Take You More Seriously When..

""Pardon me for being a conservative; however, that doesn't automatically imply that I'm a racist. "

Of course not. Tim has said so, loudly, at least three times. His point is that there is a BACKGROUND of white racial resentment at these events. So, two questions for you:

1) Have you seen this background of white nationalist resentment and hate? The Rush Limbaughs, the kids beating up black women with Rosa Parks posters, the Glenn Becks? Do you deny that those are racist, or have you just personally not been privy to them? If you haven't personally seen these events, can you admit they have occurred?

2) If you recognize the existence of this background, what will you do? Ask fellow protesters who carry signs that call Obama the "n-word" or liken him to a monkey to put them away? Call Rush and tell him to back off? Etc.?

Everyone likes to say they're not racist, or violent, or whatever, but you can tell how serious they are and their movements are by the things they say and do to deal with the issue.

"The fact that the taxpayers of the United States of America (black, white, brown, red, yellow, etc.) are becoming more vocal at the Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings doesn't mean that they are racist either."

You're making a false implication here in your parantheses. The resistance at these Tea Parties and Town Hall Meetings are disproportionately white. That doesn't mean they're wrong, mind you, but you can't honestly pretend that this is a rainbow coalition resisting national health care.

The majority of the American public has, since the 1950s, wanted a socialized health care regime like the rest of the planet. Not only have you guys who have been against it managed to keep it from becoming policy for forty years, you (and, actually, the major corporations and rich white male elites that effectively run the country) have managed to keep it from even being ON THE AGENDA, getting public debate. I think it's our turn.

"These citizens are simply utilizing their Constitutional rights to oppose an oppressive government that no longer operates for the wellbeing of all of its citizens."

See, it's crap like this that makes us wonder where you guys are coming from.

WHEN did the US government operate for the wellbeing of all its citizens? It certainly didn't operate for the poor in its beginnings when it put down Shay's Rebellion or prevented non-landed people from voting. It certainly didn't operate for the poor throughout the 19th century, with Pinkerton's Detectives running around murdering union workers and the government violently putting down strikes. It didn't operate for the poor throughout the 20th century, even during the New Deal, and certainly not since the 1970s, when wages have stagnated or fallen in real terms for the majority of workers.

It's NEVER operated in the interests of black and brown folks, and could only POSSIBLY have operated in the interests of women since universal female suffrage was FINALLY introduced 150 years too late. (In fact, it hasn't operated for the interests of women either).

And was it REALLY operating in the interests of and for the wellbeing of Americans over the last eight years, when George W. Bush and his puppetmasters squandered an unprecedented opportunity to parlay a rare moment of sympathy for Americans into real inroads to peace, murdered millions of Iraqis in a war that the majority of Americans opposed, devastated our economy, and undermined the Constitution and international law, just to pick a few crimes at random? Sure, he got plenty of help from liberals in these departments, both before, during and after. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have his own, MASSIVE, responsibility.

The ONLY way that one could possibly decode the statement you just made as being anything but ludicrous and non-sensical, let alone TRUE, is if you take for granted the idea that it is only rich white males' perspectives that matter. Obama's 1% or 5% reduction in their power (which is mostly only bringing their power back down to Clinton-era levels, not really undermining it in many serious ways) MAY be "no longer operat[ing] for the wellbeing of all of its [rich white male] citizens", but to even utter these words shows the white, class-skewed, gendered nationalist framework from which you operate. You may be operating from this framework unwittingly, but unfortunately ignorance and lack of self-reflection is a prime breeding ground of racism and nationalism.

Also, "oppressive"? What, socialized health care is worse than PATRIOT, worse than butchering Iraqis, worse than undermining the Geneva Convention? Are you serious?

"Perhaps Americans have simply become fed up with the tax burden of the bureaucracy created on Capitol Hill, and are now opposed to an additional increase in their taxes."

It'd be funny that they did that NOW, since the bureaucracy on Capitol Hill certainly didn't go DOWN with Bush reducing transparency and creating new agencies like Homeland Security. Further, if conservatives REALLY cared about lowering taxes, they'd a) change the tax code so it stops slamming the poor (stop using Social Security as a discretionary fund, stop shifting fiscal burdens to state and local governments, stop raising prices on public services like schools and busses which functions as a WILDLY regressive tax on the poor) and b) cut back on the massive waste the Pentagon engages in. The Pentagon lost 2 TRILLION dollars: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/29/eveningnews/main325985.shtml . That's only a fraction of their wasteful spending, since it doesn't include elements of the budget that are ENUMERATED but wasteful (overspending on parts and contractor services rather than UNDERSPENDING on them, the black budget which is used to hide egregious waste, various boondoggles like the Osprey). Check out Take the Rich Off Welfare for a great breakdown on this. The worst part is that if we took all that waste, at least hundreds of billions a year, put some of it towards a tax cut and put the rest towards resolving Kofi Annan's facts (that it'd take less than $100 billion to provide the basic needs of the planet), we'd be safer AND spend less. Remember that the federal government's budget is about 70% defense: It's not just the Pentagon but also tax and loan costs from previous conflicts, shares of the national deficit due to military spending, parts of NASA and the Energy Department, special funding bills like what Bush pushed through Congress for Iraq to dishonestly hide the true cost of the war, etc.

Fact is, there is a massive bureaucracy and massive taxation that operates in the interests of the rich white male elite. Always has been. So, again, this phrase comes from a place of white privilege, male privilege (yes, I am aware you are a woman), and class privilege. Tim offered some examples: The FHA loans, the GI Bill, the Homestead Act, etc.

So the timing and historical reasoning of this movement, expressed in seemingly innocuous statements like yours, is deeply suspicious. Suddenly, a movement emerges complaining about government waste in response to something LIKE a socialized health care program which will reduce burdens for the poor. The people in this movement said nothing about massive waste and massive tax problems elsewhere, certainly not in such a unified manner, until a black President introduced a program to help the poor. The leaders of this movement routinely engage in racialized pandering. What are we SUPPOSED to think, Sharon?

"Ultimately, it's not racist to oppose any president, senator, or congressman who is simply a career politician more interested in their own enrichment and power."

But it IS racist to call anyone the "n-word", it IS racist to justify beating up a black woman who showed a sign of Rosa Parks because she's engaging in "race-baiting", and it IS racist when the politician you oppose is black and the worldview you use to oppose him is a white nationalist one.

Again, not everyone opposing the President is racist. On this we can all agree. But I'm not even black, just a nice white middle-class college leftist, and yet in the few sentences I've analyzed from you there's PLENTY of a racialized worldview. That's what a lot of people in this country are responding to, and until you can understand WHERE they're coming from, even if you won't agree, the movement as a whole will have racist undertones, to the detriment of millions of otherwise nice people.

"After all, the president, senators, and congressmen are supposed to work for us, "We the people . . ." not just for themselves. The Revolutionary War was fought for freedom against the English king who imposed oppressive taxation without representation"

But you are represented. By Congress and the President. The fact that your preferred party LOST in landslides over the last few years means that you had your voice heard and the country finally got sick of it.

But, putting that aside: I agree. Hell, I'm an anarchist. I've wanted to get revolutin' since 2000. I, and the Left, have been honestly opposing the bulk of wasteful government spending since 2000. If you want to join the club, please do. But you bring up the revolutionary fervor NOW, instead of the previous eight years? As if Obama is not only oppressive, but MORE SO than Bush? Come on!

"Should the president, senate, and the congress impose more oppressive taxes while ignoring the opinions of the American taxpayers, wouldn't that also be taxation without representation?"

How are they ignoring your opinion? Putitng aside the fact that, no, they don't HAVE to listen to a damn word you say once you elect them (you have the right to petition your grievances to them, they have no legal obligation to listen), and your fellow Americans did elect them, this initiative is unlike THOUSANDS of other initiatives that have gotten passed over the last twenty years thanks to deals made in dark corridors with lobbyist's money in that you are being actively CONSULTED in town hall meetings. This is the DEFINITION of consultation and the OPPOSITE of ignoring your opinions. Say what you will about Obama (and I have a lot to say about him, a lot negative, as does a lot of the Left), he has made a real effort to listen to the opinions of the American people. He doesn't have to.

Also: You guys are in the minority. Have been for fifty years. Socialized health care is popular among the people. Yeah, a lot of people don't like it. Still not a majority. So your opinion IS being heard, loudly, with racist garbage mixed in, and despite that you might not get your way. Welcome to what it's like to be a leftist. Cookies and punch will be served. That's still not taxation without representation.

Had even liberals, let alone leftists, over the last eight years made REMOTELY similar arguments about how since we opposed the Iraq War all the money that went to it was taxation without representation (and this argument, unlike yours, would have MERIT since a majority of the population actually opposed a unilateral war declared without approval of the UN and without an official declaration from Congress) and we were entitled to revolt and to actively impede the war effort, you on the Right would have yelled about treason and "supporting the troops". But when you guys lose, and this time you LOST lost (not "lost because the elections were rigged" lost like with Bush in 2000 and 2004), suddenly it's "taxation without representation". I'm almost speechless.

"Speaking as a taxpayer and a conservative, I'm more interested in limiting our overbearing, bureaucratic, and wasteful government. How and why does that make conservatives racists?"

It's suspicious because of the timing. I don't know about you personally, but this movement did not emerge and the people in it did not make a unified complaint until a few tepid liberal policies were introduced. They don't mind government waste and boondoggles when it comes from a Texan C student President, but when it comes to a black man, hold up!

It's racist, and again not every conservative or even necessarily a majority at these rallies are racists or behaving in racist ways, because prominent members of your movement in the media are using explicitly racist and white-nationalist sentiments and phrases to whip up support and people like you are fighting against the people who are OPPOSING IT rather than the racists on your side.

We'll take you, and others protesting the accusations of racism, far more seriously when we see hordes of callers to Rush Limbaugh and hordes of letters to Glenn Beck and whole rallies saying, "We oppose the President because we think he's wrong. We don't oppose him because he's black". Since such a movement has not emerged, I'd say that we can judge based on your money not being where your mouth is, so to speak.

Indeed...

This structure is so powerful that many people have noted that if blacks stopped supporting white businesses, the economy would collapse. I'm reminded of Greg Palast who cited an interviewee as saying in response to the question, "What'd the economy be like without illegal immigration", that "There would be no economy".

This system becomes far worse and has far less give-and-take when you extend the model to global imperialism.

