POLITICS: Respectfully Pimped

The following is a post I began a little while ago that I hoped would bring some historical perspective to the current BP oil leak situation—intimating at how UTTERLY short-sighted and borderline retarded we are as a nation when it comes to energy consumption. Funny thing happened: the folks at "The Daily Show" took the same historical angle and in about 5 minutes made a much wittier case for our national stupidity. A few weeks later, with the news of BP head Tony Hayward getting the axe, I thought it worthwhile to remember the generational extent of this issue lest we start feeling O.K. about the whole issue now that someone's head is rolling and there has been progress in capping the leak. So here's the compelling opening of my original post followed by Jon Stewart & company's spot-on pimping of said original post. Respect is due.


POLITICS: The BP Leak And Why We Are Accessories To The Crime

Two propositions that might help explain our current dilemma in the Gulf with BP's Deepwater Horizon oil leak:
1) Richard Nixon was the most progressive President on U.S. energy policy in the past 40-plus year.
2) If you offer a 4-year-old the choice between a cookie right now and a huge ice cream sundae in three hours after dinner, you know exactly which option the 4-year-old will choose every time.

That's right—we're the 4-year-old. Nixon, and almost every president since, is the parent patiently hoping we'll make the wise choice. But we like cookies. Lots of cookies. And we want the cookies now. Now, baby, now. And while we pick the cookie crumbs off our bellies as we watch news reports of millions of gallons of oil pumping into our ocean each day, we shake our heads, curse British Petroleum, and the government, and never once connect our lives to the horrible disaster we've watched unfold over the past two and a half months. Good cookies though.

For some 40 years, this country has known, discussed, and even threatened to act upon our growing addiction to oil consumption. Tree-huggers, eco-terrorists, and semi-elected presidents like Al Gore have rattled their Lorax ("I speak for the trees!") sabres about this energy problem over the years. Many politicians and even some titans of industry have spoken plainly about this problem for the past four decades. But we as a people have done little to nothing to effect any meaningful change. We want the cookies and we want to be able to drive whatever the hell kind of car we want to the store that's 1/2 a mile away because, dammit, we're Americans. And that's what we want to do. So there.


While I'm sure we will learn in great detail (as we are beginning to learn even now) how exactly and who precisely is responsible for the physical failure of BP's Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf, it will not change the very simple fact that the ultimate blame resides with us—American citizens. You and I and everyone we know.

We have and produce very little oil in this country yet we consume the largest share of the world's oil output. We always have—even Richard Nixon understood what a fool-hearty course this was for our country back in the early 1970s. Of all presidents one might imagine having any real vision for the environmental and energy future of this country, Nixon did more in his six years as President than any other U.S. has ever done. The Clean Air and Water Acts he signed became the basis for decades of environmental change, and it was Nixon who set up the now much-reviled by Republicans EPA. Nixon also dealt with the first major energy crisis this country faced, and you can blame him for such radical ideas as a 55 mph speed limit, suggesting 68-degrees for building heat, expanding daylight savings time—these were all measures Nixon acted upon in order to conserve energy and reduce our reliance on foreign oil. He even wanted a pollution-free car by 1980—what a dreamer!

But Nixon was the only president using his bully pulpit to try to make Americans understand the folly of this oil addiction. Gerald Ford did the same, and Jimmy Carter actually got Congress to pass some important legislation to start curtailing our oil addiction and to try and develop new, more natural forms of energy. Carter even put solar panels on the White House—and that was in the late 1970s!—but those were quickly removed when his successor Ronald Reagan took office.

 ******************

And this is where I stopped, fully expecting to carry on with the post just as soon as I carved out enough time to finish it. In that interim, those wiley bastards at "The Daily Show" flat out pimped me. But they pimped me brilliantly. So with all due respect, Mr. Stewart . . .

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
An Energy-Independent Future
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

POLITICS: Times Square Terror—Daffy Duck and Darth Vader MIA

Where the heck are Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney?

We just had an attempted terror attack on Times Square in New York City—isn’t that when Daffy and Darth usually pop up all over the media to offer their enlightening comments on how badly the Obama administration is handling homeland security and putting America at risk of attack?

Where’s America’s Mayor thputtering on about how unthafe the Obama polithies have made thith country? How come we haven’t heard Rudy thpouting his usual mantra about 9-11, 9-11, 9-11?

And what of Darth? Isn’t this the precise moment for him to don his fear veil and try to scare the shit out of his low-information countrymen? Where’s that death-rattle drone of his making claims that this recent attempted attack proves once again that the Obama administration loves the terrorists and is putting American lives at risk?

What could possibly keep Daffy and Darth away from the cameras at a time like this?

A number. 53 to be exact.

The reason we’re not seeing Cheney and Giuliani all over the news—or at least on FOX “news”—talking about this recent attempted attack in Times Square is because it took the federal government (which means the Obama administration) and the New York City police department only 53 hours to track down and arrest the perpetrator. Only 53 hours.

How long did it take the Bush administration to track down and arrest Osama Bin Laden? Oh, that’s right . . .

How long did it take the Bush administration to catch ANY of the 9-11 perpetrators? About 18 months until Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured—by the Pakistanis.

Of course, if this recent attempted attack on Times Square had happened in May of 2007 when there was a republican in the White House, you can bet that both Daffy and Darth would be all over the news media talking about what a fantastic job the FBI, CIA, NYPYD, and Homeland Security did in tracking and apprehending a terrorist on American soil. Proof again that what the President and his administration is doing to protect America is working.

But because “leaders” like Rudy Giuliani and Dick Cheney are such politically craven hacks who are wed to party ideology rather than dedicated to actually protecting the American public regardless of political affiliation, neither of them will step forward to publicly congratulate the federal and New York state authorities who managed this pretty remarkable feat of policing. It might give too much credence to the way Obama’s administration has handled homeland security.

And god forbid, it might smack too much of supporting their and our current President.

Dethpicable.

MEDIA: A Tale of Two COMPLETELY Different Americas

See update (FOX's response on May 5th) at end of story. 

While munching a little late lunch yesterday afternoon, my wife Carolyn and I were watching a bit of cable news. With the BP oil leak, the attempted terrorist bombing in Times Square, the flooding in Tennessee, ongoing financial reform efforts—it’s a busy news world these days. It was the top of the hour, where most news outlets stack the top stories of the day. Monday May 3, the BP oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico lead all broadcasts.

Here’s a little bit of what we saw on MSNBC:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

There’s some good background in this clip, especially putting the current BP leak in historical context. Simmons started a private investment bank in the early 1970s that specializes in energy. He’s an oil and energy man, no doubt about it. But his company has also been a major consulting and research entity in the field, and his latest book Twilight In The Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy deals not with vampires in arid climates but with what will happen globally when Saudi oil supplies dry up. Because the oil-dependant industrial world cannot obtain any true measure of what kind of oil reserves Saudi Arabia has, Simmons’ purpose in his book is to warn economies like ours that we may want to consider alternatives now to prevent a massive global crisis when Saudi oil dries up.

