K.J. Cartmell's Blog, page 6

Worst Case, Part 2

The Worst Case Scenario, Part 2

Trump’s Russia problems are escalating. They have already led to the resignation of Security Council Head Mike Flynn. It may yet lead to the resignation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. When we get our news in snippets and soundbites, it may be difficult to see the big picture. How did we get here, and how bad could this get?

Candidate Trump took a surprisingly soft position on Russia. He spoke in glowing and respectful terms when describing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump suggested that the United States should not defend members of NATO who were not contributing sufficient funds to the alliance, and he seemed unconcerned by Russia’s undermining of the Ukrainian government, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Playing on Hillary Clinton’s lingering email server scandal, Trump suggested that Putin and the Russians hack Clinton’s computer and “find the 50,000 emails” that Clinton had deleted. Russian intelligence responded by hacking into Democratic Party servers and revealing embarrassing emails in which party officials were clearly favoring Clinton and dismissive and insulting towards her rival Bernie Sanders and his followers.

This action, on the heels of Trump’s ill advised statement, gave the appearance of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign. When confronted with this, Trump attacked the US intelligence community, saying that their information was wrong, a charge he has continued to make while President.

A key Trump advisor during this time was Paul Manafort, who had received $12.7 million for assisting Russia’s efforts to divide and undermine the Ukrainian government. Manafort was removed from his role during the campaign, when the Russian questions first began to arise, but questions about the Trump camp’s relationship with Russia persisted.

Recent news reports state that Mike Flynn had taken money from a Russian media company which is actually a propaganda arm of the Russian government. Flynn was later forced to resign when he lied about his contacts with Russian ambassador Kislyak.

The FBI and CIA believe that Kislyak is a spy, and a spy master. He is here in the United States to recruit members of our government to spy for Russia. (Don’t be shocked. We have someone in Moscow doing the same job.) That Kislyak also had a private meeting with Jeff Sessions, and Sessions lied under oath about the meeting, is extremely troubling.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has his own Russian connection. Previously, he was CEO of the oil giant Exxon Mobil. Exxon has an $500 billion oil deal on the table with Russia that is on hold, blocked by sanctions the Obama administration imposed after Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Tillerson, as Secretary of State, is in a position to lift these sanctions and give a major boon to his former company, the company he has worked for nearly his entire life.

What are Trump’s own business connections with Russia? The President has neither disclosed his tax returns or shared much light on his international business ties. Nor has he in any way divested himself from the company that bears his name, that his sons are now running. What financial incentives does Trump have for improving relations with Russia?

Conflicts of interest are only one scenario on the table at the moment. There is another chilling possibility: that spymaster Kislyak has succeeded, and now someone in Trump’s inner circle is sharing vital information with our geopolitical rival.

I don’t think Trump himself is a spy. But, is he naive and inexperienced enough to allow a spy into his midst unwittingly? Yes. And, if there is an uptick in communication with Russia related to the business relationships that Trump and others have with Russia, that communication could provide a cover for espionage.

That’s our worst case scenario right now - that Trump has a Russian spy and doesn’t know it. We need to pull back the curtain on the Trump administration’s connections with Russia and answer these pressing questions. Congressional hearings begin March 20th, 2017.

Want more? Check this out: https://swalwell.house.gov/issues/rus...

The Worst-Case Scenario, Part 1

The Worst-Case Scenario, Part One


After the election, I chose to step away from political commentary, and let the Trump administration do its thing, and let the Democrats and Republicans do their thing. I felt there were plenty of people commenting on all of this already. I went back to writing my novel, and I made a couple of personal posts here on this blog.

I've been appalled, however, by the Trump administration's blatant disregard for facts and truth, by their careless attitude towards the people's health care, and by their pernicious rollback of financial and environmental regulations which will enrich only billionaires like Trump himself while causing lasting, perhaps irreparable damage to the rest of us.

So, I have returned, interrupted my reflections on my upcoming novel The Gospel of Thomas , to weigh in on the latest Trump scandal.

This past week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was caught having made false statements under oath during his confirmation hearing. He said he had made no contact with Russian officials during the campaign or during the transition, and this was found later not to be the case. He met privately with Ambassador Kislyak in Sessions’ Senate offices during the transition.