Interesting...

"Who knew that my comments would offend both Frederic Christie and N Q at the same time? The United States of America used to be called the "great melting pot" that was built by people who came from all over the world. Although I realize that many citizens were unwilling immigrants who were brought here as slaves and indentured servants, that is no longer the case. Millions of people struggled, fought and died for the freedoms that we now live under. The race divisions that continue to build barriers between Americans are being built by a minority of citizens of all colors."

I think if you read my post honestly, you'll find not so much offense as disappointment. The platitudes you recite are riddled with ideas of what America is and was that come from a sanitized, rich-white-male-friendly version of history. This doesn't make socialized health care right or wrong, but it's tragic that the whole discussion has to begin even at statements that you regrettably seem to find uncontroversial, when in fact they're absurd. It's this vastly different way of looking at the problem that predisposes your movement of otherwise decent people to racist, classist excess.

It didn't "used" to be called that, it still is called that. But even that "melting pot" bit is a problem. It implies that people are melted like fondue into an indistinct mass or globule. The cost that immigrants paid to become "Americans", read: white, was to lose their culture. This is tragic, and unnecessary.

But the problem is that that "melting pot" has clearly only been a possibility, even in THEORY, for some. I think you'd be hard pressed to argue that the racial experiences of Asians, blacks and Latina/os in this country in ANY way resembles the racial experience of Irish, Italians, etc. Both groups encountered racism and prejudice at the point of entry, and for decades afterwards. But one group, now, has access to wealth and privilege that those other non-white groups do. Stephen Steinberg has done some of the best work here.

The fact that slavery is gone, while obviously of great importance, doesn't change the fact that the basic opportunity structure hasn't changed all that much from the days of slavery. A century of Jim Crow continued to maldistribute wealth, which has led to trillions of dollars difference in wealth. Blacks owned .5% of wealth in the 1860s and own little more than that now. One hundred fifty years of history have barely improved the basic wealth available to African-Americans.

Those struggles for freedom have almost always come from our side of the table, the left side, and almost always have been opposed by you conservatives. The New Deal. Abolitionists. Feminists, both First, Second and Third Wave. Civil rights. Labor movements for a century and a half. The free speech movement. The anti-war movement. I cannot think of a substantial advancement in those freedoms in which conservatives played a major role. Even as regards fighting the fascists, it was leftists (including people like Hemingway) fighting in Spain while it was Roosevelt and right-leaning people here backing the fascists and illegally redirecting Texaco oil tankers to Franco.

Your theory that racial divisions are being prompted by a minority is popular but it flies in the face of ALL evidence. So majorities of whites when asked express incredibly racist sentiments about their fellow black and brown citizens. Majorities of black children and adolescents express encountering routine discrimination. Studies like the Implicit Attitude Test show that vast majorities of whites have deeply held subconscious biases. The frequency of white flight alone indicates that. It's totally implausible that the amount of discrimination that blacks encounter in employment, the criminal justice system, education, lending and mortgages, firing and promotion, government contracts, etc. would come only from a minority of white Americans. So, no, we all have a responsibility for racism in this country, since almost every white man, woman and child reaps the benefits of white privilege at least once in their live, and they usually receive these benefits so constantly that they stop seeing that it's a benefit.

"FIRST RESPONSE: I have seen a certain element of resentment and hate in the U.S.A., but it has been the Neo-Nazi Groups or the KKK and not all whites. These are racist organizations and have always been "anti-anyone-not-like-themselves." If I were to see kids beating up black women with Rosa Parks posters, I would definitely call the police. This is because I am disabled and not able to engage in physical fights. Please note that I am aware of some racists acts, but Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck have not asked their listeners to do anything except stand up for their rights under the law."

This is, in many parts, that an evasion and not an answer. I can either surmise that

a) To you, likening Obama to Hitler, saying that white people are going to be put on the back of the bus under Obama, etc. is acceptable because they're not literally telling people to "do anything"

or

b) That you agree with those arguments being proferred

The problem is that people like Rush and Glenn are responsible for the racist garbage coming out of their mouths, and for stoking up white nationalistic fervor. So will you tell them to back off, or will you stay silent? Will you encourage others to take them to task?

I am wondering if you find comments like "How do you get promoted in the Barack Obama administration? By hating white people...make white people the new oppressed minority...and they're (the Republican Party) going right along with it 'cuz they're shutting up, moving to the back of the bus. They're saying "I can't use that drinking fountain, OK! I can't use that restroom, OK!" to be acceptable. It is repugnant and vile to equate ANY element of what is happening in the Obama administration to Jim Crow.

As far as the Rosa Parks poster: I'm glad to hear that you would make that decision. The problem is that apparently other white people in your movement disagreeing. What will you do or say to them?

"Once again, I couldn't confront the protestors personally. However, that doesn't imply that I'd do nothing. Calling Mr. Obama the "n-word" is disrespectful to not only him, but the Office of the President that he currently occupies. Besides, personal attacks on whoever is the president are nothing new for anyone who occupies the White House. George W. Bush received a considerable amount of criticism and was called names by the media and his opponents. Many “comedy” shows portrayed George W. Bush as a buffoon or inept clown on a daily or weekly basis.

Ignorance wears many faces of many races. It may be “politically incorrect” to say, but it’s been an unspoken truth for a very long time; racism, hatred, and sexism flow in two directions. Perhaps we should simply regard the actions of the extremists as being ignorant and unworthy of merit."

So Jews killed Nazis and Nazis killed Jews?

This is really beyond comment. Yes, racial resentment does tend to build up on both sides: Oppression tends to do that. But it is grotesque to view white supremacy or patriarchy as simply "flow[ing]" in two directions. There is no equivalence between slavery and anything that blacks have done to whites in America, ever, not once. One could argue they were never in a position to do so, but that's our point: Biases, prejudice and hate may be everywhere, but some groups have far more power to put those biases into action. It also ignores that, in fact, it is NOT evenly spread. Blacks report that they'd love to live in integrated communities and attend integrated schools; it's whites who are recalcitrant. And "internalized racism" and sexism indicate that the racism and sexism held by dominant groups, whites and males respectively, slam the psyches of the subservient groups, so even when there's hatred of the dominant group that hatred is paired with self-esteem issues about one's own.

Also: It is disingenuous to the extreme to liken calling Obama the "n-word" or comparing him to a monkey to the satire Bush received. This isn't a partisan thing: Clinton and Gore got much well-deserved and quite funny criticism. Nor am I against satires of Obama or any black politician: There have been great satirical comments made against Obama, Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, etc. Take Stephen Colbert's classic satire of Jesse Jackson that interviewing him is like boxing a glacier. This is simply racism, not political satire. "Personal attacks" and racist attacks against a candidate just because of the color of their skin are two rather distinct categories.

I am glad to hear these comments from you, and can take you more seriously, but note that there is a SUBSTANTIAL group within your movement that discredits these sentiments and behaves in repellent ways. The fact that you replied as you did indicates to me that you recognize that Tim's critique is in fact warranted, that it's something that real critics need to be concerned about. People like Rush and Beck only cloud the waters with hate.

 

I also notice that you decided not to reply to the far more substantive critique I offered. Obviously, people have time commitments, and I appreciate your responses, but I think that it's quite revealing that that's all you replied to. It shows a huge gulf between the perceptions of reality that these movements have.

I'm not going to address

I'm not going to address everything in your last post, maybe Frederic will do that later. But anyway...

"I didn’t mention the Jews at all so I’m not certain if I can say much more than the Nazis were a “socialist” party that utilized thuggish methods to impose their doctrines. Are you aware that not only the Jews were murdered in the concentration camps? The Nazis eliminated Catholic priests and nuns, gypsies, homosexuals, blacks, and anyone who disagreed with their movement. Your comments resound as if the Civil Rights Movement never happened. Or that the white race continues to deny everyone (except whites) their Civil Rights."

Just because they Nazis called themselves socialist DOES NOT mean they were, actually they were hardcore fascists and used thugs to get rid of any socialist-minded acitivists (ex: union leaders) You should never take the names of parties or even regims at face value. The governments of North Korea, Zimbabwe and the China have "democratic republic" or some derivative thereof in their titles but no one in their right mind would actually describe them as anything but authoritarian dictatorships. It's called propaganda. Being socialist used to be a good thing, and it sounded good.

Furthermore, you spouting out all the groups of people that were persecuted under the Nazis doesn't help your argument. By asking “So Jews killed Nazis and Nazis killed Jews?” Frederic was attempting to illustrate to you that it doesn't matter how much blacks and brown people feel hatred or prejudice towards white people, they collectively have no power to do anything about it. A jew could hate germans all he wants, all the way to the gas chamber. 

"Why do so many people want a government-run health care system? Especially since socialized medicine has failed in England, Canada, France, and everywhere else that it has been instituted. In addition, the quality of care in those countries is exceptionally poor."

Are you daft? France is rated number one in the world in quality of care. We, with all the money we spend and waste are number 37. Sure, in most places, governments are strapped in paying for their social programs, including health care. And by your own admission, you can't make everyone happy all the time but it makes me sick that the loudest americans would rather have millions go without any care while they enjoy. Even if general care went down a bit due to diffusion of resources (which would be hard since we are ranked 37th in the world) at least everyone gets access to it. I've come to the realization that other nations are simply more humanitarian than we are and I wish I knew why. 

So Many Errors

"No, Ms. Biru, I'm not daft. And I've been to France. It's a country where the health care system has nearly bankrupted the nation's treasury. If France is doing so well, why haven’t they bothered to repay their WWII debt to the U.S.A.?"

You're joking, right? All right, then how about WE repay our debt to them for winning the American Revolution? Not to mention pay reparations for our support for and inaction against Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.

First you say that the health care in that country is of poor quality. You get called on that exceptionally inaccurate claim. You then amend it to say that, okay, their health care IS all fine and good, but it costs a lot. Their treasury is bankrupt.

Well, it might be rude to point out that OUR treasury is bankrupt, or rather that we have run a national deficit of colossal proportions for the last few decades. It might pass the point of rudeness to note that their macroeconomic statistics are as good or better than ours. And it could not even be uttered in polite conversation that we're so rich because we use our military and economic might to dominate the planet.

"While you are quite correct that the Nazis were fascists; the fascists of Nazi Germany and the socialists of the U.S.S.R. both had a tendency to eliminate/murder their perceived enemies. These two forms of governments tried to have total control over their citizens’ lives. Doesn’t sound like the type of government we need."

