Archive for the ‘International relations’ Category

A Pause In Israel’s Judicial Changes, But At What Price?

Friday, March 31st, 2023

Since Israel’s founding in 1948, the U.S. and it have created a bilateral relationship based on tangible, steadily increasing security and economic interests, not just shared values. Israel has become a lynchpin in our efforts to achieve stability in the middle east (Our success in that regard has been dubious, at best). In fact, at the final presidential debate of the 2012 campaign season, President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney mentioned Israel some 30 times, more than any other country except Iran. Both candidates called the Jewish state “a true friend,” pledging to stand with it through thick and thin. And we’ve done that. Since the end of World War II, Israel has been the largest cumulative recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, assistance totaling more than $158 billion (non-inflation adjusted).

Unlike most democracies, Israel lacks a written Constitution, functioning, rather, under what are called “Basic Laws.”

The Basic Laws, enacted at various times between 1958 and 2018, number thirteen and are mostly rather vague. The 8th Basic Law, The Judiciary, enacted in 1984, lays out common sensible judicial requirements about honesty, transparency, judicial probity and process, and the like.

The Basic Laws place a heavy burden on the country’s judiciary and its Supreme Court, the High Court of Justice, making it the final arbiter. By nature, the Court is always involved in a tense relationship with its sister institution, the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. In this regard, both are critical pillars in Israel’s foundational house of democracy.

Four months ago, a coalition comprised of the conservative Likud Party and five other far right and ultra-orthodox Parties won a national election and returned Benjamin Netanyahu to power as Prime Minister for the sixth time, despite his standing trial in three current corruption cases for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. The coalition has a one vote majority with 61 seats out of 120 Knesset members.

Immediately upon taking control, the Coalition introduced a number of judicial law changes aimed at weakening the Supreme Court, chief among them one that would enable the Knesset to overrule Supreme Court decisions by a simple majority, which is currently what Netanyahu’s coalition enjoys. The reason for this seems to be that the Prime Minister’s coalition partners, without whom he cannot survive, blame the Court for stifling the establishment of new settlements in the West Bank and for being lackeys of the left. Their anger about this has been growing for years, but until now they have been unable to do anything about it. Entering a coalition with the weakened Netanyahu provides the opportunity they have long sought. If they are successful and this particular change were to become law, Israel’s Supreme Court would no longer be the “final arbiter.” Rather, it would serve at the pleasure of the Knesset.

This is a monumental change in the 8th Basic Law, in which Section 17 says,

“A verdict of a court in the first instance, may be appealed by right, save a verdict of the Supreme Court.” (emphasis added)

Further, Section 22, entitled, Stability of the law, reads,

“Emergency regulations do not have the power to change this law, to temporarily suspend its validity, or to subject it to conditions.”

Clearly, the authors of Basic Law 8 intended for the judiciary’s Supreme Court to be independent and unfettered.

The proposed judicial changes, like an oncoming train wreck, could be catastrophic for Israeli democracy.

Last week, the Knesset passed a portion of the proposed changes — a measure making it harder to remove Netanyahu, after which the prime minister announced his intention to take a more hands-on role in pushing the reforms, something he had guaranteed he would not do given the cited corruption charges and his ongoing Trials.¹

Hundreds of thousands of citizens have taken to the streets every weekend in protest. The Army, heavily dependent on highly-trained reservists, who have threatened not to obey orders if the judicial changes actually pass into law, has warned that national security is in serious jeopardy. All of Israel’s western allies have told Netanyahu he is making a terrible mistake by continuing to push for Knesset approval of the judicial changes.

Last Saturday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has become increasingly concerned that a growing number of reservists — including cyber warfare teams, pilots, and intelligence officers — have been skipping training duty in recent weeks because of the proposed changes, publicly urged Netanyahu to at least wait on the reforms until the Knesset returns from recess in a month, arguing pushing forward would make Israel vulnerable to attack. “This is a clear, immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state,” he said. “For the sake of our security, for the sake of our unity, it is our duty to return to the arena of dialogue.”

For this candid advice, Netanyahu promptly fired him.

The most vociferously far-right of his coalition partners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, vowed to resign from the government if Netanyahu halts the judicial change plan. If Ben-Gvir resigned, the coalition would collapse, which would leave Netanyahu less protected with respect to his corruption charges.

That may have been the one-too-many straws that broke the enervated camel’s back. On Monday, in an address to the nation, Netanyahu announced a pause in the judicial change agenda. Not a stop; a pause, and only until the Knesset returns from its April recess. In his speech, Netanyahu blasted protesters for urging Reservists to avoid reporting for duty and Reservists for heeding that advice, saying, “The State of Israel can’t exist without the Israel Defense Forces, and the IDF cannot exist if there’s refusal to serve. Such refusal will be the end of our country.”

It would appear that Netanyahu’s coalition partners have him right where they want him. Before Mondays “pause” speech Ben-Gvir announced he would not resign and that he had agreed to back Netanyahu’s call for a pause in exchange for the Prime Minister’s promise to create an Israeli “National Guard” under Ben-Givr’s control.

This was confirmed when Ben Gvir circulated a letter to media outlets, signed by Netanyahu, in which the prime minister promised to raise the issue of forming such a body within the National Security Ministry in the cabinet meeting two days from now. Achieved through nothing but extortion, what would a new National Guard mean when placed under the control of Israel’s most far-right cabinet extremist? It seems a terrible price Netanyahu is willing to pay to stay in power.

Left out of any of these discussions are the 1.6 million Arab citizens of Israel who make up 17.2% of the population. Whatever rules, compromises, or judicial changes come out of this mess will affect them in a tangible and meaningful way, which could be far more impactful than the current political hijinks.

