About Peter Radford

Posts by Peter Radford:

/ , / /

Non-Health Care

I have arrived at the conclusion that the only way to get people to discuss the utter dysfunctionality of American health care is to avoid calling it a system. It isn’t. It is a shambles. In case you missed it, health care is now the hottest topic in corporate board rooms. American companies are being crippled by rising health care costs and are having to cut programs and benefits as a result. The cuts are presented as ‘choice’, as in ‘we are giving our employees more choice’. The point is that staying healthy is not a choice, but an imperative. The decision to hire a doctor or visit the hospital is often made under pressure and with limited opportunity to exercise considered choice. The notion that health care is a product that people can comparison shop for is fatuous nonsense. The people who peddle choice in health care are the free market types who cannot abide the idea that government has a role to play in anything: I have the image of economist professors deciding whether to get a broken leg fixed or to spend that same money on something else. After all they argue that health care is a choice like all other economic decisions. Rubbish. Still, those of us who advocate a role for government now have an important ally in big buiness. Savvy business types are now realizing that government should get involved because corporations cannot be both businesses and health care providers. It’s not what they are supposed to do, and they can no longer afford it. As business squeezes it employees [can we all say Wal Mart?], political pressure will build. Then after we have fixed it we can dignify the mess we have by calling it a system. Just don’t call it that now.

/ /

2,000 and counting

The sad fact is that we have just passed the 2,000 mark for U.S. fatalities in Iraq. This grim tally surely gives us pause to ask once more: why? The pretexts for war given to us by the Administration have all long ago been exposed as either misleading or wrongheaded: there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was no terror link, and Saddam was not about to attack the U.S.. We were deceived. Duped. Lied to. However you couch it the outcome is the same, the people of the U.S. [and the rest of the world] were taken for a monumental ride by a group of conspiritorial ‘cabalists’ hell bent on invading Iraq. They saw no wrong in cooking the books to take advantage of our post-9/11 fears, and they brooked no opposition [see Valerie Plame]. Now they have the blood of over 2,000 U.S. military men and women on their hands, not to mention that of the 30,000 or more Iraqis who have died in this unnecessary war. Are they contrite? Not at all. Are they guilty? Absolutely. Shame on us all for for falling for the scam.

/ /

From Cheney’s lips to Libby’s Ears?

Now it turns out [at least according to the New York times] that Libby learned Valerie Plame’s name from Dick Cheney and not from reporters. Whoops, looks like Dick’s in deeper than even I thought! All these leaks of information in the last week or so of a hitherto lips-sealed investigation are mighty fishy: sounds like poor old Libby is being set up as the ultimate fall guy. But from Dick’s lips? Can we say ‘unindicted co-conspirator’?

/ , /

New Fed Chairman … 2

The nomination of Ben Bernanke as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board shows a sharp improvement in President Bush’s nominating skills: Bernanke has garnered nothing but praise from anyone who is both interested and knowledgeable, even including such anti-Bush folks as Paul Krugman. The only people huffing at all are the right wingers who presumably wanted someone less mainstream [or more political]. So let’s give Bush credit: unlike his Supreme court gaffe with Harriet Miers, this time at least he didn’t nominate his personal accountant.

/ /

Washington lies …

The more I read about the infamous Plame scandal [or should I call it the Rove/Libby/Cheney/Rumsfeld scandal?], the more annoyed I get. The Republicans are already trying to spin this as a minor affair. They are saying that it is a case of politics as usual and that indictments would cramp politics rather than punish crimes. That is plainly nonsense. The central facts of the case appear to be that a small cabal of conspirators lied and connived: they lied to Congress and they connived to ruin the reputations of anyone with enough gumption to resist. The object of their activities was to start a war for which there was no clear ‘need’, other, of course, than the neo-con aganda. Sending a country to war on the basis of fabrication and innuendo is immoral, doing it by lying to Congress surely is a crime. That’s besides the obvious crime of ‘outing’ an undercover agent [which is made worse by the nefarious motive: political advantage]. You cannot spin that away. The Republicans will have to find a way to wriggle out of this one other than simply saying it was all politics as usual, and the electorate will have to wake up so it isn’t duped again.

«< 397 398 399 400 401 >