Archive for April, 2022

The Long Recent History Of Russian Brutality

Monday, April 4th, 2022

Hungarian-born Imre Nagy had been a committed communist since shortly after the Russian revolution of 1917. From 1933 to 1941, he served the Soviet NKVD secret police as an informer. During that period, he denounced more than 200 colleagues, who were then purged and arrested.  Fifteen of them were executed. Nagy was no Mother Teresa.

The Soviets installed Nagy as Chairman of Hungary’s Council of Ministers in 1953, and over the next two years, beginning to recognize the repression of which he had long been a part, he tried to reduce the harsher elements of communist rule. The Russians could not tolerate this, and they ousted him in 1955.

On 23 October 1956, the people of Hungary declared independence from the Soviet Union and threw out Russia’s puppet government. They then named the sixty-year-old Nagy Prime Minister. In something akin to a Road to Damascus conversion, the now reformist Nagy took full control of the government, admitted non-communist politicians, dissolved the ÁVH secret police, promised democratic reforms, and unilaterally withdrew Hungary from the Warsaw Pact on 1 November. On 4 November, the Soviets launched a massive invasion, swiftly regained control, and deposed Nagy, who took refuge in the Yugoslavian embassy. Two weeks later, after giving assurances for his safety, the Russians lured Nagy out of the embassy and immediately arrested and deported him to Romania. Two years later, he was tried for treason, found guilty (there’s a surprise), and immediately executed.

In the 66 years since Russia obliterated the freedom dreams of the Hungarian people, the Kremlin has repeatedly demonstrated that its approach to putting down dissent in Hungary was not an anomaly; it was the rule. Since then, it has been swift and brutal in crushing any action it interprets as a threat to its hegemony. The invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 offers another example.

In early 1968, the Russian puppet leader Antonin Novotny was deposed as the head of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, and was replaced by Alexander Dubcek. The Dubcek government ended censorship in early 1968, and this new freedom resulted in a public expression of broad-based support for reform in which government and  Communist Party policies could be debated openly. In April, the Czech Government issued a formal plan for further reforms.

Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet Union’s General Secretary, could not allow this, and on 20 August Warsaw Pact forces invaded and occupied Prague. Over the two days it took to destroy the Prague Spring, the Russians killed 137 Czechoslovakian civilians and seriously wounded 500. The Kremlin justified the use of force in Prague under what would become known as the Brezhnev Doctrine, which stated that Moscow had the right to intervene in any country where a communist government had been threatened. This doctrine also became the primary justification for the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, the nine-year war it eventually lost after seeing 15,000 of its troops killed and 35,000 wounded. Two million Afghans died during the the war.

As the Soviet Union was collapsing, the people of Chechnya, which the USSR had controlled since 1921, broke away. Russia invaded and began the brutalization of the Chechen people and the destruction of the capital city, Grozny. In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny “the most destroyed city on earth.” The Russians killed between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians in a little over a month.

After the fall of communism in 1989, and with the exception of the Chechnya invasion, the evil Genie was crammed back into its bottle for the next 11 years, during which capitalism and democracy emerged and the oligarchs were born. This ended when Russians elected Stalin doppelganger Vladimir Putin to the presidency in 2000.

As I have written previously, over time it has become more and more easy to mistake Putin for a modern-day Ivan the Terrible. On his watch and at his direction, Russia invaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia in 2008, tore off a part of the country, and invented the “states” of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in the process destroying towns and murdering civilians before withdrawing most of its troops. Next came the Syrian city of Aleppo, which Russia reduced to dust in 2016. There, Russian troops destroyed hospitals and schools, choked off basic supplies, and killed aid workers and hundreds of civilians in just a few days.

Does any of this sound familiar?

And now we have Ukraine, where the world seems amazingly surprised to see Putin’s Russia trying to eliminate an entire country using the same barbaric methods it has employed so often since 1956.

It appears Vladimir Putin sees his mission in life is to recreate Imperial Russia with himself as Tsar. His tactics are not new. As Ukrainian President Zelenskyy says, Putin will throw soldiers at Ukraine “like logs into a train’s furnace.”