My modest proposal is that Israel immediately get to work on writing a constitution, as most modern democracies have done. They could dust off the one John Adams wrote for Massachusetts in 1780. It’s the oldest in the world and the model for America’s. It has stood the test of time. If Netanyahu were to announce such a move, saying the judicial changes are on a longer pause pending completion of the draft constitution, the warring factions may see the benefit of open dialogue rather than polemical threats.

Call me Pollyanna.

__________________

¹ Israel’s attorney general issued a sharp rebuke on Friday, warning that Netanyahu had broken the law by announcing his direct involvement in the overhaul while facing criminal charges — a stern statement that raised the specter of a constitutional crisis.

Updates On Recent Stories I Covered

Friday, March 3rd, 2023

Israel’s judicial crisis continues as far right bills advance in Knesset

In mid-February I wrote about Israel’s descent into judicial chaos.

Israel had gone through three elections in late 2022 to elect a new government. To regain power, the historically conservative Likud Party, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, joined in a coalition with five right-wing and religiously conservative parties, some of which are hugely influenced, perhaps dominated, by Israel’s ultra-Orthodox community, known as the Haredim. The coalition won the third election, and Netanyahu became Prime Minister for the sixth time. Six days after the election the government filed bills in the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, to severely limit the power of the country’s Supreme Court in that:

  1. A simple majority in the Knesset, 61 votes out of 120, would have the power to annul Supreme Court rulings. This would enable the government of the day to pass legislation without fear of it being struck down. It is called the “override” provision, in that the Knesset could override a Supreme Court ruling;
  2. The Supreme Court’s ability to revoke administrative decisions by the government on the grounds of “reasonability” (what would a reasonable person say about this?), would end, significantly decreasing judicial oversight; and,
  3. For the Supreme Court to strike down a Knesset-passed law would require 80% of the court’s 15 judges voting for such a ruling. But even if that were to happen, a simple Knesset majority could “override” the ruling.

At the time I wrote about this there was a singular complication: Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial, actually three trials, for corruption. If he is convicted of anything and appeals, the coalition government could override any Supreme Court ruling. Some might say this places Netanyahu at the mercy of his coalition partners.

Update

In order for these measure to become law requires passing three readings in Knesset committees. Last week, in a long and tense plenary session, the combined bill passed its first reading in the Knesset. Yesterday, the Knesset’s Constitution Committee advanced the bill for its second reading.

The judicial crisis was only made worse last Sunday when, in revenge for the killing of two Jewish Israeli brothers as they drove through the West Bank town of Hawara, near the city of Nablus, a mob of Jewish settlers attacked the town, torching 36 homes and 15 cars. The Palestinian Red Crescent reported one death and 98 Palestinians wounded in the attack. Three ambulances were also destroyed.

The attack was met with a public outpouring of support from settler leaders and Knesset members. Moreover, the Israeli coalition Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a firebrand of the first order, told the settlers, “Hawara must be destroyed.” It nearly was.

The U.S. condemned the violence in unusually strong terms. “Just as we condemn Palestinian incitement to violence, we condemn these provocative remarks that also amount to incitement to violence,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

It does not seem too much of a stretch to conclude the new coalition government, with its uber-nationalistic sway, has emboldened the highly nationalistic settlers who continue to gobble up land and force Palestinians into ever more woeful conditions.

Israel’s other western allies, for example the UK and France, have also condemned Sunday’s violence and, along with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, have told Mr. Netanyahu—to his face—that the judicial reforms he is championing are a serious threat to the future of their relationship. So far, the Prime Minister and his coalition partners are calling their bluff.

At this point, it does not appear this situation will end well—for anyone.

Mississippi extends Medicaid postpartum coverage duration

In February, I wrote about maternal mortality in America. Bottom line: It’s the highest in the developed world. At that time, I wrote:

Federal law requires Medicaid to cover postpartum care for only 60 days following birth, which is one of the prime reasons for our lagging maternal mortality global performance. In the other OECD countries, mothers not only receive postpartum care for a year, they also average 51 weeks of paid maternity leave. (The U.S. is the only OECD country with no requirement for paid maternity leave.)

The  American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) created an option for states to extend postpartum coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries from 60 days to a full year. Under the Act, the option was scheduled to expire in 2027. Under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023, the 12-month extended Medicaid postpartum coverage option was made permanent. Now once states take up the option to extend the postpartum period from 60 days to 12 months, federal matching funds will continue to flow. Thus far, 35 states have already taken advantage of the option and the federal cash that goes with it.

Nine other states have legislation pending to follow the 35. Mississippi is one of them.

Update

I can’t tell you how happy I am to report that yesterday the Mississippi legislature passed the postpartum permanent extension, and Governor Tate Reeves signed it into law. Reeves had been opposed to the measure, but had a change of heart when he realized that a lot more babies were about to be born in Mississippi due to the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the state’s strict (to say the least) anti-abortion laws, which meant some mothers could die without the postpartum extension, and the politically astute Reeves did not want to be the one taking incoming fire for helping that to happen. To which I say: Whatever works.

Mississippi’s joining the postpartum extension club only happened because Division of Medicaid Executive Director Drew Snyder, whose department reports to the Governor and who for months has refused to take a stance on postpartum coverage extension (how medically courageous of him, eh?), wrote a letter on 27 February to House Speaker Philip Gunn voicing his newfound support for the legislation’s passage (notably, after his boss, Governor Reeves had his change of heart). Gunn had been vehemently opposed to the measure, believing it put the state in the awful position of expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, something he has vowed would never happen. In his letter, Snyder assured Gunn that permanently extending Medicaid postpartum coverage would not equate to expanding Medicaid a la the Affordable Care Act, and he urged the Speaker to come on board for all the reasons that had swayed Governor Reeves. You know, all those babies about to be born in Mississippi. He also reminded Gunn the state has a $3.1 billion surplus, the annual cost of the extension is pegged at $7.1 million, and the feds will chip in more than $35 million. Reading Snyder’s letter is like reading George Orwell.

