Blogs: Terrance Heath

America Will Be ...

Terrance Heath — Fri, 16 May 2008 10:44:50 -0400

I knew as soon as the California Supreme Court marriage ruling was posted, that I would read the whole thing. I started reading it at my desk, after it was posted, but stopped once got to the "bottom line" of the ruling — and, truly, because as I realized what I was reading, and what the California Supreme Court had said, the emotion was too much.

I wasn't born when the Brown v. Board of Education ruling was handed down, so I don't know what it was like for those Black Americans who heard it or read it and realized what the court had done. But I think I have an idea, based on what I felt yesterday after reading the decision.

I know it was a state supreme court decision, and one that doesn't apply to me all the way over here on the other side of the country. But yesterday, reading the decision, I felt a little bit more like an American. And maybe even just a little proud of my country.

This is something I meant to write at the time, but that occurred to me yesterday, as I was walking home. Reading the CA Supremes ruling yesterday, and thinking about my own feelings, I thought about Michelle Obama's comments about finally being proud of America. I understood what she meant even then, but more-so after yesterday's ruling.

Yesterday, I finally felt just a little proud to be an American. Finally.

To understand where someone like Michelle Obama is coming from — or yours truly, for that matter — you have to look a America through the prism of someone without the privileges upon which it was founded from the beginning; from the perspective of people for whom the promises of being an American in America have been historically held out of reach.

From that perspective, pride in America is based more on its strides towards what it could become — were it to live up to all it promises to be on paper, for all its citizens — what it is or where it is at the present moment. America is something different for, say, Cindy McCain than is is for Michelle Obama, or than it is for me.

In some ways, we're proud of an America that has yet to be, and that we hope will be someday. Langston Huges probably said it best.

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-- Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

…O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-- The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people's lives, We must take back our land again, America!

O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath-- America will be!

People who point to Michelle Obama's privileged lifestyle forget that whether her current lifestyle was always her lifestyle, she grew up a black child and became a black woman in the America that was and is, not the America that will be. (Perhaps it's safer to say the America that can be.) She has almost surely seen much to make one less than proud. And, as I remember the pictures of her reunion with her South Carolina relatives — having grown up in the south myself — I know she must have relatives who have witnessed much that wouldn't inspire pride, and she's listened to their stories.

From her perspective, how much hope must be inspired by the reality that her husband is the first black (or brown) man to have a real shot at becoming president? How much hope that wasn't there before? How much hope that was nursed, unfulfilled for generations, until this moment? How much hope, nursed on an abiding faith that American can be — will be — all it has promised to be, someday?

I was a high school student when the Bowers v. Hardwick decision came down. As a gay person, I felt divorced from the constitution and my country. It wasn't until Lawrence v. Texas that anything changed for me, and by then I'd seen and heard much that didn't inspire pride. But something shifted a little yesterday, and now I have a "wait-and-see" attitude.

Peggy Noonan recently asked "Who would have taught Barrack Obama to love his country?" My experience is that plenty of people will tell you that you should love your country, and will speak at length about why. But depending on who you are, you may learn to love your country, but experience will have taught you to sometimes love it — and hold it — at arms' length.

If I feel pride, it's not the same as might be expected, but closer to what Booman said.

Where did I learn to love my country? Who taught me to love it? What did I find loveable? I'm not even sure of the answer, although my parents and my teachers and the programs I watched on television and the books I chose to read all played a part. I learned to love the Constitution of the United States. I learned to respect and admire the Founding Fathers of this country, despite all their flaws. I came to understand that our Republic was something new and fragile, and that it needed protection from both within and without. And I, of course, learned to love the area that I grew up in, and all the wonderful national parks around the country that I visited during summer vacations as a child. And I loved baseball and football, and mint chocolate chip ice cream. In other words, I learned to love my country the same way that Barack Obama learned to love it...by growing up here and learning a little history.

…I'll tell you another thing. I don't normally get my pride and my love off of the accomplishments of others. I do have pride and love for our Constitution and our system of governance, but my love of country has nothing to do with the gold miners that forced the Native Americans off their land in violation of treaties, nor with the Nazi-sympathizer Henry Ford, nor even with the enterprising Wright Brothers. I'm all for clean-running trains, planes, and automobiles, but I don't love my country because of them. I wouldn't die for my country to preserve the internal combustion engine. I'd die to preserve the Constitution. And by Constitution, I do not mean the Estate Tax, Peggy. Or whatever other supply-side economic policy you think made it possible for Americans to figure out air travel.

Yesterday, I heard a whisper of an America that never was to me, and that I hope will be. Inspired now, I will work harder to make it so.

Weekend Watchdog: Open Thread

Terrance Heath — Fri, 16 May 2008 09:17:15 -0400

We're in the process of trying out some new approaches to the Weekend Watchdog. One of them is this open thread, where we hope longtime "watchdogs" and the uninitiated will engage in sorting out what questions about which issues and news items from the past week this Sunday's yet-to-be announced guests should face.

Make your suggestions and pose your questions in the comments, and when the guests are announced this evening we may pick some of your questions for the Watchdog. Come back and check out our usual Weekend Watchdog post to see who's on the guest list and whether your question is on the Watchdog list. (If it is, you might contact the shows to suggest they ask your question. Invite your friends to join in. The more the merrier.)

Some of the more interesting items from this week's news include:

A stunning loss for Republicans in a Mississippi special Congressional election, that has the party worried about prospects for the Fall and beyond.
The Republicans' attempt at rebranding themselves as a "change" party pretty much got them laughed out of the room.
President Bush's remarks at a celebration of Israel's 60th anniversary raised a storm of controversy and assertions that his policies have made America and Israel less safe.
Meanwhile, back home, jobless claims are up again, the foreclosure rate is skyrocketing, Americans are taking out loans to pay for basic needs and spending those stimulus checks on the same things, and more of us are stressed about maintaining our standards of living.

That ought to be enough to get us started. What's on your mind? If you could ask one question on "Face the Nation," "This Week," or "Meet the Press" what would you ask? Let 'em rip in the comments. And, as always, keep things polite and respectful, as practice for when you contact the shows with your question.

Complacent Conservatism

Terrance Heath — Fri, 09 May 2008 10:38:13 -0400

I'm sure this has been covered by everyone and his brother, but I couldn't help being amused by this study suggesting that conservatives are happier than liberals. But before any conservatives start gloating, there's another thing to consider.

Being happy is a cinch, if you can rationalize not caring much about injustice and inequality.

Regardless of marital status, income or church attendance, right-wing individuals reported greater life satisfaction and well-being than left-wingers, the new study found. Conservatives also scored highest on measures of rationalization, which gauge a person's tendency to justify, or explain away, inequalities.

The rationalization measure included statements such as: "It is not really that big a problem if some people have more of a chance in life than others," and "This country would be better off if we worried less about how equal people are."

To justify economic inequalities, a person could support the idea of meritocracy, in which people supposedly move up their economic status in society based on hard work and good performance. In that way, one's social class attainment, whether upper, middle or lower, would be perceived as totally fair and justified.

