• WikiLeak’s founder says that nothing he has posted jeopardized any American lives, including those of our soldiers serving in war zones.  I don’t know for sure that he is wrong but I am pretty sure that he is not qualified to make that judgment.
• I’ve heard a lot of comparisons to the Pentagon Papers.  I don’t see the comparison.  The Pentagon Papers exposed a pattern of lies told by government officials over more than 10 years; these lies were used to justify escalating the war in Vietnam.  There was clear wrongdoing exposed, which makes the guy who leaked the documents a whistleblower.  I haven’t read all the WikiLeaks stuff but I haven’t heard about anything that sounds like the Pentagon Papers.  Video of combat in Afghanistan?  Gossipy diplomatic cables that reveal government officials saying uncomplimentary things about leaders of other countries?  Please.  Sounds like the stuff you see on TMZ.  I don’t see how any of this qualifies as whistleblowing.
• The newspapers that are publishing the documents have been falling all over themselves to explain that they, unlike the guy who stole the documents in the first place, are not breaking the law.  It’s illegal to steal classified documents but once they’re out already, republishing them in the paper is protected by freedom of the press.  I’m no expert on constitutional law but this puzzles me.  If you steal a car and I buy it from you (knowing it’s stolen), I can be charged with a crime even though I didn’t do the actual stealing.  How is this different?

It may not sound like it, but I’m generally pretty liberal on these kinds of First Amendment issues.  But I also believe strongly that our First Amendment rights work best when combined with civic responsibility.  I don’t see a lot of that here.

But, on general principles, I think we should be looking at internal reforms for the Postal Service before we allow them to cut services.  Senator Tom Carper recently had an opinion piece in Politico.com that laid out some really good ideas on where to start.

Things I Liked

• The heavy debate schedule in the Minnesota Governor’s race.  The three candidates for Governor had 26 debates.  If you didn’t get a chance to see these guys in action, you weren’t trying very hard.
• Watching PBS election coverage on Ustream while monitoring Twitter and various websites.  Much better than watching it on TV.
• Minnesota Public Radio’s PoliGraph website, which did valuable fact-checking on statements and ads from a variety of MN candidates.  We need more of this kind of coverage.
• The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.  Great political satire with a serious message hidden in the jokes.  I liked Joe Scarborough’s take on it even more.

Things I Didn’t Like

• All these self-appointed Challengers who have taken it upon themselves to monitor polling places looking for voter fraud, which they seem to define as any voting by people they don’t like.  Minnesota Election Judges generally do a pretty good job of administering elections.  They don’t need some Minuteman-style vigilante group “helping out”.
• People in the news media complaining about all the negative ads while the media industry they work for does absolutely nothing to discourage or eliminate such ads.

Some Things I Think I Think

• I’ve read and heard many Tea Partiers complain about Progressive’s smugness and arrogant know-it-allism.  It’s a fair complaint; sometimes we do come off that way and no one wants to be lectured to.  But I have to say, it’s hard sometimes not to feel a little smug when the political opposition spends most of their time shrieking wild and over the top claims that we’re about to become a socialist nation, the President is a secret Muslim, our leaders have destroyed the Constitution, etc.  How ’bout we all make a deal?  Progressives will stop lecturing and looking down their noses at Conservatives and Conservatives will accept that we also love the United States and aren’t all part of some secret plot to bring it down.
• After two years in office, it’s reasonable to hold the President accountable for the state of the economy.  But it’s also reasonable to remember how it got that way.  The damage caused by eight years of greed on Wall Street, tax cuts we couldn’t afford, and a government run by a party that was determined not to interfere in the excesses of a few top finance firms is not going to be fixed in a couple of years.
• I’m not going to say that I like the Republicans getting control of Congress but it might not be that awful.  Now, they will have to lead and participate; it won’t be enough to simply block everything and engage in irresponsible rhetoric.  It will be interesting to see what happens when the rhetoric that got them elected meets reality.
• The internet is going to eliminate the media as the place to get informed, accurate political information.  It will also be the place for those with narrow horizons to insulate themselves and only hear from people who they agree with.  We have to put the tools online to allow people to do the former rather than the latter.  One way or another, traditional media will have to give way to the new way.
• We need a constitutional amendment that explicitly states that money spent on political campaigns is not protected from regulation by the First Amendment.  Furthermore, the amendment should ban any and all political spending by any organization, including labor unions, corporations, private businesses, non-profit groups, and political action committees.  Only individual people should be allowed to donate to any candidate or party.  And those donations must be made public.  There has been way too much anonymous money in this election.