Whatever the reasons, Mississippi has done the right thing.

Ely Lilly to drop the cost of basic insulin to $35 per vial

I have written a number of times about what I consider the obscene price of insulin for Type 1 diabetics. See here and here for the history of the discovery and how we got to this point. Bottom line, as I wrote in 2018, the three discovers of insulin, led by Frederick Banting, who won the Nobel Prize for it:

sold the patent to the University of Toronto for the princely sum of $3.00. When asked why he didn’t cash in on his discovery, Banting said, “Insulin is my gift to mankind.” With Banting’s blessing, the University licensed insulin’s manufacturing to drug companies, royalty free. If drug companies didn’t have to pay royalties, Banting thought they would keep the price of insulin low.

And they did. For decades.

But patents expire, and capitalism being what it is, people get greedy, and greed is why we have no generic, low-cost insulin today and why, over the past 20 years, insulin prices have risen anywhere from 800% to 1,157%, depending on the variety and brand. It’s why, lacking health insurance, some Type 1 diabetics have recently been driven to ration their precious insulin. Some of them have died.

Update

Yesterday, the Ely Lilly company, the first company to license Banting’s discovery, announced price reductions of 70% for its most commonly prescribed insulins and an expansion of its Insulin Value Program that caps patient out-of-pocket costs at $35 or less per month. In its press release, the company said it is:

  • Cutting the list price of its non-branded insulin, Insulin Lispro Injection…to $25 a vial. Effective May 1, 2023, it will be the lowest list-priced mealtime insulin available, and less than the price of a Humalog® vial in 1999.
  • Cutting the list price of Humalog® …, Lilly’s most commonly prescribed insulin, and Humulin® (insulin human) injection … by 70%, effective in Q4 2023.
  • Launching RezvoglarTM …injection, a basal insulin that is biosimilar to, and interchangeable with, Lantus® (insulin glargine) injection, for $92 per five pack of KwikPens®, a 78% discount to Lantus, effective April 1, 2023.

Lilly also said:

  • Effective immediately, Lilly will automatically cap out-of-pocket costs at $35 at participating retail pharmacies for people with commercial insurance using Lilly insulin.
  • People who don’t have insurance can continue to go to InsulinAffordability.com and immediately download the Lilly Insulin Value Program savings card to receive Lilly insulins for $35 per month.

This, of course, is marvelous news for the 1.3 million Type 1 diabetics in the country not on Medicare, which already has a $35 cap thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.

It is not an exaggeration to say insulin made Eli Lilly and Company and Novo Nordisk two of the top pharmaceutical companies in the world. It also hasn’t hurt the bottom line of Sanofi, the company that rounds out the insulin producing triumvirate and is the world’s fifth largest pharma by sales. I think it is a good bet these last two will quickly follow Lilly’s lead.

The greed of these three companies over the last two or three decades has hurt a lot of people, both physically and economically. Let’s hope this move by Lilly is the first step in making amends.

 

 

A Potpourri To Begin Your Week

Monday, September 12th, 2022

Ukraine changing history on the move.

It is 15 December 1937. Today’s international news section of the New York Times is dripping with stories that, nineteen years after World War I, are lighting the way to the next global conflagration. In two years it will begin and happen all over again. On this day we see reports of marches, riots, assassinations, street brawls, and arson. Political warfare. An overture to the real war coming.

In Spain, political warfare has flared into civil war, and, the Times reported, the Army of the Republic has attacked General Franco’s fascist forces at the Aragonese town of Teruel. In three months, Franco will counterattack, rout the Republican forces and capture most of Catalonia and the Levante. He will succeed with troops and warplanes provided by Germany and Italy.

Turn the page and find Hitler’s Nazi Germany issuing new  restrictions on the Jews, slowly squeezing the life out of them. On the facing page, a photograph of Benito Mussolini in his personal railcar giving  the stiff-armed fascist salute. Beneath, a photo of Stalin reviewing a parade of tank columns.

Is there anything that could be done, could have been done, to avert the coming catastrophe? Of course there was, but nobody did it. Mussolini? The Italians loved him; he resurrected the former glory of Rome, and Franco showed Spaniards what nationalistic power looked like. Hitler’s hate fueled the country’s hate. The Jews? Germany, with Hitler’s face, wanted them gone—forever. And Stalin, the man who killed millions of Ukrainians by intentionally starving them with a smile on his face? The Russians never blinked. Neither did the Americans. The Times’s Walter Durante defended him and won a Pulitzer for his efforts.

And so it went. The world stumbled into six years of hell, with millions dead.

Today, in 2022, although it has taken much time, we have made progress. Inhumanity, still glowing bright in many places, is, nonetheless, dimmer than 80 years ago. Today, the Ukraine that Stalin starved is squeezing the Stalin wannabe Vladimir Putin into a box of his own making. The Ukrainian Army is moving ahead and, with tremendous help from a unified NATO, is forcing the Russian Army to retreat, although the Russians call it “regrouping.”

No one knows where this ends, or how, but it seems to me that at some point the people of Russian are going to wake up and see all the body bags coming home. What then?

The race to curb racism in the American Century: The mission of W. E. B. Du Bois.