If your beliefs don't justify gaps in status, you could be left frustrated and disheartened, according to the researchers, Jaime Napier and John Jost of New York University. They conducted a U.S.-centric survey and a more internationally focused one to arrive at the findings.

It makes sense. If you can rationalize inequities as right and just, then no matter how bad things are for someone else, you can rest assured that things are just as they ought to be. So, naturally you're not bothered by economic injustice. You're not bothered by discrimination either.

In other words, going back to a previous post, you don't have to acknowledge your privilege.

No one likes to be reminded of their privilege — whether it’s white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege, or class privilege — because acknowledging that privilege commutes responsibility for that privilege, and the day-by-day, moment-to-moment decision to perpetuate that privilege or know — while knowing the consequences it imposes on others.

Whether we asked for our privilege or not — acknowledging it, if we don’t want to be responsible for perpetuating it and the injustice it perpetuates, means changing how we are in the world, day-by-day and moment-to-moment.

That is difficult and never-ending work, to be honest. It’s easier not to acknowledge it. It’s even easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact, the first essential rule of perpetuating privilege is to pretend it doesn’t exist. That becomes difficult when the voices of those who can confirm the existence of that privilege, because they (a) do not possess it and (b) live with the consequence of its existence every day, become unavoidable.

And, the truth is that even though almost all of us enjoy one or more of the privileges above (especially if you consider class or economic privilege on a global scale), we also live with the consequences of not having one or more of the privileges above. The lack of one privilege can mask the existence of the other. (i.e. “What do mean I’m privileged? I’m barely making ends meet, just got laid off, and don’t have health insurance because my spouse and I aren’t married and he/she can’t carry me on hers, etc.”) That privilege doesn’t go away, but it becomes something taken for granted, as natural as breathing out and breathing in, so that we don’t take it as privilege anymore.

If you can rationalize your privilege, and rationalize related inequities on the flip-side, then you don't have to change how you are in the world; because all is right with the world, no matter how bad it is for somebody else.

In fact, your privilege — whether it stems from your race, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, etc. — doesn't even exit. The whole world is suddenly a meritocracy. What you have, you deserve, basically because you have it. And the "have-nots"? Well, if they deserved it, they'd have it.

Essentially, the have-nots deserve whatever they get. It's an aspect of conservatism that we saw play out during Katrina. We've heard it paraphrased by the likes of George Will and Bill O'Reilly, as well as Neal Boortz. Still I haven't heard anybody put it any better than George Lakoff.

Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.
… The role of government is to: * Promote unimpeded competitive economic activity so that both the disciplined moral people and the undisciplined immoral ones are able to receive what they each deserve, based on their own choices; … The Economy and Business: Promoting unimpeded economic activity means favoring those who control wealth and power, who are seen as the “best people,” over those who are unsuccessful, who are seen as morally weak. Corporations are more heavily favored than non-corporate businesses, because big businesses (like wealthy people) have gotten big precisely through working hard and being disciplined.

Norman Vincent Peale, as I recall, came close.

Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia “one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read”.

Why? Because here in Narnia is the perfect Republican, muscular Christianity for America - that warped, distorted neo-fascist strain that thinks might is proof of right. I once heard the famous preacher Norman Vincent Peale in New York expound a sermon that reassured his wealthy congregation that they were made rich by God because they deserved it. The godly will reap earthly reward because God is on the side of the strong. This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.

The best I could do to paraphrase it was this.

The better off are so because they are better people. Thus if the poor were better people they would be better off. Therefore, there are very few good people who are poor, and probably even fewer well-off people who are bad. What we saw in the post-Katrina suffering was simply bad things happening to bad people. Most, if not all, of the good people had the means to get themselves out of the hurricane’s path and did so.

Though I did manage to take it a little further.

Mix it all up together, stick it in an oven until it’s half-baked, and you end up with an ideology that people will eat up with both hands if they have any economic strength, or hope to have any because they are sure of their moral virtue and know they will be justly rewarded (even if it means buying another lottery ticket or two), because it at once elevates and absolves them. It elevates them above others who have less (or whom they deem less moral), and absolves them of helping the great many of the poor because the poor are right were they deserve to be. Heaven has mandated it so.

I didn’t say it made sense or that it holds together, just that an awful lot of people happily swallow it whole. Once they do it’s easy to see things as portrayed above and accept it as not just reality but as the way things ought to be.

If you accept all that, then depending on charities to deliver services to the poor isn’t “punishing the good guy.” The good guy has all he needs to take care of himself and his, and if he decides to reinvest his tax cut rather than donate it to charity, that’s his business. Besides, who are we to question the righteous?

And it doesn’t matter that charities will not be able to deliver the same level services to the same amount of people as the government, because the whole idea is that there will be fewer services, and there should be fewer services. The government may be able to help more people, but the problem is that it will inevitably help people who shouldn’t be helped. So less help is better, even some of the folks who may deserve it don’t get it. After all, if they were better people they wouldn’t’ need services in the first place.

Convince yourself of that, and you spend the last few hours before your winter break cutting heating assistance to poor families, and feel good about yourself. (You might even hum "Winter Wonderland" as you cast your vote.)

President Bush says that his 2006 budget "is a budget that sets priorities." Examining those priorities is a moral and religious concern. Just as we have "environmental impact studies," it’s time for a "poverty impact statement", which would ask the fundamental question of how policy proposals affect low-income people. Such a moral audit might reveal unacceptable priorities for many of us, including in the religious community where the president finds much of his political base. In a recent letter to the president, nearly 80 prominent evangelical leaders warned: “We know there will be powerful pressures, from some places, as you and the Congress work to reduce deficit spending, to cut even effective programs for poor people. We pray that you will not allow this to happen.”

But it is happening. In this budget, the cost of deficit reduction is mostly borne by those least able to bear the burden—the lowest-income families in America, rather than by those most able to afford it—the wealthiest Americans who benefit from the largest tax cuts. The budget projects a record $427 billion deficit, along with a promise to make tax cuts permanent. Does that make fiscal or moral sense?

Religious leaders have spoken clearly in past years about the perils of a domestic policy based primarily on tax cuts for the rich, deep program cuts for low-income people, and an expectation of faith-based charity to make up the huge gap. This budget runs directly counter to that religious wisdom. Billions of dollars are cut from programs that most directly impact America’s poorest families—in education, nutrition, child care, health care, affordable housing, job training, heating and cooling assistance, and in community and rural development. At the same time, mere millions of dollars are added as increases to a number of faith-based programs focusing on marriage, fatherhood, and abstinence. On the street, that would be called “chump change.” The warning that faith-based initiatives should provide a partnership with effective government anti-poverty programs—and not a substitute—has not been heeded. And the added tax cuts for the rich merely compound the moral and biblical offense.

You can even successfully sell that idea to the disadvantaged themselves, as purveyors of the prosperity gospel have shown. And you can grow quite wealthy doing it, even if your followers don't.

