest part, what scares me the most is how these men who must know all that is at stake by them committing these acts continue to do so. Not only does it show a lack of judgment on the part of the person, but also a total disregard for those same things they proclaim to be valuable.
Mr. Spitzer was elected in a landslide in 2006, capitalizing on his popularity he won as the “Sheriff of Wall Street” during eight years as attorney general. With a reputation for personal probity and independence, he pledged to bring higher ethical standards to the statehouse.[1]
Mr. Spitzer campaigned on personal integrity and high ethical standards. While many may decry his lack of moral fortitude, I am more concerned with something else. Governor Spitzer’s decision to commit adultery with prostitutes is in my opinion between him, his God, and his wife, I am not here to judge him on that count. What is of more concern to me is when your personal proclivities prevent you from doing your job. It’s like with Mayor Berry it wasn’t the fact that he smoked crack that bothered me, it was the fact that it prevented him from doing his job.
We all have our own moral compasses that we use to guide our lives and while the national pastime in America is convicting others for things we ourselves do, this only further acerbates the problem. The problem is that we have corruption at the highest levels of government and business. Everyday there are new stories of political and business leaders that have succumbed to their desires for power, wealth, and greed. The stories are as old as man himself and yet I can’t help but notice their intensity and their frequency today. There appears to be an epidemic of moral deficiency even among those who are widely viewed as “good people”. While it is not popular on the web to discuss spiritual matters, I can’t help but believe that the wide spread corruption is more than just a few men falling prey to their baser natures.
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.[2]
We are not struggling against men and women who have been corrupted by power, no our struggle is against the evil forces that turn men into slaves. Slaves to their passions and to their desires and despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary they continue to risk all that they have in the belief that they will succeed where others have failed. They falsely believe that they will get to live that elusive double-life where on the one hand you can champion “American values” and on the other hand engage in a little footsies in the men’s room.
The lesson of this and all of the other similar scandals is that the enemy is not some shadowy figure lurking in the dark waiting to pounce on us. The enemy is within each one of us and that everyday it is a constant struggle to subdue those desires that will cause us pain and ruin. Everyday we all face opportunities to surrender to those desires that seek to destroy us and our fellow men, but also everyday we are presented with opportunities to overcome our selfish desires and lift ourselves and our fellows beyond where we are today. The choice belongs to each of us and it doesn’t matter what your income, position, or religion is; we still have to choose. I pray that we all may choose wisely.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/11/nyregion/11spitzer.html?pagewanted=2&hp
[2] Ephesians 6:12 (New King James Version)
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Another One Bites The Dust
Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Who Says We Don’t Have Socialized Medicine
Who says we don’t have socialized medicine in America. We have it, just not the way the rest of the world does it. You see in other countries the citizenry are covered by national healthcare, in America it is the corporations that are being covered by Medicaid and Medicare. I have never been able to understand how with the massive buying power of the federal government I can get better prices than they can. If anyone still believes that Washington is not teeming with thieves, stories like these should dispel any doubts. Everyone wants to cut government spending so long as it doesn’t affect them, so what if the country is going broke. Everyone agrees that the costs of Medicaid and Medicare are skyrocketing and that the system is on the brink of disaster and rather than businesses joining with the rest of America in trying to reduce the costs and solve the problem, we get this instead.
Despite enormous buying power, Medicare pays far more. Rather than buy oxygen equipment outright, Medicare rents it for 36 months before patients take ownership, and pays for a variety of services that critics say are often unnecessary.
The total cost to taxpayers and patients is as much as $8,280, or more than double what somebody might spend at a drugstore.
The high expense of oxygen equipment — which cost Medicare over $1.8 billion last year — is hardly an anomaly.[1]
The politician’s answer to our spiraling health care costs is to reduce the rolls and the services for the patients, instead of reducing the prices of the suppliers. The sad thing about all of this is that it is not new or secret, everyone on Capitol Hill knows that this price gouging is going on. In the prescription drug bill it was actually legislated into it that the American public would have to pay the highest prices available and could not use the tremendous buying power to negotiate lower prices. There is something seriously wrong with our government and our programs and the solution is not to shut them down or privatize them it is for the government to exert the control they were elected to do.
The wingnuts will point to this story and say this is why we need to get government out of healthcare, instead of dealing with the real issue which is the profiteering of their corporate benefactors. Why is government healthcare good enough for the government, but not good enough for the rest of America? If government healthcare is so awful why aren’t the Congress passing legislation for them to opt out? The truth is that it is hypocritical for them to denounce the same system that they use for themselves. It is hypocritical for them to want to cut people and services, instead of cutting the gouging that is taking place.
Welfare only seems to be good for the corporations, it is okay for companies to bill the government for millions of dollars of overcharges, but it is a national outrage for a single mother to get a few hundred dollars a month for her children. The people of this country have allowed the wingnuts to define the agenda and to demonize the long history of charity that is fundamentally a part of America.
Other companies that sell medical equipment have also flourished. More than 114,000 home medical equipment suppliers billed Medicare last year, according to HME News, an industry newsletter. Over 1,500 of them collected more than $1 million. One of the largest oxygen equipment suppliers, the publicly traded Lincare, collected over $789 million from Medicare last year, according to corporate filings.
Large private investment firms have also jumped in. Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, a $16 billion private equity group, has invested in numerous companies that profit from Medicare. One of its executives is Thomas A. Scully, who ran Medicare for almost three years, until 2003.