This month’s edition of the journal Foreign Affairs contains a fascinating and illuminating essay on the charismatic and complicated life of W. E. B. Du Bois.

Written by Zachariah Mampilly, the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, this long-form piece details Du Bois’s lifelong, uncompromising mission to eradicate racism.

A sociologist by training, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. During the Jim Crow era, he became known for an uncompromising stance, demanding equal rights for Black Americans through his journalism and advocacy work while also making seminal contributions to various academic debates.

Du Bois was born in 1868 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, about 20 miles from where I sit, and his lifespan overlaps almost exactly with the Jim Crow era, a period of persecution during which Black Americans faced severe restrictions on their ability to participate in political, economic, and social life.

Between the two World Wars, he focused more and more on international affairs, arguing that the colonial projects  European countries were pursuing in Asia and Africa had galvanized an envious United States to carve out its own colonies. In 1898, a year before Du Bois published his first major sociological study, The Philadelphia Negro, the United States’ imperial ambitions produced the annexation of Hawaii and the acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines as spoils of the Spanish-American War. Du Bois thought America’s imperialistic ambitions and actions fed into and enhanced the country’s racism at home. Consequently, his writings and lectures veered increasingly to the left.

In observing anticolonial struggles in India and elsewhere, Du Bois saw clearly how occupation of foreign lands would breed resistance in the colonized people. From this he concluded that colonial domination abroad often required the sacrifice of democracy at home. In his eyes, Zampilly writes:

Imperialism inevitably led to increased racial and economic inequality at home: military adventures and opportunities for extracting natural resources empowered the capitalist class (and its favored segments of the underclass) and stoked racial prejudice that justified further interventions in foreign lands.

Thus, Du Bois saw domestic racism as the tail of the internationally racist dog.

It was natural that as time went on Du Bois’s views evolved. He became more radical in his writings. He saw international capitalism as the cause of black exploitation. In his middle years he went from believing in “democratic socialism” to embracing communism.  As a result, J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI began investigating him in 1942 and, despite concluding  there was “no evidence of subversive activity,” continued to investigate him for the rest of his life. In 1952, the State Department revoked his passport. The next year, the Supreme Court declared the policy of denying passports to suspected communists unconstitutional.

His wholehearted support of Joseph Stalin, while inconsistent with his lifelong support for democracy, demonstrated his belief that democracy and Western liberalism were incompatible with racial and economic equality.

Zampilly concludes his essay about Du Bois with this insightful observation:

His work upends the liberal fantasy of the United States’ inevitable progress toward a “more perfect union” that would inspire a just global order and gives the lie to the realist fantasy that how the country behaves internationally can be separated from domestic politics.

My own conclusion is this: During his life, Du Bois made seminal contributions to academia, which, over time, cost him dearly. He was arguably black America’s leading intellectual of the 20th century. If that is at least close to being true, then here is a question for today: Why are so many people, for example governors of red states, fearful of allowing his story and teachings, as well as those of other Black intellectuals, to be taught in America’s classrooms?

The US Open Tennis Championship: In a word, Glorious.

Speaking of Race, I cannot end this Letter without a shout out to this year’s championship.

The three-week US Open is played at the Billie Jean King Tennis Center. The main events happen at the Arthur Ashe Center Court Stadium. Ashe, an inspirational Black American, and King, an inspirational Lesbian American, embody inclusive diversity and are the best kind of examples we have for sincere and devoted yearnings for equality. It is more than fitting that Friday night Frances Tiafoe, a young 24 year old Black American, played 19-year-old Spanish phenom Carlos Alcaraz in a thrilling five-set, five-hour semi-final match on the Arthur Ashe Center Court. Tiafoe is the son of immigrants from Sierra Leone and spent much of his childhood at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., where his father worked as a custodian. Sometimes he spent the night there, because his mother worked nights in a hospital. The stadium was full and loud, and, although he lost, Tiafoe had the crowd, had all of us, in the palm of his hand. He’ll be back.

Yes, we have a long way to go. But the US Open shows us how far we’ve come. Tennis now looks like America looks.

 

Thursday Thoughts

Thursday, March 10th, 2022

Is there any hope for Ukraine?

Years ago, when I was a young man starting down life’s bumpy road, I had a difficult decision to make. Should I take the right-hand fork, or the left? So, I went to my mother for advice. I described the issue and the choices. She let me talk, heard me out. Then, after pausing for a moment, she said, “Tommy, pick very carefully the barricade upon which you are prepared to die.”

I made my decision, didn’t look back, and, to quote Robert Frost, “that has made all the difference.” It helps to have a mother a lot smarter than you are.

Right now, we are now witnessing the wanton, senseless, cruel-beyond-imagining death of innocents and innocence in Ukraine. Ukrainian twenty-somethings, all born after their country achieved freedom from Soviet domination in 1992, have no memory of life in the Soviet Union, the USSR. They’ve studied it in school, their parents told them stories, but they haven’t lived it. It’s like a different galaxy, spinning its own way in the cosmic beyond.

Now, they and all Ukrainians who manage to survive this living nightmare, are faced with the prospect of being sucked back into that distant galaxy, which has turned and is now quickly spinning toward them. Their heroic defense, their country’s patriotic self-sacrifice, their refusal to lose, their you-shall-not-pass attitude, all of this inspires awe in the rest of us. But at the same time, one cannot help asking, “Is it worth it?” Is it better to save lives by surrendering, even though by surrendering you lose your country and maybe your soul? The Ukrainians say “No” to that. What do the rest of us say, though?

This problem is made no easier by Russia’s obvious war crimes as its military amps up its indiscriminate shelling and cluster bombing of civilians. Yesterday, they killed three and wounded 17 by bombing a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol. The Russian government justified this by claiming the hospital was held by “local radical militias.” Wonder what kind of weapons the babies were firing?