The message flickered into Cindy Fleenor's living room each night: Be faithful in how you live and how you give, the television preachers said, and God will shower you with material riches.

And so the 53-year-old accountant from the Tampa, Florida, area pledged $500 a year to Joyce Meyer, the evangelist whose frank talk about recovering from childhood sexual abuse was so inspirational. She wrote checks to flamboyant faith healer Benny Hinn and a local preacher-made-good, Paula White.

Only the blessings didn't come. Fleenor ended up borrowing money from friends and payday loan companies just to buy groceries. At first she believed the explanation given on television: Her faith wasn't strong enough.

"I wanted to believe God wanted to do something great with me like he was doing with them," she said. "I'm angry and bitter about it. Right now, I don't watch anyone on TV hardly."

All three of the groups Fleenor supported are among six major Christian television ministries under scrutiny by a senator who is asking questions about the evangelists' lavish spending and possible abuses of their tax-exempt status.

The probe by Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, has brought new scrutiny to the underlying belief that brings in millions of dollars and fills churches from Atlanta to Los Angeles -- the "Gospel of Prosperity," or the notion that God wants to bless the faithful with earthly riches.

On the other hand, someone more liberal or progressive, and lacking such simple (not to mention self-serving) rationalizations for the inequities the witness might be more inclined to question — to ask why they exist and why they persist — and keep questioning until they reach a more challenging (and perhaps less self-serving, depending on their relative degree of privilege) answer, rather than simply accepting that they exist and that they persist because they ought to.

Essentially, progressives see injustice and ask "Why?". Conservatives, on the other hand, see in justice and ask "Why not?"

If you ask why, without settling for simplistic answers, you might conclude that inequity an injustice do not exist in a vacuum and do not persist according to some law of nature, but because they serve as the basis for the privileges of some, and thus the privileged perpetuate them in order to preserve their privileges. You might be inclined to believe, then, that inequities and injustices are not "inevitable" or "natural" and you might also be inclined to do something about them.

You might join something like the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and spend what h have been your vacation registering people to vote who had been systematically denied the right to vote for generations. You might give your life doing it.

Or , if you have a simple explanation handy, you might just leave things be, since everything is a it should be already. Of course, you might also wonder why other people don't see it the same way you do — especially the have-nots. You might wonder why they make such a fuss over it, and you might wish they would stop. You would definitely start to worry when the don't stop.

I think, then, that the study might have confused happiness with something that can look a lot like it, but isn't: complacency.

a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger, defect, or the like; self-satisfaction or smug satisfaction with an existing situation, condition, etc.

Then again, maybe there's a simpler explanation.

The Course From Here

Terrance Heath — Thu, 08 May 2008 09:51:56 -0400

Short of yodeling, I've been doing my best Switzerland impersonation during the primaries. When it came my turn to vote in the primaries I voted my hopes, knowing I'd support whomever we got in the Democratic nominee. (Let's face it. My values would never let me vote for a John McCain.)

Well, it's pretty clear now what we're going to get in a Democratic nominee, and I agree it's time to move on. This has been a passionate race so far. One that has enlivened the progressive base, and the "maybe-kinda-sorta progressive" base, and the "we-just-want-to-win" base. Now that it's rounding the bend (though only on the last lap of the qualifying round, mind you), there are bound to be people who are as disappointed as they were passionate about their candidate. I understand and respect that, and I'd say the same no matter who was all-but-the-nominee right now.

That said, it's time to remember why so many of us were so passionate about one candidate or the other: We all want to see this country change course from the disastrous path we've been dragged along for the past seven-plus years. We all know that we can't afford even four more years of the same. Not our for country, not for our communities, and not for our families.

We know that it matters who's appointing Supreme Court Justices, and we know how much we could lose depending on who sits on that bench (and lots of other federally-appointed bench spots). We know that we can't afford to foot the bill for four more years of conservative failure. Not our country, not our communities, and not our families.

We know that we don't want our children, or our neighbors' children, or our brothers' and sisters' children, and their children to have to pick up that tab. We know that they deserve to grow up in a world that's reasonably safe, where they have a fair shot at "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"; where they have a fair shot at a future. They deserve to inherit a country and a future founded on hope, not fear.

We know that we can't afford four more years of disregard for the reality that we share this world with a lot of other people and that it matters how we are in the world. It matters because our choices, and choices and policies of our elected officials can hold potentially disastrous consequences for the planet itself, for our country, for our communities, and for our families; because what we inflict on the world, we inflict on our country, our communities, and our families.

That's why we've cared so much about this race, no matter which candidate we've supported until now.

I remember when Bush was re-elected in 2004, many people swore they'd move to Canada. Most didn't. My guess is that some of those who stayed believe most of what I've written above, and because of that they fought and worked to bring us to this point, where we have a real chance of changing course. Instead of being herded down one path by our fears, we are on the verge of being able to walk down a path towards our hopes.

But first we have take the wheel, and steer this country off the course plotted by fear.

Then, and only then, can we truly change course.

Maybe I'm a little naïve — maybe a dash of naiveté is a necessary ingredient of hope — but I think most of us know all of the above, and want to change our course because of what it means for our country, our communities, our families, and — really — the world.

The Age of the "Insurance Card Marriage"

Terrance Heath — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:56:02 -0400

Forget green cards. A growing number of Americans are getting hitched to get health insurance.

Some people marry for love, some for companionship, and others for status or money. Now comes another reason to get hitched: health insurance.

In a poll released today, 7% of Americans said they or someone in their household decided to marry in the last year so they could get healthcare benefits via their spouse.

"It's a small number but a powerful result, because it shows how paying for healthcare is reflected not only in family budgets but in life decisions," said Drew E. Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which commissioned the survey as part of its regular polling on healthcare.

...What surprised researchers was that such costs had become a factor in marriage decisions. "We should have asked about divorce," said Altman, joking.

Those who cited health insurance as a factor in deciding to marry tended to have modest incomes. About 6 in 10 were in households making less than $50,000 a year, said Mollyann Brodie, who directs Kaiser's opinion research. They also were younger, with 4 in 10 between 18 and 34.

Maybe they should have asked about divorce. They'd have found that at least some people stay married for the sake of health insurance.

Whether people get married or stay married for the sake of health insurance, who can blame them?

Health insurance is getting more and more expensive. Premiums have gone up 30%, compared to a 3% increase in wages. Co-payments for some prescriptions have shot up, as insurance companies change to a pricing system that charges patients a percentage of of the drugs' actual cost, instead of a fixed amount. And that percentage can range anywhere from 20% to 70%. Plus, insurers are reimbursing less for out-of-network medical services. If you've got cancer, you may have to pay cash up front before getting treatment.

And that's if you are insured, even under-insured. It's worse, much worse if you're uninsured. So, if people get married or stay (unhappily) married for the sake of having health insurance, I don't blame them one bit.

However, no matter which option these people choose, they all have one very important thing in common related to their access to health insurance: they can get married, to each other or to some other partner of their choosing. They might even marry someone they'd have married anyway. But, again, they can.