Does anyone in their right mind honestly propose EITHER of these alternatives? No. But if we're "socialists", then you guys are "fascists".

So what that both groups murdered their perceived enemies? AMERICA murders its perceived enemies right now! It murders enemies it perceives as "terrorists" and eliminates INNOCENT people like Uighurs by placing them into prison without a trial, without habea corpus, in violation of the Geneva Convention. The Romans, the Mongols, the Athenians, all killed enemies they perceived. That's a truism of human behavior.

As far as "total control" over their citizen's lives: You mean, like a society where a large portion of the population has to ask a manager if they can go to the bathroom, a level of tyranny Stalin didn't even dream of? A society whose leaders win thanks to rigging elections and disenfranchising, often illegally their poorest racial minority? A government that used a horrible assault on major centers of government and finance as a pretext to expand executive power and declare war on the globe? A rogue state that does not even pretend to be beholden to international laws that it signed in good faith? A government who behaved with contempt for the laws and Constitution they swore to uphold? Not here, no sirree. I'm reminded of Huey Long's observation that, when fascism comes to this country, it'll be wrapped in an American flag

Further, to equate socialized health care, that almost every industrialized DEMOCRACY in the world has, with the USSR, is really below comment. To be clear: I'm not saying the Bush administration was comparable to Hitler. But if we want to talk about tyranny, or an oppressive regime, thanks to socialized health care, then conservatives had better be willing to admit that Bush WAS Hitler. The comparison, while faulty, RESEMBLED something accurate in the case of Bush.

 "This is how well the federal government handles its departments/programs and its taxpayers’ money. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac programs paid how much money to its CEOs and how much of the taxpayers’ money was lost. The U.S. Post Office is almost in bankruptcy."

And the military loses trillions, yet you never mention it as an example of federal government failures.

As for the failures of the private economy? Bill Gates makes billions, has as much wealth as the GDP of Norway, and yet our economy FAILS to provide food, shelter and health care to its citizens. Since the "market" resurged since the 1970s with "free trade", GDP growth has gone down, inequity has gone up, social mobility has gone down, wages have gone down... and yet profits have gone up.

Of the top 100 of the Fortune 500, ALL have benefitted from assistance from AT LEAST the states that they are headquartered in, and at least 20 have been saved from total collapse. Like Goldman and Sachs when the peso collapsed, or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and WaMu and the whole subprime mortgage crisis, which is UNCONTROVERSIALLY a crisis of an UNREGULATED free market. (The best that CATO Institute-style market libertarians do in response to this claim is to say that the government is responsible because it failed to regulate. Right.) 

Planned obsolescence, a cornerstone of the 1950s economy and still a major part of ours, is by definition inefficient and ecologically wasteful, yet it is a natural consequence of "market" outcomes.

The Internet, the bio-tech industry, aviation, canisterization.. ALL of it was researched at taxpayer cost by the government, whether through the Pentagon or through publically funded universities and colleges (whether private universities or public ones, they all receive massive state subsidy - MIT, for example, is nominally private yet has always had large research grants from the government), then after the taxpayer footed the bill private actors reaped the profits. Thomas Ferguson uses this as part of his argument for why our government is actually formed of coalitions of investors.

And, of course, it is CAPITALISM's insane waste, consumption of finite resources, and wholesale rape of the ecology that may spell doom for the human species.

I agree with you that the state has screwed up, and is fundamentally an inequitable and inadequate way of managing a complex society. But capitalism is just as bad. In fact, to claim that the private sector is distinct from the state is a joke: These are massive institutions in constant collusion. It is an exercise in hair-splitting to identify the precise moment where state ends and corporation begins.

"The incredible amount of tax funds that are wasted by our presidents, senators, congressmen is unconscionable. How about the current deficit?"

What ABOUT it? It was YOUR guys' Presidents who wasted that money! It was Reagan who finally sank us into a permanent state of deficit! If we want to claim that government deficits are a serious problem, then BY DEFINITION it has to be the Pentagon's fault, since the Pentagon consumes around 70% of government budgets! It was the very Presidents who espoused your trickle-down private industry model of economy that spent all that money, whether it be SNL, tax cuts and shelters for the rich, or the Federal Reserve ILLEGALLY ignoring its obligations to insure that wages increase alongside decreasing inflation.

Who do you honestly think prompts all that rampant overspending by Congressmen? Whose spending do you think it serves? Certainly not those Congressmen, who while rich and powerful are almost never Bill Gates or the Waltons or the heads of the other private empires. No, Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme Court... they all act in the interests of the elites who staff those offices and whose wealth determines whether or not our economy is worth trillions or nothing. When Bill Clinton tried to create a stimulus package, a modest $20 billion, investor coalitions threatened to make it cost $40 billion and thus nullify the cost just by messing around with bonds. That's all done by the rich capitalists who you want running our health care system.

"So why do people want something as personal as health care to be handled by our federal government? An example is the poor woman who was forced to have her baby on the sidewalk because the hospital controlled by the socialized health care in Great Britain couldn’t/wouldn’t send an ambulance for her."

A tragic story. Americans surely never suffer from being inable to get medical care, or being bankrupted by it.

Oh, wait.

The health consequences of inadequate coverage are more severe for women than for men and women are more likely than men to run into problems receiving adequate medical care. Over a quarter (27%) of women had health problems requiring medical attention but were not able to see a doctor, compared to 21% of men. Similarly, nearly a quarter (22%) of women reported that they were unable to fill a needed prescription, as compared to 15% of men.

http://speaker.house.gov/blog/?p=1909

Some of the worst victims? Veterans. Thousands of veterans are homeless and suffering from undiagnosed or previously diagnosed mental illness. If we had a socialized health care system, many of these men would be back to serving their communities, with families and stable jobs. Instead, they self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

1.5 million people will declare bankruptcy this year. Of that, 60% will do so thanks to medical bills. That's 900,000 people. Even if socialized health care stopped HALF of those bankruptcies, that'd be 450,000 people this year ALONE who would get to keep their wealth, their credit scores, and avoid being terrorized by creditors. But hey, tell us how bad those Britons have it. Cite one, or two, terrible sob stories. Never mind that a majority of THEIR populace don't demand an end to socialized health care. For the rest of the industrial countries in the world, socialized health care is like Social Security here: A shibboleth, politically untouchable.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/05/bankruptcy.medical.bills/

We're not choosing government health care because we think it's a panacea that will fix all problems for free by waving a magic wand. We choose it because the HMO system is MORE insane, more expensive, more brutal. You NEVER reply to this, because you can't. No one on the right does. They busily engage in the fallacy of perfection: Just because a government health care system isn't perfect, the fact that it's MUCH better becomes moot.

"As far as “. . . other nations are simply more humanitarian than we are . . .” where were those nations when Katrina hit the U.S. Gulf Coast? A token effort by Mexico was made, but what about all of the nations the citizens of the U.S.A. sent medical and financial aid to when they had a natural disaster?"

REALLY? Are you really making this argument? To say that Botswana should pay the US as much as the US pays Botswana is ludicrous. You are clearly done making serious arguments.

But in any case, this is not an argument. Proportional to GDP, which is the ONLY RATIONAL STANDARD, America is one of the stingiest countries on the planet. If I have $20 to my name and give $2 to a beggar, that is an amazing act of charity. If I have $2,000,000 and give $2 to a beggar, reasonable people might ask why I didn't give more. The two are colossally different.

Also: You're wrong. First: Mexico's effort was NOT token proportional to their degree to help. Hell, plenty of you conservatives were saying that it was a secret Mexican invasion plan, so it must have been SOMETHING, right? But in fact, the world DID give aid, which went unclaimed by the Bush administration because, as Kanye West, they don't care about black people: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR200704... . This was MILLIONS of dollars that the world gave us. 

We have the power to pay the world, and in fact we have the power to feed the world, because we've stolen that wealth. We stole it from Latin America for more than a century, we stole it from most of the world after World War II. And don't mention the Marshall Plan. Not only was it enlightened self-interest, but in fact conditions for the Marshall Plan helped to make Europe's coal less of a threat to American oil.

Cuba, a country with a fraction of our resources, successfully survived a far worse hurricane with NO deaths. America didn't get financial aid because the disaster of Katrina was NOT the hurricane, but complete governmental ineptitude in responding to it. That'S WHAT happens when you have a government whose taxes you cut and that you subject to market logic: It starts to suck, and starts to protect only the rich.

You also note that Americans, PRIVATELY, sent a lot of money to the world. This is quite commendable, and indeed a lot of evidence indicates that it was the POORER to sent more, not the richer. But the problem with this argument is that we're talking about the AMERICAN GOVERNMENT. That private charity only EXISTED because the American government failed to provide sufficient aid. (Not to mention the American government's role in EXACERBATING those foreign disasters, like the role American corporations paid in cutting mangrove forests that were a vital watershed against tsunamis).

"A number of forty-three-million is tossed out as to how many Americans don’t have medical insurance. How many of these people are in their late teens and twenties who choose not to pay for insurance; or those who don’t carry health insurance because they pay for their medical needs out of their own pockets?"

Quite a lot. Not a majority, but even if it were, do those people not get sick? If any of them have an appendix rupture or get septic, right now they would face spending colossal bills or die. Under a socialized health care system, they would be INSURED. They would be safe.

It is THIS that causes us to fight for socialized health care. Not it being cheaper. Not the cruelty and stupidity of HMOs. The idea is that we want a society where, if we see someone go into an epileptic seizure or burst an appendix, our first question isn't what kind of insurance they have. We want a society where those people will be taken care of, where they will be made healthy and returned to work and become functional citizens. THAT value is a real American value. It is a pioneer value, those pioneers who wouldn't ask when a barn burnt down, "Well, did you get fire insurance?" but would instead build their neighbor a barn.

"Personally, I prefer to keep control of my own health insurance and select the physicians I trust and I don’t expect other taxpayers to pay for my care."

Since, of course, HMOs can't prevent you from choosing your course of treatment, say by denying you MRIs or CT scans, or can't choose your doctor by only covering certain physicians.

Oh, wait.

But if you do so, fantastic. Socialized health care does not ELIMINATE the private market. Plastic surgery, for example, does not disappear in nations with socialized health care. You can choose to pay for your own care under most regimes, but if you cannot, the government will provide for basic care to make sure you are healthy.