As for the credibility of Simmons, as an oilman, he was taking a reasonably measured approach. He pointed out that this is first drilling incident in this country in 41 years. Simmons was witness to the 1969 drilling accident off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA that spilled 80,000-plus gallons of oil into the ocean and onto the beaches. (He started his company a few years later partly in response to that situation.) Simmons cautioned about getting a witch-hunt going before we know the full extent of who is responsible and why this current leak occurred. Simmons acknowledges the severity of the BP spill—“a global tragedy”—and doubts that some of the current ideas about how to control the leak have any real chance of working. He points out that drilling in deep water isn’t a problem—it’s the risks of drilling so deep below the Gulf floor that is revealed in this tragedy.

As for host Dylan Ratigan, his agenda is pretty clear: how can the leak be stopped, who is responsible, and why hasn’t there been tighter regulation on the oil industry that might have disallowed this kind of drilling so deep under the Gulf floor. He compares this spill to Chernobyl, and tries to link the “self-regulation” of Wall Street to the same kind of self-regulation done by the oil companies. Ratigan’s schtick ever since he joined the MSNBC on-air staff has been to go after the big moneyed interests that have so much control over our economy. So it’s no surprise Ratigan is looking to finger a villain in this story.

When MSNBC goes to commercial, I switch over to FOX "news." My wife Carolyn doesn’t much care to watch FOX. It annoys her, especially FOX personalities like Sean Hannity, and she is rightly angered by the disinformation and outright lies the station offers as “news.” As readers of Roadkill know, I can’t help myself—FOX "news" to me is like watching news from a completely different world. I’m fascinated by the station's alien ways, and I admit I marvel sometimes at the willful misunderstanding FOX “news” engages in to rile up—but ultimately insult—their low information viewers. I’m sure it’s never stated in the hallowed halls of FOX, but you know the general working attitude toward their viewers is “Don’t worry—they don’t know any better.”

So here’s what we saw on FOX "news" coverage of the BP oil leak:

Heckuva job, Brownie.

You remember Michael Brown, don’t you? The FEMA director when Hurricane Katrina hit?

Carolyn was more surprised than I was that FOX’s coverage of the oil leak was not about what happened, how to stop it, or what can be done for the future but rather a political broadside about how the Obama administration was trying to exploit the leak to its advantage. The Obama administration that recently agreed to open up more coastal drilling. And how does this FOX “news” story angle help inform people of this ongoing environmental crisis?

I must admit even I was a little surprised that FOX would bring on Michael Brown of all people to comment on the oil leak in the Gulf. Near New Orleans. Where are Brown’s friends or family advising him to keep his name and face as far away from New Orleans as possible for the rest of his life?  Asking Michael Brown to comment on an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico that will directly impact the city of New Orleans is like asking the sleepy driver of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker to come on the air to talk about why we should drill for oil in ANWAR in Alaska. (I wouldn’t put it past FOX to do exactly that.)

Brown’s appearance is part of the FOX “news” fable the cable outlet has been pushing since this oil leak began: this is Obama’s Katrina, the Federal government failed to respond soon enough (despite the Coast Guard’s immediate appearance after the initial rig blast), Obama wants to use this crisis to stop all offshore drilling, and, of course, the rest of the media is blowing the leak out of proportion and it’s not REALLY as bad as everyone is making it out to be.

Watch FOX’s coverage for any chunk of time and you’ll see one or more—or all—of these story lines being repeated and reinforced. To be fair to Michael Brown, months after Katrina hit we learned that the blame for the government’s exceedingly slow response was as much the fault of the Bush administration as it was Brown’s work and knowledge on the ground in New Orleans. During the above interview, Brown even admits what he feels was his biggest failure—not making a big enough stink quickly enough to let the Bush administration know how serious the Katrina situation was and how bad things were getting. Fair enough, but did you notice how FOX “newsman” Neil Cavuto tries to help out Brown’s credibility and history? Cavuto suggests it was BOTH party’s fault for the response to Katrina, despite the fact that one party—the GOP—controlled the White House and the Congress and that the other party—the Democrats—were the ones doing exactly what Michael Brown claims he should have done to hasten the rescue efforts. The best Cavuto assist is when, after Brown admits his biggest failure, Cavuto adds, “It wasn’t as if you failed to try.” So Brown really was doing all he could, right? Even after he admits that he didn’t.

I can’t find a link on the FOX web site to what follows the Michael Brown interview, but it’s a doozy. Cavuto brings in Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi to advance another element of the FOX fable: that the oil leak really isn’t that bad and that the media is blowing it out of proportion. Barbour, former head of the RNC, tells Cavuto that he has just been down to the Mississippi coast and hasn’t seen any repercussions from the oil leak on his state’s shores. So everything’s fine, right? Barbour then goes on with a what can only be described as an optimist’s assessment: there’s really just a sheen on the water in most places, which isn’t harmful, and the heavy goop is being dissipated by the gulf waters. So what’s everybody got their panties in a bunch about, right? No need to stop offshore drilling Barbour warns.

So here’s my question: what is the purpose of FOX “news” coverage of the oil leak? Is it to inform their viewers of the ongoing crisis? Is it to give their viewers a sense of how this will effect not only the Gulf region but the country as a whole? Is it to find out how and why this leak occurred and let people know who is at fault and how we can avoid similar disasters in the future? Not at all. FOX claims to bring viewers the news so the viewers can decide themselves, but FOX “news” has already decided, hasn’t it? Based on the coverage I’ve seen on FOX over the past week or so, their primary purposes seem less about informing their viewers of the ongoing crisis and all about blaming the Obama administration and protecting the interests of the offshore oil industry. They report AND they decide for you. Which means you don’t have to do much thinking about the whole situation. In FOX “news” America, thinking and analysis isn’t really required. Like all good fiction, suspension of disbelief is mandatory.



MAY 5, 2010 UPDATE: "FOX Defends Michael Brown Interview: He's An 'Expert on Botched Responses."
Sounds like a headline from The Onion, but they're not kidding. Check out FOX's response to the criticism they received for having former FEMA head Michael Brown on to discuss the oil leak in the Gulf. You'll rarely read such labored logic—except by an outlet like FOX.

MEDIA: Bill Maher Embraces The Teabaggers

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."

– President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Farewell Address to the nation, January 1961

Bill Maher, like Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, practices what the great satirists like Voltaire and Swift and Twain and Vonnegut all understood: make them laugh to make them think. Maher may at times push the limits of taste for some people, but his humor is usually pushing the audience to see the absurdities of our culture and government—local, national, and global. Some of the most effective satire is born of frustration or anger. Instead of shouting at or physically attacking the object of frustration, a satirist finds a way to poke fun at the situation and advance a more clear or sensible alternative. Maher is a master at this.

Case in point: at the end of every episode of his Friday HBO series "Real Time," Maher offers up a few "New Rules" for modern society. The rules target issues and people of the moment, and they allow Maher and his staff to craft the most literary satiric material for what is essentially an issues-based talk show. It's just Maher speaking directly to the camera. The April 23 "New Rule" directed at the Teabaggers/Tea Party was one of Maher's finest moments in years. He questions how serious these Teabaggers are about cutting the deficit and shrinking the national debt. No need to explain what he says—watch it for yourself:



Nice hat, huh?

