Healthcare Reform: Fighting the Rear Guard Battle

So U.S. District Judge Roy Vinson up and decided the new healthcare reform law is unconstitutional.  This surprised absolutely nobody, given that the Ronald Reagan appointee had telegraphed his decision as obviously as a bad Jay Cutler pass when hearing arguments in the case last year.

And it surprises nobody that a Republican party that has absolutely no interest in doing anything but pay lip-service to reforming our nation’s appalling healthcare situation while lining their campaign chests with insurance industry cash, loudly cheered Judge Vinson’s ruling.  Democrats, meanwhile, who have been trying for nearly 100 years to fix the mess, largely passed it off as the latest partisan development in what has been a hyper-partisan process.

This makes two Republican judges, including U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson just last month, who have ruled in assorted lawsuits filed by at least 26 states led by Republican governors, attorneys general, or both, that all or significant portions of the Affordable Care Act are unconstitutional.

Meanwhile, largely forgotten in all the recent hullabaloo, is that two other federal judges, both Clinton appointees, have ruled that the individual mandate to buy insurance, the crux of the dispute, IS perfectly within Congress’ authority to order.  Approximately two dozen other challenges have been unceremoniously dismissed as frivolous.

So for those of you scoring at home, the series record between the two sides currently stands at 2 wins and 2 losses apiece, with about 25 ties.  (Come to think of it, Healthcare Reform is not unlike a chess tournament between Grand Masters.)

This follows the law’s original passage in the last Congress with the help of exactly 1 Republican vote out of 177 Congressional Republicans and 41 Republican senators.  Just last week, every single Republican House member in the new Congress voted to repeal the new law.

What a shame, considering that this law will help the people who need it the most.  I’m speaking from experience here, as up until this past year, I’ve been unable to marry the woman I’ve been with for 10 years.  She is on the Texas High Risk Pool, a state-run pool that provides rudimentary insurance at god-awful rates to people who, like her, are unable to get insurance anywhere else because of their pre-existing conditions.

I work at a small business that miraculously offered group coverage…BUT if my fiancée forever and I ever got married, the rules stipulate that my employer would have had to offer her coverage as well, and she would have had to go on that coverage.  As this would have raised rates on everybody at the company, we made the painful decision to forgo marriage.

Now we can get married after all, however, because the rates under the current PRE-reform rules have skyrocketed so much that my coverage has been dropped anyway.

The Republicans are content with this status quo.  And people wonder why I so-loathe the do-nothing Party of No.

So, yes what a shame.  And what a sham, considering that the individual mandate was originally a Republican idea, urged for consideration by Sen. Orrin Hatch, former Sen. Robert Dole, (his party’s 1996 presidential nominee), and others, back in the days when Republicans were actually interested in trying to help govern instead of simply tearing down the government.

It was not too long afterwards that then-Governor Mitt Romney incorporated the individual mandate into his Massachusetts healthcare reform efforts.  If Romney, who some polls show is the GOP front-runner in the 2012 presidential horse race, happens to win the Republican nomination, he’ll have done so despite having what the goofball tea-sip wing of his party considers to be the healthcare albatross hanging around his neck.

But then, that’s the way Republicans operate nowadays.  Cap and Trade was a solid, free-market Republican-offered solution to pollution and global warming problems…until the Democrats became interested.  Then it became “government overreach and excessive regulation.”  Comprehensive immigration reform seemed doable with border state bigwigs George W. Bush and the “good” John McCain onboard, but when the Dems came to power, immigration reform degenerated into a thinly veiled racist buzzword for “amnesty.”  Nothing said “National Security” like arms control treaties…until it came time for this Democratic president to sign one.

On issue after issue on which they used to offer constructive ideas, Republicans have morphed into bitter, twisted, petty little prunes, interested more in coming up with good bumper sticker slogans than in governing.  “Obamacare” and “Death Panels” might scare the feeble-minded, but such coarse and overly simplest rhetoric does nothing to advance the discussion…which, of course, is exactly the idea.

So it’s no surprise that Republicans are cheering this setback to healthcare reform.  Never mind that it means next-to-nothing, given that it will most assuredly be up to the Supreme Court to decide the case, (which might make Democrats a little nervous, given the Roberts Court’s narrow proclivity to rule in favor of Big Business.)

In the meantime, let the Teapublicans have their moment of false hope.  I doubt very seriously that the President and the Congressional Democrats would work so hard, invest so much political capital, and endure such vitriol and abuse if they didn’t believe their law would help people AND pass constitutional muster.