Do I need to say it? There's an entire class of people for whom marriage (getting married or staying married) isn't an option, because we can't marry each other. And the few alternatives don't really help much either. Just ask Robert Ryan and Ralph Martinelli, whose story I blogged about earlier.

What they didn't know before moving to Idaho could fill a house, and in many ways it does.

The kitchen table holds stacks of legal papers. Medication bottles litter a nearby countertop. The two-story home Robert Ryan, 42, shares with his partner, Ralph Martinelli, 53, overlooks a quaint suburb west of Boise, a rural landscape of ruddy hills that doesn't seem quite as welcoming as it once did.

A 2,400-mile move west that once seemed like a chance at a fresh start, has instead delivered some hard lessons -- especially about moving from a state that recognizes same-sex unions to one of the 21 states that don't.

The couple was stunned when Ryan was dropped from the company insurance plan the two shared in New Jersey, where they were able to register as domestic partners. Idaho does not formally recognize same-sex couples.

"It didn't even dawn on us that this would have an impact," Ryan said.

...A year after they started dating, they registered as domestic partners in New Jersey. Martinelli was told he could insure Ryan under his policy as a Konica Minolta Business Solutions sales manager.

Ryan used the policy to pay for medication to treat his depression, anxiety and the childhood asthma that resurfaced from severe smoke inhalation in the attack.

But he was dropped from the policy last October, shortly after the Konica Minolta company found the couple had moved to Idaho, where they couldn't register as domestic partners. In 2006, 63 percent of Idaho voters approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, effectively outlawing same-sex unions.

Of course, if Robert and Ralph had been Robert and Rachel or Roberta and Ralph, it wouldn't have mattered. If they were married, they'd have been just as married in Idaho as they were in New Jersey. And if they were just shacking up and moved to a state that didn't offer the option of domestic partnership, they could just get hitched.

Boom. Done. Ralph (or Rachel) has health insurance. But they're not Robert and Rachel, or even Roberta and Ralph. So no health insurance for Ralph. Maybe. Robert pays $650 a month that he wouldn't have to pay if he and Ralph were married (and the amount deducted from his paycheck to cover his spouse would probably be a lot less), for a COBRA policy Ralph wouldn't need if they could marry, and that will expire in March 2009 anyway.

(Ironically, Robert's act of paying for Ralph's COBRA policy is a significant indication of their commitment to each other. If Robert weren't paying for the COBRA policy, Ralph wouldn't have coverage.)

A while back, I asked "Is Health Care a Gay Issue?", and at the risk of repeating myself, it becomes one at the point where health insurance is linked to marital status, or at least it should.

Again, I have to go back to the Health Care for America plan, and how it could apply to same-sex couples and our families.

At a stroke, then, no one with a direct or family tie to the workforce would remain uninsured.

…For the small share of people without direct or family ties to the workforce and ineligible for Medicaid, S-CHIP, or Medicare, the Health Care for America Plan would be available as an attractive new coverage option. Premiums would again be based on income, ranging from no premium in the case of those with incomes below the poverty line to the average actuarial cost of coverage for all enrollees in Health Care for America in the case of those with incomes above 400% of the poverty level. In other words, Health Care for America would allow higher-income individuals without workplace ties to buy into the program for a premium that did not vary with age, region, or health status (a so-called community-rated premium).

Meanwhile, Americans without ties to the workforce would be enrolled in the Health Care for America Plan through an individual buy-in, through state antipoverty and un-employment insurance programs, or through new efforts to reach the uninsured when they sought medical care without insurance.

It may not be obvious at first, but it's pretty easy to parse out if you consider how it would apply to couples like Ryan and Martinelli. Even without the benefit of legal marriage, a move from one state to another wouldn't cause Martinelli — someone without a direct or family tie to the workforce (because his partner, Ryan, is not legally considered "family")— to lose his health insurance.

For same-sex couples with children the benefit of a health care plan like this becomes even more obvious. A post by Daily Journalcolumnist Howard Ludwig pointed me to a study recently published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, titled "The Economics of Lesbian and Gay Familes," and among the findings was this interesting tidbit.

Gay and lesbian couples with children are more likely to have a stay-at-home partner. Similar to heterosexual couples, the partner who stays home in a same-sex relationship usually has fewer years of formal education.

Again, the choices for a stay-at-home parent in a same-sex household when it comes to health insurance — in any state where our relationships are not legally recognized — are: (a) purchase an individual health insurance policy at a higher cost than, say, the married heterosexual stay-at-home parent next door who's carried on her husband's policy, which is underwritten by his employer and a paycheck deduction that's a lot less than the cost of an individual policy; or (b) end up doing without health insurance. (Children, under this plan, born with coverage.)

Something like the Health Care for America plan would "divorce" health insurance from marital status because, quite simply, no one would have to get married to get health insurance. And no one who can't marry their partner would face marital status as a barrier to getting health insurance, or pay a much higher price for health insurance as a consequence of not being able to marry.

Health care has cropped up in national political debate again, as Sen. John McCain debuted his health care plan, and the conventional wisdom is that the McCain plan would raise health care costs and generally and already bad system worse. Bill Scher has posted a great blog round-up that includes my favorite assesment of the McCain plan: "Oliver Willis and Masson's Blog sum up what McCain's plan means for you in one word: Pray."

You can bet that if it would make things worse for heterosexual couples, it would do our families even less good.

The Democratic presidential contenders, on the other hand, have plans that pretty much resemble the Health Care for America plan.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have been sniping at each other for months over healthcare, but there's one thing the top Democratic presidential candidates agree on: Americans of all ages should have the choice of buying a government-run plan modeled on Medicare.

The idea, which would set up a competition between a new government plan and private insurance programs, has been overshadowed by the political horse race. But it's one of the most far-reaching and controversial proposals for making health insurance more affordable and more widely available.

The government now guarantees access to healthcare only for seniors and the disabled through Medicare and for the poor mainly through Medicaid. Under the proposals being advanced by Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the government would offer coverage for middle-class workers and their families, with benefits comparable to those now provided for federal employees and members of Congress.

Participation in the government plan would be voluntary, but the approach sparks widely differing reactions.

Equality, for our families is and may continue to be hard to come by much of the time, and hard won where it does exist, while we are in the process of building our lives and our families together; weaving our families' destinies together with those of our community and our country, much as we weave our own together as families. We can walk down the aisle just like any other couples, but may continue for some time walk back up the aisle with fewer benefits and protections than other couples.

But neither we nor they should need to walk down the aisle for the sake of having health insurance. Health Care for All isn't a "gay health bill," and it doesn't single out particular groups for inclusion or exclusion. It does, however, offer a way to provide all Americans with health insurance, married or not. It would treat my family the same as the family down the street, with two legally married parents, because its benefits are not conditional on the basis our marital status or anyone else's. We'd get them whether we're married or not, and whether we can marry or not.

Well, that's a kind of equality, and one that appears to be good for everybody.

Or, to put it another way, for all.