I think of that now with profound sadness, as I contemplate the choice facing the U.S., its NATO allies and the European Union. Given that Ukraine will not surrender, do they keep playing the long game by continuing to tighten the screws of economic sanctions on Russia and its oligarchs, hoping  to cause sense to return to formerly (maybe) sensible people and bring an end to the suffering? Or, do they (we) tiptoe toward what might be Armageddon by becoming just a wee bit more militarily involved? Do we do whatever it takes to lickety-split get those Polish MIGS to Ukrainian pilots? Do we take the right-hand fork, or the left?

This is not a Hobson’s Choice.

By the way, Putin has already said he considers economic sanctions, and probably anything else we do, “akin to an act of war.” That is precious, indeed.

Real Earnings Release: Inflation is taking a heavy toll on the middle class and the poor

As the story goes, novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald is supposed to have once said to fellow novelist Ernest Hemingway, “You know, the rich are different from you and me.” Hemingway supposedly replied, “Yes. They’ve got more money.”

This morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly report on inflation and Real Average Earnings, which are earnings after inflation is factored in. The news is not good.

Real average earnings for all employees decreased 0.8 percent from January to February 2022, seasonally adjusted. This result stems from essentially no change in average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 0.8 percent in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers.

Real average hourly earnings decreased 2.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, from February 2021 to February 2022. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with an increase of 0.3 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 2.3 percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.

Now, this announcement hits the middle and lower classes where they live, literally. The rich may have to put off buying the new Bentley, but the average Joe just got a cut in pay of 2.3%.

For the Republican Party, this is the most beautiful political fodder imaginable — they have someone to blame, Joe Biden. It’s all his fault. It’s a simple message, easy to deliver, and it will stick.

Of course, it’s not simple. It’s terribly complicated. We are at the center of a confluence of unfortunate events, global in nature, that have set the entire world back on its heels. This will get worse, especially when the Federal Reserve begins raising interest rates, which is momentary.

I, like most of you I think, fervently wish our elected officials could put their political opportunism and hypocrisy  aside, marshal their collective brains (such as they are), and work together to do what they can to help soften the blow that is gobsmacking so many vulnerable people. Is that too much to ask?

Right, and pigs will soon be seen flying past my great big third floor window.

 


 

Zelenskyy’s Heroism, Women’s Long March To Equality, And Then There’s Ron DeSantis

Tuesday, March 8th, 2022

“Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.” — William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

Ukraine update

Last night, Ukriane’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, posted a nine-minute video from the Presidential Office Building on Bankova Street in central Kyiv.

Zelenskyy opened from a window looking out over Kyiv at night (a nice way to show everyone he was really there), and then selfied his way down corridors to his office where he sat at his desk to address the world, as well as the people of Ukraine. His fierce determination not only to defend Ukraine, but, more than that, prevail against a barbaric enemy was on full display. Speaking for all Ukrainians, he said, “I’m here, it’s mine, and I won’t give it away. My city, my community, my Ukraine.”

He closed his address by letting the nation know he had earlier in the day bestowed medals for bravery on 96 “heroes.” He then singled out five and described what they had done to earn the medals. Brilliant stuff.

Zelenskyy continues to unite his country and keep its spine stiff. His leadership, his rhetoric, his example are sharp enough to slice bread. He must be setting Putin’s hair on fire.

International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day, and The Economst has released it’s annual glass-ceiling index, which measures the role and influence of women in the workforce across the countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and  Development (OECD).

According to The Economist:

A country’s performance on the index is measured along ten metrics, including the gender pay gap, parental leave, the cost of childcare, educational attainment and representation in senior management and political jobs.

We give more weight to the indicators which affect all women (such as labour-force participation) and less to those which affect only some (such as maternity pay). Paternity pay is also included. Studies show that where fathers take parental leave, mothers tend to return to the labour market (emphasis added), female employment is higher and the earnings gap between men and women is lower.

That “return to the labour market” point is important, given the tremendous difficulty American women are having right now in returning to the labor market due to the ridiculous cost of child care.

It is unfortunate that, in this year’s glass-ceiling index, the United States continues to rank lower in how it treats its women than the OECD average, 20th out of 29 countries.

You may notice the top four countries in the rankings, Sweden, Iceland, Finland and Norway, are Nordic countries so often ridiculed by conservatives as prime examples of “totalitarian socialism.” Actually, these countries have combined successful capitalism with, yes, welfare state benefits that allow their citizens to have a high standard of living, universal health care, and life expectancies higher than most other countries, certainly higher than the U.S.

But all is not Panglossian with the Nordic Model. These countries have large challenges, most notably what to do about an aging population and an influx of immigrants. Time will tell whether they’ll be able to marshal the political will to deal successfully with these significant headwinds.

That said, on International Women’s Day it seems fitting to suggest that, due to the collective culture the Nordics have fostered, their women are much better positioned for success than their peers in America. It pains me to write that.

DeSantis continues to be…well, DeSantis

Yesterday, at the conclusion of a 90-minute virtual video forum (make that show) in West Palm Beach, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis and his Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced a new state policy that will recommend against giving a coronavirus vaccine to healthy children, regardless of their age.

Sitting in front of what could have been mistaken for an IMAX screen where hundreds of forum participants were pictured, Ladapo enthusiastically proclaimed, “Florida is going to be the first state to officially recommend against the covid-19 vaccination for healthy children.”

Let’s hope it’s the last one, too. National data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show more than 40 Florida children, from birth to age 17, have died from COVID-19. Nationally, the number is nearly1,600.