The world did nothing to punish the Soviet Union for Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan. It did nothing, absolutely nothing, to punish Putin for Grozny, Georgia or Aleppo.

The Ukrainians are fighting with patriotism, bravery, and incredible determination. Ten million have been displaced. Russian forces have blown to oblivion cities, hospitals (at least five of them), schools and theatres. Just as in Grozny, when Russian troops withdraw they leave the bodies of dead civilians lying in the streets for the world to see. Yesterday we learned about the atrocities in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, where, after the Russians withdrew, Ukrainians found more than 400 innocent civilians who had been killed, some with their hands tied behind their backs. These are war crimes, and after World War II, we executed German commanders for doing that sort of thing.

Neither the U.S. nor NATO will put a single soldier on the ground or a single plane in the air to overwhelm what appears to be an inferior Russian army. Instead, we send weapons and supplies. I’m of two minds about that, but I understand the argument that joining the fight might make a terrible situation worse, if that’s possible. Moreover, public support for that just isn’t there. Seventy-five percent of Americans are against it.

So, we are reduced to fighting with sanctions as our weapons. To me, that seems like throwing a strawberry at a battleship expecting to sink it. But right now, what do we have except the strawberries?

 

 

 

 

Rick Scott Is Going To Rescue America!

Friday, April 1st, 2022

Rick Scott is the junior U.S. Senator from Florida. Elected in 2018, Scott has now served in Congress for 39 months. In November, 2020, his Senate GOP colleagues elected him Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). His job is to get Republicans elected and reelected to the Senate.

Prior to the Senate, Scott was a two-term governor of Florida, succeeded by Republican Ron DeSantis. Before that, he was a businessman. We’ll get back to that later.

You would think the Chairman of the NRSC would be lock-step with Republican leadership in the strategy to take the Senate from the tenuous hold of the Democrats in the upcoming mid-terms. But this does not appear to be the case. Senator Scott is marching to his own drummer.

On Thursday, after no consultation with or cooperation from Senate GOP elites, Scott officially unveiled and launched the Rick Scott, 31 page, 11 Point Plan to Rescue America. The Rescue Plan has 117 agenda items.

This is not a surprise to GOP Senate Leader Mitch McConnell. Scott’s Plan has been discussed for more than a month, and as far back as 1 March McConnell publicly rebuked Scott for it. McConnell is fixated on making the mid-terms a referendum on President Biden, not on laying out a Republican plan he and the GOP establishment would have to spend the entire mid-term campaign defending. He wants Biden playing defense. Scott, on the other hand, wants America to know what Republicans will do if given control of the Senate. Right at the beginning of his Rescue Plan he says, “Americans deserve to know what we will do if given the chance to govern.” If Scott gets his way, now they will. And you have to hand it to him; he certainly doesn’t tap dance around the many issues facing the country.

Before diving into his 11 point, 117 agenda item plan, Scott lays out what the future will look like if nothing changes:

The militant left now controls the entire federal government…Among the things they plan to change or destroy are: American history, patriotism, border security, the nuclear family, gender, traditional morality, capitalism, fiscal responsibility, opportunity, rugged individualism, Judeo-Christian values, dissent, free speech, color blindness, law enforcement, religious liberty, parental involvement in public schools, and private ownership of firearms.

Wow! We need a plan to stop all that!

A few of Senator Scott’s 117 agenda items, guaranteed to be saliva-producing red meat for the trumpiest of trumpsters caught my eye.  For instance,

We will secure our border, finish building the wall, and name it after President Donald Trump.

Kids in public schools will say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem, and honor the American Flag. We must foster national unity.

Teacher tenure at public schools must be eliminated

We will not allow political or social indoctrination in our schools. Teachers who refuse to comply will need to find new jobs.

We will close the federal Department of Education. Education is a state function.

Government will not ask American citizens to disclose their race, ethnicity, or skin color on any government form.

Our military will engage in ZERO diversity training, teachings on critical race theory, or any woke ideological indoctrination that divides our troops.