This incident is only the latest in a string of scandals relating to the Trump campaign/administration and their ties to Russia. Democrats have accused Sessions of perjury, lying under oath. Perjury is a word that brings up bitter memories from the darkest days of the Clinton administration. For the benefit of my young readers, I wanted to review the details of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal, and draw connections to the current case.

In 1997, Bill Clinton gave a deposition related to a sexual harassment case dating back to his days as governor of Arkansas. The lawyers in the case, attempting to show a pattern of misbehavior by President Clinton, confronted him with questions relating to a young intern by the name of Monica Lewinsky. Clinton had conducted an affair with Lewinsky in 1996-1997, and news of the affair had come to his political opponents. Clinton was evasive in his answers, and eventually a judge ruled him in contempt of court for his misleading testimony.

This was a petty manner – a married man being reluctant to admit having an affair with a younger woman. But, this was the President of the United States, and he could have committed perjury. Both Democrats and Republicans treated this matter with grave seriousness.

The worst-case scenario for the President and his supporters wasn’t perjury, however, but another legal term called subornation of perjury. The lawyers had also deposed Lewinsky, and she had flatly denied the affair in her deposition. Did Clinton use his office as President to force Lewinsky to commit perjury on his behalf? That would be an egregious abuse of power. Had there been evidence of subornation, Clinton would most certainly have been forced from power.

The Republicans could make the case that Clinton had committed perjury, but, despite their best efforts, they could not prove subornation. The House, led by Newt Gingrich at the time, brought Articles of Impeachment against Clinton anyway, and the Senate acquitted him. Clinton was given a stinging rebuke, but he remained in power though the end of his presidency.

Sessions’ denial to Senator Al Franken was hardly vague or evasive. Session said he had not met with Russian officials, yet he had. If Sessions misspoke, he was obscenely negligent in his preparation for his confirmation hearing. The Democrats had been hurling tough questions at each nominee, and the Russian story was both juicy and relevant. He should have anticipated a question about the Trump campaigns ties to Russia and prepared an answer after a careful review of his past schedule.

More likely, he was lying under oath. Perjury. I agree with those who say Sessions should resign.

If Trump forced Sessions to lie, then that would be subornation of perjury, an impeachable offense.

But that is not the worst-case scenario here. Not by a long shot.

The Journey to Gospel of Thomas

My stories come to me as waking dreams. I see a clip, an excerpt, like a movie trailer.

Back in 2009, it was a dream about a boy and a girl, holding hands, walking down a street in a neighborhood where I used to live. The girl is pretty, with blond hair and blue eyes, but at first glance, I don’t know anything else about her. She smiles eagerly, showing how excited she is to be with the boy. But when he leans in for a kiss, she pulls away and says, “Take me somewhere only God can see us.”

I knew right then that the girl was an Evangelical Protestant. She was a pastor’s daughter who attended a private Christian high school. The boy she was with was someone from the neighborhood, but he went to public school. He didn’t go to her church, either. He was completely outside her circle, which was why she was so afraid to be seen kissing him.

Maybe the boy doesn’t believe in God at all, I thought. If I name him Thomas, then he could be Doubting Thomas, and this could be called The Gospel of Thomas . Wouldn’t that be a cool name for a story!


I was raised as an Evangelical Protestant. During my teen years, I was very active in a large church with private high school attached to it. As I participated in church activities, I befriended the children of the pastors and deacons who attended that school. In Bible study meetings and new member outreach, I got to see the pastors who ran the youth program up close. For a few years, I sang in the choir, and I performed at services that ran all through the day on Sundays.

I was a hard core believer in those days. I had a New International Version Study Bible, with full color maps and long footnotes on every page, giving me insight into each passage and verse. I felt like an insider.

I was a smart, thoughtful kid who asked tough questions, like “Why are we cloistering ourselves off on this ‘Church on a Hill?’ Shouldn’t we be down in the valley, ministering to other kids and trying to help them?” I felt superior to the kids at the Christian high school, because I was amongst the “sinners” at my local public high school. By surrounding myself with people who believed differently than I did, my faith was tested every day. I felt I was doing God’s work by being there, as an example of a kind and earnest believer.