The U.S. military Empire as a family's "big dumb boat" analogy is brilliant. It's an excess that our country can ill afford in economic times such as these. Yet we keep pouring trillions of tax payer dollars into this sinkhole for some inane notion of world dominance and to make us feel more patriotic and allegedly safer. As Maher suggests, let's cut our military spending in half and see who invades us. We sure could use the currently wasted cash to reduce our strangling debt from the past 9 years of elective wars, ill-advised tax cuts, and irresponsible non-regulation of our rigged financial system.

Like the great satirists, Maher's purpose in this "New Rule" is to ultimately display the folly of our country's behavior. We want the government to cut taxes but we still want the government to provide the key services we've come to depend on. Like children, Teabaggers—and many non-Teabagging Americans—don't seem to understand that there really is no free lunch. Everything costs money and someone has to pay for all of it. If we want granny to receive the health benefits of Medicare, we have to pay for it. If we want our parents to enjoy the benefits of Social Security they worked so many years for when they retire, we have to pay for it. If we want our roads maintained and our schools functioning and the water we drink to be clean and safe, we have to pay for it. It's that simple. And as Maher suggests, instead of funneling so much of our dear cash resources into military-industrial companies that primarily benefit the oligarchy of executives that run those companies and too much of our economy, maybe, just MAYBE, we should get serious about fiscal responsibility and slash our military budget by trillions. Maybe then the teabaggers and every stripe of American will benefit and quit complaining that we as a society are spending money on each other.

Maybe.

MUSIC: Vampire Weekend's Contra

This review originally appeared in the March 2010 issue of Illinois Entertainer.

VAMPIRE WEEKEND
Contra
(XL Recordings)

For those like myself who do give a fuck about an Oxford Comma—as I suspect Vampire Weekend does despite their apparent disdain—precision, clarity, and imagination are the core of invention. Nobody sounds like Vampire Weekend. They sound like bits and pieces of a lot of familiar musics, but since they appeared in 2008 with their eponymous debut, theirs has been a singular sound. Which presents a problem for album number two: is this unique musical amalgam a one-note, one-album sound, or can the band expand on its debut and make it worth a return trip?

The answer is mostly yes.

Contra is undoubtedly a VW album. It’s still essentially Western Afro-pop by way of smarty-pants Columbia grads, but this time around what sounded a little thin and reedy on Vampire Weekend is much fuller, more lush, and more rhythmically varied. Like earlier bands that built their foundations on rhythms foreign to most rock fans (Talking Heads, XTC, The Feelies), VW songs succeed or falter primarily on the strength of the rhythm beds. Despite the loose feel of these songs, drummer Chris Tomson and bassist Chris Baio play with remarkable precision, creating in-the-pocket grooves that are so inviting and playful that they’re hard to resist. The bottom end of “California English,” though alternately spare and spastic, provides the perfect rhythm bed for singer/guitarist Ezra Koenig and guitarist/keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij’s flitting and astral melodies. The band pushes the debut sound here with (thankfully) brief flashes of Auto-Tune and a punctuating string section. The slow and gentle “Taxi Cab” pushes the sound even farther by subtraction: a thick, pulsing bass, some grand and harpsichord-y piano lines, hand claps, and Koenig’s surprisingly versatile and vulnerable voice create the soundtrack to this break-up tale of regret and the girl from the right side of the tracks (“You were standing on another track/Like a real aristocrat”). There are plenty of the jubilant, Loketo-style bubbling guitars that so clearly defined VW’s debut, but now the over-used Paul Simon’s Graceland reference/comparison indicates sheer critical laziness.

Lyrically, Vampire Weekend seems a J.D. Salinger band—or a Royal Tenenbaums band for those who don’t know any better. Their songs are peopled with yacht club kids (“Funny how the other private schools had no Hapa Club”), eggheady word play (“Contra Costa, Contra Mundum, contradict what I say”—a freakin’ papal reference!), and undergrads who traffic in white sailing pants, Steely Dan, and exceptional blow. No beef with that—they’re interesting people—and Koenig’s language play is really quite refreshing. In the propulsive “Cousins,” Koenig characterizes two cousins by family economic status: one “was born with ten fingers and you’re gonna use them all” and the other’s “birth right is interest, you could just accrue it all.” Vampire Weekend isn’t a blue-collar band, but there’s a bazillion of those out there, right?

POLITICS: Health Care Reform Calculus

As Roadkill readers may recall, a couple of months ago I posted about the need to kill the Senate Health Care Reform. It’s essentially a massive financial giveaway to the Insurance industry that requires the industry to do very little to change their way of doing business. We, the American people, will pay most of the billions of dollars for the 30 million-plus currently uninsured who will be mandated to buy some form of health insurance from the very industry that has been ripping off the citizenry and state and local governments for decades. This fact has been underreported in both the MSM media and the rabidly conservative media.

The bill remains a lousy idea in my opinion.

So what if I was a House or Senate member who had to vote on this bill and the reconciliation “fixes” attached to it? It’s now the final hour—meaningful votes must be cast to determine if this bill will or will not become law.

Honestly, I don’t know how I would vote.

I listened closely this past week when Representative Dennis Kucinich, a staunch opponent of the Senate bill, spoke to the media to explain why he had decided to change his mind and vote for the bill. Kucinich made some very good points. There ARE some important though modest insurance reforms that will directly affect everyone in the country. Prohibiting rescission and stopping insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions will impact millions of American lives for the better.

Other parts of the Senate bill, like closing the donut hole for Medicare prescription drugs, investing in streamlining electronic medical records systems, and allowing small businesses to join together and negotiate for better insurance coverage and prices are very practical, cost-saving changes that will benefit all Americans.

Kucinich made clear that, even if/when this ugly bill becomes law, he’ll begin the fight along with other progressives to change the worst elements of the bill and find a way to get a public option or single-payer, Medicare For All system made part of our health care system. It seems his rationale, also voiced by so many politicians, experts, and commentators, is to take what we can get now despite the warts and then spend the next few years making piecemeal changes to the legislation until it actually reforms the health insurance industry and serves the best needs of Americans.

This approach seems reasonable to me. So maybe I would vote for it now and hope my fellow Representatives and Senators would work to improve the overall health insurance and health care system in our country. But that would take courage. And it would mean challenging the insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital lobbies and telling them that we elected officials are going to do what’s best for the American people regardless of how it effects the lobbies’ bottom lines and profit margins.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Phew! That’s hilarious!

Can you imagine a majority of our Congressional leaders speaking and especially voting with that kind of courage?

Ain’t gonna happen. If they couldn’t muster the civic fortitude when the Democrats, the only political party in the past century that has even attempted to change our nation’s ridiculous health insurance system, held a clear majority in both houses of Congress as well as the White House, do you really think they’ll get the job done anytime in the near future? The near decade even?

So maybe I wouldn’t join the apparent majority to vote “yea” on this bill. It has taken a year of heated, sometimes vitriolic debate that sucked the air out of all the other pressing challenges our country faces and this is the best our Congress could come up with? This crap sandwich of a reform bill? Are the modest insurance reforms in the bill worth the MASSIVE bribe to the insurance companies? I don't know that they are.

And if I was a Democratic Representative or Senator faced with a decision on this bill, what of the leader of our party? Do I trust that if I vote for this lousy bill President Obama will fight to make the changes necessary to improve it and get the country closer to an equitable reform of health insurance?