It is ludicrous to argue that, for the vast majority of Americans, socialized health care means LESS options. Actually, it means MORE: The option to do something besides choose between starving or treating their kids' cancer.

And That's Not Racism?

"I wasn't angry with our federal government because it "let that city and it's dark-complexioned populace wash away into the ocean." Hurricane Katrina hit a multi-state area of the U.S. Gulf Coast, not only New Orleans, Louisiana. No matter who is in the White House at the time, the president cannot send the National Guard into any state until the governor of that state requests the president to send in aid. The total body count wasn't a "dark-complexioned" majority and it's a miracle that more people weren't killed."

If the total body count was a majority, despite African-Americans only being 12% on average of the country, that would show the racism even MORE obviously. The fact that you extrapolated from the broader region to deny the racism of what happened in New Orleans is itself telling.

Fact is, you have said NOTHING that resembles the common liberal and left critique of what happened in New Orleans, which again indicates to me that you've formed your opinions without knowing them. The reason why Katrina demonstrated institutional racism against blacks included

a) The televised and photographed spectacle of Katrina’s aftermath in New Orleans in particular revealed that the vast majority of those worst affected were black, in numbers disproportionate even to the large percentage of blacks within the city : http://understandingkatrina.ssrc.org/Gilman/

b) The federal government's response in ANY way was racist and contempuous, even putting aside the National Guard issue

c) The segregation of folks into the Superdome was egregious and racist

d) The media treatment made blacks out to be looters and whites out to be finders

e) Post-Katrina aid has lagged far behind what is needed to truly reconstruct the area, leaving poor New Orleanian blacks even poorer than before

f) Rich property owners used the destruction of poor black homes as a way to engage in de facto ethnic cleansing by changing the composition of the city

g) Police violently forced fleeing people back into the city

h) The media flatly lied about rapes in the Superdome

i) "But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained," wrote a blogger on the Philadelphia Daily News Web site who goes by the name Attytood. "Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security--coming at the same time as federal tax cuts--was the reason for the strain...In early 2004, as the cost of the conflict in Iraq soared, President Bush proposed spending less than 20 percent of what the Corps said was needed for Lake Pontchartrain, according to [a] Feb. 16 , 2004 article in New Orleans CityBusiness." http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/5514. This point is especially compelling when one recognizes that this money was redirected thanks to the "war on terror" which is itself a racist, imperialist war on the planet. Racism coming and going, and you think that race didn't play a role here?

And so on, and so forth.

What was most staggering about the Hurricane's aftermath wasn't the racist tolls, nor the denial by whites and conservatives of the tolls. After all, blacks being slammed disproportionately by disasters whether economic or natural is nothing new, nor is official neglect of their interests and plight. Similarly, conservatives covering their ass is unsurprising: Everyone covers their ass.

What was most surprising, and most disgusting, were the polls that showed that whites didn't think ANY racial lesson was to be learned by Katrina, whereas blacks did. What this shows is that whites don't think even DISAGREEMENT amounts to a lesson about race, which indicates they simply don't think black opinions amount to very much. I thought this was a fascinating snapshot of white privilege.

"The people in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida panhandle that chose to stay where they were did so at their own risk. The state and local governments of Louisiana failed to utilize the school buses and city buses to take those without transportation out of harm’s way"

And either of these can be extricated from racism?

The desperately poor people who refused to leave overwhelmingly did so because leaving meant abandoning the few things of value they may have had left. Desperate poverty can lead people to do some seemingly irrational things.

Similarly, state and local governments' failure to respond was part of the racism. So it was state and local police who kept fleeing blacks in the city.

Long Response Ahoy!

"Are you always so angry when debating with someone who sees issues another way than you? You are correct about the population of New Orleans being predominantly black; can’t deny this fact. Still, where was the black mayor of New Orleans? Did he not have a responsibility to his constituents? What happened to the millions of dollars of taxpayer money that was sent to New Orleans to build the levees to a level to withstand a Category 5 hurricane?"

I'm not angry. I'm stridently responding to points, not insulting you personally. There's a difference.

In any respect, it's not just that you see them "differently", which is of course fine and in fact wonderful, but that your perceptions are colored by a racialized, class-biased frame. When someone says that the federal government is oppressing people NOW, it is offensive to those who suffered from the federal government oppressing people beforehand. If I mentioned that high taxes harmed black folks but left out all sorts of other groups they harmed, you might get a little miffed. Similarly, if I declared, "Everyone stands to win by socialized health care, absolutely everyone", seriously, you might be a little miffed because some people WILL be losers and you have sympathy for those people. Ditto here.

"The federal government’s first response wasn’t racist. The overblown bureaucracy of our federal government can seldom do anything quickly. F.E.M.A. is a bureaucracy that also runs about as fast as a snail being chased by a bird. The National Guard moves in once the governor requests assistance and then it has to first be able to arrive at the disaster site(s). While the National Guard has vehicles to rescue people and secure the city, the flood waters must drain to a level where their land vehicles can be utilized. I watched the news stories of the National Guard helicopters plucking people off of the roofs of their homes and out of windows. Even the helicopters have fuel limits as to how far they are able to fly in to rescue people and still have enough fuel to return with the people they rescued. Likewise, the weight limits that a helicopter can carry caused, in some cases, some people not being rescued at the same time as their family members. F.E.M.A had to transport all of the trailers from safer areas where they are stored and couldn’t haul the trailers in until the flood waters drained away. Like I previously wrote, the federal government is a very slow moving monstrosity. The federal bureaucracy doesn’t always function well and that’s not racist, it’s an overgrown bureaucracy.

As a footnote: My father was an officer in the National Guard. His specialty was communications and was sent to tornado and hurricane disasters both in Texas and other southern states. Their primary function was to begin to re-establish communications, but there were times when his men needed to make rescues too. Also, family members in Baton Rouge, Louisiana work to deliver the trailers to New Orleans and other cities in Louisiana. Saw the photos and heard the stories of what they encountered."

See below, in the Iowa example, as to why this is flatly false.

 

"Perhaps you do not live in a hurricane target area, but the mayor and his council are supposed to have an evacuation plan for its citizens and also a plan for recovery after a disastrous hurricane. It wasn’t the federal government that instructed the citizens of New Orleans to go to, or be transported to the Superdome. This is something that a mayor is responsible to do. These responsibilities aren’t rare, all large cities are supposed to have disaster and recovery plans whether it’s tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, terrorist bombings, or all of the above."

Yet that ineptitude and that inability to respond hurts poorer, and therefore blacker, people more because those people have less capacity to create their own plans of escape and resources to mobilize to do so. Also, as we've noted, the federal government shirked ITS end of the bargain in disaster awareness in New Orleans but not in Iowa or in California. Weird how the only disaster where the state and local authorities were left to fend for themselvers was the disaster that was slamming poor black Southerners.

Incidentally, while the federal government didn't do some of the things you cited, they provided materials, guards, etc. to do so. So to pretend that the federal government was powerless to stop the state is ludicrous.

"The federal government sent people, money, supplies, building materials, trailers, and more money, etc. to help New Orleans be rebuilt. After a major hurricane the damaged buildings have to be removed and/or gutted and have all the damage replaced before the buildings are once again habitable. Also with all of the environmental laws that slows the work down, it now takes much longer for all of the remediation to be done. Where was the New Orleans city government during the process of rebuilding their city?"

Not enough, not fast enough.

I hardly think environmental laws are to blame, since the same environmental laws don't stop the feds from helping promptly when it's white victims. To wit:

In New Orleans, residents were kept from escaping, literally forced back into the city by armed police from a neighboring community. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, relief agencies like the Red Cross were prohibited from entering the city, thanks to an order from the Department of Homeland Security, which feared that the provision of relief would delay evacuation. In other words, the suffering was heightened deliberately by government order, as noted on the Red Cross website, as early as September 2, 2005. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, those stuck in the flood zone (tens of thousands in all) were herded into the Superdome and Convention Center, where there was no air conditioning (at the hottest time of the year in that city), no food, and little or no water. When those who were trapped (and who would wait for three full days before any serious assistance arrived) tried to get to the food in the pantries of the Convention Center (food that would have gone bad or been written off anyway), they were met by guns, pointed at them by members of the National Guard, who warned them to "step away from the food or we'll blow your fucking heads off." Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, there are very few escape routes out of the city, as anyone who has spent much time there can attest. The only artery capable of handling a significant number of vehicles is Interstate 10, heading west or east. In the Midwestern flood zones, there are far more escape routes, far fewer people to get evacuated, and the flooding was a slow and steady process, unlike the rapid inundation in New Orleans, which happened quickly after the overtopping of inadequately constructed levees.

In New Orleans, according to data in the 2004 and 2006 American Community Surveys, conducted by the Census Bureau, residents were about four times as likely as their Iowa counterparts not to have access to a vehicle that could facilitate their escape from the flood zone. Whereas more than 21 percent of New Orleanians were without access to a car at the time of Katrina, only 6 percent of folks in Black Hawk County (home to hard-hit Cedar Falls, Iowa) and 5 percent of those in Linn County (home to flooded Cedar Rapids--the biggest city affected by the latest deluge) were carless. To put the importance of not having a vehicle in stark terms, 38,000 households in New Orleans, comprising approximately 100,000 people, were without a car, and thus, unable to flee on their own.

And of course, in New Orleans, FEMA was nowhere to be seen for several days, whereas, in the Midwest, residents report that FEMA was on the ground in many communities even before floodwaters overtopped levees there, and have responded quickly and effectively, all things considered, since. (This is a point worth making, since Limbaugh also insisted that Midwesterners, unlike New Orleanians, weren't "whining" and crying "where's FEMA?" Fact is, they didn't need to ask, because the government responded rapidly this time around).

 

http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/InsulttoInjury.html

So New Orleans should foot the bill of what is a) now officially a federal responsibility, under the purview of a federal agency, FEMA and b) is so massively expensive as to be beyond their budget? When you say that folks in Iowa and California should also foot that bill, I'll take it seriously.

The fact is that, thanks to a combination of past government ineptitude, present government ineptitude, callousness, racist contempt, and the magnitude of the disaster, black folks are suffering from a horrible catastrophe while white folks repeatedly can get through, with whatever harm, their own catastrophes and rebuild. That's racism in action, in the Blaunerian sense of racist impact.

"Ethnic cleansing? Ethnic cleansing is the intentional murder of a specific group of people."