The longer I attended the church and mingled with the other young people, I found few who were as hard core as I was. Many were there because their parents made them come. The most cynical and cruel kids in the group were often the children of the pastors and deacons. They saw Faith and Salvation as something they were entitled to, not something to nurture, challenge and grow. This was a very homogenous group. There was no room in that Youth Group for outcasts, freaks and weirdoes, interesting people whom I was naturally drawn towards.

When I was seventeen, my faith faced its biggest challenge: I fell in love with a girl who didn’t go to my church. The pat, simplistic teachings I received regarding teen relationships were burnt to a crisp by the hot, hormone fuelled fire of teenage lust. Her beliefs and experiences, subtly different from my own, made me question all that I had been taught by my parents and pastors.

By nineteen, I had stopped going to that church. My old beliefs were burnt away, slowly replaced by a thoughtful, passionate agnosticism. (Folksinger Dar Williams describes a very similar transformation in her song “Teen for God.”) I found myself incensed at the backward thinking of my former associates, particularly their treatment of women, homosexuals and transgender people.

I wanted to write a novel that followed the journey I had made from believer to skeptic; a story that could filter and process my experiences into something from which others could benefit.

In my late teens and early twenties, I was too hurt and angry. I needed time to heal, time to gain a sense of objectivity. On that early morning in 2009, I knew the time had come. The Gospel of Thomas would be that novel.

Sex and Star Wars

I thoroughly enjoyed the new Star Wars movie, Rogue One. Its dark, cynical tone, however, may be unsettling to some. The sweetness and campy fun of the earlier films is gone. If Return of the Jedi and The Clone Wars were Roger Moore James Bond films, Rogue One would be Daniel Craig Bond, grittier and far more violent.

I was explaining this to a friend of mine today. I told her that the male lead was an anti-hero, and she remarked cheekily, "Anti-heroes need love, too!"

That's exactly what this film needed - a love scene. (I'm being straight, here, not sarcastic.) A few sparks, some genuine heat and a little tenderness as we went along would have given that final scene far greater emotional power. It doesn't have to be Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton in Terminator (though I wouldn't have minded if it had been.)

But, you protest, this is a kids movie! You can't have sex in a kids movie! Well, Rogue One isn't a kids movie. It earns its PG-13 rating with long, intense battle scenes. The Death Star doesn't wipe out a whole planet in this picture, but it does vaporize two cities, and each time, we observe the cataclysmic destruction close up. Near the end, Darth Vader carves up some good guys with his light saber in a scene reminiscent of the video game The Force Unleashed (Rated T for Teen.)

I'm not into parent shaming any more than I am body shaming. I know one parent who took her young children to this movie, and I know another who is planning to do so next weekend. If you do take your kids to see this, be prepared to discuss the hard choices adults make in war time.

If we're going to have that discussion, however, why not discuss, at some level, the intimate affection that adults share to comfort and strengthen each other? It could have been a teachable moment about love and relationships.

My fear is that these discussions aren't happening. We expose our children repeatedly to this level of video game violence, without qualm or qualification. We are desensitizing our children and ourselves to the real violence that is all around us, from Sandy Hook to Aleppo.

Our children need more stories about love. It's time we gave them some.

The Day After

So, as it turns out, Trump won. Maybe you heard.

I live in California, one of the most diverse and eclectic states in the Union. Hillary Clinton earned over 60% of our votes, and we are a big reason for her slight lead in the popular vote. My being from California likely skewed my perceptions of Trump’s national appeal. I shortchanged the deep distrust for Clinton in other parts of the country, especially in the rural areas of each state. I see now that the Evangelicals had stayed away from Romney, the Mormon, but rallied in surprising numbers for Trump.

I stand by my blogs. I believe Trump is ill-prepared to be president. In California, we experimented with having a political novice be governor. The six years of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration did not go well – in the end, both Republicans and Democrats were mad at him for different things - and we are still paying debts that he kicked down the road. I can’t imagine Trump’s presidency being any better. It is likely, in fact, to be quite worse. There’s just that much more to get in trouble with being President of the United States.