That’s easy: no. I wouldn’t trust that Obama would fight to improve this bill. Despite his recent push and bully-pulpit exhortations to make history by passing this bill, his “leadership” on this very important issue has been at best disappointing and at worst spineless. When he ran for President, Obama garnered a lot of support because he pledged to reform the health insurance system—his primary tool being a public insurance option to compete with the insurance companies. The vast majority of his supporters knew exactly what that meant: the insurance companies would be forced to lower their prices and change their behavior in order to compete. Recall that Obama derided his opponents Hillary Clinton and then John McCain for suggesting that a mandate to make everyone buy insurance should be part of the reform.

So what did we get? No public option and an insurance mandate.

So why would I, as a Senator or Representative, trust that this President would magically rise to the occasion to roll up his sleeves and fight long and hard in the trenches with us to make the needed improvements to this bill? Is it just as likely that in trying to make future changes to this legislation to force down the costs of insurance that Obama would negotiate away the modest reforms this current bill includes?

For any Democrat voting on this bill this weekend, the choice is lousy. One of President Obama’s refrains throughout this yearlong debate is not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Fair enough. Wise words. There is some good in this bill, some good that will directly affect our lives. But there’s too much rotten in it as well, which will also affect our lives. So maybe the new refrain is not to let the plenty of rotten be the enemy of the scraps of good?

MUSIC: Singles of the Decade (part 2)

Sorry about the delay on the rest of this list—good thing the music of the 2000s didn’t change in the interim. Below are singles 5 through 1, as well as a handful of Honorable Must-Mentions.

Let me know what you think. Agree? Disagree? What were your favorites of the last decade?

Best Singles of the 2000s continued . . .

5. “Hey Ya!,” Outkast (from Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, 2003)
I know for sure that the first time I heard this song it was on the radio just before the album was released. I later saw the super-fun video featuring 8 different incarnations of Outkast’s Andre 3000. What I know for sure at this time is that I don’t know for sure how much that video played into my initial obsession with this song. But I couldn’t get enough of this song—still can’t. I think it’s the breadth of what is essentially a very 2000s pop song that keeps me coming back to “Hey Ya!” It’s an unabashed amalgam of pop styles from across the decades. The rhythm bed blends hip-hop and a simple backbeat that could be heard on many early ‘60s singles. The ascending synth swizzle evokes bubble gum pop, the acoustic strumming that ebbs and flows throughout the song would seem incongruous if it weren’t the one of the primary rhythm elements, and Andre 3000’s rappy singing splits the difference in the verses and switches to true toaster style during the call and response sections (a characteristics of some early R&B/soul hits). No real truths imparted in the lyrics: guy’s pumped cause he’s in love and then immediately begins to doubt the whole notion of “forever.” Fair enough—but when this song is cranked and you’re singing along, even the nonsense chorus and call and response seem to be talking about something. Something fun.

4. “A Little Less Conversation, A Little More Action,” JXL/Elvis Presley (2002)
Never been much of a remix fan—too often the remixes are subtle or unremarkable changes that elicit so many shoulder shrugs or incompatible beats grafted onto a track to comic or silly effect. Not the case with JXL’s remix of this 1968 Elvis Presley track. Created for a 2002 Nike World Cup promotion, the song exploded onto the airwaves and charts and even onto the top-selling Elv1s 30 #1 Hits collection released later that year (it was track #31). What JXL does is masterful: he takes a decent suggestive Elvis song and turns it into an aggressive and highly sexual come on—purely by charging up the rhythm bed and adding some whirls, scratches, and other effects from the circa-2002 DJ repertoire. The original moderate tempo 2-minute track becomes a pumping, speedy six-minute workout. The benignly sexy Elvis of ’68 sounds much more insistent here. When he sings/demands “Close your mouth and open up your heart and baby satisfy me” amid the pounding drums and surging horns, you can hear an irritation and determination in his voice that’s nowhere to be found on the original. So you do what he says. He is the King. And he does say please.

3. “Say Hey (I Love You),” Michael Franti & Spearhead (from All Rebel Rockers, 2008)
I admit it: sappiest damn song on the list. Who’d guess that Michael Franti, one-time hyper-political rapper of The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, would one day pen such a sweetly joyous and celebratory reggae-ska hymn to a human emotion so pure and simple? Love here is a refuge and solace from the pain and ghetto games and junkies Franti sees all around him: “I don’t want to write a love song for the world/I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl.” Even the righteous get weary, and when the more you see the less you know, knowing one thing, one love, is sometimes all in the world you need. All this sentiment would be mere mush were it not for the buoyant beat and rolling rhythm that thumps at the heart of this song. It’s all on the upbeat: the chinging keyboard comps, persistent maracas, and counterpointing handclaps create an organic groove rich and wide enough to gather and mitigate all kinds of misfortune and regret. “Say Hey (I Love You)" has quickly found a spot right next to Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” in my catalogue of songs that can instantly lift my spirits no matter how bleak.

2. “Do You Realize??,” The Flaming Lips (from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, 2002)
Sometimes this song is too much to bear emotionally. Other times, it makes me feel a surge of life and energy and connects me directly to the cosmos we’re tearing around in. This is pop music of a symphonic nature. Washed in melodic synthesizers draped over a spare, chiming acoustic guitar and grounded by tympanic drums seemingly recorded in another room, this song speaks of the eternal, the celestial, the mysterious absolute. I’m not kidding. There’s a child-like awe to Wayne Coyne’s voice as he sings lyrics like this:
“Do you realize—that you have the most beautiful face
Do you realize—we're floating in space
Do you realize—that happiness makes you cry
Do you realize—that everyone you know someday will die”

I mean, how much more of life can you cover in four lines? For me, this song becomes overwhelming when I allow the wall of sound and Coyne’s voice and lyrics to evoke specific images from my life. I see my son’s beautiful newborn face resting in my arms and my mother’s 20-year-old beautiful face smiling down at me as a child. There are entire worlds, entire lives in those images. And the simple fact of that last line, when I really think on it, really think about the people that make up my life’s mosaic, and despite the people I’ve already lost, can be both unbearable and strangely, cosmically comforting. “Do You Realize??” that pop music art can do this to you? “Do You Realize??” how awesome that is?

1. “American Idiot,” Green Day (from American Idiot, 2004)
Best song of the 2000s from the best rock ‘n’ roll album of the 2000s. In three minutes, Green Day revives what punk music was and always should be: protest music. But a song also has to be the right song for the right time to truly be great. “American Idiot” was. Released in the fall of 2004, just as a majority of the U.S. population was beginning to awaken from its fear-induced post-9/11 torpor, the song encapsulated the anger and resistance that a minority of this country had been feeling since the Bush/Cheney administration began manipulating the country into an illegitimate war in the name of “protecting the homeland.” But that wasn’t Green Day’s sole target: they took direct aim at our over-saturated media culture, the willful dumbing down of citizens by hysterical “edutainment” media, rednecks, gay- and immigrant-bashers, and American idiots so easily swayed by paranoia and propaganda (two things the Bush administration and its media mouthpieces did very well). The band holds nothing back, either in musical performance or lyrical delivery and intent. From the first urgent licks that open the song to its sharp, abrupt end, “American Idiot” has both the traditional punk speeds—fast and faster. Musically, it’s a very simply song: bashing drums, an unrelenting, propulsive bass line, and some big, chunky guitar riffs. But Green Day rips into it like it’s the first, last, and only time they’ll ever play the song. Billie Joe Armstrong spits out vitriolic lines like this: “Don’t want to be an American idiot/One nation controlled by the media/Information age of hysteria/It’s going out to idiot America.” What better way to describe the past wired decade in the U.S.A.?