Not according to definitions of ethnic cleansing OR genocide.

To wit:

Genocide

Excerpt from the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of Genocide (For full text click here)

"Article II:  In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Article III:  The following acts shall be punishable:

(a) Genocide;

(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;

(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;

(d) Attempt to commit genocide;

(e) Complicity in genocide.

And ethnic cleansing:

Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a local majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory

Trying to redesign a city so that it has less of one ethnic group and more of another is racist and evil, and satisfies many definitions of both ethnic cleansing and genocide. This is a definition that came into vogue thanks to the Holocaust. Jews and other groups victimized by the Nazis agreed, rightly, that the crime the Nazis were REALLY trying to do was not to kill Jews per se, but to obliterate their national existence through fear. Killing Jews was one way to satisfy that requirement, but they had engaged in different approaches, as did the ethnic cleansers in the former Yugoslav Repulics.

"Not all of the apartments and projects in New Orleans were pre-Civil War era buildings with historical value; most were built around the 1950s."

Which is irrelevant to the people who lived in those places.

"These same buildings needed to be replaced because of the hurricane damage and years of deferred maintenance."

So replace them and get the people who used to live there back in.

"What you call the “rich property owners” may have used the hurricane damage as an opportunity to improve their properties which is their lawful right."

Which means kicking out poor black folks and moving in rich white folks. And, no, they've tried to accomplish this through illegal collusion as well as "legal" means. But even if ethnic cleansing or genocide were legal, would it be right? Changing the ethnic makeup of a city devastated by an atrocity is an insult and an attack on not just the people victimized but on the cultural identity of that city.

"The people inhabiting the “poor black homes” didn’t own the houses. When a landlord sells a property, then a tenant often has to move. This is a sad reality of any tenant anywhere."

The renter, any renter, has NO RIGHT to engage in discrimination based on race. That's what is occurring en masse.

But a landlord didn't sell a property, the property got destroyed by a disaster. Surely the federal government has some obligation to intervene?

The point, in any respect, would be that black folks don't buy up land freed by a disaster that affects white folks to engage in ethnic cleansing upon them. Whether that's because they can't or they won't, it shows how real white privilege is, despite your denials.

"Doesn’t sound reasonable, but during a disaster some strange things happen including preventing people from running toward the hurricane or other dangers. Once again, this was a city government police department so was this a case of black-on-black racism?"

Black-on-black racism is racism. It MIGHT not be our fault, though even that is frankly pretty nasty buck-passing, but that'd indicate that Katrina taught us that black-on-black racism can have massive consequences. What a majority of white people are denying is that Katrina taught us ANYTHING, remember.

But, again: A white institutional structure that acts in the interests of white is still white-on-black racist even when its footsoldiers aren't white. By your logic, there was nothing racist about the British occupation of India because their footsoldiers were mostly other Indians.

And, remember: The New Orleans police  department overrepresents whites, particularly at the highest levels of power, and underrepresents blacks.

You also have to wonder: Did white DAs, or the National Guard, or ANYONE, y'know, DO ANYTHING about this? No. The men who kept fleeing people in a sinking city are by and large still free.

The story here: http://www.rense.com/general67/copsd.htm

Police agencies south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds attempting to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, according to two paramedics who were in the crowd.   The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people. The witnesses said they had been told by New Orleans police to cross this same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.   Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.

 

"The media is predominantly liberal and always tries to be politically correct, so I’m not certain why they were so racist as to release such misinformation."

Frederic: Here's evidence that the media is racist, not liberal and not politically correct.

Sharon: Well, the media IS liberal and politically incorrect, so I'm not certain why that happened.

The statement you just made is what we call "begging the question". In response to your core claim, you simply cited your claim as established and then used it to try to disprove the contrary claim. It's circular logic. Further, the very fact that your hypothesis CAN'T account for my evidence is the point: The media ISN'T liberal.

Please try to explain the following deviations from a liberal media model under your hypothesis, if you would:

a) The media reporting prominently during the buildup to the invasion of Iraq that Saddam likely did have WMDs when the intelligence community and the falsehoods presented by the administration were never challenged

b) The lack of reporters questioning Bush as to whether or not he'd invade Iraq only if WMDs were there, or only if there was a tie to al Qaeda, or for regime change even if the two previous statements were false

c) Time's prominent reporting that the majority of Americans supported the war in Iraq when their own polls said that a majority of Americans did not want a non-UN sanctioned invasion and that a substantial plurality did not support a non-Congressional invasion

d) The media claiming that "Old Europe" (France, Germany, etc.) were just behind the times while failing to note that "New Europe" (Europe that did what we wanted) had populations that lagged far behind

e) Virtually no mainstream commentators mentioning that Saddam was backed by the US during the time that he committed the atrocities against the Kurds and others that people like Jack Straw and Tony Blair were mentioning as evidence of the evil of this man

f) Anyone who argued that invading Iraq would lead to looting of WMDs

g) The fact that you have apparently not heard, prior to this discussion, the vast majority of the arguments I've fielded

h) East Timor receiving a tiny fraction of the coverage of Pol Pot's comparable atrocities

i) The media's treatment of Sotomayor, such as taking her to task for saying that as a Latina woman she would have an advantage in anti-discrimination cases: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3847

j) 24's racist treatments of Arabs

k) The mainstream media reporting Watergate but not reporting COINTELPRO and only reporting the "secret bombing of Cambodia" as a failure to inform Congress not a colossal war crime

One can go on, as indeed FAIR and Noam Chomsky do. The media are inherently class-and-race biased, however PC and liberal they might be. And they're not all that liberal. As Maddox pointed out:

To be fair, except for FOX News (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, John Gibson, Neil Cavuto, Steve Doocy, E.D. Hill, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume), Clear Channel, Laura Ingraham, Dr. Laura, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Newsmax, G. Gordon Liddy, Michael Reagan, Michael Savage, The New York Post, Sinclair Broadcast Group (WLOS13, Fox 45, WTTO21, WB49, KGAN, WICD, WICS, WCHS, WVAH, WTAT, WSTR, WSYX, WTTE, WKEF, WRGT, KDSM, WSMH, WXLV, WURN, KVWB, KFBT, WDKY, WMSN, WVTV, WEAR, WZTV, KOTH, WYZZ, WPGH, WGME, WLFL, WRLH, WUHF, KABB, WGGB, WSYT, WTTA), David Horowitz, Rupert Murdoch, PAX, and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, they're right.

Even if the liberal media was a problem, you'd think that you conservatives would jump all over their failures, right?

"Were the polls prepared by the media? Even when the polls are prepared by professional pollsters, the questions are often worded in such a way as to achieve the result that the entity requesting the poll wants to see. Polls, like career politicians, can seldom be trusted. And since there is a majority of blacks in New Orleans, how much “white privilege” can there be if there is a black mayor running the political machine in New Orleans?"

Really?

Yes, polls are not perfect. Different questions can prompt different results.

But, for God's sakes, Sharon, can you REALLY explain results like THESE based on poorly designed questions?

White denial has become such a widespread phenomenon nowadays, that most whites are unwilling to entertain even the mildest of suggestions that racism and racial inequity might still be issues. To wit, a recent survey from the University of Chicago, in which whites and blacks were asked two questions about Hurricane Katrina and the governmental response to the tragedy. First, respondents were asked whether they believed the government response would have been speedier had the victims been white. Not surprisingly, only twenty percent of whites answered in the affirmative. But while that question is at least conceivably arguable, the next question seems so weakly worded that virtually anyone could have answered yes without committing too much in the way of recognition that racism was a problem. Yet the answers given reveal the depths of white intransigence to consider the problem a problem at all.

So when asked if we believed the Katrina tragedy showed that there was a lesson to be learned about racial inequality in America--any lesson at all--while ninety percent of blacks said yes, only thirty-eight percent of whites agreed (18). To us, Katrina said nothing about race whatsoever, even as blacks were disproportionately affected; even as there was a clear racial difference in terms of who was stuck in New Orleans and who was able to escape; even as the media focused incessantly on reports of black violence in the Superdome and Convention Center that proved later to be false; even as blacks have been having a much harder time moving back to New Orleans, thanks to local and federal foot-dragging and the plans of economic elites in the city to destroy homes in the most damaged (black) neighborhoods and convert them to non-residential (or higher rent) uses.

For more, see http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/whatcard.html and Glen Ford and Peter Campbell, "Katrina: A Study-Black Consensus, White Dispute," The Black Commentator, Issue 165, January 5, 2006.

And, no, this was not asked by the media, but by a university study. For my point based on this data to be even arguably false, you'd need that white number that thought NO LESSON at all was learned to be 10%, not 62%. That's a 52% margin of error. I await you plausibly making that claim.

First off, that "black" man is only running that political machine because of his skill at ingratiating himself to whites. His history is really remarkable as a candidate: He got tons of votes from cops but not so much from, y'know, black folks. Second: So what? Does one black mayor, or even one black President, make white privilege not real? Let's say that Hitler elected a Jew to his council. Would that make the Holocaust not exist?

To give a poignant example: Madame C.J. Walker was one of the first black millionaires in this country. She made her wealth selling beauty products, primarily ones designed to make black women look whiter: Bleach the skin, unkink the hair.

She made her millions in the first 25 years of the 20th century.

During which lynching parties, where entire communities watched a black man die, were common affairs. Before Brown v. Board. When Jim Crow was still around.

The mere presence of black politicians, and black news anchors, and rich blacks, doesn't change the basic opportunity structure nor the basic legislative interests and mandates, any more than a poor Congressman who worked his way up the ladder to become a Republican or Democratic Congressmen will vote to cut taxes or cut the deficit, things you'd prefer.

"MY RESPONSE: When I read this sentence, I sat back and had to think about its intent. What I think it means is that city and state governments failed to take care of the poor black citizens of New Orleans because these governments are racists."

No, that's not what it says. And this perception is ITSELF a representation of white privilege.

There's a famous essay by Bob Blauner, Talking Past Each Other, where he notes that for white folks racism is ONLY prejudice or bigotry. The KKK is racist, cutting welfare aid to disproportionately black people is not. But for blacks and for most sociologists of race, racism is measured by IMPACT. If I decide to raise taxes on the poor, that is a racist act even if I was only trying to slam the poor or fix the budget or what not, because it slams blacks disproportionately. jonsenglishsite.info/.../4_Talking%20Past%20Each%20Other.doc has a link.