In an interview reported in today’s Washington Post, Peter Hotez, a professor of pediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine and a leading expert on the virus, said, “To be at such distinct variance from the hundreds of physicians and scientists at the CDC and the FDA is reckless at best and dangerous at worst.”

Look, we get it that Governor DeSantis features himself as the next president of the United States and that he’ll say or do just about anything to get there. This is the man who just last week bullied a group of high school students for wearing masks at an event at the University of South Florida. “You do not have to wear those masks. I mean, please take them off. This is ridiculous,” he told the teens just before slamming his folder on a lectern.

These folks are playing with kids’ lives, all for their own opportunistic and hypocritical ends. I can only hope there’s a special place in hell reserved for such people.

I’ll leave you today with this question: How do you think DeSantis would do in Zelenskyy’s chair on Bankova Street? Or, would he have skedaddled to safety before the fun began?

Just a thought.

 

 

Stories I Was Planning To Address. They’ll Have To Wait.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2022

The life and death stories coming out of Ukraine, as its people continue to exhibit fierce and inspirational resistance to Vlad the Invader’s barbaric onslaught, tend to suck the air out of any room. Somehow, Joe Biden’s approval ratings, or America’s vitriolic partisan divide, or who will prevail in the midterms or the desperate state of our infrastructure, or the future of our newest Supreme Court nominee, while important at any other time, just cannot compete with Putin’s intentional and indiscriminate killing of anyone, man, woman, child, beloved pet, anyone in the way of his rapacious army. This is causing the most momentous change on the European continent and throughout the geopolitical world in nearly 80 years. And it’s taken only a week.

So, here are some quick takes of the things I would have written about, and maybe will in the future in more depth, were it not for the blackhole-like gravity of what’s happening in Ukraine.

Tuesday night’s State of the Union

Joe Biden’s speech to the Congress and the nation came in two chapters. Chapter One: Ukraine. Chapter Two: His domestic agenda.

Chapter One was riveting, and it appeared nearly everyone sitting on the floor and in the gallery of the House of Representatives was united in support of the West’s monumental pushback to  Vlad the Villain. I thought it ironic they were all sitting in a sacred building where, just 14 months ago fellow citizens tried to steal American democracy, and nearly did. Ironic, indeed, when one considers so many who were sitting on the R side of the aisle now want to look the other way and pretend it never happened.

Chapter Two was pretty much what you’d expect from any State of the Union speech — until the heckling. Representatives Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga, put on a disgusting display of crass and boorish incivility. These two ladies have never demonstrated having had an original idea in their lives. Why should they? They’re both travelling on borrowed gas, and inferior gas, at that. Boebert, especially, raised poor taste to a new level when she screamed out accusing Biden of killing 13 soldiers during the evacuation of Afghanistan as he was describing the death of his beloved son, Beau, from cancer attributable to burn pits in wartime. These two, both of whom have about as much empathy as a New Jersey loan shark, would be rejected from Dante’s Inferno for giving the place a bad name. (Pity the poor fellow sitting between them  wishing he were anywhere else on earth — except maybe Ukraine)

Why can’t Medicare negotiate drug prices?

When you insure more than 61.2 million beneficiaries you’d think you’d have tremendous leverage to negotiate the lowest drug prices on earth. But that is not the case in the USA.

The Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003, the one that created the unfunded Part D drug program along with the infamous “doughnut hole,” specifically forbids Medicare from negotiating prices with drug companies, giving that responsibility, instead, to for-profit insurers and Pharmacy Benefit Managers. Health policy Guru John C. Goodman calls the MMA, “arguably the worst domestic policy decision in the history of the country.” At the time of enactment, the Social Security and Medicare Trustees estimated the long-term (75 years) unfunded liability of the MMA’s Part D program to be $17 trillion. The Trustees project that cost growth over the next 5 years will average 7.3 percent for Part D, significantly faster than the projected average annual GDP growth rate of 4.3 percent over the period.

And, still, Medicare cannot negotiate prices.  Result? High drug prices for Medicare and its beneficiaries.

By contrast, the VA is able to negotiate for its nine million veterans enrolled in its health care program, yours truly being one of them. Result? Low cost drugs.

Since passage of the MMA, there have been repeated attempts to introduce and pass legislation that would allow Medicare to bring the full weight of its considerable power to the price of pharmaceuticals. Two things have prevented any success in these endeavors. First, the bottomless well of pharmaceutical industry cash, and, second, members of congress who are the beneficiaries of that bottomless well of cash.

To quote that eminent American philosopher, Mark Twain, “We have the best government that money can buy.”

Federally Qualified Health Centers. Now there’s a well kept secret!

Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) are community-based health care providers that receive funds from the Health Center Program of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to provide primary care services in underserved areas. They must meet stringent requirements, including providing care on a sliding fee scale based on a patient’s ability to pay and operating under a governing board that includes patients. Specifically, at least 51% of their Boards must be patients.

By law, FQHCs must treat anyone, regardless of the ability to pay.

There are 1,368 FQHCs in the country. Most have a number of locations, called Service Sites, bringing the total health care locations to 14,200. They welcome people with insurance, but their main targets are poor people who could otherwise not afford health care.

In addition to FQHCs, the Health Center Program also funds Rural Health Centers (RHCs), whose mission is to increase access to primary care services for patients in rural communities.

FQHCs and RHCs are funded annually by congressional approval. Additionally, Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act provides grant awards to eligible health centers and outlines the requirements the centers must meet to be eligible .