Honorable Must-Mentions
“Let That Show,” The Pernice Brothers (from The World Won’t End, 2001)
Fantastic chiming guitar pop and lithe harmonies. The sweet sound masks a fairly clear-headed lyric about ego, self-obsession, and the complete inadequacy of the two. Key lyric: “Was a time, when I thought I could talk down to all my friends/It’s a crime, when I think of how the sun revolved around me then.”

“Feel Free,” Jay Farrar (from Sebastopol, 2001)
“Breathe in all the diesel fumes/Admire the concrete landscaping/And doesn’t it feel free.” On just about every album he puts out, Farrar nails a tune that renders a sober view of America and its ideals. The spare, resigned sound of “Feel Free” evokes a car ride from Chicago to Milwaukee, where there’s always traffic and plenty of concrete.


“E-Pro,” Beck (from Guero, 2005)
Beck reclaims “na-na-na-na-na-na-na” as a hook in this thick mix of distorted guitar and fat-assed rhythm. His lyrics are as surreal as usual—“Handing out a confection of venom,” “Hammer my bones on the anvil of daylight”—so it’s hard to know precisely what the hell he’s on about. But this sure sounds awesome cranked loud.


“A-Punk,” Vampire Weekend (from Vampire Weekend, 2008)
So familiar yet completely different. When this came tumbling out of radios and web sites in 2008, with its weird blend of jumbled rhythm and wiry ska guitar and lilting flute, it was a thoroughly alluring head scratcher. “Look outside at the raincoats coming, say oh.” Say what? Say, what other crazy rhythms you guys got?


“Crazy,” Gnarls Barkley (from St. Elsewhere, 2006)
All it takes is a snippet of this song and it’s stuck in my head for the whole day. Sometimes longer. One of the best soul tracks released in decades. Cee-Lo Green’s delivery harkens back to The O’Jays and the Isley Brothers, and Danger Mouse abets the whole affair with a lush, string-laden track that would’ve sounded right at home on Top 40 radio circa 1975.


“Jesus Walks,” Kanye West (from College Dropout, 2004)
Despite what he’s become as a media figure, and even despite the relatively traditional religious belief underlying this song, “Jesus Walks” was an explosive entre into the spotlight for West as a performer. The sinning soldier in the modern world (and rap game) metaphor works, and West takes on a myriad of targets that plague African-Americans as well as the rest of us.


“All Summer Long,” Kid Rock (from Rock N Roll Jesus, 2007)
Anyone who can successfully link samples from Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” deserves any self-respecting rock ‘n’ roll fan’s respect—if only for sheer incongruous imagination. It’s hard to shake the chorus of this song once it gets into your head, and trite as some of the lyrics may be, it’s a heartfelt look back at life by a hard-partying midwestern guy nearing 40 years old. “Sometimes I'll hear that song and I'll start to sing along/And think man I'd love to see that girl again.” Now who can’t get behind that?

See below for Best Singles 6-10 . . .

MUSIC: Singles of the Decade (part 1)

Yeah, yeah––I know this is a little late in the game. Most music outlets have already closed the book on the sounds of 2009 and the 2000s as a decade. I’m nowhere near involved with the day to day of the music industry as I was the last time we closed out a decade (a century even!) in 1999, so while I remain a huge music fan, my perspective has become much more a fan’s than an industry insider. But in reading lots of year- and decade-end “Best ofs,” it struck me that if anything defined the 2000s in music it was the return of the single.

The album format isn’t quite dead––yet–—but what the rise and dominance of file sharing, widespread broadband access, iTunes, and the iPod accomplished in the past decade is nothing short of revolutionary. Undermining the over-priced CD, the digital revolution effectively returned the music world to the pre-Sgt. Peppers era where individual songs ruled–—except today it’s done with nifty gadgets and we don’t have to actually venture into a store to purchase music. The digital revolution also effectively killed off the record store–—a truly lamentable byproduct–—but that’s a topic for another post.

For the first few years of the 2000s I was thoroughly entrenched in the machinations of a changing music industry while serving as editor for a major regional music magazine. In the last half of the decade, I progressively returned to my music fan roots. As a kid in the early ‘70s, I listened to rock radio constantly, always seeking out what’s new and trying to find music–—primarily singles–—that made me want to jump around like a spastic, made me feel elated and unstoppable and what I imagined “sexy” might have been. I picked up WLS’ weekly Top 40 listings at record stores, bought lots of 45 rpm singles, and spent most of my New Year’s Eve with one ear on the Big 89 (WLS) countdown of the year’s top songs. As the late-‘70s rolled around and I got more serious about music, I started hanging out in record stores, looking at and reading album covers way more than I bought–—though I bought a lot more music as each year progressed. The album was the thing: were the dozen songs quality or not? Did the break in sides make sense? I started picking up music press like Rolling Stone and Creem, as well as the Illinois Entertainer, and devoured everything I could about new artists, new releases, and reviews–—I read a shitload of reviews—–and began what was certainly the initial stages of my future career: arguing with friends about music.

Of course today I don’t really listen to music the same way I did as a young burgeoning music fan—–once a music critic, always a music critic–—but for the past half a decade I’ve been able to experience a little bit of that earlier, untainted response to new songs as I encounter them. Which has been pretty cool after a couple of decades of being saturated in all the information and hype and back-story behind every new release before the songs even hit my ears. So the following list of the best songs of the 2000s consists exclusively of the songs I heard over the past decade that I liked the most, I listened to the most, I find myself humming years after having first heard them, that make me live my life more intensely, that kill me in some elemental way, that make me want to play air guitar or jump around or inflict on other people.

I’ve stuck with the traditional 10 here, with honorable must-mentions afterward, and I’ve tried to put them in some kind of order, though truth be told, aside from maybe the top 2 or 3, which I know are the best songs of the first decade of the 21st century, most of the tracks listed here could change in order on any given day.

Best Singles of the 2000s


10. “Last Nite” The Strokes (from Is This It, 2001)
The simple, persistent, bashy drum spine of this song is perhaps its finest feature, though Julian Casablancas’ scratchy and slightly disinterested vocals and the ragged guitars certainly contribute to the overall urgent effect. Not much going on lyrically here–—someone’s “baby” is turned off and apparently no one really cares or understands—–but sometimes just a craggy shout of “last night” accompanied by exactly the right rhythmic down stroke is enough to induce some kind of head bob or fist pump. Helping to kick-off the retro New Wave garage rock sound of the early 2000s, “Last Nite” has a timeless sound, which is why it may be the band’s sole but worthy contribution to “classic rock” radio in the 2020s . . .