The black and sociological perspective, of course, makes more sense, and it's one EVERYONE adopts elsewhere. We don't let Eichmann off the hook for "just following orders". We recognize that he helped commit genocide, even if he himself had very little interest in doing so and wouldn't have done so without the Nazis.

Of course, you can disagree. But the point is that even you DISAGREEING, and the power your disagreement has, is ITSELF based in white privilege, given how much power the white perspective on race has. If whites want to define racism as only that which affects white people, or only racist intent, they will do so, facts be damned, and the power of their voice will allow that view of the world to become the dominant one.

"Once again, was this a case of black-on-black racism? With a black majority running the city and all of its departments, I don’t quite understand why this would be racism."

See above.

A black cop pulling over a black man because of a racial profile is engaging in a racist fashion. Would you say that a lynching ordered by whites would be any less racist if they got a black man to tie the knot?

Further, blacks may have been a MAJORITY of people in government and office, but given that New Orleans was a MASSIVELY black city, the fact that the police department (as an example) was (depending on various estimates) either only SLIGHTLY majority black or actually a slight white majority means that a disproportionately white police force helped push back a disproportionately black city. And when you looked closely, again like with the police department, you found that the highest officials were majority white. So in the New Orleans police department, the highest officers were MAJORITY white in a MAJORITY black city. That's fairly staggering.

All this indicates that, no matter the racial composition of the officials of Louisiana and New Orleans (and they hardly represented real racial proportionality, especially when you note how "white" these black officials had to become to get elected), their response was racist in impact. It's simply the case that, legislatively, the concerns and needs of black folks are not high up on the agenda. Hell, one doesn't even need to believe in PREJUDICE to believe that! The fact they're poorer thanks to history would ALONE make it so that politicians are less concerned about a black backlash against their policies.

For Buddha's sake, you're trying to paint the state that nearly elected David Duke in multiple separate elections out as a zone of racial harmony!

In any respect, that only replies to state and local failures, not the list of other things I gave. So the really mendacious attempts to minimize the racism that Katrina posed is, again, deeply revealing as to how much whites need to believe that race plays no role in their institutions.

"Was it simply a case of “all the rats abandoning the ship” before the poorer citizens were delivered from harm? Or if this wasn’t the case, why are the other predominantly black cities destroyed by Katrina already back up and running? Did those of white privilege like the other cities better?"

First of all: "Up and running" is exaggerating the term a little. http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/146/secondstorm.html . In fact, some of the reason these cities are "up and running" at all is because they have become the target of effective ethnic cleansing (that is, a campaign that has had the effect of drastically reducing the amount of black folks in those cities).

Second: New Orleans faced disproportionate damage, being at the brunt of the hurricane and in a uniquely bad position. Bush cutting the levee funding didn't do anything for you?  There's no question that they were harmed most, so that the aid that the government gave them in the aftermath was again FAR too minimal, which in turn led to racial discrepancies.

"Personal responsibility is crucial to anyone’s success in this nation. If the city you live in has little or no opportunity for a job, you pick yourself up and move to a city where there are jobs available. The cold hard truth of life is that you get out of it as much as you put into it; no one is going to give you everything that you may believe that you should have in life. Too many people of average income could do better for themselves, but they have become comfortable where they are, or they spend too much money on large screen televisions and fancy cars. That’s their choice. The people who stayed because they didn’t want to lose “the few things of value they may have had left,” should have valued their own lives a bit more."

And what do you do when those jobs AREN'T available, Sharon? By DEFINITION, around 3-5% of the normal unemployment rate is structural; that is, it is mandated by market forces and by the Federal Reserve. Right now, that number is higher. So a certain amount of the population CAN'T work. If you add in temporary workers looking for full-time work and part-time workers looking for full time work plus unemployed full-time workers who aren't looking for work because they have become convinced that jobs aren't available, that number becomes even higher. That's tens of millions in this country, disproportionately black and brown, who are underemployed or unemployed STRUCTURALLY. Should they magically make jobs or should they panhandle, Sharon? And what does it say about a society that cuts aid to the people that it claims need to be underemployed because that'll keep slack in the hiring market and thus lower inflation? Why should they sacrifice having gainful employment without any safety net so banks and lenders can do better?

What do you do if, thanks to neo-liberalism, good-paying factory jobs like in Flint and Detroit have been outsourced, so that the only alternative is flipping burgers to feed your family?

What do you do if you're a felon, thanks to a racist criminal justice system cracking down on drug offenses on black and brown non-violent users even though a lot of evidence indicates that whites are disproportionately likely to be using, and no one will hire you?

What do you do if you don't make enough money to eat, like more than ten million in this country? Just keep toughing it out even though you and your kids are starving?

What do you do if employers insist on hiring illegal immigrants, even though you as a black man speak the language, because they can threaten those immigrants with deportation and violate minimum wage laws?

What do you do if 75% of companies, according to the OFCCP,  routinely flout the basics of anti-discrimination law, so your chances of being hired are already low coming into the gate?

What do you do if you don't have nice middle-class parents or friends or uncles who can help you move? What do you do if you don't own a car, or don't have enough money to afford going to a city where work is available?

Let's say you try to move. What do you do if no landlord will show you affordable housing yet will show your white friends unrented unit after unit?

Again: Your whole shtick makes a lot of sense if you're talking to even fairly poor white folks, though if you're talking to the absolute poorest (and, frankly, that's still objectively a MASSIVE number) it still makes no sense. But it makes NO SENSE talking to black and brown folks, who face so many barriers in doing things you take for granted, so much so that you think that these poor inner-city black folks just didn't think about MOVING OUT. As if that was a novel idea these savages could not grasp, that they should just LEAVE Flint or Harlem or Chicago or Detroit or South Central. 

THAT'S white privilege: The ability to make recommendations to people based on your racialized lens, your racialized experience, that make no sense for THEIR experiences and their unique difficulties, and have that be used as an excuse to deny people aid, and make a movement centered around that racialized lens that gets media attention, and have that narrative of "Just work harder" become the dominant one in society. Not to mention the inherent, grotesque irony of telling OTHER people to have personal responsibility. What do we white folks do, Sharon? To paraphrase Tim Wise, host the St. Patrick's Day Parade? Do we not help our black and brown neighbors get through rough patches?

Black males in Harlem have around the same mortality rate as people in Bangladesh. That's Third World conditions. Yet you take for granted their ability to find jobs while they're starving, to move while they're starving. And then you want to make sure they can't get health care?!

Oh, and you're also wrong. That is: Social mobility in this country is so low that the vast majority of the population will never leave the social class into which they're born, that is if you're born poor or middle-class, you stay poor or middle-class, perhaps moving up or down one income bracket. So all the personal responsibility in the WORLD doesn't change all the . Further, there are people in this country working 40, 60, 80 hour weeks just to barely survive, working multiple jobs. Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed shows how a privileged, white woman who is a well known journalist and has a college degree can nonetheless fail to or barely get by without state assistance.

"Not all Americans or Texans can be classified as having or exploiting “white privilege.” Most have worked for everything that they have and continue to do so in the hope that the federal, state, and city governments won’t increase taxes again. It’s not because they are racist, it’s because these governments are not supposed to take and waste so much of their citizens’ money."

You apparently don't know what white privilege is. That's fine, despite its importance it's not taught in high school and millions of whites can be invisible to it. Hell, that IS one of the privileges: To take the privileges for granted! See, among others, Tim Wise's White Like Me, Peggy McIntosh's Unpacking the Knapsack, Oliver and Shapiro's Black Wealth/White Wealth...

White privilege is the advantage I get when black-sounding names on resumes, which my Frederic Christie is not, get called back so much less often as to be a disadvantage equal to around eight years worth of job experience. It's the advantage I get when I can complain about my plights, fictional or otherwise, and get media sympathy instead of charges of exaggeration and hyper-sensitivity. It's the median income of my racial group being HIGHER than the median household income of the country rather than lower. It's the ability to enter the old boy's network. It's the ability to, no matter my past, clean up and have my excuses for poor credit or a bad job history be paid attention to. It's the advantage I have where white applicants for jobs with a criminal record are MORE likely to get a job than black applicants without.

So, yeah, I and a ton of other white people work very hard to get where we are. But the vast majority of us see far more for our efforts, see at least a POSSIBILITY of advancing up the ladder, while blacks see less. This privilege is massive: It's the difference between blacks having 1% of the wealth produced by America and 12-13% percent of it, almost all of that extra wealth (in the trillions) going to whites or already owned by whites. That's TRILLIONS of dollars whites reap as an advantage of being white. RQ gave you an estimate of the amount that is basically transferred from blacks to whites from ONE policy.

White privilege means that a white individual is going to be better off than a non-white or black individual in similar circumstances. Control for class, gender and political privilege and you STILL see whites having massive benefits and blacks not.

After all, there was a massive black outcry about Katrina, yet that was never given the sympathy these Tea Parties are. When blacks riot, they're violent people. When white college students riot over beer prices, well, they're just squandered revolutionaries.

Nor do whites "exploit" white privilege. I don't "exploit" white privilege when I go in for a job interview. I behave charmingly and make jokes, which are taken well because my interviewer is white and culturally similar to me. A similarly charming, intelligent black youth will be judged as a smartass. Neither of us exploited anything: It's just that my achievements will be judged as higher than hers and her excuses will be even less credit than mine.

But, again, it is ludicrous to keep on placing the blame for the economic hardships of these white Americans on taxes. Had the minimum wage tracked productivity, it would be anywhere from $12-20 right now. That means the difference between someone being able to go to college and someone staying in a dead-end job forever. Taxes are a FRACTION of the problem: The core problem is that wages and benefits have been declining or stagnating for most of the population for years.

"This has been a very long and thought provoking debate. I cannot tell you more than what I’ve learned in life, but I do know that I’ve worked hard for decades. The color of my skin didn’t give me an advantage when I had to look for another job, but I didn’t expect to be hired based on nothing more than one aspect of who I could be as an employee. I have friends who are not just white, but are black, brown, yellow, and even Native American. And while I have tried to understand opinions different than mine, it’s been difficult for me to convey my opinions without being labeled a racist."

Every sociological study, almost every scholar, and millions of black men and women can tell you that, no, the color of your skin DID give you an advantage when you went to get a job. A massive one. So even to say this is silly.

Your racially diverse group of friends, while laudable, is moot to the fact that you have more privilege than them. Bill Gates could tell me that his childhood friend is still poor and that wouldn't change his wealth one iota, right?

