Philip N. Cohen: What For Sterilization Victims?

Last Updated on Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:15 Written by Daisy Harley Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:15

North Carolina has named an executive director of the N. C. Justice for Victims of Sterilization Foundation, Charmaine Fuller Cooper. Upon her nomination, she said:

“I’m excited about this opportunity and see it as a turning point to bringing justice to so many families and individuals affected by this tragic moment in North Carolina history.”

Moment? From 1929 to 1977, as part of the state’s contribution to the Eugenics movement, they sterilized 7,600 people, nearly four-fifths of them after WWII, according to this state report.

About half the victims of the sterilization campaign have already died. Then-Gov. Mike Easley apologized in 2002, and now-Gov. Perdue campaigned on the pledge to compensate the victims. And yet no one has been compensated, although the state’s new foundation got $250,000 to get started. A bill to give victims $20,000 each stalled last year.

Many of the the victims, most of whom were White, were institutionalized on account of mental retardation, illness, or whatever. (Here’s a historical study those sterilized in institutions.) Although compensation has yet to reach the victims, the state has at least owned up to the travesty, which is documented in this good digital repository at the State Library, including a pamphlet from the Human Betterment League of North Carolina:

North Carolina has an interesting profile with regard to historical travesties and crimes against humanity. The casual immigrant to the American South might be surprised that compared with, say, Germany’s official attitude toward the Holocaust, there is little in the way of official recognition that the Confederacy was wrong in Civil War. For example, the monuments to those who fought for “their country,” the Confederacy, remain on display – like this one at UNC, which honors students and alumni who contributed to that cause:

In Germany, the old Nazi Party and some of its descendants were banned, but U.S. organizations dedicated to preserving the honor of war criminals are allowed to flourish. (I’m for state-protected free speech, just not state-sponsored monuments to the Confederacy.)

On the other hand, we’ve seen some notable symbolic efforts beyond the sterilization issue. The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot Commission at least produced a comprehensive report on the White establishment’s coup against the local government at the end of Reconstruction. And the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission has produced a report on the attack by Klansmen on communist anti-racism activists. And legally, North Carolina is virtually alone in its official willingness to consider actual innocence claims when new evidence emerges after criminal convictions.

For historical crimes, compensating the victims matters. Symbolism matters, too.

Cross posted from the Family Inequality blog.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/philip-n-cohen/what-for-sterilization-vi_b_480189.html

Robert Kuttner: The Cure That Dares Not Speak Its Name

Last Updated on Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:00 Written by Daisy Harley Sunday, 28 February 2010 11:00

In all of the debates about health care reform, one of the stubborn realities is that neither the Obama plan, nor any of the Republican alternatives, will seriously alter the trajectory of relentless cost-escalation in health care. If you look at the Administration’s own projections of federal deficits in the next decade and after 2020, virtually all of the alarming growth in deficit spending is Medicare and Medicaid.

And that’s only the public part of the health care bill. In 2009, total health care costs increased to 17.3 percent of GDP, with escalating premiums eating into both corporate profits and worker take home pay. The consensus among the usual policy experts is that there is no good solution. The march of technology and demography will just continue to raise health costs.

But you can reach that conclusion only by ignoring how the rest of the club of affluent countries manages to insure everyone for 9 or 10 percent of GDP, and have a healthier and longer-lived population, to boot. They do it, of course, through universal, socialized insurance.

There is no single formula. The Canadians do it with a single payer system for the insurance part, but physicians are private. The Brits have an integrated National Health Service. The Germans achieve near-universal coverage through a system of nonprofit health insurance plans.

What every other nation has in common is that they have taken the commercialism out of their health systems. As a consequence, they can direct health spending to areas of medical need rather than letting the market direct health dollars to areas of greatest profit. And with everyone covered, they can use highly cost-effective strategies for prevention, wellness, and public health. That’s how you cover everyone for ten percent of GDP.

Our one island of single-payer medicine, Medicare, is phenomenally popular — so popular that the Republicans’ most effective attack on the Obama plan is that it would divert some money from Medicare. The Republicans, on the one hand, fiercely attack “government-run health insurance,” while on the other they defend Medicare (which they would just as soon privatize).

But most Democratic politicians and policy wonks behave as if the option of a national health plan simply did not exist. These blinders are the result of the immense power of the medical-pharmaceutical-insurance complex combined with a failure of political leadership. Sooner or later, mainstream politicians will stumble their way to some form of single payer because there are no good alternatives unless we want to spend half of our GDP on health care.