But more to the point, this is an issue where something clearly had to get done and I, for one, am confident that this President and his party are on the right side of history, regardless of what a couple of Republican judges predictably think of the whole thing.

Honor the Astronauts

     Nobody knew their names.  That’s what’s most striking to me about the seven astronauts who climbed aboard the elevator for the long ride up the gantry alongside the space shuttle Challenger on a frigid January morning 25 years ago this Friday, (January 28, 1986).

     What a far cry it was from the heady space race days of Project Mercury some quarter of a century before that morning, when the American public knew every intimate detail about each of the famed Mercury Seven astronauts…or at least every intimate detail that the tightly-controlled NASA public relations department allowed the American public to know.

     It’s a fair bet that most Americans who were alive at the time can still, some half a century later, reel off the names of most, if not all of those first American astronauts.  How strange, then, yet somehow appropriate, that while we can easily recall Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Wally Schirra and Donald “Deke” Slayton, names with which we are intimately familiar from the dusty newsreels of history, the names of the Challenger 7 who perished aboard STS-51L stir only faint embers of recognition.

     That's because even in those relatively early days of its existence, the shuttle program had already developed the mundane, anonymous, routine workhorse attitude that NASA had promised the public.  Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory B. Jarvis, and Sharon Christa McAuliffe probably preferred it that way.  They knew that the glamour days of space exploration were but distant memories; that the time had come for the United States to embark upon the business of space flight.

It wasn’t about moon shots or beating the Soviets anymore.  It was about establishing, step by painful step, a permanent human presence in space, and adapting to that hostile environment for the benefit of mankind.

Challenger’s cargo on that last, fateful mission was a Tracking and Data Relay Satellite, or TDRS, intended to improve communications between space shuttles and mission control, as well as a miniature space probe intended to observe and study the tail of Halley’s Comet.  Nuts and bolts space infrastructure with a dash of good old-fashioned space science.

     Similarly, the crew of the Columbia who died when America’s original shuttle orbiter disintegrated on reentry February 1, 2003, was on their way home from an equally unglamorous mission.  Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, David M. Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Michael P. Anderson, Laurel B. Clark, and Israel’s Ilan Ramon had just spent 16 days in space on STS-107, minding an assortment of microgravity and Earth science experiments contained in the SPACEHAB science module that was mounted inside Columbia’s payload bay.  Like the Challenger 7 before them, the Columbia 7 died doing what they loved; work they felt was of critical importance to our species.

     These fourteen astronauts weren’t the first to die pushing the boundaries of space.  Back in the beat-the-Russians-at-all costs days of the early American space program, Mercury and Gemini veteran Grissom, Edward H. White, II, (the first American to “walk” in space), and rookie Roger B. Chaffee died in a flash fire inside their Apollo 1 capsule during a test on the launch pad on January 27, 1967.

Thanks to the endless replays shown on cable news networks at the time, however, and the fingertip access to video footage and stills available on the web, the Challenger and Columbia tragedies were the first to sear themselves into our national psyche.

How ironic it is, that all three of NASA’s great space disasters occurred within a 1-week calendar span, albeit spread across the decades.  So how best to honor those who were lost?  By carrying on their work and ensuring that the exploration of space continues in the years and decades ahead.

As NASA draws the curtain on its space shuttle program, with just two, or possibly three more missions scheduled to close it out this year, it’s good to know that the gigantic International Space Station will serve mankind for the next 10-20 years, that plans are in the works for the next generation of space vehicles, and that private companies are finally set to begin carrying out the kinds of space operations that only NASA and other international government agencies like it could handle before.

While we may not recall their names in the years ahead, as we pause to remember those lost aboard Apollo 1, Challenger, and Columbia, let’s also celebrate the fact that their sacrifices have helped return us to the stars from which we came.

That’s the cause for which they gave their lives.

KNOCK-KNOCK, HU’S THERE?

Who the heck is Hu?  If you’ve been paying attention to current events this past week, you’d notice that two main news stories have been soaking up most of the oxygen.  First, there’s been all the talk about Democrats and Republicans playing nice in the wake of the Tucson shootings, and perhaps even sitting next to each other during President Obama’s State of the Union Address Tuesday night.  This is ironic, given that the new GOP House majority seems hell-bent on waging retroactive mortal combat over virtually everything the President has accomplished in the previous two years.