9. “Knocked Up,” Kings of Leon (from Because of the Times, 2007)
Any band with the balls big enough to open an album with a smoldering 7-minute song gets my attention—–especially when it’s a knock out like “Knocked Up.” Barely 20 years old, the members of Kings of Leon have created such a rich, empathetic story in sound and lyric that it’s hard not to be effected by the confused teens who “don’t care what nobody says/We’re gonna have a baby.” They’re blindly fleeing their hometown and the rolling bass and tense, pulsing guitar capture perfectly the clandestine and ominous sound of such an escape. Punctuated by some harping chirps lifted/inspired by King Crimson’s “Sheltering Sky,” the song explodes twice in a short cacophony of teenage anger and questioning (“Where we gonna go?”). The song is related to Springsteen’s classic “Born To Run,” only these two tramps aren’t grabbing for the brass ring—they’re angry, rebellious, and completely unsure of what they’re doing. The most telling lyric is: “[She’s] always mad and usually drunk/But I love her like no other.”


8. “December 4th,” Danger Mouse/Jay-Z (from The Grey Album, 2004)
We can argue about the first or the best mash-ups, but hands down this is the greatest example of what the form can be and do. While the juxtaposition of The Beatles gentle acoustic “Mother Nature’s Son” and Jay-Z’s confessional “December 4th” may seem utterly incongruous, DJ Danger Mouse found the riffs and the way to make each song something new in this mash-up. Danger Mouse plucks the repetitive acoustic strumming of “Mother’s Nature Son” and reinforces it with a thick, clipped hip-hop beat loop that is catchy as hell (more so than both of the song’s source material, even). Jay-Z’s original is overblown, cheesy, and self-aggrandizing, undermining great lyrics and cheapening his mom’s narrative interludes. McCartney’s “Mother Nature’s Son,” while romantically pastoral, has always been one of The White Album’s cheesier moments. Danger Mouse scrapes away the cheese from both tracks and creates a multi-layered masterpiece that adds remarkable depth to Jay’s great lyrics. (Note: not available legally, but easy to find in more nefarious ways.)


7. “I Will Possess Your Heart,” Death Cab for Cutie (from Narrow Stairs, 2008)
The four-minute-plus instrumental intro to this 8-minute opus is absolutely entrancing, pulling you deeper and deeper into the song by sheer dint of the taut musical dynamism. The methodical build of instruments is dramatic, the far-away piano ebbing and flowing amid an unwavering bass line and some quietly distorted guitars. When the lyrics kick in half way through the song, you’re almost surprised that there are words and a voice–—something of an interruption of the sonic journey you’ve already invested so much energy and imagination to. The fact that Ben Gibbard’s voice is so unassuming and his lyrics are about purely obsessive love (“You reject my advances and desperate pleas/I won’t let you let me down so easily”) fit the music so perfectly that any interruption grudge dissipates and the first half of the song begins to take on new meaning. Pretty neat trick for a rock song.


6. “My Doorbell,” The White Stripes (from Get Behind Me Satan, 2005)
Visceral. Immediate. Urgent. I believe every single word and note and missed beat of this tune. Waiting for someone you love to call on you–—how vulnerable and irrational and plaintive and pissed can a human being be? From the first flat thudding drum beat and edgy shaker that open the song, you know someone’s got something pressing to express. Soon joined by simple but persistent piano comps and Jack White’s cracked sweet voice, the song never lets up in its earnest and imperative questioning of WHY DON’T YOU RING MY FUCKING DOORBELL AND WHY AM I SUCH A FUCKING SOP FOR NEEDING YOU TO RING ANYWAY? (Even his friends won’t come and save him from such wallowing.) It’s a rather simple song, musically and lyrically, but everything sounds like it’s just slightly off in such a masterful way that the result is a kind of soul music that’s new and old school and far too rare these days.

Stay tuned for singles 5–1 (coming soon!) . . .

HUMANITY: Sheer Hate

I'm rarely surprised by the things media figures say, especially the nuttier ones like Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity or the ragin' homunculus Mark Levin. And certainly not the bloviator in chief Rush Limbaugh.

At least until yesterday.

In light of the natural and human disaster going on in Haiti, Limbaugh's political opportunism seemed far too repugnant for even him. But then, why should I be surprised, right? You can say he's tone deaf, but then, Rush has one of those hearing implants attached to his skull due to the hearing loss he suffered from his Oxycontin addiction--so I guess it's not fair to make fun of his differently-abled hearing. But the fact that his response to this tragedy in Haiti would be to automatically start calculating how this might help President Obama--not how he and his $400 million could possibly help the dying and devastated in Haiti--shows that, in Rush's mind, the most important and immediate concern is to figure out how he can possibly damage Obama. No matter the subject. No matter the human devastation we're watching. For Rush, the earthquake in Haiti is just another conspiracy concocted by the Caribbean shelf to make Obama look good--and it is Rush's sworn duty to make sure that innocent, god-fearing, patriotic, tax paying Americans don't get duped by the mainstream continental shelf's obvious assist to our current president.

Only sheer hate could warp a person's soul so thoroughly.

Contrary to popular myth (at least of the 24-hour kind), Limbaugh did not explicitly tell his listeners NOT to donate money to the relief effort in Haiti. He didn't urge them to help out in any way, either. But this media myth stems from a call to Limbaugh's show in which the caller and Rush wonder if one goes to www.whitehouse.gov to make a donation, will the money actually go to the relief effort. Rush suggests that maybe all that will happen is you'll get put on the Obama campaign email list and be asked to donate money to his reelection. Again, pure hate has clouded Limbaugh's mind, because if he was to take even the 10 seconds necessary to go to www.whitehouse.gov, he would see that the "Help for Haiti" links go to a page that lists non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and the Center for International Disaster Information. Guess 10 seconds is too long when you're hatin' . . .

Where Limbaugh's comments have been interpreted as being an overt plea NOT to donate money to help the Haiti earthquake efforts is when Rush decides to drop a little historical knowledge and perspective on Haiti as a country. He equates Haiti to Africa, contending that you can't just throw money at these poor countries to solve their problems because of the political mess that rules these nations. Of course, he doesn't say anything about the economic and military intervention of the United States in a place like Haiti, where we helped train and finance the militia that overthrew the democratically elected Jean-Bertrand Aristide in the early 2000s, securing cheap labor in the western hemisphere and killing Haiti's primary crop (rice) exportation by forcing the new government to lift tariffs so U.S. rice could flood the Haiti market at dirt cheap prices. Does Rush mention any of that history when lamenting how much money we throw at these poor countries? Does he even know that kind of historic detail?

I'm guessing not. Hate doesn't trifle with such details . . .

POLITICS: Why This Health Care Bill Must Be Killed (And How Obama's Lack of Leadership Is To Blame)

Frankenstein had the good sense to kill himself. This monstrosity of a giveaway to insurance companies possesses no such conscience.

As much as the Obama administration might want to make history and get a health care reform bill passed into law, as much as progressives in this country want to see substantive changes made to our anomalous for-profit health care system, as much as every American needs reliable and affordable health that actually helps keep us healthy and takes care of us when we need it, this malformed health care reform bill currently being debated in the Senate needs to be taken out back and shot point blank in the head.