One of my many worries today was the fact that the Democrats failed in their bid to re-take the Senate. We had this same scenario in 2001-2006, when the Republicans controlled both the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House. The Country got badly off the rails in those six years without the Democrats providing a counterweight.

The main difference in this case is that George W. Bush worked quite well with his Congress, while Trump’s relationships with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are strained. It remains an open question which of Trump’s notions and wild boasts will become law and which were “just words.”

Tax breaks for the super-wealthy seem quite likely, now. (This will drive up the deficit and push the economy into a ditch, just as it did under George W. Bush). Trump’s apologists are already backing away from the Big Wall idea. We’ll see, now that she is likely finished as a politician, if the Republicans continue to harass Clinton with lawsuits and criminal charges.

What will happen when Trump faces litigation himself in the case of Trump University? The idea of a sitting president being charged with fraud is troubling, and may create a constitutional rat’s nest. He is due to testify in court on November 28th.

In the coming days, there will be much soul searching and finger pointing among the Democrats. (I will not belabor the soul-searching nor participate in the finger-pointing.) When Trump takes office, I suggest Nancy Pelosi and company not take up the obstructionist mantle from their Republican counterparts. Allow the Republicans have their way for a bit, let the train start to go off the rails again, and then hit them hard in the midterms. Let’s find someone energetic and progressive to run for President in 2020.

Will love Trump hate? Only if we make it so. I had words of comfort for an Afghani friend this morning. She was afraid she would be separated from her husband and deported. Despite nervous chatter on Twitter, I saw a Muslim woman today wearing her hajib. If this is part of your faith, you should stick to it, and God be with you. For the rest of us, we need to stand up to bigotry wherever we encounter it.

Have courage, and take care. The years ahead will be challenging.

The True Prize

Who's the most powerful person in the United States right now? President Barack Obama? As head of the executive branch and the military, he wields incredible power and influence. Yet, if you saw the frustration on his face and heard the repressed anger in his voice at his inability to pass sensible gun control measures, or even get a hearing on his Supreme Court nominee, you understand the limits of that power.

So, is Senate Leader Mitch McConnell more powerful? McConnell has done little more than stall and hamper Obama, and his obstructionism will (hopefully) cost the Republicans their majority in the Senate. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, meanwhile, can barely keep his unruly caucus in line.

The most powerful and influential person in the United States right now is not an elected official. His name is Justice Anthony Kennedy, the "swing vote" on the U. S. Supreme Court.

Through February of 2016, there were four conservative judges (Stevens, Alioto, Thomas and Scalia), four liberal judges (Ginsberg, Breyer, Kagan and Sotomayor), and Kennedy. Typically, the four conservatives voted one way and the four liberals voted the other way. Kennedy sometimes votes with the conservatives and sometimes with the liberals. His vote breaks the tie between the two camps. Whatever he decides, becomes the law.

He sided with the conservatives on Bush v Gore, which ended the vote recount in Florida in 2001, and handed the Presidency to George W. Bush. He wrote the opinion for Citizens United v FEC, ending restrictions on campaign contributions by corporations and special interests (see my last blog). He also wrote the opinion for Obergefell v Hodges, which granted gays and lesbians the right to marry.

For decades, Presidents and the Senate have conspired to maintain this 4-4-1 split on the Supreme Court. As a liberal retires, he was replaced by a liberal, and when a conservative retired, he was replaced by a conservative. (Forgive the male pronoun, but all but one of the retired judges in the last twenty years have been male.) The one exception to this rule was in 1991, when George H.W. Bush replaced a liberal, Thurgood Marshall , with a conservative, Clarence Thomas.

The sudden death of Antonin Scalia in February of 2016 presented Barack Obama with the opportunity to replace the influential conservative with someone more moderate. He appointed Merrick Garland, an uncontroversial pick, someone who had been unanimously approved to his previous appointment.

McConnell, however, blocked any hearing on the nomination, stating that the American People should decide who they want selecting the next Supreme Court justice. (I'm sure that, back in February, McConnell was thinking Jeb Bush would be the one making this pick, not Donald Trump.) With his inaction, McConnell made the Supreme Court one of the key issues of the fall campaign.