And speaking of bitter rivals playing nice, news story number two focused on Chinese President Hu Jintao’s visit to Washington, D.C., inviting a collective yawn if not the faintest hint of nostalgia.  Let’s just say that being a superpower just isn’t the same without having the Soviet Union to kick around anymore.

It used to be simple, black hat, white hat type stuff.  We were the good guys, the Soviets were the villains, and there wasn’t a heck of a lot of wiggle room in between.  Our summits with the Soviets used to draw wall-to-wall media attention.  We knew their leaders as well as we knew our own.  Khrushchev banged his shoe and Kennedy shooed him out of Cuba.  Nixon and Brezhnev went eyebrow to bushy eyebrow.  Gorbachev and Reagan became best buds even as Gorby presided over the unexpected if welcomed collapse of his “Evil Empire…” and it’s never been the same since.

Back in the day, our proxy wars around the world with the Soviets were deadly, even though troops from the two countries weren’t shooting directly at each other.  Even our athletic competitions were epic events, with the Soviets winning tarnished Olympic basketball Gold over the Americans in 1972 when the refs in Munich gave them three shots at it; or the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” when the American hockey team shocked the Soviets…in the semi-final round.  No one remembers who they beat to actually win the Gold.

But then Solidarity in Poland combined with Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost; a perfect storm whose tidal surge eventually swept away Euro-Asian communism in the sort of reverse Domino-Effect those American leaders in the ‘60s could only dream about.  Good for us, good for the Russians, and good for a global population that no longer had to worry – as much – about their planet being incinerated in a barrage of mushroom clouds.

But we seem to be built on the binary system.  Apparently we crave the simplicity and neatness of two opposing sides locked in a blood-feud; Democracy vs. Communism, Pepsi vs. Coke, Red vs. Blue, the Bears vs. the Packers, and so forth.

As such, we’ve spent the years since the collapse of the USSR searching for a surrogate.  Putin helps, because let’s face it, it was tough to demonize the Russians with Yeltsin in charge, but it’s still just not the same.  So, we’ve tried to make do, elevating a rotating assortment of not-quite-ready for primetime players to Public Enemy #1 status the way a football coach without an all-star running back rushes the ball by committee.  Iraq’s been the bête-noir a couple of times, North Korea makes a handy foil, and Iran might make a good sparring partner, but China seems to be the current nominee.

They’re not a new rival, with America sworn to defend the Republic of China’s democratic government in Taiwan against a communist invasion from the mainland since the 1950s, and Chinese support of North Korea remains a nagging thorn in our side.  Then there was the tragic Tiananmen Square protest back in 1989, which recaptured our attention, but only briefly.

It doesn’t help that with the possible exception of Chairman Mao, none of their leaders have exactly been household names; in fact we sometimes don’t even know who their leaders are.  As Wikipedia so succinctly put it, “…in 1982, China perceivably had four main leaders: Hu Yaobang, the Party General Secretary; Zhao Ziyang, the Premier; Li Xiannian, the President; and Deng Xiaoping, the ‘Paramount Leader,’ holding title of the Chairman of the CMC.”  The Chinese didn’t make it easy to know who to get mad at.

But now the People’s Republic of China has but a single leader. The President of China isn’t democratically elected, of course – that whole “People’s Republic” part of the name only goes so far, after all -- but Hu Jintao has held the job since 2003.  While Russia continues to atrophy, the Chinese economy, population and global influence are growing by the day and they are rapidly developing the military and technological sophistication to match.

Ultimately, if America has been craving a worthy foil, China just might fit the bill…which means we better be careful what – or “Hu” -- we wish for.

Real Football

     There’s a lot of serious stuff going on in today’s world:  Last week’s tragic shootings in Arizona, the struggling American economy, the ongoing war in Afghanistan, the quixotic quest for peace in the Middle East, and on and on and on.  So naturally, it’s time to talk some football.

     As a sports fan, the Holidays are a bittersweet time, marking, as they do, the end of the high school and college football seasons and the beginning of the end of the NFL’s campaign.  Millions of football fans around the country hustle to pack up the Christmas decorations so they have time to plunk themselves down in front of their TVs to watch the BCS title game, which allegedly crowns college football’s still-mythical national champion.

Then begins a football fan’s favorite 3-week stretch of the year: a 4-game Wildcard Weekend, a 4-game Divisional playoff weekend, and then the 2-game conference championship weekend.  After that comes the hiccup that is Pro Bowl weekend and, of course, the Super Bowl, which isn’t really football unless you have a rooting interest in one of the teams.