Taken together, FQHCs and RHCs are Community Health Centers. They are ubiquitous throughout the country. For example, in my home state of Massachusetts, there are 52 community health center organizations providing high quality health care to some one million state residents through more than 300 sites statewide. For perspective, there are 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Given the woeful state of our nation’s public health system, as was amply demonstrated by our response to COVID-19, it might not be a bad idea to consider the Community Health Center model as we attempt to re-engineer how we deliver health care to all of us.

Just a thought.

 

 

 

Ukraine, Day Six. Which Way To The Exit?

Tuesday, March 1st, 2022

In May, 1944, Jean-Paul Sartre’s one-act play No Exit premiered at Paris’s Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier. It tells the story of three people in Hell and how they deal with that particular calamity. It is a play about the “devouring” gaze of the other and how that restricts one’s freedom. I thought of No Exit and one of its famous lines as I watched from afar Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin’s all out attempt to devour a sovereign country, its people, and its leadership. The line that came to mind was, “Life begins on the other side of despair.”

For Sartre and his followers, life may have begun on the other side of despair, but for Ukraine, life began on the other side of Russia.

Today’s Ukraine was born with independence from the Soviet Union on 24 August 1991. Since then, Ukrainians have been building a nation state with all the mistakes that come with it. Ukraine is still a developing democracy going through birthing pains, just as America did. Think about where the U.S. was after just thirty years of independence. For Ukraine, democracy will be a generational thing, just like America’s was.

In case you haven’t noticed this last week, Ukrainians are optimistic. They have what the eminent Russian and Ukrainian scholar Uri Ra’anan called in his writings a “national personality” based on optimism. They’ve always thought: Life begins on the other side of Russia.

Now, Ukrainians are doing what no one thought possible. They are fighting off Putin with bravery, skill, and determination. And they’re holding their own — at least for now. Not a lot of countries would have been as committed to freedom and democracy as Ukraine is demonstrating it is right now.

Yesterday, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy signed an application for his country to join the European Union, and today the EU moved Ukraine to Candidate status, a necessary part of the vetting process for new members. European Union membership will take time; there are many steps. One hopes the EU will move as swiftly as possible in its consideration, which, if it leads to approval would be another rigidly straight and upright middle finger offered to Vladimir Putin.

After submitting Ukraine’s application for membership, Zelenskyy addressed the European Parliament from his headquarters in Kyiv explaining in vivid terms how his country is fighting for “its very survival.” After he spoke, the EU Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola delivered a hard-hitting and on-point speech highlighting Europe’s unity in the face of Russian aggression and laying out four Principles to guide Europe’s future, all aimed at isolating and crippling the momentarily underperforming Bear to the east. The Principles were easy to say, but will certainly be monumentally difficult to carry out.  She said:

  1. “Europe can no longer remain reliant on Kremlin gas.”
  2. “Europe can no longer welcome (Russian) Oligarchs’ cash and pretend there are no strings attached.”
  3. “Investment in our defense must match our rhetoric.”
  4. “We must fight the Kremlin’s disinformation campaign. Tech companies must take their responsibilities seriously. There is no being neutral between the fire and the fire brigade.”

In addition to Ukraine’s unanticipated, heroic, and, for the moment, successful, resistance, a unified and strong European Union must have been a complete surprise to Putin. After all, in 2008 he invaded Georgia and in 2014 it was Crimea, both with barely a ripple of response, except for some rhetorical hand-wringing and wimpy economic sanctions, and both for the same strategic and political reasons he gave for the current invasion in his rambling, wrong-headed, televised speech to the Russian people last Monday, 21 February. He maintains these former cogs in the Soviet Union’s wheel, Ukraine, Crimea and Georgia, historically belong to Russia and are integral to maintaining  its “sphere of influence.”

“Russia perceives itself as entitled to a historical sphere of influence, the so-called ‘near-abroad’, and doesn’t allow anyone else to infringe on it,” said Nicoló Fasola, an expert in Russian military strategy at the University of Birmingham in Britain.

“Russia is always anxious about foreign penetration – not only in terms of military involvement and political engagement but also in cultural terms,” Fasola told FRANCE 24 on the first day of the invasion.

Whatever his reasons, it appears being stymied by an army one-fifth the size of his has thrown a demonic, electrical  switch in Putin’s brain. Yesterday’s illegal and inhumane cluster bombs, leveling neighborhoods, a shopping center and a school in Kharkiv, demonstrate he will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals regardless of consequences from the West. The indiscriminate and wanton killing of innocents is now part of the strategy going forward.

Realizing what an unhinged Putin could now unleash, European and American leaders are searching for ways to accomplish two contradictory objectives:

  1. How to end the bloodshed, avoid a Third World War and guarantee an independent, European-based, Ukrainian democracy, while,
  2. Providing some kind of minimally face-saving off-ramp for the Moscow megalomaniac who is quickly on his way to becoming a bona fide war criminal,

In his Art of War, Sun Tzu called the second objective, “Giving the enemy the Golden Bridge upon which to retreat.”

Does Vladimir Putin deserve any kind of Golden Bridge? If not, how does this end?

Which way to the exit?

 

 

Ukraine, Still Standing Against All Odds

Monday, February 28th, 2022

Frustrated by his inability to conquer the people of Ukraine thus far, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin reportedly resorted today to carpet bombing and cluster munitions in Kharkiv in the east of the country. Russian forces have been attacking Kharkiv since he gave the order for the invasion, but have been repeatedly repulsed.

Carpet bombing of cities, towns, villages, or other areas containing a concentration of civilians is considered a war crime as of Article 51 of the 1977 Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions. Cluster munitions were banned by the Convention on Cluster Munitions in 2008. After ratification by 130 countries, including Russia, the Convention became International law in 2010.