I think the author hit the nail on the head. I don’t think it would be good for the President to change his style, however. Public discourse in this country has become way too emotional and ignorant of facts. I really don’t want another President who will connect with me emotionally. I want one who is smart, focused, and intellectually rigorous. It’d be nice if more citizens were that way, too.

I feel that I’m in an alternative universe. For eight years some people called anyone who disagreed with the President’s foreign policy or war in Iraq unpatriotic. Then in the course of two weeks, those same people cheer when the United States does not get selected for the Olympics and boo when our President is the unanimous choice for the Nobel Peace Prize. Go figure.

Congratulations Mr. President for standing up to the scorn and derision of your opponents in the election when you firmly stood for the proposition that strength meant being willing to talk to your enemies, not just your allies. Thank you for the confidence and wisdom to say that a hand will be extended when their fist is unclenched. And thank you for understanding that our national security rests on our principles, the example we set for the world, and our alliances along with the excellence and strength of our military, rather than exclusively the latter. God Bless America.

• disrupt town hall meetings on health care reform
• run around accusing the President of being a foriegner, terrorist, or worse
• throw out wacky and totally unsubstantiated claims like death panels

Democracy only works if we all chose to engage in a thoughtful, respectful manner.  If necessary, it’s OK to jettison the respectful part.  But citizens absolutely have to be thoughtful and informed.  And that’s not happening.  The idiots have taken over the discourse.

I don’t use that word, idiot, lightly.  Calling people idiots isn’t thoughtful or helpful; I will admit that.  There are people I like and respect who will read this and think I’m talking about them which makes me nervous about this post.  But I honestly don’t know what else to say about the wave of silliness that has engulfed our country.  It’s idiotic.

We often lament the lack of civic engagement in our country.  Kids don’t vote or seem to understand how government works.  The parents who are stopping schools from running the President’s message are contributing to this problem.  At one time, people taught their kids to respect officials like the President just because that’s just appropriate behavior.  Not any more.

Do you really think the President is going to give some political speech to the kids?  Or try to indoctrinate them into some socialistic cult of personality?  Do you really think that?  Really?

Get real!  He’s going to give a bland “work hard, stay in school, don’t use drugs” message just like Presidents and other celebrities have been doing for years.  Reagan and the first Bush did it.  So have others.  What’s the big deal?

I’m going to close with a video clip from yesterday’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC.  Joe Scarborough, host and former Republican Congressman, makes the argument against this insanity far better than I.

NOTE: MSNBC uses a frame for their video that is not supported in WordPress so I can’t embed the video in my post.  The link shown above will take you to the video.

It also makes me curious, however.  I think that we need more discussion (and less yelling) about this whole thing.  So I would really like to know what, exactly, makes him think I’m imbalanced.  Hell, I didn’t even discuss, let alone advocate, any of the proposals.  All I did was spell out why I think we have a problem.

So I would ask anyone who strongly disagrees with this post to tell me why.  Do you disagree with the studies and articles I cited?  If you sincerely believe that all those Harvard studies are just plain wrong, your position becomes more understandable.  Doesn’t mean I agree with you but understanding the sides of a debate is the first step towards having a rational, mature conversation.

So let’s hear it!  You can comment by clicking where it says Comments just under the title of this post, next to the date.

I guess the most the fundamental question is why we are going through this in the first place?  Why does the President want to push this at a time when we already have two wars (three if you count the war on terror outside of Afghanistan) and a nasty recession on our plate?  I cannot speak for the President.  But I can tell you why I think we need to tackle this issue now.