If Hillary Clinton becomes President, and the Democrats retake the Senate, the path for Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia will be clear. In fact, Clinton could rescind the appointment of Garland and put up someone more liberal. This new justice will give the liberals a fifth vote on the court, minimizing the power and influence of Anthony Kennedy. Likewise, if Trump becomes President, he will undoubtedly nominate a conservative to replace Scalia, maintaining the current 4-4-1 split, and keeping Kennedy as the key swing vote.

But, it's not only Scalia's seat that's at stake. Ruth Bader Ginsberg (RBG to her fans) is 83, and Anthony Kennedy is 80. It is likely that the next president will be replacing both of those justices.

This is the true prize of the upcoming election, the opportunity for the Progressive Caucus to put a 6-3 split on the Supreme Court. If you are a woman who wants to control medical decisions involving your own body, you owe it to yourself to vote for Hillary Clinton. The current court configuration leaves Roe v Wade vulnerable. A sixth liberal justice will put abortion rights out of reach of the conservatives for decades.

Likewise, to my gay friends and readers, remember that your right to marry was upheld by a single Supreme Court vote. The conservatives have turned their focus towards transgender rights. If they get a win on that issue, they will attack Obergefell. A sixth liberal Supreme Court justice could end both gambits.

With six liberals, Citizens United could be overturned, ending the desperate gathering of campaign contributions, and putting politicians to work for their constituents. As I have stated previously, I believe this is the key to ending gridlock in Washington and implementing a more progressive agenda, including single payer health care and caps on drug prices.

Some of you may be less than satisfied with Hillary Clinton as a candidate. You may prefer to be voting for Bernie Sanders, or someone else. But, this is too important an election to stay home. Not only must we avert the fiasco of a Trump presidency, but we have the opportunity to move the country once again in a more liberal, progressive direction.

This is our privilege and our responsibility.

Campaign Finance Reform

To re-cap my last few blogs, I'm advocating for infrastructure projects to drive up pay for the American worker. I'm pushing for a public option for health care, and to extract our pharmaceutical industry from the for-profit, capitalist model.

If these ideas are so self-evident, why aren't the politicians discussing and debating these ideas in Congress right now? As commentator Robert Reich has pointed out multiple times, the people inciting gridlock are the ones who are benefiting most from the status quo. (See also, Noam Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream, on Netflix). Whenever there is a chance that Congress might enact actual legislation, the forces that legislation would most effect rise up to strangle it.

Even when Congress seems like it's working, it's not really doing anything. The House and Senate both roundly criticized Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf for the unethical environment he created within the giant bank. Stumpf was later forced into retirement, but no actual regulations were passed, or even debated, intended to avoid a similar scandal from erupting in the future.

Mylan's Heather Bresch spent some time in front of Congress, too. Though she was strongly criticized for jacking up the price of EpiPens, no legislation was passed to curb these abusive price increases.

Why is this happening? Because the politicians are dependent on the corporations, and the billionaire shareholders who control them, for campaign donations. Politicians are afraid of passing legislation that hurts their sponsor, who could in turn cut off their supply of donations and fund an opposing candidate instead.

Running for President has always been expensive, as "ground games" in all 50 states involves hundreds of people. Television ads are expensive to develop, produce and to run. Hillary Clinton asks me for money all the time, as did Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. But fundraising is a fact of life for lower level politicians, too.

60 Minutes recently reported that members of the House spend 30 hours a week fundraising for their next campaign. This is time taken from legislating and meeting with constituents. Bernie Sanders was proud of his $27 average donation. But, if you're a Congressperson, and you need to raise$18,000 every day for the next six months so that you can fund your next campaign, you're not going to make it on $27 donations. You need to go to the big pocket donors, those who can cut you a check for $500 or even $1000 on the spot. There's only so many people in the country that have that kind of disposable income, and those people now wield incredible influence.

This influx of cash into political campaigns has seeped down even to more local campaigns. You cannot run for State Legislature in California without aligning yourself with one of the powerful special interest groups: the gun lobby, the business lobby, the teacher's union, etc. It's clear from the advertising which candidate is supported by which interest group. The candidates are campaigning on issues that are most pressing for their backers. Party affiliation is almost irrelevant.