I can tell you, as personal experience, that once I realized what white privilege was, I realized I was swimming in it. It was why my all-white high school could have people cutting class, getting drunk and getting stoned without being busted. It's why, at a Wailers reunion concert in Grass Valley, more than a hundred mostly white people could openly in public be smoking so much weed that it practically hotboxed the entire concert venue and not be raided by DEA officials or local Sheriffs. It's why people like George W. Bush get to get high on coke, fail at almost every endeavor they attempt, and still be beloved by the white voters they lie to, while people like Obama better be flawless paragons of virtue and merit. It's why I could screw off in high school and, thanks to AP classes, honors classes and the system being set up for my success, nonetheless slide easily into a prestigious university. It's why my parents could go from penniless hippies to people with more wealth than 90% of the world in a few years. 

No one has labeled you a racist. But we're trying to get you to see that the perceptions and statements you make are not only ludicrously inaccurate but inaccurate in a very specific, consistent way: They come from a lens of white privilege.

Yep

"Isn’t this what happened in the affirmative action debate? Whites by their sheer numbers brought down the measure because of what it did to a few whites nation-wide. Whites got a taste- a little bitty taste of what it felt like to be passed over because of your skin color- and they did not like it. It did not matter that blacks or people of color had experienced this injustice for centuries, all they knew is that it was unacceptable to them. So we (whites) will change the laws if we must. We will band together under a common banner and do the patriotic thing by using our sheer numbers to overturn this vile and racist law."

And that taste was a lie. For one thing, as Tim and others have reported, many of the people who complained about affirmative action were already marginal cases, so that their scores were below plenty of other applicants. Further, these applicants were generally only able to get in BECAUSE of white privilege. That is: In the absence of institutional racism, we'd see around 12 to 13 of the top 100 of any group of applicants being black. But many of the prominent anti-affirmative action lawsuits had people who wouldn't have gotten in had there been racial equity in the first place.

Also: No one has an unchallengable right to get into the college they want. Most of these litigants complained about not getting into their first college of choice. For many affirmative action candidates, it's whether or not they get into ANY college, or into any GOOD college, rather than UC Davis instead of UC Santa Cruz. It's amazing that many of these colleges, like the University of California, are private institutions. So, what, all you free marketeer libertarians think that private institutions have the right to racially discriminate against blacks but not against whites? And what has the Supreme Court or these activists done regarding employment discrimination or discrimination against black students in elementary, middle and high school? Answer: Nothing. They make pretextual stops Constitutional but not a point-based affirmative action system. The white privilege encoded in the Constitution and in the Court couldn't be more transparent.

Luckily, at least an affirmative action system that takes race into account is now legal. Thank goodness.

Incidentally, that whole "protecting whites" bit still hasn't stopped at least UC Davis and Berkeley from having massive Asian populations. It tickles me inside to see how fast whites reverse course on that whole affirmative action / racial preference / racial diversity on campuses bit when it's THEIR kids not going to school, but the Vos and the Nguyens and the Lees'.

"I’ve seen this experiment done by 20/20 and other news magazines. It illustrated clearly that when a white male/female is interviewed by another white person, there is a cultural commonality that won’t be shared if the applicant is black. The white interviewer may have gone to the same type catholic school- or both may have played college football. The white interviewer may share the same musical taste as the white applicant, or come from the same type neighborhood. He will connect in ways in which he will not with the black applicant; even when accounting for similar education and qualifications. The white interviewer is more apt to pick someone who makes him feel comfortable. He will allow for the occasional differences, but he won’t have to worry about stepping on the toes of a minority on the job; or taking those silly cultural diversity classes, because he made an off-color remark. Nope- he is on safer ground if he hires one of his own, even if it’s on a subconscious level."

And that's putting aside all the other factors, of varying degrees of color-blindness. So I'm more likely to have recommendations from people he knows or respects, often just thanks to my proximity to them; or more likely to know his kid since we went to the same high school; or more likely to have been in the same frat. Not to mention that even very similar blacks and whites in paired studies, who presumably since they operated from scripts weren't using those advantages, STILL are treated differently.

You Haven't Made the Argument

"There is probably no way that I would ever be able to answer all of your responses in this latest comment. While I don’t fully understand your reasons for feeling so oppressed by people of the "white privilege," I still believe in self responsibility and not expecting the government to provide for my needs."

Sharon: I'm white.

I'm not oppressed by white privilege.

I benefit from it.

THAT'S why I can be so sure it exists: I don't see the deprivation and infer privilege, I see the privilege and infer deprivation.

You make a false dichotomy here. Maybe government should provide for us, maybe it shouldn't. But if we believe in the personal responsibility mantra, we need to engage with privilege we did not earn, stemming intergenerationally from slavery and Jim Crow, and continuing thanks to institutional racism at almost all levels of American society. The first point I'm making is, to put aside the tax issue for a moment and look at what you are born into as a white woman. (Being a woman clouds the issue thanks to sexism, but we'll put that aside for a moment, just like Peggy McIntosh did).

You are born to belonging. You are born not to being suspected of criminality or violence thanks to your race, unlike Arabs who are believed to be terrorists or blacks who are believed to be criminals or Latina/os who are believed to all be illegal immigrants. You are born to individuality: If you make a mistake, commit a crime, or fail at something, it only says that you are a flawed person, not that your entire race or your community or your neighborhood is. You are born to disproportionate, inherited wealth. You are born to (some degree) of access to the old boy's club. You are born to the privilege of being able to believe that police protect you rather than wondering if the police will try to frame you for a crime if you call them for help. You are born to the privilege of not having to view every traffic stop as another humiliation rendition of a racial script, another reminder of one's racial inferiority, and another moment of dangerous contact with police who could shoot you. You are born to access to a media structure that, no matter how PC is postures itself as being, is ultimately designed to report the issues that you and people like you face.

Recognizing this privilege, and its colossal real world impacts, is the start of taking responsibility. We white communities have the responsibility to drive out this unearned privilege and replace it with something we earned. We have the responsibility to drive out the specter of racism, which is connected to white privilege.

But then, of course, we come to your argument here. Now, I'm not saying that necessarily wanting to cut government spending on the poor comes from racist intent, but barring other policies such as reparations, it has racist impact. You might be able to say that you can take care of your own needs, but that's not least because the economy has been racially designed from day one to provide you with the means to do so. This is NOT the case for black and brown folks.

I also have to ask: Why is it ONLY the poor person who's responsible? The majority of those on welfare rolls have traditionally been white middle-class families who get on hard times thanks to a job loss, an illness in the family, etc. Given how many of those job losses are structural, and how the difficulty of acquiring a new job is ALSO structural, and how many of those illnesses are structurally caused, 

I think we have a responsibility, a "self" responsibility, to aid people when we see they need help. If someone is starving, we feed them (and then teach them to fish, whatever, but they need to eat first). If someone is sick, and we have medicine, we care for them. I want a government that represents those principles. In my view, this requires revolutionarily different institutions to truly achieve, and the overthrow of capitalism, but many progressive and liberal people make a compelling case that we should not let Grandma down the street starve because we've made "self responsibility" a shibboleth.

If you don't want to take government aid, then? Don't. But conservatives keep on trying to rollback programs like Social Security that the majority want to satisfy THEIR idea of personal responsibility, rather than simply doing what they feel is right for themselves and not bothering with others. That's the problem with statism: If we see a problem, our first thought is how we can make the government fix it.

"From my first memories, I was taught that if wanted something I had to work for it; and I also learned that were I to be in a disaster, then I would also have to take care of myself and mine. So much for the Hurricane Katrina, and the citizens of New Orleans were abandoned and failed by their mayor and city government."

And you don't think black communities were taught that? Taught to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Hell, if ANYTHING, their stories of doing so are infinitely more compelling! Black communities have ALWAYS valued self-reliance, business acumen, and the community handling its own affairs, from Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois all the way up to Dr. King and Malcolm X and beyond. But it is POSSIBLE for you and your community to work hard and to try to get the things you want, or even need. It is structurally impossible or extraordinarily difficult for black folks to do so. More importantly, it's just MORE difficult. Institutions make it so that they have to work harder to get where they're going, so our institutions need to be part of the solution. I'd prefer that took the form of reparations rather than of welfare programs, but until we have the former, we damn well need the latter. (I also independently believe in providing for the poor, but that's a separate discussion from the race question).

What do they do once they have been abandoned by the institutions that are sworn to protect them? (And by the federal government, too, something you won't admit but which the evidence clearly indicates). Well, they try their best to survive, as they did. OUR responsibility is clear: To help and aid.

"

There are a great number of FACTS and MISINFORMATION flying around about socialized health care. The following are few items gleaned from The Campaign for Responsible Health Reform.

Some politicians who want to create a government-run health care system are making bold claims about how it world work, but there’s a big difference between what they say and what they mean.

It's time to separate the myths from the facts. The truth is that a government-run health care system will put our country's fiscal future at risk and threaten the health care millions of Americans depend upon. Tell your representatives in Congress you understand how some politicians are mixing the myths with the facts. Here are some examples."

Notice, again, how EVERY ONE of your arguments here assume that health care is a vacuum. Suddenly, government health care comes along and screws everything up. But this is ludicrous. We HAVE  a health care regime in this country, one of a sea of HMOs, PPOs, and so forth. It's one that has demonstrably failed millions. So the question isn't how good government health care is, it's how much BETTER it is. Conservatives like you never cast the question in these terms, and I think for most of them it's because they know they CANNOT WIN the debate in the only honest fashion it can be argued.

NONE of them try to compare what happens under a government regime to the current regime. In this ENTIRE discussion, you have never ONCE brought up medical bankruptcies, HMOs, PPOs, denial of care, CORPORATE bureaucracy (which is not only as bad or worse than governmental bureaucracy, because it gets replicated by each "competing" company, but is also infinitely more onerous because their intent is to raise profit for their shareholders while a government's intent is to provide the care), etc.

Fact is, millions of Americans, as you've already noted, DON'T depend on medical care, AT ALL, thanks to it being unaffordable. I have a friend who won a substantial settlement from a car crash. He STILL cannot reasonably afford health insurance, not least because of the crash! Since for a large portion of Americans health care is provided from within companies, not only does the system break down for the unemployed ALWAYS, but is certainly breaking down MORE now because the recession has cost people jobs and raised the unemployment rate.