A shopping center in Kharkiv and a school in Okhtyrka were destroyed indiscriminately, leaving dozens killed and hundreds wounded at the shopping center and three dead at the school.

According to reporters for the Daily Mail, the bombs were fired using the Bm-21 Grad Rocket system, which is a multiple launch weapon. If carpet bombing and/or cluster munitions were used on Ukraine’s civilian population Vladimir Putin has committed a war crime, and, according to ABC News, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at the Hague says he plans to open an investigation “as rapidly as possible” into possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Ukraine.

Nearly the entire world is united in opposition to Putin’s monstrous invasion. It seems the Russian Federation President has done the one thing all observers thought impossible: He has united Europe, North America and Australia as never before. The economic sanctions leveled over the weekend, which I feared would be no more than a slap on the wrist, have turned out to be a kick in the gut and a punch to the side of the head. The Russian stock market was ordered to remain closed today, the value of the Rubel dropped by more than 30%, and there were long lines at ATMs.

Putin’s only ally appears to be Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus, which sits on Ukraine’s northern border. In the invasion, a third of Russia’s forces attacked from Belarus, and today Belarussian forces joined the Russians in bombing and attacking Kharkiv. Lapdog Luka continues in power because of his fawning willingness to serve his lord and master, Vlad the Invader. One hopes he will also pay a heavy price for the devastation he is helping to wreak on the innocent citizens of innocent Ukraine.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Republicans (most of whom were their own kind of lapdog to Putin’s good friend and admirer, Donald Trump) have been keen to say how awful the whole situation is, and, by the way, it never would have happened on their watch, and isn’t it terrible that Joe Biden is rolling over for European leaders. Some have excoriated him, because he is letting Europe have too much of the credit for the world’s response. He’s not America First enough. These Republicans, of course, are the same people who voted to deny Ukraine the weapons so necessary for its defense. Those would be the Javelins that are now destroying so many Russian tanks and armored vehicles. Like the ever-expanding universe, there seems to be no limit to opportunistic hypocrisy.

And what can we say about Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelensky, Ukraine’s President? This is a man who was trivialized and mocked by many after his election in 2019. This is a man who had to suffer the indignity of being on the other end of the line for Donald Trump’s “perfect call.” This is a man who, more than anyone else, has shamed Europe into uniting to combat Putin’s horrific, criminal, and inhumane invasion. A man, no, a leader, who leads by example in the face of near certain death if he is captured.

A man who has now become the George Washington of his country.

And My Guitar Gently Weeps

Friday, February 25th, 2022

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps.
-George Harrison

If the great George Harrison were alive today, his guitar would be weeping over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s troops have blitzed their way to the major cities and, as of this morning, have encircled and shelled Ukraine’s capital Kyiv. Resistance has been strong. Reports suggest the invasion isn’t going as smoothly as Putin imagined it would. Ukrainian troops are fighting valiantly, as did so many in Hitler’s way in 1939, but, as with those long ago heroic defenders, they fight alone and their cause is hopeless. True, they will make Putin pay a high cost in Russian blood, but it seems inevitable that Kyiv will fall. Putin will decapitate the government, assassinate the leaders he can find, install a puppet regime, declare Ukraine restored to its rightful place in the arms of Mother Russia, and that will be that.

Russian heavy troop presence will remain, and a “leader” like lapdog Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will sit at the head of government. Maybe Putin’s friend Viktor Yanukovych, thrown out in 2014’s Revolution of Dignity will return. It’ll be easy to reach him; he’s been living in Moscow ever since. That will be irony, indeed.

It certainly seems Putin has outfoxed America and the rest of NATO and the European Union.

How can I say that?

First, as I reminded readers yesterday, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright noted in a New York Times Guest Essay that Putin is a planner and plays the strategic long game. Right now, it’s becoming obvious that the current invasion has been in the planning for more than eight years, perhaps going all the way back to the early 21st century when he first took power. Since then, everything he has done has been geared toward a return of Imperial Russia. Remember, as far back as 2005, he called  the breakup of the Soviet Union “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Second, in keeping with that, I urge you to read a brilliant column in today’s Washington Post by Sebastian Mallaby, the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist. Mallaby’s point is that by forcing Russians to sacrifice since prior to 2014’s invasion of Crimea, Putin has built up a tremendous economic reserve, much like the Bible’s Joseph in ancient Egypt preparing for seven years of famine. In contrast, Mallaby describes how the West has sacrificed nothing in response.

Perhaps a couple of excerpts would help:

1. As Matthew C. Klein observes in the Overshoot newsletter, Russia has used the past eight years to reduce its vulnerability to sanctions. The Russian people have accepted a drop in living standards, cutting their consumption of imports by more than a quarter. Russian businesses have paid off overseas creditors, reducing their foreign debt by one-third. The Russian state has tightened its belt, allowing it to build up its reserves of gold and foreign currency.

2. By embracing these sacrifices, Russia has fortified itself against the West’s economic weapons. The central bank has a $630 billion rainy-day fund. Even if sanctions blocked 100 percent of Russian exports for an entire year, the country could continue to import at its current pace and have foreign-exchange reserves left over. President Biden’s initial response to Putin’s incursions was to bar U.S. investors from buying Russian bonds. But Russia has no need to borrow from Americans.

So, as a good friend suggested to me yesterday, is our big song and dance about levelling crippling sanctions in unity with NATO and the European Union nothing more than Kabuki Theatre? Have we dug into the armory of our considerable weapons and unleashed a pack of snarling paper tigers? In the march to the takeover of Ukraine, will Vlad the Invader stare into the eyes of our paper tigers and then simply shrug and move on?

This is all so very sad.

My guitar gently weeps.