My Father's Eyes

Terrance Heath — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 11:35:41 -0400

This weekend, we attended a local conference for LGBT parents and families, and I spoke on a panel about interracial couples and inter-cultural families. At some point, I found myself speaking less as a gay dad and more as a Black man raising two Black sons, and wondering aloud just how I would prepare them for the reality of what they will likely face as Black men, and how I will prepare them for that without catalyzing what I know is an inevitable loss of innocence; the same innocence I love to see in them, and so want to protect as a parent.

But I know that I will be doing them a disservice as their father if I don't prepare them for the reality I've experience myself, and that they will each have to face in their own time. It's no surprise that in the middle of the panel discussion, I remembered an exchange I had with my own father.

I was in college at the time. I'd been home for a weekend visit, and was heading back to school — at the University of Georgia, in Athens, GA. As I made several trips back and forth, loading up the car, my dad sat on the couch, watching television. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I caught my dad looking at me with what appeared to be concern, as though he was trying to decide whether to say something to me about it.

Finally, I finished loading the car, and said my goodbyes. But my dad stopped me before I could make it out the door and finally spoke his concern.

"Son," he asked, "is that what you're wearing to drive back to Athens?"

I was wearing my basic school "uniform" at that time: a ripped pair of old, faded jeans, and a old t-shirt.

"Um, yeah," I said.

My dad then breathed a sigh that seemed a mix of resignation, exasperation, and trepidation over what he was about to tell me — what he had to tell me, really.

"Son," he said, "You are going to be driving through a lot of southern counties. Now, I'm not saying you're going to do anything wrong. But you are a young black man, and if you get pulled over by one of these southern sheriffs or policemen, they are going to take one look at you and get the wrong idea. They're not going to treat you like they would a white boy dressed like that."

It was on the tip of my tongue to argue with him, and say that stuff like that probably did happen when he was my age. Instead, I unpacked some clothes, and changed into a pair of khakis and a buttoned-down oxford, which met with dad's approval.

I was still thinking about my dad's words when I got back to UGA. After unloading the car and carrying everything up to my room, I turned on the television. At some point, the news came on and I saw this.

My father wasn't even one-year-old when the young black men who became known as the Scottsboro Nine were falsely accused of rape, and plunged into an ordeal that would last decades. My father was about 16 years old when the nation's last mass lynching happened in rural Georgia. My father was 25 years old and newly married when Emmett Till was murdered.

He lived through times when the life of a black man, especially in the south, wasn't worth a "plug nickel." He lived through times when his life as a black man wasn't' worth a plug nickel. He lived, like so many men before him, knowing that there were people who would think no more of snuffing out his life than killing a fly, and that there were people who would set them free afterwards. He lived knowing that it could happen, even if he wasn't doing anything wrong. It could happen just because he happened to be a black man, and happened to be in a particular place at a particular time. Any time. Any place. Any day.

My dad had lived with that reality, and I think he was trying to make me aware that I lived with that reality too. He had to, because he knew — and had probably seen with his own eyes — the danger of not being aware of that; the danger of taking for granted that the world would meet and treat me no differently than anyone else.

My father's eyes had seen things I had never seen and could not imagine then, or even now. I did not have my father's eyes, and he knew that. He also knew that I needed them and that I wouldn't have them unless he spoke. It was a legacy he had to pass on to me, for my own good.

Several years later, I was living in Washington, D.C., and found myself driving home late one night. I was giving a fraternity brother of mine, also a black male, a ride home after a late night fraternity event. My car wasn't in the greatest shape. I'd been in a traffic accident just a few days before, and hadn't taken it to be repaired because I needed to drive it that weekend.

We were driving past the Capitol when we got pulled over. I saw the flashing lights, and as soon as I heard the siren I pulled over. By then, I knew the drill. Don't argue with the officers. Don't get out of the car unless they tell you to. Get out of the car if they tell you to. Answer any questions with "Yes, officer," or "No, officer," give them any information they ask for, and maybe — maybe — you won't have any trouble. Still what happened then was a bit surreal.

As the officer came up to my window, I said a silent prayer that my fraternity brother — Neal, who was known for having a sharp tongue and a willingness let it loose — would keep cool. The officer asked for my license and registration. She asked if I knew why she stopped me, and I said no. She said it was because one of my tail lights wasn't working, and agreed with me when I said it was probably a result of the accident I had a few days earlier. She seemed to believe me when I told her I didn't know about the tail light.

I thought maybe she'd give me a ticket or a warning, and give my documents back to me. Instead, she walked back to her car and got on her radio (I think). I wasn't worried, because it wasn't like I had an outstanding warrant or anything more than a couple of unpaid parking tickets. But while she was in her car, another police car pulled up, and two more officers got out.

In my rear view mirror, I saw the officer who stopped us get back out of car, at the same time that I saw yet another police car pull up. At this point, I started to get nervous — because here we were, two black males, driving through D.C. at 4 a.m., in a banged up car, with the police units and six police officers now at the scene. Depending on any number of factors, including what we said or did, it might not matter if we'd done anything wrong.

"Is this your vehicle?" the officer asked me when she arrived back at my window. "We've had some car thefts reported in this area."

I assured her that it was my car, and she stepped away for a moment to confer with one of the other officers now milling about the scene. At that moment, a police van showed up, and stopped alongside the passenger side of the car. Neal, who hadn't said a word at this point, looked at the van, looked at me and just said "What the..."

I finished his sentence silently, in my mind.

The officer, at this point, was back at my window. "Sir," she asked me, "do you have the title to the vehicle."
How many people keep the title to their vehicle in the car itself? I didn't know but, I knew that I did have the title in the car. I knew just where it was. It was in my briefcase, which was in the trunk of the car. I knew that in order to retrieve the title, I'd have to get out of the car — and with at least eight officers now pretty much surrounding us — walk over to the back of the car, open the trunk, open the briefcase, and retrieve the title.

What if, I thought, just one of these officers thought I was reaching for a gun at any point in that series of steps? That I had no gun — had never even owned one, in fact &#8212 was and would have been meaningless in that moment. It wouldn't have mattered.

This was about four years before the Amadou Diallo shooting, but just about two years after the death of Malice Green. So, I knew we were one misunderstanding, one miscommunication, one hesitation, one moment of exasperation away from being another one of those stories.

I told the officer that I had the title, and that it was in my briefcase, in the trunk of the car. I told her I'd have to get out of the car, open the trunk, and open the briefcase to get the title out and show it to her. She gave me the go ahead, and I walked around to the back of the car, opened the trunk, opened the briefcase, and got the title. I don't remember if the officer followed me, and I didn't look to see if any of the officers had their hands on their weapons. I couldn't.

I showed the officer the title. She looked it over, handed it back to me, and told me to get back in the car. The van drove away, and one of other police cars drove away. Finally, the officer came back to my window.

"I'm giving you a warning," she said. "You take him home, get yourself home, and then I don't want to see you driving this car again in this condition."

I assured her that she wouldn't.

"Alright," she said. "Have a good one."