For this simple reason: at its core, this current Senate health care bill forces Americans to buy health insurance—ensuring HUGE additional profits to insurance companies—yet provides no tangible cost savings or premium-reducing measures to offset what we all will be required to pay. Once again, corporate money and lobbying power has helped create the EXACT OPPOSITE legislation American taxpayers need. We are forced to buy health insurance—or pay a fine for not buying insurance—and the insurance companies are not required to change much of anything that they do right now. But they’ll get billions more in premiums.

So who’s getting reformed by this health care “reform”?

The American taxpayer. We’ll be legally bound to continue paying increasingly high premiums. Isn’t that awesome? Didn’t our representatives do a great job of representing us? Fighting tooth and nail for American citizens long abused by a rigged health insurance industry? Wow. This really is historic legislation—historically repugnant.

The reason the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries have been so successful for the past 80 years or so in maintaining this completely rigged system is because of one elemental fact: they fight harder than the reformers. And that means us. Any substantive health care reform would mean billions of dollars would stop flowing into the insurance and pharmaceutical company coffers. Wouldn’t you fight like a cornered badger if someone wanted to take away your billions? As we’ve witnessed during this recent health care reform battle, the health insurance industry’s “investments” in Senators and Representatives since the last attempt at health care reform in 1993 is paying exceptional dividends. Not only do the health insurance and pharmaceutical TV ads and spokespeople blatantly lie and fear-monger on the subject, but they’ve also purchased via campaign contributions a whole battalion of craven Senators and Representatives who will gladly parrot the same lies and fear-mongering strategies just so long as “I can count on your help come election time, Mr. United Health Care lobbyist.”

But frankly, that’s old news. It doesn’t change. Never has, never will.

What does change is the President. And as much as it pains me to say this, as I supported him from early on in the last election, but one of the primary reasons for this monstrosity of a health care bill that we need to kill is the failure of leadership shown by President Barack Obama. Forget Droopy Dawg Joe Lieberman or insurance lackeys like Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Mary Landrieu. The reason we may end up with a health care reform bill that will leave us in worse shape than we would be if we did nothing is because President Obama does not possess the “intestinal fortitude” to take on his opponents in the debate—the health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Remember candidate Obama? He campaigned against mandates to buy insurance—people can’t afford insurance, he argued, so why force them to buy something they can’t afford? And I’m sure you will recall the centerpiece of his health care program when he campaigned? The public option. He went on at length about it—how a public option would create competition for the greedy insurance companies who were screwing the American public. He argued with Hilary Clinton about it during the primaries; he argued with John McCain about it during the election. And Obama’s ideas won.

So why hasn’t President Obama shown the same fire and desire as candidate Obama in pushing hard for the public option (or some form of it)? He came to office with a groundswell of support across the country—he had nothing but political capital to spend on health care reform, one of the primary reasons Americans voted him President. Why didn’t he use it? He certainly had no hesitation in wielding the power of the Presidency this summer when he and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel strong-armed wavering Democratic Senators and Representatives who weren’t going to support his supplemental war funding request (see here). So why didn’t he play that kind of hardball with his party to get a robust public option made part of the health reform bill?

I think it’s becoming clear that the reason Obama failed to deliver on a public option requirement, failed to deliver on one of his top two or three campaign promises, is because he never really was committed to the idea because of how difficult it would be to accomplish. Major political and economic policy changes like reforming the health care system take vision, fierce determination, and a personal constitution that is willing to lay everything on the line for what you believe in and never stop fighting until you accomplish it. FDR had it—he got Social Security passed and nearly got universal health care included in it. LBJ had it—he got both the Civil Rights Act and Medicare passed. Even Ronald Reagan had it—he managed to buffalo a majority of the country into believing that if rich people and wealthy corporations pay very little tax, we will all become wealthy.

President Obama DOESN’T have it. Sad as it is to say as a staunch supporter during the election, but Obama appears to possess only Senator mettle. Maybe competent President mettle. But it doesn’t look like he’s got what it takes to be a great one, let alone an actual reformer.

Ask yourself this: if you ignited a majority of the country behind you in ways unlike any presidential candidate had in decades and decades, elicited support—financial and boots on the ground—from more new voters than any candidate in recent history, and swept easily into the White House with a commanding victory, wouldn’t you throw yourself whole hog into accomplishing the one or two major agenda items you ran on? Or would you take a completely passive approach to one of your major campaign promises, keeping an arms-length from it and never (as far as we’ve been able to learn) using your substantial political capital and the fierce urgency of now (remember that?) to strong-arm hesitant party members to make damn sure that you got the kind of reform you promised 70 million Americans?

If you need a more tangible, less theoretical reason for why I think Obama was never really up for the fight to make substantive changes to our health care system, let’s revisit the billion dollar deal he made in private with the pharmaceutical industry after taking office. Remember that? The White House denied any deal was struck—until an internal memo was leaked and they had to fess up (see here and here). Why, if you want to change the way health care works in this country, would you make this kind of deal with one of the industries that is part of the whole problem BEFORE any serious negotiations or legislation even started?

[UPDATE: On December 15th, the Senate defeated an amendment to the health reform bill to allow re-importation of drugs into the U.S., which would allow Americans to buy the same drugs we manufacture but sell in other countries for 1/3 or more of the price we currently pay. The sick thing is how many Democrats—allies of the President—voted to defeat this bill. Big pharma wins again!]

Other indications of Obama’s actual intentions in this health care debate have been making the news for the past eight months or so: no actual, detailed, specific health care plan ever offered by President Obama (“principles” are good for counselors and self-help proponents—they’re NOT serious policy from a serious President); Chief of Staff Emanuel telling progressive groups to stop running ads badgering Blue Democrats to support the public option; the White House deflecting criticism in public (and in private) of flies in the ointment like Joe Lieberman; Obama’s broken record recitation in closed door sessions with members of Congress about the historic nature of the health care bill—yet never making a serious, hard-nosed, “Change We Can Believe In” appeal to the waffling reps about getting this public option passed and substantively changing the whole health care system. There’s certainly more, and Glenn Greenwald from Salon catalogues them well here.

So because of either the failure of leadership of President Obama or because the current state of the health care Senate bill is actually what Obama wanted, it appears that once again we will get reform in the style of the previous Bush administration: Americans pay more money to established corporate interests for little to nothing in return. That’s what happened with Medicare part D, and it looks like we’re going the same route with Obama’s healthy care reform: we’re all going to be forced to buy insurance from the companies who have been screwing us for the past 20 years, and those very same companies won’t have to change the way they do business in any substantive way.

Not the change you believe in—or voted for last year? Do something about it. Call your Senators and Representatives and urge them NOT to vote for any health reform bill that mandates we buy insurance yet does not offer an affordable, government-run insurance plan as an option.

Here’s where you can find your Senators’ contact info: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

Here’s where you can find your Representatives’ contact info: http://clerk.house.gov/member_info/mcapdir.html

And here’s President Obama’s contact info—let him know you don’t want him to sign a bill into law that perverts what candidate Obama would want: (202) 456-1111.

Finally: I came across this speech by FDR a while back and was struck by the language and passion and fearlessness of a President who enacted sweeping reforms. It’s from his 1936 nomination speech. Check out these few lines:

“We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace: business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

Can you imagine Obama saying something as truthful and as brazenly aggressive as that?