We will force prosecutors to prosecute. At present, many prosecutors in big cities are allowing criminals to go free with no justice, and they are doing it on purpose.

Immigrants will not be eligible to collect unemployment benefits or welfare for the first 7 years after arriving in the US.

No government assistance unless you are disabled or aggressively seeking work.

If Congress does not pass a budget, the members of Congress do not get paid. Full stop.

Other than disaster relief, the federal government must stop spending money on non-essential state and local projects until the budget is balanced.

All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax.

Enact term limits for the Washington ruling class – 12-year limits for Congress and government bureaucrats.

All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.

We will immediately cut the IRS funding and workforce by 50%.

Humans are born male and female, there are two genders, and to deny that is to deny science. No government forms will include questions about “gender identity” or “sexual preference.”

We will protect women’s sports by banning biological males from competing.

No tax dollars will be used to pay for any diversity training or other woke indoctrination that is hostile to faith.

We will not pay any dues to the United Nations or any international organization that undermines the national interests of the USA.

The weather is always changing. We take climate change seriously, but not hysterically. We will not adopt nutty policies that harm our economy or our jobs.

There are a few difficulties with a number of these policy tectonic changes. Ending Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in five years being among the biggest. Also, Scott’s colleagues in Congress might have something to say about going without pay and getting sent home after 12 years. Increasing taxes on 50% of Americans may prove challenging for Republicans on the campaign trail. Pulling billions of dollars from the states until we have a balanced budget might irritate a few Republican governors. And reducing the IRS’s funding and currently understaffed workforce by 50% would have brought tears to the eyes of mobster Al Capone.*

Although Senator Scott’s plan is dead on arrival, the problem is it arrived in the first place. It’s not about getting Republican senators elected; it’s about Rick Scott.

And what about Rick Scott? As I mentioned above, before getting into government, Scott was a “businessman.” He co-founded Columbia Hospital Corporation in 1987. Columbia later merged with another corporation to form Columbia/HCA, which eventually became the nation’s largest private for-profit health care company with Scott as Chief Executive. According to The New York Times, “[in] less than a decade, Mr. Scott had built a company he founded with two small hospitals in El Paso into the world’s largest health care company – a $20 billion giant with about 350 hospitals, 550 home health care offices and scores of other medical businesses in 38 states.”

Sounds good, right? Quite the businessman.

But there were problems. In March of 1997, the FBI, the IRS, and the Department of Health and Human Services arrived with search warrants. Four months later, Scott was forced to resign by his Board. He didn’t leave willingly, but when he did, he left with a settlement $9.88 million and 10 million shares of stock worth $350 million. Columbia/HCA pleaded guilty to 14 felonies and agreed to a $600+ million fine in what was at the time the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history.

The company admitted to systematically overcharging the government by claiming marketing costs as reimbursable, by striking illegal deals with home care agencies, and by filing false data about use of hospital space. It also admitted to fraudulently billing Medicare and other health programs by inflating the seriousness of diagnoses and to giving doctors partnerships in company hospitals as a kickback for the doctors referring patients to HCA. It filed false cost reports, fraudulently billing Medicare for home health care workers, and paid kickbacks in the sale of home health agencies and to doctors to refer patients. In addition, it gave doctors “loans” never intending to be repaid, free rent, free office furniture, and free drugs from hospital pharmacies.

And that’s not all. In 2002, HCA agreed to pay the government an additional $631 million, plus interest, and $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims. The entire fiasco cost the company $1.7 billion.

All on Senator Scott’s watch.

There’s one last twist. In a civil suit deposition connected to the case (there were a lot of civil lawsuits), Senator Scott invoked his 5th Amendment rights 75 times.

Somehow, all of that has been forgotten, and Scott has managed to be a governor, a Senator, and, I’m guessing, a man, a businessman, who has his eyes on the biggest prize of all, the one up for grabs in 2024.

Rescue Plan, indeed.

*Capone was a nationally famous, Chicago-based killer and crime boss who went to prison in 1931 for tax evasion.