I rolled up my window, and started the engine. To this day, I am eternally grateful that Neal waited until the windows were rolled up and we were driving away from the police officers to exclaim — well out of their earshot — "Have a good one? F___ you!"

I laughed, out of sheer relief, but I understood that there was a moment back there when we could have been "another Rodney King." We could have been "another Malice Green." We could have been Amadou Diallo, or even Abner Louima.

And now, as I remember that night, I know we could have been Sean Bell too.

Bell, 23, had just left his stag party at a club in Jamaica, Queens, when he was shot and killed on November 25 2006.

Two of his friends, Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield, were also wounded as the three plainclothed police detectives opened fire on Bell's car.

All three of the men in the car were unarmed and the shooting - which recalled a 1999 episode in which an unarmed immigrant, Amadou Diallo, was shot dead by police - brought fierce criticism of the detectives.

But after a seven-week trial, Judge Arthur Cooperman ruled that the three police officers, Michael Oliver, 36, Gescard Isnora, 29, and Marc Cooper, 40, bore no criminal responsibility for the death of Bell or the wounding of his friends.

...However, the New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who had been critical of the shooting, said that the judge had followed his duty to decide the case on evidence presented in his courtroom.

"There are no winners in a trial like this," he said in a statement. "An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief of those who knew and loved Sean Bell."

Oh, but there are winners in a trial like this. The winners are the officers who walked out of the courtroom, never to bear legal consequences for actions leading to the death of a young man who should be alive today. The officers will return to their lives. However changed those lives will be, they have them to return to.

They will return to their families. They will return to their children. They will very likely see those children grow up and — if they're fortunate enough — live to hold their grandchildren in their arms.Sean Bell will not, though there is no good reason why. So, yes, there are winners in this trial. And there are losers. To say "Nobody wins," diminishes the magnitude of loss experienced by Sean Bell's family.

Under the right circumstances, I could be Sean Bell and people could be expressing the same outrage.

Hundreds of angry people marched through Harlem on Saturday after the Rev. Al Sharpton promised to "close this city down" to protest the acquittals of three police detectives in the 50-shot barrage that killed a groom on his wedding day and wounded two friends.

"We strategically know how to stop the city so people stand still and realize that you do not have the right to shoot down unarmed, innocent civilians," Sharpton told an overflow crowd of several hundred people at his National Action Network office in the historically black Manhattan neighborhood. "This city is going to deal with the blood of Sean Bell."

Sharpton was joined by the family of 23-year-old Sean Bell — a black man — and a friend of Bell who was wounded in the 2006 shooting outside a Queens strip club. Two of the three officers charged were also black.

The rally at Sharpton's office was followed by a 20-block march down Malcolm X Boulevard and then across 125th Street, Harlem's main business thoroughfare, where some bystanders yelled out "Kill the police!"

Fifty of the marchers carried white placards bearing big black numbers for each of the police bullets fired at Bell and his friends.

Sharpton urged people to return for a meeting this coming week "to plan the day that we will close this city down" with the kind of "massive civil disobedience" once led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Why shouldn't the city come to a halt? Why shouldn't they march and shut down the city? Why shouldn't there be a peaceful demonstration of outrage; justified outrage at an absolute lack of justice?

Sure, depending on your perspective, the system worked just the way it's supposed to.

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution ensures that we have the right to a trial by a jury of our peers in a serious criminal case. But as with all rights, you can voluntarily, knowingly and intelligently waive that right and instead have your case tried by a judge.

That is what Michael Oliver, Marc Cooper and Gescard Isnora did. Many thought it was a gamble. It was a gamble that paid off.

Justice Arthur Cooperman, a 74-year-old bench veteran, acquitted all three detectives. The public is outraged. But it shouldn't be. Cooperman did what we ask every juror to do: consider and determine the facts of the case -- that is, what he believed to be the true facts -- from among all of the evidence in the case.

Again, that there are "no winners" in a case like this is a misstatement, at best, that serves as an attempt to blunt outrage. It's the flip side of calls to redirect that outrage at less specific targets.

...The history of policing in America really is the history of race relations. So, if the takeaway from this is that there's no problem because the police weren't convicted, then that would be tragic and that would be completely missing the point. This was an operation that was extremely problematic, and every effort has to be made to make sure it never happens again.

This really is a legal case more than your ordinary criminal case, because the law of self-defense is very favorable to the police. I think what they were trying to avoid was the possibility that a jury of individuals might say, well, with so many charges, we have to convict them of something. New York law allows police … to make pretty serious mistakes and still not be criminally liable, because the state has to disprove any justification beyond reasonable doubt--which is a very high standard. A judge has to put himself in the police's shoes and look at the case through their eyes. With the jury, the concern would be that the jury would say, well, let's compromise. But this judge saw that if you have doubts about whether the cops are completely justified, then, following the law, you must return a not guilty verdict, which is what he did.

...The larger message is that there's an over-reliance on the criminal-justice system, and that that has really fallen in a whole host of ways on minority Americans. This is just one example. And it's really not fair or decent to blame the cops--they're not the ones who create the system that we have. The outrage that should really be sparked by this event should be over how we have a system where so many minorities end up on the receiving end of our criminal-justice system? Why are they constantly on the receiving end? Can't we have a more balanced and a more just approach, and a more decent and humane approach?

The problem is that the target for outrage is amorphous, faceless, and too esoteric to inspire the kind of passion that a case like this one does.

And it does little to address the specific injustice in this case. Sure, a jury probably would have recognized that injustice. A jury, or at least a significant number of jurors, wouldn't have felt right about letting that injustice go un-addressed, and probably would have wanted to charge the officers with something, rather than let those responsible for Bell's death walk out of the courtroom and back to their lives.

Mayor Bloomberg can say "there are no winners" in a case like this, but there are victims; victims who have not and most likely will not get anything approaching justice.

Black male lives are meaningless in America," a female friend just texted me, and what can I say to that? Who's going to help Nicole Paultre Bell, Sean Bell's grieving fiancé, explain to their two young daughters that the men who killed their daddy are not going to be punished?

I am willing to bet that at least half of all African American families, somewhere in their history, have a story of at least one male family member who was lynched or murdered, or at least have passed down stories of what happed to young men in their community. They know, too, where an incident like this probably wouldn't happen, and who it wouldn't happen to.

Real talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper Eastside of Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the judge's decision, but the police officer's actions. Those shots would have never been fired at unarmed White people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case, but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no solution in sight.

My dad never spoke of it, but I'm willing to bet when he was growing up he'd known someone, or heard about someone, who met that same fate. He probably thought about that as he saw me about to walk out the door to drive back to school. I couldn't, in that moment, see myself through my father's eyes. Instead, he looked at me and saw all the others who'd gone before me; those who are now just plain gone.

Can my dad be blamed for thinking that so little had changed? Can anyone be blamed for thinking that the more things change, the more they stay the same?