How did we get here? A series of Supreme Court decisions, culminating in the now infamous Citizens United vs FEC, equated funding of campaigns with free speech, protected by the Constitution. The decision lifted restrictions put on corporations and special interest groups. They can now spend unlimited amounts of money in support of political campaigns.

This caused a flood of money from billionaires and corporations into politics. The money has driven up the cost of every campaign, creating a barrier that prevents those with limited resources to go into politics. Those who do make public office are forced to beg for funds, and work the phones like a telemarketer. Our unbalanced system is also undermining one of the bedrock principles of our democracy: one person, one vote.

You and I get only one ballot. We vote for whatever is on our ballot every November. I don't get to go to another state and vote in their election, too. But, a wealthy donor can essentially vote in multiple elections, by funding campaigns all across the country. Most troubling, these donors can help enact laws in faraway places, laws that they themselves would not be subject to. This is an injustice on par with "taxation without representation."

How do we fix it? First, we need to talk about it, because awareness on this issue is limited. Hillary Clinton has come out in favor of overturning the Citizens United ruling, by making it a "litmus test" for her Supreme Court nominee (more on the Supreme Court in my next blog). We will also need to enact a campaign finance reform law that will challenge the ruling and force the Court to vote again.

For that to happen, we will need politicians to unite around the idea of doing the people's business and not the business of the wealthy. If this is an important issue to you, then make sure your congressperson knows this, and push that person to take action.

This is the key to loosening the gridlock that has plagued Washington for most of Obama's term. Only a strong, enforceable campaign finance rules can keep corporations and billionaires from killing legislation they don't like.

The entire Progressive Agenda rests on this one issue. If we can reign in political spending, then true health care reform, strong environmental laws, Main Street over Wall Street banking regulation, sensible gun control, all of it becomes possible. If we fail, we submit to a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.

BernieCare

The cost of health insurance is a huge anchor dragging down the entire economy. To provide health insurance to my own family, my wife and her employer send a combined $17,500 a year in premiums to Anthem Blue Cross. That's the equivalent of a well appointed Chevy Cruze, every year, for the privilege of paying 20% of any medical expenses after our $500 deductible has been met. (I could take health insurance through my job, but those plans are even worse.)

The Affordable Care Act, aka ObamaCare, was supposed to fix this. This was a compromise from the beginning, an attempt at expanding coverage and lowering costs while maintaining a private corporate model. The plan was based on what Mitt Romney had rolled out in Massachusetts during Romney's term as governor. Romney's solution had been hailed by many Republican leaders, including Newt Gingrich, as a model for the nation.

Obama thought, perhaps naively, that the Republicans wouldn't trash their own idea because a Democrat (and a black man) endorsed it. He was, of course, wrong. The Republicans pinned the name ObamaCare on the Affordable Care Act, vilified it on right wing radio, and spent the next six years trying to undo it.

It is interesting to note that, though the name ObamaCare remains unpopular with many voters, when pollsters ask about the law's individual characteristics, (free well visits, free birth control pills, kids on the plan through age 24), those components are all very popular.

The law was successful in getting more Americans under the umbrella of insurance. It did nothing,however, to control costs. (See Stephen Brill's book, America's Bitter Pill, for a thorough explanation of what went wrong.)

High premiums suck up dollars that would otherwise be spread out across the entire economy in the form of purchases both large and small. Health care costs prevent my family from going on regular vacations. We go longer between major purchases, like cars, appliances and furniture. It makes saving for our children's college education more difficult.

But, I know we are the fortunate ones. These same stresses keep other people from having enough food for their families. Those millions of dollars in premiums that corporations pay for their workers' health care cuts into money for research and development, and for higher wages. This is the main reason why, even though the Great Recession officially ended years ago, the economy never got back into high gear. It's a big factor in the anti-establishment anger percolating throughout American society.