In that regard, the best things about the still inconclusive end-game of Obama’s efforts to enact his plan are that (1) the administration finally broke with the insurance industry, and (2) Obama is starting to get over the delusion of bipartisanship. So if we don’t need either Harry and Louise, or John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, as part of the health-reform coalition, we might as well do it right.

With Obama’s health summit behind us, there will now be a mad scramble for Democratic votes in the House and Senate to pursue the strategy that Obama should have used all along — a Democrats-only bill relying on 51 votes in the Senate via the reconciliation procedure.

The problem is that Obama may have missed the moment. The prolonged, enervating battle for health reform, using a badly flawed bill, has scared off both conservative and liberal Democrats in both houses. The bill is politically toxic to legislators facing re-election, for good reason. The original formula, designed to enlist insurance industry allies, required a mandate to purchase insurance, diversion of Medicare funds, and unpopular taxes. Now that Obama has broken with the industry, an entirely different formula should be possible.

Alas, we are too far down the present road to advance single-payer in this legislative session. The president has done nothing to move public opinion in that direction, and has backed away even from the truncated version of it, the so-called public option.

I would put the odds at about one in three of Obama succeeding. Several Democrats who voted for the House-passed bill in November by the narrow margin of 220-215 have now defected, and several more are increasingly gun-shy. I don’t much like this bill, but I still hope it passes so that the Republicans don’t get rewarded for their relentless obstructionism.

Win or lose, the next great push should be for single-payer, assuming Democrats have a working majority again in foreseeable future. Given the collateral damage of Obama’s strategy, that could be a long time coming.

Robert Kuttner is the author of the forthcoming book A Presidency in Peril (Chelsea-Green, March 2010). He is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos.

More on Health Care

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/the-cure-that-dares-not-s_b_480130.html

Joe Lapointe: Olympic Hockey: For Crosby and Canada, a Goal and a Gold

Last Updated on Sunday, 28 February 2010 10:30 Written by Daisy Harley Sunday, 28 February 2010 10:30

Neil Young’s father, Scott Young, was a hockey writer who authored classic books like Scrubs on Skates.

So it seemed appropriate that his son, one of Canada’s great musical artists, performed Sunday night for the closing ceremonies of the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. After all, one of Neil Young’s great works was After the Gold Rush.

He sang “Long May You Run” as the full moon rose over North America like a celestial hockey puck —– or a gold medal —— after Canada won the hockey tournament by defeating the United States, 3-2, on a goal in sudden-death overtime by Sidney Crosby.

Sudden-death is the appropriate term for Crosby, a skilled opportunist who plays with a lethal instinct.

He materializes from the edge of action like a wraith in the mist. The best team barely won Sunday and Crosby was its best player.

His wrist shot between the pads of Ryan Miller ended a clean, hard match of exquisite ebb and flow that elevated the profile of the sport and enhanced its appeal.

Crosby showed tears and a big smile before getting his gold medal and skating with the Canadian flag. “Hockey’s in really good shape,” he told NBC.

It sure was on this day and in this tournament, the best feature of an entertaining Olympics, a natural team competition that felt legitimate compared to some of the newer stunt sports contrived to showcase acrobatic daredevils for American audiences.

In two weeks of competition, the silver-medal Americans were better than expected; the Russians were far worse. The Slovaks were impressive; the bronze-medal Finns were hard to figure.

And thanks to NBC for staying with the entire post-game scene Sunday and not breaking for any commercials.

For the most part, its telecasts this time around showed respect for the sport and a new awareness of which camera angles work well and which ones do not.

One quibble about Sunday’s telecast was the intrusion of sounds from unseen replays that leaked onto the live audio several times.

You could hear them even over the non-stop chatter of Ed Olczyk, who knows a lot about hockey but rarely comes to the end of a sentence or a thought.

At one point, during the medal ceremonies, the play-by-play man, Mike Emrick, had to gently suggest that it would be good to listen to the public address announcer. Olczyk finally took the hint.

And then there were the flowers and the medals and the flag and the red Mounties and “O Canada!” in a big arena singing scene that seemed sacramental, like a ritual in a cathedral.

It was quite the way to end a game, a tournament and an Olympics. No, the American hockey players did not quite win, despite a clutch comeback, but it is hard to call them losers.

Both teams merit praise. In the words of the Joni Mitchell song from the opening ceremonies, you could appreciate “both sides now” and salute them for a terrific conclusion.

More on Hockey

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-lapointe/olympic-hockey-for-crosby_b_480074.html