William Bell showed the most frustration. At one point, while everyone stood and chanted, he sat stiff-jawed in his seat, his elbows on his knees and his fingers interlocking. Later, he stepped to the microphone and said, “Is this 1955 Alabama?”

Is it? It's easy to say "things like that don't happen any more." But we all know better. I was raised on it, and even when my father reminded me that I — as a black male — would not be treated the same as a white male my age, I knew enough not to even try to say he was wrong.

He wasn't wrong then, and he isn't wrong now. And if the day comes when I must have the same conversation with one of my sons that my father had with me that day, will I be wrong? Will that marrow-deep intuition — that knowing — finally be wrong?

It isn't, yet.

Taxing News for Tax Day

Terrance Heath — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 17:06:06 -0400

It's almost quitting time, and if you've put off your taxes and haven't paid them online, you've probably scoped out the post office in your neighborhood with the latest closing time. Or maybe you're planning to speed to the nearest one before it closes. Chances are there will be a line. Maybe a long one. So, here are some articles you can read while you're waiting in line.

But be careful. Reading these article immediately before or after paying your taxes may be hazardous to your mental health.

Warren Buffet, the third richest man in the world, pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
Henry Kravis, formerly of Bear Stearns, probably pays a lower tax rate than you (In other words, they pay a smaller percentage of their income in taxes than the rest of us.)
Meanwhile, low-income households will pay more in taxes, if they live in one of several states that are shifting the tax burden down the economic ladder by raising sales taxes and lowering property taxes.
At least they won't get stimulus checks. On the other hand, thanks to the stimulus package, they can now refinance their homes at a lower rate (or one of them, anyway), and borrow money on the cheap.
Lest you think guys like Buffet and Kravis are "self-made" billionaires who deserve a tax break because of ... well ... because they're billionaires, Harry Moroz will remind you that no billionaire is an island. No fortune is made alone, without support from the infrastructure investments funded by tax dollars, as Corrine Ramsey points out. So, the next time you hear that our economy would be nowhere without them, remember they might not be quite so rich without ... well ... us.
Oh, and not only do they pay a lower tax rate than you or me, but chances are they're among the 20% of CEOs whose taxes are paid by their companies, in part if not in full.
If they're in the home-building industry, their companies also just got a $6 billion tax break from the Senate — in the Senate's foreclosure relief bill. That tax-break, by the way, will actually cost the federal government more than $25 billion in the next three years.
If their taxes are picked up by their companies, the IRS probably won't look too closely. The agency is auditing fewer big companies (worth more than $250 million), and focusing on medium-sized companies (with assets of less than $50 million).
I don't know if they're on the list of "more than 100" tax evaders with accounts in Lichtenstein.
If they're not, then maybe they're among the big names who owe big time tax bills, but seem to be able to operate successfully without paying.
If not, they can still go offshore and skirt taxes, like one top Iraq contractor.
Oh well, there's at least a chance they'll pay a bit more in taxes if they're gay.
And it doesn't look like they have anything to worry about from the IRS. The IRS is losing $37 million by using private collection agents who cost more to use than they collect in taxes. (And they still pocket up to 24% in commissions.)
Finally, if all of this news has got you even more stressed out as you stand in line at the post office, just close you're eyes and imagine going on the $3 trillion shopping spree. Just don't think what we can't do with that money, because that's what we're paying for the war in Iraq.
Speaking of which, there's a good chance you'll use you tax return to pay bills. That is, if you get one.

Enjoy!

Paying the Bush War Bill, Defaulting on Our Future

Terrance Heath — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:02:40 -0400

It's almost a shame that the subprime mortgage bonanza burned out before the sun finally sets on the George W. Bush administration. After all, they managed to lure Americans into a war we didn't need and couldn't afford, then stuck us with a ballooning bill and never ending payments. Reborn as a brokerage firm dealing in subprime mortgages, this administration could have made a killing.

Don't take my word for it. Just have a look at your bill.

What could your family do right now with $100 a month? How about a little more then $100 a month? Got an answer? Good. You won't be doing anything with that $100, because that's you're share of the monthly bill for George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

It started out as a statement Sen. Barack Obama made at a campaign stop. Then the St. Petersburg Times picked up on it, decided to do the math, and discovered that the price was right.

“When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war,” he said in the speech in Charleston, W.Va.

The figure came from The Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict, a new book by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda J. Blimes. The number checked out, but lacked a footnote. So the Times called up one of the authors.

There was no footnote for the $100 estimate, so we called Bilmes to ask how she had calculated it. She said they took the Bush administration’s 2008 request for war funding – $196-billion – and divided it by 12 to get a monthly cost. That works out to $16-billion for both wars and about $12-billion just for the Iraq portion.

Then, she and Stiglitz divided those figures by the number of U.S. households and came up with $138 for both wars and slightly more than $100 for Iraq alone, she said.

We double-checked the authors' sources and math, and found they were right.

Indeed, the Bush administration request for 2008 was $196-billion for both wars, with $159-billion going to Iraq, according to a summary by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. A recent Census Bureau report said there were 116-million households. So that works out to about $140 per month for both wars and about $114 for Iraq alone. (Our numbers are slightly higher than Bilmes and Stiglitz because we used the latest estimates from CRS and a newer and slighter higher count for households.)

To understand how the selling of the Iraq war would make any broker of subprime mortgages proud, you have to remember how the Bush administration lowballed the costs of the war at $50 billion. You have to keep in mind that the Pentagon has overspent by $295 billion on weapons systems that are over budget and behind schedule, and the Army made a $300 million deal with a 22-year-old contractor to send 40-year-old ammunition to Afghanistan. You might also consider that, with these headlines still fresh, the State department just renewed Blackwater's contract, despite investigations into tax violations and the murders of Iraqi civilians.

The Bush administration's crackdown on contractor fraud, by forcing companies to report abuse of taxpayer money, has a major loophole: it doesn't apply in Iraq and Afghanistan, or anywhere else overseas. House Democrats are demanding documents related to loophole, in order to figure out just how it slipped into a plan to protect taxpayer money. In turn, the Bush administration is delaying the delivery of the documents. (The White House says it is "working with the committee" and plans to provide a response to its request "in the near term.") There's enough deception and disinformation — from the still-missing WMDs to the imaginary Saddam/al Qaida link — in the above to warm impress even the most crooked subprime mortgage broker.

Meanwhile, we continue to pay and the price keeps going up.

So, what could your family do with $114 per month? Better question, what could your family do with $1,368 in extra cash this year? That's pretty much your household's share of the Iraq war bill. It's slightly more than the $1,200 a married couple will get when the "stimulus" checks are finally mailed out. (The rest of us will get some where between $300 and $600.)

And if you're one of the 67% of Americans who think the Iraq war contributed to the economic mess we're in, President Bush says "just 'til those stimulus checks kick in."

Of course the "stimulus" will only "kick in" once. The cost of the Iraq war will kick in over and over again. Even as Gen. Petraeus goes to Washington to meet with the "shareholders" of this venture we're all paying for, somebody left their copy of the business plan lying around, and news has leaked out that we're in Iraq indefinitely.