We’ve been particularly blessed this playoff season, not because the teams involved are especially exceptional, (7-9 Seattle, this means you), not because the games have been especially memorable barnburners, but because nearly all of the playoff games so far have been played outside.  On grass.

I’m a big-time traditionalist when it comes to sports, and I curse the days that both artificial turf and especially domed stadiums were invented.  I suppose you can get away with these affronts to humanity in baseball, and I understand the economic reasons for turf in multi-use high school and college stadiums, but football is different.

Football is meant to be played outside and on a grass field.  Just as the dimensional quirks and idiosyncrasies of individual baseball stadiums add to that game, the vagaries of the weather add a welcome variable to the game of football.

This is true, not only in how it affects the teams and the play on the field, but more importantly, how it looks on TV.  Watch a game in a dome?  Boring and generic.  Watch a game that’s being played in a driving rainstorm on a muddy field or in a blinding blizzard?  Now that’s football.

The sports gods are finally realizing this, and are fighting back.  The best part about the collapse of Minneapolis’ appallingly awful Metrodome, after all, other than that nobody got hurt, was that the Minnesota Vikings and the Chicago Bears played a December football game outside in Minnesota for the first time since 1981.

And now, both the AFC and NFC Championship Games will be played in outdoor, cold weather stadiums, and I hope it snows like crazy.  I hope this not only so that it slows down Aaron Rogers and the Green Bay Packers’ scary-good passing game, thus improving the odds of Da Bears making the Super Bowl, but because that Super Bowl will be played indoors, on the Jerry-World turf.

In other words, the football season really comes to an end next week.

The Prototypes

I was cleaning my closet over the Christmas break when I came across one of those accordion folders stuffed full of papers.  Now, one fringe benefit that comes from doing something as mundane as cleaning out your closet is the unexpected joy of discovery you experience when finding some long-forgotten item like this folder.  Not quite as good a feeling as finding a forgotten $20 bill in your pocket, mind you, but not bad.

     Okay, that’s never happened to me, but you get the idea.

     In any event, I was puzzled as to what this folder might contain, so I took a peek inside its numbered slots.  There, secluded for several years in the dark, rested printed copies of a series of essays I had written, oh, probably 12-15 years ago.  Each in its own slot, double-spaced with my name and an old address neatly typed on the cover pages, these pearls of wisdom covered a wide variety of subjects -- some profound, some silly, some profoundly silly – and were all dressed up, ready to be submitted to magazines that might be interested in publishing.

     Which leads me to the other discovery tucked inside the folder: a rather impressive stack of rejection letters from dozens of magazines that I had submitted these essays to.  For some reason that probably seemed like a good idea at the time, I had masochistically held onto every one of them.

See, back in those days before the Internet was as ubiquitous as air, I had developed a fairly extensive system of researching potential outlets for my writing, methodically printing out my pieces and sending them individually through the mail to their potential targets.  This process, suspended in time and frozen at the point at which I had rediscovered it, was obviously inefficient, time consuming and, most importantly, utterly ineffective, although it no doubt helped close the U.S. Postal Service’s chronic budget deficit.

     “How quaint,” I thought to myself once the sneezing from the folder’s dust cloud had passed.  Then I had a revelation.  I was holding a blog.  Not literally, of course, but the essays on these dusty sheaves of paper were exactly the types of pieces I’d post on a blog…if only I had one.

     Well now I do, and I’m privileged to have you reading the very first entry in “Electric Blue.”  So what can readers expect in subsequent postings and how often can you expect them?  Beats me.  But what I do know is that whatever pours forth from my fingertips in future entries will bear a startling similarity to those earlier prototypes in that I will cover a wide variety of topics.  Politics, sports, movies, current events, space exploration, music, and probably a bunch of other stuff I DON’T know anything about but am eager to learn will find their way into musings to come.

     Will those original essays pop up?  Well, some of them have since been published through various online outlets, which just proves how much easier it is to earn an audience, if not exactly a fortune, in this wired world in which we live.  But yeah, I’ll probably post them periodically, when I’m feeling lazy or they seem to be topical even after all of these years.

     So, welcome to “Electric Blue.”  Thanks for sparing a few minutes from your busy life to read these postings.  I hope you come away entertained, inspired, enraged, enthralled…anything but bored.  Because when you’re bored, you have to resort to things like cleaning out your closet…and see what that can lead to?