Donald Trump, in his acceptance speech back in August, declared, "I'm going to abolish ObamaCare, and replace it with something better!" The plan that he finally did announce is a big step backwards. It would deny coverage to 20 million people. Hillary Clinton's plan would bring health insurance to an additional 9 million, but there is no assurance that her plan would control costs.

In truth, there is only one solution that will both insure everyone and bring costs in line. It's what Bernie Sanders advocated for during his campaign, what Hillary Clinton proposed that we do back in 1994: Universal Health Care, the Public Option, Medicare for everyone. Replace premiums with higher taxes, cut out the shareholders and CEOs, cut out the paperwork and the accountants, and focus on bringing quality care to the American people at a reasonable cost.

I saw on Twitter a few months ago, this comment: "Who would you rather have running health care? USPS or FedEx?" The analogy is apt, though perhaps not in the way that the writer intended. FedEx brings letters everywhere across the whole planet, in bright white envelopes carried by uniformed, smiling couriers. They do a magnificent job, and FedEx is rightfully an admired company, globally.

So, why don't you use FedEx to send out your Christmas cards and Wedding invitations? Because, at $25 per letter, you would go broke very quickly. The USPS may be slower, and their couriers less cheerful, but they get it done for forty-seven cents.

To answer the question, Yes, I'm ready for the USPS version of health care. If the ratio holds, under BernieCare, I should be paying $329 per year for health insurance. Sign me up.

The Case Against Big Pharma

As you may have heard, drug maker Mylan recently raised the price of the severe allergy treatment EpiPen to $600. The increase sparked outrage across the country, and inspired investigations at the state and federal levels. In response to the outcry, Mylan offered financial assistance to patients who couldn't afford the price increase, but it didn't cut the list price of the drug.

This was a bad political miscalculation for Mylan and their CEO, Heather Bresch. In years past, such a price increase would have been absorbed by the insurance companies and passed along to patients the following year in the form of higher premiums. The root cause would have remained invisible to the consumer, and thus, staved off governmental investigators.

But, skyrocketing insurance premiums have forced people across the country to accept cheaper plans that put them on the hook for a portion of their pharmaceutical expenses. When the price of EpiPens doubled, it hit consumers hard, and Mylan suddenly found itself with a bad public image problem. Mylan was thrown in with Gilead and their $1000 Hep C pill, and with disgraced corporate raider Martin Shkreli.

Keep in mind, the real target of the EpiPen cost increase was not the individual consumer. Mylan was quick to cut that group a discount. It is with large institutional buyers that Mylan will make the most money. It's no accident that this price increase occurred right before the start of school. Schools across the country are required by law to have EpiPens on hand to save the lives of children with severe allergies to peanuts, bee stings, etc. Our schools will buy the EpiPens no matter how much they cost, to comply with state law and education codes.

When the press started poking around for details on Heather Bresch, they found much to sink their teeth into. She's the daughter of a U.S. Senator. When her father was governor of West Virginia, he pressured West Virginia University to issue his daughter a business degree ten years after she attended the school, even though she had not completed the degree program.

She paid back our country's generosity by jacking up the cost of a lifesaving drug, one that costs less than a dollar to produce. She switched Mylan's headquarters to the Netherlands, in order to cut the tax bill, and then gave herself a big congratulatory raise. This is the kind of smug, haughty attitude that has infuriated the electorate and fueled the anti-Washington establishment campaigns of Trump and Sanders.

In the end, the various committees investigating this matter may conclude that Bresch and Mylan did nothing illegal. They acted within the laws as they are currently written. Bresch said in her defense, "I am running a business. I am a for-profit business. I am not hiding from that."

But, Education dollars should go to children's education, not line the pockets of shareholders and corporate executives. It should make us queasy that Bresch, Shkreli and others are making such huge profits off of vulnerable, critically ill people. We have a right be angry. If this is within the law, then the law needs to be changed.

Medicine is not the same as blue jeans or gasoline. Chevron charges a premium for its fancy gas, and sports car enthusiasts swear by it. The rest of us can get by using the cheap stuff. So long as there are people to buy them, there will be expensive brands of blue jeans. Yet, no one is walking around without pants because they couldn't afford a $3500 Valentino Mid-Rise.