1)  People are going bankrupt in the US due to the cost of health care.  And I’m not just talking about poor people without insurance or people who made bad choices with their health and/or personal finances.  I’m talking about middle and upper class people who had health insurance and did everything you’re supposed to do but got nailed by a chronic health problem and were abandoned by their insurance company:

• February 03, 2005 – The journal Health Affairs reports that Harvard researchers found that half of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2001 were caused by illness and medical bills.  “Surprisingly, most of those bankrupted by illness had health insurance. More than three-quarters were insured at the start of the bankrupting illness. However, 38 percent had lost coverage at least temporarily by the time they filed for bankruptcy.  Most of the medical bankruptcy filers were middle class; 56 percent owned a home and the same number had attended college. In many cases, illness forced breadwinners to take time off from work — losing income and job-based health insurance precisely when families needed it most.”
• June 04, 2009 — BusinessWeek reports on a study in which Harvard and Univerisity of Ohio researchers found that 62% of all personal bankruptcies declared in 2007 were caused by health problems.  “Medical problems caused 62% of all personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. in 2007, according to a study by Harvard researchers. And in a finding that surprised even the researchers, 78% of those filers had medical insurance at the start of their illness, including 60.3% who had private coverage, not Medicare or Medicaid.”

2)  The cost of employee health insurance in the US is getting harder to bear, especially for small businesses:

• January 28, 2009 — CNN and Fortune report that small businesses are struggling to provide employee health plans, particularly in a weak economy when they cannot pass the cost on to consumers while staying competitive.  “Premiums on group policies have soared by as much as 30%, on top of double-digit increases in each of the past five years. Coverage is shrinking. Thanks to insurer consolidation, policy choices are more limited than ever. And in a seller’s market for insurance, small business owners have little room to negotiate prices or terms.”
• March 04, 2009 — The Council on Foreign Relations reports that health care costs in the US are undermining the competitiveness of US businesses in the world marketplace.  “Factoring in costs borne by the government, the private sector, and individuals, the United States spends over $1.9 trillion annually on healthcare expenses, more than any other industrialized country. Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medical School estimate the United States spends 44 percent more per capita than Switzerland, the country with the second highest expenditures, and 134 percent more than the median for member states of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely. U.S. economic woes have heightened the burden of healthcare costs both on individuals and businesses.”
• February 11, 2005 — General Motors CEO Richard Wagoner tells the Economic Club of Chicago that “Failing to address the health care crisis would be the worst kind of procrastination, the kind that places our children and our grandchildren at risk and threatens the health and global competitiveness of our nation’s economy.”

3) The insurance company is not your friend and cannot be trusted.  If this last point seems more emotional and less impartial than the others, that’s because it is.  Right around my first birthday (1968), my dad was diagnosed (at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester) with Multiple Sclerosis.  The disease moved fast; by my eighth birthday, he was paralyzed from the waist down and had lost the use of his right hand.  That year, 1975, he left the workforce and lost his health insurance benefit.  The plan allowed him to maintain his coverage but he had to assume the full cost of the premiums.

I guess the plan’s rules didn’t allow them to kick him out because of his disease.  There was nothing, however, to keep the insurance company from increasing the premium.  Which they did.  Every six months.  After a long, expensive progression of premium hikes, my folks had to give in and “voluntarily” withdraw from the plan.  Of course, getting another policy somewhere else was out of the question due to the now pre-existing condition.  For the last 10 or 12 years of Dad’s life, he was without any health insurance at all.  I remember very clearly heart-breaking discussions of what we could do should Dad need hospital care.  I was just getting old enough to understand what was happening and the possibilities were scary.  In the end, Dad never needed to go to the hospital and he quietly passed away in 1994.  We avoided financial armageddon.

The free market is supposed to use competition to get services to the most people for the lowest cost.  Insurance works by spreading risk out amongst as many people as possible to minimize it (risk) for everyone.  Neither of these principles is working in the American health insurance industry and something needs to change.  That’s why I think we can’t afford to do nothing.  Of course, that raises the question of what, exactly, we should do.  That’s another post.

Addendum:  Although I stand by my opinion of insurance companies, I have to say that I have known individual insurance agents who were good, honorable people.  I think the evil happens higher up at the corporate office.

PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China

But some have gone further, concluding that the election was stolen and calling for sanctions against Iran.  So far, US official policy has not gone this far; President Obama is taking a “wait and see” approach.  And he is taking some heat for it.

CNN.com had a good article today giving background information on the situation, including the evidence that some say proves the election was rigged.  Politico.com has an equally good article presenting the viewpoint that, despite the deplorable crackdown, President Ahmadinejad could well have won fair and square.  If true, the protesters would have to be seen in a different light; rather than being on the side of justice, they would, in fact, be attempting to overthrow the results of a legitimate election.

That’s why I agree with President Obama’s wait and see attitude.  And why I chose not to tint my Twitter avatar green.