A confidential draft agreement covering the future of US forces in Iraq, passed to the Guardian, shows that provision is being made for an open-ended military presence in the country.

The draft strategic framework agreement between the US and Iraqi governments, dated March 7 and marked "secret" and "sensitive", is intended to replace the existing UN mandate and authorizes the US to "conduct military operations in Iraq and to detain individuals when necessary for imperative reasons of security" without time limit.

The authorization is described as "temporary" and the agreement says the US "does not desire permanent bases or a permanent military presence in Iraq". But the absence of a time limit or restrictions on the US and other coalition forces - including the British - in the country means it is likely to be strongly opposed in Iraq and the US.

Given the limited options the next president — whomever he or she is — will face limited options in Iraq, we're probably not going to start withdrawal on January 20, 2009. Probably not even January 21. So, what can your family do with, say, $4,104 in the next three years, long after the "stimulus" check has run out?

Well, take your pick:

If you're a part of the middle class — where income has increased just just 1.3 percent in eight years, compared to the 9.1% increase for the top 1/5 of the population — you'd probably use it to pay some bills, as with your one-shot stimulus check.
If you're one of hundreds of thousands of Americans taking second jobs to make ends meet, you might work fewer hours and get more sleep.
If you're one of the growing number of Americans who are putting off retirement, because their home equity has plummeted, you might use it to pad your retirement when/if you get to enjoy it.
You might also use it to pay some past due bills, if you've fallen behind 30-days or more, as Americans have done in record numbers recently.
If you're one of many Americans cutting back on driving these days, chances are some of it will go into your tank as gas prices hit a record high. (Meanwhile Iraq is swimming in a huge oil revenue surplus, and even the insurgents are getting a cut.)
If you have health insurance, you still might need it to pay for your increasingly expensive health care and the rising price of your prescriptions.
If you're one of the 232,000 who lost jobs in the firs three months of 2008, you'll need it just to cover the rising cost of food, to supplement what food stamps and food banks don't cover.
If you're a student, or have kids you'd like to send to college, that money might come in handy as student loan guarantors go belly up, and the credit crunch makes student loans harder to get from the lenders that are left.

Of course, none of us will get a bill in the mail this month, and send in a check to pay for the Iraq war. Nor will we receive some kind of collective bill for this month's $12 billion payment. But that doesn't mean that we won't pay. It certainly doesn't mean that we aren't paying.

If more and more of us believe that the Iraq war caused the economic slowdown and that leaving Iraq will help the economy, it's because we pay — not with checks, but with what the monetary cost of this war (there are other costs, paid by our soldiers and by Iraqi civilians) prevents us from doing for our communities and our country.

What we spend on Iraq in one month could buy more than a year's health care for 4 million children.
What we spend on Iraq in one month could repair our most critical levees and dams.
Just over half of the $3 trillion Iraq has cost us so far could pay for the $1.6 trillion in infrastructure repairs we'll need in the next five years.
What we spend on Iraq in one day could pay for 6,883 high school graduates to attend college at public universities, for four fully-funded years. (So one month of what we spend in Iraq could do the same for one month, or 30 days, could send more than 206,000 high school graduates to college.)
With what we spend on Iraq in one day we could hire 7,030 new public school teachers.
We could have rebuilt New Orleans 4.4 times.

Whether we're in Iraq for three more years or 100 years (in which case the theoretical cost to your household — perhaps to be inherited by your children, my children, and their children — would be something like $136,800) these are things we will not do, and can not do, as long as we pay the bill for George W. Bush's war.

Being unable to do what's needed for our families, our communities, and our country is the price. And like so many our our debts, it will only continue to rise. Until, and unless, we decide that we — and our children, and their children — will not pay that bill anymore.

Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up

Terrance Heath — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 11:06:49 -0400

Despite an attempt to take a bigger bite, the watchdog came up short once more, going 0-for-5 on the Sunday shows.

On Meet the Press, Sen. Bob Casey was not asked about the Senate's comprise bill on foreclosure relief, in which actual funding for foreclosure relief was compromised away while $6 billion in tax breaks for the building industry remained intact. The discussion was mostly about the Democratic presidential race.

While the general topic of poverty came up during the discussion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy, Michael Eric Dyson was not specifically asked how Dr. King would address the current economic crisis, which is hitting minority communities particularly hard.

On ABC's This Week despite the focus on Iraq, Sen. Jim Webb was not asked who should be accountable for the $295 the Pentagon overspent on weapons that are significantly behind schedule on deliver.

Though the recent events in Basra came up, Sen. Lindsey Graham was not asked about his 2006 statement that Iraq was "near chaos," and whether he still believed that.

Finally, on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain was not asked why — after both Democratic candidates did so — he failed to propose an agenda to continue Dr. King's unfinished work, instead of merely apologizing for opposing the federal holiday in King's memory.

Weekend Watchdog

Terrance Heath — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 18:31:22 -0400

Every Friday in our Weekend Watchdog feature, we post suggested questions for scheduled Sunday guests. You can add your own questions in the comment thread. We'll also include contact information for the shows, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

And on Sunday at 4 PM ET, tune in to Air America Radio's "Seder on Sundays" program, where I'll offer the Weekend Watchdog Wrap-Up.

For Michael Eric Dyson (NBC, Meet The Press ): In a recent Newsweek interview, you said that black Americans have not yet "made it to the Promised Land: "Middle-class blacks are closer; they are enjoying the fruits of their labors and extraordinary access by virtue of hard work, but one-quarter of African-Americans are still mired in poverty and are closed out of the broader circle of American privilege."

How would Dr. King address the current subprime mortgage crisis which has hit minority communities hardest —communities that were targeted by lenders —at a time when the racial wealth divide is getting wider?

For Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa.: Along with Senators Murray, Schumer, and Brown, you offered an amendment adding $100 million in mortgage counseling funds to the Senate's compromise foreclosure relief bill.

Does this offset the $6 billion in tax rebates for the home building industry? Does it make up for $4 billion in grants for cities to buy foreclose properties, which was scaled by during the compromise?

For Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va. (ABC, This Week): You joined Sen. Clinton in saying that the Department of Defense report that some its body armor may not have met safety standards "underscores the need" for the Government Accounting Office to complete its investigation quickly.

The GAO just issued a scathing report that the Pentagon has overspent by $295 billion on weapons that are behind schedule, and that the Department of Defense has shown little improvement despite six years of assessments

Who's accountable for this? Who should be?

For Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.: You criticized Speaker Nancy Pelosi for warning Gen Petraeus not to "put a shine" on recent events in Iraq.

But in 2006, you said Iraq was "near chaos." After recent events in Basra, do you still think so?

For Sen. John McCain, R-Az: (Fox, FSN): On the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Sen. Clinton proposed a cabinet position devoted to ending poverty. Sen. Obama said we have a politics "too small" for the challenges we face. You apologized for opposing the federal holiday in Dr. King's Memory.

Why haven't you proposed an agenda to complete Dr. King's unfinished work?

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