I am all for companies recouping their research and development costs, but $600 EpiPens and $1000 Hep C pills are obscene. (In their defense, Gilead incurred heavy expenses developing their drugs, but $1000 dollars per pill is too much. Every other country in the world has negotiated a lower rate for Sovaldi. Only our government is so subservient to the demands of Wall Street. Meanwhile, Mylan didn't invent the EpiPen. The U.S. Government developed it for our Armed Forces!) These corporations are like toddlers having a tantrum. They are just begging for the government to step in and be the parent.


We need to start viewing access to health care and medicine as a human right, not something only the wealthy can afford. We need to divorce health care, including Big Pharma, from the capitalist, for-profit model. We need our pharmaceutical industry to produce and develop needed, necessary drugs. These drugs, and the companies that produce them, should not be seen as engines of enormous profits.

A Solution to Stagnating Wages

Much of the pent up anger across the United States has been caused by the ever tightening vice of rising expenses, and stagnant wages. I will focus on the main culprit of rising expenses, the skyrocketing cost of health care, in a separate blog. My focus here is to examine why wages have stagnated, and to propose a solution.

Over the last several decades, corporations have ceased to view their employees as key components of their value proposition, but rather as an expense to be minimized or eliminated. The PEW Research Center states that real wages, when adjusted for inflation, are flat or dropping when compared to previous decades.

Corporations in every area of our economy are trying to do more with fewer employees. You see this most frequently in the retail setting. The next time you are impatiently waiting for service, while one or two stressed-out employees rush from one end of the store to another, remember this: your wait was caused by an executive in a distant corporate headquarters, who thought they could cut back on payroll without impacting the customer experience.

When Chevron laid off 8,000 people last spring, it made the business news. But there's another type of layoff that economists and the business press rarely discuss. When an employee leaves a company, either from retirement or a job change, the open position is not always filled. The responsibilities are divided among the remaining workers, for no extra pay. Profitable for company executives and shareholders, but bad policy in terms of worker morale and customer experience.

American corporations have been doing this for years. It's not just Chevron, either: all the corporations are using the same playbook. This path is unsustainable, and we're coming to the end of the road, if we're not already there.

The recession officially ended six years ago, but the American economy is stuck in second gear. Economists can seem to spark a big spurt of growth, because the middle class, a big engine of the economy, isn't spending money. We're not buying cars, houses, and durable goods like washing machines at the clip we have in decades past. The cause of this is clear - we're not making enough money (and after the last recession, we've been reluctant to run up big debts).

When sales are down, corporations cut back on purchases, and expenses such as payroll. This only exacerbates the problem, as one company's cutback causes another company to miss its sales plan, sparking further cutbacks.

To break this cycle, we need a big player to start paying workers higher wages. I don't mean only raising the minimum wage. Even Bernie Sander's proposed $20 an hour isn't a middle class wage. We need millions of jobs paying $50,000 to $99,999 annually ($24-$48/hr).

There's only one power that can pull this off on a scale that would change the course of the entire economy: The U.S. Government. What Uncle Sam needs to do is embark upon an ambitious set of infrastructure projects. As I have pointed out in a previous blog, there's plenty of work that needs to be done - roads, bridges and pipes. Our infrastructure, much of which was build long decades ago, is crumbling.

To rebuild it all, we'll need engineers and laborers, by the millions. Our government needs to start hiring people, and paying them well. This will put huge pressure on corporations to compete for workers by offering higher pay. If they don't, they'll lose their best people, and their enterprises will be in jeopardy.

Though this solution increases government spending, economists believe that the effect on the National Debt would be minimal. Expand the Middle Class, and all that extra money goes right back into the economy, in the form of purchases of houses, cars and durable goods. This in turn increases tax receipts, which should offset the original expenditures. The strengthened infrastructure should increase the confidence of corporations and consumers alike and spur further economic activity.

This is how we got out of the Great Depression. Economists such as Mohammed El-Erian and Lawrence Sommers have proposed doing exactly this.

Higher wages will go a long way to helping assuage the frustration and anger in the American electorate, but it's not the full solution. We will also need to control costs, especially, the ever rising cost of Health Care. [Next blog!]