If you want to hear this great speech, check it out here: http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/text/us/fdr1936.html

POLITICS: Funding Health Care Reform: A Modest Proposal

How to pay for health care reform—it’s perhaps the biggest issue in the whole ongoing debate. There are some people who simply don’t feel comfortable with the idea of the government handling such a personal part of their lives. Others fear the government wouldn’t do a good job of administrating such a large undertaking. These are reasonable concerns in the debate, but they are not the concerns of the majority of people in this country. I’m ignoring for the moment the fringe alarmists—the teabaggers and their FOX News-fueled parrots who decry socialism and fascism and communism and any number of bat-shit crazy ideas their beloved pundits dribble out. They’re the extreme minority in this debate.

But among the vast majority of reasonable citizens in this country, whether they come from the political left, right, or center, the question of how we would actually pay for the kind of public health care reform that’s been debated for the past eight months is a COMPLETELY rational, necessary, and crucial question.

I truly believe that 90% of all Americans would love to have a single-payer system that provides every citizen with complete health care coverage. We feel we should educate every American child, don’t we? We feel our military should defend every American citizen, right? And we all agree that our local fire and police departments should serve and protect every individual in our locality equally, don’t we? So why would providing health care—a quality of life issue—be any different? Like I said, for 90% of Americans, I don’t think it is different.

So what about the 10% that doesn’t believe a single-payer system providing health care for every American citizen is a good idea? Who are they? Take a guess. Yep—the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, corporate hospitals, and Wall Street investment firms that are deep into these industries. (No, don’t confuse yourself with a Wall Street investment firm in deep. Your piddly mutual fund holdings and stocks in Cigna or United Health don’t make you a shareholder with a valued voice. You’ve got the power of a gnat among T-Rexes.) And let’s not forget the teabaggers and the other morons who have been convinced that a for-profit health insurance employer is better able to make decisions about your health than a non-profit federal agency would be. Of course, these are also the same people who are still waiting for tax cuts for the rich to trickle down to their meager wages.

We’ve heard President Obama use the phrase “everyone has to have skin in the game” when talking about how to pay for health care. I have a number of issues with the role Obama has played in this health care debate—primarily that he has let Congress set the agenda rather than offering a detailed program for reform from which the Congress can work—but I agree whole heartedly with this notion that everyone has to be involved in resetting our failed health care system. But Obama hasn’t done what he really needs to do: specify a way to pay for this that makes sure everyone has skin in the game. In fact, it’s one part of the debate he’s been a bit of a pussy about—to his and the health care cause’s detriment. The current Democratic leadership in the Senate is spineless in many ways, but they’ve had to grapple with the sticky details of how to pay for health care reform. And Speaker Pelosi and the House have recently put their ideas for payment on the line and actually voted on it.

Because Obama has been such a weak voice in this very central issue of how to pay for health care reform, I want to take his idea that everyone has to have some skin in the game and make an actual proposal. It’s modest and simple and very straightforward:

Every American adult who files a tax return pays $1,000 a year to contribute to a National Health Insurance program.

That’s it. And here’s why it would work: in 2007, there were 141 million tax returns filed. Multiply that by $1,000 and you get $141 billion dollars. Congressional Budget Office scoring for the current health care reform ideas are coming in at $100 billion or less a year. With every American adult tax filer paying $1,000 a year, that’s about $41 more than we need. And how would that translate to our paychecks? That’s $83.34 a month. About $42 every paycheck if you’re paid twice a month. Wouldn’t $83 a month be a lot better than the $300-$800 that many employees now pay for health care every month? Which would you rather pay?

Here’s how this idea would work: our obligation to National Health Insurance would be $1,000 a year. It would be paid either as a deduction from your check if you’re paying for it yourself or your employer would pay for it as part of your benefit package. Employers could choose to stay with the private insurance plans they offer their employees, and employees could choose to keep paying the hundreds of dollars a month they currently pay in those arrangements for private insurance. But the National Health Insurance premium would have to be paid regardless.

Of course, employers could decide to drop private insurance completely and just pay for their employees’ National Health Insurance obligation of $1,000 a year. Fair enough—the employees will still get guaranteed coverage via the National Insurance system, or they can take the hundreds of dollars a month they used to pay for private insurance and now get in salary from their employers to buy their own supplementary private insurance. And imagine what employers—especially small businesses, the engine of the U.S. economy—could do with an additional $10,000 every month they no longer pay for their employees private insurance?

So what happens if thousands and thousands of small businesses across the country drop their private insurance and opt to pay their employees’ annual $1,000 National Health Insurance obligation? It’s paid for whether they stick with private insurance or not. If upon review every year it appears that more money is needed because more and more people are relying on National Health Insurance, then the annual rate is raised—except unlike private insurers, who favor 15% and 20% premium increases annually, we’d be looking at more like 1% or 3% increases with a National Insurance plan. So which would you rather pay: $300 to $800 a month for private insurance or $83 to $90 a month for National Health Insurance? And if this National system really took off and the majority of people in the U.S. began using it, then the rate would be adjusted to pay for it—so even a whopping 50% increase in the annual obligation ($1,500) would run you $125 a month. What’s a 50% increase on $800 a month?

And let’s not forget the population numbers game here: for the next 25 years or so, we’ll have the baby boomers—the largest population sector of our society by a long shot—moving into Medicare and in need of extensive health care. The more money we have in a National Health Insurance system, the easier it will be for us non-baby boomers to survive the huge resource drain the aging boomers will inflict on our economy. If such a National Insurance plan costs us all $125 or even $200 a month for a decade or so, it’s still easier to handle than the hundreds or thousands it will cost through the private insurance system we now have. And as morose as it may sound, come 2025 or so, that huge baby boomer population will be dwindling, requiring less care and far less in premiums from the rest of us.

Obviously, those living in poverty who do not file tax returns would pay nothing—just like the health care system is now. But whether you make 30K a year or 300 million, EVERYONE would pay the same and have skin in the game. And I think that’s part of what’s missing in this whole debate from the health care reform proponents: everyone needs to pay so that everyone gets the benefits. This kind of elemental fairness appeals to Americans. Sure, some AIG executive will be able to afford a gold-plated private insurance plan that a line worker or a freelance writer like myself would never be able to afford, but at least we’d ALL be contributing similarly to a National Health Insurance plan.

Of course, as it looks now, we’re not going to get anything as simple and equitable as a National Health Insurance plan from the Congress and the insurance, pharmaceutical, and corporate hospital lobbyists that own our representatives. We’ll probably end up with some watered down giveaway to private insurance—kind of like the Medicare Part D deal former President Bush and his crew struck with the drug companies a few years ago.

Ultimately, what a modest proposal like this National Health Insurance paid for by most Americans would do is marginalize the private insurance industry. Private insurance is the only part of our current health care system that doesn’t actually contribute anything to the health or well-being of Americans. It only makes money from healthy Americans. And creates a lot of stress for those who have to deal with claims. But the thing private insurance does best is make contributions to politicians—on both sides of the aisle. The largest private insurance companies are currently spending over a million dollars of our monthly premiums every day for advertising and lobbying efforts against any kind of health care reform. So if this health reform bill currently being debated seems like a big, sloppy, confusing, watered-down mess, you can be assured of one thing: the insurance companies were working hard to do what they do best.