So, already, we can dispense with every argument you make hereafter, because you haven't even RISEN to the level of debating the actual issue: Namely, should we CHANGE what we presently have?

"

The Myth: "If you like your private insurance plan, you will be able to keep it, even if health reform creates government-run health insurance."

The Facts: Politicians who want government-run health care claim their legislation will let you keep the plan you have. But, both the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and researchers at the nonpartisan Lewin Group found that with a government-run health plan many millions of people will lose their employer-sponsored coverage. After 5 years, new government rules will apply to all plans, overseen by the Health Choices Administration."

New government rules that will stem the mass callousness and corruption of the HMO system.

I had a CT scan ordered by my physician, a physician approved by my HMO, to make sure I didn't have some kind of ulcer or other problem that would aggravate my back pain. Now, I have a very good insurance plan subsidized by a medium-sized tech company, and yet I STILL was turned down for what my doctor had ordered. Some bureaucrat hundreds of miles away had the ability to veto the decision my physician and I made face-to-face with personal consultation with my personal and medical history on hand. You never talk about these things, because they would ruin your case.

In any respect, "many millions of people" is STILL A FRACTION of people covered by private insurance plans right now, so your description of the terms in absolute rather than proportional numbers is dishonest to the extreme. Add in that nothing prevents employers from picking a DIFFERENT PRIVATE PLAN that complies with the new law, so your entire argument hinges on employers sitting on their ass for five years, nor does it prevent HMOs and PPOs from changing their services, again assuming they do nothing for five years, and the fact that these people will "lose" their service but gain a government service so to say they will "lose their coverage" is a flat out lie, and your argument is obliterated. It's deliberately faulty assumptions and lies like this that characterize conservative coverage of the health care debate. And I didn't even look up a particular rebuttal to this point, to which I am sure there are dozens.

"The Myth: "Government health insurance won't lead to a single payer health system."

The Facts: Politicians in Washington have admitted that a public option is the path to single payer government-run health care."

Oh no! The American economy FINALLY catching up with the rest of the world and adopting a rational health care system, one you flatly refuse to talk about because it's clear that it is superior both in care provided (as you conceded) and in cost (as you conceded)!

This is an ominous red herring argument and nothing more. Only if I expect that single payer government-run health care is BAD do I buy this argument. But it's still NOT a response to Obama's plan, since Obama's plan could be a very good compromise. You can't say that Plan X is bad because people are proposing Plan Y afterwards. When the time comes, you argue against Plan Y. This is a "slippery slope" fallacy, and the fact that you chose it as a key part of your argument indicates how poor your position is.

You also don't QUOTE any politicians, so this is Internet rumormongering at its utter worst.

But since when have YOU trusted what politicians in Washington have said? This implementation takes place AT LEAST over five years. By then, it is wholly possible that if Republicans do their job, they will have won back Congress and/or the Presidency. If that occurs, Obama's plan may be rolled back, let alone expanded to government health care. Not to mention these politicians may very well be using the single-payer rhetoric to get people interested in this plan, then will summarily drop it (as I would bet $10 they will) after the plan is passed. You are making yet ANOTHER fallacious assumption: That politicians saying they will pursue something means they will do so and that what they say they will pursue will therefore occur.

"The Myth: "Creating a public option will lower costs for everyone, even those with private insurance."

The Facts: Everyone agrees that health costs need to come down, but while some politicians claim that health reform with a government-run plan will lower costs, the CBO finds that the House and Senate bills will increase health care costs."

And yet virtually every other independent study shows that they will decrease costs.

But so what? What does that phrase even f-ing mean? Do you mean PER PAYER costs? Do you mean the average costs? Total costs? It'd MAKE SENSE that if you get millions of uninsured people and provide for them now, you will see a temporary spike in costs as a) you're providing a service that wasn't provided for before and b) you're fixing illnesses stemming from before they had insurance. That doesn't mean the system is less efficient.

Did the CBO account for the externality factors of letting people die or continue to get sick until they are FORCED to go to an ER visit rather than extending them health care now?

In short, what you just said is a lie. It's a lie because you don't explain what the terms mean and just hope we move on. And it's a lie because even under the most favorable interpretation of your terms, you're STILL missing a huge part of the economic picture. It's also a lie because "some politicians" AREN'T the only people arguing that this will cut costs.

Let's say that health care costs DID go up. Let's say that it cost more, per person, to cover everyone. Everyone should still be covered. No one should go sick in a society as opulent as ours. So your argument, again, begs the question.

"Of course I don’t believe everything that I read, but everything the federal government runs does cost more than taxpayers were originally told. Otherwise, the Social Security System and Medicare programs wouldn’t be closing in on bankruptcy. Big government wastes tax money. I saw this while working for a contractor of the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC). The only losers when the RTC was created to fix the savings and loan debacle were the taxpayers."

Neither are closing in on bankruptcy. The Social Security bankruptcy is a myth: See http://www.chomsky.info/articles/20050601.htm among numerous others.

Note that "bankruptcy" means that they're not getting enough money to provide the services they need. Well, Jesus, why not put more money in?

The fact that Medicare and Social Security are wildly successful anti-poverty programs is uncontestable. Conservatives don't even try.

What they have done, dishonestly, is to cut these services or use the funds earmarked for them as discretionary funds, like they did with Social Security, and then claimed the programs weren't working, what Paul Krugman calls the "bait and switch".

So your two examples of government waste are actually examples of the inefficiency of cutting government programs. How weird how that works out.

Big corporations waste money too. All the time. They're just as bureaucratic and insane as government, indeed far more so, as anyone who's had to go through a phone bank to get the most basic of customer service knows. But the biggest source of that waste, the Pentagon, is something you still have not expressed interest in cutting. I guess government waste is okay when it kills Iraqis.

In any respect, EVEN IF health care cost more than we expected, WE still would have to do it. We'd just cut some new Pentagon boondoggle. You've never even TRIED to argue that providing health care for the public would be worth the cost. You haven't even enumerated the cost you think it'll end up REALLY being. In short, you haven't actually made the argument. No conservative does. They don't want to say that they are actually supporting doing nothing while someone's appendix bursts, so they flatly lie about the HMO system and don't even try to compare the HMO system to a government system, and they don't say, "Look, I think this is too expensive for us to provide the poor". I will eat a napkin if you can find me a conservative who honestly enumerates the real costs that he expects the scheme will cost and then says that improving health care for millions of poor people isn't worth it, saving lives isn't worth it, IN THAT LANGUAGE. Because that is the ONLY honest language that can be deployed.

 

 

"Ultimately, I doubt whether or not I would be able to convince you otherwise of your opinions, even if we debated these same issues for the next twenty years. So it’s been an interesting debate; and I hope we all have lower taxes in the near future. Take care and I wish you well in whatever direction the future takes you."

I hope we have lower taxes too, but I find it suspicious that the things you want to target to cut to acquire those lower taxes are by definition a MINORITY of government spending: That 30% of the government which is not involved in defense spending. Further, a large portion of that remaining 30% is also some manner of subsidy to private industry or to the rich. We could massively cut around 80% of our government spending without ever harming the poor.

The problem is that conservatives, and by that I mean leadership not the rank and file such as yourself, have used the cutting taxes lie as a means to an end. We know they don't actually care about cutting taxes and lowering spending: They raise spending colossally when they're in charge, like with the Iraq War. They use that mantra as a means to cut social programs, social programs that the CONSERVATIVE media has vilified as benefitting untrustworthy, lazy people of color at the cost of hard-working whites.

But we have one of the lowest tax burdens of any industrial society, yet those societies have far lower indicators of poverty, starvation, etc. It is literally unheard of in industrial societies aside from ours to have anything but statistical noise levels of starvation. Not tens of millions of people, or easily 3% of our country. So taxes cannot be to blame for the problems the poor face.

Opportunity Strata

"The problem with Jim Crow was...no matter how hard a black man worked- no matter how educated he was, and no matter how much he believed in the American Dream. He and his dreams were to be denied. His full participation and acceptance in it- by virtue of his skin color was denied. Furthermore- he had to teach his children not to aspire to anything beyond what he could see and if all that his son saw was the cumulative effects of Jim Crow, the black child's spirit was crushed even before he took a step."

As true as this was, it broke down for some individuals. Even at the height of Jim Crow, in the early part of the 20th century, there WERE millionaires like Madame C.J. Walker, a burgeoning Harlem Renaissance movement (as much as it was created almost out of whole cloth rather than naturally emerging), and the beginnings of a black middle class with more wealth than many poor whites. I think the way it breaks down is actually more useful for the modern imagination than the way it stays true.

See, the risk of pointing to how terrible Jim Crow was and how much it kept options off the table for millions, and for all black and brown folks by LAW, is that it can lead people now to make a qualitative distinction between then and now. We don't have lynchings, and we have black millionaires, right?

Yet there was black millionaires at a time where the state was one of formal apartheid.

The fact that some Jews escaped the gas chamber did not make the Holocaust any less of an extermination program. The fact that, in Athens, women and people not within the accepted ruling ethnic group could often ascend to positions of power didn't make it any less of a viciously racist, sexist, elitist society. And so forth.

In short, we tend to judge societies not by individual exemplars, but rather by outcomes for the majority or at least for large bulks, say in chunks of 20% (quintiles).

So those conservatives, and indeed liberal whites, who point to the success of Oprah, or T Pain, or Ice Cube, or Ice T, or Tiger Woods, or MIchael Jordan, or Barack Obama as a reason to believe racism is a thing of the past, would also, if they were consistent, have to say that the Holocaust wasn't racist because it didn't kill every Jew and would have to say that Jim Crow wasn't racist because many blacks (a tiny minority, of course) did pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

So for some even in Jim Crow, hard work and brilliance DID pay off. As a society, we have to decide if we think that means Jim Crow was acceptable and that racism is a specter today, or that Jim Crow WASN'T acceptable and it's an open question even with many successful and prominent black and brown people how prevalent and decisive racism is today.

Incidentally, I remember a story of Dr. King's father insisting that he not be called "boy" by a Sheriff, which was a ballsy move. Blacks in the Jim Crow South and in the North alike did find ways to discursively get back at "Mr. Charlie".

Are as a society satisfied with only 10% of a tiny white male elite having a real chance to express themselves, to achieve their fullest, and the rest of the society be relegated to McDonalds, to middle management? That's a core question that few outside of the Left ask.