The government’s overall bill for Medicare soared last year to an average of $8,568 per beneficiary, up from $5,522 in 1999, an increase that outpaces inflation by 34 percent.[2]
The problem is not as the wingnuts have framed it that too many people are being helped and they are undeserving, the problem is that there are too many companies lining their pockets with government money. The rise in cost for these programs is not primarily due to increased participation, but due to increased cost per patient. These costs are a direct result of a lack of oversight by the government. The reason wingnuts want to keep the government small and remove government oversight agencies is so they can pilfer the public without fear or conscious. The fewer inspectors and overseers the less chance of getting caught. The sad part is that they have managed to convince enough of the public to buy into their false logic.
Today you have poor and middle-class people spouting wingnut talking points, seemingly unaware that it is them who will be hurt by the cuts they are screaming for. I don’t know how they did it, but the 30 years of concentrated effort has been paying dividends for the conservatives. Before long you will have the middle-class calling for an end to Social Security to save a few tax dollars. There is socialism in America, though it’s only reserved for the wealthy.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/business/30golden.html?hp
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/30/business/30golden.html?hp
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
New Orleans – Let The Good Times Roll
For years, New Orleans and Louisiana have had reputations as centers of political corruption. Former Gov. Edwin Edwards is serving 10 years in prison after being convicted in 2000 in a fraud, extortion and racketeering case. Within the past week, a former New Orleans school board president pleaded guilty to taking bribes to help a business consultant win contracts for an employer, and a one-time associate of former Mayor Marc Morial was sentenced to prison for his role in a kickback scandal.
Historically, the city and state have been tolerant of corruption, Letten said. Still, he and Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, believe that tolerance is eroding, particularly in the nearly 22 months since Katrina flooded much of the city[1]
Time is supposed to heal all wounds or so they say. It has been 22 months since the disaster known as hurricane Katrina; hit the city of New Orleans. While there has been significant progress in the city as a whole, the 9th ward has not been as fortunate as the rest of the city. For those who are not familiar the 9th ward is where the majority of the poor people of New Orleans resided. I originally wanted to do a piece to respond to a challenge on a blog site, asking if the Black bloggers had forgotten about New Orleans. I had to admit that I had not done one post on it and it kind of bothered me. I was ready to do a post blasting the incompetence of the federal, state, and local governments and how the well documented history of corruption in Louisiana was playing out on the national stage.
However, as I began gathering my facts and figures and preparing to start into my tirade an interesting question came to mind. I must say I was somewhat troubled and yet intrigued by the question. The question speaks to how we respond to disaster as a society and as a nation; the things we value and want integrated into our fabric. I could find no right or wrong response to the question, but a difference in the values we have as individuals. It made me question what are we entitled to as citizens of a city and a nation.
Does the city of New Orleans have to provide for the poor people to return to New Orleans? Before you go into the immediate knee jerk response think about it. Due to the disaster New Orleans has a chance to rebuild the city; do they have to bring the poor people back that are not home or property owners? Is the city served by having poor people relocated back to the city, with the inherent problems of crime, homelessness, drugs, etc? Does the city have an obligation to include creating a ghetto in its redevelopment plans?
But you say, “They were here before the hurricane” and yes this is true but they are not there now. The reason I ask these questions is because the city is in the process of recreating itself by demolishing the public housing or projects and replacing it with “mixed income” housing, which is code for getting rid of the poor. The area that the city is “renovating” lies very near to the French Quarter and I am sure would be prime redevelopment real estate.
After the last remnants of ‘the city’ are removed, we stand and look across the dead silence of the empty projects – it is a somber reminder of the city and federal governments’ failure to ensure low income housing in New Orleans. St. Bernard, like 80% of the public housing developments in the city, is slated for demolition, despite the fact that they have sustained very minimal hurricane or flood damage. HANO, taking leadership from Housing and Urban Development has condemned the projects as contaminated, and declared a plan to destroy them while simultaneously announcing a plan to provide ‘mixed-income housing’ instead. Ironically, the buildings themselves were some of the strongest in the city, and had sustained very little real damage.
Either way, for public housing residents across the city, the prospects are bleak. They are locked from their apartments despite holding leases, and told they may not have a place in the new slimmed down version of public housing that is being proposed. The truth is, the plan for ‘mixed income housing’ would provide a small fraction of the actual units that are afforded low income families, discouraging those without other means from returning to New Orleans.
Many people believe the long history of racism in New Orleans that has led to government neglect in the rebuilding process. They simply don’t want low income blacks to return. After volunteering in New Orleans for the last 7 months, it is a hard statement to rebuke. Everywhere you look the evidence is around you. Demolished homes, skyrocketing rent, lack of public health care, underfunded public schools, and one of the highest incarceration rates for young black men in the nation. A large gap in mental health services, particularly for those suffering ‘Katrina trauma’ and a lack of decently paying jobs has led to drug wars and staggering murder rates.
Meanwhile residents in the poorest areas of New Orleans are still awaiting the long promised Road Home money, awarded by congress to aid home owners in the state of Louisiana. More than eighteen months after the storm, as few as 1% of the families who applied for this assistance have received checks. Meanwhile the city has begun demolitions on ‘neglected’ properties, part of an ongoing land grab that is being called by some “the largest gentrification project in the history of the United States.” As one black woman who was waiting for her Road Home check told me, “I’d like to see who that 1% is, because I can guarantee you, it’s nobody I know. “
Often these things can be written off as result of neglect and bureaucratic in-action. But times like today it appears intentional -- as if a small war is being waged – with red-tape and bulldozers, at a time when housing is needed more than ever.. .According to HANO’s own documents St. Bernard could be repaired for $41 million, or substantially modernized for $130 million. Demolishing them and building ‘mixed income’ apartments will cost at least $197 million, and reduce the number of low income units from 1400 to 160. The new buildings would be less secure, and more likely to suffer future Hurricane.[2]
So does the city owe the poor a return ticket to poverty or a relocation back to the slums they once called home?
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-06-24-new-orleans-watchdog_N.htm
[2] http://neworleans.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/10093.php
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